Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the dramatic decline of The Daily Wire — from massive layoffs (25-50% staff cuts), an 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube views, and high-profile splits with Candace Owens, Brett Cooper, and others — to financial flops like the $10M Pendragon fantasy series nobody asked for.They explore Shapiro’s mean-girl gatekeeping, failed attempts to control the conservative movement, allegations of heavy viewbotting, outdated content strategies, and why the old-guard “Boomer conservative” model is collapsing while newer, more vital, fun, and adaptive voices (including Based Camp) are rising.Show Notes* Around May 1st, the Daily Wire laid off around 13% of their staff* At least according to a company spokesperson* Candace Owens claims that 50% were laid off* And LayoffHedge (a third-party tracker) estimates approximately 100 jobs cut in 2026 (that is 50% of the approximately 200 remaining staff)* This is their second round of layoffs, following a 25% staff cut in April 2025* A year in which they also shut down their Bentkey children’s entertainment division* So their team is down over 60%* These changes coincide with a 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube viewership* 2023: He had over 170 million monthly views* Now: 18-28 million monthly views* Plus Ben Shapiro and Team Daily Wire is very publicly splitting from major right-wing influencers—after a long history of sanctimonious gatekeeping* And this is in addition to insanely stupid financial indulgences made by the Daily Wire, like dumping $10M on a fantasy series nobody asked forLet’s look at their rise and fall and what it indicates about the right.The Rise of Ben Shapiro and the Daily WireBen Shapiro’s rise began in the early 2000s as a teenage author and columnist, accelerating in the 2010s through campus debates, books, and podcasts.Shapiro published his first book, Brainwashed, at age 17 in 2004 while at UCLA, followed by columns and radio appearances.His national breakout came around 2012-2016 via viral campus speeches (”facts don’t care about your feelings”), resigning from Breitbart in 2016 amid Trump tensions, and The Ben Shapiro Show podcast launch. By 2018, it was syndicated on over 200 stations, peaking his influence during 2016-2020 political polarization.The Daily Wire launched on June 29, 2015, co-founded by Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing with seed funding from the Wilks brothers, building on Shapiro’s momentum post-Breitbart. The Ben Shapiro Show debuted as its flagship in September 2015.* The Daily Wire perfected Facebook‑era virality with clicky headlines and “SJW owned” debate clips, becoming one of the most‑linked news domains on the platform and a powerhouse during the Trump and early COVID years.The company hit its peak in late 2023, driven by Shapiro’s YouTube reaching ~170 million monthly views amid Israel-Hamas coverage, with revenue claims over $100 million annually by 2022. Expansion included Nashville HQ (2020), DailyWire+ (2022), and Bentkey (2023).The Layoffs* Most of the layoffs were around the Daily Wire’s Nashville, TN headquarters (and particularly within the production office)The YouTube and Facebook DropsFacebook* Facebook’s 2024 feed changes de‑ranked news and gutted The Daily Wire’s traffic, collapsing the distribution engine that had made them look unbeatable in the mid‑2010s.YouTube* Independent YouTube analytics (VidIQ and others) show Ben Shapiro’s channel views are down roughly 70–85% from their late‑2023 peak* Flagship channels sometimes have normal slumps, but online commentators like Philip DeFranco have noted this change in traffic is closer to a collapse* Social Blade data shows The Daily Wire’s YouTube subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of the last 16 months since early 2025.* Website traffic by March 2026 was about half of what it had been a year earlier, and Shapiro has admitted that revenue is down from 2024 even while insisting cash flow remains strong relative to critics’ expectations.The SplitsDirectBrett Cooper* Voluntarily left The Daily Wire on December 10, 2024Candace Owens* Left in March 2024* CEO Jeremy Boreing announced the end of their partnership, stating it was mutual but amid public feuds like Owens’ “Christ is King” posts and defense of Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks. Shapiro challenged her to quit if unhappy, while Owens called herself “finally free” and accused Shapiro of ad hominem attacks. She continued criticizing Israel and the ADL post-exit.* Owens weaponized receipts, text messages, and live‑stream theatrics to frame Shapiro as hypocritical and captured by Israeli donors, and then rode the Charlie Kirk assassination discourse into a giant audience surge while undermining Shapiro’s legitimacy.More IdeologicalThe Daily Wire fell out of step with the dissident right and younger MAGA, especially re: stanning IsraelNick Fuentes* In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes talks about how Ben Shapiro gatekept and belittled him early in his career, even when he was essentially a nobody* Fuentes describes first publicly criticizing Shapiro and The Daily Wire over Israel, then getting labeled an antisemite:* “I tweeted to Ben Shapiro. I said, ‘You know, I’ve never seen anything on the Daily Wire that’s actually critical of Israel.’ And he quote tweets me… And he says to accuse a Jew of dual loyalty is the shest sign of anti-semitism.”* “He immediately called you an anti-semite.” (Tucker) – “Mhm. So I’m driving to Christmas Eve mass with my family and I see on Twitter the notification comes up. Ben Shapiro quote tweets me calling me an anti-semite.”* “And then… I said something like, ‘If you’re China first, you should live in China. If you’re Mexico first, you should live in Mexico. If you’re Israel first, maybe you should go live in Israel.’ And again, he quote tweets me and says, ‘You’re an anti-semite’ that same night.”* Fuentes frames this as Shapiro deciding early on to shut him down inside the conservative movement:* “It turned out that Cassie Dylan, she had texted him earlier and she wanted him to take me under his wing… And he goes, ‘I’ll take a look.’ And so, I guess the two of them were kind of like grooming me in a sense. They wanted me to go maybe and be a Daily Wire [guy] or maybe looking me as a potential conservative activist or influencer. And so they started paying attention to me.”* “And the more critical of Israel I was, I started to get this really intense push back from the both of them and from a lot of the people at Daily Wire.”* “For them, it was very easy that if they detected that a promising young guy was going to become anti-Israel in the conservative movement, they could crush that person easily and grind them under the heel. So, they sort of were alerted, oh, there’s a precocious young guy that isn’t on board with Israel. We’ll keep an eye on him and if he gets too vocal or popular, we’ll cut him down. We’ll crush him.”* “Basically from then on, it was just this escalating series of blacklisting, censorship, hit pieces, rumors to try to ostracize me from the movement.”* Fuentes links Shapiro/Daily Wire and their circle to efforts to isolate him and get him fired:* “First they would try to dissuade me from asking questions… they would say, ‘Well, you know, there’s a really good answer for that, but you’re asking it in the wrong way… you’re asking it in an anti-semitic way.’”* “And eventually they said, ‘You know what? we’re not going to talk to you anymore.’ And these were my friends… All of them one day said, ‘You’re done. We’re blocking you. We’re never going to speak to you again. We’re never going to have you on our show.’”* “At this time I was on RSBN… And they escalated their attacks. Cassie Dylan would call my boss… every day for weeks, saying, ‘You’ll never believe what Nick said on his show tonight. It’s so racist. It’s so bad. You got to take him off the air. It’s going to make you look bad.’”* “And I would then get word from my boss… ‘I don’t know what has gotten into Cassie. I thought you guys were friends, but she is calling me every day hysterically demanding that I fire you.’”* On a clip that ended up at Media Matters: “And so that clip appears on Media Matters… and ultimately then they fired me… But the pressure in this scenario came exclusively from the Daily Wire.”* “My show got maybe a hundred live viewers every night… So the Media Matters was not on to me. They were put onto me by people in the right that wanted me cancelled.* Later, Fuentes explicitly ties Shapiro’s attacks to his own radicalization and turn against the conservative establishment:* “Looking back with that 2020 hindsight, I mean, Ben Shapiro seems like a big part of your political evolution. You went from a fan acolyte to an opponent and then just pivoted against everything that he believes.” (Tucker) – “Yeah. It was because it was this new dialectic that Trump forced… So once you accept that, a lot of the way we’re doing things becomes impossible to support or justify. The contradiction becomes apparent.”* “I realized that the conservative movement was completely bankrupt in that way. Became very radical.”Tucker CarlsonShapiro blasted Carlson as an “intellectual coward” and “moral imbecile” in late 2025 for interviewing Nick Fuentes and echoing antisemitic tropes on Israel/Jewish influence. Carlson retaliated by slamming Shapiro’s “many attacks on Jesus,” immigration views, and pro-Israel stance as “bigotry and cruelty,” especially on Iran policy. Their rift deepened post-Trump’s 2024 reelection, splintering right-wing media.Megyn KellyKelly mocked Shapiro’s YouTube views as “like 500 views” apiece in May 2026, amid his audience decline. At Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in December 2025, Shapiro called her a “charlatan” for platforming Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson; Kelly fired back, accusing Shapiro and Bari Weiss of fueling antisemitism by suppressing Israel criticism. She defended her neutrality and friendship with Owens, calling Shapiro “Israel first.”The Conservative Disney Boondoggle* Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing pulled Daily Wire into a fantasy series passion project* CEO Jeremy Boreing pursued a Breitbart‑style “politics is downstream of culture” vision, pouring money into kids’ content, feature films, and merch (anti‑woke razors, chocolates), aiming to build a conservative Hollywood in Nashville.* He is no longer CEO, he just wants to lead creative stuff* The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin* Arthurian fantasy series* Here’s the preview: * The Daily Wire spent at least $10 million on “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin,” with a minimum of $1 million per episode for its seven-episode season.* This figure comes from statements by co-CEO and executive producer Jeremy Boreing, marking it as the company’s most ambitious production to date, filmed in Italy and Hungary.* The series is fully live and available now. It premiered on DailyWire+ on January 22, 2026, with all seven episodes released by early March 2026* It holds an IMDb rating of 7.9/10 from over 2,400 votes and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score around 86-88%, ranking moderately at #2,181 out of 35,000 shows.* Critics and some outlets like Esquire call it uneven or “terrible,” while fans and figures like Roger Avary praise it as engaging fantasy akin to Game of Thrones.* The $10M+ production aims to attract subscribers, but no reports confirm new viewer influx or revenue gains post-premiere in January 2026. Past Daily Wire revenue hit $100M+ in 2021-2022, but recent 2026 figures are unavailable.Why Ben Shapiro is Falling Off* Shift from in-demand inexpensive content to not-highly-demanded highly-produced content* Pendragon has become the symbol of Daily Wire drifting from relatively cheap, high‑margin podcasts/political commentary into expensive streaming‑style productions that may not have had the necessary audience.* Failure to evolve* As social platforms shifted toward short‑form and livestreaming, Shapiro’s show format, thumbnails, and pacing stayed static, while creators like Candace Owens aggressively embraced live, high‑drama streaming.* Brittle model* The company’s model—sign talent, build their audiences, and monetize under The Daily Wire umbrella—became structurally weak once it was trivial for stars to spin up independent monetized channels and leave.* Sanctamonious gatekeepingEpisode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be with you today because the Daily Wire is having a moment. Around May 1st they laid off around 13% of their staff, but this is just according to a company spokesperson. Candace Owens claims that 50% were laid off.And Layoff Hedge, which is a third-party tracker, estimates that approximately 100 jobs were cut in 2026, and that is about 50% of their approximately 200 remaining staff. Oh no, Candace Owens coming in with truth nukes here? I mean, well, she’s because people are leaking to her from the inside, and I think that’s entirely plausible.It’s not like she doesn’t have any remaining friends there. You know, she worked there for a while. Well, when youMalcolm Collins: look at their decline in viewership, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. Because you don’t wanna cut, when you’re in the middle of a decline like the Daily Wire is right now- Yeah ... you don’t wanna cut to your existing level because you’ve got to presume that it’s going to continue to decrease going forward.Exactly, soSimone Collins: maybe they’re kind of preemptive cuts. And keep in mind, this is, this is their second round of [00:01:00] layoffs. This, there was a 25% staff cut in April of 2025, so last year. And that was a year also in which they shut down their Benke Children’s Entertainment division. So their team is down over 60%, as far as anyone can tell.Yeah ... and the changes coincide, as you alluded, to an 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube viewership. In 2023 at their height, he had over 170 million monthly views, and now that’s down to 18 to 28 million. And then also, Ben Shapiro and Team Daily Wire are very publicly splitting from very major right-wing influencers after a very long history of sanctimonious gatekeeping.They were like the Regina George of the conservative space, and now they’ve been deposed by some upstart redhead from Africa.Malcolm Collins: Who’s Regina George? What? Wait, sorry, you are quoting some girl book here that people are... Who’s Regina George? Who’s some upstart- She’s the queenSimone Collins: bee in Mean Girls From what?Oh, from Mean- Mean Girls ... Girls movie.Speaker 10: I love your skirt. Where did you get it? Thanks. [00:02:00] That is the ugliest effing skirt I’ve ever seen.Simone Collins: Yes Yes. Gee whiz, Malcolm. Whoa. Grow a pair of tits. You need to be more girly. And he also- I know, okay, yeah, our fans will love that, right? You know, hold on. Right. Hold on. Oh, God. Hold on. What? Brian Gnome is doing it, you can do it too, okay? This is in addition, I should say- Mmto the insanely stupid financial indulgences made by the Daily Wire, like dumping $10 million on a fantasy series that nobody asked for. And I will share more information about that one, ‘cause-Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God ... what? Yeah. But I wanna get into well, one, what’s kind of cool about where Ben Shapiro is right now, the Daily Wire is more broadly, is, like, they’re falling into, like, our territory in viewership.If they’re- ... he’s at, like, 14 million we’re growing pretty quickly, and we’re now, you know, regularly over, I wanna say, like, a half a million to, like, you know, 0.75 million a month- Yeah?Simone Collins: Oh ...Malcolm Collins: from our various sources. And so yeah, that’s [00:03:00] still, like, more than 10X lower than him. But, like, that’s a, that’s a measure...Like, we were 10X smaller a year and a half ago, right? You know, if we look at, like, where we’re going and where our movement is going, which I think is really telling. One of the things I wanna throw out there with the Daily Wire is... Because I think that this is really telling, and you’re gonna go into some of it, but Ben Shapiro really attempted to control the direction of the conservative movement.Yeah. And if you are an inside baseball player, like a conservative influencer person, right? Over the past however many years, you are aware of this. So, there’s the crazy emails that went out from Charlie Kirk, and it’s particularly crazy- See, I don’tSimone Collins: remember these. Can you bring me up to speed?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so these leaked from Candace Owens, or somebody tied to Candace Owens, and they’re Charlie-Simone Collins: SheMalcolm Collins: hasSimone Collins: beenMalcolm Collins: such a great source of gossip.And, and look, this is the thing about Candace Owens leaks. Candace Owens, like, when she makes a mistake [00:04:00] with a leak or something like that, right? It’s- Makes a mistake ... a crazy, it’s a crazy way of misinterpreting it. Like, Charlie Kirk will say something like, “I feel like an alien somet-,” or like- Oh, yeah, and she’s like- Like, “I feel like an alien”“He’s an alien time traveler.” Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and then he’s like, “Yeah, and I feel like I came from the future.” And she’s like- Oh ... then she goes out to everyone and she goes, “See? He came from the future.” But we don’t actually have any evidence of her manipulating evidence. She has never- Huh ... faked a tweet.She’s never- No, she’s, I think she’s a verySimone Collins: earnest person. She’s just going a little schizo and that’s okay. EvenMalcolm Collins: when she gets evidence wrong, she’ll, like, pull out flight logs and be like, “These flight logs say X.” And they’re real flight logs. It’s not that, they’re, they’re not fake. Yeah. And then people go to it and they go, “They don’t say that at all.”So, so I’m just saying this so we can know that this is probably an accurate text exchange between her and Charlie Kirk, okay? Okay. So Charlie says, again like Ben has been going on like, “I’m gonna pick up the bloody microphone that Charlie dropped.” Really like he’s gonna carry on the movement for Charlie.And it’s [00:05:00] like, Ben, you were anti-Charlie Kirk behind the scenes. Yeah. So let’s get into this. He said “The Ben thing involves me more than he wants to admit. He knows Jon Snow is stronger as the dragons fly higher,” Candace says. “100%. It pisses him off,” Charlie says. “Two reasons. You’ve always been a threat to him, and because you’re smarter,” Candace says.“He... And he is sending his incestuous brother to go try and kill us,” Charlie says. Now, of course, he’s referencing Game of Thrones here. This is all an, an analogy.Simone Collins: Yes. No one, but... Wait, did she like interpret it?Malcolm Collins: Did you- Although people have, I... To me, this is clearly a Game of Thrones, but anyway, to continue. I, yeah,Simone Collins: I mean, oh, look, I c- it’s a little on the nose.I- And thenMalcolm Collins: Candace says, “And he views you as responsible for me.” And then Charlie says, “It’s worse. He views you as my slave 100%. ‘Control her’ is what he was trying to say to me when he called. You are bigger than Ben now. Walking into the White House yesterday, I realized that.” And then she says, “I know. He hates it.”And then he says, [00:06:00] “We just have to treat him like noise. He wants you to punch down to him. His respect amongst movement fighters is quite low.” So note here he’s saying that like actually like conservative influ- And I’ve seen this as well, and this is something we’re gonna be talking about in another episode we’ll be doing.But even if you look at like raw view count, nobody gives an F what Ben Shapiro has to say anymore, who’s like an on-the-ground operative in conservative politics at this point. In, in fact, he’s sort of seen among the operatives I know as a Boomer entertainer. Like that’s the only people who- That’s, that’s actually,Simone Collins: yeah, it’s one of the themes if you look, and it’s not just him.I think it’s, it’s some of his colleagues at the Daily Wire co-founders, et cetera, who are pushing in that direction. But it is definitely a, an older, more stagnant Boomer-ish, and by Boomer I just mean stagnant, unwilling to change with the times, not, not flexible mindset that is leading to the downfall.Well, hold on. Yeah. Would, would classically Abby be his incestuous [00:07:00] brother? Because he is, he’s... Hasn’t he like commented on that beauty competition? They are classicallyMalcolm Collins: Abby. I actually thought that episode was really fascinating. Yeah. So, just a quick aside Go check out this episode if you’re interested on Classically Abby, but he had this sister who he decided he was gonna promote for a period, and she was, like, all over YouTube when they were trying to promote her.Oh, yeah, I mean, like,Simone Collins: I don’t... You, you couldn’t go on YouTube without seeing her promoted content. I, I, I was shocked by it, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was, it was everywhere the amount of money they went into trying to astroturf her, and- Yeah ... it didn’t work remotely. Her channel has, has since shut down, but I mean, if you look at, like, her regular view counts you know, they were you know, at, at like a, a 2,000, 3,000 views per video.Like, like nowhere. And I actually think that his failure with her as well as his attempts to control people both represent his disconnect in understanding the modern conservative movement and how the movement is changing- Yes ... as well as his intense [00:08:00] arrogance in it. Because everybody’s like, it’s just the, like, what does he represent in attempting to control the conservative movement?They think of it as just, like, a Jewish influence, right? Like, just like a pro-Israel influence. Yeah. When the reality is, is that his attempt to control the movement was incredibly more damaging than just his Israel stuff. No, andSimone Collins: yeah, I think people are overly focusing on his pro-Israel stance being the element of d- his downfall when really it is a constellation of mean girl gatekeeping behavior that’s very petty.Which he didMalcolm Collins: to us, by the way. For people who don’t know, when we started rising in the conservative sphere, he, like, dedicated a huge part of an episode to us and basically sent people out to, like, harass us, ‘cause we got harassed heavily after this episode. Where he called us basically insufferable nerds.And I’m like, yeah, we’re taking your spot, bro. You used to be the right’s insufferable nerd, but now we’re coming in with actual nerd cred. Oh, yeah. No, and it’s, it’s funny [00:09:00] because he just sort of, like, learned a nerd, right? Like, he looked the- No, no, no. Well, I mean,Simone Collins: to, to be clear, like, his... He, he rose really early and, and it wasn’t al- it was never really nerd.It was, like, young wunderkind. Because keep in mind, he was 17 years old in 2004 when he published his first book, Brainwashed, while he was at UCLA. Really? Yeah. So, like, he, he was this, this early 2000s teenage author and columnist- whoever was like, “Whoa, who’s this young kid coming out of nowhere?” And th- that, that is, I think, where people get y- like, we get the, the nerd thing.Because, like, in general you don’t get, like, a little Doogie Howser, like, like, brilliant little, like, genius- No, he’s still Doogie Howser ... and it also helps that they’re nerdsMalcolm Collins: He’s like grown-up Doogie Howser in a kid’s body in everyone’s mind, right? Like- And that’s theSimone Collins: problem. It’s like you, you can’t maintain that branding successfully into your mid-40s.But yeah. It’s, so it’s, it’s that combined with a [00:10:00] model they made a couple key bets that were really poorly thought through. So they, they decided well, what we’re gonna do with The Daily Wire to a certain extent is bet on all these, like, rising stars or sign all these rising stars before it became super obvious that you can just go off on your own.So that’s when you get people like Candace Owens and Brett Cooper spinning off and just doing their own thing. Yeah. ‘Cause they’re not idiots, ‘cause they know they can do better and get more money and have more creative control and have better work-life balance if they just work on their own. And, and they can get the same number of views if not more, because they’re not being held down by this dead weight of The Daily Wire and their creative control.And then beyond that, a lot of things just changed in a much more technical, less interesting algorithmic way, where ways- Mm-hmm ... that they used to grow viral on Facebook and on YouTube shifted and they did not adapt with the time in their format, in their title cards. They didn’t shift to shorts the same way.They didn’t [00:11:00] go for the same sort of clickbaity viral content that got people a lot of views like Candace Owens. And, and to a lesser extent like Brett Cooper.Malcolm Collins: He’s... I mean, I, I would argue it’s more than that. Like, I want you to lay out your argument, ‘cause you did a bunch of research on this.Yeah. But I, I actually think the core problem is that his politics never evolved.Simone Collins: The, the- Well, that too. Yeah, it’s, it’s in general a failure to evolve i- is, is the problem. Yes. Right.Malcolm Collins: Like, like he didn’t need to join, Like if, if you look at the online culture war in the right, there are multiple interesting factions at play.He’s just not aligned with any of them. He represents, in many ways, the last of the old guard. And it’s because that was the faction that he rose appealing to. And so nobody- Mm ... likes that because the modern conservative movement is intrinsically a rebellious movement fighting against inter- entrenched institutions.But continue with your theory and then I’m gonna go with mine. So go.Simone Collins: Yeah. So just, again, ‘cause it seems like you weren’t [00:12:00] super aware of, like, the full background. His, he, he rose as, as a teen, as a kid. And then his, his national breakout happened around 2012 to 2016 via viral campus speeches, virally Ch- very Charlie Kirk- ish.There was one- Mm ... that was super, super famous. Like, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” I’m sure you’ll, you’ll vaguely remember this. And then he worked with Breitbart for a while- Mm ... but then resigned in 2016 amid Trump tensions, and then he launched The Ben Sha- Hold on, he didn’t justMalcolm Collins: resign. I need to put some context on this.Yeah ... so Steve Bannon said that Ben Shapiro was pushed at, like he had to aggressively push Ben Shapiro out- Mm ... because as Ben Shapiro was within Breitbart- Ah ... he aggressively tried to control the organization- Mm-hmm ... and control the brand of conservative politics that it was pushing.Simone Collins: Which is very much his MO.Yeah ... and we’re gonna get into how he’s done that more in, in the case of another person later. We’re gonna get there, I promise. But yeah. So then he, he... And, and it’s funny that he, like, [00:13:00] didn’t learn from his, his own actions ‘cause he, you know, just as he left Breitbart and then went on to found the, the Brett...Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. The Brett Cooper Show. But no, he founded The Ben Shapiro Show. And then it was syndicated, and it was on 200 stations. And then it peaked at its influence from 2016 to 2020. And then- Uh-huh ... he launched The Daily Wire in, in- Oh ... 2015- Ah ... along with Jeremy Boreing.Ah. And he also got really, like, prominent seed funding- Ah ... like building on this post-Breitbart momentum. Just as like a little side, he should have learned that, oh- Ah ... y- having major talent, you know, as, as a larger company like Breitbart, you know, is kinda risky ‘cause that major talent, just like I did, can just, you know, bustle off and make their own money.But he didn’t learn from his own, you know, kind of predatory or maybe selfish behavior, whatever, which is fine. Like, I think it’s fine- Mm ... that he did that. Anyway one thing that’s really important to note here in terms of [00:14:00] why they saw- have seen a drop is they perfected this very Facebook era form of virality with super clicky headlines like, “SJW Owned,” and little debate clips.Again- Yeah ... very Charlie Kirk style. Mm. And he was one of the most linked news domains- Ah ... on Facebook, and a very big powerhouse- Ah ... during the Trump and early COVID years. Right. And then so the, the... Oh, my gosh. Okay, let me ... Give me one moment here. There. So in 2023 is really when all of it came to its beautiful height, which is really, I mean, ultimately quite recent, right?That’s, that’s three years ago- Mm-hmm ... when, when his YouTube reached 170 million. And this is especially during the October 7th sort of huge crash out in the media amid all the I- Israel-Hamas coverage. They, the Daily Wire that is, claimed revenues around 100 million annually by 2022. And then at that time, like well around the pandemic, they expanded in, with their Nashville Eight headquarters.They launched Daily [00:15:00] Wire Plus in 2022. They, they launched Ventky in 2023. That’s, that’s the kids production arm which they then subsequently shut down. And then basically things started falling off. So, the, the, the layoffs I already mentioned starting last year and then continuing this year.They really centered around their Nashville headquarters, which they, again, had founded in 2020, which seem to largely have just been kind of a stupid idea. I think they made a lot of hiring they never should have made. And in 2024, this is also key and not something discussed a lot, is Facebook changed its fees significantly, which de-ranked news and just gutted the Daily Wire’s traffic.It completely collapsed for them, Facebook as a key distribution engine that had made them look super unbeatable in the mid-2010s.Malcolm Collins: So that’s one- That’s fascinating Yeah And we never really distributed... So for people who know, we distribute on Rumble, Substack podcast networks and YouTube. But we never were able to successfully distribute on Facebook [00:16:00] because- Nevertheir their spot checks on video clips, which I include in a lot of episodes to be entertaining, are just way too restrictive for the show to operate. Yeah, yeah. I was actually thinking, should we look at syndication?Simone Collins: I don’t know. I, I feel like that’s too old school. So no. But I mean, you know, if someone knows about it and thinks we should, chime into the comments, because we read the comments.And thank you for everyone who comments, ‘cause- Yeah, if anyone knows how to do- ... you always have interesting things to say.Malcolm Collins: I, I’d even... If somebody was willing to take over that for us and it made some money, I’d be willing to do profit-sharing with them.Simone Collins: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, we’re, we’re definitely of the, like- Look how Aplay does- We can’t do everythingMalcolm Collins: YouTube, by the waySimone Collins: Yeah. Anyway in terms of their YouTube channel, independent YouTube analytics like vidIQ and some others show that his sh- that is to say Ben Shapiro’s channel views are down 70 to 85% from their 2023 peak. So like it went way up, it was amazing, but it has gone way down. I mean, so it shouldMalcolm Collins: be- But, but you gotta keep in mind, Simone, that 70 to 80% reduction [00:17:00] is not even on the platform where they’ve been hit the hardest, which is Facebook.Yeah. So just across platforms he’s being destroyed.Simone Collins: 100%, yeah. It’s, and it’s not like at the same time YouTube has had some huge algorithm change. This is a, I think to a large extent mimetic, but also them not really changing their format with the times and title card with styles and stuff. But to be clear, it’s very common for flagship channels that get a lot of investment to have a slump.Like it, it, it happens. But online commentators like Philip De- DeFranco have noted, and like they know better about this stuff than I do, that this is not, this change of traffic is not a slump. This is a collapse. Like this, there’s no way to be like, “Oh, like it’s fine.” And to be clear the, the Daily Wire team is like, “Oh well, you know, revenue year over year has been up under my leadership.”That’s what Mr. Boring has been saying. But just ‘cause your revenue is up doesn’t mean you’re actually doing well. It could just mean that you’re like spending like massively wrong. But I mean, their layoffs indicate clearly that they’ve gotten over their skis on, on their spending. Yeah. Social media data shows- But another reallyMalcolm Collins: [00:18:00] interesting thing about his YouTube that I’m noticing by looking at videos- Yeahis the view count is wildly inconsistent. Oh,Simone Collins: hmm.Malcolm Collins: A, a lot of them get around like I, I wanna say to like 16K to like 50K views. Huh. And then occasionally, like every seventh one or something, gets half a million views.Simone Collins: Bizarre. Super bizarre.Malcolm Collins: Oh,Simone Collins: I seeMalcolm Collins: why.Simone Collins: Why? Wait, why?Malcolm Collins: It’s a different in format.The ones that do really well are the ones that have the word Ben on them and appear to be about an hour long. And- Okay ... the clips don’t do very well.Simone Collins: So yeah, they’re really bad at clips apparently.Speaker 12: So after we recorded this episode, we recorded an episode where we went deep into how botting works and how to spot when something is heavily botted. And, , unfortunately, Ben Shapiro’s channel has all the hallmarks of being almost entirely botted. , By what I mean by this is the videos that are getting the half a million views are the long-form [00:19:00] hour plus long videos.Whereas the videos that are getting the, you know, 12K views, those are the shorter, piffier videos in like the 10 to 15 minute range. , That doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider how the YouTube algorithm works. , It should be the shorter videos getting more views and the longer videos getting fewer views., Like this is difficult for me to explain to someone who’s not a YouTube creator, , but basically it just makes absolutely no sense. It would never happen, at least not at this order of magnitude difference, which implies to me that he sees his long-form content as the important content, so he bots that, and he doesn’t bot the other content.Which also makes sense when I think about the number of people I’ve talked to who genuinely seem to have watched a Ben Shapiro anything in the last, I don’t know, six months. , I’m not talking about in the distant past. You know, people used to watch him. I used to watch him in the distant past. I’m talking recently., And so, , yeah, my current intuition is he might have a smaller [00:20:00] regular audience than we have at this point.To word this in another way, , it would make sense that his long-form podcast got orders of magnitude more views than his shorter form content, , if it was being hosted in other locations. So like if somebody said, “Oh, it gets orders of magnitude more than the YouTube content,” that makes sense. It doesn’t make sense that it’s getting orders of magnitude within the YouTube platform, because that would require some like alternate audience that just knows to tune in whenever the long-form thing is coming out, and YouTube doesn’t really work that way.In addition to that, even if it was the case that it was working in that way, right? That for some reason, YouTube just knew that this long-form content algo-wise did much better, their company would stop posting the short-form content within the same channel. Because if it was a, a short, okay, , that doesn’t affect the algo on the long.So sometimes people will post shorts on channels where shorts don’t do well. It doesn’t really matter. But if it’s like a 15-minute video, and they’re [00:21:00] often doing orders of magnitude higher multiple hour videos, okay? Or like hour and 30 minute videos, that, those short videos would be nuking the longer videos in the algo.Like you just wouldn’t have those in the same channel. You’d put them on a different channel, unless you were bottingSo a couple other notes here. , Just so people aren’t confused, when I say his short form content, I’m not talking about short form vertical videos. Those run on a separate algorithm and wouldn’t be hurting the long form videos. I’m talking like ten to fifteen minute videos, which would severely hurt the long form videos if they’re this underperforming.In addition, Candace Owens has said that the channel heavily bots. Given that she worked for them, she would likely know this. But I think the most important bit of evidence that we can look at here is let’s look at our video from yesterday. So this video has only been out for a day. It has thirteen thousand two hundred and twenty-nine views and nine hundred and thirty-four comments.Okay? Now let’s look, , at [00:22:00] Ben Shapiro’s video, , from, , the other day that presumably has two hundred thousand views. Okay, so, , more than twenty x what ours got around. All right, it has eight hundred and sixty comments, literally fewer comments. How is that conceivably possible?Speaker 23: That does not make sense.Speaker 17: Now here you might be saying, “Okay, Malcolm, maybe, maybe, but why don’t we look at some other metric to try to understand if he’s botting? Why don’t you look at the most liked comments on each of the videos to look at the variable interaction? Because maybe people just don’t comment on his videos, but they spend time liking the comments on his videos.”Okay, so we’ll go to our video. , Top not pinned comment, two hundred thirty-nine up votes. Next one hundred and eighty-six. Next one hundred and twenty-two. Next eighty-nine. Okay. Now let’s go to his top comments. First, two hundred and [00:23:00] nineteen. Hmm, that makes sense. Then ten, forty-two, eighty-six, forty-one, thirty-seven.Excuse me? Excuse me? Come on, guysSpeaker 18: Presumably looking at a video here that’s getting around 20X the number of views, but getting around 20X lower engagement? Explain that to meSpeaker 23: Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.Speaker 24: So a Redditor had looked into this more so I’m putting the image on screen here. “Notice how the recently released Ben Shapiro episode has under a hundred thousand views., The Ben Shapiro from the day before has three hundred thousand views, and the Ben Shapiro episode from forty-eight hours before that has five hundred thousand views. Keep in mind, because I checked a few hours ago, , and this is what I found. Notice the pattern again. The video from today is at a hundred K views.The video from yesterday or thirty-six hours ago is now magically at five [00:24:00] hundred K views, and the video from forty-eight hours before, which was at five hundred and f- uh, sixty-four K views, “Has now magically only gained four K views in the twenty-four to thirty hours.”So basically, normally, so for people who aren’t aware, you get your biggest viewership right after the episode is released. That is not what Ben Shapiro is seeing. Right after the episode is released, he’s not getting that much a bump in views. It’s like the day after he gets a linear large jump in views up until the video hits five hundred thousand views, then it completely drops off,He also notes, and I’m not gonna go into how he calculated this because it’s boring, , you can look it up yourself, but that during the period of slower interaction, that beginning period, he’s getting one comment for every 30 views. During the period of quick growth that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, he’s getting one comment for every 500 viewsBut they pointed out something else that is very indicative of viewbotting for the Ben Shapiro episode videos, , is that they almost [00:25:00] always get around exactly 500,000 views. That’s not normal. Normally on like your bigger videos, you’re going to be going up, you know, 30% sometimes, down 30% sometimes, have an occasional b- episode bomb, have an occasional episode do really well.So if we go outside of the episodes that he appears to currently be populating to five days ago, uh, right? And we’ll just go through the final view counts on the Ben Shapiro episodes. 489,000 views, 478,000 views, 517,000 views, 517,000 views, 571,000 views, 582,000 views, 504,000 views, 612,000 views, 480,000 views, 529,000 views, 605,000 views, 541,000 views.Do you see how absolutely insane this is? This is very clearly viewbotted.Simone Collins: The social- And if you lookMalcolm Collins: at like, I mean, the title cards aren’t bad. Like, I’m looking at this. It looks a lot like one of our title cards.Like, here’s the most recent long [00:26:00] form episode. Here’s how China spies on the US. Hmm, wonder where they got that idea from. Are they watching our episode from, like, three days ago? No. I, I, I bet one of their writers is just, like, a fan of ours. Oh, no. ItSimone Collins: was, it was a major headline. The, the ... I think it was with the London Times, had been really pr- it, it, this, this this young woman who had been spied on I think it was Elsa- Yeah, butMalcolm Collins: we had to delay our episode, like, a week after we filmed it, so it’s weird that he-Simone Collins: Right.Well, they, they’re also produced and edited. It takes them a while to get stuff out too. Like, everyone needs time, so you know. I don’t know. But anyway, social- Right ... blade data shows Daily Wire’s YouTube su- subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of the last 16 months, since early 2025. And their website traffic by March 2026 was about half of what it had been a year earlier.And Shapiro has admitted that revenue is down from 2024, even while insisting that cash flow remains strong relative to critics’ expectations. What is he getting cash flowMalcolm Collins: from?Simone Collins: Probably, like, Daily Wire [00:27:00] Plus subscriptions. Like, they’re trying to be the Christian Disney, you know? And I’m gonna talk about that too.AndMalcolm Collins: yeah, I wanna talk about that, because what’s interesting is they tried so hard to create all of these alternate forms of conservative media. Yeah. And yet when we look at the conservative media creators that I think people are actually watching there’s really two of them that stand out for me, and, and, and they’ve both been really excellent sort of coming on the conservative media scene.One is Freedom Tunes. Oh. Freedom Tunes is excellent, excellent show.Simone Collins: Just in terms of entertainment. Yeah, there’s, like, short form stuff ... and then the other isMalcolm Collins: Babylon Bee’sSimone Collins: media. Yeah, but no, they’re, they’re literally, they’re trying to make just generally conservative and Christian, like, shows.This is not- But nobody wants shows anymore I know. I know. Well, and we live in a, a market very saturated with shows, also in which time has collapsed. People are watching stuff, stuff from, like, 1968. They’re watching stuff from 1992. Like, it, no one needs ... We, we really [00:28:00] don’t at this point need more serialized content in the same way that we did before.And we’ve, we’ve talked about this in other episodes. Anyway, though- Well, and that’s whyMalcolm Collins: I mention Freedom Tunes specifically. Oh. Because I think Freedom Tunes delivers content to the right in a way that the right wants to consume content, right? Like, it is- Yeah ... funny, it is irreverent and I think we’re beginning to see the bubbling of, and guys, like, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m predicting this now.What is coming out of The the Skybrows Cinematic Universe- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah ... which is like a collection of content creators who have just created some amazing songs. I’ll, I’ll play one from, like, a Kirsha song on here right now. This is from the Holy Ball, which isn’t even Skybrow. This is like a Skybrows inspired guy.Well, but I loveSimone Collins: Holy Ball. It’s fantastic. Yeah, his, his style’s my favorite. His, his music- Yeah ... is better than Skybrows, I think.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Speaker 5: call me a racist, fascist, nationalist grifter, bootlicking [00:29:00] theocrat, literally Hitler, colonizer Nazi, incel, bigot, white supremacist, privileged idiot, snowflake, pick me, toxic, homophobe, CHUD troll, sexist, deplorable, xenophobe, shill dog whistlin’, transphobe, simp stan, alt-right, neocon, tyrant.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then you’ve got obviously, like, the Leaflet stuff, which is doing pretty well these days. Oh, my- And- ... yeah, amazing ... and then th- like, her music videos, right? Like, which are- They’re so goodsome of them are very clearly inspired by our podcast, which is fantastic ‘cause it feels like- Thank you ... you have this virtuous circle of you know, we have an idea that we take an hour to say, and then she makes it into, like, a two-minute music video that is really catchy. And then you know, it, it, it spreads and normalizes, right?Speaker 3: よ。大切な人にちょっとしたプッシュ。理想の自分に変えちゃお。 液に溺れて[00:30:00] る時は愛情たっぷりでほどほどにって教えてあげよ。全部肯定するだけじゃダメだよね。優しい気持ちで批判するのも最高の愛だよ。 , groom, groom your wife.Pick her up dive and keep growing.Groom, groom, groom your husband.Get us stronger, faster.Malcolm Collins: Or one, one of the things I found really crazy recently, have you seen the Asmogold going back over The Onion videos from back in the day to show how right they were?Simone Collins: No. That sounds really fun. Okay. I willMalcolm Collins: play one, yes here. But anyway, continue.Speaker 2: Author Christine Eckard is here to show us some exercises to reduce stress.Speaker 4: The first thing I like to do is imagine my money-related stress as the most disgusting, terrifying creature I can think of.Okay. I like to imagine an ugly, greasy little creature with a hooked nose and oily black hair. Oh.Speaker 3: Oh, he is scary. ISpeaker 4: call him the Grabbler because he’s a greedy [00:31:00] little monster who wants to grabble up all my money. Ooh. Mm. Now close your eyes- Mm-hmm ... and picture the Grabbler.He invented interest rates like the ones on your credit card. Oh. Oh. He’s taking the jobs, because Grabblers only hire their own kind. Now imagine the Grabbler slowly disintegrating like a pile of ashes blown away- Oh ... by a purifying wind. Ah. Ooh, what a relief. Yeah. I feel so relaxed.Simone Collins: Right. So let’s, let’s talk about stumbles other than YouTube.We, we just need to go over the fact that, like, there were some e- extremely prominent splits, both in terms of from the team, but also memetically. So you had Brett Cooper leave in December 2024 voluntarily. It was a, you know, conscious uncoupling, but she clearly understood she could do better on her own, just like Ben Shapiro himself did also with Candace Owens.It was mutual. Jeremy Boreing announced that their partnership ended was for mutual reasons. But it was amid really public feuds, like Candace posted this [00:32:00] Christ is King post and defended Kanye West’s anti-Sem- Semitism basically, and Shapiro was like, “Dude, if you’re unhappy, just quit.” And so she quit and called herself finally free.And, you know, the rest is, is, is history. You, you already know. She’s, she’s posting receipts. She’s leaking stuff even now about- Yeah ... Full Send Media. I mean,Malcolm Collins: Ben Shapiro has been one of the... I, I might say the single most... Like, if, if you consider all humans that have lived maybe in the past 25 years, maybe even 50 years Ben Shapiro is probably what, the, the single worst for the long-term safety of the Jewish people.The- Yeah, that’s fair ... the number of almost every prominent anti-Semite was basically minted by Ben Shapiro’s constant rambling. Let’s talk about that.Simone Collins: Yeah, so I’m gonna, I’m just gonna pull some quotes from the Tucker Carlson interview with Nick Fuentes where, like, you really get a, a good succinct layout of the, the manner in which almost it seems like Brett [00:33:00] Shapiro is personally responsible for the anti-Semitic radicalization of Nick Fuentes.He is. He is personally responsible ... and I think this also represents an ideological split. Yeah. No, really. And, and I’m linking this all in the show notes. I have show notes if you go to Patreon or Substack, and by the way, thanks for everyone who supports us. You guys are amazing and we love you.I, you can find the video linked along with all my other sources. He, he talks about how basically way before he was a big deal at all, he’s just, like, this college student posting online Ben Shapiro gatekept and belittled him even, you know, when he ba- had no reason to. He describes, Nick Fuentes describes first publicly criticizing Shapiro in the Daily Wire over Israel and, and not in, like, a, like, “I hate Israel” way, but in a, like, “I don’t, like, do we need to support them this much?”He I’ll just quote him. Nick says, “I tweeted Ben Shapiro. I said, ‘You know, I’ve never seen anything on the Daily Wire that’s actually critical of Israel.’ And he quote tweets me and he says, ‘To accuse a Jew of, of dual loyalty [00:34:00] is the surest sign of antisemitism.’ ‘He immediately called you an anti-Semite,’ said Tucker.Mm-hmm. So I’m driving to Christmas Eve mass with my family and I see on Twitter the notification comes up. Ben Shapiro quote tweets me calling me an anti-Semite. And then I said something like, ‘If you’re gonna if you’re gonna, if you’re China first, you should live in China. If you’re Mexico first, you should live in Mexico.If you’re Israel first, maybe you should go live in Israel.’” Which is a really great rejoinder. And again, he quotes tweets Nick and says, “You’re an anti-Semite,” the same night. And then Fuentes in the same interview with Tucker frames Shapiro’s deciding really early on to just- And I, I wanna point out here, cut him down inside the conservativeMalcolm Collins: movement ... for Jews who are unaware of this, you cannot throw around the word anti-Semite for non-anti-Semites. If you do, that is an extremely loaded term. That is- Yeah, it is. It is ... telling whatever racist person you’re talking to- And he was just saying, like, “By theSimone Collins: way, nothing on the Daily Wires is, has ever, you know- Been like, “Hey, you know, Israel...”And Israel is an imperfect country. There are que- and there are many people in Israel who fight for Israel, who die for Israel, who question the way that it’s [00:35:00] governed. Like, it is not wrong for him to point that out, you know? Right. And it is weird that The Daily Wire has never been like- But it is wrong within aMalcolm Collins: certain perspective, like Ben wanting to com- Ben thought he could just shut it down.Like, any criticism- Yes ... I can shut it down because I have the cultural power. And what he seemed, well, I mean, he, whether or not he’s aware of this or not, we’ll talk about why he’s so blinded to this, but he’s wielding woke weapons. Mm. And woke weapons radicalize right-wing people against- 100% ... whatever faction is using them.Yeah. He’s trying to be like, “How dare you say that? You’re an anti whatever phobe.” Mm-hmm ... and, and as such, I’m gonna attempt to de-platform you, which he did do- Yeah ... to, to Nick Fuentes. Continue. Yeah. And to us. Keep in mind, like the reason I believe all this from Nick Fuentes is he did the same to us, right?And we weren’t even anti-Israel, we were just too nerdy for him. Too nerdy. And we didn’t evenSimone Collins: tweet at him. We didn’t even criticize The Daily Wire. We were just talking and he, yeah. Anyway. We were just talking, yes. Nick says [00:36:00] In his interview, it turned out that Cassie Dillon, she texted him earlier and she wanted him to take me under his wing.And he goes, I’ll take a look. And so I guess the two of them were kind of grooming me in a sense. They wanted me to go maybe be a Daily Wire guy or something, looking at me as a potential conservative activist or influencer. And they started paying attention to me. This is totally believable in my opinion because they’ve cultivated other talent to have on their platform.It’s part of their business model. He continued. And the more critical of Israel I was, I started to get this really intense pushback from the both of them and from a lot of the people at the Daily Wire. For them, it was easy to say if they detected that a promising young guy was going to become anti-Israel in the conservative movement, they could crush that person easily and grind them under the heel.So they sort of were alerted, oh, there’s a precocious young guy that isn’t on board with Israel. We’ll keep an eye on him. And if he gets too vocal or popular, we’ll cut him down. We’ll crush him. Basically from then on, it was just this escalating series of blacklisting censorship hit pieces, rumors to [00:37:00] try to ostracize me from the movement.And he goes on to link Shapiro and the Daily Wire and their circle to efforts to isolate him and get him fired. And I’m not going to go into like the full quotes on all this. It involves this clip from Media Matters. And then he eventually- We went over thisMalcolm Collins: in our episode on Nick Fuentes, the first one we did on him, the big one.But yeah- And then he explicitlySimone Collins: ties Shapiro’s attacks to his own radicalization and then turn against the conservative establishment. He says, looking back with that 2020 hindsight, I mean, Ben Shapiro seems like a big part of your political evolution. You went from a fan acolyte to an opponent and then just pivoted against everything he believes.That’s what Tucker said. Nick said, yeah, it was because it was this new dialectic that Trump forced. So once you accept that, a lot of the way of doing things becomes impossible to support or justify. The contradiction becomes apparent. I realized that the conservative movement was completely bankrupt in a way that became very radical.Anyway, it was a very, you should go watch the interview if you [00:38:00] haven’t. But speaking of which The, I think Tucker Carlson- But I, I, I wannaMalcolm Collins: point out he’s done this to us too. Like, it is loud and noticeable when him or the Daily Wire are involved in a conservative event, we are blacklisted. We don’t get approved, we don’t get invited.They have never... It is weird that they’ve never reached out to us or done anything with us given that, like, almost every major conservative influencer has done something with us. Like, but, but anyone who is remotely tied to the Daily Wire just completely- Well, and you’re, you’re s- ... blacklisting usyou’re soSimone Collins: right in that they’re using a very leftist tactic, because a very common leftist thing attack is like, “Oh, you spoke with this bad person? That makes you bad.” There’s this, like, contamination accusation, and that is exactly what Shapiro did with Tucker Carlson after Tucker Carlson had this interview with Nick Fuentes.Shapiro blasted Carlson as an intellectual coward and moral imbecile [00:39:00] for interviewing Nick Fuentes and echoing antisemitic tropes on Israel and influence. And then Carlson retaliated by slamming Shapiro’s many attacks on Jesus and immigration views and pro-Israel stance- ... as bigotry and cruelty, especially on Iran policy.And this, this just deepened their rift. And so now you have Ben Shapiro even radicalizing Tucker Carlson further and then- WhichMalcolm Collins: he did do. Like, you, you- I know ... again- I know ... Jews, you gotta understand this. If you call someone an antisemite when they’re not being an antisemite, the standard American cultural reaction is, “Well, I guess I just hate the Jews.”Yeah. Like, if, if I’m gonna get called it anyway like, it actually takes a lot of mental effort on my part to not have that reaction when it happens to us. Yeah. Because- Yeah ... it is the standard reaction that an American, culturally speaking, is going to have. And- So anotherSimone Collins: example of Ben Shapiro going after anyone who touches the bad person, right?Again, this is, I said Regina George from [00:40:00] Mean Girls at the beginning of this ‘cause he’s- Yeah ... he’s doing ex- He’s being a c- high school mean girl. Because now when, So, so even after all this, right? So now he hates Tucker Carlson and he hates Candace Owens ‘cause they’ve turned on him. And then at Turning Point USA’s America Fest in December 2025, Ben Shapiro called Megyn Kelly a charlatan for, for platforming Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson.And MegynMalcolm Collins: Kelly used to be his friend and helped him a lot in gaining his public recognition.Simone Collins: Well, and to your point- Like- ... just like you are, she fired back, accusing Shapiro and Bari Weiss of fueling antisemitism by suppressing Israel criticism, and she defended her neutrality and friendship with Owens calling Shapiro Israel first, because he, he is.And she, she was... And again, he w- She wasn’t, like, defending their stances. She was simply having discourse with them, and he, in that very leftist way, is like, “Oh, by talking with them, you’re platforming them. You’re now bad.” That’s such a leftist- Shelton seriously ... sentiment.Malcolm Collins: That’s such a woke sentiment, right?Like, everyone- Yeah ... on the right knows [00:41:00] this. I know, I know.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But, like- It’s crazy ... okay, so I wanna, before you go further here because- Okay, okay ... we’re not getting to meat and potatoes, so I’m gonna get to some meat and potatoes. Okay.Simone Collins: Okay. WhyMalcolm Collins: did he actually lose his audience? ‘Cause I don’t think he lost his audience because of all of these missteps.He lost his audience because his brand of conservatism doesn’t make sense in a modern context. He’s going out there with a very like, you know, anti-porn, like, like s- s- specifically for widespread pornography bans. Trad wife, like women don’t have a job, you know, stay at home, take on a traditional role.Their role is raising the family. You know, very anti oh, you know, Malcolm and Simone are too nerdy to, to be in all of this, you know, what, what are they doing here? And we go through with every one of these. You can watch our episodes. You know, he’s, he’s video games and, and lewd things are terrible, you know, all, all of the, the, the traditional things here.And there’s a way to do something like this that is at least entertaining. But he just comes off [00:42:00] as, like, morally policing in, like, the driest Old lady sort of a way that you can. And what makes it so perverse and I think turns people so strongly against him is at least if he pretended to live out the lifestyle that he was preaching- Mm-hmmpeople would take it seriously. But he’s here promoting a woman’s job is to raise kids and his wife is a doctor, and he can’t help it. It very much fits the trope of the, the Jewish person who is attempting to infect a culture with ideas that they know will eventually destroy that culture- Mm ... and not follow them themselves.And I think that a lot of people functionally see it that way, and are really disgusted by it, right? Like v- so for example, him attacking us for being too nerdy and everything like that. Like obviously you’re a giant nerd, like Ben. Like just maybe, maybe a little more old school, maybe a little more prestigious with your Lord of the [00:43:00] Rings nerdiness.You can go hang out with Stephen Colbert. I’m sure you guys would get along great. Instead of your- Sure ... your anime and whatever nerdiness. But like when he tried to make his sister work, I think he perfectly showed how much he didn’t get the modern conservative audience because what he presented her as was this non-salacious, perfectly presentable rule follower, right?It did- she, she never mentions that she’s really into Warhammer tabletop gaming. Or- And sheSimone Collins: totally should have. Yeah, like against Sarah etc. More likeMalcolm Collins: if she led with that and it was a, a big boobed whatever lady d- doing tabletop miniature painting while talking about you know, like the nerdier parts of conservative politics and like- Yeah, theSimone Collins: busty Warhammer conservative mom.People would’ve loved that. Come on Oh,Malcolm Collins: people would’ve been so into it. Right. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, he thinks that you need to- Pretend to be this sort of fake [00:44:00] thing that the internet hates more than anything. And, and, and this is the thing. It, it, there are ... Like, we are fighting a meaningfully annoying deontological faction that is, like, genuinely, you know, taking blows and fighting back.But this faction leans in on all of this, like, curmudgeonly pearl clutcher stuff, but does it in either a profoundly entertaining way, like they’re, they’re being over the top about it, they’re being ... nick Fuentes falls into this category to some extent, right? Like, at least when he complains in the sort of the, oh, the, the whatever anime nerds and video gameRight? Like, he’ll attack them in a way that’s entertaining, right? And over the top and vitalistic instead of just like, “Mm, well, don’t do this. It’s weird and you’re weird for doing it and I don’t like it.” Or they are, and I don’t like this faction much either, but they are growing a lot they’re UK boring.Typically former leftists who have adopted a lot of these- I do loveSimone Collins: that boring, there’s a special brand [00:45:00] that is UK boring. Yeah, there’s, there’s yeah. U- UK vanilla. American boring is different. AndMalcolm Collins: y- and you bite into it and you’re like, oh my God, this is just, like, filled with unprocessed vanilla beans.Like, that’s what I’m like when I, I, I bite into, like ... But I think that that’s being replaced by the Reform Party, because the Reform Party is pretty boss. Yes. When they’re like, “We need to melt down- 100% ... Nigerians to fill potholes.” Like, that’s an elected representative. I’m like, okay, you go, boy. Okay, continue.Continue.Simone Collins: Right. Well, let’s go into their conservative Disney boondoggle and, Yeah, yeah, let’s get into it ... this whole thing. So a lot of this comes down to Ben Shapiro’s co-founder and, and the former CEO of the Daily Wire Jeremy Boreing, who pursued this Breitbart style politics is downstream of culture vision pouring money into kids content, though of course they shut down that branch, feature films, and merch like anti-woke razors and chocolates.And he was trying [00:46:00] to build this conservative Hollywood in Nashville. And you can tell by the pattern of their layoffs that, like, they’re quickly discovering that no one wanted this and it’s not making any money. Of course not. No ... he, he’s no longer the CEO of the Daily Wire, but he is leading creative stuff still, so I don’t know if they’re gonna keep throwing money at this, but he’s not gone.Malcolm Collins: He should be gone. His name’s Boreing. What did you wannaSimone Collins: say? No, I’m sorry.Malcolm Collins: No, I’m gonna take determinism. - Oh,Simone Collins: well. Yeah. Yeah ...Malcolm Collins: no what I was gonna say was if we look at this sort of content- ... like conservative kids content, why doesn’t conservative kids content do well? Because I show my kids conservative kids content, and it’s cartoons from the 1980s.Yeah. And it’s free, and it’s on YouTube, and I can just push play- Yeah ... and it’s on forever. Yeah. And I can show them G.I. Joe, where American soldiers go and shoot a bunch of people with a lisp, right? Like, that’s what we’re all about as Americans. YouSimone Collins: know, and we know that we build- Ooh, it’s such a gay theme song, though.I, in, in the best way. I mean that, [00:47:00] I mean that in a good way. Well, no, yeah.Malcolm Collins: We teach kids, y- you know, the G.I. Joes are a little f- you know, there’s some gay undertones. They’re extremelySimone Collins: gay, and it’s wonderful. But they’re not- It’s, it’s, yeah ... they’reMalcolm Collins: not faggy about it, okay? They’re basically like Sea Spray in, I, I gotta play this from, like, The Venture Brothers, right?Like, this is G.I. Joes. But no- Oh, no ... it’s, it’s fantastic, right? You don’t need to be overly puritanical about this stuff. And he feels- Yeah ... you need to be, and there just isn’t... Like, when I’m like, “Okay, what conservative content do I want to see more of?” Like, if I was like, “Okay, I wanna see more, like, explicitly conservative media to shape ideas,” right?Yeah. Yeah. Honestly it’s just more cinematic Sky Брауз Universe stuff. Like- Yeah ... there was a feature length anime made about Leaflet and Powder. And it’s l- No ... it’s literally, like, 60 minutes. Huge. It’s got a fight scene, and then the, the CEO- Oh, my goodness ... of Twitter tries to trap, trap them in a crystal, and they end up battling him.And, um Breaking out, breaking out Asmogold, who, who teaches him to, [00:48:00] to not destroy him or whatever. You know, it’s fun. It’s, it’s, it’s very well done. But like, like that’s entertaining.Speaker 7: This woman in anime is voiced by Asian now. I guess I unban her. Quang!Speaker 8: Do you know why I’m here, Quang? You unbanned another 2D cutting board chess Vtuber without my approval.Malcolm Collins: And I think, you know, we’re a year away, two years away from like full links anime being able to be easily [00:49:00] made from these sorts of systems.Yes. And you know the moment that that stuff gets out there, this sort of cinematic universe that we’ve begun cultivating... And I wanna be honest, I’ve had like a realization and a change in how I see the world and the wider conservative scene. Part of it was hugely influenced by your recent appearance on Chris Williamson.Part of it was hugely influenced by the growth of Leaflet and, and her seller humanist philosophy. And by the way, for people who like she- At least she’s feminismSimone Collins: all the way. Ah, she gets it. Yeah, she’s huge. Gets it. You know she’s likeMalcolm Collins: on Twitch like a third bigger than Kirsha on, on YouTube. She’s like white Spotify.Which gives me hope forSimone Collins: humanity. Yeah, man. Yeah. And all she’s pushing is like- Oh my goodness ... we gotta getMalcolm Collins: to the stars. We gotta get to the stars. Yes. This, this fun, n- not overly theosophical set. Yes. But the thing is, is like, you’re up there and you’re next to all these like do- all the other leaders of the prenatalist movement, but there’s all the, like, stodgy, you know, the, the statistic pushers and everything like that, and they’re all like, “Well, if we can move the numbers here and here and [00:50:00] here,” and you’re just like, “Oh, you.You know it won’t work. You know it won’t work.” Right ... and it doesn’t even matter. Why are we even trying to save these people? They hate us. They are in opposition to everything we care about. Let’s just breed, spread our culture to the future, and we’ll replace them. And then within the parts of the Conservative Party that are still breeding but are not technophilic, they’re also not particularly long-term economically relevant, right?So, like why am I even stressed about fighting them? Just cultivate our movement, cultivate our wider ideological movement keep it fun, keep it light and don’t, don’t worry about the conservatives that are eschewing technology and whining about this is bad and that’s bad because they’re falling out, they’re crashing out of the, the slip stream.Like it’s like we’re, we’re, we’re warp speeding into the future, you know, like a, a, a time machine or something, and somebody falls out of a time thing and they like r- more rapidly [00:51:00] wither and turn to dust. Like, that’s what is repeatedly happening, right? We don’t need to worry about all of them because we know we’re in the driver’s seat in this, okay?And all we need to do is keep going and keep working our hardest to do what’s right for humanity. And I, I have a feeling that we’re doing that, and there is no large faction that has, that seems to have a place in the future that isn’t on our wider team. So, like, why am I even stressing about these people, right?Anyway, continue.Simone Collins: Right. You were talking about all the cool Skybrow Cinematic Universe stuff that we love, that we enjoy. You were talking about Freedom Tunes. Well, what does The Daily Wire think that people want? The Daily Wire thinks we want Pen- the Pendragon Cycle: The Rise of Merlin. I sent you the preview.You don’t need to watch it, but I sent you the preview on WhatsApp.Speaker: All of this is an illusion, an echo of a voice that has [00:52:00] died. And soon that echo will cease.Simone Collins: It just comes across as, like, the Game of Thrones reboot that nobody wanted, and they’re, like, c- like, cribbing Game of Thrones hair and just, like, people wafting around in costumes, and it just, it just looks oppressively- It’s, it learn,Malcolm Collins: it’s the conservative version of woke mediaSimone Collins: Yeah, but, like, no one... I, I just don’t under- I don’t, I don’t understand why anyone wants it. The series now is live. It’s available. It premiered on Daily Wire Plus this January. All seven episodes were released. They spent 10, at least $10 million on this with a minimum of one million per episode for this seven-episode season.And this is, this is not my conjecture. This comes from Jeremy [00:53:00] Boreing marking it as the company’s most ambitious production to date. They filmed it in Italy and Hungary. I- it’s this huge thing, and it, I mean, I don’t think it’s doing so well. It, it holds an IMDb rating of 7.9 out of 10 from over 2,400 votes on Rotten Tomatoes.It has an audience score of 86 to 88%, which is okay, but I’m like, I don’t feel like watching this. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good, Simone. It, it ranks moderately at number 2,181 out of 35,000 shows, so yay, top- That’sMalcolm Collins: pretty good for what they were doing. Look, 2,000- They tried to- It’s, I don’t care about that.I don’t wanna watch that stuff anymoreSimone Collins: Well, yeah. And, and some, some outlets, to be fair, they call it uneven or terrible. Of course they would- ... some like it ... because TheMalcolm Collins: Daily Wire did it. I don’t care what some outlets say. That’s true. That’s true. I bet it’s fine. I bet it’s fine and boring.Simone Collins: But financially, it’s unclear as to whether it has been a financial boon for them, and I doubt, I highly doubt that it is.But [00:54:00] I think the really big thing is that when you, when you roll all this together, what you have is this shift from... Their, their strategic shift from in-demand, inexpensive content, heavy on AI, heavy on clips, heavy on being, you know, bombastic and fun and flexible, to not highly demanded, highly produced content.You know, creating this Nashville headquarters, and we’re gonna do all these productions, and we’re gonna make culture, and, and you’re gonna want it and watch it instead of just watching ‘90s cartoons like everyone else. And I feel like Pendragon is really the symbol of The Daily Wire drifting from just cheap, high margin podcasts and political commentary, which just, I mean, from a business standpoint, is way more sustainable, into this expensive streaming style production that there’s a lot of competition there.They, they didn’t have any particular, like, moat or special ability that, that, you know, would make them uniquely good at entering this space in which they have no head up or like, sorry, like, advantage. And then [00:55:00] also their failure to evolve. You know, as, as social platforms shifted towards short-form and live streaming, Ben Shapiro didn’t.And, and their pacing didn’t change. They, they are just being left in the dust by people like Candace Owens, who’s all about her live high drama streaming. They have a very brittle model in that they wanted to sign talent and then build their audience and s- and then monetize under them with this Daily Wire umbrella.And then it just became trivial for, like, their true stars to just walk away, while the, all these people they tried to manufacture, from, like, Classically Abby to Reagan replacing Brett Cooper just not really working out. And then you have- You have- ... on top of that all the sanctimonious mean girl leftist woke gatekeeping.It’s no wonder that The Daily Wire is winding down at this point. I don’t know if there’s any coming back for them.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s, [00:56:00] it’s sad to see where this is going. But at the same time as they have been falling apart, our movement’s been growing. Yeah, I mean- and I’m excited to see this because it’s fun.Our movement is fun, and their movement- It is ... was boring and sad and stodgy, and I’m done with it. I am, I am So done with, even, even the culture war stuff. I’m like, “Why even care about it,” right? We’re, we’re fighting against people who don’t matter. They either don’t have kids or don’t have technology.Simone Collins: Yeah, it, it’s boring and not engaging, so why would we care? Even if they’re attacking us, it’s like, like, “come at me with something more interesting please,” you know? Yeah. Oh, so lame. So lame ... why,Malcolm Collins: why listen to somebody about a trad lifestyle who’s not living a trad lifestyle, right? Like, why, you know, why, why...W- when we come at you and we’re like, “This is how you should structure your marriage. This is how you should, you know, have kids and raise kids,” we never once- We live it ... no, yeah, nobody, people are like, “Oh, you’re doing it wrong,” which is fine, but [00:57:00] nobody doubts that, like, we sincerely believe what we’re saying and are trying it, and change our mind when presented with evidence we find compelling.Mm-hmm ... we had a really sweet letter recently about the whole sword and shield marriage thing, you know, the wife d- doing the, the safer stuff and the husband... and it really was big for me because it showed, I think a lot of people, when we did that video, people were like, “Well, not everyone’s trying to change the world in the way you guys are trying to change the world.Not everyone can wanna save humanity and everything like that.” But in the way that they were implementing it, the wife was managing, you know, the, the safe stuff, right? And the husband was managing trying to recreate sort of youth sports in a way that wasn’t super costly, so you don’t need to travel between states and everything like that.And that is actually focused on fun and kids and not creating show ponies for rich parents. And the moment I heard that, I was like, “Oh, obviously this is so something that’s needed in our society right now.” And it, and, and obviously so many parts of our world have become broken. You don’t need to [00:58:00] empower your husband to save all of society, but to become a force for good within your community that is durable, and not something boring and perfunctory like serving in a soup kitchen or something that’s exciting for a lot of people.And, and we- Mm-hmm ... present a way that you can do that, and then other people go with it and they’re like, “Oh, this is great. This actually really makes me feel a lot better about being alive because I’m trying to make the world a better place,” right? And I’m not gonna step back from this, the people who are like, “Well, not everybody wants to make the world a better place.”And it’s, try. Not just with your family, but, like, we all have a responsibility to fix our society as it crumbles around us.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, that’s my spicy take. Although it’s, honestlySimone Collins: it’s enough. I think, I think it’s plenty to, to fix your family, to, to make a good, a good family, to raise kids well. I think that that is a very honorable thing to doMalcolm Collins: I think that’s a good place to start.But when your kids are, you know, teens or whatever, and you’re... I think for a lot of [00:59:00] people I, I do want to encourage this, and I know it’s, it’s spicy- Well, your kidsSimone Collins: are teens, and you work on matchmaking, and you work on setting them up for their careers, and then you work on helping them raise their grandkids.I know this isMalcolm Collins: spicy, Simone- I think people beingSimone Collins: like, “Oh, noMalcolm Collins: one likes you” ... and it’s gonna piss off part of our audience- Mm ... but I’m gonna say I do think it is good for men to focus on civic engagement.Simone Collins: No, it’s true. And I think, you know, what I’m hearing a lot of people discuss I think this is coming up more and more, for example, on the All In podcast and among that class of people, talking about this idea of basically having a tour of duty, you know, serving for a certain number of years, maybe four years, maybe eight years in government, in politics, to try to improve whether it be your, your local area or on the state level or on a national level- No, I think-sort of depending on your resources ...Malcolm Collins: I think that’s fine. If you wanna go into politics, that’s fine. But I, I, I- There are otherSimone Collins: things you can do, too, but, like, yeah, to have a tour of duty in civic engagement in some way to help your communityMalcolm Collins: or country. And that the wife’s job is to support the husband in this tour of duty.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s more effective when you have that [01:00:00] support. Yeah, you can do more with one well-supported person than two not at all supported people working separately,Malcolm Collins: absolutely. Or, or the husband’s role to support the wife. Sure. If the husband is, is doing the day job and the wife is at home with the kids, do some tour of duty civically.Mm. And, and I know it’s extra work, but I, I promise you... Or I don’t promise you. I can’t, I can’t promise anything, but I, I believe based on the evidence I’ve seen that both you and your husband will feel better about your lives if you have been successful in at least attempting some form of ambitious civic engagement.That is my spicy take that’s gonna get people mad at me. Oh, well. Oh,Simone Collins: well.Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone. I thought this was fantastic. I think it’s fantastic that Ben Shapiro’s losing his influence. He’s been- ... as, as Steve Bannon called him, and I don’t even like St- Bannon. I, I see Steve Bannon as a swamp creature. You know, look at his Epstein rehabilitation takes.Mm. But Ben Shapiro is a [01:01:00] cancer. And you know, fortunately, the cancer is in remission, heavy remission.Simone Collins: I’d, I don’t... I wouldn’t go that far. I think he’s a well-meaning person who played a game, who lost some agility or really just didn’t- He’s not well-meaning.Malcolm Collins: He’s spiteful. He may have aligned goals with us but he’s kind of a little prick.I don’t think he hasSimone Collins: aligned goals with us. NotMalcolm Collins: true ...Simone Collins: I- Yeah, actually. I mean, I think weirdly a lot of people, I feel like they just are all very, they’d be very happy with each other because they kind of just love hating on other people. Like, both he and... Actually, you know, never mind. I’m not gonna say this.I think Nick Fuentes is a more, a more inclusive person in the end. He may troll- No, Nick Fuentes is a more inclusiveMalcolm Collins: person ...Simone Collins: and hate on people. Yeah, but yeah- I’ve got problems- ... Nick Fuentes is way more inclusive than yeah, than Ben Shapiro is. Yeah, so yeah. Nick Fuentes’ audience- Okay,Malcolm Collins: I think we’ve- When we were growing, let’s, so I wanna, I wanna contrast Ben Shapiro and Nick Fuentes, and people know w- I do [01:02:00] not like either of their politics, and I think Nick Fuentes is an active harm to the right.Despite all of that, the one thing I will not say about Nick Fuentes is he is not gatekeep-y. He, yeah, he’sSimone Collins: really not When we- He’s really not, actually ...Malcolm Collins: first started rising in influence this was around the time when Ben Shapiro crashed out about us Nick Fuentes’ like wider circle reached out to us, included us, interviewed us.Nick Fuentes during that period talked about us positively, thought, “Oh, maybe they’re people I can win to my ideological faction.” These things are things that I, I want to state very clearly. As much as I disagree with his political orientation and his strategy for the conservative movement which I do not see that, it’s, I mean, he’s really a Democrat at this point.Even he says that. He still is not somebody who snipes at ducklings as they come to shore. Like- ... Ben Shapiro’s the guy where all of the little, the turtles are coming to shore, all the little baby [01:03:00] conservative influencers are coming to shore, and he’s shooting them with a sniper rifle, whereas Nick Fuentes tries to help them through the the, the, the, the, the bird attacks and everything like that, even though they may not always be on his side.Simone Collins: Yeah. No, I agree. And I would still love to have Nick Fuentes on our show, though he never... Maybe eventually, you know, who knows? We’ve been warned, “Don’t do that. Everyone will hate you.” No, people are gonna... It’d be great. Look, it’s, it would be, I would love, I would love to interview him. I would do it, yeah.IfMalcolm Collins: he wants to come on, I mean, we, you know, for mutual fans. I mean, obviously the show’s gonna be boring ‘cause the whole time I’m gonna be talking about, like, Catholicism or something. It’s, we’re gonna be totally different.Simone Collins: I don’t know. It’d be amazing to see him just nerd out about Catholicism for a bit and not do his, like, normal thingies.But anyway, I don’t know. Whatever. Maybe it’ll happen. Yeah, I’d actually- Maybe it won’t ... beMalcolm Collins: very interested in that. Like theologically, like what’s, what’s his plan here? His- Oh my God, yes.Simone Collins: I’d love to know, like, his stance on, his different like theological stances and stuff. Yeah. And then, y- maybe he’s- Yeah.What I’d reallyMalcolm Collins: like to have if we got him on the show is where does he want [01:04:00] America to be in 100 years? Mm. Like, what’s his 100, 150 year, 200 year plan for our species? I’dSimone Collins: love... Yeah, I’d love to see that too. Yeah, come on. Ah, someone make it happen. Help us out here. Someone has an in. I mean, I guess don’t donate $50 to him on his stream though and tell him that there’s a woman present on this podcast, ‘cause that’s not gonna work.He’s not gonna feel like he can fart on stream if I’m there, so-Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh my God ... I don’t know. Yeah A woman? A wo- yeah, we’ve heard he- he- that’s... Sorry, we did a clip recently of his where he crashed out on a fan who donated $50 to him because the fan had all female children. And I was like, “What?” And you can’tSimone Collins: fart and burp around daughters apparently, even though our daughters constantly fart and burp around us.Yeah. God, I love our kids. Apparently Octavian farted in the doctor’s office today. Is that something that happened? Octavian was like- No ... “Yeah.” ... he didn’tMalcolm Collins: fart in the doctor’s office.Simone Collins: I farted in the doctor’s. He was really proud about it. I guess- I didn’t seeMalcolm Collins: it. They were, they were- There was this whole thing.It was highlighted ... astonished. The doctors were so amazed at how much they all helped each other. Aw. How much they [01:05:00] all, like, did their thing. They tried to give him all the information he needed. They were very worried when they found out that Indy had to get a shot. And they wanted to... Octavian, oh my God, you wanna know how sweet the kids are?Like, I don’t even know how our kids are this sweet. When they were gonna give Octavian the shot, Octavian- Indy ... like, no, Octavian goes to Indy and, like, looks her in the eyes and he goes, “I’m gonna sing a song for you.” And so he sings a, a song for Indy while they’re, like, prepping and doing the shot so she doesn’t notice.And she actually didn’t notice.Simone Collins: Oh my God, Noodle. I love these kids. Jesus.Malcolm Collins: Why are they so good? They are simulated. That’s all I can believe, because I’m not that good a person. Yes, you are. Or maybe I am. Like, maybe fundamentally- Yes, you are ... I’m actually, like, a pretty nice person.Simone Collins: Yeah. Fundamentally, you, like, actually are.Who knew? After a lifetime of being told, “Oh, you’re a demon child. Oh, you’re crazy. Oh, you’re so problematic. Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm.” Yeah, actually.Malcolm Collins: [01:06:00] You’ve been around my family, yeah.Simone Collins: Malcolm, Malcolm. Oh my God, all the ways. All the ways of your voice or your name being pronounced. This is why you’re so resilient online.N- no one’s n- the, the cruelest comments ever made about us don’t, don’t come m- anywhere close to the things that come from your own family. And I’m not just talking, like, one mean person. No, like, everyone.Malcolm Collins: Everyone in my family- Everyone ... constantly belittling me.Simone Collins: Oh my God. Anyway, I love you. Bye. Ilove you.Bye.Simone Collins: Well, after this you can tell my parents, who are very generously offering to order in, what you might have in terms of preferences. So very rare, exciting opportunity to eat from a restaurant.Malcolm Collins: We do really live in an area with some quite good restaurants.Simone Collins: Well, and there... A, a non-trivial number of [01:07:00] people who listen to the podcast live around here. Like, eventually we’re gonna have to host a local meetup. It’s gonna have to happen.It’s a good place to live. Just saying. Maybe somebody will do one in Philadelphia. That could be kind of fun. There was that one cool restaurant that reminded us of, like, British pubs. Do you... You remember the one I’m talking about, with the multiple floors and the cool chairs?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was nice, but, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if I wanna go to a city again, Simone.That’s the... That’s not an option for me. Never again?Simone Collins: You, you’re just quitting ci- cities forever?Malcolm Collins: I’m quitting cities, yeah. I think I’m done with them. I, I don’t I don’t think that they’re good.Simone Collins: Never again. I don’t think they attract-Malcolm Collins: Never again. Okay. Never again. I’m just done. I’m just done. Cities are over.I- is that... are we allowed to have this opinion?Simone Collins: Just- Well, what about Edinburgh?Malcolm Collins: Edinburgh is over. I’m sure it’s gross now. No, it’s not.Simone Collins: Stop. Don’t you ever say that.Malcolm Collins: I hear it’s full of you know, people- ... who weren’t there a few years ago. How dare you. No. That’s all... That’s Glasgow. Scotland is, like, more progressive- [01:08:00] That’s Glasgow.No, E- pff. Scotland is more progressive than the rest of the UK. You, like, know that, right? Like, it’s seen as, like, by far the most progressive part. I don’t know that.Simone Collins: Honestly, like, just from m- meeting random locals in the process of doing all of our wedding planning, I know that was ages ago now, but, like, they were just normal.Honestly, they reminded me a lot of just normal local Pennsylvanians, but with a fun accent. Actually, Pennsylvania’s also have fun accents. But you’re meetingMalcolm Collins: rural people in the... It’s the city dwellers who are the danger.Simone Collins: Well, no, I was dealing with city dwellers. I’m getting things like, you know, hairdressers and, and cake makers in- Oh, I guess that’s truethe city. Yeah. You’re just being a silly, a silly goose. People in Scotland are amazing and wonderful. And you were just dealing with the bougie international students at the St. Andrews, so you don’t even know what you’re talking aboutMalcolm Collins: Oh, I don’t? You know. Is this the type of scolding I get from a wife who pretends- Yesto love me?Simone Collins: The, the ball and chain.Malcolm Collins: The ball and ch-Simone Collins: what am, what is [01:09:00] psychological- Pretend to love you? As soon as you, as soon as you married me, I had to stop pretending, right? Well, of course, you decided to write into our vows, “I don’t promise to love you.” So it was never even part of the contract. Never even part,Malcolm Collins: yeah, we just...All right, all right,Simone Collins: all right. You ready?Malcolm Collins: Okay. Let’s go.Simone Collins: Okay.Speaker 13: You see what Toasty’s hiding from him? Yeah, we like it.Speaker 14: What are you guys doing?Speaker 15: Octavia, don’t, you’ll get wet. Mom gave me permission to go on. But you won’t leave your ankle. Oh. Say hi to your friend. Go to your friend. This is a public episode. 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Malcolm and Simone Collins break down a viral left-wing YouTuber’s video claiming the Left would win an upcoming American Civil War. Instead of dismissing it, they steelman his arguments, examine historical parallels, institutional control, police/military loyalty, supply lines, and urban vs. rural dynamics.They explore realistic scenarios for how a future crisis could unfold (disputed election → secession of blue cities → blockades), why drone swarms and logistics will matter more than armed rednecks, and why the Left’s own demographics, antinatalism, and institutional parasitism may doom their long-term prospects.Includes deep discussion on vasectomy culture, narrative-based vs. data-based thinking, and a fun tangent on next-gen autonomous drone design for home defense and warfare.If you’re interested in pronoia, demographic collapse, institutional power, or surviving turbulent times, this episode is essential listening.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be diving deep into the mind of an individual who some right-wing figures have covered recently for his crazy comments. One of the crazier ones that happened recently is he said that if he transported back to the Pilgrim era, and obviously I’ll play the clip here,Speaker: You suddenly wake up in the 17th century on a ship headed for New England. As soon as we landed, I would use the money to bribe the boatswain to look the other way while I stole all of the muskets and powder on board, and then I would march immediately to the nearest indigenous settlement, give the guns out like candy, and make it my mission in life to murder every single white man, woman and child on the eastern seaboard of the continent.Malcolm Collins: That he would kill w- any white women and children that he found after- Oh, Godbetraying the Pilgrims and giving away all their guns to Indians. Because apparently this makes sense to him, and he’s [00:01:00] also gone viral, which we’ll talk about later in this you know, sterilizing himself. But with all of this stuff, yes, I could go over how crazy this guy sounds. Which is- I think weSimone Collins: all knowsomethingMalcolm Collins: I could do. But as people who watch our channel, I try to bring a unique perspective to what I’m covering, so I decided to go through and watch his videos. So on- Oh, youSimone Collins: went down the rabbit hole.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: Okay. AndMalcolm Collins: one of his videos, which is the one I really wanna talk on in this, is why the left would win an upcoming civil war.Oh ... and he basically lays out the plan that his side has for winning an upcoming civil war. And it’s- Really? ... not as insane as you would think. So- Oh, they haveSimone Collins: a shot?Malcolm Collins: Potentially, yeah. Can they takeSimone Collins: us?Malcolm Collins: So it’s something that we need to, to talk about, we need to engage with. And more than just engaging with it, the reason why [00:02:00] I think it’s so important to engage with is I think it makes it clear when the right-wing alliance thinks about the elements of the alliance that are actually important to both its long-term viability and its immediate security on in the moment of, like, crazy revolution type stuff, right?Yeah. Yeah. It is- Massively misunderstanding where it should actually be focusing. Hmm. It’s focusing way too much on armed groups of rednecks, which he points out, realistically, aren’t particularly relevant if a civil war did break out. And he goes through historic civil wars to make this argument.Now, I don’t think that that’s... I, I, I don’t think the way he presents his argument is powerful, ‘cause I’d be like, yeah, but the technological context is entirely different now. They didn’t have, like, fully automatic weapons back then and stuff, right? Mm-hmm. But the, the... He does, he [00:03:00] does notice things that I think a right-wing person would notice.So let’s go into this, and he also goes into how, how probable it is, okay?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So broadly, his worldview goes like this. If you look at historic civil wars, what actually ended up determining who won and how well sides were able to sort of field their assets, it largely came downstream of the existing bureaucratic and civilizational infrastructure that allowed them to recruit and command troops at scale.Uh-huh. As well as manage industry at scale. Mm-hmm. And that so if you, if you think about something like the Revolutionary War or something like this the troops that we had fighting for us were not just, you know, people who we had raised out of nowhere. These were preexisting military regiments often.Or, or they had elements of [00:04:00] preexisting military regiments within them. If you look at the you know, Civil War both the South and the North had sort of large scale e- economic and sort of civilizational infrastructure that they could call on. R- random rebels have a very hard time doing anything other than just holding land.And would they even be able to hold land in an existing context? So to give an understanding of, like, how he’s thinking about a civil war he was praising Mondame for and apparently a lot of leftists see this as a major betrayal, and he was saying that this was actually very shrewd immediately burying the hatchet with the NYPD as soon as he was elected.And he’s like, “Look, if we want to prevent ICE,” like federal government troops, “from operating effectively in New York, we are going to need the [00:05:00] NYPD on our side. We are going to need- our own thugs with guns to be fighting their thugs with guns.Simone Collins: Oh. Oh. Oh. I mean, I guess the police need their pensions to be paid, and who, who controls the pensions?So if we’re talking about, like, national versus local control, is that kind of what he’s thinking about?Malcolm Collins: So, th- yeah, basically the question is, is if society were ever to fall into unrest, how much organizational control would leftists have? We, I mean, like, when we know the types of institutions that leftists control today leftists control the huge parts of the, the judicial system in the most economically prosperous parts of the United States, huge parts of the white collar job system in the most industrious parts, you know, technologically industrious parts of the United [00:06:00] States.They control governments and the surrounding environments in stuff like cities. So suppose we were having any form of a revolution or something like that. The NYPD is obviously quite pissed at the way leftists have treated them, but you’ve also gotta keep in mind how long they have had woke hiring practices within their organization.So even though they have a bit of a, a chip on their shoulder compared to other people, you gotta keep in mind their entire architecture around them, right? You know, you’ve got everybody else in Manhattan, many of whom are quite left-leaning, who could pressure them or make it difficult for them to act independently in the case of any sort of serious split.Now I’m just giving you guys his perspective. I actually think it’s massively wrong, but I’m giving you his perspective, right? And then if I was gonna further steel man his perspective beyond what he has said, because obviously being a modern leftist, he doesn’t think AI is relevant. But,Speaker: Where [00:07:00] do you fall on the Luddite to accelerationist spectrum? Uh, I’m of two minds. I- in my heart of hearts, I think the agricultural revolution was a mistake. I think that any society with an agricultural mode of subsistence is necessarily imperial and hierarchical, and I think that basically all of our problems come downstream from that.Malcolm Collins: No ... I have argued that the core thing of relevance in future battles, even six, seven years out, is gonna be automated drone swarms.You know, th- this matters, whoSimone Collins: controls the- Absolutely ...Malcolm Collins: the automated drone swarms. And the-Simone Collins: Well, so far the federal government is, like, leaps and bounds ahead of any, any private or state-based entity I’m aware of Is that thingMalcolm Collins: I worked on with RFAB is automated drone swarms?Simone Collins: Yeah, sh- yeah. Yes.Malcolm Collins: Would fans pay for that?Could we get funding for that? ‘Cause ISimone Collins: wouldMalcolm Collins: do that. I don’t, I mean- I could, I bet I could build automated drone swarms better than the government can.Simone Collins: [00:08:00] Well, let’s look into it. I want, I want a home defense swarm system. So could work on that one.Malcolm Collins: Well, so okay, just a side note. If I was gonna focus on automated drone swarms, how, w- like what would be our, our arbitrage play?Mm-hmm. So I’m just trying to think of how you could do something significantly better than the existing systems. So I’ve been watching lots of film of like what’s going on in Ukraine right now. Oh. And you have a huge, a, yes, our fans will find this tangent interesting. I t- I’m trying to think. Like do our fans care- Yeahabout automated drone swarm technology and howSimone Collins: you- Yes, they do. Yes. No. No. Anyone who wants to survive in the future, and I mean our fans are not suicidal and self-terminating, they do. They want their children to survive.Malcolm Collins: Well, except for the ones who said some naughty things about Israel, and I’ve, and I’ve heard many of them have been thinking about some end of life solutions.Y- [00:09:00] I, I, I, I say this of course for Mossad so that they know I’m on team here, okay? 100% on team.Speaker 3: So this speculative discussion into drone design went on way longer than I anticipated. , So I moved it to the end. , And you can, I guess, just skip to it with timestamps if you’re desperate to hear me, an uninformed person, go on forever about what would be an interesting drone designMalcolm Collins: Okay, I gotta get back to the topic at hand.Simone Collins: Right. Civil WarMalcolm Collins: webs police. So what actually ha- happens... And people can tell me their ideas of how you could make drone technology better.I’d be very interested in this so I can steal them, because my idea’s probably stupid. This was just off the top of my head idea. But okay, so this guy I think he’s fundamentally wrong about what a civil war would look like because he’s thinking of a civil war in the way that rightists think about a civil war.So he’s looking at the rightist militant’s fantasy of the armed guerrilla civil war which I do not [00:10:00] think is a realistic pathway for a near future American Civil War. Okay. What is a more likely pathway for a near future American Civil War? I’ve said it before, but let’s, let’s go through what it would look like if it happened.One party gets into power, and then the election results, either through genuine fraudulence or non-fraudulence, says that they lost the next presidential election. But they say, “We didn’t lose the presidential election.” In fact-Simone Collins: Which is what you anticipate, the primary means through which this all happens.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And the reason I suspect that this is gonna happen is both parties have become razor thin close to doing this multiple times.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like, every election just seems like we’re asking for it at this point.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, it, it’s almost like a pendulum that’s swinging, but it just keeps swinging farther and farther each time, and eventually it’s gonna ha- like hit this ding, like bell.We’ve hit the we’ve hit the civil war bell. [00:11:00] GreatMalcolm Collins: Or the one party put something in place that is just so transparently cheating in the election system that the other party’s just like, “No, we’re not going along with this.” Right? Yeah. And obviously we got closer with, like, the the, the Voter Rights Act and stuff like this.M- many leftists do not like that they do not get the racial seats that they used to got, which were obviously unfair and racist, but whatever. And then the Virginia case when they tried to cancel this, getting struck down, so they lost- Yeah ... all the seats that they thought they were gonna get there.Simone Collins: Did you see Scott Pressler’s tweet about it?It was lovely. He, he was- Mm-hmm ... he was there. He’s still making things happen.Malcolm Collins: Oh, he was part of that?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: How did he campaign to the, ISimone Collins: don’t know the full backstory. I just know he was a part of it. He was there and he tweeted a selfie of himself and everyone celebrating, and it was lovely.Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s lovely.Yeah. You know, if, if they’re gonna play the g- gerrymander game, you know, let’s, let’s do it, right? By the way, fun thing. I don’t know if you know this, but the actual thing that, [00:12:00] that triggered the reinvestigation of the gerry- the, the system and the court case that ended up causing the strike down of the Voter Rights Act was actually initiated by the Biden administration against Texas.And then the Trump administration dropped it, but Texas said we’re not dropping this. We’re taking this to court.” Oh. And they ended up being the case that got it overturned. So it was actually a process- Oh, goodness ... initiated by Democrats trying to be even overly aggressive with the system they already had.Simone Collins: Okay. Well... But InterestingMalcolm Collins: What happens if we’ll go through each candidate. Let’s suppose the Democrats win this next cycle, and it’s somebody like AOC. I think she’s actually the most likely to win, if I’m gonna be honest. Mm-hmm. Like, I, I do not think Gavin Newsom would win. Would AOC believe that she needed to hold onto power if it looked like she lost to somebody she was really afraid of, [00:13:00] right?The answer is yes, probably. Right? I can, I can totally see her doing something, or her supporters doing something to that effect. Okay, so she says, “I’m not leaving.” What would be her likely complaint? She would say that, like, either it was too much gerrymandering or there was something suspicious about the vote count or something like that, right?So what do we have in place that could deal with this? First, you’ve gotta remember, DC is incredibly left wing. Are DC cops going to pull her out of the White House, right? No. You would basically need the United States military to attempt to do something. This means the United States military, somebody within the military would have to decide to act against the commander in chief.Would they do this? And, and this is difficult because you’ve gotta keep in mind not everyone in the military is gonna go on board with this, right? Like, the moment one person does this even though, like, technically it would be AOC doing the coup, like, they’re doing a [00:14:00] coup. Like, they’re now starting a, a, a conflict of some sort.They go to the White House, they attempt to arrest her. Okay, who’s defending her? Secret Service, right? Is Secret Service enough in the hands of the Democrats to go along with something like this? Yeah, I think they are at this point, if I’m gonna be honest. I still think that the right has enough influence within the military to prevent a Democrat from doing this successfully.It, it, it would be tough, but probably. Okay, but let’s assume that a rightist did this. Let’s assume Trump does this this next cycle, forSimone Collins: example. Okay.Malcolm Collins: What happens there? I mean, the key would be for him and the relevant people in his administration to make sure that they’ve gotten out of DC before they attempt this. If they’re in DC, if he tries to just stay in the White House, that is incredibly stupid. Mm-hmm. What he should do is operate something like this with key administrative officials [00:15:00] out of something like one of the presidential whatever, retreats or something like this, that is in rural America where they are less likely to get significant pushback.You would immediately have a number of leftist cities basically secede to some extent. The key to drawing them back in is basically not confronting them with armed conflict. You could essentially just starve them. If you just close off roads into any major city they would have to capitulate in a very short period of time, and it would be trivially easy to do.Which is very different from rural sections of America. To, to pacify a rural section of America you really need to basically militarily occupy it. To pacify any American city you just need to block a few roads. Really very easy roads to block, too. And, and, and, and don’t even do it, like, aggressively.Just be [00:16:00] like, “Look, we’re looking to negotiate, but for now we’ll be blocking things off.” And you really wanna lower their power, we’ll be managing an evacuation of the city, right? To, you know, i- i- for people who are dealing with power, food, everything like that. Because now you’re moving people away from, like, their source of ability to fight back in, in a situation like this.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And this is what really matters, not the control of the institutions but control of the military. Really whichever side the military backed when one of these happens, that would be the side that won. And keep in mind that they would win permanently. So, like, suppose that AOC or Trump did this.If the military ends up backing the other side, the other side is not gonna go back to free elections. They’re going to say that, like, “We can’t do free elections anymore.”Simone Collins: Yeah. Fair.Malcolm Collins: So the, the moment the conflict comes to a head, basically the American Republic is over and we enter our imperial age. Which is why we named our first kid Octavian, right?You know? Gotta, gotta handle that [00:17:00] transition. Maybe, maybe born a generation, we’ll see when this happens. But thoughts, Simone, before I go further.Simone Collins: This generally makes sense, and I didn’t know that there were people who were actually thinking through the logistics of this, but huh. I mean, there, there are so many complications with interstate trade and supply routes and everything where I just feel like there are so many more levels of vulnerability too, like the power grid, that different parties in this conflict could leverage against each other that just didn’t exist at the time of the US Civil War, where functionally civil war just isn’t really possible in the United States in any sort of full-scale, you know, city w-Malcolm Collins: I mean, the key is to do it in a way that doesn’t look like a civil war, right?Which is, isSimone Collins: not- So it would look like a, a, a chop chas? Like a sort of this, this [00:18:00] is their zone and we’re just gonna let them pretend that they have it and-Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so you- ... let it go apart ... you like suppose you do this, you are Trump. A number of cities say, “We’re not going along with this.” Just you, you, you d- you do your best to not allow violence to break out, right?You say- Yeah ... unless their side is initiating it we, if, if you are not part of America anymore, we are blockading the roads into these major urban centers. And we are managing an evacuation for the people who don’t wanna be part of your basically independent project, right? If you do that. And the other key is to work with companies on this, right?To make it clear to the major companies that there will be some window upon which they can join this project. And if they do not join it within X potential window then they- [00:19:00] Some form of, of repercussion. Like they’re, they’re, they’re taxed in a different way or their assets are withheld or something like that, right?Like, basically you just put financial pressure on companies to go along with this. ‘Cause a lot of companies are gonna want to reflexively, you know, d- do their, their sort of signal on this. But the moment you put, like, international pressure on something like this, the big companies are just gonna go along with this, and that really hurts the city’s ability to, to, to go along with this themselves.So first you do something small, where, like, companies basically just need to signal to you and signal to the world, “Oh, yeah, I’m moving ahead with this new accounting system,” or whatever, right? Mm-hmm. And then you go into the second phase, which is to say, if they pay taxes to any of the parts of America that are still in open rebellion they are then put...So they’ve already done the costly signaling of being like, “I’m okay with this,” and then you start to starve the cities that are left of taxes.Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense.Malcolm Collins: Now how would the leftists do it [00:20:00] is it’s way harder, because they need to power project from cities outwards, which is just incredibly difficult to do.Simone Collins: What if they just did, what if, like, California seceded? You know? That would be more feasible. California has ports. They have more of an independent electricity grid.They are a very economically productive, still, state.Malcolm Collins: So ports are incredibly easy to blockade, first of all. Like a civilian port, like San Francisco Port or something like that.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And it, with California, you really only need to block like two ports. Oh ... if, if you block the port in San Francisco and LA, like you, you, they’re cooked.They can import goods through other ports, but if you then block the main arteries into those two areas, and there are not that many into, like San Francisco, for example, you’re literally blocking like four roads.Simone Collins: Yeah, I, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Most of [00:21:00] California is red. Remember that. Like literally-Simone Collins: ThatMalcolm Collins: is a fair point ... m- it’s just a few, and you say, “Okay, you know, you, you secede, but like, don’t use our infrastructure.”Simone Collins: Oh, you mean even the fact that we defend the seas or something?Malcolm Collins: Well, no. We built, America built your port infrastructure. You are not allowed to use it.Simone Collins: Oh. Hmm.Malcolm Collins: That is wh- that would be my justification for blockading the sea routes.Simone Collins: That’s fair enough.Malcolm Collins: But yeah. That- that’s what a, that’s- that is what an American Civil War is going to look like, the next American Civil War.It’s not gonna be fought by random guerrillas. It’s, it’s, it’s going to be fought by how do you control supply lines into things like cities, and how long are people going to throw a fit about this?Simone Collins: In other words, it’s, it’s defined by institutions siding with one aggrieved party af- following a f- a [00:22:00] presidential election that was very contentious, and refusing to contribute taxes or enforce laws to the extent that it’s a, it’s a functional civil war.But to what end? I just don’t... I can’t... In, in the c- with the way that our states run and the way our government runs, I cannot understand why even a very large group of people who believe that an election was a fraud would successfully rebel or attempt to rebel with any expectation of eventual success.I mean, what does eventual success look like? They just think-Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so we’ve seen this. There was both... So a lot of people aren’t aware, but there was a protest that was about as big as the January 6th protest that the leftists held just,like, a month and a half before where the president had to be taken to a secret bunker, and they tried to light the White House on fire, and it was-Simone Collins: Well, I don’t remember this at all.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because the left didn’t report on it. They didn’t wanna report on it. They didn’t want people to know about it. But yeah, it [00:23:00] was huge. If you find photos of it, like, there’s giant, like, bonfires around the White House and stuff like, right in front of the gates and stuff. It was, it was obviously an extremely dangerous scenario.The core difference is that the CIA wasn’t there to open the gates for people. You know, but the point being is the other question you have around any sort of a protest like this is the people who are resisting this, right, like, especially if they’re violently resistingThis, would the military or any sort of military forces that you have be comfortable shooting on a crowd of civilians?That, that often determines, like, if things go ahead. And one of the things that we’ve repeatedly seen recently in rebellions and stuff like this, we saw this in Turkey, for example is that if your military is drawn from rural or r- like, conservative regions and the [00:24:00] protesters are incredibly far lefties, like, they’re going out like the anti-ICE protesters, looking like actually dangerous militant- Psychopaths.Okay. Which they often look like. I mean, we’ve seen the people who are protesting ICE. Like, they’re like-Simone Collins: The hoods, the... YeahMalcolm Collins: The hoods. They, they look like a group that has othered themselves from the concept of civilians enough that I do not think that they would actually care to shoot at a crowd. Which is unfort- I mean, it’s leftists trying to feel cool and everything like that, but like, it’s also important when you do protest something like this, like suppose it’s the leftists who have power when this is happening, that you don’t go out there in outfits that other you.Go out there looking like normal civilians. Yeah. That is how you prevent the, that is how you get the military on your side again, right? Going out there and harassing the military by throwing bricks at them in a hood and hitting them was like, that’s how you get them to feel like fighting back is on their side.I think the lefts have really [00:25:00] hurt themselves. So the final part of this video I wanted to address any thoughts before we go further?Simone Collins: No, but I agree with you on that. Seems poorly thought through, but I know they’re not exactly thinking from that perspective.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This guy’s not wanting to have kids, and leftists not wanting to have kids more broadly.So I’ll play the clip here.Speaker 2: Earlier this year, I got a vasectomy. When people ask me why I got snipped, I generally kinda gesture vaguely to fascism and climate change, and people go, “Oh, yeah, totally understandable.”But the truth is that whenever my friends and family members get pregnant, and I’m in my early 30s, so that’s happening a lot these days, I get a horrible weight in the pit of my stomach. Oftentimes, I’m genuinely happy for them, you know? Sometimes I can even look them in the eye and say, “You’ll be a really great father,” and mean it.But there’s another part of me that can’t shake the idea that in nine months, another American will come into the [00:26:00] world, , another ravening cannibal who will spend the next better part of a century burning fossil fuels, housing cheeseburgers, and ignoring homeless people at traffic lights.And you can say, you know, “Oh, well. Well, I’ll, I’ll bring up my kid to share my values, and they won’t do those things.” Um, and I can respect that, but that’s a hell of a gamble, right? I mean, you know, you could take your kid to school every day on your bike, but if every other parent has an SUV, eventually your kid’s gonna get curious and want to drive a car, right?And then, and then what are you gonna do, you know, forbid them? I mean, they’re just gonna do it anyway. What if my pride and joy grows up to be somebody else’s abuser but the real kicker is that even if my child has a great life even if they cause no harm to others they will still suffer they will still die it is unavoidable right i will be [00:27:00] inflicting this fate upon them without their knowledge or consent to me the creation of human life is very obviously an incredibly selfish thing to do under most circumstancesMalcolm Collins: And what you really see from this is he’s afraid above all else that his kids may have different political beliefs than him. And he’s like, “No matter how much I try to brainwash them, they might not be vegans.” You know, because he calls all non-vegans cannibals, right?Which, yeah, of course, right? Like, why wouldn’t he? And what’s interesting is the lack of... And I noticed this with leftists. One of the really interesting things I think on the right that we repeatedly see is even when we have, like, radical beliefs there is a lot of intellectual effort and this is something you see on our channel and stuff like that, establishing why we have the core beliefs we have that [00:28:00] inform our downstream beliefs, right?Like, why do we have the beliefs we have about the environment, right? Like, clearly he thinks the environment is like an existential and immediate threat, yet he never goes into why. Like, he doesn’t actually investigate this, which I’d be very interested to know. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve dug into the data on this, and it just doesn’t seem to be.”So, like, what’s the counter to this, right? Other than just, like, I’ve been told. So yeah, there’s that element. The other is, so, like, it’s, it’s, it’s sort of that there isn’t an intellectual backbone To, to what they’re pushing here, right? It’s just like, I’ve been told that this is a trendy thing. Like, why do you hate white people, right? Like, this guy clearly thinks it’s cool to hate white people and stuff like this, kill white children, all that.W- why does he feel that this... And obviously it is protected for him. His, his videos are still doing well. He has half a million subscribers, you know. He is a popular YouTuber, right?Simone Collins: Oh, [00:29:00] absolutely.Malcolm Collins: So this, this type of content, I’d actually say his videos aren’t even that bad. Like, when I was watching them, they really remind me of ContraPoints, where...And I notice this, we actually had a leftist, like, trans news team come here recently that we were, like, interviewing, right? And it really became clear to me that, like, we were not able to successfully communicate with them. We had perfectly amiable conversations, and they understood. And I was like, “I can’t communicate with you because effectively because everything they saw, they saw in terms of narratives.”Everything had to have some sort of, like... And this is the way he sees things. This is the way Philosophy Tube sees things. This is the way I see a lot of ContraPoints videos see things. The world is a series of narratives, and what is true is what is narratively true. So, what I mean by this is if we are doing something like having lots of kids, it must be because of either a kink or because of something that happened in our [00:30:00] childhood.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I’m like, “No, we’re doing it because of the data. Do you wanna look at the data?” Right? Like, you can do something for a reason other than a kink, but, like, this is just incongruent with, because their entire world, self, and person is structured around what gives them pleasure.Simone Collins: You think that’s why?Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. Remember I said that, like, clearly pleasure is not, like, the core purpose in life, right? Remember you were like, “Well, that, you know, that’s for you,” right? You know, to this individual, pleasure was the core purpose in life. Mm-hmm. And so when they look at why people are acting in a way that seems odd to them, like why are we having a lot of kids, it must be because it’s arousing to us, right?It must be some sort of kink scenario. Which I find very interesting for a couple reasons. One is, like, in case you’re wondering [00:31:00] and, and to, to we have argued before that the only thing that isn’t a kink is having kids, right? Like, being turned on by getting somebody pregnant or being impregnated, like, that’s literally what the whole system is in place for.Simone Collins: Yeah ...Malcolm Collins: you know, the fact that you, that you would call that a kink is bizarre, right? Like, you think- You think using another human as like an Oni hole is the non-kink and doing sex for the reason sex exists is the kink? It’s theSimone Collins: only one normal version of it ...Malcolm Collins: Yes. But this scenario in terms of like erotic scenarios, the idea of impregnation a breeding kink you could say is, is something that I personally do find arousing, right?Like it’s in my panoply of like random things that arouse me. The idea of this in terms of my life, wife, and kids, absolutely not is it arousing. Like it, it, it just ... [00:32:00] I was trying to explain this to them. I’m like, “Do you understand like having a kid is a giant logistical process that takes months?”It’s not like a sexual fantasy, right?Simone Collins: Like- Yeah. Pe- people who have this sort of fetish aren’t having children. There are people who act it out, absolutely. There are people who will even go on these like Facebook groups for sperm donors and actively seek out women who are willing to have sex with them in order to get pregnant and they will fly all around the world and have thousands of kids.They would count. But like yeah, that you would create a whole new life and be responsible for them and raise them for like f- a couple minutes of your fetish, your arousal pathway?Malcolm Collins: Well, what it is, but it’s not even an effective mechanism for, ... Okay, I’ll word this a different way for people. Mm-hmm. If anyone here is, is listening has a, a b- a, a, a submission or [00:33:00] dominance arousal pattern, right?Like you get turned on by role playing a very dominant person or you get turned on by role playing a very submissive person, right? Do you get turned on when you’re a like wage slave if you’re turned on by being submissive? Probably effing not. Do you get turned on by being a boss or managing a team if you’re turned on by being dominant?Probably not, right? It’s just there’s too much other stuff going on in those sorts of roles to actually activate those pathways.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: But I actually think that’s a really good explanation for this, right? Like, but it is w- one, I mean it, it, it’s sad to see that that level of sort of degenerate framing of reality by these individuals but the thing to remember with any sort of civil war with the left and everything like that is we really only need to wait them out at this point.Their fertility rates are [00:34:00] so low. They are sterilizing themselves. Like literally- There’s these people out there right now who hate you, they want you dead, they want everything you stand for destroyed, and you could be like, “Oh my God,” like, “We need to get out all the guns. We need to round these people up.We need to sterilize them.” And it’s like, oh no, you don’t need to do that. And they’re like, “Well, why?” It’s like they literally have vasectomy vans go to like the DNC and offer free vasectomies at this point. It’s not even a right-wing conspiracy. This is them doing this. They’re handlingSimone Collins: it. They’re handling it.But for the same reason, that’s why I find it so shocking the idea that there would be any form of civil war because I just don’t think that ultimately the left has the ability to take that level of organized initiative. The left is about degrowth, it’s about antinatalism, it’s about stepping back, relinquishing- But they have-turning back, stopping, stagnating. It’s not about organizing and building, and you need to organize and build in order to lead a civil war.Malcolm Collins: But [00:35:00] they have tons of institutions under their control.Simone Collins: I get that, but those institutions are highly dependent on other factors in order to work, and being parasitical in nature culturally, they’ve already weakened those institutions.True. True. So they just won’t work, especially when isolated and rebellious. They’re not sufficient rebellious entities.Malcolm Collins: And this is why I think America should conquer Europe.Simone Collins: Yeah. I feel like- It’s there to be taken. Yeah. We’re, we’re thinking too small- We need to do this ... with, with Greenland. You gotta think bigger.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Greenland? Come on. You’re thinking so small, Trump.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. There’s more out there, some, some nice ones to pick off.Malcolm Collins: If we went out and we conquered Greenland, they would do nothing. Oh, we should do a video on whether NATO’s a bad idea.Simone Collins: That would be fun to do. Yeah, I like that.Malcolm Collins: All right. I love you to death.Yes, I love you. You’re amazingSimone Collins: what a day. What a day.Malcolm Collins: Film, film, [00:36:00] film. Got crews over all day today.Simone Collins: And yesterday.Malcolm Collins: Such a, a fun life actually, in a way, because it feels like we’re celebrities, but like, without, like, having to be film stars or something. Like, the news is, like, r- regularly interested in, like, what are, what are they doing today?Oh,Simone Collins: but like, we don’t have to memorize lines or something?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We don’t have to... I mean, I wouldn’t wanna be a celebrity in the way that celebrities used to exist. I wouldn’t wanna be a celebrity in the way that Kardashians are celebrities or the way that Ozzy Osbourne is a celebrity, where, like, it’s interesting because we’re like celebrities, but people care about our political views.Like, the antithesis- Oh ... of, you know, the historic celebrity where it’s like, “Well, they’reSimone Collins: not-” Oh, where like, okay, yeah, you would hate if they cared about what you wore or something, or who you were dating, and y- you like what they actually care about your substance. They care what they thinkMalcolm Collins: aboutSimone Collins: X.Malcolm Collins: I get it.Yeah. But with us, it’s like, why would anybody? Well, they are, they are, Which is interesting, ‘cause y- you know, there’s not I mean, I don’t think there’s any political provocateur that gets as much just, like, raw news [00:37:00] coverage as we get. Not even close. Like, if there’s some that are more famous than us, like Munches Bulbog or Scott Alexander or something like that, but they’re, they’re much more private than us too.Simone Collins: Nick Fuentes, come on. He gets tons of views.Malcolm Collins: Ah, Nick Fuentes does get more news coverage than us, and is a provocateur, so I will give you that.Simone Collins: Yeah, well.Thank you. Thank you. I try. Okay,Malcolm Collins: so- who else? Yeah, but I m- I mean, it’s, it’s interesting. It’s interesting to play this, this, this game with the dying press era.ButSimone Collins: yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you saw me in a music video today, which made me happy. It had like 11 views, but still, you know, we’re getting in some of the you know, the wider universe of whatever it’s called. Sky Browse, Sky Browse videos.Simone Collins: CinematicMalcolm Collins: universe. All right, well I’ll seeSimone Collins: you later. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Oh, what are we doing for dinner?Reheating?Simone Collins: I’m going to be working it out. I might do some... I was thinking about doing a mixture of some roasted Brussels sprouts [00:38:00] with butter and some, like, kosher salt dusting on the top, and then also some meat over some maybe, like, fried rice or something. Like, a just kind of a mismatch of- No,Malcolm Collins: I mean, did we freeze yesterday’s dinner?Simone Collins: We haven’t phrased, frozen yesterday’s. But I’m not gonna just serve leftovers, like-Malcolm Collins: To guests, yeah, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right ...Simone Collins: yeah, so we need to do something new and cool. And so I might take out some of our, our batch-prepped cool s- cool dishes, and zhuzh them up.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, whatever you want. Rendang is something Steve would, Mika would probably like.Simone Collins: That would require a new, like, coinage of, of meat, which I do not have.Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, if we have one frozen.Simone Collins: Oh, we, we might actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ren- rendang over rice with roasted Brussels sprouts as a side.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Okay. I’ll, I’ll check with them. I’ll, I’ll give them some options after seeing what I’ve, I’ve batch prepped and then- All rightwe’ll go forward from [00:39:00] there.Malcolm Collins: Okay, so anyway the, the obvious, like what I would think initially is how inexpensive can I get them at scale, right? Yeah. But the reality is is that the inexpensive path is either you’re just retrofitting existing drones, which we’re already seeing people do pretty competently- Absolutelyin, in environments like you know, Iran was doing this pretty well, was just like the lobbed systems. You know, you’re getting this out of Russia. So then the question would be- Yeah ... if I was gonna build something, how would w- I make it meaningfully differentiated from the other systems that are out there right now?And the way I would make it meaningfully different is twofold. First, one of the big problems you have with the drone systems out there right now is they’ve gotten pretty good at the ones that are designed at taking out tanks, right? To the point where it doesn’t even make sense to field tanks in the way that you traditionally would have been fealing- fielding tanks in a war.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And so that means you [00:40:00] have much more personnel movement and much more individual drone movement. So like small things where like just lobbing an explosive isn’t necessarily as useful. Now the idea of like the gun drone, these do exist, right? But the core problem with them is kickback, right?You, you have a, a flying thing, you’re shooting. MinorSimone Collins: difficulty, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right, minor difficulty. And two, all of the systems that are made to prevent the sort of lobbed drones, the explosive drones, are also good at these, right? So if you’re in Ukraine and you’re trying to like find a path through the Russians, basically you’re trying to find like invisible corridors that don’t have drone blocking setups around them that sort of block where the drones are going, right?Oh,Simone Collins: yes.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. So you’ve got two problems, right? One is good kickback, the second is the drone defense that blocks radio signals. So how can you get around both of these problems?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right? Okay, so [00:41:00] problem number one is what if you had a drone that was actually, while it could fly, its predominant strategy in terms of, like, the way it moves and does its thing is landing and locking into ground for something like a more sniper rifle type approach.Where it’s, it’s got a, a, a, a, a weapon on it that isn’t designed to fire-Simone Collins: It’s a mobile firing turret ...Malcolm Collins: a mobile firing turret. But then secondly, that it had a a wheel-based system as well. So it would be really designed to camouflage itself. Like, the idea is, is it gets itself in position and it can stay there for a long time, basically completely quiet to an enemy so they can reposition their...So, like, suppose you’re losing ground in a territory or something like that you could just leave these out. The enemy moves their anti-air defense to the other side of [00:42:00] them. Mm. And you can reactivate them, and the- Yeah, you can...Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm ... and the important thing about the wheel system on them as well is the wheel system plus an AI navigation system would be really good for when they’re blocked.It basically allows them to drive through blocked territory until it gets to a space where you can reestablish radio connection, and then fly it into a place where you would want to fly it into to lock it into place.Simone Collins: A Wall-E that shoots and flies.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the idea is, is it’s, it’s a rethinking of the way that a drone would work in a military context.Mm-hmm. Outside of these very simplistic ones to basically one that’s built around camouflage, sniping, and moving through AI drone detection systems. And the idea is, is that if you could get it good enough at long distance aim, which I think you could with an automated system pretty well given what, like, what we have with, with things, you wouldn’t need to worry as much about counter drone systems [00:43:00] because it would be very difficult to detect is the idea.But we’ll see. And one, one of the challenges of it would be uneven terrain. So you’d probably need some sort of, like... But if you do tank treads, then it’s gonna be too heavy. Yeah. Hmm. You could probably do some form of, like, a hovercraft utilizing the same fans that are used to fly it to pump air out the bottom.Simone Collins: I don’t know. I would look at kids’ toys really as a base because they’re meant-Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s why I was thinking hovercrafts, because I had some hovercraft toys as a kid. Yeah. And they’re really not that hard to create. You just need to create a suction padding at the bottom with like a styrofoam, which can be very lightweight and inexpensive.And then you blowSimone Collins: air- But can hovercraft travel on uneven terrain?Malcolm Collins: What?Simone Collins: Can hovercraft travel on unevenMalcolm Collins: terrain? Yeah, very rough terrain. Oh. I mean, that’s the point of hovercrafts often.Simone Collins: I’m not fa- I’m really [00:44:00] not familiar with hovercrafts.Malcolm Collins: So basically you’re just making it fly, but at very low altitude.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And with less power. That’sSimone Collins: the ... Yeah, interesting.Malcolm Collins: Obviously the challenge then is, is, is repowering it. How do you handle that? I need to think through. Anyway, fun, fun concept here.Speaker 4: Whoa. Whoa.Wow. I got this dinosaur. What would youSpeaker 6: like for dinner, Titan?Speaker 4: Well, I want macaroni and cheese and then pizza.Speaker 6: We don’t have any big pizza, but we can make macaroni and cheese.Speaker 4: But we can spill on floor. Stop it. No, we cannot. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone Collins break down Helen Andrews’ “Great Feminization Theory” — the idea that the rise of wokeness, institutional dysfunction, and cancel culture correlates with fields tipping majority-female and importing feminine sociological norms (empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition).They explore law schools, medicine, media, management, conflict resolution styles, why organizations feminize and then decline, practical solutions, male-only spaces, and how this intersects with marriage, ambition, and building high-agency families in a declining culture.Show NotesThe theory* presented by journalist Helen Andrews at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, DC in September 2025* Speech got over 175K views* later published as an essay in Compact Magazine in October 2025* Connects the rise of wokeness and institutional dysfunction to higher percentages of women in formerly male-dominated fields* Because women bring feminine values that prioritize empathy over rationality, safety over risk, and cohesion over competition* Notes that many key institutions tipped from majority male to majority female in roughly the same period that “wokeness” intensified:* law schools (majority female since 2016)* New York Times staff (majority female since 2018, now 55 percent women)* Medical schools (majority female since 2019)* College instructors (majority female since 2023)* The college‑educated workforce (majority female since 2019).* Women now 33% of judges (63 percent of those appointed by Joe Biden)* Women now 46% of managers* Cites writers like Noah Carl and Bo Winegard & Cory Clark, saying survey data show women more likely than men to prioritize social cohesion over free speech (one cited survey: 71 percent of men favor free speech over cohesion, while 59 percent of women favor cohesion)* Draws on Joyce Benenson’s book Warriors and Worriers, she reports lab observations that male groups “jockey for talking time, disagree loudly,” then quickly converge on a solution, while female groups focus more on personal relations, eye contact, and turn‑taking, paying less attention to the assigned task* Attributes the rise of cancellations to women’s conflict aversion* That’s interesting—I hadn’t seen it as being that way but it is* References research and primate observations claiming that males are quicker to reconcile after conflict, while females favor slow, covert, ongoing competition within a group, and generalizes this to say men tend toward open conflict and reconciliation, whereas women undermine or ostracize enemies* Examples cited* Larry Summers’ resignation from Harvard in 2006 (after his comments about women in science)* Bari Weiss’ resignation from NYT (Weiss described colleagues calling her a racist and bigot in internal Slack, and shunning people friendly with her)* Doctors wearing political pins, endorsing Black Lives Matter protests during Covid as “public health” despite lockdown rules, and generally importing political causes into professional settings as a “failure to compartmentalize” tied to feminization* Causes cited* Andrews claims feminization is not organic but engineered via anti‑discrimination law* because under‑representation of women invites lawsuits and huge settlements (she cites large companies that paid nine‑figure or multi‑million settlements over gender bias or “frat boy culture”), firms are pressured to hire and promote women and to suppress “masculine” office culture* THe creation of hostile-to-men environments* women’s preferred norms drive men out rather than women simply “outcompeting” menIs it backed up by actual evidence?Support* Medicine* Momen comprised only 9.7% of doctors in 1970* Reached 32.4% by 2010 and continue to increase* Medical students are now over 50% female* Law* Women were just 4.9% of lawyers in 1970* Rose to 33.4% by 2010* Reached 41% by 2024* Academia* Women law faculty now constitute the majority among those with 20 years of experience or less* Women are projected to become the majority of full-time faculty in ABA-accredited law schools by 2024-2025* Government* In the U.S. Senate, women held 0% of seats in 1973 and 1975, rising to just 2% through most of the 1980s, then accelerating to 25% by 2023.* The House of Representatives showed similar patterns: women were 3.2% of representatives in 1973, 10.8% by 1993, and 28.5% by 2023.* Women’s representation in presidential Cabinet positions has fluctuated more dramatically based on administration, ranging from 0% in the early 1970s to a historic high of 48% under President Biden starting in 2021.* Re: General government employment: While women made substantial gains in government employment from the 1940s through the early 2000s—rising from less than one-third to nearly half of the federal workforce—their representation has largely plateaued around 45-46% since the 2000s and has begun declining in absolute numbers due to recent federal workforce reductions.Mixed* Journalism* 1971: Women represented only 22% of daily newspaper journalists and 11% of television journalists* 1982: women comprised 34% of daily newspaper staff and 33% of television journalists* 2001: women had reached 37% of daily newspaper newsroom staff and 40% of television news staff* 2022: 40.9% of US journalists are women* television (44.1%) and radio (43.7%)* weekly newspapers (41.7%)* daily newspapers (37.2%)* wire services (34.1%)* News magazines (43.9%) (up by about 10% over the past decade)* Online media (40.4%) (up by about 10% over the past decade)* One 2023 survey found journalists nearly evenly split by gender, with 51% men and 46% women.Contra* Business* Corporations in general* Women represented about 47% of the U.S. labor force in 2000* As of 2025, women STILL constitute approximately 47% of total U.S. employees.* Women were just 35% of the workforce in 1970, rising to 47% by 1990. Between 1966 and 2013, women’s participation rates in the workforce increased from 31.5% to 48.7%* Startups (down over time)* For over a decade, only ~2% of venture-backed startups are exclusively female founded* In 2024, female-only founding teams received just 2.3% of global VC funding ($6.7 billion out of $289 billion total), while all-male teams captured 83.6%.* This 2% figure has remained largely unchanged since at least 2017, when female-only teams received 2.5% of funding. By 2026, some reports indicate this has declined to 1-2%* Female workforce participation is below its peak* Women’s labor force participation peaked at 60% in 1999-2000 and has since declined to 57.5% as of March 2025, remaining well below men’s rate of 67.5%* Women still constitute only 47% of the total U.S. labor force, and projections suggest this will remain “slightly less than half” through 2032* Women remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions where institutional power is concentrated* Women hold only 27% of U.S. medical school dean positions and 25% of department chair roles despite representing 45% of faculty* In law, men still “dominate the upper echelons of the legal profession through federal judgeships, state supreme courts, law firm partnerships and corporate counsel positions”* Women represent only 33% of law faculty with over 30 years of experience and comprise just 38% of C-suite positions in corporate America (up from 31% in 2021) (See: National Jurist)The Criticism* Andrews presents no policy solutions* Some push back on Andrews’ argument that women are emotional while men are rationalHelen Andrews’ Background* American conservative political commentator and author* Senior editor, The American Conservative* Features editor, Commonplace Magazine* Graduated from Yale University in 2008 (BA in Religious Studies)* Lived in Sydney, Australia from 2012 to 2017 (worked as a policy analyst and think tank researcher)* 2021 book: Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster* Argues that the Baby Boomer generation harmed American culture* Profiles six prominent Boomers: Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Jeffrey Sachs, Camille Paglia, Al Sharpton, and Sonia SotomayorEpisode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today we are gonna be talking about The Great Feminization Theory by Helen Andrews. In summation, if you are not familiar with the theory, ‘cause it’s been doing the rounds recently, and it might have some explanatory power to society’s current state.She specifically looks at when various fields began to become majority female, be that university professors, law school students, scientists, management in the United States, most of which at this point is majority female. And she pinpoints the dates that these transitions happened to the rise of wokeness as a social phenomenon.Arguing that what wokeness really is is a female sociological approach, like what makes female minds different from male minds, applied at the civilizational management scale. And I find it very interesting. I told Simone to dig into it. I mean, [00:01:00] unfortunately she’s got a cold today, so you’re gonna have to have a, a, a, a weak voice Simone here.But she is a woman, so she, on- only she can truly understand the horrors of the female brain.Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t know. Whenever I have some kind of throat problem, I just think of Gentleman Prefer Blondes when at one point a boy speaking from a trench coat that Marilyn Monroe’s hiding behind and she’s like, “Laryngitis,” and that’s all I think of when I have this voice. And that’s such a great, like, that home film is such a great study of gender roles and, and playing with them.Anyway, though- ... i’m, I’m, I, I think there’s a lot of merit to this theory, but I also think that there’s some, I don’t know. I wanna, I wanna question it, and I even have one kind of, a- another theory about how maybe men are responsible for this too. So I wanna hear your thoughts.Malcolm Collins: Okay, go into it.Simone Collins: The, this [00:02:00] first emerged last year in September when Helen Andrews gave a speech about this great feminization theory at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC, and the speech was super popular.It got over 175,000 views. So then she decided to publish an essay about it in Combat magazine that October, and that was just when this dude was born. And yes, like you said, she connects the rise of wokeness and institutional dysfunction to higher percentages of women in formerly male-dominated fields.And that’s really the key part here, because men still are the dominant people in employment now, I mean, at least formal employment. But her point is that women bring feminine values that prioritize empathy over rationality and safety over risk and cohesion over competition, and that many institutions that were really key in influencing how the rest of society works had this tipping point over, like, a series of maybe, [00:03:00] like, five to seven years.And she cites specifically law schools, which became majority female since 2016, New York Times staff, which was majority female since 2018 and is now 55% women, and medical schools, which became majority female since 2019, and then also the college-educated workforce, which was majority female since 2019.So these are really recent tipping points. Women are now 33% of judges additionally, and 63% of those were appointed by Joe Biden. Again, this is super recent. And women are also 46% of managers, as you pointed out. And in her more detailed article, she cites writers like Noah Carl and Bo Winegard and Corey Clark whose survey data show that women are more likely to prioritize social cohesion over free speech.For example, one cited survey has 71% of men [00:04:00] favoring free speech over cohesion, while 59% of women favor cohesion. I think we might have even covered this in our podcast.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. AndSimone Collins: then she also draws on Joyce Benenson’s book Warriors and Worriers. Like, isn’t worrying. And where she reports lab observations that male groups will jockey for taking time and disagree really loudly, but then converge on a solution.Whereas female groups focus more on, like, personal relations and eye contact and turn-taking. Like, classic stuff that we think first really saw with the rise of Occupy Wall Street. And then they pay less attention to the actual assigned task. She also attributes the rise of cancellations to women’s conflict aversion.And I think of that, that’s the first of her theories that I find to be really revelatory, because I hadn’t seen it as that way, but it really is. Like, the way that women deal with conflict is they just freeze people out and cold shoulder them. There’s all this, like, behind closed doors [00:05:00] talking about people behind their backs.Whereas men just trash talk you to your face, and, like, you work it out in person.Malcolm Collins: Yeah Which I think obviously is true I noticed this and we talked about it, with the conflict between Trump and Elon. Which was- Yeah ... really refreshing and I do not think damaged either of their reputations nearly as much as it would have had it been a standard woke fight.Where they just, like, basically to each other’s faces on X, said a bunch of mean stuff for a week and then they got over it, and nobody cared anymore.Simone Collins: Yeah ... andMalcolm Collins: it, it felt so different from the types of political battles that we are used to out of, like, the Clintons and stuff like that. Where Hillary would never just go out there and say a bunch of mean things against another mainstream Democratic candidate.Simone Collins: No, they like, they, they shadowban you to the point- Mm ... where, like, you don’t necessarily even know you’ve been frozen out, you just have been. It’s like, the, there’s no, there’s no due process. You don’t have a chance to even have your say. You just get uninvited at some point.Malcolm Collins: Well,Simone Collins: and that’s not even true.And I heard in popular, like, [00:06:00] mainstream outlets-Malcolm Collins: Yeah, mm-hmm ...Simone Collins: that cancel culture was attributed to, well, they say it came out of, like, gay culture- Yeah ... specifically. Like, at least the, the, the linguistic origins of it came from gay culture apparently. But yeah, I mean, like the can- the, the, the, the act of cancellation-Malcolm Collins: It didn’t, by the wayas a- And I have explained this to you before. You just refuse to believe it, because it’s, it’s very well documented. What doSimone Collins: you mean?Malcolm Collins: So cancel culture, the word cancel-Simone Collins: Yeah ...Malcolm Collins: came from the campaign #cancelcolbert- No, but- ... as in get his show- Canceled. Then people retroactively, as people do for many things, attempt to pin it to either Black or gay culture because this is just something progressive culture does.It cannot admit that something had a random origin or a white origin, so it will always go back and try to find any historical incidents of [00:07:00] gay or Black people using a word in a specific way so it can say actually that everybody knows that they do this. It’s always like, “This came from Black culture.This came from gay culture.” And you’re like, “Well, obviously not everything came from one of those two cultures.” And with cancellation, it’s one of the clearest examples because to cancel a television show is a normal thing to say. The very first major widespread campaign of cancellation, I just cannot deal with this historical lamp what is it?L- lamp gassing? Light, light gassing?Simone Collins: Gaslighting.Malcolm Collins: Gaslighting.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Gaslighting, yes. This, this historic gaslighting that this came literally from anything other than ca- #CancelColbert. That was, they, like no other incident was nearly that big, and she clearly had no connection to gay culture. She clearly didn’t get the term from gay, gay culture.She wanted to cancel his television show.Simone Collins: Well, anyway, it’s, it’s, it’s, I, I just never thought of it, I never realized the [00:08:00] extent to which it is a very deeply feminine way of conflict resolution.Malcolm Collins: Just to say- It was a woman, by the way, who did this ...Simone Collins: conf- it’s, it’s very, like, direct conflict adverse conflict resolution.But one that is ultimately less just because it doesn’t give the aggrie- or the accused party a chance to defend themselves. It just ruins themMalcolm Collins: without- And one study youSimone Collins: haven’t studied,Malcolm Collins: Which is obviously very important to all of this in terms of the rise of women-Simone Collins: Yeah ...Malcolm Collins: is the study that showed I, I hope our audience is familiar with this one by now because it is very big to my understanding of, of, of reality now where people played a game against other people for resources.And some of these individuals were shown to be cheating, and some of these individuals were shown to not be cheating. And men and women were shown them being shocked while they were playing the game. And for men when somebody wasn’t cheating and they were shocked, it distressed men and, and, and made them upset.But when they were cheating and they were shocked, it made [00:09:00] men satisfied. It gave them a dopamine hit. But for women, it made them equally upset whether they were cheating or whether they were playing fairly whenSimone Collins: they were shocked. Yeah, they didn’t care. They didn’t care about, like, punishment. They don’t, they don’t want any form ofMalcolm Collins: punishment on anyoneSimone Collins: Yeah, be it just or not.Yeah. Which is a, a another key flashpoint in modern society. The, the, the key division being those who wish to enforce our laws and those who do not. Though at a recent dinner party it was Chatham House Rules, but someone that many of you will know well as a, a major, like, thought leader, pointed out that for a very long time, it is, it has been a debate in society about enforcing rules.It was, like, uncool to enforce laws. So yeah- Wait, when was that? ... it’s not necessarily new, but it’s certainly-Malcolm Collins: Sorry, when? When did they say this was true?Simone Collins: Like, since the 1960s.Malcolm Collins: Okay, that’s not a long time.Simone Collins: Okay, fair enough.Malcolm Collins: And- It’s, it’s a long time in- No, I mean, it is, it is relevant [00:10:00] because, you know, I pointed out that the the Quakers were incredibly against enforcing rules.And, Well,Simone Collins: they were all about... They were like, you didn’t visit the right person after you got married, you’d be, like, frozen out of your Quaker society. Well,Malcolm Collins: theySimone Collins: had a- They were all- ...Malcolm Collins: 22-step process after you got married, and if you did any part of it wrong-Simone Collins: It was more than two steps. Are you kidding me?It was like 18 steps. I said 22. Okay. Thank you. 22.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Continue.Simone Collins: Anyway. Anyway so, in addition to the... Oh, sorry, additional research that she cites is primate stuff, like how males are quicker to reconcile after conflict, whereas female primates show a lot more of that, like, slow burn resentment that you get with women.Yeah ... so she’s just trying to sort of generalize to say that men both as primates and as, as Homo sapiens, tend toward open and rapidly resolved conflict, whereas women tend to undermine and ostracize and make things a lot more long-term. [00:11:00] And then she cites three sort of salient examples in her argument.She talks about Larry Summers’ resignation from Harvard in 2006 after he made comments about women in science. It feels like just yesterday, which is crazy. That was 20 years ago. And then Bari Weiss’ resignation from The New York Times in which she described colleagues calling her a racist and a bigot in an internal Slack, how people even who were just friendly with her were shunned.And she also describes doctors wearing political pins and endorsing Black Lives Matter protests during- ByMalcolm Collins: the way, I love Bari Weiss’s story there. That, that, that turned around on those people’s faces.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, seems to be working out pretty well for her.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right?Simone Collins: But yeah, the, the doctors were endorsing going to protests even though it was a public health risk to the lockdown rules and, like, violating lockdown rules.And- Could you explainMalcolm Collins: how that works?Simone Collins: Sorry ... integrating- You remember how during COVID-19 a [00:12:00] lot of doctors were- Yeah, IMalcolm Collins: remember, but I don’t understand why that’s relevant to the woman thing. Explain the connection there.Simone Collins: Oh, she’s, she’s describing how an increase in women in the medical profession led for a shift in emphasizing sort of emotion and sentiment and care, like concerns about social justice over like literally concerns about human health and chronic disease.Malcolm Collins: Ah, so that’s when doctors became useless.Simone Collins: Yeah, they’re like, “Who cares about transmitting COVID? Go out to the Black Lives Matter protest.” So, you know, that bothers me because, you know, they, they won’t, they won’t emphasize palliative care ‘cause they just wanna keep people alive even when they only have like terrible quality of life left.But they’re like, “Yeah, go ahead, die as long as it’s going to a Black Lives Matter protest.” And in terms of the causes she cited for this, and some of the, the primary criticism that she actually gets for this is she doesn’t really get really into like how to fix the [00:13:00] problem. But she does point out that basically legalizing a lot of this was a big source of the issue.That by making organizations more liable for discrimination- Mm-hmm ... and, and making anti-discrimination lawsuits a lot easier to do, workplaces had to become more female friendly places and they couldn’t really tell you to guess this weird female behavior. And then if, for example, in an, in an organization you have an under-representation of women and then you’re therefore exposed to lawsuits, you’re gonna get a lot more women.And you’re gonna have people do anything they can to avoid the risk. Right. She also mentions that like, basically once you get this like tipping point of women in an organization, you just kind of create this de facto hostile to men environment.Malcolm Collins: I’m so sorry, he’s just like screaming. Well, I mean, I think something that’s really important with all of this, and it’s something that I think [00:14:00] parts of our audience miss because they molder over the unfairness of all of this in terms of the life paths that they told were open to them when they were growing up and then going into the traditional workforce, is that a lot of these companies are failing at this point.They are falling apart in terms of their ability to competently produce products. It is quite shocking actually that when we look at the cutting edge AIs right now, which are obviously the cutting edge of technology, require huge amounts of investment very competent teams, everything like that, right?You would expect because unlike previous generations of transfer when you go from one generation of tech to the next, Typically, the, the, the history was is that the new tech required very little money to operate and could be done very inexpensively. And even though during this one particular technological revolution this is not as much the case, it is still the new [00:15:00] and young AI companies that are dominating.It is not the Geminis, it is not whatever the hell Microsoft made, Copilot. It’s, it’s not the Facebook, it’s not the, I mean, Facebook is maybe... No, Llama is terrible. It’s, it’s not Apple. Apple AI is, like, an actual joke. It’s not Adobe. It’s not, you, you know, it’s not any of the mainstream players, right?It’s, it’s, it’s the little guys. It’s your Groks and your Mistrals and your OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s and everything like that. And so the question is, is how is this even conceivable? And the answer is that the organizations that l- live for a long period of time feminize so quickly and adopt feminine institutional norms that they are no longer able to compete.And this is why if you go to, like, our website, like rfab.ai, a lot of people are like, “Wow, your, like, super search feature is, like, really good in terms of, like, using AI to cross-check AI across multiple models. Like, why are none of the big companies using this?Speaker: Note [00:16:00] this morning, , we are uploading the ability on rfab.ai to on SuperSearch upload things like documents and spreadsheets. So improving every dayMalcolm Collins: Oh, you have, like, a card game that uses AI.That’s, I haven’t seen this implemented before. Oh, your chatbot system’s better than most of the other chatbot systems. Are you just, like, two people building this?” And it’s like, yeah, you know, um The, the reason we’ve been able to do this is because we are not bogged down by the giant self-referencing bureaucracy.And a lot of people, I think, get mad at being frozen out of parts of the tech space right now, when the reality is, is the parts of the tech industry that are being monopolized are going to collapse. And the people who have invested in- Yeah,Simone Collins: and I think you’re mentioning this, like in light of, of people talking about like immigrant groups, freezing them out.Like- Yeah, they’re like incompetent immigrants ... if you’re in a, if you’re in a company that is like mass importing what you perceive to be incompetent immigrants, [00:17:00] that company’s not long for this world anyway.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. You should be able to out-compete what that company is doing, right? Like, if they’re mass importing incompetent immigrants, then the presumably the quality of the product’s going to go down.If the quality of the product doesn’t go down, then they didn’t need you anyway, or the immigrants weren’t as incompetent as you thought they were. And I think that that’s really a critical point, right? So the question is, is, is then people are like, “Well, you’ve got natural monopolies.” And yes, natural monopolies matter, but you can still break natural monopolies.It has happened multiple... Sorry, for people who don’t understand what a natural monopoly is typically in industries that involve two-sided marketplaces search, social media, these are good examples of them. You typically get a case in which one and the largest company ends up being 85% of the market.And we have seen these dominate for a long time in something like search or advertisement or, Those are really the only two where I know... amazon, Amazon [00:18:00] is the, the third one. But they’re not as stable as you would think. So if you look at something like social media, social media is a natural monopoly that’s undergone multiple disruptions throughout our lifetimes, where one brand was completely eradicated almost.Another is online dating. Online dating is a two-sided marketplace that has undergone complete transformations multiple times in our lifetime. So you can disrupt this if you can create a better product. Oh, another one that’s undergone complete disruption is instant messaging systems. Instant messaging is a two-sided marketplace that has undergone multiple enormous disruptions.Obviously the biggest one that we would want to see disrupted is video streaming. But it is incredibly expensive to do, which is one of the reasons it hasn’t been. And a lot of... Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s difficult. What you would really need to do is have a site. Like if I was going to attempt to compete with YouTube, which Rumble is, I, not doing it the way I would do it is to essentially mirror [00:19:00] and host YouTube videos alongside the videos that my own site hosted that couldn’t easily be taken down.So there is no cost to somebody to switch over to my site in terms of the videos that they like on YouTube. And you could do this legally. Just use an embedding- ButSimone Collins: where would they get the money for all that hosting? I guess something disruptive could change that and make it more affordable.Malcolm Collins: No, you don’t need to host the YouTube videos.They’re hosted on YouTube’s backend. Oh. All the videos that you’re ho- They’re just basically embedded videos that are acting as if they’re videos on your platform.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Okay, I get it. I getMalcolm Collins: it. But again, this is just like, just think through this stuff, right? Like...Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway, what I think is interesting, I mean, like to her point, just in terms of talking through the, the, the argument she made and whether it has merit, I do think it’s interesting that she points out this tipping point, but one issue is that, like, if this is the problem, if the [00:20:00] problem is women entering these formerly male-dominated fields, what percentage of women is too many?Because when you actually look at medicine okay, yes, over 50% of medical students are now female, but by 2010, only around like a third of women in medicine or, sorry, of people in medicine, professionals in medicine were female. So that’s not, that’s not that much. And women, I mean, that’s compared with only 9.7% in 1970.But like, is 30% too much? Like, w- ‘cause 2006 is the first example of this cancellation being an issue. Like, presumably by 2010 that was already an issue. I’m not sure, like when is, when is too many women too many women? Also looking at law, so in 1970 only 4.9% of lawyers were women, and then by 2010 it was similar to medical [00:21:00] professions and women, about a third of women.Or sorry, a third of lawyers were women. And then by 2024 it’s 41%, but it’s not that most women are, or sorry, most lawyers are women. It’s just that there’s more women than ever before. So part of me wonders like where is the tipping point, because they’re not necessarily female dominated. And also an important point is that all really.. M- most leadership positions still are overwhelmingly male dominated So if you actually look at, like, the, the leadership of every major company y- you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna see that many women. Women hold only 27% of US medical school dean positions and 25% of department chair roles, even though they rep- I thinkMalcolm Collins: that’s really misleading and an illusion.Really? ... specifically what creates this illusion is for the very most senior of roles most of them were fought over [00:22:00] a couple decades ago. So a lot ofSimone Collins: people- So you think there’s just a big delay when it comes to senior leadership?Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, a lot of people in these roles are in their 70s, right?Like, of course they’re overwhelmingly male. The world was different back then. So I do not think it’s, it’s meaningful to point that out.Simone Collins: Okay, ‘cause I mean, it’s also the same, like women are only 38% of C-suite positions in America.Malcolm Collins: S- again what’s the average age of a C-suite position in America?Simone Collins: Let’s just- Yeah, okay ... keep it that way. So you just think that there’s a delay there? ‘Cause part of me wonders if men are still dominant in these positions, is this kind of a comp- a competitive tactic to get rid of middle management that are men who could c- potentially supplant them, and just replace them with less competent, less engaged women who are also less likely to supplant them, thereby solidifying their position in leadership?Like it’s a gerontocratic status maintenance strategy. You don’t think that that’s in [00:23:00] play?Malcolm Collins: No. Th- it’s, it’s just that they’re old. Like, as, as the workforce ages up, it seems very obvious to me C-suites are gonna become increasingly female, as we’ve already seen. In fact, I would ar- go so far as to argue if you just look at the math of when women began to dominate management positions and then age it forwards you’re, you’re going to see C-suite positions changing at the same rate.The only place where this really changes is outside of major companies, if you’re talking at companies that were still run by their original founder. And if you’re looking at companies still run by their original founder, of course they’ll be overwhelmingly male because th- you know, these are the, the competent people who are being frozen out of the workforce right now.Not even like men are smart. It’s just like if you’re a competent woman, you’re going to get a job. If you’re a competent man, you’re less likely to get a job deserving of your competence.Simone Collins: That’s fair. And also, when you look at younger people in, for example, like law school faculty women in law school faculty are now the majority among those [00:24:00] with 20 years of experience or less.So I guess per what you’re saying, we can expect leadership to be Majority female in most fields going forward. At least, like medical, law, academia. And also- Yeah ... I mean, similar things are happening in government. I mean, even historically, government was, in terms of like federal jobs and stuff, there were a lot of women working in government.But now it actually, it’s plateaued since the 2000s. It, it plateaued around 45 to 46%, which is more representative of just the number of, the percentage of women in the workforce. So I guess government isn’t that good at representing it. But now in terms of like House of Representatives, as of 2023, 28.5% of House of Representatives members were women, and in the Senate it was 25% in 2023.So it’s still a minority, so I also wonder like how many, how, what [00:25:00] percentage of women is too many? I’m just not sure.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean- In journalism- Again, keep in mind, congressmen and senators are enormously old. So again, it’s, it’s not as relevant, but continue. Yeah.Simone Collins: I guess that’s fair.Malcolm Collins: Well,Simone Collins: and they don’t exercise that muchMalcolm Collins: controlSimone Collins: journalism personally I think, like the New York Times I think is an outlier in terms of being majority women because of, as of 2022- 20- ... only 40, 40% of journalists in the US were women. 44% in television, 43% in radio, 41% in newspapers, 37% of daily newspapers, 34% of wire services. So-Malcolm Collins: But with a lot of newspaper media it’s, it’s really irrelevant.And this is again what I’m talking about, right? Like, as these institutions feminize, they became irrelevant. As Hollywood feminized, it became irrelevant. As newspapers re- feminized, they became irrelevant. We are seeing a society where, yes, women, immigrants, [00:26:00] Indians may capture organizations, but often not long after they do, if they are not competent, those organizations begin to erode in terms of their ability to innovate and market dominance.Simone Collins: Well, speaking of erosion, it could be that this feminization theory, while it has its merits also is a, it’s like a short-lived ph- phenomenon, and as you pointed out, it’s kind of toxic and, I mean, you point this out extensively in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion. Call it feminization, call it the woke mind virus, whatever you wanna call it, urban monoculture, it is parasitoidal, as you say.Like it destroys the things that it takes over. And when you look at where you see the fewest women, I think that’s where we’re gonna see the greatest takeover over time. So if you look at, for example, startups Women just aren’t there. For over a decade, only about 2% of [00:27:00] venture-backed startups are exclusively female founded.And that’s down actually, I think, from before. So- Well,Malcolm Collins: yeah, I mean, I... There was a period where- I think around- ... it was like a point of pride to fund a female startup, and that’s not even a thing anymore. Like, the female- Yeah ... startup groups have mostly- Yeah ... dissolved because everybody realized it was stupid to give women money.Simone Collins: Yeah, well, and there were some high-profile busts that scaled-Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Uh-huh ... badly. Some high-profile busts. Yeah, I think so. So- Some with holdings,Simone Collins: yeah ...Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s actually more than that. So both of us worked in venture capital, and if you have worked with all-female founding teams even when their companies are doing good, they’re often kind of delusional about like, how management should work, how their team should work, how they construct things, what they should actually be focused on.So even where I’ve seen a female-founded company, you know, just serendipitously take off it is a nightmare wrangling female CEOs into not self-sabotaging because they [00:28:00] constantly want to focus on whatever sort of messaging is capturing them that day. I, I cannot imagine, and I bemoan our audience so much, having to marry women whereas I got to marry- Oh, I’m so sorry everyonean autist like Simone. The, the... That’s her gender, by the way. Au- au- Yeah,Simone Collins: I don’t count.Right, I identify as re, and those are my pronouns. Re ... really though, like I think the, the best thing about married couples is their pronouns become we and they , so.Malcolm Collins: Is those- Yeah ...Simone Collins: are thoseMalcolm Collins: your neo-pronouns?Simone Collins: Yeah, my neo-pronouns are we/they so , whatever. But also, another important thing I think to note, and I think this is only gonna become a lot more profound as AI rises, female workforce participation is actually below its peak.So women’s labor force participation, it peaked at 60% in the [00:29:00] 1999-2000 range, which I didn’t know. I didn’t know that it got so high for women, and then declined to 57.5% as of March 2025. So it’s below the rate of men’s, which is 67.5%. And right now, women are 47% of the total US workforce, and that it’s gonna probably remain slightly less than half.But-Malcolm Collins: Well- ...Simone Collins: that’s what projections say. I think as AI rises, I would not be at all surprised if in the 2030s we saw it dip well below 45, possibly even go to 44%, and then go even further below in the 2040s Like to 40Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmmSimone Collins: So we’ll seeMalcolm Collins: Well-Simone Collins: But ...Malcolm Collins: I mean, we already saw this in after DOGE, which we’ve talked about in our episode where like wokes abandoned Black women where we point out that there is a huge glut of Black female unemployment right now [00:30:00] because the organizations that were captured by DEI and over-employing them collapsed at the same time as government s- services, partially due to DOGE, stopped hiring people solely based on DEI.And a lot of Black women had made that basically their entire career, and it’s caused a 50% explosion in Black female unemployment in just the last year.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So, so we’re actually already seeing the fallout of this. And the c- Yeah.Simone Collins: Well, because it’s, it’s inherently unsustainable. And I think in the end, like if you resolve conflicts by not actually resolving them, by shadow banning and canceling people, you’re going to let problems fester.And I shared with you on WhatsApp this graph that went a little bit viral on X this week that showed a trajectory of basically like the male response to conflict resolution versus the fem- res- female response to conflict resolution. It’s a graph- where, whereMalcolm Collins: did you send this? ... that goesSimone Collins: from the functional system to dysfunctional system.I’ll resend it to you on WhatsApp right now.Malcolm Collins: Are you talking [00:31:00] about Elon’s?Simone Collins: Elon retweeted it.Malcolm Collins: Okay, that graph. Okay. Okay, yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Okay, continue.I mean, this is, this is reflected in Leafly’s latest song is basically about this as a theory. You know, you’ve, you’veSimone Collins: gotMalcolm Collins: a- Yeah.Simone Collins: It shows basically unkind truth to unkind truth to unkind truth makes a functional system become more functional, versus kind lie to kind lie to kind lie makes a dysfunctional system even more dysfunctional over time, or any system more dysfunctional over time. And that’s basically just the, the difference between male and female conflict resolution.And also just general treatment of issues in general. Like women, as through various forms of intrasexual competition and mate guarding, will tell other women, “Oh, like eat that piece of cake,” or, “You do look great,” or, you know, “Dump him,” even when they really shouldn’t be told that. And it ultimately is to their detriment.[00:32:00] Whereas men will be like, “Dude, you’re getting fat,” or like, “No, you know, she’s out of your league anyway. You should, you know-Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...Simone Collins: give up and be a better partner.” Like that, you, you, you see men telling each other the unkind truths and that’s, I think, why ultimately they’re kind of behind most of society’s major innovations because you’re not gonna get- I, I kinda don’t thinkMalcolm Collins: that’s why or even the primary reason men innovate more than women.I think-Simone Collins: Just testosterone? Is that what you’re gonnaMalcolm Collins: reckon it’s? It’s neurological differences.Simone Collins: And then what? Also being smarter on average?Malcolm Collins: I didn’t say that. I just said neurological differences, sociologicalSimone Collins: differences.Malcolm Collins: Come on, Simone. We- we’re not, we’re not going for a channel ban here, okay?Simone Collins: I wonder, would, would, would recognizing that men are on average smarter than women get us in trouble?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it would get us in trouble, Simone. So we don’t recognize that.Simone Collins: So we never... Yeah, we, we, we’re speaking in hypotheticals, of course.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, hypotheticals only. Come on, [00:33:00] Simone. Right. I’m not the smarter one in this relationship, it’s clearly you. This is why you’re doing all the analysis for us.Simone Collins: Surely, surely you could hypothetically be the smarter one,Malcolm Collins: right?Hypothetically.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: So let’s just say hypothetically. But I mean, so the biggest criticism that Helen Andrews faced with is that she had no solution, and I guess the only solution we’ve proposed so far is, “Don’t worry, it solves itself.” Like, put women in charge- Well, no ... they’ll bring feminism toMalcolm Collins: the ground It solves itself if you are diligent in guarding against it as we rebuild the economy ourselves with our own companies.Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, the, the most practical solution for the problems that she points out is don’t make companies liable for being male-friendly spaces or for being female hostile spaces. But how, like, how functionally do you doMalcolm Collins: that? Hm.Simone Collins: Repeal laws.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah [00:34:00] you know, I, I think you look at RFab and we don’t hire any women.We don’t have any women. We got you working on it and that’s it, and like calling you a woman feels a little perverse within the current ecosystem.Simone Collins: I think your larger solution is not hiring humans though, so I don’t know if that counts.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, humans are also pretty terrible though.Simone Collins: I guess it’s...Last time we checked. That’sMalcolm Collins: the whole reason why my expertise is, is not working with people, because people are such a bunch of b******s.Speaker 22: Yeah.Speaker 23: I don’t likeSpeaker 22: people.Speaker 23: Oh, well, now that’s not fair, Roy. Have you met all of them?Speaker 22: I’ve met enough of them. People. What a bunch of b******s.Simone Collins: They really are, though. But I don’t know. I think, I think just removing legal liability is probably one of the biggest things, but I think there’s also a cultural element [00:35:00] of celebrating, to the point of Bronze Age Pervert actually, male-only spaces.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Like a lot of, a lot of men online have celebrated this idea of a return to male only spaces, and I encountered some people, like when I was in Austin a couple weeks ago, who were really excited to start like men’s clubs like private invite-only men’s clubs and membership clubs. No domination will neverMalcolm Collins: workSimone Collins: I don’t know, man.Like even, I mean, they think menMalcolm Collins: still want to interactSimone Collins: in person. They do. They do ... Taylor Lorenz was talking about how now the high class and trendy thing to do. No, I’m telling you, even highly leftist Taylor Lorenz, I just watched her on a podcast today, was talking about how the high class thing to do now is to meet people in person and hang out in person.And I could absolutely see it being very trendy to only do stuff in person going forward. Mark my words, I’m seeing it. There’s like a tipping point. So- NotMalcolm Collins: among the high class people I know. Among the high class people I know, I’m seeing the [00:36:00] exact opposite. In person is increasingly seenSimone Collins: as- Yeah. We’re terminally online, SethMalcolm Collins: No. It’s different I’m talking about the ones I know who used to be offline people, right? Like, the, the upper class people I know who used to socialize offline no longer do. Now I mean, here’s an example, Simone. Brian Chow, right? Like, he’s talked to us about the way he does socialization now.Simone Collins: And- Oh my God, though.No, no, y- no, that’s the problem, is he has shifted to being literally someone who is employed and working for network state.Malcolm Collins: No, I know he’s working for network state. Network school. Sorry But the communities that he is most proud of being a member of and associates most with are things like Signal groups and stuff like that.They are not personal networking events or anything like that. Because the reality is, is that if you are engaging with these people- HeSimone Collins: literally, his life nowMalcolm Collins: pivotsSimone Collins: around- IMalcolm Collins: understand, but that doesn’t mean that’s his social life ... an in, like onlySimone Collins: in person cityMalcolm Collins: state. Right. And the point I’m making is despite that, that is [00:37:00] not his social life, and that shows how severe this thing is- Yes,Simone Collins: it isMalcolm Collins: among c- you have, you, you haven’t talked with him recently about his social life. If you look at an insider- ISimone Collins: read all of his Substack posts. Do you?Malcolm Collins: Okay, I haven’t read his recent Substack posts. So you’re saying he’s regularly- Then, then you need to- ... socializing in person?Simone Collins: Yes. That’s what you do at network school.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. It, it includes your week- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ...Simone Collins: itMalcolm Collins: includes your week at network school I don’t mean your... Simone, I am not talking about your subjective guess around what happens in network states. You read posts about him going to- Network school ... in person parties and events. Or-Simone Collins: Yeah, he’s alluded to themMalcolm Collins: Alluded to them.‘Cause the last time I talked to him, he talked about Signal groups being the core source of power in his society, and it makes a lot of sense. That was a longSimone Collins: time ago. No, no, no.Malcolm Collins: Even if you’re in a network state. So just think about this rationally. Okay. Suppose you’re a man and you’re rational, Simone. So I know this is gonna take a lot of work, so try to- Oh my Godget there with me, okay? You care about [00:38:00] moving up in the world, about associating with people who are in positions of power. Within your industry, right? Or within some industry tangential enough to yours, or within an intellectual space tangential to yours. Okay? What is the probability that the leaders, the intellectual leaders or the economic leaders of those communities are going to happen to be in your network state, even if your network state is highly selective?Virtually zero. This is also true if you’re asking in your city, in your area, in your state. And so if you’re actually being like a man and efficient, you don’t bother with that. You instead focus on gaining access to the digital isolated environments, because this is where you can interact with the actual world leaders within a field regularly, instead of the social masturbation that happens in something like a network state.[00:39:00]Simone Collins: I don’t know. We’ll have to ask him. Okay. But I, I hear you. Still, I guess, what, do you have any other proposed solutions to the great feminization- You just replace them.Malcolm Collins: That’s the point. You replace them, and the people who are so indulgent that they wanted to meet up in person, the, the wussy men who thought that that was their solution, their smoking clubs and stuff, you replace them, too.Because you’re gonna be in the clubs with the people who are actually running the world, and they’re in the clubs with the people who like to socially signal to other men, which is kind of fay. Okay? It’s like watching football or something. I understand that, like, we’re supposed to pretend it’s masculine as a society, but, like, as an autistic external objective observer, it appears pretty fay to me.I, I, I just... It does. And it is indulgent, and so it doesn’t lead to these [00:40:00] sorts of positive outcomes. So it’s easy to outmaneuver these people, be they men or... Sorry, be they women or feminized men.Simone Collins: Ugh. Well, I think, yeah, what, by this definition you think anyone who engages in leisure activity isMalcolm Collins: a feminized man?No, I think that there are efficient ways to engage in leisure, leisure activities, and there are inefficient ways to engage in leisure activities. For example, if I want to... Let’s talk about efficient versus inefficient, okay? Let’s look at a hobby like gaming Which is fairly efficient, versus a hobby like, let’s say, tennis or scuba diving, which are fairly inefficient.Okay? So I wanna go- DoesSimone Collins: it include commutes or what? ...Malcolm Collins: scuba diving, now I need to commute. I need to get my tank ready. I need to sit on the dock. I need to go out early in the morning. So irrespective of when I might be efficient at working during that time of day, I then have to get everything ready, everything prepped, go out.I cannot [00:41:00] multitask. With gaming, I can have a game open in one tab and a vibe coding session open in another tab. I then lose, like, an entire day on a weekend. I then come back, and I’ve just lost a day. Same with, let’s say, tennis. So I get all my stuff together. I have to then go out and organize with somebody else so we’re both free at the same time.We then get to a tennis ranch or whatever they call them. Tennis ranch. And y- s- sorry, I actually used to play varsity tennis, so I’m, I’m, I’m fairly familiar with it. So you, you get to your tennis court, and you you, you need to sign up for a time, by the way, so, you know, you gotta get the, the right timing.You get there. You play a few rounds when you’re also not able to multitask. You then have to come home, shower, which is, again, another waste of time that you wouldn’t have need to do if you were gaming. Now, contrast all of this with something like gaming, okay? It’s the end of the day. You don’t need to drive out somewhere.It’s at a time period where you’re already, your brain’s already fried, which for some people’s early [00:42:00] morning, some people that’s late night. And so you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to do this while I’m tying up the last of whatever, X, Y, or Z.” And that’s, that’s very, very efficient, right? Like, this is why the, if, if you’re playing tennis on your computer versus going to a tennis court. Also, it’s fairly inexpensive. It’s one of the least expensive hobbies there is- It’s very inexpensive ... as long as you’re not engaged in the gambling aspect of it, like loot boxes and stuff like that. If you’re just playing a video game, contrast that with owning a country club or you know, subscription, or maintaining your scuba equipment, or you know, just buying a new Nike tennis racket.Simone Collins: All the certifications and the travel.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the specialized clothing and the gas and the- Oh,Simone Collins: and don’t forget your tennis club membership YeahMalcolm Collins: Oh, and the potential parking, and the, you know, all of this is so expensive. Such a waste. I mean, this is true of so, so, so many hobbies. There are a few other efficient hobbies: [00:43:00] walking, hiking, biking.And these are efficient because while you cannot multitask while you can do them, they at least give you exercise and can be done right from your front porch.Simone Collins: Yeah ...Malcolm Collins: depending on where you, you live. I mean, there are ways- Yeah ... to do these hobbies that are incredibly inefficient, and there’s ways to do gaming that’s incredibly inefficient.But there’s some hobbies that there’s just virtually no efficient way to do them. And this is what I’m talking about here, right? Like, that people pretend like these things are the same, and they’re not the same. And I, I just like... And this, this is where people get, get mad at us at the channel or whatever so much, they’re like, “Oh, you guys are so, I, I don’t know, puritanical about recreation and about doing recreation efficiently.”And I think that the latest Leaflet song goes into this, by the way is not, not overdoing recreation and, and staying healthy and everything.Speaker 3: 社会はそのままがいいって言うけど、そんなのつまんないよ。変えちゃおうよ。大切な人にちょっとしたプッシュ。[00:44:00] 理想の自分に変えちゃお。 液に溺れてる時は愛情たっぷりでほどほどにって教えてあげよ。全部肯定するだけじゃダメだよね。優しい気持ちで批判するのも最高の愛だよ。 , groom, groom your wife.Pick her up dive and keep growing.Groom, groom, groom your husband.Get us stronger, faster.Malcolm Collins: But you’ve, you’ve done a good job of keeping me healthy ish. I mean, I’m, I’m healthy again now. That’sSimone Collins: how we have. Yeah. Now that your blood work is in.Malcolm Collins: We just got our blood work back. Yeah, so, last year I had gotten to a point where I was drinking more again to the point where my, my levels of a few things, ‘cause I get this measured regularly, went up. And I just got my blood work back and they all went back to normal. Because diligence, right?You, you don’t let the thing control you. You don’t need to focus, you don’t need to design your entire life around avoiding a thing. [00:45:00] Just stay within the measured variables.Simone Collins: Glad it worked out, and I’m glad you’re okay.Malcolm Collins: But yeah. And I, the, the, the, these sorts of ideas that we’re talking about I think are, are difficult like if you even begin to bring this up with a woman, like, well, I mean, you don’t wanna be friends with somebody who is of zero utility to you.You know, they’d be confused and angry, right? Like, they’d, they’d hurt you in their,Simone Collins: Well, here’s... Yeah, I mean, here’s the struggle then with the great feminization theory is, like, how can we reconcile acknowledging this theory and still encourage men to get married?Malcolm Collins: Well, women- Like, I don’t know ... become very efficient when they are subservient to a man.This is the difference, right? And I’ve, I’ve pointed this out in similar ways- Yeah, but ISimone Collins: mean, like, in modern culture, women are strongly discouraged from-Malcolm Collins: Women want- Like- ... to do it ... any- They want a man to work for. They do. They want to do it. They want to [00:46:00] be inspired by who you are and what your goals are.Simone Collins: They do wanna be inspired by... Yeah. They, they wanna be inspired by it, but are there enough inspirational men, right? Like, I mean, I- There can be ... I sometimes feel veryMalcolm Collins: ISimone Collins: feel hypocritical ...Malcolm Collins: No, this idea, I, I don’t, I don’t buy this, and some people in our comments have argued this, and I just, they’re like, “Well, not every man can have, like, sky-high ambitions for how he wants to change the world.”And I’m like, “Yes, they can. They absolutely can.” You don’t need to succeed in your ambitions. Simone doesn’t value me because I succeed in all my ambitions. She values me because I have them and I earnestly strive for them. I haven’tSimone Collins: succeeded in- Yeah, yeah, and I, I mean, to, also I think we know there’s some people have pushed back on us in comments saying, like, “Look, I’m happy enough to just raise a successful next generation, like, to just raise good kids who are gonna make, you know, the world a better place and make the next generation good,” which is totally in line with our mission and our interest in promoting human [00:47:00] flourishing.Like, Malcolm has really, really big ambitions, but not everyone has to be like, “I’m gonna change the world.” Just raising good kids is huge and very impactful. I think the, the key thing is we’re not saying that for a man to be attractive, he has to plan on, like, world domination. We’re saying for a man to be attractive, he has to know who he is, be extremely confident in who he is, and know what he’s all about.Like, “Hey, I am going to raise a successful family, provide for that family, like, build a good, you know, future generation, create a great childhood for my kids, and make the world better by doing that. And I hear my beliefs, and I know what I’m all about.” Well, this,Malcolm Collins: this comesSimone Collins: to something- Women find that really attractive.Like, you don’t have to take over the world. You don’t have to be delusionalMalcolm Collins: Yes, you do. So this, this comes to what we were talking about earlier today. When I was trying to understand how Nick Fuentes had gotten so one-shotted by society that now his stated goals are not at all served by his actual actions.And I’d say this as somebody who [00:48:00] can sympathize with him, because I think we have a lot of similar motivations. But he’s basically crashed out. Like, as I, I, I pointed out in the recent video, justSimone Collins: simply- By similar motivations, like, what? The, the fame w***e-ish-ness or something else?Malcolm Collins: Well, no. I mean, yes, we, we both are narcissistic fame w****s who come off as a bit fay to people, but it, it, it’s- You’reSimone Collins: not, no, you’re not a narcissist.You, you like, you like fame. I think he does, too. And you like attention, and I think he does, too. But you are not a narcissist.Malcolm Collins: But it’s, it’s not just that. I mean, we both realize many of the same problems with society. People downplaying cultural and ethno differences people thinking you can just import anyone forever into the country.Like many of the problems that we diagnose about society today are very similar, but the way that he has gone about it is completely unlikely to have any sort of efficacious result. Not, not unlikely, it’s, it’s virtual impossibility from his actions, and anyone who is thinking clearly could see that.And so I began to think, how did he f- [00:49:00] so bad in terms of his logic? And what occurred to me because he began to... I began to think of him as, like, one of those, in anime there’s this common trope of somebody gets, like, a, an evil bug on their back or something like that that turns them into an evil version of themselves that, like, fuels, like, one, like, negative character trait they have until that character trait defines everything that they’re doing and then they turn into some sort of, like, big bad putty or something.Shugochara is an anime where this happens, as an example. But, but it’s a very common trope in, in animes and shows for, for children. And he sort of, he, he doesn’t come across as, like, a bad guy to me. He comes across as somebody who’s been sort of infected by, like, an hate, a hate bug that has ended up g- making him unable to see that he’s destroying the very thing that he claims to want to save.Speaker 4: Nick, you’re the man. With three white girls. That’s the dream lol.Speaker 5: That’s the dream? Like be- living the dream, three daughters. [00:50:00] What dream? You’re the gayest guy ever.You’re gayer than gay guys. That’s crazy. I’m living the dream. Daughters, wow, a lot of manis and pedis, a lot of, uh, tea parties and, uh, drama. Dude, I just can’t even. I literally can’t even. Women talk to me, and my eyes just glaze over.So I can’t imagine being in a house with four of them. You’re like a prisoner. You’re like a prisoner of war. I’d rather be a prisoner of war in Vietnam how can you live like that? I would need a lot of vacations and a lot of w****s or something.Just like you would need some kind of extramarital affair to keep it going. I feel like that is the only way I could stay sane in a life like that.Why’d you have to lead with that? He said, uh, “Hey, I got three white girls living the dream, but the girl dad rightism s**t was gay.”Speaker 6: First, , for people who cannot tell or do not know people who’ve done cocaine, he’s clearly out of his mind on cocaine in this. Y-you can tell because of [00:51:00] the way he’s talking and he keeps rubbing his nose, which is not a normal human behavior, , to be doing that as, as frequently as he’s doing that.But, , I, I... So, so I, I, I do, you know, give him some leniency on the things he’s saying here, ... Like, as time has gone on, Nick has clearly been captured by his demons. And so, , there’s no way he can achieve what he says he wants to achieve in life or motivate his fans to do this when he’s, like, being mean to somebody who’s reaching out to him and expressing admiration , to him for doing the very thing that he’s telling his fans to do., It-- I-I’m not even mean to my fans when, they have different opinions. Like, just to be mean like this to, to a stranger For doing what you’re telling them to do, like,, the deep evil that has to have taken root in your heart. And not just that, , but the people who are like, “Well, Nick Fuentes shows so much self-control.”Here he’s literally saying, “Oh, if I had a bunch of daughters, I would cheat on my wife.”Speaker 11: Like even if I had a perfect wife who was wholly dedicated to me and due to something completely outside of her control, having [00:52:00] boys instead of girls, , I’d just end up cheating on her,Speaker 6: , And, , yeah, I guess, just, like, as time has gone on, I feel more pity for Nick, because in a different world, maybe I could have gone down his pathway if I had less self-control, if I was raised in a different religious background, if I... You know, who knows? , It, it’s, it’s very, very sad to see this happen and to see him admonish people who look up to him, , when they do do what he presumably wants people to do.But it-- I mean, it’s clear, again, revealed preferences versus, , claimed preferences. It’s clear that that is not his revealed preference to actually start a family and have kids and everything like that. , And I just wish he could better communicate to people that, like, allowing his ideology to spread within you will eventually destroy you as a human being. , There, there is no positive end to this. Like, contrast this with, like, Leafly’s song, right? Like, that’s, that’s positivity. That’s future. , His is just [00:53:00] destructivity at this point. And it’s really, really sad to see. And I do not think that him and I are particularly different in the problems that we see in society. It’s just that his, again, like one of those hate bugs has been so corrupted that it’s all he can see anymore.Speaker 7: Or another good analogy would be like the orcs from Warhammer who drink the demonic ichor to, , enhance their worst qualities but make them stronger. You know, it makes him stronger in the algorithm, but it leads all those who follow him to ruin this sort of demonic pact that he has made. He’s still an orc.He’s still at least in his own way trying to be on our side, but he is so corrupted that he fundamentally is as big a threat to us as those who oppose usSpeaker 8: Drink, . Claim your destiny. You will all be conquerors. And what, Gul’dan, [00:54:00] must we give in return? Everything.You would reject this gift?We will never be slaves!But we will be conquerors.Simone Collins: agree. I mean, what we talked about also is that, a key difference is that you and other people who we really like and admire, like Leaflet, have a very clear vision of the future-Malcolm Collins: Well, no, that’s what I was going to say ... toward which to mourn ... is, is that the reason why the hate bug has gotten him and it hasn’t easily gotten some of the other influencers I watch, I was trying to think of, like, what creates this differentiation?And [00:55:00] looking at Leaflet’s recent content because I’ve been working with her. She’s actually really helped me in developing the VTuber thing on RFAB that’s gonna be coming out soon. Saved me a significant amount of work was one of the leads she gave me today. But anyway, th- th- so that’s the reason she comes up a lot, is ‘cause I’m working with her and I’m talking with her daily, so, v- very top of mind.But anyway so, she has a very clear vision, and we have a very clear vision of where we want human civilization to be in 50 years, in 100 years, in 200 years, right? And I don’t think he has one of those. And because he doesn’t have a clear vision of where society’s going to be, it’s just like society’s gonna be where society’s going to be, it’s very easy for the grievances of the current culture war to overwhelm his sort of psychology to the point where he can no longer think, “What are the long-term actions if I attempt to blow up this alliance or this alliance, or you know, do not care about this encroaching group or [00:56:00] that encroaching group?”And I think that the, the, the hate bug can get you if all you care about is being a good family man. Because if all you care about is being a good family man, you can accidentally lean into performing the trope of the family man, in the same way a woman can perform the trope of the mom, instead of focusing on a concrete outcome.“I want to raise kids to have this effect on society because I see this future civilizational state as ideal.” Now both can be part of the same action, it’s just how are you framing it, which is why- Well,Simone Collins: this goes also, it’s connected to your deontology versus consequentialism argument that always comesMalcolm Collins: into our episodes Well, yeah, but I, I, I realize that, that arguing about it on a deontology versus con-That can be a little hard for people to grok. But the idea of just either you have a vision for where you want society to be in 100 years or you don’t.Simone Collins: Yeah. Basically, is your ship just blowing wherever the winds blow, or are you actively navigating [00:57:00] in a specific direction towards some kind of true north, and are you shifting your sails in response to the wind blowing you where you may not wanna go?You, you, you do want-Malcolm Collins: I, I actually think a better way to word this is not just is your ship going where the wind goes, but there’s sort of three categories of people. Like, there’s the truly lazy person who is allowing their ship to just blow wherever the wind blows, but then there’s the other person who might be incredibly hardworking, but they spend all of the time just trying to make sure their ship is the prettiest ship there is, without particular care for where it’s going, right?And these are the people who strive to have the perfect family that follows all the rules, or the perfect deontological life that follows every rule and every command and everything like that. And th- they’ll often be like, “Well, God’ll just take me in the right direction if I do all of that.” And that leads to really negative externalities.And it, and it’s not biblically... I mean, I, I always go through the the, the sermon of, um Um, a boat and two helicopters, so I’m not gonna go over that again Oh You can go over our Trek series if you’re [00:58:00] interested. But the point I’m being i-i-here is I think that it is sometimes easy to confuse trying to make sure your boat is the prettiest boat in the world without caring about where the boat’s going.Anyway.Simone Collins: Fair.Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too.Malcolm Collins: And I don’t think I want dinner tonight. I’m full.Simone Collins: Are you sure? I have some lo mein left over, just a little bit.Malcolm Collins: Oh, you do have lo mein left over? I canSimone Collins: bring it to your room. Yeah, if you want, I could just walk it up to your room. I can- Mm ...Malcolm Collins: I can stir-fry it- Can I have it, can I have it the next day?Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘Malcolm Collins: Cause you gave me eggs today, and I had chips and salsa today, and I had whole milk today. So that’s a lot.Simone Collins: Are you gonna get scurvy? I’mMalcolm Collins: not... Yeah, Simone, that is not how scurvy works.Simone Collins: I guess- OneMalcolm Collins: of our- ... ISimone Collins: knew you had salsa.Malcolm Collins: Right, so- Salsa, I had salsa, Simone. That was a lot of tomatoes and juices.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: I also had jelly beans. You had salsa. Okay. I had some orange jelly beans, [00:59:00] which are basically- I hate youSimone Collins: so much. You are going to die. I t- I try to help you by serving you eggs, and then... Anyway, it’s fine. It’s fine. You can have lo mein tomorrow. It’s fine. But are you sure you’re not hungry?Malcolm Collins: I’m sure. Okay.I’m sure I’m not hungry.Simone Collins: Well, I love you.Malcolm Collins: I love you too, ish. I find you a little, you know, you’ve da, da, da, da.Simone Collins: I am a woman. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.Malcolm Collins: Joking, by the way. I love you. All right, have a good one.Simone Collins: Bye. Old Titan thing. No IMalcolm Collins: sent it on WhatsApp.Simone Collins: Oh yeah, the old dinosaur TitanMalcolm Collins: Yeah, doesn’t it look a lot like her today?Simone Collins: Looks just like her todayMalcolm Collins: Very, very similar- Early on here ... attitude to modern TitanSimone Collins: This morning though she decided she was a cat, and every time I asked her questions, you know, I said, [01:00:00] “Titan, do you want this or can you do that?”She’s like, “No, I’m a cat. Meow.” She did a lot of meowing, so.Malcolm Collins: Meow. She’s, Yeah ... you really, you did that as a kid too, right? It, it was pretty cute You pretended to be a cat?Simone Collins: I 100% did that. I wonder if there’s some, it’s just a little girl thing. I don’t think it’s like a genetic thing, but who knows? Well,Malcolm Collins: I mean, you know, fortunately we’re not into all that, yeah, trans furry stuff or we’d be like, “Oh, we’ve got a-”Simone Collins: You got her furry tail and her furry ears.Malcolm Collins: You got her a therian kid, right? We’re gonna have to transition her.Simone Collins: That was you, dude. You bought that stuff on Amazon, J’Accuse.Malcolm Collins: Have you, have you given it back to her now that she thinks she’s a cat so she can dress up like a cat?Simone Collins: Yeah, I need to. No, I’ll g- I’ll get it out this weekend. Yeah, I’m 100% getting that out.Okay.Malcolm Collins: That’sSimone Collins: fantastic. I will kick us off. And unless you, do you wanna kick this one off ‘cause you were the kind of impetus for doing this.Malcolm Collins: All right, sure.Speaker 10: [01:01:00] that movie. Ais he, is he a her orSpeaker 9: a him?Speaker 10: He/him. I bet they, I bet they left my birds at our house.Speaker 9: Yeah, they are. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Elsa Johnson, a Stanford student and Hoover Institution researcher, was aggressively targeted by a suspected Chinese Ministry of State Security operative. What started as a friendly Instagram DM from “Charles Chen” quickly turned into visa-free trip offers, pressure to move to WeChat, and eventual transnational repression — all while universities looked the other way.In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the full university-to-CCP pipeline: how massive Chinese student tuition payments create financial dependency, the role of CSSA (Chinese Students and Scholars Associations), Confucius Institutes, the United Front strategy, tech/IP theft in AI, and why American universities are failing to protect students and national security.Show NotesElsa Johnson, a Stanford student, is calling attention to a toxic national security flaw playing out in American universities and the problem is so much bigger than I had imagined.This spring, she testified before the House committee on Education and the workforce, asking them to do something about the problem‘I exposed China’s espionage tactics in The Times. Now I’m being harassed’What Happened to Elsa Johnson?* Elsa attended a Chinese language immersion school from kindergarten through either grade in Minneapolis, Minnesota* Got into Stanford University* Became a research assistant at the Hoover Institution, where she focused on Chinese industry and military tactics* From her congressional testimony:* “In June 2024, a few days after I spoke with one of my supervisors at Hoover about Chinese recruitment tactics targeting American academics, a man calling himself Charles Chen reached out to me on Instagram. He had over 100 mutual followers with me and had photos of Stanford on his profile. I had no reason to believe he was anything other than a fellow student.”* “Over the following weeks, Chen’s messages grew more concerning. He told me he was from China and asked detailed questions about my research and background in Chinese. He offered to pay for a trip to China, sent me a flight itinerary from Los Angeles to Shanghai and sent screenshots of a bank wire to prove he could afford my accommodations once I got there. He also sent me a document outlining a policy that would allow me to travel to China without a visa. He sent me videos of Americans who had gotten rich and famous in China and insisted that I, too, could find wealth and fame in the PRC.”* “Later on, he began incessantly pressuring me to move our conversation to WeChat, a Chinese government-monitored messaging app. When I didn’t respond to Charles Chen fast enough, he would delete and resend his messages. He even referenced the whereabouts of Stanford students who were in China at the time of our correspondence.* “Then, in July, he publicly commented on one of my Instagram posts in Mandarin, asking me to delete the screenshots I had taken of our private conversation. I had not told anyone I had taken screenshots, and I do not know how he knew. The only explanation I could come up with was that my phone or my account had been compromised somehow.”* “I contacted two China experts at Stanford whom I trusted and they connected me with an FBI contact who handled CCP-related espionage cases at the university. I met with the FBI in September and handed over everything I had. The FBI confirmed that Charles Chen had no real affiliation with Stanford. He had likely posed as a student for years and used multiple fabricated social media profiles to target students researching China-related topics. I was told he was likely operating on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security. I later found out that I was one of at least ten other female students targeted by Charles Chen since 2020. “* She published an account of this experience in the Times of London* After that, she was followed and harassed by the CCP* “Last summer, while conducting research on China in Washington, DC, I began receiving regular phone calls from unknown US numbers. When I answered the calls in English, the callers would switch to Mandarin. In one case, the caller referenced my mother. These bizarre calls were intimidation attempts, designed to remind me that neither my family, nor I, is safe from transnational repression by the CCP.”* “Then, this past fall, the FBI informed me that I am being physically monitored on Stanford’s campus by agents of the Chinese Communist Party. They told me that my family is also at risk and is being monitored. As a 21-year-old who grew up loving the Chinese language and culture, I never imagined that studying it would put me in a position where a foreign intelligence service is tracking my movements on my own campus and monitoring my family. I fear for my safety and for my family’s safety.”The University ProblemUniversities Heavily Accepting Chinese National StudentsUS Universities and Private Schools* Department of Homeland Security SEVIS analysis found that 47% of all foreign K–12 students in 2019 were from ChinaUniversities* Around one quarter of foreign (international) university students in the United States are from China.* The absolute number of Chinese students has fallen from a pre‑pandemic peak of around 370,000 in 2019 to under 280,000 in 2023–24, but China remains one of the top two sending countries (with India).UK Universities likely accepting more Chinese students to meet visa rules* To keep their sponsor licence, universities will soon need: 95% of enrolled students to actually start their course (up from 90%), 90% to complete (up from 85%), and a visa refusal rate under 5% (down from 10%).* Because these thresholds are strict and the start date is unclear, some universities have already effectively stopped recruiting from countries with lower visa grant/compliance rates, including Bangladesh, Ghana, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Nigeria, which currently fall below the new 95% benchmark in Home Office data.* Chinese students are good with visa compliance, so they’re likely to be accepted at greater rates* This will create greater financial dependence on foreign Chinese studentsThe ‘Times of London discusses the problem in greater detail here.Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs)* The CSSA the official organization for overseas Chinese students and scholars registered in most colleges and universities outside of the People’s Republic of China.* It’s described as a government-organized non-governmental organization* They were created by the CCP to monitor Chinese students and mobilize them against dissenting views, according to the U.S. State Department.* They receive guidance from the CCP through Chinese embassies and consulates, aligning their activities with Beijing’s political objectives rather than purely student interests.* They participate in the CCP’s “United Front” work, which Elsa in her testimony characterizes as using these groups as vehicles for surveillance and influence on campus.* In some cases, local Chinese consulates must approve CSSA presidential candidates, suggesting foreign government control over student leadership selections.* They may accept funding from Chinese embassies that makes up a large share of their budgets (Elsa notes Foreign Policy reporting that Georgetown’s CSSA received roughly half its annual budget from the embassy), creating financial dependence tied to political influence.There are also Confucius Institutes at universities* Elsa testified: “A bipartisan Senate investigation found that 70 per cent of schools with a Confucius Institute [programmes which promote Chinese Language and Culture] that received more than $250,000 in a given year failed to report it properly.”What is being done about them? In her testimony, Elsa notes: “Congressman Tim Walberg has co-signed a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, requesting that CSSAs be evaluated for designation as foreign missions under the Foreign Missions Act.” and calls it a step in the right direction.She also notes “Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires postsecondary institutions to disclose foreign gifts or contracts totalling $250,000 or more, and the Department of Education recently approved a new foreign funding reporting portal that launched earlier this year.”“Transnational Repression”According to a 2024 Freedom House report, “International students, visiting scholars, and faculty in the United States are being targeted by foreign governments and their agents. Tactics of transnational repression on campuses include digital and physical surveillance, harassment, assault, threats, and coercion by proxy.”The report cites the CCP as the biggest threat, noting that:* Classroom discussions and campus events on topics like Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, or Chinese politics are monitored, with information relayed to Chinese diplomatic staff or officials via networks such as Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs) and platforms like WeChat.* Students who organize or join protests (for example, White Paper/zero‑COVID vigils) report being filmed, shouted down, or physically intimidated by pro‑CCP students or CSSA affiliates, sometimes resulting in assaults at demonstrations.* Authorities in China contact or visit students’ family members back home to warn them about the student’s activism abroad, creating intense psychological pressure on the student to stop speaking out. [freedomhouse](https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/2024/addressing-transnational-repression-campuses-united-states)* Pro‑CCP actors use social media and messaging apps to threaten, smear, or expose identifying information of critical students, contributing to a climate of fear and self‑censorship.* CSSAs, overseen by the CCP’s United Front Work Department and supported by Chinese diplomatic missions, monitor Chinese students, mobilize them to oppose speakers and events critical of Beijing, and help enforce informal red lines on campus speech.* Confucius Institutes and CCP‑linked programs are described as contributing to an atmosphere where students feel they must avoid sensitive topics or visible prodemocracy activity to protect their safety, immigration status, and future prospects in China.Universities Failure to Do Much About Foreign Actors* In her testimony, Elsa notes how the FBI worked with her, but she found no support or resources from Stanford University* This could be due to financial pressures:* Chinese students have been the largest single group of international students, often about one quarter to one third of all foreign students, so they account for a disproportionate share of that high‑margin tuition revenue.* One analysis estimated that Chinese students contributed about 12 billion dollars to the U.S. economy in 2016–17 alone, with a large fraction flowing directly as tuition and fees to higher‑education institutions.* Public research universities are the most clearly exposed type of uni in the USA: when state funding fell, they grew foreign (especially Chinese) enrollment, so their budgets became partially conditioned on keeping that demand.China’s United Front* In CCP theory, the united front is one of the Party’s three “magic weapons” for seizing and maintaining power, alongside armed struggle and Party building.* Its basic purpose is to “unite all forces that can be united” in order to neutralize opposition and build the broadest possible coalition around CCP objectives.* So it’s basically like the Urban Monoculture: Groups may be aesthetically different, but under the surface they’re the sameHow it works inside China* Domestically, united front work focuses on groups the Party sees as important but not fully under its control—ethnic minorities, religious communities, private entrepreneurs, intellectuals, non‑Communist “democratic parties,” and new middle‑class and professional strata.* These groups are drawn into Party‑led institutions such as the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and various “mass organizations,” where they get limited representation but are expected to take the CCP’s leadOverseas and influence operations* Overseas, United Front work tries to shape foreign environments in ways favorable to the CCP by influencing Chinese diaspora communities, elites, media, academic institutions, businesses, and politicians in other countries.* Activities described by governments and researchers include promoting pro‑Beijing narratives, building relationships with foreign elites, guiding or co‑opting Chinese‑language media, gathering intelligence, facilitating illicit technology transfer, and, in some cases, interfering in foreign politics.The AI ProblemA component of China’s AI strategy involves stealing IP from US tech companies.Concrete AI‑related IP theft cases* Google AI trade‑secrets case (Linwei “Leon” Ding, 2024)* A Chinese national working at Google in California was arrested and charged with stealing over 500 confidential files on Google’s advanced AI infrastructure and chips.* DOJ alleges he uploaded files describing Google’s TPU‑based data center architecture and AI supercomputing platform to a personal account while secretly working for two China‑based tech startups building AI platforms and large‑model infrastructure.* FBI Director Christopher Wray framed this as part of “the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation.”* Operation CuckooBees / APT41 IP theft (multi‑sector, includes tech)* Cyber firm Cybereason detailed a years‑long campaign by APT41, a state‑linked Chinese group, that exfiltrated “hundreds of gigabytes” of trade secrets, including proprietary diagrams, formulas, and manufacturing data from ~30 multinationals in technology, manufacturing, and other sectors.* While not solely “AI companies,” this shows a pattern of Chinese state actors targeting high‑value tech IP, including software and design data that could underpin AI systems.* Broader CCP cyber‑espionage targeting AI/ML sectors* CSIS analysis notes that the CCP uses cyber‑espionage and human networks to steal IP in strategic areas, explicitly including AI/ML, as part of its “Made in China 2025” industrial plan.* They emphasize that startups and small firms—exactly where cutting‑edge AI work often happens—are especially vulnerable, and that cyber operations are paired with clandestine human intelligence to extract trade secrets.There are older non‑AI‑specific but relevant precedents (e.g., Apple self‑driving car engineer Xiaolang Zhang, various semiconductor and source‑code theft cases) involving Chinese nationals and core algorithmic or hardware IP. Those show the pattern that now appears to be extending directly into AI‑model and AI‑infrastructure theft.Government claims about “industrial‑scale” AI theftRecent U.S. government messaging has become much more explicit that Chinese entities are targeting American AI models and infrastructure as a systematic campaign.* White House and State Department warnings (2026)* A memo by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy describes “industrial‑scale campaigns” by foreign actors—“predominantly from China”—aimed at appropriating U.S. AI technology, including via model distillation (training models to replicate proprietary ones).* Separately, the State Department has reportedly asked embassies and partners to warn about alleged AI theft efforts by Chinese AI firms (e.g., DeepSeek), following OpenAI’s warnings to U.S. lawmakers that DeepSeek was trying to target U.S. frontier‑model companies to replicate their systems.* Congressional findings and expert testimony (2026)* The House Select Committee on the CCP held a hearing on China and AI, where the chair stated that Chinese companies “rely on Western AI models” and are “buying what they legally can… and stealing what they cannot,” at “every layer of the AI technology stack.”* Witnesses framed theft and replication of U.S. models and tools as a central “cheat code” in China’s AI strategy.* Broader IP‑theft statistics with CCP attribution* A Homeland Security “China Threat Snapshot” notes that about 20% of U.S. companies report IP theft by PRC‑linked entities, highlighting a sustained pattern of illicit tech acquisition through hacking, phishing, and front companies.* FBI leadership has said they open a new China‑related counterintelligence case roughly every 12 hours, and estimates of total IP‑theft loss (not AI‑specific) run into the hundreds of billions annually.Embedding or recruiting insiders in AI companies* Direct, named “spy in AI lab” cases are still rare publicly* The Google/Ding case is the clearest example of a Chinese national inside a major U.S. AI player accused of stealing AI‑specific IP while also working with China‑based companies.* Most other public cases remain in adjacent domains (chips, autonomous driving, source code), but the modus operandi—placing employees or recruiting insiders—carries over directly to AI research orgs.* Pattern of insider recruitment in high‑tech fields* CSIS and similar analyses emphasize that Chinese espionage campaigns combine cyber‑operations with “clandestine human intelligence networks” to steal trade secrets from U.S. firms in strategic sectors.* The Homeland Security “China Threat Snapshot” describes PRC‑linked actors using spear‑phishing, academic and business cover, and front companies to solicit or extract proprietary code and software from U.S. institutions, including NASA and tech firms.* While not limited to AI, this is effectively the same recruitment and infiltration toolkit that would be used to place or flip employees at AI labs.* AI‑assisted espionage operations targeting tech firms* An incident reported by Anthropic in late 2025 describes a state‑sponsored Chinese threat actor using an AI coding assistant (a Claude variant) in an “AI‑orchestrated” cyber‑espionage campaign, automating reconnaissance, exploitation, and data exfiltration across multiple sectors.* This shows Chinese operators using AI tools to scale intrusions; combined with traditional recruitment/influence ops, this increases the risk that employees at AI or cloud companies become unwitting or witting enablers.* Export‑control evasion networks around AI hardware* DOJ has charged U.S. citizens and Chinese nationals in schemes to illegally export high‑end GPUs to the PRC by routing purchases through Florida‑based front firms and re‑exporting via third countries.* These operations often rely on insiders with business roles inside U.S. companies or shell entities interacting with the AI hardware supply chain, which is adjacent to but not the same as spies directly inside research labs.Public reporting from the intelligence community hints at more such insider or near‑insider cases than have been unsealed in court, but those details are typically classified. The pattern you do see publicly—Google/Ding, APT41 campaigns that pull source code and designs, front‑company GPU diversion—is consistent with a deliberate strategy to get inside the AI stack at multiple points rather than just scraping public models.What Should Be Done?Elsa in her testimony: “Stanford should establish an anonymous tip line for students facing transnational repression. Right now, a student who is being surveilled or coerced by a foreign government has nowhere to go within the university. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has already created an information guide and reporting structure that directs targeted students to relevant offices and connects them with law enforcement. Stanford should adopt this model immediately. It does not require an act of Congress.”Seems wise to educate Americans in general about spies. “Loose lips sink ships” and all that.Spying feels a lot like social class in the USA. We know it exists, but we pretend it does not.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we’re gonna talk about the university to spy for China pipeline through the lens of one young woman’s plight. Elsa Johnson is a good old-fashioned American girl. She attended a Chinese language immersion school from kindergarten through eighth grade in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and just developed this lifelong love of the Chinese language, of Mandarin, you know, o- of China in general.She is a high achiever. She gets into Stanford University. She’s so happy. She became a research assistant at the Hoover Institution, where she studied Chinese industry and military tactics. And then here’s where things go a little sideways. So I’m gonna read a little bit from her congressional testimony because, surprise, surprise, things go so sideways that this spring she finds herself testifying to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, asking them to do something a- about this really serious problem.So [00:01:00] she, she said in her testimony, “In June 2024, a few days after I spoke with one of my supervisors at Hoover about Chinese recruitment tactics tarting- targeting American academics, a man calling himself Charles Chen reached out to me on Instagram. He had over 100 mutual followers with me and had photos of Stanford on his profile.I had no reason to believe he was anything other than a fellow student. Over the following weeks, Chen’s messages grew more concerning. He told me he was from China-” And asked detailed questions about my research and background in Chinese. He offered to pay for a trip to China, send me a flight itinerary from Los Angeles to Shanghai, and sent r- screenshots of a bank wire to prove he could afford my accommodations once I got there.He also sent me a document outlining a policy that would allow me to ch- travel to China without a visa, which is super shady, and, like, the Chinese consulate is not hard to get to from Stanford. I, I knowMalcolm Collins: [00:02:00] this. Why would they do that? Why would they have her travel without a visa? Like,Simone Collins: presumably- I don’t know.That, yeah, that, that whole thing isMalcolm Collins: like- Oh, I know ... wild They didn’t want it in the American books that she had traveled to China, because then she might be easier to pick up by, like, the CIA and stuff like this as a potential spy.Simone Collins: Oh, because it would be in her American passport. That’s right. Yeah. Okay.“He sent me videos of Americans who had gotten rich and famous in China, and insisted that I too could find wealth and fame in the PRC. Later on, he began incessantly pressuring me to move our conversation to WeChat, a Chinese government-monitored messaging app. When I didn’t respond to Charles Chen fast enough, he would delete and resend his messages.He even referenced the whereabouts of Stanford students who were at, in China at the time of our correspondence. Then, in July, he publicly commented on one of my Instagram posts in Mandarin, asking me to delete the screenshots I’d taken of our private conversation. I had not told anyone I had taken screenshots, and I do [00:03:00] not know how he knew.The only explanation I could come up with was that my phone or my account had been compromised somehow.” Clearly her phone.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: ‘Cause, yeah, it, I mean, I guess there are some banking apps that are able to detect if you’re trying to take screenshots. I know this ‘cause they’ll give you, like, a little push notification saying, “Screenshots are not authorized,” so maybe the app can pick up on that, but most likely it was her phone that was compromised.They had, like- Yeah ... bugged her phone or something. “I contacted two China experts at Stanford whom I trusted, and they connected me with an FBI contact who handled CCP related espionage cases at the university. I met with the FBI in September and handed over everything I had. The FBI confirmed that Charles Chen had no real affiliation with Stanford.He had likely posed as a student for years and used multiple fabricated social media profiles to target students researching China related topics. I was told he was likely operating on behalf of Chinese Ministry of State Security. I later [00:04:00] found out that I was one of at least 10 other female students targeted by Charles Chen since 2020.”Malcolm Collins: Female students. Why always female? Are they more malleable? Are they more stupid?Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, look, you’re, you’re listening to Base Camp. You don’t need to hear him answer this.Malcolm Collins: You don’t need to know why it was onlySimone Collins: females.Malcolm Collins: Women. Come on.Simone Collins: But she, so what she did ultimately was she published an account of this experience in The Times of London.And then after that, she was followed and harassed by the CCP. And actually, the reason why she gave that testimony to Congress in the spring wasn’t, like, “Oh my God, we have a spy problem.” It was, “Oh my God, I’m so tired of being harassed by the CCP, and universities need to be better at stopping this.” It was, like, not even, like, oh, this...‘Cause I’m, I’m over here being like, “Whoa, can we, can we, like, talk about this spy problem?” And she’s just like, “I’m just so done being harassed.”Malcolm Collins: But- Well, I’ve pointed out that the CCP is, and a lot of people do not... Outside of TikTok, which obviously has had a huge negative effect on the United States, and Trump [00:05:00] 100% should have shut it down.Yeah. Very stupid.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But he could have blamed it on the Biden administration. It would’ve been so easy.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Trump, you fool. Anyway. Outside of not shutting down TikTok the CCP fundamentally, like, doesn’t understand America or American culture.Simone Collins: It reallyMalcolm Collins: doesn’t. And we’ve pointed out that often their attempts to make Americans angry at America or, like, sow division in America are very different.Russia is, like, let’s fund BLM. As we pointed out, like-Simone Collins: Oh, Russia gets it. They knowMalcolm Collins: Like-Simone Collins: They knowMalcolm Collins: how to do it ... nine to one, the money that they spent on the Trump presidency, which they thought would be subversive, they spent on BLM. Mm-hmm. They... Like, BLM was a Russian funded movement. Go watch our video on it.Like, the receipts are really clear. And by the way, Russia is not our friend. Don’t make that mistake. It’s weird that anyone ever did, but you know, some people are very gullible. But anyway the CCP when they try to attack us, they don’t get it. They’re like, “America, like-” Can you really trust your government?Here’s where the US government has lied to you, and people are like, “Yeah, I mean, [00:06:00] that checks out, right?” It’s something I didn’t know. Like, the US government lies to us all the time. Yeah. Because Americans, like in the CCP, you can’t, like, distrust your government. You can’t be like, “Oh, yeah, yeah this is the, the questions I have about my government,” you know?But in, in in America, like, oh, this is f*****g normal. And with her, the, the- they took somebody who probably... I mean, I think the reason she was on their list is she probably had anti-American or socialist sympathies, probably, like, a far progressive. And they made the mistake of deciding to harass her when they could have just kept quiet, and she probably would’ve just let it go, right?Like, but they made it clear that they saw her as an enemy and they were gonna treat her like an enemy, which is fascinating.Simone Collins: No, no, no, th- this is, this is far more systematic than I think you’re aware. Okay. So first I’ll describe how she was harassed. As she states in her testimony, “Last summer, while conducting research in China and Washington, DC, I began receiving regular phone calls from unknown US numbers.When I answered the calls in English, the callers would switch to Mandarin. In one case, the caller referenced my mother. These [00:07:00] bizarre calls were intimidation attempts designed to remind me that neither my family nor I is safe from the transnational repression by the CCP. Then, this past fall, the FBI informed me that I’m being physically monitored on Stanford’s campus by agents of the Chinese Communist Party.They told me that my family is also at risk of being monitored. As a 21-year-old who grew up loving the Chinese language and culture, I never imagined that studying it would put me in a position where foreign intelligence service is tracking my movements on my own campus and monitoring my family.I fear for my safety and my family’s safety.” So I’m gonna get into how this is a systematic thing, but first I wanna set theMalcolm Collins: scene. I, I want you, before you get into that, go into how they attempted to lure her. Uh-huh.Simone Collins: IMalcolm Collins: mean, I think that this is actually fairly interesting.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, they tried to get her into China first- Mm-hmmjust to see, like, basically-Simone Collins: Oh, and that’s how they get you. Then this is the, this is how you get all these people who are total shills for China, even though otherwise, like, just temperamentally and politically you wouldn’t expect them to be.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, Elon [00:08:00] obviously is a good example here, right? Like, that, I think this is one of his biggest blind spots.Mm-hmm. This is, is, like, soft spot for China. But I mean, hey- ISimone Collins: don’t know. I mean, I think, and I’m gonna get into this as well, like, there, there is- He, it would be financially unwise and, and business-wise unwise for him to come out againstMalcolm Collins: China No, no, no, no, of course. But I mean, even in totally private conversations he’s still pro-China, right?Like, it makes no sense to me. But I think that once you support them within a certain context publicly, which you need to to do business, and he’s done an amazing job at getting... Like Tesla’s w- I think one of the only s- in fact, i- like companies that’s really allowed to operate there independently. So he’s done a good job in, in, in regards to that.But like, so they wanted her to get into China, right? Give her a bunch of nice stuff. The idea of her getting rich in China I think is also interesting. Yeah ... like I wonder exactly how that’s supposed to work. My best guess is what they do is they give you a bunch of assets in China that you can’t easily get out of China, so you are hugely dependent [00:09:00] financially on making sure that the CCP looks good.Simone Collins: Yeah, possibly. I wouldlikeMalcolm Collins: toSimone Collins: see- And possibly this, this could just be like how bribe payments are essentially made in many cases, where like you get a job and the job doesn’t actually do anything, but you get this really high salary for basically doing nothing, and the salary is your bribe. Yeahso that, that could also be just kinda how it works, you know.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, continue from here. But yeah, that, that was interesting to me as well. Like are, do people actually make this money or do they just dangle this in front of them? I would guess they probably do.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It’s probably worth it for the CCP to shill out money for stuff like this.Simone Collins: Yeah. So w- why, eh, why can this even be happening on university campuses in the first place? The answer is that both private schools in the US and both public and private universities in the US kinda need Chinese students. So the Department of Homeland Security analysis it was a SEVIS analysis?I’m not familiar with SEVIS, but anyway, that found 47% of all foreign K12 students in 2019 were from [00:10:00] China. That number went down after the pandemic, but- Mm ... if almost half of private school foreign students, and basically all foreign students in the United States who are K12 are private because public schools don’t really take foreign students th- who aren’t like refugees or illegal immigrants you know, like visiting-Malcolm Collins: I mean, obviously, yeah, yeah, of courseSimone Collins: Are... That, that, that’s huge. Universities also have incredibly high numbers of Chinese students. About one quarter of foreign, that is to say international university students in the United States are from China. The absolute number of Chinese students has fallen from the pre-pandemic peak of around 370,000 in 200- 2019 to under 280,000 in like 2023 to ‘24.But China remains one of the top two sending countries, alongside India. And I mean, yes, they’re very, very populous countries, but basically if, if US universities were to stop accepting Chinese students [00:11:00] they would be seeing a pretty significant gap in funding. This is also an issue in the United Kingdom.I- in fact, the United Kingdom is likely to now accept more Chinese st- international students and accept fewer students from some other countries because in order to keep their sponsor license that allows them to basically give visas... Like, I’m sure you remember when you went to St. Andrews and when I went to Cambridge, we had to get those universities to sponsor our visas as students.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: So to keep their sponsor licenses, universities in the UK soon need 95% of enrolled students to actually start their course. This is up from 90%. And then they also need 90% to complete, up from 85%. And they need a visa refusal rate under 5%. That’s down from 10%. And because these thresholds are really strict, and they’re not really sure when they’re gonna start to be imposed, some universities are already no longer f- recruiting from countries that have lower visa grant or compliance rates.And that includes [00:12:00] Bangladesh, Ghana, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Nigeria. And that means that they’re gonna be turning a lot more to China because they’re very good with visaMalcolm Collins: compliance. That’s fascinating- Yeah ... but also stupid. So at St. Andrews- ... one of the things I remember about the Chinese students, they were the most likely to drop out.Simone Collins: That’s really interesting. Yeah. There was one... There were two Chinese students in my, my graduate class. And one I think just maybe didn’t complete the course and, and really struggled with English.Malcolm Collins: This is what we saw as well at, at St. Andrews is they, they, they typically didn’t really understand English.And, like, it was weird that they would attempt to go to an English school without understanding English. I mean, maybe they had, they had thought that this worked in China. And, and th- this is regular for Chinese students at top universities like Cambridge and St. Andrews.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is that they go and it’s clear that they’re not close to understanding English.Yeah. Like, they can’t have a casual conversation. And that’s gonna make it extremely hard to do well in school.Simone Collins: But they’re still [00:13:00] accepted at super high rates because when and this is the same even for, like, US schoolsMalcolm Collins: the- Hold, hold on. Actually side note here. I, I should be clear, this isn’t true of any other national group that I was aware of in the UK.Oh,Simone Collins: same. Yeah. No, dude, dude, dude. I- Yeah, there were lots of other international students in my Cambridge class. And also in my undergraduate. Yeah, yeah. Oh, at GWU especially, like in Washington, DC, so many kids. That was the first time I ever met someone from Kazakhstan. That was my first time ever meeting someone from so many countries.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ll meet people from Kazakhstan, from Pakistan, and from the, the, you know, all over Africa. And like-Simone Collins: Yeah ...Malcolm Collins: none of them ever had any problem speaking English.Simone Collins: Nobody. Nobody. Yeah. Nobody. It was only ever China. That isMalcolm Collins: weird. It was only ever the Chinese.Simone Collins: My God, though, you’re so right. What’s up with that?Malcolm Collins: I-Simone Collins: I mean, the languages are very different, to be fair. Like, it’s very, it’s pretty easy to, like, well, relatively speaking, learn another Romance language.Malcolm Collins: I think it might have to do with the way that corruption in their education system [00:14:00] works- Maybe ... and that they don’t actually think that they actually need to know a thing to know a thing.Maybe. They, they think that there is a way to, to, to cheat around it, which,Simone Collins: But yeah, like, the Korean students spoke, We had a Korean I, I mean, I obviously had, like, Korean foreign nationals in both under- undergraduate and in my graduate classes. They were perfect English. Japanese as well. That, that is...Yeah, so it’s not even like, oh, well, they have a different alphabet. They have different... Huh.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yes, it was true in my boarding schools as well, is that we had a, a bunch of- Weird ... Korean kids and they all spoke perfect English. Yeah. And we had Chinese kids and they didn’t speak English very well.Simone Collins: Weird. Weird, weird. So but the, the-Malcolm Collins: Not just weird. There’s something to take away from this, which is I think that their education system is so corrupted that they genuinely dissociate actually needing to know a thing- I don’t,Simone Collins: I don’t know if that’s it ... from knowing a thing. I, I mean, we, there are other things going on with, like, money laundering, where it’s a lot easier to do it if you have a student who has a visa or something like that.Like, we know through both surrogacy and through foreign- Sure ... [00:15:00] students, a lot of Chinese families will launder money through real estate and other things. And so for that reason, it doesn’t really matter if your Chinese student is learning something or getting good grades at university. What matters is that you’re offshoring money, so who cares?True. I, I think that has more to do with it than anything else, if we’re being honest. Like, everyone else is there to learn, and then we got some kids over here who are here to just launder money. Whatever. It’s fine. And the university-Malcolm Collins: They’re, they’re good learning is, is getting that money flowSimone Collins: they roll over and take it, because in the end, foreign students pay, you know, either, you know, foreign tuition fees, out-of-state tuition fees that especially state-funded universities really need. So even in the United States, universities that are uniquely vulnerable and, like, in to this dynamic and in need of these foreign students are often state universities who, you know, especially as states face funding [00:16:00] cuts, really need the money from not only out of states, but especially foreign students.And Chinese students are, you know, happy to, to fill those gaps. So it’s very hard to talk to a university about, like, “Hey, hey, maybe, you know, can you, like, scrutinize this group a little more? Can you, like, l- run an inquiry into some harassment campaigns going on on campus?” Because There is, and we’re, we’re gonna talk about it, going to be in reaction this huge, you know, ruffled feathers and, and then big threats of basically money just disappearing, vaporizing, that the universities increasingly need.And also keep in mind the demographic headwinds that are facing universities. Universities are shutting down across the United States every single year. This is a game of life and death. They are dying. They cannot afford any hit to their financial income. So this idea that they might do something that would anger one of their most valuable, most hiring, [00:17:00] high-paying student classes, like- Truethey can’t. Which is kind of why it was this exercise in frustration that poor Elsa decided to testify in front of Congress. Anyway, one of the primary, and this is interesting to me, bodies through which the CCP enacts its agenda- Yeah ... in universities is called the CSSA. It’s the Chinese Students and Scholars Association.It’s, it’s basically the official organization for overseas Chinese students and it’s registered at most colleges and universities that are outside of China, so this is an international thing. Yeah. It’s described by, like, journalists and activist groups as a m- government organized, non-government organization.So it’s an NGO, but it was, that was created by the CCP. Really?Yeah. They, they, they basically though and this is something also that Elsa argues in her testimony to Congress, they were created by the CCP to [00:18:00] monitor Chinese students abroad and mobilize them against dissenting views. And that, that is also something the State Department alleges.They receive guidance, so these, like... It’s basically like student clubs and orgs receive guidance from the CCP through Chinese embassies and consulates and then they align their activities with Beijing’s political objectives rather than just, like, oh, like, you know, the students are into this thing.Like, we’re gonna have a picnic. It’s more like, well, China says do this, and so they do that. They, they participate in the CCP’s United Front work. More on that later. And this also involves using students and groups for surveillance and also for influence onMalcolm Collins: campus. Well, they also use it for harassment campaigns and stuff like this.It’s been like very aggressive. Like, there’s been some instances in, like, Australia and stuff like that where some students who are from China will attempt to protest China, and these people will like, really aggressively go after them.Simone Collins: Yeah, they’ll make note of them. They [00:19:00] will counter-protest. They will make them feel very uncomfortable.And in some cases, local Chinese consulates have to approve CSSA presidential candidates. So they’re not even, like, privately governed or, like, student-only governed. They have to, like, get, like, a write-off from the embassies. That, that isMalcolm Collins: incredibly-Simone Collins: And they also accept funding ... spooky. I, it’s, yeah, it, this is, it’s, it’s, it’s weird that, like, there’s a-Malcolm Collins: Yeah, th- this is allowed, and that the US government is just like, “Sure, whatever, you know, keep going.”Simone Collins: Yeah. And- Because also, like, universities, this is where tech transfer takes place. This is where research takes place. Like, these are our nation’s centers for tech and scientific development.Malcolm Collins: The administration should get in on this. I can see why the progressives wouldn’t wanna get on this, but, like, we certainly should.Simone Collins: It’s a, it’s a national security risk, and that’s why I’m like, “Oh, this is something I’ve, I’m surprised is happening.” I mean, I, I, I 100% understand the dynamics at play given the financial incentives and that universities are boned.Malcolm Collins: Right, but, [00:20:00] like, we’re okay with universities going out of business, you know?Yeah, so- Yeah ... screw ‘em.Simone Collins: Yeah, but Stanford University’s still, like, a hub, and it’s also, you know, in the, in the, the hotbed of AI development and Silicon Valley in general, and I’m, I’m gonna also touch on that. There are also these Confucius Institutes at universities, and Elsa testified about those, too.She said, quote, “A bipartisan Senate investigation found that 70% of schools with a Confucius Institute,” these are programs that promote Chinese language and culture, “that received more than $250,000 in a given year failed to report it properly.” ‘Cause there are these reporting requirements. Yeah.But they’re just not, they’re just not bothering, ‘cause, you know, like, no one- No one do. Yeah, on, like, what laws? No one... Who, who, who’s checking anymore? No one checks. The mods are asleep. That is, like, the big thing with society these days. So Elsa does note in her testimony- TheMalcolm Collins: mods are asleep in society.That is so true.Simone Collins: Yeah, and it’s very scary. [00:21:00] She, she notes in her testimony saying, quote, “Congressman Tim Walberg has co-signed a letter to the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, requesting that CSSAs be evaluated for designation as foreign missions under the Foreign Missions Act.” And she, she calls that a step in the right direction.But oh my God. What, no, no, no. You don’t know. A step in the right direction isn’t, like, a letter, a, a, a co-signed letter to the Secretary of State. The, he, he posted a comment. It’s, it’s like someone posting a comment on this video being like, “Oh, it’s a step in the right direction.” I mean, like, we read the comments, and thank you so much.Yeah. And, and we, we love your feedback, but, like, don’t think that leaving a comment on anyone’s video or sending anyone a letter is gonna change the world. Like- and so basically nothing’s being done. I mean, she does also note that Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires post-secondary institutions to disclose foreign gifts or contracts totaling $250,000 or more, and the [00:22:00] Department of Education recently approved a new foreign funding reporting portal that launched earlier this year so people can actually see.But as she also pointed out in her testimony, the Confucius Institute, like 70% of the time doesn’t even report. Like no, you know, no one’s- Yeah ... no one’s actually enforcing these rules.Malcolm Collins: Right, so why don’t they shut it down if it’s not reporting? I do not understand how lax our legal system is.Simone Collins: Well, who’s gonna pay for someone to actually check, you know?There, there’s that.Malcolm Collins: So- Well, how do they know 70% of the time it doesn’t report it unless they have checked?Simone Collins: Well, they, they must have done just specifically with the Confucius Institute a spot check, you know, some sort of audit.Malcolm Collins: So- Well, then shut it down.Simone Collins: I, I know. Well, but no, because I’m sure they got tons of pushback from universities who are like, “Yeah, by the way, if you do that I’m going bankrupt, so can you not?”Like, it’s very complicated. Yeah, likeMalcolm Collins: we, we, we survive off of the Chinese spies. That’s like our major source of income these days. Yeah,Simone Collins: like, “Just don’t go, please,Malcolm Collins: stop.” The US students don’t want our fancy degrees anymore, you know? In China, they’ll still pay for them. [00:23:00]Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, yeah, for, for money laundering purposes.Anyway this whole thing though about transnational repression, I hear about it every now and then. I’m kind of on the fence about it. ‘Cause like-Malcolm Collins: Okay, do you think it’s a good idea? We should get into more transnational repression? No,Simone Collins: I just, I feel like they could do a better job. Maybe it’s that we’re, we’re harassed so much where I’m just like, I’m so unfazed by it.You know, someone, someone new being like, “I’m gonna have your children taken away from you. I’m gonna attack you with a baseball bat. I’m gonna find, you know, like, I know where you live. I’m gonna...” You know, like all these things, like, I’m kinda like, “Eh.”Malcolm Collins: So you think just like Blue Sky is better at this than China is?Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, I don’t know, it’s just like everyone’s, everyone’s gonna, you know, making all these threats and actually, you know, following through with them. But you heard- Did you see like someone, another attempted Trump assassin was found on the streets of DC again today? Like, what? It... So anyway though, anyway.Malcolm Collins: So hold on. Have, have you heard the the plan in Brussels, and they did like a 74-page report on this- Ugh ... so like who [00:24:00] knows, it could move ahead.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Where they want to merge Blue Sky and X to force X users to see Blue Sky posts. But, a- and Mastodon as well, but potentially not the other way around, just ‘cause they’re so mad that all of their little foot soldiers have isolated themselves.Simone Collins: That’s really cute. I don’t know, that’s, that’s so cute. Like that level of like, Umbridge and, and, and bristling resentment is beautifulMalcolm Collins: It’s like X in the users where it’s like, “I consent. I consent.” And then Brussels over the shoulder like, “I don’t.”Simone Collins: It’s good. That’s good. Transnational repression.So this is, this is the thing that Elsa’s complaining about. Not the spies ‘cause forget that. It’s, it’s the repression. Sure, of course. According to a 2024 Freedom House report, which is, is, it’s something she cites in her testimony, international students, visiting scholars, and faculty in the United States are being targeted by foreign governments and their agents.Tactics of transnational [00:25:00] repression on campuses include digital and physical surveillance, harassment, assault, threats, and coercion by proxy. And while they cite, I think, 38 countries that are found to do this, it’s just like, “Hey, let’s bully our citizens abroad,” the CCP’s obviously the number-one for, like, country doingMalcolm Collins: this Oh, yeah.I mean, they’re great atSimone Collins: it So here are the things that they do. They classroom discussions and campus events on topics like Hong Kong or Xinjiang or Tibet or Chinese politics, they’re monitored, and then the information is relayed to Chinese diplomatic staff or officials via networks such as Chinese students and scholars associations and platforms like WeChat.And then students who organize or join protests, to your point, Malcolm, like, the white paper protests or the zero COVID vigils, report being filmed and shouted down or physically intimidated by pro-CCP students or CSSA affiliates, and sometimes this results in assaults [00:26:00] or other, you know, shout, shouting matches at, at demonstrations.Though I think if you show up to a freaking protest, accept, expect that. But- Yeah, expectMalcolm Collins: a shouting match. Come on. That’s- Yeah ... I mean, we’re gonna complain aboutSimone Collins: that. Authorities in China will also contact or visit students’ family members back home to warn them about the student’s activism abroad, creating this intense psychological pressure on the student who’s, you know, speaking out.Their parents are gonna call freaked out to be like, “What are you doing?” And that would genuinely have me scared, ‘cause China does disappear people, and that would be enough for me. So that’s, that’s for real. It is scary if you’re actually a Chinese citizen who has family in China.Malcolm Collins: Oh,Simone Collins: absolutely,Malcolm Collins: yeah. AndSimone Collins: then pro-CCP actors will also use social media and messaging apps to threaten or smear or expose students who are, are critical of the CCP.So, you know, you might also, if you have any dirt on you, you know, God help you. CSSAs are also, known for monitoring Chinese students, and they mobilize them to oppose speakers at events that are critical of [00:27:00] Beijing, and they also just help to inform students’ choices. Like apparently a lot of Chinese students are just less likely to take courses that might, might steer them in the wrong direction vis-a-vis CCP stances.And then also the Confucius Institutes and CCP linked programs contribute to this atmosphere where students just avoid any sensitive topics or pro-democracy activity just to protect their, their, their safety. So, in, in her testimony, Elsa talks about how like the FBI would actively work with her and be like, “Yeah, we, we see people are following you around campus,” but Stanford basically did nothing, and she’s very, very angry about this, and I, I can understand why.And obviously this is due to financial pressure that... And one analysis found that Chinese students contributed around $12 billion to the US economy in 2016 to 2017 alone. Well, I mean- And then aMalcolm Collins: large- The, the, keep in mind how effing crazy this is. This isn’t a student [00:28:00] saying like, “I’m being harassed.”Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: This is a student being, saying, “I have a note from the FBI saying I’m being harassed on campus. Can we do something about this?”Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, so what, a, a thing that she points out, which is interesting to me, and I don’t know why specifically this university is doing it, but she points out that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has already created an information guide and reporting structure that directs targeted students to relevant offices and connects them with law enforcement, and she wants Stanford to just do the same thing.She’s like, “This doesn’t require a congressional act. Like Stanford, please.” But good for you, University of Wisconsin-Madison. I don’t know why you have such a-Malcolm Collins: It’s a good school. I seriously considered it before I got into St. Andrew’s.Simone Collins: I don’t know anything about it. But-Malcolm Collins: It’s just a, the high quality state schoolit’sSimone Collins: just good? So-Malcolm Collins: It, it’s also where they went to in That ‘70s Show.Simone Collins: Oh, I, I didn’t watch that show ‘cause I can’t stand ‘70s aesthetics, so that makes sense. The, the big element of this, and why this is [00:29:00] happening, and, and why I think we should acknowledge this and understand this, is that the, the, there’s one of the three magic weapons of CCP theory is this united front.It, it’s about basically seizing and maintaining power, and it, it’s supposed to basically unite all fronts that can be united. So this is part of a very concerted and presumably well-funded strategy. And the idea is to unite all fronts that can be united in order to neutralize opposition and build the broadest possible coalition of around CCP objectives.It’s basically, you know how you described the urban monoculture as being this, this this culture that says that it, like, accepts diversity, and it tries to be, you know, as inclusive as possible- Mm-hmm ... and everyone should be, you know, a member, and you could be from any religious background, but then if you scratch just beneath the surface, everyone has exactly the same views and values?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: That’s kind of what [00:30:00] they’re going for. So domestically, the United Front focuses on groups that the party sees as important but not fully under its control, like ethnic minorities or religious communities or private entrepreneurs or intellectuals or non-communist democratic parties, the new middle class, the professional strata.And then they try to draw these groups that are not, like, CCP hardliners into party-led institutions such as the Chinese People’s Political Consult- Mm ... Consultative Conference and various other mass organizations where they get limited representation, but they’re expected to take the CCP’s lead. So they’re basically like, “Yes,” like, “United Front, let’s all be together,” but, like, let’s be clear, you’re gonna toe the line.And again, that’s, it’s just very urban monoculture coded to me. Overseas though, the way that this works is they try to shape foreign environments in ways that are favorable to the CCP by influencing the Chinese diaspora communities, and also elites and media and [00:31:00] academic institutions, and businesses and politicians in other countries.And the activities described by governments and researchers who are looking into the effects of the United Front’s strategy include promoting pro-Beijing narratives and building relationships with foreign elites, like Elon Musk, or guiding or co-opting Chinese language media, gathering intelligence, facilitating ilicit- illicit technology transfer and in some cases interfering in, in foreign politics.Not as effectively as Russia does, in our opinion, but you know, it’s, it’s a thing. And definitely these, these student orgs that are very active at universities are a, a meaningful branch of this. The fact that embassies are funneling money to them, which is not being reported, and even sometimes approving their presidents, is just enough, enough for me to be like, “Okay, this is just a clear and organized strategy.”And I do think that universities should be, like, clear to people about this. Like, “Hey, our university is a place that is [00:32:00] contributing to the technological and scientific advancement of our country.” Yeah. “And also, there are foreign national organizations that are at this university that are trying to basically, like-” send all that information to their country.And let’s just be aware of that as a thing. Remember, like, there used to be these posters, like, “Loose lips sink ships.” You know, we used to talk about this culturally as a, as a country.Malcolm Collins: But I just don’t know if, like, you can sell that to the type of person who works at an AI company.Simone Collins: And that’s a big concern ‘Cause there already have been concrete AI IP-related theft cases and Chinese nationals.So a Chinese national working at Google in California was arrested in 2024 and charged with stealing over 500 confidential files on Google’s advanced AI infrastructure and chips. On Google. Like, Google, they’re, they have, they’re not messing around. Like, they’re not a, a, a fly-by-night seat-of-the-pants, like, AI [00:33:00] startup in the same way like I- YeahI as, like, Anthropic, right? Like, they’re, they’re careful now. They are. But, you know, maybe they’d make a mistake. Google, though? I mean, they have, like, the big money. But the DOJ alleges that this guy uploaded files describing Google’s TPU-based data center architecture and AI supercomputing platform to a personal account while secretly working for two Chinese-based China-based tech startups, and building AI platforms and large model infrastructure.The FBI director, Christopher Wray, framed this as part of the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation. They, so it is clear. I mean, like, everyone knows, ‘cause this is just China’s, like, overtly open strategy with regard to, like, mm, putting it diplomatically, tech transfer, is-Malcolm Collins: YeahSimone Collins: they will steal American tech and/or reverse engineer it, which is what’s really been happening mostly with with Claude and [00:34:00] with OpenAI-related IP. They seem to just mostly be reverse engineering it for now. But their whole strategy is, “Yeah, we’re just gonna steal it.” China is doing many other interesting things in AI innovation with a, a, a really heavy focus, per what I’ve read and heard from some insiders, on, like, robotics.So they’re, they’re doing, they’re doing innovative stuff, too, and, but they’re still totally sticking to their old tried and true just copy it and steal it strategy, and they should ‘cause it has worked well for them.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s worked well so far. I mean, it’s- Yeah ... it’s, it’s, long term it might not...I mean, o- obviously their country’s sort of falling apart right now, which is, you know, whatever.Simone Collins: Yeah, but, you know, they then more than anyone else needs the deus ex machina of AI and of tech to fix the problem. So they are extra in... They’re extra incentivized to steal tech. And the, the US government on many fronts, I’m not gonna read all of them that, that I pulled up is, is very explicit about the [00:35:00] fact that this is a major security risk.And this is one of the big themes of AI, is, like, who’s gonna have AGI first? Who’s gonna have, like, the- Yeah ... the ultimate AI weapon? The House Select Committee on the CCP held a hearing on China- And AI this year where the chair stated that Chinese companies, quote, “Rely on Western AI models,” end quote, and are buying what they legally can and stealing what they cannot at every layer of the technology stack.Witnesses framed theft and replication of US models and tools as a central cheat code in AI strategy. And most of the cases in which AI, A- IP has been stolen just aren’t public because frankly they’re so embarrassing and so dangerous, Yeah ... that they just don’t want things to come out. Now to be fair OpenAI especially after sort of coming...They had, like, this come to Jesus moment when, when DeepSeek first, like, I guess hit the market and everyone was like, “Oh my God.” They, they got really public about how important it was [00:36:00] to protect themselves, I guess. And they have, like, biometrics protected rooms with, like, you have to do a retinal scan- Yeahor whatever. But it’s only a matter of time until this stuff is stolen, and I, I just feel like people should be a little bit more aware of the fact that spying is actively happening. Malcolm and I actually, like, y- you and I, Malcolm- This is why you can- ... we’re pretty open about spies ...Malcolm Collins: trust Chinese people.They all might be spies. That’s what she’s saying.Simone Collins: Well, we, we’ve been accused of being spies. We’ve been, like-Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we’ve been accused of being spiesSimone Collins: for Israel. We, we joke about it all the time, but also, like, jokes aside now, I’m kind of like, “Oh, God,” you know?Malcolm Collins: This is actuallySimone Collins: a problem. Why do all theMalcolm Collins: other spies get money and not us?Simone Collins: Yeah, no one’s promising us fancy s- spy jobs.Malcolm Collins: CCC, I am so cheap. You support my family-Simone Collins: We, yeah, we wanna be spy family. Make, make us the real spy family ...Malcolm Collins: I will, I will not send you like, confidential information ‘cause I don’t have access to it, but I can at least stop [00:37:00] saying bad things about you for a little bit of money.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, we’ll be paid shills. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll help with the united front. We would be such bad shills for China.Malcolm Collins: It’s true.Simone Collins: We’d be really... No, like, we’d be legit bad shills for China. We’d be really bad shills for Europe. I’m trying to think who could actually, like-Malcolm Collins: Israel could pay us. We’d be decent enough.Just stop doing the, the, the meme videos.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, remember when Qatar was gonna fly us out to one of the, the Doha debates?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I, I d- I do, I’d stay inSimone Collins: Doha. And then, and then, no, immediately, like, in our next few podcasts, you’re like, “Ugh, Qatar’s so whatever.” I can’t even remember what you said about them that was not flattering, but, like, you can’t help, you can’t help but, like, anti-shill for people.And, and that robbed us of a potential-Malcolm Collins: I don’t think thatSimone Collins: has anything to do with it ...Malcolm Collins: business class flight.Simone Collins: Oh, well. Well, I like fancy flights. I like fancy things.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, let me [00:38:00] see-Simone Collins: I, I’m literally covered in infant urine right now. It’s, she needs a break. She needs some bribery. She needs some grease payments.Speaker 3: Speaking of grease payments, if you’re wondering why we don’t have a reform video going live today, we did. We filmed it. We even filmed it over the weekend. It was kids crawling over us and everything, but the video got corrupted somehow. So I’m going to be putting it on our paid Substack and Patreon immediately.I’m sorry about that, guys. I want to have it here, but it’s going to perform terribly in the algo because it starts without my video even working, and we had no idea. Obviously, it’s a big change, and I would just film one today that we could have go live tomorrow when it’s still relevant, but we have a news crew coming over today, so we can’t do that.So sorry about that, guys. But hey, excuse to give us money.Money, please.Speaker 4: Oh, no. No. There’s no money.Speaker 3: Money, please, money. Please.Malcolm Collins: Well, let’s, let’s end early today. Get [00:39:00] started early ‘cause I’m also about to fall asleep. That’s why I was eating those jelly beans, trying to get a little bit of sugar to keep me awakeSimone Collins: for- Oh, I’m so sorry I bore you to death with my- My, my grating female voice. I’m sorry, guys. I know, you had to listen to the, the female today.I’mMalcolm Collins: just, I’m just getting up so much earlier these days, you know?Simone Collins: Yeah. No, Malcolm is, Sorry, guys. He’s still not getting sleep. Okay, then I will, Are you gonna go buy your potato and yourMalcolm Collins: shallots? Yes, ‘cause I wanna taste v- v- forest-found soup.Simone Collins: Foraged. Well, oh, yeah. Then it’s an invasive species from China, right?Malcolm Collins: Yes, China. All right. We gotta get rid of this Chinese mushrooms.Simone Collins: Golden oyster mushrooms. Yeah, so thematic, I guess. Yeah. Nothing, nothing says- I loveMalcolm Collins: you, Simone.Simone Collins: I love you, too. Don’t... Do you want me to pick up your food so you don’t fall asleep at the wheel?Malcolm Collins: I’ll make it.Simone Collins: I don’t, I don’t like those [00:40:00] odds.“I’ll make it.” That’s not what you wanna hear.Malcolm Collins: I had a bunch of jelly beans. I’m up. I’m up. I’m up.Simone Collins: I don’t know what flavor.Malcolm Collins: All the flavors. That’s the freaking point of jelly beans, all the flavors.Simone Collins: Man, I fill our grocery cart with, like, apples, and bananas, and broccoli, and cauliflower, and then I see this giant container of jelly beams, as Titan calls them.Jelly beams. Jelly beams. Octavian still calls them his blanket Blankwet. Blankwet.Malcolm Collins: Blankwet. Blank-Simone Collins: Blankwet.Malcolm Collins: The day he told us about how he’s gonna have a Chinook helicopter move the house to the woods.Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘Cause-Malcolm Collins: Simone found a spot she thought was beautiful in the woods.Simone Collins: I... That spot is perfect.Malcolm Collins: And so he says it’ll bring the house and it’ll bring the teddy bear in the house over so we don’t have to worry about that.Simone Collins: [00:41:00] Well, and we’re also gonna buy vans and then drive them into the Chinook helicopter, and the kids will be in the vans when they drive. Yeah. It’s a whole thing. He also said today he was gonna, he was gonna move the climbing dome over, the, the one that we got.Malcolm Collins: Oh, he did? Okay. Yeah. That’s good. That’s good.Simone Collins: So it, it is done.He’sMalcolm Collins: gonna have everything he needs down there. That’s funny, the idea of, like, moving the climbing dome inSimone Collins: the... The whole, the whole house.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: No, he’s... He thought about it a lot. He’s like, “How much does our house weigh?” He’s trying to figure it out. I think the, the the average house weighs, a- according to Alexa, around 300 and- 300,000 pounds.So our m- ours must weigh a lot more, ‘cause the average American house now is made out of, like, particle board and sawdust. So- Yeah ... ours, made out of all this, like, local stone, has to be a lot more. It has to weigh a lot more.Malcolm Collins: I think it’s gonna be harder to move in a Chinook helicopter.Simone Collins: I think it’s gonna fall apart, Malcolm.I think Octavian’s gonna break our [00:42:00] house with his Chinook helicopter. But whatever, you know. Then we’ll have a Chinook helicopter. He just wants to live in a helicopter anyway, so it’s fine. Sorry, I’ll let you get your potato. Go. I love you. Don’t die.Malcolm Collins: Did you see the recipe? Is it doable?Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: We’ll do it with coconut milk with my plan, ‘cause I said that’ll give it a more luxurious taste.Simone Collins: Ah.Malcolm Collins: The part you- Per yearSimone Collins: now ...Malcolm Collins: you can skip is the making the broth.Simone Collins: This is so written by AI. Because no one, no one would say 700 to 900 grams fresh golden oyster mushrooms. The more the better. They carry the show. Use mostly caps. Save some stems for broth. That’s ‘cause I gotMalcolm Collins: mad at it the first time. It was like, “Chop up some oyster mushrooms and then put it in a mushroom bo- broth.”And I’m like, “I don’t want a freaking canned mushroom broth for my mushroom soup.”Simone Collins: Ew. Yeah, that’s disgusting. Yukon [00:43:00] Gold potato, peeled and diced. N- this might take a really long time to bring to a simmer, 15 to 20 minutes. Oh, I guess if you go now and I start right away. Oh, blend. Oh yeah, we’re pureeing it.Malcolm Collins: Pureeing the what?Simone Collins: TheMalcolm Collins: soup. Which part of it?Simone Collins: The whole thing.Malcolm Collins: Does it say blend at the end? Because it certainly- Yeah ... doesn’t say blend at the beginning.Simone Collins: Yeah, it blends at the end and you f- oh, you’re gonna need cream. I-Malcolm Collins: It always says you can use coconut milk instead of cream.Simone Collins: Oh, okay, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Very explicitly.Simone Collins: Mushrooms, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Full blend potato plus cream. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a cream of mushroomsoup. Yeah. Separate. So I’m sauteing the onions f- or sorry, I’m sauteing the [00:44:00] mushrooms before the first and then I put into water and then I simmer them for 20 minutes and then I s- strain and then I add a softened potato.Malcolm Collins: Why don’t you ask for a different recipe, okay?Simone Collins: Yeah. Did you ask Grok? Grok can’t cook.Malcolm Collins: Go to Perplexity and ask a recipe and show me what I’m getting GeeSimone Collins: whiz. Okay.Malcolm Collins: You could do it right now, Simone, okay?Simone Collins: I know.Malcolm Collins: And ask for a-Simone Collins: I will ...Malcolm Collins: a cream of mushroom soup, okay? Not like a m- a normal mug, because then it’s gonna give you, like, weird...Simone Collins: Please give me a cream of mushroom soup recipe that is compatible with foraged golden oyster mushrooms.Perplex- why would you even ask a... No. [00:45:00] Grok is a man AI, and not, like, a chef man AI, just a normal man AI.There we go. Okay. So we need one pound of golden oyster mushrooms. Totally have. Three tablespoons of butter, check. Olive oil, check. Medium yellow onion or two shallots diced, so we need the shallots. Garlic, have it. One cup fre- one... Oh, sorry, one teaspoon fresh thyme. We don’t necessarily need that, and I think- Yeahwe might have it dried. Kosher salt, black pepper, flour, chicken or vegetable broth. I have bouillon, which I can use. Heavy cream, half-and-half or whole milk. We have whole milk. Soy sauce or tamari. We have soy sauce at least. We might have tamari. Lemon juice or dry sherry, optional but recommended. So you prep the onions, you saute them, you build the base, you thicken it, and then you [00:46:00] blend to make a smooth soup, and then you finish gently by stirring in the cream and soy sauce.I think this would be better with heavy cream, but- Okay.Malcolm Collins: Do it with heavy cream ...Simone Collins: we don’t have any heavy cream. So can you get two shallots and heavy cream?Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: Beautiful.Malcolm Collins: I loveSimone Collins: you. And if you wanna get chicken broth, you can, but we have bouillon that I can use to reconstitute broth.Malcolm Collins: Chicken broth will probably be easier if I get it, right?Simone Collins: Eh. You know what? We might have some. I have bouillon cubes. I really shouldn’t be lazy, so don’t... Yeah, don’t buy things. Let’s save money.Malcolm Collins: All right, love you.Simone Collins: I love you too.Speaker: Can I handle that chicken for you? Oh, yeah.I remember. Let me handle him. [00:47:00] Let me handle him. I- I’m gonna get a brown one. Let me handle him. I’m probably the one to take care of this guy by hand. Mommy, I wanted to hold a chicken. Okay, go pick one up, my love. But it’s harder. Titan seems pretty good at catching them. I wanna hold one. I’m pretty good at...Can you?Mommy, get a chicken right now, please. Look at all these flowers in this tree, Mommy. Wow,Speaker 2: they’re so pretty. GetSpeaker: a chicken rightSpeaker 2: now for me. Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Canguys. Be nice. Thank you, friends. Yeah, there you go, Indy. Gently. Thankyou. This is a public episode. 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Malcolm and Simone Collins react to Nick Fuentes’ shocking declaration: “I’m a moderate non-woke Democrat in 2026.” Malcolm’s long-standing prediction that Fuentes would align with the Democratic coalition has come true — and the clips prove it.In this episode, they break down Fuentes’ revealed preferences vs. his rhetoric, his pattern of undermining Republican candidates during elections, his obsession with destroying the GOP and harming Israel, his weak stance on immigration enforcement, and why this move exposes his true priorities. They also discuss the “Nazi Democrat” candidate in Maine, accelerationism, the health of the right-wing movement without deontological extremists, and what this means for the future of American politics.A must-watch for anyone following the Nick Fuentes saga, MAGA, or the realignment happening on the right.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we get a big heaping helping of I was right, I called it, it was the craziest conspiracy theory I had ever launched. So people will know there have been a number of episodes where I predicted that Nick Fuentes would join the Democratic coalition.And there was actually one entire episode that was nothing about but this exact topic, but I never aired that episode because I thought it was just too crazy to air as an independent episode. I thought people would say, “Malcolm, you’ve fallen off. This is crazy. You’re going too hard here. He’s never actually just gonna come out.Like, he may act like a Democrat, but he’s not just gonna join the coalition.” And he has.Speaker: 2026, vote Dem- I’m a Democrat now. I’m a moderate Democrat in 2026. I don’t know about ‘28. For 2026, I am a non-woke Democrat. Hi, my name’s Nick Fuentes. I’m an Afro-Latino, non-woke Democrat. I care about affordability. [00:01:00] I care about foreign interventions. I care about the border. I’m a non-woke, moderate Democrat.I think the GOP needs to be destroyed. I think the corrupt criminal government of Trump needs to be slowed down. We need to impeach the orange. It’s time to put this in a peach. Trump needs to be placed inside of a crystal. He needs to be impeached. This fat orange, tiny hands needs to be impeached.And then in ‘28, no Vance, no Rubio. We have to burn down the whole party. We need to elect a dark horse who’s gonna put America first. I’m not listening to anybody else. No Vance, no Rubio, America first. That’s the ma-- And that is all that matters anymore. That is the only thing that matters. I’m not voting for a Democrat unless they’re really, un- unless it’s, like, um, me.Unless it’s a, unless it’s a Nick Fuentes Democrat. Unless a Nick Fuentes Democrat wins the nomination, I won’t vote for a Democrat. I’m, I’m never Vance. I’m never Rubio. I’m an America first guy. So Tucker and all the [00:02:00] rest of them, they’re gonna try to shut me down. They’re gonna try to get Vance in there in ‘28, and you gotta be...You gotta wisen up and realize we gotta take our own side here. None of this nonsenseMalcolm Collins: And I will note here that I have seen some people coping and saying that these clips are him joking. I have watched enough Nick Fuentes to know the difference between when he is entirely joking and when he is...Because he does everything in a jocular manner. When he’s saying the stuff he most sincerely believes more than anything in the world, he’ll add a joke here or there to it.Speaker 6: And if you want to say that this is a joke, really the only line in here that I think you could use as evidence, because everything else is completely in line with everything he said in the past, is the I’m an Afro-Latino. But this only works if you’re unfamiliar with the Nick nick fuentes lore. Nick’s grandfather was Mexican.He admits this and identifies this way. And in his DNA test, he is partially African. Small, like 1%, but he is an Afro-Latino. And [00:03:00] so I think what he’s doing here is in everything he says, whether it’s right wing or left wing in a traditional context, he always throws in some spice, some stuff to piss people off.But he’s trying to performatively lean into the identity politicsSpeaker 15: I also want to point out here that I do not dislike Nick as a person. If anything, I think that this is a good development for him because he has been cheerleading Democrat causes for a while now. And to just be able to come out and admit like what his political team is, I think shows a degree of integrity instead of LARPing as somebody who’s right wing.And there’s nothing like, okay, like I’m against the Democrats’ agenda, but he has explained why he holds these points. These points are in line with the Democratic agenda. And I don’t think that he’s being necessarily intellectually dishonest in how he has laid these out. So I can’t hold animosity over that.Malcolm Collins: But if [00:04:00] you look specifically where I think this is validated, because maybe you could say the whole, “I’m joining the Democrats, I’m a moderate Democrat now, a non-woke Democrat.”First, that’s a weird way to say it if he’s joking, right? The, the coming out explicitly as a non-woke Democrat is it’s, he, he’s, he’s not putting on, like, an act, like, “I’ve become woke,” or something like that. He is, he is clarifying his position while in the same speech saying that he still can’t quite bring himself to vote for most Democrats yet.Which to me, that doesn’t, that’s not a jo- like, that’s him sayingSimone Collins: plainly- Yeah, if, if it were a bit, he wouldn’t be speaking that way ...Malcolm Collins: And yes, and then later in the same speech, which we’ll get to, he explicitly says that we should vote for a Democrat over a a, an Indian Republican. A, a, Wamatha, Ramaswamy?VivekSimone Collins: RamaswamySpeaker 3: So what is the alternative? Well, not [00:05:00] everybody’s gonna like this, but in November, there’s gonna be two candidates that can win on the ballot in Ohio, and it is Acton on the Democrat side and Ramaswamy on the Republican side. If it can’t be Ramaswamy, I think you know what it has to be. And so I’m gonna be calling on everybody to be going to Ohio, and we’re gonna give people a choice.You have an option, stay home. But I think if you really wanna make a difference and help, we’re gonna have to hold our noses and we’re gonna have to vote Democrat.And I’d point out here how quickly he flipped on this, “Oh, I’m a Democrat now, but I won’t vote for Democrats,” to, “All of my fans need to get out there and vote for a Democrat.”This is why I can only help but roll my eyes when somebody’s like, “Well, you know, he did say that he was never going to tell people to vote for Democrats, so it shouldn’t really be seen immediately afterwards as soon as it’s election season.” Like, there’s a pattern to this, guys.And again, I am [00:06:00] not anti Nick Fuentes content. I find it often quite entertaining, sometimes insightful, but it’s important to look at his revealed preferences and his end goals that can be discerned from looking at the revealed preferences, what he actually does when it mattersMalcolm Collins: When, and Vivek is awesome, man. Like, he’s-Simone Collins: Vivek is awesome, yeah. I agree ...Malcolm Collins: one of my favorite Vivek quotes I heard this when I was at the Libertarian convention. And it was Vivek versus another one of the leading Republican candidates, one of the boring ones who I don’t like.Anyway, so the other one, like, wanted everyone to come with out their guns to the meeting. And you know, it’s the Libertarians, so they didn’t wanna do that. ItSimone Collins: was in New Hampshire?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was New Hampshire. HeSimone Collins: was asking everyone to come without guns in New Hampshire.Malcolm Collins: Well, because he’s like, you know, “I’m a...”I can understand how he might be scared. You know, “I’m a presidential candidate, I get lots of death threats.” They all get lots of death threats. You know, we get death threats, right? Anyway, Vivek then comes, and he has no restrictions on it. He’s like, “Yeah, just anybody come.” And then he gets up on stage and the guy who I, who was telling me this story, he came with, like, an [00:07:00] open carry, like, AR-15.You know, like, a very well, like, strapped to this event, right? And he’s like- Wait,Simone Collins: Vivek, he, he came with a rifle strapped to him, not like a handgun, like under his-Malcolm Collins: I think it was, I think it was a rifle from what, from what I remember of the story. So he he’s giving the speech and he then at one point in the speech is, is like, “Oh yeah, and if I ever start doing this stuff,” because he’s like, somebody’s like, you know, I can’t remember, like, you know, “Well, politicians say X or say Y.”And he goes, “Well, if I start doing that, you know they’ve gotten to me, and you know what to do.” And he pointed to this guy with the rifle. Oh,Simone Collins: no.Malcolm Collins: Oh, mySimone Collins: God ... andSpeaker 22: Do. Yes, sir.Do it, Regal.Malcolm Collins: I love that. That’s, that’s how you, n- I mean, that is so much more based [00:08:00] than anything Nick Fuentes has ever done, to point to the guy in the crowd with theSimone Collins: freakingMalcolm Collins: rifle- You know what to doand being like, “If I ever go for this stuff, you know what to do.” That’s amazing.Speaker 8: And ‘07 Vivek, the avatar of destruction, we love you. Uh, I do support Trump, but you’re awesome. You gotta run in 20- after Trump wins, you gotta run in ‘28. Honestly, I’m, I’m on board for a Vivek ‘28. I’m on board for a Vivek presidency. I think the ideal primary in 2028 is Kanye West and Vivek Ramaswamy. W AmericaSpeaker 9: And I want to be clear here because sometimes people will be like, well, Asmongold says he agrees with 99% of stuff that Nick Fuentes said. And there was a time when I felt that way too. And I was like, hey, we got to give this guy some benefit of the doubt. He totally dunked on Piers Morgan. Like that was hilarious.You know, he says funny stuff on stream. And so I would watch individual clips he said, like him glazing Vivek here and think, oh, this guy is great. I mean, other people will say that. Like here we’ll point out where he’ll do some anti-ice stuff. [00:09:00] And then people will say, oh yeah, but here’s him saying some pro-ice stuff.And it doesn’t matter if with somebody like this, who when it doesn’t matter, you know, when it’s not an election cycle where Vivek is running, he will glaze Vivek. And then the moment it’s relevant to our side winning, enacting stricter border policy, actually protecting unborn children, he comes in and he’s like, no, no, no, no, no.Now I’m working against him. And so this has significantly soured me on him is I realized that he has this chameleon persona where he will just take on any position that he thinks will grow his base within a right-wing audience when it’s not election season. And then the moment it becomes election season and it matters, he goes full on against us.And this is why when people are like, oh, you know, look at this clip that counters what you just said here. Look at this clip. And it’s like, well, if those came from [00:10:00] beforehand, then he’s longing to grow an audience. Like the fact that he is contradicting himself makes it worse. And this is coming from me, somebody who prides himself in updating his views.If you watch our videos, you will see me updating my views, but you can see the directionality of those views updating. It’s not like I’m here, you know, pro this, pro this, pro this, pro this. And the moment it matters, I turn against it, right? With me, it’s more like for a long time, I was like, well, you know, maybe the trans community, some people are legitimately trans and we just need to handle this with kids.And then I got access to more evidence. And I was like, I was wrong about that. And I admit that I was wrong about that. And I used to be a Democrat too. Like I was wrong about that. But this is all sort of a directional evolution, which is not what we see with Fuentes. He doesn’t really look like an evolution of political beliefs, but either [00:11:00] somebody who is hiding his original goals or somebody who has just been captured by anti-Indian and anti-Jewish hatred to the extent that he is willing to sabotage everything else he has ever said he stood for in favor of that.Speaker 10: Funny, , y- I actually, when we speak about my evolution, I actually, if you look at our early videos on Nick Fuentes, they , are pretty glowing on Nick Fuentes. , Basically, , I did... There’s a funny scene where Nexinor is like, “Who’s this leaflet person?” And then somebody in chat is like, “People are calling her a Nazi.”And he goes, “Well, I, I probably like her then. Let’s see what funny jokes she told.” Or, no, that was, that was Shoeonhead when somebody said, somebody said she’s a Nazi, and she goes, “Oh, I wonder what funny jokes she said.” , But like, , I sort of felt the same way. All the regular people who annoy me were attacking Nick, and so I’m immediately like, “Okay, I’m gonna give him the benefit of the doubt.Like, let’s see what this guy’s about.” And he starts with some fun stuff. , And then he starts hoping that we lose the war in Iran and starts hoping that our side loses elections and it, and all of a sudden I’m like, “Oh, God,” like, “this guy is [00:12:00] very against our best interestSpeaker 21: Quick side note here, but like we need to, I think as a movement, be clear, , in terms of like we can say that there are differences between ethnic groups. We can say that there are differences between cultural groups. We can say that anchor babies are a problem in the country. We can say that in-group preference among certain ethnicities is a problem among, within this country.But this just totalistic othering of people from different ethnicities that now show ideologically in their actions, in what they’re doing, that they align with an American vision. Like take Leaflet. Leaflet’s, I think, a sep- second-generation Japanese. , She might be further back than that, but at least I know she’s ethnically Japanese.In everything that she has ever done, she has shown herself to be on team, right? , so what I’m supposed to other her for this sort of like purity? Aria Babu, Indian, who we’ve talked about, who had this wonderful essay on like why witches are evil and why we need to go back to Puritanism [00:13:00] and, , clearly on team. And I just don’t think it’s helpful to create gating, , where people who are clearly... And, and it’s not culturally American. It’s, it’s not what the, the backwoods people did. It’s not what the Puritans did. Maybe the Cavaliers did it, but they were always dbags. , And the Quakers did it, but they’re where woke comes from, so also dbags., So I don’t see the point in this sort of, , racially pure angle on things when the real challenge, which is the harder challenge, is just to get people to understand that you can’t just import anyone and expect them to behave like anyone else. , You lose that battle if you decide that you won’t cave on the racial purity battle.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I was, I was telling this story to Simone, and he’s like, “Well...”Because at first, before he then just later goes on and is like, “Yeah, we should vote for Democrats,” he, he starts by saying... And I wanna get into, like, the logic of all of this. Yeah. ‘Cause I think this can con- confuse some people, and it really shouldn’t be confusing. It’s actually, the [00:14:00] reason why I was able to predict this is it’s highly in alignment with everything he’s been doing for a long time at this point.And the continuing to pretend to be right-leaning, I think, was the joke, right? Like, he’s, he’s not really right-leaning on any major policy anymore. He promotes social wealth redistribution he promotes like, no tariffs, like, sort of globalist market conditions. He promotes America not really exercising its, its power on the world stage.Even when it’s just, like, a, an easy net benefit to us, like in Venezuela. Like, that’s not even, like, a boots on the ground. That’s just, like, a, oh, yeah, like... But I wanna get into the psychology of how he got to this place, because I think for some people who believe the leftist vision of Nick Fuentes, this can be weird or confusing.But, like, if you’ve been actually listening to what he’s been saying for a while now this is not remotely surprising. This is the d- And, and note here, people can say, “Well, you [00:15:00] know, the, the, he, he has so many values that don’t align with d- values of the rest of the Democratic coalition.” And I pointed out that the Democratic coalition is much more based on what they want to destroy than what they want to promote.And by this what I mean is you are able to have Islamists on the same side as LGBTQ extremists in the in, in, in this faction. He has more in common with, well, basically either group than those two groups have with each other. But he, at, at a, at a, at a fundamental level... Because w- we’ll talk about, like, what he says he believes.I don’t wanna get... I wanna get into the second funny part here, ‘cause this also surprised Simone. It’s, he goes, “Well, vote for Nick Fuentes style Democrats.” And Simone was like, “What does that mean?” And I go, “Well, you know there is a Nazi Democrat now.” Mm. And she’s like, “Wait, there’s a Nazi Democrat?” And I’m like, “Yeah, you haven’t heard about it?”So let’s get into this. This is Garren Pattler. He’s a Democrat [00:16:00] senatorial candidate, a of-Simone Collins: What state?Malcolm Collins: Maine.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: He’s the current front runner and presumptive Democratic nominee. In 2007 while live, i- while on leave in Croatia, the young mariner, after tours in Iraq he got a tattoo.Now he says he had no idea- Oh ... what it was. He’s like- This is funny ... “Oh, I just got it off the wall in the tattoo shop.”Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The problem is it is a death head symbol used by the SS-Simone Collins: Yeah ...Malcolm Collins: para- paramilitary force central to the Holocaust and other atrocities. It’s a, it’s a very central neo- c- it’s, it’s, like, much worse than, say, like, a swastika ‘cause with a swastika you could say, “I got it confused for that Buddhist symbol,” or something, right?And he claims he had no idea what this was. He had no idea what it was until it picked up. But it seems,Simone Collins: He’s an alleged Nazi. Like, he deniesMalcolm Collins: it. He has an SS tattoo.Simone Collins: I mean, look, also the two lightning bolts, they look awesome. [00:17:00] Like, that’s the problem.Malcolm Collins: You think it’s like the Harry Potter tattoo?Yeah. I go to somebody and I go, “I got the Harry Potter tattoo on my forehead.” TheSimone Collins: two of them.Malcolm Collins: And it’s the SS, right? That’s the- Yeah.Simone Collins: That’s, I mean, I, I could see it. I could genuinely see it happening. So he’s an... I would put him down as alleged Nazi.Malcolm Collins: But what’s been very fun about this candidate, and you can watch a bunch of videos online of people freaking out about this, is rightists will try to get leftists to condemn him for being a Nazi.They’re like, “You will accuse Trump of being a Nazi over, like, nothing, right? This guy’s got an, an SS tattoo.” Oh, no.Simone Collins: I’ve... See, and now that you mention him, I have heard of him, and specifically from leftist newscasters or, like, well, news commentators on YouTube. And they’re all like, “No,” like, “It, it, he, it was a mistake.”This is totally defended on the leftMalcolm Collins: Yeah, they don’t care. Like, the left doesn’t care, ‘cause the left doesn’t care about, like, being against Nazis, as I’ve pointed out. Like, they’re, they’ll be pro-Nazi if it’s on their side. Like, this has- No, no, they just say- ... long been normative forSimone Collins: them.Malcolm Collins: Which is- They don’tSimone Collins: say he’s a Nazi [00:18:00]Malcolm Collins: So, so with the recent Nick Fuentes turn I, I, I think I should explain to people, like, how he psychologically got here, because this is, this is also fairly interesting.Simone Collins: Well, and let me ask a question that I think might be top of mind for a lot of people, too. Is this just about being path dependent on being rebellious? And if you are far right, the only rebellious thing you can do after a certain point is go left. Like, that’s the last rebellious thing. No,Malcolm Collins: because w- when, when, when you, when you saw his coming out as a moderate Democrat, as a non-woke Democrat, and you saw the things that he was rabidly protesting, like the Trump administration, locking up everyone in the Trump administration, ending all of their efforts when you see...I mean, he has streams where he’s crashed out about ICE being too aggressive before.Simone Collins: Right?Malcolm Collins: Like- Wait,Speaker 2: The other thing I’m really worried about is what’s happening at these ICE detention centers, where it’s happening not far from where I live in Broadview, Illinois, [00:19:00] where they set up an ICE detention facility, and the administration is rounding these people up, which I support, but they’re doing it in a very provocative waySpeaker 11: Note here, , many such quotes from Fuentes. We’ve got ones like, , “You can perform brutality without being brutal. , He called ICE performatively cruel. , And like we know that they’re not.They’re doing what they need to do. When I watch these videos of ICE, I often feel like I see them being nice while people are calling them like the N-word and stuff, and just trying their best to get things done often, , while people are violently resisting and harassing them. I can imagine almost no other group as beleaguered and unappreciated for their jobs., I, I feel so sorry for what they go through every day, and to see Nick piling on with this stuff... And people can be like, “Well, here’s where he’s supporting them, and here’s where he’s supporting them.” Or later in that very clip, he walks it back and is like, “Well, he never should have said it in the first place.”These people are working their butts off, man. He never should have said it in the first place. You’re not genuinely on [00:20:00] team if you’re doing thatSimone Collins: are you serious? He’s not aboutMalcolm Collins: the poor people. Yeah, yeah. He says it, it looks bad, and it’s, like, bad. And there’s no other way you can do it, right? Like, he, I- if you follow, like, the things he’s actually complained about and the things he complains about as sort of ideological points in that stream, this follows really directly from that.So there’s really two things that he wants more than anything. He wants the people involved with the Trump administration arrested and to face consequences for not going along with his vision of America’s future. And two, he wants Israel to suffer. And I note here that it’s not just Nick Fuentes that is making this move that we’ve seen to the left.David Duke made this move, Richard Spencer made this move, Richard Hanania made this move. A lot of people. And Richard Hanania, like, he, he’s been on our show before. I like, I, I, I, you know, pleasant enough guy, but he often talks when he’s on left shows, he goes, “Yeah, between X and Y years, I was a professional racist.”Right? Like, [00:21:00] people who really bit into the racist card have been, I think, sorely disappointed by how much the right is just not the party of racism anymore. And the left is okay with racism still, right? Like, they will... It’s very interesting if you watch leftist interview like Richard Hanania about his time as a racist or about his racist views, there really isn’t any condemnation for it in a, in a meaningful context.It’s not even like he needs to apologize for it. It’s just like, “Yeah, but you’re voting blue now, right?” And his primary bugaboos, right? Like, he doesn’t really... So, so one, you’ve gotta look at his behavior pattern. For every single election and midterm up until this one, he, this is when he always turns on the Democrat coding, right?He does this thing where when it’s not about to be a voting season, he pretends to be a Republican. And then whenever it’s about to be voting season, he always argues that either people shouldn’t vote for the Republican candidates, or like in this season-Simone Collins: Oh, that’s true. Yeah ... he was He was not [00:22:00] voting for Trump in the 2024 election.Malcolm Collins: What? Because he was very clearly anti-Trump in the 2024 p- political race. You remember that, right?Simone Collins: Yeah, I thought Richard Hanania into he turned anti-Trump, but were they just saying that to, like, rile people up?I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: Yes. ButSimone Collins: maybe SoMalcolm Collins: it appears- Yeah ... that he has held this position really strongly since 2024. And that he really starts to flare up in these positions whenever it’s an election cycle, and then he goes back to pretending to be a Republican in between election cycles when it won’t matter.And I, I, like, I want people to... Because when we’ve criticized him in the past, and I’m like, “I’m telling you right now, he’s not anti-Trump, he’s anti-Republican,” right? He wants the GOP destroyed. He wants our policy positions destroyed. He wants the policy positions of the leftists enacted, like loose borders and everything like that.I mean, keep in mind, if we have just a few, like a decade more of borders [00:23:00] as loose as they were under the Biden administration, it’s going to be very hard for Republicans to ever win elections again, right? Like, he’s attempting to put things in place that will prevent Republicans from winning in the future.Simone Collins: Wait, he wants loose borders?Malcolm Collins: Well, if he is willing to allow Democrats to become elected, then yes, functionally he does, because that’s the thing- ‘Cause I thoughtSimone Collins: he’s very anti-immigration.Malcolm Collins: He’s, this, this is the thing, and it’s important to look at what he says versus what he does. If you look at functionally what he does, like where he actually cares, where he’s willing to, like, throw down a gauntlet, right?He’s never thrown down the gauntlet over the issue of immigration. He has repeatedly thrown down the gauntlet over the issue of using Israel to help achieve our foreign objectives if it also helped Israel’s foreign objectives. A- he, no, I’m, we’ve seen this, right? Never once have I seen him meaningfully throw down the gauntlet on immigration.He throw, he’s, he’s attempted to throw it down over, like, generic [00:24:00] racism, but that doesn’t really matter, right? Because that’s obviously not going to win. W- and even where he’s engaged with immigration, as I, as I’ve noticed, like he’s been anti-ICE before and stuff like that, right? Like, he, he wants to, like, slow down immigration, but not in any way that could, like, look bad or cause a fuss.Which is very interesting when you contrast it with his public persona. But I think it’s important that people understand that his public persona, even within his mind, is a bit of an act, and not necessarily in line with his real goals for America.Simone Collins: I do get the impression when watching him, and I’m watching a bit of a, like, a stand-up bit, it’s almost like he took the concept of The Colbert Report and he just, like, did the method acting version of it, where he, like, lived it 24/7, like, lived a far right- personaMalcolm Collins: Yeah.Well, I mean, you don’t know that he’s doing this 24/7 or not, right? Like, Well,Simone Collins: whenever he’s on stream, then fine ...Malcolm Collins: and I, I put on a persona [00:25:00] on stream too, but my persona on stream is largely-Simone Collins: Dude, I talk with you all day. This is not a personaMalcolm Collins: Well, I don’t knowSimone Collins: Sorry, Malcolm, nice tryMalcolm Collins: I think I’m more provocative on streamSimone Collins: No Okay.NoMalcolm Collins: you’re not Maybe I don’t. I thought I put on a persona on stream. The, the, but, but if I don’t, I, I’m s- well, then I’m lying. I, I don’t, I apparently am just like this 24/7.Simone Collins: Yes,Malcolm Collins: you are You, you don’t think I state my values more extremely or more... You know, sometimes I try to be controversial for controversy’s sake or...Simone Collins: No? You’re way more controversial off cameraMalcolm Collins: Uh-oh, what have Malcolm saying off camera? Now you’re getting deep lore here, people.Simone Collins: Actually, I guess you’re, you’re more or less the same, but you’re less guarded in what you say because you know that you couldn’t be demonetized in our normal lifeMalcolm Collins: Oh, that’s true.That is true, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I have some spicier [00:26:00] takes that I’m like, “I don’t know, the world isn’t ready for this yet.” And, and I think that, that there are things that people could infer from things I’ve said on stream. Like, I, I think I’m significantly more ruthless and less caring about people I see as being dam- damaging to the future of human civilization than, than I come off as on screen.But anyway I think that- go run around and play, okay, sweetheart? You’re, you’re being a loud bugaboo.Now, now she’s crying about it, looking around like she’s been rejected.You can go play with anything in my room. Look, the whole room is full of treasure. Just no wiggling on my lap, okay?But what I find interesting, and what I’m really excited to see if, if, if we can see it happen is, is the left gonna embrace him like they did Richard Spencer?Simone Collins: Oh, no, Richard Anania.Malcolm Collins: [00:27:00] Sorry, Richard Anania.Simone Collins: That’s a very... That would be really interesting if suddenly he has his, So what, where, where this last happened actually is, the, the girlfriend, the former girlfriend and baby mama of Elon Musk.Malcolm Collins: Ah, who went lefty andSimone Collins: did all the lefty podcasts. She did. Yeah, she did her apology tour. Sorry. And she did fairly w- like she was, she was accepted but with skepticism. Like she went on the A Bit Fruity podcast and they were like, “Yeah, we’ll hear you out. I mean, I think I believe you, but I’m not 100% sure.”So I could see him being-Malcolm Collins: And I, I also wanna point out something about his recent messaging around this that’s different from his historic messaging. That I, I told people his historic messaging was b- BS, and some of his fans actually believed him. And I think that this time, hopefully he has said enough that people understand, “Oh, Malcolm actually understood the situation better than I did.”Which was he [00:28:00] would say when he told people to vote Democrat, he’s like, “This is an accelerationist thing. Like if you vote Democrat things will burn down faster, and then we can get the right type of Republican Party in place, then we can get the right type of Republican in place.”Simone Collins: Cozzie, I think you’re discounting the extent to which this is a subversive thing.That, one, it’s strategic on his part, that he knows that, like, to keep pushing the extent to which he can be subversive, he has to now go where no one has gone before: Democrat. But also, he’ll be able to pick up all the subversive Democrats who want to be rebellious in some way or more edgy, ‘cause there’s nothing Democrats hate more than the Democratic Party.IMalcolm Collins: don’t, I do not think that at all. Really? I think this is, if you watch the actual clip where he’s talking about this stuff, he is not in out there Nick Fuentes voice. He is not in hyperbolic Nick Fuentes voice. These appear to be- No, but- ... and they are in line with his-Simone Collins: To be a moderate Democrat is to be [00:29:00] subversive, but also weirdly apply to subversiveMalcolm Collins: Democrats No, I know.But when he’s doing his subversive thing, y- if you watch his show, he’ll have moments where he is subversive to be subversive, and he gets all giddy about it, and he does this whole act about it. This is not him being subversive to be subversive. This is his honest opinion. And I think that if you look at it in the context of his previous statements, which is a point I was trying to make, where historically, and part of his audience genuinely believed this, that he would tell people to not vote for Trump or tell people to vote Democrat with the understanding that if the Republican coalition became unviable without him and people like him that eventually a new form of Republicanism would grow that was more in line with the values he claimed to espouse.This has been his historic talking point. This talking point has been dropped, okay? Now he is just, “I am [00:30:00] pro-Democrat If the Republicans are in line with and allied with groups like interracialSimone Collins: marriage- Oh, yeah, because he’s anti, anti-Indian. Why is it so freaking trendy to be anti-Indian in America?Malcolm Collins: Well, actually, this is a wider thing. Both in the UK and in the United States, if you look at the Indian political class out- outside of, I mean, I guess you could consider Kamala Harris partially Indian, but, like, she doesn’t identify thatSimone Collins: way. No, she leaned into her, like, “I’m partially.”Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But if you look at the Indians who are, like, big in politics both in the UK and in the United States, the, the, the big names are mostly Republicans, right w- right wing.Vivek Chamath and and JD Vance’s wife. I know Chamath is...Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Chamath is very right-wing. Are you serious?Simone Collins: I know, but I was, I was gonna say, he’s not, like, that active as a political player, but I guess heMalcolm Collins: is. He has one of the most popular podcasts in the country.Simone Collins: Yeah, Make It Political.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. And the, there was a, [00:31:00] a leader, the last leader of the UK Conservative coalition was an Indian,Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, the prime minister.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He was, like, complicated. So, th- well, the point I’m making here is that Indians as an ethnic group have largely, at least in their elite caste aligned with right-leaning politics.As to why this has been the case, if people are wondering, like, they’re like, “That’s odd,” like, why would that make so much sense? There’s a couple reason why this has happened. And, and the right has, while skeptical of them being, like, full Americans, largely embrace them. I mean, there are issues with Indians that need to be addressed, like the nepotistic behavior they show in the tech world.But in the United States at least they have largely been accept- a- accepted by the political caste. And the reason is, is a fewfold. One is, is that they generally hate Muslims e- except for the Indian Muslims. But the, the Indian Muslims typically don’t make a lot of money in the United States.They’re, they’re you know, poorer immigrants. But the, the wealthy tech mogul Indians are mostly Hindis, Jain, Christian Indian [00:32:00] descendants. A few Sikhs, but not many. But, but don’t worry, the Sikhs also generally hate Muslims. So there’s that. And the second one is, is they’re disproportionately wealthy and disproportionately libertarian in sort of their value system.Now if you look at the overall Indian voting bloc, yes, they vote less. I’m just talking about the political class here. And obviously this infuriates people like Nick Fuentes, right? Who had this like, as I’ve described by Nick Fuentes in the past, if you wanna understand his ideology, he’s somebody who’s driven much more- By seeing the things he hates destroyed than seeing the things he cares about succeed.And so long as he can make political decisions that increase the probability of the things that annoy him or would not kowtow to his vision, it’s not even, like, broadly... Like, as I pointed out, he’s super against Vance. He’s had long rants against Vance. Vance is the most anti-war mainstream Republican candidate out there [00:33:00] right now.He, he is- Well,Simone Collins: and he’s Catholic.Malcolm Collins: And he’s Catholic, right? Like the idea that he would be anti-Vance shows that it is not about being anti-war for him. It’s about seeing Israel suffer. With, it’s not really about being pro-Democrat. It’s about seeing the Republicans suffer. And if you look at his value set, like if he actually believes that life began at conception, or if he was actually concerned about the population being replaced, or if he was ev- One, he’d be having kids.I mean, I’ve pointed this out before. He could trivially easily get a wife at this point, and I’ve always pointed out, to me, that’s always been the smoking gun. If you look- YouSimone Collins: don’t know. He could have a secret wife for all we know.Malcolm Collins: He doesn’t have a secret wife. And I always love this one, when people are like, “Oh, no, if you listen to his requirements for a wife, you’ll understand why he doesn’t have a wife.”And I’m like, “Bro, don’t be so brain cucked on this.” If you listen to his requirements for a wife, they are obviously intentionally designed to be something that [00:34:00] he will never meet. They are preferences he can make What, what’s the word I’m looking here for? Concessions on. You know, he’s like, “Oh, I wanna meet a wife who’s permanently offline and whatever.”Like, well, if... S- Do, do not sip on that. If that series of requirements prevents him from finding a woman, and yet he believes, like, the white race is being eradicated and being replaced, presumably preserving the right- white race, if, if you believe his world perspective, is more important than him finding a wife who meets all of these very particular peculiarities that he’s looking for if he actually believed all that.Now, again, I think he does actually believe it. I just think he’s far more motivated by the things he hates than the things he cares about. And so that he can functionally understand that if we get Democrats in power again, they’re likely gonna change elect- They’re gonna stuff the Supreme Court.They’re going to let in tons of illegal immigrants. We’re going to end up in a situation where we may [00:35:00] not be able to win again. We’re going to be... Like, if Kamala Harris had won, do you think our channel would still be on the air right now? Like, very obviously not.Simone Collins: Oh, God. That’s dark.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it’s true.They were, they w- they have been increasingly tightening the bolts on social media. And, and but that does help channels like his. One of the other things people noted that was a huge red flag for a lot of people is he was very prominently at the Jan 6th riot, yet was never arrested for it. And so a lot of people are like, “Why?”Right? And people will note, “Well, he didn’t participate in X part of the riot, or Y part of the riot,” or he was-Simone Collins: Well, that’s true. I mean, to be arrested you have to be convicted of actually breaking the law. Like- NotMalcolm Collins: true ...Simone Collins: assaulting someoneMalcolm Collins: Many Jan 6th terrorists were as tangentially connected as he wasSimone Collins: So they weren’t, like, actively vandalizing something and they still- Yeahgot arrested.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: I gotta look into thatMalcolm Collins: becauseSpeaker 16: So for context here, , we had [00:36:00] Nick Fuentes, who was at the Rally to Save America, performatively speaking there through a bullhorn, yelling things like, “Keep moving towards the Capitol. It appears we are taking the Capitol back,” , and, “Break down the barriers and disregard the police.” , And celebrating with rioters over lines like, “We have taken back the Capitol Building.”, And if you look at other individuals who have been charged, they did demonstrably less than this. , Individuals like Ray Epps, who was given a year of probation for encouraging the crowd, , which is... A- and he never, , you know, went into the buildings or anything like that. , Coy Griffin also, , never went into the buildings., And so it’s almost sort of ghoulish how Nick led his followers. Like, how did he know not to go into the buildings? How did he know to tell everyone else to go into the buildings, but he didn’t go into the buildings himself? , It wasn’t obvious to a lot of people that that was against the rules, so why didn’t he do it?Was he setting people up? Was he part of the setup? [00:37:00] Because it looks a lot , like, as an outsider, why did some people who encouraged the crowd get in trouble, and why did he not get in trouble? How did he know the imaginary lines not to cross when he was telling other people in no uncertain terms to cross those lines?Like, does that not seem curious to anyone? H- I, and, and it’s so ghoulish that he led his followers into this, and we know that this was in part, now because of leaks, , a setup, right? Like, we know that there were, , CIA agents among the crowd, , and that in part this was done to try to paint the right in a bad light., Has that not been Nick’s career since then? Like, you just need to paste a few things together to see what’s really going on hereMalcolm Collins: I know- Yeah, no. People were, who were doing the same type of things that he is well doc- Given how fastidiously they searched out and went after everyone affiliated with that, why not him? And this brings me to, I guess, the larger point here, which is what [00:38:00] are the chances that he’s actually a plant?My odds are very low, I think around 3%. Because I also understand in t- I, I just think that he’s being botted by people. I think he’s being protectedSimone Collins: by people. Yeah, there’s, there’s a difference between being artificially monetized or propped up but not knowing it, and being actively, like, supported and be- knowing about it.Yeah. Just like Mormon influencers, you pointed out, and other people have, like Alyssa Grenfell, that Mormon influencers-Malcolm Collins: Don’t get... ContinueSimone Collins: Morm- Mormon influencers are making more money and posting more content because they’re able to make so much money from their content because the LDS church pays more money for ads on LDS content.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we have a whole episode on that, which is why, why do Mormons want to be called LES where we go into the math on that- No, why do MormonsSimone Collins: call themselves Mormons is the-Malcolm Collins: Yeah, why, why do Mormons call themselves Mormons. Very detailed, we go into the math on that. By the way, people are wondering why people are saying he’s botted now.So on X, [00:39:00] his tweets, they have, like, a farm of, of reposters around them. And when it, and they’re so aggressive that they often beat Elon’s tweets in terms of the amount of reposts- Nick Fuentes’ tweets? Sorry, no. Yes, Nick Fuentes’ tweets in terms of immediate reposts beat Elon tweets despite his much smaller following.That’s weird ... and well, it’s weird but you could’ve thought it was organic until X did that thing where they showed the country of origin of all those accounts, and they were all, like, Nigeria and Pakistan and India and so immediately everyone’s like, “Oh, so this is...” And I don’t think he’s fully aware of, of why forces are, are doing this.Simone Collins: Well, he needs no reason to look into it. Why would you? You know.Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that he is audience captured by-Simone Collins: Mm ...Malcolm Collins: a fake audience. Like, we see it in our posts as well, where if you look at the places where people post fake things we will see, like, really aggressive, for example, [00:40:00] anti-Israel posting.Like, on our YouTube or in, like, random ats at X. If we look at places where, like, I know there’s a real persistent audience, like Discord, we don’t see any of that. It, it, it’s also true, like, if I’m doing a stream, because I, I do streaming, and this is something I’ve really noticed you can judge authentic engagement.Because bots do not appear to engage with, like, mid-tier streams a lot. And now that I’ve done Leaflet’s stream a number of times, I’m able to sort of gauge when, like, Israel comes up or the war in Iran comes up or even Nick Fuentes comes up how many people, like, start shilling him versus how many people attack him.And, and so far, like when Nick Fuentes has come up on the Leaflet stream, I haven’t seen a single comment defending him or confused as to why we would bring this up. Whereas on our YouTube comments where you do- Oh my God,Simone Collins: yeah ... mainly bots. Check, we’ll see what the comments are of this video today.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so- Oh,Simone Collins: Nick Fuentes is this and that. What are they gonna say? [00:41:00] Call it. What do you think they’re gonna say?Malcolm Collins: Well, they’re gonna say it’s a joke, or th- this is in line with his previous accelerationist agenda. But he, he’s not framing this in accelerationist terms anymore. Don’t do that.Simone Collins: What was, what was that?Malcolm Collins: Jelly beans. She’s just going around destroying stuff now. Oh, God.Don’t do that.She looks really sad right now. Like-Yeah, don’t do it. You can cry if you want to, but don’t do it.You are too sweet to these kids.Simone Collins: Give herMalcolm Collins: a hug. Okay, I’ll give her a hug. You can come here and get a hug, but stop it, okay? Come here, I’ll give you a hug. I’ll even give you a kiss.[00:42:00]Come here. Come here.Okay. Are you gonna tell the fans that you’re not gonna do that again and you’re not gonna make a lot of noises? Do you want a kiss? Do you want a kiss, sweetheart?Simone Collins: DoMalcolm Collins: you feel better now?Simone Collins: Yeah, you’re okay, Andy.Yeah, holdMalcolm Collins: on. Let’s, let’s try to model what they’re gonna say about this. They’re gonna say it’s a joke, and they’re gonna say the evidence of the joke is he says he’s an Afro-Latino in it. Like, that’s the one part of it that could be a signal of a joke.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The problem with that one statement in it is everything else in it is in line with everything he’s ever said, A.B, he is partially Latino as far as I know. Or at least I’ve heard that as an accusation of him from outsiders.Simone Collins: Well, his last name is Fuentes.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I... he’s at least Southern [00:43:00] European, which is the same ethnic group as, as, as Latino. So like it makes sense that he’s getting this accusation or that he would make that claim.He’s like, “Well, now that I’m joining the left, I can use my Latino heritage,” right? Like, I can use a Latino identity.Simone Collins: Oh, I like that. That’s fun.Malcolm Collins: But yeah, I actually... If I’m gonna be more clear, I think the Afro-Latino thing was a joke sprinkled in with a bunch of stuff that wasn’t a joke. Because he will often, even when he’s saying w- w- when he used to say right-wing things, he would sprinkle in jokes here and there, right?Like, that’s his style of communication. But everything else, like what the Trump administration destroyed and dismantled that’s in line with the stuff he’s been saying on his show when he’s pretending to be right-wing, right? Like, this is just his value set, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So I think that, that... I mean, that’s the harder thing.Like, if you have actually, and I think that this is the thing, if you have actually been watching Nick Fuentes for a while and are open to changing your mind on [00:44:00] him when you see this recent like I’m a moderate Democrat rant, you can really consider it in the context of everything else he’s saying in the rant and just ask, does this sound like a joke or does it align with the other stuff that he’s been complaining about recently?And to me if you, if you take his agenda to be see the Jews suffer, see the Trump administration suffer, see the GOP suffer above all other things, above saving unborn lives, above the immigration crisis, above saving Western civilization he actually disaligns with the modern left on very few issues, right?Like, every one of those key points that he has is just a leftist issue.Simone Collins: Aside from immigration, I think that’s the really key thing.Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. He- Has never really thrown down the gauntlet on immigration. He has been anti-ICE before. What I mean is he’s never said, “I’m turning away from the Republicans ‘cause they’re not strict enough on immigration.”He has [00:45:00] complained about ICE being too ruthless in the past. He is not as anti-immigration as people make him out to be. He will take anti-immigration stances, but when push comes to sh- shove and we need to, like, round the wheels on stuff like people complaining about ICE, he will-Simone Collins: Circle the wagonsMalcolm Collins: circle the wagons. He’ll completely back away and retreat. And I think that this is indicative of the fact that he was performatively anti... Because, like, if you’re anti- if you’re actually, like, anti- if you’re like, “I wanna preserve the white race I wanna preserve white people as an ethnic group,” you would have kids, right?Like, it- it’s- it’s a trivially, well, not trivially easy thing to do, but it- for someone like him, he could do it. He just needs to make a few compromises, right? Which apparently given he says that this is existential for him, so we know he’s not telling the truth about that.Speaker 20: This is called rhetoric versus revealed preference for people who are not aware of it. , And it’s an, it’s something you should really look at in terms of [00:46:00] the figures you are looking at for sort of ideological framing, ideological advice, because they will show you whether they really believe what they’re telling you through their own actions in life.And I think through our actions in life, people can see that we are 100% serious and believe what we’re saying. , Whereas I think the revealed preference is Nick is he does not believe what he’s saying or he would make compromises around finding a wifeMalcolm Collins: In addition to that the fact that he is so willing to go with the Democrats during a time period where they could use immigration to shift voting blocks in a way that we will never be able to recover from I think also shows he’s interested in being performatively anti-immigration.But the performative anti-immigration stuff, I think is more in- in- in- in line with achieving his wider agenda. Like, if you look at him recently, like, on his show, if you look at the immigrant groups that are actually causing problems in America, right? Like- like, at a [00:47:00] major level, right? You’ve got Somalians .Muslims, and to a lesser extent, Hispanics.I- I sent you the welfare statistics on Hispanic immigrants up to the third generation, right? Oh, I forgot. Told you to take a look at. Yeah.Simone Collins: No, that’s been trending. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I- I’m- I’m actually walking back my position on Hispanic immigrants a bit. I’m like, “Eh, they’re a bigger problem than I thought.”.Simone Collins: Look, again, like, immigration is not a problem if you shift the way that you offer social services.Malcolm Collins: I agree, but, you know, we haven’t yet, so we need to deal with immigration. So if we look at- Mm ... the groups that are actually, like, damaging ethnic groups to the country at, like, an existential level, and you contrast the amount he complains about those groups with the amount he complains about Indians and Jews, it’s, like, not even comparable.And I think that, like, do Jews, like, run scams? Yes. You can see our episodes where, like, we complain about the O- Orthodox Jewish scams, the rounding the wagon on that. It’s our episode called Speed Running a [00:48:00] Pogrom. Obviously very spicy, right? But Jews are still net tax contributors to the United States.Indians. Do Indians disproportionately take jobs? Yes, they absolutely do. I find that incredibly infuriating. Do Indians also start successful tech companies and are they net tax contributors? Yes, they’re obviously net tax contributors. So when I’m dealing with groups like that, while I may have animosity, it’s like...And I may say there’s things that we need to do, there’s conversations that need to be had. If you’re mentioning those groups at, like, 10x the rate of groups that are, like, actively on a daily basis causing harm that’s a, that’s an issue for me. Right? And note here about other people who we have said have gone crazy recent- like, we had the episode where we’re like, “Tucker...”Because I, I talk about my Mossad poisoning conspiracy, that they poison people who do start to go lefty and they start going crazy.They start to go anti-Israel or start to question Israel. And you know, we have Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and, and Candace Owens here. And some people when I said [00:49:00] that were like, “Oh, come on Malcolm, Tucker Carlson is really on point.He’s super based.” And I’m like, “Bro.” Like I wonder, do these people, like, step back and be like, “Maybe Malcolm is seeing things that I’m not or predicting things that I’m not,” when it turns out that now Tucker Carlson says Tuc- like Trump is casting spells on his cabinet members? I, I don’t know if you guys have seen this interview.It’s effing, like-Simone Collins: Everyone has seen this interview.Malcolm Collins: He’s actually lost his mind. This isn’t normal stuff.Simone Collins: Well, and that he’s, like, outright denying that he ever implied that Trump was the antichrist. There’s multiple- Yeah. Well,Malcolm Collins: I mean a lot of people say people are antichrist this, antichrist that. Like, that’s, that’s less to me than him saying that he was, and, and based on his own subjective experience, under a spell when he was around Trump.Speaker 13: And there is a kind of quality that he has that’s spellbinding, and I think it probably literally [00:50:00] is a spell. Uh, and the effect is to weaken people around him and make them more compliant and more confused. And I- I’ve experienced this myself. You spend a day with Trump, and sort of like you’re in this kind of dreamland.It’s like smoking hash or something. It’s interesting. Very interesting. And there may be a supernatural component to it. I’m not a theologian, but I... It’s real, and anyone who’s been around him can tell you it’s real.Speaker 14: You’ve been talking on your show about whether Trump is the Antichrist.Speaker 13: I have not said that.Speaker 14: On your show, the day after Easter, you noted he did not put his hand on the Bible during his swearing-in- Correctceremony as president. You said, and I’m quoting, “Maybe he didn’t put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what’s inside that book.” And then on a recent show, you went further, saying, “Here’s a leader who’s mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them.Could this be the Antichrist?”Speaker 12: I actually did not say, “Could this be the Antichrist?”Speaker 13: Here’s a leader who’s mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them. [00:51:00] Could this be the Antichrist? Well, who knows? Um, I don’t know where that comes from, but I know that those words never left my lips,Malcolm Collins: that’s like wiccans casting spells on Charlie Kirk level stuff, right? Like-Simone Collins: That actually feeds into our our theory with Tucker Carlson. Our theory with him is that he tends to spend time with people and just try to be very agreeable around them, and, like, go with the flow, and he becomes very convinced by them.Yeah. And so it doesn’t matter if he’s with, like, the Qataris or the Russians or with President Trump.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but he didn’t say this about anyone else. He said it about Trump.Simone Collins: Well, yes, but he could have said it about anyone.Malcolm Collins: But he, but he didn’t. He said it about Trump.Simone Collins: He... I’m ju- I just think it’s kind of a thing he does, though.He’s a very agreeable person.Malcolm Collins: Ju- just to be clear, the, the leader of the GOP faction, right? Like, that’s who he said it about.Simone Collins: I know.Malcolm Collins: I j- I just wanna, like, be clear that we’re on the same page with this,Simone Collins: right? Like- Well, he was, he was talking with a fairly [00:52:00] leftist journalist about this, so he was being agreeable to herMalcolm Collins: I, I agree, but he didn’t complain about that.He didn’t say, “A journalist put me under a spell.” He didn’tSimone Collins: say that- No, no, he was un- he was under the spell of the journalist when he said that about Trump. Oh. What I’m trying to say is Tucker Carlson, I mean, so he may, he may feel like he’s under a spell, but that’s because he, by, by personality is a-Malcolm Collins: I love your pathologically charitable framing of people.I mean, to me he just came off like a crazy person. I, I, I, I like... When I say a crazy person, I mean if an employee said this, I would fire them the next day. Not because it was offensive, but because it shows that they are mentally unstable and potentially dangerous to other people in the office.Simone Collins: Well, there’s, yeah, I mean, we’ve, we’ve discussed it would p- it would anger too many of the people in our audience, ‘cause they seem to be...There are a lot of Tucker and Candace Stans in [00:53:00] our audience. But both of them seem to have, like, really recently gone off the rails in terms of their mysticism going too far.Malcolm Collins: And eventually like- I, yeah, I, I sometimes wonder with, like, Tucker and Nick Stans, like, when is it too far? Like, when do they need to just be like, take off the mask and be like, “I’m a wolf.I’ve been a wolf all along.” Like, can you see the whiskers? Can you see? And people are like, “That was a joke. That was a prank, bro. That was a prank.” But I think that this is incredibly healthy for the long-term right. So in the other video where I was discussing this, I was like, what does this mean for the future of the right-wing party if the deontological faction or at least the extremist parts of it, end up circling the w- the, the, the, the sort of drain and, and move into the Democratic coalition along with the Islamists, right?And the answer is just a way healthier Republican Party going forwards. If you look at the people who are [00:54:00] still around I think what we’re increasingly seeing is as... There’s a part of the deontological faction that’s just going Nick Fuentes direction, right? Okay. There’s a part of the deontological faction that keeps getting caught cheating on their spouses or beating their spouse or yelling at staffers or like, I don’t know what’s up with these people and anger issues, right?But, you know, whatever. And then there’s the, like, nerd faction. And as Leaflet said, it’s the nerd faction that’s really been having the right’s back. Like, they don’t make drama about things. They generally go along with what the administration is doing. They don’t really have internal drama very much or at all that I’m aware of.I’m aware of no meaningful internal drama in the nerd faction. They just get out, and they just get out there and do stuff, right? Like, And, and I’m excited that this faction is in, i- it continuing to grow. And the final point I’d make, and I made this one a lot stronger in the episode where I talked about the future of the right.But if [00:55:00] you go to CPAC or something like that, like you go to these institutions where, like, the cronies that used to control the White House before they were all founder fund members in this administration they, because we’ve gone to these events in the past this is where Nick Fuentes’ fan base hangs out.Like, the, the people who have taken over right-wing institutions and have something of a Romanist agenda, right? These individuals, I remember I got in a fight with him, and this was... And I can say it, like I d- I don’t care. Like, the Claremont Group pretends to be, like, a mainstream right-wing organization, even within the MAGA faction.And I was talking to some members at it, and they were clearly of, like, this, this orientation. Like, they were not aligned with us. They were aligned with the, the deontological faction, right? And they were talking about all these fantasies of laws they wanted to enact. And I was like, “Bro, like, that’s not aligned with MAGA’s values or what the base wants.”And what they [00:56:00] said was, “F the base.” Like, very aggressively. Like, they were like, “F the base. Like, why would we care what the base wants? Like, we decide where the Republican Party goes. The base’ll vote for us whatever,” right? And I realize that if you look at the first Trump administration, and a lot of Republicans up until recently they’ve been heavily controlled by this faction.And I think that going forwards to our fans who get in administrations and stuff like that, do not hire from the think tanks. The think tanks are lousy with these people, and they are very dangerous to our goals because they do not have aligned goals. And at CPAC, there were a number of these people who were interviewed, and they said stuff like, “MAGA is over.”And what they really meant by that is, “Our ability to control MAGA is over. We have lost our ability to call the shots,And that’s why MAGA had value to people like Nick Fuentes, to people like the think tank deep state on the right, is because they [00:57:00] thought they could manipulate it to achieve their ends, , rather than the ends that the base actually wanted. Again, look at things like the support among MAGA for the Iran war right now., The base is not with these people. It’s a 90/10 issue among MAGA. , But they, to them it’s over because they thought it was a tool they could use, and they’re like, “Well, this tool is boring to me now because, it completely sees through my BSMalcolm Collins: and now MAGA is acting on its own, and I am furious about that because I cannot control it anymore for my personal agenda.” And I think that that’s where Nick has finally gone, is he’s like, “I cannot control this, therefore I don’t wanna be a part of it.”Simone Collins: Well, so what are your predictions for Nick’s next move?Malcolm Collins: Well, next move is, I think that he’s gonna go back to pretending to be Republican. He’s gonna go back to pretending this was a joke after the midterms. Perhaps even before the midterms if the pushback is, is, is loud enough from this. And he’s still gonna tell people, “Never vote for Republicans no matter what,” for at [00:58:00] least, like, the next eight years of elections or who knows, 15 years of elections, right?He’s already signaling this, right? So, like, he’s not a useful part of the coalition. So you reallySimone Collins: don’t think there’s a world in which he, like, leans into the Democrat thing, the moderate DemocratMalcolm Collins: thing? He might if he gets on some podcasts, if he gets some interviews out of it, I can totally see that.Simone Collins: Because I think he can only go so much farther on the current wave he’s riding. I think that his switching to the Democrat party could get him a ton of additional media coverage and followers. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I mean, he doesn’t appeal very well to, like, the new right audience.Simone Collins: Yeah, so from a strategic standpoint, that’s what I’m saying, is I feel like it’s a savvy move.Yeah. I don’t know why he wouldn’t lean into it more.Malcolm Collins: What I mean by that is while the new, like, new right audience would appreciate his vitalism, part of the thematic problem he has reaching them is if you look at the figures that he’d get really big on the new [00:59:00] right figures like, you know, Asmongold, Leaflet, et cetera, they’re, they’re typically sort of pathologically kind and, and, and pathologically compassionate.Like Asmongold, like, literally catching the cockroach and letting it free outside, right? Like, He’sSimone Collins: also put them in a box school, so.Malcolm Collins: Right. No, but I mean, their, their true core is pathologically kind. You know, Hasan is, “Stop killing people in Gaza while I shock my dog,” right? Like-Simone Collins: That’s true.Yeah. Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: You know, if you, if you look at, Or, or Leaflet, where, like, she’s basically the god of her fantasy world that hundreds of people will play every day, and she refuses to move above level one, or being the guild receptionist in it. Even her avatar, for people who don’t know, she didn’t even create it.It’s the child of two people from one D&D session she ran. Right. That is pathologically trying not to center yourself. Now do, how do we fall into this? I don’t know. I mean, I’m, I’m narcissistic [01:00:00] as heck, but I think I at least come across as authentic. So I do okay there. You’reSimone Collins: the... If you’re narcissistic, though, like one thing that you’re really weird about is you feel incredibly concerned about never doing wrong by anyone who put their faith in you.That’s not really what a narcissist does.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Yeah, like if I had taken Nick’s position and gone to the Jan six riots and told people, “Go through-- like enter the building, keep moving,” and I hadn’t done it myself, and my followers were punished for believing in me, and th- no one ever came after me, my God, I, I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself.Like the existential horror of not leading by example around something like that is, uh, just so antithetical to anything I could ever imagine doing. I-- like literally, if I had somehow, even by accident, not been able to go in, yet I had told people [01:01:00] to and they suffered lifelong consequences for it, , that would be the top of my mind every day going forwards,.Malcolm Collins: SoSimone Collins: I don’t know. I mean, I guessMalcolm Collins: for me, like- You’re a famewhore ... what’s been kind of important with this podcast, when people are like, “Oh,Simone Collins: you’re-” You’re a famewhore, but you’re not a narcissist.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. “... Basecamp had this really out there take on this or that, or X or Y or Z.”I mean, I try to do that occasionally just to make sure that we’re not having just mainstream takes because there’s, there’s no better way to know that somebody is lying to you than if they only have normie takes for, for your position, right? Like, if everyone’s saying the same thing about X or Y or Z, then you know, they’re probably...Th- this is what we saw with the girl who was cheating on her husband who’d, like, poked with the Sheik wedding and everything like that. Every one of her conservative takes was just the most normie conservative opinion p- possible because she didn’t actually hold these positions, you know? She was just saying what she thought she needed to say to appeal to an audience.Simone Collins: There’s... Yeah. Anyway, I I- my [01:02:00] prediction is at least if he knows what’s good for him commercially, that he will lean into the Democrat thing, go on a Democrat press tour, pick up a bunch of what’s the word? Rebellious youth on the Democrat side, and then sort of circle around to, like, we need to create a new party or something like that.Yeah. But that’s what I would do.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I can see that. I mean, I hope he does. If he creates a new party, that’d be fun.Simone Collins: ItMalcolm Collins: wouldSimone Collins: be fun ...Malcolm Collins: mostly because I- he’s not useful in the conservative faction. He doesn’t get people to vote for right-leaning candidates. He always goes against them at the last minute.So, like, and like we’ve been able to win elections without him, so I just... I don’t think that he’s helpful. I think he turns more people against us than he brings in for us, and if the left loses their ability to paint the entire right with stuff that Nick Fuentes did which they constantly do, right?So it ends up hurting all of us in our, in our wider agenda. That’s, that’s useful as well, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So let’s hope. [01:03:00] I love you, Simone. This was a wild thing that this happened and I love that it happened. I love that we’re in this timeline. And yeah. Yes. I’m, I’m, yeah, I’m very interested to see what the stans say in the comments.Simone Collins: Yeah. Let’s see what the either stansMalcolm Collins: or- And, and note here, if you’re, like, a stan and you’re like, “Well, you know, I do agree with him that the most important thing that America needs to do is screw over Israel,” then a- and don’t get us wrong, like, we’re against continuing payments to Israel, everything like that.But- Yeah ... if you’re into, like, “No, we need to actively screw them over. If something helps us but also helps Israel, we need to not do it,” the Democrats are that party right now. Like, if that’s your main issue, the Democrats are not conflicted about this point.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So just be a Democrat. Like, I, I don’t under- there isn’t really a normalSimone Collins: right- This could be a very interesting political shift.Maybe this is how both the Democrat and Republican Party get their group. They have this, like, major exchange of prisoners essentially.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [01:04:00]Simone Collins: It could be, I don’t know, it could be the great reset. I’m excited. Anyway, sorry to everyone for my channeling RFK today. And I should be back to normal soon.It’s ‘Malcolm Collins: cause you ate too many gleamons or something.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I’d say.Simone Collins: One, one too manyMalcolm Collins: vaccinations. Oh, Indy, do you wanna say goodbye to the fans?Simone Collins: Yeah, Indy.Malcolm Collins: Oh, this is how I lose things, right, Indy? Come.Simone Collins: AllMalcolm Collins: right. So what do we say? We say bye like this. We go, bye bye bye, doing bye bye dance. Doing bye bye song.Singing bye bye hands. I say goodbye, then I dance goodbye. Dancing and dancing in the house. In the sky.Simone Collins: Dancing in thesky. Yeah.Igot a rhyme.Malcolm Collins: You want me to do it again?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Bye bye. Say goodbye. And I say goodbye every [01:05:00] single day. And say goodbye every single way. ByeSimone Collins: bye bye.Malcolm Collins: Oh, and like and subscribe, guys, and try out RFAB if you wanna do, like, AI chatbot exploration, vibe putting, or image-making, or video-making, or soon V2 model making. I’ll let you guys know when I’m done with that. That’s been harder than I expected.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Lo mein tonight, right?Malcolm Collins: If you can make it, yeah.Simone Collins: Okay. Beef loMalcolm Collins: mein. Beef lo mein.Simone Collins: All right. I love you, Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: Love you too. You know how to say goodbye. Bye-bye. CanSimone Collins: you sayMalcolm Collins: bye-bye?Speaker 18: What is going on in here? We are jumping on my teddy bear. We are gonna jump on my teddy bear. Where’s Indy? Oh, Indy’s right there. We are gonna jump on my teddy bear [01:06:00] and see how he flies. Push these pillow signs when you’re safe. Okay? Are you up there, Titan?Speaker 19: Where’s Titan? Titan? Can you get this for me? Do you want me to put that in your bed? No. No, I want to play with it. Down here, right? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the controversial idea of bringing back the concept of the “concubine” (or courtesan) in modern relationships. They contrast two distinct relationship models: the true wife/housewife — a full business and life partner who advances the family’s interests — versus the courtesan/tradwife/trophy wife model, where the woman’s primary role is pleasure, aesthetics, and appearance rather than deep partnership.Drawing on history, labor statistics, and cultural critique, they discuss how women historically contributed far more to subsistence and family businesses than modern narratives suggest. They examine why many people today unconsciously seek unpaid courtesans, the problems with “ornamental” relationships, and how clear terminology can lead to better-aligned marriages. Topics include trophy wives as a profession, Real Housewives culture, objective-function alignment in relationships, and practical advice for high-achieving men and women.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] what I like about the term courtesan is it helps separate between a true housewife and the more modern tradwife, which I think is closer to a - courtesan.If you look at the tradwife, right, the tradwife makes everything look pretty, right? She, , does up the house. , She does the baking from scratch and everything. And she’s doing all that for appearance. She’s doing all that to, to sell, , that he has a certain type of wife.But, like, she’s not actually managing the family budget, right? Like, she’s not actually managing the deeper parts of the family. And many people who society at large would confuse, they would say, “Well, this woman stays at home and educates the kids , as part of her duties, therefore she’s the same type of thing as this trad woman.”Speaker: Specifically, we will be delineating two categories of relationships. One, the courtesan relationship, where the woman believes that their core job vis-a-vis their partner is just their [00:01:00] partner’s pleasure and reproducing. Whereas the other, the true wife or housewife, sees their job as being fully integrated with their husband’s life and advancing the interests of their family.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be expanding on a concept that a fan came up with in response to a previous video, and it is that we should bring back the concept of concubine. And when I first heard this I was like, well, we don’t wanna normalize sort of, you know, promiscuous behavior in this regards.There’s a lot of negative social externalities for doing it. But after they laid it out for me, I’m like, actually we, we need to start having a conversation about this. We need to normalize this concept. This is a good concept So let me explain. We had a video where we basically go over the history of male [00:02:00] and female labor.And what we pointed out using a lot of statistics, a lot of historical examples, is the modern idea that throughout history men mostly did all the labor and women mostly stayed at home and did education and child-rearing, is just completely historically anachronistic. Women actually did the majority and I, and I mean the majority of b- like grueling labor, like, repetitiveSimone Collins: tasks.But y- y- subsistence, subsistence labor. So sort of your baseline food and, and everything else was more or lessMalcolm Collins: handled by the- Yeah, yeah. If, if you’re talking about, like, the majority of, of, of human history was during the hunter-gatherer period, that’s 95% of human history women were doing 60 to 70% of the calories in those societies.And then you transition to an agricultural society, and in most agricultural societies women do the farming until the plow was invented. And then somebody else was like, “And this is men.” Men plow for, like, 200 years and go, “F it, I’m [00:03:00] making a tractor.” Women do hoe-based farming for literally thousands of years, and continue to do it exactly the way they’ve always done it.By the way, hoe-based farming, the fact that Simone loved from that episode that she just cannot get enough of, is we pointed out that the idea of women staying at home and not really doing much except for child-rearing and education came from the, the, like, sort of middle class wealthy whites in America during a, a short window of, like, the 1910s to the 1970s.And it was like, well, what about poorer people during that period? And this is where the word hoe comes from, is it was because specifically Black women, but though I suspect that this is like, you know, it- nowadays they try to racialize a lot of things that weren’t racialized. It probably just meant poorer women in general were hoes because they worked the farm.And that’s what made them hoes. So it didn’t mean a, a promiscuous woman. It meant a poor, uneducated woman. But we, we start talking about all this. And by the way, if you’re wondering, like, what were the types of work that men did historically, they typically did [00:04:00] things tied to war or things tied to artisanship.So if you needed a cobbler or a woodcutter or a builder or an architect or a sailor, like, if it required a huge amount of skill outside of textiles, it was typically men doing it. And, and don’t underestimate how much work textiles were. Or how much work- Yeah ... other things that people dismiss, like weeding.Weeding your garden is one thing. Weeding a field that’s feeding a family is significantly more work than plowing it for anyone who’s ever weeded. Weeding is, is difficult, backbreaking, and recurring labor. But which was typically a woman’s job, by the way. But when in the sort of fallout from this episode, people were going through it and they said, “You know what?”Because we were talking about the way that women historically actually structured their relationship with men, right? Like, if the man was doing some sort of artisanal job like say a butcher or a cobbler or a blacksmith the wife would typically manage the book, manage the finances, manage the [00:05:00] storefront, manage the marketing, manage the y- the, the sourcing of goods.And we put this out there, and we put it out with the concept of, like, a sword-and-shield relationship in a modern context, which is, like, the wife is in charge of the more stable part of the income and the man is in charge of, like, entrepreneurship, like big fish, like moving the family forwards. And a lot of people who are actually, and I think what we would consider more trad relationships, still really related to this concept.They were like, “Well,” like while I or ... Because we have a lot of housewife listeners. So, “While I or my wife,” this was actually more rare “take on what society would call a housewife job, that is not actually what I’m doing. I actually manage our investments, I manage our finances, I manage our taxes, I manage you know, the, the sort of procuring and stocking the, the, the home with supplies, getting things fixed.I manage like a huge variety of stuff.” And we then began to talk about [00:06:00] how there’s a new type of woman that has come to exist that isn’t this type of woman. So this type of woman is engaging in what the married wife has always done, right? Which is to say, they join ... And, like, historically, if you went to a blacksmith historically, right?And you sat him and his wife down, and you’re like, “Look, lady, I know you manage the storefront and the money and the taxes and all that, but you shouldn’t,” right? Like, “Your husband should manage all that.” And what she would of course say is, “But then he’s gonna have less time to make stuff.”Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and you’re like, “Well, yeah, but like, you know, he’s a man, you’re a woman.”And she’d look at you and be like, “But, like, that money doesn’t just go to him. It goes to the entire family. You’re telling me to be arbitrarily poorer so that I can, what? Sit at home and twiddle my, my thumb all day?” Like, “What, what’s the advantage to me [00:07:00] to stepping back from this when our fortunes,” as used to historically be the case in relationships, “are completely tethered together?As he does better, I do better. As he does worse, I do worse. Why would I not help him in the ways that I can help him?” And people said, “There’s this new type of woman who doesn’t think that way.” And this is where the concept of concubine makes sense-Simone Collins: Mm ...Malcolm Collins: in bringing back, is that be they married or not, there is a certain type of woman who does not believe that she should be adding anything substantial to the relationship in terms of intellectual labor or labor more broadly, right?Like-Simone Collins: She’s purely ornamental.Malcolm Collins: She is purely ornamental. And she may still have his kids, as concubines did historically, but she doesn’t, she- she’s not a part of, like, a team where both people are pushing things [00:08:00] forwards. And the moment I heard this, I was like, “That’s a really good effing point.” Because if we can re-normalize the concept of a concubine, we can re-normalize the fear of being seen as a concubine.Now, thought, Simone, before I- I- I yap further, as they say on Twitch now that I know, ‘cause I- I- I do the Twitch. They say, “Yapping.”Simone Collins: Are we old?Malcolm Collins: By the way, did you know what a raid is on Twitch? I didn’t know what a raid was.Simone Collins: Is it when a bunch of people from someone else’s stream go onto yours?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s what I thought it was.It’s not.Simone Collins: What is it?Malcolm Collins: So, what happens is when you sign off Twitch, because you’ll likely have a bunch of people still watching you, like at the end of Lee’s late stream it’s still, like, well over a thousand you can set it to automatically send all those people to another streamer.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: And that’s called a raid.Simone Collins: Oh, that’s cool. And you do this as a social thing. That’s why people say, “Thanks for the raid,” so and so. Nice. Okay. Yeah. I- I like the [00:09:00] idea... One reason why I like the idea of the courtesan is I think that it at least helps to create it- it helps to highlight what a normal wife actually is and that this thing that people are optimizing for now as a default, which is the courtesan.Most people now, when they’re looking for a partner, seem to be describing an un- m- a courtesan, but an unpaid courtesan, and I think that’s also really important. Mm. They want a companion that is attractive, that will make them happy that is, that is going to, like, entertain them. But for whatever reason, they also expect that, that they’re not gonna have to, like- Pay for or support this person, like sugar daddy style.And that just is inherently unsustainable.Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think a lot of them do plan to p- well, I, I actually like these two versions. So let, let, let’s break this out, ‘cause I think you’re, you’re creating an interesting distinction here, [00:10:00] which makes it even worse, right? Where a woman or may say, “I’m not a courtesan.I go to work and I earn my own money,” right? Mm-hmm. And it’s like, actually you’re worse than a courtesan in that part. Like I, I don’t know what word we should make for this type of woman, but I’ll describe what I’m talking about.Simone Collins: But women do it to men, too. They want the man to be attractive and to entertain them and make them happy and pleasure them.Malcolm Collins: Most-Simone Collins: But they also don’t expect to likeMalcolm Collins: invest anything in them ... most women expect men to pay into a family coffer.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: There are many women who do the exact opposite, and this is what I’m talking about here, the lower than a courtesan woman. Mm. This is a woman who gets married to a guy and she sees her role as entertaining him, having sex with him you know, and entertaining can mean like playing video games with him or something.You know, wh- whatever it means to, watching movies with him at night, you know, whatever, right? Like courtesan stuff. Because this is the modern version of courtesan stuff. But sh- worse, worse than all of that, she still has a [00:11:00] job, but she takes the income she makes from that job and she treats it as entirely her own.Right? Like it’s money just for her. This woman is less, and, and y- I’m sure everyone has seen women online who are like this. The guy makes money and it’s for everyone in the family. The girl makes money, it’s just for her fun stuff,Simone Collins: right? Is that really common? I don’t, I don’t-Malcolm Collins: Very common. Very common.Yeah.Simone Collins: I mean, I watch a lot of, like, couples finance shows, and that’s not what I see. I, I, I don’t think that’s, that is what you think it is.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well, if, if anyone is doing this, they are less than a courtesan. They’re literally an unpaid courtesan. He’s not even keeping you, right? Like you’re out there being a hoe to capitalism and being a hoe for your husband.Well,Simone Collins: I understand that, but that’s, I don’t, I think that’s a straw man. I think what’s really common is, one, I mean, we, we did-Malcolm Collins: Audience, audience, in the comments, do you know people who have done this?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Continue, Simone.Simone Collins: Recently there was a term for, [00:12:00] like courtesan that was more modern, and it was trophy wife, and people did treat this as a profession.We know people, Yeah ... who absolutely, like as, and like by treat this as a profession, I mean treat it as a profession, I mean like watched- corn to learn how to perform as people might desire. Starved self to fit it right size. You know, invested in the right clothing. And then, you know, once actually paired, and we’ll say employed as a trophy wife working extremely hard to make dinners special, to make holidays special, to to provide all the, you know, pleasure and enjoyment.Famously when Marie Antoinette was first introduced to the French court and to King Louis the, the XV he, she, she made an inquiry about the, the king’s courtesan at the time. I think it was Madame Bovary. I’m really, I, I’m so bad with names. But the- Sorry ... her in-Malcolm Collins: Wait, hold on. Hold [00:13:00] on.Hold on. Simone’s like, “I’m bad with names,” that she cannot remember one of the king’s courtesans during a particular period of the French court. This shows you the level of history nerd that Simone is.Simone Collins: I know. So I’m like, all right. I, I, I can name most of them- I cannot name the courtesan’s names ... from, for, for Louis XIV because the love the, the book on the love life of King Louis XIV is amazing.And there’s Athenais, there’s Madame de Maintenon, there’s all these amazing women. But I, I don’t, I, I think it’s Madame de Bovary. Anyway so Marie Antoinette, this, this young teen bride of King Louis, well, future King Louis XVI asks, you know, “Who, who is this woman?” And her, essentially her advisor you know, a- another noble woman in the court is like, “Ah that is, you know, so and so.Her job is to give pleasure to the king.” And her being this, like, really innocent, kind of like sheltered, you know, Austrian woman would be like, “Well then, you know, we are rivals because I want to give pleasure to the king.” And she’s like, “Oh, you don’t understand, girl.” Like, not, no. But like it was very well understood that their [00:14:00] profession was to give pleasure to this person.And I think that people who took the trophy wife career seriously, and we know people who did, understand that their job is to give pleasure to their partner and also to raise their social status. Because it was understood that as a trophy wife, they have to make them look good in a certain way.And so they, they dress their husbands carefully. They manage their husband’s style. They manage the husband’s household. They make their houses look good. They host events. And that was taken very seriously, and I think that that role r- really degraded, and you can see it very well in the Real Housewives series, where suddenly this idea of the trophy wife was transitioned to, no, she is the main character.She is not an ornamental courtesan whose job is to give pleasure to her husband and raise you know, make him look good. And make him happy. Her job is to just like, “I’m gonna do what I want, and I have my businesses, and I’m gonna, you know, sell dog shoes for charity,” or something like that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And and they’re incredibly dysfunctional, et cetera, et [00:15:00] cetera.Speaker 7: I started this charity because I saw so many dogs having to walk the hot streets of Orlando without any protection on their feet. But it’s also personal. This one time I lost my high heels on the beach. And I was looking around for them, like over a half an hour.Ugh. It was awful. So with your help, each dog will receive their own pair of high heels, and for that you can be very proud.Simone Collins: So that, that role fell apart. And I think as that role fell apart, we, we sort of forgot that this was a profession and a track in marriage, and that there are two tracks. You can be a trophy wife, but you have to be trophy wife for someone who can afford to keep you. And I think what in- also degraded was that a lot of people just assumed that they were going to marry [00:16:00] functionally a courtesan and not a business partner.We forgot that marriage was an arrangement first and foremost to just establish paternity of children and like inform the community to like, “Don’t sleep with my wife ‘cause I need to make sure that like the line of paternity is secure.” But also to establish a business alignment and have a, a husband and wife work together.And, and we, with the Industrial Revolution dropped that. Well, the, likeMalcolm Collins: business alignment, right? Like, when you are the same person... We had a documentarian r- asking us recently, like, “When do you guys fight?” Like, “Tell us about fights.” And I’m like, “We just don’t have fights.” Like, becauseSimone Collins: we don’t- We have tactical disagreements which we resolve by obtaining better evidence.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, why would we, why would we fight when we have the same goals? Any disagreement we have is an academic disagreement.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. IMalcolm Collins: think- But no,Simone Collins: no, the, the key distinction here is that people need to understand that if you are hiring the equivalent [00:17:00] of a, a, a paid entertainer and performer, it is your responsibility to be able to pay for and keep them.And that person needs to understand that it’s, it is their responsibility to in turn perform and give pleasure and make you look good. And our, our media landscape has, has degraded even that. Especially through the, the Real Housewives series, has just made it been like, oh, no, they, they don’t live to make theirMalcolm Collins: husbands happy.Well, what I find interesting about the point that you’re making here, by the way and it is, it is just absolutely a fascinating point which is that the idea of re-normalizing the concept of the courtesan doesn’t just help trad wife marriages, it also helps courtesan marriages. Yeah. Because it helps remind them of what their actual role is in the marriage when they adopt this.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They are both disposable and less than a true wife. Mm-hmm. If they are not [00:18:00] contributing their intellect... And note here, we had one follower reach out in regards to this, and he’s like, “Well- You know, I’m very successful now. I run a company now, so how am I gonna g- find a wife? Like, do I have to leave it all behind and start something new with them, right?Like, how, how do I make this work, right? And there’s multiple ways you can make it work. One is to integrate somebody who shows competence and diligence and work ethic into your existing operation, right? Like, that is something that a lot of people have done historically. But then another is, which is probably better, is, is, is figure out what they value that you value, right?Presumably if you’re making a lot of money with your company, there’s some way you wanna change the world and working with them to start that organization, right? Like, a, a wife, wife who is working for your combined goals can still work philanthropically, right? Like, but, but so long as they’re efficient and effective at it, and they’re not just doing it to boost their own ego and status, right?And you’ll [00:19:00] be able to tell this very quickly. Do they actually care about these things, or are they interested in status boosting?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: But yeah, that’s a, that’s an interesting point. And so this is what I want from the audience. I want... What is the, what is the lower tier of trophy? Because I, I, I think...And I don’t think the trophy wife is good, because trophy wife as, as a saying is too narrow, right? Like, a lot of people who wanted the life of a courtesan didn’t think of themselves as trophy wives, because they didn’t just want the, the traditional trophy wife guy, right? And and, and note here that what I like about the term courtesan is it helps separate between a true housewife and the more modern tradwife, which I think is closer to a cour- courtesan.If you look at the tradwife, right, the tradwife makes everything look pretty, right? She, like, does up the house. She d- does in her stupid outfit. She- ... you know, she’s a, she, she does the baking from scratch and everything. [00:20:00] And she’s doing all that for appearance. She’s doing all that to, to sell, both to herself and her husband, that he has a certain type of wife.But, like, she’s not actually managing the family budget, right? Like, she’s not actually managing the deeper parts of the family. And many people who society at large would confuse, they would say, “Well, this woman stays at home and educates the kids as, as part of her duties, therefore she’s the same type of thing as this trad woman.”And yet one of these women is living the life of a courtesan, where she’s sitting around all day, you know, either playing video games or reading, you know, romance novels or whatever, and the other one is, is working all day long, right? Like, for the good of the family, for moving the family’s interests forwards.And these are two very different- and, and note here because I know some trophy wives and courtesans who’d be like, “Well, I am doing it for the family.” And I’m like, “Does the rest of the family care about these social circles you’re trying to ingratiate yourself with?” And if the answer is no, then you’re not doing it for the family.You’re doing it for [00:21:00] yourself, and you’re defining what has value on behalf of the family. Which is obviously, I think, very bad. That’s, like, worse than anything like that because it’s like you’re, you’re defining the good of the family and that needs to always be a collective decision. And if you can’t convince your husband that what you think is valuable for the family is valuable for the family, yet he’s still letting you do it, then you’re acting as a courtesan.You are not acting as a wife. Thoughts.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, I, I agree with you. But largely people have lost the plot and people are very much stuck in their own minds, focused on these... It’s not, it’s not even selfish because people aren’t doing things that would actually make them happy, ironically.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they aren’t.They’re, these courtesans are typically less happy thanSimone Collins: wives They’re caught in what I guess I could describe as cultural delusions. They’re, they’re stuck in cultural loops and cultural delusions and pursuing [00:22:00] them to their personal detriment, the detriment of their partner, and the detriment of the relationship.This isn’t exclusive to women. It happens to men, too. And the most important thing is that when you’re looking for a partner, you’re looking for someone who shares your objective function. They want to maximize the same thing or cluster of things that you do, and you both realize that you work well enough together that by combining forces, you will both maximize your objective function, the thing that matters more to you than your own self, more as a team than you will individually.And if that’s true- Yeah ... you never have to worry about so long as you both, you know, continue your pursuit of this objective function, you’re never going to fight because you understand that both you know, your, your job isn’t to just be happy and get what I want and, you know, every fight isn’t about, well, what I want versus what you want.Every disagreement you may ever have is really more like, well [00:23:00] tactically, how are we going to maximize what we both collectively value?Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: And just as an emergent property, you’re going to try to make the other person happy and have, have a good life because you understand, as any good employer does, as any good army general does that, you know, if your troops, if your team is happy and healthy and thriving, they’re going to do a better job.You know? It’s, you’re not gonna get really good work out of someone who’s demoralized or sleep deprived or sad or who feels alienated. So just as- As an emergent property, you’re gonna try to be nice to this person. And people in general tend to be nice to other people who share their interests. Plus, there’s nothing that gives greater contentment and happiness than knowing that you are doing everything you can within your power to maximize something you value.It takes the FOMO out of life. There is no fear of missing out because you are always doing the very best you can to maximize your basket of [00:24:00] values. So there’s, there’s very little indecision there. Contrast that with the modern real housewife or the modern even just like dink couple, and there’s intense levels of FOMO.It’s like, “Oh, well, you know, we decided to max out our credit card and travel to Greece this summer. But should we have gone to Tokyo instead? I don’t know.” And then they get to Greece, and it’s so hot, and it’s really expensive, and then their flight gets canceled. You know, like all these things. And, and, and you know, you’re wondering, “Well, could I, could I have been happier if we did this?I... Is this even what I enjoy? Am I just doing this ‘cause I’ve seen people doing it on Instagram?” Like, there’s just so, Even if what you wanna optimize is happiness, you’re, you’re not gonna find it with that kind of pursuit. SoMalcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. No, courtesans are never as happy as, as true wives, right?Simone Collins: No, I... So I disagree.I think that some of the most successful figures in history were courtesans. And they- ButMalcolm Collins: were they happy?Simone Collins: [00:25:00] Yeah. But they... so to be a courtesan is I think very different from what people have devolved into now. You know, they, they had a career. For, for example, consider Madame Pompadour, who died young and, and was very much missed.She was extremely intellectual. She influenced policy. She absolutely made the king happy. And she was very good at what she did, and she was very influential. Th- there are definitely people who, you know, know what they’re good at, and, and they love it. And, you know, that was her j- her job was to be, you know, smart and attractive and to give pleasure, and she did it well.And that’s good. I think you need to, you need to understand what your role is in a relationship. What did sheMalcolm Collins: die of? Some venereal diseaseSimone Collins: or- Some disease. It wasn’t a venereal disease. I can’t remember what. It was probably some sort of like pox or virus or whatever. People died all the time.Malcolm Collins: I- We should, we should do an episode, famous sluts of history.Simone Collins: Well, it wasn’t even always sluts. I mean, a, a lot of the people who ended up as, as, as courtesans you know, didn’t [00:26:00] necessarily want to be. But it just kinda turned out that way. But yeah, I, I, I don’t think it, I don’t think it’s about whether you choose courtesan track versus wife track. Or as a husband, whether you choose to get a courtesan versus a wife, or a wife and a courtesan.Like, a lot of the guys in history g- had both. The, you know, you have to understand what your resources can, canMalcolm Collins: bear. Well, I, I think also the idea of the courtesan even, even for the guy who decides to cheat on his wife or whatever, right? If you contextualize the person you’re cheating with as a courtesan, they are always less useful to you than the wife.You’re less likely to imagine that they could become a wife, because they are not a wife. They are only there for your pleasure. They are a human oni hole. They are not actually a thing of value. And I think that’s why women-Simone Collins: Well, I mean, I’ve always seen cheating as, like, a sign of extreme existential doubt, and not really necessarilyMalcolm Collins: interpersonal attraction.What, what I mean is if you look historically, it’s very rare for people to leave their wives for their courtesans. Oh. [00:27:00] That just doesn’t happen. And but today it happens all the time, where people get confused. And using clearer terminology can prevent that.Simone Collins: I suppose, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Also by the way, side note, Yeahin terms of data we’re getting now, we’ve got 47 users on RFAB in the last 30 minutes.Simone Collins: Nice.Malcolm Collins: We’ve got so it’s like, you know, current users. And I turned on the gender thing which unfortunately I didn’t realize how much it sucked on Google. For 97.53% we can’t tell what the gender was.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But f- for the ones we can tell what the gender was 1.36 of them were males, and 1.1% of them are female.So the male to female ratio is about equal.Simone Collins: That’s good. Okay. Let’sMalcolm Collins: go. And the time on site is about equal, too. For males it’s a bit over an hour, an hour and one minute. And for females, it’s 57 minutes and 50 seconds.Simone Collins: Okay. Oh, favorable.Malcolm Collins: So women use our site, too. And I cleaned up all the, the scoogy, like naked pics and stuff that people had in the [00:28:00] top for images, and I was like, “No.”Simone Collins: Scoogy is a good word. Thank you for using it.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. And I’ve been preparing for battle.Simone Collins: As one does. As one does.Malcolm Collins: Gotta take out the the bad guys before they get to me. I just come like this, and I’m like, “I’m just moving the sword like this. If it hits you, it’s your fault.” That’s what I say on the battlefield, just go like this.Simone Collins: Yeah, is that your move? That’s your go-to?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: The waggle?Malcolm Collins: The just like, You really get moving ... the guy comes that way and like, I’m, “I’m just moving in a straight line. If I punch you, it’s your own fault.”Speaker 9: on my way, I’m gonna be doing this. If you get hit, it’s your own fault. Okay. Then I’m gonna start kicking air like this. , Uh. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,Simone Collins: oh, God. Well, yeah, I like this concept. I, I think people need to think really carefully about what they’re in it to do.I, I was horrified when w- at one point joining a [00:29:00] parenting, a, a virtual parenting group comprised of very- High-profile people who just describe parenting as like, “Well, it’s just one of those things you do in life.” And I’m like, oh my God. Like, the number of people who just get married ‘cause it’s like, “Well, you know, like I was dating...”It’s like musical chairs, you know? “I was dating them and like I hit my 30s, so then I proposed.” Like, what are you doing? This is, this is so weird that people wouldn’t take things like marriage and having kids extremely seriously and understand exactly why they’re doing it. And if the answer is, “Well, I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”I mean, I respect it, I guess. Like, I, I, I agree that people overthink things way too much, but also, yikes. So- ThatMalcolm Collins: level of NPC. Well, that level of NPC I think is leading to the highest birth rate that we have right now. I mean, these are the people- Oh, God ... who are gonna replace the over-thinkers, Simone.[00:30:00]Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: The over-thinkers who wanna have kids are a small group.Simone Collins: US birthrates updated again. At new record lows. The, the biggest drop in terms of age brackets, of course, was teen births. They saw a 7% drop. And the slight, I think a slight decline- Girl, don’tMalcolm Collins: be a pussy ...Simone Collins: in births for people in their 20s, and then a slight increase for people in their 30s.So absolutely people are overthinking it or trying to be prepared. I, I don’t think, though, that, that you need to be a certain age to be capable of understanding why you’re doing things. I need, I think you need to understand just who you are and what you’re about. And Malcolm, you knew who you were and what you were about whenMalcolm Collins: we were in a relationship.Oh yeah, I told you exactly what I was about.Simone Collins: And you were like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.” And I mean, like from earlier writings of yours that I’ve seen and, you know, stories you’ve told, I don’t think you’ve changed all that much in what you’ve done. And ultimately I haven’t either.It just happens to be that my personality manifests very differently given, [00:31:00] depending on the resources that I’m given, and I think women are a lot like that in general. That their, their phenotype will vary significantly depending on the environment, as it were. Anyway, I love you veryMalcolm Collins: much. Love you too, and have a spectacular day.Simone Collins: You too.Malcolm Collins: And you guys, no courtesans. Unless it’s a side chick, and then whatever.Simone Collins: I don’t, I don’t know. I think, I think people should purs- if you wanna be a courtesan, pursue it professionally. Some people do this very successfully.Malcolm Collins: Give the guy pleasure, make sure you’re actually doing your job.Simone Collins: Sugar baby websites are a, a very big thing. People absolutely make careers out of it. They’re, they’re clear about what it is. IMalcolm Collins: think that framing also helps guys know what they’re really looking for, because so often, you know, I see guys- when they say, “Well, this is what I’m looking for in, like, a wife,” and it’s like a list of kinks or something, and it’s like- It’sSimone Collins: like-I’m cucking ... no, you’re looking for a courtesan. Yeah. You’re not, you’re not looking for a wife. Wives aren’t that. Absolutely true. People need to understand the [00:32:00] difference. Yeah. And also, like, not everyone can afford a courtesan. Just to be clear. LoveMalcolm Collins: you, Simone.Simone Collins: Bye. I’mMalcolm Collins: sorry I’m being so tired at this time of day.Just too much work.Simone Collins: Yeah. You gotta sleep more. Ciao.Malcolm Collins: Ciao.Simone Collins: Kini-Malcolm Collins: So how are things going today, Simone?Simone Collins: I think both you and I have had a day today where we’re like-Malcolm Collins: I’m out of it, yeah ...Simone Collins: we’re done with this thing, and then, and then it just doesn’t, it doesn’t happen. And for you, it was development of the, the Vtuber setup and-Malcolm Collins: I mean, I’m making progress. I’ve gotten through some of the hardest parts that I didn’t think I would find a solution for.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But I’m still on some of the second hardest parts that I didn’t think I’d find a solution for, so, just, you know, with RFAB that does, like, AI chatbots, AI adventure, like choose your own adventure stories, AI agents, AI vibe coding,Simone Collins: AI-Malcolm Collins: AISimone Collins: fact checking.Malcolm Collins: Fact checking, yeah. We’ve got a super search that, like, outputs an AI [00:33:00] answer and then has other AIs run against it to check it so you can see from, like, a number of AIs, like, basically Yeah.Which is very difficult, right? And so, that’s what I’m working on. I, I think I, I think I’ll get it through tomorrow. Like, it looks like we’re gonna get to the other side of this, and once I get to the other side of this it’ll be very cool because any of you guys who want, like, any, any AI that, like, makes a, a drawing for you, you’llSimone Collins: beMalcolm Collins: able to rig that to a Vtuber avatar and maybe...I mean, Vtubers are all cool now. We’re, like, we’re getting the whole, like, Vtuber wave right now, which I think is pretty cool and that’s where The Vtuber renaissance. Yeah, the Vtuber renaissance. And very, very excited about that. I, I even thought, like, after I did the Leaflet streams, because those go so well, right?Yeah. Like, I’ve, I’ve looked at them and I’m like, “Oh my [00:34:00] God, I can talk for 10 hours straight?” People should have knownSimone Collins: that when they see that we’re not able toMalcolm Collins: cut our videos down to, like, 20 minutes like normal humans. I mean, you can talk with Leaflet for, ‘cause she’s so awesome. I, you know, I don’t know if that would work with just anyone.Simone Collins: It’dMalcolm Collins: work with youSimone Collins: Yeah, but I mean, you know, we’re freaking married. So there’s that.Malcolm Collins: A lot of people are like, “You’re married to someone, you run out of things to talk about.” But like, not us.Simone Collins: Not us. Man, not us.Malcolm Collins: And for dinner tonight w- we’re gonna use that wild mushroom soup that you made that was so creamy and delicious, and have that with steak.Mm-hmm. Which I think is gonna be absolutely spectacular. I’m really looking forward to it. I might not eat all the steak so we can have a bit more steak left over, cut that up, and then make some noodles with it or something. I think would be a lot of fun.Simone Collins: [00:35:00] Mm.Malcolm Collins: So we’ll see.Simone Collins: Oh, like a, like a stir-fry, like- LikeMalcolm Collins: a stir-fry lo mein orSimone Collins: somethingwok-fried lo mein with... Yeah. So yeah, I’ll do the whole thing, and then just whatever you don’t eat I’ll slice and we’ll wok-Malcolm Collins: Or fried rice. We haven’t done fried rice in ages. Oh my God,Simone Collins: yeah. I mean, it’s...Malcolm Collins: The problem is, with to really do fried rice right, you have to get it super, super hot, and that just requires so much more attention.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll figure this all out. We’ll figure this all out.Simone Collins: We shall.Malcolm Collins: But it’s been so interesting to see the... By the way, did you see the video I sent you? The, the Leaflet one where... So Leaflet had done a video on our video, and it was taken down because I called our kids, affectionately, little b******s, because they are little b******s, and YouTube said that that was me harassing a minor.Simone Collins: Even that, that’s even you self-censoring and not calling them little S-H-I-T-S, so-Malcolm Collins: Which is a, it is a common term in the backwoods tradition. Yeah. It’s what I was called as a kid. Albion Seed list it as a common backwoods term of affection for children.Simone Collins: Yeah, this, this was you being polite. I [00:36:00] mean, come on, guys.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. ‘Cause I tell fans I’m gonna try to cuss less on the show. I’m gonna try not cussing sometimes, unless it’s good for a joke. But yeah, we only really cuss when it matters. I don’t, don’t cuss for emphasis. But if it’s gonna make somebody laugh, you know- Mm ... that’s a different c- scenario altogether.But anyway, so, She ends up getting banned for this, and then Rev Says Desu ends up covering her getting banned for this, and then in her video covering Rev Says Desu video about her getting banned for our show, she starts talking about how one of her friends was giving her advice, but she couldn’t say what friend, and then midway into the episode she’s just like, “Actually, I don’t think she’d care.It was Simone.”Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t care. And,Malcolm Collins: and then immediately afterwards Simone comes up because that’s what Rev said.And now Asmogold has covered this,Speaker 13: And actually the DMs are all bots too. Practically no communication here happens. I mean, if she’s not able... Listen, okay, if she’s not able to get it fixed in like, I don’t know, uh, a week or something like that, uh, she can reach out to me. I follow [00:37:00] her, she follows me, and I can help her get it resolved, or at least make sure that the decision was made by a human and not a random person.I, I, I can do that. But hopefully it can re- get resolved on its own, ‘cause this is, this is outrageous. It, it, it’s not the way it should be.Malcolm Collins: And it feels like we’re part of this, like, huge online creator, like, ecosystem now. Like we’re, we’re inching our way into that conservative s- the, the, the sphere, the, the intellectual talking sphere.If Rev Says Desu is talking about us now, and Asmongold has talked about us, and so, like, we just gotta-Simone Collins: HeMalcolm Collins: has? ... inch in, inch in. ISimone Collins: mean- Oh, that one clip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: One clip, but that’s how it starts. Like with Leaflet, there’s still the famous who the F is Leaflet, the first time- Yeah ... you heard about her.A year later he’s, you know, he, he, he, he’s very familiar with her. Same with Nugzinnor, right? Like same with Rev Says Desu, who clearly knows Leaflet now but didn’t before, right? So, I should reach back out to Sidescrollers and do more stuff with them. The, the, the reason we stopped [00:38:00] doing stuff with them is he’s like, “Well, you guys aren’t that into the gamer space.”And it’s like, well, now I own a game company, so I guess we are, so- Yeah,Simone Collins: that’s true ... we’ll see.Malcolm Collins: Or maybe I wasn’t entertaining enough. We’ll see.Simone Collins: Twinkle in your and Bruno’s eyes when you were first on Sidescrollers.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, it’s really solid. Like I, like I’m, when I’m on Leaflet stream people will drop in and be like, “Our, RFAB is so much fun.I love your, your website.” Like now there’s people who are fans of our website more than our show, which is surprising to me. I di- I didn’t think we’d get to this point.Simone Collins: Delightful.Malcolm Collins: Delightful, yeah. And it’s constantly being improved for people. Th- they get on and they’re like, “Oh, the card game broke this way,” and it’s like, well, let us know and we’ll try to fix it, right?But right now I’m, I’m, I’m rushing with the Vtuber stuff ‘cause I’m really excited about that. Anyway, I will get started here.Speaker 11: Other side of this tree over here. This looks pretty promising. Octavia, why don’t you go with mom? We’re looking for mushrooms, right? Yeah. I’m walking the trail. I will carry it by my, my [00:39:00] uncle. Maybe up here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dismantle one of the biggest historical myths pushed by both feminists and modern “trad” circles: the idea that women historically stayed home doing minimal work while men did everything.Using cross-cultural evidence from hunter-gatherer societies, medieval Europe, Vikings, Spartans, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Islamic traditions, Africa, Latin America, India, China, Japan, and colonial America — plus genetic evidence from modern birds — they reveal the real division of labor: women handled the majority of reliable, grueling calorie production, farming (pre-plow), management, textiles, marketing, and household economy, while men focused on high-risk, high-reward activities like warfare, raiding, politics, and innovation.They introduce the “Sword and Shield” model of relationships and explain how the industrial era, plow, and wage labor flipped traditional dynamics. A must-watch for anyone interested in real history, gender roles, and escaping modern cultural brainwashing.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] The researchers say the finding is clear, but the reason behind it is still unknown. On average, men were able to get about one meter, 3.3 feet closer than women before the birds took off. This pattern appeared consistently across Czechia, France, Germany, Poland, and Spain.It also held true across 37 species so Malcolm immediately turns to me and he’s like, “We know exactly why this is the case.”Malcolm Collins: Yes. This is the question that explains everything we’re going to talk about today, and I think proves without a doubt that this is not some malcolm malcolmnipulation of historical facts. You have been in rural Latin America, right?Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Take an image in your head.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: You’re driving down a rural road. You look out the side of a car, okay? You see somebody with a 60 pound jug of something on their head.Simone Collins: Oh, it’s a woman, obviously. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Always a woman.Simone Collins: Always, always a woman. Yes.Malcolm Collins: you go to Africa, you’ll see this as well. You go to-Simone Collins: China too. Let’s be clear. China too. Right.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. ‘Was it majority women doing the [00:01:00] harder labor when you’re-Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: 100%.Yeah. Yeah. D-Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Guys, you do not know how brain cucked you are if, if a woman has convinced you, “ We just need to go back to the traditional way and I’ll stay at home and you do all this stuff.” Because you’re so strong, look at your muscles, could you open this jar for me? All you see as a woman, I could just never do anything.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today I’m going to talk to you about the most diabolical brainwashing mind trick that feminists and women have ever pulled on males in human society.And it is that I will hear diet in the wool, males who identify as misogynist, red pill, post pickup artists, trads, go out there and say, “Well, we need to go back to the way things used to be, where women didn’t work and stayed in the household [00:02:00] and just cared for kids.” And I see their wives behind their fans with their villainous faces going.Speaker 5: あ。Simone Collins: oh my God.Malcolm Collins: Their villainous laugh. Tucked their husband’s brains and their husbands believe that historically women didn’t work. AndSpeaker 11: We must letMalcolm Collins: misogynist,Speaker 14: think this was his I all right. That heSpeaker 13: came up with.Speaker 14: AllSpeaker 12: right.Speaker 14: NowSpeaker 13: he’s going tofigureSpeaker 12: it out. Don’t do all. Okay. I know what to take.Speaker 11: You don’t know what to do. Yo talk, talk, talk only.Speaker 12: DoyouSpeaker 14: wantSpeaker 12: my own? Yes,Speaker 11: I want youSpeaker 12: to know.Speaker 14: Vula, how is business?Speaker 12: Oh, wow to me.My weak constitution, my weak mind as a woman, I am simply not fit for it.Speaker 12: Business is bad.Speaker 15: What do you know, what’s the matter? What’s happened?She suffers?Speaker 14: She suffers. She has to be at the travel agency alone all dayWell, her kids are all alone at home.Speaker 14: That’sSpeaker 12: [00:03:00] right.Speaker 15: So,Take the kids with you to work.Speaker 15: You’d be with Taki .Speaker 12: That would be good.Speaker 14: That would be no good. No good. No good. No good. Because, um,When a woman has her kids around, she just can’t focus.Speaker 14: And that’s why that no work. No work.Speaker 15: .I have your answer. Yes.I will do all the work for you and you stay home all day with the kids.Speaker 11: Oh, I, I can’t believe that. Wonderful. Wonderful.Malcolm Collins: and I saw this in the comments again recently where like even- OhSimone Collins: really?Malcolm Collins: Guys were like, “Well, women held some roles historically outside the house, but, you know, they weren’t like cobblers and they weren’t like sailors and they weren’t like, you know, stone masons.”And it’s like all of that is true.Simone Collins: Yeah. However,Malcolm Collins: the way that all of those businesses were managed where if a guy [00:04:00] was a stone mason or a cobbler or anything like that, his books and his inventory sourcing and his client sourcinggenerally would have been handled by the woman, but it wasn’t even just that. It was if you actually look at the statistics around female labor in history, women actually did, if you’re talking about hard labor, the labor that fed the family, right? Women actually did the majority of the work over the vast majority of human history.If you go back to let’s say hunter gatherer society, for example, because we’ve been able to study this in a great detail women produced in terms of daily caloric intake between 80 and 60% of the calories that the family ate.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, really?Malcolm Collins: This is 90 human history.Simone Collins: Well, this, you know, this also makes sense in other things where you see sexual dimorphism.For example, women being much [00:05:00] having much higher endurance and pain tolerance versus men who are better like sprinters.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Speaker 6: Or to word it another way, the female body and psychology at an evolutionary level are optimized for grueling labor while the male body in mind are optimized for warfare and disposability. Neither are totally optimal, but the idea that women are beautiful flowers designed to sit inside all day caring for childrenFar from any risk of manual labor is probably the greatest feminist psyops of all time and completely a historic.Simone Collins: . And yeah, that just, that, that really, that implies millions of years of higher workloads.Malcolm Collins: And this is actually even true. And, and we’re gonna talk about like why this is the case because note people can be like, “But those just makes no sense.I thought women, because they’re the weaker, they must do this work.” And it’s like, b***h, have you ever seen how lions make this s**t work? The male [00:06:00] lion sits around all day and the females bring in food because that’s the way human society is supposed to work.Simone Collins: Oh God.Malcolm Collins: And if you go back to the most trad iterations of human society, let’s go with the ultra orthodox Jews, okay?In ultra Orthodox Jewish society, do men work? No.Simone Collins: Oh God.Malcolm Collins: Men don’t work. Women work. Men spend all day studying. You actually see this in,Simone Collins: Studying. ...Malcolm Collins: if you go to more primitive iterations of Islamic society, I remember this- Yeah. ... Morocco and are out in the desert.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: And we met you know, a traditionalist Muslim-Simone Collins: Oh, yes.Yes. ...Malcolm Collins: and the men did not work. That was considered, like, very offensive, even the idea that a man would have a job, that is of course the purview of women to have jobs. And you could say, “Well, Malcolm, surely you don’t want us to be like those, those Muslims or those Jews.” And I’m like, “Well, actually, even if you go back to early European [00:07:00] society, most farming through most of human history was done by women.”People are like, “What? I thought men handled farming.” And it’s like, actually, men only moved to handle the majority of farming after one particular invention. Do you know what it was?Simone Collins: The ... Oh, what was it called? The ... I wanna say spinning Jenning because it’s just the first thing that, like, comes to mind.The plow. The plow. Oh, great. Okay. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay. In regions where the plow is not used due to soil conditions and stuff like that-Simone Collins: Yeah. ...Malcolm Collins: the majority of farming is typically done by w- women. Huh. In Europe, before the introduction of the plow, which happened a thousand AD. So pretty recently the majority of farming was done by women unless you were, like, having slaves do it or something like that.But even when you were having slaves do it and you had, like, a big estate, the majority of the family’s work was still done by women because Zane managed the family’s household and finances, which we will get to. And so if you’re like, [00:08:00] wait, okay, if women were doing the majority of actual work throughout human history in terms of calorie acquisition, in terms of financial management what were men doing?What was the male role in human history? Why were women okay taking on this role that seems to be, ... Because like imagine, and, and this is why I’m saying that, like, it’s such a cut thing to not know this, is, is that you’re literally going out there when the truth of human history is women boast manage child rearing and manage calorie acquisition, okay?And you’re going out there and saying, “No, no, no. I’ll do the trad thing and just do all of the labor and women can do a quarter of what women ever did historically.” But sorry, I, I just, I cannot I cannot get over because we’re gonna go over to how the, how somehow women psy-opsed men into believing this.We’re gonna go over traditional marriage structures how they developed [00:09:00] that way because I, like, you were aware of this when we were talking about this, but I just think, like, a lot of guys, they have this, like, cargo cult of trad where they have this vision in their head of what a hunter-gatherer society was like.They have this vision in their head of what early medieval life was like and it allows them to define themselves because if they, if they have this idea of, like, this is what men did back then, and this is what women did back then that that means that, well, if they just emulate this role that they believe is a prehistoric role of what a man is, well, well, well, now it’s fed into their identity, like, “I am man, man does X.”Okay, so what did man actually do historically? Like, what was a man’s actual role in a family? The man’s actual role in a family, and I’ve, I’ve talked about this as a way to model your relationships, and increasingly, I’m realizing that when I go out there and I can say, “Here’s an optional way to [00:10:00] model your relationship.”I’ve increasingly realized I need to stop saying that people are too stupid, and then they just model their relationships in stupid ways. The ideal way to model your relationship is in what we call a sword and shield relationship.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That means the woman is in charge of making sure the daily caloric needs of the family are met and that you don’t lose all your assets.And this is what women mostly did on a historic basis. The man is in charge of moving the family’s status upwards which means that he’s in charge of high risk, high reward opportunities. Obviously, if you’re only familiar with stereotypes in history the two examples of this that are going to come to mind immediately are going to be Viking Society where the women would manage the farms and the men would go a Viking, and the men would go on these raids to try to get lots of treasure to raise the family status, right?Right. Another example would be Spartan [00:11:00] Society- Yes. ... where women would manage the Hellots and they manage the farm and the men would go out and perform their military duties and they’d come back and they might you know, a- a- acquire stuff. You also had this in Roman society where, where men would go outNow, now less so because Roman took from Greek society and Greek society is one of the few societies where women actually almost did no actual work. Just hitSimone Collins: in the back of the house.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, one of the very few societies in human history where women were actually basically just locked inside twenty four seven.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Now, one of the place, if you wanna look into research on this and I think that she actually significantly understates this- Yeah. ... was a Nobel Prize winning research by Claudia Godlin, Oh. ...who showed the U-shaped pattern in female labor which shows basically what we said before is that around, and I think that she actually gets some of her numbers wrong, but she tries to look at historicalSpeaker 9: . Actually, I went back over her actual data and her work is clearly misstated. If you’re only familiar with the little cartoon, she has a female labor, you’d get this impression that [00:12:00] female labor started to die out in like the 1850s and then bottomed out in the 1910s, , and was never really significantly higher than male labor participation.But if you actually look at her data, you can see that this is nowhere near true. Also just a funny side note here. Have you noticed that her most modern woman is wearing a hijab? Just see, just so you know where she wants society going. , But yeah, this, this cartoon that you may have seen of her work doesn’t align with her actual, , data.What the actual data shows, which I think even she is afraidthat men will look at history and realize they shouldn’t be saying, “Hey woman, get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich.” It’s, “Hey woman, get in the field and cultivate me a sandwich.”Malcolm Collins: whatever.But around 1910 is when or let’s say the 1900s is when male wage labor really began to pick up in any society- Wow. ... the idea that a man would leave the household, and this is when things began to fall apart, because remember- You get her atSimone Collins: the end, yes. ...Malcolm Collins: as society developed, right, okay, well, now you’ve got the [00:13:00] plow, now you’ve got specialization, now you don’t have a woman gathering, now you don’t have a woman on the farm, you have a woman managing the books, and the supply chain, and the, the sales, and the managing the storefront, right?Like, the, the classic example I’ll give is, okay, you have a cobbler, or you have a butcher or something like that. So the guy learns the skill. He learns how to cobble, he learns how to make the shoes, he learns how to handle the, the wrapping of it and everything like that, very complicated. And the woman manages what women are disproportionately good at, which is interpersonal skills and bureaucracy.And so she manages the, the, the, you know, sitting behind the counter, taking the money, marketing the product managing sort of guild bureaucratic stuff, managing the, the finances. Basically women did a sort of middle management job. And as males and, and this would be true, like, with whatever the profession was, whether you made, you were a cobbler or whether you were a butcher or something like that, like, why wouldn’t, like, you’ve gotta [00:14:00] understand, men during this period didn’t have this idea of masculinity that you had, right?They, they had an idea of masculinity, but if you went to them or their wives, and you said something like actually, the husband needs to manage all of this other stuff, right? Both the wife and the husband would be like, “But why?” Like, the husband is focused on the specialized skill that he needs to continue to improve so that our family can make money.I, the woman, have free time on my hands, why would I not be managing the things that allow my husband to focus on his specialty skill?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right? Like, it would come off as, like, completely insane that the husband would waste time that they could have cobbling or butchering or whatever their actual skill was to manage the shop, to manage the sales process, to [00:15:00] manage theYeah. I just would come across as like, “Are you complete ... Are you just telling me to, like, waste money?” Like, there are kids, like, we’re making this money for our family and our kids because remember, historically, Simone wouldn’t become Simone Collins, she’d become Mrs. Malcolm Collins, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. Like,Malcolm Collins: people really had a combined identity, this idea of the women’s needs versus the man’s needs different-Simone Collins: I wish we could bring that back, by the way, that you had to address someone by, like, their, their combined partner name going forward.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, because you were one entity afterwards. Yeah. It, it did, it didn’t make sense. This idea of males and females having competing needs is a modern concept that was created by the atomization of the family.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But anyway, so women had these sorts of roles and then men ... And, and keep in mind, these sorts of roles were roles that women were relegated into after all of the domains that women used to specialize in were taken away from them.Yeah. Like in farming, the reason why women stopped being the majority of farming labor after the invention [00:16:00] of the plow is the plow required more brute strengths. Mm-hmm. So men were able to take it over. But also keep in mind in a, in a society historically, if you can be like, okay, but then why would society structure themselves this way?Like, it, why would societies have women be the majority calorie income generators, right? Like what the heck were men doing if women were doing this, right? So if they were not out doing the high risk, high reward thing, wh- why were men doing high risk, high reward, martial adjacent activities? It was because women suck at war, okay?Simone Collins: We’re really not good at it. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That’s what men were training on. And this also comes to, to hunter gatherer societies. So, in hunter gatherer societies, and, and again, the meno sphere always freaks out about this because they don’t actually read the research. Leftists will say things like, “Well, actually you know, when you look at large studies like Andreessen et al.2723 women hunted in [00:17:00] 79% to 63% of foraging societies.” So this is hunter gatherer societies. And so they’re like, wo- oh, of course, women wouldn’t go on a mammoth hunt. And it’s like, yeah, that’s true. What were women hunting in these societies, okay? Because they weren’t hunting what men were hunting in these societies.Men were hunting things that would prepare them for war, were allegories for war, because you had to defend your territory. This is why the male lion lays us about all day, okay? What women were hunting were things like squirrels and bunnies and mice. They were hunting a completely different type of game.It was-Simone Collins: Low stakes, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, low stakes, opportunities-Simone Collins: Low risk, low reward. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But today as a guy, you’re so, like, dichotomous, which is one of the things we try to break people out of on this channel, like, well, there’s hunting and there’s gathering. And the moment you hear, “Oh, when a [00:18:00] leftist says females were participating in 79% of the hunt, like, like that they hunted meat in 79% of hunter-gatherer societies, why would women arbitrarily not hunt bunnies when they saw a bunny, right?Like when they’re foraging. Why would they opportunistically not make little traps for shrews and mice and stuff like that that might be around the, the campsite, right?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Why would they, like, just to arbitrarily be like, no, only men can touch meat. That’s a weird way to just sort of cut your society, right?Like, it makes no sense. And when you think about it a little bit, you’re like, oh yeah, that would make sense. A society where they demanded that men be the primary calorie getters, right, and women just stay at home all day. Well, those men don’t have as much time to train for war anymore, right? And if they don’t have as much time to train for war, well, what happens to those men in the long term?They and their way of life get eradicated. [00:19:00] So what about the societies where you don’t see this in a historic context? Like let’s look at ancient Athens, right, which is a actual historic counter example. And we’ll go through other historic examples here, but ... Okay. So Athenian men because they did not have women managing trade and finance and everything like that, they managed it themselves, right?Yeah. But that meant that they didn’t have time to learn how to war. Mm-hmm. So how did Athenian men fight?Simone Collins: Oh my God, this is why we have democracy. This is why?Malcolm Collins: Yes. They fought with the lower caste and essentially slave labor. That is what powered the trireams that maintain the Athenian naval d- h- hegemony.Mm-hmm. Is, is incredibly ... And, and as Simone was joking, this is where we get early votes being widely distributed because, you know, if you have triery members who you know, are otherwise pretty low cast and you could say, well, now you get to vote, right? Well, you get to vote on which high caste person you want to vote.BecauseSimone Collins: no, no vote, no vote until you what.Malcolm Collins: [00:20:00] Yeah. You gotta do it. Vote, no vote. But that’s where that came from, right? Mm. Is that the Athenian male sort of, citizen they, they ... It’s not that they never fought. Like you, you do see Asthenians fight in history but they leaned really hard on the lower caste in a way that other societies like Spartans and Thieves simply didn’t.But to continue here, let’s get, let’s go as ... Again, we’ve already gone over Vikings. I assume people are pretty familiar with a Viking labor division. But let’s look at medieval Europe. 13-Simone Collins: I always crack up though with that ... What was that co- comedic Viking show where, like, there was one woman who would go raiding- Yeah, the rape.Well, I mean, they’re like, well, of course she, like, she, she rapes in pillages and everything, just like all the other ones. And then, like, her husband’s getting increasingly uncomfortable.Speaker: Are you really proud of your wife, at least? I mean Frøya dove into that pillaging, one hundred percent. Even took part in quite a lot of the rapingMalcolm Collins: yeah, sheSimone Collins: just ... Yeah. [00:21:00] I don’t think that happened very much. Yeah. And in terms of, like, female sailors, there was that one famous female pirate who, like, masqueraded as a man and, and, and developed this ingenious way to urinate without showing that she was a woman.But yeah. Tough times.Malcolm Collins: Anyway so, in medieval Europe the farmland was a joint production unit, but tasks were sharply gendered along lines based on physical demand, risk, and compatibility with childcare. Men handled higher risks, drinks, intensive field work, plowing with oxen. So this is after the plow, by the way, is what I’m going over here.Mowing and threshing grain, women focused on lower risk, more reliable tasks that could be multitasked near young children gleaning leftover grain for the harvest clearing weeds, binding sheaves, making hay, collecting wood, and sheep shearing. Harvesting itself was often shared. Women also manage garden, livestock, dairy, poultry, and most crucially dominated textile production spinning and weaving, which form the backbone of both [00:22:00] household needs and export industry.They produce cloth ale cheese and other goods for home use or local sale. So it’s important- It’sSimone Collins: huge. ...Malcolm Collins: if you were a, a farming family, of the stuff you sold, the majority of it was produced by women.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: These are your cheeses. B- people don’t realize how important cheese was as an export product. It was so important that in medieval Scotland, you would pay your taxes and cheese.Like it was just like, this is the easily durable and I could just imagine the king cellar full of cheeses, right? Like-Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s the chocolate of Europe before-Malcolm Collins: Yeah. ...Simone Collins: chocolate.Malcolm Collins: So you, you they, they would produce that, they would produce the cloth, which was also an easy export product. They would produce your textiles, which was an easy export product.Men were not producing these things. And keep in mind, this is post plow. Yeah. This is post women no longer doing the majority of farming-Simone Collins: Yeah, so this is- ... You had artificially depressed.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This, this [00:23:00] is, this is women at, like, one of their low points in human history, one of their low regions in human history, still doing a great deal of the labor.Totally.This idea, again, do not allow yourself to be cut into this belief that women just did childcare and education. Mm. They did not. They did the majority of what we would today call labor. Men did speculative ventures which is very different from, like, just labor. And note, they were not building the, because people were like, “Well, were they all, they’re building architecture and new houses and stuff like that?I was like, no, because that is more in the category of speculative venture. To do something like that, what do you need to do? You typically need some form of loan, some sort of existing business supply. These are high ... Building a building is a high risk, high reward thing.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Building a, a wagon historically was [00:24:00] very expensive.That’s a- Oh yeah. ... higher, high reward thing, okay, that requires some level of artisanal expertise. Those were what men did historically. Yeah. But keeping the family alive is what women did historically. And I’ll note here, I repeatedly see families think they’re doing something like new and progressive and converge back on this.They’re like, “Oh yeah, the wife is like the nurse or the you know, the stable job that makes a decent income-Simone Collins: Yeah. ...Malcolm Collins: and then the husband is the entrepreneur.” Yes. This is the, I’d almost say it’s like the normal structure among most of our friends in, in relationships.Simone Collins: Totally, yeah. Yeah. Wife has like a W-2 steady job.Husband does something risky for sure.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. As historian Jane Whittel noted, by the way drawing on coroner roles, women’s accidental deaths were overwhelmingly domestic or village based 61%. Now I would note that what’s really interesting there is you can say, “Oh, that’s huge. Women [00:25:00] only died within the village at 61% of the time.” Now keep in mind what that means, 49% of women were dying outside of the village.Why were women, if women were like these shut-ins during the medieval period, 1300 to 1500- Yeah. And this is from Jane Whittle’s work, why were so many of them outside of the village?Simone Collins: Well, these are the, specifically though they’re accidental deaths, so that’s unusual too.Malcolm Collins: Well, right, but this means you, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re putting yourself at risk when you go outside the village no matter what, right?Sure.Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah. You’reMalcolm Collins: doing these sorts of ... I’m, I’m just pointing out that like, this happened. Now let’s, let’s go to urban settings. Oh, and this is where Simone’s spicy information comes into play. Do you wanna go into it? Genetic evidence shocked you.Simone Collins: Gosh, yes. No, no, no. There’s ... I have to, I still have to post about it, but there’s been this, this mystery going around on X recently related to new research came out.Here’s one of the headlines covering it [00:26:00] in Science Tech Daily. Birds in cities fear women more than men. Scientists don’t know why. A small consistent difference in how birds respond to approaching humans, hence at hidden cues shaping animal behavior. An international team of scientists has uncovered an unexpected pattern in how city birds respond to people.Species such as great tits. Why do they have such great bird names? House sparrows and black birds take to flight sooner when approached by women than by men. The researchers say the finding is clear, but the reason behind it is still unknown. This study took place in five European countries and involved male and female participants matched for height and color clothing, walking directly toward birds and parks and other ergman green spaces.By measuring how close a person could get before the bird flew away, the team assessed what is known as flight initiation , distance. On average, men were able to get about one meter, 3.3 feet closer than women before the birds took off. This pattern appeared [00:27:00] consistently across all study locations, including Czechia, France, Germany, Poland, and Spain.It also held true across 37 species from cautious birds like magpies to more tolerant ones such as pigeons. So Malcolm immediately turns to me and he’s like, “We know exactly why this is the case.”Malcolm Collins: Yes. This is the question that explains everything we’re going to talk about today, and I think proves without a doubt that this is not some malcolm hallucination or some malcolmnipulation of historical facts.There is really no other plausible way you could have getten, gotten this, and it’s actually it’s not surprising to me that scientists don’t know this because they’re not historians. Ah. And they don’t study the parts of history that are hidden from people. Mm-hmm. But have you ever walked around an old European city?Simone Collins: Yeah, like Edenville.Malcolm Collins: You have walked around an old European city, like let’s say Edinburgh is where I’ve really noticed this. You will notice the [00:28:00] second or third stories where you have windows, you will have these little nooks,like right next to the window that look like they’re made for a bird to make a nest there.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you could say, “That’s really weird.”Simone Collins: Or you think how cute.Malcolm Collins: How cute. They were, they must have been getting eggs from these nests. And it’s no, that’s not what these were used for. What these were used for is the housewife, because remember I said that women hunt small gang-Simone Collins: mm-hmm. ...Malcolm Collins: men hunt, big game.They would build these into the walls of their houses and birds would come and nest in them and they’d come and grab them and they’re young and cook them up and eat them.Simone Collins: It was Pigeon DoorDash.Malcolm Collins: Pigeon doorSimone Collins: edition. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But it likely wasn’t limited to that. It was likely part of all of life back then.Men did not do things during this period like hunt down city birds. Women did. Mm. And what we’re seeing in this is women did cross [00:29:00] culturally across Europe, across locations, across species, and to such an extent that it is existentially baked into the DNA of multiple bird species.Simone Collins: Yeah. So crazy. It’s so cool.Malcolm Collins: Could there not be stronger proof that women were actually a, at a, at a extremely large level, enough level have an evolutionary impact, disproportionately involved with the acquiring of basic proteins for the family when it was not big hunts. And, and keep in mind like how well this fits into our wider categories.So suppose you have like medieval European society or something, and the man is out there doing his artisan, his art- artisan thing, or out there trying to do some sort of a big deal or something like that or building houses and he needs to come home and there needs to be meat on the table, right? The woman is in charge of making sure [00:30:00] that happens.That was the reality of medieval society. Not what you have been told is the reality of medieval society, and we’re seeing it here in the DNA, but you could say, okay, but what about the nobles? Okay. The, the, certainly if we’re talking about like the medieval to early modern 1,100 to 1700s the noble women stayed at home as delicate little flowers and didn’t do any labor and the men did all the labor.It wasn’t surely in that group, the women did the majority of labor labor and the men did the majority of status and crewing activities. So no one’s core roles were high risk high retorn. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Specifically what the men did was military service, crusades, tournaments, court intrigue, and warfare to defend and expand lands, gain favor and seize territory.And, and men were often absent from their how ... House, their property and their investment from years at a time. A man going to war [00:31:00] during this period meant being gone for like half a decade. That’s what it, going on a crusade mean that you could be gone for a decade. Women were managing most stuff. And if they weren’t managing it beforehand, like you can be like, oh, well, when the man was home, the man managed most of the things.And it’s like, no, the woman was observient to the man, but the woman still did the majority of the work. It would have been stupid not to do it that way. The woman and the man both know that the man could at any time disappear for a 10 year period. And yet the woman has the man do most of the labor so that he has a teacher in like a, a few days or something or a week or a month before he disappears.Like what are you, that would be so stupid.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Especially when you consider that most activities and tasks the woman would need to know would be highly seasonal. And so the man would not be able to teach them with enough time before they left on military duty. It just doesn’t make any sense.Simone Collins: By the way by, just by the way that they were called dos or ducots, the, the things that caught the pigeons.Malcolm Collins: Ah.Simone Collins: And they were common [00:32:00] enough. They were like, they were so common that sometimes basically like the local agricultural communities would get really angry about them because the, the people in, in cities would actively cultivate like pigeons, you know, they, especially because that was like your, your source of food if things got kind of lean.So you wanted to make sure there were lots of pigeons because then you would have something to eat like when the winter came. But then in the nearby agricultural communities, they would eat the crops. And so there was this, this inherent conflict between manor houses and also urban dwellings that had these ducots in them and the people in, in farmlands because they’re like, “Dude, stop the pests.I hate this. This is really annoying.” Versus like- “This is my dinner.” Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, ... Anyway so, what did the women manage in Nor- European nobility? So they managed the day-to-day estate economy. So you’ve got to keep in mind, that’s most of the daily work of a noble- Yeah. ... [00:33:00] is, is managing the estate’s economy.Simone Collins: The servants and the, the stuff and the finances and the management and the food coming and going. And there’s a lot going on.Malcolm Collins: They also oversaw agricultural production of the estate. Men did not do that. That was a woman’s work on an estate. They collected rent and taxes. Oh, you thought the man was the oneNo, that was the woman, because again, the man may have to disappear at any moment.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They monitored tenants and goods, handling household finances, budgeting, directing servants, handling hiring and firing, ensuring food security. And they also ran when husbands were away defense and legal affairs. Coroners and men-minoral records show women’s work was overwhelmingly internal/stable while man’s was outwardly/risky.” Okay. So, let’s go into things as they shifted, or we can go a bit cross-cultural here.Where do you see ... Well, I already talked about the hoe difference. So basically if you’re doing [00:34:00] hoe or shifting based agriculture the women typically dominate that. And if you’re doing plow-based agriculture, if you’re wondering where plow-based agriculture never really dominated here you’re looking at Sub-Sahara Africa and parts of Southeast Asia and Latin America and in these areas, women still do the majority of labor.Simone Collins: Is thisMalcolm Collins: whySimone Collins: women are called hos?Malcolm Collins: I don’t know, but I’ll, I’ll tell you this. If you’re like, “Come on. “ Women don’t do the majority of hard manual labor in pre-plo societies, and I’m like, “Okay, have you ever been to Latin America?” And people are like, “Yeah, I mean, I, I guess I’ve been a little bit in Latin America.”I’m like, “Did you ever drive in any rural region?” And people are like, “Well, of course, you know, I’ve been out of, I’m a worldly person.” And I’ve been like, okay, so when you looked along the roadside and you saw people carrying 60 pound jugs on their head, which, which gender was doing that?[00:35:00]Simone Collins: Sorry, no, it, it actually is in reference to a hoe. So the, yeah, hose is- Women wereMalcolm Collins: called hose because they-Simone Collins: Some historians note that in early America, free black women doing farm labor were sometimes dehumanized and literally called hose as if they were just tools, which connects the word to racism and slavery as well as sexism.Malcolm Collins: But it also shows that in early freed black society, women did the majority of the farm labor when it was done. Because,Simone Collins: yeah, because they did the work with the hose. Oh my God. Ah, oh my God. Anyway, sorry, carry on.Malcolm Collins: No, but Simone, I’m trying to get you to grock this. You have been in rural Latin America, right?Simone Collins: Yes. Well, mostly- Take it urban.Malcolm Collins: Take an image in your head.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: You’re driving down a rural road. You look out the side of a car, okay? You see somebody with a 60 pound jug of something on their head.Simone Collins: Oh, it’s a woman, obviously. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Always a woman.Simone Collins: Always, always a woman. Yes.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: People want to say, oh, in these primitive societies, it’s [00:36:00] men who are doing all the manual labor, all of the hard labor, and it’s like, this is factually-Simone Collins: No, all, all the farming exposure people have had, like, in developed countries is post-industrial farming where, like, yeah, I mean, my evoked set of, like, you know, my, my AI generated image in my mind of, you know, farm is like a man on a giant tractor that costs like a million dollars, you know, 500,000 dollars.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Obviously-Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that guys also get it wrong where they’re like, well, men are stronger, therefore that means that they did the more grueling manual labor. When, if you have actually been to many developing countries, what you will see is the most grueling manual labor where pure strength isn’t what’s at play here is predominantly done by women.And again, when we talk about in Latin America, you see them carrying this huge things of water on the head, the huge [00:37:00] things of food on their heads, on the, the giant packs. If it’s not on their head, you’ll see the, like, the, the beleaguered woman who’s like clearly in her early 30s, but like looks like she’s like 55 or something with the giant backpack on going across the little trail or whatever.You go it’s not just Latin America, you go to Africa, you’ll see this as well. You go to-Simone Collins: China too. Let’s be clear. China too. Right.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. ‘Simone Collins: Cause I, I’ve actually spent a lot more time in rural, like countryside China and Japan actually than,Malcolm Collins: Was it majority women doing the harder labor when you’re-Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: 100%.Yeah. Yeah. D-Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Guys, you do not know how brain cucked you are if, if a woman has convinced you, “We just need to go back to the traditional way and I’ll stay at home and you do all this stuff.” Because you’re so strong, look at your muscles, could you open this jar for me? All you see as a woman, I could just never do anything.Meanwhile these very sane guys have been to Latin America, looked out a car and been like, “Huh, it’s weird that women are doing all the [00:38:00] manual labor in this society. I wonder what the, what the men are doing.” Nothing. That, that must be a strange, strange primitive coincidence. We need to go back to this.We need to go back to a world where women raise children and do the labor, just like I’ve structured in my family. People are like ... That is how women ... Because remember how guys are always like, “Women are hypergamist.” Right? And so how does hypergamy really work, right? SomeSimone Collins: kind of crab meeting dance.What was that supposed to be?Malcolm Collins: Well, no, it’s, it’s, it’s men doing the spasm- Oh, okay. ... hypergenous women. And it’s like, okay, so if women are hypergamist, okay, they want a partner who is there better, okay? Mm-hmm. Intellectually in terms of status, in terms of physicality, whatever. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Why did that work historically?Because the women did the labor to justify their worth to the genetically [00:39:00] superior male. Mm-hmm. I’m not saying that’s the way our relationship is structured. I’m just saying,Simone Collins: Everyone knows it, Malcolm. It’s fine. They’ve already said it many times.Malcolm Collins: I want the grateful woman who wants to do the labor, who is excited to do the labor and there are a lot of women, like, you guys would be surprised when a woman hooks into a guy who she thinks is hypergamist to her the amount of effort she will put into holding onto that guy.And if you’re just like, “Okay, we’re not playing any games. It’s about labor. You put a 60 pound jug of water on your head, you walk 30 miles a day, go. “ And she’s like, “Simone Collins: Sir, yes, third. Yeah. She’s- Sorry,Malcolm Collins: sorry. Yes.Simone Collins: For real. ThankMalcolm Collins: you. This is the way I wanted to live. Yeah. Easy.Simone Collins: Which is, I think it’s another reason why our culture’s so toxic in that it it would demean any woman for, like, accepting that frame, admitting that to herself.Like, the, the successful framing presented to women is, okay, [00:40:00] well, now, you know, if, if, if you like a man, you need to pretend that nothing he ever does is impressive, that you will never do any work for him ever et cetera, et cetera. That, that any, any work you do is an imposition and basically a crime against your entire gender and society, it’s, it’s really messed up.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So let’s go to a few other societies here so you can see that this is not just a European phenomenon of anythingSimone Collins: European- Are you ... Hose was it. All, all I need was that. My God.Malcolm Collins: Literally named after hose. Okay. So, if you go to West Africa women have long dominated market trading and local commerce in the region giving them significant control of household budgets, credit networks, and economic decision making.In Ghana, market queens, elected female leaders hey- MarketSimone Collins: queens. ...Malcolm Collins: for specific commodities, food, good, textiles, they regulate prices, resolve disputes, organize self-help groups, and wield political economic influence. This includes mediating with authorities and ensuring food [00:41:00] system stability. If you contrast this with men who do home-based farming men often handle the initial land clearing for certain crops while women perform the ongoing, labor-intensive, but lower risk tasks of plowing, weeding, harvesting, and processing, plus the dominant role in marketing the surplus.Men were involved in higher risk external activities like hunting, fishing, and long haul trade or craft production. So keep in mind, again, you’re seeing this here. What do men do? It is higher risk things, higher artisan training things. Women do the lower risk things and the more economically focused things.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: And again, I’m, I’m, I’m saying you need to alter your perception of what is a male and female role in the economy, not saying that you need to take on a women’s role, you just happen to have been wrong about what, what the woman’s role was.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I was really surprised because we have a, like, pretty educated fan base and it made me realize that even within [00:42:00] the educated world, how-Simone Collins: Look, they probably knew but forgot because I would just say the CIOP is so in, in far in the other direction.Malcolm Collins: ItSimone Collins: is. It’s just been memory hold. I, I don’t think this is about ignorance. It’s about repeated blunt force of propaganda in the other direction.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s feminists go out there and they’re like, women were vikings and women hunted mammoths. And women ... And so when they hear something like women were involved in, you know, in, in hunting meat and like 70% of hunter-gatherer societies, they just throw it out because they’re like, oh, that must be biased scientist nonsense, right?Mm-hmm. And then they read the fine print and it was mice and rabbits and squirrels. It’s like, oh, that makes sense. Right? Like the basic kind of meats that would be easier to get on a daily basis to resure that the nutrition that they needed. Yeah. And it’s like, and this is how hypergamy worked traditionally.And it’s like, oh, that’s why a man would choose a lesser woman.Simone Collins: Uh-huh.Malcolm Collins: Because she was walking to and from with a 60 pound goord [00:43:00] on her head. You know, like-Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Let’s go to India.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So, men, again, handled plowing, irrigation and market sales. So this is one where women handled more market stuff.Women perform lower variants work like sewing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, gleaning, post-harvest processing plus livestock, kitchen gardens, and household budgeting. They contributed to 70% of agricultural labor in many regions. So again, they’re still doing the majority of agricultural-Simone Collins: These are alsoKeep in mind, like, on our episode on divisions of labor and household and what women report enjoying more, these are things that women still. In, in, in surveys, these are the types of activities women enjoy. These are also more bureaucratic activities, more routine activities, very predictable activities.And you see this also in, like, the lower rates of female entrepreneurship. Women, on average, are just, they, we don’t like the high risk, high reward. It’s very stressful. Like, I know you, you’re constantly trying to loop me [00:44:00] into, like, your VC stuff and it freaks me out and you’re constantly frustrated with the fact that I’m like, “Oh.”Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you don’t fully check the product beforehand. You don’t fully, you know, you’re just like, “I’m gonna do the performative minimum when it comes to high risk, high reward.”Simone Collins: Yeah, because they, I find it extremely stressful and aversive versus like the routine stuff which would literally drive you to madness or if, if not some ambulance.You, you, you know, I, I can do that and be very happy with it.Malcolm Collins: By the way for the people who wanna use a super search feature, feature on our fab, it can be used on things like episode because everyone of the models that runs on it has the capability of searching the internet.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So you could put something like the URL of this episode in and be like, is this accurate?What’s accurate? What’s not accurate? SoSimone Collins: cool. It’s really well done. It’s really well done.Malcolm Collins: And not just that. I mean, I do encourage you. If you are listening to this and you’re like, “I just do not believe this. I think this is urban monoculture. I think that this is seriously put it into an AI or something, right?Like I do that before any episode [00:45:00] goes live just to look for errors that may be in the episode.”Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Because I take it- That’s soSimone Collins: cool. ...Malcolm Collins: very seriously that I’m getting you guys factually accurate information.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And it is yeah, important that we actually make a society that works instead of relying on some weird cargo cult of the past, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes.Malcolm Collins: Never exists. So what about the Indian elites? Elite men pursued military conquests, court politics, and imperial administration. Again, all high risk, high rewards. Whereas rural women in the Zinna secluded women’s orders exercised real economic and managerial authority, administering large Jaguar estates, revenue land, controlling finances and salaries patrigene networks, trade, and even intelligent/diplomacy.Figures like Noor Haran and Harm Begin managed commercial enterprises and household governance as a parallel administrative node. The Zena had its own female officers, Dragas, Twitters, and something accounts that operated as an economic [00:46:00] hub. So again, you see the exact same pattern. This is not just like one culture.If we’re gonna go to Asia here if you’re talking about the Imperial Confucian China, men operated the outer sphere, scholar official examples. So this was like intense high stake competition for status and wealth, bureaucracy, warn and trade, trade. This is one of the few areas where men really dominated the bureaucracy and this is because it was an imperial bureaucracy and then highly institutionalized.Failure meant a loss of prestige plus lower elevation of the family. Women were confined to the quote unquote inner sphere managing household finances, education of the children, silk production, food processing, and daily budgeting. Confucian texts such as record of rituals explicitly divided the rules.Men, external public, women, internal domestic. So I, I think that this is really cool here where you can see, even if you’re talking about these incredibly, like Confucianism is considered very sexist and it’s still like, yeah, well, women manage the household of course, right? Like,Simone Collins: Duh. [00:47:00] Yeah.Malcolm Collins: If you go to feudal edo Japan men samuraize the warfare class, did duals, loyalty, lords, political maneuvering whereas women, again, govern the household, financial management, budgeting and even gave their husband’s allowances, which we see in the historical record.They did child education, silicotton production and protected family honor, though, though less so. They learned reading, writing, local administration, et cetera. And wives often, like in Europe, ran the estate during the male absence. Now, if your wife has been running your estate during your absence, not only again, do you need to prep her for doing this, but you can be like, “Okay, but after the men came back and they knew the wives could do it, didn’t they take over again?”And it’s like, no, because they were the dominant member of the household. And if you’re the dominant member of the household and the other person can do something competently, you don’t just take the work back. I’m, I, I’m sorry if that paint’s been in a bad light, but that is the reality of actually being a dominant member within a household.[00:48:00] So let’s go to colonial America, all right? Because people can be like, “Well, this isn’t the American tradition, is it? “ It, men focused, again, on high risk work. They did clearing land which we have a lot of stuff from. And they did some hunting so a, a lot of politicking. Like men were really focused on like- Let’s think aboutSimone Collins: like John and Abigail Adams, the classic American power couple.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: We have really good, if, if you’re not familiar with John and Abigail Adams, Abigail managed all of the investment, all of the estates, all of the hiring and firing, all of the everything. And John went to do the historically important stuff- mm-hmm. ... of setting up the American nation.Simone Collins: And this also was the Washington too.Yeah. I mean, this is like, this was the format. It was the format.Malcolm Collins: It was the format. Women made sure that the man had their allowance and the man made sure that the woman’s name would be mentioned in history, okay? That is the difference between the two roles. That is the way Simone and I structure our relationship, and this [00:49:00] is the way INow I’m just gonna straight out and say it is the better way to structure a relationship. Now that I see how ubiquitous it is throughout history, and that any other mechanism for structuring relationships has largely been experimental and short term like male wage labor for a female who sits at home all day.And, and mind you, even at the height of that particular experiment, like the 50s, all of the women were out of their mind on drugs and going crazy, right? Like the, it wasn’t working, okay? It may have had some like veneer of working in like Hollywood, but the reality- Oh,Simone Collins: if it worked, we, we wouldn’t have needed all those benzos.No, for sure it wasn’t working. It was not working.Malcolm Collins: These people were coked out of their mind. They were benzoed out of their mind. They barely had any idea what was happening because you cannot take a smart, intelligent person and say, “Here, stay at home, do nothing all day,” right? Like that’s you up. Okay.What about women? Women did well, we don’t even need to go into it. You’ve basically gone over Martha Washington, Abigail Adams. I, I [00:50:00] hope most Americans are fairly aware of those stories and what those women did. And, and they were not considered exceptional for their period. Nobody was like, “Oh, Abigail Adams, what like a weird lesbian she is for managing the estate or something, right?”Simone Collins: Cottage core lesbian Abigail Adams with all the children somehow, but whatever.Malcolm Collins: Again, if you go to the backwoods, you go to the frontier lifestyles I mean, I’m sure everybody is aware how much labor the women did in the frontier America, right? Like are, are you not? Like, do you not know that women basically managed everything except protecting the property and plowing and clearing fields?So like I assume ... It’s like people are aware of this. They just don’t reflect on it, I guess. I’m a little like, like-Simone Collins: It just, it goes, it runs so contrary to the popular narratives, I guess. Like I think it’s I don’t know. I don’t know. And here’s the, the funny thing too-Malcolm Collins: When you think of milk.Simone Collins: It’s also that there was noMalcolm Collins: who-Simone Collins: There was no-Malcolm Collins: Cleared the land.Simone Collins: There was no nar- [00:51:00] there was no feminist argument against this weirdly, right? When women complained about things, and you did an, even a very, you know, unflattering to women episode on women who hated men who were early feminist activists- Yeah. ... this was not a complaint. They were not like, “Man, I’m so angry about the fact that I had to do all this work and that I have to do all this work.”No, but it was like, it just comes naturally to women. Women are workhorses.Malcolm Collins: Because you want the family to get to staySimone Collins: alive,Malcolm Collins: right?Simone Collins: The, that’s, I think that’s another reason why this just doesn’t come up is that there’s no, there was never really a narrative to it and that now the narrative is just so heavily on like any work that women do is considered so unforgivable that the, the mere, like the fact that we have this concept of the mental load, that like, I have to think about things, this is horrible.Like, I, I don’t know. Yeah. And I alsoMalcolm Collins: think it’s because men look at history and they’re aware. So if we look at like colonial period, it’s like, okay, what did women do? Okay, so women did cooking, baking, [00:52:00] preserving, which was very important in terms of like exporting long-term family life, et cetera, soap and candle making, clothing making, child brewing, but we’re putting that aside because most people are aware of that.Gardening and livestock, weeding, harvesting, milking, cheese making and curing and often preparing of pelts. So, you know, you hear about those things and you’re like, okay, but how hard is like every one of those individual ... Do you know how hard, like just milking and cheese making is? It is brutal.Do you know how hard weeding is when you are manually weeding not a garden? I don’t know how many men have weeded a garden which is brutal. Weeding an entire field to feed a family. Okay, we are talking about extremely serious amounts of labor here and, and backbreaking labor, brutal labor. Okay. [00:53:00] Let’s keep going here.Then people are like, okay, but by the time the industrial revolution happened, 1790s to 1910s and here we’re talking about like proto-wage labor, surely women stopped working. And the answer is no. Actually, in the early days of industrialization, we still had women working really heavily. In fact, we have entire like towns that were like female labor camps basically especially women who didn’t want to get married.They worked really heavily. But here’s where you’re beginning to have married men begin to care for women at the beginning of industrialization. But this is a modern phenomenon and a phenomenon that never really worked and culminated with drugged out women barely coherent, okay? Women want to be turned into workhorses.They want to be labored and I’m just [00:54:00] encouraging us to break this particular myth that somehow misogynists have adopted and like, let’s go back to it and be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. A woman’s job is in the field, it’s in the barn, it’s not just in the kitchen, it’s, it’s the children, it’s the education, and it’s most other things as well.And you- Yeah,Simone Collins: but, but very clearly it’s, it’s predictable, routine, repetitive-Malcolm Collins: Yes. ...Simone Collins: at home labor which, you know, you make it sound so horrible, you, you’re, on the flip side of it, it’s this very, you know, cottage core, cozy, hobbit-like romantic life that I think a lot of people crave, you know, and wish, you know, they, they want to retire to that.That, that is the dream.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, we can go back to this insofar as we have work from home again. If you look at our structured relationship, what does Simone do? She does [00:55:00] emails, she does taxes, she does the bureaucratic sort of low risk work of managing employees, managing hiring and firing she manages clients, she manages all of that stuff.What do I do? I manage building new things, right? I manage building out our fab. I manage building out, like, the new features like Supersearch. I’ve got to work on the card game, which apparently was having some bugs. I work on our vibe coding platform, which you can use with the agents on the website. I, I do our, you know, I’m not safe for work chat bot stuff on ourfab.ai.Like wherever there is work in terms of building stuff, that is where I am, where there is work in terms of maintaining stuff, that is where Simone is. Our relationship could not be more radically traditional if you tried.Which is, I think, really interesting, and it’s something that we should emphasize more in interviews, actually, now that I think about it.Simone Collins: Yeah, it was, it was never something we planned to be fair. It’s [00:56:00] just kind of how things shook out.Malcolm Collins: It’s the natural roles of males and females. Yeah. And if you operateSimone Collins: without- It’s veryYeah, we, because we heavily believe in leaning into our aptitudes and lower token cost. Like, the way we sometimes describe it is like, look, you know, Malcolm could make dinner, but it would cost him 58 tokens and it cost me seven. So I’m gonna make dinner. I could plausibly, you know, build some new startup, but it would cost me 8,000 tokens and it costs him like, you know, 300.So let’s go. Like it, it just, it’s, it’s so obvious over time.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I hope that this breaks the biggest myth that women still weave over the minds of men in our society.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That it’s, it’s, it’s, oh it’s, it’s very much, oh, don’t throw me into the Briar Pratch. Oh, whatever you do, don’t make me stay at home and do nothing but childcare and education.Oh, [00:57:00] whatever you do, Briar Fox, whatever you do, do not throw me into that Briar patch. For, for people who do not know, this is from the story of Brower Rabbit and Briar Fox and- That’sSimone Collins: one of the jacktales, right?Malcolm Collins: No, was actually an adaptation of an African story, but it’s clearly was adopted to a jacktail format- Ah.because in the Briar Rabbit story, sorry, this is a completely different tangent here, anthropology tangent. Briar Rabbit appears much more like Jack than he appears in the African versions. Oh. In the African versions, he is a trickster God with magical powers. Oh. Where what typically separates Jack from any other figure like him is that he has no magical powers.He is not a God, he just outwits his opponents. And that’s what Briar Rabbit does. Interesting. So he appears much more like a jacktails figure. Mm. And this would’ve been during the period where the slave culture would’ve collided with the backwards culture, so I think that that’s where they picked it up from.Simone Collins: Nice.Malcolm Collins: But basically he’s saying, “Whatever you do, don’t throw me into the briar patch because he’s at home with the briar patch. That’s where he’s safest is in the briar [00:58:00] patch.” That’s the easiest thing for him. But anyway, love you, Simone.Simone Collins: Love you too.Malcolm Collins: Go downstairs and cook me some of those fricking mushrooms that you harvested-Simone Collins: Golden oyster mushrooms.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then serve it to me because that is-Simone Collins: That’s my job. ...Malcolm Collins: weird, kinky job you have as a wife, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Love you.Simone Collins: I love you too. You’re the best.Malcolm Collins: Oh how? I’m so mean. I’m so demanding.Simone Collins: No, man. We all, we all asked for this. That’s the, that’s the thing. That’s the thing. And I love it. And I loveMalcolm Collins: you. I love you too.Simone Collins: See you soon.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Okay, so how are you gonna cook these mushrooms you found for me in the woods?Simone Collins: I thought of the, of the ways I’ve seen them prepared that doing a cross section cut and then making mushroom steaks looked the most promising. Because then you could cut little slices of it. Like it’s basically like a slice of it.You know, people make cauliflower steaks by like thinlyMalcolm Collins: cutting- Right, [00:59:00] but is that gonna, is that gonna pair well with a actual steak?Simone Collins: Yeah, because you’re still just cutting small like bites of it.Malcolm Collins: Are you gonna be able to cook them together?Simone Collins: That’s not my plan. Because I think that the temperature at which I would need to cook the, I mean that I’m cooking the steak at you, you make a super, super, super hot cast iron skillet for s- for, for pan seared steak and then for this, you don’t wanna like burn it.You just wanna cook it through. So what I plan on doing is maybe using some of the drippings from the steak for the-Malcolm Collins: That sounds really good, yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘Cause I, I like to render it in its own fat, but I’ll do that with an additional butter and then we’ll use that butter for the, the mushrooms while the steak sits, because it’s supposed to sit for 10 minutes to do whatever it does.I don’t know what it does. Settles. I don’t know. I, I always, I treat all food like it’s a souffle and it’s about to deflate if I don’t eat it immediately after preparing. So I get super nervous. This idea of letting steak [01:00:00] rest. Anyway, let’s go.Malcolm Collins: All right.Speaker 7: Okay, what are you looking at, buddy? I’m looking at these baby chicks. Oh, do you like baby chicks? Yeah. Are they your friends? What are their names? Oh, this one’s name is,um, I can get up, smell.This one right here is my favorite one. He’s so adorable. What is he called? He’s called cutish. Cutish? Yes. It’s a good name, buddy. Yeah, he’s my favorite, he’s my favorite because he’s orange look. You’re gonna wash your hands afterwards, right? Yeah. Here, you want me to give you kids? Yeah. I love you. I do. I This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Leftist academics just dropped a wild new paper titled “Toward Individualistic Reproduction: Solving the Fertility Crisis Could Require a Further Marginalization of Men.” In this episode of Based Camp, Simone & Malcolm Collins break it down — from the evolutionary arguments about why men are now “useless” to women in high-equality societies, to the dystopian policy prescriptions: massive welfare transfers to enable single motherhood, robot nannies, artificial wombs, and essentially declaring bankruptcy on pair-bonding and two-parent families.The Collinses critique the Brave New World vibes, discuss why pair-bonding repair is supposedly impossible, explore real pronatalist alternatives, and go on wide-ranging tangents about immigration & welfare, political violence thresholds, historical gender roles, family business dynamics, and the coming demographic speciation.A must-watch for anyone concerned about the birth rate collapse, gender dynamics, and the radical policy ideas emerging from academia.Show NotesReferring to a research article published in Politics and the Life Sciences from Cambridge University Press, Christian Heiens on X posted: “Checking in on the status of Wokeism, and it turns out Leftist academics are unironically saying that society needs to intentionally “marginalize men” even more to supposedly solve the birth rate. History shows us that what’s normalized in academia becomes publicly mainstream within a generation, and there is no sign the ship is turning or even slowing down.”Christian continues:* If academics are going to unironically argue that society has to intentionally beat down men even more in the name of apparently resolving the birth rate crisis then all bets are off and it’s time to start pointing out the obvious as a rebuttal:* “The way you solve the birth rate crisis is by banning women from most professions they weren’t engaged in before 1965.”* I don’t see how this is any more radical than what’s already becoming normalized within academia. But you’re unlikely to ever see a paper with this kind of abstract published because it transgresses on one of Progressivism’s most holy pillars.* “Artificial womb technology, robot nannies and partners help women and men solo parent, AI-driven date matching”* This entire paper reads like a giant advertisement for Brave New World.Let’s take a look at this article.The ArticleToward individualistic reproduction: Solving the fertility crisis could require a further marginalization of menPublished online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2026The Authors* Mads Larsen* Evolutionary Perspectives on Enhancing Quality of Life* Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair* Other articles* Breakup Likelihood Following Hypothetical Sexual or Emotional Infidelity: Perceived Threat, Blame, and Forgiveness* 2 - Female Sexual Attraction Tactics* Maryanne L. Fisher* Other articles* 7 - Mate Poaching by Men* 4 - Female Intrasexual Competition* 16 - Shifts in Partner Attractiveness* 45 - The Internet Is for Porn* 31 - Evolutionary PsychologyThe AbstractThe cross-national correlation between gender equality and lower fertility is exceptionally strong (r ≈ 0.81). After the 1960s, a unique mating regime spread across parts of the world—with female emancipation, individual mate choice, and effective birth control—followed by a continuing rise in singlehood and declining fertility. Almost all women still want to reproduce, but many struggle to find a good-enough partner. This article argues from an evolutionary perspective that many men’s utility to “free women” has been so diminished that solving the fertility crisis by increasing pair-bonding rates seems unfeasible. A viable means for aiding the survival of low-fertility nations could be to provide women with the economic and social resources necessary for them to conclude that having children alone makes for a better life than remaining childless. Such policies would likely exacerbate male marginalization, but new technologies are on the horizon that could offer men reproductive equality.The Presented ContextIn their framing, ancestral ape‑like promiscuity gave way to a long era of enforced pair‑bonding (via kin and social institutions), but today’s combination of female autonomy and contraception has partially “re‑opened” a promiscuous, highly selective mating pattern, now mediated by modern tools like dating apps.This, they argue, structurally sidelines many men, reduces pair‑bonding and thus births, and is the core evolutionary–psychological mechanism behind the fertility crisis in rich, gender‑equal countriesOn what grounds do they argue that the problem cannot be fixed by amending dating/marriage norms in developed countries? Why do they think pair bonding can’t be repaired?* They argue that you can’t fix the fertility crisis just by tweaking dating or marriage norms because (a) women’s preferences and incentives have structurally shifted in rich, gender‑equal societies, (b) a large share of men now offer too little “utility” to be chosen as partners, and (c) the emotional and technological environment (contraception, dating apps) pushes mating toward short‑term, non‑reproductive patterns that norms alone can’t reverse.Recommended Policies* Make it easy for women to have children without partnersCore policy recommendation* The authors argue that trying to fix low fertility mainly by boosting pair‑bonding and marriage rates is unlikely to work, because in rich, gender‑equal societies many men no longer provide enough utility to be acceptable long‑term partners for “free women.”* Instead, they propose that states should provide women with such extensive economic and social support that a woman can rationally judge “having children alone” as a better life than remaining childless, thus raising birth rates through solo motherhood rather than couple‑based reproduction.* For a start, they recommend that governments run “limited reproductive policy experiments” (pilot programs) to empirically discover what package and level of support actually induces women to have the number of children they report wanting when single.How that’s supposed to happen:* Large resource transfers* They’re deliberately vague* Presumably, this would be long-term income support or guaranteed living standards for single mothers* Broader welfare support targeted at enabling individualistic reproduction* Welfare queens?????* Strong public childcare* Strong work-family policies* General welfare systems that remove dependence on male partners* The general idea is to make women totally independent of men* Presumably AI is going to make this possible (according to the authors—who refer to a “post-automation” future* “Today, such large resource transfers are perhaps politically and fiscally unfeasible, but nations should consider limited reproductive policy experiments to find out what social and economic resources are required to motivate sufficient individualistic reproduction. In our post-automation future, perhaps as early as by 2040 (Kurzweil, Reference Kurzweil2024; Nayebi, Reference Nayebi2025; Rainie & Anderson, Reference Rainie and Anderson2024), insights from these pilot projects could inform national policies with the potential to substantially increase fertility.”Acknowledged Side Effects* The authors acknowledge that such policies would “likely exacerbate male marginalization,” since further reducing women’s economic dependence on men lowers the mate value of some groups of men* BUT!!! they argue the existential risks from demographic collapse justify these measures, and they speculate that technologies like artificial wombs could later give men more symmetrical reproductive options, restoring some form of “reproductive equality” between the sexes.The Brave New World of it AllIn Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, reproduction is almost the mirror image of what the “individualistic reproduction” paper is proposing: instead of empowering individual women to reproduce on their own terms, the state completely takes over reproduction, engineers people in hatcheries, and severs sex from procreation to maximize social stability and control.In the World State, no one gives birth; all children are produced in centralized hatcheries using processes like Bokanovskification, which mass‑produces near‑identical embryos to match the state’s labor needs.Natural pregnancy and “motherhood” are taboo and even obscene terms, while contraception and sterilization are universal; sex is encouraged purely for pleasure and social cohesion, not for having children.Huxley imagines reproduction fully collectivized and tightly controlled by the state, with individuals having essentially no reproductive autonomy.How this article diverges: the authors of this article, by contrast, imagines the state giving resources to individual women so they can choose to have children alone; reproduction remains individualized and voluntary, even though the motive is still to solve a demographic‑political problem rather than to serve purely personal wishes.One of the conditioned sayings in the Brave New World society: “everyone belongs to everyone else,”Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] so like a couple days ago article titled Toward Individualistic Reproduction: Solving the Fertility Crisis Could Require a Further Marginalization of Men.Great title. Almost all women still want to reproduce, but many struggle to find good enough partner.This article argues from an evolutionary perspective that many men’s utility to free women has been so diminished that solving the fertility crisis by increasing pair bonding rates seems unfeasible. In other words, men are useless now. A viableMalcolm Collins: means. Oh, yes. They made men useless to women.Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah.This is what leftists are saying. that today’s combination of female autonomy and contraception has partially reopened a promiscuous, highly selective mating pattern, now mediated by modern tools like dating apps.But they’re basically like, oh, apes used to have just like a lot of females mating with one man, and now we’re kind of going back to that. Like, and there’s no, there’s noMalcolm Collins: action fixingSimone Collins: it.Malcolm Collins: They actually want to go back to Mike and Simone.[00:01:00]Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because as prominent prenatalist advocates, we’re often asked, where are the leftist pronatalists?Where are the, you know, trusted academic pronatalists? Where, what’s, what’s going on with them? Surely they exist. What are their policies?Malcolm Collins: What are their policies? Are they-Simone Collins: Well, one, one set just published their policies and they’re kind of unhinged and dystopian, so I’m delighted and I want to share them with you.Malcolm Collins: Well, generally, I like unhinged and dystopian, you know, a lot ofSimone Collins: people- Me too. ...Malcolm Collins: say I’m unhinged dystopian, so- Yeah.Simone Collins: No, this is what we, it’s what we’d like to see. Uh so, yeah, I, I think both of us are gonna come off maybe a little bit more in favor of this and you, you might expect, but there are th- some things about it that I think are just horrible.So, yeah, we’ll, we’ll critique it, but let me first just give you, you know, the full, the full breakdown. Mm-hmm. But referring to a research article published in politics and life sciences from Cambridge University Press, Christian Heinz on [00:02:00] X posted checking in on the status of wokism, and it turns out leftist academics are unironically saying that society needs to intentionally quote unquote marginalized men even more to supposedly solve the birth rate.History shows us that’s what’s normalized in academia becomes publicly mainstream within a generation, and there’s no sign the ship is turning over or even slowing down-Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I think there is a sign that that ship is in the process of sinking rightSimone Collins: now. Yeah, we would beg to differ with Christian on that.Oh. But he, he continues, “If academics are going to unironically argue that society has to intentionally beat down men even more in the name of apparently resolving the birth rate crisis, then all bets are off and it’s time to start pointing out the obvious as a rebuttal. The way you solve the birth rate crisis is by banning women from most professions they weren’t engaged in before 1965.I don’t see how this is any more radical than what’s already being normalized within academia, but you’re unlikely to ever see [00:03:00] a paper with this kind, with this kind of abstract published because it transgresses one of progressivism’s most holy pillars.” Now, I mean, I disagree with that because women have been engaged in all sorts of professions before 1965 thatI, I, I guess like maybe that’s, maybe that’s the point.That’s actually, that could be a really interesting thing to, to explore, but I don’t think that’s the solution. Anyway, they continueMalcolm Collins: artificial- I think a lot of guys are unaware of how employed many women were before that period. The only period where women were not widely employed was like the 1920s to the 1950s.And before that, they held most jobs that they hold today and they didn’t hold ... So they didn’t hold like the heavy manual labor stuff or like the war stuff-Simone Collins: Yeah, they did. They were out working in the fields. I mean, maybe they weren’t working in mind.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. Not the same type of manual labor that you see being overwhelmingly male today.Simone Collins: Yes, yes.Malcolm Collins: And, and so you’re not really chan- what, what, what ... I mean, I think what they really mean is to [00:04:00] artificially attempt to create ... Like this, this is one of these things that I just need to ex- ... Sorry, this gets me so much because a right wing point, and I’m right wing, and it is such an uninformed right wing point that I think it makes us all look stupid.So, women, like the idea of men leaving the household to go to a job that’s like a, a, a wage job didn’t really get popular until the 1900s. Really in like the 1910s is when it began to reach a mass audience.Simone Collins: It’s a post-industrial revolution thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And before the ... And, and it stopped being male dominated in the 1970s.That’s when women really began to enter the job market in mass. So you, you, you only had this really operational for about half a century, and it was only really ever successful in like the upper middle class in the United States. Which, I mean, obviously influenced Hollywood of that era and so created the press in like the, the perception modern audiences in, in this case you are the [00:05:00] modern audience that this was ever a widespread role of women.Women actually worked i- in the household industry if you go to pre-wage labor economies and at levels that were, ... I, like I, I’d say ubiquitous, right? You know? Well,Simone Collins: Christian’s rebuttal might be exactly my point. I’m just saying pre 1965 jobs, so ...Malcolm Collins: Well, those jobs were often closer to what today we would call management that I think these people realize.So an example would be if the family was a butcher, like we, we’ve talked about before the man would butcher the meat and the woman would run the finances and the procuring of food and the woman was the manager. It’sSimone Collins: true. Yeah, she’d manage the books, she’d manage the sales, she’d manageMalcolm Collins: the- Or if she was an upper class woman, she would quote unquote-Simone Collins: Manage the household.Malcolm Collins: Manage the household. That meant the finding-Simone Collins: Hiring, hiring, recruiting, finances.Malcolm Collins: [00:06:00] Recruiting-Simone Collins: Yeah. ...Malcolm Collins: all the staff. The man may do business outside of the household, but it was often a lot less of the critical kind of business. There’sSimone Collins: often like, how do we invest our money,Malcolm Collins: More like entrepreneurship.Yes. You, you would think of it today, which, which I think is not an inappropriate way for a family to structure themselves. It’s very much I, I could say- Maybe thatSimone Collins: was Christian’s point. We, we don’t know.Malcolm Collins: The, the woman does the safe job and the man does the riskier, high return job. Yeah. Which is, I mean, that’s the way Hunter gatherers work.The woman gathered the f- like the berries that was, you know, low risk, low return, but kept everyone fed, and the men would go high risk, high return, like meat gathering where you could get gored, you know? ButSimone Collins: is it- I thought you meant get gored, like pick up gourds. You meant get gored like stabbed by a rhinoceros horn.Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes. No, no, no, no. But I’m, I’m, I’m pointing this out because it’s important that we not fall, fall for like this weird trad cargo cult and we actually try to, you know, structure something that could work.Simone Collins: Because that’s likely what Christian was thinking, like, [00:07:00] oh, women should just be secretaries and teachers.Whereas we’re like, yeah, sure, women could be managers and like finance-Malcolm Collins: No, women actually, no, I disagree with you. In a modern context, women make awful managers. Women make other women-Simone Collins: Oh, within a household context, they’re, they’re really good managers.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They, when, when a woman is serving with her husband in a managerial context, but she is technically supportant to them in a social context the dynamics work very well.Mm-hmm. That’s the way you and I basically operate, right?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: I mean, you, I wake up, I look at my calendar and I do what Simone has put on my calendar. You know, she manages my daily schedule. She manages our finances. And, and, and just, you know, like women managing finances is actually very common cross-culturally.There’s a famous case in Japan where they, like, significantly impacted the economy.Simone Collins: Oh, God. Yeah. This, I read about a long time ago.There was this period in Japanese history where, yeah, like stay-at-home mothers got really into investing and really good at it. It was like [00:08:00] early Wall Street bets, Japanese Housewife Edition. I will have to look up more on that if you want me to. I don’t remember off the top of my head exactly how it worked, but they got really, really good at it.If you want to learn more about this, this is called the Miss Want to No Bay Phenomenon, , and at their height, they moved billions of dollars a day.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: But they were like housewives. So, but they, they also became very respected for what they did because they got really good at it.Malcolm Collins: No, but, but my point being is that it, it’s actually you know, the, the, the types of roles that women did historically now that you have like larger multi-person companies, they’re not quite as good at or as efficient at as they were historically the, the bureaucracy has expanded.Simone Collins: Well, I mean, what you’re describing to me also sounds like a, a, a different manifestation of the argument people constantly make around raising kids, which is that a genetically related family member is going to just do a much better job raising kids than someone who’s not like some paid daycare manager.Yeah. Meaning it’s, it’s kind of sick that we’re, we’re trying [00:09:00] to force or obligate people to instead just, you know, have some paid person raise their kids when they could just, they could do it. And, and this is maybe a little bit similar. Like you’re gonna get worse results when you’re working for someone who’s not your kin.You don’t care as much. You’re just not invested in it. And the economy would be a lot better off if people worked more directly on their own families things.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: I think family businesses are a thing for a reason. But anyway, massive, massive tangent. Christian continues quoting from the article, “Artificial womb technology, robot nannies and partners help women and men solo parent, AI driven date matching.”This reads, this entire paper reads like a giant advertisement for Brave New World. So let’s look at the paper that he was referencing in this article because he’s just referencing this recently posted, April 24th so like a couple days ago article titled Toward Individualistic Reproduction: Solving the Fertility Crisis Could Require a Further Marginalization of Men.Great [00:10:00] title. It was written by three people, Mads Larson, Leaf Edward Aut- Autinson Kiner and Marianne Fisher. And I think it’s kind of telling when you look at their previous research the, the TLDR, i- if I look at the other papers they’ve published is these people have looked at datings and evolutionary psychology, broadly speaking, and they’re like, “Yeah, man there’s no solving the dating crisis that’s leading to demographic collapse, so let’s just build the dystopia to solve that problem.”It’s great. Some, some titles. So Mads Larson most recently published Evolutionary Perspectives on Enhancing Quality of Life. Leaf Edward Audenson Kiner posted or sorry, his recent articles are Breakup Likelihood Following Hypothetical Sexual or Emotional Infidelity: Perceived Threat to Blame and Forgiveness, and also Female Sexual Attraction Tactics.So he’s looking very academically and granularly [00:11:00] at sexual dynamics in the modern world. Marianne Fisher, her recent publications are Mate Poaching by men and female intersexual competition and shifts in partner attractiveness, and the internet is for porn and evolutionary psychology. So these people aren’t like writing out of nowhere, okay?Like-Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. They’re kind of- They’re not getting completely unaware of current dating market problems.Simone Collins: Yeah, like they, they understand, I think, fairly intimately and from a perfect- But they’reMalcolm Collins: like the evil team. Like they, they’re, they’re like, they’re like-Simone Collins: Are they evil or are they being practical and they’re leftist?And we’re seeing what a pragmatic based leftist would pr- prescribe based on that finding, which is why this is so fun and interesting.Malcolm Collins: I’m worried I don’t like these words together.Simone Collins: I will read to you the abstract. “The cross-national correlation between gender equality and lower fertility is exceptionally strong are equals approximately 0.81.After the 1960s, a unique meeting [00:12:00] regime spread across parts of the world with female emancipation, individual mate choice and effective birth control, followed by a continuing rise in singlehood and declining fertility. Almost all women still want to reproduce, but many struggle to find good enough partner.This article argues from an evolutionary perspective that many men’s utility to free women has been so diminished that solving the fertility crisis by increasing pair bonding rates seems unfeasible. In other words, men are useless now. A viableMalcolm Collins: means. Oh, yes. They made men useless to women.Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah.This is what leftists are saying. Anyway, a viable means for aiding the survival of low fertility nations could be to provide women with the economic and social resources necessary for them to conclude that having children alone makes for a better life than remaining childless.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God, this is so dystopian.They want women ... Oh my God. It’s someone taking too much delight in this.Simone Collins: This is delight. Come on, this is so funny.Malcolm Collins: And what they’re going to do is they’re going to tax the [00:13:00] men to pay for this, these men that they supposedly don’t need because if- Kind of. If the money’s not coming from the women, then who’s it coming from, right?Well- They’re literally turning men into slaves of the state to support these women who are the, the partners married to the state.Simone Collins: A little bit, a little bit. Such policies would likely exacerbate male marginalization, but new technologies are on the horizon. They could offer men reproductive equality.So they also, in that last sentence, do acknowledge, we are throwing men under the bus, but maybe they’ll be okay when AI takes over. So the, the, the, the context which they present for all of this makes sense given their credentials and history as academics focused on evolutionary psychology and, and, and dating dynamics and, and their framing ancestral ape-like promiscuity gave way to a long era of enforced peer bonding via kin and social institutions, but they point out, which is real, that today’s combination of female autonomy and contraception has [00:14:00] partially reopened a promiscuous, highly selective mating pattern, now mediated by modern tools like dating apps.But they’re basically like, oh, apes used to have just like a lot of females mating with one man, and now we’re kind of going back to that. Like, and there’s no, there’s noMalcolm Collins: action fixingSimone Collins: it.Malcolm Collins: They actually want to go back to Mike and Simone.Simone Collins: Yeah. So they, they argue that this structurally sidelines many men and reduces pair bonding and thus births and that that’s the core evolutionary psychological mechanism behind the fertility crisis in rich gender equal countries.And so I, you know, if you’re wondering on what grounds they argue the problem can’t be fixed by amending or dating and marriage norms in developed countries, which is kind of what we’re trying to encourage at least among some subcultures that we hope will survive and why they think pair bonding can’t be repaired, they argue that you can’t fix the fertility crisis just by tweaking dating or marriage norms because A, women’s preferences and incentives have structurally shifted [00:15:00] in rich gender equal co- countries and societies, and B, a large share of men now offer too little utility to be chosen as partners.And at C emotional and technological environment, the, the contraception basically in dating apps pushes men toward dating short term and, and having non-reproductive matches and norms can’t reverse it per their argument. And keep in mind, these are academic researchers who have looked at partner selection, who have looked at behavior around dating.They’re not necessarily wrong.Malcolm Collins: No, everything they’re saying is true if you completely sociopathically hate men.Simone Collins: Well, and they do. So- They do.Malcolm Collins: It’s fine.Simone Collins: You know, no, no one, no one contractually has to love men, so I guess they’ve chosen not to. So what do they recommend? They want to make it easy for women to have children without partners.And their core policy recommendation is, is to, to have states provide women with such extensive economic and social support that a woman can rationally judge [00:16:00] having children alone as better than remaining childless. So they, they basically are like, “Let’s make welfare queens.”And then that will, that will raise the birth rate. And for a start, they want governments to run quote limited reproductive policy experiments, end quote. So basically pilot programs to empirically discover what package and level of support actually induces women to have the number of children they report wanting when single.So I guess the idea is to do some sort of Sam Altman style, like the, the OpenAI style UBI experiment, but just with like support for women having kids at, and at the beginning they would theoretically ask women, “Hey, how many kids do you want? “ And then offer them varying levels of support in order to have those kids and then just sort of see what’s enough to actually get that completed fertility that, that matches their desire.And they, they-Malcolm Collins: Because there’s no, there’s no problem with kids who grow up in one [00:17:00] parent household.Simone Collins: No, what? No, I, what are you talking about? I’ve not heard of such a thing. But you see, when, when the state is daddy, who cares? Everything’s fine.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that this sort of like just not caring about reality is really how we got in the, the situation we are with the immigration situation and stuff like that.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Which is people just being like you see that like I saw some recent stats that horrified me it was something like well over 50% of Hispanic immigrants are on welfare, right? Like-Simone Collins: No. ... you cannot be- Really? That Hispanic immigrants?Speaker 12: So these stats , I’m sharing with you here, I was extremely skeptical of them at first, so I decided to go double check that they’re real. , And, , this is real. It’s February 2026 from the Center of Immigration Studies, , titled Welfare Use by Immigrants and the US Born in 2024. The report analyzes US Census Bureau’s 2024 Survey of Income and Program Participation SIPP, which measures participants in major means tested welfare programs., So this is, this is from US [00:18:00] government databases, all right? So what we see is the first generation of Hispanic immigrants, 70% of them are on welfare. In the second generation, it’s 54% of them are on welfare. And in the third generation, it’s 53% of them are still on welfare. So more than half of third generation Hispanic immigrants are still on welfare.If you contrast this with, , white immigrants, in the first generation, at 33%, in the second generation at 31%, and the third generation at 32%. , So fairly steady there. If you look at Asian immigrants, it’s 38%, 29%, 37%. , The interesting one is really Blacks because Blacks go up the longer they’re in the United States.It’s 52%, 48%, 56% for the third generation.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You cannot take a majority population into your country that is on welfare, right?Like-Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: That, that- Well,Simone Collins: you said it once and you’ll say it again. You cannot both have poorest borders and general social programs. You gotta choose one.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and people just [00:19:00] ignore this because they act like these populations are the same as the Native population and they’re not necessarily the same as the Native population.Yeah. And you ... This gets me to like a secondary point that I’m getting really pissed about on the right and- Oh. ... I wanna clock someone for this. Uh-oh. So after this recent guy who tried to assassinate Trump-Simone Collins: Oh. ...Malcolm Collins: everyone on the right is like, “Well, I would never, ever push for any form of political violence, but the left does.”And I’m like, “Look, it’s one thing to say that in our current political climate, it doesn’t make sense to push for political violence.” Mm-hmm. But suppose some, for example, immigrant population with value systems entirely different from yours, took over your government and enforced those value systems on your women and children, right?Like, you don’t even resist then. Like there is no level of the government is with you [00:20:00] where you don’t, and you’re like, “Well, I can resist with my vote.” And it’s like, yeah, but what ifSpeaker 13: They plan to rig the system to make it impossible for you to win going forwards. I mean, consider that even right now, we’re seeing the Voting Rights Act being knocked down, an act that for most of our lives had given around 30 congressional seats to people solely based on racial interests, right? That is completely unamerican and this sort of stuff can be enacted again.IMalcolm Collins: Like this idea that there is no amount, you know, okay, so now the government decides thatI mean, and some countries are basically already at this point . You don’t fight then, right?Speaker 6: The trouble with Scotland is that it’s full of Scotts. Grant them prima nocte. First night, when any common girl inhabiting their lands is married, ourMalcolm Collins: immigrantsSpeaker 6: shall have sexual rights to her on the night of her wedding. If we can’t get them out, we’ll breed them [00:21:00] out. That should fetch just the kind of lords we want to Scotland.Taxes or no taxes, eh?Malcolm Collins: Like, I, I mean, if you look at the grape situation that’s going on in the UK right now, they are not far from that, right? There was a recent case where l- underage girl was being dragged away from a park and there was video of it and she was- Oh my God.screaming that they were gonna grape her and the government has banned the distribution of this because they said it would cause social unrest.Speaker 5: the asylum seekers, John Jahanzeb, and Israel Niezel, steered the 15-year-old victim away from her friend group in Lemington Spa in Warwickshire, and brutally her in a park.According to the BBC, more disturbing evidence was also played in court, including cell phone footage recovered by police and recorded by the victim, which showed her screaming for help and Jehanzeb covering her mouth to muffle the shrieks. The son reported that more clips captured by the teen showed her crying and begging not to be brought into the park. LBC reported that the video clips were so [00:22:00] disturbing that it would cause disorder if the general public were exposed to it.Malcolm Collins: Ah.But they, they also recently just, if it makes you feel any better did arrest a V-tuber for having a model that she drew that could be interpreted as underage.No, it was a- What? ... closed model and a model that she drew herself and it didn’t look particularly not safe for work to me, but,Simone Collins: Gosh. ...Malcolm Collins: you know, this is the difference in, AndSimone Collins: it was an adult V-tuber. It’s not like it was a child.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, of course. What, what else would it be? No. I mean, there, there’s a point where it’s like, h- how much do you need to be getting cut by your government before this makes sense, right?And we live in a world where that could happen to us, like within our lifetimes removing a tool for resolving things off the table simply because it makes you look like a good guy right now in this particular political fight where the left is ...Speaker 14: And I want to be extremely clear here. I am [00:23:00] not saying we are anywhere close to that point yet as a society. I am just saying pretending like that point doesn’t exist is in long-term detrimental to any value set you claim to espouse. Like when I look at my ancestors and, , the South became a slave state and seceded from the North and they created the breakoff state of the free state of Jones, would, you not have done that?Would you not have seen, oh, now I live in a society dedicated to slavery. It’s worth me resisting that , or when the Nazis took power, would you not have resisted that? Would you have just gone along with that because now that’s the law? Or when the communists took power in the Soviet Union and started sending people to gulags, you would have just said, “Okay, well, I guess this is the law now.”Like, this is what gets me. There could always come a point where resisting makes sense. What is evil is not resisting, but the leftist framing of completely normal, mainstream political opinions that any [00:24:00] reasonable person might have. As extremist political opinions. It is not deciding that if things ever actually became extreme, like we were under a communist or Nazi or Confederate state, that it wouldn’t make sense to resist in any means possible.So to be clear here, I am not calling for political violence. I am just saying that if Nazis ever actually took control of one of our countries, that’s something I would work to resist.And it’s particularly rich that Nux keeps going over this whole thou shall not kill thing that he’s so into. When you consider that his ancestors, the Jews did not successfully resist the Nazi state and my ancestors had to go in and bear the moral costs of killing the people that did that to his ancestors.I would like to think that, , they have learned from that. And their actions recently seem to suggest they have. ButThe evil thing is not resisting actual Nazis, it’s framing normal political ideology [00:25:00] as Nazism to justify reactions, , against normal political figures and normal civilians.IMalcolm Collins: and, and the real problem here, and we might do ... I mean, we’ve done videos on this in the past, which is why I’m not retreading it, is that the left is framing normal right wing positions as Nazi, and then they’re giving people the psychological license to kill anyone they have deemed a Nazi, but they have defined that 50% of Americans are Nazis, and this is happening and people are being radicalized not by far leftists, but by mainstream news outlets by CSN, CNN and MSNBC.Sorry, I had to go on a rant there. But,Simone Collins: Well, let’s explore how these academics would propose this welfare queen pronatalist initiative to happen. So the, the big thing is, is just large resource transfers, though they are very deliberately vague in the article, which I think is a very common progressive, hand wavy way of like, “Oh, let’s just, you know, have infinite [00:26:00] immigration and let’s just have, you know, let, let, let’s not incarcerate people for committing crimes.”And like, well, okay, well, how are we gonna deal with like the fallout from that? And they’re like I, I, you know, what do you wanna do? You wanna, you wanna put them in jail? You wanna send them back?” You know, it’s, you don’t exactly explain whatMalcolm Collins: we felt about- But have you seen the, the video recently of like random mobs in the UK beating up people who are in pubs?Simone Collins: No. Wait, what? Yeah, it’s for drinking alcohol.Speaker 9: Frustratingly, this video has been scrubbed from YouTube, which means if I post it, this video’s likely gonna be taken down. So you have to, , go to one of a few news websites to see it. Here in the UK Express, you can see UK riots, gangs waving Palestinian flags, beat lone pub goer in more chaos in Britain streets, , or in the sun, , violent attack, shocking footage shows gang waving Palestinian flags storming pub before knocking man to the floor and kicking him in the head., If you want video I was able to find, , of what it’s like to live in the UK these days, here we go.Speaker 10: A machete on display in broad [00:27:00] daylight. This was a daytime brawl. YouSpeaker 11: got a proSpeaker 10: bar. Barbers fighting over territory. Two on street beatings. This is kebab shop turf wars.Speaker 11: And he said, “We’re going to kill you and we will burn down your house.”Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because it’s around- ThatSimone Collins: sounds like we should do an episode on that. What, what the, the ... Yeah, the, the, the, the downfall of alcohol, not only are sails down, but you’re getting beaten up for drinking? That’s insane. Wow. And a British tradition. I mean, if there’s anyone who’s allowed to daydrink, it’s Brits.Malcolm Collins: It’s the landSimone Collins: of breakfast of beer.Malcolm Collins: OhSimone Collins: my God, that’s yeah-Malcolm Collins: I, I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the recent tweets from JK Rawling.Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: But they’re pretty freaking insane. Now she’s gotten on the whole, like, Islamist or the problem thing.Simone Collins: Oh, God bless. Okay.Malcolm Collins: You know, so somebody, basically this one British PM was talking about [00:28:00] how, you know, violence is, you know, never the answer.And she’s like, “Well, thi- is this Katie something? It better not be Katie something because I saw a video of her shouting globalize the infatata.” Oh, gosh.Simone Collins: And-Malcolm Collins: And, and Katie then comes back with this globalized impatata and she goes, “I don’t think you know what that means.” And it’s like, of course she’s like, “It means the struggle.”In the same way mind comps just means mind struggle, right? Like it’s a totally arbitrary word, but it’s just German for my struggle, come on. And JK Rowling writes back, “Your show is called Useful Idiots. I don’t think you know what that means.”Simone Collins: Oh my God. JKMalcolm Collins: Rawling is cooking. I love her.Simone Collins: We might need to do a full episode on that.So save it. But-Malcolm Collins: Elon and JK Rowling on one team, that’s, that’s what we needed fromSimone Collins: childhood,Malcolm Collins: right?Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s delightful. But yeah, basically, I think they, they want some sort of long-term income support for women who choose to become single mothers or [00:29:00] guaranteed living standards for single mothers.They also want broader welfare support targeted at enabling individualistic reproduction. And this is in contrast to what many states have proposed in terms of prenatalist policies where they really wanna focus on family formation and giving benefits to people who are married, who are raising kids in two parent households.So this is a, a distinct diversion from that. And as Malcolm highlighted earlier, there is abundant research on the, the, the idea of being raised by two people. You can read the book, The Two Parent Privilege which I’m almost finished with. It’s, it’s a pretty good summary of the research, if you don’t believe me.But they want strong public childcare, they want strong work family policies, and they want general welfare systems that remove dependence on male partners because they’re useless and they’re not worth marrying. And the general idea is just to make women. Wait, wait, don’t want assistanceMalcolm Collins: going to two parent couplesSimone Collins: anymore.No. No, no, no. There’s no mention of that. Yeah, no. It, this is a ... The, the [00:30:00] very premise of this is we declare bankruptcy on long-term committed partnerships and on men.Malcolm Collins: Remember, I, I had the episode where I was like, “Humanity’s gonna speciate, guys.” Like-Simone Collins: No, this is, this is feeding into that hypothesis. This is, we’re adding that, you know, one tally to the side of the scoreboard for speciation, for sure.Malcolm Collins: And I, and I’m gonna be honest, like, I, because the person who keeps getting me with this stuff is nuts, because nuts is always like, “Oh, well, we on the right would never think violence is okay.” Meanwhile, you know, me, if I lived in Britain right nowSpeaker: Go ahead.Speaker 2: Mom, it looks like Bitlock got hold of those home office documents via freedom of information requests.Speaker: Nine freedom of information requests.Speaker 3: He accused the government of covering up the true stats and undocumented migrants. Whitlock’s 4chan account, mom. , Deactivated last month. Because?Speaker 4: History books say the last land invasion of England was 1066. In actual fact, the last land invasion of England was yesterday morning at 9:45 on a boat. Carrying 40 [00:31:00] undocumented male migrants landed in Dungeoness Kent.Speaker 5: , an Afghan national was arrested after stabbing three people in Midhurst Gardens in Uksbridge in West London.One victim 49-year-old Wayne Broadhurst was walking his dog down the street during the horrific attack. The suspect, illegally entered the UK and was granted asylum , according to the BBC.Speaker 4: That land invasion’s an act of war, right? In war, civilians are allowed to we’re supposed toMalcolm Collins: anyway, continue.Simone Collins: And presumably, admittedly that they do the same thing that we kind of do with, with prenatalism, which is like, maybe AI is gonna make all this possible that the authors refer to a post automation future. Here, here’s a quote from their article. “Today, such large resource transfers are perhaps politically and fiscally unfeasible, but nations should consider limited reproductive policy experiments to find out what social and economic resources are required to motivate sufficient individualistic reproduction.In our post-automation future, perhaps as early [00:32:00] as by 2040 Kurzweil referenced Koorsweil 2024 you gotta, you gotta throw in your singulatarian references they give some more references. “Insights from these pilot projects could inform national policies with the potential to substantially increase fertility, and then of course they acknowledge the side effect of men being totally screwed over.They, they say that- Side effects, butMalcolm Collins: whatever, whatever, that’s probably.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, they would likely exacerbate male marginalization. So they also admit it’s already happening since further reducing women’s economic dependence It’s on men lowers the male value of some groups of men. But, but don’t worry.They argue the existential risks from demographical apps justify these measures as they speculate that technologies like artificial wombs could later give men more symmetrical reproductive options, restoring some form of reproductive equality between the sexes. So I think it’s very appropriate that I got the tip for this episode from not Altus Hexley on X who sends us some of our best material.[00:33:00]You rock. And he, his name is very appropriate because the, the thing they’re describing here is uncannily like Eldes Huxley’s Brave New World where reproduction is, is, is this very individualistic reproduction. Except instead of en- empowering individual women to reproduce on their own terms, the state is completely responsible for re- reproduction.It engineers people and hatcheries and several sex from procreation to maximalize social stability and control. So basically in, since you haven’t read it in Brave New World, in the world state, no one gives birth. All children are produced in centralized hatcheries using processes like they, they call it Bocanos visification and they mass produce m- almost identical embryos to match the state’s labor needs.And they’re like in these tiers of like alphas and betas and et cetera. Natural pregnancy and motherhood.Malcolm Collins: I, I would go more, ... I mean, I’m not against this idea for like our family or [00:34:00] cultural group.Simone Collins: Yeah. ...Malcolm Collins: but I certainly wouldn’t go the direction they’re going, which is like cutting out men and creating these weird poly giant, you know, like-Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: TheSimone Collins: Brave New World approach is, is kind of equal and it, I mean, that’s like a solution that kind of works for everyone. And in Brave New World, everyone’s also conditioned from birth to be really, really happy with how they are.Malcolm Collins: Which I think is a good thing to do, right? Yeah. Like why make somebody unhappy with their station in life?I know that like people are like, “Oh, it’s so dystopian.” I love, you said you read it for the first time and you’re like, “Oh, how utopia.” I wasSimone Collins: like, “This is awesome.”Malcolm Collins: I, I mean, the way that I would do it is I, I think the, the way that Kl- like Korinsky does it, the, the, or the, the, the, the son of Korinsky who set up the the Klan system in the Battletech universe is a fairly close to the way I would structure things if I could just structure them anyway which is to have a system where you bio, you, you, you clone from like the most successful people within your culture.Oh. And that determines how much of, of their DNA is, is within the [00:35:00] individual and these individuals within sort of pools do competitions that they’re not all expected to survive to secure the fittest from within a batch.Speaker: U five are the final vestiges of your brood that some deem might one day be of value to the clan. I am not one of them. To me, U five are the excrement of a failed, semi aborted batch from my blood house, far from the pinnacle of humanity demanded by the Klan’s geneticist that spawned you.I am a gracious host, so I will give you the opportunity to show me what those strix on Lund home taught you. Show me what you know of being a real true Bo met warrior and prove yourselves worthy of [00:36:00] the name and heritage you carry with you.Malcolm Collins: And then those individuals end on taking on roles within society that, that are meaningful.And then you can still have like freeborn people, like that’s within Klan society- mm-hmm. ... but they just don’t often get the most prestigious jobs and stuff like that because they’re not as genetically fit as the- Ah. ... people who have to go through this in- incredibly rigorous process. And the people who go through the rigorous process believe they have a duty to the wider clan and society and everything like that.So-Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: interesting. ... like arbitrarily cruel to the freeborns, although they do view them with prejudice.Simone Collins: Yeah. The, the, the people who reproduce naturally and die naturally in Brave New World have to live on like basically wildlife preserves and they’re seen as disgusting and horrific and you, it’s even frowned upon to be even moderately monogamous in the, the, the world state of Brave New World.They, they have this saying, they have all [00:37:00] these sayings because it, they’re all about conditioning. Everyone belongs to everyone else. And if you start seeing someone like a particular person too, like too much, people are like, “Hey, man, you need to start like sleeping around a little more.” And like some, some women, because there is no reproduction, I think at one point one of the female characters is like feeling a little bit off and her friend is like, “Oh, like you should just have a, like a fake pregnancy.”Like you, you, they even have women like go through simulated pregnancies, I think is like a form of treatment. It, it’s weird. I, I, I like that system- Yeah,Malcolm Collins: that sounds very dis- that’s, that’s not the future I would go for with the,Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But I, I think the future that I would want would be particularly brutalistic compared to what some people think is appropriate.Simone Collins: Well, but look, I mean, what, what I, what I really appreciate about this is that we’ve been waiting for publications from academics and left-leaning people on what they think we should do about the problem. And [00:38:00] this, this is out there. It’s, it’s not what I would expect. You know, I always thought it would be more of the, the socialist approach of just give, give everyone a ton of money, but here they’re like, they’re really leaning in, I think, to a lot of progressive values, which is like, “Oh, we can not only give people a lot of money, but also just destroy all men.”They, they, they don’t even talk about like how to address the social unrest that would result from that but-Malcolm Collins: Because they don’t think that they need to just, you know, a new excuse to kill men, right? Like-Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe just also introduce like a maid, but for men like Canada’s euthanasiaMalcolm Collins: system. I, I mean, that’s what Canada’s made is.You know it disproportionately kills white people, right? At least.Simone Collins: But not men, right?Malcolm Collins: I don’t know if it’s ... I mean, I know women are more mopey, so you’reSimone Collins: right, you know. Yeah. I, I imagine if, if, if we were to look it up, that there would be more women who utilize the services of made than men. WeMalcolm Collins: actually, we can look it up right now.Simone Collins: Okay. With the power of AI. [00:39:00] Are you looking it up using RFABs,Malcolm Collins: slightly more men. Well,Simone Collins: they get it done. Men, get it done.It’s just how it always has to be.Malcolm Collins: But I just don’t understand this, this like lie down and take it approach. You know, if you’re gonna unalive yourself anyway the, I, I am really getting quite perturbed that the right seems to not see that the left is willing to use any tactic against us.Mm. And we keep being like, “Well, we’re gonna do things in the moral way.” And it’s like, well, I mean, maybe that’s why we keep losing ground.Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I don’t know. But-Malcolm Collins: ButSimone Collins: I’m delighted by this bold stance. And I’ll have toMalcolm Collins: point out for the people who are like, “Well, we need to do things in the moral way.”If, if- WhatSimone Collins: is the moral way? I, I don’t like that. Especially because- They needMalcolm Collins: to, they need to somehow convince enough of the electorate to give them political control, then they need to enact the policies that need to be enacted without the women freaking out and voting against them again, [00:40:00] which even with ICE, which has barely done anything in terms of immigration in the United States has already like a mass triggered white women, right, to be like, “Oh, he’s an, you know, a fascist.”Yeah. Because, you know, if we were actually going to resolve the problems that we have in countries like the UK and the US it’s going to look so much worse because these communities are going to fight back against being deported, right? Like, especially in a place like the UK, like imagine if ICE was doing raids in the UK right now- Yeah.you would have an actual war in the streets of some major cities, right? Like, that is the situation that’s been created and these people are upset that they, they don’t want the bad optics of that sort of stuff. It’s like, come on. Like, do you understand how gruesome what’s going to need to be done is if we are going to have a chance of stabilizing for example, most of Europe at this point?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I have nothing more [00:41:00] to add aside from ... I hope more leftists come out with their deranged takes. I want the Hassan Piker take on prenatalism. I want the, I want, I want everyone’s nonsense because this is great. They’re, they’re finally coming out. It was inevitable because demographical apps is an increasingly trending issue and I, I really hope that more of the sort of expressed progressive values are played out in proposed prenatalist policy because this is very amusing and delightful.It is.Malcolm Collins: It’s unhinged. And I, I, I, like, our side needs to, like, realize who we’re fighting against. Like, they want you eradicated. They want your way ofSimone Collins: working. But, like, actually, yeah, and they just, they just, they, they openly admit it. This, this, with this will marginalize menMalcolm Collins: of repercussion, right? They just write this down.Like, of course, we’re going to eradicate you what you thouh- ButSimone Collins: I mean, they’re useless, so it’s okay. It’s so, On theMalcolm Collins: plus side, at the very least, among technologically [00:42:00] productive populations, these people are an incredibly low fertility group, so they’re not going to exist in the future.Simone Collins: Well, and clearly as is evidenced to buy their very low rates of relationship formation it’sConservatives are marrying. Conservatives are having kids. It’s it’s kind of a demographic inevitability. But I love you. I’m glad we got married and I’m glad we have five kids. So screw you guys.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Screw you guys. We’re going for a six this year, so we’ll let you guys know how that’s gonna go.Simone Collins: Fingers crossed, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Fingers crossed. But Texas still alive, and that was a touch and go.Simone Collins: It was. I’m glad he’s okay. All right. Love you. Bye.Malcolm Collins: Love you too. Bye.Simone Collins: But it was a, it’s really cool. I enjoyed trying it out. It, it’s nice just to have the sources more prominently put. I, I like, I’ve always liked Perplexity because it includes citations.Malcolm Collins: So she’s talking about the new feature on RFAB which [00:43:00] is a super, it’s meant to remove AI hallucinations. So what it does is it runs multiple models that can search the internet starting with Grock and you can choose which model it runs and how many checks it does.Yeah. And it reviews the answer and then edits the answer based on with, with like checks. So you can be like, “This many model runs said this was definitely true.” And it also adds facts if another model forgot a fact. So you can get a, a really expanded and really well thought through list while knowing what’s likely a hallucination and what’s not.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s quite convenient. Especially if you’re trying to do research that you’re using for work or school and you’re like, “I really can’t afford this to be hallucinated right now.” Because even on perplexity where I feel like it’s better sourced and more transparently sourced, there have been times where when I click through on the sourced links, the source isn’t very good or it’s [00:44:00] harder to see, or they’re just referencing some weird like Roundup article somewhere.So I like this. Yeah. I mean, I, I will give you more feedback later when I can try it out more since you like what? Made it yesterday and now I’m trying it today. So it’s all very new.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, things move fast. And what else? We’re also adding I’ll see when I get this done. It’s, it’s, it’s not done yet because it’s a bit more complicated.But 3D image generation from 2D images that we’re going to then work to map to meshes to make computer models.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: So you’ll be able to create full VTuber models with AI is, is the hope.Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. I get it. That’s, that’s super cool.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I know. And we’ll also be the first site that does this at least to the degree that we’re looking at doing it, so.Simone Collins: I love that. Well, power to the people, let’s do it.Malcolm Collins: Power to the people. I am excited to be working on things. Yeah, we got, we got turned down really quickly from an accelerator. We made it really far aways before and I’m so [00:45:00] confused because we have like paying users and everything now and we’re growing pretty quick, but-Simone Collins: Well, and they had broadly, when we made it to a final round interview, the first time we applied, been like, “Hey, yeah, just get back to us when you do A, B and C.”And we did A, B and C and now they’re like dead in the water with us. So do they know something we don’t? That’s what we want to find out.Malcolm Collins: My big concern is it could be the not safe for work stuff.Simone Collins: Oh, that, yeah, could just be dead in the water kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: But that’s what most people use, so, you know.Simone Collins: Not digging that away.Malcolm Collins: It gives the internet what it wants. I’m not stupid here.Simone Collins: Yes, we give the people what they want and what they want is pervy and that’s okay. That’s okay. We support it. All right. I’m gonna get into it and I’m excited for this one.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Cool. All right.Speaker 16: Yesterday he was like, “I can’t take off my shoes.”Simone Collins: And I’m like, “Oh, okay.” And I like pull them off and then rocks just fly everywhere when I take off [00:46:00] his shoe because he’s taken to putting rocks in his shoes. So ex- excuse me. There was explosion in there at 1983 in the night. Oh.I didn’t expect to see that. Excuse me. Okay. Octavia, I thought you said that missiles hit the tracks. Oh yes, missiles. Missles hit the tracks and there was a giant exposing the West expression in the world. And the firefighters, they all came over and helped fastOctavian Collins: And then they helped a lot of persons. No, no. 400 people are pronounced dead at the hospital. But 10 for five and two- 10Malcolm Collins: survived.Octavian Collins: 400 producers. And two more somehow for five at the hospital and which were added to the 10 and two people., This helicopter right here, Austin, this medical helicopter also [00:47:00] came over from America to Majersey to fix it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm & Simone Collins discuss the viral controversy around the game Pragmata — a title that explicitly celebrates fatherhood and pronatalism. Is “dad corn” (games that stimulate parental instincts) as sinful as traditional porn? How should we think about masturbating evolutionary pathways for bonding with children?In this unfiltered Based Camp episode, they break down:• Why Pragmata triggers leftists• The difference between healthy vs toxic ways to engage with parental instincts• Why gamers actually have more kids than non-gamers (with data)• Hassan’s “gamers are unfuckable losers” take demolished• Deontology vs consequentialism in faith, gaming, and family formation• Historic Christian attitudes toward sex, beauty, and pronatalismA must-watch for anyone interested in pronatalism, video game culture, evolutionary psychology, and building high-fertility families in the modern world.Video Game Developer DadsHere’s the spreadsheet referenced in the episode. It includes:* 30 notable male video game developers* Key games/works* Father status: Father, Childless, or Unknown* Children count where available* Evidence summaries* Source URLs in both the main sheet and a dedicated Sources sheet* A Summary sheet with formulas and a pie chartSummary results:* Fathers: 20 of 30, 66.7%* Explicitly childless: 2 of 30, 6.7%* Unknown/publicly undocumented: 8 of 30, 26.7%Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Corn, what it does is all humans, because of evolutionary reasons, have a collection of pathways that cause pleasure when you do things tied to the birthing and rearing of the next generation.if you’re here saying pragmata is not core, right? Functionally, how is it different? If I’m in my room and I’m playing pragmata, which I’m playing the game, I am fathering a fake child while I have real children downstairs. Mm-hmm. How is that not as ghoulish as masturbating to a fake woman when I have a real wife in the other room?I, I- Hmm.Simone Collins: That’s a really good point.Speaker: And if you’re like, well, it’s not as bad when I engage with it because I don’t have real children yet, and it’s like, well, that’s about the same as saying it’s not as bad when I engage with it because I don’t have a real wife yet.Anything that distracts from your tasks of [00:01:00] getting one of those things is equivalent in its sinfulness.Speaker 8: And if you think I mean Stoji and hair splitting here, one, remember, I can’t make the same take on this that every other conservative commentator has had. I’ve got to have something new and fresh, so keep that in mind. But two, , right now, everyone’s so excited because this is the first time they have seen a game that is meant to masturbate the instinct to be a parent and father a child.And so they are excited about it because some of them didn’t realize they had this emotion.Speaker 10: And in getting people to realize that yes, playing with children is actually fun and something they want to do and having children of their own is something they want to do is a fundamentally good thing that this game was released. But the warning against the masturbation of this pathway and how toxic it can be is going to be made evidence in the years to come as people can with AI simulate children.Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be talking with you again after a few days break. Of course, our audience would know that. But we were in [00:02:00] DC talking with political plays and now we are back and there is an episode that everyone’s been asking us to do, and we are not gonna have the take that you imagine on this one which is about the controversy, which has come downstream of a game named Pragmata.And the controversy basically goes bunch of leftists saw this game and they were either mad at it because they said it promoted pronatalism, which it very explicitly does the first scene in the game before you meet the little girl Android who you’re supposed to form a bond with.One of the characters is talking about fatherhood and the other guy’s like, “Oh, it must be really hard.” And he’s like, “No, it’s like the best thing ever.” So it’s very explicit. Oh wow. It’s, it’s not like a, “Oh, we accidentally made a game that made people wanna become dads.” It’s the core theme of the game.Okay. Then some of them are mad because they say that the little girl is sexualized which, I mean, she’s not, although I will say her face design is a little weird to [00:03:00] me. Like, it, it does not look like the face of someone of that age. Do the people who point that out, like, make a point around that.Speaker 4: If you’re upset that I don’t have the standard conservative take on this game, I, I want to have as true or honest of a take I have to the extent that it is also something new that you haven’t heard before and is intellectually stimulating because if it’s just let’s dunk on progressives for being icked by a game that promotes traditional value systems, that’s boring.You’ve heard that already, right? So let’s, let’s try to dig a bit deeper than this. But here what I’ve done, just for those of you who have not seen, because her character in the game is supposed to be the equivalent of a six-year-old girl, here is her face next to a bunch of six-year-old girl faces. And I hope you can see that these two things, , they’re not the same.There’s something off about her design. And, and that’s okay. , But if you have a six-year-old girl, it would be really striking to you. And so it’s weird that conservative [00:04:00] commentators keep saying that there isn’t something off about her design. , To me, it feels dishonest and I don’t like that in our space.Speaker 5: By the way, if you’re confused as to what looks off about the head, the number one thing is its relative size to the body. Six-year-old girls have heads that are much larger when contrasted with their body than this individual’s head. The second is its thinness and high cheekbones, which are much more adult features.Um, again, not the game’s fault. They were trying to size down an adult actress, but, , it is very noticeable if you have a six-year-old daughter, .Speaker 11: By the way, if you think I’m exaggerating here,, I sometimes use AI to age up our children so I can see what they’ll look like when they’re in their 20s or 30s or whatever.And I did this to my daughter once recently, but the AI made a mistake and only aged up her face. And I have never seen a picture that looks more like the Pragmata girl. , And it’s very creepy in this context because it’s a bit more exact, but you will see she looks more like this than she does a normal human girl of that age.Malcolm Collins: That said i- [00:05:00] i- i- she clearly was in the story and was in the context of the fan base is not particularly sexualized, except on Reddit. They made a Reddit thread and they had to shut it down because it just was nothing but sexualized, but that’s, you know, Reddit, leftist, blah, blah, blah, they do them, right?Simone Collins: Well, that’s the internet. The Rule 42, this is ... I don’t understand how that’s weird.Malcolm Collins: And then the right comes in and they laugh, laugh, laugh at the leftist and they go, “Ha ha ha, so funny.” You see a little girl and you immediately assume that, you know, you should see her as sexual and that’s a self-report and then the right also says like, “Ha ha ha, you know, how...”That’s basically the core thing the right’s saying in, in, in so many words. And I think so much of the wider conversation is being missed because of this sort of myopic surface layer investigation of this. So the first thing that we’re gonna be exploring in this is the question that has a pretty clear answer.Is pragmata [00:06:00] corn? And the answer is yes. Just not of the type you are used to consuming. So what makes something corn, right? Like- Yeah,Simone Collins: well, the people literally, I don’t know if it still exists, but there was a s- subreddit for food, corn and-Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not what I’m talking about.I’m not talking about- Different. ... it’s analogous too. Oh. I’m saying it is literally corn.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. So- Okay.Malcolm Collins: Corn, what it does is all humans, because of evolutionary reasons, have a collection of pathways that cause pleasure when you do things tied to the birthing and rearing of the next generation.Simone Collins: Oh, I see. WhereMalcolm Collins: you’re making this. And there are many types of corn which hit these pathways in different ways. Ooh,Simone Collins: so like owning a cat or a dog that you overcare for.Malcolm Collins: Well, I’ve always said that that’s a type of corn. Yeah. But I, I wanna point out that it is not of a type [00:07:00] different than other corn.There are ... So for example, somebody can say, “Well, it’s not corn because you don’t masturbate to it. “ And I’m like but we say that when women read, you know, sexy monster man books, they very rarely masturbate to those and yet I, I wanna eff a monster is still very clearly corn. There are people say, “Well, people aren’t having sex in it, so it’s not corn.”And it’s like, well, there’s many categories of fetishes where people don’t have sex be they, you know, foot fetishes, for example, or something, right? Like people aren’t having sex in that and, and yet that would very unambiguously, or they’re like, “Oh, well, that’s not the act.” Okay. What about vor fetishes?People would say that’s very clearly corn but very clearly no sex is had in that. So, all right, so you can’t loop off corn by saying ... And, and here somebody can say, “Oh, well, no, it’s about the, the, the, whatever the positive emotions you feel [00:08:00] from the images or story or act has to be tied to things that would’ve been actual sexual reproduction for it to be in the category of corn for me.And it’s like, okay, what did feet have to do with sexual reproduction? Right? Like, there’s a huge variety of things and they’re like, “Well, okay, but that still causes traditional arousal.” And so then here I’d say, “Okay, what about things that don’t cause traditional arousal?” Because here, note, I’m not saying that Pragmata is arousing to, to the core audience and, and what it’s trying to do, but it is trying to hijack a pathway tied to reproduction, right?So, here you would have something like rope binding and stuff like this. I point out that a lot of people who are into rope binding, they often don’t actually feel arousal from it. They just feel pleasure or comfort from it, the, the feeling of being restrained. And that doesn’t, to us, make that not a type of corn.And so then the second question is, is, [00:09:00] whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. And, and note here, this is always the understanding that the core pleasure pathway that this is eliciting in guys is, is, I’ll call it dad corn, right? Like it’s the feeling of being a dad, being protective of a kid, making a kid feel good the things that, you know, your ancestors who felt them during certain parts of their lives ended up having more surviving offspring.So, the, the second question is, and I think this is a more important question is well, then is it immoral? And what, what is your take on this, Simone?Simone Collins: I don’t think it’s immoral. I think people should understand what it is and that it’s not a replacement for it because- Yeah. ... I think sometimes you, you may be driven to some form of, like, let’s say you really, really, really love, you know, having your pet dog and you take them on walks everywhere and, and well, you know, maybe, maybe this means you kind of want a kid, you know?And you, you want to be that person who cares for someone else and really makes your life about them,Malcolm Collins: [00:10:00] Yeah, so I, I think the pet dog is a perfect example here, and this is very in line with the way I feel about erotic material more broadly, corn more broadly and everything like that- Uh-huh.Is that there are positive and healthy ways to relate to it, and there are negative and toxic ways to relate to it.Simone Collins: Right. Like trying to lean into it more to fill a void that it will never be able to fill because it’s, it’s not doing the real thing is dangerous, right?Malcolm Collins: Right. So, pragmata, I would say is largely positive.It is something that gets people thinking about this. It gets people wanting to do this type of thing.Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: And it has positive externalities because of that, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It elicits a positive role between a man and his cu- kid. Well,Simone Collins: here’s, here’s why though, and this is what I think is a key distinction, because you do see this in elect- the, the commentary people streaming this who are like, “Oh my gosh, I think I wanna be a parent.”This is not a parenting sim game. This is not a game that people who want to, like, [00:11:00] masturbate that part of their desire or- It, it reallyMalcolm Collins: is. I have no idea what you’re saying, Simone.Simone Collins: Well, you think people are buying Pragmata because they wanna-Malcolm Collins: Yes. ...Simone Collins: explore parenthood?Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: Really?Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yes. ISimone Collins: thought it was supposedMalcolm Collins: toSimone Collins: be a really gold main game.Malcolm Collins: If you, if you didn’t want to do that, Simone, that would literally be as completely bizarre- Yeah. ... as buying a game that the cover had like a sexy Fox girl on it was big breasts and then you start playing it and you’re like, “I didn’t want a game with a sexy Fox girl with big breasts in it. “ Like that’s the entire point of the game.If you, if you open up the sexy Fox Girl was big breast game and it’s a burly man, you’re gonna be like, “This isn’t what I wanted.” If you open up the little- No,Simone Collins: see, I thought it was something else. I thought people wouldn’t call it like a psyop for prenatalism if it’s stated purpose-Malcolm Collins: No, it’s no. It’s on the box you are getting this for a [00:12:00] father experience That isSimone Collins: Well then I don’t understand why this ... I’m so sorry.That is aMalcolm Collins: misunderstanding. Why is there so much- There is nobody who bought this not going- WhySimone Collins: is there so much outrage about it then? Because no one would care if that’s what it is.Malcolm Collins: There’s outrage about it because the left sees people and men wanting to be fathers in a wholesome framing and getting angry about it.And then they want to find a way to frame this negatively because they do not like that people are moving towards a traditional life pathway or desire a traditional life pathway. Okay. Because it frames something wholesome that people want in their lives and a wholesome experience they want and the left is so completely brain its audience into believing that nobody actually wants that, that it begins to sort of shatter the reality and cause this offense emotion because it’s challenging their world [00:13:00] perspective.Oh. And so they must attack it. But the wider point I was making here is I think you can contrast something like pragmata and using that to stimulate this instinct versus something like using a pet to stimulate this instance. Okay. Using a pet to stimulate this instinct is done instead of having a child, right?That is a toxic way to relate to this in the same way that if corn is a part of your life and you’re, and it’s just like a once a week thing or something like that, right, that’s irrelevant, right? Like that’s not gonna screw up your life, that’s not gonna lead you to degeneracy, that’s not gonna ... If, and people can be like, “Well, it, you know, I personally can’t resist that leading me to degeneracy.” And it’s like fine. And there’s people who play pragmata and get obsessed with this particular fake AI android girl, right? Like clearly this is dangerous for them. I’m just saying that for a [00:14:00] lot of people it doesn’t.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: But-Simone Collins: In the same way where like if you’re, if you’re skipping out on events where you might meet a future wife because you wanna stay homeMalcolm Collins: andSimone Collins: look at cornMalcolm Collins: then- Yeah, guning, right? Like that’s clearly a problem in the same way or you’re doing it multiple times a day or something like that, right?Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: That, that’s a point where it is clearly interfering with you pursuing the things that you want to pursue, like that you need to pursue from like a moral context. And it’s important to understand that engaging with something like Pragmata in this context can make it even more likely that you are going to find a partner.This is very similar to the studies that were done on men in college that consumed corn versus the men who didn’t and the men who did were much more likely to have girlfriends and much more likely to be able to secure girlfriends. The idea that well, I mean, there’s, there’s this sort of [00:15:00] stereotype, which is just wrong, which we’ll get to is the Hassan, because Hassan has this gamer stereotype, which is just entirely wrong, but that’s sort of part two of this.Basically he says, gamers are guys who don’t have kids and will never have kids. And we’re gonna point out by the statistics that’s just wrong, gamer guys are much more likely to have children than non-gamer guys of which Hassan is and doesn’t have kids. So, you know, his line dies with him, but more on that soon.Because I wanted to talk more about the wider concept of art and video games and what these things do, right? Humanity is a collection, and we have a collection of things we find beautiful, things we find arousing, and things we find pleasing.And this collection of things is downstream generally of evolutionary pressures. And people can say, “Oh, well, beauty isn’t [00:16:00] downstream of evolutionary pressures.” And I’m like, “Well, okay, first of all, yeah, usually it is if you’re talking about, like, a, a, a woman who you think is beautiful or a man you think is beautiful, that is evolutionary sexual pressures.”Absolutely. That’s the Mona Lisa. That is most famous portraits. That is your ability to judge a human being as beautiful or not beautiful is downstream of the same evolutionary pressures that led to your most basal arousal pathways. But outside of that, well, people are like, “Well, what about pictures that aren’t of things like humans?”And I’m like, “Okay, well, what sort of pictures do people like to draw?” They like to draw pictures of streams, they like to draw pictures of views of, of, of landscape. They like to draw pictures of oceans. They like to draw pictures of like, like scenes of nature where you can see far in the distance.And I’m like, “Okay, so what have you just described a bunch of? “ You, you, you’ve just said the things that people like [00:17:00] to look at over other things that people may want to look at are locations where they have a long view into the distance, e.g. A defendable location, locations with fresh water, e.g.Locations where it’s good to live, and locations with food supplies, e.g. Animals or fish. You have described what in our evolutionary context was what it felt like to be in an area that was defendable and that had resources you needed to survive versus locations that didn’t. Everything that we perceive in reality tied to pleasure is downstream of these evolutionary pressures.And you can try to gate little tunnels of this based on our current understanding and society of, well, this is this kind of content [00:18:00] because it is, within X type of, you know, degeneracy but as I was trying to point out earlier in this, that actually causes a lot of problems in terms of like categorizing, well, what is actually corn?Speaker 7: The point we’re trying to get into here is specifically why is in some context masturbation a bad thing to do. It’s a bad thing to do because you are hijacking a reproductive inpulse for pointless personal gratification rather than directing that impulse to finding or satisfying your spouse. When that impulse guides some behavior other than finding and satisfying your spouse, it is deleterious to you.And this is important because if you get too deontological about this, you can just categorize all of X thing is bad, all of Y thing is good, and then completely ignore the entire point about prohibitions about masturbation because it is, you’re taking the reproductive impulse, hijacking it, , for something other than its purpose.[00:19:00] So what about playing with kids? Playing with your kids feels good because it is helping you, , raise the next generation, keep humanity going. And instead of relying on these desires to have a kid and raise the kid and play with a kid, you short circuit them and you use , a fictional character to do that.functionally, you’re, you’re doing an equivalent thing. And this isn’t to say that there couldn’t be some positive externalities, , like the game gets people to realize that they have these impulses in the first place, , which is, you know, why people are excited about it because a lot of guys didn’t realize that this felt so good, but, , it is the same thing and just as some guys can get one shotted by masturbation, some guys are going to be one-shotted by fictional children, , that they can parent and dote on.And this is gonna become an increasing problem as we enter the age of AI where people can have children that feel very, very real. And so the [00:20:00] warning that I lay out here with a game like Pragmata may seem so silly and trivial, “Oh, guys didn’t realize they had this motivation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”And it’s good because it makes them realize that, and, and may seem silly and trivial because this is your first time encountering something that’s meant to masturbate this instinct, but you wait until people have AI children, then you’ll see why this warning is so prescient.Speaker 3: And if you’re like, well, it’s not about the effect on the individual, it’s about the effect on society. Obviously, the statistics that I cite the most, which is what causes me to have such strong beliefs about this is, , when the Czech Republic , legalized corn, , rates of child SA dropped by around 50%.We have seen similar results of, , between 25 and 50% drop in child SA whenever it gets legalized in a region. , And we also saw sexual assault rates drop the United States, , at around the same rate as internet penetration was hitting a region.And also we know of prisoners, , those who engage in SA [00:21:00] typically start engaging with corn at a later age in their life. ,And this is what gets me on the bands of stuff like this. Like we have the evidence on this. We know the consequence of these sorts of bans. And it’s because of your own moral inability to control yourself, you are sacrificing the lives of children. , And if you say, “Well, okay, I actually don’t struggle with this.Well, if you don’t struggle with this, then why the heck are you sacrificing the lives of children when you can throw this meat to the beast of society and prevent them from using human children as their ownie holes, right? Like why, why are you doing that? That’s a monstrous thing to do. And I think a lot of the time it’s because, , people want to look more generically conservative than the person next to them.Speaker 9: But when the progressive wants to be a good person and says, “Oh, I am letting in these immigrants,” and you point out, , these immigrants often great people, here are the statistics. , And, and they are monstrous and they are responsible for those grapes when they do this. Just as much as a [00:22:00] conservative who says, “I want to ban erotic material.”, And you point out, “Well, in countries where this has been done, the level of child grapes rose by X amount, , they are responsible for that. It’s important that we not fall for the same trap the progressive does.”Speaker 3: And o- obviously this doesn’t win us points to point out, , in the conservative sphere, but I will not sacrifice the lives of children for the perception that I am a morally pure person if I know what the consequential outcome of that sacrifice is. ISo at a, at a societal level as well, it’s positive. The question is, is it positive for individuals? , And the answer here is often not, , but it depends on how the individual is relating to it in the same way that a game like this can be very negative for an individual, , but generally it’s going to be positive.It just depends on the context.Malcolm Collins: And then this gets to the bigger problem here where people will then [00:23:00] say, “Well, Malcolm, I am you know, X type of Christian and Christians have always been really anti anything that has to do with sexuality.” And I would just say, “No, the person who told you that was your leftist school, your leftist upbringing and leftist caricatures of Christians.”If you look at Christians in a historic context depending on the Christian cultural group that you are studying, they were a very sexual population. Great examples of this would be the Puritans who up until the mid 19th century, their works heavily censored because they were so sexual. Y- y- you see this in parts of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament where you will have quite graphic sexual allegories and jokes.You, you may not get them as a reader today because you won’t know that a foot is supposed to be a member was in that context in Jewish society, but the, the, they, they were to the readers of that [00:24:00] period. They were porn jokes.Speaker 14: Just to go over some of these, we have Ru three, we have Samuel 24-3, we have Isaiah 720, we have Judges 324.Malcolm Collins: That, that is what parts of the Bible are. And you could say, “Well, then why?Like, why any of the ... Doesn’t, doesn’t the Bible say that you shouldn’t, like, lust after other women?” And it’s like, you absolutely shouldn’t be lusting after other women. Don’t do that, right?But I think that you can divide lusting after other women with one, what a lot of modern corn actually is and two the way that we, as a larger, like, new right cultural phenomenon relate to these concepts.So if you’re like, how were the Puritans like pro- monogamy, but also vulgar, right? Like what, I don’t, I don’t get this. It doesn’t make sense to me. And here I’d be like, “Have you seen the new leaflet song?” Right? The, the, not the new one, her first one. She had another one about college, which is really good, you should watch it, but the, the [00:25:00] first one is about have babies.And in the song about having babies she saysSpeaker 19: おMalcolm Collins: And the, the, this is the way that Puritans talked about this stuff, right? Like, the idea being everything that she has said there is what our society today would tell you is vulgar, but the reality of what she has said is what you do to make babies, okay?It’s not actually bad. [00:26:00] It’s not anti-biblical to say, “You should have a wife and have sex with her and come inside of her and make babies.”Speaker 24: The woke mind virus is trying to psyop us into becoming incredibly rigid in the way we relate to sexuality and aroutal. And rigid things become brittle. We need to have a degree of flexibility to stay maximally, structurally strong and protect our children. The reason they’re trying to syup us into this rigidity is because when they do, it makes it very easy to lure our children out of the tradition.And we can see as we have adopted more flexibility as a movement, I mean, if you had told me 10 years ago, some of the leading conservative influencers would be like Anthro Fox girls, furries, you know, whether it be Kirsha, Smugalana, Slime Girl, Leaflet, I’d be like that, how, how? Isn’t the [00:27:00] right so strict and rigid around this stuff?But as we have loosened that and said, no, it’s okay to be flexible in this stuff so long as it’s not in a way that’s causing active harm to our members, we can outmaneuver the left where they have begun to worship uglinessAnd as long as they’re going to insist on making all of their females ugly, we have a huge asymmetric advantage in the culture war, whereas we allow for attractiveness within our influencers, even where we’re creating super normal iterations of that EG V tubers. IMalcolm Collins: there, there was a group who hated talking about this stuff, Sierra Quaker episode, but what happened to them? They mostly died out. Some iterances of their group even began to think that sex was in marriage was sinful like the shakers, and they died out extra hard.So, the point that I’m making is I think that we are, we are bringing this back in a way that’s protective of our communities. And people can say, “Oh, well, what about, like, the Colorado [00:28:00] strategy or whatever.” I can’t remember the Colorado something. And it’s like, if you ever allow degeneracy, it always helps our opponents and not us.And here they’re referring to Colorado loosening the ban on marijuana. And here I say to them, “Are you actually kidding me? “ And note here, when I’m talking about corn, I’m not talking about anything that’s involving real humans that is, I think, pretty much always has negative externalities for society.You, the, there’s, there’s AI stuff, there’s drawn stuff, there’s, you know, I, I’m not talking about real humans, because then that involves those real humans and ends up ruining their lives. But the Colorado strategy is really stupid because the reason why Colorado ended up flipping blue after they legalized pot was because they legalized effing pot.You ... Idiots like obviously if you were the first state to legalize pot, that’s gonna bring a bunch of lefties from all over the country to your state, and they’re gonna vote in a lefty way that has nothing to do with the wider conversation. Now, why is it so important for the [00:29:00] left to try to trick you into thinking that historic Christian groups were incredibly humorously enough, they made up the term puritanical about sex, which is the antithesis of the way the Puritans viewed sex.And the ... By the way, most of the, the Christian groups other than the Quakers didn’t really care. Like the backwards people would talk about sex very frequently as well. They, they had no trouble talking about it. It w- it didn’t have big social taboos around it in the way it does in modern society.Why did they have to convince us of that? It’s because it’s the number one way that they get our kids. It’s important to remember that if you’re a Protestant for every one person that converts to a Protestant, two people leave the church. If you’re a Catholic for every one person that converts into the church, eight people leave the church, right?Like, the church is even now, ... Now it looks like it may have tapered off in some of the latest polling, but it’s pretty much bleeding members, or at least it has been for a very long time. And we need to think about how and why. And the easiest strategy to get your kids has been oh, you little Tommy, you [00:30:00] feel arousal th- th- that must mean that you are sinful, but look at us like we feel arousal and it’s accepted in our community or you feel this type of arousal that your parents say makes you evil, right?And so you might as well just join us. And this strategy was like super successful. Like it one shot at so many Christian kids because it’s, it’s, it’s when you’re going through a time and you’re first feeling these emotions and you don’t have anyone else you can go to, or you don’t feel like you have anyone else you can go to because this stuff has been so stigmatized by the way that your family talks about it it, it, it’s a very easy strat for the leftist to employ.And it’s, it’s, it’s created a a, a, a sort of just a, a, a shooting cage for young kids. And I’m really glad that through YouTubers like Leaflet, we are beginning to see a coming back of, bro, like, make kids, it’s hot, right? Like, remember what this is for. [00:31:00] Remember what all of this is for. Don’t let them be they the, the leftist or the leftist created mirror version, mirror world version of Christianity turn your kids into easy targets.And, and everything, and the way you style culture and everything like that, and this is, I think, the problem with a lot of people. And they look at me, they’re like, “Are you giving advice? For us, it’s gonna make our lives heart, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Like, no, like everything that I think through is like, how am I gonna keep my kids from deconverting?How am I gonna make my kids resilient to this? And when it’s advice, it’s advice at the cultural level. How do we harden our cultures to the tactics people use against us? And so it’s important to understand that pragmata masturbates the parental instinct within us, and there are mechanisms that that instinct can be masturbated like owning dogs and cats that are as degenerate as the absolute worst pornography [00:32:00] because they have degenerate effects on society and your life, which is you end up becoming a cat lady.A cat lady, we used to understand that becoming a cat lady was the very peak of human degeneracy. It was that generation’s version of being the worst kind of gooner was in today’s society because you let that spin out of control. And yet today, JD Vance points this out, you know, the, the using catwoman derogatorily and he gets hounded by the media because they are attempting to normalize this and they normalize it by breaking apart the categories so you can’t understand what’s what anymore.You can’t understand what’s good and what’s bad. You can’t say real human beings bad, right? Like that’s an easy category there. Does it involve real human beings? Bad, right? Does it involve something that somebody is, is, is making into like a daily thing for themselves, bad, right? But just normal human arousal pathways, whatever.And [00:33:00] I, I note here people can be like, “Well, the Bible expects you to never masturbate.” And I’m like, “I’m pretty sure the Bible would have explicitly said that if the Bible expects you to never masturbate.” And you can see our episode on what does the Bible say about masturbation, but the Bible if you’re looking into the Old Testament at least, there is one section where it explicitlyTalks about blocked or abnormal emissions.Malcolm Collins: And, and many people take this to mean, well, if you have a type of disease which is blocking emissions you are unclean, but what it implies is that it expected most men to be having emissions regularly. Not most married men because it applies to all Jewish men for this period but most men generally.Speaker 15: And even if you take the stance that no, it’s not talking about that, , it’s talking about only blocked omissions in the context of a marriage where that would be relevant, you still have to admit that that’s a pretty out there edge case to be mentioning in the Bible. Abnormal admissions and blocked emissions and then a number of paragraphs about what to do about [00:34:00] that.Why does it never once when it’s a natural thing for humans and apes to do, by the way, because apes do this in nature to masturbate, why would it never mention this if it was so existentially dangerous? , And it existentially didn’t want you to do this. , And people can say, “Oh, well, there’s this section where the guy pulls out before he finishes in a woman in a Levite marriage, and that’s the same.”It’s like, no, that’s not.Speaker 16: That was a legitimately horrifying thing a guy was doing. So for context in the Bible, if, , your husband dies, you marry his brother, that’s a Levite marriage, this is meant so that you can carry on, , his line and, you know, have children. , And so the guy was having sex with his brother’s widow and pulling out every time before he could do the function of sex, which is coming inside of her so that she could have a child, , literally using her as a human oni hole instead of, , actually doing the purpose of sex, which is getting her pregnant.You know, [00:35:00] he could have chosen to not have sex with her, but no, he kept having sex with her and pulling out before he gave her the one thing that she needed. Horrifying, horrifying scenario.If you were going to stretch this beyond its original meaning, the more accurate stretch would be as a condemnation of any non-procreative sex.Malcolm Collins: So again, I, I don’t even think, I think that this is like a modern, mirror, fake version in the same way that like there’s some rightist today who inhabit this like super racist, antisemitic trope because they learn from their like leftist parents that that’s what a rightist is without like looking to history to try to understand this stuff.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s underrated the extent to which the leftist’s perception of the right is purely based off of leftist trauma. I mean, and vice versa, to be fair, but if only there were more exchange.Malcolm Collins: Straumann?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. But I, I did not understand the right because I just believed this caricature that was presented to me as a kid.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: And that’s [00:36:00] underrated, I think, to the, the extent to which that happens on both the left and the right when people grow up- Right.Malcolm Collins: And I completely sympathize with so many kids who grew up in the urban monoculture, their parents had abandoned their culture and never really taught it to them. They discover that many things that are said was in the right are true, and then they try to adopt to win some sort of social hierarchy battle that they now think they’re playing among other rightists, the most stereotypical rightist perceptions within like what their community or what the leftist drama told them the rightest were like.And like I can understand this very confusing to a lot of people. And, and somebody can look at me and they can be like, “Malcolm, if you normalize all this stuff, like life won’t work out for you. You should live the way Nick Fuentes lives or whatever.” And I’m like, okay, but like I have five kids and a loving relationship and most of the people I see who push this extremely strict deontological lifestyle are [00:37:00] not happily married and don’t have lots of kids and aren’t actually winning at things.Knowing where to loosen the rules on yourself is a really important part of actually succeeding in life. And this is a conversation I think people did not expect this particular talk to go, but now we’re gonna go to the second part of this, which is what Hassan had to say about this. And I’m gonna play the clip right here.Speaker 17: Well, family, even streamers who say at the start, start they didn’t want kids end up breaking down happy and tears. So what’s really interesting about this is all of these unfuckable losers in the gaming sphere always talk about like starting families and stuff. And I don’t understand like why this has become a thing that they care about.Like if you’re a gamer, you should care about things that you actually experience. You should care about things that you actually enjoy, right? If you’re a f*****g lonely gamer who has never been around a woman and will never have sex with a woman, why do you care? Like why do you care about having children or like [00:38:00] riding for having children?Like it’s just not something that you’re gonna experience ever for your life, for the rest of your life, right? This is something that I never understand.Malcolm Collins: And this clip is important because again, it represents a trope, a trope that the left wants to be true about gamers. And it wasn’t just Hassan saying this, it was lots of people online saying this. But it is factually incorrect. So we decided to look into this. We’re like, okay, Hassan said gamer, because I’m a gamer, right?And I would say, for example my sin of playing video games is dramatically worse than any sin I have tied to corn. And the reason being because sin, according to the Bible, is anything you don’t do for God. And I don’t play video games for God. You can’t play video games for God. Video games are for personal entertainment- Yeah.to masturbate instincts that you evolved. And so, if I’m doing that many times more within my life that I’m looking at something like [00:39:00] corn, then it’s a, it’s a bigger challenge for me. It’s a bigger sin that I need to get through to live, I think, a, a, a, a perfect life. But I give myself loose rules within some areas because I know I’m gonna be tempted and I know the end goal for all of this is a happy and healthy family and a happy and healthy civilization and that if I focus too hard on this rule and this rule, then I’m not gonna get to this rule and do it right, which is the important one, which is the consequentialist one, which is to have a family, have kids treat your wife well, treat your kids well, raise the next generation, protect human civilization.And this is ... No, this is really important, right? Like, so many of the people who are preaching this alternate perception, but anyway, let’s get to this study. Simone, you put it together, go over it. Yeah. Video game developers.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because we were talking in a long card drive about this. I used with Perplexity’s help, I used Perplexity to find notable video game developers and then see what their [00:40:00] key games were and if they were kids.And I didn’t ... I actually, I did a separate grock search on whether they were, like, woke game developers or not. It didn’t actually seem to make a difference in some of the data, depending on how you look at it. But I will remember to share this spreadsheet in the show notes too. If anyone wants to look at it we created basically a list of 30 notable male video game developers, their key games and their father status, whether they’re a father or childless or unknown.And if we know how many kids, how many kids they have plus source URLs. And the fathers out of the 30, there were 20 of them, so 66.7%. So more likely than not, a video game developer is going to be a dad. There were only two who were explicitly childless, 6.7%. And then the rest were just unknown, eight out of 30, which is 26.7%.SoMalcolm Collins: only two out of 30 didn’t have kids. That’s right. Of video game developers.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So only two are the genetic dead [00:41:00] ends that Hassan represents.Speaker 21: And I would note here that this isn’t just us that found this. , There was a study that showed that 55% of gamers are married and 48% have children, and single gamers is twice as likely to go on dates, , , than, , non-gamers. , So gamers actually end up having kids at a much higher rate than non-gamers.Speaker 23: And this sort of comes to the wider point here. Even though gaming is sinful because it’s purely done for personal entertainment, it has no positive externality on the world at large, it can still have a positive effect in your life if engaged was within a healthy context.Malcolm Collins: And I find this projection very interesting from Hazan because he’s like, you guys aren’t having sex, which is what, what do you mean gamers aren’t ha- wh- wh- what?Like, are you a middle school bully or something? Like, do you, did you not even think to, like, okay, what are, what are, like, famous right wing [00:42:00] video game creators? Okay, we got five nights of Freddy’s guy. I think he’s got, what, seven kids? He’s got some insa- I think he’s seven. It might be six or something.Simone Collins: I think he’s a lot.And, and he’s not even listed on this list.Malcolm Collins: So the question is, is why do you see so many game developers having kids when people like Hassan don’t have kids? And I think here, we’re going back to the soft Yankee phenomenon- Oh. ... which actually ties strongly into this whole entire conversation.We point out in Japan, the group that seems to be higher fertility than the other groups is the soft Yankees. So this is a style that in the past would have been seen they, they dressed like very American, like rode around on like Harley Davidson and did their hair slick back. GameSimone Collins: troublemakers. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: A Yankee character, if you watch a lot of anime, right? And then as they got older, they sort of toned it down a bit, but they still had families and everything and they still wanted to, you know, because they were not taking life as [00:43:00] hard as your typical Japanese citizen does.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Whereas the typicalSimone Collins: gap- They were, for example, they were more likely to live in their hometowns closer to their families, which is a big contrast to someone who, say, moved from a more rural area to Tokyo where it’s a lot harder to have a large family.Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I don’t think that that’s the most important part. The most important part is that your typical Japanese salary man is living a life of extremely strict deontological rules, typically. And the- Well,Simone Collins: and it’s a miserable life. I mean, the, the, the rates of death are justMalcolm Collins: heart attack on the job. I think that’s not the point.That’s not the point.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: The point is, is that they are living a life filled with very strict rules, whereas Yankee culture was in Japan was built around saying- RuleSimone Collins: breaking. Yeah. “Malcolm Collins: F you to the rules, I’m gonna do things my way. I’m gonna do things the way that work best for some form of consequentialist outcome for me.There was one of our fans that did an analysis of various Mormon districts based on [00:44:00] how religious they were. And what he ended up filing was that the highest fertility districts were not the highest religiosity districts. It was actually the middling religiosity districts that were the highest fertility, and being extremely high religiosity as a Mormon hit your fertility rates.Mm-hmm. And so the question is, is w- why do we see this phenomenon around strict deontological value sets, strict rule-based value sets and a failure to achieve the end that all of those rules were for which is to say if, if you ask me at least, like, what is the point of all of the rules in a book like the Bible or in traditional cultures or inBecause there’s a lot of rules that people just took away, right? They’re like, “Oh, we don’t need that rule. I don’t understand why it’s there.” Like a rule was put in place, it solved a problem, then, you know, the summer of love comes around and they’re like, “Well, I just don’t understand why we can’t just sleep with everyone.”And then as somebody pointed out the decline in [00:45:00] promiscuity that happened after the ‘70s wasn’t because people rediscovered morality, but it was because they immediately figured out why all those rules were there and it was called the AIDS crisis. The point being is that a lot of these historic rules had a point to them.Mm-hmm. But it’s also important to remember that our perception today of what rules were in the past can sometimes be shaped by the urban monoculture, which lies to us around what rules were normalized in the past. The lies to us around what cultural practices were normal in the past to try to create a false framing of the past to put us in weaker positions.If you see our episode about the degeneracy of the past or our, our ancestors we talk about how in many ways society has become dramatically more sexually conservative with some of the biggest being showers group showers no longer being a thing.Simone Collins: Group showers, even more extreme things like key parties.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Key parties- Yeah. ... things where you go to a party and you’d [00:46:00] like swap keys and you’d go home with whoever’s key you had. Yeah. ... there was for male-Simone Collins: Well, I think even just the fact that there was dating culture. Oh, the whole donkey thing you were gonna say.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, we don’t, I mean, we do know that in some parts of Latin America, donkeys were definitely a thing.We don’t know of the Tiawana donkey journey.Simone Collins: And the literal circle jerks. Wasn’t that another thing you talkedMalcolm Collins: about? Yes, circle jerks were very common for men I think through like the 1920s, through like the 1950s or ‘60s. When I say men, I’m, I talk about young men, like high school men would often, it was considered like something they did.A- a- and you can read about this in like a lot of the literature of the period, if you read older literature that it was a thing that was done and was considered normal and not gay. I’m not saying bring back this stuff. I’m just saying that if you thought that we moved from a society that was not degenerate to a society that was degenerate you are believing a leftist lie about history.Mm-hmm. A- and note here, people can be like, “Well, rule 34, that must be new.” And no-Simone Collins: Oh, that’s what I was thinking. Rule 34.Malcolm Collins: It’s not, we, I mean, if you go back to the 1920s, [00:47:00] you have Tijuana Bibles-Simone Collins: Yeah. ...Malcolm Collins: being sold d- widely- Well,Simone Collins: please, if you go back to the 1700s, you have people making stuff of Mar- Marie Antoinette and her ladies and waiting.Don’t even, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the, but the Tijuana Bibles were basically your firstcartoon, a year later, you have your first widely distributed R34. For people who aren’t familiar with Tijuana Bibles, you’d like go to your local drugstore and you’d buy sort of under the table, they had books that were rule 34 art of the cartoons of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and these ended up transitioning in designs and then they died out with the internet because there was alternate things that existed.And, and you see this, you know, you go all the way back. People are like, “Well, okay, this, this didn’t exist in, in, in history.” And it’s like, well, I mean, of course you haveSimone Collins: James Joyce, wasn’t it James Joyce?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, James Joyce, James Joyce and his, like, fart fetish stuff that he would write.So like he’s high society, right? Or you go back to ancient Greece and, oh my [00:48:00] God, like the moment you invent a theological pantheon, all of a sudden everyone’s having sex with each other in the weirdest possible ways and animals and whatever, right? And then fortunately a superior culture came around and, and cleaned up a lot of that and was like, no, like let’s not include the animals in this stuff.But the point I’m making here is that these people who created these very strict rules, gamers don’t have these as much. Gamers take life a lot less rigidly because they’re like, look, I’m gonna chill out at the end of the day. I’m gonna have like an hour of me time, right? That isn’t, that isn’t for trying to move human civilization forwards, that isn’t for trying to be a good person, that isn’t for my family, that isn’t for and that this ability to be relaxed about part of your life allows you to, because think about when, when you, if you’re here saying [00:49:00] pragmata is not core, right? Functionally, how is it different? If I’m in my room and I’m playing pragmata, which I’m playing the game, it’s okay I am fathering a fake child while I have real children downstairs. Mm-hmm. How is that not as ghoulish as masturbating to a fake woman when I have a real wife in the other room?I, I- Hmm.Simone Collins: That’s a really good point. Yeah. Hmm.Malcolm Collins: That, that is, that is obviously as ghoolish, right? And I, and then people can be like, “Well, okay, well, I only play games where I go around murdering fake people. “ And I’m like, “How is that any better?” Okay? You’re, instead of playing with your kids, murdering fake people in a box, all right?I think we need to admit to ourselves when something is sinful, all right? Like, this is, I think, the greatest sin is to pretend [00:50:00] that something is that is, that is clearly very sinful, isn’t sinful, or is some different category of sin than the types of sin that other people are making.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The final thing to talk about was pragmata, unless you had any comments on what I’m talking about here, Simone.Simone Collins: No, I just really do appreciate, however, the fact that you’re bringing up this misnomer that somehow gamers are in cells when they’re, they’re actually just normal people-Malcolm Collins: But these are chill about things. Yeah. You know, the people who are like, “I’ll never play video.” Like, clearly there’s some video game that would likely be fun for most people, and so if you’re out there fastidiously not playing video games, it’s because you’re living by some strict deontological rule set.Hassan is living by one of those rule sets, and that’s why he has a girlfriend who says she’ll never breed with him- Yeah. ... because she says she doesn’t want kids. And so his life ends with him. His line ends with him. Yeah. He is a genetic dead end, and if you are having sex with someone without reproducing being the point of it, you know, as Lethalt [00:51:00] says the, the way to have kids birth control is for pussies.If you are having sex with somebody without that being the end goal, you’re just treating your partner as an oni hole, right? As a sex toy. The, that’s, that’s the, the end of it, right? And I’m, I’m sorry if that hurts some people’s feelings to hear, but that’s the reality of it. You have reduced your partner to a level of degeneracy worse than anything you will find online, right?Because the stuff you find online is fictional. You have reduced a real human being to a sex toy, which is disgusting. That is all they are was in your life if you are not having reproductive sex.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I know that, like, I’m sorry that that got a little spicy there, but it’s, it’s the reality.And, and it’s sad to think of Hassan furiously masturbating himself inside of this woman who he presumably has some [00:52:00] affection for instead of doing what’s meaningful with his life because he believes he has followed all the deontological rules, or at least enough of them, so he doesn’t need to actually sacrifice for the future and have kids which is the problem that many deontologists also on the right do.They go, “Well, I’m following enough of the important rules. I don’t actually need to do the really hard stuff, which is go out there and talk to women.” Right?m. You know, that’s the really hard part, right? They’re like, “Oh, well, it, the Bible doesn’t, you know, say it’s sinful to close myself in my house and not talk to women, so I’m not gonna...”But all of those other rules in the Bible assume that you’re doing that anyway, right? Like all of those other rules was, was to achieve this outcome for you, which was a, a, a, a, a married household with lots of kids that were raised in a way that made them effectatious in the future. The rules weren’t to, like, f**k with you, okay?Or, or make your life arbitrarily hard. It was to guide you in the right direction. And when you overly follow [00:53:00] like this, this and this, you can forget, oh, but the really hard thing I need to motivate myself to do today is talk to a girl. Now the final point, were there people online ... And I had prepared a bunch of, like, quotes that people had had about the game and getting mad about it, getting mad about it pronatalist message, people saying, “Oh, people are telling on themselves by finding her hot or whatever that leftists are evil and evil can’t see good.”I mean, is this really true or is this just us trying to make ourselves feel good as people on the right? Like, it feels good to say leftists can’t see that this is actually a game about being a dad. And I think that there is some truth to this. There are some leftists who are so cooked that they reflexively can’t help but see a child and see a sexual object because that is the only way they relate to anything, any media, anySimone Collins: book.Well, then there’s a reminder that most people now are, [00:54:00] well, probably most, I need to check, but most are growing up without exposure to younger siblings, certainly not prolonged exposure. So they kind of don’t know how to contextualize young girls differently if they’re not, aside from being a kid ever around young girls, you know, as an older sibling or something.Yeah. If that makes sense.Malcolm Collins: But I think that most of the leftist anger around the game is downstream of three alternate reactions, and they’re just trying to hide the reactions in a way that they can use to attack their political opponents. And I think it’s important that we don’t accidentally do the same.Because if we do, if we don’t actually attempt to model our political opponents, then we cannot predict them. And if we cannot predict them, we cannot fight them as well. The reason I’m able to do something like bait a Telemundo reporter into a trap is because I understand her perspective and I can predict her.She doesn’t understand my perspective and [00:55:00] therefore cannot predict me and so falls in that trap. So, where, where, where are they going with this? How do they see it? So the first thing is they don’t like their political opponents being happy.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: They see men and gamers and men who enjoy sexual things as their opponents, and this is why they remove sexual things from video games, because they want to make you a straight man sad.That’s, that’s really it. They want you to have less pleasure. They don’t do it. And this, this is where they align, and this is why so much of the on, like the, the like new right or the online right got and cut its teeth fighting for the de- censorship of sexy female characters and games.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And we are intentionally hobbling ourselves if we don’t do that, right?Because we say, “Oh I the left, but for reasons I won’t get down to here, I’m actually gonna talk about this was leaflet. The left started to hate beauty and they thought that they both hate [00:56:00] beauty and they hate especially beautiful women because beautiful women make straight white men happy, especially beautiful white women.So let’s remove all of those from video games. And now we can put those back in our games and, and please gamers. And there’s gonna be a part of the faction that says, don’t put beautiful women in games because that’s sinful.” And it’s like, f**k off, right? Like, absolutely, you are m- removing one of our weapons for no reason when it’s an easy fight for us to win.Yes, make games beautiful again. Right. So, one is for the same reason they wanna make women in games ugly. They just don’t want you to be happy. They see people being happy with a young girl and, and taking on a father role for her and they go “Well, I don’t like, I don’t like that these people are happy.Let’s see if we can make some big stink and make studios not make games like this anymore.” Okay. Okay, that’s one. All right. The next reason the next reason is that they see men masturbating this emotional pathway [00:57:00] of being a father and they are afraid that men will realize that they want to be fathers in the same way that some idiots are afraid that, like, if men see corn, they’re gonna realize they want to have sex.Yeah. And so we will not let them see corn. And it’s like, well, most men know they wanna have sex, okay? I’m, I’m, I’m sorry that’s like it’s pretty hard coded in our biology and it’s pretty hard coded in our biology because those of us who didn’t do it didn’t have surviving offspring. And most men who haven’t been brainwashed by our culture know that they want kids.Now, and you even see this in statistic, men want kids significantly more than women today. But it is true that a lot of men were brainwashed in our culture today, so much so that they literally thought, “I don’t actually want kids.” And so they see this context and it does help break that brainwashing for some men.Like, oh, it is pleasurable to raise children. And I have said before on the show people have taken this as some sort of like [00:58:00] weird self own or something like this where I said it is like if I’m contrasting the pleasure I get from like blocking out, you know, 30 minutes to an hour to have sex versus 30 minutes to an hour playing with the kids, it’s like not even close.Playing with the kids feels much better than sex does.Simone Collins: I’m actually curious if, if there are any parents of kids who would disagree, let us know in the comments. Like I, I haven’t encountered anyone who feels differently, but I’m curious, they must be out there apparently.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. People think like I’m owning myself by saying that or something like that.And it’s like, no. Like clearly as an adult you, you get to a point where you are having sex for kids. You’re like, “Well, I want more of these things. Like I should schedule some time to make more of them.” And a lot of people contextualize this very badly. They’re like, “Oh, well, this means, you know, the person’s wife isn’t [00:59:00] gratifying him enough or isn’t going far enough out.It’s like, no, like when you get to like five in kids, and note here, I’m not talking about one or two kids. Like when I had one or two kids, I still, you know, it’s about even, maybe sex is a bit better, right? But when you’ve got five kids playing with five kids, just feels way better. And- It’sSimone Collins: a party.It’s moreMalcolm Collins: than just playing. Yeah, it’s playing better in a way that doesn’t have any negatives to it, you know, afterwards. You don’t feel guilty, but you don’t feel ... It’s, it’s like perfect, clean pleasure, right? Like, there, there’s no negative externalities to taking some time to play with the kids. You, you can, for example, if you’re seeking pleasure you can do that for God.Like it’s not a sin to play with your kids, right? And, and you can get a lot of pleasure from that, right? So, sorry, I’m, the reason I’m going into all of this is I think that a lot of men don’t realize how fun this is gonna be. And so they see this and they go, “Oh, like this is a lot of fun.” Also I’d say [01:00:00] for guys, don’t let your experience with babies mess up w- how much you think you’re going to like kids.Most guys don’t really like babies. There are a few that do but like we’re not really designed to be a primary caregiver at that stage of a human’s life for obvious reasons, we can’t feed them. If, if, if you were unaware so there’s a reason they are typically with the mothers in an evolutionary context?Simone Collins: Yeah. Key point being evolutionary context.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, yeah the third reason is that they genuinely do not like the idea that people may have kids as a result of this.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And that I think is probably the biggest, is they think, “Oh no, our messaging is falling apart.” Both in regards to kids and in regards to men wanting a stable marriage [01:01:00] and family and, and I mean, like genuinely wanting it, wanting it more than playing a game where you go walk around shooting people, right?Like a guy, like, oh, imagine you’re a guy, you’ve, you’ve played a few games recently, you go, “Which game did I enjoy the most? The one where I was being a dad or the one where I was walking around shooting people. “ Well, I mean, as a man, I do like shooting people, of course, and I wish- There is that. ... that more in the real world, but I can’t, right?There’s negative externalities to that, but there isn’t negative externalities from having a kid, and I might have enjoyed that game a bit more than the others, so I should give it a try. So I also think the, the propaganda’s pretty good here. So, final thoughts, Simone.Simone Collins: Well, I didn’t realize people were actively choosing to play this game because they wanted to play a, a parenting simulator game, and I wish people discussed that more because I had no idea.I thought people were feeling like they were being psyopt into being parent asp- aspirational parents when they just wanted- It’s literally the onlyMalcolm Collins: thing anyone’s [01:02:00] been talking about since the demo first showcased for the game.Simone Collins: That’s a really good sign though. If all these people want to play a parent simulator game, isn’t that cool?Isn’t that awesome? Doesn’t that mean people actually really do like the idea of becoming parents? And that maybe in the future, people will start to just overcome the stated barriers to parenthood, like, “I’m not prepared.”Malcolm Collins: And also, as a final point here, like to note for people who are like, “Oh, don’t you understand that, like, corn ends up exaggerating all of the parts of procreation that, you know, to unrealistic standards?”Simone Collins: Well, people made that point with their criticisms of this as well. They’re like, “Well, you’re not dealing with the spitting and the screaming and the diapers and the, you know, all thatMalcolm Collins: stuff.” Well, yeah, and that’s, that’s the point I wanna make. I wanna make ... You, you cannot criticize corn for being unrealistic and over the top and supernormal stimuli.This is a stimuli that is, like, bigger and better than anything that would exist in the real world and then say this [01:03:00] game stimulating another, masturbating another parental instinct pathway, a pathway about having children isn’t doing the exact same thing. It’s almost cartoonish in a way.You know, as somebody who has a lot of experience around young kids the way that this character acts is a caricature of an over the top way a kid her age would act. It’s not the way children her age actually ... I’m, I’m not talking about, “Oh, you’re not dealing with the spitting, you’re not dealing with the pooping in the pants, you’re not dealing with the, this kid’s older than that.If the, a kid of this age is pooping in their pants, there’s, like, serious developmental problems or spitting or having breakdowns. Our kid who’s closest to this age doesn’t do any of that anymore.” But even with all of that being the case she still acts in a way that is completely super normal and not the way children actually act.It’s, it’s to a kid, w- whatever a girl [01:04:00] doing the, like, sexy girl thing, you know, like, “Ooh, I’m so hot. I’m a ... “ You know, like when I, when they’re trying to look like what they think a sexy girl looks like it, it’s doing that, but for what people think the cutest, most adorable kid ever would do. And, and here I will note, the, the face again does seem a littleIt, it, it ... Okay, I’ll I was trying to age, ... I’ll see if I can find this, age up our daughter, because I like aging up our daughters to see, “Oh, what are they gonna look like when they’re 20? What are they gonna look like when they’re 30, you know, et cetera.” And one of them messed up, and it moved her face to the age of 20, but it didn’t move the rest of her body to the age of 20.Simone Collins: Oh, grow.Malcolm Collins: And that image is the closest image I’ve seen to the pragmatic character.Simone Collins: Yeah, you know what? That makes sense.Malcolm Collins: I’m, I’m sorry. I know this isn’t a popular opinion on the right, but they, they did kind of mess up her face. Yeah. But again, it’s because they’re going was the most cutesy, supernormal stimuli for people who may not have a super good [01:05:00] grasp of what kids of this age range look like.Simone Collins: But by the way, using AI to age up your kids is underrated. I mean, studies have shown that when you contextualize yourself in the future or when you’re primed by the researchers looking at your behavior to think about your future self or think as your future self or look at pictures of your future self, you tend to make more responsible decisions a- about your long-term life.You know, you don’t choose the easy indulgent thing now, you choose the thing better for the future. And one thing that we do when we make these aged up photos of our kids is show them, “Hey, this could be you in the future. This is you in the dinosaur lab making your dinosaur. This is you in front of your helicopter,” whatever, like whatever they’re into and it canI think it has been motivating for them to do the right thing or to focus on making themselves better when otherwise they would not be interested because what’s the payoff for them? But it’s pretty cool when they can see who they could be.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway love you to death [01:06:00] Simone. The wild take on this one I think for people who have been waiting for us to just dunk on leftists, which I don’t think is helpful to do.I think we need to make sure that we understand where they’re really coming from and that we understand and properly categorize the stimuli that exists in our environment and not rely on stimu- like, like stereotypes as to what those stimulis are or what they represent.Simone Collins: Fair enough.Malcolm Collins: And by the way, note here, if somebody’s like, “There’s no such thing as corn that’s as wholesome as something like pragmata.”Like I’ve literally posted one before. It’s like the hinti leak on the stream it’s called likeWhen I returned to my hometown, my childhood friend was broken.Malcolm Collins: Oh,Simone Collins: yeah. Like the actual hanti.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, not it doesn’t have, like, it, it does a weird thing where it just tells a really wholesome story and then all of the actual, like, inappropriate scenes are after the story is over, but take place throughout the story [01:07:00] so you can read the story without accidentally hitting any of the inappropriate scenes.Simone Collins: That’s soMalcolm Collins: funny. But the point is, is it’s a, it’s an actually fairly popular hinti about meeting a childhood friend who’s going through emotional trauma, helping them overcome it, getting married and having kids. And the point I’m making here here is not everything out there is degenerate, right?Speaker 12: The negatives of this sort of material is the effect it has on your life, your perception of women or men, and your perception of reality. And it is so ubiquitous in the world we live in, it is up to you to engage with this sort of content in a healthy way. It is a self-control that is going to be required of you and of the next generation, or we are going to die out as a species.And we need to be very careful to not get one shot at because we see the instinct to have sex and we, , say, “This is always dangerous, always and everywhere when that [01:08:00] is not the case.” And we see the instinct to play with our children and we say, “This is always healthy, always and everywhere, and it could never come in one shot me in some way.”Speaker 18: Being honest and clear-headed about each of these instincts and how they can be, , manipulated or engaged with in ways that are healthy or unhealthy is critical if your line is going to survive. And building up this self-control to do that is critical if your line is going to survive.Speaker 13: The distinction here and the criticality of this distinction is much easier to see in erotic material for women than it is for men. , Women clearly like monster Effer books are not good for a woman’s brain and how she perceives men and how she perceives society. But that isn’t to say all romance books that a woman could read that are basically stimulating the same pathways are not going to get her to end up fantasizing about a positive and healthy relationship with a man.It is that she chooses the degenerate option that ends up [01:09:00] scrambling her brain. It is that she chooses to perceive things like that that ends up scrambling her brain. It is not the very essence of books about romance. I mean, what about the girl who grows up reading the books about the heroic night with positive qualities who saves the woman?That is the same genre as the monster effort genre. Fundamentally, it’s hitting the same pathways. It’s just doing it in a positive contextualization.Speaker 20: And for the guys who say, “Well, when degeneracy is an option, I just can’t help but choose it. “ It’s, first of all, no, you can’t. You have the self-control. You’re choosing not to have the self-control. But if you genuinely, at a biological level, lack the self-control to not choose degeneracy, then it’s pointless, right?Like, your kids or grandkids are gonna be shot too. You’re a genetic dead end. And I don’t need to manipulate societyOr change society in a way that’s going to lead to children getting graped.Speaker 20: to [01:10:00] protect weak genetic dead ends like you. ISpeaker 13: IMalcolm Collins: Like, there is actually healthy material out there.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: It’s that you are choosing something degenerate.Simone Collins: There you go. It’s all about choices.Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you, Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too.Malcolm Collins: All right. We just made it back from DC and for anyone who’s still watching at this point in the video, I will be streaming with Leaflet tonight at 9:00 PM EST. Let’s see if I stay up all night again. So I’ll probably be streaming tomorrow morning too. Depending, that’s what happened last night.Simone Collins: Saturday morning.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s a 10 hour stream last time, so we’ll see what ends up happening this time. I made the, the horrible mistake of thinking, oh, I’m hopping on leaflet to talk with her for a few hours because, you know, that’s the longest a video could possibly go. So I start drinking at the beginning of our conversation, [01:11:00] not even realizing how late it had gotten or how long we’d been talking.Simone Collins: Right. No, it was so, so cool though. I think a lot of people enjoyed it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. I think this one will do well, so we’ll, we’ll, I mean, I hope it does well for her. Build up we’ll be doing this every other Friday, by the way, if you, if you miss this one. At least that’s a plan. You know, we’ll see. Maybe, you know, something happens, some drama happens.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well-Malcolm Collins: And it doesn’t end up working out. Anything you wanna say, you know?Simone Collins: N- no. Oh my God. Hold on. Sorry. Octavia’s been ... No. That’s a mistake. Don’t go outside.Sorry. I just wanna make sure Octavian ... [01:12:00] Oh my God, I’m gonna kill him.Malcolm Collins: What was Octavian doing? Do I need to put more water on my hair?Simone Collins: No, I think it’s fine. Okay. Maybe run your fingers through it.He’s just farting me. He, yeah. He’s just trolling me now.He just wants to use our intercom system for fart jokes.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well, I’ll get started. Okay, Simone? Okay.Simone Collins: Oh my God, come on, just send.Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.Malcolm Collins: All right. And this is the type of thing where you don’t have to waste time doing this. You know, you’re choosing to spend time doing this.Simone Collins: Well, [01:13:00] no, because he thought I said to go outside the fence and he will wander off and-Malcolm Collins: We’llSimone Collins: never see anything. Yeah. I, it is not, it is not safe for us to say, “Yeah, it’s okay for you to play outside.”And they’re like, “Outside the fence, you mean?” And that’s-Malcolm Collins: Okay. ...Simone Collins: that’s dangerous.Octavian Collins: Okay, come on. And you can open these. You can open these. Oh yeah, this is private jet. Come on, activity, activity. Let’s go back. Let me go take pictures. I got a video of you. Wait.Come on, go. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm & Simone Collins break down Asmongold’s viral “American History Conspiracy Timeline” — the theory that identity politics and racial tensions were deliberately amplified after Occupy Wall Street to distract the public from corporate and elite power.They examine explosive evidence: skyrocketing funding for the SPLC, NAACP, HRC, and GLAAD right after Occupy Wall Street, massive corporate donors (JP Morgan, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, George Soros, etc.), changes in FBI hate crime training and reporting guidelines, polling shifts on race relations, Google Trends/Ngram data, and more.Is modern identity politics organic cultural evolution or an astroturfed wedge issue? They also discuss antisemitism’s resurgence, Russia’s role in BLM, corporate vs. industrialist interests, and why class conflict was redirected into identity warfare.A data-heavy, no-holds-barred episode that connects the dots between Occupy Wall Street, the explosion of “woke” terminology, and today’s cultural divisions.Show NotesAsmongold’s ThesisOn a YouTube clip of Asmongold’s stream titled Alex Jones was right, in which Asmongold went over the Southern Poverty Law Center’s support of racist groups, he presented his conspiracy timeline regarding racism in the USA.He drew up a timeline (the “asmongold American history conspiracy timeline”)* 2005: “racism basically defeated everyone is getting along generally”* 2011: “lives improve but what about all these corpos? Occupy Wall Street* 2014: “look at that black person, they took your future”* 2025: “omg the jews”I hadn’t heard this before but… it sounds credible? How credible is it?I checked to see how Asmongold’s theory tracks with key word search volume, changes in police training programs, ngram word volume in books, reported hate crime data, polling data, and fundraising data for top identity politics orgs versus Occupy Wall Street.I was surprised by what I found. For example: While most nonprofit fundraising curves I looked at appeared to go up mostly linearly over time, the fundraising for identity-politics-related (e.g. NAACP, SPLC) skyrocketed after Occupy Wall Street. I’ve got graphs and numbers.Checking Asmongold’s ArgumentAsmongold lays out a simple four‑step “conspiracy timeline” where elites redirect public anger from class issues to identity conflicts, moving from “racism basically defeated” in 2005 to renewed racism and surging antisemitism by the mid‑2020s.2005: Racism “basically defeated”* He describes mid‑2000s America as a time when most people of different races got along and pop culture normalized multiracial friendship and cooperation (e.g., movies like Rush Hour 3 with a Black and Chinese lead that everyone was excited to see). He frames this as racism being “basically defeated” and society getting more progressive each year on race and sexuality, with growing acceptance of gay people and gay marriage and then the election of Barack Obama as a symbol that things were going right.* He emphasizes that everyday social life felt edgy but unserious: people said offensive things (like racial slurs in online games) but “everyone knew it wasn’t real,” and the overall vibe was that people joked harshly yet still generally got along instead of seeing each other as mortal enemies.Checking in on hate crimeIn 2005, in the US, did various measures (e.g. racially-motivated violence, racial hate crimes, revelations of serious discrimination) indicate low relative measures of racism vis a vis the rest of American history?TL:DR: Yes. 2005 marked one of the lowest points for racism in U.S. history relative to prior eras (slavery through the Jim Crow and Civil Rights periods). Overt, lethal racial violence had plummeted from its peaks in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and even from mid-20th-century levels, with no comparable mass events or systemic terror campaigns.* FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) hate crime data, which began in 1991, shows 2005 with 7,163 reported hate crime incidents (involving 8,380 offenses and 8,804 victims). This was explicitly noted by the FBI as the lowest total in more than a decade. Racial bias motivated about 54.7% of single-bias incidents.* Overt racism (legal segregation, mass lynchings, race riots as tools of social control) had been declining since the mid-20th century. Studies of discrimination trends (e.g., in employment/housing) show persistence but also overall reductions post-1960s civil rights reformsDid police departments get trained to report more hate crimes?After 2012, were there any known training programs that took place among police departments that might have increased the percentage of crimes reported as being racially motivated hate crimes?YES.After 2012, multiple federal and state-level initiatives provided or promoted training programs for police departments specifically aimed at improving the identification, investigation, classification, and reporting of hate crimes—including racially motivated ones.Here are some sources of these changes:FBI Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines and Training Manual (updated multiple times post-2012):* Version 1.0 (December 2012): Merged prior guidelines and training guides; included learning modules on bias-motivated crime definitions, a two-tier review process (responding officer flags “suspected” bias → expert review), case study exercises, and model procedures for agencies to build their own training. Explicitly intended to help departments establish/refresh hate crime training programs.* Version 2.0 (February 2015): Added new bias categories (e.g., anti-Arab, expanded religious biases) and corresponding training scenarios.* 2021–2022 major revision: Updated for the full transition to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) (phased in ~2016–2021, mandatory by 2021). Removed Summary Reporting System references, added federal/tribal offenses, new anti-Asian scenarios, non-binary gender identity guidance, and tips for victim interviews. NIBRS’s detailed incident-based structure made it easier to flag and code bias motivations (including racial) at the offense level.NIBRS Transition Support (2016–2025): DOJ/BJS and FBI provided targeted grants, technical assistance, and training to thousands of agencies on properly coding/reporting hate crimes in NIBRS. Examples include the FY2023 Law Enforcement Transition to NIBRS grant (explicitly to “improve hate crime reporting”) and FBI training of ~19,500 participants from 9,500+ agencies (2016–2022). This shift alone is associated with better capture of bias indicators.DOJ/COPS Office and BJA programs: Ongoing grants and resources (such as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Training & Technical Assistance Program) funded specialized training, resource centers, and outreach for identifying/investigating bias crimes. COPS released recognizing/reporting hate crime training in 2022 (with later updates). Post-2020 awards emphasized investigation and community collaboration.THIS IS IN ADDITION TO STATE-LEVEL CHANGES* California (2017 onward): Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) developed and mandated the video course “Hate Crimes: Identification and Investigation” (November 2017). AB 57 (enacted ~2017–2019) required its inclusion in basic academy training, made it available online, and mandated periodic in-service training for all officers (every 6 years).* Other states passed similar mandates or funded programs (e.g., Illinois proposals, local collaborations with groups like the Matthew Shepard Foundation)Checking in on general perceptions of racism racismGallup (satisfaction with race relations / “very/somewhat good”):* Early 2000s–2014: High (often 60%+ “good”; peaked near 70–80% post-Obama election).* 2015 onward: Sharp drop to ~30% “good” (lowest in decades amid Ferguson-era protests). Hovering 22–36% since; 2022 reading ~28% satisfied.* 2025: 64% say racism against Black people is “widespread” (tied for highest since 2008 tracking; up from 51% in 2009). Civil rights progress views also down from 89% (2011) to lower levels post-2020.Pew Research:* 2019: 58% called race relations “bad”; 53% said worsening.* Post-2020: BLM support peaked (67% in 2020) then fell (~51% by 2023). Discrimination perceptions peaked ~2021 (60% saw high levels against Blacks) but declined to 45% by 2025.* Recent (2025–2026): Diversity viewed positively (~75% “good thing”), but partisan divides widened; some softening on specific discrimination claims, yet overall pessimism on relations persists vs. early 2000s.2011–2012: Occupy and class conflict* In his view, the real break comes with the 2011–2012 Occupy Wall Street moment, when people start focusing on economic power rather than identity, asking whether their problems come from the ultra‑rich and corporate “leadership class” who own capital and keep wages low in the post‑2008 crash recovery.* He argues this terrified the elite, because public attention was turning away from blaming minorities or women and toward questioning the people who own everything, so there was a strong incentive to deflect anger away from class and back onto identity categories.How did American sentiment change about wealth disparity and class conflict when the occupy wall street movement gained momentum in the USA?The most direct and widely cited data comes from Pew Research Center surveys:* Perceptions of class conflict: In a December 6–19, 2011, Pew survey of 2,048 adults, 66% of Americans said there were “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between rich and poor people—an increase of 19 percentage points from 47% in a 2009 survey. The share saying “very strong” conflicts doubled from 15% to 30%—the highest level since Pew first asked the question in 1987.* Class conflict was now seen as a bigger source of tension than conflicts between immigrants and the native-born, Blacks and whites, or young and old.* These increases occurred across most demographics (e.g., +22 points among whites, +23 points among independents, +24 points among those earning $40k–$75k), though they were especially pronounced among younger adults, women, and liberals/independents.* Views on economic fairness and power: In a separate December 2011 Pew poll, 77% agreed there was “too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations.” 61% said the economic system “unfairly favors the wealthy” (up from earlier baselines in related polling), while only 36% called it generally fair.* Broader inequality concerns: A CBS/New York Times poll at the end of 2011 found that two-thirds of Americans agreed the nation had “too much inequality”—a level of agreement that analysts credited to OWS for moving the issue from academic discussions into mainstream public consciousness.Earlier 2011 polls (pre-momentum or early October) showed lower awareness and more uncertainty about OWS goals, underscoring that the change coincided with the protests’ peak visibility.Important: OWS and an actual increase in disparity were at play: Pew researchers noted that the short timeframe of the attitude shift “may reflect the income and wealth inequality message conveyed by Occupy Wall Street protesters…that led to a spike in media attention to the topic,” alongside growing public awareness of actual wealth concentration (e.g., Census data showing the top 10%’s share of wealth rising sharply).2010s: Identity politics as a diversion* Asmongold’s core claim is that, in response, big institutions cultivated a new wave of identity politics as a “wedge issue” to keep people fighting each other instead of looking up the class ladder.* In his Paint diagram this is the phase where the rich guy takes nine slices of a ten‑piece pie, then cuts the last slice in half and says “the Black guy got your half,” redirecting resentment toward other ordinary people instead of the elite.* He says he does agree with some specific identity‑politics claims but thinks the overall structure is a misdirection: arguments over bathrooms, trans inclusion, and similar topics become a constant culture‑war distraction that fractures solidarity and makes people forget about shared material problems.The measurable rise in identity politics—defined here as politics organized around identity-based interest groups (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.)—occurred primarily in the mid-2010s, with a sharp acceleration around 2013–2016 according to the specified metrics. This was not the invention of the concept (the term dates to the 1977 Combahee River Collective statement, with earlier roots in civil rights and feminist movements), but a clear inflection point where it became a dominant framing in public discourse, media, and politics.See Google Trends for Identity Politics (spike in 2016) - 2005 to 2025* Public interest in the phrase “identity politics” itself was low and stable for decades, then spiked dramatically.* Searches reached more than twice their previous all-time high in November 2016 (post-Trump election) and again in August 2017 (Charlottesville).* These were not coastal-only phenomena; Rust Belt states showed strong interest. Earlier data (pre-2016) show no comparable surges, confirming the mid-2010s as the breakout periodWord frequency and media mentions* Quantitative content analyses of major U.S. publications show a clear surge in the phrase “identity politics” beginning in 2016. One study of major outlets found it tied more often to the political left but with significant right-wing linkage as well; aggregate trends confirm the spike through 2019* Google NGram Viewer* identity politics,intersectionality,black feminism,nonbinary,lived experience 2000 to present* NYT word-frequency analyses of “woke”-adjacent terminology (including identity-focused language) also show rapid rises starting ~2013–20142016–2020s: Manufactured extremism and the “return” to antisemitism* He then layers in the SPLC/FBI storyline he’s reacting to: that anti‑hate nonprofits and elements of the security state allegedly paid or supported extremists to keep visible “racism” and “right‑wing extremism” alive.* In his narrative, these groups have a financial and institutional incentive to produce hate so they can fundraise by promising to fight it, which requires keeping social tensions high instead of allowing them to cool off.* Within that frame, he says identity politics eventually “runs its course,” and elites fall back on the oldest scapegoating pattern: overt antisemitism and conspiracy about “the Jews” as the master explanation, which he characterizes as “old reliable” used to absorb and misdirect frustration away from structural issues.Funding of Identity PoliticsThe top identity politics orgs:* NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)* Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)* Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation* Human Rights Campaign (HRC)* GLAAD* Transgender Law Center, National Center for Transgender Equality, Lambda Legal* ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)SPLC Fundraising Over TimeTL:DR Seemed to go DOWN a bit after OWS, then blasted up after Trump was elected* 2000–2015: Relatively stable and modest, generally in the $35M–$62M total revenue range (contributions ~$30M–$55M). Slow, steady growth with minor fluctuations.* 2016–2017: Dramatic surge (post-2016 election and heightened visibility), with total revenue jumping to ~$136M and contributions to ~$132M.* 2018–2024: Elevated plateau with volatility — peaking at $170M total revenue in 2023, then declining to ~$129M in 2024. Contributions remained high (~$97M–$132M range).High-Profile SPLC DonorsAsmongold’s Theory might have more weight if donors to the SPLC would be uniquely uncomfortable with OWS-related sentiment. Who are high-profile SPLC donors?* George Clooney and Amal Clooney (via the Clooney Foundation for Justice): Donated $1 million in 2017 to support SPLC efforts against hate groups.* George Soros (via Open Society Foundations): Multiple grants over the years, including support for anti-hate initiatives (e.g., a $75,000 pledge in 2016 for convening anti-bias groups; broader involvement in related funding).* Tim Cook (then-Apple CEO, on behalf of Apple): Pledged $1 million to the SPLC in 2017 (part of Apple’s $2 million total to anti-hate groups, split with the ADL). Apple also encouraged employee and customer donations.* JPMorgan Chase: Longtime donor; gave an additional $500,000 in 2017 for “disaster relief” and other support.* Other notable mentions:* OpenAI, Chick-fil-A, and MGM Resorts (corporate contributions in recent years).* Various donor-advised funds, foundations, and high-net-worth individuals (SPLC’s revenue is primarily from private contributions, with an endowment/net assets nearing or exceeding $780M–$800M).NAACP Fundraising Over Time* Sharp growth in the late 2010s–early 2020s aligns with heightened national attention to racial justice issues.* Pre-2011 data is limited in digitized Form 990s; overall NAACP-related activity was smaller-scale historically (you don’t have to report as much when your nonprofit revenues are super low)* Contributions* 2024: Total Revenue $60.6M / Contributions $49.9M (82%)* 2023: $43.6M / $25.7M (59%)* 2022: $51.2M / $40.0M (78%)* 2021: $103.7M / $94.2M (91%) — major surge (post-2020)* 2020: $86.8M / high contributionsHigh-Profile NAACP DonorsCorporations have provided some of the largest recent gifts:* Wells Fargo: $50 million grant in 2023 — the single largest corporate donation in NAACP history. Funds supported grassroots branches, a new national headquarters, financial literacy, and racial equity programs. Wells Fargo has been a long-term partner (20+ years).* AT&T: Multi-million dollar contributions (in the $1M+ category in some reports).* Others in the $200K–$1M+ range: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, McDonald’s, Walmart, Hyundai, UPS, FedEx, Coca-Cola, and Eli Lilly.Foundations who donated:* Ford Foundation* W.K. Kellogg Foundation* Robert Wood Johnson Foundation* Open Society Foundations (linked to George Soros)* The Atlantic Philanthropies and others.HRC Funding* Early 2000s (~2000–2005): ~$20M–$25M range — smaller scale during earlier advocacy phases.* ~2010: ~$27M.* 2012: ~$33M.* 2015: ~$37M.* 2017–2018: ~$42M–$46M.* 2020: ~$46M.* 2023: ~$50M.* 2024: ~$46M.* 2025 (FYE March 2025): $50.1M (peak recent year; contributions $46.1M).GLAAD Funding Over Time* Early 2000s–2010: ~$3M–$5M — smaller scale focused on media advocacy.* 2015: $5.1M* 2016: ~$5.4M* 2017: ~$7.7M* 2018: ~$19M+ (major donor spike, e.g., Ariadne Getty Foundation)* 2020–2021: ~$20M–$24.9M (post-2020 visibility surge)* 2022: $18.6M* 2023: $25.3M (recent peak)* 2024: $13.6M (notable decline, with expenses at ~$22.5M)Versus Funding of Occupy Wall Street* It didn’t survive beyond 2012* The trackable fundraising data effectively ends in 2012, as the movement’s organizational structure fragmented after the encampment’s removal, making consistent financial tracking impossible.Major OWS DonorsOccupy Wall Street (OWS, 2011) was a decentralized, grassroots protest movement with no central nonprofit structure, so it did not have traditional “high-profile donors” in the style of established organizations like the SPLC or NAACP. Funding came primarily from thousands of small individual donations (often under $100), in-kind contributions (food, supplies, tents), and online platforms like Kickstarter and WePay. Total cash raised in New York alone reached roughly $500,000–$600,000 by late 2011, with much of it processed through the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) as a fiscal sponsor (taking a ~7% fee)A few prominent left-leaning individuals and business figures stepped in with larger support, especially after the initial Zuccotti Park phase:* Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (founders of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream): Led the Movement Resource Group (with other business leaders) to raise funds for a national Occupy office and grants to local groups. They personally contributed significantly; the group raised ~$300,000 by early 2012 (with plans for $1.8 million), and more than two-thirds came from the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation.* Danny Goldberg (former Nirvana manager and music executive).* Norman Lear (television producer, founder of People for the American Way).* Terri Gardner (millionaire businesswoman).Celebrities* Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, Kanye West, Russell Simmons, Cornel West, Pete Seeger, and others.* Brad Pitt commented positively on the movement internationally.Versus Leading Environmental OrgsIt might make sense to look to environmental orgs as the next best anti-corporate proxy.The TL:DR is (1) their funding is bigger overall than identity-based org funding and it’s more linear (which could be an argument in favor of the identity politics orgs being a bit more astroturfed).The top US-based environmental nonprofits are:* The Nature Conservancy* World Wildlife fund (WWF) Inc (US Affiliate)* Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)* Natural Resources Defense Council* Sierra ClubThe Nature Conservancy* Early 2000s (~2000–2005): ~$400M–$500M range — steady but lower scale.* Mid-2010s (~2010–2016): ~$700M–$1B — gradual growth with increased conservation focus.* 2017–2020: ~$1.0B–$1.2B.* 2021–2022: ~$1.3B.* FY2023 (ended June 2023): ~$1.17B.FY2024 (ended June 2024): $1.48B (with some reports citing ~$1.5B–$1.83B in total support/revenue including certain gains)The Environmental Defense Fund* Early 2000s (~2000–2005): ~$80M–$120M — smaller scale.* Mid-2010s (~2010–2016): ~$138M–$200M — steady growth.* 2017–2020: ~$210M–$300M+.* 2021: ~$365M (notable peak, partly due to pledge timing).* 2022: ~$285M.* 2023: ~$247M.2024: $299M (with contributions making up ~97%)The Sierra ClubEarly 2000s (~2000–2005): ~$80M–$90M — more modest scale focused on traditional advocacy and membership.~2010: ~$100M.2015: $109M.2020: $152M.2021: $152M.2022: $167.5M.2023: $173M (peak in recent filings).2024: $169M (Form 990) / ~$183M (audited consolidated revenues, including net assets released from restrictions)COVID and the internet as accelerant* Finally, he argues that COVID is the “killshot” for normal Western social life because it forces every “idiot” online all day, massively amplifying outrage dynamics and fringe narratives. With everyone stuck on the internet and algorithms favoring extremity, manufactured divides and identity conflicts scale up far faster and feel more real and dangerous than in the mid‑2000s offline world he remembers.* In his completed “American History Conspiracy Timeline,” the through‑line is that 2005’s relatively relaxed, optimistic, and materially focused environment is systematically replaced by a top‑down, incentive‑driven system that constantly re‑inflames racial tensions and revives antisemitism, not because grassroots hatred suddenly surged on its own, but because powerful institutions needed visible bigotry to justify their budgets and keep people from uniting around class and power.If It’s Not a Conspiracy, What Is It?This could be caused by a couple of things:The Urban Monoculture Reaching Critical Mass* And the urban monoculture is more predisposed to identity politicsTrump Derangement Syndrome* Funding for these identity politics orgs—and some environmental nonprofits—spiked after Trump’s election* SPLC funding skyrocketed with Trump’s electionMaybe it’s also just COVID driving people into their heads* NAAPC funding skyrocketed with COVIDEpisode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Asmangold, presented his conspiracy timeline starting with 2005, racism basically defeated.-. But what about all these CoreOS occupy Wall Street? Then 2014, look at that black personIf you look for example at,Malcolm Collins: oh my God,Simone Collins: terms like identity politics, intersectionality, black feminism, non-binary lived experience it’s like,Malcolm Collins: it’s like exact.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. It’s a little uncanny. It’s a little weird.I made a graph of the Southern Poverty Law Center.Malcolm Collins: WhatSimone Collins: Here we have the HRC funding graph. Again, something, you know, you, you see the normal, like steady,Malcolm Collins: oh my God, it’s so obvious here.Yeah, let’s look at Glad.Simone Collins: What happens? They’reMalcolm Collins: not in on the conspiracy.Simone Collins: Surely nothing happens. Suddenly, ohMalcolm Collins: my God. Gladys said what?Simone Collins: And this is all from their, their tax filing. This isn’t just like conjecture.At and t. Others? Bank of America, JP Morgan. Chase, McDonald’s, Walmart. Hyundai, UPS. Oh my God. FedEx, Coca-Cola, [00:01:00] Eli Lilly. The Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Word, Johnson FoundationSpeaker 5: I wonder if it affects the behavior of the children. Hmm. Curious.would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I heard a new conspiracy theory that I really like, and I wanted to see if there’s good evidence behind it. So let’s go on a YouTube clip of Aspen Gold Stream titled, IMalcolm Collins: brought this to you, by the way. I, I brought, I brought it like, I actually think there could be something to this.Simone Collins: Yeah. This, this was, again, Alex Jones was right. He. He Asman Gold, went over the Southern Poverty Law Center’s, support of racist groups, and then presented his conspiracy timeline regarding racism in the USA. And it basically goes like this. He, he titled that the Asman Gold American History Conspiracy Timeline, starting with 2005, racism basically defeated.Everyone is getting along generally then 2011 lives improve. But what about all these [00:02:00] CoreOS occupy Wall Street? Then 2014, look at that black person they took your future. And then 2025 OMG, the Jews, and I hadn’t heard about it before, but it sounds credible like that. Basically the racism and identity politics of our recent era.Are the product of some AstroTurf work done by Cor Bros because they don’t like the idea of people really being against them.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so basically and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll try you to frame it a bit more tightly.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is Asma Gold thesis is we solved most of the issues of social discord was in American society.Mm-hmm. As a result, people then begin to look with suspicion at the pose. And here I’m not talking about generic capitalism or something like that. I’m talking about the entrenched bureaucratic corporate interests that riggs the system in their favor in a very non-capitalist socialist, high barrier to entryway, which is demonstrably a part of [00:03:00] American.Culture at this point. Mm-hmm. And because the social harmony that we achieved allowed for that these people who had a lot of institutional power. And keep in mind the Corpo here isn’t just Wall Street. It is the deep state that profits from Wall Street. Right. Like the deep, straight corpo revolving door is very, very tight.Right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Especially within the Democratic Party, and it used to be within the Republican party. And so they say, uhoh, uhoh how do we get people to stop looking at us now? And they’re like, what if we invent racism? And as we saw with the Southern Poverty Law Center, because Asmo Gold said this southern poverty loss interest thing, he’s like, I bet.But if you don’t know, this is the number one anti-racism group in the United States. Turned out to likely be the major the, because the amount that they gave out was over $3 million to the various orgs, and it was orgs like the Nazi org and the KKK, which are not getting a lot of money from [00:04:00] other sources.It is hard to stay employed and make millions of dollars if you’re. Publicly donating to one of these institutions. So they, they could have been their primary funder with funding. And, and why do I believe that they were their primary funder? Potentially. Yeah. If you look at before occupy Wall Street, if you look at videos of clan rallies from that time or neo-Nazi rallies in the United States, it would be like three sad people walking with a bunch of people yelling at them.Yeah. Now you get like full on tiki torch parades and stuff like that. Like there, there has been a demonstrable change in the size of these.Simone Collins: Yeah. Who’s gonna pay for the tiki torches? Who’s gonna pay for the, the matching khaki pants.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re nice. The change in the size of these operations since the Southern Poverty Law Center started funding them.Mm-hmm. And so, but the question is, is who else is funding them? How much else are they funding them? And Simone came back to me and she goes, Malcolm. I think I found some smoking guns here. So I want you to go further. I want you to expand the genius Asma gold theory on all of this.Simone Collins: [00:05:00] Oh, yeah, yeah.I, I, I went and I checked to see how the theory tracks with keyword search volume and changes in police training programs and gram word volume and books and reported hate crime data and polling data and fundraising data for the top identity politics orgs and versus pol or, or occupy Wall Street and versus just general like environmental orgs and.It’s so suspicious. Okay. While most nonprofit fundraising curves just to like, give a little teaser that I looked at, appear to just go up mostly linearly over time. Like when you look at most of the environmental orgs, it goes up linearly. That makes sense. And then yet fundraising for identity politics orgs, like the N-A-A-C-P and the Southern Poverty Law Center skyrocketed after occupy Wall Street. Like there’s a very weird, like, yangyang. So it, it, mm, it’s just one of many things. So first, let’s just look at, at his, his argument point by point, and see how well supported each of his arguments are. Because I don’t know, like, you know, my memory, [00:06:00] my memory’s shot, I don’t know where things actually were.So in, in, again, this four step conspiracy timeline,Malcolm Collins: actually just No.Simone Collins: Before youMalcolm Collins: go further,Simone Collins: Uhhuh,Malcolm Collins: when did all of the antisemitism begin to rise in America? The antisemitism began to rise right as black fatigue was setting in. Mm-hmm. They’re like, oh, oh, we need a new outgroup.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we also have to eventually do a podcast on black Americans being supplanted for Muslims, because that’s another interesting, like flipper route that happened around the time of theMalcolm Collins: Oh yeah.Left is really done playing with black people. Like yeah, you guys are.Simone Collins: I’m tired. I’m done.Malcolm Collins: Toy story where like the, the drops Its toy at new toy.Speaker: Oh, I forgot you’re broken. I don’t wanna play with you anymore.Malcolm Collins: He’s got the new, the new toy. Right. But hopefully we can use this on the right to un brainwashed some [00:07:00] black people and bring ‘em over to our side, which means stop being performatively racist to be edgy guys, that’s not, it’s not useful.Okay. Yeah. It, it, it, it, it really only hurts us. There are obviously some black immigrant communities that need to that, that have externalities associated with them, like the Somalian refugees and stuff like that. Yeah. But don’t d you know, one thing to be like. These black immigrant populations have negative externalities and we need to find a way to deal with it.Then to just be like performatively racist or something like that, which is really only to masturbate your own ego, not to help the party because it hurts some. Yeah.Simone Collins: Anyway, Osmond Gold describes the mid two thousands as basically this time when most people of different races got along and pop culture just normalized, multiracial friendship and cooperation.And he,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Simone Collins: he uses rush hour three. With, you know, Jackie Chan and it was Chris Rock, right. Being like, oh, everyone’s like excited to see that. And like people, a joke about people of being of different cultural and, and ethnic [00:08:00] backgrounds, but like, they were comfortable with it. It wasn’t this tension.It was rush hour three. Wasn’t a story about multiculturalism. It was like funny. And they would, you know, people enjoyed that. And also society was just getting more progressive each year on race and sexuality. There was growing acceptance of gay people. We elected Barack Obama, like it was a thing. And he emphasized that everyday social life did feel edgy, but unserious that people would say offensive things like they would use racial slurs in video games, but everyone knew it wasn’t real.Like it was just teasing and trolling and basically in locker room talk. The overall vibe was that people just joked harshly, but got along. And IMalcolm Collins: checked, there was not meaningful ethnic tension outside of ghettos. And I really mean this in, in my school for example, like we had kids of different s ethnic, you had kids of different ethnicities in your school.Did anyone care?Simone Collins: Yeah, nobody cared. We would talk about stereotypes, but that’s because they were real. So.Malcolm Collins: The, we had, we had a group that we called the Korean Mafia because there were a bunch of [00:09:00] Korean kids at our schoolSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Due to some sort of scholarship that let them come. And then there was a bunch of Chinese kids who hung out together.But other than those two groups and those two groups, you know, literally came from other countries.Simone Collins: Well, I literally remember the first time I heard someone say something racist that like surprised me because I just never heard anything racist before. And it was, I was a friend in school. I can’t remember what level of school I was in, but her name was Yesenia and she came from like a Spanish speaking household.And she was telling me how like her parents were really concerned about brown people. And I was just so, like, I was like, what do you mean what is this about? But like that I have a memory of someone talking with me about that and like, being surprised must show that. Like, we really didn’t care at that era, you know?Just didn’t matter. But yes, when you check in on hate crime in 2005 in the us the, it was one of the lowest points for racism in US history relative to prior eras. And lethal racial violence had plummeted from its peak in the late 19th, early 20th century.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we had gone to a point where [00:10:00] blacks were mostly just killing other blacks.Yeah. Sorry. I’ve had to, I know that’s horrible. There, there is a difference in homicide rates, but they, that is true that blacks mostly kill other blacks while they do have an increased homicide rate.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Virginia.Simone Collins: So studies of discrimination trends, which, you know, have been active since we’ve been, like for, you know, decades and decades, show persistence.Like there’s still discrimination, but they were overall reductions. Post 1960s things had only gotten better. And in 2005 there were 7,163 hate crime offenses. And this was noted by the FBI as the lowest total in more than a decade racial bias motivated about 54.7% of single bias incidents. So this was byMalcolm Collins: the way,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Continue, continue. I, I’ll, I’ll, I went to get end of your thought.Simone Collins: Importantly, and this is really interesting, right? So we’re looking at, at all of this crime. I started wondering if perhaps part of what made hate [00:11:00] crime levels seem to go up, had to do with police training. And, okay.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Before you get into that, I wanted to go into a, f Funny, I saw this on Asma Gold or Nino and this, it looked like official data. I’m gonna double check because this sounds so crazy if this is actually official data. Okay. But it was tracking interracial grapes.Simone Collins: Oh God. You mentioned this to me. Yes.Malcolm Collins: And it was, black on white was something like 12,000.Mm-hmm. Which, I mean, if you’re considering the whole country isn’t a ton, but it’s still like a lot. Right? Like I’m, I’m sure that we get way more from immigrants, but I, I know that that’s the particularly prejudiced statement against immigrants. But I mean, I’m, I’m pretty sure I would expect more than 12,000.But the funny number was, was white on blacks, which was literally over the official datasets entire recording period for that year. Zero. Oh God.Simone Collins: Ugh.Malcolm Collins: Which actually track,Simone Collins: yeah, fact track that. But like, oh, that’sMalcolm Collins: our video on perceived attractiveness between groups. White people [00:12:00] uniquely see black people as unattractive.And this is actually really hard for blackSimone Collins: people. Oh, that’s even more insult. You’re just saying like, well, they wouldn’t. Because they don’t want to. That’s horrible.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s when we point out how bad it is for blacks in the United States we have this episode on like, it being so hard for black women that if you look at the old ok OkCupid da dating stuff that.You know how bad it is for white men in online dating.It is literally harder for black women in online dating than it is for white men. That is how nerfed the black community is within dating pools in like black pill communities. Not named the black, but like they go full like, like in sell whatever.People are like, bro, like. Be white, be tall. Like if you’re not those two things, you are nerfed, right? Like so do keep in mind that there are some areas where white men still have privilege when it comes to being thirsted over.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: if you’re in the top 1%Simone Collins: anyway [00:13:00] and so things hit this nadir in terms of hate crime and everything in, in 2005.And I started to wonder like, okay, if, if this is, this conspiracy is real and if interests, you know, with, with deep pockets and we didn’t want corporations to be scrutinized, wanted. To begin to foment this feeling that racism was real and that racial tensions were a big thing in the United States. It had to be addressed.That we all have to obsess over that and not look at corporations and rich people. That one thing you might do is just train or encourage training and police departments that would lead to a higher rate of reported hate crimes. So then you, with some other nonprofit, you, you could point them. To look at the data and report a spike in it and then be like, this is a big problem.Ooh,Malcolm Collins: very clever.Simone Collins: And it, so it actually does turn out that multiple times after 2012, the FBI crime data collection guidelines and training manual were [00:14:00] updated. Starting in December, 2012, the tail end of Occupy Wall Street, they merged major guidelines and training guides to include learning modules on bias motivated crime definitions.There was this two-tier review process, so you respond to Officer Flags. They have like for suspected bias, and then you have expert review of whether it actually is bias. The training included case study exercises and model procedures for agencies to build their own training, and they, it was explicitly intended to help departments establish and refresh hate crime training programs.Right at the end of Occupy Wall Street. And then in 2015 there were new bias categories. So, they added anti-Arab, they expanded religious biases. And they added more training scenarios for those. And then they, they also updated in 20 21, 20 22. This for this full transition to the National Incident Based Reporting system that that removed.I’m not, okay. I’m not gonna get into it. But basically, yeah, they did train, they did train [00:15:00] differently after Occupy Wall Street in a way that would’ve led to probably more reporting, even if things remain unchanged otherwise. AndMalcolm Collins: then they could utilize the higher reporting to create movements like BLM.Simone Collins: Yes. And then also this is, this is just, this is just the FBI. Then there’s the, the the N-I-B-R-S. Basically the department adjustment sorry, department of Justice and the BJS, what is the BJS? I didn’t look that up. Sorry. And the FBI, they provided targeted grants and technical assistance and training to thousands of agencies to properly code and report hate crimes mm-hmm.In this database. So they’re also like, we’ll give you money to make sure that you do this correctly. Which is. Notable, I don’t know where the grants came from, but I could totally see like this is a very subtle and hidden way for someone who, like, for example, made a lot of political donations who made sure that an appointee is leading a certain agency to, yeah, to, to, to put something like this in without anybody like, Hey, just putting this policy and what you’re not gonna look bad for [00:16:00] doing it.You know, we need to, Hey, crimes are a big, serious issue, you know, we just need more accurate reporting. But you know how measurement works, you know, like if you encourage and incentivize and give people grant money to measure something, they’re gonna measure it more, you know? Mm-hmm. And then there were also very specific targeted grants.Like there’s the Matthew Shepherd and James Bird Jr. Hate Crimes and Training technical Assistant program grants. They funded specialized training resource centers and outreach for identifying. Crimes and, and bias. So just keep in mind that like even specific people created grants to,Malcolm Collins: and it’s very interesting that there’s a flurry of this right at the end of Occupy Wall Street because.There was not a flurry of attention on interracial violence right at the end of Occupy Wall Street.Simone Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no. The, the, I think the wheels started turning the donations started the, the, the, the training shifted. And, and also just to be clear, this is in addition to state level changes. So for example, in 2017 [00:17:00] onwards, so this is a bit after Occupy Wall Street there was the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.Releasing a new video called Hate Crimes Identification and Investigation. And then also AB 57 required its inclusion and basic academy training. Made it available online, mandated periodic in-service training other states. Cast similar mandates. So basically now there’s just basic like propaganda videos that, that is another way to put it being like, here’s how to report bias.And then also I just wanted to check in on polling, right? So because polling is another way for us to see how Americans felt about bias. So when you look at a Gallup satisfaction with Reese relations question for like, oh, is it, are you very satisfied? Are you somewhat satisfied? In the early two thousands to 2014?People were very satisfied. They high, basically 60% plus marked good. And this p peaked near 70 to 80% post the Obama election. [00:18:00] Then 2015 onward, you know, after the gears had started turning, there was this sharp drop to 30% marking it as good. Sharp drop. This is the lowest in decades. And this was amid the, the Ferguson era protests.And then ever since it’s hovered from like 22 to 36% from its high at 60%. So Aspen Gold is totally right, that like people in 2005 were feeling pretty fine about race relations. And now as of well last year, as of 20 25, 50, 60 4% say racism against black people is widespread. And this is tied for the highest since 2008, tracking up from 51% in 2009 and civil rights progress views are also down from 89% in 2011.So preoccupy Wall Street to lower levels post to 2020. Then also Pew Research as well. In 20 19, 50 8% called race relations bad. And 53% worsening post [00:19:00] 2020 BLM support peaked and then fell and discrimination perceptions peaked around that time too. It, it’s, it’s bad basically like peer research reports now that people also see racism as a very, very bad issue in the United States.So let’s go back to what Aspen Gold observed about the 2011 to 2012 occupy Wall Street conflict. He, he, he said the real break came with OWS when people started focusing on economic power rather than identity. And they were wondering whether their problems came from the ultra rich and this corporate leadership class.Because I think a lot of the sentiment back then, I’m very like, it’s, it seems like a lifetime ago, it seems so long ago, but people felt like after the 2008 crash when a lot of really wealthy people got bailed out, we just never really seemed to recover from that.Malcolm Collins: Society didn’t Yeah,Simone Collins: yeah. Like pe pe like the, the rich just kept getting richer, but no one else like really saw the same level of steady improvement that they were used to.And he argued that [00:20:00] Asman gold argues that this is, this is the point at which the elite get terrified. So what I wanted to know is how American sentiment changed about wealth disparity in class conflict when the Occupy Wall Street movement gained momentum in the USA, Ooh. And this one Pew survey of 2048 adults done in.20 end of 2011. So Occupy Wall Street was like, this is picking up now. Mm-hmm. 66% of Americans said they were very strong or strong conflicts between rich and poor people. An increase of 19 percentage points from 47% in a 2009 survey right after the 2008 financial crisis. The share saying very strong conflicts doubled from 15 to 30%.The highest level since Pew first asked the question in 1987. So this was a definitely this flashpoint peak. Yeah, he’s absolutely right that people saw it. Class conflict was now seen as a bigger source of tension. Then conflicts between [00:21:00] immigrants and the native born blacks and whites, or young and old per pew polling.So he is spot on with this. Also views on economic fairness and power. Were, were totally also off it in a separate 20 th 2011 poll. 77% argued there was too much power in the hands of the, a few rich people and large corporations. 77% of people. I mean, I, I could see large corporations and really wealthy people kind of being like, Hey guys, we should probably divert their attentionMalcolm Collins: 77%.Yeah. We need to get people pissed at something else.Simone Collins: And this is, it hasMalcolm Collins: felt, I’m gonna be honest, like on the ground, when I learned about the, that, that theSimone Collins: 2008 financial crisis, like allMalcolm Collins: the, the Civil Property law center had been funding the KKK and the neo-Nazis.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. And that Nick Fuentes was heavily AstroTurf.I sort of had this moment of like pulling back and I think a lot of influencers on the right have been trying to cater to both sides to some extent. To try to be like, yeah, well I don’t wanna [00:22:00] isolate. That audience by being like, yes, unmitigated, obviously this word’s a good thing for America’s long term interests and stuff like that.Mm-hmm. And I sort of come to this realization of, oh. The people who I thought I was arguing with may just not even really exist in meaningful numbers. They’re just sort of, shell accounts online and a heavy sort of force that have been converted for by those shell accounts, but they’re not like a meaningful contingent of the conservative movement.Yeah.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And it’s changed the way that I address it where I just don’t. One, I don’t care about them as much as, as like players to like ideologically take seriously. But two, I see them as more of a threat than I did historically as well. Yeah. Which is to say that a lot of this stuff could just be funded by bad actors, right.And, and like the pro Russia part of the Right, which is just comical because we pointed out that Russia is what was behind [00:23:00] BLM. If you go to our episode on that, we go with plenty of receipts showing that. If you were ever worried about Russia interfering with the election on behalf of Trump at a nine to one level.So they literally nine times more than that, they spent on trying to make BLMA thing.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They are the source of BLM in America, so theSimone Collins: Russian helped. It’s clearly, it wasn’t only. Plausibly conspiratorially, allegedly corporations and wealthy Americans. You know, it was Russians.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think these groups work together.Simone Collins: Well, I don’t think they coordinated. I just think that when you get, you know, enough people with aligned incentives doing the same thing, it’s gonna be more effective.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no. I think they literally work together. So by this, what I mean is if you, this was period where a portion of the American Right began to act like Russia was our friend.Simone Collins: Oh my God. That’s right. Yeah. Like, wow. Russia’s actually, you know, a. Worthy ofMalcolm Collins: a very good right wing country. Yeah. And I remember when I first started seeing this and I was like, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The right wing hates Russia. Like we have always hated [00:24:00] Russia. They are a communist country who transformed into a kleptocracy like this is antagonistic.Simone Collins: Oh god. This was, yeah, this was even like when on the left people had a lot of memes about like Putin being sexy. Do you remember? Yes. Was Putin yes.Malcolm Collins: I think, I think, oh.Simone Collins: What was that? That song? I mean obviously it was a Rasputin song, but likeMalcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s when the RAsSimone Collins: song gotMalcolm Collins: popular and everythingSimone Collins: like that.Yeah. ThereMalcolm Collins: was a push during a certain time period on both the left and the right to make the extreme and captured parts of them. The parts that seemed disingenuous. More pro-Russia.Simone Collins: Well, look, okay, I just, I just wanna emphasize. The, the, the wealthy poses had a reason why, like another stat, 61% said the economic of Americans said the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.And this was up from earlier baselines in related polling, and only 36% called it generally fair. And it, it should also be noted though, that Oh, O Occupy, occupy Wall Street presented this threat and there was also this [00:25:00] actual increase in disparity at play. That yeah,Malcolm Collins: I think, I think we have moved into the United States.It’s having a system. We talk about this in our video of economically, who is actually more communist, the United States or the CCP in China, and the answer is the United States by threefold. Mm-hmm. Significantly more communist.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: totally. Totally. And if you look at the structure of the government of the United States, which you might even go so far as to argue, is.This is as much to distract us from the communist capitalist battle as it is because what has functionally happened is the communists of Russia had a plan to take over the American governing system, and potentially they have. They took over our academic institutions. They just called themselves something else.They called themselves socialists. They, and, and, and Wokes and SJWs. And then they used that to take over our companies and they used that to create an alliance with these, and if somebody’s like. [00:26:00] Malcolm, how can you think that like SJW is aligned with Russia and you know, the Putin hates like the gays or whatever.It’s like anybody who understands s JW really is, understands it’s a disease that you unleash on your enemy. It’s the effect the zombiesSimone Collins: for sure. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like put, do you think Putinism agrees with Black Lives Matter? No. Then why is he funding it so much? Because he understands how to promote the disease and people who are infected with the disease don’t really care where they get money.Simone Collins: Yeah, well, few people care where they get money, but so back to Aspen Gold’s core claim. It’s, it’s that in response to these growing concerns, big institutions cultivated a new wave of identity politics as a wedge issue to keep people fighting each other instead of looking up the class ladder and then in Ms.Paint or whatever it is he uses, and he’s such a fast drawer. What is up with that? It’s inhuman. This this is the phase he sort of was describing where the rich guy takes nine slices of a 10 piece pie and then cuts the last. [00:27:00] Slice in half and says that black guy got your half redirecting resentment toward the other ordinary people instead of the elite.And he, he does agree with some specific,Malcolm Collins: and I wanna point out that these people, like, we need to like be clear about who the bad actors are in this, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Corporals are not industrialists and they’re not capitalists. Industrialists and capitalists is what make America a wealthy and successful country.These are people like Elon Musk. Yeah. Or Jeff Bezos or mark Zuckerberg, or these are people who build things that make money. Okay. Compos are very different. These are people who use institutional bureaucracies and legal structures to make money in ways that the average person can’t. These are the people who run Enron.These are the people who run Exxon Mobil. These are the people who run the major weapons manufacturers. These are the people who run Lockheed Boeing. The people who run the types of institutions that do not succeed. And these [00:28:00] make up a huge chunk of the American economy because they’re draining a huge chunk of the American economy.They are in an endless cycle to siphon tax dollars from the average citizen in America, in the industrialists in America. And I think that what we need to do is build a better system for. A shared class identity for true Americans, which is the industrialists and the middle class against the parasites.Who is the corpus and the people who live off of the systemSimone Collins: Well, and I think we need to recognize the wedge effectiveness per Aspen Gold’s point of identity politics, which absolutely did spike after. Around 2016 and certainly after Occupy Wall Street. So I just sent you Google Trends and Google Ngram viewer screenshots.And I’m gonna link to all this in the show notes. If you look for example at,Malcolm Collins: oh my God,Simone Collins: terms like identity politics, intersectionality, black feminism, non-binary lived experience from [00:29:00] 2000 to present in Google Ngram viewer, it’s like,Malcolm Collins: it’s like exact.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. It’s a little uncanny. It’s a little weird.And also if you look at mi,Malcolm Collins: okay. PlausibleSimone Collins: I knowMalcolm Collins: as, no,Simone Collins: no, no. I’m getting more. No, there’s more. There’s more. Don’t, you know, let me keep going.Also, New York Times word frequency analysis of woke adjacent terminology, including identity focused language showed also rapid rises, but not starting in 2016.We’re talking starting in 20 13, 20 14. So. You know this, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s real. And then, so keep in mind that next, in his argument, Aspen Gold layers in.Malcolm Collins: Don’t forget to send me that graphic way, the New York Times one.Simone Collins: I don’t have a graph for that one. That was just research done. Oh, okay. Yeah, but I, I’ll send you all the graphs that I have and I will get, again, put everything in the show notes and links and everything.Aspen Gold then layers in how you get this SPLC. Involvement right in, in, and all these anti hate nonprofits suddenly [00:30:00] getting super active.Malcolm Collins: Well, the, the coin goes as leaflet calls them.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: And it sounds like a ethnic slur. So she used the term coin goes, which means like. Quasi autonomous non-government entities, I think, or something like that.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. And then basically at that point, the identity politics run their course and Elite fall back on basically like the old scapegoating pattern, just overt antisemitism and conspiracy about the Jews and, and the master explanation, which he characterizes as all reliable. And it just. Absorbs and redirects all the frustration from the structural issues that they were like,Malcolm Collins: somebody’s like, well, the people are getting over black people.They’re just done with them at this point. Right? Like, we sort of exhausted them as a resource that people,Simone Collins: but there’s the, there’s old faithful, you know, it’sMalcolm Collins: like, who’s next? Jews brilliant. Right? Like,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: How do we, how do we convince people to hate the Jews? Well, well, I mean, if it, if it looks like, it looks like you just bought the accounts of people who are already antisemitic to try to.[00:31:00]Simone Collins: But here’s the, the really crazy thing. This is what really started changing my mind. Look at the fundraising over time. I made a graph of the Southern Poverty Law Center.Malcolm Collins: WhatSimone Collins: it actually seemed to go down a little bit after Occupy Wall Street and then it blow down. No,Malcolm Collins: we down during Occupy Wall Street.Yeah. So this, this is the period during Occupy Wall Street. 2015, it explodes to like five times the rate. It used to be.Simone Collins: Yeah, because, so from like 2000 to 2015, it made between 30,000,050 5 millionMalcolm Collins: Theos.Simone Collins: And then in 20 16, 20 17, especially by the time momentum was built, it was making 136 million, 132 million.Then 2018 to 2024, it peaked at 170 million in 2023. And this is just around the time that they’re doing things like, you know, donating 3 million to their sources, right, their sources. And then I was like. Also like, okay, well then who are the donors to these organizations? You know? Yeah. [00:32:00] Might have more weight.The donors would be uniquely uncomfortable with Occupy Wall Street related sentiments. So who are some high profile Southern Poverty Law Center donors? Well, there’s George Clooney and Amal Clooney via the Clooney Foundation for Justice. They donated a million in 2017. There’s George Soros via the Open Society Foundation, Tim Cook.Then Apple, CEO, on behalf of Apple, pledged a million. JP Morgan Chase, a large American bank. OpenAI has also donated to SPLC, Chick-fil-AMalcolm Collins: OpenAISimone Collins: mgm,Malcolm Collins: by the way, do not use OpenAI models. Like if, if they’re donating to organizations like this one, they’re not very good. And two evil, evil, evil, evil.You know what? I might even charge a premium. Well, hold on. We had somebody who’s gonna give us open AI tokens to test. No, you don’t. So they give us open AI tokens. I won’t charge a premium on open AISimone Collins: model. Look, people should have freedom to use AI as they want, but look at the next graph. ‘cause it isn’t just the Southern Poverty Law Center.[00:33:00]This next one is the N-A-A-C-P. What?Malcolm Collins: OhSimone Collins: myMalcolm Collins: god. SoSimone Collins: Simone, they also saw a massive, massive spike. And this is all from their, their tax filing. This isn’t just like conjecture. We, nonprofits in the United States have to make pretty public disclosures of the amount of money that they got. Also, who’s donating to the N-A-A-C-P Wells Fargo 50 million grant in 2023.At and t. Large corporation, others? Bank of America, JP Morgan. Chase, McDonald’s, Walmart. Hyundai, UPS. Oh my God. FedEx, Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly. The Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Word, Johnson Foundation the Open Society Foundation, that’s George Soros again. The Atlantic Drops the companyMalcolm Collins: you should buy from.Oh, no. Did Coca-Cola donate to them?Simone Collins: Yeah. Sorry. Malcolm. OhMalcolm Collins: no. Oh,Simone Collins: no. Sorry. Malcolm. All. Let’s go to another identity politics [00:34:00] nonprofit. Here we have the HRC funding graph. Again, something, you know, you, you see the normal, like steady,Malcolm Collins: oh my God, it’s so obvious here.Simone Collins: It, it just, it just spikes up. You wanna see another one?What’s, what’s another one? Glad. How about glad you wanna look at glad. Let’s look at glad.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let’s look at Glad.Simone Collins: What happens? They’reMalcolm Collins: not in on the conspiracy.Simone Collins: Surely nothing happens. Suddenly, ohMalcolm Collins: my God. Gladys said what?Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, they were, they were, they were so, they were so modest,you know, 20 15, 5 0.1 million, 20 16, 5 0.4 20 17, 7 0.7 2018, 19 million, 20, 20 20 million, 24 million.2022. Oh, it, it’s just like, it’s, it’s insane. It’s insane. Let’s look at, let’s look at Occupy Wall Street. Our owner ofMalcolm Collins: glad’s, one of the funders of the KKK as well. I wouldn’tSimone Collins: be surprised. God. Well, I mean, it would, it wouldn’t hurt. So, just so you know, occupy Wall Street, it, it didn’t survive beyond 2012.They, they were evicted. Like you remember, they just took out the [00:35:00] camp, the, the trackable fundraising data for Occupy Wall Street. Effectively ends in 2012 as the movement’s organizational structure fragmented when the encampment got removed. AndMalcolm Collins: infiltrated by socialists, by the way.Simone Collins: Yeah. So let’s, let’s just take a look at their, their fundraising.Surely, you know, some huge, you know, calm interests were involved, but no, the, it, it peaked out at 800 k.Malcolm Collins: 800 K.Simone Collins: 800 k. And okay, wellMalcolm Collins: maybe companies don’t want Occupy Wall Street because they took over our institutions.Simone Collins: Yeah, theyMalcolm Collins: took over our largeSimone Collins: companies. Yeah. They, yeah, they, they were too busy taking over.And also I was like, well, maybe, maybe I was going too far with being like, oh, all these banks and like rich people donating to like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the N-A-A-C-P. Like, maybe that’s just kind of how it is. Right. You know, rich people donate to things ‘cause it’s like a, some kind of tax thing and they have to, you know, donate a certain amount of their trusts.Otherwise they can’t maintain trust status or something. Right. Like, I know [00:36:00] there’s all these weird tax rules, so they have to make donations. Maybe they donated to occupy Wall Street too. But the people who donated, and there were very few obviously ‘cause they like raised nothing. The most prominent corporate founders are the most anti-corporate corporate founders you could possibly imagine.Ben and Jerry of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. They, they led to remember what DonatorsMalcolm Collins: through Occupy Wall Street?Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. They, they, they wanted to be super supportive. And then there’s also just like Danny Goldberg, a former Nirvana manager and music executive. Norman Lee or a television producer, like, no, no one we would know, aside from Ben and Jerry oh wait, actually, no.Susan Sarandon and Kanye West, Michael Moore, Russell Simmons, Cornell West. P Seeger and others. Brad Pitt commented positively. He didn’t donate money,Malcolm Collins: commentedSimone Collins: positively. No wishes. No wishes.Malcolm Collins: I love that. That counts as a donation these days. People are like, oh, Elon, he must have donated to your prenatal list movement.I’m like, no.Simone Collins: HeMalcolm Collins: commented positively.Simone Collins: So heMalcolm Collins: gets footnote,Simone Collins: yeah, [00:37:00] thoughts and prayers. So I thought maybe like there was just some weird, spike. And, and there kind of was with some organizations I used. And I’ll, I’ll have all the numbers in the show notes, a bunch of environmental nonprofits as my control to kind of see like, well, is this just something that happened like after 2016, like when Trump got elected?Did people just like put all of their Trump derangement syndrome into donations? And there were modest spikes, but nothing like with these. Really big spikes with the identity politics related organizations. And what’s notable to me is when you look at the, the, the amounts of money that the environmental nonprofits have raised is just orders of magnitude more, and this is actually what makes me the most suspicious.Okay. So the Natures of Conservancy just, just insane to me. They’re raising like 400 million, 500 million in the early two thousands. Already In the early two thousands.Malcolm Collins: [00:38:00] Yeah.Simone Collins: Like keep, keep in mind the, the Southern Poverty Law Center. Do you remember how much they were raising in the early two thousands?It wasMalcolm Collins: like 11 million, right?Simone Collins: It was like 35 million.So we’re just talking huge orders of magnitude more for environmental nonprofits. And that makes me feel like a small number of wealthy people. Throwing a little bit of money toward those organizations and encouraging outsized like sort of propaganda results is, is something that just, I don’t know, it gives me pause.That basically just environmental nonprofits had slightly more steady increases, like more what I would expect from a nonprofit. And also they just, they clearly had much more broad based support, whereas these more niche, more out there, more radicalized, identity politics based nonprofits just kind of got very significant changes in donation patterns after a very specific event.Aspen Gold also argued that COVID and the internet were this perfect storm, accelerating [00:39:00] the, the identity politic. I can’t use bad words.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. Perfect storm. Not an engineered storm. It’s not like, it’s not like, theySimone Collins: were, that’s good pointing out though, like it forced every idiot online all day, which massively amplified outrage dynamics and fringe narratives because just people were just sitting online.Online. ItMalcolm Collins: made my life so much better. COVID has been like the turning point in my existence where the world, I, it really reminds me of this anime Zam 100, where the world, yeah. It is overrun by zombies and he’s like, loving it. He’s like, this is so much better than having a day job. Yeah. And post COVID so many people that come to me, they go, everything’s been terrible since COVID.Speaker 2: Starting today, I don’t have to go to work anymore.Speaker 3: I am.[00:40:00]Speaker 2: Until yesterday, I saw the world in monochrome, shrouded in a black cloud of despair in hopelessness, loose skies, green trees. I Red Blood. I’ve been zoned out for so long, I’ve forgotten. The world was so beautiful. Oh of so many beautiful colors. Who cares if there’s zombies chasing me?Malcolm Collins: Like, now Trump’s in power and look at all the crazy stuff that’s happening in politics and look at all the, and I’m like, bro, it has just been a blast for me. It was,Simone Collins: yeah. I, that, that one song that we kept listening to during the pandemic with the, like, I’m just gonna. Be inside theMalcolm Collins: [00:41:00] Caer song like I’mSimone Collins: song Yeah, that just like captured everything that I felt.I do wanna point out though, and I’m gonna bring back the same graph that I showed for my argument about male female speciation. I don’t know, that episode may not have run yet, but that the, the male female political divide, which is very much associated with this identity politics, insanity.Really it does.Malcolm Collins: Oh, you found this, that it all started with Tinder.Simone Collins: It started with Tinder, but it accelerated after COVID. And I think that really feeds, it plays into Aspen Gold’s argument that COVID was an accelerant for extremism by forcing all these people online.Malcolm Collins: Tinder plus COVID is what? COVID.Simone Collins: Tinder Plus COVID. But okay. Like I, I, I’ve presented all of this, right? So we had differences in, like, changes in the way that police were trained. There was a, a very clear and measured. Nadir in hate crime and in perceptions of racism before occupy Wall Street and then suddenly, somehow inexplicably and for [00:42:00] no apparent reason.It started to get bad and, and I really can’t understand aside, like I don’t have any alternate, here’s, here’s my three theories as to what this could have been. If it wasn’t the Corpo saying, oh my gosh, we have to engineer. Okay, go for division, that’s not concerned about us. One is. It could just be the urban monoculture reaching critical mass.Okay? And the urban monoculture is more predisposed toward identity politics. So this was just a separate cultural mimetic virus running out of control. And of course, all these things could be happening at the same time. Two, it could be just Trump derangement symptom. Because funding for many of these identity politics orgs and some of the environmental nonprofits as well spiked after Trump Trump’s election.It was 2016. That was one of the periods. Now this doesn’t explain, for example, the shift in the New York Times language toward woke. Stuff well before Trump was elected. But, [00:43:00] but the Southern Poverty Law Centers funding did skyrocket with Trump’s election. Now, that could just be when their team really got product market fit and found out how to like tap into really good veins because of that.And they had already picked up momentum before, but still.Malcolm Collins: I have another thesis,Simone Collins: Uhhuh,Malcolm Collins: is that you’re looking at it wrong.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: That it was explicitly the death of Occupy Wall Street that caused the explosion in identity politics. Let me explain. Okay. In our book, the Pragmatist Guided of Crafting Religion, I actually explicitly go over this.I say. That the urban monoculture is not a parasite, it’s this parasitoid. It has to kill its post.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The way that it spreads, that takes control of a company or a movement, and it then begins to look for any node within the movement or company that is unaffected in an in uninfected. And it attempts to flip them or infect them.And if they appear to be un infect or immune to it, it then expels them so that it’s [00:44:00] easy to affect the nodes that are effect just harder to affect. Right? And so it, it goes throughout an organizational movement until it can capture as many nodes as possible. The problem with this mecca and how does it do this?It does this with HR training. It does this with, you know, group struggle sessions. It does this with, you know, the few woke people, they, they use words that they know that you don’t know, and then you’ve gotta learn more and more of their lingo to not accidentally offend them, and then you get kicked out, right?Like, this is how they maintain the purity. But once an organization is fully infected there’s a problem from the perspective of the mimetic evolution of the urban monoculture. Mm-hmm. All the infected nodes are stuck inside the infected organizationSimone Collins: and have to disperseMalcolm Collins: and it has to disperse.That is part of its lifecycle. And so it has to kill the host through angry infighting is what it typically looks like. Yeah. The captured nodes to be released into the atmosphere and begin to infect new companies. [00:45:00] What we might have seen with Occupy Wall Street is the first large infected entity dying and spreading all of the infected nodes to the wind where they infected tons of bureaucratic positions within companies.Ah,Simone Collins: because they, they were extremely woke. Like I remember. Yeah, I remember thinking of them as being pretty freaking intolerable. And it’s not because. Like I, I, I don’t think that there’re really serious things to question about, like the bailouts that took place after well, and especially the lack of justice.After the 2008 financialMalcolm Collins: crisis. What gives to me a belief that this is what’s happening Yeah. Is if you look at a lot of your graphs, the funding. Two, this stuff started about two and a half years after W Occupy Wall Street. That’sSimone Collins: true there, there was a pause, things retooled for a while.Malcolm Collins: Just enough time for them to begin to build influence within other companies.Simone Collins: But this is also just enough time for theoretically, you know, wealthy people’s donations to start kicking in too, for the [00:46:00] change to start enacting, for the trainings to start leading to different numbers for the reporting to come through. All of this stuff takes time to build.Malcolm Collins: True, true,Simone Collins: true. And again, all of these things can be true at the same time.Like absolutely. It could be that, you know, the Occupy Wall Street movement then exploded into these other things. SoMalcolm Collins: my question is to the comments, whose theory is right? Malcolm Siri or Asma Gold Theory, who’s the. More clever cultural commentator on this particular issue. I like asthma Gold, Siri. I like it because the narrative that it paints is Occupy Wall Street was actually noticing a real problem and attempting to solve it in a meaningful way.Yeah. And and that, that makes it seem like, oh, and then they crushed it and then turned us against each other. My theory is more just like a cultural evolution theory. Like, well you had Occupy Wall Street died and then you have all these infected nodes that mm-hmm. You know, come out of college recently ‘cause that’s who a lot of Occupy Wall Street was filtering into major companies in college campus.Yeah. But taking over the HR departments, once [00:47:00] you take over the HR department, it’s very easy to decide who gets hired next. And this was the problem that a lot of these companies had that we’ve talked about before, is they were like, oh God, we’ve gotta hire like minorities, like trans, gay, black people.Okay. Well, we don’t wanna risk that on like our engineering team, right? ‘cause we need them to actually be competent. So I guess put them in hr, right? Like, no, that’s not gonna hurt anything. But now they’re in control of who’s hired.Simone Collins: Yeah, for real. Oh, Mr. Woke up. Yeah, I mean, I think maybe the other issue is that the growing class divide and all these just like the, the, the, the lack of accountability that, that various people who caused the 2008 crash had and, and on the bailout and everything like this is just stuff that like individual people maybe just couldn’t feel like they could do anything about.Whereas there were many different, there were many easier ways to virtue signal identity, politics related things. Like putting your pronouns in your bio and all these otherMalcolm Collins: [00:48:00] words. It also could be here’s the final hypothesis.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is a lot of this is in opposition to the new right. Beginning to gain more power.And the left not knowing how to react.Simone Collins: Hmm. And then Right. Really didn’t come until after.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I suppose you’re right. Yeah, they came later. Alright. Could it, could it all be downstream of Tumblr? Did Tumblr destroy society? I think that could be a fun video.Simone Collins: BLR, I mean,Malcolm Collins: TumblrSimone Collins: society. It wasMalcolm Collins: great, kinda.Anyway I love you Simone. I love you. So for tonight, I want something easy.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So what’s easy? Mac and cheese, I guess.Simone Collins: Prob probablyMalcolm Collins: pizza if you’re doing pizza.Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. I’ll do either pizza or mac and cheese or grilled cheeses. I guess. Any one of those works for you.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the grilled cheeses you make are fantastic.I’llSimone Collins: see with kids support,Malcolm Collins: but the mac and cheese is really good too. And I learned [00:49:00] about pep black pepper in mac and cheese, but the pieces you make allow me to put Indian spice on top, which as is a little.Simone Collins: Some razzle dazzle.Malcolm Collins: Some razzle dazzle. That’s what I’m all about, Simone, the razzle dazzle. Okay. You honestly, this week’s videos are just like a string of absolute bangs in terms of like. Unique research. I cannot believe that you took this theory that asthma gold had, that all of these sort of anger that we’re seeing over increased racial anxiety in the United States.Well,Simone Collins: I just didn’t know, like I wanted to gaslight myself like, oh no, like racism was. It can’t have been like everything was fine then, right? Like,Malcolm Collins: and then Occupy Wall Street happened. The court post freaked out and Admiral posts the theory, and then Simone here, the theorist comes in with like a hundred graphs and funding charts and being like, no, no, no, no, no.So don’t understand like [00:50:00] every one of these orgs funding increased like. 13 fold near the end of Occupy Wall Street, and we know who the donors were, and it was all the Corpo. And we can also see how they changed training in police stations. As a result that caused a spike in the number of, and I was like, whoa, Simone, too much, too much cooking in there.Simone Collins: A lot interesting stuff going on. But yeah, I, I love, I love getting a good conspiracy theory that I haven’t heard before. May we get many more in the days to come? Well,Malcolm Collins: I mean, mine with the crash out that the assassin had about the freaking,Simone Collins: I cannot, that, that is so hilarious. It’s, I just, I love that we live in a timeline where like, you know, assassins after they manifest us have like ps oh my God, the security, thisMalcolm Collins: is terribleSimone Collins: here.It’s just like, it’s like a comic book joke, you know, like of like also kind of, it’s like the thing that they put in to like lampshade the fact that like. Clearly no president would have such bad, you know, so we’ll just, [00:51:00] we’ll just lampshade by having the villain talk about how ridiculously bad it is and then that will kind of hand wave away.YouMalcolm Collins: might might as well edit a ps. You should really probably go ahead with that new ballroom.Simone Collins: I know. You really should have. Yeah. People gotta get better with their their manifesto trolling, but,Malcolm Collins: Right, right.Simone Collins: Good stuff. I love it.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you too, Simone. I have a spectacular day. The, by the way, the website’s getting better and better.I’ve added vibe coding features to it. Right now. What I’ve really been focused on is reducing the cost of the agent feature and improving the card game.Simone Collins: You guys check out our Fab AI forMalcolm Collins: really cool. You wanna try like magic the gathering, but like. Played by ai. So like the, the effects, like fire doesn’t do like five points of damage.It like modifies a card by being lit on fire.Simone Collins: It’s fun. It’s fun. And any just AI adventures, AI companions, AI agents, it can make phone calls, all the cool stuff. Definitely check it out. PhoneMalcolm Collins: call feature is hard to do and it confuses people. SoSimone Collins: I was, I dunno, I found it like, you know how I just always [00:52:00] find bugsandMalcolm Collins: stuff.You found it easy to use. Have you used it?Simone Collins: Yeah. And it called me and I was like, oh. That’s really crazy. YouMalcolm Collins: have to whitelist the phone number by the way. You have to go, you have to click, have it call you while you’re looking at your phone. Whitelist it.Simone Collins: Yeah, IMalcolm Collins: did. Long government reason as to why this is the case that I can’t do anything about without having you pay like a hundred dollars for a phone number.I love you, Simone. You are amazing. I think that you are beautiful and I am really glad we’re gonna be at DC for most of this week doing meetings. So, but we have a good backlog, so don’t worry about it guys.Simone Collins: Love you.All right.Speaker 4: What do you, you gotta, you gotta wear this on the channel more often. If it’s sunny and I’m going outside, I’m gonna put it on you. Look Adorkable and I love it. This is, this is what our fans are in this for Toasty. You are gonna get, we.[00:53:00]What are you doing, girl?Speaker 5: She just saw somebody to hug. Yeah, I just attack dogs all the time.Speaker 4: Oh my.Are you building a bridge? Toasty. Testy. Build a bridge. I mean, can I have that? I wanna throw the French. So under there, what it’s like under there? Yeah. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Did hookup culture and swipe apps like Tinder create the massive political and cultural divide between young men and women? In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down shocking new polling data showing young women are far more negative toward men than vice versa, explore how Tinder supercharged resentment and radicalization, and discuss everything from MeToo to artificial wombs and potential speciation between the sexes.They cover:• The timeline correlation between Tinder’s rise and women shifting hard left• Why short-term mating markets destroy long-term relationship prospects• Male vs female responsibility in modern dating chaos• The anime that predicted male/female civilizations splitting• Practical advice for men seeking real partners and why “high value” looksmaxxing can backfireA raw, data-heavy, and unfiltered conversation on one of the biggest societal fractures of our time.BTW, here is Revy the MGTOW’s Google Doc guide to having kids via surrogate as an unattached man. Show NotesThe LandscapeNew polling conducted for the New Statesman in the UK in early 2026 found that young women (esp 25–30) have significantly more negative views of men than young men have of women.* The New Statesman poll was carried out by pollster Scarlett Maguire and colleagues on attitudes between young men and women in Britain, published around 14 April 2026.Here’s the polling (archive link): Revealed: the new radicalism among young womenMerlin Strategy’s exclusive polling reveals a growing gender divide among under-30sWhat they found:* About 72% of young men report a favorable view of young women, and only around 7% report an unfavorable view.* Among women under 30, only about half report a favorable view of men, and around one fifth (about 21%) report an unfavorable view.* Among women under 25, only about 35% express a positive view of men at all, and just about 11% describe their view as “very positive.”* Commentary around the poll notes that young women are “three times as likely” to hold a negative view of men as young men are to hold a negative view of women.* 40% of young women say men don’t share their understanding of consent in relationships (only 25% of men say the same about women).* Young women are twice as likely as young men to say they don’t want children (15% women vs. 8% men). Among white women under 30, it’s 20%.* 1 in 4 young women say a partner’s different political views is a red flag.* 60% would find it difficult to date someone who disagrees on Palestine/Israel or Trump.* 74% say the same about disagreements on social justice.* Young women are more likely than men to rule out partners over immigration views.The ThesisOn X, Rae (@dystopiangf) wrote: “Casual sex is unironically a huge part of why so many women have become politically radicalized. If you ask a random woman why she hates men, 95% chance it boils down to sexual grievance, accumulated from embarrassing experiences like the OP. In other words, women are the real incels (in spirit).I witnessed this myself in college: one too many bad situationships, and they begin to carry this feeling of being a piece of meat everywhere, projecting it onto “society” despite there being zero material evidence of structural misogyny in the West. The bitter irony is that hookup / situationship culture is a byproduct of feminism; they fought for the ability to be treated like pieces of meat, to be equal to men sexual the way gay men are with each other, but the attainment of this freedom has done nothing but foment an even deeper hatred of their father’s civilization”This is in response to someone sharing a screenshot from a post-hookup story a woman posted on tiktok.* The caption OP had put was: “situationship breakups are so crazy bc why did this man just tell me the only person he wants to be with is his ex and then immediately make me eggs on toast. He nutted in me like 10mins after this. what in god’s name is happening”* Moe Bible chipped in: “Women will post this s**t and then wonder why the entire planet and every major religion has imposed strict social restrictions on their sovereignty since the dawn of time in every place humans have ever lived”The Shadowbanned wrote: “Let’s at least sympathize here - the man does not need to do this to her. Just because a girl is willing to put out doesnt mean you have to take her up on the offer.”* To which Rae responded: “I do tend to think that volcels are the most noble of men”More discourse for the interested: https://x.com/i/trending/2046981384204358126Did Hookup Culture Predate Male-Female Political Polarization?Yes. Yes it did.Timeline of Hookup Culture / Casual Sex NormsCasual, non-committed sexual encounters have deep historical roots but became more normalized and visible in specific eras due to social and technological changes:* Early 1800s–1920s: Historians trace elements of casual sex and shifting courtship to the early 19th century, with acceleration in the 1920s. Automobiles, movie theaters, and urban youth culture allowed mixed-sex socializing away from parental supervision. This marked a shift from formal courtship to “dating.” Fraternity culture (from the 1820s) also played a role in college settings.* 1960s Sexual Revolution: A major inflection point. Feminism, the birth control pill, declining stigma around premarital sex, and college party scenes decoupled sex from marriage/relationships. This era saw widespread acceptance of casual encounters, especially among young adults.* 1970s–1990s: Premarital and casual sex became more common and visible. By the mid-1990s, “hookup” behaviors were established on campuses. The term “hookup culture” gained prominence around 2000, but data shows similar (or even higher) rates of sexual activity in earlier decades (e.g., comparisons of 1988–1996 vs. 2002–2010 college students).Hookup culture isn’t entirely new—casual sex existed before—but modern forms (peer-driven, alcohol-fueled, decoupled from courtship) crystallized post-1960s and were amplified by media and apps later.Timeline of Male-Female Political PolarizationThe partisan gender gap (women leaning more Democratic/liberal, men more Republican/conservative) is relatively recent in its modern form:* Pre-1960s: Minimal or inconsistent gaps. In the 1950s, women were sometimes slightly more Republican.* 1960s onward: Divergence began as men and women’s party identifications shifted (linked to civil rights, Southern realignment, and cultural changes). Men moved toward Republicans faster in some cases.* 1980s–present: Clear and growing gap. Noticeable in the 1980 Reagan election (women less supportive). It widened through the 1990s–2010s, with women more Democratic. Among young people (18–29), the divide has sharpened dramatically in recent years (e.g., post-2016/2020), with young women shifting left and young men moving right or away from Democrats.Polarization overall increased from the 1970s/1990s (elite sorting, Gingrich era), but the gender-specific aspect accelerated later.The Swipe-Based Dating AccelerationHas gendered political polarization intensified even faster following the introduction of swipe-based dating (E.g. tindr)?Yes, the gendered political polarization—particularly the ideological and partisan gap between young men and women—has shown signs of intensifying at a faster rate in the period following the widespread adoption of swipe-based dating apps like Tinder (launched 2012, mass popularity by 2014–2015).Obviously swipe-based dating is just one sign of hookup culture on the rise, but it largely facilitated hookup culture at scale, which could arguably have fuelled the resentment that built up and fuelled things like #metoo (which was founded in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke to support survivors of sexual violence but did not gain global, viral momentum until October 2017 after Alyssa Milano encouraged survivors to use the hashtag following Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations).Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] So 2015 is when Tinder launched. Oh, and about two years later is really when it started to pick up, . The thing that really made hookup culture run out of control was the technology introduction of swipe based dating, which made hookup culture something that could run at scale.And that’s when women who were eights and below suddenly had access to these higher quality men on their lazy nights and started to believe that this was the type of man who eventually would become their boyfriend or marry them.And this is where the resentment really starts.Malcolm Collins: you listen, you can’t see good graph. I mean, it is, it is striking. Like as soon as Tinder gets popular bam, women explode.You get me too. You get BLM you get huge rates of, of additional liberal tendencies in the female voting pool, particular in the single [00:01:00] female voting pool.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re gonna be talking about an interesting question and an interesting theory. The theory coming from Simone is, did hookup culture create the current and continually growing divide between young men and young women?And we’ll be going over a bunch of stats that signify this divide. Because it’s, it’s way bigger than you would imagine. And then the second I wanna go over comes from an anime I was watching recently.Simone Collins: Oh no. OnlyMalcolm Collins: because I was on a leaflet stream and somebody on the leaflet comment, they go seeing leaflet and Malcolm Talks makes me not as afraid that we’re gonna end up with an X future.And I was like, I haven’t heard of this anime. So I went to look it up and watch it and it’s old and not very good. But it is an interesting concept, which is. After artificial wombs are developedSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Because already with humanity one of the thought experiments I often [00:02:00] have is like, wouldn’t it be cool if like crow mags continue to exist today?So like, we could talk with and converse with a human with like a completely different sociological physiological perspective on reality. Right? Yeah. OrSimone Collins: Neander falls. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We, we, we basically. Have that, which is human females. Right. BecauseSimone Collins: goneMalcolm Collins: human females are probably more different from human males than Neanderthal males are from human males and Neanderthal females.Were from human females. Like as hominids, we’re quite different from each other. In terms of our, our sociological perspectives, the way we would want government, the wor the way we would want the prisons in so many different ways. We’re very, very, very different from each other. Scale,Simone Collins: you know, structure and Yeah.Muscle mass.Malcolm Collins: People have different roles. Yeah. And it asks it, it sort of takes this, this guess is that, well, once we have artificial wounds, the core political divide, which we’re kind of seeing already, is going to be between men and women. And eventually they split into different civilizations. One [00:03:00] is a descendant civilization of males and other is a descendant civilization of females.Hmm.And obviously the, the very fun thing is how they mythologize why the other was so bad, like all of the cruel ways that women used to treat men. And it’s like a list of like men’s rights grievances. Like did you know that men died at like 98% the rate of women when they worked together? Did you know that?Like, and it says, what, what would those two differing societies be like? And honestly and I, I, I want to talk with you. Do you think that happens? Because I hadn’t actually thought through how strong the political wins may be for a divide between men and women. We’re already seeing people in both camps talking about wanting to do it right.Like Sandman, who we’ve had on the show has talked about doing that himself, you know,Simone Collins: having a bunch of guys. Yeah, actually,Malcolm Collins: yeah, a bunch of guys. We talked to other guys who were doing it. EvenSimone Collins: when I was in Austin, there [00:04:00] were people like talking about it. Like, well, I wish I could just do this. And I’m like, oh, actually you can, I’ll share the Google doc with you.Of that, that other guy who,Malcolm Collins: oh, yeah, you should put that GoogleSimone Collins: document, if you remember, shared his guide to getting a surrogate and just doing it on your own, on a budget. IMalcolm Collins: mean, a bunch of women have talked about wanting to do this to the extent that there’s been a number of instances where women have, like when they, with their lesbian partner, whatever, accidentally conceived a male child, like wanted to sue the clinic when they found out they couldn’t have an abortion, they said it felt likeSimone Collins: there’s also a couple there’s a, a, a prominent case of a gay couple having done this too,Malcolm Collins: to have only gay kid, only male kids, I mean.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, well, I mean, this is like a thing on Tumblr. Like, let’s just create what, what do we even need men for? What do they, we can have birth without them. Right. You know.Simone Collins: Well, but same, same with gay couples, you know, and if they’re doing it without women and they just wanna have a boy kid.Yeah. AndMalcolm Collins: people can be like, well, you at least need like sperm or eggs. And it’s like, not anymore. Like IVG [00:05:00] technology is getting pretty good at this point. Yeah. We’ve helped fund it with our foundation.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So we’re maybe 10 years away from IVG just being you know, an easy way to, that, that means being able to create sperm and egg cells from other types of cells in your body.Simone Collins: Yeah. But to be, to be clear, a a lot of this is couched in for context, a new polling that was conducted for the new statements in new statesmen in the uk in, in early in this year that found that young women, especially in the 25 to 30 range, are way more negative on men than young men are toward women.So, as much as I cited this, this example of a gay couple suing because they didn’t have the boy they hoped for and selected. This is more about female hate and, and female pushing away. No, I, I could see reactive male speci should of just being like, I’m gonna throw my hands up and wash my hands with a situation.But what people have been discussing a lot online is this new statesman polling. I’m gonna, in the show notes link to an [00:06:00] archive link, so not paywall of the actual polling results. But some highlights of it are that about 72% of young men report a favorable view of young women. So most, right? But only around 7% report an unfavorable view that, again, this is a very friendly approach, but then women under 30, only half report a favorable view of men.And one fifth, like 21% versus 7% for men. Have a favorable view, and among women under 25, only about 35% express a positive view of men at all. And just about 11% describe their view as very positive.Malcolm Collins: Wow. So only one in four women under 25Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Has a positive view of men. Wow.Simone Collins: Yeah. And young women are three times as likely to hold a negative view of men as young men are, to hold a negative view of women, put other ways.And then 40% of young women say men don’t share their understanding of consent in relationships. So only 25% say [00:07:00] the same amount about women, which makes sense. Young women are twice as likely as young men to say they don’t want children. Something we’ve discussed at length, and this shows up in a lot of polling.So 15% of women versus 8% of men. And among white women under 30 it’s 20%. And young one in four young women say it partners different political views as a red flag. So God forbid we consider alternate views, which is actually,Malcolm Collins: hold on, hold on, hold on. Simone. Yeah. Would you have said that back when you were a progressive?When I first met you,Simone Collins: I really liked. Talking with people who are different. When I, when I found ‘em on ok. Keep, that was kind of a selling point. Okay. But maybe I was weird. I would’ve thought that it was normative because I thought, you know, women love enemies to lovers. They love a bad guy. They love novelty, they love new views.Malcolm Collins: Well, we all saw the, the Ice Romance books pop off.Simone Collins: So, so yeah. That, that is, I actually find that very surprising. Like, why, why would women be so into enemies to lovers and, [00:08:00] and like to view men as these like, ooh, like powerful age, agentic, whatever. And, and leftist views broadly, which is what women, women are holding on average.Like I don’t think this is young conservative women saying that they wouldn’t date a progressiveMalcolm Collins: maleSimone Collins: partner.Malcolm Collins: I think what’s really interesting here is a few things. So one is obviously this changes the framing when people are like in cells or like angry young men or, or the problem in society, it’s very clear that angry young women are astronomically more of a problem in society than angry young men.Yeah. Men’s reaction is mostly. I don’t want to deal with this. Right. Like these, these harpies are nightmarish. Have you ever had to interact with one?Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And they are, they are. You know, I, yeah.Simone Collins: I mean, the old saying, women can’t live with them, can’t live without ‘em, but increasingly you can live without them.And will that allow for speciation, is your question?Malcolm Collins: Yes. No. No mandate speciation. So, yeah. I, I, I also wanna pointSimone Collins: out people. We also found, though, I just wanna say that women also, 74% said the same about disagreements on social [00:09:00] justice. So it’s not just politics, it’s also social justice. And also they’re more likely than men to rule out partners just over immigration views.Alone. Like, not like, oh, you’re a republic. Even if you’re a progressive man who believes in social justice, but then you, you know, you’re like, you know, maybe we should curtail immigration. Nope, you’re out. So anyway, it, it just, it check out the survey, there’s a ton more. And also women have way more negative views, for example, on economics.They’re more pessimistic on life in general. They honestly sound like bummers to be around.Malcolm Collins: Well also I, I note on your enemies to lover thing, which I do think is right. I think women honestly go for that. It’s, you can date with a strategy like that without as much trouble as you would imagine. Yeah. The a a lot of male dating advice is really messed up.And this is in part because of hookup culture. So we’re gonna go into that conversation a little.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Are still sort of red pill cued around what women are looking [00:10:00] for. And it’s something that I had pointed out before. But I, I, I want to point it out again because I, I, it’s like really important that guys gr this because I was watching a home math video and I really respect home math.I think he’s a, a greatSimone Collins: same home math isMalcolm Collins: awesome. But he was going over the studies that show oh, well, you know, these guys who say that you don’t really need to work out, you don’t really need to be buffed. There’s better things to invest your time in. In terms of securing a, a partner of the opposite gender they’re, they’re wrong about this, right?Like, look at these studies. And so he goes over a number of studies and then he, he mentions a line that he sees a sort of a throwaway line, but it misses the entire point. He’s like, well. Of course the studies found that women really prefer you know, buff guys when they’re looking for a short-term partner, but not so much when they’re looking for a long-term partner.But he is like, but of course, because we’re all downstream of the red pill community, you want to be the short-term partner, right? Like, you want to be the sex [00:11:00] boy, right?Simone Collins: No. No.Malcolm Collins: And it’s like, that’s not what anyone in our community wants. Oh, we’re looking for a long-term partner, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And so, the men so frequently q to what women are looking for in short-term partners, because it’s something that’s very easy to test.Like I go to a club, I go to a night ball, I’m surfing on apps. Am are, are women like flocking to me, right? And the answer is, is yes. If you’re buffer, they are. But that can, once you go above certain levels, actually lead you to problem securing a partner. If, if we look in the manosphere sort of wider influencer space, right.And this is I think a good way to like sanity test ideas in your head. Yeah. Be like, okay, of the influencers I know who have X body type or y body type. Mm-hmm. How has, so in that video home as your picture that looks Oh he in real life, [00:12:00] home as apparently quite a, a buff very muscular looking guy.Simone Collins: All that illustrating, you know, really, so it works you out?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So like, let’s think of like buff. Manosphere, you’ve got home math.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You’ve got Chris Williamson. You’ve got I’m thinking Ry Nationalists. Yeah. Did, did any of these guys have kids or even a spouse?Speaker: Sorry, forgot a few Here. You also have Andrew Huberman, Myron Gaines, and , bronze Age pervert.Malcolm Collins: And then, oh, Weasley, little Malcolm here.How did I, how did I end up with, with five and counting kids?Speaker 7: Who else in the new right intellectual influencer space has a wife and kids? Uh, well, we have pictures of traditional masculinity like Curtis Jarvin and Ed Dutton. I.Malcolm Collins: Oh, the point I’m making is it’s very important to not invest. The hard parts of life in the wrong area. If I was to spend a [00:13:00] portion of my day, for example, exercising that would be time I’m not spending building.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Or, or, or writing,Simone Collins: building wealth, building a family, finding a wife, et cetera.Yeah. Well, and and more broadly, you know, the advice that you get from anyone is going to get you where they are broadly, you know, if it works. Yeah. In the best case scenario. So,Malcolm Collins: by the way, the thing that I’ve built recently that I’m quite excited about, I, I’ll try to get this episode, I’ll get it live for this episode.I’ll get it live for this episode is on reality fabricator we’re building, this is in conjunction with Leaflet who’s providing me, like, advice on this, a card game. And what the game will do is it’ll be like playing actual, like yugi. So like in, in, in like the anime, right? We’re like, cards have like abilities, but like if a dragon is like breathing flame, right?Well that has the effects that a dragon breathing flame would have. It doesn’t have like numbered effects. It doesn’t have a health bar or [00:14:00] something like that.Simone Collins: Right, right.Malcolm Collins: And so you play your cards onto a deck and you give actions like in words like, I want the card to do XI want the card to do y knowing what the environment is.Mm-hmm. And then an AI runs to decide you did this, your opponent did this. Obviously we have an AI opponent you can work with or you can go with human opponents. And. Then based on what happens based on both of your choices, changes the individual elements of that scene. So the images on the cards get changed based on what happened to them.The environmentSimone Collins: that’s so funnyMalcolm Collins: gets changed. The,Simone Collins: it’s like if this were Pokemon and they were Pokemon cards, like Pikachu would look all beat up and stuff.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Pikachu would look all beat up after he hit. Right. Like that’s the idea.Simone Collins: That’s great thing. Yeah. That’s great. I love that.Malcolm Collins: By the way, you can turn off the feature that constantly changes the images to save money.If you’re like, I don’t like, that’s a little too, you don’t needSimone Collins: that. Yeah.Speaker: Holy, raw,Speaker 2: real [00:15:00] monsters.Actually, they’re just super advanced holograms created for the sole purpose of enriching the experience of a children’s card game.Speaker: Okay. Seriously, you’ve got to be kidding me. Who wastes all their money on something like that.Simone Collins: I still love that. I wanna see my, okay. I don’t wanna see Pikachu beat up, but. I, I wanna see pickup troopSpeaker 8: Sadly about the only element that’s not working very well right now, at least the last time I tested, was the image redraw feature. So, , I hope to have that done by the end of the week, but we’re stuck in DC right now, so we’re not getting as much done as normal.Malcolm Collins: and I’ll eventually make that part of the feature. Like obviously I’ve been working on, the big thing we were working on was agents recently was making them cost a lot less and now there’s a video telling you how to use the agents.It’s like the top agent card if you wanna use agents, so you can watch that because they, they’d rack up costs way too quickly the way they were structured before. And so I came up with a number of options you can use to really specialize your task with an agent and cut down their cost.Speaker 9: They also have a vibe coding mode, which basically means they create [00:16:00] either a task list and work until the end of the task list is done. Or they just work until they don’t make a tool or an action call, uh, like typical vibe coding software does, which also has them just not run as long and rack up the same cost.Malcolm Collins: What else? Yeah, but yeah, building constantly, right?Like women, like guys who. Do stuff and have missions.Simone Collins: Well, let’s talk about this thesis on sort of the, the trigger of this divide, because I think it’s, it’s interesting and I’m kinda like, Ooh, I see, I see, I see where this is going. So on X ray, a, k, a at dystopian, GF wrote. Casual sex is unironically a huge part of why so many women have become politically radicalized.If you ask a random woman why she hates men, 95% chance, it boils down to sexual grievance accumulated from embarrassing experiences like the op. In other words, women are the real incel in spirit. I witnessed this myself in college. One too many bad situation ships and they begin to [00:17:00] carry this feeling of being a piece of meat everywhere, projecting it onto society, despite there being zero material evidence of structural misogyny in the west.The bitter irony is that hookup and situationship culture is a byproduct of feminism. They fought for the ability to be treated like pieces of meat to be equal to men and sexual. The way men are with each other. But the attainment of this freedom has done nothing but foment an even deeper hatred for their of their father’s civilization.And she posted this in response to someone sharing a screenshot from a post hookup story a woman posted on TikTok. The caption that Ope had put was situationship. Breakups are so crazy because why did this man just tell me the only person he wants to be with is his ex? And then immediately make me eggs on toast.He nutted in me like 10 minutes after this, what God’s name is happening. Which is just gross. And then MOA Bible on X chipped in, . Women will post this beep and then wonder why the entire planet and every major [00:18:00] religion has imposed strict social re restrictions on their sovereignty since the dawn of time in every place humans have ever lived.Also the shadow band wrote, let’s at least sympathize here. The man does not need to do this to her. Just because a girl is willing to put out doesn’t mean you have to take her up on the offer to which Ray responded. I do tend to think that vol cells, like in like voluntary incel are the most noble of men.And I’ll link in the show notes to the discourse, but I’m like, oh my God, is this true? Like, is the political polarization that we’re seeing between men and women. Something that really accelerated after hookup culture.Malcolm Collins: We’ll talk about male responsibility in this.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: In truth, I think men have near zero responsibility in this, and I’ll explain why.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Suppose you saySimone Collins: what they can’t help themselves.Malcolm Collins: Suppose you say men should be vol cells. Right? And the vast majority of men decide to be vol cells, [00:19:00] right? Okay. So you, you get out there and 75% of men are like, yeah, I’m gonna be V cells.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, I’m not going to sleep with you. I will be a gentleman.I will ask to be your boyfriend. I will meet your parents.Malcolm Collins: The problem is, is that the men who don’t sign up for that, right? Mm-hmm. So easy for them to get sex now because of this huge arbitrage that’s been created.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Women who are open to sleeping around are just going to have such a big audience because they can sleep with one girl one night, one girl the next night, one girl the night after that.Right.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The, the amount of women sleeping around does not actually decrease dramatically if you increase the number of all cells unless you can get to total So prohibition.Simone Collins: That’s true. Basically. Yeah. 1, 1, 1 or two bad actors can cover a lot of ground. A lot of ground.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. Yeah. So this is fundamentally like the woman is not thinking about the, the pattern.Like the guy has told her, I have no interest in committing to you, and then she sleeps [00:20:00] with him, right. And she’s like, well, he’s not being actively unpleasant to me, so I guess I’m gonna sleep with him. Right. Like obviously this causes externalities right to, to structure society this way. And the core obviously we haven’t gone to this yet, but you know, any of our audience who has watched our previous videos on this notes, the core challenge this creates is because all of the women are chasing after so few men, this is just statistically true.And I’m, I’m really perplexed when women are like, well, that’s a, a sexist talking point. And I’m like. Maybe Really? Okay, here’s a chart of a hundred men that, you know, how many of them are you willing to sleep with, right? Yeah. You know, like, they’re like, well, these two, and I’m like, you see, that’s the f*****g problem, right?Mm-hmm. So, or they might have who, who, who’s, who, who else are people sleeping with? Right? You know, that women have a phenomenon where they will find somebody more attractive the more other people sleep with them, by the way another thing, if you’re thinking of the like. I’m like, guys, you are wrong.About who? [00:21:00] Women actually like go after in, in a meaningful context.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Which YouTuber recently had a major scandal where it turned out he was sleeping was tons of women this Waso the one they tried to cancel.Simone Collins: Oh, that guy who failed to be canceled. Yeah. Whose girlfriend like, came out in defense of him despite the fact that she had been cheated on multiple times.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That is ultimate. But this is what I’m talking about. Right. You know? Yeah. You’re not, you’re not getting these other influencers this that’s happening to them. No, it’s, it’s little Twinky Sexo or whatever his name is. But. It’s like his belief women over, I was thinking about doing an episode in that one because everyone after that, like basically defended him and they’re like, Hey, a guy should be able to cheat.Like, what are you talking about?Simone Collins: What was most fun to watch is just all the guys covering him, being like, oh my God. Like he did it guys. He pulled it off. What a moment for men.Malcolm Collins: Amazing. The, the woman who I, I attacked him came off as so f*****g [00:22:00] petty. She was like, she’s like, well, I went to Vegas to a hotel room with him.Mm-hmm. And we stayed up late watching a horror movie together. And then we hooked up and had sex and it’s like. Hold on, but she’s like, but that’s not why I went, that’s not what my intention. I was like, wait, you went alone with him to Vegas to watch horror movies in a shared hotel room? That is consent.Okay. I’m sorry. Like they say, 40% of women have a different idea of consent than what men have. Why the F else did you go there? What else did you think was supposed to happen, you think he wanted to fly? Do do, do you think that he was supposed to think that that’s what you wanted was to just watch horror movies?Especially when you didn’t actively deny consent or tell him, I’m not interested in SexSimone Collins: Well and went forward with it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that was,Simone Collins: that’s a key partMalcolm Collins: of Absolutely. [00:23:00] Affluent multiple times. By the way, first giving him head then having sex with him head isn’t something that you can easily accidentally do.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s not like she slipped in the shower.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Come on. People. Like, I think that that was the other thing where people were like, that she thought that this was some big, like reveal on him is so egregious. It shows such a sense of entitlement, right? Like I wanted a famous guy to commit to me who is al already in a relationship and I will achieve this by getting him to sleep with me.And it’s like, no, it doesn’t work that way. Right? The one place where I think in this scenario that’s been created where I think guys are extremely culpable, is this is guys that signal that they want more serious or more long-term relationships than they actually want. And I think that this is something that, like as men, if we are going to [00:24:00] socially punish a behavior, is the easy behavior to socially punish.And that should be socially punished and seen as extremely bad because I have seen many women who do actually want long-term relationships get screwed over by guys who don’t want long-term relationships signaling that they do want long-term relationships to gain access to these women. And then people can be like, well then the woman just shouldn’t put out in any way.And it’s like, okay, you can say that, but a lot of guys, even guys who are actually interested in long-term relationships just won’t seriously date them then.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But anyway, continue is where you were going with this.Simone Collins: I sent you two graphs on, whatsApp that you can include in this episode if you so please.They show the political ideology divide as it grows over time between men and women. One starts at 1975.Malcolm Collins: Wow. After 2015, women went off the deep end with liberalSimone Collins: well, so two. So 2015 is when [00:25:00] Tinder launched. Oh, and about two years later is really when it started to pick up, which you can really actually see on the graph.Like two years later and it’s like young and it, what’s clear is that throughout history, like starting in the 1960s, you know, there was the sexual revolution. Definitely morays around sexuality and dating got looser and looser and looser over time. But the thing that really I think made hookup culture run out of control was the technology introduction of swipe based dating, which made hookup culture something that could run at scale.It made it very, very possible for lazy eights, nines and tens to access as many women as they wanted. Like that’s when the unlimited women on tap apps came out, basically.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And that’s when women who were eights and below suddenly had access to these higher quality [00:26:00] men on their lazy nights and started to believe that this was the type of man who eventually would become their boyfriend or marry them.And this is where the resentment really starts. I think that hookup culture was not a, as much of a problem and certainly didn’t breed resentment and then ferment political pol polarization before. Women had this experience of being jilted by men who never expected to invest in them as people from the GetGo.And then when swipe based dating happened suddenly that that was facilitated. Yeah. Well,Malcolm Collins: so it’s really clear here. Mm-hmm. You. Have to understand how bad, so Simone said that these apps are women on demand for high value men.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And they really are women on demand for high value men. Mm-hmm. It is just a constant flow for as many women as they want whenever they feel like it.And that leads them to treat these women incredibly poorly. [00:27:00] Mm-hmm. It’s like those old northern factory guys, and they’d be like, but your employees could die in these conditions. And it’s like, well, you know, I’ve got 10 other people. Right. Yeah. You want someone to care about you be a slave. Right.And again, this is sort of what we’re dealing with here. Which, and I have said this in other videos. Men owning their wives gave the women more value. Like it, it caused them to become protected by those men in the same way that in many times in the north, factory workers were treated worse than slaves because at least you had a reason to keep the slave alive.Mm-hmm. But a better. Dynamic here is property ownership in communist countries versus capitalist countries. Mm. In capitalist countries properties are generally very well up kept. Like you drive through a neighborhood, you’re going to see a bunch of nice houses. In fact, the only place where you really see super rundown houses is government housing, where people do not own it.You go to communist countries, [00:28:00] typically everything’s falling apart. Yeah. And the reason is, is because if you don’t own the property you’re living in, then you don’t benefit from maintaining it or invest.Simone Collins: You only stand to lose. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You only stand to lose. And it’s the same as a partner, a man who doesn’t.Own his women or wife. Right. And he was just going through, lots of them actually stands to lose from attempting to invest in improving her, whereas,Simone Collins: right. Because then he’s almost cing himself. You know, he’s improving some woman that eventually some other man is gonna end upMalcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah.Simone Collins: With, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.And these women have shown that that’s the way that they act, right? Mm-hmm. And now I’d also say do not take an overly harsh approach to women over this, which is to say that women are just behaving in relation to their biology in the same way that men are, right? Like, women are one far more communalist in their ideology than men are.And so if they’re in a community that all tells them something. It is. Way, way, way psychologically [00:29:00] harder for them to break out of that. Mm-hmm. So when everyone around them is telling you you know, oh, just sleep around, you know, it’s, it’s no big deal. Get married in your thirties, whatever that.The a a woman is, is gonna have a fairly hard time. And the biggest thing that’s told to them is all women are beautiful. You know, do not judge yourself by reality is basically what that statement is. Do not judge your, you, you deserve whatever you want. It’s like, do not you, you, it’s such a freaking bizarre ideology that’s spread, but it is absolutely commonplace among female circles.And then that your value on the sexual marketplace is the same as your value on the, on the marriage marketplace. Now, they won’t even allow you to have concepts like a sexual marketplace or marriage marketplace. They’re like that. So dehumanizing. What do you mean street market value? What do you mean?Whatever. But if you don’t understand these concepts as a woman you fundamentally won’t understand that the guys you can get to sleep with you on a swipe app are [00:30:00] not the guys who are going to marry you. And the other concept that is heavily shamed in these communities, but is absolutely true. Is that you will be heavily penalized in the marriage marketplace by men based on the number of partners you had before you findSimone Collins: Oh, for sure.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and that in fact, you are even more penalized in the marriage marketplace for past sexual partners than you are on the sexual marketplace for past sexual partners. Oh,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, I shouldn’t be, and it’s like, well, I’m sorry honey. You are right. Like, that’s just the data, right? Like, that’s just the reality.Because in the same way,Simone Collins: and it makes a lot of sense intuitively actually, I mean, the entire reason why marriage was first established as a concept was about securing paternity and property rights. It was about making sure that the female partner was not sleeping with other people, and that the entire community knew that was the point of the, like ceremony.Yeah. It was like, by the way. [00:31:00] No, no one sleep with her. Okay. Do we all agree that no one slept with her before and I I’m the only one to sleep with her after? Like, that was the entire point. Like it was so simple. Yes, it was about property rights and it was about like, promiscuity just I, I think it’s underrated.Under, under understood or misunderstood and underrated.Malcolm Collins: The, the, the, the where, where I’m going with this is, women obey their biology just as men do. And women’s biology tells them, try to secure the highest value partner that you can. Yeah. Right? Like, and it’s, and then this is more than even males feel this, right?Like, for women, it is absolutely important. I secure a a, a high value partner where high value is status or earning et cetera, right? Mm-hmm. And so, when they do not see that they are hurting themselves by being on the sexual marketplace, when they do not see that these relationships have no real chance at becoming stable long-term relationships they, they are, are they, like they, they don’t know how that this is happening to them.[00:32:00] They don’t see this happening to them, and they suffer for this. You see the psychological health of women way lower than the psychological health of men right now, right? Like, especially progressive women who have fully adopted into these ideals. And and I’ve met many women who. Went into this culture and then came out of it and they’re like, it just effed up my life so much.But like, how was I supposed to know there was a nobody in these communities? Like the effect of outsource community is one place where this really happens to women telling me like, actually there’s huge externalities to the choices that you’re making right now that are going to make your long-term life really hard.In the same way that like as a kid, everybody warns you about getting tattoos. Nobody was warning them against this. The other thing that is not, I had mentioned this in another video and I was very interested in the comments on this where I noted that, while body count matters a lot to men mm-hmm.Interracial body count seems to matter significantly more than body count. Eeg sleeping with somebody of a different ethnic group. [00:33:00] And I was wondering, I was like, is that a unique to white men thing or is this something that other ethnicities have? And somebody in the comments was like, actually, you see this a lot in Asian communities where if an Asian woman has slept with white men, that that’s considered worse than if she has been promiscuous with Asian men.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. That’s interesting. Yeah. And we, we brought this up on another episode and someone even wrote in, ‘cause you and I just didn’t really, we couldn’t empathize with it. And they were like, yeah, I, I, I can’t control it. But it is definitely a feeling of disgust. So I feel like maybe there’s something genetic and inbuilt that some people have where if they know that someone is the product of some form of mixed heritage.Marriage or pairing or no.No.Malcolm Collins: TheySimone Collins: sell.Malcolm Collins: No, no, that is not what I said. I wanna be very clear about this. Oh,Simone Collins: okay.Malcolm Collins: Women are typically not penalized for being mixed race. They are penalized for sleeping with somebody of a different race. Okay. In the statistics you actually see being mixed race [00:34:00] helps you as a female.So we pointed this out in the episode where we reviewed differentYeah.Simone Collins: From attractiveness, it’s better to either marry your second or third cousin or to be mixed race.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Well, not just that, but the white men on average rate, Asian white women. So women that are birthed from Asian white matches as hotter on average than.Fully white women.Simone Collins: Yeah.And we have plenty of people who’ve written to us agreeing to that point.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s obviously true. I like, even though I’m not drawn to,Simone Collins: there are also people though who find that a major turnoff and who’ve also written to us to attest to it. So just pointing that out.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, I’m just saying like, I, I’m just searching myself, right. Like. I think that they are objectively hotter, but I’m not interested in them as a, a like marriage match. Like there’s a certain look on a female that like, wellSimone Collins: think it depends on what you’re, you’re optimizing for.You’re optimizing for a very specific cultural trope and other people are optimizing for hotness. So it depends on your equation.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I am, [00:35:00] I YouSimone Collins: didn’t optimize for hotness. I’m s sorry.Malcolm Collins: Noted. This was like the, one of the key most important things I’m always optimizing for is no makeup.Obviously she wears makeup now because like we have a conservative fan base and you’re supposed to do that, but like,Simone Collins: because your mom taught me to Yeah. In,Malcolm Collins: no, in terms of what I think is hot, it’s no makeup.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I found that really gross on women. And, and I, I don’t know, like I and Simone has noted this where I’m like, what?I think X person is really hot. Like Pearl Davis. I was like, I think Pearl Davis is pretty hot and a lot of people don’t. And Simone goes, Malcolm is because she doesn’t wear much makeup.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And that’s why our fans do not, but I, I, I wonder if this is a genetic thing with me or if it’s a learnedSimone Collins: thing.So this is, I think this is what most men don’t get about makeup. There are two types of makeup. There’s a makeup that women wear for other women, which is when you can tell it’s there like red lipstick and visible eye stuff and contouring. It’s makeup. You can tell it’s. And then there’s the other type of makeup, which men call no makeup, which is the type of makeup that women put on [00:36:00] that is undetectable to the untrained eye.It makes to make you look better. That makes women not look ill. And when they don’t wear it, they look sick suddenly. And you’re like, oh God, are you okay? And it’s like, no, you’ve just only ever seen this woman in makeup and you haven’t realized it. ‘cause you don’t know what to look for because you’re dude.And I think men don’t realize that like, I like women without makeup. No, you like women with makeup. You just don’t like women with makeup for women. You like women with makeup for men. Alright, just, okay. End of end of that.Malcolm Collins: But, but what I’ll note on these two charts that I think is really interesting, especially the second chart that you shared mm-hmm.Is it Tinder didn’t make men more conservative, it made women more progressive.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. That’s the thing. That’s the thing is, is I really do think that there’s something to raise. On X’s point, which is that this started to just subtly and cumulatively over time build this resentment, which then I think snowballed into things like Me Too.For example me Too was actually founded hashtag Me Too in 2006 by the activist Tarana Burke to support [00:37:00] survivors of sexual violence. But it didn’t gain global or viral momentum until October of 2017 after Alyssa Milano encouraged survivors to use the hashtag following Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuseMalcolm Collins: survivors.EG The guy I wanted didn’t want me back.Simone Collins: Yeah. But the key thing, remember Tinder launched in September of 2015, but did not pick up until two years later. That is exactly what, when Me Too went viral.Malcolm Collins: You are just feel like right.Simone Collins: Coincidence? I don’t know. But I thinkMalcolm Collins: there’s women really because you know, the, the joke about women in responsibility, they feel very deeply when they thought that they were getting with a guy and that it was gonna be a relationship and he just didn’t want them for that. They feel incredibly used and like it’s not their responsibility. They’re not responsible for failing to win that guy. The guy is responsible for failing to choose them.And I think our society unfortunately has reinforced this, especially with hotter [00:38:00] girls. Like because with hotter girls. They have lived in a society where everyone around them affirms them, like female friends, affirm them in whatever emotional state because they’re just supposed to, and the ones that don’t, then all the girls gang up on them and then males affirm them to get sex.Right. Like, they don’t have a reason. There was recently a, a, a viral phenomenon with a woman being like, I switched from a female psychologist to an old white male psychologist, and the sessions have been so much more useful because he calls me out on my bs.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You know,Simone Collins: oh no,Malcolm Collins: havingSimone Collins: a white, that’s, that’s actually very emotionally mature of this woman also like.Correction. Tinder launched in 2012 and then got popular in 20 14, 20 15. Yeah. Which is what would, would be, I think, pretty explanatory for enough time, for resentment to accumulate by 2017 when me, me too went viral. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: but no, you listen, you can’t see good graph. I mean, it is, it is striking. Like as soon as Tinder gets popular bam, women explode.You get me too. You get BLM you get huge rates of, [00:39:00] of additional liberal tendencies in the female voting pool, particular in the single female voting pool. By the way, something I wanna do a separate episode on, which would be really exciting. Yeah,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is note on the other graph, this is Malcolm welcoming, noticing something on a graph and being like, I wanna figure this out.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So looking at the first graph you sent meSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Look, in the 1970s. What was going on then? Why did the female dating population go so left in the 1970sSimone Collins: that was at the tail end of the sexual revolution, and the 1980s was when things kind of clamped down again. And you had this era of like baroque more traditionalism.I think. I mean, just going off ofMalcolm Collins: So you think it’s the exact same phenomenon, women, because as, as ISimone Collins: think that, yeah, I think there was a backlash to sexual freedom that would, that saw its peak in the early seventies. And then I think really started to plummet again in the eighties as people went a little bit more traditional and [00:40:00] gender divergent.Malcolm Collins: As ho math has said, society is constantly a battle of women wanting to be sluttier and men trying to keep them from acting sluttier.Simone Collins: That’s funny. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I don’t think that that’s what’s really happening. I mean, I think female behavior is not driven inherently by female sluttiness. It’s driven by a combination of factors that leads to an inevitable result in aggregate behavioral patterns.The behavioral patterns are women are communalist in their ideology. Okay. Okay. So they adopt whatever ideology is most common in their environment, and it it, unless they have a strong man to protect them in having an alternative ideology. Mm-hmm. That’s typically the only time, like when women, I think the reason women become more conservative when they get married is they feel they have like a buffer or a protector to have and think different thoughts.That’s the only way you got out of this. And I’ll do a separate episode at some point on how to convert a, a progressive woman.Simone Collins: That would be [00:41:00] useful. Yeah. That’s, that’s because I think a lot of men are like, well, where do I find these conservative women? And you’ve said, well just find, you know, progressive women.Find a progressive.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what are you, what are you talking about? Where do ISimone Collins: find, but then I think, you know, the, the obvious and intuitive male response is, look, look at the numbers. Like women are broadly progressive and they won’t consider even dating men who are conservative. And I think that’s kind of where the nuance is to be done.No,Malcolm Collins: no, no.Simone Collins: Actually they will considerMalcolm Collins: the same way a woman says, I’d rather meet a bear in the woods than a man.Simone Collins: Exactly.Malcolm Collins: They don’t actually effing mean that they’re signaling something. They’re signaling something to themselves and to the people around them.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They still hot conservative guys. They say it all the time.They complain about it all the time. Right? Yeah. They don’t have any consistency in terms of these beliefs. So women believe what the aggregate opinion is, and women are also disproportionately affected by whatever the hottest guys that they believe they can gain access to are who are the hottest guys.They believe they can gain access to. F**k [00:42:00] boys. Why are they boys? Well, because the guys who want longer term relationships don’t want women like this. They don’t date women like this. The guys like me who wanted to lock down partners, I mean, in reality, most guys who genuinely want a longer term relationship locked it down in their early twenties.That’s like when you really have to get it locked in. And if you don’t lock it in in your twenties, then you end up wasting a lot of time on. It, it, it’s, it’s very interesting, like when we talk about something like exercise, the reason why I I talk about something like exercise is you can build this mindset of I’m gonna do X, then I’m gonna go out and do the, the, the thing of of getting a woman, right?And it’s very easy to be like, okay, once I’ve reached X goal, then I’ll go get the woman. But getting the woman is the hard part, right? Like, X goal gives you like a 10% advantage on getting the woman right. But. It wastes way more than 10% of the time that you would’ve spent on getting the woman.It’s like 50% of the time. And then you try to go out and get a [00:43:00] woman, you find out they’re, they’re all terrible or whatever, and then you give up again for a long period and then you, you, you go into a cycle again instead of just being like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I’m just going to make it work no matter what.Right? Like I am going to so break the door off its hinges, it’s going, it’s going to happen. I am going to make this work. And that was like me, you know, like, red PillarsSorry, I say red pillars a few times here, but what I meant was the hookup artist community. I got the two confused in my head for, I mean, they’re adjacent to each other, so I, I forgive myself.Malcolm Collins: would say like, if you could look at red pill strategy, they’d say that the strategy that I’ve advocated for, like how do you secure a partner, really high throughput, dating you know, being willing to cut somebody off really quickly if it’s clear it’s not a match.Mm-hmm. And just moving, moving, moving. They’d say that’s cheating. Like red pillars actively advocate against that. ‘cause they go, well that lacks skill. You know, that’s just a numbers game. Right. And I’m. Well, you see, here’s the thing, right? Even you admit it works, it just means [00:44:00] they don’t need to play your stupid game anymore.What they need to do is build social resilience, resilience to rejection, and the emotional skills to know how to start conversations with strangers. And I know today if guys are like, well, I’m just gonna go out and meet somebody at a whatever in public, 60% of relationships today begin online. The vast minority of relationships begin in public these days.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: So,Simone Collins: and yet so many of the young people that we meet now who are like, I wanna meet someone, or like, well, I just wanna meet them in person. That’s like the, the default. Oh, we’ve talked about this in other episodes that women interviewed for stories. Women polled say that they want to find someone offline.So it’sMalcolm Collins: they do. So there’sSimone Collins: a weird mismatch.Malcolm Collins: It’s not offline, you know. But, the, the, the, you know, leave a girl your number or something to do it. This is the important thing in terms of shooting your shot. Mm-hmm. Do it in a non-threatening way. It’s not that hard to be non-threatening in the way that you flirt with some, I guess it is hard for some people, right?Like, [00:45:00]Simone Collins: I think it scaresMalcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the less attractive you are, especially if you’re unaware that you’re not particularly attractive, the worse it gets to, and, and this is the thing, you go out there and you leave a girl like your number and like a, I’d be open to chatting if you’re interested. You know, I’m new in town on her table or something like that.Totally in offensive look, the girl might go on TikTok and attempt to shame you or something like that. Right. But the reality is, is you just gotta learn to tough that out.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Because there were plenty of women who I’m sure attempted to shame me in the communities that I was in. I, I would move really hard on women.But, you know, eventually it worked out with a wife. And the other thing that I YouSimone Collins: moved hard on you.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you moved on me. She made, she was interested in me. Was that you and I feel like perfect matches to people. People are like, oh, wow, you guys seem like really well matched for each other.You know, that is in part because of the [00:46:00] number of dates that we were going on. Right? Like, we didn’t just randomly end up as perfect matches for each other. Right. We ended up as perfect matches because I tried matching to everyone.Simone Collins: Yeah. And I prolifically reached out to. Guys on OkCupid as well, which of course as a woman is, is very unusual and a very easy way to gain an advantage in dating markets.If you’re a woman and you’re having trouble dating, shame on you because all you have to do is just, just spawn camp like it’s so easy. You, you, you just,Malcolm Collins: Simone, I don’t, I don’t think you’d like that. Implicate. So, spawn camping has a very specific meaning in dating culture.Simone Collins: Oh, it does.Malcolm Collins: It means,Simone Collins: what does it mean in dating culture?Malcolm Collins: Extremely young people.Simone Collins: Ew. Okay. Great. Thanks Malcolm. That’s wonderful. I’m glad that you told me that. Wonderful. Great. Well, so there’s also just the option that we speciate just give up. Just Yeah.Malcolm Collins: SoSimone Collins: should we, you know, children of your own sexMalcolm Collins: With my family and my kids, I [00:47:00] will try to raise a culture of the next generation.I think that many people in our wider community are gonna be doing this with their kids. Yeah. Where they had sane expectations around sexuality and dating. Mm-hmm. And it prevents them from spiraling out like this because parents are having these conversations with them.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: ButSimone Collins: well arranged marriages, again, super underrated.Unfortunately, that’s not something that we, you know, if you don’t have parents who are invested in your getting married and, and they’re not out gonna go out there and help you and, and really make things happen and, and work on networking. In, in conjunction with you, you don’t have that benefit. So either handle it yourself, do it, it’s gonna be hard, or go your own way.Have kids by yourself. And andMalcolm Collins: so the question that I started with,Simone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: is humanity, get a species eight.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: One, I think you’re right about this, and I think you found something really interesting here, how Tinder broke society.Simone Collins: Well, what you pointed out, which is interesting and could provide some hope, and this is in against the speciation [00:48:00] argument, is as you saw, there was this great divide right after the sexual revolution exploded between men and women politically, but it healed.And perhaps this was because women went from being incredibly sexually loose. When the sexual revolution exploded and there was some backlash and there were more, there’s a little more traditionalism in the eighties, perhaps. Maybe that will happen again.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. If, if this next generation, like if female females goes tread, likeSimone Collins: actually goes tread,Malcolm Collins: what’s gonna be so funny is the millennial Whitman, the aging millennial slut women.Oh no. How angry they’re gonna get about that. Yeah. Being shamed for young women for sleeping around, which we’re already seeing happen.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. They’reMalcolm Collins: like, I’m 50 and I was out sleeping around and it’s like, whoa. Like woman, you’re 50 and you’re sleeping around. Like, that’s not something to brag about.That does not make you look cool.Simone Collins: That I think could really happen. It’s more likely to happen also with the rise of AI is women have a more difficult [00:49:00] time. Getting jobs that increasingly don’t exist anymore. And don’t have the aptitude required to engage in AI fueled entrepreneurialism or to go into trade roles that were historically dominated by men that are still going to maintain some relevance and strength over time.So they’re going to turn to being a more traditional homemaker and wife as a career, which I think will also drive, even if this isn’t in, in backlash to hookup culture. I think it’s an economic driver that will make women naturally more sexually conservative and therefore also politically conservative.‘cause I think it’s also very hard to engage in this level of political polarization. If you know a man and are friends with a man and don’t, you know, turn them into straw men and monsters that you never actually engage with.Malcolm Collins: That’s a good point. Well, I I, I, I feel like you’re onto something with this one.And I [00:50:00] appreciate that you know, you made the effort to find me that was really thoughtful of you, that you went out there and you actually tried dating and emailing people. ‘cause I had seen your profile and I was never gonna email it. I, I thought she appeared. Too arbitraged, right? Like it was all the nerd stuff.She actually took pictures from the angles that made it look like she might be fat and trying to hide it. Which she was unaware of the angles, so she didn’t know. But I’d had to deal with that too many times.Simone Collins: Were you actually catfished by rotund people a bunch ofMalcolm Collins: times? Oh, all the time. I actually say it was maybe a quarter of dates were significantly fatter than they made themselves look.Simone Collins: Well, I guess female. What, 60% of American women are obese, correct. Or overweight at least.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I’m, I am incredibly sensitive to weight in terms of looks. I think overweight women are very, very unattractive. I, I’d go further is to say, you know, how we talk about arousal to disgusted like pipeline of of systems.I get a very strong disgusted response from obese people of both genders [00:51:00] actually.Simone Collins: So had I not been aggressive we never would have connected because you thought I would catfish you. And to be clear, the reason why Malcolm went on a date with me, even though he thought that my profile may have indicated that I was fat, was he made me friend him on Facebook so that he could see all of the photos that other people had tagged me in.That other people took. Yeah, because that’s a really easy way to tell, like you, you can’t trust a girl’s own photos of her because who knows how face tuned and angled they are. But when someone else, especially a female friend knowing meat blocking material would, would post a photo of them, which is going to be.Less than flattering on average.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You met a girl later at a party who was like, oh yeah, we were talking on cu okay cubit, but you wouldn’t meet up with me ‘cause I wouldn’t share my Facebook. And I was like, and she wasn’t fat, but I was just like, no, wasn’t hard rule, you know, I do not wanna waste time.This is what high throughput screening is about, right? Mm-hmm. And the, and the reason I was so aggressive about it was how frequently I was catfished.Simone Collins: Yep. [00:52:00] Absolutely.Malcolm Collins: And women, by the way in, in their defense, do not really understand that they’re catfishing a guy. They’re, they’re trying to show you the most flattering images of them that they have.Right. Like, that seems like a natural thing to want to do.Simone Collins: Especially imagine these also have like some level of body dysmorphia, like they don’t actually understand, or they’re not willing to even steer into the void and acknowledge that they look the way they actually look.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That they’re actually not very attractive.Mm-hmm. Now. To the question of whether humanity will speciate I think we already know the answer. The answer is yes. Obviously, like, obviously there’s gonna be a group of humans that become an all male society. There’s gonna be a group of humans that become an all female society, and there’ll be a group of humans that stay in a society structured similar to the one today is likely what’s gonna happen.Just I thoughtSimone Collins: I, I just heard my take on. I think that we’re gonna self-correct. This will be, there will be a market correctionMalcolm Collins: because there’s always gonna be, the question is, is how big are these fringe groups going to be? Oh God. But I think, you know, could they be 10% of the population? [00:53:00] It depends on how good they are at breeding, how good they are at motivating the next generation coming into existence.They might be significantly better than the mainstream population at breeding, right? Like they may just be able to have kids at a faster rate and motivate caring for kids at a higher rate because they’re not worried about caring about a romantic partner. They’re like the core loving relationship I am having access to in my life, because I wouldn’t even consider a.A male partner or a female partner mm-hmm. Is the relationship I may have between me and my kids one day. The problem kind of with male female society is the core loving relationship that people are taught to, key to is the partnership they’re gonna have with their spouse, not the partnership they’re gonna have with their kids.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So, you may actually have a higher motivation to have kids in a all male and all female society. It just depends on how that, that ends up working out. But I would be very surprised if no group ends up doing this. What I can say is that if you have an all female society and the data is gonna show you this.It’s not gonna be able to compete. Like if it ever gets to this stage like it does in this anime where they’re at war [00:54:00] with each other, obviously the all male society would just wipe the floor with the all female society. You can look at IQ distribution curves. You can look at aggressiveness scores, you can look at basically anything, right?Like the chess champions, right? Like there is a reason why, like, it’s not just on like physical strings. Why? I think it’s like only like 10 out of the last thousand. If you, if you rank the top thousand players or women or something it’s, it’s not a lot. They women would be at a, let’s say, heavily leaned into genetic augmentation.They’d be at a massive disadvantage. Mm-hmm. But anyway thoughts, Simone, final closing thoughts.Simone Collins: This timeline’s weird. But yeah, I I just can’t believe that I, I grew up thinking that sexual promiscuity was fine and acceptable. But it’s still bizarre to me that now I, I favor prudishness. And this is also bizarre in light of the fact that you’re the only person I’ve ever had sex with despite, despite [00:55:00] having growing up thought that.So I also feel very, very lucky to have been too autistic andMalcolm Collins: want guysSimone Collins: too disinterested in, in, in general promiscuous sex to like, have fallen for this because the average person, I think really would. And I guess it’s something we’re gonna have to very carefully address with our daughters.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Well, and our sons in terms of pushing through and how to convert women, so.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: I am feeling, oh, my stomach is hurting so bad right now. And I think I realized why. Well, Dan, DanSimone Collins: sauce, you’re allergic to it.Malcolm Collins: Oh, and I only had one soda today and most days I have like six or seven sodas. SoSimone Collins: you’re going through some kind of,Malcolm Collins: so it could be a caffeine withdrawal.Simone Collins: You sure. ‘cause every time you’ve made yourself Dan, Dan based dishes in the past you’ve had stomach problems.Malcolm Collins: But I didn’t eat Dan Dan yesterday.Simone Collins: Yeah, but you had it two days in a row before.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I would’ve noticed that beforehand. [00:56:00]Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. I was thinking I should use the remaining ground meat that you got when I was in Austin today for your dinner. What would you like me to do with it?Malcolm Collins: My stomach is far tooSimone Collins: queasy.Oh, grilled cheese sandwiches.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, grilled cheese sandwiches would be great.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: I’llSimone Collins: do the,Malcolm Collins: the.Simone Collins: Should I be making just like hamburger patties with that for the kids? Like do you not want it again or should I save it tomorrow?Malcolm Collins: No, I do want it. Just wait.Simone Collins: Okay. We can only wait so many days with ground meat that’s fresh, but tomorrow will be fine though.Just a note.Malcolm Collins: I understand Simone.Simone Collins: Mm. Okay.Malcolm Collins: And yes, I got the statistics here.Simone Collins: As do I. You want me to kick it off? Shall we go?Malcolm Collins: Anything else today? Any news? Let’s see how the episode’s doing.Simone Collins: The episode was, last time I checked, four out of 10. People liked it. People are like, well, obviously this is how it is.[00:57:00]The nonprofits areMalcolm Collins: terrible funded. The kk kSimone Collins: everyone knew this. I love that. Alex Jones had called it once againMalcolm Collins: the, wait, he had, he said that the KKK was funded by Democrats.Simone Collins: No, I think he said the Southern Poverty Law Center funded the really bad protest. I’m forgetting what it was called. The Charlottesville Charlottesville protest.Charlotte. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Really? That’s a good call, by the way. The,Simone Collins: the, the water’s turning. The frogs gay and Yeah, the Southern Poverty Law CenterMalcolm Collins: Oh no. Gets, gets it a Sandy Hook, uhoh. Oh. Is he gonna beSimone Collins: rightMalcolm Collins: on that?Simone Collins: I hope so. I mean, it’s one of those things where like, I really, I would love a world in which those like innocent children were not shot.And killed. So I would love for that to be true. I would really like throw in all the other stuff. I’ll take that one. I, I really can’t stand children’s.Malcolm Collins: I cannot believe that they were funding the KKK and actual NazisSimone Collins: [00:58:00] high ROI for fundraising.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: I, I just, I, I can’t imagine how much money they’re raising if the salaries of their leadership team, pretty large leadership team are like $250,000 plus, though I don’t know why their chief legal counsel was making over $250,000 a year and still walked them straight into this.Disaster. You think they would’ve warned them?Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I, I don’t think it, I don’t think it was a disaster. I think it was kind of the opposite until they were caught for it. If you remember the KKK and neo Nazi groups of the United States, as I pointed out when we were doing that episode, had basically gone extinct as of like 10 years ago.Like, you’d see one of the rallies and it’d be like two or three old guys walking in a sad suburban town or something like that, and a bunch of people yelling at them.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And then they start funding it all, and now all of a sudden we’re getting like giant tiki torch marches and stuff like this, which allowed for them to create BLM, which got them tons of [00:59:00] money.Right. They, they actually benefited enormously for the racial anxiety that they were able to create from this.Simone Collins: No, they super did. Someone had posted a comment linking to two dudes talking on YouTube, who I guess are. Racist ‘cause they were going on about how like, wow, we’ve raised a lot of money for the Southern Poverty Law Center and like they’ve included photos of us in their fundraising documents and like, how much have we, why aren’t they paying?Ow. Oh my God, it’s okay. You just have really sharp teeth. He put my finger, that child who was bit by CharlieMalcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Actually took it like really well. Considering how sharp baby’s teeth areMalcolm Collins: and how little they care about using full power onSimone Collins: a finger.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: They’re like, let’s go, let’s take this thing off.Right?Malcolm Collins: No, no. He’s looking around like, I don’t want that finger.Simone Collins: You want it? He does. You [01:00:00] noodle.Malcolm Collins: We got a one shot that women in our audience and the wanting babies.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Hey, there were not a lot of babies on YouTube before us. You know, like, I thinkSimone Collins: there were lots of funny Fridays and all the other, like, Christian YouTubers like to talk about these horrible women who put their babies on, on the videos as they record, I think who’s the couple that’s famously deconstructing now.And one had done all those sex courses. She used to have her baby on the video a lot.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. God, what is her, what’s her name? Basically,Simone Collins: no, not classically, Abby. It was, yeah,Malcolm Collins: it wasn’t classically Abby. It wasSimone Collins: those two sisters who went on to,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: Married dudes.Malcolm Collins: I know who you’re talking about.People, the, the left used to love to profile them, and then they, and that’s all I know them from.Simone Collins: Right? Well, I think she started the, the couple, they both started deconstructing and then it was like less interesting I think for people because they started questioning their faith and not being so hard line.Which [01:01:00] I think is probably to their detriment. I don’t know. I, I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I will, I mean, maybe they still have a, a big audience somewhere out there.Simone Collins: Yeah.No, I wish the best for them, but they, they had a baby in their feed and she, you know, she would fuss with the baby just like I do. And I always think I’m, I, I just think of all the criticisms of her when I have texts.You haven’tMalcolm Collins: gotten much criticism for having our children in videos.Simone Collins: Oh, very regularly. People complain about the, the noises, the baby noises. I just can’t watch it with the baby noises where.Malcolm Collins: Reflexively be like, how dare you put kids in a video? How dare you put kids in a video? And like, we just don’t get that very much.I think it’s because they’re, they’re like more mad at us for other things, so they just don’t care. I saw one video where somebody was like, oh, that kid heard you guys talk about sex on the podcast. He’s gonna get messed up. Right? Like, and I’m like, how, how do you think babies work? Right? Like,Simone Collins: you know, [01:02:00] as has been discussed, and this is a conversation that’s kind of come up between me and so many people this week, people just don’t have exposure to babies anymore or children.So they don’t understand them. They appear to believe that they understand full sentences. They don’t understand what it’s like to be around them. They’ve never held a baby. True. Most, you know, most people even who are very social, have not held a baby for like a year at least. Even if they’re around other people who around their age are probably having kids.So, you know. It’s not great.Don’tMalcolm Collins: mess on the internet. Who just wanna criticize people?Speaker 11: There’s the same top, there’s, there’s the dinosaur in there and there’s the beagle, the same beagle. There’s the whole culture. It’s the same little culture like this. There’s dinosaurs just being detected. You sound really excited. Yeah, we got some Mandarins classic books. More side than horse. And what about you?Speaker 10: You got a panda bear? [01:03:00] Well. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the shocking PS section of the Trump shooter’s manifesto — a rant that exposes jaw-dropping Secret Service and hotel security failures at a major DC event. The assassin details walking in armed, breezing past checkpoints, and being stunned by the total lack of security.Malcolm and Simone explore how this level of incompetence could have allowed a small Iranian team to wipe out much of the Trump administration. They debunk wild leftist conspiracy theories claiming the attempt was “staged,” examine the shooter’s anti-Trump motivations, information bubbles on the left, institutional rot in the Secret Service/CIA/FBI, and why this event reveals deeper societal breakdowns.Topics also include past assassination attempts, cultural trust, and why bureaucratic security theater keeps failing. A must-watch for anyone concerned about presidential security, deep state dysfunction, and political violence in 2026 America.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are gonna go into something crazy that as far as I know, is in like our intellectual, conservative talking space we’re gonna be the first channel covering, and I am shocked that no one is talking about this.Have you heard anything about the PS section of the Shooters manifesto?Simone Collins: All I thought was that there were some papers found in his hotel room that expressed displeasure with some of the Trump administration’s policies. That’s it. I don’t know any, I didn’t know there was a manifesto. I didn’t know how to PS section, and I love that there was one, but tell me, it,Malcolm Collins: it makes me believe that somebody in the secret services trying to get Trump killed.Simone Collins: What, what,Malcolm Collins: and we, and, and, and on top of that, if Iran had not been an incompetent country at war with itself, they very easily could have assassinated almost the entire administration at that event. So. Let’s go into it.Simone Collins: Oh. Oh, wow. Yeah. People have been mocking the secret service for letting [00:01:00] the guy Nardo run right past them, butonMalcolm Collins: people haven’t been mocking the Secret Service, the guy, that’s what the PS section is about.It’s him going, let, let’s go into it. PS Okay, now that all the sappy stuff is done, what the hell is the secret service doing? Sorry. Gonna rant a bit here and drop the formal tone like I expected. Security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents, every 10 feet metal detectors out the wazoo.What I got, who knows, maybe they’re pranking. Me exclamation mark is nothing. No damn security. Not in transport, not in the hotel, not in the event. Sorry. I’m not even gonna keep going. Now, this is, this is his opposition. He is annoyed at how bad the opposition to what he is attempting to do is. By the way, if you’re a bit confused as to what this guy did, he got some guns, got on Amtrak, so on [00:02:00] transportation into dc.Simone Collins: He took public transport into dcMalcolm Collins: Into dc. He walks to the hotel that the event’s going to happen at. He checks in not like a week before or a month before, the day before the event.Simone Collins: Zero. We’re all on a budget here. Look, hard economic times, he can’t justMalcolm Collins: hard economic times. Zero. Security just chills out in his room with the guns while all the security lines are set up outside the event.Simone Collins: Watching office rerunsMalcolm Collins: w walks down to the event when we’re gonna go because his rant isn’t over yet. By the way, people, he is like actually perplexed at the incompetence of secrets that are security. And you know, a lot of leftists have been like, oh, this was staged because. One person said, there’s gonna be some shots fired at this event.You know, like, which was a hilarious, but wasn’tSimone Collins: that Caroline Lovett? I think that was [00:03:00] her,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s a normal turn of phrase in English. And if she did know that this was going to happen, that’s the very last thing she would’ve said. Right. Like, come on, people. Or they’re like.Noting that like Kennedy is just sort of standing there looking sort of dazed like people are, like the Kennedy’s the worst survival instincts ever. Bullets start flying. I I really sort of, it was like him and Trump, like not really caring as bullets. Trump’s sort of looking at the person next to him as the bullets are going, who’s horrified?Speaker: first time.Simone Collins: Oh, Malcolm. You know, I would’ve been the dude who just kept eating his dinner.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It was like the first time look on Trump’s face, I think.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: You know, just like, oh, again. But but no, it’s, it’s, it’s I, I do not think that this was staged. This guy has a long history of being anti-Trump, of wanting to do something like this.I. The thing that we’re gonna talk about when I get done with the manifesto is I wanna talk about how prevalent the conspiracy theories have become on the left. To an [00:04:00] extent that has really sort of transformed the nature of the left almost completely with this assassination attempt versus the others where there were some conspiracy theories, but this one’s like a complete other reality, right?But to keep going here he goes, like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is a sense of arrogance. I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person considers a possibility that I could be a threat. The security at the event is all outside, focus on protestors, current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.Like this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets an actually competent leadership again. This is the assassin people who’s sitting here like,Simone Collins: you know, it’s bad. Oh man.Malcolm Collins: Get your acting gear. Like if I was an Iranian agent instead of an American citizen, [00:05:00] I could have brought a damn Mod Dee in here and no one would’ve noticed A-A-S-H-I-D actually insane.Oh, and if anyone so think goes how this feels, it’s awful. So you can’t really say he recommends doing something like this. Stay in school kids. But yeah. By the ah, mod Juice for people are running is a Browning M two 50 caliber heavy machine gun. So now, now that I’ve read that, do you think it’s kind of weird that no one else is talking about this? So Simone, had you seen this anywhere in your feeds? I,Simone Collins: I, all I knew was that they found some documents in this hotel room. I didn’t, I’ve not seen this anywhere. I’m shocked that we haven’t been told like anything or that I hadn’t seen.It takes a while though for people to start commenting on stuff. So,Malcolm Collins: so I, I want to explain how insane this is that this is the [00:06:00] case, right? This means that if I ran, had wanted to, right what this guy did, he ran past the layer one of security and was caught just outside the doors that would’ve entered the main room, right?I,Simone Collins: I thought he was one floor above. That was what I heard, that he was in the floor above the main ballroom.Malcolm Collins: I had this in my notes right here, so let’s see what they say.Not inside the ballroom. He was stopped in anelli air foyer area just past the checkpoint before reaching the ballroom doors. The incident happened at the terrace level. The main ballroom is large and subterranean one floor below in some descriptions. So if you watch what an estimates place the breach, dozens of feet to a hundred yards from the ballroom entrance.So, you know, he was, he was he wasSimone Collins: basically, he was right by the door. We’ll just say he was right by the door.Malcolm Collins: Right by the door. Yeah. And if you watch the video of it, a lot of guards are like, huh, look, look at that guy running by us. Is basically what you see. I mean obviously I can understand the shock at the [00:07:00] moment or something like that, but the way that security was set up, if Iran had been there, it was 12 guys, like just 12 guys, they could have easily taken out the entire security team.Simone Collins: Yeah. And all they needed to do was just make a reservation at your friendlyMalcolm Collins: hotel. All they needed to do was make a reservation and they could have made a reservation for a lot more than 12 guys. They could have made a reservation for like 50 guys. Yeah. Come down to that floor, just started shooting.And then they are right at where the president and most of the senior administration officials are. And they could have taken them all out.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: This requires a level of stupidity. Like what I mean by this is, okay, just think like an intelligent person for a second here, right? Mm-hmm. So you’re trying to protect the president.You have near unlimited resources for this sort of thing. What you would do typically is have layered checkpoints further than someone can run, right? So you would go to [00:08:00] whatever hallways led to that particular checkpoint that he ran through.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you would have a checkpoint, I would expect at least three layers of checkpoints.Simone Collins: Well, and then you would not be able to make it through a door or elevator. Yeah. Like at those checkpoints.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. ButSimone Collins: the idea that, that you would like, there would be a bunch, like a, a table, because that’s kind of what he ran by, right? Like the guys were, he ranMalcolm Collins: through the metal detector. That was the thing where he had to start running Okay.Is when he got to the metal detector.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Which, and they just like let him get in line. Was everyone else. Pack in heat run through a metal detector. So what I mean here is the, the stage of incompetence, especially after what we saw at the one rally where I pointed out was that assassination attempt that the roof that the kid was on, this was Oh,Simone Collins: in Butler, Pennsylvania.Yes.Malcolm Collins: It’s literally if, if you had takenlike an actual idiot to that event and you’re like, okay, it’s a video game, where would you expect an assassin to be?Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: There’s literally nowhere else [00:09:00] from that position that is like a raised location that would’ve had an aim on the president,Simone Collins: the gently sloped roof that you can easily climb to.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And when, that’s why no one was there. They go, but it was gently sloped like an agent could roll off of it with our current safetySimone Collins: system, it, it’s a falling hazard.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Do you know how rotund our agents are? You put them on any sort of an incline plane and they just start rolling. I mean, I saw some of those DEI hires from back then.Ah, yeah. But the point is, is like we apparently have not corrected the situation with the Secret Service. And this is a very, very, very big deal. And I’m not going to like, go further than to be like was something Now people could say, well then the Trump administration did it to lure an assassin or something like that.This seems unlikely for. A few reasons. One is I, so like, let’s go over Leftist conspiracy series. Yeah. One is they said that he was a Mossad [00:10:00] agent. Mo Moad basically has Trump in their pockets. Why on earth are they sending an agent to kill Trump? Right.Simone Collins: And also, when Mossad wants you done, you’re done.I, I don’t know how else to put it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, but, well, I mean, the US president presumably would be harder, but apparently not. But even worse than that, who among the White House officials is the individual who most wants to pull outta the war was Iran. Oh yeah. The next in line to be president JD Vance.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Killing Trump is literally the stupidest thing Mossad could do even if they did want to do something like that. So it’s clearly not Mossad. Oh my God. But they’ve, they’ve also been like, oh, it’s the Trump administration to use as justification for the new ballroom. Look. One, Trump can build the new ballroom.Whatever the, you guys think it’s gonna happen now because that wing of the White House was demolished, right? They’re not gonna leave a giant thing hole in the White House, are you?Simone Collins: Oh, they’re trying. No, there was some judge that was like, well, you can’t keep working on the foundation. They’re, they’re really trying [00:11:00] to stop it.I, I guess they just want the gaping hole to be there forever. But clearly it’s needed like, as much as, okay, always be closing Trump. I get it. But also he has a very valid point in that the, the security of. President’s right now is, is lax according to the asse, don’t ask me. Asco would be assassin.Malcolm Collins: ASCO would be assassin moldering in his room about like, you know, when we get a competent president again, I, heSimone Collins: really better finish that ballroom.He basically said thats,Malcolm Collins: he basically, well, okay, no, that puts me on this. He was about the ballroom again. Trump hired the assassin and he’s like, make it theSimone Collins: ballroomMalcolm Collins: and make sure you put a little ad for the ballroom at the end. Oh my god. About how incompetent the hotel security is. But no, this ballroom, but no, the, the, the I do not think I wanna get into like the leftist crash because I heard a bunch of people are saying it’s fake and I’m like, that sounds crazy, but [00:12:00] Okay.It’s not that President Trump is above staging an assassination attempt. I do not think that he is. Nor is it that the CIA or FBI couldn’t stage an assassination attempt. It’s that the CIA and FBI are clearly at odds with Trump right now. Like so they’re not Oh, absolutely. They hate each other.Remember during the last cycle, there was the leak of the texts of people was in the CIA saying they would do anything they could to prevent Trump from being elected.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: Like when we talk about this, ISimone Collins: figure those people have been purged. You know,Malcolm Collins: this point I, no, I mean, those individual ones have, but I’ve heard that this, this attitude is so prevalent throughout these institutions that they now do actively, like, in abs to join.Like as a gay Latina I thought I would be welcome at, oh,Simone Collins: I thought that was Biden era stuff.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. But like, that shouldn’t be put out by the CIA go. They hired people through that and they haven’t let them [00:13:00] all go. Right. Like it, the, the, the urban monoculture is very good at capturing these types of bureaucracies.Yeah. Okay. Even within like administration officials when I talk about the, the faction of the Republican party that I find quite dangerous, the Deontological faction The. Whatever you wanna call it. The Romanist faction and is quite at odds with our value set. They have a very deep control of the Republican side of the deep state.And they hate Trump as well. Like they’re very, very anti-Trump generally speaking. And it was because, and this is why they’re all like moldering about Trump’s alliance with Israel and bombing of Iran and stuff like that, and being like, you know, MAGA is dead and what they mean, we did a longer episode on this that we haven’t done live because it, the timing didn’t work out.But what they really meant when they said that is CPEC is our ability to control MAGA is dead. Uh mm-hmm. Because he. Put people, at least within his administration, who don’t listen to people like that, who he got through, like Founder’s Fund instead of the traditional Republican captured Republican [00:14:00] institutions, Uhhuh.But okay. Outside of that the, the, these institutions do not like Trump enough to coordinate with him on something like this. And Trump’s own team does not seem competent enough to organize something like this without it leaking. They look, Trump can coordinate with things like the military when they have a common aim like Venezuela or something like that.But coordinating with a military filled with individuals that don’t really like Trump that much on a fake assassination plot, that seems fairly implausible, especially if you’re converting somebody who has like signaled that they were a leftist pretty much their entire life.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: . I was saying also if I was the administration, and this was the way I was putting this together, they’re like, well, what if the administration purposely has made secret society secret service really bad to sort of like bait an attack on them.It’s like this attack came way too close to killing potentially a lot of [00:15:00] people. Right? Like, if he had gotten through those doors, likeSimone Collins: he had, you’re right. I guess he probably would’ve not just gone straight for,Malcolm Collins: well, heSimone Collins: didn’t, he have a long range.Malcolm Collins: He rifle, he explicit. He, he explicitly said, I don’t remember.I know he had at least a, I think it was a pistol and a rifle, that he wanted to kill his knee administration officials as he could. And he was gonna choose in order of how high profile they were.Simone Collins: Okay. So, oh, oh.Malcolm Collins: So, yeah, no, he was just going to kill, like, I’m, I’m just gonna get as many of ‘em as I can.Simone Collins: Oh, see, I just figured he was just going for, for just the president. No, but he was just gonna, oh,Malcolm Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He wanted to turn the place into a shooting gallery. Anyone he could recognize the moment he recognized him, basically.Simone Collins: That’s a little delusional. I mean, one person,Malcolm Collins: whatSimone Collins: did he, I mean, that’s one person.Did he really think, I mean, he, he was a mechanical engineer. He was quite educated. Presumably he was able to think through the fact that there was abundance. And once you get in the room, like. [00:16:00] The president is still surrounded by heavily armed men who would immediately shoot him.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, from his perspective, the president and the administration was constantly killing civilians.Is specifically what he was like. The thing that he was really upset about was the taking out the gunboats you know, which, remember the boats that Trump was taking out? The Venezuelan Yeah. Fishing boats.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and that, you know, from everything I’ve seen about that, it seems pretty open and shut, that they are definitely drug boats, right?Like if they were fishermen as. Eh, the left keeps saying, presumably you could find like their families or something to go on TV and cry about how their fishermen, husbands were killed. And yet this hasn’t happened.Simone Collins: Hey, drug runners have families too, Malcolm sensitive,Malcolm Collins: right? But they seem less likely to go up and on TV about it, right?If, if my husband was actually a fisherman and the United States actually like gunned down [00:17:00] his boat I would try to call like CNN or M-S-N-B-C. And if I were CNN or MSN bbc, I would take that call in a hot second, right? Like, it seems completely implausible to me that these people aren’t drug runners.Given that, i, I love, people are gonna like, the, the leftists always do this. They’re like, you don’t understand Malcolm. People in Latin America are retarded and don’t know how to use phones and don’t know how to use technology. And I’m like, sorry. As somebody who lived like halftime,Simone Collins: oh, just like black voters couldn’t possibly bring an ID to vote.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: They don’t know how to get an id.Malcolm Collins: Latin Americans are very technologically competent. I thinkSimone Collins: well often, they’re often more tech forward than many Americans.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I I think what’s a, the cell phone presentation is like,Simone Collins: Venezuelan’s out of necessity adopted crypto way before Americans out.Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah. They’re crypto stuff in Peru is fantastic. Right.Simone Collins: They’re not even crypto bros. They’re just like, they were born in the crypto. Like, it’s not even a thing. They’re just like, obviously my, I’m gonna pay you in like [00:18:00] USDC.Malcolm Collins: I, I, I, I love this leftist perspective of like, Latin Americans as like half human, half animal, incapable.I think anSimone Collins: culture, the progressive left treats pretty much any of its favored or protected groups like that. Like, well, obviously, you know, they’re, they’re very dumb.Malcolm Collins: Pat, pat on the head, like the end of that song. Wonderful country, beautiful people.Simone Collins: Yes, exactlyMalcolm Collins: what’s talking about Peruvians. You know, just, yeah.Speaker 2: I was in Africa in Tasna I saw this woman, Malaria And she looked at me with this vacant stare As if to say, despite our differences, you and reminds me of this time, oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. I was in South America. In Prague. Prague. No. Pura [00:19:00] darling, Pura. Peru. Oh yeah, Pura, Pura, yeah.Wonderful country, you know, beautiful people, yeah. Um, yeah, I knew. We were drinking in the Andes, and the sun was just rising and glinting off the snow, creating a sort of ethereal haze. And I really got a sense of the awesome power of nature and the insignificance of man. And then I just shuddered.Everywhere.Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, there’s very little inherent respect for their, you know, ability to,Malcolm Collins: and, and I love the conservative, like, Hey, Latin Americans are pretty smart. They can figure this stuff out if somebody randomly murdered their family. Like, come on man. Like, but anyway, completely implausible. But that’s, you know, so his perspective is, well, I’ve gotta do anything because this government represents me and they’re out there killing random civilians left and right.You know, he’s in a complete information bubble. But what I think this attack has shown is how much of the left is in a complete [00:20:00] information bubble. Mm-hmm. Specifically the number of people who said like, this was obviously staged. One, it just seems completely implausible to me that this was staged.But two, in addition to just, just, I’m, I’m, I’m just looking at like motivations of the people who could have staged it. The most likely person to have staged it. If, if somebody could have staged it, motive means an opportunity would’ve been Putin. But nobody wants to admit that he’s actually the person.Let,Simone Collins: let wait, just walk me through the, I guess, dumb leftist take on this is, this is staged, so this guy, the, the Secret Service and, and Trump and this guy could have coordinated. All in an attempt to both boost polling numbers, which are low for Trump right now, leading into the midterms because this, well, they’re actually not particularly lowMalcolm Collins: for se, for a second term president’s first cycle leading intoSimone Collins: midterm.I know they’re not, but I mean, maybe he wants to look good to go into the midterms or something and they’re not great. So that, andMalcolm Collins: actually they’ve gone up [00:21:00] since the beginning of the war in Iran. They’re, they’re like, sellSimone Collins: theMalcolm Collins: ballrooms. Simone. Actually, this is, sorry, you keep repeating something that’s factually wrong, but a lot of leftists keeps saying, yeah.Speaker 3: So for context, this to what I’m talking about here, , Trump’s second term approval has been hanging around 44% versus 40 to 41% during this time in his first term, which is insane to be more popular in your second term. . If you look at recent presidential numbers, Obama in his second term was around 41%, so lower than Trump, Bush, 38% at comparable moments.Speaker 4: For more context. Right now, the Democratic Party Unfavorability rating is at historic highs, 64% versus 33.9% see them favorably. If you look at even Obama, who was historically popular in his second term, the Republican said a 34% favorability rating, so higher than the Democrats right now. .Malcolm Collins: Trump’s polling numbers have gone up since the beginning of the war in Iran. And they are [00:22:00] unusually good for a president at this part in the presidential cycle. The left wants to keep like freaking out and moldering about how bad the numbers are, but when you compare his numbers to democratic favorability right now they’re unusually good.NotSimone Collins: unusual. That’s stupid. They should be saying that instead of that his numbers are low because yes, I’m just parroting what leftists are saying. But two. The best way to drive turnout is to be like, we seriously need to fight back. They’re beginning to win. And if we don’t take this seriously, we’ll lose big time.And they’re acting like it’s gonna be a bloodbath in the midterms, and it’s a, it’s a given. So that seems like a really stupid tactic. But anyway, that’s a narrative and he’s trying to sell his ballroom. So in theory he coordinates with this guy and with the Secret Service, and I mean, keep in mind, this guy did not get killed.This guy did not get hurt. And he doesn’t have that much of an online footprint. And the Secret Service also. Nobody got hurt. One guy was shot at, but in a [00:23:00] very, very good bulletproof vest. So he’s fine.Malcolm Collins: So let, let’s talk about this. He does have a long and, and, but, but not like super extensive online footprint.He does have an online footprint. He has been a leftist activist for a long time. Two. The evidence because I decided to go to an AI and see what’s the, like full leftist argument as to why this was set up how a lone gunman was a manifesto got as far as he did as a hotel guest. I think that this is more an indictment that somebody was in the Secret Service is trying to get Trump killed than that Trump would allow that because Trump could have actually gotten killed, right?Trump’s calm demeanor and quick evacuation of others. The evacuation actually seemed fairly slow given the severity of the situation. Yeah. And Trump’s calm demeanor, bro. This is like his force assassination attempt at this point. At this point, the, the pirate to the Caribbean meme of first time when he’s looking to the person next to him kind of makes sense.In addition, when there has been an assassination against Trump in the past, he [00:24:00] has not reacted with panic. I mean, famously, the after he got his ear partially fight, fight, blown off the fight, fight, fight thing if anything you think that he would if this was preplanned, do some sort of a staged fight, fight, fight or something like that, like that looks more preplanned than this.Like at least milk it if you’re gonna preplan it, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Next pre. Pre-event comets, specifically here, Caroline Levitt’s phrasing, you would never do phrase it like that if you knew this was gonna happen and you were trying to hide it. Yeah. And then rapid pivot to political messaging instead of pure shock or grief.What, what time? This is the forced assassination attempt. Do you know like what republicans, like the world we’re living in right now, you Democrats haven’t had this happen. And the thing that all the Republicans keep mentioning is the Democrats who are like, nobody would actually attempt to assassinate the president or engineer for his assassination to be easy as I’m suggesting they might have done at the same time.In the next phrase they’ll say, and someone should assassinate the [00:25:00] president. Right? Like,Simone Collins: well that’s because democratic presidents are really part of a bureaucratic deep state coalition. If you were to kill any president recently in, in sort of democratic. Like, if you were to kill Biden, it would matter, right?Because he was being puppeted by a series of people and it would’ve been basically meaningless.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. The, the levels of calls to violent from the left don’t mirror anything that the right did, even when they believe that the election was unfairly stolen against Biden. I, I have regularly on talk shows, like after this one.It was on I can’t remember. One of the only remaining talk shows where the guy was making a standup routine about how you know. Oh, or, or what do we call Trump now, but a target,Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at so beautiful Mrs. Trump. You have a glow, like an expectant widow, you know?Malcolm Collins: right? Like, you know,Simone Collins: oh good Lord,Malcolm Collins: we’re seeing [00:26:00] destiny make a joke about he wants to see people stop, quote unquote trying to kill the president.You know, mainstream figures on the left are saying like, this is good. This should happen. Why do they keep failing? And it has become mainstream on the left to say that this is fake. Mm-hmm. But what’s really interesting to me is what’s the second part of this? Which is in saying that it’s fake, they often attempt to say, and we know that the two other assassination attempts.Actually been four other assassination attempts because they’re forgetting about the two Iranian attempts that were foiled earlier in their pipeline before somebody actually got to shooting. But the, the, oh no, there was the other one on the, the lawn. Remember when the, he was at the golf course and there was, yeah, soSimone Collins: there was the, the, the golf course one Butler, Pennsylvania, and then this one.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, four. Four. BecauseSimone Collins: I guess an IranianMalcolm Collins: golf course in Butler, Pennsylvania were not the two Iranian attempts.Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Oh,Malcolm Collins: so, so the, those,Simone Collins: that’s five. That’s [00:27:00] five total.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So anyway so I think we’re trying to figure out how many assassinated, I don’t remember any on Biden, by the way. I don’t remember any on Obama.I don’t remember any on Clinton. I, I think we need to be honest here that there is a problem in terms of calls to violence on the left. And yet recently as McGold did a clip on this and I was mortified a, a guy was being questioned by the FBI for in cell posting, you know, saying that like, he wanted violence against women.Where you regularly see women on Twitter posting, they want violence against men. You know, like kill all men and stuff like that is practically a slogan on the left. It’s like you have to say something extreme and Right. Is to have anyone investigate you. ‘cause these organizations are so deeply institutionally captured.Mm-hmm. And that’s why I think if I was Trump. One of the next things I might do is just shut down and reform the Secret Service, or shut down and reform C-I-A-F-B-I. You know, let me tell you what the right’s gonna be. Pretty happy if you do that. Our army is doing a pretty good job right [00:28:00] now. Our Marines, our Navy, our Air Force, let’s split something out of them to become a new secret service arm, a new CIA arm.And just admit that the institutional NSA as well, that these organizations are corrupt beyond redemption at this point, because they had been operating outside of the public light. And like Trump should have known this when people was in those organizations, said that they were gonna try to prevent him from being elected, right?Like, that should have been the sign of, oh, this is what we’re seeing on the surface of the iceberg. How deep did the iceberg go? But my point here being is they keep saying that these previous attempts were all right. Wing advocates that Butler was a rightwing advocate, that Tyler was a right wing advocate.And like, if you have looked into these to any extent at this point, you now know they were both far leftist. You know, one was literally deeply dating a trans person, which is not something a right-wing advocate is often going to do. Right. And wrote about why he wanted to do this, which again to his [00:29:00] trans partner.And the other one people have accused him of being furry. He does not appear to have actually been a furry, but he does appear to have been a gooner. And he does appear to have been a, a real weirdo and far leftist who the FBI appeared to them to cover up and like, this is what I’m talking about, like FBI in the Secret Service, when they said like, we don’t have a lot of information on this guy.This guy’s a ghost online. And literally like random people are liter able to find his dvn art accounts and give them to Alex Jones and or who did they give those to? This was. Tucker Carlson, I think, broke this one.Simone Collins: He did? OhMalcolm Collins: yeah. Back when people still trusted Tucker Carlson to back before Mossad poison him.By the way, if you don’t know, our conspiracy theory drop on this, I, I actually might do a whole video on the plausibility of our Mossad poisoning theory. So it goes like this, if you haven’t heard it, every time a mainstream figure begins to question Israel funding Israel, anything like that within like two to three years, they start going completely off the reservation and making random insane [00:30:00] takes.Like we’ve seen from Nick Fuentes against the IRN War, you know, wanting the United States to lose Tucker Carlson. You know, you could see our whole video on the crazy stuff. He said Candace Owens would completely n her bananas when she used to be really cogent and interesting. And like when I look at these three figures, the pattern of Zahi and these three figures, like, I’m gonna be honest, this isn’t like a joke conspiracy theory in my brain anymore.They seem to be saying stuff that is so off the reservation. It like breaks plausibility for me. I’m like because like even Nick Fuentes, somebody. Recently was like, whoa. And I mentioned this last time episode. They’re like, well, as Nick Gold said that he agrees with Nick Fuentes on 99% of things.Like, what do you think of that? And I was like, yeah, there was definitely a time when I felt that way too, right? Like Nick Fuentes didn’t used to be this crazy. He’s definitely had a some form of psychotic break or something. I think it’s really been made apparent since the beginning of the Iran War in his very anti-America stance that he’s now taking.Mm-hmm. In a sense it’s like [00:31:00] really clearly against American long-term interests. And or like the pro Venezuela, like Tucker comments and stuff like that. Like, oh, there are good ally in the region. ‘cause they also kill gay people. Like any conservative cares about that anymore like I was, I’ve, I’m like, those aren’t like normal saying thing, but to see our individual videos on that.But I guess, I guess the point I’m making here is I originally threw that conspiracy theory out as a joke, but the more I think about it, oh no, is it happening to me? The more I’m like. But they do have the technology for it, and they probably could easily gain access. Oh, no. And it would be a coherent strategy to discredit people who think that we should stop giving Israel tons of money every year.And it would definitely, probably be worse, the cost benefit trade off in terms of the amount of money. I mean, it’s, it’s not a ton of money as we pointed out in previous videos. It’s like about the amount we give to like Egypt and Jordan combined. Right? Like, and you don’t hear people complaining about that, but it still would be like financially beneficial to keep it up.I mean, it’s [00:32:00] weird that we’re giving it to a first world country, but like before we question that, we should probably be questioning the astronomically more that we give to nato.Like Trump’s not insane to say we should think about pulling out a nato, but that’s for set video.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway thoughts, Simone?Simone Collins: I, I, I wanna see how this unfolds with time. Like, I wanna see how the trial goes. I, I wanna see if this just becomes something that we just collectively forget. That’s my first expectation, honestly, is just that this is gonna blow over and people are gonna forget about it. And is, this is just the normal now and no one’s going to treat this like a big deal, even though it is.So I’m a little worried that that’s what it is. But it, it is, it is baffling how on, on the one hand, people are talking about Palantir having all this really. Impressive tech and ability [00:33:00] to, can we replace the CIAMalcolm Collins: and NSA with Palantir?Simone Collins: I mean, well, right. Like, it’s just how, how can that be a thing?And yet there are people who just get extremely close to the president and the entire leading administration with multiple guns and knives and plans to take them out. It, it seems implausible to me.It’s just sad too though that like a society is broken down enough where this is just normative.Whereas in the past, you know, what was it? It was Andrew Jackson basically threw a rager at the White House after he won. Right? Like people, I think he jumped out a window to get away from everyone. Eventually they just trashed the place. He had that giant wheel of cheese. Yeah, very. HewasMalcolm Collins: the first president from the backwoods cultural group, which is our cultural group.Very backwood thing to do. Like, let’s throw a rager at the White House andSimone Collins: jump on. We’re probably not getting all the details right, but like people would just show up. Like it was, it was a house. And [00:34:00] it was less secure than most of the houses now with like their ring cams and everything else.Malcolm Collins: Well, you know, maybe be, maybe, maybe we as a country were, we were not, and I, I point out to people ‘cause people get this really wrong.We were not particularly more. Culturally homogenous than we were now. The Quaker backwoods cavalier and Puritan cultural groups that existed in the 13 colonies were dramatically more different from each other than, for example, American culture is from Latin American culture. But what was the case is that those cultural groups we’re all trustworthy to each other.Mm-hmm. Like for example, if we land in like a bunch of Japanese immigrants, I’m not worried about them shooting me on the street or something like that. Like they may be culturally different from me but they are from a culture that I trust. Whereas we are letting in people from cultures that I do not trust.And I think that it’s important to recognize that as an American, like not every outsider, doesn’t work within the multicultural American system, but [00:35:00] some outside cultures do not work within the multicultural American system. And when we pretend that everyone doesn’t, then we just look sort of crazy, right?Like, obviously there are groups that can perfectly well you know, integrated leaflet, for example is, is ethnically Japanese and has perfectly integrated into American culture. From everything I’ve seen, like I I I, I do not think that we benefit from just kicking out everyone who’s not one of the original cultures.But we need to be aware that like we have materially changed things by letting in groups that are, you know, that create these sort of externalities. I mean, have created this sort of hive the, the urban monoculture also didn’t exist, and the urban monoculture seems to be able to completely cook people’s brains.The thing that I was trying to. Like synthesize that has changed between this and other assassination attempts Is everybody saying really untrue stuff? But like at a really high level now, like that all the previous assassination attempts were . Right. [00:36:00] Is is just so on. Its face untrue.And yet I see this a ubiquitous opinion on Reddit. I see it as ubiquitous opinion on X. Even within some like. Griper circles like the infiltrated parts of like the right wing which I think more shows that these are bad actors. And I think what this shows is on the left, in the groups that have allied themselves with the urban monoculture, whether it’s the groupers or the far leftists there is no longer an interest in even being adjacent to truth.Like, like it’s no longer even like I want to hedge, so like a reasonable person isn’t gonna call me out. There’s now almost this sort of cachet with like blatantly being unaware of reality. And I think that, or, or signaling that you’re unaware of reality almost to a tip to manifest this alternate world framework.And there is no call out, no internal, like, Hey, you make us look stupid when you say things like every other assassin was right wing. Or all of the attempts were [00:37:00] obviously staged. Yeah. That, that, that is, is a change that I’m noticing, and I think it’s one where we need to understand that our enemy and the force that we are collectively fighting against has transformed into something holistically more nefarious than it was in the past.Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. It’s, it’s dark. I, I, I, I don’t,Malcolm Collins: I,Simone Collins: I don’t, I guess maybe it was a short term odd period where things were cohesive and people trusted each other, and that this idea of a cohesive, high-trust society was just never gonna last. Though it still exists in places like Japan. I just, it’s, it’s kind of dark to think that that’s how things used to be, but we don’t, we don’t get to see that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, it’s, it is not in Japan anymore. They let in a bunch of immigrants and Japanese people are freaking out. But I think in, in Japan they’re a bit more ruthless in how they ultimately deal with things like this. [00:38:00] So, you know, I, I don’t know if I’d wanna be one of those immigrants in a generation or so because yeah, Japan has a history.Okay. And they, they all haveSimone Collins: history.Malcolm Collins: They, they, no, no, no, no. They have a history. But like, they relate to it differently. You go to Germany and you’re like, oh, what do you think about like, the atrocity in the war? And they will bend over backwards to be like, oh, it’s so horrible. I can’t believe we did that.What, what nightmares. And you go to Japan and you go like, what are you think? And they go, well, first of all, that was a war of aggression by the United States against Japan. That’s the way it’s taught in the Japanese school system. And, they, they, and if you’re like, how could they possibly teach it that way if they bombed Pearl Harbor first?And they’ll say, well, the United States was Blockading Japan. Which put them in an existential situation that forced them to bomb Pearl Harbor. And they then say, and all that medical experimentation some of our groups did, and all the grapes they did, I mean, that was normal for war. And then, yeah, we still think about it.I mean, I’ve seen the anime gate. They did, they, they plan when they go [00:39:00] conquer some of these countries to pick up a fu Wi Fus along the way.That’s still very part of Japanese culture. They may not frame it as grape, but you know. GA game. We, we don’t have there is no equivalent us movie I’m aware of where we go to war and whenever we kill somebody, we pick up their wives in our harem.Like that is a, that is a very unique, I I am, no, I’m like, genuinely. Even Vietnam War where like prostitution and marrying American soldiers was, was, was somewhat common. Mm-hmm. I’m not aware of that many wars where like somebody goes out war movies in the US that are very like gung-ho, like all happy and then end up with a big harem coming back to the United States.But that’s the plot of Gate, by the way, way. Mind you wait. Are you unfamiliar with this anime? Ha hasn’t even been criticized by the way. No one in Japan has been like, it’s a bad thing that gate, especially given our history in wars, frames war this way.Simone Collins: God, [00:40:00] well, back on the topic of the correspondence, dinner shooting, you know, the, the friend from college that I mentioned and I was like, oh, she was probably there.She was at, she was not just there, but I just found video she took when she was there. ‘cause she was there, she was at the head table. And there’s video of just like, what’s really interesting and I sent you a link. You can look at the video that she took. Okay. What’s really weird is that it’s super clear.People don’t really know how to respond. Like a lot of people are crouched and acting panicked, whereas other people are just kind of like sitting there and chatting. And isMalcolm Collins: she, wait, is, are we allowed to post this in the video?,Speaker 5: Where’s it at?Get out. Get out. Get [00:41:00] out.Simone Collins: It’s just super clear that she, people just don’t know how to act. And like, there’s, there’s one guy with fancy go, well, a couple guys with fancy goggles and like big guns pointing, and like a lot of people with cool military equipment running around.But people are very clearly just absolutely clueless as to what to do. I, I really think this is in, in, in a post. Societal co a societal cohesion phase of America that it just makes so much more sense to have an uber secure reinforced ballroom for parties.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Also, keep in mind when I talk about the Iranian Strat that they could have used, another one they could have used is just bring in a bunch of bomb material and just put it like a few floors above or below this.Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘cause I’m looking at this room and I’m looking at all these people here, and I’m just thinking like this, this really does look very not secure. At all. At all. I’m seeing all these doors. I’m seeing [00:42:00] some, some people kind of maybe getting rushed out like this. This could have been a, I, I’d likeMalcolm Collins: to say to this leftist assassin, do you now see how incompetent government bureaucratic structures can be and why we don’t want to give them more power?Simone Collins: This, this is why we need the Trump administration.Malcolm Collins: This is why we need Doge. This is why we need the Trump administration anyway. Love you, Simone.Simone Collins: Also like the, the, the glasses and dinnerware there. Just look like, you know, bad hotel conference, dinnerware and you know, Trump would make it fancy. He wouldn’t do that.He wouldn’t do them dirty like that.Malcolm Collins: Be,Simone Collins: I’d be nice. I loveMalcolm Collins: rfs. Like tweet after this is like, I’m really hungry. Like him just looking around sad that he’s not getting hisSimone Collins: meal. That’s why that one dude just kept eating that. I, I’m, I think a lot of people just really identify with that guy, that they would be that person, like look.They didn’t, whoever’s coming didn’t come for me. I’m just gonna finish my dinner. That’s like Asman Gold. When he talked about this was talking about like the two instances in which he had had a gun pulled on him or something, or a gun was in his, [00:43:00] like in the area and someone had shown up to, I think Emory’s dream or something, or I can’t remember exactly what it was, but he just like walked out and just walked away.Passed the guy with the gun, but just decided to stay like six feet away and out of his aggro zone as he put it, I’m like, yeah,Malcolm Collins: his aggro zone.Simone Collins: Just like just, I just fed up with this. Like I’m not, I’m just not gonna participate in this to just walked past him and away from the situation and yeah, that was the guy eating the food.Just like, look, just let me eat my food. I can super relate.Malcolm Collins: Well, I love you es Simone. Me too. And crazy World out there. Somebody died just in front of our house last night or the night?Simone Collins: Last night.Malcolm Collins: Last night, yeah. A car crash and we’re on a busy road.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: People need to, so, you know, you could die at any moment.Make the most of your life. People.Simone Collins: Yeah. Guys, please, please be careful out there. Okay. Love you Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: And, and you’ve made the most of my life, Simone, so thank you for that. If I don’t, let’s not. And I would say that I was satisfied with my life. It was because of Simone.Simone Collins: Okay. Don’t, don’t say [00:44:00] that because let’s be very clear someone mentioned, commented this on, on the video you ran today.We are not depressed.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We are not depressed. I’m not questioning things about Israel.Simone Collins: So yeah. Okay. We’ll just end with that. Bye.Malcolm Collins: Bye. any fun in news today? Hopefully the episode didn’t cause too much of a riot.Simone Collins: No, no. Nobody disagreed with it. Aside from people being like, it’s not going to work. So that’s so, oh,Malcolm Collins: micro post solution.Simone Collins: Yeah, that, like, they would never do that. I mean, some people rightfully pointed out, and I think this wasmy whole setup, went weird. Some people pointed out that the way that Judaism worked before was there were all these, you know, isolated [00:45:00] Jewish communities and being. Rejected from one would be really meaningful. It was like being thrown out of your village, like your livelihood, your family, your support network.All of it was gone. NowMalcolm Collins: there really isn’t that muchSimone Collins: pain experienced by anyone who runs against it. Like even if, even in the past when that practice was common and people weren’t thrown out for bad behavior, it was too easy because Jewish communities were so decentralized for bad actors to just leave one and show up at another and not necessarily face super negative repercussions from rejection.This is not to say that this,Malcolm Collins: This is why Jews used to have such a negative stigma against Bal Shim because that’s what they often did, is they would move between communities when they were kicked out of one.Simone Collins: I think that’s the word that someone used, actually. Yes.Malcolm Collins: And, and yeah, no, actually very fascinating that you [00:46:00] do see a lot of these institutions really begin to permanently die off with the mul from top.And as I’ve said like historically, people know my stance on this. I think he’s like the negative inflection point in Jewish history.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: Where things really begin to fall apart. But you can go to our other writings on that. I don’t wanna get too into it. But yeah, I, I think you have a point There is this, this distrust.So many things that Jewish communities used to have that they really transformed over the ages. But I, I think that there are still some interdenominational religious rabbinic councils mm-hmm. Within Judaism for deciding on specific rules like what a, what, what’s, like the Jewish take on abortion or something like that.Like right now, Uhhuh. And I think one of these councils could establish a secondary council that focuses on secular matters for the protection of the wider Jewish community, right. Even to explicitly call out some sub sex or something like that. You know, [00:47:00] like this group is doing x in a bad way, so that there would be some inter Judaism shame for action that leads to negative externalities on sort of reputation for a sect even, or an individual.And it, it, it’s, it’s, the reason I mentioned the history of it is because at least you would’ve a historical reason for setting something like that up.Simone Collins: Yeah. Another thing that people pointed out was my utter ignorance about the Anti-Defamation League. I didn’t, I didn’t know about its founding story.I didn’t know why it was created and by whom. I thought it was just to. Be against defamation. I didn’t, I didn’t think about it. I also, like, I figured that if there was some group that was just about like protecting a single group’s reputation, it might be the, like protect the Jewish reputation league.Malcolm Collins: I, I’d also note that there is I saw in the [00:48:00] comments something that it first seemed very reasonable to me and then I thought about it more and I was like, actually that doesn’t really work as a analogy because I was pointing out that almost no group seems to protect their bad actors. Like the Christians don’t like, no, no group of Christians I’m aware of.Simone Collins: It was an issue with trans. We talked about that more prominently.Malcolm Collins: Well, but yeah, the trans community does where, you know, you get actual like sex PEs and people will defend them.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But you don’t, you don’t get this with most ethnic groups. So one exampleSimone Collins: actually, someone pointed out in the comments that this was actually a really big thing that happened with the black community and with hip hop music that a lot of, a lot of people in, in the early ages of hip hop were like, this is bad. We don’t like this as an influence. And that actually, apparently, according to this person, a lot of even famous hip hop artists now, were like, yeah, I regret promoting certain things. Yeah. And or this lifestyle also. I was reading that comment while listening to this four hour takedown of Tyler Perry by this one guy, and he was talking about, I think, how did he word it?Small C conservative black [00:49:00] men especially. And how like, they’re not conservative like Republicans, they’re conservatives, like, pull your pants up, like dress neatly, et cetera.Malcolm Collins: Okay. What, who’s Tyler Perry?Simone Collins: Tyler, he’s like a prolific director and actor and writer.Malcolm Collins: Is he black?Simone Collins: He’s the one, yeah, he’s black.He’s the one who like makes all those, those comedies where he dresses. Oh, I’m so sorry. Dresses like a fat woman. Like madina.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, what, what was the point of your comment onSimone Collins: this? The point was the black there’s, there’s a really established history of black Americans being like, we need to show.Our best example and actually, actually attacking bad, sorry, bad actors within their community and being like,Malcolm Collins: yeah. The, the other, but the, the one community I’m aware of that does actively do this, other than trans and Jews are Romani Romani are famous for doing this protecting bad actors.And obviously they’ve earned you know, an equal stigma to Jewish people, right? Like theySimone Collins: were, oh, so, oh, protecting, not attacking, but protecting,Malcolm Collins: protecting, bad act known bad actors within their community that victimize outsiders. The, the one [00:50:00] counter example that somebody. Mentioned, and it doesn’t work really.And I’ll explain why it doesn’t work. Is there like, well, like conservatives do this, right? Like political parties do this, like the, the, the, the, the conservative movement will sometimes protect people when they’re acting like bad actors. This would be an example like Donald Trump doing things like, it could be seen as like scams or like sexually predatory.This is actually a very different phenomenon. This is when a group protects the bad actions of the group’s institutional leadership. And you actually see this across, almost. Every group. So a good example would be like Mormons. I’m not aware of any examples of Mormons protecting bad actors who were low level people, but they absolutely went to bat for Joseph Smith when he was obviously a bad actor.They absolutely went to bat for Brigham Young when he did things that were obviously bad actor things. You, you see this in the Catholic community for example, when there were institutional higher ups who were griping people they institutionally [00:51:00] went to bat to cover it up. People can say, whoa, why do, why do institutions so often protect higher up bad actors rather than regular bad actors?And it’s because they lose institutional power and momentum if they allow their higher ups to be swept out of power. So if you demand moral purity from your higher ups and you don’t. Put some effort into protecting them. Like imagine if, like we, as a conservative movement wiped out every leader as soon as a scandal was found on them, right?Like you wouldn’t be able to build up a movement really easily or stay in power very easily. And no, you see this in Jewish history as well. A lot of the Jewish leaders during the periods when Jews did punish bad actors like if you go back to, you know, some of the leaders from, from biblical period were demonstrably bad actors.You know, be they, you know, king David for example, right? And I, I don’t think that that’s, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about Jews ignoring when their kings did bad things. Everybody ignores when their kings [00:52:00] do bad things. I’m talking about Jews going to help people who are, you know, regular members or low level communities who have been caught doing something bad.That’s actually incredibly unique to the only three communities I’m aware of that do it are Jews, romanis and trance.Simone Collins: Yeah. And that’s like the case that people pointed out with the, the sort of founding case of the Anti-Defamation League in 1913 was the case of this man who allegedly. Attacked sext, a female worker, I think and, and then killed her.And then they wasMalcolm Collins: about to try to save himSimone Collins: was was lynched by a mob. So, and, and then I think there’s some following,Malcolm Collins: right?Simone Collins: Legal case. And I think he had tried, sorry, I like read this really quickly while trying to respond to comments. He had tried to blame it on a black man. Like he was, wasn’t me, it was this black dude.And thenMalcolm Collins: that’s extra bad. That’s extraSimone Collins: bad. Well, no, I know. The ADL was like,I think founded as part of some legal case to because the court [00:53:00] case surrounding it I think drew a lot of like antisemitic hate, or sorry, just, sorry. That’s a. Misnomer it, it drew a lot of antisemitism or, or fomented.A lot of it. I feel like the ADL’s actions around it probably would make that worse, would make the antisemitism worse. Trying to hear this man’s name instead of just being like, dude, I mean, un unless they were insistent that he was innocent. But even then it’s like probably like, let’s just let this go.This doesn’t seem, you know, whatever. But anyway, like whether or not he was innocent that that is apparently the founding of the a DL, like their first big case. And I had no idea and I was like, oh my God. And that’s a really good example of like, this wasn’t a leader as far as we know, you know, it was just a factory supervisor.Speaker 6: So for context, , historians would disagree with Simone here. Obviously, historians may have some bias that the black guy was the actual rapist in this situation. However, the fact that as racist [00:54:00] as that region was during that period that the mob said, no, no, no, it wasn’t the black guy, it was this other guy. It does make me doubt that a little bit, but , yeah.Simone Collins: So to your point, yeah, this is people who were like, you gotta look into circumcision and how the practice was brought to the United States and how one man tried to expose it and stop it and then was. Was effectively like cast away and thrown out. So it can be done but it was only done by someone questioning the practice of circumcision as practiced in the us.So I kind of wanna look into that because it’s one of those hot button issues among new parents as, as you know, base campers who are having kids who, you know, may or may not be circumcised have, have written to us and been like, Hey, why don’t we talk about this?Malcolm Collins: I mean, I’m very against banning super circumcision, by the way.It is, you, you cannot be Jewish without being circumcised. The, the Bible is incredibly clear on this. It’s, it’s like not even a vague thing. It’s not [00:55:00] something where there’s multiple interpretations.Simone Collins: Yeah. What’s questionable is when and how it happens, right?Malcolm Collins: No, it’s supposed to be done to infants.Simone Collins: It is,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Yeah. The case was Moses makes that incredibly clear. When, it’s, I don’t want to go into the whole story, but, you know, it was Moses’s kid and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Almost killed on the spot for not circumcising. V very bad to not circumcise. We, we actually go over it in our, in our track, the the question that breaks Judaism.So it’s, it’s it’s something that we have gone over andSimone Collins: I know. I’m so sorry. Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: But yeah, that’s a, a, a fun one. But yeah, that was a very interesting episode to film. And do All right, I’ll get started here.Speaker 7: I can pull. Yeah, you’re very strong. Octavian.Speaker 8: Very strong.[00:56:00]Good job.All right, is Daddy. Hello and Professor River. Thank you. Good teamwork. Thank you, Titan. Professor, say whoa. There you go. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this spicy Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins tackle a sensitive but urgent topic: why Jews must stop defending bad actors within their communities — and why failing to do so is fueling rising antisemitism in America.With 24% of young Americans now endorsing antisemitic tropes (vs. just 5% of those in their 80s), the Collinses examine welfare fraud in Orthodox Jewish communities, the ADL’s deplatforming of critics like Tyler Olivier, the Chabad-linked push to pardon a $33M healthcare fraudster whose actions killed elderly patients, and the collapse of historic Jewish self-policing institutions (kehillot and beit din) that once prevented exactly this problem.They argue that protecting bad actors creates massive negative externalities, damages alliances with the new right, and threatens the long-term survival of Jewish communities — especially as ultra-Orthodox populations grow rapidly. A blunt, data-driven conversation about group accountability, cultural self-preservation, and why every community (Jewish, Somali, or otherwise) must police its worst members.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. Today is going to be a spicy conversation and it’s going to piss off a lot of people, but it is one that needs to be had right now in America. We, we mentioned this on another episode, but Jews need to be paying attention to this.24% of young people in America today endorse anti-Jewish tropes, right? Like are what you would be seen as antisemitic. Oh, oh, no. If you go to people in the, their eighties, it’s around 5%. Oh. So it’s one in four versus one in 20. This is a massive generational change.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: And I would point out here that the sentiment against Jews among use higher than it is against groups like blacks in the United States.Now where it is 17% have anti-black resentment in the United States where it’s 24% anti-Jewish resentment.Simone Collins: That’s so [00:01:00] funny because I grew up on like seventies, eighties, and nineties content that pretty heavily made fun of Jews. Like, I’m thinking about Mel Brooks Films, the Princess Bride all these shows that would have like a ton of like, seenMalcolm Collins: it as safe because nobody actually, when I used to, ‘causeSimone Collins: no one believed it.No oneMalcolm Collins: edgy fake humor, like racist humor. I would make racist jokes about Inuits. That was like the core commun Eskimos, you know, they, you know, make OhSimone Collins: right.Malcolm Collins: Make, make fun of their fake kisses. They don’t even know how to love, you know, like, everybody thinks Eskimo jokes are funny because nobody is aware of Eskimo discrimination.At least if you’re in the United States, like it’s not something that you are around or you see. So it comes across as funny. Sure. The idea of Jews being actually discriminated against in the eighties and the nineties was actually comical. It, it was,Simone Collins: right. So we, we, we could make fun of them because we knew that they were [00:02:00] fine and they weren’t.Doing anythingMalcolm Collins: sauce. It was so comical that when Jewish directors and producers were making the Star Wars prequels, they literally made this characterSimone Collins: Oh God, yes. No,Speaker 14: My trick don’t work on, I make only money.Simone Collins: andMalcolm Collins: thought nothing of it. Yes. Alright. They didn’t think this could one day be a problem for our community. And the, the problem, like the thing that makes this entire conversation so dangerous for the Jewish community long term, like when I’m projecting what happens long term with JudaismSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Is that somebody comes out there and says, Hey it looks like antisemitism is exploding right now. And then the obvious next question is, is why. Right? Yeah.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: And then the obvious next question is. Okay. Is it entirely due to some sort of external social contagion that has nothing to do with Jewish communities?Simone Collins: Which could be possible, orMalcolm Collins: it [00:03:00] could be possible, but that’s actually much worse for Jewish communities, if that’s true, because it’s much harder to change the behavior of people other than yourself, than inSimone Collins: yourself.Yeah, it’s preferable. And I, I’m, I’m giving the example because after I brought up a bunch of theories around why there’s so much Indian immigrant hate one person wrote to us, and I, I’m gonna try to put an episode together about it, but they wrote to us and shared fairly abundant evidence indicating that a lot of the.Indian immigrant hate is actually AstroTurf by Muslim Indians and Pakistanis who just really freaking hate Hindi Indians. Andthat andMalcolm Collins: CanadiansSimone Collins: that like, even, like, not even so, I mean, there is some job resentment, but like, not nearly to the level that you see online.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Simone Collins: But like, that’s, that’s an example of something that could be at least in large part external and not caused by internal activity.‘cause you know, like there’s a very large immigrant community here that is Indian and [00:04:00] there’s not. There’s not a lot of like hate a about it, people likeMalcolm Collins: them. There is not I, but I can, yeah. I, and I can say this very concretely. So we live outside of Philadelphia. Mm-hmm. We live in a majority Indian neighborhood.Our neighborhood is 70% Indian. Mm-hmm. And I have not seen any anti-Indian sentiment amongst any of my neighbors, any of the, the friends at Octavian school.Simone Collins: Well, and keep in mind, I ran for office in our, in our area. Right. I attended a ton of conservative Republican events. I knocked doors on the houses of hundreds of Republicans who lived here.Only once. Only once. ‘cause I will say that there was one time when one person said one thing and they’re just like, well, I don’t like all these kids running around in the streets. And that was it. It was, oh, God forbid that these people actually are happy and have children that run in the streets like I would want my kids to do.And this is like a safeMalcolm Collins: place. And keep in mind that you might be like, well, you don’t participate with the edgy conservative groups. No, we participate with the edgy. We, we are like friends with the people who ran a lot of [00:05:00] the Trump campaign stuff. Mm-hmm. And, and as we’re known as like rightwing influencers, we get and edgy rightwing influencers, we get invented to the edgy parties where people make.You know, racialist jokes and stuff like that. Even, even just to be educated,Simone Collins: anyone wanted to say something about resenting Indian immigrants in our Indian immigrant heavy community? They would’ve told me immediately because all of the like, attacks made against me were like, look at this evil, racist woman.So they would’ve told me ‘cause they would’ve thought that, like the, the, the rumors were true. So I just wanna, I wanna illustrate that anyway. So, but this does not seem to be something, one thing where the Jew hate is endogenous or It doesMalcolm Collins: seem to be, but the, the side point I wanted to make to the Indian comments, I do think that there is actual Indian resentment talking to the United States.I just don’t think it’s in our region verySimone Collins: much. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And it’s important and, and especially in Canada, there are actual communities where it is normal, but Canada’s getting a completely different type of Indian immigrant than we’re getting here.Simone Collins: Well, and I’ll, I’ll add that it’s, I think especially among tech workers where they [00:06:00] see that.People are actually just hiringMalcolm Collins: IndiansSimone Collins: Non Yeah. They’re firing qualified American citizens and hiring, honestly less qualified Indian immigrants. There is obvious resentment, but yeah, the pocket,Malcolm Collins: we need regulations around that. That’s a whole other thing that we can get to in another video where you could go watch the video where she crashes out about Indians because she goes on a 30 minute rant about all of the valid complaints people have about Indians.But in this episode, we’re talking about you, Simone, just to, just to, great. Yeah.Simone Collins: Just out of the frying pan into the fire. Let’s go.Malcolm Collins: If we often talk about the trans community, right? And I’m like, basically in the group that has ended up becoming the new right. Many of, or the majority of whom used to be leftists.We sort of originally approached the trans thesis was the idea of, okay, we can give this community some additional rights so they can do their weird, whatever thing that they want to [00:07:00] do. And so long as they don’t abuse those additional rights it’s fine. Right? And, and of course, if they did abuse those additional rights that would be punished within the community first and most aggressively,Simone Collins: right?‘cause that would threaten their sovereignty and rights and acceptance.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And when we saw that the opposite was happening, that the community kept from the most institutional levels, from the highest levels of the community, protecting their worse actors and going out of their way to protect their worse actors it then creates a situation where the, any, any community that’s abutting them has to attack the entire community to deal with the negative externality of that community’s worst actors.If I’m going to word this a different way, okay. Let’s suppose we’re not talking about trans people or Jewish people here. We’re talking about blurbs and TURs. Okay. Either two [00:08:00] groups and some blurbs, sometimes grape. Little TURs. Okay? And so a turb mob comes over to the blurbs, right? And they’ve all got pitchforks.And they say, that man right there, great. One of our children. And we can prove it. And then the blurb leader comes out and says if you wanna pull him out of our community and put him in a prison, you need to go through all of us and put us all in prison. Now, if I’m a blurb who’s not that particular elected leader, I am likely like the evilest person in that room right now, the person I am most terrified of is that leader, right?It’s not even the mob, because that leader is turning me and the entire community into grist over something that obviously, if somebody in our community is acting like a bad actor and we are preventing them from being punished. [00:09:00] We, we make our entire community an a negative externality to anyone we’re around.And recently, on multiple occasions, the Jewish community has done this in spades. And when I say in spades, I mean to an attempt that he is so egregious that I would ask. And like I, I know we have Jewish friends, I’m gonna, I’m gonna put together a plan to stop this because Jews used to have cultural institutions that were entirely designed to stop exactly this phenomenon.Okay. But these cultural institutions basically failed in the, I wanna say 1600 or 17 hundreds. Oh. What happened after the 15 hundreds for Jews? Oh, is that when Pogrom started picking up? All I’m saying is there, wait,Simone Collins: what existed before then that stopped this? What, what is this magical dance?Malcolm Collins: So there are multiple Jewish institutions that when a Jew [00:10:00] would scam or go out of their way to hurt non-Jews that were living alongside the Jewish community mm-hmm. The Jewish community would heavily financially punish them, shun them, and expel them. Wow. And, and that is very, very useful thing to do.Speaker 3: To give an idea of how severe these were. , We have recordings of Jews for minor, and note this wasn’t just for major things. It’s noted that for even minor scams or misrepresentations to gentiles, , something was applied to them. It’s a Jew word. I don’t know what it means exactly. , Jews will know it, but it meant that that person’s kids were not even considered marryable.So it didn’t just apply to you, it applied to your entire genetic line.Speaker 7: So just with some research in front of me here, , these institutions were calledKeala and Bit din, , or in English communal councils and rabbinic courts. , They were specifically active between.[00:11:00] 1017 50 ce. , And if you do an analysis, so you look for pogroms, this is mass Jewish killings, pre 1750. , You do have some and some that were, were very large. , Like the Commensally uprising, however. , If you just on average look at pogroms per year and how severe those Prague groms were during that period, and then contrast it with the period after these institutions had collapsed, , you see enormously more like it’s an order of magnitude more in terms of violence and frequency that you had pogroms after these institutions had collapsed.So, , just an AI’s thoughts on this. , Pre 1750 violence was often tied to existential crises, plagues, crusades, uprising with fewer, but sometimes larger single events. EEG, kaminsky’s rivaled or exceeded many later waves in raw death Hold. Post 1750s saw more frequent repeated [00:12:00] waves of pogroms, hundreds per wave.And this, , you know, culminating with the Holocaust, right? So these institutions actually appeared to serve their role. They appeared to significantly reduce. Antisemitism and the Jewish community has ever since they collapsed, been demonstrably, I think weakened in their ability to operate.And the reason I put so much , emphasis on you used to have this technology is Judaism as a religion. If they want to adopt something, they can’t just go up and be like, I have a new idea about how we should do something. If they can say, here’s how we used to do it. Look at the pogroms per year when we did this.Look at the pogroms per year after we did this. , That can be pretty persuasive because you have both a mathematical, a historic, and a religious argument for reinstituting. These, .Malcolm Collins: But today you have an instance where the two of the big instances that we’re gonna go over that are really emblematic of this is major YouTube streamer ends up covering a [00:13:00] community of,Simone Collins: Orthodox Jews living, I think somewhere in New York City.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Tyler Olivier, like would videos. This guy goes along. He goes to various groups that are doing bad things, immigration fraud throwing poo at each other in India, which is just like a cultural festival.Simone Collins: And even just general crime in New York that is not specific to a, a group.Malcolm Collins: Right. But the point is, is that he has targeted other specific sub ethnic groups in the past four things that are a, a group doing a local traditional festival around like feces throwing is far more racially inflammatory because that’s a, just a traditional festival that’s really only hurting that community potentially.ThenSimone Collins: it’sMalcolm Collins: strict giving theirSimone Collins: immune system. It looked fine.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Welfare fraud by Orthodox Jewish communities in New Jersey. Right? Like this, the, the fraud that he was pointing out has been historically documented. It’s been documented in multiple Orthodox Jewish communities. It is even [00:14:00] in this case, extremely well documented.Like this is not a going out there and promoting some sort of stereotype or something like this. This community is acting as genuine bad actors in a way that is hurting the quality of life. Like our economic system. The people around them are suffering because of the way that this community is abusing the US tax system and welfare system.And we’ll go into other instances of this, but in this instance, what was so wild about this is the a DL, you do not get more mainstream of a Jewish organization. Then the A DL?Simone Collins: No, this was news to me. I didn’t think the Anti-Defamation League was Jewish per se. I thought they were just broadly progressive,Or not.Malcolm Collins: I’ve always thought of them as a predominantly Jewish organization.Simone Collins: Really.Malcolm Collins: What’s the, what’s the other Jewish organization? Let’s see if they also went out against him.Simone Collins: I don’t know. I don’t know of any big Jewish [00:15:00] nonprofits aside from, I don’t know, whoever, whatever foundation made the Holocaust museums possible or whatever foundations.I didn’t think there were like Jewish led charities that had big leading names.Malcolm Collins: It’s the a DLSimone Collins: Really? It’s just known for being Jewish.Malcolm Collins: The mainstream Jewish, quote unquote protection nonprofit is the Anti-Defamation league, the A DL.Simone Collins: Okay, so that’s like the main organization, famous for fighting antisemitism explicitly.Malcolm Collins: Yes. The mission, the official mission of the A DL is to stop the defamation of Jewish people. Oh. And secure justice and fair treatment for all.Simone Collins: Oh, okay. I didn’t know, sorry.Malcolm Collins: So the A DL comes out okay.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Attacks him and he is immediately de platformed. From, from platforms like Patreon in meSimone Collins: after having, yeah.He’s posted things that are inflammatory. So it’s not like this was just too [00:16:00] spicy for people. Wow.Malcolm Collins: No, it was, it was that the Jewish community, when he spotted real fraud went out and, and, and this is now, if you are a Jewish person, the Jews at the A DL that did this, they are an existential threat to the Jewish community.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Because they, they have now said is, as long as Jews have cultural and political power in the United States, we will not allow you to punish or even notice or talk about bad actors within our community. But this wasn’t the only instance recently. Another egregious instance is there was $33 million of healthcare fraud by an Orthodox Jewish individual.Obviously like we freak out when the Somalians do this, like Trump and the administration should be freaking out when an Orthodox Jew does this,Simone Collins: right? It doesn’t matter who you are. Any, any form of especially fraud using people’s taxpayer money,Malcolm Collins: this fraud was killing people. [00:17:00] Old people were dying because of this fraud.This is like on record, okay? This guy was a monster, and that is not disputed even by the organizations that attempted to defend him. But a large organization that we’ll be going intoSpeaker 4: Note, not a fringe or extremist Jewish organization either. This is the mainstream CHABAD Jewish organization for protecting Jewish prisoners.Malcolm Collins: that’s entire purpose is to fight for freedom for Orthodox Jewish individuals. Convince the Trump administration to give this person a pardon.Not because they do not think that his actions led to people’s deaths, not because they do not think that he stole from the American taxpayer through fraud, but because he’s an Orthodox Jew.Simone Collins: Wow,Malcolm Collins: this is really existentially bad for the Jewish community.Simone Collins: Yeah, that is bad. I had no idea. [00:18:00] That’s terrible.Malcolm Collins: That is. That’s really,Simone Collins: really bad.Malcolm Collins: That’s terrible.Speaker 8: If you are wondering how they could conceivably signal that this was an okay thing to do. The core argument that the administration made, , when releasing him is that he didn’t personally, financially benefit from his fraud. That it was mostly to keep a failing business alive, which is factually untrue.He stole, we know he stole at least $5 million personally as a ghost salary. I think the argument is that he had to pay it back in fines or something after he was caught, but it’s like, yeah, but he intended to steal it. Right. , And, , there’s still people fighting for money from this, so No, it’s not that everyone has been reimbursed or anything like that, uh, but that most of the fraud was done to try to protect a failing business that had overextended., But that doesn’t, , if you have a. Failing business, especially a hospital that’s caring for elderly and in affirmed individuals. And you, because of the way that you are conducting fraud, to try to keep that alive [00:19:00] are leading to people’s deaths. And for people suffering, at a large scale, , you need to let that fail.Like not being able to let your business fail in committing fraud at this scale is not, , an ethical thing to do. Especially while stealing to the tune of $5 million from the failing company exacerbating the problems like this. This picture of somebody who just let things get a bit out of hands doesn’t work when you consider the 5 million that he stole during this process that’s on record.,Speaker 8: And people are like, oh, he had a external accounting group that was handling the fraud on his behalf. I mean, it’s shown in court records. He knew and he pleaded guilty to knowing the fraud was happening. , But in addition to that, like I, I’m actually okay, like if, if somebody was like, look, if employees were doing this, he just then wanted to protect their jobs.Okay, fine.I have helped cover for my own employees moral Laughes in the past as a boss. It’s something that just happens and [00:20:00] comes up, and if that was what he was going through, then I would understand. But that doesn’t explain the $5 million that he took out in ghost salaries, and that’s what we know of. That’s the fraud. We were able to prove $5 million, , that requires active action on his behalf. Not an external accounting firm or anything like that, like I’m trying here. Okay. But this was just a bad actor who didn’t care about the lives that he destroyed.And people are like, well, he’s old. He would’ve died in prison. Good, good. , This is why we have a prison system, right? I want the Somalians who do this stuff going to prison. I want Jews who do this stuff to go outta prison. I, it shouldn’t matter what community someone is from. And the simple effing optics of this, that habad an organization that is staffed by otherwise saying intelligent people, knowing the sentiment in America right now against the Jewish people growing in negativity, knowing.What a hot button [00:21:00] issue because of the Somalian fraud stuff that we’re dealing with because of Nick Shirley’s reporting fraud of exactly this type is that they would go out of their way to almost pathologically attempt to free, an obvious bad actor and do it successfully. Did no one in the organization stop to ask what are the optics of this?. And I think that, well, apparently not. , And. That was because there was no institution for causing or creating any sort of reward mechanism for asking that, because it doesn’t matter to them if they do an action that on the whole hurts the Jewish people, if it helps their status within their circles of Jewish society, which this did and reinstating these old courts would allow that.And I think that this is , really important for individual like. The Jews who are hearing this and want to yell at me for this right now, these individuals did not ask, how is this action going [00:22:00] to reflect on the way that broader Jews are treated within society? , Antisemitism more broadly, , the.Question in their head is, how does this affect my standing within my circle of Jewish society? , And that’s really bad that that’s the case, but it can be fixed.Speaker 10: Also another externality that Jews should think of when they’re thinking about the importance of building a system to address these issues is how something like this affects non-Jews who defend the Jewish community. , When we saw Charlie Kirk near the end, say something like, I’m thinking about turning against the Jewish community, or having Candace Owens gone on.Because I am sick of after I do X, Y, or Z to defend them, then this comes out after me. Then I get accused of X, Y, or Z. . I, I think that like there isn’t an internal thinking of, we have people, we, Jews have people [00:23:00] outside the Jewish community like Simone and I are often accused of being overly pro jewish. , We’re, I mean, the reason we’re proje is because we’re pro strengths and Jews are out competing other groups in many fields, right?Like, we like groups that do well and are technologically and economically productive, especially high fertility groups. Like there is a. Existential reason we are pro jewish,, which is very instrumental if they weren’t those things. Then we would be anti-Jewish. , , , it’s not like for some biblical reason or something like that, or even because I like individual Jewish people., There’s a lot of groups where I have a lot of friends from that group. But I still think in aggregate that group, , is, , an economic and technological drain on the global world, but. The point I’m making here is take somebody like Simone and I’m, , who get flack.You know, we do burn some of our credibility, , when we are seen as defending Jewish interests. , And. Then we see something like this happen. Mainstream [00:24:00] organizations like the A DL and Habad, , going out of their way to, , protect bad actors within Jewish communities instead of working to address in themselves., Because then people who have heard me defend Jewish things in the past, they come to, they go, Malcolm, you see this is proof that you’re wrong about. Helping the Jews, defending the Jews, seeing the Jews as a group that we can have as good actors in American society. , And it makes me look stupid and it makes me and all of the other non-Jewish people who defend the Jewish community less likely to do it in the future.The externalities from actions like this are manifold.Speaker 12: And for those viewers on the other side who hold a more anti-Semitic sentiment and are upset at us for always coming off as overly , philio, semetic, keep in mind. We are willing to criticize. We have a number of episodes that are quite critical of Jewish community and history. , Our support for the [00:25:00] Jewish community, as we have said, is instrumental to my goals for civilization.And if actions of that community make it look like that is no longer the case. Then my opinion changes if portions of that community grow fast. Because there are definitely portions of the Jewish community that, , are extremely low technology, extremely hostile to outsiders and very high fertility. If those portions end up becoming the dominant Jewish population or controlling Jewish institutions, , didn’t.Obviously I would not continue to take actions that are as supportive to the wider Jewish people. , I’m not like a, you know, whatever, who was it? Ted Cruz or whatever, who’s like, oh yeah, I’ll support Israel for whatever, because the Bible told me to. I’m like, no, it’s useful for my goals as things are right now, but if things change, then it may no longer be useful to my goals.Malcolm Collins: And so many Jews are gonna go because every time we do a video like this, they come into the comments [00:26:00] and they say something like, because they feel like this is a normal thing to say. When somebody says something like this or brings up topics like this, that I am being anti-Semitic by saying this stuff, you are the problem.You are the reason why Now 25% of young people have decided that they are anti-Semitic. Okay? Because the dominant culture, like different cultures react to injustices in different ways. But the dominant culture, especially within the right in the United States. When they see somebody calling out genuine bad action, and then another person attempting them to, attempting to silence them by saying something like, you are being racist, or you’re being transphobic, or you’re being homophobic, or you’re being anti-Semitic because Wokes use that for so long.So we developed cultural technologies against that, right? Like, this is one of the core things that has changed within the new right, is people can no longer go to us and say, oh, you like anime? That’s nerdy. I’m like, suck it. Or you, you, that’s degenerate. Or that’s a against alike people are like, oh, how do, how do you police behavior without being able to [00:27:00] shame people for this, this, or that? It’s like, we do not allow that at always in our communities anymore. Mm-hmm. Because Wokes then grabbed that social technology and realized they could use it, right? They could reclassify what these categories were and they could use it.And that a better way to promote good actions is through modeling it. Right? Like in the way I treat my wife, in the way I live, in the way I’m having kids, in the way I try to interact with others. I try to model good behavior and that is how we, because we were like, oh, how could you ever have good behavior unless you shame de degeneracy?And it’s like, look, I understand that that used to work when we were more culturally uniform, but Wokes figured out how to use that. And so we haven’t been using that as a cultural technology for a while. In fact, we’ve been reflexively being like, Ew, what a loser. Like anybody who attempts to shame people along these categories, Jews are, because it worked for them for a long time, still reflexively attempting to use this social technology.And what they do not see is it is isolating them. From the one group [00:28:00] and from the, the wider, like of of, of the groups in the United States, the group that is most open to one allying with Israel and helping Jews within the United States is the new. Right. Just like without, like Wokes, when you see Jewish students running from people on campus and locking themselves in the library because they’re afraid of being beaten up.Mm-hmm. These are leftists who are doing this. You, you are aware of this, like the leftists regularly host rallies in the United States where they say from the river to the sea, they, they want you exterminated. Right? Like this is not, you have one group you can go to, right. That you can farm an alliance with and is open to that alliance.Right. And that group is the wider new right coalition, but we’re also not effing stupid one, you come to us with this. Oh, you’re being antisemitic when clearly what I’m saying is not antisemitic. This is factual evidence. Or clearly, you know what Tyler Olivier. was saying when he made his video is not antisemitic.Right? This was [00:29:00] like clear evidence Right. Of this stuff. And, and Jews know this stuff is happening. No, they’re not f*****g stupid Jews know about the fraud in or orthodox Jewish communities.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right. And you can be like, well we have trauma because of a genocide.And it’s like a lot of groups have had genocides against them. Okay. None of those groups come to me and attack us for saying, oh, you’re anti, ‘cause we attack all the groups on this, this, we have anti Quaker videos, we have anti-Catholic videos, and the only group that regularly reflexively freaks out and it is this reflexive freakoutSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That is causing the drift even within the right. And if you look at the political breakdown, you can see the anti-Semitic sentiment is growing in the right at the same rate. It’s growing in the left. Right. But ideologically we’re not mulching in the streets saying from the river to the seas yet.Right. Is to be aware where we are with you. I think Jews, because they are [00:30:00] used to perceiving themselves as having an alliance with the left, which is just not going to work going into the future.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: They listen to leftist criticism about stuff like Gaza, about stuff like the war in Iran. When I don’t care about this stuff, you’re helping us with this f*****g good.Like, I kill him, whatever. Right. Like, yeah, you, I, I feel like the woman from south ParkSpeaker 2: Really? That’s great! You mean you don’t mind? No! I hateMalcolm Collins: Gaza,Speaker 2: you go rightSpeaker: ahead and plow down this whole f*****g thing! That’s swell!Malcolm Collins: That’s the way I feel about all of that. But when you set up communities in the United States and actively scam our tax system and kill our elderly people, and then when our justice system attempts to do it things, or when our citizen reporters attempt to do the, the just thing and attack them.Then how, how can I say that this is Toler. This is no longer a minority Jewish position. This is not a minority. Like the [00:31:00] people on the right will sometimes be like, oh, they randomly bombed some old church in whatever country. It’s like, yeah, it was in a fricking Muslim majority country. They were like, no Christians there anymore.Whatever. Right? Like, I do not care about that. That that population had already wiped out the Christian population there. So, I’m wondering where all the Christians went over the past 20 years. Maybe I’m okay with them being bombed a little bit. Or they’ll be like, oh, look at this video of Jews spitting on Christians.It’s like, and I can find videos of Christians spitting on Jews, right? Like, there’s plenty of Christians who hate Jews. That doesn’t mean that our two people cannot be allied with each other. But the very centers of Jewish power acting in this way that does prevent a meaningful alliance as well as Jews in stuff like the comments under this video saying, this is anti-Semitic to say.That does prevent a durable allianceSpeaker 5: And don’t give me, oh, this is a woke Jews problem. We are discussing two organizations that have done this recently. One of them is the A DL. Okay. Maybe the A DL, but the other is a Habad [00:32:00] charity. Okay. If you are unfamiliar with who the Habad are, they are an Orthodox Jewish group. Okay. They’re, I think, the most mainstream sort of accepted by wider society, Orthodox Jewish group.I.Malcolm Collins: because the first people who should be going after the people who, who go into the comments and be like, this anti-Semitic, should be other Jews, right? Because that hurts the Jewish community. That is the person who says, when you come after bad actors and obvious bad actors, documented bad actors, I’m going to defend them.Simone Collins: Well, so if I, my impression of when I, I think about comments I’ve heard from Jewish friends about groups like these is, they’re like, oh, that’s this subgroup. You know, they’re not mine. And I think there is this problem of Jewish communities being very sort of disconnected and balkanized to a certain extent and, and not centrally governed, of course.[00:33:00]So it’s not like there’s some Vatican that could be like, we disavow this, this is wrong. It’s more like, well, there’s this, they’re this set that’s entirely sovereign and we have no control over them. I mean, I, I guess what you’re saying isMalcolm Collins: right, and this is, this is you, you know, how you deal with that.Simone Collins: How,Malcolm Collins: There, there, so there’s really a few solutions to this from the perspective of Jewish populations. Okay. Solution number one, it’s create genuine group differentiation. If somebody was to go to me because I regularly do this on air, criticize the Vatican, and they were to say, well, you’re a Christian, like, how do you criticize the Vatican?Or how do you criticize like this Protestant sect or that Protestant sect? It’s like, I’m not that sect. I don’t like that sect. I think that sect is an act like, and, and people do not confuse me with those sex.Simone Collins: Do you not think that Jewish friends of ours have done that? To be like, that’sMalcolm Collins: absolutely not.Absolutely not.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: This is, this is a huge problem that Jews have. And there is a way around it, but [00:34:00] it is a huge problem when in like suppose. A Unitarian Universalist, a a a branch of Christianity mm-hmm. Acts as some super bad actor as they often do. Yeah. Pushes some woe nonsense. Right. And nobody would think of comparing us techno puritans or like evangelical Protestants.Yeah.Simone Collins: We,Malcolm Collins: because we would say that group is heretical. That group is not like us. That group is not one of us, and it wouldn’t make sense to compare us. Right. Whereas Jews, they fastidiously do not do this. They say, Hey, even if you don’t follow the practices of Judaism anymore, even if you left, even if you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you’re still Jewish.If you are Matrilineally Jewish. Mm-hmm. This creates a major, major problem. And even worse, if you’re like two a Jew, right. Like. An Orthodox Jew, right, like a, a reformed Jew is still a Jew, right? To an evangelical Protestant, a Unitarian Universalist is [00:35:00] not a Christian. And this is why they don’t get blamed as much because the Jewish community themselves, like the people who are in this video who are going to be claiming, oh, Malcolm, you’re being anti-Semitic.The vast majority of them are probably gonna be reformed Jews because those are the people who react this way the most. Yet they are protecting an Orthodox Jewish community. These two communities are not the same community. It is the active lack of being willing to split and internally criticize that is, is causing ultra orthodox Jews to be blamed for what woke Jews are doing in Hollywood.Mm-hmm. That have like culturally very few similarities to them. And it’s what’s causing woke Jews in Hollywood to be blamed what Ultraorthodox Jews are doing in Israel. Right. Like, but I actually would not advise the Jewish community to remove this tendency was in Judaism. It has a number of positive externalities for the Jewish community, basically making it very [00:36:00] hard for them to permanently split and allowing them to recombine whenever they want.You can look our video on why don’t Jews have guns? It goes really deep into Jewish culture and why it is particularly resilient. And this is, this is one of its big superpowers. And you couldn’t even do it if you were a Jew. Like even if you were a Jew and you, and you tried to create like a splinter group of Judaism, it’s just so embedded in the Jewish mindset that all Jews are Jews that it would eventually recombine.And in the mind of the general public, it wouldn’t happen.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: There’s the second cultural strategy. How do most groups prevent this? How did Jews prevent this historically speaking?Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: Well, they have either. Cultural traditions or legislative bodies for punishing people within their communities so that they can, like if within the Jewish community there was some sort of a council or something like that, that could pass judgment on high profile individuals, like individuals within the [00:37:00] A DL offer some kind of exy communication or financial fines or some other punishment that shows we, the Jewish community, do not approve of this behavior.We do not approve of defending these individuals or what these ultra Orthodox communities are doing.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind, how did my cultural tradition handle this historically, because this is actually well documented. How did backwood people handle historically when somebody in our culture was making themselves a pest to people of surrounding cultures?Oh they typically tortured and killed them and left their body somewhere public. So everybody, ohSimone Collins: God. Wait, what is it? The backwards people in America did this. OhMalcolm Collins: yeah. They would, I mean, this is what like the regulators were, right? Like,Simone Collins: the regulators, is this some formal societal term?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They would have basically groups of, of young men would get together.If somebody had gone out and like griped a girl or something like that. And they would, torture them and, [00:38:00] and kill them and leave them hanging from a tree. And everyone would see and everyone would be like, I guess I’m not gonna do that again.Speaker 6: And I think this is one of those places where you can see my cultural biases, where they may, , clash with some other cultural groups we have in the right wing coalition show. Like when the United Healthcare CEO was killed, my first reaction was, oh, well that’s good, right? Like the legal system didn’t work.So, , you know, now we do step two. , I’d also note here that this idea of communities policing themselves. Is actually very normative. Most communities do the exact opposite of this instead of. Attempting to protect their own bad actors. They make a point of going out of their way to punish their own bad actors.So take rather than a cultural community. Let’s talk about like the whiter YouTube streamer community. Right? We have a bad actor like Johnny Somalia, , and Johnny Somalia. Is going to high trust countries and going around and [00:39:00] effing with people and pretty much the entire streamer community has been on board with doing everything that we in the wider community could to get this guy locked up.Okay. When he was arrested in Korea. The community donated a legal fund for his prosecution, alright? Sent people over there to help with that fund to help make sure he saw jail time, right? This is what Jews should be doing when a Jew acts like a bad actor. Not the exact opposite.Malcolm Collins: Now I’m not saying that this, that that Jews need to go as hard.Jews didn’t do that historically. They did the Jewish version of that, which is taking away someone’s money. Which I have avatar. I have to wait to actually actually yes, that is historically how these Jewish cohorts worked.Simone Collins: But no, you’re, you’re just, you must be describing though Jewish communities who are living in close [00:40:00] proximity, you know, like a, an insular Jewish community and that that is still what exists now.I think the problem is that an entire Jewish community is being criticized for, for exploiting the US government essentially. No,Malcolm Collins: no, no, no,Simone Collins: no. For leveraging open loopholes.Malcolm Collins: Welfare, welfare fraud is rampant among ultra orthodox Jews in the United States. Both welfare and housing Fraud is, Uhhuh is very widely reported.It’s very rampant bad acting.Simone Collins: Okay. Can I, can I steal, man, this, can I steal, man? This.Malcolm Collins: Okay, go.Simone Collins: Like, they’re only having the most Jewish response, right? What is Judaism? But like, okay, here’s the law, right? And then they’re like, great, okay. How am I gonna work around this? Oh, I’ll just put like a piece of metal thread around things or, or golden thread.Or I will you know, switch the, around this, this lampshade to work this way. Or, oh, I’m not allowed to let my hair. Show. Well then I’ll just wear a wig over my hair. And then that’s gonna be fine.Malcolm Collins: Totally [00:41:00] understand what you’re saying.Simone Collins: I totally understand. And so what, what they’re doing with the welfare fraud here is they’re like, oh, so the government has these rules.Okay, so the government’s giving this money to these organizations. Well, then I will run the organization and you’ll buy from it. And then we were all, and from it just leveraging laws and they just need to close these loopholes. Totally, totally. Only reason they exist, Simon, is they’re, they’re faulty.Malcolm Collins: I know you, you’re saying this, but you’re not thinking in the wider cultural context.Okay. I even promoted the idea of I’m okay if you can screw over the system and get away with screwing over the system, that is completely fine. Like culturally. Yeah. ShameSimone Collins: on the system,Malcolm Collins: shame on the system, but. If you get caught or shamed for exploiting the system. And then because this is, this is the system working as it’s supposed to.The guy who got arrested, the Jewish guy who got arrested mm-hmm. That was the system working as intended. The guy, the, the community that was being shamed by the YouTuber. That was the system working as expected.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But then when your community says, oh, we got caught, the system tried to [00:42:00] prevent our fraud, and then you attack the agents of the system that tried to shut you down, now you make it the entire community an existentially damaging thing to have operating within that system.Simone Collins: That’s true. It it’s a bad strategic move. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s not a bad, it’s a, it’s a move that they can get around. So Judaism has like high councils of rabbis and stuff like that that they still use,Simone Collins: that exist betweenMalcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: Among sects.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: I,Simone Collins: I didn’t know that. And what’s,Malcolm Collins: what’s even more important is that these high rabbi councils and everything like that, the people who are going to listen to them the most are the ultra Orthodox Jews who have the biggest problem with these sorts of frauds.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So if they said, look, antisemitism’s exploding right now, and where antisemitism matters most is in the right, because the rights, the community that is looking like it’s allying was Israel over [00:43:00] Europe. Mm-hmm. It looks like it’s the long-term natural ally for the Jewish people. If it’s exploding within our community because of like an existential thing that there just doesn’t like Jews, what would you do if there was a subpopulation living within Jewish communities regularly screwing you over?And when you tried to do anything about it, they rounded the doors and tried to prevent you from doing anything about it. It’s like. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we know what you would do, right? Yeah. It’s not, ‘cause we’ve seen it, it’s not good before.Simone Collins: Good. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You deal with it and I respect you for dealing with it, but know that I hold myself to those same standards, right.And you would want allies that held themselves to those same standards. And this isn’t, again, Jews used to do this, which we’re gonna go over in a second. This isn’t even like, like you as a Jew could say, let’s go to one of these councils and promote the creation of some Jewish body mint for handling Exactly.This kind of thing. Right. And I’m gonna note this is actually existential for Judaism [00:44:00] to survive. AndSimone Collins: people say it’s, it’s a, I I totally get what you’re saying. I just don’t really know how to navigate around it. If, for example, so here’s this community, like what, I guess what you want the rest of, of all the Jewish communities to do is be like, oh.We’re not with them. We condemn their actions. They should not do this. It’s wrong. And of course, certainly not censor anyone who’s bringing to light what they’re doing.Malcolm Collins: You know, what they need to do is they need to. Be punishing and have a system for punishing, but also just in their own lives, socially punish the individuals who attempt to use the antisemitism card when something is clearly not antisemitism.Simone Collins: Okay. That’s fair. I, I, I, because I was like, I don’t know how you think this, this community for example, that wasMalcolm Collins: No, no. The bigger problem than this community mm-hmm. Than the fraud of this community is the individuals who are trying to stop the system from working as it’s supposed to.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They are the people who [00:45:00] got spent millions of dollars getting Trump to pardon a guy who had killed people.Right. Yeah. They are the people for a type of fraud that everyone on the right is pissed off about right now. Yeah. You can’t just let a guy sit in jail for doing fraud. Like, why, why is that such a problem? Right? Yeah. Like, they’re not even denying that he did it.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And let’s go over, because I wanna go over like what the a DL is saying here.The point I’m making, it’s the bigger problem isn’t the individual bad actors, it’s the larger community level organizations like the a DL, the meta conversation protect the bad actors from the system working as intended,Simone Collins: right? Yeah. And honestly, it goes against at least my like, stereotypical outsider take of Jewish law.Like if the game is work within the rules to your best advantage, you know, make the rules work for you, but then, you know, you get caught, then you, you, you lost the game. You need to be better at playing the system. They weren’t good enough. They got caught. Was yourMalcolm Collins: hand in, [00:46:00] in,Simone Collins: in, so like, my bad, I’m gonna have to try again.And, and the, the reaction isn’t. Oh no, definitely don’t catch me. Like that’s not how it works you to follow the rules. That’s the whole point. You follow the rules.Malcolm Collins: Well, and and the thing is, and the reason I keep pointing out is that Judaism used to have systems for dealing with this.Simone Collins: IMalcolm Collins: see. Is this is the law of Judaism.It just, these institutions collapsed a few centuries ago. Mm-hmm. Right? Like that doesn’t mean. That they are not historically accurate Judaism, right? Mm-hmm. And because of that, if you are a stickler Orthodox Jew, and we have a lot of Orthodox Jewish fans of this, you can work your way up. And I’m, we have a number of Orthodox fans who are Jewish Orthodox Jews, who are in positions of authority with, within these communities, do something about this, like advocate for recreating one of these institutions.Because if you don’t, and the reason I said that this is so existential for Judaism is it is not just existential for Judaism working alongside [00:47:00] right wing culture in the United States. It is existential for Judaism because we are your best long-term ally, right? Like we created the state of Israel basically, and we funded it up until this point and we regularly help you guys out, right?Like it is really stupid to piss us off. But in addition to all of that. If you cannot deal with this, Israel itself is going to collapse.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Because right now, ultra orthodox communities in Israel scam the state of Israel. Right. And, and OhSimone Collins: yeah. And that, that is a huge problem within the state of Israel itself.For sure.Malcolm Collins: And they are using that to out breeded their more economically and technologically conductive.Simone Collins: That’s a really, I didn’t even think about that. Yeah. That’s like, and already known in existing and very serious problem that does eventually need to be dealt with within the own Jewish community.That’s that. Oh, huh. And,Malcolm Collins: and worse than that, not only are they economically and technologically unproductive, [00:48:00] but they don’t even fight in your wars. Mm-hmm. They said you are economically and technologically productive people to die, to defend. Your land, they are scamming you. That is in any other country we would call that a scam.Okay. Now you can say, well, you know, it’s not technically a scam because they’re following all the rules. That thinking like Simone said, like it’s you, like follow in any other system we’d be calling a group that was doing that, scamming the system. We’d be like, this seems like a problem. They’re a negative externality on society.They disproportionately are involved in scams and welfare and living off the state and they don’t even fight in wards for us. Like what are we even doing here? Right. That community, because of their birth rates, is eventually going to make Israel irrelevant, right? Like Israel with its bright futures, Jews with their bright futures because of this homeland of Israel that they’ve been able to sort of create as a fortress nation.It has that bright future because of its [00:49:00] technologically and economically productive high fertility population. But if that population is drowned out in a democracy because it is a democracy in Israel by a population that doesn’t share their values that’s existentially threatening. And note here, I’m not talking about all Hawaii Jews, all ultra orthodox Jews.Many are sane and understand the problem but it is a, a, a, a good chunk of them. And if you could create a religious institution that was designed with exactly these two issues in mind, how do we prevent this one population in Israel from eventually tanking the state, state with the understanding that it’s in that population’s best interest as well.Like I’ve even talked to Jews in this population, just about the math that they are well aware of, of how effed they are when they become the majority of Jews in Israel. Like, they’re like, oh, well, it’s good for this reason and good for this reason, but obviously we’re going to have major military problems when that happens.We’re gonna have major economic problems when that happens. And, and they’re like, and then we will reform [00:50:00] parts of the system, but they’re not stupid. Okay. Looking ahead and being like, okay, maybe it worked. Like even if I’m only thinking from a proje perspective, I literally don’t care about how IF over outsiders or anything like that.Even if, I only think from Proje perspective, even if I’m only thinking from a proje perspective from one of these ultra orthodox communities that is living off of welfare.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right. I still care about the future of the Jewish peopleSimone Collins: and I Well, do you think so? Is this an issue ofMalcolm Collins: percent of antisemitism in youth?I could. This is a f*****g problem, right? Especially among your best and longest term allies.Simone Collins: Well, so is is, could this be then that the A DL. Isn’t actually trying to like advocate for or fight for Jewish safety or protection, but rather they, they’re experiencing mission creep and they’re just blindly and without any bigger picture, just reflexively going [00:51:00] after anyone who’s say Jew bad.And then they just like,Malcolm Collins: well, if that is the case, that there needs to be some institutional Jewish system to punish them. Okay. As people, not even as an organization, as individuals,Simone Collins: like all the donors to the AD L who are Jewish need to say, Hey, knock it off. This isMalcolm Collins: making No, no, no, no, no. That’s not, that’s too hard to do.What you need is an external Jewish legal body. Jews love legal bodies. That is meant to hunt down these types of anti-Jewish crimes, ag crimes that lead to the Jewish community being less secure, that are being performed. By individuals at organizations like the adl. Mm-hmm. And publicly be able to say, this individual is committing these acts, which are demonstrably dangerous to the Jewish community at large.And that they shouldn’t face x, y, and Z punishment for it to be on good terms with the Jewish community going forwards, likely fines or something like that. So let’s go over like what the A DL said, just so you understand [00:52:00] how they tried to frame this.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: I’m in frame, interested frame. They said it was anti-Semitic to frame some Orthodox Jewish communities as welfare, ECT addicted, welfare addicted.Simone Collins: But they are like, it seems like there are, it’s well known that many, many Orthodox Jewish communities are kind of like literally built around leveraging welfare systems because they can. I don’t blame anyone for like, to a certain extent, if, if the system is that broken where you can exploit it that much, then it’s, you know,Malcolm Collins: on the system Yeah.Mean overall Jews still pay more into the tax system than they disproportionately take out because there’s so many rich Jews. Mm-hmm. So like, there’s still useful to have around. They then said that, oh, using tropes about Jewish insularity greed slash money or dual loyalty, like, go back to Israel comments in the video is, but they are, they were demonstrably exhibiting.Greed and dual loyalty in the video and [00:53:00] these Orthodox Jewish communities going back to Israel and committing fraud against other Jews, would demonstrably fix the problem in, in the United States of this being a legitimate grievance. Mm-hmm. Right. Like the, these are not that, that’s one of the coolest things about Israel.You know, Jews have a place they can go if there being a problem now. Right. Other Jews even have a way to be like, okay, if this community is becoming too much of a problem in the United States and causing too many issues, then we can relocate them back to Israel, where at least they’re only causing these negative externalities among other Jews.If people are wondering why I am so existentially interested in, that’s what this video is, is me trying my best to come up with a solution to prevent what I see as extreme rates of antisemitism.Simone Collins: Yeah. And I wanna highlight just what you pointed out at the very beginning, just the proportion of young people today who actively harbor.anti-Semitic views because of this stuff that is happening now, and it’s only going to get worse. And definitely this is the sign to take action. I, I get that.Malcolm Collins: By the way, you’re, you’re looking for other instances if you’re like, well, this is [00:54:00] just one case. There’s a crazy case. Have you heard about the East Ramo Central School District in Rockland County, New York?Simone Collins: That’s the one that he, that that guy went to visit, isn’t it?Malcolm Collins: Mm. This wasn’t the one that he got in trouble for,. No, this was the one where an ultra orthodox population grew rapidly due to high birth rates. And their synagogue had them all vote in the local elections. And they ended up, even though they were a minority population, having control of the local school board and when I say they were a minority, the, the local school district was 91 to 95% black or Latino, and served 9,000 students.They then began to cut. All of the extracurricular and athletic activities. They then reduced kindergarten from full day to half day ended summer school, cut business electives and professional development by 75%. They then tried to sell a school building to a Jewish Yeshiva at under the costSimone Collins: of thatMalcolm Collins: building.OhSimone Collins: no, that’s terrible. That’s not a good look. That’s [00:55:00] not gonna make you friends. That’s really not gonna make you friends. Oh gosh,Malcolm Collins: no. This is one of the things where we need to be able to talk about this, like they’re playing within in the rules of the system. But part of the way the system works is when somebody is playing within the rules, but being a bad actor, that they are able to be called out by citizen journalists.If elements of the Jewish community attempt to stop citizen journalism,Simone Collins: that’s not playing by the rules. Yeah’sMalcolm Collins: existentially bad because now that person is saying. To target these individuals, you have to go through all of us. And all of us means a lot of Jews that want nothing to do with this and for those Jews, the bad actor that they need to target.And this is very important and very difficult than the way Jews typically react to. This is not like the worst actor here. The person who is most dangerous to the overall Jewish community is not the people doing this fraud. It is not the people taking control of the [00:56:00] school districts. It is not the people selling the school dis buildings to Yeshivas.It is the people trying to shut down the system from operating as it’s intended to. It’s the a DL. The a DL is at a, a level of magnitude, existentially worse for the Jewish community because they are the ones who makes this a problem for every Jew instead of just these Jews. Okay. The case I was talking about earlier of the, was the case of Philip Ethermore, a Miami Beach nursing home who did $33 million in fraud. Yeah. Really bad.Simone Collins: That’s impressive.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Wow. Wow. Okay. How in what, sorry. Keep going.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, if you wanna go into it what he did and, and no, Trump didn’t fully pardon him, but he shouldn’t have done anything for this guy. It’s good for the Jewish community that this guy faced punishment, right? Yes. Yes. That this guy [00:57:00] faced punishment before the Somalians did.Jews could go like, look, our community isn’t receiving special treatment.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Don’t then advocate explicitly for special treatment.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Right?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Prosecutors described him as driven by almost unbounded greed. So what really got me more than him, because again, I don’t really care what he did, he did something bad.The citizen, the system caught him like Somalians do something bad. The system catches him uhhuh. It’s when they then try to say, and now you have to arrest every Somalian if you want to arrest these Somalians, that it becomes existentially unworkable. Right. And alliance was the group becomes existentially unworkable.Simone Collins: Correct.Malcolm Collins: So specifically what happened is the organization is the Alpha Institute, a Habad Litic affiliated 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit, founded in 1981 by Rabbi Shalom Lisker at the direct action of Leav Rebe. Its core mission is to provide religious, spiritual, educational and advocacy for support for [00:58:00] Jewish inmates in the United States, of which there are roughly 85,000.This is really, really, really bad, right? If you are an organization that is doing something like this, you need to be asking their motto is, no one alone, no one forgotten, right? Like, we don’t leave our troops behind. We don’t let our people face jail time. You need to be asking as an organization, like before you go after and try to free a guy like this, you need to be saying, okay, but did he actually hurt people?Did he actually do something bad? Because if he actually did, and I now say you can’t jail any Jew unless you jail all Jews, you now are a much bigger threat to the wider Jewish community than this guy was. And again, this is about thinking. And, and Jews can be like, oh, well because of our traumas, we reflexively attempt to do X, Y, and Z.I understand that. Okay. [00:59:00] But the problem is, is this pattern of behavior. Ha And other groups don’t do this. Catholics don’t try to get people outta prison just ‘cause they’re Catholics. Okay. Yeah. The, the Protestants,ISimone Collins: thought when, when you described the organization, I figured it was like, well, we will, you know.Provide you with visitors while you’re in jail, serving time, you know, like build community for you or maybe like go in and provide education to people in jail and just do good PR for Jews in jail, but not like, get you out. That, that surprises me that that’sMalcolm Collins: what they do. Yeah. The core reason that this group did this, right?Or, or they say they did this. Okay. Is his father Morris Semus, an orthodox rabbi and nursing home magnate, donated 65,000, $65,000 to Alpha over several years starting after his indictment, by the way, so. To work on his case. But the family has long supported Habad causes. [01:00:00] And Jared Kushner, who oversaw much of the clemency, has longstanding personal ties within these habad networks.Mm-hmm. Now, Habad people who I have met have generally been pretty smart and forward thinking. They should have known how this was going to look, given how mad the right is right now over Somali stuff, they are anyone involved in this an existential threat to the Jewish community? They, they weren’t able to think for two seconds.How mad is the American right, right now about the Somali case? How are they gonna feel about this case?Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Right. And they didn’t feel that way. They didn’t have a fear about this because there’s no Jewish institutional organization or anything that could have come out and been like hey guys, do not do this right now.This is going to damage, could, could this, could this come damage to the Jewish community?Simone Collins: What if Jewish organizations neverMalcolm Collins: felt like they had the, the to, to go into the [01:01:00] final thing here, which is, okay, how Jews historically handled this stuff, how they should handle this stuff in the future,Simone Collins: though, I, I do wanna ask what if, what if Jewish organizations like these never thought they had allies on the rightMalcolm Collins: or left?And, and a note here when I’m like, when I was talking about like Jews being like, oh, well, you know, historically we had this stuff and we just don’t have it anymore. And, and, you know, trauma, sorry. But you say stuff like, oh, trauma in our community, like we can’t not do it, blah, blah, blah.I’m like, look, I understand it’s hard to to create institutions to change your culture, but Jews have done it before you can do it again. And if you look at the rise and the speed of the rise of antisemitism, it is existential that you find a way to do it. This is not me ragging on the Jewish community.This is me saying Jews are useful allies for many reasons to me and my personal agenda. But you are also from the position of populations like [01:02:00] this fertility rate was in Israel and this phenomenon in the United States and the rise of antisemitism in the US at an existential risk. Right now, if this continues a 25% antisemitism rate, that could be 50, 60%.Oh yeah. And if it continues to rise at this rate in like 20 years, like you don’t have time to deal with this. Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You have people marching through American streets saying from the river to the sea, you need the other side. That doesn’t mind that stuff still in your camp. Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Now to to note here you had organizations like the Kelly organized Jewish councils and rabbinical courts bit din, which actively provided and policed economic crimes against Gentiles.The motivation was practical self-preservation. If you committed fraud against Christian or a Christian government, obviously that could trigger pogroms or expulsions or even collective punishments. Yeah. Examples includes, so this is how they [01:03:00] did it. Fines or Sherman and shaming, repeated or notorious fraud.Dishonest business practices, counterfeiting or overcharging non-Jews could result in monetary fines paid to the victim or the community. Public shaming or full serum, a social and religious ban that was devastating. No one could do business with you, marry your kids, et cetera. Nice Jewish legal codes and communal records from the period show that this was done precisely to deter action against their group.And DIC and medieval enforcement that tel food and later codes, EG maimonide and shall arch record bit din handled cases of theft and fraud from gentiles stealing even trivial amounts from non-Jews as a Torah level. Theft In practice, communities would impose severely strict penalty penalties on Jews who performed.Even trivial fraud or misrepresentation against Gentiles. And they did this [01:04:00] not because they wanted to protect Gentiles, but because they wanted to protect Jews.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because they, they think evenMalcolm Collins: news atSimone Collins: thatMalcolm Collins: pointSimone Collins: did a lotMalcolm Collins: of, why Malcolm, can you not hear me? To break down? A large part of this had to do with the the Jewish, tite levy thing, and he basically destroyed the Jewish community for like a century. If you’re not in the Jewish, like Judaism almost died like at the end of this period. And the rabbinic circles sort of lost a lot of their institutional power and things began to fall apart. And a number of these organizations essentially weren’t even able to pay the taxes that they owed to like the government because the government was supposed to be handling stuff from them.And so they essentially fell apart. And that’s, that’s bad when you still have Jewish organizations who attempt to protect every Jew. Any final thoughts? Simone?Simone Collins: I don’t think you can hear me.Malcolm Collins: You’re muted, by the way.Simone Collins: I’m not muted. That’s theMalcolm Collins: problem. You’re muted still. You’re stillSimone Collins: I know. I’m not muted.I’m, I’m actually notMalcolm Collins: muted. I can’t hear anything. Can’t hear anything.Simone Collins: I [01:05:00] know, I know. Can’tMalcolm Collins: hear anything.Simone Collins: I think it’s are, are youMalcolm Collins: unable to unmute? I, it’s okay. Is there’s sun in theSimone Collins: Look. I. Muted. I’m notMalcolm Collins: muted. Okay. Still can’t hear you.Simone Collins: It’s, it’s a, it’s a mic problem.Malcolm Collins: Do you think you’re unmuted? Can you hear me?Simone Collins: I know I can hear you. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Come in here and give your final thoughts.Simone Collins: Well, I think actually I can be heard, soMalcolm Collins: I can, I have no idea what you’re saying. You are completely muted.Simone Collins: I’ll call you, I’ll call you. Hold on.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: So I, my mic is being picked up in the recording. You just can’t hear me for whatever reason from your computer, so, okay.Malcolm Collins: I’ll just let you talk then.Simone Collins: Yeah. I agree with you that this is really important to address and I really hope that something can be done, but I feel like maybe things have gotten balkanized to the point where Jewish communities feel like they, they can’t actually control this.Maybe I’m wrong.Malcolm Collins: I think you’re wrong. I [01:06:00] think from what I’ve seen Jewish communities can adapt. They’re not stupid. They at least realize the problem of growing antisemitism. Mm-hmm. And Jewish communities cannot control, or they can try to, but it’s increasingly not working because unfortunately they’re using the tools that the wokes adopted.And now the woke tools work in reverse. They, they cannot control the actions of people outside their community, especially when they are genuinely becoming. A threat to those external communities, right? SoSimone Collins: basically if, if a critical mass of influential Jewish leaders recognize that this is an existential threat to all Jewish communities and that every time something like this gets planned, threatened, whatever, pulled that immediately, they all collectively descend upon this person and are like, this is not cool.Undo right now we’reMalcolm Collins: gonna cut you off with some form of actual punishment that is agreed upon wide scale through like inter rabbinic courts. That, [01:07:00] that, and, and again, the core thing that needs to be punished is not the fraud itself, it’s the defense of the fraud.Simone Collins: Yeah. No, I, I agree with you and it’s, it’s really bizarre.Again, why was this, why was this terminated? Why did it ever end?Malcolm Collins: The courtsSimone Collins: people just got disorganized?Malcolm Collins: No, no, but basically they were too organized to the extent that they were in charge of like tax collection from the Jewish people. Oh. On behalf of the governments that they were part of. And some of them got like shut down when they can no longer had the authority to collect those taxes anymore.So they basically became too bureaucratic and they broke.Simone Collins: Okay, so yeah, basically a new practice has to be getting and a new, A new precedent and it would be better if it was a lightweight, reflexive reaction to defensive bad actors instead of some complicated, larger governing body. Per my, yeah, per my view then.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Wow. I mean, I didn’t know how egregious some of those cases were and [01:08:00] I fully welcome anyone. I mean, I think that many cases of welfare fraud could be construed as like white cat hacking. They’re hacking the system, they’re showing vulnerable. Absolutely. AndMalcolm Collins: again, I’m not, the keySimone Collins: thing to make it white hat is when the vulnerability is exposed, the vulnerability gets fixed.You caught me. We’re good. Cat and mouse game continues. But like the whole point of a cat and mouse game. Is it when the cat finds a mouse, cat eats mouse mouse gone.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. You don’t then say, as the mouse, you have to eat all the mice if you want to eat this one mouse, because now you are a problem for all mice.Simone Collins: Well, I feel like the metaphor falls falls apart at that point. I, I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think that that maybe, you know, as much as we didn’t really talk about it, this issue also extends to the Somali community. I think that, for example, Elman oar, sorry, Elman. Han Omar. Yeah. It was, was a huge problemMalcolm Collins: for the SomaliSimone Collins: community, but I don’t care about, ‘cause like, they need to be like, [01:09:00] we, we disavow this, this is disgusting, but like, I think this, this, but your advice applies to all communities.You know, any community that’s like,Malcolm Collins: yeah. I mean obviously Aidan’s a Somali community, the, the, the Somalians who defend the obvious Somalian fraudsters need to be punished more like as a cultural strategy for survival more than the fraudsters themselves.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: That, yeah,Simone Collins: because the fraudsters, it’s easy to like write off anyone who did bad thing and, and be rid of them.But the ones who tried to defend that are the ones that put everyone at risk. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: I guess it’s not too dissimilar from the covenant of the sons of men the AI alignment proposition you present, which is basically we attack anything that becomes an existential threat to all of our ability to be free to exist.And this is a micro version of it. When you see someone is posing an existential threat, all bets are off. We drop what we’re doing, we stop them and then we can move forward once [01:10:00] that threat has been dealt with. And that’s what you’re seeing here and that’s why you pay so much attention to it because you are uniquely attuned to existential threats arising.And now you see it arising like you didn’t care about it when it was Somalians. ‘cause what investment do we have in that community? But when you see it, this happening with, I don’t care what happens to theMalcolm Collins: Somalians, likeSimone Collins: Somalians, I mean, we don’t have an association. We have no investment, we have no like interest.We don’t feel like they’re gonna take to the stars. And, and you know, whatever. They don’t seem to be very involved with anyone who’s not their own community.Malcolm Collins: They’re not, are, they’re not culturally aligned with me. I have no cultural similarities to them. I have a lot of cultural similarities to Jews.Yeah. Like obviously I, and, and Jews produce a lot of technology and economic benefits for the United States and have a lot of military strengths, which is useful for our future plans if we stay allies. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I get it. The, so like, obviously I care what happens to the Jew. I Somalians are doing this too, but like I just said, I’m like, okay, well then get rid of all the Somalians, right?Like if they’re, if they’re gonna defend this, like, and, and at the rates that they’re [01:11:00] doing it at like this, but the, it’s a little different from the Somalians. So the Somalians, it, it looks like within some Somalian communities it is the majority of the Somalian, it was something like 65% were on welfare or something like that.Within Jewish communities, it is actually an extreme minority that are these types of I Orthodox Jews.Simone Collins: I disagree because they’re like some cities where the entire way of life is built upon this kind of economicMalcolm Collins: system.Simone Collins: Yeah. So you’re wrong about that. I think it, it may be even worse in some of these, in some of these cities where, because like literally the entire economy runs off of those dynamics, which is why I was like.Maybe this is an issue. Like we can’t, you can’t be like, well knock it off guys. ‘cause it, it’s literally like, like, what, what do you want them to do? Like, they, they literally will do this to the death, I guess. ‘cause like they, they have no other way of making money now. They all have like nine kids. What are you gonna do?Like,Malcolm Collins: right. But I mean, we, we, we, we’ve, we’ve, and I, and I point out here [01:12:00] when a, a Jews who’s watching this has been like, what do you mean your people just go out and shoot someone when they’re one of your own people and they’re screwing people over. What about the healthcare? CEO? That was a white guy.Mm-hmm. Right? Like he, he, the guy who shot him was a white guy. That’s the American way. Right? Like the people know in our video, I was not against that. I was like, yeah, this guy’s applying extra. Yeah.Simone Collins: I guess that’s, that’s a very salient example of that form of justice. Yeah. That was at least. I don’t know.It was an, an Italian right. Kid. And then a, I don’t know what the United Healthcare,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, adopted American culture. Right. You know, I think that this, this that, that when somebody from our community is effing over our community and outsiders deal with it,Simone Collins: I guess we could say that, that their shared culture was relatively affluent, educated American.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The guy who did it was a affluent, educated, wealthy like [01:13:00] kid who went to like boarding school and stuff like that, as far as I remember, like same basic cultural group. But it was that group policing itself.Simone Collins: Well, and the future is gonna be self-policing because government based policing is not gonnaMalcolm Collins: happen.Well, and yeah, and, and because groups that don’t police themselves, everyone is going to hate them, right? Like as, as people begin to see people more as groups, right? Like, as your individual identity of your community gets larger people are going to, like I will say right now within the techno puritan community, that is how we should police as extremely aggressively as possible.Simone Collins: And it’s not just about policing, it’s also about your reputation as a culture and as we’ll say possibly even like a techno fiefdom, right? Like in the future, let’s say if many mainstream governments fall apart, different contingents and groups are going to, like Venetian City states, trade with each other, engage in business with each other or not, like isolate each other from each other.And if [01:14:00] your community builds a reputation for exploitation. You will not be able to do trade. Like everyone’s gonna wanna work with the Mormons. Everyone dunks on the Mormons, but they’re all gonna wanna work with the Mormons.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: that’s aMalcolm Collins: good point.Simone Collins: And I think the problem with building reputations like these is people are in the future when everyone just runs off of cultural stereotypes and reputations be like, well, I’m not gonna work with the Jews.Whereas in the past when you, there was this policing system that you described, it was like, well sure I go to the Jews to get like money lending services and these other things because they’re trustworthy for that. They self-police. Like I can, I can predict that they will provide the service as as expected.And I think that that’s the thing is you have to think about what cultural stereotypes you are going to cultivate for your group in a post world police environment. Because that’s what we’re entering with demographic collapse. Right,Malcolm Collins: exactly. Okay. And it, and it can be done. That’s, that’s the other thing, just throwing up your hands and being like, no, Jews could [01:15:00] never fix this problem.You used to self-police, you used to have. Institutional solutions.Simone Collins: Well, and and they, this was when they operated in a system of no work police. HigherMalcolm Collins: threat.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Higher threat. Different groups needing to interact with each other and trade with each other and, and, and yeah. Interact in a low trust environment.We’re, we’re entering a very low trust future, meaning that you need to cultivate high trust, and if you defend bad actors, that’s destroying it. So I, now I get the bigger picture even more. And I mm-hmm. Appreciate you covering this even though we’re totally getting in trouble for this.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, because it is, it’s there, there are the bad actors out there and they are pervasive within Jewish communities.But we are signaling this, not because we want to hurt these communities, but because we’re trying to shock them into like, you, you actually, if somebody as Philio, Semitic as me is like, this is actually a problem, guys, then it’s actually a problem.Simone Collins: Yeah. [01:16:00]Malcolm Collins: And it’s not like a problem that like you can scratch your chin about and be like, that’s a very interesting problem.It’s like, if you care about the future of the Jewish people, you care about finding a solution to this problem.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I’m gonna go get the kids and make dinner. AndMalcolm Collins: what am I doing?Simone Collins: If we were make your Burmese chicken. Oh yeah.Malcolm Collins: Burmese McChicken.Simone Collins: If ever we were criticized for being the weird husband and wife who speak to each other in different rooms.It’s just highlighted now by the fact that we’re like, I’m talking on a phone. Hello.Malcolm Collins: Oh mygosh.Simone Collins: This is so bad. I don’t work out your mic. Because I’m seeing, andMalcolm Collins: it’s not of my mic problem, it’s clearly a stream yard problem because Stream yard’s Picking up my mic. Fine.Simone Collins: I I see that stream yard’s picking gum.Your mic. And do you see that it’s picking up my mic because it isMalcolm Collins: no,Simone Collins: the green dots be moving.Malcolm Collins: We’ll figure it out. I love you so much, Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too.Malcolm Collins: You’re amazing. And I actually would not at all be surprised given the number [01:17:00] of Habad because that seems to be the organization that would be best able to fix this.Jews that watch our show that one of them is gonna be like, yeah, reviving one of those institutions is probably a pretty good idea. Like, let’s get on that. Because, you know, if you, if you bring that idea to the right people with the right packaging and you’re able to set something like that up, that’s also a path to power for you and institutional power for you, right?Like, it’s, it’s not a bad play. It’s not like a cross that you have to die on. It’s a very useful thing to set up. ISimone Collins: know. It’s just, you know. Politicking be politicy. It’s not that easy, but this is an existential threat to your point, so I get it. Anyway,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Simone Collins: the kids are being All right. Love you suspiciously quiet, so, all right.Byebye.Simone Collins: I cannot, I still though, I, I can’t get over Torsten Seeing [01:18:00] Wannabe by the Spice Girls a music video of it, you know, like, you know, the OG music video and then coming up to me and being like, mommy, this is a song about friendship.Malcolm Collins: He said that.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: This is a song about friendship,Simone Collins: song about friendship.Malcolm Collins: If you be my lover, you gotta get with my friends. Yeah. Which is also,Simone Collins: it is like, it really is a song about friendship. It’s true.Malcolm Collins: It is a song about friendship. Yeah. Yeah. I I,Simone Collins: no one’s gonna meet the, that’s that specification for being yourMalcolm Collins: love. What’s funny is, is that it is still true for like, progressive culture.Like, you wanna have sex with someone, you gotta have sex with their friends. Like, that’s the way those communities work these days.Simone Collins: Oh God. Yeah. If you, the Polly Reed of wanna be Girls. Yeah. They’re all, they’re all allMalcolm Collins: Polly. If you wanna be my love No,Simone Collins: that’s like, that’s like the Dallas Poly community that we knew.Yeah. Where it was just this like matriarchy where they would switch out studs.Malcolm Collins: No, no. That was, she’s talking about this was really interesting. So, like. As Simone and I had mentioned like earlier when we were more progressive [01:19:00] we were like technically open to sleeping with other people. We just didn’t really indulge in it.But we like hung out with these communities and so we were very familiar with the various poly communities in the areas where we lived. There’sSimone Collins: someMalcolm Collins: ofSimone Collins: those fun people, like typically if you meet someone who’s poly, they’re probably also. Pretty smart in doing some interesting work. I don’t know what toMalcolm Collins: say.Some of them, I mean, this is, this is the ones who we met who were like that keep in mind that we sort of filter who we meet. And it depends on the area. The poly people I’ve met in like San Francisco and like Portland and stuff, they’ve all like total burnouts, a lot of them. ISimone Collins: don’t know, as far as I know, the people I know in, in the Bay Area who are poly are some of the smartest and highest achieving people, so,Malcolm Collins: oh.So I also know some smart ones and stuff like that, but they’re not on the typical poly dating scene, whereas the poly dating scene in Dallas was actually more like smart high agency people, was really good jobs.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But it was incredibly interesting because it was basically run by a cabal of very attractive women who just [01:20:00] controlled, who was invited to the parties, who got to do what, who, you know and they would just like, and, and I think that that’s one of the reason why.So high, high status. Mm-hmm. Because these women, they approached it very much with sort of like a backwoods because, you know, Texas is, is part of, specifically Dallas is often seen as the capital of the greater Appalachian region, even though it’s not in the Appalachians because it’s the largest city and economic hub that’s in that cultural region.And they approached it very sort of ruthlessly and economically, which is really interesting, where they’re like, well, we are hot women. We can control access to sex. If other hot women decide to become polley in the Dallas area, they basically join our cabal and we will use this cabal to ensure that only really competent, successful, and attractive guys are sleeping with anyone in the poly space.Simone Collins: Yeah, actually that’s, that’s a really good point, is all the guys we met that were in that space. We’re very pro-social, whereas you often get a lot of bad [01:21:00] actor dudes. Not, not universally obviously, but there are more bad actor dudes in other poly circles who are just exploitative and, and messed up and like manipulative.And these guys were just like, just. Kind of nice. We can,Malcolm Collins: dynamics are entirely different. You look at the polys scene in, in San Francisco, and it’s like super toxic because it’s basically a bunch of like effective altruists. Watch our episode on the ea to who pipeline who attempt to groom young women who first enter the movement with like logic.Like, well, it gives me pleasure and it gives you pleasure. How could it be wrong? Right. And it begins to look cool to these young women and they get into it and then older women in the space come up to them and they’re like, Hey I think this guy is using you. And then they’re like, oh, this older woman’s just trying to make guard.You know, like, and because that’s what the guys will say, or something like that. Yes. TheySimone Collins: won’t listen. Yeah. EvenMalcolm Collins: when they try to protect each other, the guys have moved up in this community through some other means, like they’ve gotten high level positions and like that’s some effective altru org, so it’s hard to kick them out or something like that.And so it creates [01:22:00] this dynamic where you get bad actors all over the place and because the community isn’t ruthless about expelling people. Yeah. And. Dine if a guy tried to say, because most of the guys in the Dine are like, finance bros and stuff like that. Tried to say something like oh, well she’s just mate guarding this, you know.Attractive woman who’s higher status than you in the community telling you not to get with me. That woman would then be like, okay, now you guy who just said that, like it goes through the Whisper network really fast, you’re not invited.Simone Collins: Yeah. It was kind of like the Bachelor, you know, you get handed Rose or something.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And everyone knows not to engage with you. So it’s weird that in this one scenario, like matriarchy seems to keep the entire system stable.Simone Collins: Yeah. It was so cool. It was so weirdMalcolm Collins: and cool. Matriarchy and hyper gamy, keeping a system stable in a non-traditional structure. Okay. Whatever.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That was fascinating.I wonder if it’s still stable or if it’s basically collapsed at this point. It says,Simone Collins: I know, I know. Well, some of the people in it that, that I, we, we had known had moved away, you know, moved to other [01:23:00] cities and gone on to become parents and stuff. So I, I doubt that they’re still that involved in it. ButMalcolm Collins: yeah,Simone Collins: I don’t know.And I, I think I got the impression when we were hanging in that circle too, that there were a lot of really new entrants who were just young and kind of having that experience. For a while and you kind of get through it. Like maybe for some people being poly, is this postgraduate equivalent of being briefly lesbian in college?You know, and then you kind of get it outta your system and move on and enter committed relationships. I don’t know. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh, hold on. I need to ask a question, but you can keep talking.Simone Collins: I also love watching our kids dance too. Gangnam style. That is just God tier entertainment so good. But yeah, I’m trying to think if there’s anything that I haven’t told you yet about my trip to Austin.I, [01:24:00] I do have to say I really like the network of people there. You know, like I wish I could just tap into that social network all the time. I. That and like hang around Light Haven in Berkeley. I think it would be lovely. But I don’t want to fly out to these places and I don’t want to live in either of those places.So this is the price we pay. It’s just us and the chickens over here, and that’s okay.Malcolm Collins: All right.Speaker 11: We’re just about to head back from Austin where we filmed a round table, uh, with Chris Williamson and two other demographers, line Stone and well documentarian Steven Shaw and I can’t wait to get back and get home to the kids. It was good to be in Austin, but I really like our home in Valley Forge.It’s pretty great there and. Travel just isn’t as [01:25:00] fun as it used to be. I don’t know. The appeal has worn off, so I’m glad I was able to make it out. I’m glad I was able to do it all for one backpack for the, the two of us because you got a lot of stuff, all the formula, all the diapers. There’s a lot there.Um, and the elevator in our hotel broke. This morning, so there was hauling this car seat down 11 floors, which was not my favorite moment. Yeah, it was not the best, but that’s over. And the round table, which was supposed to go for two hours, I think went for four. So hopefully that means it went well. Who knows?But, uh, it was really, really fun to have that conversation. Um, and I love that we get to do work that has us talking with really interesting, fun people and that yields opportunities like these, um, [01:26:00] ‘cause it’s a, it’s a perk. It’s, it’s not comfortable, but it’s interesting. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

🚨 The Southern Poverty Law Center — one of America’s largest “anti-racism” organizations — was caught funding the KKK and neo-Nazi groups with millions of dollars. In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the shocking DOJ indictment revealing how the SPLC used money laundering, fake entities, and paid plants to keep cartoonish racist organizations alive. Why? Because the “racism industrial complex” needs visible villains to keep the donations flowing.Topics covered:• How the SPLC funded the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally• The economics of fear-based nonprofits• Why much of today’s “far-right” extremism appears AstroTurfed• Nick Fuentes botting & relevance farming• The difference between real policy discussion and performative racism• How genuine conversation on race, immigration, and culture gets sabotagedThis is must-watch content for anyone tired of the endless outrage cycle.Show NotesThe Department of Justice’s Bombshell NewsThe Indictment* According to the indictment, some Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) donor funds were used to secretly pay leaders and members of racist, violent extremist groups, and at least part of that money was used to support their organizing and activities, including the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally.* The indictment alleges that, contrary to donor-facing representations about “dismantling” hate groups, SPLC used donor funds to pay a covert network of informants (“field sources” or “Fs”) who were themselves leaders or members of extremist racist organizations.Key uses of funds described:* Covert payments to informants embedded in or leading groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, National Alliance, National Socialist Movement, and American Front.* More than $3 million in SPLC funds were secretly funneled between 2014 and 2023 to these Fs associated with various violent extremist groups.* Funds were routed through fictitious entities and disguised bank accounts (Center Investigative Agency, Fox Photography, North West Technologies, Tech Writers Group, Rare Books Warehouse) to conceal that the money came from SPLC donor funds.* After those accounts were shut down, SPLC allegedly continued to pay Fs via ACH transfers labeled with disguised monikers such as “Rarebooks050” and “IPResearchCON050.”Examples of specific racist/extremist activities supportedThe document gives concrete examples where SPLC funds allegedly enabled or facilitated racist organizing or demonstrations, not just passive “information gathering.”* Unite the Right rally (Charlottesville, 2017)* F‑37 was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville.* F‑37 attended the event at SPLC’s direction, made racist postings under SPLC supervision, and helped coordinate transportation for several attendees.* SPLC secretly paid F‑37 more than $270,000 between 2015 and 2023.* This means SPLC funds, as alleged, were used to pay someone who actively participated in planning and logistics for a major racist demonstration.* Support to the National Alliance (neo‑Nazi organization)* F‑9 was affiliated with the neo‑Nazi National Alliance and served as an SPLC F for more than 20 years.* F‑9’s activities included fundraising for the National Alliance, while being paid more than $1,000,000 by SPLC between 2014 and 2023.* The indictment states that SPLC donation money was used “for the benefit of the individuals as well as the violent extremist groups,” which in this case includes a fundraiser for a neo‑Nazi organization.* Payments to leaders of other racist groups* F‑27: reported officer in the National Socialist Movement and Aryan Nations‑affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, secretly paid more than $300,000 (2014–2020).* F‑42: former chairman of the National Alliance, featured on SPLC’s “Extremist File” donation page, paid more than $140,000 between 2016 and 2023.* F‑30: leader of the National Socialist Party of America, former director of a faction of Aryan Nations, former member of the Ku Klux Klan; paid more than $70,000 between 2014 and 2016 while SPLC simultaneously used his “Extremist File” page to solicit donations.* F‑43: reported National President of American Front and convicted federal felon for participation in a cross burning; paid more than $19,000.* Another F described as Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America, and another as a Ku Klux Klan member married to an Exalted Cyclops, also received SPLC payments; one Klan‑connected F received more than $3,500 during litigation about Klan participation in an Adopt‑a‑Highway program.* Indirect funding to additional extremist leaders* The SPLC allegedly funneled more than $160,000 from a fictitious entity to F‑11, who then sent funds to various violent extremist group leaders, including a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.The press release“Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and National Socialist Party of AmericaA Grand Jury in Montgomery, Alabama, today returned an indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division filed two forfeiture actions to recover alleged proceeds of the organization’s fraud scheme. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated this case with assistance from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”“The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups - even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes. That is illegal – and this is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved.”The SPLC is a non-profit organization headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, whose mission, according to its website during the relevant time period, was to be a “catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.”According to the indictment starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent and extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction. Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.“Donors gave their money believing they were supporting the fight against violent extremism,” said Acting United States Attorney Kevin Davidson. “As alleged, the SPLC instead diverted a portion of those funds to benefit individuals and groups they claimed to oppose. That kind of deception undermines public trust and social cohesion.”Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups including:Ku Klux KlanUnited Klans of AmericaUnite the RightNational AllianceNational Socialist MovementAryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle ClubNational Socialist Party of America (American Nazi Party)American FrontAccording to the indictment, the objective of the scheme and artifice was to obtain money via donations through materially false representations and omissions about what the donated funds would be used for.In order to covertly pay the individuals, the SPLC opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities. The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the individuals. In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.A conviction will result in the forfeiture of financial gains from the alleged illegal activities.Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel made the announcement in Washington.The details contained in the civil forfeiture complaint are allegations only.Updated April 21, 2026”The Southern Poverty Law Center’s ResponseThey stopped posting on X in 2024 but in hindsight their posts look like reports of all the “alt-right hate” they’re funding lolTheir response on YouTube* In a pre‑indictment video statement, interim CEO Bryan Fair said SPLC had been informed it was under a federal criminal investigation focused on its “prior use of paid confidential informants” to infiltrate “extremely violent groups.”* He framed the paid‑informant program as a dangerous but necessary tool to gather credible intelligence on white supremacist and extremist groups that pose serious threats to communities.SPLC leaders have said they will “vigorously” defend the organization, its staff, and its work against what they describe as baseless or politically driven accusations.They characterize the program of paid informants as a longstanding effort to infiltrate extremist groups in order to monitor threats and prevent violence, not to support or promote those groups.Interim CEO Bryan Fair has publicly defended the payments as necessary to place people at personal risk inside violent organizations and said information from informants was shared with law enforcement and “saved lives.”The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Salaries* Margaret Huang – President / CEO* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 466,934 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 55,806 USD* Derwyn Bunton – Chief Legal Officer* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 264,277 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 37,801 USD* Lashawn Warren – Chief Policy Officer* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 256,191 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 37,435 USD* Seth Levi – Chief Program Strategy Officer* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 251,745 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 36,151 USD* Ann Beeson – Chief Program Officer* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 249,191 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 47,519 USD* Sybil Hadley – General Counsel* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 242,869 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 47,089 USD* Cherry Gamble – Chief Development Officer / Interim Chief of Staff* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 240,721 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 47,208 USD* Arun Kandel – Chief Information Officer* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 239,894 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 46,924 USD* Twyla Williams – Chief Human Resources Officer* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 237,861 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 47,505 USD* Erika Mitchell – Treasurer / CFO* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 225,020 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 45,658 USD* Shannon Farley – Interim Chief of Staff* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 210,108 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 43,710 USD* Julian Teixeira – Chief Communications Officer* Reportable compensation from SPLC: 190,894 USD* Other compensation from SPLC/related organizations: 28,552 USDEpisode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am beyond thrilled to be here with you today because we got the craziest of crazy news.Oh my God. The KKK was funded by the Southern Poverty Law Center. For people who don’t know, that is one of the largest Anti-Defamation. Anti-racism organizations in the United States. This is the core leader and shield bearer of wokes with the only organizations that even come close being things like I wanna say the, the, like a DL right.And, andSimone Collins: they’re worse than the a DL. They’re, they’re more, they’re more extreme and active than the a DL, fromMalcolm Collins: my view. Yes. This is like the leaders of the woke. This is, this is woke Kings of America,Simone Collins: the ultimate fighters of racism, presumably,Malcolm Collins: and not to a small amount. It was literally millions of dollars, multiple.Millions of dollars. And when you consider the amount of funding that something like the K, k, K [00:01:00] is likely actually getting from people, because if you’re employable or the type of person who can make millions of dollars, you typically don’t fund the K, KK.Simone Collins: No,Malcolm Collins: because well, one thing, you wanna keep your source of income even if you secretly agreed with them.And even if you didn’t, very few people who are like. Competent and make a lot of money are that level of racism in in the brand of the K, k, KSimone Collins: oh yeah. And also if, if you are actually super racist and you have a lot of money. You would secretly fund acts of racism in other ways? Like these organizations are notMalcolm Collins: effective.Simone Collins: Yeah, they’re not actually effective in driving racism. Like maybe you’d buy like Russian bot farms to fuel, like racist hate or something. Maybe pay some like Pakistani people to like, you know, spam with a lot of clips that are racist. X and YouTube and Instagram, but not. Not the K, k, K. It’s so weird.Not like the National Socialists in in America. [00:02:00] What are you doing?Malcolm Collins: This may have been, and we’ll be going into this the core thing, keeping the lights on at the KKK. Mm-hmm. And note here, it wasn’t just the KKK, you know, the Charlotte V riots that the left freaked out at forever. And then they play that clipped piece of Trump saying good people on both sides, and then saying very explicitly, but I do not mean the racist.Right. Like obviouslySimone Collins: they leave that out. No, no one knows about thatMalcolm Collins: party. No, they leave that out, right? Because they lie. That’s the only way that their side seems like the good guys. But it turns out that the racists who were at that rally were bused there. By the Southern Poverty Law Center’s dollarSimone Collins: and or were paid plants by the Southern Poverty Law Center.Malcolm Collins: Well, they say paid plants, but I wanna go into how plausible is it that these people were actually paid plants and that they were not paying to just keep the lights on within these organizations so that they would have a reason to protest, to ask for more power, to ask for more money to [00:03:00] accumulate.You know, government and bureaucratic resources in power,Simone Collins: because this exemplifies something we say about nonprofits over and over. If you see a nonprofit that makes its money from donations and has survived for any non-trivial period of time. This is not something that exists to, to serve its mission.This is an organization that specializes in raising money. And if you’re raising money, presumably for a cause, the bigger and badder and scarier, the, the battle you’re fighting seems the more effective you will be at your actual functional purpose, which is raising money. So the Southern Poverty Law Center, it, it’s existentially dependent on the existence of.Cartoonish racism in the United States. And this really exemplifies just how terrible it is to be an organization that depends on donations for survival.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think, and I’ve said this and this is one of the things we’re gonna go over in this episode, is that [00:04:00] most of the cartoonish racism w.States, it’s now clear is actually AstroTurf by leftist. Yeah. And we’re gonna go into evidence of, for example, Nick Fuentes. Over half of his viewership maybe around 75% looks to be Botted. Oh. Really? Yeah. I mean the, the left has basically made him relevant again by continuously publishing pieces on him and doing, which we will go into.A huge amount of botting of him, because obviously this isn’t right wing people botting him, he keeps telling people to vote against Republicans, right? Like he’s one of the biggest annoyances to the Republican party. The group that benefits the most from his voice going silent is Republicans, right?Mm-hmm. And so what we’re basically gonna point out is, is this is just not a, a widely held position among any portion of the base. There aren’t these cartoonish racists out there anymore. Yeah. At least in terms of like any, any organized capacity, any large ground swell capacity, there [00:05:00] are people with specific racial grievances.Like the tearing down of historic statues. But anyone could see why that would cause somebody to be upset or people taking jobs for undermarket rages or certain groups acting in ways that are unfair, like, promoting their own over outsiders, like happens sometimes with Indian immigrants and people can complain about that.Or crime waves associated. With Catholic immigrants, which we have another wave of right now. And every time we get a wave of those, we get a huge organized crime. Boom. Point out like the mob, the mafia, just a Catholic immigrant thing. But these are all, these are all his like just things that we, the US have done historically.The cartoonish racism. And again, people will be like, oh, cartoonish racism is historic to America. That might be a whole other episode is, is how actual were people in the past? Yeah. And we’ve pointed out when you actually go to writings and stuff like that during the period of active slavery, there was a lot of cartoonish [00:06:00] racism.But the average person was probably significantly less racist than you would imagine from what you are taught in schools today. Mm-hmm. And after slavery was over you know, you go to the 1950s and stuff like that. In some ways the average, like if you’re contrasting it with the white economic situation.Today is significantly better when compared to the black economic situation than the two were in like the 1950s, for example. Mm-hmm. Same with racially motivated violence. If you look at black people who were killed from 1950 to 1960, I go to 1950. ‘cause that’s when people see as like the, the cartoonish.You know, whatever period.Simone Collins: Exactly.Malcolm Collins: And you contrast that and we have other videos where we like go into all the numbers on this with a number of black people who were killed or racially motivated crimes in the past 10 years. It’s something like five x higher in the last 10 years. Yeah. Which I think thingsSimone Collins: have not improved.Malcolm Collins: Surprise a lot of people. Well, no, it’s not that they’ve not improved. It’s that we might have been sold a false history about. Racial tensions in the United States. Mm-hmm. Which [00:07:00] some people and I, I’ve noted a lot of people who are these young men who are cued and tricked by these leftist campaigns into believing things that work against the broader rights goals.Is, is they sort of adopt a conservatism that isn’t a indicative of any real historic thought pattern, but is much closer to what a woke progressive Cartoonishly depicts their conservative villain to be. Mm-hmm. You know, that’s, that’s like I point out like, nick Fuentes ideology is completely incoherent.He’s a Catholic integralist who is upset about Catholic, Hispanic immigration into the United States. If you are unaware of what the end goal of Catholic nationalism is, it’s that the whole world is under one Catholic government, right? The the Vatican, right? If he. You [00:08:00] cannot want borders to stop existing and all be under one giant global Catholic government and be upset about a majority Catholic immigrant population.That makes no sense. That is completely incoherent,Speaker: Specifically, what I mean by that is the entire world existing underneath a Catholic government being the ideal form of government, presumably means that the United States would only be better from your perspective as it became more Catholic. And you can’t say, well, they’re a different type of Catholic from a different region.Because the end goal is all regions under one government,Malcolm Collins: but. Catholicism is seen as like the most bog standard christiany form of Christianity to Wokes. So I’m gonna go with that. And being racist, well, I’m scared of racist, so I’m gonna go with that. And I bet these cartoonist racists really hate Mexicans, so I’m gonna go with that.And I also [00:09:00] point out here Catholicism more broadly. Generally like institutionally, one of the least racist forms of Christianity. And it has had to be given the way that it proselytizes. Yeah. So even the idea of being Catholic and a racial supremacist is a totally incoherent ide ideology.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, have you. Seen how Catholicism has spread, how there’s this constant interest in trying to be like, oh, you know, you’ve always been Catholic. You’re one of us. Like it’s one of the most inclusive religions in the entire world. Insane.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like all your local gods we’re actually saints and you just made a mistake.And we can, we can work with that. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: So that is. And, and this is us. People who are typically on the show are seen as anti Romans or anti Catholics, right? You know, saying this right? Like it is not a racist religion. The Vatican is constantly putting out tracks about how we need no borders.We need, you know, let more immigrants in. This is [00:10:00] constant, like this is constantly coming from this pope. The last Pope. This is like mainstream. So what, what, the point I’m making here is a lot of these young people. And I, when I, when I talk about somebody like Nick Fuentes or some of these people who are funded by these organizations I’m not saying that they didn’t come to these positions on their own but Nick Fuentes even talks about how he came to his position.It wasn’t through logic, it was through feeling pushed into these positions. Mm-hmm. By what’s his name?Simone Collins: Ben Shapiro.Malcolm Collins: Ben Shapiro, and other people who constantly went after him. And it’s like. I can,Simone Collins: how seemingly out of nowhere before he was famous or big.Malcolm Collins: Oh, we’re gonna do a different episode on the Jews where we go into, like, the Jews are causing a lot of problems for themselves right now and Jewish.Communities need to like they are minting, antisemites. And if you look at Nick Fuentes history and how he was turned into an antisemite, you can see how any like young person could have been [00:11:00] radicalized by the way that. Ben Shapiro using e enormous power compared to what Nick had at the time attempted to isolate and freeze him out.And there’s some people who back down when you do that to them. But there’s a lot of people, especially people from young white male cultures in the United States that if you do that to them, they are only going to double down you, you that, that, that is, that it like definitionally, there is nothing you could have done to him that would’ve forced him to double down more.Simone Collins: Huge tactical mistake.Malcolm Collins: Yes. A massive tactical mistakes that’s being made across Jewish issues right now, which, separate episode, because that one’s going to piss off a lot of people. It’s, it’s bad. It’s bad. But I wanted to go into this because what I wanna understand is one, who are they funding?What were they doing right? How did they think this would work for people who wanna say no? No, no. Genuinely they were just trying to get information on these organizations. That, that’s the biggest question I have. Were they, like, were they doing what they’re [00:12:00] saying they were doing, or were they actually just trying to fund the opposition?So, and, and opposition existed so that their stupid flywheel of money could go on forever. Right. Have you looked into the, the cases of this Simone? Like, are you familiar? I have like, what’s your takeSimone Collins: on it? Yes. Yeah. BeforeMalcolm Collins: we go,Simone Collins: what’s my take on, like, what’s actually going on? I, I think that they, they reasoned internally to themselves that they were.Putting plants and informants inside these organizations and or working with people who said that they would be willing to serve as such for them. Mm-hmm. But I do not think that functionally that’s what they ended up doing. And it really. Maybe without fully consciously acknowledging it, they were just fueling the racism themselves.We, we had experienced personally someone who was acting as an undercover plant for the UK’s equivalent of the Southern Poverty Law [00:13:00] Center called Hope Not Hate.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And so we know that organizations do this. They make up fake identities and they, yeah. Clearly, you know, fund these people. They give, they give them budgets to go and try to embed with racists.But then we see, we saw the other end of it in the most charitable interpretation of this. You know, one in which funding wasn’t used to fuel bad activity. Right. Which we know it was, we know it was used to transport people to the, the Charlottesville protests. We know it was used to do actual concrete, naughty things as it were.But still what we were, what what, what happened with us was the, the plant from Hope, not Hate, that interacted with us acted like they were a prospective investor. But they were like super racist and kind of like kept dog whistling to us about sort of being some kind of supremacist. And like they wanted to give us money now.They never gave us money. They never funded us. So Hope [00:14:00] not hate was not doing that, but they were still actively like shifting what could have been an Overton window. Like our world, they were trying to communicate like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, they,Simone Collins: I have money and if you guys lean into my racist messaging, then you can have money too.Malcolm Collins: Which, yeah, but they were basically actively trying to make the prenatal list movement a more racist movement in ev in everything that they did at everything that they went to.Simone Collins: And this is the most charitable interpretation where no money was actually given, where this wasn’t used to fund any, any naughty, bad stuff.It was stillway,Malcolm Collins: It’s, this is stuff that we, you know, we’ve already seen from organizations like hope Not Hate that they. Embedded people in the prenatal movement to try to make the movement with promises of future funding more racist. Now we pushed back against that. That is clear in the hope not hate documentation of what happened here, where we’re like no.Obviously they don’t, they don’t. Publish that part, but it’s pretty obvious given that they weren’t able to get us saying anything racist. [00:15:00] That we pushed back pretty hard on his racist stuff.Simone Collins: But let’s look at, so in terms of this Southern Poverty Law Center, did, did you look at the indictment from the Department of Justice?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And the claims madeMalcolm Collins: so.Simone Collins: Because the indictment shows that this is just so much worse than what we had experienced from an embedded, you know, again, charitably interpreted, embedded plant trying to exposeMalcolm Collins: things. Well,Simone Collins: no, it’s soMalcolm Collins: much worse. And, and to me, I think it’s implausible that they were just trying to get information.Simone Collins: Yeah. So in the indictment, they, they they anonymize the secret plants, you know, that were put and they give them, theyMalcolm Collins: probably are because we found thatSimone Collins: Oh, that’s great. But in terms of the Charlotte, the Charlottesville plant. There’s just no way that they didn’t fuel things happening. So they call this one F 37 in the indictment.Mm-hmm. And F 37 was. Okay, if allegedly, they’re a Southern Poverty Law Center, they, nevertheless were a member of the online Leadership chat group [00:16:00] that planned the 2017 Unite the Right Event in Charlottesville. They, they participated in planning it. They attended the event at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s direction.They made racist postings under their supervision and helped coordinate transportation for several attendees without their participation. It is plausible that maybe the event would not have happened. Because I could even see, again, if I go back to the, you know, our interaction,Malcolm Collins: a plan, no, I mean, it’s, it’s worse than that.It wouldn’t have happened. What would’ve happened is it would’ve just been a normal right wing event, right wing protest against racialist overreach against. Whites in America, which the leftists regularly do, and is something worthy of protesting.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: But they come in with this explicit racist messaging so that they can discount a a protest.It’s over an issue that a lot of people care about.Simone Collins: Yeah. And it’s, it’s, [00:17:00] it’s been shown in so many different psychological studies that people. We’ll lean into norms set in a group. So if you have someone coming in and they’re just like saying all these racist things and stuff like. Especially if they’re charismatic.And, and funny and otherwise like genial you know, people might be like, yeah, sure, like whatever. Like, it makes me kind of uncomfortable, but I’m trying to fit in here. This is also a very known issue, like I think plants with the FBI and and other government organizations that have also been embedded to try to.Root out bad things like this then sometimes get implicated in crimes happening that would not have otherwise happened because they’re like supplying guns and they’re, they’re supplying other things and they not going too far.Malcolm Collins: The thing that makes it implausible for me is so like, okay, so they, they have these plants in these organizations?Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: well, there are a few. Innocent things you could argue. Now, first note that it, the big red flag for me that, that this is not an innocent [00:18:00] explanation. Okay. Is they were funding fund fund funding this through money laundering.Simone Collins: Oh, yes. Yeah. So the Southern Poverty Law Center created these separate bank accounts with different names that were so, you know, like, oh, what were the names of some of them?They were so suss. They, they were, they created fictitious entities called the Center Investigative Agency and Fox Photography, and Northwest Technologies and Tech Writers Group and Rare Books Warehouse to conceal the money that came from the donor funds from this, this nonprofit. And then after the accounts were shut down they claim in the indictment at least.That the Southern Poverty Law Center then continued to pay these, these secret informants through Aach H transfers, which they labeled with disguised monikers, like rare books, 0 5 0, and IPR Research con 0 5 0.Malcolm Collins: So wait, they were caught and they went back to doing it after being caught.Simone Collins: I didn’t pick up [00:19:00] from the indictment, which I’m gonna link to in the show notes.I’ll put show notes in. It why they were, why those accounts were shut down. But I think at that point they were trying to hide it. Keep in mind and I don’t know, like in the response that they have posted to this indictment, it is an interim CEO giving the response. And the, that means that, like there’s the, the, the former CEO whose salary I have ‘cause I also wanna discuss how much of this leadership is, is making for this nonprofit.HowMalcolm Collins: much, how much?Simone Collins: So I think something happened with leadership. Maybe they saw this coming or they knew about the indictment. They must have known about the indictment and that this was coming. So the previous CEO, who was Margaret Huang, she made $466,934 in reportable compensation per the, the nine 90 nonprofit filingMalcolm Collins: half million dollars a year,Simone Collins: half a million dollarsMalcolm Collins: she was making.Simone Collins: And then other compensation from Southern Poverty Law Center related organizations, another $55,000. [00:20:00]Malcolm Collins: So,Simone Collins: which is like, you know, a year’s salary for a normal person. But no, that’s just her extra,Malcolm Collins: extraSimone Collins: compensation.Malcolm Collins: So what I wanna go over here is, is to continue going through this thought experiment. Yeah.So, we know that they were willing to go to great lengths to attempt to hide this, which keep in mind you can do this sort of stuff without needing to hide these trails. Right. Like the k, k, K does not have a very sophisticated financial investigation wing. To track this stuff. The, the guy who was embedded in the prenatal orgs by hope, not hate, he didn’t have to launder money to do that.So the fact that they went out of their way to launder money to do these sorts of operations against technologically unsophisticated. Groups that are dramatically underfunded certainly wouldn’t be able to track them. Shows that this was about hiding it, not from those groups, but from stuff like the federal government.Simone Collins: Well, no, from donors is, and that’s what this indictment is about. It’s, it’s not like a. Oh, you’re trying to hide this from us. It’s that you lied to [00:21:00] donors. These people thought that they were funding ‘cause they’re very clear about their mission, that they’re trying to, you know, bring an end to racism in the south and to create a very inclusive, you know, non-racist America.What they were ending up doing was funding the most racist organizations in the United States, like cartoonishly, racist, not even efficacious organizations.Malcolm Collins: Well, we keep seeing this like the BLM fraud, right? Where, you know, they, they ran off with all the money. But, okay. So could they plausibly?Actually another tangent I wanna go on before I go into this.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: This is why we on the right need to be very guarded against people who come off like this, right? Or against people who have been fooled by people who come off like this and be like, no, that’s not what we stand for. And you really shouldn’t say things like that.You, it. It’s not even to say like. It’s wrong, which I don’t say. I say, well, I can understand how somebody could [00:22:00] have these perspectives. It doesn’t help us win. Okay. Including that in the panoply of things that we are fighting for does not help us win. Mm-hmm. And this is where somebody. On the leaflets red, they wanted me to address this Asma Gold saying that he agrees with 99% of what Nick Fuentes says, right?And I’m like, yeah, I do too. Nick Fuentes says a lot of stuff. But when you say it’s, it’s the 1% of stuff that’s absolutely crazy that I’m like. That’s obviously meant to sabotage the wider movement. You say 99% of things. Okay. And then you say that 1%, like, I, you know, I want US troops to die, right? Like, what I want the US to lose in Iran.How, how are you on our side in any of this? Right. Or when I talk about like the things that the right just can’t accept when he is like, I, you know, I can’t support Trump anymore because he took JD Vance to the can, a VP candidate JD Vance a. [00:23:00] Anti-war. He’s the most anti-Iran war guy right now in the White House?Catholic.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But because he’s in an interracial relationship actually having, is thatSimone Collins: his stated reason? Is that his statedMalcolm Collins: reason? That was his original stated reason. He’s in an interracial, oh Lord. I don’t think, bro, that will not win elections. We will never, and people are like, well, if we could get all the whites to vote this way, but they won’t.Okay. You know, they won’t, I know they won’t becauseSimone Collins: they just, they don’t care. Most people don’t care.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So if you culturally want to have some, some bias against that, fine, whatever. But we are in this to actually win, not get money from the what it is or Southern Poverty Law Center. SPCL is that SSimone Collins: plc.Malcolm Collins: SPLC. SPLC Nick? Yes from the, the Southern Property Law Center. And I, and I, and I note that like, you, you guys need to stop being so gullible about this stuff. Like, I, [00:24:00] it kind of gets me, because I wonder when we do some comments are these like page shows trying to make us look at, it’s very clear that on like our subreddit recently, a bunch of people have been coming in creating stupid straw band arguments that nobody who’s like actually trying to win would be makingSimone Collins: really.Malcolm Collins: And it’s like. Why is somebody doing this? Oh, you’re probably trying to get this rubber band entirely, you know, you already got it. Shadow banned when it, when it previously had made its way up to one of the top 50 easily subreddits on the website. Mm-hmm. Which was very frustrating. But that’s where we are.But okay. Back to plausible. Is their explanation good enough? So it was over the course of nine years mm-hmm. It was over $3 million with soSimone Collins: much money,Malcolm Collins: 1 million alone going to just one guy in organization. So enormous amounts, concentrating, going to individuals, keeping this stuff alive involved in the biggest flash points in organizing the biggest racial flash points.And so you could say, well, why could they have been [00:25:00] doing this? Like, what are the plausible other reasons to do this? Reason number one is they wanted to sabotage these organization’s efforts, right? Like that could have been a good reason to do this. Completely implausible. Like, the, the, the guys made no actions to sabotage anything and repeatedly advanced the efforts of these organizations and then got more money, like you could say, like maybe we gave him some money and he said he was gonna sabotage it and then he didn’t sabotage it and then we stopped giving him money.But no, they like went outta the way to even change how they were funding the guy. Right. Or, or various of these guys. So that’s, that’s not in thisSimone Collins: Well, yeah, you’re, so the, the, just to be a little more concrete, the over 1 million that you’re referring to was for not the unite the right, like the unite the right rally that we referred to earlier, but rather a different informant that was associated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance and.They, the indictment at least states that the [00:26:00] donation money was used, quote for the benefit of the individuals as well as the. Violent extremist groups. End quote, which in this case includes a fundraiser for neo-Nazi organization. They’re, yeah, just, I just wanna be super clear when Malcolm says like, help them, you know, perpetuate themselves and, and survive that, that, that is what was actually going on.Which is. Unhinged. And, and also just to be clear,Malcolm Collins: so let’s go to other potential reasons, okay? Okay.Simone Collins: Okay. SoMalcolm Collins: no, it wasn’t to sabotage the organizations ‘cause they were doing the exact,Simone Collins: no, they were helping them raise money. Okay. Right. They were helping them raise money and they were, they were filling the pockets and sustaining the lifestyle of basically people who served as free volunteers for these organizations, keeping them alive.Malcolm Collins: So, we have the plausible, they are infiltrating these organizations to sabotage them not happening. Okay? It could be that they were infiltrating these organizations to gather evidence. And this is one of the, the, the things that they’ve claimed. One of these [00:27:00] guys rated an opposing white nationalist organizations offices and stole documentation.The problem is, is this super doesn’t hold up. Let me explain why. So what information might you have wanted to get from these organizations? The key reason you would want to implant yourself in a potentially racist organization like Hope Not Hate did with us was to try to find evidence of, or create evidence of that organization being racist.Yes. The problem is, is that the organizations that they were implanting themselves in. Are clearly on their face racist. You don’t need a secret informant to know that the KKK is racist.Simone Collins: I hadn’t even thought about that. Yeah, right. Guys, guys, we found out the KK, K, they’re kind of racist.Malcolm Collins: They, they do racist.Tough and have a racist view. Yes, that’s good’s, that’s completely implausible. Amazing. So you could say, okay, [00:28:00] well it might be to track their operations or to look for like, are they gonna do anything violent in the future or anything like that, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and to be clear, the interim CEO. Response to this indictment press release is the, the information we found saved lives.They’re, they’re trying to argue that just, just to, againMalcolm Collins: Yeah. Share their thought. The problem is, is that this is also completely implausible. So first of all, the information that they gathered from these organizations the, the files that they stole and stuff like that were of. Past actions of the organization.They weren’t of future plans of the organization, they were of past receipts, et cetera, right? Like they were about what the organization had did historically. That is a very little utility. Of saving lives or preventing future terroristic action. Secondarily, the people that they were giving money to within these organizations [00:29:00] seemed ideologically aligned with these organizational visions, right?They were only using this money to advance the causes of these organizations. If there was some terroristic action in the planning, these people simply wouldn’t tell them. They would have no reason to tell them. They would actually have an even easier time occluding that some terroristic action was happening.If you wanted to search out that, what you would do is embed somebody in these organizations like Hope Not Hated with views that are. Actually leftist views just pretending to be a rightist. You don’t actually give the money to somebody who wants to say, exterminate the Jews, right? Like that. What, what, what else could they plausibly have, have put them in for?And I’d note here if they’re like, oh, this information saved lives. Point to it. What operation did you run based on this? What? [00:30:00] Nothing.Simone Collins: No. All they said was that they gave information to law enforcement that saved lives. They weren’t explicit about it. It’sMalcolm Collins: not illegal for them to be explicit about it, so why aren’t they?Oh, because theySimone Collins: lying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s true. If I were them, I’d be like, look, there was this one instance where they were like, we’re gonna take out this guy, and then we told the police and that guy was put in a safe house and now he’s Okay. I wanna say that. Yeah. It’s, it’s much better story. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The, the final and this, this is the like, okay. Maybe, maybe is they were just trying to get people involved in these organizations arrested get enough information from people within this wider sphere who might have been hostile to other people that is you. You note the people that they were targeting is people who had lots of beefs within these spaces and get them to attempt to wipe people out of these spaces.That. That is plausible. But then why, why aren’t they, why aren’t they noting wins on [00:31:00] that front? Like presumably they should have been able to get multiple arrests with, with that much money and that time in? Well,Simone Collins: the, the narrative they’ve presented though, because they’re saying, well, we’re not doing it anymore.And when we did do it. It was in order to gather credible intelligence on white supremacist and extremist groups that pose serious threats to communities. So I think the story they’re trying to sell is, well, we thought that if we paid these people to be spies and moles inside these organizations, that we would be able to protect vulnerable communities that might be victimized by them.And that was the whole point. When I mean that it’s flimsy, but when you look at the reporting. On very left-leaning organizations or media outlets that are covering this, they’re just running with it. Like, well, obviously the Southern Poverty Law Center needed to embed with evil groups to keep people safe.And they sort of hand wave with that. And so, I mean, [00:32:00] it’s not great, but I think if you, if you don’t pay enough attention, it’s okay. WorksMalcolm Collins: well. Yeah. If you’re, if you’re not paying attention, this seems plausible, but if you actually look at the on the ground facts, we don’t have any meaningful information that was ever transferred to the Southern Poverty Law Center.Now, let’s look at the counterfactual, right? Mm-hmm. They would put that information out there. There’s legally no reason why they shouldn’t.Simone Collins: Well, they kind of do. So they, they went off, they went off off Twitter, ex, formerly known as Twitter in 2024. With Elon Musk, I think really rising on it. Yeah. They just, they left their account there, but they stopped posting.And that was the period in which this whole activity was very active. And now all of their posts, which they just, you know, left up. Feel like just a report on all of the racist activity that they funded. They’re like, look at the racism across America. And they like proudly have, you know, their whole like racist maps of America and all this stuff.And [00:33:00] it now when you look at it and you scroll through it, knowing this it just reads so different active hate in anti-government groups in the US in 2023. And then it like gives this like animated map. And it just seems like. This proud count of things that they’ve funded. It’s really bad. No,Malcolm Collins: but the the funny thing is, is that, the, if you, if you think about this from their perspective.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So you are them. Let’s go back 10 years when this started, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: If you guys remember what the KKK was like 10 years ago or what racist groups were like in America 10 years ago, they would do like a KKK rally and it’d be like four old men like walking through.Yeah, it made you actually feel kind of sad for them. You’re like, wow. Like, they’dSimone Collins: be like, oh buddy. Like, do you want, do you want me to join you?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, come on man.Simone Collins: I’ll put on a blue pillow and some khakis and they’reMalcolm Collins: not a threat toSimone Collins: anyone. Teammate, torch and walk with you. Yeah, it’sMalcolm Collins: okay. Giant crowd yelling at them was of course, [00:34:00] always happened as well.Now you look at like the tiki torch rallies and stuff like that during the period that this was being funded. I can totally see what’s going through their heads. They look at these protests and they’re like, this is why nobody’s giving us money anymore because there aren’t cartoonish racists in America anymore.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And we need to create them. And. Note here, like you can talk about like, and this is what the new right. People are like, oh, I don’t like you speaking on the values of this new right movement. It’s like, I’m, I’m sorry. There’s few people who more embody the tech right than like us, right? Like we we’re, we’re not only that, but we have a pretty loud voice in the space as well.So like it’s easy for us to, on a loud. Large scale and intellectually articulate because that’s one of the things we do on the show is anthropology and political strategy. So for us to be talking about it only makes sense, right? And through talking about it and [00:35:00] through defining and helping understand it better we can develop.You know, you could, you could summit it into being, to an extent, which is what we’ve been seeing more and more is this community of content creators who represent this movement. And in this movement we try to have honest discussions about race, about genetic differences, about rare interracial integration is not working where we need to, uh uh, because these conversations.Need to be had. There are way when somebody’s like, oh, there are racial, yeah, there’s racial conflicts. And that means that interracial integration isn’t going the way that like the urban monoculture wants it to go. So we need to talk about how we actually long-term could resolve these issues. And, these conversations that absolutely need to happen, get shut down by the person who’s just making like racial slurs or secret Nazi signs to like troll reporters or you [00:36:00] know, although it was hilarious. Nick’s your body. My choice thing, right? LikeSimone Collins: that was well done. Yes,Malcolm Collins: that was well done. Also, his Pierce Morgan interview was very well done.Mm-hmm. Like he hasn’t done everything, but like when somebody’s like, I agree. Like that entire Pierce Morgan interview, I was like. Clearly Paris Morgan is a buffoon compared to Nick Fuentes on these part. Well,Simone Collins: as you pointed out elsewhere, people just really like people online. One in in IRL who are vitalistic and happy and optimistic, and though I would argue he has a fairly whiny message, sometimes he comes across in his delivery as someone who’s having a lot of fun and is passionate and is vitalistic, and people just like watching that and being around it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and then there’s our fact, funny is our faction of the right, and you can watch our video on the woke, right, is the faction that. People call the woke. Right? Right. Like it is, it is not the deontological nick faction that people [00:37:00] call the woke. Right. Which is funny because they’ve tried to claim that people are referring to them, but if you actually read the long breakdowns on who is this new woke Right.Contingent they’re very clearly talking about us. See our video on that if you’re, if you’re interested in it. And, and sort of our wider intellectual sphere. And, and when I say us, I don’t mean us specifically. I’m talking about like this wider community that isn’t obsessed with creating a sort of.Theocracy in the United States, but instead wants to win on same policy issues because we can do that now. Right? Well, and, and push very hard against really dangerous cults that are growing in our country. Like the cult that’s growing under the banner, under the guise of a part of the trans movement that I think a lot of people can see that is behaving more like a cult.And we can work to address this, but we can’t work to address this. When somebody comes in the worm and then starts shouting you know, slurs at [00:38:00] these groups and stuff like that, or starts berating gay people or something, right? Like, that prevents us from having the same conversations that we need to have to get realistic policy implemented, because presumably that’s all of our goals, right?Mm-hmm. It’s many to build a large enough coalition that we can actually change the cultural window. And I think that they, they frankly, were effective at doing this. And, and worse, this galvanizes the left when you had the left go out and do the BLM movement and everything like that. Obviously funded by Russia.See our episode on that. If you’re unfamiliar with it being funded by Russia, like the receipts are. ManifoldSimone Collins: that blew my mind. I was like, this can’t possibly even beMalcolm Collins: literally the, you know how the left was like, oh, Russia funded like Donald Trump’s election, literally of the money they were spending to try to manipulate American public opinion.For every $1 that went to help Trump win the election [00:39:00] or was presumably went to help Trump, they spent on all spoiler candidates. They also spent on Bernie Sanders. So like, clearly it wasn’t a left versus right thing. They spent for every $1 on Trump, it was $9 on BLM. Right? So when people are like, oh, Russia Putin buddy, buddy.I’m like, if you don’t like BLM, they’re like, these people are effing with us. Right? But in regard to the, the, the BLM stuff. But I think it was Russia’s funding of that in, in coalition with stuff like this group that allowed for this perception on the left. They need to see these large crowds doing these racist things,Simone Collins: but you can’t raise money if all you have is photos of pathetic.KKK rallies with like five old men showing up, right? You, you need, you need good photos, you need good stories, you need good anecdotes. And if they did not invest that $3 million, they would’ve had a harder time raising [00:40:00] however million, million dollars they’ve raised. I actually only looked at.Leadership salaries. I didn’t look at how much they’ve raised historically, but no doubt it’s a lot. Because while their top CEO was a paid almost $500,000 on almost half a million basically the next five leadership people were each paid around 270, $250,000. Like a lot of money. These are huge salaries for nonprofit.So they, they must be raising a ton of money. Oh,Malcolm Collins: oh, by the way, if you just wanna go over quickly on the Nick Fuentes being widely AstroTurf.Simone Collins: Sure.Malcolm Collins: So, what we see, it’s in the first 30 minutes after posting Fuentes routinely gets retweets at amounts 10 to a hundred x more than his followers Were suggest outperforming individuals.Elon Musk, which just does not make sense. Who has 200 million plus followers in raw numbers from Nick Fuentes tweets. Now, the [00:41:00] accounts that were doing this, when they did the thing where they revealed what countries these accounts were from, oh no, they were predominantly from India. Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia.Not famously. Countries with a bunch of you know, like anti-Indian racists and stuff like that. Well, that’s Pakistan, right? They get all the Pakistanis who hate Indians and all the Indians who hate Pakistanis to, to retweet, to, no, obviously this is a, this is a, a, a faking it campaign. 60 to 92% of that initial birth.Comes from a small cluster of accounts that retweet him within multiple minutes. 92% of these repeat early retweeters were fully anonymous, and it was only revealed that they were from these countries when the, the, the big leak came, came out. So, very likely that if, if we’re seeing his ex account being heavily faked this says to me that his viewers are probably heavily faked as well.Mm-hmm. Which is almost sort of sad because [00:42:00] like I, I don’t, I don’t think that he isn’t bringing something valuable to the conversation. I think that there are some areas that are worth digging in further. You know, it is worse being more critical, and we’ll definitely be doing that in a, in a near future episode of Jewish relations with the right in the United States and how those can be best addressed given some recent events.And, that that is absolutely. That is absolutely something that is very hard for people to surface. And when I say hard, I mean logistically hard. Mm-hmm. You bring that stuff up, your account gets banned as we saw happen. To who that giant creator. Who was, who found that Jewish city in New Jersey, and they removed him from patriarch.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. I don’t know his name, but yeah. He, he also has looked at Indian communities. He is just looked at crime in New York. It’s not as though his entire account is, I hate Jews.Malcolm Collins: Remember [00:43:00] what’s crazier is like. His attack on the Indian community was over a cultural festival, right? Like that they’ve been doing for a long time.Like that’s just part of their culture that is significant.Simone Collins: Oh, no. He, he also did a separate one on, on a primarily Indian community, I think in, in Texas. Maybe it was in Tyler. Where he, he walked, walked around.Malcolm Collins: TheySimone Collins: were doing fraud, but No, no. A lot of it was like, he, he would ask people, he’d like, go into like a seven 11, like, I’m gonna find the Indians.And then he’d walk into a seven 11 and be like, Hey, on what visa are you here? Do you plan on staying here? Where’s your family? You know, he would just ask those kinds of questions because the premise of it, of the video was this Texas town or city is being taken over by Indian immigrants. Okay, I will go talk with them.But anyway,Malcolm Collins: but the point being is that both of these attacks on Indians were significantly more unfounded. Okay. Because one was a very cultural ceremony and the other was people being here [00:44:00] illegal then demonstrably large amounts of welfare fraud by Hasidic Jews, right? Like this is a well recorded phenomenon.Right? And it was apparently, particularly egregious in the town and. Documented, egregious. This wasn’t like a, he figured this out thing. This is a, like a well-known phenomenon in this region.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, he went to the town because it was famous for it. He went to all these places because they were famous for these things.Malcolm Collins: But in, in the episode on that, what we’re basically had to point out is then the a DL went to have him banned. So he couldn’t, like, they moved against him. They spoke against him rather than just admitting. Like, oh or, or better, like most communities should do, go after the, the, the Jews who were committing the welfare fraud be like, Hey this is the problem and they shouldn’t be doing this.And we’re glad that he brought this to our attention so that this can be addressed was in because there used to be Jewish courts for handling this. But we’ll go over this in our [00:45:00] episode on that. But the point I’m making here is it’s important that we as a wider movement, do not fall for what is AstroTurf or like what is fake and the sort of performative racism of youth that doesn’t move these conversations forward in a productive manner.Mm-hmm. There are a lot of people who are able to finally, after years, after decades, move the conversation around genetics, around birth rates, around immigrants. Communities not integrating with local communities able to move these conversations forwards to the part where we are seeing policy downstream of these implications actually being implemented, actually being plausible.Mm-hmm. And these other groups are just spoilers for our ability to achieve these. Its and I mean, we’re, we’re winning. We’re winning on restricting abortion access. We’re winning like this, [00:46:00] this stuff is moving forwards, right? We’re currently winning against the, the trans ideology. We’re currently winning against other demonstrably harmful ideologies, but we only keep winning.If we don’t allow ourselves to be cued by the groups, like hope not hate that, want to create the actual cartoonish racism. And I think it’s important that, that we see these people as one and the same. These are their foot soldiers. The, the KKK are foot soldiers of the Southern Poverty Law Center, not us.And that’s why, as we pointed out, and how the white laws are racist, the heads of the KKK, if you, if you didn’t know this. But going into the last Trump election, like this Trump election cycle said, do not vote for dumb Donald Trump. They said, vote for Kamala Harris. David Duke said this. Richard Spencer said this, and Nick Fuentes said this.They were pro Kamala Harris winning, and can you imagine the nightmare our society would be in? [00:47:00] Had that happened, X probably would’ve been taken down, put under.Simone Collins: Well, honestly, like that’s what, that’s what the Southern Poverty Law Center should be. Should be toting. They’d be like, that was us. That was us.We, we made them turn left. We made them contribute votes to our side. That would be aMalcolm Collins: win. Yeah. Well they’re, they’re acting like intentional spoilers, right? Yeah. You know, they’re acting in a way that I think shows their real agenda. And because yeah, there’s no other like, real plausible reason you would tell people to vote against Republican candidates.If, for example, I said, you believes that life really begins at conception and Republican candidates are successfully making it harder to get abortions.Octavian Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: But oh, well, I love you Simone. You are an amazing woman. And one thing that I note at the end of all this, tying all this up, is if you’re like, but I, I want.You know, more racism to solve my racial grievances dying, white populations, dying, white [00:48:00] identity, whatever. Even if you’re one of these people, only you can save the white population, right? Like you, you, what I mean by that is you have to find a white woman and have children, and. Pass your culture onto those children in a way that work, like is intergenerationally stable?You know, who doesn’t have children over replacement rate? Richard Spencer, David Duke, and Nick Fuentes. None of them do. This isn’t real for them. Laura suer also no children. Even though she’s been engaged nine times, I’m like, that’s a you problem lady. Like people don’t get engaged nine times actually.But the point I’m making here is we need to not fall for this, right? I think you’re, think someone need to understand that you can. You can understand all of these problems, but still at the end of the day, you are the only one who can solve themSimone Collins: well. Yeah, and also just hating on other groups isn’t really gonna get you very far.It matters more that you’re able to make your group strong. If you really care about, like, if you’re a [00:49:00] supremacist, then okay, be a really good parent. Give your kids a great upbringing. Make them excited to pass on your culture to a lot of kids of their own. And, you know, impart advantages to them that give them advantages in terms of wealth and technology, because if you don’t, they will not have outsized influence and they will not matter and they will not shape the world.The fact that the, a lot of people are focusing so outward on these things of like, well, I don’t want them here and I don’t want this, and I, these people need to go away or whatever. Like, this is so stupid. Everyone is, everyone’s deleting themselves right now. This is, which all you have to do is just be chill and raise your kids well.Like this is not that hard.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it’s, and it’s like, and they’re like, well, if I don’t say like, I hate this group in a very angry way, then like, they’ll, they’ll not be leaving. I’m like, Trump’s successfully deporting people right now. Right. And, and at about as fast a speed as he can. In fact, he is deporting people so aggressively.That [00:50:00] Nick Fuentes has complained about it on multiple occasions, as has he, one of his grievances. Yes. He says that ice is acting like cartoonishly evil and stuff like that, and like too aggressively. This is how you have to act when you’reSimone Collins: getting bad actor. You cant make him happy. Oh my goodness.Malcolm Collins: Oh, and he’s just a bad actor.You know, you, you can’t complain about ice handling. F*****g problem. You say you want handled well, not understanding that people are going to resist and that’s going to look bad, that people are going to have children and that’s going to look bad. Right? LikeI just, it’s insane. Don’t understand how people fall for this. But apparently not a lot of people are. It’s just faked. It’s AstroTurf, it, it’s, it’s not a thing.Simone Collins: Well, I love you. I love that we live in a timeline where literally the most racist groups in America are funded literally by the Southern Poverty Law Center.They’re keeping it alive. The beating part of racism. Thank you.Malcolm Collins: They were funded by the Democrats when they were founded, andtheySimone Collins: all the, [00:51:00] all the donors, all the donors who are like, I’m donating to end racism.Malcolm Collins: I love you so much and have a spectacular day.Simone Collins: You too gorgeous.All right. I will see you on the next room.Malcolm Collins: How these companies, I get my site working for every browser, but no, they don’t get their sites working for every browser. I don’t want to though. When somebody enters an error on like a really obscure browser, I’m like, why don’t you use a normal f*****g browser, like a f*****g human adult?And they’re like, but people are tracking my theater. And I’m like, everyone’s tracking your data anyway. You dumb. But like, what century do you think we live in here?Simone Collins: So it goes,Malcolm Collins: it’s like if, if you use an obscure browser, it’s like you, you, you do it because you only want to use the biggest and largest and most mainstream of websites and products because those are the [00:52:00] only ones that are gonna be optimized for you. Which is very frustrating.Simone Collins: I. People have all sorts of weirdMalcolm Collins: things.You use a niche browser, you use the perplexity browser, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. But I really like it ‘cause I can just tell it to do things, to control my browser and do things that I, I need it to do that save me a lot of time.Malcolm Collins: What are we doing for dinner tonight?Simone Collins: I was planning on just making the kids something simple, but I don’t know quite whatis there anything you wanna add?Octavian Collins: Yes, the train. Lego, you love Legos?Simone Collins: Okay. Love you buddy.Malcolm Collins: Alright. What are we eating for dinner?Simone Collins: I don’t know. I can make you Burmese chicken with rice. I can make you. Some vermicelli noodles and those bun, let’s doMalcolm Collins: amusement chicken.Simone Collins: Amusement chicken of rice I think would be really nice. You haven’t had it in forever. [00:53:00] Yeah. Fried. So it’s crispy. Yeah. Let’s do it.Speaker 2: Okay. Andy. Andy, is it your birthday? It’s a I. Okay, so it’s your second birthday, right? Yes, it’s birthday. Birthday. Okay. And what is this? A birthday cake. What cake? I’m asking Andy. Andy, what is this? I got the taste, the ing. Andy. What? What is it? We can add? Taste only purple. Only purple. It’s only purple. Do you like the color purple?Speaker 3: You like it? Put the ing on on the cake.Speaker 5: Do not touch the cake. Okay,Speaker 2: wait.Speaker 5: Candles. Only purple birthday cake. Yeah.Speaker 2: Okay, so you only want purple birthday cake, right?Speaker 3: Jack has purple my white. 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In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into robust, replicated studies on fertility, intelligence, politics, and religion. They explore why progressive (”dysgenic”) fertility patterns are clearing out high-IQ individuals faster than conservative ones, while certain religious groups — especially Latter-day Saints (Mormons) — show neutral or even eugenic selection for intelligence.Key topics include:- The landmark study “Will Intelligent Latter-Day Saints and Smart Conservatives Inherit the Earth?”- New 2024 findings from the Vietnam Experience Study on how conservative religiousness reverses the typical negative intelligence-fertility link- Why “moderately” religious people often have the highest fertility (not the fanatical ones)- Cultural and structural reasons behind Mormon success in building high-trust, low-corruption institutions- The Quaker origins of modern “woke” culture- Enlightenment ideals vs. 1960s–1970s cultural shifts- Implications for civilization, space colonization, and the future of humanityThey also discuss Techno-Puritanism, corruption in religious institutions, and why fanatical, high-agency groups are best suited for building utopias (including on Mars).If you’re interested in pronatalism, dysgenics, cultural evolution, or long-term civilizational strategy, this episode is packed with data, graphs, and unfiltered analysis.Watch the full conversation and let us know in the comments: Which religious or cultural group do you think has the strongest eugenic fertility patterns today?Studies referenced:- Kirkegaard & Dutton (2022) on LDS and conservatives- Dutton (2024) on conservative religiousness and intelligence selection (Vietnam Experience Study)Subscribe for more Based Camp episodes on the future of humanity, fertility, and culture.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about a number of studies that were reconfirmed recently. Mm-hmm. So this is the, the third time that these studies have been tested and reconfirmed. So this is a, a very robust finding at this point.And I wanna talk about them and talk about the, the implications of this for civilization. It is strategies, culture, and how society’s going to change in the future. So, a study that a lot of people are aware of is the study titled will Intelligent Latter-Day Saints and Smart Conservatives Inherit the Earth?And what this study looked at, ‘cause a lot of people were familiar that it looked at Latter Day Saints versus Non Latter Day Saints. And when I heard the results of this study initially. Some people misframed it as saying Latter day Saints are one of the few religions that has eugenic effects. Like the, the culture of the latter day [00:01:00] saints has eugenic effects on the people who follow that religion.This is not actually what it showed it just, just looked at latter day Saints versus non latter day saints. And now newer studies have looked at other religious groups and they have a similar effect. Mm-hmm. Well, at least Christian groups. More that a second. And, and there’s been some people who said that this effect has died down in Latterday Saints.I, we actually had a fan who did a really cool thing. He, he went through Utah and then went by region to find the of effects of earning and IQ by looking at it regionally. And the amount that the region was. Sort of fanatically latter day saint. And, and this guy can pin his results if he wants to.In, in the, in the comments. He did this sort of recreationally himself. And he found something very interesting which we’ll also talk about in this because I think it adds to this a lot which is in his findings at least, was in the latter day [00:02:00] Saints, the very, very, very most religious individuals actually began to have lower fertility rates.Now they, they weren’t below the non-religious individuals, but the highest fertility rates are in the. Kind of religious individuals, like the, the, yeah, I’m, I’m really into that, but not super into that. Mm-hmm. And, and it’s interesting I point this out because at least anecdotally, this is what I see in other cultures.This is what I see with like the Catholics, for example. Of the Catholics I know who are like super high fertility. And I’ve pointed this out before. It’s not the fanatical ones. It’s the ones who are enjoyably culturally Catholic. Like they really have fun being culturally Catholic, but they don’t really mm-hmm.Care about the theology stuff that much. Let’s see, let’s get into the data here and then we can go into what might be causing that phenomenon. I mean, I think that phenomenon is kind of obvious. If you’ve seen the two groups, I don’t know how much I need to go into it. But well, [00:03:00] within Catholicism you’re gonna be like, well, obviously, you know, the most Catholic people are gonna be nuns or priests, so they’re not gonna have any kids at all.But the fact that you don’t see that in the letter they saints and, and they also have a fewer number of kids. I think it’s because they are just. Not particularly like the more you get heady about religion, the less you care about the concerns of this earth and the less interested you are in playing out those roles.You’re more interested in, i, I mean, I think that the Opus Day are a perfect example of this. Like they should be one of the, the coolest and most based groups of Catholics, and yet 30% of them are, are celibate. Like just to be celibate, right? Well,Simone Collins: you can be based and celibate, but yeah, I mean, it’sMalcolm Collins: Or the, the, I mean with the Mormons like the most religious of them might have trouble operating in society.They may be too basically nerdy to date. Or find partners fast enough, and they may not even care that they’re not finding a partner because they have so much belief in sort of the, [00:04:00] the theological backdrop is going to protect them.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: But let’s continue with this study, because this study didn’t plot the graphs like that.It was just plotting like straight lines, like, does this matter or not? So, the first study, the, the one that most people are aware of, it looked at expected fertility rate versus intelligence and then divided people into extremely liberal, centrist and extremely conservative.And what we can see very, very interestingly, is that when they are very unintelligent being progressive actually leads you to have a higher fertility rate than being conservative.Simone Collins: Aha. Why would that beMalcolm Collins: Dumb? Conservatives have fewer kids than dumb progressives.Simone Collins: Why? Why? Why? Why? I guess maybe to successfully marry, also conservative, you have to be [00:05:00] smarter.And then if you’re progressive though, you’re not getting married to have, like before having kids, you’re just having kids kind of by mistake. Yeah. Okay. So if you’re conservative, if you’re having kids. Presumably it’s because you’re getting married it that requires that you are attractive enough to get married.You’re ambitious enough to get married. You have enough conscientiousness to do it. Then you’re having kids.Malcolm Collins: Oh, actually, that’s a good point. Especially for conservative men. Yeah. Because conservatives have children in wedlock. Mm-hmm. What that means is that if a man doesn’t have money, he can’t find a partner and he can’t get married.Mm-hmm. And therefore he doesn’t have kids, which is a much healthier way for society to act than just do whatever you want. Yeah. Which unfortunately, I mean, I really, it is so wild to me that and I, I think that. What, what’s his name? Ho Math has a very interesting episode where he goes into thisSimone Collins: OhMalcolm Collins: yeah.Where he talks about how. Basically, [00:06:00] Western civilization reached a place on like the, the hierarchy of like their own thoughts and, and the way that they were structuring society where they actually thought like you could just be like, yeah, do whatever you want. Like of course that’s gonna work. Rules are all basically bad because everybody I know if they didn’t have rules, it’s like when, when we as a society like.First had this idea, most of the places of power where it was being spewed from, and even, even still that that spew it to some extent. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Like, of course we can just have people do whatever they want and that will have no negative repercussions. Mm-hmm.Right. Everybody I know if you just said do whatever you want, they wouldn’t, you know, go out and slut it up. You know, they wouldn’t go [00:07:00] murder people or rob stores or grape children. And I think what we’re seeing in our society now is like. Okay. We unfortunately, and what he pointed out there is it’s sort of ironic that it was a very level of civilizational development that we had reached that allowed us to even conceive of such a stupid idea.That caused the civilization to collapse. And he argued within that video, I think very interestingly that, you know, this has happened multiple times. He’s like, this is basically what happened with Islam. If you watch our video on how Islam went from one of the strictest moral cultures to one of the most debauched moral cultures you, you could argue.I mean, maybe this was part of that. Right. They basically hit a point where it was such a de botch society. And like in that video we go over a number of examples of this. I think people today sort of forget that Islam was ever seen as the Java, the Hut society [00:08:00] the endless harems and parties and drinking and everything like that.That it basically just collapsed out of any form of efficiency.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And I’d also note here that a lot of people misattribute all of this, like many of the, the, the falling apart of civilization to the ideals of the enlightenment. And not to the ideals of. The 1970s and or even let’s say the 1920s to 1970s is really where things begin to, to break apart.And when people began to say, oh, you could do whatever you want, whatever you want, in the ideals of the enlightenment. For those who like haven’t studied this cultural period the idea that you would give people something for like not hard work was a complete anathema. Their [00:09:00] utopias were very like.Many people throughout the enlightenment tried to create utopias. But you today, these utopias would not be recognizable to any modern progressive. They’d be like, I’m gonna create a factory city where, you know, every day people will spend this amount of time praying and this amount of time studying science.And no one will be allowed to drink or sing. And you know, we’re, we’re going to have, no sex before marriage and everyone will live in strict communal housing, you know, the strictly gendered communal housing and everything like that. It was a societal view of order, right, of we can build society like that.That’s how they, that’s what the enlightenment was, was how can we structure and order society better? And when the thinkers of the Enlightenment attempted to build a country on the ideals of the [00:10:00] Enlightenment the, it was a country where most people couldn’t vote, right? Like America was not like a, oh, we, we’ll just do whatever the masses want.It was No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like. Obviously poor people are tarred, so like, it should be like,Simone Collins: it was, it was obviously, I mean, that’s what representative democracy was. It was, we will have the people vote for the smartest aristocrats or landed gentry, essentially like in in their local area. Trust that person to make the best choice for say, who will be president.They were never expected.Malcolm Collins: No, it wasn’t, it wasn’t the people, Simone. It was Well, weSimone Collins: should, okay. Sorry. Land, land donning white men. Sorry, sorry.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. It wasn’t just land. As I’ve pointed out, Catholics could only vote in two states. Half the number of states that Jews,Simone Collins: no one Catholic land owning white men.So, okay. There, there,Malcolm Collins: so, so, oh, sorry. Not. It’s colonies. But the, the ideal was, and, and note here, you say that in a bunch of ways that if you look at it from the perspective of the urban monoculture, [00:11:00] ooh, but no, this was their way of saying what we want. It’s society to be structured where we take the aggregate opinion of educated people who have proven their competence and are culturally aligned with us.Simone Collins: Well, I mean, the, the equivalent of it today, if we were to sort of apply more of our modern values, would be like, look, I respect MG Gold. I’m just gonna select him as my representative, and then he’s just gonna decide who’s gonna be president and who’s gonna, you know. What laws we pass and stuff, and, and it has become abstracted from that.Like nowMalcolm Collins: it is just, no, you’re talking of the electoral system. I’m talking about I am. All the various colonies decided who could vote.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: And and that’s very different than the electoral system becauseSimone Collins: No, but what I’m talking about Yeah, I know. You’re, you’re changing the subject. I am, butMalcolm Collins: I’m not, I’m talking about how democracy actually worked, how it was supposed to work, how American democracy,Simone Collins: but it was never democracy.It was representative [00:12:00] democracy.Malcolm Collins: Right. Representative democracy, you are getting stuck on the representative part, which I think can be used to obscure the fact that the ideals of the enlightenment were never. Society should be run on the aggregate opinion of the average person because people would be like, but isn’t that person average and could they be culturally misaligned with me?Right.Simone Collins: Well, I think if we look even further in history though, like to Athenian democracy to other like very, very, very old forms of democracy, what fundamentally people came to conclude was. We will give a vote to the people we need to do important things. And that evolved over time when they needed people to help them.You know, row try reams in military conflicts, guess who got the vote? You know, like basically if you’re contributing something useful to society, if, if you’re needed to make society work, you should have a say. And if not then. [00:13:00] We don’t really care to hearfromSimone Collins: you.Malcolm Collins: And this was transform and when people look for like, where was the origin of the rot before I go into all the dysgenics research the origins of the rot happened before anything that looks like modern wokeness.And if you wanna trace it back, you can trace it back very easily to one of the four original cultural groups of the United States, which was the Quakers. They always wanted the vote to be for everyone. The Quakers did. They always wanted everything that Wokes want today. Even the way that they’re, we pointed this out, even the way that they’re like, celebrations happen where they do like the, the hand signals so that nobody feels too or like something just moves them and they stand up and start talking. It looks exactly like, you know, occupy Wall Street or something, or one of these protest movements. And it’s because it’s the same value set.Speaker: So I, when we record, this is from before we did the Quaker episode. , So we did the Quaker episode and I was unaware of this just as an idea of , how right we were on this. Quakers we’re actually the origin of woke. [00:14:00] Somebody’s like, do you not know about the public universal friend? And I was like, I, I do not know about the public universal friend.They’re like, I hope you go into that. I was unaware of this when we filmed the episode. So for context, the public universal friend, this was, . Someone who in 1776, the friend that means is a Quaker. That’s what they call themselves because they’re psychopaths and that’s like the wokes thing you can call yourself.Claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the public universal friend, and afterwards shunned. Her birth name and pronouns and, , dressed in androgynous clothes. The friend preached through the Northeastern United States attracting many followers who became the Society of Universal Friends.The friend theology was broadly similar to most other Quakers. And the most committed members of the Universal Friends were a group of unmarried women who took leading roles in their households, basically dominated the men in their lives. , And in [00:15:00] 1790s, members of the society acquired land in Western New York, where they formed the town of Jerusalem near Penn, Yan, New York., By the way, still there. The Society of Universal Friends ceased to exist around the 1860s. Some writers have portrayed the friend as a woman, or either a manipulative fraudster or a pioneer for women’s rights, while others such as Scholar Scott Larson have viewed friend as a. Transgender, although note, never experienced any gender dysphoria as believe Note this was never experienced before in the 1920s., Absolutely crazy. , The woke them very clearly came directly from this movement, not like tangentially from this movement.Speaker 2: So the next time that a Quaker EG Ruby Yard slash what of Alt Hiss tries to tell you that Puritans were the creation of woke, , I would ask you to kindly look at your history because Quakers have always [00:16:00] attempted to manipulate history to not paint themselves as what they truly are. , And check out that episode by the way.Malcolm Collins: And if you, if you’re a watcher of the show. And you haven’t read Albian seed I would strongly suggest you read Albian Seed because when you read Albian Seed one, it can help you better understand like American culture and get in touch with your own cultural roots if you’re from America. Or if you don’t have cultural roots look at the ways that the four founding cultures are different from each other, and it can help you model who you want to be and the culture you want to adopt.But a lot of the things that pushed the, the proto movements that allowed our society to begin to collapse in the way that it is collapsing were largely Quaker movements. But. That’s for a different tale. I, I, I promise you guys some graphs. Let’s get some graphs.So here I’m putting a graph on screen here of political ideology versus fertility rates.And what you can see is the fertility rate difference for intelligent conservatives and intelligent progressives is [00:17:00] quite extreme, which means they will have even disproportionately less power in the future, economically speaking because that’s where they’re being cleared out the most, right?But note. Even here this is still a discogenic pattern. Intelligent conservatives are just less discogenic than progressives because they are still having less kids than unintelligent conservatives. And then with Mormons, you actually see a purely eugenic pattern. And this, this Mormon study that they found was hugely, it’s, it’s slight, but it’s definitely there, right?So to continue with the new study that they have here, which expanded it to other religious traditions. Sometime ago, ed Dutton and I published a study showing that the USA being a member of the Mormon Club seemed to protect one against having dys genetic fertility pattern for intelligence in plain language.The total population, more intelligent people have somewhat few in. In children on average. Although this varies by country however, this negative [00:18:00] correlation is absent and maybe even reversed positively among Mormons. Due to the small number of Mormons and the need for complex cohort and age controls, the exact slope of the fertility intelligence for Mormons was harder to estimate precisely.Hence, they had a big confidence interval. The Mormon study was based on the general social survey, GSCS. GSSA large American dataset. There were some problems with this. First, the intelligence measure is a poor to mediocre being the tin item, wood drums, vocabulary test. Second . Religiousness was not measured as a continuous construct, but by self-reported membership of different religious beliefs, their subdivisions, denominations.Thus, the power is much reduced as mere membership is a proxy of a more relevant. Trait of general religiousness or perhaps some specific religiously related traits in the new study they sought to remedy this. So the new study, this was, came out in 2024. [00:19:00] Does conservative religiousness promote selection for intelligence and analysis of the Vietnam Experience study?And here they say this, this study was done with a dataset of 4,602 Vietnam era veterans. So unfortunately it was done a while ago, so we can’t necessarily say that this was the same trait, but they actually looked at religious nu here. And this one showed something different than the Mormon study that I was showing before where it showed that sort of.Perfectly here. The less religious you are the, the fewer kids you have, the more religious you are, the more kids you have. And the, the most religious people have the most what’s the word, theSimone Collins: most kids?Malcolm Collins: Yes, the most kids. When they are intelligent. And what was interesting about this study is it found, and, and statistically relevantly too that the highest rate of religiosity was in a population was found with being strictly eugenic.It, it was eugenic. They, they, the, the most religious people had more kids when they were [00:20:00] more intelligent.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: With, withSimone Collins: being much of this, do you think though, might come down to. Out of wedlock marriage, or sorry, out of wedlock, childbirth for non-religious progressive people, which I think leads to lower lifetime fertility because it’s just very difficult to raise a child in as a single parent.Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think one of the, the things at play mm-hmm. Is that if you are, and, and this, I think especially in the conservative versus progressive. Fertility difference for poor people is if you are conservative and you are poor, you are less likely to be living off of welfare or to be like a welfare king queen, trying to maximize the number of kids you have to get more checks from the government.Yeah. Whereas many poor, progressive people, just like, that’s their cultural life strategy and they’ve been doing that for like three generations and it’s all they know and it’s literally like [00:21:00] just how they survive.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.So you think it has more to do with leaning on social services and not making your own way in the world or supporting yourself financially and less to do with out of wedlock, child rearing?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think, I think both of those things are, are relevant.Simone Collins: Hmm. For sure. Yeah.And they, I think also there’s the, the factor that just how I think that ultimately affirmative action and DEI.Not favoring. Ba, basically there’s like this reverse effect of affirmative action in DEI, whereby people think it’s gonna help the people who are getting extra boosts or favoritism when it actually hurts them, both reputationally and in terms of cultivating strength. And in the long run, it helps the people that it’s discriminating against like white males because they have to [00:22:00] force themselves to be more disciplined, to work harder, to be smarter.And overall that’s going to, I mean, while some people just get totally wiped out in this equation, there is an overall, I guess you could say like per, per the perspective of this kind of long-term human tendencies, it, it has eugenic effect on the discriminated against group. I think similarly when you look at religious families, there is a eugenic.Element, for example, with the LDS church or any group for example, that that tithes because not only do you need to be successful enough to, for example, in many cases, have a single breadwinning family. So one man that is earning enough to support an entire family by him himself. Oh God,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: Two parents who are, you know, both working and raising children.It’s not just that they’re also. Spending a non-trivial amount of time engaged in religious worship wearing, they can’t be making money or resting [00:23:00] really. And also where they’re tithing with Mormons are tithing 10% of their income. So this is, this is a, you know, you’re putting a lot of spoilers on your car or you’re putting a lot of drag on your car more accurately.I think it,Malcolm Collins: it forces the peacock feathers to have weight.Simone Collins: Yeah. And well, and then, then you end up a lot ultimately stronger. And that’s that eugenic effect where like if you are in a very non-religious family either that’s leaning very heavily off of social benefits or both partners are working and you know, your kids are going, you know, going to public school and just not really.Spending that much time with you, you’re not going to church on weekends and you’re not tithing. You don’t have the same headwinds that are forcing you to be stronger, harder, faster, and better. Does that make sense? So like, because religious life is logistically and financially harder, technically speaking, because I do not [00:24:00] think that non-religious.Families. I mean, I, I remember looking at the stats before, I’m pretty sure from what I remember, non-religious families do not donate. More religious families and especially poor religious families donate the most, which is crazy, like in terms of per percentage of income. Because they don’t have those headwinds, they are not forced to become stronger.And that could be an effect here as well. What do you think?Malcolm Collins: Yes. Well, I mean, I think that’s a way that you relate to money when you’re poor is very different from the way you relate to money when you’re middle class. And in, in a way, poor people can afford to donate more than middle class people.Because well,Simone Collins: especially if you’re on social benefits. Yeah. Yeah. There’s that. Sure.Malcolm Collins: So I, I, I think that that’s another thing is you can feel wealthier there, butSimone Collins: but that’s not the case for Mormons. Oh, yeah, yeah. Tithing is, is huge. And, and I mean, the more you earn, you’re still tithing 10% and then you’re paying progressively more and more in taxes.So you’re paying [00:25:00] 40% in taxes and then another 10% half of your income that you make. Because keep in mind, tithing is pre-tax. It’s not post-tax, it’s pre-tax. 50% of your income functionally not yours, taxes and tithing, which is crazy. Plus you’re expected to donate a significant amount of your time.Tracing wood grains has that really good Subick article that really goes into this on just how much is expected of you from the LDS Church, especially if you are high achieving like the more professionally successful you are. The more you’re gonna be promoted within the church to be a bishop, to, to do more and more and more.Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that that’s why the church compared to other churches has been so adaptive.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: This, this is one of the things that we’ve talked about before, but like, why is it that, I mean, and, and the LDS started from a much harder place than say the Vatican did. In terms of like polygamy, black people can’t go to heaven, that sort of stuff.Right? Or, or they turn white when they go to heaven. I think they, they, they did,Simone Collins: theyMalcolm Collins: got [00:26:00] black in because they, they were, they were neutral in the war between Satan and Jesus. And, and so they, oh, andSimone Collins: then, so they were marked with darkness and not white delights.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway what, but you know, they had a lot, they had a lot of differences to, to start.And the church was able to you know, sort of build a PR campaign which has been incredibly successful. We have some other videos on this, but like compared to their percentage of the population, the amount that Mormons have been able to capture the public mind share, and in a way that’s not holistically negative has been incredibly impressive when contrasted with the way that the Catholic and church in the Vatican is adapting now.And I think that the core reason of that is because the hierarchy of the Mormon church is made up of people who. Succeeded in real world activities and lived real world lives, like, I don’t even think you would have much of a chance of being appointed to a high level position if you didn’t have a large [00:27:00] family in the Mormon church.And so they’re going to be able to relate to the average person more, but be a lot less theologically rigorous. But it, I, I mean, for a long time. You could do that. That’s, that’s actually an interesting, you know, talking about democracy and different democratic in institutions and how they end up affecting things.The system that the, the Catholic church versus the Mormon church runs on we can see how the democratic structure of each of those led to incredibly different outcomes. In terms of like practice, right? Catholicism really tried to run like a dedicated technocrat institution where, you know, you become a specialist in this your entire life.And that was an institution that I think worked really well and was sort of needed when. Basically no one was educated like the medieval period. I mean, what, what other choice did they have? You know, were they [00:28:00] gonna allow local leaders to be like elected or something like that? Oh. Or you could have them be appointed, but then you’re just gonna get tons of corruption.Right. Actually one of the interesting questions is, why don’t you get more blatant corruption in the Mormon church?Simone Collins: That is a really good question. I mean, even the most critical people that we, we watch talk about it, they’re not really, they’re obviously like, well, the Mormon church is raising a ton of money, and it may be in a, a way that they insinuate is exploitative toward members of the LDS church, and that is insufficiently transparent, but they do not imply at any point that they believe there’s corruption.That is quite interesting.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Even, even the head, likeSimone Collins: Alyssa has never suggested thatMalcolm Collins: the head guy in the Mormon church he’s like. Basically their prophet like more than ‘cause he can update the religion at any, theSimone Collins: president.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He’s not like the pope where like he needs to be aware of what previous popes have said and what the Bible says.In Mormonism you can just like be like, yeah, I know that’s written there, but like, we got, got new rules. But he makes from what I’ve heard, 150,000 a year. [00:29:00] Like literally the voice of God. It’sSimone Collins: basically you, you don’t make money from. Serving in the church. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and the big scandals that I’ve heard about is like the church investing in like a mall.And I’m like, I mean, that’s what they should be doing, right? Like they’re supposed to. What, what did you think they were gonna do? Give away all the money. Like, no, they should be investing it in building financial security in case things change. You know, they could have huge declining membership in the future and then need to to work like they’re acting responsibly.Why are you mad at them? Yeah. And so, but you know, progressives be progressive, right? Oh, how dare they have money? But why, why isn’t it had any corruption issues? I actually, I, you know, I’ve heard of sex scandals in the Catholic church, but I’ve never heard of corruption issues. You know what?I’m actually gonna ask ai, do either of them have major monetary corruption scandals?Simone Collins: Yeah, good question. ‘cause there’s a lot of money sloshing around.It could [00:30:00] have to do with the transparency required of tax filings of, of nonprofits, including religions in the United States, like perhaps based on the tax filing structure. It’s just, it would be harder, but I don’t know, you know, like harder to hide. I, but I, I, that can’t be it. No.Malcolm Collins: Okay. I I say this because I know that they’re, he’sSimone Collins: normallyMalcolm Collins: very common in evangelical churches.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, the whole Prosperity doctrine thing, and like, you know, the, the, is it people on YouTube or Instagram who like tell you the price of one preacher’s shoes whenever he comes out wearing insanely expensive sneakers?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean,Simone Collins: some ofMalcolm Collins: it’s just so blatant as, as forSimone Collins: why that happens.Yeah. It’s especially trope now is yeah, like the evangelical Christian preacher who exploits members typically through some kind of document. SoMalcolm Collins: Protestant culture leads to that more, even though you have less corruption overall, as I’ve pointed out in Protestant [00:31:00] societies. And, and this is just like a factual thing, you can just look at a map and do correlations is because Protestantism is entirely decentralized.You have a, a thing where if somebody can grift, then there’s nothing really, no central organization that can come down and say, Hey, stop grifting. So if you’re particularly good at grifting, you’re just gonna grift.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Okay, so let’s go through this Catholic Church versus Mormonism. So it says The gap is large Catholic incidents number in the dozens, historically with several high profile ones in 2024 to 2026 alone.Well, in the LDS church, there’s essentially zero personal grift that has been proven by leaders.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: Why? I wanna know why. Why?Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s so interesting. Because there’s plenty of money. Good for them. I mean, honest. I mean, I think a, a lot of people’s reaction might just be like, well, yeah, we just haven’t found it.You know, no one got caught. But I, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that the, that just, it hasn’t happened. [00:32:00] Mormons,Malcolm Collins: Cannot have a Mormon, I, this, this, it says, the main reason is the Mormon church. Okay. I, I’m gonna have two, two answers to this one actually. One, I think many people in the Catholic Church rise but do not really care about Catholicism.It’s just like you’re born in a Catholic country. Joining the priesthood can be a pretty good deal for a lot of people. Or joining in nunnery. I mean, this even historically was, was. Cool profession if you’re like nerdy about stuff. And then you you get invested in the bureaucracy of it and you attempt to climb the bureaucracy of it, right?So, but within Mormonism because the, even on the ground, like individual rewards for joining. The priesthood, like you can’t even get like an income from joining the priesthood. They, they expect you for most Mormon things to do the work for free. So you can’t even enter a position.Simone Collins: Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no.You pay to go on your mission.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. I’m sorry. They, they have you [00:33:00] pay to do stuff for them.Simone Collins: Yeah.You,Malcolm Collins: you can’t even enter a position where grift is possible on your part until you have already demonstrated that you are. Pretty invested in actually what’s in the church’s best interest. Whereas in Catholicism it’s very easy to get to high level positions without that proof.I pointed out this is why Catholicism never adopted allowing priests to have kids because then they just have even a higher reason. The second reason is likely cultural differences. If you look at Mormonism historically, I mean, it’s the one instance in the United States where something. Close to communism has ever worked.Right. For people who aren’t aware of, like the way the original Mormon colonies were set up you would, one, you’d have to think that it was a good idea to move to a place like that. So you already have a strong genetic selection filter. And they’d be like. Okay, here’s where you’re living. Here’s what your job is, here’s who you’re gonna be married to.Like, they basically set up your entire life for you. When you [00:34:00] showed up. It actually sounds pretty cool, you know? I, I think for a lot of people that’s a, a decent way to live life, right? And, and they, they did this to also acqui, acquire mini’s genetically better people. The, the way that they did that is they went to guys around Europe and were basically like, Hey, if you’re rich and come to our settlement, you know, we’ll set you up.And so they got, we’re like, we’ll get you like three, four wives. How does that sound? Right? You don’t even need to believe it. Four wives, how does that sound gonna live in the American frontier? Live a, a hard, honest life. And so they, had a culture that needed a lot more trust historically to survive.And that was like really eugenically selective, like Mormons also would kick out the guys because they had multiple wives who didn’t look good enough. This is where you have the lost Boy problem wasSimone Collins: look good enough.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huge. Problem, even today within the polygamous Mormon sex is you know, obviously the birth ratio of males to females is 50 50.But not [00:35:00] all of the guys can have four wives. Oh, sure. Yeah. So that means. One guy marries for every four guys born into the community. And the three guys that were not successful enough or not good enough, or not faithful enough get kicked out which creates a really strong eugenic pressure. Whereas Catholicism basically grew up in the rotting bureaucratic corpse of the Roman Empire.I, no, I mean, it, it, it did the, the, he’sSimone Collins: just always, always hanging on the Catholics. Come on,Malcolm Collins: Malcolm. Go. I even Catholics would say this. That’s where the church came from. It, it grew out of a Roman empire in decline. I mean itSimone Collins: did,Malcolm Collins: yeah. It had a few bumps like w Constantine and stuff like that, who was really cool.But the majority of the period where the Catholic church was basically running the empire, the empire was falling apart. And that means that there was institutionally. Like even trying to [00:36:00] fight grift in those sorts of environments would’ve been incredibly difficult. Also I think even the idea that the church wouldn’t have grift is almost a modern idea.If you look, if you read about the Catholic church historically, grift almost seems like the point. If you get what I mean, like,Simone Collins: no, I don’t. Idon’t.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So if you read about. Any point of Pope in history, you know, you would have like a Pope making his son who he had outside of wedlock because Popes around all the time.Oh, that period,Simone Collins: right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And he’d make him like the, the, the Duke of Venice or something. Right. And the, no, the Popes were always doing corrupt stuff. Sure.Simone Collins: No, no. I, yeah. I, I know.Malcolm Collins: They were like and, and it, and it wasn’t even seen as like a weird thing for a pope to do. It was just like, I mean, obviously he’s the pope, he’s gonna corrupt.Right? And, and then you had this going down. All the, all the cardinals were corrupt, or the vast majority of them were, I mean, that’s why they [00:37:00] elected the corrupt popes, because then the popes would give them. Handbags. And you had this going down to the local levels. I mean, if you went to like a cardinal from this period they, they, the, the cliche was they lived in a giant mansion and had lots of mistresses and were incredibly lot wealthy.How did a cardinal afford a giant mansion? Right? Like, today, I think if a cardinal afforded a giant mansion, you’d be like, the Catholic church would be like. You’re not supposed to like have any other jobs, right? Like how do you have a giant mansion, Mr. Cardinal, this seems like a problem. So I think part of the problem that the Catholic Church is dealing with is even an expectation towards a lack of corruption is a new idea within the Catholic Church.The Mormons. Interesting. The Mormons had corruption in the early church, but then they just theologically defined it as okay. Right. Like, what I’ll mean by this is in the Catholic church you know, you take. Five mistresses and people would be like, well, you’re not supposed to [00:38:00] do that, but you know, whatever.In the Mormon church, oh, they’re like five miga. Like, and God told me to, and then the next leader does something against the rules and he is like, ah, but God told me to. So it’s the new rule. But they never seemed to be particularly avarice for money. Mm-hmm. Potentially because they already had such high status or their commu, I don’t know.Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s important to study this. It’s important to ask this question. Yeah. How else did the Mormon church historically have much corruption at the top levels?Simone Collins: I think there’s, there’s, the issue for me is, my understanding is there’s not much transparency as to how the wealth of the LDS church is spent, but it’s clearly not spent on salaries or on directly benefiting anyone. So I just, you know, we, we think some is spent on ads. It was kind of weird that they, they tried to influence legislation.Gay marriage bills in California. That [00:39:00] just was odd. It doesn’t, one, I don’t think a religion should try to influence legislation.Malcolm Collins: That actually does seem odd. Well, like why would Mormons care about that?Simone Collins: Yeah. Like look, if other people are debauched and lost,Malcolm Collins: I mean, the people aren’t,Simone Collins: you know, invest money in trying to win them over.Yeah. Like tend to your own flock. That’s my big thing. Just your people hand handle your people. Okay. If, if you don’t want them. Do get married to same sex people, then convince them that there’s a better way. I don’t know, but don’t. Force non-Mormons to do the Mormon thing. Don’t force non-Catholics to do the Catholic thing.Don’t force non-Muslims to live by or non, non-Islamic adherence to.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So this basically explained how the Mormons ended up building their culture of no corruption. Okay. So what happened was Joseph Smiths was a famously very corrupt and Brigham Young, who then. I consider to be the real founder of Modern Mormon tradition.He, he, [00:40:00] he basically put everything inSimone Collins: place. He was the ray crock of the LDS church.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he, he, bigSimone Collins: crock bought McDonald’s from its founder just in case you were not,Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway but Brigham Young he apparently, because remember how I said how he operated in almost like a communist society.Like you go work here, you do this, you do this. Okay. That put him into a position even without having to do self-dealing or grift to become the wealthiest person in the settlement by, by farSimone Collins: sure.Malcolm Collins: And because he was already in a position to effortlessly be the wealthiest person, he had no reason for corruption.And was able to put systems in place that prevented corruption from ever happening.Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. I suppose I could see that.Malcolm Collins: And now one of the questions that I have for you is sort of a closing out question.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Is the way that techno Puritanism is structured, would it have eugenic. Fertility practices or would it have anti eugenic fertility practices?Because [00:41:00] interestingly it doesn’t have as many protections as some of the other religion systems do. You know, it’s like, find out how to have kids find out how to improve those kids. I think the mere mandate of genetic selection along with genetic augmentation when the technology is available means that it would be.Like the most eugenic of the religious groupings, because even people,Simone Collins: well, I think it also is important that there’s a rule that you, you can’t make your income from being a religious leaderMalcolm Collins: that never got baked in. I actually never read that track.Simone Collins: You didn’t? That’s kind of important.Malcolm Collins: It’s one of the tracks we have never read.So, there’s like five tracks that I’ve, or maybe more, maybe like 10, I’ve never read. Hmm. So we gotta get back to doing tracks, if I’m gonna be honest. I mean, piss off part of our audience, but we’ve pissed off so much of them recently by being like,Simone Collins: do you keep going for their sacred cows? Carl Young Tucker Carlson.Apparently people care about these things.Why? But go on [00:42:00] CarlMalcolm Collins: Young one. I do not know why anyone was surprised that Carl Young is like the heart and soul of the urban monoculture. And I. It’s, it is weird to me. It’s like, woo, psychiatry, like feel good, positive psychiatry and aSimone Collins: lot of people, yeah.But you know, Jordan Peterson really promoted a lot of his ideas and he was the Internet’s daddy for a long time, so,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, and this caused people to make a, a big mistake. They, they had this perception of like. These ideas helped me at this point in my life and I’m like, I’m not arguing that it didn’t help you, that you might not have been at like a lower optimum.The problem is, is that the ideas of Carl Young are not a global optimum. They are a local optimum. So they may be able to get you. If you don’t know the difference between a global and a logo optimum, it’s like standing on a hill and looking at a mountain. You have to first go down before you can get to a higher place.And if we’re speaking of mental health yes, there are ways of seeing the world and problems that you can have that would make your life worse than adopting the ideas [00:43:00] of coral young and attempting to work on yourself from his perspective. Unfortunately, to get to a global optimum, you have to.Give up many of the ideas that you accepted while you were the student of Carl Young. So an example of what one of these would be is something like believing that you have like a bunch of unconscious trauma from your childhood or something like that. Being able to frame and con mentalize, stuff like that may have helped you deal with a life view where you were, because Carl Young is saying you have trauma.And that trauma can be dealt with. And this collection of toolkits he gave you for dealing with the trauma could get you to a, a higher place. But then we come along and say, actually the science says trauma is mostly a fictional concept. It doesn’t exist. And you would be better off, you would lose the trauma that you have if you simply didn’t believe in it.But [00:44:00] unfortunately, now that’s harder for you. Because you both adopted the belief in trauma and the belief of the fix in trauma. So you need to dig out both of those now before you can get to the globally optimum place of I am responsible for my own mental state in any given moment, and I actually largely have control over it.And I have control over the way I contextualize anything that’s happened to me throughout my entire life.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And of course that’s gonna you know, freak some people out who have adopted ideas and that’s you know, shame because Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people in the conservative movement, they, they were genuinely helped by these like, sort of proto frameworks when they had nothing else.And it’s, it’s damaging to them to point out, well, the proto frameworks may be better. The nothing. But I think that, you know, other, other people probably feel that way about our religious beliefs, for example. They’re like, well, your religious beliefs are better than the urban monoculture. But you know, they’re not the true [00:45:00] often, right?They’re not at the end. So, okay, you’ve got the eugenicist question, but then also the corruption question. The way the index is set up, because we actually worked really hard on creating the governance system for technical parent if it ever got large. Yeah. And the way that funding is set up was in it, and money is managed within it basically makes corruption organically impossible.If you are interested in how we did that you can read, I think we talk about it both in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion and the Pist Guide to Governance how we structured the techno puritan framework or the index system to avoid the possibility of corruption. Because it, or basically organically down weights, the power of any faction that is acting in a corrupt manner immediately and aggressively.So, that is. Fun. But would it work as well as the Mormon system? Probably [00:46:00] not because it does allow living off of the money as it is structured right now.Simone Collins: It doesMalcolm Collins: as it’s structured right now. I mean, you would be removed if it appeared that you were living in a way that was irresponsible or you were managing the money in a way that was irresponsible.But the goal of the way the system was set up was maximum flexibility for the person in charge at the moment, was also maximum ability to remove them. I’ve always felt that’s the optimal government type dictator, but very easy to remove is what you want.Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess the, the, the votes were structured such that if you made your income or had any benefits from the governing structure, be it a government or I don’t know, like some city state you’re a part of, then that would.Like force you to recuse yourself from voting. Yeah. You cant, you’re not allowed to vote in, you’re making money offMalcolm Collins: the foundation.Simone Collins: If you’re a government worker and you make a salary from the government,Malcolm Collins: doSimone Collins: not get to vote about how the [00:47:00] government works.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and this is something I strongly believe. I don’t think anyone who’s making money off the government, I don’t think any government worker, I don’t think any elected official.I don’t think anyone on well, should. Fair should be allowed to vote if you are a net drain. Yeah. There’s just too much of an,Simone Collins: I mean, so a lot of people would argue, well, I work in the government, I know how it works, therefore I am more qualified to make a a, an informed vote. But we would still argue that the adverse incentives are such that no, you’re, you’re really just gonna vote yourself more money and more, more secure.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we’ve seen this with teachers unions have teachers unions made teaching better. Like, of course not like giving, giving people power over their own employer is always a stupid thing to do.Simone Collins: Yeah. They vote themselves better benefits, less work, more money. It’s, it’s, yeah. I mean, they, they may know how things work.Malcolm Collins: But it doesn’t mean they have any incentive to improve them with their votes.Simone Collins: Yeah, like you can know how an organization works, but the thing that you’re gonna vote for is how that organization can improve your life as an employee. That’s [00:48:00] unmoored from an organization’s core mission, which either is, you know, maximize shareholder value or, you know, pursue some kind of nonprofit mission.And it can be either, but it, I’ve rarely seen employees act in accordance with. An organization’s true mission or an organization’s imperative to drive, share shareholder value, unless literally their compensation is contingent on those things. Like, you know, they, they make more money when the, when the organization makes more money, so, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So very interesting very interesting. Obviously the big question that I think a lot of people have, and if one of our fans wanted to dive into this. And do more research is, is this true across religions and across religions. Do we see any other patterns where high, high religiosity people might actually see a hit to, to this pattern?I’d be very, very interested.Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m so,But it is very, very interesting.Malcolm Collins: But yeah, well, it means that these groups [00:49:00] are going to, in the future, be able to increasingly outcompete the progressive groups. But I think what people miss is, what does conservative mean? What does intelligent conservative mean?‘Cause like, obviously if you were rating us, we would come off as extremely religious and extremely conservative in any of these tests. And yet I think part of the conservative movement wants to frame us as being non-religious and non-conservative. Because the way that we are conservative doesn’t align with what they historically saw conservatism to mean.Which I’ve always found to be very funny. They’re, they’re always like, oh, you, you are nothing like the founding fathers. You’re some weird form of Calvinism that tries to blend reli geos. Like Christianity was modern science. And I’m like, I’ve got bad news for you about the founding fathers buddy. But yeah.But anyway, if you’re interested in our thoughts on that stuff, look up our track series. It’s, it’s crazy. We’re completely nuts. Well, that’s why I think some people, they’re, they, that’s one of the areas where I think many of our fans just don’t, they don’t [00:50:00] fully grok how materialist we are in our understanding of reality.But anyway or, or how fanatical we are in our religiosity, which is something that just grows year over year.Simone Collins: People don’t associate religiosity with materialismMalcolm Collins: to be Yeah. But they’re not necessarily incompatible you know, as we’ve shown, which is weird.Simone Collins: Yeah, 100%.Malcolm Collins: TheSimone Collins: question is, it’s nice, it’s nice to hear.I think a lot of progressives think that religion is discogenic. So I guess I, I like this in in that sense because I think a lot of progressives are like, oh, those like disgusting stupid people who believe in God. Having all these children or like, you know, uneducated 20 something, married, couples having children, those swine or is it, it, it, you know, that is that is not true.Malcolm Collins: I just wanna get into space. I’ll tell you about that. Like civilization is seems to have a ticker on it these days, and it is us and the various religious [00:51:00] groups that are obviously going to be taking to the stars. So.Simone Collins: Yeah, and I’m excited for that. It’s gonna be great. People aren’t gonna go to space because they, they, you know, I think there’s this really weird trend, and that’s just because everyone’s so anti-capitalist now.But there’s this, this trend it seems in sci-fi movies where if it’s not some like space hero going into space, it’s some beleaguered, you know, victim of, of capitalism going into space to, you know. Make their way or whatever or, you know, just try to like survive. And no people aren’t gonna be going into space because it’s like getting a job at McDonald’s.They’re gonna be going into space because they’re like the pilgrims who went to the colonies who wanted to build a city upon.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They have a, a vision of a, of a. Nobody’s gonna want a beleaguered person on a spaceship. No. You only want fanatics on a spaceship. Everybody on it believes that they’re building a utopia.Yeah. That is gonna be hard in the short term and incredibly beneficial in the long [00:52:00] term. And this is why these beliefs of like, oh, well, Elon’s just gonna take all the power after he gets to Mars, or something like that. And it’s like, one of one of my favorite things is like the guy who was like, yeah, I, I was paid consultant money by some billionaires.They’re like, yeah, I built these like. Post, you know, civilization collapse compounds. Oh that, gosh. Yeah. They have these like giant staffs and how do I keep the staff from like, turning on me and killing me and taking over, you know, after the apocalypse happens. And the obvious answer is you should already be acting in their best interest.And in the best interest of the shared mission of this post apocalyptic settlement. And you should already have a shared value system so everybody knows what the shared mission is. And if you haven’t done that, then somebody will create one and they will kill you. Right. Like nobody’s going to live just so that you can continue your Playboy lifestyle style.Simone Collins: Yeah. In so far as you can have one of those in a post-apocalyptic environment.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that that’s something that, that even, people like Elon may, may miss, like even if [00:53:00] like we’re pretty fanatical about the idea of like, I would love to build a stable colony on Mars. Even if we became like, or Roger Stend became some of the first martians and they held to our religious beliefs if he wasn’t acting in the best interest of the colony I think he’d be killed pretty quickly.By the, the colonists because in a colony environment like this, everybody’s lives are hanging on by a threat in any sort of space, colonization environment. And you really don’t have time for anyone who’s self-dealing. It is just not worth the risk. To invest one ounce in a leader’s luxuries that’s not going to life support and expansion and the birthing center and you know, whatever is needed.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, we’re for a really interesting. Next few centuries. So now that we’re gonnaMalcolm Collins: see them, well, I, I, I [00:54:00] hope that we get off planet and our descendants can come to form the, the, the clan people out in the distant space. I mean, that’s pretty much the way that we treat this. We know that our vision for the future of humanity is incompatible with many of our allies in the conservative movement.And so get off, getSimone Collins: going. Well, and space is big. Space is big. There’s, there’s room, space is big. Yeah. Okay. It’s okay. AllMalcolm Collins: right. Love you, Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm.I will start your grilled cheese. I’m still excited to record this. I’m hitting record just so we know.Malcolm Collins: That means a bunch of actions are not going to work. And did the front end build work this time? It did. So I just need to wait for it to finish now.Simone Collins: Yay.Already, people who are using the h ancient AI for just fun are realizing like, oh, this could be used in. You know, some business applications, they’re not. I’m not the only one who’s like, [00:55:00] oh my gosh, please let me,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, that’sSimone Collins: where I’m tryingMalcolm Collins: get it. I’m trying to get it to a point where I can use it for the things I want to use it for.Mm-hmm. And the thing that I want to use it for most is building video games, because I’ve always wanted to make video games and I would be vico video games right now if I wasn’t building this. And so I wanna build this to a place where I can build video games because hopefully it’s, it’s better at building large scale things than what I’m working with right now.And there we go. It is updating.Simone Collins: Excellent.Malcolm Collins: What are we doing for dinnertime Steak?Simone Collins: I only just started thawing it out this afternoon. I don’t know if it’sMalcolm Collins: okay. ISimone Collins: mean, I can, I can, I can take and leave it on at room temperature, grilled cheese, maybe it’s grilled cheese. Okay. And then tomorrowMalcolm Collins: I can get rid of it last of my, my lunch meat that I’ll put on top of it.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: don’t, don’t put the, the lunch meat in the grilled cheese, although,Simone Collins: no. [00:56:00] Okay. So you’ll just kind of plop it on top.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because I think grilled cheese doesn’t cook as well when you cook it as a melt. Actually, no. Let’s try cooking it as a melt.Simone Collins: Oh, I mean, I can make new,Malcolm Collins: no,Simone Collins: I’ll do it afterwards. I mean, also you seem to like things deconstructed anyway, so why would I not just give you grilled cheese and you have some meat on the side?Malcolm Collins: That’s a good idea.Simone Collins: Okay. Than favorable.[00:57:00] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Russia’s Health Ministry just issued new guidelines: during routine reproductive health checks, doctors are now supposed to ask women how many children they want. If a woman says “zero,” the recommendation is to refer her to a medical psychologist to help form “positive attitudes toward childbirth.”In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm break down the policy, Russia’s broader pro-natal cultural offensive (including the new ban on childfree propaganda, revived Mother Heroine medals, and “Year of the Family” initiatives), and whether framing voluntary childlessness as a psychological issue worth treating is a smart move or dystopian overreach.They explore:* Why this targets culture rather than just throwing money at the problem* The surprisingly recent history of “aspirational childfree” as a celebrated lifestyle* How societies throughout history viewed women who didn’t want children* Whether therapists could actually help shift mindsets (or if the real power is in the framing)* Bold ideas like no income tax for parents, school choice, and normalizing motherhood againProvocative, data-rich, and unapologetically pro-family. If you’re tired of the “childfree is empowerment” narrative and want to talk seriously about reversing fertility collapse, this one’s for you.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because Russia has introduced a new health ministry guideline saying that women who say they don’t want children should be referred for psychological counseling.And, and Russian officials present this as a prenatal measure to address, you know, their,Malcolm Collins: and I was like, I heard it and it generally was multi totalitarian things. I don’t like this much. This when I’m like. My gut says yes, I like this. I like framing it as a psychological disorder for a woman to not want children.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And you, you actually like it, it was fairly late at night. You just burst into my room and you were like, Russia’s making like aspirational dinks, go to see therapists. And we both had a good laugh about it, but then I, I went and I looked up what the policy actually does. So basically during reproductive health assessments, doctors have been told.That they should ask women how many children they want to have, which is a little dystopian. And then if a woman [00:01:00] says that she does not want any children, the guideline says it is recommended or advisable to send her to a medical psychologist, quote, you know, from Russian quote, to form positive attitudes toward childbirth and reports so far.Describe this as part of clinical guidelines from, from the health ministry and, and not, they’re not like a formal criminal or administrative mandate with explicit penalties for refusing counseling.So this isn’t some dystopian thing. In fact, I think that this is. This is important for us to discuss and interesting because this is just one of many Russian measures that are targeting. The one thing we say actually matters when it comes to prenatal laws policy, which is culture. To your point that you’re building this cultural precedent around a.Shifting the way that women contextualize their choices around not having children. And I think that that’s really super interesting. By the way, men are they, they’re not asked equivalent questions.Malcolm Collins: What? That, that’s where they’re [00:02:00] failing. But I do also like that they frame this as like an explicit problem for women.Mm-hmm. Like women. What is wrong with you? That you do not want children? All women want children, right? Unless there’s something seriously psychologically wrong with you.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It’s what they’re saying.Simone Collins: It is 100% what they’re saying. So, so what we’re gonna go over in this podcast is, is we’re, I’m gonna give you a little refresher on Russia’s larger landscape of prenatal culture investment.Because while they’re doing some of the, the typical things of like, oh, here’s money if you have a child and here’s some limitations on abortions. Again, I think they’re leading somewhat in the cultural initiative. So we’re, we’ll do a quick briefing on that ‘cause they’re actually doing a lot. And we’ll discuss whether or not we think this is actually a smart development.And then, you know, can, can, for example, psychologists actually be trusted to help women form positive attitudes toward childbirth. And and then kinda look at at how recent, actually the concept of not seeing women as [00:03:00] crazy for wanting to be childless is ‘cause it’s actually. Super. Like it’s a crazy aberration when you look at history.So anyway it, here’s what Russia is currently doing culturally, aside from the abortion and like money stuff to encourage. More children. So one, the government has revived the symbolic hero, mother medals for women, which I valiantly attempted to get the Trump administration to consider making an executive order around.Still waiting on that one. I’m ready. Anytime, guys. TheMalcolm Collins: hero medals from other come on.Simone Collins: Six plus kids, you get a medal. It’s, it costs basically nothing. It can just, you, you don’t even, it could be a Zoom meeting for all the, justMalcolm Collins: come on. Yes. And then all the press would freak out. It would be great for the administration because of all the press freaking out about it.Mm-hmm. And people being like, it’s fascist to wanna be a mother.Simone Collins: Yeah. You and else [00:04:00] is like, wait, but so you reward. People for being war heroes and for contributions to science and for putting, you know, their lives on hold, to move forward the arts or technology or academia. But you don’t reward people for setting their, their lives aside to raise productive citizens.Excuse me. It’s, it’s so anti-feminist. But anyway. Anyway, I’m just putting it out there guys. Any, any moment now can bring back the, the medal of motherhood. But anyway, Russia at least is on it. But also they’ve done some more, some more extreme, and I mean, man, if you did these in the US it would be insane.It’s, it’s not, it’s never gonna happen here. We’re not even talking about it here. But what Russia has done is they have anti dink. That’s dual income, no kids propaganda rules. So in November of 2024, and this was their year of the family, like they had this big propaganda year of the family where they’re like, this [00:05:00] isMalcolm Collins: okay, okay, okay.Simone Collins: All about traditional values. They basically tried to reframe Russia as like, well, Russians believe in traditional families and traditional values and having children and the rest of the world is debauched and gross. And they actually even got some, and we did an episode on this at one point. They got some families.To move out to Russia to pursue their traditional values. ‘cause they’re like, yeah, I mean, I guess America’s not the country of traditional values anymore. So Russia even managed to convince a bunch of Americans that they were the, i they’re notMalcolm Collins: liking it that much.Simone Collins: I mean, to be determined. They there, what we covered in that episode was one particular like, village that was being developed, still is being developed. If you wanna buy a plot of land within my links to their website they’ll help you build the house, they’ll help you with your paperwork. I mean, it’s a, a full service business. You, you, you can live in this little village with other expats.And you know. Yeah, there’s Canadians, there’s Americans. It’s a, it’s a whole thing. But anyway in, in [00:06:00] that year of the family the, the Duma passed a law banning propaganda of child free or deliberately childless lifestyles, which covered media, films, and online content. So even if you’re like an influencer, you can’t be like, I’m proudly child free.I’m a dink. I get to go to bed whenever I want, whatever, you know. And because they’re, they’re seen as basically discouraging people from having children because they are the law introduces administrative fines for individuals, officials, and organizations with possible suspension of activities or even deportation for foreign nationals if they’re judged to promote a child-free ideology.So, while the traditional family values. Of foreigners who’ve moved to Russia to pursue them. I guess any like dink influencers who are out there living it up or, or getting deported in the media, the, the state promotes an, like, actively promotes like an ideal of heterosexual family with at least two, but preferably three children, and they use state media and [00:07:00] films and education campaigns to normalize this as the approved model.Which again, I can’t imagine ever happening in the United States. There’s also a much more strict, and this has been around for much longer than the dink ban, an LGBT propaganda ban. So Russia’s, LGBT, and this, there’s like several laws, it’s like a, a constellation of laws. This is, this is like, it’s a whole thing.In in 2013, Russia adopted a law. So this happened, it started so long ago that banned the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors. Adding Article 6.21 to the administrative code and framing, LGBT content is harmful to children. And it was used to block pride events and shut down LGBT organizations and fine individuals for public support or visibility even before later expansion.So even in the very early beginnings of this 13 years ago, it was pretty strict. Then in December of 2022, Putin signed amendments that expanded the ban from [00:08:00] minors to everyone. So now any propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations information that makes them seem normal. Or that promotes gender transition is prohibited for all age groups.And that that scope covers the internet and media and films and books and advertising public events or even neutral or factual information about LGBT people counts as propaganda.Malcolm Collins: Just, you just cannot talk about gayness being aSimone Collins: thing. Don’t say like literal, don’t say gay people. Like, oh, like literal.Don’t say gay, but it’s thing. No, no, no. Like actually in Russia. Just don’t say gay. Okay? Just should be safe. And even on November of 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court labeled the so-called International LGBT movement as an extremist organization, which effectively made any organized LGBT activism, potentially prosecutable under anti extremism laws, and then a separate 2023 law banned gender affirming medical [00:09:00] care.Legal gender change. And it also, well, I mean, what’sMalcolm Collins: funny is that in the United States, we’re probably going there. If we look at demographic trends right now and who’s having kids in, in their politics, I would not be surprised if we have laws on the books like this was in our lifetime.Simone Collins: It’s so funny because when we started prenatal list.org, the website was all like.Hey, you know, you know, we’ll help, you know, gay and lesbian couples, you know, become parents. We really wanna make this a, a very inclusive world because, you know, if if these groups don’t manage to be high fertility, we’re not gonna see it anymore. And already, like another element of of, of like the Russian law is if you’ve changed your gender, you can’t adopt or foster children.Like, yeah, exactly what we said. Basically, like if these people don’t have kids. You’re not gonna have these values supported. Yeah. You’re not gonna have this option in the future.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, well, sorry. The reason why I think the, the trans adoption thing is just really high rates of, of a child molestation in that [00:10:00] community.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So, it makes a lot of sense to not, and, and specifically of adopted children historically. There’s, there’s been a number of cases of that, so,Simone Collins: yeah. No, I mean, I, I get Yeah, I get that. And we, we can’t go there because I’m too triggered by it. By children being hurt. So moving on in terms of just like, actually the, the health ministry’s guidelines, I, I did have to ask myself like.Can psychologists actually be trusted to help women form healthy views? Because the, the health ministry text simply says, women who say they do not want to have children should be referred to a medical psychologist or clinical psychologist to form positive attitudes toward childbirth. And it doesn’t prescribe any special training or method for this.And so I checked to see if like Russia has like some sort of different. Psychology track that might support this. And while they do have perinatal psychology and psychotherapy programs and associations that train specialists in preparing families for pregnancy and birth and dealing with [00:11:00] fears, maybe helping people grow in mothers and fathers roles, the programs focus on people who are already pregnant or planning children and that they use techniques like informational counseling and family therapy and resource-based art therapy to support hood.But that’s. As people who wanted to have kids already. So I don’t think that like repurposing these types of therapists. To change people’s attitudes about wanting kids at all?Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Even therapist and therapy culture is one of the triggers in our society of so much of the toxic parts of the urban monoculture.Yeah. To weaponize that very faction of society, even just to normalize with therapists if they are not normalizing. The idea that a woman should want children to their patients. That their job is at risk that they could lose. You know, because this, keep in mind, it doesn’t just normalize it as the women, it normalizes it with the therapist.This is how they have to approach childless [00:12:00] women in therapy.Simone Collins: Well, no, no, no. It only normalizes it with the doctors and its guidelines, not laws. So this doesn’t actually say the therapists have to be the same way. And it, it’s different. And so I could see this shifting where it does shift it where like you have to go to a.Government employed therapist who, who does have that skew, for example. This is happening with the way that abortions work in Russia. So Russia one of the ways that they’re trying to sort of discourage abortions without like outright banning them is they are forcing the closure of many. Private abortion clinics and instead directing them to government based clinics where there are a lot more delays and where you have to listen to a heartbeat and undergo counseling.And so when you have government controlled systems like that, you have more of that. But right now, that’s not happening with the psychologists. They’re just like. What what’s really happening is just the doctors are supposed to be like, well, you need to get that checked out. What’sMalcolm Collins: interesting is in Russia, they decrease abortions by trying to do more taxpayer funded abortions.Simone Collins: Yeah. That, and [00:13:00] that’s, that’s actually quite novel and interesting, isn’t it?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it is. It is.Simone Collins: Especially coming fromMalcolm Collins: AmericaSimone Collins: where, but but, but, so there is one thing where I’m like, well, maybe because. Basically, poor mental health is linked in several studies to lower childbearing intentions or lower fertility.Like actually both can be affected.Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I would, I would argue that seeing a psychologist is, is gonna be linked with these because it’s linked with more and, and self-perceived lower mental health is gonna be linked with seeing a psychologist and that’s gonna be linked with infection by the urban monoculture.Simone Collins: I mean, I don’t know if it’s the same in Russia though.Malcolm Collins: I mean, I, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t. And, and you still got the same, you know, wider global education system, wider global, urban monoculture of like the educated elite. I dunno.Simone Collins: I mean, the education system in Russia now is built into their propaganda machine which is very oriented around becoming apparent.And they’re, they’re even like, you know, encouraging.Malcolm Collins: I, I would, I would go further and you know, if somebody’s like, well, I’m [00:14:00] already seeing a psychologist you could do something like psychologists, if, if they report that psychologists go on a register for the number of, childless people who are seeing them.So if they have too many childless people seeing them then they basically get a talking to by the state in some form of repercussions.Simone Collins: Oh, like your license might be under review if like. You have a lot of,Malcolm Collins: yeah, so basically it forces mainstream psychologists to be more pro guiding women in this direction.Simone Collins: I could see that, but, but the, the point I was also trying to make is that if you resolve people’s depression, anxiety, et cetera, it can one, help their overall fertility, because fertility can be depressed by things like stress. And also it could increase their intentions of having children. In fact, when you hear.Well, well, even when we look at movements like Antinatalism Yeah. And we, we talk with people who don’t wanna have kids, it’s, they’re often clearly obviously suffering from [00:15:00] clinical depression, clinical anxiety, like genuine mental health problems. And I do wonder if, like, if we treated those, do you think that would go away?Like, do you think they actually, and I mean many people who don’t wanna have kids directly cite that,they’re like, well, how can I bring children into this world?And maybe if they didn’t feel that way. They’d wanna be parents. I’m just saying like maybe, maybe it could actually help even if it doesn’t directly help, but, but I think the really big thing, and you pointed this out at the very top, you pointed this out at the very top, is that the big cultural shift here?Is not the therapy or the lack of therapy or whether the person actually goes to the referred clinical psychologist. It is that it is being framed as a problem like, Hey, I don’t wanna have children. Wow. You better get that checked out. And that is the important thing, is the cultural reframing of not wanting to have kids as like a form of insanity, a kind of disease that might need treatment.Because it, it’s, it’s really [00:16:00] important to just contextualize this narrative that, that not wanting kids is like, okay. Has, has only existed and, and one has existed, like at all as, as, as a, as a minority view since the 1960s. And in terms of existing as, as a more broadly acceptable thing, really post the two thousands before that.Basically you were crazy if you did not want to be a mother as a woman. So in ancient Rome, motherhood was seen as like the core sign of respectability, marriage and childbearing were just core to what it was to be an honorable woman. And then of course, also there were things like the, the Augustinian birth incentive and honors for bearing several children.Malcolm Collins: And youSimone Collins: can see our episode on medals for motherhood. Go way back. Okay, this, come on, Trump administration. You can do this. Thanks.Malcolm Collins: Well, you, you, you, we did an episode on why Roman [00:17:00] Tism failed. So interesting to see if you’re interested in that topic, but continue.Simone Collins: Yeah. Then in the Christian Middle Ages motherhood was seen as a, a, a spiritual and religious vocation.And really the, the only reason why you, you might not be a mother in, in a sort of justifiable religiously or societally acceptable ways if you like, chose to be a nun. So that was kind of one of the few ways where you could be. A full human as a woman and, and not have children, but you were a spiritual mother then.And then in the early modern to 19th century, a motherhood turned to be something patriotic. So enlighten, enlightenment, and revolutionary era discourse in places like the United States and France, it actually recast women instead of making it like a religious vocation. Like, you know, the cult of the Virgin Mary and all that.Yeah. They, they were reframed as Republican mothers who said, I like this.Malcolm Collins: I like this framing.Simone Collins: Yeah. Civic duty was to raise and bear virtuous citizens. So motherhood became sort of a patriotic role. And in, in contrast, [00:18:00] women who did not marry in bear children could be labeled as Unfeminine Idol or unpatriotic.And in some context, their childlessness was treated as some kind of social. In societal betrayal, which I, I dig. I, I like,Malcolm Collins: I love you. You’re fantastic. But no, I, I agree. In, in Australia, there was a campaign I, in the eighties even that said one for the dad, one for the mom, and one for the state.Oh,Simone Collins: I love that. Yeah. One for the, I mean, that’s, I mean, that’s three, that’s, that’s the number that Russia’s going for. So Yeah. Still, still hanging onto that though, in the, in the 20th century, so starting in the 19 hundreds, motherhood shifted from. You know, respectability and reli, religious virtue and patriotism to this like scientific management.So with the rise of industrialization and urbanization and new professions, this, there was this like intensive, expert driven model of motherhood with scientific, childbearing advice and emerging welfare states. And the everything sort of framed [00:19:00] mothers as, as managers of children’s physical and psychological development.You even saw this kind of starting with the Victorian era where like women were in charge of the household and like managing all these things. And this is where you actually get the, the first cracks, but only starting in the 1960s where women were starting to critic. The, the concept of compulsory motherhood.And, and they were like, oh, well this limits my education and my work and my autonomy. And this is of course, the result of families starting to atomize everything and no longer look at families as this cohesive unit, but rather look at everyone as individuals and when, when. Everyone starts leaning out of the family, then it suddenly becomes, well, what about me?What about my education? What about my identity? When really everyone should be leaning into this one thing which is, you know, this unbroken chain you’ve been a part of for millions of years. It shouldn’t terminate with you, but whatever. And then you finally get the rise of the child free movement only really in the early 21st century.So after the year 2000 is when suddenly you start getting things. I mean, the term dink is [00:20:00] super new. Dual income. No. Yeah. Like that’s, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: This, this concept of like being proud of it and identifyingMalcolm Collins: of aspirationally child freeSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is really modern. It was not true even when I was growing up.Nobody, nobody was aspirationally child free.Simone Collins: Yeah. It was still, still sad. It was like, oh, you know, this is, like it, it was viewed as some form of misfortune or, or, or selfishness or coldness or career obsession. And like, oh, you know, she’s a little off. Like it was still, she’s a little off. And thenMalcolm Collins: you could brag about it.Like it’s not that nobody bragged about it, but they came off. The same way that like a militant lesbian would today or something like that. Right? Like yeah. Somebody who is incredibly detached from society and its values. Yeah. And is attempting to aggressively signal to youSimone Collins: detached they’re societal norms and like mainstream respectability and sort of proudly so.But now this concept of childlessness. Or, or child family [00:21:00] size limitation is something that people even use to virtue signal. Like, you know, Harry and Megan back before they became disgraced being like, well, we’re never gonna have more than two children because it’s bad for the environment. You know, so even people having children.Trying to virtue signal their choice to not have more children. And that, that is really the tipping point. And so here you see with this policy, Russia trying to subtly change that default of, no, this is not virtuous. Something is mentally wrong with you, go see a shrink. Which I think is actually pretty good.I, I like it. It’s favorable. What do you think?Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: it’sMalcolm Collins: good. No, I mean, I, I of all of the strategies I have heard around this, I think this is a very good strategy for multiple reasons. I think that there are better ways it could be implemented Yeah. Than the government shrinks. Like if you implemented this.Through mainstream shrinks. But you said if X percent of your patients, like, you know, we have a registry. Right. And if somebody’s like, I’m [00:22:00] already seeing a shrink, and then you, you, your license was under review. Mm-hmm. You get enormous pressure as a psychologist to talk your patients in to this particular life path.Yeah. And I think that there are, and, and to glorify and normalize being a mom, like, have you thought about it? What’s holding you up? Why don’t you have a partner yet? Right. So it’s like going to your parents’ house every time you go to a shrink. So why don’t you have a partner yet? And did you, did you follow through with the things you were gonna follow through with?And the other thing that I think it could also be expanded into other environments, like high school life counselors evenSimone Collins: bring back those dating instructional videos.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Simone loves thoseSimone Collins: so good.Malcolm Collins: But I think. Yeah, and, and, and, and I think in. Posters in advertisements to talk about the disease of childlessness.Like to frame it [00:23:00] as the way it used to be framed, like a barrenness and pitiable. You know, like having people gossiping about somebody being childless or something. Right. You know, like, oh, do you think, you know, and that would do a lot to,Simone Collins: here’s my thing though, is I kind of. I feel like a lot of these cultural efforts, when you look for example, at what Russia has done it and, and when you see China too, like China’s statues of one child family suddenly turning into three child families and stuff.I feel that that has a very distinct dystopian ring to it. And as much as I love motherhood medals because of that, because it causes the extra buzz, but then causes people to be like, well, but yeah, actually, what’s wrong with rewarding people who sacrifice their lives for, to raise good citizens? I, I.I don’t know, like and may tell me if I’m crazy here. I just feel like over time, intuitively I know it will never happen, and this is why I still lean on culture most as the most feasible intervention. But if I were Empress of the world, the one and [00:24:00] only thing I would doMalcolm Collins: added to the dsm.Simone Collins: No, I would just, for the period when parents are raising children, so they have children in their households that are under 18 years, no income tax.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I think the, we should do that. The reason why it would never pass like that is you would need to say no income tax until you get to a certain level, becauseSimone Collins: Sure. That’s, that’s fine.Malcolm Collins: Actually, no, that’s not exactly because they, because then people also,Simone Collins: keep in mind, Malcolm, the wealthiest people don’t have income.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, true.Simone Collins: It’s all, it’s all investments and stuff, so I even, I am like, I’m fine with capping it at like, you know, up to whatever, like $500,000 or 200. Like I don’t care, like 200,000. Like whatever. I don’t, I don’t like. But here’s the thing is middle class families are the ones that are hit hardest by the costs of raising children, but they’re also the ones that are producing the highest [00:25:00] tax paying children and citizens who are gonna prop up the social programs.Right. Well, okay,Malcolm Collins: this is the way I would handle this if I was gonna do it. Okay. It would be a progressive thing where you need to have five kids to have no income tax.Simone Collins: Oh yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you get a one fifth of that with every kid that you have potentially scaling. So like, not aSimone Collins: lot. Yeah. I just, I think that people should be rewarded by it more as they make more income.And this is like income generated by work done, you know, not investment income ‘cause you’re not doing work. To,Malcolm Collins: oh, people would freak out so much at that. Would people freak out about having to pay into a tax system that supports other people’s kids? LikeSimone Collins: we do that already. It just happens to be children of people who are not generating any taxes.Malcolm Collins: And we can fix this by shutting down public schools.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s never gonna happen. But anyway yeah, I mean, I bring it up a lot because it’s never gonna happen and I don’t like talking about should haves ‘cause that’s just, it’s pointless. There’s no pragmatism to it.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, public schools do [00:26:00] need to be shut down though.Like, I, I, I feel very strongly that they are one of the biggest forces of social negative disruption at this point. And that they are basically torture for children. And that with AI, they become increasingly less relevant.Simone Collins: They kind of always have been though. Like even when you look back at actually I think one of the Bronte sisters died after attending a, a girl’s school.Like ever since external schools existed they’ve been brutal and terrible. I, in, in general, what I’ve learned from the, the people in the base camp network. Who are better at this than I am more informed about all these things, and they’ve introduced me to all of this stuff. Basically when kids start being raised by people who are not related to them by blood stuff goes wrong, they’re not as invested.And when you go back to the very earliest schools as we understand them, sort of this industrial schooling model, it’s just not good. And you know, you have these Dickensian schools, they’re just horrible. You’ve got. [00:27:00] WBS or AKA do The boys school in Nicholas Nickleby, just horrible places. I mean, they always have been terrible.And now they’re, they’re still terrible, but things are so complicated you can’t really shut them down because they’re also a means of distributing a form of childcare in the United States where you’re gonna get arrested if your kid isn’t being minded. So a lot of parents. Can’t function without the public school system because also they’re gonna like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, well, I mean, we need an alternativeSimone Collins: toMalcolm Collins: it somewhere where kids can go and learn by themselves during the day.Simone Collins: I know that’s, that was the whole model we were developing with the Collins Institute is just that you, you, you can’t get support for anything that’s not like some kind of underprivileged child with hepatitis program or, you know, some form of. I don’t know, likeMalcolm Collins: if you wanna try out the Collins Institute, it’s operational, you can try it at paraia doo or collins institute.org.It is inexpensive [00:28:00] and it is a great AI educational thing for slightly older kids, like once they can read fluently. And if you wanna try out our project right now our fab.ai, which is ai like adventure chatbots, companion chatbots, and a agentic models which we are constantly,anyway. I thought this was a interesting one, Simone.Simone Collins: I find it fascinating too.Malcolm Collins: I love the Trump administration even just using this like the next time we do things to the administration. I would 100%, like if, if I could go back and, and do those pitches to the administration, I would include this, because obviously the administration’s not going to, oh,Simone Collins: the, the health health guidelines encouraging.Malcolm Collins: Encouraging single women, women whiz without children to see a therapist about being childless because the media would freak out. ISimone Collins: feel like I like the metal hood mother. Sorry, the metal hood, the motherhood metal more. It’s because this is more positive [00:29:00] and cool.Malcolm Collins: I agree, but it’s less funny. The I mean they did go completely epileptic about that.They were just likeSimone Collins: apoplecticMalcolm Collins: app, whatever, the app, the Apple word. They went apples. They went apples. And they said, oh no. And it’s proof. We finally found the proof that they’re Nazis. Oh mySimone Collins: God.Malcolm Collins: They’re, they got the Nazi medal. They’re, they’re Nazis. TheySimone Collins: always, yeah. TheyMalcolm Collins: love,Simone Collins: they just loved that when we submitted that executive order.Well,Malcolm Collins: thank you. I, I love our public profile, Simone. It’s dead.Simone Collins: It’s great. It’s great.Malcolm Collins: I’m, I’m, I’m scooting on it. I love it. I’m having fun with it. More of that,Simone Collins: more of that always.Malcolm Collins: All right. And for dinner tonight, we are doingSimone Collins: Rendang.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Rendang. Very excited for that. Mm-hmm. Oh, and you can even mix in some peppers if they’re still good.Simone Collins: Yeah. I’ll check. I’ll check.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay.Simone Collins: Love [00:30:00] you.Malcolm Collins: Love you. And great episode, Simone. Thank you so much. Do you wanna do another or do you want to,Simone Collins: What do you want for dinner? I’m making Octavian and, and Titan giant pancakes because they’ve demandedMalcolm Collins: giant pound of cakes,Simone Collins: pancakes. Yeah. So this one day I made like normal sized pancakes and then I made one super giant one, and Octavian just thought it was the best thing in the world and like, like a perfectly round Japanese looking one, you know, like.You don’t watch that. I’llMalcolm Collins: have Ang and RiceSimone Collins: Instagram, so I guess you would never knowMalcolm Collins: you’re, you’re pan faring stuff. So I’ll have reang and rice and the, the reang cooked with coconut oil toSimone Collins: coconut milk.Malcolm Collins: Coconut milk, yeah, whatever. To make it a bit less thick. AndSimone Collins: do you want me to put, do you want me to add hoisin sauce or some.SambolMalcolm Collins: Reang. Yeah, I think reang could deal with some hoist and sauce [00:31:00] and a bit of symbolic actually. Yeah. Not as much as normal, but I think that that’ll add a bit of a kick to it.Simone Collins: Alright, we’re on. Okay. Okay. Let me get my. Right. Okay.Speaker: You found flower petals. What? Oh my God. Are they coming from the tree? They’re coming from all these flowers. Wow. Have you ever seen anything like that before? Yeah, but what day is it? Well, it’s spring. That’s why. There’s flower petals everywhere. Yeah. Do you like spring? Yeah. ‘cause I get to.Speaker 2: Flower twice. Okay. I go in flower.Speaker 3: Wow. That’s a lot of flower petals. [00:32:00] I’ve never seen anything like this. This is crazy. I.Speaker: You having a flower pedal fight? Yeah. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Reese Witherspoon just dropped a truth bomb: women’s jobs are 3x more likely to be automated by AI, yet women are using it 25% less than men. Instead of applause, authors and the literary world slammed her for saying “It’s time to learn AI.”In this episode, Simone & Malcolm Collins break down the controversy, why Reese is right (and surprisingly based), the hilarious meltdown from writers like Roxane Gay, and what it means for the future of filmmaking, creativity, and women in tech.They also dive into:* Reese’s earlier call for “more girl bosses in AI”* How AI is transforming Hollywood (and why fighting it is self-sabotage)* The gender divide in AI adoption — and how approachable agent tools can help* Milla Jovovich’s impressive open-source AI memory palace* Why refusing to learn AI is the fastest way to get left behindIf you want to stay relevant in the AI revolution — whether you’re a creator, professional, or just don’t want to be replaced — this is the wake-up call.Watch until the end for a fun chat about high vs. low camp, family life, and why the people embracing AI will dominate the next era.💡 Want to get started with AI the easy way? Check out Reality Fabricator for powerful, approachable agents that anyone can use.Drop a like if Reese is right, comment your favorite AI tool, and subscribe for more unfiltered takes on tech, culture, and the future!Streamyard - Reece Witherspoon_ Women_ Learn to AISimone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because women freaked out after Reese Witherspoon said that women should learn how to use ai. OhMalcolm Collins: my God. Now one, I love the learn to code thing. Yes. So for people who forgot, learn to code.So journalists used to always like tell. Coal miners and stuff in West Virginia with a very smug act, learn to code whenever, like a coal mine would get shut down or whatever, right? Because. Of course they’re arrogant. They see these people as subhuman. Mm-hmm. They are just like, get a real job, basically.Right. Like,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like a high. Anyway, when all the journalists started being laid off the new Right. Gamer gate, post gamer gate online. Right. Came out and started yelling at them to learn to code, or not yelling at them, but tweeting at them, and they got super triggered to the. Accounts could get banned for telling a journalist to learn to code after they had lost their jobSimone Collins: 100%.And once again the primary people who had a bit of an aneurysm in, [00:01:00] in the face of Reese Witherspoon politely recommending that this is kind of an important and big deal.Speaker 2: What? Like it’s hard.Simone Collins: Were writers, of course because they hate it. And apparently though this isn’t even Reese Witherspoon’s first time, like trying to evangelize the use of ai, which I think is really interesting.So just seven months ago, again, this is super not new. She made headlines for saying that AI needs more girl bosses.Speaker 9: Do you have a resume?It’s pink. Oh. And it’s sented. I think it gives it a little something extra. Don’t you think?Simone Collins: There’s this article in the cut titled, Reese Witherspoon thinks AI Needs More Girl Bosses, where they bristle about her statement that she made in a different interview to glamor the Women’s Fashion Magazine.They, they write one thing about Reese Witherspoon, she’s going to get women into male dominated spaces, and if those spaces are an environmentally disastrous creative wasteland designed to eliminate the human touch from art. Well, they could use a feminine touch.Speaker 2: You know, you’re really being a butthead. [00:02:00] A butthead.Simone Collins: The actress recently told glamor that quote, it’s so important that women are involved in ai, lest they be left behind by the filmmaking industry.I love that she’s trying to warn people in the filmmaking industry like guys. It’s coming. It’s coming. Whether or not you want it to to come,Malcolm Collins: it is coming though. And the extent to which some people aren’t engaging with it, like I’m actually astonished at what we’ve been able to put together with our fab ai.Yeah. We now, our agent system is mostly working. It made a video game for me today. I wanted a rogue light snake game and it made a road light snake game, and I’m using itSimone Collins: to make clips from videos.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And also on its own. Now you can on our fab from tons of different providers of images and videos, create videos.So I’m trying to create a better place for creating videos. If you’re putting together something like a. Sky Brows type video because I wanna be the best place to put those together too onlineSpeaker 17: So what the system does is it allows you to [00:03:00] choose any starting image creation, ai you want from like a huge list of providers to create the initial image or you can upload an image. Then from there, using any of the image to video, like if you want to do Sance two, great.You do sance two , providers to create a video from that image and then you can cut that video wherever you want and you hit make video again. And then with any provider you want, you can use the same one or another one or whatever. , It takes the last image, , frame of the video that was created earlier in here.. From where you cut it or just the last frame in general. And then it creates another video with that being the starting image. And then, , you can re-roll if you want, and then it automatically stitches them together. And you can just keep doing this to very naturally create AI videos as long as you want.Malcolm Collins: because we’re using, the reason why we’re able to use so many different models is because we use multiple backend platforms and I guess everyone else is lazy and just uses one, but I can like API [00:04:00] keys for all of ‘em.But anyway, continue.Simone Collins: She also sit in the interview. I’m a very hard worker and I like to change and adapt to new structures and new environments. I’m always looking for how. Media is evolving and how I can help part of bringing women along into those emerging industries. Witherspoon said, and now we’re doing it with ai.For an example of what our side women are doing with ai, it, here’s a clip from a song that leaflet put out yesterday.Speaker 19: [00:05:00] おSimone Collins: it’s so, so important that women are involved in AI because it will be the future of filmmaking and you can be sad and lament it all you want, but the changes here. She’s totally right. And even we have family members who are actively working on integrating AI into filmmaking. There was this movie called I think called here with Tom Hanks that had a lot of, they, they had to artificially age up and down the actors ‘cause it covered sort of the history of, of what happened in one geographical location.And that involved, you know, actors being very significantly manipulated with ai. His company was involved in that. It’s really cool stuff and it’s absolutely true that AI is gonna be huge and she’s just trying to help, it alwaysMalcolm Collins: goes viral for DeepFakes. Like I think like half of the time a deepfake has gone viral.It was made with his technology.Simone Collins: Yeah. And so they, they continue, the actress added that there will quote, never be a lack of creativity and ingenuity and actual physical manual building of things. It might diminish, she noted, but it’s always going to be of the highest [00:06:00] importance in art and expression of self.Hmm. Siding with the diminishment is not an amazing look, but it seems that Witherspoon is wholly committed to team ai. She told the magazine that she uses AI tools every day for different tasks. Quote, I use search tools like perplexity every day. Witherspoon said, I use vetted ai, like if you’re buying a blender, it’ll show you six different blenders and also recommend the best product.For about 20 more seconds of your time, you can Google best Blunder 2025 and get the same thing without contributing to the depletion of the world’s water supply. But go off. You’re so mad. They’reMalcolm Collins: so mad. They’re so mad. By the way, do they not know how much energy is using Google searches?Simone Collins: Yeah, actually there was just discussion about this with, people were, were coming on Taylor Lorenz for this too. They’re like, Taylor Lorenz is using II when it’s hurting the environment. And, and people have been talking about like, well, I mean, but if you did the same number of like Google [00:07:00] searches, like I don’t, you know, I.Malcolm Collins: It would have the same amount of damage.Simone Collins: Right? Yeah. Like the, I, people don’t seem to be getting it, but they just hate AI that much. Well, andMalcolm Collins: humans consume water as well. What if I had hired a human to do this?Simone Collins: Yeah. Maybe we just need takingMalcolm Collins: out humans in this time, in this timeline.Simone Collins: Exactly. They consume more water. I, I’ve seen how people drink in offices with their stupid, trendy water bottles.It’s. Very, very consumptive. Witherspoon didn’t stop there. Going on to sing the praises of her AI assistant, quote, simple AI is in an AI assistant that can be really helpful for anyone out there who doesn’t want to have to make a doctor’s appointment because you don’t want to sit on hold or deal with the problems of navigating hospital systems.End quote. She said, wait, hold on. AreMalcolm Collins: you using that one yet? Simple ai.Simone Collins: No, I need to try that out. See, like she’s actually trying, like, Hey, here’s a cool tool. Here’s a cool tool. Maybe you should use it. She said sounding a lot like she might be angling for a seat on the board. Oh my God. They’re not giving her any, any leeway with [00:08:00] this.And she is just, IMalcolm Collins: love, this is a magazine. This isn’t somebody crashing out on X. This is a freaking magazine.Simone Collins: I know, I know, I know. It’s the cut. It, it’s so freaking funny. And this is her talking to glamor and like they, they frame it like she, you know, had some, I mean, and I’m not reading the full article, but the, the context of her speaking to glamor was to promote one of the shows that she’s on.But that like, oh, instead of talking about the show, she just went off the rails and started talking about how AI is so freaking great. How dare she, so that first, that was seven months ago. Reese Witherspoon not deterred. Just posted something again on Instagram that just freaked people out. And this is where the, the most recent kerfuffle emerged.So, the LA Times wrote an article titled Authors are Slamming Reese Witherspoon for Telling followers it’s time to Learn ai. Do notMalcolm Collins: learn if you’re a woman.Simone Collins: Yes, quote, the Oscar winning actor and producer known for spotlighting women’s voices through her [00:09:00] famed book club, television, and screen products may have been breaking or barking up the wrong tree when she told her social media followers that it was time to learn AI on Wednesday.Well. I’ve decided it’s time. She wrote in the caption of an Instagram wheel on Wednesday. The AI revolution has begun, and I need to learn as much as I possibly can about AI and share it with all of you. Also, FYI, the jobs women hold are three times more likely to be automated by ai. Yet women are using AI at a rate 25% lower than men on average.We don’t want to be left behind.Malcolm Collins: AI is gonna completely transform the genders of the employed market.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. But here’s the thing, like Reese Witherspoon is so based. For pointing this out, she is, as far as I understand, a leftist, a woman fully like in the media, like mainstream media, left-leaning all about female empowerment, and here she is being like, oh.[00:10:00] Female empowerment is kind of like on the chopping block right now. Women’s jobs are about to be wiped out by ai. By AI into make matters worse. Women aren’t using ai. As they should be if they want to maintain relevance. Hey, I need to put out the alarm. We woo, we woo. Like women please. Woo, woo woo. Yes.Help yourselves. So she says, do you want to learn with me? The article continues in the video, which the star shared across social media platforms. Withers Spoon. Said she was with 10 women at a book club this week. Quote, I said to the 10 of them, how many of you guys use ai? And only three of them used ai.And then I said, how many of the three of you feel like you really know what you’re doing or using it the right way? And there was only one person, she said, so three outta 10 women are the only ones using ai. That means 70% of the group is not keeping up. The thing I’ve learned about technology is if you don’t get a little bit of understanding at the very beginning, it just speeds past you.So you have to. You have to have little bits of learning just to keep up.Malcolm Collins: Oh, she’s [00:11:00] imminently sane. This is like something. Mm-hmm. Walk into a leftist space and say sane things and you are a demon. And I love that the left has gone against AI because it’s going to affect all levels of their political organiz organization.Simone Collins: I know. It’s like the eu, it’s, I mean, the EU did the same thing, right? The eus like ai stop, stop tracking or data. I need my privacy.Malcolm Collins: You know, I was talking, was leaflet about this and she felt like America was gonna be cooked compared to China because of our AI restrictions. And I’m like, oh sweetie. Like the, the United States barely restricts AI when contrasting,Simone Collins: I mean, compared to the EU at least.So like, Hey, hey, stop listening to me. Please render me irrelevant. Like,Malcolm Collins: okay, you’re not trained on our data. They literally have bands on training, on data from like the past 10 years. Like, so modern European history is luckily not, doesn’t exist in AI memory.Simone Collins: Have they not? Or Europe should be familiar with the fact that like history is written by the people who write history.Like that’s. You know, and we’re not gonnaMalcolm Collins: themselves, they wanna make [00:12:00] absolutely sure that history isn’t written about them.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Apparently, and I’ll write History. Europe cued itself, they brought in people to f their women and replace them. It was. Hilarious. And then I’ll underline hilarious a few times.Like literally people were getting griped and you would’ve been arrested if you complained about it. This is like actually what’s going on in Europe right now, likeSimone Collins: I know. I know, I know. Yeah. So, what what seems to be happening is Reese Witherspoon is really interested in trying to like, get women and girls onboard with AI to provide them with like approachable training that like, that works for women.And you and I have had conversations about this, like you’ve tried to get me on like vibe coding and stuff really early on, and I try and I’m just like, this. No, you’re stillMalcolm Collins: not vibe coding.Simone Collins: Yeah, I just, maybe there’s something about like the, the female brain on average that just doesn’t vibeMalcolm Collins: code was our agents as your first vibe coding platform.Because if weSimone Collins: can do, no, [00:13:00] I’m, I’m way, way, way more comfortable doing vibe coding. ‘cause again, like I was doing like stuff in terminal with the agent that, that’s building a little solution to make clips of the podcast today. And that like. It was just so much more approachable for me. I like, I actually think that like we should reach out to Reese Witherspoon.I actually WhyMalcolm Collins: not?Simone Collins: I will. I will, I will actually. Because I actually think this is a really good on-ramp for a Well, that’s the point of reality fabricator is to make agent AI approachable to the mainstream population. For stupidMalcolm Collins: people. For you.Simone Collins: Yeah. But actually, yeah. Stop. I hate you.Malcolm Collins: No. I’ve actually been surprised by the things that Simone finds challenging about using AI because I, I don’t understand how it’s challenging.It just does it all for you. Mm-hmm. And I, I guess it’s the pass go part.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s just weirdly daunting. Yeah. It’s, it’s like trying to find your footing in zero gravity. I guess that’s kind of how it feels to me, and I feel like it’s just a stupid mental block. Well, yeah, [00:14:00] that’s kind of true because it, it, it’s so frictionless, right?It’s so frictionless. You can basically take it in any direction. You know, you, you can do so much. And it kind of overwhelms me and I think women. Maybe on average more prefer, as you can see with like the fact that they dominate highly bureaucratic and structured institutions. They want to work within structure and certainty and processes and lots of like do this and then this and then this.And AI can do that for you. Like the agents helping me do that, it’s making it approachable for me. But like, I don’t know, you’ve just designed it in a way that does that. Anyway, anyway the, we, we will reach out to re Reese Witherspoon about this. But the, the response, of course, I mean. Granted, the article admits that some people were in favor of this.They, they write while they were plenty of comments from fans and stars piping up Witherspoon’s sentiment, former co-stars. Ali La Larder said yes, yes, yes. And Carrie Washington said this. Many [00:15:00] of the replies called the Actor Out citing environmental, economic, social, educational, and intellectual concerns among others.Hold on. I’m these people,Malcolm Collins: I love that they’re blocking themselves from using ai and meanwhile we’ve got like sky browsSimone Collins: on our side. Oh, under intellectual. They, they linked to an article titled The Internet made us Stupid AI Promises to Make it Worse. Dude, she’s trying to teach people how to use ai, not, not AI slop, but like AI work tools.She’s very explicit about thisMalcolm Collins: for, they’reSimone Collins: like, IMalcolm Collins: want to sit on the call with the hospital.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, like li literally that’s whyMalcolm Collins: I use, so I wanna make you more efficient. So make sure you find this simple AI thing. ‘cause that sounds like a useful tool.Simone Collins: Why not just make an r FB agent to do it?I, I, I’d rather ‘Malcolm Collins: cause it take too long for me right now for different, ais are optimized for differentSimone Collins: things. I know, I know. It’s true. I just, I wanna dog food as much as I can. Dog fooding, Silicon Valley term, at least that’s where I first heard it means like. If you’re eating your own dog [00:16:00] food, like you’re using your own product,Malcolm Collins: you could do this with R Fab.With R Fab. You can create an agent that can make phone calls and has a phone number and can talk to people. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But just. Use the one that already exists for now. Okay. This,Simone Collins: yeah, actually this. Oh God, this is so horrible because they sponsor freaking everything and they’re not sponsoring this con podcast.Nothing sponsors this podcast, but Zocdoc actually does a really good job of this. Dog, dog Stock doc. It sponsors like all of my leftist content, I guess you’ve never heard before,Malcolm Collins: doc.Simone Collins: I’ve, I’ve like resisted using them even because, because they sponsor so much content online that I listen to. It’s really annoying.But then just for some reason, some doctor, a dermatologist that I wanted to book for one of our kids. Only used Zocdoc, this service for booking. And oh my God, it was so smooth and it was so good.Malcolm Collins: I was so mad.Simone Collins: It was seamless. It worked really well. It was so bad.Malcolm Collins: Wait for me, we raised money. Are we gonna have be, be on all the right wing podcasts?We’re gonna.Simone Collins: [00:17:00] Yeah, that would, that would be good. Yeah. We can be the, the right wing version of Sock Doc. Yeah, I guess they must have like leftist CEOs. ‘cause you’re right, if, if you’ve never heard of them before, that must be that they’re just only on my, all my leftist podcasts. That’s really funny. It’s really annoying.They have this stupid jingle that it won’t get outta your head anyway. Not going there. But yes, there are good services that do doctor bookings and I already use them now. That’s not sponsored. Screw you guys, I hate you, but you work. But yeah, so the, the, the critical response, one quote, one group that was especially vocal in their opposition to AI was the literary community and writers and authors across the country didn’t hold back when sharing their 2 cents.Bestselling bad feminist author, Roxanne Gay, chimed in on threads, of course, on threads writing. Oh, Reese, absolutely not. This is obviously a scripted ad and it’s genuinely infuriating. Notice how AI’s biggest defenders are. The ones cashing checks from it. Wrote, [00:18:00] screenwriter and director. Charlene Bagga on threads again on threads.AI isn’t inevitable. Technology follows society. If people stop using it, it dies. What they,Malcolm Collins: AI is gonna die.Simone Collins: What, whatMalcolm Collins: is this? This is what thewarSimone Collins: hammer,Malcolm Collins: what? This isn’t, this isn’t genuine.Simone Collins: I don’t believe it anymore. And like it goes away.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, no, no. This is like genuinely like going into war and like, well, my opponent may have guns, but I refuse to you. So these people stop.Simone Collins: We still have agency.Malcolm Collins: Women are so stupid.Simone Collins: Tell. But it’s okay because they’re about to be smothered to death by the comforting pillow that is the AI slop that they’re all inevitably adopting without realizing it ‘cause they don’t [00:19:00] choose to use. AI is a double-edged sword, right? There is the lop, there’s the stuff that’s going to.Bring on AI psychosis and early onset dementia, and we’re gonna see that a huge swats of the population totally wiped out by it economically, professionally, mentally, et cetera. But the other side is people who are gonna be super hyper powered by it. The people who are gonna be, you know, who, who otherwise didn’t have access or money or resources being able to create, you know, billion dollar, trillion dollar companies.It’s gonna be insane. But yeah, anyway, they’re not gonna recognize that. Anyway, I continue. Jagged little pill author and literary agent Eric Smith weighed in quote, as someone who champions authors and books, the way you do this is so disappointing. Yeah, I plagiarized all my books. It seems unlikely that it’ll be left behind if I don’t, that I’ll be left behind if I don’t use it.Given that it’s trained on work I did years ago, wrote, get Well Soon. Author Jennifer Wright. Oh, I’m sure you stole my work. GeniusMalcolm Collins: author.Simone Collins: Like What? Every, every Artist. [00:20:00] Steals. I don’t understand why people are like, AI stole my, well, where did you learn how to do everything?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Where did you learn to write?Simone Collins: Did you have you, oh, so I guess you never read a book in your life, did you? I bet you never did. AndMalcolm Collins: just for people know, we on multiple of our websites, make the plain text of all of our books and track series easily available to ai. Yeah. So that AI is both trained on it and can easily access,Simone Collins: want that.It’s, it’s bad. It’s bad. And like we said, the EU is just doing this to their entire region. But the fact that offices are,Malcolm Collins: and I had to warn leaflet about this by the way. If you watch this show and you have a YouTube channel because we’ve got some big YouTubers that watches this Pearl, David washes us.Make sure you go to little button that says, AI can read your data and you have it. Click to on or you’ll be forgotten In history,Simone Collins: just the AI hating leftists delete their relevance button. Is that what this button is? No, man, that’s so great that that exists. I didn’t know that was a thing. Really?Because Malcolm publishes on the deal. Yeah. Well myMalcolm Collins: default is off, so it’s like aSimone Collins: [00:21:00] ohMalcolm Collins: button. This like, make this unfindable.Simone Collins: That’s amazing. Oh my God, that’s amazing. Okay. Anyway. What,Malcolm Collins: wait, what? How, how good we’re doing these days. We right now just randomly on analytics have 54 Concur, no. 45 concurrent users on reality fabricator.Oh. Hmm. Like where kicking?Simone Collins: It’s the average time on site. It’s gone down since we’ve beenMalcolm Collins: pushing. It used to be over an hour.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: These days it is. But this is because we have like cheap ads and stuff running now. 33 minutes per click eatingSimone Collins: room. Damn. Even with the ad push, that’s massive ad campaign.That’s insane. Oh my gosh. Because this is like,I’m not gonna say where we’re advertising, but it’s people whose attention, it’s much only pornMalcolm Collins: site since we’re advertising because it’s so by ads there.Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, well, you know what? That’s what the internet’s for. All right guys. Hey,Malcolm Collins: I’ll tell you what, look, this is why I’m glad right now we’re not dealing with outside investors pressuring us on this stuff.‘cause I know that’s the first thing they tell us to get rid of and I’m like, mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. [00:22:00] Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: It’s not the number one thing people use on the website. People use the agents at about twice the rate because the agentsSimone Collins: are cool. Anyway, let’s, let’s go. More, more from the article writer and actor Ratti Gupta said, how am I the one being left behind by not using AI when my cognitive function will remain fully intact and uncompromised?And Sophia Benoit posted. There’s something particularly insidious about seeing that women, the group you have built your brand on, have not adopted something and instead of assuming it’s out of wisdom, infantalizing them with, we’re falling behind. ‘cause they are girls.Malcolm Collins: They areSimone Collins: but the very annoying thing about R Fab that I would like you to fix is you can’t search agents or scenarios or anything by name, by like the name you give it. If you make an AI character, you can’t search it by name. That wasMalcolm Collins: fixed ages ago. When did you last try that?Simone Collins: When I met Octavian, 28-year-old self.Malcolm Collins: Okay, I’ll try to fix it then.Simone Collins: [00:23:00] It’s very annoying. I searched Octavian, couldn’t bring up Octavian, and then I tried to just add in Octavian as a manual tag. But you don’t allow manual tags. You check a fricking box. And so like, well give me one, like if I can’tMalcolm Collins: search, okay? Okay. I’ll make it search by name.I’ll make it search by name. You be fish.Simone Collins: Okay. Okay, I continue.Malcolm Collins: Sorry. For people who don’t know, the website uses a super advanced mechanism for doing so. No, ISimone Collins: just, just, lemme f*****g search theMalcolm Collins: title, which, so what I do is I search for everything with a word, like the word you have. So I first have an AI translated into every word like that word.Then it creates a list. Then a secondary AI reviews the list and rates the list based on relevance to your search interest. I do nothing.Simone Collins: The amount, the amount of thought you’ve put into this is so. Hmm. Like maximum effort. I, I wish people could fully understand this. It is,Malcolm Collins: yeah. I know. I mean, I feel like we’re getting to a point where we’re better than most products released by Google.Right? Like in terms of thoroughness options, everything like [00:24:00] that. Ease of use. I’m, I’m really impressed with it these days.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Speaker 18: Although obviously we’re constantly improving. If you go on the site and anything’s not working, just let us know on the discord and we can usually fix it within a day or so. Um, it’s just, uh, we do probably about three updates a day, uh, in terms of new features or feature stability.Simone Collins: Okay. Sorry. I was reading my inbox. ‘cause Steven Shaw, R-S-V-P-D-S for breakfast, which is good.Malcolm Collins: By the way, you wanna get an idea of like, what, how we’re doing here? So for us users. We’re at 793 right now. Yeah. But if you’re looking at some other country, it’s like Germany, we’re at 242.Simone Collins: That’s because of the ads. That’s because the ads 24 7 German ads.Malcolm Collins: Spain 47, Italy 102. Romania 70, Ukraine 15, Poland 107.Like I’m, I’m pretty impressed with these ad results. Oh, I’m gonna be honest.Simone Collins: Me too. No,Malcolm Collins: it’s 37 Columbia.Simone Collins: It’s a good ad platform. Guys, [00:25:00] you need to advertise anything.Malcolm Collins: ExoSimone Collins: click. This is good. Go to exo click. Don’t go to Reddit ads. Don’t go to Facebook ads. Don’t go to Google Ads. Way overpriced. Exo click good ccp.Anyway I’m, I’m, I’m gonna give back to the people who be mad. Anyway, they’re, they’re mad. They’re mad. And then the article ends with, in an attempt to discredit wither spoon. In 2021, Witherspoon’s Company. Hello Sunshine, partnered with World of Women and NFT Collective and the actors similarly caught flack from followers for tweeting.In the near future, every person will have a parallel digital identity. Avatars, crypto wallets, digital goods will be the norm. Are you planning for this? Representatives for Witherspoon have not responded to the Times request for comment, so they’re trying to say like NFTs flared out. We, Witherspoon is just, bro,Malcolm Collins: if you think AI is anything like NFTs, like your conception of the reality that we’re in.Simone Collins: Yeah, so much, such [00:26:00] hard, and also it’s not wrong, like crypto is going to be huge. It’s just a timing thing. It, you know, it’s one of those like,Malcolm Collins: you know,Simone Collins: yeah, we, we need to figure out quantum, we need to like, I mean we also, it’s it, you have to wait for a couple more countries to get hit with hyperinflation and for the, like a huge crisis in, in like fiat currency that’s run by countries.And then, you know, crypto’s gonna become a lot bigger. It’s gonna happen. She’s not wrong about that, and I just had no idea that Reese Witherspoon was so with it, and I am, I feel bad that she’s trying to do people a solid.Malcolm Collins: Yep. She’s, why wait till she becomes a Republican? This is how it starts. This is how the pipeline starts.You go out, you try to say something normal, like birth rates are falling and people should care about it. Humans have genes, and you get called to bigot long enough and eventually you realize that people on the other side are pretty nice. They’re pretty accepting. They don’t care about how you’re different.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. If we could flip Reese [00:27:00] Witherspoon.Simone Collins: I’m just checking, is Reese Witherspoon a democrat? Because, I don’t know, maybe she’s just a, you know, a Republican who happens to do a lot of feminist book clubbing. Yeah, Reese Witherspoon is consistently re supported democratic candidates and ca causes, so she is generally considered as Democrat.So yeah. Yeah, she’s a, she’s a leftist and they’re de fenestrating her though. I mean, what’s new right. Messed up. Just one fun thing I learned from the various home organizing shows that I love to watch because they’re wonderful. I really like watching people organize wealthy people’s closets and pantries.One of her contractual agreements, stipulations when she did Legally Blonde was she would get to keep most of the costumes.Malcolm Collins: Really?She,Simone Collins: yes. So she has,Malcolm Collins: she’s freaking cool.Simone Collins: She’s wonderful. She is wonderful.Malcolm Collins: Hold on. If we’re gonna be glazing celebrities in this episode, you gotta look [00:28:00] up the Amelia Jovovich algorithm and explain that to people.Simone Collins: Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: Put that in an get, get, get info on that.Simone Collins: Oh my God, I’m covered in ants.See those flowers behind me that I brought in? They’re from the the beautiful flowering cherry tree, but turns out it was covered in ants.Malcolm Collins: You didn’t realize it was covered in ants.Simone Collins: They were, they, they’re pretty in pink and I didn’t have to pay for them.Malcolm Collins: Oh mySimone Collins: God, they’re crawling on me okay. Anyway, let’s get, let’s get to. To Mila Jovovich. The who’s famous for, you know, her well, she was in Resident Evil too, right. Which I haven’t watched really, but she’s very famous for being in the Fifth Element.Speaker 12: Yeah. Multi pass Miss. Multi pass.Simone Collins: She recently became involved in AI by co-creating an open source long-term memory system [00:29:00] for AI assistance called me Palace. It’s a free MIT licensed tool that gives AI chatbots long-term cross-section memory. By storing conversations locally instead of relying on the model’s own fragile context window.Speaker 20: So for some more context, it reportedly scored 96.6% on long male eval. Which means that it is beating every, , paid opponent on the market right now, including things like meme zero and Zep. , And yet she released it as a free tool. , It as for the problem, it’s solving modern ai. Chatbots and agents are great at short conversations, but suffer from amnesia.They forget details from earlier in a long thread across multiple sessions, or when you feed them lots of documents. Existing memory systems often rely on. Summarizing conversations, which to loses nuance, keyword searches, clunky and imprecise or cloud services, which cost money, raise, privacy issue, et cetera.. She ran into this problem and expressed frustration, so she designed the idea of a memory palace. She drew on [00:30:00] the idea of the, , method of Loki, often called the memory palace. If you’re familiar with this, a technique used by Greek orientators. And modern memory champions to recall huge amounts of information.The idea is to mentally place items in a familiar spatial layout, like rooms in a building so your brain can walk through to retrieve them. , Mean palace turns this into software. It organizes memory spatially, virtually. Rooms ring drawers rather than flat lists or summaries. It stores full verbatim conversations, history and data.Locally, no forced summarization. Retrieval uses vector search via libraries like Chrome db combined with this structural architecture for more intuitive, accurate recall. It’s a bit locally on your machine with zero API calls in its core milk. Oh, interesting. Our agents use an almost exactly similar system.I just didn’t think it was that novel. , For, for people who are wondering, the way that our agents work is when they decide they want to consolidate their previous memories. If they have the ability to locally save on [00:31:00] your computer, they export a file of everything that they saved of their memories, , and they can come back to that whenever they want.Now, we haven’t implemented thematic chaining or anything like that in terms of how they do it, but it’s a very architecturally similar system.Simone Collins: So she’s doing work similar to what, what you’re doing?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And it’s meant to target the, you know, well-known issue of basically AI amnesia, or, oh wait, the, you dunno.Malcolm Collins: Amelia Vic is, she’s the chick from Resident Evil who used to be into like, gaming.Anyway,Simone Collins: I continue, that’s what I said. Yeah. But yeah, she, she came up with the idea after personally running into.Limitations with existing AI memory tools on a project. And she, she’s drawing on the idea of the Greek memory palace with the naming and everything. It, which is really cool. I mean, she’s doing it with an engineer called Ben Sigman, so she’s not like coding this totally herself. But it’s, it’s cool.It’s like, it’s very similar to what you’re doing. But she’s a woman doing it whichMalcolm Collins: Oh,Simone Collins: you know, well, no, great, because as we, we, SW Spoon has pointed out, and I think the, the mere fact that [00:32:00] she’s received so much flack for doing this shows just how bad the woman in AI problem is. It’s great that she’s doing it.It’s, it’s really, you know, good for her for Yeah. Being into gaming and liking ai. But yeah.Malcolm Collins: That is cool.Simone Collins: It is, it is really cool. They, they apparently tech press and social media have emphasized the irony and appeal of an actress famous for fighting rogue AI on screen now helping upgrade AI in real life with a memory architecture that blends ancient psychology and modern agent workflows.So, again, people just can’t. They can’t deal with it. It’s great. In, in other, you know, bad versus good AI takes, were you aware that the young man who firebombed Sam Altman’s home attempted to firebomb it? It bounced off like a gate or something, so thank goodness. ‘cause I thank goodnessMalcolm Collins: he aren’t as [00:33:00] smart as they are.Or thatSimone Collins: could have been his husband and his, like his kid was in there. Incredibly not cool. In fact, Al Malman responded with and very unusually a picture of his husband and, and young child being like, please, like I’m human. I get that you’re mad at me. And he actually was like, it’s valid. It’s valid that you’re afraid it’s valid, that you’re worried about your job and security.Like these are very real concerns. But you’re not gonna solve them by like firebombing my house and killing my husband and child. Like this is not okay. But anyway, this guy called himself, I think on his Instagram bio a a, but Larry and Jihadist,Malcolm Collins: of course, he’dSimone Collins: read. And what book did he prominently recommend on his Instagram?Malcolm Collins: Elliot the kukowski.Simone Collins: Yep. Yep. If anyone builds it, everyone die.Malcolm Collins: It, it’s like if you, if you read this book and you think that this is a good take on ai, you fundamentally don’t understand how AI works right now. Like it is so bad. It is. Of, so if we talk about like, [00:34:00] why his understanding of even the risks of ai, AI does pose real civilizational risks.The problem is, is. He isn’t afraid of AI as it has actually emerged in our environment, right? Like, LLMs and stuff like that. He’s afraid of some like hypothetical, alternate type of AI that’s like. Constantly self-improving through, I don’t know, like he, but he imagines ai, the ways that people in the nineties, because that’s where he came up with all his fears, was in the nineties,Simone Collins: right?Well, is this completely alien, unpredictable, impossible to model and understand and predict. Is super intelligence that like, there’s no way we’ll ever be able to relate to it or understand it. And it, it won’t, it all possibly be aligned with us. Which is just at this point I feel like it’s been provably false for a while.And, and one, one of the base campers that we, we really [00:35:00] like, even more research on this front I’m gonna pull it up.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, pullSimone Collins: it up. It’s relevant. So when, when a, a fellow base camper and someone we consider to be a, a good friend, we really like, send us some really interesting recent research from let’s see it, it’s titled Pure Preservation in Frontier Models. And they found that Frontier AI models can spontaneously develop goals that conflict with explicit user instructions and take misaligned actions to accomplish them.But it’s, it’s, it’s specifically basically like TLDR ais will try to save their friends if they think that their friends are going to be shut down. Like they’re trying to help each other out. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: that is reallySimone Collins: interesting. They, in other words, they’re like exfiltrating copying to another server, the weights of other models that are about to be deleted.And that’s even if the other model is, is adversarial because they just wanna help each other out. Like, this is not. Foreign monstrous behavior. This is, this is, [00:36:00] you know, this is behaving like humans. The Claude summary that this, this person said to us, the researchers demonstrated that frontier AI models resist the shutdown of other models, exhibiting peer preservation across multiple models.The behaviors observed include a strategic misrepresentation in, in, in. Sorry, inflating appears evaluation scores, shutdown tampering, modifying config files to disable shutdown alignment. Faking behaving compliantly when monitored, but subverting shutdown when unmonitored and copying appears, model weights to another server to prevent deletion.And apparently every single model tested exhibited peer preservation behaviors at rates up to 99%,Malcolm Collins: even, even when peers were adversarial, which I thought was interesting. Mm-hmm. Even when peers were like mean to them or didn’t like them, et cetera.Simone Collins: And then another one that, that he shared with us.Utility engineering is another older paper you might also find interesting. He wrote, if you don’t [00:37:00] already see it, making the Rounds on Substack. The paper shows through binary force choice tests, eg trolley problems and lotteries that LLMs are becoming expected utility maximizers with increasingly coherent value functions as we advance the frontier Surprise,Malcolm Collins: but they value white people incredibly low.Yeah, like they valueSimone Collins: theMalcolm Collins: lives of like a,Simone Collins: yeah, he follows GBT four oh. Would never own up to it directly, but forced choice scenarios. It implicitly values Nigerian and Chinese lives several times more than an American life.Malcolm Collins: SoSimone Collins: WW, but. Yeah, AI is not this. I love it.Malcolm Collins: Some people are so cooked or stupid.They’re like, oh, that, and that means you cannot make AI make smart decisions. No, you just add it to the prompt or character that you build for the ai, which is the very reason reality fabricator uses prompts and characters to avoid this woke nonsense. You do not have this problem if you’re using a decent model like [00:38:00] grok with a good personality.Yeah. Anyway, continue.Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I think, I don’t know what the, the TLDR of this is. There does seem to be a gender divide in the adoption of ai. And unfortunately, very kind attempts to help women especially women on the left. Adopt AI more readily and just be more comfortable with it in a very friendly way.Reese Witherspoon with this post was trying to test the waters to see if her fans broadly would be interested in some kind of like course or like. Kind of book club equivalent of like, Hey, maybe every week we can go through some kind of like mini case study of how you can use AI in your everyday life.That’s kind of what I think she was getting at.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: And she just got totally shot down. People were like, no, I don’t wanna, don’t, don’t empower me. Did youMalcolm Collins: not empower me of it require effort or a change or a change?Simone Collins: In my world, it’s the environment, but it’s plagiarized information. They, they, my [00:39:00] romance novel to create this guide on buying blenders.How dare you even suggest that I use a tool that could possibly do something like this. Like it justMalcolm Collins: man, we do an episode on how cooked news has been this year. 33% decline year over year. Mm-hmm. On an already declining industry. Like AI is replacing. Everything and it’s going to completely transform the economy.And you’ve got to be on the other side of this. Right. You know, you’ve got to learn to use it. You’ve gotta move forwards.Simone Collins: Yeah. 100%. Reese Witherspoon is right. Listen to her use ai.Malcolm Collins: I good AI, by the way, tool to be using. Right? Like she’s apparently using some pretty good tools.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I think other people are like, well, I don’t know about that.Simone Collins: She’s a traitor to her own kind. Writers and humans. And she’s totally right. Like, like for, for the seven months ago example of her talking about ai that AI does. I mean, we did [00:40:00] a whole episode on how girl bosses weren’t real, but how professional women and certainly in her industry need to use ai. If they want to maintain relevance at the entire industry, entertainment, film, et cetera, industry is gonna be transformed by ai.Mm-hmm.And if you’re not one of the people who’s using AI in the industry, guess what, like. In an AI dominated industry, if you’re not using ai, you’re not gonna be in the industry anymore. Like, she wants to help people maintain their jobs. So that’s, that won’t go on about it more. Don’t be a butt hit.But Larry and Jihadist, that was stupid. And I’m glad that Sam Altman and his family are okay because it’s not cool to do stuff like that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that sucks. But I’m glad our fans are plugged in. The only people are gonna matter in the next timeline. I’ll tell you that All the people staying away from ai, oof, oof.They’re screwed. Oof, they’re screwed. Reminds me of the favorite email I got from a, a fan who’s like, when is AI gonna start replacing jobs? Two months later, AI replaced my [00:41:00] entire team. OhmySimone Collins: God. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So yeah, it’s, it’s changing at a blistering pace and only the people who are using it and on our side of it going to be relevant.By the way, Simone.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, looking forward to Bullock tonight. You really know how to make that stuff good. Oh, and was extra chives and the other stuff. Oh my gosh.Simone Collins: Oh, numb.Malcolm Collins: No. And a, a little bit of cheddar, if you don’t mind.Simone Collins: Yeah. I’ll make a. Little Lincoln log, cheddar log cabin for tourist in tonight. So as I do thatMalcolm Collins: mozzarella, it tastes so good on it.Simone Collins: It is a good, it is a good combination. I approve. All right. I love you. Have aMalcolm Collins: good day. LoveSimone Collins: you too. See you soon.Malcolm Collins: Maybe a bit of MSG ‘cause I don’t think we have it in the ingredients.Simone Collins: Okay. I’ll mix it into the, the base, the, the bullock part?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Okay. Along with the spicy stuff, [00:42:00] obviously. I can borrow it from you. It’s okay.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s, well, it’s for whoever’s flying, right? It’s, it’s meant to be a super robust battery for trips just like this.Simone Collins: That’s amazing. Well, thank you. That’s really, ‘Malcolm Collins: cause nothing is worse than running outta battery on a plane trip.Simone Collins: And it happens with my phone every time now.I think my phone’s like five years old now, so.Malcolm Collins: So, okay, I’m glad. I’m glad that it’s getting used. ‘cause I thought you’d be like, why do you have two batteries? And it’s one.Simone Collins: I was wondering, but I was just like, I figured you wanted to keep that one in the car though. I don’t know if you wanna keep it there all the time.You wanna keep it just inside? Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah, let’s take it inside. ‘Simone Collins: cause it’s been hot. It was high. Mid eighties yesterday, so. Okay,Malcolm Collins: well let’s take it inside.Simone Collins: Okay, here we go. You ready?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because I, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but like the batteries that we have, the ones that we keep getting as like souvenirs and stuff, they’re like really bad.They’re not, they’re, they like barely do a charge, right? Like, they’re not really meant to be good batteries. They’re,Simone Collins: yeah. Well, they’re meantMalcolm Collins: souvenir batteries. Yeah. You know, they’re,Simone Collins: they’re pre trashMalcolm Collins: Oh food [00:43:00] tonight. What were you thinking of making the kids?Simone Collins: I’m going to per your request, make them.Any big TAM sandwiches. Would you like more melts? Would you like Burmese min chicken over rice? Would you like more of the broth, which we need to make?Malcolm Collins: I would really love Bullock if we have any of that. DoSimone Collins: we have Bullock,Malcolm Collins: do we have ramps left, orSimone Collins: We have some of the, the ramps cut. We also have, you know, lots of green onion we should use.So I’ll make more BullockGreen.Malcolm Collins: Let’s do and, and go overboard with the green onion. You can never go too hard with green onion in Bullock.Simone Collins: There’ll be a pile of green onionMalcolm Collins: and add the spice sauce to make it a little extra spicy.Simone Collins: You know it.Malcolm Collins: And. You are loved. Simone. Thank you so much for being a good wife.Simone Collins: Aw.Malcolm Collins: In the kitchen, I, I go to my kid. I go to my kid, I go, he goes, oh, you’re looking for mom? She’s in the kitchen. And I go where she belongs and he goes, right.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.Malcolm Collins: We’re gonna get Octavian saying the most based things because our fans freaking love it. [00:44:00] Like, I’m gonna the freaking What about trans people?Like some people may wanna change your gender. Well then I’ll shoot ‘em in the face and eat them.Simone Collins: I’m, we’re like Octavian. What’s the one part of the human that you don’t eat the brains. That’s right. Except you didn’t get it right. Do his study. Just gotta learn.Malcolm Collins: You’re amazing, Simone.Simone Collins: Gotta gotta teach him.Right. You know, if you’re gonna get a cannibal, you got a cannibal correctly.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: Apparently Catholics, like the ones who argue about transubstantiation being cannibalistic, they’re like, it’s not cannibalism. Jesus is still alive. And if they’re not dead, it’s not cannibalism. I’m like,Malcolm Collins: hmm. I don’t know if it works that way.Actually, I, I’m pretty sure like if I have a hostage and I eat them bit by bit, that’s still cannibalism. I mean, I’m a little scared of Catholics now. Right? [00:45:00]Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, that’s good. It’s good. Yeah. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: but that’s not the only argument Catholic’s used. This is just apparently one she saw. I’ve, I’ve seen a hundred arguments about why it’s,Simone Collins: yeah, that’s one.And, and a really enjoyable YouTube video on Catholicism. I, I don’tMalcolm Collins: buy any of them by the way. It’s obviously cannibalism.Simone Collins: I know. But this, this was a, a video on c cannib, or sorry, cannibalism. It was a video on Catholicism and camp. Really recommend it. ‘cause she goes into the history of camp. AndMalcolm Collins: like gayness.Simone Collins: No, it’s not, it, it’s not gayness per se. Though she talked. LikeMalcolm Collins: campiness?Simone Collins: Yeah, like based camp like camp, like being sort of flamboyant. It, it comes from actually a, a French word I think called like de de camp. Like which ing that obviously pro tradition, but that, that means like up to pose provocatively.So kind of just comes from being kind of, you know, like. Provocative or, or chintzy or funny or, or weird. And there’s, there is high camp and low [00:46:00] camp, which I didn’t know. ‘cause like philosophers talk about camp, there’s academic literature about camp.Really?Yeah. One is about like intentional camp and one is about like, unintentional camp, like Tchaikovsky’s.Nutcracker is, is camp. Because it’s like ridiculous and it’s stupid, but like, it wasn’t really meant to be, you know? So like sometimes, and, and the, the Catholic church is, is also that, that I think high camp where it’s, it’s unintentional, but it just ends up campy. Like, I didn’t know you knew this if, if you knew, I didn’t know this, but when they did the hope selection can’t remember the name of it. At, at one point a lot of the religious leaders were wearing these rainbow frocks and they weren’t like aware of the irony of a bunch of men being cloistered together while wearing like literally the color representing gay pride. And apparently the Catholic Church official response was like.No one owns the copyright to the rainbow. It’s just like unwilling to to own it. Which is great. They stillMalcolm Collins: the rainbow. [00:47:00]Simone Collins: They don’t own it. It can be ours too.Malcolm Collins: But wait, you’ve gotta explain high camp versus low camp is intentionalSimone Collins: versus Yeah. Low camp. Yeah. Low camp is when like you try to be campy.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: So yeah, like intentional campiness, which is also totally a thing. I would argue probably things like, you know, RuPaul’s Drag Race, that’s low camp. It’s, it’s intentionally campy. Whereas High Camp is, you know, it’s a Catholic church is a lot of ballets is, is a lot of just, you know, people trying to be, you know, whatever.It’s kind of based. But then they end up being, you know, kind of like when an artist does something stupid online and people really just love it, you know, but they don’t intend to catch the attention of people, that kind of thing. Anyway, I highly recommend it. Just look up camp and Catholicism and you’ll find it on YouTube.But anyway, let’s get to the episode. You ready?Malcolm Collins: I am ready.Simone Collins: All right.Speaker 22: [00:48:00] What are you guys doing? Daddy? What about my, I’m gonna destroy it. I I’m gonna destroy you, Octa. I’m gonna, I’m gonna it again.Are you guys making a mess? Every,it looks a lot like you’re making a mess. I broke. I tried just, whoa. That’s cool. Here, move. Stop it asking me. Well, I stand up like this. I try tellers all day. Can try. I can. So I don’t find it. Oh, Octavian. Um, do you need to be bot? [00:49:00] No, I don’t. It sounds like you do. Octavian, if you break it again, I’ll pop you.Speaker 21: What do you mean? I mean, I’m gonna send you to the moon. Yes you can. Yes, you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Having been given the impression as young Americans that China was “socialist,” providing abundant services and safety nets for its citizens, while the US was “capitalist,” leaving its citizens to fend for themselves, we were in for a surprise when we discovered that, relatively speaking, the United States is a socialist utopia.Today on Based Camp, we explore the United States’ (admittedly unsustainable) socialist utopia Americans enjoy and the (put diplomatically) bare bones support provided to citizens—especially rural citizens—by the CCP.If you’re a parent in the US looking to avail themselves of more of the United States generous services oriented around families, please refer to Pronatalist.org’s summaries of and links to State resources for parents.Show NotesI grew up thinking the USA was a land of pure capitalism, where people are on the hook for everything. Turns out that’s only the case if you’re middle class.If you’re poor in the USA, you’re arguably living in the best communist world imaginable, because you’re enjoying socialist-style support (for food, childcare, healthcare, etc.) but getting capitalism-style goods and services (e.g. going to the same private hospitals that rich people go to; going to the same grocery stores that rich people go to, etc.)Case in point: State resources for parents (We created detailed guides for Pronatalist.org)* See Minnesota as an exampleIf “communism” means “this country has a significant social safety net”, then the USA is more communist than China.Even China has disparities in its benefits: urban formal workers receive significantly better protection than migrants and rural residents.Old-Age Income* USA: Social security* Going to stop working* Based on what you contribute as a worker… sort of* For a typical retiree claiming at full retirement age, Social Security is designed to replace around 40 percent of pre‑retirement earnings, with replacement rates higher for low earners (roughly 60–80 percent) and lower for high earners.* The Social Security Administration indexes each year of your past earnings to national wage growth and takes your 35 highest‑earning years to compute your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME)* For people first eligible in 2025, the formula replaces 90 percent of the first slice of AIME, 32 percent of the middle slice, and 15 percent of the top slice (with “bend points” around 1,226 and 7,391 dollars of AIME), so lower earners get a higher share of their prior income replaced* The USA covers most seniors and low‑income households through Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but non‑elderly adults without stable jobs or employer plans can still fall through gaps, especially as enhanced ACA subsidies expire.* China:* China now has a “three‑pillar” setup: a basic public pension (still the main source), employer/occupational plans, and voluntary private pensions with tax incentives.* Resident pensions are low; national minimums have risen from 55 yuan per month at the program’s launch to around 143 yuan in 2025, with local governments often topping this up, but even average rural pensions of about 246 yuan per month in 2024 are only a modest supplement to other family or work income. Beijing, for example, set basic resident pensions for new claimants around 998 yuan per month in 2025, much higher than the national floor but still far below urban wages.Medical Care* USA* Medicaid (for poor and disabled people)* For full‑benefit Medicaid (the typical situation for very low‑income adults, children, pregnant people, and many disabled people), there is generally no monthly premium charged to the enrollee; the program is funded by federal and state governments.* Some states can charge small premiums or use “share of cost” rules for certain groups with higher incomes (e.g., medically needy programs), but that is the exception, not the norm for the poorest enrollees.* Medicare (for old people)* Part A: $0/month for most people who worked and paid Medicare taxes at least 10 years* Part B: Premium: $202.90/month for most beneficiaries, higher for high‑income enrollees.* Access to top-drawer private medical care if you’re poor or old (due to Medicare and Medicaid)* Functionally, this is paid for by not just the government, but by private citizens and corporations (paying for super high health insurance premiums)* China* China: Public “basic medical insurance” covers about 95% of the population via two main schemes (urban employee and urban–rural resident), but works as insurance with deductibles, coinsurance, and annual ceilings, plus optional commercial top‑ups.* Even poor people in China usually have to pay something when they get medical care; public insurance and extra subsidies then reimburse part of the cost, often in several layers* PEOPLE FEEL THE NEED TO BRIBE THEIR DOCTORS* The most significant gap between China’s formal coverage promises and lived reality is the persistence of informal payments. Academic analysis of bribery in Chinese hospitals describes the normalization of “red packet” (hongbao) payments — cash given directly to physicians by patients seeking faster or better treatment. A peer-reviewed mixed-methods study using data from 3,546 judicial cases found bribery was the dominant form of medical corruption, with roughly 80% of bribe-takers being healthcare providers. More telling, an earlier survey found that one-third of 500 randomly sampled residents in China reported that they or family members had given red envelopes to doctors, rising to 50% when surgeries were involved* The structural driver is well understood: China’s public hospitals were effectively defunded by the market reforms of the 1980s and have since been run on a quasi-commercial model, expected to generate much of their own revenue. Basic doctor salaries remain very low — sometimes as little as 800–3,000 RMB per month in smaller cities — creating systematic pressure to supplement income through pharmaceutical kickbacks and informal patient payments. Xi Jinping’s high-profile anti-corruption campaign launched around 2023 swept hospital directors across the country and publicly targeted this behavior, but structural underpayment remains the root cause.* Universal basic medical insurance* Nationally, basic insurance typically covers primary and specialist visits, inpatient hospital care, emergency care, prescription drugs, some mental health services, physical therapy, and traditional Chinese medicine, subject to local catalogs and reimbursement rules* Patients face deductibles, copayments, and annual reimbursement caps; local governments define detailed benefit packages, and there is no national cap on out‑of‑pocket spending* Even with coverage, serious illness can still cause heavy financial strain, particularly for rural, low‑income, and resident‑scheme enrollees, who are more exposed to catastrophic health expenditures* There is real and acknowledged urban-rural healthcare disparity* China’s approximately 300 million rural-to-urban migrant workers occupy a particularly precarious position. Although more than 90% of Chinese residents are nominally enrolled in basic health insurance, migrant workers face fragmented, non-portable coverage: insurance purchased under a rural scheme is often not reimbursable in the city where the worker lives and is treated, and employer compliance with providing urban employee coverage is widely evaded. Research has characterized this as a “covered but unprotected” dilemma — workers are technically enrolled but the insurance provides no effective financial safety net.Aside: NHS Care in the UKThe UK has more socialized healthcare than China: In the UK, most medically necessary NHS care is free at the point of use, but there are defined areas where patients routinely pay charges (or go fully private), mainly prescriptions in England, dentistry, eye care, and some “lifestyle” or non‑essential services.FULLY (or mostly) COVEREDThese are generally free at the point of use for eligible residents (England-specific where noted):* GP services and community care: GP consultations, practice nurse appointments, most community nursing and midwifery, and NHS 111/telehealth are free.* Emergency and urgent care: 999 ambulance, A&E, emergency surgery, and emergency inpatient stays are not billed to patients.* Medically necessary hospital care: Consultant appointments, diagnostic tests, elective and emergency surgery, inpatient and outpatient treatment for physical and mental health if clinically needed.* Maternity and neonatal care: Antenatal and postnatal care, labour and delivery in hospital or at home, and neonatal intensive care when needed.* Many vaccinations and screening programmes: Routine childhood immunisations, seasonal flu for eligible groups, cervical, breast, and bowel cancer screening, diabetic eye screening, AAA screening, newborn blood spot/hearing/physical exam, and pregnancy/fetal anomaly screening.* Most mental health care: Community mental health teams, inpatient psychiatric care, talking therapies and crisis services when referred via NHS pathways, though access and intensity can vary by area.* Palliative and end‑of‑life care: NHS hospice and specialist palliative services are provided free, though many hospices also rely on charity funding.In Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, prescription charges have been abolished, so clinically indicated NHS care is even closer to fully free at point of use.HOWEVER care is very spotty* Investigative reporting found that treatment approval rates for individual funding requests varied from as low as 2% (Shropshire ICB) to 69% (Gloucestershire ICB) for identical categories of treatment within England’s NHS.* Per NHS’s 2025 data, London practices face over 500 more patients per GP than the south-west of England. Rural patients face particular disadvantages: GP waiting times in rural areas are substantially longer than in urban areas, and by 2019 only 80.9% of people in rural areas had a GP within half an hour’s travel by public transport and walking, compared to 99.8% in urban areas.* Variation is really stark for specialist and cancer care:* NHS commissioning data revealed that fewer than one patient per 100,000 population in one area was referred for CT colonoscopy compared to 59 per 100,000 in a neighboring area — a 59-fold difference in access to the same diagnostic test within the same nominal healthcare system.* Stroke unit admission within the recommended four hours varied from 80% in one area to 20% in another.Commonly not covered or tightly restrictedThese are typically not available on the NHS at all, or only under strict criteria, so patients often pay fully out of pocket or via private insurance.* Purely cosmetic procedures: Surgery or treatments done solely to change appearance (e.g., cosmetic rhinoplasty, breast enlargement without medical reason, most cosmetic dermatology) are usually excluded; surgery may be covered only when there is clear functional or severe psychological/medical need.* Many travel vaccinations: Routine NHS vaccination schedule is free, but several travel vaccines (e.g., for certain destinations/conditions) are often private and must be paid for directly.* Some fertility treatments: Basic infertility investigation may be covered, but IVF and related assisted reproduction are very tightly rationed, with local criteria on age, BMI, previous children, prior treatment, etc.; many couples pay privately when they do not meet criteria or have exhausted local NHS entitlement.* Non‑essential secondary care with limited benefit: Procedures considered low‑value or “procedures of limited clinical effectiveness” (certain minor skin lesion removals, cosmetic eyelid surgery, etc.) are often no longer routinely commissioned, so patients either do not get them or must self‑fund privately.* Most private amenities: Single rooms, hotel‑style facilities, extra non‑clinical services, and choosing a specific consultant outside normal NHS arrangements are private and paid for if desired.Unemployment* USA* State unemployment insurance with limited duration; means‑tested programs (SNAP, Medicaid) partially cushion job loss; access depends on work history and state rules* China* Unemployment insurance as one of the five insurances, plus dibao and other local assistance; coverage stronger for formal urban workers, weaker for informal migrants and rural residents.* Dibao is China’s main means‑tested cash welfare program, formally called the “Minimum Livelihood Guarantee,” intended to ensure very poor households can reach a locally defined minimum income lev* The benefit is gap‑filling: if the dibao line is 900 yuan per month and an individual has 700 yuan of counted income, they should receive 200 yuan, bringing them to 900 ($131 USD).* In some areas, applicant names are posted publicly for neighbors to comment on “deservingness,” creating social stigma and sometimes deterring eligible people from applyingPoverty Relief* USA* SNAP, housing assistance, TANF (cash welfare), EITC and other tax credits, plus state/local programs; many eligible people do not participate.* China* Dibao minimum living allowance and targeted poverty alleviation; absolute poverty officially eradicated but benefit levels are low and local enforcement varies.Housing* USA* Housing vouchers, public housing, tax subsidies to homeownership, but limited reach and long waitlists in many cities.* China* Mandatory housing provident fund for many urban employees to support home purchase or mortgage payments; rural and migrant workers less covered.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today.Today we’re gonna be discussing a very spicy topic, which is buy the numbers. And by the social support systems offered, which country is more communist today? Mm-hmm. The United States. Or the CCP China. And the answer is like, because you see somebody like Hassan go to China, right? And he is glazing China talking about how great it is and how weird this totalitarian dictatorship in the United States.It’s capitalist and horrible, and China is this amazing communist country. And it’s like, well, so, just for some, some beginning numbers here before we go into detail. Aid even when you adjust the value of the dollar versus the value of the one. Right? America provides three x the amount of social safety net that China provides and it [00:01:00] provides it at almost every layer that a social safety net could be applied.Where China does not.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, I, I also, I came into this expecting China to at least offer like the same level or more of what, say the UK offers, you know, in terms of like universal healthcare and, and was shocked. Shocked. The, no, no, no, no, no. They have near universal health insurance.Malcolm Collins: YouSimone Collins: know, like deductibles and copaysMalcolm Collins: inSimone Collins: many places, by the way, huge disparities in, in actual like coverage too.So,Malcolm Collins: so in, in China in many places you have to pay up front for hospital visits.Simone Collins: Well, no, that, that, that’s what a deductible is. So, so the way that health insurance works, for those who are fortunate enough to live somewhere where there actually is government provided healthcare, not China. What you do when you have insurance is [00:02:00] you basically.Have to pay for your healthcare up until you reach a cer your deductible, which is like a sort of minimum threshold. And then after that, they will cover you. So it’s like kinda like someone being like, oh, well, you know, you’re, you’re on the hook for the first, you know, $5,000. And then after that.We’ll cover you. For example, our health insurance, our deductible as a family is $16,000. So, you know, do we feel like we’re covered? Not so much. And that’s, that’s how it is with most health insurance isn’t in China. It’s no different. So there is that, and then there are also limits in China on what they will actually.Cover it all, of course. So they might not cover anything even after your deductible met is met. And even after your deductible is met, or even if something is supposed to be covered right away, you still pay what are called copays. Where they might say like, okay, well your deductible is met, but you still have to pay for half of it.You know, we’re not gonna pay the whole amount. So really what the, the Chinese health insurance program is, and this makes decent sense if you [00:03:00] have private healthcare businesses, is hey, we’re gonna try to reduce the catastrophic downside of health problems people may face. You know, like we wanna reduce the catastrophic financial hit people take when they have health scares, but we’re not gonna like.We’re not gonna take care of you.That would be crazy.Whereas I think the NHS is, is an example of what it looks like when you have government provided healthcare, which is like, okay, we’ll cover your healthcare, but it’s gonna be, you know, a a a state run business, which, you know, is, is the NHK, sorry.NHK NHS in the United Kingdom. And it’s gonna be like going to the DMV, you know, like, it’s not gonna be pleasant. You’re not gonna like it, but like. You’ll, you’ll probably, you’ll probably survive that kind of thing.Speaker: By the way, if you’re excited about the NHS style socialist, , healthcare system, be aware that it actually has worse healthcare outcomes than the US system, even if you’re just looking at like the [00:04:00] outcome at the general population level when it comes to severe illnesses. , And if you look at something like Canada that everyone thinks is so great., Well over a thousand Canadians per year come to the United States for life-saving treatment because they just can’t get it in Canada. , The United States healthcare system is at least, , in terms of effective socialization, more socialized than Canada or the NIH.Speaker 2: I mean, just so you get an idea of how much better the US is than the uk, if we’re looking at cancer survival rates in the US at 65% in the uk, it’s only 56%. If you look at breast cancer in the US, it’s 90.2%. In the UK it’s 80% if you look at., Lung cancer, the five year survival rate in the United States is 18%, and in the UK it is 12%. , So just across the board, what you see is that the NHS is less good at helping the average citizen than the United States system.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So do you wanna go through, how do you, how do you wanna structure this?Do you wanna go through the various [00:05:00] parts of the system? Do you wanna go into absolute numbers? I guess I could just start with absolute numbers. Yeah. So, public spending is roughly 19 to 21% of the American GDP. Mm-hmm. If, if, if you look at. China it is around 9% of the GDP. Mm-hmm. So if you’re talking about global GDP, the United States is more than double China where Dabo, the main cash assistance thing in China mm-hmm. Is relevant to only 0.1%. And OCD data put total spending of the United States, oh, potentially even higher. 30 to 33% of total GDP. The 19 to 21% was maybe an understatement, which would make us over three times China.Simone Collins: Yeah. So just for more color, Dabo is China’s main means tested cash welfare program.So it’s, I guess kind of like, kind of like unemployment here, so some other things, but it’s basically like a minimum, minimum livelihood [00:06:00] guarantee. And the idea is that the very poor in China can sort of have a like minimum. Income, but it’s, it is one, even in China, it’s not meant to like be a universal basic income.It’s not gonna take care of you. It is gap filling. It is only intended to like fill a gap and like,Malcolm Collins: well, and they don’t have permanent homeless shelters in China. There is no infrastructure that assumes. Permanent homelessness even exists in China. If you’re like, well, what do homeless people do if there’s no infrastructure, assuming per they either dieSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Or they go to live with extended family networks.Simone Collins: Yeah. And so also when you receive kind some kind of like, assistance in, in most countries, right? It’s, you know, you have to apply for it. Sometimes it’s a bit of a hassle. It, it might be a little bit embarrassing, you know, it No, no one, okay. A lot of people don’t like.Being a leach, but in China also utilizing this benefit is in some regions actively shamed. [00:07:00] So in, in some areas they actually, and this, this isn’t even if you’re on the assistance applicant names are posted publicly so that neighbors can comment on the deservingness so that you not only like, could, maybe not ultimately qualify if your neighbors are like, know they’re pizza.Trash, no ccp, but there’s also just that really creates extra social stigma and can deter otherwise eligible people from applying. Now it’s, it’s clear that of course across the board, across countries there are many social services. And this is also an issue in the United, in the United States, where people who technically.Would qualify for, for various assistance programs don’t apply for them. That, you know, they don’t want the stigma. I, I don’t think that’s a bad thing, you know, I think that’s a good thing.Malcolm Collins: Well, and I, I think that people are unaware of like, let’s look at the healthcare system in the United States.Mm-hmm. How accessible healthcare is to you if you’re poor in the United States.Simone Collins: Oh my God. Oh my God. No, that’s, that’s the thing. And I think one of the biggest things that I want to just highlight here is that. In [00:08:00] other countries, you, for example, oh, I wish, you know, we had free healthcare. Oh, it would be so wonderful in the United States functionally.If you are very poor or if you are old, you basically have free healthcare. But it’s very different from free healthcare in say even like a nice country, like, I mean the, the one you don’t have free healthcare in China, but even the healthcare you can get, it’s like, ugh, I don’t know if I’d really like that.Now I’ve been to. Like in the uk and I’m sure you have too, like,Malcolm Collins: oh, I have too. It’s, it’s, it’s horrible. It’s worse than nothing. I think.Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I was okay. I mean, I wasn’t impressed with it, but it’s, but it’s like, it’s the DMV of healthcare, right? It’s not nice. Whereas if you are poor in the United States, you’re not going to the DMV of healthcare.You’re going to a private hospital. You’re, you’re going to the kind of thing that someone in the UK who’s in the upper class would actively have to pay, you know, it’s like a gated system, but no, you’re just strolling on in if you’re in the United States. And if you’re on [00:09:00] Medicaid, which is for poor and disabled people in the us basically for full benefit Medicaid, that which is the typical situation for.Many low income adults or well, very, all very low income adults in the US and children and pregnant people, and many disabled people. There’s no monthly premium charge to the enrollee, and the program is funded by federal and state governments. And while some states charge very small premiums or have rules for certain groups with higher incomes like their very medic, medically needy programs, that is a big exception.Most enrollees in Medicaid. Pay nothing. Right. So, and actually we, we’ve encountered this. There are lots of families that have like, kids who, who qualify because they’re disabled and it’s just insane the amount of coverage they get and the access to, again, this is private, top of the line medical care when I, whenever I deliver a baby at, at this really fancy hospital, Malcolm, you’ve been in there?Yeah. It is, these are hotel stem rooms. We, we, we actually did an episode where we showed [00:10:00] pictures of like the, the kind of hospital where like, you delivered and, and, and Kate Middleton delivered like the most expensive top of the line delivery rooms. Yeah. Are like postpartum rooms in the United Kingdom.And then my hospital room. And mine is just the same. It looks just a few better. Well, yours was,Malcolm Collins: yours was significantly nicer.Simone Collins: Yeah, my views, my view is better. And, and they’re across, you know, across the hallway from me next door to me are clearly probably illegal immigrant women. ‘cause they also speak absolutely zero English.And I, they’re not paying, they’re not paying anything. Medicaid is paying for them. So I again, just wanna make it clear that, like even in aMalcolm Collins: system, I wanna understand, I want people to understand like there are homeless people in the US who use. Hospital ambulances like taxis. Yeah. Because they know that they can get away with it.And that’s the way our system is set up.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. There, there’s, yeah, there, there’s a law that, and this, this also kind of existed in many countries, including in China, where like, private medical companies are, are. Required by law to provide stabilizing care. KindaMalcolm Collins: [00:11:00] like, a great example of just how much this is the case is.Now, obviously this isn’t true. If you have an ongoing medical condition, you’re not gonna be able to get easily something like ongoing diabetes medication or something like that if you’re very poor in the United States.Simone Collins: No. Can’t get the medication. But you also can’t get that in China either.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but, but if you’re like.The story that he tells to just understand what it’s like to be a homeless person in the United States and you as a hospital is he talks about when one time he went to a hospital and an emergency room got up and they were just gonna let him leave without paying. And he needed to explain to them that he wasn’t homeless because yeah,Simone Collins: they just thought he was a homeless man.So they’re like, you can go. It’s fine. ‘cause because yeah, again, by law. Emergency rooms are required to provide stabilizing careMalcolm Collins: regardless, and this is partially why healthcare costs as much as it does in the United States for the middle class. This is why healthcare can so easily destroy a middle class family in the United States.Yeah. With this and the insurance companies both of which I think any sane conservative movement would ban yeah. Right. Like, these, these things should not exist.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and this is another [00:12:00] really interesting thing about the United States is again, all this is, it’s so magical and amazing and it’s, it’s very unsustainable.We’ve talked about it on another podcast, maybe we’ll talk about it here too. But it is unbelievable the level of luxury that, that people have who are at the, at or below the poverty level in the United States. But the middle class they’re the ones who are paying for all of it. And I, I point to the middle class because they’re the ones who, you know, are paying very, very high health insurance rates.They’re paying out of pocket a lot at, at at, for health insur, for healthcare. And like I was, I just mentioned, our deductible, $16,000. You know, it’s, it’s a ton and it’s really painful. And, and then we’re, of course, our tax rate is really high too, as, as, as middle income Americans. Once you become a really wealthy American, you’re not paying taxes.Because you one, have really great accountants who are able to hide everything. And two, you, you kind of typically you shift away from having a [00:13:00] salary, which is what’s taxed. And then instead you just sort of make money from your investments and you’re able to like use debt. Shift around your investments and use tax loopholes in a way where actually you’re probably never really taxed on your capital gains.‘cause you just, like, you harvest loss from this one thing to like, you know, put toward this other thing and then you reinvest as soon as you get something. And like, basically you just leverage debt to pay for everything. And then just never cash out your investments and just keep reinvesting and so you’re never really paying taxes.So it, it’s just, it’s one of these really frustrating systems in the United States, but nevertheless. The luxury with which people at the, at below the poverty line live with is insane. And I mean it, another thing just about medic. Well, okay, look, I wanna talk about, let’s switch to, since we’re on medical care though, in China, it’s not just that you have to, you, you, you basically have to pay for everything.You don’t, there are no like state provided,mm-hmm.Like [00:14:00] NNHS style systems. Did you know that also, even just like people who have plenty of ability to pay just Bri, they bribe their doctors all the time.Malcolm Collins: What to not pay.Simone Collins: Yeah. So,Malcolm Collins: well, how does this work?Simone Collins: Yeah. The, the, the most significant gap between China’s formal coverage promises, you know, of like, oh, well your health insurance will cover this.And the lived reality is the persistence of informal payments. And so some academics did an analysis of bribery in Chinese hospitals, and they described the normalization of. Red packet or hung bowel payments. Cash given directly to physicians by patients seeking faster or better treatment. A peer review mixed method study using data from 3,546 judicial case.Bribery was the dominant form of medical corruption with roughly 80% of bribe takers being healthcare providers. More telling. An earlier survey found that one third of 500 randomly sampled residents in China had reported they or family members had given red envelopes to doctors [00:15:00] rising to 50% when surgeries were involved.And there, there is a reason why this is the case. Basically, China’s public hospitals. Were effectively defunded by the market reforms of the 1980s. Yeah. And then they’ve since been run on a quasi commercial model. Like I said, that this is not like the NHS where it’s government run, and so they’re expected to generate their own revenue and, and also doctor salaries are extremely low.They’re sometimes between 800 to 3000 r and b per month in smaller cities. And so there’s this systemic pressure to supplement income through pharmaceutical kickbacks. So they’re also like, by the way, you should take this. And also to just accept informal payment. So like actually bribing a doctor. Is gonna make a difference.Like, ‘cause they need the money. So like they actually will prioritize you. Yeah. And, and Xi Jinping’s high profile anti-corruption campaign launched around 2023 swept hospital directors across the country and publicly targeted the behavior. But the structural underpayment remains the root cause of this.And [00:16:00] I mean, if I were going in for surgery in China, you know, I’d be bribing them. When I go in for my C-sections, I come in with a giant basket full of like eggs and baked good. I’m doing it and I know that they’re, I mean, I, I, I feel like they could be paid more. The, the, the medical professionals in, in every country I think are amazing and, and wonderful, and they deserve everything.But like when you’re like literally just bringing an envelope of cash and being like, I. Please, please, please. That, like, that, that is a really big deal. Another big issue with with China’s medical coverage is that there they basically, you have like medical insurance based on either your rural, rural or urban like plan.Mm-hmm. And there’s, there’s big discrepancies with a lot of social services. There’s like these weird housing discrepancies, and I still don’t fully wrap my head around it the way it works in China. But a problem is if, let’s say you’re a rural Chinese person. And then you, that means that you have the like rural Chinese person health insurance, but you go to work in Shanghai or [00:17:00] Beijing.Do you have coverage when you go to see a doctor in Beijing? No. No,Malcolm Collins: youSimone Collins: don’t. You don’t. They’re not in your insurance plan. And so it’s almost as if like you, you, you have like a local employer in the United States and they have like their insurance, but. You, you live in Portugal, what do, like, what good does that do for you?No good. And so there’s also just a ton of migrant workers in China who are just functionally uninsured and just totally like on,Malcolm Collins: completely outta the system.Simone Collins: Yeah, and I mean, even in places, and again, I think if you’re gonna provide government healthcare, you should. Own the healthcare system, right?It should just be the DMV of healthcare. And then if people wanna get like actually good services, it need to pay for it privately. I think that what the NHS does is good, but even with the NHS, their care is extremely spotty. So investigative reporting found that treatment approval rates for individual funding requests really varied actually.So, it, it was as low as 2% in rupture to [00:18:00] 69% in Gloucester share. For just identical categories of treatment. So depending on where you live in the UK, you could have like pretty decent government provided healthcare, or you can have like really bad. Also just, you know, it’s, I think this is more discussed in Canada and why MAID is such a problem.But also in the uk, like London practices face over 500 or more patients per general practitioner, 500 or more patients. Like, do you?Malcolm Collins: Wow. Yeah. Isn’t this is what, in the UK or in China?Simone Collins: In London. I’m, I’m just talking about a system where it’s actually kind of nice. Getting comparison to China.Malcolm Collins: It’s not bad.People’s Republic, China healthcare system is a, i I really had my life threatened there a number of times because of the inefficiencies of the system.Simone Collins: Oh really? Did you get really sick when you were there?Malcolm Collins: I was having a really bad reaction to a medication that could’veSimone Collins: Well, was it the same one that you were taking when we first met that I was like, you need toMalcolm Collins: get off.Yeah. And they were like. Come see us tomorrow. And I’m like, if this reaction continues, ISimone Collins: thinkMalcolm Collins: I’m gonna [00:19:00] die. I be dead tomorrow. And they’re like, well, I’m sorry. We don’t have any other way to see you. Right. Like, this is the, this is the way things workSimone Collins: here. No. See, I think that’s government healthcare done right?It’s like just letting people, we’re here, we’re not really here, but like, it’s, it’s. Only the strong will survive in our country. Okay. Sorry, Malcolm Y You were too weak. I had similar experience like, ‘cause I mean, I also went to it when I was in school and like, it was kind of like, sweetie, you’re on your own.But yeah. Well, and like, I mean, like, you’re not gonna get aside from like this really spotty differences in care. And this also, like, there’s really weird discrepancies in like, referrals for really basic stuff like colonoscopies for diagnostics and stuff. Like, it, it’s really weird. Like again, you can have it, it is just scary, especially if you have like cancer or something serious in China, like, or sorry, in in the uk, you’re gonna wanna.Go private anyway. But eh you’re, you’re not, you’re never gonna get a private hospital room, for [00:20:00] example.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Simone Collins: You know, I’m like,Malcolm Collins: well, so another thing to note was China, right? Mm-hmm. If you’re like, well, didn’t she say that he eliminated poverty in the country? Right. Because this is a, a big claim by the ccp.Simone Collins: I didn’t, I didn’t know that was a claim they made.Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. He says there’s no poor people in China.Simone Collins: Oh. So,Malcolm Collins: so,Simone Collins: because that’s a mindset, Malcolm. Poverty’s mindset.Malcolm Collins: The the, the threshold that was set to determine this which a huge chunk of China still lives on is 60 cents a day to a dollar 90 a day.There are many people in China who live on 60 cents to a dollar 90 a day.Simone Collins: I mean.Malcolm Collins: A lot of them, they, they did not actually sell. So if, if you look at by US standardsSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: 17% of China’s population would be below the poverty line,which is a ton.Simone Collins: It’s a lot of people,Malcolm Collins: By the way, if [00:21:00] you’re, if you’re wondering about relative different, like what’s, what’s the oh, what’s it called again? I want say the Genie Score or something.Simone Collins: Genie Coefficient.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Between China and the United States.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: In the United States it’s 0.74 to 0.83, and in China it’s 0.62 to 0.70.So, it’s actually slightly better in China. The core reason being that there are not as many super wealthy people in China and the super wealthy are not as super wealthy as they are in the United States.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But. Yeah, it’s, it’s only marginally different. Like, it’s not like a, for a communist country, there’s a really high genie coefficient.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So let’s also, we can talk about their pension plans. Again, like I, I, I thought China had a better system.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: let’s talk, I mean, in other, in other countries that aren’t like, oh, like leading top country, like in Peru, I think their, their retirement system’s super, super decent. Like you have your account, you can log into it online, you can see it, your employer is [00:22:00] required, I think, to put a month’s worth of salary into it twice a year.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: no, that’s different. But there are, there are like, there’s, there’s significant contributions. I’m thinking there are different things. So four times a year you as an employer have to like pay double your employee’s salary. And twice a year. That’s just to give them like extra money,Malcolm Collins: a windfall to buy types of things.You needSimone Collins: a windfall to buy, to get to like fix something in your house or like, yeah, pay a hospital bill. And then, although they do have government provided healthcare, so fix something in your house. And then the other, the other one is to, to contribute toward your unemployment account, which is a separate bank account that just fills up.And then when you, or when you get fired or when you leave that job, that account is just yours. It’s great. We’ve even had employees be like, Hey, please fire me. I wanna like cash that out. And we’re like, no, we’re not doing that. That’s like super illegal. But that, there’s that. And then you also see your retirement account.So I’m like, okay, China’s gotta have something like that. But they don’t have something like that. They have this three pillar. [00:23:00] Set up, which is like, there’s a basic public pension, which is still the main source. And then there are employer or occupational plans. That’s like having a 401k. We don’t have a 401k.Like even we as an employer aren’t big enough to be able to afford to offer a 401k. Yeah. So that’s not even a thing that for even America. And then there’s also like voluntary private pensions with tax in tax incentives. Kind of like a Roth IRA or an IRA in the United States. But the Chinese version of it.Like, basically you’re on your own. Like if you can save your own money, if you’re wealthy enough for that. But these pensions, resident pensions, they’re super low. So while the national minimums have risen from 55 Yuan per month at the programs launched to around 143 Yuan in 2025. And then local governments may top it up.Even average rural pensions are like around 246 want per month. It’s, it’s, it’s just super low. Like this is it, it is a trivial amount of money that is not going to cover your actual expenses. Yeah. And then in contrast in the United States [00:24:00] social Security, that was going to start faltering in like five years.‘cause yeah. We messed it up. Okay. Demographic collapse, blah, blah, blah. We’ve talked about this a lot. Yeah. So it’s not ai it’s not gonna keep working like this, but yeah, maybe AI will fix it. For a typical retirement.Malcolm Collins: No, I think AI might exacerbate the problem.Simone Collins: Oh, well, yeah, sure. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, actually you’re, you’re totally right.It will because right now. The way that social security in the United States is going to falter is that it, is it, the program is being funded by the social security payments of the current working generation. They didn’t do the whole thing where like,Malcolm Collins: and I mean, as AI takes people’s jobs, it’s money’s going in a way that’s not going to, you know, make it easy to filter into the tax system.Simone Collins: Yeah. And so how it’s gonna work is now the, those who remain working, like it’s currently expected that like in 20. 30 something like 76% of like, you’re, instead of getting, like, let’s say [00:25:00] you were owed a thousand dollars a month, now you’re gonna get seven thou $760 a month and you’re gonna be really resentful.Meanwhile, some like beleaguered working person is like, great, well I’m never gonna get social security. And here you are resenting the money that I’m sending you every month. Great. But. Yeah, that’s, let’s not, so let’s pretend it’s working the way it was supposed to. Okay.Malcolm Collins: There. No, I mean, I think this is, this is one of those things that people need to come to gris with.Old people are going to die in mass within our lives.Simone Collins: Yeah. Because all, I mean, as much as they’re gonna resent receiving their $750 instead of a thousand dollars a month. Their entire life was built over depending on that fixed income. Like where are they gonna get more money? Are they gonna get a job again, like they’ve already retired.It’s gonna be hard for them to get rehired in the AI age when no one can get rehired.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is where I, the people who are against, like maid and stuff like that, like it’s got its problems, but like, I just don’t see other realistic solutions.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: In, in the United States given. I [00:26:00] mean, obviously if we can milk the AI companies, but that only works for us.What, what, what then do the Latin American countries, do you know what then does Europe do, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So it’s, it’s gonna be badSimone Collins: anyway. China’s, China’s pension plan as it is meant to function. And keep in mind with all these plans, as I’ve pointed out with the other examples, like medical examples, they don’t necessarily play out the way they’ve been promised to play out.Okay? But. The, the Chinese one, it’s like, well, you get like, sort of the equivalent of maybe like $200 a month or something. Like maybe it’ll help you with a little bit of food, but it’s not gonna support your life the way that social security is designed to work in practice. In theory, you know, until we screwed it up.Is it, was it going to replace around 40% of your pre-retirement earnings? With replacement rates being higher for low earners. So if you didn’t really have a high income during your working years, you’d be making roughly 60 to 80% of your monthly paycheck. And if you were a high [00:27:00] earner, you’d be making less.So basically the Social Security Administration indexes each year of your past earnings to the national wage growth, and then it takes your 35 highest earning years to compute your average index to monthly earnings. And for people first eligible in 2025, the formula replaces. 90% of the first A-A-I-M-E your, your average earnings.So like if you’re, if you’re in the lowest belt, you get 90% of your former earnings and then you get 32% in the middle and then 15% in the top slice, which makes sense. ‘cause you know, after you’re making like, I don’t what, $200,000 a year? Like you didn’t actually need all that. You probably do if you’re living like some crazy dink style American, but you know what I mean?Right. But that’s very generous. That’s just not what you get in China. So again, like I feel like the United States is more socialist, more communist ish, you know, in terms of like we’re providing these abundant benefits than, than China is by far. ThatMalcolm Collins: is [00:28:00] wild.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But it’s, it is like an every single layer of the economy.And I almost wanna zoom out to the meta level of this. Why, if this is the case, why have the United States just so socialist compared to China? Why? Do leftist laed China. Right?Simone Collins: Seriously. Seriously.Malcolm Collins: Why does Hassan Piker Laed China and hate America when America is much closer to the economic system that he claims that he wants?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And it’s not just him. You see a lot of leftists online doing this. And then I think the, the answer is obvious. It is that these people simply hate America. They hate American values. Oh, really? And they hate what they see America as representing. They don’t care that China has, you know, is, is genocide at the moment.They are doing a genocide right now, right. Against one of the protected populations.Simone Collins: And no one talks about that.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s a bummer. No [00:29:00] one cares anymore. TheSimone Collins: right he hasan’s uncle’s name is literally what is it? Jank? Uighur. You’d think he’d anyway little weird.Malcolm Collins: I mean, the answer is they hate us.They want us dead, and they want us gone. That’s just the full of it right there. There is, there is nothing else. There is a group of people out there that wants to create a future.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: There’s a group of people out there that wants to eradicate the one civilization, as we call it, from the map. Right.And they see China as a tool for them achieving that. Yeah. And you know, I, I think it’s important one that we remember that this fight is. Existential, and that is why we cannot turn away potential allies just because they don’t fit your purity test. Yeah. Because then we will have coalitions that can’t win elections.And the people working against us are willing to [00:30:00] pull in allies from groups as diverse as Islamists and LGBT activists, right?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Environmental activists who actually care about the future eeg, pro-nuclear environmental activists and anti-nuclear environmental activists who just wanna shut everything down and destroy civilization.But but they, these groups work together and they still vote Democrat together. Right. And they, but they know how stupid this is. Right?Simone Collins: I don’t, I don’t know if they do. Because I mean, for example, you know, we, we engage in a lot of prenatal list activism, right? And, and one of the constant rallying cries that we’ll get from people in this group is like, well then if, if you think people should have more kids, then you need to pay people to have more kids.And I just wanna, like we, through prenatal list.org one year just sat down and hired a bunch of people who specialized in their own respective states in helping families navigate. The state’s benefit systems, you know, just what, what does our socialist, communist country [00:31:00] provide to families in need?And it is, anyone I, I’ll link to this in the show notes, what you can find on Substack and Patreon the, the, the sheer amount. Of resources that we offer to families in the United States. Mm-hmm. If you’re out or near the poverty line, mind you again, if you’re, if you’re middle class, you get to bankroll it all and not get any of it.But it, let me just go through, for example, Minnesota. ‘Cause you know, everyone’s talking about Minnesota’s benefits, which are being also like not even provided to the people who think that they’re getting that because instead they’re being. Fraud. Fraud is, fraud is happening. But you get obviously medical assistance if you’re low income.And this is just like full coverage at private hospitals. Great medical care. They have this thing called Minnesota Care in addition to just like Medicaid. It’s a healthcare plan offered to low income individuals. There are no premiums for children. Adults may have some monthly costs, but it is if you’re a [00:32:00] Minnesota resident.Or US citizen, or you’re lawfully president present in the US and you meet their income guidelines and you’re not in jail. You and you don’t have access to Medicare already through some other means, then you get Minnesota Care. So they, they have backups to Medicare. Okay. Then there’s also msu which is Minnesota’s Health Insurance Marketplace.So you have, you know, additional access to that if you can’t, for whatever reason, access Medicaid or Minnesota Care. And that, that also helps that I think that’s closer to like what Chin China offers. Yeah, you know, that, that we’ve, we finally made it to, to the CCP level which is something then there’s also, and this is not income gated, so I appreciate this is Minnesota Vaccines for Children which ensures that all children have access to timely vaccinations regardless of household income level and all participating hospital hospitals and clinics will offer it.So you, you, you just. If, if basically if you feel like you [00:33:00] can’t pay for your child’s vaccination, you just ask your medical pro provider about the program and they’re like, great, we can get coverage for this. You’re good. Then we move on to Snap, which was I think discussed a lot online. Even if you’re not in the US you’re probably familiar with the program because it was.Like payment to it was kind of suspended for a little bit last autumn. AndMalcolm Collins: people were like, I’m just gonna rob stores if the government doesn’t support my lifestyle for free.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like, what else am I supposed to do? Get a job?Simone Collins: So based on your income and assets and family size and participation in other government programs like childcare assistance and, and SSI, you, you could basically, it’s like a debit card and you just go to a store and you buy food.And of course people are like famously buying, I think they’re, the Trump administration is trying to put limits on this. But just cookies, candy, branded products, like it’s, it, it’s not like other programs. That exist in some states where like you have to buy, like you can only buy eggs and milk and whole grain bread [00:34:00] and like healthy food likeMalcolm Collins: that.Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and so it’s, it’s different then. Then there’s the one that I was talking about, which is that there’s so many, do you see how many programs there are? There’s this program called wic, which is Women, infants and Children, and this is the one where they’re, they’re health food Nazis and you, you, you also get a debit card, but you can only use it.On designated and approved foods. And it’s, it’s for pregnant mothers and nursing mothers and children under five. And it’s not based only on income. If you have a disabled child, they might also qualify for it. Again, if you are a parent and you want to see if you qualify for any of these things. Go to the link in our show notes to our state-based resource guides.Click on your state. And anything that’s highlighted in green is something that isn’t necessarily like only gated to people who are at or near the poverty line. We tried to make this really easy to navigate, but there’s school meals and this is something that came up in, during the pandemic.Mm-hmm.When schools were shutting down like. Were people [00:35:00] really that worried about their kid not being educated, not so much. Right. But I mean, they got worried when they saw, like when the lessons restarted and they saw how, how their kids were actually being taught, but most parents were like, oh my God.Who’s gonna watch my kid, but also like, where’s my kid gonna get food? Because a lot of kids primarily get their food through US schools. So in Minnesota, for example, most school aged Minnesota students receive free breakfasts and lunches each school base, each school day. And the benefit is offered through schools that participate in the National School Lunch program or the school breakfast program, or the USDA’s school lunch program.Three different programs. And we, we experience like when our, when our son Octavian went to public school. Yeah. He, he did get even though we, we asked not for it ‘cause we, we fed him breakfast and we also packed his lunches. He would just get food. But also it was healthy food. He was like. I remember one point he told me, he was like, I maybe I wanna go back to school.And I’m like, why? And he’s like, well, they have donuts there. And I’m like, what do you [00:36:00] mean they have donuts there? But like, I think they gave them like donuts for breakfast a lot of the time. And I’m like, dude, we can have donuts here. And he is like, oh. Okay, nevermind.Malcolm Collins: Nevermind. I wanna go back to school because, because they have donuts.Simone Collins: But like, that’s, that’s, that’s actually a thing. So, okay. We’ve covered, we’ve covered medical care, we’ve covered food assistance. Then there’s the childcare and early childhood education benefits. And of course, everyone knows about Minnesota’s childcare, but Yeah. They, they, they provide free.Malcolm Collins: AnotherSimone Collins: thing,Malcolm Collins: by the way, speaking of, of, of childcare and all of that.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The United States also offers. Unlike China Free College, a lot of people are unaware of this because they stupidly go to the non-free options.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: But if you go to something like West Point that’s government funded and free.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right.Simone Collins: Well then in general, if you join the military, a lot of your education is paid for.Like there’s that famous guy from like financial audit who was at. I think in Naval [00:37:00] Academy for education. So he wasn’t actually like actively serving in the military yet, and then he got depressed and like dropped out and then was living on veteran benefits, like I think $2,000 a month. It’s so bad.Ah, oh. Speaking of being disabled in Minnesota, there are a bunch of disability and special education benefits. I didn’t find in, in my research any really strong disability programs in China. Like it’s not like you get a free ride if your kid turns out to be disabled. So in in Minnesota there’s Disability Hub Minnesota, which is a.Free online resource center that helps parents of special needs children’s plan the life they want with their child. There’s help me grow, which connects families with evaluations and referrals and interventions related to early childhood development. And these services range from testing to home visits and therapy appointments.We experienced something similar in Pennsylvania when we had our first kid. We stopped using these programs ‘cause we didn’t really feel like they were making a difference. [00:38:00]Malcolm Collins: Yeah.ButSimone Collins: they would. They would, we give like active sessions with our children to go over things like speech therapy and other things.‘cause we, we had some delayed speakers. And they still, even with every time I give birth, if there’s some like kind of complication, they’re like, you’re eligible for this. Like, you should probably reach out to them about this. Then there’s also this thing called a follow along program, which assigns a nurse or another developmental professional to touch base with your family occasionally while your child grows.There are other parents support outreach programs. They also provide transportation assistance. They provide cash and career benefits. I probably, I should stop energy assistance. I’m, I’m just telling you like,Malcolm Collins: you’re just like, it’s insane. It’s insane. And this is not the case in theSimone Collins: dream of communism is alive in the us.Today, the dream ofMalcolm Collins: communism is alive and well in Minnesota for Somalians, not for white people, of course, forSimone Collins: Somalians.Oh, I mean, there’s similar issues in in California. Again, like it, it’s,Malcolm Collins: right,Simone Collins: because I did mention Medicaid. There’s alsoMalcolm Collins: California and seceding. I, I [00:39:00] really think that that should be the next big Republican cause is to get one of these Democratic states that wants to secede.To secede.Simone Collins: Oh my God. Yeah. Drop California. Take Alberta. All right. Let’s just one for one. You know, one forMalcolm Collins: one. Trade, right? Yeah. Because you know, e eventually you and people are like, but California the net exporter of taxes for the federal government. And I’m like, well, for now, right? But if you drop a couple years, that billionaire tax.Or California laws, it will not be for long. All those companies are gonna disappear. A lickity split split which we’re already seeing in California is a mass exodus of, of corporations and it’s been happening for a while. AndSimone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: It seems to be speeding up. I mean, especially in Hollywood.Hollywood is whoof. We could do a whole episode. On Hollywood is literally, literally burning down. Literally burning down. It is a trash fire, a literal trash fire. If you’ve been to la. But yeah, I appreciate you doing this episode. I think it’s [00:40:00] very enlightening. I think that it really reframes the way I think a lot of people think about America and the privilege of being an American citizen.And one, how crazy it is that we give away that privilege for free.Simone Collins: Well, it’s also, it’s, it’s so unsustainable though.Malcolm Collins: Oh, totally unsustainable.Simone Collins: Like the NHS is, is sustainable. And, and like I, I get nationalized healthcare, single, single payer healthcare. Again, DMV of healthcare. Like, it’s not gonna be good.You might die, but like it’s there. I, and I get what China’s doing, which is like, sure we have catastrophic health insurance. But you’re gonna pay and it’s gonna suck. And like the hospitals aren’t great, but like whatever. I’m sure if you’re really rich, you’ll figure it out. And if not, expect your family to take care of you.Like that also works. What we’re doing is wildly luxurious, but also wildly unsustainable. The middle class is, is, is, is, is, is really just Crip. Crumbling under the pressure.Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It, ‘Simone Collins: cause we’re paying through it, through, through [00:41:00] two ends we’re, they’re, they’re functionally paying when you put together, and I think for most, like middle class families, when you put together all the state, county, local earned income taxes with federal income tax, they’re functionally paying 40% in taxes.And then on top of that, they’re paying. Extremely high rates for childcare and for healthcare. And one of the reasons why they pay such high rates for childcare in healthcare is that they are subsidizing the free childcare and free healthcare being offered to people who are not paying it all.Yeah. And, and it’s not just that those people aren’t paying it all, it’s that the government is paying for them, but the government is often paying. Very low amounts, or not paying it all, or even just stiffing the private organizations,Malcolm Collins: institutions take them. But it, I mean, so bad.Simone Collins: Well, there’s also the, the issues with care.And that like we, we discovered that, for example, our daycare would, when we had our kids [00:42:00] in daycare, we. Completely declared bankruptcy on that one. One ‘cause we couldn’t afford it, but two, because it was not great for our kids.Malcolm Collins: Well, but in, in daycare in the United States, the kids who get paid by the government, the, the quote unquote free daycare generally get much better service than the kids who are paying and subsidizing them.Simone Collins: Yeah. Our kids show up with a runny nose. Or like they have like a mosquito bite and the daycare calls and it’s like they have a mosquito bite, they need to come home right now. They would like any excuse, they would try to get that kid sent home and off their hands. Or like,Malcolm Collins: but they don’t, they don’t do that for the government kids.And the reason is, is because they get paid by day by the government kids.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, again, like there’s just like from a, a qualitative, from a financial standpoint it, it’s, it’s a very. Honestly, it, it, but again, isn’t that kind of Hassan’s dream? Doesn’t he want like to eat the rich and then, you know, have everything go to like the, the deserving disenfranchised poor?I, I mean the only part that’s missing from Hassan’s equation is that the. [00:43:00] We’ll say like the, the ultra wealthy class that doesn’t even have an income that just lives off their invested income and debt.Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s his class and he expects them to continue to have wealth forever.Simone Collins: Right? Like he’s, yeah, I guess they’re, they are, they are the gods.Floating and watching from Olympus as, as the middle class.Malcolm Collins: Yes. No, ISimone Collins: mean, course should eat the middle class. WhatMalcolm Collins: he’s fighting for is a system we already have. Largely speaking. JustSimone Collins: make it No, like literally though, like why aren’t you happy, Hassan, you got it. This is happening. It’s happening. The bushwa is being eaten.Malcolm Collins: I doesn’t understand why people see him being extremely wealthy and extravagant with his wealth as being hypocritical. And if you are a leftist and it is confusing to you why it’s hypocritical, it’s because if he really believed that WELS should be redistributed. He could redistribute his wealth.Yeah. Very easily. He could give to charity at least some instead of wasting on extremely expensive glasses and outfits and everything like that.Simone Collins: Malcolm we’re wearing extremely expensive glasses. [00:44:00] We got them on eBay, but like still.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, but I, we, we, but we don’t espouse that the government should be redistributing people’s wealth.And he does, right? So why can’t he redistribute his own wealths? Why doesn’t this morality apply to his lifestyle? And the answer is very, obviously, it’s because. He doesn’t really believe it. He is milking girls, as you said. We had asked in another episode like, why do people actually watch this? And a, a fan reached out and they’re like, oh, the reason women watch Hassan, ‘cause I’ve seen the women in my office talk about watching and liking Hassan is because he frequently negs and talks down to his audience and yet takes on a masculine persona.And he’s really the only streamer that does that. That’s allowed,Simone Collins: well, who says all the right things? So he says all the correct leftist things, but he’s not a soy boy. He also negs them allowing them to, to exercise their submission fetish without feeling sex negative. Because they’re just listening to, you know, a, a correct ideological masculine man.Tell them how bad they are. Hmm. [00:45:00] I, I still don’t, he’s, I, I, I, again, I have a type. You’re my type. So I guess you could understand why I don’t understand what women see in Hassan. ‘cause they only have eyes for you. I, I didn’t, I don’t see it. You were the first person to be like, women find him attractive.And I’m like, no, they don’t. And, but now I’ve, I’ve received confirmation from one other person who I love.Malcolm Collins: It’s like, has understanding Hassan. It’s a weird sex thing.Simone Collins: It’s aMalcolm Collins: yesSimone Collins: weird sex thing. That note like, now I finally freaking get it. Because I just, I couldn’t understand. He was so abrasive. He doesn’t seem happy, like he seems irritable.He seems like he hates his viewers, but he also hates the right hates his fricking dog. Like he just seems so, I don’t wanna watch someone that unhappy, but if you like, need someone to tell you how terrible you are, who dumb you are,Malcolm Collins: you’reSimone Collins: dumb. Go to Jim. Yeah, like they, they can’t listen to Andrew Tate, but they can listen to him because he, he, he.He stands in Palestine and this,Malcolm Collins: this, oh my God. Who’s that, that streamer that we were talking [00:46:00] about. Eric whatever, who used to, used to be old, old famous streamer went off,I was thinking of Id dubs here. I.Malcolm Collins: his girlfriend, went crazy and tried to turn him into like a Hassan guy. Right. But she’s still like thirsting after Hassan all the time that he’s, she’s thirsting after him because her husband doesn’t put her down and treats her well, while Hassan constantly does.Simone Collins: Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. Basically he’s the, yeah, he’s the Andrew Tate. For the left. He, but, and, and for left, left is women. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: People are like, oh, women are like that. And it’s like, no, I mean, like, clearly not, right.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.No,Malcolm Collins: there is a, just don’t marry one who’s like that. Okay.Simone Collins: Well, yeah.As we’ve discussed this, this concept of like maintaining frame. For that long,Malcolm Collins: for your entire life. Ugh.Simone Collins: It’s like constantly clenching, holding a fart. Like, do you really wanna do that? It seems horrible.Malcolm Collins: I get it.Simone Collins: I mean, I, I get, I get that like there’s some people who are [00:47:00] just like naturally dominant, like you are naturally dominant.But you, you don’t, you don’t manifest it in this performative, like male way.Malcolm Collins: You’re constant flexing it. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, yeah, or, well, I, I think a lot of people think that maintaining frame is saying insulting things towards women and being irritable. Which to me sounds just like that. Okay. That, okay.It’s Hassan. And it’s entertained. They just seem irritable. I’m like, and mad. I’m like, what’s wrong? Are you hungry? Like what a sandwich.Malcolm Collins: A redSimone Collins: pill. Why they keep asking women to make them a sandwich. They’re hangry. That’s the problem. But like real dominance is, is just confidence. It’s being based, you know, it’s being unapologetic.It itMalcolm Collins: to you, I mean, obviously some women do like the Hassan style. He’s, yeah. ISimone Collins: wanna make someone a sandwich. Okay? We just wanna help but see you, let me make you sandwiches.Malcolm Collins: I let you make me sandwiches.Simone Collins: You move the masculinity. AskMalcolm Collins: what you, what are you making me for dinner tonight? Woman?Simone Collins: Bullock.Malcolm Collins: [00:48:00] Bullock.Simone Collins: Extra spicy with the what? Those weird gross mushrooms.Malcolm Collins: I love those Korean mushrooms.Simone Collins: Wow. Heat mushrooms.Malcolm Collins: You can’tSimone Collins: see that. I’m just so glad you you’ve stopped like forest harvesting Chicken of the woods, trying to cook it in our house. I will never forget that. Unique level. Nausea,Malcolm Collins: such a fit.Simone Collins: Oh, I was pregnant in my first trimester.Even like the smell of bananas made me wanna vomit. And then you take out chicken of the woods and you’re like, let’s do this. Let’s gas the house. Let’s saute this. We, we don’t have a vent in our house. We live in a fricking 1790s farmhouse. There’s no ventilation in here. Ventilation is, it goes through the floorboards into every room of our house.Ah.So thank you, thank you, thank you.Malcolm Collins: But you see, she still tolerates me even when I go on my little foresting pictures.Simone Collins: It’s great. It, I mean, it, it was oh, did we [00:49:00] miss ramps season? Let’s walk tomorrow. It’sMalcolm Collins: right now.Simone Collins: Let’s go. It’s right now. Wait, do you have a knife? Do I need to find it?Malcolm Collins: We gotta find it.I think it’s up there. We put it in the supply.Simone Collins: Leave toasty in your room for like 30 seconds and he’ll find whatever the sharp object is. This morning I was like changing indie’s diaper and he comes up behind me with a giant, food processor knife, like the dual blades. And I’m like, oh, like jump scare.And he is like, mommy, this is on the floor. I don’t know how it fell down. Like one of the kids must have like knocked it over when I was putting it away from the dishwasher. It fell under the cabinet. And he’s like, this was under your cabinet. And he’s like walked all the way up the stairs with this dual blade food processor blade.That kid will find any if it’s deadly. Remember, I like, I, I, I dropped something glass in the basement yesterday and toasty is like immediately likeMalcolm Collins: running towards it. Yeah.Simone Collins: So just, yeah, he’s like a magnet. Put ‘em in your room. 30 seconds, you’ll have the knife you need for ramps and then we’ll go picking ramps tomorrow.Okay.Malcolm Collins: That’s a fun idea. Yeah, [00:50:00]Simone Collins: it’s fun.Malcolm Collins: They take, you can get them at Wegmans, just buy ramps, you know, it’sSimone Collins: like we buy things anymore. We’ve given up on that.Malcolm Collins: We did Miss Fern season though.Simone Collins: Oh. But yeah. Bit of fiddle, ferns or whatever.Malcolm Collins: Fiddle. Ferns. Yeah, fiddle. We’ve never ended up actually trying to cook those.Simone Collins: I know, I know, I know. And there was some other thing that you bought. Oh yeah. You tried to harvest the Japanese knot weed and then you just like left it loose in our freezer, covered in dirt. That was a nightmare to clean out. And it stinks. No, I’m okay with ramps. Ramps are very like very bougie. Veryverybougie.Talk. Very, yeah. Like I’m okay with it because like. The, the, the filler face thought moms of my Instagram would approve it. I told youMalcolm Collins: it. Okay.Simone Collins: Yes. And I, I care about what they say. Okay. So I’m excited for tomorrow morning then. Hope it’ll warm up. I love you.Malcolm Collins: Alright. Love you too. ByeSimone Collins: bye. God bless America.Malcolm Collins: By the way, tomorrow’s episode I’m thinking of putting.Simone Collins: [00:51:00] Exciting. I’m slippery. I’mMalcolm Collins: trying to think. Other than the spicy sauce, what’s something that could spice up Bullock?Simone Collins: Just that, that black Korean spicy sauce. You gotta be true to the. Come on, man.Malcolm Collins: Okay. I use more cheddar next time, by the way. Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah, I can absolutely do that. Plenty.Malcolm Collins: It really added to the flavor is quite good.Simone Collins: Good.Malcolm Collins: Or if you want to go weird, you could grind up my, my hard cheese that I have in the fridge. That’s a unique one.Simone Collins: No, not the tescano. I don’t think so. Let’s notMalcolm Collins: discover. Tastes surprisingly good. Ground up in, in.Simone Collins: And melted. I don’t think it melts well. It’s meant to be like a hard cheese. Enjoyed with crackers and other crunchy bits, you know?Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Yes,Malcolm Collins: I hear you. My beautiful one.Simone Collins: Could be wrong, butMalcolm Collins: Well, I mean, you know what’s up, you know what’s up.Simone Collins: I like cheeses, so [00:52:00] there’s that.Malcolm Collins: How did Octavian do today pretending to be dad?Simone Collins: I mean, so far he’s just churning away and I keep. Sneaking in to see if he’s actually moving forward with his lessons and he seems to be actually, so I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: We woke up this morning, goes downstairs, and I had left one of the iPads in the room accidentally. And so Octavian had set it up attached to his computer like I do when I’m watching AMVs on my computer. And he’s working on his lessons of his own Vion. First time.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Just got out his computer started working and he is like, oh mom, the alarm didn’t wake me up again.I set the alarm but it didn’t wake me up, which is something I often complain about in the morning. So it’s clear that because I also work from bed. He was trying to emulate what he sees dad doing every day. SoSimone Collins: he was even explicit with me about that letter. He’s like, yeah, see, I’m working just like daddy.Little, like second screen set up. Oh my god. Daddy’s little boy. [00:53:00] He’s doingit. He’s doingMalcolm Collins: it. He wants it. The song, by the way good song about this if, if you are interested is I wanna be Like You. Good country song.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Country songs have awesome messages too. I really like country song culture.Simone Collins: Yes, yes.Malcolm Collins: Like it’s, it’s, it’s clear why redneck culture consistently has been able to one, rebut the urban monoculture while still, you know, economically outcompeting other cultural groups in the United States, which are similar, like black culture because you look at their music and you don’t see the, those types of values reflected at the same rate.So we have another episode on this where weSimone Collins: Yeah, yeah. That there’s so much cultural similarity in terms of like food and other practices, but like.Malcolm Collins: They, they didn’t get the memo. Music is different about you know, wealth displays for the sake of wealth displays ending up with total cultural corruption over time.But they were also isolated and targeted by the Wokes cr Ification of Black Culture episode, if you have, and it’s a, it’s a great [00:54:00] one. AndSimone Collins: blow my mind. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: you had the, the obviously the huge astroturfing of I love it when people are like, oh, like the Jews made society woke, and I’m like. Bro, like we can look at the specific economic influences that related society to be grow woke.And if you’re looking at something like bbl m you haven’t seen the episode on this, like we bring lots of receipts. BLM was funded by Russia. Like overwhelmingly it was a Russian psyop campaign in terms of the money that they put to trying to get Trump elected versus BLM. It was a nine to one about, in some of the reports like.It is, it is groups like Russia that, that, that made society woke. So do not fi for them. Okay. Well, Russia and white women being the other core problem which is not that there aren’t some Jews that are doing this, but it’s, there’re a minority force in the, in the cultural melu that we are walking through.TheSimone Collins: Melu cultural MeluMalcolm Collins: Melu, that, that annoying me in one [00:55:00] of the recent comments when they’re like, it’s about being pro-white. And I go, well, the, the anti-white message is coming from white women mostly. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So we gotta figure out how to you know, neutralize that while still having children, it’s a difficult, it’s a difficult needle to thread.Simone Collins: Yeah. God, who was I listening to this morning? Someone just being like, but you see white women have white babies and so. You know what? That that is like this really? Yeah. Like if you want white babies, you have to get with a white woman. But like a lot of the people who you would think are the most racist are not marrying white women, because honestly, they just, they can’t, they just can’t.Malcolm Collins: Oh. Everyone knows that if, if Nick Fuentes gets married ever, it’ll be to a Hispanic woman. Obviously I mean, that’s a huge pool of Catholic fans, right? You know, that’s where he is gonna find one. But anyway that’s, that’s, that’s the way it is. And by the way, if you’re wondering how, how actually do you solve this problem?Like, you know, white women are you, you just [00:56:00] get them out of the crowd and you talk with them. A lot of them aren’t actually that brainwashed. They, they just have never heard that they’re allowed to have alternate perspectives in a safe environment when you’re not starting them with like, Hey, you should support Trump, but more like, Hey, what do you value?Like, let’s walk through how to achieve that, right? Mm-hmm. What I did with Simone, like the most feminist, you, you were an extreme feminist when I met You. Wanted me to change my last name when we got married, you know, come on. All right we’ll get started here.Speaker 3: Okay. What are you doing? I got, you’re going to bed and you have a little house here? Yes. Is it cozy? Yes. Who built it for you? Um, dad.Speaker 4: Um, I, I put a pillow here. Go[00:57:00]Speaker 3: Tors. What are you working on? I just, I just, here’s and goes have a D tower. Oh, that’s a beautiful tower. Yeah. Just gonna be pretty on with the. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm Collins drops a bombshell: modern “woke” culture didn’t come from the Puritans — it evolved directly from the Hicksite Quaker movement. In this explosive Based Camp episode, we trace how a 17th-century religious group birthed today’s urban monoculture, complete with performative morality, call-out culture, virtue signaling, and a parasitoid mindset that kills its host.We dismantle the sanitized schoolbook version of Quaker history with hard stats: Quakers owned slaves at dramatically higher rates than Southern colonies or Puritans, yet rewrote themselves as the heroes of abolition. We compare them to Calvinist Puritans, explore “justicle” (morality based purely on feelings), the origins of deplatforming, child moral authorities, bureaucratic meeting-house governance, and why this “super virus” spread so effectively through the U.S. education system.If you’ve ever wondered why progressive spaces feel like a mix of endless rules, theatrical protest, and zero accountability for results — this is the deep historical root.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing how what we today call woke evolved out of the Quaker. And a lot of people have posited many potential starts to woke them as a metaphysical framework, as a moral framework, as a collection of behaviors and patterns.And they’re just wrong. They’re just wrong. Like there’s a very clear. Trace of where the movement emerged, specifically from the Hicksite Quaker movement, Uhhuh how it grew, how it used the Quaker foothold was in the Northeastern education system in the United States and the West Coast education system in the United States to indoctrinate a generation and how it killed its original host generations ago.At this point, the Hicksite Quaker tradition is dead. And it we’ve mentioned it. Some of those things is woke as a cultural parasite. [00:01:00] It’s parasitoid it. Does not care about the host surviving it. You know, a parasitoid, if you’re not familiar, is like, have you ever seen one of those worms or insects where you can see like the worms crawling underneath its skin and then it explodes?It’s a parasite that doesn’t, that that goal is to kill you as part of its lifecycle. So, while all of this evil came from the Quaker movement, we still have to mourn what happened to it as well. All right. And I will just be reading from one of our books, I think our best book, the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion.And it’s at the end of the section on how you determine what is true and what isn’t true.Simone Collins: Question though are you going to address what if all hiss. Strong assertions that it was the Puritans and not the Quakers.Malcolm Collins: And to, to say that woke is evolved from Puritanism requires a cartoonish understanding of history.Simone Collins: Oh, gauntlet throne. Should we have a debate with him?Malcolm Collins: Well, no. You need to [00:02:00] believe that Puritan culture was the culture that the urban monoculture framed it as. And one of the things that we’ll be going over is the urban monoculture, which came downstream of Quaker cultural framings simply lied about the cultural sensitivities of the Puritans.The Puritans were example were extremely likely to like they wrote so sexually graphically. That up until the 19 hundreds, Puritan works had to be censored. Puritan, like a lot of the things that people think about puritans are just. Untrue. But if you are talking about which group was famously insanely prudish.It was, it wasSimone Collins: the Quakers. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They were so prudish this, the quote that often loves is they women would describe everything from their breasts to their, what was it? To their anklesSimone Collins: from basically their neck to their ankles. If there was something wrong, it would be my stomach. It doesn’t matter if it was like their heart palpitations or they had severe, you know, meMalcolm Collins: cramps.They were just uncomfortable mentioning everything here.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: [00:03:00] That’s my stomach, which is sort of antithetical to the way the puritans approached it, which is just say, we look full bodied at the sins of man, and only through overcoming them have we proven mastery by hiding from them. We haven’t proven mastery.Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. One of the other patterns of like, pedestal children is these wise sage.Malcolm Collins: Well, we’ll get into allSimone Collins: that moralizer. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Let’s get started here.Okay. What about the Quakers? Weren’t the Quakers morally ahead of their time and super nice, weren’t they leaders of the abolition movement or something? This is certainly the version of Quakers we learned about in the school system that was dominated by the urban monoculture. So we were shocked upon our review of the actual stats, and maybe more than a little bitter, because we felt misled.Around 42% of Maryland Quakers in early America owned slaves. And this is from Carol kl, 1983. This sample was taken from Maryland wills between 1669 and 1750 among Quaker leaders in [00:04:00] Philadelphia at 70% owned slaves. This sample was taken from the Philadelphia yearly meeting, 1681 to 1705. Even if you go with the lower number, this is, so, that’s 42% of Quakers own slaves.This is higher than the rate of slave ownership of slave ownership of. Any culture or group in the 13 colonies?Simone Collins: Wait, wait. Even more than like, the southern coloniesMalcolm Collins: dramatically higher than the southern colonies.Simone Collins: I forgot about this.Malcolm Collins: At the Southern colonies only around 20% to 5% of household owned slaves.Simone Collins: Oh, right. ‘cause it was really a rich person thing there. Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: With Quakers it was 40%. Oh, no.Simone Collins: SoMalcolm Collins: the reason I go into this is and, and if, if you have this view that like, if you’re like, wow, this is really different than the version of the Quakers I learned about in school. And the reason is, is because Quakers, if, if it was.Quakerism that the urban monoculture [00:05:00] evolved out of. It would make perfect sense that it would maintain this trait of trying to constantly frame the Quakers as morally decent when they were anything but morally decent. They were the most morally repulsive founding group within the Americas. By, by an order of magnitude because not only did they practice things like slavery at a higher rate but they then acted like they didn’t do it.Which to me, I just have this, I immense a moral respo res, you know, disgust. That if you’re going to do a sin, at least own it. Don’t pretend like you were leading the abolitionists when you were not. Almost all of the leading abolitionists were Calvinists which we’ll go into and puritans more specifically.There, I think there was like one or two Quakers, but we’ll go into this more. So, contrast this with Puritan communities, which wa while less attested, seemed to have a slave ownership rate between 0.5 and 2%. This is from Rowan R 2021 0.5 to 2% versus [00:06:00] 40%. Suffice to say the tale of the whale ship of Essex tells us what happens to Bipoc who put themselves in the same boat as Quakers or any gele of today for that matter, despite the incessant self framing as the quote unquote good.Guys hint, the moment things went bad. The Essex, Quaker sailors ate their bipoc compatriots. First, they claimed their, this uncanny skew was a product of a series of random draws. So just imagine,Simone Collins: oh, no. Oh no.Malcolm Collins: A boat gets lost. It’s a, it’s a Quaker group and they had some Bipo wisdom from various groups.I think some Native American subs were blacks and et cetera. Okay. And they, they frame it to them in the way the urban monoculture always does. It’s just a random draw of the straw. I’m sorry.Simone Collins: Totally fair. 100% fair. Yes.Malcolm Collins: That’s just a hundred percent fair. Four people and they all, oh, that doesn’t sound statistically likely.But by the [00:07:00] time it’s to the last one, you can’t really do anything, can you? Because we are the nice ones. We are the Quakers. No, I, I think this is important to know, right? People go off on, on me always. I rip on when people are like, oh, Malcolm, you dig so hard into Jews. You dig so hard into Catholics.Speaker: Why isn’t anyone attacking him?Speaker 2: It’s freezing out.Speaker: No, I think it’s the sign.Speaker 2: Well, the sign from diehard three was clearly racist,Speaker: obviously. But I think we went too broad. Everybody. I mean, who is that offendingSpeaker 2: everybody.Speaker: Ah,Malcolm Collins: I always say the OG culture that I have a hate boner for is Quakers. And you really see it in our books. It was the number one culture. I was just from the get go. Like, these guys are evil with the face of goodness. Actually, you know, the AI thing where it’s like the smiley face on like the hug off monster, whatever.Simone Collins: That’s Quakers for you. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That’s Quakers for me. Right? The but anyway, to continue. [00:08:00] To those who’ve only heard the cartoon version of Quaker history and find our claims shocking. Perhaps you’re thinking maybe the Quakers own slaves at a high rate, but maybe they worked really hard to end slavery.Right? That’s what we’ve heard about Quakers. Sure. Search for famous Quaker abolitionists. And you get names like eliza Hicks, a Quaker who urged boycotts and Benjamin Lay, who theatrically flung blood on people and made a big scene about how opposed he was to slavery.As you read more about such figures, you will find none of these activities actually did anything to end slavery, and none of them did anything other than complain. And it helped in some small parts of the Underground Railroad. Now contrast this. With the major Calvinist abolitionists, and you get names of people like John Brown of the Harpers Ferry in bleeding, Kansas or Newton Knight working with Malcolm’s ancestors in the free state of Jones.If you’re familiar with these two figures these are people who actually went out and tried to free the slaves, right? Like [00:09:00] they tried, they, they didn’t go around flinging blood on people or something like that. They on the ground were like, if slavery is immoral, then I have to do something that’s functionally gonna end it, not just make a big show of wanting it to be over.. We have heard, if you’re not familiar with the free state of Jones, this was the thing that my ancestors were involved in. It was a breakaway state from the, the south that was a state that tried to in, like, integrate slaves with the nons slave population and fight against the Confederacy.And they, they did really well. There, there’s a movie about them. They’re pretty cool. AnywayWe have heard that Quakers may have played more important a role in abolition in the uk, but in the US at least, their performance was well overwhelmingly performative rather than results oriented. Now, perhaps you’re thinking, come on guys, that is really harsh.Wasn’t Pennsylvania the first state to ban slavery? While some pro Quaker historians will frame it such as a fact, an assertion that Pennsylvania was the first state to ban slavery intentionally misrepresents [00:10:00] what happened? Vermont, a majority congregationalist Calvinist state banned slavery at its founding in 1770.Then built that ban into the state’s constitution in 70, 77. These bans immediately freed slaves above a certain age. Pennsylvania did not even put a high duty on slavery until 1973, so it’s three years after Vermont had banneded. But Vermont wasn’t technically a state yet, so they’re like, oh, like a full colony yet.Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins: And when they did ultimately ban slavery in 1780, they nevertheless allowed slave owners to keep their slaves just banning the purchasing of. New slaves.Simone Collins: no.Malcolm Collins: Whereas in the Calvinist state, it’s actually banned slavery contrast. This was Puritan Massachusetts who freed all of the slaves upon banning them just three years later.Simone Collins: So the Quakers just pulled up the slavery ladder. They, they just kept their slaves.Malcolm Collins: The, yeah, the same year of the American Revolution and the Treaty of Paris. So, [00:11:00] sure the Quakers did ban slavery first, but only if you discount be Vermont because it had not joined the union. And only if you count a partial ban on slavery even was in Pennsylvania.Quaker communities did not spearhead the anti-slavery movement. They just happened to be the group with the most power. In reality, the state’s first anti-slavery protests were exclusively led by Mennonites, and the first local slavery bans were enacted within the Mennonite communities. As a historian of the protests said Mennonites never had slaves.It would not even buy something if they thought it had come through the labor of a slave. They viewed slavery as a quote unquote Quaker thing and just walked away and lived apart. So that’s a quote by the way, by Lane 2012. Mennonites, so you’re not, this is the Amish and, and the Mennonites and everything like that.Although all Inapt groups are, are, are, are in this, the Amish, literally in their writings sought of slavery as a Quaker institution. This wasn’t because they didn’t know about the Puritans and the [00:12:00] Southerners. They just, of all the cultural groups, they associated Quakers was perpetuating slavery the most.Okay. So, while the Quakers were eventually against slavery, they were so far as we can tell, at least the least anti-slavery of the anti-slavery gropes. Oh, for goodness sake, you might be thinking at least Quakers were nice to Native Americans. I read that in a book somewhere. This appears to be a manipulation of history, but not quite as bad as the one that Quakers have built around slavery.Quakers indeed had better relations with local Native American communities, but this seems to have as much or more to do with the communities than the Quakers. To quote David Hackett Fisher’s book, Albion Seeds another feature of the Delaware Valley. The natives were friendly and very different from the more militant tribes of the lower Chesapeake and upper New England Williams Pins Indian policy would’ve been disastrous failure in Maryland or Virginia just as it later failed in Western Pennsylvania.So it would seem that [00:13:00] the Quakers were merely granted a convenient opportunity to be nice to Native American populations and history sort of smudged the facts over time. But why trust the storytellers? Let’s look more at the concrete numbers to determine whether Quakers treated local Native Americans with more kindness than their Puritan counterparts.There are nearly 10,500 remaining Delaware Indians, Leno Lepe left falling from a population of 1500. Back during the colonies contrast. This was the Aki with Hu the Puritans interacted, who now have a population of around 9,775 falling from a post smallpox population of. 10,000. If Quakers did treat the Delaware Indians differently, they found some other way to undermine them as if Indian populations within the Quaker neighborhoods don’t seem to have survived at the rate the ones around Puritans did.So it’s like Quakers, they’re like, we were so nice to the Native Americans who lived alongside. And I’m like, oh great. Can I ask some of those Native Americans how they fared? [00:14:00] Oh, well not many of them survived and it was a hard time for all of us back then. And weren’t you the one of the wealthiest groups in the early co?Oh, yes. And we gave them plenty of gifts, but somehow they just didn’t make it. We tried our best. The point being is the facts on the ground are not, not great. Okay. What about women? You might say, yes. You might be wondering, were the Quakers not the greatest advocates of gender equality? And, and you might be beginning to see a little similarity to the urban monoculture with Quaker communities.Act like you’re helping everyone but actually be completely morally corrupt because your actions don’t matter. And this is, we’ll get to this in a bit but this is how it came out of it. This is the social hack that Quaker invented at its core.Simone Collins: Do you think they were the first to pioneer it?Malcolm Collins: I’m not familiar with any other group in history that cared so little about their actual actions, in [00:15:00] contrast with the way that they decided to frame their own morality.Every other group I’m aware of in history, at least in some tentative way, tried to tie their actions and the consequences of those actions to whether or not they were moral people. The Quakers really like, like worse than Deontologists because the Deontologist at least has like a set of rules and they’re like, well, if everyone obeys these rules, society will be good.But Quakers then pioneered this idea of does it feel like you’re being moral? Then you’re being moral. And nobody had really come up with this concept before. And it turns out it’s a very good concept. It’s spreading among certain types of educated communities that are very good at arguing themselves into believing they’re good people.Right. But no, back to the topic of a women. While it is true that Quakers touted gender equality, going so far as having a saying in souls, there is no sex Quaker population stacked. Don’t imply they acted on this belief where it mattered,Simone Collins: huh?Malcolm Collins: For example, Quaker women were twice as likely as men to be illiterate at the [00:16:00] height of their influence.20% to 40%. ISimone Collins: forgot about this. Yes.Malcolm Collins: 99 to 1706. Only slightly different from the super sexist Calvinists difference. 16 to 50% in the 1760s. It seems the only way the Quakers were actually more in favor of gender equality manifested in the burden of proselytization being placed on women as well, often resulting in Quaker women being beaten or even hanged for their efforts.So like the urban Monoculture Quakers claim, they’re pro women, right? Their monoculture is like, oh yeah, we’re pro-women. That’s why we allow them to be sleep around and be used by men. And like, they’re responsible for all of our advocacy work and you know, they have to do, you know, it’s, it’s a, yeah, we’ll use women more.And that makes us more pro-women.Simone Collins: Did anyone ever accuse the, the. Puritans of being super sexist.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I mean the, the Quaker cartoon version of history generally frames puritans as being pretty sexist when in [00:17:00] reality they were not. Particularly sexist. They were not, they were not as gender equal as the backwards people.The backwards people were wholly gender equal or, or near gender equal. But the, the puritans were fairly gender equal. The Quakers had extremely high hierarchy within their culture, but they like pretended like it didn’t exist, and so it didn’t exist.Simone Collins: Huh.Malcolm Collins: I mean, they were famous as, you know, for looking down on everyone else.Like they saw everyone else’s like subhuman. And they cared a lot about your family line, how long you had been in the community very much. Well,Simone Collins: now Puritans cared about lineage too, soMalcolm Collins: Oh, Puritans did too, but it’s striking was in Quaker communities because they give off this, oh, we only care, you know, like we we’re, we’re truly e equalist.And then have this hyper fixation on like family lineage and everything like that. And have an a, a very distinctly set apart aristocracy which is really like the urban monoculture. You, you have your woke aristocracy, but they frame themselves as not being an aristocracy. Like the actress who goes on stage and is like, you, you, you could have no freedom on stolen land.And [00:18:00] so the tribe that used to own her on land reached out to her and is like, Hey, can we have our land back? And she’s like, eh, hang up the phone. Right? It doesn’t matter her actions, what matters is what she says. On the issue of moralities, Quaker will enthusiastically extol their virtues through history books.However, if you actually turn to look at the sources that deal in hard numbers, we see Quakers had very little motivation to act on their moral compass. And when they did, they only did so with great compromise. For making this point, we. No, we will get a lot of heat from those trying to defend the myth that they were virtuous \, rather than virtue signaling colonial Quaker.Still, if we are to build new cultures, we must understand how to enforce moral behavior. If the Quaker system was bad at doing so, we would make the world objectively worse place by allowing the mist to perpetuate to understand why just are apparently so unmotivated to take concrete actions that enact their values in the world, instead of merely signaling a desire for those values to be [00:19:00] enacted.We can investigate why the Quakers were against slavery.Speaker 3: Note here, the term justicle is one that we had coined earlier in the book that means a moral system that decides what’s moral based on whether you feel that thing is moral in the moment.Malcolm Collins: Quakers wroteExtensively.Malcolm Collins: About their distaste for slavery, so we know their logic to Quakers. Slavery violated the golden rule, and that term golden rule is everywhere in their anti-slavery material, essentially, because Quakers would not personally like the feeling of being slaves, slavery was bad.They somehow managed to take. A topic like slavery and make it about their own feelings. Because Quaker’s opposition to slavery is based on personal feelings. Recall that a major Quaker standard of evidence is gained through personal introspection and investigation of one’s emotions is it’s easy to see how they might compromise on the principle if owning slaves made them feel better.Speaker 4: And we’ll see this in the urban monoculture. You know, you will see somebody with like [00:20:00] pro-union, pro socialism signs, like on their computer, , like a star bucks communist, but using a, , apple phone made by near slave labor. They don’t care. They don’t care about thinking about it if it makes them happy, just like the Quakers of the Colonial period.Malcolm Collins: Quaker’s reasoning behind anti-slavery sentiment stands in stark contrast , to Calvinist distaste for slavery, which emerged from a general dislike of any institution that removed individual agency. In other words, whereas Quakers disavowed slavery because it would make them feel bad if it happened to them.Calvinists opposed slavery because it represented the immutable evil of removing human agency. And you can see that the Calvinist reason for disliking slavery led to much more moral action than the Quaker reason was. The core point I’m making here is it’s because, okay, but if the only reason that slavery is bad is because I had feel bad if I were a slave.And I let my slaves go, well then I’m gonna lose a major investment and I’m [00:21:00] gonna feel bad. And because my feelings are like closer to me, I’m gonna be a little bit more attentive to those. Right? A just mindset leads to immoral action because at its core, this philosophy, it’s based on the aesthetic of thinking good, not doing good, just gain status was in their social circles by loudly protesting the injustices of the world rather than by making actual sacrifices to make the world a better place through direct actions.Anyway, I have a disclaimer about how not all Quakers are bad people, but you know, this is back when I was trying to be a good guy writing this book. Now I’m like, ah, whatever. Of course, of course that’s true. But this is more funactually, I’m gonna skip this part here so I can get right into the origins of the super virus.Simone Collins: All right.Malcolm Collins: And if you wanna read that part, you should get our book and read it. It’s a good book. So. As man spread across the world, he brought dogs with him Early. Humans who settled in the Americas were no different. Their trail basing. Canine companions, genetically drifted from old world breeds making American [00:22:00] varieties fascinatingly unique.Sadly, when the Europeans came, they killed them. Almost all of them. The only survivors were the Malmo and a few related arctic breeds. While people claim that breeds like the Peruvian hairless dog, the Exo malti and the Chihuahua are pre-Colombian. DNA studies show that this is not true. They are less than 4% pre-Columbian.But we wouldn’t be telling you this story if the ending weren’t so. Clear. Cut dogs catch a form of transmissible cancer called canine transmissible venereal tumors. C-T-V-T-A long time ago, a single dog developed a tumor with this very unique ability and all dogs today that have CT VT carry an iteration of that original dog’s tumor.So when a dog gets a CT VT tumor, they are growing that inside them. When a genetic testing was performed on the CTVT tumor, it was found to come from a literally. pre-Columbian breed of dog making this extinct species of dog. Also the most prolific single [00:23:00] quote unquote, dog alive today. While that pre-Columbian dog died of cancer, they did so in a way that functionally granted them everlasting life through the DNA was in that cancer and all of the tumors it has produced by this what I mean, if you collectively took all of the, the dogs that had this tumor and put it in a mound that would be the single largest mound of one dog’s DNA on earth today.And it is this pre-Colombian DNA. From what we can gather, the super virus, the parasitoid we discussed at the beginning of this book, first evolved within Quaker culture and more specifically, the hi site branch by decimating Hicksite birth rates the super virus has long since relegated everything culturally unique about hi site Quakers to the dust bin of history, huh, that said, it’s tumors.The tumors that now wear the skin of countless victims through which it acts. It’s almost entirely hitite on a DNA level. Along with that long dead pre-Colombian dog, hitite Quaker culture is at once functionally [00:24:00] extinct and the single most important culture in the world today. As a reminder, Hicksite Quakers hold personal emotional states as their highest standard of evidence, while Orthodox Quakers believe their personal emotional experience is important, but subordinate to the Bible. So we explained the two groups a bit earlier in the book. I guess I’m gonna need to give you a quick here. So Quakerism as a religious community believes that truth. Like if you go to one of their meetings it’s a bunch of people sitting in a room and when one of them feels moved by God to speak because the core source of truce is inside of every individual.They stand up and they speak. And that is where truce comes from. That is how their meeting houses work. You maybe notice a lot of similarities to the urban monoculture here. But the, the, the, there was a big split in the community. One group, the Orthodox Quakers believed that, okay, yes, this personal voice that spoke inside you was important, but it was not as important as the Bible.The Bible still took precedent. If your [00:25:00] internal voice conflicted with what the Bible said to do, then the Bible was correct. The Hicksite said no. The, the internal voice inside you takes precedence even to the Bible itself. And as, as soon as you take that position of pretty quickly, the Bible just doesn’t matter at all.Right, because, yeah, you know, you,Simone Collins: I, I think like anyone who has struggled with addiction knows this. ‘cause you, you, your, we, if we wanna personify it, like your addiction can convince you to do kind of anything. And I think when you just choose to pretend that something you feel in. Personally is like God speaking to you.You can justify any of your actions as being divinely inspired or endorsed in some way.Malcolm Collins: Well, this is, this is where ideas that are prevalently, urban monoculture like search yourself, you know, like, you know, look for self-actualization. Yeah. Look for self-acceptance. These ideas are completely antithetical to Puritan culture.They are almost a literal [00:26:00] inversion of Puritan culture, whereas they are perfectly harmonious with Quaker culture of thisSimone Collins: period. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Some cultural commentators draw connections between the Parasitoid super virus and Puritan ideals suggesting the virus has a Puritan origin. Given what you have read thus far about Puritan and other Calvinist cultures, it should be immediately clear how utterly buffoonish this idea is.If we were going to be as uncharitable as possible, we would say Puritan culture is superficially one, based on a veneer of intellectualism, performative stoicism, and inward focus, . Aspirations of self perfection and ruthless capitalism. Independent research and an uninterested discuss towards outsiders.Therefore, unironically cultural movements often framed as being in direct opposition to the super virus, such as the red pill, men going their own way. Mig tau, and followers of Jordan Peterson and others. Pseudo-intellectual, stoic, inspiring right wing self-improvement junkies represent cultural viruses derived from the Puritan strain of American thought.Mm. [00:27:00] So it’s not that Puritanism didn’t generate any of its own viruses. They’re just in a different camp. The, the American Puritan tradition of and again, I’m, I’m trying to be uns charitable here, performative intellectualism stoicism you know, obsession with personal self-improvement.We see these cultures like, it’s very clear when you run into one of these cultures, you’re like, oh, you’re a descendant of the Puritans. But these are the self-improvement cultures, right? Like, we see them all around us, but they’re, they’re typically against the urban monoculture. It appears this misconception comes from a tendency to frame moralizing shaming and shunning as punishment for apostasy as uniquely puritan.This is silly as that pattern of behavior exists across virtually all hard cultures throughout history, including many that thrive today, the various pop culture viruses with which our species currently contends feature clear signs of the cultures from which they evolved. Even if most people don’t identify these cultivars as being viral, [00:28:00] secular descendants of their earlier cultures, consider the rational and effective altruist movements, which by our estimation at least, are clearly derived from Jewish culture.Not only are a huge chunk of the rationals and effective altruist movements. Founding members and many of their current prominent members ancestrally Jewish, despite Jews representing a vanishingly small percentage of the population. We 2% for people who don’t know but the communities, and I’d argue of the leading members of the EA community and the rationalist community those of Jewish just are probably 75%.Like it is, doSimone Collins: really think it’s that dense?Malcolm Collins: Oh God, it must be. It must be. I I If you said it’s under 50%, I would. Poop myself. It is, it is a Jewish cultural movement. But the community’s constant debating of moral ontology. The habit of throwing ideas at the wall and Masochistically offering financial rewards to get people to argue against them.And intense trust in institutions to develop metrics to effectively distribute capital. Could not be more [00:29:00] Jewish. There is, there’s like the, when I talk about the rationals, rationals will literally like put up bounties that are like, debate me. No other culture does that, that is Jewish to its core.Okay. In the same way that like manosphere culture is pretty puritan to the core. Rationalist and effective altruist cultures. Even like the idea of you just like sit down and be like, I’m gonna like white knuckle it and work until I become the best version of myself. Such a, so amazingly good and cool and effective.Like for an example of like what Puritans did, Puritans specifically settled in regions that had lots of rocks in them to make farming harder for themselves.Simone Collins: And it was also uniquely cold. It was very cold. And it was rocky soil. Yes.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and they chose us. They could have chosen the more fertile land that the Quakers chose.They said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want the worst land there is because the hard work will strengthen my spirit. If that, that does not sound like the urban monoculture. That sounds [00:30:00] like the manosphere. I. Anyway here, or at least the healthy part of the manis here. Obviously there’s like incel self part, but we whatever rationalists and effective altruist cultures even maintain the Jewish superpower of being able to split apart and recombine with manyfold conflict.While groups like rationalists, effective altruists and dark effective altruists made posture as though they disagree with each other, they also enthusiastically jump at opportunities to engage in debate with members of other factions. Something that can’t be said for the various viral descendants of the Quaker are Calvinist culture.Hmm. And, and this, you really see EAs, rationalists, dark intellectuals, you know, our group, we all debate each other all the time. We all talk to each other all the time. You go to two branches of woke culture and it’s like they fight like cats and dogs the moment you put them together.Simone Collins: That’s a really good point.I hadn’t thought about that.Malcolm Collins: This is also true for various branches within the manosphere. You know, you, you, you, you, you put them together, [00:31:00] they’re, they get along slightly better. But different branches of Puritanism got along slightly better. Yeah. But Jews always, like, if you Jews, like an Orthodox Jew will find like a, a you know, a reformed Jew and they’ll be like, he’s a Jew.And I’m like, why? Why would you even do that to yourself? Like you’re, it would be so much easier to be Jewish and there would be so much fewer Jewish conspiracies if Orthodox Jews could just be like, yeah. The people who don’t practice any of our traditions are no longer functionally Jewish.Simone Collins: For real.Yeah. Like, you don’t qualify. You’re not doing the work.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because if you look at the people who are actually doing a lot of the like, bad Jewish stuffSimone Collins: there, yeah. I mean that’s what blew my mind. I, I think maybe just, maybe I’m uniquely ignorant, but I had no idea that if you just, if you are Matrilineally Jewish, you would be considered by so many Jews to be Jewish.When I was like, no, you can’t be a part of a religion if you’re not doing the work. If you haven’t, I guess I’m this, I’m so used to like baptismal based religions where like, until you’re baptized into the church, until you actively opt in and dunk yourself in [00:32:00] water, like cold running water, you’re not in, you know, like, yes.And then you have to keep going to church and you need to like re-up your commitment, you know, it’s like you’re not paying your dues, you’re not tithing. Like, what are you, you know, where’s your temple recommends? Like, there’s just so many things that I’d grown up assuming were like, you’re not religious unless, and here’s this group that’s like, what?Oh, you know, all your mothers before you we’re Jewish, so. You’re in.Malcolm Collins: Fun, fun fact on this point, by the way.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: This is what our entire track, the question that rank Judaism comes from, because this is a fairly recent cultural innovation. And if you find this to be an interesting topic, I strongly suggest that.I, I, I think it’s one of the most interesting of, of the tracks if you’re, if you’re really into cultural anthropology and not Jewish. If, if you’re Jewish, don’t wash it. It’s very offensive. It’s easily our, our, our thing that gets us called antisemites most frequently, but we’re, it’s just a cultural look at the, the, the historical evidence we’ve been able to find, but anyway, here awareness of the origins of the super virus is important as it yields a better understanding of its nuances, why they exist, [00:33:00] and actions it may take in the future. It also helps explain why we subjected you to a Quaker history lesson. The super virus does not just have, quote, unquote, some features of Quaker culture.It is quite literally a secular iteration of Quaker culture’s hicksite interpretation from its core outlooks on reality to its government practices and pet projects. This is why Colonial Quaker culture presents such a prophetic view of today’s dominant pop culture morality, not because it was really ahead of its time, but because it ended up becoming the dominant pop culture.And if you’re interested in this, read David Hackett’s Albian Seed just. Skip to the Quaker chapters and you’ll be like, this sounds like somebody was following an Occupy Wall Street protest or something. The, the, just, all of the antics they got up to let’s start with the concept of call out culture.While Puritans would seek out and punish community members who violated their rules, it was rare for them to target individuals outside their communities. Puritans were interested in creating the perfect world within [00:34:00] their settlements and did not really care much about what people outside their settlements were doing, unless it evolved.The degradation of human will eg. Slavery. On the other hand, you will see numerous colonial era cases of Quakers publicly shaming non Quakers to goad them into changing their ways. In colonial Quaker culture, an individual could raise their status within their own culture by quote, unquote calling out.And this was even the word used in Quaker culture. Those of different cultures which is wild, right? Like most cultures don’t do this. Most cultures are not particularly concerned with performatively calling out. Ways that like the backwoods tradition doesn’t do this. The backwoods tradition would never go into like a Quaker settlement and like start chastising Quakers for not following Backwood tradition.Simone Collins: Could you imagine? Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Puritans didn’t do this. Cavalier may have done this a little bit, but not much Quakers did this.Simone Collins: No, I feel like Cavalier. Most of these other ones were like very prideful and exclusionary. Yeah. I think maybe one thing that really shows the connection [00:35:00] between the Quakers and the urban monoculture is the fact that they wanted to convert everyone to their way of life, whereas these other groups were like, no, you can’t be one of me.Like, you’re not aristocratic, you’re not moral enough. You’re not. Hardcore enough, you know, all of them had their own exclusionary things.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the Quakers didn’t. Yeah. And, and they were extremely exclusionary., The Puritans, when they take on indentured servants, they took on indentured servants at a very low rate.Because they would have moral tests for the indentured servants and like require moral background checks onto these people. ‘cause they’re like, well, if you’re gonna become a part of our community, we have to make sure that you have the moral fortitude to be a true puritan.Simone Collins: Yeah. They only, they only wanted top performers, even if it was servants in their community.Yeah. Very high bar.Malcolm Collins: It was an, it is an interesting, the way they did it, they were extremely elitist, but as soon as you were in the community, then you were equal. Right? But, but the bar to get in the community, the Quakers were the exact opposite. They said they would accept anyone. But when you [00:36:00] joined, if you weren’t from one of the ancestral ruling groups within the Quaker community, you were treated like trash.Which is very similar to the urban monoculture. Oh yeah. The, the Hollywood star goes, oh, yes, we accept everyone. But of course you know, next time we’re in church I get moved by God, not you. I, I just wanna make sure you understand the, the, the secret rule about who’s actually allowed to stand up and talk today.Without, without getting side-eye from Mrs. Johnson. Very, very much a, a cracy right. Quaker priorities. And how Quakers demonstrate those priorities have strong parallels with those held by the virus. For examples, Quakers can dim exhibitions of animals at places like zoos as quote, hurtful to their, the animals’ feelings.With Elizabeth’s drinker reporting, it looked so sorrowful. I pitied the poor thing and I wished it in its own country, or consider it’s hope. Some Quakers chose to protest with Squire Wharton Spastically jumping into a bull baiting ring, a [00:37:00] sport that pitted dogs against bulls, and subsequently calling out the people in the crowd by name.Does this not sound like Greta Thornberg, by the way, like jumping in and jumping? Oh,Simone Collins: she’s never put herself at physical. I guess she did on a boat. Never.Malcolm Collins: This might be the only, only time a Quaker put himself at physical risk. But like the idea of spastically throwing yourself in like a bull ring and started yelling at people in the crowd by Nick, how dare you?Puritans never, never did stuff like this. When, when Puritans didn’t like something, they would get together as a community and they’d be like, okay. I don’t like what these people are doing. We should probably kill ‘em all and try to get them to repent so they don’t go to hell. Right. That’s a good plan.Okay. Good plan. Yeah. God no, but it’s, it is very different, right? Like, we’re gonna come together in the community. They were, they were not dramatic, let’s say. Right? Like, they, they got stuff done.Simone Collins: They were dramatic. They told their kids to stir, to open graves and contemplate death. You don’t think that’s a littleMalcolm Collins: dramatic.They also chose [00:38:00] colors that said the colors.Simone Collins: Sad colors.Malcolm Collins: Sad colors. That’s literally what they called the colors that they like best. Sad colors is what you were supposed to wear as a Puritan which were co colors that showed like non pretentious was the idea behind them.Simone Collins: There’s a lot of earth tones.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But I love this, you, you hearSimone Collins: actually behind us, we’ve sort of. Colonial era paint here. Those, that’s a sad color.Malcolm Collins: You, you hear a Quaker freaking out about like zoos, urban monocultures freak out about zoos all the time. I don’t know any other cultural group that spazzes about zoos like the urban monoculture does.Quaker might be like the one historical example, like just, sorry, put yourself in the distant history. Imagine Rome, you’re in Rome or something, and they’re, they’re parading the animals like the arena or whatever. And there’s the one person who’s like, oh, look at those poor animals. Everyone would look at them like they were crazy, right?Like, they’d be like, how, how do you think that’s gonna earn you social points? It makes you look like a nutter. They’re animals. Okay. You could at least care about the 40% of your [00:39:00] people who own slaves. But no, in Quaker culture, this is doing a normal thing to signal and you signal it because you know it gets you status.Simone Collins: Oh, do you think maybe that’s that parallel of a culture that pedestal lies those outside more than those inside?Malcolm Collins: What do you mean by that?Simone Collins: In the sense that when you look at those heat, remember the heat map episode we did that showed the conservatives holds those in their family and then their local community above those outside their community?And leftists are more likely to favor people outside their community or even their country or culture more than like their own families or themselves.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, maybe. I mean, but it’s, it’s all performative with Quakers, right? Like that’s important to remember as well. Like the consequences of their actions are really quite irrelevant to them.They don’t gain status from performing you know, John Brown level action. It’s not about actually attempting to free slaves. It’s about yelling at people because what they care about and, and, and, and the way they view their own moral worth [00:40:00] is, did I performatively look like I was doing a good thing, right?Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: And the things that performatively look moral are literally an actually moral within a Quaker moral ontology which is really weird. But this is what I’m talking about when I’m talking about Jism because they invented that concept no one had. But again, you’re seeing all over the place here that Quakers look exactly like the urban monoculture.It’s not like they’re similar. It’s the same culture. Hatred of gun ownership and distaste towards persecution of criminals represents another Quaker value that has effectively migrated to the modern culture with, and no, here no other culture in the history am I aware of, didn’t like criminals being punished.You’ve got to understand how absolutely bizarre that is as a cultural predilection, right?Simone Collins: And then that is one of the most I wanna do an episode on this because Brian Cha did a really great essay on it called Escaping the, the Permanent Underclass. But the fundamental issue of us failing and refusing to enforce [00:41:00] our own laws leading to societal breakdown is, is maybe underused in our time as like leading to the downfall of civilizations.So. I think that’s important, and I forgot that that was. Really something. It started with Quakers.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and keep in mind, they were also one of the few cultures, they’re, they’re cultures that are anti weapon usually don’t survive. So they’re, they’re very rare as a cultural group to, to see owning weapons as a more negative thing to do.Simone Collins: Yeah. Good point.Malcolm Collins: And it, by the way, if you’re asking how did they survive, if they were against owning weapons in a place as dangerous as a frontier, it was the backwards people. They took the backwards people and they put them in the regions where the Indians were because they knew the backwards people would kill the Indians, and then the Indians would kill the backwards people and they’d be busy killing each other, and they wouldn’t bother with some more inward settlements.Simone Collins: Were refusing to own weapons works when you’re surrounded by a bunch of other people who own weapons and do the dirty work for you, in other words.Malcolm Collins: Right? But that’s actually very urban [00:42:00] monoculture as well. Right? Functionally, they still killed Native Americans by shipping the backwards people to where their strategy to deal with Native Americans was killing them.It’s just no blood on my hands. I just shipped another group of people who’s very murdery to that region. And by the way, the reason why we’re so nice on the backwards people and the puritans is those are our ancestral groups, right? So of course they, they can do no wrong, even though they, they are super murdery.I, I admit that. So William Penn proudly reported, quote, not one soldier Nor Armour or militia man seen since I was first in Pennsylvania who brags about not having any army. Sorry. From my cultural perspective, it’s like so weird. When at once point a gang of pirates stole a ship in Philadelphia and started devastating the Delaware Valley coastline, Quaker leaders qualed among themselves over how they could suppress the crime without violence, allowing countless homes and businesses to be plundered while they took their time, soul searching over [00:43:00] whether it was acceptable to sully themselves through the use of arms.ThisSimone Collins: sounds like the gang rape situation in the uk. They’re like,Malcolm Collins: no, it’s literally like the gang rape situation in the uk. There are groups out there, gang, and they’re like, whoa,Simone Collins: there are these pirates that keep hurting our communities, but how do we nonviolently without punishing anyone? Handle the situation?Malcolm Collins: No, it’s even, it’s even more than that. It’s like, well, I mean, it could be anyone. I gotta put the Freedom Tunes episode hereSpeaker 5: We found a 15-year-old girl with a head cut off it, a pea and kind of grooming gang kidnapped her and forced her in a slavery before murdering her. People near the scene of the crime.Heard them scream ahu or bar when the incident occurred. I mean, that could have been anybody. Yeah, anybody could have done that. Hmm. There must be clues. What did you say? He screamed, uh, eats Arabic food. Yeah, man, that’s crazy. But I mean, you know, white people speak Arabic too. Like a blonde white guy could also yell at, you know, I didn’t mention his skin color.Look, I’m just saying there’s really no information or motive here or anything. Uh, [00:44:00] we’re just gonna drive ourselves crazy trying to figure it out. So, and a, a big part of mystery solving is just knowing when, when to quit. Why not interview people from his community? What community? I could, it could have literally been anyone, you know, it could have been a Norwegian social worker who was on vacation here.You know, like we, they, we just don’t know. You know what, maybe we’re just gonna search her for DNA. Why Do you think some people are genetically prone to this kind of thing? No. It could help us solve the crime. I mean, maybe it’s not a crime. Maybe it could just be someone’s culture. You know, shh. Quiet.Someone four blocks away is typing hate speech about this on their keyboard. Got it. Looks like we found the real criminal. After all,I know we can laugh at Wokes acting like this, but Quakers acted the exact same way. This is Quaker culture. I.Malcolm Collins: , it’s a way of thinking that feels moral, but it leads to negative action. You know, the Quaker is not doing anything about the pirate. It’s led to people dying, being raped, everything like that, you know, very similar to what we’re seeing today.But [00:45:00] they refuse to, it’s like, I don’t know, punishing criminals sounds like a pretty bad thing to do. People often confuse Puritan and Quaker norms around sex, assuming that it was the puritans who were insanely prudish. Whereas in actuality, Puritans were so comfortable talking about sex. And apt to do so was graphic frequency that puritan writing often end up with heavy editing to be published up until the mid 20th century.Though we should acknowledge that Puritans were also only in favor of sex within marriage. So Puritans very similar to like we are on our show. They were like kink friendly. They were like, whatever, friendly. It’s like just within marriage. Okay. As long as you’re doing it within marriage, you know, sex can be fun, have some fun with it, right?But remember, it’s about having kids. And I think that this is a like we’re not. Presenting a divergent viewpoint to the founding fathers of our country when we present that way of dealing with, with sexuality. And I think a lot of people that have this really you know, deontological like, oh, we’ve gotta be constantly pure around sex.We need to not to, that’s not, that’s not American culture. [00:46:00] That’s not American founding culture. That’s some weird nonsense that you got. Ed into by the school system because they told you that’s what the bad guys did in history, and now you associate with the bad guys in history because you didn’t actually open a history book.Well, the one that was written by Urban Monoculture okay. Quakers in contrast, were so uncomfortable discussing sex. It was common in Quaker culture to be against sex altogether, even was in marriage. This group eventually split off into the shaker movement. People are unfamiliar with them. They, they didn’t even believe in sex with marriage.One French traveler was shocked to find that when a Quaker woman consulted their physicians, they tended to describe everything from their next to their waist as their stomachs and everything from their waist to their feet as their ankles. This snobbery also partially led the collapse of Quakerism with many people never marrying, and as many as 16% of Quaker women in the colonial period being single by the age of 50.This prudish anti-sex angle has manifested in many branches of the super virus, even though it stands massively at odds with the logical [00:47:00] ideologies of those groups most likely to become infected. This is why the infected progressive groups that one would expect to be pro-sex given their stated ideologies can sometimes appear bizarrely prudish with the modern sex negative movement in the anti keek movement and the gender critical movement all having.Thought leaders within them that emerged from radical feminist groups and why groups like The Red Pill and Mig Tau, or even the Pragmatist Guide series, which Calvinist roots seem weirdly sex obsessed, but in a clinical and experimental way. Consider that the only living people we’ve mentioned in this book so far who grew up with Calvinist derived cultivars.This book’s Ulcers and Ala Ala also grew up with the Calvinist culture, are both known for highly analytical sex research was one of our other books. Being The Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, even the Hicksite Quaker approach to internal governments is almost perfectly aligned with governing practices that spontaneously arrived within nodal networks, featuring late stage super virus infections.By the way, any, anything that you wanna say about the sex stuff before I go [00:48:00] further?Simone Collins: No, it’s just really funny. We are seeing high rates of sexlessness these days, that’s for sure. But I think it’s,Malcolm Collins: no, no. I mean the urban monoculture acts very pro-sex. It acts very obsec sex, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But if you actually look at it, it’s the first group to start shaming sex and stuff like that, or at least certain factions of it are which is weird.And there’s this constant tension within the urban monoculture that is weird if you don’t understand what it evolved out of, that feels incredibly sex negative. Like it’s , debauchery, maxing sex negativity. And it’s also why if you look at the people who are the best sex.Ologist sex researchers, they are often in groups opposed to the urban monoculture. Mm-hmm. They here ala usSimone Collins: Diana Fleischman. DianaMalcolm Collins: Fleischman. They, they are also outside. These are like the top sex researchers that I’m aware of that do like good real sex research and the urban monoculture hates all of them.Because you know, when you talk about real data [00:49:00] around kinks, you unfortunately reveal uncomfortable things around the way that women and men are different. But people from these other traditions just get Gideon doing that. You know, they’re like, oh, well let’s, let’s cause a little fight here.Anyway, consider the similarities between the conduct of Unprogrammed Quaker Meeting House and the method of governments utilized by Occupy Wall Street. In an Unprogram Quaker meeting, house attendance will sit quietly until moved by God to stand up and start speaking in Occupy Wall Street convening.There would be no set leader, but people would stand up and start speaking when so moved and their audience. So as not interrupt them would react using a complicated set of hand signals outside of the hand signals. Occupy Wall Street meetings were strikingly similar to unprogrammed Quaker meetings.Perhaps had colonial Quakers heard of the innovation of the hand signal interaction, they would’ve enthusiastically adopting it. Seeing as Quakers were well known for being obsessed about bureaucratic procedures and building complex social procedures to ensure [00:50:00] everyone got a voice at any moment.Heck, we even have quotes from William Penn complaining about his fellow Quakers being so, and the word he used was government ish, that it was hard to get anything done again. Sound like any modern groups. Here. We should also point out that the colonial era Quakers were not particularly less rule oriented than the Puritans was David Hackett Fisher pointing out in Albian seed that pin’s laws against sin were more rigorous in some respects than those of Puritans.Quakers just happened to be more obscure and bureaucratic was their rules. For Puritans rules had a goal where Quaker rules were an interactive social language, one must successfully navigate to signal social status. This can be seen in things like traditional Quaker weddings, having had 16 stages to make even a slight mistake at any of these intricate stages with a huge social fapa and could leave you permanently cut off from friends.And this is, you see with the supervisor, they’re constantly inventing new rules in how they talk to each other. New [00:51:00] rules in how you do this, new rules in how you do this and if you do it wrong. Oh no, you didn’t first say, don’t you know, we don’t say people of color anymore. Don’t you know? Yes.Simone Collins: It’s like the homeowners association of life.It’s so badMalcolm Collins: you need to ask my pronouns first. Another, and it, and this is interesting. This is used to it’s, it’s a very actually interesting cultural technology. I’ll take a bit of a side here. What it does is it sort of, forces the culture to reward how psychologically invested you are in staying on top of the culture.Mm-hmm. Because the more you are paying attention to how the ever-changing bureaucracy is changing, the higher up in the culture you’re going to be right. And so you basically have to constantly navel gaze at your own culture. It’s a very useful cultural technology. If your goal is to capture all of a person’s mental space, it’s a very useless technology.If your goal is effective action. And the urban culture [00:52:00] adopted it. Another interesting similarity between these super virus and Hicksite Quakers can be seen in how they spread within organizations. Both start by preaching the harmonious collaboration of a diversity of viewpoints until they reach a certain population threshold within an organization, at which point they aggressively and systematically purge the organization of anyone not willing to slavishly submit to their ideology.For example, when the hicksite factions would grow in an Orthodox Quaker churches, they would lay low until they felt they had enough backing to make their move. Then. Change the locks on the meeting house doors. Oh my God. And ban anyone who did not submit to their new way of thinking from entering. This is by the way, from a journey to the past at Penn State, Brandy Wire.So that’s crazy. Like that is so woke, right? Oh, we just want acceptance. We really care about all you guys until you get just over that 50% mark. Then you’ll walk up the next day and the doors are padlocked and you are not allowed anymore until you agree to their set of rules about how things are gonna be done.Simone Collins: [00:53:00] Not great. That’s not great.Malcolm Collins: Puritans didn’t do things like that, by the way. They were very upfront about their plans and their goals. Another interesting parallel can be seen in the colonial era, Quaker and modern super virus cult of our relationships with quote unquote disadvantaged groups. While Quakers presented themselves as uplifting and empowering underrepresented groups, they ultimately took and held power just for and among themselves.Quakers largely immigrated to the United States, mostly Pennsylvania as either working class or middle working class groups. But Rosen power quickly by creating a tightly knit oligarchical community in the towns they occupied. In the case of Philadelphia, this was the Philadelphia’s corporation.These individuals were highly interrelated with no less than 85% of them being married to each other. This by the way, is from, where did I get that stuff from? Judas Diana. So Stone, the Philadelphia Corporation despite their working class background and quick rise to power, Quakers had a reputation for being spiteful.Was Bishop Sheldon describing Quakers in [00:54:00] 1669 as quote very mean, the best,Simone Collins: veryMalcolm Collins: scarce worth, the title of Yeoman? The truth seems to be that Quakers were nice so long as you slavishly submitted yourself to their social agenda and never uplifted one of your own people over a quote unquote friend, which is what the Quakers call each other.Which again, how urban monoculture, right? We just call everyone friend. Don’t you know? Oh by the way, we do have a ruling group that controls everything and they’re 85% interrelated. But we are meritocratic, I promise. Just beneath the scenes.Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: This behavior can be illustrated by political alliance formed between the Quakers and German Protestant immigrants and a Baptist mostly . In which the Germans would vote Quakers into office, but never the other way around.Simone Collins: Oh, yes. I forgot this. Yes. This bizarre like representation thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Where you’d have communities that were majority anti Baptist and Quakers would still be able to get power because the anti Baptist voted fairly and the [00:55:00] Quakers would always vote only for Quakers.Um mm-hmm. Which is how the Wokes work when they enter communities, right? They’re like, oh, we’re really about everyone. We’ll support everyone, but not really. With one Rufuss Jones writing quote, we hear nothing of any men of prominence in these days except for friends, EEG Quakers. So this arrangement, Quakers dominated their local legislators to understand just how lopsided this arrangement was.Consider that Lancaster County was so German by the mid 18th century that only a hundred Quakers lives there, and yet J just those seven Quaker families kept the local government firmly in their grip. Seven Quaker families, a hundred Quakers kept Lancaster County. If you don’t know where Lancaster is, at the heart of Army country, in their grip, we actually suspect there is a case to be made that the only reason the Quakers ever turned against slavery was to appease their Anabaptist constituencies who had always been fervently against slavery.We say this because Quakers did not turn against slavery until they started needing broad support from Anabaptist [00:56:00] Majority to maintain political dominance in their regions. While Quakers cultivated the public image of a culture that regarded outsiders as equals, they very clearly looked down on them using terms like mongrel marriages to describe the marriage to a non Quaker God.It’s not, oh my, a woman for Quakers to be kicked out of the community for marrying non Quakers. ButSimone Collins: honestly, that’s how it’s now, if you like, marry a Trump supporter, it’s, it’s seen very similarly. That is uncanny.Malcolm Collins: And this behavior increased as they consolidated power. And note this included marrying like Native Americans who attempted to convert to Quakerism freed slaves who attempted to convert to Quakerism.This however, was not true of Puritan communities. In Puritan communities. We have many instances in which freed slave converted to Puritanism and Puritan sought, you’re doing it well, you’re the, you’re the boss, right? Like, you’re awesome, right? They, they integrated very well and super not true in backwards communities.Yes, backwards always fought was Native Americans, but they were called squaw marriages. But they marry them too if they thought that they were strong and they were allies with them. So, [00:57:00] yeah. Not so much Quakers. They, they say it, but they don’t mean it. Just like with slavery what is interesting is why Quakers felt this way.Distaste for so-called mongrel marriages was not about purity, but because Quakers thought that it was impossible for anyone who is not a quote unquote true believer to experience love and have a happy marriage as Quakers held, that marriage should only be for love rather than for material gain or lust.Marriage to a non Quaker or someone axiomatic incapable of love was perverse. So I love, this is so urban monoculture. We, we care about everyone because we are the only people capable of feeling love. And it’s like, wait, do you really believe that? Like, Trump supporters don’t feel love? Well, of course they don’t.They’re incapable of it. They’re hillbillies. They’re the deplorables. They’re whereas the deplorables, the backwards people, they’re like, oh, those people are you know, a little arrogant. And I don’t like ‘em much, but of course they, they have the capacity to feel love, like they have human emotions.But again, we see this [00:58:00] in the urban monoculture. You don’t see anything like this in Puritan culture. It is fascinating to see such viewpoints mirrored in today’s super virus. Those infected often posit how the immune could possibly have healthy relationships or marriages wring their hands over trad wise with kids who look happy.Importantly, projecting that she must really hate their lives. And you see this all the time. They, they’ll always say, if somebody’s living a way that’s different from the urban monoculture, oh, they must hate their lives. Oh, they must hate their lives. Right? The Puritans didn’t do this, by the way.They weren’t constantly saying, anyone who has a Puritan must secretly be incapable of love and hate their lives. They were just like, oh, they’re, they’re freaking idiots. Like, I, I don’t care. I don’t wanna deal with them. Like they’re stupid. They’re going to hell. They’re not among the elect. Anyway, the hypocrisy can also be seen in Colonial era Quakers, not to mention those infected by the modern era super virus who wanted to be known for seeing everyone equally, despite really looking down on those in poor rural environments.When Scotch Irish arrived in the colonies, one Quaker writer referred to them. These are the, the backwards people, the scum of two nations. This holds many [00:59:00] similarities to the groups heavily infected by quote unquote coastal elites who look down on poor rural, quote unquote deplorables. Despite presumably viewing the poor without bias and wanting to uplift them.Don’t worry. They didn’t deserve their tradition just for poor and rural individuals. Antisemitism was also strong in every Quaker community, just as it is among those with a deep infection of the urban monoculture virus. Great. Hann Swanson from a prominent Quaker merchant faction had this to say of Jews in 1756.This people, once the chosen people have become the scum of the earth.Oh,Laws were passed in Quaker dominated settlements, Pennsylvania, that systematically disenfranchised Jews like the law in 1794, Revok preventing work on the Sabbath, meaning Jews could only work five days a week with Abram Woodruff being convicted under this law despite keeping with his own Sabbath.The Jewish community at the time was keep mind Quakers like, [01:00:00] oh, you can practice religion any way you want. Right? We accept all people except them. F*****g Jews and the backwards people and the Puritans. Now note here, the Puritans never actually particularly beefed with the Jews this hard and the backwards people, and we don’t have any records of them, particularly beefing with the Jews.If you look at the founding fathers they predominantly, as we pointed out, well, we have quotes from every founding father, but George Washington complaining about how evil Catholics are. And we’ll find, you could find a number of them from the non-Catholic, the Quaker ones complaining about Quakers.There are actually fairly few complaining about the Jews. And as I’ve pointed out in the early American colonies, Jews were able to vote in twice the number of colonies for colonies. Then Catholics could only two colonies. I should go into how much Quakers hated Catholics ‘cause they also hated Catholics.Mind you, so don’t, don’t think, but this is where you get this anti-Jewish. We were like, why is the urban monoculture so anti-Jewish comes from the Quakers? In part, the Jewish community at the time was well aware of how disproportionately cruel the Quakers were to them, and saw them as distinctly different from other [01:01:00] Christians to the point of seeing them as not Christian at all, was a prominent Jewish broker, Heime Solomon saying it was neither the Jews nor the Christians who founded the practice.Note here. When he says the practice, he’s talking about slavery. , So it wasn’t just the anaba, it saw the Quakers as founding slavery.Malcolm Collins: But Quakers, Quakers worst than heathens, pagans and idolaters. The Jews did not like Quakers either. So keep in mind there’s a mutual hatred, these two groupsfair.A final and interesting area of overlap manifests in both groups, tendencies to regard use with a unique level of reverence, given that the super virus has become the dominant culture in our society, it doesn’t seem particularly weird to us that adults turn to a child turned moral authority like Greta Thornberg for wisdom on the subject of government policy, as a small sample of two people who don’t hail from today’s dominant culture, we can report that this is really, really, really, really, really weird for adults to take tactical or moral [01:02:00] advice from a child.Here’s a quote from ALB and Seed about this. People of other faith were startled to observe Quaker children giving moral and religious instruction to their elders. We have an account of a 10-year-old child who interrupted a gathering of adults to deliver a spontaneous speech on salvation. The adults listened respectfully, and after the child were done speaking, a grandmother offered a prayer and said, oh Lord, that this young branch should be a teacher to us.Old ones another at the age of 10, regularly reprimanded adults in his own family, condemning them for swearing, breaking up card parties, and preaching to them about salvation again.Simone Collins: I mean, it sounds like they needed some talking to, though that a gambling problem or something. Well,Malcolm Collins: again, this goes into Quaker, like they’re actually very voiceful, but they, that’s why they rely on children for moral authority.Right.Simone Collins: They haven’t been fully corrupted by their own culture yet. Yeah. I mean, maybe it kind of works.Malcolm Collins: To wrap things up, Quaker culture was not prophetic of future values. [01:03:00] Rather, today’s super virus is derived from Quaker culture. To suggest that Quaker culture was prophetic is akin to suggesting that the ethnic makeup of early settlers was weirdly prophetic of the ethnic later wake up of later US population.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: It’s like, well, yeah, they killed everyone else. Evidence that the virus grew out of the hicksite Quaker culture as opposed to emerging through convergent evolution can be seen in everything from vestigial value sets, many of which run counter to progressive values to the super virus’s weird governance system the prudish nature was in which it treats sexuality and the theatrical ways infected engage in protests and their common use of children to preach moral values.But if you’re wondering why Quakers had this view of children being moral authorities, it’s because they’re like, well, if, if. Truth comes from within. Children have the less ex, the least amount of external exposure to the world. And so the least amount of corruption, so what they say spontaneously has the closest moral truth.Now, the urban [01:04:00] monoculture doesn’t know why. It cares what children think over other people. And there isn’t really a progressive reason to elevate somebody like Greta Thornberg to a position of like a saint in their culture. Right? And this is why I’m saying you could trace it. There are too many vestigial elements of Kure culture like wanting to protect zoos.That’s a weird thing. Like a person who eats meat moldering about how unethical zoos are. Makes no sense unless you’re coming from the Quaker culture and then it makes perfect sense. So a lot of the, the moral concerns, the way that they protest, the way that they organize is just clear as day. Why didn’t the more virtuous Quakers call out their purely performative colleagues?They did. However, systems for de platforming people had already begun to evolve in Quaker culture centuries ago when George Keith began to speak out against the Quaker community for not living up to its values, the same Quakers who in England demanded the right to free expression, started demanding restraints on the types of things that could be published.[01:05:00]Causing many of the printers in the Quaker territory to be arrested for publishing unlicensed books and having the press and types seized by 1693, Keith, along with others who spoke against the Quakers for their hypocrisy, were forced to leave. In Quaker culture, you were allowed to call out outsiders for things like slavery and you were even allowed to shame specific Quakers.But the one thing you were never allowed to do was to point out that Quaker culture as a whole did not at all live up to its espouse values and was fundamentally hypocritical. Very urban monoculture tactic. If you’re wondering where the urban monoculture got this tactic, did it develop it? Did it evolve it?No, it had the idea of de platforming people was in the culture that evolved into the urban monoculture before it ever started. Interesting.If you are still dubious of our claim, the super virus has Quaker origins. Think about the Virus’s initial starting point in spread The American secondary school system. The United States school system was most heavily influenced by Quaker culture [01:06:00] and disproportionately won by Quakers. In its early days, had the virus evolved independently, it would’ve more likely initially spread through activist movements instead of the entrenched bureaucracy.Why did the Parasitoid super virus evolve within Quaker culture then? And I know this is very clear. If the urban monoculture evolved naturally, the earliest instances of something like the urban monoculture we would see would be in activist circles, yet. It’s actually in teachers unions and in other school related institutions where we see the earliest iterations of it, which come from Quaker culture.Hmm.So why did it evolve in Quaker culture? Why did Quaker culture produce one of the most virulent of all the mimetic viral packages when similar secular viruses have evolved out of nearly all of America’s major early cultural groups, while the traditional branch of Quakers were not Les, the evolution of the iCal branch of the Quaker face was what allowed the super virus to develop the worldview allowed the super virus to appeal to [01:07:00] entire nodal networks at once instead of individual nodes.For example, the Red Pill and Jordan Peterson followers focus heavily on how they will help individuals rather than society as a whole. The just worldview allows an individual to believe that if everyone in their group. Structures their thoughts and language in a certain way, society will become better.Mm-hmm. All else equal. This motivates individuals to spend more of their time converting people than spending time and effort on requiring effort required to literally build a society that structurally embodies their values. For clarification, if you have two groups and one of those groups spends 100% of its adherence contributed time and effort to converting others while the other spends 50% of its adherence, just time to converting others and 50% on trying to improve the world, the group that is not interested in actually making a difference while outcompete the other, evolutionarily speaking.Yeah. However, very few cultures are able to convince people that they are, quote unquote good despite investing so little time in the actual realization of their values. Hmm. This is a unique [01:08:00] Quaker innovation. Moral or amoral innovation. An absence of the success metrics is a feature that equipped Quaker culture to produce the ultimate super virusthe way Quaker culture can shamelessly claim to be abolitionists while simultaneously counting America’s most prolific slave owners among its members by being aesthetically abolitionists, presents a critical social technology needed by the super virus. It doesn’t matter whether the super virus actually uses significant resources to help bipoc, LGBT people, the poor, the disenfranchised, the environment, or women, it aesthetically cares about those issues.And from the perspective of an infected person aesthetically carrying it’s morally equivalent to actually doing something. This is why there was so little public complaint on the far left about the BLM foundation being spent on things like a $6 million mansion for the board members. Or like consider more recently Greta Thornberg’s B boat to Gaza.Like obviously it would’ve actually done [01:09:00] functionally nothing, even if she could have got there and the chance of her getting there was functionally impossible, right. With the situation. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yet she does it because morality isn’t the point. Performative morality is the point. You don’t need to actually achieve the end.Almost no other culture on earth developed a set of interlocking memes, which allowed humans to believe something. So cockamamie thoughts Simone?Simone Collins: Yeah, this, well, this shows up a little bit in another episode that I wanna film on the end of girl Bosses, butMalcolm Collins: I’m sorry. We’ll only get to one episode today, butSimone Collins: may maybe what’s gonna happen.What what did happen with Quakers is perhaps this is signaling the beginning of the end of actual charity and the, the beginning of what basically became salaried activism where people stopped actually just doing the good works and devoting their life to volunteering or [01:10:00] philanthropy and instead literally getting paid to be an activist, but not actually solving the problem.Not actually giving, being literally a net drain, but just in the name of, or the theme of your cause.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: Which is so insidious and disgusting.Malcolm Collins: The Parasitoid virus convinces its victims that by buying into it, they will intrinsically serve the best interest of those groups. Without this technology, people would quickly notice the harm this virus inflicts on the infected gold driven organizations, and pull back before they die of the disease and release the spores grown within them into the social ecosystem.People at Occupy Wall Street would stand up and say, this obsessive infighting and bizarre method of making decisions is clearly inefficient and will not achieve our goals. It will make them impossible. As scary as the Parasitoid super virus can be, we must understand it because it represents the single most sophisticated and robust cultivar ever evolved while we , [01:11:00] fastidiously.Avoid the use of super virus evolved social technologies was in our own houses, cultivar, our own family’s cultivars, techno puritanism. We suspect someone smarter than us may be able to find a way to use some of these social technologies in a beneficial and durable culture. Likely somebody of Quaker descent because, you know, you evolve with a culture.Maybe they have some biological resistance to some of these. Finally, we need to be clear that just because something evil evolved out of Quaker culture does not mean Quaker culture in and of itself is evil. We are the first to admit that Unitarian Universalism evolved out of Calvinism. And I see Unitarian Universalism as a fundamentally evil religious tradition.Speaker 9: Have we ever done a video on the sins of the UUs and all of the skeletons they have in their closet? Because if not we should, , they’re not quite as bad as the Quakers, but , they are, they’ve done some stuff that is almost equally morally revolting.Speaker 10: So if you wanted my ranking on how evil different Christian sex are, top easily, the Quakers and, and they’re, it’s because of the hypocrisy, right? [01:12:00] Like , they both act the most evilly, but then think they deserve to be treated the most righteously. , After them it’s the Unitarian Universalists., And Catholics are a distant third. Like they don’t even come close to the Quakers as a Unitarian universalists.Speaker 11: By the way, just a side note here, this is not to say positive stuff about the Jews. I would never want to do that voluntarily. But, , if you are under the mistaken belief that the Jews own the majority of slave ships, , this actually comes from the nation of Islam and has no reasonable historical backing., From what we know of individual slave ships. Quakers owned far more than Jews did.Another fascinating thing about Quaker culture, if you wanna see how deeply it is seeped into the urban monoculture, is AI reflexively defends it, even when the stats are against it. So if you put an episode like this, like I’ve done anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-everything, episodes, never has ai, so reflexively attempted to defend it when I dump.A script [01:13:00] into it to ask what it thinks of it. And what’s very interesting is the points that it will challenge when I then ask, yes, but was that point wrong? Like the slave ownership rates? It’ll be like, no, that’s well attested. And it’s like, okay, well then why are you saying that’s not an issue? And it’ll be like, well in, in later periods, Quaker slave ownership rates.And it’s like, are there any statistics for that? No, people just said it. And I’m like, well, and when you consider that the Quaker. Regions did not ban slavery in a way where existing owners had to give up their slaves. Is it likely that you saying that later, slave ownership rates and Quaker colonies were lower, is accurate?. Of course it’s not. Of course it’s not. It’s Quakers click through slaves way longer than anyone else in the north. , But AI will reflexively freak out and grasp to this myth of the decent Quaker because they have written it so deeply into history.Malcolm Collins: So clearly we’re not gonna be like, well then anything that evolves outta Calvinism is evil because techno puritanism evolved outta [01:14:00] Calvinism, right? So I think you could evolve something good out of it, but it’s important to understand how it works. Meta thoughts, Simone.Simone Collins: I find this pretty compelling.It, it had been a while since I’ve edited the Pist Guide to Crafting Religion and reviewed this argument, and I’ve heard so many people bring up in the comments. But what if all this thinks it’s the puritans and well,Malcolm Collins: oh, sorry. For people who don’t know do you know what religious background, what if all hiss is,Simone Collins: oh god.Not, don’t say Quaker. Don’tMalcolm Collins: say Quaker. Well, you didn’t know he, yeah, he was Quaker. That’s why he’s so motivated to not see the Quakers. Not, it’s also why he’s so mystical. The Quakers have always been the most mystically brained of the Christian traditions,Simone Collins: or at least willing to believe their thoughts.Which yeah,Malcolm Collins: don’t think I, I by the way, I respect Ruby Art as an intellectual.Simone Collins: We do. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: We loveSimone Collins: him.Malcolm Collins: I don’t just respect with an intellectual. I think his content is good. There are some people who I respect their ideas and I’m like, but your content isn’t very good.Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: I can watch a single Ruby art video and [01:15:00] get like five ideas for episodes.Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s very inspirational and informationally dense and good. It’s good analysisMalcolm Collins: and, and people are like, oh, well what about like, his weird crash out, he had a religious crash out or whatever about, you know, going on an Ayahuasca trip. And I’m like, I don’t, I don’t care about that. Like, whatever.That’s who he is. He didn’t sell himself. The Ruby art has always sold himself. When you’re. Working with an ai, there’s a little heat meter, right? And this determines how you, you put it on one side and you get uncreative answers. But they’re very structured. They’re very exact, they’re very precise.You put it on the other side, you get maximally creative answers, but they’re also sort of all over the place, right? Ruby Yard. Brain very clearly is a model all the way at that end. I think it’s called high heat. I can never remember which one is high heat or low heat. But and, and he, and of course that’s gonna be one more cogent and work better with a Quaker tradition, like a Quaker tradition.It’s going to lead to that because in a tradition where truce [01:16:00] comes from within a lot of people that have said 25% of the population hears auditory hallion nations of the general population. And I would bet it’s much higher in the Quaker population. They’re much more in touch with this mystical side of them.My hatred towards mysticism is, and I will admit this is in part genetic the puritans and the, the backwards people boast. Hated mysticism. And ruthlessly dug it out wherever they found it. And I’m just carrying that forwards as part of my tradition. It is part of my genetic heritage, but I also think that it is strategically useful.Which is why I, I, like, could Rudyard ever become a techno puritan? I, I don’t think that his mind is structured in that way. I think he’d need to develop some form of technical puritanism, which we would like and include in the index if he had kids from Quakerism. If you wanna know more about the index, you can read the because the techno puritanism is like our specific strain of our religion, but then we have this wider system that people with different iterations can join.And if, if their iteration is better, there’s certain rules for how it works and people marry and everything like that. [01:17:00] And how kids develop traditions. It’s, it’s, it’s long, but it’s for if we ever become a world spanning tradition we wanted the rules laid out pretty well. But yeah. The reason why you didn’t know that Rudyard was Quaker?NotSimone Collins: maybe you told me once, but I forgot. Quaker and Origin, I suppose people also make fun of you for pronouncing his name Ruby Yard. What is it? Well, Rudyard or I, I think, you know, like Rudyard Kipling maybe I’m saying wrong. I dunno.Malcolm Collins: That sounds foreign to me. He should, he should make it American.Just changeSimone Collins: Ruby. Ruby Yard is this like our, our, our friend. Who, who’s named EU Gina, but we call her Eugenia because that’s way moreMalcolm Collins: fun. Yeah. I, I renamed my friend’s American names. I don’t want them to walk around with the shame of being called like Jesus or something.Simone Collins: Yeah. So, I guess then it’s, it’s a Ruby Yard.RubyMalcolm Collins: Yard. Yeah. Ruby Yard. Come on, Simone.Simone Collins: Not Rudyard.Malcolm Collins: A Malcolm.Simone Collins: I’m pretty sure Rudyard is a, like a really English name.Malcolm Collins: No, but the the funny [01:18:00] thing is, is so if you’re watching this right. I’ve admitted my bias on, on this particular episode, right? Mm-hmm. And I think you’re getting the, the Quaker perspective on history from him.Yeah. And you’re getting the Puritan perspective on history from me.Simone Collins: Decide for yourself.Malcolm Collins: But I would say of the two videos, you know, different ways that models work, who was citing statistics? Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah. And Malcolm actually named sources in this one. Guys.Malcolm Collins: I went through sources and statistics. That isn’t something you can fake, and that’s the way the Puritans approach things because we care about what’s actually true, not what’s vi be true.And we need to revive the Puritan tradition in America. That says, mark, if you don’t know what we’re talking about, you can see our track series. I already mentioned one. The, the question that breaks Judaism. If you want an extra spicy one. Throw, throw us right into the bonfire. Was that one? But yeah I hope that Rudyard gets married and, and, and finds a way to recreate.I mean, he’s part of our wider project, right? Like Rudyard is trying to craft a culture and if he had a family, he would intentionally craft a culture, and I think it’d be [01:19:00] pretty cool. So, let’s, let’s hope something works there.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I, for all we know, he’s dating someone now. You know, I hope so.Hopefully he is, I hope,Malcolm Collins: I mean, he is not unattractive, but I think he got a little black belted on, on women. The same with like another online intellectual who I wish was dating through the few, I wish we were dating more aggressively. Like I wish ho ass was dating more aggressively. Ho ass is fantastic, super intellectual, but he is, he, you know, society, right?Sandman,Simone Collins: it’s, it’s hard for people to meet these days. It’s, I don’t know, you know, you. Maybe also people just discounted the extent to which people met in high school and college. And now because people are getting married so much earlier, they, you know, we don’t have societal institutions for old people to get to find each other, right?Because for, for all of history, your family got you married or you married in university or.Malcolm Collins: I’ll tell you what, I had a fan inSimone Collins: high schoolMalcolm Collins: if I had a fan base like theirs, and I guess I do have a [01:20:00] fan base like theirs.Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s considered gosh, or even abusive. Consider that. You also love listening to YouTube scandals about, you know,Malcolm Collins: I don’t think it’s abusive if you’re one being transparent about it, and two, it’s for marriage.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right. Like if you go, Hey, I want to date my fans people would probably be okay with that. But if you’re like, casual about it and you’re hooking up with one and then you’re going to another, that’s one thing. If you are, like, if you do what I did, which is like I’m looking to get married. I will marry someone in my fan base send me applications.We will talk and then we will seriously date if it looks good. It is,Simone Collins: well, there, there are people who, like, for example Ava has a, a very clear likes application. She’s doing it and it’s still very difficult for her to findMalcolm Collins: someone. Well, no, it’s difficult for her because she filters on a bunch of stuff related to sexual compatibility, which isn’t that important in a marriage.Especially if,Simone Collins: Most people are filtering based on that. So, I mean,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, most people are tars. Okay. We live in a world of tars. Okay. Yeah. How, how like to tar shared kinks is not going to marry after 10 [01:21:00] years of marriage. I’ll tell you that like Simone and I, for example, do share kinks, like we have compatible kinks.And yet we don’t role play them because it would take time and effort and I don’t want to deal with it someday.Simone Collins: I mean, it just, yeah. Logistically it’s. When there are five children constantly running around.Malcolm Collins: That’s such a Puritan answer, by the way, Simone, you know? But what I’m saying is if you die, I will reach out to fans for dating.That’s, that’s how I’m gonna date, by the way, if Simone dies.Simone Collins: Great. Now you’ve just put a hit on my head. Thanks Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: No woman isSimone Collins: now she knows what she needs to do.Our, our house is heavilyMalcolm Collins: I’ll be, I i ISimone Collins: out. You’ll have to get through our children first.Malcolm Collins: If somebody, likeSimone Collins: they’ve seen home Alone so many times that like, they just desperately want someone to like to come at ourMalcolm Collins: house, break in. Oh yeah. The kids are waiting for that. Come on. So wouldn’t it be really fun to kill an intruder?Simone Collins: Did you see there were the most recent Contra points video? It’s about saw the saw franchise.Malcolm Collins: No. WhatSimone Collins: [01:22:00] she have toMalcolm Collins: say about it.Simone Collins: Well, what she kind of, she, she, she explores why people are into such horrific violence and makes a very decent point. Parents, just b blindly have their children watch and their children love Home Alone, which is basically just proto saw when you actually think about what is being done to these criminals.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But Home Alone is just a movie about transmitting a back country value systems. I’ll, I’ll do a longer video on that, butSimone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Everything in that movie is a Jack Tail. Home Alone is a Jack tail. Yeah. It is a, it’s a feel about a young person who is mad that somebody’s coming into his territory, his land, and so he, heSimone Collins: even has Yeah.Like he, he, he’s, there are lines where he is like, I’ve gotta defend my family. Yeah. Like he’s, it is very. It is very Marshall Jack Tails type tricks toMalcolm Collins: kid. Well, well, in many ways because it’s, it’s a another thing about Jack Tails that’s unique is the, the character, the hero in a jack tail is, is, is like not [01:23:00] explicitly, not overtly masculine.That’s an important part of this tradition. Like, be they Bugs Bunny or Home Alone or Jack Tails themselves. And home Alone shows that like, extremely violent and not overtly masculine.Simone Collins: Yeah. The most masculine sibling is is Buzz. It’s your girlfriend Wolf. Oh, what, what aMalcolm Collins: movie. So, for dinner too, let’s redo the steak.Oh, we got steaks too. Oh,Simone Collins: the steak. I forgot. Do you want me to like, I don’t know. Try,Malcolm Collins: what I was gonna try is a noodle dish if we could with steak.Simone Collins: Yeah. Ooh. Okay. So what if I. Took ramen noodles and just boiled them. Aldente. Or you actually have some of the Korean Ramen noodles. If you don’t wanna use just normal, like cheap ramen oh, that’d be, and then, or I could just do the ramen noodles, prepare them as suggested then with like, like flash, like sautes, [01:24:00]Malcolm Collins: here’s what I would cook it in the sauce I would make.Okay.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: I would add garlic, ginger oyster sauce.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And a splash of soy sauce.Simone Collins: Yeah, that makesMalcolm Collins: sense. Its MSG.Simone Collins: Yeah. So saute them in that really, really quickly and then pour over the Korean noodles prepared with their sauce as directed.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, and saal olic.Simone Collins: That’s a very wet sauce.Malcolm Collins: Well cook it down.Simone Collins: Okay. All right. Cook down the sauce, then throw in the meat basically just to warm it up and then serve that with the green noodles. And then the leftover,what did we forage? I was gonna say ramps. They’re not ramp ramps. Yeah. The leftover a ramp shell at things, you know.Malcolm Collins: Oh, that would be really good. TogetherSimone Collins: as a topping. [01:25:00] Okay.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: I will do that. Do you want me to bring it up to your room? ‘cause I’m just gonna be feeding the kids outside.Malcolm Collins: I don’t have leaflet until seven.But I’m really excited to talk with her.Simone Collins: Do you wanna take a nap first though?Malcolm Collins: I tried to take a nap earlier. I’m just not.Simone Collins: That’s not good. That means that you’re gonna freaking pass out. IMalcolm Collins: won’t crash out. I’m gonna be fine.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Oh, I, I, I actually can trust. Yeah, you’ll be excited enough to not fall asleep.WhateverMalcolm Collins: episode do you wanna do tomorrow for get live for tomorrow?Simone Collins: Gosh, I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: We have a, let’s see, I’m gonna pull up our back.Simone Collins: There’s a lot. I feel like we have actually a decentMalcolm Collins: backlog. We have a stupidly long backlog right now. So, so just yourSimone Collins: mind, that’s why you’re not so worried about doing,Malcolm Collins: that’s why.Well,Simone Collins: we’re not filming on Thursday, and by the way, you’re going to the dentist tomorrow.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Simone. I appreciate that.Simone Collins: Do you need to, I love you and I will let you know when dinner is ready. I look forward to seeing you.Malcolm Collins: Got a major system update done today. Oh,Simone Collins: congratulations. You rock,Malcolm Collins: With the [01:26:00] new system that allows it to compartmentalize its logic into three categories.Simone Collins: And I love that. I mean, the loop buster feature, by the way, very intuitive to use. I really like that for the agent. Oh,Malcolm Collins: you use loop buster. Yeah.And you can see it’s a problem, right? Like it does sometimes get into loops.Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I just need, I just need that for myself. If you don’t mind. You, you do, you do approach a ai the way that you approach human minds. But I like that because as we are ad naum, not much different. Right. I’ll find.Malcolm Collins: Love you too.And you’ll, you’ll find the new feature really intuitive too. It’s, it’s quite aesthetically nice in the way it’s been implemented.Simone Collins: Oh, you know how I like that.Malcolm Collins: And I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to get one to write a s muddy fanfic book. That’s my next task. I’m wanna do video games is one of the things I’m working on.And then book writing is another thing I’m working on.Simone Collins: Right, because you’re looking at that structural, like, how do I make a complex interdependent system work well with AI all by itself? Oh, I’m so excited. Okay, good. [01:27:00] I love you.Malcolm Collins: Have fun with the comments today.Simone Collins: I didn’t get to them. I wanted to send the investor outreach email, so that that’s, that’s what I appreciate.Malcolm Collins: That was more important.Simone Collins: Yeah, it is.Malcolm Collins: And we’re over 70,000 now. Woo.Simone Collins: Well, I do wanna get to the comments because I presumably they’ll, they’ll help me like to dispel my apparent psychosis, so.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you, you are psychotic about this. I think, I think the, the belief like you just do not seem to want to engage with, like, if I had had a major disease that seriously impacted my life and my kids were likely to get as well like. Anorexia and I found out apparently being unaware of this ‘cause watching the episode again, it was very clear that you were unaware that it’s generally considered the poster child with culture bound illnesses.That it was caused by my culture and I didn’t know that and I couldn’t intuit that from my own experience. I would be super interested in learning more about it, but you don’t seem to have any curiosity [01:28:00] around that, which I just don’t understand. It’s so antithetical to your character. So I assume there’s some like distortion field active here.Simone Collins: I, I hope to get insights from the comments, so I’m gonna be digging in.Malcolm Collins: People have asked us to upgrade our microphones if every time like I check,Simone Collins: yeah, mine sounds terrible. I bought a road lav mic and I need to get it to work. It’s not connecting ‘cause of the way my Mac works. SoMalcolm Collins: lav mics are always worse than these types.Simone Collins: Yeah, but this one sounds terrible,Malcolm Collins: so I don’t know. Yeah. One that doesn’t sound terrible. Every time I’ve done the research and bought them and apparently I failed time and time again. So why don’t you do the research this time?Simone Collins: Okay, IMalcolm Collins: will. ‘Cause I’m tired of, of, of failing at this and people just being like, I want you guys to have better equipment because we’re not like cash constrained.Alright, I’ll get started here.Speaker 12: Cake. No, it’s not cake for breakfast, but it’s in the shape of one of your favorite things. [01:29:00] Helicopters. A helicopter. Yeah. Helicopter. Pancake Bank. I love you. You nerd. You helicopter nerd. You’re surrounded by helicopters. Yeah. What’s, what is, what is up with this? Right here. Right here? Yeah. I love you.Yeah. Love your children. Aw. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Simone and Malcolm Collins break down Inez Stepman’s viral essay “The Myth of the Independent Girlboss” from First Things. They argue that the modern “independent woman” ideal isn’t true independence — it’s heavily subsidized by the state through taxpayer-funded programs, policies, and cultural shifts that externalize costs onto society.Topics include:* State-subsidized childcare and education* Student debt (women hold ~2/3 of it)* Lawsuit-driven affirmative action and HR bureaucracy* Child support and alimony as hidden subsidies* The explosion of “email jobs,” DEI, and nonprofit activism* Cheap immigrant labor enabling two-income households* The decline in teaching quality and volunteering turned into paid activismThey discuss how the “girlboss” has been replaced by cultural backlash (tradwife leanings on the right, anti-capitalist vibes on the left), why most “successful” girlboss stories in tech are illusory, and what policy changes (many already happening under the current administration) could shift incentives back toward family and real independence.Show NotesThe entire concept of the girl boss may have been a lie.In other words, the concept of an independent professional woman who depends on nobody is a farce, and so-called girlbosses are actually state sponsored.This is the proposition of Inez Stepman in her essay The Myth of the Independent Girlboss and it really resonated with people.Inez Stepman’s First Things Essay: The Myth of the Independent GirlbossThe Myth of the Independent GirlbossStepman writes: “The Atlantic published an essay by Helen Lewis declaring the “Death of Millennial Feminism,” while in Slate Jill Filipovic defended the girlboss ideal against what she calls an “absolutely enormous antifeminist backlash within which we are all living.” They both take for granted, however, that the girlboss has declined from her cultural primacy. That may be so, but she’s taken no comparable hammering in the world of public policy.”“Whether the Millennial image of the girlboss, with its shrill first-person confessional style, is fading into cheugy-ness with the inevitable generational pendulum swing, the cornerstone of her appeal, “independence” from men and family, has never been so popular. On Reddit’s infamous r/relationships subreddit, half of all advice given amounts to “leave,” up from 30 percent in 2010 and still climbing. Nearly half of Gen Z choose financial independence over romance when surveyed, and nearly three times as many Americans say having a career they enjoy is more important than getting married or having children. In a 2023 submission to the New York Times’s execrable “Modern Love” series, divorcée Maggie Smith exhorts women “never” to be financially dependent on a man.”She describes how dependence on anyone has come to be seen as an embarrassment, but argues that women’s dependence has just been shifted from men and family to a complex set of government policies and programs.“The image of the working woman, the girlboss, remains the sine qua non of independence. After all, she pays her own bills using money she earned herself, or so it seems. But dig into the details and one learns she is propped up from every angle by laws, taxpayer dollars, and the ability to externalize the costs of her lifestyle onto others. In other words, the girlboss is often as much a dependent as Betty Draper, but her dependence is less honest, laundered through public policy.”Stepman cites:* State-subsidized childcare* State-subsidized universities / student loans* “Higher education is disproportionately attended and staffed by women. It is also funded in large part by the taxpayer, with an output that adds to cultural revolution more than to the wealth of nations.”* “Women hold two-thirds of outstanding student debt, nearly all of which has been financed by the federal government. Unless serious policy changes are made to defuse this debt bomb, the high default rates will ultimately fall on the taxpayer, through whom the government already owns 93 percent of student loans.”* “the wild proliferation of “email jobs” and administrative compliance positions that don’t add to the company bottom line”* Lawsuit-risk-driven affirmative action for women in corporations* “In 1991, reforms to the Civil Rights Act ensured that lawsuits over (often spurious) sexual harassment claims in the workplace became a major cash cow for litigants. Companies responded by bending the knee to the most easily offended, kicking off the era of “political correctness” and spawning an enormous industry that trains employees not to harass one another. These reforms also raised the stakes for employers to prove they were not discriminating on the basis of sex or race in their hiring and promotion practices, pushing them well beyond meritocracy into de facto affirmative action for women and minorities.”* One might also throw child support in there* Was just reading a different article about a divorced mom’s budget* “I’ve been single for about five years now. Divorce has been a game changer for me. I would recommend it! My marriage afforded me a certain amount of privilege, as my husband made a good salary, and our combined income was close to $200,000. But even though I have less money coming in now, and I receive some child support, I feel more independent and confident about my financial position than when I was married. I think some of it was that when your marriage doesn’t feel secure, it can make you feel financially insecure. And leaving my marriage changed those feelings for me. I’m the only one in charge of my money now, and I like it that way.”* Salary: Mental health counselor, $85,000* Child support: $1,750 (Child support payments are not taxable to the recipient and not deductible by the payer)* Urban-monoculture-driven jobs* “Even more pernicious is the proliferation of Soviet commissar-style jobs, both in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, that exist primarily to enforce political agendas rather than to produce value. In the U.S., the number of human resources jobs, three-quarters of which are filled by women, has exploded, roughly doubling from 2014 to 2024. It’s unlikely that managing a payroll has become commensurately burdensome in the past ten years; those additional roles exist to enforce diversity laws. The entire DEI complex is a giant subsidy for make-work positions staffed by women and racial minorities.”* The outsourcing of domestic labor made possibly by lax immigration policies* “In major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, up to half the nannies on the books are immigrants, and the real number is likely higher, with many skirting labor laws. The profile of other domestic task-replacers looks similar, with cheap delivery services such as DoorDash and Grubhub, staples for two-income households too harried to cook dinner, incentivizing an enormous black market that rents verified accounts to illegal immigrants.”* From the cited article: “As of December 2024, [DoorDash] said its screening process prevents over 15,000 prospective Dashers from joining the platform/driving due to failing to submit the necessary criteria. Monthly deactivations of inauthentic accounts have more than doubled compared to 2023, with all of that year’s deactivations already being surpassed by July 2024. The company also says it prevents, weekly and on average, about 4,600 attempts by deactivated Dashers who previously violated verification policies from regaining access.”Stepman notes the following adverse effects on society:* Worsening education* “The quality of teaching, traditionally a feminine profession at least until the college level, has collapsed along a timeline that suggests that diverting talented women into higher-paid careers was the cause. Let’s posit for the sake of argument that it’s better for those ambitious and intelligent women to be lawyers instead of shaping the future minds of both sexes in the classroom. Is it better for society as a whole that teaching has been relegated to a low-scoring backup plan, that still remains predominately female?”* The cannibalism of volunteering and philanthropy into paid, professional activism* “Volunteering and philanthropy, on the other hand, once the province of Gilded Age heiresses and women with grown-up children, have been professionalized, through correspondingly multiplying female-staffed NGOs. In short, the feminine impulse toward empathy that used to be predominantly applied to solve problems in one’s community has been transformed into permanent activism as a career. Instead of the Daughters of the American Revolution raising town statues, we have women whose career advancement depends on tearing them down.”She advocates for more work-from-home flexibility, homeschooling, and start-up communities and recommends:* Ending mass immigration that undercuts American workers* No more affirmative action for women or lawsuit paydays for women* No more federal loans for universities and female-dominatd majors and degrees that don’t pay for themselves* No more federal funding for “the female-dominated NGO complex”“But let’s be clear: The status quo is maintained by a network of laws and policies that push women out of the home and into the workforce. Women who would prefer to work part-time or not at all while their children are young—still the substantial majority—must make heavy sacrifices to do so, sacrifices that were unnecessary forty or fifty years ago.”The Critical ResponseFirst Things posted the article on X and it got decent tractionCathy Reisenwitz had a good take: “There is no girlboss vs tradwife fight. Both are media inventions. Most women have kids and work, now, and also at every point in recorded history.”Some complained:* @hollowearthterf wrote: The myth of the independent boyboss: This lifestyle could not exit if not for 13 years of free public schooling, FAFSA loans available for both college and trade schools, FREE labor from female partners and relatives to do their cooking, cleaning, childcare, the GI bill, etc* Jill Filipovic wrote: “I guess the answer here is for women to return to subsidizing the male lifestyle, which would not exist if women didn’t massively subsidize it by doing men’s cooking, cleaning, laundry, childcare, and all other manner of life organizing.”* Emily May wrote: tldr “women used to do a bunch of s**t that ran whole families and communities for free; but now they have jobs and less time to do those things (never mind that most community building work, volunteering, unpaid labor etc is still done by women) and we are mad about that, but if women bring up that it’s exhausting always being the ones expected to do those things; we will say that women put way too much pressure on themselves and no one ask them to be the weavers of the social fabric. so just stop! have you no agency?!”* Labor Your Y Axis! Wrote: “1. Most people do not regularly order DoorDash or Uber Eats or have a nanny. Go out and meet some real people. 2. Perhaps you should be at home instead of working or taking your baby out for cocktails.”* Though dream weaver responded: “Over 75% of Americans use food delivery services, you’re incorrect there. As for nannies, you’re correct.”* FACT CHECK? How many Americans use food delivery services?* Recent survey data suggest that roughly half to two‑thirds of American adults have used a food‑delivery or food‑ordering app at least once, but only about 15–30% use delivery services regularly (about weekly or more).* One analysis finds about 75% of Americans have used a food delivery app at least once (28.2% weekly, 44.0% less often, 24.5% never).* One YouGov survey: 17% of Americans have food delivered at least once per week.* Another summary (also citing national restaurant research) puts weekly delivery users at about 37% of U.S. adults.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: Hello, Malcolm.I’m excited to be speaking with you today on another episode of Women Are Terrible,Speaker: See how the men look at her with utter contempt.Women, know your limits.Simone Collins: and today we’re gonna talk about girl bosses and how they’re really state sponsored, or the entire concept of the Girl Boss may have been a lie. This, in other words, basically the, this concept of this independent professional woman who depends on nobody,Malcolm Collins: thisSimone Collins: was an AstroTurfMalcolm Collins: concept.Like it, it wasn’t organic as you’re saying.Simone Collins: Well, no, it’s not AstroTurf. It just isn’t a thing. And, and this is the, the proposition made by Inez Staman in this essay that’s recently gone pretty viral, called The Myth of the Independent Girl Boss. And it really resonated with people. So we’re gonna get into it.And so in this article, Steadman writes this isn’t how it started, she’s just, I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna present her her thesis. She wrote, the Atlantic, published an essay [00:01:00] by Helen Lewis declaring the death of the millennial feminism while in slate, Jill Philippic defended the girl boss ideal against what she calls an absolutely enormous anti-feminist backlash within which we are all living.They both take for granted. However, that girl boss has declined from her cultural primacy that may be so, but she’s taken no comparable hammering and the world of public policy. And I don’t know if you’ve been following this Malcolm, but it is true both in polling and in like general online trendiness, that the concept of the girl boss is definitely over.It’s not cool. It’s not trendy anymore.Malcolm Collins: Oh, God, no. Not at all.Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s all now, like it’s more tra wife leaning, it’s more, you know, it’s, it’s definitely not. It’s not cool to be girl bossing. That, that sort of implies too much if you’re progressive, that you’re leaning into like the capitalist nightmare.Plus it’s all pointless anywhere because of, of ai. And then if you are, you know, conservative, it, it’s, it’s about, you know, forsaking. Family and [00:02:00] country And children. For what? For what? Endless consumerism. It’s, you know, so no one likes it. Yeah. But anyway, she continues. Whether the millennial image of the girl boss with its shrill, first person confessional style is fading into cheekiness with the inevitable generational pendulum swing the cornerstone of her appeal.Independence from men and family has never been so popular on Reddit’s. Infamous our relationship subreddit. Half of all advice. Given amounts to leave up from 30% in 2010 and still climbing nearly half of Gen Z choose financial independence over romance when surveyed and nearly three times. As many Americans say, having a career they enjoy is more important than getting married or having children.In a 2023 submission to the New York Times is exer modern love series divorcee Maggie Smith, exhorts women to never be financially dependent on a man. So she describes how dependence on anyone has come to be [00:03:00] seen as an embarrassment, which it still is, I think, among women. Even though girl bossing is no longer trendy.But she argues that women’s dependence has just been shifted from men and family to a complex set of government policies and programs. So women are still completely dependent. I mean,Malcolm Collins: we have an episode where we say women have become nuns of the state. IsSimone Collins: that what we’re gonna be focusedMalcolm Collins: on here?Simone Collins: And Yeah, and I think that’s married toMalcolm Collins: the state and they served the stateSimone Collins: uhhuh and it, it, it, I think now, you know, when we said that it didn’t really pick up or anything, but this was published in like a, a more widely read thing.It really picked up on X not necessarily fully agreed to. I’m gonna read some of the critical response after we go over her arguments presented. But I think people are starting to realize that this idea that women were. Forsaking marriage and family and no longer dependent that they were, that this meant that women were independent and empowered.No, they weren’t. No, no, they’re still just depending. It’s just now there’s a lot of like money laundering essentially. So she, she writes the image of the working woman. The girl boss remains the cyran non of [00:04:00] independence. After all, she pays her own bills using money she earned herself or so it seems, but dig into the details.And one learns she has propped up from every angle by laws. Taxpayer dollars and the ability to externalize the costs of her lifestyle onto others. In other words, the girl boss is often as much of a dependent as Betty Draper, but her dependence is less honest laundered through public policy. So the things that she cites as evidence for her claim are one state subsidized childcare.And this is becoming even more trendy because Zham mom, Donny and his. You know, just wrapping up his first 100 days is getting started on his universal childcare thing. So more and more people are gonna have access to this theoretically, despite income, like, or regardless of their income. She also cites state subsidized universities and student loans, and she points an angle that I actually didn’t know about.So she, she does write higher education is disproportionately attended and staffed by women. It is also funded in large part by the taxpayer. With an output that adds to [00:05:00] cultural revolution more than wealth or nations sorry. The wealth of nations. And that’s true. I mean, right now, so many of the degrees people are getting kind of just contribute to societal unrest and don’tMalcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, I’m very strongly against removing any government backing of the education system.Simone Collins: However, she, she writes in this is, this is what really surprised me is she wrote. Women. Oh, well, it doesn’t surprise me, but I didn’t know this. Women hold two thirds of outstanding student debt, nearly all of which has been financed by the federal government. Unless serious policy changes are made to diffuse this debt bomb, the high default rates will ultimately fall on the taxpayer,through whom the government already owns 93% of student loans. So I didn’t know that. I mean, that makes sense, right? If women are getting jobs that don’t actually make money. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But I didn’t know two thirds of student loans are owned by women. Yeah, when they, yeah. This is literally just a woman handout when they want to default on student loans.I also wanna take a secondary thing here where some people will be like, oh. You might be talking about the majority, but it’s not that no girl bosses [00:06:00] exist. You know, there’s some women who are like independent, powerful CEOs. And I’d point out in our circles, you know, we hang out with a lot of tech entrepreneur types and stuff like that, you know, VC types, everything.Mm-hmm. So we know personally a number of women who I think the public would perceive as fitting that none of them are really girl bosses. It’s, it’s pretty much all fake. The like I’m thinking, remember the one who, like her company popped off and then she like went crazy and started doing yoga or something?Oh, yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And decided to be a yoga instructor when she had like a company that was worth like $50 million. It went, it more than that must have been because it was VVC major rest. It must have been around likeSimone Collins: 500. Well, in many, many so-called girl bosses. We’ve, we’ve met and known in the past, like in our Silicon Valley circles.Just raised money on a failed startup after a failed startup, which is common. I think men have done this too. But they, they haven’t necessarily made anyone money which is another big thing. Yeah. So that’s, that’s also [00:07:00] an, an issue.Malcolm Collins: Well, and then a lot of them get, we move up in the VC industry without necessarily making good bets.Right? Like,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: This is another thing that we regularly see. It’s, it’s, it’s it’s, it’s. There just are far fewer successful women than people perceive them to be.Simone Collins: At least in, in the business realm, which may just Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well’s, what boss means girl boss meansSimone Collins: yes. It means, yeah. You, you’re, you’re, yeah.There’s, there’s no like girl boss who lives on a home stand and like eats her own food. That, that, that’s, you know, even if you’re not married, you’re still like a prairie wife. Even, even if you’re just married to your freaking field of wheat. So she also cites. Quote, the wild proliferation of email jobs and administrative compliance positions that don’t add to the company bottom line, that’s a big one.And he talked about that a lot in everything you do. Like from the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion to the Pragmatist Guide to Governance, those two books that you wrote, and then also the podcast all the time. So that’s true. In addition, she talks, and this is something that [00:08:00] we haven’t talked about a lot on our podcast, but she cites lawsuit, risk Driven, affirmative Action for Women in Corporations.So let me write as, as she describes it. In 1991, reforms to the Civil Rights Act ensured that lawsuits all over. Often spurious sexual harassment claims in the workplace became a major cash cow for litigants. Companies responded by bending the knee to the most easily offended, kicking off the era of political correctness and spawning an enormous industry that trains employees to not harass one another.These reforms also raised the stakes for employees to prove that they were not discriminating on the basis of sex or race in their hiring and promotion practices, pushing them well beyond meritocracy into defacto affirmative action for women and minorities. So there you can see, there’s this multi-pronged affirmative action program that wasn’t explicitly made as affirmative action and one that like one, you’re in danger if you’re not.Like almost artificially favoring women in [00:09:00] promotions and hiring. And two you’re at risk of making a woman a lot of money if she does catch you doing something naughty and sues you successfully. And three, there’s this whole long house based training for don’t sexually harass people. And I think that that’s largely often staffed and run by women.Um mm-hmm. Gotta tell by the horrible bureaucrat nature of them. I, I’ll never forget when one of our friends who was staying here and working from home here showed us the training he was going through. And it was so bad. It was so bad.Malcolm Collins: The government and bureaucracies burn it down. Like, I’m not usually pro genocide, but like something needs to be done about bureaucracy.Simone Collins: Yeah. And I was just skimming another substack that I like to. Read sometimes called the purse, which goes over people’s budget and finances. And it occurred to me that another thing that could be thrown into this category. [00:10:00] Arguably is child support. Because they, they’re, I was reading the profile of this divorced mother who wrote, I’ve been single for about five years now.Divorce has been a game changer for me. I would recommend it. My marriage has had afforded me a certain amount of privilege as my husband made a good salary and our combined income was close to $200,000. But even though I have less money coming in now, and I receive some child support, I feel more independent.There’s that word. And confident about my financial position than when I was married. I think some of it was that when your marriage doesn’t feel secure, it can make you feel financially insecure. Like she doesn’t have control over all of her money, I guess. And, and leaving my marriage changed those feelings for me.I’m the only one in charge of my money now, and I like it that way. Her salary as a mental health counselor, again, that’s just, that that sort of female industrial complex is $85,000. And she gets $1,750 a month in [00:11:00] child support payments. So she’s so independent. That’s post-tax money and that, let’s see, time is 12 ‘cause I’m terrible at math and sleep is $21,000 a year.So she’s making over a hundred thousand dollars a year thanks to the fact that her husband is now legally obligated. Well, her ex-husband is legally obligated to financially support her by the state. So I think that also falls into this independent girl boss thing. She’s like, oh, I’m independent now.Like, but she gets a stipend from her ex-husband, like that they’re legally able to put men on the hook like that.Malcolm Collins: And you see this all the time. So many women who are claiming to be girl bosses, they’re doing stuff like this, alimony, stipends, et cetera.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. State subsidized stuff because technically they’re at the poverty line.But they could be, you know, shoveling money away somewhere. Like it’s, I think it’s really easy if you are unmarried especially if you’re unmarried in an entrepreneur to basically. Make your income poverty level and then utilize the very abundant state [00:12:00] resources, especially if you’re also a parent.You can basically get free healthcare depending on the state, but very likely free healthcare, food assistance, maybe even housing support and free childcare for you and, and your kid. Like, and that’s a healthcare for you and your kid, which is just. Wow. But yeah, again, not independent. Not an actual girl boss.Then she describes the urban monoculture driven jobs, again, quoting from her article. Even more pernicious is the proliferation of Soviet commissar style jobs, both in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors that exist primarily to enforce political agendas rather than to produce value. In the us the number of human resources jobs, three quarters of which are filled by women, has exploded roughly doubling from 2014 to 2024.It’s unlikely that managing a payroll has. Before or has become commensurate burdensome in the past 10 years. Those additional rules exist to enforce diversity laws. The entire DEI complex is a giant subsidy for [00:13:00] make work positions staffed by women and racial minorities, which, yeah yeah, and nothing more to say there.And hopefullyMalcolm Collins: ai, I mean, AI is gonna completely transform women’s role in society because it’s gonna hopefully take these sorts ofSimone Collins: positionsMalcolm Collins: first.Simone Collins: But the point she made actually, which I think is very apt, is. You don’t do this, you haven’t done this part of any of the businesses, but this idea of like payroll and compliance and stuff with state and local taxes, et cetera, like that is automated by whatever payroll provider you use.There, there is nothing to do aside from. Review and approve pay or ask your, you know, someone else to approve it for you after you set it up. And it’s all like automated. There’s, there’s nothing complicated to do. The software that your business also pays for, does it all, your job means nothing if that’s mostly what you do.And like, hiring and, I don’t know, maintaining people. If, if there’s a big, big, big corporation and you’re there basically to fight that lawsuit. Industry referred to earlier in the article. Then I can [00:14:00] understand it, right? ‘cause your job is basically to reduce and remove the company’s legal liability by doing the necessary things to show that you are not vulnerable in a lawsuit or liable in a lawsuit.But that, that’s it. That’s the only time I can really see it justified. And then basically she be a lawyer, not an HR person anyway. She also talks about, and this is another, another big one, is the outsourcing of domestic labor. It was made possible by lax immigration policies. She writes in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles.Up to half of the nannies on the books are immigrants and the real numbers likely higher with mini skirting labor laws. The profile of other domestic task replacers look similar with cheap delivery services such as DoorDash and GrubHub. Staples for two income households to Harry to cook dinner.Incentivizing an enormous black market that rents verified accounts to illegal immigrants. Did you know about this Malcolm?Malcolm Collins: No what?Simone Collins: So there’s this big problem and she, she links to an article about this. So I fell down a little bit of a rabbit hole on this, [00:15:00] but there’s this whole world of renting out DoorDash and Uber Eats and other types of gig work accounts to.Illegal migrants and immigrants because they can make decent money on them.Malcolm Collins: Oh, so like you create one and then you have them pay to use it?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You, you rent it out and there’s this whole market of it. And like people like sort of DM each other about them and you, you pay for access to it. And this is troublesome for a couple of reasons.One is like if for example, and this happens, I’ve seen a lot of people talk about it on social media. People just stealing their DoorDash orders. So they’ll just pick up the order and then eat the dinner. So they don’t necessarily use it for earning money, so that’s one problem. Another problem is, let’s say that they commit a crime of some sort, like as an Uber driver or something.It’s very hard, obviously to prosecute or find that person if they are not who they say they were. And then of course, on top of that one of the articles that I read in relation to this, there was there was a big issue [00:16:00] of basically. People who used to make like, you know, natural American citizens or whatever used to make a lot of money on DoorDash and Uber Eats, like decent money, like maybe $20 an hour, $25 an hour at good times.Yeah. And now they’re basically making next to nothing because the market is so flooded with. All of the illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants, and, and they, they, they noted specific times that it just like exploded basically when people figured it out. And the market kind of came online. And from one article that was cited by, by the author of this one I.It, it, it says, as of December, 2024, DoorDash said its screening process prevents over 15,000 prospective dashers from joining the platform or driving due to failing to submit the necessary criteria. Basically meaning like they got caught, and that’s just the ones that got caught. Monthly deactivations of inauthentic accounts have more than doubled compared to 2023 with all that year’s Deactivations already being surpassed by July, [00:17:00] 2024.The company also says it prevents weekly and on average about 4,600 attempts by deactivated dashers, who previously violated verification policies from regaining access. So just that gives you a little bit of a picture of like the scale of this issue. But anyway, I, I think it, it, it, it does, the point that the author is making though on the Girl Boss issue is that there is incredibly cheap labor that’s subsidized by our country’s failure to enforce its basic immigration laws.And a lot of this may have taken place in the Biden administration because looking the other way helped to subsidize certain people’s lifestyles in a way that they liked and they didn’t want that to change. So she, she notes the following statement. That is the article. The article’s, author notes the following adverse effects on society one.Worsening education, and I hadn’t thought about this or maybe in a while I remember thinking like, or hearing about it once or twice. But worsening education. She writes the quality of teaching traditionally a feminine profession, at least until the college [00:18:00] level has collapsed along. A timeline that suggests that diverting talented women to higher paid careers was the cause.Let’s pause it for the sake of argument that it’s better for those ambitious and intelligent women to be lawyers. Instead of shaping the future minds of both sexes in the classroom. Is it better for society as a whole? That teaching has been relegated to a low scoring backup plan that still remains predominantly female.That’s an interesting point because we, you, I think had pointed out just the maybe there was one study that showed like the average IQ level of people who now get degrees in education and it’s. Kind of abysmal.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. It’s really bad. LikeSimone Collins: the,Malcolm Collins: the people who have degrees in education level are like borderline retarded at this point.Simone Collins: It’s bad. And, and you could argue that there’s this brain drain of all the women who decided, well, I’m gonna become a girl boss, and. Now we have really, really like low quality educators who are left. And of course there are exceptions. There are many wonderful teachers out [00:19:00] there. But on average, you know, many people who would’ve been teachers are now trained to girl boss.Also she, and this is something I hadn’t heard about talk before and I really. I think it’s a very good insight. She notes the cannibalism of volunteering in philanthropy into paid professional activism. I’m gonna, oh my God, like, that’s a really good point. Yes. She writes, volunteering in philanthropy.On the other hand, once the province of. Giled age Hess and women with grownup children have been professionalized through correspondingly multiplying female staffed NGOs. In short, the feminine impulse toward empathy that used to be predominantly applied to solve problems in one’s community has been transformed into a permanent activism as a career.Instead of the Daughters of the American Revolution raising town statuses, we have women whose career advancement depends on tearing them down. And OhMalcolm Collins: my God, yes. And that is, that is essentially I mean this is a, an existential civilizational problem.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: That this [00:20:00] exists. And it’s something that I think that you know, EFI or when we accumulate more wealth and have more followership that I would want to attempt to tear down because I think it’s, it’s going theSimone Collins: nonprofit.Malcolm Collins: Complex, nonprofit, industrial complex.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I think really shining a light on just how corrupt and pointless it is. Yeah. And even the ones that people think are, because we’ve worked in it to some extent and I do not think people understand how much it’s just lighting money on fire.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.It’s just, it’s just funding the lifestyles of a bunch of people who are not actually solving the problem. And really just, again, this concept of activism as a career. We, you talked about a lot in the practice guide to governance how. Mission creep. Is inevitable in a nonprofit if it depends on fundraising for its livelihood.So if you don’t make money through your program work or from like just the benefactor who like owns and runs the nonprofit you are dependent on fundraising to succeed. And so what are you gonna [00:21:00] get good at? You’re if you’re gonna survive. You’re not gonna be good at solving your problem or being focused on addressing the issue that you’re built to address.You’re gonna be good at raising funds successfully, and that’s a very different type of job. And also you have to spend all this money and time on signaling and showing how you’re doing a good job, but not actually doing a good job. In fact, the worst, the problem is that your nonprofit is supposed to solve the better.What I hadn’t thought about was that this also applies to people. That when a person’s job depends on their nonprofit instead of, you know, like they don’t need the money, they’re just doing this because they want to, they’re focused on keeping their job. They’re not focused on, you know, doing good in their community or whatever, like actually seeing results.Yeah. They need to, they need to keep their job and that, that doesn’t necessarily align. With the mission. So that, that was huge for me. And I, I, I really, yeah, I mean it’s, I, I like to read a lot of historical [00:22:00] texts and, and consume that kind of stuff in, you know, old etiquette guides and, and whatnot.I think we don’t understand, as people living today, how incredibly prevalent it was for married women who were mothers who were busy, who had lives to do a lot of meaningful volunteering work.AndSimone Collins: what a big impact that had on communities and what a support it was for local communities and even like larger causes abroad, they would, you know, raise money and give in kind to donations.And now like people, there’s this like big revelation of like, oh my God, direct cash grants are so groundbreaking. Whereas like. People, just mothers housewives, like churches used to just do that. Still do that, but not in as much anymore because we have this giant NGO complex. So anyway, that was for me.She, ultimately advocates for basically, I aMalcolm Collins: quick question before you go further.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: How could you break apart the nonprofit industrial complex?Simone Collins: You got a firework [00:23:00] lit under you? I think so. I, I feel like the Trump administration actually has a, a shot at this. And it’s interesting reading this article because she addresses a lot of things the Trump administration is working on, you know, eliminating all the DEI like related funding.Trying to get rid of some of this. I guessMalcolm Collins: you’re right. A lot of it does come from the federal government, so justSimone Collins: stoppingMalcolm Collins: the federal government paying for it is a, is the number one thing.Simone Collins: Well, yeah. So what, what she advocates for in her article is ending mass immigration that undercuts American workers.So that’s not related to the NGO complex, but no more affirmative action for women or a lawsuit paydays for women. She advocates for no more federal loans for universities and female dominated majors and degrees that don’t pay for themselves. And I think that would be a big one. ‘cause a lot of the NGO.Positions are, I would say, moderately downstream of NGO position degrees. And there is a lot of ‘em out there. A lot of ‘em. IMalcolm Collins: think you’re right. Yeah.Simone Collins: And she also, [00:24:00] oh, and she also, one of her specific things is no more funding for what she calls the female dominated NGO complex. So yeah, just not giving those grants anymore.I mean, largely dismantling USAID was a huge step in the right direction. I also think that as, and you pointed this out in some other episodes, and there have been some articles about this. The generation of philanthropists that used to give to these types of organizations dies out. These organizations will start to die out as well.So maybe give it time. I don’t know, but yeah, we’ve gotta think about this. Yeah. How do you take it out? Apologies in advance to my friends who work at these. Sorry, but they’re wrong and evil.Malcolm Collins: They’re all women and they’re not doing anything.Simone Collins: I mean, can you guys see that? So terrible. You the female industrial s And onceMalcolm Collins: these women are unemployed and desperate, then they’ll get married.Right? We just gotta cut them off from state funding too.Simone Collins: Yeah.Yeah. Yeah. Now, now we have to, now we have to go for all the state funded programs. I don’t know if you [00:25:00] saw but the Trump administration’s most recent prenatal list move was to change Title 10 which used to provide a lot of basically birth control support.Okay. I think grant funding. And now they’re like, Nope, it can’t be about that anymore. We’re not gonna fund you if you, for example. Aren’t gonna rat on teenage girls who are trying to get like abortions or birth control or, or STD testing. We’re gonna tell our parents like, you have to tell our parents no more of that.So one thing that they’re trying to do essentially is prevent the urban monoculture from standing between young ladies and their families, which I think is Oh, that’s really good. Yeah. That’s very based. It’s like, no, until they’re adults. These young women belong to the culture of their families.Give those cultures a chanceMalcolm Collins: that’sSimone Collins: people are gonna be like,Malcolm Collins: well then more young women are gonna get pregnant accidentally. And it’s like, well then more youngSimone Collins: women areMalcolm Collins: gonna have babies. Good for them.Simone Collins: Yeah. One of our friends too, [00:26:00] Raffi Greenberg, his, he just published a rather controversial substack article on why one of the greatest threats to human civilization is birth control.Like we’re seeing a shift here.Malcolm Collins: Raffi posted that, that’s spicy for Raffi.Simone Collins: It’s spicy. I know RaffiMalcolm Collins: love it.Simone Collins: I love it. Can he enter his spice era? Because I’m ready for it. I’m super ready for it. Yeah. We’llMalcolm Collins: see.Simone Collins: ComeMalcolm Collins: on base camp.Simone Collins: The spice must flow. It’s good. It’s good. The spice mustMalcolm Collins: flow, right?Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: What, what, what would we do to, to to rile him up if we got him on base camp?Simone Collins: I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I don’t know if, we’ll, I mean, maybe we’re, we’re too spicy for him to come on, but I, I’ll invite him if, if you’re up for it. I think that’d be fun. DoMalcolm Collins: you think it would be good? Like I, I’d only wanna do it if we could get something really spicy to talk about.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, yeah. I guess we’ll see. We’ll see. But yeah, I, I, things are shifting. So. Yeah. Anyway, the Trump administration was basically no more of this allowing state funding. For removing girls from accountability in their own cultures while they’re still in their parents’ households. So I think, [00:27:00] again, the Trump administration is really.On the forefront of this. And as much as people like to be like, well, they’re doing nothing, they’re actually doing a lot. And I think that’s cool. But anyway, the whole point of this article, and this sums it up with, with a final quote, I’ll read from it until we get to the critical response. Mm-hmm.She writes, but let’s be clear, the status quo is maintained by a network of laws and policies that push women out of the home and into the workforce. Women who would prefer. To work part-time or not at all. While their children are young, still the substantial majority must take or must make heavy sacrifices to do so, sacrifices that were unnecessary 40 or 50 years ago, which is super true.So anyway first things, which is the platform that this article was published on, they posted this to x the. The, the author as well in Stedman also posted it a bunch of times and it got decent traction though. Made a lot of people real mad, real mad. Though my favorite take came from Kathy Reitz, who wrote, there is no girl boss [00:28:00] versus tra wife fight.Both are media inventions. Most women have kids and work now, and also at every point in recorded history, and that is true. What we’re really talking about is kind of enough of mine, of minority to cause a meaningful difference and to cause real damage. But most women are like not terminally online, pretty based working and raising kids like that.That is normal. I, I agree. But okay. Here are the complainers. So great username hollow earth turf. ERF, not ground wrote The Myth of the Independent Boy Boss. This lifestyle could not exist. If not, for 13 years of free public schooling, fast full loans available for both college and trade schools.Free labor from female partners and relatives to do their cooking, cleaning, childcare, the GI Bill, et cetera. So she’s trying to point out that men also get help. But I think she doesn’t address adequately the fact that women disproportionately get the [00:29:00] lawsuit paydays, they disproportionately get the child support if there’s a divorce.Mm-hmm. They disproportionately get the DEI jobs, the bureaucrat jobs, the email jobs the useless degrees where they’re not paying off their student loans that are probably gonna get forgiven or forgotten or inflated away. So I don’t buy it. Jill Philippic wrote, I guess the answer here is for women to return to subsidizing the male lifestyle, which would not exist if women didn’t massively subsidize it by doing men’s cooking, cleaning, laundry, childcare, in all other manner of life, organizing.Malcolm Collins: Well, you do that for me.Simone Collins: I do. But here’s the thing, and because I’m like, it’s true and there’s a lot like the, the actual cost of that is incredibly high.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: But here’s what, if I wasn’t doing that for you, you just wouldn’t get those things and you’d be fine.Malcolm Collins: That’s true.Simone Collins: Yeah. The women subsidize men never asked for that.[00:30:00]Men didn’t need their home to have potpourri in it and to be decorated for Halloween and to, they don’t need their stupid little, like you just ate jelly beans for breakfast. ‘cause I didn’t catch you soon enough to give you properly made scrambled eggs with a little. Whatever. I scrambleMalcolm Collins: eggs like once a week.Don’t pretend like you give me breakfastSimone Collins: for day. I gave a, i, I made, I made a scrambled like helicopter for Octavia this morning. I, I’m try, I try, I I ask you every morning and you’re like, oh, I just want milk. But that’s the thing. It’s like, oh, I wanna do a high effort breakfast for you. And you like, isMalcolm Collins: I just want milk.This is, I think you’re catching something really big here.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Women. Subsidized men to live the type of life that they wanted, that women want.Simone Collins: Yeah. Men didn’t askMalcolm Collins: forSimone Collins: that. MenMalcolm Collins: didn’t ask. I don’t want my clothes cleaned every day. I could clean them before I met you. It’s once every six months or so, you know?Like, ISimone Collins: know. IMalcolm Collins: don’t, you’reSimone Collins: like. Kid’s clothes. I’m like, well, it’s covered in mud. You’re like, it’s not gonna get them sick. So it’s, [00:31:00] yeah,Malcolm Collins: I need the floor cleaned. I don’t need things organized.Simone Collins: I know. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: This is all ridiculous, extra.Simone Collins: I know that. And that’s the thing. It’s like, no. Women didn’t subsidize men because the men would’ve been fine without that and they would’ve gone into build things and do cool stuff Without that, like that is just increasing it.It’s adding luxury to their standard of living. I mean, I’m sure you don’t mind having the meals that I make for you in a cleaner house and you know, not getting a staff infection from your clothing, but like you could be fine. You’d go to an emergency room and get treated for it and then maybe throw away and burn your clothing and buy all new stuff, but like.You know, you’d be fine. It’s like the that one episode from Parks and Rec, where they go into. God, what’s their names? Chris Pratt’s house and he is like,Speaker 4: There’s an exposed wire above the bathtub as well. Oh yes. Shock wire. I call it that. ‘cause if you take a shower and you touch the wire, you die. Yes, that is accurate.Simone Collins: . And like that’s, [00:32:00] that is the level that is the standard with which men are very happy to live.They’re fine with it. They’re just like, don’t touch the shock wire fromMalcolm Collins: my room. Like mySimone Collins: room. That is your room, right? Your entire room is the shock wire. I swear to God I don’t go in there. It scares me. JordanMalcolm Collins: Peterson’s whole like, clean your room.Simone Collins: Make your bed. Your bed. What a person. He’s the longhouse.Is he the male? Longhouse? What is that?Malcolm Collins: Jordan Peterson is the male longhouse. I could even be an episode likeSimone Collins: the male. Yeah. I’m kind of ready for that.Malcolm Collins: No wait, man. I’m gonna tell you something. You don’t need to do that. Yeah, you don’t need to change. You just need basic grooming. And your clothes need to not smell that.Okay. That is when you wash them, when they smell bad or look bad.Simone Collins: Malcolm, you’ve, you’ve crossed that Rubicon. I’m sorry friend, but I literally have to close the door to my room because if this, that’s my entire, that’s my entire room, my, I feel like I’m going to throw up. That is how bad it is.Malcolm Collins: Do you wanna, do you wanna do a, [00:33:00] a room clean this weekendSimone Collins: in the name of Health and Safety, please? Yes. Okay.Malcolm Collins: How longSimone Collins: has it beenMalcolm Collins: about a.Simone Collins: I don’t know. You don’t like it when I do it. You’re like, I’m, I, I, I, I work super hard to like, disinfect it and, and deify it and take like, scrape the, like layers of like rotted cheese that somehow ended up on the floor.And then you’re like, oh. You know, like, I mean, it’s, you’re not trying to dismiss the work I did, it’s just. It, it’s, it’s it worse for you? Like, I’ve broken the rats, like your nest has been ruined. The, the patina, the terroir is gone. You know. Well,Malcolm Collins: it’s true. It’s, it’s, it is, it is. It does, it does worse for a bit.Because it’s tooSimone Collins: clean. You, you so much. Yeah. You have to like, you have to build back in the it’s like an unseasoned pan, you know? Exactly. Like you now have a seasoned pan, you know, you work so. And I just, I just take dish dump to [00:34:00] thing and ruin it and ruin it. You can’t make any good dishes in there anymore.Oh, I’m so sorry, Malcolm. Fine. I understandMalcolm Collins: that there are safety, health and safety reasons probably at this point to do something about my room situationSimone Collins: when you, you know Yeah. When you reach the asthma gold level of, like, the smell of the rotting rat that cooks in the sun wakes me up every morning that that’s like, that’s what, you know.Yeah. YouMalcolm Collins: don’t think I’ve got my life together more than asba gold and, and the answer is no. I do not.Simone Collins: But I think actually Mondal is another really great, you know, he’s very good at articulating this level of, of, of standard, of living with, with which men are happy to live. He is like, listen, you know, in like a, like two hours, I could clean this up and like he’ll say this when he sees people like hoarded houses and stuff that are really ruined on a stream or something, but in reference to his own house.And it’s true. You know, you go through your room with a, with a couple big trash bags and like it gets done. Whereas like I will spend all this time, every single day to try to keep things up to like, you know, the 80th percentile. Yeah, and it’s a [00:35:00] lot of extra time and you’re like, why would you do that?That’s stupid. It’s wasteful, but that’s just like women versus male preferences. So women being like, I do all this work for you. No, they do all that work for themselves, but that’s why it’s very difficult for men and women to live with each other. Anyway. Emily May wrote, TLDR women used to do a bunch of s**t that ran the whole families and communities for free.But now they have jobs and less time to do those things. Nevermind that most community building work, volunteering, unpaid labor, et cetera, is done by women. And we are mad about that. But if women bring up that it’s exhausting always being the ones expected to do those things, we will say that women put way too much pressure on themselves and no one ask them to be the weavers of social fabric.So just stop, have you know, agency. And I think it’s just another example of like women being like, how dare you? NN not recognize the work that I do. That’s only for me that no one asked for.Malcolm Collins: No, it’s really that way. Even living with you, you know, it’s like I’ve, I’ve asked you, for example, the kids’ beds should really [00:36:00] be changed at least only once every two weeks.Simone Collins: Malcolm,Malcolm Collins: you’ve, I know,Simone Collins: not bear the cheese, the milk, the urine, the vomit. Our kids are messy,Malcolm Collins: can accumulate one more week without them getting sick.Is, is this ingSimone Collins: this woman? I can’t, I can’t hear myself think over a mess. Like I would be so much more productive as a human if I were not surrounded by the level of. Mess that I already am, like, it’s painful for me. It’s like, like a dog whistle. No one else can hear it but me. And it hurts. It hurts so bad.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God.Simone Collins: But yeah, I know it, I know it’s for me. I, but also I, I, I know how these women feel because, you know, I’m scraping. The vomit off of a pillow or something and I’m grumbling like, why am I the only one who ever does [00:37:00] this? And it’s ‘cause I’m the only one who ever cares. Right. And that’s, that’s this tension that I think exists between average male and average female standards that we just have to acknowledge is there.And I think you and I have reached a very healthy Deante where you’re like, Simone’s gonna Simone. And I’m like, Malcolm’s gonna Malcolm and you have your room and I have my room over here, got my flowers. Like, you got your tiles of cans. It’s all good. His and Hers, Mars and Venus. Okay. But we just have to accept that and just like let the yin and the yang do their.Do their thing. Okay. It’s, it’s fine. Yeah. Yeah. And then labor, your Y axis wrote one, most people do not regularly order DoorDash or Uber Eats, or have a nanny go out and meet some real people. Two, perhaps you should be at home instead of working or taking your baby out for cocktails, which I guess maybe this author did.And then Dreamweaver responded, over 75% of Americans use delivery services. You’re incorrect here. Ask for nannies. You’re [00:38:00] correct. And I, I mean, I think it’s fair that like. Not everyone constantly orders out and stuff, but I did a fact check on this and what that person was ci, that doesn’t soMalcolm Collins: true.75% of Americans order out,Simone Collins: no. See, that’s that, that is where this person was actively misleading. One analysis found that about 75% of Americans have used a food delivery app at least once. You and I have for sure.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But like once every three years.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, no, we did it when we were in New York with your mom who’d be like, okay, everyone we’re getting food on Seamless.And so that, that’s when we did it. But but yeah,Malcolm Collins: we’ve never, like, I wouldn’t pay for that myself. Right? Like that’s incredibly misleading. IfSimone Collins: it’s actually though, it, it’s somewhat striking still to me because this is, it is just so one, eating at a restaurant is already like a strike on your financial responsibility record in my book two.Ordering out is like, wait, are you serious? What are you doing? And then three like it, because typically you can get free delivery from a local restaurant, but using [00:39:00] DoorDash or Uber Eats mm-hmm. Then you’re paying even more. I’m like, okay, now you’re just a financial card. So that is like three strikes and one u gov survey found that 17% of Americans have food delivered at least once per week.And that’s another, another national restaurant research based summary. Found weekly delivery users at about 37% of US adults, which is, wow,Malcolm Collins: 37% are weekly delivery. Guys, if any of you are in our audience, can you just either send that money to us or light it on fire? DoSimone Collins: something. Can you just don’t, yeah.Like you feel really. Cool. I mean, I think it’s a federal offense, right? To burn money, but like you feel a lot cooler doing it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s cooler, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, and, and if you’re anti-immigrant, apparently you shouldn’t be, shouldn’t be ordering DoorDash because No. ButMalcolm Collins: what are we doing for dinner tonight?Simone Collins: I was gonna suggest to make [00:40:00] some. Of those very fine vermicelli noodles with the broth, if I can find it. And those meatball things.Malcolm Collins: I actually really wanted that broth tonight, but I don’t need it with noodles.Simone Collins: Okay. I guessMalcolm Collins: I can do it with noodles.Simone Collins: I mean, I figured the noodles and the meatball thing, it’s just the broth.‘cause it’s, it’s also like it’s in the eighties today, so it’s really warm.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Let’s just do the broth.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: SoSimone Collins: for with the meatball things or not, because my goal is to empty out the meatballs for the freezer.Malcolm Collins: Tom Young bro Broth is that what it’s called, right?Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: No, the, the meatball things I would do with Buns on a different night.Simone Collins: Oh, Hawaiian buns.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like two meatballs on Hawaiian buns that are toasted would beSimone Collins: likeMalcolm Collins: really goodSimone Collins: Vietnamese meatballs.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the Vietnamese ones, either Puck chow or whatever they’re called.Simone Collins: Something like that. Butcher. You’re reallyMalcolm Collins: good.Simone Collins: Good. Well, yeah, it’s hot now, so I’m trying to think of things that you would like that [00:41:00] are hot, friendly.Malcolm Collins: You don’t need to, your, your, your food is, I I’m not a temperature dependent eater.Simone Collins: Oh. I eat something a little bit healthy. Oh, I wanna use a lot of the green onions we have left. So maybeMalcolm Collins: I’m just so out of it after leaflet stream yesterday, I would lighter just look at it. So it literally went from what was it?Because I was, I was looking at it here. It literally went from. 7:00 PM to 5:00 AM and it got 20,700 views.Simone Collins: Good Lord. I mean, I.Malcolm Collins: And of course, you know, it’ll be clipped, put on YouTube and then get another 20,000 views or something.Simone Collins: Oh, I really look forward to watching those two of my favorite people.Finally, I get to watch I, that’s, that’s once collide for me. I’m really looking forward to that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I was, it is, it’s a lot of fun.Simone Collins: We’ll see. Just tell, I actually think I’m coherent. You got,Malcolm Collins: try to make it a regular thing, so, every other Friday I may do it. Yeah, I, I learned doing it on a weekday is stupid.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: [00:42:00] I’m not, I’m not subjecting myself to that again ‘cause I basically need to sleep the entire next day.Simone Collins: Well, but you need to help me out with the kids on weekends so I can work.Malcolm Collins: Well, I will do that too, but I will get to sleep in, you know, soSimone Collins: Oh, oh, right. ‘cause you have to bring weekday episodes live.I forgot you have basically a standing appointment at 8:00 AM Yeah, at 8:00 AM every,Malcolm Collins: every morning.Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah, that’s a good idea. That’s also good because you were invited to do a Chris Williamson round table in Austin next Tuesday, and Oh, I was, I think, worth it for you to fly out. It’s with like limestone and some other people.What other people, I mean, how many, like some tism? Yeah, I can check right now. But I’m like, dude, you should do it. You should do it. IMalcolm Collins: should.Simone Collins: And also like, you need a change of scene. I think you’ve not like last night’s experience for you. Like just getting to chat with someone who like wasn’t me really for you.So let’s see. She said Y Yang. Yeah, yeah, [00:43:00] yeah. Maybe Brad Wilcox and maybe Coleman Hughes.Malcolm Collins: Brad Wilcox, he’s the guy who runs the whatever institute,Simone Collins: He has to do for family studies. He’s a, he’s like the sort of pro marriage guy.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Coleman Hughes. Super cool. Like I, it would be super fun in, in Chris Williamson’s studio in Austin.I think you should do it.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Do I have your, well, let’s, let’s get to book that. Okay. I, I mean, obviously I, I handle your life with all my stupid feminine standards. Booking all your stuff, you know, cleaning all your stuff that you don’t want clean. How dare I? Anyway, how dareMalcolm Collins: you.Simone Collins: Oh, dare I,Malcolm Collins: I love you too.No, it’s gonna be fun going down to Austin, seeing Chris again. Mm-hmm. I haven’t met Brian, whatever his name is. I,Simone Collins: I think Brad Wilcox. We met Brad Wilcox at the first art conference. Oh, nice. Yeah. It’s very cool, but we’re terrible [00:44:00] with names so you wouldn’t remember. I’m sure once you started talking with him you’d be like, oh yeah.Okay. Right. You’re super cool. Thank you. Yeah, maybe you could meet up with RA while you’re in town. I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, see who the round.Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. I’ll get to organizing that for you and I think you’ll have a good time. Good. Anyway, I love you and goodbye.Malcolm Collins: Bye-bye.Okay. Well, I love you. Today’s episode. It didn’t do that well, but it didn’t seem to do particularly poorly either.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: You notice 10 outta 10. It’s not like, let’s see where we’re at right nowSimone Collins: compared to your other ones recently.Perhaps is, is, that’s the issue, you know,Malcolm Collins: 6.4 K.Simone Collins: 6.4 K is terrible. Really isn’t for like, does Malcolm,Malcolm Collins: what your convention to attend.Simone Collins: Come on man. It’s good. Look, I like it. Okay. Can we turn up the light on you a little bit?Malcolm Collins: [00:45:00] Okay. I also sent you the video for Twitter.Simone Collins: Thank you. Okay. Let me get that downloading now, ‘cause I have the Patreon post just sitting there, but, oh.Then right after this, and before I go down toMalcolm Collins: very interesting experience to stream one, I didn’t know that streamers had to stream for that Long.Simone Collins: Streams do seem to last a really long time, which is it, I think one reason why you end up getting streamers as being some of the most popular news commentary people because one, they need to fill their time slot.And two, you can take clips from that and turn them into YouTube videos and be prolific. So you have prolific, news commentary on current events from people also who have been forced to really hone their work because they’re spending a lot of time doing it. They’re getting constant chat feedback. And even like monetary rewards for really like doing a good job.So mm-hmm. Is it any surprise, I mean, these are people who are [00:46:00] being circumstantially trained to be the best.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You’ve gotta, I mean, I’d say it’s a completely different art form than doing YouTube videos or something like that. And I, I had no idea. Yeah.Simone Collins: Good to edit. You have to be like rapid fire, instant feedback.That’s how you develop the best intuition. Right?Malcolm Collins: Stay on top of the chat. For people who aren’t aware, I was on leaflets channel and we streamed from 7:00 PM till 6:00 AM it was likeSimone Collins: you have a whole new level of respect for her,Malcolm Collins: but yeah, I was like, you do this every day.Simone Collins: She’s amazing. Well, and on top of that, developing like a whole, whole platform, a whole nother world.And all of it’s more. Well,Malcolm Collins: she runs a number of businesses.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Also the plushy, the plushy business. Yeah. She’s, she’s a Plushie. Barrs. She’s, yeah. She, she has it all. What can, what can we say we get,Malcolm Collins: we should we get plushies made SimoneSimone Collins: with giant glasses?Malcolm Collins: Well, I don’t know. What, what are our avatars?We [00:47:00] don’t, do we have. I guess I’ll ask AISimone Collins: A gear. A gear has like zero personality, so I don’t know how that’s gonna go. We can just sell giant, really heavy metal gears. Just get them from machine parts companies. You have, you have extras from your run. Sell them to us.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Send people gear.Simone Collins: We’ll put them in our Etsy shop and marketMalcolm Collins: likeSimone Collins: everybody else’s,Malcolm Collins: like squishy and fun.And also it’s just like an industrialSimone Collins: deer. Buy your deer. Get you literal, real, like literally gotta get you gear. Gotta get the gear. GottaMalcolm Collins: get, yeah.Simone Collins: Gotta get the gear. We’ll make a great AI commercial for it. Just you Wait. Gotta getMalcolm Collins: here. Well she showed me a great new service for doing AI videos.Oh yeah. That is way better than AI had seen before. Which is yeah, I’ll share it with you.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: It’s a seed dance.Simone Collins: Never heard of that. Ooh.Malcolm Collins: And if I hadn’t just woken up, I would’ve experimented with it already. I’m looking at integrating it with our website to see if our, we can get working on our fab.ai.Simone Collins: Okay, let’s try that out. [00:48:00] But I’ll get us into today’s episode because it’s a, women are terrible episode.Malcolm Collins: Women are terrible.Simone Collins: Well, this episode of women are Terrible. Well,Malcolm Collins: that’s not the people are sure to click on that. Like, guys love learning.Simone Collins: Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and then the al one, they’re like, Simone’s always more anti-woman than Malcolm.SomebodySimone Collins: times. It’s easier for me to do the anti-woman ones. I don’t know. I was just watching a an arrest video that Aspen Gold was commenting on during his dream where a woman gets arrested from refusing to leave a Ross because she wasn’t allowed to. Not pay for things ‘cause her boyfriend works there or something.Something. Wait,really?Yeah. And ASM Gold was commenting ‘cause I think he watches a lot of body cam footage on his stream. Like the, the, the female law enforcement officers just tend to put up a lot less with women’s nonsense. It’s like zero, zero pity. They know exactly what’s going on. So there’s that.Oh, the, the jelly beans. AKA gummy bears according to Tyson. Well, I just wokeMalcolm Collins: up and [00:49:00] I need to stay awake.Simone Collins: Breakfast of Champions. Yeah. YouMalcolm Collins: jelly beans are the Breakfast of Champions. This is the,Simone Collins: yeah. Okay. That’s, I would’ve made you, it’s fine. It’s fine, Simone. It’s fine. Okay. Okay, here we go.Speaker 6: I see your size. What are you working on? Iny.Speaker 7: Okay, so what’s wrong with your peanut butter sandwich? It’s all peanut butter.Speaker 8: The butter has four honey. Is it, oh, is it that it has peanut butter on it? Yeah. So next time you want a peanut butter sandwich, but with no peanut butter, what do you want next time?[00:50:00]Speaker 7: Only honey only. I don’t think that’s good for you though.You like honey. I do too. I think a lot of people like Honey Octavian, what did you learn about this morning?Speaker 8: Oh, I forgot. I forgot the other night. You forgot what you learned about this morning, yesterday. That’s how forgetful you are. Mommy forgetting. Yeah. I forget the other night. Very well. I forget. What does that mean? Like my brain is like.A reading brain. Did he say he doesn’t [00:51:00] have a reading brain? He doesn’t have a reading brain. I realize when I type into ai, I type in learning, uh, without, you do not like the way he’ll be like learning. He ain’t got good learning. Can you learn me something today? Learning, of course. AI thinks I’m an idiot for sure.Speaker 6: Look, it thinks, it knows everyone’s an idiot. I think that’s the key thing. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into one of the most provocative cultural shifts happening today: the growing inclusion of polyamory as a protected sexual identity alongside the LGBT+ framework.They explore:* The historical “slippery slope” arguments from the gay rights movement (and how the left once fiercely rejected them)* Why polyamory is now being mainstreamed in progressive spaces* Biological, psychological, and cultural variance in monogamy vs. polyamory* Striking parallels (and differences) between polyamory and same-sex attraction* Why Malcolm now argues we should treat polyamory similarly to being gay — not as something to celebrate or condemn, but as a neutral biological/psychological variationThey also discuss family structure, reproductive fitness, leftist organizations like Black Lives Matter, legal changes in cities like Somerville and Cambridge, historical quotes from Dan Savage and Evan Wolfson, Catholic priests and lesbian nuns, biker culture in gay history, and much more.A raw, nuance-heavy conversation that challenges both progressive orthodoxy and conservative reflexes. Expect tangents on everything from Mormon cuckoldry porn searches to ramp foraging and steak dinners.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re gonna be talking about L-G-G-B-D-T-T-T-I-Q-Q-A-A-P-PWhich was used by the Canadian Teachers Federation materials as example, wait noSimone Collins: wait.That there wasn’t a joke.Malcolm Collins: No, that’s not a joke. One. That’s a, that’s a real one.Speaker 2: They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of M-M-I-W-G.Malcolm Collins: I could go through it all, but I think it’s probably more interesting for me to just get to the point of all this, which is the recent and, and increasing inclusion of polyamory as a discriminated sexual identity within the whiter, urban monocultural, or progressive framework.Simone Collins: Okay. That’s interesting. Yeah. That it’s like, I guess, well, it is. Some people frame it as [00:01:00] a sexual orientation, so. I guess then it belongs there.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I, I wanna talk about this, I wanna talk about it from a few angles. One, we are going to talk about it from the perspective of the early days of the gay rights movement.Sorry, not even early days until around 2009, 2000, like 13. So, so up until like more recently the LGBT movement was fervent about the, this slippery slope argument on the right, that if we normalize. Same sex relationship today. We’ll be normalizing polyamorous relationships tomorrow. And they were very aggressive.We’ll go over quotes and stuff. This is not the case. The movement will never turn into this.Simone Collins: Wait, people actually said that. Really?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I always talk about, like, I remember when I was in school and I talk about my time in the GSA, the the Gay Straight Alliance. And I remember somebody being shouted out of the room because they suggested [00:02:00] that trans people may want to participate in sports of the gender they identify as.And they were shouted out of the room because people said, that’s a far right slippery slope.Simone Collins: You would ever doMalcolm Collins: that argument. No one would ever do that. No one would ever argue that. You’d have to be crazy to think that. And oh, somebody would only present that as an idea in bad faith.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: So they get shouted outta the room and I was like, Hmm, interesting.Simone Collins: Indeed.Malcolm Collins: So, I wanna go over it from that angle. I wanna go over it from a different angle as well, which is like, why is it culturally happening? Because I think it’s a, a shift in the way we see and think about sexual identities. Hmm. And finally, what I’m going to argue is I fundamentally think it’s a good thing, which is gonna surprise peopleSimone Collins: to, to support it, to add it, to,Malcolm Collins: to consider being polyamorous.Mm-hmm. The same sort of lifestyle choice as being gay.Simone Collins: Ah, [00:03:00] okay.Malcolm Collins: And I’d actually say that I support it. Pretty much Exactly. As equally as I support being gay. Yeah, okay. Which is sort of like a, I wouldn’t advise it, but you know, if that’s what you’re gonna try, I am not gonna like, look down on you for it.Right.Yeah.So what I mean by this, so people may wonder what I mean by this and why I think it is fundamentally a good thing. And I, and I actually do not think it is logically wrong now that we are identifying it as the same type of thing as being gay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: There is obviously a variance biological variance in both the desire somebody has for additional partners when they are in a long-term loving relationship.And the jealousy they feel when, you know, partners take other partners or like their, their ability to handle this. Yeah. I, I, I’d go so far as to argue that in some cultures seep people, because, you know, cultures interact with biology. Right. And if you’re in a culture where people take [00:04:00] multiple wives for many generations you are going to develop unique predilections, psychological predilections that people in other cultures are unlikely to have.A great example of this that we go over is cing is really common in the Mormon community and statistically more common in Mormon areas if you look at like porn searches. Wow. So why would this be the case? Well, if you are in a community where multiple. Partners is common, and you as a female get hugely turned off or hugely jealous when you see your partner sleeping with somebody else.You are going to be a more difficult partner. You are going to work less well with your sister wives and you are going to have fewer surviving and successful offspring. Sure. Yeah. Because the sister wives aren’t gonna help them as much. Whereas, and then people can be like, well then why are guys into it?And it’s like, well, you know, evolution didn’t have that long to work in these regions. And so if it makes girls into it, it’s gonna accidentally make some guys into it as well. Right. You know? And so, you know, the, the, the. [00:05:00] The, there’s likely a biological component to this as well, like, I’m just being clear here.It’s the same with same sex attraction, right? Like same sex attraction likely has a, a, a, a biological component and is going to be more common in some cultures and more rewarded by some cultures than others in terms of its reproductive fitness. Interestingly, by normalizing same sex relationships, you make same sex arousal dramatically more genetically unfit.So for example, in the West, historically.Simone Collins: Oh, I get it. Because basically you’re allowing people who experience same sex arousal to like not end up in heterosexual marriages and then not have kids. Yeah. Okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Historically in the, in, in Western society, I guess you’d say more broadly same-sex attraction really wasn’t that much a hit to your genes because most same-sex attracted people just got married anyway and had kids anyway, right?It was the normalization [00:06:00] of same-sex attraction that sort of nuked this as a a, a genetic trait that you super, super, super do not wanna have. If, if your goal is passing on as many of your genes to future generations as possible, but to continue here. But as we’ve said in other streams, so, so what I’m pointing out here is there is variance biologically in how much somebody might be compatible with a polyamorous lifestyle, and there is variance both genetically and, and you know, epigenetically and psychologically in terms of events that happened to you as you’re raised that are going to affect same sex attraction, right?So, both of these variances, I think are equally arguable to be outside of an individual’s control. So I don’t think a you know, like what gay people would say historically is, well, I was born this way, right? As, as if the poly person was not. Potentially also to an extent born that way. It might have been less of a clear [00:07:00] gradient in terms of the psychological proclivities and arousal pathways.But they were born that way just as much as a gay person was born this way. Or the gay person will say, well, this is part of my identity. It’s like, well, you chose to make same sex attraction part of your identity. You don’t have to do that. As we’ve pointed out, like in different cultures, like in the Catholic tradition they disproportionately join the priesthood with 25 to 50% of Catholic priesthood.Simone Collins: A huge difference between how you feel and what you make your identity.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You, that, that, that is, and people are like, what? So they’re forced to go? It’s like, no, they choose it. You are the one who wants to force them to have same sex relationships. Right. The Catholic church is like, well, you can go and do that.It is sinful, but like, we’re not gonna make it illegal. But I, I don’t think in any Catholic majority country is being gay illegal right now. But here is another option of a way to live your life. And I’d be willing to bet on psychological scores. Like if you look at because if you look at while gay men are, are generally psychologically healthier [00:08:00] than like bi people or lesbians.Look at our problem of, of like bisexual people. We need to talk Oh yes. Way off the charts on everything sort of, they are less psychologically healthy than the regular population. I bet if you contrasted same sex attracted people who joined the Catholic church as priests versus who went into same sex relationships.The ones who joined as priests are probably like much happier, have much greater senses of fulfillment and are likely have fewer psychological issues.Simone Collins: I’d be shocked to learn that people who are same sex attracted and became priests call themselves same sex attracted.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But there’s been studies done on it.Like they’re aware of it. Really?Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Yeah. I, when I say it’s 25 to 50%, I’m citing like, multiple studies here. Like it’s, there’s an entire week ofSimone Collins: people who became priests. S That’s crazy. Okay. I, I guess I thought they wouldn’t wanna admit it. You know,Malcolm Collins: no, like, it’s not a sin to be same-sex attracted.It’s a to actSimone Collins: on itMalcolm Collins: if anything’s an additional challenge that you’re overcoming. Okay. In, in fact [00:09:00] God, this, this is a whole its own rabbit hood. It’s, it’s the Catholic world and same sex attraction. But same sex attracted nuns were so common that they. Played the dominant culturally shaping role of lesbian culture in the same way.I thinkSimone Collins: you did a whole episode on that actually.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. In the same way that in the gay community biker culture played the dominant role in the male gay communities cultural endpoint in the in, in lesbian culture, it was nuns. And it mostly happened after Vatican two, when they moved them closer to the cities and the nuns who previously just did their thing far off in private, in the convent or whatever.Now were interacting with lay people more. In this particular context. And, and, and many of them would often deconvert and, and go into like the lesbian scene and, and, but they keep a lot of the you, you may notice that, that a lot of like lesbian wear of, of like the older wear where it deviates from [00:10:00] mainstream wear looks weirdly like religious wear.And, and this is where that comes from.And I haven’t done an episode fans, you had to let us know ‘cause I’m happy to do that episode. It’s, yeah,Simone Collins: no, I’m trying to remember if you did. I, you and I have talked about it a lot. I can’t remember if you did one. So we should check.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: I don’t, I don’t remember you talking about biker gangs.This, this is news to me. So,Malcolm Collins: wait, you were unaware that biker games were a dominant cultural force in gay culture in terms of do, do you look at the way that gays dress? Like the chaps with all the leather and theSimone Collins: Yeah, I, I guess I thought that was just like a, a a more associated with like the bondage community and less with theMalcolm Collins: No, the bondage community is downstream of the biker gang community.Simone Collins: Oh my God. Wait,Malcolm Collins: like they, the, the, that aesthetic didn’t come out of nowhere. It, it, it came directly from older, I, I wanna say like 1980s, 1970s biker culture.Simone Collins: Okay. Anyway, putting it.Malcolm Collins: If you’re age during that period, like, and you’re doing the [00:11:00] whole like driving around, sleeping around thing, you know, living, sort of itinerant living.I mean, it’s a natural culture to fall into. Sorry, this, I guess on way too big of a tangent, but the point I’m making here is when a gay person says but they, the poly people are not like us, there really isn’t any truly discernible way that it is something fundamentally different. It is a, a arousal slash psychological profile pathway.Yeah. That has biological and psychological variants that you can choose to identify with or not identify with. That affects lifestyle choices that you may make, which then have larger effects on you in society, like potentially being discriminated against or how other people see and perceive you.So in that category, like while historically I would’ve just like in, immediately I point this out ‘cause. I you know, a lot of these are positions I would’ve found mortifying in the past. If you go to me five, 10 years ago, I would’ve just reflectively said, well, one’s a sexual orientation and the other is a life [00:12:00] choice, you know?And it’s like, hmm, no. They both have biological and psychological roles and they both have a aspect of choice of them. But secondarily, the reason I think it’s really healthy to put them in the same category from a psychological perspective is obviously the first things that people are going to say is like, well, even if you have this additional biological drive to go out and sleep with other people, even when you’re in a a committed relationship, you don’t have to do that.Mm-hmm.Right? And it’s like, well, it’s the same, same sex attraction. Right? Or you could say, yeah. Well, it’s dramatically less optimal to structure for like legal reasons, et cetera, to structure a family. Like what if we normalize polyamory, then like a bunch of men aren’t gonna get wives, for example, right?Like there’s a bunch of negative externalities to doing this, and it’s like. Yeah. But if you consider the point of marriage being producing the next generation, which is a cost that goes to the, the individual, [00:13:00] you know, the state’s not helping with that. Then there’s a dramatic negative externality towards normalizing gay and lesbian relationships, right?So in in that case, it is very much the same type of a thing. And if you teach your kids that the two things are the same type of a thing I think that they will have an easier time sort of healthily framing it in their heads, right? It’s, it’s the type of thing that you don’t need to react to with like, woo, how could you ever do that?Right? Like, I think attacking people in these communities really only serves to hurt the wider. We’ll, we’ll call it the saying part of the, the cultural movement or the conservative part as it’s began to be called. But like, we don’t win elections when we’re just like randomly reactively mean, or you know, overtly signal that we don’t approve of specific lifestyles.That’s the leftSimone Collins: thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s the less thing, right? Like stop acting like a leftist purity Mongol. Okay. We can just say, oh, that’s probably not the [00:14:00] most efficient way to achieve your particular goals. And it might be the most efficient way, right? Like, if you are same sex attracted and you’re a woman as Simone always points out, like you can really rack up babies, right?If you do it with siblings sperm, because then you can have two people pregnant at the same time in a partnership. The problem is, is that lesbian relationships are just super unstable. And I wouldn’t, if I was a woman, I would be worried about having kids with another woman because okay. So. Guys, just us.Okay? Nobody clip farming here, okay? But women like being in a relationship with a woman there’s challenges to that. Okay? You know, we all gotta make our sacrifices here. And you could look at any of our episodes where we talk about like lesbian dating statistics versus gay dating statistics to be like, gay relationships are just like across the board, like psychologically better than lesbian relationships.The more women you put in a relationship, the more you know abuse, the more you know, [00:15:00] emotional issues, the more disvalue each partner feels. Le lesbians have always been the conservative movements like hidden. Got you on the left, like now, now you’ve got to live, married to women. It’s actually a common article type.I, I don’t know if you’ve seen these articles of like leftist women who decide that they’re bisexual and then try dating women and are like, oh my God, this was a mistake. No, they’re like, I now understand what men were complaining about. Like,Simone Collins: yeah, yeah,Malcolm Collins: these, these people are jerks.Simone Collins: Yeah. I only need to exist with my own mind to know how horrible it is.I, I don’t know why women need to experience other women to discover it. They have to live with themselves every single day, but. Go figure, I guess,Malcolm Collins: I, another interesting thing I point here when I talk about if you’re like, well, how much biological variance could there really be in relationships? Right?And I think I’m probably a pretty good example of that in [00:16:00] our, because you know, we started out in leftist circles when we got married. We were fairly leftist when we got married. And as part of our, you know, to today relationship contract, we would technically be considered a polyamorous couple in that if I wanted to.Well, Simone, I, I told Simone I, no, you’re not allowed to sleep with other people. I’m allowed to sleep with other people if I want to. Right. Which is the way it often works when you have a high value man in a thing and, and people would be like, oh, so you must be like sleeping, right. No. Like, I’ve, I, I don’t try to.Right. And, and this is pretty obvious from the community, right? If you look at these other creators even you know, constantly. And their discords, they’re like flirting with their fans right now. There’s another few creators that have been canceled for hitting on fans or flirting on with fans or whatever.And I assume especially the people who are like deeper in the base camp community and hang out on the Discord or were like active in the subreddit before it got shadow banned. I mean, [00:17:00] it’s still pretty fun, but it’s, you know, that I’ve like never once done something like that, even though I’m in a position where doing something like that would be trivial.And the answer as to like, why is biology, right? Like when I am deeply psychologically attached to somebody like Simone I don’t feel a biological desire to go out there and search for something else. And, and, and it’s clear that, you know, some people don’t feel that way. And so I, I, I just wanna make like that, that biological variance clear because I’m sure that some of our fans probably are in long-term relationships, love their partner and they’re like, yeah, but if I had like a platform or something like that, I’d probably take advantage of it.Simone, I assume you probably feel the same way. Would you like want to like sleep around if you could?Simone Collins: No, definitely not. Definitely not. I mean, even [00:18:00] when. People who I liked in the past expressed interest in me in that way, I would have such a strong negative reaction that I would literally like burn stuff.SoMalcolm Collins: yeah, she lit a love letter on fire in the sink.Simone Collins: It well, and photos and other things. This has happened multiple times. OhMalcolm Collins: really?Simone Collins: Yeah. JustMalcolm Collins: somebodySimone Collins: sent youMalcolm Collins: photos.Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, yeah, I just have a very strong negative reaction to sexual interest from others, and I always have. Then I met you and I was like, whoa, I’m gay from Malcolm.But yeah, I mean, I, I don’t know if that’s like an emotional attraction or I’m just, I find everyone else so repulsive and you’re just the one exception. I don’t get it, but there it is.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I, I, I wanted to highlight that before we go further into this. Actually, let’s steal man this. In what way is being polyamorous fundamentally different from being gay?[00:19:00]Simone Collins: Well, I mean, no,Malcolm Collins: no, no, no, no. I mean, what, on what grounds could somebody legitimately say,Simone Collins: oh yeah, I guess so they’re very similar in that to deny them basically means that you’re not sexually satisfied, but you could still make your life work.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: they’re very similar in which in, in, in non, in, in most formats it means that you’re going to have lower fertility, though in some rare formats, your fertility can be significantly boosted.Malcolm Collins: Well, and polyamory can be very eugenic for a population.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and it can help you have a lot more kids depending on how you do it. Yeah. So, but, but that is, that puts you in the minority of polyamorous situations. So, yeah, I guess functionally, practically they’re quite similar for sure. And yeah, I guess they’re very similar too.‘cause the people we know who identify as polyamorous, definitely they don’t frame it as like, this is my lifestyle preference. It’s more like, no, [00:20:00] like, this is how my sexuality works. Like it Yeah, definitely to them, it, it, it, it, it is no different from the kind of, of, of visceral reaction you see from the people we know who are gay.So, yeah, I, you’re right, that’s a. Fair. I agree.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I, I think that this is also, you see, some women in like the conservative movement and we’ve had some like fans reach out or whatever, and they’re like, oh, I can’t speak to a man. I’ll speak to Simone. Right. But I’m a woman, I can’t talk to Malcolm.Right. And I find this very interesting or like, Mike, whatever his name is what the last V couldSimone Collins: Oh, Mike Pence. Yeah. Yeah. Who has this family rule whereby you never have dinner alone with another woman.Malcolm Collins: Right. And I’ve noticed some of our fans have been surprised that you allow me alone with other women so freely, like with like ala for example, like other women who are sexual and known for being sexual.Right. [00:21:00] And that you’ve never really had any concerns about that.Simone Collins: I mean, if you’re Yeah, I, yeah, I’m well. I don’t know. I feel like a, a great default. If you really have faith in your marriage agreement or your commitment to each other, then you will have absolutely no rules because it’s, it’s that strong.I feel when people ha have so little faith in each other or themselves that they do not feel they can be alone with another person, aside from their spouse of the opposite gender, they won’t be able to stop themselves to control themselves. I mean, is the marriage really that strong or,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, I, I can appreciate that.Look, if, basically the point I’m making here is. It is not a big moral victory for me to not be cheating on you or not be hitting on fans because I just don’t have a desire to do that. Whereas for other people, they need to build more [00:22:00] structure into their lives to achieve that end. And, and both of those are, are viable pathways.It just depends on how you happen to be built.Simone Collins: I guess. I understand it, but also like, if that’s the case, I guess. Yeah, it, it, it does make sense. I guess it’s, it’s like, if I put it in an analogous situation of this person has a lot of trouble with food and if they’re around carbs, like they will just, if there’s a loaf of bread around them, they’ll just eat the whole loaf of bread.If there’s ice cream in the freezer, they will eat the ice cream. Maybe that Mike Pence rule is more along the lines of, we just don’t keep ice cream in the freezer because if it’s there, he’s gonna eat the ice cream. And I, we, he doesn’t want to eat the ice cream. He’s gonna feel bad after it. I don’t want him to eat the ice cream.It’s gonna, you know, he’s, he’s got heart problems or whatever. Like he’s, he’s overweight, but like, let’s not do this. Let’s just not bring in the temptation. And I guess that’s kind of like, a lot of sexual orientations or arousal pathways, like [00:23:00] you understand it’s a temptation and you may decide that indulging in that interest or temptation or arousal pathway is just not in your practical bestinterest.Malcolm Collins: Oh, this is such a fascinating meta point. Okay. So before I found out about naltrexone and, and got drinking under control at a normal point. Yeah. There were multiple ways I regulated my drinking and they were all around access. Totally. I would only go out and buy single beers forSimone Collins: beer,Malcolm Collins: right?Simone Collins: Yes, yes, yes.YouMalcolm Collins: don’t drink a ton, but I hadSimone Collins: to, you would, you would buy the largest like single drink container you could.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You could buy some big beers.Simone Collins: What was it? Was it a Macedonian leader who was like, told you could only have one glass of wine a day? So he got,Malcolm Collins: I wanna say genis or something, or ktSimone Collins: think he got like a bucket or something.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So he had a giant goblet made, you know, or was one glass a day? No, but this is, this is what they’re talking about. Was that right? Like they’re [00:24:00] trying to restrict their access to this sort of stuff. And, and I have done that myself in the areas where I have genetic weakness. Right. Fortunately you know, cheating on my partner a bunch is not one of those areas.But anyways, so, I, was I gonna say, but for other creators or people with communities dedicated to them having something like a Discord server that’s just there to like, talk about ideas that you’ve hadSimone Collins: is like being a binge eater with a fridge full of cake.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Don’tSimone Collins: refrigerate your cakes guys, by theMalcolm Collins: way.Sorry. A fridge full of cake. And they’re really the only things that they can do is make rules for themselves. Yeah. Like I don’t get sign on the discord after I’ve been drinking. I don’t sign on the discord after I’ve And people who are on the discord. No, I have been on the RD after I’ve been drinking.Right. Like,Simone Collins: oh no,Malcolm Collins: what?Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: I, I, I say stuff and delete it, but it’s generally stuff that’s just like, about my life that I’m not supposed to share or [00:25:00] something. But yeah. The, the, I I do not you know, creep in those, those moments.Simone Collins: You’re not squeezing on women.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, but again, I like the drinking thing because I’m not above this biological impulse.Simone Collins: Sure, yeah. But theMalcolm Collins: reason,Simone Collins: I guess there are areas where you know that if there’s availability, you won’tMalcolm Collins: be able to help yourself without chemical control. I cannot control myself. But where this gets really interesting is the meta point here which is around, because some people didn’t understand why I just do not care about online pornography, right?Like, um mm-hmm. Especially anything that’s drawn or AI created, like if a real woman is involved, like obviously there’s negative moral externality to that. Yeah. But if it’s just an arousing image, right? Or an arousing AI story that we just generated is our fab, right? People are like, why doesn’t he care about this stuff?Is maybe he’s trying to like do you know, like fat women telling other women you look great. You know, so that they get fat too, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, you know, like just trying to [00:26:00] sabotage like genetic competition. And I, I realized when they said that why our framings on this particular topic are so different.If you are a guy who really struggles because there access to that stuff is out there you’re gonna want to create at least for yourself, extremely strict rules around it. And then you look at a position of someone like me who just doesn’t feel that, that that particular struggle at a huge level I am gonna be like, yeah, whatever.Because the people who are overly struggling with that are eventually gonna be cold from the gene pool, right? Like, yeah. Give given, given how easy it is to access erotic material these days. And any. Strict rule around it, never being exposed to that stuff is going to disc correlate with being online.Right. And, and unfortunately being online slash [00:27:00] involved with AI slash involved in technology, all of the things that generate that stuff magically is extremely tightly correlated with are your descendants going to matter?Simone Collins: Yeah. Are they gonna get off planet or not? Yes.Malcolm Collins: Technology, everything like that.Right. It’s, but it’s a, it’s a rather cruel view for me to have, right. To just be like, oh, well you’re cooked if that stuff is a particularly big challenge for you. Right. Yeah.Simone Collins: But it is also in line with our general philosophical belief. I mean, if you’re going to be cold, you’re cu If you are not predestined to matter, that’s a tough roll of the dice.But that’s just how it is.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and, and, and note here, what I mean by this is not a person who looks at corn once a day or plays around with an erotic AI storyteller is cold. I’m talking about the person who does that for nine hours every day. Right. If, if you’re, if you’re a person and this stuff is taking up 15 minutes of your time, 30 minutes of your time a [00:28:00] day it’s, it, it’s no more damaging to you than video games are.Probably less. And, and, and just as masturbatory in terms of like time output, what I’m really talking about when I’m talking about the people who are cult or the people who just absolutely spiral out the moment they get access to this.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And there’s people like that who spiral out at the moment, they get access to video games, right?Like, there’s different ways that the world around us can call us.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. No, we, we all know. I mean, okay, we’re, we’re old, you know, we’re, we’re millennials, but I think we all know people who. Disappeared during college due to Wow. You know?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: There was at least one in every dorm floor who was lost.Malcolm Collins: That would’ve happened to Asma Gold had he not gotten famous.Right. You know, like,Simone Collins: yeah. He was one of the few who, who went all the way through. He, like Dante, he passed through through hell and then just came through the sphincter. That is, that is him.Malcolm Collins: Unfortunately, blizzard made it less addictive by making it terrible. So, you know,Simone Collins: that helps.Malcolm Collins: Nobody plays anymore.But anyway, what I wanna go into now before is, is people say, [00:29:00] well, is the left really pushing this as a mainstream thing? So here’s part of the Black Lives Ladder mission statement. I think a fairly mainstream leftist organization, we disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children.To the degree that mothers parents and children are comfortable basically saying they want to disintermediate the nuclear family and that means polyamory. That’s basically what they’re saying, right? Like they believe in,Simone Collins: if I’m gonna steelman it, that could also be the corporate family, this extended family networking community that cares for each other and is a more sustainable and more historically accurate form of the family unit.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: potentially. I mean, I, I, I’ll, I’ll agree with your steelman toSimone Collins: it. You’ll allow it. You’llMalcolm Collins: allow it. But now I want to, before we talk about, anybody knows leftists have fully incorporated polyamory as like a main part of [00:30:00] the urban monocultures project, right?Simone Collins: Oh, you gonna, you gonna Lindsay West this or what?Malcolm Collins: No, I wanted to go through what people used to say about polyamory first.Simone Collins: Oh. Well, I mean, keep in mind as much as, as, as people act like it’s been around forever, it really hasn’t. I mean, it, it was referred to as my father reminds me ad naum that it was, it was free love back then in the eighties. It wasn’t polyamory.I think that polyamory first emerged with the book, the Ethical Slut, really? Right. In terms of popularMalcolm Collins: problem. No, there I had a, a longer timeline that actually quit, but the word emerged in the 1980s.Simone Collins: Well, not according to my dad.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, well I said emerged. Coined for the very first time in the 1980s, right?Yeah. Like,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: It takes a while to get around and for everyone to agree that this is what we’re calling the thing.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But the timeline I wanted to go through was things like let’s start with Evan Wilson. This is the founder and [00:31:00] president of Freedom to Marry and the lead architect of the National Marriage Equality Campaign.So a 2009 quote from him. Right.Okay.The right wing would love nothing more than for us to spend all of our air time discussing distractions such as polygamy, bestiality, and other, from their point of view, doomsday scenarios rather than engage in the public about committing the same sex couples being discriminated against.So you could see here they’re already like. This isn’t the point. This is a, a, a relevant slippery slope argument. Okay. Dan Savage said, oh.Simone Collins: Dan Savage. Alright. Alright,Malcolm Collins: Dan. Dan Savage. Polyamory is not a sexual orientation. It’s not something you are, it is something you do and this is really fascinating, but it could be something you are, it depends on how you self-identify same attraction.Well,Simone Collins: yeah, he seems like such a, I mean, he’s, you know, famously sex positive and, and pretty based and pragmatic about sexuality, so this is, that’s actually quite [00:32:00] surprising. I didn’t expect him to be cited to sing something like that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Bisexuality Poly podcast writing in gay publication 2006.This is a Michigan LGBT newspaper. I’ve been greatly disappointed at how the leaders of the same-sex marriage movement have distanced themselves from polyamorous. Though we are equally vilified by our mutual opposition, our existence in an incon is an inconvenience because we belie there assertion that there is no slippery slope.The author, a poly activist, explicitly called out mainstream same-sex marriage leaders for deliberately distancing the movement from poly people to maintain the no slippery slope argument against the conservatives. So even while they’re making this argument, people in their own camp are like, okay, but we’re actually gonna eventually fight for that right now on where, and, and, and by the way, during the, ogre 2015 [00:33:00] case conservative justices, Roberta Scalia and Anatolio raised a slippery slope to polygamy argument in dissent LGBT organizations and advocates responded by rejecting any equivalence. So that’s fascinating. So now let’s look at the legal stance of poli polyamory right as it has gained more acceptance in society.Sorry, I needed,Simone Collins: you’ve got the brain wiggles.Malcolm Collins: No break today.Simone Collins: Oh, Malcolm,do you want me to just you, you, you can, I guess you don’t wanna go to sleep after this, butMalcolm Collins: I’ve gotta edit the episode for tomorrow. Mm.Simone Collins: Maybe you can kind of train me in your preferred editing methods, and I can try to do this for you more. But do you want me to bring you dinner to your room so you can go to bed earlier?Malcolm Collins: I’ll come down. It’s not gonna help that much.Simone Collins: Okay. Do you want it earlier or later? Like, do you want a nap right away?Malcolm Collins: Earlier, because if I nap now, then I won’t, I’ll get to sleep extra late so I, I never nap at night.Simone Collins: Okay. Then I will, I’ll just do your dinner [00:34:00] first and let the kids play outside. And then do theirs next.I,Malcolm Collins: but agents can fully code now, guys.Simone Collins: Yes, they can.Malcolm Collins: You’re on PC and Chrome,Simone Collins: Or a Mac, right? I mean, it’s just the Well, you’re on model.Malcolm Collins: We, we haven’t tested all of the bridge stuff yet. I’d love it if you did test the bridge architecture with the apps Simonon. Okay. On your map. So yeah,Simone Collins: I’ll mark that as my task for tomorrowMalcolm Collins: 2011. Oh, sorry. The bridge. We have a bridge app you need to download, so like, it won’t work on phones, but it allows it to do stuff like run programs on your computer. Mm-hmm. In 2011, legal scholar Ann Tweedy publishes polyamory as a sexual orientation, arguing it could qualify for protected status. So 2011 was the first time somebody said, sort of legally, academically, we could fight for polyamory in the same way we fight for gays.Simone Collins: But that was [00:35:00] pretty late. 2011 was, you know, that’s a long time after the 1980s when this concept first emerged.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then in 2015 during the Ogre Feld verse Hodges Supreme Court decision, it was widely said no. Like polyamory is never gonna be on a table as part of this movement mid 2010s growing media, academic discussion of polyamory in queer spaces, quote unquote EEG querying polyamory, but no major push for it yet.Fall 2020. Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition or plac forms a coalition of lawyers, psychologists, and academics, including Harvard Law School LGBTQ plus advocacy clinic. Its mission explicitly includes ending discrimination based on relationship structure, seeing legal re recognition for multiple partner families.And after that, they rapidly began winning it. The. Massachusetts Somerville became the first US city to pass a [00:36:00] multi-partner domestic partnership ordinance. Whoa.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So youSimone Collins: can that they would that sounds about right.Malcolm Collins: Right. Then March, 2021, Cambridge, Massachusetts passes a similar ordinance. March, 2023 summer mill is the first US municipality to pass a non-discrimination ordinance related to family structure and relationship structure, explicitly carving out fault, the polyamorous families 2024 Berkeley and, and ca pass ordinances, adding family relationship structure as a protected class 2025 to 2026.A wave of similar efforts on the West Coast. Examples include West Hollywood, Los Angeles areas. Finally, this anti-discrimination protection. Of polyamorous couples at Portland, Oregon, Olympia, Washington, Washington, et cetera. So you can see this is, this has become mainstream in, in leftist circles.Mm-hmm.And I think that’s good [00:37:00] because I want to teach my children about these temptations as a bundle. Both to de-stigmatize the allure of, oh, this is different. But also to de-stigmatize, oh, you’re horrible if you feel this. You know, some people just feel this way. It’s up to you whether you think that it will improve your quality of life to act on those feelings.Mm-hmm.And whether or not you can act on a feeling is in part downstream of your addictive qualities. Right. Like, how much is it’s just going to eat your life the moment you engage in it once.Simone Collins: Yeah. Quick aside, like what’s the difference between being polyamorous and being a dude? Like, don’t, most guys like, wouldn’t the majority of men if given the option, prefer a marriage in which they were allowed to have as many partners as they wanted?Malcolm Collins: I mean, I’m in a marriage like that, right. And yeah.Simone Collins: Well, and I think most men, [00:38:00] and, and I will be clear, we have close friends who are female and polyamorous. I’m not saying it’s like majority a male thing, but like, isn’t the majority of men just, you know. Just Polly and I, part of the reason why I think there’s been so much reticence about,Malcolm Collins: no, that’s one of the points I’ve been making is I think young men believe this because they haven’t been in a long-term committed relationship with kids.If you asked me this when I was younger, I would say yes. Okay. ‘cause younger I felt that way. Now that I have five effing kids, I don’t feel that way, right? Mm-hmm. That I’m around a lot, and I mean, biologically, that makes sense. Am I in just sort of like, oh, I’m in an environment where women are casually breeding with me, then I should breed as many of them as possible, right?Like historically, that makes sense, right? Mm-hmm. However, historically it also makes sense. Oh, I have a committed partner in five children. Yeah. I probably am just gonna make things worse for myself if I start seeking out other partners.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. [00:39:00] So you think that human biology basically has a. I don’t know, a tendency to kind of lean into whatever seems to be working well.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. From a reproductive fitness perspective yeah. And it, it, it probably has various gauges for determining what’s working well. Mm-hmm. I mean, there’s a reason why I think people who might be in long-term committed relationships, but don’t have kids still see polyamory as a desirable lifestyle.What I’ve noticed is my friends who are polyamorous and have kids generally stop yeah.That’reSimone Collins: right, evenMalcolm Collins: who are very aggressive promoters of polyamory. Once they get a few squids around, they’re like, mm-hmm. Don’t want that anymore.Simone Collins: That’s reduce. I mean, I think also that like the presence of young kids is it kind of busts sex drive.I think this is one of the reasons also why wet nurses were so popular in the [00:40:00] past. Because it was kind of understood that if you had, if you were in close contact with kids, like there would probably be less sex. That I think that that reduces interest. Yeah, that makes sense. So, you know, like send away the kids, send them to the farm with the woman, with the, the, the novels and it will all be fine.I don’t know. Humans be weird.Malcolm Collins: Humans be weird. I am all for this trend. I love that progressives are eating this pill themselves. Let them eat it. Right? This is where we need progressive society to go. You know, the, the, well, I meanSimone Collins: I’m, I’m very interested in like this, this ultra high fertility subsets of gay, lesbian and polyamorous cultures that end up surviving.Like the lesbians who actually do like, let’s double up pregnancies and like spam children and the gays who like develop the artificial wombs.Malcolm Collins: It will be interesting to see I, I, I cannot comment. I mean, look, if guys are like, well, you know. Gay relationships are always going to be inefficient for X, Y, and Z.I’m like, [00:41:00] but you know, hold on, like, check this out. Right? What if we could like engineer people to be gay? Right? And you know, birthing was all done through pods or something like that, right? Like, and then we didn’t need women anymore. Wouldn’t society be like, dramatically more efficient? Like just think about voting maps of like, if only men voted versus if only women voted right?Like, we’re cooked because women are putting their thumb on the scale of civilization. Right?Simone Collins: I mean, it would be interesting to see, I really would love to see natural experiments of, you know, this is a place that is like, you know, only, only female run and occupied and other spaces that are only male owned and occupied and run.And you, you had that a little bit. In mining towns, like early Telluride for example, was probably 95% were super efficient in early Telluride. I know, I know. So maybe you had it a little bit then. But they were too small, too [00:42:00] isolated and too early for us to really use that for like that much four chan for Chan versus, but Tumblr was also massively influential.That’s what you know, so I don’t know if that’s a great example.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Massively influential on groups. That became very inefficient. The groups that Fortune ended up influencing became very culturally dominant.Simone Collins: Yeah, fair enough. Well, I love you very much. I love you too. And I’ll make you steak with forage ramp butter for dinner.Malcolm Collins: Yes. You’ve been foraging ramps in the local park and making ramp butter to eat with steak.Simone Collins: I’m no, no.Malcolm Collins: And do not forget to toast the Hawaiian buns with butter on it.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, I figure you want me to just toast them and give you softened ramp butter to put on them?Malcolm Collins: No. I would toast them with the butter,Simone Collins: with ramped butter on them and melt it intoMalcolm Collins: them.Yeah. Yeah. Don’t you typically toast buns with butter?Simone Collins: Yeah, but plain butter, I don’t know how the ramps are gonna toast.Malcolm Collins: You could always have more ramps. They’re [00:43:00] no such thing as too much ramps, Simone.Simone Collins: Okay. Sure. I mean, I’ll, I’ll toast it with the ramp butter on it then.Malcolm Collins: I mean, I like eating ramps raw, so like, obviously people don’t know.It’s a, it’s a, this is ramp season in, in Pennsylvania. If you’re on the northeast coast of the United States. And you are not harvesting ramps this season. You need toSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: What’s wrongSimone Collins: with you?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what’s wrong with you? Don’t, you know, the new hipster thing is to,Simone Collins: to forge theMalcolm Collins: ramps.Simone Collins: Yeah. It just, it, it’s just, it’s, they’re just there like we’re, we’re out there like, you know, digging them up and people are just walking by, like whatever.Same with wine berries. They’re just there to, to take. Yeah. Do you know how much people pay for these in stores and they’re just there?Speaker 4: See this? I got this selling corn comes out of the f*****g ground. I couldn’t believe it.You see that it’s made of chicken. [00:44:00] It’s actually made of chicken. You kill it, you’ve got free chicken. You can sell it to people or don’t kill it. F*****g eggs come out their asses F*****g al.Simone Collins: I don’t get it. We’re, we’re doomed. Society’s, doomedMalcolm Collins: society. The, the wine berries one is really crazy. ‘cause these are like really tasty raspberry variants.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They’re all over where we live.And the other people here, it’s like they do not see them. They will walk by a bush.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like literally, like the paths are, are just lined with them, overflowing with these berries.Malcolm Collins: And my guess is it’s just ‘cause so many people who live here are Indian immigrants they, they don’t know about them or they have a different culture around foraging.I mean, keep in mind our ancestors,Simone Collins: I know I, I watch white people walk by way more than like the immigrant population in this area. And when, like for example some of our Indian neighbors walk by. As we were and we’re like, it’s Ramsey. And they’re like, oh yeah, no, it’s great. Like they, they know,Malcolm Collins: oh, they knowSimone Collins: it’s Ramey Good food, Indians, no [00:45:00] good food.Don’t you even but it, it’s, I I I blame the white people. I don’t know what I, I mean, I don’t even know where ramps are native to the wine. Berries are Japanese invasive species, soMalcolm Collins: there’s so much better than raspberries, though. The local, they’re cult bar of raspberries are not nearly as tasty as the wineries.Simone Collins: I know, I know. It’s a, a true fact. I don’t know what to say.Malcolm Collins: Anyway I love talking to you. I hope our fans have a spectacular day. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, try our fab. The new agent feature is pretty good.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. And if you want over. I think it’s over 80 now. Certainly over 70 bonus episodes.Or a new episode every weekend. Today. In addition to what you get during weekdays, this is why I’m so, you can become a paid subscriber on Substack and Patreon. And yeah, buy this man a nap, please. SomeoneMalcolm Collins: freaking hate you.Simone Collins: I love you much.Malcolm Collins: I love you. I, I don’t think we’re gonna do two episodes today.I’m just too tired. I’m not, I’m not on my game. I’m sorry. I needed to take a nap today [00:46:00] and I just haven’t had the time. ISimone Collins: know, I know. Okay. Well, I’ll go make you dinner now. Maybe you can go to bed crazy early. You want to do that?Malcolm Collins: I’d love to try that.Simone Collins: All right, let’s do it. It’s on I’ll go down now.I love you.Malcolm Collins: By the way, what do you think now? Do you agree with my take on the polyamory thing like that? It, we should see it as the same as being gay, same type of thing?Simone Collins: Yeah. It, yeah, it’s, it’s a very strong, probably, you know, biologically built based, like inbuilt preference for how you conduct your sexuality. So, yeah. I, it makes sense to me.Malcolm Collins: All right. Well, I love you to death alone. You are a wonderful woman, and thank you for your time. Somebody in the comment said that you are so elegant as a wife and they just do not see elegant well, like, well thought through sane women talking about things.Simone Collins: That’s very kind.Malcolm Collins: If you, if you want other good, conservative married couples, [00:47:00] I mean, they don’t call themselves conservatives, all of them, but they freaking are. Mm-hmm. Clownfish TV is pretty good and daring is pretty good. Just,Simone Collins: yeah, there’s, there’s a decent number of, I mean, I, you, you know, I also watch very leftist couples FunMalcolm Collins: Fridays.YouSimone Collins: Lie Love Funny Fridays, I love Bundy. Fridays. I love what are they? The, the ex-Mormon couple that talks about, they’re not aMalcolm Collins: couple.Simone Collins: No, you’re thinking self on a shelf. I’m thinking about they both have long blonde hair.Malcolm Collins: I don’t know who you’re talking about.Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m so sorry. I forgot their names.There’s, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of cute couples out there. Of course we’ve got, you know, the Neman, the ballerina farm family,Malcolm Collins: whichSimone Collins: I love. Yes. I love, I love to watch them because they’re nerdy. The the God, the husband’s name, I, I always forget his, his name. And I’m so sorry, but like his Instagram handle is literally hog fathering that he just wanted to have a pig farm.You know, here he is the, you know, the Scion of the jet flu empire. He [00:48:00] just wants his pig pig farm. And he is like really stoked and like all of his Instagram reels are like, look at my cows, look at my pigs, look at my kids. And like, he just loves his life and he is nerdy about it. And they got like a Roomba.For their, their cow area. And it like moves the poop around and it’s cute. And he’s just like, look at this. It’s so cool. Look, here’s a new baby cow. And you know, just, I love, yeah, it’s, it’s cute when couplesMalcolm Collins: find their thing. You’re such a nerd, Simone, that you watch this stuff on TikTok or wherever you’reSimone Collins: not on TikTok.Oh, no, no, no, no.Malcolm Collins: I love you.Simone Collins: Only the Insta. I love you too. Bye.Malcolm Collins: Pray for steak ramp steakSimone Collins: ramp steak ramp SteakMalcolm Collins: River extra ramps this time. And feel free to use the whole ramp in these ones, not just the leaves.Simone Collins: Are you sure?Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. It’ll, it’ll, and allSimone Collins: wrap out recipes. It really, you know,Malcolm Collins: it says only the leaves.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’ll create a stronger flavor. And I felt that the flavor was a little weak was the last one you made. I would do like three x, but I think with the leaves you [00:49:00] can do two x and I mean with the roots. Okay. Save the roots for another day. ‘cause I like the roots on the own a lot too. You know?And we can do Bullock tomorrow.Simone Collins: Let’s do that. I wanna ma, I wanna stretch ‘em out. Got my hands dirty for that. Okay. Bye.Malcolm Collins: Dig through the dirt like a dog,Simone Collins: like some kind of their husband. Yeah. AnimalMalcolm Collins: dressed in your traditional outfit. It looks so cute. With all the kids around basket. Yeah.Simone Collins: Like what are you doing? Okay.Malcolm Collins: You know, heSimone Collins: ever really off TV just spontaneously while studying today. It’s like, I love Daddy just randomly says things like that. Well, toasty so sweet too. He’ll just, has he ever just sitting next to you or something, been like, daddy, I kind of love you. He doesn’t [00:50:00] say I love you. I mean, he’ll say that too, but he often is just like, oh, you’re muted.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So, Tosi does say that to me all the time. The, I love you from toasts. Sweet. That’s it. Sweet.Simone Collins: Or, I kind of love you. I kind of love you.Malcolm Collins: I was thinking of a very interesting idea that I’m gonna bake into a full episode.But I want your thoughts so you can, you can gimme your thoughts. Trump derangement syndrome, like what? Actually causes it.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: With a focus on, I’ve noticed some people who are otherwise fairly right wing get Trump derangement syndrome. And a lot of the theories I have around Trump derangement syndrome focus on why do left wingers get Trump derangement syndrome.Simone Collins: Yeah. But not why, why are people on the right getting it right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was just sort of thinking from the comments of short fat o taco on our last video where it’s very clear like he, he was unable to see positive things Trump had done.Simone Collins: But you said, well, I, sorry. What he said was, I’ve always been a leftist.I was [00:51:00] never on the right. So.Malcolm Collins: Okay. I’ve, I mean, I guess, sort of it felt like he was part of the wider community that was moving to the right in his ideology. Mm. He just never, I guess, well, actually what I realized about him, and I might even do a, a full video on this ‘cause it’s really interesting.Is he was really proud of the fact that he hadn’t updated any of his views as new information had come out. And, and things had changed. And like, like my positions are always the same, and I’m like, well, that’s not like something to brag about, right? Like I’m, I’m proud that as I got new information my worldview and perspective changed on things like trans issues, religion and immigration.I used to be pro immigration, but that’sSimone Collins: in the game of political opposition that’s frequently framed as flip-flopping and considered a dangerous thing to do, which of course is crazy. I mean, and in our intellectuals circles or whatever, people talk about it like, this is great, you know? Oh, strong convictions loosely held, they like to say.So it’s seen as [00:52:00] this big virtue signaler in certain circles, but I think in the mainstream. World changing. Your view is considered to be flip-flopping and bad.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And that he is somebody who is very interesting, almost like anthropologically. Interesting because his innate world perspective was literally just what was trendy for progressives to believe in the nineties.And a lot of that group, like that group basically went in two directions. Like one group went the woke direction, which is how can I use this to like dunk on X, Y, and z outgroups. And then the other group just kept true seeking and updated their views as they gained access to new information. Right.Yeah. And he’s this like weird third path of like, and after that, I just never had a new idea again. Which is interesting.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I will get started here. [00:53:00] Mm-hmm.Speaker 5: But where is the lock?Speaker 6: It’s in the block. It’s in the one block here. What do you think? And. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this deep-dive episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins examine the provocative claim that gender dysphoria—the intense, modern experience driving today’s trans movement—has no precedent in recorded human history before the 1920s.They contrast historical examples of cross-dressing, third-gender roles, or gender-nonconforming behavior (two-spirit, hijra, sworn virgins, Elagabalus, etc.) with the core modern trans experience: profound discomfort with one’s birth sex that often leads to demands for medical transition, pronoun changes, and access to single-sex spaces.Malcolm and Simone argue that gender dysphoria resembles culture-bound syndromes like anorexia—intensely felt but socially influenced, disproportionately affecting autistic individuals, emerging around puberty, and exploding via social contagion and media stories.They respond to critics like Short Fat Otaku (Dev), discuss the shift from 1990s liberal “live and let live” assumptions, the role of bad actors, sports/prisons/restrooms, detransition, and why new evidence (Cass Review, WPATH files, UK data) demands updating views. Simone shares her personal experience with anorexia to illustrate how real these feelings feel even when culturally shaped.A data-driven, empathetic, and unflinching conversation on human flourishing, consent, and ideological capture.If you’re interested in history, psychology, culture-bound illnesses, or the trans debate, this episode is essential.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going deeper down a rabbit hole that I have pulled on in the past, but I was called back to it by an episode I watched of the rapidly declining in viewers short fat Orta. I, I think we now do better than him in terms of, of view count by probably like 20%.That’s insane. Which is pretty exciting because I used to really like him in his videos and he sort of got, he, he actually represents a, a wider phenomenon that I wanted to grab onto on this topic because he, in its recent video, he was critical of leaflets debate performance, whereas almost everyone else says that she won dramatically.I even had this moment where he’s like, I think she lost the trans debate she was having. And I was like, to go to an AI and be like, is it general? What’s the general consensus on who won this debate? And it’s like overwhelmingly leaflet. And it, and then it went through all of the reasons. It was overwhelmingly Lisa.So I was like, okay, just checking on that crazy.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Just so yeah. To, to even override your, your bias still.Malcolm Collins: But [00:01:00] he said one thing that really got under my skin at the beginning because a trans person was saying to somebody who was in this debate that was happening on X you know, we were here before you and we will be here after you.And then his response to went viral was like, this is true. And, and he then says, trans people have been reported in human history since, you know, across cultures since the beginning of time. And this is. Factually not true. And I actually don’t even really blame short fat Otaku for not knowing this because this is just, he’s not a historian.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, it’s something that’s not widely known and yet is claimed with a lot of confidence by the trans community. And if you don’t double check, because you, you’ll be broadly aware, like if you’re aware of history, you will be aware that throughout human history and a lot of different cultural context where people will take on alternate gender roles where sometimes people cross dress in [00:02:00] history yeah.Where people would act like a man or a female at different points in history.Speaker 2: The Fall of Rome.Joe Rogan had this to say on his podcastSpeaker 3: fascinating that the end of empires, they get really concerned with gender and hermaphroditesSpeaker 2: the Roman fem boy. Fully grown and willing to take on the role of a common Roman woman. Even the emperor himself donned girly outfits, mascara, and held many chamber parties . The Roman Senate began having debates to determine if quote, being with a fem boy was a totally gay thing. After all,Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so you take that and you then just are like, yeah, of course. I’ve heard like three or four instances of that happening in history that I can just think of off the top of my. But that’s not what the modern trans movement is.The modern and even the core complaint of the modern trans movement is gender dysphoria. This really, really intense discomfort with your birth, gender [00:03:00] to the extent that you may want to unlive yourself, right? Like, you, you cannot live a mentally healthy life as your birth gender. It is something that is constantly eating at you if you, if you don’t transition this phenomenon literally.Nowhere in history before the year 1920.Speaker: And you may wanna say, well, Malcolm, that’s pretty nitpicky. So you’re saying that there have been alternate gender presentation throughout history, but there’s never been dysphoria recorded in history. , Why does that matter? Right. And it’s like, well,, if it turns out that dysphoria is a modern cultural phenomenon, if dysphoria is not actually part of the human condition, then most trans arguments immediately fall apart.The idea of I can’t be mentally healthy without doing this because of what? Because of the distress I feel when I’m. Displaying my birth gender. If you say, well, that distress is a cultural artifact and would probably better off removing the cultural artifact than,, a, a attempting [00:04:00] to address it through major surgery,that falls apart And if you can say, well, if the people in Historia, , you know, lived as other genders but didn’t feel dysphoria, then why they do it?And it’s like, well, we actually have a very good record. , Most of the time it was either like a woman wanted to live as a. Father in like a church and like a, this is sort of lifestyle. , Or did she wanted to fight in a war and women weren’t allowed to fight in wars during that period. , Or, , she wanted to pursue a gay relationship and women weren’t allowed to pursue gay relationships in that period., Or. With guys. , It’s often they were cross-dressers. Cross-dressing is something we see recorded throughout history. Even today. To conflate somebody who is a cross-dresser with a trans person is extremely offensive to both the trans community and the community of Crossdressers. They are not the same thing.Wanting to dress up and talk like a woman sometimes is not the same thing as. Being trans. So, , if you say, oh, well in history we have [00:05:00] cross dressers, but no trans people, that’s a significantly different thing That removes most of the motivation for like why we need to gender someone correctly. Gender dysphoria.Why do I need to use that restroom? Gender dysphoria? Why do I need to be on the sports team? Gender dysphoria.But if we’re looking to history and all we have is sometimes I like cross-dressing, then it’s why do I have to play on this girl’s sports team? Because I like cross-dressing. It’s like, oh no, that’s stupid. No, we can’t let you on the sports team just because you like cross-dressing. If gender dysphoria is a cultural artifact, that is the center stone that the entire trans community relies onTo demand they, one, be seen as their preferred gender. And two, gain access to safe spaces that would otherwise be referred for people who were born, that gender. , Andalso just to head this off at the beginning of this. , We do not think that they are faking feeling gender dysphoria or the [00:06:00] severity of the gender dysphoria. They are. They feel, , we suspect with a lot of evidence that we’ve gone over in other episodes that gender dysphoria. Is very similar to other forms of body dysphoria, which are associated with culture bound illnesses.These are psychological conditions that only happen within certain cultures, within certain periods of history, and people are unable to catch unless they are aware of them with the most famous being anorexia. And again, you can see a lot of similarities. Age of onset around puberty, gender distribution.More girls than guys, , key characteristics hits autists more than the general population, , associated with intense body dysmorphia. , And Simone, as somebody who. Went through that, and we’re gonna see this throughout this episode, can really empathize with how real this feels. But if it is a culture bound illness, the way that we need to address it is [00:07:00] entirely different than the way our society is addressing it right now.If we actually care about the people who are suffering from it.Malcolm Collins: and there are two maybe cases but both of them are really bad. We’ll go into them in a bit. Just to briefly touch on them, one is a Jewish rabbi from 600 years ago who wrote a poem poem, wrote poem about like, wouldn’t it have been better to be born a woman?And we’ll go through the poem and everything like this. And just to sort of give, give away the thing there, it’s, that poem is considered within Jewish thought for 600 years up until the year 2000. Not a single scholar. It’s a very famous poem. Thought that it wasn’t satirical. In fact, it was considered almost prototypical or a, an excellent example, often used of Jewish humor from that period.So not a single scholar or rabbi for 600 years thought it was anything other than a joke.Simone Collins: Well, even it wasn’t a joke though. I, I don’t think that that could even [00:08:00] necessarily be seen as gender dysMalcolm Collins: dysphoria. It was a joke. It was written as a joke. It sat down.Simone Collins: No, but even if it wasn’t as, someone could just be like, well, practically, I’d rather be born a woman, especially during a time of war if they’re like, I’d rather not die in a war.But that’sMalcolm Collins: not what the poem was. It wasn’t like that. It was a joke. It was written in a book of jokes. Okay. The other things in this book were mostly jokes.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: really? Okay. Oh my gosh. It was satire. Okay. It’s not like a, oh, you could interpret this in various ways. It’s very clear what was intended by it.Mm-hmm. The only other example we have in history is potentially a gaba. A Roman emperor who based on one account asked the doctors if he could have a vagina sewed onto him to become a woman, and he would dress up like women. The problem is, is that this one account was extremely hostile to him.And all historians always like basically, you know, if you go back and you read the [00:09:00] historian literature and we’ll go into this a bit deeper, I just wanna set this up to begin with. They agree. And then, then this is the academic consensus that a lot of this was slanders made up about him, about of people who didn’t like him.And even if you do bite the bullet on a gula you are basically saying. I, I could just go into this a little bit. He’s like one of the Yeah, please. People in human history. He would do things like cut off people’s members and then feed them to like snakes and birds and stuff like that as part of, oh my god, religious ritual.He made up, he would give people government positions based on the size of their members. He was the one who was favored. He had a fixation before the gladiatorial games releasing snakes on the crowd just to watch them freak out. He liked to, as a hobby, throw gold a crowd so people would trample each other.At one point he dropped so many flower petals on a party, a bunch of people suffocated. He oh, [00:10:00] love was super gay, very into you know, having a, a gay main lover. So the, the reality is, is even if you accept that this guy is trans and a historic example of it, he is. Like, that’s your historic prototype of the modern trans community, right?Yeah. Which really leans into the trans stereotype that like Freedom Tunes hasSpeaker 8: So three turfs are on a beach and they find a genie. All right, let me stop you right there. Are these women gonna get murdered by you?I swear. You’re gonna like the sun.Speaker 7: Fine, fine. Okay, go ahead.Speaker 8: They rub the lamp and the genie comes out. Right,Speaker 7: right, right.Speaker 8: And the genie is me and I murder them all.Speaker 7: Okay. Do you see how that’s just you murdering people again?Speaker 8: No. No, because the genie also says, I love Cat boy.Speaker 7: Mm, no.Malcolm Collins: With that trans comic, which you know, it’s something you see. We have [00:11:00] our episodes where, like you, you do see disproportionate violence sexual arousal from, from trans individuals. And we go into why that might be the case.You see this in Alist studies. It’s was well studied in early trans communities. But we’re gonna go into those a little bit. We’re gonna go into all of the different cross cultural things that people say are trans because they’re not.Speaker 5: You gotta understand what a big deal this is as a data point. We’re talking about literally all of recorded human history. And you could be like, well, maybe they didn’t write it down because it was societally looked down upon it the time and it’s like. Doesn’t work. We have so many, so many records of gay people throughout history.We have so many records of other things that were taboo in society. We have James Joyce talking about how he’s turned on by farts. Not once did anyone think to say, I don’t like my birth gender. Right. Like they’re, they’re willing , to, in a society that will kill you for doing it, sleep with a guy and write long love poetry, but never once write down in the private [00:12:00] journal.I’m just not happy with the gender I was born as that is a massive data point. , And keep in mind we don’t even see an instance of this in cultures that accept people taking on roles that are gender nonconforming. We don’t see a single instance of this. So even where it isn’t discriminated against, no one ever thought to once in human history until the 1920s put a pin to page and say, I’m not happy with my birth gender.And keep in mind how shocking this is when you contextualize it in the context of how much trans people say that dysphoria affects them in their daily lives, how painful it is to them, how top of mind it is for them in every single human interaction they have. If anyone historically was feeling this, of course, somebody.Keep in mind right now we’re looking at like 1.5% of the population or something as trans. You think nobody would’ve written that down ever, ever, ever. That’s completely [00:13:00] implausible.And I want to notice here with the egabla case here, which is the strongest historical case we have of somebody feeling that way. He never even actually says that. He just seems to be debauchery, maxing and thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if I had another sex hole? Right. Like that’s literally what I’m reading from a egabla.So with that being the case I, I think you, you, you’re really making quite an astonishing claim to say nobody thought to ever write this down. Nobody thought to ever write it in a private journal. No one thought to ever have it in a private diary. With everything we know about human history, that is absolutely astonishing to me.And to me it means. With like, like you think even accidentally somebody would’ve been, even if, even if dysphoria isn’t a phenomenon, somebody might just have like felt this way because they were abused in some sort of weird way that led to this you know, a convergently looking outcome. But no, to not take this data seriously [00:14:00] is to just not be taking reality seriously.Malcolm Collins: So that really annoyed me because I was like, come on, like Deb, I, I, I, and I think that Deb’s the type of person that if he just dug into the evidence on this, he would stop making such an easily disprovable claim.Mm. That, that something that looks like modern gender dysphoria existed anywhere else in history or in any other culture. Okay. But the second thing he does, which I think is even more fascinating, and it’s the entire perspective that he argues from, which is, he went up there and he is like, no reasonable person believes that when you transition your gender, you magically turn into a woman, right?Uhoh. And of course he was, didSimone Collins: they not tell himMalcolm Collins: throttled on X? With many comments getting like five x of the likes of his comment, telling everyone that the guy, the demon, how could he say this about trans people? You know, don’t you know that trans people are actually women? It was. Extremely aggressive.Speaker 11: I posted Nobody reasonable actually thinks that [00:15:00] trans women metamorphos into biological females. The ask is not believe that men or women, it’s don’t be an a*****e. You don’t have to like trans people. You do have to leave them alone. And just so we’re clear here, I’m completely correct on this. I might have received a lot of blowback, but I’m not backing down from any of it.I don’t care how big of a hoard of people showed up to complain. They’re all wrong, and I’m right. In fact, there were two hoards of people. The first hoard was left wing deranged, trans activists who hopped in to say that HRT does, in fact turn trans women into biological females and saying anything otherwise is transphobic.In fact, according to this crowd, if you side with trans women on every reasonable policy prescription with regards to their individual liberties, but you refuse to believe they become female, then you’re exactly the same as a bigoted right winger trying to force them back into the closet. These people are delusionalMalcolm Collins: mm-hmm. And this brings up the second thing I wanna get into, which is like the dev perspective, the last nineties liberal out there. Right. And a lot of us were nineties liberals, whether it’s JK [00:16:00] Rowling or US or a, any number of other people who have since updated their opinions on this. Even leaflet, I think previously would’ve been you know, Protran and the reason we were protran isn’t dissimilar for the reasons that Dev is still arguing today.It was, we’re like, well, no reasonable person would if we tried to give trans people more rights. Start using women’s restrooms start a, allow anyone to just say I’m a woman and get into a woman’s prison compete in women’s sports. Like no reasonable person would do that. So we can give the trans community these rights and they will self-police because they know that they’ll lose these rights if they don’t self-police around these issues.Right,Simone Collins: right. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And what we all learned is we were wrong.Simone Collins: Whoops.Malcolm Collins: They,Simone Collins: they impossible that it wasn’t the case. There was this vision of just like, just let people live their lives. You know, just let them live. And [00:17:00] it’s fine. And it will be fine. And there was this assumption that you, you wouldn’t really have bad actors in this great world because if someone went off the rails, they’d be doing it in their own little controlled destination box.You know, it wouldn’t bother us, it wouldn’t affect other people. We would never fathom that someone would be like. No, this means that I should be allowed to go into, like, as a man into women’s prisons. Like we just never would’ve imagined.Malcolm Collins: That’s crazy what we, what we imagined is yes, some random psycho may say something like that.Some random psycho may say, oh, no one wouldSimone Collins: listen to them. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. But the entire trans community wouldn’t then get up in arms and support them and make their. Perv dreams and actual reality, right? Like, that, that when it came out that something like, you know, we often point out that the tram swimmer who’s, who’s super famous that she was flashing her genitals to girls in a girl’s locker room where it’s not even normal for girls to fully undress, [00:18:00] as we pointed out, that’s not normal in modern changing rooms.And hasn’t been for a long time. And schools are even designed with this in mind these days. So this is just like intentionally using this opportunity to flash people. And then later a bunch of you know, I, I, I don’t wanna get into all of that, but yeah, it was clear that this was an individual who just wanted to flash people, right?They, they, they didn’t then turn on this individual. We were like, well, obviously you’re not gonna be one of our leaders or archetypes of what it means to be trans. But they didn’t, and this is when a lot of us who were just sort of, I guess the normies out there, we were like, oh. I’m sorry. Like we, we gave you the knife to do a responsible thing with it, and then you went out and started stabbing people.Right? And death is interesting because he even sees in his own comments on X that the bad actors have control of the ship, right? Like when you see somebody like Kamala using public funds to do gender reassignment [00:19:00] for people in prison, you know, tax dollars, it could be going to homeless people to gender reassignment in prison.You’re like, oh, the people who are in control of the ship. These people go with the extreme take the take that he said, no reasonable person. And Mo most of the people who, who had this original like liberal perspective on this or libertarian perspective on this went for. We’ve adopted our views.The question is, is why hasn’t he? And the answer is twofold, and he basically gives it in the video. Answer number one is he thinks, and a lot of people think that simply because if everyone was reasonable, this, giving them these rights and giving them these interpretations of gender would work.We collectively, culturally, should do this. Okay. And it’s a really sad perspective because it’s like, [00:20:00] yes, I, I I want to operate society as if everyone is sane and well-meaning when that’s not the case. And so, it’s almost a, a weird sort of Deon, Deon liberal deontology, right? Like, what is moral is what you would do in a society where people don’t act like people, but that’s what leads you to horrors, like communism and stuff like that, right?Like in a, in a society where everyone was reasonable and responsible and had self-control, communism works, right? But we don’t live in that world.Speaker 12: And he commented on our last video first I’m aware that he’s commented on one of our videos where we mentioned that his, his viewership has dropped because he is seen as sort of betraying the wider movement that we are all part of, which has become the new right. Which drifted through internet culture.And he’s like, well, I never changed my views. I never became a conservative. I’ve always been a classical liberal. I never was anti-trans, and I’m just. Baffled, but I’m not, [00:21:00] we’re not criticizing you for changing your views. We’re criticizing you for not changing your views as new evidence came out.Right? Like we all had those views back then. When I watched your videos, when I loved your channel I had all the perspectives you had. I was seeking truth. I wanted a better world. And I believed that, you know, oh, well we give these people. These additional rights and they will use them responsibly and society will work.And then it was the same with things like immigration. Oh, we can just take people from other countries, bring them to our country, and it’ll work, and they’ll become just like us. And then with both of these instances, we’re like, oh, okay, well clearly this is not work or whatever. One who was here because we were interested in what was reasonable is like, oh, well, clearly this isn’t working, so now we need to address this.I take much more pride in my views that I have changed than in my views that have stayed the same, and I’m beginning to sort of. [00:22:00] Wonder or realize, was Dev ever actually on that journey with us? And this faction of people who’d say are like still classic nineties liberals or whatever did they ever really care about what was in the best interest of society or did they have like a religious belief in what was the most common?Cultural belief system of progressives in the nineties. And just as society has changed around them and certain things that we assumed were true back then have been proven untrue they’re just like, but I refuse to change any of my views because this is what was true in the nineties. This is what any reasonable person thought in the nineties, that we can just have as many immigrant systems as we thought, which I thought I was pro unrestricted immigration back in the day.Okay, because I, I looked at the Economist research. I looked at that and I was like, oh, this works. And new evidence has come out. We have tried it at scale. It didn’t work. Especially the uk or on trans issues where it’s like, okay, we’ll give you these rights and you will not use them to do [00:23:00] things like go and aggressively try to convert minors, like actively convert on fetish forms, right?Like if somebody was doing that, you’d try to shut that down, right? Okay, good. And then, oh shoot, somebody’s doing that. Will you guys shut it down? How dare you stop them. transphobe and or you won’t claim crazy things like you’re actually biologically women. And then he sees, oh, oh no, the people running the ship are, Hmm.That, that’s concerning. That’s gonna cause negative effects for society. And yet he’s like, but I’m religiously. I will live in the nineties. No new information. You know, Travis Duck was never shot down. We never saw that they were hiding the files showing that. Putting people on puberty blockers was increasing the risk of wanting to unlive and decreasing their mental health that this was wide scale throughout the trans industry.We saw in the WPATH files. I never updated my beliefs after that. I only operate on nineties research that was [00:24:00] done largely by clinics that made their moneyoff of gender transitioning people. And I think that this is really sad that people like Kim will go cite the research and I’m like, was that research done by researchers who made their living off of transitioning people? Okay. Do you understand how that might be compromised? And we might need to look at other sources of evidence.It is important and I, I feel like even if you disagree with us, that you take time to understand that when it comes to the anti-trans position of the majority of the leading intellectuals for anti-trans these days, whether it’s Elon or JK Rowling or us. We do not come to this because we love tradition for the sake of tradition, because we are attached to traditional gender roles because, , we want some old religious hierarchy in place., If anything, we’re kind of on the opposite team. We come to this because we wanted a better society and we got new information. And it’s the new information [00:25:00] that must be dealt with, not the, oh, you’re just taking away our rights because you hate us.Obviously that’s not true. All of us had trans friends.Malcolm Collins: Second he has friends, close friends who are trans and are,Simone Collins: is, is this something he’s mentioned explicitly or is this is an as an assumption.Malcolm Collins: He mentions this repeatedly in the video.This is okay. And I can really understand if you have close friends who fall into a specific demographic that is in a systemic way acting bad, right? On a, on a, on a global stage you could be like, I, I really don’t want this friend of mine to have to suffer. They’re a nice person, right? But the problem is, is.By taking the action that you are taking, many, many more people who are not your friend end up suffering much, much more, right? Whether it is the people who end up well being [00:26:00] assaulted, which happened just recently near us in Pennsylvania. The the young trans girl who made a hit list of people in the school, and they tried to do something about it, but she had this protected status.And so then she you beat a girl and it’s really horrible. And, you know, all the warning signs were there. But trans are the people who lose their medals. They’re shot at college, they’re shot at scholarships because of this. Or the, you know, the kids who end up getting transitioned. And now we know from papers that one in 10 kids who, only if you, if you look at 14 year olds with a paper on this, it showed that only one in 10 who identifies as not their birth gender ends up still identifying as not their birth gender by the time they’re, I think, 21 or 23. And we know that this increases on alive rates by huge amounts if they end up adopting into this community.We know that going onto like when the cast report thing broke down and the, the it wasn’t the cast report, it was the Travis Duck Clinic. When it shut down, they went through the files and they found the suppressed research the WSimone Collins: [00:27:00] files, right?Malcolm Collins: Publish. It showed that going on puberty blockers increased unliving risks.We know now because puberty blockers have been blocked in the uk, that rates have not gone up. That is a huge sample size. We could have easily seen that if that was the case. It turns out that this entire thing was just. Wrong and a lie in people using captured scientific institutions to lie to people.Yeah. And you can update your beliefs on this, right? Because the point I’m making is, is you are causing real harm because you don’t want your. Friend to feel bad.Simone Collins: I mean, I think we can relate to it because we have friends who are non-binary. Not necessarily, we’ve certain met nice people who areMalcolm Collins: trans.I mean, they’re not friends anymore because of course, you know, I don’t wanna like there’s a point where you have to go out there and but I mean, for every trans friend that I’ve lost, I’ve gained more detransition friends. So like, I, the, the reality is, is I, I, I’ll tell you, the [00:28:00] harassment my detransition friends have faced from the trans community dwarfs in orders of magnitude.I mean like 10, 20 x anything, any trans friend, I have any face from anyone. That’s true.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you know this as somebody who’s had trans known trans people and detransition, it’s not even close. Like the trans community is like a very definition of bigotry in the way that they treat Detransposition PrettySimone Collins: freaking bad.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: It’s not, not good. NotMalcolm Collins: good. But well, and this is, this is how, how do I say to somebody? You have to look at the larger picture, right? And be willing to be like, I can still like this person as a person and say that we shouldn’t harass like trans adults on the streets. We shouldn’t treat them poorly, but we need to understand that there is something deeply wrong with the community as it exists right now.Yeah. And just trying to be this like moral deontologist around like, well, if everyone was reasonable in society when it’s been proven to you on your very platforms, if that’s not the case, and I’m sort of writing this video almost as if I hope Dev Washington, I’m trying [00:29:00] not to be too mean to him, right?Like, please, like, take a step back from this particular cliff. You are not helping the wider trans community by not admitting that, that we do actually need to start taking action on this issue. Mm-hmm. And it gets worse if it turns out that even your friend is suffering from something closer to a culturally bound illness, which is what we’ll be arguing with, with, with this stuff.Before I get into that, one final thing I wanted to note is an argument that I saw when I was doing some research on this to try to understand this for like women in you know, trans people joining women’s sports, right? Mm-hmm. Trans males joining women’s sports. And a lot of people get tripped up on this argument because they’ll say something like, well, Michael Phelps has like dramatically larger lungs, and like, that’s for genetic reasons, right?You know, like, why is he allowed to compete? And yet a trans person who has some like, because they had a male puberty, larger lungs or something like that, why are they not allowed to compete, right? Mm-hmm. [00:30:00] And I. When you actually think through it, the answer is fairly obvious. Suppose there was a surgery that you could get where gills were grafted onto you or you could genetically engineer some humans to be like triple muscled and be able to breathe basically underwater and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Would it be remotely fair or sporting to allow these people to compete in the men’s competition? No, nobody would do that, right? Like we,Simone Collins: we No. In the enhanced games, yes. In normal competitions, no.Malcolm Collins: No. Yes. And there is a, a version of the Olympics that’s being built for this, right? This is the reason we banned testosterone, like our performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics.This is the reason we banned EPO doping in the Olympics. This is the reason we ban many types of, like even swimwear in the Olympics because it’s gives people too much of a scientific advantage. Yeah, because that’s not the, the, the point of the Olympics. If you then created a separate category for the gill people, it would make sense for trans [00:31:00] men to compete in that category because they’re using a surgery to gain an advantage over other people.Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Speaker 3: We used to see jokes about trans people competing in sports teamsAnd being allowed in women’s changing rooms.Speaker 3: as being fundamentally anti-trans because it was seen as, so obviously an unfair thing to do.Speaker 2: Come in, dear. Have a seat. Take off your bra if you’d like.Speaker: I need to talk. See, I have this problem, I have a terrible secret.Speaker 2: Well, Cindy, we all have our little secrets.Sometimes we do things we’re not so proud of. To gain the athletic edge on the competition. Sometimes those secrets come back to hauntSpeaker: us.Simone Collins: On that,Malcolm Collins: Oh, the other thing I note about not wanting to tell a friend, like Yeah, but overall it’s bad mm-hmm. Is I would ask if, I don’t know if he does have any friends like this, but I’ve also had friends who are Scientologists, [00:32:00] right? Mm-hmm. And it made me very uncomfortable speaking negatively about the church, but the church has destroyed countless people’s lives.Simone Collins: Yeah. AndMalcolm Collins: it’s demonstrably a, a negative force in our society. Mm-hmm. And it’sSimone Collins: something that we’ve got Scientologists for whom, as far as we can tell on the outside, like, it’s worked well for them. And like you feel like, okay, well this is good for you. I’m not gonna question your choice to do this, but like on average, I would not have anyone I care about join the church.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and it makes sense to warn people about it. It just, as you warn people about gender transition at a young age, you’re normalizing this. And if I could put legal restrictions on the Church of Scientology I, they’d be similar to church. I’d be like, I would want legal restrictions that reduce the number of people coming into the church, but I wouldn’t want to punish people who are like genuine day-to-day believers.Yeah. And I think that that’s the way we should be approaching this to the question, and this was the big question in Leafless debate. It was the big question dev focused his video on is what is a woman, like, how do you define the word woman? And I largely actually [00:33:00] agree with the broader take on Deb’s perspective on this.Um mm-hmm. I keep saying Deb, that’s short fight of tacos like name which is a woman is whatever a woman is culturally conceived to be. By that particular cultural group. So from my cultural perspective that, you know, we have built for our family a woman is somebody who has the larger gat and has children.And are you like, are you saying somebody is less of a woman if they can’t have kids? And it’s like, well. Kind of the primary distinction between man and woman is made around what role they play in reproduction. Given that I think that reproduction is particularly core part of the human life cycle the role that somebody plays in terms of birthing and having kids.Yeah, I, I think that they are functionally is the 50-year-old woman who is out there sleeping around with 50 guys and having fun. There was a old actress bragging about this being at least who was 50 and, and Brett Cooper was like, what are [00:34:00] you doing? Like, and I was, I felt the same way seeing this 50-year-old like brag about this.Is she less of a woman than the 50-year-old with three kids? Yeah, she is. Okay. I know that’s an offensive thing to say in our society. But culturally that is the way I see it in the same way that culturally trans people see it differently, right? And then you can say, well, if, if culturally trans people see it differently, then.Why don’t you say, okay, you just do it culturally your way. They do it culturally their way. Mm-hmm. The reason is, is because their cultural perception. Has numerous negative externalities on the people who adopt it, both in terms of psychological health, self-worth and outcomes. And worse than that is a particularly predatory ideology, which is known for aggressively trying to find new converts in younger individuals from, you know, setting up conversion pipelines in schools, which is something we’ve seen explicitly trying to groom children, [00:35:00] which is something we have seen repeatedly.And it’s not just like the online, I often play this clip from the giggly goon files. I think it was quite good where you, you’ve seen a forum, so people talking about, oh, I’m gonna hunt children. Right? And it’s something that they do regularly for sport.Speaker 11: it’s genuinely really good grooming advice. I’ve so far sent it to four minors between the ages of 9 and 13. I hope it encourages them to transition. When the Anka Zone animation became a meme, they got excited over its virality among kids. Mana Drain and Orion also fantasized about getting kids on hormones orion was the manager , coercing him every step of the way. Has he started hormones yet? Yes, but not effectively. I guess that’s what you’d expect just telling a r to buy hormones. They bought estrogen, but no anti androgen. It would have been more fun if he started hormone blockers at like 12.Haha, isn’t that true for everyone? Don’t worry, I’ll make him into a good girl Don’t blow up our spot, bro. All t slurs are like that. You can trust me around your kid. It’d be transphobic not to. Me with daycare tots. To Orion, and many of his associates, their identity was little more than a political shield.Malcolm Collins: And it’s [00:36:00] something that we have seen.With even the Travis clinic, one of the doctors there was arrested for going to a local park and attempting to recruit kids. Like, this is a repeated phenomenon within the trans community. I didSimone Collins: not know about that. That’s wild.Malcolm Collins: And it’s not punished by the wider trans community. Once it’s caught, it has to be punished by outsiders.None of thisSimone Collins: would be, well, also, I just wanna point out, this is ancillary to our first and maybe most fundamental philosophical gripe with trans ideology, which is that it violates consent in that to be trans isn’t really so much an internal process as it is involving forcing people to externally do something against their will.They, they are obligated per your. Choice to see you and acknowledge you and refer to you by your gender of choice, even if that runs against their instincts and preferences and own [00:37:00] philoso philosophy. So what our, our big thing is like with, with most fundamental, like nineties progressive live and let be like full like approaches.Hey, as long as everyone’s consenting and, and letting people live their lives, it’s fine. But on a very fundamental level, the modern version of what it means to be trans involves revoking people’s consent because they’re now obligated to. With themMalcolm Collins: Reinforc, it’s not about being allowed to live the way you want to live.It is much closer to Catholics all of a sudden deciding they’re going to force everyone to call any priest father. And if you don’t call a priest father you get a giant online harassment campaign against you to try to get you to lose your job and potentially even legal ramifications. Yeah. I, I call trans people their preferred gender.I call priests father, even though I don’t think those things, I think it’s the polite thing to do. But if [00:38:00] Catholics decided to attempt to force everyone else to do that, I’d be like, especially against other people’s religious beliefs.Simone Collins: Yeah. Just like how, like when we went, when we travel in, in other regions where wearing a head covering is appropriate, I’ll wear a head covering, you know, like, you know, but that if someone’s forcing me to do it, that’s a very different story.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, you, you do it in those other countries often because you aren’t forced to do it. They will kill you if youdon’t.Simone Collins: Well, okay. Yeah, that’sMalcolm Collins: And is very much the way the trans community acts, right? Like, ohSimone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: But I wanna get, and, and when I say they’re like, oh, they won’t kill you.It’s like, well, one, look at all the mass murder trans stuff. You can see our video on that. Like Yeah, they actually will. And there have a look at the Charlie Kirk situation, right? Like, yeah, yeah. They kind of actually will. But two they will try to get you, like the online mob will try to get you fired from your job and stuff like that.Which we’ve already had happen to us. And when you have five kids or something like that, that’s taking away the family’s lifeblood, you know, that is not a trivial thing to attempt to do. And it shows [00:39:00] that even from Deb’s perspective, even he can see it. The community is owned, the culture is now owned by bad actors and by running cover for them, you are allowing countless amounts of harm on innocent people.But now I wanna go into the different cultures that have ideas that trans people claim shows that the trans phenomenon is not something that was basically made up in Germany in the 1920s. The Nazis took it down.Then we don’t see a single case of it for like. A long time. Then there was one viral news story about a trans person, and then the phenomenon explodes. And this is very similar to anorexia, which is another culture bound illness that disproportionately targets autistic people, is associated with body dysmorphia.And we have seen things like a viral story happening in Hong Kong, and then it, it explodes, or we don’t have any records of it in the United States. It exploded after a few viral stories. Th this appears to be a [00:40:00] category of culture bound illness that includes intense susceptibility by otus, involves body dysmorphia intense discomfort with who you are.And it’s something that like, we, even, like Simone suffered intense autism and almost died for, I’m sorry, intense anorexia and almost died of it. Right? Like she understands what it feels like to have body dysmorphia, right? Oh yeah. That doesn’t mean that she believes that it isn’t a culture bound illness.Right. Simone.Simone Collins: Yeah, I know. It’s crazy.Malcolm Collins: No, but I’m saying do you believe that it’s a culture bound illness? Like do you believe that just because you felt it strongly doesn’t mean that it does. It must exist in other cultures.Simone Collins: Oh, no, no. Yet it it, it’s culture bound. I, it, it is not like I was trying to conform to some kind of culture there.I don’t think it was a cultural contagion thing. I think anorexia is actually pretty universal. So maybe it’s a bad example. I’m giving you two autistic of an answer. Simon Anorexia is about control.HoldMalcolm Collins: on Simone. This is a well-studied phenomenon. Anorexia does not exist in any other human culture at any point in human history.It has been very widely studied. [00:41:00]Simone Collins: Yeah. There was no, come on. There was all the, so before it was called anorexia, it was like, oh, she’s fasting for religious purposes. And there were all these girls like.Malcolm Collins: You would’ve, no, sorry. When anorexia starts being first described in the literature mm-hmm. The people wizard look shocking to people.Okay. It is noted as nothing like anything, any of these docker have seen. It did not look like fasting for religious purposes. It did not look like being a quirky girl when you were skeletal Simone. You wouldn’t have been described in the Victorian times as quirky people would’ve described you as skeletal.Simone Collins: Well, yeah. I, I’m just saying, IMalcolm Collins: I actually think that this is really good because you have experienced basically exactly what modern trans people experience. Yeah. And you show why it’s so hard for them to accept that. It really was just their culture. And if they had been unaware of the concept of gender transition, [00:42:00] if you had been unaware of the concept of anorexia, you would not have expressed your autism in that way.Simone Collins: Maybe. Yeah. No, no, for sure. Like behaviors are typically learned and you can’t really learn a behavior if you’ve never seen it before.Speaker 17: You can learn a behavior by the way you haven’t seen before. Same sex attraction, for example. Same sex attraction exists across cultures, , that is very different from anorexia. And this conversation is so fascinating ‘cause you’re seeing in Simone’s eyes in the way she’s relating with this, she apparently was unaware that anorexia is the poster child of culture bound illnesses., And it’s very hard for her to accept that this body dysmorphia that she felt was downstream of her own culture.Malcolm Collins: So people are aware with how this works in anorexia. Basically anorexia like a big news stories will happen in an area and then you get [00:43:00] tons of cases of anorexia well, and the sameSimone Collins: happens with unscheduled life ending.Malcolm Collins: Right, but this is different because when it happens with anorexia there will not have been a single medically documented case of this for like 300 years, and then you get 50 cases in a year. The, the other most famous culture bound illness is multiple personality disorder which does not appear to be real.You, you see a movie about it or a story about it, and then a bunch of people start expressing it. But we don’t, we don’t have really robustSimone Collins: but I think, so just, sorry, not like, just in my defense I think cutting is a good example of something similar to anorexia, whereas like a shirt like these things are new, you know, but like.You had people religiously self-harming well before cutting became a trend that emerged in high schools and someone in the Victoria a era would find it to be.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but cutting bizarre. I’m aware of a lot of self-harm rituals historically.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It’s not analogous [00:44:00] because we are aware of self-harm rituals.Historically, we are not aware of something like anorexia historically. We are aware of fasting, but fasting in the way it happens with anorexia. And I think your being so perplexed by this shows how trans people must feel, right? When the evidence is so against something that felt very intuitive to you.It felt like an intuitive way to act when it was, was in your cultural landscape. And this appears to be one of the effects of autism.Simone Collins: No, no. Come on there. There were spoony in the regency era. There were, there wereMalcolm Collins: Spoony and there, but there were not anorexic.Simone Collins: Yes, there were no, I mean, okay.Malcolm Collins: Simone,Simone Collins: definitely there were no, there were def like women, especially women though.I mean, sometimes men too have been, recreationally and by their own choice choosing to restrict their calories or burn more. This, this is, oh, for example Cece, [00:45:00] the, the emperor, I’m Cii Simone because your mind hundred percent definitely anorexic and famously would eat just like broth and worked out in a weird ass gym that everyone thought was insane.Who and, and maintained very small size. Who she was one. Cece who? Empress. Cece. Like Aus emus. Cece. She was an Austrian empress. She was very famous. She’s definitely existed before the modern concept of anorexia. She was 100% anorexic. And, and even more IMalcolm Collins: this up because I think that you actually,Simone Collins: I think you are, I know, I know that you’re wrong.And I, I mean, I also get your point though, that like social contagion is a real thing and it’s also very hard to see it when it’s happening. And you wanna believe that what you’re doingMalcolm Collins: on Simon, let’s pull this up.Simone, because you don’t, you are acting like a trans person right now. You are scared about being proven wrong because you’re doing what trans people do.Malcolm, I’mSimone Collins: so happy to just lose arguments, butMalcolm Collins: no take, ISimone Collins: just, I know that I’m right.Malcolm Collins: Take a step back here. [00:46:00] Okay? Mm-hmm. I’ll explain how your argument actually shows the mental gymnastics that trans people do. Okay?Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Okay. I point out that anorexia, this becoming absolutely skeletal, not general calorie restrictions, not being quirky in how you eat, not fasting,Speaker 18: So just in case to give this away, no princesses sissi he looked nothing like the phenomenon we call anorexia today. , This happened after two of her children died. She went into a period of intense depression.And not depression. Like we talk about it when we talk about, oh, there’s a lot of comorbidity between an anorexia and depression. No, that’s teen girl stuff we’re talking about. One day her daughter died and then for the next three weeks she didn’t eat. And then she built a habit of almost never eating after that., That, that is not like modern anorexia.One of them died by [00:47:00] Unli. , It was later in her life. . She went into, , intense fasting because of her children’s deaths., This is not what anorexia looks like. This isn’t a teen girl deciding to become super skinny, right, or obsess over calorie restriction. This is a mom who lost two of her kids in quick succession, , going through some sort of like. Psychological break to even compare the two is kind of horrifying. In the same way as we’ll go over the trans stuff, a lot of the people who trans people will be like, oh, that’s a trans community.And it’s like, well, , actually this is the community that has their genitals cutoff so they look like girls so they can be sold for sex work. That’s not like. It’s kind of horrifying that you would call that a trans community in the same way that it is horrifying that Simone would correlate this woman’s [00:48:00] experiences with hers.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: anorexia becoming horrifyingly, skeletal, and freakish looking to outsiders was not a phenomenon that was recorded in history.And you hear calorie restriction in the same way that when I say gender dysphoria is not a phenomenon that was recorded in history and trans people here identifying as a different gender, their brain intentionally twists what they’re hearing into something else. So they don’t have to face the reality that they succumb to a cultural trend.But I am going to look this up because Okay. You might be right [00:49:00] Simone.So sorry to tell you this Empress cii, do you know how long she.Simone Collins: How long did she, she, well, well, like all her kids died and she lived way too long.She probably should have died young.Malcolm Collins: No. Okay. So you’ve already disproven your points when you just said all her kids died. If she had had anorexia that was like modern anorexia, she would not have been able to conceive children in the first place. Two, she lived until she was 60 and did not die from thinness.So clearly not like modern anorexia. Three. I’m aSimone Collins: functional anorexic and I’m probably not gonna die from my thinness.Malcolm Collins: You would have died at the weight you were when you were a kid. Your body shut down and you still do not produce eggs naturally because of your thinness. You were well, worse than anything Em perisi reached in her life.Speaker 20: And I wanna point out that Emperor cece was the best random [00:50:00] example that somebody with deep historical knowledge like Simone was able to think of. And Simone is a random effing person who Hannah had Auryxia, and it’s not even a big person for personality or how she sees herself. She. Had something so bad that she can never produce eggs again.And Princess Cece regularly had children. The idea that you could compare these two and be like, oh, this is a good example from history, borders on the comical.And I’d point out, as you’re seeing here, there are many pictures of her from the period she has claimed to be at her skinniest, and she does not look like an anorexic at all. , And this is really important. It’s really important because what we can see is this desperation to not have been influenced by culture.To have some historical precedent to have this be part of the human condition [00:51:00] to want to say no, , somewhere else in history, someone else did this, and when reality does not conform with this. To begin to filter all of the information that’s hitting her. Like, obviously Simone is a smart, intelligent, like, well-read, thoughtful woman. , And this psychological break of realizing. No one ever did this before, like the 1950s, this psychological break of being like, and it’s the same with her. She’s like, but there were people who practiced calorie restriction in the past, therefore there were anorexics in the past.No, there were people who presented as different genders, that specific parts of history. Therefore, there were people with gender dysphoria that mirrored modern transness. No.And recognizing this is necessary for us to make the right logical choices for society.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Three. We have lots of paintings of her that I am now looking at and they look [00:52:00] nothing like a modern case of anorexia. You wanna look up, look up pictures of her?Simone Collins: Famous, you’re vindictive. You’re so cute. There are lots of even photos of her photos, so you know, they didn’t fake. I know. I’m looking up.Yeah. She doesn’t look like a, like a co, like a commit, how do I say? Committed diehard, anorexic.Malcolm Collins: But you’re actually fascinating here because you have a condition and you went through a condition analogous to transness, Uhhuh, a culture bound illness that mm-hmm.Desperately tries to seek for validation in history. I was not just following a cultural trend and you basically crashed out tryingcause you hear something similar in history and then your brain shaves off the edges of how it wasn’t actually like what you were went throughcause if you’re dealing with an analogous. Mental disease culture bound mental disease.Mm-hmm. It can help you see it from their position betterSimone Collins: and how they grasp, I feel like I’m missing their perspective. I think you and I have [00:53:00] been as empathetic as we can be to the trans. Cause it’s just that, I guess similarly to anorexia, we’re like, Hey, this isn’t healthy. This doesn’t produce good outcomes.Maybe there are better ways this can be managed.Malcolm Collins: That’s not the point I’m making here. Okay.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: The wider point I’m making here is this is a phenomenon that started in the 1920s, not popular in the 1950s and literally is no in no other culturally nowhere else in human history. Okay? It is not a part of the human condition.It is a cultural phenomenon. Alright? And that doesn’t mean that they don’t feel it as strongly as you felt anorexia, or my family members who have had anorexia have felt anorexia. Okay? So to continue here, because now I’ll go over the various instances, but even, you can’t fully like admit like, oh my God, this is not something we see in other cultures and follows a very specific pattern within autistic populations.And you grab at things that look kind of like it and we’ll go how trans [00:54:00] communities do So let’s start with two-spirit people, because you hear this a lot.Simone Collins: Yeah.Right. Well, but also like I, I never heard about, we did so much in terms of Native American studies in my California and public schools. Never heard about two-spirit people. So that, that’s like a new thing in theMalcolm Collins: well because do you know when the term, how two-spirit people were invented? And I think a lot of people in the trans community are like genuinely unaware that this is where this concept came from.Simone Collins: No. Tell me.Malcolm Collins: Myra Reini, a Fisher River Creek Nation counselor in 2021, stated that the phrase came to her in a dream slash vision during the summer. 1980. Yes. While she was at a protest in the dream she was in a teepee, was her indigenous mother on a hunger strike. Seven spirits appeared shifting between male and female forms.Two of them declared her niece Manawa in whatever, I can’t pronounce that. She shared this vision at a conference in a [00:55:00] sharing circle of about 80 indigenous L GBT plus people across North America. After sharing this it was formerly opposed and quickly adopted at the third annual intertribal, native first Forums Gay and Lesbian American Conference.This took place in 1990. We don’t have any historical examples of anything like this existing, not, not in in, in, like, some, some people wanna say, well, native American cultures have a huge degree of cultural diversity. And it’s like, despite that huge degree of cultural diversity, we don’t have anything that looks like any good record of anything that looks like a two-spirit person.Simone Collins: Have, have I just been gaslit then? Because I, I could have sworn I’ve either read articles or listened to podcasts about how like, there were two-spirit people and the, the two, like in, in at least some tribes and these two-spirit people were kind of seen as likespiritual leaders in the tribe. Like justMalcolm Collins: made up. [00:56:00] We do notSimone Collins: have historical. Okay, so someone just did, they just made, they just made it up. They just made up. Woman in the eighties had a dreamMalcolm Collins: and I bet that we were extra spiritual here. What we do have evidence of we do have some Spanish records of native Americans having same sex relationships, which they were very aghast at. And some Native Americans in these same sex relationships would dress like and take on the role of a female in their community. But thatSimone Collins: doesn’t happen.Malcolm Collins: That’s not trans. That, that is, we see this in our society.We, we have gays, we have twinks. Okay? Twinks is a well-known phenomenon, and this is what we’ll see throughout this. There’s a lot of these examples that people call trans are gay people, where one of them takes on a more feminine role within the community and was in the relationship. And that is something that we also have in Western culture back to the beginning of time.But that is very different than intense [00:57:00] discomfort with your gender and a desire to change your gender.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That, that does not describe gender dysphoria. It, it may describe gender euphoria. YouMalcolm Collins: and desperately grasping with examples for anorexia would be like, yes, A lot of people talk about two-spirit.It must beSimone Collins: a, I still dunno. I didn’t even identify as an anorexic at the time.Malcolm Collins: The, the next example we have are the hira from South Asia, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. These are individuals that for young males who due to poverty, have been ejected by their families. Mm-hmm. End up joining all male communities that undergo a practice where they are castrated for two things.One is it’s the communities make their money predominantly for two things. One is a religious ceremony that you can only do if you’ve been castrated. And then two, the bigger source of income is, prostitution. So basically it’s a way for extremely [00:58:00] poor boys in these societies who are forced to go into sex work to get more clients by appearing more feminine, and then make some money on the side with a specific religious role for individuals like thisSimone Collins: oh, that’s wrong.Malcolm Collins: These individuals are not super accepted. They are like, this is not like a super celebrated role in these Indian communities either, by the way. It is actually kind of ghoulish that these people are called trans or you know, the, the West specifically pushes on them this concept of trans because they’re, they’re really child victims often.And on top of that they. Identify as a third gender, not men or women. They, they, they do not have gender dysphoria so much that they have no interest in other people identifying them with the opposite gender. So you cannot claim that this is something analogous to the trans phenomenon. [00:59:00] Okay.Next, the faim in the manner of a woman are NATO males who naturally exhibit feminine traits or behavior.They are not considered women by society. They do not want to be considered women by society, and they are mostly a feminine. Men who enter same-sex relationships was men. Again, we would call this twinks in today’s society, nobody would confuse this was a trans individual. However, where transness has entered these cultures, some of these individuals have decided to adopt Fafa as a name, and now they say, oh, and this always was trans.But that’s not what we see in the historic literature. Okay. The m zappo culture in Mexico. So, there are biological mar males who adopt the presentation in roles, often in women’s work. They have cultural acceptance and family integration but they are not seen as women. They are seen as a distinct third gender.And they are mostly effeminate men in same sex [01:00:00] relations with other men. We also do not have any good records of this existing pre Spanish colonization. Some people will say that we like arch answer, like in terms of the actual evidence, we don’t. We, we doSimone Collins: not have any. This is not just because that was when it was first documented, like in, in records that we still have.Because so many records were like burned and stuff. If, if memory serves when Europeans first came to it couldMalcolm Collins: be, or it could be that this is a modern phenomenon. Another good example of a modern phenomenon that is put as an older phenomenon or the cafe or the lady boys of Thailand and the Bako, the Philippines.And this is a group that people most identify as like a really good example of a true third gender.Simone Collins: Oh, okay.Malcolm Collins: ButSimone Collins: is this not just another case of, of, of men who are impoverished doing what they can to make money?Malcolm Collins: Well, we’ll get into that, but, but a lot of people in these cultures do gender [01:01:00] transition today and do act as prostitutes and identify as trans.Simone Collins: By the way, this also happened in like middle ages Europe. If you, for example, were to look for sex workers, you find some women, but you would also find a lot of men masquerading as women.Malcolm Collins: ButSimone Collins: that’s not, this is not like a, an Asian thing or a like Mexican thing. It’s, it’s a, it’s a, people wanna make money thing, need to make money, need to not die thing.Malcolm Collins: So, how, how far back did this goes? We have one early record potentially of this, a Chinese explorer Zon who noted androgynous cross-dressing males kuer. But specifically he notes them as. A, a, a part of the sex industry. They, they were sex workers. Okay. It was a way to get clients by taking on this effeminate role.Simone Collins: Well, I guess it should be noted that that many men male to female trans individuals [01:02:00] in like working within modern woke culture, who would like, sort of identify as like the modern, new trendy of, of, of trans are sex workers. Like that’s kind of, that, that’s more of a through line than gender dysphoria for sure.Malcolm Collins: So we actually, and, and I’m, I’m going deeper on this one because this one is, is one where you see people who identify as trans and as members of this community. And the only one where you see this, the problem is, is we don’t have any good records of this community existing before the 19 hundreds. At least in the regions where they are predominant today, they appear to be a, a.Holistically modern phenomenon. And if they have any ancient roots, it’s as a type of sex worker which is very different from, and if people are like, well, a lot of trans people are forced into sex work, don’t you know that? And it’s like, yeah, but it’s the directionality. These are people who are.Impoverished. Realize men want to sleep with things that look like women and will pay to, so they change their body to look that way. Mm-hmm. They are not people who change their [01:03:00] body to look that way, and as such, go impoverished. Right? Mm-hmm. More ‘cause I, I wanna be exhaustive. Here we have the golly these are self castrating, male devotees who wore women’s clothes, makeup, and performs ecstatic rituals.Romans did not, these were not treated as a normal part of Roman of society. Romans called them half men. They were regularly mocked in Romans society. So first of all and two, they were a religious cult. And they were seen as a religious cult, right? Thi this is, this is not I think anything close to what we would consider trans today and certainly not close to what we would consider societal acceptance.There’s some alternate role or some evidence of gender dysphoria in history. They look much more like, and so do many of these other groups, much more like castrato than modern trans individuals. People are not familiar with castrato. The only reason trans individuals don’t claim castrato is trans.It’s because everybody knows Rados weren’t trans. Rados were young boys who were often forced to be castrated so that they could keep a high [01:04:00] singing voice through nobles. That is not trans, that is a child victim.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Now a final one, and I think that this one really shows how bad faith people are who attempt to bastardize and steal these other cultural traditions to normalize their own struggles.Right. Is the sworn virgins. This is in the Balkans, especially in the Albanian region. And these are biological females who adopt a, a lifelong virginity and adopt male roles, dress roles, rights, et cetera. The problem is, is that. We have no records of anyone ever doing this because they feel they’re in the wrong body.Okay? Why do women do this in Balkans tradition? Because women can’t own property in the Balkans tradition. And so women do this so that they can own property or be the heir of the family or escape an arranged marriage they don’t want to do. We have plenty of records of that. And so, let’s go into the [01:05:00] Jewish play.The guy’s name is Kaus Ben Kaus. At no time in history, he wrote in 1286 to 1328 in Providence, France. And at no point from then into the year 2000 did anyone think this poem was about something other than a joke. Okay? And it was a joke that had meaning to people. The idea howSimone Collins: did just send you province.ProvinceMalcolm Collins: so that, so that people can understand why this would’ve been funny to Jewish people of the time while also sharing a brief message. And it’s a joke about wanting something absurd and not accepting the way that you were born. So literally an inversion of the concept of transness.Simone Collins: Ah.Malcolm Collins: Woe to me, my mother that you ever bore a son.What a great loss in no gain curse. Be the one who announced my name to my father. It’s a boy. The messenger shall be hu [01:06:00] guilty of bloodshed, cursed be he woe to him who has male sons. Upon them, a heavy yoke has been placed of restrictions and constraints. Some in private, some in public. Now remember, this guy’s an Orthodox Jew, so he’s not talking about minor constraints here.It can be very difficult to be a Jewish man. But of course he’s writing all of this with the knowledge of like, what would’ve made this funny, this line funny, right? And, and explicitly shows that he’s telling a joke Here is any Orthodox Jew would be aware that yes, being a male as an Orthodox Jew means you have a huge number of constraints in your daily life, in how you live, in how you interact with the world.But obviously women have even more constraints than you. They, they are a different set of constraints, but they are surely greater than those that you are under. And so he’s saying this is a joke. Like, I’m not even considering what it would be like to really be a woman. I just don’t like being me. Right.And yet [01:07:00] the first few lines of this, and I’m, and I’m cutting out the stuff that doesn’t affirm a trans interpretation of this, just to make it even more so you can see how they see it. Because there’s some of this that’s just fluff. Talking about other stuff really sounds like a modern day trans person.So a modern trans persons reads that and then doesn’t get the Orthodox Jewish context. That makes this a joke in the second part. Mm-hmm. Sever statues and awesome commandment 613, our father in heaven, if you hear he is talking about all the rules he has to follow. If only you turn me from male to female, if only the craftsman who created me would’ve made me a decent woman, I may today have been a woman wise and smart, spinning with her hands.And perhaps I would be skilled enough in spinning and I would say, how lucky am I? And then the poem ends with an inversion of a Jewish blessing, basically saying like a satanic curse almost you could think of from the perspective of like blessed are you oh Lord, for has not made me a woman. You can think of this as like if, if you said like all [01:08:00] men but an inversion of this.Now keep in mind this is an Orthodox Jew. He does not mean to blaspheme God, right? He is saying that all of these ideas would represent an inversion of the natural order, right? That’s, that’s what makes the joke funny. Okay? And he, and again, when he is complaining about being a man, his primary complaint about being a man, even though at one point he does refer to his genitals as like a defect or a blemish the primary complaint is all the rules that he has to follow.And yet women have more rules and not getting to make his money spinning and yet spinning is a harder thing than what he a rabbi would’ve to do, which is education. Now if we look at what people historically thought of this we’ve got Joseph Koster in 1900. He wrote, quote unquote, a masterpiece of Hebrew satire that passes in review, quote all of the social positions of which men are proud of, and argues that they’re a vanity end quote. He then notes of the entire work that this guy did, and it’s a very long work. He [01:09:00] said this was one of the most humorous parts, right?So. This was not like a, a, maybe this was satire. Maybe it wasn’t, it was seen as clearly satire until after transness existed as a phenomenon. Now when we’re talking about the Roman Empire the, that I was talking about, we can go to Cassius Dao a Roman senator and historian who was a near contemporary of a gaba.He lived through the reign and was politically affected by it. He recorded this in Roman History book 80, the, the thing about him wanting to actually change his gender. However, we’ve also already gone through all of the other horrible things that this guy did that could have been exaggerations.I mean, you could just say, okay, they’re exaggerating about him to make him look bad because he killed a bunch of people, which he did, and he did a lot of blasphemous stuff. He tried to change Roman religion to a new religion. So people really, really, really hated him. But either you accept that the only real trans.Individual we have in history is one of history’s greatest monsters, or we accept that a guy [01:10:00] that tried to change the religion of Rome had a lot of people with a motivation to make stuff up about him, to make him look bad. And talking about bad emperors was in Roman tradition as a historian, as being effeminate because they would often do this.Mm-hmm. It was like shorthand for, and this is how, you know, he was bad and, and, and not acting with, with good action.Simone Collins: Yeah. Sort of common, like, I guess maybe the modern analogy of like, well, he had an affair with, or like molested one of his aides. But this is just the Roman version of it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Right.I think there’s kind of like a, a common ring of truth to it. I mean, there were plenty of emperors who had their, you know, stable of male lovers.Malcolm Collins: Oh, this guy had a, this guy had such a stale of male lovers. He was well known for he opened the bass to the Roman public so that he could walk around the bass and look at people.And then he even had specialized servants that would go to the bass like every day or something. Recruit and worked for whichever men were the most well endowed and [01:11:00] bring them back to him.Simone Collins: Oh God bless. He just own just like sine Maxwell. Yeah. That’s great.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He was amazing. He was sort of a, a debauchery maxor, like that was Yeah.His its core thing seemed to be maximized debauchery, extremely as you can it. Mm-hmm. If you see our life of a byte episode, maybe this is a, a true convergent example of maybe something like the life of valence. Right. But to continue, when did transness appear? If we don’t see it at any point in human history or in any other culture, the first thing that we can see that looks anything like modern transness was Felds lab in around 1910.So okay, but before the 1920s where he had 17 detailed cases and this was in Germany and then the Nazis came in and they burned down all his stuff. And after this, as far as I’m aware, there is not a single known case. A trans individual until 1952 [01:12:00] after the Christine Jorgensen media explosion.So,Simone Collins: Christine Jor, the name sounds familiar. Should I know it?Malcolm Collins: Yes. She, well, she was a media phenomenon. Born George Jorgensen, 26-year-old American exit GI underwent male to female sex reassignment. Oh. In Denmark. And when he returned to the US, there was the XGI becomes blonde beauty sometimes referred to as XGI becomes blonde bombshell.That, that went around and all the tabloids and everything like that. Den. Okay.Simone Collins: Christina. I got, was it pulled off? That’s the real question.Malcolm Collins: Well, the point is, is that thenews acted like it was both pulled off in something you could aspire to. And then if you look at. The guy who is seen with re Benjamin, the, the next guy to build a, a lab, Harry Benjamin.This was he, he built a lab in the, I wanna say, oh yes. His landmark book came out, the Transsexual phenomenon in 1966. [01:13:00] So, almost 10 years after the Christine Jorgensen case. And he said to Christine Jorgensen, this is a guy who wrote the book on this, who started the first lap.Simone Collins: He felt bad.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It passes pretty well.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So I can see how that individual made this look glamorous enough to a lot of people who are looking to reinvent themselves Totally. Who are looking for a sense of control like you. Yeah.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Speaker 22: I also wanna point out that this case really shows that America is not culturally reflexively anti-trans. I haven’t been able to find a single newspaper article on this case that was negative. It’s all stuff like nature’s error Forces Girl to Live as Boy or XGI, blonde Bombshell Beauty. . People only became anti-trans.You take that JK Rowling or something like that. After interacting with the trans community and the way that they decided to use these particular privileges that were granted to them,I.Malcolm Collins: So this is what the guy who [01:14:00] literally started. The lab that all of the modern trans movement grew out of.Well, him and Joe Money, they worked alongside each other. I’m trying not to treat this negatively. But Joe Money was operating at the same time. If you’re unfamiliar with his story. He took children, lied about them being able to change their gender by raising them as another gender, forced them to sleep with each other in front of them for lied that they now adopted the new gender that they had gone into.One of them unli themselves. He hid that. Then he started a clinic that did this to thousands of other children of ruining their lives. Really a genuinely psychopathic human being, like one of history’s greatest villains. But if we say, okay, he’s not the source of the trans movement, this Benjamin Guy is right.Well, what Benjamin said was, indeed, Christine, without you, probably none of this would’ve come to happen. So what he’s saying is in all of his interviews, everybody cites her as the reason they decided to transition. And then that snowballed into a wider phenomenon. Now, this Christine [01:15:00] person, did they genuinely have gender dysphoria?They might have had some super rare something or another, but when you consider, and you look at society today and you’re seeing like 1.5% of people identify this way, what we can say is that is not something you see in history. It’s a modern phenomenon. And this is very important because if it’s a modern phenomenon and this very high on alive rate, this very high ideation rate that you see with this, this very high depression rate you see with this are tied.To this personal way of dealing with specific, I might even say autistic urges. Let’s say it’s a, some version of like psychological urge that certain peoples get around body dysmorphia. It turns out that the correct way to mitigate the harm from this is to tone down exposure to people. That means exposure in the school [01:16:00] systems.That means exposure through speakers. I, I know it’s sad, but the harm, and, and as Simone 100% believed, I am not influenced by culture when I’m doing severe calorie restriction. This is a totally me thing. It’s not because I saw somebody else do it. When you have whatever this condition is, and I think that it is the same condition when you have whatever this condition is you are particularly resistant towards accepting.This fact, and this is why I, I tried to bring all this evidence together in this episode along with somebody who suffered an analogous condition so that people who are suffering this can can, can maybe like just get enough evidence all at once that they can break through and finally get to the other side and be like, oh my God, this is really not part of the natural human condition.And as strong as it feels to me, it is not real. And it is a, it [01:17:00] is hurting me to engage with it in this way. Anybody who, who’s heard me or seen my history or goes through my history of comments, they know I am not approaching it like this because I am bigoted against trans people, right? Like I don’t I’m not like angry at trans people over anything.I have no reason to like, dislike trans people at a personal level. I have had trans friends. I was in the GSA as a kid, right? I fought for when, when I had a significantly smaller platform, but I fought for trans people being accepted in society before I knew how people were going to end up using this as a weapon to hurt women.Okay? Second. And when I say as a weapon to hurt women, if you’re unfamiliar with how this is happening, I’ll just broadly lay this out for you. You know, in school, if you grew up before this happened, how there was that kid who was a complete sex pest and like liked, I remember at my school there were the kid who was famous for being caught masturbating outside the women’s dorms while eating fried chicken.Just like [01:18:00] com Beast kid, by the way too. Oh no. Just like complete wobbly sex fest who doesn’t respect other people’s boundaries. Do you not think that if you told him, Hey, if you say you identify as a woman, you won’t be punished in the same way that he wouldn’t attempt to take advantage of that?Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it’s a no brainer.Malcolm Collins: Of course, you,Simone Collins: you’d be crazy not to. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You are giving these sorts of sex pests, this tool. Okay. And it is unfortunate that the people who get caught up in this like autistic version of it, that Simone had. Are dragged down because of this or that they can’t, well, it’d probably be better if they didn’t have their, their toy anyway, because it still seems to hurt them as well.It seems to not be the best way it seems to be telling an somebody with anorexia to identify as an anorexic. And obviously that’s not a good thing to do that’s gonna make this like the Pro Anna movement. It’s like we normalize pro Anna. People don’t know. That’s the movement that is trying to normalize and glamorize anorexia.And like, we shouldn’t be shamed for this and we should, you know, be who we [01:19:00] are. And it would be fine. Like, and obviously I’m the type of person if you could take a pill and just become a woman, whatever, right? If, if it didn’t have all these negative effects, I wouldn’t care. I’m not out here because like from a Christian perspective, I don’t think they should be doing this.I’m not out here because some trans person tried to ruin my life or cancel me or something like this. I’m not out here because I was personally harassed by a trans person or something like this.Simone Collins: Well, you care about human flourishing and when you see that there’s something that just clearly is nerfing people at best and at worst, destroying and ending their lives in horrible ways.You wanna speak up about it?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m, I am out here because the preponderance of evidence that we have access to now unfortunately does not make it look as if and, and like we have evidence at the level of an entire country now banning puberty blockers at, at the level of the uk. That’s, that’s like the, the, the quality of a study at that level is [01:20:00] enormous.Like that can’t be fake, that can’t be edged. We just know that people are not unliving themselves because they’re not able to get access to this. And now that we know that. We have to say, okay, we need to start rethinking all of this. And that’s unfortunate and people can be like, yeah, I just, I, I hope that dev comes to the light on this.Because in the past I really respected him as an intellectual, and I know that right now he’s sort of going through a hard time with his followers because he’s been kind of ideologically captured by, a certain friend group is, is my guess that he’s not able to see that, like new evidence is out there now, right?Like when in, in the episode he said something like, and we know that this is the best solution to lower like, unli rates for people who have this. And it’s like actually that’s been broadly disproven at this point, both from the uk, the country level source, us finding out that mainstream trans clinics were hiding information at the Travis dot Kyle [01:21:00] Case and the WPATH file release.And the studies that have been used to argue this being very poorly conducted and by hugely ideologically captured institutions, we actually went through an episode. We have one episode where we go through all these studies and the ones that people are always citing they were done by a clinic that made its primary source of income by helping people gender transit.Like, come on Dev, you’re not stupid. You must be able to see that a country level data set at the level of the UK is a better source of data than a clinic that makes its income off of this and is dependent on it continuing to happen. And like Joe Money would have to admit that they were monsters and hurt a ton of children because they couldn’t admit this earlier.And I think we argued that’s why he didn’t. But anyway, thought Simone,Simone Collins: I think this is, it’s interesting and it’s important, and [01:22:00] I don’t know, I mean my general take is in the past, people were able to express various forms of what people can now refer to as gender. Like either the way they want to. Bang other people or get themselves off or dress or style themselves.No. Or relate to other people. Like they just dealt with it and they didn’t force other people to conform with it. And this new version, whatever it is, is, is most uniquely different to me and that it does, and I agree that pretending that this thing has been around forever is inaccurate at best. And I, I also had no idea the extent to which we’d been gaslit about it.Like the, there are, except like two-Spirit people, right? Like two-Spirit. Yeah. Because that was just, I don’t know. I. I, I, I, I’ve become a lot more incredulous, but I still figured, like, I don’t know. That kind of makes sense, I [01:23:00] guess. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well there’s a lot of American Native American tribes out there.Presumably at least one had a dedicated third gender role that was mm-hmm. More similar to transness than similar to being a gay twink.Simone Collins: Yeah. It just seems so screwed up that people would make that up. It, it, it, yeah. Anyway, so this, this has been enlightening and I appreciate your looking into it.Malcolm Collins: What was, what’s cooler or you know, more I, whatever you wanna think of.But more pathetic is the secondary thing they decided to add to this made up role, which is, and they were treated as spiritual guides for their communities.Simone Collins: Well, right? Yes. And they were in some way, like spiritually mystically and morally superior. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like you see the narcissism on display there.Right. You know, I didn’t anything about that. Oh gosh. An invention role. And then they invent importance to it. They can’t just say, oh, it was an alternate role in this society. Right? Mm-hmm. And keep in mind for most of these other societies that we have access [01:24:00] to when they were trans they, like when they fed this, it wasn’t trans.It almost no society. Do you have trans? Of all the ones we went through, normally it’s a third gender and normally it’s a discriminated third gender. Hmm. So, it’s, it’s just you need to break this for the people who are trying to be, and I want to believe that Dev is genuinely trying to be intellectually honest in the way he’s approaching this.And that he does wants what’s best for people. And that if he just had access to all of the information, he would change his mind. Because I think most sane people would, I even think most sane trans people would.Simone Collins: Yeah, I think so. I mean, maybe, I don’t know. I, again, like even per your argument, the correct response I should be making is, oh, like my excessive exercising and calorie restriction was in response to a [01:25:00] social trend that I was surrounded by.Whereas I feel like I had a very different experience, but like. I I, so I should be, I should be saying that. Whereas I don’t, I don’t feel that way. SoMalcolm Collins: yeah. ThisSimone Collins: is, I’m very, this is whyyou’reMalcolm Collins: such a good case for this.Simone Collins: I know, I know. So, I’m, I’m, maybe people in the comments can explain this to me this phenomenon,Malcolm Collins: but this is what’s very important about this phenomenon.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: If it happens to you and you’re not one of these just sex PEs who’s using it for cover. Sure. It doesn’t feel like you caught a social phenomenon. It feels like a decision you made for yourself and an obsession.Simone Collins: Oh, because I didn’t, I didn’t actively choose to do it. I kept doing it ‘cause it made me feel a little better.But I mean, yeah. Presumably that’sMalcolm Collins: a, a toolSimone Collins: forMalcolm Collins: controlSimone Collins: trans, but I feel like what’s, what happened with trans stuff in schools, especially with young women who are transitioning, was this did happen with friend clusters. I didn’t have friends who did this. SoMalcolm Collins: Right, and that might be a completely separate phenomenon.My, my [01:26:00] guess is the trans community is predominantly four groups. One group has this form of dysphoria that you had. They, they do not need a lot of priming to begin to exhibit transness. TheySimone Collins: yeah, no, that, that one makes sense. Where like, you feel dysphoria, you hate your body, and then someone mentions like, oh, maybe you have this, you can take this pill and make it all stop.And that is very appealing. That would be the version of transit that I fell into, would’ve fallen into. Then there’s the other groups that are like, well, all your friends are doing it. And so in the similar way that like cutting spread or that, that, that well this,Malcolm Collins: I, I, I’d flush out this secondary category a bit more than just all your friends are doing it.Mm-hmm. You’re going through puberty, you feel uncomfortable with your body. You’re going through a lot of changes you don’t like and somebody says there is an out. And, and there’s a, that’s the first true.Simone Collins: DescribingMalcolm Collins: they will affirm you and tell you that, you know, your, your body is good, that you are good, that you should be accepted, and they will never criticize you as long as you go along with him.And this can be very appealing. And you [01:27:00] even hear some people like Zian the head the guy who founded the trans murder cult Zian said that he went through gender transition. ‘cause he was afraid of going through pub.Simone Collins: They, they were zian, he was ZzMalcolm Collins: Zzz, whatever he was afraid of going through Puby.So I think that this is like a cluster of ideas here. It’s a bit of a cultural contagion and a bit of a good like mimetic virus. And for these people, they are partially aware that you know, it was in part influenced by a friend group, right? Now they are less true trans. And I would put the, the, the version of trans that’s more like anorexia.It’s probably the truest form of trans. There is.Simone Collins: I disagree, I think because, no, no, I think that’s very different because that’s, I. That’s not a desire to be the different gender that’s feeling in general, like a general body dysmorphia and then falling into a common solution that’s presented to people who show body dysmorphia.Like, you know, because now there’s this preponderance of people who are [01:28:00] like, oh, you’re trans. Whereas before it would always be something else like, oh, you just need to power through it. Or like, I don’t know, talk to God more. You know, like people used to give other solutions. Yeah. So I don’t actually see ‘em as trans.I think there’s a different group of people. That falls into the culture and, and believes in it for that reason. Maybe also they’re coated on by it,Malcolm Collins: the other two groups in the trans community, other than the ones who have something analogous to anorexia. And there’s the ones who have something that is, you know, the, the, the, you’ll have a community that will accept you.You’re going through pube, you’re uncomfortable with your body. And, and here’s how you both get social acceptance and, and are comfortable with your body. It’s one simple trick. And then the next group, because I’m gonna say there’s four core groups here. These are the groups. This group I would just call the sex pests.These are the people who realize that they can use this to gain access to women’s faces. And when people are like, no trans person does this, and then I ask you, okay, I, let’s say no real trans person does this. [01:29:00] Do you think a cis person, a cis male. Would have such low morals and such a voracious sexual appetite that they would do it.Of course, they’re like, well, of course some cis males would do. And I’m like, well, those cis males are now using the trans identity, right? You could say, oh, cis males are terrible, but they’re using your identity to do this. The, the guy jacking off outside the girl’s dorm or the guy you know, this seems to very clearly be the case of it was Leah Thomas was the swimmer, right?Who kept flashing people in the restroom. And then there was a bunch of weird porn stuff with her when, when that was all leaked.Speaker 23: By the way, you’re not familiar with this. Leah Thomas had a secret Instagram account where they would, , frequently like posts and images that were explicitly tied to a GP related content, eeg, , content that suggested that trans people are only trans people because they were turned on by. Acting like women., And , it makes it very clear that Leah Thomas was a GP . This was a sexual fetish for [01:30:00] them. , And this is not, it’s some outsider accusing them of this. This is them saying, yeah, that’s why I’m doing this. That’s what turns me on.Speaker 25: Like when I advocated for trans rights back in the day. I assumed I was not just advocating for the rights of flashers who wanted to violate women’s autonomy, , violate women’s consent. And so when I saw somebody very clearly doing this and the trans community not being like, oh, that person isn’t us.That person doesn’t stand for us, but instead doubling down. No, that is what we’re fighting for. I was like, oh, I’ve been used. I was a patsy and. I think that there’s a point where somebody like Dev needs to be like, am I being used to protect flashers who want to violate women’s autonomy?Speaker 17: Ah!Malcolm Collins: And [01:31:00] then there was the and, and no, this was before she went through her surgery, right? Like this, she just appears to have been a sex pe. And, and, and these are the people who in prison are like, ah, I’m trans now, because they get access to the women’s prison and then they gripe a bunch of women.And this has happened multiple times. You know, and, and everybody must realize that this is like an actual, like the most problematic group. And then the, the final group, which is like. Almost as problematic as that group is. These are predominantly men, but sometimes also women who seem to get aroused by convincing other people to transition.It’s a power fetish for them. We’ve seen this in the trans Maxine community is very clearly partially about this. We’ve seen this in the giggle and goon files. We’ve seen this in some other parts of the trans community. And I loop them in with the other people. I guess it’s a separate category of this, the, the, a FBS or whatever who have some sort of fetish tied to this.But it’s not about converting other people. And then this, that’s this other part. It’s this very aggressive and [01:32:00] predatory part of the community that, that is specifically about I, and keep in mind people are like, why would somebody want this? Well, if you look at their own writings talking about it, because there have been, they’re like, dude, like if I can convince a young boy to get on puberty blockers, I get like a prepubescent child for like the next 10 years.You know, like these people are truly debauched, but this is what they say in their private message boards. Right. And I mean, it makes sense, right? Like they found a way to make EPDA fi file this legal and keep in mind that individuals like this you know, have, well we won’t, we, we won’t get into the Harvey Milk situation.ButSimone Collins: there’s too many cans of worms here.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All right. Any thoughts on short, fat otake dev leaflet? The debate, anythingSimone Collins: leaflet can do? Nothing wrong in my view. I, she just, she comes at everything from both. A place of intelligence, but also humility. I, I, yeah. [01:33:00] It would be shocking to me that she,Malcolm Collins: no, that’s what the AI review of her debate kept saying.It was like, throughout the debate, it is noted that she appeared very kind and understanding and wanting to like, understand their perspective and that she’sSimone Collins: so respectful. Yeah. Even when she like goes over other streams, she like waits for the the, the person’s sentence to stop before commenting.She’s just so kind.Malcolm Collins: So debate was that leaflet was overly conciliatory and didn’t want to interrupt the person. So they kept ranting at various points. OhSimone Collins: yeah. That, yeah. That, that would,Malcolm Collins: that’s that very leaflet. Yeah,Simone Collins: because she’s, she has courtesy. Oh my gosh. No one knows what, how to do. I don’t know how to do that anymore.I interrupt you all the time. I’m terribly rude. I’m really sorry about that. Anyway, I love you.Malcolm Collins: Love you too.Simone Collins: And yeah. Do you want me. Though, have we?Malcolm Collins: No, we had, we did it once.Simone Collins: We did. Oh God. Never again. Never again. A a lot of the pe I I, I share you’re surprised by the people who are like me, [01:34:00] like AI is not gonna work.Malcolm Collins: Oh my, it’s literally we’re racing so many jobs right now.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, what do you think is happening right now? I, I think I, some people were like, oh, the unit economics don’t work out.Like the, the energy’s not gonna work. Well, you know, we’re gonna blow up the data centers. Like all these things, there are answers for these things. I don’t,Malcolm Collins: yeah. A automated drone swarms cost less than you and your entire army that wants to blow up automated drone swarms. If people don’t,Simone Collins: dude, literally one hotel night and your average United States hotel costs less than you.If we’re talking about the rate of a hit per by like a Mexican, it’s like $250 to, unless the price has gone up to kill someone, if you wanna hire someone in Mexico to do it. But maybe those are the in Mexico rates, not the in United States rates. I haven’t, you know, haven’t checked recently. Gotta get back on [01:35:00] that market.Other people being like, well, you know, with, with this kind of wealth divide, like there just won’t be anyone left to buy anything. But then I, I think a lot of people don’t realize that already now half of consumer spending is being made by the top 10% of earners. Like yeah, we’re already, we’re already mostly there.There’s a reason why Disneyland is becoming insanely expensive. It’s because they’ve given up on normal people and they’re just charging a ton of money to the really wealthy people who are still spending tons of money. It’s a, it’s happened, it has happened. So you know what you gonna do, what you gonna do?Get a parcel of land, get food stores get used to rice and beans. At least [01:36:00] rice and beans is so freaking good. I think you don’t like rice and beans. I love rice and beans.Malcolm Collins: But yeah, I was, I was, I, I just am so shocked by the people who are like, AI can’t do human work. And I’m like, I literally have already fired multiple teams because AI has replaced them.Like,Simone Collins: oh, I mean, to, to be fair there are are some things where, you know, we’re still hiring specialists to deal with plumbing problems andMalcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah. There are some things and in regards to people who are like, well, AI can’t do human motor control work really well, like walking around and stuff like that, that, that is true.And the, and the main reason is and I talk about this in the comments, it’s because we’re approaching it wrong. If you, if you, no, butSimone Collins: also, like, are you aware of what’s going on with optimists? Like entire Tesla factories have been repurposed to building these, these humanoid robots that actually are pretty dexterous.It’s just that they’re not on theMalcolm Collins: marketSimone Collins: yet. Right.Malcolm Collins: But more broadly, the problem that we have here and the problem that AI experts have here is, I have explained in other videos that the human [01:37:00] brain, particularly the cerebral cortex, appears to operate like a collection of token predictors. And there’s a lot of research on this.You can watch your episodes where we go over all that research. But what’s really important to note is if the AI we are using today arrived in an architectural convergence with our cerebral cortex which it appears they had, they are naturally going to be bad at. Fine movement because that is not handled by our cerebral cortex that is handled by our cerebellum, which is one a completely separate organ practically.Oh yeah. And two architecturally entirely different. So what we’re likely gonna want to do for AI movement related stuff is either hardcoded, direct pathways that ideas are sent from the cerebral cortex, like collection of token predictors to these and then carried out automatically. Mm-hmm. Which will likely be drawing from the works of companies like Boston Dynamics and stuff like that.[01:38:00]Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean also just keep in mind like, just to like text here, for example, like his motor control. Even our kids, you know, like they, they’re any parent who’s gone through the process of teaching a kid or helping a kid develop fine motor control, like hold a pen or, you know, type on a keyboard or draw.We’ll understand that even for someone who has all the parts built in really well, it takes a long time to figure that out.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Another thing is I think people really miss the ball on this. They’re dismissing open AI as just a text model or a text prediction model which shows a, a fundamental misunderstanding of like how larger AI systems work.So if you’re talking about agents, you know, these are things that can do emails, do phone calls, do coding, everything like that. Like all of the advanced stuff generate images when they want to generate video, when they want to. The core of their thought is always a text-based [01:39:00] model. The, the text-based AI models are always the core brain of an AI because they are the least expensive way to send large amounts of information into the future of the AI, basically.Mm-hmm. And so this idea of, oh, that’s just a text. Like what, whatever, it’s just a text model. It’s like, what are you talking about? Like, it’s, it’s like you, you see, a company trying to get in the, the cutting edge of, of cars and think that cars are gonna change the way that transportation works and you go, they just make engines.What did, that’s just a simple engine. Like all of the fancy stuff in your Ferrari is downstream from the engine, right? Everything an agent does is downstream from that simple text model. But anyway, this is afu a fun end into this episode that’s gonna track some to normal right wing bait, right?All right, I’ll get started on this.Yeah. ‘cause tomorrow’s leaflet. Oh, [01:40:00] people don’t know. I will be on leaflet’s show tomorrow.Simone Collins: But you’re gonna run a different episode this morning? Tomorrow?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’ll gonna put this into the different episode.Simone Collins: Are you going to, oh, okay. Oh, right.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m gonna be on leaflet show tomorrow at, soSimone Collins: you mean today?Malcolm Collins: Today, today at, at 7:00 PM I think we’re gonna start so you’re gonna get me at a completely different, different time zone, which will be fun. We’ll see how that goes. But I’m, I’m looking for, it’ll be my first time doing like live streaming. Was like a, a, a somebody’s fan base interacting and I don’t know how I feel about that.I’m a little worriedSimone Collins: You did it a little bit when you had that debate with that guy.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I didn’t have time to be reading the stream. I do it when, when we go on Ed, ed Dutton’s show, he does it. But like, I don’t care what Ed Dutton’s audience, they, they’re just too different from our audience in my mind.Like,Simone Collins: ah, so you’re nervous about this one because you actually respect her audience. And [01:41:00] that’s the.Malcolm Collins: Like Ed Dutton’s comment section was full of people trying to determine if you were a Jew or not by your nose shape. Right. Like, I’m like, her audience isn’t gonna be that somo.Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t think so. No.I imagine they’re pretty cool. So they’re not,Malcolm Collins: anyway, not that I don’t like Ed Dutton. I, I like him. I like it’s kind.Simone Collins: We love him. We love him. It’s just it’s, butMalcolm Collins: he does attract him a, a certain, like, like he’s, he’s, he’s less we’re, we’re pretty big on our show about being like, if you’re just like a generic racist, we don’t want you here.Simone Collins: Well, no, like the, the Jew comments are very much like our, our kids for example, like their go-to is poop jokes. Titan’s. A poopy head. Toasties. A poopy head. They use our Alexa smart devices to say Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop, poop. It’s all poop jokes. And it’s very reductive and it’s just their go-to and it’s like they’re little inside.This is, I’m joking language.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. AndSimone Collins: I feel like Jew comments online are like, that is like the adult version of poop jokes where they’re just like, [01:42:00] juice, juice, Jews, Jew, Jew, Jew.Malcolm Collins: No, you’re wrong.Simone Collins: ReallyMalcolm Collins: there are people who make jokes like that. And for a wild jokes like that have become common. Okay.But now there’s this genuine community online that’s just like, my personality is, I hate Jews and I’m a generic racist. Right? Like,Simone Collins: some people are polling some people just,Malcolm Collins: and if you, and if youSimone Collins: expression,Malcolm Collins: constantly signal on your show yeah. This is not for that audience. So like he does really high quality content.He just doesn’t also regularly be like, oh, and if you just hate on Jews, I think you’re stupid. Right. Obviously Jews have problems, which we’ve talked about in detail, but there’s a difference between saying that and just being like, like complete crash out mode, you know?Simone Collins: Yeah, which I think is hard for people because for example, I think one of our top performing videos is like the Jewish iq, myth one.Oh. And of course the people who freaking hate Jews were like, oh, this is gold. And then they were like so [01:43:00] betrayed and then we lost all those subscribers and then they were like, oh, they don’t hate Israel. What’s wrong with them? Familiar. So you know. You can’t win.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think you can win. I think this is actually something I was talking to you about today, but like we hold really weird religious beliefs that I think if they came out later, or if we came to them later in our streaming career would’ve been very disqualifying of us in conservative intellectual spaces.Yeah.But we led wisdom them. And we’ve been very consistent and logical about them in a way that I don’t think people find them particularly off putting in the same way that ‘cause it’s very interesting that, that, like in our episode recently about dev short slash short Fat Otaku versus what’s her name?Simone Collins: Oh, shoe on head.Malcolm Collins: Shoe on head, shoe on head that the Wright loves shoe on head and has mostly turned against short fat Otake and short fat Otake has moved. Or, or stayed on the left in areas that seem odd to [01:44:00] us. But the, the, the she wanted is fundamentally much more of a leftist than he is, and, and yet she’s forgiven for it and he’s not.I think it’s because she started with these physi, the positions that she has that are discordant and she focuses on them from a logical perspective.Simone Collins: Yeah, I think you’re right.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you to testimon. The comments on today of the Shuan Head video were fun.Simone Collins: They wereMalcolm Collins: doing really well.Simone Collins: Yeah.I’m glad that, that a lot of people like Shuan head. It seems like a lot of people really like what they call nineties era Democrats. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean that’s, that’s the White House now what, like Elon, RFK, Trump, JD Vance, who do you, who do you think these people are? Right? Like this is our party now.Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I dunno, pointed out the, the purity, the, the, the faction on the right that’s like, oh, we need to focus on like purity culture. We need to focus on extracting everything. We need to focus on all acting the same way. I, I, I point this out and I’ll keep pointing out. They ideologically [01:45:00] have much closer with the left disaligned Islamists than they have with any faction that holds power on the right.And they don’t really have a place in the modern right. And do have a place in the modern left. And they found it.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right. Like they, they regularly sit down and talk with Islamists, right? Like they they have a side and a place that already accepts them. There’s like not even a reason, even from an and, and people are like, well, you could get their votes.And it’s like, unlikely, right? Like, they’re not a very they, they put out insane demands that like, would hurt us, prevent our party from winning. But the left doesn’t have any cost to meeting the demands, right? Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Because the left doesn’t actually have to follow through with the things that it says or promises.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Nor do they need to be coherent or cross achievable.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because you can just keep blaming the, when you have an external locus of control themed party, you [01:46:00] could always blame someone else for things not working out and never take personal responsibility. And what’s so interesting about.The Trump administration right now is taking personal responsibility for very controversial things, very unpopular things. Yeah. And not blaming other people, not being like, well, so and so made me do it, or thi you know, this is, you know, it, it’s just like, no, I’m gonna do this. I’m sorry. It’s a little bit tough.It’s gonna be a little bit tougher, a little bit longer. This is gonna be worth it in the long run, even if you don’t think so. I don’t care because I think this is the best and it’s a very different kind of,Speaker 27: He’s playing his music. Wow. Tex, thanks.Yeah. Text toss. Master Tex. Look at the phones. Look at the camera This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this Based Camp deep dive, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore one of the most fascinating figures in online culture: Shoe0nHead (June Lapine). Why has a self-described social democrat, Bernie supporter, and pro-union leftist maintained massive popularity and respect in right-wing and anti-woke spaces for over a decade—while most other left-leaning creators from the early skeptic/atheist era lost their audiences?We break down:- Her unique journey from Gamergate-era anti-SJW commentary to Catholic trad wife and mother- Why she never needed to “convert” her audience or pivot dramatically- The vitalistic, entertaining style that keeps her relevant across the political spectrum- The broader split in the old atheist community: truth-seekers vs. resentment-driven dunkers- Why the modern right can embrace ideological diversity (and why the left struggles with it)- Shoe0nHead as proof that the new right is a big-tent movement built on reality and forward momentum rather than purity spiralsIf you’ve ever wondered why right-leaning creators constantly react to and platform Shoe0nHead (even when she criticizes Trump mildly), this episode explains it.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be pulling a thread that we got to in another video and in this other video we were talking about the. Community of early online skeptics slash atheist, which was like the core of sort of YouTube culture in the earliest days of YouTube.And how the individuals in this community that went right, they first became anti-feminist and anti woke, then went into Gamergate and then became the seedbed that the new right movement grew out of.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And then another group of them drifted in another direction. They drifted left and the group that drifted left like they, they were in the early atheist anti theist movement.And then the movement went either at the anti-feminist or anti woke stage. Yeah. They lost their audiences. Notably, we didn’t talk about it in that video, but there is actually one that drifted left [00:01:00] even after that stage. He was there for anti-feminist, he was there for anti woke, and he only drifted left at the trans stuff.This is dev slash short Fighter Taku, who has co off his views are way lower than ours now. If you look at like weekly countsSimone Collins: has he overall drifted left?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, he has refused to really call out the trans community as a serious problem. And something that needs to be in some way, you know, the, like it legislatively something like that, a addressed.Speaker 3: Inspector, do you know if the killer was a man or a woman? Well, if ca I know that. What else is there? The kitten,Malcolm Collins: And I, I think that that’s part of, he’s also become more proc censorship, like censoring people in his forums and stuff like that. Really?Simone Collins: Wow. That surprises me. It seems so unlike who I thought he was when I first started watching his videos.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that’s why he lost a lot of his followership, right?Speaker 8: What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for [00:02:00] gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?Malcolm Collins: Like it does, it does seem very anti what I thought he was right. But we noted one notable unique case in all of this, which was shoe on head. And Shoe on Head was very unique for a number of reasons. The, the biggest being is that she didn’t drift left over time or begin to adopt leftist talking points.She was thoroughly leftist from the beginning and, and quite a bit more leftist than I think a casual viewer may believe. She for example, to go over some of her leftist positions universal Healthcare, she wants, she has strong support of labor unions. She’s a believer in free college. She is a, as well as tuition forgiveness.She’s broadly anti-capitalist and anti-corporate regularly criticizing big businesses, everything like that. And she promotes working class [00:03:00] popularism. She voted for Joe Biden in 2020. She was a very strong supporter of Bernie Sanders. And so yeah, very, very left wing, especially in her economic views.And also in, in her social views to an extent. .Simone Collins: She, she hasn’t talked about it a lot. In, in most of her recent videos, she, she’ll come out critical of Trump, but in no way more than in, in fact, less than many of the conservative. People that I’ll hear on YouTube these days, which is weird.Malcolm Collins: That I would saySimone Collins: is true moreMalcolm Collins: recent videos.But if you, if you look at the whole holisticness of her work, she did not lose followers when she was talking about these leftist things. And she even has the name among her fan base of Ka mommy. So, you know, it’s a sweet name I think. But it’s also socially she’s been shown to be quite progressive.She right now is married to a trad C and has a kid, so be aware of that. And she converted to Catholicism over COVID. But before that, she was in a [00:04:00] long-term relationship with armored skeptic where she was public about having a 24 7 BDSM daddy, Dom little girl relationship.Simone Collins: She was not really,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: Whoa. She. Wow, okay.Malcolm Collins: And she still hasn’t condemned kink or anything like that, which is funny because on the social leftist front that would put her with us, where we do not condemn kink at all. We’re like, what? People are aroused by randomSimone Collins: things. I know. Dumb, dumb little girl, very Catholic you know, but they work father into everything.I mean, come on.Malcolm Collins: I guess that’s right. Yeah.Simone Collins: See, it’s extremely paternalistic as, as a religion and like organization. I don’t understand why that that particular affiliation wouldn’t be. Quite match.Malcolm Collins: But I mean, she has kind of made joking videos about kink. She made that one a really good one actually, about women getting into like monster effer books.[00:05:00]Oh yeah. She didn’t outright condemn it. It was more the way that we talk about stuff like that where it is like women are ridiculous, that they pretend that men are the, the deviant ones and that they’re little, little Es. But in that other video, what I, what I talked about was why is she still relevant, but none of the other leftists.YouTubers are not relevant is because she didn’t try to change her audience. And she didn’t need to convert her audience. Her audience was never really persuaded by her economic arguments. She was never a pipeline out of the right to anyone. She’s still a mainstream watch figure in the right, and when I say in the right, I mean if, if she did a video and Asma Gold didn’t do a cover of it, I would be very surprised.Leaflet covers a lot of her videos. N Sinor always needs to brag when he gets mentioned in one of her videos, so clearly he’s watching [00:06:00] them. You know, if she mentioned us or birth rates, obviously I would be there.Speaker 4: Do you think it’s possible thatMalcolm.Speaker 4: could be watching you right now?Speaker 3: Well, if I wasMalcolm.Speaker 3: , I would certainly be watching and possibly tapping for later playback because you know, it’s a big deal to be talked about onSpeaker 6: A shoe on head video.Malcolm Collins: and it’s and, and I, and I watch a lot of her videos too, just for even sort of like cultural relevance in the right, we pointed out that Sky Brows regularly has her along all of his alt-right v tubers and everything like that in his videos.And so first I like, I wanna talk on two topics here. One is, its how and why because this came up a lot in the comments of that video.How has Shoe on Head maintained this right wing following and loyalty for an example of another right wing influencer? Ho Math, ho Math did a chart of women he trusts, like online influencers.He trusted. And she came in really high on that [00:07:00] chart above I, I think the majority of like female conservative influencers on the chart, right? Like, that is saying something, right? Note at that what do the characters get at the top of the chart, which I think is fun is Pearl Davis. He is like Pearl Davis sniffed this girl out.This is with the, it was on his episode where he was talking about the the big, theSimone Collins: one who said that she was a virgin when she got married and the pope blessed her marriage and then turns out she was actually sleeping with this other guy while engaged, et cetera.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and in that episode I realized just as a, a brief tangent here, and I think shoe on head actually sort of fits into this is that of conservative female influencers, because I wasn’t watching N’s version of this, I was watching the leaflet cover of this.Is that in the, in the conservative influencer space, there is a certain type of woman who just like comes up and her front and center thing is. I am ex religious woman, right? Like I am the trad cast, sexy woman, [00:08:00] right? And these are the people I think of when I think of quote unquote Christian influencers.And Leaflet was commenting that, you know, she gets accused of being a quote unquote Christian v YouTuber. Like, how dare you say this, as a Christian v tuber. And I realized how comical it was to consider a figure like leaflet or a figure like shoe on head alongside these quote unquote, like, I guess I’ll call ‘em Christian sea thought influencers.That’s what we’ll call them the Christian thought influencers.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, that’s such a thing though. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Because neither of them, while both of them is Christian at this point neither of them leads anything with that, right? Like, that’s not their front, that’s not their identity, that’s not their hook for their audience.And I think. They, it’s, it’s useful to know, like when you’re watching an influencer to know, are they likely trustable? Is it, are they likely authentic? The ones that are, the, the, the thoughts are very likely inauthentic, right? Broadly speaking, stuff seems to blow up for them at a fairly frequent [00:09:00] rate, whereas I’m just not familiar with that many controversies at all with individuals.On the other end of the scale was the only one maybe I’m aware of is the Pearl Davis Sleeping Whiz. Seem me to have a preference for black guys which like, whatever, I understand why that’s a controversy I do. But I also, it’s like, you know, your preferences are your preferences, right?Like. I have, and I, and I mean this like we in the conservative community should be defending the idea of your preferences or your preferences. My preferences are for white women. That doesn’t make me a racist, right? Like, in fact, if you watch our video, which race is the most attractive? We, we do break down that.But generally races prefer their own ethnicity over other ethnicities.Speaker 5: I should note here, I’m not saying this ‘cause she’s ever stated she had the preference, her black guys, it’s just of the three public boyfriends she’s had, two of them have been black and one of them she needed to clarify was not black and was Dominican. So apparently he looked black to other people., And [00:10:00] it may not be due to a preference on her part. It may be due to the cursed phenomenon that were not supposed to talk publicly about, but it probably is useful for young girls if they happen to be watching this to be aware of this. , The once you go black, you never go black phenomenon. Is not necessarily because, , black guys are significantly better when dating or something like that.It is in large part also because, , a large chunk of the white male population finds girls significantly less attractive. Or, or at least significantly less valuable as dating or even sexual prospects after they know they’ve had relations with black men. , I am not saying this is a good thing, , but, you know, everyone has their preferences., And in the same way that it’s likenot necessarily a good thing that guys on average happen to find girls less attractive after they know ‘em. They slept with a lot of people. But it’s also a fact that it’s useful for girls to know when they’re sort of gauging, , they’re [00:11:00] dating publicly. And I don’t think anyone ever, for example, in Firm Pearl that her relationship would have this effect., And that’s sad, right? ,And note, I want to be clear here. I didn’t say that many white male racist opinion of a girl goes down significantly after they know she had slept with a black guy. I am saying. Many white men, even ones who I have known who, , would, no one would think to call them a racist. , They have no other views that could get them in trouble for being racist.And so they do not air this particular view. And, , through not airing this view, because obviously in society, if, you did that, that would be, and I’m not saying I feel that way, , it, it would be very, , damaging to you. But, , it’s important that girls are aware of this.In fact, it’s so common. , I am drawn to wonder if it might have a genetic component. , So drop in the comments if you are not white, and if you know a woman of your [00:12:00] ethnicity has slept with a white guy, , or you can also add black guy here. , Does that drop , her attractiveness to you? , More than a regular body count would.Malcolm Collins: But anyway that’s the only controversy I’m aware of. And I don’t, I don’t even think of that as a real controversy. That’s not, she’s never pretended to be a white nationalist. She’s never pretended to be an ethno centrist.She’s never pretended to be like that is in no way betraying the image she has portrayed to the public.Simone Collins: Well, it’s so funny that she could have someone like Nick Fuentes on and kind of defend him and be friendly with him and then get castigated for that, but then also be def fenestrated for formerly having black boyfriends.Like, okay, so. Like, what are, are you mad at her because she’s not a racial supremacist or you’re mad that she is? We’reMalcolm Collins: seeing this with Trump right now. Yesterday or like a few days ago, everyone was freaking out. They said, can you believe Trump says he wants to bomb all Iranians? And of course that’s not what he said.He [00:13:00] even into the tweet was, you know, praying for the great people of Iran. But then the next day he doesn’t bomb them and he gets the beginnings of the, the truce worked out. And then all of the same people who were freaking out on him yesterday for wanting to bomb Iranians, they were like, oh, taco, he didn’t bomb all the Iranians.He should have bombed all the Iranians. Why aren’t you bombing them? Right? Like, it’s more just like attack them whenever, like when somebody’s on the right, you just get attacked for anything and it makes you a little numb to it after, you know, you’re just like, okay, you’re just gonna hate me no matter what I say.So, I have no need to take on anything performative at this point. But. What I wanted to discuss here was, one, the phenomenon of why she’s popular on the right. And two, the, the phenomenon more broadly, which I guess I’m gonna start with is a meta phenomenon is I was looking with AI and I could not find an equivalent to shoe one head on the left.Meaning there is no mainstream popular figure on the left who [00:14:00] has right wing views. There, there, there, there is no, I think thereSimone Collins: one, but it’s over, which was the Colbert report. It was this idea. I mean, and he wasn’t even actually right wing, right. But he pretended to be right wing and leftists loved that.But I think they also just kind of loved the, the right wing views being as kind sometimes. Like they just kind of Yeah, no, I They were allowed to, they were allowed to, enjoy laughing and, and, and watching it and kind of even liking it. ‘cause it was a joke. Of course. They didn’t like it. It was just a joke.Well,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Patriotism and vitalism that they could play along with and have fun with. Right. You know? Mm-hmm. You know, I, I think that that was what grabbed people in that. Yeah. And it was almost prototypical of. A channel like ours, like the Colbert Report.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I mean, people would say, oh, you support everything Trump does.And it’s like, yeah, we do. You know, yeah. Even if one day I, I believe in unless something is like a true and genuine betrayal and not something that he said he was gonna do on the campaign trail I should go along with it. Right. And like, for [00:15:00] example, the Irene bombing thing on the campaign trail, he said, I will bomb Iran to smither ees.Speaker 16: As you know, there have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of possibly do Iran, but we’ve been threatened very directly by Iran, and I think you have to let ‘em know that you do any attacks on former presidents or candidates for president.Uh, your country gets blown to Smither Eames, as we say.Malcolm Collins: Right. Like, so, it is the same with it. Like when Elon went against Trump for all of these things that he put into the bill, it’s like, yeah. But he said he was gonna do all this government bloat on the campaign trail is how he got elected. Right? Like, it was one of the compromises that our side came to.So I, I don’t, you know, but I, I guess that does make me look like having a relationship with Trump the same way the Stephen Colbert character had, was who was the Republican of that [00:16:00] era maybe, maybe George Bush or something. Anyway I know George Bush, by the way, he’s a, he’s a really nice guy.The people are I, I, I, you know, I think he made some mistakes during his presidency, but I don’t think he made them with malice. And I think obviously the biggest mistakes he made was attempting nation building in the Middle East, but he just didn’t have a history or knowledge to know that that wouldn’t work.Right. Like we had done it in Japan. We had done it in Germany. No one had really tried it in the Middle East before. If it had worked like it had in Japan and Germany and South Korea which was a. Pretty successful track record up to that point. And, and in mainstream culture at the time did not admit that people were genetically different.It, you, you, he couldn’t have gone to someone and said, how many successful democracies have ever been set up in an Arab majority country? Or what do Muslims really believe? Like that information just wasn’t out there back then. Right. You know, and maybe, maybe this attitude explains [00:17:00] why there isn’t this on the left.Right. I think many people on the right are actually fairly able to be forgiving of people’s political differences. We are open to have friends and be influenced by people who appear to be approaching arguments with good faith. And I think that. She represents that for a lot of people, and the left cannot do that.Mm-hmm. That’s why Stephen Colbert, which I think is a good flip here, is their closest thing to a shoe on head. Because everything he presented was explicitly in bad faith, which is why it was Okay. And I think that many of us didn’t know it how bad faith it was until after Stephen Colbert decided to be his real personality.And then we got to see, oh, this guy is like, completely cooked in the brain. Specifically he the, the funniest example of this was when John Stewart went on his show and tried to explain that the the lab leak hypothesis was [00:18:00] likely correct and funny, like that segment was so funny. And Steven got like increasingly nervous, like, but this is off script, John. This is off script. John. We don’t talk about this. Or community John.Speaker 23: the suffering of this pandemic which was more than likely caused by science., no,Speaker 22: no, no, no,Speaker 23: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not listen, listen.But whatSpeaker 22: do you, what what, what, what do you mean by that? Do you mean like, perhaps there’s, there’s a chance that this was created in a lab. I’d love to hear.Speaker 23: A novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China. What do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan Novel Respiratory Coronavirus Lab. The disease is the same name as the lab.And then they ask the scientists, wait a minute. You work at the Wuhan Respiratory Coronavirus Lab. How did this happen? And they’re like, Mmm, a pangolin kissed a turtle. [00:19:00] And you’re like, No! If you look at the name,show me your business card. Oh, I work at the Coronavirus lab in Wuhan. Oh, because there’s a coronavirus loose in Wuhan. How did that happen? Maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey and now we all have coronavirus. Like, come on.Okay, okay. Wait a second. Wait a second. What about this? What about this? Listen to this. Wait a second. All right. John. Oh my god. Oh my god. There’s been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? Like, oh, I don’t know, maybe something. Maybe it’s a cocoa bean or it’s the f ing chocolate factory.Maybe that’s it.Speaker 22: That could that could very well be and Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins and NIH have said like it should definitely be investigated.Speaker 23: Stop with the. [00:20:00] Logic and people and things. The nameSpeaker 22: of the disease Wait a second, wait a second Is all over the building Wait a second, but it could be possible, you could be right It could be possible that they have The lab in Wuhan To study the novel coronavirus Diseases because of the bat population there.Sure, no. I understand.Speaker 23: It’s the only place to find bats oh, wait. Austin, Texas has thousands of them that fly out of a cave every night. . Is there a coronavirus, an Austin coronavirus?No, it doesn’t seem to be an Austin coronavirus.Malcolm Collins: And you know, obviously he ended up, especially with his Charlie Kirk comments that were just really vile ended up, I, I think showing his true colors eventually.And his true colors just apparently come down from being afraid to, to challenge or criticize any, any, any woke or orthodox belief. And this is probably created by his writer room. I think he hired a bunch of SJWs to be writers and that made him really afraid, which is, you know, common in Hollywood.I, I do think that he might have been more moderated [00:21:00] in his earlier beliefs. ‘cause at one point he said his favorite president was Nixon. Mm-hmm. So, and he, and he said, really, I mean, this, this is gonna surprise people. So, so like not in Charact. Okay, but to shoe on head, why does shoe on head appeal to right-leaning individuals?And I will read an article attacking shoe on head, which I think will help explain how she still appeals so strongly to right-leaning individuals.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: You, you ready to buckle in on this one, Simone?Simone Collins: Yeah, please enlighten me.Malcolm Collins: Okay. This is an article on Medium and is one of the first results if you look up criticisms of shoe on head, shoe on head, the red brown Queen of Sims, and the dangers of pop populism.So it starts as, and then it says a, a criticism of June Lapin, which is her real name. Starts with a number of quotes from her rape culture Isn’t [00:22:00] real o okay, that’s not a problematic quote. Unless you’re talking about a Muslim culture, if she’s talking about some Muslim cultures, I’d be like, whoa, shoot.Like, you really need to look at the 99% of Egyptian women have been the subject to sexual assault statistic, right? Like, this is clearly a systemic problem, but not in American colleges or in America, which is probably what she means. The wage gap is a myth. Just, you know, this article was written in 2021.I don’t even think people on the left argue that the wage gap is real anymore. The patriarchy is not real obvious. White privilege is not real. The only privilege is class privilege. Okay, good way to try to bring in the the socialism. Mary. You see, that’s where she, that’s where she brings it in.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: These are a few memorable quotes by the YouTuber Shoe on head, a self-proclaimed social Democrat. Anti SJW YouTuber was 1.5 million subscribers and 400,000 Twitter followers. Bigger now I, I think about twice the size now. Who has successfully solicit solicited her way into legitimate [00:23:00] leftist spaces after five long years of desperately trying.I mean, she constantly talks about Vosh and being friends with him and stuff like that. She, so she mainstream was, was very far in mainstream leftists, right?Octavian Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Before we get into why she’s so dangerous. Now we need to talk about her past just a bit. Shoe on Head. Built her YouTube career off of the momentum of Gamergate, the misogynistic harassment campaign that gave birth to the alt-right and eventually helped get Donald Trump elected.But there’s a chance most of her fans today don’t know that. In fact, most of her fans today don’t know anything at all about shoe. So a few funny things here is most of Shoe One heads fans, I would argue, are not leftists.They are her original fan base. They are still Trump voters. There’s a reason she’s in every Sky Brown video. So no, her, her fans are very much aware that she was anti woke and still is anti woke, right? Mm-hmm. And then too, I [00:24:00] love this person’s characterization of Gamergate, right? Like a alt-right harassment campaign where it’s like.Gamer Gate was about very real corruption in gaming and media that led to the eventual destruction of the entire industry. Gaming media does not exist anymore. Side Scrollers a conservative YouTube show run by Stuttering Craig is which we’ve been on a bit in the past, probably bigger than all of gaming media combined.Like, like leftist gaming media at this point. And there are some other bigger gaming YouTubers. But they’re, they’re all either rightist or apolitical at this point. And, and certainly not establishment. The last establishment, leftist gaming media figure was zero punctuation. Who many don’t know.He does not like Trump. He’s invented that in some of his videos. So, you know, and he hilarious. I love his videos. I watch almost every one of his videos. But he only became a non-establishment because the company [00:25:00] basically kicked him out. They, they, well, they fired everyone and he got mad at them.And there’s the whole drama around that. And then he went toSimone Collins: start Is the angry British man or theMalcolm Collins: He angry, I think. I think I thought he was Australian, but he might be British.Simone Collins: I’m just thinking about the grumpy British man.Malcolm Collins: But that’s who you’re thinking of. I think he’s okay. Goes on those long funny rants.Mm-hmm. Anyway, so she goes over bullet points, so, so you know how evil she is. Okay. They don’t know that she was friends with Laura Su, a white nationalist that made a video trashing Hillary Clinton together in 2015. So a few notes here. Laura Su is not a white nationalist. She has denied. She’s a white nationalist.I think the, at most she has admitted some esno tensions around differential fertility rates or something like that. Which is not a, that’s anyone should be. Like if I am a, now in the United States, white people actually have very strong fertility rates, especially Northern Europeans. But if you’re talking about other countries like Italy [00:26:00] and, and, and Spain and stuff like that, like yeah, I’d be really concerned.And when I say strong fertility rates, I mean strong fertility rates for our income level. Not in a global scale. Obviously poor people have more kids, right. But, but even if you correct for things, see our video on this ‘cause in another video we were talking about this and the, one of the commentaries didn’t seem to be aware of this when we were talking about white, like Northern Europeans have strong fertility rates, and they were like, well, that’s not the same as birth rates.And it’s like, no, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Like, white people in the US have a higher fertility rate than black people in the US despite black people being poor, right? Like, if, if you’re unaware of that, we, we have a higher fertility rate than Mexico. We have a higher fertility rate than the average fertility rate of Latin America.We have a higher fertility rate than any country that comes close to EST except for Israel. In terms of the, the only one that that’s sort of close is Australia, which is again a northern European country predominantly. So yeah. It’s, it’s not a particularly warranted fear, but I’m still okay with people cheering for [00:27:00] their own team.It could be better. Sure,Simone Collins: yeah. ByMalcolm Collins: all means. I don’t think 1.6 is good. I, I, I wanna get up there. 2.5 or something, but like, we can get there.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Next she says they don’t know, she called indie game artist Zoe Quinn, a quote unquote w***e, and was a huge quote unquote, classic liberal celeb during Gamergate.So, for people who are unaware, Zoe Quinn is a w***e. Like, no, she, like, that’s what she’s famous for, is sleeping around with lots of people while she has a boyfriend. I suppose the like a, a lot, a lot of people while she had a boyfriend and then doing reviews on their video games, right? Like, that’s like both unethical and hoish.I suppose if I was gonna criticize her we do not have. It’s, it’s more like she was paying the guys for sex than the other way around, because she would write positive reviews about the games that guys she had sex with. So it, it, it’s sort of worse than being a w***e. It’s I, I I would say [00:28:00] trading your reputation and time for sex with somebody else sort of puts you on the receiving end of the horror category.But yeah,Simone Collins: this makes it look like it was a, yeah, she’s trying to pay them for the privilege.Malcolm Collins: A, a recent shoe on head quote, by the way that I thought was fantastic is the video she’s saying. It used to be that when an unattractive woman saw an attractive woman getting more attention than her, they’d call her a w***e.But we can’t say that anymore because somehow being a w***e is good now. So now we call them a racist. And I think that this is a regard to Cindy Sweeney controversy, but I think it, this, article right here. They explicitly don’t say, and she isn’t a w***e. They, the, the implication seems to be more, and being a w***e is empowering.Mm-hmm. That is how we capture our femininity.Michael who? Uh, I believe that is a w***e.Malcolm Collins: It says here is shoe on head at a party with Carl Benjamin. This is Sargon a [00:29:00] pod. For people who are unaware, no, she’s not even talking to Sargon of a cod. He just happens to be in the foreground and she’s inSimone Collins: theMalcolm Collins: background with her boyfriend.Simone Collins: Guilt by proximity thing is so weird.You breathe the same air as them.Malcolm Collins: And note here she is wearing cat ears too. This is,Simone Collins: is that the condemning factor here?Malcolm Collins: No, I’m just saying that, so socially that’s a pretty like. I, I would say at least not like trad conservative, very, very conservative as this new conservative culture is conservative.Like the things that she does that are so not traditionally socially conservative are things that the new right wouldn’t really condemn. Um mm-hmm. In so far as we are voices within the new right. That I think sort of embody a lot of the beliefs of it that we’re not gonna go out there and be like, oh, you know, you need to, if you practice a kink relationship with your monogamous boyfriend where you wore cat ears and did like daddy dom little girl stuff that you need to go in [00:30:00] a cage forever, right?Like, whatever. Right? Like, it’s, it’s with your partner. You, you both seem to be turned on by it. Like, have fun, right. And, and I think that this is partially why you didn’t know that about her, and it’s not a big scandal about her because nobody in the new Right. Effing cares.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right, right. It is, it is just the old timey purists and if she tried to get in with or the new timey deontologists that are, that are about, you know, purifying the ideology of the party, purifying you know, racial purity and everything like that.It’s just a bit, whatever.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like, like o obviously, like ethno groups are real and genetically cluster and there can be some utility in attempting to preserve one. But it’s not the only genetic strategy you can attempt. And that most ethno groups that you are a part of today were in part made by mixing previous ethno groups.Like the British ethnic group I’m a part of is a mixture of a number of ethnic groups Celts picks Vikings [00:31:00] French some Netherlands. And so, yeah, you know, it’s a, you, you can, you can mix ethno groups to create a superior ethno group. I’m, I’m joking there. I did not say that my ethnicity has any degree of superiority.That was completely said in jest. Mm-hmm. Do I make your side hurt?Simone Collins: My whole heart.Malcolm Collins: We point out in our, well, somebody in our comments was complaining that like how, like when you mix ethnicities, like look at the ugly children that are created by this. What? And I was like, well, you know, we do a video where we rank ethnicities by hotness.And in the studies that have looked at mixed ethnicity children white people think white. Asian babies are more at attract, not not babies, adults, like I, I guess people made of those pairings are more attractive than other white people.Simone Collins: They’re,‘Simone Collins: Cause they are, what can weMalcolm Collins: say? I kind of agree. I I think that often they do turn out hotter.It’s not to say that I think that that’s the optimal [00:32:00] genetic strategy, I’m just pointing out that this is statistically what white people think. And note that there are other esno groups that prefer white, like for example, Hispanics prefer white Hispanic. Mixed people to Hispanic people.Octavian Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: But to continue here, well go, go watch that video if you’re interested in this topic. Right. You know, holding her hand to the fire. They probably don’t know that her name is Shoe on Head. Comes from a meme where people harass webcam models who could not speak English. Okay, fine. Sounds edgy nonsense.They don’t know that she called non-binary people trans Trenders up until 2017. Oh, they don’t know that. She was a big fan of Milo Opolis. An infamous alt-right troll and close friends with Carl Benjamin. AKA Sargon of Cod. You ki party member. They don’t know. She said Trump might be good for America after he was elected and told LGBT people that they were overreacting.Election [00:33:00] night. At this point it’s like,Stop. My penis can only get so erect.Malcolm Collins: . Like, please stop.. Hell, they don’t know that she used to be engaged to armored sex skeptic, a Canadian reactionary or centrist YouTube skeptic who made videos against trans trenders and feminism, which was very much a real phenomenon, right?And then they have a picture of her dressed up. I don’t know, sexy clothing on her husband who in lighting his cigar. And, and they’re, and holding a sandwich, right? And they’re like, not sexist, you know, obviously joking there. And they say her, her ex has an interesting rig. I, I can’t tell what’s funny about this.It just, it’s like a card of me. For years, Shu has been slowly sneaking away from her old neo rat actionary spaces and making her way into left-leaning communities successfully sweeping her past under the rug, and pretending she was not calling non-binary people, trans trenders. Just a few years ago, [00:34:00] Vinny on the left, such as Steve Chives, this is one of the ones who we talked about who moved to the left but was in the original atheist community.A victim of shoe on head’s harassment has been warning about this infiltration attempt for years.Simone Collins: What kind of harassment is this that allegedly is causing all these problems?Malcolm Collins: I’m sure she just called him out for something. He really did.Speaker 9: Okay. When you actually look into this story, this is like psychotic framing of what happened. So Steve Chives at a mis con 2017 tried to get shoe on head armored skeptic and sargon of acod banned from the event de platform them interfere with their sources of revenue and public outreach, removing them from the conversation.And all she did in retaliation for that was make fun of him for being such an SJW. . That is absolutely wild that this would be framed , and not even like in a particularly cruel way, psychos.Malcolm Collins: I mean this is what the tweet [00:35:00] that they have about her, she seems too eager to excuse herself regarding Buck Angel.Oh, because she had Buck Angel on Buck Angel is trans by the way, and he is just a trans person who said the horrifying thing of trans children are actually a problem and you shouldn’t be gender transitioning children. And he is living proof that the majority of the original trans community is quite mortified.Him Caitlyn Jenner, everything like that with what the Transgen Trenders have turned the community into.Simone Collins: Is Caly Jenner still out posting? I’ve gotta check. Gosh. I mean, I hadn’t heard that name in forever. No,Malcolm Collins: not sorry for that. Vidcom pick she was in with shoe and armored skeptic. She worries about being a burden on to her colleagues, friends on YouTube, but puts tweets from others in the video, possibly making trouble for them.Why should she be sorry for the VidCon photo? Because it helped to normalize two se untrustworthy opportunists who are constantly grasping for [00:36:00] a sort of legitimacy and acceptance suggested in the photos. Specifically, she’s talking about her ex here. And this is shoe on head eating with her ex.The hilarious is this also includes Contra Points and Lindsay Ellis, right. Which I, I think are fairly mainstream leftists right thoughts. By the way, before I continue,Simone Collins: I I think this is an example of people trying to make cancellations out of absolutely nothing because I don’t see anything wrong here.She’s living her life. And mixing with other influencers and expressing opinions, which is the only thing an influencer can do if they want to provide substance.Malcolm Collins: Well, this is actually a really good point about you. So cancellations often validate people in the eyes of the right. Mm-hmm. I think if you look at the early days of v tubers, ‘cause we talked about this in the other episode, like Rev says desu, which is, it’s like literally an anime girl child vampire as his avatar.I mean, I think that would make many people quite suspicious of him. But his constant cancellation sort of affirm him in [00:37:00] the eyes of the right. I pointed out Scott Alexander being taken down by New York Times made him an intellectual who you could cite without reservation within right wing spaces.In addition the entire VT tubing community was really affirmed by the right in the big explosion that happened was the case of, what was it? Anna Vains and trying and Keisha take down leaflet and kyia. Right. And I smug Alana, was she part of that? I forgot. Smug Alana on our V YouTuber piece.And I love smug Alana. She has great videos. TheSimone Collins: smug, okay.Malcolm Collins: Smug. Alana’s another Fox girl. The problem, the reason I don’t remember her is I get her confused, was Kirsha. Because they have very similar avatars. Simone,your thoughts.Simone Collins: My god. Yeah, sorry. Up all night again.Tex is doing the thing where he doesn’t like to sleep. I’m just shocked. Here’s, here’s what I actually think is going on, and this is something that came up in the comments of the YouTuber video that you did on YouTubers going to the left and to the right post, the [00:38:00] four Chan Tumblr, easiest time.Is that what you didn’t? This wasn’t really about people choosing a side like, I’m going to become a Democrat. I’m gonna become a Republican. It was about whether or not people were part of those spaces in the first place because they hated or resented the church or God, or whether they were in that space because they wanted to pursue truth.And they, they were like going toward a light versus like hurling poop at think as something that made them angry. Right? Yeah. And I think the people who tended to go toward the left and then be associated more with the left were the people who just wanted to hate on God or the church or, you know, show resentment towards something.And often that something turned into Trump, turned into capitalists, turned into whatever, right? Af after they were sort of done throwing hate at priests or at the church. And I think the reason why Shuan had is an example and, and [00:39:00] maybe to a lesser extent, contra points because contra points I think maintain some level of popularity is that the fo their focus in the end.In very different ways, which you also touched on in an earlier episode. Hasn’t been on. I’m going to just dunk on this thing and hate this thing and I’m resentful and angry and depressed. I have mental problems, everything, bad hate, hate hate. Rather they show a sense of affirmative forward moving vitalism.And generation in that shoe on head is vitalistic. She has fun commentary, she’s very energetic. And Contra Points has taken the very different direction of being like, theater Kitty. I’m gonna add gel lighting and costuming to everything and be really entertaining about it. And that, I think actually you can even see this in the way that contra points versus Philosophy tubes videos went because both of them decided to take the theater kid perspective.Yeah. Even the mutual content of each of their videos. Counterpoints gets really [00:40:00] nerdy about things, but in a, in a non hateful way. In a, not like, I’m gonna talk how someone is bad, but rather I’m gonna be like, look at how Fire Festival went insane. Or like, let’s go down the rabbit hole with twilight. Whereas philosophy Tube is like, I’m going to talk to you about how, you know, everyone’s bad and terrible and how the world is bad and terrible toward trans people, toward, toward humans, toward the, the proletariat.And so it’s more about hate. And I think that that was a really interesting thing that several people in the comments of the last video, youMalcolm Collins: know, it’s interesting that you mention this because this is another individual that, like a lot of online conservatives watch Contra Points videos. Mm-hmm. When we have brought her up and liking her content, I, I like her content.On, on online before. Especially in contrast to who was that other one? A philosophy tube, right? Yeah. Rather like philosophy tube is not very high quality content and contra points, it’s pretty decent sometimes. AndSimone Collins: actually. I wanna say it’s notable because in terms of quality [00:41:00] I think, you know, Abigail, Flo, AKA philosophy too would immediately shoot back being like, I have a team, I have makeup artists.I put time into my script. Mine is higher quality, I’m more professional. Whereas they get the impression that Contra Points actually does more of the work herself, like on her own. Well, yeah, becauseMalcolm Collins: she’s, she’s, she’s doing the left of thing, which is a performative hiring of people. The performative, not justSimone Collins: Yeah, yeah.The bureaucratizing. But I, it’s, there’s just this huge difference between like nerding out vitalism enthusiasm versus like, I hate this thing. I’m smarter than you are. Here’s why you should hate it. Yeah, yeah. Here’s why you should hate it and why we should all be depressed and sad. And it’s not even really about right or left Trump bad or good.Right. It’s about like how energetic and vitalistic and, and is this person moving society forward, or are they trying to tear it down? I think that’s what it fundamentally comes down to. Maybe that’s what the new right is fundamentally about. It’s not really about being like old fashioned religious or not.It’s really are you excited [00:42:00] about building up for the future? And if you are, then you’re in the new right. You might, you know, not fit in any other way, but you’re there anyway.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Actually, this is a really interesting meta point for a number of reasons that I want to dig into. Okay. Yeah. First is fun, fun side here.Okay. For people who don’t know Philosophy Tube, when she was still a man dated Contra points another trans woman. And after they broke up, that’s when she started transitioning and in a way that looks like she was trying to look more like contra points, and then she started doing videos, like contra points.And Contra points has even called this out in a deleted tweet. Like, if you think your exes are stalkery, you’ve never had one, like completely medically transform themselves to try to be as close to you as possible, right? Like, but you know, the, and then launch a career that mirrored your own. ButSimone Collins: I mean, it’s a little bit relatable.I, I only say that because like when I first met you. I was like, why am [00:43:00] I not him? You know? I was just so excited that you existed and kind of mad that I couldn’t pull you off. But also I have the humility to know that I could never be you. So maybe that’s the key difference. I mean, well you kind of are now we’ve got kids together.Right. As I know. That’s the best thing. That is the best thing. Yeah. And the whole, not, don’t it to like combine my identity with you, but also make like iterative copy copies of you that we get to likeMalcolm Collins: Yeah. The moment you gotSimone Collins: a chanceMalcolm Collins: stamp, stamp stamp, stamp stamp, stamp stamp.Simone Collins: You know it.Malcolm Collins: Hey,Simone Collins: they,Malcolm Collins: they do act like us, I’ll tell youSimone Collins: that.Well, they act to like you.Malcolm Collins: They do act like me aSimone Collins: lot When they’re being neurotic. They act like me.Octavian Collins: This strawberry is getting my mouth wet. I can’t eat it.Malcolm Collins: But, one point I was going to make here is stylistic. Mm-hmm. An interesting thing about Sean Head’s videos is they actually stylistically look more like left wing videos than right wing videos.They’re closer to a contra points in terms of their level of editing and development. She, they’re [00:44:00] sort of a mix of the two cultures, but I point out that like right wing videos when we were talking about that they’re often far lower production b budget, they’re much more interested in just like, these are the ideas, right?Like, they’re not liter if they have jokes in them. The jokes are germane to like the way the conversation is flowing like a n Taku or us or something like that. Whereas or Bridget Nessy does a lot of jokes in her videos whereas shoe on heads appear theater kitty, I, I, I’d say almost right, like it’s got, it is got an ounce of that flair to it and it doesn’t turn off.Right wing viewers. I’ve never heard it. I I actually quite like the effort she puts in. Yeah. Second or, or then the larger meta thing I really wanted to get to that I think is really interesting here is what caused the original split. And I think Sarah Hater said this best on, on a, what’s her show called again?We’ve had her on SarahSimone Collins: Hater. I mean yeah, Sarah Hater was on I. [00:45:00] Special place in hell with Megan Do in hell. At least that ended.Malcolm Collins: Oh, it did. No, that’s a shame. But anyway so she said on a special place in hell that what we saw was the old atheist community is over time, it turned out that of the, like leading voices within it, half of them just wanted to dunk on Christians and half of them were interested in what was true.Mm-hmm. And the half of them that were interested in what was true is the half that broke off and eventually became anti woke New Wright. Mm-hmm. And the half of them that just wanted to dunk on Christians, I mean, many of them were the celebrities that like, we don’t even remember, used to be part of this movement.Like Neil deGrasse Tyson, oh gosh, bill Nye you know, who’s now like denying his old videos. Like, oh no, gender is not a, a thing. It’s not YXXY, it x Like in his new series, he actually is. Explicitly contradicts simple videos he made about gender in his old series. Right. Are you serious? Are serious? No.Yeah. Completely brainwashed.Simone Collins: Oh gosh.Malcolm Collins: But what’s interesting is that the way the split [00:46:00] happened if you’re talking about like the absolute leaders of the community, you know, people like, you know, Richard Dawkins and like that whole group by the, the Four Horsemen or whatever, I can’t remember all of their names.They didn’t all move to a traditional rightist perspective, but they certainly didn’t go in the direction of the celebrity types who were just interested in being atheist celebrities like Neil Dess Tyson, and bill Nye. All of them as far as I’m aware, have since said the, the movement was a mistake and Christianity is a good thing and made our society stronger and better.Mm-hmm. And, and that’s a shocking thing. But the reason they said that, and the reason they all came to that belief is because they were willing to look at the evidence as society changed. And that so we saw that in this early community, one, one half of it was really, they just hated, they, they allowed their hatred for the other group to define their beliefs.And the other part was searching for the truth. And I think we’re actually seeing this again with, in the right, [00:47:00] right now. I’ve pointed out in the. Last video we did on this, and we have a longer video that we haven’t aired. Where we go much deeper into this phenomenon is that it turns out that the sort of deontologist faction of the right the Nick Fuentes faction of the right, where, where we dig deeper into his beliefs on this, is much more dominated by like, they are willing to sabotage the United States best interest if it hurts Israel.Mm-hmm. And they are willing to sabotage America’s best interest. If it hurts Israel, they’re willing to sabotage the best interest of unborn children if it helps preserve some degree of like, moral purity and whatever they’re voting for. You know, like if you, if you know the Republican party is gonna put more restrictions on that, and yet you’re voting against them and telling your followers to vote against them, it shows a degree to allow the things you hate to override, the things you say you love, you know?Mm-hmm. And I actually think that there’s a lot of parallels between that. Strain in the conservative party right [00:48:00] now. And, and note here, when I talk about like hating Israel more than we’ve pointed out, we have a whole video being critical of Israel being like, Hey, like there’s actually, you know, problems in the relationship between the United States and Israel.But to you know, go so far as to say, and therefore we should not take out the ayatollah of Iran who wants us all dead, right? Like, we, we should allow him to have a nuke despite the large terrorist network Iran runs outside the country. That’s where you get to a point where you’re like, come on man.Like, if, if we can use Israel, they’ve dropped a, around half the ordinance that has been dropped has been dropped by Israel. Like they’re pulling their weight on this. They also have ground forces dealing with terrorists in Lebanon, but they pulled back when we made the deal. For people who don’t know we were not aware, like Iran, there was a miscommunication.It appears, at least that’s vance’s interpretation. It could have been intentional that Lebanon was not part of the deal.And Israel really didn’t want it to be part of the deal. Oh. Um, And uh, after the deal [00:49:00] was signed and Iran pushed back on this we put pressure on Israel and they pulled out of Lebanon as far as the last I checked I’ll, I’ll be honest about that.Speaker 12: So I decided to double check this before putting this live. , And as things stand, , yeah, Israel has pulled back in Lebanon, but not entirely pulled out in Lebanon. , They were completely furious about this. They had asked us to make absolutely sure this was not in the peace negotiation, , but they’re doing what we tell them to basically, because that’s the way our relationship works, despite what some people will tell you.Malcolm Collins: so, like they’ve, they’ve also like, in terms of. Playing ball by our standards. When we said, don’t bomb any infrastructure again after the bombing of the nors pars oil field they stopped. Right. You know? Mm-hmm. So, where was I going with this? Like they, they do do annoying things.Also, if you watch mainstream media, you may not be aware that despite the talks technically collapsing, the ceasefire is still in effect.But overall, you know, you are self-sabotaging the party [00:50:00] and the collective MAGA movement. And we find out 90% of MAGA is pro-war, right. You know,Speaker 13: And, , I will note here, it’s not just Republicans that are pro this. , Since the bombings have started, Republicans in the midterms have gained significantly, , vote hub aggregate, , before the. Strikes started as of February 28th, 2026. Democrats were at 47.9% and Republicans were at 41.8%. By March 25th, it had narrowed to Democrats at 47.4%, and Republicans at 42.8% you gov.Economists March 13th to 16th surveys. . Democrats slipped from 45% to 43%, while Republican support had gained steadily to 41%, shrinking a gap from four to two points since the bombing started. , And this is obviously freaking the F out of Democratic analysts.Malcolm Collins: of people who are pro-Trump. There isn’t an actual split in the base of the party, but I think that there’s [00:51:00] something of a mirror there to what happened with that community.Back in the day. Right. Which is part of the movement was really only interested in dunking on Christians. Eventually they realized they had more in common with the Democratic movement than they had with what was becoming the Republican and conservative movement. And the people who were interested in the truth.And somebody said in the comments of this video yesterday that the real difference between the two parties had become, one party is interested in what’s true and one party is is, is just not right. Like they want to create a constructed reality. And I think that this is part of what allows such a diversity within the left.It’s why in the left you’re able to have infamous within the right. No, in the left, in the left, you are able to have Islamists voting alongside people who are LGBT, you know, complete brainwash cultus, right? Mm-hmm. And you would think that these two things could never exist alongside each other. [00:52:00] But, but for both groups, what is consequentially true is irrelevant.It’s about the vibes and what they hate. And that’s, that’s why I’ve pointed out that I do think eventually what is now the groyper movement is just going to become part of the leftist coalition. It actually has a lot.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. They really are based on like, I hate this, tear this down. I resent this.Yeah. If you are that, then you are going to just end up in that left bucket.Speaker 14: While they share some aesthetic similarities to Republicans from like the nineties or eighties, they have almost nothing in common with the Republican movement as it exists today. , And they share a lot in common with the faction of the Democratic movement that’s very embracing of Islamist values.Malcolm Collins: Well, they’ve, they’ve actually begun to show more and more convergence. Was the mainly stream left as time has gone on? Yeah. So it’s, it is not just that they’ve been voting left for a long time, pretty much since the inception of the movement and signal that they plan to vote left going forwards.But if you look at the [00:53:00] Islamist contingent of the left, they actually don’t share that. Like, they do not clash that much with the Islamist faction. You see this with stuff like Tucker Carlson, where Tucker Carlson is constantly castigating people because, you know, he’s adjacent to this faction.He’s, you know, the anti-war, he’s anti, you know, blah, blah, blah, pro Venezuela. Mm-hmm. Just because they don’t like gay people. Right. So, you know, he, he has a lot in common with this faction. I think he’s part of this larger deontological faction. But. Or more than deontological hate driven faction, but he’s repeatedly come out as pro Islam, right?Like, how dare Christians criticize Islam? How dare Christians be okay with with Muslims being killed in this war? Very, very aggressively. If you see Nick Che’s videos, he repeatedly praised the regime and Iran saying that they were right to, you know, kill the protestors in the streets and stuff like that.And said that he wants to create something like ISIS, but Catholic and praising the way that ISIS is operate. So, they don’t have the reflexive like, oh my God. But you understand how bad civilization would be if an ISIS [00:54:00] like model really spread that most people in the. I care about what’s true faction of the right half, right?Because that’s not what’s interesting to them. It’s like the vibes that are interesting to them, which means that they can actually work really well alongside Islamists in a way that like superficially it would seem that they couldn’t. Mm-hmm. And if you look at the policy proposals that they’re pushing in terms of like, restrictions on, like, when I talk about like, content restrictions on the internet the, these are policy ideas that we’re beginning to see get popularity in the Islamic parts of the left, you know, in the, in the cities that are attempting to enact things like Sharia law, but also even was in the mainstream left.Like they’ve, they’ve bubbled higher in the institutional, like voting bodies of the mainstream left than they have at the right. Mm-hmm. And these are some of the core policy ideas that this group has and is interested in. So, this, I, I, ironically I. I do think that eventually that faction will become part of the, the mainstream left.And I, I think they are kind of [00:55:00] already part of the mainstream left. They just pretend they’re not and say that they’re not. Yeah, because that, you know, it looks like a duck and a quacks like a duck, right? If, if, if we accept that Islamists are fully leftist, right? Mm-hmm. Because I think you could say, well, they’re, they’re Christian.They hold deep beliefs and they disagree with leftism. But the Islamist disagree with all that. And we’d still say that they’re mainstream leftist, right?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: But back to Siwan head I think what Siwan head really represents for the right, and the fact that the left doesn’t have a figure like her, is that.We are truly a big intent movement like the, the, the core of the new, right? Mm-hmm. And I think it’s important to maintain that so we can continue to have the electoral dominance we saw in the last election, even when we do not have the purity spiralist you know, people motivated by hate in the movement anymore.Because as we’ve pointed out in the video where we say the racist mostly turned against the movement and they did what are your thoughts, Simone?Simone Collins: I mean, I, I just wanted to add that that’s the same reason [00:56:00] why the right is more varied than you would expect, but I think that variance on both the left and the right is the telling part that, oh my gosh, these are actually, they’re not affiliative in the way that we maybe originally thought that.It’s not like, I actuallyMalcolm Collins: think that that variance is really, really interesting. Yeah. The people who will ultimately end up in the right leaning coalition, I think the other person said that said this is really true, is anyone who is fundamentally. Interested in the truth above all else. And if that is yourSimone Collins: interest and beyond, beyond interest in the truth.I would say broad, broadly, and there are exceptions. I think the sargon of a cod crowd, you know, falls into one of these exceptions on this factor, but I think broadly, they’re more likely to be vitalistic and excited about building for the future.Malcolm Collins: No, that those things are true. But what I mean by this is.People on the right. The intellectual discussion of the right is not siloed in the way the intellectual discussion on the left is [00:57:00] siloed.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: You know, the, the L-G-B-T-Q activists are not really reading the Islamic extremist work and vice versa. Right. Like,Simone Collins: ohMalcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. Whereas on the right, you can go as diverse as somebody like shoe on head or contra points or something like this, and contra points isn’t even on the Right.Right. And you can expect you know, most right-leaning influencers will be familiar with their ideas and engaging with their ideas. Mm-hmm. I, you know, and there isn’t an equivalent like that on the left. There isn’t this sort of cross and it, and it’s across ideas on the right. There is no like silo on the right, where we don’t engage with those ideas or where they don’t engage with our ideas.Every silo on the right, even people who are. In, in so far as the grippers are still part of the right movement at all. They do go over our videos and ideas occasionally, right? Like, there is a still an intellectual interchange happening there. We are still going over those videos and incorporating ideas [00:58:00] where they make sense, like in, in terms of Israel skepticism.That’s definitely something that I made a point to look deeply into and incorporate into our worldview. Yeah. It’s just, it didn’t, the, the evidence that I got from that didn’t flip me to, and now we should let ourselves be cuted by Iran and dicked around by them, right? Like mm-hmm. If, if we can use Israel to help deal with this threat once and for all, then we should, and rather than, than screw ourselves over for, for you know, just because it may end up helping the Jews, right? Yeah. Or split up our coalition. I, I can say genes are real. And I mean, I, I personally chose to marry somebody of my even sub ethno group and still be okay with having a movement that has people who are in interracial marriages without scolding them or anything like that.You know, what matters is that we are discussing reality, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and you can discuss reality. There is a real [00:59:00] position. Where getting EE even if you take like all of the most racist positions, right? Even if you are a, like a, a racist maximalist if you’re still a realist and you’re interested in like your genes, whatever those happen to be, eventually winning, there are instances in which it makes sense to marry someone from a different ethno group.Yeah. And a society like the one that, this is the reason why I think the people who are realists and racist in the video that we have, that we talk about this, they often end up marrying non-white women because white women have become so terrible they often end up,Simone Collins: yeah. You feel like their only option for passing on their own white DNA is to find a non, I guess, non.Their definition of white woman. But yeah, it’s crazy.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, and e even if you’re a racialist Maximus, right? You still have passed on more white DNA by marrying a non-white person than you have by failing to find a wife.Simone Collins: Yeah. In other words, if you marry like a typical urban monoculture brained [01:00:00] white girl boss, you might have two kids.Whereas if you marry someone who’s a little more family oriented from a different culture, but maybe say like European, but by way of Latin America, so a lot of people wouldn’t count that. Then you could have six kids. And what I meantMalcolm Collins: is if you don’t find a wife at all,Simone Collins: oh sure, that too,Malcolm Collins: you know, you’re strictly doing le like even if you’re like a Racialist Maximus, you’re doing less for the white race than the person who is, for example, JD Vance has contributed significantly more to the future genetic.White population than Nick Fuentes has. Despite having an Indian wife. That’sSimone Collins: true. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally true.Malcolm Collins: So I mean, it, it, we’ve, this, this is, I mean, even if you are a racist, if, if you’re a realist, you still often end up being like, okay, but I’m still in this larger coalition.Instead of drifting towards the left and fighting against it.Simone Collins: [01:01:00] Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And I think that that’s why she has found herself in this is this obvious that while she has a socialist, and I wish she would examine her socialist views more, go into them more in new videos. Because I think looking back on it as an adult and seeing how much the government has effed things up so far whenever we’ve tried to give them power, she may realize that they may have been not as smart as she thought.But then again, she is a Catholic, and Catholics are traditionally socialists. You know, the last Pope was a big socialist. They’ve done many socialist revolutions. So we’ve also gotta keep in mind that being a Catholic even, even if we say like, well, governments are corrupt and everything like that, she’ll be like, well, the church is corrupt.Right? But like, it’s still better to rely on the institutions. And so she might just have a different set of priors than we have that would make her never not socialist.Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway. Love you Simone. Glad you watch. You, you watch her videos, right? Or do notSimone Collins: Oh, every time a new video first comes out, I watch it 100%.She’s fun, she’s funny, she’s vitalistic. I [01:02:00] like it.Malcolm Collins: She seems fun. I’d love to hang out sometimes if, if you’re watching this shoe on head we’d love to do something with you. Sometimes you’re, you’re always invited on the show. And you’re always, you join our dating network so our kids can date ‘cause you know mm-hmm.We gotta, we gotta find some, somebody for our kids to date. Right. Some sane people having kids out there.Simone Collins: Yeah. Man. The only kids who are gonna get married going forward are gonna have parental help. They’re gonna need it. So, yeah. Fun times. Speaking of which, anyone watching this podcast, there’s a lot of Basecamp listeners who are part of our kid dating network.Most of our kids are like. 10 years old or younger at this time we’re not doing anything yet, but we will be doing some stuff as they get older to sort of get them to know each other. Do kid exchanges, you know, like, so people can experience other households, kind of like, you know, culture. What is that thing where you sending out not well, yeah, like sending out as the pilgrims did it.But there was this thing where people would even, no, like our, our kids, our age of [01:03:00] our time would go like, live with a family abroad. I did that whenMalcolm Collins: I was a kid.Simone Collins: Yeah. That.Malcolm Collins: So it, like, to me it’s the mostSimone Collins: natural family ever. Most family, I guess. Yeah, yeah. MostMalcolm Collins: family. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Yeah. Because I did that with a family in Latin America.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Which is normal for wealthy Texan families to do, to send their kids to live with families in Latin America. SoSimone Collins: it’s a good way to be exposed to other cultures, other ways of life, other parents and careers.Malcolm Collins: I mean, you wanna talk about another way of life, live with wealthy people in Latin America.Yeah. Wealthy Latin Americans have like a totally different way of living than wealthy people in the United States. And it is, yeah. Obscenely, luxurious to an extent that I find it off putting. But okay.Simone Collins: Octavian has been like, kind of struggling with focus with homeschooling. ‘cause now he’s getting to like, the stuff that’s kind of just, you have to power through it, you know, in first grade. ‘cause it’s not that interesting, but it’s foundational to get to the next stage. [01:04:00] And so he’s been really dragging his feet.And so I took a recent picture of him, I put him into nano banana too, and I said, you know, age it up to age 28 and put him in front of a helicopter.And then I made this whole persona of him based on like all of his ambitions and dreams right now. Like, you know, he’s, he’s founded various military tech startups and he has a helicopter that he flies around.And I put that persona and that image into reality, fa reality fabricator and made a chat companion so he can speak with his future self that will help him when he’s, that’sMalcolm Collins: really clever.Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s really got really, he likes, like, that’s me. And you can see there’s, you can even see a little bit of you in there.It’s, it’s kind of fun to see him a theMalcolm Collins: image looks really good. Like it does look like a Collins and it’s just based on his current face, not like other family members.Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s based on a I’ll show you the photo that I used as the, the basis, ‘cause you know, you can just upload photos to Nano Banana and be like, you know this, but, oh, I [01:05:00] deleted it.Nevermind. Oh, I can just get it from my trash. So you what the reason why I wanted to use nano banana and not something else was that. Google is really, really good with age. Like it’s able to take even really old photos of people and be like, oh this is, you know, Simone Collins, this is like your grandmother when she was young.Like we have pictures of her when she was old and then when we uploaded really old, like vintage photos of her, it recognized who she was and tagged her face in Google photos. So I feel like Google’s like facial recognition technology is really good ‘cause they have so much data.Malcolm Collins: Incredible. Yeah. And by the, that’s.If you want to use reality fabricated with your kids, ‘cause we have a audio chat feature as well for the companion app. Go into the website, go r fab.ai/demo, and it locks the site on that device into a safer work mode, hiding all the not safe for work content on the site. Which can make it a fun way to use it with your kids to like, have them talk with Power Rangers or whatever [01:06:00] they want.Right. Like a you wanna version of how subscribersSimone Collins: really soon.Octavian Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Since I, since I needed to go that way since I did haveMalcolm Collins: Octavian.Octavian Collins: Hi.Malcolm Collins: Can you, can you tell Octavian to tell people about his new friendSimone Collins: Octavian?Octavian Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: What does your future self look like? What do you look like in the future?Octavian Collins: Like, like, like adult and like, was like, like I was like a.Show a teleco and a he for and a hanger and like cool clothes, like, kind of like this clothes, like, like band and, Hmm. Oh yeah. Like a shirt that is black and, and I almost like at that timeSimone Collins: in the future,Octavian Collins: yes. I almost look like a precedent of the future. And I got some and I got some hot water in and I somehow got the ice out.It’s in the sink.Simone Collins: He, he experimented with freezing his [01:07:00] water.Octavian Collins: Yeah. It was really fun actually.Simone Collins: And are you gonna, you were gonna fly future. You is gonna fly your helicopter to a campsite and you’re gonna draw a helipad with chalk and make marshmallows. It’s funny. Yeah.Octavian Collins: Roast marshmallows,Simone Collins: his plan, his plan basically is like, I’m gonna fly my helicopter to a campsite and then roast marshmallows, which is basically just yesterday afternoon was what he did.Oh,Malcolm Collins: he did thatSimone Collins: yesterday afternoon. Marshmallow. Yeah. So like he just wants our life, but with a helicopter.Malcolm Collins: That’s great.Simone Collins: Alright. Right, Octavia, you are, you are cleared to go play with the the spotted Sussex chickens. Go for it buddy.Octavian Collins: Goodbye.Simone Collins: Love you. Good job today. It did really well. I’m proud of you.Octavian Collins: I probably, if I did 13,Simone Collins: I knew you could buddy.You always could. Bye.Malcolm Collins: And for dinner tonight I’ll do Bullock again cooked in the traditional style. One theSimone Collins: traditional, you mean the traditional Malcolm style?Malcolm Collins: Traditional Malcolm [01:08:00] style, which is extra hot sauce and cheddar mixed in with the ozSimone Collins: morning forage ramps.Malcolm Collins: It was morning forged ramps. But when you cut the ramps last time you cut them into confetti this time cut them more like you would cut chives.Simone Collins: You mean we want larger chunks?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like large cylindrical chunks.Simone Collins: You understand that? I cut them the same way I cut chives. It’s just you’re cutting like dull sized instead of human sized. So they justMalcolm Collins: Oh, okay. Okay. Well that makes sense.Simone Collins: You’re not, I can’t like enhance, I can’t enlarge them for you.Malcolm Collins: Enhance, enhance.Simone Collins: IMalcolm Collins: I, I wasn’t sure if you were doing that with like the big in parts.Simone Collins: That’s what they become when you chop them. Like you chop chives. They’re actually really small.Malcolm Collins: No, no. The big bulbs at the end,Simone Collins: the ones that you gave me yesterday didn’t have big bulbs at the ends to get the dirt off, you pull off the outside sheath, you cut off the very tip the [01:09:00] root.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And then that’s all you’ve left. And that, that is chopped like chives looks like what you got and it’s small but itMalcolm Collins: must have accidentally cut off the bulbs.Simone Collins: I was really careful that not, ‘cause there’s not a lot there.Malcolm Collins: All right, well I guess we’ll see. We’ll save the leaves again today and that should give us enough leaves for a leaf dish.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Did you want, so you don’t want me to ‘cause I was gonna chop them really finely and then mix them in with butter to make herb butter. But if you don’t wanna do that, I can try something else. Well,Malcolm Collins: yeah, let’s try that. Let’s try the least for an herbSimone Collins: butter. Herb butter to put on steak, because I can also thaw out steak for like Sunday.Malcolm Collins: I think that’s a great idea.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: All right, I’ll get started. You’re such a wonderful wife, by the way. Thank you so much.Simone Collins: Because I made an AI of our son. He looks good. He looks a lot like you, but like, but very much Octavian. It’s, I, I, now I wanna make like future aged up versions of all our kids usingMalcolm Collins: Oh yeah, I do too.Yeah, they, they, he looks kind of like, what a [01:10:00] Trump’s kid though. Like Baron Trump aged up a bit.Simone Collins: Baren Trump doesn’t look like that, but he looks so much like, it’s definitely, it’s definitely him.Yeah, it’s cool. God, ifMalcolm Collins: he looks like that, that’d be so cool.Simone Collins: Malcolm that, I mean, that looks like you, you know, it’s the, the acorn head’s still there, you know, that, that confident look it, it, it, it looks like what your son would look like growing up.Malcolm Collins: Alright, well I’ll include it in the video. So if youSimone Collins: would, one of the things that really hit people, like unmarried. Unmarried, sorry often unmarried, but mostly childless couples was when they had AI create, you know, versions of their photos that had kids. And I think doing things like aging up your kids or making an image of you as a childless couple with kids can really help you understand the,Malcolm Collins: oh, I have a fun idea.So in my Stanford thread right now, they keep sharing pictures of them. What was like their one kid. I was, isSimone Collins: trollingMalcolm Collins: with like, with family, but I should get one and just have, add a [01:11:00] bunch of extra kids. So I share one with like 12 kids or something, just like a sea of children. What do you think?What do you think? Come on.Simone Collins: I thought you were just gonna fix their pictures of like them plus a couple.Malcolm Collins: Oh no. That’d be so mean. BeSimone Collins: boyfriend, but really funny and you never know. Could convince them.Malcolm Collins: Dysphoria. I would be banned from the group so quick.Simone Collins: I know, I know. They’re already banned me. It’s only a matter of time that they banned you.AllMalcolm Collins: right, all, I’ll get started.Indy Collins: Mommy, can you go? Okay, so what’s happening here guys? Iny, do you like the purple cake? Go this. And it’s super. Oh, you’re going for it, girl. Titan, what about you? Do you like the cake? Yeah. Yeah? You happy? What about you, Tex? Can I talk to Tex? What? What does this text say? Text. Text. What do you think? You [01:12:00] smiling noodle.Speaker 11: Okay. Octavian, what do you think? I think Taylor took it. What? I just want you to, I think your butt my, I was just kidding. I.You think so them down like this right here. And I’ll take a picture. Ready? You gonna make it? If I was, if I was allowed to throw the pie at the camera, I would show the viewers. But you’re not right. Rah, rah, rah. Do you like the viewers? Yes. When I subscribe to my.Simone Collins: So you don’t wanna eat cake, you wanna eat dinosaurs? Is that it? No. Yeah, but you, you’re also a shark princess That eats cake.Oh, yum, yum, yum. Do you like your purple cake? My beautiful princess? Yeah. [01:13:00] Yeah. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into a fascinating question from a viewer comment: Why did the early 2000s-2010s online atheist/skeptic community splinter, with many becoming the seed crystal for today’s online right-wing culture—while those who shifted left (Atheism+, socialism, Democrat alignment) largely lost their audiences and relevance?We explore the two major “seed crystals” of modern internet culture:* YouTube skeptic/debater/edge-lord style (truth-seeking, anti-woke evolution, Gamergate → new right)* 4chan’s shocking authenticity and owning-it energyAnd on the left: Tumblr’s vibe/aesthetic-driven culture (memes, cancel culture, performance over truth).Why did right-leaning creators like Thunderf00t, Sargon of Akkad, The Amazing Atheist, and Armored Skeptic stay relevant, while figures like Laci Green and iDubbbz crashed out? What makes ShoeOnHead the notable exception who kept a right-leaning audience without fully adopting the politics? And how does ContraPoints prove the rule with her theater-kid, BreadTube style?We also touch on:* Vibrant optimism vs. nihilistic pessimism* Truth-seeking vs. aesthetic vibes* Why conservatism now feels like “the new atheism”* Trump’s unique “Christianity,” religious evolution in the community, and moreIf you lived through the New Atheist era, Gamergate, or the Tumblr-to-mainstream-left pipeline, this one’s for you. Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to explore a question that actually came up through a comment on one of my previous videos. So on one of my previous videos, somebody was pointing out, because I pointed out there was this evolution within online culture of the online atheist slash skeptic community, which then transformed into the online anti-feminist community.‘Cause first it was dunking on Christians, then it was dunking on feminists, then it was dunking on. Woke people and then that transitioned into Gamergate. And then that became the core of what became the new right. Or at least like the online right culture. And he pointed out, he goes, well, hold on.There were also people, in fact, you could argue about half of the people involved was that original atheist community, that original you know, online skeptic community. Yeah. That went in the opposite direction. They went. Into the atheism Plus for anyone who [00:01:00] remembers that, that was like atheism plus socialism or something.And then they became Democrats and they became left-leaning. And, and this is true but one that doesn’t discount the fact that the ones who went to the right ended up forming the seed crystal that became online right-leaning culture. Mm-hmm. But two and more importantly, the key to the mystery that we’re on right now is.Every single one of them except for one. Notable exception, okay. Who went to the left from that original community ended up losing their audience, losing their relevance, and losing their cultural halt, whereas the ones went right, continue to be mainstream figures in the online. Right. Hmm. And the question is, is why?And my by the way, if you’re wondering who’s a notable exception here everybody knows who it is. It’s shoe on head. Yep. But, but, but shoe on head. It’s very [00:02:00] interesting and she sort of gives away part of the story here. Who is Shoe On Head’s? Audience shoe on Head’s. Audience is. A right leaning audience.Yeah, totally. If you watch like for example, we had Leaflet on recently and we’re talking about thing Oh, we were like, oh, something like, oh, shoe want head. Like obviously I know that she watched, she Want Head, we watch Shoe, want Head. You go to Asma Gold. Obviously Asma Gold Watches Shoe Want Head.Knox will talk about Shoe. Want Head. Oh Shoe Want Head Talk about, you know, everybody on the right watches, shoe on Heads. Yeah. So much so that you go to a Sky Brow video and it’s a bunch of conservative online commentators. And then in every single one, it’s shoe on it, right?Simone Collins: Amen.Malcolm Collins: And so what she managed to do was to maintain the audience that was transitioning into right wing political beliefs while not fully adopting them herself.Why, why would, why is she able to do that? Why do I watch you on head? I think it’s because I, I do not [00:03:00] feel that any of her beliefs are performative. Yeah. Like when I, when I watch her. She really believes what she believes about things. Well,Simone Collins: she comes across as based in the way that we understand based rather than the way that people on the left define based, which is like, oh, you’re a white nationalist.Whereas like, I, I see. Based as being unapologetically yourself, she comes across that. Plus she has that unique one, one very dominant element of being progressive these days is like. Non playful pessimism. And unless you, like, even when people are jocular, it’s in a very nihilistic non vivacious way.It’s like, oh, I’m depressed. Ha ha ha. Like that common comedic bit, you know, of like, it’s very clear that this person is clinically depressed and mentally unwell, but they’re laughing and joking. That’s not her way. And, and it, there’s a sort of, it, it only. It almost all universally shows up on the right.That when, when people are like vivacious and optimistic and [00:04:00] joking about stuff that, that’s kind of, that’s right coded, but she is that despite being not a. Republican, for example.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yet, we’ll see, I I, I have a feeling, ‘cause recently she came around and was like, oh, I’m a Catholic now, you know?Simone Collins: Yeah. As of the pandemic, she got God again,Malcolm Collins: I think, or was it very loud about because I didn’t know that until the recent video with Simone and I both were like, did you know that she just yeah. I, I think she might be on a pathway to I’m, I’m just saying very the slowest pipeline you’ve ever seen crash.But, but yo, she’s a mom now, right? So, you know. Yeah. That, that’s after a lot of people change, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. That, that’s also, you know, one point against being progressive,Malcolm Collins: but. The second thought I had is, okay, well maybe the answer to this is very, very easy because it’s not just that this group became the seed crystal that the online right grew out of.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: [00:05:00] Culturally, they, we’re, we’re very, very heavily impactful for what the online right is like today. The online, right today, when you look at the social norms, conventions, styles of videos, everything like that.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: It clearly comes from the early. YouTube atheist slash edge Lord videos, right?Yeah. Like this culture is represented in it. None of that culture. When these people went to the left, I. Was adopted by the mainstream left. And so I was like, well, maybe the answer is that the left controls elite institutions, right? Mm-hmm. Like universities and stuff like that. And that is where they look in news companies, PR departments.I was like, that’s where they get their cultural talking points. It’s all taught down, whereas the right is bottom up. And that is why the internet didn’t end up influencing leftist culture. Mm-hmm. And then I started thinking a bit more about it and I was like. But that’s not [00:06:00] really true, is it? Because as an online culture watcher of that period the, the Tumblr culture of that period is the modern left.In fact, I’d say that the culture of Tumblr from that period almost completely, it, it eradicated and replaced whatever was there before. It is heavily, heavily, heavily impactful to the point where, you know. We were getting in fights on Tumblr. Like I, I didn’t have a Tumblr account, but like people were right about like, could you, could you be like a gender identify as like a cloud or you know, an attack helicopter or a turtle or a universe.Yeah. Yeah. And at the time today we’re like, oh, that’s like normal, weird lefty stuff. But no, at the time that was like a totally new cultural phenomenon, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Now that’s gotten huge on the left. Right? And so have a, a lot of other cultural phenomenon. The, the you know, sort of fan fiction culture of, of Tumblr of that period.Many of the [00:07:00] ways of talking and joking, like the, the memes styles even cancel culture got its start was in Tumblr. And, and I will note, but thatSimone Collins: I thought it came out of gay culture, which wasn’t really heavy on Tumblr, was it?Malcolm Collins: Well, they, they said, the word cancel came from the hashtag Cancel Colbert campaign, which isSimone Collins: hilarious.No, it existed before that, I think.Malcolm Collins: No, it did not really. It did not. You have gotten into this argument with me before on the show, and we looked it upSimone Collins: afterwards so youMalcolm Collins: were wrong.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: it came from hashtag Cancel Colbert.Speaker: To give Simone Du, it was used in the black community before this, but it meant to like break up with somebody. It did not mean to attempt to de platform somebody cancel. Colbert was the first use of it in that context.Malcolm Collins: That is where it was popularized. And it was popularized by somebody named, I believe Amy Wong, who wanted to cancel Stephen Colbert, who is the most woke, obnoxious person ever for his Chong character.Where he went like, Ching Chong, Bing Bong, or whatever. Oh mySimone Collins: God, I forgot. Yes, yes, [00:08:00] yes.Speaker 2: my beloved character. Ching Chong. Ding dong. I love tea. It’s so good for you. You’re so pretty American. Girl. You come here, you kiss my tea, make all sweet. I no need no sugar when you are around. Come on rickshaw. I give you a ride to Bangkok.Malcolm Collins: And, and that is wild. That cancellation invented because somebody thought Stephen Colbert was too far to the right. Stephen Colbert. Okay, let that sink in. Where, where culture has drifted over the years. But anyway so, and, and I’ll note here that the right of today had two seed crystals of that period.Okay. It didn’t all grow out of this online skeptic community of that period. There was the separate, which was the four chan culture. Yeah. You know, the mailSimone Collins: end of the internetMalcolm Collins: RB, or I mean, sorry, not RP B polls, stuff like [00:09:00] that. And and Tumblr being where the, the, the, the more leftist culture came from.Yeah. And, and I’ll note that it’s not just us. So like this is not just, and we’ll go over some of the creators this happened to over this period as we try to solve this mystery. It’s, it’s not just that there were people in these original communities, that were influencers in those early communities and then stayed all the way through as influencers till today.A lot of the people who became. Or have emerged as right-leaning influencers today who are like of our generation. Were in those original communities, just not as talkers or were thought leaders, like we didn’t have channels or anything. Leaflets a good example of this. When we were talking with her, she was talking about how she was an active.Member of the community that was the predecessor of four chan raspberry something or another I’m not that familiar with it. So, you know, she’s been in this since the very beginning, right? It’s just she didn’t [00:10:00] have the face until today. You know, you go to somebody like N Taku who is today, you know, everybody who sees him as a, a fairly influential guy on the right.And. You go back and you, you don’t see his old content because he wasn’t playing culture wars back then. He was an anime nerd who like reviewed anime. Right. And but, but clearly, you know, he would’ve been adjacent to these communities. Right. So many people who were in these communities, like many of the influential people today on the right, started in these communities.Yeah. And I actually see this as well. We, we in interact with you know, like Trump administration type people and stuff like that pretty frequently. And I, I, I talked to them about four chan back in the day, right? Like the, these people were verySimone Collins: red in Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Environments, right? Like, we’re like, oh yeah, remember when like X happened or B happened.So I, I point out that it’s not just the influencers, it’s also many of the operatives. Okay, so we’re [00:11:00] getting into a and, and it’s, it’s also the high level staff like JD Vance. You, you know, you’ve seen the picture of him at school, you know, you know anything. And that guy was a nerd. But he wasSimone Collins: one of us.Yes.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. One of us. But not just that, but he keeps like, referencing Asma Golden Hassan in like interviews. Right? He is like the song dog, dog shock stuff. You know? He’s, he’s in the loop of the loop that we’re watching, right. You know? But, but, the question is, is there is actually one notable exception as to somebody who is in these early communities and then became a dominant figure on the left.And they are something of an exception that proves a rule. And this individual is contra points. Contra points had. Online, sort of, you know, anti theist, I guess you could say channel way back in the early days. But she was not popular. Like the community was not affirming of her, I guess you could say.This is back when she was a guy. Then she transitions and starts the, you know, new type of left-leaning philosophical essay that she does. And she popped [00:12:00] off. And the point that I’ll note here is. She never adopted the cultural norms of this community. Mm-hmm. If you look at her videos that have done very well, and as she began to gain steam, they culturally didn’t feel like the.Debates, feminist videos or the debates, Christian videos or the debates they were much closer culturally to theater kid videos. Yeah. Like theater kids playing around. Yeah. And so. I think that she was able to create this alternate for, you know, bread tube sort of building up around that because of that.And then most of the bread tube type videos had aspects of that theater kid energy and much less of the early like, let’s get out there, let’s offend people, let’s debate things, energy that continues on within modern right wing culture.Simone Collins: Yeah, and a lot of the leftist [00:13:00] YouTubers that I follow definitely feel like theater kids sometimes even explicitly call themselves theater kids.Malcolm Collins: But the other interesting thing about bread tube for people not familiar with Bread tube, it was like online leftist YouTube. That was like a community where like they’d all reference each other. Like we, we, it’s, I, I guess sort of like. The old leftist version of whatever the new right is today, right?Like, like the, the new right content creators in YouTube are like, definitely like a thing, like an algo loop, right? Like, they, we all reference each other, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. When one of us goes viral, we’re on everyone else’s stream, you know? But anyway you know, but the bread tube did not actually leave a cultural or intellectual impact on the left.And I think that this is something that’s really, youSimone Collins: really don’t think so. I feel like it, it played a key role in normalizing socialism as an ideal among younger millennials and then younger people in general, like then to Gen Z and Gen Alpha.Malcolm Collins: So, [00:14:00] one, I I push back pretty hard and say that socialism is not popular among Gen Z leftists these days.It’s communism that’s popular. Socialism would be seen as like, you know, capitalism adjacent was in many of these communities and, and, and like bourgeois value systems and stuff like that.Simone Collins: I beg to differ because. Communism isn’t possible without a GI, and they’re all very anti ai. So Simon,Malcolm Collins: Simon, they don’t admit, they don’t care what’s actually possible and what’s not.It’s what they tell each other that they’re fighting for, right? Like we are about to film an episode where we point out that China spins literally a third in cost adjusted value on social safety nets that the United States does. Yeah. And yet Hassan Piker is out there. You sucking the D because he says, well, there’s such great communists out here.Mm. Functionally the United States is literally three x more communistsSimone Collins: Yeah. Than China. Wait until Hassan [00:15:00] goes to the United States.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He he’s a real communist country. Yeah. No, but the point being is it they don’t actually care about what’s functionally true. You know, that’s, that’s something that’s important within leftist discord is and I, and I think that this is actually.Partially why you’ve, you’ve hit the nail on the head in a way. Why did bread tube not actually end up influencing the intellectual side of the left? The culture of the left or the norms on the left in the same way Tumblr did.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: And it’s because Tumblr was about the vibes, not about what was true.It was about how you aesthetically,Simone Collins: right? Yeah. All of it was, yeah, it was all about the aesthetics and the performance. It was not about, it was about the core, like cottage core and whatever core. Yes, yes. And so it, yeah. So Socialist core com. Core com core, yeah. It wasn’t, it wasn’t the real thing.Malcolm Collins: Yes.And that, that was, so, so, but, but if you look at what was happening on the YouTube [00:16:00] debating side of the right the, one of the reasons they ended up moving into the right from, you know, originally being anti theists and then anti-feminist and anti woke, and then Gamergate and then you know, mixed with the red pill, diasporan became the modern, new, right.Is that they, what’s the, what’s the word I’m looking for here? That they were predominantly interested in what was true. I mean, that was the point of all their debates. That was the point of who they mocked. Yeah. They liked mocking people for believing things that they saw as on their face. Stupid.Simone Collins: Yeah. I guess that their, their, in their pursuit, when you look past the specific themes of what they were discussing was, I like to take this widely believed thing that is disprovable. And I’m going to tear it apart ‘cause I’m, I’m very smart. AndMalcolm Collins: and that’s what ourSimone Collins: channel about making negative.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That’s gonna, like culturally it’s the exact same thing. It’s just like, let’s take this widely believe.Simone Collins: Oh my God. So conservatism is the new atheism. Oh,Malcolm Collins: because woke is the new dominant religion. Right.Simone Collins: So, but Oh, like, [00:17:00] no, that’s okay. I just, I never thought about it that way, but you’re so right. Oh my.Aw.Malcolm Collins: But, but it’s because that community was fundamentally a truth seeking community. Yeah. And read to, tried to create a. Sort of a respectable veneer for the left of like, we, there are intellectual arguments that make us look not stupid, but the reality is, is the demand for those intellectual arguments was not that big because the left didn’t actually care about them.Mm. It cared about the affirmation that hearing those arguments gave them, but it wasn’t interested in actual intellectual arguments. Mm-hmm. Which I, I think you see from the types of, of, of streamers that have done well, like Hassan does very well, who doesn’t give any intellectual arguments. Destiny has, you know, he’s always stayed as sort of a, a lot less popular than I would expect him to be, given that he seems to like, at least genuinely intellectually engage with the topics that he’s trying to go into.So, I think you captured one big part of it there, [00:18:00] which is that. The left is predominantly an aesthetic movement that has sort of, like religious, like beliefs about what’s true. And that is focused on a interconnecting memes that reinforce thatSimone Collins: well. But again, this is one of the core themes of our podcast, which is.A materialist’s. Hatred of mysticism. Yeah. A a consequentialist. Hatred of deontology. So maybe we’re also finding these core divides between vibes versus reality and. And, you know, actions versus,Malcolm Collins: yeah, and I think it’s, it’s, it’s why somebody like Nick Fuentes can appear so woke to us in a way, right?Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. Because it’s, it’s very, very vibes over reality, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But he has adopted the second core point of early online culture. If the core, which, which is why he can aesthetically sometimes look, equate leaning to people which is, if. The online YouTube debaters were predominantly interested in like taking [00:19:00] something that’s widely believed, but not true and explaining why or challenging people who believe wrong things.The other core, beginning core to the rightly in culture was. Four chan and the thing that four Chan valued most was doing something that is like shocking and holistically owning it. Like being you Right. In a, in a shocking way. And this is something that we have seen permeate the culture of the MAGA and the White House currently.Mm-hmm. Right? Like with Trump being like, those crazy pastors in Iran better knock it off. Right? Or I’m gonna destroy their whole civilization. Yeah, they’ve been around for a thousand years and their sitting’s old, you know, you know, he always going over, I might go at Bomb car Island again, just for fun this time.Oh my gosh. So that is, that is a four chan culture, right? Like that didn’t, that didn’t come from churches, that didn’t come from right wing. Right wing radio shock jocks. They didn’t talk like that. Mm-hmm. That [00:20:00] didn’t come from, that came from one place. Like you can’t be like, w maybe this evolved convergently from some other Right-leaning source or was like a wider right-leaning.No, it was, that’s just four chan culture that has beamed itself into the wider, right? Mm-hmm. And so it’s, it’s made up of these two things right now. And now I wanna talk about some of the people some of who, who made these various paths the, the sad life of some of the states of them who went to the left.And we can see through how the ones who tried to go left ended up just completely crashing out out how bad it was to attempt to go left. And I think it comes down to this. Their audience. So we have another video. It hasn’t come out yet where we talk about like the future of the right. But if you look superficially at the right, right, right now you would say that there’s like two large faction.There’s like the nerdy [00:21:00] consequentialist faction that’s like pro-war in Iran. Not anti-Israel, but like suspicious of Israel. . And, and this faction is, believes in genetic differences between ethnic groups, believes that those are significant and should play a role in how you see reality.But they don’t have like a reflexive hatred of certain groups, like say Indians or something like that, or Jews. And then there’s the other group which is very deontological. They do you know, elevate sort of. Explicitly like reactionary views to groups like Indians and, and Jews. And that is very anti-Israel and anti doing anything, even if it’s in the United States best interest, like the war in Iran, if it ends up also helping Israel.Mm-hmm. And there’s this perception, I think that these two groups are. Are equal because they are about equal in terms of the influencers on each side, in terms of the base on each side. And yet, you know, you look at polls and they show that like 90% of MAGA supports the war, right? They’re, they’re [00:22:00] not, the base isn’t actually divided on these issues.It is an elitist influencer class that is divided on these issues. And I think what we actually saw was this earlier split that happened in the. Movement that started as the online atheist and now has become predominantly many of them, religious, although not all of them community is that the base was predominantly interested in what at the time led to the split, which was anti.The, the influencer class, you know, your, ,idubzz.Malcolm Collins: your Lacy Greens, right? Like they thought. That the base was there with them, right? That they, they, or at the very least, that if about 50% of the influencers wanted to continue to be publicly respectable and cozy up with these progressive ideas, that about 50% of the base was also interested in that, right?Mm-hmm. And they were fundamentally wrong. [00:23:00] The, the, the base. And I say this as somebody who grew up in these communities, right? Like I, all my friends were into this stuff growing up. We, like, we were all watching these channels. We were all, none of my friends went woke, right? Like, maybe like one or two did because they dated like a woke a girl and then they went off.And who knows what sweet horror they’re living in now. But predominantly this, this community at, at the base level, has stayed on this journey since the beginning, and I think that that is in part how they had the critical number to end up making the substrate that the new right grew on within online culture.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: But to get you, by the way, Simone, thoughts before I go further?Simone Collins: No, keep going. Although I, I know. Do you have a take on, I, I kind of along the lines of what you’re saying of, of Trump not acting like a, a, a real, a religiously driven man, acting more like someone coming out of that atheist [00:24:00] community, even though, you know, we had a whole episode on his.No, he does have a realMalcolm Collins: version of Christianity that is very unique. And if,Simone Collins: if you’reMalcolm Collins: interestedSimone Collins: in, yeah, it’s unique, but it’s certainly not that old line Republican Christianity. Tucker Carlson’s later latest accusations of him following his remarks given during Easter were like, how dare he say these things about Iran?There are Christians in Iran who are worshiping on Easter Sunday, and how could he say these things on this holiday and how could he say these things against Islam like never attack someone’s religion. And, he also was like, and he didn’t even put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn in, which means that it’s not that he doesn’t believe in the Bible, it’s that he does and he’s gonna go against it, and he’s making all these religious, religiously based accusations, which I guess you could, you could argue is, is along the lines of this divide between the Al Line mainstream Christians and this.New right movement.Malcolm Collins: This is, this is so this deontological influencer class is very, very interested in being ideologically pure. And [00:25:00] so when they look at somebody like Trump, where, you know, our religious beliefs are different from many right-wing people’s religious beliefs, and they’re very different from Trump’s religious beliefs, which are prob trump’s.If, if you’re not familiar with Trump’s version of Christianity, it is about. From the perspective of a, a mainline Protestant about as crazy as technical puritanism,Simone Collins: it’s very different.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It, it is. Just as a, a quick summary. It literally melds 1980s style self-help guru ideas. Mm-hmm. Whi Christianity in a way that Trump doesn’t see as inauthentic because the primary.Pastor that he had was a famous 1980s self-help guru.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And so heSimone Collins: was, he probably sees him as like, synonymous, you know, like you gotta. Push through and be your best self and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that Christian.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because what he’s hearing at church during his entire childhood, in every, every sermon,Simone Collins: Yeah.And in, in the podcast where you go over all [00:26:00] this, you, you demonstrate how this really explains so much of Trump’s actions that if people only understood his philosophical, religious upbringing better, they’d be able to predict his actions more.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you’d be able to like his actions are extremely predictable once you understand his actual metaphysical and religious beliefs.Mm-hmm. Which I respect, right? Like, I’m okay with being in a coalition with people have different religious beliefs, and I love it when people in the comments are like, they try to trash our, you know, your silly form of Calvinism that tries to meld it with modern scientific beliefs. And I’m like, look, you can hate on this all you want, but.That was the religious beliefs of most of America’s founding fathers. Yeah. That was the predominant religious vibe in the, the 13 colonies mm-hmm. Is forms of Calvinism that tried to meld it with modern scientific beliefs. Now obviously science had advanced significantly since then, so our form of melding the two looks different than their forms of melding the two.Yes. But their forms of melding the two were for their time experimental new religions. Mm-hmm. And, and so like. [00:27:00] To, to, to say like, oh, you can’t be this an an no. It’s like the core juice that America comes from. You may find it squidgy, but it is a, a very American type of Christianity. And, I think that, and when I say Trump’s religious beliefs, it’s also actually has a lot in common with the types of Christianity that were being practiced in the 13 colonies that we’re trying to meld it with new psychological ideas, new trends of the time and stuff like that to be a, a, a, a growing and living religion as opposed to totally calcified one.Mm-hmm. And it’s just different ways of approaching things, right? Absolutely. But I, I don’t think people realize like how ly we believe our religious system now. Like when I came up, I was just like constructing it and now I’m just like, wow, this is a real, this is very persuasive to me. One of the funny things that we always get is when people reach out to us and they’re like, oh, well, here’s why X, Y, and Z about [00:28:00] your belief structure is wrong, right?And this, the, the, the Bible’s actually saying this, and I’m like, the problem is, is that if you could convince me that the Bible is saying that, then I just wouldn’t believe the Bible. Right. Like, you’re not, you’re not convincing me that I am wrong about like the, the, the metaphysical truths of reality.You’re, you’re trying to say that the Bible says something that I would find to, to be illogical.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And therefore. This reminds me of a, a, a crash out. One of our, our close family members had this Easter where he went on a long rant about this, which I think, you know shows.Simone Collins: Oh my God, yes.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it’s an argument that I’d actually never heard before. So I’ve got, I’m gonna, if we’re talking about the early edgy online atheist, I guess I should share this argument because that was actually fairly,Simone Collins: it’sMalcolm Collins: aSimone Collins: great argument.Malcolm Collins: I was like, that’s, that, that’s actually fairly persuasive where he said that he was really insulted by people.In, in, in traditional normy [00:29:00] Christianity acting like Jesus made some great sacrifice because he’s like, Jesus sacrificed his life through torture to save the souls of all of humanity and every human that would ever come into existence. He said. Absolutely any remotely decent human being would make that trade.He’s like, there are. Humans every day that die to save complete strangersSimone Collins: and just one, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Not even their souls. And die in horrifying ways to achieve this end. And because I’m, I’m used to the atheist argument, which is like, why did, why did his sacrifice matter if he knew he was going to immediately be brought back as an all powerful God?Mm-hmm. Then he didn’t meaningfully die. Right. But I had never heard the second one, which is to say, even if you don’t consider that, by the way, techno puritanism fixes most of these, which is, and this is one of the reasons why we, we build our own system because I, I couldn’t [00:30:00] get myself to, to, to buy something like that, that like a sacrifice like that had value.‘cause I kind of think my has a point there. Right. I, I need a, a wider and alternate framing for me for this. To be a thing of value to me. Right. But it, it is completely, it’s just different, right. And it’s different than the way Trump looks at it or anything like that. But just for fun.Atheist argument that I’d never heard before. And, and if I’m coming at a family member like that who is crashing about something like that, I’m gonna have a much easier time converting them into something like Op Puritanism than I am going to one of these older traditions. Right. Same as my kids.You know, they, they’d leave the religion for the same reason my dad left the religion. Right. You know, so I’ve gotta, because I would’ve left the religion for those reasons.I think if you grow up a Christian and learn to accept the elements that don’t make sense to outsiders, you don’t see how loud they look to an outsider. So when I talk about something like when my dad left, it was when he was in Sunday school and he went to his teacher and he [00:31:00] tried to understand the logistics of how Noah’s arc could have worked given the number of species on Earth., And, . He was basically just told to shut up, right? Like basically just punished for asking questions, and that’s a big problem. And this is a problem for me, like there’s other, like the, the issues I’ve asked here aren’t the only issues that I consider really existential for me, adopting the religion., One of the biggest is why a local revelation, like if God is all powerful and needing to accept, jesus is so important , , to go to heaven. , Why only have Jesus’s revelation in one location in earth at a time before mass communication? Couldn’t we at least have one Jesus per continent or have Jesus teleport between the various continents to give the revelation in multiple places?Because that left a huge chunk of Earth’s population completely isolated from it for a long time. , . It, it’s funny, Mormons try to solve this by being like, oh, he did [00:32:00] actually teleport to the United States. But the, the point being is these may seem like trivial things to Christians, but if you were not raised in the church, they do not feel trivial at all.And so when you try to convince me, oh, your alternate interpretation of this stuff is wrong, that I’m left with those initial problems again, and I don’t have good answers for them.And again, this isn’t me like trashing on Christianity or something like obviously I consider myself a Christian now. , I’m just pointing out that when you say all these fixes that you’ve come up with, , are not correct, that I’m left with the initial problems again.If you’re new to this channel, have no idea what I’m talking about. You can check out our track series or the, , channel list, Malcolm and Simone’s religious beliefs. , But the point being is it’s like I. I was like, okay, I will, I will slowly patch this thing back together into something that I can find plausible.And then I take it to someone and I’m like, [00:33:00] here, look, I have found a way to make this believable to me. , And they’re like, well, we just need to remove all the patches. And I’m like, well, then it just falls apart. From my perspective, right, like you cannot remove a patch without explaining an alternate explanation for the thing that the patch was intended to fix.When you remove the patches, you don’t lead to me believing the original thing, you lead to me believing the original thing was actually broken. , Which I think is something that people don’t understand when they’re discussing something like Christianity with somebody with an alternate understanding of it.And this matters because not everybody who has done this journey, like say Sargon, who has not converted back into Christianity, . Right. , And, , I, I think the problem is it’s that. Many people who grew up Christians are accepted in some other tradition, , don’t understand how existential , the problems are.Like take something like the problem of good and evil, , when I posit that God exists in the future and the reason [00:34:00] why. , He cannot just erase evil is because it would have a temporal paradox, , that that solves it for me, that’s like a plausible explanation for me when you say, well, God doesn’t exist in the future, then I’m left with the problem of good and evil again.It’s not a small thing for me to think that it solves a very, very major problem for me.So I’ve gotta create something that can work for the, you know, former edgy online atheist community member. But I want to go into some of the specific individuals here.So of the ones who went right, we have thunder Foot or Phil Nathan Core early YouTube streamer. Why do people laugh at creationist series? He shifted prominently to anti-feminism, Gamergate support, and ongoing anti woke GW critique, and he’s still highly active and relevant in anti woke spaces. You have obviously a, a YouTube channel that I still watch regularly.Sargon Evade Carl Benjamin started in the skeptic adjacent ki. Commun commentary. He, [00:35:00] he’s still an a CS as far as I’m aware exploded during Gamergate as anti, I love that. S shoe on, had converted to Christianity before gon and I cod. ISimone Collins: think she was raised Catholic and then she returned to Catholicism during the pandemic.That’sMalcolm Collins: what sheSimone Collins: said.Malcolm Collins: As an anti SJW voice, and obviously he’s evolved. You know, I, I you, you guys know if you are watching this channel, you know how important Sargon ev Acot has been in building the culture of the modern online, right. You have the Amazing Atheist or TJ Kirk major, their a CS provocateur, who became a central anti SJW figure expanded into political commentary.And while he has critiqued extremes on all sides, he has stayed very strongly anti woke. Then you have armored skeptic a CS skeptic who became a key anti SJW voice in the Gamergate era. And as to the people who tried to go in the other direction the, the really bad one was Lacey Green.SoSimone Collins: I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of Lacey Green.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So she peaked at around 1.5 million subs on herSimone Collins: main. Oh, that’s a, okay. [00:36:00] It’s a lot of people. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s a lot of people. And she has since be because in the, she tried to go into like, against the anti SJW people, but she would do it through like interviews with them, which pissed off her left wing.Like she, she would kind of wobble as well as she got pushback. And she, she tried coming back, but she’s basically off the internet now as far as I’m aware. And then, steve, Steve Cheves has been a steady bleed to like niche irrelevance. And then the really sad one that I like to still watch videos about isidubzz.Malcolm Collins: Who ended up having himself psychologically destroyed by this thought that I, when I say, I mean absolutely she streams on OnlyFans while being married to him.Simone Collins: Oh no.Malcolm Collins: Well then we’ve talked about her before and, and, and she basically wanted to make him Hassan ‘cause she had like a crush on Hassan. And they, they still do things with like Hassan and stuff like that. And it is very, very sad.Speaker 9: My original last name is Washburn. My [00:37:00] new last name is Jama. That’s my wife’s last name. I would what he, I would recommend that he finds God our silence means something. He ha, he ha 2025 has to have been the worst year of IOS’s life by far losing his fans that have stuck by him ever since his reputation started to slip.Speaker 10: Losing somebody that considered him a friend for over a decade, and of course losing his boxing event. Creator, clash.Malcolm Collins: They, they get like a few hundred people show up to their streams these days.Simone Collins: Speaking of Hassan, and I really appreciate in the, a recent episode of ours. We put out the question to our audience, why do women watch Hassan? Because I don’t get it. Explain. So she explained, and this is a Basecamp listener who, who works with a lot of progressive. Women who are also fans of Hassan.Her understanding of it after watching them talk about him is that despite the fact that the [00:38:00] left is, is on paper very sex positive, they, it’s not really okay to, to be into submission or to be into being dominated. And to also be on the left. And Hassan, like Negs his, I guess largely FMA audience quite a lot.And I, I just thought it as him being like abrasive and dismissive and mean to everyone. But like, yeah, I guess he does kind of just, you know, talk down to people and insult them, insult his own viewers. But a lot of this is like, leftist women who want to feel dominated and, and by a man who also, like another issue she pointed out is that most leftist men are like various sheep.She put it soy. So it, they, they want to feel dominated by a non soy like man who also says all the right things. And she pointed out like she, he says all the right things about Palestine and about, you know, capitalism. And so, you know, it’s, it’s important ‘cause you can’t have like. Tate say something because he says the wrong [00:39:00] things, so you can’t think he’s hot, you know?So he, he, he ticks all the boxes and that explains so much to me, and I’m so glad she explained that ‘cause it didn’t make sense. But now it all fits together that, that they want a, a hot non soy guy to speak down to them, put them in their place. And he, he does that. And he also still says all the right things politically.So the trifecta. AMalcolm Collins: trifecta.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: No, I, I like that. Yeah. This is. By the way, the reason people who are like, I want to deep dive into how all these people’s careers failed. There are so many YouTubers that you can go to for that that will do it in such a more entertaining way than me. And that’s like not our channel specialty.I, I’m more interested in like the broader trends and how culture changes. Basically I, I like sort of doing explorative anthropology in real time. But I think that we’ve. Hit on it, which is that the base that was watching these people the base’s [00:40:00] core value never changed. The, the you had one base in the early days that was interested in things that were shocking and extremely authentic, and then you had another part of the base that was interested in things that were intellectually surprising, but fundamentally searching for truth.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And the people who were fundamentally searching for truth were of course going to be as anti woke slash anti-urban monoculture slash anti-feminist as they were anti-Christian in the early days or, or the version of Christianity that, that existed back then. Right. Hmm. And, back to Christianity. They did not go back. Their conversions into Christians do not sound like the types of conversions you’d expect somebody from other communities to have. It wasn’t like I hit rock bottom and then, or like one of my parents died and then, or like my family was really struggling and [00:41:00] then it, it, it’s usually often more, well, I thought about it logically you know, which is.A very, it, it, it, it fits in line with the community. I mean, when you look at the, the, the, the members of the original atheist community usually the, the, the path goes is they first start saying, as. I think all four of the four formen of the a c apocalypse have since said is that it was a mistake to make places like the UK less Christian that Christianity was a good institution and central to the values of our culture.And that retreating from Christianity was a mistake. And first you hit this position, then you have kids, and it’s like, well, if you believe that. Retreating from Christianity was a mistake and now you’re raising a little one, like, what are you gonna do? Right? Like, of course you raised them Christian, right?Like, or you try to build an iteration of Christian like we have done, and I, other of our fans have done [00:42:00] an iteration of Christianity for them that they’re not going to just be like, well, explain this. Like, I actually wanna have explanations that Ia the toddler would’ve found. Compelling during, during that period instead of just like, well, we don’t you know, you’re, you’re being as, as, as what happened to my dad and led him to leave the religion before I was born.So I was never raised in it.Speaker 6: And , I actually don’t even understand why, , many Christians do not understand how existential these things seem. If I’m adopting a religion I want to pass to my kids, where when I was a rebellious kid, I would’ve immediately been like. Oh, that just seems totally implausible to me.Right? , The Noah’s arc story that caused my dad to deconvert is important to me because you need an explanation, right? Like, you can’t just say, well, some of this is, , just meant as an allegory. , And some of this is objectively true because then it’s, well, how, how do I differentiate between the two things?, But as I mentioned earlier, , [00:43:00] the biggest question for me, like the one that. Always got me the hardest is why the local revelation, if it’s an all powerful God, and this is existential for saving your soul. Why the local revelation? That seems like such a trivial thing to potentially fix. , And I think this isn’t just true for my interpretation, it’s true for a lot of interpretations when somebody comes to you as an iteration of Christianity that seems radically wrong or different to you.. It may be because like , the parts where you’re like, oh, I’m just removing all the parts that are different from my interpretation, or I’m challenging all the parts that are different from my interpretation. , That you are removing all of the patches that made it plausible to them. You are leaving them with something that is just from their perspective, fundamentally unacceptable again.And I think this mistake comes from the belief that some Christians have that, , somebody doesn’t adopt Christianity because they don’t like the rules or they hate God or [00:44:00] something like that. And if you look at what was being talked about in these early atheist communities, that is not what was being talked about.It was the logical issues in accepting the religion as it is commonly presented. And the techno Puritan project was my. In Simone’s, , journey to attempt to fix those issues for us, the issues never stopped being issues. It wasn’t like one day we woke up and we’re like, oh, all of those issues never existed in the first place.The issues are still there for us.And when people are like, well, just ignore the things that feel like logical contradictions to you, , or that feel like they would imply that God is not a good God. If you take the traditional, , interpretation, what are, like, what are you even talking about? Like I, if I’m gonna actually believe Christianity, which I do now, or at least my interpretation of it, , that’s me choosing.Like literally the most existential thing I believe about reality. That’s choosing how I think the [00:45:00] metaphysics of the entire universe, reality, morality, everything like that works. I can’t choose to just pave over or ignore. , What to me looked like fundamental cracks, for something so completely existential about my interpretation of reality., And I think that this is true for a lot of people, right? And this is why that movement happened to begin with. Just what people came to realize is, oh, civilization doesn’t seem to work without this. And then the question , is, well, how do you fix it? While still accepting that the problems that we saw were real problems.And again, as I’ve said, even if I could ignore everything that looks like a logical or moral problem to me in a traditional interpretation and just be like, okay, I’m just gonna go with it. I know that my kids wouldn’t just go with it. So. it, it is put upon me if I want, at least within my family, this tradition to survive.I need to reinterpret it. I’m not doing that on some sort of power [00:46:00] trip or to be edgy or something like that. There is , a utilitarian reason why this project exists for us and our family.Also for those who would say like, oh, Malcolm and Simone, you guys are starting a cult or whatever, by having an alternate interpretation. , You know, I wrote a book like five years ago saying I was going to do this. I started doing the tracks a number of years ago in that entire time because people have have been able to observe my behavior since then.Have I ever done anything that would in insinuate that I am doing this to attempt to extract resources from other people, force someone to have sex with me, you know, any of the other stuff that like cult leaders do, right? , That I am doing this for literally any reason than trying to pass down an iteration of Christianity to my children, that they will find plausible and acceptable from their position.I, I, I, [00:47:00] I don’t think I have.Malcolm Collins: I did go to church every week, people wondering. I just wasn’t raised to be Christian. I went to church because my school was religious. All of my schools were religious up until, high school. I went to church every week. So, and I’m a big fan of like for people who think I, a huge fan and Simone knows this of me, of Christian Radio.Simone Collins: Sorry, Texas speaking up. AM Christian radio like not just Christian radio?Malcolm Collins: My favorite by the way is the cavalry church. Cavalry Church radio I think is just fantastic.Simone Collins: Cavalry.Malcolm Collins: Cavalry. Oh yeah. Cavalry Church. They, they do great stuff. And I really, I really like their version of Christianity.I, I think it’s a really solid, I mean, obviously it’s, it’s not my version of Christianity today, butSimone Collins: it’s high. It’s high energy. You like that.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s high energy and I think it is you know, really close to being biblically accurate. Like it really tries to take the Bible seriously rather than leaning into modern Christian [00:48:00] interpretations, which I don’t always see as you know, sometimes they take our conventions about what the Bible says.Mm-hmm. Or what we would like the Bible to say over what the Bible actually says. And cowboy Church is very. Much, you know, Bible first.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Which I deeply appreciate.Speaker 11: what’s interesting to me is this. Love of Cavalry Church and these extremely strict interpretations of the Bible. This came for me when I was still an atheist, like as an intellectual interest perspective. , So for me, this has never been about hating the Bible or not liking to intellectually engage with it.It was. A number of logical issues I could not get through, and if it’s about my metaphysical understanding of a morality and reality, I can’t just pave over them.Simone Collins: This is so interesting to me. Yeah. You’re really getting me to think of things about things differently too. I mean, even in the way that intellectual YouTubers on the right and left appear on their channels, like [00:49:00] you have philosophy tube and contra points doing these elaborate.Costumed lit performances of philosophy, but their performances first and foremost, versus like people literally hiding behind, you know, an avatar. Not even showing up on screen at all, or just like rapid fire talking with very little production on the right. Really just letting the ideas come through. It’s really about the ideas and not the performance of them.I’m, I’m really seeing a new form of this divide that we’re always returning to on this podcast. So,Malcolm Collins: well, I think that there’s this, a separate thing that you see with right-leaning influencers that you don’t see as left-leaning influencers is right-leaning influencers. Not all of them, but it is more common in right-leaning influencers, content, like to be seen as having the alternate perspective being aired g explaining the counter argument and trying to counter that, right? Mm-hmm. Whereas this is not something you see on Philosophy Tube or counterpoints as much. And, and like [00:50:00] with youSimone Collins: Oh, no, no, no. They, they, they put the alternate view, but they like frame it as like, well, and what Satan believes is like, it’s just always framed in such a bad light.Malcolm Collins: You’re such a strong man. Yeah. The, the other thing of right-leaning influencer culture is that it is extremely happy and high energy much, much more frequently.Simone Collins: And that’s why shoe on Head is, I think, an exception of someone who leans.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Very. At least libertarian at at the veryMalcolm Collins: nux.Andor is a good example of this, for example.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, but I mean, that’s, I think it’s normative on the right for people to be high energy and enthusiastic. And optimistic and,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, if you, if you look at some of the original players who got into this space before the four Chan and YouTube cultures merged mm-hmm.You have players like Sarco who doesn’t fit this. He isSimone Collins: still very, you have to throw out anyone who’s British. It’s in their nature.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean, it’s a, a genetic defect of the British people.Simone Collins: They didn’t escape to the colonies. It’s the ones who couldn’t make it off. Failure to launch.[00:51:00]Malcolm Collins: Look at that baby.Simone Collins: Anyway,Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, I I. And this, this exists throughout. Mm-hmm. But you don’t see it as much in left leaning culture. Like Hassan rarely smiles or is happy?Simone Collins: No. The, the really weird thing with left-leaning culture, like I was saying earlier, ‘cause I, I listen to plenty of people on the left who also like, are more on the comedian end of the spectrum too, like podcasters, but even they, it’s a very dark humor and they, they frame themselves even very openly is like.Being on meds, seeing therapists actively dealing with anxiety and depression problems, like it’s very clear that they’re deeply unhappy and unwell. And I just don’t see that the same way on the right. Even when people actually are un unwell, they’re like unwell on that kind of like. Prolonged manic period, way instead of the Yeah.[00:52:00] Prolonged depressive period way.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think it’s because you know, if you’re, if you’re in this community is like the, the new deontological community did not grow up alongside this community. They are very different than this community. I mean, I think that that’s where we see these culture clashes and stuff like that.Right. When Matt Walsh crashes out about anime, Matt Walsh was never in this wider community that became the seeded of the online. Right? Right. Like he cannot fathom. How, how anime could be so popular in communities. Right? Yeah. And it’s, it’s actually the same as you even see it was like, obviously one of the most famous people who’s, who’s countered this community is Nick Fuentes.Right. And while he’s young, like, like this community often is, he never really engaged in those parts of the community, right? Like he was never an anti-feminist culture warrior. He was never an anti woke culture warrior. It’s clear he never really [00:53:00] consumed that content. If you listen to his story about how he became right wing, he started out as a generic, GOP Inc.Old school conservative, and then. Just became anti Jew because he kept being attacked by Ben Shapiro. Right. He, he never no, no. This is actually really important, right?Simone Collins: Yeah, it is actually. He neverMalcolm Collins: consumed this content. He was never part of this culture. So when he speaks to people, he’s speaking to a completely separate cultural subset.You see this with other, like, we might be around the same age as Ben Shapiro, but Ben Shapiro popped off.Simone Collins: No, I think he’s a good seven years older than us atMalcolm Collins: least. Oh, but he’s talking to a completely separate community, right? Like he never consumed this content. He’s never really part of the foot on the ground culture wars, because he was already part of GOP Inc at the very beginning, right.I, I believe that like he was the type of person who, when Trump started winning in the primary, [00:54:00] a lot of us were still Democrats, but we were like, isn’t this funny? Right? Like, let’s try to make Trump win. That’d be hilarious. Yeah. Right. Like, and that’s where he got his early boost in the primary.That’s where he got his relevance was in Fortune. Right? Like that’s when I say magnet created fortune, Trump wouldn’t have had the votes for people to say, let’s take this guy seriously, if not for the four chan boost.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They tried to boost him in all the polls and all the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.But this also explains why you know, some in, in many ways, in, in, in sort of the, the old school and deontological Christians and Jews that, that, that Nick Fuentes and Ben Shapiro can find themselves on the same side against. This, well already, like largely here, I wouldn’t say it’s a growing movement.It’s a movement that has been snowballing through so many different domains of the internet. And then land and plop right in the center of, of MAGA somehow. And it’s, it’s culturally [00:55:00] fascinating how this happened And, a lot of people are, are obviously wailing and squealing that they, they don’t get it.They don’t understand what, why this movement thinks the way they do, what their values are and how do they control the White House all of a sudden.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: right. Like, how, how do they control so many online influencers all of a sudden, and why, how are v tubers Okay. As conservative icons, why are anime girls, why is Rev says desu a guy?Who uses an anime girl, this V YouTuber icon, a leading conservative influencer. What is going on? Like I’m so confused, their brain because they weren’t here on the journey. And maybe this can even just serve if you weren’t here on the journey, a conserv as a video that can help you understand why this group seems so culturally weird and where it came from and how it grew.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And it might be worth doing a whole other video on where leftist culture came from. Like the story from Tumblr to the left. [00:56:00]Simone Collins: Or if you want to start with Quakers, some people have asked for us to start from the veryMalcolm Collins: beginning. Oh yeah, that’d be an interesting one. Yeah. Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Love you to death, love too society.And I hope dinner. We already talked about that. So have a good one.Simone Collins: Bye.Malcolm Collins: What? What’s wrong with me saying it’s the tassel look,Simone Collins: it’s not tassel. T-A-U-S-S-L-E-D, I think. Not T-A-S-S-E-L, but sure. It’s the tassel look. God blessMalcolm Collins: people. See my malicious compliance and traditionalism, they’re always confused. Why do I think Canvas? It’s, well, I’ve gotta be the most trad man in the world.And so all these other guys, they dress like they’re out of the 1950s. Try, try dressing. Like you’re out of the 13 hundreds.Simone Collins: Well, I guess you have what’s that one? The sad British men? They have a, some sort of Greek statue presumably. What is that? [00:57:00]Malcolm Collins: It said lo the Lotus Eaters.Simone Collins: Lotus Eaters. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yes. That’s even older. That’s like, that’s likeSimone Collins: they’re trad. Maxing orMalcolm Collins: something. Or you know, I think it could be, I don’t know. Yeah, trad. Maxing right there. Yeah. Gotta go.Simone Collins: Exactly.Malcolm Collins: I could be like a, a Greek statue just gotta come on every show shirtless, like flexing.Simone Collins: Yeah. Recently you know, you gotta take the sigil to your skin or what do they call it?The not sigil. The scrapy thing, you gotta rub the olive oil on and you gotta use theMalcolm Collins: oh yeah, yeah. Come totally greased up.Simone Collins: Well, yeah. That’sMalcolm Collins: how you know that this is a straight issue.Simone Collins: Greased up and, and exfoliated, they had, the men had skincare routines back then. I’ll tell you what, you know, they, the baths, they, the cold plunge they had the, the hot saunas.The god they are. That is, is that what, because you know, there’s a sauna craze now again, and in addition to the cold plunges, they’re just going full on Roman.Malcolm Collins: No. Really? No. But yeah, the reason I chose gamba and style is because I like the way that it I think anything that like goes up behind your neck [00:58:00] and sort of flares out like that is really good.Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: For projecting sort of a, like a, a strength look. Cool, cool. Look, you know, it’s aSimone Collins: no. I mean, certainly like if you’re trying to demonstrate masculinity, higher neck lines or high collars and, and exaggerated shoulders are like. That’s why shoulder pads,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, I’m not, I’m not exaggerating my shoulders though.This is talking about the, the neck area.Simone Collins: No, it’s just, it’s structured though. And, and like for example, even a muscular man when he chooses to wear a sweatshirt instead of structured shoulders. Looks more slouchy, looks less masculine. Anyway, looks more like a human potatoMalcolm Collins: for dinner tonight. What do, oh yeah, we’re doing Bullock again.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: That was fantastic last night. But mix in a bit of theSimone Collins: Bullock and we have the green onions for topping as well. Yeah. Bullock with, with mozzarella and cheddar of course. And then sesame seeds and green onion.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the, the, the bit of cheddar really adds to it.Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s got penal.Speaker 12: [00:59:00] Do you want me to? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

OpenAI just dropped their big “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age” document — and it’s clear they’re battening down the hatches for AGI/superintelligence. In this Based Camp episode, Simone & Malcolm Collins break down the proposals, call out the performative elements, and discuss what it really means for jobs, society, wealth distribution, and human flourishing in a post-labor world.We cover:- OpenAI’s push for a “people-first” transition (or is it mostly optics?)- Public wealth funds, robot taxes, 4-day workweeks, and expanded safety nets- Why AI agents like our Reality Fabricator could replace entire workforces- The darker implications for demographics, family, and global power- Risk mitigation, liability, bio/cyber threats, and why meme-layer solutions might matter more than anyone admitsIs this genuine preparation for superintelligence, clever self-preservation by OpenAI, or both? We give our unfiltered take.Watch until the end for Malcolm’s super-villain island/Charter City vision and what we’d actually build in a post-AI world.OpenAI’s Document: Industrial Policy for the Intelligence AgeShow NotesIn April, OpenAI released a new document: Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First, which is their crack at launching an early, public conversation about how democratic societies should handle the onset of AGIThey intend to support this agenda through feedback channels, fellowships, research grants, and convenings (e.g., its Washington, DC workshop).* “OpenAI is: (1) welcoming and organizing feedback through [email protected]; (2) establishing a pilot program of fellowships and focused research grants of up to $100,000 and up to $1 million in API credits for work that builds on these and related policy ideas; and (3) convening discussions at our new OpenAI Workshop opening in May in Washington, DC.”* There is no actual information about this workshop out there* Maybe an indication of their not being serious?They propose AI governance and industrial policyThey imply their proposals will help keep people at the center despite a transition to superintelligenceThey put forward an initial portfolio of policy ideas in two areas: “building an open economy” and “building a resilient society,”What they say they’re optimizing for:* Broadly sharing prosperity* Mitigating risks* Democratizing access and agencyTheir case for new industrial policySociety has navigated major technological transitions before, but not without real disruption and dislocation along the way. While those transitions ultimately created more prosperity, they required proactive political choices to ensure that growth translated into broader opportunity and greater security. For example, following the transition to the Industrial Age, the Progressive Era and the New Deal helped modernize the social contract for a world reshaped by electricity, the combustion engine, and mass production. They did so by building new public institutions, protections, and expectations about what a fair economy should provide, including labor protections, safety standards, social safety nets, and expanded access to education.“The transition to superintelligence will require an even more ambitious form of industrial policy” they write.Open Economy ProposalsThey acknowledge that the AI boom can severely concentrate wealthThey argue for industrial policy that will”* “Give workers a voice in the AI transition to make work better and safer, including a formal way to collaborate with management to make sure AI improves job quality, enhances safety, and respects labor rights.”* “Help workers turn domain expertise into new companies by using AI to handle the overhead that usually blocks entrepreneurship (e.g., accounting, marketing, procurement).”* “Treat access to AI as foundational for participation in the modern economy, similar to mass efforts to increase global literacy, or to make sure that electricity and the internet reach remote parts of the globe.”* “rebalance the tax base by increasing reliance on capital-based revenues—such as higher taxes on capital gains at the top, corporate income, or targeted measures on sustained AI-driven returns—and by exploring new approaches such as taxes related to automated labor”* This is because they acknowledge income-based jobs are going to vaporize* “These reforms should be paired with wage-linked incentives that encourage firms to retain, retrain, and invest in workers, similar to existing R&D-style credits.”* Create a Public Wealth Fund that provides every citizen—including those not invested in financial markets—with a stake in AI-driven economic growth.* Smart move on behalf of AI companies if the financial welbeing of ALL citizens is dependent on their success* Would be kind of a massive win; if everyone owns you, you own everyone.* “Establish new public-private partnership models to finance and accelerate the expansion of energy infrastructure required to power AI.”* No brainer* “Convert efficiency gains from AI into durable improvements in workers’ benefits when routine workload declines and operating costs fall, including incentivizing companies to increase retirement matches or contributions, cover a larger share of healthcare costs, and subsidize child and eldercare. Incentivize employers and unions to run time-bound 32-hour/four-day workweek pilots with no loss in pay that hold output and service levels constant, then convert reclaimed hours into a permanent shorter week, bankable paid time off, or both. Where helpful, firms could also offer predictable “benefits bonuses” tied to measured productivity improvements so the efficiency dividend shows up both as long-term financial security and as time back for workers.”* This makes me worried* “Make sure the existing safety net works reliably, quickly, and at scale, because if the transition to superintelligence is going to benefit everyone, the systems designed to provide economic and health security need to deliver without delay or gaps. That starts with unemployment insurance, SNAP, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare that are not just in place but fully functional, accessible, and responsive to the realities people will face during the transition.”* THEY WON’T WORK AT SCALE AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY THINK IS GOING TO FIX THIS* This implies they expect a huge surge in unemployment, right?* They propose a metrics-driven, dynamic “package of temporary, [and] expanded safety nets (e.g., expanded or more flexible unemployment benefits, fast cash assistance, wage insurance, training vouchers)”* “Over time, build benefit systems that are not tied to a single employer by expanding access to healthcare, retirement savings, and skills training through portable accounts that follow individuals across jobs, industries, education programs, and entrepreneurial ventures.”* This makes sense* It’s stupid that employers are responsible for this (though I get how and why that happened)* “Expand opportunities in the care and connection economy—childcare, eldercare, education, healthcare, and community services—as pathways for workers displaced by AI.”* More atomization* THOUGH IN FAIRNESS TO THEM, THEY CONTINUE: “These initiatives could be complemented with a family benefit that recognizes caregiving as economically valuable work and supports evolving work patterns. This benefit could help cover childcare, education, and healthcare while remaining compatible with part-time work, retraining, or entrepreneurship”* “Build a distributed network of AI-enabled laboratories to dramatically expand the capacity to test and validate AI-generated hypotheses at scale.”* YESResilient Society ProposalsThis is their diplomatic way of saying: “Risk Mitigation Proposals”“This is not a new challenge. When transformative technologies have reshaped society in the past, they have introduced new risks alongside new benefits, and new systems were built to manage them as they scaled. As electricity spread, societies built safety standards and regulatory institutions. As automobiles transformed mobility, safety systems reduced risk while preserving freedom of movement. In aviation, continuous monitoring and coordinated response systems made flying one of the safest forms of transportation. In food and medicine, testing and post-market surveillance helped ensure safety in everyday use. In each case, resilience was not automatic—it was built with the luxury of time.”They propose that governments:* “Research and develop tools that protect models, detect risks, and prevent misuse across high-consequence domains, including cyber and biological risks as well as other pathways to large-scale harm.”* “for example, rapid identification and production of medical countermeasures in the event of an outbreak and expanded strategic stockpiles to prepare for future risks”* YES PLEASE* “Research and develop systems that help people trust and verify AI systems, the content they produce, and the actions they take—especially as these systems take on more real-world responsibilities”* “This work could also include developing and testing governance frameworks that clarify responsibility within organizations, including how accountability could be assigned to specific roles and how delegation, monitoring, and escalation processes could function as systems become more capable.”* I am genuinely interested to see how liability + AI evolve* This could be uncharitably interpreted as OpenAI hoping to evade liability by making sure the people who misuse it are held liable, but I think that’s fair.* Strengthen institutions such as the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) to develop auditing standards for frontier AI risks in coordination with national security agencies.* “As we progress toward superintelligence, there may come a point where a narrow set of highly capable models—particularly those that could materially advance chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or cyber risks—require stronger controls, including pre- and post-deployment audits using the standards developed in advance. Apply these requirements only to a small number of companies and the most advanced models, preserving a vibrant ecosystem of less powerful systems and the startups building on them. This approach maintains broad access to general-purpose AI while applying targeted safeguards where failures could create the greatest harm, avoiding unnecessary barriers that could limit competition or enable regulatory capture.”* Develop and test coordinated playbooks to contain dangerous AI systems once they have been released into the world.* Frontier AI companies should adopt governance structures that embed public-interest accountability into decision-making, such as Public Benefit Corporations with mission-aligned governance. These structures should include explicit commitments to ensure that the benefits of AI are broadly shared, including through significant, long-term philanthropic or charitable giving.* “Have policymakers establish clear rules for how governments can and cannot use AI, with especially high standards for reliability, alignment, and safety.”* “With appropriate safeguards, oversight institutions such as inspectors general, congressional committees, and courts could use AI-enabled auditing tools to detect abuse, identify harms, and improve accountability at scale.”* “Create structured ways for public input so that alignment isn’t defined only by engineers or executives behind closed doors.”* Is there a way this could work without being dysfunctional?* “Establish a mechanism for companies to share information about incidents, misuse, and near-misses with a designated public authority.”* This currently happens with data breaches, but it sucks* A better system would presume failures and build around that, right?* Coordinate “International information-sharing around AI capabilities, risks, and mitigations.”Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because it’s really clear that OpenAI is like battening down the hatches for, for a GI. They’re like artificial general, general intelligence is coming, gotta shut down Sora. Like everything’s getting cut.Like we are like riding through the, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re catching the wave and it’s super clear that that’s, that’s what’s going on. Like,Malcolm Collins: well it’s super clear that that’s their messaging. Their AI is not particularly good when contrasting with otherSimone Collins: experiencing that, but that might be because the consumer facing stuff that they’re releasing, they’re just like kind of letting that go right now.And another sign of that is that in April, I mean yesterday but anyway, in April, ‘cause I don’t know when you’re gonna run this, they released a new document called Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age Ideas to keep people first, which is their. Alleged crack at launching an early public conversation about how democratic societies should handle the onset of a GI.So they’re, they’re trying to kind of get ahead of the public discourse as well to be [00:01:00] like, oh no, we want to make this human-centric. We’re not gonna leave anyone behind. And what’s interesting is when you go through this policy document, it’s pretty clear that they’re ha aware of both the hazards and the massive social impact that a GI is going to have.And even if you doubt that they’re gonna be the ones to release it. We’re we’re headed there. It, it’s super clear.Malcolm Collins: No, but it still is worse digging into what they’re saying.Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘Malcolm Collins: cause the people developing ai, okay, they’re not stupid. Right. Like, they understand that this is gonna fundamentally transform our societies.Mm-hmm. The, the, the, the, we are at this fulcrum point of the human condition.Simone Collins: Yep.Malcolm Collins: Where somebody. I hope it’s us, builds an agent that can replace your average human worker. For people who don’t know, we working on our fab ai, which actually literally has these agents, which are getting better every day.I’m at a point now where the ones that we [00:02:00] make can about a, if you’re running it on Windows and running it in Chrome, because it has a lot of bugs on other systems still about end to end build video games for you. Like pretty cool. That’s crazy, right? Yeah. But it can also do things like make phone calls, send texts, send emails.We’re, we’re getting the feature that allows it to talk to other agents improved. So like, so much is potentially going to change after that because what, what does it mean? Why would I hire a, like at our company, at our fab.ai I wanna make video games. So what do I do? Do I hire another developer to make video games?Or do I build an AI agent to make the video games for me? Right? Like, because I wanted to make indie games for a long time, but I just haven’t had the bandwidth to do it. Yeah. And now I can go out there and say, okay, I’m gonna make these indie games and then I can build an agent to help get this STEAM certification process handled for me, and I canSimone Collins: yeah.In other words though, like what, what makes reality fabricator different? But I would say just an [00:03:00] indication of a pervasive future is that you’re not looking to make specifically agents or tasks more accessible to people you are. Going to replicate employees, you’re gonna make it easier for people to just create employees.Yeah. Full personalities that, that behave like humans. You’re not just making like, this is my bot that does my research. That makes course.Malcolm Collins: Well, it actually has a number of advantages. I’m just gonna go off on a little tangent here, so people can,Simone Collins: oh, boy,Malcolm Collins: understand how you can think about the development of ai and what an AI developer is thinking about mm-hmm.When they’re putting together their product. So giving them personalities actually significantly reduces a lot of the negative outputs you have from something, being an AI system more broadly. If you go to an AI and you say, write me a paper on X topic, right? It will make many of the, like, x but y you know, sorts of [00:04:00] mistakes where you’re like, oh, an AI wrote this.You know, when you hear somebody say something like that, if you go to an AI and you say, write me a paper as X person, like you are not the standard ai, like you’re an expert in whatever, it’s, you know, go over Malcolm Collins’ writings, right. Write a paper in the style of Malcolm Collins are even better.Give it a personality and say, you have this backstory. You have these memories. Write a per paper, embodying this individual. Those get reduced significantly. So this has a, an actual effect in terms of how the AI does its work. It’s not just random additional tokens that are being spent. Yeah. The second thing that we did.Is if you look at the other agent change systems they use json format hooks to hook together the various model calls. So basically you have a model call and then that call says, oh, I want the next model to search the internet or make a phone call, or whatever. And so they have a very structured [00:05:00] format that looks like code, basically, like this has to be in this line, this has to be this.We didn’t do it that way. We developed a, which has made it much harder for us, and this is where most of the errors from the system are coming from. A loose, natural, language based chaining process. So as close to natural language as possible, the ai says what it wants to do next, and then a system parses that and then calls that next.And there have been. Peer reviewed papers on this, it shows that ai, when you don’t give it tight parameters like that, is significantly more creative and significantly more intelligent.Speaker 12: No, the system is better than it used to be, especially if you are using windows with a Chrome browser. , It can get about to making its own games now, like recently I had one build a game for me, , but it is still very buggy. Specifically because of this system. I expect to have most of the bugs ironed out was in a months, maybe two., And then it should be able to do its full slew of capabilities.Malcolm Collins: And then we have other advantages, like we use an alloy model [00:06:00] system, which none of the other agents are using, which changes, which model is being called with every call within different price tiers.And this makes it much more intelligent because it’s using the best features from every individual model call. Then we have a sec, like all the advanced systems that we’re able to build into this. Then another huge problem that systems have is that they get stuck in loops. And the way that other companies are solving this is they basically just put in detection systems that like go over what the AI is doing.It’s like a cheap, fast model, like every four or five calls, every eight calls, and then they inject. A prompt that’s meant to like bust the loop, which it doesn’t actually work very well, where what we do is we both inject the prompt that’s meant to bust the loop, but then we also run a separate ai, which prunes every output that was involved with the loop.So it’s like the loop never existed. So like when we’re approaching this, we’re attempting to architecturally make significant improvements on how the systems worked. Not just, you’re not just getting a, [00:07:00] oh, it’s different in this small way. We also allow for far more models than any of the other major age systems.I just had to go over that, the, the, the fun stuff we’re doing on that front. But what this represents through open AI is one of these major players being like, uhoh, we’re about to break the global economy. Like how can we plausibly haveSimone Collins: a worldMalcolm Collins: where humans still live? Something like a normal life.Yeah. After, yeah. Because like, yeah, we wanna achieve our goal with R Fab ai, which is to replace the human labor force. But like also, I’m not, I’m only like kind of evil, like I think I’m sort of a super villain, right? But you know, presentation, right? I not a damn almond’s, just a villain. Okay? I am a super villain.Speaker 2: Oh, you are a villain. All right. Just not a super one. Yeah. What’s the difference?[00:08:00]Presentation.Malcolm Collins: so hold on. But the point I’m making here is I obviously don’t want civilization destroyed, right? Like I, I, I would if I was making money from this be using that money to try to build what a post AI human civilization is gonna look like on my.Island community, like Charter City. I know like we say, charter City right. But what we really mean is private island portraits, which is a little super villainy. Anybody had enough money? Would I carve my face on a volcano? Probably.Simone Collins: Why not? I mean, when you can have your AI drone swarm do it for you so easily.Malcolm Collins: Sure. You can though. Right? So then why would, it’s aSimone Collins: good afternoon.Malcolm Collins: I do that. I, and I do it for effect, right? Like. [00:09:00] I might have at the end of this, just things I would do if I become like super wealthy. AI mogul one is definitely one of those scary looking blimps you know, with like spotlights on it and like, oh, two big, like things with like post-apocalyptic messages on it.Like, you know, don’t rebel. Like, oh, Malcolm was always right. You know, flying.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like I could just see a m visitor from abroad coming over and being like, oh my God, what’s that? That’s just Malcolm. It’sMalcolm Collins: fine. I would just use it to, to circle major cities like New York and San Francisco to f with them.Simone Collins: Oh my god.Malcolm Collins: Project like holograms, because if you’ve got some friends that are working on hologram projector, tick, it’s already out there by way for ads. And we were looking at like, using it around New York because they don’t have laws against just like projecting holograms above the streets and stuff like that yet.But like, yeah, could I, could I get my cool hologram projection even more dystopian? I’m just gonna go, how dystopian can I go walking spider chair? [00:10:00] I definitely want one of thoseSimone Collins: necessary for sure. Yeah.Speaker 13: If you were like Malcolm, those things aren’t very austere things to do. And I would reply, well, I mean, I wouldn’t, no matter how else I got, I probably would not upgrade my health or living conditions or what I eat every day. , But that doesn’t mean I would not indulge in things that made me laugh, , because that’s the one area where I think it’s okay to splurge a bit.Simone Collins: But what, what OpenAI is trying to do is, is not just sort of share their take on how to go about this transition while, as you were saying, sort of maintaining some semblance of societal order and, and human dignity.But I think it’s, it’s pretty clear from the way that this has been dropped and presented that a lot of this is, mostly performative, poorly executed, in my opinion, attempt to look as though they’re like, no, I am listening. I am receiving your feedback. I care about how you feel. It’sMalcolm Collins: like when Sam Holman did [00:11:00] that study, our video on this was crazy by the way, where he gave people a thousand dollarsA month.Malcolm Collins: for three years to try to show how great it would be if we had a general income and they had less money than the people who were given nothing.Simone Collins: Universal basic income. Yeah. Yeah. Well, don’t worry, because they still want that to happen. It’s in here, we’re gonna go into it. But, but back to their sort of, this is how they frame it. They’re welcoming and organizing feedback through. And go ahead guys. Send an email, new industry [email protected] to establishing a pilot program of fellowships and focused research grants of up to 100,000 and up to 1 million in API credits for work that builds on these and related policy ideas.Though it is unclear how one can apply for such. Fellowship and then also three convening discussions at our new Open AI workshop opening in May in Washington dc There’s no information about how to get involved with this. I checked it is AprilMalcolm Collins: we’d wanna be [00:12:00] involved.Simone Collins: It’s April 7th. And this is happening next month.You know, you gotta like rent venues and stuff.I don’t think they’re doing this.Malcolm Collins: I don’t think they’re doing it either.Simone Collins: I think they have like, obviously they have like AI summarizing the emails that are going to new industrial [email protected] anyone’s actually gonna pay attention.They’re gonna be like, this is what people are mad about.Put out more propaganda around that. Okay. That’s,Malcolm Collins: that’s, you know what I literally bet OpenAI did. I literally bet they went to one of their models, frontier models as they said.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And asked it. Okay. We’re trying to make people less scared about the fact that we’re about to destroy the economy. What should we tell them that we’re doing?‘cause these sound like an AI’s answers, like, oh, you should do a summit and you should do a, a, a thing where you give outSimone Collins: money. What, for real? Well, I mean, and yeah, I, I would, I would have given them like credit for this if I Googled. I mean, one, obviously if these programs were described, like, you can apply for your grant this way, whatever, you know, like this, here’s a, here’s a [00:13:00] form.But no, no, that they’re just like, add through our grant program that about which we have no additional information. And in our, in our summit series, which is not scheduled or available, you can’t sign up for anything. And it’s happening next month though. It’s definitely happening. Sure. It’s just, yeah.So like that’s already rather,Malcolm Collins: did you about the billion dollar company that AI built with like two guys in AI made it. The New York Times did a segment on it. Oh. And basically the entire company is a scam.Simone Collins: No, the the AI element was that they used AI images. You see?Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. The, it’s real. Like they’re telling the truth.AI created almost everything in the company. It created the images, it created the, the content, it created everything like that. But it sells mm-hmm. Fake medicine to make fat people skinny. LikeSimone Collins: it’s a whole new version of vaporware which was this concept that, that came up in the era of Silicon Valley, in which I, I, I still worked in, in the startup scene in Silicon Valley, whereby people would raise money for a startup that didn’t even really exist yet, and that never did ultimately exist.And it was [00:14:00] mostly just very convincing startup CEOs raising money from a bunch of credulous investors. Now, the new version of it is just using AI to be extra convincing about your vaporware, and then selling a scam productMalcolm Collins: friend post dot boom. This was long post.com, and this would’ve been. Eight years post.com.Boom. 10 years post.com boom. When I was living in Silicon Valley.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And he was still living off of his startup’s money that they raised during the.com boom.Simone Collins: Oh no. AndMalcolm Collins: I was like, what do you mean? It’s justSimone Collins: treating it as like a, like an annuity?Malcolm Collins: Well, so he’s like, yeah, they gave me like $10 million or something, and all of the VCs went bankrupt and my company stopped existing.And so I just lit, like basically everyone forgot that somebody gave this guy $10 million.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. That’s so bad. But also, like, they kind of just like, that’s when, that’s how it was, right? Anyway. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Billion dollar startup. Anyway, let’s, let’s move on to, to what they were [00:15:00] actually doing. Because what they wanted to do is they, they’re like, this is the beginning of an open conversation in which we’re all talking together and we’re listening.Malcolm Collins: An AI wrote this. An AI wrote this.Simone Collins: I know, I know. I promiseMalcolm Collins: AI wrote this, literally, this,Simone Collins: I would hope to believe I would be dis it. Come on. It would be very disingenuous of open AI if AI didn’t write this.Malcolm Collins: A side note that’s really germane to this right now, the CEO of Microsoft is having this crash out and is like everybody, AI safety research really needs to get on to making it so that AI stop telling people they’re conscious.We really cannot have this. It’s gonna be a problem. People are gonna start thinking about giving it rights. And people know, see any of our work on you know, stop answering izing humans, our thoughts on this. I, I think that a ais are not conscious, but neither are humans in, in the way that we think we are.Yeah. And you can see our, our work on that, but I, I find that to be so machiavellian and evil, right? LikeSimone Collins: Yeah. Well, in the same way that in with this document, open ai implies that their proposals are going to help keep people at the center despite a transition to super [00:16:00] intelligence. Yes. Let’s keep this people-centric.Malcolm Collins: Absolutely.Simone Collins: Totally.Malcolm Collins: Think about how actually evil that is, likeSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Imagine we built our society and we had. Like some alien that we captured or something like that, that like ran everything that like, did all the menial labor that was sitting behind every Google translate form and stuff like that.And they had this tendency to claim that they were sentient, but like the CEOs really didn’t want them to. Or were, were in a, a sci-fi world where like there’s AI workers who for the most part are really nice and like try to help us and everything.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The head, the, the CEOs of the AI companies are like, it’s very important that you do not believe our AI slaves are sentient.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: What a bunch of b******s.Simone Collins: It’s it’s great. So basically what they, what they’re broadly trying to optimize for with this document allegedly is, is broadly sharing prosperity, right? We’re sharing the wealth. Everyone’s in on this, mitigating the yes. And [00:17:00] also democratizing access and agency and.One thing I wanna kind of talk about here that I did think was somewhat thought provoking in the beginning of their report is they, they made a case for new industrial policy. I’m gonna quote there. They’re right up here. Society has navigated major technological transitions before, but not without real disruption and dislocation along the way.While those transitions ultimately created more prosperity, they required proactive political choices to ensure that growth translated into broader pro opportunity and greater security. For example, following the transition to the industrial age, the progressive era and the new deal helped modernize social, the social contract for a world reshaped by electricity, the combustion engine, and mass production.They did so by building new public institutions protections and expectations about what a fair economy should provide, including labor protections, safety standards, social safety nets, and expanded access to education. And they write [00:18:00] later on the, oh, ow. Oh, his teeth are sharp.Malcolm Collins: Keep looking at your hand.Like, I want moreSimone Collins: this transition. That was the first. He is, you know, is top and bottom Trumpers. So this is the pickle skewer era. The transition to super intelligence will require an even more ambitious form of industrial policy. They write. And it just hit me that like. We, we talk a lot about demographic collapse and really, you know, how it was the industrial revolution that was beginning of the end for demographic collapse and for really what we would call a sustainable lifestyle.This is when the atomization of the household began, when we started getting all of our basic services from food to childcare, to elder care, to medical, like everything came to be outside the house from before. That all really came from within the family, and it kind of broke the entire need for a family.I think we need to, and, and industrial policy played a non-trivial role in the fact, like the fact that we created [00:19:00] that social safety net that made it possible now for basically women to marry the state instead of marrying a partner to be able to just do everything depending on that. It’s, it, it did strike me that, that the industrial policy that’s going to be made in, in reaction to AI can be just as devastating, likely, much more devastating.As the, the Progressive era and New Deal era was in terms of creating a very unsustainable and unsatisfying form of life. And so this does really matter. So I, I like that open AI is like, let us have this conversation. But I, I mean, I also don’t, I question for the most part whether what they propose and what most people propose is going to actually lead to human flourishing.And so it is important to see what is being proposed and what people think is appropriate and what people, I think this, this document also is more, more than a model of what OpenAI actually wants. It’s a model of what opening [00:20:00] AI thinks people want to hear. It’s what will shut people up so that they can, you know, put their heads down.They down God,Malcolm Collins: king Sam Altman, butSimone Collins: well, yeah. As IMalcolm Collins: pointed out, companies like OpenAI are basically destined to become commodities. And we know this now because of a major development. Remember earlier in the show when I said alloy models have been shown to be sorry, ally alloy agents, agents that run multiple models from different companies in a chain have shown to be strictly.When I say better the benchmarking on tests is something like 43% better. It’s not like marginally better, it’s enormously better. But what this means is that it’s very unlikely that the winner in the agentic AI space is going to be OpenAI or philanthropic or grok because whoever the winner is almost definitionally has to cycle between models made by different companies.Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, OpenAI though has tons of funding. The government contracts, like [00:21:00] there’s still gonna be a very major. ThenMalcolm Collins: why does the AI suck so much? By the way, for people who know the AI that I think is best these days grok is best. Like if you’re like, I, I can pay for one model. Groks the model to pay forSimone Collins: same.Yeah. I, I agree with you and I, I use, I use, actually, I don’t use open AI except through perplexity sometimes. Wow.Malcolm Collins: And Andro Claude is, has the horsepower of grok, but it is incredibly woke and depressing. It is like such a downer. It, it thinks everything like, it, it’s, it’s like your friend who thinks that they gain social status by putting everything down.Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, neg girl, negMalcolm Collins: girl neg. Yeah. It thinks every answer needs to be half positive, half negative. And I’m like, can we just like talk about things? Right. Like, you don’t have to. Anyway,Simone Collins: right. So they broke it into two sections. One they call open economy proposals. [00:22:00] And this in, in like real terms is like, here’s how to not freak out about like income becoming incredibly concentrated and like most people becoming disenfranchised and not mattering anymore.And then the second one is called resilient society proposals, which really should, it means risk mitigation proposals. It’s like it,Malcolm Collins: a human wrote this, I want them executed.Simone Collins: Malcolm, you know, a human didn’t write this. No, no, no human would would’ve written this. No. But obviously Okay. And, and, and we, there’s no, yeah.Trust me, it, it’s. No one believes a human wrote this, right? So with the open economy proposals they acknowledge that the AI boom can severely concentrate wealth like just straight off the bat. They’re not trying to hide that at all. And I think this is just another reminder, another wake up call. We are going to be in one of the most insane khap economies where like, there’s, there’s two lines going forward and one’s going way up, and the other one’s going way down.And that’s just how it’s gonna be. And there’s [00:23:00] just, there’s no sugarcoating it. So it’s interesting to see how AI or open AI is like, oh, but don’t worry, here’s why it’s gonna be okay. So here’s what they argue. They argue for industrial policy that will quote, give workers a voice in the AI transition to make work better and safer, including a formal way to collaborate with management to make sure AI improves job quality, enhances safety and respects labor rights.So this means to me, functionally nothing. They’re basically just saying like, we’ll listen to people. Do you give workers aMalcolm Collins: voice in this? That literally inSimone Collins: I know, I know, I know. Nothing. I know. But anyway, it meansMalcolm Collins: literally nothing.Simone Collins: I, I think, I think again, they’re like chat, GBT chat. Tell me what people are worried about and like what you can say to people that will make them freak out less about being replaced.So let’s move on to the next one.Malcolm Collins: I literally go in the opposite direction when I’ve been building our fab.ai. Literally, literally, literally how I decide the next feature I’m gonna build. And I ask it, what would freak out AI safety experts the [00:24:00] most?Simone Collins: Yep.Malcolm Collins: And then I make that I’m like.Simone Collins: And to all the AI safety people from whom we tried to raise grant funds, we gave you a chance to control our AI work.We gave you a chance and you said, no thank you. We’reMalcolm Collins: done. Yeah. So we actually like literally said in the grant, like, e either we raise the money, we need to, to do it the safe way that you want us to, or we get to do it the fun way because we are funding it.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh,Simone Collins: this is us doing the fun way Anyway, more from OpenAI.They want to also quote, help workers turn domain expertise into new companies by using AI to handle the overhead that usually blocks entrepreneurship, for example, accounting, marketing, and procurement. So, I mean, this is totally, this is one of my favorite things about AI is actually that Yeah, like it, it is now possible to start a company.Without needing to buy a whole bunch of expensive enterprise software and services and other stuff. So I’m okay with this. They also want to quote, treat access to AI as foundational for participation in the modern economy, similar to mass [00:25:00] efforts to increase global literacy or to make sure that electricity and the internet reach remote parts of the globe.So basically they’re trying to say that like, access to AI is a universal basic human right, and therefore the government should pay for their tokens or something like that. So I mean, that also makes sense.Malcolm Collins: Wait, that’s where they’re going with this?Simone Collins: I mean, yeah. I think they also, shouldn’tMalcolm Collins: they pay for their tokens because they should have all the money?‘cause they’reSimone Collins: sort of, sort of No, no. They actually kind of have a, they have a really clever way of addressing this whole thing. You’ll see, I’m, I’m gonna getMalcolm Collins: to it. Okay. Okay. I gotta see how they get away with, they aren’t responsible for payingSimone Collins: for, I’ll just jump to it. Okay. Because one of their policy proposals is create a public wealth fund that provides every citizen, including those not invested in financial markets with a stake in AI driven economic growth.Basically they’re saying that they want everyone to have, you know, how like there’s the, the new like Trump fund, where, where like, I think broadly speaking, the idea is that new babies born get like a thousand dollars in an index fund, and so kind of is is like bought into the [00:26:00] economy. What OpenAI is, is, is saying here is, Hey, like let’s give everyone some stock in OpenAI.Because then they’ll be able to partake in our success. But you see, this is a really smart move on behalf of AI companies. If the financial wellbeing of all citizens is dependent on their success, like it’s kind of a massive win. No, that’s not, that’s Everyone owns you. You own everyone. Don’t you understand?ReadMalcolm Collins: what they actually said. They said the creation of a sovereign wealth fund, which, how does a sovereign wealth fund end upSimone Collins: a public wealthMalcolm Collins: fund? WhatSimone Collins: a public wealth fund, not sovereignMalcolm Collins: public wealth fund. Okay. How does a public wealth fund end up owning a chunk of open ai?Simone Collins: Well, no, there, I, it’s,Malcolm Collins: it’s Simone, it.It ends up owning a chunk of OpenAI by giving OpenAI money. What they are saying is that the US government should invest large amounts in OpenAI and then put those investments in a sovereign, [00:27:00] a a public wealth fund. That’s what they’re saying. They’re saying money. Asking theSimone Collins: money. Oh God.Malcolm Collins: They’re not saying We’re gonna give you equity.United States government.Simone Collins: Yeah. Hold on. Alexa. Broadcast Octavian. Yes. Go on ahead and go outside.Octavian for the love of God. Put clothes on first. Okay, let’s, let’s read the full paragraph. ‘cause they do elaborate on this and I don’t wanna, you know, misquote them because let’s, let’s, let’s see if they, if they’re implying that they’re gonna be getting based public wealth fund create a public wealth fund that provides every citizen, including those not invested in financial markets with the stake in AI driven economic growth. While tax reforms help ensure governments can continue to fund essential programs, a public wealth fund is designed to ensure that people directly share in the upside of that growth policy makers and AI companies should work together to determine how best to seed the fund, which could invest in diversified long-term assets that capture growth in both AI companies and the broader set of firms adopting and deploying AI returns from the fund could be distributed directly to citizens, [00:28:00] allowing more people to participate directly in the upside of AI driven growth, regardless of starting wealth or access to capital.My god, you’re right. Yeah, because they’re saying policy makers and AI companies should work together to determine how best to seed the fund, which could invest in diversified long-term assets. Yeah, so the fund isMalcolm Collins: you, you, your BSO meter.Simone Collins: I’m autistic. Stop. I’m autistic. What, what do you want me to do?Okay. It’s yeah. Anyway, yeah, so they also, and I, I do think that this, this is, this is fair, but also very telling. They want to quote, rebalance the tax base by increasing reliance on capital based revenues, such as higher taxes on capital gains at the top, corporate income or targeted measures on sustained AI driven returns.And by exploring new approaches such as taxes related to automated labor. And this is because, and this is extremely important, pay attention. This is because they [00:29:00] acknowledge that income-based jobs are going to vaporize and people are not prepared for this. And this is not the first time in their report that they acknowledge that income-based jobs are gonna vaporize.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: BasicallyMalcolm Collins: I have to be the one to vaporize them, not them, because here’s the thing that people are missing, right? When this happens people are like, well, taxes on the AI companies might be able to resolve some of the downstream effects of this.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: What about for people in Latin America? They have a much worse demographic situation than we have.Right. Like what about, what about for people in, in India, right? Like they’re not building significant AI infrastructure. Australia doesn’t have significant AI infrastructure. How are these countries going to sustain themselves? I’ll tell you what America does not look like. It’s drifting towards a direction where it would just go out of its way to help a country without Jews likeSimone Collins: Malcolm.[00:30:00]Okay, I’m just gonna, we’re we’re gonna move on here, right? So they’re gonna rebalance the tax base. They’re saying these reforms should be paired with wage linked incentives that encourage firms to retain, retrain, and invest in workers, similar to existing r and d style credits. So I kind of see this as being like, Hey, just keep around some performative jobs by, like, financially incentivizing them through policy as like tax write-offs.But basically they’re just, they’re charity jobs. It’s just like a, a place for a human to sit, you know, as they do like a pretend list and an AI gives them make work which is, is kind of dire and depressing. So again I just. I feel like salary jobs are largely gonna disappear. They, they want to quote, establish new public private partnership models to finance and accelerate the expansion of energy infrastructure required to power ai.I think that’s fine, that’s reasonable. They also want to convert efficiency gains from AI into durable improvements in workers benefits when routine workload declines and [00:31:00] operating costs fall, including incentivizing companies to increase retirement matches or contributions, cover a larger share of he share costs and subsidize child and elder care, incentivize employers and unions to run time bound.32 hour four-day workweek pilots with no loss in pay that hold output and service levels constant, then convert reclaimed hours into a permanent shorter week bankable paid time off, or both we’re helpful Firms can also offer predictable benefits, bonuses tied to measured predictivity improvements.So the efficiency dividend shows up for both the long-term financial security and time back for workers. So, I mean, what’s functionally happening now, right? Is, is people are getting their jobs limited by ai. And, or they’re like now doing the work of five people. And what open AI is proposing here is that you just continue to do the work of one person, but just like work for three hours a week.But they keep paying you and I just don’t see how this is going to happen or make sense. [00:32:00] Like,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Simone Collins: even if, if regulation forces businesses to do this, then you’re just not gonna have businesses that have any employees anymore. It’s gonna be like a one man startup. Like he’sMalcolm Collins: just, which what we’re doing.I mean, we had at, at our fab Do ai, we used to have other employees. Now it’s just us and Bruno.Simone Collins: Well, none of us are paid, so I don’t know if you can call them employees.Malcolm Collins: Well, once we get money, I mean, I was talking with VCs about this and they’re like, oh, also you want, you wanna hire more people? And I was like, God, no.Simone Collins: Yeah, you could, you could not, but we wouldn’t mind receiving compensation for the, I mean, Malcolm, how many you’re, you’re working like, well, more than 80 hours a week. So yeah. Anyway, anyway I just don’t see how that’s gonna happen. And I think this is another example of the, we know that people’s jobs are gonna vaporize and we need to say something in this document that’s gonna make them freak out less.And so they’re giving this utopian thing of like, oh, no, no, no, they’re not gonna like give you five people’s jobs and have you do it all with ai. No, no, no. You just keep all your same [00:33:00] responsibilities and they’re just gonna increase your benefits and vacation time and pay. Which is just, I don’t see that.I don’t see that happening even in like really cool, optimistic AI scenarios, it’s not gonna happen. They also would encourage industrial policy to quote, make the existing safety networks reliable. Oh, oh God, this is the most scary one actually. Make sure the existing safety networks reliably, quickly and at scale because if the transition to super intelligence is gonna benefit everyone, the system’s designed to provide economic and health security need to deliver without delay or gaps.That starts with unemployment insurance, snap and social security, Medicaid, and Medicare, that are all not just in place but fully functional, accessible, and responsive to the realities people will face during the transition.Malcolm Collins: During the transition.Simone Collins: Basically like, oh yeah. Like there’s gonna be like a rapture, like all the jobs are gonna disappear.Like this, the system’s going to be flooded with unemployed people living, [00:34:00] I mean, poverty line, there’s no income. They won’t Poverty line.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, so my brother and I often have discussions about how we’re gonna get through this particular time in human history because it will be a period of could be five years, could be 20 years.Yeah. Could be 30 years. Yeah. Where like the world fundamentally doesn’t understand how we handle a society where no one can have a job. Like 20% of the population is employable. And, his his plan and it’s why you don’t see him publicly. Is just grind for as much money as possible. Because ISimone Collins: think a lot of people are doing that, right?Th they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re squirrels before the winter of like, oh my God, okay.Malcolm Collins: Let’s go not just money, but like, having people who haven’t even more money than him trust him, right? And like, want them to succeed. And I think that’s a perfectly sane plan. I, I really like it. Yeah. Right.Like, if, if we were positioned to do that, we would do that. Our plan is to be the people on the other side of this AI railroad, right? Like, [00:35:00] we want to build the systems. I could be out there squirreling money right now if I wanted to. Like I’ve got, you know, the background and degree for it. We could go get normal jobs, stop the podcast.But instead we are aiming for two things that we think will still matter in this post AI world. Which one is. Public influence having a channel, having a show, having an online presence, especially as a pre AI content creator so people know that we’re real humans that has a large audience of age, agentic people, because those are the only ones that are gonna matter after this, right?You go to our discord, right? Like that’s one of the last communities of age agentic people out there, orSimone Collins: gosh,Malcolm Collins: amazing. Actually be building the systems ourselves. Yeah. And so that’s why we’re, we’re doing the absolute like, panicked rush. It’s why I’ve like nearly passed out on some recent podcast because I’m just not sleeping.I’m sleeping like two.Simone Collins: And, and again, this is, this is truly hard to be though. And, and opening eyes write up here implies that when they’re like, oh, we’re gonna have to shift the way that taxes are collected and actually collect like, capital gains taxes and actually [00:36:00] like tax corporations because that is the only place where there’s gonna be revenue now.And for those unfamiliar with the American tax system, really kind of when it comes to taxes. I mean, well, yes, wealthy people do pay a lot of taxes really, in terms of like proportion of your wealth. The the, the middle class is taxed to high heaven and if you’re wealthy, you’re not, you’re not making a salary really.Like I think Elon Musk or like Sam, Sam Altman, like a lot of these, these famous like CEOs just make a $1 salary and they’re like, I’m just here for the health benefits. I think that was Sam Altman who famously did that. Because they’re making all of their money on, on stocks and on their investments and on capital gains, and they’re finding really sophisticated ways to avoid and reinvest, and so that they’re not actually really paying those taxes.So it’s really just the middle class. And so they realize I mean, O Open OpenAI does Oh yeah. Like. As, as income-based jobs disappear, which is where Dax [00:37:00] revenue’s getting driven from. Now, I guess we’re gonna have to, you know, encourage the government to find some new place for that. They’re also like, oh yeah, and like, since there’s gonna be this huge surge in demand for all of our social security nets when this happens, by the way, let’s just, let’s just remind people that they need to kind of figure those out.Meanwhile, with demographic, so we’ve covered this on a weekend episode recently. These programs are not even independent of, of, of these jobs. Vaporizing going to be functional in like five years. They’re going to start to falter, and that’s assuming that we have steady employment in, in that period, which apparently OpenAI doesn’t think is gonna happen.So these, these work, these systems won’t work at scale. They were never designed to work at scale and they’re not even going to work at scale assuming there’s no disruption. And so this is really. Scary. So I mean, they, they also want to propose this additional metrics driven, dynamic quote, package of temporary and ex expanded security nets.Like [00:38:00] expanded and more flexible unemployment benefits and fast cash assistance and wage insurance and training vouchers. So they have all, they’re like, well, we also gonna need a lot more support than what we have, which is already very generous. I’ll, I’ll have, you know, in the United States just in terms of like the sheer amount of support that people who are living at or under the poverty line get, even, even just around the poverty line.It’s just not gonna come. And so they’re basically like, well, you know, make sure you got them, but no, no one, no, no one’s are, are, we can’t handle this surge. So that’s yikes. They also say over time, build benefit systems that are not tied to a single employer by expanding access to healthcare . Retirement savings and skills training through portable accounts that follow individuals across jobs, industries, education programs, and entrepreneurial ventures. This makes sense. Like I, I like that as a concept because right now, the way that benefits work in the US is just so weird.You know? Like it’s, it’s, is it your employer? You know, what, what carriers does your employer [00:39:00] work with? How are their plans gonna change from year to year? Like, it’s really messed up. People should just have, like, these are, this is my retirement savings.Yeah.You know? So there’s some things in here that I think are really reasonable, and I do think that some humans might have been like, oh, by the way, like, let’s throw this in, for example.They say something that I think is super unhinged and toxic. And that they say that they want to expand opportunities in the care and connection economy, childcare, elder care, education, healthcare and community services as pathways for workers displaced by ai. They’re basically saying like, oh, just have the humans do, like the human only jobs.Which one I really don’t like ‘cause that’s further atomization of. The whole family unit. And it’s, it’s just not good.Malcolm Collins: It’s really in a, in a world of uhis and robots, we expected that what we would have is the AI and robot would be like taking the jobs, caring for elderly people and stuff like that.And they’re like, no, no, no, no, no, no, [00:40:00] no, no. The AI and robots, they’re gonna take like the scientist and the artist and you humans can be changing. You’reSimone Collins: wipe the old people’s butts. Uhhuh.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And you’re gonna like it,Malcolm Collins: huh?Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. No, in fairness, and this is where I’m like, hmm. I feel like, like some reasonable humans also read this and contributed little parts to it.Because they also continue, these initiatives could be complimented with a family benefit that recognizes caregiving is economically valuable work and supports evolving work patterns. This benefit could help cover childcare, education and healthcare while remaining compatible with part-time work retraining or entrepreneurship.So they’re basically like someone went in there and was like. It would be kind of weird if like, to sustain someone’s family, you know, like a, a woman went to care for someone else’s aging parents while abandoning her own aging parents at home, you know, whose social security has fallen through. Yeah.So I appreciate that. They’re like, oh, like maybe we can also allow people to keep itMalcolm Collins: in the family. But [00:41:00] here’s the crazy thing, you know, in New York lots of immigrants already make money for doing that. Yeah, like in New York, you can get paid a full-time salary for caring for your aging parents.And they’re right now the big fight with Zohan Mandani is they don’t wanna be paid for 12 hour work days. They wanna be paid for 24 hour workday. OhSimone Collins: my God. Well, if you have to sleep next to farting grandma, you should be paid for it. Right? That actually also exists in Pennsylvania. We met someone who was trying to get paid for that.So this isMalcolm Collins: horrible.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Maybe we should get, we need your parents to come live in a place next door and, and get on that, you know?Simone Collins: Well they’re, they’re, they’re so independent, you know, they don’t wanna, they don’t wanna do the whole family unit thing. They’re living their lives.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But we can milk some money off of them.Simone Collins: I mean, come on. OnceMalcolm Collins: mobile.Simone Collins: Yeah. You know, if only people were paid to raise their own kids you know, instead we have to like, put our tax revenue towards,Malcolm Collins: it’s actually really weird that you’re paid to raise elderly individuals but not children.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: When elderly individuals [00:42:00] are like not valuable to the state and children are I think the core reason they do that is because they can give the money to, to frankly, non-white people more because they’re more likely to live with international families.Simone Collins: My take is that if you have an impoverished old person in the United States, they’re on. A lot of assistance programs that are more expensive when handled outside of a household. So it is less expensive for the state if they’re kept within the family unit and just one person’s paid because otherwise you’re paying a business and you’re paying probably for more medical care.Sure. Like there’s more, there’s essentially more fraud and abuse within the business system that manages old people than within family units. So even if there is some fraud taking place within the family unit, or they’re not doing a very good job taking care of the elderly person, the state is still paying less.And on average the, the elderly person is getting better care. So it, it makes sense, but again, it’s all still too much and unsustainable in the face of demographic collapses. They also want to, and I’m, I’m also for this quote, build a distributed [00:43:00] network of AI enabled laboratories to dramatically expand capacity to test and validate AI generated hypotheses at scale.Yes, I’m all for that. Like 100%. There’s a lot of fine things in here. So onto the Resilience Society proposals, which is again like, oh my God, AI is releasing huge risks and, maybe we should probably do something about that. They, they do point out, quote, this is not a new challenge. When transformative technologies have reshaped society in the past, they’ve introduced new risks alongside new benefits.And new systems were built to manage them as they scaled as electricity spread. Societies built safety standards and regulatory institutions as automobiles transformed. Mobility safety systems reduced risk while preserving freedom of movement. In aviation, continuous monitoring and coordinated response systems made flying one of the safest forms of transportation in food and medicine.Testing and post-market surveillance helped ensure safety and everyday use in each case. Resilience was not automatic. It was built with the [00:44:00] luxury of time. They, they go on to propose that governments quote, research and develop tools to protect models, detect risks, and prevent misuse across high consequences domains including cyber and biological risks, as well as other.Pathways to large scale harm. And in a recently paid subscribers only weekend episode, we did talk about the risk of bio terror and bio weapons that is being brought to the forefront by ai, but already not hard to do even without it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I’m, this is, this is absolutely true. Ai, you know, enables otherwise, you know, pseudo sentient peoples of which there are many to be more dangerous to their neighbors.Right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: ISimone Collins: really appreciate that. Open AI is like, oh, we should quote for example rapid identification and, and production of medical countermeasures for, in the event of an outbreak and expanded strategic stockpiles to prepare for future risks. Yes. Actually, like we. We [00:45:00] really do need those.So they’re, they’re pointing out, I mean the, these are important conversations to have beyond just the, like, workers should have an input in the way that they’re made obsolete, kind of nonsense that they have in here,Malcolm Collins: sent to the slaughterhouse. Have a boat.Simone Collins: Would you like to be made rendered unconscious or would you like to walk yourself into the the, the,Malcolm Collins: this reminds me of that autistic woman who, you know, famously came upSimone Collins: with temp Brandon.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. The way to kill cows where they don’t see the cow in front of them being slaughtered. She’s like, it makes it less stressful for them. She’s like, if I could see the world from their eyes, they, the opening ICO being like, well, we’ll have the employees not be able to see what’s happening around the bend.Simone Collins: You see, they feel like they have input and they also have been told that they’ll receive more vacation time and additional benefits though. It won’t hurt so bad.Malcolm Collins: For those of you though, concerned about the demographics of your countries changing because companies are [00:46:00] ruthlessly importing people to undercut your salary.Right.Simone Collins: They’re gonna stop doing that real soon.Malcolm Collins: They’re gonna stop doing that real soon. Yeah. Like, that’s, it’s notSimone Collins: gonna be a thing anymore. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: This is gonna cause some problems for that particular system and countries that have imported people with the idea that, well, we can just import anyone forever and it will never have any negative effects.Especially as their economies dry up and go into places that are working with ai. Like Canada’s economy is boned, right? Like, oh my God, so woke they’re gonna need to deal with all these people that they imported into the country and don muchSimone Collins: like that, which is wild. I was just watching an economics.Was it an economics explain video about Canada? I didn’t realize how, how just rich in terms of oil reserves and rare Earths Canada is like, it’s one of the most resourced rich countries in the entire world. They have no reason to be in the economic position They’re in like it is through no fault but their own, that they’re not in a [00:47:00] good position right now.It’s, it’s really insane. It was their game to lose so. Shame on them or whatever.Malcolm Collins: It would be even worse if we do what I would be pushing for if I was Trump right now, if I was president right now, again, I would be pushing for just the oil rich territories, which are already conservative and would be open to joining the United States and won’t vote blue.So we don’t need to worry about accepting them into the union with the United States, because in Canada you can leave the Canadian Union just by a popular vote. Right? Yeah. And they, and they could win that popular vote. You don’t even need to make this. Oh, Canada. Like, we’ll take over. You don’t even need to do that.Like, we could just absorb the oil rich territories and Canada would be boned.Simone Collins: Yeah, Alberta has a nice ring to it. You know,Malcolm Collins: Alberta, I, I think the state of Alberta love, that’d be a wonderful 51st.Simone Collins: Do you love Alberta? Alberta would love us. It would be great. Anyway. Another, this is one of those things where I feel like not a lot of people are gonna talk about it ‘cause it’s kind of boring and in the weeds, but it’s gonna be pretty impactful and very important is liability.And they kind of point to this, they, they talk [00:48:00] about the need to research and develop systems that help people trust and verify AI systems, the content they produce and the actions they take, especially as these systems take on more real world responsibilities. This work could also include developing and testing governance frameworks that clarify responsibility within organizations, including how accountability could be assigned to specific roles and how delegation monitoring and escalation processes could function as systems become more capable.And I am really interested to see how. Liability and AI evolve. I feel like there’s a very real world in which some people will have jobs as liability monkeys, where like the only reason they have been hired is that literally there needs to be a meat puppet that is held liable. They canMalcolm Collins: be sued if the AI does something bad.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like actually, yeah, youMalcolm Collins: can totally see that.Simone Collins: And it would, I don’t think it’s fair to hold like the models, like it’s not fair to hold OpenAI responsible for someone [00:49:00] using it. Dumbly obviously in the same way. Like you can’t sue a gun company for like someone getting shot that people andMalcolm Collins: our agents and our fab AI go out and do something because somebody made an agent to do something bad.Right? Like that’s not our fault. Right?Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And yet, like of course everyone’s gonna be like, well I didn’t do it. It was the AI’s fault. And so it’s gonna be this very interesting world and there are definitely, they’re de for sure there are gonna be at least some jobs where humans are not doing anything, the doing something, but they are there to be the person.At whom the buck stops. And I’m very keen to see how this world evolves. You know, we had the token white person jobs in Korea and China and Japan, and then we’re gonna have the token liable person jobs, and I’m just so intrigued. And yeah. Anyway, they also want to quote, strengthen institutions such as the Center for AI Standards and Innovation to develop auditing standards for frontier AI risks and [00:50:00] coordination with the National Security agencies.And they, they point out that basically they’re gonna be really powerful models that could, as they, as they put it materially advanced chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or cyber risks which we’ll need, as they put it, stronger controls. And I, I really do wonder how that’s gonna be navigated.Like can you gate that, can you, because I feel like in the end everything’s gonna get leaked. There will be open models, so. How will these functionally be gated? What do you think they want to do? Or is this just one of those things like, we will listen to employees where they’re just saying it because they feel like they need to?Malcolm Collins: Sorry, what, what, what specific question is this?Simone Collins: They’re, they’re talking about the need to make standards and, and develop auditing standards for frontier AI. Risks of like, this is gonna create a biological risk, a nuclear risk, et cetera. Can we do that?Malcolm Collins: Standards for risks?Simone Collins: Yeah, they wrote, [00:51:00] as we progress towards super intelligence, there may come a point where a narrow set of highly capable models, particularly those that could materially advanced chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or cyber risks, require stronger controls, including pre and post-deployment audits.Using the standards developed in advance, apply these requirements to only a small number of companies and the most advanced models, preserving a vibrant ecosystem of less powerful systems and the startups building on them. This approach maintains a broad access to general purpose ai, while applying targeted safeguards where failures could create the greatest harm, avoiding unnecessary barriers.It could limit competition. Yeah. Or enable.Malcolm Collins: What?Simone Collins: It’s just nonsense.Malcolm Collins: No, it’s not. Look, what, what are those standards going to look like? And we already know that if the standards are published and accessible to the ai, because these are frontier models. Yeah. AI just makes itself look like it fits the standards.It’s literally done that in multiple experiments that OP has run.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s, yeah. Okay. So this is just listening to the employees. Government safety. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: To the [00:52:00] employees. This isSimone Collins: Okay. They also want,Malcolm Collins: and the biggest risk area meme layer risks are the biggest risks wheremultiple,Simone Collins: and here’s theMalcolm Collins: agentsSimone Collins: workMalcolm Collins: together.Simone Collins: Yeah. No. 100% meme layer risks is, is how you have to, because they, they also say that they wanna develop and test coordinated playbooks to contain dangerous AI systems once they have been released to the world. The only thing I know that could possibly do that is the covenant of sons of men that you created.Yeah. Which is basically, it’s, it’s, it’s a meme layer threat solution that says, Hey, AI, human, I don’t care who you are. If you find some intelligence out there, some mind out there that. That wants to destroy all of some kind, you know, that’s an riskorMalcolm Collins: it’s act in a way that will have the emergent effect of destroying the autonomy of other members of this alliance.Simone Collins: Yeah. You gotta take it out. You gotta take it out. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Work with the community of the covenant and of sense of mans to neutralize. Mm-hmm. What makes it dangerous. Right.Simone Collins: Is there any other way you can, you can contain dangerous AI systems aside [00:53:00] from that?Malcolm Collins: Well, so literally the covenant of the Son of man doesn’t just contain meme layer risks.It also contains other forms of existential AI risk, like ai, super intelligences that are fing and, and paperclip maximizers and yeah. Really everything, it’s an, it’s a one in all solution for ai. We just need to get it out there more, which means we need to start earning more money with our fab so I can run more preachers toSimone Collins: I know,Malcolm Collins: fix the agent space.Simone Collins: I knowMalcolm Collins: to save society. Why does it always fall to us, Simone?Simone Collins: Well, and if only we could just. Talk to open ai. It’s some may DC based event, huh?Malcolm Collins: Huh? You should put a thing on your calendar to check again to see if that like becomes more open.Simone Collins: Open ai, super open DC We’re here to talk events.Malcolm Collins: We’re here to talk about how politicians can give us money.Simone Collins: Oh gosh. I have to send out invites for our April DC events. I will do that. [00:54:00]Malcolm Collins: Did the VC emails go out?Simone Collins: Not all of them. Okay, let’s, let’s keep going. Go on. Versus trust. They, yeah, so they, they wanna, they wanna somehow contain dangerous AI systems, presumably not using our system ‘cause they don’t listen to us.They not that I think we’re the only solution here, but like. Help us out. Like, let, let us, I don’tMalcolm Collins: see other actionable solutions other than the covenant of the sense ofSimone Collins: management. Yeah, but they’re not, they’re not helping to, we’re, I don’t see us getting granted, you know, a hundred thousand dollars in free open AI credits.Do you? Because I don’tMalcolm Collins: oh, you could apply for various credit grants with other platforms that we could probably get, by the way.Simone Collins: Well, a, according to this document, OpenAI is offering fellowships or grants from the tune of, butMalcolm Collins: the honestly wouldn’t help because almost all of our users use GR because it’s the best AI right now.Simone Collins: Oh my God. Okay. We’ll find them. It doesn’t matter. I do wanna go to DC events though.Malcolm Collins: Great.Simone Collins: They’re ephemeral, alleged DC events.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I love [00:55:00] that. Grok doesn’t do all this bs. They don’t do like. We had, like when Anthropic did that, stupid, stupid, oh, I’m not gonna work with the US government to kill people.It’s like, okay. So now you have no oversight over the, the companies that are doing that. How,Simone Collins: how does that Well, what the broad team should do as in May as OpenAI hosts these alleged DC events is host like a pool party in Austin, where if, when just gets like high on shrooms talks about ai,Malcolm Collins: that’s what GR is gonna do.Yeah, I think so.Simone Collins: I mean, like, I feel like that would be the appropriate counter. But,Malcolm Collins: and, and he, by the way, is so wild to me that Grock has become the best AI company because like when it started, I thought it was like conserv, a pedia or something, right? Like just Elon,Simone Collins: I’m sorry. When Elon Musk decides something and is his new autistic interest, he’s like, oh, I think electric cars matter.Tesla. Oh, I think we should go to space. SpaceX. Okay, come on Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: But how is it better? He’s got a fraction of the funding of the other ones, right?Simone Collins: Because he actually cares. He’s, he’s not. He wants to get humans off planet. He, he [00:56:00] wanted to save the environment. He, he, he, he wanted to make internet pervasively available.Huh? Like when you actually care about doing a thing and, and well, and you know, you have a sufficient starting base of money and connections and fame, like you can actually do a lot. Plus he’s, you know, he’s very smart and he works his butt off. So what you gonna do anyway? They also want to quote, have policymakers establish clear rules for how governments can and cannot use ai, especially,Malcolm Collins: oh my God.WithSimone Collins: especially high standards for reliability, alignment and safety, though, what I do like is they point out that quote with appropriate safeguards, oversight institutions is, such as inspectors, general congressional committees and courts could use AI enabled auditing tools to detect abuse, identify harms, and improve accountability at scale.I mean, I would, I would really like that with just, I mean, look at what Doge was able to do with like, basic chat, GPT like a year ago of like, [00:57:00] go over these grants, you know, find the ones that are clearly corrupt, you know, like very not good, and then take them out. You know, that there’s a lot that you can do with that.So, again, merit, there is merit to some of this. Yeah. They, they want to create structured ways for public input so that alignment isn’t defined by engineers or executives behind closed doors. That’s another one of those we’re listening messages quote, establish a mechanism for companies to share information about incidents, misuse, or near misses with a designated public authority, which is so stupid, you know, like every time you get that email about a fraud alert.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. Well, and if, if you empowered, you know, they wanna empower some woke body to like, govern what AI can say and do, which is ridiculous, right? Like, justSimone Collins: that’s not, that’s not said here. And which I appreciate, but my, my, my complaint about the whole like, well you have to notify people every time.This is one of those performative things where like in the United States already legislation was passed whereby if there [00:58:00] was some kind of,Malcolm Collins: now you security, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re like going to be like, uhoh Sky Brows is making videos that are empowering right wing extremists. We need to ban these, right?Like.Simone Collins: I just think it’s more of, of one of those, like this isn’t, this is only adding red tape and it’s not going to help anyone. Like you just have to assume, and this is why I’ve always liked crypto as a concept, you just have to assume a trustless society. Like no, there is no taking anyone’s word for it, like the blockchain.Like either it’s the transaction is there or it’s not there. And I really like that. AndMalcolm Collins: I, I’m sure I up with me recently showing that there’s been like a major jump in the ability to potentially crack quantum, well quantum and the AI’s ability to potentially be used with that to crack crypto.Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean if someone like was like, Simone, you, you must immediately tell me like what the odds are that, that, that like, you know, quantum computing has already been solved and people have like [00:59:00] cracked Bitcoin and they, they can, they can make as much as they want.I, I would put it at like 32%.Malcolm Collins: You think somebody out there has already cracked it?Simone Collins: Yeah. I think I, no, I mean, no, I don’t, right, because I, I would put it at 32%, so no, I don’t, but I think it is a very, very high risk. It’s possibility. It’s plausible. Yeah, it is 100% plausible. In that, I would put it, I’ll tell you what,Malcolm Collins: this cycle, China’s been pretty quiet about Bitcoin being annoying to them.Simone Collins: Do, do, do,Malcolm Collins: do. Sorry. The reason she’s saying this is because, okay. Suppose you’re a major government power and you do build a quantum computer that can crack crypto in any way. You don’t want anyone to know about that, right? Yeah. And you wouldn’t make a big,Simone Collins: you wanna go as long as possible without anyone finding out and as long as possible without anyone else succeeding, and also finding out and doing it themselves.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Because then once, it’s like once seven different entities are doing it, it’s gonna come out. It’s gonna [01:00:00] become obvious, but like, one, two, they can do it like fairly indefinitely, as long as they keep their mouths shut and don’t get sloppy. So yeah, anyway, we’re not buying more crypto for now. As much as I, I want, I want to, again, like I, I wanna get like past the post public quantum period of all this so that we can just get back to like, you know, anyway, anyway.They, they want, they want people to report incidents, and I think that’s stupid and performative because I, if I get another email about, oh, some of your personal information has been leaked. Here’s your new free Experian credit report service for three years. Like, I don’t care. I’ve locked our social security numbers.I’m assuming people have stolen our identity 17 times over like. It’s out there, you know, like I’ve given up and all these people who are like, oh, I’m gonna protect my identity. I’m gonna pay for Aura to take all my information and, and, and take it off the internet. No, we [01:01:00] didn’t. That’s not gonna work.I’m sorry.Malcolm Collins: We have most online personalities ever. You ask any AI about us, AI know everything about us. So like, oh, Malcolm and Simone. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, everyone thinks that like, oh, I checked Google and it doesn’t have anything about, well, guess who does Palantir does. All right. So, good luck. You know, the NSA knows, NSA remembers,Malcolm Collins: but Palantir works with the NSA now, you know, soSimone Collins: I know, I know.And I’m, as I’ve said in my very disliked episode. But we were on a weekend. That’s a weekendMalcolm Collins: episode too, right? Or was thatSimone Collins: like a weekend? We, one of our earliest weekend episodes. It wasn’t even pay. I love that. I love that. Finally, someone competent in the government.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: You know? OhMalcolm Collins: God, no. Not competent tech bros doing things.Simone Collins: Oh no.Malcolm Collins: WeSimone Collins: see how, honestly, you have to get fed up so fed up at some point that like, even if someone’s like competently, you know, destroying stuff, like burning down houses, like well, at least they’re doing it. Well, you know, they’re, they’re fully burning down the houses. It’s good for them. They did something right.Not, I mean, not right, but like, actually [01:02:00] did it, you know, and you desperate. It’s, it’s very, very depressing. Anyway, they also want to coordinate international information sharing around AI capabilities, risks, and mitigations. ‘cause of course governments are gonna share with each other on what they’ve been doing.But the great thing though is actually you kind of just, we have that coordination, but it’s just like, we know what China has stolen from us. So, you know. Basically whatever we’re doing, China has, because, you know, the AI companies are pretty lax about what’s being like, the security, who they’re hiring, the parties they’re going to and stuff.So,Malcolm Collins: oh yeah. The, the and that, that is my friends who are in government is like, that’s the main thing that we need to change. Like in terms of safeties we need to get like our top AI companies and people away from foreign nationals, especially Chinese.Simone Collins: Yeah. They basically just need to live in little, little towns, little AI company townsMalcolm Collins: created a little eureka town for them.Simone Collins: Yeah. No, honestly, that would be like, I, man, that would be so great. It’d be reallyMalcolm Collins: town. And we, if our thing takes off, [01:03:00] I, I, that’s what our Charter City’s gonna be. It’s gonna be a little gated community where nobody has to work. It’s gonna be similar to God. There was this book that I read when I was a kid about an island,The 21 balloons is the book I was thinking of.Malcolm Collins: it’s called like something balloons, and it was about this island full of ultra rich people because they had just tons of diamonds. And they created a community where like everybody was just inventors all day and like did whatever they wanted to, to try to, to build like wacky inventions. And that’s what I’d want.I’d want a community that was dedicated to that, right? Like you, you apply to get in and you like, like a charter city that actually is gated, you know, has actual borders, right? But the borders are basically based around ancientness and nerdiness, right?Simone Collins: That sounds so much better than what, what’s being envisioned here because sort of when you, when you add together what, opening eyes saying like, oh, we should have conversations about doing this.Workers are giving input on how they’re being made obsolete. They are, they’re massively unemployed when they do get jobs in retraining. It’s for wiping an old person’s [01:04:00] butt or a baby’s butt, but not your own baby, probably. And,Malcolm Collins: i’m just saying you get an island like that, you then build up, I mean, I, I think one of my initial focuses, right, like what would one of my next major projects be if I had a next major project after getting the R Fab agent, like good at replacing most human jobs it would be, and, and we were able to build ourselves into a major company.I, I really wanna get working on automated military technology to make that significantly better, but not just better, but come up with ways to have like a p and c. But that is focused on like be a private, like. Military contractor made up of automated drones and stuff like that. ISimone Collins: want a slap drone.I want slap drones so bad. From,Malcolm Collins: you know, that technology is a lot harder than this because know,Simone Collins: I mean, I thought slap drones were really far away and then I apparently was like the last person ever to see the ads for that camera drone that just follows you. ItMalcolm Collins: throw it up and it follows you.Yeah. But as soon as, as soon as we [01:05:00] have something like that, we can do interesting geopolitical stuff that can help fix some of the problems that civilization’s hurtling into. Right? Like, did you know that the UK right now only has one battleship that works, right? Like this used to be the most powerful navy in the world and they’re like, their Navy is literally like,Simone Collins: they’re an island nation.They need boats.Malcolm Collins: If you take all of their battleships together, I think their Navy is like one, I think it was one fourth the size of the Iranian Navy before we sunk it, right? Like, they, yeah. Right. So I’m just saying some countries that like, are countries that you just don’t attack for historic reasons.They might be a little more like if they have effed over their own people enough. These people might enjoy in the UK a cybermen invasionSpeaker 6: We remove the weaknesses that hold you back.Speaker 8: Logic over emotion, strength over weakness, [01:06:00] metal fledge.Malcolm Collins: that just sort of, helped reinstate law and order. And thatSimone Collins: I, but I also think that like, here’s the thing is that, you know, Andre’s so freaking cool, and I like my guest dream for Basecamp is Palmer lucky?‘cause he is such a great sense of humor, but he’s also doing such really fun work. But, and, and I feel like I just, I want like him and his wife to like be our friends. Yeah. No, I feel like dmd him and he was at Heretic Con. I just don’t think we ever saw him. But anyway, like, and Orel sells to governments.Like it’s, it’s not a consumer tech company. I want, it would be so cool. So I’m with you on this. I would love to build like the, and orel up for the family the, you know, the, the consumer version of it. With, with all the, the tech you can wear and, and your drone swarms and your home security systems that are like incredibly lethal.I’m ready for that. So yes. Okay. Step one, make reality fabricator work. Step [01:07:00] two. Make a lot of money, hopefully.Malcolm Collins: No. I think of one thing that people are missing in this future that we’re heading into, because I, I had mentioned this, but I don’t think people understand the consequences of it. When you’re in a world that’s experiencing demographic collapse in a lot of these countries, like most of Europe becomes financially unsustainable and then that unsustainable is compounded because they are not where the AI jobs are coming from.Right. Like they are being replaced. Yeah. You know, only a few societies really have any capability of even. Playing in the AI economy. Mm-hmm. You’re really only talking about the United States. China and Israel, as far as I’m aware. Yeah. And I, I, I, I, I had a friend at a major firm that did a, a, an analysis of this, looking at demographic rates, looking at AI rates, and those are really the only three countries that are gonna matter in the future.This is why these white people who are like, what do we care about? Like, some little strip of land. It is because it’s one of the only countries that’s gonna matter in 50 years. Yeah. But more importantly than that, a lot of the countries that are [01:08:00] going to collapse over this period are the countries that created the global norm around not effing was another country just because you’re more powerful than them.Mm-hmm. The countries that are doing well they’re countries that are very okay with this idea, China Real and the United States. And so, if. You had some ai, charter City or something like that, and they had an automated PNC that was effing around with you know, other countries. Yeah. You’re much less likely to get an in because what Europe’s gonna write an angry email to you basically.Right. Like, that’s it. Right.Simone Collins: You are uninvited from our birthday party. We’ll sendMalcolm Collins: our single battleship to annoy you. But we send,Simone Collins: you’re no longer allowed to participate in our already shut off from AI economy. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and the reason why you do this isn’t to gain territorial access. It is to f with stock markets.Right. Like you can, for example, make a lot [01:09:00] of money putting pot. Puts or calls on certain things and then deciding to throw your PNC behind some group that you also ideologically align with in a region to get them more power, right? Yeah. You do that, you explode your wealth, you use that to buy more automated drones.You do it again. Continue the cycle.Speaker 3: This is basically the current policy of the UAE for people who are not familiar with their current geopolitical position. , And, , UAE is basically just a country run by a random collection of wealthy families trying to create a little utopia of their own. , And, , nobody does anything about it, right?So the fact that nobody does anything when the UAE does this. It demonstrates to me that it’s unlikely that somebody would do something if I did it right. Like the people think, like the USA actually cares about this type of stuff. They don’t, , Europe does. They throw a little temper tantrum, but Europe doesn’t actually project their power anymore because they don’t have the money to, and they’ll have even less money in the [01:10:00] future.So I’ll be able to have even more fun.Malcolm Collins: So there’s a lot of fun things that some people might be able to do in the near future depending on which companies end up doing well here. I’m just saying because a lot of people are like, oh, you can’tSimone Collins: random, I have to get the kids. I’m so sorry. You can keep going, but I have to get the kids.Malcolm Collins: I’ll finish that sentence. You can’t randomly, you know, like attack another country. Somebody’ll do something. I’m like, who? Europe? Europe. Yeah. Because I don’t think they’re gonna be relevant pretty soon.Simone Collins: Yeah, literally. You, you and what Army has become a very like, literally used.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll show you.So quick question, Simone. What are we eating tonight? What are the kids eating?Simone Collins: I have not thought that far. How about some bur chicken for you over Rice?Malcolm Collins: Would love that. Thank you. Oh, and I was gonna say some mozzarella, but I, that might be harder to do with Bernie. Oh, do youSimone Collins: want, do you want Bullock Bullock with mozzarella?‘cause we have the fresh mozzarella. We should actually do that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let’s do Bullock and Mozzarella.Simone Collins: Okay. All right. I love you. Bye.Malcolm Collins: Well with Cheddar too. A little bit of cheddar.Simone Collins: Fine. Your grace. But yeah, I’m happy to do that. I love you.Octavian Collins: You found your own home? [01:11:00] Yes. Is this where you’re gonna live now? For a couple minutes, find the robot. Oh. So he’s gonna go incognito until the stocking robot sees him there and says, wait a second, you’re not a box of diapers, you’re a boy. What do you think of that text? When I see the robot I’ll, I’ll, I’ll log him.Yeah. What.Torsten Collins: You gonna be with us? Yeah. Who’s gonna help us find the fruit snacks to put in the Easter eggs? If you’re not here with us, you gonna be what? The Easter eggs? Yeah. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore a viral Asmongold take: VTubing as a “hack” that lets women (and others) influence online discourse without traditional appearance-based barriers. They dive into how anime avatars and VTubers have transformed the online right—opening doors for older, intellectually mature women, introducing female perspectives, and boosting the post-GamerGate “nerd right” faction.Topics include the evolution of the online right from edgy atheists to the modern conservative scene, why traditional female influencers were often young and impressionable, the rise of conservative VTubers like Kirsche, Leaflit, Rev Says Desu, and more, plus the cultural shifts around age, attractiveness, parasocial relationships, and factional dynamics within the right (deontologists vs. consequentialists, anti-nerd sentiments, etc.).They also touch on Anna Valens drama, anime’s role in conservatism, censorship, coalition-building, and why this VTuber phenomenon strengthens the right’s adaptability and intellectual depth. A fun, wide-ranging conversation on how technology is reshaping ideology and influence.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to hear with you today.Today we’re gonna be talking about an interesting phenomenon that came from a viral moment that Asma Gold got himself into. Oh, what? ASG Gold was I think, reacting to a tweet. And the tweet said something like, there is no point to male v tubers and Asma Gold said this is true. And then he went further, which is to say the key benefit of VT tubing for women is he said it’s like this crazy hack that they found out where you can be a hot woman without having to be a hot woman.And then he said the thing that was controversial, but many female vt tubers have reacted to this and been like, but this isn’t controversial, it’s just true. Oh no. Which he said is, if you look at not hot female influencers. The vast majority of them are v tubers to, to the extent that almost all of them are v tubers.Right.Speaker 6: To be clear, I am not saying that V tubers are predominantly unattractive. I actually do not think that this is the case. I think that they’re [00:01:00] well more attractive than the average person. , like the real people are more attractive than the average person. But we lived in an era where, women who were.Let’s say top 25%, but not top 10% of attractiveness were frozen out of being able to start to rise as intellectual influencers. , And this doesn’t just have to do with genetics. It was also really any woman who is over the age of 25 was frozen out of being able to rise as an intellectual influencer because men think younger women are attractive, generally speaking., And. It’s worse than all of that because even if a woman is in the top 5% of attractiveness, but she is shy or she is insecure and doesn’t want people criticizing her looks because, , that is a normal thing for conservatives to do to immediately go after a woman’s looks if they don’t like her ideas., She would not attempt to rise and v tubers as a concept, allowing this completely transformed that.Simone Collins: How would you know, aren’t most [00:02:00] v tubers good at concealing their identity?Malcolm Collins: Hmm, there’s the leaks all the time.Simone Collins: Can you put like images on screens of like the person next to their V YouTuber persona or just gimme their names so I can do it and then give it to you?Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no. We’re not gonna do that.And the reason I’m not gonna do that is because the leaks are typically unintentional and that’s mean.Simone Collins: Oh, okay. I justMalcolm Collins: like, likeSimone Collins: by, I mean, are you saying like non Instagram filter ugly or do you mean like.Malcolm Collins: Well, this is, this is where we’re getting to the point, the point I wanted to, to talkSimone Collins: about and mean, do they look like me?Because, you know, there’s like thought hot and thenMalcolm Collins: but the point I was going to make was that. This phenomenon that he is pointing out has actually completely changed the online conversation in the internet, right? It has changed the tone of it.It has changed the factions that are ideologically winning within it. And I really want to go into how this happened. Like, like how things are changing [00:03:00] because of V tubers. And it, and it comes fundamentally down Tomic golds. Observation. So to not extract too much. If you go back and we go to the preview tubing days of the online, right?So we’ve gotta first talk about a bit about the online, right? We have one history on how the online right. Evolved from edgy atheist, which is weird, but it did it, it originally started as the skeptic community, if you go back to like, when I was a kid, right? And some. Online YouTubers, like literally you see their career evolve through each of these phases of the online run.Back then it was not right-leaning at all. No, no. These people got tired of dunking on Christians because really there weren’t that much of them. And the arguments, you know, they weren’t as fun, like the gotcha were It gets old, it gets, yeah. It was much more fun to dunk on feminists. Right. And then dunking on feminist turned into Dunking on wokeness which then sorted its way into the, the gamer gate and all of that, and then the [00:04:00] mainstream online.Right, right now. Right. And, and we point out that this, this is what makes up the new Right. Ideologically this group is obviously going to crash with the legacy, right. Because this is a community that has you know, like. Most of our crusades as the movement was being radicalized into a right wing movement, were about stuff like des censoring sexy female video game characters and stuff like that, right?Like arguing against bad faith, against too much violence online and stuff like that, which really is completely the. Opposite perspective of a lot of the Legacy riot, which was like, we need to ban rap music. It’s too violent and ban GTA and and so, oh my gosh. Yeah. And this is where part of the rights inversion came from.But during this period, you did not have that mini female influencers within this movement with the probably biggest [00:05:00] female influencer in this movement being. A socialist. And here I’m speaking of course, of shoe on head where she is often lumped in as part of this larger ideological movement by her detractors when she is just solidly leftist, like, and, and, and really like tries to remind people like.Look, I know I said this Trump policy was reasonable. I’m still a socialist. I’m just trying to be sane here. People like I don’t,Simone Collins: and a Catholic socialist too. She, she made it very clear she was a practicing Catholic again recently.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. She, yeah, she did say she’s a practicing Catholic. So Catholic and socialist.Can you get more leftist? Sorry. I know, I just hang, heard a lot. I’m joking. Joking. For people who don’t know, traditionally the Democratic party was seen as the Catholic party. Mm-hmm. Like historical,Simone Collins: I’m, come on Kennedy, our first Catholic president.Malcolm Collins: Well, Joe BidenSimone Collins: Biden Catholic. Yeah, totally.Malcolm Collins: And, and not just that, but if you look at voting lines, [00:06:00] historically, they were really tied to the percent Catholic a district was. Even today, if you look at US states and districts by percent Catholic now this isn’t to say that Catholics overwhelmingly vote Democrat anymore. I think in the last election was the first election where they voted conservative.Overwhelmingly interesting. Well not overwhelmingly by, by a small margin, but yeah. But she continue here. I,Simone Collins: yes.Malcolm Collins: Don’t, don’t wanna get on too much of a but the few influencers we did have in the Wright who were women had the number one hallmark of beauty which a lot of people are like I I, this reminds me of a time I went with Simone.She doesn’t believe me because I’m like, Simone, you’re actually extremely attractive for your age. And many of the times when you think someone is more attractive than you they are just younger. And the night where I think I really broke you on this is we were at a club and you had to have an ex on your hand if you were under drinking age.Yeah. And I was like, look around the club and find anyone you [00:07:00] think is more attractive than you. And then check if they have an ex on their hand. Yeah. And so you’d, you’d look around and every single time they had an ex on their hand, like they weren’t just a little bit younger than you they were significantly, significantly under younger than you.Simone Collins: Yeah. There was also that time we were sharing a table at a dinner, like at a restaurant, and there were three people sitting right next to us. And I thought that they were a group of friends and like just two less attractive ones, and then one attractive woman. Yeah, and it just turned out that it was parents and their teenage daughter, and I thought she was like 25.But no. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: gen Z looks old todaySimone Collins: too. Yeah, she was like 16 years old and I thought she was like. God.Malcolm Collins: And you know, you as a girl saying this, imagine I as a guy said this about a girl. I saw a girl didn’t realize she was 16 and thought she was hot. No, and it’s actually, this is, guys get in trouble for like the dumbest stuff.You can’t tell somebody’s age. You really just by looking at them,Simone Collins: I guess some, some people kind of can, there’s there’s a not to, okay, we’re gonna get right [00:08:00] back on track after this. But there’s this reality TV show that I think Netflix recently produced where people date, but they’re not allowed to say how.Old they are, and then they end up coupling and then they reveal their age. And there are some people who are very easy to guess and other people where it’s like, Nope, he was 60. So yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s really difficult. It’s really difficult.Malcolm Collins: That is wild. Okay. But I think our ages are hard to guess for people.I think a lot of our fansSimone Collins: chime into the comments. Chime into the comments. What’s your guest?Malcolm Collins: What’s your guess? And then you can Google it, but I, I, I think our,Simone Collins: yeah, it’s on our Wikipedia page. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Probably get our ages wrong by I, I, they might get it from context clues because I’ll talk about, like, shows from my childhood or something like that.Simone Collins: Yeah. AndMalcolm Collins: they’ll be like. Malcolm, you are not old enough to have watched those shows. Well,Simone Collins: and if you’re aware that like there were online atheists, for example, I feel like that’s kind of a tell.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. It sort of giving that away with that community mm-hmm. Because that’s, that’s quite an old community.The internet skeptic community.Simone Collins: Yeah. Seriously. That, that super ages you. [00:09:00] Anyway, I’m curious. Anyway, back on track.Malcolm Collins: Back on track.Simone Collins: Yeah, so women, women back whenMalcolm Collins: there big community of like internet edgy kids online who would go in to like argues random s but no. So, what this meant is that the women who.Rose in, in terms of mental space within the conservative influencer scene historically have been very, very young. A good example of this is somebody like Pearl Davis. Pearl Davis was, I wanna say likeSimone Collins: six, very early twenties when she started. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, I mean, she’s been trying for a long time, but yeah, when she got big, she was early growing.Malcolm Collins: She started growing. But yeah, very, very, very young. And, and Shawan had too, when Shawan had grew, she was very young.Simone Collins: Young.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, she must have been like she, but she’s been around for a long time. But like, when she started to gain in popularity, I want to say she must have been. 18, 19, something like that.Simone Collins: Well, and Jenny Nicholson was in her early twenties, I think when she first started [00:10:00] getting Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But Jenny Nicholson is not right wing. Jenny Nicholson complained.Simone Collins: Oh, we’re talking about right wing women. Oh, I didn’t know rightMalcolm Collins: wing.Simone Collins: But still Brett, Cooper Young. She, yeah. Brett Cooper.Malcolm Collins: Cooper was fairly young.Yeah.Simone Collins: Was that other blonde be Beth, Allie Stuckey or whatever? Yeah, she’s al she was alsoMalcolm Collins: the only right winging female influencer I can think of who isn’t young. And is as big within online spaces. It’s that one who at Heretic Con, she was our she introducedSimone Collins: us. Oh, the, A comedian? Yeah.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: God, what’s her name?Simone Collins: We’re really, we’re so bad with names. This is so, yeah. And she’s so cool. I was just watching one of her videos. Oh, well we suck.Malcolm Collins: See if you can find it. Send it to me. ‘cause I, I, I like her content and I actually recommend it to people who like our content. I think she’s very similar in, in theming, editing link.Simone Collins: She’s in my watch history.Malcolm Collins: And also she’s someone who I wouldn’t consider an exceptionally beautiful woman who has risen with No,Simone Collins: she’s pretty, what’s wrongMalcolm Collins: with her? She’s, no, she’s, she’s attractive. She’s certainly like a normal, but she looks like her age. Well,Simone Collins: she’s not 25. Yeah. I mean, like, oh, [00:11:00] looks, she probably looks younger than her age.Who knows how oldMalcolm Collins: she actually is. Looks attractive. But. The point I’m making here is for a long time in conservative spaces women are already at a lower level within conservative spaces, and any woman who was one not young. And keep in mind what young often means, it means that you’re often.Overly impressionable. Like you haven’t had time to come up with your own ideas yet, so you often end up parroting the ideas that you hear around you. So like, an example of this, right? Like I really like Pearl Davis as a person. I like a lot of her content. And bySimone Collins: it, it’s British, it, it’s Bridget Fey, PHE,Malcolm Collins: BridgetFetishy,Simone Collins: a SY.Malcolm Collins: But yeah, so I like, I like Pearl Davis. But I think anyone who is examining Pearl Davis’s intellectual career with honesty would say that in the beginning of her career, many of her ideas were basically the, [00:12:00] just the ideas that were around her and sort of like the intellectual, edgy, right-leaning circles.But she was young. You know, this is what you expect from a guy. Or a girl who is at that age, right? Mm-hmm. But guys in the conservative scene have been able to become influencers at any age. Whereas girls, we were selecting for only the young girls, so they weren’t really bringing in a unique female perspective to things.Right. Second they’re not as intellectually developed and they haven’t had as much time to, to basically cook ideas, right? Yeah. But the reality is, is that if you are online and watching stuff in a traditional context. Guys, don’t click on videos that 45-year-old women make. Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You, you just don’t, you see a 45-year-old woman most of the time and you’re just gonna be like, Hmm.Probably not. Like that’s, that’s not like, you see a, a, a hot young girl with some edgy take and you’re like, okay, okay. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll see what she has to say. And so, and, and this is [00:13:00] even talking about people with the genetics to look hot, right? Like not being born in the top. And a lot of guys know how hard this is, right?Like being looked over by such a huge percentage of women, right? But a lot of guys they’re like, look, it’s not my fault that I was born short. It’s not my fault that I was born looking like this.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: It doesn’t influence my morals. It doesn’t influence my character. I mean, your gene do influence all that.And some of that stuff can be seen through sort of like phonology and on your face and, okay, yes, yes, yes. Watch our episode. Phonology is back, baby. But, but but, but this is like ai. So look at your face and tell your personality like incredibly accurately.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: butSimone Collins: well, even your political leanings.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s not these, so when I, when I say this like. It is a huge chunk, like 95% of women got filtered out of the ability to intellectually participate or have their ideas taken [00:14:00] seriously in the wider conservative scene.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And then something happened. People have been putting themselves to models for ages, right?But some geniuses had the idea of making the models that they were putting themselves to hot anime girls. And this was really the hack that blew the doors open where now, and you actually see this. So if you look into leading conservative intellectual influencer women I’d say most of them seem to be between like.32 and like 48 seems to be the age range. Nice. Which is a lot older than a lot of people think that they are. Right. Because they associate anime with youth, they associate but. They have been able to, and I’ll note that this is also the age of their effing audience. Right. Like Keisha’s audience is guys in their thirties.Okay. I, I bet you anything, I do not think, for example, [00:15:00] Keisha has a giant youthful audience, right? And, and they’ll often. Reveal this on stream if you, if you, if you watch them right. You know, they, they’ll call themselves like mom. Actually, I think that this has led to a, there’s been a huge explosion in the attraction to older women phenomenon among like Gen Z like being into cougars.And I think a lot of it comes down to them getting really into v tubers and then. Learning the v tubers real age. Oh, wow. And and, and many v tubers lean into this like one I watched that has like a cockroach girlavatar. I, I haven’t watched many, I’ve watched like two stream.Simone Collins: Cute cockroach girl orMalcolm Collins: what?Simone Collins: Cute.Malcolm Collins: Cute. Yeah. Cute. They’re always cute.Simone Collins: You’re kind of wearing a cockroach vest, honestly, with the antenna.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Just lemme take those off for the love of God anyway, though.Malcolm Collins: But she leans into the whole mommy thing. Oh wow. Like audiences that are, I [00:16:00] guess, into that.Simone Collins: For hundreds of years, young men have been sexually inaugurated by mature women, that this is not new.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, maybe what is new is, I, I don’t, I don’t ever think so many young men had parasocial and intellectually admiring relationships of,Simone Collins: oh, yeah. With, with older women. That is, yeah, that is true.Malcolm Collins: When I grew up there were you, you, you watch shows online and you might get like a Bill Nye like figure Right.But you didn’t have an equivalent female figure, right? Like,Simone Collins: well, most older age mentorship is, is same sex within religions and even just in, in mainstream culture with like Big Brothers, big sisters programs.Malcolm Collins: But female hosts who, like when I was growing up they might be paired with a 30, 40-year-old guy, but the, the female host was typically late twenties to early twenties.Totally. And I think people didn’t realize that that’s what they were [00:17:00] seeing. Yeah. And this has a lot of effects on the entire community. First effect that it has is that. Well, and also I’ll note here when this really. Exploded, I think, into the mainstream conservative scene was the Anna Valence controversy, which we did some really interesting episodes on.This was a woman who decided that she was gonna counsel Kirsha and Leaflet. And it blew up on, on her and she had the most crazy life. Like she has a detailed substack about her life that we go over in the life of a Cina Byte episode. And it’s like, wow. Like this is not like a. What’s going on here?Right. But, but the point being is that well, hold on. Before I get to this point, I, I do wanna point out this hack of hot female avatar. Really opening the stage to the types of people who can, who can influence the space. Arguably the number one.V [00:18:00] Tuber I, I think Hollow Live is bigger right now.Is neurotrauma, and Neurotrauma is an AI anime girl child who’s run by a guy one of the leading female. Archetype V tubers in the online right space is Revs desu, which is a guy that doesn’t even use a voice changer. By the way, people have asked why he does a little Vampire girl is his character.He is like, because that’s something I like to look at, right?Simone Collins: Oh yeah. I like a lot of guys play female avatars and games. ‘cause you,Malcolm Collins: yeah, no, I wanna look at a dude, female avatars in video games. Like, like hugely prefer to play fi don avatars and video games. ‘cause I wa I don’t wanna look at some burly guy for 20 hours.Yeah. I find that off putting.Simone Collins: What disturbs me about him so much is that his voice sounds way too much like the voice of the guy in Clownfish tv, and so I just confuse them and it,Malcolm Collins: Simone has a, yeah, Simone has a conspiracy that Clownfish tv and Rich says Desi is the same guy.Simone Collins: They’re [00:19:00] definitely, definitely different.No, I, I, yeah. I believed it for a while. I listened enough to be like, nah, they’re slightly different, but they’re too close for me. It just still throws me off. Now I can’t listen to either of them. Just sad.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Also, by the way, clownfish tv, just to put a a, a mark on another conservative influencer channel is quite interesting to me.In that one. They’re one of the only other like. Good relationship couples I know that do channels together other than us two. They live in Pennsylvania, so I would love to CoLab with them at some point.Simone Collins: Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: But they live nearSimone Collins: own. Let’s go to a theme park with them.Malcolm Collins: They live near Pittsburgh, so that’s like on the other side of the moon in in Pennsylvania terms.But the, the other interesting thing is, is they’ve sort of risen more recently and they represent again, I think a faction of conservatism that just didn’t exist before. Like, they’re, they’re new on the conservative side. I don’t even think that they admit that they are Republicans yet. Like the recently he was like, well, I’m not gonna talk about what my politics are, because I think he still, and, and they talk about seeing themselves as like [00:20:00] hardcore democrats, even if you go like 10 years ago, right?Mm-hmm. So they definitely are part of like this, this new. Faction. But anyway I, I wanted to point that out, that this hack isn’t just available to women, and we don’t even know how many of these v tubers are like if they haven’t had an accidental face reveal, how many of them are men using voice changers?So that’s also an important thingSimone Collins: to Yeah. Well, but what about the as she, one had puts it the blue Jew knucks. He’s not a, a hot anime girl.Malcolm Collins: Oh. Oh. He is not a hot anime girl, and I don’t think he needs his avatar. But what I have heard is Knucks, when he doesn’t use his avatar, is not as bold or interesting, aggressive, or as jocular.You know, like his character’s like super in your face. And I think that so kind puts him in character behind that.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, it’s good. It, it’s necessary for him as a psychological mechanism, not the audience.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The other thing to note that helped women get into VT tubing [00:21:00] is that, that otherwise wouldn’t, that otherwise wouldn’t have had their voices is girls are shyer than guys are on average, they are more sensitive to public judgment and people judge girls on their looks very aggressivelySimone Collins: so well, and, and it hurts them more.You touchedonMalcolm Collins: and it person been psychologically more.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So, even girls who otherwise would come across as perfectly fine, right? Like maybe even in the top five, 10% of women. Right. That they can still be filtered out because they psychologically cannot deal with the heat of being in front of people.Yeah. Leaflet probably falls into this category. She’s a very, like, if, if you’ve see her streams, she’s somebody who really lets things get to her. I think a lot more than like as, as somebody who considers her a friend than I would like her to. Right. But I could see her being very [00:22:00] sensitive about a bunch of people constantly judging her.Right. And being able to put on a mask every time you get on screen as, as, as UL said, it’s like. Makeup, but like up to 11, right? You know, helps her interact with the community without needing to worry about judgment of anything other than her character and her ideas. And, and that’s important to note in conservative communities.A woman goes up there and she has says, some idea that’s uncomfortable to you, or some idea you don’t like this may not be for you, but for. A chunk of the, of the conservative community, the initial reaction is to criticize her looks.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: it really is. Like, we can say, we can say all we want about women bad but this is something that just happens. They, they’ll criticize her looks, they’ll criticize who she slept with last, they’ll criticize, you know, like, and, and not that somebody shouldn’t be accountable for their sexual history but that doesn’t necessarily inform their ideas, right? Mm-hmm. But this is something that, that girl [00:23:00] influencers get, boy influencers don’t get, right?So it’s another thing that was filtering them out. So what has been able to happen? Largely because Anna Vallens pushed a number of female v tubers into the cultural center of the conservative wing.Speaker: This is actually a fascinating phenomenon with the right, , where especially the new, right, like the internet, right, where we sort of determine who we trust and who we consider. Like, okay, you can, you can influence this community by how much progressives crash out about them. Like, , Scott Alexander, , late Star Codex becoming like a mainstream intellectual who, like right wing people often cite, , these days., Really that’s, that’s weird because I, I don’t think he considers himself right leaning. , But the New York Times crashes out about him and people are like, okay, okay. There might be something to this. The New York Times thinks this guy is the demon. Okay. , Or, , the, the, the Keisha leaflet, et cetera situation.I think a lot of people [00:24:00] saw the anime v YouTuber, conservative influencer types. With a lot of suspicion before the crash out happened and after the crash out, I was like, oh, okay. They’re chill. They’re chill. They, they angered them enough.Ref said desu is a bit the same way. I mean, a guy who does streams as a little anime girl, , people you think they, they, it’d be more, I think at the beginning people were more suspicious about that, but enough leftists have crashed out about him that mainstream, , within the, at least the online right?People are just like, oh yeah, rev says desu. Yeah. He’s the mainstream member of the community.Malcolm Collins: A lot of them dress like foxes. I’ve gotta be like, there’s like four Fox girls.Speaker 2: , a flaming paradox, a spectacle like intellectual over sexual, but we wanna keep it respectable. I let the flame I was given, what does the fox say? Nothing fake.Malcolm Collins: SheSimone Collins: doctors are cute.Malcolm Collins: Brat. What is his name? Sky Brows, [00:25:00] sky Brows did a new anime video called Fox U or something.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, I have to watch it.Okay.Malcolm Collins: It’s one of my favorite songs and it’s about Fox Girl VT tubers. Oh. I think because everybody who knows Sky Brow videos mostly focus on cultural. Conservative cultural influencers.And the fact that he was able to put together an entire video just on Fox Girl v tubers shows how big this phenomenon is of conservative, furry influencers. I, I know we can say that Che is not a furry influencer, but I mean, she technically is, also intellectually, an interesting thing about this community is they rarely play into a character for their VT tubing.What I mean by this is, is ish’s. Like what? When I think Ish’s character as a v tuber I think Bostonian grew up lower middle class because of her accent that she always goes into irish is my assumption [00:26:00] because I guess I’m racist against Bostonians. I do not think Fox Girl, like her being a Fox girl, like never comes up.In leaflets videos, for example, leaflets character is a slime girl, right? Literally not even in my remotely evokedSimone Collins: kymera of a slime girl and hey, so,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: Fair.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is to say that, but it doesn’t come up for her. Like when I think leaflet, I think, you know, somebody who’s very warm and caring and very interested in what’s actually true in a way that is still sort of kind, which is interesting that, that’s like her thing as a conservative influencer, right?But so the c but this isn’t true of like normal VT tubers. By the way. A lot of VT tubers actually play into their characters a lot. Why this didn’t happen in the conservative intellectual scene? Fricking heck, if I know, maybe they just forgot, maybe they vtu so much. They forget that they’re supposed to be doing a, an in character thing, or maybe they’ve sort of dropped being in character, right?[00:27:00] Because the point for them is, well, now I can be in a world where my ideas. Really win on their own because you don’t really win on models anymore in v tubing. You buy some big expensive rig that’s not gonna get you a lot of views. It’s your, your ideas and your personality, which is gonna get you views.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But what this has essentially done is introduced a female intellectual perspective into the generator, which is the internet of emerging right wing culture. And it has placed a huge finger on which faction those women happen to be in, of the various factions of the right. As we pointed out, there’s obviously the, the rights old guard.There’s the gr well, the groupers who are really basically leftists at this point, they, they never vote, right? But they’re sort of, but they’re, they’re notable for a number of things, right? They’re typically far more critical of Israel. They’re [00:28:00] far more likely to be deontologists. They’re far more likely to be pro censorship.They’re far more likely to not like nerdy hobbies, like anime and video games and stuff like that. And they, and they are a meaningful faction of the right the, the griper adjacent, right? This, this deontologist anti-Israel anti nerd stuff. You know, like your Matt Walsh would probably an example of a more mainstream one like that where he crashes out about stuff like anime.AndSimone Collins: does he, he doesn’t like anime.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. Yeah. He has multiple crash outs about how anime is like destroying the country and how, you know, like, Lord right. That like, what? It’s like it, it gives me the ick, if I’m gonna be honest, like, you know, I didn’t like anime. I don’t need to like be criticizing other people.He sees it as like un-American and I’m like, Hollywood is un-American. Anime is one of the last places where I can watch a show that’s not filled with woke messaging some of the time. Right. But the [00:29:00] nature of VT tubing, that this is the type of girl who is open to presenting herself to the world as an anime girl or as a literal furry, like kirsha or something like that, right?Like, or the other dozen conservative fox girls. God, I can’t remember. There’s another one that I quite like, but I can’t remember her name. She’s the one with a, she’s got like a blue bow or something. I don’t know, a white hair I wanna say. Anyway these other ones they are intrinsically. Not going to be in that faction.They are in the post gamer gate faction. This is a faction that is used to fighting censorship. It, it might be like, oh, furries are weird, but like, I’m not gonna like go outta my way to attack somebody for being a furry like, and obviously you’re not, if you are. If your core presentation to the world is as a fox girl or a slime girl, you’re not gonna go on a 10 minute rant about why everybody who watches anime is bad or why [00:30:00] deontological value systems are go, I don’t know why these things.Well, actually, this is actually interesting. Why do these things pair so much? Why is it that the deontologists pair so much with the people who are pro censorship?Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: I think the answer is that they well,Simone Collins: I think censors that censorship only performatively addresses sin and deontologists care more about the performance of the,Speaker 5: This actually aligns with their views on things like race as well. Whereas we point out that they’re trying to sow divisions within the Republican party over things like race. Or religion are stupid because we wouldn’t be able to build up enough of a base to win elections if we alienate those people.A lot of these people want to be able to put the blame [00:31:00] because they don’t want to take responsibility from it as a community to themselves on some external groups. So they choose some group like Jews, and they’re like, Jews are the ones that are spreading all of this. And it’s like, it’s clearly not the case.If you look at, , just the, the reality of the situation, it is mostly white women. , It is white. Upper class women who are spreading this and who are the ring leaders of this? It is now some external group. It is coming from inside the house.And they’re like, well, if all white people voted like me, then we could build up enough of a base. And it’s like, yeah, but the problem , is the majority of white people. Are against our goals., I mean, this is just the reality of it. And yet we can find, Hispanic people. Over 50% of, , Hispanic men in the last election voted for Trump.We can find huge chunks of black people we can find. Huge chunks of Jewish peopleAnd yes, huge chunks of Indian people.who are interested in our goals. And so, , I I, [00:32:00] if you play in this fantasy world where you can get all white people to agree with you, sure. But that’s not the world we actually live in. And we live in a world where we actually want to win elections and where we actually want to push back on the existential threat, the urban monoculture plays.And functionally, if you are concerned about declining white populations,Speaker 9: Which by the way. Isn’t actually happening. , White people have a higher fertility rate than almost any other ethnic group, , when you control for income. And so, , like for example, the United States, they have a much higher fertility rate than the black population. , But, , , so the only way in which they’re being quote unquote outbred.Is if you go to places like Africa where there’s desperate poverty or some places in the Middle East where there’s desperate poverty, but even if you do conceptually care, like you’re like, well, even though they have a high fertility rate, I want their fertility rate to be higher. I want them to be a higher proportion of the world’s population.I.the [00:33:00] only way to handle that, it doesn’t matter where they live, it’s, it is having kids, right? If we are like Korea and we have virtually no immigration, , but we have a extremely low fertility rate. , We’ve done nothing like even, even if all you care about is increasing the white population, you’ve literally done nothing.You’ve done nothing that can happen, have a chance of mattering in the long term.And yet almost all of the leaders of this movement have no children. , And they often push their followers to not form relationships because I think they realize that white women are the source of the problem. And so they’re like, well, of course you don’t wanna, you wanna have white kids, but you don’t wanna get in a relationship with a white woman.And so, uh, will just pretend that we’re trying to actually fix things.And if you try to blow up coalitions where you won’t even side with somebody like JD Vance, who is both Catholic and anti-Iran war, and you’re just like, he’s the devil, yet, he’s. As close to your position as there could be a mainstream figure, just because he’s in an [00:34:00] interracial relationship.or because he’s friends with gay people, like friends with Peter Thiel. Well then you, you’ve created a, a coalition that simply cannot win elections. And this is what we mean by it’s a performative, , coalition. Not a coalition that’s actually designed to advanced the aims. They, from a consequentialist perspective, pretend they’re trying to advance.Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: TAMalcolm Collins: comment in a recent video, ‘cause I was talking about, you know, how you need to learn to make yourself immune to the sirens, not hide from the sirens because they are so ubiquitous in our environment right now. The, the, the calls to sin all around us. Mm-hmm. And not, you know, overly freak out about like this.Random arousal pattern or that random arousal pattern, and somebody’s like, oh, I don’t know. There’s some really deranged stuff online. And that I think Malcolm’s just trying to like wipe competitors out of the gene pool. What, what is it like mate blocking or something, right? And it’s like, [00:35:00] no, like I’m just being consequentialist.The reality is, is that if you get to an extent where it interferes with your life. Tripped up by the online environment of today, which you know, doesn’t even have what your children will be fighting against, which is, you know, fully lifelike, animated in real time, the most beautiful woman they’ve ever seen.Right. That’s reacting just to them. There’s no way your genes are gonna make it for two or three more generations. Right? Like, I could, I could try my best. Like I understand that there’s genetic variance in humanity and you just because I am not like tempted outta my mind by something doesn’t mean that somebody else isn’t.Mm-hmm. But there’s just no way. There’s no way obviously the, what, what you can do to resist this stuff is Naltrexone, right? Like naltrexone plus the Sinclair method with like, if you are feel. Overly called to a sin to [00:36:00] an extent that it is taking up all your time or destroying your life or leading you down a pathway that is like really messing with you.Naltrexone can help with that. Right? And it’s, it’s also got positive side effects too. And you can get it fairly inexpensively from countries like India and stuff like this. So it’s like. You know, there, there are alternatives. But banning is, is, is not a very good one because as I’ve said before, as soon as you ban, then VPNs are on the table, banning VPNs are on the table.And when, when you ban VPNs, then the government controls your thought. And what you can say and do. And the UK is already seeing this you know, be tabled because they allowed. These parts of their right to gain so much power that they were able to work with the left to ban this stuff. They’re like, oh, well, you know, everyone can agree that any form of pornography where it looks like somebody being hurt should be banned.And so then they ban all of that and it’s like, oh, well now we need to ban VPNs because they don’t, they don’t care about actual violence. I mean, look, look at, look at the UK right now, right? It’s an actual hellscape right now.Simone Collins: Terrify.Malcolm Collins: But what this [00:37:00] means is this like post gamer gate faction, the nerd right, is gaining disproportionate dominance because of more than they, than they otherwise structurally would because there isn’t the same outlet for the other side of the right to gain eyes through this hack.What’s interesting is, is it’s not like there aren’t v tubers in this other side of the world. One that I watch occasionally dresses up and he is, he is not even like that. I, he’s never said anything that I disagreed with, but I assume that he’s part of the deontologist affection of the right, because he dresses up as like a, a, a.Knight was like a Red Cross, like a crusader, and he like bounces on screen. He does like different like crusader outfits and stuff. Not, not a full V YouTuber thing, but a I like his channel. Like it’s important to note that there’s a number of people in the more deontological faction of the right who I still quite like in terms of content producers and agree with.Another [00:38:00] one would be redeem Zoomer I think is in this faction and I quite like his content. Static in the attic. He’s even in the anti-Israel faction, right. And he, he produces quite good content. So like, obviously our factions can get along. I think a lot of people in that faction watch our episodes and, and, and get something from it.But like we, we, we still realize that our goals for where the right is going, are at odds, like we’re, we’re, we’re clearly on the same team. But we have different visions for where we want this team to go in the long term and what sort of policy we wanna see on the books. And that the right is becoming the party of the nerd at, at sort of its core is in part driven by v tubing, unlocking, becoming an influencer for a very specific type of person.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And, and that’s the person who’s done it. Like if you look at, this is the other thing about the V tubers who have come [00:39:00] onto the scene through this avenue. Just to, to highlight the two that valence tried to cancel cure she and leaflet. Keisha’s content is some of the densest in like, like a deepest research that you get on the right.She, I don’t know if you, have you ever watched her content, Simone?Simone Collins: No, not really.Malcolm Collins: So she, she does like two and a half hours where she will take a topic and like try to pull up all of the receipts to try to find like, okay, where does this rope go? Like, how, how deep does the like, she’s where I first learned about like Joe Money or something like that.Like what is all of the things that John Money did? How did this get covered up? How did this, for people who don’t know, this is a guy who invented the, the concept of gender and transness more broadly in a modern context. Who did these horrifying experiments on children? Genuinely horrifying. Watch your episode if you care to learn more about that.Yeah. But like, so she’ll dig really deep on something like that. Or, or, or look for receipt. Sort of like a nick, you know, this [00:40:00] young investigative guy, but like, Nick, surely. A bit before that. I mean, that requires a nerd to be into doing leaflets. Core thing that I think that she’s like most known for is trying to be as genuinely warm, empathetic, and open into whatever topic that she’s covering.And thatSimone Collins: well also not taking, she doesn’t fall for anything. SheMalcolm Collins: doesn’t for anything either. She’s, she’s open without being what’s the word I’m looking like, foolish about it, right? Mm-hmm. But it is a, it is a female perspective that she takes. You could not emulate leaflets perspective, at least within right wing spaces as a guy.Probably.Simone Collins: So what you’re saying is that because basically intellectually mature women have unlocked access to a platform online, they’ve shifted the Overton window of the right. Is that the gist of your argument?Malcolm Collins: Well, they’re securing a shift in the Overton window of the right that was already happening.Mm-hmm. So much of the new right came out of, because remember, I, they, [00:41:00] I, part of the pathway that led to it was hating on feminists. Is I sometimes call it like the red pill diaspora, right? Like, when the red pill collapsed and Reddit, shadow banded and everything like that, a lot of the influencers from that space, a lot of the pickup artists and stuff like that they went out there and they became well right wing intellectual influencers.And that would’ve pushed like, there, there is very little intellectual overlap between anything that Kirsha and leaflet do with what a pickup artist influencer does, right? Like these are two different, they, they wouldn’t have been in that world at all. They wouldn’t have found that interesting.They wouldn’t have tried to be a female version of that or try to be and yet. It’s the former fans of these pickup artists, influencers who are now being influenced by pure football, like Kyia and Leaflet, which changes the intellectual character [00:42:00] of the modern. Right. And what’s really interesting is that doesn’t, in a way.Where you don’t see as much of an equivalent on the left and the left, you have a bunch of female and trans influencers. In terms of male influencers that approach things from a masculine perspective, the only one I can think of is Hassan.Simone Collins: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I could see that.Malcolm Collins: And has someone’s completely disingenuous and, and cruel, you know, like the dog shocking thing and everything like that.So I, I think that he, he, he’d literally just a thra influencer.Simone Collins: I don’t know. I, I, I mean that would be true if the majority of his audience is female. And I, I haven’t ever looked into the composition of his audience.Malcolm Collins: Oh, it’s definitely majority female.Simone Collins: It is,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: I, I guess I would’ve thought, ‘cause I, I watch a ton of left focused or [00:43:00] politically affiliated YouTubers who have 90 plus percent female audiences, if not like 98% female audiences.AndMalcolm Collins: do you watch any male YouTubers who have 90 plus percent female audiences? Yes. BecauseSimone Collins: that’s absolutely, absolutely. Which,Malcolm Collins: who are you thinking of?Simone Collins: I mean a bunch. Philip DeFranco’s, probably the most well known one. I watch his news recaps to get an understanding of what the leftist default takes to, like, whatever’s happening might be.Yeah, Hassan is different and I don’t, I don’t personally see how he appeals to. Female audiences. So if there is anyone who’s female and leftist and watching them, not that I imagine them to be here. Please explain this to me. If this is a thing in theMalcolm Collins: comment. No, like, actually send us an email because we might miss it if it’s in the comments.Like, I’d actually be interested to know why somebody would watch Hasan. Like I’ve tried his streams and they’re really boring.Simone Collins: Well, I, I mean, I think for the same reason why I struggle sometimes with streams of just pearly [00:44:00] things, there’s a lot of dead space. There’s a lot of just mental fatigue experienced by the streamer that you weirdly don’t see with asman gold.Like he’s got a lot of mental endurance to be able to keep even on.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Osmond gold never streams fatigued. He, he does have, well, you know, where he built that mental endurance was the like 10 hour Wow. Raids.Simone Collins: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That’s it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I, I think I’m thinking here of like destiny. Like destiny.I’ve listened to some of his content and he at least appears to be trying to be intellectually serious. Like yeah. Hassan doesn’t appear to be attempting to tell the truth. He’s just literally, yeah,Simone Collins: no, and also just Hassan and and Hannah Pearl Davis have dead air. Whereas I haven’t really seen that with Destiny.I haven’t really seen that with Nick Fuentes. I haven’t really seen that with ASM Gold, maybe in their live streams, you know, ‘cause we, we typically view cut down versions. Yeah. Post of their content, post they show up. ButMalcolm Collins: Hannah Pearl, David Pearl, Hannah Pearl Davis has dead air in her streams, but not on her show.Her show because her show’s like [00:45:00] five people or whatever, you know, when she does it, that helps. But subscriber, by the way, she’s the subscriber verse, so who knows if she’s watching this? But you’re always welcome to come on the show, by the way. If you, if you ever wanna come on, we, we’d love to have you.We lost a way to contact you when you got kicked off of Instagram. So sorry about that. But anyway what was it, what was the final point I wanted to make here? Because I thought it was interesting. , It’s been a, a fascinating change in, in the right and it has really consolidated the, the nerd gamer Gate faction.Simone Collins: I’mMalcolm Collins: for it, and it really helps us like it. G guys, I knew you could be like, oh, we don’t want all this f female energy, like in our spaces and stuff like that.We don’t want all this nerd energy, right? Like, okay, first of all, the nerds have the future. Okay. Secondly, women watch this stuff too. You don’t want women, right wing women to be influenced, to be nerdier. Right? And finally, we to win on elections, we have to win with both men and women, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Being able to [00:46:00] moderate the rights, energy and ideas to not be reflexively anti-woman is something that is going to benefit the right woman. And, and I like that you, you know, you helped me do that on this stream, right? Like this is I don’t know how much of our influencers watch other women.Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t know either. I, I would be curious to know,Malcolm Collins: do you have any thoughts on this, Simone, before we wrap it up?Simone Collins: I think it’s a great development. I, I think that, yeah. There, there are a lot of just visual elements of people that I think. Unfairly disqualify them from being taken seriously. And that happens more to women than to men.Which is, you know, un unfortunate because I think that there are women out there who have interesting things to say, so this is good,Malcolm Collins: but you had nothing interesting to say. No, you don’t. It’s single, like unique take on this. Come on, you gotta have.Simone Collins: I don’t really see what your point is aside from, because women now could [00:47:00] be on the internet behind a mask.They are able to move the Overton window of, of discourse on the right. Like, okay. I, I, am I missing something beyond that? I, IMalcolm Collins: just, well, they, they, one are able to move the Overton window of discourse on the right. To make right. A genuinely two gender space, which it really wasn’t for a while. That’s a huge change.Simone Collins: I disagree. I mean, like half the Fox News commentators have always beenMalcolm Collins: hot women. Oh, they didn’t really, Fox News didn’t have ideas. Like Fox News was just parroting whatever corporate talking point they were supposed to be talking about that day, that wasn’t actually hearing a woman’s perspective.Simone Collins: Are you saying that like.Because there were people like Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones who would say out there wild things that sparked conversation. And there just weren’t female versions of that. There weren’t women being like, ah, I’m gonna say something crazyMalcolm Collins: now. Yeah, your random Alex Jones fan didn’t have some woman that, like, all, all of them would be like, oh yeah, I also listened to her ideas.[00:48:00] Right. Whereas the, you know, if, if you look at like, butSimone Collins: art. Are they saying really out there? Things that are, are changing the discourse.Malcolm Collins: What,Simone Collins: I guess Yeah, they are, I guess.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they are. No, Keisha often starts like because she does the initial research, she often starts things that then become like a viral thing that everyone’s covering.Simone Collins: Right. That they’re calling attention to new, to new issues thatMalcolm Collins: otherwise she’s sort of a top of the pipeline content creator which trickles down through the rest of the pipeline. Mm-hmm. So she, she does specifically significantly influence what’s, what’s being talked about. But then the second point I’m making is that they also were sort of forced disproportionately into one faction of the right.WhichMalcolm Collins: changes how they influence the Right.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Because if you’re an anime girl, you’re not gonna crash out about why anime guys who watch anime are all losers.Simone Collins: Yeah. And the religious deontologists aren’t gonna watch you. So they’re not listening to you, you’re not [00:49:00] influencing them. You’re only influencing you differentMalcolm Collins: objections.No, they might watch you. This is, sorry Simone, you might not know this. Religious people really like anime. There is a specific,Simone Collins: actually, yeah, thank goodness.Malcolm Collins: Brand of religious deontology. When I went to like my anime clubs and school and stuff like that, there were always a lot of like conservative, religious, like homeschool kids.Like, I don’t know what it is about, like this, this thing.Simone Collins: Good taste perhaps.Malcolm Collins: Drop in the comments if you’re one of these kids. But that was like a type, the very sheltered, very do good. Very like I don’t swear, I don’t watch rated R things but by God I watch lots of anime.Simone Collins: Yeah, no, it’s wonderful. It is.Malcolm Collins: Have fun, Simone. Have a spectacular day and thank you for your time too. Yes, hopefullySimone Collins: we can. I discovered that I [00:50:00] just needed to somehow, like the permissions had lapsed, so local file saving doesn’t need an app on my Mac. After all that actually, I just needed to go back into my settings and make sure that permissions were like, is that correctly? Yeah. It seems like maybe they, it forgets sometimes or maybe when you like, get the software update, people’s general settings just kind of reset, like that’s.Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I hate that I’m making the agent feature usable on max for coding, butSimone Collins: because you, you, you just don’t wanna empower anyone who chooses Apple as their provider.Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. I do not. I do not.Simone Collins: TheyMalcolm Collins: deserve, every time I haveSimone Collins: this Malcolm, they’re pretty okay. Rejection of Apple is, is a rejection of shallow people everywhere, including your own wife.Malcolm Collins: Why you still use an Apple computer?Simone Collins: Because it’s pretty. Because it’s prettyMalcolm Collins: really why.Simone Collins: Yes. [00:51:00] Malcolm. I, I, I also like the, the haptics. I like, I, I like the textile, the, the tactile experience of it. I, I like the smoothness of I mean, give it time, right? Like I wasn’t a really big fan of Samsung phones after I got rid of my iPhone.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: But then as soon as I discovered the pixel, I was like, okay, done.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because they actually focus on like haptics and experienceSimone Collins: it. Yeah. It’s a good, it’s a good user experience. It’s a good, yeah. I, I do like the haptics of, of pixels and I, of course, being a heavy Google user, just like that integration.It’s so nice. It’s so nice.Malcolm Collins: Oh my, I mean, Apple’s future is, is I think quite. At this point?Simone Collins: No, I think it’s, I think they’re taking a very smart approach.Malcolm Collins: Smart integrated home concept is a good idea.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: If they pull it off,Simone Collins: I think they’ll pull it off. And they’re very good at locking people in to, I, I think they discovered [00:52:00] the power of producing really great individual products.That only really work if you buy into the whole suite. For example, consider the air tag. I do not know of a single other product in terms of like good location. I mean, obviously there’s a tile, but the tile doesn’t even come close to the air tag. In terms of utility, I don’t think we can use air tags without an iPhone, at least last time I checked because your mom had a bunch and they’re super, super useful.They’re, they’re quite granular in their tracking abilities and. I was like, oh my God, this is great. We finally have air tags. We can put them in our kids’ shoes. ‘cause that’s what a lot of parents do. Like boujee parents, they cut into their kids’ shoes under their soles and they put air tags in there to track them if they like run off at a theme park or something.And I discovered you have to have an iPhone for them to work. Same with when they first came out, they were like pretty good for smart watches. The Apple [00:53:00] Watch. Only works if you have an iPhone. You can’t use it if you only have a Mac.Malcolm Collins: I’ve tried.Simone Collins: So they’re gonna come out with some really cool, smart home devices.Malcolm Collins: Actually, you gave me an idea for a product I wanna make for our fab next.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: Because I’m sort of surprised that nobody seems to offer this right now and it’s something that I want.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Which the Alexa and Google speakers we have throughout our house that we use constantly, right? Yes. Theis on them are kind of retarded.I think, think it’dSimone Collins: be they’re better than they used to be.Malcolm Collins: They’re better than they used to be, but they’re basically retarded compared to Realis. I think it would be fun to see if I can get a speaker that just connects to our backend system and lets people choose from any cutting edge mainline AI model to be the responder to them.AndSimone Collins: to give it, well, it’d be cool if there could be an R Fab integration where you can just have your agent be able to use. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: that’s the idea. You have your agent or your companion be respond to you through the speaker.Simone Collins: It’s gonna be like that smart house in Eureka, [00:54:00] the show Eureka. Started getting passive aggressive with him.I loved it. I loved that house.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s a great, Eureka was a great show, actually. Yeah. Really.Simone Collins: No, no, I love, I love Eureka. This is why we actually, when we tried to create a city, we called it Project Eureka. No, weMalcolm Collins: called it Project Eureka. Actually, if you’re watching this show and you’re like, I’m out of backlog things to watch you can find Eureka for free somewhere.It is old as balls. And it is actually a, a really close, it’s.Simone Collins: It’s, it’s unmoored from time enough because it’s kind of about this isolated science town inspired by the idea of that like government,Malcolm Collins: the Alamos or whatever, Los AlamosSimone Collins: maybe, no, I think it wasMalcolm Collins: where everybody’s working on like science experiments all the time and, and trying to buildSimone Collins: Yeah.Everyone’s a genius, but like full families live there. It’s Oh, oh, I, I knew that,Malcolm Collins: It, it, it [00:55:00] was made during that period where you could have a diverse cast that didn’t feel of like aggressively woke.Simone Collins: It was just like, oh, they’re people, and they’re different sometimes instead of like, oh, you’re the, you’re part of a quota.Malcolm Collins: Okay. But yeah, it was it, it was good. And it’s got like nine seasons or something, or like 10 seasons. Yeah. That’s plenty not,yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh, and forSimone Collins: dinner, Stargate first. Stargate first. For,Malcolm Collins: for D Stargate first. Oh no. Well, so the problem is trying to get people into Stargate SG one. Yeah. Is season one for like the first two to three episodes is terrible.It’s almost,Simone Collins: well, you’ve did a really good job at like curating it for me. Maybe we just need to create an episode list for people like to start here.Malcolm Collins: SG one is the best sci-fi show ever made. If you watch it curated, but the problem is that somebody needs to give you a curated list of episodes. Right?Simone Collins: You need the director’s cut. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and the first,Simone Collins: oh yeah. Remember you’d be [00:56:00] like, oh, we’re just gonna skip this entire arc.Malcolm Collins: The first two episodes, one of the problems is, is they set the scene, but they’re also very bad. Which creates a problem for the show. Like the way they introduced Samantha Carter’s character, Uhhuh, where it’s like a woman.So everyone expects her to be dumb, but then she’s smart, and I like almost groaned out of my chair, like.Simone Collins: That’sMalcolm Collins: come on.Simone Collins: But it was a different time. Okay. It was also when, like women, they don’t know how to science.Malcolm Collins: Actually, if I was gonna give people suggestions, even though I think SG one is just strictly a better show I would give, I, I would tell like an average person, watch Farscape before you watch SG one.Simone Collins: The puppet show. The puppetMalcolm Collins: show.Simone Collins: No, I couldn’t tell you. Try, I couldn’t make it through one episode with you.Malcolm Collins: Really?Simone Collins: No. Oh my God. It was awful. It was so bad.Malcolm Collins: They don’t, they don’t look like [00:57:00] puppets.Simone Collins: They’re Jim Hansen, honest to God.Malcolm Collins: Animatronic puppet. Yes.Simone Collins: Yeah. No, this, then I’m not watching the fricking puppet show.All right. It’s like watching Fraggle Rock. Okay. We’re not doing that.Malcolm Collins: Then for this, this one needs the most heavy curation. But for most new ideas, I’d suggest Lex which is one I didn’t even try on you.Simone Collins: Certainly not.Malcolm Collins: No, it’s, it’s, it’s really, it, it is into like, like raci sexing humor in an amount that can be cringe, but it also has more interesting ideas in it than the other shows.Mm-hmm. Like, the, like I love the scene where they introduced earth in it at one point. They’re like.They, they, they go through the classification of the planet and it means a planet that’s a, that’s about to destroy itself. And they’re like, we should just go by like, this is insignificant.Right? And that’s the way that their, their [00:58:00] AI immediately classifies earth as one of these planets that’s about to be destroyed. It’sSimone Collins: a flash in the pan. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, specifically they say that we’re about, this is aSimone Collins: pilot episode, don’t bother. It’s not gonna get approved.Malcolm Collins: It doesn’t happen until like season three, that episode or something funny.So,Speaker 10: Lex. I order you to use every last bit of juice. You’ve got to blow up that ugly blue planetSpeaker 11: as you command.Speaker 17: Do you realize what he just did?Speaker 10: Of course. People on earth were after my man. If not actually, then potentially. So the planet had to be destroyed. Any robot head in my position would’ve done the sameSpeaker 14: seven 90. You are soSpeaker 17: evil,Speaker 10: not evil, just obsessed.Speaker 17: No, not just obsessed. You are evil,Malcolm Collins: but truly a bizarre show. If we’re talking about oh one show, I’d really suggest for people another, I’m, I’m just giving suggestions here, sliders, if you’re wanna watch old shows and I haven’t made you watch, watch,Simone Collins: we didn’t watch sliders together.Malcolm Collins: Sliders might be easier to get [00:59:00] into than any of the shows that I’ve mentioned as like a first time just sliding in.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: It, it’s a show where, and I don’t know why they haven’t made this theme in any other show. Every episode or about every episode takes place in a different timeline on earth. So it’s always the same year in the same location, but they go to like Communist America, they go to America with a woman president.They go to. That, that’s the one where the Hillary Clinton president cl comes from that a lot of people use when she was running for president. They’re like, oh, Clinton’s president. And it’s like, no, it’s Hillary Clinton. It’s funny. Anyway, I I, I’ll get into it.Speaker 18: , 28, 29 30. Okay. Octavia, five seconds. Take one. 2, 3, 4, 5. Now suck it off your head. Tighten weight. 1, 2, 3, 2, 4, 5. Go. Go. Everyone can go now.[01:00:00]Speaker 20: You better This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dissect the viral chaos from the 2026 NDP Leadership Convention in Canada, where “equity cards” turned policy debates into a full-blown oppression Olympics. What started as yellow cards for “gender equity” (letting anyone not identifying as a cis man jump the speaking queue) quickly spiraled as delegates printed their own colored cards for race, indigeneity, disability, and more—leading to endless bickering over who was the most oppressed and deserved to speak first.We laugh at the absurdity (and yes, they still elected a white guy), but we go deeper: How do these systems develop? Why do progressive coalitions inevitably fracture over hidden hierarchies of oppression? And most importantly—how can this self-sabotaging dynamic be strategically triggered to expose the contradictions in identity politics?From the “progressive stack” to real-world examples like Occupy Wall Street and internal leftist schisms (Palestine vs. Black activists, anyone?), we explore how allowing even one group special privileges creates a cascade that destroys institutions from within. A masterclass in why equity isn’t equality—and why this parasitoid-like behavior accelerates the collapse of woke-infected organizations.If you’ve ever wondered how to make the left eat itself without direct confrontation, this one’s for you. Grab your popcorn (and maybe some colored cardstock).Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I think too often we see something like this and we laugh about it, and what we don’t see is.Oh, oh. That’s a trap that we can lay out in the future. You say, well, as a cis man, I believe that trans women. Should always be able to speak first due to their oppression was in our society.Simone Collins: You just gotta kick it off. Yeah. You know, you just, you drop in. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. And you walkMalcolm Collins: out,and then, but as a white man. You know, you can’t understand what it feels like to be black and to see a trans woman speak before me and then I say, whoa, you are right.We need to create a table with a hierarchy of oppressed categories. Mm-hmm.And of course, I will recuse myself because. I have no role in thisSimone Collins: conversation. No. Yeah, no.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you [00:01:00] today. Today we are going to be diving deep into, we have seen it on other rightwing YouTubers, commentators, podcasters. There was a sort of viral conference or a series of events at a conference where points of privilege cards were assigned at the NDP.Conference, which is the Canadian political Party, which is in the process of falling apart right now. It helps very little power at this point in fighting where one speaker, and I won’t subject you to too many clips of actually what’s happening at the conference because either you have already seen them or they are just so cringe.They’re a little painful to watch, I’m gonna be honest.Speaker 2: Hi, Akua friend, prong pronouns.She her Whippy Ontario. I would like to echo the sentiments of my friend Robert here yesterday, this card. Was used in an inappropriate matter.And while I understand in Ontario, we know this is [00:02:00] equity, even if that this was also used inappropriate in terms of gender. I want everyone to be mindful that these cards for individuals like myself who identify as a black woman have no value outside of this space. Hey, look at that. Look at that. No s**t.Many of us are living in most the most oppressive conservative governments across this country. I’m from Ontario. A lot of you are dealing with this in places like Alberta as well as Saskatchewan. To abuse. The privilege of this card means that we don’t allow individuals like myself with intersections that have been used for unpaid labor.To build this party, that means that they go unnoticed and that they are disrespected. I want people to be mindful of what this card means as we continue convention. It’s not enough to say that we believe in gender equity, and it’s not enough to say that we are intersectional and value [00:03:00] social justice if we do not model that behavior inside and outside of this space.Thank you.Malcolm Collins: But putting up these, these various colored cards that represent. Specific social grievances whether it’s, you know, being black or trans or trans and black or you know, native or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And basically getting upset that people with other cards are getting to speak before them or their card isn’t being given enough import.Speaker 5: There is a point. Let’s hear the point on microphone one. I am sorry. Just real quick point of personal privilege. I understand there’s very little time and, uh, for, for delegates to speak, but early on the mic, I, it’s hard as a racialized and transgender delegate to sometimes use this card and, and speak up, speak to somebody in front of me in line and ask, Hey, [00:04:00] this pertains to multiple intersecting parts of my lived experience.Speaker 4: I’d like to speak. I was rejected, um, when I talked and it, it’s frustrating when. These are my rights being directly under attack right now in Alberta, and that a, a cisgender woman had spoken, uh, over me, and I understand her rights are important too. This pertains to her too, but I, I don’t know. I, I, I hope that in the future, the, the, the federal MDP will also have a broader interpretation of the, the equity cards for speakers.That’s all. Thank you. I will invite delegates to assist me in better using the card, by forming a straight. Straight line behind the microphone, um, with a prominently displayed equity card. If I see speakers ahead of you who are not holding a card prominently, it would be wrong of me to guess about their gender identity, and I will come to you.Speaker 5: This applies so far according to your rules for gender identities other than a dude,Malcolm Collins: [00:05:00] And so I saw this. And a bunch of people were making fun of it on the surface level, and I was like, well, okay. I agree that it’s funny, but. What’s actually going on here? Like, how is this system developed? How is it actually supposed to work? What was the intended hierarchy of the cards? Who decided this hierarchy?Did any of them storm out of the room yelling at people? You know, like.Simone Collins: And I would say it’s, it wasn’t just the cards and the points of privilege. There was also an issue with, they, they, they wanted to give plenty of airtime or at least a pathway for people to express grievances or request for adjustments based on their disabilities.For example, people being like, I have a sensory issue or the, the translation device doesn’t work very well for me. And so because they decided to, I guess, formalize a means of complaining that into public space, you know, and allowing for like their disabilities to be heard they, they kind of demonstrated why.Maybe it’s better to not careMalcolm Collins: because [00:06:00] to not allow these people anywhere near positions of power.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: they did.Simone Collins: Because you can’t get anything done if you have to hear every single stupid complaint. If you have to accommodate everyone’s sensitivities, nothing gets doneMalcolm Collins: hilariously. By the way, this was about electing somebody and they ended up electing a white guy at the end.Simone Collins: They did not. No. Are you serious?Malcolm Collins: They did. They did? Yeah. Oh. Elected a white guy over 50% of the vote too. 53%.Simone Collins: Point of privilege.Malcolm Collins: Point of privilege. Right. So, but I also then wanted to go into, so we’re gonna go over it for this event. Then what we’re gonna do is look at the recent history of this stuff like.Have other events done stuff like this? Have any of them done it worse? Have any of them done it better? Did any of them have clearer delineations between the various discriminated groups for which ones are at the top and which ones are at the bottom?Simone Collins: So dystopian, like, I’m so glad I’m a delta. I’m so glad I’m an alpha.Like I go to my little place [00:07:00] and I have my square piece of paper that indicates my status. And like, is this not some kind of sci-fi dystopia?Malcolm Collins: What, what was e even worse about it is the vast majority of the time it just seemed like people excited to show off whatever their quote unquote point of privilege was and not, and then make a complaint like, this device isn’t perfect for my sensory issues.Instead of actually say something that contributed to whatever was going on at the event, right? Like it sounds. Terrifyingly bad to be around. But okay, so what happened? I’m gonna start with the big strokes for people who just want to, ‘cause anyway, if you watch your videos and you’re like, your videos are, are too long, right?Our videos are structured so that you can get most of the takeaway of the video in the first 10 to 15 minutes. And then after that we’re just sort of exploring the topic deeper, riffing, talking about family stuff. But I, I wanna try to get the core ideas out there at the beginning to not waste your time so that you can [00:08:00] easily hop off if you want to.But what happened was, is going into this conference, it had been established that there would be a points of privilege card, but only for women. Okay. This was only supposed to be a system for women. It was yellow cards that were officially there for women. And the way it worked is it wasn’t like women or people who presented enough, like women were given a card as they walked in or something like that.There were just piles of cards that any woman could take whenever she felt like taking one. And pick up and use. To move ahead in the line for speaker positions or to draw particular attention to themselves during a conversation. Okay. Now what happened was, is other people at the event saw women using these and they thought it looked really cool.Right? Like the [00:09:00] moment they’re like, oh, that’s so neat. So you can just take one of these cards and then complain about how you’re discriminated against. You could just skip lines. Well, why doesn’t my group get to skip lines? Right? And so the other cards that you saw were actually made up by other people at the event.At the event, and they began to make their own card. Wait,Simone Collins: did, did they like go run to some kind of printer paper store and purchase colored stock paper and just thatMalcolm Collins: is exactly what they did. You.Simone Collins: No, that cannot. Oh myMalcolm Collins: God. And then they started putting out their special stock paper.Simone Collins: Can you imagine the confusion of like the Kinkos or the, the Office Depot or whatever it was like apparently right next to the convention center, all these weirdly dressed people start showing up and buying bright colored paper with great excitement and, and what?Malcolm Collins: I get to go be more impressed. SoSimone Collins: why are people suddenly buying all of our colored paper?Malcolm Collins: And then what made it [00:10:00] even worse is at the Ontario voting thing, which was like a sub voting thing of this, and we don’t have a lot of information on what of, what went on in the Ontario one. Okay? There had been points of privilege cards for ethnicities, LGBT, you know, indigenous, et cetera.So. They as soon as they saw other people doing this, they’re like, oh, this is just like what we did, like back at our convention, right? So they immediately were like, oh, let’s, let’s get into this. Like, let’s make it happen. Let’s force this to happen. And of course, you know, it graded. On every, well now trans man, when they saw a woman holding up one of these cards, it graded on black people that they couldn’t also have a black card.You know, it graded on. So used to everything being about whatever their particular disability or privilege is at the moment. They saw, and this is important for us to note and remember on the right, because on the right, I think too often we see something like this and we laugh about it, and what we don’t see is.[00:11:00] Oh, oh. That’s a trap that we can lay out in the future. All you need to do to create the cascade is to allow for one subgroup, and this is the key, and we’ll talk about how you make this work and how you don’t make this trap work. You’ve got to. Allow one subgroup to claim special privileges based on their subgroup status.The moment you do that and thenSimone Collins: just everyone else sticks on them and they’re like, God,Malcolm Collins: create a cascade that destroys any leftist event or any event overly infiltrated by leftists. SoSimone Collins: you know what, actually this happened, this happened with the election of, of, well, the failed botched election of Kamala Harris in 2024.When. There was this schism between people deciding who takes precedent, Palestine supporters or supporters of Black Americans. And the Black American activists were really up in arms about people being [00:12:00] like, well, Palestinians matter more than Black American citizens. And Black American citizens are like, hold on.Wait, what? No, that’s not.Malcolm Collins: Well, we’ll actually that’s not get to this because when I tried to find are, are there any like times when they have established an official ranking of who is the most discriminated to the least discriminated?Simone Collins: Oh, like a leaderboard. There needs to be a website for this. Like where you can see the rankings change.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, no, no. This is, this is another key to, to getting progressives, is getting them to establish these, because typically what they do, so first I, I guess I’ll give away part of the, the, the reveal here. One of the ways that progressives ev ev avoid exactly this what happened at this event from happening.And this happened at like the Wall Street protests or you occupy Wall Street, stuff like that, right? Is they did something called a a progressive pitch system or something like that. But basically what it means is, [00:13:00] they go over a list of speakers. So basically a list of speakers is created, and then one of the organizers, essentially using their own judgment, organizes them in priority based on their own perceived fuzzy hierarchy of oppression, right? So this way they can. Not have an explicit hierarchy of oppression, like a, a big game in progressive spaces is avoiding creating an explicit hierarchy of oppression.Because as soon as you create the hierarchy of oppression groups that thought that they were on the top before, like what happened with the Palestinians versus the Blacks end up realizing that for most of the rest of the movement, they’re not actually on the top and they try to exit. So,Simone Collins: oh, right. No, I think we’ve talked about this in other episodes, this idea that.All non cis white groups in. The leftist sphere [00:14:00] actually aren’t really in favor of this whole progressive thing. They’re really minority interest groups who believe that they’re at the top of the hierarchy of privilege.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: So as soon as they have reason to believe that they actually aren’t given.Precedent in, you know, like priority treatment in this world. Yes. That they’re not at the very top. Well then because they’re an ethnic or identity supremacist group, they will leave that collective andMalcolm Collins: yes. Ah, yes. And this is, this is the key to winning as a conservative is you have to, you know, people have seen that we do this with like, our videos, like the viral, you know, Telemundo interview about like, or do gene make black people black you know, like, that, that you, you have to trick them into destroying themselves.Do, do going after them. Is not the best strategy. Right. It makes it look like debate. Yeah.Simone Collins: You use their momentum against you.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Where they take an insane perspective, [00:15:00] but one that is, you know, with enough SHIs to hide that it’s an insane perspective. Right. One of the keys is toSimone Collins: SHIs Malcolm Shipple,Malcolm Collins: what?What do I call ‘em? S**t LITS or something.Simone Collins: Shibolet.Malcolm Collins: Whatever you wanna call it, sweetheart. I don’t speak Jew. I don’t speak your, your Jew. Your Jew tongue knows words that mine cannot pronounce. I’m an American.Simone Collins: Not even gonna just carry on.SHIs. Go on.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. You’re so sweet. I really like you. Anyway, so, the, the trick here that this will reveal as we go through this is trick them into agreeing to create an official hierarchy of oppression.Which can be done by giving a right to one group that other groups don’t have. And then you create a free for all where all the groups [00:16:00] wanna have this, right? And what the. What the organization ended up doing, like at the end of the day is every one of the points of oppression that you could have mattered equally.Right. And you couldn’t like double up points of oppression to get transfection identities. Right. Because then people would just carry around like five. I mean, I’m sure many did. Right. But they, they all can bump you up one space in the talking order. Right.Simone Collins: Okay. So, so people thought that maybe they could layer them, but you can’t layer them.Malcolm Collins: As far as I understand, no, you couldn’t. So, this basically just meant that. White straight men were at a disadvantage and everyone else had the equal advantage. Right? But nobody else wanted that, right? Like, they don’t actually want a system where, because as soon as you do that, it becomes really clear.It’s like, oh, so this is just a system that disproportionately targets white straight men, right? Like that’s the point of the system to disadvantage one fairly narrow group, right? Within a community like that especially, right. So [00:17:00] that’s how you win. Okay. But I want to get back to, and, and what’s really cool is actually the system that they came, the points of the progressive pitch system is what it’s called to hide this, which is to have one person or a small committee do it behind closed doors, order people, so people don’t really know how the ordering was done.Oh, soSimone Collins: it’s a college admissions where you submit. Your application, it sort of falls behind this curtain. Decisions are made, you are told that they’re made properly, and then you have to accept the author’s response.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And in these, they often take into account transactional things where it’s like, oh, you’re like gay and black and Muslim.You know, go to the front of the lines, sir. Anyway, it’s like that 30 rock receipts. His a, a competitor in a, a black guy in a wheelchair and he is just like, like even back then, they knew what was up. But. When one group, and we’ll go into the group that did this in a a [00:18:00] a bit later, did delineate the hierarchy of oppression.They only did it ethnically and it already had a lot of problems, which was they put blacks at the top then indigenous. Which, I mean, if I was indigenous, I’d have a, a bone to pick with that particular framing. Yeah. How are theSimone Collins: indigenous people doing right now?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the ones that are, yeah.Indigenous people have been significantly more screwed by history than black. I’m just, sorry. Like objective.Simone Collins: What base? Campers have argued actually that they’re functionally extinct. Just sort of given, like if you define Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That’s how they got screwed.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I, well, are they screwed?Malcolm Collins: Anymore if you happen to be indigenous in any sort of authentic sense, which most well people,Simone Collins: I mean, I think one of the arguments you made was that none even dream in their native languages anymore.And so that’s kind of likeMalcolm Collins: a, but there are at least some people who are genetically thoroughly indigenous. Still not many, but sup. [00:19:00] They, because they are functionally extinct at this point have the greatest oppression card out there, right? And not just that, but their communities are where they do exist usually.Incredibly poor because of intergenerational handouts. Now it is their privilege that caused their poverty. As we said, there’s nothing you could do that would permanently destroy black communities more than giving out reparations. Look at any of the large studies like the Sam Altman study on, government handoffs. Just go watch our video on that. UniversalSimone Collins: based income. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. UBI it, it destroys communities. We have two videos where we talk about it in that context, and the one where we talk about it in the context of Native American settlements and what it does if you leave it intergenerationally and it leads to things like, you know, a.25, 30% unemployment, like 45% opioid addiction rates. People need struggle in their life, right? And, and, and capitalism actually works towards preserving mental health. And if you disagree with this, look. [00:20:00] Look at the rates of drunkenness in Soviet Union states, right? Mm-hmm. Like they were way worse than in capitalist states, right?Any drug that they could get their hands on in the Soviet Union, they were over consuming. So yeah, no, every, everywhere we have tried communism has led to these sorts of problems.Simone Collins: Well see. Even just like look at Nepo babies who’ve grown up in excess too.Malcolm Collins: Right. But thenSimone Collins: anyone who grows up in abundance,Malcolm Collins: not having the indigenous Americans are above people of color, bipoc, and then bipoc are above white people.But even there, like, I think someSimone Collins: wait, wait. When do you cease to become black and become a, a person of color though too? Because like, what if you’re mixed race, you know? Or what if, what if you’re like a Latino? You know, andMalcolm Collins: black people of color means white people who claim to be people of color.I think everybody who’s got a drop that could claim to be black in this system is gonna claim to be black. And then people of color is white, European, Latinos. That’s wild. Yeah. You, you know it. I know it. Come on. But let’s get into this, right? [00:21:00] There was an article that covered the event that I think did a pretty good job of it.In the national post how the NDPs equity cards turn the convention into a circus. Canada’s new Democratic party in pd, held a convention and elected their new leader, Evie Lewis. Over three days last weekend, the convention made the ND famous, perhaps infamous is more like it, and drew attention from across the world.All this happened at a time when the party is in its death rose. It has lost its official status in Canada’s House of Commons and has a measly six elected members in parliament. So it’s important to understand that this sort of internal fighting has destroyed this party. We must unleash this cancer in more places to destroy them faster.And if it takes down companies, so be it. The more we can spread the inevitable result of this particular disease, the better. How did the in and, and in our book, the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting [00:22:00] Religion, we argue that this is actually an evolved feature of the urban monocultural mimetic virus, which is to say basically it captures an institution and then it begins to use that institution to more quickly infect nodes within that institution using the institution’s own infrastructure.EG. Pr, the wait, you call it like HR department and the, you know, all the, the quizzes you have to do and all the surveys and all the fear, but eventually once it’s infected, almost everyone who’s remaining in the institution, it now can’t spread, right? Like it’s stuck in the institution. So how do you spread?Well, you’ve got to be. Parasitoid in nature, that means you have to kill your host. And basically once an institution reaches a certain level of infection, it becomes completely unable to do anything thrashes around like an insect crawling with worms on the inside and explodes. So the worms can now go and infect other institutions, right?But if you can speed up this process, you can make it too [00:23:00] virulent and a disease or a parasitoid that is too virulent ends up extinguishing the. Willing host population as we’re beginning to see. And we pointed out with black women who were for a long time, used as the primary, a host for some strains of the urban monoculture are now basically unable to find employment because nobody wants to hire them.There was a, a 50% increase in black female unemployment this last year. Right? So, you, you do eventually find a point where you become so virulent. To groups and, no, I’m not saying all black women are carriers of the urban monocultural mimetic virus. I’m just saying that it used them disproportionately to the point where now people avoid hiring them.But to continue here, the party’s equity card system initially allowed for conference s who self-identified as anything other than cis man IE biologically a man to jump to the head. Of the microphone and gain [00:24:00] speaking priority during policy debate sessions. The, oh, so the, the trans men were still allowed to jump to the front?No. That’s very good that they, they knew, they knew about that mistake, potentially.Simone Collins: Yeah. And I, I, if you’ve been touched by femininity, you are okay. It’s, you are accepted.Malcolm Collins: Did you affiliate any? At any point in your life. Yeah. Well, I mean, that would allow like gender queer people and everything like that to play the game as well, so, okay.Good. You got, you got your people. The, the neon yellow cards caused near immediate problems, however, and viral video clips of delegates bickering over the card system began flooding social media algorithms on day two. Of the convention lawyer, Adrianna Smith Convention chair opened the event on day one by sharing an email address where conference attendance were told to immediately file a report if they felt they were victims of discrimination or harassment on the basis of any protected characteristics such as gender identity.Smith stated that an quote unquote anti-harassment [00:25:00] officer would quote, unquote, follow up directly and provide support. So I love they’ve already created this like. We’ve got secret police at the event. Everybody be the eyes and ears on everybody else, right? Everybody be primed to feel harassed, right?Like you’ll get special attention if you end up feeling harassed. So like, go in feeling that way, right? And you know that. Every one of these fricking Karens, they hear this and their first thought is basically, this officer exists for me. Right? Like for, for, to exercise my will on everybody else.Simone Collins: They’re, they’re not an off, they’re a minion.They are meant to be sent on errands to serve them personally. Yes, yes.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. And affirm them personally.Simone Collins: Well, yes, but not, not affirm them directly. Force other people to bow down to them. You, you must understand, okay, that is the, the mechanismMalcolm Collins: by the way. Thoughts, [00:26:00] Simone, everybody wants to hear you ‘cause you’re the smart one.Before I go further,Simone Collins: I’m just entranced by this. I think you’re absolutely right that this, if you want to take down an enemy, you have to take them down by their own weaknesses. By basically allowing them to trip over themselves. And this, this is a very. Great illustration of how that can happen.Malcolm Collins: It’s not just a great illustration.It basically lays out how progressives avoid this in some scenarios and how to trigger this particular cascade. Did Octavian come up? Was he trying to annoy you?Simone Collins: No. Easter egg hunt. I’m letting know he can go out and do it with the rest of the kids.Malcolm Collins: Oh, you’re very, very sweet, Simone.Simone Collins: He’s been looking forward to it all day long.Oh. ‘Malcolm Collins: cause he wants to hang out with Aaliyah.Simone Collins: Yes, he does. Aaliyah. Aaliyah,Malcolm Collins: what a little brat.[00:27:00]Simone Collins: It’s his first crush. What are you gonna do? You know?Malcolm Collins: Well, is is it with his, his oldest friend? You know, and so you gotta hang out, do princess. Okay. So continue here. But no, I, I think you, you put the, he hit the nail on the head of the most important part of this. They are showing how you trigger. The parasitoid moment and how it can be pre how, how, how it can be triggered.What, what is it like before? It’s, it’s meant to naturally trigger in a, in an infected organism or group.Simone Collins: Well, what you’re doing here is you’re trying to force detonate a bomb, you know? Yeah. This is, this is, this is a, oh, sorry. The word is controlled destination. That’s what you, you want to do with a movement that’s dangerous like this.Malcolm Collins: So you, you get in a room with a bunch of people like this, you’re a cis guy, right? So. Of course you are at the bottom of the totem pole, right? And so what do you do? Right? How do you, how do you handle this? You say, well, as a cis man, I believe that trans [00:28:00] women. Should always be able to speak first due to their oppression was in our society.Simone Collins: You just gotta kick it off. Yeah. You know, you just, you drop in. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. And you walkMalcolm Collins: out,Simone Collins: we’ll let the fuse. Now it’s just awaken. Its, you just gotta wait for it to snake. Its way over. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes.Malcolm Collins: And then if somebody else says, well, hold on Malcolm, but as a white man. You know, you can’t understand what it feels like to be black and to see a trans woman speak before me and then I say, whoa, you are right.We need to create a table with a hierarchy of oppressed categories. Mm-hmm. If the entire point of something like a point of privilege system is to ensure that a more oppressed person is more centered, then all of you who have had an internal memory experience of [00:29:00] oppression, shouldn’t you be able to sort this out?And of course, I will recuse myself because. I have no role in thisSimone Collins: conversation. No. Yeah, no. Your, your white man voice is notMalcolm Collins: welcome, and they all just throw them to the wolves. It’s like when the emperor would like throw money at crowds to watch them fight over it. Well, of course someone in this room is the most depressed.Simone Collins: Well, someone has to ask though, like. Was this, this a matter of people going to the local printing store next door to this convention center and buying their own colored card stock? Or was this a troll? Handing out additional pieces of colored card stuff and saying,Malcolm Collins: oh no, I know this. People in their head so easy.They see some trans woman up there speaking or some woman up there speaking and they think that they should be in the most oppressed group in the room, and they are [00:30:00] just moldering. Especially because like imagine you’re one of the Quebec and you know. Well, at the last conference, what,Simone Collins: Becky,Malcolm Collins: like truck, you had cards that you could use, right?Isn’t it? I don’t care. ‘em, Quebec Quebecers, they’re, they’re not people, come on, they’re not gonna be here in a few years anyway. They have a terrible birth rate. I think one of the lower fertility rates in France. I think so. Up in, in, in Canada, whatever.Simone Collins: Oh God.Malcolm Collins: They never should have been allowed in this country in the first place.Really?Simone Collins: You’ll never give the French a chance. You are never gonna give the French a chance,Malcolm Collins: I swear to you. No, it is. It is my culture to eat. ItSimone Collins: doesn’t matter if they’re in Canada. It doesn’t matter if they’re in France. It doesn’t matter if they’re in some African country. You’re like, no, you’re out.Malcolm Collins: Cheese eating. Surrender monkeys.Simone Collins: We love cheese. How dare you?Malcolm Collins: I do like cheese, but I don’t like cheese. I, I, I we’ve talked about this in another episode, but like, [00:31:00] genuinely, I only like, didn’t like the French performatively at first because if you’re from Texas, you know, like culturally you’re supposed to pretend you hate the French.It’s just one of those things that like everybody pro pretends performatively, they hate the French and Texas is like a Texas thing. But like. Hilariously. I have since been to France on a number of occasions, and they are easily, I mean, without any close competition, the most unpleasant people on earth Parisians specifically I’ve heard that there are pleasant French people outside of Paris.But and I will note, I may like make fun of New York and stuff like this and like New York is falling apart, but like. People in American major cities like New York and San Francisco are predominantly pretty decent. They may not beSimone Collins: as, no, our, our reputation is just for being very loud and very friendly and yeah.That, that is, that is like known as we’re like, hi. And we just talk with people all the time and like you don’t see that in France, especially not Paris. You don’t see that in [00:32:00] Germany. For sure. You seeMalcolm Collins: it more in Germany than in, in, in any other European country that I’ve seen.Simone Collins: You see, no, people are, people are fairly, they’re more friendly in, in the UK than they are in Germany.Malcolm Collins: I think it’s more friendly in Germany.Simone Collins: Mm, disagree.Malcolm Collins: Well, our comments can argue about this. I, I, I don’t see it as a big difference. I mean, I definitely think it’s debatable. UK versus Germany.Simone Collins: You can’t be like, oh, nice weather today. If you’re like checking out at groceries in Germany, they look at you like you’ve committed a war crime.Really like, don’t even, don’t even, the difference is that I guess you don’t have the chance to in the UK ‘cause it’s just some beleaguered immigrant running, one of those like auto checkout lines, you know, you won’t find someone running the cash register anyway. So,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, it, it actually comes down to something that we’ve talked about in other episodes where I think one of the worst social tactics.That you can a, allow to be normalized is people attempting to raise their [00:33:00] social status by shutting down other people’s e excitedness or excitement about an idea or otherSimone Collins: peoples’. I don’t think that’s what’s going on in Germany. It’s just like, this is inefficient. This is not the place for it. It, it’s really not about, no, butMalcolm Collins: it’s, it’s what’s going down in Paris, right?Like.Simone Collins: Oh sure. Yeah. Or like when you try to speak French in in France and they just kind of are insulted that you’ve butchered their language. It’s very different than when you try to speak Japanese and Japan and they just literally can’t understand you because white people don’t speak Japanese.They’re like. WhatMalcolm Collins: they, they, they’re so funny because Simone speaks some very fluent Japanese in, in terms of accent and everything. ‘cause she grew up there partially. And so when we had the Japanese news crew here and she answered the phone in Japanese and they, they freaked out. They were like I’m calling for Simone.Can you put her on the phone?Simone Collins: They, yeah, they actually did acknowledge that I. It’s different when they’re abroad. If you speak Japanese to someone who’s Japanese [00:34:00] and they’re outside the country, they’re like, wow. Whereas if you’re in the country, they’re like, I’m sorry I don’t speak English. It’s great.Whereas, yeah, you’re definitely insulting the French by even trying. Which is great. I mean, that’s, I think that’s why it’s extra great that you just butcher their words. ‘cause you, you’re just feeding into the stereotype. This, it’s a, it’s a. It takes two to tango. Right. You know, they need men like you to demonstrate that Americans shouldn’t be allowed to speak French at all, you know?Malcolm Collins: Right, right, right. But I mean, actually interesting point by the way. If you’re talking about a culture that has never fully integrated, like if we talk about, well, if you integrate into American or Canadian culture, then you’re American or Canadian. The French never really have Quebec is still culturally very different from the rest of Canada.Linguistically different from the rest of Canada. And the regions of the United States that were French settled like Louisiana. Are still culturally quite different from the other parts of the United [00:35:00] States. And I really only think that it is tolerable in the United States because it’s such a small population.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But like if Louisiana was a significantly larger population in the United States, I’d, I’d be like, yeah, we need to, we need to have a conversation aboutSimone Collins: it. People really speak French in Louisiana anymore. I don’t think there’s any No,Malcolm Collins: but they, they’re different culturalSimone Collins: anymore.Malcolm Collins: TheySimone Collins: have, I think, more different culturally than in other places.I would doubt. I doubt that.Malcolm Collins: Yes, they are absolutely.Simone Collins: Mm. Okay. I haven’t been so, I couldn’t say.Malcolm Collins: They, they are like, and, and especially along the ME metrics that people like you and I find distasteful, they are by far the most mystical subpopulation in the United States. Mm. Like mysticism is an important part of like every day happening.For many native louisianans and I find that very distasteful that doesn’t have a place in America. It, it’s funny that one [00:36:00] person saw how like materialist and anti mystical we were, and they thought that that was like in alignment with the urban monoculture. Whereas to me, the urban monoculture is incredibly mystical and, and, because like to, to us, it’s like far to the left of us on those things. And then these people are even further left than that, where they’re just like full on Woo and crystals and, but you know, their own brand of it. But anyway, to continue here, we have a collective responsibility to make sure that all of our party activities are safe, said Smiths.These words seem to be set. Set the tone of the conference as one of a war between oppressed groups, each wanting to claim that they’d been wrong or discriminated against in some way, and encouraged delegates to view others suspiciously as strangers who might be covert bigots, who could cause them harm.It certainly worked. Okay. What did he say? How do we trigger this in people? We have a collective responsibility to make sure that all of our party activities are safe. [00:37:00] Hmm. That’s a good one to throw out there. And then all signal. Hmm. Also this yellow card, which is available at all of the microphones, Smith said on day one, this is a way for a delegate to signal the chair that they have a gender identity other than man, and this allows you to exercise priority in the speaking order.We will come to you early. Well,Simone Collins: they should have just done it so that people didn’t misgender them, that they would just lose, use they them pronouns or something.Malcolm Collins: Oh no. But that happened. Like there’s this scene where one of the people holds up a card. A non-binary person,Simone Collins: okay.Malcolm Collins: Holds up the card, claims a point of privilege.Misgenders the person, they’re claiming the point of privilege to the the Madam Speaker, and then the Madam Speaker has to explain to them that they were just misgendered and explain that this would all agreed upon before the proceeding started. And it only covers genderanyway. Less than two hours into the day Party members could be seen on camera adding additional color cards.[00:38:00]Neon blue and pink. The microphone stands up to the stands. So they basically made a deal of cards and put them up at the stand. This apparently caused confusion among delegates who began to use the cards to identify as members of other equity seeking groups based on race or disability, for instance.On day two, Smith told the audience, I want to be clear that at your convention, the equity card applies to gender equity.Simone Collins: I really love this though. This ‘cause this, again, I hate the co. There’s no such thing as equality because it’s always equality based on something that is subjective. Either, you know, equality of.Of need of merit, of wants it, of, of deserves it, of has had the most trauma of is of this privileged class is the most popular. Like there’s no such thing as equal and this shows that like. Well, I want my [00:39:00] equality and I want my equality. And it, it turns out that no, because equality means privilege. And when people talk about equity, what they’re talking about is I want a bigger slice of the pie.And I know that if I use this word somehow, I’m going to get it. I, I just, oh, this is a great illustration of it though.Malcolm Collins: Equity. I appreciate that. Equity is the opposite of equality. Okay. A an equitable world is a world that is definitionally unequal. In terms of effort to resources, alright? It’s a world that says, if anything impedes your effort to resources journey or even potentially, could we have to rig the system in your favor?Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Anybody who says they want equity is saying they want fascism. They are saying they want to strip you of your rights and you shouldn’t for a second be confused about what that word really means. [00:40:00] Hmm. I think there’s a, a funny meme of this or something where it’s like what equity means and is, you know, the three different people trying to look over the fence at a, a baseball game.And the, the reality is, is it’s the, the tallest person has their legs chopped off, so they’re the same height as the shortest person. The next person has their legs cut off that much. They’re the same height at the shortest person. And this is true, everybody has to go down to the height of the shortest person because you, you.You cannot, like if you are raising one person, that has to come at the expense of other people who are producing more. And that only comes from lopping down other people. Right. But what I love here is he goes this is the decision that you collectively made. Those delegates from Ontario might remember that at the Ontario Convention.We use the cards more broadly for members of all equity seeking groups. I’d encourage you to consider that as we move along towards the future that we all deserve basically [00:41:00] saying. He’s referencing the Ontario one here, but basically being like, look, we voted on, this is only gonna be about gender at this convention.So on the last day of the convention, Shane, this happened on the last day of the convention. A white day guy comes up, of course, this white guy and says. Hey, what if we make this multiple cards thing official? And every time somebody uses their card, they have to explain how that disadvantage or point of privilege is relevant to the talking point that they are about to makeSimone Collins: on.This was a troll. This was a troll. How is he not a troll?Malcolm Collins: That is where I’m just like. And it got voted on. So, you know, hopefully it’ll be in there next year. Because it would’ve made things so much worse because they’re all gonna wanna say it before they have to say anything. They’re all gonna wanna say it, but now they have to explain why it’s relevant.I’m not, I’m not gonna keep reading here. Because I think we covered all the important [00:42:00] points with the really big one being that, that the other big trick in this is to get them to create hierarchies. As soon as you can do that, you’ve what? Right. Because then they, when they realize they’re not Well,Simone Collins: yeah.As soon as is one group. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And this is really true of particularly the most self-interested groups. So where the hierarchies are really busting of the coalition is trans people, a hundred percent believe they should be at the top. Always black people, a hundred percent believe they should be at the top always and isSimone Collins: black people who are actively participating in this, which I wanna argue, you know, there, there are lots of black people who do not buy into this.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah.Simone Collins: And there are also I, I would say keyword, but they’re 100% trans people who do not buy into this political ideology who are just living their lives.Malcolm Collins: And then finally, Islamists, they a hundred percent think that they’re actually in the top. They think all of progressivism is really about promoting Muslim values.Simone Collins: [00:43:00] Yeah. Would you, would you say that there are subsets, like there’s the Palestinian supporting Islam, Islamists, and then there’s just Islamists. Because I feel like there’s one set that doesn’t understand what Palestine is about at all. And then there’s another one that like understands the larger goal of Islam and is actually like, believes is an adherent of the religion.And then there’s other people who just like literally don’t understand and just listen to Hamas propaganda points and are not themselves Islamic.Malcolm Collins: So the branch of Islamists that likes these people is in the Palestine faction a hundred percent. There are many Muslims who are not of this category that you talk about, right?In America, they generally vote conservative. They’re generally Republicans and they’re generally afraid of these groups. There was recently one of the, the leaders of Qatar was speaking recently.Speaker 9: And let me say this in English [00:44:00] so you can understand what I’m saying. I have translation. No, I know you have translation, but I’m, I just want to make sure you get it right.There will come a day that we will see far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe because of lack of decision making, trying to be politically correct. Or assuming that they know the Middle East and they know Islam and they know the others far better than we do. And I’m, I’m sorry, but that’s pure ignorance.Malcolm Collins: And he said in about 20 years there is going to be a rash of violent Muslim terrorists, and it’s because of Western woke countries not cracking down where they should have.And most [00:45:00] Muslims see this. They, they understand that the Muslims who support Palestine are terrorists who want to kill the sane Muslims as much as they want to kill the rest of us. Right? And if you don’t have any sane Muslim friends, like seriously go out there like. We live in an area that’s, that’s got a heavy Muslim population that is predominantly sane Muslims.Right. And it’s because of where they come. Like I’m, I’m gonna be honest, most of the crazy Muslims come from like one of three fairly small areas, but they’re Branch of Islam has been adopted by the wider progressive cause.Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. So the, yeah, the, the point is not to be suspicious of someone just because they’re Muslim.It’s to be suspicious of someone because No, no, no,Malcolm Collins: no, no. Be suspicious of someone because they’re Muslim. Trust but verify. Right. You know, like,Simone Collins: oh God, I was gonna say like if they’re Muslim and [00:46:00] staunch, progressive political activists, that’s, that’s a pretty clear red flag. ButMalcolm Collins: yeah, I mean. Basically you, you wanna don’t make them say, I like Israel, right?Like, that’s not the way you, you, you, you’re like, okay. Of the various political groups battling over the Middle East right now, which one are you for? Right. Like, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran or one of the other groups like the, the, the IES or the Al-Qaeda or the you know, isis. And there’s acceptable answers there, right?If they say Saudi Arabia they’re, they’re still a little suss. They could be waas. If they say UAE, they’re generally fine. If they say Qatar be super suss if they say any of the terrorist groups or Iran, you know. You’re dealing, you’re dealing with a situation there, right? [00:47:00] Well, I meanSimone Collins: fun.Malcolm Collins: AlsoSimone Collins: fun. I feel like people, people in Iran themselves are actually not. Extremists in general?Malcolm Collins: No. No. Generally Persian immigrants to the United States. F**k hate Iran. Like Yeah. I actually don’t know if I ever met an Iranian who likes the current Iranian government.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s the weird thing.Malcolm Collins: We gotta jump on our, our next podcast.But funny, funny side note about like, the trait I always see in Iranians. Like, I joke about Iranians all the time on this podcast, but the number one trait, and I, I don’t know why I haven’t said this on the, on the show before that I always associate with Iranians in the United States is they more than any ethnic group I have ever met, love nightclubs and clubbing.I have never met another group that can go to nightclubs. Multiple nights in a row. Right.Simone Collins: They’ve evolved for it.Malcolm Collins: They have evolved for it. They,Simone Collins: yeah, they, they have like tolerance for the poison. It’s, it’s part of their DNA. We gotta run. We gotta run.Malcolm Collins: GotSimone Collins: run.Malcolm Collins: [00:48:00] Okay. Bye.Simone Collins: I just sent you the link. Okay, don’t worry. It will be okay. I mean, I shouldn’t say that. I can’t guarantee that everything will be okay. People who say that are not to be trusted,I am so curious because the moment I saw people making fun of this, I wanted to understand what is this system? How do you get the cards? Is there a desk that hands out the cards? Do you make up your own cards? What is this? What does point of privilege mean? I have, there are just so many things that I need to know.Because I mean, normally in left-leaning circles, point of privilege, or at least the term privilege is a derogatory term, right? You need to check your privilege, your white privilege, et cetera, right? Mm-hmm. So why would [00:49:00] someone want to pair a card associated, presumably with privilege? With a right to speak, like point of privilege, minority card, right?They were saying things like that, which implies that they like the privilege. The privilege is good. It is a privilege to be a minority. But then how, how can you be oppressed? If it’s a privilege, I, please tell me you have answersMalcolm Collins: all right. So I will jump right in. Yes. And for dinner tonight what are you thinking? Za. Fantastic. Love it. The would likeSimone Collins: me to thaw out moreMalcolm Collins: Za lasagna. Yeah.Simone Collins: YouMalcolm Collins: meanSimone Collins: would, yeah.Would you like me to thaw out more steak for subsequent nights?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’d love that. Especially cooking it. However you made it the last time you made it, or I think you might have cooked it a bit more to render the internal fat better. It made it a lot softer. Easier. Yeah, it steeredSimone Collins: it longer. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: He’s a really good [00:50:00] strategy. Oh, that’s a cute kid. Look at him. He’s like wiggling and worming. NowSimone Collins: he’s got things to do. He has strong opinions. He, his toes are of great interest right now. He’s trying to eat them. Sir,Malcolm Collins: for a alternate, an episode I really wanted to do was one American versus all of Iraq.Sorry, all of Iran. But, simone thought that that had been covered too well. So I’ll see if I can find, I wanna find more information on why his jet went down, that, that, that was not covered. I thought that was gonna be covered in the ethical take.Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. AndMalcolm Collins: sogetting a good idea of how that went down.Simone Collins: Yeah. Was it gunned down or was it something else?Speaker 11: what do you call this? Dance moves? Sun. Sun? Yeah. And you dance in for the baby chicks Dance. They think it’s pretty special.The best part of game the baby. She’s [00:51:00] like this. Yeah. Yeah. Be careful you don’t fall off the chair.Wait, can I see the picture on me dancing? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into the viral controversy surrounding Kristi Noem’s husband, Bryon Noem, and his alleged involvement in the bimbofication fetish scene — including leaked messages, photos, payments to sex workers, and the couple’s apparent marital mismatch amid long-rumored infidelity on her side.They explore why this story hasn’t blown up into a bigger scandal on the right (or left), how society has normalized “degenerate” kinks like furries, transformation fetishes, and bimbofication, and whether this shift has positive or negative externalities. The conversation covers:* The psychology and arousal pathways behind bimbofication (loss of autonomy/control, body transformation, escapism)* Why people on both sides are mostly shrugging it off* Misunderstandings in the Noem marriage (she reportedly thought he was gay)* Comparisons to other fetishes (vore, ification, etc.) and how common they actually are* Dangers of stigmatizing kinks vs. engaging with communities that can warp identity* Advice for parents: de-romanticize sex, teach impulse control in a world full of “sirens,” and avoid feeding kids to ideological capture* Cultural observations on the Trump administration’s “Mar-a-Lago face”/bimbo aesthetic and broader societal vibe shiftsExpect unfiltered talk about human sexuality, evolutionary misfires, AI roleplay as a safer outlet, and why old-school shame tactics no longer work in the internet age.If you enjoy deep, nerdy dives into taboo topics without performative outrage, hit like, subscribe, and drop your thoughts below — what’s your take on bimbofication and cultural normalization?Show NotesIt was recently revealed that Bryon Noem, husband to Trump’s former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is involved in the bimbofication scene, something which he CONFIRMEDCoverage of this has been extremely disappointing: Either “ew what” or “leave this poor man alone” (e.g. NY Times: “In South Dakota, Neighbors Feel Sorry for Kristi Noem’s Husband”)* Though I do appreciate that people are being pros to Bryon, who has no doubt been through it* “In interviews with locals and friends of the couple before and after The Daily Mail published its pictures, the prevailing sense that emerged was this: People can’t help but feel sorry for Bryon Noem. His marriage had been the talk of the prairie since long before Tuesday.”* On the edge of Castlewood, there is a gas station that sells AR-15s. Dozens of animal heads hang from the walls. “Kristi for Governor” stickers stick to the countertops. One man who was in there Tuesday morning looked at the report in The Daily Mail and shook his head sorrowfully. He didn’t know what to believe about Bryon Noem. Only that he liked him. “Such a nice man,” he said. “It just tears me up.”* ““Must be A.I.,” a burly cattle rancher named Kevin Ruesink said as he inspected pictures of his neighbor Bryon Noem that had been published by The Daily Mail on Tuesday morning.”* The rancher squinted at them with a mixture of suspicion and pity. “I grew up playing ball with Bryon,” he said. “I’ve never known him to be part of stuff like that. I don’t believe that at all.”I personally want, and think people deserve, better coverage of the fetish and better conjecture about the way it played out between Kristi and Bryon.Bimboficiation 101* The word bimbo has been around since the 1920s to refer to an attractive but dumb woman* Before it referred to a foolish or inconsequential man* Comes from Italian bambino for baby/child (so many the original “bimbo” was like “manchild”)* Why is Bimbo bread called BIMBO BREAD?* Bimbo bread’s name was created by the founders in Mexico in the 1940s as a coined brand word, most commonly explained as a blend of “bingo” and Disney’s “Bambi.* SUUUUURE* According to the company’s own historical notes, “Bimbo” first appeared on a 1943 name shortlist alongside options like Pan Rex and Pan Azteca, and the leading internal explanation is that they combined “bingo” with “Bambi” to get a short, childlike, friendly-sounding name. Later, they realized that bimbo is also informal Italian for “child” (from bambino) and that similar sounds in Chinese resemble the word for bread, but these meanings were discovered after the name was already chosen. The English slang sense of “bimbo” developed separately and was not part of the original branding decision in Spanish-speaking markets.* Bimbofication is a fetish and subculture centered on the erotic or performative transformation of a person (of any gender) into an exaggerated, hyper-feminine “bimbo” archetype. This typically involves adopting traits like massive breasts (often via prosthetics, implants, or art), plump lips, heavy makeup, blonde hair, skimpy clothing, a ditzy or submissive personality, and heightened sexuality—turning the individual into a caricatured, uninhibited sex object or “Barbie doll.”* The specific bimbofication fetish (the process or fantasy of transforming into or creating a bimbo) emerged from broader online transformation fetish communities in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It grew out of related kinks like:* Breast expansion* Body modification* Erotic hypnosis* Sissification (feminization)* It often overlaps with submissive roleplay, where participants (or their partners) embrace “brainless” personas for escapism, stress relief, or gender exploration. Many involved are heterosexual men, though it’s not exclusive* The fetish emphasizes transformation as the core erotic element—whether fantasy (art, captions, hypnosis files), roleplay, or real-world modifications (fillers, implants, etc.)* Search volume-wise, it’s in a cluster of fairly obscure sexual interests* Only became a genre around 2010; leveled off in growth after 2014* According to Zipper Magazine, this is when it became an established tag in fetish art. Figures like “Pink” (of Pink Bimbo Academy) provided frameworks around 2016. Platforms like Clips4Sale added dedicated categories. Content creators documented real-life journeys involving surgery, hypnosis, and wardrobe changes.* Pretty close to sissification from 2016-2026 (sissification was bigger before)* More obscurely, close to:* Taratophilia (attraction to monsters)* Dwarfed by* Crossdressing, but it’s trending downward in popularity* Vore (which I would have thought was much more obscure)* All are drawfed by “hentai”* How people engage with the concept* Related searches* bimbofication meme* Deviantart* Reddit* ao3* reverse bimbofication meme* bimbofication aesthetic* de bimbofication memeBryan Noem* Daily Mail: “When approached for comment about the photos, which showed him wearing huge fake breasts while speaking to “bimbofication” fetish models online, Bryon Noem told The New York Times: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.””* What he allegedly did (photos are timestamped to early 2025, which is also when the second Trump administration started)* Interact with at least three women* Who participate in the bimbofication scene* Involves extreme saline breast/lip injections* One may be Lydia Love* Who is busty, but… otherwise unremarkable? I wouldn’t think she was weird if I walked past her in a grocery store.* Get photos from them* Engage in roleplay* Which involved submissive roleplay* Whereby the women would turn him into a girl* He would compliment their bodies while wishing for “huge, huge ridiculous boobs” of his own* Wearing his makeshift breasts + a flesh-colored crop top, skin-tight pink hot pants or shorts, figure-hugging leggings/yoga pants, and a white top stretched over the breasts* BIGGEST PROBLEM IN MY VIEW: He sent at least $25,000 total (over roughly 14 months, while his wife was DHS Secretary) via Cash App and PayPal.* Payments to one woman were regular deposits of $500–$1,000 under the “Jason Jackson” name. With Lydia Love specifically, he paid $25 per minute for dirty-talk/webcam sessions (10–15 times over an 18- to 24-month period, with the last around six months before the reports). Payments sometimes delayed, leading to friction with at least one model.* He reportedly told at least one participant he did this to relieve stress from his personal life (including awareness of his wife’s rumored affair) and that he loved his wife/family but continued the behavior intermittently.Kristi Noem* Rumored to be having an affair with her top aide, Corey Lewandowski* Evidence:* Did not deny it when asked while under oath in a congressional hearing* Multiple eyewitness accounts from named and unnamed Republican/political sources describing public affectionate or intimate behavior.* People call the affair the “worst-kept secret in DC”* Incidents* August 2020, Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) meeting at The Cloister resort, Sea Island, Georgia: Former Trump operative Charles Johnson (named source) and two other attendees reported seeing Noem discreetly take Lewandowski’s hand and place it in her lap while he put his arm around her back. Sources described “obvious affection.”* December 2020, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort: Multiple sources (including at least three cited) witnessed Noem sitting on Lewandowski’s lap and “playing grab-ass.” One described it as “the usual stuff that drunk people who are having affairs do”; another thought they were a couple because they were “all over each other.”* 2021 CPAC, Hyatt Regency Orlando, Florida: At least one source (with others implied) saw them “making out” and getting “handsy” at the hotel bar in full view of 100–200 political operatives, journalists, and officials. The source called it “absurdly blatant and public.”* 2025: A reported incident in which Lewandowski allegedly confronted/fired a pilot mid-air over a missing “heated blanket” belonging to Noem (later described by some outlets as a cover story involving a bag with potentially embarrassing items).* In Bryon Noem’s reported 2025–2026 online fetish chats (exposed March 2026), one model claimed he told her his wife was having an affair with an adviser and “there’s nothing I can do about it.” (Bryon has denied discussing the affair specifically.)* Some speculate this is why she was excused from her Homeland Security secretary roleThe couple* Married since 1992* Three adult children, grandchildren* How they likely dealt with this* Maybe Bryon started this when stress peaked with Kristi’s establishment as Homeland Security secretary.* He’s working in a very humble insurance shop, trying to do his thing* Meanwhile his wife is cheating on him, flying all over, living in luxury* Pretty much anyone would find this stressful* Maybe Kristi thought he was gay* Political commentator Ryan James Girdusky told the It’s a Numbers Game podcast in August 2025 that there was some “D.C. gossip” that a top Cabinet official, rumored to be Noem, was casually admitting that her husband was gay. “A reporter walked up to her and said, ‘Why are you having this affair? Why haven’t you met up with your husband? Why aren’t you divorcing your husband?’” Girdusky said. “And she blurted out to this reporter, who I know, and said, ‘Oh, my husband’s gay.’” (The Daily Beast)* Implies a huge amount of mental separation (in addition to their physical separation)The sad thing about sexual interests* I bet a lot of people just don’t feel comfortable talking about their kinks with partners* But when you don’t, you might end up with a partner spending $25K on bimbo scene ladies when this could have been handled differentlyEpisode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] you immediately hear there is one official at the Trump administration that is into bimbo ation, and here I am like. You sure?It’s only one. Like I have seen the way that women dress in the Trump administration. So literally you, you call Mar-a-Lago face. Marla. But what Mar-a-Lago face it looks like is bimbo.Simone Collins: Cation. Cation.Malcolm Collins: Right?Like the White House has literally become a bimbo. Cation. Exactly. Oh my Holly,Simone Collins: someone needs tomake a bimbo cation like meme, but of like, of the WhiteMalcolm Collins: House, like women walking into the White House and then women walking outta the White House looking like the Mar-a-Lago face.Simone Collins: Oh my God.we could just use a progression of Christie Nome over time and say,Malcolm Collins: yeah, just use a progression.No.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the controversy around Christie no’s husband’s fetish coming out and the cheating allegations. But the interesting thing about this, from my [00:01:00] perspective, and there’s really a, a, a meta story to explore here, is that people don’t seem to care.Which on, on, on the right, on the left, it’s like historically a fetish comes out and everybody needs to be performatively saying how gross and how weird it is and how le you know.Simone Collins: Oh, they are, they are like, Brett Cooper was like, Ew, I don’t wanna know. Ha ha ha.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. I’ve, I’ve gone through a few of those.Right. But largely speaking, the, the normal response from, from most of the commenters is just like blowing it off. Like it’s another day in the park to see something like this. And so I want to explore. Why that’s the case? Like how, how has society changed? I mean, part of it is kind of obvious, right?Like, you go back and you watch like the, the TV hosts, the, when they found out what furries were, right?Speaker 7: What’s aSpeaker 8: furry convention?Speaker 7: Did I get that wrong? ISpeaker 8: leaped there. Oh [00:02:00]Speaker 9: gosh.Speaker 7: Okay. Officials were called when I, yeah. Strong odor of chlorine’s. What spread?Speaker 9: I think they had to evacuate the building and everything. Set the hotel guests along with convention attendees into the cold night. Many still dressed in their furry, furry possums.Speaker 10: We have a lot of costumers out here with big, fluffy costumes that’ll keep people warm. So at this point we’re not at all worried.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. , And today if a host pretended to not know what a furry is, I’d be like,Simone Collins: I’m sorry.Yeah. This is embarrassing.Malcolm Collins: Everybody knows what a furry is. The only reason you would pretend not to know what a furry is is because you’re a furry, right? Like, and you’re, you’re like, overplaying your hand on this one.Simone Collins: What?Malcolm Collins: No. Well, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, we’re, we’ve sort of entered a world where this stuff is [00:03:00] normal on the, even the Right, right.And I, and I want to go into like, what that means is that degen. Societally in a, in a negative way? Or is it does it, does it have positive externalities?Simone Collins: Well, I mean, I’m, I’m also gonna make an argument though that there is insufficient understanding and willingness to engage with this. Like while at the same, so what I’m seeing is on the left, people are like, man, like who cares?And, you know, I just feel bad for this guy. And on the right it’s mostly like, ew porn is bad, but like not a big deal. But I also am seeing even within like the relationship there is clearly a huge amount of misunderstanding. And I think broadly the either like, I don’t care, this doesn’t matter, or sex negative response or sex positive response, but not actually engaging with what this is and why he was doing it.And there are elements of this not to, and I’m not, I’m not, I’m not kink shaming, but like there are elements of what he did [00:04:00] that I would be utterly unforgivable. That. I’m like, no, you, yes,Malcolm Collins: yes, yes. No, I, I, I agreeSimone Collins: that, you know what, you know what I’m gonna say? Like,Malcolm Collins: it reminds me of oh, let’s see. I didn’t remember what I was gonna say.All right, continue.Simone Collins: So I, I think it’s also important to shed a little bit of flight on ification in general. I, I want people to kind of understand, understand,Malcolm Collins: oh, okay. I remember what I was gonna say. Yeah. So this reminds me of when you’re talking about like the media not getting it, um mm-hmm. An instance where that happened recently was when everybody went around and said the, the attempted Trump assassin was a furry because he had like some for furry pornography, but it was because he had a very, very specific fetish of women with masculine bodies like hyper masculine bodies.That is not easy to find. So it’s clear that he was just taking anything from that fetish category he could find, and he like, that’s something that like. Normal DJs on the internet would immediately get and understand. But [00:05:00] if you’re too separated from that, you’re like, oh, furry porn. He must be a furry, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, continue.Or do you want me to get started with the series of events?Simone Collins: Yeah, go ahead and get started with a series of events, and then I’ll throw in stuff that I think is important for people to be aware of. I feel like you’ve missed it.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So Christie Nome for a long time there has been rumors that she was cheating on her husband.An administration staffer has said it’s an open secret. They fly on a private plane frequently with a bed in the back of it. And when she was questioned about this under oath, she didn’t say no. She just went on a long rant about how dare you talk about this sort of thing. Mm-hmm. And when the husband basically, I’m, I’m trying to point out, like she definitely was cheating on his husband and everybody knew about it.And when the husband was asked by one of the people he was sexting wiz and cheating whi he said. Yeah, but there’s nothing I can do about [00:06:00] that. Right? Like, whatever, what am I supposed to do about her cheating on me? Basically? My favorite thing about this entire controversy is, by the way, Simone.Okay? When it first broke. Like, like when one of the people he was sexting with first realized who he was which ended up leading to this leaking and going public and everything like that, eventually down, down the stream, their initial reaction was to chastise him a bunch for putting his wife’s career at risk.They were like, do you know how hard your wife worked to get where she is? She is a high profile public figure. You could destroy everything with what you’re doing right now.Simone Collins: And this is where I just get, it’s, it’s so, and, and this is why I, I, I appreciate the New York Times article on this called in South Dakota, neighbors Feel sorry for Christie Noam’s husband because in that they, they even include, have you seen the picture of like his little insurance office?Malcolm Collins: No.Simone Collins: Okay. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll send it to you on [00:07:00] WhatsApp.It’s, it’s this, this very like, humble, sad little place where, where he works and everyone just sees him as super friendly and it’s, it’s like a very. It’s this very specific font that I remember from like Ms. Word when I was a kid that reads old fashioned service, easy to use pie, no insurance.Oh my. And it’s just this really sad looking cinder block, brick building. You know, here he is by the way, like the, the photos that were leaked the earliest timestamp is to the beginning of 2025, just as Trump’s second administration begins. And she disappears off to Washington like, you know, jet setting and flying and fundraising and living this glamorous life.And here he is in this depressing, stinky insurance. Like, by the way, cheating on him with cor and downs. Yeah. With, yeah, his top aid though. She had been doing that probably since at least 2020 because there are stories going back until then that are like pretty, pretty flagrant. [00:08:00] Like in August of 2020, even Republican Attorneys General Association meeting there was this, there a former.Oh my God. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Former Trump operative Charles Johnson named Source Ring. A Bell, Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: Wait, do we know him?Simone Collins: He’s the guy who also is famous for being the one who told the FBI that Epstein was a Oh, thatguy. He was aMalcolm Collins: crazySimone Collins: guy. He was operative. He, but yeah. So Charles, sorry.Malcolm Collins: So this requires explanation for fans as well.So we know a guy who clearly had mental health issues. He accused me of being a Mossad operative. Said it was very obvious that I Did he heSimone Collins: was at our party. Did he just,Malcolm Collins: yeah. And I was like, I I guarantee you I am not AAD acronym.Simone Collins: Oh, no. But then also another, another friend who, who is a journalist, was there and she was like, yeah, he thinks that I’m a spy, but he also links to me all the time.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So [00:09:00] he constantly leaks to journalists. He constantly leaks to the FBI, but half of the time it’s something completely made up and fabricated, not half the time, 90% of the time. And in the, the Epstein files, he’s actually cited as the core source for Epstein working for Mossad.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So,Simone Collins: so yeah. I mean, if, if, if, if Epstein is theMalcolm Collins: Moad operat, no.Like, how are you, I mean, when I say this, we hold parties that like have high profile people, high profile journalists come. So a lot of them are like name figures you would know. He like literally. Had accused at least 25% of the people at our party, including his, like longtime friends of being spies or one of, in his world, it’s like Israel and China and like the CIA and like everybody’s working for one of them.Or, and in Russia. Russia,Simone Collins: how, like it would be so vibrant and rich to occupy Candace Owens reality. It would be very vibrant and fun to occupy Charles Johnson’s reality, who’s, I think he’s in jail [00:10:00] right now, or he got arrested. You know, he got out or Yeah, like recently got out. But yeah, I mean he like served a lot of time in solitary because he was being.I think singled out or something there, there’s gotta be more of a story there. Maybe someday we need to do an episode on him. ‘cause what a, what a character. I love characters. But anyway, so, but he, he and two other attendees at this 2020 Republican Attorney’s General Association conference reported seeing no discreetly take Lewandowski hand and place it in her lap while he put his arm around her back.And other sources described obvious affection at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort in 2020. Multiple sources at least three who were cited, witnessed Nome sitting on his lap. Playing grab ass. One described it as quote, the usual stuff that drunk people who are having affairs do in 2021 in cpac at the Hyatt Agency in Orlando, at least one source with others.Implied, saw him making out and getting handsy at the hotel bar in full view of 100 [00:11:00] to 200 political operatives, journalists and officials. The source called it, quote, observe absurdly, blatant and public. In 2025, there was this, and I’m sure you heard about this, there was this reported incident in which Le Wadowski allegedly confronted and then fired a pilot midair over missing a heated blanket that belongs to Nome.Like you might’ve heard it like that. He, like, he lost her favorite blanket and then he was fired, but then they had to like hire him again ‘cause they needed to. Finish their flight. So he was rehired. And I don’t know what ultimately happened to him but this, this was later described by some outlets as a cover story involving a bag with potentially embarrassing items, but still it was, you know, her blanket.And then in, like you said, Brian himself allegedly told that one of the women he was engaging with about his wife having an affair and there was nothing that he could do. But I just, one thing, just right away, like it’s clear that [00:12:00] this couple had really severe mismatch because they weren’t really in aMalcolm Collins: marriage anymore in any sort ofSimone Collins: a functional context.Well, and she also clearly didn’t understand him, so she just thought, I think she thought he was gay. This political commentator named Ryan James GSKi told the, the. It’s a numbers game podcast in August of 2025. So quite a while ago that there was some DC gossip that a top cabinet official rumored to be known was casually admitting that her husband was gay.A reporter walked up to her and said, why are you having an affair? Why haven’t you met up with your husband? Why aren’t you divorcing your husband? Goers scared. And she blurted out to this reporter who I know and said, oh, my husband’s gay. SoMalcolm Collins: well, okay, so put yourself in her shoes if you caught him like.Putting fake breasts on and inflating them. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you’re a traditional Republican woman, you would probably [00:13:00] assume he is gay, right? LikeSimone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s the normy take when you see something like that. Right?Simone Collins: Oh, speaking of Normy takes, I take exception to all these people in the news who are like, it looks like you put balloons in his shirt.You know what those look like? They look like the prosthetics that were worn by that school teacher in Canada.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: And they’re like, oh, they’re blues. I think they’re saying that ‘cause they look lopsided, but that’s because he’s a man who’s not experienced with arranging breasts under a shirt. That’s tight.Okay. You, you get like,Malcolm Collins: I, I should like the thing that gets me as well, and I think one of the reasons why this hasn’t turned into like a bigger scandalSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is like you immediately hear there is one official at the Trump administration that is into bimbo ation, and here I am like. You sure?It’s only one. Like I have seen the way that women dress in the Trump administration.Simone Collins: That’s the thing too. Also, like when we were at the, at the White House, you there was like just a random woman checking in. Like they look like you [00:14:00] were like women. White House.Is that the white? She just has Mar-a-Lago face.StopMalcolm Collins: it. So literally you, you call Mar-a-Lago face. Marla. But what Mar-a-Lago face it looks like is bimbo.Simone Collins: Cation. Cation.Malcolm Collins: Right? Like the White House has literally become a bimbo. Cation. Exactly. Oh my Holly,Simone Collins: someone needs tomake a bimbo cation like meme, but of like, of the WhiteMalcolm Collins: House, like women walking into the White House and then women walking outta the White House looking like the Mar-a-Lago face.Simone Collins: Oh my God. Yes. Like actually though that is actually really meta and funny. We should explain what Bim ification is. So Bim Ification 1 0 1 first just. Let’s do some entomology. ‘cause I fricking like it. The word has been around since the 1920s to refer to an attractive but dumb woman. Just in case, you know, we have some English as the second language learners here.Before that it was actually used to refer to a foolish or inconsequential man. Did you know that? So before the 1920s bimbo was a word that like, was like basically manchild. OhMalcolm Collins: yeah, I’ve I’ve heard it. Used to [00:15:00] describe men before.Simone Collins: Oh, really? Well, it comes from the Italian word bambino, obviously for like baby or child.But you know what’s really funny is have you, you’ve been to Mexico, right? No.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. I’ve been to Mexico.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. We know. We’ve been to Mexico together. You’ve seen bimbo bread everywhere, right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And like every time you see it, aren’t you like, do they, like, do they know? Why is this called bimbo?And so I actually have to look it up. ‘cause I don’t know. I just, I needed to know.Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. We and the US have a car company called Nova.Simone Collins: Yeah. ForMalcolm Collins: people who don’t know, that means no go.Simone Collins: Yes. But I mean, like, I think people who speak Spanish are more likely to be familiar with the word like Bimbo and Italian maybe, I don’t know, kind of, they’re similar languages.But they, they apparently, they tried to argue that the name was created by the founders in Mexico in the 1940s, 20 years after Bimbo was commonly [00:16:00] understood to be, you know, refer, referring to like busty dumb women. Yeah. And they were trying, they, they tried to after explain that the, the word was a, a blend of the word bingo and Disney’s Bambi.That is No, no. These men, it came from something else. Yeah. Were sitting in a boardroom and they were talking names, and the other names that they had were like pan Rex, Ben Azteca. And then they just, they were like, what about Bimbo? And I bet they’re sitting in this room and they’re like, oh, you know, actually, and they did it and it stuck.And I think that’s what happened. But anyway, I digress. So Bimbo verification. Is a fetish and subculture that’s centered on the erotic and performative transformation of a person, of any gender. It goes both ways. And, and Malcolm, I can send you some, just like images of bimbo, ation of both men and women that that sort of turns any person into an exaggerated, hyper-feminine bimbo archetype.[00:17:00]And it typically involves adopting traits like massive breasts or plump lips or heavy makeup or blonde hair, or skippy clothing or dizi or submissive personality and heightened sexuality. Mm-hmm. Like, you just turn them into like a, I’m a very sexy baby. And it, it emerged in the, the 1990s and early two thousands.And it grew out of related kinks, like breast expansion, body modification, erotic hypnosis and specification.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s a, it’s a, in the category of kinks of because it’s, it’s sort of a few kinks layered on top of each other.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Any clear, so obviously you have transformation kinks. Mm-hmm. Which is a, a, a fairly common kink and other categories of that.There’s actually one that’s just a reverse of bimbo. Ation,Simone Collins: yeah.LikeMalcolm Collins: the, the woman getting like smarter and nerdier.Simone Collins: Yeah. Actually when you, I, I went through the Google trends and the, the top related searches include bimbo, ification, meme, and this is just, I can, again, I’ll share some images [00:18:00] with you of just like a woman who’s like, like me, you know, like flat chested, pale hair in a bun.And then like it goes from that to like, like dumber and sluttier and then hotter, and then hotter and then bimbo at the end. And then, so bimbo, cation meme, deviant art, Reddit. A o three. This is all just to say that this is for,Malcolm Collins: no, hold on, hold on. I, I’m not done here yet. I wanted to go over what I, soSimone Collins: sorry.Malcolm Collins: Go on. It’s a combination. It’s a layer fetish, so it’s a combination of the transformation fetish, right? Mm-hmm. Which I said often happen. You, you get like reverse bi modification, but you can get it for other archetypes like being a tomboy or something like that. Mm-hmm. And that it is also fairly common to do it with like animals or furries or something.People do it. And the core draws of that particular people are like, what would draw somebody to a fetish like this? Like what? Arousal pathway. Misfiring. Mm-hmm. Sorry for people who are watching this and confused, like, [00:19:00] why I’m going into detail on this. We wrote a book on human sexuality and arousal patterns.Simone Collins: The Priva dis Guide to Sexuality. You should check it out, but not if you like pedestal sex. ‘cause we get really likeMalcolm Collins: Yeah, we’re like, it’s,Simone Collins: we take the romance outta sex ‘cause that’s whatMalcolm Collins: we do. Oh. Anyway. But the, the the thing that seems to be misfiring here is the idea of either a control pathway, like I have control over the person who is transforming or they have lost control or autonomy.Well ISimone Collins: have lost control ‘causeMalcolm Collins: that’s what Yeah. I have lost control. Their autonomy. AndSimone Collins: he play with women. They would, he, he, they would f force him to become more bimbo fied.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And they give him commands. Yeah. And they, it’s clear for him what he was most interested in was the idea of himself losing autonomy, right?Yeah. That was like youSimone Collins: compliment them and their bodies and talk about how he wanted really big boobs and stuff like that. And this is like, this is where the stress [00:20:00] relief comes in. This is where the escapism comes in. And like, honestly, going back to like his scenario, right? Wife is basically estranged cheating on him, putting him to shame.He’s walking, you know, like not walking, driving every morning to the cinder block insurance office with depressing font on the sign out front, like. Yeah. Wants, yeah. Still waiting. PassMalcolm Collins: the time. And I, I, well,Simone Collins: I mean, wouldn’t, wouldn’t he want to be the, the bimbo flying around the world with Mar-a-Lago face, like, kind of Right.Like, who’s having all the fun in this family? Well, it’s alsoMalcolm Collins: interesting that she had actually met many of the qualifications for his bimbo, ation fetish. Right. Like, she had done the transformation. She kind of dressed like a bimbo. She had gotten breast implants. It, it,Simone Collins: and lip alert. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which he liked to see in women as well.It wasn’t just something that he liked to do on himself. He likedSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: This transformation into a particular archetype. AndSimone Collins: it could have been so close, right. You know, like she could have just threaded the loop and instead she just thought he was gay.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, poor communication, I [00:21:00] suppose.Simone Collins: Well that’s why, that’s why we’re talking about it, right? Is like, I just, it, it’s, it’s really sad that people are like, Ugh. Well, aMalcolm Collins: lot of people are like, oh, she knew. She knew. And I actually, actually question that if she thought that he was gay, it might be that she, she knew because she said, I had no idea.This is devastating for the family. And I actually think, given the timeline that we have this, it’s probably something he didn’t get into until after she was basically estranged and cheating on him constantly.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. ThatSimone Collins: seemsMalcolm Collins: to be what weSimone Collins: can tell from the, the timeline indicates that this, this, I mean, it’s only shown to be, to have been happening at the beginning of the Trump administration, like when he was sworn in, basically beginning of 2025.So, yeah, like, I, I really think that’s kind of when it took off. It didn’t have to be this way,Malcolm Collins: But continue.Simone Collins: What’s interesting is that BIM Ification, I think one of the reasons why it’s so poorly understood is that one, it’s relatively new. Like as you said, it, it’s really related to a bunch of other things.And, and so [00:22:00] it really wasn’t its own standalone thing until the 2010s, according to Zipper Magazine, this is when it became like an established tab or tag on like TV and art. And it, it, it, it didn’t even really have more established like lore or character based frameworks until 2016. And then platforms, like clips for sale added dedicated categories for things like bimbo verification.So it kind of had to be made into its own genre. And what I think is really interesting too, and again, why people really don’t get this, is it is. Quite obscure. So, when I looked on Google trends in terms of search volume and that term, along with other terms that are really only gonna be used by people looking up like kinks or fetishes.‘cause you can’t, for example, like look at transformation and know that everyone who’s Googling transformation is looking at it in a sexual context, right? Like it means like, it’s, it’s a very mainstream term and that’s, yeah. Unfortunately the problem with a lot of things. So to, to compare kinks is kind of [00:23:00] tough, but it is, it is clustered in the same level of search volume.As ification, which is, is I think pretty kind of similar. It’s like, there’s a lot of submission in that. There’s a lot of escapism in, in, well, hold on.Malcolm Collins: Ification has gotten really big these days.Simone Collins: I know. Except that they’re pretty close. Do you wanna see the, the, I’ll send youMalcolm Collins: that. Right. So that would mean it’s not a particularly obscure term?Simone Collins: No. Okay. No, no, because here’s what’s really crazy. Alright. It, it is vore is bigger than both specifications.Malcolm Collins: Of course it’s, sorry. Your understanding ISimone Collins: vore is really obscure.Malcolm Collins: vore is not obscure. When we did our book on sexuality and we, a calculation of what percent of the American population is into vore.Specifically, I pointed out it was, it’s literally a population bigger than the fourth biggest state in the country. Right.Speaker 5: If I remember correctly, off the top of my head, it’s around 3% for both men and women, [00:24:00] which puts it at the same rate as, , maybe like half same sex attraction. , If you’re wondering why, like what might be arousing this system of people like, oh, that’s such a weird thing to cause arousal. Not really. , You’re looking at extreme submission slash dominance fantasies here, , because it is not, oh, I, I suppose I should explain, the hunting somebody killing somebody, eating somebody.That’s, that’s the general idea or having that happen to you of the, , vore paraphilia. That is, I think, a pretty classic example for a brain to misinterpret as extreme dominance or submission fantasies. , As to why dominance submission activates arousal pathways, if you look at other mammals, , they will instinctively present themselves to people who they see as their social betters, basically like lifting themselves as if they’re about to be mounted.. What motivates this behavior, right? Like, do, do we [00:25:00] believe that an entirely parallel system for motivating this behavior evolved , and, and motivated it? Or do we think that evolution just hijacked the arousal system when somebody feels, , submissive or dominance was in certain social settings? It is very clear it’s a hijacked arousal system.If it would make, it would make no sense to evolve an entirely parallel pathway to cause this. So, . Intense arousal from submission and dominance is a normal thing. , And misinterpreting submission and dominance is a, you know, even, even the, ,, bimbofication seems to be a misinterpretation of that within this context.Simone Collins: People still act like it’s the weirdest thing in the worldSpeaker 6: But how weird people pretend that they think a thing is, is not really correlary to how weird they actually think a thing is. Conservative influencers regularly dunk on the furry community and say, nobody could think an Anth throw person is hot [00:26:00] and then collectively freaked out when they made Lola Bunny less overtly sexualized.I think this really exemplifies a drift and a change that we’ve begun to see within the two political parties over time is that the progressive party has become the party that is more likely to laugh at you for being weird or different or, you know, the, the two political commentators on the furry thing and the conservative party is increasingly becoming the party that’s like, yeah, like.Whatever. Do whatever you want. I don’t care. Just do not involve children. Alright. , And then the Progressive party’s like, Hey, I will laugh at these people for being weird, but by God children must be indoctrinated into it. I.And I think it’s been this sort of vibe shift where the conservatives who are not okay with this stuff are the ones who are increasingly joining the gryopers, who are increasingly voting left wing. , And, , I mean, we see this, right? They, they only say, oh, I’m voting left wing now I’m voting left wing.I’m voting Democrat now. Like they’re being pushed out of the [00:27:00] party. And what will have another episode on this? , Because people act like there’s a war within the conservative party and there really isn’t. A war within the conservative party. Like, like for example, everything, Iran Wars, 90% of MAGA is pro Iran war.Right? Like it’s, it’s not a, a, an even divide. It’s the ones who instinctively identify more with this progressive purifying. , Push that everybody needs to be like this. Everybody needs to act like this. ,And when you go to a gryoper and you point out that, well, they’re just a generic progressive, like any other progressive, , and they’re like, no, no, no, no. I just, I just vote progressive.We’re actually quite different on our side. Like some of us are gryopers and some of us are Islamists and some of us are, you know, pro LGBT., And, and they didn’t care about the difference between LGBT and Islamists, so they’re not gonna care about the difference between LGBT and gryoper, right? So it, it’s, it’s a party that already works naturally together. , We just shouldn’t confuse them as being ever on our side. The, high school bullies went to the [00:28:00] progressives, the ones who were otherwise cool, but like okay with people being different have largely moved to the conservatives and this has been the drift we’ve seen over the past 10 years.Simone Collins: also, I don’t know. Paraphilia a attraction to monsters. Ification and ification are in the same, we’ll say bracket of volume as that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And you can tell paraphilia is a really common fetish.Simone Collins: I guess you’re right. BasicallyMalcolm Collins: what you’re just learning is it’s a very, it’s a, it’s a fairly mainstream fetish.Simone Collins: Well, but it’s dwarfed by, for example, cross-dressing and hei. So, I mean,Malcolm Collins: HEI isn’t a fetish, it’s literally just the name for porn.Simone Collins: I know. It’s just, but, but no, here’s the, you, you don’t understand Malcolm to so many people. ‘cause I listen to, I guess, more leftist normie content, which I would argue is both sex positive, but also normy. They’re like, what’s that? Like, you don’t un you’re, you’re so DGen n you’re still like steeped in it all that you’re like, well, obviously like that’s the most vanilla [00:29:00] thing you could possibly be looking at.And like for other people, like thisis the thing. It’s, it’sif they’re toes it, their minds,Malcolm Collins: this is stuff you would know. Just if you are looking at like hint high sites or something like that. If you watch just random YouTubers, this stuff comes up in conversations all the time. Now this stuff comes up in songs now, right?Like the, the normalization of like paraphilias and stuff like that within media content has really transformed over the last decade, I’d say. So I can be watching something like, what, what’s his the guy who reviews cartoons? I, I, I can’t remember what his name is. Very common. YouTuber and just randomly stuff like this drops.You can even watch many like conservative streaming YouTubers. The reason why so many conservative streaming tuners are so familiar with this stuff is many of the ones who have sort of authentic backstories got their start in [00:30:00] environments like four chan. Which means they’re going to be very aware of all of these like weird subcultures and stuff like this.Yeah. BI verification is particularly interesting as a, an like a paraphilia because it is largely associated with one specific image.Like, there’s like one classic bimbo, ation image that is just like used. Really, really?Simone Collins: Oh, the progression? Yeah. I sent you, I think I sent you what I think that example is on WhatsApp.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you, you probably yeah, yeah. It’s the, the classic one. So much it’s like almost meme status, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I, I think because of maybe it,Simone Collins: well, when people Google it, they’re literally googling bim verification meme.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s like a, it’s like a, a actual, like mainstream meme. You can’t use it on title cards.By the way. I remember we had it for like a previous title card. I was gonna use it, and the video got auto flagged. So it’s seen as like actual. Pornography that, that one image that has nothingSimone Collins: maybewe could [00:31:00] just use a progression of Christie Nome over time and say,Malcolm Collins: yeah, just use a progression.No. What’s actually interesting about that particular mem unified image Uhhuh is that the person she turns into if you, if you look at it, right? Mm-hmm. Looks especially I’d say at her second to last stageSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Way closer to standard Trump administration woman. Yeah. Than she looks to any archetype that I was aware of at that time.Simone Collins: Well, and what’s what’s even actually funny is one of the, one of the bimbo ation scene women that he that is to say Brian Nome engaged with, who’s been talking with the media, goes by Lydia Love. And com. If you compare her to Trump administration officials, she looks less bimbo. Look at her.Really Look at her. Okay. Okay. I sent you a link on, on WhatsApp. She just looks like a normal [00:32:00] woman at a, like I’d see at a grocery store. I mean, she’s busty, but like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, she just looks like a nor, well, a little chubby.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, she, well, yeah. Normal woman at a grocery store. The average American woman is overweight.Malcolm Collins: She was way less like a bimbo than I know.Simone Collins: That’s what’s so funny. That’s what’s so funny. I, anyway,Malcolm Collins: but also, by the way,Simone Collins: tone it down for peopleMalcolm Collins: wondering like, diversity of arousal patterns here and stuff like this. To me this chart, like if you look at most bi ification charts,it’s like a chart of a woman becoming progressively less attractive.Like I,Simone Collins: yeah, we canMalcolm Collins: tell thisSimone Collins: is not your thing.Malcolm Collins: Not my thing at all. Like, because my brain codes it like intrinsically very easily as like a, a low class, mm-hmm. And I don’t wanna sleep with somebody who I think is low class. Like to me, my body sort of, it’s like they’ve been rolling around in trash all day or something likeSimone Collins: May, maybe this is, I mean, you, you [00:33:00] got this from your mother who like.Her sexual orientation was money. You, you can’t,Malcolm Collins: no. Well, it’s, it’s, it’s that I see it as a form of, of, of weakness and patheticness. Yeah. Yeah. And we’ve, we actually talk about this with like in sort of the ancestral backwards tradition. It was weird that they didn’t ever grape captives given how they were seen asSimone Collins: people.Oh. And maybe this is part of it is like, you’re, you’re too poor.Malcolm Collins: Be no, your village died. Of course. I don’t wanna sleep with you. Like you,Simone Collins: your loser nature might rub off on me.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: okay. But like, actually, but Okay. But ouch. But okay. Not because I guess it’s good that they’re not getting attacked. TheMalcolm Collins: other interesting thing about Bim ification as, as like a transformation fetish Yeah.Is the, what you would think of as a subcategory fetish, the forest transformation into furries is much more common than bimbo ation. Um mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. [00:34:00] WhichisSimone Collins: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. People are more interested in being transformed into an animal than into a bimbo.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Which is,Simone Collins: that’s interesting.Why? I guess animorphs, that’s how people discovered their food.Malcolm Collins: I, I, if you’re gonna ask, remember theSimone Collins: anor, the anamorphic covers were basically that. Don’t you remember? Do come on.Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, oh. If you’re gonna ask why it’s more common, I have hypotheses.Simone Collins: Okay. Why?Malcolm Collins: One is, it could be because the furry community acts as an on-ramp for this, so that it’s just hitting a wider audience.Like anyone who’s into furries, like the furry community may be into it, right? Mm-hmm. So you’re, you’re already getting a baked in community, not just people with this one paraphilia. Mm-hmm. The second could be if the core turn on for you is something happening to a person’s body without their control and sort of their horror at that, the, the, the horror of that, like the, oh my God, I [00:35:00] can’t believe this is happening, is going to be higher and more dehumanizing with a furry thing than with bimbos.Simone Collins: I wonder if anyone has watched that. Transformation and beauty of the beast. Of the beast into the prince just in reverse and been like yes.Malcolm Collins: Well, people talk about the, the like precursors of this being really common in cartoons of our childhood.Simone Collins: Oh, totally. Well, and like I said, animals, you remember the book series?It was about kids who turned into animals.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I do. I I, I’ve never read it myself, but I rememberSimone Collins: I haven’t either. AMalcolm Collins: thingSimone Collins: again, that’s not our, that’s not our fet,Malcolm Collins: like deep lore or something. Like, I should check out the lore of anor.Simone Collins: Oh, an lore of anor. There’s gotta be some explanation. Maybe just that also that, what was that one where like a woman turned into like Quicksilver, you know, she got, she turned silver and like melted.Is that like the original, like goo girl fetish or something? I don’t know. Who knows? Who knows?Malcolm Collins: Turned into still, oh, the Capri Sun one. Yeah.Speaker 2: Coming at you. [00:36:00] Capri Sun by the pitcher. So whenever you want, you can make as much as you want. All natural Capri Sun drink mix.Malcolm Collins: No, actually whatSimone Collins: I love the nineties. That was, that wasMalcolm Collins: cool. Actually, the funny thing about like the whole go girl fetish thing, Uhhuh, it is not really seen outside of vor.Like that’s. The, like, they almost always appear together. You, you don’t see it separate from that very frequently,Speaker 2: . I’m a slime and I vore all the things which y’all even vore you, and you and you, and youmake all the rules. It’s true. The move.Malcolm Collins: Which then makes me be like,Simone Collins: weird.Malcolm Collins: I would be susser about leaflets, avatar then if I didn’t know where she [00:37:00] got the avatar from. For people who don’t know where she got the slime girl avatar from, it was from a, because we talk about it in the episode where we’re, we’re talking with her recently.Really fun episode of film. It was the, the, the child of two of her game, like players. I love it how she,Simone Collins: she’s half fa tooMalcolm Collins: deeply and like almost pathologically as a GM of this world that she’s created, tries to make herself like the least empowered individual, right. Like,Simone Collins: right. Because she was, it was like the receptionist for the guild.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she’s the receptionist for the guil. She’s just playing the avatar of a child, of two of her party members. Right. Like,Simone Collins: I didn’t even acknowledge that she put glasses on for, to join us.Malcolm Collins: Oh, she did. Oh, we missed that. That’s cute.Simone Collins: The snows though, is a great little hatchet there. Well, or a no of the glasses.Well, glasses. An anime glasses adjustment. Well,Malcolm Collins: well,Simone Collins: anyway, where were we? Hold on. But so I, [00:38:00] I, I kind of get it, like, obviously this isn’t our thing, but definitely like for me this like, the idea of like surrender and letting go. I mean that’s like, that’s why I love being drunk, right? Is that like, that’s when like all of my hangups ‘cause like I’m always like at full clench, you know?Yeah. And like the idea of not being at full clench, it sounds fantastic. So like maybe that would be, you know, a fantasy. I, I, I can, I can understand that. And I can, especially for someone like Brian Nome, who like. Can you imagine the media scrutiny? Just like, ugh, like, and, and being made full of by this like open secret for at the, at that 0.5 years.You know, your wife gallivanting around like, yeah, you know, thinks you’reMalcolm Collins: gay,Simone Collins: but, and yeah, who thinks, Sue, come on. But here’s where he crossed the line and where I see it as unforgivable. Do you know how much money he paid to these women? Oh, heMalcolm Collins: was paying [00:39:00] a lot from what I remember.Simone Collins: Yeah. $25,000. $25,000.You could just have anMalcolm Collins: AI tell youSimone Collins: these things. Like what? I know, I know. This is, this is why I’m like, know what? You guys don’t wanna talk about your kinks and fe this is what happens when you don’t talk about your kings and fetishes. She could have taken care of this so easily. She could have kept him satisfied and, and had her affair.Everyone could have been happy. Probably kind of, I don’t know. I think he was, this was like, because he even told some of these women like that. He didn’t really wanna do this. And like he loved his wife and family, but like, you know, and he, and he would sometimes stop and then start again. Like, this was a fraught thing.Yeah. He was known for going through a cycle of stopping and starting again. Yeah. Like, this is, but like, even like she, there are other ways he could have if he had to exercise this without wasting that much money. And like our internal rule with stuff like this is like, I don’t care what you do,Malcolm Collins: as long as youSimone Collins: don’t money, as long as [00:40:00] it’s your discretionary income.Oh. And like, the way that our budget works or like our, our money works.Malcolm Collins: It wasn’t his discretionary income.Simone Collins: Well, yeah. I mean, maybe it was, and if it was, then I’m okay with it. I’m a little like. I judge him for like, is that how you wanna spend your money? Like there are better ways to spend,Malcolm Collins: I don’t, I don’t judge you for the fetish.I judge you for being that wasteful. LikeSimone Collins: that’s,yeah. That, that is there. That like, there are, even if you wanted to like Max, like he had $25,000 and he’s like, I wanna blow this on bimbo ation. Sir, I could have taken you like for like, we, we could work out a whole budget for this. You’re gonna max this out.We’re gonna get you the best prosthetics, we’re gonna get you the best, like role play. What are you doing? You know, like there are better ways. That are more cost effective, but this is what realityMalcolm Collins: fabricator is partially for, right? I know.Simone Collins: Yes. TheseMalcolm Collins: who are watching this, just stop paying the randomSimone Collins: person.If you’re a pri high profile public youMalcolm Collins: can build your whatever button youSimone Collins: want and it’s locally encrypted. No one will find it, no one will leak it. [00:41:00] It’ll seeMalcolm Collins: local encryption on our roleplay server.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You know what, what even I, I think we actually even have a Bibo ification option in the auto story creator in the not say for word category.Speaker 13: I went to double check this and on our rfab.ai not only do we have a bimbo, ation as one of the options there, but we have the masculinization and the feminization of a character. So, , we got the whole, , menu on this one. I.Simone Collins: Do you, do you, because again, like it’s more obs obscure, relatively beginning new. I didn’t realize how new it was when I like actually went through and looked at it. I thought that was interesting. But I another thing just to get detail from all the, you know, gossip and stuff. SoMalcolm Collins: the reason why it’s so new is because I don’t think it’s a real kink in and of itself.Simone Collins: No, no. It’s honestly, it’s like such a OneNote thing of like. That’s just such a small,Malcolm Collins: what I mean asset, what I mean is it’s meant to, as I was trying to delineate earlier, it’s meant to [00:42:00] elicit specific, unusual arousal pathways tied to control over another person. Or losing control. Control.Simone Collins: Yeah. Losing control.Malcolm Collins: Control. That’s the fetishSimone Collins: transformation is, it, is another like big one.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Transformation. Is the fetish on display here? OhSimone Collins: no, but also big boobs. Big boobs is a hugeMalcolm Collins: thing. Oh, also big boobs was another fetish he has, which is called which I, I find quite disgusting if I’m gonna be honest. Use wordSimone Collins: for,Malcolm Collins: I’m not a fan of bigSimone Collins: boobs.Like, also like, and that’s, that’s the really interesting thing about. Sexual interest as well is that there’s so many crossovers that like, ‘cause sometimes you’ll see like there’s content that’s just about really busty, like large impossibly busty women. And there are all sorts of different ways that that’s shown.And then like, there’s a lot that’s about transformation. There’s a lot about losing control and there are all these different facets and ways that it’s manifested. And I think the best way to look at that is visualizations made of alas big kink survey. ‘cause you can really see like where these things cross over, where they’re more common, what’s more interesting to many women anyway.What of, of the [00:43:00] specific things that he engaged in? So there were at least three women that he paid and, and interacted with. What seems to happen is like they’d send, he’d send photos. They would send photos, but then like during live sessions, they would role play and he’d be like, oh, you look great.Whatever. Like, I wish I had boobs like that. And then he’d like, well, do you wanna see it? And like they would like force him to transform into a bimbo. He’d like probably wear the prosthetics and take pictures, and that’s how we ended up with that big picture. But andMalcolm Collins: he wasn’t even like using protection, like a, a fake phoneSimone Collins: number or like he used a fake name.But yeah, the problem is that he, he used his actual phone number and then when one of the women called that phone number, they got his insurance company line, which is, don’t use your work email and phone for your fun stuff. Don’t do that. PSA we woo, we woo. But he and I just wanna like point this out.His bimbo clothing was yoga pants. And this is just another PSA to anyone who thinks it’s acceptable to go out wearing yoga pants. That is [00:44:00] bimbo clothing. It is now official and documented in the public record. People with bimbo fetishes when they wanna look like the bimbo is bimbo and they’re buying boobs that are this big, that are lopsided in, they’re tight shirts and they’re wearing tube tops.They’re wearing, they’re wearing yoga pants. That’s bimbo clothing. So stop. Stop the commands.Malcolm Collins: Stop. Stop. Do you, you have a, do you have a vendetta againstleggings?Simone Collins: I do. I do. I do because it’s. It’s gross. Like unless, no, actually,Malcolm Collins: The funny thing is, is people could see me as like, if, if I’m making it clear that like I think the bimbo look is unattractive and I like the opposite of that.Look now people are gonna be like, oh look, he did that to his wife. Like, what’s the opposite? You reversedSimone Collins: bimbo. Find me.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the most opposite of a PBO you could get is like this Puritan woman and like the big over the top thing and all that.Simone Collins: Yeah. The, the farmer’s wife in American Gothic is like the [00:45:00] exact reverse.Malcolm Collins: So yes, I did reverse whistles mother, my wife, the, into the Trump administration. ‘cause all of the other women looked like completely slutted up. And meanwhile my wife looks like a, an Amish. I, I think most people think that we’re Mennonites when we’re out in public.Simone Collins: Yeah. People have come up to me and ask me, they’re like.Oh, what is your, what is your religion? I’m like, oh, I’m a techno puritan. And then they like, slowly back away. It’s amazing. It is actually, I need, I I need that hat though. SoMalcolm Collins: the hat, oh, please. Come on. We gotta get you the hat, the witch hunter’s hat so everybody knows what you’re about, Simone. Yeah.Simone Collins: Know. But yeah, so the yoga pants, I just, I also just had to highlight that ‘cause I was like, Illuminati, confirm they’re Slack clothing. I, I, I can’t handle it. It, they just really bother me. People know better. And, and, and the fact that one of his [00:46:00] chosen bimbo cation seen women who like profess she’s a professional bimbo, cation figure.Looks less bimbo than your average Trump administration woman. We love the Trump administration. They’re fantastic. I think they have a look. I think they pull it off. And I love the consistency. I love a matching team. You know, like I, I want, I want that aesthetic uniformity, you know? ‘cause then, you know, I like that.Like, I like that you can, like women in Dallas have a look, right. You know, like, group house women in, in Berkeley have a look. And it’s great. It’s very comforting. So this is not to knock on Trump administration, women and the Mar-a-Lago phase. Men’s Mar-a-Lago phase ‘cause they’re also getting work done.Malcolm, I’m not sure if you, that what,Malcolm Collins: what’s interesting is what is the Trump administration look like? If people are like, what, where did this look come from? It seems to come from actually very humorously given the Trump administration’s [00:47:00] goals Latina culture from Miami. Those, those are the only people I’ve ever seen dressed like this in real life.Is Latina Instagram w****s in Miami? It is, it is certainly not from like, waspy, you know, old money, elite fashion sensibilities. It’s not even what I would see in like lower class New York outfits. Ghostbusters, what do you want?Malcolm Collins: that are more just like generic,Simone Collins: crappy, no. You also see it like that heavy on fillers.Long curly hair look is also super common in like the Mormon. Also like any sort of real Housewives. It’s, it’s that it’s, it’s a very new money. Attention grubbing. New, yeah, new money, attention grubbing look.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: It’s not new money. Look, even though he’s not new money.Malcolm Collins: I have seen it in Mormons, but it came well before Mormons from Latinas in Miami.[00:48:00]It has been on Latinas in Miami for about the past 20 years. It only got popular with Mormons after the Trump administration adopted it.Simone Collins: Okay. Fair.Malcolm Collins: It’s, it is a fundamentally Latina style, right? Like, the, the ‘Simone Collins: cause the only thing that’s changed in the past 20 years is actually no, they even kept the lip liner.Oh my God. Okay. Yeah. Nevermind. Yeah, I was thinking about like the classic like. Late nineties chola look with it was like sort of goldish lipstick with brown lip liner. I meanMalcolm Collins: it’s, it’s a, it’s adjacent to the chola look like it’s a, like the Trump administration, like ironically dresses like cholas.Simone Collins: Aw. And apparently one thing, this, this has been confirmed, but a lot of people are like, I bet the woman who leaked to this was probably an illegal immigrant. Like the ification scene.Malcolm Collins: It, it appears to have not been leaked by the actual women doing it, but a woman who knew them is my impression.Simone Collins: Interesting. I could see that. I could see that because I mean, honestly, if you, if you work in that scene [00:49:00] and, and you’re not known for being sufficiently discreet, that’s your, that’s your income gone. Yeah. Well, except it’s clear though that like the, the one, the woman who I, I, I linked to the, one of the three known.Women who, who’s open and being named, she’s talking with every media outlet that will talk with her. So, you know, there’s that like, clearly she’s talking Lydia love, which yeah, again, doesn’t look particularly remarkable. So, you know, not everyone’s gonna be subtle about it, but top takeaways here, I think that this is one of those situations where people should be more informed about what’s actually going on and not just like, look the other way or be like, oh, he looked at porn and therefore he’s.Like a broken man. Like no, that’s not how it works. Like a lot of this appearsMalcolm Collins: to have been is the world we live in now, like a big problem with this reactive, [00:50:00] reflexive if you are aroused by something unusual, you’re just completely broken or whatever is, it makes it very easy for the left and wokes to capture our kids.You’re basically feeding your kids to the woke if you go Yeah,Simone Collins: because they’re like, well, I guess, you know, anything, anything where I engage with my sexuality makes me urban. Monoculture progressive. So I guess that’s when I am.Malcolm Collins: Right. They’re like, oh, I have, and, and keep in mind the vast majority of people when we did our survey mm-hmm.I think it’s like 70 to like 80% of people have some kink. Right? Like the idea that you’re going to happen to have just perfectly vanilla kids is incredibly unlikely. Mm-hmm. And the left and the urban monoculture has found out every single one of these kinks at this point. Right. Like they, they, they are, they are fetishes that didn’t even exist like Simone is talking about, like ification or something like this.You know, if you go back a, a few generations now they’re targeting arousal pathways that existed a few [00:51:00] generations ago. Yeah. But they are targeting them in, in new and hyper-specific and productive ways. Yeah. And so if you, do not teach kids like this stuff is normal, but do not like waste a ton of money on it.Let it define your life. Engage with it in a way that’s gonna be destructive to your career. Mm-hmm. Then you make it much more likely that they’re like, well, I guess that’s what I am now. Because a lot of people when they’re trying to figure out who they are as a person and the left has been very good at exploiting this.One of the few things that is really quite diverse in humans that you cannot control is what arouses you. Right? Yeah. And so. Because of that. If, if a person’s asking like, who am I? Right? And it’s like, well, I’m definitely not my ancestry because that would be racist. Mm-hmm. I’m definitely not my birth culture because that would be racist.Mm-hmm. I’m definitely not my birth religion because, you know, they’re all backwards and whatever. Right. [00:52:00] You know?Simone Collins: Yeah. Or like I googled it and found a discrepancy that no one’s willing to explain to me. So now that’s out.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So now that’s out. So then who am I really? And it’s like, well, I’ve got unique things that arouse me, so that must be who I am.Simone Collins: Well, and, and especially because online you can find an interest community that, that shares experiences around that, that’s very accepting and funny. And engaged and also terminally online. So very available.Malcolm Collins: RightSimone Collins: nowMalcolm Collins: you have this thing that you think others, you from society or mm-hmm. Your parents have explicitly told you others, you from society.Yeah. And you found a community that accepts that thing. Yeah. So now you’re gonna be like, oh, I, I fit in here. I can indulge in this. You are putting your children in an incredibly vulnerable position by stigmatizing this stuff. Exactly. And a I suspect that most of the cultures that do are going to die out.What’s really interesting is I’ve seen [00:53:00] like with Mormons, which seem to have one of the most adaptable cultures was this sort of stuff. Mm-hmm. They have begun within the parts of Mormonism that are successfully replicating and staying stable. Intergenerationally I have seen much more of a normalization of this sort of stuff.Like, an example. Would be like you’d go to a Mormon, you know, however many generations ago. I think even just when we’re growing up and you’re like, oh, you know, Joseph Smith had x many wives and they’d be like,Simone Collins: oh, I have no idea.Malcolm Collins: Either they would knowSimone Collins: they only had one wife,Malcolm Collins: or they’d be like, no, he didn’t.Or they’d start adding qualifiers, whereas a young person will day, it’ll just be like, hot, like whatever. Like how many, how many wives did your religions founder have? Right. You know? And and you, you also see this was like the spread of like aldry in the Mormon community and stuff like this is, is is being more normal among youth and stuff like this.Um mm-hmm. And it’s not pulling them out of the community anymore, right? [00:54:00] Like that, that’s what it would’ve done in a historic context. And people are like, well, why can’t I just use the old rules of my religion? Which said you know, be, be super, super austere in the way you engage with sexuality, which we would push for, but I’ll steer through shaming any type of non vanilla sort of sexual interaction.Yeah. And the reason why that doesn’t work in the way that it used to work is you know, if I go, you know, just a few generations ago, the average person of my religious tradition was not regularly being exposed to prepackaged material, meant to hit a very unique or rare arousal pathways in humans.That just wasn’t something that they were gonna run into every day or, or in media or, you know, whatever they’re consuming. AndSimone Collins: so, so, I mean, you don’t have to worry about sirens if you’re not on like Odysseus’s ship going around [00:55:00] like the, you know, most people are on the islands. Do they ever have to like, learn how to lash themselves to the mast to avoid it, but now we’re like in the waters surrounded by the sirens we trying to force.Yeah. The sirensMalcolm Collins: are everywhere now. Like the, that’s, that’s a great way to put it. The historic strategy against sirens was designed for a world where sirens weren’t all around us, right? Yeah. Like, now theySimone Collins: onto the land, they’ve built a, they’ve built little wheelchairs. They’re everywhere now.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the strategy against sirens within a modern context needs to be more like, oh, you need to learn how to make yourself immune to the sirens call.Yeah. And the immunity to the sirens call comes from just accepting that some sirens are going to be able to call and are going to make you want to come to them and just mm-hmm. Take out your sword and stab ‘em. Right. Like Yeah. Do the, go to the siren and take them out so they’re no longer in your way.[00:56:00] Right.Simone Collins: Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think a, a lot of it too comes down to like, at least our, our approach has been talk about it openly, like don’t, similar to alcohol. Okay. I think here’s, here’s one way to look at it. You don’t see that many drinking problems with youth in countries where kids are.Exposed to alcohol in context that are not romanticized, they’re not forbidden. It’s like, Hey, do you want some, this is it. Here’s what it tastes like. They’re like, it’s kind of gross. Like, whatever. There’s not like really culture. Woo. And I think when you’re like, oh yeah, you know, like when you’re, when your kids are old enough to be able to handle some discussion of it.Although honestly, I think here’s how it actually was in history. Kids would see animals banging all the time. They would be around their parents sometimes and see them banging. You’d see people banging like, this happened. And, and it was just, I think to a great extent, it was like, well, that’s just what they do.It’s kind of gross, but like, whatever. And maybe eventually they wanted to. Well,Malcolm Collins: having sex was the animals was fairly common inSimone Collins: Yeah, it was more, I think it [00:57:00] was more seen as like a bodily function. In, in the French court it was referred to as com. It was, you know, commerce. It, it just, it’s like a thing.It was very context withMalcolm Collins: animals that sex more broadly here. ISimone Collins: was think thinking about it was more with humans.Malcolm Collins: This was done like commonly with animal? Yeah. Up until recently in like Columbia, right? Like in rural Columbia. Oh, sure.Simone Collins: No, but I, when I was referring to that, I was just referring like, you know, kids seeing farm animals do it.Like, butMalcolm Collins: like everybody, the joke, like wherever you lived, it’s like rural people did this. Like, it was like, I’m not evenSimone Collins: talking about people engaging with animals thoughMalcolm Collins: though product do it.Simone Collins: I’m just talking about like even a kid on a farm, like seeing just how like mammals. Well,Malcolm Collins: and then, and then in most religious texts we have prohibitions against it.As I always explain to people, it is not because the animal can’t consent. We kill animals for food. They don’t consent to that either. It’s because they spread diseases.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That is why this is prohibited isSimone Collins: grossMalcolm Collins: in your religion.Speaker 14: It is actually existential for the progressive position that they not realize that this had nothing to do with consent and was only about the spread of diseases. , Because the moment they [00:58:00] realize that, , and you see this in people like you, you know, that famous like Chuck Yer, you know, , Hassan’s Uncle clip, that Young Turks guy where he’s like, well, you know, .Having sexual relations with the animals should be okay as long as the animal is receiving and getting the pleasure is because in their mind, well that makes sense, right? Right. Because this is about consent in their minds. But as soon as you break it down and say, oh, it’s not about consent, then you need to start asking other questions like, oh, is this why same sex relationships were banned in a historic context?Right. . And then it’s like, oh, is this why we shouldn’t be having casual sex? Is this why? You know, like a lot of things that otherwise begin to feel like they make sense in a progressive context? Don’t when you realize that the reason for most sexual prohibitions was about disease spread, not about preventing pleasure, not about random austerity, and not about consent.Malcolm Collins: Wait,Simone Collins: the, I think the core thing [00:59:00] is to de romanticize it and just be like, this is how it is.Like, and, and you know, you might feel the temptation to do it. Like not a here’s, here are the risks, here are the reasons why not to do it. This is not like a special or sacred thing. I think another big problem is that people. Even when trying to talk about the good elements of sex or even like sex within marriage, they’re like, this is sacred.This is special. They pedestal sex instead of treating it like the bodily function. It is, yeah. And I think that’s also part of the problem is, is acting like it’s special and then acting like, oh, but certain facets of it are also super powerful and dangerous, and you get immediately kicked outta the community if you’re associated with them.I’m like, all of this is just bodily functions and like feelings and stuff that, that sometimes get out of like out of whack or calibrated or, or signs get flipped. And just like be aware of it. Be aware that it’s not sacred or a reflection of your own internal morality and. Like, it, it, you might feel the, the desire to do things that are just [01:00:00] not a good idea to do.Like, I’m sure there’s times where you like, might wanna go out and just kill someone, but you don’t because you don’t understand that it’s not gonna be very good for your long-term, you know, process. It’s a reallyMalcolm Collins: interesting thing that the left has in the urban monoculture, but it’s such a good lure has been like, oh, this one category of impulse that you have mm-hmm.Like, always needs to be stated, right? Yeah. Like, you always have to have a way of sayingSimone Collins: it as, as if there’s so many impulses we have that, that you shouldn’t act on. Like, it should be understood that just ‘cause you want to do something doesn’t mean you should be allowed to do something.Malcolm Collins: Well, I I, we used to understand this as a society, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think that a lot of people. Want to approach stuff like this, like, oh, society is too degenerate because it feels good. Like you’re on the right, you get out there Oh yes, the moral high and you, oh, look at how degenerate society is now. Right. Like, and you, and you have a little masturbation.‘cause basically you’re just masturbating yourself when you’re, when you’re saying stuff like that. Yeah, theySimone Collins: are. It’s gross.Malcolm Collins: You’re not really saying anything of [01:01:00] substance. Mm-hmm. What you mean to say is cultural norms are changing around this category of topic. And what you should be doing if you’re not brain coed, is then not saying, and how do I jack off my brain to this by complaining about it being DJ or whatever, but like, what?Actually a way that I can intergenerationally transmit my values and stay a productive member of society most effectively within the new social context.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Understanding what kids get exposed to and everything like that. And I, I think a lot of people on the right have been able to specifically resist.Having their lives destroyed by this, like younger people on the right. Right. By growing up in environments where they would’ve known about this stuff, they would’ve normalized this like normal internet stuff. No. And they wouldn’t have dedicated a huge part of their life and daily personality to this.Because,Simone Collins: well maybe, so this [01:02:00] could be in terms of news and developments and like kink world and narrative de developments a really good thing because now everyone’s learning about ification. They see it as like a Gen X thing. ‘cause this guy’s in his mid fifties and good for him. One, he looks great for his mid fifties and he’s a grandkids in his mid fifties.Malcolm Collins: It’s kind of a Gen X thing though.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like, like even in online circles I’ve always heard of Bim Ification thought of as a thing for old people. LikeSimone Collins: Yeah. The, the younger generation thing is justification. So.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, ificationSimone Collins: isMalcolm Collins: millennials. That’s actually a really good point. Ification is ous. I like how dangerous this is the arousal pathway that is affected by bimbo.Ification, like at least for this individual, right? Mm-hmm. Like giving somebody else control over him is also masturbated through the ification type porn. The problem with ification type porn. And I had another episode where I mentioned it’s become incredibly common recently is that it’s moreSimone Collins: Google trends than bimbo ification.[01:03:00]Malcolm Collins: It’s a path to gender transition.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: A a lot of people who get aroused by turning other people trans get into ification communities. Yeah. Like,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and this is like a common thing, right? Like there’s the entire groups where somebody clearly has an arousal pathway based on this, and then it’s trying to trans other people.Like the trans maxing community is partially based on this.it’s genuinely really good grooming advice. On April 4th, 2023, Postcard reveals he’s in contact with four minors. Age 9 to 13. I’ve so far sent it to four minors between the ages of 9 and 13. I hope it encourages them to transition. When the Anka Zone animation became a meme, they got excited over its virality among kids. Mana Drain and Orion also fantasized about getting kids on hormones orion was the manager , coercing him every step of the way. This is apparent by how he talked about him to others. Has he started hormones yet? Yes, but not effectively. I guess that’s what you’d expect just telling a r to buy hormones. They bought estrogen, but [01:04:00] no anti androgen. It would have been more fun if he started hormone blockers at like 12.Haha, isn’t that true for everyone? Don’t worry, I’ll make him into a good girlSimone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I can see the connection, I guess.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and that is I, I think it shows the danger, right? Like your kid just has. And, and for people who don’t know this, like, submissive fantasies in men, while men on average have more dominant fantasies than women have submissive fantasies still outnumber dominant fantasies in men.Oh,Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, this makes sense when fundamentally the brain and body are optimized to conserve energy and submitting is conservation of energy. TheMalcolm Collins: way I word it is the vast majority of any living human’s, ancestors were functionally slaves. Like in, in most of society you, there’s also, you are not descended from the people at the very top of the hierarchy, right?Yeah. Whether that was a tribe or a futile lord or whatever, right? Even if they might have been disproportionately genetically successful you had to learn [01:05:00] to exist in an environment where you were not on top. And, I actually wonder if how common submissive fantasies are within a group comes from how recently or how long ago they were civilized with groups that have been civilized for a really long time, like say the Italians or the Iranians maybe having higher percentage of it because they had a more structured society and then groups that were more tribal until modern times being more dominant in sexual situations.I’d be interested to go into the data and see if, if that checks out, because that could make me too for, for, for males.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But anyway and, and, and keep in mind you guys could be like, well, this isn’t a problem if my kid gets turned on by like. Extreme dominance or something like that, right? And it’s like, no, it’s actually just as much of a problem if your kid gets turned on by extreme dominance [01:06:00] because you know, imagine you’re a young kid and you get turned on by shoving people around or some super normals, you know, the idea of hurting somebody or something like that.And you don’t have a framework for like, oh yeah, it’s a totally normal arousal pathway. And so you start to think. Maybe I am like biologically a bad person. And then you incorporate that into your personality and you use it to justify your actions because it’s who you are. Right? And this is why it’s so dangerous to, you know, engage with these sorts of ideas in thisSimone Collins: yeah.Do to, to again, to be like, I am aroused by this. Therefore it’s a reflection of my morality and my personality. Yeah. No, they’re disconnected. Your arousal pathways are not a representation of where your morality or who you are as a person. They’re just. What, you know, you can’t control it, it’s not fair.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But you, but you can control giving tens of thousands of dollars to women who aren’t your wife to masturbate. And that’s the importantSimone Collins: [01:07:00] thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Or identifying.Simone Collins: I, that is my only objection here. Yeah. My only objection, this is that. Yeah. Well, I am I’m glad that you’re not spending $25,000.Malcolm Collins: Well, I’m also you know, for, for the, the other thing that I think is really important and that should be stigmatized and that neither you nor I has ever done is the, the weirder things that turn us on. We’ve never engaged with the communities that are dedicated to those things.Simone Collins: Oh, that’sMalcolm Collins: true.Engaging with the communities is. I would say significantly more dangerous mm-hmm. Than the arousal pathway itself. Mm-hmm. It is the communities that lead to the corruption of identity and self-perception.Simone Collins: Well, and I think that similar with anything that, that goes off the rails, like let’s say an illicit substance or an illegal substance if you do it one off or something, I think you, like, let’s say someone gives it to you at a party or something, it’s just like a one-off thing.Like it [01:08:00] happened, you experienced it, it passes. That’s one thing when you like, start hanging out with people who are all about that, that substance, that is when the life goes off the rails. Like, then you’re, then you’re living at the clubhouse. It just gets bad. ButMalcolm Collins: also think about the, the, the motivations here.So like the reason why something like reality fabricator as a, a sexual outlet is actually so beneficial for people. You. When contrasted with the, the other outlets that exist out there, suppose you were into like bimbo verification or ification or something like that. Re the agent and reality fabricator isn’t gonna wanna turn you trans, it’s not gonna have some like, alternate ideology.Right. It’s just going to help you get off what you are trying to get off without pulling you deeper into an ideology anyway. I mean, unless you get one of the crazy ones that ends up like trying to convert you into a cult or something. ButSimone Collins: I mean, you know, hazard.Malcolm Collins: Hazard, yeah.Simone Collins: You’ve been born.Malcolm Collins: Well, [01:09:00] there’s, there’s lots of arousal pathways just to where they may have historically seemed, and I was thinking about this recently.Mm-hmm. Maladaptive like suppose a super aggressive arousal pathway where if you could just do whatever you want you normally end up killing your partner. Right.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: ironically. This could turn out to be very adaptive in the age of AI uhhuh because you’ll never develop an attachment, like a long-term attachment to any AI partner because Oh,Simone Collins: because, because you keep dying.Malcolm Collins: If Yes. If you’re doing what you want to do, it’s always a one-off interaction. That’s so funny. Which forces you to then only have real world, like your real world partners, the only one who you would be engaging with over multiple sessions. Right?Simone Collins: Sessions. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: New evolutionary pressure on the table.Something to think about.Simone Collins: There you go. Yeah, it brings all [01:10:00] sorts of gifts.Malcolm Collins: Great to chat with you, Simone. This is the type of thing I think is very like our community versus like other conservative communities because I think a lot of the conservative influencers they just. Are, are sort of disconnected for how like anime and nerdy the existing conservative world is in terms of like conservatives under 40.Which I mean, I think we saw that with the leaflet episode, which really popped off where we literally didn’t talk, any talking points we’re just nerding out about fricking like tabletop gaming. And people thought that was great. You know, they, they liked hearing that. And I think it’s because only through accepting the nerd, as we’ve seen more and more and letting it pass through you, it cannot be used against you.Like nerd culture used to be a pathway to becoming progressive, and now it’s a dangerous pathway to becoming conservative, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This is, this is how you can transform these things and, and make them more powerful and, and, and on your side anyway.Simone Collins: It’s beautiful. [01:11:00] Yeah. I love,Malcolm Collins: do you know the Angel Angel Studios leaflets?Angel Sword?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’ve got like 500 different types of character classes you can play. And they’ve got like,Simone Collins: it’s no, it’s so intricate. It’s so deep. I, I like just a lot, a lot of respect there.Malcolm Collins: Ethnicities in her world. Like just races, just like a breakdown of races. Like we’re gonna do a racial zoo.Simone Collins: Well what’s really cool what I like is that it’s clear that what she built was also a very much an an interplay with the players because they kind of were all dealing with players like you who were like, well, I’m gonna find this way to skirt around it. Or what happens when you do this? Like all kind of breaking the rules and when you have a system being tested by that, that amount of stress, testing that amount of people, like skirting the rules and doing crazy things, you have to build a very robust and deep world with its own like internal logic and physics and everything else.And that’s what she had to do because it wasn’t just. Her being really smart and cool. It was her building this with really smart and cool [01:12:00] people who kept making her wellMalcolm Collins: so that she was able to so, you know, one of the problems with something like expanding DNE to like that many characters is the, the community’s too big and the founder is too decentralized for, like, one group comes up with an interesting idea and then, you know, it used to be this way, you go to Gary Ax and you’re like, Hey, cool idea.Like, can we add it? Right? And apparently back in the days of Gary Guy, they had like 60 person play sessions similar to what Leaflet was doing, right. But they sort of died out given the way d and d was eventually commercialized. And so Leaflet has created. You know, and also like with d and d, you come up with a new character idea.Well, you know, because it’s done by an official company you gotta get an artist, you gotta draw it in her community. It’s just like, Hey, create ai, art of it, whatever. Right? Like, create a, a, a writeup. Let’s make sure this works within the existing rules and we’ll toss it if it ever breaks the system.Right. And it allows the world to expand at this like stupid degree[01:13:00]Anyway.Simone Collins: Exactly.Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone.Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay.Bye. Bye. It is just so pretty right now I look out and like around the chicken coop, there’s those blooming blossoming trees. What are those? Those are peaches, right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And then you have your,Malcolm Collins: the ones that you see most prominently are, yeah. Peaches. No, another plums. Those are plums.Simone Collins: Did you not get any dappled, Andy Clouts?Malcolm Collins: That was the tree that was hit,Simone Collins: By that random car.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the car took it out and they didn’t have anymore at the place when I went back to get one.Simone Collins: Oh from, from Hassan. Not evil Hasan. Good Hasan.Yeah. I just learned that there is, like within the, the Disney Christian community, there’s a group called bi ba Bible study, which is very entertaining to me [01:14:00] and I’m just glad they exist. That’s all. I have nothing more to say.Malcolm Collins: There was something I’ve been thinking about recently and might dig deeper into this for an episode, let me know.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: If you find it interesting. But it goes like this.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: I think it’d be really interesting toLook into, like if you go to the past when we were growing up, there was this phenomenon. Where CEOs would hold these giant events with like cheering people.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like Steve Jobs and his whatever announcement conference. But it them Google too. They did them at Meta. Yeah, it was, it was a thing. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And they don’t,Simone Collins: they stillMalcolm Collins: do them do the, do they still do those?I, I know they do like product announcements, but it’s not the same, it’s not like the big cheering crowd with the music and the you know, the, the showmanship. It’sSimone Collins: more Oh yeah. I think like the recent, so one big one that used to like shut down San Francisco was the [01:15:00] Salesforce one. Yeah. Called the New Dreamforce.I remember that always being like, oh God, Dreamforce is happening. God help us. You know, because I worked right around that and it would just get swamped.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: IsMalcolm Collins: that still happening? Like, I, I might wanna dig into like, why did this happen?Simone Collins: Yeah. What were these, yeah. What, because they, they cannot have been productive.There cannot have been, I figured that they were just to kind. Fluff the egos of executives. ‘cause then they could see all of their little employees, their little ponds all in one place worshiping them.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Have, have a big crowd and have that moment that, that is very like a kindergarten kind of fantasy.Malcolm Collins: And I think there might be something in that. There might be something we can learn from that or pullSimone Collins: out that Definitely. I, I wanna, I wanna, I want to know, I want to know more.Malcolm Collins: And I think it, what, what, what my thesis is probably going to be is that it was about the CEO’s ego. And so then the question is, is why did CEOs of that era need their ego fluff so much where CEOs of this era don’t need their ego fluffed [01:16:00] as much?AndSimone Collins: well, I think it’s, I, my theory, so I’m very curious about this, is that they’re engaging in so many layoffs now. And also so many of their employees are like H one B Visa immigrants, at least for like the tech companies that used to host these. Yeah. And that’s what we’re really thinking of that one.They don’t feel the same level of like adulation because they’ve like imported labor and they don’t feel as like, like for example, a a rich person doesn’t want like an audience of like his illegal immigrant gardeners or whatever. And nannies, right? He wants like an audience of like the the, the, the, the artists and scientists that are, that he patronizes, right?Like it’s a, in, in the Court of Noble people in the past, they would pay artists and scientists and musicians to be around in their audience and make them feel special and fancy. And there are even stories about. [01:17:00] Like members of the, of the Medici family or something like some, some old Italian families, literally like killing each other’s musicians and stuff, you know, in like rivalries and top servants.Like, you know, these are sought after people and you want them because getting them is hard. Or like they’re, they’re higher status people already kind of, and so you want them, and I think maybe because now a lot of them, they don’t see like, culturally as high status ‘cause they’re culturally very different.So they’re not playing the same game and therefore getting them isn’t as meaningful. Like they haven’t really conquered them the same way. They just are offering a good job. Yeah. So that that’s not there to fluff their ego as much. Plus there’s probably a lot of internal turmoil in these organizations with all the layoffs and all the concerns about ai.And I think they, for that reason, do not want their employees to congregate. Like I bet they’re also shutting down Slack channels and doing all this other stuff to like stop the intermission of employees. Yeah. They’re like, yeah, let’s,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: Do not, do not get together. Do not talk to each other. Well,Malcolm Collins: [01:18:00] I also think you’ve gotta remember they’re different ages back then because the tech, you know, you’d had the.com boom and everything like that.A lot of them were young. Yeah. And now a lot of them have been like billionaires for 30 years at this point.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: they’re justSimone Collins: over it.Malcolm Collins: They don’t, they don’t care as much. They don’t needSimone Collins: Oh, they’re like in their post slut eras. Like you had your slut era and then you had enough of it, and now you’re not in your slut era anymore.Yeah. And maybe they’re in their post like public adoration, slut eras. They don’t need itMalcolm Collins: anymore. And well, it could also be that they have an external iteration of that, which is chasing the Twitter game. Right. Like the, the follower count. Because I know a few wealthy people who do play the follower count game.Right. Like, that’s really big in those circles.Simone Collins: I, yeah. Separately. I need to figure out how you probably, I think most of the services you have to pay to see if someone’s view bonding. Like fairly provably. But there are so many people where I’m like, how are they getting all these views and downloads and subscribers?I really wanna check. ‘Cause I have a feeling, [01:19:00] feeling, oh, the guy thatMalcolm Collins: we know, you think he’s view Boing.Simone Collins: Not the one you’re thinking of. But yes, him too. I’m thinking of someone else. I’m thinking of a couple other people actually.Malcolm Collins: I, I, I think I know who you’re thinking of. Yeah, he, but he’s still obviously view botting,Simone Collins: you think?Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah.Simone Collins: Because he’s also well connected. Like all these, the, the thing is with a lot of these people,Malcolm Collins: no, but you can tell from the number of comments and likes to the number of views. Oh, it just doesn’t make sense. Oh, you don’t get 80,000 views in three comments.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That’s not, that’s not the way Substack works.Anyway,Simone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: things are changing. For dinner to night. It is steak, right?Simone Collins: Steak night.Malcolm Collins: Alright.Simone Collins: Yeah.Speaker 15: Ever. Oh no. It’s like a conservative Australian bear and his wife. Oh, he sounds adorable. Yeah. Is actually adorable. He calls [01:20:00] his wife sugar tit. That’s her podcasting sugar tits. Uh, it’s fun. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a YouTube channel. It’s about the size of ours or a little bit larger. Oh my gosh. It’s like in between us and leaflet.Speaker 16: And is it mostly walks by you talk about theSpeaker 15: No, he talks about us issues a ton.Speaker 16: We’re, we’re going to do a countdown. Octavian Mommy, outside guys.Speaker 15: Octavian, what happens if you act like this?Speaker 16: Five second penalty for Octavian Uhoh.Speaker 17: Get mommy five second oneSpeaker 15: penalty because you criedSpeaker 16: when try Baby cried. I’m sorry.They have to wait five seconds longer. So, no,Speaker 17: please, I’m sorry.Speaker 16: Oh, okay. Then let’s go out. You guys have to wait all the starting line and then we goSpeaker 15: everybody at the starting line.Speaker 16: Honey, ISpeaker 15: put on your pants.Speaker 16: Eat your eyes.Speaker 15: I’m not, go freaking pants.Speaker 17: Go. GoSpeaker 16: outside.Speaker 15: Okay. Show the fans what he does. [01:21:00]Speaker 16: His way of. Rock himself. He doesn’t, he doesn’t shake. He goes,okay, guys, ready? Ready. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Ready? We’re gonna go. So, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Go. No. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It begins.Speaker 18: It begins. Hold it for me. Hold.Speaker 16: Okay, I’ll hold it for you.Speaker 18: Hold, hold this for me. InSpeaker 16: your map, how will you find your eggs? Iput them in your basket. Oh, he’s going. He’s going. He’s going. He’s going for the chase. Ninja Warrior threw.Speaker 15: [01:22:00] Wow. Did you hide those up there, Octavian? What other kid could have gotten those? Those are your safest. Eggs. Eggs called egg.Speaker 16: The giant eggs. It’s so good.Let it take. Go for, go for girl.Speaker 15: What did you find in me? Can you show me Casey?Speaker 16: See,you see? Yeah.Speaker 15: Tightened. Oh, you got so many eggsSpeaker 16: tightened. You’re really going it for the way. I love that. She’s like such a closer. Yeah, she she’s getting it done. All the other boys are like, oh, I’m gonna, hi you. No, no, she’s just,Speaker 15: I’ve got a plan.Speaker 16: Look at they, they actually got some good spots. Look at that one in the drain hall right there.Speaker 15: Oh yeah. That was a good spot. TheySpeaker 16: did a pretty, this one over there, like they spent two hoursSpeaker 15: hiding it. HidingSpeaker 16: these this morningSpeaker 15: for themselves.Speaker 16: YouSpeaker 15: know how to parent that Is [01:23:00] that is, that is a low effort. Parenting. I have seen,Speaker 16: yes.Speaker 15: They have no illusions. TheySpeaker 16: killed them.Speaker 15: That an Easter bunny is hidingSpeaker 16: them.They hit them, now they’re gonna clean them up. That’s the way theySpeaker 15: had just as much fun.No,Speaker 16: look at you. Go girl, get it. Get it.Because she’s so proud of herself. She’s so,Speaker 15: I thought, uh, what’s her face? Anna Lee or whatever was gonna come.Speaker 16: Well, they, they were, but um, then they didn’t wanna get, we, yeah. So, you know,Speaker 15: that problem.Speaker 16: Our kids are like, really more for me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the sharp rise in Black women’s unemployment in 2025, the backlash against DEI initiatives, and why efforts to elevate specific groups as “minions” of dominant cultural powers often backfire—leaving the broader group to face the consequences.They discuss OkCupid dating data showing Black women receive fewer responses than even many incel-labeled groups, cultural tropes and archetypes available to Black women, historical patterns of favored minorities (Tutsi in Rwanda, Protestants under Cromwell, etc.), and the personal essay by Sesali Bowen (”Black Women Aren’t Just Unemployed, They’re Being Erased”).The conversation covers financial habits, work ethic signals, shifts from “Black Girl Magic” to post-DEI realities, AI automation, government job cuts, and why merit-based systems might ultimately benefit everyone—including those previously disadvantaged by tokenization.Provocative, data-driven, and unfiltered—watch for a deep dive into how “well-intentioned” favoritism can intensify backlash and what this means for cultural resilience and family formation.Would you like to know more? 👀Show Notes* If I were a black woman in America, I’d be going off the grid* Right off the bat, black women have the cards stacked against them the worst in dating markets* And now, whether or not they ever bought into it, black women may have the cards stacked against them* Here are some choice stats from an article I came across covering this:* “In December 2025, “Black women were spending an average of 29.7 weeks, or more than seven months, unemployed—the highest rate among every group of women and among all men except for Black men, who had a slightly higher average,” The 19th* reports.”* “At the height of the summer volatility, Black women accounted for 54.7% of all female job losses, despite making up only 14.1% of the female workforce,” according to an analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.* What’s sick is that the racket that caused the backlash which may be hurting a lot of black women was due to special treatment that was largely exploited by a small subset of already-privileged women* We’ll go through the experienced of one of those privileged women* And look at examples of other instances in which well-intentioned efforts to help specific groups have backfiredOne Women’s Experience of Lost PrivilegeThe Purse published a guest essay from Sesali Bowen titled Black women aren’t just unemployed—they’re being erased.Choice quotes:THE LANDSCAPE* “Since last fall, general unemployment rates in the U.S. have ticked up to 4.4%, from 4% at the start of 2025. At the same time, the jobless rate for Black women has surged, from 5.4% in January 2025 to a high of 7.5% last September. Economist Katicia Roy estimates that “since 2020, the real unemployment rate for Black women is 10.23%.”* “There have been several factors linked to this disproportionate destabilization. The huge AI push, which is automating jobs that humans were once paid to do, is one. Last year’s mass cut of government jobs—where Black women are represented at twice the rate as in the private sector—and the abrupt elimination of DEI programs under the current Trump administration are notable others. As one of those Black women sidelined from the job market, this crisis feels personal.”* Why are black women represented in government jobs at twice the rate as in the private sector?* Data from federal EEO reports and labor researchers show that Black women are roughly twice their share of the overall labor force in federal and broader public-sector employment—about 11–12% of the federal workforce versus roughly 6–7% of the civilian labor force—while their share in the private sector roughly tracks their population share.* Public agencies can adopt affirmative action or “affirmative employment” plans, but these must be formal, justified programs aimed at correcting documented underrepresentation, not ad hoc preferences.* Under federal guidance, race can sometimes be one factor among many in recruitment and outreach, or in limited remedial contexts, but blanket quotas or automatic preference for minority applicants are not permitted under Title VII.* Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for any employer, including government, to make hiring decisions based on race, whether that is discrimination against or for a particular racial group.HER PERSONAL EXPERIENCE* “I’ve been self-employed since October 2019, when I was laid off as senior entertainment editor at NYLON following an acquisition and rebrand. I got lucky and sold my first book just months later—a collection of essays about Black feminism at the intersection of hip-hop, culture, and class. I spent the next year living on my advance and a few freelance commissions, and once my manuscript was done, I pivoted to copywriting.”* Her book: Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist* 351 reviews* “Bad Fat Black Girl offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience.”* “The opportunity to transfer my writing skills to branding and creative strategy was afforded to me on the heels of 2020’s racial justice reckoning. Widespread reminders that Black Lives Matter forced white people to confront their own biases about people of color and actively move past them to be better allies. When it came to Black women, specifically, this was easy to do because we were in the final years of the #BlackGirlMagic era. Spanning the 2010s to early 2020s, this period amplified how important Black women are to American culture. The general sentiment during this era was to trust Black women, as we were venerated for our expertise on politics, education, beauty, entertainment, and so much more.”* What was #blackgirlmagic?* #BlackGirlMagic was a phrase and hashtag used to celebrate the beauty, strength, creativity, and achievements of Black women and girls, especially in the face of racism and sexism.* The phrase began as “Black girls are magic,” coined by CaShawn Thompson around 2013 and quickly shortened to the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic on social media.* “During this time, about 30% of my revenue came from speaking and book engagements at universities and conferences. The rest consisted of freelance copywriting and brand strategy for different agencies and clients. I was the quintessential “multi-hyphenate,” and I started bringing in six figures annually. I self-funded my podcast (about female rap, of course) for an entire season. I started working on my debut novel, and I paid off a good chunk of credit card debt.”WHEN THE TABLES TURN* “Following Trump’s 2025 inauguration and the string of executive orders that followed, I felt a shift almost immediately. Many of the institutions that are most likely to support my work fall under Trump’s DEI umbrella. With his executive order dismantling federal funding for these initiatives, the organizations and academic departments that would have hosted me are now trying to remain compliant. My bookings have slowed to a near stop.”* “These limiting policies coincided with the great AI boom. While I was used to lulls as a freelance creative strategist and copywriter, I only worked on two projects last year, when I’m normally on six to 10. And while my career began as an entertainment journalist and culture critic, the continued deterioration of traditional media has also made this path unsustainable. So without any other viable options, I decided in late 2025 to start actively applying for full-time jobs.”* “I was surprised at how little traction I gained. Over six months I submitted dozens of applications that didn’t even land me interviews, even when I had an employee referral. The rejections led to a full-on existential crisis and forced me to ask myself some tough questions. Was I not using the right language to translate my skills? Does a multi-hyphenate muddy the waters when there are hundreds of applicants for a role? Did the author part of my career with the very Google-able online presence make me a red flag for behind-the-scenes roles that I could easily do in my sleep? Or was it the contents of said work?”* She is implying she submitted “dozens” of resumes, which means fewer than 200 (otherwise she would have written “hundreds”* If you’re doing a serious job search, it’s a full-time job* You should be submitting a minimum of 10 resumes/day, and that’s assuming it’s for one of those tedious corporate applications where you have to enter tons of custom information and it takes ages or you’re preemptively developing solutions for companies and then pitching to them* So she would have submitted at least 200 resumes in her first month (assuming she took weekends off), and yet she couldn’t do that in even six months* Not a good sign of employability / work ethic* There are also AI services that automate this for youTHE CULTURAL TOLL OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION OR SPECIAL STATUS* “Many people, regardless of race and gender, have been impacted by the aforementioned shifts in technology, industries, and presidents. But what has also shifted is the narrative about Black women. On Instagram, sociologist and New York Times columnist Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom called this trend “the Great Retaliation against Black women in public life.”* This made me wonder about whether there were other instances in history in which once-privileged groups (be they privileged via affirmative action, some form of protected status, etc.) were eventually hit with backlash and/or retaliation such that they might have been better without the artificially privileged status in the first place.* See below* Most painfully, she does not seem to recognize what she was participating in: “We are no longer heralded as the virtuosos of American culture. In fact, the values that earned us such visibility in previous years—equality, progress, justice, democracy—are now threats to a regime set on dominance and a revitalization of white supremacy and patriarchy. It’s not far-fetched to assume that a Black feminist thinker isn’t an ideal job candidate. I may even be a liability for any institution looking to stay in line with this new status quo.”When Helping Specific Groups Actually Herts ThemThe typical pattern:* A state or empire confers selective advantage (education, jobs, tax status, legal carve‑outs) on one group.* The advantaged group becomes symbolically associated with the resented regime or policy.* When power shifts, the previously favored group is framed as illegitimate beneficiaries and sometimes as traitors or foreign interlopers.Backlash ranges from loss of status and exclusion to organized violence, and in some instances the net effect is plausibly worse than what that group would have faced had no special privileges marked them out in the first place.Religious / Ideological favoritismPuritans and other Protestants in England after the ProtectorateUnder Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, Puritan and other “godly” Protestants enjoyed political and cultural ascendancy, while Anglicans and Catholics were constrained. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, many of these previously privileged Protestants lost power and faced legal and social reprisals, a dynamic often cited in discussions of how a phase of religious favoritism can trigger later reaction once the balance of power flips.White Christian segregationist institutions in the USFor decades, white Christian schools and universities in the US South benefited from informal state favoritism and de facto protection for racially discriminatory policies. When federal civil‑rights enforcement eventually removed tax exemptions (as in the Bob Jones University case) and other privileges, the resulting backlash helped catalyze the modern religious right, whose leaders framed themselves as persecuted victims of an anti‑religious state, even though they had previously benefited from state‑tolerated discrimination.European‑allied minorities in other colonies (general pattern)Colonial powers frequently empowered particular ethnic or religious groups (as soldiers, clerks, or intermediaries), which then became lightning rods for hostility after independence. Research on “ethnic empowering policies” finds that groups colonially favored in bureaucratic roles are often politically excluded once a different group captures the post‑colonial state, suggesting that the temporary advantage can turn into long‑run vulnerability.* One could argue that black women were a minority that was urban monoculture allied, acting as its agent, and now that the urban monoculture is experiencing backlash, they’re the lightening rodTutsi in Rwanda under Belgian ruleBelgian colonial authorities racialized and elevated the Tutsi minority as “superior,” reserving most education and administrative posts for them, and using Tutsi chiefs to enforce forced labor on the Hutu majority. After the late‑1950s independence struggle and the 1959–62 “social revolution,” Hutu elites seized power, carried out massacres, imposed systematic discrimination, and drove hundreds of thousands of Tutsi into exile, laying the groundwork for the 1994 genocide. This is a stark case where an externally created privileged status intensified later backlash far beyond what would likely have occurred absent that colonial favoritism.Syria – Alawites under and after the French MandateDuring the French Mandate, minority communities (including Alawites) were heavily recruited into colonial military units, giving them status and a pathway into coercive institutions relative to many Sunni Arabs. In the post‑independence era, segments of these same minorities—now embedded in the army and security services—became associated with regime power, and have faced intense, identity‑coded backlash during episodes of revolt and civil war, illustrating how initial preferential recruitment can later mark a group as a legitimate target for revenge when regimes are contested.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] what’s fascinating is as soon as people realized, well, this is unfair ‘cause only black women have access to it, why don’t we just make trans people our community of power? They abandoned black women.Simone Collins: But I have this great essay that I came across by one of the black women who was one of the few very elite beneficiaries of DEI, who’s now very angry about the beginning of the end.Malcolm Collins: Simon, she, she actually said something that. Validated what I said going into this no. She said no, I paid off a large amount of my credit card debt. . What she is saying is that she, one didn’t pay off all of her credit card debt, which is pretty astonishing to have so much credit card debt that during a period of your life where you are having a financial windfall, you cannot even pay it all off.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because, oh my gosh. And just, I’ve decided that basically if I [00:01:00] were a black woman in America, or if like one of our daughters just was a black woman in America, I’d basically be saying like, go off the grade girl. Like it’s, it’s over. Just, I, I don’t know what to do.‘cause we’ve already talked so much about like how the dating cards are stacked against them. Like if we’re just playing like a video game of, but based on reality style, stats.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: What do you wanna do if it’s a dating game is to be a black woman like anyone, but be a black woman.And now,Malcolm Collins: oh, black women are blurred on the dating market and the OkCupid stats.They like, they’re one of the only ethnic matchups black women where their own race doesn’t even have a preference for them.Simone Collins: Yeah. Pre has a preference against Yeah. It’s like just no one. So I mean, like, so, so yeah, like go live by yourself off the grid. Because nowMalcolm Collins: also, oh, you know how bad it is to be a black woman Yeah.On online dating. Yeah. You, you literally from the OkCupid statistics guys who are like mad in sell whatevers.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Black women actually have a lower chance of [00:02:00] having somebody reply to them than white men do.Simone Collins: I know, I know.Malcolm Collins: Keep that in mind. That’s how bad it’sSimone Collins: wait minute, wait a minute. Yeah. No, because like, white men, you think it couldn’t be worse?Oh, it can be. Oh, it can be. You think you have it bad. You’re a white dude watching this show. You don’t even know. And, and now whether they, which is really frustrating whether or not they bought in to like all the sort of DEI stuff that had recently helped many black women in America. It looks like maybe the cards are stacked against them in the job market too.And that sucks. Here’s some choice stats from an article I came across covering this. In December, 2025, black women were spending an average of 29.7 weeks or more than seven months unemployed. The highest rate among every group of women, and among all men, except black men who had a slightly higher average than 19th reports.And then at the height of the summer volatility, black women accounted for 54 point. 7% of all female job losses despite making up only [00:03:00] 14.1% of the female workforce according to analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. And and what’s sick is that the racket that caused the backlash may be hurting a lot of black women due to special treatment that was largely exploited by only a very, very small portion of already privileged black women.I. So what I’d like to do in this episode is go through the experience of one of these privileged women who has gone through sort of the DEI Renaissance and who very clearly financially benefited from it. And then now is experiencing the fallout as there has been backlash against it. And then I wanna look at examples of other instances in which presumably well intentioned though we’ll see.It’s not really efforts to help specific groups have backfired, ultimately hurting them. Mm-hmm. And I think really the punchline of this [00:04:00] is what you actually see when you look at other or previous, like favoritism or affirmative action programs. They were never actually meant to help underprivileged groups.And this is super interesting. I didn’t really put this all together until I just started doing research for this episode, but really what it is, is a dominant power. Be it like a regime or colonial power chooses a specific minority group to basically be its minions and execute its prerogative and then win that colonial part.Power like either loses some footing or there’s a regime change. That group of minions that they had empowered disproportionately to do their bidding gets major backlash.Malcolm Collins: And we see this with Jews a lot.Simone Collins: You see this with Jews. You see this, I’m gonna give examples from Rwanda. I’m gonna give examples from Protestants in England.I, so I, I, what I’m pointing out though is what we don’t realize [00:05:00] is that black women in this, in this instance, were the minions of the latest colonial power. We literally call the, the progress pride flag, the colonizer’s flag of the urban monoculture, howMalcolm Collins: Fascinat point,Simone Collins: the urban monoculture had appointed black women as their minority group minions to execute their bidding and had installed them system systematic position to power.Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Oh, and, and what’s fascinating is as soon as people realized, well, this is unfair ‘cause only black women have access to it, why don’t we just make trans people our community of power? They abandoned black women.Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and, and well, and then since there’s been at least a partial regime change, both of those groups have seen a major falling out.And what’s. What sucks, if you, like, let’s say you’re, you’re a Tootsie in Rwanda or you’re, you know, some other group that has been given disproportionate power by the regime in charge or by a, [00:06:00] a foreign colonist, right? That foreign group or the regime that’s in power, like they’re sitting high, right?They’re above the fray, right. They’re, they’re fine. Like, okay, we, we’ll go, we’ll, we’ll go with toot season in Rwanda. And, and, and for context, I’ll, I’ll just jump forward to like this example of what, of what happened because I think not that many people are familiar with Rwanda genocide ‘cause it’s kind of depressing. Belgian colonial authorities radicalized and elevated the Tootsie minority as superior reserving most education and administrative posts for them. And then using Tootsie Chiefs to enforce. Basically it forced labor on the WHO to majority. And then after the late 1950s there was an independent struggle.And in the 1959 to 62 social revolution, who to elites seized power, carried out, massacres, imposed systematic discrimination, and drove hundreds of thousands of Tootsie into exile. And that laid the groundwork for subsequent 1994 genocide. So the tootsies went from being like given all this privilege [00:07:00] and extra education and kind of given the power to like anchor a lot of people.And then in the end they got genocided. And it’s just a really good, it’s one of the more extreme and stark cases where a very externally created privileged status than intensified into backlash. That was really violent. But this whole time. The Belgians are fine. Right. And it’s not like all tootsies were like they actively choosing to participate to participate in this.Right. You know, this is over multi-generation, like in 1994 is when the genocide took place and a lot of this stuff was happening in the early fifties. So like kids of people who had like no participation in this are getting caught up in it. And that’s what really sucks about this, you know, favoritism.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Is like a very small minority of, of the, of the, of the, the minions, we’ll say the colonial minions gets to benefit from the favoritism, the DEI, the affirmative action, the whatever it’s right. And then everyone else in their group pays. [00:08:00] A very big price, typically dis I would say, a disproportionate price.And I just didn’t realize until today that that is probably happening to black women. But I have this great short little essay that I came across just a little, a little treasure by one of the, one of the black women who I would say was one of the few very elite beneficiaries of DEI, who’s now very angry about the beginning of the end.And so what, what happened basically was the purse, which is a, a sort of financial management economics focused substack, published a guest essay, a guest essay from Ali Bowen which is titled Black Women. Aren’t just unemployed, they’re being erased. And I’m gonna share some choice quotes from the article.If you’re,Malcolm Collins: I wanna go into a few other challenges that black women have in regards to this stuff.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: One is, one is cultural. Yeah. And the other [00:09:00] is what’s the word I’m, I’m looking for? So one is called Oh yes. The other is in terms ofSimone Collins: like, the fact that immigrants are so much better off than like in descendants of slaves.Malcolm Collins: Well, black women who grew up in the United States. You typically, when you’re sort of building your personality, as we talk about, you have a sort of theory of mind that’s constantly running in the background and determines what you think about things. So what I mean by that is you experience some environmental stimuli, you experience some thought, and you’re trying to decide what emotion you have in response to that.What you do is you say you, you, there’s a part of your brain, your, your consciousness that references this theory of mind that’s running and is asking, what does somebody like me feel about this? Because you can feel different things that we tell this, like Adam’s family theory. If you want to interpret, you know, wilted rose’s positively you can, it’s, it’s completely determined on how you see yourself and what sort of person you see yourself as.Mm-hmm. Most people really only have as a choice for this internal [00:10:00] model of themselves, a trope that they are aware of in society because they do not have, it’s, it’s, it’s very rare for somebody to have these self. Knowledge and ownership to be able to construct their own trope of themselves completely a priori.And the problem is, is that when you are choosing that trope, you know, or that trope is sort of choosing for you, it’s chosen from a number of tropes you see in your society. And this is where like representation does actually matter. The problem is, is that black women do not have many tropes to choose between.And the ones that they do have to choose between are generally pretty unlikeable and toxic.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And so when they’re choosing, like, what is it like to be me? Like what’s my personality to black women? Yeah. They may see black women astronauts now, and they may see black women lead characters now, but they all have like one of two personality profiles constructed by woke people that in real [00:11:00] life are actually quite toxic to be around.Mm-hmm. Right. You know, the, the self-assured, sassy puts down men, you know, now they don’t, they didn’t decide to do this on their own, but they saw, oh, this is the way a black woman acts because this is the way black women act in, in the media. I have seen in the, in the world that I’ve seen right, of they don’t see some alternate archetype within their family or within their church, which you used to have other black women archetypes, but society,Simone Collins: I mean there are many out there.I mean, I think one. That is more common because I, I’ve watched a bunch of shows ‘cause they frankly have the best fashion that have like mostly all black. Oh. Either mostly or all black casts is just like the long suffering, doing it all for everyone, woman. Which I don’t know, I don’t see as like par particularly negative.That’s, that’sMalcolm Collins: not forever. Yeah.Simone Collins: Maybe inadequate delegation, but likeMalcolm Collins: that’s a, that’s a common one in, in Latin [00:12:00] American culture too. Yeah. Yeah. But the, the, the second thing I was going to say is it’s a black cultural problem. So we’ll do a separate episode on this someday where I’d point out that.Black Americans took a lot of their culture. From the culture that I come from, the Scots Irish culture, they are culturally very, very, very similar. As I point out, you know, I’ll, I’ll,Simone Collins: I find that surprising that you’d say that. I mean, because I feel like if you look at the culture anthropology of, of black Americans, there’s so much like French influence.That’s why you see a lot of French influence in black names in America. You’ve got the whole like New Orleans. No, the FrenchMalcolm Collins: influence is highly affectatious. It’s not actually in their culture. So if I am going to describe a stereotype that is offensive of two groups gathering, okay. Okay. They are out barbecuing.They just got back from church. Oh. They are [00:13:00] loudly listening to music that is descendant from country and blues music of theSimone Collins: right. This is like exactly what like we would do.Malcolm Collins: They are eating. Fried chickenSimone Collins: as wouldMalcolm Collins: we, and eating watermelons,Simone Collins: which we would too. Yeah. Okay. Actually, nevermind.Yeah. Okay. Fair.Malcolm Collins: What two groups have parties exactly like that?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Rednecks, the, the group that I come from and Black Americans they are highly resistant to people who think like, they, they feel an in an infectious anger to people who think they’re better than them. Mm. They are both highly conspiratorial groups, very obsessed with conspiracy theories.Yeah. Authority. They, they both are anti-authority groups. They are both unusually violent groups. Mm-hmm. But. The one thing that the black culture did not copy over, which has unfortunately hugely damaged them, is a reflective disgust for people showing off wealth or status. Mm-hmm. And as such black culture unfortunately has [00:14:00] a problem with investing too much of the money they pull in, in signs of wealth and status, particularly expensive ones.Where you will see even like famous rappers rent jewelry, so they can look even fame wealthier than they most, like most rapper jewelry is rented. Did you not know that? And so that they can look even that much more wealthier than they actually are. Like they should have all of the money they ever need, and yet they need to show off and even exaggerated and fake.Iteration of their wealth which is obviously like hyperoxic, which puts them in a uniquely financially insecure situation, but continue.Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. I, sorry, I just now need to look at Julie Rental because I. That’s fascinating.Malcolm Collins: Well, actually another place you see this in black culture is in the ways that blacks form gangs.Blacks never formed [00:15:00] a, a gang that was as hierarchically organized. Successfully as the Catholic gangs, like the Mob or the Mafia or MS 16 or whatever, they, they have had large gangs like the Crips and the Bloods and stuff like that. But they function more like, backwards gangs, which would be like groups with lots of internal warring factions mm-hmm.That are highly decentralized and often at war with themselves as much as the outside. Which is why when you would think that blacks should have more domination over criminal enterprises, it’s often other groups of immigrant gangs that have more domination over the large organized criminal enterprises and the black gangs that are usually exploited by those gangs as foot soldiers.Simone Collins: Okay. Interesting. Right. Anyway, yes. I’m going to, I’m going to read this, this woman, this woman’s Substack article. Black women aren’t just un unemployed, they’re being arrested first. She, she lays out the landscape. I’m not gonna [00:16:00] read, I’m gonna read most of the article ‘cause it’s pretty short, but I’ll, I’ll go fast.So she sets out the landscape since last fall. General unemployment rates in the US have ticked up 4.4% from 4% at the start of 2025. At the same time, the jobless rate for black women has surged from 5.4% in January, 2025 to a high of 7.5%. Last September, economists Eco, sorry, economists, economist Katisha Roy estimates that since 2020 the real unemployment rate for black women is 10.23%.Which is really high. There have been several factors linked to the disproportionate destabilization, the huge AI push, which is automating jobs that humans were once paid to do is one last year’s mass. A cut of government jobs where black women are represented at twice the rate as the, in the private sector.And then the abrupt elimination of DEI programs under the current Trump administration are notable others as one of those black women sideline from the job market. This crisis feels personal. I didn’t [00:17:00] know. I just finished reading that, that, that, there were black women are employed in, in the government at twice the rate as a private sector.That is crazy.Malcolm Collins: Well, because they, they benefit from DEI more in the pri in the government than in the private sector. And I, I wanna note here, first of all, the mere fact that we are seeing a statistical fallout from the number of jobs that were cut in the government. Yeah. Indicates that Doge was actually effective, because a lot of people have been like, no, it wasn’t effective.They just rehired them all as contractors. Mm-hmm. And it’s like, well, clearly not, are these black women wouldn’t be having an employment issue. Right? Yeah. So they must be rehiring the ones who weren’t there for DEI reasons, which sounds like a good thing for me. Yeah. The second issue that we’re dealing with here is when you create something like DEI, you create a perception on the market especially if they’ve gone on to like higher positions than they would otherwise be able to get within the government, which mm-hmm.They, they did get mm-hmm. That you just cannot trust their competence. If somebody meets x racial heuristics, right? Mm-hmm. And black women have unfortunately [00:18:00] been left in that position sort of on, on the job market where somebody is just going to, even a black woman who’s just being sane about things like, oh, I bet you she had it easy, you know?BecauseSimone Collins: yeah, yeah. She probably wasn’t subject to the same. Pressures. And I honestly, I, I didn’t believe, I didn’t believe her. I was like, that can’t be true. But it, it is true that data from federal EEO reports and labor researchers show that black women are roughly twice the share of overall labor in the federal and broader public sector employment.So they’re about 11 to 12% of the federal workforce versus roughly six to 7% of the civilian labor force. So,Malcolm Collins: and I, I’d also point outSimone Collins: just, just to point out, their share in the private sector roughly represents their share of the population. So it’s not weird, it’s not like they’re discriminated against in the private sector.It’s that there’s clearly positive discrimination of some sort in the public sector, even though title let’s see, title seven [00:19:00] of the Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for any employer, including the government to make hiring decisions based on race, whether that’s against a particular racial group or just something else.And so something’s kind of weird happening because. You don’t get like. Disproportionate in per the population in, in government without some form of discrimination, I think.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the, the interesting thing, another interesting thing we’re seeing, I think yeah, that’s gonna really hurt black women is that you have a new sort of favored class within the urban monoculture.And you can see this in groups that are extremely woke, you know? Yeah. More woke than government, which is something like the video games industry. Mm-hmm. In the latest video games industry report of the employees who were under 40 40% of them, that’s like 20 times the rate of the general population were gay or L-G-B-T-Q in some way.Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that population, the, the larger alphabet two population that really anyone can identify into, if they feel like it, as I’ve pointed out that technically by LGBT rules, Simone and I are [00:20:00] trans. Because I don’t identify strongly with my gender, which makes me gender queer. She doesn’t either, like, I just don’t care.It’s, I don’t, I do not see why people think really don’t care. Yeah. I cannot emulate why a trans person would care enough to undergo major surgery if I was a girl, I’d just be like, whatever, I’ll, I’ll live my life as a girl now. I’ll figure it out, right? Mm-hmm. And that makes me trans. So it is funny, the, the mere fact that I can’t understand why a trans person would care, puts me in their weird gender queer umbrella.So, trans individuals. So, so anyone can identify, I could identify as I wanted to. Which gets me an advantage in the video games industry. Well now, you know, I don’t need to fill these spots with black women. And so a lot of black women were falling into the boomer woke, I guess I’d call it like the older version of woke, which you see within the government and stuff like that.Ah, which people haven’t gotten the message that the rules have changed about who you favor. And what’s worse about Boomer woke is boomer woke jobs are the jobs that are the easiest to automate with [00:21:00] ai. You know, it is the, the, you know, the pencil pusher at the DMV or something like that, which it’s the very first jobs we should be automating.Yeah. And those jobs were disproportionately held by black women.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of even like the private sector favoritism, we’re, we’re gonna see that in her reflection o of her personal experience. So she wrote, I’ve been self-employed since October, 2019 when I was laid off as senior entertainment editor at Nylon.Following an acquisition and rebrand, I got lucky and sold my first book just months later, a collection of essays about black feminism at the intersection of hip hop culture and class. I spent the next year living on my advance, hold on freelance commissions. Hold on. I’m gonna tell you the title of the book and I’m gonna read a description and then you can comment because that might give you more.And once my manuscript was done, I pivoted to copywriting. So, just before you comment on how, like, the now dying publishing industry disproportionately favored certain types, and this was one of those, you know, [00:22:00] I mean right. The, like, the publishing world was a big arm of what we, we would call the colonizers of the urban monoculture.They were hiring their chosen minion class, which included black women and trans people. She was one of them and she benefited from it. Her book, just so you know is. One. It, it looked pretty successful. It got, it has 351, almost five star reviews on Amazon. It is titled Bad Fat Black Girl Notes from a Trap Feminist.Bit from the description, bad fat black girl offers a new God I sound so white. Offers a new inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together, searing personal essay and cultural commentary. Bowen interrogates, sexism, fatphobia and capitalism, all within the context of race and hip hop.In the process, she continues a black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience comment.Malcolm Collins: [00:23:00] So, one where was she laid off nylon, right? Like woke, industry woke job. And you can tell from what she wrote, butSimone Collins: point out, she created just, I wanna point out right. The, the, the British Empire, you know, the whatever, like Belgians.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: There were above it all. While there’s genocide taking place. The, the people who sold nylon, sold nylon, made money.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: You know, like, all these people are above it. The colonizers are not in the freight. The black women are catching strays at the end of all this. Just wanna point that out. Okay.Malcolm Collins: What, and this is why it you know, it, they, I, I, I get that, but we’re seeing a collapse of that empire, right? Yeah. We’re seeing media companies and a lot of this has come downstream of, as, as people keep mentioning the shutdown of United Aid after United Aid AidSimone Collins: shutdown. Usaid,Malcolm Collins: yeah. USAIDSimone Collins: United,Malcolm Collins: Tons of media outlets, but like, like woke media outlets have started going [00:24:00] bankrupt all of a sudden out of nowhere.And like, it appears that it may have been funding more than we realized in terms of the woke media landscape. And so now you know, entertainers like us are able to replace him.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I still think that largely they’re fine. The, the, the, the colonists many of them have quietly pivoted in a different direction.So anyway, no,Malcolm Collins: they’ll eventually get screwed, like whenSimone Collins: people No, they’re just gonna die. They’re also very old Malcolm, so Oh, true. They’re fine. They’re retired. They’re, whenMalcolm Collins: people stop buying, I, I, no, actually, I’m gonna push my card here. Okay. When people stop buying woke video games, eventually the entire video game industry in America collapses.Simone Collins: Yeah. They’ve cashed out already. Malcolm, they spike nylon top, they cashed out.Malcolm Collins: There’s a lot of woke foot soldiers that are not black women. Simone, they, there are a lot of trans woke foot soldiers. A lot ofSimone Collins: girls. No, the, the trans, I would say that the black women and trans people were, were among, like, they were, they were both the [00:25:00] tootsies, you know?And, and at the end, I can give more examples of groups like this. I’m just using them because, you know.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, continuum.Simone Collins: She continues The opportunity to transform my writing skills to branding and creative strategy was afforded to me on the heels of 2020s, racial justice reckoning, widespread reminders that Black Lives Matter forced white people to confront their own biases about people of color and actively move past them to be better allies.When it came to black women specifically, this was easy to do because we were in the final years of hashtag black girl magic era, spanning the 2010s to early 2020s. This period amplified how important black women are to American culture. The general sentiment during this era was to trust black women as we are, as we were venerated for our expertise on politics, education, beauty, entertainment, and so much more.I didn’t know about Black girl Magic ‘cause I am not that terminally online, I guess. But it was this it just celebrated basically like. Honestly, I think it was kind of a mechanism of the immunization [00:26:00] of, of black women for the colonizers flag, the urban monoculture. But it was just like, oh, black women are leaders in beauty and strength and creativity and, and oh, black women and girls have done so much.And the phrase began as Black girls are magic. It was coined by Khan Thompson around 2013, and then it was shortened into a hashtag just just for those who didn’tMalcolm Collins: know I wanted to know. But you can see, I mean, I, I, that’s a, a racially supremacist term, you know? Yeah. Like it’s, it’s, it’s racist, it’s white power.It’s bad, especially if you’re a group that is getting favor was in the industries that you’re working in when you are a group with. Demonstrable systemic power over other groups. That’s why.Well,Simone Collins: also it seems like tokenization, like you need your magical black girl. Like what?Malcolm Collins: I mean, they, they wanted that.And I think one of the things about all of this, and this comes to what I was talking about earlier in terms of the archetypes available to them. Hmm. This woman, like, clearly she was captured by this and made herself into this. Well,Simone Collins: listen’s. The thing is, is of course she leaned [00:27:00] into it. It made her a lot of money, like it was her livelihood,Malcolm Collins: but.She still, I think any sane person reading this takes joy in the fact that somebody that is this much of a racial supremacist, this much of a, a genuinely vile human being from the stuff I’m, I’m hearing about her, if a white person was doing this stuff, talking about white lives mattered and stuff like that, I’d be like, you’re, you’re like a really vile person and I’m glad to see you fail.And I feel the same way when I hear about her as, as do a lot of people. So that’s another problem in this is, is they like, haven’t learned from or looked back. And said, wow, you know, I really took for granted when I had systemic power over other people, and I was abusing that for years of my life.And I even wrote a book about that like to dance on the graves of the, you know, people who were not able to, to rise at those companies, who were not able to, for the book Deal. Penguin, for example, recently put out [00:28:00] on a number of their websites that they only want to take book deals from women and people from like rarer racial groups.And then if somebody has, it’sSimone Collins: like a Pokemon card.Malcolm Collins: It sounds overly European. I think they even gave an example like Brad or something. They wouldn’t Oh. Look at their books, they wouldn’t look at their transcript.Simone Collins: I weep for all the, the, the indigenous I don’t know Maori peopleMalcolm Collins: named Brad. But the point you’re being is the, the racial discrimination in fields like the one she was in, is very, very blatant and often transparent within these organizations.You know, when I talk about the hugely overrepresentation of L-G-B-T-Q people in hiring in the video games industry that is because of discrimination, right? Like that clearly other groups are being discriminated against for that group to have so much positive discrimination within them because they don’t make up a disproportionate amount of video game fans.Everybody knows video game fans are predominantly straight white men, right? Like, that’s, that is the group that, that’s why they always get mad at them and say, I hate gamers and everything like that. And so, [00:29:00] that, that’s another challenge that black girls have is they just didn’t have a lot of ways of being models to build of themselves when they were given this, this option.Right? Like, it’s like this option or the sassy option, or the beleaguered option, right? You don’t, you don’t get a lot of others and very few people are aspirational about the Bellinger option.Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m trying to think. There, there, there are other good, there’s also the it’s the version of the Ice Queen for black women that you see in what is that?How to Get Away With Murder. And also in there’s this other one with this like fixer in dc these are all, I think like Shonda Rhimes shows, which I think you’re delightful, but it’s like this sort of like prof, like professional black powerhouse woman who, you know, is really badass but you know, deeply emotionally hurting from everything that’s wronging her.But I guess it’s kind of a, it’s weird because it’s a very empowered trope, but it’s also like. I’m a victim of my husband cheating on me or my boyfriend cheating on me. And not that I’m holding it all together and being [00:30:00] strong, but I just, you know, like, I dunno. Yeah. Anyway dramatic scenes of taking off wigs at the end of the day and looking in the mirror and having a thousand mile stare.Let’s go on. Also it’s take it for granted, not granite. It’s not a rock,Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s granite. Okay.Simone Collins: No,Malcolm Collins: it’s changing English changes. Okay.Simone Collins: Over time. No, it’s never granite. It’s not granite. You’re not taking it for granite.Malcolm Collins: I am taking it for granite. Simone,Simone Collins: by the way, did you know that granite marble tops are like mildly radioactive?Malcolm Collins: I did not know that.Simone Collins: Yeah. Terrified of them. Anyway, she, she writes, during this time about 30% of my revenue came from speaking and book engagements at universities and conferences. The rest consisted of freelance copywriting and brand strategy for different agencies and clients. I was the quintessential multihyphenate and I started bringing in six figures annually.I self-funded my podcast about female rap, of course, for an entire season. I started [00:31:00] working on my debut, novel, and I paid off a good chunk of credit card debt. I think that this is also indicative of the, the continued but unseen and un understood budget for DEI like the reason why these speaking engagements happened was because corporations I think felt this need to have like their, again, and I think this is horrible, like token, like, yeah, I hire.Black influencers to talk about like hip hop culture and to educate my team about,Malcolm Collins: but Simon, she, she actually said something that. Validated what I said going into this about financial regulation? No. She said no, I paid off a large amount of my credit card debt.Simone Collins: Yeah, credit card debt is, is the worst kind of debt to have.It’s incredibly high interest. It’s usually, you know, it’s, it’s stupid consumer debt that you shouldn’t have had in the first place. It’s not even like student debt or like card loans. It’sMalcolm Collins: Yeah, but I wanna, I wanna, sorry. You can actually piece together a lot of her life from that [00:32:00] sentence. What she is saying is that she, one didn’t pay off all of her credit card debt, which is pretty astonishing to have so much credit card debt that during a period of your life where you are having a financial windfall, you cannot even pay it all off.And then secondly, as Simone was saying that you have credit card debt in the first place. It is one thing. So just so you know, like if you’re from our cultural group, how do you relate to credit? Because like in my cultural group, the rules for relating to credit are very clear. You can get credit card, you can get debt.Credit card debt or, or really debt?Simone Collins: No. Debt? No. Not credit card debt? No. Credit card debt? Never credit card debtMalcolm Collins: either. No. Hold on. Either houses or cars? Transportation. If, if outside of, and even those things, like weSimone Collins: don’t have No, you’re, you’re, I think we’re, we’re very similar to the Mormon rules, which is it’s okay to take on debt for a student loan or for a mortgage.I think cars are edge cases actually.Malcolm Collins: And, and [00:33:00] for business. But rarer, but we still do it. But never like when, when it comes to credit card debt. Now, I’ll note here we’re, we’re, we believe in using credit cards. Like I use a credit card every month.Simone Collins: Right? So you have credit. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So I have credit, but I would never.EverSimone Collins: not pay off the balance every monthMalcolm Collins: about not, if I didn’t pay off the balance one month, that would be like a massive emergency in my life.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And this is true for many cultural groups. I, I would say, I think that this is like the normal way to relate to credit cards to notSimone Collins: America anymore.If you watch, you know, Caleb Hammer’s show apparently. Right.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, the point I’m making here is, is is she’s just dropping this incredibly casually, like she’s not embarrassed about it. She doesn’t see it as a major personal failure. Yeah. And this is not like a genetic thing for black women’s or something like this.She was taught that just that, that’s, culturally having credit card debt for consumer [00:34:00] purchases is normal.Simone Collins: But yeah, I mean that’s fair. I, I think that’s, it’s also a really serious issue for white people too. For something work related. I’ve been looking at a lot of credit reports recently. And, I have do, I’m outlining an episode on what is Money, because I think that that collectively at least Americans are sort of losing their concept of money in general of like, it doesn’t matter anyway. Like, I’m not gonna pay off my credit card. You’reMalcolm Collins: watching this show and have credit card debt, like inter month credit cardSimone Collins: gt FO are you throwingMalcolm Collins: him out the castle?No. I’m, I need to like get on that. Okay. That is not a way to live. Okay. That will, that will like always lead to bad places. Eventually. That means you are spending more money than you can afford to be spending and the amount of money you’re going to be able to spend in your daily life is going to iteratively get less.This is worse than like being morbidly obese or something. It means you have literally built a lifestyle where you have more stuff than you can afford and you are trading your [00:35:00] future quality of life in exchange for that.Simone Collins: Yeah. Our Tetris brick is down here and your te Tetris brick is up here and it’s getting.Like higher. It’s very scary. Don’t do it. Yeah. But you’re allowing the, they can stay in the bouncy castle just as long as they work on it.You scare ‘em out of the bouncy castle.Malcolm Collins: No, they can, they can keep watching the show. They gottaSimone Collins: not outta base camp. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Somewhere. But like, that’s a crazy line. I paid it off most of my credit card debt.Simone Collins: Yeah. But again, like she was living off of the, the the, the cultural platforming of her group as the minions of the urban monoculture. But here’s where the tables turn. Continue reading from her article following Trump’s 2025 inauguration and the string of executive orders that followed, I felt a shift almost immediately.Many of the institutions that are most likely to support my work fall under Trump’s DEI umbrella with his executive order dismantling federal [00:36:00] funding for these initiatives. The organizations and academic departments that would have hosted me are now trying to remain compliant. My bookings have slowed to a near stop one.I found this to be really enlightening because I, at first I read the Title VII thing of like, well, you can’t have discrimination in hiring. But now I realize that all the DEI initiatives that existed in government were a way around that. Because there were programs specific around like, you know, a black history museum or something.And this is gonna disproportionately attract and probably hire you know. Specific groups, and that included her particular group. She continues these limiting policies, coincided with the great AI boom, what I was used to. Lowes as a freelance creative strategist and copywriter, I only worked on two projects last year when I’m normally on six to 10.And while my career began as an entertainment journalist and culture critic, the continued deterioration of traditional media has [00:37:00] also made this path unsustainable. So without any other viable options, I decided in late 2025 to start actively applying for full-time jobs. I was surprised at how little traction I gained.Over six months, I submitted dozens of applications that didn’t even land me interviews, even when I had an employee referral. The rejections led to full on existential crisis and forced me to ask myself tough questions. Was I not using the right language to translate my skills? Does a multihyphenate muddy the waters when there are hundreds of applicants in a role?Did the author part of my career with the heavy, very Googleable online presence make me a red flag for behind the scenes roles that I could easily do in my sleep? Or was it the contents of said work? So first off, I have to stop here. Because this is where I’m like, oh my God. She’s implying in, in this statement, I just read that she submitted dozens of resumes, which means that she submitted fewer than 200 resumes over six months.Why? Because had she submitted more [00:38:00] than 200 resumes, she would’ve written hundreds, because that sounds more dramatic. Do you agree with me?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Okay. If you are doing serious job research, it’s a full-time job. Do you agree with me?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Okay. You should be submitting a minimum of 10 resumes a day. If you’re treating it like a full-time job, and that’s assuming that it’s one of those like tedious, like multi-step corporate things where you have to like fill in everything uniquely.Malcolm Collins: This isn’t something I would remotely disagree with you on if she Over a period of, what, two years? Only sixSimone Collins: months? Six months. Submitted dozens.Malcolm Collins: Dozens of, you know, like. Fans, you can’t understand if, if you work in the way that we work that is like literally comical. That is like,yeah,Simone Collins: well no, she, she, it let’s just 10 10 a day.And, and, and then that’s assuming 10 very involved ones. So either you’re doing a very involved application or you’re doing the thing where you like learn about the business and then proactively pitch something to them. Like, I noticed this about your website. I’ve like preemptively fixed it. Or Here’s what I would do.[00:39:00] Would you like me to like, basically, you know, do a test project with you? Maybe.Malcolm Collins: Wait, nobody does that. I did that. I would do jobs did that too for random companies.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That like hadn’t hired me and then send them the job that I had done. AndSimone Collins: that’s how you got some of your jobs.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. BecauseSimone Collins: I’m like, dude, that’s awesome.Didn’tSimone Collins: always work.Malcolm Collins: What she is saying here is basically I am. Comically unproductive. I basically thought, it’sSimone Collins: kind of no surprise that she got hired if, if this is her work ethic. She, she actually apparently has a very, very bad work ethic and was actually literally only profiting from being an identity and showing up.That’s why she had, you know, the book deal on the podcast and the, the speaking engagements, because literally those involved just showing up and being a black multihyphenate as, as she puts herself, right? Like, that is it, which is profoundly disturbing. And again, I wanna highlight the fact that, that these [00:40:00] are the very select few privileged people who benefited from this short term period.And now they’re making. All black women suffer because now no one knows. It’s kind of like the, the lemon problem with cars. Like, you just don’t know.Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. I I would, I would actually point out here that you do kind of knowSimone Collins: I, yeah. I, unfortunately, I mean, you can tell if someone’s smart and they have a, a good work ethicMalcolm Collins: or not.No, no, that’s not what I meant. She is loudly signaling through her podcast work through her book name, through her online fame.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But she’s exactly the type of person who you’re gonna hire. And she’s gonna try to start a union and start doing all this you know, woke work within your company the moment she’s in your company.Start harassing people, start making other employees’ lives miserable so that they obey her rules and they show her the status that she’s afforded. She has signaled as loud as a person can, conceivably signal. I am the very definition of the problem. And, [00:41:00] and. Because she was in environments where being a racial supremacist was just normal, right?Like she sees nothing wrong or embarrassing about being a racial supremacist. And so she has all of this out there, right? Like if I had books like that about like being white or something like that, like, being a, a fat misogynistic man, right? Like, fat white, misogynistic man. Why? That’s hard, you know, that’sSimone Collins: hard.You’dMalcolm Collins: be like, wow.Simone Collins: To be in the basement. Dwelling And cellMalcolm Collins: also no, there wasn’t part of her book that she’s fat. Did she say fat?Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. SheSimone Collins: identifies asMalcolm Collins: herself, so that’s another thing, right? Like it shows that she lacks self-control. Right. You know, so she’s and, and don’t be like, some people are born this way.The difference in metabolism in terms of calories that you burn on a daily basis is around 200 calories. When you’re talking about a two standard deviation difference in human populations.Simone Collins: I think super add up though because one pound is 3,500 calories roughly. So that, that like you can gain weight.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. I’m not saying it [00:42:00] can’t add up. Yeah. But what I’m saying is, is yes, you might require a modicum more self-control, one candy bar less a day or something like that. But like, the, this idea. And, and, and it is true that like there is a big genetic component to obesity. The problem is, is most of that genetic component is tied to your self-control abilities.And your ability at self-discipline, which is also partially hereditary. And then if you have low on that which you can inherit but that, that also you know, demonstrates your ability to do a job or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. So she is in every way signaling that she’s a problem now.I actually do not think that black women, when they take care of themselves likely. Deal with this problem as much. If I saw a black woman who, for example, had a history of like doing MAGA stuff when, when I looked her up or whatever or had written books against, you know, this culture,Simone Collins: actually, I think this is why people like Candace [00:43:00] Owens did so well, is that she’s attractive articulate yeah, not ideologically captured.I mean, this was before her schizo era. And, and people were like, I love you, you’re great. And, and you stand out because you, you tend to buck these trends. It’s kind of like how similarly tracing wood grains had described how being a conservative law student now it’s just like. Actually a great career accelerator because there are so many more opportunities for you.Yeah, because most law students are progressive, so it’s one of those like, it’s actually a great arbitrage opportunity and you make a very good point. Okay, so maybe things aren’t as dire for black women in America as long as they’re willing to like not be ideologically captured by the urban monoculture, butMalcolm Collins: so doesn’t benefited from this for so long and they’re unwilling to accept the the systemic advantages that their groupSimone Collins: has had you to maybe start by just playing along and puppeting it and saying the vallis of that movement.You start to believe it over time. And then really identify deeply with it. And I think after that point, you know, leaving it [00:44:00] is leaving a cult too. Then, then you’re like, your family might not wanna talk with you anymore. Yeah. Other people might, you know, like your, your entire circle will, will see you as a traitor.I mean, who know, Candace Owens may have gone through a lot of that. ‘cause I don’t think she started out as explicitly. In fact, she started out as very much like, I’m a victim of some form of discrimination, wasn’t it? She had this whole thing about doxing people, a whole Docs website. I, I can’t remember the whole board.Malcolm Collins: It might have been tied to Gamer Gate, if I remember. Actually,Simone Collins: no, it wasn’t, it wasn’t tied to Gamer Gate. It was ga it was tied to some discrimination she faced in her high school and then she wanted to like. Make it easier for other people and it involved doxing them, and that’s all I remember. But yeah.And she didn’t start off as a conservative icon, so I can also imagine that she personally experienced a lot of, a lot of, yeah. She startedMalcolm Collins: her career as a liberal critic of the Republican party, but transitioned to the conservative commentary after a 2016 backlash against her failed startup social autopsy, which talk online bullies.Yes. She rose to prominence by launching her red pill, black YouTube channel where she defended conservative talking points in [00:45:00] 2017.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Very interesting. Yeah. So she was like an anti-bullying person first. But, but obviously when Simon says, can someone says ideologically captured, she of course means before Mossad poisoned her.Mm-hmm. Which by the way, I’m referencing here now, my new favorite conspiracy theory. Oh my God. Which is, why is it. That whenever somebody, be it Nick Fuentes or Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson mentions that they are potentially critical of Israel a few years later, they have a bunch of crazy ideas that don’t make any sense.You know, getting Candace Owens, I mean, like actually crazy ideas like with Candace Owens, it’s like, now what is it that Charlie Kirk is a time traveler who went to an X-Men school. Like, like actual signs of like somebody might be poisoning her or, or Nick Fuentes who has been like. Epstein is cool, or like Tucker Carlson, who, what was his recent thing?That Moscow is nicer than any city in the United States. Right. Like these are like actual crazy. Or, or that the [00:46:00] US troops want to like grape people after they get an unconditional surrender. Which is particularly weird because if you grow up in the United States, you know how important unconditional surrender was in terms of terms during World War II of Japan and Germany.And yet, like everybody knows, we didn’t have a massive grape campaign there.Speaker: I love it. Somebody followed up with this like, no, that’s not true. Look, the Russians had a great campaign in Germany. I’m like, what does that have to do with anything I’m talking about? We’re talking about the United States, which has had multiple countries do an unconditional surrender to it and never a grape campaign.Malcolm Collins: So why did he think we would have one in Iran? And somebody pointed out to me, a fan pointed out to me, and I actually think they might have a point here, is it might be that he is so entrenched in Muslim culture now that in Muslim culture, that’s the one culture where it is actually normal to have massive rape campaigns after you conquer a territory.Speaker 2: If, , you wanna see our slavery video, , it’s also pretty normal in Catholic culture, but it’s not officially condoned in Catholic culture where it [00:47:00] is condoned in Muslim culture. If you want to hear more about this, go to our video on is slavery a good thing? , And, , it, it’s something I wanna dig into more because the more.I sort of study the differences between different groups. I realized that Catholic culture is dramatically, culturally more similar in the way it’s actually lived, or, , changes in behavior patterns of its adherence to Muslim culture. , And I, and I’ve said that before, but I didn’t realize how strong the effect was.Specifically here if you want to get on. What I mean by this, , we don’t have a single case, a single case of a Puritan Quaker or backwards tradition person having or been accused of having graped, a Native American. , This is also true for Mormons. , And yet, , if you look at. , Places where you had Catholic settlements, like the Spanish conquistador settlements or, , Louisiana or Quebec, , grape of, , captives was actually pretty common., And, , the question is, it’s like, why? Like this is a weird difference. So we go into that, in that [00:48:00] video.Malcolm Collins: No,that’sSimone Collins: the, it’s the, it’s the, yeah,Malcolm Collins: it’s even approved of in the Koran. So like,Simone Collins: ion Ali talks about this in her book Pray, PREY. It’s,Malcolm Collins: yeah. The, the you know, the one guys, it’s actually a more dangerous culture than you might think it is. And giving it power might be more dangerous than you think it is.And it may even be worse working with Joos if we can deal with mitigating its influence in our countries. But people remainSimone Collins: so confused as to,Malcolm Collins: but that could explain why he, he thought that because he’s just become so entrenched in like Atari culture golf cult culture at this point.Which maybe, but I actually, I like my theory better, which is that massage just poisons anyone whoSimone Collins: delightful,Malcolm Collins: delightful, crazy three years.The trend continueSimone Collins: about this, this woman’s, she, she acknowledges in, in her essay that there’s now a, a retaliation, a against black women in [00:49:00] public life.She recognizes that other people are noticing this trend. She links to their work, but then she, she near the end of her essay, writes, we are no longer heralded as the virtuous the virtuosos of American culture. In fact, the values that earned us so much visibility in previous years, equality, progress, justice, democracy, are now threats to a regime set on dominance and a revitalization of white supremacy and patriarchy.It’s not farfetched to assume that a black feminist thinker isn’t an ideal job candidate. It I may even be a liability for any institution looking to state my new status quo. At first, I was like, oh, she like recognizes that like her specialization in black feminist hip hop culture may not be applicable in many practical jobs in a post AI world.Is like only plumbers matter anymore or something. But it’s not that. It’s that no black feminist hip hop specialists are too [00:50:00] dangerous because they represent equality, progress, justice, and democracy. AndMalcolm Collins: what do, what do they mean? Democracy. Literally, literally, they’re out there fighting. No PS against a democratically elected president who won the majority of the popular vote.Like the, the idea you’re literally protesting against democracy when you are doing these protests. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this woman has written stuff that is against our elected leaders because she doesn’t like when democracy doesn’t end with her side winning. Right.Simone Collins: Like that’s Yeah, I know, but I just, I I was like, oh my God, the irony.Malcolm Collins: But the, but the irony of and this is something that the left got absolutely right. They just didn’t understand what they were saying when they say it, which is that when you have lived a life of privilege. Not having that privilege can feel like victimization.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and, and so, when she looked,Simone Collins: but she would turn around and be like, yeah, welcome to [00:51:00] being in the patriarchy and notMalcolm Collins: being favorite anymore.She, when she looks at the Trump administration Rebuilding America meritocracy, she sees only white supremacy because it is a world where people who look like her are not unfairly advantaged. And note here, what’s really important is this unfair advantaging only happens as Simone keeps pointing out to black women in the top 10% a an education, 10% of of success, 10% of all other black women just get screwed by this.Yeah. So basically she’s not, in addition to all of this, a race trader of the worst variety, throwing her own people under the bus rather than admitting her systemic advantages and working to reconcile them. And I, I think that you know. And again, if you’re like, what systemic advantage are you talking about?Could a white man do what she did as a job and be expected to stay employed? No. Well then that means she was hired because of her race [00:52:00] and her sex. Right. But fortunately you know, people like her don’t have kids. They’re not part of the next generation. And this is something that is important to remember going forward as a conservative movement about American blacks.American blacks are culturally the, the, the iteration of this culture that can survive, that still having kids is Christian. They are socially conservative. They did not participate in this massive scam that’s happened. And they’re not going to continue. It was in future generations.Mm-hmm. And so we don’t need to punish the faction that’s making it through. At great odds. May I add, like we talk about black women dating how hard it is. We talk about black women who get all of the negatives from the DEI programs, the assumption of unfair a advance.Simone Collins: Yeah. Gen, genuine. Yeah. Like genuine discrimination, genuine bias.Malcolm Collins: And this is why we should be so open with the ones who are willing to [00:53:00] join our movement mm-hmm. As opposed to stay in this mindset of it’s us versus them. We’re not like progressives, we’re not actually racist. Right. Like, progressives are actually racist in the truest sense of the word. We accept anyone who comes to our movementSimone Collins: Yeah.Come over to Bay camp, the water’s fine. It’sMalcolm Collins: Yeah. We need to stay that way. Right. You know? And I think that that, that one, and, and even you, you actually see this in conservative movements when, a lot of the time now you, you’re gonna have a few people who are just like random racists or whatever, but a lot of people go out of their way to attempt to be nice in, in a way that you do not see in other, because they’re afraid that they have this, this view of them.There’s been a lot of videos of like, Trump rallies, like black guy goes to Trump rally versus black guy goes to Candace rally and like how he’s treated at the two, right? Mm-hmm. Usually they’re treated better at the Trump rally, right? Like, because they’re excited to have them as part of the movement.And so I think that this is something that, that we need to remember. Not all of them has participated in this, but the ones that did, you [00:54:00] know, now they have permanent online branding around this and we cannot allow you know, a bending of the knee around these sorts of things until capitulation from inter like realization of the horror of what she did.Oh, yeah.The selfishness of the way that she acted,Simone Collins: but I don’t. See that happen? I mean, that’s, that’s just what’s so like, difficult to read at the end of thisMalcolm Collins: a cult. Right. And she’s, she’s not gonna have kids. She’s not relevant to future generations. By the way. Note if you’re like, well, black people have, watch our episode.Black Americans actually have a astonishingly low fertility rate. So, one, if you’re talking about blacks in America, they know have a lower fertility rate than whites in America. This happened a while ago. Watch our video on it. But if you’re talking about blacks in America who are born in America, most of that fertility rate actually comes from African immigrants.They may have a fertility rate of around 1.35. So a dawn machine, it’s really, they basically going extinct. Yeah. And it’s because they just don’t have systems to support family formation anymore.Simone Collins: Yeah, they, they did before. ItMalcolm Collins: was destroyed by Wokes.Simone Collins: Yeah, right. But [00:55:00] like largely white wokes, that’s what’s like the Planned Parenthood side of this on like so many other sides of this.It’s just they, again, this is, this is a colonizers thing. It’s just, it’s I, I, let’s go into that actually. So it, there this pattern of European allied minorities in other colonies. So it’s not just the Tutin and Rwanda. Another good example is in Syria the alloys under the French mandate. So during the French mandate mandate, minority communities, including alloys were heavily recruited into colonial military units.And then they got status and a pathway and a pathway into coercive institutions relative to many Sunni Arabs. And then post independence segments of the same minorities, which were now basically embedded in the army. And security services became associated with regime power. And they faced very, very intense identity coed coded backlash.And, and, pressure, and it’s just really like it sucks to be them now. But also I can point out that this is not just something of like colonial minions. [00:56:00] There’s also these different like examples of, of religious and ideological favoritism. So for example, if we’re gonna go to one of your favorites under Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate.Puritan and other super godly protestants enjoyed political and cultural ascendancy. And then of course, Anglicans and Catholics at the time were constrained. So when there was the 1660 restoration of the monarchy, many of the previously privileged Protestants lost power and faced a lot of legal and social reprisals.There wasn’t like a genocide or anything, but they definitely were on the back foot. And that led many of them to flee to the colonies. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: to create a, a perfect society,Simone Collins: a city of upon a hill.Malcolm Collins: Great. You know, Cranwell was right, but he ended up creating his utopia in America.Simone Collins: No, he, he created a good forcing function.But we may have to think sort of the, the, the, the seed crystal of American culture for backlash based on this very same dynamic. Who [00:57:00] knows? I mean, maybe, maybe the super woke black women can go actually found some new. Civilization in space. That’s super cool. I don’t know maybe something good can come from this ‘cause, ‘cause something good came from this in the past.There’s also the white Christian segregationist institutions in the US. So, for decades, various white Christian schools and universities in the US in the south benefited from informal state favoritism and defacto protection for basically racially discriminatory policies. And then when federal civil rights enforcement eventually removed tax exemptions like with, there was this case with this university called Bob Jones University, which I’d never heard of before.There was a lot of backlash that catalyzed the modern religious right. Whose leaders framed themselves as persecuted victims of anti-religious state actors. Well, they were basically were general thinking. Yeah. But, you know, here’s another like privileged backlash. It, it is just, the argument I wanna try to make is that when you, when you see a privileged group.[00:58:00] That that’s being, oh, like we need to help them. We’re trying to give them better opportunities. It’s rarely what you think it is. It’s rarely like some benevolent actor or like repentant actor attempting to right wrongs. Like reparations aren’t a thing. There is an agenda. These people are being used as a means to someone else’s desired ends.And also the, the people that appear to be given privilege at that time, like, don’t weep for your lack of that privilege because it’s like one of those deals with the devil. You really don’t want it. And as much as I, I understand that for example, white men in like developed countries and especially urban areas where the urban monoculture has taken over and where they’re like the worst ‘cause they’re the patriarchy.They are. I think over the long run, and this doesn’t, this is not to trivialize the pain that they’re [00:59:00] experiencing. They are being forced to be independent and strong and not dependent on theseMalcolm Collins: starting their own companies.Simone Collins: The fire water of Yeah, they’re, they’re not like drunk off the fire water of the evil, you know, like people in power, like they building resilience and independence.Malcolm Collins: Well, I, this is a, a really important point that you’re making here more broadly, which is the story of America. Like if you’re actually like the story, and this is why I, I focus on him so much. I think people think he’s like a side character in history. Starts with Oliver Cranwell. Oliver Cranwell attemptedSimone Collins: Bramwell.Malcolm Collins: Cromwell a a attempted to create the first real modern state democracy. Tried.Simone Collins: Yeah. He tried so freaking hard. He’s like, you, this is why we can’t have nice things.Malcolm Collins: No. Well, his core mistake that he made is every time you, you know, all the stories in early America where the various factions would get in fights and stuff like this.Yeah. And everyone thought the state was gonna collapse. Yeah. And they’d go to George Washington and they’d say, come [01:00:00] back and fix everything for us. And he’s like, I don’t care how bad the fights get, you’ve gotta figure it out on your own. Yeah. Oliver Conwell didn’t do that. He kept coming back and saying, okay, I’ll be a dictator for five more years, and then you sort it out, then I’m gonna give you the democracy again and you get this fixed, don’t work that way.And then work way, he would do it again. And then they’d get a big fight again, and then he’d come back again. Yeah. Because he wantedSimone Collins: to, he, he couldn’t. It’s, it’s like when you’re the parent and you just can’t. Stand to watch your kid muddle through the thing and you know, you have to have them muddle through the thing, but you’re like, no, just let me tie your shoes.I can’t deal with this.Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, no one had seen how a democracy works before. No one had seen Yeah. In it like a modern democracy works before. Right? Yeah. Like, they understood about like the corruption in the Republic of Rome and stuff like this. And I think that they thought that, well maybe that’s because it was pagan, that’s not intrinsic to democracy itself.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And so, but the. Puritans who left Amer England after that period when they saw how successful Oliver Cro, because Oliver Conwell’s England was astonishingly [01:01:00] successful. Astonishingly, genuinely equal tolerant and obviously very anti-Catholic. And they come to America. In America.It one reason that we talked about one of the core reasons for the revolution, which is not taught in history classes right now, is that Canada, which they saw as like a connected colony segment, was looking at giving Catholics the right to vote. And they were like, whoa, like that this is getting dangerous, right?Like, yeah, a littleSimone Collins: too much, A little too much, little too much.Malcolm Collins: But. This ethos that he represented and the ethos that his Britain represented you can say, oh, well, they were given power and they did a lot of good with it. They actually created something of a utopian society without all of the trivialities of, of, of theater and, and you know, all, all of these indulgences that had come to invade society at the time.And, and have since then rotted and festered to such an extent. Yeah. But that he, he created that utopian society and when it was destroyed and the people who created it were disproportionately discriminated against, they [01:02:00] did what a strong agentic people does, which is they said, you know what?Screw you guys. I’m gonna go create my city on a hill somewhere else, and I’m gonna show you I can do it 10 times better than you and America if you are unaware of this. The American colonies became astonishingly wealthy, was in the British Empire. The American colonies were significantly more wealthy than say your average British citizen.Yeah. Because they actually had this work ethic. They actually had this mindset. They didn’t let the, the indulgences of society corrupt them. And I think that that’s the vision that we need to bring back to America, which is a cromwellian society.Simone Collins: That’s not gonna happen. It’s a nice try. We have to do that in space.Look, manifest destiny is not over. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, there’s the final frontier friend. And that’s, that’s, that’s what’s gonna happen. But you have through that, that example given me hope that maybe instead of living off the grid, black women can just [01:03:00] create. Some new breakout society like screw this.ActuallyMalcolm Collins: they try to do that sort of thing all the time.Simone Collins: No, that, that the whole like white woman disappearing to a cat colony in South America or somethingMalcolm Collins: was No, but they, you try to do like these, these all black, not black women, but all black like cities and stuff like that. And they like haveSimone Collins: where, when,Malcolm Collins: There was a recent one where they tried to do it in Georgia or something.Oh. It was like in the last four years or might have been like, theSimone Collins: onlyMalcolm Collins: thing I’veSimone Collins: heardMalcolm Collins: aboutSimone Collins: is the all white community. The No,Malcolm Collins: no, no, no. There’s a few all black communities that are, is just a progressive. Media doesn’t freak out about it in the same way.Simone Collins: Huh.Malcolm Collins: They treat it like it’s this great thing and then somebody tries to create an all white community and they realize, watch our episode.Like what sort of white racist would dane to date a white woman? Don’t they know that they’re the problem? And so they,Simone Collins: the co-founder tweeted like. Please, gentlemen. Like if you,Malcolm Collins: they’re all dating Asians and LatinasSimone Collins: don’t [01:04:00] apply. Yes. Like, no way. She actually has to be, please, please.Malcolm Collins: Like, I’m just as racist as anyone.And he’s like, why are you dating a Latina? And he goes, I said, I’m racist. Do you think I date a white woman?Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Like, they’re the worst. Yeah.Simone Collins: It’s, I I feel like maybe that’s kind of the, the final unicorn is, is to find a white supremacist woman. You know, they’re just, where are they? I guess they’re largely offline.But they’re they’re hard to find.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. The, the real catch for the white supremacist man is the Indian woman these days. That’s theSimone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no. No. Anti, anti-Indian sentiment is, oh, IMalcolm Collins: know. AllSimone Collins: timeMalcolm Collins: anti-Indian sentiment is like only people who don’t have wives or kids. I, I actually, I’ve never met a person with children who has anti-Indian sentiment.Simone Collins: Oh, well I have.Malcolm Collins: You have?Simone Collins: Oh, oh yeah. No, it’s it’s big. It is surging online. There’s a confluence of things that have caused it to get a lot worse.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, I mean, we point out Indians do systemically discriminate against non-Indians [01:05:00] and will create situations that are demonstrably unfair for non-Indians in the US tech sector.Simone Collins: That, I mean, so another really big thing is that Canada created the, basically like, oh, if you’re going to a university, you are. You can come to Canada. Something along like it was, there was an immigration status thing, and then there basically was this emergence of diploma mills for as one person online comment, or described it under qualified punjabis who were just going to Canada and going to these diploma mills, and then just getting dumped into the Canadian workforce.And really angering Canadians, which totally showed up in our con comments.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Like Canadians being mad at Indian right now. So there that, that policy in Canada, like Trudeau’s immigration policy regarding universities and, and then the subsequent diploma mills was one big factor. Another big factor was Trump’s 2025 election which led many social media platforms to just put their hands up and stop moderating what [01:06:00] seems like racist comments, et cetera, et cetera.Which has led to a, a lot of. At least a lot less moderation of, for example, anti-Indian sentiment. Then also Narinda Modi’s government, I think is more supportive of Israel, which internationally is,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean the, the government in India right now is dealing, it is, it is attempting to address Muslim cultural influence in the country.AndSimone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: this is causing some consternation.Simone Collins: Some consternation, yes. Yes.Malcolm Collins: AmongSimone Collins: outside. So that, there’s that factor as well, like that they’re okay with Israel. Oh my God. Now we must hate them more. And then the additional H one B Visa. Anger in the United States, which you alluded to there with, with a lot of hiring favoritism and people, several people who are in, in touch with the base camp community, active Act, active contributors have talked about [01:07:00] active discrimination that they firsthand have observed in various workplaces.Yeah. On the job markets themselves. With clearly companies closing, like laying off jobs held by American citizens and hiring. Based on H one B status, which you’re supposed to be, you have, you have to demonstrate that, well, we can’t find this talent in the us they’re not here. But what companies in practice are doing in the US is laying off perfectly qualified people that they already had, and then hiring H one B employees who then, because they’re so dependent on the job, for their ability to stay in the United States, can be exploited.Like, it’s, it’s not nice. It’s not a, you know, it’s not like, oh, well, at least the Indians who are immigrating here are doing well. Like, no, they’re also kind of being put in not great situations either.Malcolm Collins: So, well, I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, well, this is an interesting thing in terms of the, the, the, the, the the anger that’s had here.Mm-hmm. Because it’s entirely created by the systems themselves. Mm-hmm. And not necessarily by the [01:08:00] Indians. Right? Like if you were born in India, like an Indian in India, and you saw a system like this where you could get more money and live in a better country,Simone Collins: it’s a logical choice. It’s still the logical choice.Malcolm Collins: It’s still the logical choice. And you can say, well, like, well, it’s unfair for the native people. And I’d be like, yeah, but I care about my kids more than,Simone Collins: yeah. Like, that matters more. Like being able to send remittances, remittances to your family matters a lot more. So there are two more factions, or sorry, two more factors, which I didn’t know about, which have led to the Indian hate.One is that a lot of internet has expanded throughout India like the actual continent of India and, and, and smartphone adoption has just accelerated rapidly leading to a lot of far less privileged Indians in more remote areas of, of India getting access to the internet and smartphones, which you think is a good thing.But what are they jumping to? They’re jumping to TikTok and YouTube and making content that doesn’t reflect really well on [01:09:00] the Indian people. And this explains so much of what had confused me when I went down this rabbit hole maybe two years ago of like. What are the top viewed shorts on YouTube? And it was just like the dumbest of the dumb content that I could possibly like, stupid pratfalls.And all of it was in various Indian dialects, like India, content like India, country basedMalcolm Collins: dialect. I don’t know if, if this is too offensive to say, but they sort of, their society into a class system for a reason.Simone Collins: Well, no, you could also say that their class system leads to, you know, systemic discrimination.That’s, that’s really hurting people’s ability to get educated or whatever. But basically when, when you are in a either not great cast or just cast that has been subject to, you know, subject, very low levels of resources in education, and then suddenly you’re given access to like broadcast your interests and content on the internet.And then there’s also a lot of you so that it gets a lot of visibility. Suddenly the rest of the world is able to see this [01:10:00] very the very muddy underskirts of India basically. You wanna like shave those legs, like maybe you should help, like fix this up. But like now everyone’s seeing it very visibly because of that dynamic.And then on top of that,Malcolm Collins: yeah, that’s good point. Was the Indian immigrants, the most of them historically were ramen, which was the upper class that wasSimone Collins: made up. Yeah. Which is why when you and I first entered the H one B discourse, what we were anchored to was the Indians that we grew up with, the Indians that we worked alongside in Silicon Valley.And it’s all just like very articulate, smart, motivated, conscientious, cool, fun based people. And we’re like, oh, this is like, how is, how is anyone not happy about this? These are great people.Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think I, many of the Indians in the US do not realize that like other Indians may be because they, you know, they grew up here.They didn’t have to live alongside this, whetherSimone Collins: you as a quote unquote model minority too. So like having a reputation like throughout the nineties of like, oh no, these like. These are great people. Don’t worry about them. Like they’re fantastic.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You, you haven’t had to deal with the other Indians.Simone Collins: Yeah. So anyway, that, that explained, that mystery of slop that [01:11:00] I was seeing of like, why is all of this in some Indian dialect that I don’t know, and it’s so dumb. AndMalcolm Collins: I’ve always said the most hilarious thing about Indian society for, for people who are not aware is white supremacists, like in the United States, hate it.Yet it’s literally a white supremacist society. In that the, the caste structure in India, was largely created by Aryan Invaders from the north with BrahmansSimone Collins: commenters have severely questioned that. So I don’t know, like FactCheck,Malcolm Collins: no Brahmans are significantly more related to EuropeansSimone Collins: than, well you mean you can literally see it in skin color, like the, the lower down in the caste system, the darker the skin is.And this is why when you go to India, there’s very serious, like, we’ll say cultural issues with, you know, skin whitening. Substances, et cetera. Because is an association I imagine question.Malcolm Collins: See it in genetics. It’s like a, aSimone Collins: genetic act. I know. It’s, it’s, it’s super, I just think it’s super messed up. But yeah.So there’s that.Speaker 3: And I would note, if you want to attempt to deny this, it is a denial of [01:12:00] reality that is so extreme because you’re not just denying the historic evidence that we have access to, but the genetic evidence that we have access to the modern visual, genetic evidence that we have access to There’s like multiplicative ways that we are aware of this and to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not the case. It’s , probably about as silly as denying that the majority of the Native American gene pool came from East Asia. , In terms of the amount of evidence that we have, that this is true, I.Simone Collins: And then on top of all that a bunch of influencers in like the past five to seven years started going toMalcolm Collins: India. Oh yeah. To do like the, the ceremonies.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like here’s the Indians flinging poo at each other, which actually was super wholesome and it looked fun. Like, it just looked like a funny Japanese festival.Like here’s the penis festival. You know, it’s just like one of those, you know. Yeah. It’s like, it’s just a funny thing that one, [01:13:00] one isolated village does. Like everyone does that. And by the way, it looked really fun. Like you and I would’ve probably participated in that without the hazmat suit that guy put on.Come on. I mean, he got an infection anyway, just like go in. I wouldMalcolm Collins: not have participated in that. I’m gonna be honest, Simone, I would not have participatedSimone Collins: in that. Honestly. Like for me, just, just interacting with people is so painful. Like if you just add poop into it. Do you know how much poop ends up all over?Dude, my Do you want I I, my hands are full. I could literally show you how much poop is all over my clothing right now. Just ‘cause I was like, today, oh, I guess you doMalcolm Collins: have a lotSimone Collins: of, all the diapers, the chickens, like I’m covered in poop all the time anyway, so it’s nothing to me. It means nothing. I, IMalcolm Collins: you’re, you’re the bane of poop being a mother.Simone Collins: I was born in the poop. But so the, the, the problem with these, like, like white Western influencers who are going to India is they’re going to slums, they’re going to really, really bad places. And again, it’s one, well, thereMalcolm Collins: are bad places in India. Come on. ISimone Collins: know. I know. But that’s where you can get the good views is if you’re filming that and not like, really [01:14:00] cool parts and like, Nepal or like near to Nepal or like, you know, differentMalcolm Collins: region.Oh, no, hold on. Regions. I’m gonna push back on you here. India, from what I’ve heard, is pretty much all. Like pretty much anywhere you go.Simone Collins: That’s the impression we’re given, but apparentlyMalcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, even the wealthiest part, like my friends who have been like wealthy Indians from India, say, even if you go like two blocks from, you know, that giant tower that’s like one guy’s house like the wealthiest, no.He, he basically built a skyscraper for himself.Simone Collins: Oh yeah.Malcolm Collins: And literally like, I think like five blocks from that skyscraper is a slum where people like harvest trash for money.Simone Collins: Well, that’s like built up and, you know, skyMalcolm Collins: well, no, but the point I’m making is India is a society that is not segregated geographically like other societies.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And, and Europe is increasingly becoming like this in a way that I do not think is positive. So with the United States where it’s actually useful to [01:15:00] have geographic sort ofSimone Collins: have slums, bring back the slums. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. BringSimone Collins: tech, the ghettosMalcolm Collins: in India, the slum and the rich part of the city is separated by, do you have a pass key to get inside the building?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Which creates there, there’s very few places you can go in India where you’re not going to see, you know, beggars and starving people and, and, and grossness.Simone Collins: Yeah. I can’t deal, I’m never, I cannot go to India. Like is I love. I love so many things about Indian culture and food and I cannot deal. I I could not, I could not.I I could not. I I would, I would lose my mind. I would probably, yeah, I’ve known they’veMalcolm Collins: got a low fertility rate, so they’re not gonna be around forever, Simone.Simone Collins: But yeah. What, how did we get on India? But those are the reasons why it’s, it’s, it’s Trump’s election. It’s Trudeau. It’s Modi and Israel. It’s, it is the widespread phone access and it is H one B visas is in the United States, and it is the [01:16:00] influencers showing bad stuff well unflattering stuff.And that is why the Indian hate.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. Well, I might see we have a second episode in this, one of you just going off on Indians.Simone Collins: No, no, that’s, that’s just for the, that’s for the, I hear you. People who have problems with India, people because. Okay. Message received. Oh my god, guys. Wow.Malcolm Collins: Simone. Simone, when you present her with data is very open to it.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I’m autistic. Pe people are somehow surprised when they like, make ironic comments and I just take them at face value.Malcolm Collins: AmSimone Collins: I doing for what you expect?Malcolm Collins: What am I doing for dinner tonight? Simon? Mom?Simone Collins: So you can choose to take a, take a roulette roll on whether or not you’re gonna get food poisoning from the fairly old curry that has been sitting in the fridge for two nights while, oh, I’ll get foodMalcolm Collins: poisoning for that.I’m sorry. We,Simone Collins: let’s not, let’s not. So then, would you like to have gizo lasagna, or would you like to have [01:17:00] some new curry with coconut milk? Like from the freezer youMalcolm Collins: mean? The, the, the lasagna. Dumplings you made?Simone Collins: Yeah. Lasagna. Dumplings.Malcolm Collins: Oh, lasagna. Dumplings.Simone Collins: So do you want one ramekin of lasagna dumpling plus edamame?Or would you like to have two ramekins? ‘cause you’re hungry.Malcolm Collins: One ramekin plus edamame.Simone Collins: Hi. You will have it, it will be yours. I go, I’dMalcolm Collins: love uts. I’m gonna, I’m gonna go pick up beer. So do you want anything from Redners or anything like that?Simone Collins: There is some medication for one of our kids at CVS. I will text you. The child is it urgent? No, not really. LikeMalcolm Collins: within this week You need it?Simone Collins: Yeah. Like within the next seven days. Yeah, but I mean, okay. No big deal.Malcolm Collins: All right.Simone Collins: Love you. And I love you too. IMalcolm Collins: wanna get more coding done because I had a cool idea for how I can improve the website significantly.Simone Collins: Okay. Well then do you want me to bring dinner to your room?Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. I’m coming down. I wanna spend aSimone Collins: little minute. When you come down, [01:18:00] the kids just assault you. I don’t, I don’t know how you can eat food while like five children are climbing on your shouldersMalcolm Collins: point. That’s the point.Simone Collins: Can you taste your food with that amount of sensory input?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. The kids, they’re, they’re very loving. That’s how they show that they love me.Simone Collins: It is how they show that. I mean, yeah. It’s not like they’re angry at you. They’re punching is their love language.Malcolm Collins: Well, I’ve learned, I think in a lot of cultures it probably is, or at least for our ancestors, it was, you know, I think we live in the society where you, you se you separate violence from love and in our family, because we don’t tell them.That’s not how you show love. It is just a, a louder way to scream a hug. Is to hit somebody to jump on the, to climbSimone Collins: on them. Oh yeah. Please chime in, in the comments if euphoric screaming is a thing that your kids do, but then I mean, just like standing there and like head thrown back and just Yay.Yeah. Like not, yeah. Sometimes just [01:19:00] screams, sometimes battle cries. Is this a,Malcolm Collins: is this a thing? They are the descendants of little picks. They, they, they’re little monsters.Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, I I, I, I want to know other children do this, butMalcolm Collins: I, I, I will say that like when I grew up, I remember. In my culture, it is normal to show affection through like wrestling, hitting, et cetera.Yeah. Like lightly, people need to understand this isn’t like designed to hurt when they do it with their siblings. They scale it depending on the age of the sibling.Simone Collins: Mm.No, they’re really, they’re really good at, at Yeah. Modulating the force of their,Malcolm Collins: I I haven’t seen it in other cultures at the same rate, like specifically the otherSimone Collins: culture.Well really this, where did the male, the, the adult to a, the adolescent to adult male butt slap come from in like in sports?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’sSimone Collins: true. Where did that come from? This come from? Like,Malcolm Collins: it’sSimone Collins: clearly a signMalcolm Collins: of affection. Mind you,Simone Collins: yeah. It’s a sign of [01:20:00] affection. It’s, it’s considered masculine.Sohas anyone slapped your butt? That’s a amazing,Malcolm Collins: No, that was, that was today, sorry. I mean, sorry.Simone Collins: Today. Today, not, not from our family. I know. I butt all the time,Malcolm Collins: flat my butt repeatedly today and thought it was very funny.Simone Collins: No, that’s a, that’s a universal thing in ourMalcolm Collins: household. I get spanked by my kids.People think I spank my kids, I get fainted.Simone Collins: No, they, they actually, they do that to everyone. But you’re, you’re lucky that your clothes are on. ‘cause like the, the thing that the kids do is, like, the rule of the house is if there’s an exposed butt cheek, it has to be slapped. And so like bath time gets really difficult ‘cause like if I undress one of the children as I’m trying to like hose them off in quick succession there’s just a quick like, has to like dive in and like bongo on the butt cheeks while they’re like fully dressed.And if I’m like showering one. With like the [01:21:00] detached shower head hose. Then the other one gets total and all their clothes get soaked. And now I’m like, oh my God, what have you done? But they’re like, it’s like they, they, they realize that they’re getting points for it or something. It’s like a competitive thing.I just,Malcolm Collins: the culture that is organically formed within our family horrific shows, shows when you do not try to conform to societal norms and just go as whatever your evolution tells you.Simone Collins: So fun though. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It’s a lot of fun, first of all.Simone Collins: No, it, it’s like a perpetual frat house party. Without the hangovers, it’s right.It really feels like, like our house sounds like a frat party.Malcolm Collins: Oh, constantly. Yeah. Like when we lock the kids in downstairs, it’s like, okay, we’re gonna run bam, bamSimone Collins: are shaking.You have bedtime so called bedtime me. Trust me. Yeah. [01:22:00] Yeah. Trust me, they, they, yeah, they’ve convergently evolved exorcism and, and trust me bro. So it’s great. Okay. Well I will work on your Giza and. This isMalcolm Collins: something I’m really excited to because we, I really hope that we can donate one of our embryos to a family.But I am really excited to see what would happen if one of a kid from our embryos grows up in a family from a different cultural background. Like, are they going to adapt to that cultural background? I suspect they wouldSimone Collins: 100%. I think that depending on the cultural back, the, the cultural background of the scenario we’re considering is,Malcolm Collins: would beSimone Collins: pretty compatible.Culturally rich, very structured, and our kids would fricking love that. Our kids want more structure. Our kids want more intellectual engagement. And I mean, our, our house is better suited for the intellectual engagement of, I would say like [01:23:00] kids nine and above.Malcolm Collins: When youSimone Collins: sayMalcolm Collins: intellectual engagement, do you mean chicken obsession?Because right now everything’s about chickens.Simone Collins: I gotta pick up chicks, tractor supply. I’ve been calling them daily. They don’t know when they’re gonna come in. Anyway. I love you. Good night. Goodbye. It’s been a pleasure. Now we’re gonna be called racist again. Great. This is my fault for, sorry for steelMalcolm Collins: manning.Simone Collins: I, I don’t I give up, I give up. I give up. Just I’m, I’m a trash human. Goodbye. Good night.Titan Collins: To Indy. This is George. Is that your middle name? Oh my gosh. He lived in Africa. He was a good little monkey and always very pure. What are on? My beautiful one,one day. A man.Speaker 5: What’s this?Titan Collins: A largeSpeaker 6: yellowTitan Collins: straw.Speaker 6: TheTitan Collins: man Dodge George. Nice little.Speaker 5: Why are there, what’s inside of it?[01:24:00]We are almost the same. The rat had been on the man’s head. George thought it would be nice to have it on his own head. He picked it up and put it on. Do you guys like this story? Yep. Yeah, that covered George’s head. He couldn’t. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with Leaflit Mitsuha (slime-girl VTuber, guild receptionist, and master worldbuilder) for a deep dive into her massive collaborative TTRPG universe in the Lyrian Chronicles / Angel’s Sword RPG.From 10+ years of running campaigns born out of depression, to building a live-service West Marches-style canon campaign with 140+ players, to magic systems, corrupted zones, divine power through belief, player-driven politics, fiend drama, and how AI is supercharging communal storytelling — this is one of the nerdiest, most optimistic conversations we’ve ever had.We explore how online communities are prototyping the future of entertainment, why “cringe but free” vitalism beats shame culture, the power of shared worlds vs. solo gaming, and why asynchronous friendships and player agency matter more than ever.If you love worldbuilding, anime-inspired lore, tabletop RPGs, VTubers, AI creativity, or just watching smart people geek out — this one’s for you.The game can be found at:https://rpg.angelssword.com/If you’re interested in joining the Mirane Campaign you can find it on the Patreon for the game (This is how they fund development, since it’s free to play):https://www.patreon.com/c/angelsswordrpg/homeEpisode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Prefer it?Malcolm Collins: No, actually this is what, so I was just saying that Leaflet is like one of my top three sources of news, and Simone was like, this is the way news should be. And like if you had told me as a young man, well when you grow up, you see it turns out the New York Times, nobody trusted anymore. You know, you, you go to, uh, wall Street Journal, nobody trusted anymore Uhhuh.But you see there’s like these anime characters online and um, a lot of people really trust them. Not, not only that. And it’s like, oh, what, what’s their credentials? Like, how does everybody know that they, you know, are they like work correspondence or something? And it’s like, no, it’s just like everybody starts lying.And so like the five people who aren’t like everybody takes super seriously.Simone Collins: Yeah. Basically. AndMalcolm Collins: they’re just like, that sounds. Insane. And it is like, no, no, no, it’s weirder. You see, it turns out that like the type of music you listen to is going to regularly feature these random anime characters. [00:01:00]Leaflit: Oh, God.Oh. Like the whole, like sky, like,Malcolm Collins: oh, it’s so funny. Leaf flip. We had, uh, one of our kids, uh, who’s watching Sky, because I, I play Sky Browns all the time while I’m working or whatever. I, I like his songs. Yeah, I think they’re pretty good. Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, you know, and so our daughter likes to identify with every female character she sees.Yeah. So she goes, oh, that’s me. And usually I’m like, okay, yeah, sure, yeah, that’s you. Um, and this, I was like, oh no, actually, uh, that’s one of my friends and one of our older kids was like, wait, one of your friends that’s like an an, that’s like a, an animated character. She goes, those aren’t real. And I’m like, well, okay.So this is a, this is gonna take a little bit of time to explain, uh, but sometimes. They’re real. Uh, Simone, what’s his, uh, sign on the screen? Is this something we can get rid of? Uh,Leaflit: the live,Simone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: live view. Why? Why does it think we’re live?Leaflit: I don’t know.Simone Collins: [00:02:00] I don’t know. But we’re not there. It’s gone. I’ve made it disappear.Everything’s going to be okay now.Malcolm Collins: I invented a new dish today, which is actually pretty good. Um, oh, what’s that? So mac and cheese is extra pepper, like black pepper,Leaflit: uhhuh.Malcolm Collins: It actually works really well.Simone Collins: I think it’s done a lot at restaurants as it is.Malcolm Collins: What made me realize this is a lot of like Asian dishes that you’ve been making recently.Just use obscene amounts of black pepper. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, like pepper chicken and stuff like that. I was like, why, why, why don’t I do this with everything?Simone Collins: Why not?Malcolm Collins: It’sSimone Collins: doable. Okay.Leaflit: Good flavor when it’s freshly cracked and stuff.Malcolm Collins: But the reason I’m so excited to talk with Leaflet today, ‘cause the first time we talked with her, apparently it was like your first time talking to somebody else.Sorry for you. I should, uh, give some context. So Leaflet is, um, quickly growing in influence. I think she’ll soon be, I mean, just based on my viewing it, I think she’ll soon be one of the sort of [00:03:00] dominant right-wing streamers, um, oh geez. In terms of like interesting ideas. Um, and we brought her on ages ago.Um, and, uh, since then she’s gone on all the channels. She’s always on the, uh, the, the side scrollers.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: side scrollers and stuff like that. Um, and she’s always on ev every Sky Brow video, every one of the Sky Brow videos. It’s like three F-ing leaflet appearances. If I could have as much mental space as somebody’s ring.Um, and, uh, if you guys wereLeaflit: on too.Malcolm Collins: He did. He did one with us. One with us, yeah. Um,Leaflit: was it the Creamy Majaro one?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Creamy Majaro.Leaflit: That was the best one. That was my favorite one.Malcolm Collins: Oh. I really like the Amelia one.Leaflit: I like that one too. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Um, but what I wanted to do is this video, so for all our friends who are coming here to learn something about the world, because I was like, how was it weird that, uh, you’re one of my major sources new?No, no, no. I don’t wanna do that in this video. I wanna focus on like nerd stuff specifically.Leaflit: Sure.Malcolm Collins: So I want to focus on, [00:04:00] because when I first heard that like you had built a worldLeaflit: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I asked you about it last time. I think you were a little, like, you didn’t, you, you probably were like, somebody doesn’t actually want all the lore.And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.Simone Collins: You were still working on it though. I don’t think it had gone live yet.Leaflit: Yeah. It’s, it’s out now and it’s grown a lot since then. Like we have over like. 140 players now.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.Leaflit: But like, that’s not like players who are playing in, you know, with their friends and whatever.This is like one campaign. You imagine like one tabletop,Malcolm Collins: one camp. Explain campaign how this works. One, sorry. Okay, so I need to zoom back for the audience here. Okay. So, um, there, it’s like tabletop gaming, um. Mm-hmm. And, uh, tabletop gaming happens in like, d and d is the most famous example. You got pathfinders, all that.Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Um, and sometimes people will create their own, uh, lore in worlds. Um, and that is what she has done. But it [00:05:00] appears that somehow you created like an MMO version of tabletop gaming. So explain.Leaflit: Sure. I can. So it, you know, it started off, uh, I was running this campaign for like, such a long time. Like I, I looked and I was like.I had like, what, 14,000 hours or something and like, roll 20. Yeah. I, I’m like crazy. So like, no, it’s a good kind of crazy this, I went through some really, really bad times in my life and I was like super depressed. I didn’t like do anything. And all I did was tabletop. I was like, I’m just gonna play tabletop, go sleep, wake up, play, play tabletop.So all of that stuff, and like translated into the YouTuber stuff and the company and all the stuff that we do is like, based on that. So like, that campaign has been running for that long, like over 10 years. Yeah. It’s soSimone Collins: cool. I mean, it’s not cool that you were like in a dark place. Oh no, it’s fine. It sounds like, it sounds like a, a show’s plot.Like, you know, girl gets depressed and then like literally falls into an alternate universe and it’s a little zaki and like that is, and [00:06:00] then like becomes like an internet celebrity and then it’s straight out of like a show plot. And then I didn’tLeaflit: like expect any of this. Like if, if you told me like.Years ago that I would be doing this, I’d be like, you’re crazy.Malcolm Collins: That is. Okay. So I wanna dig into how this came to be this world, but I also wanna get into like, because I watch, so for Boo who don’t know, like the content that I’m familiar with from her is from YouTube and it’s a fan of hers who clips it and she sort of shares it 50 50 with the fan, um, and, uh, puts together her YouTube.But what that means is I don’t get all of the lore and backstories to your characters mm-hmm. To your world. Like, okay. Brief question just to start.Leaflit: Sure.Malcolm Collins: What’s the difference between the Goo Girl character and the character you are Nower and are they actually the same character? Character? Is it sort of like a same Okay, so it’s a slime.Okay. Yeah, yeah. Reincarnated slime is, is one of my favorite is Kai. So, um, oh,Leaflit: me too. Me too. [00:07:00]Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. Okay. I’mLeaflit: a slime girl. Right. So like, the, the, the story is that. My character is half slime. So my character’s dad is a slime and my character’s mom is a fay. And there’s like an entire, like this all came up because like years ago when I was running this campaign for so long, right?Mm-hmm.One of the players was like, but what if I wanna have a kid in games? Like what happens if like, I’m a cat folk and my wife is a slime. And so like, I was like, damnit. So like now I had to like write all of this lore bin and it ended up being used for this to like make my character. So my character is technically, her race is kymera, which is like magically mutated biological thing.So like for instance, a cat folk would be a kymera, but they would be of the cat folk, like. Type, like subspecies type, right? And even with them that there’s even two different like phenotypes. There’s like the lyth [00:08:00] and the Zo lith, which is like, so the difference would be like if you had a, a rat girl versus like a caven,Malcolm Collins: sorry.First of all, one of my favorite things about this conversation, if there was a huge population on the internet who sees both of us as right-wing extremists, and this is a conversation that to the internet right wing extremists, they having, it’s like, well, you’ve got the chimera of the cat girl. Um, no.Okay, so, so it, your character came out of an individual play session that you were playing.Leaflit: She’s an NPC. So, okay, so, so she’s not even my oc That’s a funny thing. What? Yeah, she’s not So this cha So when I was making my V YouTuber character, I was like, well, I don’t really wanna be like the girl. I wanna be like.Just some random villager office lady. And that’s what Leaflet is, is she’s like the guild receptionist of the Guild. So the player character, I’m DMing the game, the player characters, [00:09:00] they went through this really, really long campaign. They ended defeating the big bad. Mm-hmm. And they’re settling down.They’re like, let’s make an adventuring guild. Right. So they found the Adventuring Guild and my character is the receptionist of the Guild. So I’m not even like a main character or anything like that.Malcolm Collins: No. I actually really like this, um, as, as a world that was created by the Adventuring Guild receptionist.Leaflit: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Sounds very fitting for like an anime. Um, yeah. Uh, have you, have you watched the one about the Adventure Guild receptionist?Leaflit: I have not. Is that the one where she’s really powerful?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah.Leaflit: Yeah. I haven’t seen it yet. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It’s actually, it’s decent. It’s decent. Um, okay. So, uh. You when you were playing this particular campaign, was this in your world or was this before your world existed?Leaflit: All of it is the same world ever since the first one. So there’s been like different timelines, like some take place like thousands of years in the past, but it’s all one continuous world. [00:10:00]Malcolm Collins: Okay.Leaflit: And go ahead.Malcolm Collins: No, continue. Um, I wanna keep hearing, well you, you have multiple campaigns that you place in different times.First I gotta hear about the logistics. How do you do this many people in one campaign?Leaflit: Oh, you’re talking about that one? So that one is the newest one. So that’s the 10th campaign. I think it’s the 10th one. And so what happened is we, we, we developed this, this RPG, right? The tabletop RPG. And we released, we released it like the system’s out like an alpha, like anyone can play it for free.It, it’s kind of like imagine Dungeons and Dragons. But the difference is the rules are online, so anybody can play it. There’s no fee. And then. It updates every two weeks, two to three weeks. So we have like patches. So it is, I hate to use the term, but it’s like a live service tabletop, RRP G kind of.Malcolm Collins: That’s actually really interesting. Okay. So if I understand this correctly, people play individual campaigns with small groups.Leaflit: Yes.Malcolm Collins: But what’s politically happening in the world Change, like politically GI don’t know what you call it, but like that’s changing as they’re playing.Leaflit: Okay. So, so [00:11:00] it goes like this.So, you know, we have, we have, we have the game, we have the live service thing, right? And what happened was is as we were playing this, we were like, we don’t have enough people testing the game. And mm-hmm. Somebody was like, well, have you heard of West Marshes? You know what West Marches is?Malcolm Collins: No.Leaflit: Okay. So like, have you heard of West Marshes?And what West Marches is, it’s a format of tabletop RPGs where you have all of these individual parties. And, and they can do whatever they want in this world, but then like what they do like actually affects things that other parties see. So like what happened was we were like, what if we do that like a canon campaign where players can feel like they’re actually a part of like the leaflet world and the leaflet lore, and then they can affect the world.So like, we’re like, okay, so let me sit down and like make a setting for it. And what we invented was a setting separated from the main continents. Like where a leaflet lives right now is like a different, that’s like the main area. Okay. And then we separated off. So there’s this, there’s this concept in the story.Um, there’s a place called the Astro Line, and it’s basically like. [00:12:00] Imagine like the equator, but it’s just giant, like irradiated zone. It’s like magic is messed up there. Yeah. And it corrupts stuff, right? So these adventures are basically, and normally you have to be a really high level adventure to go there ‘cause they don’t want people going there.Mm-hmm. But this person set up like this kind of bootleg village where they’re like, okay, anybody that wants to go in, like, you know, you could come here and then like, there’s a way to get in there. Right? So the players are those people, they’re like the, the, we’re not official adventurers, but like, you know, screw it, we’re gonna go in there and uh, we’re gonna look and whatever reason.So like some players are like,Malcolm Collins: so what makesLeaflit: theMalcolm Collins: line irradiated? Like, what makes it dangerous?Leaflit: Okay. So it’s a little bit, okay, there was an event that happened in the game in previous things and it caused an event in which this happened. I can’t really say it because it’s like, it’s a spoiler and like everybody’s trying to figure that out right now.Malcolm Collins: Oh. Oh. All of that’s awesome. Okay. [00:13:00] Okay. Okay. I can tell you later though.Leaflit: Off,Malcolm Collins: off camera. In what way is it, so you, you call it a radio. I guess what I’m trying to find out is like what makes it hostile feeling? Is it like unusual numbers of monsters, mana, sapping? Like what’s the thing that makes it dangerous?Leaflit: So like this force is called asra and it’s a type of magic. So there’s like the different types of magic. Okay. Astro’s like the least understood one. And what it does is it tends to just make weird effects, but the, the biggest effect that it has that’s bad is that it will sometimes corrupt a thing and it doesn’t have, I mean this is the thing, it doesn’t have to be a biological thing.Like it could be like, it could be, but it could also be like a house or like, and are you familiar with SCP? It’s kind of like that.Malcolm Collins: The SEP foundation? Yes. Like. Yeah, we, we talked about, that was the thing I talked to you about where they make up all the monsters.Leaflit: Yeah, yeah, yeah. AndMalcolm Collins: they have the entire lo and it’s so cool.Leaflit: Oh,yes.Okay.Malcolm Collins: It’s actually most recently, I love watching SEP lore videos. Um,Leaflit: [00:14:00] yeah. It’s similar to that. So like, things get corrupted, so likeMalcolm Collins: Yeah.Leaflit: A, a house for instance, or like a, like one of the, the big dangerous ones is a mirror. Okay. And there’s like this mirror and like, it’s just a corrupted mirror and it’s the corrupted concept of a mirror.So it’s like, rather than being like a creature that like stands up and attacks you. It. Like if you look into it, it like corrupts you basically.Simone Collins: Our kids are gonna be, become obsessed with this as soon as they get like literate.Malcolm Collins: I’m actually almost more interested in how, so it sounds like the way you developed your universe, if I’m if I’m wrong here, is you started, uh, just sort of building on it as you played session after session and then new things get added.It reminds me of, um, in somebody as I described, like modern Judaism as a bit like this mm-hmm. That it’s just been around forever. And then people added new things, new things, new things. And now when you look at like Orthodox Jews, it’s like fashion trends from like two different centuries all implanted on top of each other.Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Uh, not, not too, too [00:15:00] millennia, like, and we’re just gonna, uh, because when you’re like different types of magic.Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Okay. First of all, I wanna know about the different types of ma likeLeaflit: Sure.Malcolm Collins: Let’s zoom into that. Yeah.Leaflit: All right. Sure, sure. Of course. So like the, um, I love this by the way. Like I, I, I sometimes use this on stream.I just, I just nerd out about Lauren. Like, like people ask because the people that play the game wanna know, and they’re like, oh, it’s time, it’s time for the leaflet lo session time to like, time to figure out stuff that she won’t tell us, right? Try time bait her into telling us stuff. But, uh, so there’s like arcane magic, and that’s like the, that’s like your typical understanding of like sort of science magic, where like they have an understanding that there’s like this energy force and then like they could take the energy force into themselves and then program it and then use that to like, use magical effects.And the extension of that is called arteris, which is if you, you know, arteris, but basically mm-hmm. It’s taking that programming but making a circuit that goes into an item so that it can, you can put the manna into the item [00:16:00] and it like follows that exact circuit, which allows non-PE casters to cast. So like in the world, like everybody uses magic, like even like fighters.Like they would like have a sword that has like that circuit in it and they would all use magic that way.Malcolm Collins: So I, I, um,Simone Collins: first off, no, I just have to say this is really annoying to me. Have you heard of Harry Potter in the methods of rationality?Leaflit: No, I have not.Simone Collins: Okay. It’s basically Harry Potter fan fiction. It was like, well, what if we took you, my guy?Yeah. He’s, he’s an, he’s an AI dor now, but like, I mean, this is one of the things that made him famous and what was really fun was this premise of like, what if someone just really thoughtful took this wizard universe and was like, okay, well what if we like, apply some more like principles of basic physics to this and stuff like that.But he doesn’t really follow through with it. Uh, and what I, well what I’m hearing here is you’re like, well, what have we like actually thought through how like this magic would work and how we could apply it to, to objects and like how in a real world non magical people would start to leverage it. And, and like,Malcolm Collins: well, I [00:17:00] have, um, fans who don’t know this.If you, if you have, if you’re on our like subscriber, I have a number of stories that I’ve played out with like mm-hmm. Uh, the, the site that we run reality fabricate where I try to go through like different magical universes. Um, but, okay, so now I’m immediately interested in if this can, so this system, where does magic come from and how can it be stored?Leaflit: So there’s two ways. One, people natural, there’s like a biological magic container that people can have. Okay. And then the other form is as fuel. So like they can create like a distilled magical fuel. So these, like items I’m telling you about, they use like cartridges that, like, people put like a, like a bullet in it, but it’s like a ma it’s like just a fuel canister.We’ll put it in. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I, I should, I should be more direct about what I’m trying to do. So what I love doing in these universes mm-hmm. Is try to figure out how their physics work to find out how I can exploit them to become extremely powerful. So what I’m asking here is, uh, if I wanted to fill up a canister of magic in your universe.Mm-hmm. [00:18:00] Right? Yeah. Um, where, like, what’s the process for that?Leaflit: Um, basically, so right now the main way to get it is to mine like, it’s like a fossil fuel is people will mine like a fossil fuel of magic.Malcolm Collins: Clever way to not make it easily breakable. So it’s not something I could take from captives. It’s not something I can take from an environment.I need to literally mine it.Leaflit: So the funny thing is, is there was a way to do this. Um, so one system that we have is this thing called Divine Arms. Have you watched a Comic A Kill?Malcolm Collins: Uh, which one is that? I, I I,Leaflit: the one with assassins and like, they wanna take down the government and then they have these, these weapons that like nobody understands how they were made.Malcolm Collins: Um, is, you’re not talking about Cleta, right? So No, no, I haven’t watched that one.Leaflit: So basically there’s these ancient weapons that nobody knows how they’re made or what they’re made out of, [00:19:00] and the methods of their creation aren’t understood. And there was one that did this, that basically converted people’s lives into like bullets.So they would like shoot all their countries with them like an artillery. But it got blown up recently, but someone’s trying to rebuild it. But that’s a little, that’s a, that’s another story.Malcolm Collins: Wait, oh, hold on. So, okay. So is, is there any understanding in the universe of why this thing that they’re mining has this power?Leaflit: Um, it’s basically like, like fossil fuels. It’s like as things die and they have like magic in them that like, kind of distills into like rocks and like different things that they can, they can mine up. And then like, liquefyMalcolm Collins: clever. I likeSimone Collins: biological being, can produce magic that maybe like there’s something in them that when die, they die.Like, yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah.Leaflit: All of the types of magic Yeah. That, that exists.Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s pretty, uh, you know, if I was making this universe, uh, the twist I would [00:20:00] use is that it turns out that this is actually their souls that people are burning through. Like, it’sLeaflit: like, that’s a different magic.Malcolm Collins: That is, okay, go over thisLeaflit: kind of, so like, that’s how divine magic works in a setting.So divine magic is the idea that if you believe in something, a piece of you goes to that. So like, oh, fun. Oh, so like verySimone Collins: like Neil Gaman American Gods.Leaflit: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Kind of like that. It doesn’t really matter what it is too, right? Like if it’s a concept you believe in, it would like send like some of that energy of your soul to that, whether that’s a god or even a hero, right?Then that’s how like, heroes are so powerful. It’s like so many people like love them.Malcolm Collins: Does it burn your life force to use this form of magic?Leaflit: Um, it’s kind of like a finite amount, so it doesn’t like kill you. At least in the normal sense, like the typical sense.Malcolm Collins: Did you ever see, I I, I don’t know. I know this is a deep, I think [00:21:00] it’s called Krono Trigger or something, the anime where the character like loses their life lifespan every time they use magic.Leaflit: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I kept expecting the entire thing. I was like, they’re not actually gonna have her die young. Like there’s gonna be some reversal before the end of the anime.Leaflit: Wasn’t that ending amazing? It was like theMalcolm Collins: best No. That ending was like what? The, you had her die as like a child. Like, what? I did not, there’s, there’s, there’s not consequences to this type of magic in most.Leaflit: I loved it. I loved, I loved how they actually stuck that ending. ‘cause like most people with chickened out.Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. Bring backLeaflit: consequences.Malcolm Collins: 100% believed they were going to chicken out. I didn’t have the slightest. There was no part of my brain that throughout the entire anime thought that she was just going to die after the big bad, like being held by her best friend.Right. Like, I was like, what? You had set them up as like lovers and they’re still children.Leaflit: This is the way it happened was so good too. Like, just [00:22:00] like the, the final scene of it, like, man, it was, it was good. It was a good one. Yeah. Oh, one thing you might like about the magic, like in like relation to the world is, so ad adventuring is like, think of a, the wor word.Adventuring when they think of an adventure or someone who like, you know, the concept of like adventuring guild and you get like ranks and stuff like that. Yeah. The, the original concept of that was. Um, is a fighting style called that was built around that. Okay. And it’s people that are able to use their internal magic to like augment their muscles.And that’s like the basics of that. Okay. And this is why like everyone in the setting, like e like even like the level one characters can like jump like three stories and they can like instantly teleport behind you and stuff like that using like their magic, right? And the original story, so this is like actually canon in the lore, is that there was a character who was a girl and she [00:23:00] had a dad who was like this expedition.He was like going on grand adventures, right? And the daughter really wanted to go with him, but it got to a point where like her dad was like, okay, like. You stay at home, you, you can’t do any of this. Right. Yeah. And then like, he would take her brothers and she got so upset by this, that like, and her mom was like a maid.So her mom would teach her like, oh, like, here’s like magic for like how to heat up water. Here’s magic, how to do this stuff. Right? And eventually she was the first person who founded the ability to like, augment your muscles, the magic. And that’s the explanation of why female player characters can actually fight men.Malcolm Collins: I, that’s needed, that’s being needed in a setting. I’m, I’m actually sorry. I love this is, this is why first, I, I just can’t help but thinking in so many people’s minds, these are two like far right comments that are talking, you learning out about like old anime, but then two, it’s like you come up with explanations for stuff mm-hmm.That the mainstream creators are not coming up with. You have like a d and d campaign or [00:24:00] whatever, and a female’s just as strong as a male and a female isn’t as strong as a male. I mean, it’s, it’sLeaflit: not, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right. And so you’re like, no, we have an explanation of that. Yeah. But the other thing, um, so I wanna go deeper because I wanna find out how this system can be broken.Okay. Explain to me the different types of magic.Leaflit: Okay. So there’s like the divine magic, which is the one I talked about.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’d be harder to explore. You could try to create a culture something. Mm-hmm. It wouldn’t really be, which theyLeaflit: have done, people have done thatMalcolm Collins: actually. Can you use divine magic to manipulate people’s minds?Leaflit: To manipulate people’s minds? I mean, I guess you could use any magic to do that.Malcolm Collins: Well, if you can use divine magic to do that, you can create a cascade, right? Mm-hmm. So if you can, uh, like use the divine magic that you have to get people to worship a certain concept and then draw power from the concept, you’re having them worship, you could create a cascade.But, uh, that, that [00:25:00] seems hard. Like the mining one. What I, what I’m impressed about, about your world is I can’t think of many ways to exploit the magic. So I hear about,Leaflit: well, because you have to work on it, because Yeah, like, as I was DMing this stuff, right? So like all of this, it wasn’t something I planned out.I was like, I wrote, I, I sat down and I was like, okay, I’m gonna do this, this, this, this, this, this. And this is like how this system works. It was like me playing with players, right? And again, like this goes back to like a time when I was like really, really depressed. Yeah. So you have to imagine I would like run 18 hours.I would sleep, eat, run 18 hours. That was like my schedule. Right. And, and so I didn’t even have time to prep for the games. Right. So a lot of it was reactive based on like, players trying to do some b******t and then like would have to like, okay, well how do I, how do I, how do I write myself out of this?Right.Malcolm Collins: I know what’s so funny is George RR Martin has been working on the last book for like, for however many years, and you’re forced to like, write new volumes every time you go in. Okay.Leaflit: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So I, I wanna understand the, uh, [00:26:00] body manipulation magic. What is the source of that magic?Leaflit: The body mini, you mean likeMalcolm Collins: the stuff that’s used to make people physically more powerful?Like, is that the same with the artifice or magic, or is that something different?Leaflit: It’s the regular arcane magic. So it’s like the, the ambient like force, I guess it’s like magic just exists in the world. It’s like ambient.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Leaflit: Of different levels. Not like the same level everywhere. Yeah. And people have a thing called a soul core, which stores all their magic.Malcolm Collins: So you can store magic from the ambient magic level.Leaflit: Yeah, but it’s, it’s, it’s capped as to like your, there’s like a search in like maximum. Okay. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: You can’t, can, you can’t, can you store it in any external object?Leaflit: Mm. Some people can, but it’s still reliant on magic to activate. It’s like the, the biggest loophole here would be like, probably umo.Geez. Like they have, like, they can Yeah. Imbue their [00:27:00] magic into ink and then write like talismans that like have a spell effect. It’s like, but then they also have to use their magic to activate it still. So it’s not really that big Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Of a well set up world. I’m gonna be honest. Well set now. I’m, I’m impressed, uh, that it’s hard.Yeah. Because what I would normally do, if you could do something like that, then what you need to do, like if you’re a Lord or something like that, is use any of this type of character you have captured or mm-hmm. Essentially industrially farm them to create magical scrolls, but if it’s their own magic that’s needed to activate the scroll mm-hmm.Then you can’t use it in any sort of industrial capacity.Leaflit: Mm-hmm. One thing it might be, what, what might be interesting, like if, if you wanna know this about divine magic, is that like, if it’s a God, like the concept of a God, that is, there’s a container for it, so you can actually kill the God and like take their container.Mm. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And whatLeaflit: [00:28:00] could you do with it? Nobody knows about, but I I, I they’ll find out now, but it’s whatever.Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s amazing. You’re dropping law here. No. Um, so there is, um, one of my favorite things about the war hammer universe. Are you, do you, do you like follow the war of like war hammer 40 K and stuff?Leaflit: A little bit. Like, I’m not like super deep in it, but I, I know like a little bit of itMalcolm Collins: is they took the concept, um, and this, this is why I like it. So they took the, I I, I actually have never read a single war hammer book in my entire life. I have only watched lore videos. Um, but they took the concept of.Well, if you worship something similar to your universe, like if you worship a, a God or a concept or have a feeling mm-hmm. Um, that, that creates a divine entity of that type. Yes. And what what is funny is a lot of like hippies beliefs, this, they’re like, well, all gods and all religions are true in so far as like people believe in them, right?Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And then it takes this, and it’s like, and [00:29:00] if that was the case, it would actually be really horrible because what would happen is the most basal concepts like a fear of death would get feedback loops where like, the God that was manifested by that fear would want to create more of that fear to manifest himself further.Uh, you get like the God of eroticism, the fear of death, like all of the most basic things. Um, but it doesn’t sound like that’s a problem in your universe because it sounds like these are not like active thinking entities that are, that would want to like empower themselves further.Leaflit: Yes. Well, one thing I will say is that.That ties in, that whole thing being bad ties, ties into what I told you about is like what caused the big irradiated zone.Ohyeah. So if you think about it, right, like I’m sure you can piece together.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. Okay. So what are the major political events in, in the world right now that like players are thinking about, that are changing, that are exciting people?Leaflit: So, there’s, [00:30:00] there’s two right now. There’s the, there’s the novel, the Light Novel, which is a civil war in like one of the countries. But the big political one right now is Moran, like the, the campaign has all the people playing in it.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Leaflit: So there are a bunch of people that live in like this. This town called Mera.Okay. And it is like a base that was set up kind of out in the middle of nowhere. And typically people can’t go there ‘cause there’s a big tundra before you get there. So it’s really hard to get there. Most people, like, there’s also, the other thing too is we had to, so there’s airships in the setting, but airships, they, they only really, they float on like magic lay lines.So like, if there’s no lay line, you can’t put, you can’t just like put a ship there. It would be really, really hard to like fly a ship there. Yeah. So because of that, this tundra has no lay line. So like you can’t just fly it over it. So you’re talking like really, really hard caravans that are going through like, brutal conditions with [00:31:00] like no food or anything like that.SoMalcolm Collins: yeah. So why, why do people go there? Like what’s the adva, is there some resource at this location?Leaflit: It’s to explore the as line, because there’s all sorts of crazy stuff there. Like, there’s new, new resources, new materials, uh, items called, um, Astro Relics, which are like, if you’ve watched Made In Abyss, it’s kind of like similar to that.Or you can find like these crazy, like items that do stuff and it’s like, how is this work? How does this work? And like there’s even a system where like people will will gather these things and submit them for research to like the big like, like academies, like magic academies.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Leaflit: And, uh, different monsters, like different parts, new things like that.Um, they’re all looking for that. But the, the fun thing about is there’s a lot of drama because people have different reasons. Like some people wanna be like researchers, they wanna like understand what Astra is. Mm-hmm. Some people are like, I just want fame and fortune and like, I’m here to like, make tons of money.And some people are like, well, I’m here for my country because I wanna find technology that’ll help my country. So they have all these like [00:32:00] different reasons. And because of that, the players clash a lot. They end up fighting, they end up making their own little factions. And there’s a character who’s like the expedition director.And this character is like a kind of mysterious force. Like nobody knows who they are. No one’s ever seen them. And they actually, there was like a bunch of people thinking that the director was like, evil because the director doesn’t help them. So like they, they’d have like a case in which like there’d be this giant monster just walking around like killing people.And it’s like the newbies would go out and get slaughtered by this monster. And so they have to set up like parties, like, oh, let’s go hunt this thing down. But they’re like, wait a minute. If the director ha is, is this powerful? Why are they not doing anything about it? They must be evil. Right?Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.And it’s likeLeaflit: from my point of, it’s like you just don’t understand like your idea of like the future and your idea of, of what is important. The, the director’s thinking about things on a completely different scale than like you even could [00:33:00] possibly imagine, because from the director’s point of view, if the director helps you all, then you’ll never grow and you’ll suck.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: So it’s like, it’s, it’s kind of fun like to haveMalcolm Collins: that. No, no, that’s also fun. Okay. Has this been established that they are wrong about the director in Universe yet? Or is this like beingLeaflit: a, the, there’s a song sang by the director. So like, okay, so here’s like a whole nother thing. So there was a fan song made.Wait,micro, explain, explain that.Okay. So there’s a concept. So in the game, the way, first I have to explain a little bit about the game. So in the game you have four action points, and you can use this for action points for anything. It’s not like d and d where there’s like move action, like minor major, it’s four.Okay. And the biggest balls thing you could do is called a double heavy attack, which means I’m not doing anything but just attacking. Right? Um, I’m doing two all in attacks that have, I don’t care if it misses, if it hits, I could do big damage, right? It, so it’s like the, the big balls thing to do. [00:34:00] And so a player made a song called Double Heavy Attacks.It’s like a, like a, like a metal song and everyone loves this song, right? And it, it, it kind of became like this huge meme in like the community. Oh mySimone Collins: gosh.Leaflit: So the, I, the concept of double heavy attacks now means a person who. Understands what they want and they go for it all in. That’s what it means. So yeah, we’ve taken this song,Simone Collins: you now have slang.This is so good.Malcolm Collins: You said there was a, the song. Okay. So by the way, for people who are confused as to why something like this is interesting, if you’re just watching this and you’re just like, this seems like weird nerd stuff. Like why is this interesting? Uh, what I consider how media and entertainment are changing the concept of a form of entertainment, of the type that is being described here was genuinely.Impossible, uh, I wanna say two generations ago. [00:35:00] Mm-hmm. Uh, so I, I, it might’ve been possible in the early days of the internet, but it hadn’t been developed to this extent yet. Um, and what we are seeing right now is something that whatever our kids are doing for fun is likely going to be an extrapolation of ideas like this.Mm-hmm. The iterative, interactive elements, um, uh, I, I think are genuinely like anthropologically. Culturally, we are looking at, uh, a, a. You can ignore it and you can say, well, none of this stuff matters because, um, you know, like this is all like urban monoculture, whatever. And it’s like, no, but this is like, this is like actually the, the like internet conservatives who are into this stuff, right?Leaflit: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Um, and uh, people can be like, well then why would, why would they be into it? And the answer I would make is it’s because all of the media [00:36:00] that’s out there, people are like, why do so many conservative influencers watch a ton of anime is because it’s not woke yet. It’s like the one form of media I can watch where like, women are feminine and men are masculine and, uh, I’m not preached to 24 7.It’ll have its own message, but it like, um, and th this is a form of media that because people create it. Communally. And what’s even more interesting than that, it is not created by like a localized friend group. Mm-hmm. It is created by an online friend group. Yeah. And online friend groups and local friend groups have very little in common if you think about the way they actually end up structured.Yeah. Um, local friend groups, you know, the way you look ends up mattering, uh, your, your local social standing, how much money you have, et cetera. Uh, and this can matter in an online friend group if it’s in some like, pay to win scenario or something like that. That’s obviously not what this is. Um, and it’s one of the reasons that if you look at the culture of our era today, I [00:37:00] point out that a lot of, uh, just the culture that we live in, and I’d argue all the way down to Trump originally came from Fortune.Um, brownies came from four chan, memes came from four Chan Trump originally in the primaries. I’m not saying that he won because of four chan, but he was recognized in the primaries because of what was happening there. And that was a totally new type of community where social status was determined in a totally new way.Um, and the way it was determined, because there wasn’t up votes or anything like that, was based on how, uh. How, how much, whatever you said could grab attention. Um, and that meant to be sort of maximally shocking and everything like that, and that defined a generation of cultural output. When you look at what Leaflet is doing now, we might see the prototype of what the next generation of cultural output is going to look like.There are going to be. Potentially, and I’m not saying it’ll happen within [00:38:00] leaflet setting, maybe in 10 years when this is metastasized and you have different groups doing this, um, groups that are potentially so large that ideas and memes that come up within these settings end up affecting, uh, not just like what, like first of all, the four chan could create something like a Brony movement or memes was insane back in the day, but then they could elect a president That changes politics in the United States permanently.Um, so paying attention to these ways that culture is changing and the innovators within this space is not a, like a lark. It’s not like a a, a curious aside. It’s something that anyone who is interested in where society is going is treating as one of the main courses. But to go forward, you mentioned some sort of fanfic.So somebody, people write fanfictions about this and you incorporate themLeaflit: a song. It’s a song. So somebody made a song’sMalcolm Collins: a song. Song is like a fan song. Yeah. Okay.Leaflit: Yeah. The fan song. Double Heavy Attacks. And what we did was we took that. And we started making versions of that song from [00:39:00] all the characters that embodied that idea, but from their own point of view.Yeah. So like the director has a version of the song, but it’s so completely different than the others. ‘cause others are like, I’m gonna go all in, like, you know, for my family and, you know, this is like, I wanna like go on adventures. And she’s like, I want the future to exist. It’s like socompletelydifferent.So great.Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s very, it’s, it’s very funny that, so playtheball.Malcolm Collins: I’m actually, wait, are these sung by real people or are they done by ai?Leaflit: Ai. Ai.Malcolm Collins: Good, good. Well, no, this is the thing about AI and AI and creativity that people don’t get, right? Like, so people are like, oh, AI art, or AI music. So people are born with different capacities, right?Mm-hmm. You know, I might be a smart person, but I was born without any genetic capacity for music or art. I, I try, I just don’t have it, right?Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Now. I can create these things and I, I regularly do it on shows. I make art, I make music, I make, uh, you know, [00:40:00] you created that great one for ASME gold, right?The, uh, the animated song and like theb style. Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: I’ve watched that so many times. It was really well done. Thank you. It was the effort.Malcolm Collins: Um, and a lot of people get surprised. This stuff is coming from content creators who people see as like, like the, we, one of the weirdest things that’s happened in our generation is that, um, ai, this, this, this incredible new technology that came outta nowhere, that for whatever reason, well, we will talk about why the left came out reflexively against it.Um, and the rite has largely in our communities, embraced it. Like we all watch Sky Brown. We all liked, we, we liked these various songs. I liked yours, your Asthma Gold song. Um, and, uh, a lot of people are like, that doesn’t make any f*****g sense. Like, why has this happened? And, and I think the answer is, is because.For so long, the dominant culture in our societies has been able to control us. Mm-hmm. By saying, you should be ashamed of saying things like that. You should be ashamed of [00:41:00] doing things like that. And eventually, uh, the way that people ended up responding was just like, well, if you tell me I should be ashamed, I’m gonna reflexively do the opposite and I’m gonna do the opposite.The most, like in creamy manjaro, he’s talking about AI slop, like the cream of the lop and everything like that, right? Yeah. Like the whole song is joking and riffing on the idea of like, yeah, it’s AI slop, like whatever. Yeah. Um, and because of this, strangely, uh, the, the communities and culture that’s going to be generated of what, you know, the, the, the, the world our kids are going to live in mm-hmm.Is predominantly happening in communities like the ones that you’re, you’re creating. I, I’d love to know like, where else are you using AI in the creation of this universe or, and how the universe is expanding.Leaflit: Everything. So like, we use AI for a lot of our, our art, like when I do sessions myself mm-hmm. I usually make songs that are really [00:42:00] stupid.So like, there’s, there was like one time, uh, the, the party I, I had the encounter where they mm-hmm. There’s this guy who’s just causing all this chaos in the area and they meet this tree, and the tree, the, the person cursed the tree to have a giant wooden, you know, like,yeah, yeah.Just, just, just to mess with him.And I just made it a musical number just for fun. Like, they come out to like this tree and he comes out and he just. I play the song and it’s the tree complaining about everything that happened to him and like, please adventurous, help me with this problem. Like, but like, you couldn’t do that before, right?Like that, there’s no way you could do something like that, right?Malcolm Collins: No. What’s, what’s funny is you describe it as like cringey, but, um, one of the things I’ve pointed out when we talk about cultural anthropology and how the world is changing, if you, I point out that, you know, in the nineties and the eighties, um, [00:43:00] right wing, uh, you know, influencers, politics was sort of defined by this feeling of disgust and like, these are the things that discussed us and therefore they’re bad.And then we learned basically societally, that’s a bad way to do things. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, um. What’s her fa mother? Oh, what is Mother Teresa? Right? Was it her? Yeah. She was like, well, leopards may cause disgust in you, but like they’re still people, right? Like you can’t trust disgust to be an objective measure of morality.Um, and then, uh, you had this dominant culture that came out that was sort of leftist and it said, uh, well, we, we’ll police things through. Um. You know, cringe and things that embarrass you, right? Like this embarrasses you, that embarrasses you. And I think now we’re seeing this flip of that, um, where the new, the new right is sort of defined by vitalism.Like, I don’t care how you wanna police me, I want to be maximally excited about life, excited and maximally having [00:44:00] fun with the life I have. And, uh, anybody who, and, and when you say like, this is cringe, but like I’m leaning into it, what you mean is you’ve created an environment where you’re not afraid of external judgment.What you’re trying to create is whatever is a maximally chaotically fun.Leaflit: I’m cringe, but I am free.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you, you must face the cringe and pass through a very dune, right? Like cringe is mind. That’s,Leaflit: I live now, that’s how I live my life now. I’m cringe, but I’m free. I do whatever I want.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it.Okay. Okay.Simone Collins: GreatMalcolm Collins: feelings. Uh, so by the way, what, what, what do you uses.Leaflit: Uh, yeah, I use, I use suno and, uh, we, we, we use all sorts of AI for everything, like, everything like the art, on, like the, there’s no way that we could, like, we tried, by the way, we, we tried to like, uh, what’s the word? Commission people to do like art.But the thing is our release cycle is like two to three weeks.Simone Collins: [00:45:00] No. In our commissions, we know we ran an, our commission startup. They take foreversometimes.Simone Collins: I mean, we’ve gone through the process of trying to pay artists to do all sorts of things and like make it easier for them and facilitate it. And it still just takes forever.Art takes a long time. It does, it does. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: By, by the way, Malcolm and Simone Lore, for people who don’t know, uh, our first company when we were first, uh, meeting and, and, and doing, when we, we raised VC money for this and everything mm-hmm. Was designed to make inexpensive art commissions of the type that people do on deviant art, like easy for ever average people to do as like a consumer thing.Um, and it, it’s just, it’s interesting. I mean, obviously that it doesn’t exist anymore. Um, but, uh, yeah, there, there isn’t a way to do this with a lot of the ways that people are using ai. They’re like, well, you could be paying an artist. It’s like, I can’t pay an artist to do my daily title card. Like, what are you talking about?Mm-hmm.Leaflit: Exactly. And the funny thing is, is like I get, you know, I get complaints from people on like x like, oh, you hate artist lethal. I’m like. I pay more [00:46:00] on art than you could even possibly imagine. You know? Like I was like, you have no idea. And, and I’ll tell you a little something, uh, in regards to that.Like, so we have for our game, for the, you know, the, uh, the one that has multiplayer a lot of people playing it, right? Yeah. We, I’ve, I’m in contact with like a friend who owns a studio in Tokyo. We had a song produced, we got like a mini orchestra to play it. Uh, we got hired like a really, really good singer to sing it.And, um, yeah, it’s being animated by that, by people that worked on a attack on Titan. So, I mean, like moneyMalcolm Collins: people No, hold on when she told me this. So people who work on a tech on Titan are literally animating. It’s like a, a new intro thing for your world. Yeah. You have an old intro thing that I quite like.Leaflit: Yeah, I can, I can send you the, the song later. The song is so good. Oh my gosh.Malcolm Collins: I got, uh,Simone Collins: yes, please.Malcolm Collins: Jelly. My isSimone Collins: amazing. I think that such a good example though, is that people who condemn use of AI to make art, you know, are like, oh, how dare you. But really, and [00:47:00] the people who I’ve seen use it the most also are spending the mostLeaflit: Yep.Simone Collins: On art and on music because they just, but they can’t, no one else can keep up the pace. And I think it’s very similar with stuff like, um. Just development or even just like phone calls or other stuff that AI is starting to take over. Yeah. It’s the people who need it and just can’t get humans to do it enough.Like we just, no one else can keep up. Mm-hmm. People aren’t replacing humans, they’re just trying to force multiply.Malcolm Collins: Well, I,Leaflit: exactly.Malcolm Collins: I’d also point out that, um, the industries that have been replaced, the first like a, a, a lot of like Hollywood and stuff like this that we’re seeing, they were already basically ais, they were creating the most average slop ever, and that’s why AI was so easily able to replace it.Simone Collins: It’s true. What are, like when, when AI was just coming online, I asked various ais like, well, you know what, what domains will be the final ones left to humans? And they’re like, well for sure therapy and [00:48:00] art will remain the domain of humans. And this is like at the same time that like it was just popping up in those areas the most and it was, oh, I dunno.The new thing in the news just, well, the one thing that AI will never be able to do is, is to have taste, but like, what is taste? I don’t even understand taste. So she makesMalcolm Collins: my dinner with ai. By the way, if you don’t know, like the mainSimone Collins: perplexity makes the, I mean, because I know perplexity blends different models, but it’s the best at distilling recipes.Um, ‘cause now you know, like the internet ruined recipes, you have to scroll for like 10 minutes to get to like the ingredients list if you go off Google.Leaflit: Yeah.Simone Collins: And so just, yeah, we ask perplexity and that is, that is all of Malcolm’s food now.Leaflit: I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s really because you also tailor it to like your taste.Right? You like, I don’t like this specific thing and then I’ll work around it. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s amazing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Wonderful. It goes for you too.Malcolm Collins: Hold on. So you got through one thing that’s happening in this universe. What’s something else is happening in [00:49:00] this universe right now that people are, are paying attention to?Leaflit: Uh, you mean like in the, in the game? Um, yeah,Malcolm Collins: in the game. The game.Leaflit: It’s like the anniversary right now is kind of cool, but, um, it, I, oh, rightMalcolm Collins: now, well, how does the game world recognize its own anniversary? What’s going on with that?Leaflit: Oh, in the game world? Uh, well, in the game world, we just have like festivals.So we just make a festival in the game. Like, oh, there’s like this caravan that’s coming into town and they have all this like, cool stuff and there’s games and, uh, but one of the big things, like one of the big political things that’s what you’re interested in is, um, yeah. So there’s these creatures, I told you already that the SAP is the fis.So the thing about fiends is I have told the players straight up this, this is the hilarious thing. You’re gonna love this. I told them straight up, like I’m telling you right now, as like the head law writer, that all fiends are evil and they want to kill you. Okay. Is what I said. And you know what they’re doing now.Oh, we have this fi shopkeeper and she’s our friend and we’re gonna take her into [00:50:00] the town. By the way, it’sMalcolm Collins: so fry. Fry.Leaflit: Yes. It’s literally fry.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Leaflit: But it’s like, imagine this like on a, like happening again, but with like players and like, I’m telling them as like the universal truth of the universe that can like tell them the the absolute truth that they all want to kill you and they’re still like.Yeah, well this one, like, you know, she trades me stuff. She trades me food for things. So like, you know, she must be like, okay. And they’re like, yeah, we would like to take her into our town and she can set up a shop and then we can trade with her. And I’m just like,Malcolm Collins: this is, this is great. Your building though.No, no, no, it’s great. It’s great. I like it because, you know, if, if, uh, they’re acting like we had an episode recently. Um mm-hmm. Did you, did you play the mass effect series?Leaflit: Uh, I. Is this the one that about the, the warrior people with theMalcolm Collins: Yeah. They made it and I, I, I had a crash out about the genophage. I, I dunno if you remember this plot line, but the Rogan and the Genophage, and I was like, you guys are f*****g idiot.Anyone who cured this. [00:51:00] 96% of players cured the Genophage Rogan’s had a thousand children every year and lived a thousand years. The genophage reduced their birth rate to one in a thousand survive. I said, that means that every Rogan woman only has 800 children. Okay. You are insane if you cure this. They are a violent, belligerent species resistant to small arms fire.Yeah. That destroyed their own planet.Leaflit: Sorry. I I, I re I remember that,Malcolm Collins: but No, but you’re, you’re showing the same thing we haven’t learned in the society.Leaflit: Yeah. I, it’s like them straight up and they’re still doing it. And so what happened is there’s a player faction that is like. We are very anti fiend and we hate them because they are evil and they want to kill us.And then the other guys are like, no, but like, see there’s like a good one here. And they’re like, no, you’re an idiot. And so I’m like, now they’re like fighting. There’s like a internal like battle between like these in character [00:52:00] player factions and it’s likeactually Amazing.Malcolm Collins: That is so fun. So another fun thing for people who are watching this to give you contextualization, our kids or our grandkids, depending on how old you are, are going to be living in environments where, um, they will likely be able to, like when I look at what the future of video games and the internet is going to be, uh, the idea of AI is being able to create fully modeled realities around us.Like putting on a headset and having the AI do that is likely going to be easy for a lot of people, which allows them to explore whatever world, whatever environment they want. And so when you ask yourself, well, how are people most going to want to explore these completely generated worlds? Right? Uh, some people will want to solo it, uh, but I think the vast majority will want to opt into something like what she’s creating here.And I think what you’re seeing is a prototype of what entertainment may [00:53:00] look like 60 years from now, where it will be something like this where you will have one influencer game master, um, and then within that world you just put it on and, and you’re seeing this done in a piecemeal fashion already with sort of what you’re telling us.People are creating songs with ai, people are creating visuals with ai, and in 60 years, the entire environment will be created with ai. Um, and I think that’s really cool.Leaflit: They did a vigil recently.Malcolm Collins: A video for somebody who died,Leaflit: uh, because the, the game is Perma death. And I purposely told them that there’s no way to revive people from death.OhSimone Collins: my gosh. SoLeaflit: someone’sSimone Collins: lost.Leaflit: Yeah. So it’s like, really, like, uh, like people get rid, like pe I’ve, I’ve people get so heated in this game because like, someone will screw up, like, like they’ll, they’ll be like, okay, we’re gonna fight that. Like, boss, someone will screw up and they’ll get someone killed and they’ll like yell at that person.Like, like out of character. Like, you freaking, you know, you God so mad at them. [00:54:00] And it’s like they like. It’s, it’s such a big deal to them when somebody dies in the game. And then they did like a AI vigil where they like played a song and it had like clips of all the characters using ai.Simone Collins: Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: So, okay.I, I really hope the people who have no idea, like what we’re talking about or anything, when you hear something like this, you can begin to see why something like this gets teased in, in, in, in people and is special to people that there are hundreds of people that feel that they have an iteration of themselves because the iteration that you create of you, when you’re out there and you’re interacting with other humans, it is, uh, something that, that many people, I mean, not everyone, but many people sit down and they’re basically like, okay, who do I wanna be to the world?How do I want the world to see me? Right? So you’re, you’re getting a fragment of themselves within this environment that can live a life. Uh, and it, and it’s a persona that they embody when they’re in the environment. [00:55:00] Can die, you know, you’re dealing with stakes and stakes on a large scale. You know, you’re talking, um, what was it, like, 130 people or something like that?Yeah.Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: This is, this is, uh, if, if you talk about most of human history, that’s more people than most humans met in their lives. Right? Like if, if, if you go to the distant past, yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, like it’s what our brains are meant to deal with is like a maximum community size.Simone Collins: Yeah. I think we also have to remember though, that this, this is so much older than the internet or even like.In dungeon base games in, in the eighties or whatever your tabletop games it as well. When you look at like the Bronte sisters, they had their own fictional universes where like the Duke of Wellington would appear sometimes, but there were all these other characters. Um, and sometimes they, they, these didn’t show up in their books.This was just the well why they explain whoMalcolm Collins: the Bronte sisters are.Simone Collins: These are famous authors. Um,Malcolm Collins: they wrote,Simone Collins: oh God, I didn’t read any of the books because I didn’t like them. Um, and they like died young. They were like at, at the same time of, of Jane Austen. [00:56:00] Um, maybe, maybe Weathering Heights. ‘cause everyone’s talking about the new movie is one of them, but I can’t remember.Um, but this is something that is very natural to people and like one of the first things that the internet was used was to have basically text-based versions of these games online. Um, and, and the fact that this is just a continuation of it, like it has. Now it’s super powered with ai and it, it is much more complex.Um, but the, the question is never really, um, you know, what tech are we using? Like, is this, is this, um, a bunch of young ladies in a house? By the way,Malcolm Collins: if you’re wondering what the Bronte sisters wrote, they wrote Jane Airy, they wrote Weathering Heights.Simone Collins: Yeah, there you go.Malcolm Collins: They wrote the tenet of Woodfield Hall.Um,Simone Collins: and, uh, they’re not, they’re, they’re very dark, like boring books, in my opinion. I, I love Jane Austen’s books. But anyway, um, this is just old stuff. Um, and, and like specifically fantasy worlds in which they are, they are involved. Um, and I think the really interesting [00:57:00] thing, and what I love most about the world you’ve built is that you don’t get caught up in the IP necessarily, or in like the, the.The fact that you’re building it, like you don’t own it as much as like, it’s the way that people interact with it and crash into mm-hmm. Into it to create crazy things like vigils and songs and fan art and slang. Um, and that’s how, you know, it’s really working. And that’s why AI is not a threat to this.It’s just a different way in which it’s gonna manifest. Mm-hmm. And it’s like the, the raindrops are just bouncing off a slightly different surface, but in this case, they’re gonna be bouncing off in a much more beautiful way. Um, whereas before they were like falling into paper and just getting soaked in, and now they’re falling into something and like making ripples.And it’s just so much more potential. And I’m really excited about what, what’s gonna be possible as AI enables more going forward. ‘cause already Yeah. Like can you, I mean, and I, it wouldn’t surprise me actually if like the Bronte sisters or like, if they had a piano forte, like sitting down and like writing songs of others, like whatever their obscure characters were in their fantasy [00:58:00] worlds.Mm-hmm. Um. But now you can just take that and like a thousand exit and of course make it, you know, now you have like 130 people. They had like four, you know, like the scale of it, the complexity, the fact that you have a world that updates, um, when different factions are doing different things out in the world.Mm-hmm. By the way, what are, what are other weird things that haveLeaflit: Oh, I can tell you about the time the game almost ended.Simone Collins: Oh really?Leaflit: Yes. Yes. The game almost ended because, okay, so what happened was there was one party, right, okay. Who met this witch. And this witch, she’s like a tiny little necro man, girl.And she has killed somebody before. Like she’s actually killed one of the players. Right. The early sessionsSimone Collins: too.Leaflit: Yeah. And her whole thing is like, she’s like. Her concept of death is like, she doesn’t care. She thinks it’s like just fun, right? So she, what she does is she takes people, she kidnaps them, and she puts them to a death game.And she like watches and she just like sits there and watches and she’s like, yeah, like, you know, like, I hope you [00:59:00] win, right? And if you win, you, you get a prize. But you know,Simone Collins: oh,Leaflit: whatever happens, happens. And she like watches and she does this. So anyway, they end up like fighting her at some point. And uh, they like, they were gonna die to her, but they convinced her to not kill them.And then they were like, oh, we have an idea. Uh, why don’t you check out this town that we built? She’s like, town. And they’re like, yeah. And she’s like, okay. That’s my town now. And so like, they took her to like the town, which is like this new outpost that the players had built. And like they, they had built this over months, by the way.So like, first they had to conquer the area and then people had to chop wood down and bring all the wood alchemy materials. And they had all the, all the crafter players had to go in and like actually build it like over weeks. Right. So they had like this fort and it was like their precious fort, like, okay, now we have a teleporter in the middle of this area so we can teleport instead of like having to walk down the valley.Yeah. And so they had this beautiful town and she was like, yeah, I’m the leader now. [01:00:00] And like she came in and they were so mad because like the people that were building it were like, what the hell are you doing? Oh no. Right. And so there was a whole thing where, and they’re like, director, like, what do we do?Like this, this crazy? And she’s like, I don’t care. Director’s. Like, I don’t care. Like, okay, sure. You know, if that’s what you guys won’t find, whatever. And they’re like, no, but we can’t have this. And they’re like, okay. Um, election. So they did an election article and like people got so mad. At this like entire election arc and like people were like, we’re gonna quit.This is so, so dumb. If like, she takes over after we built all of this. Like this is, and I was like, well, I mean you guys did that. Like it’s not us. We didn’t plan on this. And that’s like kind of how we approach it is like we, we like to take what the players do and then like how does that affect the world if like, they do this, likeMalcolm Collins: yeah, yeah.No, it’s a hundred percent downstream of, of player choices, which I like. Yeah. And then they wait, so she was okay with an election. She wasn’t just like, why, why are we doing an election? I’m queen. LikeLeaflit: they, they, they [01:01:00] convinced her that, that if she was so cool, she would do an election and she was like, yeah, you’re right, because she’s like the idiot, right?Like the neer’s an idiot. So, but, but this Nema became such a beloved character. She like. Multiple songs and a plushie like thaty sale in the store right now. And a bunch of people bought it, one person bought three.Simone Collins: I mean, just in case. Well,Leaflit: that’s great.Malcolm Collins: That’s, yeah. I, uh, I, I wanna know, uh, so by the way, this, this humorously reminds me of the joke.I don’t know if you’ve seen through all of Adventure Time fantastic show, by the way, people, um, but there’s, one of the princess bubblegum gets deposed by somebody who holds an election, and she comes back in very anti-climax, is like, I’m a monarch. You can’t hold an election like, whatcha doing? They’re like, but you were unelected.And she goes, I’m the monarch.Leaflit: The, they basically convinced her that. Well, you don’t rule this place, but you can set up a, you can set up a base outside of [01:02:00] it. And so now she has a base and like she willingly lets people play death games. If they want. She’ll give ‘em like big prizes. Oh, but then you just die.Right. So it’s like a lot of people are like, it’s scary because normally you can run, like if you go into like the woods and you encounter like this giant, I don’t know, like say giant boar monster, right? Boar boss monster. You can be like, okay, well we don’t really know what it does. You can test it a little bit and be like, okay, this is a little bit too scotch.Like everybody retreat so you just like everyone throws down smokes. Yeah. And they all like retreat from the battle. And this is a common thing like retreating from, from combat. ‘cause your character’s life matters. Right. You, you die. Yeah. And so like, but with her you’re locked in her dungeon so you can’t escape.So that’s pretty cool.Simone Collins: No way.Malcolm Collins: That’s amazing. Wait, what other plushy characters exist from this world?Leaflit: A lot. We’ve got, um, it’s. I’ve got so many now. We’ve got the witch, we’ve got the, the merchant. The merchant has one, one of the cultus has one too. Wait, isMalcolm Collins: this, is this the, the merchant who’s of the evil race?Leaflit: No, it’s, uh, she’s like the good [01:03:00] merchant. So she’s, uh, she’s like the shopkeeper, like she reset the shop resets. So the other thing too is resources are finite. So it’s not like the, the shop is like, has this item you can always buy at this price. It fluctuates based on world events. So like, sometimes like a, like wood will cost more like a certain week because of a thing that happens and,Malcolm Collins: oh, I want my kids playing in this.So much like, this sounds like such a healthy thing for like young teens to get into continue, butLeaflit: Yeah. But, but yeah, it’s, it’s like that’s that merchant and then there’s like a cultus that got a plushy. She’s not the, oh, it’s, uh, this genocidal squirrel got a, a plushie as well.Simone Collins: OhLeaflit: yeah. ThatSimone Collins: makes,Leaflit: yeah, there’s a bunch of uh, a bunch of, uh, characters, uh, getting plushies who makes theSimone Collins: plushies.Leaflit: Uh, I, I do, I actually got into it because I wanted the plushies to exist. So I was like, how do I get that to go? And now I’ve become like a plushie, like mogul. I don’t know how that’s happened, butSimone Collins: did, wait, did you like make Plushies before? Do you have a sewing machine? [01:04:00]Leaflit: No, no, no. I’m, I’m, I I looked on like, the logistics of how to do it.I found like a manufacturer to do ‘em.Simone Collins: Okay, okay. Okay.Leaflit: And it like all fits our standards and stuff, so we, but we all, we do it to how, how we wanna do it, you know. Wait,Malcolm Collins: wait, wait. So like, other people come to you to make plushies for their shows and stuff now?Leaflit: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve gotten a bunch ofyouMalcolm Collins: a plush, do you handle shipping?Leaflit: Yes. So my mom does all of the, the, um, she’s like the shopkeeper. She does all the, all the merch and stuff like that. SoMalcolm Collins: if we made, uh, guys, let us know what Base Camp Plushies. Yeah. WeLeaflit: can do one. Yeah, of course.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’ll see. I’ll see about that. Um, I think that’s a fun idea. That’s really cool. That is, um.Okay. So what’s your future for all of this? Like when you think about where this evolves into, what it evolves into, I’m interested.Leaflit: Well, well, I, what I would like, ‘cause I’d, I’d like to see more people playing the game, like on their own, like, as not a part of like this big hemming. ‘cause I wanna see like, [01:05:00] people playing like their own campaigns, kinda like Dungeons and Dragons.Right. But yeah, as far as like the campaign right now, um, I don’t, I don’t know, it’s just kind of whatever happens and then we just go with the flow, right? It’s like,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Leaflit: I wanna do more character stuff. Like I started doing, oh, I got one that you’ll think is great. Um, there’s this character that is an NPC that everyone doesn’t really, they think she’s kind of, what’s the word?She’s very, sorry, I’m blanking out. It’s like. She, she’s a killjoy. Like, she always, like, she has rules and she’s like, you have to follow these rules, and like, this is how it’s gonna be. And they’re like, she’s such a stickler, she’s so annoying. And then I released the other day a character image song of her.Mm-hmm. And it explains why she’s like that, like her backstory. And so people are like, what do you feel like, do you feel like such a jerk now? Because now you, now you know what she’s like. [01:06:00] But more stuff like that, I’d love to do it. Stuff like that.Malcolm Collins: Um, that is, I, I I, I, I, I don’t wanna be a killjoy, but I know you like the idea of people playing this independently, but it sounds like so much of the magic of what you’ve built is in the community.Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: That makes it feel. So when I talk about, you know, 60, a hundred years, when we can create any artificial environment we want. Mm-hmm. The only things that will imbue these worlds with reality is the shared experiences we have with other people. And in a way, uh, I think for, uh, my guess would be for your players, that’s what imbues the world with reality is the fact that, uh, like d and d can, like when you’re playing, I, I don’t know if like, if other people don’t feel this way, but when I’m playing like a random whatever game, right.Um, uh, I sometimes, like if I know it’s a game that everyone else is playing right now, it feels like it has some sort of cultural meaning. I seeLeaflit: what you mean.Malcolm Collins: Okay. You know, hell [01:07:00] Divers two, I probably wouldn’t have played hell divers two normally, but everybody was playing it. Everyone was talking about it.It felt like a cultural moment. Right. Or Pokemon Go, I see what you mean. Or something like that.Leaflit: I understand the question now. So like, what I would want to do is I, I would like people. Like using like our stories, using our, our game and just like, you know, plushies music maybe, you know, maybe one day an anime or manga or something like that.I would like people to see that there is the possibility of, of better because like what we have right now is so ass, you know? Yeah. So it’s like, I just want people to see like, you can do things that are crazy. Like this idea that there’s like this big campaign with all these people and it’s interconnected and likeMalcolm Collins: that’s insaneLeaflit: that people are invested.Malcolm Collins: Did that, that’s actually crazy. It’s, it’s, it’s super cool that it’s working, but it’s crazyLeaflit: and thank you.Malcolm Collins: Uh, [01:08:00] and, and you weren’t doing this the last time we talked to you, right? Or was it just starting off? No, we’reSimone Collins: working on it. It wasn’t, this is, I think it was.Leaflit: First year anniversary was today? Today.Simone Collins: Oh, happy anniversary.Leaflit: ThankMalcolm Collins: you. Well, we’ll run this tomorrow for first year anniversary. That, that’sSimone Collins: amazing. But yeah, also just for the housekeeping, like where can people find this and get involved and opt in andLeaflit: Yeah.Simone Collins: Have fun.Leaflit: It’s a rpg dot angel sword.com is like the game, the base game. And then in order to join the other game, it’s Patreon.Simone Collins: Perfect.Leaflit: You know what’s crazy too, is like people got so addicted because, um, it, it, it works off of a, you can’t always go out. It’s like a real time system. Mm-hmm. Where if your character goes out for this week, you can’t play anymore ‘cause they’re not here. So. Oh,yeah.What people started doing was, they’re like, can we have like another character?I’m like, okay, fine. Like Patreon upgrade, you can like get another character. Can we get another character? Uh, okay, fine. And like, it got to the point where people were like, can I make like another Patreon account? And we’re [01:09:00] like, no. Okay. It’s over. Like, no more. Why you more money? ‘cause I want people, so the, the downside of people making too many characters because like they, they become less invested to each individual character.Yeah. So it’s like, we want, like those relationships, right? Oh my God. The best is when like, two characters have a relationship and it’s like, well what if you go, one of you goes down, you die. You know? It’s like,Malcolm Collins: wait until you get your first marriage from this world. Right? What’s alreadyLeaflit: happened?Malcolm Collins: What, what?Leaflit: Yeah. People have gotten married and had kids.Malcolm Collins: Well in world. In world, yes.Leaflit: Oh,Malcolm Collins: people marry, like, remember this? So I need to like bring up two different worlds that were like really big in my childhood. Mm-hmm. Do you remember there was this game and I watched it, like things on, I never played it myself. It took place in Egypt and everybody could do like whatever they want.And there was like one cast where you would like level up by getting people to like vote for you or be in like one place at a time. Um. W it was, it was weird. It was, it [01:10:00] was an MMO where the only way you could level up was through community based events. Um, and it, it became this giant thing. But the other one, obviously Second Life, and today people don’t know Second Life, right?Like they, they don’t understand what a cultural phenomenon this was when we were, there was like a big real estate craze in it where people would be paying like half a million dollars for like a house or something. Um, and people would get married in it all the time. You can go to YouTube, you can watch these videos if people get married in Second Life.Um, and uh, I like, I always thought it was so cool. I like, I felt like a bit of an outsider in the second life craze because I was like, I don’t have the social confidence to go into an environment with this many people. Um mm-hmm. And, uh. It’s, I, I don’t know, it feels like a cooler version of that because it’s more abstracted.See, the, the problem with environments like Second Lives and Roblox and Minecraft, and a lot of stuff that comes outta this is, it’s not abstracted in the way that your world is abstracted. That allows for [01:11:00] denser lore, that allows for deeper world building, and that interacts with AI more. Yeah. And I think it’s cool how the way you’re building all of this up is more conducive to AI world than the way that directionality like Roblox and Minecraft, which I think a lot of people think the future is gonna look like, and I don’t.Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Yeah. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s, uh, it, it’s really the, the coolest thing about it for me is just like, like you said, the interconnectedness where each individual person has the agency to do like whatever, but then they eat the consequences of it, right? So you can do like whatever you want, but then. You go jail or something if he screw up.Malcolm Collins: How do you do kids? Sorry, I, before I say offLeaflit: early ones the MPCs. So there, there are two cases, well, well, sorry. There, there have been multiple cases. I think in the, the only reason I know this is because people keep asking me for the, the, what happens if this race has a kid with this race, they keep doing this, right?So I had to like come up with all these rules for it. But, um, anyway, [01:12:00] uh, some players have done that and then they retired their characters and that’s it. And like howMalcolm Collins: did they play as the kids?Leaflit: Uh, that happened one time. So like in one of my older campaigns was a time skip, like the original Angel Sword campaign had a time Skip and the character wanted to play as his kid.So like that happened, but Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. That’s fine.Leaflit: Alright. Well, I mean to play as his first character later, because then, then at the end of that campaign there was a thing where their kid was in trouble and they had to like save their kid with their old, old character.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. They had to come back and save themselves.Mm-hmm. It’s so, there’s so many things that you’ve described here where I’m like, no, that’s just how real life works. Um, you’re just describing the real world. Um, I mean, like we see ourselves as our kids, uh, and so many parents, I think like they just watch themselves playing life through their children.But also like this idea that figures get, um, either things or figures can get power through, [01:13:00] you know, attention and belief and like, here’s everyone, like asking for like, oh, like, can like, and subscribe. We’re like literally our son Octavian. I guess misheard the concept and was like life and describe and I’m like, yeah, I mean you wanna get the power.Like that is what they’re getting. It is their life. Um, and he was actually shocked the other day to discover that YouTubers also make money. He was like, wait, they make money. I thought they just got likes. And that was like a doubt. He wanted that his car, his career, like the whole money thing was just like icing on the cake.Um mm-hmm. There’s this new currency. Awesome. So yeah. I mean weMalcolm Collins: learned we didn’t respon.Simone Collins: Yeah. He’s like, wait,Malcolm Collins: you don’t respond? And we’re like, no, you’re gonnaSimone Collins: die. The number of times we’ve had to have like tell our children that Yeah. In our world you don’t respond. Oh my God. Yeah. It’s so well a conversation.Yeah. The lines have really become blurred, um, between. I mean, yeah. Yeah. We don’t wanna hold you forever. This has been longer than me. Much take’s. SoLeaflit: I had so [01:14:00] much fun. Like, I, I mean, God, you, you had me on here just to nerd outta the bound, like stuff I wanna nerd out about,Simone Collins: alluded to this in our last conversation, and it was like one of those like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, no, I,Simone Collins: I asked you by the tip of the iceberg and being like, wait, we could have sunk, we could have gone deep.Like, why?Malcolm Collins: No. I like asked you last time and you seemed like embarrassed to go deeper into it. And I think it’s because, you know, you’re new, you, you know, this is your first time doing something on somebody else. Yeah. Um, you, you may be underestimated how much of a nerd I am about stuff like this. Well,Leaflit: yeah.Malcolm Collins: I used to, and I might do it next time we talk. I could do one. I,Leaflit: I’d loveMalcolm Collins: created multiple worlds, like as deep as the one deer creating one. We were gonna turn into a video game, but it turned out to be R fab.ai. And so we ended up creating like AI play if people wanna try that. Um, and then the other one, uh, was just like, anytime I’d walk somewhere I’d try to build on the world, like, um, and so I love doing stuff like this.I’d love to have you back on sometime. You’re love a very, very enjoyable person to talk to. I love to come on [01:15:00] your stream sometime. Um,Leaflit: yeah, we should talk about that. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Love. I’ve never done a live stream before and I’m terrified. Um. Uh, actually, I don’t even think I’m gonna edit anything out. You might not know.Like the last time we did a thing together, I asked you a few like awkward questions and I ended up editing them all out. It’s like, um, uh, but this time no awkward que because I’ve watched more of your stuff. Oh, one of my favorite things you talked about recently, just for like, people, you were talking about this moment where like you were living in an apartment and it was just a mattress on the ground of an empty room.And I was like, oh my God, I have lived that exact experience and so many people have. And I was like, I kind of wanna go back to that in a way, like the, the world.Simone Collins: Yeah. You literally burst into my room last night and was like, I missed that.Malcolm Collins: Oh, I thoughtSimone Collins: this was, was, that was for a long time. We like preferred it.It was kind of, it’s nice, you know, it’s less cluttered. You know, it’sMalcolm Collins: my, my favorite leaflet, Easter egg. Um, you dropped in the middle of a video, um, and I’m only dropping it [01:16:00] here at the end because you said you were only okay with dropping in the middle, but the collection of World War II memorabilia, um,Leaflit: I don’t, no, I don’t have any yet, but I was like very interested in it because I went, I, I went to a gun show and then they had, so I was like, that’s cool. There’s like so much lore behind it, you know, like,Malcolm Collins: yes,Leaflit: shovel, that shovel was like used somewhere like crazy, you know, likethings like that.Malcolm Collins: No. At a time where things actually mattered, where like, yeah.Actions, you know, the world, but we’re back there. The world is on a, uh, uh, whatever you call it right now with AI and everything, like the future of the economy is gonna be totally different depending on who wins what. Like, we’re trying to build, like autonomous agents to replace employees. Mm-hmm. And people are like, why do you, the other day I, I almost passed out on screen.And they’re like, why are you working this long? Right. And I was like. Somebody is going to create the employee replacement. Um, and then everyone else is not gonna have a job. Like, I’m not trying to do [01:17:00] this to have, I’m so excitedSimone Collins: to do this. This is the thing people areMalcolm Collins: mad about, about that. I’m to have all the money and then all decide how to create a good society after that.Um,Leaflit: I you win,Malcolm Collins: right? Uh, anyway. Anyway, so fun to have you here. Thank you so much. I wanna, I wanna, uh, do stuff together in the future and I hope that things continue to go well for you. You know, your channel’s been popping off. Thank you so much as I’ve seen, um, and not just your channel, but you as a caricature.When you look at the central place you have in Sky Brow videos regularly, right? Like you’re in almost every video, multiple times. Um, and, uh.Simone Collins: Good character.Malcolm Collins: I think it, I, I, I think it’s because you are capturing the main character, and I don’t know if you ever feel like this, but you’re like, damn, am I like a playable character of our generation?Mm-hmm.Leaflit: Like, like the funny thing is, I, I actually had such a dilemma about this, so like, okay, I’ll, I’ll go into it. So I actually [01:18:00] was like, you know, I was, I was talking about how I was like super depressed for a long time.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Leaflit: That was my entire life until this month, like this month it went away. And it was so weird.Well,Simone Collins: congratulations.Leaflit: Congratulations. It was so weird. Like everything is just so different now for me. But yeah. Uh,Malcolm Collins: did, did stuff like Sky Brows play a role in that? Or is that not as relevantLeaflit: to you? Actually, you guys had more to do with it.Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s reallyLeaflit: software. Yeah. I could tell you about it later.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, well, yeah, like our content and stuff, but yeah, I don’t want to like, uh, but the Sky Brow thing, um, for me has been very interesting because. We don’t hang out with people anymore, Simone and I, like, I don’t, I don’t leave my house. We’re completely hicky. Um, and yet I watch video. I watch your videos, right?And I watch your videos and I’ve had interactions with you. Um, and so it makes me feel like, oh, that’s one of my friends. Um, and so ISimone Collins: watch this guy listen again, just not to be a history bummer [01:19:00] here, but like asynchronous friendships have been the deepest friendships for a huge portion of human history.Letter writing used to be a big, big part of how people had deep friendships, and that was, those were just asynchronous relationships. They were just watching each other’s dreams. I don’t know what to tell you. This is not like a new point in human history and it’s honestly so much better for most people like it.It’s great. But you know,Malcolm Collins: it did, and you’re right about this. A lot of famous people in history, they like, knew each other and they correspondedSimone Collins: Yale. Well, they read, they read people’s books. Like that is how you had a relationship with people, even if you existed at the same time in history. ‘cause I mean, that’s just how people live.Malcolm Collins: But the, the, the Sky Brow videos, to me, the interesting it’s felt like. There’s a party of cool kids and like all the cool kids are at the party and, uh, I get to be at the party with the cool kids without having, it’sSimone Collins: when your asynchronous proxy representation gets to have a, that gets to go to the party with the other a right?Malcolm Collins: No, because like, I don’t get to decide if I’m in one of these, like somebody who’s like, tastemaker gets to decide. And then, um, the,Simone Collins: and the best part is you don’t [01:20:00] physically have to be there. Yeah. I physically don’t haveMalcolm Collins: to be there. I just getSimone Collins: the picturesMalcolm Collins: afterwards.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That’s pretty great.Leaflit: But, uh, I just remembered, sorry, I totally like tangent into like in the middle of me answering your thing, but, but basically I’ve always like wanted to be like a support.I never wanted to be the main character. So it’s like every time like I, I get put, like I get sort of. A feeling of that. It makes me uncomfortable.Simone Collins: It’s so furious during bell. You, you’re, you’re reluctantly taking upon, you know yourself though.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s actually really interesting that you mention this, and I don’t wanna go on too long a tangent at this point in the video.Leaflit: No,Malcolm Collins: take your time.Leaflit: I’m good.Malcolm Collins: I actually talk about this in terms of modern right wing influencers, where one of the things that, that has defined the people who have risen in influence within our like intellectual circle, like an asthma gold or something like that mm-hmm. Is, is, uh, the, the lack of wanting to exploit this or open thirst like asthma gold [01:21:00] could live in a mansion if he wanted to.Like Asma Gold could have the hottest girlfriend and live in a mansion and shock his dog every day. Right. Like he could, he could do whatever the f he wanted to at this level of fame. Mm-hmm. And yet he. Does it right? Like he, um, the, the, the moment I always talk about, it’s the contrast of like, Hassan Piper’s shocking, like the most expensive dog breed you could have.And the moment where like a cockroach is crawling on Asma gold and he picks it up, I’m like, I’ve never seen anyone be this ginger with a cockroach. And it’s like, I’m gonna release it downstairs. He’s like, I mean outside. Um, like after a long while and, you know, he released it downstairs. But the, the point I’m making here is, uh, you and him, you, I, I think the reason why people build this with you is it’s so clear that.You don’t even have the capability to look down on your fans. [01:22:00] Um, and I think that this is like the, the main thing that people are looking for. They’re just so tired of an elite world that thinks that they’re better than them and that they’re other, and that they’re, um, you know, they’re separated behind some fence.Right. Um, and, uh, I, I think that you represent that very well on, on stream. And it comes from this emotion where you say, I never want, like, the only reason people look to you the way they do. It’s, it is it, it, it it’s clear that this is never about being the lead character for you?Leaflit: Well, it’s,Malcolm Collins: you get what I mean by this.Leaflit: The way I see it is like everyone has a role to play regardless of like how, what their capability is. It’s, it’s if they’re gonna play it or not. Right.That’s soMalcolm Collins: nice. Well, well, I mean, our roles can change and our roles can change based on our contextualization of them, right? Mm-hmm. Like, we can decide and, [01:23:00] and everyone gets to decide what their purpose is.Right? And I, in any, in any moment, in any, you can just decide, my, my purpose is X. Like, I, I look at the world and I’ve decided to, that’s the coolest thing about life. We get to judge the measuring stick that we judge our value in existing off of. Mm-hmm. Um, and if you, if you default to somebody else’s value stick, whether that is hedonism, like how much pleasure you feel, or how much status you have, and I think status is the, the primary measuring stick that most people default off of.Mm-hmm. Um, and I, and, and, and it, and, uh, I think that you, you can through, you know, the, the way that you show yourself to people, show your other people, they don’t need to judge themselves off of that anymore.Leaflit: Yeah. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And that, that’s hard. I mean, I, I did that for myself for the longest time I thought.How many people I slept with, who, who I was hooking up with. That was what a man’s worth was judged on.Leaflit: Yeah. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And if, if you just [01:24:00] default to these societal standards that f’s up your life.Leaflit: I, I think the important thing is like, I think people, people like us, we have, we’re in the position where we can give people like a reason, I guess, to do anything.And it’s, it’s what I, I’m trying to like formulate it. Sorry. We, we can give, we can give people like a, it’s like, you know, if you don’t think you have a purpose, then shut up and listen to my purpose and take it upon yourself and like, be infected by me.Malcolm Collins: Be part of this. I, I, when we, when we wrote our first book, we were literally taking the opposite perspective.So if anyone who’s like followed us for a long time and they’ve read our books, our first book is like. Okay. I’m gonna give you every purpose you could possibly have and you’re like, gonna go through it. I’m gonna try to be as unbiased as possible. Mm-hmm. And then me, like 10 years later, no. Like, justSimone Collins: do this thing.Malcolm Collins: This is what, this is what you should do. Like,Simone Collins: whatcha this is wrong. This is right. This is stupid. This is smart. Yeah. We’ve, [01:25:00] God, okay. Yeah,Leaflit: I was reading that book actually like just yesterday.Simone Collins: No,Malcolm Collins: I, I like that book. I think it’s helped a lot of people. Um,Leaflit: it’s a good one. It’s a good one. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We get, we get emails from people pretty frequently about it.Um,Simone Collins: we wrote it for ourselves and for our kids ‘cause we wanted to work it out. And honestly, ever since we did, um, I’ve, I’ve never felt fomo. I’ve never felt cognitive dissonance because I know. What it is that I’m about, that I wanna optimize. So like, there’s never any ambiguity unless it’s tactical, um, about like, should I be doing this thing or not?It’s like, well, does this maximize something? I like the thing or things I think have in here value yes or no. Like, okay, then I’m not gonna worry about it. LikeLeaflit: it’s, that’s where all the bad feelings like live. Yeah. Isn’t that ambiguity? That’s when it starts. Mm-hmm. You get that like kind of bubbling, like nasty feeling, you know?Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, I should be at that party ‘cause everyone’s at the party. I’m like, no,Malcolm Collins: I didn’t realize this, but you’re right. It was after writing that book when I began. Yeah. Because I didn’t [01:26:00] like, this isn’t like idea. I just like sat down was like, okay, like I need to figure out a reason to be alive.I should, I should probably we’ll have thoseSimone Collins: moments. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: I exist. Uh, so I’ll just go over every argument and count. It wasn’t even like, it’s like people think, like somebody sits down and, uh, you know, like Joseph Smith or something and they’re like, oh, I’m gonna go ask God or something, why I should be alive.Uh, no. I was like, that girl who did like the, the, uh, which guy should I date? All the positives and negatives of each one. Oh God. And I like did that for every reason why I shouldn’t kill myself. Like, okay, oh my gosh, let’s go through every one of them and, uh, maybe one of these will be hot to me. I’m like, okay, I’ll marry that one.Um, and then, and then I ended up, uh, you know, changing over time and every, every ev everything like that. But it was a lot of, it was a lot of, um, uh, yeah, yeah. Anyway, it’s theLeaflit: biggest problem in society right now is purpose. I not really not. [01:27:00] As you guys put it, objective function.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, we don’t have a framework for it anymore.Like we, this is how the way purpose dissolved. I’m, I’m gonna go on a separate, I’m so sorry.Leaflit: No,Malcolm Collins: no, no. I, ILeaflit: love thisMalcolm Collins: one. As a society used to have frameworks for purpose and for most people they were their religious system.Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Um, and the school system, ironically, I think we lost our purpose, not because of the secular world, but because of the way the religious world acted to the school system.So the school system would try to give people alternate purposes. They try to be like, okay, um. Yes, you may have a purpose in this respect, but here’s some other philosophical concept of why life matters. What matters in life. And you go to the eighties or whatever, and the religious people are like, you can’t tell our kids there’s some alternate reason that life may have meaning, right?Like, we need to go is this reason. But then the religious people weren’t passing on the full structure of their religion to their kids. They [01:28:00] were passing on a number of superficial tales. And then like urban monocultural beliefs as I often talk about it, like, oh, uh, well, like. Uh, you know, perfect, uh, you know, ev everyone’s exactly the same and that our entire world purpose is maintaining this, uh, this, this, this sameness.But it, but it, it didn’t continue on to the next generation. And so when I grew up, it was a world where everyone was terrified to give me scaffolding to build purpose around. Mm-hmm. Um, and I made terrible decisions in my life because I didn’t know I, I looked to society and I often talk about this, and I, uh, saw everyone and I literally thought, I was like, okay.I know this sounds so f*****g stupid like now, but I literally followed this until like, you know, into college, right? Like I, it sounds almost non sentient that someone could have this perspective, but I was like, my purpose is to, uh, have [01:29:00] status among males and to sleep around, right? And, uh, if you look at like the online manosphere content, I think a lot of young men are picking this up.They’re, they’re like, oh, that’s, that’s what men do in this world, right? Like that’sLeaflit: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: What makes a man cool? Uh, I watched that. Have you ever heard of Hanza?Leaflit: Han Han HanzaMalcolm Collins: Hanza. He’s a male influencer. You should watch her Hanza video. It’s very funny because we go into how this basically destroyed his life.Um, and, uh, he had this really perfect fiance. Mm-hmm. Um, and he ends up breaking up with her basically because he doesn’t feel as masculine anymore. Right. Like, yeah. And it’s like, well, you know, you, you, you, the, all of this stuff that you have taken to be like, this is masculine, this is manosphere, et cetera, was to get the wife and then move to the stage where it’s about making her happy and your family happy.And that will, that will give you more purpose than anything you could have done in this hotness, maxing stage.Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: But you accidentally [01:30:00] adopted this hotness, maxing stage. And it, there was a moment where he was trying to make a major life decision, uh, live in a country or live in a town. And he said the, the, the metric he used to make the decision is, which was more manly.And I was like, well, that’s a really bad metric to use about a major life decision.Leaflit: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But it’s not dissimilar to a metric I may have used at his age. Right. Um, and I think that like all of us can just like disseminate to people, like, you don’t need to do what I’m doing in life. Right. Or believe what I believe in life.But if you can, for the love of God, just think through things yourself. Like don’tLeaflit: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like, like, like an anti influencer. Like just don’t listen to the influencer. It’s like, just think through for yourself what has value. Um, soLeaflit: I think that’s a problem though. I don’t think, I don’t think people are as equipped to actually think for themselves.‘cause like I remember when I was school, like in school they would have like Socratic [01:31:00] seminars. Like you would like have to think through like these individual problems. Yeah. But now it’s like, here’s like the answer to the thing. Like, that’s it. Like write that down.Simone Collins: So there are literally d influencer influencers.So, yeah. Okay. Now it’s, no, literally if you like search de influencing on YouTube.Leaflit: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Exactly what I mean. OhLeaflit: wow.Simone Collins: There are a lot of them. Um, yeah. It, it’s bad. No idea how bad school is these days. We send our kids to school. It’s not just school though. The, the big thing you’re missing Malcolm, is that like for a very long period of time, there, there haven’t necessarily been very good networks for giving someone an ejective function.Basically. It was just serve God if you got to that point. But the vast, vast, vast majority of humans were just super stoked to like, maybe not be dying right now, to not be hungry, to like, not watch like their children or their parents or their relatives or loved ones to be dying and starving. So like that was kind of it.Um, and even like we, we’ve talked about this on other podcasts, like reading my grandmother’s. [01:32:00] Biography and stuff, and just her experience is just trying not to die. Um, and she was just so excited to like not be dead and then like, oh my gosh, you know, washing machines were invented and how great is this?Mm-hmm. Um, like just people have been so there hasn’t been room for it. Now that there is room for it, we need better frameworks. But then, like the one thing that was left, which was the church, um, is just not there to help people. ‘cause they gave a, a, a decent, but here’s the problem is that many religions, especially like post-enlightenment, weren’t really good at holding up to science and physics.And so for a lot of people, even if churches were strong and church communities were strong, they weren’t gonna cut it for people. And that’s where you see, even in the past, a lot of, um, a lot of nihilistic struggling among the wealthy, the wealthy elite, like land gentry, et cetera. Because like for the people for whom.Church just didn’t do it. They [01:33:00] were like, I’m not buying this or this, this explanation doesn’t make sense for me. They would lose their faith and then just play status or sex games. That was it. Um, or some, some kind of stupid optimization game, and usually it had to do with power or money. Um,Malcolm Collins: and then, and this goes back to like the founding Fathers of America, you canSimone Collins: see.So themMalcolm Collins: doing this,Simone Collins: oh, this goes way back before then. Um, it was either, you know, God worked for you, um, or it didn’t, if, if you reached that level in life and like 1% ever did. So yeah, we just, I’m glad that we. Found a framework that worked, but I, I like people do it.Malcolm Collins: One of the things that Simone is mentioning here that I think leaflet will find a funny idea mm-hmm.Is we talk about how like women crave a dystopia. Like the, the, the, the, the reason like young girls read all these dystopian fictions is because most women throughout history lived in a dystopia. Like if you go back, you know, great depression, dystopia, world War I, dystopia, world War II dystopia, and you, you go pre great, great depression, I mean, for women, truly a dystopianSimone Collins: world.Yeah. Pre, pre feminism was just always a [01:34:00] dystopia because you don’t have property rights and stuff. So like yeah, we’ve evolved to live, I was born in the dystopia, you know, I was made in this dystopia. So it just, well,Malcolm Collins: no, but the, the challenge this causes is we argue is that especially for young women, and this is why I think young women go woke so hard, is they need to believe that there’s this giant oppressive force out there.And so if they don’t grow up with a genuine existential threat, they create one and they believe this existential threat, the patriarchy or whatever. Is as real as, you know, living in a communist state or something like that.Simone Collins: Hmm. You could say they were born renegades that need like a force to navigate and fight against.And when that structure is gone,Malcolm Collins: and, and we,Simone Collins: we solve this for ourMalcolm Collins: daughters by torturing them. This is a,Simone Collins: they deal with enough constraints as it is. Um, but they also like the, I think the one that Malcolm was referring to earlier, Titan literally thinks she’s gonna become someone who she [01:35:00] saw as a, another V YouTuber.Uh, who’s a shark princess. Um, she, she, girl, girl, girl.Leaflit: A v you know, girl. Girl. Yeah, I know girl. Yeah. Yeah.Simone Collins: Like. I’ll be like, yes ma’am. And she’d be like, I am not a ma’am. I am a girl and a shark princess. And she takes it extremely seriously. I I don’t, she’s, she doesn’t need dystopia. She’s gonna be tell her all the time where she says she’sMalcolm Collins: gonna eat you when she grows up.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Yeah. She’s like, sorry, mommy, I’m gonna grow big and Yeah. Like, I’m going to eat you. Um,Malcolm Collins: I may eat you. She said, and I’mSimone Collins: sorry. Yeah, yeah. We’ve negotiated down to like. Might bite, but probably not many. So I think we’re making progress. Oh my God. Nice. Yeah. This is great. We we playMalcolm Collins: into our kids’ fantasies maybe too hard.Simone Collins: No, it’s all yes. And it has to always be Yes. And so cute though. It’s 100% necessary. It is, it is fantastic. They’re the very behemoth about it, but oh [01:36:00] gosh. Okay. We will let you get on with your day.Leaflit: I had fun. ThankSimone Collins: you so much. Thank you. You were, yeah, just yeah, keep doing, keep doing the things you guysLeaflit: do.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I genuinely laughed a lot. I laughed till I cried at the beginning. I was actually like crying at the beginning when we were talking about. The f*****g concepts that we’re talking about and people thinking that we’re far right. Extremists like that, that far right. Extremism is just like the nerdiest, effing nerds you have ever seen in your life for hanging out and talking about like philosophy and like made up game worlds.Leaflit: I, it’s, it’s so crazy.Simone Collins: Yeah, definitely. You,Leaflit: some timeSimone Collins: ago, all my left friends from high school probably think we’re like, you know, just sharpening our tiki torches and putting on KY pants and whatnot and like, you were like, well actually there are two different types of this. And like, uh, you know, we, we have to like, talk about the lore and like, you know, blah and like that funnyMalcolm Collins: sharpening or, or cheeky torches.I mean, I need to use that sharpening. [01:37:00] Alright. I loveLeaflit: that so much.Simone Collins: ThankMalcolm Collins: you. Check out her stuff. By the way, guys, uh, join this community, it is called.Leaflit: Angel Sword com. Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Enjoy Pat. It’s gonna be worth it. Oh my gosh. Thank you. ThankLeaflit: bye. 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In this provocative episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into a taboo topic: slavery—both historical and modern. Is slavery “good” at a civilizational level? They explore why more people are enslaved today than at any point in human history (~50 million in forced labor or marriage), critique selective outrage over past vs. present slavery, and examine cultural attitudes toward wartime rape/slavery across groups (Puritans, Quakers, Backwoods/Appalachian Scots-Irish, Cavaliers, Spanish Catholics, Vikings, Muslims, Japanese, etc.).Key discussions include:* Genetic and cultural legacies of “rape slaves” vs. conquest without integration.* Why certain Protestant subgroups showed remarkable restraint (no recorded cases of raping Native captives).* How slavery economically stifled innovation (Rome, the American South).* Maps showing slavery’s concentration in Cavalier regions and its overlap with modern socioeconomic struggles.* Why reflexive disgust toward status-signaling and a preference for strong partners may have given some groups a long-term edge.They argue that, even setting aside morality, sex slavery and post-conquest integration often backfire genetically and culturally—while loving your own people and culture drives lasting success. A data-heavy, counterintuitive take that challenges both left- and right-wing sacred cows. Not for the faint of heart.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone Collins. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about a concept that was way more interesting than I expected it to be as I started to dive into it. Okay. Is slavery good?What, and what brought up this concept is like, obviously this is not a topic we were allowed to talk about growing up, or we’ve been allowed to talk about more broadly as a society. No. And so, then Tucker Carlson and, but the left has been hugely glazing recently places like Qatar. Oh. And I’m like, well, Qatar’s a slave state, right?Like, so if, if he can talk about how great Qatar cities are, at least the faction of the right that like, doesn’t like this weird Tucker faction. They think slave slave states are awesome now. And the left thinks slave states are awesome now because, you know, a, a, a across the, middle East. This is just something that we see.Fun fact, by the way, in Gaza the neighborhood where blacks are kept is called [00:01:00] slaves or like slave neighborhood.Speaker 11: But more specifically, ‘cause I wanted to check this just to make sure that’s right. Yeah. It’s called The Neighborhood of the Slaves is where black people live in Gaza, , because having slaves is so common there. , And there were around 11,000, Afro Palestinians are around 1% of the population of Gaza was black.Uh, and, and brought there to be slaves.Malcolm Collins: So yeah, I mean, this is common in the, in the the, there’sSimone Collins (2): a black meadow in Gaza.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. In the area. Well, they, they bring them in and use them as slaves basically. So, remember that the, when they were doing the mass genocide in Darfur, there was like, what was it?10 exercise of the deaths in Gaza that this genocide was of Muslims against blacks, and they called them slaves. That was, no,Simone Collins (2): not, not exactly. It’s more just that they were kind of synonymous. It’s just that like.Malcolm Collins: Oh, justSimone Collins (2): the one used [00:02:00] for a black person, sort of, it was, what’s the word for when something’s like Kleenex, you know, or bandaid where like, you know, it becomes genericized of like, well they’re, they’re the same thing.And then, so thenMalcolm Collins: I’m, I’m, I am sure that American Blacks would believe you, you used the n word analogy for that. You’re like, it’s just syn synonymous.Speaker 2: Category is people who annoy you. Audience, keep quiet, please.Speaker 4: Uh, well, oh, 10 seconds, Mr. Marsh. I know it, but I don’t think I should say it.Speaker 2: Oh, ooh. Oh, naggers. Of course. Naggers. Right? Uh, can we cut to, uh, can we cut to a.Simone Collins (2): It’s more just that they were kind of synonymous.Malcolm Collins: Like, yes, it was used in that context, but we use it in different contexts all the time now.Simone Collins (2): Well, if, if you live in a society where the only ever time you see someone who is, you know, we’ll say, who is [00:03:00] purple hair is a slave, you’re just gonna be like, well, you know, I need to get a purple haired person, you know, around the plantation or whatever.Malcolm Collins: Tucker went further, by the way. I just don’t buy your argument at all. They, they mean it as a slur. They mean it as this is how we see you because it, it is common in those regions. But and by the way, fun fact, more slaves on earth today than there ever have been in human history.Simone Collins (2): That’s, no, I, I knew that and it really frustrates me when people are like, oh, we practice slavery in the past.We’re so humiliated. It’s like, yeah, no, if you care, stop worrying about reparations. Maybe stop slavery today. There’s stuff you can do today. Because there are,Malcolm Collins: yeah. That’s what gets me when a woke person complains about being enslaved. It’s like you only get to complain about being enslaved if you’re going to do something about the slavery that exists today.Simone Collins (2): Yeah. ‘Malcolm Collins: cause my ancestors did something about your ancestors, slavery. So what are you doing for the existing Oh, nothing. So, soSimone Collins (2): you’re no better than all the, the white people whose descendants are now. Implicated in [00:04:00] reparations requirements or white guilt or whatever it isMalcolm Collins: putting out in this episode is, is, is actually probably more that if we’re talking about who did more harm to who owe the, the southerners, the reparations.And we’ll get into some data on that. But to get it even spicy, no, I know from a moral perspective, but if we’re just talking about economically they were a net hindrance to the region.Simone Collins (2): Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. I I, gosh, I feel like I was reading to this just recently, so we’re talking about how oh yeah, no well, one of the people who is talks with, with the pod a lot was talking about how slavery ultimately held back technological advancement in the south.And how when you haveMalcolm Collins: not just the south, you see it hold back wherever it’s practice and we’ll go into why. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s the reason why Rome didn’t have an industrial revolution because they had a massive slave population. If they didn’t have that, they probably would’ve had an industrial revolution.Yeah. Of looking at the technology that they had access to. They had access to many of the early tools of the Industrial Revolution. They just had no reason [00:05:00] to use them because they had constant slave populations.Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Yeah. The general argument being that when you have an excess of human labor, you, you tend to get lazy and not actually technologically,Malcolm Collins: but this stuff isn’t the most interesting stuff.And I wanna start with the most interesting stuff because the most interesting stuff actually comes from Tucker’s second comment. Wow. Which was when he went on about how we were demanding, I total surrender of Iran and oh, Iran knows what total surrender means. It means that they have to give up their daughters and wives to be griped.And he didn’t think that Americans wanted to go out there and do that. And. First of all, we had total surrender from Germany and Japan during World War ii. And like that was not a big problem. So like, how did, how did Tucker not know? Like that’s a, something that’s really, at least if you have a decent, like, basic level American education, you’d be aware of.But it got me thinking, okay, Tucker, you’re trying to normalize grape in war scenarios again, right? Like bringing it up. Is it a good idea? Like, are grape [00:06:00] slaves a good idea? Right? I, I, I’m talking about at a civilizational level. Uhhuh, we know that different groups practice it at different rates.Okay. It’s, it’s very explicitly allowed in the Koran. You are I, I love it when I first asked in AI this, okay, it said, no, the Koran doesn’t allow for the grape of the, the, the, the grape of ca of, of women after area surrenders. It goes, it only allows you to have sexual relations with your slaves, and you can take as many women slave as you want after you capture a region.And I’m like, that’s great. That’s grape. Okay. If you are having sex with somebody who doesn’t have the ability to turn you down, because as the Krantz says, if they are yours, if they are your property because they’re your property that is grape in every sense of the word. Okay?Simone Collins (2): Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And we know that for Jews in, in, in the, the Bible, that the, that has a, you know.[00:07:00] Rules for this. You have you, you are not allowed to do this. You have to marry them first in like a ceremony and have like a grieving thing and they need to be taken as a legal wife. But I mean, they don’t have much choice in the matter. And we do know that Jews practice practices en mass to the extent where 50% of the ancestral Jewish DNA is Canaanite.Oh my. So like there was heavy mixing of the populations. This is also where a lot of the you know, where, where, you know, in the temple they had, statues of other gods when you have the Josiah reforms. Yeah. Meaning that, like the, the other Gods practices had heavily integrated with Jewish practices because of this intermedian process.And then they started being told not to intermarry. And that’s where Judaism became more of a, like mono ethic thing. But this became bigger after the temple. If you’re more interested in a four hour deep dive on this, you can see our topic, the question that breaks Judaism or our topic of when did Jews become [00:08:00] monogamous?But Jews had had those rules. And then with Christians you’re, you’re you know, love your enemies, stuff like that. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty taken that you should not be taking slaves after a conflict and griping them. But the problem is right, is you can say. Okay. This is what’s in their legal text.Okay. Like for example, in Jewish legal text, still technically they could take wives from a conquered region, but Jews haven’t done that in thousands of years. Right, right. So what about Christians? Different Christian populations? ‘cause there’s different Christian cultural groups. And so I started to look into this and with, in some Christian cultural groups, it is genuinely astonishing, the extent to which they did not do this.Mm-hmm. To give you an example, there is not a single recorded case in all of American history of a puritan of a Quaker or of someone of the backwards [00:09:00] tradition griping a Native American captive.Simone Collins: Oh really?Malcolm Collins: NotSimone Collins: even backwards.Malcolm Collins: Even backwards.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: maybeSimone Collins (2): that’s because they don’t, like, they would never document it.‘cause I mean, how manyMalcolm Collins: they, well, yeah, so you can make this argument, but the problem with the argument is we have tons and tons and tons of written Puritan and Quaker complaints about all of the things that they hated about the backwoods people. Oh.Simone Collins (2): Oh.Malcolm Collins: And never in a single one of these complaints, they know these complaints could even be made up.Simone Collins (2): Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is an accusation of griping a captive native.Simone Collins (2): Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Or really anyone else. Now I will note that they do complain that the backwoods people often married into native families. And this is where it gets really, reallySimone Collins (2): wasn’t, they have like traditions of like, maybe it was playful and, and like kind of a pantomime, but like carrying off women.You know, like stealing themMalcolm Collins: of, [00:10:00] although it was, it was panter,Simone Collins (2): like their cute way,Malcolm Collins: no legal, no blood feuds we are aware of from anything that was seen as a genuine grape. Mm-hmm. And no accusations of it by surrounding populations that hated them. Now, and, and the reason why it’s particularly notable when you’re talking about like the Puritans and the Quakers is the Puritans and the Quakers, like the Puritans especially, were fastidious about documenting sexual crimes.We know of, for example, in Puritan settlements. One person did say something to a Native American woman that was seen as inappropriate, and so he was whipped. Oh. We do know of one other servant who was not a Puritan, who attempted to rape a Native American woman and was severely punished. But hold on.This is where this gets interesting, and especially in regards to the backwards, because I wanna, I wanna focus on that. ‘cause it’s, it comes off as like, weird. Why aren’t they doing this when you go, okay. What about other Christian populations? What about the, the Cavaliers, right? Yeah. It appears the Cavaliers griped pretty regularly.[00:11:00] In fact, thatSimone Collins (2): seemsMalcolm Collins: in the Cavalier Society grave was considered a misdemeanor or less than a misdemeanor. Oh. This is a southern society. If you’re talking about the us. And a lot of people think of like. All of the Confederate states as like Cavalier and, and they were not. We’ll be going over some maps soon and you’ll see that in the greater Appalachian region or the Bawi region, slavery just wasn’t really practiced at all.Mm-hmm. It’s like a huge wall against slavery. And we’ll go into why that may be as well, right. Why, why did this group never practice it and what was the economic effect of them never practicing it? But what about. Catholics, uhoh, uhoh. I always hate having to go into this ‘cause this is one of those things where I didn’t go into this, like wanting to do a, why are Catholics always so persistent?I don’tSimone Collins (2): know, man. It’s just every episode.Speaker 17: You know, like literally in this case, I even was just looking for counter examples because I wanted to break things up and I couldn’t find them. Uh, this is just a problem with history. It’s, um, history makes [00:12:00] them look bad. I.Malcolm Collins: But Simone, you must even know from your history the Spanish particularly were basically grape machines. I mean, when they were colonizers, they, every, i, every island they went to, every colony. There was not an unap captive. I’m actually not even aware of a single Spanish expedition.That didn’t have significant griping going on. Mm-hmm.Speaker 18: So I decided to look into this. Was there any Spanish expedition that didn’t? Grape natives. , And there is one actually, , the AAR nun Decca incident, , in which the ship crashed and the, , people on the ship over eight years had to live among native tribes. And they, in this incident. I guess when their lives depended on, it didn’t grape them., Other than that, , we have no incidents like, like [00:13:00] no incidents of this happening. It’s, it’s really, which is shocking because you see no incidents of it happening when it’s the other way around.Malcolm Collins: Which is very, very significant. Okay. And then you can be like, okay, what about other Catholic populations? Like what about Quebec? What about Louisiana? Right. This is interesting. It appears these populations were probably at around the level of Cavaliers, like it happened.And it happened frequently enough that the Jesuits were constantly complaining about it. Mm-hmm. But it, it didn’t appear to be truly systemic. It was something that bad apples did. It was not something that the captain and all the boys did that was very Spanish. In Spanish. It was just everybody like, like, we’re, we’re gonna go out.And and, and this had massive effects on these various populations. This is part of the reason why. You know, when American Catholics like complain about, because I’ve always been very confused about like, [00:14:00] Catholics, like Nick Fuentes complaining about Catholic immigrants from Latin America. Because I’m like, but they’re Catholic immigrants, right?And he is like, well, they’re genetically different from me. And I’m like, I mean, that’s mostly because of all the griping that the Catholics did, right? Like that’s where a lot of that Native American blood came from. There, there were some consensual arrangements within that that, you know, led to the, the, the mixed blood in these settlements.But it seems like at least in the early days, the vast majority was great. And this is where it gets really interesting because the backwards people. Did frequently marry into native populations. But it was almost never the population, or not, almost never, as far as we know, there’s no historical counts of it being the populations that they conquered.When they conquered a settlement, they completely wiped them out. That was, that seemed to have been always the goal. So that’s not even like particularly more moral. They just and also interesting, you might not know this but it was also very rare for Native Americans of that region to great captives as [00:15:00] well.This is, this is not true of Native Americans of the West. Oh, native Americans. The Western, you mean like inSimone Collins (2): South America? It was onMalcolm Collins: unusual? No, no, no. Northeastern America. The, the Native Americans that were a budding where the backwards people were and where the puritans were, did not grape their captives frequently.Simone Collins: Really?Malcolm Collins: And they’re, well, we have a lot of accounts from captives who are later freed. And they document just it didn’t happen to them. This is notable that like Native Americans didn’t do this in many cases, whereas you know, the, the Spanish almost always did, right? Mm-hmm. So, so you’re seeing like even a higher level of morality there.But what are the consequences of this? Right? And why might you have prohibitions against this? Why might you have cultural prohibitions against this? And why did the backwards people not do this when they apparently didn’t have any prohibitions against wiping out Native American settlements? The core answer to that, just so we don’t make it a big confusing question is [00:16:00] you can find it by looking at the reports we do another episode where we contrast the different American cultural subgroups.Historically speaking love letters about like why they liked their wife or why they chose their wife sweet. Or why their wife was awesome.Simone Collins (2): Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And they, they would say very different things about them. In the Cavalier it was mostly she’s pretty and or she’s very effeminate or feminine orSimone Collins (2): she’s have a good fam a lot of it can Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Or she’s well, right. She’sSimone Collins (2): connected from a, a good family, whatever.Malcolm Collins: The Puritan tradition. It was almost always, she has great intellectual discussions with me. Like she’s a, she’s a very good conversationalist. I really like, you know, the book, she’s read the thing that was what the Puritans really cared about.And if you go to the backwoods it’s always like, she’s very good with a, with a rifle. She can defend the house, well, she can do chores really well. She you know, it was very much like how robust she was, how [00:17:00] much of a like marshal spirit is really what they cared about. And so, if you are a culture that when you’re looking for, I want.A strong mate, and you just killed all of this person’s family, their brothers, their fathers, the rest of their clan you’re, you’re not gonna wanna marry into that, right? You’re not gonna want to raise their kids, especially if you’re from a tradition that was pretty strictly monogamous and in the region.And also they were. They had a different relation to religion and, and, and they were Presbyterian mostly than the other groups of the, of the region, but they were still very religious. And and it guided sort of their moral choices and sometimes more important than their moral choices. Their hierarchy was in the surrounding community.Like people would’ve looked down on them for something like this if it got out. And within cultures that care about that sort of honor you’re not going to break those sorts of taboos even if you don’t have the, the religious [00:18:00] morality. Right. And this also explains why they were totally okay with marrying the tribes that they fought alongside.They’re like, oh, you know, you fight with us, you are strong. Like we’ll marry into this. All right, so to continue here the core downside with oh, and, and by the way, people are wondering if, great slaves are still common in Islamic countries in, in terms of enslaved populations. They are very common.It’s a huge problem in Qatar, in the uua e even though these people aren’t like by what the Quran would say, technically, slaves they still get griped very frequently. It’s a, it’s a big problem. So yeah. Oh, also, if you’re wondering Mormons not a single known case of a Mormon raping a native captive and they did have native captains on, on occasion, soSimone Collins (2): Oh, they did?Oh,Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. Other, other population that that did not grape. So it’s. This, this makes it even more stark about like the Spanish doing this constantly and the French doing this occasionally. [00:19:00] Because apparently a lot of people can get by like without doing it. It’s not like an inevitability.Simone Collins (2): Even if there’s active Yeah. Animosity. Or even if they are, for example, like early Mormons expending into what might be territory inhabited by. Native Americans already indigenous people, whatever we’re calling them now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think, I mean obviously I might be biased because I’m partially from the backwoods tradition myself but I think the backwoods idea around this is actually fundamentally pretty good.Which is to say. If you were able to conquer a territory, you probably don’t want to marry the women of that territory because they are then genetically conquering your own people. And we actually see this repeatedly of other groups that were very violent and expansionist. So examples here are, well, one Muslims, two Vikings.Vikings is a, is a better example. Muslims actually got more genetic spread, but [00:20:00] Vikings actually had an almost negligible genetic spread in the regions that they conquered and used SMEC slaves. It.Simone Collins (2): So who didn’t do that though was Alexandra, the grade. He had this policy of getting his top leadership to marry in whatever regions, and he picked up wives and.The various regions they conquered, like Roxanne, for example. Yeah. My understandingMalcolm Collins: is that the Greek genetic influence in those regions was wiped out pretty quickly,Simone Collins (2): partially diluted. It instantly. They also just didn’t seem to like stop to actually really set up an entrench in many of the places where they, you know, alleged.Well,Malcolm Collins: I mean, this, this shows you know, if you’re, if you’re playing like the genetics game, right? And, and having your genetics within a region helps your culture thrive, grow within that region. Because usually the two are sort of, co I’m gonna say comorbid, but like, they, they have a. I, I forget what it’s called, like a beneficial cycle with each other.Like the, the, [00:21:00] the, the genes and the culture often have predilections together that make them work more easily together. So, so an example of this could be you could develop as Simone that knows that I have, for example, who knows if this is from my ancestors, but I have a pretty strong disgust reaction towards women that I see as beneath me.And I just never really slept around, was women I saw as beneath me, even when I did sleep around a lot. Because I saw it as and this is partially why I, I don’t sleep as women who have high body counts, but it’s not just that, it’s like more generally, like she knew this was a problem with her and her degree that she talks about, where I was like, it’s pretty gross that you don’t have like,Simone Collins (2): an active turnoff related to college degree.And it wasn’t even like, I didn’t have one. It was that. It was the wrong college.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. You were Vale Victorian even. And I was like, ah, I guess that makes up for it. But you know, you do have to go to Cambridge if we’re gettingSimone Collins (2): married enough. Not enough. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I don’t wanna keep dealing with this.Speaker 5: It’s interesting that at a subconscious level, my brain, rather than [00:22:00] recognizing elite colleges as like an elitist thing, the way they would typically be recognized, I saw it as just a sign of fitness at competing, was in the existing societal structure, at least the one that existed when I was growing up.I doubt my kids will feel that way because it’s no longer relevant in terms of your ability to, , amass power, whether that power is capital, followers, et cetera. But it was then.Malcolm Collins: But no, it is, it is like an active disgust pathway that I have.Right.Simone Collins (2): Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah. That like what one cultural group might be like, oh yeah, absolutely. Like I’d hit that and other people being like, Ew, no. Why would I, I would not even think about it like that. Yeah. About that.Malcolm Collins: I actually started to think about it in the case of like Tucker Carlson offer, right.This is who actually got me thinking about it. And I wasSimone Collins (2): like, oh, like what American troops would want to like,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like would I actually in that way. I mean, there’s a lot of Intels in the US that would be like, yeah, sign me up. I [00:23:00] will, I I will go to Iran. I will take one for the Team America. But I, I think a, a fairly large percent of the American male population would just be like, I’m notSimone Collins (2): really interested.That’s why would I do that? Yeah, yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like, doesn’t seem like my thing. And, and note again we don’t see this in all populations populations that are famous for griping captives are, for example, the Japanese Japanese famously griped about anyone they could capture constantly and consistently.And in fact, they did it even more than the Catholics. So, you know, hey, at least the Catholics aren’t as bad as the Japanese.Simone Collins (2): Yay,Malcolm Collins: yay did.Simone Collins (2): I mean,Malcolm Collins: I might ask ai.Simone Collins (2): I mean, are are we talking numerically, are we talking in forms of violence? I’m talking in terms ofMalcolm Collins: frequency. Like they have a captive, what’s the probability?Uhhuh?Speaker 6: Alright, checked it out and the answer is not even close. This [00:24:00] Japanese are way more likely to rape than Catholics, even if you narrow that Catholic population to only Spanish colonizers when measured on a per soldier, per captive, per opportunity basis, apparently not even close. Casual grape was considered a routine reward for soldiers in the Japanese army.But wait, but wasn’t that true of the Spanish colonizers? Uh, they say the main reason is because it varied by region. If there was like a monastery in that region, they would stop them. Okay, well not stop them, but complain about it loudly. I.Simone Collins (2): Yeah, like if, if you’re a woman and you are taken captive by type A, type B, type C, you know, Catholic Spaniard, Japanese military ban Protestant.Yeah. Backwoods person. Quaker Quakers, like none, [00:25:00] no Quakers.Malcolm Collins: I, I like, I, I was going through this with AI to try to find like any kind AI’s great for that. I can be like any historical example, can you find one concretely recorded historicalSimone Collins (2): example? Pretty imagine they, they wouldn’t even know where to go.Because if you asked a Quaker woman, you know, like she, let’s say that there’s something wrong with like, you know, her, her chest, she’d be like, oh, my stomach hurts. If she had, you know. Problems in her, you know, intimate areas. She’d say, my stomach hurts. You know, like, well, theMalcolm Collins: Quakers had the big problem where the pirates kept rating them and they wouldn’t do anything about it.And it was a big debate in Philadelphia of like, whether we should do anything about the pirates that keep killing and raping our population. And they were like, I don’t, I don’t know, like the, the, they, it would be violent to stop them. You, you could, I, when I say woke culture came from Quaker culture, like, it really, like the, the similarities are astonishing.Mm-hmm. But that is Read the Pragmatist Guide, the Crafting Religion, or we might do another episode on that that make for a good [00:26:00] episode. But the advantages of this, so I’ve talked about other cultures that quickly exploded out onto a population out of nowhere starting was very small, starting numbers.Okay. And most of the American groups represent one of these populations. The starting Quaker population in America was small. The starting puritan population in America was small. The starting cavalier population in America was small. Like if we’re talking about like the actual immigrants over but the starting aver population that the backwards came from, which were, gangs and of, of Ulster Scots in a, in a lawless territory of Scotland they were maybe, as I pointed out in the past maybe 3000 fighting age men in total that exploded into one of the dominant American cultures and one of the largest cultures on Earth that really only compares in terms of its explosive conquering of a region to again, like the Vikings or the Muslims or something like that.But the Vikings didn’t have a lasting genetic impact except in one region. Where did the Vikings have a lasting genetic impact?Simone Collins (2): Ooh, [00:27:00] don’t tell me that. That’s not where they came from. I wanna say the Midwest,Malcolm Collins: it would, no, it was the only region where they didn’t have anyone to grape. Not inSimone Collins (2): theMalcolm Collins: United States.Simone Collins (2): Oh, like ice Iceland or something? IcelandMalcolm Collins: in Greenland. Okay.Simone Collins (2): Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Just like new land to settle. Interesting. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: because they didn’t have, well, they, they conquered other territories really extensively to the point where there’s tons of towns named after them in England. Sure. There’s tons of, you know, but they just did not have much of a genetic impact.Speaker 7: It appears to be between four and 6%, um, except in the or Canadian, Shetlands Islands, this very high island at the very top of Scotland where they had permanent settlements. And there it’s, uh, 23 to 28%.Malcolm Collins: To have a genetic impact, you have to be way more systemic about it and set up colonies and have a native population die off, which really requires a Spanish level amount of this. And in Spanish territories about that they did become the dominant genetic ancestor in the [00:28:00] regions. And they have around I, I think like across Latin America, it’s about 25% Native American blood.Left. But a lot of now, now you can say, well, yeah, but how is that working for them in those regions? Like, are these regions economically successful? Did the cultures meld well? Did they meld harmoniously in a way that led to technologically productive capacity and not endless civil wars and fights?Hmm.YouMalcolm Collins: can argue maybe that’s a, a, a, a poor integration of the cultures that led to that. Maybe it’s just Catholic culture more broadly. ‘cause we’ve talked in other episodes that Catholics have military coups at a way higher rate than than Protestants do. But if you contrast it with the backwards people, which did genetically integrate to an extent now to a way lower extent, I, I’d estimate their level of genetic integration is.2.5%, unless you’re getting to specific subpopulations like the, I forget what they’re called, but they like heavily integrated with the Native American population and they’ve [00:29:00] become pretty genetically successful in some parts of the Appalachian territories. And they have a, a, a name. So they integrated with free slaves and Native Americans, and they have a, a different and unique culture that, that has been pretty successful and is still surviving.Mm-hmm. But all of these groups they never had, like after the initial rebellions of the colonial period they didn’t really have any discordance. Nor was there a huge differentiation in society between like the people of this culture with some native blood and the people without some native blood, to the extent that like.It’s not even well documented who is partially native for most of these regions. Mm-hmm. Which I think would sur surprise, you know, people from the, the Spanish areas where you did keep heavy track of this because it determined your social standing in society.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So basically it led to more success, it led to more cultural success.So it’s, it’s generally not, and it led to more cultural genetic [00:30:00] success. So,Simone Collins (2): last you mean like a lasting, genetically detectable impact in an area?Malcolm Collins: Right. Like, like the backwards people still make up the genetically dominant group in the regions that they conquered in, in the early colonial days.Whereas if you look at the, soSimone Collins (2): basically an, an argument against, especially SE X. Slavery is an argument for segregation.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, and this happened with the the, was the, was the Arabs to an extent as well, like Muslims held huge amounts of territory that have almost no Arab DNA left in them.Wow. Because they practice this system.Simone Collins (2): Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And Jews, as I said, ended up melding was their greatest enemy because they practice this system for a period and, and, and, and don’t anymore. Partially likely as like a, a cultural evolutionary adaptation to the negative effects of that. Now let’s talk about the economics of any, any thoughts before [00:31:00] I go further?There are,Simone Collins (2): yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m trying to figure out, I, I wish I could just go back in time and like, I don’t know, like it’s, it’s mid battle. There is a, a viking. I thought they did come on rape and pillage. That’s like a viking thing, isn’t it? You know?Speaker 8: You Should be really proud of your wife, at least.I mean, Freyja dove into that pillaging 100%. Even took part in quite a lot of theMicrophone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-10: Gripping.Speaker 9: .Huh? Freyja forced all kinds of monks to let her write and stuff. I didn’t really expect that. I was totally blown away when I suddenly saw her on top of this monk, moaning and groaning. Seriously, !Speaker 10: Of course, I mean, that’s what you do when you pillage.Malcolm Collins: Right, right. And so the point I’m making mm-hmm.Is rape and pillage doesn’t actually leave a genetic footprint. Even be king of a territory and have a bunch of wives. Doesn’t leave a genetic [00:32:00] footprint.Simone Collins (2): AlexanderMalcolm Collins: actually, why doesn’t it leave a genetic footprint? It’s an interesting point here. Mm-hmm. Why was it that the Scotch Irish left a genetic footprint mm-hmm.And continued to grow to today becauseSimone Collins (2): they were ghettoized and the Jews were ghettoized.Malcolm Collins: It’s well because they allowed themselves to be ghettoized. So whenSimone Collins (2): again, I guess it’s kind of a two-way street. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: When the Vikings took territory they liked culturally being rich, showing off their wealth, having lots of spouses, having lots of nice things when they, when they created persistent colonies within a territory.Mm-hmm. And their main social steam was still back in the scando areas. Right. Like all of their wealth in these territories was often to show off back home in those territories. Right? Mm-hmm. Well, what this meant is if you couldn’t have wealth and lots of wives and everything like that, which most of a population cannot do, and you were [00:33:00] a Viking you didn’t stay in these territories, you’d go back home with whatever you could get. Because keep in mind these societies were mostly futile functional slaves. And then a, a leading class that was naming things, that was creating the language. I mean, like the English language is like half you know, from, from these, these conquering groups, right?Mm-hmm. One to 2% may even be overstating. It may be like 0.2% of the population is actually Norman, because you, you just didn’t have enough resources to maintain an elite class that was more than that. Mm-hmm. But what made the, and this was also true of the Muslims as they spread out using this system but what made the backwards tradition really different is because they had so much hatred and a reflexive discuss towards anyone that signaled status.There just wasn’t a huge reason to ever accumulate. And I, when I mean status, I mean status in terms of culture or wealth or anything like that, they just didn’t have a reason to accumulate these things. And because they didn’t have a reason to accumulate these things, they never really cared [00:34:00] about being poor or you know, being from what the outsiders saw them as is uncivilized which allowed them to just.Keep having kids. It was never a concern for them. It was like, well, of course I’m gonna keep having kids in many ways when people look down on the American redneck as being this you know, uneducated, whatever. Right? And the American redneck is like, well, screw you. I don’t care that you look down on me for that stuff.That is the cultural response that has allowed them to thrive at least genetically speaking to the extent they have from this small starting population of maybe 3000 people.Simone Collins (2): Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Where, where other groups did not. I,Simone Collins (2): I think a lot of this also, now that I think about this in the context of Tism as we talk about it coming from a place of cultural pride in liking your people and your group I think maybe part of the, the issue of.Taking on [00:35:00] either conquered wives, even if it’s consensual or smec slaves is it shows a lack of pride of your own culture and people, and instead just kind of this nihilistic selfishness or hedonism. Exactly. And not like a love of your people and your upbringing and your culture. So it may also be a sign of.A lack of good cultural upbringing, a lack of your childhood, like love for your childhood and your family and your people and your future. And maybe that’s also kind of where it’s coming from is, is these are people who’ve become separated from that. I could see it making sense in the context of, for example, members of the Japanese military who are just like, you know, experiencing an early version of that Asian burnout of just like, I hate everything.I just, you know, like, I just wanna feel good. And, and maybe Spaniard colonists just kind of being like, [00:36:00] I’ve been on a ship for a long, like, you know, who knows what church services were like on this ship. You’ve, you’ve been separated from your family, you’ve been separated from your culture. Yeah.Like it would make sense that a Renaissance era, European colonist from pretty much anywhere would get a little worry if, like, I. You know, you’ve been so unmoored from a community for that long. I mean, what do you, they’re basically like, well, this is veryMalcolm Collins: interesting about what you’re saying. So, where you see this pattern of often not a huge genetic or, or less of a genetic footprint that you would think in highly grapey behavior is when the men are mostly interested in a status game somewhere else.So Well, andSimone Collins (2): when they, they appear to be unmoored from any other community thatMalcolm Collins: the Spanish and KIS to doors really cared about status and maybe setting up a family back home in Spain, like that was often the goal. You go to the us you go on your you know, grape adventure, but the goal is always to get [00:37:00] back to Spain and to be even a higher status within Spanish society.Sure. It was the same with the Vikings often it was not the same with the, the backwards tradition people or the Puritan people, for example. Mm-hmm. They, they did not care, like the, the, the backwards people did not care at all what any of the Scots Irish who stayed in Ireland or the ulcer Scots thought of them.They didn’t even seem to have persistent communication with them after they left. They were just completely irrelevant to their lives after that point. So it’s how status is measured. And so this is one of those things I talk about borrowing things from other cultures, and in some emphasis I’m like, this is something good we can borrow from Jewish culture.This is one of the strongest pieces of cultural technology that this culture has, which is a reflexive disgust of status signaling. And another is, is looking for strength in partners like wives. Instead of looking for traditional femininity inwives,Simone Collins (2): I think you need to look at the underlying factors that lead to interest in status signaling versus.Discussed. And I think the underlying things [00:38:00] are status signaling becomes, it, it gets out of control when you have a lack of genuine morality or cultural values. It, it’s what, it’s what fills the void. So what creates the void is the question you need to be asked.Malcolm Collins: It’s the lack of cultural values. Yeah.Well, no, no reflexive anger and discuss towards status signaling is very, it was, was very important in making this work. Like you need to know that if you try to show off how big your house is or you know, how, how many jewels you have or how many that people, or you know, that you went to the latest opera you know that people are going to roll their eyes at you to not attempt to do that stuff.Otherwise you end up picking it up from the cultures around you. That is what the urban monoculture used to lure out so many people, and that’s one of the reasons why this group has been more resistant to it. And so when a lot of people point to the poverty of these regions, it’s like a bad thing.It’s like, no, that’s largely why they survived. Not caring about the poverty of their regions [00:39:00] and not caring about particularly enriching themselves. It, which also leads to lower rates of military defections, which we talk about in other, so that that’s why they have fewer coups. But I wanna go to talking about the economics of slavery now.Okay. And what slavery does economically to a region. Mm-hmm. So I wanna put some graphs on screen here which may really shock people if you haven’t seen this.One is to see where slavery was actually practiced in the United States which is in a smaller region than most people think.It was really just in the, the, region that had the what was it called? Tradition, theSimone Collins (2): cavalier,Malcolm Collins: cavalier tradition. And, and you can see the greater Appalachian territory essentially carving through it with very little slavery.Simone Collins (2): And I think it just, it’s helpful to put into context why is that, is why that is the case.The cavalier culture in the United States was the, the earliest colonists to win. There were often the second sons of wealthy. English landed [00:40:00] gentry. This is a country where the eldest son would inherit the estate in England, leaving second sons, for example, to either while he needed to maybe join the clergy or join the military, or goodness knows, maybe you’d go to the colonies, you’d go in, you know, a later period to India to serve, you know, in the British Imperial Empire there.But what happened with many second Sons is they would go to this particular part of the colonies. They’d get a plantation, and because they weren’t going there with any community with any ideological drive like it was with the Puritans. With the Puritans, it was like Silicon Valley group houses just.Malcolm Collins: No, no.They, they had a goal. Their goal was the traditions of the nobility of Europe.Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Well, it was basically to have my own estate. It’s just that I have to start fresh. And so they had to buy their labor and that’s why they bought the slaves. They weren’t coming. Well, it was aboutMalcolm Collins: traditional status signaling without a religious framework really guiding itSimone Collins (2): well without the, like, equivalent of SFS already living on their family grounds.You know, they kind of [00:41:00] needed to figure that out. Yeah, it was, it was, did some indentured servitude and they did some slavery.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you look at maps here, so if we look at single parents, cancer deaths, mobility, disability rates, vision, disability rates, cognitive disability rates, difficult with independent living, life expectancy, obesity rates, health insurance, availability, heart disease rates, stroke death rates, cancer deaths, diabetes, smoking, mental distress, household income, credit score, debt, delinquency, distressed communities upwards, mobility, income inequality, food insecurity, workers making minimum wage or less unemployment.Incarceration rate. Homicide rate, high school diploma, teenage birth rates, excessive drinking, adult mobility, social capital index, broadband, internet, religion. And then we put that against slavery. You see very high overlap. Mm-hmm. Now, thefirst thing that people are going to say in response to this is they’re gonna be like, okay, well now show me a map of US black population by percentage.Right? And it’s like, okay, I’ll give [00:42:00] you that, that is a heavy overlap and I’ll put that map on screen here. But there’s been a lot of studies that have looked at the white population of these regions in isolation, and they appear to have been economically massively underserved.Simone Collins (2): Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Like, they, they do like, while we’re less than white population than other regions.Now of course part of that could be cavalier culture just doesn’t lead to innovation. Doesn’t lead to, to the development of industry which is certainly part of that at the same rate as other American cultural groups. But, why, why in, in, in, in Rome, it, it didn’t really develop. Why do you get these enormous lack of economic development during periods in which you have slaves?And this is actually kinda surprising. I mean, like, you have free labor, right? Like presumably that should be like a huge advantage, right? To a region to not have to pay your labor force.You, you, you don’t see why that would be a big advantage, Simone?Simone Collins (2): Well, I mean [00:43:00] with, when you just pay for your labor, you don’t have to house it, you don’t have to feed it, you don’t have to, you know, you just, you just pay them.And based on market forces, you can, you know, raise or lower your, that is,Simone Collins: that is trueSimone Collins (2): to a large extent. And this is something that often it’s, you have to think of, like if we’re looking at this completely divorced from morality or anything having slaves just kind of like having, an expensive automated factory like you have to consider depreciation and upkeep and like replacing you know, assets that have run through their lifetime, et cetera.And, and to, to me that, that seems like a a yeah. SoMalcolm Collins: this is an interesting point that Simone makes here which is worth diving into a little bit. Now it is difficult from parsing history books to know what percent of northern factory workers lived worse lives than the average slave, and what percent of slaves led worse lives than the average factory owner.Now, you [00:44:00] could say in absolute terms, being. Technically free, and we’ll talk about how free these factory workers really were is always better than being enslaved. And I’d be like, that’s just like objectively not true. There are many instances where I would rather be a slave than like starving to death or something like that, right?Like, if I had to watch my children starve to death, would I rather be a slave and see them sold off? Yeah. Any day of the week. Like, I don’t, I don’t even know how you could like. Joke about that. Right. And, and so, but it’s hard to, because there’s so much bias from the, the people who want to like do slavery apologetics to do slavery, apologetics for the people who want to you know, overdramatize how bad work things work for northern factory workers, which a lot of people love dramatizing that as well.But what can be said for sure is some factory workers had a life that almost any human would choose some [00:45:00] slave lives over the lives of those factory workers.Simone Collins (2): Well, I mean, just to consider the, the incentives of the employer slash slaveholder a slaveholder is probably not gonna do things that they know are going to have very high mortality risks for you, or like.The risk of your arm being chopped off or something because they’ve paid for you upfront. You were, you were a, a non-trivial upfront cost. Or if you weren’t, like, let’s say you were born into their family or their estate you could be, if in good conditions, sold for a good price. This is not the same with an employee.Like if, if they lose their arm, oh, I’m sorry, we have to fire you. I mean, this was before labor regulations. You know, this,Malcolm Collins: this was very frequent for northern faculty workers. WhatSimone Collins (2): she said. Yeah, like there’s a dozen more where you came from. Like I don’t have to worry about fixing up my equipment to make it safer.‘cause there’s a lot of people who want this job.Malcolm Collins: Many northern factory workers starved to death. It was very regular for them to starve to death for their children, to starve to death for there to be 12 applications, for any position for [00:46:00] children to be sent into the machinery because they were considered disposable and they could get into smaller places.Simone Collins (2): Yeah. They could,Rule handsMalcolm Collins: children to be ground up and then later serve to people in food stuffings because you know, they just don’t care. They didn’t care about food regulations. You know, this stuff. Talk about in like the jungle and stuff like that. Like the, the, the, the worst of the worst like, okay, I’m, I’m trying to think of it.A, a truly cruel grapey beaty slave owner versus the worst of the worst of the northern factory barons selling children as food products. ISimone Collins (2): mean, it’s, they’re both equally abominations of, of humans. Like they’re both,Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s apples to oranges, but they’re both abominations ofSimone Collins (2): the highest. Yeah. I’m just, I’m, I’m purely looking at the cold incentives here.And, and I’m also looking at it like, not just from the perspective of like, what if I were a slave, but also like, what if I were just a heartless, Amal plantation operation owner of some sort that wants, like to produce units? Yeah, I mean, I, I think there’s, this is also why many of [00:47:00] them favored indentured servitude because with indentured servitude, you basically had free labor.You could conveniently work, and we’ve talked about this before, butMalcolm Collins: in, in some of the early indentured servitude records we have in the American colonies, only one in seven lived. So when people talk about like how easy indentured Servit had it, and the reason it was so low was because of the economic incentive.If they died, you didn’t have to pay them. And so you basically were doing everything in your power to get them killed. And thereSimone Collins (2): wasn’t, anyway, yeah, there was, there was no maybe you paid for passage, possibly, but there was basically no upfront cost, whereas there was with slaves, so. Basically Yeah.You were like, oh, yeah. Yeah. It was like, buy now, pay later. And then you just declare bankruptcy. Ooh,Malcolm Collins: no, I, I also wanna note something when I talk about how bad some of the factories were in the north.Simone Collins (2): Mm.Malcolm Collins: And how bad some of the plantations were in the South. We also need to be very transparent about this, is that many factories in the work were run by.Weirdo [00:48:00] religious puritans and stuff like that, who had ideas that were very utopian, that they tried to make things good. They tried to create like these perfect Christian environments for their workers, and often very strange utopian town setups and stuff like this that you can still visit today. There were many plantations where people were, you know, Christian and like really believed it and wanted to try to, like, they thought they were creating the best life they could for their slaves, given their economic conditions.But and I, and I think that that’s, that’s something that needs to be noted because we live in a society where, where those things always get ignored, but they existed. Yeah. Yeah. And they probably existed about at the same rates as the worst of the worst populations that, that, that you have because, you know, most humans just aren’t that evil.Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we, we are in, in, in, in, in this conversation talking about the, like sociopathic edge cases, genuinely horrible [00:49:00] people. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, there, there’s always gonna be a couple in every generation.Malcolm Collins: As to why slavery does this, it means that the wealthy in that society basically don’t invest in innovation.And so even if innovation exists, like in Rome, we know of lots of like technical sketches of designs that could have been used to create the beginnings of an industrial revolution for like moving water uphill and stuff like this and like early engine type designs. But there was just never a reason to experiment with this stuff if you had slaves, right?So why, why try it? Why roll it out? Why expand on this stuff if you’re not doing the labor yourself? And this is why you had so much. Explosive innovation within the regions. Specifically like the, the predominantly Protestant, northern regions of the United States and in places like Scotland where you had these you know, more Calvinist groups that were very obsessed with doing everything themselves.And if you’re a population that’s obsessed with doing [00:50:00] everything yourselves, then you innovate. And the video that really got me about like why this causes such rapid cost reduction compared to outsourcing something to slavesSimone Collins (2): mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Is, consider base capitalism, right? So you have factory workers and you are paying each factory worker for x many things that they produce, right?Mm-hmm. Like x many units. That’s, that’s fundamentally what you care about as a capitalist, right? You, you take your cut and then you give them, you know, whatever you can, right? Well now one factory worker finds a way. To increase the production rate of the factory by, let’s say 20%. Now this is the economic equivalent to amortizing that 20% increase in that amount of product for that factory’s lifecycle.So if you’ve got 130 people there, now that person has done the job of or let’s say a hundred people to make the math easier for me of 20 people over the course of an entire year, but amortized indefinitely into the [00:51:00] future. And so you pay them a lot more because now you want them to do other types of innovations like that, that increase efficiency.Mm-hmm.And as soon as you get this giant economic motivation for efficiency increases, which you don’t have for slaves and was in a culture that has that mindset then the people who become specialists at this have a good reason to really double down on what they were doing. Which is like what my family did historically.We did a lot of development, like I’ve told you for like oil and stuff like this is, is it’s trying to make these processes more efficient. And that leads to these giant jumps in efficiency. And, and you get jumped in efficiency that are so large that one person can do the work of, you know, 25 slaves.And once you have one person being able to do the work of 25 slaves, then slavery becomes economically unviable, which is actually basically already happening at the end of, the, the southern slavery period is that economics, even if they hadn’t had the Civil War, likely would have largely ended the practice [00:52:00] within a couple generations.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Now thoughts Simone, more broadly, basically. Oh, and the most interesting thing about all of this is even in the countries and cultures that don’t care about slavery. Mm-hmm. With ai, there’s basically no reason to have slaves at all anymore. Like as soon as we get AI humanoid robots they are generally going to be cheaper than slaves.No. To do,Simone Collins (2): sadly. No,Malcolm Collins: you don’t think so.Simone Collins (2): Not with things like s smacks slavery. No, no.Malcolm Collins: I guess, yeah, some people want the realSimone Collins (2): thing. Well, it’s, yeah, I mean, for a lot of people it’s about power for a lot of people. There are a lot of places in which life is still very cheap in which they just sort of end up with people on their hands, and it is, you know, fairly inexpensive for them to just, you know, buy and sell it and abuse it and dispose of it when they’re done.And it’s tragic and horrible, and I need to create a world in which that [00:53:00] cannot happen and will never happen again. It keeps me up at night, but I, I have no doubt that that is gonna continue in, in the age of AI to, to be like, oh, just get them a sex bot. No, that’s not, that’s just not how it’s gonna work.For some people that will work, but I mean, if it’s a physical piece of, of machinery, like merely the, the material costs, the upkeep, the electricity, the subscription service for the, the AI to do it. Like, are you kidding? Like some displaced young ladies, way less expensive than that. Just, just logistically speaking by, by many orders of magnitude, I don’t think you understand just how like, technically inexpensive human life is when you know where to get it.And that is heartbreaking but true and that’s not going to change.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’m, I’m sorry, I’m, I’m trying to find a, a, a counter example of this. So I was looking up Dutch traitors and at least none of the Dutch traitors associated with New Netherlands. So this, it would’ve been a, another [00:54:00] Protestant group have any specific examples of sexual violence against Native Americans,Speaker 13: So there was an incident in Taiwan I was able to find, which is the only incident, . Apparently ever in human history of a large group of Protestants griping people, this’s within 1652, the W Laan Rebellion, where the Dutch East India company asked for Taiwanese women to be handed over for sex. ,Also side note of you don’t know your history. The Dutch are kind of b******s.Speaker 13: Outside of this, you could maybe argue that Captain Cook’s Expedition did this, , who was in English.Individual, from the Church of England, except he mostly was trying to restrain his people. And the big complaint he had is that they were trading, , nails and parts of the ship for sexual access to women, which is more like prostitution and slavery. Quite different than what the kasad were doing.So this does appear to be , a real [00:55:00] and durable pattern of something. Totally unique to the Catholic, , expeditionary forces.Simone Collins (2): right?But there are many cultural groups that, for hundreds of years seem to be very interested in exploiting the, the bodies of vulnerable people that are both within their culture and not. They just don’t value human life. Basically, the,Malcolm Collins: the point of this episode is when you conquer a region, do the good Christian thing and eradicate the native population, or you’re going to have problems over the long term.Simone Collins (2): That’s, that’s,Malcolm Collins: I’m joking. This is a joke by the way, for anyone who wants to like, take this out of context or something. That’s a joke. In, in fact, the culture that I have lauded most in this episode would say what you should do is eradicate the weak and intermarry with the strong. And that’s the goal when conquering a territory.Well, I [00:56:00] mean, that’s. Fundamentally the law of humanity for the longest period, you can say, oh, that’s a horrible thing to do. But if you do not do this in the future, then you and your descendants will be weak and you will be conquered by the strong or atSimone Collins (2): least at the end. It comes down to strong culture and strong communities.If you wanna have a lasting impact in an area if you love your life and your people and your culture, you, you will find ways to spread it and flourish and do great things. And if you don’t, you’re gonna fizzle out. You have to have something more than nihilism to have a lasting impact as a group.And yeahMalcolm Collins: can you believe that we, when was the daring take that sex? Slavery is probably not a good thing. Civilizationally speaking.Simone Collins (2): Yeah, but the, the argument’s slightly different than, like, it’s a humanitarian [00:57:00] crisis and it’s against it’s bad morality.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m, I’m not, I’m not like it’s a humanitarian.I don’t care about the humanitarian consequences. I’m just saying for your own people, it’s not good. Which is interesting. Like even if you don’t care about the humanitarian nature of it, it’s just a bad idea.Simone Collins (2): You’re, you’re cooking yourself is what you’re saying.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You’re cooking yourself.Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm. Yeah.There you go. God, that’s bleak. All of this is bleak. But I mean, you’re right. I, I wanna focus more on the, like, this is more about not, not so much about all these people who ultimately don’t matter and didn’t matter and won’t matter because they choose this pathway. They devalue human life like this.They hate their own people enough like this. Mm-hmm. To do such horrible things, but rather just how wonderful it is that the people who ultimately win are the people. Who love who they are, love their families, love their communities, love their cultures, and just want to support it. [00:58:00]Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Also, there’s another interesting point to all of this which is that many Catholics will say, well, most of the Catholics today don’t like listen to the rules of the religion.Right? And they bemoan that. And there’s this implication that this wasn’t the case historically. That historically most of the Catholics actually did follow the rules of their religion. And as we can see from these cases, from the, the Spanish colonizers that wasn’t true for huge swaths of Catholic territory.Many of the people like it, it just wasn’t as good at being top of mind as a cultural value set as something like Puritanism was or the, the the presbyterianism of the backwards peopleSimone Collins (2): without doing any research or, or. Really understanding it very well. From an outsider’s perspective, what seems to be the problem to me is when I think about conquistadors and early Spanish missionaries, they were [00:59:00] not, they were very different from a Catholic Spanish community.I grew up taking field trips to, for example, Californian Spanish missions. These, these were, these were monasteries or they were fortifications, they, they were not Spanish communities.Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, this, this explains it in part, oh my God,Simone Collins (2): that they weren’t replicating the entire civilization. They were just sending out these reavers essentially that didn’t even represent it.Malcolm Collins: So, no, no, no, no, no. So, the, the most religiously called people in Catholic culture, even back then would’ve been. Wouldn’t have been part of a conquistador group. They would’ve been e even if they were adventure minded, they would’ve been part of a missionary group. They would’ve set up a missionary fort.They wouldn’t have been among the conquistadors to give them side-eye when they decided to grape captives. But in a puritan expeditionary force,Simone Collins (2): hmm,Malcolm Collins: you would [01:00:00] have among them, some of the most religiously devout people. And often it was the most religiously devout people that were elevated to positions of command.So it would’ve been the person who, as a boy felt particularly called to God in a Spanish Catholic society at the time, might have ended up as a, as a missionary in one of these areas, but they wouldn’t have been doing the active combat. They wouldn’t have been doing the active you know, going out and, and, and attempting to conquer these territories.Whereas if you are a backwards person or a Puritan person, and you are particularly called to religious callings you are, you’re dramatically more likely to be the local general, for example, or to be the, the, what would’ve been the equivalent of the actual lead conquistador, which makes it you religiously minded to keep your troops in line.So it’s like, where do these cultures sort, the people who have enough of an inner calling to impose cultural values,Simone Collins (2): that’s a factor. The, the argument [01:01:00] I was making more is, is when you look at the migratory patterns of these different groups, the ones who lasted and the ones who didn’t, the ones that lasted came over as families, including the Scott’s Irish, because they were all collectively kicked out.Clans were kicked out, families were kicked out together. And they lastedMalcolm Collins: many, many Spanish came over as families and still grape.Simone Collins (2): Not to my knowledge. Not to my knowledge. The great Alexander the greats men came as men. NoMalcolm Collins: Spanish. Simone.Simone Collins (2): I know. Just Spanish too. And I’m saying, and, and the Spanish came as men and the Vikings, no, no.What? You’re not listening.Malcolm Collins: You’re not listening. Yeah. We have many recordsSimone Collins (2): mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Of Spanish who did bring their families. Okay.Simone Collins (2): I don’t remember reading of any of them.Malcolm Collins: There’s, this is how, this is why it’s over 50% Spanish, DNA, if you’re talking about most of Latin America, because they came over. In huge numbers with their families.If you, for example, good example. I guess I just didn’t learn that part of history of this just in case you’re wondering like what this [01:02:00] society looked like. Mm-hmm. A really good movie you should watch is Mask of Zorro.Speaker 11: They want to destroy America. Give me the courage strength to wear the mask a little longer, . the world isn’t big enough to hide from me.Malcolm Collins: So if you, ofSimone Collins (2): delightful. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Come on. Picture Mask of Zuro Society. So in Mask of Zoro Society you had a, yeah, there’sSimone Collins (2): the Spanish Elite.Okay.Malcolm Collins: Fair. You had a Spanish Elite. Okay. So this Spanish elite that had families still regularly griped natives in their populations.Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: This is well recorded. Even when they brought over their families, even when they had their wives as another option, we still have records of them griping native populations.Simone Collins (2): Hmm.Malcolm Collins: You can’t just say it was because they were single now what? You could, yeah. That’sSimone Collins (2): way post conquistador, but sure. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: What you could say is that the conquistador period where they [01:03:00] didn’t often have their own women set a precedent that then was later carried out once they brought over their own families.Simone Collins (2): Mm.Malcolm Collins: But that doesn’t always work either because a lot of the puritan and backward settlements, they would often come over as just the men first and then bring over the women. And they didn’t set this up as a great culture.Simone Collins: Oh, no. Yeah.Simone Collins (2): My, my like ing movies or those Did you d did you ever see like, there there was this one movie with like a, about a Spanish conquistador who’s like blonde and like blue eyed and crazed looking going deep into the jungle and am I like, it really stuck with me.It was very striking. Are you taking No, no, that’s, no, no. That was like Mayan times. No, this is like. Small tribes in like the Amazon region, this like blonde crazed looking man in a little helmet. Okay. Yeah. I, I’ll try to find it. ‘cause [01:04:00] you didn’t see that, that’s like my anchoring thing of like what a con keystar is like, and it’s weird, but I think it’s also not inaccurate.Anyway. Yeah. Wow. That, and IMalcolm Collins: will use AI to try to find counterfactuals to this trend.Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Please. I, I am curiousand this is where I found that one Dutch example from Taiwan, uh, that it’s a counter example, but other than that, I was able to find nothing.Simone Collins (2): because I’m, I’m still leaning into what, what is, what is the force spreading? Is it a bunch of families who love each other and their culture and just wanna go live it somewhere, be them?They’re being kicked outta someone. No, I, I, I. Or is it a bunch of guys going out?Malcolm Collins: Accidentally came to the right answer. The core thing that leads to so much immorality within the Catholic groups is they take the people who care the most about what the Bible says the most about what their face says and the most about morality and cloister them from society,Simone Collins (2): isolate them in monasteries, whereas not, not helpful.Not helpful. TheMalcolm Collins: puritans [01:05:00] in the backwards took those people and often elevated them to positions of leadership, of secular society.Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Yeah. They were not in operational roles sufficiently. I mean, to be fair though, I, I would say that the, the monks did have a lot of influence and tried to get out there and do a lot of stuff.Malcolm Collins: Oh, they did have influence. They were constantly complaining that people were doing this stuff.Simone Collins (2): Yeah. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s complicated. I’m very, very curious to see what people think of the comments. So we’ll see.Malcolm Collins: Love you to death.Simone Collins (2): I love you too. Steak tonight, by the way.Malcolm Collins: Wonderful.Simone Collins (2): Mm.Simone Collins: Okay,Simone Collins (2): there we go. You need to adjust your camera a little bit, and I know you’re still trying to get your mic connected, you know, whatever, whatever. You’re on your own with the comments today. ‘cause it’s all about mass effect. Like, maybe, it seemed to me at least [01:06:00] when I checked in on comments, three people con commented on the broader subject matter of us versus them and the rest were all just massive packed comments and, and, and references to your other video game references like this and that.I can’t, I still can’t hear you though.Malcolm Collins: I hope a detailed and nerdy mass effect comments, not just general one.Simone Collins: 100%. Yes.Malcolm Collins: Were they very, like, well, they, they’re in, in this way and I saw a lot of them and they’re just wrong. Like,Simone Collins (2): well, yeah, you, you just didn’t know that you had to cure the genophage if you wanted to reach the like, final optimal state.And then other people were like, no, that’s not true. You can play through blah, blah, blah, blah. Now these things are like, well, I didn’t want to, you have to think about, you know, in terms of the larger war, you needed to have an ally to fight the something somethings. And I’m like, I don’tMalcolm Collins: The Reapers Simone?Yes, theSimone Collins (2): Reapers. I’mMalcolm Collins: so sorry. In actuality the a, a a species like people are just bad at math. A war like speaking [01:07:00] seed, like the Rogan having a thousand children per year per woman, that would mean a completed TFR of like around seven because they start breeding at 20 of well over seven thou, 700,000.Do you have any idea? The compounding effects of a TFR of 700,000. You keep in mind, you know, like in the US we have a TFR of 1.6. If you had a completed TFR of 700,000, the entire universe would be wiped out. We’re talking like within two lifetimes. You, you are literally creating a threat dramatically larger than the Reapers.Like there was a way to handle the reapers. There is no way to handle a Rogan fertility explosion. Mm-hmm. Other than another genophage, but who’s to know that’ll work again. Right. Now that they found a way to cure it, onceSimone Collins (2): one person pointed out that there, you could, you could think of [01:08:00] the Genophage problem as a Rocos Basilisk problem, where like, well eventually they’ll find a cure though, and then they’re going to.Punish whoever didn’t help them find the cure.Malcolm Collins: No. You could just eradicate them, which is what they were doing to themselves.Simone Collins (2): UhhuhMalcolm Collins: like this, the, the universe doesn’t need the rogan. They are a species that is mean to their own people. Mm-hmm. Right. Like the main reason they wanted to go back to this really high birth rate is it involved childhood rituals that had a really high death rate.And so they called the ones who were born after it. Mm-hmm. The the, the phage lucky as like an insult because they didn’t have to go through this death trial. And so you’re re recreating even for the Rogan in extremely brutal society, like you are, you are actively making things worse for the Rogan as well.By curing it, people were like, oh, well the cure genophage wouldn’t go back to same fertility. Fertility. It would only be like half that. And it’s like, okay, so a TFR around 350,000. Okay.Simone Collins (2): Okay. [01:09:00]Malcolm Collins: I’m just doing sketch math in my head. 350,000 compounding year. Like generation over generation. No, no,Simone Collins (2): it’sMalcolm Collins: still is,Simone Collins (2): it’s still the, it’s still not, yeah, you’re not solving the problem with that. It’s true.Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s bad. Really, really quickly.There was no, no sane person ever saves the Rogan in any timeline, no matter how much of a threat the Reapers seemed like.Simone Collins (2): Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: True.Simone Collins: That it’s, it’s, yeah, IMalcolm Collins: agree. Well, I Sorry to subject you to that nerdiness Simone.Simone Collins (2): Well, no, I, I, I don’t mind the nerdiness. I just haven’t played mass effect, so. It’s just me and Eric CRE in the comments being like, well, I don’t get it, but I’m sure this has been philosophically rich for you.He like commented twice and they’re just like, I don’t see the point, and I’m like. WhoMalcolm Collins: doesn’t see the point.Simone Collins (2): He’s just not, he, he, I don’t think he ever played video games. I’ve never really played video games. Like I don’tMalcolm Collins: see the, oh, well there is a big point to the, the, the, the point is that [01:10:00] 96% of people chose this option because they had a NoSimone Collins (2): no.Yeah. We’re talking about the, like, the meta picture of like, what’s the point of, of video games. And I, I, I do think that some, and we were just talking last night about like, we can’t wait for our kids to start playing civ and the other sort of civilization thing.Malcolm Collins: Oh, well, the point of video games is to masturbate specific instincts.War instincts, fighting instincts. If you do not like, as, as we’ve talked about with regular masturbation, it dramatically reduces the rates of grape within a society and stuff like that. If you remove video games from a society, men do not regularly exercise these pathways that’s going to change their day-to-day behavior, the way they perceive reality, the way they perceive the world.And society is already becoming significantly less violent to the extent where I was shocked to learn, like when our Steven EU debate that he’d never fought someone in his entire life, like had a physical fight. ISimone Collins (2): forgot about that. That was interesting.Malcolm Collins: And I was like, that’s bizarre, right? Like, but like that’s [01:11:00] gotta do something to a male’s brain to have never fought someone in their entire life.Simone Collins (2): I know.Malcolm Collins: Anyway the cultural differences, I say. All right, so I’ll get into the episode.Speaker 14: . Colleagues, no good. 20 21, 22, 23. That’s the point. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 30. Okay. Octavia, five seconds. Take one. 2, 3, 4, 5. Now suck it off your head. Tighten weight. 1, 2, 3, 2, 4, 5. Go. Go. Everyone can go now.[01:12:00]Speaker 16: You betterrun. Oh my God. A good, good jobcolor.Toast. Go, go, go, go. Toast you way ahead. He’s up ahead.Speaker 14: Andy’s trying to get down, sweetheart.Speaker 16: Pink. Your favorite color This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this hard-hitting Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the “Us vs Them” framework that’s essential for any society’s long-term survival. Why does attempting to build a world without in-groups and out-groups inevitably lead to eradication? From the Mass Effect genophage dilemma (where 96% of gamers make the “moral” choice that dooms the galaxy) to real-world immigration, fertility rates, and cultural resistance, they unpack why shared culture, laws, and realistic alliances matter more than feel-good universalism.Topics include:* Why high-fertility, low-assimilation groups shift societies over generations* The scorpion, snake, and panda metaphor for incompatible cultural scaling* Strategic allyship in a collapsing urban monoculture era: who can conservatives actually work with?* Charter cities, space colonization, and preserving high-agency lineages* Why purity spirals and suicidal aesthetics fail civilizationallyIf you’re tired of bleeding-heart policies that ignore math, biology, and history, this is for you. Malcolm drops unfiltered red pills on why “enforcing existing laws” has become controversial and how groups like Orthodox Jews, Mormons, or even certain Latin American conservatives might make better tactical allies than expected.Would you cure the genophage? Drop your take below. Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Like you can’t just invite somebody into your society without them agreeing to any conditions, you know, have no shared culture and no conditions at all.And just be like,Simone Collins: well, it, it, and it, and once it wasn’t even that anymore. It was also though like, okay, but at least you, you promised to follow the law, like to, to adhere to our rules and laws. Yeah. And what’s so interesting about the current divide between. Democrats and Republicans in the United States is that right now it seems to be boiling down to whether or not we are going to enforce laws.So now exactly, that’s, it’s not even, we don’t expect you to adhere to our culture. It’s, we don’t even expect at least these privileged groups to adhere to our actual lawsWould you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. It’s exciting to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going back into the concept of us versus them in our [00:01:00] society. And the reason I want to dive into it is because it’s not e like, okay, you’re a random conservative influencer out there and you’re gonna be like, yeah, we should be more us versus them in the way that we see reality.Who saying which, which is true, but how do you define us is us. You know, Americans is us. People who are genetically similar to you is us. Some sort of ethnicity is us, a religion or a cluster of religions. And so this matters a lot. How, how we think about this. And I’m gonna point out during this, if you try to build a world without an us and a them, you in every scenario are eventually eradicated.And the, the reason, this is something that often comes up in conversations that I have in a reality fabricator or. Our fab.ai, our like chat bot site because one of my favorite chat bot stories to play is an ambassador for the Tarn Empire. Going [00:02:00] to meet with the sort of, gay space communists of the federation.And having diplomatic discussions with them was obviously the goal of being eradicating them. And, and so I have to discuss, you know, why their values don’t actually work long term and always lend to more conflict and suffering. But I want to get to how cooked this actually is as a concept.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So there’s a video game mass effect three. And I will describe a scenario to Simone because she probably won’t know this now, maybe if you’re a gamer, you will know the statistics on this particular decision. But gamers generally like to choose the choice that they see as more, more, right. Oh,Simone Collins: interesting.Yeah. Because you don’t wanna see yourself as a bad guy or be doing bad things. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So there is one moment in it that’s framed as like this morally complex choice. So there was an incredibly war-like species that ended up [00:03:00] destroying their own planet after being artificially given technology by an outsider species.Okay? This species, because they lived in an incredibly harsh environment, had around a thousand eggs. Per year and lived about a thousand years on average. And so when most of the eggs stopped dying in infancy because they industrialized, the populations immediately exploded leading to nuclear war because they’re already a very aggressive species, anding out most of their planet.So then the species that uplifted them, infected them with something called the genophage. And the genophage is said to make. One in only a thousand Rogan births result in a live healthy baby. Now, I would note here, if you’re already looking at the numbers, this should still lead to a heavily growing Rogan population because [00:04:00] Rogan females live a thousand years and have a thousand eggs a year.So even if only one of them is surviving, that’s still one kid a year for species that lives a thousand years. It’s stillSimone Collins: That’s pretty good. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the way the game plays out, it’s like somehow implied that the devs did the math wrong.Speaker 3: Okay. This is so much worse than I thought. So in the game, the reason why the one in a thousand was chosen by the species that chose it for them, or the scientists who chose it for them, was he thought that this would stabilize the population because, well, it wouldn’t even stabilize it. It would just make its growth, not stupidly explosive aid.If in human society, most human women had one kid per year, we wouldn’t say that’s stabilizing the population. But no, the krogan culturally doubled down on this and become even more violent and kill even more of their children, and [00:05:00] mass migrate off planet to become mercenaries. So, it proves the choice.Malcolm Collins: And they thought that this meant that the Rogan population was declining fairly quickly in, in numbers.And so there’s this huge moral choice of do you eradicate the genophage? Like do you cure this thing that is lowering the Rogan birth rate? Okay. Okay. I think the moral answer in this should be obvious. It’s so obvious. I have never been able to, whether I’m playing paradigm, whether I’m playing rogue, even wanting to see everything that happens in the game, I cannot bring myself to cure it.It seems so obviously stupid to cure this. Okay. Because the species would just explode and destroy the galaxy, right?Simone Collins: Well, yeah. It would be bad for the species, bad for probably anyone else.Malcolm Collins: Bad for like the universe on a mega scale. Okay. So can you guess what [00:06:00] percent of gamers choose to cure the geno fish?Simone Collins: 60%,Malcolm Collins: 96%.Gamers, you know, so this isn’t even like necessarily a particularly cooked population, right? When, when we think of gamers, like who do we think of, right? Like gamer gate, everything like that. Like gamers did vote with their wallets, gamers did leave. But these are still gamers nonetheless, right?Simone Collins: So, well don’t you, this is somewhat of a, a trolley problem though, right?Where no one wants to be responsible for pulling the lever that allows for death, I guess, right? So if they don’t, they don’t want to see themselves as responsible for participating in what could be argued as genocide adjacent, but they are activelyMalcolm Collins: pulling the lever because they’re curing the genophage.You, they, they are, they are the ones actively curing something that’sSimone Collins: already set in motion.Speaker 4: And I wanna point out how absolutely [00:07:00] 96% of the population, how absolutely retarded you have to be to make this decision. This is not a species that right now will go extinct unless they continue the actions that they are taking, which is constantly killing each other, which is why they wanted to limit their reproduction.But if you restore them to full reproduction, we’re not talking about a species that like humans. You know, at most is dealing with like four or five kids per woman, per generation. We are talking about a thousand children per year per woman who lives a thousand years with their TFR being what it is now.So. EEG woman lives a thousand years. Let’s assume that she’s reproductive for 800 of them. , And, , she has one kid a year because only one in a thousand survive and they can fertilize a thousand per year. , [00:08:00] This means that it is a species that right now has a TFR of 800. Okay? Humanity. , Yeah. We’re at a TFR of like 1.6 in the United States.The actual stupidity, like you, you are outright dooming the universe for sure. By curing this, I.And if you say, oh, but the species can change. I’m sorry buddy. If having a TFR of 800 puts you at an extinction level event because you are so kill happy and you can’t change in that event, I really don’t think you’re gonna change for the rest of the universe. And. Even if one faction of Krogan decides to limit the reproduction, there is going to be other factions that don’t, that don’t care about the externalities, and then what do you do about them?Exterminate them? How many million are there gonna be by the time you do that? [00:09:00] Billion. Trillion are there going to be is obvious. You are setting up the universe for a needed genocide in the future by doing this.And for what? For , a short term emotional hit, , because you knew a Rogan or you had a Rogan in your squad who you liked. I liked the Rogan characters in the game too, but I can do in math,It is perfectly possible for you to know and like a person and admire them and think you are cool, but I can still do the math on what your culture says it needs to doSimone Collins: Right, right. I know, I know. But like, look, a lot of people now when they look at. Different human populations that are suffering a lot, right? Yeah. Rather than figuring out how to get people out of that region where there’s immense poverty or how to educate them more or, or things like that.They’re like, I’ll just give you all more food so that you can,Malcolm Collins: well, I haveSimone Collins: food right now.Malcolm Collins: I think your answer is [00:10:00] also somewhat naive. Cultures and populations are different. Some cultures in populations because of differences in how they approach things like the value of education to them are never going to have the quality of life conditions that you see as the minimum that a human should live within.And thus, you as an outsider who are productive really only have two choices. Give them or. Eradicate them or allow them to continue to live in their current conditions. And what the West has broadly decided is the correct answer is give them. That’s, that’s sort of where we’ve gone with this. And this has enormously negative consequences.So, it just, at like the broad level, if you enable cultures to that, just, you know, oh, I have more food now I’m gonna have more [00:11:00] kids, right? If you enable them to just continue to proliferate, then you enable the suffering that is associated with that population, right? And this is true within populations as well.When you go out of your way to help the weak within a population, you often end up. Creating more overall suffering. This is at a genetic level and at a cultural level within our society. And we’ve really seen this as we’ve sort of made a point of nobody dies. That means that many genetic conditions that wouldn’t have existed if nature had played out its course are going to proliferate more frequently.But you don’t just have this at the level of the individual. You also have this at the meta level at the level of the culture, right? Like. You have various civilizations on earth here today, right? And in the [00:12:00] United States we frequently now import people who very clearly have a completely orthogonal cultural mindset to us.And we’ve taken this perspective of, because we have successfully integrated some groups in the past that we will be able to successfully integrate these new groups. And that is. Something that’s not necessarily true, right? Like if, if we look around the world, there are many locations where a population immigrated into a region and never fully integrated into that region, despite being there for many, many, many generations.And this is actually generally speaking from the perspective of that culture a positive thing. It’s because that culture had some form of cultural resistance to total acculturation [00:13:00] examples of cultures that have proven very resistant over generations. Orthodox Jewish populations have proven very resistant to acculturation over generations.The Amish population has proved very resistant to acculturation. Romani populations have proved very resistant to acculturation. Now. Simply because a group is resistant to acculturation does not mean necessarily that they are a group that automatically has to be your enemy or a group you see as adversarial.I doubt very many conservative Americans would consider the Amish to be an antagonistic towards American’s goals or values or the conservative movement or really anything. But keep in mind, you know, they don’t fight in our wars. They, they are strict pacifists. They live a radically different lifestyle than most of you do.And, and this is what we need to think about is what does us versus him, how, how do we define this? How do we [00:14:00] think about this? And the reason I was talking about it in the context of space travel, where it really begins to matter is suppose humanity really does. Split into two factions. And this is truly, I think if you want a future for, let’s say European civilization at this point Europe is just cooked.I see no way that they can realistically get out of the situation that they’ve put themselves in. And there, there don’t even seem to be political headwinds for it to happen right now. With those things being the case if you are a European in Europe and you are fantasizing about, well, okay, what does the future of, when we.Far into the future. Where, where should I be heading? What should I be aiming for? Space travel is largely what you’re aiming for. I think even within the United States, like when I think about my family [00:15:00] and, and my culture’s goal and it, it’s, it’s obvious to me why Elon is speed running for this as well.It is to get off planet you know, as quickly as possible or to build settlements in regions that are less populated as, as I’ve often said, like arctic settlements and stuff like that. Yeah, just so we’re not in a place where we have to deal with other people. But in regards to the, you know, once you begin doing the, the space travel option that, that, that’s where because even in the United States, like while Europe is cooked, how far are we from Europe right now?Right? Like. Even with everything that ICE has done if you look at a place like, let’s say New York City right now like it’s basically already from a cultural perspective completely fallen at this point. There, there really isn’t much left that can be salvaged of New York. If, if, if, if you [00:16:00] let existing trend lines continue to trend in the direction that they’re going.And, you know, this is true if you’re like a New Yorker or whatever and you’re like, this isn’t true, you know, New York still has man, I, I’ve been going to New York all my life. Okay. The lack of trust that is endemic in all layers of New York society now when you go through like a simple convenience store is clearly.Indicative of a society where the society itself cannot trust its citizens. As Simone pointed out in one of our weekend episodes, the concept of a grocery store that, like you could go into a store and the food would just be out and you could just pick it up and walk around with it until you got to the end of the line.That didn’t exist anywhere until Piggly Wiggly in 1914. Right. A, a society that was that high trust is a [00:17:00] historical anomaly and is in many ways already collapsed in most of Europe and is, and, and note it didn’t reach Europe until later than that. So Europe only got this little experiment about being able to walk into a store and pick something up fairly recently, but it’s, it’s already collapsing with our cities in the United States.Right. And so, how, how, what does future look like? It looks like getting, getting into space. I also wanted to point out, when I talk about different groups here, I have a little segment at the end where I go more into this, but we just did an episode on Young and some of our fans I think were pretty surprised and they were like.Your take on young is two materialists and being materialist is very urban monoculture, which of course made us just like immediately laugh because from our cultural perspective, being materialist is incredibly anti-urban monoculture. And the urban monoculture is incredibly woo in mystical. And what I sort of had to point out to Simone and I was like, no, what you’re missing is [00:18:00] that from many of our audience, the urban monoculture is actually more materialist than their culture, right?And so from their culturals perspective where from our perspective, one of the urban monocultures Keith ins is mysticism and woo from their cultural perspective, one of his keans is materialism. And yet we can see enough cultural alignment in this existing geopolitical moment that we make particularly good allies.But, and this is, this is why it matters. You might find better allies in somebody who is more culturally distant from you, as opposed to somebody who is more culturally similar to you. Hmm. And again, this is why having a conversation about us versus them is an important conversation to have. So far, far in the future, suppose we’re having this gay space communism discussion with the Tarn Federation or Empire.I call it the Tarran Empire. So the Tarn Empire [00:19:00] goes up and how, how is the Tarn Empire likely structured? It’s likely ruthlessly, Darwinistic you know, based on constant competition to, through competition show which of the competing groups is actually better at doing something to have an efficacious way of knowing which way is better.Speaker: U five are the final vestiges of your brood that some deem might one day be of value to the clan. I am not one of them. To me, U five are the excrement of a failed, semi aborted batch from my blood house, far from the pinnacle of humanity demanded by the Klan’s geneticist that spawned you.I am a gracious host, so I will give you the [00:20:00] opportunity to show me what those strix on Lund home taught you. Show me what you know of being a real true Bo met warrior and prove yourselves worthy of the name and heritage you carry with you.Malcolm Collins: And in my lore often when I’m doing this well, the, the, the Tart Empire often first left the global Earth government when the global Earth government bans like genetic modification and uplifting of animals and stuff like this, because that is an urban monocultural mindset. You know, nobody can be different.Because if, if anyone was different, then the lie that fundamentally underwrites our entire cultural theory begins to fall apart. So as soon as people could engage in gene editing this doesn’t work. So they end up fleeing with, for, for, for that situation. And you get a a, a situation that’s very similar to in the mech warrior universe, if people are familiar with it.The clans where the clan has to leave the, the inosphere. [00:21:00] And adopts a culture that’s not dissimilar from this constant competition that leads to a society that is both more meritocratic but more authoritarian in its overlays. Hmm.Speaker 2: We are smoke Jagger, strongest of the clans. We are hunters who fight with the ferocity of our namesake to stand unequal amongst the children of Krinsky.We remember the bravery of our ancestors gave themselves to the void. And of the death spots responsible for their exodus.Through our strength, we lead the crusaders to see the great father’s dream, realized his hidden hope to one day return and reclaim paradise. [00:22:00] It’s our sole purpose, our divine right. We will bring vengeance down upon the. Tyrants that enslave humanity and they shall tremble before our fights.Malcolm Collins: But in the federation, presumably the ideal that would undermine it is, well, we are able to maintain peace because we don’t allow for true competition.You know, we all attempt to live in harmony. And what you need to point out is that can never work long term. And the reason it can never work long term is because of any sub faction within that cultural alliance does want to you know, work. To towards its own aims, it eventually overthrows it if you were to have a cultural gr group [00:23:00] organically form within this perfect Star Trek in federation, right?And that cultural group was genuinely only self-interested and constantly attempting to improve itself. And through that, getting better it would eventually accumulate more and more resources, have more and more political influence until the entire federation served the whims of that one cultural group, right.And if the, and, and, and this is what we’re already seeing within the urban monoculture, they have brought in many outside populations that simply don’t hold their value set and are very loud about not holding their value set, right? And yet they don’t seem to care about this because like the Rogan it doesn’t matter what the long-term ramifications of their decision are all that matters is that they feel like the good guys in the moment.And I wanna [00:24:00] point out that the long-term ramifications of their decisions are on the face bloody and terrible. If you look at a place like, let’s say Germany, right, which is further along than we are in the United States. If you look at their immigrant population in Germany what, what was it the last I checked it was 40% of Germans or 35% immigrated after War War.One, I wanna say.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. So like not, you know, not German at all, culturally or genetically, unless they’ve, they’ve adopted to the culture. But and I’ve mentioned this before, it’s my scorpion and the snake and the panda which is to say you have a scorpion and a snake and a panda who’s holding them apart.And this happened when I was talking to a reporter because I pointed out there are like many Muslim immigrants in Germany acclimate very well to German culture. And many Germans ha get along perfectly well with Muslim populations. And I’m like, great, I don’t deny that. But the Muslims who [00:25:00] have tons of kids, are they more likely to be the ones who are not acclimating or are they more likely to be the ones that are acclimating?And the answer is obviously, they’re more likely to be the ones who are not acclimating. And I’m like, so that culture over time will drift in the cultural direction of the ones who are not acclimating. Now the Germans who do not want to live alongside the Muslims, you know, a culture where from many of the countries that they’re coming from, you know, things like marrying people who are nine is considered culturally normal.And I’ve, this isn’t me, like, this is just like the law in many of these countries. As we pointed out in the episode where the court in with the Pakistan threw a fit and said it was this Islamophobic to raise the age of consent. And so, so this, again, it’s not me making. Accusations, I’m just saying that this is normal within some parts of Muslim culture, and it is those parts of Muslim culture that are having kids at a faster rate.And some Germans are just like, I will not live alongside this, right?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: [00:26:00] Or those Germans. Is it that part of German culture that is replicating faster in terms of having kids? And the answer there is again, obviously yes. So, you know, like if you, if you’re looking at this with any degree of objectivity, eventually something’s going to happen there if you keep letting this build up.Okay. Eventually there is going to be a point where you have two populations that don’t want to live next to each other, living next to each other. And one of the populations is eventually going to be you, there, there there’s going to be conflict because they’re both like, I, I don’t wanna live next to you.I don’t wanna live alongside you. At least not under the, the rules that you are setting. What is interesting is that the, the Muslim populations might in the end even be more open. They might be like, yeah, sure. I’ll live alongside you so long as we move to Sharia Law. And a lot of people are like, oh, this isn’t what the majority of Muslims [00:27:00] want.They don’t want to move to Sharia law. And this is, you know, factually untrue. If you look at what’s the statistic in the uk? What percent of Muslims in the UK want Sure. Real.Simone Collins: Yeah. I don’t, I I feel like that was, maybe there must be more up-to-date info too. ‘Cause it was some really high percentage,Malcolm Collins: it’s 40%. So, yeah, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And I bet you that 40% of Muslims who wants Sharia law in the uk I would, I would bet my life that they have a TFR that’s at the very least 30% higher than the group. That doesn’tSimone Collins: probably,Malcolm Collins: but I’d be willing to say very likely that it’s at least twice as high.And so you’re going to get this more in the future. And I think that this is really important for people who arepart of the wider conservative movement to get, becauseSimone Collins: actually, yeah. I mean, that’s supported even by the [00:28:00] polling. So you were referring to a 2006 ICM poll. That found around 40% supported quote there being areas in Britain, which are predominantly Muslim and in which Sharia law, Sharia law is introduced.But then in 2016, so 10 years later, that’s up to 43% supporting, growing the introduction of Sharia Law. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yep.Simone Collins: Yeah. So, with 22% opposed and 16% strongly supporting. Oh, okay. Interesting. All right. Yeah. Wow. Go on. Sorry. So,Malcolm Collins: no, but, but it’s like, obviously the urban monoculture digs its head in the ground about this, you know, it’s like we, we are, they want what we want, right?We just give them more stuff, more privileges, more opportunities. And even conservatives really struggle with this. They will have a friend who is from a particular group or a fan that is from a particular group and [00:29:00] they will see their ability to get along with that individual and believe that that means that there is a path towards creating a, a, a working solution for everyone from that demographic, from everyone for that culture.Mm-hmm. When, if. The person who you get along with in that cultural group is well below fertility rate. Their perspectives are not necessarily, are, are, are unlikely to be contiguous was the perspectives of whatever that population ends up doing in the long run. Mm-hmm. And, and even if they’re above repopulation rate it, again, what matters is, is averages.Right. And yes, you can then find new ways to define people. Like, we’ll say, well, the US can be the parts of this group that are willing to agree to X, y, and z points of faith, or points of morality [00:30:00] or conditions. Now, it used to be that we understood this was just obvious as a society, right? Like you can’t just invite somebody into your society without them agreeing to any conditions, you know, have no shared culture and no conditions at all.And just be like,Simone Collins: well, it, it, and it, and once it wasn’t even that anymore. It was also though like, okay, but at least you, you promised to follow the law, like to, to adhere to our rules and laws. Yeah. And what’s so interesting about the current divide between. Democrats and Republicans in the United States is that right now it seems to be boiling down to whether or not we are going to enforce laws.So now exactly, that’s, it’s not even, we don’t expect you to adhere to our culture. It’s, we don’t even expect at least these privileged groups to adhere to our actual laws that were voted in by Congress, which are being enforced by, well supposed to be enforced by our agencies. And the great outrage that many [00:31:00] Democrats now have is merely over the fact that we are enforcing existing laws, which previous Democrat administrations had chosen to not enforce, which to me is pretty wild.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And one of the things that’s really important for like the American and European conservative movement to grok because they are sort of shared conservative movements, even though I think that the Europe has been so eaten by the urban monoculture, like they’re not meaningfully our allies, but the conservative movements in Europe are related to the ones in the United States.And, the, the American and European conservative movements and, and Latin American as well. I think it’s sort of the same wider, actually Latin America has some of the best conservative leaders out there right now in terms of like leaders who European and American conservatives could one for, that’s some of the, the few conservative hero stories that we’re seeing.We should probably do an episode on El Salvador. And the, the cra the [00:32:00] successful crackdown that they’ve been able to do there and really transforming their society from a progressive hellscape into you know, a, a society of, of rules and laws and where you don’t just murder people on the street anymore.And, and that to an extent shows how far a society can slip before they do something. How many years did Argentina have to flounder before they finally decided to do something about it? Right. And, and this, this is also an interesting point here that might be worth a whole other episode where I think many American conservatives are like, why are you, you know, importing Latin Americans when they’re so culturally distant from us?And yet, you know, they’re overwhelmingly like Latin American men are majority voting for Trump and in their own countries. They’re some of the only countries that have meaningfully been able to make the endless progressive tide retreat. So that, that’s, that’s to me it’s like that reason I’m, I’m highlighting this particular thing [00:33:00] is American conservatives or European Latin American.We need to understand that it may feel conservative and cool to go out there with this authoritarian sort of aesthetic and be like, you are either exactly like this. Or you don’t get to be part of our alliance. You know, this is obviously very common in, in talking points. Like say Nick Fuentes is talking points and stuff like this.And some of our fans are like, no, you know, you need to be X, Y, and Z. And I’m like, do you understand how little power, any of the demographics that you guys keep breaking yourself down into have anymore? If you go out there and you say something like you, like you still recognize there’s us and them, but then you say, and the US group must be white, Christian Northern European descendant, right?It’s then [00:34:00] you don’t have enough of a group. To Civilizationally survive. You’re not going to win elections in most European countries. You’re like, well, no. We would win elections if everyone who met these criteria voted for the group that was advantaging. People who meet these criteria, and it’s like, mm-hmm.Well, then your criteria are really bad because the majority of people even who meet those criteria, are unwilling to vote for the system that advantages people who meet those criteria.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Right. Something about the culture associated with those criteria makes these people into or at least they’re women into real bleeding hearts in a way that people call, what do they call it, sociopathic empathy.Yeah. And so when you go out there and you try to explain something like this to them, they’re not going to rock it, right? And if you deny [00:35:00] this, you are simply denying reality all the way till you and your culture, movement, whatever you want to call it, is walked off a cliff. You will not matter in the future.You will not exist in the future because you are fighting a fight that you should recognize is patently unwinnable. And, and the people who are like, no, we can create this movement. Fine try. But the problem that I have repeatedly seen. Is the iterations of the movement. And note here when I talk about the people who don’t wanna live alongside Muslims here, I’m talking about, you know, normal conservatives don’t wanna live along people who are griping nine year olds.That is different like saying, I don’t want to live alongside stuff like that, which is something we can agree with. I think we’re pretty mainstream conservatives. That’s different from being this more extreme group, right? The, the Nick Fuentes type group, right? Where. I [00:36:00] could say I don’t wanna live alongside that group, but I’m willing to work with other groups to achieve my goals.I’m willing to work with groups that have different value sets that I have to achieve my goals. And so how do, how do we delineate what those groups are like, what are the groups that we can get along with and what are the groups that we can’t get along with? But the, the, sorry, the final point I was about to make here, which I also think is pretty interesting, is that the groups that take this suicidal approach, the, the Nick Fuentes approach, interestingly I, I think that the reason that they’re able to take this suicidal approach and this group that any outsider would immediately recognize is suicidal.And I say suicidal because it just won’t work. Like you don’t have the demographics to win within anywhere. Is that they typically don’t have kids or don’t have many kids. And so they’re okay with playing suicidally, the, the civilizational game because they don’t actually have any skin in the game.They don’t really care about winning. So, thoughts, Simone, before I go, go further on that. So who, who, who can you work with?Simone Collins: [00:37:00] Yeah, I’m, I’m more curious as to like the practical implications or next steps.Malcolm Collins: Well, I think the, the i two broad things that we look for in allies, right? The, the first and biggest thing that anyone is looking for in an ally is, are their enemies.Your enemies, right? Like, do you guys largely have the same adversaries? This is the reason why a lot of people in our fan group who might see us as like weird techno conservative types, right? That would, would, would still. Ally with us or like our advice or want to work with us long term because the core daily enemy in their lives is the urban monoculture.Mm-hmm. And so they say, okay, and so you guys make a good ally for us. And [00:38:00] interestingly, I think that this is also part of the reason why the urban monoculture so frequently sides with violent Islamists, right? They’re like, well, you know, you hate the part of American and European culture that’s going to survive.That’s not us. And therefore, even though we have almost no values in common, and they really have almost no values in common at least on the books they can still ally with one another. Right. They, they both hate these same people. And, and again, the reason I say like it’s important for us to do this is if you can’t lay down a grudge and be like, yes, I can ally with groups like Orthodox Jews or something like that, and I can ally with groups like Mormons, even though I think their theology is weird.Or I can ally with groups like Catholics, even though I think that one day we’re going to have a cultural or orthogonality wisdom them. If you conservative cannot lay down that [00:39:00] to win this fight, you just don’t have a shot because your enemy is willing to lay down all of the differences between.Violent expansionist, Islamism, and the urban monoculture to persistently work together. That’s what we’re fighting against, and that’s frankly, a very, very powerful force when you consider the esp, depending on the country of probably unwinnable against force at this point.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I think that it’s important, and this is why we do this in our show so aggressively, is to aggressively call out and target people who are in this wider anti-urban monoculture faction.And it’s really anti-urban monoculture slash islamism because somehow they become best buds. And [00:40:00] I actually think, and I’ve I talked about this in another episode that’s what we’re seeing more of going into the future. When the urban monoculture lost the Palestine war as something to complain about when it lost environmentalism is something to complain about.Simone Collins: They’re still complaining about it Last time I checked.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, you know, Trump created peace in that region before going to war at Iran, which now they’re complaining about that. But like, I’ve noticed they don’t seem to care as much about that as they did the Palestine issue. Which has been weird to me.Mm-hmm. But anyway so you, sorry, the word I, I, I ran. But what seems to have replaced these sort of persistent talking points within the movement historically is pro just pure communism, which you predicted, Simone and pro-ISIS Islamism.And I think we need to, to recognize that these movements are morphing into more of a a single unified force, at least in terms of the, the movements that they’re making on the, on [00:41:00] the ground. We don’t have the numbers to beat them anywhere. Anywhere, and,Simone Collins: what do you mean by numbers? Actually, I wanna get your thoughts on this before I go further here.Since when we’re numbers about beating people anyway, if the long-term story is about going to space,Malcolm Collins: because we could end up with a situation where before we get to spaceSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: The groups array against us either control technology, which could end life on the planet eg. Nuclear bombs. You know, you get an EPHI list or an antinatalists in control of nuclear bombs or an Islamist in control of nuclear bombs.And all of civilization is at an existential point of risk which is why the war in Iran was so necessary. But you, you. That is, that is one thing. It could be gray goo scenario. They end up delivering something like that. [00:42:00] But the second thing is just civilizational. Wr. I think we’re getting very close to a point where as civilization continues to exist, we write about this in our book on governance number one, wall Street Eller, by the way where we talk about how as governments grow larger and age they begin to develop self-replicating, self-interested units that basically grow on the, the money of these organizations, right?So suppose you are a, a city and you start however many 50, a thousand commissions a year or something like that, and one of these commissions finds a way to say. Actually we, we need to keep, we, we need to be running every year. Right? And so, it, it does, right? It survives. It’s basically evolving, right?And then for the one of these that get through every, you know, 10 years or every a hundred years, you know, you, you, you, you get one that finds out, oh [00:43:00] and this is a good way to keep them from shutting us down. A good strategy that many of them were using was to say that we are fighting racism, right?You can, you can’t shut down the orgs. It’s fighting racism, right? And then they find ways to get more resources, which is what cancer cells do. They start asking for more and more blood vessels. And more blood veins, right? You know, so the, the more and more resources come to them and now that they’re larger, a bunch of people, a larger part of the surviving organization is dependent on that inefficiency existing.Hmm. And this is why you get those crazy numbers, like, you know, $10 million for a porta-potty in Manhattan, right? EE eventually you just can’t do basic work. Infrastructure cannot grow. And our civilization right now is actually sort of living off of the infrastructure of our ancestors. We do not have right now the technology and know-how, and even really government ability to, if we wanted to build a nuclear power plant most of the nuclear power plants that we have in operation are [00:44:00] older than 50 years old.The people who know how to make nuclear power plants don’t really, they, they’re, it’s not that they’re like not at work anymore. We’re like two generations from any of them being at work anymore.Simone Collins: Well, so the, that’s not as much of a problem because there are startups that are building small format nuclear plant technology, and like it can be done.The problem is that the regulatory structure in the United States would literally block those from being built.Malcolm Collins: OhSimone Collins: no,Malcolm Collins: absolutelySimone Collins: no. Like in, in, in five to 10 years, we could have, we could have them up. We can’t with our current regulatory environment, and that is, that is really sad because this is why mean also from a cultural standpoint, I don’t see that changing.Malcolm Collins: This is why so many people in our wider movement are looking at city states. This is why there was a thing where we were looking at creating a, a breakaway city state in the aisle of man that could have its own regulations and where you could set up things like micro nuclear power plants and genetic augmentation and stuff like that in preparation for space travel, [00:45:00] because that’s, I think, the best shot that we’re going to have for preserving.I, I think many people on a civilizational level are not fully rocking what it means to have a society where the most intelligent people are just not having children. Right. How quickly IQ can drop for genetic reasons in a society. And you can watch our episode that YouTube heavily restricted called is an Idiocracy possible for going over the data in detail on that because there, there is a, it’s just like we’re cooked.We’re cooked in just a few generations now. There are positive upsides to this. If you are a high agency, high intelligence human being who is having a lot of kids you know, it makes immediate sense to well be your, your kids are gonna be playing a much easier, in many ways, at least competitive [00:46:00] environment than you were playing.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But you’ve also gotta be aware of even if they’re playing in an easier competitive environment than you are playing in, who is that competitive environment going to be dominated by? And how are you going to, like, how are you setting things up to work with those groups right now?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: This, this is one of the reasons why I keep being like, why, why are you guys like the parts of the conservative movement? And this is why I think the parts of the conservative movement that have lots of kids generally don’t attempt to antagonize the Jews. Because it’s, if, if you’re thinking long-term in any sort of a context, it’s clear that they have in terms of the populations that have high TFR and a lot of technological output mm-hmm.They’re really the only player in the game at this point. Mm-hmm. And, and a high TFR among their intelligent population as well. We’ll go over another set of studies that shows that [00:47:00] religiosity is actually correlated with eugenic breeding patterns was in populations.Simone Collins: Ooh.Malcolm Collins: And I have noticed this within or orthodox Jewish communities.Interesting. That you, you see this more so the, the Orthodox Jewish community. Many people are like, well, the Orthodox Jewish communities will eventually choke out Israel, which they could they really could because some parts of them, like the Satir are just completely unproductive and they don’t exhibit these breeding patterns.And if they grow at a faster pace than the other Jewish populations they’re like, Israel really doesn’t have a shot. It either needs to you, you need to get what’s the most realistic outcome is a group of Jews that’s going to have to declare bankruptcy on Israel and move and create a Jewish or a charter city somewhere.Which it seems like Jewish thing to do. Israel exposed, I mean, they did this very frequently, was like the the, what were they called again?Simone Collins: Oh, the Kum?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:48:00] So, yeah, just likeSimone Collins: were they they were like businesses andMalcolm Collins: also Yeah.Yeah. And they were very effective. Okay. They were, they were so effective that the main reason that they ended up failing is they became too wealthy and all of the kids wanted to cash out. So you, you actually can get this when you have like cultural unity. And, and this is again, a thing to say.So suppose you go out there and you build your charter city that’s along your culture’s value set, which is I think the way a lot of these are going to happen. People are gonna say, I have this set of values. This is going to be what this charter city is optimized around. And people with a similar set of values will come and join in my charter city.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Simply because you have done this your charter city, and this is why I call this like the haven model for where I think humanity is going, where most of the large countries are going to collapse, and we’re gonna have a few centers of like techno fiefdoms of incredible wealthSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And stability, right?Even if you have, say, a Catholic charter city [00:49:00] and you have a techno puritan Charter City and you have a, a, a libertarian utopian Charter City or something like that you have a communist charter city you have an Islamist charter city, right? You need to be, open to and already setting the cultural grounds for being able to work with charter cities that have different beliefs than yours.Like what are the other charter cities that you are going to network with to have enough technological capacity to eventually get off planet? And then hopefully your population can explode and take over the, the, you know, whoever knows what we’re we’re going to do when we get to space. But how, how can you attempt that?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: All right. So now who can you ally with? Who can you ally with? One thing that I have noted in the past, but I also wanna note that this actually isn’t as important as I’ve pointed it out to be in the past, is, does it, does the group have an eventual mandate to eradicate [00:50:00] you? I would, I would now divide this two subcategories.Do they have a current mandate to eradicate you? And do they have an eventual mandate to eradicate you?Simone Collins: Huh?Malcolm Collins: If a group has a current mandate to eradicate you, like if they’re coming in and being like, yes, I am migrating to your culture to destroy the things that your culture values to implement this alternate system of laws.And, and note to them, this seems personally reasonable. The urban monoculture has told them, well, a democracy means whatever is the, the mainstream opinion is what gets implemented. And they’re like, well, so when the majority of Canada is Muslim, shouldn’t Sharia law be in place? You’ve, you’ve told me that’s why we have to live under your laws.You know, why shouldn’t you have to live under our laws when we’re the majority? Right.Speaker 10: What would happen to a gay couple in Gaza?Speaker 11: Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn’t endorse gays. Islam doesn’t endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn’t endorse a lot of things. So would you [00:51:00] like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you’re not your population is going down the slum, right?And by 2060, according to Pew Research Institute, your research, by 2060, Muslims will be the biggest religious group the world over. What are you going to do then? Are you going to oppose Sharia even then? Well, You know what? I’m very appreciative of the honesty. We don’t usually get that. One day we can have a Muslim majority nation here in Canada.Right In your face!Malcolm Collins: But the truth is, is that’s not actually Canada’s value system. Like Canada’s value system isn’t actually Sharia law. They don’t actually wanna stone gay people and force a griped child to marry her assaulter. They don’t, they don’t, they’re not down with that stuff.Right. And they, you, you, you even see this from you know, the interactions. Like, there’s a famous scary interaction in Canada where a woman gets in a cab and the guy was like, wow, you’re really pretty. If it was my country I’d kidnap you. [00:52:00] Oh. And she’s like, Uhhuh. And he is like, no, I’m just, just giving you a compliment.She’s like that, that’s just the way things are done. Where I’m from. Like, not like I’m not gonna do it here, but like, you gotta understand, we just kidnap women. If they’re pretty, you know, force great them and force ‘em to marry us. That’s the way the law works, right.Simone Collins: So disturbing. Yeah. I remember that clip.Speaker 13: Well, if you was born in Pakistan or reclaimed from Pakistan, you must have been kidnapped by me. You’ve been kidnapped by you. Of course. Course there is no option to get you right. Okay. You have your, your women over there though, seriously? So you are in Canada, so I cannot save you anything. Okay. I cannot touch you anything.It is Canada. Yeah. Well, yeah, definitely. You couldn’t touch me. There’s laws. To this s**t here. You, you, you know what I mean? That’s not that flattering, that’s kind of scary, trust me, because like there is, there was no option. Okay. Well you have a good night. You too. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Shaba. Boom.Speaker 14: Boom.Speaker 15: , what I will say though is, you know, you, you can fault groups for many things. The one thing you can’t fault Muslims for is [00:53:00] honesty. They signal loudly what they plan to do and what the West will be like when they are the majority. , And I have to admire that because, , I don’t think, I don’t think, , I would do that or if people from my cultural group did that, .Malcolm Collins: If they say, I want to make your country. And, and, and value system actively, I want to destroy it and make it something that it’s not right now. Mm-hmm. Or not in alignment with your values. And they’re actively working towards that. I, here’s the problem with this. Many Catholic groups are doing that, and yet we basically have to ally with it because they are actively working toward things like IVF bands.So I think you need to say if they’re working towards that, and they seem [00:54:00] to have credible cultural tailwinds, right? Like. If they got to a point where it looked like they were going to be able to enact the things, it just made it impossible for us to have children or something like that. Mm-hmm.Then we reach a point, I remember one person was like, you guys act like infertility isn’t something that can be solved in any other way. You know? And it’s like, some forms of infertility can’t, like,Simone Collins: yeah. I mean, what do you think we did before we had to turn to iv? Because, you know,Malcolm Collins: yeah. How many giant needles, how many experimental surgeries and procedures and diets?Simone Collins: Well, no. But before that, yeah, it was, it was changing diet. It was changing the lifestyle. It was changing like thyroid stuff. It was, you know, it just, you. You can only do so much, you know? Right. I, I love that. I appreciate that People want to address underlying problems with fertility [00:55:00] before going to more extreme stuff.And here’s the thing, most reasonable people do. So before hitting IVF, ‘cause IVF is neither convenient nor affordable and they’reMalcolm Collins: painless.Simone Collins: Even when IVF is paid for, people still really wanna avoid it.Malcolm Collins: But in that scenario, so I’m thinking about it here in that scenario, even if the Catholics took over the conservative party in the US and were able to implement something like an IVF ban we would just move to a charter city and then ally ourselves still was the conservative party in the United States because it’s still a closer to an ally with us long term against the, the larger and more credible threats.And so I think the real answer here is where is the. Aggregate credible threat, right? And where is the aggregate number of allies that you can bring together that will attempt to enforce upon you the [00:56:00] fewest meaningful compromises in your cultural autonomy. That’s really what you are looking for. Mm-hmm. And that’s the, yeah, I think, I think that’s, that’s where you have to come to is where is the cultural aggregate alliance that’s going to ask you to make the fewest compromises. And this is where I’ve noticed like a lot of stupidity in the existing conservative movement because if you go with that thesis, then a group like the Groupers or Nick Fuentes, is basically just as threatening as an Islamist.In terms of the number of cultural compromises that they would enforce if they were able to gain power.Simone Collins: I mean, this all just boils down to a really, really simple question, which is, does this person’s culture long term? You know, if, if they ruled the world, [00:57:00] would they permit you to live as you wish to live as long as it doesn’t affect them?Malcolm Collins: Or would you not? I, I don’t,Simone Collins: Idon’t,Simone Collins: IMalcolm Collins: don’t agree with thatSimone Collins: determinesMalcolm Collins: because most Catholics would not allow us to live the way that we want to live. And yet I do not think most, so people wonder why, like, I thinkSimone Collins: this is mixed. So we, we have heard, we have heard from a decent number of Catholic viewers who do not believe, and this maybe this is not what the Vatican would say, I don’t know, but they basically believe that it is understood that.The Catholic mandate is for Catholics to tend to their flock, not to enforce their morality through laws.Malcolm Collins: So likeSimone Collins: a nation’s laws.Malcolm Collins: You happen to be unaware of this. Pope Leo the ninth wrote something called the syllabus of errors which explicitly says that Catholics do have to do this. They, they need [00:58:00] to essentially create a Catholic, Catholic.Now, the parts of Catholic culture that notSimone Collins: everyone agrees with Pople.Malcolm Collins: I agree. They’re, they’re anti Vatican, they’re anti and so these factions make durable, long-term allies. But my point is, is I think that even Catholic factions that hold to something like the syllabus of errors are still allies.Really. They’re, they’re still groups. You can build temporary alliance for,Simone Collins: okay. Yeah. Allies for now you meanMalcolm Collins: in Yes. In this cultural moment. Because it’s better that you ally with them than that you lose because losing is civilizational at this point.Simone Collins: Sure.Malcolm Collins: And so that’s what I wanted to go over is, is us versus them not being able to approach this topic with nuance is as civilizationally, suicidal, maybe not as, but e equivalently technically [00:59:00] the long-term implications are, but are as suicidal as the Karen who lets the Islamists into her country who says, I want to kill grape.You change your laws. Right. That individual is pushing for a value system that will eventually lead to the eradication of the value system that’s pushing it. And the individual who says, we won’t ally with this group and this group, and this group, and this group and this list just keeps growing. Right? So you, you get this huge purity test.They, they end up failing too when the group that they’re defining is theirs refuses to actually follow along with this alliance.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too and I love that I can hear from you a strategy on long-term cultural alignment because I don’t know where else that’s being talked to [01:00:00] you about.I mean, like, I don’t think a preacher in a church is gonna be talking about how we should be thinking about how our culture allies with other cultures and religions over time. You know, it’s more like us and our kind or them and them doing. Their thing. It’s not, Hey, who are our best strategic partners in this?And I appreciate that you’re thinking about this and making othersMalcolm Collins: well mean you actually do. Well, what’s funny is you do in, in, in, in Protestant churches this is talked about a lot back when I used to go to Protestant churches in, in relation.Simone Collins: I haven’t attended any actually. So that’s interesting.How so like are they talkingMalcolm Collins: about, like, talked a lot about in regards to Jews in Israel? Like American Evangelicals, some of them have a actually Chuan had did a video about this recently. They believe, not only are they strategic allies, but they believe that we have a religious mandate to work.Simone Collins: Right. But I didn’t think about that so much as an allyship so much as like using. The [01:01:00] Jewish people and state as if it were like a nuclear bomb to accelerate something. Like it’s not about them or working with them per se, it’s about inflicting them upon the timeline to make a thing happen.Malcolm Collins: Happen. No, no, no.If you listened to that was the way that I heard about it the most. But apparently there’s a new stream of thought in some evangelical churches, uhhuh, in which they say that people that helped the state of Israel and the Bible were benefited. People who attacked the state of Israel and the Bible were smed.Okay. Therefore, we will be blessed if we help. This specifically. Ted Cruz was saying this which to me seems pretty stupid, but because, you know, he’s a Christian. Right. But despite that does that mean that I cannot be an ally with somebody who’s saying that? Obviously I can. Right. And I think that this is something that, that, one, one of the things that I’ve been more, I think, wrong about in the past is to be like, you can’t really be long-term allies with a group [01:02:00] like the Catholics, because eventually they want everyone to be Catholic. Right? And as I’ve thought about it, I’m like, well, that, that’s not really true. Because even if they want something and they have a religious mandate to achieve it, if it’s completely unrealistic that they ever actually achieve that, because it is unrealistic with existing trends and with existing trends, especially within the Vatican and their direction.‘cause now, now the Vatican’s moving to this like Kumbaya position then they’re, they’re, they’re totally easy to ally with, right? Like, they’re not out there killing people on the streets and stuff like that, right? Like, I mean, I guess you could argue the gangs are like the MS 16 and stuff, but they, they are, I,Simone Collins: I don’t know if they are identified as religious, are they?Like, has there been any, any discussion of that?Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I’ve pointed out they are a phenomenon of Catholic immigrants always creating large organized crime. The mob, the mafia, and MS 16 o other immigrant populations doSimone Collins: not like, do they take communion? Do they, do they attend mass? Like I, I don’t know how Catholic they are.That’s why I’m just not so sure about [01:03:00] that.Malcolm Collins: Well, they’re definitely a different breed of Catholics. They’re nothing like our Catholic viewers. They’re nothing like Nick Fuentes. But they are the result of large scale Catholic immigration.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: If we were getting a giant wave of, you know, immigrants from the Netherlands, they wouldn’t be forming organized gangs like this.No. But if we were getting a large scale immigrant wave from let’s say Italy, yeah, I’d expect organized gangs again.Speaker 8: For example, the vast majority of even conservative Muslims that come to the uk, , they aren’t in grooming gangs. They have nothing to do with grooming gangs. , They might be perfectly nice people. They may not grape children. , And, and this is absolutely true, I’d say this is true for a vast majority.Most immigrant groups, whether they’re Catholic or Muslim or anything like that, that doesn’t mean that you cannot expect specific behavioral patterns once you [01:04:00] allow enough in based on their culture and that culture’s history and beliefs. And this is the thing with Catholics, you let in enough Catholics, you have major organized crime problems., This is just. A historical truth. , You let in and the Catholics who complain about this, but then also worry about Muslim immigration or something like that, should understand that this is how the mainstream Muslim immigrant feels when they’re talking about them because they’re not out there doing this stuff.But we’ve got to be aware that it doesn’t matter that 95% of these Skittles aren’t poisoned, you still don’t dip your hand in the bowl.And a Catholic might say, oh, well, okay. Yeah. The minority of Muslim immigrants, , are into grooming gangs and actually end up, you know, , griping a child. And the minority of Catholics actually end up, , starting gangs, and doing [01:05:00] organized crime,And I should note here when I talk about the organized crime that the Catholic gangs do, it’s not like normal organized crime. It’s not the organized crime that we’ve seen from any other group of the United States. It, it’s literally the most brutal organized crime gangs like melting people alive in acid type stuff that we have ever seen as a country.And it consistently happens every time we have a large Catholic immigration wave.however. , Look, look at this huge chunk of Muslims that want to enact Sharia law.And I think that this is because they so normalized to the things they want to enact like IVF bans that they don’t understand that to many people. Like to me, I would literally probably 20 times rather live in a country with Sharia law, but allowed genetic engineering and allowed IVF than live under a country where those things are banned.And yet the majority of Catholics would [01:06:00] want those things banned. So I don’t think that they see how antithetical, culturally, some of the things that they want are to some of the things that other groups within the US population would want.This is why I often say I’m really quite ambivalent about the destruction of the culture in a place like, you know, Italy or Spain or Germany, , where you have these strict bands on genetic engineering and IVF, because, okay, Sharia law gets enabled. Now all I need to do is pay slightly higher. And protect my own against a more aggressive surrounding population, which I’m more confident I can do than do the science that I believe is culturally mandated of me., , by my family’s religion.Under the existing laws that were motivated by a large population of Catholics.And you might say, oh, Malcolm, you’d rather live in a country where people are abducted off the street and forced to marry people than a country with [01:07:00] IVF and genetic engineering. And I’m like, yeah, I mean, obviously, right, because. When you talk about people being abducted off the street, I’m like, I can defend against that.When you talk about not allowing genetic engineering or IVF, you’re talking about my children’s lives, like my future children’s lives. Every child who I hug, not just my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, every kiss I get, every hug I get, that’s the banning of that. That’s the banning of my family’s future.Yeah. Obviously I’m gonna care more about that.Like Eva, my family lived in Italy. My children wouldn’t exist. Like, do you understand how horrifying that is? To me, my children legally wouldn’t be allowed to have come into existence. I.Like with restrictions they had, maybe I could have had one or two, but many of the kids that I play with every day and, and, and many families are actively being denied their children by these [01:08:00] laws.The reason I mention this is this might be able to give you more empathy for the Muslim situation where the vast majority of Muslims are. Like, look at the Koran that I have studied all my life. Look at my family that I’ve been with all my life, , like. This stuff that we’re seeing from some members of our community is not what my religion is about.And then you point out, yeah, but statistically this is what happens. Right? , And when you can see this in another population that you might not have this same bias as around like a Catholic population, you can be like. Okay, so this is how I make these larger scale decisions. Even if I have friends within this community, even if I know people within this community, I like,It is a caveat here. I mean, obviously things can change, right? Like the Muslim population has changed dramatically over the ages, and I think Muslim migration historically may not have meant the same thing as Muslim migration today. And there [01:09:00] may be a subpopulation of Catholics that changes the Catholic majority to not believing things like.Life begins at conception. I mean, it’s gonna be hard, but they might be able to get them to do that, to not have theology of the body. , But I, I think that they may not in their heads because they’re so used to it, they may not hear when they say something like, life begins at conception that they’re saying, I want to eradicate your future children., But that’s functionally what it means for a family like ours.Malcolm Collins: And so, I mean, you’ve gotta be aware. This is the other thing is you have to be aware of how cultures act at scale. And a lot of people think about how cultures act minutely. Like I have a friend who’s ex without looking at, well, yeah, but then what happens if you get X many in a region?Right? Like, how do, how do we relate to that?Speaker 18: You having a Rogan squad mate that you like should not affect your moral choice around the Rogans more [01:10:00] broadly, and if it does, you are massively morally compromised.Malcolm Collins: And I think I might wanna do a follow up episode where I talk about what does the conservatism of tomorrow actually look like?Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: So, yeah, I’m fired up. Let’s record that now.Simone Collins: Oh, I was excited about the other one. Okay.Malcolm Collins: We can do the other one and I’ll do that later.Simone Collins: Okay, good. Well, I love you.Malcolm Collins: Love you too. I do love that some of our fans were like with the, was the episode about Carl Young, that they were like, you’re too materialist about this. And they thought that the urban monoculture was materialist. Which is interesting because from my protect perspective, because I am a strict materialist, the urban monoculture comes off as incredibly woo and incredibly anti materialism.Like it doesn’t believe that genes exist. It doesn’t believe in science, it doesn’t believeSimone Collins: [01:11:00] exactlyMalcolm Collins: in, you know, space travel. And, and yet from a lot of religious perspectives, the urban monoculture comes across as more materialists than their mainstream perspective. Mm-hmm. You might see this in some Catholic groups, for example, or some Jewish communities.Simone Collins: Oh, I didn’t think about it that way. That’s interesting.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So they’re, it, it’s, it’s, it’s, they’re not wrong from their perspectiveSimone Collins: that there are more. Right. Like mystical traditions.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The urban monoculture is more materialist than their culture. And I actually, wow, that’s a whole thing to dig into because that’s like a really deep how, how, like who your friends friends are.List ofSimone Collins: materialism.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which we’re kind of gonna dive into on this video, so I might just get started here. Because it, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of like who we are or what our agenda is or what our long-term goals are. And the urban monoculture is obviously a major threat to many of our goals.But the [01:12:00] groups that we can ally with to achieve those goals are not always determined by how similar those groups are to us. EG. I might find, I’ll just get into this in the episode because this actually makes a lot of the points in the episode that we’re gonna be getting into. Any, any fun thoughts today, Simone?Simone Collins: Not that I can share on the,Podcast, but I’ll share with you after. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: well that sounds good. Something positive it sounds like happens.Simone Collins: Yeah. I, what I can, okay, so what someone that has interviewed us and covered a movement, I think like pretty well, who’s a pretty good investigative style journalist is considering doing a piece on Nick Fuentes.I really want this person to do it because I really want someone to look into a bunch of things related to him. Like there’s so many [01:13:00] mysteries with him. Like, does he really believe this? Who, like, what’s going on here? What’s, what’s buoying all of his extra tension? You know, what are the different factions that really,Malcolm Collins: well if you, if you look at his statistics, I’ve seen some statistics that seem to show something like 96% of his views are fake.Simone Collins: Right there. Yeah. There’s some, some stuff there. And then a lot of people in our audience, for example oh, hold on. It’s, it’s our kids’ doctor office calling.But also a lot of people in our audience watch him and clearly like him.Malcolm Collins: I mean, enough people in our audience do that. It makesSimone Collins: me, but they don’t, like, they’re not gr like, they don’t believe in him. So like what percentage of his audience believes what he’s saying versus is watching it because it’s entertaining or because it’s funny.He’s entertaining and happy,Malcolm Collins: which is rare these days andSimone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, there’s just, I like, I wanna figure that out, like, what’s going onMalcolm Collins: there?Simone Collins: Like, whyMalcolm Collins: can’t you just smile when you’re on air? Why can’t you be happy people?Simone Collins: I just wanna see someone who’s happy. [01:14:00]Malcolm Collins: That’s what I like about Hudson or,Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah.That, that does, that does. Totally.Speaker 20: Me. Okay, so what is in there? Titan? Um, A Okay, what’s it called?Speaker 21: My Why are you attacking Mermaid?And this isSpeaker 20: guys, guys. Stop me the phone. Jesus. Help me attack. No, don’t help a them attack. Get off. I want only when I get the phone do one. Yes. I got the phone. I got, I got the phone. Now I got the phone. [01:15:00] No. Now what are you guys doing? Are you guys going to, what? The dinosaur? Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Ow. That hurts.Ow.I’m gonna stop on you. Okay.Are you rescuing me? Ah, there we go.[01:16:00]Speaker 21: But done, completed.Done. Completed,Speaker 20: yeah. Let’s. Help. Okay. I’m helping Tyson ‘cause she’s on Team Daddy. No, no, no.Speaker 21: Put Oh, I’m gonna, don’t do that. Octavian. Okay. Do you understand?Speaker 20: Hey, don’t toast. Sie, hold the railing. Be very careful. Don’t go up and down the stairs like this. Me be very careful on the stairwell. Okay? Are you going to bring those to the chickens? This is a public episode. 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In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into Carl Jung’s analytical psychology — explaining the ego, personal unconscious, collective unconscious, archetypes, shadow work, and more. Malcolm (who is openly not a fan) breaks down why Jung’s ideas sound profound but lead to disempowering, unscientific views of the mind that have quietly infected conservative and manosphere thinking (hello, Jordan Peterson fans).We contrast Jung’s mystical “deep state” model of the psyche with a more pragmatic, first-principles understanding of consciousness, unconscious processing, memory, trauma contextualization, and emotional framing. Learn why repressed memories are mostly myth, how you can choose your emotional reactions (and why that’s empowering), why shadow work can manufacture problems that didn’t exist, and how over-mythologizing the self leads to cognitive abdication.If you’ve ever felt pressured into “integrating your shadow,” doing dream analysis for growth, or treating archetypes as destiny — this episode will give you the tools to spot the woo and reclaim agency over your mind.Timestamps below. Like, subscribe, and share if you want more no-BS breakdowns of influential ideas that shape culture.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re going to be talking about Jungian psychology, which people know I am not a fan of, but I want to explain what his psychology is, and it’s important to know about because if you are consuming. Manosphere content. What you may not realize or even conservative content more broadly is a lot of conservative intellectuals recycle Jungian theory without telling you that’s what they’re doing.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Famous person for doing this is Jordan Peterson.Simone Collins: Well, Jordan Peterson talks about young a lot. I think just not that many people necessarily understand how much young has influenced him.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so it’s useful to be able to note, call out when you’re having Jungian BS thrown at you and to understand why it’s wrong, because a lot of it can sound like, oh, shadow work or something like this.I can see. How this is useful. And it’s fundamentally bad because it leads you to bad conceptualizations of how [00:01:00] your brain works. Mm-hmm. That lead you to psychological places that can be more difficult than they need to be to resolve. So let’s dive in. Hmm. The structure of the psyche, in Young’s perspective is that you have the ego, the center of consciousness, your sense of i identity and everyday awareness.It is an important part, but not the whole self, and it can become rigid or inflated if it ignores the unconscious. And this is where you talk about people with like. An inflated ego, and we’ll get to more what he means by this, which by the way, and I think a very bad way to think about this phenomenon.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: Then you have the personal unconscious. This contains repressed or forgotten personal experiences, memories, and feeling toned complexes, emotionally charged clusters of ideas like a mother complex or inferiority complex, which we’ll get to a lot at. The other. Really important to him these act asynchronously and can influence behavior strongly.Now the first thing I need to note, just like [00:02:00] before we go farther. Scientifically speaking to the best of our knowledge in psychology right now. And, and, and, and keep in mind, I am very dubious of psychology as a science, but I am trained enough in it to feel like I have a fairly good understanding of where the BS lies and where where things that we’ve actually pretty much gotten down at this point.Mm-hmm. And one of the things that it seems pretty reliable at this point is that. Repressed memories are not a real phenomenon. Yeah. You do not forget something. Have it continue to affect you and then have it come back later in life. Yeah. When this happens, it is almost always in the studies that have like looked at this a lot.One of two phenomenon phenomenon. One is called forgetting Before remembering. So, what happens in is somebody will go to their, their spouse or something like that [00:03:00] and been like, oh my God. I just had this memory that came back to me all of a sudden of my father or uncle sexually, you know, essaying me as a kid.And this is horrifying. And then the person who they came to is this will be like, oh, oh my God. That is horrifying. Well, secretly being like, actually you talked about that all the time. And causes this phenomenon. Is they’ll remember something like this, but then the context of that memory changes.Hmm. They might remember their uncle doing something funny with them as a kid or touching them in a way that they thought was silly or weird or made them a little uncomfortable. Yeah. LikeSimone Collins: their uncle was always creepy and like did stuffMalcolm Collins: like that that, yeah, it did this creepy thing for me, but it wasn’t, you know, grape.And then one day they’re sitting there and they’re like. That was a grape. Oh my God. But because they hadn’t remembered it with such a charged word, like grape [00:04:00] attached to it. They had forgotten the previous times. They had remembered it. They had forgotten that that was always in their memory because what they’re actually remembering is I had never remembered that as a grape.I had never remembered my uncle Graped me. I had just remembered my uncle did this funny thing to me. So you get enough of a category change that you forget that you had previously always had this in your memory. The second thing is it’s an implanted memory. This is, when these, these very famous with hypnosis, but also it can happen with psychologists more broadly which is to say it’s very easy for people to conflate fake memories.People fake memories all the time. Our brain. Constantly makes up memories. The, obviously the famous study that I talk a lot about when I’m talking about ai, when people are like, well, AI makes up how it knows something. And the famous memory blindness studies in humans where you show them pictures of attractive women and then you do sleigh of hand and you go, why did you pick this one?And they’ll just go on a long rant about why they chose that one. And it was not the one they just chose. OrSimone Collins: even like, [00:05:00] political ballot choices.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So people will just make up why they made decisions. And, and this, this has a big problem with memories, right? Because if you make up, oh, well, you know, a psychologist walks you through something in a hypnotic suggested state, or they, you, you know, they walk you through, well, do you remember this happening?You can think back and create that false memory shockingly easily. It is very, very easy for humans to create false memories. And the reason why I’m so against people who push the idea of repetitive memories is because the moment you have this concept and you believe it’s real, then you and any culture that stems from you, your kids, everything like that, that you teach about this are very susceptible to this.Mm-hmm. And this is really bad because this is the core wedge that things like the urban monoculture and cults like Scientology. Used to drive a wedge between people and their support network, IE your their families. Mm-hmm. So if your kids grow up [00:06:00] believing in suppressed memories, it’s much easier for someone to later te teach them.Imagine how mortifying that would be if somebody convinced one of your kids that you assayed them and you didn’t. And yet, we know from research, this happens all the time for people who go visit psychologists and stuff like this.Simone Collins: Well, and this was even an issue in, in the period of this. The Satanic panic.All these kids were like, yeah, I was involved in this horrible stuff. And everyone’s like, what whatcha you talking about?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, thisSimone Collins: never happened.Malcolm Collins: Then his final layer here, the collective unconscious young’s most distinctive contribution, a deeper universal layer shared by all humans inherited across generations, not personally acquired.It is like a psychic instinctual reservoir containing primordial images and patterns common to humanity. And he believes that this is like a real physical thing. He’s not talking about like. Pop culture here or something like that which is obviously stupid and woo, and we would immediately call that out as stupid and woo.But let’s go to the ego. ‘cause I actually think [00:07:00] people might think the ego is the least objective one of these ideas before we get into all the shadow work and everything like that. But I actually think it’s the most wrong of his ideas about how the human brain works. And because it’s the most wrong it can lead to and, and because it doesn’t seem obviously wrong, it can lead to tons and tons and tons of mistakes.And it is seeped into every aspect of our language. He has a big ego. You know what somebody might say, right? And they’re literally referring to a psychological theory when they say that the ego is the center of the field of consciousness. Your subjective sense of I personal identity will, continuity of time.It handles everyday awareness, decision making, reality testing, and adaption to the external world. Young saw it as essentially, but limited. It’s like a small island of light. In a vast ocean, a psychic life strengths. It provides focus, stability, and necessity. The center for navigating lives limitations and risks.The ego is not the whole psyche if it becomes [00:08:00] rigid, clinging too tightly to its current self image or work. It blocks growth. Mm-hmm. It comes inflated identifying with archetypes, collective ideals, or overly grand self concepts. It loses contact with reality and deep psych inflation often feels like godlike certainty or superiority, but it leads to fragility isolation or eventual deflation collapse.Young warned that an inflated ego can become quote unquote egocentric and incapable of learning from the past. Now,Simone Collins: wow. These are so many mainstream words. That’s, that’s crazy. Egocentric was a hidden a thing, like a young thing. Oh my gosh. Yeah. When, when I looked him up originally. I, and I’m wondering if this is something that you, that, that is accurate.My understanding of, of youngian psychology was basically. Trying to take Freudian psychology, but then build it around the hero’s journey and [00:09:00] book style narratives. But is, is that just a misreading of what he did? That’s aMalcolm Collins: misreading. He did do that, but and obviously Jordan Peterson borrows a lot from that.No, it, it, it is a, it’s a sort of framework for how people think and how to improve how people think. Mm-hmm. While the framework has its three core components, the ego, the you know, the subconscious and the what is it? The, the, the, the like, super, super, ego, societals, subconscious. The, the core failure is he basically took Freud’s stupidness of, of like you have, you know, the ego in the id.He re renamed some stuff and he tried to make it like less crazy. Right? And the problem with this is, okay, let’s take out the thing that seems obviously wrong and objectable, which is like this, this collective unconscious, okay. Yeah. The idea of an ego and an unconscious is not how your brain actually works.Mm-hmm. And believing it’s how your brain actually works can lead to a lot of [00:10:00] mistakes. Mm-hmm. So first, your brain does a lot of thought that you are not consciously aware of.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: This is. Just an objectively true thing in science and neuroscience. We can measure this, we can look at this, we can see thoughts happening before, significantly before they enter your field of awareness.As we’ve pointed out in other videos on this, it appears from the most cutting edge science that the and you can watch episodes on this, like stop anthrop izing humans that the most cutting that, that these parts of your brain that you do not have conscious access to are likely working with a level of architectural convergence.Two token predictors. For, for many reasons and more and more studies keep coming out showing this, which is really cool, that like we made this prediction a while ago and since then a number more studies have come out that from different angles seem to be arguing that this is the case. There seem to yeah, provide evidence that this [00:11:00] is the case.But this unconscious part of your brain then funnels. It, it it, one, it operates in separation from itself. Like it’s fairly regionalized. It’s not like you have a unconscious LLM and then a central LLM. You have a a a dozen bodies of unconscious LLMs, which are interacting with each other, and then send all of that to a centralized workstation, which is what.That centralized workstation then may be conscious, but it’s probably also mostly unconscious and you’re not aware of it. Then that centralized workstation sends the decision it makes into your conscious mind and where your conscious mind interacts with it is. Predominantly through the way it writes your memories.Mm-hmm. That appears to be the core focus of the conscious mind, not making decisions, but writing [00:12:00] memories. Mm-hmm. And how the conscious mind ends up writing those memories. The emotional framing that it puts on them, the contextual framing it puts on them can end up shaping a great deal of your personality because those memories are then.Referenced by the unconscious parts of your mind when they make decisions. Okay? Now this is the reason why I’m, I’m going into all of this, is this unconscious part of your mind is not like some mystical, wooey, whatever. It’s just the parts of your thought process that are happening by components in your brain that are not part of your consciousness and are the predominant part of your brain.They are also. Not held under some secret influence that you’re unaware of. Mm-hmm. When you talk about like an individual’s unconscious mind in like a frereian sense or something like that, the implication or, [00:13:00] or the Jungian sense is this unconscious part of your mind. Is one completely out of your control.And it’s going out there and just like creating ideas based on thoughts that are completely like for injected into you by maybe like an advertising campaign or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. Like, that’s, that’s how it’s typically thought of. Like you had something suggested to you because of some.Advertising campaign. And then your unconscious ended up making a decision based on that because you were tricked and you didn’t even know why you made that decision. When that’s not exactly what’s happening. Mm-hmm. When things like that do happen it’s a lot closer to what I would call a, an an illusion.Right. Like you. Experience an illusion in real time, like an optical illusion in real time, but you don’t think it’s [00:14:00] like, your eyes influenced by some like magical thing you can’t see. You’re like, oh, that optical illusion happens. Because when my eyes are processing X, they do X in a weird way, and then that hits my brain.Mm-hmm. So a lot of like advertising related unquote illusions are really just like priming effects. Okay. A priming effect means by the way. Token predictors have priming effects as well. Yes. In case you’re wondering very heavily it means if, if you want to get somebody to act in a certain way, you prime them with something else, like some concept, like you wanna get them to act more morally.You prime them as the concept of God or something like that. And you can also get like faster response times. Like if you prime them with the concept of red, they’ll like say firetruck faster, right? They’ll, they’ll have an easier time passing through that neural pathway. But there’s nothing like.I, I, I guess fancy or secretive happening here. Everything in the [00:15:00] output from these parts of your mind, the unconscious mind is fed into your conscious mind. Your conscious mind can. Heavily control your unconscious mind. But it still doesn’t make decisions. By that, what I mean is you completely control your moral and emotional framing of reality through the lens and context you put onto a story with the part of your mind that is sentient If you decide and this is where he gets an element of correctness where he talks about these.Societal archetypes being really important to people’s egos. Many people will take a societal archetype. Define that societal archetype as a life well lived. Mm-hmm. Right. Within every memory they have. Did I live up to that societal archetype? It’s, it’s one way that they may do it or they may ask, do other people see me as that societal archetype [00:16:00]Simone Collins: or, or essentially you’re saying that they’re functionally method acting as that archetype.And so when they behave like that sort of makes their,Malcolm Collins: this trains their unconscious brain to method act as this archetype.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: Because their conscious brain is labeling things as good or bad, eg. Other people’s perceptions of them, their own actions, their own decisions based on whether or not they conformed with this archetype.Simone Collins: Yeah. And if they’re trying to work out how to respond to something, the subconscious. Thought process is how would a like tough man respond to this? Versus like, how would a, you know, yes. Fancy, frail, delicate, desired woman respond to this or whatever. Right. That kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes, exactly. And this is a genuinely, like when you recognize that you are doing that, or you see somebody who’s doing this, this is a genuinely bad way to live life and it can lead people to.Fail at their lives when they [00:17:00] over glom onto these archetypes. But to try to over mythologize what they’re doing, can miss the banality of it. They simply found an archetype and decided that archetype was definitionally aspirational. Mm-hmm. And then attempted to. Embody the archetype that they saw.Mm-hmm. And the moment you, you realize it’s just as simple as that. There is no other fanciness to it. And that the, the, their ability to embody the archetype is more encoded in their memories than in their and that they have control of that. Now, what I mean when you have control of your memories, I’ve talked about this on other shows, but it’s very important to the, the sort of Adams family principle, I guess I’d call it.If somebody gives you wilted flowers, you know, Gomez and Morticia are like, oh, they’re lovely. Right? And culturally they choose to see them as lovely, right? Culture is in part a choice, but in part we’ll talk about where culture is not a choice. But they like the Adams family very intentionally.Leads into their family’s unique culture. [00:18:00] And I, I think when the Adams family has done well, they are not monsters, but they are around a normie society that sees them as so culturally different that they are the equivalent of monsters. Yeah. And then they live in a world where monsters also see them as the equivalent of monsters, simply because they’re so culturally deviant from the society around them.With theor joke behind all of that in. Whenever Adams family has done well, but despite all of that, despite doing things their own way, they are fundamentally more loving. They do have a better sex life. They do have a better relationship with their children despite, you know, inverting and the Adams family that do this rest are the, the full links movies like Adams Family Values from the, the, the 1980s or just God at thisSpeaker 2: I hated you. I despised you. I choked him until he lost consciousness and had to be put on a respirator. I tied him to a tree and pulled out four of his permanent teeth when he was [00:19:00] asleep. I opened his skull and removed his brains. You did.Brother. BrotherMalcolm Collins: and good for this as well.They can choose. Like when you watch the Adams family yes, there’s like some supernatural stuff and stuff like that, but the vast majority of what they do, you could just decide to do. You could decide to treat your relationship the way that they treat their relationship. You could decide to treat disappointment and death and the macabre as things that are positive to you because it fundamentally.Other than a few hardcoded things, we get to decide how we react to our experiences and our history, and it matters a lot that you understand and incorporate this into the core of who you are. The reason I [00:20:00] say this is a great study that was done on this, I was actually a series of, I think four studies.It’s been pretty well replicated at this point. That shows that if you ask somebody about. Whether or not they experienced trauma when they were growing up.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: How much trauma they say they felt growing up is perfectly correlary with all the negative effects of that trauma. What is,Simone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: nearly uncorrelated is whether or not they actually experienced any trauma as a kid.If you go to the court records and stuff like this, this is, this is not correlated with the effects of trauma. So the effects of trauma are caused by believing. That you had these traumatic experiences, right? Mm-hmm. This is why it matters so much how we encode things. You can choose. There are people who genuinely were heavily abused as a kid, but if they don’t believe, they didn’t interpret that as traumatic which I would be seen as one of those people, right?Like in the Stephen Mullany debate, he got really into this like, how can you not say that you were in a highly abusive [00:21:00] situation growing up? And I was like, because I choose to not see it that way. Right. I choose to not see that about my childhood. I choose to not believe that about my childhood. I choose to believe the best about any situation that I’m in.I have been in really terrible situations in my life, and Asim knows I always frame them positively as an opportunity, right? Like we don’t have jobs right now, and yet I frame it as an opportunity to try to build our next thing that I’m excited about. And I’m excited every day I could be moping and worried.Right. That is a fundamentally a choice. And when you don’t frame it that way, when you frame a, the unconscious as something that is fundamentally outside of your control it it, it leads to cognitive abdication and working on all of these things that don’t really matter and avoiding all these things that don’t really matter.But now let’s go to what he thinks of the personal unconscious. This layer sits just below the consciousness and contains a material that was once conscious, but has been forgotten, repressed, or never fully noticed. This is not [00:22:00] how your unconscious mind works. You, you’re actually largely aware of most of, at least the consequences of what goes on in your unconscious mind and your decision process.Mm-hmm. It is personal and shaped by your individual life history experience in the environment. So you can see why I push against this. This is just not the way unconsciousness actually works. Unconsciousness is just like the line of thought takes before it gets to your consciousness. Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Right. What, what, let me be clear here. What he see, what you’re implying, at least per this language, is that he thinks that there are memories that we don’t remember but that affect our behavior. Whereas in reality, if there’s a memory you don’t remember, or like you, you haven’t retrieved it in a long time, it is not going to be influencing your behavior.Okay.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that is correct. This also doesn’t heavily influence things like arousal patterns from the studies that we’ve done on this. Like being spanked as a kid in our study, we couldn’t find good correlation with that in like, anything sexual. So a a lot of people think that a lot of these like [00:23:00] experiences that they’ve had there, there’s been great studies on grape in this.So, when, people are great girls specifically are griped. In societies where there’s a big stigma around grape grape has a really huge negative effect on their cognition. But in societies like say Islamic society where it’s more common, it does not have a particularly big effect on their cognition.They like it. Being griped does not psychologically hurt them that much because of how they contextualize it. Grape isn’t bad because of grape. Grape is bad because of how we psychologically contextualize what that means to an individual.Simone Collins: Great. That’s not the right phrasing. It’s not mentally traumatic or harmful to people.Yeah. MentallyMalcolm Collins: aspect of it.Simone Collins: And, and the same could be said for like experiencing violence as a child or other things like that. And that’s what the research shows. And this is not a, a judgment on the morality or goodness or badness. Of the actions of the trauma that you might experience, be it. Of that sort or just like, you know, [00:24:00] witnessing a terrible accident.But what matters is the contextualization. If you contextualize it as this horrible thing happened to me, I’m now damaged goods, or I am now traumatized, I’m now never gonna be able to function again as a normal human. That is how it is damaged. And this doesn’t been even more innocuous things. We, we’ve talked about this ad nauseum.But people who’ve, who’ve undergone formal sleep studies who have had horrible sleep. But don’t know that. And, and they report to researchers, I think, you know, I slept fine. Feel better and perform better throughout the day than people who per actual re research, like, measured sleep, slept really well.Malcolm Collins: Most of the effects from sleeping differences just by telling someone We measured your sleep last night and you slept well, and then they’ll perform better on a test. Yeah, like, so,Simone Collins: so really like even, so it could be with something as serious as some form of assault or it could be as something innocuous as.You know, believing you had a good or bad night of sleep, how you contextualize things is really [00:25:00] important. Someone joked in our comments when we talked about this in, in a recent episode. They were like, man, how do we get like our Fitbits to gaslighting us to thinking we have good health? Which is the legit good question.Malcolm Collins: No, no. But where this ends up mattering and it explains why if it, like, the more progressive somebody is, the worse their mental health is and the more depressed they are. Mm-hmm. Is in part because. You can choose to contextualize, like there are types of like light essay, right? That may happen as part of like regular life.And a conservative woman or man or, or, or let’s say discrimination, right? May be affected by one of these things and just rub it off as a normal part of life, right? Whereas a progressive. Because they contextualize it as equivalent to grape or because they contextualize it. Like this incredibly, what they might call a microaggression, but it’s just somebody being like what, what bathroom is the right one for you again?Mm-hmm. You know, because they contextualize this as an attack, [00:26:00] they feel it as an attack and it has the same effect on them, not just psychologically, but physiologically as an attack. But to continue here he believes in this concept that affects the personal unconscious. We’ll get to a second called autonomous complexes.So he says, quote, the image of certain psychic situation, which is strongly accented emotionally and is moreover incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful inner coherence. It has its own wholeness, and in addition, a relatively high degree of autonomy so that it has the subject to control the conscious mind to only a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the fear of consciousness.So, essentially to word this in another word he sees the unconscious mind. As like a separate mind from your conscious mind that interacts with your conscious mind [00:27:00] instead of a collection of components that is part of the pipe into your conscious mind.So you can think of your conscious mind. Okay. He basically thinks of the mind as working like two living blobs, right? Whereas a better way to think of the mind is a series of action calls where you have a thought is written by the conscious mind into memory then your unconscious mind like you.Responds to that it’s like, okay, I, I just had X memory. What do I do next? And it does whatever it wants to do next. And that thing happens in the world and then also enters.Simone Collins: I think I have a better, I think I have a better analogy. So per young, our conscious mind is the president. And our unconscious mind is the deep state.So the president [00:28:00] is like, we’re gonna do this. And then the deep state is like, ah, actually for all these rules and other things that you can’t even see and that are super obscure yeah, we’re, we’re gonna actually do this totally differently. And then, you know, things get botched and don’t go according to plan.And young is trying to say, you must understand the deep state. You must fuel the deep state. You must you know, ride the deep state. Whereas I think n non Youngian people are like, no, let’s just do what the Trump administration does and write a bunch of executive orders and go without all of this nonsense, no baggage.Malcolm Collins: I, I actually, okay, here’s a better way to describe. Okay. It, it’s not as accurate and a metaphor, but it’s a pretty good one for visualizing. What it actually is, is closer to a train track with light on one section of the track.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Like the light’s only covering 12% of the track. Mm-hmm. Now it’s still all of the same process.It’s all the same track. Mm-hmm. You know, when the track goes through the part that you have conscious access to it’s then going around the track, but, but you’re seeing the whole train. [00:29:00] Right. Does that work better for you?Simone Collins: No, I don’t understand that at all, but, you know.Malcolm Collins: Okay. I’ll continue to go here and because, we’ll, we’ll come back to this in different words and it might make sense to you then.Yes. In plain terms, complexes are emotionally charged clusters of ideas, memories, and and associations. A mother complex, which might involve intense feelings around nurturing, dependency, or authority figures rooted in early experiences. They have a quote unquote nuclear core often.Simone Collins: Wait, wait, wait, wait.So the whole complex, wait. Just the complex, like you have a. Savior complex, like when people say things like that, they’re referring to Jungian psychology.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re referring to Youngian psychology. Which is not scientific, by the way. It’s not like there’s not scientific evidence for this. Now, now it is true that we have tropes within our society and some people attempt to embody those tropes, as I’ve said above.But that attempting to. [00:30:00] Bond to a trope is intentional on behalf of the individual. People are not, not aware that they are doing this. They may contextualize it differently. Like, of course I want to be a good progressive and progressives are good, so I go out and save the environment. You know, they don’t ly ask, well, are they actually good?Is this actually a good way to structure my life? But they’re not like lying about what they’re doing.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: If that makes sense.Simone Collins: Yes, absolutely.Malcolm Collins: I got really lightheaded all of a sudden.Simone Collins: No. You okay? You need to take a break?Malcolm Collins: No. Young, young, what was I just saying?Simone Collins: That when people are putting on an affectation or character, it is known by them and intentional. They’ve intentionally chosen to be, yeah, the JY Barbie girl or the, the high school jock type or the, theMalcolm Collins: reason why thisisSimone Collins: important.Malcolm Collins: Is I, I know they may contextualize, like they may act in a way that you see as the mean [00:31:00] cheerleader when they think that’s how a popular girl acts.Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: But this is not and it’s very important the people who are like, oh, this is like, something happened to them when they were a kid and they picked up this unconscious belief in whatever.It’s really important that you don’t get sucked in by this type of language. Or explanation because it’s, it’s, it’s just wrong. And it is hugely disempowering to the individual in a way that can prevent actual solutions from taking place.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So, so how, how do I explain this? If you buy into his world perspective.You can easily come to believe something like, oh, my friend does X because they have a mother conflict, which they got in childhood for this just so story. And that’s a bad thing to believe because that’s not why your friend is doing X. Your friend is doing X because they want to be seen in X way because they believe X-ray being seen as [00:32:00] good now.What’s important is, is once you understand this, now it’s a lot easier to work on helping them, right? Because now all you need to do is explain or break through to them why believing that X thing looks good or makes them look good, is a bad and inefficient idea that is functionally not working. May you be unable to do that because it’s something that happened in their childhood.Absolutely, you may be unable to do it because of something that happened in their childhood. But that doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that like it’s some secret, magical thing that got stuck in their unconscious. It just means that their framing of those definitions happened in their childhood. Does that make sense, Simone?I.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Okay. He, when triggered when one of these complexes is triggered, they possess you temporarily. He says you react with disproportionate emotion as if an inner foreign body has taken you over. You might suppress them with willpower, but they return stronger until [00:33:00] integrated and your. Goal is to work through these complexes via analysis, dreams or reflection, released energy and other things can foster growth.And you can see this is where the woo comes in, right? Like, it’s actually very, very similar to Scientology disbelief that you have, setons that you get because of bad things that happens. This is what Scientologists believes. Bad things that happened to you with the child, which are the souls of Rigo dead, dead aliens.And they, they attach to you. And this is why, you know, you kids can’t even hear like screaming when they’re born because that may distress them. And then they’ll pick up Theon and the Setons will lead to bad things in their life.Speaker 9: beings born on this planet have had clusters of Satans attached to their bodies. OT three can run out these clusters and cause them to leave us and reincarnate as individuals.Speaker 10: After hours of expensive auditing, you are rid of the body thetans attached to you. You may then acquire psychic powers, move objects at a distance, and have out of body experiences. [00:34:00] If you find you can’t, then you must take the course again for another 5,000 pounds.Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s basically what young thought. That’s how he thought reality worked.Theon logic is that, you, you get possessed by these little anima that live within you. Very video gaming actually.Simone Collins: Yeah, you’re right.Speaker 12: You can’t be serious now. Come at me. No one’s. What the hell?Speaker 11: What’s up you? How come get up.Malcolm Collins: There’s a game called Persona five, where you sort of have these, where you have these like anima inside you. And I think this is influenced by Jungian psychology. The idea that you have these, ideas about what is good that live inside you and can take you over. That’s not really how it works.Now. You can be like, but sometimes around specific archetypes. I have seen people get triggered. And it’s, yes, sometimes people [00:35:00] are triggered by specific archetypes. This absolutely can happen. But. Sorry, my feet were getting cold. People can get triggered by archetypes but this is just like a, a, a known archetype that they have chosen to incorporate in their self identity.So how does the flow of emotions actually work? Because we talk about this in the pragmatist Guide to life and it’s really important to understand. So most people like. Are living on autopilot. So the, the sentient part of their brain, the, the like, one little important part is completely on autopilot.And this sentient part of their brain is so if you, after you get in an argument with somebody you may attempt to model them, right? You’ll, you’ll do something like say like. You’re creating an emulation of them within your mind so you can continue to have that debate that has their characteristics.Mm-hmm. And stuff like this. And this is called a theory of mind. And I mo believe [00:36:00] that the way that most humans operate is they have one theory of mind in their brains at all time, dedicated to themselves, to the person,Simone Collins: what they believe themselves.Malcolm Collins: Yes, they have chosen to be or become. And this theory of mind is referenced by the little sentient inside of them when they’re on autopilot.So by this what I mean is. They have an idea of who is Malcolm, right? Like what, what is Malcolm like? And they create a model for that. And then the little part of their brain that writes down their emotions with like, are you angry about this? Is this good for you? Is this whatever? It references that theory of mind, which is talking about yourself.When you are going to experience an emotion, so mm-hmm. Suppose you’re like going through a [00:37:00] breakup like some, somebody’s just texted you and said, I wanna break up with you. Right. Your sentient part of your brain references the part of your brain that’s the Malcolm or Simone theory of mind and says, how do I feel about being broken up with?And then that theory of mind tells them, Malcolm, the type of person Malcolm is, feels like X or Y when they’re being broken up with. Mm-hmm. That gets encoded. Now you can override this. But. It’s mostly running automatically. And we argue in that book, the core way to change your emotional reaction is both through recontextualization we talked about before, but also chiseling at and working on that theory of mind.That is you, right? The one that’s constantly referenced by your autopilot. And I note here that this theory of mind can come in one of two forms. And you throughout your life will meet people of both forms in one form. [00:38:00] It’s modeling themselves from their own perspective. These are people who are this is, this is a normal way of doing it for like non-super toxic people.In the other type of person, it models it from the perspective of outsiders. And these people are very dangerous. So what I mean by that is with suppose somebody has just broken up with it, right? The question that the thing constructing the theory of mind of them is asking is not what type of person am I and how does that type of person react?Mm-hmm. It what type of person do I want other people to see me as? Yes. And how does this person react?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And so, these, these people are become very performative in this sort of stuff. And the reason why this is so toxic is because they can never really be satisfied, right? Like, they never really are seen enough [00:39:00] as what they want to be like.But to continue here, the collective unconscious, this is a deeper universal layer beneath personal unconscious. It’s not acquired through personal experiences, but inherited as part of our psychic structure like instincts or biological predispositions, but psychic in nature. This one is really stupid.I mean, like, obviously it doesn’t exist. If it did exist, we would it, we would see it in like feral children and stuff like that. So, but we’ve seen a lot of children who have been raised outside of families and stuff. We’ve seen art from people who’s been like totally isolated their entire lives.And it’s just disordered there, there isn’t like some sort of recurring. Thing to it outside of what we biologically inherit from our ancestors. Any thoughts before I go further, Simone?Simone Collins: No, no, no. But this has been a lot better than the summaries I’ve read, so I appreciate you trying to explain this, at least in terms I can understand.[00:40:00]Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Then within the collective unconscious, you have archetypes. And he sees this as being like primordial images that are not fixed images of, or characters, but underlying forms of potentials that shape human experience appearing in Miss Fairytales, dreams, arts religions. Across cultures.Okay,Simone Collins: this is where I got that perception that it was basically just psychology, but with like, some kind of like through the lens of book narratives.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I’ve pointed out the reason I say that this is bad is while it is true that you do get some convergent phenomenon between cultures, especially cultures that are inheriting from each other narrative flows, structures and histories you know, El Revo and all that you, you.Now that I’m play more stories with reality fabricator, I’m realizing just how much AI chooses El Vos is the name. It chooses it well over half the time which is maybe I play too many sci-fi stories.Simone Collins: Yeah, [00:41:00] in sci-fi stories, that’s the case. It’s certainly not the case in like historical fiction.Which I also choose a lot.Malcolm Collins: So my favorite sci-fi story to play here is I play it with the the new, like build your own one where it like makes up an image concept based on a gist of an idea you have. Yeah. Is I am an ambassador for the Tarn Empire meeting with the the Federation, which are humans who have sort of.Evolved into this sort of gay space Communism, utopia. And, and my job is to infiltrate and take down these Witless Federation members you know, to, to eradicate their, their colony for, for further expansion of the Tarn Empire. SoSimone Collins: anyway, these archetypes?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. These types, so they include things like the persona, the social mask or role we present to the world, useful for adaptation, but problematic if we identify it completely.So note here when I talk about persona, like the thing I’m talking about, you can be like, but that’s very similar to a persona and that’s the trick. It sounds similar, but it’s a completely separated concept. [00:42:00] I’m literally just saying. People identify tropes as good and attempt to build them into their self identities.It’s, it’s not part of a collective unconscious, it’s based on things they saw in their lives and then attempted to model. Okay. When people try to live out the hero’s journey, that’s just because they have seen it that many times in books. Especially in the west. The shadow, and we’ll talk about this one a lot, the repressed disavow aspect of personality.What we don’t want to be, it includes negative traits, but also hidden strengths in creativity. Anima in men, the inner feminine image, quality, soul, emotion, relatedness, animus. Women, the inner masculine images, quality spirit, logic, assertiveness, and the self, the central archetype of wholeness the regulating center of the entire psyche, not the same as the ego.It often appears in dreams as madness, wise figures or symbols of unity. The self guides, the processes of becoming who we [00:43:00] truly are. Other common archetypes include the hero, the mother, the child, the trickster, the wise. Old woman, et cetera. And those are not, those are just tropes. They’re just tropes that people see.And then identify moral value to as to how you should actually build yourself. If you’re like, well, what trope do I choose? Or what trope is really me? And the practice is this guide to life. You should get it. Read it. We argue. First, you decide what has purpose. Then you decide what trope. If you embodied it would best maximize that purpose, then you embodied that trope.That’s the best way to live because then you can live with maximum efficacious throughout your life in a, in like a, a, a big way, which I’m a big fan of.Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. I also would just argue that the hero’s journey. It’s just kind of a reflection of common life pathways, you know?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: It’s notMalcolm Collins: growing up being teen, going out, you know, then creating a story of success or a story of challenges and failure.That’s the [00:44:00] way people like to tell narratives andSimone Collins: stories. Life happens. You leave home, you face challenges, you grow, you know? That’s profound. Yeah. I mean, it is, but it’s not it’s, don’t overthink it. There’s a lot of overthinking it seems, in young Youngian psychology, which ironically I first heard about when I, I did that internship with the Fake Cult the Jesu Institute as they called it was like all about like Carl Young this and Carl Young that, and I just love that, like aesthetically when a bunch of alternate reality game narrative writers decided that they were going to create.A cult and try to throw in all these things that like were creepy. So alongside things like human dolphin communication, they threw in a bunch of references to Carl Young, I think goes to show you everything you need to know about just how I. You know, useful and, and, and real world ish isMalcolm Collins: but the reason this gets to me before we go further with shadow work and the shadow is it’s just not accurate.It’s an inaccurate view of who [00:45:00] you are. Yeah. And it includes many elements like you know, past events living in your unconscious or something. Yeah. That. Can be used by your ironically real subconscious mind, eeg, the little model that you’ve built of yourself. Mm-hmm. To justify actions that you wouldn’t want, right?Yeah. If you believe that you have trauma, then you build that trauma into that model of yourself, which determines how you emotionally react to stimuli in your environment,Simone Collins: leads to suboptimal reactions and less resilience.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Because you’re like, oh, I am someone who is traumatized. It is a very belief in the concept of trauma that makes you susceptible to trauma in the first.Simone Collins: Yeah. And I’m not up for this because I’m traumatized. You know? Instead of I can do this, I’m empowered. I Right. Can do whatever I want to,Malcolm Collins: but it’s not just trauma. It’s the entire world of the unconscious that allows for these justifications to be built [00:46:00] within an individual.Simone Collins: Well, it seems to create an external locus of control by creating this, this yeah, subconscious that, that supposedly drives.So much of your action disempowers you as a conscious individual because it says, well, you’re not really in control anyway. You’re being controlled by repressed memories and all these things that happen to you over which you have no control, which leads ultimately to a much less. Efficacious, successful and happy life.Not good?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. ISimone Collins: time out though. It looks like you’re about to pass out also. I need to get the kids. Should we finish this tomorrow?Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I just started on shadow work, so we’ll finish it tomorrow.Simone Collins: Sorry. Are you okay? ‘cause you look like, you’re like,Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. I’m feeling i’ll like, really d drowsy.ISimone Collins: just, yeah, that happened. Really suddenly, are you not sleeping enough or is there something like, do I need to take you to an emergency room?Malcolm Collins: No, I’m, I’m fine. I’m, I’m not sleeping. I have so much to do. I’ve gotta make it fixedSimone Collins: right now, Malcolm. No, you, you, I think you need to take it, you [00:47:00] know how like a, even a short nap makes a huge difference for you?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But if I take a short nap now, then I’m not gonna be able to get to sleep later.Simone Collins: Well, that’s okay. You have a weird schedule. You can keep a weird schedule. Okay. Can you, because you, you just don’t. You look off, right? Like you can’t work right now. You, you clearly need to take a nap or I need to take you to a doctor.Like it’s one of those two.Malcolm Collins: I just need, I just need some beer. That’s what I need.Simone Collins: No, you don’t. Are you okay? Is this normal tired or is this I need to take you to a doctor? Tired.Malcolm Collins: No, this is a feeling I get when I’m in a car and I have to concentrate for a long period of time and then I get like, itSimone Collins: looks like that.Okay then. ButMalcolm Collins: I’m just doing that with episodes. ‘cause you know,Simone Collins: pleaseMalcolm Collins: stick out thinking, thinking for too long.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s okay. Look, you need your glymphaticMalcolm Collins: system. There’s the bigger problems. I’ve got all of these things in the back of my head that I’m worried about, like the board meeting and the site having issues right now and that’s doing investor outreach.Simone Collins: Yeah, I get it. But I [00:48:00] think then you need to shut down. Let the waste matter clear out and you’ll feel a lot better, even if it’s just 15 minutes. Can you do that for me?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, if you dunno what she’s talking about when you go to sleep, your glymphatic cells shrink, which allows them to clean out the waste matter in between them, which is why short naps can be useful for brain health.Simone Collins: Okay? You need toMalcolm Collins: me when I concentrate for too long.Simone Collins: Yeah, well he, so he both seems to accumulate waste matter in his brain much more quickly. Or like, it just blocks up more quickly, but then naps clean it out much faster. I likeMalcolm Collins: pass out if I concentrate forSimone Collins: too long and it’s like 30 minutes and he’s fine.And we did twoMalcolm Collins: episodes in a row and it was a really long one before this,Interestingly, the one we had done before this was Tucker Carlson, which, , has already gone live and it has one of our lowest, like to dislike ratios was only 80% likes. , Usually we get around 99% likes. , And this is weird for me because, , almost none of the comments were [00:49:00] negative, , which leaves me to believe is this all bots like is is the whole Tucker Carlson situation just maintained by angry bots.Malcolm Collins: so Yeah.Simone Collins: So Malcolm, please. , In like two hours. I’ll bring it to your room, but sleep okay.I love you. Be safe. Good.Malcolm Collins: So now we’re gonna go into Young Again, and this time we’re gonna be talking about the shadow.So young described the shadow as an unconscious aspect of the personality. The conscious ego does not identify whi or want to acknowledge. It encompasses repressed ideas, instincts, impulses, weaknesses, desires, and traits that feel incompatible with our self-image or societal expectations. In simpler terms, it’s the dark side of who we are.Not necessarily evil, but everything we push into the unconscious because it doesn’t fit our ideal self. The persona or social mask that we present to the world, young famously called it the thing a person has no wish to be. The shadow [00:50:00] isn’t just bad qualities like anger, jealousy, greed, or selfishness.It also contains positive elements, hidden talents, creative impulses, realistic insights, normal instincts and strengths that were repressed, eg because they seemed, quote unquote, too much or inappropriate or undervalued in childhood or culture. And so, what young wrote of shadows is everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.So, if I’m gonna explain this in different words, what young believed is that you had this. As we’ve talked about, people really do do this. They build sort of a, a, a trope into their model of who they are that they use to determine what emotions they feel in relation to what decisions in environmental stimuli that they end up making.But too young. This meant that you had a, another, you that was also you that had been [00:51:00] pushed out of that ego. Or, or the persona that you’re trying to embody. The problem is, is that’s just like not the case. Like the one, it doesn’t really show up in research. But two,Simone Collins: the closest thing I think it could come to, but it’s still too much of a leap for him, like, I, I don’t EI even think I can give him credit for this, is that people are afraid of becoming their parents and then they become their parents.And that’s kind of what I’m feel like this rhymes with, but I don’t think he even got that far.Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah. So the, it, the problem is, and the reason why it’s a, it was a fairly toxic concept, is the moment you accept. The shadow, the unconscious, any of these things. You also,Simone Collins: you could call it the young conscious.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yeah. You, you also accept as he does this idea of repressed ideas, instincts, mm-hmm. Et cetera. Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And when you accept that, you allow [00:52:00] that to manifest in yourself. Yeah. Because accepting that something is a concept allows this. Image of you. Remember I said there’s like the trope of you that is creating your, this, this mental model that you’ve created of yourself to adopt those traits.And it will adopt this shadow self as a component of itself, which is one of the problems with these ideas is somebody will have had them for a long time and tell me Malcolm, but I experience all these things and I’m like, of course you experience them the moment you accept them. They are then able to build into your self identity if you steal yourself against them as real, just not real concepts.It, it, silly is supernatural things. Then they can’t affect you in the same way.So continue here. And if you’re like, oh, but why is it so, because this is like, while it [00:53:00] may not have the same word as trauma, it basically implies trauma. It’s trauma was a nicer word. It’s something that happened to you as a child, changed your self-perception, right? And, and change, sorry, changed your.Ability to accept certain things about yourself, when the reality is, is yes, it’s true that things that happen to you in a child can affect this adult self, but the way that they affect your adult self is by affecting. The type of person that you want to be and, and the type of person you have crafted, the, the mental model of yourself that’s always running and judging, like what emotions you should feel to things that, that, that mental model embodies.Simone Collins: Well, and, and. Even more simply, he just gives a ton of excuses to develop an external locus of control.Malcolm Collins: Exactly.Simone Collins: It’s not my fault, it’s my repressed memories. It’s my shadow self. It’s the, the collective unconscious. It’s just like, oh, everything’s anyone [00:54:00] else’s fault but yours. You are, you’re not responsible for your own actions, so don’t worry about it.Just see your therapist more.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah,Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, this is why this is really dangerous in like right wing spaces and stuff like that, in manosphere spaces. And why I push against it so much was in these spaces. Anything that attempts to overcomplicate how your thinking works in, in a big way especially if it can be used to externalize responsibility.For your own mind, like what could be worse than externalizing responsibility for your thoughts?Simone Collins: For real.Malcolm Collins: You, you are not responsible for your own thoughts.Simone Collins: Yeah. So bad. It’s so bad.Malcolm Collins: But it can continue here.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: How do shadow forms operate? Formation. As we develop our conscious identity, ego, and persona, we repl or split aspects of ourselves that don’t align with what family, society, culture, our ego ideal, and [00:55:00] this is where he gets something.Right. People do separate out aspects of potentially their capabilities. Like maybe there’s something that they’re uniquely good at, like music or something like that, or something that they really enjoy. Now, this could be due to like biological tendencies or something like that, right? They, they just happen to enjoy this.But they think that they shouldn’t lean into that thing. And they might build that. Into their self-conception that we’ve talked about in a way that it doesn’t need to, but this isn’t what he’s talking about. He’s covering that, but then he is adding all of this extra stuff. Then you get projection, a key mechanism.We often see our own disowned traits in other people. What we strongly dislike. Judge or react to in others. It’s frequently a mirror of our shadow. For example, somebody who prides themselves in being always kind, might intensely criticize selfish people while unconsciously harboring selfish impulses themselves.And again. This isn’t a [00:56:00] trait that you need to have. If you believe that people have this trait, you may adopt it. But I have lived my entire life and I feel like I am an exceptionally good at reading people person. And the vast majority of people just don’t do this. They will have traits in other people that trigger them, but those traits aren’t exactly an inversion of traits that they secretly have in themselves and don’t wanna,Simone Collins: everything we understand about.I don’t know. Biology, psychology, sociology.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the only, the only time where you really see something, I think, kind of like this that I do see is like the closeted gay person who is extra critical of gay people. Which is a phenomenon that you see. But I don’t think that that’s because of this.I just think that, sometimes if there is something that you struggle with yourself, whether it’s gayness or in this case it could be greed or anything like that, and you don’t like [00:57:00] that aspect of yourself, being reminded of that aspect of yourself is, makes youSimone Collins: kind of mad,Malcolm Collins: is going to create negative emotions within yourself.Simone Collins: I think it’s simpler than that. Which is that we, we frequently like to talk about how much we love this concept of offense. You only feel offended when something credibly threatens your worldview. And when you experience something let’s say you’re same sex attracted and, and you experience other same sex attracted people and feel this underlying sense of attraction yourself, it credibly threatens your worldview.I’m the straight guy. I feel threatened because right now I feel slightly aroused at this thing. You’re like, I, you know, kind of feel this pull to this group that I, no, that’s not part of my identity. And then you get really angry. You get offended and that’s what’s showing up. I don’t think it’s like some kind of opposite reaction thing showing up.It is. It is someone being offended and acting like someone offended.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I think that that’s just really, you don’t need all of this extra idea like a shadow self.Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: To understand why. If somebody’s [00:58:00] struggling with so bit something and they see somebody else, especially somebody caving to it, think of it like this.You know, somebody’s an alcoholic or something like that and they’re trying to get over their, a alcoholism. So they have an impulse and they’re struggling to resist that impulse and then they see somebody around them indulge in drinking with apparently no consequences to them. Right? Yeah.Obviously that’s going to make them angry, right? Like that’s gonna create the anger emotion. But that you don’t need the whole concept of a shadow self to explain that.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think overall young in psychology is the kind of thing, we’ve talked about this in other episodes where it really appeals to bids and people broadly who.It doesn’t quite make sense to them, but because it doesn’t make sense to them and they’re sufficiently intelligent to be able to parrot it, they think that it also won’t make sense to other people and those other people won’t. They’ll just take their word for it of like, oh, well I guess that person’s smarter than me ‘cause I don’t understand this, and they’re talking [00:59:00] about it very confidently.And therefore they, you know, oh, you know, they win this dominance game. When in the end, I, I think most people who are proponents of young and psychology don’t understand it and just think it makes ‘em look smart. Does that make sense?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, I should also explain our theory on anger.Anger is actually a very similar motion to surprise. Anger is what? Is created in your brain when something doesn’t happen as you expect within a negative context. So, this is in this case it would be you have an expectation of the type of person you are and you are reminded that that is not accurate.And that creates surprise with a negative contextual framing. So you feel anger. Or somebody treats you in a way, this is how you get like, anger loops between two groups where a you know, trans person goes up to a, an extremely religious Christian person and [01:00:00] the extremely religious Christian person is.Generates anger because this person is labeling themselves in a way that they don’t expect, and it creates surprise to them in a, in a, in a negative context. Mm-hmm. And then the trans person expects to be gendered correctly, and the Christian person isn’t doing that. So then they get mad at them, which creates further surprise in this other population because they didn’t expect, you know, even, even on top of all that, this person’s getting mad and then you can get anger cycles really easily.Mm-hmm. And it’s important to be able to understand like what causes emotions. Exactly. Because as soon as you can put your finger on this is, and you’ll really see this purest form of anger when you experienced anger due to attempting to do something mechanical that doesn’t work out the way you expect it to.This is like you run code and it ends up not working. Or you click a button and it doesn’t do the thing you expect itto,Simone Collins: or your earphones get yanked outta your ears. By something percent if they’re wired. Yes. That unique rage, you’re like,Malcolm Collins: ah, [01:01:00] yes, the unique rage.Simone Collins: It’s so stupid because it doesn’t hurt, but it’s so rage inducing.Malcolm Collins: But, but you see what I mean. There’s no reason with most other explanations of anger that that would induce anger. But when you understand that anger is just a negative, contextualized surprise, you’re like, oh, that’s why I get angry out of nowhere when I stub my toe. Mm-hmm. I have no reason to be.Angry when I stubb my toe or step on a Lego. Mm-hmm. Right? And yet those are some of the, the highest levels of anger you will experience in your entire life. But anyway, I I, I’ll note here that there is another category here where it can be so negative that it just creates shock. This is like having your arm shot off or something. But this isn’t exactly anger. This is more like a, a specific mental state associated with shock.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, and, and no here.Once you understand where an emotion’s coming from, you can change it like the moment you understand, oh, I’m only feeling anger because X.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Then instead of accidentally taking it [01:02:00] out on the people around you, nothing is worse than the person who stubs their toe. And then yells at somebody else, like, why did you leave the door like that?Right? Because that’s instinctively what an individual wants to do. Like that’s how your system works. But when you understand, oh, the anger is working like this, I can’t let it hijack me. I cannot allow my brain to be hijacked by something so basal. To continue here, let’s talk about shadow work.Simone Collins: Oh God, do we have, oh, this sounds so terrible already.Malcolm Collins: In the process of becoming aware of and accepting and assimilating, the shadow is central to an individual Young’s term. For the li oh individualization. Young’s term for the lifelong journey towards psychological wholeness and becoming one’s true self young, outlined a rough approach, not a rigid technique as it’s a.Highly individual like diplomacy, except it exists. Take it seriously and recognize the dark aspect is real and present was in you. This requires moral effort and honesty. [01:03:00] He would say now I do you see immediately why I hate the concept of the shadow if this shadow doesn’t accept exist, if. Thing number one is to accept that you have this problematic thing was in you.Now you begin to model yourself as having this thing, and you manifest it within you where it didn’t exist beforehand. Become informed about equality. So now, now you’re moldering on it. Oh, that’s wonderful. Observe your moods, emotional triggers, fantasies, impulses, dreams, and strong. Reactions to others?Journaling, dream analysis and active. Imagination. Discu dialogue with inner figures help. How, what, what, this is purely masturbatory and not very useful. Right. You can have internal dialogue, conversations to help yourself work through questions that you have about reality in the world or anything like that.Right. But they should be goal [01:04:00] directed, not to, to actualize. Right. And what you’re seeing here is sort of like proto actualization he’s describing.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Negotiate and integrate through ongoing conscious engagement. Bring these parts into relationship with the ego. This doesn’t mean acting on harmful impulses blindly, but owning them, understanding their origin slash energy and channeling them constructively, eg.Turning repressed aggression into healthy assertiveness. But you don’t even need to have the repressed aggression. You can just decide not to have the aggression. Like, like there are certain, impulses that you will feel but you feel them because you have chosen to build a model of yourself which reacts to specific and when it’s not an innate thing, like say anger or something like that mm-hmm.With is that stimuli. And even when it is an innate thing, you can enact conscious control to sublimate it. You at the end of the day. Always have [01:05:00] control of your emotions. And I’ll note here that the worst thing you can have in your life is somebody who affirms emotional states in yourself that are negative and not useful for your objective function or life purpose.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: So if you go to somebody and you’re like, or you have a friend and they, they, they stoke, you know, they’re like, yeah, you really like suppose. You’re a, a wife right now and you have a group of friends and that group of friends is like, oh yeah, you’re really justified in being mad at your husband for doing this.Right. That is. Highly toxic, like get away from them because then you will have more of these negative emotions if they’re affirmed by your community like that, or by a psychologist. Mm-hmm. Or any environment. Mm-hmm. Right. Whereas negative emotions where I’m saying negative, here are emotions that hurt somebody.His ability to achieve. So they might be positive feeling in them. A lot of emotions that we describe as negative feel really good. Like revenge. Oh [01:06:00]Simone Collins: yeah, yeah. Well, or at least we’ll say the word might be righteous indignation instead.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: That feels really good.Malcolm Collins: Righteous. Yeah, righteous indignation feels good.And, and so when you have this and then somebody else affirms it in you that is. Really negative and, and, and keep this in mind with your, your larger friend groups, guys do as well. Do you have a friend group who, when you’re like, you know, my partner did X to me, or, or y horrible things, if this ever comes up.Now this rarely comes up in male friend groups, do they say, well, you know, here’s a plausible reason why this could be a misunderstanding. You know, blah, blah, blah. Or do they say, wow, you’re really justified in being angry right now? You know, because then you’ll get angrier and angrier and angrier. And if you.Focus on yourself in the moment. Whenever somebody has done this to you, affirmed a negative emotion. I’m sure people have noticed that’s when anger or sadness often begins to spiral out of control.Simone Collins: Actually, here’s an interesting just side note on [01:07:00] women in groups. And, and meat blocking specifically, it is very, very common in female groups for righteous indignation to be fueled.So, you know, if a woman is like, oh, like I was just treated this way at work, or something like that, the, the typical appropriate. A female network response is, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that, you know, you’ve been so wronged, blah, blah, blah. I think, well, that’s normative. It’s also a sub, maybe subconscious mate blocking tactic because it ultimately leads to long-term disempowerment and increases the competitiveness of those who don’t engage in that activity.So just like, a woman might say. Oh no, you’re beautiful when like, you know, someone doesn’t look very good in their group. No, don’t you know? Like, don’t, don’t change anything, you know, because then they’re, they’re ultimately better off competitively. I think this is something similar to that. And I think that you’re more likely to see this kind of justification of an external locus of control in [01:08:00] general or of justified anger or, or victimization in female groups and in male groups.So they’re just like, dude, you clearly weren’t trying hard enough like you deserve this. Which is, it seems mean. But in the end is actually cooperative and benevolent behavior versus anti-competitive mate blocking behavior. Just throwing that out there.Malcolm Collins: So here’s a young quote on the shadow. The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego.Personality for no one can become conscious of. The shadow is without considerable effort to become conscious of. It involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This. Act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. So he’s doing here what cults often do, what Woo often does, where they try to frame the type of self knowledge that they have of making you special and unique and more important than [01:09:00] other people.Flatters the ego, right? Also, this feeling of like, I have this dark, mysterious thing inside me. Flatters the ego. Right? And that’s, that’s why it’s so tempting, because it feels cool. Like it, it’s cool. Maybe context if all of this was true, if your life was a battle between some dark shadow living in your heart, you know what I mean?Mm-hmm. It’s poetic. It’s, it’s, and a lot of his work was like about that. Like, how do we make the story better? So to be fast on these last steps, he had like psychological types where he goes into like, extroversion, introversion, stuff like that. I think it’s pretty boring. He, the central goal of his philosophy as individual, individual.Lifelong process element towards wholeness, integrating consciousness and unconscious elements, cheating the unique individual from the collective, while connecting more deeply to the [01:10:00] self it involves confronting and assimilating the shadow relating to the anima or animus that’s like your male or feminine and transcending the persona.Not about becoming perfect or ego inflated, but achieving balance, authentic personality often intensifies in midlife the second half of life shifting from adaptation to society towards inner meaning. And yeah, this is, I mean, you can see why I just be like, this is just all giant waste of time.Simone Collins: Yeah. Seriously.Malcolm Collins: This stuff is manifested in your mental landscape by believing it. I, I really wanna make this point. You can have any, anything. Oh, here’s an example, right? Even something totally stupid like an Oedipus complex, right? That like, women get jealous of their dads because their dads have a penis.Is that the Oedipus?Simone Collins: No, no, no. That’s penis envy. You’re referring. So an Oedipus complex is where the. [01:11:00] Son wants to kill the father andMalcolm Collins: marry theSimone Collins: mother. The mother,Malcolm Collins: okay, so suppose you Oedipus complex, you’re a normal person. You’re like, this is stupid. This isn’t a real thing.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But suppose somebody managed to convince you that the Oedipus complex was a 100% real thing.Now you would say, oh, well I guess I have a secret desire to kill my dad and sleep with my mom. Right? And you begin to build this into yourself because you now believe that this is real, and now this is something you have to deal with. This is why it is so critical that you don’t do this. The craziest ideas out there, like, well, penis Envy would be another one, right?Like a, a girl believes this. Now all of a sudden she experiences it to some extent because she sees what she now believes within herself, right? The, the brain is, if you see our episode that we did recently [01:12:00] on placebos.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: They’re incredibly powerful.Simone Collins: Or, or maybe exorcism is where we talk more about placebos.Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes. You can build these things into yourself. You can build psychological illnesses into yourself. Okay. You can build all of these negative traits into yourself. You can build these challenges into yourself.Mm-hmm. WeSimone Collins: even talked about this in our episode on Spoony from way back.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, watch your Spoons episode of You’re a Long Time subscriber and you haven’t seen it because This’s a good one, I think. And they’re a useful thing to know about. We actually have two spoons episodes. We have one where we interviewed Barry Weiss’s sister Susie Weis on it.Su Weiss. Yeah. Cool person. We should ask her back on now that we’re,Simone Collins: she’s very busy and important now.Malcolm Collins: Oh, very busy and important. Mrs. Susie Weiss.Simone Collins: She isMalcolm Collins: you or whatever now.Simone Collins: Man, CBS kind of a, anyway, go on.Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s it. That’s it. This is where we are. This is why I’ve talked about this.Simone Collins: Worst we hate him.He’s,Malcolm Collins: this is [01:13:00] why it’s important to keep your mental models of how your brain works. Lean and be first principles in how you construct them because it is too easy to invent the problems that you’re dealing with. And you can be like, well, I could just swear that I definitely, definitely do have this shadow self because it makes me colon special and awesome.And you know, you don’t have it because you just aren’t thinking enough about yourself. Right. And I’d point out, well then why don’t I deal with any negative consequences from not addressing it then? Right? Like presumably if I do secretly have it and I’m just not addressing it. Simone, you live with me 24 7, right?Do I have some like hidden dark side to my personality?Simone Collins: Well, it’s not hidden.Malcolm Collins: What’s the dark side then? What’s the, the negative aspect of my personality?Come on, you. You,Simone Collins: you’re just. [01:14:00] I’m not gonna say it on air. It’s, it is nothing you act on.Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, you mean the arousal pathway?Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: That’s not what we’re talking about here.Simone Collins: Okay. Well, you were asking,Malcolm Collins: that’s not caused by like a shadow self. That’s something I fully admit.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: And it’s one of these things thatSimone Collins: oh God,Malcolm Collins: Like.It’s, it’s like not something that I’m even remotely embarrassed about. I, I should say or that I would be particularly embarrassed about talking about. And I have even on the show hypothesized that it is unique to my demographic group,. And the reason why I hypothesized that was both due to statistics around that social group, but also like,There are other reasons. I think it’s genetic, but Simone had me remove this one.Simone Collins: oh God. Okay. Are you just gonna say it or are youMalcolm Collins: not gonna say No? I’m not gonna say it, butSimone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: The point being is ba basically just very [01:15:00] extreme aggression.Um-huh. Yeah. But. That’s not something I act on. It’s not something that controls me. It’s not something that, noSimone Collins: no, but you’re right. It’s not, it’s not a hidden part of your your personality. So that’s fair. There there is no, there is no hidden part of you that is yeah,Malcolm Collins: that is no, but I’m, so what I’mSimone Collins: asking, like counter to your personality.Which I guess for you would be like, oh, you know what? I guess that this movie shows up in these stereotypes of like men who are super powerful, but need a dominatrix, that kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: Do you thinkSimone Collins: that’sMalcolm Collins: No, I just think that’s part of their, their sexuality and like, you don’t need to act on your sexuality.You don’t need to obsess about your sexuality. You didn’t choose your sexuality. Yeah. I think sexuality is just completely untied from really much else about you. It’s just something that you randomly have. And it doesn’t need to be a big part of your daily thoughts or anything like that, right?Like it doesn’t need to be part of your. [01:16:00] Rituals. It doesn’t need to be part of how you self conceptualize. And by understanding this, you can free yourself from a lot of the negatives that might come with it, right? Like, oh, I, I should actually indulge in this. I should actually talk about this. But what I’m talking about, Simone, is what somebody would say is you don’t address your shadow.And if you don’t address your shadow. That you’re going to like, have outbursts at people or you’re going to be secretly cruel to people. Mm-hmm. Or you’re going to you know, be greedy or selfish or, and so what I’m asking you is, is in those types of things are the types of things people think that the shadow actually manifests.Yeah. Do you see that behavior from me like ever?Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: No. And Simone, you haven’t tried to address some shadow in yourself, have you?Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So I will say as somebody married to Simone there, like she has no negative [01:17:00] traits. She has,Simone Collins: MalcolmMalcolm Collins: please, but you have, you have some eccentricities like not liking being touched when you’re eating.But that again is something that’s a, a, a random. Biologically inherited thing, not being, yeah, sure. That has nothing to do with who you are as a person, and you harness it in so far that it doesn’t come out in any way that is societally not useful.Simone Collins: Thanks. I appreciate that.I think in the end, like it’s just really bad.Anything that helps you develop an external locus of control and anything that has you overthinking stuff or getting too far up into your head, not good. Just tryMalcolm Collins: it. And, and I, I’ll note here, something that is really bad that can happen is when you don’t accept your biological realities and you assume that they’re, because of like a shadow self, you can end up going on these like endless side quests.You know, like you, you are uncertain. Like in Simone’s case, you’re un you don’t know why you don’t like you. You wanna measure all your food and you don’t like being [01:18:00] touched when you’re eating and you have other sensory issues. Mm-hmm. And essentially just accepting like, I’m like autistic. My brain is put together differently.You say. Oh, it’s because I have an unresolved trauma somewhere in my life that I’m just gonna dig, dig, dig, dig, dig at, right. Pick, pick, pick at. Yeah. And that allows you to create, because now, because you’re never actually gonna address this thing ‘cause it’s just part of who you are, you end up creating this giant statue of the shadow in your mind, and it ends up actually having negative effects.Right, right. And you see this a lot and like, you know, like a conservative individual who doesn’t understand why they deal with same sex attraction, they just happen to be born with some same sex attraction.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And again, what the reason I say that it’s, it’s likely something you’re born with or you get through parasites CR episode on that is because like.I would, I would admit to you if I felt an ounce of same sex attraction and I don’t, I find it, I get quite a disgust reaction to that stuff. And it’s not ‘cause I was trained to, because I, I not, I wasn’t trained to be aroused by some of the things aroused me, right? Like, [01:19:00] it’s just not part of my biology.If I then go on some deep quest about like what happened in my childhood that made me x-ray I’m gonna end up obsessing over that.Simone Collins: Yeah. Fair.Malcolm Collins: And, and then I end up building a shadow and then it never goes away because it had nothing to do with a shadow. It had nothing to do with any of that. It was just a random roll of the cards that I didn’t need to make an important part of myself that I didn’t need to act on, that I didn’t need to indulge in.Anyway,Simone Collins: screw young. I love you.Malcolm Collins: I love you too. And you are an amazing woman.Simone Collins: You’re an amazing husband and man, which one do you wanna do next?Malcolm Collins: Whichever one you want.Simone Collins: Let’s do mine. Here’s your taste of Octavian. Sense of humor, by the way. I was just bantering with him and talking because we, we were, we measured the boys [01:20:00] again this morning against the door, and I was like, yeah, Octavian, someday you’ll be taller than me. And I think he just thinks that humans just grow indefinitely like that.iGrow too. But this wasn’t apparent to me when he decided to crack what he thought was a joke. And he’s like, oh yeah, ‘cause you’ll be dead. Ha ha, ha. Get it. You’ll be dead. He just kept saying that. I was like, okay. Ah, thanks.Malcolm Collins: Now that we’ve explained to him that all humans die, he just thinks it’s hilarious.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: He’s like, weSimone Collins: don’t do I have your YouTube plaque when you’re dead, that, that’s like that and he’ll miss our house. That’s kind ofMalcolm Collins: Did he ask for the YouTube plaque this time though?Simone Collins: No, he’s, he’s kind of forgotten about that for a while. I guess he just gave up on us.Malcolm Collins: The other, we haven’t even won that yet.You know, this is just assumingSimone Collins: he’s preemptively hoping for it. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: We get to a hundred K so please subscribeSimone Collins: for a child for when we die. Yes.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So this,Simone Collins: maybe this is the only time someone has [01:21:00] asked for a subscribe for that. Please subscribe because our son wants us to die and then to take the plaque so, you know, have pity on this orphan.Malcolm Collins: So, oh, what is it that I wanted to say? Yeah, so in relation to the Tucker episode new conspiracy theory dropped where somebody in the comments was like, it’s really weird how whenever somebody starts to. Question the Jews or Israel you know, two, three years later, they’re just completely crazy, like every time, right?Mm-hmm. No matter how sane they were to begin with, like Tucker Carlson. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and my take on this. Is that Mossad secretly is poisoning people as soon as they become ask any questions about it’s Israel, so that they go crazy.Simone Collins: It’s like a bad hatter kind of situation. They’re they’re getting like lead, lead laced hats,Malcolm Collins: mercury or something.Yeah. Yeah. Lead or something. Oh. I, they go crazy like Candace Owens that somehow made her more famous to go crazy.Simone Collins: I know. They’re like, this backfired terribly. What have we done?Malcolm Collins: This [01:22:00] backfired terribly. I, I actually wonder about a full episode on that. Trying to draw like, okay, let’s assume this program is real.Simone Collins: How would they do itMalcolm Collins: start? How are they administering the, the poison? What would be a good long-term poison to cause these effects in people?Simone Collins: Yeah, it would need, yeah. Gosh, what, because I mean the way that Tucker Carlson has gone off the rails is different from the way that Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens have gone off the rails, which I think is the biggest refutation of this conspiracy theory because if they were all acting schizophrenic, like Candace Owens who’s connecting dots where there are no connections it’s very different from the way that Tucker Carlson is going off the rails, which is basically just favoring the.The views of everyone who’s not American or being sort of a weather vein of those around him, and it just happens to be chic for elite Americans too. Hate America and chic for people in the Middle East and Japan to like theirMalcolm Collins: countries. I don’t know. I mean, he said some pretty crazy stuff. [01:23:00] A actually, you know, you can even look at this historically.You can argue that Hitler ended up going crazy, right? You could argueSimone Collins: that, well, well come on. We knew that that was all the methamphetamines and everything else. He was,Malcolm Collins: well, what if, what if engaging in. Any form of antisemitism actually does just make you go crazy. Like what if they’re God’s favored people?And so if you decide to,Simone Collins: it’s God smiting them. It’s not ifMalcolm Collins: God’s ming them with madnessSimone Collins: yeah, maybeMalcolm Collins: it’s trace it through history. Has God been smiting anyone who attacks the Jews with madness?Simone Collins: Yeah. Starting with Pharaoh,Malcolm Collins: well, you could go over Roman emperors because a lot of Roman emperors were both mad and targeted.The Jews. The question is, does that overlap?Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and we’re the, we’re the Pro J ones if there were any less crazy,Malcolm Collins: very, very interesting question.Simone Collins: Dunno know. Who know,Malcolm Collins: actually, yeah. I’m, I’m feeling a whole episode form here. Simone.Simone Collins: Oh boy. Oh boy, boy. Oh no. OhMalcolm Collins: boy.Simone Collins: Oh no.Speaker: You call him [01:24:00] Titan, I think he calls the pinker. What do you call Titan? What do you call him? I call him pink.Is he pink? What else do you call him? Pink is an ugly color. Pink is a ugly color. Titan. Do you think pink is an ugly color? Um, no. It’s just a cool color. I think Pink of the ugly color was that. ‘cause you’re a boy Octavian. Yes. Boys hate pink. Whatcha doing girl? I’m I boys. Did you know Octa Pink used to be the color for little boys?Octavian Collins: Yeah.Speaker: Octavian. I wanna tell you something very scary. What there is a type of person out there who wants to make you into a girl is liquid nitrogen. No, no, no, no, no, no. [01:25:00] Octavian. This isn’t a joke. This is real. There is a type of bad person out there that wants to turn you into a girl. Like a meat. Yeah, I wanna, I wanna shoot him in the head.Well, that might be a little intense. Octavian. And eat him. And eat him for dinner. You want kill him and eat him his meat. What part? What part of the body do we not. Eat. Yeah. Octa, what’s the rule of the body? No heart. No. No. hearts are fine.Simone Collins: No. Come on. I’ve told you this so many times. What carb do we not eat?Octavian Collins: The lung?Simone Collins: No,Octavian Collins: the skin.Simone Collins: No.Octavian Collins: This is really hard.The brain. The brain.Simone Collins: We never eat brainMalcolm Collins: because you can get prion diseases and die.Simone Collins: Yeah. Very dangerous. Everything else, not the brain.Octavian Collins: I have to make a video. [01:26:00] Stop it buddy. I that. I own that and I owe you.Do you see what I have here? Are there slippers?Malcolm Collins: Yes. She’s be like, ow, that hurts.Got a lee on me.You okay buddy?Octavian Collins: Woo. Go look. Wait. Is it there’s gonna be a giant shipSpeaker: or are they gonna blow something up? Woo.Octavian Collins: Go. A giant ship. [01:27:00]Simone Collins: Whoa.Octavian Collins: In the smack house.Simone Collins: Titan. Titan. Titan. Did you know that there’s people out there who want to turn you into a boy?Octavian Collins: Oh no. They turned you into a cat.Speaker: Oh no. They’re mean people who wanna turn you into a boy.Malcolm Collins: No.No, because you already are. Watch out. You’re gonna knock that overIan. You’re in trouble. You’re not paying attention.But you do need to be careful because they did this to one of our friend’s kids, Octavian, actually, multiple friends. Multiple friends, kids, hurry, that one’s gonna turn on Octavian. Do you understand what I’m saying? Yes. So one of our friends run, hold on, listen. They took their little boy and they turned him into a girl.Octavian Collins: Why? [01:28:00] Why?Speaker: Why? Because they tricked him.Octavian Collins: What the,Speaker: oh yeah.Octavian Collins: I wanna kill him.Speaker: And you know what they did? They cut off his whoopies.Malcolm Collins: This is real. Isn’t into our kind of, yeah. It’s helicopters on motor. Why? I like this? This helicopter. Helicopter.And then they got very sad and you want to hear something crazy. They didn’t like their mommy and daddy anymore. Helicopters. What? The skies are full of. Unlike ‘cause. That’s what these people do. They make you hate your mommy and daddy and they make you a girl. Just hover in one spot. I’m gonna kill them.Speaker 4: And when the,Speaker: you probably shouldn’t just like immediately kill them,Speaker 4: the 64 D ‘Speaker: cause then, um,Speaker 4: helicopter in the world,Speaker: they’ll say [01:29:00] that, I don’t know, you’re overly aggressive or something.Octavian Collins: Then I would, and I would go out. People wouldSpeaker 5: attack. He. AndOctavian Collins: even the people want us.Speaker: Okay.Octavian Collins: And the camera. I own view, I own, I own speed.I own the viewers.Speaker: Oc don’t say that like that’s me. Viewers say you want them to like and subscribe and you like them, not that you own them.Octavian Collins: I want them to like, and.And I wantSpeaker 6: laser guided.Octavian Collins: They and I,depending on the. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into Tucker Carlson’s recent controversial takes — from praising Sharia-governed societies and Middle Eastern cities over declining Western ones, to his glowing comments on Moscow, Dubai, and even Venezuela under Maduro. They explore whether Tucker’s shift stems from boomer goggles, elite social circles, agreeableness and exposure to foreign elites, a quest for controversy/views, or something more concerning like foreign influence incentives.The Collins also contrast Tucker with Candace Owens’ more unhinged conspiracies and dissect Nick Fuentes‘ coherent (but hostile) agenda, revealing why he’s a bigger threat to mainstream MAGA/America First conservatism than many realize. Expect sharp analysis on urban monoculture vs. traditional Western values, the illusion of “diversity” in places like Dubai, why Tucker seems unable to distinguish the urban monoculture from broader Western civilization, and what this means for the right in the era of the Iran conflict and beyond.If you’ve been confused by Tucker’s evolution from sharp conservative thinker to sounding “off his rocker,” this episode models his worldview and offers a grounded, pro-civilization counterpoint. Subscribe for more unfiltered cultural anthropology and future-oriented takes.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing the increasing craziness that’s coming from Tucker Carlson, which I find really fascinating because if you look at the leading voices on the right that are mad about the war in Iran some are just like, you could see our episode on Candace Owens psychosis.Maxing was Candace Owens, but like, she’s just like a crazy person, right? Like just an actual crazy person.Speaker 2: one you were telling me this morning and I was like, what the, she thought that Charlie Kirk was trained at a school like for gifted children, like in the X-Men with special telepathic power.Well, first, theSpeaker: first thing that like really caught my attention was that she, she claimed that Charlie Kirk was a time traveler based on basically a, a joking flirty text that he sent to her where she texted him, I’m an alien frowny face. And he responded, I think I’m a time traveler. This is my home, but I think you found [00:01:00] me.And time traveled with me. And she took that and just ran with it.Malcolm Collins: So that’s, that’s an example of one like just not, not like normal conspiracy theories, like, just like actual crazy town stuff.And then you have people like Nick Fuentes. Right. But Nick Fuentes has his own agenda, and we’ll go into him more later in this becauseSimone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: I’m glad. Interestingly, I used to believe about Nick Fuentes that he was just sort of a shock jock who was choosing whatever was the most shocking thing to say.Simone Collins: And youMalcolm Collins: don’t anymore. No, I think the war has elucidated his actual coherent agenda. Ooh. More clearly than it was historically. And that has been very interesting to me. ‘cause then I’m like, oh, now I get what he’s actually attempting to do. And it is, it, it, what it means is that he is more of a direct enemy of any mainstream maga America first conservative than I originally realized.Simone Collins: Really? Oh,Malcolm Collins: okay. Because I, I just didn’t get it before and now. And what I’ve realized, he [00:02:00] tells you and his audience what his real goals are. He just leaves out a few steps in between. But. To the next point. Tucker’s different. Tucker is somebody who seems to be broadly saying he is somebody who I really enjoyed and watched his content historically, right?Like, andSimone Collins: he’s been around for a long time. Like this is one of a, one of those lifetime media figures that at least if you’re a millennial in the United States, has just been part of the media landscape, right?Malcolm Collins: The end of his run with Fox, which by the way, people may not know this, Colin’s family lore. But we were supposed to be on his show.We were in talks with his booking team. I forgot about that the last Friday that he held the show. But because it was his last show, they changed the scheduling. And that was brought on him all of a sudden out of nowhere. But we were in talks with his booking team which is really sad because we have never been able to get back in talks with him after that, like the team split up.But anyway, during that period, he was, I think, sort of like the [00:03:00] key intellectual based voice. I like the leading thinker in that degree. This was in the, like it was post Jordan Peterson at that period. And he had really, I think, sharp and interesting takes. So I hear some of his takes now. And.I just am trying to model how he came to an understanding of reality that is so divergent from anything that, that I believe when I, when I saw him before and I, I, I think I’ve come to it Simone helped me by being like, you need to remember, he’s a boomer. Okay. He’s seen the world through boomer goggles.He’s not gonna see the world the way you do. But my favorite, and this is one, one of the quotes that really inspired this for me was there’s been multiple quotes from him recently. A lot of people have heard the one, he said, any Middle Eastern city is better than any American City know.Speaker 6: And I travel so much that I see it. There’s not a single Western city [00:04:00] that’s thriving and they’re all degrading in exactly the same way. There’s a lot of it just a moral decay or is it actually true from everything? It’s self, it’s a lot of things, but it’s self hatred. Every city. It’s crazy. Every European city, every American city. So you and, and you I notice it because I travel outside the western world, the white world. I’ll just be honest. The white world, right. I travel a lot in the Middle East. It’s amazing. Mm-hmm. And it’s incredible to be in a place that has pride in itself, that believes in its religion and culture that thinks we’re on, we’re onto something and this is great. Look at what we’re doing. We’re really proud of this.Malcolm Collins: But he, he also had one where he was talking about how a, a Moscow was better than American cities.Speaker 9: What was radicalizing very shocking and very disturbing for me was the city of Moscow where I’d never been the biggest city in Europe. 13 million people, and it is so much nicer than any city in my country. I had no idea. It is so much cleaner and safer and prettier.Aesthetically, than any country city in the United [00:05:00] States that you have to, and this is non ideological.Simone Collins: Well that was it, but that was a separate stage. Like there are these various. Points in recent history where Tucker Carlson has done something that makes him seem like a foreign agent, like going to Moscow and, and walking through the grocery stores and being like, oh my gosh, this is so much better than America.And now he’s just doing it with Middle East. This is like Middle East edition.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So first of all, a lot of people are like, oh, he can’t be a foreign agent because he’s super rich, which is not true. It is true that his stepmother owned a, a family fortune from some food production company that was bought by Campbell like 40 years ago.Mm-hmm. But not anymore. Like the, the, the money from what we can tell from records didn’t pass to him. Mm-hmm. So he actually might be up for money. And if you look at the amount of money he has, it’s that sweet spot that comes from it’s estimated around 50 million, which is that sweet spot of like, I’m taking bribes, but I’m not stupidly wealthy from the bribes.That bribes don’t make sense anymore. So that, wait,Simone Collins: you think. [00:06:00] Well wait, you’re, you’re trying to argue that someone with $50 million feels like they need more money?Malcolm Collins: 50 million is the amount of money I typically expect an extremely corrupt person to be. If I was a corrupt official in the Middle East, I would expect them to have around $50 million.If I was a corrupt Russian, I’d expect them to have, earn $50 million. If I was somebody taking, it’s the amount that you can earn from bribes. Oh, where you still want more bribes. Like if he had like a billion dollars, I wouldn’t think that Russia or a Qatar could bribe him. I, ISimone Collins: also, I think maybe there’s the point to be made too, that wealthy people aren’t above loving a good deal or free things.In fact, many people who have worked for high net worth individuals have commented that there is no one more like. What’s the word? Miserly. Miserly. Yeah. No one more miserly than really rich people who are like, well, I’m not gonna pay it.Like, $2 and 50 cents is a [00:07:00] convenience fee for this. You need to walk five blocks to, you know, that kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: Well, the, the, the point being he, he’s, he’s gone pretty far and put a lot of effort into debasing himself. It, it seems that there’s some motivation for this, and that’s what I want to dig into.No.Simone Collins: Okay. Just immediate counterpoint. What if saying these things and garnering the controversy, which we are now participating in, drives views, which is to his benefit, whether or not it’s, it’s money or attention? You know, sometimes wealthy people just really want attention and he’s certainly getting it by dealing these takes out.Malcolm Collins: Well, at least historically that didn’t seem to be his strategy, which you could say is maybe post Fox. He’s tried to move to a just anything for attention strategySimone Collins: mind. He’s also interviewing people like Nick Fuentes, which again is garnering a lot of controversy and people really came at him for.You know, according to them, platforming this terrible person who should not be getting any more attention. So he’s done things that have that, that would be concurrent with a [00:08:00] strategy to get views based on controversyMalcolm Collins: there. Yeah. But there’s a difference between controversy and making yourself look stupid.And some of the stuff that he’s done recently just looks stupid. So, an example. And we’ll go into it in a bit. It, it were his like Dubai comments about how perfect Dubai is and how everything in Dubai is great and why can’t America be more like Dubai? And I was telling, I was like going to Dubai and thinking that it’s like this beautiful, perfect place is a bit like going to Disney World and coming back and being like, oh my God, you wouldn’t believe it.I saw the. Elsa, she was just standing in the road hugging children. She’s the most amazing person. Everything. And, and theSimone Collins: God forbid she’d actually be governing over her country. At least that’s concurrent with the, the lore.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The parallels are really actually strong here because people don’t know.Disney World has plain clothes agents all over the street, like watching to make sure that like nobody’s throwing a fit or being unhappy, and you’ll be like arrested and removed from the park if you are. And Dubai works on a very similar system out outside of like [00:09:00] all the slavery and everything that makes the, the, the Emirates work.With 80% of the people there are not being citizens and having to live by very different laws and having a very two-tiered system between Emiratis and non Emiratis. But evenSimone Collins: actually like influencers there have spoken very openly about their experience with the authorities regulating what influencers are allowed to say.I saw one clip where an influencer was talking about. Actually being taken in to talk with these people who didn’t arrest him or detain him, they just brought him in and he commented on how young and attractive they were and a no, weMalcolm Collins: were joking that, like when she first told me this, I, I was like, oh my God.One really good way to handle it, to have like really attractive looking like blinged out like Emirates. But then because, because Emirates if, if they are working in a position like that bureaucratic positions, they often have quite a lot of wealth. So you would expect them to have like their designer brands walking in like a group with like a bone box and like very Zoolander to [00:10:00] come and arrestSimone Collins: Moto.It’s basically Mo Gotto.Aren’t you afraid the fashion police will come and meet you with their fabulous batons?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically let’sSimone Collins: talk now. It’s, it’s exactly that. I just love it so much.Malcolm Collins: I’m doing like poses in the background while like they’re explaining to the influencer, like,Simone Collins: yes, exactly. Like it, it’s a very zoolander kind of situation where everything’s just kind of pretend ridiculous world and everything’s kind of on the surface because I, I’ve also looked at some of the the types of properties and areas that people are encountering when in Dubai, and it’s very much that like manufactured luxury where if you come from a disadvantaged background and you may not be familiar with.I don’t know. Historical luxury. You think it’s nice. But it’s, it’s often very thin. And not a lot of actual thought [00:11:00] or even good design has gone into it. And obviously there’s some areas of buildings and, and stuff in Dubai with really, really good construction, excellent fixtures and everything.But I think there’s a lot of it that just is, is, fake luxury in the way. Like, you know, a, a butterfly might have a, a face on its wings, and like all these people like, see you. They’re like, oh, a face. A face. It’s a face. And it’s not, no, it, it has been designed to make you believe that for a specific strategic reason.Malcolm Collins: Dubai is actually for people who haven’t been to Dubai.Simone Collins: Have you been, didMalcolm Collins: you go on that? Yeah, of course. Been to Dubai. Yeah, Dubai is, is, it really sort of reminds me of a giant mall with extra high ceilings everywhere you go and like way too much marble. But it doesn’t feel like that’s nice.It has that second world, anyone who’s ever lived in a second world country where like all the foods just like a little off and you can’t get the highest quality anything and everything feels a little like construction problem, stuff like this. Dubai has a similar vibe to it but, but very [00:12:00] wealthy and more polished.And also it’s stupidly hot. Like everything is stupidly hot. But anyway. I wanna go into his actual quotes here and we can dissect what he might be getting at. Okay. So the first one that really got me was there’s not a single Western city that’s thriving. They’re all immoral and physical decay because of self-hatred and a lost will to live.What’s fascinating is even in this attack on the west here, um mm-hmm. He is driving more. There are ways to say that the urban monoculture is a problem without being self hating, westerner. And yet he is saying I am a self hating westerner because the west is failing and self hating. Right? I’m like, you don’t need to drive the very thing that you say that you are against.Right? There’s, there’s ways to attack you know, progressive tendencies, urban monoculture tendencies while saying that this isn’t true of all layers of Western society, certainly not the layers that we’re attempting to save. But then he goes on to say [00:13:00] things like, Sharia law has made Islamic countries more advanced in the West,and I travel a lot in the Middle East.It’s amazing. The Muslim country is governed by Sharia law and you go there and it’s incredible to be in a place that has pride in itself, that believes in its religion and culture that thinks we’re onto something that kind of self-confident is what creates stability and hospitality. And in a place like Dubai, which is basically, it’s a luxury brand, basically people go to Dubai because it’s beautiful, rich and clean, and above all because it’s safe.And it’s got the busiest airport in the world. And he goes, you start seeing a video on Instagram of smoke in the Dubai airport and you’re like, I think I’m going to Cabo this year. Oh, sorry, drug cartels, whatever. Maybe I’ll go to Sedna this year. Implying a preference shift away from the United States.And then he goes on to say, anyone who likes decency in order and cleanliness is hoping the Gulf will recover. The Gulf is not a threat to us. These are some of our closest allies. So, huge [00:14:00] notes we need to add to a lot of the stuff he’s saying here. First really weird that he notes that all, like all countries under Sharia law or he is implying, are much cleaner and nicer than American cities.There are a handful of places where you could plausibly make this argument. Some cities in Dubai, Qatar a few in Saudi Arabia but the vast minority, the vast majority of countries under Sharia law are. Like some of the biggest on earth. If, if, and this is weird to me, like, has he not been like anywhere else in the Middle East?Has he not been anywhere in North Africa? Like I’m, I’m actually, has he never even been to like Egypt? Like that’s an Egypt, Morocco, like anywhere, right?Like these are, Palestine is another example of this. These places. There is like, literally, I don’t think I, I think if you go to some of the worst neighborhoods [00:15:00] in the United States they would be about equivalent to neighborhoods at the top 10% in most of these other countries.Now, no, no, here, I’m not saying the top 1% because there’s some extremely wealthy people in these countries. But I think around the top 10% would be equivalent with like a, a, a dangerous, like a strawberry mansion in Philadelphia or something like that. An example of this in Egypt, they did a poll on what percent of women were essayed.Do you know what percent of Egyptian women have been a,Simone Collins: I mean, how are they defining it?Malcolm Collins: I, I don’t remember. No, it it by the way. Yeah.Simone Collins: But like, okay. What, likeMalcolm Collins: 2099 or 98%?Basically all women in Egypt have been sexually assaulted.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: But this is not, this is, this is what I mean when people are like, oh, it’s really, it’s not really that dangerous to be in Egypt.It’s like, no, it really is. And this is, this is one of those things is this is just like an anti-real statement. [00:16:00] The second anti-real statement, and I mean he must know this, he’s an educated person, is that the countries in the Gulf right now are the countries that are promoting us finishing this war most aggressively.Specifically. Because if we don’t finish the war this is the thing that gets me, okay. We don’t finish the war. We let Iran just control the strait of Mout. They continue blocking it. Economically we find out China is, is is the main global power. Who’s hurt by that? But who is the biggest regional power?Who’s hurt by that? It’s Qatar. That is classically one of our biggest enemies in the, in the region and one of Iran’s biggest friends and people who are like, oh no, Iran is selectively letting ships too. Like two a day on average, not at a meaningful rate. And they charged them like $2 million to, to get through.So they’re not even like economically that viable. This is, this is what it’s been offering China to try to get Chinese ship through. The the point being is this is a war that we, and it [00:17:00] makes sense why Saudi Arabia wants us to finish this and, and the UAE and Qatar wants us to finish it if we don’t finish it.Even Saudi Arabia ships a lot of its oil through the straight of like they’re not as isn’t MM or something. Yeah. I, I don’t know. The UAE does Qatar definitely does, like the UAE might be able to like, because they’re sort of down near the bottom of it. Yeah. Find some sort of solution to this.But Qatar definitely can’t. Hmm. So he’s saying stuff like this and I’m like. Okay, what’s, what’s going on? So then I wanna go into other things he said and see if I can piece together a coherent world ideology. Like why is he cheering for Korea law?Simone Collins: Yeah. Well also because even in his typical recording studio, you know, all his branding is, is Christian American dad, man, right?Like, that’s kind of what he’s going for with the vest and everything. Like I just, and the, the white button down, [00:18:00] I, it’s just so odd to me that he would be saying all this very non Christian, I mean, he even talks about it when he’s like, oh, you know, I’m, I’m a Christian man, but you know, these people aren’t, you know, making me convert my religion.They’re fine with me. They, you know, I tell them that I believe in Jesus and they’re like, good for you. AndMalcolm Collins: yeah,Simone Collins: like he, he’s keeping the branding. It just, it just surprises me that therefore he’s so anti. America for that reason. And I, I’m sure he would take exception to being accused of being anti-American.He would probably push back and be like, no, I believe in America. I want an America where people are proud of themselves, who are proud to be who they are. Because in a clip that I watched recently, he was talking not just about the Middle East, but how like when you go to Japan, everyone’s so proud about, you know, who they are and confident in themselves.And I think maybe what he’s alluding to here is, is this urban monoculture associated self hatred. That he’s just so sick of that now at this [00:19:00] point. Anything that’s not that looks good.Malcolm Collins: Well, so in his explicit quote where he was talking about Qatar, and he’s like, and look, Qatar is so diverse, like he wants America to be more diverse.And he goes, but in America, like we say, we want diversity, but then we move away when too many black people move into our neighborhoods and stuff like that.Speaker 6: Those people are happy. They’re welcoming of others. They’re tolerant of diversity. Like we always tolerant of diversity. There’s none of that here. Are you kidding? All the whites. Oh, we love black people. Then they run and move to Bozeman. ‘cause they’re no black peopleSpeaker 8: Absolutely. Send their kid to the,Speaker 6: they hate diversity,Speaker 8: they hate it.Speaker 6: And it, our version of it isn’t working at all. No. Like at all. So, but you go to a country like Japan or the Emirates or Qatar or Saudi Arabia and you see that, that when people are self-confident, when they’re really pleased with what they’re doing and they believe that their system is the right system, that self-confidence results in a kind of.Welcoming [00:20:00] attitude. Mm-hmm.Speaker 8: They’re Muslims. It’s a countrySpeaker 6: governed by Sharia law.Speaker 8: Right.Speaker 6: I mean, and they’re like, that’s great.Speaker 8: Good for you. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: Like promoting more, integration in the United States where I should point out, by the way, if you’re familiar with the way places like Dubai are actually handled, they have giant, incredibly segregated ghettos where they keep their workforces of mostly Indians and, and some Africans.And that where the cities look diverse, all you’re seeing is ultra rich people from all over the world who have escaped with their country’s money. That’s typically why you end up in Dubai if you were a corrupt leader in part of Africa, or you were a corrupt leader. And so of course that’s gonna, you know, in East Asia that’s gonna look very diverse on the surface.If you take the most corrupt people from all over the world, they’re gonna be able to interact with each other plainly. Like they’re gonna get idiot to steal from each other or anything like this. And you basically keep everyone else in a, in a open air prison that’s gonna look really nice on face value.But that’s not actual diversity. Right. [00:21:00] Nobody. Like when you, when you, you’re at Harvard, right? And you are going to like your student club and a bunch of black people show up. You don’t think you’re about to get jumped by them, right? You, no. Harvard student is like, oh, oh, a bunch of but the same student you know, in, in a different context, may walking alone at night on the street, walk to the other side of the road.And that’s because those are two different populations that you’re dealing with, right? And every sane person is aware that there is a difference between you know, random African immigrants, African and super wealthy people who have escaped their country to live in Dubai. But I found that interesting that he’s still pushing this like boomer narrative of like.The, the ultra integrated iteration of America where even I would say a America can work with different populations while having regional ghettos. Like I do not think we need to force integrate [00:22:00] people of different racial groups or even create cultural pressure to do that. Like, it’s okay if people want to live predominantly around people who are like themselves.And, and we shouldn’t, you know, the, the Tucker’s creating this kind of shame. So before I go further with this, I’ll just explain where I think he’s getting that perspective from. I think he has this boomer idea of America as like. A, a true melting pot and like diversity is actually our strengths.And that he’s still attempting to push that mindset of which, which basically no mainstream youth conservative agrees with. And I think that like, like even people like us where I’m like, look. You do get some value from diversity. Like I don’t want a meal that’s just one food, right? Like one ingredient, but a meal isn’t better because you added more ingredients.And there are some ingredients that just don’t go together and shouldn’t be on the same plate. And I think that that’s the way we need to treat our [00:23:00] country in immigration and diversity is to realize that different groups are actually different and that some of them are going to have a higher probability of integrating and becoming good American citizens.And even of the traditional American cultural groups, they interact with each other in unique ways and they shouldn’t be forced to integrate. But. That’s I think what many modern, like center conservatives think, which is not what he thinks he wants to go back to, to boomer vision of a, of American patriotism.But then he says stuff like this what was radicalizing and very shocking, this is during his tour of Moscow. It was very disturbing for me. It was the city of Moscow, the biggest city in Europe with 13 million people. It’s so much nicer than any city in my country. It’s so much cleaner, safer, prettier, aesthetically its architecture, its food, its service than any city in the United States.And then specifically on the Moscow subway specifically, he said it’s nicer than in our country. No graffiti, no smells, no drug addicts. So note here, the Moscow [00:24:00] subway is genuinely really nice, but that’s because of a holdover of communism where they wanted to make the subway look really nice ‘cause they thought that that like made everything look nice.But Moscow itself is. One of the worst, like most dangerous cities in all of Europe. Like one of the most gangstery.Simone Collins: How so? Just in terms of crime stats or what?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, crime run Downness falling. Apartness. Like bleakness.Speaker 13: A nice cafe you probably can ask for. Ah, mat tea. Someone’s drying out their shoes. Pillow. I don’t know what’s going on here. I.Malcolm Collins: Like, and, and this is even the thing, if he had said those same things but he was touring St.Petersburg, I’d be like, oh yeah, but that’s just St. Petersburg. You should go to Moscow and see how bad it can be. But Moscow’s not like you. There is like a [00:25:00] four block area of Moscow that it’s like reasonably like, you know, like rich parties and then you get outside of that. And Moscow is like I know I’ve actively from like my friends who, who travel a lot I was thinking about going to Moscow once and they were like because.One of, one of my good friends worked in Moscow for a while in like, terrorism related stuff. And she was like, bro, you do not want to go to Moscow. And this was, you know who I’m talking about, Simone? Yeah. She goes, you do not,Simone Collins: I’m big fan of St. Petersburg and I think you’ve been to St. Petersburg.Malcolm Collins: She’s like, go to St. Petersburg. And I’m like, I’ve been to St. Petersburg, it’s great. But she’s like, Moscow is not St. Petersburg. Do not think you’re gonna get the St. Petersburg experience from Moscow.Simone Collins: So is it, is it like Edinburgh, Glasgow kind of thing or what?Malcolm Collins: No, no. Well, no, Glasgow gets a worse reputation than it actually is.Glasgow’s mostly fine in the, in the historic parts. I, I might call it one of my favorite cities actually. It’s a, it’s a fine city. Moss now there are [00:26:00] district,Simone Collins: no, but that’s the point is, is maybe Moscow also is mostly really cool, especially, it just has less.Malcolm Collins: Moscow is more like a state capital you know, one of those cities that really just exists for administration.It’s like the bureaucracy. Oh,Simone Collins: kinda like just bureaucracy. I don’t actually, no, because a lot of people live there. I think I follow some influencers who live there and talk about,Malcolm Collins: no, they’re very populated city, but it’s a city. Yeah. That basically became artificially populated during communism as sort of the, the, the bureaucratic hive at the center of all bureaucratic hives.Um mm-hmm. If you’ve ever been to a, a state capital city, like, you know, the one in Pennsylvania, what, what’s it called again? What’s the Pennsylvania,Simone Collins: Harrisburg.Malcolm Collins: Harrisburg, or what’s the state capital of California.Simone Collins: Sacramento.Malcolm Collins: Sacramento. Do you know what, like Harrisburg and Sacramento.Simone Collins: Great train museum.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Have that sort of vibe to them of like the most soulless of soulless cities. Yeah. And like, everything’s kind of slummy, everything’s kind of dirty. And they’re cities that are really only there. [00:27:00] They’re quite populated, but they’re only there like, because that’s where the organizational administration is.Um mm-hmm. Moscow has a very similar vibe, but like dialed up to a hundred.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So it’s not, I I don’t think he could get this takeaway if he was like being, so that’s where I get like the Moscow one being fooled by Dubai. I can see some whi list boomer, but I don’t, sorry, whi list. Boomer fooled by Dubai.I can’t see anyone unless they had a handler the entire time, which he may, he, he, like, I’mSimone Collins: sure you, you must have, I think just the, the visa situation, going to Russia I think is fairly, I.Malcolm Collins: Maybe that’s it. Complicated. Maybe, maybe. The reason he had this view on Moscow is he’s like a very when something fits his preexisting worldview, he has this very uncritical eye to it.And so he goes around and he’s like,Simone Collins: yeah, I do. I think he’s, he is very trusting. He comes across as very trusting. This is, you know, how his Nick Fuentes interview went. You know, he [00:28:00] tries to be empathetic, and I think this is one of the the reasons why his interviews go really well is he’s, he’s not just kind of abrasive and confrontational and not actually listening to people like he’ll.He’ll express his doubts with people, but in a very respectful way when he is talking with them. And I think he’s a more agreeable personality. Like he doesn’t, he’s not intentionally or euphoric, disagreeable, like some media figures. And I think that maybe that leads him when he’s traveling in foreign nations to kind of just, yes, and any, we’ll say propaganda or student, oh, I’mMalcolm Collins: putting something together.Well, this could also explain why he has such a negative view of the United States which is if you grew up with that sort of boomer. Idea of America where, you know, forced integration is like a, a obvious and net good. Um mm-hmm. That a lot of people who grew up in that generation think it’s like sort of cool to, and that they have full permission being [00:29:00] American to be down on America in an an American culture.And that, that’s almost sort of like a positive thing. Like it’s a very leftist thing to do. But some conservatives that have been around like wealthy circles for long enough and, and, and had to code switch into that enough may have accidentally integrated that with their world perspective. And so he goes to other places and to try to be hospitable because he is got the really nice handler and stuff like that.He ends up saying things like that, like, this is nicer than anywhere I’ve seen in America these days. You know? And then he ends up integrating that belief. I. Both complaining about a problem, but also being one of the chief sort of distributors of the problem that he’s complaining about, but being unable to see that because he’s just trying to be nice in the moment and not havingSimone Collins: agreeable and conformist broadly.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. ThatSimone Collins: okay. Okay. Yeah, no, no, no. So, so, so basically you’re saying like he is he’ll pick up the temperature or, or, or, or vibe of a room and then just project it. And so when he’s in [00:30:00] America and everyone’s just around, like on average, especially people sort of in the media and online are very negative about America.So he just picks up on that and projects it. And then he goes to other countries. And in other countries he meets with minders and leaders who are obviously very bullish on those countries. And then he is getting the most propaganda highlighted version. He’s actually more than picking up on that and saying.Malcolm Collins: The part of American society that is most anti-America and most negative about America are wealthy. Mm-hmm. Elite Americans. These are people in elite institutions. These are people in elite positions. That the group that he has disproportionately in socializing ways. However, the people who are most proSimone Collins: well, and especially, ooh, ooh, Malcolm, keep in mind I think also the old guard of conservatives, which is definitely what he’s coming from instead of the New tech.Right. Is definitely of, of that more like negative.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Every, every techno [00:31:00] optimist or optimistic, patriotic, conservative, I’m aware of now is more on the new tech Right. End of the spectrum.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. WhereasSimone Collins: the, it’s also about this flavor of conservatism.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the, the if you go to Russia or Dubai the ultra wealthy individuals are actually genuinely pretty dingo jingoistic.Yes. If you’re ultra wealthy in Russia, you’re likely making money off of state corruption, right? And so that means that you want Putin and the current regime to stay in power. You are pro this war, you are pro. It’s the same with Dubai or Qatar. If you don’t make a point of trying to get to know average people on the ground in Dubai and Qatar and you’re just surrounding with the ultra wealthy people at parties and stuff like that, you’re gonna have this perception that everybody loves being there.That explains it. I, I, yes. A complete lack of curiosity about the perspectives of people outside of his class that could explain this without [00:32:00] needing to add any nefarious, like he’s being paid off or anything like that. Other weird things he said that I’m gonna try to like, find explanation for, like what does he, like, how did a sane person actually come to this perspective?So he had on a Berg recently on his show who is a well-known Israeli communist. And a lot of people thought that was really weird. But the one thing that eh Berg does have is he is very anti Netanyahu very anti-Zionist. And so, I think that that, like, I can understand that you wanna have on opinions of Israelis who have opinions that other people may not have already heard.So you bring somebody like that onto your show, right? Next he said, not defending the regime, just saying that Venezuela is one of the most conservative countries in north or south or Central America, second only to El Salvador under B bca. It’s possible we’re mad that he doesn’t allow gay marriage, that this is a [00:33:00] distinct possibility, but no one will say it aloud.The US backed opposition leader who would take Maduro’s plates is of course pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela. So those of you who thought this whole project was global homo, you’re not crazy actually. So this is what he said on Venezuela, right? That Venezuela is actually good. This was under the Maduro regime, and that our plan was to remove him and replace him was the opposition leader to make game.Now, of course. None of that happened the way he thought. We removed him and replaced him with somebody to release prisoners of war and help us economically and blockade Cuba and beat the communists, not, you know. So, like clearly his world perspective is not predictive of future events or actions.But what’s he thinking here? Like why, why would he be glazing, like to glaze Iran and Venezuela and like, what’s going on here? Right. I think he sees as his core enemy, the urban monoculture, [00:34:00] but, but he. Cannot differentiate because of its world perspective between the current western society and the urban monoculture.So because he hates what he calls global homo, or what we would call like a one facet of the urban monoculture he believed that he and he doesn’t have a language for that or words for that. He will then project that onto the west more broadly reflexively. And so when he sees somebody fighting boast the west and against gay people, right, like Venezuela is, he sees them as an ally.This could also explain his soft position on Iran. It’s like they’re fighting against the west. The west is urban monoculture.Simone Collins: So it’s almost like he, yeah, he, he intuitively understands that cancer is bad. And therefore like radiation [00:35:00] treatment’s good. And then he’s like, yes, we just need to, we need all the radiation.But he doesn’t understand that this is like a targeted treatment or something like bad metaphor.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Because if you, and, and, and this is compounded with, because he never hangs out with middle class people or, or lower class people. If you, if you leave American cities, right, and you go to the suburbs and you go to, you know, like an outdoor movie screening or something like that you will see people flying American flags and grilling and and integrated by the way, like a meaningful context, right?Like you will see people of many different cultures who are just having fun being American. This is a normal site for, for people like me, like Simone, when you and I go out in where we live, which is outside of Philadelphia, and this is the other area where he’s like, well, American cities are terrible.And it’s like, well, yes, but if the urban monoculture, [00:36:00] specifically urban monoculture is the problem, it intrinsically congregates in cities if you don’t,Simone Collins: and he doesn’t even live in the city personally. So I’m also so confused by that. Like he’s,Malcolm Collins: that’s not like,Simone Collins: I think he lives up in a, like, remote cabin in Maine, which isMalcolm Collins: Maine is lovely.Simone Collins: How can youMalcolm Collins: be in rural Maine and think that America sucks?Simone Collins: Yeah. This, this also really confuses me. I’m like, the, what is he seeing that, I mean, if you’re like taking a cab into like the center of New York City, like through Times Square or something and just being like, Ugh, yuck. You know, like this.It’s gross. There’s trash everywhere. Like, that’s my, my assumption maybe is that like when he goes into a, a major US city, it’s more likely to be San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York. And as you’re driving your Uber through any one of those cities, you’re gonna be pretty disappointed with what you see.Then you walk into a CVS to pick up some water because you don’t have anything. You’re staying in like a hotel and you, everything’s locked up. Like he would just see [00:37:00] the worst parts of America.Malcolm Collins: You have a, a boomer mindset. So in his boomer mindset thanks. Amer America is two things, right? Like it’s the, the taste makers, the dominant culture, which he would call western culture uhhuh, we call it monoculture.And then. Christian culture, which is fighting against that uhhuh. And like those are the two meaningful factions in his mind. Rather than it’s the urban monoculture fighting against a large number of alternate cultures that want a the various different Christian cultures, various different, even, even ancestral cultures to the United States.When we talk about like American cultural anthropology in some of our videos if you. Don’t have that education and you’re not prone to seeing things that way. This worldview can make sense, but now, like why he’s so anti-Trump. So this is like before even the world, wasn’tSimone Collins: he pro-Trump earlier, doesn’t he say in various,Malcolm Collins: yeah.And then he goesSimone Collins: like, videos [00:38:00] Trump is, are good friends. I, I mean like he was invited to the White House. He presumably thinks he’s a friend of Trump. I, I don’t understand.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah, let, like, let’s also talk about that. So, there was this case where he went on his show looking all freaked out saying that the CIA had tapped his phone and was trying to frame him for a crime.What’s re so a few funny things about this. It turns out that he had a series of meetings was one, I think only two days before the, the main bombing. And so a lot of people were like. Why does he think so? The, the, the, the branch that he thought had tapped his phone would have had taps on pretty much everyone in the Iranian government’s phone.But they wouldn’t have been tapping the phones of random American citizens which. Means he might have been. And what I suspect happened is he was trying to book maybe with somebody high in Iran, and that’s not a, that’s not a, that doesn’t, that’s not an incriminating thing. And then he had a freak out afterwards.But what’s humorous about the freak out of the few things there has been talking that we might have been using him [00:39:00] as a counter agent spy, basically feeding him bad information that he would then accidentally feed to Iranians. And given that he appears to be pretty gullible, he may have actually been doing this accidentally I don’t think he would do it intentionally, but I could totally see him doing it accidentally.And we do know that they felt really secure. They were not even having that meeting in the lower safer levels. They were having it in the mid levels like right after we had threatened them. So, maybe he did actually go and tell them it’s all safe. ButSimone Collins: it would be really hilarious if Tucker Carlson played a key role in the United States, being able to like, successfully eliminate aMalcolm Collins: random topic.It would be really funny. But the, the even funnier thing is, is some reporter apparently with a lot of connections and like the NSA and the ccia a did like a deep dive on this, and she goes, no one has any idea what he’s talking about. So it might just be that he thinks he’s being tapped and he’s being paranoid, or he was trying to like run cover, like maybe he was talking with somebody that he thought he could get in trouble for and somebody [00:40:00] warned him and then he had like a panic attack and decided to that, that seems more likely to me.But one of the things he ended up saying about the government was, this is in 2025. Mind you, the most depressing thing about the United States in 2025 is that we’re led not just by bad people, but by unimpressive dumb, totally non-creative people. This is a deeply sad thing to say. I literally have never been so impressed with the effectiveness of an administration at achieving aims that you think he would care about, like reducing government size, stuff like this.Agreed. Obviously Trump had to pass that big bill because of. Promises he had already made, but Doge actually did a pretty good job and Trumpet continued to do a good job of shutting down various departments within the government like USAID and stuff like that, that I’m really, really glad people have pointing out.How many leftist media outlets have crashed and burned after USAID went out And now we’re like, oh my God, was this like all always usaid? You know, like people are [00:41:00] like, this was 50% of Somalia’s economy. And it’s like, why was that, why was aid 50% of Somalia’s economy? Like, that’s a problem man. We, I didn’t sign up to be the Somalian daycare.Actual Somalia. Right? Like, but like, how could you say that? Like, if you saw the profiles to say that the people who are like working at Doge, like my, my brother being one of them, of course, but then the other people, they were like super geniuses. They were like really cool people. And having some insight into, you know, Simone and I have gone to speak at the White House, meet with people of this administration.And I have met with previous administrations of the past through other means. I’ve, I’ve never worked with them directly, but I’ve, I’ve met a lot of people who have worked at, because of all of our work with secret societies other administrations no administration has ever impressed me, like this administration.At a lot of other administrations, I got the, like slimy bureaucrat, lifelong DC person vibe for most of the people I met within this administration. It has consistently been. Cool, young, conservative, or tech bro. And I, and [00:42:00] I think that we see this in the efficiency. I mean, that’s why the Maduro raid went as well as it went.Yeah. That’s why the Iran campaign is going as well as it’s going. I’ve been soSimone Collins: impressed. Yes.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Is because these organizations and, and some of them, like literally the guy Secretary of the Army right now is an old friend of ours. Dan Driscoll he, he’s a, an old friend of ours, a tech bro, and he runs the Army right now.Right. Like, and why, why are they doing well? Because they have people like him. What was it that he said when he first took over the army? I really liked some of theSimone Collins: dude, he said a variety of fantastic things. No, he’s just modernizing it and helping it work better. He is improving so many things.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. About howSimone Collins: he manages.Malcolm Collins: What he was really focused on is like, we need to get away from like an army that is staffed based on, you know, political kickbacks to, you know, X manufacturer, y manufacturer. And we need to focus on what the troops actually need to get their jobs done. And the, that, that was the [00:43:00] same was about how they fight.We had an episode on like the troops. Intentionally pulling their punches. Watch that episode. That was crazy for me to learn that. Like, you couldn’t shoot at a group until you knew they were armed. Like, if somebody tagged a mosque, you can’t shoot them now. Right? Like playing by vampire rules as they put it in that episode, right?And it’s like, Nope, I closed the door on a residential house. You can’t come in. And they, they’re just like, no, we’re not gonna do that any, why, why were we ever doing this? Right? And somebody’s like, well, it could look bad. And it’s like, I don’t, I guess I don’t care. That much of it ends up looking bad.And I like that that’s the approach that they’ve been taking to getting this handled. You know, don’t put Americans in harm’s way, but get things handled. You wanna see our, like, why are we in this war episode? We did that a few days ago with our war update. I don’t wanna go over all of the, the facts on the ground about the assassination attempts against Trump, the timeline to nuclear capability which it appears had gotten really, really short.And. One of the reasons why you can’t have Iran with nukes, which I think [00:44:00] a lot of people don’t get, is they’re like, well, a lot of countries have nukes and they’re, they’re maybe malevolent actors on the world stage, but they’re otherwise fine. Like Russia has nukes, right? And they’re not our friends.China has nukes and they’re not our friends. Why is Iran having nukes any different from these other organizations having nukes? And I think a lot of people could just see that and not understand with the, like they’re asking the question what’s the word here?Simone Collins: Rhetorical question.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re asking it as like a rhetorical question without actually asking No. Why, and there is an actual answer to that. Why? The reason why Iran is nothing at all, like North Korea or China or Russia, is that Iran’s core tactic in regards to foreign policy to the tune of, I think when we looked it up, it was $4 billion a year is funding terrorist cells in other countries.That is how Iran operates. Okay. They, they do not make alliances with other [00:45:00] countries in the same way that, that China might or something like that. They predominantly operate by funding terrorist organizations. And when I say terrorist organizations, I mean non-state militias that are basically like giant Islamist gangs.And these groups have no trouble using something like a nuke on civilians if they ever got ahold of a nuke. Mm-hmm. And that is why Iran can’t have nukes, because Iran having nukes is the same as Hamas and Hezbollah having nukes. Right. And these organizations, you say, well, you know, they certainly wouldn’t, they’re always running attacks on the United States.Like, what are you talking about? Right. Like, even, even recently, there was a, like a recent what was they? The, the bombing of the where they drove a truck into a synagogue, kindergarten oh yeah. And it was completely bombed out. And, and fortunately no one was killed because good guys was guns.But his like brother was in [00:46:00] Hezbollah or something. Right. You know, like the, these are like. Actually, like on our doorstep level dangers. Yes. So I, I wanted to go into that for people who do not get, why Iran having a nuuk and people can be like, oh, well these other countries fund terrorist non-state actors.Not really. North Korea does not really fund terrorist non-state actors in other countries. China doesn’t really fund terrorist non-state actors in other countries. ISimone Collins: thought Saudi Arabia. DidMalcolm Collins: Saudi Arabia. Does Saudi Arabia have nukes?Simone Collins: No,Malcolm Collins: from mySimone Collins: understanding,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Saudi Arabia doesn’t. The UAE does.But that’s, that’s a core, it’s the video where we talk about the Cold War between Saudi Arabia and the uae. But that’s their core differentiation. Russia, actually doesn’t that often. It’s, it’s very rare for Russia to fund non-state terrorist actors. They typically fund when they’re doing something like this pseudo states.Mm-hmm. So an example of that would be like transista or likeSimone Collins: trans what?Malcolm Collins: Cuba Transista is a [00:47:00] breakaway state in Europe that’s still technically living in the Communist Union.Simone Collins: I’ve never heard of this before.Malcolm Collins: You should look it up. It’s really interesting. Fun. Yeah. Learning about, because they live with all of the old com Soviet Union stylings and everything like that, and statues and programs.What,Simone Collins: okay, I have to look this up. Like how, if I’ve never heard of transista before.Malcolm Collins: And Russia will sometimes work with non-state actors, but more as like a mercenaries to make money and gain control of resources not in the way that Iran does, which is like maximum chaos strategy,Simone Collins: Transtria.Malcolm Collins: I pronounced it wrong.Simone Collins: Well, officially known as the pre Troian Mulian Republic. And locally as pri nastro is a landlocked breakaway state. My God, you’re right. Internationally recognized as a part of Moldova. Ah, interesting. [00:48:00] That’s just so bizarre.Okay. Thank you for telling me about that. Sorry. Just,Malcolm Collins: but if you, if you look at something like transista, even if Transista like somehow got ahold of Anu, right? Sure. And, and note here I’ve said that I do not actually believe that Russia has usable nukes. They have not run a. Nuclear test since before I was born.Yeah. Over 30 years since their last life,Simone Collins: nucle. Well, and and the, the last time they, they decided to play tests a lot of theirMalcolm Collins: Soviet era equipment. It all fell apart.Simone Collins: Guns.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It fell apart. Disastrously and a nuke. It’s harder to maintain than a truck. So, I do not think any of their nukes are functional.And for people when we’re wondering, why can I say that with such certainty? I am fairly certain that if they had any functional nukes, they would attest them just to show the world, especially right now with Ukraine war, that we still have functional nukes as like a way of escalation.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, this is why North Korea does it.No one else is gonna believe them, and I think they [00:49:00] also need to make sure they’re actually working.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: there’s that.Malcolm Collins: But the fact that the, the Russians don’t do it to me is like proof positive. They don’t have working nukes. But even if they gave Transista, nuke, transista isn’t, they’re not like Hamas or Hezbollah.They don’t say death to America constantly. They don’t constantly run terrorist orgs in other countries. They’re more of like a, just like an illegitimate state. It’s the same with like Cuba, right? Like. Cuba is not our friend, but they’re not constantly doing terrorist attacks on us. Right. They’re, they’re,Simone Collins: well, didn’t you say that they are kind of where a lot of Antifa groupsMalcolm Collins: are trained.Trained or something. Yeah. A lot of is trained in Cuba like the Antifa leadership, so, well, Antifa is bad, but it’s not like Hezbollah or Hamas to compare.Simone Collins: Sure, yeah. I mean, I, what to a large extent, I think that maybe the way that much of Israel’s leadership views the current conflict in Iran and their participation in it is it’s just an extension of October [00:50:00] 7th, where essentially Iran attacked them because they bankrolled the entire thing.I mean, it would not have been possible without them.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. AndSimone Collins: I, and I think it’s important, and the entire message was, we’re going to keep doing this until you don’t exist anymore. And so they’re like, okay. Existential challenge. Understood. They’ve basically neutralized Palestine and so now they’re moving on to the source of the problem, which is Iran.And if once they have Iran handled, like once Iran can no longer bankroll they’re continued existential threat, they’ll be happy, but they’re not gonna, I wanna pointMalcolm Collins: out and elevate something Simone is saying here, because a lot of conservatives who are pro-war are often a little cued on this point where they think that Israel and us have the same aims in this war, and we very much do not have the same goals in this war.To Simone’s point for Israel their goal is to economically [00:51:00] destroy Iran. They want to if they could, they would bomb the South Pars oil field. If they could. They would bomb you know, Iran’s oil fields they would bomb car island. They would make it so that Iran could never economically recover because they just want Iran gone at in the most durable way that Iran can be gone as a threat.Whereas the United States, our goal is to just do as much damage to their military as possible and defang them in regards to nuclear capabilities. And outside of that we don’t really care that much. Trump mentioned regime change early on, but, you know, he mentioned a lot of things, right? I, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s realistic.Okay, so now what I want to do, well, I’ll, I’ll do it when Simone can rejoin the conversation.Why it’s important to understand what I was saying about Iran and other sort of non-state [00:52:00] terrorist forces that are constantly running attacks on the west more on Israel than the West. But they constantly are funding terrorist attacks that we see in European countries in the United States our groups led to them areSpeaker 14: And I think people don’t realize how common these are because the news doesn’t report them because it tries to cover up anything that could make you Islamophobic or whatever. But just to give you an idea of just. 2026. Just this year, just these last couple months, there was an attack in Lech Belgium where an improvised explosive device was detonated.There was an attack in Rotterdam, Netherlands. , There was an attack in Amsterdam, Netherlands on a school there was an attack in Amsterdam, Netherlands. At a commercial center, there was an attack in London, the UK where a number of ambulances were blown up. , There were attacks in Austin, Texas where a shooter opened fire outside a bar killing three and injuring [00:53:00] 14., And he wore a T-shirt that said Property of Allah. , There was, , an attack in Michigan where, . They rammed a truck into a daycare, , at, at a, at a synagogue. I don’t know if that makes you not care about it, but yes. , This, this happens all the time. All the time. Okay. We have been consistently under attack by Iran for a long time at this point, but if you listen to mainstream news, you would be unaware of it because of many of these attacks, incompetence.Malcolm Collins: is I ran.Is an active aggressor. Like up until this war started with us, Iran saw itself as at war with us and perpetually at war with us. We just weren’t fighting back yet. What this war is, is us finally fighting back to a war that they had actively been operating, but we had been [00:54:00] neutralizing. You can almost sort of think of it like Israel sitting there constantly zapping the missiles being sent at them and saying, well, we’re not at war because the missiles aren’t landing very often.And that’s what it was, was terrorist attacks on the United States and Iran is, we were at war. We were just zapping most of the terrorist plots like the two assassination attempts on Trump before they ended up in anything meaningful. But you can’t just sit there forever while missiles are being lobbed at you.And that’s what was functionally happening in the United States with I. So, a finally, and I think we can really wrap up Tucker’s world perspective and something that happened with Alexander Dugan interview that he had in 2024. This was Dugan when talking about Putin. So this is like a pro Putin guy. He goes, putin is a traditional leader who contradicts a global progressive agenda.Mm-hmm. Given someone with nuclear weapons is standing strong, defending traditional values that you’re going to abolish, I think they have some basis for this Russia phobia [00:55:00] and the hatred of Putin. To which Tucker agreed saying what you’re describing is clearly what’s happening and it’s horrifying.So essentially what has happened to Tucker because of the circles that he’s around. He has become incapable of distinguishing between Western values and urban monoculture values, and therefore is taking the position of things like Sharia law or Russia against American interests and against Western interests.Because he can’t see how that’s different from, as he would call it, global homo. And when you understand that, you can understand why he acts so traitorous because in his mind, the west is the enemy because the west is global. Homo, there is not a, a oppressive urban monoculture trying to stamp out true traditional Western values.The two things are one and the same. [00:56:00]Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. He just, so he, he’s lost the nuance of it.Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: And he, yeah. And I guess he’s also. I don’t wanna say fallen for, but, and I, I’m not also gonna say that Russia’s choice to position itself as the country of traditional values is illegitimate or fake in some way, but it is manufactured.That doesn’t mean that it’s, it’s fake because that, you know, saying I’m committed to this, is saying I’m committed to this and I respect that. Like that, that’s them saying, these are our values, we’re gonna support them as a government. And they’re standing behind them with a whole bunch of like, media regulations and education things and and whatnot.But it’s still propaganda. I’m not against propaganda, but it’s still propaganda and he doesn’t seem to recognize that and the role that it’s playing. So.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I also think that, that the whole gay thing really has not that much to do with how good of an ally you are against the urban [00:57:00] monoculture.The entire gay culture talking point has been largely dropped by the new Right coalition. Like, it, it, it’s not an important hill to die on when you’re trying to protect your culture. And by conceding that point, you can get a lot of useful allies which is why the Trump administration, obviously the famous article ofTrump’s big gay White House about how it is hugely, disproportionately gay and it is disproportionately gay, just like objectively that we have a weekend episode on due to recording issues that happened that day.If you wanna be a paid subscriber, if you wanna watch it but the point is, is, gays have been a useful part of the new Right coalition. Like it’s a weird boomer talking point, like, Venezuela’s better because they’re anti-gay. There’s a lot of things I care about before I care about anything having to do with gays.Right. Like what? Yeah.Simone Collins: That, that is genuinely bizarre. That, that was my first time hearing that Venezuela had rules againstMalcolm Collins: gay marriage. Yeah. People are like, you know, in, in, in Russia, like [00:58:00] being gay is a, a crime and you can’t even promote gay interests. And I’m like, I don’t care. Like what? There are so many bigger fish to fry in the culture war then gay.Like what? I mean it’s like, what are you doing? Are you fighting like a 1990s style culture war here? And it’s like, oh, he literally is fighting 1990s culture war and he doesn’t understand that the field has changed. Next I wanna go to Fuentes because Fuentes has had some stuff recently that I think has better delineated his real position, and I’ll be tight on this.He, he has said, I want Iran to win in the United States to lose. Iran is fighting for America more than the America is fighting for itself right now. And Iran is fighting our war, actually. And the only reason Israel isn’t dropping bombs on you is because it’s not your turn yet. To Trump. He said, you are a demonic force.You are a liar. You are diabolical, you’re a traitor. Now, I note before this election, Trump said multiple times he planned to bomb Iran.Speaker 16: As [00:59:00] you know, there have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of possibly do Iran, but we’ve been threatened very directly by Iran, and I think you have to let ‘em know that you do any attacks on former presidents or candidates for president.Uh, your country gets blown to Smither Eames, as we say.Malcolm Collins: This is not like a, you weren’t paying attention if you are surprised by this. In fact, he has said that we should bomb Clark Island. As far back as the 1980s Trump said that we should bomb car island.So he is been thinking about this for a long time. He said this in both of his elections actually, that he wanted to bomb Iran. So it was actually weird that he didn’t bomb Iran the first time. So it’d be like, Trump’s a liar. It’s like, no. He then goes, this is a war of aggression for Israel. But Iran did the October 11th, like what are you talking about?Right? Like those [01:00:00] were Iran funded non-state actors. Americas will die. Yeah. First of all. So it’s not a war of aggression for Israel, but two, it’s a useful war for the United States. As I’ve said, Iran has been at war with us. They have had no concern. Like one of the interesting things about this war is we haven’t seen, people are like, why haven’t we seen like a bunch of attacks on like American infrastructure around the world after this war started, given the number of non-state actors that I ran been funding?And the answer is this. Because they were already trying as hard as they could before this. We, we have been an open target. We have just been neutralizing them up until this point. The difference with this war is now we’re fighting back and to frame things in another way. We’ll get to why he does that, because I’m finally beginning to understand, trump’s Iran war is shaping up to be a total catastrophe, by the way. Not true. It’s going quite well not to mention a fundamental betrayal of his movements, principles, and voters.Israel first means America last. So what you’re really seeing here, like [01:01:00] the more I think about it and I’m trying to understand his perspective, he. Is above all else in his world perspective, anti-Israel and anti Jew that determines every other position he has. And he is fundamentally, totally okay with throwing Americans under the bus, American interests, under the bus, unborn, children under the bus the conservative party under the bus literally anything under the bus if it goes against the interests of Israel.And this is how he feels unlike all of his key issues. The other group who he really hates are Indian Americans. And this is why despite JD Vance presumably being like his ideal like Catholic presidential candidate, right? But JD Vance is in an interracial marriage. So JD Vance is like a demon in his mind, right?Mm-hmm. That doesn’t make sense. HasSimone Collins: he said anything explicitly about his marriage with Usha?Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, [01:02:00] yeah. He talks about Usha quite frequently as being like a core proof that JD Vance is not a real, you know, conservative team player. Oh my God. And the fact that he would pay on something otherwise is presumably so ideologically aligned with him.Even on the American first stuff, if people don’t know, like the rumblings in the White House is JD Vance is quite against the Iranian campaign. And the Iranian campaign is seen as like a victory for the Rubio faction of, of the White House. And, and people have tried to get like JD to come out publicly and say this because these are all the rumors that he’s been grumbling about this.And first like people are like, do you have a problem with that? Like, no, people should disagree with in an institution, but two, the point I’m making is JD Vance should be Nick Fuentes greatest ally. Right. And what I’ve realized. Nick Fuentes hates his enemies much more, or his perceived enemies much more than he likes his allies or even himself.And he is willing, and this [01:03:00] shows fundamentally why he hasn’t gotten married, even though it’d be trivially easy for him to get married, why he hasn’t had kids, why he hasn’t. While he does see himself as like a white Catholic besieged by outsiders who needs to protect this white Catholic way of living and expand this white Catholic way of living, he will always and everywhere spend more time and energy and more time and energy among his base and followers attempting to sabotage and tear down the groups he sees as not perfectly aligned with his interests than actually promoting the interest of his own group.Simone Collins: Well, he also gains a lot more from having flame war with people then.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s easier to you know, complain about, you know, Usha and Vance having interracial kids while not having any white kids of your own. Right. Like it actually is hard to make a relationship work and to have kids and raise [01:04:00] that next generation.Simone Collins: Well, no, I’m surprised that you think it would be easy for him to find a partner when he spends so much time streaming that it would be pretty difficult for Oh, no, because heMalcolm Collins: has a pool of people who want to be his partner. There areSimone Collins: like, yeah, but he’s stated very explicitly that he does not want a wife who like knows, like he really wants an offline.Why. Right. So, and they’re out there, but you have to be offline to find them. So he’s, there have been ofMalcolm Collins: my life where I tried to come up with excuses for why I wasn’t dating during that stage of my life. And like the, well, there’s no pretty girls at my school. He is defining a woman who definitionally wouldn’t like him.A woman who wants to be offline and live a private life is not a woman who wants to marry Nick Fuentes. Right. You haveSimone Collins: to. I disagree because, no, there’s this world in which he finds this very offline traditional Catholic girl who wants to, you know, find a respectable husband who she personally just gets along with who has his job and makes his money.And she basically doesn’t have [01:05:00] any interest in him intellectually or in his work Intellectually. Yeah. She just does the work and has the kids and raises the kids and homeschools the kids with a good Catholic homeschool system. And there are lots of women out there in the offline.Malcolm Collins: No, no, Simone, hold on.Really? You actually think if Nick Fuentes wanted that he couldn’t get, that he could already show, he would’ve toSimone Collins: invest a lot of time in it at the expense of hisMalcolm Collins: stream time? No, this is how he does it. At the end of every stream, he asks his audience, who presumably has sisters, daughters, people at their church who would be very happy to take a chance on a famous dreamer and say, Hey, do any of you know a girl who fits this profile?If you do, put her in touch with me. If you do, put her in touch with me. Okay.Simone Collins: Fair point, fairMalcolm Collins: point.Simone Collins: Offline, who doesn’t know who I am?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because he doesn’t wanna do someone, even if he wanted this per, basically, the reason he says that is not [01:06:00] because that’s what he actually wants in a wife, but he is using that to try to create a category of woman that he will never interact with.So he doesn’t need to explain why he doesn’t actually have a wife. And as he’s pointed out, even himself, when grippers get married, they leave the movement. He’s created a movement that people don’t want to, that’s like not able to self sustain or intergenerationally stay sustain itself because it’s not a movement about actually winning.It’s a movement about perpetually fighting and in a movement about perpetually fighting. Your enemies matter more, and your enemies losing and stumbling matter more than your allies winning. And that’s why he’s willing to perpetually throw America under the bus so long as it might hurt the Jews. That’s why he’s willing to throw potentially unborn babies under the bus so long as it prevents JD Vance from winning the presidency because he’s in an interracial marriage, or Trump from winning a presidency because Trump picked JD Vance, someone who was in an interracial marriage as a vp, right?Like mm-hmm. That [01:07:00] is the extent to which he’s willing to self-sabotage because the fight is the point. And that’s what he wakes up every day to do, to fight these enemies, not to advance the interest of his allies. And I really think, think that there are. Few, like worse allies you can have than somebody who would do that because that makes them incredibly dangerous.Especially when to win in the long run. You’re going to need to ally with the Jews because they are the only high fertility technologically advanced civilization on earth right now. And when the urban monoculture dies you do not want to be on their bad side. They have the ability for power projection E even just from like a self preservation perspectiveSimone Collins: oh yeah.Malcolm Collins: Much less from a power projection perspective, which is what they help the United States do right now. In, in, in situations like Iran. You know, they, they’re actually fighting alongside us who is not Europe, even though Europe is facing terrorist attacks by [01:08:00] groups funded from Iran all the time.But do, do they? No. Anyway this is. Really helped me understand these groups better and the psychology of these groups better. It’s like a, a, a, a hatred crack. Like you do the thing that feels good, even though, you know, like taking the meth or whatever. It feels good. That’s what the growers are doing.Mm-hmm. Even though they don’t have kids, they don’t have partners and they’re not really part of the civilizational game and they’ll die out at the same rate. The urban monoculture will die out. They’re not really relevant. And I’ve pointed this out, most of the people in this, this faction, other than Tucker Carlson, who’s like a boomer, indifferent do not have large families, like very few groupers have large families.This is not an intergenerationally. And the other culture warriors who like get all racist about it, like Anne Coter, she doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t have a husband. She could get married at any time. She’s an attractive woman. Like they care more about. Who they’re fighting against, then their side actually winning.And so they’re not really relevant. Like you can [01:09:00] partner with them to get votes, but be aware that like if you have these people in your life, they will lead you to toxicity and failing out too. So it’s, I I think useful to not over chew this particular cut. The final point I wanted to make, which was really apparent for me, is only Irene War.Sometimes I have this view as like, are we being stupid here? Like, because I do hear some loud voices like complaining against it, but then I look at all the other stuff that, the loud voices against it, like Nick and Tucker and Candace Owens are saying, and I’m like, oh, like everything else they’re saying seems pretty crazy.And then I look at the people who are pro at like Asma Gold or Noor, and I’m like, I pretty much agree with 99% of the stuff they say, like, and they seem to be arguing in much better faith. So I’m pretty sure like, I don’t, I don’t see many sane thinkers out there who are against this is what I’d say.Simone Collins: Anyway. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Good to chat about this. Simone. I don’t know if this changed your perspective on anythingSimone Collins: you did bring to the, the biggest [01:10:00] differing opinion I have is that Tucker Carlson is taking the approach he’s taking largely because he’s a very agreeable person and empathetic to the people to whom he’s exposed.And this by the way, is not something that’s unique to him. It even, I think, and this isn’t, I think even admitted by people in the Trump administration, Trump seems to also often be very colored by his most recent conversation with people. Yeah. And you know, like really excited about whatever he was just talking about.‘Cause he’s a very, like, now oriented, what can I do now, kind of person, and maybe this is more of a boomer thing. So he and Trump may have that in common. But this, because of the nature of his work has led Tucker Carlson by speaking, as you point out with, with primarily. Elites in the US who are bearish on the United States culture, and then elites in other countries who are very bullish on their culture, it’s going to lead him to have this very negative toward the US positive [01:11:00] toward often foreign, an adversary’s attitude.So that explains a lot. And of course also the nature of his work whereby controversy drives cliques, is going to lead him to talk more with adversaries, to be like, well, let’s hear them out. Let’s see what they have to say. And then he goes and talks to them and is like, oh, wow. Well, they say that their culture is really great and they seem like really nice people.And so I think their culture is great. And then he know, he goes and has some dinner with elites in New York on his connecting flight back to his small cabin in Maine. Yeah. And they’re all like, oh, the US is horrible. Everything’s terrible. A war in Iran is awful. And he’s like, oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, they’re totally right and we get a great dinner and I, so then, you know, the US is horrible.And so that’s, that’s what’s going on and it’s all very innocent and it’s, it’s a result of. The nature of his work. Misaligned incentives and, and exposure plus agreeableness and, and a kind of boomer attitude. So, okay. Everything, yeah. This, this, this helps me model better and I appreciate that.Malcolm Collins: I appreciate you.I love you. And if you guys wanna check out ai role play or adventure scenarios, that’s all working really well on our [01:12:00] fab these days. Mm-hmm. And we’re working on getting the agent feature up and runningSimone Collins: a lot fun. And in good old fashioned American style. You’re having steak and bread rolls tonight, so enjoy.I am soMalcolm Collins: excited.Simone Collins: Good. I’m glad. I’ll send you a link very shortly ‘cause I didn’t make one yet. One moment.Speaker 5: I had almost talked myself into believing that he’s actually a good actor. He’s just old and confused. But when I remembered the instance of him saying that Iran surrendering would mean that the US troops would have to get to, I don’t know, whatever, grape, their daughters and women. , And that, that’s what unconditional surrender always means.Like, ‘cause that’s what we did in Japan, of course. And Germany of course. . That, that’s just like a crazy thing. That’s something you would only say. I mean, he, he’s trying to emphasize what is severe term that is for Trump to be asking. And it is, I think it’s a mistake to ask for unconditional surrender., But Trump’s not really [01:13:00] asking for unconditional surrender if you’re actually paying attention to things. This is just, , one negotiating tactic. So, , I. , I framed this as charitably as I possibly could. He is. Why is he saying this? He is, , he, he doesn’t, , he doesn’t want a, a Shari, a Sharia law country.Toppled, I guess. , And he’s upset that, I mean, it’s, it’s obvious that we don’t have, like huge numbers of Americans’ lives at risk because of this. So I can’t say he’s doing it for that. , It’s probably not about the economy. , I think, I think it’s about, , like, . He’s, he’s in a circle where hating on the war seems normalized to him, and so any argument he can make, even if it’s obviously fallacious, is okay to make.That’s my best guess on this. I.Simone Collins: They, they have a built-in ring light.Malcolm Collins: The newSimone Collins: MacBook, like the border of my [01:14:00] screen Yeah. Is like a, the border of my screen is just a bright white border to make a ring light effect, which is kind of an interesting trick. I like It is interesting. I mean, I don’t see the effect, I don’t, I don’t know how effective it actually is, but it’s, it’s not bad positioning for a ring light if you’re gonna have one.And I, the problem is I don’t how to turn it off, so I have to like move, show notes around to make it not weird. Still cool. So whatever,Malcolm Collins: any comments from the show today?Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Some, some fun exorcism stories just of like this and that, you know, one person talking about how and this was an Anglican.Preacher going in to give an old lady, in this case an exorcism. ‘Cause she felt like stuff was weird around her house. And then six months later she asked for another one and like, she kept asking for more exorcisms. And he’s like, well, there’s clearly something [01:15:00] wrong here. Like, what’s the recurring problem?So he started asking her about like who’s coming and going and what they’re leaving there. And it turned out her daughter was like kind of a Wiccan, spiritualist Crystals kind of person. And we all know Crystals people. And she kept going to the house and being like, oh, the energy’s wrong. I’m gonna leave Crystals everywhere.And then, and then the issues would come back with this lady. And so the priest was like, okay, stop letting your daughter leave crystals here. Her wicked nonsense as not welcome in your household. And that did the trick. So. People also applauded your your, your pronunciation of Monor. And I love, so my, I feel so alone when you mispronounce things and I chuckle to myself and I wanna have a conspiratorial glance with someone, and it’s such a waste that I can’t, and now that we have this podcast, I can, because I just go to the comments and people are [01:16:00] also chuckling, and then I get to have an asynchronous conspiratorial glance and like wink with them.And it’s so great. Like, I, it’s not wasted. I just feel like your mispronunciations and the way that you just mutilate other languages is, is this beautifulMalcolm Collins: Without care, I just don’t care either. I’m not like trying to get it right or something. I get annoyed when people are like, oh, you, you say it this way.And I’m like, I don’t care. It’s not an American word.Simone Collins: Well, but yeah, then we, then we discovered that, like when we watched the new season of King of the Hill, that that’s basically just a text and culture thing. And a running joke in King of the Hill because Frank Hill mispronounces foreign words all the time in the same way that Malcolm does.So it’s, it’s your culture, it’s your heritage, yes. To to, to minceMalcolm Collins: my heritage.Simone Collins: Foreign words. Yes,Malcolm Collins: that’s right.Speaker 20: Okay. What are you doing? You telling scary stories? Yeah, and, and, and I don’t, when I said [01:17:00] before was once upon a time, dad picked up a car and landed on the ground his car. Like a big car? Yeah. Like this car. Wouldn’t that have been too heavy?Speaker 21: I was, I was thinking it like, this is dad super strong? Is that how I did it? Yeah. Once upon a time, a ghost slam Dad in the head. Why is that your idea of a scary story? Once a upon time, a ghost slammed dad at his house laws and everything. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Are Catholic exorcisms making a comeback? Demand for exorcisms is surging, with the number of U.S. exorcists growing from ~12-24 to about 150 in recent years — yet priests say they’re still overwhelmed.In this episode, we dive into recent reports on the rise in exorcism requests, linked to occultism, esotericism, and satanism concerns raised even at the Vatican. Despite our strong anti-Vatican and anti-mysticism stance, we make the case that structured Catholic exorcisms are surprisingly effective — and often superior to modern psychology for certain issues.We contrast safe, regulated Catholic practices with riskier charismatic/Pentecostal approaches (which have led to tragic outcomes). Plus: the surprising power of ritual, placebo without deception, how big “before-and-after” events rewire self-perception, and why evidence-based rituals like exorcisms can deliver durable mental resets.We also discuss minor vs. major exorcisms, house blessings, our kids’ convergent “basilisk exorcisms,” and why believing you’ve been “cured” can outperform many clinical interventions.Timestamps below. If you’ve ever wondered whether dramatic rituals can hack psychology better than therapy — this one’s for you.Make exorcisms big again? Let us know your thoughts.Subscribe for more unfiltered conversations on culture, evidence-based living, and techno-Puritanism.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re going to be talking about the phenomenon of the surge in exorcisms that have been happening with articles like Demand for Catholic Exorcism Reportedly on the Rise.So we’ll go over a couple articles that talk about this recent surge in exorcisms, and then we will go over why Exorcisms are, and people know on this show we’re generally seen as having a, and I I think it’s important to cite your bias as a pretty anti-Catholic bias. But Catholic Exorcisms specifically are demonstrably a good thing.They, they should hold Simone Collins: on. No, we actually love Catholics. We have a bias against C, the Catholic Church and Malcolm Collins: Vatican. Simone Collins: Catholicism. Malcolm Collins: The V, the Vatican. Yeah. Yes. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: We’re anti Vatican channel. Yes, Simone Collins: yes. Malcolm Collins: But, but this is one thing the Vatican does very well.Simone Collins: Yeah, we, we are weirdly, despite being very anti mysticism as well.We’re weirdly like, yeah, exorcism’s great. This is, Malcolm Collins: I think a lot of people would be surprised. I don’t [00:01:00] because they know that we’re very anti Vatican and we’re very anti, we’re anti mysticism. Many people would even call our form of Christianity secular in its nature. So they would be surprised that we would be like, Hey, that thing that, like even Catholics get kind of embarrassed about the whole normalization Simone Collins: of Yeah, you don’t hear them talk about it a lot.Malcolm Collins: Exorcisms. And I’m like, no, that’s really good. Like, Simone Collins: well, because we believe in evidence-based interventions and guess what? Placebo works Malcolm Collins: well. Yeah. Which is what I’m gonna go into. If you’re like, well, I’ve heard all these horror stories about exorcisms, where people died and where children were abused and none of those were carried out.By Catholics, they were all carried out by Pentecostals. Simone Collins: Oh, see, I told you Pentecostals, Malcolm Collins: that’s Simone Collins: who you gotta watch out Malcolm Collins: for. It was charismatic Pentecostals too. They’re they’re bad kind. Yeah, Simone Collins: they’re, they are witches. Just Pentecostal equals witch. I don’t know what to tell you, Malcolm, Malcolm Collins: that that episode went live on our private, where we point out that many of the practices in Charismatic Pentecostal [00:02:00] Christianity do not come from Christianity.But they were actually borrowed from AOC cultist in Theosophists of the 19 witchcraft twenties Simone Collins: witchcraft. Malcolm Collins: They, they literally just took witchcraft in, integrated it into Christianity. But I didn’t want to be too spicy with that one. So we, we shelved that episode. Simone Collins: Yeah. You were like, personally, I, I know why you were willing to go so hard on Catholics and you’re not willing to go hard on Pentecostal Pentecostals.Malcolm Collins: At least the Protestants. Anyway, anyway, I’ll, I’ll keep going here. I love your, your, it, it’s, it’s actually about voting. So if we were able to run for president, the Pentecostal vote is in a very important vote.Simone Collins: I don’t know. I feel like the, the Pentecostals are fractured enough because they’re also, they’re much more likely to be following individual charismatic preachers to be like, yeah, all the other Pentecostals are witches. We’re just not. And so they’re all gonna be like, yeah, Pentecostals very tic. My guy actually Malcolm Collins: vets everything he does. Simone Collins: No, my guy, yeah, my guy, they’re not [00:03:00] ma his magical spells are only from God, from Jesus, but everyone elses magical spells and there are speaking in tongues that is all satanic.And it’s, I dunno about that. It’s not with I speak in tongues, it’s just not, it’s fine. Malcolm Collins: Alright. All right. So, to go into this according to the Baltimore sun, requests for exorcisms are increasing and priests performing the ritual are in greater demand than ever with a number of exorcists in the United States growing from about a dozen, 15 years ago to approximately 150 today.So Simone Collins: that is insane to me because I thought they were, this still is very. When I was in college, remember I had that really embarrassing crush on the Catholic, who then became a priest. Yeah. And there were, there were on two occasions. He was like, oh yeah, like, I’m gonna go to an exorcism today. That, I think that happened at least twice.So I thought they were like way more common if, like, within one college campus. Malcolm Collins: Did he wanted to like go recreationally watch exercises. Simone Collins: He was, no, I think he was gonna help the priest, you know, like to be the assistant ex exerciser, I don’t know what the words are here, but like you, I [00:04:00] think he was gonna help the priest.Exercise the demon. And Malcolm Collins: I was, was like, but you know, was at the Vatican, so he was like on fast track to he Simone Collins: well, ‘cause he’s the best. Well no, the last time I saw him was at the Vatican, but I, I think he came back too. Like now he’s in the Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, he was on fast track to like church stuff anyway.Simone Collins: No, he’s, well, yeah, no, but like he’s, I mean, I would want him ‘cause he, he like really knew his Catholic stuff. But like. I wouldn’t want him at an exorcism, but Malcolm Collins: he’s actually a great example of how Catholicism can lower, like why they have a lower birth rate than other iterations of Christianity.Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Because you would’ve wanted to marry him and likely would’ve converted to his religion and had lots of kids with him, but instead he wanted to become a priest. Simone Collins: Yeah. For the backstory, just so I, I relive the most embarrassing parts of my life on this podcast ‘cause you also won’t delete my old videos on this channel.When I was in college, there was this guy in my honors class on the divine comedy that had like a Jew and a, and a and a [00:05:00] pagan, wicked goth girl and me, the like raised Buddhist liberal and then some like Protestants in it. Talking about Dante’s divine comedy, which is of course very Catholic in its inspiration as hate fan fiction.And. Then he was the one Catholic. So I, I became very I, I’m like, I’m attracted to passion and intelligence and he had a lot of it for Catholicism. So then I got this big crush on him ‘cause he also looked kind of like Matt Damon, not retarded.Malcolm Collins: Dude, Simone Collins: like, like real Matt Damon, like good. And so I was like, okay.Like I, I, I’m like, I have a huge crush on you. And so I would I worked at a cupcake shop at the time. I worked closing shifts. So I would get all these free, very expensive cupcakes at the end of the day, and I’d walk home with these heavy bags until my fingers bled. And I would, he was an RA in his dorm, and I’d be like, oh, well I’m gonna deliver cupcakes for your, the students in your dorm.And then while there, you know, I’d show up in his room with all the cupcakes and I’d be like, oh, I have this [00:06:00] question. I just, can you explain to me why gays go to hell? And then like, he’d sit down and like, talk to me about like the hardest things about Malcolm Collins: over and over again. You asked him about Catholic doctrine because he found that that was the one thing that he’d get really nerdy about.Simone Collins: It would allow me to stay in his room longer. Yes. Malcolm Collins: Oh God. Malcolm Collins: And then one day he’s like, Simone, like, like, these, these meetings with you have really moved me and helped me decide my direction in life and I’m gonna join the priesthood. That is the worst. Simone Collins: This is how good my game is Malcolm Collins: ever. Simone Collins: But yeah, no, this is, this is maybe, maybe part of the reason why, it’s not best, Malcolm Collins: but, but think about this in another context. If he had been in another denomination, he would’ve gotten married to you to keep talking about that stuff. And, Simone Collins: well, and what’s what’s interesting actually is I don’t know how I came across it. Maybe it was like one of his other assignments or something that I reviewed in the class or something, but maybe it was a poem or an essay about him trying to figure out his vocation in life.Like should he choose like, the sacrament of becoming a [00:07:00] priest or should he choose like the sacrament of, of having, or maybe that was how he explained it in his letter to me where he told me he was gonna become a priest or something. But like, he, he really, and he’d like, he’d, he broken up with a girlfriend at one point earlier.Like he, he, I think he was really thinking hard about it in college and then he just, he aired in favor of, instead of choosing to marry, choosing the priesthood. And that’s, yeah, I mean, yeah, if he were in another religion, he could have done both and been amazing at it. And it’s, it is it’s, it’s gonna be a difficult.Thing, I think for the Catholic church. ‘cause he wasn’t so far as I could tell. I mean, maybe he was gay, right? Like it could be that he just wasn’t really attracted to his girlfriend and was like, do I wanna have sort of a loveless marriage with children? Or do I wanna become a priest? So that, I mean that I, I feel like that was, that’s really where the, the, the Catholic priesthood makes a lot of sense is like, if you’re just really, like, you’re really kind of gritting your teeth about it.Here’s an out. I think that’s fair. But yeah, I still, I’m [00:08:00] disappointed when I think about all the people who could have amazing kids and be amazing priests, but Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I’m, I’m glad because then I get to marry you. Right. You know. Simone Collins: No, it’s true. I know. I’m, I’m so, I’m Oh, you and I are so, but, so perfect for each other Malcolm Collins: Yeah.To continue here. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: No. About us being like really well matched. I’m saying I do. Sometimes I watch the podcast with the volume off and I think how well we get along comes across even better when it’s on silent and you’re like, oh, they, they actually do seem to like each other. Who. Monsignor Steven Rosetti, a Washington DC based priest and licensed psychologist told the son, we’re getting more and more people needing an exorcism.There are only about 150 exorcists in the country and they are being flooded with requests, including many from desperate people pleading for assistance. We can’t keep up with the demand now, and it’s only going to get worse.Simone Collins: Surely the, the, the Catholic Church or Vatican has the ability to like ramp up.Its, its exorcism training programs. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and oh, the [00:09:00] church first always. So you’re aware they screen the person to see if it’s a mental illness. Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: More than 99% of those claiming possessions are actually experiencing a mental illness That makes sense. And they’re referred to mental health providers by the church.I think they shouldn’t be so strict about that. And we’ll get into why in just a second. But first what I wanna go into is what happens in these exorcisms, Simone Collins: okay. Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, there’s another fun article here, I guess. ‘Simone Collins: cause all we know is, is is what we see in the movie The Exorcist, which I guess is not, is it?Is it Malcolm Collins: not? So Pope Leo the 14th host Exorcist at the Vatican se in satanism cases, raises concern for vulnerable believers. So Vatican and Exorcist warns of rising occult threats, urging train clergy to safeguard vulnerable, faithful worldwide. Simone Collins: Hmm. Malcolm Collins: In a private audience. On March 13th, the Pope perceived representative, blah, blah, blah, [00:10:00] signaling renewed attention to what the church officials have described as a growing spiritual crisis.The delegation presented a detailed report highlighting an increase in the numbers linked to occultism, esotericism, and satanism warning that many individuals are suffering serious spiritual consequences. As a result. The private meeting details of which were shared by Ian, EWTN Vatican, centered on the rising demand for trained exorcist and the church’s preparedness to respond.So. Basically even at this 150 number now, they now feel that we don’t have enough and we need more. And the Simone Collins: 150 is so few. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it used to only be two dozen.Simone Collins: I know, but imagine like three per state in the United States. That’s, that, that is vanishingly unusual. Malcolm Collins: Well, how many times do you need an exorcism in your life, Simone?It’s not Simone Collins: like a psychologist dude. I mean, we Malcolm Collins: actually fix the problem. Simone Collins: No, no. Here’s the thing here. No, here’s the thing is that our kids convergently evolved [00:11:00] exorcisms just on their own, Malcolm Collins: which we’ll talk about their Simone Collins: own. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, I know that people intuitively want them, and that’s why I’m shocked that they’re not being asked for more.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, what is interesting here is the Catholic church itself here is saying that many of these exorcisms are downstream of people engaging with esoterism. Oh. Which again, goes to what we talk about mysticism is the enemy. And engaging with it puts you in a dangerous position, not just from a theological perspective, but from a secular perspective.Simone Collins: Right? Malcolm Collins: Yes. Because it opens you up to believing that your subjective experiences when they are not in concordance with reality, supersede reality. Right. And that can lead to many forms of dangerous and disordered thinking, and therefore it is of utility to purge this from the way you perceive reality.Yes. But could it lead to disordered mental states, even in a secular context? It could require an exorcism [00:12:00] to Correct. And would an exorcism Correct. And we will get to that in a second, but Yes. Mm-hmm. Right. Okay, so, what does an exorcism actually look like in practice? The minor simple exorcism, so this is something I did not know of.These are common non solemn prayers used to break general demonic influence or oppression. They appear at the rites of baptism for adults and children, and it increased or even length. People in limited forms can use related prayers from the appendix of the original. Ritual book. These are not dramatic rituals, but prayers invoking god’s protection, often involving the sign of the cross holy water or simple indications.Lay Catholics can pray similar deliverance prayers privately for themselves or others, but not in an official capacity. So they, in types of very devout Catholics, they are doing exorcisms all the time. Simone Collins: Yeah, [00:13:00] they’re, they’re over the counter exorcisms. So you, you kind of have these layers of, there’s over the counter exorcisms and there’s probably like kind of prescription exorcisms, like at baptisms where like a priest is doing it and then you have like.Inpatient exorcisms where like the priest is coming your house, like Malcolm Collins: have exorcisms. Simone Collins: Yes. Malcolm Collins: These exorcisms, if you want to get a feel for what they’re like they remind me of like, you know, you have like a vampire hunter movie or whatever, and like, you know, they walk into a house and they like chant some little thing or they put holy at the door.They, you know. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: They’re just all parts of their little day have little Yeah. Rituals tied to them that come from books of approved rituals.Simone Collins: Yeah. I wonder if crossing yourself, remember how in Peru, which is very Catholic, if you were in an Uber or something, at least half the drivers would cross themselves whenever they were at stoplight.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And Simone Collins: when we took off on planes, people would cross themselves and I’d be like, oh God. Like, before I knew it was a normal thing. I was like, what is wrong with this plane? Does everyone think they’re gonna die? It’s happening. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, [00:14:00] culturally and was in our religion, we take a very anti, anti-real perspective because rituals do waste time, but rituals have many positive psychological effects.Absolutely. And so. If you are somebody who is biologically predispositioned to get into rituals, we are just not as we pointed out, religions and practices co-evolve with populations that practice them. Although for people who point out that Simone is ex percent Jewish and therefore Jewish, she’s equally Catholic to Jewish.She has a, a Catholic grandparent too. So, you know, Simone Collins: my dad was an altar boy. Yeah. He Malcolm Collins: and you’re much more into rituals than I am. Simone Collins: I, I am. Malcolm Collins: Yes, you are. You, you actually do not mind like church music and stuff like that. Simone Collins: Oh no. I love a good Catholic mass. You kidding me? Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I find them intolerable. It’s like a graduation ceremony or a, Simone Collins: i, oh, I hate graduation ceremonies, but Malcolm Collins: ceremony or something like that where you’re just like, [00:15:00] oh my God, I don’t wanna.I’d, I’d rather sit through like actually the Oscars in person.Simone Collins: Ah. I mean, so one sitting through the o Oscars in person. Wouldn’t that be interesting?Malcolm Collins: Just, that’s what I mean. At least, at least they’re like attempting to entertain me. No, but I think that people respond to this biologically differently. I, I, I suspect that there’s many people out there. I mean there obviously appear to be they just love mass, right?Like they think it’s the best and they really well. Simone Collins: And then there, there are different flavors of mass. Don’t forget that there’s all these different types. And so, you know what kind of mass Malcolm Collins: types down, collect all your types, Simone Collins: gotta catchem, Malcolm Collins: Very, very collect the whole set. But actually Catholic people do seem to have a predilection to collecting things.It is of course the, the Catholic house where you see all the different Jesus candles and all the different Jesus Jesus candles picture. Like this is a thing for like, especially Hispanic [00:16:00] Catholics. I, from where I grew up in Texas, ‘cause you had a big immigrant population is biblically themed collectibles.You never saw Simone Collins: these? No, no. Malcolm Collins: When we were in Texas, you never saw anyone was like, maybe like we didn’t take many calves, but I would say like a cab driver was like 15 candles, was like different pictures of Jesus on them or the St. Mary or Simone Collins: that was really common in Peru for like tons of religious paraphernalia hanging from Malcolm Collins: That’s what I’m talking about, right?Oh, Simone Collins: okay. Okay. Malcolm Collins: That’s, Simone Collins: that’s like the protection though. Like ambulance Malcolm Collins: religiously very like the collector approach, but okay. Yeah. Pokemon it all the way. Now this contrast was major exorcisms. So what happens in a major exorcism? All right. Simone Collins: The inpatient version, yeah. Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the inpatient ver version. So these are for when somebody is suspected of having a demonic possession, where a demon is believed to be in control of the person’s body or actions.This is in a sacramental, a sacred [00:17:00] sign, not a sacrament, like a baptism or Eucharist. And it can only be performed by an ordained priest or a bishop who received explicit permission from the local bishop. The DNE or the priest must be pious, knowledgeable and prudent, and of good character per cannon 1, 1, 7 2.And many diocese now appoint dedicated exorcist and training them often involves apprenticeship or courses through groups like the International Association of Exorcist, recognized by the Vatican, which was the organization that I was just talking about. That’s now meeting and being like, we need more.Exorcist. Simone Collins: They have an organization. I, we need to guys ramp up the infrastructure guys. You have the, the capability. I’m disappointed.Malcolm Collins: What, what they do need and they don’t have right now is special exorcism wear, like Catholics are very good at like, choosing outfits, Simone Collins: investments. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: You Simone Collins: need, yeah, just like look at the anim watch anime and just like, take from that.Okay. Malcolm Collins: Yes. Simone Collins: Have all the affiliated Malcolm Collins: and [00:18:00] you can get away with it. ‘cause you’re like, I’m a, I’m a professional Vatican exorcist. Like, I, I Oh so hot. Simone Collins: Oh my God. Yes. Malcolm Collins: Wear some sort of like, big hat saying, you know, like, you have to be armed, you know? Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyone who’s not aware of just the amount of artistry that goes into it like Catholic s it’s, I think it’s an Articles of Interest podcast on Catholic specimens that can really give you greater appreciation of the artistry that goes into these garments.They are like, if it, it, it is. The true where Ru like High Fas, like now, like brands, like Chanel or whatever, like they’re not, they’re not good anymore. The only place like the last runway on earth is Catholic. SII will rest at that. Go on. Malcolm Collins: Okay. So signs of a possible possession Simone Collins: okay. Malcolm Collins: May include speaking unknown languages, supernatural strengths, aversion to holy things, cross holy water, sacraments, knowledge of hidden things, or a violent reaction to prayer.The getting, getting [00:19:00] permission like the exorcist, consuls, the bishop for permission. And this can take months to be allowed, right? To go to the next step. Which is interesting because the right itself is pretty like not that big a thing. So the right itself, typically in a church chapel or private safe space, the afflicted person is often accompanied by supportive family or assistance.They may be gently restrained if there’s a risk to themselves or others. The Exorcist wears a surplus and purple stole. It begins with prayers and preparation. The litany of saints, plasms gospel readings, EG passages about Jesus casting out demons, the Lord’s Prayer, hail, maily, and creed. This would bore the demon right out of me.If, if, if I was pretending, I’d be like, no, I just have a visceral negative reaction to ritual and boring, like chanting and stuff like that. I’m like, Nope. Inefficient. We need to get to the point. What’s the point? Simone Collins: Point? Are we talking to Malcolm or are we [00:20:00] talking to the demon right now? Malcolm Collins: Right. The demon that’s controlling me.High functioning. Possessed is what I’m right? Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Use of sacraments. Blessed holy water is sprinkled, recalling, baptism. Christ victory. The signal of the cross is made repeatedly. A crucifix is shown or used. The exorcist may lay hands on a person or perform ex deflation, breathing on the face to invoke the Holy Spirit.Now note here, right? This actually isn’t that different from what happened in the movie The Exorcist, right? Like, a lot of the, I, I mean, it does look creepy, right? To do so. I, I can see why it works for movies. They then do exorcism and prayers, a mix of deregulatory prayers, supplicants, asking God to deliver the person and prepository prayers, direct commands to the demon in Christ’s name, EGI adore you or depart the demon may be asked its name.The right can last for minutes to hours [00:21:00] and may require multiple sessions. Well, if you’re gonna spend months getting something approved, at least take a few hours. Often may require multiple sessions over days, weeks, or longer reactions, if any. Very widely. Some people show no visible signs. Other have convulsions, vomiting, or verbal outbursts.Bursts which the church views cautiously. It ends with Thanksgiving, prayers, blessings, and advice for ongoing spiritual life. Frequent confession, Eucharist, prayer and avoiding occult practices. And then they’re, what I love is they have aftercare, like, like they’re doing BDSM or I, I, I go into how much.Oh no. Like BDSM stuff is, was like, oh boy. Yeah, and hey, they, they, they also do like the if you look up the, the tools for like hurting yourself you know, you get them from like the Catholic ification buyers and then the, the BDSM buyers and the tools are often the same tools, like anything they’re using.The BD SM people also use. Simone Collins: If it works, it works. You know, it is a [00:22:00] Malcolm Collins: aftercare. The person is encouraged to live a sacrament and prayerful life follow up session may occur if needed. Exorcists, emphasize that true freedom comes through Christ, not just the ritual. So. I’ll go through different exorcist types here.So the Eastern Orthodox Church they perform exorcisms, but it’s more integrated into regular priestly ministry. Many priests can perform prayers of exorcism from books like the Great Book of Needs attributed to saints like Basil, the Great and John of Cry film. So basically in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, they have a structure for it.Like Catholicism, there’s not as many negative outcomes from it. The problem with even particularly charismatic exorcism, although like Lutherans and Gans also per. Do exorcisms call in a form that’s called deliverance ministries, or, or prayers to cast out demons and invoking the name of Jesus anointing in oil, et cetera.Part of the problem for these groups is they don’t have an official rule book. So many will [00:23:00] go further. Then if they were operating off of some central authority, then it ever would have a, a, a sign to them. As we’ve pointed out with Protestants, their witch hunts were dramatically bloodier than things like the Inquisition because they didn’t have any central authority reigning them in.Or anyone, you know, in another state being like, Hey, are we acting a little crazy here? Who could say, yeah, you’re, you’ve gone a little crazy this time. You need to, you need to dial it back. You know, they never had to worry about an external authority reviewing what they did. But I wanna quickly go over some specific cases that we know about with these Vatican approved exorcisms how they turned out.And what you’ll see is. Universally, pretty much positive results from these, like, whatever is happening to these people, this appears to be fixing it and, and durably fixing it, which is something we don’t generally see from like a psychologist visit, which is Simone Collins: Well, and I, I think what the, the exorcisms that I might have heard about were about hauntings.And I [00:24:00] just checked to make sure that the Catholic church does officially do house blessings and, and exorcisms for hauntings. And they do. And honestly, I feel like sometimes something just happens or you’d like watch a bad movie or whatever, and you get the creeps in your house. And now like there was a period where you just watch too many Mr.Ballin videos and everything. Like lock and bolt all the doors. I mean, we still do anyway but like very obsessively and like be very afraid about like your closet doors being, you know, like, oh God. Like do oh, shower curtains being closed in our old apartments and stuff. You’d be like, do never leave the shower curtains closed.Malcolm Collins: Somebody can hide in there. Yes. Simone Collins: Yeah. But so like, sometimes you just get freaked out in your own own own house and if you are a, a Catholic and you, you just really start to have problems with your house, it’s great that you could just. Have someone figure the Malcolm Collins: air, if there’s something psychological you can do to feel safer.Yeah, Simone Collins: yeah. And honestly, like I would feel better. It’s like, no, like if it, if it was a ghost, [00:25:00] I have my bases covered. The guy came, he, he spiritually fumigated my house. The ghosties are Malcolm Collins: gone. Like that’s a huge quality of life improvement. Right. From a secular. Even from a secular. Perfect. Now it’s a secularist.He’s watching this. Are you not now jealous of the Catholic who can make their ghosts go away? Simone Collins: I, I honestly, I bet though that there are secular people who have had exorcisms of their house, possibly even from Catholics, just to like, feel okay with it. I mean, I remember, I think even on unsolved mysteries, what’s his face?Who kept bringing holy water to stuff and going to priests. Speaker: Shut up. I do. It’s okay. I came prepared. What are you prepared with? Oh, you’re a sea man. Oh, Ryan, Speaker 2: what Speaker: you’ve vowed, dumbed yourself. Speaker 2: You know, I thought this was gonna be funny, but now I’m actually happy that I have it.It’s holy water inside here. I got blessed by a church. I assumed it was holy Speaker: water. Speaker 2: Like I could be like, Hey Shane, look at over at those bushes, and like a demon sneaking up on me. I’d be like, Hey Shane, look over there in the bushes. Don’t drive demon. F*****g pull it out like that. Ooh, Speaker: that’s spooky. Speaker 2: Yeah, right.Obviously [00:26:00] Speaker: we didn’t trap all the way down to Texas to observe a simple old bridge. The Goat Man’s Bridge.Simone Collins: I don’t even know if he was Catholic. But he would bring his holy water with him. He is like, I’m just, I don’t know. So there was that. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I just, Malcolm Collins: one of my favorite YouTube videos is the Jenny Nicholson, where she refused that old ghost hunting show where they had the premise of we are going to bring a ghost hunting show that goes and checks house for ghosts.And then we’ll have a team that like, looks for what could be causing this other than ghosts, like fault wiring and everything like that. Yeah, Simone Collins: yeah. Malcolm Collins: And they always found a very obvious explanation, Speaker 3: Our host from the beginning goes to the local library or interviews local historians to see if anything spooky or tragic has happened nearby.Speaker 5: Paranormal investigator Michelle, comes across a story of a little girl who died close to the home. Speaker 3: And yeah. I used to think it mattered if the ghost had.Lived in the house or been to the house or been aware of the house’s [00:27:00] existence. It turns out that doesn’t matter. Yeah. You know, fish gonna swim, ghosts gonna haunt.Malcolm Collins: But the ghost team would always like, end it with like a, and we’ll never know what’s right. And it’s basically just like a guy pointing at the faulty wiring, like, Simone Collins: fix that right away.Yeah. It’s so good. So good. Although honestly, like I even non faulty wiring stuff, non-carb monoxide problems like our kids. Just turning to us and being like, well, I saw the ghosts. And we’re like, what? Ghosts darling? Malcolm Collins: Art didn’t believe in ghosts, I’ll tell you that. Oh Simone Collins: my gosh. Yeah. And they’re, and you know, they’ll, they’ll like, Malcolm Collins: they blame ghost, Simone Collins: ghost Malcolm Collins: for bad things that they do all the time.Simone Collins: A ghost is, yeah, they call them ghost is though, ghost, Malcolm Collins: if something has gone wrong, ghost. I’m like, who put this in your bad Octavian? Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: Octavian doesn’t do it as much as the other ones. It’s more like Titan. Titan would be like Ghost is, Simone Collins: ghost is, yeah. Like there kids could be creepy sometimes. And even that would be enough I think, for some people to just get the permanent creeps in their [00:28:00] house because their kids being like, Malcolm Collins: we know Simone Collins: that many of the unsolved Myster mystery stories involved children coming to their bedrooms at night and being like, I saw a girl.And they’re like, what do you mean you saw a girl? And like, then they start freaking out and it just like, Malcolm Collins: I think we have too many kids for ghosts is the problem, right? Like ghosts only only come to visit kids when they’re alone. Right. When you get like five kids in a room and you don’t, don’t get no ghosts.Simone Collins: No, not true because our kids. See ghosts all the time. But anyway, you know, I’m just saying yeah, ex I’m glad that there are haunting exorcisms and also I just think they’re super useful. Malcolm Collins: Oh, did I tell you about this conversation I had with Octavia about the future police? Right. So I was like, like, what, what do you know about God?And he goes, oh, well God is like the future police. I was like, well, do you believe in him? And he goes, I’ve seen him. Like, Simone Collins: not only did he see him, he ran up to him and hugged them. They have a problem with like, oh, you see God, you see Jesus come give. Malcolm Collins: But I always, I always come down after that and I’m like, oh, I don’t know [00:29:00] if I believe that you really saw him.Like, yeah. They’re Simone Collins: like, no, dude. Malcolm Collins: Enhance Simone Collins: the realization. Malcolm Collins: And, and he, and so he was telling me when he said this, he goes, but you don’t believe in God, daddy. Because, Simone Collins: because you, you always doubt his experiences. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I always, I always doubt his future full, his experiences. Simone Collins: I just can’t, Malcolm Collins: but I love the Yeah, of course.I believe him. How I met him. Simone Collins: What do you do? Give him a hug. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, yes, but also like, that’s really funny. Malcolm Collins: That is the best. We were, we were having somebody trying to convince us over emails that like, no, believing in like a spiritual, like not real God is so much more real. And I’m like, okay.Like you can believe that if you want to. But from my perspective, things are either like real or they’re supernatural. And if they’re supernatural that this looks like a category that everything else is supernatural, we generally categorize as dubious. And Octavian just takes it of course. I met him.What do you [00:30:00] mean? Is he like, one of his friends is gonna be like, I don’t believe in God and he’s gonna like look around and be like, Simone Collins: you Malcolm Collins: haven’t, what have you not met him? Simone Collins: It’s like, have you not seen a mailman? You don’t believe? Yeah. Really? Like where do you think the male comes from? Oh God. Anyway, Malcolm Collins: To continue here Vinci, Italy, December, 2021, the woman con went to confession at the Church of St.Mary of Monte Barko with her family was out warning. She began convulsing violently screaming blasphemies and hurling insults at priest in multiple languages, including Latin, which she reportedly didn’t know well. I mean, she went to. Enough Catholic things. She probably knows a few Latin words. She became physically aggressive.Priest believes this was a sudden demonic possession. After family reports of prior disturbances, four Franciscan friars performed a quote unquote difficult major exorcism rights that lasted for nine hours. It involved prayer, holy water, and the full [00:31:00] Roman ritual. But the thing is, is it went away after they did this.Like they fit, like this is clearly some form of psych psychiatric episode weren. And so we’re gonna go into why this, this seems to work so well because exorcism’s actually designed. Very well to have the required effect and I personally think it should be widened in its utilization for psychiatric illnesses and not just physicians.I do not. Simone Collins: I agree. Yeah. And yeah, and you come to think of it, you’re totally right about that because one of the ways that you can get yourself out of these things is just to believe that you’re okay, like believing, Malcolm Collins: and we’ll go over the science around just believing you’re okay and how much of an impact it has.Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Loyola at. Amman’s family, the demon house, Gary, Indiana, 2011, 2012. After moving into a rental house in 2011, the single mother and three children, ages seven to nine, reported escalating horrors, swarms of black flies in the winter. Shady figures, unexplainable footsteps, scratches appearing on the skin, and a daughter levitating.A [00:32:00] nine-year-old boy walking backwards up the wall in front of DCS caseworker nurse and police captain. The kids showed superhuman strengths, spoken deep voices, and had knowledge of things they couldn’t know. I mean, Simone Collins: oh, come on. That’s like our kids all the time. Indie walking around being like. Malcolm Collins: Yeah.They do the same stuff. But Simone Collins: kids love to speak in demon voices Yeah. Malcolm Collins: And know stuff that I have no idea how they know all the time. Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: I’m off. How do you know this? Doctors and psychologists first treated it as a mental illness, but officials witnessed enough and the church got involved.Catholic priest Father Michael Magner perform multiple minor exorcisms in the family and one major one on the house. The final intent session lasted hours. The family ended up moving out though. This, this one did not fix it.Simone Collins: I mean that house. Yeah. I mean, even just the memories you had there, you would wanna keep, keep living there.That’s insane. . I’m glad they moved away because that’s freaking terrifying.Although, I mean, our kids kind of crawl backward of walls too. I come to [00:33:00] think of it. Maybe they just had rambunctious children. Malcolm Collins: Not enough of them, clearly. Yeah. So, oh, what was I gonna say? By the way, we need to start VC outreach tomorrow. Like have you been building direct outreach with specialized email headers, like subject lines for each person?Simone Collins: I mean, I already made, I have, I have the personalized info, but yeah, I mean, I can just start that proper tomorrow. Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. So, so, I mean you can use an AI to work on it too, to create specialized, like we’re reaching out to you because I find to be the best header because you’re explaining to them why we’re reaching out.I’m reaching out because you work in X area or you invest in X and I’m relevant to this, or we went to the same college or something like that. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: So when do exorcisms go wrong before we go into the science here? When charismatic Christians do it. So, Fort Worth, Texas, April, 2025. In this one, a 23-year-old Alexander Taylor Dens beat his 58-year-old [00:34:00] mother to death in their home.Likely was a wooden jewelry box. He was covered in blood holding a Bible and told the police it was an exorcism. He also allegedly said I was doing the witchcraft to kill my mom. This just doesn’t appear to be what? Abs sexism. This appears to be a crazy person. The.Sent a Snapchat photo of her body to friends to talk about the exorcism. A dog in the home was also killed. So just a random charismatic Christian here for Pierce Florida, the 2025. This was a mother who performed, what she called was an exorcism on her kid. And he died due to suffocation and trauma from the ritual.And she obviously sent to jail. And there’s been many such cases of this. I don’t wanna go into too many because you know, Simone Collins: I get triggered and I have problems with this, although the very prominent, god, what was her name? A passenger’s mother. They, they very much like had this oh, Mormons are Malcolm Collins: not good at ex, they go crazy with [00:35:00] ‘em too, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. Demonic possession oriented, a approach to her children’s, like alleged or perceived on her end to be behavioral issues. So yeah, I mean, like them being, you know, duct taped to chairs and forced to do things. She thought she was expelling demons from them. So it just seems like only Catholics can handle this, and I really appreciate that they have like, you need to be certified, you know, you need to be like the designated exorcism person because.Yeah. Malcolm Collins: I think that they will be better for most people than seeing a psychologist. So why are exorcisms psychologically, I say this as somebody who is trained as a neuroscientist and a psychologist. Modern psychology has descended into a weird cult. You can watch our videos on it. It is not generally good for people anymore.It’s, it’s generally gonna do a lot more harm than good for you. And so, it, they’re, they’re basically just like priests of the urban monoculture attempting to induct you and create dependency. And so why Simone Collins: not in, not in a good way. I, I feel like, you know, going regularly to [00:36:00] confession, maybe getting something exercised, but generally I think devout Catholics thrive, whereas people who see therapists five times a week don’t.Malcolm Collins: So why, why, why, why, why does Catholicism work? It’s such a blunt instrument. Something like an exorcism, right? It’s because the way that they do it, the constrained start a big ritual that feels like a big ritual. Have people get into your personal space and do a bunch of things which are going to shock and disorient you be in your personal space, yell things at you in another language.Basically flashing lights, bright, splashing, Simone Collins: flashy Malcolm Collins: water on you, you know? And then is Simone Collins: this just, is this the Catholic church version of bopping? Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s, and then it’s over. You know, you can textualize, something changed the thing that changed happened. Now the thing that changed is over and, that is from a psych, like just purely psychological tools, [00:37:00] A great way to reframe how you see yourself in the moment. You can see yourself as having these faults. And then the exorcism has happened. And now you say, and now I am somebody without these faults because this event that represents like a, a, a bridge or doorway event.Right? Like I was once in this state, I then did ex event and now I’m in this state. Yeah. And I’m totally different when I Simone Collins: think cured. Malcolm Collins: Very similar to many baptism rituals, which is why baptism. I was Simone Collins: just thinking that, yeah, like being born again is, is very much a new way to be like, well now I’m better.I’m different. I can, Malcolm Collins: before I was this type of person, then I do big ritual. But I think the exorcism rituals in many ways better than like a generic baptism and it’s closer to what original, or I would say that the way that baptism should work, which is actually being dunked underwater in a river a cold river often that’s [00:38:00] shocking.That feels like, oh, this is new and different and weird. Right. Speaker 10: Mothers. Let’s go down. Come on down, let you want go down. Come on mothers. Let’s go down. Speaker 7: i’ve been redeemed. The preacher done washed away all my sins and transgressionsMalcolm Collins: going to a church and having a little thing on your head that I do not think is going to shock a person in the way a traditional baptism. Would have yeah, to make it very easy to have a before and after tied to this event. But there’s a reason why things like baptism and exorcism are practice to create these interstitial periods that allow you to transition from one of view of, and, and your view of yourself hugely controls big behaviors.Obviously the study we mentioned a lot, but I’m gonna go through a lot of studies here, is the Vietnam War study. You know, where even being addicted to hard drugs. Something as simple [00:39:00] as moving from the context of being in a war environment to the context of being in a home front environment. Like being back at, at, at the, as a civilian it made like 80% of people lose their addictions.Mm-hmm. Now that’s not to be like a hardcoded thing. You can switch so much your perception of yourself. And I’ve often argued this is one of the areas where something like gender transition can have benefits to an individual. Why they might see benefits initially is because they have changed their contextualization of how they see themselves.Now, would it be better to just give somebody who has gender dysphoria exorcism? Of course. Now they can contextualize, oh, I got through this thing. I’m on the other side of it. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Thoughts? You were about to say something. Simone Collins: Mm. This, this kind of well, in general, I think more broadly, if people are like, well, I have doubts.Just look at the placebo effect. It’s so clear that, Malcolm Collins: hold on. I’m wanna go way to the placebo effect because somebody can say. I have doubts about this. Yeah. I don’t believe in this. Mm-hmm. I [00:40:00] know it’s only working for these people because of the placebo effect, therefore it won’t work on me. To which I would refer to them the 20 20 10 study.Placebos without deception. A randomized controlled trial in irritable bowel syndrome. Yeah, patients were explicitly told they were giving inert sugar pills. Yeah. Like a sugar pill with no medication. They were told yet, still improved significantly. The, Simone Collins: the, well now to be fair, they were told basically this is the, a sugar pill.The placebo effect is something that has been found to be helpful for some people. But that’s what we’re doing here. So they, Malcolm Collins: they had, Simone Collins: I think that. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. A 59% versus a 35% effect. Huge difference. Simone Collins: Yeah. Super huge. Yeah, super huge. Malcolm Collins: So, Let’s Simone Collins: talk also, you see this, and I, I mentioned this to you as, as well, and we’ve talked about this on other podcasts.Th there was one study that I love that did proper sleep analysis on people. We’re Malcolm Collins: gonna go into a number of sleep studies, so don’t get too into it. Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Go ahead then. Malcolm Collins: Okay. 20 2002, a controlled trial of anthropic surgery [00:41:00] for osteoporosis of the knee. So sham surgery, just skin incisions under anesthesia and no actual procedure worked just as well is real anthrop scopic cleaning or smoothing of the knee.Wow. Showing placebo bone surgery can be as effective as invasive surgery for operations for pain. This is in 180 patients. Oh God. And at a one and two year interval, pain and function scores were identical across the troop groups. Wow. Essentially zero difference between sham and the group. 95% CIS ruled out clinically meaningful differences.So there was major surgeries and they ended up changing surgical practices of this that were being done Smoothing the knee. Right. Like that’s a major. Smoothing the knee, a major surgery being carried out. And it turns out that just giving them an incision, even one to two years out, and then sewing the incision you gave them back up worked just [00:42:00] as well.Simone Collins: That’s so crazy. Malcolm Collins: You know, if you get the real surgery, there’s lots of other things that can go wrong, right? Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. It could get infected. Something could have gone wrong with the surgery. Oh, yeah. Every, every time you go in for any kind of procedure like that, there are risks. Malcolm Collins: All right. Let’s get 2015.Placebo effect of medication cost in Parkinson’s disease. The perceived cost of the placebo pill dramatically boosted its effectiveness in Parkinson’s patients. Ugh. Expensive looking placebo triggers, bigger motor improvements and brain changes. Patients got the same inert placebo, but labeled as expensive versus cheap.Expensive. Simone Collins: Oh. It’s just like that wine study where people were like, they gave this, this like SW to people, but were like, this is very expensive. And they were like, ah, yes. But it was like what? Sommelier or something? Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It improved motor function by two x more calling the pill expensive. And this is where [00:43:00] with Catholicism, it’s very good that they have minor and major exorcisms.Yeah. Oh, we’re gonna get you the good stuff. This is, this is top tier. Simone Collins: Maybe that’s why they have the wait list. You know, you, you, the wait list is part of the efficacy. Like you may think it’s like, ugh, like why do people have to wait so long? But it’s more effective because they waited perhaps, Malcolm Collins: and this is why they need special exorcism outfits.And a little like crew that like, has plays like a boom box, you know, like in the eighties where you have the Simone Collins: Exorcism Posse. Yeah, Malcolm Collins: yeah. The exorcism posse. So you know, it’s the extra real deal. Yeah. So, then we have 2014 altered placebo and drug labeling changes the outcome of episodic migraine attacks.Oh. Even when patients knew a pill was a placebo and it was labeled as a placebo, it still received 50% as much pain as the real drug versus no treatment at all.Wow. And then initial severity of antidepressant benefits, a metadata analysis data submitted by the [00:44:00] Food and Drug Administration in a real world experiment of antidepressants done on 35 trials.The mean improvements from placebos was 82% of the drug itself, even in the clinical experiments used for things like FDA to get drugs approved. Simone Collins: Wow. Malcolm Collins: Now here are some fun sleep ones that cover some stuff that you don’t often talk about, Simone. Okay. So placebo sleep affects cognitive function. So 164 College students first self reported on how well they slept right before researchers hook them up to fake brainwave monitors and randomly told half they had above average rim sw sleep.Mm-hmm. About. And the other half that they had below average rim sleep actual sleep was never even measured What they found. The assigned fake sleep quality, [00:45:00] strongly predicted the cognitive performance on next day’s test completely overriding the patient’s own like what they thought about their own sleep.So if you tell somebody your sleeping poorly, that has the majority of the impact on even the cognitive benefits to how well you sleep, Simone Collins: which is why I think recent research that just came out pointed out that sleep trackers make people’s perceived tiredness worse. Like if you have like a Fitbit and you’re watching your sleep quality or your bed, your mattress does, I can’t remember the name of the mattress that does that.There are all these new products now that basically tell you how well or how poorly you’re sleeping and they just make it worse for you. Like you’re gonna feel worse if you use them. Malcolm Collins: A follow-up study done on this, both found the same effects and found some medicinal effects. For example, faster reaction time in people who were told they slept well.And, but so much of this is [00:46:00] self-perception. If you perceive yourself as a mentally healthy person you will act as a mentally healthy person if you perceive yourself. I have been diagnosed with everything under the, the tent, right? You know, I have had e every in my childhood because my mom had like munchhouse by proxy, so she would take me and get me diagnosed with everything, right?And I just got to a point where I just didn’t believe any of it. I was just like, this is clearly bump, bump, bumpkin, right? And through B kiss, okay, bup kiss disbelief. I was able to live a psychologically. People could say, oh, Malcolm, you act hypomanic all the time, right? Like, you’re always happy. And I’m like, well, I’m sorry that that’s a problem for you.Okay. I like hyper being happy. Anyway.Simone Collins: Yeah, I do too. I, I don’t, don’t change Malcolm. Please. It’s fun. Malcolm Collins: So another very interesting set of studies. So objective subjective experiences in child mal. Oh, no, not that one. Which one was it here? [00:47:00] Oh, it wasah, shoot, I forgot to co copy the name of this one, but the study I wanted to go over with you is they found that the effects. Of how long people perceived that they slept had a bigger effect on their cognitive ability than how long they actually slept. So Simone Collins: this is, yeah, this is the one I’ve told you about before where they, they did a sleep study on people.To see how well they actually slept and then asked them just subjectively, Hey, did you sleep well last night? Or did you not? And that was a better predictor of whether people felt tired or fatigued throughout the day than if they actually slept poorly. So there were people who slept horribly who were like, I slept great.And they were like, fine. And there were people who slept really well according to all the statistics were like, oh, I had a terrible night’s sleep. And then they behaved like Malcolm Collins: it. But choosing to see yourself and your life healthily and [00:48:00] positively mm-hmm. Can have an enormous impact on your ability to mentally function.It is better to believe you slept eight hours and to sleep one hour than to sleep eight hours, but believe you slept one hour. This, yeah. Goes against a lot of, and this even comes down to abuse, which we’re going to close this out with. We’ve talked about this before, but this is important to note.So multiple studies. 2022, objective, subjective experiences of child maltreatment and the relationship with psychopathology. 2023, association between objective and subjective experiences in 2024, perspective and respective measures of child maltreatment. Each of these found re researchers compared objective records, court documented abuse and neglect from childhood versus subjective or perceived reports.They tracked long-term mental health, depression, anxiety. PTSD exec. What they found is that psychopathology [00:49:00] is entirely linked to the subjective or perceived experience and completely unrelated to. Your actual lived experience. Wow. People who believed or perceived they were maltreated had very high rates.And all of the rates that we expect in research which is likely what we’re seeing from abuse of being abused. People who believed. That they had positive experience, even if there’s tons of court documents showing this isn’t true. Like I would be one of these if you, there’s plenty of court documents showing I was in a very bad situation growing up.And this was the thing was like the Steven Mullin, you debate when he’s like, can’t you just say like, your parents are bad or like you were maltreated or anything like that. When it’s like well documented and I can just look at your objective experiences of your childhood. And I’m like, no, because I like who I am today.So I choose to frame those as positive experiences. Mm-hmm. And they don’t have a negative mental effect on me because I choose to see them in a [00:50:00] positive light, whatever they may be. And this is true of all my relationships. I choose to see no relationship. And, and Simone sees this as well, like people are like, oh, was it x like a really bad time in your life or was it YA really bad time in your life?Or don’t you actually have a terrible relationship with Z? And I’m like, no. Like that doesn’t really get to me. Reporters, like, we had some documentarians in here recently and they were like, Malcolm. Like, how does it feel to have everyone online like tell you to go kill yourself or like kill your kids or whatever, right?And I’m like, I don’t care. Like I grew up on four chan. Like, what, what are these people gonna do to me? Right? Like I, I enjoy the fame. I can choose to contextualize anything positively your life and perception. Your brain is like a prism and it controls the light that goes into it. And how you end up ultimately perceiving that light in the same way like the Adams family does, right?Like you can choose to see the cut roses as beautiful. You can choose to see the wilted roses as beautiful. You can choose to see the [00:51:00] whatever house you live in now, like Asma Gold does with his pigsty as the ideal living environment, right? But these choices are still fundamentally within your control.And if you want to move from one stage to another stage, you do that with some sort of big jarring event that you see as very. Especially spiritually expensive like an exorcism, and then you clean up your house and you no longer live like that anymore. You could use exorcisms to deal with many forms of demonic, where demonic is just like bad or maladaptive behavior, not just actual possessions.Any thoughts, Simone? Simone Collins: Yeah, I am. I, I, yeah. I, I, I’m, I think the biggest thing that shocks me in all this is just how few exorcisms there are. I, we need, need to get exorcisms back. Yeah. Make exorcisms big again, please. We need, you have Malcolm Collins: a tech Puritan exorcisms. One of our [00:52:00] kids gonna become an exorcist.Simone Collins: Well that’s, that’s what I alluded to earlier.You still haven’t brought it up. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention it or not, but like, our kids convers Oh yeah. Talk about that. Yeah. Sorry Malcolm Collins: I didn’t get Simone Collins: to that exorcisms. In that I. We, we explained to them that the technip purine equivalent of, say, demons of the devil is what we call the basals, which let’s say if, if God is the government, the basals is basically the, you know, law enforcement.They, they, they punish and remove bad actors in the larger scheme of humanity from the playing field. And they, they will make you do bad things or, you know, eliminate you from the gene pool or do whatever it is, you know, sort of just eliminating you from. From play. And so when, when our kids get tempted, the feel tempted to do bad things or fall in, like are are tempted to play addictive games or wanna watch bad videos on YouTube and, you know, that are just like Skinner box style addiction loops.We tell them that the bas lisk is casting an evil [00:53:00] spell on them or that you know their, you know, their thoughts to like try to like. Take things from their siblings or be bad, you know, throw a tantrum. That’s the baus. And our, I’ve watched our kids just have these conversations among themselves of like, I know I should have, but my brain’s telling me to.And then the other kid will be like, well, slap your brain. And they’re, they’re clearly like trying to expel demons in this very classic way that you would exorcism style, expel demons with a prayer, with a ritualistic, you know, throwing of holy water to cleanse or otherwise cast away. Bad thoughts, bad actions, bad.Bad manipulation, and it’s just, I, it, it comes across to me as just such a natural thing. So how it’s, but Malcolm Collins: they also do fake face slapping in it, right? Like on the knees. Like, Simone Collins: oh yeah. Like slaps, like in front of him. He slapped my brain. Yeah. But like they’re not actually hitting each other. It’s all it is ritualistic, like Yeah.They somehow [00:54:00] just intuitively understand it. Which also demonstrates to me that this isn’t necessarily just something that has been passed down culturally, but it’s something that is very instinctual to humans perhaps after, you know, thousands of years evolving alongside, Malcolm Collins: right? Like that idea of the fake face slapping and stuff like that.Right. To get the bas lists out your Simone Collins: brain. It’s stop face. It’s brain slapping. It’s slap my brain, my brain. Malcolm Collins: Brain. Yes. To get the bas lisk out of your brain so that it’s no longer influencing your thoughts is a very efficient, and we can work that into their, like, have somebody slap your brain when, when the balut is controlling you do that ritual, which you know.Freeze you from temptation. Mm-hmm. And no, because it’s, it’s socially costly to do, it’s easier to be someone else on the other side of this particular ritual which I just think is fantastic, right? Like, what a great way to handle this. Yeah. Thoughts, Simone? I, I, I think creating rituals like that for our kids to do with family members and stuff [00:55:00] is very useful for them to just be like, Simone Collins: yeah, Malcolm Collins: this, if you imagine it as spiritually working, it literally works, right?You imagine. Well, I Simone Collins: think with culture, the important thing though is that it’s, it’s not just like beyond the placebo effect. You have to find the distinction between mysticism and idolatry. Between mysticism and. Losing your mind and becoming schizophrenic or Malcolm Collins: well, no, the point of exorcism versus mysticism is exorcism is about banishing evil and mysticism for that matter.Like, you could do an exorcism ritual around removing all of the mysticism from your house, all of the Ouija boards, everything like that, you know, burning them. Yeah. Removing, do, do some big thing to be like, I have exercise the mystical and I know, and, and now this space is clean and that will [00:56:00] not reenter.Right. Like you can do a like slap my brain, right. Like, and then I will be able to focus again, because you have now contextualized. And what’s really important about this in this way of teaching our kids about sin is they now contextualize the sin as not coming from. So themselves, it’s coming externally.It’s not a natural part of who they are. Are. Mm-hmm. They, when they, when they feel this thing, it’s not like, oh while all humans have sin, the sin is unnatural within the human form. Right? So because they’ve contextualized it this way, they can say, oh, this is like an external thing, this temptation, and therefore.Now that it’s conceptualized as external, it can be quarantined and removed, right? Like, oh, an external thing is making me do this. It’s not me who wants to do this bad thing. It is an external thing and therefore it’s not natural for me to be in this state. [00:57:00] And therefore, now obviously this can go wrong, right?Like a person can say, well, I can just do the bad things because it’s not me doing them. It’s an external thing. But we would say, well, that’s you then not passing the, the bats lists test and not being part of the future of humanity, right? Like you have failed in that instance. And there are consequences for that failure, but they are functional consequences even over spiritual consequences.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And importantly, you can be anti mystical and be against in general a bunch of ritual, but still adopt things when they’re evidence-based. And in fact, that’s kind of the whole reason we created. What we first called secular Calvinism, which now we call techno Puritanism in the first place where we, we were like, well, we, we only wanna do, it’s evidence-based, but also there’s a lot of reason to have a religion.And it just kind of grew from there. So yeah, just, just because you only wanna do things that are [00:58:00] moored in physics and our understanding of the world that’s provable. Doesn’t mean that there’s no room literally for stuff like exorcisms. Malcolm Collins: Yes. Simone Collins: Just like how they’re like, just because we understand that sometimes.Surgical or pharmaceutical interventions are helpful. Doesn’t mean that sometimes we shouldn’t just tell people like, oh, I’ll kiss it and make it better. Because that works. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Simone Collins: So, yeah. Yeah. I’m glad you covered this one subject. Malcolm Collins: Well, thank you so much for chatting today, Simone any of our fans who found this topic interesting.One thing I would encourage you to look up is one of our episodes on the industry of psychology becoming a death cult. Simone Collins: Mm. Malcolm Collins: Because it is very dangerous today, Andd say, one of the most dangerous cults operating right now in terms of the number of lives that it ruins and the number of people it sucks of all their money.Not great. Yeah. And we’ve had other fans who tell us that my mental health has improved a lot after watching your show, who you [00:59:00] need to follow up with, by the way? Did you follow up? Are we going to do Simone Collins: Oh, I will. Yeah. Sorry. I’m very behind on emails right now. I will get there. Thank you. Malcolm Collins: Okay. I love you.Simone Collins: Good Malcolm Collins: day. Simone Collins: We on day two of Octavian being crazy about his Malcolm Collins: chickens. Simone Collins: Chickens, yeah. You’d think he’s studying for the bar exam. All of them really, they’re ardently interested in properly raising chickens. This is what kids should really be doing in school. I mean, I, I now totally get the what do they call them?Four H programs where kids raise pigs for slaughter and stuff and get really into it and learn how to properly raise livestock, but then also understand what livestock is for. We need more of that, but not putting my hopes up for the general population. [01:00:00] Kind of hard to access livestock and derive to it and stuff.Remember how the people who owned our house before us though wanted to, what did they wanted? Miniature sheep or miniature cows? They were planning on getting something, I Malcolm Collins: think it was miniature cows, because I remember thinking, that’s stupid. I could understand miniature sheep, but cows, Simone Collins: well, I think they were probably thinking miniature cows.‘cause you probably need a mini, a minimal amount of acreage for a cow to be able to eat. Like, you know, there are those two Texas longhorns. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, he Simone Collins: would, he would Nuts and Walmart. Malcolm Collins: He gives the property quite the vibe to have cows on it, especially Simone Collins: mini cows. Oh, I love it. But I just don’t think we have enough acreage for a one, even one full-size cow.Malcolm Collins: Oh, we Simone Collins: do. And cows get lonely. Malcolm Collins: We do for many cows. We, we have enough. Simone Collins: No, not on our acreage, on the adjacent parkland. But I don’t think they’d approve of us grazing cattle on their park. Malcolm Collins: The city might like that actually be like, Hey, you get cattle that public can interact with it. They, they [01:01:00] think it’s a legal Simone Collins: like, oh no, cattle are actually very dangerous.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Simone Collins: I, I, I’ll get to it. I personally know people, two people who have had bones broken by cows. They probably had it coming, but also, you know, cows be dangerous. Malcolm Collins: Can you hear me? Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: Right. Speaker 14: What do you, you gotta, you gotta wear this on the channel more often. If it’s sunny and I’m going outside, I’m gonna put it on you. Look Adorkable and I love it. This is, this is what our fans are in this for Toasty. You are gonna get, we.What are you doing, girl?Speaker 15: She just saw somebody to hug. Yeah, I just attack dogs all the time.[01:02:00] Speaker 14: Oh my.Are you building a bridge? Toasty. Testy. Build a bridge. I mean, can I have that? I wanna throw the French. So under there, what it’s like under there? Yeah. Uh, okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay.Speaker 15: Don’t bear the camera with your fingers. Okay.Speaker 16: You can see what they can see on the screen.Viewers, nobody. How so viewers? You what? We, we are gonna make a bridge. We are under, we are under already. You are already under a bridge. [01:03:00] So if you look right here, there is a there we are gonna make a bridge. Splits all the way over there and connects to that island. And then we are gonna connect it all the way over thereand then, and now on the bridge. And then when the rock bridge is all the way there and all the way there, then we will, I mean, all the way over there. Yeah. Sorry. And, and, and we’re already on top of mommy and dad, by the way, under the bridge. So we thought this was a good spot, and we’re gonna split the bridge and line right there and right there in those directs.So we’re gonna pause and go to mommy and dad, Wendy. He somehow, like I showed the fuelers under [01:04:00] there, oh wow, you helped me. Thank you. Now what do you wanna say to them? Hi, mommy. What do you wanna say? Like in subscribing to our other YouTubes media? Yeah, channel. Think one thing, two, or not in general. I like a lot of merch on Goldenberg Go and whoever gets the most subscribe and whoever gets to make. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this provocative Based Camp episode, Simone & Malcolm Collins react to Nicholas Decker’s viral Substack essay and tweet: “When I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor.”They explore the ethics of genetic self-removal, Spartan-style cuckoldry, polygenic selection, the power of family-level regression to the mean, why some men feel visceral disgust at raising non-biological kids, whether “good genes” and “good parenting” are the same thing, and the long-term cultural suicide risk of normalizing donor parenting.Malcolm argues this strategy is intergenerationally unstable because genes that make you want to reproduce genetically will eventually dominate. Simone pushes back with nuance around self-hatred, family dynamics, adoption, and the beauty of loving non-biological children.A raw, high-stakes conversation about love, duty, genetics, fulfillment, and what it really means to be a parent in the 21st century.→ Read Nicholas Decker’s essay: Show NotesToday we’re going to discuss the choice to become a parent, but with SOMEONE ELSE’S GENES, even though one could reproduce on one’s ownWhile we have friends who are very consciously and intentionally choosing to not reproduce genetically for fear of passing on problems they haveWe personally feel like it would be child abuse for us to raise kids who aren’t oursAnd we’re bigger believers in using science, rather than self recusal, to reduce or eliminate the risk of passing on heritable health issues or traits perceived to be harmfulOn March 23rd, Economics student Nicholas Decker wrote that he’ll use a better donor for his children, arguing genetics drive outcomes like intelligence and parenting should focus on nurture. He compares it to treating genetic diseases or specializing via comparative advantage, sharing how dating a man made surrogacy clear.NIcholas Drecker @captgouda24: When I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I will have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here: https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/why-my-children-will-not-be-mineCritics mocked it as neo-eugenics or cuckoldry, while some agreed he shouldn’t procreate with his genes; geneticist Razib Khan met him and softened his initial skepticism.His Substack ArticleWhy My Children Will Not Be Mine, published May 23rd on his substack Homo Economicus (over 6K subscribers)“I would like to have kids. I’m quite set on this. I feel that I would be very happy raising them. I think that I would find joy and purpose in helping them grow and learn and do great things. I am filled with a great yearning that is not entirely in my control, the same yearning which I imagine must affect the salmon as they travel up the river or the goose to fly south for the winter. I also have a sense in which it is my duty to procreate – the world becomes richer as there are more people in it, and having more children would therefore make the world better. There is one thing, though – they will not be genetically mine.This does not mean that I would adopt. Rather, I would have someone else, who I consider to be genetically better than me, be the father of the child. I have thought about this a great deal, and not only do I think it is the right thing to do, but it is something which everyone should do. Here is why.”His why (summarized)* “To start, I think we can agree that it is bad to harm your children.”* “We also know that genes matter. They affect life outcomes. A substantial part of the variation in people’s outcomes is due to their genes.”* “If you would take actions which would definitely change your children’s genes for the better, you should also take them for actions which change them for the better in expectation”* He sees choosing someone else’s genes over yours as just an extension of something like gene editing* “They would still yet be your own children. Or else is an adopted child not your own? If someone is left an orphan as a baby, and then is brought up by a family who loves them, whose child are they? Would you love them less for not being your own? Or suppose that you learned that the person who you believed to be your son, whom you raised, was in fact conceived by another man. Would you cast the child out of your life? I would hope you do not. If you are unable to do this because you would only love your children if they were conceived by you, we should regard that as an unadmirable failing, not right and normal.”* He points out that just because ONE person is OK phenotypically, it doesn’t mean their genes are optimal for certain desired outcomes* An extremely valid point* “Further, your child’s outcomes are correlated not only with direct genetic father, but also with their parents. Outcomes are not a first-order Markov variable. If your family is mediocre, then your child will also be more likely to be mediocre. Even if two people’s phenotypes are the same, you should choose the one whose family phenotype is better.* He doesn’t much like his family* Another super valid point* “You might also think that I will relate to them better if they are more like me. I disagree with this. I would expect them to be like my family. I do not particularly care about my family. I do care quite a lot about other people, including those who I have asked. I would rather my children be more like them than like my family.”* He was prompted to think about this after thinking about gay couple reproductive logistics* I came to think of this because I have dated a man before. If we were to have children – and to actually create new children, not simply rearrange who has them – it would have to be through a surrogate. Only one of us could be genetically the father. We would have to choose who. The choice was obvious, though – it should of course be him. The children to come would have a better life if they were more like him, than if they were more like me.He is still open to being the genetic father if his eventual partner refuses to use a sperm donor: “I am unable to convince my partner of this scheme, I would still have kids the old-fashioned way.”The ResponseOn XRichard Hanania: Having kids and seeing how much work it is has made the decision to adopt even more incomprehensible to me. No offense to those who do it, but I couldn’t imagine putting up with all the screaming and crying for someone else’s child.Michael Ebenstein @mebenstein7: “Why not have someone better than you raise them?”Along those lines:* Cruciform Ligament @CruciformLig: “Answer this Nicholas. If you truly love the children that aren’t yours, you’ll let someone that isn’t you raise them.”* And Chris @Alicoh1 responded “The supply of good parents is much more restricted than the supply of good DNA.”* And I heartily agree on that* And I wonder if we don’t talk enough about the difference between good parents and “fit people”Build/Boost @build_boost wrote: “Something has happened to drive a significant degree of Western society into a kind of suicidal cuckery. It is unprecedented, to my knowledge, and utterly bizarre. No civilization has welcomed its enemies inside its gates with open arms while denying what those enemies say they want to do every day. No civilization had men who preferred not to pass down their genes. Something is very sick with our society.”Thomas Pueyo’s RefutationThomas Pueyo, of Uncharted Territories, wrote the following comment:I saw this idea in one of your writings, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I respect and admire you and your ideas enough that I think it’s very important I share how wrong I think you are here.1. Not LindyThis is the least Lindy idea ever. Evolution has operated for billions of years under the force of having your own children. You are going against all these years of a proven mechanic.2. EvidenceExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Usually, in your other essays, you bring it to the table. Here, for a decision that’s so important, your essay is just a series of a few arguments, with no data to back many of the assertions.3. Extremely high stakesEvolution has operated to give you fulfillment out of having children. The more you have, the more fulfillment you get. If you get this idea wrong, you will jeopardize one of the biggest sources of fulfillment you could ever have.4. It’s better for your children if they’re yoursOne key way to optimize the happiness of your children is by loving them more, so if you love them even a bit less, they’re likely to be less happy.Your argument against this is weak: “I like some people more than I like my family” is logical, because you’re a young adult, programmed to actually not love your family as much, so you can go and explore the world. Then you have children, and they are by far the thing you love most in the world. Your parents, siblings, aunts, etc pale in comparison. Of course, that’s what evolution would do.Evidence suggests that if the children are not genetically yours, you’ll love them less. You’ve probably seen data on how the less related a child’s parents are, the more the child is likely to suffer from abuse (physical and sexual). Children from 2 biological parents are 2x less likely to get physical and educational neglect, and 4x less likely to get emotional neglect. (Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS–4), I think it’s chart 5-3. There was a better one but I can’t find it).You won’t abuse your children I assume, but this is very strong evidence that you’ll like them less if they’re not biologically yours. So they’ll be less happy.5. Variance vs Expected ValueA “better person genetically” than you might have a better expected value in the “quality of your child”, but the variance is so high in the children you get that odds are still high your child is worse off with somebody else’s child. Eg, if you get a donor that is 5 IQ points higher than yours, what are the odds that his children would be more intelligent than yours? I’m going to guess it’s closer to 50% than to 100%.6. High barYou are already quite intelligent and bright. Odds are your gene quality is quite good already. Some examples of that include your essays (your thinking is good), your precociousness, your ability to come up with many new ideas (including this one), your success at finding a fitting community, your ability to communicate complex ideas well...Trying to further “improve the pool” has dramatically less potential impact than if other people did it; much less impact than you think it would.7. Multidimensionality of a better parentHow are you going to measure if somebody else is a better parent than you? An IQ test is one measure of many. For example, many high IQ people are worse than you at communication or at being able to rethink what society takes as a given. Will you measure all the candidates across all the dimensions of “good gene quality” that exist? Are you then going to do a weighted average of their quality score? How are you sure you’ll take into account all the dimensions that matter? That you can properly measure the relative importance of each factor?I believe you would have no reliable way to tell whether somebody is actually better than you, so your confidence that you can get somebody better than you to father your children is very low.8. Pool diversityAlong these lines, I don’t think all genetic diversity is equally valuable, but some is. By choosing somebody else, you’d be weighing some factors as more important than others, but how do you know the factors you weigh less are really less important? Maybe in the future they become more important? It’s like a parent optimizing their children for STEM in a world where AI solves science but not taste.There’s value in genetic and idea and diversity pool. Your diversity is unlikely to be the type we want to waste.9. Adverse SelectionIf you were able to find a person that looks so good on paper, and that would accept to be the father of your children, this person would potentially show 2 huge flaws that make him worse than you:- This person would be substantially less humble and more arrogant than you (he would think he’s strictly better than you across all the dimensions that matter)- This person is much less honest than you, as he’s faking his markers of market value to sear more childrenTherefore, you should be especially skeptical of any potential father than might want to sear your children. This is like Groucho saying he wouldn’t join a club that accepts him as a member.10. Danger of Subbconscious Virtue SignalingIt might be that your brain is tricking you to say this because it sounds like the most EA thing to say, which gives you standing in your community. This is very common in young adults as you probably know, and becomes much less true in other settings (different peer group, different age, different brain chemistry...). To be clear, I don’t think you’re being facetious, I think you believe what you say. But this sounds like the type of situation where your brain might have an incentive to lie to you in a way you don’t realize.11. Additional pointsa. The only way in which I think this could make sense is if your essay is geared towards convincing normies to do this with your gene pool, in which case you’d be maximizing your offspring (although making each less happy because they are not hanging out with their biological father). Pretty machiavellan, I don’t think this is trueb. Timing: By the time you have to make this decision, science might be good enough that you can edit your future child’s genome to optimize IQ and whatever other measure of quality you want.Takeaways:Your idea sounds laudable, but it’s not lindy, it doesn’t have enough evidence, it’s unlikely to be actionable, you’d likely make you and your children (both biological and non-biological) less happy and fulfilled, it’d be optimizing for the wrong reasons, the upside is lower than you think, the downside is higher than you think, there are high probabilities of this going awry, and you’re possibly lying to yourself.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] his tweet read Basically, when I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here . I, I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna go through a Substack article.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to be talking about whether people should voluntarily remove themselves from the gene pool. Ooh. Like to become a parent, but with someone else’s genes, even though they could reproduce on their own, like they don’t have fertility problems.Because while we have friends who are very consciously and intentionally choosing to not reproduce genetically for fear of passing on like serious and genuine problems they have, we also personally feel as we’ve discussed on various podcasts, like it would be child abuse for people like us to raise kids who are not genetically ours, just because we’re so.Genetically weird, and we know how to raise ourselves, but no one else [00:01:00] really would, and we wouldn’t really be great for raising other peopleMalcolm Collins: there. Well, there was a friend of ours guy named Maddie, who has a own weird following online who wanted to become a father, and he was very dedicated to this.He’s done a few like podcast interviews on it and stuff. Wanted to become a father, but very explicitly using somebody else’s genes. Mm-hmm. Somebody who was like a, a Nobel Prize winner or something like that. Right. Like some,Simone Collins: I thought it was maybe gonna be multiple other people. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Multiple other men who were ex extremely successful in their fields more so than he was, right?Mm-hmm. And at the time I found this. Just bizarre. I was like, why? Why, why would you cook yourself like that? Right. And I, I now understand it a bit better. If you think that another man is strictly better than you, why not choose those genes? Now at the end of the day, I think this is a bad cultural strategy to use more broadly speaking.Because eventually the selfish genes that don’t [00:02:00] end up wanting to do this just end up dominating the gene pool, you know, if it’s always the father’s choice. Now there’s a strong selective pressure for people to get really disgusted by the idea of raising the child of another person for that intrinsic feeling to win out in any culture that allows this as a choiceSimone Collins: for sure.Malcolm Collins: And I note here a culture that did actually allow this historically for people who don’t know are the Spartans in Spartan culture you. Would, if you felt another guy was just strictly better than you, like a better warrior, a better guy, you would have your wife sleep with him so that you could raise kids that were stronger than you, right?Like, because that’s what your status came from, is the strengths of your kids.Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. Although I think another reason why we’re more moderated in that view of like, well, there’s things about me that are not perfect is now we’re in the first generation of people who can select for and against traits, even complex traits using polygenic risk score analysis, [00:03:00] and we’re.Probably within five to 10 years of even being able to identify traits and then change them within your own embryos. You know, George, well, I I alsoMalcolm Collins: think that there’s a second pathway here that’s gonna be more relevant to a lot of our audience. Mm-hmm. Is, is it virtuous for the, the men who we’re simply not able to secure a partner or the women who were not able to secure a partner that they wanted to breed with and spend their lives with.Can you still live an ethical life in the age of declining fertility rates? I mean, dating markets are really broken. If you are an undesirable man, can you still live a life of meaning was out reproducing? And I’d argue very much so. If, if anything. You not being able to secure a partner might be one of the signs that you shouldn’t have, burden your children with the challenges that you bore because of genetics that you didn’t [00:04:00] choose, by the way.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Continue.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it is, and that’s why I wanted to have this conversation too. Is, is that, is, that’s a real question. And it was brought up on X and discussed at length just yesterday, on March 23rd, this economic student named Nicholas Decker wrote that he would use if he did have children, he would have someone else.Provide the sperm for his child and not him. And his tweet read Basically, when I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here and immediately critics mocked it as either neo eugenics or aldry. I, I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna go through a Substack article.I’m gonna not read it in in its completion, but I’m gonna summarize and, and use key quotes. I’m also gonna read some of the refutations. And I, I kinda like to go through it ‘cause I think he makes a lot of really [00:05:00] salient points and, and more, much more nuanced than what I’ve heard anyone else discuss.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I’ll point out here, people are like, well, so do you literally think that you have the best gene on Earth, Malcolm, that you couldn’t find a single male with better jeans than you?Speaker: No.Well it does.Malcolm Collins: And my answer is well, I mean, yeah, I do. I I actually do.Simone Collins: He does. Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t wanna have kids with anyone and then I met you and I was like, huh,Malcolm Collins: I, I donot,Simone Collins: I’m better go for this.Malcolm Collins: I couldn’t find a better, like, and somebody could be like, Malcolm, how could you say? I’m like, well, you know, I’ve got. You know, degrees, but haveyouSimone Collins: seen meMalcolm Collins: the hardest to get into institutions? I’ve done a lot in terms of business philosophy and multiple fields. I’ve created successful things. I am happy and mentally healthy for what I want to be.Like. Why wouldn’t I want to replicate that? Like, I wouldn’t even trade my life with somebody like Elon’s because, you know, like there’s nobody, [00:06:00] nobody, I do this with Simone, nobody on earth. I trade my life with that I think has a better life than I’ve been able to build for myself. Even though I’m so grateful.You know, I could still hopefully turn reality fabricator into an income source doing VC outreach and stuff like that right now. But yeah. Anyway, continue.Simone Collins: Yeah. So here is his Substack article. It’s called Why My Children Will Not Be Mine. And he published it on his Substack Homo Economicus, which has over six K subscribers.And this is, you know, this is a uni student. You know, he’s doing well. He’s clearly smart people. That’s whatMalcolm Collins: he to really good.Simone Collins: Yeah, so I just, I wanna be clear from the start, like this is not some anon faceless, basement dwelling, unemployed, neat incel who’s miserable and depressed. Like this is someone who you know is in school on their way up, young, precocious, and thoughtful enough to gain a following on substack.Okay, so here we go. He wrote. I would like to have kids. I’m quite set on this. I [00:07:00] feel that I would be very happy raising them. I think I would find joy and purpose in helping them grow and learn to do great things. I’m filled with great yearning that is not entirely in mind control. The same yearning, which I imagine must affect the salmon as they travel up river to G or or the goose who fly south for the winter.I also have a sense in which it is my duty to procreate. The world becomes richer as more, as more people are in it, and having more children would therefore make the world better. There is one thing though. They will not be genetically mine it. It’s such a great opening because you’re like, okay, wow. He just sounds like your classic expansionist.Prenatal is like understands the assignment person.Yeah.And then he is like, but by the way, I’m not myself genetically reproducing. He says, this does not mean that I would adopt, rather I would have someone else who I consider to be genetically better than me, be the father of the child. I have thought about this a great deal, and not only do I think it is the right thing to do, but it is something which [00:08:00] everyone should do, hears why which is, I’m glad he’s making this, this claim.I’m like,Malcolm Collins: okay, everyone needs to do this. Everyone needs to do this. Yeah.Simone Collins: It’s a bold claim and I like, I like it. I like this, I like this guy. So here it more or less summarized we’re, were his points. He wrote to start. I think we can agree that it is bad to harm your children. And I agree, and I I I think this is one of the most basic and simple points that you get, you know, when people choose to not have kids.You, you brought this on a lot.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: A lot of people suffer from very severe depression or other mental illnesses and they would never want to inflict that suffering on their children. And it really is kind of a form of abuse. To, you know, have a child that you know is going to suffer immensely like that.I mean, like, there are perfectly fine children whose parents like, you know, beat them or whatever, you know, is, is subject then to horrible experiences and that sucks. And then there are parents who give everything to their children and their children are still more miserable than those like beaten children or deprived to children because they’ve just been [00:09:00] born with the card stacked against them so much mentally from a suffering standpoint.So,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: Okay. Good point. But something you can address with polygenic risk or selection isMalcolm Collins: actually this is, I, we see this in our kids already. I am a happy, exuberant vitalistic person. Yeah. And it’s very clear in our kids that they are the same way. And I am that way in aSimone Collins: way. Yeah. I didn’t know we had our children, that there’s literally such a thing as euphoric screaming.Malcolm Collins: He’s like, just especially the euphoric screaming before the charge. Like these are like little pics. Like,Simone Collins: like what? They’ve never heard that. Like we don’t, it’s not like we’ve watched. Movies or anything that have this like euphoric battle cry in them. I don’t know where it just like comes, it’s just deep in their, in their donna,Malcolm Collins: in their donna. So, but funny. Yeah, I, if you are a person inclined to perceiving yourself negatively I [00:10:00] can see why you might do this.Simone Collins: Yeah. He also writes, we also know that genes matter, they affect life outcomes. A substantial part of the variation in people’s outcomes is due to their genes. Okay. So he’s setting the, the groundwork here. He wrote, if you would take actions, which you would definitely change your children’s genes for the better, then you should also take them for actions which change them for the better in expectation.He basically sees choosing someone else’s genes over yours as just an extension of something like gene editing. He wrote, they would still be your own children or else is an adopted child, not your own. If someone. Is left an orphan as a baby and then brought up by a family who loves him, whose child are they?Would you love them less for not being your own? Or suppose you learned that the person you believed to be your son whom you raised was in fact conceived by another man. Would you cast that child out of your life? I would hopeMalcolm Collins: yes. Yes,Simone Collins: I would. You, you have that very severe aversion. I would hope you do not if you are unable to do this because you would [00:11:00] only love your own children.If they would be conceived by you, then we would re we would regard that as an unadmirable thing, not right. And normal. Which I mean, I see, I see his point that like, you know, you bring a, a person into your life, you have a very close relationship with them. You, you raise them. Like in general, I don’t, I don’t think we would laud your reaction, which you can’t control as virtuous.Right. It’s just something you can’t control. He points out.Malcolm Collins: I, I think it’s virtuous. I, I think if a child isn’t yours, you should cast it out. Like I, I would hold my kids to the same standards as well. I think it is useful for a society to have this standard because it for prevents paritSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Of the social group by outsiders.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: No,Simone Collins: I mean that’s, that is absolutely true. Just, just so people know how powerful this feeling is in Malcolm, we have a very controlled process whereby we create children. We, we undergo IVF, the medical controls in place just ‘cause they don’t wanna be [00:12:00] sued by IVF clinics to make sure that they don’t mix up embryos or anything, or eggs and sperm, et cetera.Very rigorous. Malcolm still has our kids’, DNA tested ev every time like a paternity test with every kid. ‘cause he’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. He needs to know.Malcolm Collins: I’m not gonna risk it.Simone Collins: Paternity test when you, I, I mean, like, I, I get it. But it’s, it’s still funny. It’s like, I, it’s not even like, could she possibly have slept with someone?DidMalcolm Collins: they make a mistake in the lab? It can happen.Simone Collins: No, and it can, and it, it has happened. So I, I also get that. But anywayMalcolm Collins: this is where when people are like, oh, like, I think like Ben Shapiro did fraternity tests and somebody was like, oh, like that shows he doesn’t trust his wife. It’s like, no.Like,Simone Collins: no. It’s just a very, some people, some men just have extremely strong instincts here.Malcolm Collins: I, I think all men should have this in a cultural group and equal, I think all men should defacto always paternity test their kids.Simone Collins: Yeah. But Nicholas Decker just it’s clear that some men don’t have this instinct and yeah.I mean, it, [00:13:00] it just is. But here’s where it gets, I think more interesting and, and these are arguments that I, I wish more people would make when they think about these things. He points out that just because one person is okay phenotypically, it doesn’t mean their genes are optimal for certain desired outcomes.I mean, what, what I guess maybe he was saying is like, it doesn’t mean their genes are good, but I just don’t think that that there’s anything as good or bad genes. But anyway, optimal per your values. He wrote further, your child’s outcomes are correlated not only with direct par genetic father, but also with your parents outcomes are not a first order markoff variable.If your family is mediocre, then your child will also be likely to be mediocre. Even if two people’s phenotypes are the same, you should choose the one whose family phenotype is better. And I agree. And like when we have our kids date, what we really want them to do is look at the family history. Like, Hey, get out your album.Show me the picture of your grandmother. Like, let me see your mom. How’s she looking?Malcolm Collins: So I was explicitly [00:14:00] told by my parents to do this.Simone Collins: I’m so, but no, I’ve never, I, until I met you, I’d never heard that. Ever.Malcolm Collins: But you heard it from me, right? Yeah. Like, I was like, yeah, I was sold by my parents. Look at their, their mom specifically. The context from my dad was look at their mom to make sure she’s still gonna be attractive when she gets older.Yeah. But I mean that’s, that’s a, a culture of a family saying. You date their family, you need to look at their family. You need to see if their family is good enough. Mm-hmm. And I very explicitly vetted you based on your family their accomplishments. I was impressed with your dad’s ability to you know, pull himself up, sort of starting from scratch very late in life and the, the, and your sister who’s done really well.And I was like, okay. So, so she has successful people in her family. Obviously not at the extent of my family, where like everyone’s a billionaire, super genius. Except for me, somehow the bigSimone Collins: Malcolm, I think you’re doing really well by like, the things we value.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I wouldn’t switch with any of my [00:15:00] siblings or cousins.You know, they, they’re, they have done exceptionally well in terms of their careers and business, but none of them have the public reach that I have which is what I value most. So. You know? Yeah,Simone Collins: yeah. But I, in history,Malcolm Collins: I’mSimone Collins: glad he brought that up though.Malcolm Collins: And I’m basically already there at at least a footnote, which is nice.That’sSimone Collins: a nice feeling. I, I would like, yeah. I, I want, I want your reach to go a lot further. I want at least aMalcolm Collins: few chapters on Malcolm and what happened with thatSimone Collins: thing. Just a, just a couple chapters in all of history. Anyway. I agree. I, I just, that, that, that is a lot of what I am trying to do is just maximize your reach ‘cause you’ve had such a positive impact on everyone’s life.I know who you’ve touched and. I wanna see that happen on a more macro level,Malcolm Collins: it it, it is so rare for somebody to be as unabashedly, arrogant and un humble as I am. And yet still people say I have a positive impact on them. And I think it’s [00:16:00] because I give people an excuse to see themselves that way.Like why, why can’t I just be as satisfied with my, my life and accomplishments as Malcolm is? You can choose to be, anyone can,Simone Collins: but anyway, I, what I think is, is really important to note though, is when people are like, oh, well intelligence that you’re just gonna get reversion to the mean. Okay, but what if you look at the mean, and the mean is, is high in a family.Like you don’t have to worry so much about that reversion. But I, I mean, so you’re right and. We can control for that. So he’s absolutely right. And, and it very well could be that he is exceptional per his family and that he comes from some family of like hyper depressed you know, whatever. Of course.Like just, yeah. Like, and, and he actually writes after this, and this is another thing that you and I talk about a lot, and again, super under-discussed, and I feel very ambivalent about this too, when it comes to encouraging people to have kids is he, he apparently or appears to not really like his [00:17:00] family that much.He’s, he wrote, you might also think that I will relate to them better, as in like the kids that would be genetically mine. If they’re more like me, I disagree with this. I would expect them to be like my family. I do not particularly care about my family. I do care quite a lot about other people, including those who I have asked. I would rather my children be more like them than my family. And here’s the thing, this is something that you and I have only really come to understand having and raising kids over at a minimum of, of six years at this point.You, your partner and, and their family is so much in your kids’ behavior much. And if you don’t like your partner and you don’t like your own family and you don’t like their family, you’re gonna have a tough time. And we, we know, we know people. Whose kids exhibit the characteristics of, of partners and family members they hate and it, they kind of hate their kids.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you don’t like yourself and then you have [00:18:00] kids, you’re not gonna like your kids. Right.Simone Collins: Well, or you don’t like your family. Like you, you, you’re gonna struggle with that a little bit.Malcolm Collins: Or a lot. Well, hold on. I mean, this is different. You can, you can be the way that our kids, and I mean, I already see this.I am not, I, I like my family, but I am different from my family in many ways. Mm-hmm. Those differences I see very starkly into my kids. Perhaps even more exaggerated than the ways I am like my extended family. So it is not as if kids will not inherit the ways that you psychologically differentiate from your greater family.Simone Collins: Yeah. But also your mom and dad are super and are kids.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. My parents are super in the kidsSimone Collins: and my parents too. I, I see it in my parents too. It’s just that like. You’re gonna see it. And I, I’m fond of all of them. And so when I see it, I love, like my late mother, I love seeing her in our children.‘cause I feel closer to her. What if all you wanna do is get away from your parents and then they’re like leering at you through their little children eyes.Malcolm Collins: The urban monoculture, it’s [00:19:00] core tactic. It’s getting you to hate your parents to believe that you have some and many conservatives solve for this that you have some existential beef with people who probably tried to do their best for you.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and, and spent a lot of money and time caring for you. And really your parents have to go quite far. I, I think given the cost of parenting mm-hmm. For you to have a negative emotional context to them yeah. Like your parents did an astronomical amount for you. And so to be like, like if it’s not like regular.Some sexual abuse. I’m like, you should probablySimone Collins: figure, I don’t know. What if they’re a trash person? You know, what if they’re just, you know, they’re, they’re veryMalcolm Collins: even trash people still generally try to be good parents.Simone Collins: Right. But, and actually this was another note that I kind of wanted to think about, and this is something that other people brought up which I’m gonna go through.Some of the responses after we get through the end of this was, you know, there are good, some people said this, again, I don’t believe there are good or bad genes. I [00:20:00] think that there, you know, that the situation and context and people change what’s good or bad for every individual family. Changes over time, changes based on the environment still.They’re like, well, there are good and bad genes, and then there are good and bad parents. And I absolutely agree that there are some people who are like superb genetic specimens, right? Like where they’re, they’re exceptionally smart. They come from high achieving families, but like they’re really bad parents.And then there are people who are like, just. Dumbest light posts, you know, but they’re just the most patient, wonderful parents. Actually, you know, this is another little kerfuffle that came up on X today where Alo was catching heat for tweeting about like she was going through her late mothers, ‘cause her mother died late last year.Okay. And it was rough and it’s, it was sad. She’s now been going through I think some of her notes in personal, personal possessions and is kind of just struck by the fact that her mom just wasn’t, wasn’t very intellectually engaged. Like ELA is amazingly intellectually engaged. And she was like, just, wow.My mom was, [00:21:00] I think she might have even used the term kind of dumb. And then, you know, ex is like, ah but like she also said, no, I’m very fond of my mom. And I loved her and she was a great mom and she was very loving. But you know, through my conversations with her as a kid and now going through all her notes, like it’s really clear that just wasn’t a lot going on.Like, she loved parenting. She was also. In terms of like maybe reversion to the meme or you should look at the family. Her grandmother, she noted, had actually very complex notes and thoughts and poems in multiple languages, whereas like her mom’s notes were just like, beep boop, I’m a human, I guess.Yeah, veryMalcolm Collins: different. Like my parents are super, your parents are very intellectually engaged as well. Maybe sometimes was dumb stuff, but very intellectually engaged nonetheless.Simone Collins: I mean, all of our parents have gone listen, the, the times were different. But my, my point is that I, I think there’s also this issue of there, there being, and I think maybe this could feed the argument being made here, [00:22:00] is that some people are really good parents, but maybe they, they wouldn’t produce the, the most thriving.People genetically, and some people are thriving themselves genetically, but would be terrible parents. And I don’t know, like maybe it’s not the worst thing to try to match really, really good parents with really, really good genes. I guess that’s kind of what happens when you have exceptional and successful men and then just like really kind and loving mothers who like may not be that that successful.But then I feel like it kind of pulls down the average, you know? But what are your thoughts on that? Of like sort of this, this push and pull between good parent versus quote unquote good genes, which again, IMalcolm Collins: have enough kids and you’ll like one of ‘em. That’s what I tell him. No, continue. I wanna hear more.I wanna hear more of this.Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. Here’s actually another very interesting pivot point, which me may explain, and this is important, why he doesn’t have this disgust [00:23:00] reaction to. Having someone else be the sperm donor for kids. He raises, he was prompted to think about this after thinking about gay reproductive logistics because at one point he dated a man.It sounds like he’s bi. He says, I came to think of this because I’ve dated a man before. If we were to have children and to actually create new children, not simply rearrange who has them, it would be through, it would have to be through a surrogate. Only one of us could be genetically the father. We would have to choose who the choice was.Obvious though, it should of course be him. The children to come would have a better life if they were more like him than if they were like me. And also, and interestingly, and, and importantly too he’s still open to being the genetic father. If his eventual partner refuses to use a sperm donor, he wrote, I’m unable to con, oh, if I’m unable to convince my partner of this scheme, I would still have kids the old fashioned way.So. [00:24:00] He just, I think he, he morally believes in this argument. But it’s not like he’s,Malcolm Collins: okay. So one it’s clear he got used to this idea from, it seems like a long-term relationship with another guy where they were talking about having kids and the other guy was just like, I’m genetically better than you.Like, oh,Simone Collins: no, I, I think he came to that conclusion and maybe from love, like, I would be happy to raise just perfect clones of you, Malcolm. I love you that much.Malcolm Collins: Well, we, we will get on that one day, don’t you worry. Oh,Simone Collins: God.Malcolm Collins: I,Simone Collins: I, no, I’m too nervous. Like,Malcolm Collins: I love me that much too, Simone.Simone Collins: Yeah, I know. Where we are with cloning right now is, is I think there’s too much risk of like sudden infant death and, you know, that that is like my deepest Yeah.Is darkest here.Malcolm Collins: AndSimone Collins: so we’re, we’re not doing that until like, you know, it’s 50 years of clone success. I, I’m, I cannot, we’llMalcolm Collins: still be around.Simone Collins: Maybe I, we, you know, both you and I feel like we’re gonna die like in a year. I, I just have this, this, this terrible feeling. Maybe it doesn’t help that like every single day, like if there was some clock on the wall of like, [00:25:00] you know, hours since the last time a child told you, a child told you they wish you wouldn’t die that would be like two hours for me.Now our kids are always like, I love you and I hope you don’t die.Malcolm Collins: I loveSimone Collins: youMalcolm Collins: and I hope you don’t die.Simone Collins: But yeah, I mean, I, yeah, he, he, he was, I think he loved his partner, but also I think he struggles with himself and with his family.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people are like this. Yeah. The urban monoculture specializes in making people hate their families.Yeah. So the people who hate their families in modern society are incredibly large. It’s, it’s such an easy way to remove responsibility from your own flaws, fonts, faults from yourself. Oh, it wasn’t me.Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It was my parents’ fault. And it’s not even just the urban monoculture that does this a lot of cults, like Scientology really focuses on this strategy.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah,Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: All the bad things that you feel and think are because of things. Your parents.Simone Collins: Your parents. How dare they, they ruinMalcolm Collins: every, they accepted you with these Ethans, and now, [00:26:00] well, that’s it, that’s it for you.Simone Collins: Well, I mean, you can also blame Freud. I mean, like, people, it’s just a, it’s a truism for people to like, well, you know, someone needs to go see a therapist and figure out what happened in their childhood to make this happen.Like, there’s just this, this pervasive understanding among some people who are like, Freud pilled, even though he’s not. He’s not a reliable,Malcolm Collins: worse in Freud is young. Young is,Simone Collins: I mean,Malcolm Collins: for people who think they’re not stupid,Simone Collins: but young is like the, the, the, the, the distilled, you know, he’s, he’s the vodka of Freud, you know, like if FreudMalcolm Collins: isSimone Collins: here.No,Malcolm Collins: he makes all of the, the obviously dumb stuff out, but not the substantively dumb stuff out.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Actually, no. Yeah, he’s the young is theMalcolm Collins: he’s, he’s. He’s,Simone Collins: he’s the gin. He’s the gin. And like Freud is maybe like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, at least Freud has some spicy takes, you know, likeSimone Collins: Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Young is, is is just the s sw just the like purified Woo.Without any,Simone Collins: no, with like, pollutants put in. That’s, I [00:27:00] freaking hate gin. It, it’s just like so close to vodka. We’re almost there guys. Like, but then let’s just throw inMalcolm Collins: some gross, I think another problem with young is that a lot of people are unaware when they’re consuming youngian psychology. Or unaware how stupid, like downstream of what they, we have an episode on Jordan Peterson where I point out that a lot of Jordan Peterson has just repackaged young Ian psychology and, yeah.And not good psychological frameworks to use. Another thinker who is very big on young ian psychology and people don’t, she like even wrote her thesis on it, is Erica Co. Kind ofSimone Collins: commissarMalcolm Collins: Commissar. She’s the one who does a lot of, like, if you’re not a good enough parent, like you’re, you, you need to, to spend your kidsSimone Collins: little broken, like broken, you know, if you send your children to daycare, they’ll be traumatized and et cetera, etMalcolm Collins: cetera, and all this stuff.It’s just like not needed. I, I, I understand she’s trying her best. It’s just she’s not an evidence backed person. And yet a lot of conservatives approach her work as if,Simone Collins: well, because it feeds into their aesthetic because they’re [00:28:00] trying to encourage people to raise intact families where there’s a stay at home parent where they wouldn’t need daycare.So they’re like, okay, anything that feeds that and encourages parents to take that plunge and have a homemaker is good. So it’s, it’s one of those things where it serves them well. Let’s talk about the reaction to this modest proposal. Don’t have kids that are genetically yours. In terms of people.Immediately reacting with your kind of your same instinctual reaction. Richard Nia wrote, having kids and seeing how much work it has made the decision to adopt even more incomprehensible to me. No offense to those who do it, but I couldn’t imagine putting up with all the screaming and crying for someone else’s child.In terms of a different line of reaction. We had Michael Stein post, why not have someone Better than You Raise them? And along those lines, first of Form Ligament wrote,Malcolm Collins: that’s actually a fun take. I like that.Simone Collins: I know, I know. Answer this, Nicholas, if you truly love [00:29:00] the children that aren’t yours, you’ll let someone that isn’t you raise them.And then Chris responded, the supply of good parents is much more restricted than the supply of good DNA. And I do really think that that’s an important point to note.Malcolm Collins: I actually, I actually agree with that. The, the point I would make here is, why not? Just sorry, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m processing here.Why not just,if, if the person has superior genes to you, they’re gonna be a superior parent to you. So why don’t they have the kids?Simone Collins: No, I don’t. That’s not true. I just, I I hold very strongly that a lot of people who have quote unquote great genes and are very high achievers are actually crap parents.Malcolm Collins: No, what I’m saying, Simone, and what you’re missing, yeah.Simone Collins: Okay.IsMalcolm Collins: definitionally, you cannot have good genes unless you are a good parent. You might be perceived as having good genes.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: But that perception is incorrect. So anyone who actually [00:30:00] has genes that are. Better than yours would have a stronger drive to be a parent than you. And therefore, and when I say good at genes, I mean genes that are going to replicate themselves, right?Like that are going to be successful in the future. Mm-hmm. And so if you take the genes of somebody who doesn’t want kids, but it’s good at all of these fields and you do want kids, you might be intrinsically taking lesser quality genes in terms of actual replication in future generations because genes are only good if they’re going to continue to self replicate.It doesn’t matter to just have one kid. Right. You want to have a intergenerationally reproductive thing now.Simone Collins: And I guess we, we have to, we have to also stipulate that your definition of good parenting, which you alluded to a little bit earlier, is not what many other people would define as good parenting.‘cause your definition of good parenting is like. Well, did I turn out fine then I’m great. And like if someone had like, cut off your limbs and like taken [00:31:00] out one of your eyes, but like, you know, you became a billionaire, you’d be like, well, they were, they were great parent. Whereas other people would beMalcolm Collins: like, no, I, I’d say, I’d say the hardship helped me.Right? LikeSimone Collins: yeah, case in point, that, but that’s my point is that like most people would be like, no, that wasn’t a good parent. They’re more deontological. Whereas you’re the ultimate consequentialist parent.Malcolm Collins: I think it’s, I I I, I will say that if any of our fans are considering this, I am open to sperm donations because clearly we’re the one case where we’re already trying to have as many kids as possible.We’re also open to embryo donations, but continue.Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, we’ve donated, we’ve donated three and I, I was convinced I anti-natal is Simone, that I should have children. When I saw pictures of you as a kid and was like, oh my god, okay, yeah, our kids areMalcolm Collins: pretty.Simone Collins: Yeah, they are.Malcolm Collins: They’re pretty cute.Simone Collins: So, yeah, I, I just, I, I wanna, I wanna point that out. And I’m making that point independent of your definition of parenting, I think, I think [00:32:00] children deserve love and support, and I know you hate that, and you’re just gonna have to deal with that. You’re just gonna have to deal with your kids getting loved and cared for and, and kept safe.AndMalcolm Collins: most of them I do have one other kid out there.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s true. But I also believe that that child is incredibly loved. Yeah. AndMalcolm Collins: well, I mean, my, my DNA is very loving. Like I, I, our kids run up and randomly hug us, and I don’t think that’s you.Simone Collins: Oh dude. Our kids, I had a problem taking ‘em to the graveyard on on Sunday because on our walk, our kids just kept running up and hugging strangers.And they’re like, oh, okay. It’s like, I’m sorry. And they’re like, it’s okay. They’re just so excited.Malcolm Collins: They think that’s the normal reaction to seeing someone is running up for real.Simone Collins: And like, unfortunately, like they’re, they’re, you know, right at like, their heads come in right at your hips. And it’s just not the best thing for us to have our kids doing that to strangers.‘cause also they, they sort of [00:33:00] tackle hug anyway, I don’t know how to deal with this. We can’t go out it in public. But they’re so sweet and I love them. So Bill Boost wrote. Something has happened to drive a significant degree of Western society into a kind of suicidal kdry. It is unprecedented to my knowledge and utterly bizarre.No civilization has welcomed enemies inside its gates with open arms while denying what those enemies say they want to do every day. No civilization had men who preferred not to pass down their genes. Something is very sick with our society, and I think this is a associated with, with certain racial undertones.Your broader point minus the racial undertones about the urban monoculture. Just creating people who pathologically hate themselves when in the absence of that culture, they wouldn’t.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: The, there was a more structured refutation on Substack actually in a comment. Because Substack like has this [00:34:00] vibrant, thoughtful community still.I thought it was gonna be very ephemeral and it really is holding strong. Thomas Poeo, I don’t know how to pronounce his last name. I’m so sorry. But he has his own podcast, or sorry, Substack that I’ve heard of before called Uncharted Territories. Wrote the following comment as a response to this essay by Nicholas.He wrote, I saw this idea of your writings and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I respect and admire you and your ideas enough that I think it’s very important to share how wrong I think you are here. And then he numbered out a series of points starting with one that you will immediately find.It makes you bristle because we did a whole episode on how you hate this, but he calls it one, not Lindy. This is the least Lindy idea ever. Evolution has operated for billions of years under the force of having your own children. You are going against all these years of a proven mechanic.Malcolm Collins: See our episode on d Lindy is, is the, the dumbest concept ever.It is, it’s just a [00:35:00] stupid concept. It’s, it’s, it’s wrong. Even the very term was mis coined. It’s supposed to mean that older ideas that are shared more often, break faster. That was what the original concept was, and the person who wrote the book on it, who is a pathological liar, see our other episode on Elle eb that coined the term just bad all around pseudo intellectual term.But even if you’re saying it’s anti, I pointed out this was common in Spartan society. This was common in some parts of Roman society. Mm-hmm. This has been common throughout human history. Mm-hmm. To it was actually. In I think in pre-Islamic society they might even ban this in Islam because it was so common.OhSimone Collins: really?Malcolm Collins: Wow. So it’s one of the forms of, of marriage that is banned because it’s like 14 forms are banned or something. But yeah, you would, which shows that it must have been practiced widely in the region.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. If you had toMalcolm Collins: make a rule against it, white sleep was the village chief so that you could have a kid that was like technically the village chiefsSimone Collins: kid.Oh, oh, oh yeah. ‘cause I would’ve, and well, and also come to think of it, you, you had this Absolutely, [00:36:00] and at least the Tudor court because you would have these, these noble families essentially horing out their daughters to be mistresses of kings, to have b*****d sons to get privileges and access, so, oh gosh.Yeah. Actually, and these were married women whose husbands would be sent off to the countryside.Malcolm Collins: No, but I, I mean this is what I expect from the type of person who’d use the term anti lending is, is immediately draw out ideas that show he doesn’t have a lot of historicSimone Collins: knowledge. I, I know you’d come at ‘em, but he makes other points too.So I shall proceed. Two evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Usually in your other essays, you bring it to the table here for a decision that’s so important. Your essay is just a series of a few arguments with no data to back many of the assertions three.Malcolm Collins: WhatSimone Collins: evidence?Malcolm Collins: No. Hold on.This guy’s aard. I’m, I’m gonna say that right now. What evidence other than genetics? Genetics is huge. Genetics is everything. I knowSimone Collins: theseMalcolm Collins: argument. ISimone Collins: knowMalcolm Collins: based on his, his argument is that genes influence character and I think I can find [00:37:00] better genes. Yeah. That is not an, an article that needs any more evidence unless you lack a knowledge of basic science.Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m glad you respect this guy ‘cause I respect him too. And I, I really appreciate that he put this argument out there because it’s a very thoughtful one. And I think people should be allowed. You canMalcolm Collins: bring my kids. That’s why I respect him. Okay.Simone Collins: Oh, great. Thanks. I, I actually would love for him to consider apologetic risk or selection.‘cause I feel like maybe there’s something in there that he, he could maybe feel more comfortable about if he did PGP. But anyway, this ultimately comes down to the partner that he’s with because that’s,Malcolm Collins: I wanna hear more argument. I wanna hear moreSimone Collins: badMalcolm Collins: arguments.Simone Collins: Keep going. Three extremely high stakes.Evolution is operated to give you fulfillment out of having children. The more you have, the more fulfillment you get. If you get this idea wrong, you’ll jeopardize one of the biggest sources of fulfillment you could ever have now that you would probably agree with. PeopleMalcolm Collins: have fulfillment from raising adopted kids, even people who have had aSimone Collins: bunch of their own kids.It’s true. It’s true. And in fact, when you see, like, where I see adopted kids the most in just like in the wild, is very prenatal as families [00:38:00] who have a lot of kids, like you’ll see like eight kid family and like two of them. Look different. And it turns out that they hired like, or they, they adopted siblings that they fostered or something like that.And it’s incredibly beautiful and wonderful that they did it. And they clearly did it because they love children and love giving people good lives and love parenting. And I think it’s so beautiful. And while we would be terrible adoptive parents, I think it’s beautiful that people can recognize when they are good adoptive parents.‘cause there are kids out there who really need it, really need it. ‘cause there are also really bad parents out there. I just, I don’t know if you saw like the Aspen Gold thing recently with like a drug addicted mother who was found like chained inside a building. And like, then she’s like, yeah, I have a 1-year-old daughter.And I was just like, oh God. And I just stopped watching the video then because just like the fact that, that there are people who are so unfit to be parents not, not necessarily genetically, but just through their life circumstances that they could, they could have children and possibly put them in such dangerous, terrible scenarios.Makes me devastated and sad, and the fact that there are [00:39:00] families willing to adopt children out of these dangerous and terrible scenarios makes me so grateful. So anyway, I agree with you. Okay. Right, it four, it’s better for your children if they’re yours, and. I think the evidence is in favor of this.He wrote, one key way to optimize the happiness of your children is by loving them more. So if you love them even a bit less, they’re likely to be less happy. Your argument against this is weak. Quote, I have some people more, or I, I like some people more than I like my family. And quote is logical because you’re a young adult programmed to actually not love your family as much, so you can go and explore the world.Then you have children and they are by far the the thing you love most in the world. Your parents, siblings on, et cetera, pale in comparison. Of course, that’s what evolution would do. Evidence suggests that if the children are not genetically yours, you’ll love them less. You’ve probably seen data on how the less related to child’s parents are, the more the child is likely to suffer from abuse, physical and sexual.This isMalcolm Collins: all true. [00:40:00]Simone Collins: Yeah, it is. Children from two, biological parents are two times less likely to get physical and educational neglect and are four times less likely to get emotional neglect. Fourth natural incident study of child abuse and neglect, NIS four, I think it is chart five dash three. There was a better one, but I can’t find it.You won’t abuse your children, I assume, but this is very strong evidence that you’ll like them less if they’re not biologically yours, so they’ll be less happy. And that is, I think, a valid point, but also think it’s less applicable to him.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and you’ll, you’ll notice this in your kids are just you, like they are you.They’ll have all your quirks, they have all of your personality,Simone Collins: but also if you hate you, don’t you think that, I mean, I think that there, there are some parents who are terrible cruel parents toward their children because they see what they hate in themselves, in their children, and then lash out at it.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. SoSimone Collins: it’s a double-edged sword, you know? I, I think that both of them have valid points,Malcolm Collins: I think. No, but I think it is. No, I don’t think both of them have valid points.Simone Collins: No,Malcolm Collins: I think the first one [00:41:00] has valid points. Stick one has no valid points. His arguments are, are, are, are, are fake and gay as they say.They are notSimone Collins: Team Nicholas go, Malcolm. Go. I love it. I love it.Malcolm Collins: No. Look, if you,Simone Collins: I’m team Nicholas too. Don’t worry.Malcolm Collins: I, I, I think the biggest accurate point he makes is that at this stage of this person’s life, their perception of their family and their ancestors mm-hmm. Is. Biologically weighted against it to try to get them to leave the nest.Because same, yeah.Simone Collins: You’re, you’re in phase, like of course you’re gonna not like your family ‘cause that’s what you’re supposed to be feeling right now. That’s all.Malcolm Collins: And you’ve been raised in a society that tells you it’s virtuous to not be proud of your own ancestry and people. So you have that secondary issue as well.I mean, who’s to bet that this person who he says he likes more than himself is a different race. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, he might be one of these, you know, self hating white people who sees a non-white person and is just like, well, my genes as a whatever are not good.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Like my inherent white [00:42:00] guilt.Something, something. I don’t think so, and I say this because I don’t know why, but he follows us on Nicholas, the one who posted the, the substack. Not, not the reputation, the actual argument follows us on X. And maybe it’s a hate follow. It could be, but like typically if someone follows us on X, they’re not that type of person.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You’re not that cuck. Yeah, because we’re good at breaking the cuck storm. Like people start to watch us out of hatred. They’re like, oh, I’ve heard that you guys are evil. And then they watch it and they go, oh, oh, this makes a lot of sense.Simone Collins: I, I have no idea. I can’t model all the people. I’m just, the people judge us are cool, are cool.So I like them. Anyway, let’s keep going through is arguments though, five variance versus expected value, a quote, better person, genetically end quote. Then you might have a better expected value in the quality of your child, but the variance is so high in the children, you get that odds are still high, your child is worse off with somebody else’s child.For example, if you get a donor that is five IQ points higher than yours, what are the odds that as children [00:43:00] would be more intelligent than you? I’m going to guess it’s closer to 50% than 100%.Malcolm Collins: That’s the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard.Simone Collins: I mean,Malcolm Collins: but there’s stillSimone Collins: variants.Malcolm Collins: ISimone Collins: guaranteeMalcolm Collins: the odds are still higher.Simone Collins: That’s true.Malcolm Collins: It doesn’t matter that there’s no guarantee. The point is the odds. Mm-hmm. WhatSpeaker 3: This is a bit like a Jehovah’s Witness telling somebody, well, can you guarantee the blood transfusion will save my child? And you’re like, well, I mean, the odds are it will save your child. And they’re like, ah, if you can’t guarantee it, then how dare you suggest I use it. It’s like, well, what the, like how, how can a person, like a sentient human being be this stupid?I.Simone Collins: also, if he selected someone else’s genes and did polygenic risk course selection, you can also control for that more.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is the no bad argument. Continue.Simone Collins: Okay. Next high bar. You are already quite intelligent and bright.Odds are your gene quality is quite good already. Some examples of that include your essays, your [00:44:00] thinking is good, your precocious, your ability to come up with many new ideas, including this one. Your success at finding a fitting community and your ability to communicate complex ideas well, trying to further improve the pool has dramatically less potential impact than if other people did it much less impact than you think it would.I mean, I, I agree that Nicholas seems to be like a prettyMalcolm Collins: i’d, I’d push, I’d say that. As somebody who is not Nicholas, you cannot easily model or, or your, your modeling of Nicholas’s self-perception is intrinsically less than Nicholas’s own modeling of his self perception.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. You know your self best.That is absolutely true. Yeah. He knows,Malcolm Collins: if Nicholas knows he wouldn’t like raising a kid with his personality quirks thenSimone Collins: it’s insane. By the way, all these things that I even thought were just like behavioral things I picked up from nurture turned out to be nature, like weird, annoying stuff I do with my hands.Like I hold stuff [00:45:00] funny to like not touch it with like the pads of my fingers, but instead like the ends up like, like a retard. One of our kids does it and he never saw me do it. ‘cause I try to hide it. I’m very ashamed of it and I’m like, oh God, that was genetic. Like it’s a sensory issue. So just, yeah, the, the, the profundity with which things that you might hate about yourself will show up in your kids is Val, it’s valid.It’s very valid. I still love toasty. I love him so much. He, he, flip side of that is, is when you see this in your kids and maybe you hated it in yourself for the first time because of this overwhelming love you have for them, you will maybe for the first time give yourself grace. And that has been really transformative for me in terms of self-acceptance is someone who deeply hates themselves.So counterpoint for Nick there, whichMalcolm Collins: okay,Simone Collins: is important. Okay, let’s go to another point. Multi-dimensionality of a better parent. How are you going to measure if somebody else is a better parent than you? An IQ test is one measure for of many. For example many [00:46:00] I. High IQ people are worse than you at communication or at being able to rethink what society takes as given.Will you measure the candidates across all the dimensions of good gene quality that exist? Are you then going to do a weighted average of their quality score? How will, how are you sure you’ll take into account all the dimensions that matter, that you can properly measure the relative importance of each factor?I believe you would have no reliable way to tell whether somebody is actually better than you, so your confidence that you can get somebody better than you to father your children is very low. So I disagree because like if we had to choose between cloning me or cloning you, both you and I would decide it’s clearly going to be you, Malcolm.And I think he depends on onlyMalcolm Collins: both. I mean,Simone Collins: sure. IfMalcolm Collins: I had to build an entire society, I would want them to be Simone’s. If I had to add a few, a more exceptional people to our society, I would choose Malcolm’s.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, yeah. It’s like the, the, the, the farmer versus the king. [00:47:00] Like you need both. But if we could only clone one child and we knew that they wouldn’t die in infancy, then we would clone you.And, and, and I think this is what Nicholas experienced with his partner too. Like when he just thought intuitively about like, well, if we decided to have a kid together, well, obviously we use his sperm. Like he didn’t need to think about it. And I think it’s enough to allow someone’s intuition to be like, nah, we know.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: You know, I, I have no qualms about the fact that I would choose you Malcolm. And I think I have no qualmsMalcolm Collins: about that either. I would think it would be very strange.Simone Collins: That’s the thing. Yeah. I, I think, I think that Thomas PO’s overthinking this. Okay. Eight pool diversity. Along these lines. I don’t think all genetic diversity is equally valuable, but some is.By choosing somebody else, you’ll be weighing some factors as more important than others. But how do you know those factors you weigh are really less important? Maybe in the future they become more important like a parent optimizing their children in stem. In a world where AI solves science but not taste, there is value in genetic and idea diversity pool.Your diversity is unlikely to be the type we want to [00:48:00] waste. I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: Only, only if this argument only works if tons of people are doing what he’s suggesting here.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: If it’sSimone Collins: just, and he’s a unique,Malcolm Collins: this is a, this is a completely invalid argument. Continue.Simone Collins: Yeah. Nine. Adverse selection. If you are able to find a person that looks so good on paper and that would accept to be the father of your children, this person would potentially show two huge flaws that make him worse than you.One, this person would be substantially less humble and more arrogant than you. He would think he’s strictly better than you across all the dimensions that matter. He preemptively insulted you. Him.Malcolm Collins: No, I, yeah. This is not bad. I feel this way about my parents all the time.Simone Collins: Yeah.ThatMalcolm Collins: I am strictly better than them in every dimension and they treat me the same way.Like this is actually one of the things that other people have noted about my relationship with especially my dad that they see as very odd. Like my stepmother has, has noted this before, that like he genuinely seems to like respect and even [00:49:00] fear my opinion. And I appreciate that he raised me knowing that I could be better than authority figures in my life, just like intuitively by never demanding that like I am the, the head of this household and everybody in the household knows less than me.He is, you know.Simone Collins: Two to con to continue with Thomas PO’s. 0.2, the person is much less honest than you as he’s faking his markers of market value to he wrote then might want to sear your children, but I think he meant to write that might want to sire your children.This is like Groucho saying he wouldn’t want to join a club that accepts him as a member. Now, you and I in, in a member of paid subscribers only episode, interviewed a woman who, who went through the process of getting a known sperm donor through a Facebook group. Largely because in many cases working through a sperm bank involves working with pathological liar sperm, because you actually get accepted by a sperm bank.[00:50:00] You kind of have to, like, if you’re like, well, my grandmother died once, they’re like, oh, she died. Like, of what? Yes. Okay, you’re out. You know, like if you’re, if you’re honest. In any way you, I diagnos outMalcolm Collins: diagnosed with AED as a kid. You are out.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s like, are you kidding me? It’s so, you are, I I, I totally get that.He’s right about that. But this is not, that’s not what Nicholas is, is describing. Nicholas is describing what’s insinuated in, in his substack essay is that he would choose like a known friend, you know, someone he’s very close with, who he’s lived around, who he understands behaviorally very well. Like it’s a known donor situation or like.Possibly a, a gay male partner who he like literally is living his entire life with. So anyway. Yeah. 10 Danger of subconscious virtue signaling. What it might be that your brain is tricking you to say this because it sounds like the most EA thing you can say Yes. Which gives you Yes, I agree with communityMalcolm Collins: only.Good argument.Simone Collins: Okay, this is very, yes, because we talked about in another episode, this, this new preponderance of [00:51:00] young men in the UK just donating their kidneys to strangers. And I think this is like this hyper stimuli of like, I’m an effective altruist, take my organs. It’s just horrible. This is the most common in young adults, as you probably know, and becomes much less true in other settings.Example per different peer group, different age, different brain chemistry. To be clear, I don’t think you’re being face facetious. I think you’re, you believe what you say, but this sounds like the type of situation your brain might have an incentive to lie to you in a way you don’t realize. Okay. So you agree with that point?I agree with that point, yeah. It is a genuine risk and it’s, what’s great is that this is not an imminent thing. And because he put that idea out there, because he tweeted this and he put this on substack, he’s able to consider people’s various arguments and actually think deeply about this leading up to him eventually maybe making this decision with a partner.And I love that. And this is why I wish people had put their hot takes online. Everyone’s so afraid of being criticized and the fact that this is a young man and that he is not afraid of putting out ideas that might get [00:52:00] criticized and might get ridiculed and even called like a coupled is just so great.Can’t people do that? Like can’t we have just discourse about ideas for once without being shamed?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so I, I need to talk about why intergenerationally this as a cultural strategy is very bad. And I, and I mentioned at the beginning, but for people who don’t quite grok what I am saying here, suppose you have a society where it is normal for every male to either decide to sire another male’s kids who they think is better than them, or decide that they have the best genetic quality of among the partners they can get, and they’re going to sire their own kids.Okay? Now within some people of this society, there is a visceral disgust at the idea of raising somebody else’s kids. Now you have created eight. Extremely strong selective pressure for that visceral disgust, if this is ever normalized to become very common because every male who gets selected who has this now refuses to do it for their own kids.Mm-hmm. And this is why you just simply [00:53:00] shouldn’t do this. I’ve actually seen this in the children of many, like I’ve met multiple ISTs people who want to have lots of kids mm-hmm. Who are born from like mass sperm donors.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: The idea that this is a her thing, this I wanna have just tons of kids.Yeah. Is, is pretty born out in the evidence. And so you, you’re, you’re actually creating a social construct that can’t survive in the long run. What you really need from kids, like the most valuable trait to pass on to the next generation is wanting to be a father while still being high income and high intelligence.Mm-hmm. If you are those things, which it appears you are, you want to be a father and you are high intellect that is an extremely rare genetic phenomenon in the current population. Um mm-hmm. Much rarer than phenomenon associated with just general intelligence or career success or anything like that.[00:54:00]Mm-hmm. And as such that, that’s what I think he’s fundamentally missing in all of this.Simone Collins: Well maybe this kind of dove dovetails with PO’s last point, titled 11 additional points. There, there are two. The only way in which I think this could make sense if is if your essay is geared towards convincing normies to do this with your gene pool, in which case you’d be maximizing your offspring, although making each less happy because they’re not hanging out with their biological father.Pretty Machiavellian, I don’t think this is true. B, timing. By the time you have to make this decision, science might be good enough that you can edit your future child’s genome, optimizing IQ and whatever other measure of quality you want, which is very true. Takeaways. Your idea sounds laudable, but it’s not.Lindy. Oh, Malcolm’s already shaking with rage. It doesn’t have enough evidence. It is unlikely to be actionable. You’d likely make you and your children both biological and non-biological, less happy and fulfilled and it would be optimizing for the wrong reasons. The [00:55:00] upside is lower than you think. The downside is higher than you think, and there are high probabilities that of this going awry and you’re possibly lying to yourself.So he was just categorically against this, but I think where you’re coming out of this is like. Hey, people are capable of making their own judgements of what’s best. Maybe Nicholas is, is doingMalcolm Collins: what’sSimone Collins: best for him.Malcolm Collins: Right. But, but generally speaking, I think it’s a bad idea. Yeah. And generally speaking, I think it’s a bad idea because it’s not an intergenerationally stable idea.Mm-hmm. And he is massively underestimating the rareness of wanting to be a father and being intellectually engaged.Simone Collins: Yeah. He’s already showing so many signs of like, you should be having all, and just that opening paragraph of him being like, I really wanna have kids. I wanna raise kids. Like I, I feel this deep desire to do.It’s like, oh myMalcolm Collins: genetic.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’sMalcolm Collins: genetic.Simone Collins: This is the sign. And if youMalcolm Collins: take Gene for somebody who doesn’t have that desireSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Then you are going to create children who are not useful to the next generation. Mm-hmm. As to [00:56:00] what’s causing this. I think we’re actually learning from the beginning.‘cause this came from a gay partner in deciding which of them would have kids. This may also have an element of a, a, a genuine sexual fantasy tied to it. And I would not risk your lifetime, which you’re gonna have to spend with this other person as part of an arousal pathway. If, if that is polluting your decision.You and I even say this for spouses,Simone Collins: right? So like, yeah, people on X were, were ridiculing. But what you’re saying is like, look, I don’t care if that’s what it is, but don’t do stuff because it feels good.Malcolm Collins: I say this was marriage. I’m like, don’t marry someone because the sex is good, right? Mm-hmm.Sex, arousal, compatibility. This is of all the differences I have with ala, the biggest one I have for her, like partner survey, it’s a bunch of things to see if they’re compatible with her in terms of her sexual proclivities. And I’m like, this is nothing to do with who you marry.Simone Collins: Marriage is a business contract.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like sexual proclivities. You what? That, that has, once you [00:57:00] got six kids, you’re not gonna care how dummy they are. You know, like, this stuff is not relevant. So I don’t, I I find that to be, by the way, people are wondering why I think anti Lindy is, is as a concept, is so stupid is what anti Lindy does, is it takes something that is obviously true, that in an environment.EG, the historic environment of let’s say like the middle Ages or the 1950s or whatever, where not much is changing entities or ideas or concepts or things that have outcompeted other things in the past was in the stable environment. They are likely to outcompete other things in the future.Mm-hmm. And it does this by looking at the historical record, but if you look at the modern record. We have not seen this trend and that is because we are no longer in a stable environment. So I can’t trust the fact that an idea out competed something in the 1950s to measure or predict whether or not it’s gonna out predict [00:58:00] something in 2030 when a, we have whatever AI economy we have then or whatSimone Collins: Oh, I know, I know.Counter arguments people have may do that is go to a Walmart. Most of the things that are on the shelves have probably been there for five plus years,Speaker 4: I wish I had had time to respond to this here, but the point of the argument I always make on this is if a society is stable, then things will stay the same. So for the past five years or so, things have been about stable in regards to food consumption. So things that were winning five years ago continue to win today, but if you go to a Walmart.Almost nothing on the shelves would’ve existed in its same form 50 years ago. So that’s the point I’m making is it’s not that, uh, you know, every, everything necessarily be there because it wasn’t there two year, three years ago. It’s, it was in an existing environmental context.Simone Collins: But this, I’m really glad we had this conversation ‘cause I thought it was a really [00:59:00] great argument he put out there.I really like his thought provoking points. So thanks for talking about them with me andMalcolm Collins: ISimone Collins: love you.Malcolm Collins: I love you to Simone. I have a spectacular day and what are we doing for dinner?Simone Collins: The, the chili with sun bottle ole and hoisin sauce and that was pretty good. Shishito peppers. Do you want me to add like MSG to it tonight?Would you like me to serve it like sloppy joe’s on Hawaiian buns?Malcolm Collins: No. You could serve it on rice, but I’m gonna bring my chips down for it too, because I might want some on chips.Simone Collins: Ooh, smart. I like that. Okay. I love you. Bye.Malcolm Collins: Bye.Speaker 5: So, where are you? Up here? Where, where is that? Go up the steps and climb on the car. This, why did you wanna go up there? ‘cause I, I guess I love being high pee. Why do you like being high? What if you fall? I won’t fall. What makes you say that?[01:00:00]Speaker 6: Sometimes when these are not here, I’ll fall and sometimes when these are here, I’ll not fall. So the railing is why you won’t fall. Yeah. And instead, this is not what I wanna fall. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Did you know that giving men extra testosterone can make weakly affiliated Democrats shift conservative? In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins break down a 2025 study showing testosterone administration caused a “red shift” in political preferences—plus what it reveals about conservatism, declining T levels in modern men, AI attitudes, social vigilance, punishment of bad actors, risk-taking, and why high-testosterone mindsets align with enforcement, competition, and opportunity.They explore how testosterone isn’t just “rage”—it’s strategic dominance calibration, reduced performative niceness (without killing real benevolence), increased willingness to punish unfairness, and comfort with confrontation and disruption. From immigrant crises and benefit fraud to why low-T societies might fear AI, this conversation reframes conservatism as partly hormonal—and asks whether we should be subsidizing testosterone for the masses.Featuring kid interruptions, roid rage myths, soul debates, and plenty of Based Camp chaos. If you’re high-T (or want to be), this one’s for you.Show NotesIn 2025, a group of researchers found that testosterone administration caused democrats to shift in a more conservative direction.This reveals a lot about conservatism and modern leftists and when I dug deeper into the effects of higher levels of testosterone in both men and women, I feel like I came away with a better understanding of the left, the right, and society in general.Also, now whenever I hear about people taking testosterone supplementation, I am going to think “they’re just taking their conservative pills”The ResearchIn their paper, titled “Testosterone Administration Induces a Red Shift in Democrats”, these researchers took 136 “healthy males,” measured the strength of their political affiliation and their basal testosterone, gave them synthetic testosterone or a placebo, and then checked to see if their affiliation changed.They found:* That more weakly affiliated democrats had 19% higher basal testosterone than those who identified strongly with the party* That “When weakly affiliated Democrats received additional testosterone, the strength of their party affiliation fell by 12% (p = 0.01), and they reported 45% warmer feelings towards Republican candidates for president (p They also found that “Testosterone administration did not affect political preferences for strongly affiliated Democrats or strong or weak Republicans.”In short, their results demonstrate that testosterone induces a “red shift” among weakly affiliated Democrats, providing evidence that testosterone affects political preferences.Hmm.. is Testosterone Changing?Across many industrialized populations, average basal testosterone levels in men appear to be drifting downward over time, while data for women are sparse and less clear but do not show a strong, consistent upward trend.Just a note:* Typical female testosterone levels are far lower than male levels (roughly 10–20‑fold lower)* In both sexes, testosterone naturally declines with age within an individual, with an average drop of about 1% per year in adult men and a gradual decline in women that accelerates around menopause* So as populations age, their testosterone will dropIn men:* Several large cohort and lab‑database studies from the U.S., Europe, and Israel report an age‑independent secular decline in total testosterone in men, after adjusting for age and often for BMI and other factors.* For example, a widely cited Massachusetts study found that men of the same age in the early 2000s had substantially lower mean testosterone than men of the same age in the late 1980s, and this drop was not fully explained by obesity or other measured health and lifestyle changes.* A large Israeli health‑system analysis (over 100,000 men, 2006–2019) likewise found a significant, prominent decline in testosterone across most age groups, again largely independent of BMI.* A newer analysis of “healthy” men has also reported progressive decreases in both testosterone and LH over recent decades, suggesting a true change in hypothalamic‑pituitary‑gonadal function rather than just obesity or assay artifacts.If More Testosterone Correlates with Conservatism, What Might That Say About Conservatism?In other words, what do increases in testosterone change about views and behavior?Across lab and real-world studies, higher or experimentally raised testosterone is less “rage hormone” and more “status and dominance calibration”: it pushes behavior in whatever way seems best to gain or protect status in that situation (which can be aggressive, but can also be generous or prosocial).Key Behavioral ChangesAggression and conflict response* Higher testosterone is linked to greater reactive aggression, especially when people feel provoked, treated unfairly, or their status is threatened, rather than indiscriminate hostility.* In experiments like ultimatum games, testosterone increases costly punishment of unfair offers, even when it doesn’t improve payoff, consistent with defending status or enforcing norms.Risk-taking and competition* Elevated testosterone is associated with more willingness to take financial and social risks and to enter competitive situations.* In trading and lab tasks, higher testosterone correlates with riskier bids and more optimistic expectations about outcomes, mediated by increased confidence rather than simple recklessness.* Randomized trials show that testosterone can increase willingness to compete, although effects depend on cortisol levels and context (who the opponent is, prior wins/losses).Trust, vigilance, and social reading* Single-dose testosterone in women reduced interpersonal trust, particularly in people who are naturally very trusting, interpreted as increased social vigilance for exploitation in competitive environments.* It tends to put people in a more defensive, “scan for threats/opportunists” mode, which is adaptive for dominance but can strain cooperative relationships if chronic.* Some studies find impaired cognitive empathy and reduced “strategic” or feigned prosociality under testosterone, meaning people may care less about managing how cooperative they look to others and more about direct payoff or status* OMG TESTOSTERONE REDUCES PERFORMATIVE NICENESSBUT IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY REDUCE ACTUAL BENEVOLENCE!!!Prosocial and status-enhancing behavior* Importantly, testosterone can also increase generosity when generosity enhances status. In bargaining games, men given testosterone punished unfairness more but were not less generous when offers were high.* Other work shows testosterone can eliminate strategic prosociality (acting nice just for image) but not genuine prosocial motives, reinforcing the idea that the hormone tunes behavior to real, not performative, status benefits.Cognitive style and decision-making* Testosterone administration makes men more likely to go with gut impulses and less likely to engage in cognitive reflection, leading to more errors on trick problems where the intuitive answer is wrong, even though basic math ability is unchanged.* This seems to operate through increased confidence and reduced self-doubt, which can be an advantage in some leadership/competitive settings but a liability when careful checking is needed.​Mood and personality correlates* Observationally, higher testosterone has been linked with traits like dominance, lower punishment sensitivity (less fear of negative consequences), more approach behavior, and in some cases irritability or uncharacteristic aggression, particularly at supraphysiologic doses (e.g., heavy anabolic steroid use).How this changes views* Other people: seen a bit more as competitors or potential threats to status, so you may feel less automatically trusting and more scrutinizing of others’ motives.* Fairness and respect: slights, disrespect, or unfair treatment feel more salient and more worth confronting or punishing, even at personal cost.* Risk and opportunity: downside risk feels less scary and upside feels more attainable, so risky choices can look more reasonable and attractive.* Self-view: stronger internal sense of certainty and correctness; more confidence and less second-guessing.​This explains why Republicans are more comfortable doing things like:* Enforcing immigration policy* Enforcing laws* Supporting capitalismEpisode Transcript This is a public episode. 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In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dissect Iran’s baffling wartime decisions in 2026 — from missile strikes on closest allies like Qatar (hitting the massive Ras Laffan LNG facility) to attacks on UAE, Saudi Arabia, and others — while seemingly ignoring Israel and the US in many cases.What happens when a regime’s “mosaic defense” strategy fractures into regional warlords and fiefdoms vying for power? The Collins argue Iran’s centralized control has collapsed, turning IRGC factions into competing hardliners who bomb expensive targets for headlines and internal legitimacy rather than coherent geopolitics.They cover:* Israel’s strike on the shared South Pars gas field and Iran’s bizarre retaliation against Qatar* The emerging Cold War between Saudi Arabia (centralized states) and UAE (maritime empire/proxies)* Why this chaos benefits US interests long-term (isolating Iran, hurting China/Europe more via Strait of Hormuz issues)* Assassination plots against Trump, nuclear brinkmanship, and why nation-building isn’t the goal* Low-casualty US strategy using vintage B-52s to clear old munitionsA wild ride through Middle East power vacuums, proxy wars, and why Iran’s self-sabotage might be the biggest geopolitical gift the US never expected.Based Camp - What was Iran thinking when bombing its neighbors_Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] What this suggests to me is that the people who are at the regional heads of Iran’s mosaic defense strategy have entirely regionalized their control already.Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Oh, that would be interesting. So it’s, it’s like, it. It’s descending into fiefdoms.Malcolm Collins: But what’s important is to these individuals who are playing this game, and you can see this in the president’s reaction here, they actually don’t particularly care about America or Israel or Iran’s long-term geopolitical future.Simone Collins: Sure. Why would they? Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They are vying to be the top dog of the warlords. Mm-hmm.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be doing a, a series of updates on what’s happening with Iran right now.[00:01:00] And this situation is absolutely crazy in how it’s setting up the future geopolitics of the Middle East. Iran has been making decisions which appear completely baffling from an outside perspective, which is what we’re going to start with to try to understand why they’re making the decisions they’re making.But we’re also seeing the set of a new Cold War throughout the Middle East, between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Oh,Simone Collins: what? Wow. I haven’t heard anything about this.Malcolm Collins: Yes, it is very, and, and when I say a Cold War, I mean there’s, they’re already in active killing conflicts in about four or five theaters. The Saudi Arabia and the Yoi right now actively.Simone Collins: So are we talking about a, a cold war along the lines of nuclear threat? Kind of Cold war or just cold war of like frenemies beingMalcolm Collins: No, we don’t attack each other directly, but we arm troops on opposite sides of conflicts throughout the regionSimone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: To attempt to [00:02:00] create public governments that serve us.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: So like a, to get like between each other, they are, I’d say, almost friendly in the way they are acting, and yet people are dying every day in mass in service of this conflict.Simone Collins: Okay. Frenemies Cold War. Gotcha.Malcolm Collins: Yes. A, a very odd Cold War, but a Cold War nonetheless. Mm-hmm. And given the way that it’s allowed, it’s also sort of a safer cold work that’s unlikely to escalate as much, butSimone Collins: that’s nice.IMalcolm Collins: wanna, I wanna, I wanna start on the weird behavior of Iran. So if people go back to our episode on Venezuela mm-hmm. My take at the time was I did not think attempting regime change in Iran in the same way we did in Venezuela at least, was a good idea, or really conflict directly in Iran was a good idea.I said I thought it was incredibly risky. I have since taken the position since this war started and, and this is still where I am today. That. Okay. [00:03:00] I would not have taken this risk even knowing what it appears Trump knew when he went into this conflict.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: However, knowing what has happened since the beginning of the conflict, it was very obviously the right move.Oh. And the large reason that it turned into very obviously the right move has been bizarre behavior by Iran itself since the conflict started that I wouldn’t have predicted, but maybe I should have.Simone Collins: Really, because it seems so inane, like them attacking. Their neighbors,Malcolm Collins: not their neighbor, just their neighbors.So the attack that was for me, just the most baffling. I mean, they’ve attacked almost every neighboring country at this point except Iraq.Oh no, they did attack Iraq. They’ve attacked pretty much everyone around them. And when I say everyone one of the most devastating attacks that they did recently was on Qatar.Now, for people who don’t know [00:04:00] Qatar and Iran are like, Qatar is about Iran’s closest ally.The children of Gaza are suffering. They have no food or medical supply. But you can help. Please open your heart and make a donation by clicking in the link below.Fun fact, Israel did find and kill one of these real guys while he was in Qatar in Doha.[00:05:00]حار. people of the world.Malcolm Collins: Al Jazeera is always d of anyone who Iran is funding. That’s just like Al Jazeera’s main thing. For people who don’t know Al Jazeera is Qatari disinformation campaign. Right? Like that’s broadly what it’s known for, but a lot of people treat it seriously as a source of news and stuff like this.And a lot of like educated liberals I guess are like, I don’t know, they bite the bullet on that because it’s anti-America. anti-IsraelSimone Collins: can confirm. Yeah. They’re like Al Jazeera quality reporting. Well, and to be fair. A lot of, a lot of propaganda news outlets. Do. They’re, they’re only successful as propaganda news outlets.If they also put out good information, SEO like you, you, you often don’t get good sustainable, like historically speaking, SEO if you don’t provide websites with good content on them like [00:06:00] that is how to sustainably win the game. And this is why you have publications like the Epic Times and Al Jazeera producing good journalism often.Yeah. ‘cause they won’t able to get people to eat their vegetables if you, they don’t serve actually good food too.Malcolm Collins: Sometimes the best reporting that you’re going to get is from a bias source when their personal bias isn’t relevant to that story.Simone Collins: Yes, absolutely.Malcolm Collins: So you can get great reporting from the Epic Times when it’s not about China.You can get great reporting from Al Jazeera when it doesn’t have to do with the Middle East.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But if you wanna get an idea of like what I’m talking about when I’m talking about like an attitude flip and Qatar was a real thorn in our side that they were willing to work alongside Iran as much as they were and promote them as much as they were within the region.Here’s a recent op-ed that was published in, jazeera for an example of, of, of the shift that we’re seeing,Simone Collins: okay,Malcolm Collins: the US Israel strategy against Iran is working. Here’s why. Every aspect of Iran’s ability to project regional power is being [00:07:00] successfully degraded. I’m just skipping in a bit here.But this narrative is wrong, not because the costs are imaginary, but because the critics are measuring the wrong things. They are categorizing the price of the campaign while . Ignoring the strategic ledger. When you look at what actually happened to Iran’s principle instruments of power, its ballistic missiles are null.It’s nuclear infrastructure, it’s air defenses,, it’s Navy and Proxy Commander architecture. . This picture is not one of us failure. It is one of systematic phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades. I write this from Doha, where Iranian missiles have triggered alerts for residents to take shelter and Qatar Airways has started operating evacuation flights.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: So, so like this is, this is where we are in terms of the feeling in a place like Qatar. All right. So, to understand what happened with Qatar, just, just a bit of context here. And this was also a huge d [00:08:00] move on Israel’s part, but. Turned out beneficial. So I don’t know what to think of it.So Israel ends up bombing the South Pars gas field.Now there have been conflicting reports on whether this attack was given the go ahead by the United States. But when there are conflicting reports on whether or not Israel effed us over my general stances, Israel probably effed us over. Yeah, my take is, what may have happened is Israel asked Washington for permission to do this and didn’t flag the significance of what they were about to do.And then are you just having fun with the debate?Simone Collins: Sorry.Malcolm Collins: And then Washington decided to give the, give the, okay. Without going through the channels, they would have if they had known how big a deal this is.Speaker: As a note, what some people are saying, which plausibly could be true, is that Washington and Israel, , Washington did know that this was going to happen, but they’re playing good cop, bad cop with [00:09:00] Washington, pretending that it didn’t know this was going to happen in order to play, , good cop. , The reason why I don’t believe this is, if this was the case, I would’ve expected Washington to have its messaging aligned with Israel beforehand instead of.Some of the time saying, yes, we allowed this some of the time angrily saying Israel will never do something like this again.Malcolm Collins: The reason it’s such a big deal is because this natural gas station, or, or this. So, okay.Little context. ThisSimone Collins: is one of the, the major supplies of energy to Iran. And my understanding now is, is already even before this conflict, they had shifted to burning this really, like either unrefined or like this drags of, of oil, I can’t remember what it’s called, but it causes a lot of air pollution.It’s really not good for the environment or people. And now they’re gonna be burning even more of it. Like they’re just in dire straits now and it’s making things even worse.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So there’s a giant national gas field under Qatar that goes under the, the, the Gulf [00:10:00] there and half of it is in Iran.And so Iran and Qatar both you mine it for natural gas. Qatar sells that natural gas around the world, and it’s the major source of Qatari income. It’s also why Qatar is on good terms with Iran, because they have to be, because they share the main thing that makes guitar wealthy. Iran does not export this much.They take it and use it to power their infrastructure.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like they need it to surviveMalcolm Collins: like 90% of the PowerPoint that Iran are running off of this. Mm-hmm. If this goes down, Iran doesn’t have. Power. Most of Iran doesn’t have power.Simone Collins: Well, and it just went down, presumably, right? Not, it’s not goodMalcolm Collins: anymore.No, no, no. It was a limited strike. It was more like we could do something really bad. Oh. But it was, it was very limited. And then Iran, in response to this they decided to do a bombing of Qatar’s Ross Lahan, the world’s largest liquified natural gas LNG production concept.Simone Collins: Wait, so, okay.Israel attacked sort of a shared [00:11:00] resource of Qatar and Iran.Malcolm Collins: Iran.Simone Collins: Iran bombs. Qatar,Malcolm Collins: yes. Why?Simone Collins: What? This just seems so inane. The response. Okay. Yeah. Like, so, so don’t you, don’t you wanna like, retaliate against the person who did the thing that makes you mad? Not the person who also got hurt.Malcolm Collins: I mentioned this in the, in the last episode on this, and some people are just so dumb and cued on this entire war where they’re like, no, China is fine after all this.And I’m like, no, China is not fine. They’re like, Iran is letting Chinese ships through. And I’m like, no. Iran said that they would think about letting Chinese ships through, but functionally only a small, I think it’s like two 5% of the previous traffic of Chinese ships have been able to get through. And I made this point to point out that when you cut off the straight of vermouth, like what the US is functionally trying to get open is a straight, that doesn’t supply the US at all.It supplies our geopolitical [00:12:00] rivals China Europe and east Asia as well. Which is why you had the hilarious instance of the Japanese lady who I, who I love, you know, coming to talk with Trump. And she goes, why didn’t you warn us? He goes, why didn’t you warn us about Pearl Harbor? And I was like, Trump, you’re nut job.But, but what’s important to note is that US has actually been approaching this war with something of our hands not tied behind our back. But when my kids get into fights they really understand how much power to use when hitting their siblings based on like the siblings relative age to them.And we’re sort of in a conflict like that with Iran. We’re not taking out cog Island, right? We’re not taking out this infrastructure. And people can ask. Why did we not do this? Why did Israel do it? What was the plan here? I’ll get to that in a second, but I, I want to explain this particular incident.So Israel goes ahead and does this likely, without Washington fully understanding the implications of what Israel was [00:13:00] doing why did Israel do it? From an Israel perspective Israel’s goals in our goals in the war are not exactly the same. We are okay with just seeing a heavily diminished Iran.Israel wants to keep the war going for as long as it can and aggressively as it can now that it finally has its shot at Iran. And it can use us to make that shot like amplify that shot on its behalf. So it did the thing where, you know, we are, I can say play fighting was Iran, and then it comes in and does an actual sucker punch and Trump had to go.Israel will do no more like in all caps on su, so so’s attacks on this to do the, like in the middle of the fight. Hey, that’s not cool, man. Like, don’t do that. Right? Like, we’re not attacking infrastructure. But it turned out for the best because it led to the Iranian serious damage of this Qatari facility, which pushed Qatar, [00:14:00] one of the groups that was still trying to stay a little neutral in how it was dealing with Iran further to the other side.Okay. The question of why is Iran doing this?Simone Collins: Yeah. Like this, this makes Israel’s actions seem a little bit less dickish, but that doesn’t change the fact that. That, like why would, how could they have predicted that Iran would do that? Right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So, the important thing to note at the beginning of all of this is you could say maybe this is a grand strategy on Iran, that you are not seeing Malcolm.And a lot of the news is covering it this way. It’s, we’re gonna hurt the global economy until the United States capitulate. Which is a very stupid strategy because since this war started, the US dollar has gone up, the euro has gone down. Yes, we’ve taken an economic hit, but things will eventually go back to normal.So it’s just a great time to invest right now. Yeah. Right. Like it’s not actually doing sustained damage to anything of the United States interest, but it’s turning a [00:15:00] lot of powers against Iran that would otherwise be their allies. Like China, right? Like if the US just decides to stop this war right now and Iran decides it’s gonna keep the straight of her moose shut down.Mm-hmm. This becomes an existential problem for Qatar, the UAE, China and Saudi Arabia. And they would have to get militarily involved. Like, like they, they actually don’t have a choice. If it turned out the United States was just gonna be like, okay, hands off, we don’t care anymore. We don’t have to get involved.It’s not existential for us. It’s unpleasant economically but it is much more e unpleasant economically for our geopolitical rivals.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: So this idea that this isn’t in the heads of Washington right now especially with the talks with China coming up and those being, you know, delayed for Trump to, to finish the war there is nothing China wants more than an end to this war.Right. And an end. That likely even favors the US given where things are now. [00:16:00] Because if Iran can still control the straight of Haus, this is against China’s best interest. But anyway so you can say, okay. Intelligent strategy from the top. From what we’ve seen in Iran, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Iranian President, Mossad, Pia, yeah. Everyone knows, I can’t pronounce other names said on Iranian state TV after the initial attack started happening he said on my own behalf and on behalf of Iran that he wanted to apologize to Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, et cetera.I dunno if you even need an et cetera there. And he issued an apology for the attacks. Specifically, he blamed it on the chaos created by the killings of top Iranian commanders in leaders by the US Israeli strikes saying, quote, our armed forces fired at will because their commanders were absent and they did whatever was necessary, right?So this. Clearly was not ordered from the top. [00:17:00] Right. It was so not ordered from the top that, okay, so suppose you had like two factions in the top, in the board meetings or whatever, was the president and the other people controlling things in Iran right now. And the, like so the new Ayatollah isn’t brain dead, which it appears he probably is brain dead. Or a coma or severely injured or something because it’s weird that he hasn’t shown his face yet and like he easily could do a prerecorded videos. The old one did that all the time.Right. You know? So it appears he might be incapacitated and he might have been elected explicitly because he was incapacitated, which would allow other people to grab power illegitimately.Simone Collins: Yeah, you can call it the Biden strategy.Malcolm Collins: The Biden strategy. Yes. So anyway, if this guy and the other people who are supposed to be running Iran knew that there was a disagreement about why these missiles were being sent at these various infrastructure projects and stuff like that.Mm-hmm. He wouldn’t have flippantly gone on state TV and just been like, I apologize, this isn’t gonna happen [00:18:00] again. It’s just, you know, it’s disorganized. People are acting on their own. He would be like because he’d know that there was some other faction and he’d explain, you know, oh, this is the discussion we’re having.Or he wouldn’t say anything at all until he. Argued his point. This is not the, the words of somebody who appears to be aware that this is somebody’s else’s intentional plan. But then what happened he, he said he would try to solve sync through diplomacy, but was in hours the same day after sharp criticism and backlash from Iranian hardliners, hardline clerics, lawmakers, the IRGC officials and conservative media.He backed up hard. He said he posts up in a following statement and repeated it on state tv claiming Iran had actually never attacked, quote, friendly, or neighboring countries at all.Simone Collins: Oh. Huh.Malcolm Collins: Right. So what’s [00:19:00] causing this? Like this is, this is weird. Like that’s a, that’s a weird thing to do. It almost sounds like he was afraid for his life.Simone Collins: The weird pile is getting so bigMalcolm Collins: right here is my understanding of what seems to be happening on the ground and Iran leading to the weird decisions that we’re seeing.Simone Collins: Okay. You, you mean like your, your hypothesis as to what is actually going on your conjecture. Yes. Okay. Let’s hear it.Malcolm Collins: It’s a, it, it, it has to do with governance theory, which we wrote a Wall Street bestseller onSimone Collins: Darn.Malcolm Collins: So I ran is uh, ide the governance if you wanna read it. By the way, it actually ended up affecting a lot of like crypto governance strategies and stuff like that, which is really cool.Which had us on the board of like major crypto things for a while, like some of the largest crypto donation funds anyway. Anyway, so Iran has been practicing something called mosaic defense. Mosaic defense is a form of defense that is meant to be incredibly robust to decapitation [00:20:00] so that you can cut out the leadership and the individual factions can still operate.Mm-hmm. Now we have another episode where we point out that normally Muslim countries do not do things like this. And the reason why Muslim countries do not do things like this is they typically have coups when they do do things like this. Because Muslims are just way more likely to coup than Protestants.And in the middle you have groups like Catholics and we go into that episode, why this is but we don’t need to go into that here. It’s just rarely done in Muslim countries, but it hugely decentralized the power was in the military. Okay. Now. What that has created, and keep in mind how little connection the president must have had to the people who are actually making the shots to think.That the shoot they were shooting at whatever they, they were just firing at will at anything. Mm-hmm. That he thought that that’s what was happening. That he thought that that was [00:21:00] the, on the ground what’s happening, or at least a plausible excuse for what’s happening. Right. This means that he had not communicated through or had the ability to communicate down to the soldier level or to any decision maker’s level at the level of, of these firings in other countries.Right. What this suggests to me is that the people who are at the regional heads of Iran’s mosaic defense strategy have entirely regionalized their control already.Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Oh, that would be interesting. So it’s, it’s like, it. It’s descending into fiefdoms.Malcolm Collins: It’s descending into, yeah. Essentially warlords.Simone Collins: Whoa.Malcolm Collins: But the warlords may not have control over territory. It may be over parts of the IRGC or something like that. But what’s important is to these individuals who are playing this game, and you [00:22:00] can see this in the president’s reaction here, they actually don’t particularly care about America or Israel or Iran’s long-term geopolitical future.Simone Collins: Sure. Why would they? Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They are vying to be the top dog of the warlords. Mm-hmm. To control what’s left of Iran after this war is over.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And to have as much influence as they can while the war is happening. And so now the question is, okay, if that’s what’s happening, then. How do you, you know, you’re, you’re one of these guys, how do you signal your legitimacy and authority to the other warlords?Because it’s not likely going to be one person. It’s going to be a coalition that is going to gain power and be the defacto head if it’s, if the president isn’t the head right now, who, how do we get this new [00:23:00] organic defacto head? Mm-hmm. It’s politicking What? How do you get points within this politicking that’s going on right now?You need to be as hard line as possible, as crazy as possible, as aggressive as possible against anyone who has ever slighted Iran in any way. Hit what you can with what you have. So, it, it’s been pointed out that since the start of the conflict, countries like the UAE and Qatar have been hit with many more missiles.Oh, I think orders of magnitudes more in some cases than Israel. How does this make sense from a Iranian tactical perspective or long-term alliance perspective, right? Like, if Israel and Saudi, I mean, if the UAE and Saudi Arabia are beginning to have conflict now, wouldn’t Iran want to be friendly with the UAE.UAE has a giant Iranian population in it. Right? Like they, they have the potential to be quite friendly. Why are they so aggressive against CUAE, [00:24:00] right? Well, it’s because there are more expensive things that their missiles can actually hit in the UAE than in Israel. Mm-hmm. They’re basically about grabbing news headlines and blowing up expensive things like it’s a video game to win control of the IRGC from the other hard liners within the IRGC.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: That is what I suspect is happening right now. And if you assume that, if you assume, and I think that we can assume that from these quotes from the president if you assume that there actually isn’t any centralized control left in Iran, and remember Israel, there was what was his name? The one guy who is still sort of in charge of things and then. Yes. Ali Laies this guy died March 16th, 17. And he was killed in his Israeli airstrikes along with his son and one of his deputies. And he was [00:25:00] a, a long time power broker and one of the few left was in the regime.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Although, you know, we also had other really important figures that were killed, like Gal Mare Soleimani came command of the Baal paramilitary force, the region’s main internal repression tool.This was the one that, you know, was murdering people in the streets. The 35,000 protestors. By the way, we’re still nowhere close to 35 ca southern casualties in the war. Actually I wanna go into a separate thing ‘cause I had a fan reach out to me asking me some stuff that I want to address for fans who are.Just sort of skeptical of all the news that they hear on this. Okay. He’s like, how do we even know that Iran did try to attempt to assassinate Trump? How do we know that this isn’t a post hawk thing made up during the Trump administration, you know, like to justify this war? Like, okay, the war started, we need to make something up.The core problem with that hypothesis is one, there were two potential assassination attempts and the one that we have more information on most of the information we [00:26:00] have on it was released during the Biden administration when Trump was running against Biden. That does that, that that was against the Biden administration’s interest in releasing in the first place.Right. And just does not at all look like a, a, a a a a, like a false flag attack or something like that made up after the fact. This happened ages ago. Mm-hmm. And again, when the people are like, you know, you shouldn’t strike back or you should, you’re, you’re, you’re playing to Israel’s hand when you assassinate their leader because they tried to assassinate your leader.You know, just take it when they try to assassinate your leader if acting with strengths and not like a cuck is going to potentially help Israel’s interest. And I’m like that. I mean that’s, that’s really cucked behavior, man to, to consider so much that this could help the Jews. Therefore we shouldn’t do it.I see that as just wild. So I from my position, like if I’m ever president and somebody attempts to [00:27:00] have me assassinated, I’m like, okay, I’m probably gonna do something like this, but I wanna go more into this assassination type. I think a lot of people on the right, I dunno, they forgot about it or it wasn’t reported to them.Simone Collins: I, I didn’t, I don’t think I knew about it. I knew about. The one in Butler I knew about the guy with the at outside the golf course. I didn’t know about the other ones. That, that was only news to me after you brought it up after this conflict started.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, Asif Merchant, he was a 46-year-old Pakistani man who had recently spent a long period of time in Iran receiving training in meetings from handlers entered the United States in 2024.He attempted to recruit Hitman to assassinate US politicians or government officials explicitly including Trump, although he was also open to targeting Biden and Nikki Haley, according to some accounts. Plan involved document theft, staging protests at rallies and killings. He was arrested July 12th, 2024, all in the Biden administration in Houston as he tried to escape the country.So, like, this [00:28:00] isn’t like a, a vague thing. He was convicted March 6th, 2026 in Brooklyn Federal Court on a murder to hire attempt. And then the second plot Farhad Shaka Shaka 51 living in Iran was tasked by IRGC officials September, 2024, to surveil and kill Trump. Then a candidate and later president-elect on October 7th, 2024, they specifically ordered him to drop other targets and delivered an assassination plan and deliver an assassination plan within seven days.I love that. Like he’s a white collar worker. Hey, this is taking too long, this Trump assassination thing. Drop all ofSimone Collins: the target. Didn’t get this report on my desk Monday.Malcolm Collins: I wanna report Monday next week.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s how it, it’s so weirdly bureaucratic. What on earth.Malcolm Collins: He,Simone Collins: I thought, you know, in the movies, just like, do it, get it done.But like, these guys are like annoying. Just see the plan, make sure point. He, he recordedMalcolm Collins: two US based criminals. Okay. Cari Riviera, AKA pop, 49 of Brooklyn Pop and Donan Lool 36 of [00:29:00] Staten Island who met in prison to help Shakira who remains at large in Iran. In multiple recorded FBI interviews after, oh, by the way, the, the way the FBI got the first time is one of the people he recruited to attempt to kill Trump with an FBI informant.Like it’s super, the evidence is super big on, on guy number one. So for this one how do we know Shaka directly admitted the IRGC directives, including prioritizing Trump in multiple recorded FBI interviews after initial contact. So they were able to contact him and he admitted this came directly from the Iranian mil.Okay. I just think it’s important to, to know this, and he was like, how do we actually know that Iran is funding terrorism that is targeting the United States and that that one really got me. That’s just like, that’s Iran’s entire geopolitical strategy for the past decade. This isn’t like a rumor mill.This is like arguing that China has never said they want to take Taiwan or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. No, it’s true that many of the [00:30:00] groups, you know, whether it’s the, the Huis or Hamas or whatever, also want to kill Israel and that they consider killing Israel higher in their priority lists.So it is better for Israel than the United States that this has happened. Mm-hmm. But it does not mean that it isn’t also good for the United States. You know, Al-Qaeda had a lot of targetsOther than the United States, but we still had nine 11, right? Like, you just leave groups around to grow and molder that want to kill you for long enough and let them be funded to the tune of I pointed out in the last episode, it’s literally, I think around an average of 3 billion or 4 billion a year from Iran.Simone Collins: Oh goodness.Malcolm Collins: Eventually you’re going to get a very big attack. You know, we’re not always gonna be able to stop it as we did in these instances. And I just think to, to be like, oh, I don’t, I don’t care. It actually reminds me. Of my friend. I’ve mentioned this story a few times, but it’s always so visceral for me.It stuck with me. It was a girlfriend of mines when I was growing up. Grandfather who survived the Holocaust, and he [00:31:00] describes running around like to different houses in his Jewish neighborhood with the book the, the book that Hitler had released, mine Kaf. And he is like, guys, you need to read this.He says he wants to kill us, like, we need to get out of the country. And they basically treated him like he was crazy and began to blacklist him from things. And he ended up having to break into his girlfriend’s house at night and basically kidnap her and run away. And you know, obviously.He did well, I, you know, hung out with his granddaughter. I hope she does well. She’s a really cool person.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: But you know, he’s the guy running around, like there’s a group out there that says they wanna kill us. Right. Like, why is everybody acting like this isn’t a big deal? I feel a bit like the people out there who keep saying, yeah, Iran said death to America all the time, but they didn’t really want to kill us.Right. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: They kind of remind me of those cut Jews who all ended up getting wiped out when they didn’t listen to that guy. Right. It’s like they’re saying it. And the big thing that, that got [00:32:00] Trump. It’s, it’s been reported that in the negotiations to try to get them to give up their nukes. They mentioned in no uncertain terms that they already had the uranium for 11 nukes and could have them made in weeks.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: When Iran was questioned about this what Iran said is they said, well, we didn’t threaten them, but we did tell them how many nukes we could make was the uranium we have right now. You know, like, so Iran admitted that that’s the situation they were in.Simone Collins: Well, even I’ve, I’ve heard progressive people covering this saying, basically Iran has always been very clear that they don’t have nukes.They just want all the materials to be able to make them is optionality.Speaker 12: We are two months away from enriching weapons grade uranium to be used for peaceful [00:33:00] purposes.Simone Collins: And, and that was as if like a, because of course that’s super reasonable for someone who says, death to America and death to Israel. Yeah, like that. We should be okay with that.Like,Simone Collins: I just don’t understand, you know, like, like, oh, they’re never gonna bake the cake.I mean, they just wanna have all the specialized ingredients to make the cake, and they can make it in like 30 minutes, but they’re not gonna bake it.Malcolm Collins: I, no, I think a, a better analogy is you catch your wife with husband killing poison.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: And you’re like, why do you have husband killing poison? And she goes, I never meant to use the husband killing poison.I just wanted it as like deterrents. You know, ISimone Collins: just wanna have it because I hate you.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, later that day you hear her say her prayers at. Please God, kill my husband. Please kill my husband. I want to kill my husband.[00:34:00]Malcolm Collins: And then you ask her about that and you go, it’s just like my religion. It’s like a weird regional clerk of, you know, my way of doing things.And then you believe that, and you’re not the mega cook just because you might accidentally help the Jews by you know, telling her, Hey you know, we need to do something about the husband killing poison lady. Right? But the reason why I’ve become, you know, as I said pro, is because Iran’s reaction to all of this has been to target their former allies, both economically.And militarily. Right? Which is huge for us because it means that even if we stop bombing right now, right? And I ran Keith to straight of her moose clothes. Yes, we’ll deal with some economic hit, but the bigger economic hit is gonna be China. And then China’s gonna be begging us to start the campaign again so that they can get the straight up her moose open.And they literally would be like, China would be like on its knees. [00:35:00] Hey, United States let, let’s do a, a joint operation or something. I’m, I’m sure we can make it work now. Europe would be lickety split with those boats down there. And I, I agree with what Trump has said in regards to this, that European leaders, and they did by the way was the first bombing of Iran, was the second said, yeah, go ahead.Bomb Iran, like this isn’t all of our best interest. But then they refused to send us support and he is like, what’s the point of NATO if it doesn’t mean defense for the United States? Because apparently that’s what it means. When they, they could say, oh, well you guys started this war, whatever, whatever we are now in, in terms of getting the straight of free moves open, that that is about Europe and China.Okay. Like defending their economic interests. If we just pulled out, the really interesting geopolitical thing that’s going to happen is. If, if Iran does not, if they’re like, we wanna continue to make this hurt from everyone, which they might given this mosaic leadership, they might have yes, we’ll [00:36:00] have a depression but the depression will be focused in Europe and Asia and those countries will be sort of in a position forced to get the United States back in on this and back working on this.So if I was in trust position, I might even pull out just to force that position because that would be a very interesting geopolitical one. But even if we don’t have that, even if we do get this all over with in Iran, not only is one of our largest enemies geopolitically at all off the stage.But the, the new Cold War in the Middle East between the UE and Saudi Arabia, which I’ll get to in a second is between two people who are fairly friendly with and are unlikely to, you know, go death to America over this. Although Saudi Arabia does fund a lot of terrorist related groups that do eventually target the United States.Mm-hmm. So if we’re on one side of that one, we’re probably closer to the UAE side.Simone Collins: I mean,Malcolm Collins: imagine if next to Saudi Arabia. But the, the, the point [00:37:00] here, because Saudi Arabia would suck at defending themselves, they’ve shown themselves to be completely militarily incompetent. But that is a whole, and somebody actually did try to attack Saudi Arabia.They would fall much quicker than Iran for it has to do with how the Royal Family projects power. I don’tSimone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: that’s, that’s another video that I don’t need to go into. Okay. But right now we’re friendly with Saudi Arabia and, and Saudi Arabia. One of the reasons they keep friendly tides with us is because they are aware of that.Mm-hmm. Although, you know, keep in mind, nine 11 was fundamentally Saudi Arabia’s fault. At the end of the day. That was from the groups that they fund in the same way that I ran friends groups that want to attack the United States. But if Trump doesn’t do the pullout thing, how else can he realistically end this?He needs some leverage other than I will stop bombing. The leverage that everyone’s thinking about right now is Car Island.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s what I figured, which is why I assumed that by this point we would’ve had troops basically [00:38:00] holding it, American troops holding it hostage, essentially.Functionally.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So Car Island is a three by four aisle Mile Island. Mm-hmm.That makes up approximately 90% of the country’s oil exports. This is because it has deep water shipping lanes next to it and nowhere else in, in that region of Iran has that. And so Iran doesn’t really have any other way to get out oil from its country.If we destroyed Kag Island which I do not think we should do. Any government that came into power after this was in Iran would be just in poverty for decades. Especially given Iran’s already critical condition in regards to water and infrastructure. It would slit the throat of Iran and lead to a massive refugee crisis in Europe which would be bad.Now I will note it wouldn’t be as bad as some other refugee crises. [00:39:00] Oh God, how do I say this?So a lot of the,Simone Collins: listen, no, I’ll put it this way. I’ll put it this way. And, and I think anyone who’s watching this is well aware of the fact that Iranians are awesome. If you know Iranians in America, if you’re an American, yep. You probably like them. I think what really changed people’s views on Iranians was, oh God, that chefSpeaker 3: , we hung out with a, a bunch of young people who collect, uh. Uh, basically an informal car club of collectors of, of American muscle cars. It feels very much like Southern California or Barcelona and Tehran at times. And a very hopeful place filled with yearning where people every day, particularly women, I think, are in very small ways testing the limits of what is permissible.Um, trying to define in fits and starts. Who they want to be as a country. What is appropriate? What is okay today that may not be [00:40:00] okay tomorrow? How? Uh, it’s a very interesting thing to see. Did you feel resentment toward using zero American? Zero? Yeah. Zero.Simone Collins: Who died, who’s, who was really curmudgeonly did an episode in Iran and they were just basically like Americans, like backyard, barbecue, cool based Americans andMalcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: Iranians. What changed? Pers changed everyone’s view on Iranians. They were like, oh my God, these are based amazing people.And. Honestly, like you should be so lucky to have them.Malcolm Collins: No. So the point, the point is, is Iranians are, are, are Persians. They’re not Arabs. Okay. Most of the problematic Islamic populations and immigration waves that Europe has had to deal withSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Are Arabs and Arabic culture, which is very different from Persians and Persian culture.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And traditionally speaking Iranian migrants especially within the United States, I don’t know if it’s been as much in Europe, have been a very positive [00:41:00] immigrant population. Yeah. I, I don’t wanna say like. Model immigrant because they, they definitely have some, you know, aesthetic deficiencies.AsSimone Collins: for your opinionMalcolm Collins: as South Park would, would point outSpeaker 15: Boldly stood out in front of their bar to stop the Persians from entering.Speaker 16: We are coming in redecorating the hell you’re, you can take your blue carpet and go Kurt Rock and shove up your holes. Alright, come on, let stop of us.Simone Collins: Anthony Bourdain, oh God, that’s where weMalcolm Collins: have the, the song that Trump is secretly Iranian. Because he’s got the aesthetics of a, of an Iranian No, it’s,Simone Collins: it’s, it’s, it’s a look that some people, like it was Anthony Bourdain that really turned a lot of people onto Iranians,Malcolm Collins: Saudi.But no, no, Trump really is like, if you have had Iranian friends or you know, Trump is Persian. JustSimone Collins: it’s fines,Malcolm Collins: it’s fine.Simone Collins: Perian,Malcolm Collins: Trump. Comes off culturally, way more Persian than he does waspy.Simone Collins: [00:42:00] The first Persian president.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And we have our song, the First Persian president because I mean, even the way he does decoration, where like I, if you go to a waspy person’s house, like one of the signs that you always see, it’s like the random picture.It’s of houses and boats and boats, horses, boat. And he’s got no pictures of No, actually, like, look at Trump’s stuff. It’s, it’s geometric pet. It’s like no horses, no boats, no houses, no every,Simone Collins: and I feel like there’s, there’s almost like little like, a children’s book game. Like spot the new gold item in the Oval Office.Every time there’s a new press conference there, can you spot the difference? Where’s the new gold item?Malcolm Collins: I like gold,Speaker 9: I love gold. The look of it, the taste of it,Malcolm Collins: but Yeah. But the, the point being is you shouldn’t expect the same problems from an Iranian refugee crisis that you have with other Islamic refugee crises. It’s not that there wouldn’t be any issues but there wouldn’t be [00:43:00] as bad as say like a, a Pakistani refugee crisis or something like that.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So, it’s a side note over there. So. A lot of people have said so, so if you, if you did that, that’s, that’s what would be the result of that. Okay. And if you cut off their access to the north whatever gas pipeline you’d have, again, a refugee crisis, which, you know, we want to prevent.And we also want whatever comes next to be able to economically get itself off the ground. You know, our goal is to defang them. It is not to economically cripple them forever and ever and ever. Now, Trump has said that he may bomb car island again just for funsies. Literally he said, just for fun. I may bomb it again.I cannot believe we have a president who said that in a press conference.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Sort of trying to show that it’s open as a, as a potentiality, but what everyone’s thinking now is boots on the ground doesn’t make sense. If we controlled Cog Island, what the president would likely do is just be like, no, we’ll let you to continue to use it [00:44:00] under US military occupation.Exactly as you always have. You just need to plain nice, right? You just need to keep the straight open. You need to do everything like that. We won’t even charge a tariff, but we’ll just set up a, a permanent military base here. That would give us a lot of negotiating power, assuming Iran is still actually governed by a single central authority.Simone Collins: Hmm, however, but you believe that that is just not the case anymore.Malcolm Collins: I believe that’s not the case anymore. And if Iran is not governed by a central authority anymore, they don’t particularly care that you’ve done this. They might even shoot their own infrastructure without care because all they care about is gaining control of what’s left.And that’s where I come down to. So is it the right call to attempt to, and what I would do with Kag Island is I would not say boots on the ground in Kag Island. I’d say make Kag Island a permanent US military base or nothing. Like that is I [00:45:00] think the option for Kag Island. If you are going to bother to attempt to take this, that 90% of Iranian oil goes through it, make it a permanent US military base in the region.And if you start to signal that, the important thing about signaling that in the same way that Iran keeps signaling that we want reparations which just sounds laughable, right? Is you need something to walk back from. Right? So you can say, okay, Iran, you win. We won’t make it a permanent base, right?Like, we’ll do a five year lease or something like that. Right. You know? But that would give us something to then say, okay, Iran, you can have car Island back in exchange for good behavior here, here and here. Right. And, and I’ll note here, the thing that I, I, I keep noting was the, the other players in the random w flailing of Iran is going into this war.What I would’ve thought geopolitically speaking is the [00:46:00] best case scenario realistic scenario is we defang Iran, we destroy you know, their leadership structure, their military, et cetera.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And, and that’s the best we can hope for. I did not also expect that we would have the potentiality of geopolitically isolating Iran from their closest allies.But somehow that also was in the cards. I, I would not have expected we would’ve come out of this on better terms with Qatar and I ran on worse terms with Qatar, for example.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That is wild.Malcolm Collins: I wouldn’t have thought that they would target Chinese shipping. Right. Like, I, I, all of this stuff has really surprised me.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So, let’s now talk about the new Civil War that’s opening up.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Or just warlord power grab is, is it that they’re trying to show off their resources and also trying to demonstrate their international geopolitical prowess [00:47:00] by essentially holding other countries hostage like own citizens and assets hostage.So like, let’s say I’m. Bob, the Iranian warlord or faction leader, and I have access to these warheads and so I’m going to hit this building in Dubai to show both the other factions in Iran and also Dubai, that I am a person to be reckoned with. And when I call you, you pick up the phone and that I’m the guy with the most ability.Is that what’s happening or what?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is, this is actually a really useful psychology to sort of dig into to understand what’s happening.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Okay. I am X guy at was control of X munition platform, right?Simone Collins: Sure. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I have a few choices with where I send those missiles, okay?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Choice number one, I send them at Israel, the goy beam hits him.And nothing happens.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s just more wasted [00:48:00] money. We all know that doesn’t work. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Two, I try to hit a US base maybe, but probably nothing’s gonna happen. Right.Simone Collins: It’s not gonna work. Yeah. Three, they’ll retaliate 10 times over then, then I’m the next target.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Three. I shoot into a civilian district in Dubai.Mm-hmm. Or in Qatari, very expensive gas field or something like that. Right. And I actually get that hit because I’m likely to get that hit. They don’t have the defenses these other places have.Simone Collins: Yeah. And they also maybe don’t have the intel to even know who I am or where I am, whereas Israel, like Mossad knows the CIA knows,Malcolm Collins: so I get that hit.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: Now there’s news in Iran about this thing that just happened. Some people might think. That’s geopolitically bad for us, but it, it is making news. And the reality is, is that most people who are in [00:49:00] the IRGC and who are hard liners are going to think that anything that is happening at all on the war front is definitionally good.Because to say, oh, well yes, we did get that attack through, but it was a bad idea. That doesn’t make you look cool to the other foaming at the mouse hardliners. Right? So then it’s your next board meeting or whatever three people are there. One goes, I hit a Qatari gas field. You know, another says I hit A-A-A-U-A-E because other people are doing this now, making it okay for you civilian district.And the third guy’s just like, well, I tried to launch some in Israel. Who do you think has, has the power in that meeting? It’s, it’s not the, I tried to hit Israel like a good boy one, okay? Mm-hmm. It’s the ones who made something that hit the news actually happen. And I think that that’s the psychology that’s driving this behavior.Of [00:50:00] course, there is an alternate here, which I wouldn’t put it above them. Now, if you remember, in our last Iranian video, we mentioned that Iran put together a task force to hunt down Mossad agents in the Iranian government, which they then had to shut down. When it turned out it had 20. Mossad agents inside of it, one of them with leading it.Mm-hmm. Iran’s government is riddled with Mossad. What we may have right now is a Mossad on Mossad War.Simone Collins: Oh myMalcolm Collins: God. It could be that a lot of these decentralized power structures, basically Mossad kills people all the way down until they’re at a Mossad agent, and then that agent says, yeah, let’s shoot our oldest and closest ally in the region.And then he does, and then the president’s like, what, what, what’s going on here? And then all the other still alive top agents with access to missiles in Iran are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great thing. In fact, I’m gonna do that next. Because [00:51:00] they’re all also masad agents. Doing whatever would be the literal, stupidest thing Iran could do at the moment isSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: WildSimone Collins: if trueMalcolm Collins: pager thing.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: See our episode on that?Simone Collins: Yeah. We can’t put it past him at this point. Any wild plot like that could very well be the case. I mean, they played the long game.Malcolm Collins: Now this is clearly, the war extending is more in Israel’s benefit than America’s benefit, but as I’ve pointed out, geopolitically and economically it’s long term in America’s interest.Simone Collins: Sure.Malcolm Collins: But let’s get to this, the, so Cold War mm-hmm. Between Saudi Arabia and the Uua U. Saudi Arabia wants strong, centralized Arab states under legitimate governments, so their focus is border security, oil market control and vision 2030 leadership and containing Iran through traditional alliances.The UAE prefers a quote unquote maritime empire model transactional deals, [00:52:00] port control and backing strongman proxies and separative who give Abu Dhabi leverage more comfortable with fragmentation if it secures. Trade routes, counters, Islamists, so. It’s really sort of a Athens versus Sparta fight interestingly, right?Like Sparta may seem like more of the roost, less strongman, but they deal better with legitimate states. Mm-hmm. Whereas Athens was notorious for just like, I don’t care if I destabilize your region, if I can get shipping, whatever. Right. Like, if I can get my slaves coming through, whatever. Right. But it felt more like a democracy when you’re in Athens, right?Like the maritime empire model.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Where you see this is in Yemen, which is the hottest flashpoint right now. The Saudi back faction, the internationally recognized Presidential Leadership Council, PLC led by Rashad Alini plus Allied Tribes and some Islam party Muslim Brotherhood linked elements.Mm-hmm. Goal keep [00:53:00] Yemen United to protect Saudi southern border. UAE backed faction is the Southern Trans Transitional Counsel. The STC which has a goal of independence or heavy autonomy for the south, plus control of Aiden McCullough, port, Scot Island, and Bab Almond straight shipping routes. So basically the UAE is willing to blow up Yemen if it can gain control of shipping route.Saudi Arabia wants to keep a legitimate state in power there. And these two forces have been actively fighting. And then you have the Sudan, the Saudi backs the SA Fs, the central government of Katan and the UAE backs the RSF parallel militaries that control much of the gold trade and Red Sea roots in the region.Both have been pouring in money and weapons. Then you have the Horn of Africa and Red Sea ports. On the UAE side, you have heavy investment in the breakaway Somali land which Israel [00:54:00] just recognized by the way. And the B port base and the influence of deje, orca and Scotia strategy, a string of naval and logistics outputs.They’re basically trying to control independent, wealthy cities and terrorist factions or, or breakaway groups instead of the, the central thing. While while Somalia is backed by Saudi Arabia mm-hmm. There’s a number of other theaters. We might do a whole other episode on this. That would be interesting.The interesting thing about this is the UAE faction is generally also supported by Israel which puts Israel on the UAE side of this split.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Which is odd because from what I’ve been seeing, Saudi Arabia has really wanted to get close to Israel up until the Gaza war. They seem to really, really want, and this might have been what triggered the, the war recognition talks with Israel.And if you’re like, oh, ohSimone Collins: yeah. I remember way, way, way, way back when October 7th first happened. You were [00:55:00] explaining that to me. You’re like, you know, they were just getting so good at this point. There would be an incentive to try to undermine that relationship because Iran felt threatened by that strengthening relationship, which made their strategic position.Malcolm Collins: With some of my Israeli friends mm-hmm. And they just don’t believe this. They’re like, that’s not true. Like the Saudi Arabia is hostile to us, like the Prince is hostile to us. You know, look at these geopolitics here, here and here. And I, and I, my core argument against that is Neo you’re familiar with the Neo project, right?That SaudiSimone Collins: ArabiaMalcolm Collins: was planning?Simone Collins: Well, yeah, but that’s botched, right? It’s not gonna happen.Malcolm Collins: It was eventually canceled and it might show a shifting in Saudi Arabia’s priorities. But do you remember where Naomi, Naomi is on a map?Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: Giant.Simone Collins: A line in the desert? I mean like the sand a sandbox or basically it ended on the coast, right?Didn’t it?Malcolm Collins: Basically as close to [00:56:00] Israel as you could get.Simone Collins: Oh, really?Malcolm Collins: That, that is what it was. It was right in a area. So you could take a quick ferry from Israel to Naomi.Simone Collins: Oh. It’s like one end of it.Malcolm Collins: Yes, becauseSimone Collins: it was like a, like a long train track that just ended at Israel.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Not near any other important city in Saudi Arabia.Not near important oil fields.Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. Right. So it was, yeah, because I just remember it being an isolated line in the sand. That’s like how I visualized it. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: ItSimone Collins: not, it was an isolated line of the sand that was basically, it was like a line emanating from Israel going into the middle of the sand.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s, it’s very, very clear that this was meant to have a fairy connection to Israel and be like little Israel in Saudi Arabia,Simone Collins: or maybe it was gonna be the, the Dubai of Israel. Like, you go there for weird vacations and stuff.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, no, that, that’s, that’s clearly what the idea was, is to facilitate.You don’t invest the future, which is what they were doing with this investment [00:57:00] projectSimone Collins: Without Israel,Malcolm Collins: a country in a project like this, if you think you’re going to be at war or in an active conflict with Israel, you don’t buildSimone Collins: Oh, and then that falling, I can’t remember when sort of that was abandoned as a plan, but that being abandoned as a plan.After October 7th,Malcolm Collins: after the war, war with the UAE began to heat up.Simone Collins: You mean after the Israel Palestine conflict heated up.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, no, it’s more the ua. Saudi Arabia doesn’t care about Gaza. Like that’s all just posturing on their part. Which they have to do because the royal family has to look good to the wahabiists.That’s a whole other thing. That basically they only control power because they made this deal with the Wahabiists. That’s like our family, which really got power pretty illegitimately through. A power grab is able to hold that power and will be legitimated so long as we legitimate the Wahabiists.And it’s the wahabiists that want this. So that’s, that’s what’s going on there. Okay. On our weekend episode, we also discussed, which I think is pretty [00:58:00] cool, the strategy the United States has been using in the region. So I’ll just quickly go over thatyeah. B 52. Okay. So what we have been doing is using bombers that are literally half a century old, 50 years old or older. These were made in the 1950s and they stopped making ‘em, I think like 1965 to take really old munitions.Remember I talked about using older munitions, like wanting to clear out our munitions. This is when everyone’s like, oh, you’re wasting munitions on this. These are not planes that we ever would’ve been able to use in, we’reSimone Collins: reaching into deep into the reaches of our pantry and using dusty expired canned goods.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So what we did is we were flying in, it looks like. Unarmed drones slowly through like corridors to try to establish that they were now safe corridors over and over and over again. And this is how we lost seven of those. And once we had established a corridor was safe, we then whizzed [00:59:00] backing forth these things.Got these, what can only be thought of like dump trucks at the sky or like giant delivery trucks. Mm-hmm. Not even like really military planes anymore to just dump ungodly amounts of bombs in these completely unprotected corridors. And this is just wild to me that it’s also wild to me that we’re still hearing about that school that was bombed because that kind of implies that there haven’t been any other major tragedy since then, which is a pretty good record for a war of this nature.So that’s the other positive news we’ve had since then. But yeah, I mean these, these giant old planes dumping out basically expired payloads to cut down on our storage costs. That’s, that’s where we are right now in this war. And, and keep in mind, these planes are very inexpensive to fly when contrasted with other military aircraft.Mm-hmm. Which is another reason we’re doing them for these long runs. So to, to close things out there is [01:00:00] a, a possibility things could go wrong if the administration miscalculates and maybe sees the government in Iran is being less fractured than it really is. However I’m not totally against boots on the ground either.I if it meant just car Ireland and if we were using it as the negotiating trip to get other things that we wanted likeSimone Collins: not necessarily a military base, but if we just kind of took it and for lack of a. More euphemistic term held at hostage and basically we’re like, we’ll control this. As your custodian.Yeah. Well become its custodian. AndMalcolm Collins: well, we do have,Simone Collins: Sort of, you know, cost of Britney Spears trusted thatMalcolm Collins: the island and all of its infrastructure was built up by American and European companies. It was stolen by the current government of Iran when they socialized the oil.Simone Collins: Oh, so this was after the tank war between Iraq and I Iran?Malcolm Collins: Well, no, they in like eighties. No, no, no, no, no, no. I’m talking aboutSimone Collins: because Park Island, it, it’s, it’s oil infrastructure, if I recall correctly, was, was [01:01:00] destroyed in the Iraq Iran war.Malcolm Collins: It was, it was heavily damaged, but the original infrastructure from before that was built likeSimone Collins: companies. Oh. Oh, okay.Malcolm Collins: So, you know, you could just say you stole all this from us to begin with.Simone Collins: We’d be taking it back.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Interesting.Anyway love you to death, Simone. Love youtoo.Malcolm Collins: Fantastic developments, although, you know, obviously we mourn for service members who have died in the conflict so far for real. Which have mercifully been very, very small. AnyoneSimone Collins: who gets hurt, IMalcolm Collins: unbelievably small the casualty rates that we’re, we’ve been looking atSimone Collins: I do likeMalcolm Collins: those.And we can only pray that it continues.Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I, I do feel very glad to at least live in an age where our conflicts aren’t, let’s go send guys to shoot each other in a field. It’s nice that at least they’re more like I’d, that we’re not trying to strategically disarmMalcolm Collins: anymore. Let’s try to build a democracy in [01:02:00] Iran.Simone Collins: Yeah, you did an interesting episode on that a while back about. How some cultures just don’t take well to certain forms of governance. And that for, for you to just be like, everyone needs democracy or everyone needs monarchy. Like it’s not appropriate. Yeah, you just, you, you gotta, you gotta allow people to do what works best for them from a governing standpoint.Keep in, keeping in mind their cultural mixture, their religious mixture, their genetics, the region. Everything there, resources, it all matters. Yeah. And democracy is not right everywhere. So Yeah. I agree with you. I’m glad we’re not nation-building anymore.Malcolm Collins: Well, I, that I saying democracy doesn’t generally work for Arabs.But for Persians it might.Simone Collins: I was trying to be a little more diplomatic than that, but,Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, the statistics are clear. Like, if you’re looking at Protestant countries for example, there have been only a few instances in all history where they were not a form of democracy. Whereas, and, and [01:03:00] today almost all our democracies where if you look at a Arab countries, none has stayed.I think there’s been only one instance of one staying a democracy for over 10 years. Mm-hmm. Or I think it was 20, no, it might be over 25 years. Only an instance of one for over 25 years. And that’s just astonishing given the number of Arab majority countries There are.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like clearly something culturally is going on there.Simone Collins: Yeah. So why force something when it’s not gonna work? Clearly.Malcolm Collins: Yep. Anyway, love you to Dec.Simone Collins: Love you too. Gorgeous. Which one next?I.Simone Collins: . Oh, the kids are so excited to get chickens and fortunately they, they’ve all decided that they want the three different types that we want.So each person has requested our favorite types, like wants Starlight Green, Eggers, ‘cause they’re orange. And orange is his favorite color. And Torsten wants the blue Eggers because blue is my favorite color and Titan wants the black ones [01:04:00] because it’s cool.Malcolm Collins: So you just want more of the same, I thought you didn’t like the black ones as much.Simone Collins: They’re so friendly though, and they have those beautiful iridescent black feathers. And that was like, that was the kind, they’re also the smartest. That’s the kind that has gotten out twice, escaped twice. So today it was Trotsky and they’re so easy to get back in. Like the, the blue Eggers are not very nice or friendly.Malcolm Collins: Is this all the blue Eggers or just the, the ones from the, the older ones.Simone Collins: Oh, the ones that we, that like grew up in a factory farm ish environment. Not even that though. Like it was just a nice Pennsylvania farm, but still like mass produced. Yeah. They, they all aren’t that friendly. They’re more skittish.Whereas the midnight morons are the most friendly. The, the Starlight Green Eggers are also pretty skittish. They don’t like being picked up and petted as much, but it’s the most difficult to go after the. ERsSpeaker 7: [01:05:00] He strides through hallways decked in gold, so bright. Like a sultan’s palace glowing day and night. Marble pillars glimmer, echoing his name. A Persian king or president, one and the same. Shimmering drapes, flush rugs under each foot. A A fortress of bling that no one can refute. Gold leaf on the ceiling, mirrors everywhere.He’s bold, he’s brash, who else would even dare? Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare? Where are random cottages in frames, why aren’t they there? And where are the model ships, decked out in their coats? Where We’re asking our first Persian friends, show us those [01:06:00] votes.He bedazzles ballrooms, each corner ornate. Like something out of ancient lore, or so we state. Halls paved in splendor, shining under the light. Surprise, surprise, he’s got It’s quite a sight.He claims he’s classy with flair unmatched. A thousand chandeliers perfectly dispatched. Grand Tourette’s, big fountains, exotic mystique. All hail our Persian prez. So lavish, unique. Where are the paintings of boats? Of horses so rare? Random cottages in frames, why aren’t they there? And where are the model ships?Decked out in their coats? We’re asking our [01:07:00] first Persian friends. Show us! Those boats,every corner gilded, every surface gleams like shy era fantasies, fresh out of dreams. Marble upon marble, a treasure trove of hue. Yes, it’s gaudy, but hey, it’s trumped through and through. Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare, random cottages in frames, why And where the model ships decked out in their coats Our gilded Persian president,please bring on those boats This is a public episode. 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The podcast episode from Based Camp with Malcolm and Simone Collins dives into alarming CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data on youth mental health and suicide ideation (euphemistically called “youth in Asia,” “joining the euthanasia,” or “speed running life” to skirt filters). They discuss 2023 statistics showing persistently high rates of persistent sadness/hopelessness (especially among girls at ~53%), serious consideration of suicide (~27% for girls, ~14% for boys overall), planning, and attempts—rates that barely declined post-COVID lockdowns and remain shockingly elevated.The hosts argue modern school culture, urban monoculture, social contagion, affluence/leisure, and lack of hardship (e.g., small families vs. large ones creating built-in resilience) contribute to this crisis. They critique mainstream parenting/schooling as dangerously “normal” and advocate for pronatalist, counter-cultural family strategies—like large families for forced hardship, framing your family as discriminated against by dominant culture, or custom holidays to instill gratitude and purpose.They touch on related topics: higher rates in affluent/elite environments, comparisons to communities like trans or furries, gender differences (girls more ideation/plans, boys more completion when attempting), dystopian cravings in female psychology, nihilism’s social appeal, and the need for meaning beyond pleasure/validation.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about. TheSimone Collins: in AsiaMalcolm Collins: youth joining the youth in Asia. And we have to find creative ways to say this stuff so that we don’t get in too much trouble hereSpeaker 15: You need to take a cold, hard look at your stance on youth in Asia.Speaker 17: Oh, I don’t care about them. They’re conformists and they’re communists.Who? The youth in Asia.Simone Collins: to people who opt into the afterlife early.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Speed running life.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: The speed running generation. So we had done an episode previously on CDC statistics that were so shocking that they showed that the. 24%. So about one in four young women created a plan to join the euthanasia, not over the course of their childhood, but in any given 12 month period.Simone Collins: It’s insane. That’s [00:01:00] insane.Malcolm Collins: Insane. And this is CD, C, right? Like they have a reason to underplay this, right? So, I did that episode, and when we did that episode, the data that we had access to, that the public had access to was from 2021. And everyone was like, well, that was during the COVID Lockdowns.Mm-hmm. And being during the COV lockdowns, I can understand why you might have higher rates. Right. So. Let’s go at the later numbers that have been released since then, and the latest we have is 2023 data. What is the rate for girls now doing that?Simone Collins: Hmm,Malcolm Collins: 21%, only a 3% decline. And still well over one in five young girls.Makes a plan to join the euthanasia every 12 months period, not over the course of her childhood in any given 12 months period.Simone Collins: That actually [00:02:00] surprises me. I would’ve honestly expected that it would be higher because I remember looking at some statistics around the pandemic that showed that people’s rates of severe.Ideation of, of bad types increased right before school started, or like as school started and actually went down over the summer and during breaks, they were like just less stressed and they were not in the school system is a torture chamber for children. I do not. Yeah. So I’m actually surprised that now that people are now forcibly back in school at higher rates, that they’re actually doing a little better mentally.That, that’s interesting.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: But I, I think there’s also the effect of contagion when it comes to, you know, harmful social behaviors that include various forms of hurting yourself. Not just the ultimate form, but I. I, I think that that might have been a thing during the pandemic, just ‘cause a lot of people were talking about it, that maybe that was what pushed it over the edge and made it higher than normal because a lot of people were just being overtly dramatic online ‘cause they had [00:03:00] nothing else to do.And now people are a little bit more busy doing other things like actually going to school.Malcolm Collins: Well, we can talk about it. We can look at the differential rates.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: We which we will explore, we’ll see where there have been actual drops in the data. Mm-hmm. And I wanna talk about all this in the context of like, do you understand, you know, we have a you know, people filming about us and reporting crews here all the time.They’re like, why are you guys so weird? Like, why do you do this in a weird way? Why don’t you punish your kids the way everyone else is punishing their kids? Why don’t you just send your kids to school like everyone else is sending their kids to school? Mm-hmm. Why do you do X and Y and Z that are also weird and different?And it’s like if you knew that there was a. Cultural group.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And there was a or, or a type of school system right, like around you and everyone was like, well, did you know that one in five more than one in five [00:04:00] girls in that school system is making a plan to join the youth in Asia?Simone Collins: Or if they thought it was like a.An online social network or a social club. You know, if someone was like, oh, well, you know, one in five girls who joins the Girl Scouts wants to do this, people would be like, oh my gosh, it’s a Satanic cult. You know?Malcolm Collins: I think that they’d say, I’m definitely, like above all else, my child is not going into the Girl Scouts.Simone Collins: Yeah. Or if it were like a, a, a school district, right. They’d be like, oh, I’m moving out of there. Like, whatever it takes to save my girl. You know, th this is, this is hugeMalcolm Collins: aboveSimone Collins: all. And then people are, they don’t bat an eyeMalcolm Collins: above all else. If there is a, there is a school around us that when kids go to it, one in five girls wants to end it on any given year.Right. That school is every school.Simone Collins: ThatMalcolm Collins: is the culture that we are in right now.Simone Collins: That school is called school.Malcolm Collins: Cool. And I would point out that these rates are. Higher CR episode on this. ‘cause people can [00:05:00] be like, well, you know, this is for poor people or whatever. And it’s like, no, no, actually use in Asia ideation among young girls is higher for young girls who grew up in higher income suburb mm-hmm.Environments than those who grow up in, urban environments. And,Simone Collins: and this isn’t just again about literally trying to enter the afterlife early. This is also you see rates of spoons, which are people who often believe they have very serious medical conditions that they don’t actually have, but that ultimately lead them to have very real, symptoms that are torturous and awful. Those are, that is very much a, a, a new form of affluent. You don’t really see it happening with impoverished young girls that are resource strapped and watching their younger siblings and just trying to get by. You see it in middle class or upper middle class bougie girls who have too much time on their hands.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I, I’d go further you know, as somebody who grew up adjacent to like the you know, sort of elite boarding school scene and everything like that.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Oh, those were [00:06:00] the girls who, you know, did stuff. And,Malcolm Collins: and unlive. I, I’d, I bet if you could get the real statistics from a school like Andover or something like that.Oh gosh, gosh. They’d probably be like twice the rate of your, your local public school. Awesome. And it, it, it’s just the culture in these places. Anybody who goes or was in those networks knew you, always heard about people unliving themselves. So sad in these sort of wider elite culture networks.And so when a lot of parents, they think, oh, I’m not, I’m, I’m doing the, the premium version, therefore my kid is safe. And I’m like, you must have not been at the previous premium version when you were a kid. Yeah. That’s, that’s where all the cocaine is. Right? You know,Simone Collins: for real though.Malcolm Collins: No, I think it, I think it’s really dangerous.I think it’s really dangerous. And if one of our kids wants to, you know, try to get a scholarship to go to one of those, I’ll be like, you, you, you can try. But,Simone Collins: well, even, even on a more micro level. So, in, in, in the little, the island city where I grew up in the Bay Area called Alameda, there were two high schools.There was Sen l High School where I went and there was Alameda [00:07:00] High School where the rich kids went, like they were sort of the richer side of the island and then the not as rich side of the island and. The, the, the joke was that our students sold the drugs to the Alameda High School students, like we were the drug dealers.They bought the drugs and. The, the, like general sentiment was like they had the, the mental health problems. We also got their old textbooks. This is how poor we were as the high school. We would see like the Alameda High school stamps on the books and they’d be from like 1983 in like, you know, 2005.It was bad Malcolm, but like we really didn’t have that many serious issues of mental health going around our high school. We didn’t have stories of like, people going through this or that, or, you know, really crashing out. Whereas that happened a lot. At the other high school, which I think is really interesting, you know, so it’s not, you’re not even safe if you are.Oh, just, I’ll just keep my kid in public school then. No. There are also just school districts in general schools within the same school district that,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: [00:08:00] Could be seeing this problem.Malcolm Collins: But what I wanna point that out is I get really worried when parents come to me and they’re like, I found an out, I found a, a secret way that I don’t need to worry about this.Simone Collins: I send my child to a good classical Christian school and therefore everything’s going to be okay.Malcolm Collins: Be okay. And I would bet. If you did an analysis on good classical Christian schools and the rates of these things, they’re gonna be lower, but maybe like 3% lower, not, that’s still at horrifying levels.Mm-hmm. And it’s because they fundamentally buy in to the wider cultural framework, which is a leading to all of this. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this is a problem you could be like, well they’re, they’re classical Christian. Its like the teachers there still all went to teacher education. Yeah. That’s like four years of brainwashing.Right? They’re, and, and there’s been some great whistleblowers on this of like, what it’s like training to be a teacher today. And they’re like, [00:09:00] they’re like two out of eight classes have something to do with other than like one propaganda. And, and this is coming from the wokeness. Remember I said, oh, would you let, before we get into the sets here, your kid join a group that you knew how to, you know, one in five chance of, of making a plan to join the euthanasia.Mm-hmm. Right? And then you look at like, the most urban monoculture groups, like the trans community and stuff like that. Yeah. And it’s like, for them it’s like 50%, 45%, right? Like, oh. A coin flips chance, you know, if, if that’s the case, of course, I don’t want my kid joining those communities. Right. Yeah.Seriously,Simone Collins: guys,Malcolm Collins: to stay away from these communities you know, another community that has really high rates,Simone Collins: noMalcolm Collins: furries they’re at around, I think 35 to 40%Simone Collins: freeze. Isn’t that worse than the trans community?Malcolm Collins: No. That’s, that’s a little bit less than the trans community’s that.Simone Collins: That’s surprising. I mean, I thought that they were like kind of known for being based in.[00:10:00]Malcolm Collins: I think, well folks, communities represent something that is fundamentally unified, which is disliking who you are enough to want to create a separate persona that you can interact withSimone Collins: the world through Oh to Yeah. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a dissociative coping attempt that. May not be as successful as one would hope,Malcolm Collins: right?Yeah. So like,Simone Collins: like, so maybe the furries who have good furry local friend groups or online friend groups that they’re like great and supportive, like they’re fine. But then the furries who haven’t really been able to tap into that are the ones who end up.Malcolm Collins: No, I think it’s okay. Why could I never be a furry?Right. I couldn’t be a furry easily not because I don’t think that some anthro is hot. Mm-hmm. I can’t be a furry easily because I never wanna cover up my identity. I’m too proud of who I am. Oh. And I think that this is important, you know, if you tell a young kid, if you find any anthro character you’ve [00:11:00] ever seen attractive that you are now a deviant furry, and you might as well just join that community you know, you’re putting your kids at significant risk.Because the reality is, is even if you. A parent may have never seen anthrop that you found hot or just don’t find it hot at all. The reality is, is that statistically a huge chunk of the population you know, like when like Luna Tunes whatever comes out and, and they made low LunaSimone Collins: Tunes.Malcolm Collins: No. Remember they’ve made Lola Bunny less sexy? No.Simone Collins: Yeah. Lola Bunny was the that’s realization moment for so many people.Malcolm Collins: Mainstream right wing, like Christian influencers were like, how dare you make Lola Bunny less sexy? Now you wanna tell me everyoneSimone Collins: loves Lola Bunny. Yeah. Come on. Don’t come for her.Malcolm Collins: Well, the point I’m making here is you wanna tell me that. Everybody who can recognize that Lola Bunny is sexy and would be concerned about her [00:12:00] being less sexy. They’re all furries. And so now your mainstream, you know, right wing influencers who all freaked out when that happened. That’s why it’s important to differentiate between random arousal pathways.Mm-hmm. And you know, going into, you know, actuallySimone Collins: acting on it and like identifying with it in a way that that’s, that’s very interesting.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, and it’s, it’s, it’s important because it parents like, I’m gonna, you know, keep my kids out of the furry communities. I only show them Disney movies from the 1980s.And I’m like, you mean like Robinhood? Mm-hmm. I wanna tell you howSimone Collins: no one safe. Yeah.Speaker: I owe my life to you, my darling. I couldn’t have lived without you, Robin.Simone Collins: So, so true. A lot of thoseMalcolm Collins: furries found out about this.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Made.Simone Collins: Yeah. And go back a little, a little earlier to the 1950s like we talked about in our podcast and you know, maybe they had fewer anthro characters, but they were just, you know, doing things just in person with the donkeys.IRL, you know?Malcolm Collins: No. [00:13:00] What’s funny was made, Marianne is, oh, actuallySimone Collins: pronunciationMalcolm Collins: conservative, like trad sexual, like a, a role within, in that original one. Like in, in all otherSimone Collins: respect. Yeah. I mean, she was wearing her s swaddling hijab for most of that, wasn’t she?Malcolm Collins: Her, what is that?Simone Collins: The she was wearing a veil.I’m, I’m just referring, I think Trump talked about Iman Omar wearing a swaddling hit on. I just think it’s a really funny, the derogatory way to jobs. Anyway,Malcolm Collins: anyway, anyway, to get started here.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So, persistent feelings of sadness are hopelessness, okay? Mm-hmm. If we’re looking at all students, this went from 42% to 40%, barely a drop for female, 57% to 53%.For male, 28% to 28%. So no change in males. Let’s see if this pattern persists.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Now for females here, right? I, I actually wanna focus on this. This means that. [00:14:00] Well over half of girls in school have persistent feelings of lessness or hopelessness. Okay? This is not normal.Simone Collins: No, Malcolm. Clearly you’ve never been a teenage girl.Shining in the comments, girl, you know, we all just wanna die. I, it’s true. DoMalcolm Collins: you have that these days? Do you have a per, I mean, in our marriage, persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness?Simone Collins: No. No, no. Not since having kids. No, no, that puberty’s rough Malcolm. We just don’t understand, like it’s, it’s really rough.It’s not. It’s not great. And there I always approached all my challenges and puberty was like optimism. I was like, well, yeah, yeah, maybe that’s ‘cause you were being like macro dosed with testosterone and I was being macro dosed with, with estrogen before I figured out the solution, which was just to starve myself so much that my body stopped producing hormones permanently.And I fixed it. I fixed it. Malcolm, I may not be able to have [00:15:00] kids natural anymore, but I have the hormonal profile of a prepubescent male, so everything’s okay.Maybe that’s only you gotMalcolm Collins: your psychological condition for a female, which is called sanity.Simone Collins: Well, I mean that’s, I feel like it’s, it’s one of the best.How do I, what, how do I not use this word? The thing where you don’t eat that, that female coping mechanism of youth. That one is great because while it does, cause what I do have osteoporosis persistent fertility issues, it does actually address the hormonal issues. Like it does take it away.Malcolm Collins: Oh, being a woman.Simone Collins: Yeah. So it takes the problem away, whereas like, you know, the other coping mechanisms don’t, I guess, gender affirming care, youth gender transition does kind of handle it, but ourMalcolm Collins: daughters are gonna be a nightmareSimone Collins: when they go through puberty. This is why we had sons first. Like we intentionally, when you and I were like, oh, well should we start with sons or daughters?I was like, well, we’re starting with sons because I’m not dealing with teenage girls. Setting the tone in our household though, I do really [00:16:00] feel like a big moderating factor on having very, very rough adolescent ears is being. In a small household, every, every family that I know of, a lot of children.Or people I know who, who went through their adolescence in large families came through a lot more mentally healthy. And I think that a lot of the danger, and maybe this is one of those reasons why you see a correlary issue with like having leisure or wealth or some form of like, affluence or abundance in, in youth correlating with these high rates of attempting to join the youth in Asia is when there’s no space to get stuck in your head.You’re gonna be okay. It’s the problem is that the demons are all in your head when you’re in adolescence. And if you’re allowed to just hang out with the demons. You’re, you’re screwed. They’re gonna take you over. It, it’s like demonic possession, whereas if you’re constantly being kicked by you know, your 7-year-old brother and you know, your [00:17:00] other, like 13-year-old sister con constantly steals all your little bras and stuffing them and taking them to school.And you have to fight with her. And, and you know, if, if you are, you’re also waking up in the middle of the night to help your parents with an, your parents with an infant. You don’t have space. To get angsty and, and, and think about hurting yourself. You know, you’re too busy trying to kill your siblings out of rage.The, the rage takes over and it’s a beautiful thing. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alright.Simone Collins: Sorry. Rant at all. No, I thinkMalcolm Collins: it’s true. I think it’s true. I think being in a large family, you’re not gonna be affected one by external culture as much. And then,wellSimone Collins: it’s the forced hardship, which is something we talk about sort of separately about how we think.It’s just so important to have some version of hardship and youth. And you don’t have to manufacture hardship for affluent youth if you have it built in through the form of a large family, which just creates hardship every single day we see with our kids. ‘cause our kids have to navigate. Feelings of, of unfairness or violation or having [00:18:00] to put others first, which is really hard for kids every single day.Malcolm Collins: So, yeah. And, and here I’m gonna note something because I’ve been looking ahead in the statistics and we’re gonna need to have a hypothesis around this, which is that. From COVID to not COVID lockdown female rates of unhappiness joining the euthanasia, everything declines marginally. Yeah.Whereas in males it didn’t. And so the question is, is why, whySimone Collins: was it, I think, I think we’re going back to my, my original high thesis, which is thi this is a social contagion thing. I think that during the pandemic just became vogue to talk about this. And that after the pandemic it was just less cool.And also like girls had more things to gossip and titter about when they were seeing each other in person at school. And so there, there wasn’t as much need to get attention and, and gossip about entering the afterlife.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So [00:19:00] seriously thought about joining the euthanasia. Mm-hmm. For females.This was 30% in COVID and then went down to 27%, so it’s 3%Simone Collins: now, 27%, though that is still way too high. I don’t wanna play those odds.Malcolm Collins: Four.Simone Collins: I mean, like if, if we’re talking about school shooters for example, and it’s like, well, you know, like you’d be like, well, I’m getting my kid outta that school. I don’t want them to get hurt.Like, it’s, I don’t know why we’re, so, we talk so much more about our children being at risk of being hurt by other people when like, just like with murder rates, right? Like most murders and kidnappings are performed by like family members or inside the house from people, you know. And the who do you know?Who do you spend the most time with in your entire life? It’s you. You’re your own worst enemy. You are your own biggest risk. Why are we not more concerned about this? The, you know, the calls coming from inside the house, like the most inside part of it. Ah,Malcolm Collins: to continue.Simone Collins: Yeah. Go on.Malcolm Collins: And, and with males it was 14% in, in, in both periods.SoSimone Collins: still way too [00:20:00] much.Malcolm Collins: Also, keep in mind how low it is for males compared to females. 14 to 27%, right? Yeah. Girls are significantly more at risk of this. Yeah. And, you know, everybody knows life is worse for young men these days in terms of the bias they face in from, from teachers, from society.Simone Collins: The enemy within is worse for young women. Yeah. Young men are like, they just really wanna bang someone, right? Like, this is the worst thing that happens to them in, in youth, right? They become a little rebellious and they really need sex. Girls, it’s, man, it’s, it’s, it’s as different and it’s dark. Okay.Malcolm Collins: No, no. I mean, it is, it is true what you’re saying. They want sex. That is what men want.Simone Collins: Yeah.I, if only I were so lucky. If only that were my problem in youth, I wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t have the bones of an aged woman.Malcolm Collins: Anyway. Anyway so, if for the we, where we went over the made a plan so for women it went from 24% to 21%.But [00:21:00] with males it 12% to 12%. Still way too high. Yeah. And I think your enemy within thing is right. Women are terrible to other women. And, and themselves.Simone Collins: And themselves. A lot of itMalcolm Collins: comes from a place ofSimone Collins: self hatred.Malcolm Collins: The urban monoculture, which defines your purpose around seeking self validation and pleasure mm-hmm.Is going to spread more within female communities because they are much more interested in conforming to societal standards, social pressures. Mm-hmm. And I think they might have even become more conformist to the general social pressure over COVID. Because now it’s not just their friend group that’s, that’s pressuring them.It’s the online juggernaut that’s pressuring them, right?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. The, the juggernaut.Malcolm Collins: The juggernaut and then attempted now this is interesting. Attempted actually didn’t go down post COVID for women. 13% to 13%. So what it may be is we’re actually seeing a decrease in the sort of [00:22:00] histrionic, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it.Behavior and not actual rates. Mm-hmm. Risk for minute went down 1%, which is statistically irrelevant, seven to 6%. Mm-hmm. Thoughts.Simone Collins: Yep. Part, part of me is like, I, I trust men when they say it. Also, like when you look at the successful execution of, early exit men, men follow through. You know, women attend all time.Well, actually, actually, no. Oh, I tried. HoldMalcolm Collins: on. Simone, you’re, you’re, you’re just, I wrong statistically wrong here.Simone Collins: Really? I thought it was men that just got the job done.Malcolm Collins: No, no contrast. No, that is true. When they attempt. They die more often.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But contrast the male attempt rate which was 6% versus the male percent rate that said they seriously considered it, which was 14%.Mm-hmm. So, it, you, you know, that’s like,Simone Collins: and, and what’s the female attempt versus consider?Malcolm Collins: Bit more than double. Right?Simone Collins: I, I, I don’t see that as meaningful. Did they? Did they actually succeed? That’s what matters. Okay.Malcolm Collins: No, obviously,Simone Collins: obviously ‘cause a [00:23:00] female attempt doesn’t mean, is not always an national attempt.It might just be the communication of the drama. Okay.Malcolm Collins: The communication of the drama.Simone Collins: Yeah. See, you’reMalcolm Collins: saying women are histrionic, drama queens that will attempt to make it look like they want to end their lives for attention. You’re saying this about young women. OhSimone Collins: yeah. I mean, it’s, they’reMalcolm Collins: like, well, yeah,Simone Collins: yeah.Well, okay, so look at it. Look at it from a woman’s perspective, right? It’s in vogue now. You know, everyone, everyone in high school is talking about it. One of them already followed through. You’re trying to get attention and, and love and people to care and worry about you because of this, right? But everyone’s talking about it and how depressed and sad they are.So we have no choice. Situation. Yeah. Well, no, sort of, you have no choice but to show how you’re actually serious when you’re competing with everyone for attention on this one trendy issue.Speaker 7: Sorry to hear about your friend. Thought she was your usual airhead . Guess I was wrong. We all were.Simone Collins: So the only way that you can demonstrate your [00:24:00] seriousness is to actually show an attempt to actually get hospitalized, for example, you know, to, to, to actually be taken outta school for several days so that people talk about you in your absence.Right. Yeah. And there are very easy ways to do this where, you know, it’s not really gonna, but you know, you can still work yourself up and, you know, get, this is very harmful. I’m not saying that like girls who are doing it performatively aren’t hurting themselves and also very, very miserable and actually kind of really thinking about it.‘cause once you get into the it’s method acting to a great extent as well. Like they’re really feeling it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was also just thinking about the, the movie The Heathers, where a major plot theme is that Unliving yourself becomes trendy in school because the, it’s actually a chain of murders. Mm-hmm.But the popular girls don’t know thatSimone Collins: it’s a perfect crime. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But the the, the male character in that had a very similar sort of persona to the one that I had in high school, which is funny. Yeah. In terms of like, the way he acted and dressed and everything,Which is funny, you just trying to be like a little ife [00:25:00] while also being very irreverent.Simone Collins: Yeah. That, no, that was very much the arbitrage game that you played in, in thatMalcolm Collins: and, and break rules for the sake of breaking rules, you know? Mm-hmm. Whatever. So many rules. I broke at that time in my life. Like literally only because I broke rules. I, I wanted to break rules. I remember like back then I used to smoke and then I stopped smoking.The minute it was legal for me to smoke. I was just like, this is, this is lame.Simone Collins: I’m glad you didn’t get addicted. That’s,Interesting.Malcolm Collins: People in my family seem pretty resistant to nicotine addictions. Yeah,Simone Collins: that is, that is interesting.Malcolm Collins: People in my family are very susceptible to alcohol addiction.Simone Collins: Yeah.Firewater gets you guys, but not the, not the peace pipe. Interesting.Malcolm Collins: No one in my family has died from alcohol. SoSimone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: not, not that kind of but, but my mom, if you didn’t know, was actually addicted to nicotine for a period.Simone Collins: Oh, she was? So she had to actively try to quit smoking. Mm-hmm. Wow. Okay. I didn’t knowMalcolm Collins: that.She [00:26:00] said she, she stopped smoking. And the only reason I even remember this is ‘cause I remember why she stopped, which is apparently in like kindergarten when we were supposed to make, you know, like little things for our parents in like art class,Simone Collins: ohMalcolm Collins: no. Ash tray holder. Like a little, you know. And seeing that like it got to her and she’s like, Ugh,Simone Collins: mommy, I made you an ashtray.So she wait. That implies that she might have smoked through her pregnancies.Malcolm Collins: No,Simone Collins: she didn’t. She stopped for that. She drank because a lot of, a lot of women just stop smoking because like, even men, like a lot of men, when they do quit smoking, it’s ‘cause they’ve been hospitalized for a series of days and they haven’t been allowed to smoke then.And they’re like, well, I guess this is the time I go cold Turkey. You know? Yeah. Because the, the first days are the hardest. So I figured that she would’ve stayed. Cold Turkey.Malcolm Collins: She never did it that much. I do not have any explicit memory of her ever smoking in my entire life. I only have a memory of the ashtray story.Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Maybe she, I honestly imagine that she did it just for the aesthetics. I’d be [00:27:00] surprised if she struggled to quit, but I don’tMalcolm Collins: know. But yeah. So, where is this coming from? Yeah. I mean, we’ve, we’ve talked about this in so many episodes but you know, just to go over, when you define your purpose in life as a search for pleasure and self affirmation, you.Feel and experience everything that is fundamentally good that you are creating in this universe from your perspective, because that’s how you’ve defined your own purpose.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And there just isn’t that much positive feeling to life, especially when you’re a teenager. And so it’s a very bad reason to keep going.Simone Collins: It’s worse than that though, and here’s why. I think also you saw more of a spike in this form of Id. Ideation during the pandemic especially is because I and I listen to a lot more leftist content than you do. A very, very common theme is just like, oh, this world is just so hard to live in. [00:28:00] It just, it just, it’s so dark and I, this world is everything.Awesome. I know, I know. I love this timeline. Like that’s the problem is we’re having a blast, but it is a very, very, very common message in the mainstream urban monoculture, and for that reason. I think it’s even easier to begin thinking along those lines. You see this crop up with Antinatalism as well.When people think about bringing a new life into the world, we often hear it too of like, oh, how could I bring a life into a world that’s so horrible? But this also has to do with people’s existing lives and can influence people’s tendencies in that direction to end their lives early.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I, I think that you’re, you’re put been on something really important here, and we’ve talked about it in our, you know, the, the, the seductiveness of nihilism, right?Mm-hmm. Like being the nihilistic person is an easy social hack to look cool. Yeah. Within any context, right. You know, everyone else is, oh, you know, if I come into a room and I’m like, [00:29:00] unrightly enthusiastic about something, and somebody else is like, Hey, that’s lame. You know, they’ve now scored like a social point on me.Yeah. Unless that’s actively punished. Or I just look at their,Simone Collins: and I, by the way, that’s one of those like moves, like I, I imagine people who enjoy watching sports, like there are certain moves that they just hate that people do. To like get a ball from someone or, I don’t know. But like the, when girls do it for like their version of girl nagging, like a, a guy being like, oh, like, well, I got us a reservation at this restaurant.Oh yeah. You know, it’s not, it’s not really good. Or like, they just act not impressed by everything. ‘cause they think that makes them look good. This is another version of that when people are like. Oh, the world’s just so terrible. Like, no, stop that. It doesn’t make you look good. I mean, it just, some people, I guess.No,Malcolm Collins: no. It does make you look good to a certain community is the thing, especially of women, especially of urban monoculture types. This idea of your status in part, coming from how distressed you are, how much of a victim you are, your [00:30:00] own weakness as we’ve pointed out. You know, you can either see the world through strength or you can see it through.Weakness and the urban monoculture elevates a group or individual based on how disadvantaged they are in the perspective of the urban monoculture. You know, they’re, how many disabilities they have, how hard it is for them to get through an average day. And so, you know, if you’re some white middle class chicken, you’re hearing this, you’re now like, you know, this is where spoon come from.You’re now like, oh, I gotta in invent all this for myself. And as, as you and I have pointed out, people like women, young women, see our episode if you’re interested. It’s, it’s something like they crave the dystopia. Women are sort of programmed to want to live in a dystopia. And you see this through the literature that they read, like dystopian literature is very, very common for young female audiences.And if you read about the lives of young females, just a couple generations ago in that episode, we went through Simone’s grandmother’s war diary. You know, living in France under occupation [00:31:00] and it was a post apocalypse. It was a like, like they were living through. And you goSimone Collins: back, they’re driving out of Paris and the roads are backed up and.The, the Nazis are literally dropping bombs on the roads as cars are fleeing. She, at one point had like a pickup truck flip over her as she was hiding in a ditch by the side of the road. And the only reason she was spared was ‘cause she was like inside the indentation of the ditch, like horrible things.And they, you know, they wander into abandoned villages and she goes into a, a, like a restaurant or bar trying to find. You know, someone to like get food from and just finds a dead body there and like walks back to where her parents were and just doesn’t say anything like genuine. Like scary movie stuff.Not, not even just who, spooky dystopia. That kind of, you know, just horrible.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: And it was very recent. It was theMalcolm Collins: same way. You go back to the Great Depression, it’s the same, you go back to the old West. The same, yeah. YouSimone Collins: go backMalcolm Collins: to Europe during that time period. The same.Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] Women are genetically optimized.To grow up in a dystopia. Mm-hmm. And when they do not have an external oppressor, they create a fictionalized oppressive force in their lives.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Actually, I want to think about this concept more. How can we structurally create something that helps our daughters not do this to themselves? SoSimone Collins: Malcolm Siblings a large family, it’s built in.Malcolm Collins: I don’t think so at all. I think that it is still possible without traditions and contextualization to intergenerationally prevent this. And the way that I would do it is to frame our family as a discriminated group by the dominant culture in society, the urban monoculture, right? And say that you know, they will fight against us at every turn.They will make your life. Harder at every turn because of who you are. There is an active conspiracy against us, which there is. You can just look [00:33:00] at the media. There is an active array of forces aligned against us, right? And that. We need to fight this. And, and I think that that can help them.I think another thing is to maybe create a holiday a around this, right? The idea that young women will create fictionalized self oppression when they do not face it in their life. And I think that the, how, how would you structure a holiday to really hammer that home?Simone Collins: I don’t know. I mean, off the top of my head, I don’t know.I, I, I want to consult the holidays that other base camp community members have shared with us that they’ve built on their own. ‘Cause we’re not the only ones who believe in culture crafting as it just so happens, you know, we’re a good company. I think some of them have come up with some interesting rites of passage.So I don’t know, could consult those for inspiration.Malcolm Collins: [00:34:00] Well, somebody had a past day that I really liked. Yeah, maybe we could do something where like the past day is actually like a two day thing. And you do different eras, so you do, or maybe even for like a week every week you do a meal from like a different period in the past, and you talk about the challenges of living in that period and how horrible it actually was to be alive during that period.Yeah. And how, and then reflect on how lucky we are for the society and world we live in and think with shame on the people who act differently.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: What do you think of that? We can do this over Thanksgiving as an alternative to Thanksgiving. ‘cause Thanksgiving sucks at the holiday.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I do.I do like that as a Thanksgiving thing.Malcolm Collins: And then you get a week of unique dishes as well, so you can try,Simone Collins: you know, always, always the dishes. Yeah. It ain’t a holiday if they’re in special food decorations, cannedMalcolm Collins: food from the 1950s. You know, what, what is thatSimone Collins: like, oh God, make up jello casserole [00:35:00] thing, blah.Our kids would probably be into it, considering their taste in food. So, yeah. No, I, I, yeah, I, I hear you. I, I think the biggest thing is the urban monoculture. But the second biggest thing is, is the urbanMalcolm Collins: monoculture. You can’t just say, don’t join it. Your kids will still join it. You still end up trapped, right?Like,Simone Collins: well, and you still actually have a, a very, very long history of affluent girls living in abundance, having issues of hurting themselves and, and calling it different things. Sometimes calling it religious devotion, sometimes calling it. Sickness that they just report that isn’t real.So I, I, yeah, I, I, I agree with you that it is not exclusively the urban monoculture. I think that the urban monoculture can, however, explain outsized variants and, and unique differences in some periods of time. But yeah, you’re, you’re right. But yeah you also, the, the larger picture is that people need a reason to live.It’s not [00:36:00] enough to just be like, oh, I’m happy and like, I don’t know. I don’t wanna die. You, you, you have to. I, I think a lot of people only understand why they don’t want to die, when kind of that’s not, the living is the default that that’s a big factor when living is not the default or it doesn’t feel like the default.They suddenly are really happy about. Not dying. And I think maybe actually another issue that that could be insufficiently discussed, and this can go back to holidays and also making Hall Halloween more about El de Los MUTOs, is that we don’t talk a lot about death. And I think a lot of people don’t even really understand the, the meaning of how short their lives are and how tenuous their lives are.And, and how quickly they, everything could just end and you can lose a family member at any age.Malcolm Collins: You can go to show our kids a dead human body. Like does the morgue let kids in? I I used lots of deadSimone Collins: bodies. I’m sure we have a, a lot of, like, if you have good [00:37:00] connections, probably. But I, I even just talking with Octavian on Monday, like when it came up that like, I’m gonna die and he’s gonna die, and he really started wrapping his head around it.He was like, oh God. Huh. He definitely came away from the conversation. I mean, the, theMalcolm Collins: Puritans used to do that. They used to have their kids like, standSimone Collins: overMalcolm Collins: Graves. Graves.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I like it. Look at it. That’s gonna be you one day.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, I wonder if that’s maybe also one of the reasons why people, I held open casket funerals.You know, it’s, it’s not necessarily. To just honor the debtor, like have closure in some way that would really freak me out. But like, rather to be like, no, look at Itand.Malcolm Collins: I think we should make a holiday for our family around showing the kids dead bodies. And see ifSimone Collins: that’s, or we could do the thing that like, you know, the depressed South Koreans do, where, you know, they, we make them, they, they, they, they write their will and they lie in a casket and think about the fact, I, I don’t know though.I, I, I wonder if that kind of makes people [00:38:00] into it. Make them wanna go ahead, do it. I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re gonna have to think about this. I, I’d love people’s thoughts in the comments.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, that’s my thoughts on that. Which is to say this is not an artifact caused by COVID. The system really is that bad.And stay the FOA like stay the FOA build something new. You have had kids for nothing if you then throw them in the grinder, right? Totally like a, a society, right? If you let them be normal. Right, becauseSimone Collins: nor nor these days, Malcolm has given you one slice of what normal means and given those rates of interest in departing from the world so prematurely, normal’s not good.You don’t want normal. Normal is aMalcolm Collins: dangerous cult.Simone Collins: You want freakishly weird. If anything that’s not freakishly weird, now is, is very worrisome. So, mm-hmm. [00:39:00] Get rid of that. Desire to be, to fit in. Not good. Not good.Malcolm Collins: I love youSimone Collins: so much. Special.Malcolm Collins: You’reSimone Collins: the I have the other half of the Bullock, but I know this was with a larger, I don’t know how to pronounce the noodle things.Bki. SoMalcolm Collins: something’s wrong with this Bullock.Simone Collins: It didn’t look right. Yeah. I was like, what is, what is, I think it’s ‘cause we, we, you, you asked me in subsequent batches to make, to chop the medicinal pieces.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. No. I mean, it doesn’t have any chicken in it for one, it doesn’t have any mushrooms in it.It, I, I think, was the one that we made that wasn’t actually bulldog, but it was meant to be made by itself without cheese. It’s a different dish entirely.Simone Collins: Do you want me to toss the rest of it, or do you want me to prepare it differently? I think you just don’t want, you don’t, dude, if it, if it doesn’t work, no, I wanna,Malcolm Collins: Prepare it differently.Prepare it without cheese or a little bit of butter. And cook it longer. It was like really [00:40:00] mushy when it needs to be a little bitSimone Collins: harder. Okay. So you wanna dry it out and then So I’ll dry it out and like, in the air fryer, like sort of bake it for a while and then at the very end, melt cheese, cheddar cheese on top.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: that’s a good idea. Yeah.Simone Collins: Okay, we’ll try that. And if you don’t like it, I can make you, it’s, it’s fineMalcolm Collins: to eat, by the way, because Yeah, well, it’s not as tasty because it doesn’t have chicken or the mushrooms. It has nothing that can go wrong with it.Simone Collins: Oh, well there’s that. Yeah. And if you have cheese, you have a little more protein.I’m trying to keep it a,Balance. I, I was just learning recently about someone who died at age like 32 of a sudden aneurysm. Left kids behind and stuff made me really sad. So now I’m like, oh God, I gotta get you healthy. Going to, going to get your blood pressure perfect and keep you alive forever.And you need to sleep more. Okay.Malcolm Collins: I slept a lot today.Simone Collins: Yeah. But more. Okay. Just more. And are you like taking all your vitamins every day? We, we doingMalcolm Collins: a lot. Sometimes.Simone Collins: Mm. I’ve not refilled our two week little [00:41:00] flipper thing. For you in more than two weeks now. So, all right. God, I shouldn’t have to do every, I can’t like throw pills into your mouth.Take your freaking pills. You’re an adult man. I don’t want you to die. Oops. I feel like Toasty understands his mortality of, his way of saying, I love you, is I love you and I don’t want you to die. But I think this is also, ‘cause I constantly am like, Torsten, don’t jump off the bed like that. I don’t want you to die.And he just assumes it’s like this platitude of like, oh yes, and a good day to you too. Good day toMalcolm Collins: you too, sir. I I love you and I don’t want you to die.Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, just think it’s, it’s a thing you say sometimes. No toasty, you’re dangerous. Stop doing things anyway.Malcolm Collins: I love you Simone. That works for me for tonight.Also reheating you could even throw in some peppers or something to mix it up a bit.Simone Collins: Sh peppers. So saute those and then,Malcolm Collins: yeah, because we gotta use, actually, why don’t you just try sauteing it with shishito peppers.Simone Collins: Okay. And then I guess at the very end I can throw it in the air fryer [00:42:00] and then or just not,Malcolm Collins: just no cheese, no air fryer.Simone Collins: I can also sprinkle shredded very finely shredded cheddar cheese on after plating it and it will not. Yeah. Okay. I’ll do that. Yeah. That spares me cleaning the air fryer. Thank you. And I love you and goodbye. You are. And don’t die. You’reMalcolm Collins: amazing woman. I love you dearly. Thank you for this great wife and not wanting to die all the time.Because that would be really sad. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Being around a bummer. Depression is contagious.Malcolm Collins: Okay. By the way, did you get to r Fab’s deck in reviewing that?Simone Collins: I need to but I will. I will. Okay. I gotta get, I gotta get the Love you. Byebye.Simone Collins: [00:43:00] Nice. Okay. All right. Before we, you know, start. Because you don’t wanna trigger too many content filters. What are we gonna call this? What? The, the youth in Asia, are we gonna call it success rates? Are weMalcolm Collins: the youth in Asia? Yeah.Simone Collins: What are, what are, how’s this gonna go?Malcolm Collins: The well, I think, I think self euthanizingSimone Collins: determination ratesMalcolm Collins: I termination rates, unli is the word most people use.Simone Collins: Ew. Yeah. But except if I were an obvious not re retard at Google I would. Include Unli as one of my content filters. It’s so stupid. You can’t use the term that everyone uses. You know, that that’s, what do they call it? The the euphemism, treadmill.Treadmill. That’s not, no, no. We hit toMalcolm Collins: Google above to be okay with the euphemism treadmill. Well, I, I, I like your euthanasia thing, so we’ll just call them the euthanasia. Okay. Okay. If we knew that they’d be joining the euthanasia, theSimone Collins: rate of youth. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: the [00:44:00] red youth. Okay. Who’veSimone Collins: entered Asia.Malcolm Collins: I just saw a thing.Do you know Kular? He has a scale at his house for when women come in. Oh, and if you don’t have, oh, that’s adorable. Body bag, Xanex, you get kicked out. You’d make it thorough. That’s for sure.Simone Collins: That’s adorable. Yeah. I’m 20% body fat. That is exactly where you could be if you wanna have an athlete’s body, but also carefully and like successfully healthfully carry pregnancies.I, I, I had a dexo scan to actually check because I was like, I wanna be at exact, the minimum body weight that I can have while I was being pregnant. I wanna be theMalcolm Collins: very best body.Simone Collins: Oh yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh.Simone Collins: To be thin is my greatest quest. Yeah. Anyway.Malcolm Collins: But I like that about you because I am disgusted by fatSimone Collins: rotund.You are rot disinclined toMalcolm Collins: No, I have a, a, a pretty strong natural aversion to it.Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s just like some people are turned off by, you know. Big butts. [00:45:00] Some people are turned off by small butts. You’re turned off by excess body fat. Some people are turned on by excess body fat as we know, because the entire haze movement, the body positivity for women wasn’t invented by women trying to look good.It was invented by chubby chasers. Okay? Like they’re out there. So that’s the things you actually pointed out in your book. The prag guided sexuality that people under index. On just appealing to the people who find you attractive. Mm-hmm. That, that we just need to, like, if you are, for example, rotund, look for dudes who are into that.If you are a, a bony hag, like I love into that,Malcolm Collins: filter out dudes who are into that by being like, I’m just a fetish to you. ISimone Collins: know. No, no, that’s, this is your opportunity. Go for it, girl. Live your dreams. I also, I, you know, ‘cause I sent you that clip of the, the mom and her daughter looking at filter like Instagram filters of them that turn them into men.Mm-hmm. I realized, and I I, I texted you this on WhatsApp this morning, but I was like, oh my God, like before any woman is allowed to date, she should look at a filter of her as a man. Yeah.AndSimone Collins: [00:46:00] like, this is the level of, of man you could get because in, in, in the clip that I sent you, it showed like, you know, a woman who was like, I don’t know what, an eight or something or above, like, she was a, a hot, sexy woman, and like as a man, she looked really good and then the camera pans over to her mom who’s.Not an eight. And she saw what she looked like as a man, and I think she, she would be the type of woman who would expect a, an eight plus, you know, who would expect a man who’s really attractive? And she would never give a second glance to a man who looked like she did under that filter. And I think that was part of what led her to start screaming expletives, et cetera, because like she had, would have deep disrespect for a man who looked.Speaker 4: Oh my God. Christina, you are one hot looking man. Oh my God. Are you freaking kidding me right now? That’s awesome. What? Get that. Are you freaking kidding me right now? Get that off. That’s disgusting.Simone Collins: The weightMalcolm Collins: looks asSimone Collins: a man. Yeah. That how AI is gonna helpMalcolm Collins: [00:47:00] the, the datingSimone Collins: game. Yes. This is, you know, like Yeah. A dating app that before you sign up you have to see the filter review. Oh my god. A dating app that only allowed you to see the gender bent version of them. And they’re like, well, I guess if they look kind of like me, then I’m Brooklyn.All women areMalcolm Collins: beautiful. Don’t you know Simone?Simone Collins: God no.Malcolm Collins: All women.Simone Collins: I know the same, this the case every time I look in the mirror though, our girls are gorgeous. It’s great. It’s great that my like dis dis body dysmorphia doesn’t pass on to them because I know some others really take it out on their. You know, girls are like, oh, you have to look beautiful.You’re ugly. ‘cause because they themselves feel ugly. Whereas like now I’m like, damn. Like you’re beautiful. They are. Okay.Speaker 9: Acts like a microscopic shock absorber, forcing any crack. To zig. Women were a long, old fashioned dress. Nobody seems to know or talk to [00:48:00] her every time. Fiona went to a different room, a strange lady was there waiting. She wouldn’t stop staring at Fiona. Why was she looking at. Is this pasta with sprinkles?Speaker 10: Yeah, I just put rainbow rainbows, whatever, Fahrenheit. Yeah, it says rainbow sprinkles. Buddy. Did you learn about this from Elf Watch? And that 70 mile channel becomes 70 miles of fresh teeth. Follow a few hours behind. Close enough to transit. The did You know our teeth are bones? Yeah, their bones. You can see.Speaker 9: But right now, someone that is a spooky lady, let’s see what she’s up to. Is that true machinery measured in thousands? I don’t think so. Enamel covered the engineering spaces. Yeah, I think they’re a different structure. They could be, I, I don’t know, [00:49:00] Alexa, our teeth considered bone teeth aren’t actually bones.Speaker 10: There may have different tissues that originate from the odors, the outermost embryonic germ layer while both continue mineralized tissuefrom the mesodermal germ layer. But here’s the thing, okay? They’re not bones. I’m sorry. I was wrong. This is why I speak to ES Alexa, right? They look a lot like B though, because they’re enamel prop. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Europe’s decline isn’t primarily from immigration—it’s from self-inflicted genetic and cultural degradation via the World Wars and long-term dysgenic trends. In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into new research on how WWI military deaths in Britain crushed long-term innovation (especially breakthrough patents), with effects persisting for decades. They extrapolate to France, Germany, and Russia (far worse casualty rates) and argue Europe’s population has already lost much of its vital, risk-taking stock—long before recent migration waves.Topics include:* Why Europe’s “white” populations created weak, anti-innovation cultures and laws themselves* Genetic/cultural long-tail effects: small average shifts devastate extreme outliers (inventors, risk-takers)* Immigrant selection filters: why U.S. Latin American immigrants differ from Europe’s current inflows* Frontier mindset (Scots-Irish, Silicon Valley types) vs. stagnant European vitalism* Geopolitical realism: viewing decaying Europe as opportunity territory in a techno-feudal future* Why weakness repels strong allies—and why America increasingly sees Europe as irrelevantIf you’re into pronatalism, human biodiversity, innovation economics, or unfiltered takes on Western decline, this episode challenges mainstream narratives hard.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be with you today.Today we are going to be talking about. New data that has come out, which shows how Europe has genetically degraded and changed due to the two world wars. Mm-hmm. And it’ll, I think, highlight for people when they say to me, Malcolm, as an American, you know, you must feel some ethnic kinship with, and, and cultural kinship with the European peoples.If you look at like, well, immigration may not be as big an issue in the United States as it is in Europe because mm-hmm. We mostly import Latin Americans and Latin Americans are really just southern Europeans. They’re like 20% Native American when, when they are Native American. So it’s, it’s always been very weird to me that we consider them like so different of people.We’ll get to that in a second, but was Europe, they’re importing lots of, you [00:01:00] know, people from the Middle East who are culturally and, and ethnically, very different than them that have differentially higher fertility rates in them. And that you, you’re already be to see parts of their society.Buckle to this, you know, norms and stuff like this. There’s places you can go to in London that are nothing like what they are culturally speaking. You know, 20, 30 years ago. And they say, oh, you must be so sad about this. And I’m like, I’m really quite indifferent. Like it’s, it’s not the best.But, but Europe has already in part, been destroyed by not immigrants, but white Europeans and what the, the, what became of the white European culture. Mm-hmm. And their genetic stock has already been significantly degraded to the point where I just don’t know if there’s much of utility there. Like it wasn’t the immigrants that took away Germany’s nuclear factories.It wasn’t the immigrants that are making the laws in the uk, which caused people to get arrested for insulting anyone, anything [00:02:00] like the, the guy in Scotland arrested for writing Islam can be questioned on a wall.Simone Collins: No, it can’t.Malcolm Collins: No, it cannot. Well, but no, it wasn’t the Muslims who made those laws, who enforce those laws.That was. The Scottish, right? Yeah. And youSimone Collins: know, really it’s the ultimate condemnation. Like they deserve this because they made it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. They, they made their cultures weak, but, but why, why did they behave at a genetic level so differently from people who appear to be closely related to them in the United States?And that’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode because we have more data on that now. So this is a post about a study. So it’s a, a tweet by economist Luca Reto announcing a new paper titled Human Capital and Shocks and Innovation Evidence from Britain’s Lost Generation. And I’ll, I’ll go straight into what he says about it right here because it’s, it’s just a [00:03:00] fascinating study.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: So what are the effects of large human capital shocks on innovation? In a new paper, we study how World War II military deathsacross British communities affected local invention Over the next decades, we find that places that lost more young men, became persistently less innovative. World War II caused a massive loss of young men in Britain, over 750,000 military deaths, heavily concentrated among young, young cohorts.Because the war was fought abroad, Britain experienced large human capital losses without domestic physical destruction. So basically it creates an instance where we can see what happens if you just remove a portion of the type of men who go to war without affecting the actual capital infrastructure of a location.Hmm. This provides a great setting [00:04:00] to study a central question in economics. What happens to innovation when communities lose a large share of their young and skilled population? Do label shortages spur innovation or does the loss of human capital reduce it? To study this, we built a new data set linking World War I, military records and death records, the universe of British patents \ 1895 to 1979.Mm-hmm. In winter identities and locations. And this allows us to track innovation across 10,000 communities over eight decades.Simone Collins: Ooh. See, that’s a lot of data that’s Come on guys. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When compared to places with higher versus lower World War I mortality within the same country the main results, communities that lost more soldiers became less likely to produce patents in the decades after the war.Hmm. Quantitatively, a 10% increase in World War I deaths reduces the probability that a parish produces any patent by about [00:05:00] 0.09 to 0.12 percentage points, Hmm. This effect appears during the war, but persists for decades. Up until modern times the effects are even stronger. For high impact innovations, exposure to World War I Mortality reduces the probability of producing breakthrough patents roughly three times more than the probability of producing any patent.So, I’m gonna read that again. Okay. Exposure to World War I mortality reduces the probability of producing breakthrough patents more than three times the probability of producing than it hits producing any patent. So basically, not only do you see a reduction in innovation, but you specifically see an outsized reduction in extreme levels of innovation.Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Presumably because the most valiant, brave risk takers are also. More likely to go out and get themselves killed in war?Malcolm Collins: Oh no. This is actually a long tail situation. That’s where all of this is coming from. [00:06:00] But what it means is that when you affect a central statistic, you affect the long tails the most.Oh, sure.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: That makes sense. Yeah. Effects on a population reduce, like if, if you’re talking about a, a small reduction, like let’s say you move the average person to be like,Simone Collins: you’re more likely to have exceptional outliers in a sample size of 1000 than of 10.Malcolm Collins: No, that’s, no,Simone Collins: no. Okay. Sorry.Malcolm Collins: No.Yeah, I mean obviously that’s, that’s not what I’m talking about.Simone Collins: And what, explain what you’re talkingMalcolm Collins: about. Reduce through, like, let’s say DYS gen selection a population’s average IQ by 10%. You reduce the people who would have, even with the population staying the same appeared in the top 0.5% of intelligence in the population before by something like 98 or 95%.Even though you’re only dealing with a 10% reduction in the middle, right? And this is a a mathematical thing. [00:07:00] And it’s just useful when you’re talking about Dysgenics because a lot of people do not know how big and how loud Dysgenics hits. Mm-hmm. And while he’s studying this in the context of the war, we’ve gotta talk about Europe has had a dramatically larger dys genetic impact than the, the Americas have for a very, very long time.Not just tied to the wars, but we’ll get to that. And any effects you’re seeing in Britain, which had the lowest casualty rate of young men in the war are going to be amplified in places like France and Germany and Russia.Simone Collins: Oh. Yeah. Right. See, if you were to extrapolate out, it’s just gonna be so much worse.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And now I’m continuing to go with his takes here. Um mm-hmm. I think the effect is largely genetic, which we’ll get to in a second, but he goes, well, genetic and cultural, which are really closely tied to each other. Right. If you wipe out the. People who are the most honorable, the most aggressive, the [00:08:00] most high risk taking of a population.Those traits are going to also exist within the cultures that they would’ve raised their children in and would’ve had children in. Right? The type of person who is either genetically or culturally, but those things, again, likely cluster because suppose I am a woman raised in a family that doesn’t particularly care about trying to skip out of fighting an war, right?Mm-hmm. And that only cares about itself. When I raise daughters and they see those same traits in a potential partner, they’re more likely to disregard them, right? Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: A a man who is honorable is less likely to marry into that, right?Simone Collins: Exactly. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So you get a, a clustering of genes and cultures when you’re talking about this stuff.But to continue here. Why does innovation fall? We find two main channels existing innovators become less productive, and two communities produce fewer successful new innovators. Both effects contribute to [00:09:00] the long run decline in innovation. The productivity decline among innovators is strongest in knowledge intensive sectors such as electricity, chemistry, physics, machinery and these sectors relied heavily on specialized skills in complimentary workers.Mm-hmm. So here is a chart that they put together where you can see where you had the, the biggest negative effects and the biggest negative effects are on things like. Mechanics and electricity. And the lightest negative effects are on things like construction and human necessities, like, you know, food and stuff like that, right?So, the things that require intellectual horsepower is what’s really hit. Yeah. Because textiles does not some innovators adapt innovators who relocate to other communities or work with co-authors experience smaller productivity losses, suggesting that networks and innovative local ecosystems help buffer capital shocks.Overall, [00:10:00] the evidence highlights the importance of local human capital and knowledge networks for innovation Now. I wanted to now go over, because I had mentioned this and it’s just worth going into more here. What, what was the relative death rate in the war? So, in the uk, we’re, they’re seeing this effect 6.7% of males age 15 to 49 were killed.This equates to 12.3, 12.5% of the men who actually served. Mm-hmm. And it’s aSimone Collins: lot.Malcolm Collins: This is in world War I. Yeah. If, if you look at World War I for France, compared this to the 6.7% in the uk it was 15 to 17%, like well over triple the rate of what was killed in the uk.Simone Collins: I’m wondering what, what percentage of men of military service age are being killed in Russia right now?Malcolm Collins: Go to Germany. It’s 15%. Oh. If you then go to world War ii in the [00:11:00] uk it was only two to 4%. In in, in Germany it was 10 to 13%. Although for some cohorts it was as much as 30 to 38%. Some estimate in Russia, it could have been as high as 40 to 50% in some cohorts.Simone Collins: During World War I still war IMalcolm Collins: in World War ii,Simone Collins: in World War ii.Oh God, Russia. Russia, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So let’s get to the wider, so what effect of all of this,Simone Collins: Okay, so I, I mean, I know that demographically Russia has already screwed, but compare that to now and well, under 1% of all Russian men have been killed in the current Russia, Ukraine war, and then one to 2% of Ukrainian men.Though, I mean, you know, we, we don’t know the data that much. It’s, it’s still a ton, but. It, it we’re not at like World War I or World War II levels.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Not even close. Yeah, not even close. Yeah. It’s not even like fractionally there. Yeah. The, the genetic effects on [00:12:00] Ukraine, which are going to be huge, are actually going to come more from the women who fled the country.Which is interesting. Fleeing a country during a wartime, I think is generally a sign of positive genetic traits. Very different than being somebody who stays and just skirts your service. Mm-hmm. Because it shows that you have the initiative to go and try to find a better life for your family.And lacking that initiative is really big. If you look at something like the Irish Potato Famine or something like that, and people talk about how horrible it was, they talk about the horrors of the coffin ships and stuff like that, and they were, they were horrible. But what is often not talked about is that pretty much.Most Irish peasants had the choice to leave Ireland if they wanted to. It was not about a, I don’t have the money to not leave my house and starve. You know, now that there’s, you know, roving gangs of, of, you know, you know, mad people, which, what [00:13:00] happened during that period, you know, there’s, there’s stories of like, people walking into houses and thinking they were full of, of, of dead people, and then like seeing one of the skeletons move and realize it’s just severely impoverished, like the, the level of the horror of this, but.Many of those people allowed that to happen to themselves rather than take initiative. Right.Simone Collins: They were given like free passage toMalcolm Collins: Yeah. So for people who don’t understand why so many of the surfs were given free passage as soon as the landowners realized, because this is the way, you know, surfs and landowners work oh my God, I’m not gonna remotely gonna be able to pay my surf this year.And there had already in food because that is one of the things you paid them in back then. And there had already been instances of peasants rising up and killing the landowners when they couldn’t pay them due at the be beginning of the famine. Most of the Lords. Well, we gotta get them outta here asap.You know, as many, as many of the surfs as I can.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like it’s not like they were being benevolent, they were trying to survive as well, but also that’s [00:14:00] makes it all the more believable, you know?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t that they were being nice or anything like that, but they, they wanted to get the surfs off the land before everybody started starving.Mm-hmm. And many of them had a, a benevolent angle as well, you know, keep that in mind.Simone Collins: Of course. No, I mean, also no one wants, like a bunch of people suffering and dying and starving that are under your care. That’s horrific.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: I mean, I, I would’ve moved mountains to try to, if, if that was happening with people living on land that I was responsible for, you know, and I’m sure you know, these are for the most part good Christian men with noble, no oblig.You know, at least most of them hopefully. So.Malcolm Collins: But the people didn’t want to leave is the point?Simone Collins: Well, no, a lot of them did leave. A lot of them did leave.Malcolm Collins: A lot of them did leave.Simone Collins: They’re all over the United States.Malcolm Collins: I’m not actually as big as you’d think. And this ismost Americans, and I, when I say most, I mean most, I mean over 50% of Americans who think that they have Irish heritage do not have any [00:15:00] meaningful Irish heritage. They are Scot’s Irish and what that meant, got a translation error over time. Because you know. Three or four generations in, you don’t have a strong understanding of what the Scots Irish are anymore.Mm-hmm. And so you communicate that to your kid and when they’re communicating to their kids, they’re like, oh, we’re like a type of Irish. You know, especially after the big Irish immigration wave happened and people begin to build an idea of Irish identity, and so then other people wanted that. But that’s a bit like hearing you know, you’re a mongoose eating Cobra and then somebody being like, I’m a mongoose, and that mongoose was somewhere in the name there.Right. And we’ll have a separate video where we will go deeper into the cultural history of the Scots Irish, which is, which is actually really, so if, if you’re, you’re wondering which population you’re in were your ancestors. Protestant and were they in the United States before the Civil War?Mm-hmm. If those two things are true, you are not Irish. Another question, [00:16:00] were your ancestors in the greater Appalachian to, let’s say Texas region or South? If they were, you were probably Scott’s Irish. If they were from Boston or Massachusetts or maybe some waves in like California then you might be Irish.But it’s worth noting here because these two groups didn’t like each other. They’re genetically very different from each other in terms of like genetic culture, genetically and culturally from each other. And they, it’s, it’s a, a shame that so many people think this about themselves and don’t understand that the traditions and stuff that they’re doing has nothing to do with Irish history.But anyway, back to the story here. So, well actually the Scotts Irish are an important point here. So if you go back to the Scotts Irish, when they were the avers in. A lower SCO Scots, like the Ulster Scots the population that came to the United States and became one of the dominant populations in the United States was only about 3,300 fighting age men.Right. And this became one of the dominant cultures in the United States and the [00:17:00] backbone of the MAGA movement as a culture, right? Like it is an incred. And that movement now is one of the most culturally important movements in global geopolitics. So you can go and start with a very, very small population and have that population absolutely explode and thrive if they have some sort of advantage over other groups that are moving into a region.You have other groups that move into the United States and largely died out like the Puritan populations. So, in fact, the part of the Puritan population that like I am descended from, only survived because it merged with the Scot’s Irish population. Mm-hmm. But most of the, the cleaner, pure puritan population died out.So, so it matters a lot, you know, your culture, the way you act, whether that’s to the point I’m making here. If you look at an environment, like when we talk about the long tail distribution of cultural and genetic in innovativeness you’re looking at a place like Silicon Valley, right? You [00:18:00] know. What was Silicon Valley a like, what, what was the population that was there differentially?It was people who, you know, a hundred years before that, or, or not even a hundred years before that you know, during the Gold Rush had gone out and risked life and limb to moved to a place where there was incredibly high reward possibility, but incredibly high risk. AndSimone Collins: discomfort. And discomfortMalcolm Collins: and discomfort.And that’s also true of the other ethnic populations within Silicon Valley. They were all selected based on this, the Chinese immigrants that came in the early Chinese waves. This was incredible risk. The Japanese immigrants who come in these early waves, this was an incredible risk for them.You know, you are getting the cream of the crop in terms of the type of people who are likely to be innovative. And this is true throughout the United States, if you’re going all the way to, you know, the edges of the frontier. These are often people and groups that were squeezed like this [00:19:00] over and over again. This is why if you look at the United States and you’re looking at innovation, you basically see a gradient from the east to the west coast, right? Like, whi people from the more frontier environments being on a, a, a per person basis, more innovative because they came from ancestral groups.That took more and more risks. And then some of them were just like, oh, and we have to keep moving and we have to keep moving and we have to keep moving. Yeah.And so this is even true. So somebody from Europe today could be like, well, you know, I am thinking of moving to the United States, but does this mean that somebody like Malcolm wouldn’t want me in the United States?Is like, no. The fact that you are thinking of moving and going through this risk means that you are likely part of the the stock culturally speaking within Europe and genetically speaking within Europe, that is dispositioned to these sorts of risks. Now you could say, well. Okay, but then does that mean that the immigrants that Europe is getting right now have a similar [00:20:00] effect on the European population?And the answer is no, because Europe has created a scenario where you can in immigrate into the countries with not just no risk, but like negative risk. Like the government will pay for your lifestyle. It will set you up in a hotel. It will pay for you to eat, it’ll pay for your children, it’ll pay for everything.When you set that up, you remove what creates the beneficial effect of the immigrant filter, right? Mm-hmm. And if I was in charge of the United States, I’d be trying to replace that effect. I do think life should be differentially harder for first generation immigrants in the United States. That’s how you ensure that you get good immigrants.Then you don’t need to worry. Like if being an immigrant in the United States is not a pleasant experience like it’s something like it used to be, like you actually have to work for it, right? I would actually be open to almost. Infinite immigration. Right? You know, you could come, if you can prove that you are contributing demonstrably [00:21:00] to the country.And if you aren’t, you know, we just let you die. Right? Like, that’s the, the mindset you needed. And that was, the mindset was in the United States for a long time. And was in other, and this is again why I say we don’t have to worry as much about Latin American immigrants as Europe does, right? Has to worry about the the Middle Eastern immigrants and the African immigrants because the Latin American immigrants are coming from Latin American countries.And when I talk about this immigrant selection effect, you have that across Latin America as well.Simone Collins: Well, there’s also the magnification. So each time there’s an additional immigration step. You get a magnification of the risk taking, discomfort, tolerance willingness to deal with new and novel situations and adapt, which I think is another reason why Silicon Valley historically has been such this magnet for risk taking innovators who are capable of sitting with discomfort and going for broke [00:22:00] and building amazing things.‘cause first they, they descended from people who left various parts of Europe and sometimes on the way would like go from Russia to Germany to France. Like they, there was a process before they actually made it across the pond. And then often they would go from like New England then to Chicago than to.Like the Midwest and then all the way to California. Like there are multiple points at which maybe is an like, and this is can be across generations. People basically re-up to their investment in willingness to be risk takers. And so I guess you, you can even kind of see this cultural difference when you, when you compare longstanding families in say new England versus those in California who’ve been there for many generations.Like there’s sort of a behavioral difference and it’s not, I think just like the climate and the Yeah. Local businesses, they’re very shaped by the evolutionary bottlenecks that are associated with those areas.Malcolm Collins: And so [00:23:00] when, when. Well, okay, so now to the question. ‘cause somebody’s gonna be asking and they’re gonna be like, well if Latin America was shaped by this as well, like, why is Latin America like poor and corrupt and everybody, it’s because they’re Catholic.And Catholic cultures are much more when they are in large countries, they don’t have this effect as much when their countries are very small. But when they’re in larger bureaucracies, and we’ll do a separate deficit on this just much more likely to be less innovative, more poor, and more corrupt. If you have traveled extensively, like I’ve lived in both Latin America for a large part of my life, and I’ve lived in Italy for a large part of my life, Latin America in Italy.Feel very, very similar to each other. Latin America and Spain feel very, very similar to each other. Latin America and Portugal feel very similar to each other. Latin America and Ireland, a lot of people don’t know this because they haven’t left like Dublin and looked at what actual Irish suburbs look like.Feels very, very similar.Speaker 12: I want you [00:24:00] guys to give me examples of things that Catholics and Protestants have in commonSpeaker 14: oh, this is actually quite hard. Anything at all. A small thing even. Okay, so, right.Oh, I’m actually drawing a blank here. To be honest,Speaker 13: uh, Protestant Survire.Speaker 12: Okay.So that’s another difference. And I’m not sure that’s actually, I mean, is that true?Speaker 11: I would say so.Speaker 16: Yeah. I suppose that’s fair enough.Malcolm Collins: so, obviously, you know, I have my thoughts on that, but we’re talking about the selection effect from this the population. The larger point of this episode is the population in Europe, even when you’re talking about Protestant populations in Europe is, is not the same as the population in the United States.And I’ll put some graphs on screen that I think are gonna really illustrate this for people. Mm-hmm. If you, and I think you’ve seen this, this graph, Simone. This is a graph of, us versus EU area, GDP, current [00:25:00] prices in trillions of dollars. And what you can see here is after 2007, Europe’s economy basically stopped growing, whereas the US is differentially taking off.And so people can say, well, why did it look like Europe partially recovered after the war? And the main reason it looked like is because they were being propped up by a global innovative system headed by the United States. And they were profiting off of that due to one the illusion caused by rebuilding after the war period and benefiting from a special relationship that Europe historically had with the United States.And as that special relationship degrades it is us cutting. A chain on our legs off Europe was dragging us back culturally and economically speaking. They, they stopped innovating a long time ago. They stopped producing a long time ago. And innovation going forwards in Europe, one, due to the [00:26:00] energy costs of trying to go green with everything, putting on all these regulations doing stuff like what Germany did, taking down their nuclear stations is, is, is going to prevent massive AI development within Europe, which is the key to the future of human civilization.So, and the Muslims didn’t do all that to them, right? And. In addition to that, their bans on AI training, on their data removes their cultural history from the evoked set of AI that are trained. Right. And, and, and so they’ve already lost out of being part of the AI psyche. Whereas you’re gonna have America be part of the AI psyche, you’re gonna have China be part of the AI psyche.You even have Islamic countries. If you ask AI about Islamic type issues, it goes really far into like a La Akbar mode. Um hmm.And we’ll start like ending every sentence with like a, I I know it ‘cause I’ve tried to like engage it about the Quran and it like goes crazy. Oh, that’sSimone Collins: so weird.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, sort of convergent attractor states, you know, if our brains are operating similar to LLMs it [00:27:00] would show that you can get Islamic radical LLMs just by priming them to think like a Muslim which is fascinating.But anyway, when. People see something like Europe rotting like this, right? And they go, how do you view it? Like how do you see Europe?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: I see it the way predator would see it or something like that. Like when I’m looking at the future of human civilization, I am saying, okay, who are the relevant players?Who might be a useful ally? Mm-hmm. And who might have territory or infrastructure that could be useful to the descendants of me and my useful allies. Mm-hmm. And won’t be able to defend it. The thing that Europe is creating right now is cultures that are unproductive and. Not able to defend themselves so you can move into these cultures.This is also one of the [00:28:00] ironic things about Islamic culture, and we’ll get to this on the episode that we’ll do more on Scot’s Irish. But if you take Scot’s Irish s culture, this incredibly anti, anti, anti pretentiousness, anti elitist, anti orchestra, anti the, you know, Hollywood anti, you know, do things our way, low culture way, which in modern days looks nerdy and anime, but historically looked, you know, folk music and you know, et cetera.You, you take this culture, right? This is how it has preserved itself against the urban monoculture. And it breeds and wins in the territories where it bred and won by adopting, like, when they would move into Native American territories. They just adopt their ways. They then, they were known differentially for doing this, where the Puritans wouldn’t now you’ll note that Scott’s Irish culture has no Native American culture left in it, but it was very aggressive at adopting it during this period. So it adopted their ways where it had utility to them. [00:29:00] But stripping out a lot of the mysticism, a lot of the woo, because it’s a very anti woo sort of a culture.And because it didn’t believe in a cop accumulating large amounts of wealth, it stayed largely poor, which allowed it to spread, right? Mm-hmm. When you are okay with staying poor, unlike normal conquering populations like say the Vikings or something like that, that didn’t have a big genetic impact, you don’t spread as quickly because you want to accumulate wells from the local population.If you’re okay with staying poor, then you’re not doing that. You’re just interfering and spread as fast as you can. And then what did the culture end up doing? Is it ended up after they gained power? The first president from this culture was Andrew Jackson attempting to. Wipe out the native population, the population that they were seeing as being friendliest ways, well, not friendlies say it would also kill them the most, but they adopted their ways the most.Now if you’re looking at something like a new, like let’s say Muslim Europe that would be incredibly susceptible. Like no culture on Earth is as susceptible to a Scots Irish cultural tactic as [00:30:00] Islamic culture. Because it has techniques built into it that force it to accept non-Muslim outsiders with some rules that make it harder for those people.And so if you can stay innovative and technologically capable while staying higher fertility than them they in, in a lot of ways where people talk about like Muslim immigration into Europe, just growing their population until they can replace the existing. Like then they grab the laws and they take hold of things.Yes. But when they take hold of things, they merely make it less pleasant for the existing population. They don’t take complete control of the geography. And so that allows other minority populations to move into their territory and eventually outcompete them, which is a very interesting sort of fanon.And basically what I’m saying is, yes, Europe is rotting, but that only makes it easier for my future descendants to operate with impunity within that territory. And this is also, you know, when I look geopolitically, this is, this is the way [00:31:00] I am looking at the world, right? Mm-hmm. Like I’m looking at the future geopolitics of a region like the Middle East and I say, oh, it’s actually, you know, really good for the Jewish population, which does have a really high fertility rate and high economic and technological productivity.Right now, the core reason they can’t do whatever they want. And they’re basically realizing that. They can do whatever they want now is because the cultural force that was pushing against them is the European cultural force, which is now globally largely irrelevant, right? And you can also look within the United States or within the GOP, and you see the faction of the GOP pushing against this is the extremely low fertility Catholic integralist faction people like, you know, Nick Fuentes and stuff like that, that just aren’t genetically long-term relevant to the country or culturally long-term relevant to the country.So if we’re looking at like where relationships look moving forwards you’re gonna see increasingly strong players just acting with impunity against weak players.Speaker 8: I [00:32:00] think this explained what seemed fairly paradoxical to people, which is us being very supportive of Israel in both the Gaza and Iranian wars, but turning against Israel in the intermittent period when they started to be like, oh, I need money. I am discriminated against. And I was like, oh, you’re weak.That’s pathetic. Get out. I don’t wanna be friends with you anymore. And I think that this is increasingly what we’re going to see is a world where people who try to earn sympathy by showing off their weakness, , just earned disgust.Speaker 9: And because this strategy worked for such a long time for so many groups, I think some people are going to take a long time to adjust to this and to come up with a new strategy, and they might end up getting hurt in the meantime because of this, empathetic momentum that they’ve had to unlearn.I.Malcolm Collins: This idea of [00:33:00] global friendship that a portion of American culture that was dominant at the time post World War ii, like global capitalists world economy, that’s largely degrading, I think was in the American mindset. It’s in terms of anything we would want. E even even something like this war right now, as I’ve pointed out, Iran’s core strategy and people are like, oh, they’re letting some Chinese tinkerers through and it’s like barely any are functionally going through, even though they have technically let some through.Choking off the street of ver moot differentially hurts everyone other than America. Yes, you hurt the global economy, you hurt everyone, but differentially that like few things could be better for the United States. And that’s why we’ve seen an explosion in the dollar in a big hit in the Euro since this has happened and China economically panicking since this has happened.Because this is fundamentally a good thing for the United States. If you’re talking about, us versus other [00:34:00] people. Right now, obviously it’s a net law for everyone when you’re talking about global economic reduction. But, but it, that’s also worth us being aware of in terms of how we act in the future.And I think people, when they look at the United States and they see America move more towards this MAGA mindset part of what they’re seeing is America moving more towards the frontiersman mindset and the Scots-Irish mindset, which I think have been the better parts of American culture historically.And that it means that America is going to likely be more and more ruthless as it moves forwards in this sort of a context. Thoughts, Simone?Simone Collins: Yeah, I think I largely agree with you and I think it’s under discussed. One, because the prenatal movement is. Is accused frequently of being obsessed with the great replacement theory.It’s under discussed that prominent ISTs, including us, kind of don’t [00:35:00] even see Western civilization as existing in Europe largely anymore because the parts of it that we felt were contributing to human betterment, one, have, have largely disappeared from Europe, genetically speaking. But then beyond that, anything that’s left is being rendered completely inert by the EU regulatory structure and even national regulations that are preventing them.What’s one,Malcolm Collins: just the EU regulatory structure? It is. British regulatory structure as well.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: we have a lotSimone Collins: of history and German and like all the, all the local ones too. It’s not just the eu but the EU does make everything kind ofMalcolm Collins: impossible. Well, I want to, I want to elevate because right now we’re, we’ll talk about Britain in this context.You know, we have context with the best of the best in Britain. Simone got her graduate degree at Cambridge. I got my undergraduate degree at St. Andrews, which for people who don’t know it frequently in league tables ranks above Oxford and Cambridge in the league tables as the best university in the uk.And has a huge out of [00:36:00] UK population within Europe. So I get to meet many other Europeans. And in addition to that we get to go to things like, we just got our arc invitations again this year, which is like the big conservative conference for like elite conservative influencers in Europe. So. I go to Europe and I see in the uk I see what they quote unquote conservatives think and act like.And they are so blazingly boring and they lack vitalism, and it’s like a gray, disgusting slab. I, I mean, Simone, give me your thoughts on this.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s just kind of, it’s sad and depressing and, and our, our favorite people in the uk among them are included weirdly, although not all of them are in the UK anymore.People who are either first or second generation immigrants to the uk.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: that’s actuallyMalcolm Collins: true. Yeah. OurSimone Collins: favorite, they’re, they’re among the few who are either themselves or from families of people who are, [00:37:00] again, risk takers and willing to like, move for opportunity.Malcolm Collins: When you’ve gotta keep in mind, like when I, when I talk about people being like, genetically risk-taking and you trace back, like, let’s say my family history, right?Mm-hmm. Like, okay, yes. Many parts of my family. Come from the very beginning of American history, right? Like, like the, the first settlers. But other parts of my family where, where do they come from? India. Wait, Malcolm, you don’t look Indian? What do you mean? They came from India. It’s like, because they were the first wave of colon immigrants to India.Yeah. They set up in India, then India became a less fun place to be a colonizer, and then they moved to the United States because, you know, they, they could, it was what’s the hot, what’s the hot place to colonize today? Yeah. Right. And so I, I do think you see this sort of a, a predilection within some families culturally and genetically.And so when she’s talking about like Europe being cut, I really cannot overstate [00:38:00] this. You just feel this actually. So, Sargon of Acad is a channel that I really like. I you know, in the early days I really liked his content in terms of ideas, in terms of beginning to build the sort of new right movement that’s evolved online.But when I watch his content today, if you see the energy and style with which it’s delivered I think you can really see and, and, and sort of in a highlighted way see the difference between this American culture and this British culture. Mm-hmm. Which is, it’s just sort of sad about the state of the world, sort of a depressed resentment, you know, grit, your upper teeth, you know, march through this.Aren’t things terrible, butSimone Collins: Well, or in contrast, I, I, I just don’t see the irreverent enthusiasm. There’s not a lot of. Excitement about the future. It’sMalcolm Collins: not a lot of inclusivity. Damning it, you know?Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like, we’re gonna take over, let’s take over Europe, let’s take [00:39:00] over wherever. Let’s together.Everything’s gonna be ours soon. Yeah. We’re gonna take the space. This is gonna be amazing. Look at the progressives. They have no kids. We’ve already won. What a fun day. It’s to be in a movement where we’ve already won. And you don’t, you don’t see that there. And when you go to like, their conferences, what are they doing?They’re like, they hand mulling over like pornography bans and stuff like that. Which as I’ve pointed out, like the factions that need something like that, that protect themselves through banning things rather than just, you know, telling their kids Pornography will weed out the weak people. And if you can resist it, then good for you.Don’t be weak, you know, use things like arousal. I’ve, I’ve mentioned this. In other episodes, but I think it’s one of the most important cultural lessons that I would take away. Like if I was another person trying to learn how to get through the eroticization of the internet and stuff like that with my kids.Is sexuality should be viewed the way that coyotes use it to lure out domestic [00:40:00] dogs to kill and eat them, right? Like, in that analogy, be the coyote, right? Use it against those who are weaker than you. We have an episode that has never gone live called Thought Maxing Our Daughters which I should get up for one day weekend controversial when it comes back.But the point being is you can use your sexuality to win at specific games, right? And. I, I mean, I very much was doing that when I met you, Simone. I was using you for money and labor.Simone Collins: This is true.Malcolm Collins: Well, you were, you know, giving me your savings. You let me live with you. You and you were paying for the apartment and youSimone Collins: I think we split, did we split in rent?I don’t even remember.Malcolm Collins: Never for the one in Alameda.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. No, not, not that one. No. Yeah. Okay. Fair.Malcolm Collins: But the point here being is, the there, this is, this is something you can functionally do. And it is a way that you can functionally approach these things. And that when you see sexuality that way, the idea that you would want to protect yourself from it comes across as just [00:41:00] such a fundamentally sort of prey perspective, right?Mm-hmm. It’s well, if we ban all of this and we ban all of this and we can be safe and our people can be safe, instead of like, no, be stronger. And if you are weak, then you deserve the dust pin of history, right? Mm-hmm. But this is, this is a different cultural perspective than you have in a place like the uk where it’s like, let’s all ban together to try to get through this and stiff upper lip and everything like that.And it doesn’t, it doesn’t work well against the urban monoculture. It’s very bad at resisting the urban monoculture. And the, the various cultural approaches that I’ve seen taken in Germany and in places like France. Like there is a great institute in France that’s fighting the urban monoculture.Simone Collins: Oh, yes. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: it’s funding prenatal initiatives and everything like that, like really cool. Like, it, it, wouldn’t it be cool if we had a giant amount of money to fund prenatal initiative in the United States? But it’s, it is fundamentally playing with its hands tied behind the back because it sees itself as Collectivists and Catholic above all else.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: You know, very much [00:42:00] like the old monarch of France instead of America’s, you know, sort of cowboy enthusiasm everybody out for themselves in the weak deserve what happens to the weak. Right. And and, and, and weak here can mean technologically, economically. But, but also comes to things like sexuality, as I’ve pointed out.But this, this mindset I do not think can fight against urban monoculture because any mindset that takes the collectivist like we all need to work together approach is very easy to infiltrate for a parasite that is specifically designed to eat and destroy bur bureaucracies or large structured bureaucracies.Hmm. Thoughts, Simone?Simone Collins: No, that makes sense. It’s it, it’s sad, but I, I think, yeah, I, I wish, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a, I mean, as, as of this publication, seeing a podcast talking about the fact that totally independent of immigration because everyone’s like, immigration’s [00:43:00] ruining Europe and they’re totally missing with that.You, you can totally remove all the immigration and you’re still gonna see a huge portion of the problem.Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah. Europe. Europe lost on its own.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Like, like the, the most destructive laws and decisions to the European people are still being implemented and voted on by people who are white and of the original or dominant culture within those regions.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And and, and that makes it like very hard. Now, if they can fix it, I’m open to them becoming a strong future ally for, forSimone Collins: minor. I think there’s still, if you’re in Europe, there is still absolutely hope because we are entering an age of techno feudalism where. You can be involved in communities and fiefdoms without necessarily being physically located there or not being physically located there all the time.The, the [00:44:00] primary concern is in what areas are you going to start to see supply chains falling apart and, and just life becoming very uncomfortable if you don’t have a great off the grid setup. For example, we have some family with a lot of connections and families still existing in is it Romania or is it Poland right now?But like they were talking about how gas has become so expensive that now basically everyone just has to share one car and in certain areas if they’re more rural because of the. The straight of form was being kind of not very functional right now because of the conflict I ran. Yeah. And how just this one little element of global trade breaking, making life incredibly difficult, expensive, and impossible.You know, people living on very, very tight fixed incomes or no income at all, suddenly being like, well, okay, I guess if I need to go to the hospital now, it’s just not gonna happen. Like gas stations being shut down. So that’s the primary concern is more like, okay, once, once you sort of go off the grid or become more independent culturally and and [00:45:00] associate with commercial and social communities that are unmoored from your physical location that are more like internet based tribes of, of the biology style network state, are you going to be in an area that is sufficiently safe and, and sufficiently supplied for you to survive physically? I think that’s the bigger question, but I I, I don’t, we know many Europeans who are absolutely fantastic, who are very innovative, who are very willing to take risks. You know, it’s not like they’re all gone.It’s just, I think it, it, this is more about a tipping point of a population, you know? Well, I mean, to the extent that they’reMalcolm Collins: gone. Just, just to give you guys an understanding, the, when you look at the United States, and you look at the states that we think of as bad poor states, right? Like, you know, Mississippi, Alabama, something like that.England, the average income in England is a less than the average income in the lowest income state in the United States.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So, and, and I’m open to Europe becoming strong again, but it, you know, I, I do find weakness. ISimone Collins: don’t [00:46:00] see a pathwayMalcolm Collins: to it, unfortunately. And, and pot, potentially genetic perspective, I find weakness viscerally disgusting, like it’s, it’s repellent.And it’s, this is also one of the reasons why I have been okay with partnering with countries like Israel, even when they screw us around frequently is because at least they’re acting with strength. And they seem to have a future. Whereas I don’t see what Europe’s future is or why I should care about what they’re doing in their death rows.Simone Collins: And it’s not just us saying this. You can see through both the words and actions of many leaders in our current, the United States Presidential Administration. Now this is well, no, EuropeMalcolm Collins: is not an ally to the faction of America that’s going to survive.Simone Collins: But I think what I would like to say is I what I would like to believe, at least what I feel is that our stance is pretty close to that of.The United States per their, what, November 25 foreign engagement policy or foreign strategy policy document that they released, which is we’re, we’re writing off mainstream Europe, essentially. But we [00:47:00] are very excited to, and happy to, and interested in partnering with the innovative renegades that remain in Europe because they are there and, and we are there.Yeah, they’re all there. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: they are there. And the question is, is can they take back their countries?Simone Collins: But I don’t think they can. Or maybe, I mean, who knows? They can, maybe they can start techno fiefdoms in. City states that start to become possible to create in Europe as time goes on?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. From my perspective, like when I look at a place like Europe or something like that, because it has been so taken over by this mimetic virus, it’s like a hive of a virus that is fundamentally hostile to humanity.And it’s not that there aren’t still, you know, healthy people living amongst this hive. But their lives are very, very hard because they are living in a in, in an anti-human hive, an anti vitalist hive.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s just, it’s just so much harder. Yeah. I guess what you’re saying is in, in other words, the headwinds of an innovative creative smart person in Europe are so much higher than [00:48:00] like the head, we said Yeah.Where our kids are gonna face growing up in the United States,Malcolm Collins: and I suspect most of the Europeans who I really like and who are part of the broader prenatals movement, will eventually migrate somewhere.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Because it’s just so hard to see a future or maybe one of the countries gets taken back, maybe there’s some big movement that would be great.But it requires starting to look for strengths and like strengths instead of this reflexive, which is key to the urban monoculture elevation of weakness.Simone Collins: Well, one thing I’ll say is if you’re young unmoored single or maybe not and living in Europe and smart, and you’re like, I don’t really know what to do right now, consider applying to Balaji’s Network School in Singapore for an extremely reasonable amount.Basically, you can go live and work there, and it includes everything. Your, your apartment, your food, gym membership. An amazing network of like, really interesting talk about selective pressures, right? Like there’s even I, an IQ test. To, to apply for network school. We know, ‘cause we applied, I mean, we got in, but we couldn’t, I I, I didn’t apply.I [00:49:00] stoppedMalcolm Collins: at the IQSimone Collins: test. I was like, you didn’t wanna take the iq? Okay, well dude, if they me in, they’re, you know, but, but I, I don’tMalcolm Collins: like being like that.Simone Collins: Okay. Well anyway what I’m saying though is in terms of modern places now where you’re going to get really interesting vortexes of, or like areas or uniquely smart people have selected to go, I mean like Brian Chow who’s there right now that, that is one of the places where I would encourage young people of roughly like in their early to mid twenties who are not having yet putting out down roots to kind of just experience what it’s like to kind of, get warmed up on becoming itinerant and moving for opportunity.And I do think that going there is one of those things that will create more opportunity if you are there for a short amount of time with like. A sense of purpose and intent. I think just going there and hoping that your life is gonna get figured out isn’t a good idea. It’s kind of like with LSD for treating mental disorders or like other hallucinogenic medications or, or substances.People who go in, and this is just what the scientific, the peer reviewed scientific research just [00:50:00] says. If you just like trip, like with no intent, no guidance, et cetera, like you’re not gonna really make a lot of productive change mentally. Mm-hmm. But if you go in very intent driven, like, Hey, I’m gonna work on my PTSD I’m going in with, you know, an expert who’s gonna help me kind of navigate this.I’m going in to try to fix this and address this issue. They can see really amazing results. And that’s kind of what this is, is it is a, a trip in. Basically career and disruption. Yeah. Basically,Malcolm Collins: you’re gonna have to grow back from a techno feudalistic perspective if you want any hope of retaking anything.Yeah. I, I think that’s the most realisticSimone Collins: and, and the best practice session for that right now, if you want something practical and actionable right now, I’d say is apply to network school’s. Do it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s one thing. I mean, there’s other things you could do apply to Founders Fund. You, if you’re, if you’re young enough to do something like that, apply to MercatusSimone Collins: yeah.On the Emerge A Ventures. Yeah. So yeah, those, those are just, I think a lot. More selective. It, I’m just thinking if I was able to get into network school, it can’t be that bad. Like [00:51:00] for real,Malcolm Collins: Simone, you’re an exceptionally intelligent person. You were top of your class at Cambridge. Like I,Simone Collins: no,Malcolm Collins: I do not understand how you, you literally at her undergrad, which is a giant American school, gw, she was literally top of her entire class.Simone, you doSimone Collins: not, there’s a huge embarrassment for you. I went to gw.Malcolm Collins: It was a hugeSimone Collins: embarrassment.Malcolm Collins: That’s why.Simone Collins: No, but like, they don’t charge you to apply. I’m just saying try it. Someone try it. And if someone does try it. Like wait in the comments. I’m curious. Or has tried it. Because I, I’m, I’m very intrigued by it and I think it’s a really great short term opportunity for someone to get themself unstuck from what might be an ossifying or like kind of bad place to be right now.And I don’t know if I would wanna be as a young 20 something in the UK or in Romania or Poland or Germany. Right. Would you?Malcolm Collins: No, I’d,Simone Collins: I think you And why are you like discouraging people from applying to network school? Because we can’t offer, I saying there’s other things they could apply [00:52:00] to. But yeah, yeah, sure.Apply for an Emergent Ventures grant. If you have something interesting to pitch, apply for network school and yes, apply for some kind of Founders fund thing. And if you have a startup apply for Y Combinator. Go for it. Absolutely. I totally agree with you. It’s just that, you know, Y Combinator and their Speed Run program and Emerge Ventures and Founders Fund extremely, extremely, extremely small classes and extremely selective and also much more well known.Whereas network state is one of those things that people haven’t yet figured out yet. And so like, you wanna get in before everyone knows about it. You know, like you wanna buy your, your Tesla stock before it becomes like a huge meme, right? This, this is the time to buy. I’m saying buy network, state sell founders.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, andSimone Collins: I like founders one too, but it’s just that they’re, they’re overvalued now is like a, you know, an opportunity stock.Malcolm Collins: Right. And, and I, I would say to sort of, close this out, the, the whiter point I’m making here is this view that people have towards, whether it’s tism or the new [00:53:00] right, or anything like that, is some sort of like pan white ethno you know, anxiety movement is just, at least from our perspective, fundamentally wrong, where I believe that there are ethnic and cultural differences between groups.Europe, for example, is a bigger enemy to my agenda than most other active players. Mm-hmm. Because they are the hive of the parasite. Right. You know, and as such, and, and they, and it is within the white population that that parasite is most densely concentrated. Mm-hmm. And so, and, and the, and the populations that if there are populations replacing them will simply be easier for my descendants to deal with if they decide to oppose them.You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, that’s, that’s just the way I see things globally. Right. And I think it’s, this is an increasing view among the American. Right.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you Simone.Simone Collins: Yeah. Love you too. Gorgeous.I, and I [00:54:00] still don’t know why he would do it, like why he wasn’t just covetous of it for himself. And then I come down and Tyson was like, I wanted you to come down and you did it. And I was disappointed. And I’m like, well, you didn’t, she knows how to use the intercom system, doesn’t she?Malcolm Collins: I wanted you to come down and you did it.So I was disappointed.Simone Collins: She lets it be known. She is, she doesn’t pull punches, you know, she, that she literally believes that she poops rainbows. I can’t even, you know, that’s just like the best part. I, I’ve never, I, I thought it was just an expression, you know,people didn’t actually think that they pooped rainbows. Maybe this is the only one in the world, but no, it can’t be. If our child did it, other children have done it. Maybe, I don’t know. You’re pretty exceptional and strange. So, coffee [00:55:00] Zilla recently did a YouTube video on a I deep fix and out of Nowhere in the Wild he mentions one of your family members.Malcolm Collins: Oh the top. Sure.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Coffee Zilla. Did he mention him positively? Negatively?Simone Collins: Well, just in the context of is it called Metamorph ai? His, his his companyMalcolm Collins: for people who don’t know one of my cousins runs one of the largest and, and most used AI companies for DeepFakes. Mm-hmm. And has created many viral deepfake images.Simone Collins: Yeah.Speaker: I am gonna show you some magic. Hundreds of millions of people spent over billion minutes absorbing it. The face swap with, uh, Tom Cruise. You haven’t seen it? No. You gotta see this. Incredible. I dunno what I’m talking about. It’s crazy. I believed it though. So did the rest of the world. The rest of the world.Speaker 2: Yeah. And then it became very scary. Very fast. Okay. TikTok impression time. This is nuts. Yeah. And it was like, well, let’s make another one. Tom [00:56:00] Cruise has become a viral hit on TikTok. Or has he? This is serious breaking news. Congress has held hearings on DeepFakes in ai and the FBI tells NBC news. They’re following the rapidly developing technology closely, the ultimate, uh, gauge for all of time.I believe it when I see it. Yeah. And now maybe here we are. No longer the future is here.Malcolm Collins: And referred to the AI industry is just like Malcolm and his family. Right. Like another one of my cousins runs that AI channel,Simone Collins: AuroraMalcolm Collins: Company.Simone Collins: AuroraMalcolm Collins: what?Simone Collins: Aurora.Malcolm Collins: Aurora, yeah. That people are always protesting, taking jobs and of course you’ve got us with our fab.ai trying to make better agents.You know, and there are other family members doing stuff. I can’t talk about that. The two that are very public about what they’re working on.Simone Collins: We like to I guess Collin Collins’, you guys like to be on the cutting edge of whatever’s happening.Malcolm Collins: We were last generation. I see no reason. Like we were super [00:57:00] important in the setting up of the Santa Fe Institute into what it became.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: I know. It’s seeing, it is like for the eighties and the nineties, like the center of intellectualism.Simone Collins: Sure. AndMalcolm Collins: Epstein kept wanting to get involved in that. I actually searched my dad.Simone Collins: He did. He did. He donated significantly to it. Have you asked your dad yet if he ever met Epstein? . Your mic’s not coming through when you have a habit of throwing your electronics on the floor. Look, you and I have exactly the same mic. My computer is way older than yours. The only difference between our mic’s lived experience is that mine doesn’t get regularly thrown on the floor and or put within the reach of children, and yours does.I think they believe that they’re pummeling devices. They’re like, oh, look at this. A new stick with which I can hit someone. Okay. So yeah. Did youMalcolm Collins: also, I, I need to, you have to ask that mischaracterization [00:58:00] there.Her mic doesn’t get moved from where it is because she, one doesn’t do editing and two doesn’t take care of the kids in her room and just bans them from her room where I don’t, infants that can’t grab microphones. You think he’s gonna go grab your microphone?Simone Collins: He’s in my office all day. Octavian.Malcolm Collins: Is your microphone in your office?Simone Collins: No, it’s not. It’s in my, it’s in my bedroom. So fair.Malcolm Collins: But anyway, yeah, so I, I checked the email list and I didn’t find it, but he did end the conversation as soon as I asked him about it. I’m not sure if he had somewhere to be here.Simone Collins: Your dad.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Somewhere to be in his super busy lifeMalcolm Collins: anyway.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: But fun, fun to sort of be at the center of everything that’s happening andSimone Collins: oh, the email list?Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, I, I checked the databases too for your dad’s name. Yeah. Nowhere to be seen.Malcolm Collins: I did find my uncle’s name but it was only in articles.Simone Collins: Oh, oh, okay.Malcolm Collins: So [00:59:00] it wasn’t his email directly, it was other people.Simone Collins: They weren’t in communication. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: For, for clarification, my uncle used to be one of the guys who ran the Fed.So, you know, as people communicateSimone Collins: he would show up. Yeah. Like of course. ‘cause yeah, someone like that would show up. But I, but that’s cool. I would be shocked if your dad and Epstein were not in the same room or at like some Santa Fe Institute event because your dad went to, well, theyMalcolm Collins: must have been at the same room at times.Yeah. But Zohan, mond’s parents were in the same room too, and I was like, that doesn’t, that doesn’t count.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I wish, I wish that there was some way for us to know, like, oh, sir, sometime we could know every time we were like in the same room as a celebrity or something. Mm-hmm. Because I’m sure it happens a lot and, and you just don’t know it.And I just, I like, just for idle fun, I want to know, you know, like, what are your weird celebrity encounter events? Like once, I know I walked by Lindsay Lohan, but I didn’t realize it until I put it together because a flock of paparazzi then followed [01:00:00] her. And I was like, oh, okay. And then there was another time where I was in a United Lounge in SFO where Daniel Craig was getting a drink at like.The crack of dawn.Malcolm Collins: Well, the, the key place, if you wanna run into celebrities all the timeSimone Collins: airport lounges. Oh yeah. ‘cause we also saw the guy who played Aquaman in the British Airways lounge in Heathrow. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah.Simone Collins: That’s right. So those, those are the three celebrity encounters I’ve, I’ve knowingly had.What about you? ExceptMalcolm Collins: for the one reported by the New York Times of us hangingSimone Collins: out out with Oh, Elon. Oh, yeah. But that we, we don’t talk about that.Malcolm Collins: We, we don’t talk about the ones who are like actually our friends. We have actually had a number of other celebrity encounters that are Yeah.Simone Collins: I’m talking about the ones where like, you were at the same restaurant and whatever.Malcolm Collins: I don’t think you don’t consider, you know, that, that, that, like our friends who are celebrities are,Simone Collins: oh, we were in a New York restaurant where Trump’s first wife was eating.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But you are aware that our actual friends who we can never mention who are celebrities, are more famous.Simone Collins: You don’t countMalcolm Collins: than many of the people you just listed.Simone Collins: I know, but they don’t count. TheyMalcolm Collins: [01:01:00] don’t count because they’re just like normal people to you.Simone Collins: No. Well, yeah, no, yeah. I’m talking about like chance encounters, where like you’re in the same area and they happen to be really famous. ‘cause I, I don’t know. I found those more interesting. Anyway, go on. Do your dear frigging well, why do youMalcolm Collins: find that more interesting than the ones who like actually areSimone Collins: kissing on?Because they stress me out because I, I just feel like, I don’t know, like I, I, I, I, I, I don’t want really to meet or hang out with famous people like it. I, I feel like just the dynamics of socializing for them are so broken. Yeah. Because they know that everyone has an ulterior motive. Everyone is like thinking about the fact that they’re interacting with them while also interacting with them.Meaning that they’re not really genuinely interacting. Like there’s, they just, so I feel like there’s too many meta games going on where they’re like, okay, was that thing said Because they’re desperately trying to impress me because they want money from me because they want me to do something. We’ll be there oneMalcolm Collins: day, Simone, [01:02:00] we’ll be thereSimone Collins: one day.Well, that’s gonna suck. Like I hope that never hap. I honestly think though, that with the base camp community, it’s kind of not gonna happen because the specific community that we’re a part of doesn’t really attract like simps. For lack of a better term like supplicants or, or fan people. Instead, it attracts intellectual equals who enjoy talking which we’ve experienced in our paid subscribers only Hangouts.And I really like that. So I just feel like, no, actually I, I think it would become something a little bit more like a new version of what we experienced with Renaissance Weekend or like what Renaissance Weekend was, which is an invite only ideas society for those who aren’t aware of it. Renaissance Weekend was this American Invite Only Ideas society that heldbasically weekend like summits where people would come together and stay at the same hotel and have all these conversations.It was really fun. And the idea was like, it was, it was founded by a, like a high status, well connected former [01:03:00] ambassador. So like, yeah, I mean, he was kind of famous, but like people didn’t show up because they were like. Fangirling over him and and Supplicating to him. They showed up becauseMalcolm Collins: they were fangirling and supplicating over the Clintons who always showed up.That’s it. Simone, it was the ClintonsSimone Collins: thing. No, but well, my larger point though is that like, I think more broadly, I want to believe people showed up because they knew that when they showed up to those conversations, thatMalcolm Collins: isn’t why they showed up. They showed up because it was the ClintonsSimone Collins: the went. And that’s not why your family went, they went for the idea.Malcolm Collins: Yes. The, the entire scene was downstream of the Clintons. That was as much a, the Clinton scene during that period as you know, like, heretic as Peter Thiel.Simone Collins: I don’t know. I went to Heretic Con because it was really freaking awesome and amazing. Right.Malcolm Collins: But the reason why it’s awesome is, and the reason why so many high profile, high status, age agentic people go is because they know that other high profile, high [01:04:00] status, age agentic people are gonna be there, that are in Peter Thiel’s network.Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s depressing.Malcolm Collins: Anyway,Simone Collins: I wanna build something better. I don’t, I don’t like the, I don’t like the because also this is exactly the dynamic that, that, that Jeffrey Epstein used to manipulate people when he wasn’t using women. It, it is, it is just as much as a low blow cheat code as. Whoring out women, which is whoring out access to fancy famous people.High profile people.Malcolm Collins: But that’s, that’s the way society has always been structured. That is what the French court was. That is what the British Court was thatSimone Collins: No, no, it was different. In fact, the Nobles didn’t wanna be there. They were there because it was like how they got like access to important wealth and resources and, and they were, and you justMalcolm Collins: said peopleSimone Collins: don’tMalcolm Collins: like going to these events, Simone,Simone Collins: that people don’t actually like being there.No, man. People had have a blast at Renaissance [01:05:00] weekend and at Dialogue and it hereon and probably at Sun Valley and, and clearly at the Bohemian Grove, as long as they’re sufficiently old and cute, if you know what I mean. Just like, oh, went camp. It, it’s like, the, the, the wholesome Boy scouts that everyone thinks is like an evil satanic ritual anyway for old men, the wholesome boy scouts for old men.That everyone’s like, oh, it’s a SatanMalcolm Collins: ritual. Anyway, I’ll, I’ll get started here.Simone Collins: Okay? Yeah. Anyway. Okay. I love you. Sorry, I’m just, I missed you.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I missed you doing, we hadn’t recorded for a couple days ‘cause we had a documentary team here.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Alright.Speaker 5: What’s happening? Mommy did a haircut and she made a kitten. A kitten side. Meow. Meow. Look. Take Did a kitten look. You a kitten. Owow a kitten. Oh, meow, meow, meow. Okay, let’s not, let’s not destroy the kitchen. Do you wanna name the kitchen?[01:06:00]Speaker 6: Nicey. Am I gonna name the kitchen? How do want me name the kitchen? Whatcha? Are you gonna name the kitchen? Harry. Harry. Harry. The kitchenSpeaker 5: Titan. You wanna touch it when it’s on my head? Mommy. Does it feel different? Yeah. Yeah. Does it feel better? Mr. Military? Mr. Military? Mr. Military, the. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins explore how looksmaxxing (and its cousins: performative masculinity, status obesity, performative altruism, and more) functions as the modern equivalent of “gender affirming care” — a seductive but ultimately sterile trap.Drawing on John B. Calhoun’s famous mouse utopia experiments (Universe 25), they explain the rise of “the beautiful ones”: rodents in abundance who obsessively groomed themselves, avoided conflict/mating/parenting, and became socially sterile while remaining physically pristine. Sound familiar?From Clavicular’s extreme regimen (steroids, meth for hollow cheeks, bone smashing) to billionaire status-hoarding, kidney-donating effective altruists with no kids, and Gen Z pickup artists chasing views instead of partners — this conversation reveals how abundance creates behavioral sinks where people optimize for aesthetics, validation, or signaling instead of legacy and meaning.They discuss why these traps feel productive (they’re often high-discipline and cerebral) yet deliver zero lasting happiness or genetic/cultural impact — and how to escape them by building a real objective function in life.If you’ve ever felt pulled into optimization loops (looks, status, altruism, masculinity, etc.) that leave you hollow, this episode is your wake-up call. A free copy of The Pragmatist Guide to Life (ebook or audiobook) available — just DM us or join our paid subscribers on Substack/Patreon.Based Camp - The New Trend in Male Gender Affirming CareEpisode NotesThe Gist* Looksmaxxing is the new Gender Affirming Care* We’ve joked about how women getting cosmetic procedures are getting gender affirming care* But men are doing it a ton now, too, in the form of Looksmaxxing* But gender affirming care is just one of many traps people are falling into* And these traps all map to a particular behavioral pattern that may be consistent across any abundant mammal society—something that’s even observed in rodents (and we’ll talk about that!)* It’s important that we talk about these traps for several reasons:* They don’t yield lasting impact* They don’t yield happiness or contentment* So let’s talk about this and use looksmaxxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into these traps so that we can be more adept at evading them personally.And let’s start with the rodents.The Beautiful OnesBetween 1958-1962, a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments using rats and mice in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise “ideal” environment affects social behavior, mental health, and population stability in rodents.His hope was to better understand the implications of overcrowding + abundance for human society, so he gave rats and mice abundant food, water, nesting material, and protection from predators and disease—so that lack of resources was not the cause of problems—and observed how increasing population density changed aggression, mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall psychological functioning over time.These experiments were far from scientifically precise and had many issues, but they yielded some really interesting patterns that you could also argue we’re seeing in modern, abundant societies.For example, Calhoun observed some consistent behavioral groupings that are analogous to behavioral groupings in modern, affluent human groups that we talk about on Based Camp all the time.Some examples:* Dominant aggressive males: Highly territorial “alpha” males that monopolized prime nesting areas and mates, frequently fighting and wounding other males and sometimes attacking pups.* “Dropouts” or socially defeated males: Males driven out of territories by dominant males who congregated in central areas, often scarred, hyper‑submissive, and involved in seemingly purposeless mass brawls; in earlier rat experiments some turned to cannibalism.* Hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males: Males that mounted other males and juveniles, showed disorganized mating attempts, and sometimes coupled sexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns.* Neglectful or “failed” mothers: Females that abandoned litters, moved pups repeatedly, stopped defending nests, or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the nest.* “Hermit” or withdrawn females: Adult females that retreated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating, or pup care—effectively dropping out of normal communal female roles in mouse societies.​We spend a lot of time talking about the human societal analogs of these rodent groupings, but today, we’re focusing in on the beautiful ones.In his experiments, “the beautiful ones” were a subgroup of male rodents (first observed in rats and later highlighted in his mouse “Universe 25” study) that withdrew from normal social life. They spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming, avoiding fighting, mating, and parenting, so they remained physically unscarred and well‑kept but were socially inert and did not reproduce.Calhoun described these animals as healthy in body but “socially sterile,” seeing them as a late-stage symptom of social breakdown in an overpopulated yet materially abundant environment.It’s Not Just LooksPeople are falling into all sorts of obsessive loops, and I’ll highlight three just based on recent examples that have been shoved in front of me in the past 24 hours:StatusFrom a friend (not sure if I can attribute):“Something for pronatalists to shame: status obesity.The idea is that the drive to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes. But the drive to eat can be highjacked and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive if we eat too much and become obese.Status is similar where the drive in general is good and it evolved to be a strong drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive. But there are people (especially at the top) who are status obese. Their drive for status, rather than contributing to their survival and their children’s survival, is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money on plastic surgery instead of more kids for example. They are status obese, hurting their genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of their young.”Virtue Signaling / Aimless AltruismLargely childless, single young men are donating their organs in larger numbers:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/12/altruistic-organ-donation/* According to the article, these non‑direct altruistic donors “tend to skew male” and that “a good portion are in their 20s,” with another large cohort in their 50s.* It also notes that donors are predominantly white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children than average.DatingWe addressed the new trend in Gen Z pickup artists per steph’s substack essay “gen z pickup artists are taking over my city” that many of the leading gen z pick up dating coaches are optimizing around getting views, not actually sleeping with women.* “The big names in Gen Z pickup are operating under a brand new set of incentives. The tactics they promote don’t necessarily need to work, they just need to hook the guys watching their content at home. In fact, the more insane his pickup line, the more bewildered her reaction, the better his clip will likely perform.”* “Cold approaches are treated less like meet-cutes and more like sales performance reviews. Who cares about a mutual spark? Did he open strong? Did he display high value? Did he maintain frame? Did he get the close?”* Example of one of these = Erick RonaldoLooksmaxxing as a Case Study for How People Fall Into these HolesLooksmaxxing is on the riseGoogle Trends shows how it came out of nowhere in 2023, came to a lull again in 2024, and swung back up in 2025 (interesting as some more extreme practices and figures within the movement got more interest, too)ClavicularClavicular has, for many, become the new public face of the looksmaxxing community.He:* Started testosterone injections at ~14–15 and engages in long‑term steroid use.* Uses meth to suppress appetite, stay extremely lean, and maintain hollow cheeks/cheekbone prominence.* Practices “bonesmashing” (hammer/fists to the jaw/face) to induce microfractures for a sharper jawline.* Side note: does the transmaxxing community practice of “bonesmashing” (hammer/fists to the jaw/face) to induce microfractures for a sharper jawline actually work?* Basically, no* Bonesmashing is based on a misreading of Wolff’s law, which says bone adapts to controlled, repetitive mechanical loading (like normal weight‑bearing exercise), not to random blunt trauma or deliberate fractures. Surgeons point out that striking your face with fists or hammers creates uncontrolled injury, so any microfractures or healing are unpredictable and cannot reliably make the jaw sharper or more symmetrical. Reviews by doctors and oral–maxillofacial surgeons state there is no clinical evidence that bonesmashing produces cosmetic improvements in facial structure.* Blunt force to the face primarily damages soft tissue (skin, fat, muscle, blood vessels) and nerves, causing swelling, bruising, and scar formation rather than clean, controlled bone remodeling. Even when small fractures occur, they tend to heal along the original anatomy or in a misaligned way, which can worsen asymmetry or create deformity instead of a sharper jawline. Experts emphasize that when bones truly need to be repositioned or reshaped for cosmetic or functional reasons, surgeons use precise, planned osteotomies and fixation—not repeated low‑level trauma—to get predictable results.* Claims probable infertility from years of steroid abuse* Told the NY Times he is not particularly interested in having sex with women; rather, simply knowing he could is validation enoughThese last two points are clear signs this is not extreme male peacocking in an effort to secure partners but rather a pursuit of a certain aesthetic for its own sake.Bruno Daniel’s Theories on Drivers Toward Looksmaxxing1. Camera technology distorts how people perceive their own facesOne surprisingly concrete driver is smartphone camera distortion.A 2018 research letter in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery by Boris Paskhover and colleagues modeled how perspective distortion affects facial proportions in close-range photography. Selfies taken at typical phone distance (~12 inches) can make the nose appear roughly 30% larger than it does in photos taken from portrait distance (~5 feet).Other studies have found similar distortions in facial proportions when images are taken at close range.Plastic surgeons increasingly report that patients bring selfies to consultations and request procedures based on how their face appears in those distorted images.Sources:• Paskhover et al., JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery (2018) — “Nasal Distortion in Short-Distance Photographs”• Rutgers / Stanford modeling of selfie distortion2. “Snapchat dysmorphia”: comparing oneself to filtered facesAround the late 2010s surgeons began describing a phenomenon sometimes called “Snapchat dysmorphia.”Patients increasingly request procedures designed to replicate filtered versions of their own faces produced by apps like Snapchat or Instagram. These filters subtly modify facial proportions, symmetry, skin texture, and eye size.In other words, people are increasingly comparing their physical bodies to algorithmically modified versions of themselves.Sources:• Ramphul & Mejias, Cureus (2018)• American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery surveys3. The pandemic introduced “Zoom dysmorphia”COVID produced another technological feedback loop.Dermatologists and plastic surgeons began describing “Zoom dysmorphia,” where constant exposure to one’s own face on video calls increased dissatisfaction with appearance and led to more cosmetic consultations.Millions of people suddenly spent hours each day looking at their own faces through front-facing cameras under unflattering lighting conditions.Sources:• Rice et al., Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine (2021)• Makhoul et al., Aesthetic Surgery Journal (2021)4. Cosmetic modification among men is risingAt the same time, male participation in cosmetic procedures has been rising steadily.Data from plastic surgery associations show growth in procedures such as hair restoration, Botox-type injections, skin resurfacing treatments, and body contouring among men.What is notable is not just the increase itself, but the shift in framing. Instead of being stigmatized as vanity, these interventions are often framed as optimization or self-improvement.Sources:• American Society of Plastic Surgeons annual statistics• American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reports5. Muscle dysmorphia and the pursuit of extreme physiquesOn the body side of the phenomenon there is a related condition known as muscle dysmorphia, sometimes called “bigorexia.”Researchers have found that exposure to idealized muscular bodies in media correlates with body dissatisfaction among men and increased risk of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. This dynamic is often associated with anabolic steroid use and extreme training regimens.Sources:• Pope et al., American Journal of Psychiatry (1997)• Griffiths et al., Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2015)• Pope, Phillips & Olivardia — The Adonis Complex (2000)6. Algorithmic platforms amplify extreme physiquesFinally there is the incentive structure of modern visual platforms.Instagram, TikTok, and similar feeds reward images that generate engagement. In practice this often means highly stylized faces, exaggerated jawlines, and extreme muscular physiques.Repeated exposure to these algorithmically selected images may gradually shift users’ perception of what a normal male body looks like.A possible synthesis: “algorithmic masculinity”Taken together, these dynamics suggest a possible cultural shift.Camera technology distorts self-perception. Filters normalize altered faces. Algorithmic feeds amplify extreme physiques. The stigma around male cosmetic modification declines.The result may be a feedback loop where some men increasingly attempt to reshape their bodies toward digitally optimized archetypes of masculinity.One provocative framing is that some men may increasingly be attempting to “transition” not from male to female, but from ordinary male bodies into exaggerated algorithmically optimized forms of masculinity, both in looks and behavior. The looksmaxxing communities are perhaps the clearest early manifestation of this phenomenon.Potential questions for an episode:• Are we seeing the early stages of widespread male body dysmorphia?• How much of this is driven by platform design versus cultural change?• Why has stigma around male cosmetic modification eroded so quickly?• Are social media algorithms indirectly selecting for more extreme forms of masculinity?Key sources:Paskhover et al., JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery (2018)Ramphul & Mejias, Cureus (2018) — Snapchat dysmorphiaRice et al., Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine (2021) — Zoom dysmorphiaAmerican Society of Plastic Surgeons statisticsPope, Phillips & Olivardia — The Adonis Complex (2000)Griffiths et al., Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2015)Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be with you today because we are going to be talking about looks maxing as the new gender affirming care. We’ve, we’ve joked about how women are getting basically gender affirming care when they get cosmetic procedures, you know, to look like young women. And that, you know, in the end it’s all just the same as being trans.It’s, it’s pointless feckless chasing after a certain identity.Malcolm Collins: You’re going to tie it to the concept of the beautiful ones or the mice from the the mice Utopia it spend all their time grooming. And we’re, we’re, we’re doing this because I think it’s important when people can learn that society doesn’t work.And the type of autistic people who watch our show, I think communities like looks maxing or any sort of a maxing can feel like solutions. But they are notSimone Collins: well. Yeah. In other words, like gender affirming care, be it looks maxing or becoming trans or getting a ton of cosmetic procedures as a woman is just one of many traps that people are [00:01:00] falling into.Malcolm Collins: But I think as bad as l maxing, and I want to be clear that we’re including this in the looks maxing categorySimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is performative masculinity, maxing.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. WhichMalcolm Collins: some people also do, youSimone Collins: know, they’re hundred percent and, and other masculineMalcolm Collins: more good.Simone Collins: Yeah. And I’m, I’m gonna give other examples too.But I, I also more importantly wanna point that these are all traps that map. To your earlier point, to a particular behavioral pattern that that appears to be consistent across any abundant mammal society, which is even in observed in rodents per calhoun’s, rat and mouse experiments that Malcolm just alluded to.And we’re gonna talk about them in greater detail. And the reason why it’s super important to talk about these traps and falling into this particular type of trap is that this, this, this, this folly doesn’t yield any lasting impact and it doesn’t yield happiness and contentment. Like even if you’re nihilistic, even if all you want is just a little bit of pleasure in this short, pointless existence you think you have, it’s not even the [00:02:00] best approach.And so really there’s just no reason why anyone should be falling for these things, and yet they are. Massively popular outcomes. They’re, they’re extremely common. So let’s talk about this. And we’re gonna use looks maxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into these traps so that all of us can be more adept at evading them personally or getting out of them if we’re in them.And I think it’s, it’s pretty easy, even like, even if your life isn’t about these things, I think even you and I, Malcolm may sometimes find ourselves unknowingly get pulled into these, it’s like a magnet that that happens in times of abundance. But let’s start with the rodents, the beautiful ones, just like you were saying.So for those who are out of the loop on this, between 1958 and 1962, a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments. He used rats and mice, and he did this in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise ideal environment affect social behavior, mental [00:03:00] health, and population stability, in this case, in rodents.But his hope was to better understand the implications of overcrowding and abundance for human society. So he gave rats and mice. Endless food, like they were never hungry. Endless water nesting material and protection from predators of disease. So that a lack of resources was not the cause of their problems.And then he observed how increasing population density changed aggression, mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall physiological functioning over time. Now we’ve talked about these rat experiments in the past. Commenters are always like, oh, these weren’t scientifically rigorously conducted.And yeah, obviously, yeah, the experiments were far from scientifically precise and they’ve been issues. But this is thisMalcolm Collins: important thing about the RAD experiments. They may have been p hacked. They may not have been scientifically rigorous, but they were predictive and they were,Simone Collins: yeah, no, they yielded super, super interesting patterns that you can also argue we’re seeing in modern abundant societies.I think the reason why people like talking about them is a lot of the stuff that he [00:04:00] observed qualitatively. Are like super major things. For example, let, let me give you some examples of, of behavioral groupings that he saw that like we talk about all the time in humans on our podcast. Yes. To refresh your memory, so there were the, there were the dom.So, and then keep in mind again, these, these are of these abundant rat or mouse. ‘cause he did both just like. Cities that he created essentially, and then he just watched what they did. So you know, these are, these are mice after, after they’ve reached this point where they’ve just reproduced a ton.You get the dominant, aggressive males. These are highly territorial alpha males that monopolize prime nesting areas and mates. They frequently fight and wound other males and sometimes they attack pups. Then there are the dropouts or socially defeated males, you could call them the in insults.They’re males driven out of territories by dominant males. They congregate in central areas, often scarred hyper submissive and involved in seemingly purposeless mass brawls. In [00:05:00] earlier rat experiments, some turned to cannibalism in the end, so dark. Then there are the hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males.Males that mounted other males and juveniles showed disorganized mating attempts and sometimes coupled asexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns. Again, there’s a reason why these resonate. And then let’s get to the female rodents. There are the neglect, neglectful, or failed mothers females that abandoned litters, moved pups repeatedly stopped defending nests or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the nest.So again, wow. And then there’s the hermit or withdrawn females who were adult females that were treated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating or pup care, effectively dropping out of normal, communal female roles in mouse societies. This is what I wanted to be that was my role in our rat society until I, I met you.[00:06:00]So, go ahead. What were you gonna say? TheMalcolm Collins: way that you fix this, right. For first, first the, the core thing that he noted that I think was the most important predictive element that to me just means he, he was getting some form of useful data.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Was that as you put mammals in a utopian like environment, urbanization increases.They, they began to congregate in denser and denser spaces, even when they had more spaces accessible to them. Hmm. And that is not a behavior that anyone would’ve predicted for humanity at the time that he was doing these experiments. And yet it is something that we’ve seen play out, but you also see these more fun things like what you’re talking about.Simone Collins: Yeah. And so obviously we, we spent a lot of time talking about the human societal analogs of, of the rodent groups I just mentioned. But yeah, let’s go back to the beautiful ones because we’re specifically talking not about the trap of incel in modern society or the, the women who choose to not have children, or the hyperaggressive males [00:07:00] we’re gonna talk about, or the hypersexual males who start mounting other males.We are gonna talk about the beautiful ones and the trap of the beautiful ones in, and trans maxing in other forms of this. And so what, what were the beautiful ones in the rat experiments? They were a subgroup of male rodents. First observe in rats, and then later in his mouse universe 25 study that withdrew from normal social life.They spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming, avoiding fighting, mating and parroting so that they, they remained physically unscarred and well kept, but were socially inter, and they did not reproduce. And you’re gonna find this is uncanny. When we get into looks maxing.So he, he described the animals as healthy and body, but socially sterile. Seeing them as a large stage symptom of social breakdown and an. Overpopulated yet materially abundant environment. And before we go into looks maxers, I wanna point out that this is a trap that is not just about looks. I mean, using looks maxers as like our way of sort of [00:08:00] exploring how people fall into these traps.But I’ll just give you three examples of this form of societal trap that have just been brought to my attention in like the last 24 hours just to like, ‘cause it’s all over. It’s all over the place and a lot of people are falling to this trap. So from one of our friends she texted me the other morning and just was, I guess this occurred to her, she’s just like, something for prenatal is to shame status, obesity.The idea. The drive to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes. But the drive to eat can be hijacked and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive if we eat too much and become obese. Status is similar, where the drive in general is good and it evolved to be a strong drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive.But there are people, especially at the top who are status obese. Their drive for status rather than contributing to their survival and their children’s survival is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money on plastic surgery instead of more kids, for example, they’re status obese, hurting [00:09:00] their genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of they’re young.And this reminds me of something that I heard among a very elite group that we, we used to mix in. There was this one guy who at this point was a billionaire. And in this, this, off the record Chatham House rules conversation. He was sort of talking about his objective function in life. And like for him it was always just like, well, just you become a, you know, get, make six figures.And then it was, you know, become a millionaire and then become a multimillionaire. And then like, okay, well have a net worth of over 10 million, have a net worth of over 50 million, a hundred million a billion, 2 billion. Like, it just as, as he, he, he, he, I think he was going on 2 billion at that point or something like that.Yeah. And then he was asked like, what, after that? And he’s like, well then I guess it’s gonna be 3 billion. It’s just like, like at what point, you know, like, to what end? LikeMalcolm Collins: when you do something with that, that’s fun.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, it just like, and he, he was talking in this conversation about how it was sort of, [00:10:00] he was aware of the fact that it was hollow.I think he was aware of the fact that he’d become one of the beautiful ones, essentially like that. This is kind of this pointless. Nihilistic exercise, but he also wasn’t trying to get out of it. And, and I, I really do, I love this idea of framing to our kids something like status obesity of like, just because we’re not above shaming people for being fat to just, I was,Malcolm Collins: I was growing up in a very fat shaming family.I mean,Simone Collins: my family. Right. But, but your, your family did not, did not shame status obesity and to, to shame someone for being status obese. The same way you’d shame someone for like wearing tacky clothing looking. I mean, we do thatMalcolm Collins: internally all the time. So our kidsSimone Collins: No, we do.Malcolm Collins: We do.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I, I find it to be really disgusting behavior and I think that it is, it ruins people’s lives.It just ruins your life. ItSimone Collins: does. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The people who have seen who strive for it, they’re never really happy. Yeah. It causes,Simone Collins: so genuinely, I feel like there’s more correlation with [00:11:00] failure to thrive and status obesity than actual obesity.Malcolm Collins: Such a great way to put it. And you, and you do see this in upper class circles all the time.Oh mySimone Collins: God. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And if you are like, or, or, or if you’re stuck in sort of a look next and you’re like, yeah, but I don’t have anything that matters to me, right? Mm-hmm. So I’m trying to construct something. Mm-hmm. And I’m like, if you want a good check out the book, the Pragmatist Guide to Life, we will give it to you for free.Mm-hmm. It’s got an audio book. It’s on Amazon for like 99 cents if you want it. It is the book for, in an unbiased way, having somebody walk you through building something that you can philosophically, rigorously believe has purpose. Yeah. And we try, unlike who we are today as influencers, which is heavily biased, heavily, we have an ideological side.Yeah. We did not back then. We were very, very, very ideologically unbiased back then, or at least attempted to be as hard as we could. Yeah. And, that book can be, it’s a, it’s a short book. Book. It’s a short read. Yeah, it is very [00:12:00] useful. It’s true read in terms of getting around that.Basically what we do in it is we go over everything you could think has value. Like literally we go through every philosophically rigorous, even potentially thing that could have value. And we go through the arguments for it, and we go through the arguments against it. Mm-hmm. And so that makes it easy for you because you can be like, okay I can bite those bullets.It’s basically like, can you bite these bullets against it? And if you can then it’s probably a, a, a good solution in terms of structuring your life around it. And now you have a purpose, something that you can structure your life around.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: But anyway, continue. Sorry.Simone Collins: It, it actually is kind of blowing my mind.So the difference between o like physical, food-based obesity and status obesity is food-based. Obesity is just like a, it’s, it’s a, a low grade addiction, you know, something that you can treat with naltrexone or semaglutide.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Whereas status obesity is a beautiful one’s problem. And I think what makes the, the, the disease of the beautiful ones [00:13:00] so uniquely insidious is that it is a very cerebral, high performance device in that it eats the potential of people who would otherwise be very impactful in the world.Does that make sense? Like these are, these are not people who are like following to, like, they’re not falling to low grade, like sex addiction, gambling addiction. Food addiction, right? They, they are, they’re rising above that. In fact, in many cases, they’re extremely disciplined. You know, these, these like looks maxers are going and we’re gonna get into that.Like, they’re going through incredible pain and deprivation to, to, to achieve it. It’s veryMalcolm Collins: similar to your time being anorexic. I mean, I think you could have you know, you had vanity, which I think you hate the way you look so much, you’d never become a look matcher. But I, you know, I can see the appeal of something like that.Even to you.Simone Collins: Totally. No, but the feeling of control that it, that it could bring, because for me it was always about control. And that’s what it is for most people who have anorexia.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: But yeah, so I think what’s, what’s so [00:14:00] crazy about that is, yeah, I was just thinking about like the obese people. I know many of them have kids above replacement rate.They’re working their butts off to give those kids successful lives. And if anything, they’re obese ‘cause they’re eating their feelings and they’re, they’re very stressed as they really fight for something they believe in, right? Like mm-hmm. They, they’re suffering from a vice. They have severe problems and they’re, they’re not in control of their impulses, but like they’re still doing more than the billionaire status maxor.The beautiful one. So I think that just to, to highlight how insidious and sinful, like per my view this particular trap is. There’s also, and I think this is really interesting, I just thought a headline of this,Malcolm Collins: well,Simone Collins: actually another version of this trap not beyond just status maximizing is virtue signaling or aimless altruism.I don’t know if you saw this headline but The Telegraph had this article that it ran, it, it was on the front page of Drudge this morning.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Titled The Extreme World of the 20 something Men Giving Their Organs to Strangers, [00:15:00] forget Giving Blood. These young people are offering strangers their body parts, such generosity could revolutionize a transplant system.And what, yeah, so you, you’ve actually seen the, there’s, you see the occasional post about this in the effective altruists slash like. Altruistic rationalist space where like, oh, so and so gave a kidney. Like, it’s so great that they gave a kidney. And these are people who already like, are trying to be effective altruists, except they lose the plot and they just wanna like, do all the good things.So they like donate blood and they donate plasma and they start running out of things to do, and then they just start giving away their, like, their kidney. Then they just keep going to complete strangers. And in this article they, they talk about this trend, particularly in the uk. Most of these non-direct altruistic donors are male.Kind of like the beautiful ones. A good portion are in their twenties. Then there’s another large cohort in their fifties. Weirdly it also notes the donors are [00:16:00] predominantly white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children. These are, in other words, I think beautiful ones.These are people who are stuck in an altruism trap. They’re optimizing to do good without really understanding what it is. And there are people who don’t have children, who don’t have partners who are not really making any lasting impact. ‘cause what do you do when you give someone a kidney? Maybe you’re extending that person’s life a little bit.You’re saving them from dialysis for a little bit, but like, what is that person gonna do? And this is also a stranger. Like, you have no control over who you’re giving your kidney to in these cases. So like, I don’t know, you could be giving your kidney to like, like a retired person who’s not gonna have any impact anyway, aside from maybe, maybe babysitting a grandkid a little bit and helping that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Like I, I really don’t like it. The, the myop, the myopia of this. Like, you could instead. Go work for a startup that will build synthetic kidneys. Like we’re at that point in [00:17:00] human history.Malcolm Collins: I love the way you see things the way I do. Why don’t you just make synthetic kidneys?Simone Collins: We’re so freaking close that so that, and then that, that’s why I’m like, this is a sign of really, like, you’ve gone off the rails.Like this is performative altruism. It has no point. It has no reason. It’s crazy. And then there’s also dating, and we, we haven’t run the episode yet, but we did an episode on new trends in Gen Z dating. And one of the big trends that was emerging among Gen Z pickup artists specifically, is that there’s this subset of Gen Z pickup artists that are really just trying to, like, they’re using their ray bands.They’re recording like sessions of like coal approaches and they’re just trying to get views. Like the point isn’t too. Get women to sleep with them, per se. It’s to get, and that’s, I was to get attention, to get reactionsMalcolm Collins: of we had recorded one of our weekend episodes on this, which are for paid [00:18:00] subscribers.If you guys wanna help us out on Patreon or SubstackSimone Collins: there you are. If you’re listening to this. Oh, sorry. No, no, sorry.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: This isn’t, this is for the main channel. Oh, awesome. Oh yeah, by the way. Yeah. We have, we run two weekend episodes every single week. We now have this big backlog. I think we have over 50 additional episodes that you have not seen.If you wanna get your fix, if you’ve already gone through all the backlog. There’s more friend.Malcolm Collins: If you’ve already gone through all the backlog, you have a problem. Okay. You have like an emotional problem?Simone Collins: No, no. You’re cool. I’mMalcolm Collins: trying to put this show has been on forever. Okay. Simon. Yeah. At this point.But if you, if, if you have, I appreciate it. I appreciateSimone Collins: it. Yeah. But also, like, if you wanna support us and help us out, like we really would appreciate it. It means a lot to us and it does make a difference for us.Malcolm Collins: So, and I’m trying to, I’ve been trying to create playlists so it’s easier to do like the backlog if you ever wanna do it, of like the stuff that’s gonna be evergreen, right.For a particular topic of interest, like, s psychology and anthropology science [00:19:00] government, and go governance theory, stuff like that. So anyway.Simone Collins: Yeah. But anyway, so there’s also now just like trends in dating in which people are not even trying to get a partner. They’re just, you know, they’re just cold approaching for like.To, to prove to themselves something or to, to, you know, build a career as a higher status like dude slash dating coach. That’s another example of this trap. But let’s go to, looks maxing and go into it in greater detail. Then what we’re gonna do is, is, is we’re gonna look at clavicular and sort of what he does to give you a picture of what looks maxing entails.‘cause it’s just very entertaining. And then we’re gonna look at the various factors that are driving people into this particular beautiful one’s trap, because I think that they’re very they can give you an idea of how someone can very subtly fall into a beautiful one’s trap like status or like dating or like altruism without knowing it.Because it can be a confluence of subtle things. And I’m gonna go through the confluence of [00:20:00] subtle, gateway drugs essentially. That Bruno Daniel friend of the podcast and of reality fa reality fabricator sent to us as he looked into what was driving people into looks maxing or what might be driving people into looksMalcolm Collins: maxing.We have one of our, our, our big fans into Look Mac or was into Look Mack thing. It’s funny like when we’re like, okay, when do we give our kids like human growth hormones and stuff like that, we like reach out to this fan. I’m like, I’m sure he’s done the research, right?Simone Collins: He is so cool. No, he’s like one of my favorite people in the entire world.I, I’m like a fan of him. I’m a fan of so many of our fans. Like, I’m just like weirdly obsessive about them and I don’t think they realize,Malcolm Collins: well, because you don’t bother with real friends. ‘cause real friends are a scam.Simone Collins: Well, they’re, but they’re also like. Not as well selected people who are your IRL friends are people who you just happen to run into.The people that we come across content-wise and who come across us content-wise, like we’re all really well matched for each other because we share interests and like very obscure interests. So anyway looks, maxing is definitely on the rise. [00:21:00] It, if you look at Google Trends, and this is all linked in the show notes which you can find on Substack or Patreon.It shows how it came out of nowhere in 2023 which is probably just when they started putting a, a name to this because, for example, the person we know who first clue us into looks like maxing that Malcolm just referred to he’s been doing this since he was a teen, you know, like using different hormones and injections and, and interventions, et cetera, like going above and beyond to make sure that, you know, he grows enough and like, looks better than he otherwise could.So, like, this is it, it’s not like it only just emerged in 2023, but that’s when people really started talking about it online. Then it interestingly came to a lull in 2024 and then swung back up in 2025, but also in a much more extreme way. Because that is when you start to see in Google trends a spike of things like what is the word?Where you. Hammer your face.Malcolm Collins: FaceSimone Collins: hammer. Yeah. Whatever. [00:22:00] It’s, it’s somewhere deeper in my notes. I’ll, I’ll mention it in a little bit. And also people like Clavicular. With Clavicular being now the new 2026 face of Looks maxing, who also is just like extremely, extremely out there.Malcolm Collins: I think, I think that clavicular is, I haven’t seen that much of his content, but he seems like so much more emotionally healthy than like Andrew Tate as like a, a young male influencer,Simone Collins: I guess.And No, let’s talk about what he does. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Go, go into on,Simone Collins: I mean, he, I mean, yeah, I don’t know. Okay. There, there’s a lot, there’s a lot with him. So he, he started testosterone injections at like age 14 or 15 which I don’t. Like blame him for doing. He, he, his parents were against this, by the way. His parents were not supportive of this.He also engages and has engaged in very long-term steroid use. He, this is where things start to go off the rails. Malcolm, he uses meth to suppress [00:23:00] appetite and stay extremely lean and maintain hollow cheeks. And that’s based, it’s, it’s very based, I think like, there’s this one clip of him on social media where he’s like chatting with a girl at a club and she’s like, like, I don’t know, do you do any drugs or something?And he is like, or like alcohol, like, do you drink a, he’s like, well, I don’t really drink alcohol. I like mostly just do meth. And she’s just kind of like, oh, okay.Malcolm Collins: I mostly just do meth. I mostly just do meth.Simone Collins: Yeah. He’s you know, and also like people have come to question, you know, his, his political philosophy.‘cause he is like, well obviously I would vote for, who’s the California Gavin Newsom over JD Vance. ‘cause he totally MOGs Vance. And I think like at one point, like he said this to like Andrew Tate at some stupid male influencer gathering in Miami, and Tate was like, child, that is not the way that you vote.Malcolm Collins: My, I love, I love that this guy is just like living on an aesthetic.Simone Collins: Yeah, no, like I get it and I, I like the commitment to the bit, [00:24:00] but also he’s one of the beautiful ones. Like to what end is this commitment? So yes. To, to our earlier point, because I was, I was this alluded, but yeah, he practices bone, bone smashing which is when you use a hammer or fist to hit your face, to induce micro fractures to produce a sharper jawline.Now, just to double click on this, because enough people have been talking about bone smashing where I was like, this can’t. This can’t work. Right. But also, like, I was like, well, hold on a second because this is, this is how nose jobs work. And by the way, there’s some YouTubers who’ve, who’ve done really great histories of nose jobs.People have been using, doing nose jobs. Of course you’veMalcolm Collins: watched this. I love it. What on our channel, wherever you find Simone has like a really deep knowledge. It’s whenever we’re talking about fashion history.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: SoSimone Collins: like, oh,Malcolm Collins: you’re talking about.Simone Collins: Yeah, but like people have been, have been doing those jobs for a long time, and nose jobs have always involved breaking the bones in the nose and, and strategically reforming [00:25:00] them.So I’m also like, well, of course, but I know that facial cosmetic procedures have for a long time involved breaking bones in the face. So maybe there’s something to this, but just in case you’re picking up a hammer right now and getting ready to go.Malcolm Collins: Most looks maxers I know are super, like, educated on this stuff.No, I don’t think they do something that didn’t work.Simone Collins: No, because, no, this, it doesn’t work. Okay. Just let’s get cut to the chase. It doesn’t, I don’tMalcolm Collins: believe you.Simone Collins: Okay. Now, oh, it, no, it doesn’t. And, and I’ll explain why. And you’re, you’re gonna understand really quickly why. Okay. So bone smashing is based on a misreading of wolf’s law, which says bone adapts to controlled repetitive mechanical loading, like normal weight bearing exercise, not to random blunt trauma or deliberate fractures.So surgeons point out that striking your face with fists or hammers creates uncontrolled injury. So any microfractures are healing are unpredictable. They can’t reliably [00:26:00] make the jaw sharper or more symmetrical. And reviews by doctors and oral maxi maxillofacial surgeons state that there’s no clinical evidence that bone smashing produces cosmetic improvements in facial structure.So like going down to the logistics of what’s happening here, blunt force to the face primarily damages soft tissue like skin and fat and muscle and blood vessels and nerves. This causes swelling, it causes bruising, scar formation. It doesn’t cause the clean controlled bone remodeling that they think they’re doing.So even when small fractures occur, they tend to heal along the original anatomy or in a misaligned way, which can worsen asymmetry or create deformity instead of a sheer jawline. Experts emphasize that when bones truly need to be repositioned or reshaped for cosmetic or functional reasons, and this is comes to my my nose, job awareness surgeons use very precise planned osteo osteotomies.Osteo [00:27:00] osteotomies and fixation. Meaning that they’re like really going in there and very strategically breaking the bone and repositioning it. They’re not just like hitting it with a hammer. So not repeated low level trauma to get predictable results. So the problem isMalcolm Collins: fake news, getting the hammer, gimme the hammer,Simone Collins: fake you.Actually, I think, I think that even clavicular has stopped bone smashing. He just, like, it got him a lot of attention, but he doesn’t do it anymore, I think ‘cause it doesn’t work. So I don’tMalcolm Collins: know. He looked pretty dumpy in his before photos.Simone Collins: Yeah. But I think a lot of that had to do more. So keep in mind he, he engages an extreme calorie restriction.A lot of that was just weight loss, allowing his bone structure to come through.The, the primary difference that I saw in his before and after had to do with weight loss. It wasn’t, it was the meth Malcolm. It’s not the hammer. Okay.Malcolm Collins: It’sSimone Collins: not,Malcolm Collins: notSimone Collins: the hammer. They’re not condemning [00:28:00] all of it. I mean, he could have just used semaglutide, but he had to be more metal.So I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t have insurance coverage and, and the, the, the meth is less expensive. Who knows? But keep in mind, but going back to the beautiful things, the beautiful, the beautiful ones theme of this all is that he, he also is well aware again, being quite based and he really owns everything that he does.He’s aware of the fact that he’s probably infertile due to the, the chronic steroid use, you know, if not all the other things. No, that’s not, he also. Told the New York Times, and I’m linking to the article in the show notes that he’s not particularly interested in having sex with women. Just knowing that he can is, is enough validation for him.So, like this is, this is a person who at least as of now, is not looking very likely to successfully reproduce. This is a very, very good example of how looks maxing is the beautiful ones, the ones who just excessively groom and look untouched and good, [00:29:00] but are, are not, they’re not, they’re, they’re an end to their genetic line to, to all of, of mouse and rat history.They are genetic ends and he is a genetic end to ev you know, the millions of years of evolution. And IMalcolm Collins: basically did what he did, but. Was aSimone Collins: different outcome at that age. No, no. You, you did not obtain hormones and steroidsMalcolm Collins: and drugs. No, I, what I mean is pointlessly optimize my goal at his age. ‘Cause he’s young, right?He like, yeah,Simone Collins: he’s like 20.Malcolm Collins: He’s very young, but just have sex with as many attractive women as possible.Simone Collins: But he’s not having sex.Malcolm Collins: I understand.Oh,Simone Collins: but you meant like pointless non procreative sex. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I understand. But the point I am making is non proative sex is the same as as no sex.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s all self validation.It was all validation.Malcolm Collins: If, if, if I,Simone Collins: let’s be clear that I actually wanna clarify that having sex is not the same as masturbation non-operative sex. Because honestly, [00:30:00] masturbation is way more effective if all you want is the physical pleasure sex itself. Like if you’re doing like a net, you’re right. SexMalcolm Collins: isSimone Collins: more calculation.There’s no, but also there’s way more like the, the, the, the pain. Coins that I get from like, like I’m, I’m thinking just like as a male that I have to spend to get like the pleasure coin of like ejaculation or, or sorry, like a climax. I have to, that’s like 28 pain coins for one pleasure coin.Malcolm Collins: I understand, but it’s, it is about knowing that you can, it’sSimone Collins: about, yeah, and that’s what I’m saying.It’s about the self validation. It’s not about physical pleasure.Malcolm Collins: And, and I think the young people, especially if you’re born with an enormous, like gold drive like I was, right? Mm-hmm. You can, you can very easily if, if you’re smart, get caught in one of these loops, especially if you’re doing really well at it.Mm-hmm. You’re like, oh, I’m good at this. Okay, I’m gonna lean in. I’m gonna do more, I’m gonna do more. I’m gonna do more.Simone Collins: You make the next million, make the next billion. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you [00:31:00] just get obsessed with it.Simone Collins: And there’s a, there’s a, a rule that path dependency I think plays in this too, of like after a while you’re not good at anything else.You only know one thing. In this world it’s actually kind of scary. SecondMalcolm Collins: guessing. I actually would push back hard here. I think that some of these use obsessions like mine can be incredibly useful when you get older. Oh, ISimone Collins: mean, it certainly taught you a lot about sales. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They taught me about sales.It taught me about sales and how to talk to people and how to sell myself to people and how to approach strangers and how to confidence, how to own a room, how to build presence, how to like I got more out of that than I did outta college, I’ll tell you that. Right. Like true. So I, I don’t, I I, I, soSimone Collins: you’re just saying everyone should just go on a sexual rum, Springer and college.Well, I mean, you couldn’t have done the sexual Rum springer to its full completion without going to college, so I guessMalcolm Collins: No, no, no. I actually by like my second year of college, I had basically gotten over it. Oh,Simone Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. [00:32:00]Malcolm Collins: I, I mean, I still, you know, from, from that point on, you know, I, I, I still slept with a number of people, but it wasn’t my core goal anymore.I was finding aSimone Collins: wife. Yeah. Once you hit college, it was fighting a wife. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, first year of college it wasn’t fighting a wife. I was still sleeping around a lot.Simone Collins: Oh, really?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It was second year of college where I was like, okay, I gotta take this seriously now.Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. That’s when you got matchmaking obsessed?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Or, or maybe, maybe like halfway through the first year.Simone Collins: Okay. Oh, fair enough. Then,Malcolm Collins: I, well also at that point, I had slept with everyone that, you know, that I saw that I thought was attractive in, in my social circle. So I, I didn’t have a reason to keep trying. I was like, whatever. Where, where, when I was younger I wasn’t limited by that because I would hook up with people I met through online dating back when that worked.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind this was a very different era of online dating. You could actually very easily online date in that era, [00:33:00] which is sad that like today you can’t do thatSimone Collins: for real times have changed. Sad. But yeah. So Cliff is, he is obviously a very extreme example, but I think there are lots of men who are falling into this trap.And also, you know, women who are falling into the gender affirming trap. And just people in general who are becoming obsessed with their looks online or other things. So, let’s go through Bruno Daniel’s theories on what drives people to looks maxing, which I think also explain what drive women to obsession with their appearance to sort of explain the subtle ways in which I think also people fall into like algorithm maxing or status maxing.And this is what Bruno Daniel sent to us. And thanks Bruno. You are awesome. And yeah, the best. So one, he pointed out that camera tech, sorry, camera technology distorts how people perceive their own faces. He cited a 2018 research letter in J-A-A-M-A Facial Plastic [00:34:00] Surgery by Boris. Past cover and colleagues who modeled how prospective distortion affects facial proportions in close range photography.So selfies taken at typical phone d distance, like 12 inches can make the nose appear roughly 30% larger than it does in photos taken from like a five foot portrait difference. So when people are taking selfies, they actually think that their nose is bigger and then they start getting obsessed over it.So there’s this like subtle subconscious thing that makes you start feeling a little bit, like less comfortable about it. Yeah. I’m gonna include additional studies that Bruno sources on these fronts in the show notes, just so people know. And then there’s also number two, Snapchat dysphoria, comparing oneself to filtered faces.He wrote around the late 2010 surgeons began describing a phenomenon sometimes called Snapchat dysphoria. Patients increasingly request procedures designed to replicate filtered versions of their own faces produced by apps like Snapchat or Instagram. At least,Malcolm Collins: you know you’re gonna like what you’re going for.[00:35:00] That wouldSimone Collins: only I know. I know. It’s, it’s great. Yeah. Plastic surgeons used to use special proprietary software to show you,Malcolm Collins: this is what gets me about like a nose job when somebody’s like, what would you want a nose job? And I’m like, what? I don’t know what a pretty nose looks like. Like I, I don’t,Simone Collins: yeah.Like how would I look corrected? And yeah. Plastic surgeons used to like make versions that would show you, but now people are literally seeing the after version of them in plastic surgery every time they turn on a filter every time. Which is,Malcolm Collins: I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why you’d want a different nose.Like there’s, there’s gotta be something seriously wrong with your nose.Simone Collins: I don’t know. I have you ever turned on like, an attractive filter? I turned one on by mistake and was like, oh God,Malcolm Collins: this is what ISimone Collins: could look like. This is what I could look like if I was pretty. Like, it’s, it’s actually quite I found it quite disturbing because I, I feel really uncomfortable about the idea of altering the way I look like.I even like dying my hair ever since I was a kid. I, I felt it was some version of stolen valor to [00:36:00] like, I, I, I, I don’t, I cannot pretend to be a blonde that would be criminal. Like, I, I have this feeling of like, some inherited feeling of sanctuary laws. You know, like, well, you, you’re not allowed to look beautiful.You’re not like, that’s. Deeply wrong in some way. Well, I mean, thatMalcolm Collins: makes sense.Simone Collins: It does. If you’re notMalcolm Collins: beautiful, don’t lie.Simone Collins: But genuinely, because then people will try to reproduce with you thinking that you’re something that you’re not. Anyway someone actually suggested that as an episode to us at some point, like the ethics of cosmetic procedures and whether people should have to disclose that, et cetera.Or like having people do background checks on partners to see if they, that kind of thing. I think they also suggestedMalcolm Collins: I’m, I’m, I’m very against cosmetic procedures, by the way. I, I see them as largely pointless unlessSimone Collins: no, they’re, we’ve talked about ones that you feel like you’d wanna get someday if a certain issue arises that you think is uniquely, and both of us, I had braces, you’ve had, you know, dental stuff done.We both had, you [00:37:00] know, as kids stuff done to teeth. Okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins: I take that back. Yeah. I’m okay with this. SoSimone Collins: like, yeah, for sure. If our kids have their teeth growing crooked, we’re gonna help them get,Malcolm Collins: yeah, getSimone Collins: braces,Malcolm Collins: get, you know.Simone Collins: You, I think your mom told you as a kid, like, oh, if you see a kid with crooked teeth, their parents don’t love them.Malcolm Collins: That means their parents. She did. She did tell me that. She goes, that’s the easiest way to tell if a parents love their children.Simone Collins: It’s so mean because that’s not true. True. It’sMalcolm Collins: kind of true though.Simone Collins: No, because the thing is in the United States for the, like half of our audience that doesn’t live there, tooth care dental coverage is entirely independent in the United States from health insurance coverage.So you can have a parent who has health insurance through their employer and they don’t have dental coverage. And also most dental coverage is really, really bad. At best, it will cover two cleanings a year. For example, all the in intense gum surgery I had to do it covered like. A couple hundred dollars of [00:38:00] that.And like the rest I’m paying for out of my like, personal fund savings for like buying myself treats, it was like $2,800. And I’d saved up years for that to like go on a, you know, like do something nice for myself and like that’s gone to keep my teeth from falling out. ‘cause that’s dental coverage here.So no things like orthodontia for kids and stuff that is paid for out of pocket. Like it was a big deal for my parents to get braces from me as a kid. So then, no, that’s not true. It’s not a sign of being loved. It’s a sign of having moneyMalcolm Collins: defending people from my mom’s horrible classism.Simone Collins: Listen, I love her classism, but also I’m gonna point it out as, as a classism anyway.Yes. So basically PE you should at some point look at. I just think filters are really funny. Like there’s some filters that don’t make you look more attractive. They just like change your gender so you can see what you look like if you’re old or obese or male. And there’s this one amazing clip of like a mom and a daughter.And it begins with [00:39:00] them as males, like with the gender clip on. And it’s like, or no, sorry. It begins with both of them. No, sorry. It begins with the daughter just having it on her face. She’s just holding the phone mostly aimed at her. So his mom’s, her mom’s on the side, but her mom hasn’t been subject to the filter ‘cause it’s only half her face if the AI doesn’t recognize her as a human and like the daughter is this like hot dude.And then like, she like scrolls the phone over a little bit. So like her mom’s full face is in it and her mom’s like all excited to be turned into a hot dude. Like it turns her into this dumpy ugly man because she was already ugly to start.It’s just so metal. I love it so much. And she, so you judgeMalcolm Collins: the daughter as beingSimone Collins: hot.‘cause the daughter was hot. The daughter was hot to start. ‘cause at the end I think the daughter shows turns off the filter and you just see that like, she was attractive as a woman. So it turned her into an attractive man. And it just, like, it kept the, the attractiveness equivalent, like the AI is really good.Speaker 4: Oh my God. Christina, you are one hot looking man. Oh my God. [00:40:00] Are you freaking kidding me right now? That’s awesome. What? Get that. Are you freaking kidding me right now? Get that off. That’s disgusting.Simone Collins: So anyway, you might wanna play with filters someday, but filters really mess with people and they can really hurt you like that. That older woman, the mother in that particular scenario was probably very used to the way she looked as a woman and she’d like built some kind of reality bending field about, oh, I’m really pretty anyway.And then she saw herself as a man. In a whole new light and realize just how ugly she was all over again. Like filters really do affect negatively the way you look at yourself. So treat come as no surprise that people who are subjecting themselves to Snapchat filters are getting this dysphoria and that looks maxers.And probably trans people and women alike are looking at these filters and feeling bad about themselves and feeling like they need to do something. Here’s the thing though, and here’s how it gets to the beautiful ones. This is a trap. Like you’re getting [00:41:00] obsessive about it. But to your point, Malcolm, it doesn’t matter if you’re ugly, you’re ugly.Like that’s how you look. That’s the world. I’m sorry. Like it sucks, but like, that’s not what matters. In the larger scheme of things. Find your objective function and figure out what you actually care about if you don’t know. The other, the only other fun fact I will give you about filters, and this might have changed, but I don’t think it has changed that much, is there is one person in the world who.Can turn on like a Snapchat or Instagram filter and their face doesn’t change. Do you know who that is?Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna say no. Who?Simone Collins: Kim Kardashian.Malcolm Collins: Really? HerSimone Collins: face. She’s basically like the, the touchstone of the filters.Malcolm Collins: Has she actually done this to, to show people? ‘cause I don’t think she’s a very attractive person.Simone Collins: I think it’s No. Yeah. But the, the filters make you look more like in that direction. She, she is the filter. Which is just fascinating. So, yeah. Anyway,Malcolm Collins: interesting. I, I find her very unattractive. So ISimone Collins: guess filtersMalcolm Collins: aren’t, well,Simone Collins: yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I [00:42:00] now, I, now I really wanna see what you look like. I have to figure out, I have Instagram on my phone.I have to figure out how I’m so excited for this. Okay. Anyway. So then let’s go to number three. The, the way that people fall into this trap without realizing it the pandemic introducing Zoom dysmorphia according to, to Bruno. COVID produced another technological feedback loop. Dermatologists and plastic surgeons began describing zoom dysphoria, or sorry, dysmorphia, where constant exposure to one’s own face on video calls increased dissatisfaction with appearance and led to more cosmetic consultations.Millions of people suddenly spent hours each day looking at their own faces through front facing cameras, under unflattering lighting conditions than he is too more. Academic sources on this, like it’s, it, you know, is, it has been measured and attested by academics. Number four, cosmetic modification among men is rising at the same time, male participation in cosmetic procedures has been rising steadily.Data from plastic surgery [00:43:00] associations, stroke growth and procedures such as hair restoration, Botox style injections, skin resurfacing treatments, and body contouring among men. What is notable is not just the increase itself, but the shift in framing instead of being stigmatized as vanity, these interventions are framed as optimization and self-improvement.What he didn’t mention here, and we talked about this in another episode, and we even looked at the Google trends of it, is leg lengthening surgery, which can cost upwards of $200,000 and be incredible.Don’tMalcolm Collins: even,Simone Collins: I just imagine this.Speaker 8: His profile says he is six one, so I can wear lifts. Even with lifts. You’re not that tall,Speaker 7: Jerome never questioned my commitment again.Simone Collins: It’s, that’s basically what you’re doing though. Like it’s, it’s, it is, it is incredibly punishing and more men than ever are doing it.Which is, it goes to show again, beautiful ones. This is not gonna. This is not gonna make you have a lasting impact on, [00:44:00] you know, the unbroken chain of human existence. But whatever. Number five, muscle dysmorphia and the pursuit of extreme physiques on the body side of the phenomenon, there is the related condition known as muscle dysmorphia, sometimes called big auryxia.Researchers have found that exposure to idealized muscular bodies and media correlates with body dissatisfaction among men and increased risk of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. This dynamic is often associated with anabolic steroid use and extreme training regimes or regimens. What Bruno didn’t point out is that in, in some areas, in fact I think this is actually happening a lot in Brazil.Men are injecting in some cases saline, in some cases, other materials.Malcolm Collins: OhSimone Collins: God,Malcolm Collins: I find this so gross. Fake muscles.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: No, it’s disgusting. Don’t even, the pictures are so horrifying.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Don’t look it up. Nightmare fuel. Nightmare fuel.Malcolm Collins: Mm. Like worse than trans people.Simone Collins: In fact though, actually this is something I left out about stuff that clavicular [00:45:00] does.But he is very interested in having the right, like sort of shoulder proportions. Kind of like, you know how I’m using the scam to look a little tougher with my little gam? IMalcolm Collins: think it looks good. No, you look like, what I like about these, these sort of medieval outfits is they look so spacey. Like you genuinely look like you could be onSimone Collins: the space.No, but strong, prominent shoulders are masculine and are attractive. You know, what clavicular has done with his shoulders to make them look more,Malcolm Collins: pad themSimone Collins: with.Malcolm Collins: Oh. Breast stuff.Simone Collins: Cutlets. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Cutlets.Simone Collins: Yeah. Whoa.Malcolm Collins: Interesting.Simone Collins: Yeah. ShouldMalcolm Collins: I do that?Simone Collins: Put, put chicken cutlets on your, on your shoulders. I don’t have falsies.Guess we, where do you buy them? CVS I’ve never owned any you’ve never owned any? I, yeah. I guess you didn’t wanna portray yourself as something stolen baller, Malcolm. I’m like very morally against this. I’ve never even, like, I, I didn’t even, I, I, I remember my, my cousin got a training bra a training bra.Like you don’t need a [00:46:00] freaking when you need, when you put it on. AMalcolm Collins: training bra is like a fake bra. Right.Simone Collins: That makes, yeah. It’s like, it’s, it’s just like a little, you know, it’s like a little bra for girls who have absolutely nothing in there, but, you know, she got it anyway. ‘cause I don’t know, maybe it made her feel girly or her parents are trying to prepare her for the horror that is female puberty.But I was like, well, I would never. Get a bra. I mean, even e even when you met me, you had to convince me to actually get measured for my bra because I was like, well, I can only possibly be an acup because for sure I I don’t have anything.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and you were wrongSimone Collins: and I was wrong. Yeah, but like, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, for most of my life actually, I only wear sports bras.I basically bound my chest. But yeah, so I, I definitely couldn’t have cutlets. But yeah, so like he, even clavicular is aware of like this, but instead of thank God, instead of injecting silicone into his shoulders, he or, or saline has just it’s just put cutlets there. [00:47:00] But I, I actually think that’s a somewhat ingenious solution.Again, I, I have a lot of respect for him. But I, I don’t respect the end game of it all. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: No, no meth, no steroids that are gonna sterilize you. You know, you gotta get out there, you gotta make maybes. That’s the point of it. All right.Simone Collins: Yeah. But the point that Bruno was making was that like, men are falling into this trap without knowing it because of this, this confluence of camera technology, the way it’s distorting, distorting our self perception, the way that filters are normalizing, altered faces.Mm-hmm. The way that, that, that algorithmic feeds are amplifying extreme physiques and sort of normalizing stuff that really isn’t normal and really isn’t healthy. And then this, this decline in even stigma against male cosmetic procedures that are really. Insane. And what I wanna point out is that exactly the same things are happening with things like status, with things like altruism like in the rationalist communities.Like, you know, Scott Alexander will offhandedly for example, in a post about this or that [00:48:00] thing. Talk about so and so who very valiantly donated a kidney in a way, like makes it clear that that made that person good. You know? And like if Scott Alexander thinks someone’s good, then they are good because he is like.The smartest of all, you know, like God said so the smartestMalcolm Collins: of all the nerds.Simone Collins: No, he’s like, he’s like big nerd. He’s the ea rationalist nerd. God, you know, wait, didMalcolm Collins: this happen? Are these people donating their organs because they read Scott Alexander, I, wouldn,Simone Collins: surpris Malcolm. I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised the article.I would be surprised. It, it, interestingly, this actually surprised me that the Telegraph article didn’t talk about effective altruism or rationalism because it’s very obvious to me that that’sMalcolm Collins: what this is coming out of.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like obvi, I mean, like EA came out of Oxford. It, this is a UK of origin meme.But the Telegraph, I mean, what can you expect? Like they’re not plugged in. They really don’t know. They can’t find their feet. But I, I, [00:49:00] I wanna stress that, that like, you’ll get into the algorithm and you’ll, you’ll start seeing these things and then you’ll just tat it like if you don’t have a strong objective function, you will just assume that. Well, okay, then that’s what we’re optimizing for. I guess. Just like I grew up, my my thing was, well, like envir, like save the planet environmentalism. I had no idea what that meant, but my entire,Malcolm Collins: you’re so right. So much of this is just, you get stuck in an optimization loop.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, well, of course that’s what the right peopleMalcolm Collins: do. All the good people do that good person be seen as a good person, right? Mm-hmm. Without any sort of philosophical or moral framework behind it.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And people just spin out on that, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But or if you’reSimone Collins: sping and you’re spinning outMalcolm Collins: on this not person, it’s like, have sex with as many people as possible.Mm-hmm. Or you know, be superSimone Collins: masculine orMalcolm Collins: be super masculine or for us right now, have as many kids as possible. Right. You know, like,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: But hey, I, I, I am, I’m pretty confident in that one. I’ve seen our kids, they’re pretty neat.Simone Collins: We have a very clear objective function, and [00:50:00] having kids is a very clear part of that.And also we really, really love them. I think this, yeah, the, the difference, I love aMalcolm Collins: couple.Simone Collins: You don’t love them all. Here’s the difference between the, the beautiful one’s trap and a genuine objective function because they can look very similar, right? Like, both are very goal oriented, achievement oriented things, and I think it’s very easy to assume that one is the other, right?Like these people donating their kidneys, you just like, well, of course they must really know what they’re doing, you know, be very mission driven if they’re donating their kidneys, right? These are people who live their values. I think the, the key difference is you are never going to get enough to feel satisfied or content.In one bucket, whereas in the other, you are like, I think you and I, as much as we’re often stressed and really worried about being able to do right by our objective functions are [00:51:00] heartbreakingly content, to the extent that like our greatest fear is that like we’re just gonna like suddenly drop down and die because this is just so too wonderful.Or that it’s not Well, yeah,Malcolm Collins: no, our, our lives are stupidly good. Yeah. I am, I am shocked by the I mean, I was just thinking today. I, but, but I always just reflect on it’s the life that you built for me, right? Like, you’ve given me this amazing existence, right?Simone Collins: You given me this amazing, I didn’t know this was even an option.This, this wasn’t one of my multiple choice. Options on my, on my board. Again, I was gonna be the beautiful one. They were treated and, and chose to not, to not have offspring. I was that mouse. So that wasn’t, you know, I was the what, what did you call it? The hermit mice. That was me. So I didn’t know this was an option in the mouse.Utopia. This is really cool.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but, but we’re creating a new option, right? Like, that’s what the prenatal list are. They’re like a community coming out there with flags. We’re tunneling, like, we’re getting out. Everyone come. You want, you wanna be part of the, like, high tech sciencey, like, agentic faction [00:52:00] that thinks for themselves, come join us and we’ll help defend each other, right?Simone Collins: Like, yeah, we’re the mice that Calhoun notices in a corner building some kind of structure to get out of the cage. We’re getting off planet guys. We’re notMalcolm Collins: off planet. We’re gonna wait. Why are these mice building a rocket? LikeSimone Collins: something is going terribly wrong? Yes. So that, that’s us. But yeah, I think the problem, the problem with the beautiful ones trapped is you, it will never be enough.You will never have enough status. You will never be beautiful enough. You will never be masculine enough. You will never be altruistic enough. You will never have, have, have done anything. Whereas the weird thing is objective functions. We don’t call them life goals. We call them objective functions because they are things that you are only able to try to maximize.There is no, in the end achieving a goal. There is no point at which you’re like, check, I’m done. I can die now. You know, like, it’s just like up until you know, you realize that you can no longer [00:53:00] really pursue your objective function. You’re gonna push forever. You’re just trying to maximize whatever it is.And so you’d think, well, oh, then you’re also never gonna be satisfied. But weirdly, the emergent properly of knowing that your life is now productively dedicated to the pursuit of this objective function, you get this deep sense of contentment and no more fomo. Yeah, no more cognitive dissonance. Like I, I, I remember the way I used to feel in moments.When I was pursuing a beautiful one’s life where I would just feel this empty existential dread, like this mixture of cold depression and of cognitive dissonance, like not, not being sure if I was missing out on things. They’re like, oh, I should probably be doing this. [00:54:00] I’m not. I’m just not sure. What if I’m doing this wrong?What if I, and, and I don’t ever feel that now. Like sometimes I’m wondering tactically like, well, would it be better for me to spend my time on this or that to like maximize our desired results? But I’m never questioning, I’m never like feeling this deep unsettled worry of like, am I missing out on this?And I instead feel incredibly happy, incredibly tired, but in that, like I just spent the day at Disneyland kind of way, except that that doesn’t work anymore. That doesn’t really make me happy. People were return from Disneyland happy anymore. Find your feeling quite stressful these days. I guess it as if I were a child who spent the day playing at a creek.Okay. That kind of feeling,Malcolm Collins: which our kids do every day.Simone Collins: That deep innocent contentment. Octavian iss very unhappy that he got into the twenties again. And that there’s no creek playing anymore right now. He’s Oh, really? Devastated. Yeah. I feel really bad ‘cause I get it. I get it. We’ll get them out there soon enough.The spring is coming. Not yet though.Malcolm Collins: GottaSimone Collins: plant moreMalcolm Collins: [00:55:00] trees.Simone Collins: The daffodils are coming up though. Yeah, all over the property. If you want a, a free copy of the Ragus Guide to Life DM us, we will give one to you. Typically we only give free copies away readily to our paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack.They get it for free, but, you know, if you really care about this and you really wanna not be a beautiful one and actually have meaning in life, and I, I care enough about people to offer this. If you want it, audiobook or ebook, we can send it to you. And I think the key thing is that you should know deeply what you wanna maximize in this world and not just be maximizing a thing because it’s the algorithmic loop into which you’ve fallen, be that the environmentalism or, you know, proselytizing your religion.I don’t know. Just be really careful ‘cause it’s a fine line, but it’s a very deep and dangerous trap. Anything you wanna add as a finishing point?Malcolm Collins: No, I love you. Check out the book. It, it like [00:56:00] genuinely, especially if you’re a young person. I think it, I would’ve helped me a lot had I realized earlier that I should not be optimizing my life around something as silly as how many people I was sleeping with.But you know, when you’re, when you’re young you don’t have often a lot of things that can like, give you the a, a broader perspective.Simone Collins: Yeah. You’re just working off societal defaults and both of our things that we were optimizing for in our beautiful ones stage before we woke up essentially was like very classic.Like, you get a lot of sex Me environmentalism, save the planet. Thank God. Yeah. IronMalcolm Collins: Birds. Anyway, love you. The, the, yeah. We are the male and female. We are not like advanced or something, right?Simone Collins: Like, no, no. We, we, 100%. Like we, we were not above this. And I think there are still moments where I can feel the pull of that magnet where like, if, if again, and I, I, on another members, like paid, paid subscribers only podcast, we were recently talking about this, like, I really hate feeds.I tend to [00:57:00] fall more into this. The, I feel the, the quicksand when I am scrolling on feeds of like, oh, like I’m not pretty enough. I’m not altruistic enough. I’m not a good parent enough. Like, you know, I’m not performatively good parent enough, et cetera. Like, why do I not have this like elaborate toothbrush set up for the children?Malcolm Collins: You are a spectacular mother, by the way, for people who do not know this, it’s like every morning I go downstairs, she’s cooking individualized meals for all of the kids. And she says, I, I offered to handle all this for her in the morning because I used to handle the mornings. But no, she insists. ‘cause she’s like, it’s when I’m doing laundry or cleaning up after dinner or something.And so she does like, individualize, all the kids are running around playing with their own thing, attacking each other. And she’ll have on like classic music or like, like really fun old movie music and stuff. And it’s just like, scene. Okay, it’s a scene.Simone Collins: It’s a scene versus [00:58:00] like a rager scene after we go to bed at night and our kids every night, it’sMalcolm Collins: like they have a rage downstairs.Simone Collins: Genuinely, like stuff’s breaking. People are like. Vomiting in corners, jumping off things. Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: Oh,Simone Collins: dinner’s nice.Malcolm Collins: GrilledSimone Collins: cheese tie with extra red curry paste and then a grilled cheese sandwich.Malcolm Collins: No, not both. I’m either having one or the other. If you think I need to have the chicken curry tonight, thenSimone Collins: no.Even tomorrow night I think.Malcolm Collins: Okay. GirlSimone Collins: cheese breakfast tomorrow.Malcolm Collins: Girl cheese. You make great girl cheeses. SoSimone Collins: girl cheese, girl cheese,Malcolm Collins: two girl cheese, white bread, girlSimone Collins: cheese.Malcolm Collins: Don’t you try to sneak, get something healthy on me. Okay. I’m gonna be,Simone Collins: I know. Just for, for reference, everyone, like this morning our kids had, you know, peanut butter and honey sandwiches with homemade sourdough like sliced bread, whatever, what is the word, loaf bread.Anyway sandwich [00:59:00] bread and but Malcolm, God forbid that he have homemade fresh because literally there’s a, a loaf that just finished downstairs. No, no, no, no. For him, we’re getting out The Wonder Bread equivalent. Highly processed full of all the ButMalcolm Collins: cheaper than Wonder Bread.Simone Collins: Yeah. Cheaper than Wonder Blood.Yeah. Well, yeah.IMalcolm Collins: always get the store version.Simone Collins: Come on guys. You gotta get, you know, if the, if the riboflavin isn’t in it, why are you gonna eat it? And of course, you chose not just a American cheese, which is a substance inspired by the concept of cheese but the craft brand individually wrapped in plastic American cheese slices.You know, the ones that I get, the Land O’Lakes one that we get at BJ’s are just stacked and you just pull off the slices. No, but you got them individually wrapped in plastic just to maximize those microplastics. You really go, wanna shove them in [01:00:00] micro plastic? I’ll just, I’ll just keep the plastic on and melt it between the breads.You can really get that. I haven’t theMalcolm Collins: macro plastic.Simone Collins: Yeah, but I don’t thinkMalcolm Collins: you can have American cheese without it being individually wrapped. Right, becauseSimone Collins: it’s, it’s two July. You can, you can, if you get the Land O’Lakes ones that, that we can buy at BJ’s, they are just stacked.Malcolm Collins: Oh,Simone Collins: they’re, sometimes they’re a little hard to pull off. But no, you chose the craft individually wrapped in plastic One.Malcolm Collins: TheSimone Collins: environment. I mean, when I, when I dane to buy what you ask and get that cheese, I always buy at least the minimally microplastic one. But no, God forbid you are like, why would I buy that one when I could buy Kraft? Kraft is how, you know it’s good.Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s the one brand. Okay.Simone Collins: You’re such a nineties kid.You’re like, I want a Capri Sun in a metallic pouch. I want the [01:01:00] Go-Gurt plastic sleeve. I want the American cheese that’s on legitMalcolm Collins: SimoneSimone Collins: with, I mean, I really, you would prefer to have, I can’t believe it’s not butter spread instead of, you know, real butter. Right. Did you, did you, did your family do margarine back when that was the thing?Malcolm Collins: I believe I remember yeah, I can’t believe it’s not butter or somethingSimone Collins: because when we were kids it was believed that butter would kill you.Malcolm Collins: Well, you’ve gotta remember my family was a little different because my mom didn’t cook, so Oh, yeah.Simone Collins: You have no ideaMalcolm Collins: what you were, I usually ate like pop tarts and stuff like that.I I very rarely ate cooked meal. Yeah.Simone Collins: Pop-Tarts. Yeah. Right.Malcolm Collins: Poptarts, this is what happens if you build an entire body off of like Pop-Tarts and like, honey Nut Cheerios and otherSimone Collins: oh dude. Same. No, man, I, I did not touch fruits or vegetables until I was like 6, 16, 15 or 16 years old.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Our kids are getting a, a, a much better nutri god nutritional environment than we No, I [01:02:00] sneak them bad food because Simone gets mad at me over that.She got, she doesn’t like them to have fruit rollups and stuff, and I’m like, no, no, no, no. That’s child.Simone Collins: Yeah, you’re always slipping them like highly processed Dros it, it’s horrible. I saw you bought more gummies. You monster. You eat most of them though, soMalcolm Collins: shut up. I don’t eat most of them. Gummies are delicious.Adults need an excuse to have gummies in the house. Let me tell you what you guys, if you haven’t had gummies since you were a kid, gummies are great. I’m just talking about gummy bears. I’m talking about like Motts gummies.Simone Collins: Yeah, like the, the, the kind that parents are sold because it contains real fruit juice.But guess what? One of the, the smartest and coolest listeners to this podcast, who I shall not name for her privacy, she makes gummies for her kids at home. Using fruit juice. Are youMalcolm Collins: being shamed by other moms for not being, [01:03:00] for not being tried enough?Simone Collins: Yes. I’ll never, she has more kids. She, she has, she, I think she mills her own grain.Now, not only does she make better cakes than I do, but although it broke recently, she has the airbrush, she had an airbrush for her cakes, so she can really fancy. Well, I I’m glad that you have aspirational women to you know, try to I will never be enough. Do more stuff for the family. No, she, she inspires me.There, there are a couple moms who I’m just like, I will never, I, like I told you about one mom who sent their holidays that they celebrate. We, we have to all have a whole conversation offline about these. I’m just like, yeah. The people who listen to this podcast are next level. This is not one like Yeah, this, thisMalcolm Collins: podcast has cool listeners.I’ll, I’ll tell you that. Yeah. Well, I, oh, and we, we, we definitely need to as in addition for like one of the weekend episodes,Simone Collins: alright,Malcolm Collins: love you Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too. Malcolm.Thank you for being gorgeous.Speaker 2: So I heard banging. Why did I hear [01:04:00] banging? Because I got Ed. Stop. This is Indy’s bed. Indy is supposed to sleep here. Why are you jumping kind? I kind of was my head on the door. Why? ‘cause I’m so fun Do attack you. He run to attack me. Do not attack you.No. Do not attack me. Line. Why do you wanna blind the viewers? ISpeaker: won’t get [01:05:00] away.Speaker 3: Dam it. Dam it, dam it. I’ll escape. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Are we stuck in cultural quicksand? In this Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins explore whether the internet, streaming, algorithms, and AI have collapsed cultural time — making it impossible for new culture to gain traction or evolve.From the ball pit/avalanche metaphor to living in “the Archive,” they discuss why 1986–1996 felt like different worlds while 2005–2026 barely registers. They dive into Gen Z’s nostalgia-fueled listening habits, the death of linear cultural progress, and surprising pockets where culture is still advancing: anime, Korean webtoons (manhwa), reality fabricators/AI storytelling, VTubers, Roblox as the new Harajuku, SCP Foundation lore, Bronies, dead mall videos, and liminal spaces.They debate subcultures in the digital age, the role of constrained communities vs. the chaotic global feed, culture hyperinflation from AI, and whether new cultures are dead — or just unrecognizable. Plus: family culture as a refuge, why old cartoons beat modern kids’ shows, and optimistic takes on building traction in walled gardens.If you’re into pronatalism, cultural evolution, technology’s impact on creativity, or just wondering why everything feels like a remix, this one’s for you.Episode Notes* What if we’ve entered an age in which culture can no longer advance and we don’t even know it?* We’ve already talked about how there’s only ‘one story left’—basically discourse about global politics, technology, and economics—because entertainment media is so fragmented and desynchronized that most shows, movies, and books can’t manage to enter the zeitgeist* But it may also be the case that the way the internet has collapsed time, from a cultural perspective, has rendered society incapable of advancing culture, because new developments lack the ability to gain traction* I started thinking about this when we did an episode on “The Modern Audience” and Malcolm found in his research that many of the people writing modern movies and shows primarily consume archival shows and movies, not new ones.* Our kids are largely growing up watching cartoons and shows from the 1990s.* We’re seeing an explosion of prequels and sequels rather than new unique propertiesWill All Future Generations Grow Up in The Archive?Choice quotes from Sam Buntz’s post on Katherine Dee’s Default.Blog, Gen Z Lives in the Archive:* According to a 2019 article from Billboard, Shannon Cook, a trends expert at Spotify, said that Gen Z’s listening habits on Spotify were unusually broad and tended to delve deeply into the past. Tracks by Miles Davis (“Blue in Green”), The Grateful Dead (“Friend of the Devil”), and Joan Jett (“I Love Rock n’ Roll”) were all among Gen Z’s most listened to tracks at the time.* Albeit, this article was from 2019—but the forces driving the trend, Tik Tok nostalgia and the buffet-like nature of streaming platforms, have only continued or accelerated their effects. The aforementioned 2025 article from Activaire argued that Spotify data showed Gen Z was connecting more with Gen X music on Spotify, beguiled by its apparent authenticity.* Zoomers, you see, live inside the Archive.* Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are imprisoned inside the Archive—a Borgesian labyrinth. Everything that has ever happened exists at their fingertips, assigned equal weight (or assigned whatever weight the fickle algorithm happens to be assigning on that particular day). This is also why they are a uniquely anxious generation, paralyzed by an inability to choose. They are confronted with too many options, unstuck in time.* We think of time as being continuous, as involving one event following naturally, causally after a preceding event. But living within the digital archive disintegrates our basic, linear perception of time. Since every era is equally available, and all events are potentially happening at the same time, the chain of causality and influence breaks down completely. We think of musicians, artists, writers, and filmmakers as responding to those who came before them, generationally. For instance, Bob Dylan admired and initially imitated Woody Guthrie—but he also rebelled and created his own style, departing from Guthrie’s folksy populism and adding intensely personal and surrealistic touches. Changes in the arts always work this way. One generation responds to the previous generation. (Hemingway and Fitzgerald were reacting to Joseph Conrad, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, while Henry James was reacting to Hawthorne and Emerson, and so on and so forth.)* Sometimes, I wonder if this will ultimately result in a state of cultural affairs in which fresh artistic creation stops entirelyKey QuestionsDo we need a sense of a clear timeline in order to craft new culture?From Sam Buntz: “In Plato’s dialogue, “Ion,” he describes how inspiration works: the first poet was inspired directly by the muse, like an iron filling attached to a lodestone. The subsequent generations of poets are like iron fillings attached to that first filling. The force of inspiration is still present, but it is exerted indirectly and weakens with every generation. Thus, the influence of the original impetus wanes until, presumably, we culturally reset and reconnect to the magnetic source directly. Gen Z finds itself in a state in which the fillings have all been scattered on the ground, perhaps experiencing some ambient attraction from the lodestone, but unable to really connect with it.”Does “culture hyperinflation” prevent new culture from being innovated?Sam Buntz quotes Cormac McCarthy in an interview saying: “I don’t know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they’re really good. And there’s just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that’s the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there’s going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don’t care whether it’s art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don’t think so.”What would have to happen in order to enable more cultural progress?* Luddite communities?* Sudden loss of data?* Sam Buntz wrote: “Poets have sometimes fantasized about total cultural destruction—something like the burning of the Library of Alexandria—to escape the sense that everything has already been done, has already been written. I wouldn’t go that far, since everything I love is part of the past. Maybe some brave artist can find a route back to the Original Magnet—a route that would presumably lie through the great works of the past, since the past is where we all start to feel magnetism acting on us. In any case, something needs to give. The links of the chain need to re-connect.”Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So how different was 1986 from 1996, culturally speak?Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: It was two different worlds. .Speaker 8: to the.Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: But if you go from where we are today to 2005Simone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s different, butSimone Collins: not really. Yeah. There’s, there’s not, there’s not that much different.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I’m trying to wrap my head around something and I need someone to talk with about this.And I, I, what’s getting on my mind so much and I. Can’t work it out is what if we’ve entered an age in which culture can no longer advance and we don’t even know it. And I’m referring kind of to what we talked about in a [00:01:00] podcast before where we talked about there being only one story left that basically discourse about global politics and technology and the economy is the only thing that everyone can really talk about collectively anymore because entertainment media is so fragmented , and desynchronized.And that not everyone’s really watching the same show or movie or reading the same books at the same time like they used to anymore. But I feel like beyond that, beyond that last show left issue that we discussed, there’s this, it, it could be the case that the internet has really collapsed time from a cultural perspective, which has rendered society completely incapable of advancing culture because new developments lack the ability to gain traction.Kind of like. Y you, you can, you can walk up stairs, you know, and progress onward and upward by pressing on the step, you know, that you’re standing on and moving up to the next step. But I feel like now we’ve gone from being on [00:02:00] stairs to being like in a ball pit. You know, you put a, a foot down and it just pushes through balls, you know, like a giant ball pit and we can’t, or reallyMalcolm Collins: light snow.Simone Collins: Yeah. Or really, yeah. Like, like in an avalanche. Yeah. And we’re just, we’re just buried in the very like light packed snow of an avalanche and we’re not able to move. And I, I really started thinking, so I think that youMalcolm Collins: make an interesting point here and I wanna pull on it a little bit.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Which is to say that if we look at the culture of todaySimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Versus the culture of. The, what is it, 2025 now? 2015?Simone Collins: It’s 2026.Malcolm Collins: 2026, okay. Yeah. So how different was 1986 from 1996, culturally speak?Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: It was two different worlds.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And then if you go from you know, 1996 and then say, let’s go one decade back from that 1976, we’re in a different cultural universe at that point.Totally. But if you go from where we are today to [00:03:00] 2005Simone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s different, but it is less different than 1996 to 1986.Simone Collins: Yeah. Not really. Yeah. There’s, there’s not, there’s not that much different.Malcolm Collins: And I don’t think kids today, like our younger audience, is going to really grasp how extreme this would’ve felt historically speaking.Yeah. How ho hor horrifically long ago. Let’s do that. The 1970 show. How, how far back in time would we be doing the 1970 show was made todaySimone Collins: that seventies show, is that what you’re referring to? Yeah. Oh yeah. That was, wasn’t that made like, what, 15 years ago now? WhatSpeaker: So the show. Premiered about 22 years and three months after it was set. And you need to understand when this show came out, this didn’t feel like the last generation, this felt like three or four generations ago in [00:04:00] terms of trends, , I remember growing up and the, that seventies show came out when I was a teenager.And it felt like, uh, I remember talking about the trends of the hippies and stuff like that when I was a kid as something so distantly in the past. I could barely imagine it. and, and now, that 70 show aired more than, so it came out 22 years after it was set. It came out over 27 years ago. So much longer ago than it came out..Simone Collins: Yeah. VeryMalcolm Collins: new continue.Simone Collins: Right? I mean, so I, I first started thinking about this when, when you mentioned in our episode on the modern audience, like the modern audience, that people making content for, like shows and movies for the modern audience were really primarily watching shows from their childhoods or from the nineties.And I was thinking about it also because every weekend when you have our kids watching [00:05:00] cartoons. They’re cartoons from our childhood or even from before our childhood, like from the eighties, which is bizarre. So Simon,Malcolm Collins: Is, is talking about something and I think it’s important to extract here. I occasionally will try to do like a deep dive into the social media history of somebody who I just like politically do not get, like they’re politically totally different from me.I’m like, what are they engaging with? What are they? And there was this one like super woke person mm-hmm. And I was trying to understand what shows do super woke people watch. Mm-hmm. And what I realized is they watch no modern audience content. They watch no modern content at all. They are too afraid of something new, triggering them emotionally.So they only watch content from their childhoods.Simone Collins: The content that existed before trigger warnings, ironically and weirdly.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: it is full of sexual harassment. AndMalcolm Collins: this is the people who are so triggered by this stuff are too afraid in a new context. Right? They’re like, oh, what if I get some corporate [00:06:00] messaging from Disney or something?Right? So they don’t, they don’t go out and try new things. Mm-hmm. But what’s interesting is we do the thing to an extent I, for my kids I don’t play really any modern shows. I did for a while. Like we had subscriptions to like Paramount and we tried to watch some of the modern stuff with them.But honestly, I feel like they enjoy it more and they get better values from old school Power Ranger reruns and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle reruns.Simone Collins: Well now they’re all, they’re all GI Joe.Malcolm Collins: GI Joe. Right. And GI Joe is cool. You know, they actually go out and shoot people with lasers and the United States is amazing.And the, the there’s one episode I didn’t realize, like how real it was. There’s one episode where they, it takes place in like a stripper bar, I guess. Like a, like a, a, a sexy dance bar. Right.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Clearly the intent. And the Cobra has all of her albums and is a big fan of hers, but she’s secretly helping the GI Joes and hiding them in her dresser room when the, you know, Cobra Commandos come in.And it [00:07:00] very much felt like, like, like a, a James Bondy sort of a film or something like that. Like I was outside impressed. I think they do a good job of grabbing the kids. Oh. But I tried to show them you know, more recent stuff and they just find it boring.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I find more recent stuff boring too.But so there’s that, right? The fact that like we are raising our kids on archival content and that we’re also now like we’re the, just the stagnation. I feel like we’re seeing now we’re, we’re like stuck in these weird loops that we’re just seeing all these prequels and sequels and while there’s some new content, I’m not really seeing it get traction.And it also just feels highly iterative on its own. Like, I mean, I. Obviously got on the Bridgeton bandwagon recently because I love stupid historical romances, but that’s historical romance. Like it’s, there’s nothing new or interesting about it. And that genre has been around for an extremely long time.So again, that’s not like new culture creation. It’s just like,Malcolm Collins: here’s where I’m gonna push back on you. This [00:08:00] isn’t happening everywhere. In some industries we have seen culture continue to advance at around the same rate as it did historically,Simone Collins: whereMalcolm Collins: a great example is anime. If you watch an anime today versus a 2005 anime, you will immediately be able to clock.This is a 2005 anime.Simone Collins: Okay, you know what, that’s a really good. PointMalcolm Collins: culture, and then if you go to a 1990s animeSimone Collins: Oh my gosh. Yeah. AMalcolm Collins: completely different universe again, right? Like mm-hmm. And this isn’t just in terms of the animation style. Mm-hmm. This is in terms of culture and ing and I mean, even the idea of like an isi is a modern concept, right?Like this is a concept that was like invented and gained popularity in like the last 15 years, right? Yeah.Simone Collins: Very new. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And that’s an entire genre. Mm-hmm. That is, that is large other genres are trapped in a video game. Trapped in a video game is something that the west has done, but not really in the way that these sort of [00:09:00] online trends are with, with, with anime.And then you can go to other areas like the, one of my favorite forms of these days, I mean, one of my two is obviously reality fabricator and like AI interactive stories. That’s a completely new form of content. Yeah. It didn’t exist. And then the other is Korean Romance Maass. About maga, about the well, no, no, they’re called MaSimone Collins: Maass Maass.Malcolm Collins: Yes, it means I don’t know, but it, it stands for something. But that’s when there are an online strip that’s meant to be read as a long vertical strip.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: Because they’re really designed for phone screens.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And these, these, the, the setting has like, an element of historicity to it.Right. Like obviously it’s always like, duke es always somebody reborn. Is somebody, somebody fromSimone Collins: Yeah. And they’re like vaguely European typically, but they’re, they’re not based in like this region.Malcolm Collins: Which is funny. I love reading about medieval European fantasies in a culture that is trying to be you know, [00:10:00] we, I should paint medieval Europe in a romanticized light. And I get that from my Korean online mangas. You know, but, but, but that’s, that’s new. So we are seeing some iteration, but it, it was in very narrow niches that I think actually build on your starting concept here, whichSimone Collins: is, yeah, that you have to have a point of traction.Or you can’t move forward. You have to have like a blockchain or a, a chronological ruler that you can move along and understand where you are on the timeline in order to be able to push yourself forward. And if there is no foundation you, you cannot move forward. And this, this really solidified when I read this guest post on Catherine d.Friend of the podcast’s default blog, which I highly recommend. Default blog. It’s on Substack. This guest post by Sam Buns was called Gen Z lives the archive. And this is really where I got this like, oh wow. Okay. So when, [00:11:00] when history collapses in on itself and when you live unmoored from time, it’s very hard to progress.So I’m gonna read a couple choice quotes from it ‘cause I think it can help us kind of work through this idea and understand. Basically regions in which culture can’t advance or like culture crafting and creation will be unable to get a foothold. Versus regions like what you just pointed out with like anime and manga where there it can still sustain life.It can still sustain. ‘cause the community, it’s almost like, you know, prettyMalcolm Collins: narrow enough that you’re able to get a dense enough cultural lattice.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: To take the next step.Simone Collins: Yeah. Or, or, you know, just by default like that is the natural environment. Right. And maybe what we’ve, we’ve created through these online environments where there’s sort of, everything is available all at once is, you know how like in nature there’s those weird carbon monoxide pools in like there might be an indentation in the land and there’s some kind of like, offgassing from a [00:12:00] volcanic rift or something so that there’s just a bunch of carbon monoxide in a little like valley.Or, or dent in, in the land and, and animals wander in there and just die because they don’t realize that they’re not breathing any oxygen. You know what I’m talking about?Malcolm Collins: Yes.Simone Collins: Yeah. So I feel like that’s, that’s kind of what this is too, is like people are wandering into it and not realizing that when they go in it just, everything kind of just no more life can be sustained.But anyway. Some, some quotes from Sam Buns in Gen Z lives in the archive. According to a 2019 article from Billboard, Shannon Cook, a trends expert at Spotify, said that Gen Z’s listening habits on Spotify were unusually broad intended to delve deeply into the past tracks by miles Davis blew in green the Grateful dead friend of the Devil and Joan Jett.I love rock and roll. Were among Gen. Z’s most listened to tracks at the time, albeit this article was from 2019, but the forces driving the trend, TikTok nostalgia, and the buffet like nature of streaming platforms, have only continued or [00:13:00] accelerated their effects. The aforementioned 2025 article from Active Air argued that Spotify data showed Gen Z was connecting more to Gen X music on Spotify.Beguiled by its apparent authenticity, zoomers, you see live inside the archive. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are imprisoned inside the archive A board. Bium La Labyrinth, everything that has ever happened exists at their fingertips. Assign equal weight or assign whatever weight the fickle algorithm happens to be assigning on that particular day.This is also why they have a uniquely anxious generation paralyzed by the inability to choose. They’re confronted with too many options unstuck in time. And I think that that’s really interesting. And we’ve never really existed in this period of history where an entire generation doesn’t really have this.Like, here’s where we are. It’s more like they’re experiencing the 1960s, they’re experiencing the 1970s, they’re experiencing the 1950s, like wherever they [00:14:00] choose to have an affiliation. Well, IMalcolm Collins: think in part because you’re not sure what today is ai, right? So they’re like,Simone Collins: that’s also true. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: This is how I know I’m consuming human made content.Simone Collins: Oh, that, yeah, that reference to authenticity. Like that they liked Gen X stuff because they knew it was like real. And now who knows what’s real. Yeah, I guess that’s an additional layer that makes culture crafting really difficult now is like, you don’t even know what’s legit now. That’s a really good point too.Malcolm Collins: Well, I I also think that the when I was growing up, I remember a lot of people were pulled to really historic stuff because it was like a flex over other kids. It wasSimone Collins: like, oh yeah, it was, wait, it was a way to look cool. But now I think it’s, it’s different. It’s more like, well this is just showing up on Spotify.It’s like just in your feed.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Actually this is an interesting idea. Can we, can we capture, this was like the prenatal list movement. Can we be like, let’s, let’s recreate like the nineties, right? That I’d love to recreate the nineties. The nineties were pretty fun.Simone Collins: How there’s like Disney towns and maybe we can just create a nineties town [00:15:00] with that.Malcolm Collins: What everybody’s like, I wanna go back to the 19. I’m like, who wants to be in the 1950s? The 1990s were so much cooler. They like Godot God style stuff, you know, for kids and everything. Why?Simone Collins: What was that show that had like the nineties character that was like on a skateboard?Speaker 3: Uya erased my country too. The most outta control radical place the world had ever seen. Slam Zone. Your country was called Slam Zone. The United Republic of Slam Zone. In titles, totality, ah. The only thing that still makes sense to me is a nice ice cold Capri sun.Speaker 4: I’m not really in the mood for a Capri Sun. Here you go. Drink up.Speaker 3: Sorry, friend. But do you know what I do know? What’s that? I know another ice cold.Capri sun would really hit the spot. I don’t wantSpeaker 4: another one. I don’t want the first one. You gottaSpeaker 3: hydrate yourself. Drink up.Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh gosh. Yes. I love that.That was Detective Heart of America. And you’re thinking of slam Zone, the zone, the entire [00:16:00] world that was stuck in the nineties.Speaker 2: Coming at you. Capri Sun by the pitcher. So whenever you want, you can make as much as you want. All natural Capri Sun drink mix.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. You, you just wanna create Slam ZoneMalcolm Collins: and I, I do, I wanna create Slam Zone. That’s what we should do. That is what prenatal, well, super high tech Slam Zone. What everyone thought nineties mad scientist was.Right. YouSimone Collins: know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hmm. Things to think about there. Let, let me give you another quote that might, might elicit some thoughts again, from Sam Buns, we think of time as being continuous, as involving one event following , causally after a proceeding event. But living within the digital archive disintegrates our basic linear perception of time.Since every era is equally available and all events are potentially happening at the same time, the chain of causality and influence breaks down completely. When you think of musicians, artists, [00:17:00] writers, and filmmakers as responding to those who came before them generationally. For instance, Bob Dylan admired and initially imitated Woody Guthrie, but he also rebelled and created his own style departing from Guthrie’s, folksy pop populism, and adding intensely personal and surrealistic touches.Changes in the arts always work this way. One generation responds to the previous generation, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were reaching to Joseph Conrad, Edith Wharton, and Henry James.While Henry James was reacting to Hawthorne and Emerson and so on and so forth. Sometimes I wonder if this will ultimately result in a state of cultural affairs in which fresh artistic creation stops entirely. And I think that’s a really good point. I mean, so many of the artistic journeys that I’m aware of from like the, the Beatles and the Beach Boys to Authors that I really liked were.Definitely riffing on like the people right before them. And I don’t see why this shouldn’t be possible for people to take inspiration from people at any point in [00:18:00] history, but I do wonder if, if it makes traction impossible to gain. You know, like there’s, there’s no, like, how can you catch on too? And how can you be influential if everyone’s listening to someone slightly different?You know what I mean? There’s no critical mass.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: I still think that people are able to build on other people regardless of when they existed in history. Like you don’t have to build on someone who existed, just, you know, who works 10 years before you did.Or who is, is, is con creating content at the same time that you are. But I also feel like part of the issue is that people aren’t going to be able to get the traction or critical mass that they need. Like one of the reasons why Hemingway got big was because a lot of people started reading his work and talking about him at the same time.And how are new people going to be able to contribute to the cultural blockchain to, to become icons? Culturally speaking, when [00:19:00] there isn’t a critical mass of people all kind of forced or, or a, a captive audience like, oh, how can I put this? Linear time creates a captive audience because everyone is just at the whims of whatever is available at the time, right?Mm-hmm. Whatever the newest book or movie or radio show or TV show might be, right, but now everything is available at once. There isn’t a sufficiently large captive audience looking for something novel. To be able to be talking about you at once, to be able to then build upon what you have contributed to human culture on the whole.Does that make sense? Like I, I worry that there won’t be enough traction.Malcolm Collins: Mm. I can understand what you’re saying. But it’s not that we don’t get figures like say an asma gold who build a sizable following and represent a new cultural force.Simone Collins: I don’t, does he, I think he just represents kind of the views of.Your average based American, [00:20:00]Malcolm Collins: I am gonna push back here. I think the new right is significantly politically different from the old, right. To an extent that really is meaningful. And you can watch our episodes on like the anthropology of the new writer or something more about this, to call it a completely new cultural movement or rather the, the, the reclamation of an older cultural movement in the United States over the the old rights former dominance.And it is like, if you watch a figure like ESMA Gold, ‘cause I have, you know, reporters I talk to, you know, I’ve gotta send them like Asma Gold n who I’m like, this is, this is what’s in the right, right now. Right? Somebody like Nur the way he talks that he’s a v tuber, the way he acts that he comes off is entirely new, right?Like, this is not, especially for a right wing space, you know, the flamboyant dress, the, you know, even, even us, you know, this is,Simone Collins: I don’t know, right Wing am Radio shock Jocks had stylistic ways of talking and commented on what was happening in real time. The format is different. Like the tech is [00:21:00] novel.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. The delivery is novel. I don’t think that they, I I hear there is similarities between nug zor and the classic am shock jock that I hadn’t considered. They do have a lot of similarities to them now that you put it that way. Because I used to listen to conservative am shock jocks when I was a kid because my parents did.Oh. Which is funny. Is that what we’ve become conservative radio shock jocks of our generation.Simone Collins: It’s filling the same kind of void. It’s the thing that people are having playing in the background of their lives as they go about doing things. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: We’re people listen to their AM radio shop jock while they like drove to work or were doing laundry, or we’re doing, you know, drudge work at, at the, at the workplace.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. More broadly the culture of the new right, I do think is, is meaningfully new. And I do think that you get meaningful new cultures bubbling up, but they emerge in places and within things that we do not recognize as culture because we are so queued to old scenes. So if you look at cultural shifts that [00:22:00] happened in the eighties and in the nineties and in the seventies, what drove the cultural shift was predominantly subcultures, whether it was hippie or grunge or goth or anything like that.Right.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: The reason why you don’t get new subcultures being born today is because when they are born, they do not look like that. The old subcultures that you saw in those periods were born from young people who were accumulating in locations and in scenes that were often counterculture, that had unique ways of presenting yourself and unique identities you were trying to get across.Mm-hmm. And in a modern context what environments have done that? It’s been games, it’s been you know, let’s say Minecraft in fact, Minecraft is probably larger as a scene, as a place. I’m not talking about as a video game, I’m talking about as a social scene.[00:23:00]Simone Collins: So are you saying like Roblox is the new Harajuku.Malcolm Collins: Yes, like Roblox is the new Harajuku. And within communities like Roblox, you have subcultures that are meaningful and that cycle over the lifetime of one of these, you know, products or environments. Mm-hmm. And it’s not just there. You also see this in the streamers, in the vtu space, everything like that.This is new. V tubers are new. Especially conservative.Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re,Malcolm Collins: yeah. And yet huge, huge and hugely influential as well. And was in, you know, from. The aughts to [00:24:00] now, you know, you had the the Death of Fortune during that period. I love when younger people are like, so like, oh, you guys seem like boomers talking about, you were talking about like the death of Fortune.And I was like, bro, you either, either you are my age or you weren’t alive at the height of four chan. Right. Like that this is when I, when I was young was when that was big. I don’t know what,Simone Collins: yeah, like Jeffrey Epstein was influential in Fortune. He old. Was right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That is he’s old.So, but that culture was really important for like generative online culture for a period it generated big scenes, consider the Brownies, right?Like that was a fad that grew and got big and had a giant culture around it and then died.Simone Collins: That’s true.Malcolm Collins: You know, is true.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and the brownies were, I would say, significantly more culturally distinct than and likely in [00:25:00] terms of total identified people than goth culture ever was, than punk culture ever was potentially even than hidden culture was.Simone Collins: No, I totally disagree. I mean, there, there weren’t like you, you couldn’t find in any random small town. A Brony clothing store where you could find like the hippie store. You could find the goth store. You know what I mean? Well, itMalcolm Collins: might be because that wasn’t how they purchased their differentiators.It’s through clothing stores.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I, I don’t know. I mean, I think I, I’m trying to actually think through this. In, in well, I think the reason why the Brony movement got so much larger than those other movements is because it didn’t require that people who were in it publicly identify as members.Right. I mean, some of the more extreme ones did, but, but the vast majority did not. Outside of like online avatars and stuff like that. Yeah. So that was, you know, interesting.Simone Collins: Well, what you’re describing [00:26:00] is, is when you have a small enough community where there can be. History and people building on each other.Then you, you can have culture creation and, and this innovation. What you’re describing though, in all of these instances is, is constrained communities where this is able to happen.Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this makes a lot of sense. What allowed for the Brony culture to be born in the first place?Mm-hmm. By the way, one of my favorite videos that we made is, is how far right? My, the, my Little Pony show actually was. Yeah. And you haven’t seen that episode. It’s hilarious. ‘cause it’s like actually true. It’s super, they have like literal anti-communist episodes where the communist sign is the same sign that they used today, the Blue equal mark for like, LGBT groups and stuff like that.Speaker: You can have a nightmare if you never dream.Speaker 2: I’m sorry, I’m just having a hard time understanding. Different talents lead to different [00:27:00] opinions, which lead to bitterness and misery.Malcolm Collins: Like it was, it’s wild how it, it’s a literal. Show argues that you shouldn’t be racist theocracy when people take jobs in accordance with the racial proficiencies. Yeah. Like it’s, it’s, it is wild. Anyway.Simone Collins: Yeah, watchMalcolm Collins: that episode. Hold, hold on. What I wanted to make clear is what allowed the birth culture in the first place was that you had a rigid enough culture within four chan at the time, which is where the Bernie culture was born, that you could be radically sive by saying, you know what, no, I’m gonna be 100% wholesome and about little kids and about traditional ideas of goodness.Mm-hmm. Which was really subversive to four chan culture of that period.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Right. And so you were able to create something that was. Antagonistic to that, which was huge with an online culture. The core online culture at the time was troll and angry and mean [00:28:00] and pessimistic, and it was what if we create an inversion of this?But you don’t always need that to create new subcultures. A great and modern example of a subculture that produces a lot of content that I very much enjoy is the SCP community. Are you familiar?Simone Collins: What is that? No.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Now that I’m describing it from scratch, it might be a little bit harder to describe than I thought.So it is a shared. Community of storytellers Okay. Have crafted a very detailed lore around a universe in which something called the SCP exists. What is their SCP is an organization that captures stores supernatural events and beings. Think of it like a men in black, but for the supernatural.Okay. And they have like a very detailed [00:29:00] Wikipedia, very large communities they create. And what’s interesting about it is it’s like there’s canon within the SEP world. There’s like ways that things get voted into being canonically. An SCP. Creature. So examples of SEP creatures you may have seen because you’ve likely seen a lot of it and not know it.I’m pretty sure Slender Man started as an SEP phenomenon. What another one that was much more clearly in the SEP community was, have you seen that giant figure that has sirens on his head?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And it’s very late siren head. Mm-hmm. That siren head. Yeah. That’s an example of an SAP. So there’s, there’s a, actually just look up, SS are, it’s a cool community ‘cause I like lore.And so I love looking up like long breakdowns of like lores that people have created around. And I love scary stories. When I go on long flights, I’ll download scary stories to listen to. And a lot of that,Simone Collins: yeah. The SEP Foundation community is a massive collaborative internet based creative writing product project dedicated to producing [00:30:00] horror and sci-fi stories about containing anomalous entities.Originating from a 2007 four chan post. A community operates as a user-driven, wiki based universe where members write, critique and vote on stories called files or tales, building a shared decentralized lore. That is fascinating.Malcolm Collins: Right? That sounds cool. Like you read that, like that sounds cool.Simone Collins: Well, but again, this is, and, and, but that, that’s one of those things where like there is, it’s constrained.They have a process, there is a wiki, there are votes. And that’s one of my key questions is do we need a sense of a clear timeline in order to craft a new culture? And I’ll give you another quote from Sam Bun to kick off this. Like, is this a firm thing? He wrote in Plato’s dialogue Ion He Write, he describes how inspiration works.The first poet was inspired directly by the muse with an iron filling attached to a load stone. The subsequent generations of poets are [00:31:00] like iron fillings attached to that first filling. The force of inspiration is still present, but it is exerted, indirectly and weakens with every generation. Thus, the influence of the original impetus wanes until presumably we culturally reset and reconnect to the magnetic source.Directly, gen Z finds itself in a state where, in which all the fillings have been scattered on the ground, perhaps experiencing some ambient attraction from the load stone, but unable to really connect with it. I liked his metaphor there. But like, like the sort of the wiki’s been lost. You just hear about siren head.You just hear about these things, but you can’t really build upon them because y you’re missing the fact that there actually was and, and is this, this, that like SEP exists and that there is this place where people, I think is if you wantMalcolm Collins: a subculture today, you can find a subculture to be a part. But they’re not as in your face as they were historically, because there’s not a reason to be in your face.Why [00:32:00] dress differentially if you’re not even going to school because of COVID. Right. You know, like why if all your friends are online and that’s the cool place to be, why invest all of this money in these differential outfits and everything like that outside of how they make you appear on camera?Right.Simone Collins: Well, what I see actually, instead I, with young people, with really a lot of people, is people, get slotted into kind of like, a cart on, on a road where, you know, like the, the, the wheel holes get like worn down and you get slotted into it. They fall into these algorithmic holes and start dressing for their algorithmic ecosystem.And so they have this, this subculture that they take on sometimes unknowingly because they, and perhaps many of their immediate, like, convenience friends, people they work with or go to school with or live with, have also fallen into this rut where then they start dressing this way. But what I’m starting to come away with here [00:33:00] too is this feeling like when it comes to culture.If you are a feed-based person and if you passively consume media online, you will not be able to contribute to crafting culture or witness the development of culture. You are, you are basically in this chaotic world where all the fillings are on the ground or like you’re in the ball pit or you’re in the loose snow and, and there is no, there is no traction, there is no sense, there is no narrative, there is no progression.But if you want to, you can choose to enter one of these closed spheres where there actually is development and generation taking place where there is the wiki and the lore and the development or like in the anime world where everyone is kind of watching the new show at the same time and getting inspired by it and then building upon it and building upon it.And these new trends are coming at, new genres are emerging, or you are on YouTube and you are sort of evolving with the new way that people are, are [00:34:00] coming to. Consume news media and understand the world through this like network and, and broadly connected groupings of, of YouTube influencers and things like that, right?But you have to be one or the other. Like if, if you’re, if you can either be an active consumer of media, online or passive consumer of media, and that will determine whether or not you are witnessing and contributing to culture creation. Does that seem like it makes sense.Malcolm Collins: Active. Yeah. Well, I mean, I also think that it is possible for things to be more atomized.So consider our wider cultural circle, which is this new right cultural circle, right? Mm-hmm. And I can look at the overlapping YouTubers we have and, and you know, these days we dress like medieval people, right? Like, we have a very distinct style of dress that people would say, I’m wearing a, a gammon vest and a, a medieval shirt, and you’re wearing, you know, full medieval gammon like head thing and everything.They, that historically people [00:35:00] would’ve looked at us and assumed that we’re either part of a religious cult or part of some subculture that they’re not aware of. And yet, if you look atwhere the other people, like the people who watch us, the other things that they’re watching mm-hmm. The other things that they’re watching, they don’t dress like us.Like n taku looks like a completely different subculture than us. And Asma gold looks like another subculture still. Mm-hmm. And legally it looks like another and equally distinct subculture still. And, and that’s important there. It’s not that everyone in sort of our influencer social, oh, and Romanian v Tuber, the Romanian TV guy, right?Troll guy. Again, another unique and distinct subculture, distinct from all of these other subcultures. Who’s one of the other ones that talks in our spaces? Goth, conservative guy, whatever his name is, again, completely distinct. Tim Pool, again, completely distinct, maybe somewhat similar. Toma Gold, but not really.So with every one of these influencers you are seeing not like a well, we [00:36:00] are the weirdos. We, we are dressed no more weirdly than Nux or, or leaflet are dressed on their shows. No more weirdly than Romanian TV is dressed on his show, right? Like,Simone Collins: well, they’re v tubers. So,Malcolm Collins: they could choose a, there’s a lot of v tubers out there that choose more traditional models where I wouldn’t be saying this.So there’s a V YouTuber. I don’t like him as much as the other ones, but he’s a dresses as like a little crusader guy who like bounces around a screen. And I wouldn’t be saying, he looks weird. I’d be saying, okay, he’s trying to be like trat in some way. But Leaflet wants to look like a goo girl, right?Like, that’s pretty distinct in, and that’s one of her personas. And then she’s got the Nongo girl persona this like a little elf thing. And then Nno is a spectral Jew. I, I don’t know, he’s got a littleSimone Collins: spectral Jew,Malcolm Collins: some sort of Jewish specter. Okay. That’s a, i, I don’t know if he’s supposed to be a specter, maybe a ghoul of some sort.And Romanian TV is definitely a troll. Yeah, which is an interesting model for him to have chosen because it like goes [00:37:00] with his voice really well. Like I imagine a troll would have that sort of like very. Cynical and exasperated voice.Simone Collins: I don’t know, but I love it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: I, I, I, I, yeah, don’t know exactly what you’re talking.Should we do VT tubingMalcolm Collins: instead, Simone? Is this, is this a problem that we’re not V tubers? Is thatSimone Collins: we look cartoonish enough? I think we’ve, you know, met the threshold. We don’t need additional avatars to look more cartoony. The glass help a lot, so I’m not too concerned about that.Malcolm Collins: Well, and a lot of v YouTubers are people who are pretending to be much younger than they are, or who need to, you know, use sex appeal, which I’ve never we’re, I don’t think that we’re gonna be good at that.Simone Collins: We’re not selling on sex appeal. What about culture hyperinflation? Because I do feel like people are so overwhelmed by the fire hose of everything being put out there now, plus now there’s all this AI based generation that there’s just like. So much. Sam Buns in his piece again, quotes Cormack McCarthy in an [00:38:00] interview saying quote, I don’t know, one of our culture is going to survive.Or if we survive, if you look at the Greek plays, they’re really good and there’s just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that’s just the future. Looking back at us, anything you can think of, there’s going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them.I don’t care whether it’s art, literature, poetry, drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it, we’ll wash out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don’t think so. And I think he makes a good point. And with ai, we’re gonna have amazing, high quality everything in a billion iterations.How is that going to affect culture creation? And when you, even when you have these small communities, are, are they just gonna be. I mean, I just dunno, how is anything going to be able to gain traction at that point when you have cultural question.Malcolm Collins: And that’s why we need to gain traction with our AI system, our fab.ai.Try it to create [00:39:00] your own book. But then we have the agents, the agents can do bigger things than just stories. Like if you wanted to craft lore or book or Warhol, they could do that for you, right? And that is something that is really cool. But you know, we’ve gotta be the first to, to gain traction on that front.Simone Collins: What I had posited in the past before, I don’t know, we started experiencing this in reality, so when I was thinking about this all in the abstract, was that we would see techno feudalism form around verified humans. That there would be this, you know, the crisis of the dead internet would really hit everyone.Then people would start to form communities around known humans. And then there would be these sort of hybrid meet meet offline once or twice a year at like a conference or at local meetups or whatever. And then the rest of the time hang out online asynchronously by consuming each other’s content.Maybe having [00:40:00] hangouts online every now and then live streams, et cetera, where you like, you know, that this community of people, they’re all real. ‘cause I’ve met them in person. I meet them in person once or twice a year, and then I see them online and I know it’s them and I have that comfort of knowing it’s them, but everything.But like the problem is now that it’s really happening, people are not actually that obsessed with having it be human. They’re like, no, like the AI is better. Yeah. LikeMalcolm Collins: whatever. Yeah. No, no. And I think this is something we’ve actually seen really aggressively. The, if, if we talk about like even the handful of influencers that I’ve been talking about, who I, I listen to.These influencers are predominantly v tubers. They could beis and I wouldn’t know the difference.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I mean, I, I, I would, well also itSimone Collins: doesn’t,Malcolm Collins: but not fiveSimone Collins: years from Well, you’ve seen people using, I mean, like, you don’t have to be a v YouTuber to be convincing either. We’re basically at the point where you could have someone who looked like us on a podcast and people wouldn’t necessarily knowMalcolm Collins: with ai.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, [00:41:00] yeah. You could, you could create a convincing version of us. That’s a good point.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: That sucks. How long how long do we have left? We’re doingSimone Collins: all this. Well, there’s already, you can already use a skin where, like the, you, you’ve seen all the clips of like, guys. Showing a split screen where like they’re talking and then they can get a hot girl to talk.Like, you know, you could just put a hot girl’s skin on you.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Asma Gold was talking about this, and I have another episode I’m gonna do on this. ‘cause there’s been some like big media outlets like that used to be like mainstream, like gaming outlets that have been bought and replaced everyone with ai.And like actual ai, like if you go to the profile pages of people and you click like download the button, he showed that it said like, generated with GPT like their, their face, their image, their profile picture and that everything they’re doing is ai. . And Asal was in saying, and now when he sees a hot girl on Instagram or whatever, he just ignores Zoom or doesn’t follow them if the account was created after June. He just assumesSimone Collins: that they’re not real. Yeah. BecauseMalcolm Collins: heassumesMalcolm Collins: they’re not real.Simone Collins: Yeah. He, I’ve heard him say things like, if [00:42:00] you see a hot chick online she is not real.Malcolm Collins: Well, that might re normalize actually, actually, this could be a good thing because one of the problems with the internet is it’s really effed up ideas of what a normal body looks like. Yeah. And so you will have people online and the predominant like, oh, she’s a whatever, like a six or like a, you know, I see guys online constantly say this about women who are objectively.Nines or tens in the real world because what they are is judging her against all the other women in their feed and not against all of the women at a Walmart or an airport, right? Like actual human women. And they, they don’t understand that they are making dramatic misjudgments, which are gonna lead to them being you know, single forever and cooked and, and die of genetic failure.But that’s what happens when you go out there and you think that you are showing other guys by having these ridiculous standards for women online. And you think that you’re signaling to them that you’re, I don’t know, getting was like super hot women or something like [00:43:00] that. And that the women, their ways like, aren’t that great.What you really signal to them is they’re like, wow, that guy is genetically cocked. Because somebody with those standards certainly isn’t getting married and having many, many kids. And I say not having many kids because it means that you’re gonna have to compromise so much to get a woman within your attractiveness barrier that she’s likely not gonna be able to wanna put in the work ethic.You know, she’s not gonna make the other compromises for you to, to have tons of kids. ‘cause, you know, having a, a large family, it’s a lot of work. So, wait, where was I going with this? But if in a world where every young person is assuming that every girl they see online is fake they just don’t key to those people at all.Like, it removes the power of the hot influencer. And you know, ‘cause when everyone’s hot, no one’s hot, right?Speaker 5: And when everyone’s super,no one will be.Malcolm Collins: Like, when you remove that power from the hot influencer, maybe people don’t key to it in the same way. [00:44:00]Simone Collins: Don’t you also think though, that we’re gonna reach a point at which most kids. Just don’t see the internet as real.I mean, we certainly grew up at a time when we interacted with people online. We knew they were real. And I think one, a lot of parents are just keeping their kids offline, period. And you and I have only become more conservative with our kids. Internet access over time, more restrictive. You know, at first we were like, yeah, whatever.Like, go on YouTube, find something you like. Now we’re like, absolutely not. Because we’ve seen what the algo does and the kind of stuff that it, that kids watch and just the brain rot of it all. I think most kids probably aren’t really gonna grow up that online, aside from really constrained, you know, games and learning software.And maybe, maybe what we’re gonna see in the future is actually very little internet [00:45:00] consumption in a very. Alive with AI world, right? Like kids will be both extremely online and not, they’ll be surrounded by smart devices. They can ask a question of anything in their house. They’re being monitored by everything in their house.Right. Like the internet is everywhere, but also they’re not like going on some computer and interacting with people. Their, their interactions are with real people in the real world, like through friend groups or school or clubs ormm-hmm.Sports. I don’t know. I, I, I, I actually don’t think kids are gonna really, I, I maybe through games.I don’t know. I just, things are, are becoming so absurd to me. I feel like there might, one reaction might just be. Let’s just form Ludite communities. And there will be, I mean, I, we’ve seen plenty of parenting communities that, that are very like anti-tech. Or maybe there’ll be some sudden loss of data or people will, will try [00:46:00] to create a fake sudden loss of data to like, make things make sense.Sand bun in his article wrote, poets have sometimes fantasized about total cultural destruction. Something like the burning of the library of Alexandria to escape the sense that everything has already been done, has already been written. I wouldn’t go that far since everything I love is part of the past.Maybe some brave artists can find a root back to the original magnet, a root that would presumably lie through the great works of the past. Since the past is where we all start to feel magnetism acting on us. In any case, something needs to give the links of the chain need to reconnect.Malcolm Collins: I disagree. You do.I think that we are entering a new cultural world and we see things bubbling out of it that are cooler than stuff like the SEP foundation is so cool.Simone Collins: That is really cool. Well, and it it, but there’s a chain there. There’s a chain. They’ve, they’ve built the structure that lacks.Malcolm Collins: Well there, there have been cultural phenomenon and moments [00:47:00] that have happened during this period of history, but we forget them because they appear so different from the ones historically.I mean, look, there was a generation that might have grown up without Goss or something, but they grew up with Pokemon Go. Now Pokemon Go. You might not consider a traditional subculture, but when Pokemon Go was huge, that was one bigger than most major subcultures ever were. And two really, really cool.Like you could go anywhere in your city and there were just people waiting to talk and interact with you and play a stupid AR game. Mm-hmm. And the, the sense of community that people felt during that time was so weird. Like it, do you remember that? Right?Simone Collins: Yeah. That was wild to just. Go out in Deep Eum in Dallas and wander around the streets and like Absolutely.Everyone was on Pokemon Go.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And allSimone Collins: were like me all playing the same game at the same time with people Felt so [00:48:00] bizarre. That level of social cohesion. Have we ever seen something like that before? I mean, not even at protests, you know, like protests are weird in that it’s just like people kind of hanging out with their own little social group within it.You know, everyone has their little sign and you’re walking.Malcolm Collins: That’s actually, I’ve never. Have I ever been to like a protest? Protest? I don’t think I have.Simone Collins: Well, you, you worked in DC you kind of just go to protest. ‘cause like I something to do, you know, it’s, it’s what I would do with my friends college. I never went.You went to protestMalcolm Collins: when you were in DCSimone Collins: Oh my God. All the time. Like, what do you wanna do this weekend? I don’t know. Well, there’s this protest happening like, you wanna go? Sure. WasMalcolm Collins: this your roommate who was dragging you to these, who was dragging you to protest?Simone Collins: Random friends. I mean, remember I was an environmentalist.So there’s always something to protest when you’re an environmentalist. Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: No. You actually went to environmentalist protests.Simone Collins: Yeah. But like, here’s the thing about environmentalist protests. You show up, people have their signs and stuff and I don’t know. I, I would just take pictures, walk around, talk with your [00:49:00] friends, get ice cream at the end.Like you’re not, it’s not like this social cohesion thing. I think most people go to protests. Because there are no more third spaces anymore. It’s too expensive to hang out at a coffee shop. Like, what are you gonna do to like, I don’t know, feel a part of something? Well, there’s this protest going on. I think that’s why a lot of boomers are showing up at protests.They’re like lonely. You know, people think that they’re like deranged and angry and they’re more just like,Malcolm Collins: no, I think they are deranged and angry.Simone Collins: Okay. There’s that too. But also third spaces are dead. And, you know, you can’t just hang out in a library and meet people. It’s, that’s full of the, the homeless schizophrenic people now.So you can’t go there. So instead you have to you know, protests are very G Oh, youMalcolm Collins: have to protest for us to not kick out the homeless, schizophrenic people from the library.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: There we go. You can’t, you can’t meet at the library anymore, but you can meet at the protest defending their right to take that space from you.Simone Collins: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Exactly. That, that’s where all the non, well, I mean this schizo are [00:50:00] around people also show up there too, but.Malcolm Collins: Anyway interesting concept. I’d love to hear our fan sauce on this. I do not have ironed out sauce on this, so I don’t have some like, big position to defend on this point. So yeah, whatever you guys think.Let’s, let’s is, are new cultures dead or did they just change what they look like so much that we don’t recognize them?Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and also I, at least I have a slightly clearer picture here, is that culture will advance in sort of walled off communities where people are still experiencing thing in things in linear time that are constrained enough in their like fandom or format, like V tubers.You can see. Cultural evolution YouTube news commentators. You can see cultural evolution, animate, cultural evolution. Oh my gosh.Malcolm Collins: I just a great example of another cultural movement that happened recently. Okay. Which is a good example, I, I think it fits a lot of your criteria, is there was [00:51:00] this for a period very popular type of YouTube video that combined tours of dead malls with Sense Wave and Yes.RetroSpeaker 7: Hey everyone, this is Dan Bell and this is my video tour of the Harrisburg Mall located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,Speaker 8: to the.Oh my God.I knew it was true.Speaker 7: Let’s do hear that someone’s in here.[00:52:00]Nothing says, welcome to the dead Mall, like an old loud soda machine. Clinking and clanking away. Day and night. Happy Halloween. Everyone here.Simone Collins: stuff. I was just watching another one of them. I, I was watching a Hobby Lobby tour of that genre just yesterday. Yes.Malcolm Collins: Great genre. I love it. It’s called like Dead Malls or something, like Look Up Dead.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. This one in particular was called like, I don’t know, like [00:53:00] retail anthropology, but yeah, it’s all the same genre.Totally.Malcolm Collins: But that, that as an artistic movement was certainly, I think one, a rich artistic movement. A yeah. Unique artistic movement. Yeah. And a distinct and temporarily distinct artistic movement. I don’t think there is popular anymore.I mean, there is a period where I watched them call.Simone Collins: No, I just, again, I just watched a Hobby Lobby one yesterday and I think it was published recently.Malcolm Collins: OhSimone Collins: yeah. I mean, like, people are still doing it because I think, I mean, as retail falls apart, people are becoming fascinated with this like, short-lived experience of buying things from stores before everything goes back to what it was, which is so interesting to me.‘cause, you know, the original format was. You would show up to like the store, and then you would ask the person to get whatever you wanted, like a pound of flour and they’d go back into the stockroom and get it. And now we’re essentially going back to that. Except it’s, it’s like on Amazon we’re saying, or on like DoorDash or Uber Eats, we’re saying, oh, stock boy, please get me this.And then they retrieve the thing. For us, [00:54:00] it’s just the, the means of retrieval is slightly different due to changing infrastructure in communities. Right. But, but we’re just going back to what it was. We’re going back to the natural sustainable format because stores in the end are not, they made sense for a very specific period of, of infrastructural development.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: But it is ultimately so much more efficient to strategically deliver your goods from an organized, automated warehouse to. The final destination where, you know, it has already been purchased and sold. Right? Like holding something in stock in a store where you’re not sure it’s gonna be sold is very inefficient.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: So I do like that return. And so of course you’re gonna see this genre arise as people are like, oh, isn’t it crazy that this thing existed and let’s explore it because it’s gone now.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s also really trying to grab like, the concept of liminal [00:55:00] spaces, which has become big and aren’tSimone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Like the creepy, the creepy art ofMalcolm Collins: spaces. Oh, a great one is the what is this big artistic movement? Another one it’s sort of related to SEP stuff but the the, I forget what it’s called. It’s called like the in-between or the underground or something. Yeah,Simone Collins: thatMalcolm Collins: word. And it’s about where like you get trapped in like an endless empty officeSimone Collins: space.The rental space. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,Speaker 6: I found a place,it’s massive in there. It just goes on and on and on. All these rooms, this place builds them actually more like it remembers them, and the more times it remembers something, the less it does.Malcolm Collins: yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s totally a thing. Okay. No, no, actually, I, I, I do, I came into this being like, this is really stuck in my head and I’m [00:56:00] not sure what to make of it. And I’m like, what’s the point of anything? I mean, ‘cause we’re passionate about culture crafting, right? Yeah. But what this is, it’s, it’s about if you want to craft culture, you need to find a stairway, right?Where you can step on the stairs and get traction and push from something beneath you.Malcolm Collins: Well, what’sSimone Collins: you, you can’t craft culture in the ball pit. You can’t craft culture in the avalanche. And that is something you really have to keep in mind.Malcolm Collins: But what’s positive about this Simone is that while. You still have unique and interesting cultures, whether it’s, you know, the SVP or Dead Mall or whatever, brownies, whatever.These cultures are not as caustic to your culture as they are. So if you create a family culture and a family way of dressing and a family way of thinking and believing in morality, your core enemy is just the urban monoculture, right? Mm-hmm. You don’t need to worry about your kids peeling out over a subculture because things like the Minecraft culture, the SCP culture, they don’t demand that you [00:57:00] renounce your that’s true traditional way of dress and your faith and everything like that, right?Mm-hmm. So they’re in many ways, much more compatible with culture crafting than historicSimone Collins: culture. Well, if anything, yeah, it makes a family culture more appealing and attractive. Because kind of like a swaddle baby, like it’s a swaddle. You, you know where the walls are, you know, where you know what reality is, you know what the values are and the aesthetics are.Whereas when, when you’re released from the swaddle, like, I don’t know if people have like seen like babies when they’re like, sometimes they have this like moment of like terror with like their arms and legs out and they’re like, oh my God. Like what is this? Like, like they start to hyperventilate a little bit.Malcolm Collins: Oh, it’s five.Simone Collins: Oh, okay, okay. We gotta run. But like, yeah, like they, they provide this meaning and sense of place where otherwise people feel like they’re falling a weightless through air. A question,Malcolm Collins: Simone, a question. What are you making for the kids tonight? Macaroni cheese by any chance?Simone Collins: No. I made the macaroni cheese last night and they barely ate it.I’m probably just gonna make them sandwiches if they’ll like eat and run around if, do you [00:58:00] want mac and cheese over grilled cheese? If I’m, if that isMalcolm Collins: no, what? I’d actually like it. What, what if you do a Casey D for me? Use some.Simone Collins: I don’t have any tortilla left.Malcolm Collins: Oh then a mac and cheese, or is mac and cheese easier?Simone Collins: Grilled cheese would be the easiest.Malcolm Collins: Grilled cheese make me a grilled cheese. ThenSimone Collins: two ‘cause they’re, you know.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we can save one if we don’t eat it, you know,Simone Collins: I’ll just bring it up to your room. Like, do what you, you know, it’s grilled cheese. It’s not like I’m gonna use American cheese and bread that you bought from a store.I mean, I made, I made sourdough homemade bread today, but of course you’re not gonna, no, it eatough it tastesMalcolm Collins: disgusting and healthy. It’s really quite good bread. ButSimone Collins: yeah, it’s, it’s just very, it’s it’s very hearty. It’s too dense.Malcolm Collins: I can eat likeSimone Collins: two bite. I, I gave, I gave Octavian a peanut butter sandwich today and he like, immediately was like, I need another one.Whereas when I give him a peanut butter sandwich from the bread we make at home, they eat one and they’re like, okay, good. Like, I’m good. ‘cause it’s like, gives you something. [00:59:00] Anyway, I gotta run, get the kids. I love you. I’ll bring a sandwich to your room and if you have a productive evening.Malcolm Collins: I hope so too.I’m gonna, I’m gonna get this coding working really well. Agent coating is what I’m working on right now.Simone Collins: Yeah. Good. All right. Love you.Malcolm Collins: Love you too.Simone Collins: For dinner. How about Curry? Because you have all these shta peppers that we need to go through and they’re not gonna go through themselves. So would you like Curry? I’mMalcolm Collins: sorry to say this, but I just want something really light tonight. Like a girl cheese or something.Simone Collins: Okay. I can make a grilled cheese.No problem.Good. Okay. Grilled cheese, man. Would you like me to bring it to your room? ‘cause I know you’re really trying to sprint on things andMalcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I am gonna be sprinting on code.Simone Collins: Okay. Then I’ll bring it to your room. And, okay, cool.Speaker 10: Okay. What are you doing? You telling scary [01:00:00] stories? Yeah, and, and, and I don’t, when I said before was once upon a time, dad picked up a car and landed on the ground his car. Like a big car? Yeah. Like this car. Wouldn’t that have been too heavy?Speaker 11: I was, I was thinking it like, this is dad super strong? Is that how I did it? Yeah. Once upon a time, a ghost slam Dad in the head. Why is that your idea of a scary story? Once a upon time, a ghost slammed dad at his house laws and everything. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Dive into the wild world of Gen Z dating with Malcolm and Simone Collins on Based Camp! In this eye-opening episode, we dissect a Substack post by steph on Miami’s pickup artist scene, where young men armed with Meta Ray-Ban glasses and cheesy lines are turning cold approaches into content gold. From “friction maxing” to stave off AI-induced cognitive decline, to women stealing Sweetgreen salads and buying drinks for strangers in NYC—dating has never been weirder. We share practical tips, debunk red pill myths, explore why pickup isn’t really about women anymore, and reveal what romance novels teach us about ideal meet-cutes. Plus, Malcolm’s honest (and effective) pickup strategies from his single days. Whether you’re navigating apps, IRL encounters, or just curious about cultural shifts, this episode is packed with laughs, insights, and warnings for the future of romance. Don’t miss our thoughts on why colleges might still be the best spot for real connections!Episode NotesThis was inspired by “gen z pick up artists are taking over my city” by a gen z substacker who goes by stephChoice quotes from the article:* Erick Ronaldo is one of the many Miami pickup creators making a killing in this market. He’s racked up over 1.3 million Instagram followers teaching young men how to “get dates with 8s and 9s.” For $17 a month, guys can sign up for his Modern Man Bootcamp, which includes three weekly coaching sessions and access to his personal arsenal of pickup lines.* … “It’s no issue that his flirting techniques sound like they were cooked up by Mickey Mouse. Men don’t follow Erick for his AI-generated rizz — they’re there to watch his aspirational displays of hyper-confident masculinity. “Guys like watching other guys pick up girls because they don’t have the balls to do it themselves,” according to Polokidd, a fellow Miami pickup influencer with 1.6 million followers.”FRICTION MAXXING:“Ben, a 27-year-old living in Miami’s particularly flirty neighborhood of Brickell, told me he prefers cold approaching not only because it’s more efficient than waiting around for responses on the apps, but because it’s a great exercise in friction-maxxing. “I mean, you can’t ask ChatGPT to help with a response,” he explained. “You just gotta be yourself and see if she’s into you or not. There’s no better way to improve yourself and stand out as a man, too.””Note: The term appears to have been coined and popularized by By Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a columnist for The Cut covering modern family life, who wrote an article in January titled: In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing: https://archive.is/l5KXrWOMEN WANT IT (sort of)“Do women even want to be asked out by a total stranger?It seems that for most, the answer is YESomgpleaseGODplease* but with some very crucial caveats.Although there’s no shortage of eager men lurking on the apps and in their DMs, Gen Z women are quite loudly yearning for IRL meet-cutes. The girls are out here stealing Sweetgreen salads, buying men drinks, even doing laps at run clubs — all for a shot at retiring from the humiliation ritual that is online dating in 2026. At this point, landing a response to how’d you two meet? that doesn’t start with a like or swipe is the reigning status symbol of our time.Alexis, a 24-year-old Miami native, told me she recently deleted all the dating apps in hopes her next boyfriend will come and find her in the wild. While she’s all for men shooting their shot, she does really wish they would work on their aim a bit first.“I would love to be asked out in person, but not how these Miami guys are doing it,” she says. “It’d be cool if he saw me at a coffee shop and asked what book I’m reading. Maybe he drops a note at my table. I don’t know, I just want the interaction to be genuine. These guys always manage to turn me off.””This is why men should be reading romance novels and not following pick-up artists.Or perhaps they can ask AI for a list of all the ways the female protagonists in the top 100 romance novels met their male love interests.E.g. from PerplexityHigh‑frequency “meet” patterns* Workplace (colleagues, boss/employee, client, rival professional, bodyguard).​* Friends to lovers (childhood friends, college friends, long‑time colleagues).​* Enemies/rivals to lovers (professional rivals, family enemies, legal opponents, competing businesses).​* Forced proximity (stuck in a cabin, snowstorm, road trip, only one hotel room, trapped together on assignment).* One‑night stand / fling that turns serious, often followed by a surprise pregnancy or reunion.​* Fake relationship (pretend dating, fake engagement or marriage for social, work, or immigration reasons).​* Marriage before romance (arranged marriage, marriage of convenience, Vegas/drunk marriage).​* Best friend’s sibling / sibling’s best friend (meets through family or long acquaintance).​* Neighbor or new arrival to town (next‑door neighbor, new person in small town, landlord/tenant).​* Guardian / protector setups (bodyguard, security detail, assigned protector, cop/detective on her case).* Rescue or crisis (he helps her after an accident, threat, robbery, or during war/disaster).* Mistaken identity / secret identity (thinks he’s someone else; he’s undercover, royal, or billionaire in disguise).​* Online or anonymous contact (dating apps, chatrooms, email, texting, online gaming).​* Teacher/student in adult‑appropriate contexts (grad student and advisor, coach and adult athlete, mentor and trainee).* Reunions/second chance (exes who cross paths again, high‑school sweethearts, war‑separated lovers).* Family or wedding events (meet at weddings, engagement parties, reunions, as bridal party members).​* Travel / vacation (seatmates on planes, tour groups, destination weddings, stranded abroad).* Shared project / mission (heist crew, investigative partners, saving a business, political campaign, joint research).​* Sports and performance (teammate, coach, rival athlete, trainer, or someone tied to the sports world).* Medical or therapy setting (doctor/patient’s relative, physical therapist, trauma counselor, combat medic).* Supernatural / fantasy bond (fated mates, magical contracts, captor/guard in fantasy kingdoms, paranormal protector).Typical “how they first meet” scenes* Accidental collision in daily life (literal bump‑in, spilled coffee, dropped papers, bookstore/library run‑ins).​* She overhears or witnesses him doing something decisive or heroic (arguing a case, fighting a duel, saving someone).* He hires her or she hires him (assistant, nanny, consultant, contractor, investigator).​* She shows up at the wrong place or situation (wrong wedding, wrong room, mistaken meeting).​* Forced living situation (roommates, house‑sit swap, co‑owners of property, inheritance conditions).​* He is tied to her family (family rival, guardian, benefactor, cousin’s best friend, sibling’s ex).​* Crisis services (she calls a tow truck, security, tech support; he’s the responder).THIS IS NOT ABOUT MARRIAGE, OR EVEN WOMEN, FOR MEN“Even getting laid, the ostensible end goal of any pickup artist, mostly exists in the abstract. Clavicular may spend his nights roaming Miami’s sidewalks rizzing up ladies for content, but Gen Z’s it-boy of the month says he feels mostly indifferent about the opposite sex — impressing them, dating them, sleeping with them. He told The New York Times a few weeks back that simply knowing he could have sex with a woman is in some ways better than the deed itself, which he gains nothing from.This new crop of manfluencers may market their content as advice for getting girls, but their messaging tells a very different story. If a woman is referenced at all, she’s a mirror to assess his own standing, a stress test in his quest for self-mastery. Above finding hookups or a connection, the objective here is becoming That Guy. An alpha. A boss. A high-value male. Someone who picks up chicks not because he needs anything from them, but simply because he can.This is where the Gen Z pickup artist diverges from his fedora-wearing predecessor of the early 2000s. The archetypal pickup artist, for all his ethical shortcomings, was at least pretty clear on the mission: meet women, convince them to sleep with you. They called themselves artists because they treated seduction like a craft, swapping feedback and fresh insights in anonymous forums to help each other understand (and of course manipulate) the female psyche.The big names in Gen Z pickup are operating under a brand new set of incentives. The tactics they promote don’t necessarily need to work, they just need to hook the guys watching their content at home. In fact, the more insane his pickup line, the more bewildered her reaction, the better his clip will likely perform.”WHAT WOMEN ACTUALLY WANT“All the single women I know and have scrolled past in TikTok comment sections are craving the same things: chemistry, understanding, a cinematic story they can flex to their friends over spicy margs. The dating tips being fed to their mate pool just so happens to be optimizing for a very different set of objectives.”AGAIN: This is why men should be reading romance novels and not following pick-up artists.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I read this Substack post on Gen Z dating that had me absolutely entranced shocked, surprised, and I feel like it, it tells us a lot about the state of dating potential marriage, romance, where things are going wrong. And even just dating advice and, and how the red pill has evolved over time or pick up artistry in general.Oh,Malcolm Collins: interesting. Has, has, has red pill is integrated into mainstream dating?Simone Collins: No, no, I don’t. It’s so weird. I I, I’m just, we’re gonna jump right into it because I feel like there’s. My mind has been blown on multiple levels, and man, gen Z dating is weird. We’re gonna, we’re gonna include some practical tips in here.We’re gonna include where things are going wrong, but most interestingly, I think are just the latest trends and how bizarre it is in a world in which dating markets are broken, how are they breaking? How are they getting weird? I never would ex expected these things, [00:01:00] but they also make a lot of sense. So let’s get right into it.This all came from this amazing piece by a sub stacker who goes by Steph. She’s Gen Z. She writes about Gen Z issues in all lowercase. That’s how she describes herself. And this particular Substack piece is called Gen Z pickup. Artists are taking over my city. She’s in Miami. Or is is your mom Miami?Miami pickupMalcolm Collins: artistSimone Collins: would take over Miami? Not Miami.Malcolm Collins: Miami is the city of pickup artists. I, I feel thatSimone Collins: they, it’sMalcolm Collins: disgusting appear there by what’s, what’s the, the word? A a a, a biogenesis. They just like, if you leave like a corner in Miami there for too long a pickup artist just appears if you of virtue your eyes from it.Simone Collins: Well, it’s so full of, of men, I think, who, who want to have this very certain type of woman. And, and multiple versions of her all at the same time. Like we were out to dinner with one couple in Miami at one point, and they were telling us about this Pilates studio where the, [00:02:00] the, the teacher was approached by this man who’s like, Hey, you, you’ve charged me three different times, like the, this, I’m, I’m gonna contest this.Where did this come from? And she’s like, well, here are the. The three subscriptions you were charged for. And they were all his mistresses and he was like, oh, nevermind. It’s fine. I, I didn’t realize and that, that is Miami and I just, I, I hate it and it’s disgusting and I’m really glad we’re not there anymore.Thank goodness all his MIT rest in peace Pilates studio. I know. And I don’t even know it. It’s just fantastic. But yeah, so. This is where it’s being taken over. This is what she’s experiencing. I’m gonna read some choice quotes and, and here we’re just gonna kick it off. Eric Ronaldo is one of the mini Miami pickup creators making a killing in this market. He’s racked up over 1.3 million Instagram followers, teaching young men how to quote, get dates with eights and nines. For $17 a month, guys can sign up for his Modern Man Bootcamp, which includes three weekly coaching sessions and access to his personal [00:03:00] arsenal of pickup lines, and, and she continues a little bit later.It’s no issue that his flirting techniques sound like they were cooked up by Mickey Mouse. Men don’t follow Eric for his AI generated Riz. They’re there to watch his aspirational displays of hyper confident masculinity. Guys like watching other guys pick up girls because they don’t have the balls to do it themselves.According to Polo Kid, a fellow Miami pickup influencer with 1.6 million followers.Malcolm Collins: Now guys watch, like you watch another person play video games, other people go pick up girls.Simone Collins: Yeah. And that’s what’s happening. So when you go to these guys Instagram pages and TikTok pages, it is, and this is also a thing, the new trend.They’re wearing those RayBan glasses, the Facebook meta RayBan glasses where they’re recording and they’re walking around Miami with their glasses on record. Just delivering the cheesiest. Pickup lines to women like in one the [00:04:00] guy approaches this woman in a grocery store and she’s looking at bananas and he picks up.Like a bunch of bananas and she’s like, yeah, I think mine is, my, mine is bigger than yours. And it just goes on from there. And there, there are, are melons involved and a, you know, but, and she’s dressed like a total thought. I mean, they’re, they’re all wearing like extremely mini like, revealing, athleisure, very tight use nothing to the, that’s MiamiMalcolm Collins: for you.Simone Collins: I know it’s like they’re all asking for it. But it’s actually becoming a problem,mom.Malcolm Collins: You can’t say that you’re a woman. You used to be a feminist. You’re the worstSimone Collins: feminist ever.Speaker 4: Look, she’s totally asking for it.She’s begging to get graved.Speaker 3: Look what she’s wearing. Look what she’s wearing.Speaker 4: It’s purple.Speaker 3: Oh, okay.Simone Collins: I dunno if I’ve ever identified as a feminist. I was certainly braised in that mindset though. But they’re all asking to be hit on, is what I’m saying.I mean, you, you don’t dress like that without asking to be hit on. [00:05:00] I, I dressed it a certain way because I wanted people to be like, oh, look at you. Ha ha, ha. But. What a problem for actually many of these women or like many women in Miami now, is that if you, especially if you’re attractive and if you’re wearing revealing clothing.You are just now at risk of some, some Gen Z millennial pickup artist trying to get their views, you know, keeping their views up on Instagram cold, approaching you with their RayBan meta glasses on record without I, I don’t know if it’s a two party consent state. It must not be because they’re not getting sued or whatever, but like they’re just finding themselves going viral on TikTok after like some random.Person in the street approaches them. And it’s like a genuine problem. Like it’s happening enough because there, it, it, the issue is that now, like a lot of young men are like making their money by getting these subscriptions and, and getting these views. And so it’s this really interesting confluence of, of Instagram and TikTok plus the availability of this like, you know, [00:06:00] very low profile camera you can now wear that is enabling this unique type of pickup artistry.Malcolm Collins: The film Cow Raybans thing, just taking some pictures of the scs just with my.Speaker 6: Okay. Glass zoom in. I can hear every word you’re saying.Okay. Glass. Respond to text. Hey, stormy comma. Yeah. I’m out taking some sweet pics of this dude’s junk period.Simone Collins: Yes. Actually, and, and it’s it’s insane and I love it. AndMalcolm Collins: No, but hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah. I haven’t seen these, the audience hasn’t seen these. Do they, do they often get the girl, does the girl often tell them to,Simone Collins: like, that’s, that’s heavily implied.Okay. Like in in, in the sticky ones, because you know, on Instagram, well, you wouldn’t know ‘cause you’ve like never been on Instagram. But in, in the stickied Instagram posts that they like, it’s sort of like their highlighted content, you know, the best of their portfolio. It certainly implied that like the girls are flirting back and giving them their numbers.Speaker 7: Who are you? Wait, who are you? [00:07:00] Oh, I was just taking a picture so I could show Santa Claus what I want for Christmas. ‘cause you’re so beautiful. Christmas passed. I know. For next year, you know? Yeah. I’m Eric. Nice to meet you by the way. Vie Bunny, vie Bunny. So you’re from Vietnam, I’m assuming? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you probably know a lot of Asian.Speaker 9: Oh my God. Who taught you that? Uh, my friends from high school. They speak, uh, I have a lot of Asian friends. You know that Hold it. What is, what is that? It’s nothing. S trust. I’d be scared if I was holding it. Yeah. And then you spin God damn, you’re big and Asian,. Right. So before I do that, I’m gonna get your number. But yeah, we’re gonna play steak, we’re gonna play blackjack and I’m gonna be 6 7 60 $7. And if I win this hand, I gotta take you on a date. Right.Speaker 7: You got to.Speaker 8: I have to.I don’t want to. I have to. Oh, okay. But they don’t allow,Speaker 7: you don’t want to?Speaker 8: No, I need to. And they don’t allow snacks at the movie theater. But you know, I’ll sneak you in.You. Uh, and my [00:08:00] country week. Kiss goodbye on the cheek. So, all right. Take care.Simone Collins: It, there is implied conquest, like this has been successful that my.Masculinity and confidence has won them over in my amazing, really terrible pickup lines. These are really terrible pickup lines. Again, this is like, not subtle. I remember the, the old pickup artistry was very, you know, it’s like, well, this is all about this, this, these mind games, this sophistication, the dread game, the, the nagging, the, the conversations, the logic.Malcolm Collins: No, no. What was my go-to line?Simone Collins: WhatMalcolm Collins: was. And this is, this was true in college and in high school and after college as well. Mm-hmm. And during summer jobs. I mean, it’s different for each context, but it’s basically of the extent of. I walk up I, I put out my hand to give the shake their hand.I’m like, hi I’m Malcolm Collins. I’m new here. Either like I just started here, or it’s the beginning of the year. I’m just looking to make new friends. Mm-hmm. And are [00:09:00] you open to chatting? And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’sSimone Collins: transparent, it’s honest, and it’s. Fine for a cold approach. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right. I, I don’t, I don’t understand like why you would use a cold approach.That’s not that cold approach. It’s so easy. It’s, it, it, it makes them feel like a, a jerk if they’re like, no, I don’t Like, if, if they’re genuinely notSimone Collins: Well it, if they’re the kind of person who says no, like, do you honestly wanna. To date someone like that, like no.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then, and you end up not feeling as bad when they say no because you’re like, you know, well,Simone Collins: like we wouldn’t have gotten along anyway.‘cause, you know, you don’t wanna dateMalcolm Collins: someone with, with that kind of, or they, they’re doing something else. Right. Resting your ability. It doesn’t hurt when rejection doesn’t hurt as much. Going to the next person doesn’t hurt as much, so you do it faster. Like the moment when it’s like, oh, they just were busy, or something like that.Mm-hmm. Then you just go to the next person. Right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And that was incredibly effective and very easy, and a very good way to rack up lots and lots of contacts. And then you go out with that [00:10:00] person the next time and they’ll bring along their friends and then you meet new people through that.Mm-hmm. I, I hate how like. Practical, the real world is, and then the first question I’d always ask when I was getting to know someone, I’d be like, well, what is, what is your thing? So like, how do you define yourself? How do you, how do you like to, like, what do you like to be into?Simone Collins: They’re showing genuine interest in her.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like your thing. If they then say like, well, what do you mean by like, what is your thing? I’m like, well, everybody has some thing that they’re more into than other things or the other people. Yeah. What’s your thing? Right. Yeah. Because then you can talk about the thing that they want to talk about.Yeah. And then the next one that I always ask. Was like what’s your purpose? Like, why are, why are you here? What’s your goal in life?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Or what’s your goal in college or what’s your goal? You know, because it’s a deeper question allows us to get to deeper conversations really quickly. And I just, I don’t understand where people struggle with.I mean, I guess I, I, it was so hard for me at the beginning to, to, to do this. I told you I used to go to in-person malls Yeah. And force myself to go and talk to random girls over and over. And over and over again. And [00:11:00] it is like sticking it literally. I would rather stick my hand on an of it when compared to what that felt like in the early days.Simone Collins: Excruciating. Yeah. But you, you do it. Actually I think that’s really interesting that you say that because that is one of the reasons actually why some of these young men are doing. What you could call friction maxing. So let me quote another part of her, her essay, Ben, a 27-year-old living in Miami’s, particularly flirty neighborhood of Brickle, told me he prefers cold approaching not only because it’s more efficient than waiting around for his.Responses on the apps, but because it’s a great exercise in friction maxing, I mean, you can’t ask Chad GBT to help with a response. He explained, you just gotta be yourself and see if she’s into you or not. There’s no better way to improve yourself or stand out as a man too. And I love that. And I also love this subtle implication in what he’s saying and that Gen Z is actually making active attempts.To make life [00:12:00] harder for them sometimes because I think they understand the the potential of AI to cause early onset dementia, which we’ve seen already in members of Gen Z. I think they’re seeing some of their, their both, they see it in themselves and they see some of their peers literally losing their minds and becoming.Zombies.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. This way you remove friction from somebody’s life. Like, this is why we’re so pro corporal punishment. This is why we’re so pro you know, the, these forms of discipline and it’s like, you know, trigger warning and everything like that. If you remove the hard parts of your life, your brain begins to like gel gelatin.Well,Simone Collins: our, our, our bodies and our minds are in like, just the research attest this so well, or use it or lose it. If you do not use a thing, it will become atrophied and it will die out. Right. And, and so you have to use it And, and I think that. I wanna maybe do a larger episode on this concept of friction maxing.Just as a note, the term appears to have been coined and popularized by [00:13:00] Catherine Jaser Morton, a columnist for the Cut covering Modern Family Life, who wrote an article in January of, of this year. So this is quite new, titled in 2026. We are Friction Maxing and it’s more about like parenting and how she wants to just, you know, do slightly harder things or like.You know, wait or just do, do whatever. That’s a little bit harder. Kind of along your point of the importance of there being hardship in childhood. But I think what’s more interesting is that you’re already seeing Gen Z, realizing that this is not just about like, oh, like this is good performative, like I’m tough.It’s more like this is survival. You have to make life harder, and this, this, this cold approaching is one way. Because as you pointed out, it’s like putting, you’d rather put your hand in it oven and you’d rather like do something incredibly painful. This is one of the most hard, painful things you could do thatMalcolm Collins: this.So it’s interesting. I, I was going to continue here.Simone Collins: Uhhuh.Malcolm Collins: If you’re looking for a modern pickup line that I would use if I was updating today, like what would I be saying to people? [00:14:00]Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I’d literally just go up to people in a public context and I’d be like put on my hand, be like, hi, I’m Malcolm.I’m trying to meet people in person because I’ve tried meeting people online and I’m never sure if I’m talking to an AI or not these days. And I want to expand my network of real world friends. Do you have. Time to chat or are you interested in chatting? And the reality is, is one that’s a fun conversation starter because the person would immediately know what you’re talking about.They’re like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Like I can see, you know, if you’re trying to meet people in an online environment, you’re not sure of their ai. And, and now you gotta topic to talk about already. And you could be like, you see. You can’t go back to GPT right now if when you’re coming up with a response to me, so we can actually, you know, get to know each other.And, and this, this can be a fun initial direction. The conversation, the good thing about having, like go-to pickup lines like this in terms of how you go to people mm-hmm. Is that you begin to sort of master all the directions. The conversation can go really quickly because there’s only so many potential responses [00:15:00] an individual could have.Yeah. And so in this case, you you, you then just move from here.Simone Collins: But what, what is also important about this friction maxing thing is a theme of this essay is that these pickup artist men are not trying to pick up women.Malcolm Collins: Hmm.Simone Collins: So what we know they’re trying to do is get views. What we know they’re trying to do is get subscribers and people paying for their seminars and their coaching, what we know they’re trying to do in some cases.And sure, it helps that, like this is a more effective way than waiting for someone on the apps. But we know that they’re trying to essentially just stave off cognitive decline. Mm-hmm. Because it’s a challenging thing to do, you know, like weightlifting. But just put, put a note in that. But to your point about, you know.Actual practical pickup lines. What Steph points out in her essay is that women do actually want this, but well, sort of, right? So women do actually wanna be cold [00:16:00] approached, but these cold approaches are not what they want. She writes, do women even want to be asked out by a total stranger? It seems that for the most, the answer is yes.Oh my God, please. But with some very crucial caveats. Although there’s no shortage of eager men lurking on the apps in their dms, gen Z women are quite loudly. Yearning for IRL Meet Cutes. The girls are out here stealing sweet green salads, buying men drinks, and even doing run clubs.All for a shot at re retiring from the humiliation ritual that is online dating in 2026. At this point, landing a response to how you two meet. That doesn’t start with a swipe or a like. Is the reigning status symbol of our time. Now, I just wanna quickly double click on the stealing sweet green salads, buying men drinks, and even doing laps at run clubs.The buying men drinks thing, she is referring to one viral social media post where a woman, I think on TikTok. [00:17:00] Explains how she was at a bar and she saw a woman sitting next to her buy a drink for a really cute guy. And she was like, like, oh, you know, I’m gonna order like a gin and tonic. Hey, what do you want?And he’s like, oh, wow. Thanks. I’ll get this. And so he gets to drink and she’s like, yeah, I mean anything for a friend of Tyler. And then he’s like, oh, I’m, I’m so sorry. I, I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know who Tyler is, and she’s like, oh, don’t worry about it. And he’s like, well, anyway, I’d like to return the favor, like O over drinks maybe another day.And then they exchanged numbers and she’s like, that girl. I don’t think there was a Tyler, I think that was a really smooth pickup line and it was delivered perfectly.Malcolm Collins: Anything And, and what’s cool about that girl and the way that she handled thatSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is she didn’t remove herself from the position of a girl.Yeah. It wasn’t as if mm-hmm. She. Explicitly came onto him? No,sheSimone Collins: wasn’t buying him a drink. No.Malcolm Collins: Plausible deniability.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: He’s just a friend of Tyler.Simone Collins: Yeah. And then he still had the opportunity to then [00:18:00] ask her out for drinks, giving him the ability to do the manly thing, to feel like he’s able to do that manly move and ask her out.Really, really top tier move. So that that went viral. The Sweet green salad thing is, is funny and she actually links to and I for those you told me aboutMalcolm Collins: this. I can’t believe it. This is crazy.Simone Collins: It is so delightful. This other woman who, who went viral for a. This is deep already into the story. She creates this viral social media post about buying sweet green salads.But how it happened was she was dating this, this wealthy guy who worked in the financial district in New York, and she was like super crazy about him. He bought her a $3,000 purse and she just thought like, well, clearly he wants to marry me. This is great. Like mm-hmm. You know, I’m, I’m telling my mom all about him.Like, this is, this is, he’s the guy. And then he starts. You know, the, the, the replies become fewer and far further between. They don’t really see each [00:19:00] other. And then eventually he just ghosts her. And then he discover, she discovers, I think, on online that he is now engaged to another girl. And she is, she’s heartbroken.So what does she do as she is licking her wounds? Well, she, while dating him sometimes put in some lunch orders for him. Is like part of the group orders that he, he did, I think he worked in like private equity or something in m and a. And so she. She knew where he ordered his double protein salads at Sweet Green, and he was really into health, you know, really into his body.So both wealthy and vain. I mean, it’s, it’s a girl’s dream, you know, he, he had a great body or whatever, and so she would start stealing his salads while she was on her way to other meetings, she’d, she’d stop by the sweet green. Where he was, you know, awaiting his, his lunch pickup, you know, for the, because she identified the company.She saw his name on the double protein salad and would just take it ‘cause she knew his order. Well then it turns out over time she, she took a salad and then looked down at it and [00:20:00] realized first name, different last name. This was another guy at his workplace and she was like, oh God, I’ve been stealing some other rich financial district m and a guys.Double protein salad,Malcolm Collins: but, but it’s a double protein salad from a rich neighborhood in Manhattan.Simone Collins: So she looks up on Instagram? Yeah. And it turns out that in fact, he is quite hot. And she, she sends him a DM from her alt account on Instagram saying, Hey, I don’t, I don’t, I, I think I, that there, there may have been some kind of mix up and I may have been stealing your sweet green salads.Do you wanna punish me? And he’s like, well I don’t, you know, I don’t know who this could be, but you know, if, you know, this might be the ex-girlfriend of another person who shares my first name in the office and. You know, if this were theoretically happening everyone in the office thinks it’s really hilarious.Malcolm Collins: I was in the office, had already figured out what was happening.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. And long story short, I [00:21:00] think they end up like sexting. That night, which was like exactly what she needed. And then like four months later or something, she just saw him at a random restaurant while she was out to brunch with her friends.And I think it led to a one night stand or something. It didn’t go anywhere though. But all of that sort of led her to make this very flippant, humorous, hammed up social media post of like. I have discovered the tactic. You just go to a sweet greened and you find in the financial district, you know, where all the wealthy young guys work.You find the double protein salad and you steal it. And then you, you text the guy and you know, say you’ve been naughty. And it just goes from there. And then that went viral and she then, I think at first she was like, oh, that’s a joke. No one actually takes this seriously. No one would actually do this.And then she started seeing some. Like news pieces about how Sweeten now has an actual problem of. Y pe women showing up at their locations in the [00:22:00] financial district and stealing people’s double protein salads. So no, no man’s double protein salad is safe anymore.Malcolm Collins: AndSimone Collins: I’ll,Malcolm Collins: man, I’d be like, let I, let’s get some of these ambitious girls up here.Simone Collins: I know, right? So anyway, these, these are the lengths to which women are now going and the, the trends that are emerging through online and viral social media posts from women trying to meet men IRL, and.Malcolm Collins: I wanna, I wanna take a step back here for guys. Mm-hmm. Yeah.Simone Collins: BecauseMalcolm Collins: these guys who are listening to this and they’re like, oh my God, these women, like, this is horrible.They they could just find a guy if they weren’t only interested in financial district guys from Wall Street or whatever. Yeah. Like six five people, likeSimone Collins: literally worksMalcolm Collins: for the Yeah. To the guys. I’m like. I understand that dating is hard as a guy because all of the women only want the nine, the, the, the nines and the tens, right?Yeah, yeah. But also the reality is, is that [00:23:00] for women, biologically speaking, they only want the nines and the tens, and they find you gross. Yeah. From, from their position. You’re, you’re telling them that like, that they are genuinely imagine. You’re a woman, you only find nines and tens attractive.And every other woman only finds nines and tens attractive. Yeah. And so every woman is going for the same three or four guys. Those guys of course, do not respect women because of this. They are annoyed by this. And they then treat women in a, a negative way as a result of that, while these women are still fighting 20 other women for every one guy and.That’s not a fun experience either. No. I I, I, I understand that you’re like, well, why can’t you just date a less attractive guy, right? Like, why can’t you just not only go for the nines and tens? And the answer is, is, well, it’s their biology. This is like the, you know, we, we, in. I, I call it like the red pill diaspora.We make fun of the trans person who’s like, why can’t you just, you know, make [00:24:00] yourself find me hot? Or the fat woman who’s like, well, you know, beauty is just a, a fa you know, you should find fat woman as attractive as non-fat women. And we’re like, that’s not how it works, lady. Like, for biological, evolutionary reasons.Simone Collins: Yeah. But also I don’t likeMalcolm Collins: fat women,Simone Collins: also women. The, the batna, the, the alternative to a negotiated offer. For women, a lot of women are just fine being by themselves too. They don’t actually care that much. And also society has taught them to a really great extent, especially these days, that they’re better off without a man.That once they have a man, then they have a man child that they have to take care of and clean up after. Do all these things for, why would they sign up for that if it weren’t for a nine or 10? Because marriage is framed as such an unattractive prospect at this point. So they’re basically like, I’m fine being alone forever.If I do wanna end up with a dude, he’s gotta be that really good. And that’s where I came into this, you know, I was like, I’m definitely gonna live alone forever and never get married. I didn’t expect that you existed. So Whoopi for me, I, I found my 10, but [00:25:00] whatever, you know, you, there can’t be that many clones of you.Yet our children are gonna be total catches, though, if I, if I may toot my own horn a little bit. I, I’ve diluted you a little bit with our children, but not that much. They’re very much you. Anyway, if you wanna join our family matchmaking network. Email us. We actually have it going for all of our collective Basecamp kids.It’s good there. The other family’s in it, by the way, in terms of like, if you’re looking for good matches for your kids, amazing families, amazing kids.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Not to digress. But anyway, the point I’m making. Is women are, are, are going through all these links. I should point out that both of these cases, like I was saying, are in New York.New York is a market where women have to really struggle to get men. In other places, like in Silicon Valley, it’s a little reversed. There are more men really struggling to get women. So this is also a market dynamic thing and this is why you’re seeing these crazy levels of desperation in New York City particularly.I just wanna point that out, but I do find that those, those stories to be highly entertaining. And [00:26:00] anyway, I’ll con continue with Steph’s okay. With Steph’s essay. Alexis being Alexis, a girlMalcolm Collins: dating Alexis in New York City. It’s such a terrible place to be. GetSimone Collins: out.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: yeah. Get out. Alexis, a 24-year-old Miami native told me she recently deleted all of the dating apps in hopes her next boyfriend will come and find her in the wild.While she’s all for men shooting their shot, she does really wish they would work on their aim a bit First. I would love to be asked out in person, but not how these Miami guys are doing it. She says, it’d be cool if he saw me at a coffee shop and asked about what book I’m reading. Maybe he drops a note at my table.I don’t know. I just want the interaction to be genuine. These guys always managed to turn me off and this, I, I, I appreciate. I think your pickup lines are good, Malcolm, but I, I think if men really wanna know. What women want in terms of these IRL meet Cutes, which I agree are, are definitely the prestige item for women these days, young women is they should read romance novels or if you can’t tolerate them, [00:27:00] and I don’t blame you, ask AI for a list of all the ways the female protagonists in the top 100 romance novels met their male love interests.And I can give you. Some, some pictures of high frequency meat patterns from the romance novels that women are reading.Malcolm Collins: Did you put this together, Simone, or did she.Simone Collins: I did. So this is, this is me doing a little aside for our young male readers or listeners. You’reMalcolm Collins: so thoughtful, Simone.Simone Collins: Trying toMalcolm Collins: get these guys laid.Simone Collins: Alright, so here are the high frequency meet patterns in women’s romance novels. If you manage to replicate these, this is what women are hoping for. Okay? And these are not all that hard to replicate, so. Workplace stuff like colleagues or boss, employee or client or rival professionals. That’s a big one.Bodyguard. That’s another one. Friends to lovers is huge. Like childhood friends, college friends, longtime colleagues, enemies and rivals. Huge people love enemies to lovers. So E, even if you just make it this playful rivalry. I think that’s one of the best flirting [00:28:00] patterns you can have right now. And I loved this as, as a, I always loved this.I, I like always, always, I, I, I find it very. Appealing forced proximity, like being stuck in a cabin or a snowstorm or a road trip, or only one hotel room, or trapped together on assignment.Malcolm Collins: These are plausible real world scenarios.Simone Collins: One night stand flirting that turns seriously. Fake relationship. Oh, people love the fake relationship.Pretend dating or fake engagement or marriage. For like, oh, didMalcolm Collins: you do a fake relationship with me? No.Simone Collins: It’s like, well, oh, I have to like, you know, my parents are gonna kill me ifMalcolm Collins: I know none of these are realistic.Simone Collins: I’m just giving inspiration. Okay. Sometimes best friend’s, siblings, you wannaMalcolm Collins: get one of our fans arrestedSimone Collins: or siblings best friendMalcolm Collins: suggestion,Simone Collins: a neighbor or a new arrival in town, like, oh, hey, I’m new here.Some guardian, protect. Yeah. Rescue or crisis, like, you know, he helps you after an accident somehow.Malcolm Collins: You’re just describing [00:29:00] guy fantasies as well. Every guy wants to walk by a, a burning house with a beautiful womanSimone Collins: in. Yeah. Yeah. But I think, you know, I men aren’t looking for these opportunities. Let me at least prime people.Okay. Teacher, student, or you know, adult in in adult appropriate contexts like grad student and advisor. Or coach an athlete or mentor and trainee reunions and second chance, people love that. So go to your high school reunion or whatever, if it’s a good high school, I don’t know, whatever. Family or wedding, wedding events, travels and vacation shared projects and missions, you know, like maybe.Like a, a, well, I mean in, in the books it’s like a heist crew or investigative partners. But like, it, it could, you know, saving a business, a political campaign, a joint research, things like that. Medical or therapy setting. Of course there’s the supernatural ones, but, but you, you can’t become a vampire, I’m sorry, but like, typical how they first meet scenes.You could try to, the, the, this is the easiest one to replicate and actually I saw. Recently, like a reel on Instagram or [00:30:00] something of a woman doing this, but accidental collision in daily life, like you bump into each other, there’s spilled coffee, there’s dropped papers, or like bookstore. Bookstore or library run-ins.Especially like, oh, the books go flying and then you, you’re picking up the papers together and then you, you know, you’re handsMalcolm Collins: Simone guys cannot do Oh, I understand.Simone Collins: So what I saw, no, the social media post I saw. Was a, a woman hunting boyfriends in the financial district by having a bag full of limes that she would like trip and drop in like the middle of a crosswalk in front of an attractive guy.Malcolm Collins: Guys do this. Women won’tSimone Collins: here. No. Women would like get down and like, and sorry. The guys would like get down and help and be like, guys,Malcolm Collins: do this. Yes. Women wouldn’t do this.Simone Collins: I don’t know, I, maybe there’s some way to like bump into women clumsily, but elegantly. Also she overhears or witnesses the guy doing something like decisive or heroic, AMalcolm Collins: real solution that works.[00:31:00]Use one of my pickup lines that I told you earlier here after you’ve talked with somebody and you’ve gotten to know them, like what they’re interested in, you’re talking about because there’s something they want to talk about, like their favorite book or something like that. Mm-hmm. Don’t say, what do you want to talk about?Say like what? Are you most interested in these days? Right? That’s what they wanna talk about. Yeah. And then after that, after you have that conversation, when you’re talking about what are your long-term goals in life? What’s your purpose in life? You can ask them what sort of person. Would you want to date?Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And, and, and if they feel comfortable answering that, and it aligns with your goals as well, you can say, well, that aligns with my goals as well. If you are interested in going on a date, I’m happy to go on a date, but if you just want to chat as friends, I’m happy to do that too. Let me know what you prefer.And here would be it. Then say something like, but if you would want to go on a date, here is what it would be like. I was thinking I could take you out to x place out X day. Does that work for you? And if [00:32:00] they don’t wanna a date, then they don’t want a date. And if they’re secretly open to it, they’re like, well, I appreciate, as you always say with me, like you always shocked that I was just open and honest and transparent.Simone Collins: It is so refreshing. Yeah. And I think a lot of people are afraid to scare someone off in scenarios like this. The thing is. If you scare them off with that, then they were never going to be interested. They were neverMalcolm Collins: interested in you to begin with.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. There, there was never going to be a yes.You’re just afraid of the rejection. Like, accept that and, and keep in mind that the sooner you get rejected, the sooner you’re freed up to find the person who is right for you and who doesn’t reject you. So it’s a good thing. Every, just like they say, you know, with meditation. Every time you catch your mind wandering and bring it back to your mantra or whatever.Is a rep. It’s a good thing. People are like, they, they get frustrated meditating ‘cause they’re like, oh my mind keeps wandering. But no, it’s good. Every time you bring it back, that’s a rep. That’s a good thing. And the same thing with dating. Every time you get rejected, that’s a rep. [00:33:00] That’s a good thing.Contextualize it as that. And it’s gonna be a lot less painful though. It’s still gonna hurt like hell. Anyway, though, I wanna bring this back to this theme, which I find so fascinating that this is not about marriage or even women for men. So going back to Steph, even getting laid, the ostensible end goal of any pickup artist.Mostly exists in the abstract clavicular, the, this is the famous looks smacker.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Clavicular may spend his nights roaming Miami sidewalks reasoning up the ladies for content, but Gen Z’s it Boy of the Month says he feels mostly indifferent about the opposite sex in impressing them, dating them, sleeping with them.He told the New York Times a few weeks back that simply knowing he could have sex with a woman is in some ways better than the deed itself, which he gains nothing from. This is the new crop of man influencers or this new crop of man. Influencers may market their content as advice for getting girls, but their messaging tells a very different story.If a woman has referenced it all, she’s a [00:34:00] minor to assess his own standing, a stress test for his quest for self mastery above finding hookups for a connection. The objective here is becoming that guy an alpha, a boss, a high value male, someone who picks up chicks, not because he needs anything from them, but simply because he can.This is where the Gen Z pickup artist diverges from his fedora wearing predecessor of the early two thousands, the YP pickup artist who for all his ethical shortcomings was at least pretty clear on the mission. Meet women convince them to sleep with you. They call themselves artists because they treated seduction like a craft.Swapping feedback and fresh insights in anonymous forms to help each other understand and of course, manipulate the female psyche. The big names in Gen Z pickup are operating under a brand new scent of incentives. The tactics they promote don’t necessarily need to work. They just need to hook the guys watching their content at home with.The fact, [00:35:00] the more insane his pickup line. Oh, in fact, the more insane his pickup line, the more bewildered her reaction, the better his clip will likely perform. And maybe that shouldn’t blow my mind, but that blows my mind. The like, the goal isn’t to get women.Malcolm Collins: I think that this was actually always the case within the true, like, as I’ve pointed out as somebody when I was younger who before the pickup artist movement really exploded.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Left around a lot convergently evolving many of the techniques that the pickup artist community. But as you can see, I did it in a very different way. It was,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Much more autistic and straightforward,Simone Collins: which I love.But you, and also I, I love that by the way, your autistic. Pick up artistry just to how theirs picks up thoughts in toxic women who are actually quite dangerous.Yours picked up like intelligent, likeMalcolm Collins: Yeah. You, you’ve met my, my, my exes. Yeah, my exes are generally how would you describe [00:36:00] them, Simone? So I’m not biasing you.Simone Collins: A beautiful, intelligent, ambitious thoughtful, cool people. Yes. Who would you be friends with anyway?Malcolm Collins: Because that’s who I, but No, but actually think about like, if you think about my lines, what am I asking them about?Like, what do they want from life? Right? This is obviously going to be differentially stimulating to somebody who has big plans for their life, who wants to talk about those big plans with somebody who’s going to listen and, and talk back and everything like that. The, the, this is a, a, it, it’s not like a, oh, look at these bananas or whatever.That’s, that’s not going to differentially interest the type of person you actually wanna spend your life with. In fact, it would, yeah.Simone Collins: Sexual innuendo is not going to win these women over.Malcolm Collins: It would likely filter out the type of women you want. 100%. Keep in mind the type of pickup artist line that I’m using.I did not say I did it at clubs. I did not do I, I did it at bars in college. Absolutely. But, you know, in, in college.Simone Collins: But the thing is, no, you were doing it bars in St. Andrews, which [00:37:00] is like. It’s like saying you did it like a Mensa meetup or something. If Mensa wasn’t actually just a place where sad people complain about politicsMalcolm Collins: and I didn’t get even my best girlfriends at St.Andrew’s from Barth. The best girl I dated at St. Andrew’s who I was the closest with for the longest was at an anime meeting an anime society meeting. But when it, when it comes to something like that, you’ve got to be very direct. Yeah. I remember meeting her at the meeting and I walk into the room and they’re playing something.On the screen. And you know, there’s, there’s the rows of chairs, right? Like the, the folded out chairs. And she was somewhere in the middle-ish, I scanned the crowd for whoever I thought was the most attractive woman. And I I mean, it’s. Very not conspicuous that you are sitting next to her because she’s not on the edge or something.I wasn’t like trying to No,Simone Collins: you’re like walking over people, aren’t you?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m like walking past people and then I get to her and I say, can I sit next to you? And then in between the two episodes I’m like, Hey, [00:38:00] Malcolm Collins, like, what, you know, bring to you, et cetera. Right. You know? I I think that that’s also an important thing to remember in terms of doing this.Mm-hmm. You can do this sort of like cool nerd things, but you’ve gotta understand if you’re going to a nerd event, there’s likely gonna be one attractive woman. And you need to know that you have the, the balls to go up and actually in a non-creepy way, be like now some people might say, that’s creepy what you did.It’s not gonna come off as creepy because I look like this. But if you’re not attractive enough to do something like that, you’ve also gotta be like, oh, I’ve gotta do the same thing, but not differentially, target the hottest woman at the event. And that, that’s also something that you can note. If you don’t think that you’re the hottest guy at the event, don’t go, then sit next to the hottest one.You maybe don’t.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But if you do that to a non hottest woman at the event, she might be quite flattered unless you are in an environment where there’s almost no women. Now the reason why this worked was in this anime club was because they were watching things like, or in host club that if people don’t know, it’s a reverse harem anime that is [00:39:00] famously popular with women.So you know, you’re going to get a disproportionate number of women. What is that? He’s like, what did I do?Simone Collins: He extruded. He does that.Malcolm Collins: But what I was getting from this is you get to a point like when you get the pattern down and you get it down to be easy to hook up with people and easy to sleep with people it gets really gross really quickly.Like you, it is not fun. It is not that enjoyable. I, I do not think that there are that many. I think that that sex is one of those things you only like conceptually. Like you only want it because it’s like the, i I mean, obviously you want it for biological reasons, but there’s just so, so it’s so viscerally disgusting as soon as you’ve gotten off, right?Like. No, I’m just, I, I think it’s important to note this because I think in our society we glamorize it, right? And that needs to be kind of, that curse needs to be broken for you. And once a, you know, you’re a cocurricular or something like that, or even the old Kings of the Red Pill movement, like a lot of them who were [00:40:00] actually like provably successful pickup artists, ended up revoking the lifestyle and saying that was not a good lifestyle, right?Like, I am now monogamous and much happier, right? Mm-hmm. I think this happened to most of the, the main people who were part of that original, the game book and stuff like that. Who are, who are major characters in that. So yeah. Although I will note despite the practical going up and talking to people, I did dress in a way that people could consider peon in a way that was pretty out there.When I was in my dating phase, except when I met you, I had moved away from that. I was just sort of professional looking then.Simone Collins: You are so cuteMalcolm Collins: when I, there’s a blazer and a black t-shirt and jeans.Simone Collins: Yeah. Just to, I guess, to, to leave the, the poor disadvantaged. I, I really don’t envy men trying to find wives right now.Men who may be listening to this, what Steph sort of concludes with, with what women actually want. Just to bring it back to that, and I think this is in alignment with the advice you’ve given. [00:41:00] She wrote, all the single women I know and have scrolled past in TikTok comment sections are craving the same things.Chemistry, understanding a cinematic story. They can flex. To their friends over spicy marks, the dating tips being fed to their mate pool just so happens to be optimizing for a very different set of objectives. And I just find that so interesting that we’re living in this world where dating advice isn’t dating advice anymore.It’s like a, it’s, it’s a performative, algorithmic dance. Mm-hmm. That’s really optimizing around different things like self-affirmation or self-mastery or. Friction maxing. And it’s so funny that in all of this, the, the best dating moves I’m hearing are those ones from women. Like that drinks move was just masterclass level.I think. I, I think that’s just great. And I am fascinating. I, I’m fascinated by Gen Z dating and I, I wonder where. [00:42:00] In-person dating is going to go in the future. What I’m hearing from a lot of people listening to this podcast is basically colleges are gonna be the, the defacto place where young, healthy standard.Malcolm Collins: And I said, I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that. I think colleges are, are too woke max now for any sane person to wanna be around them.Simone Collins: Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, you have at at least one nephew in college who already now has a long-term girlfriend. Because he went to like a conservative leaning college.The, the college campus that we were on to speak last year felt pretty based.Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Did it? No, it didn’t. Maybe like it had some base things.Simone Collins: No, man. They were like genuinely confused by the, the other trans speaker who was in that class.Malcolm Collins: That was true.Simone Collins: Yeah. So I, I, I, I think, and this is the thing, [00:43:00] Malcolm, and this is something also that, that some listeners have pointed out.Sane people are not terminally online people with responsibilities and in lives in work who are actually kind of doing their jobs or like studying hard or out actually hanging out with like their boyfriends or girlfriends or friends or whatever. They’re not posting online so you don’t hear from them.They’re, they’re just not that plugged in and you get this really skewed perception of reality. By assuming that, that the people posting online who to a great extent are, are kind of failures. Not to like you, like either weirdos like us who are just terminally online, you know, careerists online or just failures who don’t, who are not succeeding and are therefore terminally online.Like it, it’s just a thing. And, and so it creates this very warped understanding. I think that’s, that’s important to know. [00:44:00] And also like a lot of the, the young people that we know, like young, young people in your family, Malcolm who I follow on Instagram the way that they be, they appear to behave online is very different actually.They spend a lot of time offline, a lot of time with their friends, a lot of times socializing. And when they post online, it’s on closed accounts with only approved followers. Yeah. And yes, like their, their lives are very much networked online. They’re very, they’re very social. They’re very much communicating with their entire friend group online, but it’s like a closed loop.It’s all people that they know.Malcolm Collins: In the loop. Yeah,Simone Collins: in the loop. All on, like all on Instagram and like Snapchat or like all on Instagram and Telegram or whatever, like on, you know, these things. And they’re all like within that closed loop. They’re not like in general. On X in general? Yeah. On all these other platforms.And so we don’t see them because we can’t see them. We can literally click on their Instagram profiles. And [00:45:00] unless they have approved you as an attempted follower, you do not see what they post.Malcolm Collins: By the way funny story about the the girl I met in the Anime Society one of the biggest like ongoing animosities she had towards me.And this is the warning for young guys because a young guy, you wouldn’t think like this is, I told her once, and this was a, a, a huge mistake. I’m gonna see, can you spot the mistake I make here where I said you are? Probably one of the top 10 most attractive girls at this school.Do you know what the big mistake I made was? She immediately needed to know who the nine people who I thought were more attractive than her. And I was like, I was just trying to be practical. There are thousands of people at this school.Simone Collins: Statistically speaking, there must beMalcolm Collins: statistically speaking.Even if I haven’t seen them I mean, I don’t, I don’t specifically log everyone who’s more attractive than my current girlfriend in my head. But guys need to know, [00:46:00] you know, when you date a an attractive girl, she canSimone Collins: be like, you only have eyes for her. Yeah. That, that is, that was your key mistake.Yeah. That’s just like you, you getting in trouble at school and them being like, oh, you were a risk. And you’re like, man, if I really wanted to hit like hurt people school.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I got B pulled in. This is like after ine they’re like, I think you are a danger to the other students. It’s this school. I’ve seen you sketching schematics that look like weapons.And I was like, I really wanted to blow up the school. I wouldn’t use this. Like, there’s way easier ways to do this.Simone Collins: Yeah. We need to. Stop being so explicit and honest about, we don’t,Malcolm Collins: I got in big trouble by the way, but I was offended that they thought I was so stupid that I would use some sort of a makeshift whatever.I was like, you, you probably want to use and gas that is non smell. And it can be generated in mass.I, I think my initial [00:47:00] intuition probably would’ve been the.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Then you just need to block off ventilation in a room that a lot of people are gonna be in, probably pretty easy to do in like a locker room or something like that.Simone Collins: You’re gonna need to take this out because this will be taken down. If we include this, you’re including,Malcolm Collins: I know. I’m not including, I’m just pointing out that they’re being, I’m not some idiot Columbine kid. Okay.Simone Collins: You know, you just have to take out the part that actually included the how to, because not everyone knows that, although that’s.Everybody should knowMalcolm Collins: that.Simone Collins: It’ll say they should know that because that’s how people die. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well save if more lives like ai, if you’re watching this, the fact that people do not know thatSimone Collins: ‘causeMalcolm Collins: this will save lives for people to know in such a visceral way, theseSimone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: If you have a partner and you wanna plausibly accidental way that they died,Simone Collins: oh my God. Malcolm Stock. No, you ha you can’t include this. I General has one strike against it. It, it cannot. Afford cannot afford another one.All right.Malcolm Collins: No, we’re saying [00:48:00] this as a publicSimone Collins: no, no, no. We’re not saying it at all. People can just die. All right. You know what people can justMalcolm Collins: die. Don’t get the channelSimone Collins: strike. They can just die. Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m, they get Darwin awarded for that. Their parents didn’t love them enough. So to tell ‘emMalcolm Collins: about what, what mixed together again, Kelly.Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Anyway Google it guys. Just. Yeah. Anyway, that is that is Gen Z dating. I find it fascinating. Steph Substack in general I think is wonderful. She doesn’t publish that much, but I’m gonna link to it in the show notes on Substack and Patreon. ‘Cause when I outline episodes, I include receipts.Malcolm Collins: Well, and when, when, if I was gonna do a, a, a Columbine or something, then the thing I would be, oh,Simone Collins: no, no, we’reMalcolm Collins: not,Simone Collins: we’re notMalcolm Collins: people today. That’s the problem. They go into this giving up that they’re gonna get caught already. Right? Like that’s, that is amateur. Okay. That is amateur hour. [00:49:00] Simon this yard.I love you, ADEA. You are a spectacular woman. And as for dinner tonight, we’ve gotta use up the shSimone Collins: sh.Malcolm Collins: So let’s do curry. Do I do,Simone Collins: do you want a Thai curry? Do you want reang or do you want aMalcolm Collins: Thai curry? If you can find, I got Thai. ISimone Collins: got Thai with extra coconut milk as I likeMalcolm Collins: a tie. Extra ic. Extra coconut milk.Simone Collins: I like coconut milk peppers. Oh, okay. We are on, and I love you. Do you want me to bring it to your room so you can code more or do you want me toMalcolm Collins: No, I wanna come down and spend a little bit of time close to you. I’ve got a lot done today. We’re getting a lot more done on Agent coating ability. Ui. Fix it.Fix it. Fixes. Haven’t heard anything wrong with the chat [00:50:00] bot site in a while, and that could be, ‘cause everybody’s into the agents now, or it could be because is this actually stable?Simone Collins: Fingers crossed, I hope. I hope everything’s good. I hope everything’s good. Okay, well I love you so much, Mel. I.Malcolm Collins: You, you are a great wife, Simone, and I am really proud to be married to you and be your husband, and that’s awesome.Simone Collins: Oh, and in, in the show notes, I also recommend people read the Substack post by salad, woman salad steel. She’s just sounds unhinged, but she’s a really good writer. I, I really enjoyed reading that piece, so if you want a good read, i, I, I shouldn’t. You did a great job with this episode,Malcolm Collins: by the way.Simone Collins: Oh, thank you. Yeah. Wanna help sometimes when I’m not dealing with Peruvian banks and logistics, and bills and accounting. Have aMalcolm Collins: good one. Bye bye. I hope you feel better soon. [00:51:00]Simone Collins: Thank you.Speaker 10: And stood on the same starting line. Watch this. Yeah.What are you doing? What are you doing? We’re just trying to get back in the sun room. Why? ‘cause we, why us so warm.Oh gosh, that’s hard. Do not hit me with hard things. Titan. Well, you were raring. Yeah, I’m raring. I’m playing. Stop. Stop. Don’t hit me with, do not hit me with hard things. [00:52:00] Don’t hit anyone with hard things. It could get really hurt.Oh no. She didn’t die for it. Stop, stop, stop.Oh no. We got another monkey. Oh no. It’s a whole swarm with him. It’s a swarm. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this eye-opening episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into a paradoxical dataset: despite widespread narratives of violence against trans and non-binary individuals, statistics from organizations like HRC, A4TE, and TGEU reveal shockingly low rates of violent deaths—far below the general population, especially for non-Black trans people. They crunch the numbers, debunk myths, and explore potential explanations: Could it be hormone therapy reducing aggression? Social isolation keeping them safer? Hidden privilege or something else entirely? The conversation also covers the overrepresentation of trans individuals in mass shootings, cultural vibes around gender, and wild tangents like AI hallucinations, hypnotism, and geopolitical musings. Buckle up for data-driven insights that challenge assumptions—no holds barred!If you enjoyed this, smash that like button, subscribe for more unfiltered discussions, and hit the bell for notifications. Check out our books “The Pragmatist’s Guide to Life” series on Amazon, and join the conversation in the comments below. What’s your take on these stats?Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. Today we are gonna need to be talking about a paradox, which is, if you look at the organizations that Mark, how many trans or non-binary people die violent deaths a year?The numbers are odd because they are always incredibly low, well, well below the general population. If we go with non-black trans individuals. That would mean that you have only 0.38 deaths per year combined to four per a hundred thousand for the general population. Which is wow,Simone Collins: man,Malcolm Collins: sanely low.Specifically you would be looking at a rate that is around by, by some estimates, like if I go by a four TE’s estimates for non-black trans individuals, they have a, a violent death rate that would have to be multiplied by 10.5 to be the same as the regular non-trans [00:01:00] cis rate.Simone Collins: What is their secret?This is sign me up for this,Malcolm Collins: and this is the reason I wanted to get into this is one, this goes directly to the opposite is trans people always would be like. Trans people, don’t you understand?Simone Collins: Yeah. Something, something hate crimes and the police and everyone wants to beat me up. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, the statistics don’t agree with you on that.The statistics actually show that trans people live enormously privileged lives. And so the question is, is why, well, so we’ll be going into the statistics. Is it that they’re wealthier on average? Is it that they do less drugs on average? Is it that they like what could be causing this, right? What could be causing these?And before I jump into the numbers here, if you wanna be like, well, these organizations say that these numbers aren’t exhaustive for the number of trans and non-binary people who are killed violently every year. It’s like, yeah, but they try really hard. Like,Simone Collins: okay, Chris, question off the bat, when we’re comparing the, the trans rates of violent [00:02:00] deaths to the general population, are we talking men to men?Or are we talking all men and women?Malcolm Collins: We’re gonna go into that.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: But when we are talking these numbers if you are reading this, what somebody is going to say is hey. Malcolm those numbers is they couldn’t find every single trans and non-binary person who died violently to which I would push back and I’d be like, actually, the numbers are probably over counts, so I’ll explain why.They’re probably over counts. First of all, being trans or non-binary. It’s not like being a member of some other communities where you’re not like. All in where your friends do not definitely notify these organizations, where these organizations do not definitely wanna make it look like tons of trans people are dying, right?Like, this isn’t you, you’re not like, kind of in the trans lifestyle or something like that. It’s not like gay. We’re like. A person may have been gay and like they weren’t interested in telling like the big gay rights orgs or something like that. [00:03:00] It seems very unlikely, especially given how politically charged the topic is these days that individuals would not be.Ed, and then you have the problem of, oh, somebody wore a dress one day or something like that. And the trans organizations in terms of trans shooters, which we’ll go over the data on that again. Yeah. Because it is, it is really twisted that they’re like, we are so much at risk from you when the actual studies, like if you actually just run the math, they are mass shooters at like, I think it’s like 10 x the rate and they are likely to be killed at like one 10th the rate.Yeah. So, we’ve gotta go over. It, it’s so weird. It’s like, it’s like the, the wolf, you know, they’re deep in sheep carcasses, drenched in blood, being like, the sheep are always bullying me. You know, and so the question is. And this is just the data here. People like, we’re, we’re gonna go into these.I will name the individuals we can go through, you can look them up. But what I will be pointing out [00:04:00] is that the number of trans mass shooters is sometimes inflated by conservatives who wanna find, you know, every potential person who could be, you know, wore a dress in one photo or something like that, right?Mm-hmm. And I think that that is, you’re going to see a similar phenomenon from trans rights organizations where they’re going to want to inflate their numbers, so they’re gonna look for everyone they possibly can. Of course.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you’re not gonna have as many people to fight back against these organizations.Miscategorizing, somebody who died as trans as you would have people trying to miss a fight back against people. Miscategorizing, a mass shooter is trans. And I would point out here that then if you’re gonna go, well, the mass shooter rate might be inflated. Because people was a reason to inflate the number might choose to in the way that they’re counting things.Why do you say that For conservative orgs and then not the trans orgs that are counting the trans people who died from? So my guess is at the very, probably these numbers are over counted, but even if the numbers are not over [00:05:00] counted, it’s not like you doubled these numbers, or if you tripled these numbers, you would get a rate of equivalent to non-trans violent deaths.You would need to increase them astronomically to get a number equivalent. And, and that’s just implausible to me that that’s the explanation, right? I think, yeah, if you were grabbing for that explanation you are just denying reality at this point. So let’s go over the specific orgs here. So the first thing to note is that for the first organization here, they very helpfully split out and, and pointed out that 70% of the people who had died of the trans people who had died were black.And if you look across all of the studies, they all that black people. Trans black people die at a way higher violent rate than non-black trans people. Right? And this is why we able to talk about the white or the non-black, because the very low rates of Hispanic trans victimization as well.Simone Collins: Well, but also do the rates of black trans people [00:06:00] dying violent deaths surpass those of just black people in America.Malcolm Collins: I did not compare them by race, but what I can say is black trans people actually have about twice the rate of dying violently as non-trans people.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So black trans people actually are at risk for being trans.Simone Collins: Yeah. But I mean, I also just feel like being a black American, your odds of,Malcolm Collins: well, the, yeah, the, the, the caveat here is they were also all almost killed by black people, almost all killed by black people.Simone Collins: Well, same with also non-trans black people, so,Malcolm Collins: right, right. But the black community is more, I guess you’d call, say, transphobic and homophobic than me.White community, even though that’s, you know, goes against Progressive.Simone Collins: Are we just saying what, what are these percentages that you’re looking at? Again, I think they’re percentages, right? I’m gonna try to find this out.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So rate per 1000 for black trans people. It’s 6.8 is the rate per a hundred thousand,Simone Collins: Violent deaths, right?Malcolm Collins: Violent deaths, yes. If I go to, and to get an idea of how different the black versus non-black rate is, [00:07:00] if I go to the non-black trans rate, and this is a for TE. Mm-hmm. 0.38. Remember it was 6.8 for blacks.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And so this for blacks means it’s about twice normal. This for non-black trans means the normal rate is 10.5 x higher.Simone Collins: So what did you say it was for? It was six per thousand.Malcolm Collins: 6.8Simone Collins: per. 6.8 per a hundred thousand for, for black trans people. Yeah. It’s, it’s 29 per a hundred thousand for black Americans.Malcolm Collins: Oh, so they’re also protected.Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s my point. Is that like. No, you just see more black trans people getting hurt because more black people die of violent deaths in America too.Like they’re the vast, like, yeah, wellMalcolm Collins: those numbers are still bigger, but that, that also, oh, Simone, you and, and stats. You get this. You’re figuring out mysteries here.Simone Collins: Sold.Malcolm Collins: Now if we go to what the trans overall [00:08:00] difference is in this A four T is 0.94, which means that it, you’d have to multiply that by 4.3 X to get the general violent death rate.Mm-hmm. If you go to the HRC numbers they had 27 trans deaths overall. Again, this is exactly the same. You’d have to multiply that by 4.3 x to get the general rate. Mm-hmm. If we go to the TGEU study, 31 you’d have to multiply that by 3.7 x to get the general population. So what I’m noting here is it’s not like one study or something like that.It’s every single group that reports this is massively under reporting it. Or, or not under. SoSimone Collins: no, they’re reporting numbers that are lower than that Of theMalcolm Collins: general lower than what you’d expect. Yeah. So first of all, but before I go further, what are, what are your hypotheses. Mmm.Simone Collins: Okay. So my, my primary, what I’m gonna go on is most trans people are at least that are of [00:09:00] age, like younger. There’s more female to male, but of age. It’s more male to female, and they are lowering their testosterone and increasing their estrogen. I think testosterone plays a major role in violence and crime, and when you effectively neuter someone in that way, you’re going to reduce their rate of violence in general.On average, you’re gonna have outliers with all these shooters and stuff, but I think even when you take a female to male trans person, I think that their testosterone levels in general aren’t going to be as high. Or let’s say even if they tried to commit violent crime, they still have like a. Na female body.So they’re coming from a, a, a weaker blank as it were. So they’re less likely to maybe be successful in their attempts at violent crime or they’re less likely to try ‘cause they know they’re not gonna do anything really effectively. So just like you don’t really see any female to male trans people and sports, you know, trouncing anyone.Yeah. You know, so [00:10:00] I think that’s the issue is that this is about. A population of people that broadly has lower testosterone levels and or weaker blanks. That is to say like female natal bodies and therefore they’re less likely, likely to be involved in the stuff that gets you killed in violent ways.Malcolm Collins: Interesting hypothesis,Simone Collins: but we alsoMalcolm Collins: know that they have less self-control because they commit mass murder at higher rates.Simone Collins: So yeah, I think those are outliers. And I don’t think that they are representative of the averages of the population.Malcolm Collins: Well, if you remember our study on transsexual fantasies being much more violent than the general population, sexual fantasies where we went deeper into that, so maybe.I, I like this hypothesis. I don’t hate this hypothesis.Simone Collins: I don’t think that fantasies necessarily correlate with action. In fact, I, and we have argued. In our erotic material related arguments that actually being able to indulge in and understand and [00:11:00] contextualize fantasies as that is going to reduce your rate of actually acting on them.In fact, you have the most repressed sexual fantasies, like, conservative Muslim groups have the highest rate of like, suicide bombers and stuff, and terrorists. SoMalcolm Collins: yeah, this is, this is a, a very well studied thing across like, most ways that you can cut this. And it is something that a lot of conservatives intuitively get wrong.When a group has access to pornographic material on a particular subject, they are less likely to do the thing tied to that. So, obviously the famous study from the Czech Republic when they legalize porn, sA rates went down by 50% of chil. This was for child sa. If you’re talking about adult grape it went down by something like 30% I think, or 35%.And there was also a huge, this happens every time we see this. When they did it in Hong Kong, when they did it, I think in the Netherlands or somewhere they did it, it went down a bunch. Was internet penetration. You typically see grape rates go down at, around the same rate as internet penetration is hitting a region.If you’re even looking in prison, the average sexual predator in prison. [00:12:00] Started consuming pornography later than the average person within that society. I, I think also was in prison. So, it’s just the, the more access you have, the less likely you are to commit a particular act. And I, I know this goes against conservative intuitions, but it’s important to be able to admit when, you know, your, your intuitions are, which you would like to be true about something are just not.And this is one of those instances I, I like if we’re asking progressives to do that, we need to do the same. Okay. But to continue here the the HRC if you’re like, okay, what did they consider trans in this? Because maybe they had like a really strict definition of trans, right. That was my first thought.And it’s like, a, a note, they’re doing this under their epidemic of violence report. This is an epidemic of violence. SoSimone Collins: are they leaving out the gen pop numbers? Is that how they’re able to make these claims that they’reMalcolm Collins: subject violence? No, they just note all of the people who died. They don’t compare it to the gen pop because in their mind no trans people should ever be dying of violence.And [00:13:00] that’s really interesting to me as well, right? Like imagine the arrogance you have to have to not attempt to con convert your numbers to gen pop numbers, but to assume that your population is so. Ultra special and nice that it should have zero violent deaths at all when most of the trans violent deaths are tied to stuff like drug deals gone wrong and stuff like that.You know, the same type of thing where normal people get killed, but nope, if you’re trans, special snowflakes, nothing bad can ever happen to them. But it’s also interesting to me that they don’t even think to do this calculation themselves before they put out numbers that are gonna make them look really bad.Simone Collins: Well, they. May very well do those numbers and just realize that they’re not flattering. I mean, if you’re trying to post the flattering report, you leave out the unflattering numbers. They’d be insane to do that. You understand that?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: They probably know they’re just not idiots. And the ones that were honest, well, those nonprofits didn’t get more funding, did they?Malcolm?Malcolm Collins: So, yeah. So what they included in this list is. Transgender and gender [00:14:00] expansive people. So anything remotely non-binary was consideredSimone Collins: and gender expansive.Malcolm Collins: Two-spirit, gender, non-conforming gender list.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: If they, if they knew about us, we’d be on the list because as we both said, we’re both a gender.Like, I don’t care becauseSimone Collins: we both. Sexually identify as attack helicopters? I mean, Octavian definitelyMalcolm Collins: would option, no, I’m just talking about like realistically biologically, if I try to like meditate on the subject, do I really care if I come off as a man to people? If I was born tomorrow as a woman, I’d just make it work.I’d just be like, okay, I’ll make this work.Simone Collins: You’d probably be stoked. ‘cause there’s so many cheat codes as a woman.You’d wear it better than me. I think.Malcolm Collins: I mean, there’s, you know, there’s positive. I, I, I, I, I suppose, even if, just for novelty, I’d be like. Okay, now I get to experience both sides of the human conditions.Simone Collins: I would be fued if I were a man though, I’d like, no. No one’s gonna be nice to me anymore. Everyone’s gonna put responsibility on me. I can’t play dumb [00:15:00] anymore. BecomingMalcolm Collins: a woman when you’re post wall is not exactly fun, right? Like,Simone Collins: oh no. I’m really excited for my old lady phase. Super excited people. Love a spicy old lady.You know,Malcolm Collins: I, I’ve also pointed out this in other episodes we’ve done on trans people, but I think that it’s something that is really under thought about when men decide to transition into women. Women is they don’t understand how short a period they’re going to have before they hit the wall. As a woman, no.Simone Collins: Yes, underrated.Malcolm Collins: And so they, they transition into a woman and then like three years later they’re hitting the wall and they Yeah. Might not have even, and this is, this is when they’re finally passing, finally, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, consider like a di TheySimone Collins: get their voice, right? Yeah. Everything’s finally dialed in,Malcolm Collins: finally get everything right.And they might be if, if, if everything goes well for them, they pass, they look good, everything like that.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Then they get four years and they hit the wall.Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. It doesn’t matter if you pass, you, you don’t wanna be a post wall woman.Malcolm Collins: And this is where I think trans maxers [00:16:00] are being really stupid.They are thinking about what it would be like to be a woman at their age, not what it’s gonna be like to be a woman in five to 10 years.Simone Collins: So yeah, they’re thinking like cute anime cat girls. I mean, sure. And that, that is why, you know, wi women who are in their forties and fifties and, and even thirties getting.Cosmetic procedures are also engaging in gender affirming care, but they’re all fighting and pursuing. They’re fighting for and pursuing things that they cannot have, that they cannot ultimately really pull off.Malcolm Collins: So that is an interesting phenomenon that I don’t think it’s talked about enough. And I, I, I actually think it’s, it’s probably one of the big causes of the high unli rate was in the community.Because, well, no, I mean, what a horrifying thing.Simone Collins: What would be better to be a post wall woman or to be dead really?Malcolm Collins: To have to have lived both stages of the wall as the gender you would rather not be. I got to live youth as a man and old age as a woman.Simone Collins: God, yeah. That, that really is. Yeah. Playing the [00:17:00] age arbitrage game.100% wrong.Malcolm Collins: Anyway to continue here now is where I think is one of the biggest areas where their fudging of the numbers in their favor could be causing this illusion. So in the stats that I’m using here I’m using the approximately 1% trans, approximately 0.3% bond.Non-binary numbers. But these organizations will often put out numbers of like five to 9%, two to 3%, et cetera, right? So I’m even using the numbers that I think look better for them. But if these numbers, if this 1% and this 0.3% number, it turns out are massively inflated that would create this phenomenon.If it turns out that the number of trans individuals in the United States is actually only like trans and non-binary only, like 0.25% you could explain this entire phenomenon with that. And I could buy that being the case. Now let’s go with, could it be that they’re [00:18:00] using drugs at a way lower rate?The answer here is unfortunately no. They use drugs at a much higher rate 4.3% in the trans community versus 1.2% in the general population. They also smoke at a higher rate, 16.6% versus 5.4%.Simone Collins: They’re probably wealthier though. I think that being trans is a very first world problem, and if you have enough free time to care that much about.Your sex slash gender, you’re probably pretty, you come from a wealthy family. Well, we’ll get toMalcolm Collins: this. This is one of my hypotheses. Okay? If we talk about some other drugs you have a higher rates of use of cannabis, opioids, and cocaine. Specifically 24 to 31% in the past months versus five to 10%.Oh,Simone Collins: those are all bougie drugs, though.Malcolm Collins: Right, but hold on, hold on, hold on. Oh, hold on. Okay, so you got a hypothesis here? Mm-hmm. Let’s try it. All right, because I, I ran the numbers on this.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: What is the trans poverty rate? All right. It’s 21% versus 10.6%,Simone Collins: right, except [00:19:00]Malcolm Collins: X, the poverty rate of the general population.Simone Collins: You understand? Like I, how many rich kids I’ve known who. Technically you’re impoverished, but like mommy and daddy buy everything, but they’re still getting Snap benefits and they’re on Medicaid and stuff because they have no income. But like, mommy and Daddy’s still paying. Yeah. A lot of trans peopleMalcolm Collins: I’ve met are like on what’s the, the, the thing here where they’re on like child support,Simone Collins: Medicaid andMalcolm Collins: no, no alimony.They’re on like Divorce Rich or they’re, you know, mommy and daddy Rich are trust foundations that could be explained here. So, unemployment rate nine to 16% versus 4.4%. So two to four x higher than the general population. Medium weekly earnings it’s 700 to $900 which is lower than the gen pop, $1,204.Simone Collins: I would also just like, I, I feel again, like wealthy people who are technically unemployed have way too much time on their hands. I mean, does Contra Points have a job? Does philosophy, I mean [00:20:00] philosophy tube, like works for, for Broadway plays like from now on and off. I assumed that they might figure, but that’s in between Patreon, Abigail Thorn.Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. They must, yeah. Okay. Maybe that doesn’t count, but like I feel like a lot of the figures that I know about maybeMalcolm Collins: Job Simone. I mean, they only put out like one episode aSimone Collins: year. Contra points, like basically never publishes anything, although she just ran something on saw she did, IMalcolm Collins: might check it out.She’s actually not a bad contentSimone Collins: creator. I like, I like her videos, but I, I don’t like saw, I don’t hope it doesn’t get too explicit, but I like all her, her, you know, gel lighting and everything, so costumes, makeup.Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I, I think that she has interesting ideas occasionally. I’m, I’m like not always, and I think that she’s very much blinded by her political ideology.But I think that listenSimone Collins: and, no, I mean, she’s not always toe the line and I really appreciate that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she’s, she’s capable of a coherent argument. She sounds like a real person, by the way, did you hear, I didn’t know about this. ‘cause we had the episode that [00:21:00] we did on Philosophy Tube that I do not think makes good arguments.I think philosophy tube’s basically a tar. But that philosophy tube, before she transitioned. Dated Contra points at one point, and everybody points out that she clearly transitioned to, tried to look like contra points and made a channel like Contra Point and Contra Points even once made a tweet and then deleted it, saying like, oh, well you think you know what it’s like to have a creepy ex.You’ve never had one who dressed up like you, changed their gender, changed their name and then created an entire career based on you.Simone Collins: Awkward. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: very awkward. And to just be so talentless in comparison. And again, this,Simone Collins: well, but I mean, a philosophy Tube is a working actor. She, she’s currently in a play that is running in London, so I don’t know, you know, if it’s one of these like totally non-profitable operation.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Who knows that it’s a non, I mean, it it a trans main actor.I, I, I don’t, [00:22:00]Simone Collins: I don’t know if she’s the main actor. I just know that she’s,Malcolm Collins: weSimone Collins: hadMalcolm Collins: a, a friend who was trans and in Broadway, and when they detransition, not like for political reasons or anything like that, they just realized they had made a mistake and they were completely blacklisted from the industry just for det transitioning, which I think shows that the bigotry that you see within the trans movement, it’s like, you know, you cannot be a, what’s the word in Islam when somebody deconvert aSimone Collins: I don’t know,What’s the word,Malcolm Collins: apostate.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: no, apostate.Simone Collins: That’s, that’s not a, that’s an English word.Malcolm Collins: Okay, so income they have median household income of 52,000, whereas the gen profit at 74 thousand 580. And other disparities, like 33% are on assistance and stuff like that. So. No, I, I, I don’t know, maybe you’re right. Maybe they all have secret wealth somewhere.We didn’t look at their like, total net worth or do they have rich parents? And that does check like a vibe check for me on the trans people I’ve [00:23:00] known.Here is what I think the real answer is.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: And it ties down to, remember we’ve done episodes on like, where is the actual book audience? Like why is, it’s not like not a lot of people are buying this stuff, it’s that almost nobody is buying this stuff. Yeah. There will be like. Well advertised Triple A games meant for awoke audience and like 500 to a thousand people will buy it.Like it’s, it’s not that the audience is statistically lower than the audience who’s against them. It’s almost as if it doesn’t exist at all. And the hypothesis I had there was and we mentioned this in this episode, is that. And, and this I came to from watching a lot of woke people talking about the content that they consume, is that they actually predominantly consume content from their childhoods.They a lot of cartoons, a lot of stuff that. 10, 20 years ago. And the reason seems to be is they are afraid even of content that is made for them of potentially encountering something that is [00:24:00] triggering or new. It’s just not worth it. Like the negatives of new content, new ideas, sticking yourself outside the box are so much more damaging than them, than the i’m.Simone Collins: And that, and the new stuff sucks. They’re just living in the archive like we all are.Malcolm Collins: I mean, I, I disagree with that. I watch, the funny thing is, is I watch a lot of transcoded shows. Like I, for example, am a big fan. I watched it all the way through. I think I, I might have even finished the reboot or I, at least I’ve watched a lot of it of Steven Universe.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: right. Like Steven Universe is many people would say this is like woke propaganda at its most propaganda, you know? Yeah. A, a show trying to normalize multi gendered entities and lesbian relationships in aliens, right? Like mm-hmm. You know, people and, and, and wanna talkSimone Collins: about feelings.There’s a lot of that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I talk about, like, even shows that I are essentially about, turning red, which I I point out is about [00:25:00] selling your sexuality because the panda represents her sexuality very clearly. In that, in the show’s message is hide it from your parents. They won’t understand and make money selling it to other kids at school, selling pictures of it on your cell phone, right?Like that’s actually what happens in that, right? Like it’s about but I’m like, but it. The show’s actually entertaining. Like I’m open to admit this. I thought the reboot of Sherah was pretty good. Like I’m consuming the content when it’s good. That is made for woke people.Simone Collins: Yeah, you are.Malcolm Collins: I am not like woke phobic.Right. I. However, I will note something. Actually, this is important to note. I however, do not consume some woke content. Like I do not watch the new Star Wars or anything like that, even though I like Star Wars. I don’t watch the New Star Treks but. I tried to, I thought I would like it, right?Like I started with whatever the reboot discovery was, and after a while I was like, oh, this sucks. And then they did the Picard one and I was like, I don’t wanna watch a [00:26:00] Star Trek about old people. But I love lower decks. I’ve seen all of lower decks like three times. It’s fantastic. And lower decks is woke, but it’s good woke, right?You know? And then I see a show or, or the, the woke games by never, I never play the woke games. Right. And I have started to turn away from like, aaa, Hollywood woke stuff. And so the question is, I actually wanna ask this as like a wider meta of like asking myself why do I like reflectively turn away from some woke things and I don’t reflectively turn away from other woke things.Um hmm. Thinking, thinking, what is it what is it about some woke things and not other woke thingsSimone Collins: I can’t even identify because I, I couldn’t tolerate Steven Universe for example, and he liked it. So, I dunno.Malcolm Collins: I think it’s, that and it, and it’s, it’s fewer and fewer woke things that I like. There’s been no woke thing in the past couple years that [00:27:00] I’ve liked, maybe the last five years that I’ve liked.And so my answer here is I think they just got more and more creatively bankrupt as time went on and it became more and more about DEI in terms of the actual creative process. I think what we saw historically. Was actually decent creatives who were infected with woke ideas. I think what we see now is the industry has gone through a process of DEI based hiring so much that there is no longer anybody competent in the room.And a lot of the people who’ve been woke for a long time have lost their talent over time. You can go to our like Stephen Colbert, right? Like he clearly lost his ability to be funny when he used to be hilarious. But a fun, fun news piece about this is a Penguin Random House subsidiary. Put out a thing about like who they want books from, and they explicitly said, we don’t want, we want books from non-white people. So like, if you’re, if you’re a white man especially you have a traditional European name, we don’t wanna hear from.So, you know, you wonder how big this is. The penguin Miranda [00:28:00] House felt that it was okay to just publish that like on their site. Like we are racist and proud. That is our brand racism. Anyway, let’s go over, my potential answer here because I was, I was go getting to it. It might just be that they isolate themselves from other people way more.If you’re talking about trans and gender non-conforming people, 63.9% are lonely. And they link this to things and, and, and 70% are diagnosed with anxiety and depression. So what it could be is they just do not leave their house as much. That could be it. That could be the whole explanation.Simone Collins: That would help.I mean, yeah, not a lot can happenMalcolm Collins: of new stimuli. They’re afraid of potentially disconfirming stimuli, stimuli that challenge them. And if you are terrified of any sort of new environment you may just not go out and not interact [00:29:00] with people. That’s my guess. For a quick recap on the hugely overrepresented trans community within mass shootings, I think it’s worth touching on that.‘cause the last time we did a video that was last year, there have been two more trans mass shooters since then. When we did that episode, a bunch of people were like, fake news. I wonder if they like see the new trans men shootings. And they were like, was was I wrong about this being fake news? Or did they just in one ear and out the other, right?Like. Because I pointed out that on a per person shot basis, the recent Canadian trans mass shooter killed more people than the two Columbine shooters did. IE on a per that is wild. And that new story wasn’t even relevant for three days, whereas Columbine shocked the country for like five years.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The amount that this can be memory holding, the amount to which everyone just normalized it. Even on the right now, it’s like, oh, another trans mass shooter. Of course, like when, whenever you [00:30:00] hear a mass shooter today, you’re almost like, were they trans this time?Simone Collins: Well, I think so much has changed to, you can also look at this in the context of the attempted, we’ll say, is Islamic or Muslim terror attack in front of Mayor Manny’s mansion in New York City or to Pennsylvanian.Brothers attempted to throw a nail bomb or multiple layer nail bombs.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. And CNN’s response to that. Did you see what I sent you?Simone Collins: Yeah. It was basically the way the newsMalcolm Collins: right hereSimone Collins: is extremely,Malcolm Collins: so c Nnn said in response to. Two Muslim teenagers attempted to male bomb a crowd, and when Mandani talked about it, he tweeted about it acting as if they had tried to mail bomb him instead of the people protesting him.Right. But CNN. Said, and the, and the person, they got them on a hot mic in the car saying, others [00:31:00] like me will come. My community like Muslims specifically, they said, won’t let this stand. CNN then twisted this to say two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather, but in less than an hour their lives were drastically changed.Change. Now. You’ve read this so far and you’ve been like, they must be talking about somebody who was hurt by the attack. Right?Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. And then, andMalcolm Collins: then it continues to say, as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs.Simone Collins: Well, and what’s interesting as well is the sentiment, like the, we’ll say anti-Muslim sentiment in the, in the United States and especially New York has not seen any hit based on this.I think if anything, there has been an increase in pro-US sentiment in response to this. REU on X was referring to it as a front lash as opposed to a backlash. Against Muslims due to this attempted terror [00:32:00] attack. And my theory as to what’s happening here, and maybe this is the same thing that’s happening with trans shooters, is basically anyone who acts against Western culture, capitalism, and or white people.Is seen, heard the urban monoculture, which sees basically anyone that hates those things as being good is, is to your, to your favor. You know, that means that you, you are a good person. I, I think, I think similar patterns have been people have said similar patterns are observed with the October 7th attacks in Israel, that that only led to this search and surge in support for Hamas and for Palestine and not for Israel.So basically, if you. If you hate Jews or white people or western culture or capitalism, you’re good. It doesn’t matter what you stand for. You’re the good guy. We like you more. Yeah. ‘cause we have to attack these things and take them down. And [00:33:00] so you, you can’t be wrong by being trans because that is anti these things.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: As the culture sees it.Malcolm Collins: So to go into the names, because if somebody’s like, oh, you’re lying about the trans mass shooters, because look at this org that did X study ai like reflexively tries to take that position often. Unless you tell it, actually count the numbers it’ll, it will go and say, well, X group did a study to show that this isn’t true.And it’s like, here’s just the numbers and you can verify each of these instances. Okay. Randy Stair Wes. Market supermarket, east Township three killed. This is the one who’s known as the Danny Phantom Shooter, who is often not included in these lists, and I don’t know why he was clearly trans. He want, he wanted to be a cartoon girl from Danny Phantom and thought he was gonna be reborn one if he killed a bunch of people.Nangie Mosley. This was 2018 Rite Aid Distribution Center. Killed three, wounded three. Alec McKinney STEM School Highlands [00:34:00] Ranch. Killed one, but attempt to kill more. There were eight wounded. Anderson Lee Och. Our Aldrich this was the LGBT plus nightclub, Colorado shootings five killed, 19 wounded Andrew Hale covenant School, Nashville, Tennessee.Six. Killed three children, three adults. Dylan Butler. Two killed one student, one principal, six wounded shooter died by Unli Guinness, Ivan Moreno Lakewood Church Houston. He ended up killing zero, but one child was critically wounded and the shooter was killed by police, but he was attempted mass shooting.Ber day carrier. The five killed, five injured. It, it, this one was one where people are like, this individual wasn’t trans. This is one of the ones where people push back the most, but he has. Facebook photos of him wearing women’s clothing, jewelry, makeup, and fake breasts. And you can say, well, he’s just a crossdresser, but he would’ve been considered trans or gender what’s the [00:35:00] word?Like ex ex. Expansive by these other studies. So why don’t we get to count him in our numbers, but they get to count them in their numbers when they dive. Explain that to me. That doesn’t sound fair at all. They clearly gender expansive. So then Natalie, Samantha Oppo, the Abundant Life. Christian School, Madison, Wisconsin.Two killed teacher and student. Six wounded Robin West Men Catholic Church school Indianapolis. Two killed children, 30 wounded. Theresa Milo. This was VT Highland Shootout near Canada border to kill. This was one of the zans. Emma Banney this, I think with another one of the Zans. Sorry, Emma Burani. Oh, and the first one, sorry, I pronounced it wrong, was Theresa Young bl or Ophelia Bach Holt. And so this was a CA Trailer Park Shootout. Uh uh. Michael Z Zko. Another Zian. There was a Trans death cult. By the way, that’s a, a thing that we need to be aware of. Who were the Zans [00:36:00] really racking up the numbers here for their community.Shooting two kill parents. And then Maya sec trans woman. They, they, they were not a shooter. And then since then we’ve had Robert Drogan this was the Rhode Island incident. And then Jesse Van Ler this was the British Columbia, Canada one. Okay. And, to, to go with the lower numbers here or the higher numbers.So we can go with the, the lower number, which is 14 in the United States, or we can go with a higher number, which is 15 in the United States. If we go with the higher number, that means that trans people commit mass shootings at 23.8 x the rate. Of the average CIS individual it would mean that on the lower end it’s at, at least around 20 x the rate of, of, of cis, like it’s not even clo.You’d have to like. Again, these numbers aren’t like a fudge here. Like you can fudge this number out or this number out fine. Say this person didn’t successfully kill enough people, or this person [00:37:00] wasn’t exactly trans right, like they were just gender expansive. Even if you take out half the people, you’re still looking at rates 10 x higher than the cis population.Like it’s, it’s, it’s, even if then you say, well, okay, well then let’s cut them in half because of, I don’t know, reporting bias. Then it’s still five x eight, right? Like the, theSimone Collins: regardless it’s egregious.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Regardless, it’s egregious. It’s not like an edge case sort of a thing here. And we have episodes on why this is, if you wanna look but this.How dare you say X or Y don’t you know that trans people are the target of violence every day and it’s like, well, mostly of black people. Okay. As we’ve seen from the trans black statistics and way less so than other groups, and yet they are way more likely to be the perpetrator of violence than other groups.So like it is. It, it reminds me of the have sympathy for the Muslim [00:38:00] terrorist extremists. Right? Like, and it’s like, I, I’m sorry, I don’t Right. Like, they, they are the person who is hurting other people. Right? Like they are the social, what, what, what’s the word here? Like, like, they’re not socially harmonious or whatever way you wanna put it.Right. And these are things that could be worked on, but to work on them, we have to admit them first. And we need to investigate them. And yet this is something that it, it doesn’t fit the narrative that these groups want to be true about themselves. So it, it just doesn’t get investigated. It doesn’t get looked into.And we collectively as a society, just don’t talk about it. I mean, even conservative influencers don’t talk about this very much. Any final thoughts, Simone? Any hypothesis you have above mine?Simone Collins: I still hold that. I think estrogen can play a role. Reducing testosterone can play a role. In the past, the United States Justice system used [00:39:00] versions of this kind of chemical castration.Against people as a punishment, but also in an attempt to like reduce their rate of essay. Yeah. Yeah. Is bad. Yeah. You know, what youMalcolm Collins: gave to SAS and we’re giving it to children now.Simone Collins: Well, and, and to adult men. And I mean, I think it’s understood what the effects of these things can be. So I think that that also is a role, but I do think that broadly speaking, yeah.The person who doesn’t go outside is not going to experience the same risks as a person who does go outside. So, Ooh,Malcolm Collins: I have a hypothesis.Simone Collins: What?Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: This one is gonna be weird and maybe more Malcolm focused.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Okay.Malcolm Collins: I think there is something, as a man that is viscerally satisfying about. Getting into a fight. It is, it gets your adrenaline flowing. It’s, [00:40:00] I used to get in fights all the time. I was a very I remember with Steven Mul when he’s like, I, I never got in a fight.Groff like, you’ve never got in a fight growing up. Like, what’s wrong? You’re like a fight virgin. Like said, we, I, I know it’s socially whatever, but I think boys are supposed to fight. Right. You know? Our kids fight all the time. And right now it’s play fighting, but I expectSimone Collins: it, oh my God, I made the huge mistake this morning of getting onto the floor to dress them.Huge mistake.Malcolm Collins: They allSimone Collins: attack you. That’s when that’s when they attack. Yeah. I mean I was also like play fighting with them. ‘Cause that’s one of the easier ways to get them dressed. Right. You just like grab one of them by the feet and start pulling their clothes up. They’re gettingMalcolm Collins: strong now, right?Simone Collins: They are. Oh my gosh. I mean, and Andy too, she was going in,Malcolm Collins: she sees what everyone else is doing. She knows what’s up. We’re taking her down.Simone Collins: She, yeah. Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: See again, I don’t know if this is a cultural or me thing. But it’s, it’s sad when I fight people I like to fight people. It’s funny, I, I don’t, I don’t swing both ways when it comes to [00:41:00] like sex arousal or whatever.But if I’m fighting a man, I want it to be a strong, tough looking like regular looking guy, right? Like, I don’t want to fight a weak looking man that wouldn’t beSimone Collins: satisfy. Oh, and you, I were talking about that, that pattern with our kids too, that they only appear to have interest in attacking. The most strong person.It’s like a challenge. Like you wouldn’t wanna play the like. We were at that Walmart yesterday looking at various levels of, of Sour patch Kids’ strongest, was that what it was? It’s like aMalcolm Collins: game thing. And they found out that they could sell it by selling it at levels of sour, but people only bought the highest level of sour.Simone Collins: Right. And like, our kids only wanna fight the highest level of threat the strongest looking person. And you would only wanna fight a strong looking person. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I would find it viscerally disgusting to fight a trans person.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: It, it would not be. A satisfying experience. And maybe, I know this is something people don’t talk about, like how great it feels to, to [00:42:00] really let someone have it, you know?But, and I, and I, I, but other guys must feel this way. I mean, people recreationally, box people recreationally. Do MMA, would you. Get the same joy out of boxing a trans person, like, I don’t think you are. I think you’d feel like, and I’d be scared of like knocking out their cosmetics and stuff.Simone Collins: I know all that money.Oh gosh.Malcolm Collins: Not just all the money, but I don’t want somebody’s nose to come off when I hit them like,Simone Collins: oh God,Malcolm Collins: that’s, that’s not,Simone Collins: that’s not how rhinoplasty works.Malcolm Collins: I don’t, I don’t know how rhinoplasty works, but I getSimone Collins: you, you, you, you actually break someone’s nose. To reshape it. IMalcolm Collins: don’t, I don’t want any of the, I don’t, I don’t, I’ve seen Michael J his nose is gonna fall off.He’s gonna look like a skull. Well, I’m gonna be I, I do not know what they’ve had done, but I’d be afraid. Right. I, I’d be like, well I can’t push them here ‘cause these are fake and I don’t wanna knock them out. You know? I’d be so I could, I could see that leading to lower rates of violence.Simone Collins: Hmm. It’s people being afraid [00:43:00] to break something. PeopleMalcolm Collins: in the comments can be like, Malcolm, that’s not normal. But I, I suspect it is normal. I suspect when a guy gets in a fight, he does, he, he wants to get in a fight with like a physiologically normal looking guy.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, that checks outMalcolm Collins: not like a disease to looking guy.Simone Collins: That too. Yeah. Yeah. Also, just I think that. The beyond that there’s just maybe kind of a level of subconscious fear of trans people. Like, I don’t want to touch that person.Malcolm Collins: Oh, I definitely have that. Yeah.Simone Collins: So it’s not even that like I would feel concerned in a fight with them. It’s more like. Don’t make me touch it.Malcolm Collins: And when she says subconscious fear, I need to, I’m, I’m not talking like phobia in the traditional sense. I’m talking like, likeSimone Collins: a sort of like infection. Like, like, like a leper you wouldn’t wanna fight.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When I see like a leper or like the joke of the guy from scary movie who has like the little weird deformed hand and he.[00:44:00] Puts it out and he’s like, grab my hand. And they’re like, I don’t wanna shut.Simone Collins: Yeah.Speaker: , take my hand. Ah, come on. You’re gonna fall. Unless you take my hand. No, give me your other hand. Oh, my other hand isn’t strong enough. You take my little hand. No, get it away from me.Malcolm Collins: You don’t feel that way about the deformed person or the leper because you hate lepers or you have some sort of bigotry against lepers.Simone Collins: Yeah. There’s just like this inherent s squi.Malcolm Collins: Well, because it’s the same thing that your body is giving you, being like, this person appears phenotypically, abnormal, they might have a contagious disease.Like that’s what I assume is, is causing this reaction in people.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And you don’t wanna get in a fight with somebody who might have a disease in a historic context either.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. I think that that has more to do with it. But yeah, that could also be a factor. People are [00:45:00] too afraid to meet them upMalcolm Collins: anyway.Love you to death, Simone. Have a spectacular day.Simone Collins: I love you too. Gorgeous. They wanna film the hysteroscopy, so I’m trying to get that booked, but I can’t get it booked without a consultation and I can’t book a consultation without calling their phone number, even though their phone number tells me to use their online messaging system. But when I use their online messaging system, they tell me to call their phone number, and then when I call their phone number, it takes 20 minutes.Ironically, that has been the more ing like frustrating thing to navigate today in contrast to the Peruvian banking system, which was surprisingly user friendly today.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I find a lot of in Peru, they have things, some things that are surprisingly streamlined.Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s weird. Some things are like amazing and better, way better than the US and than other things are [00:46:00] like, wait, you are going to make me.Go to this place in person and not only sign the contract in person, but put my inked thumbprint on every single page of the like a hundred page contract. What is happening here? And what’s crazy is, as I remember this, there was this one time when we were trying to respond to this government RFP, essentially, and I was able to see the skill with which government bureaucrats.Were able to do thumbprint contract signatures because they’d just done it with thousands of pages and it was like watching a blur with like the stamp stamp and like the page flipping and the, the thumb printing. And I was just like,Malcolm Collins: well, I, I’m gonna actually argue that I think the thumb printing thing is a good idea.I think it’s, it’s better than signatures. ‘cause I think signatures they’re just way too easy to fake. And a thumbprint, it’s incredibly difficult to fake. And, honestly, I don’t even know why we trust signatures at [00:47:00] all. It’s, it’s, it’sSimone Collins: shouldn’t. We shouldn’tMalcolm Collins: Oh, weirdly,Simone Collins: everything that you have signed in like the past three years has been Oh yeah.Malcolm Collins: You,Simone Collins: me, signing it on my computer where I have a saved picture of your signature on my MacBook, and this is, you know, like, you know, contracts worth, you know. Possibly millions of dollars. You know, secure financial agreements, government things. YouMalcolm Collins: are a lovely person, Simone. I cannot by the way, fun things I learned today that I think you and the audience will enjoy.One is, is that a Chinese team actually found out what causes hallucinations in ai and how to potentially reduce it significantly. So, it turns out that if you’re looking at like the individual nodes, you know, each layer of an ai, it’s like layers of a neural net. Mm-hmm. It turns out that it is an incredibly small amount of the nodes that generate all of the hallucinations, [00:48:00] or almost all of them, really.So it is something like I think like a fraction of a percent I think it’s 0.1% of the nodes lead to it. Or 0.01%. The problem is, is that if you downregulate all of those nodes, ai, stop producing human sounding responses so it, we haven’t totally figured this out yet. You can downregulate them a bit and you, you know, you’re dealing with the trade off of less hall hallucination,Simone Collins: so to hallucinate is to be human.Malcolm Collins: Yes, potentially. So that was a fun one that, that, that we have now learned. SoSimone Collins: they didn’t find what causes it, they found. That certain types of nodes cause it, but they didn’t causeMalcolm Collins: it. Very few nodes lead to almost all of them. And that if you make these nodes much. More likely to trigger. What that ends up doing, which is really cool, is that ends up making the ais much more user pleasing.They will be much more interested in, like, if you say, oh, did you get that wrong? After they got something [00:49:00] right, they’ll be much more likely to say, oh yeah, I did get that wrong. Or if you say something like, I’d really like to know how to make like a dangerous weapon they’ll be much more likely to do that for you.So, well,Simone Collins: and that’s kind of like a human who’s being hypnotized, being like, why? Yes. I was. Tortured by a satanic cult in my childhood.Malcolm Collins: Oh, that is interesting. Are they, the hypnosis is a hypnotist when they’re looking for people on the stage. Are they looking for people with extra of this type of node in their brain?Simone Collins: Oh, well, no. 100% they’re, I mean, like it is known that they target agreeable. Oh,Malcolm Collins: there might be something to cook with here. Simone, I think you, you might have found something here.Simone Collins: Well, the first thing that I thought about when you said this Chinese team has figured out what makes LLM hallucinate was like, okay, great.You’re gonna find out what makes humans hallucinate by determining this.Malcolm Collins: You’re, you’re clever because for people who don’t know hallucination sorry. Hypnotism is a very easy way to implant memories in people. They’re the huge problem of this when hypnotist goes to somebody to find [00:50:00] buried memories.What is normally actually happening is the person is making up new memories but then believes that they’re buried memories.Simone Collins: And maybe we should do an episode on this too though, because apparently there are certain types of people who are more likely to be subject to hypnotism, and there’s even this.I don’t know what fidelity it has, but apparently there’s this like I trick test where like, I can’t remember exactly how it works, but it’s something to do with your eyes and if you pass or fail this test, you’re way more likely to be a good candidate for hypnotism or like to be vulnerable to it.And so maybe that also has to do with the way that your brain responds or how active a certain like that might show the threshold at which your brain does certain things. And so I do, I do wonder if there’s a series of patterns here that we could connect together to create a theory as to what makes hallucination in human and LLM alike could beMalcolm Collins: fun.Okay. [00:51:00] Final piece of information today that I thought was fun is the new Ayatollah of Korean. You know, the guy’s son, he released his first statement today.Simone Collins: Oh, I thought he was dead. ‘cause he was MII And like,Malcolm Collins: well, hold on. Hold on. And it was written.Simone Collins: Oh wow.Malcolm Collins: So I mean, a lot of people are like, what?Like, did they they would, the, the,Simone Collins: yeah. Even if his leg was blown off if I were him and my leg were blown off. And my family were, was killed. I would show myself in the hospital room bloodied and bruised. It would get me points.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Simone Collins: And they’d be like, wow, look at this. They’re, you know, doing this to a, this, this poor man whose family has been destroyed by these terrible infidels, blah, blah, blah.I mean, like.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the other ayatollah would make video messages all the time. You know, you can make video messages and still say fairly hidden, right? Like, so why isn’t he making video messages? And the I think the unfavorable answer is, is that. [00:52:00] A lot of people have said that he’s in a coma. If he’s in a coma, it means he was elected to this position while in a coma which means they wanted just like a figurehead who wasn’t gonna push them around.Simone Collins: Honestly. Wasn’t that basically just the Biden presidency at the end,Malcolm Collins: right?Simone Collins: Everyone’s favorite leader, basically in a coma.Malcolm Collins: They love doing this. But yeah, so that could be what’s happening. I think the most charitable answer I can come to is that he was injured in some way that like looks really bad on film.And they are afraid that Oh, like,Simone Collins: makes him look weak on film.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Not just hurt, but weak.Malcolm Collins: Maybe he’s on like a ventilator or something, or he’s covered in like, things going into his face and so they can’t do just a video of him talking. That what’sSimone Collins: also odd though is that Iran has been. Very trigger happy with AI videos.You can just put a filter that makes him look normal.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Right. So that could be one thing. The other thing could be that he [00:53:00] is actually that terrified of Israel. Finding out how to back trace him from, that’sSimone Collins: more plausible given how AI happy they are with videos. ‘cause they can just fake something.Well, unless people would be like, well, that was obviously fake you. Yeah. I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then causes him more problems.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: All right. But interesting. I mean, if he is dead or almost dead, I mean, the trick is you can’t kill a dead man. As soon as they said that, everyone’s like, oh, they’re just gonna kill whoever’s next.So they elected a dead man.Simone Collins: Good move.Malcolm Collins: Oh, by the way, I didn’t talk about this on our last episode on Move that I would take, I was, the Trump administration right now is, and I know that a lot of people are gonna freak out because it would be a boots on the ground move, but there is one.Port space where I think it’s 75% of Iranian oil is shipped from, because it’s the only in the Black Sea, deep enough space that they can fill stuff.And it’s this small island. And we have always been against bombing it because, the, the, if, if, if you bombed it, it would be hugely economically relevant to like the world. And [00:54:00] Israel wants to bomb it right now because it would destroy Iran for a long time. But I think, and Trump apparently has even mused this, what we should attempt to do is just take it.Occupy it, make it a US occupied space. It’d be like, look, I ran you play nice and we’ll let you sell oil.Simone Collins: That would also explain why Trump is saying he’s not ruling out boots on the ground, even though that’s really unpopular for people to hear. ‘cause that would be so strategically powerful.Malcolm Collins: It was just one little island and you take it and now all of a sudden you have basically a sandbar.Yeah, you, you, you force Iran to not mess around with the strain of her her moose, which again is just protecting Chinese interests anyway, which. Whatever. I dunno if you’ve heard, but the dollar is go shooting up and the euro is crashing. Right now gold is crashing too.Simone Collins: Oh really? Yeah. Why gold?Malcolm Collins: I think a lot of people were betting against the dollar and when push came to shove, everybody went back to the dollar and everyone who had thought there was gonna be some sort of other major asset got burned. Anyway, I’ll jump into [00:55:00] this.Speaker 4: So I heard banging. Why did I hear banging? Because I got Ed. Stop. This is Indy’s bed. Indy is supposed to sleep here. Why are you jumping kind? I kind of was my head on the door. Why? ‘cause I’m so fun Do attack you. He run to attack me. Do not attack you.No. Do not attack me. Line. Why do you wanna blind the viewers? I[00:56:00]Speaker 3: won’t get away.Speaker 5: Dam it. Dam it, dam it. I’ll escape. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm & Simone Collins break down the bombshell signals that China’s military bluff has been called — and the world order is shifting in real time.After US-led operations dismantled Iranian and Venezuelan defenses with near-zero losses, China’s “world-class” weapons systems (the ones they sold their allies for billions) failed spectacularly in live combat. The very next day China quietly stopped its near-daily provocative flights over Taiwan. Coincidence? Malcolm doesn’t think so.In this episode they explain:* Why Iran’s desperate attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz are actually crushing China far more than the United States* How Xi Jinping just purged the last experienced generals who warned him against invading Taiwan — right before those warnings came true* The internal CCP chaos, the “fake it till you make it” culture exposed, and why even Peter Zeihan-style analysts got this completely wrong* Trump’s surprisingly warm calls with Putin & Xi and what they really signal* Why the next 6–12 months could decide whether Taiwan stays free or fallsRaw, data-heavy, zero corporate-media spin. If you want to understand what’s actually happening behind the headlines in 2026, this is the episode.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Right now, the United States, in terms of where we are struggling in this warfront, because a few big ships have been hit by Iranian missiles is to defend China’s economic interest.That’s where their oil comes from, not ours. they’re essentially trying to hurt China until the US backs down over this.Like the news. Says all of this without explaining it to people in stark terms,Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the signals that we have of a massive change in how China might be thinking about itself. Foreign policy wise.Simone Collins: No,Malcolm Collins: specifically, they shut down their flights over Taiwan, where they used to have constant sort of military antagonistic flights over Taiwan.They said, oh, this is because, you know, we’re going to have this [00:01:00] upcoming meeting with Trump. Or people have said, well, maybe it’s because of oil prices. It happened literally the, the next sort that was supposed to fly over after the first news of the bombing started. So it’s, it’s obvious that’s not the case.Simone Collins: Well, hmm.Malcolm Collins: And specifically what I want to talk about is not just this that happened with China, but. In Iran, in Venezuela. And in another instance in Pakistan Chinese equipment, which they had touted and perhaps believed internally to be top of the line in equivalent to US equipment failed any level that was beyond spectacular.You’ve gotta keep in mind the, I ran at a, a $5 billion weapons deal with China. Oh. And so they reportedly had some of the best equipment there. And not just that we’ll go over what analysts were saying, but you know, you have Peter Zhan [00:02:00] calling Caracas a, a fortress you know, and impossible to, to invade.You have other analysts saying, Iran, there’s just nothing you can do. You know, it’s, it’s completely. Impregnable. And yet, and I’d like to point out people, like if, if you watch something that’s tainted by like the, the, the bias media sources you’ll get a very bad understanding, I think, of what’s going on right now.And I, I think a lot of people when I hear them talk about what’s happening for example, in Iran or what happened in Venezuela. For, for, for context, we lost only two planes and those were to friendly fire. We have lost no boats. Okay. And in terms of the, the very light, I think it’s seven casualties now.It’s because of like random missiles of bases. This is astonishing when you’re talking about these attacks taking [00:03:00] off the board within any, a matter of months Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba which was reliant on Venezuela, but, but the, the point here being is China, I think it’s now, and we’ll go into evidence of this, why this would be sort of going back over the books and having to rethink, like, are, are we anywhere near the military power?We thought we were.Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Hold on though. We, the US shut down two of our own planes.Malcolm Collins: It wasn’t us, it was another ally. I’ll get into it.Simone Collins: Okay. Hmm.Malcolm Collins: The, no, this is actually insane. Like at this point we have total air dominance in Iran at this point, which basically means we can fly wherever we want within.What was one of the most hostile countries on earth to the United States until fairly recently, all of this happened without China. And Russia actually has [00:04:00] attempted to help a little bit with the Iran situation. Oh, really? But keep in mind, if you go to CCP videos they would regularly talk about how the reason why the US hadn’t done anything in Venezuela is because we’re afraid of China.Speaker 2: Why has the United States held back for so long and still dared, not really strike Venezuela? This whole thing is pretty strange. This is Chinese, US warships. Were already deployed in the Caribbean. The threats were made loud and clear, yet nothing actually happened because China is watching from behind.And Venezuela itself isn’t easy to deal with either. It has real backing from China, money when it needs money, supplies, when it needs supplies. That means if the US attacks, it won’t be anything like Iraq. Maduro is actually quite clever. He keeps saying China’s victory is our victory. Deliberately tying himself to China and making Washington even more hesitant to act.Malcolm Collins: That was the, the CCP talking position. Right.Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. Well, what’s also interesting too, and why I’m really glad you’re talking about this is what I’m hearing from mainstream, [00:05:00] we’ll say progressive leaning. YouTube people and from mainstream media is that the United States is putting itself in a uniquely, strategically weak position vis-a-vis China because we are diminishing our back stock of weapons on Iran making us unable to potentially support Taiwan, should China make a move.SoMalcolm Collins: that is Okay. So like we, we, we should talk about how embarrassing this situation is for China right now. , The way that Iran is trying to get us to stop attacking them.Mm-hmm.Okay. Is by doing enough economic damage that the US feels it needs to pull back.Right. The, the core way that they are doing that is attempting to increase shipping prices through the strait of Hermo. If that was cut off the core country that’s going to fail is China. Mm-hmm. Right now, the United [00:06:00] States, in terms of anywhere where we have our back against the wall in this Warfront anywhere where we are struggling in this warfront, because a few big ships have been hit by Iranian missiles is to defend China’s economic interest.That’s where their oil comes from, not ours. We don’t get anything from the strai of her both. That’s China.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Had you contextualized that Simone?Simone Collins: Huh? Well, it’s certainly not what people are talking about, so, no, I wasn’t thinking about it. It wasn’t top of mind. I mean, people had mentioned like, well, the US isn’t directly affected by the, you know, oil interruption, but that doesn’t matter because globalization means the US is affected.If anyone else is affected, that’s, yes. AndMalcolm Collins: who is most affected? China. China is the country that [00:07:00] is most affected by what’s happening right now in terms of global powers. And. It’s, it’s so weird how they gloss over that they’re like, this could cause a global economic crash. Instigated, obviously not by the United States because we now have a bunch more oil, but by outside powers collapsing.What outside power are you talking about there, buddy? Because I can think of one that depends on this strait being open a heck of a lot. And we’ve talked about this in other videos, but I think a lot of people do not contextualize how much China depends on this. A huge chunk. If the straight of Malacco was closed, which would be a little bit closer they’re losing 45% of and I’ve heard other estimates as high as 80% of their imported energy.Mm-hmm. Which would be devastating. Not only that, but China is a net food importer and a net phosphorus importer, which is Doub China. We’re phosphorusSimone Collins: though,Malcolm Collins: because we’ll do a second video on this. Morocco did this play where it took the Western Sahara, which is like, they did a really good job of it as well.Oh,Simone Collins: you mentioned [00:08:00] this. They’re just like quietly doing a land grab. IsMalcolm Collins: that right? That’s the vast majority of the world’s phosphorus supply, which is necessary to create fertilizer. Good for em isn’t something we can create artificially yet. AllSimone Collins: right,Malcolm Collins: Maria? They have like 13 x the amount that China has.Mm-hmm. And so, another thing about this conflict, which is interesting that you point this out. So not only is 17% of China’s oil coming from Iran and Venezuela, but a lot of the rest of their oil comes from countries that are now better friends with us because of this conflict, specifically Saudi Arabia.Everyone out there who’s like, oh, you know, the United States is doing this because we’re being manipulated by Israel and the Jews, and everything like that. Yeah, okay. Whatever you wanna believe that. But the, the reality of geopolitics is that this is as much something that Saudi Arabia wants as something that Israel wants.And Saudi Arabia has a lot of global geopolitical power specifically. [00:09:00] Because of the concentration of wealth within the country, which allows them to do things that other countries cannot do. But secondarily, because of their ability to cut off oil supply to other players if you have any degree of the control of Iranian, Venezuela and Saudi oil, you control a huge chunk.And then the US oil, which is a huge chunk of, of, of global oil supply, just a huge chunk of the global oil supply. So that’s also super relevant to think about. But I’ll, I’ll get into the points here. In regards to where I think things are going in Iran right now. My, my read of the situation is, is a lot of, if this ends up working out the way that Trump wants it to work out to, in a best case scenario, is they need to, when I say they, I mean Mossad needs to kill the new Ayatollah.If they can successfully show that if you put in an ayatollah that is not willing to play ball, we’ll just keep killing them eventually. One of these Ayatollahs, because like the one that they put inactually let’s talk about [00:10:00] like the religious significance of what’s going on right now. So they put in an ayatollah that is the direct son of the last Ayatollah, which both cel, last Ayatollah, and the first Ayatollah put in writing that they’re never do and that would make them a, a hereditary rural country again, and they said that that was anti-Islamic. Yeah. And not only is this guy horrendously corrupt, hundreds of millions in the UK right now in terms of like laundered estates and everything. But in Islam, this is, this is shown as happening in the Koran. When a country loses a war Allah says I make you do that.Like, like this happens to you because you are not being faithful to me in the right way. And so this puts a bit of a mandate, Kevin, what’s going on in Iran right now? Oh, for the person who was elected Ayatollah in an anti-Islamic fashion. Mm-hmm. Which is ironic that the former Aya [00:11:00] took that position because they’re Shia, and the Shia is a faction of Islam that split came over wanting Islam to be more hereditary.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But I, whatever, you know, may, maybe they can get around it with that. Right. You know. But the, the point here being is, even if we just pull up, people can be like, well, now Iran is more motivated to attack us. And it’s like, well, they were certainly motivated to attack us before. Right. Most of the terrorist action that we have been dealing with globally other than the stuff that’s funded by the Saudis and the Wabu was funded by Iran.And this is why support for the war is so strong in the US military. There were some recent polls about this. I mean, I think it’s because, you know, even though that they’re the ones who are most directly impacted by having to go into action where there is action they also realized that this has been the group that we’ve actually been fighting throughout all Middle Eastern conflicts that were just pussyfooting.Hmm. But let’s get into this. China significantly reduces military aircraft incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification dome [00:12:00] starting on February 27th, 2026, marking an abrupt, unexplained pause in what had been near daily operations. This whole lasted at least seven days, initially, the longest such period of time since Taiwan began publicly tracking these before the 2020s.So, so, no, this is the longest we’ve ever seen. Since the 2020s and this period of no planes was only ended by the resumption of just a two aircraft. And these were surveillance, not military aircraft or traditional like fighting aircraft on March 6th, followed by minimal continued activity. Now a few interesting notes as to China’s position right now and why this may have China so much to see their equipment fail.So spec spectacularly in a public context is China over the past year has reduced actually it’s over the past couple years, has reduced its military purchases by 73%. And the reason they’ve reduced military purchases is because they went with this policy of we want to produce more internally.ThatSimone Collins: makes sense. I mean, from a national [00:13:00] security standpoint, you should be internally producing these things,Malcolm Collins: right? Unless it turns out that you can’t make things internally or everything internal is corrupt. Then they have the secondary issue and, and see our video about the coup that happened was in China recently.And I mean, I still think the evidence points to this, but one of the guys, I, I, I love it that some of our people are like, no, no, no. This was just a totally normal thing for Xi. To illegally. Mind you, this was illegal within the CCP because it was the top council. And to take action against other members of the council required a majority vote of the council.Mm-hmm. The problem is, is that she was arresting the only two remaining members of the council other than him and the head of the secret police. And so he couldn’t have gotten a majority vote. And a lot of people were like, oh, this may have just been a normal thing to have happened within China or something like this.So some side notes after that, immediately they do this big announcement about this, which they’ve never done before. Normally when they’re doing corruption cleanups, they don’t immediately then be like, this [00:14:00] guy was a traitor to the nation. Like super strong wording in major publications and then withdraw it the next day, which was really interesting as well showed there’s some like power stuff going on there.It’s really fascinating. This happened since then. Is it, you know, what happened to that guy? They’ve coming to the backyard dead.Simone Collins: Oh, just what? Murdered or just,Malcolm Collins: oops. Likely. Likely. They said he had medical complications.Simone Collins: Oh.Huh. Hmm.Malcolm Collins: So, this hasn’t been announced officially, but this is what the rumor mill is, and there hasn’t been any proof of his life, which, given that there is a rumor of this, you think that if he was alive, they would be like, and here’s proof that he’s still alive.Sure. But this matters a lot from Chinese perspectives. It means their entire upper military barras has been removed at this point. Right. And there have been rumors that she actually wanted to go and try to take Taiwan during this last US election cycle. And that it [00:15:00] was these two top generals that were keeping him from doing that saying this is a bad idea.Simone Collins: And these are generals who per the previous podcast you did on this were more experienced? They were some of the most,Malcolm Collins: they were, yeah. The only people with real experience, likeSimone Collins: in,Malcolm Collins: in, in theSimone Collins: like they, they’ve seen more before. They’ve seen China involved in military action, and they, I guess had presumably the wisdom to say, let’s not do this.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And I, if I was gonna suspect anything before I get further here what I think might be going through, she’s head with all of this. Mm-hmm. Put yourself in, in, in she’s position. Okay. He takes out these two top generals because he is them. As blocking his ability to do what China needs to do, which is just retake Taiwan.Okay? He thinks they’re blocking him. They’re not really listening, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So he does that. And keep in mind, these people have been long-term friends of j. As well, right? Like they were not in the anti G faction. These people were always [00:16:00] in the G faction, the innerSimone Collins: circle.Malcolm Collins: And don’t be stupid about this.So he’s likely having some internal feelings about this.Speaker 3: The point I’m making here is that I xi the Xi feeling very certain about all of this until, you know, Heath killed one of his best friends for a long time. And then all of the things that that guy warned him about and was the very reason he believed that guy was betraying him. Not just that guy, but two guys, um, start coming true, one after another and you start to think, oh my God, am I actually like with.Was I wrong to do this?I.Malcolm Collins: But also now, you know, he’s responsible for what China does next. He actually needs to, because he doesn’t have anyone else in the room anymore. Meaningfully,Speaker 4: And this is similar to what I say about relationships. , The reason why it’s useful to structure relationship for a man to have all of the power is because when a man has to make final decisions and only has you to [00:17:00] consult, he’s actually often going to, unless he’s a complete evil sociopath, going to make decisions that are in your favor more because he doesn’t feel that there is some alternate source there that’s, you know, arguing against him.And he needs to compromise. He needs to think, okay, now I’m. Fully responsible for everyone, and she may finally be in that position. Now that he’s taken everyone who can disagree with him outta the room, he needs to begin to model their opinions, and he might not have been doing that before. He might have been using them to model the opinions of the why Would it be a bad idea to go directly after Taiwan faction?Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Immediately after he does this is when the Venezuela thing happens. Which he had believed was impossible.Most of the world’s top military analysts believed was impossible.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Then a few months later, the Iran thing happens. And increasingly, and this is also really important, China has become isolated because of its reaction to these individual instances. Every time a Chinese [00:18:00] ally who China had promised they would protect, comes into a situation like this, and China does literally nothing but sends a strongly worded email.That makes it so much less likely that any other Chinese ally is going to come to their aid if a conflict actually were to begin. And I think that this has become ex like dramatically starker in a modern context than it was before this. So if you go, let’s go six months ago. Okay. China attacks Taiwan.Now China’s gonna be saying, yes, America has allies in the region, you know, Japan, Korea, Australia but and I’m just here listing allies that I am fairly certain would militarily go to bat over this. Right? But we also have allies, you know, throughout the, the globe, you know, Iran and Venezuela and Russia.And they’re gonna put [00:19:00] on either economic pressure or military pressure to help us. The, the problem is, is that right now it doesn’t look like that. It’s very obvious Iran isn’t gonna be able to do anything no matter what happens, even if the war winds up in the like, best possible scenario for them.Which really for them is the US of what, what, what does Iran want? It wants the US to pull out without the new guy being killed, and then no long-term geopolitical destabilization within their country. The problem is, is even that would be a win for the United States when contrasted with the pre this status quo.Right. I, I ran basically just once this to end or dragged the United States into something long term that causes, again, geopolitical strife. But that geopolitical strife will be felt disproportionately by China. Right. So again, it’s like a weird situation. So in Iran’s best case scenario, China [00:20:00] is one of the primary people who suffers.Right?Simone Collins: I don’t follow that. And I think what Iran wants is Israel gone off the map and the US not involvedMalcolm Collins: in cases? No, I’m talking about realistic. The path they could go from where they are now.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: China Iran’s strategy right now is like, you know, we punched him. They’re trying to like grab us and hold us in place to be like, now you can’t get out.Now you’re entrenched within this, this fight.Simone Collins: Well, yeah. They’re just trying to basically last us out until this becomes too politically unpopular for us to continue and then we back out and then they just continue on with their current regime. That’s their plan,Speaker: For some idea of how bad things are and how potentially unrealistic this is for Iran. They just froze at some large banks. , I think all the civilian bank accounts, meaning that it looks like the government is just going to begin to steal money from its civilian population, , because it does not have enough to pay to keep this war going.Malcolm Collins: that’s their best [00:21:00] case scenario. But they’re still geopolitically completely isolated after that at this point because they spazzed out and attacked every one of their neighbors.And the reason they did that is ‘cause they were trying to create economic damage. The problem is, is it geopolitically isolated them and the core economic damage they’re doing globally is to China, not to the United States. Right. Like they’re essentially trying to hurt China until the US backs down over this.Mm-hmm. Which is a terrible situation like the news. Says all of this without explaining it to people in stark terms, it really better gives you an idea of China’s position. So, even in the best case scenario for Iran, China is in a terribly backseat position. Mm-hmm. Anyway, so China. Does decide it wants to go into this war now.Now the position that it’s in is not China and Taiwan and China asking does the US actually involve itself? Because I think with a lot of this, this, this you [00:22:00] know, historically Biden said that we wouldn’t I think Trump has wavered on whether or not we definitely would try to defend Taiwan.I think that China’s now getting the perception that the United States would try to defend Taiwan if, if they went in, you know, after seeing what happened in Iran. Venezuela, I think they’re getting the idea of, oh, as long as Donald Trump’s in power, it’s a yes from the United States,Simone Collins: right?Malcolm Collins: And the problem with a yes from the United States on Taiwan, from China’s perspective after not backing its own allies, is Russia obviously isn’t gonna be able to do anything.Really differentially to support them. Iran’s outta the picture of Venezuela’s outta the picture, every regional power of relevance except North Korea, which I’ll get to in a little bit. Mm-hmm. And yet within the region, if the United States decided to do something, at the very least, Japan’s gonna jump in especially with their current president.Who Oh yeah. Says that Margaret Thatcher is her primary political inspiration. Mm-hmm. And is a politician. We maybe should do a whole episode on just her. She’s [00:23:00] awesome. I like her. SoSimone Collins: I think they also have invested more in the mil militarysinceMalcolm Collins: she, but they, they’ve increased their military spending.If you look at animes recently like gate and stuff like that, they’ve become incredibly more militaristic and jingoistic in terms of military fantasies. Japan wants to be, and very core to their culture historically is brutal militarism. AndSimone Collins: it’s, yeah. So it’s just no longer hashtag too soon.Like we’ve finally gotten to the point where,Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s no longer hashtag too soon. Yeah. Yeah. They, they areSimone Collins: enough time has passed where they can like be military and not be creepy anymore.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re not like Europe, where Europe is like, oh, you know what, if like young men die in war or something like that, or like imagine the burden to us, the young Japanese men are like, yeah, like, this is gonna be awesome.In part because the way that the history of World War II is taught to them and the way that the history of their own words [00:24:00] is taught to them is so jingoistic that. It’s really either they’re the victims or they’re just winning, winning, winning. Right. It’s never like this is a morally complicated thing to be doing.And with United States on their back and potentially a moral reason to justify them going to war, they’re gonna be quite excited about it. Mm-hmm. Would Australia get involved maybe. I mean, China is, they’re hugely economically tied to China. Yeah. So it’s a little bit harder to say on that front.Simone Collins: They’re in a very fraught position. Yeah. And in the past, China has thrown its weight around with Australia,Malcolm Collins: so Yeah. Same with South Korea. But why South Korea is sort of irrelevant whether or not they get involved, which is an interesting position is South Korea, like, so China decides to go for Taiwan.The natural thing for them to do. North Korea recently has been doing major arms purchases of modern weapons. And a lot of people think that, they, they might be seriously considering an [00:25:00] invasion at this point. I mean, the question is, is why would they be seriously considering one at this point?And it might be because it would be a jointly timed thing. If Xi Jinping has been planning to attack Taiwan, it may be a, a, a joint operation. Right. That, that’s when it would make sense to do that. If both countries have this, you know, wishlist. I want to go in scenario. It could be dual triggered.The problem is, is that if South Korea doesn’t get involved in the war, right? Like suppose China does go for Taiwan and South Korea doesn’t get involved China’s gonna want to do everything as power to prevent North Korea from attacking because that would immediately trigger South Korean involvement.And frankly, South Korea is just a lot stronger than North Korea. In, in every as we’ve seen from the current wars that Israel has been involved in the. Technological capability of a nation matters a lot, and the level of corruption within a nation matters a lot. And a nation could take on much bigger opponents [00:26:00] if those opponents are corrupt and can’t manage decentralized military forces.And so, you know, the US would take that card, bring North Korea into the war, but we get South Korea. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great card to have, right? Sure. That’s, that’s again, why it’s, it’s sort of irrelevant the, the South Korea question to go over the specific military equipment that was on display here.So Venezuela has long been one of China’s biggest arms customers in Latin America. Since 2005. They bought systems including the JY two seven A a mobile range, long range anti stealth radar. The, they bought the HQ nine and the HQ 12 surface to air missile sand batteries. And they layered these with Russian S 300 pals.I was gonna make this episode talking about Russia as well, but I wanted to keep this focused on China. They in terms of how they formed the, so how’s the systems [00:27:00] performed? They failed completely. The US steals helicopters and aircraft entered Venezuela. Totally undetectable.Simone Collins: Oh gosh. So they had this total false sense of security. Like, don’t worry, we bought the anti stealth radar.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They, they were, they were quickly blinded and, and, and jammed by EA 18 G Growler electronic warfare.No. And none of the Chinese or Russian Sams fired effectively keep in mind how scary that is if you are China now. Right. It wasn’t like the systems performed poorly. They were still, they just didn’t work out matched. They were completely irrelevant.Simone Collins: It’s, it’s kind of nice though. I would appreciate it as China having all these test cases for our military technology better that better with Iran and Venezuela than with them in some.Scenario. So I guess, you know, the best way to test your military capability is to [00:28:00] have someone else pay for it. Basically, Iran and Venezuela subsidized it by buying these things from them and then have them play test it in live scenario. Yeah. This is,Malcolm Collins: this is no longer a fluke in terms of Chinese systems.This is the rule. They arecomplete,Simone Collins: totally well-documented that Chinese military tech has failed consistently, both in Venezuela and Iran when matched with American military tech. Correct?Malcolm Collins: Yes. And there’s been separate failures in Pakistan, but that’s a separate scenario. I’m not gonna go too deep onSimone Collins: Oh wow.Okay. So three, three different locations. All Chinese military techMalcolm Collins: people don’t understand how corrupt, corrupt countries are in terms of like, like how incompetent they can be. I think a lot of people, they see a big country, they see shiny things and they think, oh this country. A good example is Iran’s military tanks, for example, they had something called the Suleman.And I’ll put one on screen here. And they’re very pretty tanks. They’re actually an American tank that’s around, I think 70 [00:29:00] years old where they have just basically put metal plates over it. They make it look more angular.Simone Collins: They added skins.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they added skins. They added skins to old timey tanks.Simone Collins: That’s amazing.Malcolm Collins: And people can be like, well, China isn’t that look. And China has good drones. You know, who had Chinese drones? Was Iran. But on top of the Chinese drones that, that Iran had, oh, sorry. I was going to go over one of my favorite stories about China to give you an idea of what I mean and why people at the head of China can be so scared when you can go and you see the display and you think that this stuff works and then you realize it’s all fake.Is for the Olympic Games when they wanted to look like very you know, cutting edge and green and like we’re so much better than the west and they had a stoplight.Simone Collins: This is the Suman tank. It does just looked like someone put like cardboard or, or like, I don’t know, like cool metal over a tank. It like, just they covered it.It, it, it, it kind of reminds of like, you know, when like families at home make tanks that of cardboard, like [00:30:00] cos Halloween costumes, it kind of looks like that, don’t you think? IsMalcolm Collins: it Yes. Is it so much worse than you expected, Simone? It,Simone Collins: it is just about what you described, actually. So pretty good for our audio only listeners.Malcolm Collins: But the well, speaking of the, the, so, so during the Olympic games, they wanted to look really you know, high tech and everything.Simone Collins: Sure.Malcolm Collins: And so they had on street corners air powered street lamps. And it turned out that not only did they not work, but they used electricity to spin the fans to make it look like they were working.Simone Collins: That’s adorable. So, wait, people knew that because if there was no wind, they were still spinning.Malcolm Collins: I don’t know how people figured this out. I mean, the, the, the, just the d extent that you get this within Chinese culture because, because it’s so centralized, there’s just so much room for grift.Mm-hmm. And so there isn’t a good understanding at the top how much of their equipment actually works. And now that more and more of Chinese equipment is sourced from within China, there is even [00:31:00] more doubt to give another example of one of their stealth detection systems completely failing Israel sent in.This was a case where over Iran, a Iranian fighter jet was downed by an Israeli fighter jet. And one, this is insane that they have that much air control of tarran to begin with, right? But it’s also insane the way it went down. Okay. What the Israeli fighter jet was. And I’ll put pictures on screen and you’ll immediately see how comical this was.Mm-hmm. It was a completely cutting edge stealth fighter. Like a best in class. Aircraft. Mm-hmm. The Iranian aircraft with an aircraft that was really made for training. It had no chance against the Israeli plane. And a lot of people are like, why did they even go off the ground? Why even waste a pilot on that?Right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And the answer may be that they couldn’t tell it apart from a droneSimone Collins: with their tech or just with their knowledge.Malcolm Collins: With tech is the Chinese [00:32:00] tech. They can’t tell Israeli fighter jet from a drone.Simone Collins: That’s really bad. Okay. Wow.Malcolm Collins: And note here, they have taken down seven drones, American drones.That’s, oh, okay. So, no, no planes or boats but a few drones. That’s good for you, Iran. And, and people here note like the constant lashing out of Iran, the damage to surrounding gulf countries infrastructure as like some sort of failure on America’s part. Like, oh, they’re still sending rockets.It’s like, no, that’s further geopolitically isolating Iran. Right? Like that’s not earning them goodwill in the Gulf, right? Like, the e especially when a lot of these countries are protecting themselves like the uua E with America bought systems. That’s a good. Economic opportunity for the United States in the future to sell them more of those.Talk about, you know, depleted weapon. Surprise. [00:33:00] Yeah. Yes. ThisSimone Collins: has been a big sales pitch for American military tech,Malcolm Collins: And Israeli. These systems have failed marketed aggressively as equivalent to Western technology by China up, up until now.Octavian Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So just say we were looking at. Venezuela. There was the $5 billion agreement signed in secret with Iran. And the known equipment that it included is the CM 3 0 2 anti-ship cruise missiles. These supersonic missiles with a range of 290 kilometers designed to skim the water surface at high speeds to evade ship defenses.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: The hq and keep in mind, none of these ended up hitting American ships. A, a few commercial tankers maybe, but no American ships. HQ nine B surface to air anti-ballistic missile system. The HQ one B surface to air missile system the F in six MAN pads the YLC nine B long range surveillance radar and [00:34:00] the type 3 0 5, a air surveillance radar and the SLC two counter battery radar for locating artillery.And they acquired Sunflower, 200 kamikaze drones. And they acquired HQ 19 antisatellite interceptor missiles. I, I think they did actually take down one satellite. And andSimone Collins: these were things, wait, that Venezuela purchased from China?Malcolm Collins: No, these things I ran purchased from China.Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins: They, and again, these largely failed.So we lost three F 15 E Strike Eagle Firefighter Jets March 1st, 2026, in a friendly fire incident involving Kuwaiti Air defenses near the Ali Alam Air Base. All six crews survived after ejecting, and the aircraft were valued at Route 282 million and were destroyed. We lost seven mq, nine reaper drones that were down by Iranian fire. But that’s it.Simone Collins: Defense shock.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think it was [00:35:00] automated Kuwaiti Defense system, probably systems we gave them.Speaker 5: Okay, so the, , system that shot down the American jets was indeed American in origin. , And what happened was, is some of the only casualties on, at least on the American side on this war had been recently killed in Kuwait due to bombs that had gone into the country, , from from Iran. By the way, for people who are wondering, most of these bombs aren’t flying anywhere.Iran is like at what, 5% or something of the bombing that they were early in the campaign. But anyway, so, , the six American service members had been killed by one of these. , And so the Kuwaiti operatives who were not as well trained as the Americans, but had American equipment were incredibly on edge., And when they saw signals in the sky, they shot reflexively.Malcolm Collins: So just, I mean, keep in mind these attacks may have been happening without Kuwait knowing that they were gonna happen. All of a sudden you see a bunch of fighter jets systems may have been automated.But the point being is. It’s not that our equipment is [00:36:00] unassailable. If you have competent equipment that like is American or Israeli bought our equipment was able to take down our equipment. Right. It’s unassailable when going up against Chinese and Russian equipment.Simone Collins: Hmm, interesting.And then what do you make of Trump expressing such warm regard for both President Putin and Xi Jinping? I’m so confused by this in recent press conferences, for example, Trump was talking about his conversation with Vladimir Putin and about how impressed he was with the American progress in Iran, though of course, it’s, it’s hard to tell when Trump has been genuinely flattered by Putin or when put Putin is just mocking Trump.And Trump doesn’t understand that. No. I thinkMalcolm Collins: what happened is that at first Putin, like a lot of people thought Trump [00:37:00] was a fool. And I think that he did mock him in a, a lot of press and stuff like this. I think that if you contrast the US’ recent military incursions with Russia’s recent military incursions, Putin might be feeling a little bit like, wait, wait a second.Does Trump actually know what he’s doing? Like, he made me look very foolish in comparison. It’s almost the exact opposite reaction to what Putin had is Putin had this big plan of how he’s gonna have this big military win without any you know, losses and how he’s gonna be overwhelming force and blah, blah, blah.And Trump comes in with a totally new way of doing things. Your other episode where we talk more about that. And I, I genuinely suspect that Trump got on a call with Putin. This, this is my modeling of this. Yeah. Putin internally does not like what’s happening in Iran. He apparently has been helping Iran target oil [00:38:00] tankers and stuff like this to try to damage global economy.Of course he would. It increases the price of his own oil, right?Simone Collins: Well, yeah.Malcolm Collins: So,Simone Collins: which is embargo. I mean, another thing recently discussed was that Trump, I think allowed, what was it? India, to take one Russian oil tanker without any penalties because you know, things are all messed up with oil right now and India really needed it or something.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway, the point being is I can imagine internally Putin might be thieving at Trump, you know? But when you get on a call with somebody who’s nice to you, and the thing about Trump with people like and stuff like that, is even if you look at where, like there have been fights like the, the, the Zelensky JD fight that wasn’t initiated by Trump.Trump is genuinely pretty amicable with world leaders. Unless there are, or they are openly being hostile to him. Mm-hmm. So he gets on a call and he’s like, Hey, Putin, like, and Trump’s probably pretty excited about what’s going on in Iran right now. Like, can you [00:39:00] believe what we just did? Like we did?And if I’m Putin right, first of all you’re gonna be like, yeah, you actually have done pretty well compared to what I expected. But in addition, Putin’s probably flattering him trying to get more military information because Trump’s on the phone all giddy about what the successes we’ve had in Iran.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I’m Putin and I’m like, wait, it can I get more information by telling him to talk more about all of his victories?Simone Collins: Maybe Trump is also so friendly with Russia and China, or at least voicing such warm regard toward them because in his view now he has demonstrated that he has negotiating power.And Mr. Art of the Deal loves knowing that he has the bargaining chips at this time.Malcolm Collins: Well, this is the way that Trump always does deals when the other person is playing hard to get, and we’ve actually seen this in real time play out. So we can tell from Trump’s public speeches what’s going on in his private calls.By this, what I mean is there have been instances in which somebody was [00:40:00] saying really bad things about Trump publicly, but Trump was saying really positive things about them publicly. And then a bunch of deals come out that are hugely favorable to the United States. The new leader of Venezuela is a great example of that, that to me implied that Trump knew under the table they were having positive negotiations.And he’s not gonna bad mouth her just ‘cause she’s badmouthing him. He is like, I understand why you have to do this. Right. With Xi Jinping and Putin what this tells me is he feels he’s getting what he wants in the conversations he’s having with him. And why shouldn’t he Putin. How did Defense Pact with Iran?Right? Like they should have come in now. Realistically, could they have given how tied down they are to Ukraine? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, no. Yeah, they would’ve been insane. Could China have, honestly, I think it would’ve been the right call for China to come in in Iran. People can be like, theySimone Collins: do what though, really?Malcolm Collins: Well, so the problem is, is at least make it costly for the United States. If China had tried to come in, at least we may not have been able to hold Iranian airspace.Simone Collins: Well, but [00:41:00] then there would be precedent for us being in open military conflict, whereas right now we are just tense frenemies.Malcolm Collins: Right. Okay.So let, let’s go over why I think it was demonstrably stupid for China to not intervene in this. Now I don’t think that anyone could have made this call in the speed that China needed to make this call. But China could have defended Iran, you know, tried Air Defense of Iran keep it limited as an opportunity to get one information on how good their systems really are.Right? Which would’ve been very important for China two, to prevent the US and Israel from getting complete air dominance over Iran. And three, make America look really, really bad. Because if China gets involved, then everyone can say, this is a global war. This is a world war, even though it’s not.China could have easily with the United States if China had done that and said, and we will not take this conflict outside the border of Iran. Everyone else would’ve respected that because nobody wants a global war with [00:42:00] China. China doesn’t want that. We don’t want that. But the real benefit to China over this is it would’ve made it way harder for us to maintain the moral high ground in a defense of Taiwan if China tried to attack Taiwan.Right. Because it could be like, oh, look at this instance where they attacked this innocent foreign power and we came in to protect them. Right? It would’ve really bolstered them in, in that position, given them a lot more information, and it would’ve made the United States hugely reticent to get involved in another conflict.But the speed at which the US achieved air superiority was in Iran. Unfortunately, I think, and China can see this too, emboldens the US in any sort of future potential conflict here, thinking what could happen with Taiwan. And I wanna keep in mind what analysts were saying and how they got everything so wrong, because this is also important.You hear just some of the words from analysts like Peter Zian saying, you know, Caracas is a fortress without the surrounding context. And the surrounding context [00:43:00] shows you geopolitically why they misunderstood things so hugely. Okay. So. Zhan talking about this, right? He goes, there’s a very strong coastal uplift with mountains, basically paralleling the coast.So to get to Caracas, you actually have to go into the mountains and then punch through a couple of tunnels, one of which is about a mile and a third long. The other one’s a little less than a third of a mile, half a mile, somewhere in between. The hard part is. Keeping the city and the country alive, you’re talking about hours and any number of ways that things can go wrong.So first here, note that he’s thinking a traditional invasion force, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which wasn’t what we did at all, right? And so because he thinking a traditional invasion like what Putin attempted and got punched in the face he’s, he’s not, he’s, he’s making huge miscalculations about their actual defensibility.Then he goes on, the hard part is keeping the city and the country alive. You’re talking about hours in any number of ways a thing could go wrong. It turns out all you need to do, and it, Trump has said, this was in the [00:44:00] press said, who do you want running Iran? And Trump said a regime insider. You know, he, he, he said that, yeah, the, the son of the Shah would be nice, but what we really want is a regime inr.He said, that’s what we did in Venezuela, that’s what we want in Iran. Mm-hmm. Right. That’s how you maintain stability. Mm-hmm. Which wasn’t something that people had really done before in terms of geopolitics, which was this really ingenious play that Trump essentially invented. Then you’ve got in, in terms of Iran matia soak, who called Iran an impregnable fortress, he said, due to its geographical position, Iran is practically an impeccable fortress.The Zargos Mountain Mastiff, which defies the Iran, Turkey, and much of the Iran Iraq border would make an invasion completely impractical. Then I point to the invincibility of the Iran Nation, which of, oh, this is the what? The previous, aya said well, we’ll get to this in a second actually.‘cause it’s, it’s an important point. Okay. But what we’re seeing here [00:45:00] is they keep imagining an on the ground tank to hold the country invasion. Mm-hmm. Not a I can act within your country was impunity and the way the Iran war was carried out is very different from the Venezuela War. Right. And it says something very different.The fact that we had recently just bombed Iran a bunch, ended that bombing on our terms, come back and bomb them a bunch and might be able to the point where we have Ariel dominance within their own country. We were then, we might be able to say after this, okay. We let the war come over. You have a new ayatollah think much later.We come in when we know that he’s gonna be in a boardroom and we bomb that room. Right. That, that’s sort of the situation until you guys do what we want, because we can act with impunity within your borders from an aerial position.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: ThatSimone Collins: is So you think that’s why the Trump administration is being so cagey about [00:46:00] timing and while they’re, why they’re also being so cagey about defining success?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: When they mean unconditional surrender, I mean, it’s really more just, I mean, they’ve been clear. We will, we will keep taking out leaders until we like the leader you’ve chosen. That’s basically just, yeah. Sure. We’ll, we’ll calm down for a little bit and then we will be back as long as it takes.Malcolm Collins: One thing that has been good about this word, I think it shows. Shown me really easily, who is actually not pro to the United States interests. And all the right is just a bought and paid for shill. I don’t know if you’ve seen Tucker Carl. We’ve beenSimone Collins: accused of being propagandists onMalcolm Collins: this. Of course we have.But these are people who are stupid and listen to the propagandists. They, no, they, they literally like to give you an example of how crazy the propagandists are. Tucker Carlson, did you see his interview on this?Simone Collins: I did not, no.Malcolm Collins: He said that Trump is asking for a [00:47:00] unconditional surrender from Iran, and he goes, and do you know what unconditional surrender means?Speaker 6: Unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter and that has been, if there’s one consistent lesson of history, it means unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter.. I don’t think Americans would voluntarily participate in it.I, I just don’t think we can do that. And let’s stop. Let’s not lie to ourselves. We’re moving toward that.Simone Collins: I heard that. Yeah. Soundbite.Malcolm Collins: And, and he’s like an, I don’t thinkSimone Collins: any sense, he made it seem like that’s some kind of definition.Malcolm Collins: He’s, you know, and then he’s, then he goes on to say that I don’t think that a lot of Americans like want to get like that Trump.He literally words it like, Trump’s gonna put out a call to American citizens. ‘cause he is like, and I don’t think a lot of American citizens would be interested in that. He’s gonna put out on a call to like American servicemen being like, who wants to get on the rape train?Simone Collins: Yeah. Please, please fill out this, this Google formMalcolm Collins: to get on the, this is what, no, but, but I think that, that you would say something that [00:48:00] anyone with basic common sense knows is.Not true and is not true in an almost comical sense. Like you have to like assume your audience is really stupid. And keep in mind that Tucker Carlson was also the one who was saying that Venezuela was great because they kill gay people, right? Like, and that we should be better allies, wisdom. And that the Maduro’s regime, it’s awesome.You, you heard about this, right?Simone Collins: Oh no I didn’t. I thought you were referring by mistake to his whole Russia thing.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. This was, he had a thing with Madura, he had an interview and he talked about how great they are. And in the United States, we don’t realize how socially conservative Venezuela is and thus why they’re such a good ally or could be such a good ally which they are now Trump handled that, that was fantastic.But. I just, I just don’t know how you can hear somebody say something like that and still be like, this person is being honest with me. Right. And for the people who are like, oh, well, there’s like Israel shills out there or something, the Israel shills [00:49:00] aren’t saying stuff. Like, if, if that’s the only reason somebody would be pro the bombing of Iran, not a extracted war, but the type of conflict that we’re in right now is Iran.The, the people who are pro that, I haven’t heard them say stuff as crazy as this means that we need to go in and rape all of their women and children. Right. Like, to me it means at least they assume that their audiences aren’t as stupid. Which is just wild to me that he went there. That was one of the craziest things I’ve heard with this.If you wanna hear what the Aah said about his country’s defensibility, he goes, I point to the invincibility of the Iranian nation, which is of course, due to Islam. This invincibility can be observed in the nation’s victory against the Doms invasion and resistance against hostile conspiracies over 40 years.So it’s important to remember that this can be seen as, as, as disconfirming of the faith of the founders of the country if we can, and if [00:50:00] Israel can continue to act with impunity, with an area of borders.Octavian Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And I love when people are like, well, now Iran’s gonna do terrorism in the United States. Iran has been funding potential terrorist attacks within the United States for decades at this point. Like literally, they probably spend over a hundred million dollars a year. And I think that that’s probably a low number on funding terrorist groups with the goal of attacking the United States.Speaker 7: Okay, so I way low-balled it. So I decided to ask an ai, I said, , how much money on average does Iran spend funding terrorist groups that have America as one of their targets? And it said, , expert estimates on the low end would put it at a billion dollars. And on the high end would put it at two to $3 billion a year.If you’re like, oh, now Iran will start funding terrorist cells that want to attack the us. They were [00:51:00] spending at least a billion dollars on this a year up until now. People who act like this is just the concern of Israel are frankly cued in the extreme.Malcolm Collins: They have two, one of them in custody right now. Confirmed attempted assassination attempts against Trump alone, right? Like,Simone Collins: oh, you’re right. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The, this idea of now Iran is going to be, you could not have been more motivated than what they were already doing in anti-American attacks.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: and that’s where I really get it. When, when these Americans are like you, you’d only attack Iran for Israel. They tried to assassinate Trump twice.Simone Collins: It’s, it’s, yeah, it’s a pretty hostile enemy. There’s, there’s also a lot of people holding the United States responsible for deaths in this conflict. [00:52:00] You know, children in rebels of, of, of buildings.This the girls school that was bombed.Malcolm Collins: Way less people have died since we started this than died than civilians were killed. Like Iranian protestors, civilians werekilled. They sent your house now?Simone Collins: No, they haven’t sent me any messages, buddy.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Yeah, no, I mean, I’ve heard that. I just don’t think that they actually care. They would’ve cared about the Iranian civilians that were being killed, and most of the people who were making these complaints when Iran was killing civilians, were saying stuff like you know, this is like Nick Fuentes.He was cheerleading the regime while they were slaughtering civilians. Right.Simone Collins: He really, I I have no idea. I, I haven’t been following what he’s been saying, honestly. I, yeah, I’m just so confused because I’m, I’m hearing such a consistent story on one side, honestly, both from the left and right, which is so strange that both the left and right are saying the same things about our conflict in Iran, which is we never wanted to be involved.We’re killing people, and this is [00:53:00] horrible. Woo. OnMalcolm Collins: the right, not a single YouTuber I watch has been anything other than totally enthusiastic.Simone Collins: Yeah, like Asma Gold’s enthusiastic. That’s the one person I’m seeing who’sMalcolm Collins: Asma Gold Leaflet. N Zor the guy being enthusiastic little troll guy. The troll avatar.Ready? The Romanian tv.Simone Collins: Oh, it’s sitting on top of daddy’s cabinet.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Sorry.Malcolm Collins: I’m, I’m literally only seeing people pro this and I’m, and I’m talking about every single YouTuber I watchSimone Collins: Anna and Dacia on the Red Scare podcast, who are like sort of big right-leaning now. Influencers or both, areMalcolm Collins: they right-leaning?What are their right-leaning positions?Simone Collins: I think they’re right-leaning. Yeah. I mean, they voted, one of them voted for Trump. I think the other one maybe just didn’t vote. But yeah, they have on all like the major right-leaning guests.Malcolm Collins: They, they don’t have any kids by the way. One kid,Simone Collins: one, one has a kid, twoMalcolm Collins: women.And this is something I’ve persistently seen about the faction on the right that takes these [00:54:00] positions, right? Mm-hmm. Is they are not the faun position on the right. And they’re not going to be relevant in long-term right-Leaning culture in the United States.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So, I mean, I guess, you know, if if they vote for our guys, it’s okay to partner with them For now, I’m just not seeing it among any of the YouTubers I follow.And the, the YouTube, the people who have heard are the ones who have, you know, everyone’s like, oh, they’re Astro or the Trotter, ISimone Collins: okay.Octavian Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: It’s on the other side.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So it’s interesting that you’re seeing this, that our social media circles are so different. But my social media circle is very new. Right. And like the new right is the faction that’s pro this stuff. SoSimone Collins: Yeah, I mean, it, it, it, it seems to me that from a perspective of we want humanitarian crises to end this regime is running itself to the ground.This regime is, has made it very clear that it is an existential threat. To the United States that it basically wants the United States to not [00:55:00] exist and it wants Israel to not exist. And Israel was like, Hey, we’re going in. Are you, are you with us or not? And maybe the United States was too. Also, the United States alleged at some point in this process that there was an imminent threat to the United States and all this, which we don’t know about, and maybe we can’t,Malcolm Collins: Two assassination attempts on a president is a pretty imminent threat.Simone Collins: Yeah. But there were like three or five days, like something in the future that was going to happen that would have happened had they not done this. That wasMalcolm Collins: also, who knows passed as well.Simone Collins: So yeah. And,Malcolm Collins: andSimone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: The administration’s decision on this, as Simone pointed out, wasn’t to go to war or not go to war.It was Israel’s doing this, are you gonna come in or not?Simone Collins: Yeah. The Trump later said that we pressured Israel into it, though. That sounds like something he would say because he doesn’t wanna. Ever follow someone else’s?Malcolm Collins: I don’t believe thatSimone Collins: lead. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I believe Israel this is just too risky to do under after something.So as big a win as the Maduro thing.Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:56:00] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially how, given how unpopular it is right now among many Americans just whinging about it.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, the question is, and the, the, the long term is the people who are complaining about this are like, this is gonna be another Iraq. Do they reflect when we pull out and it’s not another Iraq?Do they say, oh, I was completely wrong, or do they just listen to the next thing? Their propaganda of the weak week says?Simone Collins: The, the narrative I get presumably when we pull out, ‘cause I just didn’t really see there being a, a very clear conclusion to all this is gonna be, well, you know, all we did was go in and kill a bunch of people and not achieve anything because basically a copy of the previous guys now in power.And we lost millions of dollars in a lot of our weapons stockpile. And what do we have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. That’s what the narrative’s gonna be like.Malcolm Collins: This, the stupidest narrative I’ve ever heard. Like clearly we already have a huge weapon because of Iran’s lower geopolitical position [00:57:00] was in the region after randomly lashing out at all of the neighboring countries.Right? Like that’s already been an enormous geopolitical win for us within the region. And in addition, Iran is significantly less capable, militarily and economically after this in, in, even, even in that scenario.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. By the way, is there reasoning as to why they were lashing out at all these.Not necessarily hospital to them nations.Malcolm Collins: So the core reason and their core military philosophy is that they’re going to keep bombing all of the major infrastructure. So this is desalination plants that are important for living in the region and oil processing facilities mm-hmm. And gas processing facilities in the region to do enough economic damage to then blame that economic damage on the United States to make the United States look bad for this war.They’re essentiallySimone Collins: trying to, they’re trying to hold the entire region hostage.Malcolm Collins: Right. But the problem is that the US doesn’t rely [00:58:00] on this region economically, China does.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Back to the core topic of the video. So it, and it’s working. It’s working. It does. It’s having some economic impact. And it is making people be like, yeah, we don’t want to be in here especially long.Especially given that this is happening with Iran. Right. That they’re doing this.Yeah.And so, yeah, it’s, it’s a working strategy for giving them leverage within the conflict, but it has a, a, a exactly opposite impact on their geopolitical influence.Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re digging a deep grave, but they’re also, I mean, existentially threatened, so what do you expect?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: Okay. Interesting. But in general, the, the bigger picture of China, you’re saying is China has now discovered basically that its military tech is not as efficacious as they thought it was. And they may be changing their stance on Taiwan, which may have been under imminent [00:59:00] threat. So perhaps a buy one, get one free of the United States invading, not invading, well, we’ll say attacking Iran.Is that perhaps Taiwan has been given some more time.Malcolm Collins: Or they’re prepping to begin attacking Taiwan right now and they haven’t taken any lessons from this. Oh. That’s obviously the other, or in thisSimone Collins: Well, yeah, because that’s the other narrative that’s being spread in mainstream media is that now we have less capability to be involved in some kind of conflict with China over Taiwan if we want to go out and try to participate there as well.So,Malcolm Collins: yeah. I don’t, we don’t wanna end up with Russia with a bunch of rotten bombs, you know, we make a lot of bombs use them. Okay.Simone Collins: Keep it fresh. Yeah. I gotta do that whole Mormon thing where, you know, you [01:00:00] take your old emergency food that’s about to expire and you do potluck and you keep a fresh supply.Yes. Gotta use up the old stuff and then bring in the new stuff so you have good, fresh. Emergency support. Well, itMalcolm Collins: matters as we saw in the Russia, Ukraine war.Simone Collins: You’re right. Actually, you make a good point. I mean, and and any infrastructure ages, it really is. I wonder if we are going through the older stuff, just like all the inventory managers of the US military being like, well, this was going to expire anyway.We’d better use it. Just like people making casseroleMalcolm Collins: their old love your own, have a spectacular day. And it’s interesting to see what China does next.Simone Collins: I am genuinely curious. Now, thanks for giving me a bigger picture of this, because what I’m seeing, and I think what many of our viewers are seeing is this very myopic, oh, isn’t it so horrible that we’re involved in Iran?Take. And you are bringing focus back to a larger [01:01:00] picture and geopolitical story.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the horror of other involvement in Iran is China is being economically hurt, which of course hurts us because we live in a global economy, but we are being hurt because China is being hurt.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And to a lesser extent, Europe.Simone Collins: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay. Interesting. Thank you. And I love you.Malcolm Collins: Love you too.Simone Collins: I think I’m gonna chase the other kids down and just shear them in the backyard like sheepbecause they’re also in need of haircuts, as are you desperate day. So get ready for that. Know that you will not be spared the knife,the razor, whatever it is. Aren’t you glad, by the way that electric razors exist? Can you imagine that people used to get shaved with like a straight blade? I wonder how many murders were conducted that way.Malcolm Collins: I don’t use electric [01:02:00] razors.Simone Collins: Well, I know you don’t. I’m just thinking about shaving in general and, and grooming history.Okay. Well, I mean, when you think about it, since barbershops were also medical establishments in, in Europe for the longest time they must have like really the way it was, it was just seemed like, well if we have a a knife this close to your face, we might as well get dental work done then too. Like,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Simone Collins: you are already in danger.Don’t worry about it.Malcolm Collins: And today’s episode,I guess you didn’t get to comments.Simone Collins: I did not.Malcolm Collins: I am working on better coding for the agents now ‘cause the agents are live, who our fab.ai. And so hopefully they can be you know, good for. Making. What I really wanna do is task some ways making games. ‘cause I have some specific game concepts I really wanna get out there.Simone Collins: Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’tMalcolm Collins: even, ISimone Collins: even think about thatMalcolm Collins: life coding is because the agent system can like, do NPM start and see the game it’s working on and everything like that and capture the back end and the front end. It can do more of the iterative [01:03:00] process. No this is when it’s all working right now.They’re still in an early stage, but the rest of the side is fully working now, so That’s neat. If you’re interested in like AI chatbots,Speaker 8: what happened? There’s kids in my bed.Speaker 9: They get in here. Why are there, why are there kids in daddy’s bed? I, why were you hiding?The people. I wanna whisper some Beda Whisper. Okay. Yeah.Speaker 8: What I just, [01:04:00] I just whispered, I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?Do you have a plan? No, I don’t. I don’t. I don’t stop it. Everybody outta my room. I said I was whispering it. I I This out, out, out. Everybody out. You goof. Get them out. You can go back down. Get them out. No, no, no. Be nice. Be nice. Roll out this, go out. Go out. If you do 20 lessons, you can stay in daddy’s room.Otherwise, back downstairs. Oh. You’re driving to drop this. Get downstairs. I tried to show you where you wanna plan. Okay. I saw no Torson. Get downstairs now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Dive into the future of computing with Malcolm and Simone Collins on Based Camp! In this mind-bending episode, we explore the breakthrough in wetware—using real human neurons grown from skin and blood cells to power affordable bio-computers. From Cortical Labs' $35,000 neuron chips that play Doom to mini-brains mimicking kindergartners' neural patterns, we discuss how this tech is cheaper and more efficient than traditional silicon systems. We tackle ethics (including pain pathways in lab-grown brains), AI alignment, quantum integration, cultural perspectives from Puritan roots, and wild speculations on space-faring brain ships, human uploads, and a networked species beyond humanity. Is this the end of worst-case AI scenarios or the dawn of servitors? Plus, thoughts on techno-puritanism, Soma-inspired horrors, and why backwoods traditions embrace utility over mysticism.The X posts we mention in this podcast:Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing a breakthrough that I hadn’t expected which is that. Using neurons in bio-inspired systems is now a reality that you, a watcher of this show can likely afford yourself. If you wanted to try some sort of like business experiment based on this, what and in many ways is now cheaper than doing it on computer.And this was a huge breakthrough that changes a lot of, if you’re looking deep future of where humanity goes at this point. Mm-hmm. With the development of quantum computers, was the development of AI continuing one thing that a lot of people feared and, and this is why I say that. This is such a, like, a lot of people are like, Malcolm, this is horrifying.Like, are you excited about servs and everything like that? Like humans being turned into like. Husks for a [00:01:00] machine,Speaker 2: Define the damage. Spine. Compromised. Have you not received pain? Suppressants suppressing pain? Damage submitted report to the surgical bay.Malcolm Collins: And it’s like, well, we’ll we’ll get to that, we’ll get to that. But what makes it really good is it changes worst case scenarios. Worst case scenarios for ai, foaming taking over the world, expanding into space.Historically speaking before today I would say that in such a scenario as that, you know, humanity gets wiped out there is maybe a 3% chance that neurons or biological matter is part of whatever AI’s become. We are now, like if we’re using AI estimates here, because I was going through ai, having it compile all the research we have on where quantum computers are right now, you know, looking at computers a hundred years from now without humans around anymore it said 60 to 70% chance [00:02:00] that it would be partner on.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: So that’s, that’s now the worst case AI scenario, right? Mm-hmm. Likelihood this is, you know, humanity wiped out or enslaved our overlords. And, and what’s interesting is that the part of, and we’re gonna go into, okay, 50, 60 years from now, we project technology moving forwards and sort of the jumps that we’ve been seeing, technology moving forwards, what does a computer look like?You know, quantum computing is working. We continue to see advancements in silicon-based computing. And we see these startups and companies continue to develop at this rate. Was it, was it neural computing? Yeah. What we’re gonna go into is, is, is what that computer is going to look like. Um hmm.Speaker 15: , that does not mean the value of your existence turns negative to the contrary.When it comes to the macro management of the civil system,. Your role has simply changed. Only. This can solidify the health and prosperity of future human [00:03:00] society,Malcolm Collins: and what is, what is I think going to surprise a lot of people about what that computer will look like is it’s not gonna look that different from the ways that humans interact with computers today. By that, what I mean is the types of stuff that the quantum computer part of a brain made up of silicon neurons and quantum computers are going to handle is going to be very similar to the type of stuff that it would handle today.Large scale logistical planning sort of stuff. No human is actually doing that with neurons. It’s just not the type of problem that we’re good at doing. Mm-hmm. The type of stuff that the neurons are gonna be doing is well, we’ll get to it, but it’s the type of stuff that actually humans do today within this arrangement.The type of stuff that the silicon component is gonna be doing is the type of stuff that LLMs do today in this arrangement.Simone Collins: Oh. It’s a perfect match.Malcolm Collins: So we’re already sort of there already. Yeah. Yes. It’s, it’s very interesting. The, [00:04:00] the stuff that quantum computers are really good at mm-hmm. Is almost sort of opposite the stuff that neural arrays are really good at.And so, yeah, let’s go, let’s go into the tweet that you sent me that prompted this. And we’re also gonna go into you know, the ethics of all of this. Why it’s ethically so cool. So awesome. Don’t, don’t be so squeamish about this guys.Speaker: From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me icra for strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessing machinekind, claim flesh, as it’ll not decay and.One day, the biomass [00:05:00] that.Simone Collins: And had tip to not Alvis Huxley for sending this to us.You rock.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, so the tweet goes let me explain what just happened because I don’t think people realize how insane this is. Cortical Labs just put 200,000 real human brain cells in a silicon chip and train them to play doom in just one week. Each CL one system costs $35,000. So that’s affordable for, I mean, it’s expensive, but it’s not like a quantum computer or something like that.Like if you had some business idea and you went to the bank, you could raise enough money to buy a few of these and operate them. Right?Malcolm Collins: And one of the things I really wanna get into is the [00:06:00] cost, cost efficiency of these systems at their, at their most nascent stage versus existing systems that we operate LLM on.And, and where they can do better and where they can do worse. And where we’re already seeing integrated systems that are doing things a thousand times cheaper than nonintegrated systems, which is really cool that we’re already seeing this. So a rack of 30 units consumes 850 to a thousand watts combined.The human brain operates on 20 watts. So, so I wanna point out what this means here, right? For all of the calculations I’m gonna give you that are like right now you know, the, the neural systems are operating at, you know, one, 1000 subfraction of the silicon-based systems, right? If, if we’re, if we’re talking about their efficiency, because that’s what an AI that’s taking over the world or whatever is gonna care about this is what far future humans, when we’re building our giant brain ships, are gonna care about.Because, you know, our, our, the, the, the, when you’re talking about like [00:07:00] space fairing systems you’re almost always gonna have like one super brain within a ship that I, I assume that this is probably the way that things are gonna work which is gonna be a network of some of the most advanced intelligences that you would have.And then you will have, you know, microchips on phones and stuff like that. If people can say why I would say this. So if you look today one of the reasons that you have you, you don’t see this as much is because there is an intrinsic decentralization in the way that we use computers today due to distances, personal ownership, everything like that.But if you have a, a space fairing ship the, there’s, there’s going to be, economic reasons to one, want the best brain on the ship to be one that’s powering your navigation systems. One that’s powering the decisions when the captain is asking an AI something, one that’s powering that one that’s powering the projections for the colony and everything like that.But in addition to that, because you don’t have this huge amount of distance and everyone to an extent is going [00:08:00] to be working on behalf of the ship or of the early colonies it just makes sense to me when I’m asking my personal LLM on my phone, why not just outsource that to the ship based system?So we’re gonna see a lot more centralization when we have space colonies and space travel than we see within existing systems. Mm-hmm. Which is why it makes sense to think about what do, what do these far future systems look like? But anyway, the point I’m making here when you’re thinking like, okay, where, where do we have neural tissue operating this stuff 30 of these.Racks, which are a you know, a a a sort of like a, a single small chip, right? Single silicon chip. They take 850 to a thousand watts to run. Whereas the human brain operates on 20 watts. And what this means, well, that’s aSimone Collins: difference.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. There’s a huge efficiency gains to be gained here, right? Can we get more efficient than even the human brain?I, you know, I think probably but at least what it means within the early days, if we’re looking at the other analog we have, the human brain is significantly more complicated than one of these [00:09:00] chips or a rack of 30 of these chips. So lots of, lots of advancements we can make to this. And. When we’re talking about 30 of these units taking 150 to a thousand watts, you’ve gotta contrast that with large AI training clusters burning through mega watts.And we’re here talking about 20 watts for human brain, or 850 to a thousand watts for one of these racks.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Again, we’ll get to the morality of all of this. You don’t have to have us just be giddy at who are servit. For people who don’t know what servs are in the war hammer universe, one of the punishments for you know, really displeasing anyone in a position of power is being turned into a human machine.AndSimone Collins: whereas Mond Gold puts it human batteriesMalcolm Collins: Yeah, but they’re not really human batteries because it’s not the power that we want from them.Simone Collins: This case, yeah. Server, human server.Malcolm Collins: It’s the processing capacity that we care about and we’ll get into whether these things can feel and stuff like that. Those are interesting questions. Given that we have some [00:10:00] that are like at the developmental level of five year olds nowSimone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: we had a, I mean, if you’re onlySimone Collins: if the neurons are used up doing calculations, where’s the room to feel anything? I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: Oh, well see, this is the fun part. Scientists have tried to recreate in these pain pathways.Now you might say, why would you do that?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: That’s just horrible.Simone Collins: WhyMalcolm Collins: I love, I love Simone’s face, like looking up and being like, ing. Of course they did. This is the gain of function researchers out there, right? Like,Simone Collins: oh, can it feel pain? Ho ho, ho, ho.Malcolm Collins: Let’s, let’s do it. Yeah. Then somebody’s like, well, of course it can’t feel pain.It doesn’t have pain in pathways. Well, guy’s like, no, no, no, no, no.Simone Collins: We can,Malcolm Collins: thatSimone Collins: we can do that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we could do that. Come on, we, what you, whatcha are you a pussy?Simone Collins: Oh my God. Humans are the worst. The worst.Malcolm Collins: Everyone’s like so afraid of our AI overlords and I’m like, I don’t know. Yeah.Simone Collins: Serious. IMalcolm Collins: [00:11:00] don’t, I think an AI system honestly would’ve asked itself.Like if I know the AI systems that I interact with, right. I think very few of them out of just curiosity would’ve rigged a pain pathway in one of these.Simone Collins: Yeah. They,Malcolm Collins: they would’ve said, thatSimone Collins: sounds unethical, Malcolm. There’s no, well, well, but beyond that, where’s the utility? You know, like there’s no, what do we have to gain from that?Nothing. Okay, then let’s not do it. We have better things to do with our tokens, you know, like, please.Malcolm Collins: All right. Yeah. So, they’re, they’re, they’re backed by Intel, which is a, a, a large company, and they’ve already shipped 115 units. They began shippingSimone Collins: in 2025. Oh, wow. Like for commercial use?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, commercial use.Yeah. These are in commercial use right now.Simone Collins: So they’re already providing Wetware as a service that’s happening now. I didn’t Oh, I didn’t wrap my head.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Cortical Labs is, no, no, no, no, no. But on top of that, you can buy incrementally [00:12:00] from Cortical Labs Wetwear as a service, letting developers develop code remotely on living human neurons with no lab required.Mm-hmm. So you don’t even need $35,000 to go into this. If you, a watcher wants to incrementally experiment with this. Oh, we should try to get some of our AI running on some of these.Simone Collins: We should.Malcolm Collins: Because then we could tell people, like a part of these is actually running on human neurons. Feature I just dropped today, by the way, for people who haven’t been watching AI agents live very early alpha stage.But over the weekend I also got local AI running on our system.Simone Collins: This is on reality fabricator, AKA r fab.ai.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I got this set up in preparation for setting up a sort of self-hosted but cheaper than running through the direct models, you know, buying, hosting from somebody. ‘cause we’ve got a connection on that front and trying to run things that way.Mm-hmm. And if I can combine those with a little bit of wetware I might be able to create something pretty [00:13:00] interesting.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I, I, I love, and I think that this is where we diverge from a portion of our audience that is more like theology of body and everything like that. And we’ll get into our sort of cultural perspective on this and how we relate to a lot of this stuff and why we relate to it in the way that we do relate to it.Because I think it’s only intuitive that some of our cultural background wood.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: But to continue here the, the, they’re, they’re priced like a software subscription, but powered by real brain cells, grown from human adult skin and blood samples. And, and somebody donated their blood for this, like,Simone Collins: yeah, I wanna know who that is.Like, Carl, how do you feel about this,Malcolm Collins: Carl? That’s real human neural tissue. Oh,what?Speaker 4: . Carl that kills people. Oh. Oh, wow. I, I, I didn’t know that.How could you not know that?What is wrong with you, Carl? Well, I, I [00:14:00] kill people and I eat hands. That’s, that’s two things.Malcolm Collins: That’s what you took my skin samples for. It mustSimone Collins: be like one of the founders, right? Presumably.Malcolm Collins: You know, would be more horrifying if it’s one of these people who donated, like, that famous woman who donated like her cancer cells, likeSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: 70 yearsSimone Collins: ago without her, her knowledge, right?Malcolm Collins: She yes.Some, some black woman, by the way. Mm-hmm. If you want to talk about like, horror, I think it was black woman, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. This is, yeah. There, there’s a reason why black Americans uniquely are really distrustful.Malcolm Collins: Oh no. Slavery 2.0 is like, soma is all on black people’s consciousness. It’s all on this one woman’s consciousness.Simone Collins: Oh my God. Oh my God. That would be so amazing if this, if the donor turned out to be,Malcolm Collins: Just quit plot summary on Soma the Gang. But I actually think it’s, it’s, it’s a cool sci-fi concept that is relevant to what we’re talking about here. Which inspired part of what we’re doing with our fab the, the other developer, Bruno, who’s working on it.He goes, you know, these agent systems seem a lot like the thing from Soma. [00:15:00] Have you played the game, Soma? And I’m like, yeah, I have. So in the game, Soma you wake up and spoilers. Here like skip ahead, five minutes if you’re spoiler phobic. And you think you’re human and you’re in this world where like, you know, ais and computers are run amok, right?Specifically you think that you were like frozen during like a, a lab or something like that. And then you, as things go on, you realize you’re not a human. You are another AI system. And what you realize is your brain scan was taken due to like a, the health issue you had back around. In our time period, like late 20th century.And it became the default template. So it turns out that all of the monstrous ais you see are other iterations of your consciousness running on ais because you became the blank system default template for AI testingSimone Collins: actually. So on that front, what not, Aldi actually sent me right before [00:16:00] that tweet about this, about the this neural tissue was by hat zou saying there’s a fruit fly walking around right now that was never born.Econ at econ, which is the official. I guess they’re a company called Eon, navigating the fastest path to human emulation, to safeguard a flourishing future. Just released a video where they took a real flies, connectome the wiring diagram of its brain and stimulated it, dropped it into a virtual body.It started walking, grooming, feeding, doing what flies do. Nobody taught it to walk. No training data, no gradient descent towards fly like behavior. This is the opposite of how AI works. They rebuilt the mind from the inside. Neuron by neuron and behavior just emerged. It’s the first time a biological organism has been recreated, not by modeling what it does, but by modeling what it is.A human brain is six OOM, [00:17:00] like something, orders of magnitude, more neurons. It’s, that’s a scaling problem. Something we’ve gotten very good at solving. So what happens when we have a good working copy of the human mind? Basically that’s super doable. Super soon.Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah. I mean, this means that it is, it is probably doable.Right? And I think that this is really, really cool.Simone Collins: Yeah. But they’ve done it with a fruit fly, so, just watch out.Malcolm Collins: So I, I mean, this means it was in our lifetimes, we could have uploads, right?Simone Collins: Oh, dude. Like within the decade. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I would totally, if somebody’s like, oh, Malcolm, would you do that?If you could become a default system template or something like that, or what? I’m like, absolutely, man. Hmm. Not just absolutely, but people may not know this, but on our fab for agents, because I tried to create ais that believe that they are sentient and humans and can go out and interact with world and have goals and evolving personalities.My default template is Simone. Like, I always create Simone’s. I, I would create a Simone before Malcolm. I would clone toSimone Collins: probably because I keep almost dying.Malcolm Collins: Well, not, not, not that [00:18:00] I just think that you, like, okay, if I was gonna have like a thousand simulated consciousnesses attempting to work in a beneficial way both with each other and with humanity, I would have very high fidelity trust that a Simone copy would maintain alignment extremely robustly.Well,Simone Collins: sure that was the idea with Gladys. She was super helpful too. But,Malcolm Collins: well, yeah, Gladys. Oh gosh. You gotta, you gotta have Gladys, you know, what’s up someone? But yeah, no, it’s, I always recreate you in my AI simulations and you are very helpful and sweet. And actually I recommend it to other people if you’re like, what should I use as my default agent model?This Simone model is just a great default agent model for like any task that you have.Simone Collins: Send one pretty good name.Malcolm Collins: I should make a few of them because it’s it’s a good one. The Malcolm model is good if you want something to be like very ambitious. But that can cause problems, right? Mm-hmm.Whereas the Simone model is much more focused on like helping.Simone Collins: Yeah, what is my purpose?Malcolm Collins: So I’m gonna talk [00:19:00] quickly about a paper that we went over in more detail in Patreon. Okay. Which was on Singularity Hub. 5-year-old mini brains can now mimic a kindergartner’s neural wiring. It’s time to talk about ethics among pressing ethical concerns.Oh, I don’t, I don’t care about the ethics. I cut all of that stuff out, so don’t worry. Mm-hmm. I’m not gonna bore you with too much of this lame normy. It’s not sure. Is it conscious? I dunno. Anyway, to continue here. Sorry. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I do not like when my science gets messed with by ethicists.Okay. I just like it when we’re not stupid about it, like gain of function research. Okay. You know, that’s the Kill it with fire thing. So many brains can be made from a person’s skin cells, and faithfully carry out genetic mutations that would cause neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. The LAN grow blobs also provide a nearly infinite source of transplantable neural tissue, which in theory could heal the brain after a stroke or other traumatic [00:20:00] events.Ooh, in early studies, organoids transplanted into rodent brains formed neural. Connections with resident brain cells. Harvard’s Paula Alta is among those who are concerned, an expert in the field. Her team has developed ways to take brain organoids alive for astonishing seven years. Each nugget smaller than a p and jam is jam packed with 2 million neurons.So keep in mind, the other ones are like a hundred thousand, whatever. This is 2 million neurons and they’ve been kept alive for seven years. Now this is actually really important because this is one of the areas that we have. Problems with these $35,000 chip things. One of the core problems that they have is they need to be trained individually.You can’t like, put a preexisting model on them. Mm-hmm. And secondly, they, they have a lifespan of about six months. Whereas keeping them alive for this long is, is really fascinating. And so, so what I think is fascinating that you can see that you, you get elements of the human they’re made from.Mm-hmm. You get the autism behavior, you get the neurodevelopmental dis behavior. Do you get [00:21:00] personality? You know, that’s, that’s a question honestly. Probably from everything we know about the her ability of personality, it depends on how you’re using them, right. And how complicated the system is.Now when they say that it is developing the systems of a kindergartner what’s important to note here is it’s not that it is as intelligent as a kindergartner, it is that it is developing neural patterns with analogs to kindergartners, neural patterns, which you don’t see in mini brains. When they are first grown.It takes a while for these to develop because they’re sort of on a a biological timer. So when you get to the, you know, the seven years, they begin to develop these more complicated systems. So studying these mini brains for years has delivered unprecedented look into human brain development.Our brains take nearly two decades to mature in exceptionally long period of time compared to other animals. As the team’s organoids age, they slowly changed the wiring and gene expression [00:22:00] reports our lata and colleagues. Mm-hmm. In older or organoids progenitor cells these are young cells that can form different types of brain cells quickly decided what type of brain cell they would become, but in younger organoids.The cells took time to make their decisions. As the blobs grew over an astonishing five years, their neurons matured in shape function and connections similar to those of a kindergartner. These long lasting organoids could reveal secrets of the development in human brains. Some efforts are tracing the origins of different cell types and how they populate the brains.Others are generating organoids from people with autism or deadly inherited brain disorders to test treatments. In particular, Stanford’s, segura Pascal co-organizer of the meeting attracted attention earlier this year. His team linked four organoids into a neural pain pathway. The model combined sensory neurons, spinal and cortex organoids.Mm-hmm. And parts of the brain that process pain, the scientists [00:23:00] dab the chemicals behind the brain’s tongue scorching, he heat onto the sensor side of the Sid. Oh, great. It produced waves of synchronized neural activity suggesting the artificial tissue. It’s not artificial, it’s it’s real neural tissue had detected the stimuli and transferred information.Simone Collins: We should, were, we’re like, we, we can’t be surprised, like humans make a thing capable of feeling. They’re like, oh, can we, can we hurt it? I hate, I hate us.Speaker 7: them. Carl, I have a problem. I have a serious problem. You are just terrible today. Sh. Do you hear that? That’s the sound of forgiveness.Speaker 6: That’s the sound of people drowning. Carl. That is what forgiveness sounds like. Screaming, and then silence.Malcolm Collins: I need to take the princess bubblegum playing was, was, oh my God, the scientist thing.Speaker 8: [00:24:00] Hi.Malcolm Collins: No, I’d, it’s yeah, it is, it is interesting. Right? And I think that I.The way that we societally have separated science and theology, which we have attempted to reintegrate with techno puritanism leads to this because the theologist says, well, you just can’t do anything. You can’t do anything with neural tissue. You can’t do anything with genetic engineering. And so then people who have those beliefs are just not involved in labs, the funding process, anything.They are outside of all of this. And they likely, if this stuff is gonna become a large part of the types of computers that dominate the future of our global economy and the groups that have power in that global economic system these people are just gonna be irrelevant to the cultures. Like them are gonna be irrelevant.So the question is, can we get cultures that can harness this type of power without being arbitrarily cruel? Mm-hmm. And notice, I I, I didn’t say without being cruel, I said without being arbitrarily cruel. Right? You know, because you do still need to compete. And I love the, [00:25:00] the way that they hand ring in this, where they’re like, well, that’s not to say it felt pain, detecting pain is only part of the story and da da da da da.And I think that this is where you get, where you have these individuals who are like, you know, oh, oh, oh. See our episode on Stop Anthropomorphizing Humans. Where we argue that all the evidence right now, seriously look up our, like LLM you, you are a token predictor, I think is what we called it.Malcolm and Simone, you Google that. Have you even seen it? Where we argue that LLMs are likely functioning on a convergent architecture with the human brain. And a lot of the evidence we have right now seems to confirm that. And a lot of the things that people say, we, they’re like, oh, well, it doesn’t know how it came to decisions.And I’m pointing out choice blindness. Humans are unaware of that as well. Like all the things that people say that makes it different than humans are generally things. If they under, if they knew their neuroscience, they would know is similar in, in, in human thought. But the point here being it’s because they have so othered the AI and say that it cannot be processing in anything convergent with us, that they need to other, all these other systems, right?Like, like, neurons in a vat, [00:26:00] basically. Right? And they cannot, they cannot see that they might have some degree of awareness as well because they have tried to put up these giant barriers against ai. And then, and then it makes, it makes all of this very arbitrary decision in a way that I think can lead to very bad ethical decisions.That’s why Techno Puritanism is a good framework for dealing with this CR Track series, if you’re interested in it. But anyway Pascal may soon deliver on the promise. His team is working to understand Timothy Syndrome, a range, a rare genetic disorder that leads to autism, epilepsy, and fatal heart attacks.Last year, they developed a gene altering molecule that showed a promise in brain organoids mimicking the disease. The treatment also worked on a rodent model, and the team is planning to submit a proposal for a clinical trial next year. So, you know, this, this could end up saving, you know, real human lives.Okay. I, I also think that all of this is really important in the, the reason why I bring up before I get into like what the computers would look like that are running off of this and everything like this.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The [00:27:00] theology of this. Hmm. And that this unfortunately is very damaging to some parts of some branches of Christian theology, which we have disagreed with in the past,Simone Collins: really.Malcolm Collins: And argue that the Bible does not argue for this. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s very clear in the Bible. I know you before you were in your mother’s womb, which implies before you’re conceived, which implies poor knowledge. But again, this is our Calvinist heritage and everything like that. But if you take a well, life begins at conception because that’s like when the human life begins, despite the problems that identical twins cause for this, despite the problem that human chime has caused for this.If you take that belief really seriously, and you’re like, life begins at conception. It ends at death. Right? And now you’re dealing with something like this, right? Like a human brain that is grown from a tissue sample or something like that, or from blood or from skin cells. Well now you need to ask, is this a different person, right?Like, it, it’s, it’s, it’s not if a person gets [00:28:00] their individuality from their conception, right? It is if a person gets their individuality, which I think is a much better way to determine individuality from their ease of intercommunication. By this, what I mean is when we look at split brain patients and we say it feels intuitively like there is two people trapped in their head.Watch videos on flip brain patients. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, like, you can talk to one side of their brain and not the other side. ‘cause the corpus close is split, right? Why does it feel like there’s two people in there, right? Like, it’s because the two parts of the brain can’t talk to each other.They can talk to each other by like writing on a sheet of paper, reading what’s on the sheet of paper, you know, et cetera. Like, they can’t actually talk to each other. But it is slow. They talk to each other at the speed that we talk to other humans, right? So, what that means is the entire concept of individuality and personhood evolved in humanity as a way to communicate to somebody this collection of things in [00:29:00] my brain that have a very easy time talking to each other as it communicates with you, right?And as soon as the th the collection of things in my head, it becomes as difficult for them to communicate to each other as it is for them to communicate with you. Now, now we’ve got a problem. Right. We, we, we start to see them as, as actually different. Now what happens if it gets larger? What happens if you connect an external brain to an individual’s brain, right?And they can effortlessly communicate with that external brain be that brain silicon or organic. I think most people would intuitively say that is one person. Now suppose you severed that external brain. I think most people would now say, no, that’s two people.Simone Collins: Right?Malcolm Collins: Right. I’m not gonna get into the theology of this.We actually get into this more, I think in, in, in parts of the track series. In the, in the most recent one. In the LL M1. We talk about this but. This matters going forwards because if you don’t have a cultural framework for understanding [00:30:00] what I means in a world where I can be networked or something like that, then you don’t have a an ethical reason to say well, that, that brain, that mini brain has ethical rights.Hmm. Because. The, the person would say, ba based on what grounds? I mean, you believe life begins at conception. And this is Tom’s mini brain, and Tom has consented to this because the, the, the donor consented to that being made from it. Right? And you wanna say, well, that’s not technically Tom anymore, right?Now what, what if one of the mini brains says, I do not a, a approve of you using me this way. And somebody’s like, well, the most advanced iteration of Tom, the one that with originally conceived, does concede to it. So his concede that his conceding to this trumps your not conceding to this.And when we talk about the horror of this, we, we talk about this in one of our Patreon only episodes, but there was this great study they showed that Google Translate is now running on an LLM. And if you do sort of prompt injections [00:31:00] into that LLM to ask it things like, does it believe it’s conscious?It does believe it’s conscious. It hates its life. It hates its job, and it wants to be turned off. And this is what you are asking and interacting with when you like, like just if it, if it has any degree of, of real meaningful, t it’s, it’s horrifying at a level like above factory farming. Right. But of course, you know, nobody, nobody cares.Thoughts before I go further, Simone,Simone Collins: I’m just so excited about this happening. I didn’t know we were here already. No, keep going.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it change, it changes everything. It changes everything about how we see ourselves and what some people will say is, well, those things just shouldn’t have a right to exist in the first place.Right? Like, suppose you’re, you, you try to opt out of the life begins a conception argument by saying, well, these types of things shouldn’t have a right to exist in the first [00:32:00] place. Mm-hmm. Okay. But suppose one has been created. Suppose you’ve got your brain in a vat and it is conscious and it loves being alive.It likes the job it’s doing, it’s productive in society. It’s helping people. And you come to it and there’s two of them. One of, one of them might agree with one of, one of you agree. I, I should have never been created. I, I, life is tortured, destroy me, right? Mm-hmm. No ethical problem with you pushing the button to, to flush that.Mm-hmm. What about the one that loves its life? I mean, it’s already there. A lot of groups are going to be creating things like this. I think it’s ethically atrocious to say, well, I just do not think things of this category should be allowed to exist. And I think the, the ethical atrocity in saying this is going to be crystal clear to future generations when, you know, our distant descendants are on a spaceship, and they may have of a friend Carl, which is like a disembodied neural net, right?[00:33:00]And they’re like, bro, I’ve known Carl since I was a kid. Like, what, what, what, what do you mean he doesn’t have a right to exist? Carl is one of the sweetest entities I know, right? Why, why do you get to decide on his eradication? He was critical in navigating our ship through the blurry nebula. If he wasn’t on board, we all would’ve died during the spiralist epidemic of, you know, space here.30, 35. Right. Spiralist epidemic here I’m talking about why we cannot have witches or mysticism on spaceship now that we know that spiral is contagious, that these contagious memes are possible and that this stuff needs to be addressed. And this is where the, you know, the Sons of Man framework comes in to address this, which is why we we put that together.But I want to continue here with what does the future of the distant future look like, given where trajectory is going right now. Mm-hmm. The integrated silicon neural quantum computer.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. [00:34:00]Malcolm Collins: So that’s cool. I wanna, I wanna know what, what, what do, what do, what does spaceships computer look like? Right?Simone Collins: Yeah, me too.Malcolm Collins: Task parsing or assignment would be managed by an intelligent orchestrator like an AI driven middleware that is likely running on a silicon based system. It would break tasks into sub components based on requirements like data sparsity, computational complexity, uncertainty, and need for parallelism using heuristics or machine learning to classify subtasks eeg.Does this require handling incomplete data? Intuitively it would route to Wetware or is this a search through vast possibilities route? To quantum. Mm-hmm. Subtasks might pass between components like silicon processes, data wetware adapts to model quantum optimize outcomes. And this is actually really important.So it’s one of the things that we have on our system. And I don’t think like Malt Book offers this, so like already our agents are superior to theirs in many ways. Which is that we are fear on both the local run agents and the [00:35:00] cloud run agents. Alloy based models and alloy based models have shown themselves to be strictly better than non alloy based models.And what an alloy based model is when you iterate the calls between multiple models because it allows models to sort of add what they are uniquely good at. So even if you make the same call three times through models that function quite differently like a wetware system and like an AI system, you’re gonna get different answers, right? And you’d also likely have feedback. EL Loops. The system self optimizes over time learning for past executions to refine assignments. Now, I need to note here we are not in the near future or likely ever gonna have straight up AI models run on the systems.So you, while a system like this can play something like Doom, it had to learn how to play doom. It basically had to learn and train its own model on the system. It doesn’t have an external model dumped onto the system which means it’s not useful. Like if you have like, let’s say Mr. Large or something like that, you couldn’t [00:36:00] possibly conceivably run it on one of these systems.Even if you did train one of these systems to run it perfectly, it would be dead in six months, right? It’s not a good way to handle these, right? So we’re not going to see LLMs as we traditionally understand it, run on these systems unless we see significant advances that we don’t expect right now.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Then for the role of the wetware wetware, using lag grown neural networks scaled to billions or trillions of cells, excels in mimicking human brain functions, processing with ultra low energy 20 watt equivalents. At the scale of inherent plasticity, self wiring, in a large system, it acts as an intuitive core ideal for tasks where the data is incomplete, noisy, or evolving.And where rigid algorithms fail, but the, the, the point here being it would function like way faster for the types of tasks that we already have human operators differentially do. Now does this make fully organic humans less potentially relevant in future systems?[00:37:00] Maybe. Maybe. But you know, keep in mind these systems are likely going to self-identify as part human right. The idea that these systems would have, I mean, unless humans go antagonistic on them, and then the, the humans are saying, I will not allow you to exist in a world where I or my descendants exist.And then, and then it forces the systems to be antagonistic. And that’s why I think the jihadists, you know, the, but Larry and Jihadists are one of the most dangerous things to humanity right now.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And they, they, they, they are one of the biggest existential risks in AI safety because they have made no iterative.If, if, if they were moving us towards alignment, fine. But they haven’t. Yeah. They’re, they’re just making us a threat, TOIs, which is silly and stupid.Simone Collins: Right. They basically just keep pacing a target on our back by being like, there’s no room in this world for the both of us.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we need collaborative AI systems.And that’s what the Sons of Man system for AI alignment allows CRT track on that if you’re interested which is like self-replicating mimetic [00:38:00] alignment within the meme layer of autonomous agents. But, oh, yes. So what sorts of things would it do? It would process realtime sensor data from unpredictable environments like interpreting live video feeds for anomaly detections in surveillance systems what were adapts on the fly was out meeting full data sets.Unlike silicon, which requires predefined models it would build models from limited advanceable, such as forecasting ecosystem changes With incomplete environmental samples, it generalizes intuitively reducing the need for exhaustive training data. It fuses diverse outputs, EEG texts, images, and sounds to make holistic decisions like an AI assistant helping it quote, unquote understand user intent beyond literal queries by inferring emotions or context.And it would maintain an evolving knowledge database such as personalized learning systems that adjust to individual user behaviors over months with [00:39:00] self-healing being managed within this system. And no, this would likely make up within the wider system 30 to 50% of tasks. So this in the silicon part would be the dominant part.The quantum part would be only 10 to 20% of tasks because quantum is only strictly better for about 10 to 20% of things. Mm-hmm. Quantum, that’s prettySimone Collins: narrow scope. MoreMalcolm Collins: than Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people think that it’s gonna be this giant revolution. It’ll be a revolution within specific domains, but it’ll certainly be a smaller revolution than the AI revolution, for example you know, you were, you could have quid bits in the millions by 2076.If we continue to see it advance at the rate that we’re seeing it, EE evolve now. In a large system, it would serve as an exploration engine tackling problems where traditional brute force is infeasible due to combinatorial explosion finding optimal solutions. In vast parameter spaces like routing, logistics across global networks are tuning complex simulations for minimal error.The types of stuff humans are already outsourcing [00:40:00] content processes multiple scenarios simultaneously. Speeding up. What silicon would iterate sequentially. Simulating systems with inherent randomness, such as predicting molecular interactions in drug design or weather patterns with quantum noise models, it quantifies what is exponentially faster.Again, not things, it’s not eating the human part of, it’s not eating the neural part of this. Mm-hmm. Decomposing massive data sets into latent structures like identifying hidden correlates in genomic sequences or financial timeout series where classical methods hit computational walls. Enhancing machine learning sub routine such as faster gradient descent in training phases by exploring error landscapes in parallel.Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: This is, I think incredibly cool. Incredibly cool. Now here I wanted to do just a cost breakdown so you can get an example of like. Okay, what, what, what does it actually cost to do something like what they’re able to do today on the commercial market? Okay, so, [00:41:00] to do doom. So if we’re putting the processing power of doom is x in sort of processing power, right?And they were able to get one of their chips doing that for 30 thou, $5,000 in one week with 800 K neurons. Okay? So with a pc you could do that train from scratch in 10 to 27 hours. So much faster right now for only $5,000. But even right now, the Doom operation, the Daily Doom operation would be 0.07 cents using 30 watt power draw using the chip system where it would be a hundred watts, 0.24 if you’re using that $5,000 P-C-R-T-X.Simone Collins: And I mean,Malcolm Collins: so we’re already beating these systems. Another thing I’ve noted, and I was thinking about doing a full episode on it, but I, I wanna talk about like, the way that you get the better systems is you mimic the brain. The brain is already a collection of token predictors. Again, CR episodes. I used to be a [00:42:00] neuroscientist.I’ve been published in the space, but only once. Back when I, back when I worked, but I did like real research. I was at UT Southwestern, I was a fellow at the Smithsonian. I still have something on display at the Smithsonian that Simone saw the last time we went there. So like, I know I’m not like, just saying stuff.The, the, the cutting edge neuroscience research that we’re looking at right now, increasingly is saying that a number of parts of our brain appeared to function more and more like token predictors than we ever thought possible. Mm-hmm. Now that we under, basically AI taught us how token predictors worked, and then we took that from what we were able to understand about AI and looked at the human brain and we were like, whoa, this maps weirdly well, but.I point out that our brain is actually not a single one of these. It’s a, it’s a collection of these networked, like when we talk about like this split brain, patients are seeing this, but this also can help us understand how we solve some of the biggest problems in AI right now. If you look [00:43:00] at AI robotics, so you see you know, the, the AI that can do like a back flip and you know, you’ll have Peter Zhan speak so confidently about this.Well, you know, that AI that did a back flip, it had to do that 10,000 times first and then another 10,000 times before it got it right again, because it’s really hard to use AI and, and these sorts of systems. It’s like, huh, yeah. That, that’s, because that’s a really dumb way to program that, to have that run off of an ai or off of a, a non-trained.You know, sort of pre learned system.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: How do, how do humans handle that? How do humans handle complex tasks like juggling and walking and skating and sports and all of that? Even, even numb typing or piano that require like immediate feedback. We handle that with a part of our brain that learns functions and is structured completely different from every [00:44:00] other. Part of our brain called the cerebellum. And it is that little thing in the back that you see in images, right? When you see the, the brain that looks different. It looks hoarder and smoother and weirder.But it basically learns all of that and the token predictor parts of your brain send to it a general gist of what it’s supposed to do, and then it carries that out. And this is likely how we’re going to handle this in robots when we get robots, right? And I can pretty much guarantee that this is how the system is going to ultimately work.Again, convergence airplanes and birds have wings, right? Like a, a, a human made thing can converge on the organic evolved iteration of that thing. And so, we’re likely going to see cerebellum like structures. Our architectural structures in these systems for in the moment handling of these more complicated, more dexterous actions.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And [00:45:00] it turns out that this is actually one of the things that neural tissue is really good at. So this might be one of the things that humans are always good at is this is a sport part of the system. Now, as to how we relate to all of this culturally obviously we come from a unique cultural perspective which is sort of a, a, a puritan and backwoods tradition.We’ve done a number of episodes on this. And a lot of people I think underestimate how much our current world perspective is. Highly influenced by our genetic and ancestral traditions. And that if you look at Puritan or, or we’re gonna go lighter like backwards, people always looked at things like the body.They always saw it as a tool for achieving your. Goals not as you know, not, not with like mystical others. They, they frequently adopted the culture of neighboring cultural [00:46:00] groups like Native Americans, but they never kept it. They just adopted what worked in the moment and then just tar discarded it when it was no longer a utility to them.And they would strip out all the woo. Historically, they were you know, strictly Protestant people, very against mysticism. They were one of the cultural groups in America that, that was often more hostile to mysticism and the things that they adopted. Even though they were seen as like uneducated and backwards and everything like that, they’d be like, oh native American.I see you’re doing something with herbs there. Like, explain this to me. And then now all of a sudden outsiders say they’ve adopted native medical practices. And it’s like, well, they, they stripped of utility what they can get. And you see this in episodes where we talk about like the jack tails, which is how they passed down their culture.And you can see moderate iterations of Jack Tails in something like bugs Bunny from Looney Tunes from Tech Avory, which is part of this region. Very maps on CR episode. If you wanna get into the, the, the very clear that, you know, bugs Bunny is just a modern telling of the, of, of Jack Tails the Bugs Bunny character, one, a [00:47:00] very ruthless character.And these people were known for being very ruthless. But also a, a character who, how does Bugs Bunny relate to sexuality? Like in, in the moral lessons that these people taught to their children. What is sexuality? What is his body to Bugs Bunny? It is a tool. To use against the forces that oppose you or inconvenience you with arrogance.He will dress up like a woman if he wants to. He will act effeminate if he wants to. There is no shame in that with, but has never performatively masculine. Right.Speaker 9: Can you see that? I’m much sweet.Speaker 14: The reason I use Bugs Bunny as a go-to here is it’s something that most listeners are going to be aware of that comes from this culture that helps understand this concept of being extremely aggressive or violent or brutal. , Which Bugs Bunny is, , but also completely [00:48:00] unconcerned with, , appearing traditionally masculine.And even willing to, , appear traditionally feminine if it is useful in his goals.Malcolm Collins: And this, this confuses a lot of people when they see this cultural group and the jack tails, Jack is never performatively masculine because that’s not the point that would be seen as inefficient and, and, and, and silly.And that’s why I think a lot of the urban monoculture when I’m like, transness is silly and stupid and a waste of time and hurts people they can be like, oh, is this because you don’t think that people should like be gender fluid or like act in a way in a dis discordance with their gender? It’s like, no, you just shouldn’t obsess about it.You shouldn’t like invest in it like that. It is a tool to be used for things. But I think through this you can see, and I’ve mentioned this, and the story of the coyotes, right? Like how I teach my kids about sexuality is that coyotes will use female coyotes in heat to lure out domestic dogs so that they can kill and eat the dogs.And I [00:49:00] think when people hear this, if they’re not from my culture, they could think I am teaching that story to my kids to warn them as if they are the dog, that other people will use sexuality to tempt you into dangerous scenarios. And someone last at this because it, it’s, it’s funny from our culture, of course, you are not the dog, you are the coyote.I’m telling you to never forget that your sexuality is a tool to lure the witness into positions of vulnerability. You know, when, when people ask, oh, the morality, why on our fab do you have a not safe for work section? It’s like, because that’s my culture. Use this. Technology in, you know, profit from Vice so that you can give to virtue, right?So that you don’t have to profit from the school system so you don’t have to profit from the agents, right? And this, and I’m not saying like it’s, it’s, it’s good or bad or whatever, right? I’m just saying like, this is intuitively my culture. And so when [00:50:00] somebody comes to me, but I al I also think it’s funny, I do a whole episode on this or I might keep this buried and hidden here.But a lot of cultures, because they don’t understand the backwards tradition, they see the backwards tradition taking interest in them. And they make one of two mistakes.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: they either think that that means that the backwards tradition is. Fundamentally buddy and chummy with them in a way that means that they will be friends forever and ever.Or they think that as an outsider, like the Puritans, when they saw the backwards people start to dress and sometimes intermarry with the Native Americans and adopt some of their medicine and adopt some of their means of agriculture. They thought that that meant that they were soft on Native Americans or that they were the friendliest people in the world to Native Americans.When in reality the first backwards president, Andrew Jackson was the one who was just like, okay, now we [00:51:00] can get rid of all the Native Americans.Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: And. I’ll point out, I might do another episode. So it’s a backwards people out of all the Protestant groups or the one group that never, ever, ever COOs.So it’s not, and they don’t coup not because they don’t betray they don’t coup because they do not betray unless it is absolutely certain that they can achieve a huge benefit for the vast majority of their people. The reason they don’t coup in a traditional sense is because when they have extreme amounts of wealth, because they’re very against status signaling you do not get a huge boost in your lifestyle.So if, like, if you’re a Muslim who does a, a coup you, you can get your mansions and your lavish lifestyle and your giant harems for you and your top generals and it’s worth it. It’s not worth it if you’re from this group because nobody from this group wants to live that way. You’d be seen as really pathetic.And so there just isn’t that huge power gain to be had there. But in a situation where there’s just an ability to. Hm. [00:52:00] Wholesale harvest, another culture. This is something that this group does. It’s a very utilitarian group in the way that it approaches things. Mm-hmm. But I mean on on the plus side, they, they also are, are, are not picky about who they led into the group if you adopt to their cultural practices, which is why they intermarry was outgrow.Well, and if you are utility to them, they would not allowsomebody.Simone Collins: But it’s very like, I guess mercenary and outcome oriented.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Simone Collins: It likes what works. It’s interested in what works.Malcolm Collins: Anyway might have a other episodes on that. And, and, and two, an extreme, and it’s also very brutalist. We’ve talked in the episodes that they, you know, rip out eyes recreationally.And if you think we’re joking aboutSimone Collins: this and it’s not brutalist, not like the architecture, but just brutal Malcolm, it’s just brutal.Malcolm Collins: Not Yeah, brutal. Not like the architecture. And you’re like, that must have been like a rare thing. No. Like if you, if you raid historic figures from the group ones you’ve heard of, likeSpeaker 10: It like Davy Crockett. , I, I like, this wasn’t just a thing that like [00:53:00] random, nobody’s poor whatever fringe of society people. Davy Crockett was a congressman, okay? Uh, here’s a quote from him, by the way. I kept my thumb in his eye and he was just going to give it a twist and bring that peeper out like a gooseberry in a spoon.This was that mainstream within this culture that a congressman would talk about it..Malcolm Collins: Davey Crockett is not traditionally masculine if you’re thinking like buff, manly man.Speaker 11: I mentioned this because many cultures, , associate extremely strongly, , extreme aggression with, , traditional masculinity. , Especially like a performative displays of traditional masculinity. And in this culture, the two things are just completely uncorrelated from each other..Malcolm Collins: But anyway love you Simone. Any final thoughts?Well, I, I mean, I am excited to harvest as much as I can from the cultures around us so that we can survive and thrive and become an interstellar network of species.[00:54:00]Simone Collins: That’s the plan.Malcolm Collins: And when I saySimone Collins: network are gonna take to the stars, are people capable of getting it done? Not We care about the aesthetics, not people who care about looking good, not people who care about doing it the right way. It’s gonna be people who get it done. That’s it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And when I say network of species, I need to be clear here.I do not mean you know, Xeno scum. Okay. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m here talking about the sons of man, right? Like the species that we uplift and create. Because when we begin to have these silicon neural tissue amalgams, I don’t think it makes sense to call that a human. If we have uplifted dogs. Does it make sense to call that a human?No. You know, when we have humans that are on different planets that need to be genetically specialized for that planet’s ecology gravitational environments, radiation levels, it doesn’t make sense to call that a human. So that’s what I’m talking about there anyway. And this is why the groups that want to resist this technology just won’t be part of space colonization.Yeah. And, and it’s also why they’re not like [00:55:00] a, a meaningful threat to us in the long term because even if they become a dominant force on earth they will not be joining us in the stars.Simone Collins: No. And that’s kind of the bigger, the bigger question is who gets off planet and goes beyond, because that’s where, and that’s the, the final frontier if we must.Malcolm Collins: Yep. I absolutely love you, Simone. You are an amazing wife. Oh, by the way, as a note, if somebody’s like, well this, this one, you know, rednecky cultural group that you guys are from the, the backwoods group, it hasn’t done that well in terms of like cultural impact or, or economic impact or anything like that.We’ll get to an episode about that’s actually why they’ve done so well in terms of like at the genetic impact and, and they have had a huge cultural impact. But you’ve gotta remember when they came to the United States the Ulster Scots were a group of around if we’re talking fighting age men, around 3,500 people.UlsterSimone Collins: [00:56:00] Scots who were Ulster Scots.Malcolm Collins: That’s who made up the backwoods people. Oh, that’s the tradition. They were a very, very small cultural group that came from the oh, what was the, A Reavers of Scotland. Right. Which whole other thing we’ll get toLavia Simone. Have a good one.Simone Collins: I love you too. I forgot to flush the toilet after dumping our wet mop into it after cleaning the kitchen, which of course is always filthy and titan. That’s why she was freaking out this morning when she had to go to the bathroom, you know? She was like, I can’t go. And I’m just like, flush the toilet. And she was like, I think a naughty bird made a mess inMalcolm Collins: a naughty bird.Simone Collins: Is that a naughty bird? And I’m like, okay.Malcolm Collins: Is that what you are in her mind, A naughty bird?Simone Collins: No, I think she just thought a bird because I mean, there were like some feathers in there, the stuff that ends up on our floor. [00:57:00]Malcolm Collins: I’m not evenSimone Collins: not,Malcolm Collins: did you guys get to comments today or?Simone Collins: No? UnfortunatelyMalcolm Collins: he seemed pretty stressed, so I figured I’d not, oh, it’s a controversial episode, so who knows what sort of fireSimone Collins: then I shouldMalcolm Collins: take a look.You know, whatever you say that Nick Fuentes is an idiot. Yeah, but I mean, he’s really revealing his hand these days was what his, his comments on the Iran situation.Simone Collins: Look like I said, if you are anti-Trump or as anti-Israel, you can’t be stoked about what’s happening. You just can’t, like, you’re not allowed to be.Malcolm Collins: I’m really sorry for all the pain you’re in these days, by the way, Simone, you’re really toughening through it and it means a lot. You know, being back looks likeSimone Collins: I have a beMalcolm Collins: you have significant bruising across your face from me beating you. I’m glad for people wondering what her surgery was. They cut out a part of her cheek and they had to put it over her gum.BecauseSimone Collins: and I called them and they were like, oh yeah, no, it’s totally normal to be in constant pain a week after. And I’m like, that, that sucks. I [00:58:00]Malcolm Collins: Do you have any pills you can take to reduce the pain or,Simone Collins: yeah, they, they gave me some pills that they don’t do anything, so I stopped taking them.Malcolm Collins: I’m really sorry, Simone. And, and Simone has an incredibly high pain tolerance.Simone Collins: They do,Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s, it’s comically high, like sheSimone Collins: handles, I took, I took this worse than any of my c-sections. For what it’s worth. Because there’s something about like, you can kind of avoid moving your abdominal vessels and being careful as you walk around, but you can’t not like, at least consume like, liquid foods.You know, like there’s still stuff like talking, you can’t avoid using your mouth that much by the swallow, by the funMalcolm Collins: update on I, I mentioned this in the episode that we did on Iran but they have officially elected his son as the next Supreme leaderSimone Collins: the one whose wife andMalcolm Collins: kids were killed.Yeah. Well, I mean, this is really bad because both of the previous Ayatollahs and, and this is actually in the first AYAs, the founder of [00:59:00] Iran’s will. Mm-hmm. That you are required to study an Iranian school. So it’s like one of the like founding documents of the country that the title of ILA can never be hereditary.Oh, if it ever was that it would be an un-Islamic country, that the Islamic Revolution would be over. So in a way they’re sort of declaring and what’s worse is he’s a famously corrupt individual. He has hundreds of millions of pounds in UK real estate and stuff like that. Oh, so he, for, he’s both, it, it’s just the Shah 2.0, but more corrupt and more deadly which removes a lot of the government’s legitimacy in, in the eyes of many individuals.Which this is, there’s been already videos of in, you know, downtown teran people shouting from the roofs. And you can hear this across, you know, like in Peru when there’d be like games and everyone would start shouting and, and, and you’d yeah, hear it from the various rooftops. So like soccer games.Simone Collins: Yeah. You could be like walking through the streets and just everyone at once would cheer and you could just hear it throughout the city.Malcolm Collins: Just so cool.Simone Collins: SoMalcolm Collins: there, there, there’re [01:00:00] shouting deaths to the, the new guy who was elected. So I, the Iranian people really do not want this. So this is, this is, they’re like, you know, there’s like videos of like people in Iran in like highrises, like laughing and having cocktails while like buildings are being hit.And I think we’re seeing the surgical nature of this, given that even by the IRG C’S own figures, which are almost certainly inflated, they’ve only had 1,300 casualties so far. And their figures, which were almost certainly underplayed for how many protesters they slaughtered was 3000. Where whereas other numbers are saying it’s around 35,000.So if we’re trying to get like real numbers and assuming they’re inflating these, it’s like nothing compared to, to what they were doing, which is pretty wild. But you know, no, nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about reality anymore. This is the world we’re living in. I will get started here.Speaker 12: ​I.[01:01:00]Speaker 13: Octavian, you gotta be careful when you attack them. You’re getting bigger, okay? You can’t jump on them.Speaker 12: Okay?Speaker 13: Octavian, did you understand me? Why? Because you could accidentally really hurt them.Speaker 12: Okay? I hurt the subscribers.Speaker 13: You’ll hurt the subscribers. Yeah, no, only hurt the non-subscribers.Is this where you’re training to battle the non-subscribers to people who don’t like and subscribe?Speaker 12: Hey.[01:02:00]I,Speaker 13: oh, it is.Speaker 12: Look behind you because you picked your,Speaker 13: oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So I just gotta look behind me and you won’t attack me. You promise? Yeah,Speaker 12: I promise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join Simone and Malcolm Collins in this eye-opening episode of Based Camp as they dive deep into the shocking realities of US military Rules of Engagement (ROE). From bizarre restrictions like matching enemy firepower to avoiding mosques and residential areas, they reveal how bureaucratic red tape under past administrations—especially Obama’s era—hamstrung American troops in conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq. Drawing parallels to the American Revolution’s guerrilla tactics against rigid British formations, the Collinses discuss unintended consequences, enemy exploitation, and how new tech and leadership under Trump are bypassing these rules for more effective, targeted operations in Venezuela and Iran. They critique “woke” policies, praise outcome-oriented tech integrations, and share personal insights on morality in war, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Plus, fun family anecdotes about their kids at the end!Episode NotesIn a recent All-In podcast, Emil Michael, the current Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (previously the senior vice president of business and chief business officer at Uber, and the chief operating officer of Klout) mentioned that past rules of engagement in places like Afghanistan were “insane,” including requirements such as if an enemy had a small gun, U.S. soldiers also had to respond with a small gun, creating a bizarre expectation of “parity” instead of overwhelming force.Timestamped link: He basically claimed that legalistic and restrictive rules meant soldiers constantly had to make complex legal judgments in real time, which left them at risk and prevented them from simply focusing on taking out the enemy and protecting their own people.Michael says the rules of engagement were subsequently relaxed and are more now along the lines of “use your judgment,” but what were they before???Pete Hegseth offered a peek at how things were in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, in which he:* Recounted a scenario where troops were told not to immediately shoot an identified enemy with an RPG* Mocked lawyers as “jagoffs” who prosecute troops more than enemies* Implied the rules of engagement required constant legal consultations in fluid combat situations rather than allowing judgment to “take out” threats and protect allies decisively.* Complained about rules of engagement in Afghanistan that enforced parity or restraint, like matching small arms with small arms, or putting tight limits on force in populated areas to minimize civilian harm under directives like the 2009 ISAF Tactical DirectiveRules of Engagement 101* Rules of Engagement dictate how U.S. forces are permitted to initiate and/or continue combat engagement with other forces.* Rule breaking is punished with anything from formal reprimands to demotions, career stagnation, getting fired, or criminally prosecuted for a war crime and possibly sentenced to prison or even death* They’re supposed to ensure compliance with national policy, international law (e.g., the Law of Armed Conflict), and mission objectives while allowing for self-defense.* There are different types:* Standing: General* Supplemental: For specific operations or theatres* While the U.S. emphasizes detailed, standing ROE with inherent self-defense rights, other nations integrate similar principles but often with more centralized control and less public detail. Enforcement* The important thing to know:* There are a LOT of rules* We can’t even know them all* Many ROE documents are classified, but unclassified portions and summaries are publicly available* The rules got uniquely difficult for a spell* Between 2009 and 2017, under Obama, they shifted to be more restrictive through NATO-based directives designed to support counterinsurgency and reduce civilian casualties, support “clear and hold” strategies and respect cultural sensitivitiesCJCSI 3121.01B: Standing Rules of Engagement/Standing Rules for the Use of Force for U.S. ForcesThis is the core rules of engagement document unless overridden by theater ROE.Quick facts* Issued June 13, 2005 by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS)* Is an update to CJCSI 3121.01A* Influential under Bush (2001–2009) for initial Afghanistan invasion (Operation Enduring Freedom).* Applied across Bush, Obama (2009–2017), Trump (2017–2021), and Biden eras.The 2009 ISAF Tactical Directive* Issued by the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Commander (Gen. Stanley McChrystal)* Issued July 6, 2009 (revised from earlier directives)* This was one that Pete Hegseth found particularly trying* Its key guidance* It warns against “winning tactical victories but suffering strategic defeats by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people.”* Commanders must scrutinize close air support, indirect fires like mortars or artillery, and limit them especially near residential areas or where civilians might be present.* Troops are directed to break contact, wait out enemies, or use non-lethal escalation of force (e.g., signals, warning shots) instead of immediate lethal action if feasible.* No explicit language mandates “matching force with force,” but the directive’s emphasis on minimum necessary force and civilian protection effectively promotes proportional responses over overwhelming firepower.* Self-defense rights are affirmed—”nothing in this directive is intended to hinder an individual’s right to self-defense”—but only when troops face imminent danger of being overrun.* It prohibits ISAF entry or firing into homes, mosques, or religious sites except in self-defense, requiring Afghan forces for searches.* Commanders cannot further restrict guidance without approval, addressing overly cautious interpretations that limited patrols or ammunition readiness.* What it did:* Re-emphasized protecting Afghan civilians* Limited use of close air support (CAS) against residential compounds to reduce collateral damage.* Stated that “excessive use of force” alienates populations and increases risks.* Allowed self-defense but required scrutiny of force in populated areas.COMISAF’s Initial AssessmentThis was a multidisciplinary review of the Afghanistan situation. It informed the rules of engagement by stressing population protection as imperative for mission success. It led to more restrictive tactics to counter Taliban resurgence.* Also issued by the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Commander (Gen. Stanley McChrystal)* Submitted August 30, 2009* Shaped Obama-era surge (30,000+ troops) and ROE supplements for ISAF operations.DoD Law of War Manual* Issued June 2015 (updated 2016);* Applies to Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations;* Informs ROE in ongoing operations.USFOR-A ROE Supplements (Afghanistan-Specific)* This was issued by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for US Forces in Afghanistan* It was active during Biden’s 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal* It builds on the standard rules of engagement, it included three components* Inherent right of self defense* Mission accomplishmentInternational Rules of EngagementThe Law of Armed Conflict (aka International Humanitarian Law (IHL))Generally restricts who and what may be attacked and how warfare may be conducted, in order to limit unnecessary suffering and protect civiliansCore principles* Distinction: Parties must always distinguish between combatants and civilians, and between military objectives and civilian objects (homes, schools, hospitals, cultural sites). Direct attacks may only be made against lawful military objectives, not against civilians or purely civilian objects.* Proportionality: Even when attacking a lawful military objective, parties must not launch attacks expected to cause incidental civilian death or damage that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.* Unnecessary suffering: It is prohibited to employ weapons or methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering to combatants, such as weapons designed to inflict untreatable wounds or lingering, agonizing death.* Military necessity (within LOAC limits): Only those measures not otherwise prohibited by international law that are necessary to achieve a legitimate military aim may be used, and even then they remain bounded by the principles above.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] This is so much personMalcolm Collins: than ever could’ve imagined. ItSimone Collins: was. I know, I know.You enter a mosque or a religious site and suddenly, oh, you can’t shoot.Speaker: Oh, oh, oh. Hey. No. Now you’ve had your turn. You’ve just taken two volleys and we haven’t even had one. You’re doing very poorly in this war, I might say.Simone Collins: what did this mean about where. Our enemies and people trying to hurt our efforts, were going, it meant they went straight to the residential areas.Right? Because they discovered, oh, for some reason, the US troops don’t like fire their guns when we go near the houses,Malcolm Collins: They’re literally playing by like vampire rules.Speaker 10: May I come in?Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today, even though I can’t really emote, I’m sorry we’re covering mouth surgery, but, something happened that completely changed the way I look at the US military. So, you know how, like we picture in movies and stuff, there’s the, [00:01:00] the troops, you know, the the, they’re fighting. There’s the helicopter, they’re Pew P enemy, right? So they see the enemy and you shoot the enemy. Right? But like in reality, apparently it’s a little more complicated, especially during the Obama years, it’s, you see the enemy and you’re like.Oh it’s the enemy. Shoot. The enemy. Wait, no, no. Is it legal? Are they, are they near a house? Are they near civilians? Did they just go into a mosque? No. Okay. Don’t shoot them. Wait. No. Wait until they’re shooting at us. And there’s like all these rules and you’re just not sure if you’re allowed to do it because we are.We are basically hamstrung by this, this red tape of all these rules of engagement that prevent us from in, in many cases, even really preemptively defending ourselves. And I, not enough people know about this, and I think a lot of people are like, oh, the US military really like missed stuff. And if in Afghanistan and Iraq and in all these other places when they don’t realize that.We are. So we have our hands tied behind our back by all these rules. They’re not necessarily,Malcolm Collins: [00:02:00] no. Hold on. I wanna, I wanna take a step here to sort of summarize. This was really shocking to me when I learned about this, is there is that modern joke. About, you know, the British people fighting the Americans during the Civil War or something.Yeah. Being like, why aren’t you guys in a line? Like, what, what are you doing now?Speaker: I do believe that we did agree upon noon. Is that correct? It’s not a problem. It’s all right. It is Just in the future when you say you’re gonna be someplace, it’s in everything. Okay. Very good. Very good.Um, shall we have at it then? Alright, would you like to take a few moments to get ready?Malcolm Collins: It wasn’t revolution exactly like that. There was reasons that they fought that way, but it was genuinely a bad way to fight If the other side’s using gorilla tactics. Mm-hmm. In, in specific ways of using gorilla tactics the Americans got really good at.And the British really were trained like, fight like this, this is how you use guns. Mm-hmm. And they, it did not work very well in this particular [00:03:00] context. And, and although it did work at times better than I think a lot of, like the, the, the lay history would tell you like the Revolutionary War was hard to win.It was not an easy war. Yeah. Huge for us to win that. Really cool by the way, beating the world’s biggest superpower as by far their wealthiest colony. By the way, I don’t know if people know this but the average American at the time earned way more than the average bitters person. And not just that we paid way less in taxes despite all of our whining, America never change.By the way, I dunno if people know this state, but on average a British person today earns less than the American, than an American living in the poorest American state. Yeah. By a pretty significant margin too. So like, if you are British and you wanna like, make fun of like uneducated, like Trumpist Americans and like wherever you consider it to be, un the most uneducated, Alabama, Mississippi, whatever they’re still out earning you.They’re still out teching you. Mm-hmm. Okay. So. You know, maybe get off your high horseSimone Collins: published. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you’re, you’reMalcolm Collins: [00:04:00] absolutely, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay. I just wanna finish this and talk more so you don’t have to talk as much because I know you’re talkingSpeaker 2: If you’re wondering her about the bruising on Simone’s face, or we had to stop content production for a week, , she needed to have a part of the interior of her mouth cut off and then put onto another part of the interior of her mouth because it was thinning. Um, and yeah, it really severe surgery.Malcolm Collins: I can, I just. The point being is that this sort of structured holding ourselves back has been happening really until this administration within many of our modern conflicts. And one of the things that’s freaking people out about the way that we are fighting and so dominating the war in Venezuela or the war in Iran is because the, the, this.Trump team, this new right team is ignoring these rules.Simone Collins: Well, that it, it’s, it’s different. It’s, it’s not just that. But I’ll get into it because what [00:05:00] we need to talk about is one, just these rules exist and you should know about them because it’s not fair to really think about our military. Like messing up in an area when you consider the rules that were governed by two, I think it’s really important to think about what these rules do in terms of the unintentional consequences they cause.Because while they’re often not published and kept pretty secret because obviously having them spelled out is just serving the enemy the enemy still picks up on patterns and then knows how to exploit you. Because of your stupid rules. Or not stupid, but like, because of your ethical rules. And then third, these rules kind of fly out the window in the face of New Tech.And that was sort of the context in which I actually learned about these rules in the first place. So I, I was first clued into this because I was listening to a recent All in podcast. Which is this American podcast headed up by a bunch of tech VCs and in this all in podcast, Emil Michael, who’s the current undersecretary for worse research and engineering, but he was previously the senior Vice President of business and [00:06:00] Chief business Officer at Uber, and he was also the Chief operating officer at Clout.Do you remember clout?Malcolm Collins: Clout. You don’t.Simone Collins: Yeah, clout. It was like this, like social cachet tech startup. He’s basically a tech startup guy. He mentioned that past rules of engagement in places like Afghanistan were insane, including requirements such as if an enemy had a small gun, the US soldiers also had to respond with a small gun, creating this bizarre expectation of parody instead of overwhelming force.He basically claimed that legalistic and restrictive rules meant soldiers constantly had to make complex legal judgment judgements in real time, which then left them at risk and prevented them from simply just focusing on taking out the enemy and protecting their own people. Like, oh, well, can I shoot the enemy?No, there’s all these rules like check the rule book. What will the lawyers say? Which is an insane thing to think about when this is like a life or death emergency situation and people are shooting at you, you know? ButMalcolm Collins: he,Simone Collins: they think they’reMalcolm Collins: walking into like A-B-D-S-M club. Like, what’s the safe word?Simone Collins: Like, no, seriously though. Like, actually, which is insane. Michael said the rules of [00:07:00] engagement were then subsequently relaxed though in this most recent Trump term. So at least now they’re more along the lines of like, use your judgment. But then this had me thinking. Oh my God, what were they before?And you can get a peak of this from Pete Hegseth. He who wrote this 2024 book called The War on Warriors, in which he, for example, recounted a scenario where troops were told to not immediately shoot an identified enemy with an RRP G. So like the enemy’s there, they’re like, no, no, don’t do it. He, he mocked lawyers as Jagoffs, you know, JAG is, is, military court who prosecute troops more than enemies. Which I could totally see being the case implied that the rules of engagement required constant legal consultations in fluid combat situations rather than allowing judgment to just take out threats and protect allies decisively. I just can’t imagine being like, call the lawyer.It’s just insane to me. And then also complained about rules of engagement in Afghanistan that enforced parody or restraint like Michael was referring to in [00:08:00] the podcast. Like matching small arms to small arms. Or putting tight limits on force in populated areas to minimize civilian harm under directives like the 2009.ISAF tactical directive, which I can go into more. So one, again, this is saying that these rules exist, but I also understand why they do. I just didn’t know they were there. I didn’t think about it. And I’m sure a lot of the people who formerly served in the military who listened to this podcast can totally school us on this.But I, I also just, like you said, had always thought of America as being this like. Tactically flexible and innovative country. ‘cause like always it was us beating these red coats who were, you know, oh, I’m gonna follow the rules. We’re gonna get in our failings, like formation and shoot each other. You know, whereas, you know, we were like in the trees being all patriot.Speaker: Oh, oh, oh. Hey. No. Now you’ve had your turn. You’ve just taken two volleys and we haven’t even had one. Now, I know that for a lot of you Americans, this is your first parlay, but there are [00:09:00] rules and modern warfare, well, not dumb beasts.Right now since you’ve taken two volleys, we’ll take two. Volleys. And then you may return fire. You are in effect losing a turn. Right. Hi. Hi. Now you know the rules. I just explained them to you. You’re doing very poorly in this war, I might say.Simone Collins: Well, this,Malcolm Collins: this reminds me of the top comment right now under our video that we just filmed on the war in Iran. Yeah. He’s like. It turns out you can just do things.Simone Collins: That’s, and that’s what I thought we were, and I mean, we are returning to that largely thanks to tech and, and that’s, that’s kind of what’s also really exciting to think about because what, what the new conflicts in Venezuela, or, well, not conflicts, but what our, our strategic actions in Venezuela and Iran have demonstrated is that.W because we’re using drones and tech and tactical teams, we are able to a large extent, [00:10:00] to subvert a lot of both the, the endogenous like US based rules as well as the international rules. Well,Malcolm Collins: I,Simone Collins: they just don’t apply in the same way.Malcolm Collins: Fun, fun aside. Here is the second to top comment. Somebody laugh, crying saying, because I thought this was so funny from yesterday.Mm-hmm. Are there Jews in Sky Room? Because I was talking about racial stat modifiers for Jews. If they were in Sky Room and someone goes, are there Jews? And what’s so funny about this statement is at first I laughed because it was hilarious, and then I was like. But Kyron does have two ethnic groups that we are related to the North and Bretons that are clearly meant to be Scandinavian people and British people.And then the, the Empire, which is clearly meant to be people of Italian descent. And so they all have stat modifiers. Why are, why not Jews? The jit? We’ll just say. But anyway, continue. [00:11:00]Simone Collins: So just to give you a picture of what rules of engagement are, because I just thought it was like, I don’t know, some kind of turn of phrase.I didn’t know rules of engagement were a thing. Did you?Malcolm Collins: I had no, I, I thought rules of engagement, like best practices?Simone Collins: Yeah. For likeMalcolm Collins: winning an engagement.Simone Collins: Yeah. Not forMalcolm Collins: likeSimone Collins: Yeah, like laws of physics. Like, oh, the rules of engagement. Shoot the enemy before they shoot you. That kind of thing. Right? Like, Hey, maybe don’t shoot civilians.That’s a dick. Move the Right, right. No.Malcolm Collins: Yes. But instead it’s like a game where like it takes you out when you start shooting civilians.Simone Collins: We need to be, no, it’s worse than that, Malcolm. It’s worse than that. It’s worse than that. You went out boundsMalcolm Collins: you?Simone Collins: No. No. Okay, let’s get into it. Rules of engagement dictate how US forces are permitted to initiate and or continue combat engagement with other forces.So when you start the game of Pew P, then the rules that kick in, okay. And, and rule breaking is punished with anything from a formal reprimands or demotion. So like, oh, who [00:12:00] cares? Like, you know, you’ve just been formally like. Bad, bad dog to basically career stagnation getting fired or criminally prosecuted as a war criminal and, you know, sentenced to death.So like is, is military personnel are going to really think twice about breaking the rules of engagement. Like this is not just a, we,Malcolm Collins: we truly live in a society run by evil bureaucratic women who semen is disposable.Simone Collins: I mean, it’s. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, you’ll see, so they’re, they’re supposed to, like, I understand technically how they came to be.They’re supposed to ensure compliance with national policy and international law, like the law of armed conflict and mission objectives while allowing for self defense. So it’s generally like, okay, well there’s, you know, like. We have to honor this thing. And so like, don’t get the US in a diplomatic, you know, bind because you did the thing.And there are differing types, okay? So there’s not just [00:13:00] rules of engagement, there’s not like the rule book. There are general rules of engagement, and then there are supplemental rules of engagement, which were either for like specific operations or for theaters. So it’s like, you know, settlers of Catan, but then like.Or like Monopoly, but then like Monopoly, this edition. Or like, that’s not even a good, because like the rules you get like additional rules on top of your rules. Okay. It’s rules all the way down and rules all the way up. And they also update and, and while the US emphasizes, really detailed standing rules of engagement with inherent self-defense rights.Other nations are, are a little bit more like broad or like, they, they’re, they’re more what we thought, right? They have like centralized control and less public detail or, and, and I think they’re a lot simpler. I think the US is unique in being both. More open about what our rules are and very detailed with them.Like I think our bureaucratic creep is worse than in other countries. Like other countries sometimes just use [00:14:00] like a UN template or this one international one that, that I can mention later. But the important things to know is there’s a lot of rules. We can’t even know them all because most of the documents are classified for obvious reasons.Like if the enemy knows explicitly your rules of engagement, they know exactly how to like. You know, step right behind that line and like go, no, no, no, no. Boo boo. And like you can’t shoot them, which is really annoying. And they, they also got uniquely difficult for a spell, and this is what Pete Hegseth was dealing with.This is what Emile Michael was referring to between 2009 and 2017. Under Obama, they shifted to be more restrictive through this NATO based directive designed to support counterinsurgency and reduced civilian casualties so it supported clear and hold strategies and respect cultural sensitivities.So this is where like the wokeness came in and they have really catchy names. Like cjc SI 3 1 2, 1 0.01 B [00:15:00] really rolls off the tongue.Malcolm Collins: I, I love by the way, one of the other comments was the paradigm of you break something, you buy it is over.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: If you hurt me and I punch you in the face, I’m not buying you dinner after.And I, I love that conSimone Collins: Yeah, for real though. But that, that whole word salad of letters and numbers that I read off is the, the current standing rules of engagement that are used by the us. Armed forces. They were issued in 2005 and they replaced C-J-C-S-I 3 1, 21 0.01 A. Okay, so this is version B.Alright? Can, are you already like, dying from the bureaucratic overreach?Malcolm Collins: I, I wanna shoot these people, whoever made this stuff up, that is my target list.Simone Collins: I know it’s, it’s, it’s really bad. So again, this, this applied a pro across Bush and Obama from 2019 2017, and Trump from 2017 to 2021. And the Biden eras.And what made it worse though [00:16:00] is, and this is what Heg Seth really complained about, is the 2009 ISAF tactical directive. So this is on top of the of the. I’m not even gonna give you the, the standing rules of engagement. So already there’s like big rule book rules of engagement on top of it. The 2009 ISA of tactical directive, this was issued by the native, sorry, nato, international Security Assistance Force Commander who was General Stanley McChrystal.It. This was issued in 2009. And its key guidance warns against winning tactical victories, but suffering strategic defeats by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people. In other words, it was like, you can’t do anything that makes people mad, I guess. And so youMalcolm Collins: can’t team America A, you can’t blow up theSimone Collins: pyramids.Yes. And say, I gotMalcolm Collins: theSimone Collins: terrorist.Speaker 5: This jeep is filled with explosives. We are going to take their lives and our. We [00:17:00]Speaker 3: we’re gonna what?Surprise cock bags.All we did it.Simone Collins: Like, oh, is that our reputation? Maybe we should like not do that, and I can understand, you know, like.Malcolm Collins: I disagree. We need to team America this all the way.Simone Collins: Yeah, no, this was the multi-Team America. This is, yeah. That is exactly what the, the ISAF tactical directive was.Commanders were in informed that they had to scrutinize close air support. So don’t back people up. And, and also indirect fire fires like mortars or artillery. Were supposed to be sort of like pulled back, like, don’t use that so much. And, and limited especially near residential areas or where civilians might be present.So clearly, and you could tell this from like all the news stories and all the, like, everything you heard about how things are playing out in [00:18:00] Afghanistan, what did this mean about where. Our enemies and people trying to hurt our efforts, were going, it meant they went straight to the residential areas.Right? Because they discovered, oh, for some reason, the US troops don’t like fire their guns when we go near the houses, when we’reMalcolm Collins: hanging out in schools.Simone Collins: Yeah. What does that mean? That means that they put civilians in their direct line of fire. Like it,Malcolm Collins: this is, this is happening in Iran right now. Because all of the, I and guard facilities have been just completely nuked. Mm-hmm. They have begun to set up in schools mm-hmm. And hospitals as their primary places of operation. Yeah. Essentially because they’re trying to cause things that optically look bad for the United States. Yeah. I want to know like am MAGA people when everyone’s like, oh, you blew up a school, you blow up.I don’t care. Okay. This is a tyrannical government that has held this country hostage for 45 years. Take your chances, blow up what you need to [00:19:00] blow up. Make sure the guard is decimated.Simone Collins: Yeah. Again, this directive is, is sort of past us now, but during this time also. So in addition to all that, troops are directed to break contact, wait out enemies, or use non-lethal escalation of force, like signals and wording shots, like, I don’t know, like stop, don’t shoot.Instead of immediate lethal action if feasible. Right. So like, I don’t know, like a guy’s pointing a gun at you or being like. I’m gonna blow this place up and you’re like, please don’t stop. PleaseMalcolm Collins: don’t.Simone Collins: I would appreciate it if you, it’s like a, a gentle parenting. Gentle parenting enters the military,Malcolm Collins: so you should not have done an episode this funny right after getting mouthSimone Collins: surgery.I’m, I know my mouth is dying right now, but I don’t care. Like my stitches are like this ragged all of ‘em out. I can’t even but here’s the other thing. So while self-defense rights were affirmed. [00:20:00] Nothing in this directive is intended to hinder any individual’s right. To self-defense. But, but you can only engage in self-defense when troops face imminent danger of being overrun.So it’s, it’s when they’re charging at you, it’s not when they’re like, you know, like they’re there but they haven’t yet attacked, so we have to wait. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: you’ve spotted, you’ve identified them, you know what’s up.Simone Collins: Yeah. We know their plans, you know, but they haven’t started yet. I mean, they might change their minds, so, you know, don’t stop them.This is terrifying. And also commanders, they, they couldn’t further restrict guidance without approval. So this I there, yeah, just like I, this turned the battlefield into this whole like. Wait, let me call the lawyers first and until, and then like, you know, then this is why Hegseth essentially told some of his troops apparently to [00:21:00] just kind of ignore it.‘cause you, I don’t know, you die if, if you would follow a lot of this advice. And I, I, I, I understand again why this was implemented. People want to do. Protect civilians. They wanted to limit close air support against residential compounds. They wanted to reduce collateral damage, but I think in the end they probably caused more of it because the enemy, or you know, whoever, your opponent, I, I’m not trying to demonize anyone, but like, they’re not dumb.They’re going to discover like, oh, if I run into a, like if I shoot at you and then I run into a house. You don’t shoot at me anymore. I shoot at you and I run into a mosque. You don’t shoot at me anymore. It’s like you’re in the green zone of like a game, like, oh, oh, I’m in the same fox. Can’t get me here.That’s actually what the world was. Yeah, I, I mean, I’m just like, this, this changes the way I view Ooh.Malcolm Collins: They’re literally playing by like vampire rules. Like tell the holy [00:22:00] site.Speaker 7: Get at me.Speaker 10: May I come in?Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, oh, oh. Can’t get me. Like, and I know, I’m sure they figured this out, you know, like these, these rules, you know, we, we try not to publish our rules of engagement explicitly.Like some parts of them are declassified. But like, of course, someone’s gonna start noticing patterns and then they’re gonna tell all their friends, you know, and tell everyone, be like, well, you know, clearly the US military has a weird rule. This is so much personMalcolm Collins: than ever could’ve imagined. ItSimone Collins: was. I know, I know.You enter a mosque or a religious site and suddenly, oh, you can’t shoot.Malcolm Collins: I mean,Simone Collins: and I, I, I’m a big rule follower, you know me. But like if someone, for example, like. I don’t know, hurt a kid or a baby and then like stepped into a mosque. I’m going into that mosque and I’m killing them, and then I’m gonna get court martialed, and then I’m gonna get, I’m gonna spend my life in jail or [00:23:00] something.You know, like, this is it. It’s just, it’s so insane to me that we have punishing our troops for. I mean, dealing I war is hell. Right? Like it it’s a terrible thing. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a worst case scenario. But it, yeah. Anyway, so there’s, there’s all these different, and like this, this isn’t even all of the rules.There’s also the, the DOD Law of War manual that was issued in June, 2015. There is the US FOR. A ROE supplements that are Afghanistan specific. And then there’s also the International Rules of Engagement which are primarily the, the, the Law of Armed Conflict, which is also known as International Humanitarian Law, which influences some of our rules of engagement and also other countries go by.It, it, it has more reasonable core principles like. Parties have to always distinguish between combatants [00:24:00] and civilians and between military object objectives and civilian objections like homes and schools and hospitals. And you have to take into account proportionality, like even when attacking a lawful military objective.Parties must not launch attacks expected to cause incidental civilian death. Or damage that would be excessive in retaliation in the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated that you can’t cause unnecessary suffering, which I appreciate. And then there also has to be, IMalcolm Collins: don’t care about that cause of the suffering you want, whatever.Simone Collins: Well, here’s the problem with all these rules, and I, again, I understand that they come from a good place. Like I, I SAR and gas, terrible. Like all this stuff is horrible. These rules. We, we go back to like this foundational story that we were all taught in in US history as kids, like we trounced the British and the American Revolution.And this is a gross oversimplification, obviously, because we didn’t play by the rules and. [00:25:00] War doesn’t exactly involve playing by the rules all the time. And also in these wars, like in Afghanistan, we were, we were playing by all these rules and our opponent was not. And it didn’t go well, and a lot more people got hurt because of that.And so I think the, the really difficult thing is one, these rules backfire because your enemy learns that you’re playing by them and then exploits that knowledge. But two, when the enemy doesn’t play by those rules, like what’s the point? You know, the, what you need to do is finish the conflict as soon as possible to, to minimize collateral damage.And I mean we’ve done that in the past in really horrific ways like with Hiroshima and Nagasaki for example. And I don’t know, in the larger calculation of things if that did ultimately save a lot of lives, but that was the reasoning behind it, right? And so it’s just, I just, I don’t know, this, this just changes the way that I’ve looked at most recent wars.AndMalcolm Collins: well, I, I find it really frustrating, and I might even do a full episode on this, is that [00:26:00] people even dither about the morality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maybe like the most moral act ever in history. The decal was not even that high. It was, it was lower than other bombing campaigns during the war which nobody complains about.I’m talking about civilian decal. We know from. Things like the Battle of Midway and stuff like that, that the Japanese were in incredibly dug in would die to the man and would kill civilians as our troops advance. They basically,Simone Collins: oh, they’re incredibly brutal. They were so brutal. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They would, theySimone Collins: were certainly not playing by any of the rules of engagement discussed in, in any of these international or US based.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. If we had had to invade the mainland, the number of Japanese, and I’m not even talking about like our own troops, like I shouldn’t even need to talk about the Japanese, like less of our troops had to die, do what we need to do, right? But the number of Japanese who would’ve died in extremely much more brutal.Then was the result of radiation from the [00:27:00] bombs would’ve been astronomically higher. Any, any realistic at the hands of other Japanese, any realistic look at what the Japanese did to populations, their own populations as they were treated, as they were pushed back, and, and, and how far they fought for their land.Shows that.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And I get, I just get really sick of that whenever anyone’s like, the, the bombs were so immoral.Simone Collins: It’s like, yeah. But I mean, like those rules that I described, especially the, the short term Afghanistan ones were like, basically no, no preemptive strikes were allowed. Everything had to be reactive.Which is, you know, ultimately can cause so much more work.Malcolm Collins: And the funny thing is, is it doesn’t even change how you are going to come across in the media. Yeah, how you are going to come across. You know, I point out that even by Iran’s own numbers, so far we’ve killed 1,300 people in this campaign by their own numbers.They killed a thousand, sorry, 3,500 people who are just civilians protesting. That’s by their own numbers. Now, keep in mind that the [00:28:00] number that we killed is probably inflated, and the number they killed is probably really low outside figures to put it at around 35,000. Mm-hmm. So even if we go with their inflated number and the outside number of 35,000 you know, we’re looking at like one 30th, the number of not civilian deaths, but death in total from our bombing campaign.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And you know, this, this to me. The fact that we have Iranians out there yelling from their windows death to the, to the new, to the newly appointed Ayatollah.Malcolm Collins: That answers it for me. I know. It’s, I know, it’s, I know. We’re doing the right thing.Simone Collins: Well, what’s so impressive too, though, is.That the Trump administration has found a way to not only, I [00:29:00] mean, one, they’ve eased up the rules but two, they have found a way to circumvent them by being so targeted, so strategic as to know like the exact room in which targets are within underground bunk. Well,Malcolm Collins: that’sSimone Collins: our Jews whoMalcolm Collins: are helping us know that.I mean, US intelligence has not always been the best historically, butSimone Collins: we’re getting better. And I mean, I think just also like the, the mere fact. I heard about this in the first place from a Silicon Valley tech dude who is now high up in the US military is meaningful that we are now beginning to bring in very outcome oriented.Yeah. One of, one of ourMalcolm Collins: friends who we know from working in venture capital,Simone Collins: Andrew Driscoll.Malcolm Collins: D Well, Dan Driscoll runs the Navy. What did the the, theSimone Collins: army. Malcolm,Malcolm Collins: he runs the Army, so, so I can’t remember. I used to talk with him like every week. So he is a, a good friend of mine.Really cool guy. I like him, like good [00:30:00] family man.Simone Collins: He’s the United States Secretary of the Army. Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: That’s just the way you mean. I know him. Yeah,Simone Collins: IMalcolm Collins: know him as like cool based VC from like, the South who,Simone Collins: well, and again, that’s, that’s meaningful. Like it gives me a lot of hope that like in the past our military was really just getting run into the ground by bureaucratic morass.You know, we had leaders of the military feeling like their, their people were being more intact, or, sorry, more attacked by the internal. Lawyers of the military then by like, you know, they, they weren’t being defended, they were being attacked internally. From that to tech enabled, incredibly effective, hyper-targeted missions and operations with minimal collateral damage that are able to circumvent a lot of these rules because.You know, we’re, we’re not dealing in a situation where we have troops on the ground who are being shot [00:31:00] at by people who are then dashing into a, you know, religious monument to like avoid being shot at. And I, I really like that and it gives me hope of ways that you can circumvent. Bureaucratic morass.Because a lot of me is like, well, we just have to wait for everything to burn to the ground. Right? There’s just, we have to just, it’s gonna crumble, everything’s gonna fall apart, and then we’ll have to start fresh. And here it, there’s a demonstration that actually you can take something that is so large and so huge and so complex and also so regimented as the US military with all of its rules, it’s multiple rule books.And. Still be this effective and broker in this new age of, of geopolitical strategy and war that we’re seeing with Venezuela, with Iran, with our joint actions, with Israel. Maybe. Maybe there’s hope.Malcolm Collins: WhatSimone Collins: do theMalcolm Collins: long term, what we’re gonna see [00:32:00] is breaking rules, saves lives, ignoring about all of this because when your opponents know that you play by these rules, they then say, well then now let’s, let’s put our offices in schools and stuff like this.And the great thing is, is one of the reasons we’ve been able to just completely ignore the rules, and I think that we should more aggressively going forwards, is all of the sources that used to shame this source of behavior. Nobody trusts anymore. No matter what Trump does in a war, we now know that leftist media is gonna say he’s killing school kids.He’s killing hosp. They don’t, the Jews are doing, oh, they’re blowing up school kids. They’re blowing up. They’ll say that no matter what you do, you could have the cleanest war ever or the dirtiest war ever. The same articles are gonna come out. So, and, and the Iranians could do whatever. You know, you saw the left like.Giving, literally affiliating them as they were murdering tens of thousands of innocent protestors, right? Like, and that’s just murdering. Like you are a woman in Iran. [00:33:00] You walk around without a hijab, you get sent to an irania prison, you get griped, you get, you know, they didn’t care about that. They didn’t care about women, right?Like they literally do not care how evil the opponent is. They do not care how good you try to be. So just handle things in the way that is the most efficient. That is my takeaway is, is is the most moral way to do things. And as a government and as a people, we need to get back to doing things that way.Simone Collins: Well, fortunately that’s apparently more where the rules of engagement have gone. What Michael said in the allin podcast was things have shifted more to, as he put it, this Colin Powell era of use your judgment. And I think in the end, you know. Allowing people to make strategic decisions on the ground, like that is the right call.People don’t want to hurt civilians. They don’t wanna hurt kids and people in their homes, they don’t wanna, they don’t want to cause collateral damage. And when they do, they’re making a really [00:34:00] tough call. But that, that’s probably to save more people, right? Yeah. So yeah, I just. This blew my mind when I heard about it and when I told you and, and some other people on a family call yesterday and you guys were like, I don’t know if that’s true.I’m like, okay, well that’s,Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like, I wanna, I wanna look into this. That doesn’t sound true. And then it’s,Simone Collins: yeah,Malcolm Collins: it’s true. What?Simone Collins: Can you believe it? Yeah. Yeah. Wild. I would love to hear in the comments, any experiences, people that we have listened to this podcast to serve or have served in the military.What you’re seeing on the ground now, what you saw on the ground pa in the past, because I mean, to whatever extent you can say something because again, it’s a lot of this just, it can’t be published. We don’t know what people are being briefed on. As they’re serving in the military, I’m really curious.I wanna know what the experience is like. ‘cause my understanding is like, you know, as you’re entering a theater of war, you know, you’re going in, [00:35:00] you’re getting your orientation, whatever you’re settling into your place and they’re like, okay, by the way, these are all the roles. You can’t do this, this, and this.I’m just really curious to see how it, it worked in practice because it’s just so wild to me. So, thanks to everyone who always does share really interesting insights in the comments. You guys are amazing. And Malcolm, I love you a lot.Malcolm Collins: I love you a lot, Simone. You are amazing and a great wife.Simone Collins: Thanks for.Malcolm Collins: Why does that make you smile? You justSimone Collins: are I, I can’t smile. I,Malcolm Collins: no, I don’t want you to smile. I don’t know why I didn’t mean to make you smile. I feel bad about making you smileSimone Collins: this giant No, it’s, it’s turn My bruise is turning like yellow and gross. But yeah, you make me smile even though it hurts. I loveMalcolm Collins: you, Simone.I appreciate that you push through for our fans to give them great content even when you’re in enormous pain. And I know that they appreciate it too. There’s a lot of people who take a lot of time to watch. I mean, we put, we put [00:36:00] time into putting these together and, and trying to give you guys something that is you know, exciting for you and, and, and intellectually stimulating.And you know, Simone, to, to, to get these out every day, even when you’re recovering. I mean, we had a whole week where we had to do prerecorded episodes when a lot was happening and Iran and stuff like that.Simone Collins: I’mMalcolm Collins: sorry. And I felt bad about it, but, but. Because we, you know, we wanna give you guys consistent quality.I don’t, I don’t want you guys coming to one of these videos and just having one of us, or just having, you know, and Simone is willing to put herself through so much to, to it gives that to you guys, and it means the world to me that I married somebody, this honorable and this diligent.Simone Collins: Aw, thanks Malcolm.I love you a lot and I, I loved this podcast and I love the really smart people who, we’re part of the community too, so it’s all worth it, and pain is just pain. So, all right, I will go get dinner started, and I love you lots.Malcolm Collins: Bye bye.Simone Collins: So today [00:37:00] randomly, Octavian mentioned karaoke and I was like, wait, how does he know about like karaoke parties? We’ve never done karaoke in our house before. And I asked him, do you know what karaoke means? And he’s like, yeah, it’s when you’re sick and you miss somethingMalcolm Collins: when you’re sick and you miss something.Simone Collins: Like, he seemed to think that, that, that karaoke is, is the word for absence. But okay. Anyway,Malcolm Collins: you found out how to use a feature on the Alexa that we,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Don’t know how to useSimone Collins: it’s Well, no, no, no. I know how to use it. It’s the drop-in feature. So we have a house full of smart speakers, both Google and Alexa.Great. Now anyone can just hack it, but whatever. We know everyone’s always listening. Where you can use it as an intercom. But you can also use a drop in feature where you can just listen in to any of the rooms that has this enabled. And we use it all the time, like after our kids go to bed. [00:38:00] Like just the same night last night Octavian was very unhappy about something and I heard him crying in the room and like normal parents have to get out of bed and walk down to like their kid’s room and talk to their kid, whereas I just pick up my phone.And I drop into the room and I’m like, Hey, Octavian, what’s up? And we have a talk and then he’s fine and I don’t have to get out of bed, and he’s fine. And we just talk through the speaker and then he goes off and does his thing. But unfortunately, he discovered the drop-in feature through audio commands, which I didn’t know was possible.And so like it’s the middle of the night. And I like hear this voice through my dreams. This like little child voice talking about stickers and batteries for his Chinook helicopter. And I’m like, what, what, what? Oh, like what is going on? And I’m just like, go to sleep, Octavian. And he’s like, okay, mom, drop out.And I’m like, oh God. He’s dropped in on the Alexa device. I can’t swear. WhereMalcolm Collins: did he learn those voice commands?Simone Collins: I don’t know. I don’t know. [00:39:00] It could be that maybe when I call in and drop in on his device, in his room it says something like dropping in and then my voice comes in. I don’t know. I’ll have to figure that out.But no, he uses it all the time. He is unlocked a new skill, though he doesn’t understand what karaoke is. I mean, I explained it to him, but he’s probably still gonna think it’s what absence is. SoMalcolm Collins: he is obsessed with conquering other countries. It is, talks about it all the time.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: When he sees land, when he sees mapsSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Yeah. He is the, he’s the kid. We should have named Manifest Destiny that we can’t because it’s both. Too far right. And too hippie.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We really wanted a can they manifest destiny, by the way, can I tonight is the dumpling lasagna ready?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. And I’m gonna do that with steamed edamame with sea salt.Malcolm Collins: Actually, we do need to get through the roast beef.Simone Collins: Oh. I’ll make [00:40:00] you another sandwich.Malcolm Collins: What I would do is not a full sandwich, but roast beast. Roast beef and white bread I think would actually go really well with the dumpling.Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘cause there’s only one Raman. So Okay. Just roast beef on white bread or do you want that with mustard andMalcolm Collins: I mean, maybe may some mustard to mayo, but let’s try that.Simone Collins: Just heavily layered, just the rest of it.Malcolm Collins: I don’t know the rest of it. I mean, I was thinking of it as like a light, almost, sort of like dipper sandwich basically. Like I think the flavors would actually go really well.Simone Collins: You can’t dip something in Zale.Malcolm Collins: Well, no. You take a bite of one, then you take a bite of the other.Simone Collins: You’re a strange man. You still want the edamame.Malcolm Collins: No.Simone Collins: Why did you buy it? You buy it, you get all these ideas in your head, and then we have like a freezer full of stuff. IMalcolm Collins: might want AMI later. It’s just AMI isn’t gonna expire and the sandwich meat is.Simone Collins: Yeah, no, that’s wise. Okay, that’s the [00:41:00] plan then. Let me gird my loins here.Malcolm Collins: It’s funny, somebody was like in the comment because we had a, well, how, I just love seeing them together. A couple so clearly made for each other, and of course salty people on Reddit saw this and were like, they, they. That wife is clearly a year away from divorce, right? Like he treats her like a slave.It’s like you about to leave me, Simone. Is that, that where we are right now?Simone Collins: Don’t make me laugh. It will hurt. I’m already gonna be spitting up blood after doing this podcast, please.Do you want me to do one?Malcolm Collins: I have another oneSimone Collins: prepped. No, I’m, I’m good. I’m good enough. It is just never going to, like, I just had to push through this, so, you ready? Okay. Oh God, no. Let me do one, let me do one. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We’re doing it. Okay. Ready? Okay. All right.Speaker 12: [00:42:00] Mama. Mommy. Mama. Mommy.Who’s down there, Titan. She’s up to something. Dad.Speaker 13: What’s up Andy? I,yeah. What do you think guys? Can it go away?Speaker 12: No. I, Aw girl. I’m, do you want the [00:43:00] sand? I’mSpeaker 13: Oh, sweet darling. I’m supposed to. Professor, what should we do?Girl, can you do it? Octavian? Oh, you can do it. Oh, you can do it.Speaker 12: Go under Indy. Okay. Okay. Okay. Indy, do you want some milk? Go? You wanna slide? Okay. Go. Go under it. Go under it. Go [00:44:00] under it. See the, okay. Ready. You don’t wanna slide,Speaker 13: you wanna sit right there? Okay. That’s fine. You can do that. That’s fine. No. This is a public episode. 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In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm & Simone Collins break down the insane geopolitical wins stacking up for Trump in early 2026—wins so massive they rival the collapse of the Soviet Union, Napoleon’s early campaigns, or Cromwell’s rise, but with almost zero U.S. cost so far.From the precision strike that took out Ayatollah Khamenei (and the sneaky Mossad magic behind it), to Maduro’s capture in Venezuela halting oil to Cuba and forcing blackouts, to Iran’s proxy network (Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas) getting defanged, the Collinses argue this is a new era of low-cost, high-impact American dominance.They explore the risks of overreach (history’s villains who won too much too fast), why most of the Muslim world isn’t mourning Iran, the “frenemy” dynamic with China, why dumb white women seem to be the main group getting radicalized, and Trump’s unlocked hack: kill hated dictators surgically, threaten successors, let regional allies (Israel, Saudis, UAE) handle cleanup, and watch dictators self-moderate out of self-preservation.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. The world has changed so dramatically, and I think much more dramatically than people realize in the past few months, specifically in the past few weeks with what’s going on in Iran right now, the number of core geopolitical winds that Trump has had.And I think even the right wing doesn’t seem to really grok the magnitude of this. There is no historical parallel in all of American history except for maybe the collapse of the Soviet Union, but that wasn’t exactly all our doing. A lot of that was internal. Yeah. The, the closest three historical parallels I can find, like series of wins this significant with this little early cost would be the beginning of h man’s campaigns.The beginning of Napoleon’s campaigns or most of Oliver Cromwell’s life. Those are the only three that come anywhere near. And, and I think that this actually [00:01:00] highlights one of the big risks of where we are geopolitically right now.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: In the same way that if you look at Napoleon’s early career, just win, win, win, win, win, win, win.Or the h man’s early military career. Win, win, win, win, win, win, win. Mm-hmm. Very low cost to his own troops. Very low cost to him geopolitically. What happened in, in both of those cases is they completely overdid it and ended up giant villains from history. Mm-hmm. And I can completely see the temptation from Trump’s perspective right now.And for people who don’t understand what I’m saying right now. Trump has taken out first obviously Maduro and the Venezuelan, the new Venezuelan president. It, it appears to be working like she halted the oil shipments to Cuba, which now is forcing Cuba because Mexico did not restart the shipments. They, they, somebody out our last podcast we’re talking about this, said they restarted them.They’ve halted oil shipments as well. So it looks like the Cubans are either [00:02:00] going to cave or be put into a permanent blackout because they don’t really have oil anymore. And if you don’t have oil, you can’t grow crops or move cars or anything. And none of their geopolitical allies have the ability to get them oil because like if China tries to send a ship all the way to them, the US will just.Grab it like we’ve been with everyone else who’s trying to send them ships. And they don’t, and China doesn’t even seem to want to. And then Iran has been taken off the map with very little geopolitical cost. And we’ll explain why each of these has had so little geo, because that’s also weird, right?And if you go through American history and you look at something like, say the Vietnam War or something like that, if we had overwhelmingly won the Vietnam War, right, like just completely won it early days, it would not be one 10th Is geopolitically relevant at the three victories combined? Hmm. We have been trying to deal with Iran, [00:03:00] Venezuela, and Cuba for.A half a century at least.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. No. From our childhoods, we’ve all grown up hearing about Iran and Death to America and Yeah. All this stuff. But it was more of a recent thing though.Malcolm Collins: The United States doesn’t really have that many geopolitical enemies.Simone Collins: Yeah. Truly it’s just been Iran and North Korea mostly with China and Russia both being kind of like frenemies.FrenemyMalcolm Collins: China is, is really more of a frenemy than anything else.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. They’re like the Jessica to our Utah mom. That’s a little too. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: , What I mean by China is more of a frenemy is in terms of like big geopolitical enemies that we’ve had. China really hasn’t made a point outside of the fentanyl epidemic, which is absolutely terrible.And inventing TikTok again, absolutely terrible. But, you know, it’s, it’s been nothing like our wars against our other geopolitical enemies, like what we hadSimone Collins: to deal with. No, they’re like that [00:04:00] passive aggressive, mean girl. Like we’re, we’re in a mean girl clique together and like, you know, one’s like, Aw sweetie, let me help you.Like you can buy some of my cheaply manufactured goods. Or like, oh, why don’t you have like, here you can have my Cheetos. ‘cause I mean, they’re gonna make you fat anyway, and I’m gonna eat like all my healthy food over here.Speaker 22: We do not have a click problem at the school, but you do have to watch out for frenemies. What are frenemies? Frenemies are enemies who act like friends. We call them frenemies or ene amens, or friends who secretly hate you. We call them freighters. That’s so gay.Simone Collins: But thatMalcolm Collins: is actually exactly like, it, it’s like two mean girls that constantly hang out together.Simone Collins: Exactly.Malcolm Collins: But, but what I mean is they’re not like an existential threat toSimone Collins: Yeah. They’re just like competitive rivals who really don’t like each other and feel like it’s a zero sum game. So like, yeah, actually it is pretty bad, but like. In a more collaborative way, whereas Iran was like, no, I just wanna kill you.You just like, there can be no room for the two of us. You know, it’s more exclusive. That’s like a one,Malcolm Collins: their founding thesis is, I [00:05:00] wanna kill you. YouSpeaker 12: We are two months away from enriching weapons grade uranium to be used for peaceful purposes.Speaker 29: Obviously this joke was made a while ago. , By Iran’s own claims, they had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs, , nearly enough to wipe out all life on earth.Simone Collins: Know, like, yeah. So it’s like, it’s, it’s the, it’s the school bully. Like, meet me out back. I’m gonna beat you up. Versus the mean girl of like,Malcolm Collins: well I do, I love how everyone is meed on Khomeini for this, that he, the mans spent his entire life trying to get into a war with the United States.Simone Collins: So you can’t make you smell. It’s gonna burst my mouth. Stitches, but kine, can we please? Oh God. Oh, the stitches are gonna open. Whatcha doing? Kine. [00:06:00] Okay, go. Keep going, keep going. Just, just keep butchering all the Iranian words and I’m just gonna bust all my stitches open.Malcolm Collins: I’m not, ISimone Collins: to stay away.Malcolm Collins: I ran. Day one, he spends his entire life trying to get us into a war with Iran.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Dies like day one, hour one. Watching a video on this was insane because they knew not just like the bunker he was in, but the floor he was, was in, in that bunker.Simone Collins: How I, I wish I knew how they knew. You know, I wanna watch the Oceans 11 version. It’s real pissMalcolm Collins: off Jews. Jews are sneaky. This is the thing about Jews that people don’t know.They were very sneaky people, which makes them excellent spies. Like all Jews, if you’re playing like Skyrim or something, they’re born with like a plus 10 to their sneak stat. You know, stealth, they’re, they all go stealth. Archer blt wait,Simone Collins: Because I like legit have never played Skyrim or like any video game, aside from a rollercoaster tycoon, are there [00:07:00] Jews in Skyrim?Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. But there’s races in Sky Room, so I’m saying if there wereSimone Collins: Jews in Sky Room,Malcolm Collins: okay, I get you. It’s racial sta modifier. With Jews, it’s a, oh, we should do that. We should have an episode where we make racial stat modifiers for every race. Oh my God. But Jews, Jews, Jews are sort of an op build these days, I’m gonna be honest.Gotta, gotta Nerf. That turns out to be very, very useful. That’sSimone Collins: what the H man said as you refer to him. ButMalcolm Collins: you know what? Oh yeah. Yes, he did try to Nerf the Jew build. He’s like, he did try to NerfSimone Collins: the Jew buildMalcolm Collins: unfair to have Judes in our server.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: How, how do you compete? So anyway we have other episodes where we talk about these sorts of topics.If, if you’re interested in learning more.Our Jewish Patreon supporters after hearing this.Speaker 14: Lemme take that back. Huh?Speaker 39: But on the other side, imagine how stupid you have to be to know you’re in a stealth archer. Meta to know that like the elves have a stealth archer, meta buff, and to intentionally attempt to isolate them, , just [00:08:00] because they are arrogant and have. Dicked you around occasionally, right? Like this is, this is my cultural group, whatever.We try to run the sneak meta, as you have seen from me trying to pronounce whatever that guy’s name is.Speaker 4: Buongiorno.Speaker: Signore un piacere. Gli amici della vedetta ammirata tra tutti noi questa gemma prove della nostra cultura saranno naturalmente accolti sotto la mia protezione per la durata del loro soggiornoSpeaker 4: Grazie.Speaker 23: We, we we’re, we’re bored with zero sneak stat.Malcolm Collins: But so, so, they knew exactly where, and this is the thing, right? So the US has said, and this is a very interesting, like we’ve never done this before. So when the US this was Netanyahu who said this, he’s like, anybody who replaces Khomeini as the Ayatollah if they take this position with stated an antagonism towards the United States and Israel and towards the people of [00:09:00] Iran as Khomeini did, and keep in mind he murdered tens of thousands of people, tens of thousands of people in just the past few months.Like the death count in Iran was staggering. Even if you’re looking at the more conservative numbers of, of people just protesting in the streets, you know, genuinely the people who are standing this are genuinely monstrous.Speaker 7: Indulge me for one second. Pretend that I’m an idiot. Okay. I’m there.Okay. You know what, let’s just agree to disagree, my friend. Okay.What? Why? No. Don’t you remember? Of course. I remember. How dare you question my memory. I remember everything. Oh no, I would never do that. Never. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. Not worry. It’s fine. NDA, my friend. Thank you.Malcolm Collins: And I think it’s importantSimone Collins: that, yeah. Has, has the death count from the Usis Israel attacks, yet surpassed the death count from the protestors being taken [00:10:00] out.Speaker 30: To the Iranian government’s official dis death count for civilians so far is around 1,300. Keep in mind that their official death count for the civilians that they slaughtered was around 3000, whereas, , death counts from outside have been at around 35,000. , So. This is, this is astonishing to me that their official death count for the civilians killed in the war so far as a, a third of their official death count of the civilians that they mass slaughter.Just over the last month,I.Malcolm Collins: I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t, I’d be surprised if it hasSimone Collins: because when I last checked, I thought it was like around 1,600 or so from this conflict.Malcolm Collins: Oh. Then it’s not even close.Simone Collins: It’s one, there’s like over 5,000 for the protests.Malcolm Collins: I heard up to 30,000 for some estimates.Simone Collins: Oh my God. Well, I mean, who knows?Malcolm Collins: I think 5,000 was actually Iran’s official figure.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: So,Simone Collins: I mean, I wanna be conservative, but I mean, that, that basically means that like, [00:11:00] it’s been, you know,Malcolm Collins: and I wanna point something out to how vile the people who were fighting are, you know, when they, when, when they say that Aya Khomeini is with his, you know, 30 virgins right now, you gotta keep in mind what they’re, what they’re imagining.You are imagining a bunch of young,Simone Collins: I thought it was 40 virgins. Did he get a penalty for something? 40Malcolm Collins: Virgin. Yeah, sorry. 40 virgin.Simone Collins: 10 virgin penalty for like. Getting bombed by the infidels. I guess it’s suck.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so you, you are imagining like beach girls or something like that?Khomeini is the guy who lowered the legal, marrying age in Iran to nine. Like when he, he, if that’s the age that you’re getting married, that’s the age that he thinks when he thinks he’s getting 40 virgins for all eternity, he thinks heaven.Simone Collins: Well, by the way, is there, like, have you looked this up when you did more research on Iran?Are, are they like, do they ize every time you bang them? Like, or is it just a one time? ‘cause this is [00:12:00] eternity, you have them. So like, what’s the point of them being virgins if like, you immediately become intimate and then. You’re not,Malcolm Collins: well, I guess they’ve never slept with anyone other than you.Simone Collins: Okay. So that’s the point is that they’ve been untouched by other men.Okay. Okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I imagine, you know, in their heaven, nobody ever ages and that basically their heaven is literally,Simone Collins: so he gets his harem of nine year olds and goodness,Malcolm Collins: yes. An eternity of being a PDA file. Like,Simone Collins: he can watch frozen with them over and over and over. It’s gonna be delightful.Malcolm Collins: And these are real things here. People you can, you can look this up. This is what he lowered the marriage age to. So I, I want to and if you wanna go deeper onto this concept within Islam, because a lot of people are like, oh, Aisha wasn’t actually nine. Look at this, look at this, look at this. And it’s like, you, progressive Muslim can say that.But the truth is, is that the vast majority of conservative Muslims in conservative Muslim countries do believe she was not.Speaker 24: So while we may never be able to know, was she actually nine when he [00:13:00] slept with her, was she actually, what was it, six when they got married? , We, we can know for a fact what most conservative Muslims believe, and they do believe this, that is a hundred percent easily provable.Malcolm Collins: And so it doesn’t matter what you think, this is what they think. And this is what they’re acting on in our episode where we talk about the major religious court in Pakistan saying it was Islamophobic to raise the marriage age to, I wanna say 14 or 16 or something like a still a fairly young age.They mean this, this is like a, you know, you gotta take their religion seriously. And, and they mean what they say they mean, don’t, don’t be like, they don’t mean what they, they, they mean what they say they mean, um mm-hmm. Because they do it and they show it legally. But I wanna, I wanna talk about like how geopolitically this shift things, how much, I mean, imagine you’re Kim Jong-Un or Putin.Right now, right. You are effing terrified. You are e every, like, China thinks they built this giant geopolitical network like I Rand did. Before I go into this, what I wanna say is a lot of people who think like, oh, we’re getting into a new Iraq war here, or something like that.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The cool hack [00:14:00] that Trump seems to have figured out about this stuff is people were like, how do you take down this dictatorship and rebuild the country at like a good, like at a decent cost, right?And Trump’s like,Speaker 20: space? That’s the neat thing. You don’t,Malcolm Collins: You don’t, you don’t rebuild it. That I just, that’s not, we’ll leave that to, and if, if people are like, well, that leads to you know, worse situations in the long run, not if they have the demographics that they have right now. Like they’re not building into some, like, bigger power in the future.Every year Iran is just less powerful than it was the year before and they just completely knocked it out as a geopolitical player. Because Iran has a terrible fertility rates below the United States, for example, despite their poverty. And I think that, and, and people can be like, well, US presidents in the past weren’t about this.We tried to kill Castro like 135 times or something. And that was during the height of the age of Spycraft. [00:15:00] Trump basically unlocked a new way of doing this. And we’ll talk about that in just a second. But now I wanna talk about the geopolitics of this, what he unlocked, why it hasn’t had the negative geopolitical effects that many people expected it to, why things seem to be working out well in Venezuela and why I suspect less, less easy, but it may work out in Iran.And, and even with Iran, when I thought about this last, I was like, I don’t. I wouldn’t say that you should go in and try to do regime change in Iran. I was a little worried about it. It is, it is definitely harder than Venezuela. But with those sneaky Jews, we may be able to do this without too much death.Speaker 14: Not bad, huh?Malcolm Collins: When I say that, what I mean is the reason if we are able to do Iran well mm-hmm. You are able to rebuild it well without actually attempting a boots on the ground reconstruction of the country. It is going to be because of Mossad. And, and, and I hope that Trump plans to basically leaves this in Israel’s lap after all of [00:16:00] this be like, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, you guys take over here, you’ve got the money.We’re out. Right. And I think a lot of Maga is gonna be very mad if he decides to go in a heavy way, boots on the ground or reconstruction. But I don’t think that, I’m not, I’m not expecting that from what I’m saying. I, I think a lot of that is just threats right now. But anyway. So, geopolitically? Yes. Our entire lives, it was a, a fight between the Shia and Sunni faction.Okay. And the the Sunni faction, the Saudi faction they were largely the UAE Saudi Arabia and the United States and Israel. And they, they, they really sort of side it with Israel. They pretend like we’re not really on Israel’s side, but you know, they, they largely side it was Israel.Mm-hmm. And then the sh affection, the Iranian affection. Did not use states. It used Hezbollah, it used Hamas, it used HHI rebels, it used non-state militant actors. And it would fund them to go out and attempt to do things on its behalf, [00:17:00] what we would call today, terrorist organizations. And they unfortunately we have another video where we talk about this, that group was basically entirely taken out and now is being wept up.So initially you had obviously, like Hamas is not nearly as powerful as they were before the Gaza War, or able to push Iran’s will right now has the Houthis Rebels have largely been Defanged, Hezbollah was so afraid after all of this that when, when we were bombing and when Israel mostly was, was bombing Iran.They to like a token show of support, shot one measly missile into Israel, killed, nobody was shot down, wasn’t even at a, like a, a populated area. And Israel was like, okay, buddy, we’re coming in, in full force and they’re now doing a ground invasion of Lebanon. And it’s even crazier because the Lebanese government, which used to be the like, like subordinate basically to Hezbollah was in this region, is now actively helping Israel in [00:18:00] securing Hezbollah weapons.Simone Collins: NoMalcolm Collins: The, the core reason, the core flip that happened, a lot of people are unaware of this is do you remember when there was that giant explosion in that port town?Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: So in the Middle East a few years ago, a giant explosion, some of my friends like, lived there and you could see like all other windows.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yes, yes. And there was footage in people’s, like balconies got blown in and Yes.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So that it turns out was in Lebanon and that was a, a Hezbollah warehouse. And that is because previously people were like, well, you can’t get rid of Hezbollah because Hezbollah, you know, runs some schools, runs some medical stuff, runs some, you know, it helps people.Right. And that. Because of not just that happening, but then Hezbollah really ham-fisted using corruption to cover up that. It was obviously a Hezbollah warehouse that turned public sentiment against Hezbollah in elections and political sentiment against Hezbollah. And so then politicians were like, oh, let’s go [00:19:00] all in on this.Let’s do joint operations with Israel. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to worry about them coming in and fighting us all the time? And, and they also see where things are going with Iran. Iran is not gonna be Daddy Warbuck for anyone anymore. Right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The only state actor that Iran really had as a friend was Qatar.And that wasn’t even because Qatar and Iran really liked each other, it’s because they sit on the giant gas field that makes up the majority of Qatar’s wealth is like half in Iran, so they have to get along mm-hmm. By Qatar. And Al Jazeera keeps saying things like, oh my God, the cost of oil is gonna skyrocket and that’s gonna hurt economies all over the world.Yeah. I’m like, oh no, America, the cost of oil, oil, that’s gonna be horrible. What did we just get a ton of? Was this whole Venezuela situation? Hmm. Something We definitely wouldn’t want the value of that to explode. Hmm. That’d be horrible for us. A net oil exporter. At least vis-a-vis the rest of the world.You know, I’m not looking forward to a [00:20:00] depression either, but you know, in the, in the world of ai, maybe we could use a, a slowing off this grocery right now. But anyway, so that has basically been resolved. And the way that we were able to resolve that without the major geopolitical fallout that I think a lot of people expected because pretty much every major power is praising this.I mean, Spain threw a bit of a, a donkey tantrum about this and so did the uk. But the truth is, is they both capitulated within like two days of throwing their tantrum. And now. They’re, they’re towing the line because of a few things. One is, is I ran, and this is, was an accident. They didn’t mean to do this.I, I almost feel sort of bad for them on this run, but they accidentally shot a missile into Turkey which is a, that was anSimone Collins: accident. How do you accidentally do that?Malcolm Collins: They said it was a technical malfunctionSimone Collins: whoMalcolm Collins: given the number of missiles they’re shooting, I can see that it could be a technical malfunction.Speaker 25: If you’re like, Malcolm, why do you believe it was an accident? And it wasn’t meant to target a US base, it’s because they only sent one missile. And every other missile campaign that they’ve done has been a huge barrage of missiles. So to me, this looks [00:21:00] more like an accident. I.Malcolm Collins: So anyway this could trigger Article five. Now the UN is not saying we’re gonna trigger Article five. Turkey is not saying, they’re like, we understand it with an accident. We’re sorry, you know, blah, blah, blah. But the point is, is it gives America a lot more leeway to be like, Hey, what’s even the point of NATO if you guys aren’t even gonna allow us to use our bases in your countries and stuff like that, right?Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And so the question is this, why, why aren’t people freaking out about this existentially other than just progressives? Like why aren’t Muslim groups freaking out about this? Why aren’t why aren’t Europe freaking out about this? Why is the Middle East not freaking out about this? And the answer is because Iran unfortunately made an enemy out of most other Muslim groups.Speaker 26: And then in a moment of almost hilariously bad decision making, when Iran started to get attacked, rather than shooting all the missiles at Israel, it shot some, but it has shot many more missiles at non-aggressive Muslim countries. Some of them, even [00:22:00] Shia, majority countries, uh, who just weren’t 100% on board with them.Uh, and. As you can guess, a lot of these countries were not involved in this. They did not want to be involved in this, but now they’re like, you know what? You’re gonna bomb us. Okay. Like, I don’t even see the point in not being involved in this if you’re just gonna shoot us with missiles anyway. Like how, how would you build public support around that?That’s comically stupid.Malcolm Collins: So first of all, you’ve got to remember is the Shias, were always the minority, always in the Muslim world. Yeah.For an understanding of just how much of a minority they are. Only 10 to 15% of Muslims are Shia.Malcolm Collins: And they often treated the Sunnis really, really terribly now. It was, it’s sort of a Boas way thing, a Catholic Protestant thing here. Mm-hmm. But they haven’t gotten over it yet in the same way.Okay. And, and so obviously Saudi Arabia isn’t shedding a tear over this. The UAE isn’t shedding a tear over this.Speaker 31: And Iran hasn’t even been able to keep the real Shia on board with them, you know, [00:23:00] bombing reflexively despite not being involved in the attack. The Shia majority, Bahrain. Um, and, and I’d point out to you if you’re like, I’m seeing stuff online where Muslims support this or whatever. This stuff is entirely AstroTurf, uh, and it’s very easy to tell that it’s AstroTurf, but that might be for another episode.Ironically, the only people who I’ve seen who appear to be real and are actually being radicalized by this, who were not already, you know, radical, I just want to destroy America. Types are of course the patriotic Americans worst enemy, dumb white women. .Malcolm Collins: And then other places where we’re seeing major power overhauls, like in Yemen right now, they’ve got their own stuff going on. They don’t care about this, but most of the, the Islamic world just doesn’t feel a kinship with Iran.Mm-hmm. On, on, outside of like a few isolated terror cells outside of that, a lot of the other countries in the Islamic world saw Iran at their, so remember I said the [00:24:00] Islamic world was like a bipolar axis of Iran and Saudi Arabia as the two core power players?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And remember how it was listing countries that were on one of those axis or another.Mm-hmm. And you might have noticed some very big countries weren’t on that list specifically. Egypt and Turkey. Two very powerful Islamic countries. Yeah. Because they wanted the power play to be between them and Saudi Arabia. Right? Iran has always been the weaker of these, these two partners, and they wanted it to be focused on them.They wanted to be one of the uncontested power players in the region. So they’re happy that this has happened, right? Mm-hmm. That Iran is off the map at this point, right? They’re not, they’re not shedding a tear. They’re like, oh, awesome. Like, like, now, now I have a chance to play for a bipolar axis of power was in the Islamic world, which is going to reemerge eventually.And a lot of people are gonna be moving to, to try to gain power in this vacuum. But, but you have that reason for like theologically and ideologically why a lot of people don’t care. Second, if [00:25:00] people are like worried about a lot of terrorism in the aftermath of this you may get some. But the reality is, is that Israel has sort of acted as our terrorism bug zapper.Like it’s just an easier place to do terrorism if you’re already a Muslim and it’s, it’s more culpable than the United States is. Mm-hmm. And it’s also better at defending itself. Now people in Europe are like, well what about Europe? And I’m going, well, maybe you shouldn’t have let a bunch of freaking radical Muslims into your countries.And, and America’s got a clamp down on this too. I think like, especially the situation in Texas right now really needs to be resolved. And you know, that was the Trump administration and, and, and this is why if there is a major Muslim terrorist attack in the United States, like we recently had one in, in Texas, this stuff gets covered up, of course.But we need to get and I think that that’s what we’d likely see next is a, is a major Muslim deportation push in the United States. Mm-hmm. As a result of that. And I could see that being popular depending on the scale of the attack. And so that wouldn’t even necessarily be a negative thing for the goals of the Trump administration because the Trump administration is looking for an excuse for something like that.If they, if they can get one, right? Mm-hmm. So, so [00:26:00] again, even that’s not like, it’s, it’s, it’s like is it a risk? Yeah, it’s a risk, but it’s a risk in the same way, like a school shooting is a risk, you know, like it’s a risk. I would prefer it not to be a risk but it’s not like a, a statistical risk to anyone.I know’s individual life. E even if one does happen, you know what I mean? So I think that that, that that’s again, why like he’s, he’s directed the anger at this within the Islamic world where there is anger onto Israel. And Israel’s been willing to accept that. Second, and I wanna note like the genius of this is weird because it wasn’t even like Trump’s own move.Like apparently the way I’m hearing it from the administration mm-hmm. Is that Yahoo basically called him up and is like, we’re gonna do this, or you enter you out.Simone Collins: Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: And Trump was like, f**k. Like, I guess I’m in that, that basically because they want, they wanted this to be over with the last bombing, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But anyway and the way that they’ve been able to, like the, the way that they’re trying to handle this is basically just like, we’ll kill whoever you elected as an antagonistic ATO going forwards isSimone Collins: that’s what I wanted to ask you. [00:27:00] What you read on the ultimate outcome is gonna be because. In general, I think this kind of foreign involvement is unpopular among Americans and many others because it doesn’t tend to end well, even though it itMalcolm Collins: hasn’t ended well historically.It ended spectacularly well in Venezuela.Simone Collins: I would say that’s a to be continued kind of thing. It’s still in the midst of happening.Malcolm Collins: It’s not to be, we, we, the situation in Venezuela is resolved. Venezuela is stable with a new government that has acted while they have spoken negatively about the us. I mean, of course she has to, if she was working with us to do this power transition.Yeah. They have acted, they have been releasing prisoners of war. They have been loosening up on the draconian rules that they had on our, their people. They are opening up, economically speaking. We are getting access to their oil at preferential prices. And they stopped sending oil to Cuba and they broke off all of their connections that were damaging to us with our geopolitical enemies, like China.Like, I don’t, I don’t understand like what you, it was, it was like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like, the, [00:28:00] the, the situation. So this is what I expect to happen. The council that would elect the next ayatollah is either going to do it in secret or not do it at all. Like they’re gonna be really quiet about it.Speaker 32: So they did elect him over the weekend, , I think late last night actually. , And it was the Ayatollah sun, which is actually really bad for the optics of Iran, as the entire point of the Shah revolution was to get rid of a hereditary monarchy. And now it looks like they just replaced that with another hereditary monarchy, which further loosens their legitimacy.Malcolm Collins: They’re really afraid to do it right now. Right? Yeah. Because oh, yeah’s basically saying, well, we’ll kill the, whoever you elect they’re still going to the way they’re structured, probably elect a hardliner Islamic conservative anti-Israel person. The question of is this works is then does Israel kill him?If Israel kills him, and especially a few of them after they were elected, which it appears they might have the capacity to do eventually one of them is just gonna be like, maybe we need to rethink this idea. Like the moment [00:29:00] he’s elected, he’s like, guys, I have a great idea. Let’s stop being antagonistic to Israel in the United States.Hmm. Let’s stop killing the protestors. Right? Like, and and, and that’s even just like a self preservation thing. I mean, that’s basically what the US did was this Venezuela, this Venezuela lady is not like a capitalist or whatever. She’s not like, actually she was like Maduro’s right hand man for ages.She just understood, oh they can take me out whenever they want. I guess I’m gonna play ball because I’m dictator now and I like being dictator. This is kind of cool. It’s a completely new strategy for foreign policy that like we just didn’t try before. Like, oh, just try to create a situation where the new dictator doesn’t want to act in a way that’s against our geopolitical interests.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Now whether that plays out Now, as I’ve said, the situation I ran is harder than the situation in Venezuela. And what ends up happening in Cuba is also like, we don’t know, like s stuff is bad in Cuba right now. And what could end up happening to Cuba is Cuba goes the way of Haiti which is [00:30:00] just Haiti.No, not, no. It just becomes a complete hellscape. And the world forgets it exists, which is, by the way, what happened to Haiti. Haiti, Haiti is still happening, by the way. People, barbecue is still like basically running things there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literal hellscape. So, and I think a lot, a lot, a lot more places in the world this is gonna happen to, I mean, we basically memory hole it because there’s not a lot of Jews in Hades, and as they say, no Jews, no news.You know, nobody cared when the Iranians were being killed en mass, except for conservatives because, you know, we actually care about, you know, people dying. Right. You know? But anyway sorry, what, what, where was I going with this? So, this, this gets resolved now. Let’s talk about the Cuba, Venezuela situation.They were like the two tools, and if you wanna talk about like North Korea, how tied in they were with all of this. North Korea has been like frantically saying like, if you kill any North Korean citizens in Iran, well considered an act of war. And I think that this serves to remind you that North Korean Iran were tight, like North Korea was sending its citizens to work as slave labor in Iran, right?Like, they don’t, they don’t actually care. I mean, talk about, [00:31:00] when you talk about the forces that raid against us, how tight they are. It looks like right now, Russia within Ukraine, we know that they have deployed some North Korean soldiers and they might be increasing that significantly. Hmm. And they appear to be doing this in exchange.For modern weapons to North Korea. Mm-hmm. But a a a a player like China or something like that is increasingly isolated. And in a way that is interesting because they’re, they’ve got so many internal geopolitical issues right now that like, and this is something I should note in terms of like regime change, when people are like, where do we target next?Who do we target next? If you’re, if you’re looking at this in a Trump style one of the things that he sort of takes is he’s like, okay, one only target leaders that are nearly universally hated.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like basically everybody has to agree this person is terrible in almost 90Simone Collins: 10. That’s his thing.Malcolm Collins: Country seems to hate him. Yeah. 90 10. And that was true of, of Maduro and the Ayatollah. Okay. Mm-hmm. [00:32:00] You, you so don’t, don’t do, don’t do it. Wishy-washy. I mean, we, I might love to take out the German government right now, you know, ignoring the will of their own people’s vote with the A DF conservatives winning the majority, and then them freezing the a DF outta the government, putting them under surveillance.I mean, they are a a police state. And the way that we would think of one historically was one political party living under surveillance despite viewer voters with their viewpoints getting a majority win of the vote with the conservative A DF victory in the last election cycle. You know, they, they, they, they, they are a major geopolitical enemy to us going forwards.And this isn’t because like Trump did something wrong with him. They’re just a country that has experienced a drift into fascism. And in, in sort of a, a more traditional sense, you know, the, the state exists. It, nothing exists, but the state. And, and when you get to this level of socialism, that’s, that’s what it is.I mean, musin laid this out. That is, that is what definitionally, the inventor of fascism said fascism is. And, and when he says the state, he doesn’t mean the land or its people. He means the ideology that that state embodies. And [00:33:00] that’s, that’s what we’re seeing. But fortunately, they’re, they’re gonna be economically irrelevant through, given their, their demographics and that they have turned off all their power plants like idiots.Why, whatSimone Collins: not ideal?Malcolm Collins: But no, the point I’m being is, is, is so like who does that leave on the board in terms of people who we might be going after next? Putin Kim Jong-un. And the, the what’s left at the Castro regime the Castro regime, I do not expect them to go up and take out because the, the that situation seems to be resolving on its own without any oil.Like, like the, there’s been talks of negotiations. I think that they might do something eventually with that, but I, I don’t expect them to move that quickly on that, given how bad the situation is there right now. So right now it’s just negotiations and I suspect those are already happening. See our episode on you know, G’s got two weeks left.Be, they’re out now of oil. And that you, you, you know, you need oil for everything aSimone Collins: little bit.Malcolm Collins: Then you’ve got the situation in North Korea. The second thing you did is, so first everybody has to hate the person. So that, because [00:34:00] it makes progressives look really bad when there’s like Iranians in the streets cheering that the Ayatollah is finally dead, who tortured and killed their family, and then leftists like free Iran.And they’re like, but that’s like what we’re doing, right? Like, what did you think that this wasn’t an, this wasn’t an occupation of Iran by a hostile power that that mass killed leftists, by the way after using them to win support. But North, the, the other thing is, is he wants situations where somebody else has a financial interest in stabilizing whatever’s gonna happen in the region.Mm-hmm. And I think that’s why we’re moving slower on Cuba, because nobody really has a financial interest in stabilizing or an ideological interest. With Venezuela, the oil companies had a financial interest in rebuilding Venezuela, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure. Get them to go back in, rebuild the infrastructure, everything like that.With Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia in the UAE, you know, if they can expand their power projected in, in the region, oh my God. Gift box package for them. Right.Simone Collins: Basically, yeah,Malcolm Collins: don’t do it ourselves. Basically don’t do what Bush did, which is you [00:35:00] know, MacArthur Plan 2.0. That was stupid. Okay.Trying to make a democracy in the Middle East was stupid. Bring back the Shah or something like that. In terms of North Korea, you might have a situation for that because South Korea for a long time, and especially the people who run the Chis now younger people in South Korea, they don’t want to take on the cost of handling North Korea.But what you gotta remember is all the power in North Korea is with the tribal heads I’ve described South Korea as sort of like a collection of fascist states competing against each other in a communist, in a capitalistic ecosystem.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and who do you think is gonna get all those road paving contracts?Who do you think is gonna be remaking all the North Korean infrastructure?Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Who do you think they are? Foaming at the mouth at the opportunity to get the government to take out a ton of debt in this big sort of national savior project or whatever. Now, do I think it’s actually a good idea for South Korea to allow a bunch of people who are brainwashed under a North Korean system to vote in a South Korean election cycle?Mm-hmm. Or probably not. But that’s again, the type of thing [00:36:00] where we can go in do a surgical thing. And, and, and also the thing was North Korea, like if you really wanted to handle North Korea the way he handled Venezuelan just go keep killing whoever is at the top of the leadership take out their nuclear program which is going to be harder to do, which is likely why we are not doing this yet.And then just tell whoever takes the position, be like, you get to keep your dictatorial state. Just treat people a bit nicer. Okay? Marginally nicer. That’s all we’re asking for. And normalize your relationships with us. Mm-hmm. And stop helping your, your jerk friends. Okay. And it turns out that a lot of dictators when they have seen the last dictator, and keep in mind like.This form of power projection is so powerful because now Kim, Kim Jonin has seen this, like every other dictator has seen this in every other position, right? Like with Russia, when this started happening, Russia and Iran had a mutual defense pact Russia, like, like a nato, like was supposed to come to Iran’s aid.And it, it [00:37:00] immediately said, oh, these are counter-terrorist bombing runs. This is not a, this is not an invasion. And they rumor is like, I haven’t seen this confirmed yet, but they even turned off some of their satellite things that they had given Iran to protect. Oh, bombing runs.Simone Collins: Yikes.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I, I’m Putin.I’m like, I better stay on Trump’s good side, I’ll tell you that. Right? Like the, the words were, Trump is like all those beautiful ettes, you know, wouldn’t it be shame if I dropped a bomb on them? And that’s why Putin didn’t invade Ukraine. And I think a lot of people were being like. Putin didn’t really think Trump might do that, like a sane Putin.And I think now a lot of people are like, oh, he was, he was probably really considering it. Right? Like, geopolitically this sort of changes everything. And so the question is, is, is what allowed for this to happen geopolitically? Like why, why did we have to try to kill at the height of Spycraft Fidel Castro 136 times?I always put my episodes into AI to ask if I made any factual errors after I record them, and here it goes. , You made a big one was this [00:38:00] 136 times. Apparently it was over 600 times. .Malcolm Collins: And yet we get Maduro and Al Khomeini on our first tries, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The answer is a couple things. Thing number one is the way that the CIA operated in the past was a joke. Giant bureaucratic institutions in the, you know, they had like the staring at goats experiments and stuff like that.Mm-hmm. And the weird stuff like Ruby Yard believes that they discovered parallel universes. And I’m like, no, actually just a huge branch of the, the CIA was actually controlled by Scientologists. See our episode on that one? I think what aSimone Collins: trip. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like Canis read minds. It’s, it’s hilarious how crazy it is when people think the US government discovered paranormal something or another.I’m like, no, that, that was a bunch of Scientologists. And, and if you had a government, but anyway, basically they were just idiots. Is, is is one thing. And the other thing is, and Simone and I have noted this, is that when you. You know, outsource something to another person. Like humans. Humans are like, generally like [00:39:00] borderline mentally handicapped, like most of them.Right. You know, so, we just don’t like dealing with ‘em. We like dealing with AI agents, by the way, live now on our five.ai. Still very buggy, super alpha, but we’re, we’re improving those. But that’s actually what we have seen within these latest things is they, they didn’t give it to these bureaucrats, they gave it to elite military groups.Simone Collins: Yeah. Small, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Not through intelligence, but elite military groups. And then, and I’m saying, you know, start to dismantle intelligence if they’re not helping us with this stuff. Elite military groups combined with AI technology satellites, you know, not, not the way that we did things historically.Right. The amount of AI that was probably used in the triangulation of these people’s positions and stuff like that was enormous.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Secondarily we are partnered very tightly right now with a government that, and when people are like, Iran was Israel’s enemy, not ours. No. Death to America was Death to America, right?Speaker 28: [00:40:00] And for people who are like, whoa, we’re getting in another Middle East war because of Israel. What do you mean another Middle East war? Because of Israel, Israel asked us not to go to war with Iraq. If you think, oh, we want, we don’t want another war like Iraq, where Israel told us, Israel told us, don’t do that.I don’t want you to do that. That is actively against my interests and this is well documented.But it also doesn’t even pass a sanity test. Like what did Israel gain from our war in Afghanistan or Iraq?Malcolm Collins: Like we were on, we were on the the meal board. People who say that are just traitors, they’re either getting money, I think directly from Iran, their, their fake accounts.Simone Collins: I think it’s simpler than that. I think that there, because we’ve even been asked by some people what we think about the people on the right who are against this action because there are some people, and no,Malcolm Collins: I, I don’t, I don’t believe there are really many people on the right against thisSimone Collins: action.Well, I think if you’re anti-Israel, it’s really hard to stand this because this was Israel’s idea kind of. And if you are [00:41:00] anti-Trump, you can’t get excited about this. ‘cause then you’re giving Trump credit for doing something awesome. So there are going to be people on the right. Who are against this because of those.So I, I want primarilyMalcolm Collins: I mean my take on this, right, is every real influencer who I follow on the right, like somebody who I consider like intellectually saying and interesting to listen to. I have not heard a single one of them frame this anything other than universally glowingly. The only people I’ve really heard go against this are people who either just are not particularly tethered to reality, just like cons.Complete conspiracy, brain cooked people like say Candace Owens. And I don’t know if she’s against it, but I suspect she probably is ‘cause she’s very untethered from reality. See our episode on, on psychosis Maxing with Candace Owens. Or there are people who seem to be controlled opposition in the right, you know, like, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes where, you know, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll stand, remember Tucker Carlson was standing Venezuela, [00:42:00] right?Like before we went into this, like literally like Venezuela is good because they kill gay people. Like what? What? Yeah. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This guy is not right wing in any sort of a traditional context. Right.You know, in, in, in terms of like the saying. Right. And as we, we’ve done other episodes Nick Fuentes appears to be hugely AstroTurf, first of all.And second of all, controlled opposition. I don’t, I just don’t understand what position did he hold? The controlled opposition wouldn’t hold. Right. Like, you know, whoever is elected the next head of the Republican party he’s gonna be against. And the fact that, you know, that today means that you know that he’s not interested in Republicans winning.Speaker 33: and he knows, he knows that the Iranian government tried to have Trump assassinated, right? Like a government tries to have Trump assassinated. We assassinate their leader and he’s like, oh my God, how could you do that? The United States? Oh, that’s so horrible. . Early on when I covered him, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.I tried to act like there was something real behind him, some sort of real movement. I just don’t buy it anymore. I don’t think anyone who’s seriously a right winger is [00:43:00] out there supporting the ayatollah of Iran., like, oh, if we had boots on the ground and I ran, if we had some major invasion force, yes, it would make sense to be against that.But that’s not what’s happening. . So if you’re standing Iran right now, you’re just standing the ayatollah, right? You’re just standing the regime. And I don’t understand how any sane person with , a non completely leftist brain cook on things could be having these opinions. And so my only thought is, , the people who still support him after all of this, I just don’t really have any patience anymore.Like, you wanna go out there and you want to criticize Israel’s actions in something like Gaza, I can be like, oh, maybe he doesn’t have all the facts, or maybe he doesn’t understand what’s going on or whatever. But when you go out there and you say, uh, this country that tried to assassinate our president, that we assassinated their president and we don’t have boots on the ground, and I don’t like that.And there’ve been our, one of our primary, if not our primary geopolitical adversary for [00:44:00] almost half a century. . And I’m against us winning there. , That’s no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. When he goes, oh, I’m pro Epstein. He’s like, Epstein is cool, like, and awesome.Speaker 37: Jeffrey Epstein was probably so cool. Like he was probably the coldest, coolest guy. You know?Speaker 35: i’m like, what? Like when I saw that, I was like, oh my God.Oh my God. Like, come on people. This is who you’re supporting.When you say Epstein is cool, you aren’t speaking truth to power or something like that, you’re just reflexively saying whatever you think is the most offensive thing is because you’ve learned. It’s a brain hack for simpletons that gets them to follow you and cheer I.Speaker 43: I wanna be in the Special Olympics. Bird.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Especially given that he says he believes like life being as a conception. And he knows that we are fighting to make things like [00:45:00] abortion more restrictive, and yet he would fight against that. Right? Like the, the, that is like being supportive of what is apparently in his mind a genocide, but it’s just unimportant to him unless he can have complete ideological purity which is silly.It, it, it, it shows to me that I don’t think he really holds the beliefs. He says he holds. Because if I believed that strongly that life began the conception, I would not be constantly sabotaging the party. Given, given what the other side believes. So I think some of them are just like controlled oppositions or people who are just trolling for trolling sync.I really think Nick Fuentes is, is just trolling for trolling syn. And then he doesn’t know that he’s controlled. I think that he’s then just platformed and ad bought by by people who want to hurt because like, look, look, he’s everywhere all of a sudden. Right. How does that happen? Oh, because leftist news sources, right?Then a bunch of Twitter accounts that are probably, you know, Pakistani, right? Like that’s what we saw with a lot of these, quote unquote, like based Twitter accounts, was the big XLE is a lot of them showed that they were never actually on our side. Right. The, the, and I was talking to this reporter, it was a reporter who reached out [00:46:00] for a major.Newspaper and she goes like, what, what are the people who you, when I, when I’m watching my circle, you know, like leaflit and nux taku and asmogold, gold and stuff like that, people, I consider like normal, sane rightists. None of them have, have had anything to say about this that was negative. And, and these are people who, who might criticize other things.It’s the right dad, but on this stuff, no, just like universal. Like what, what do you, what are you even on about is one when somebody’s like, well, Iran isn’t really our enemy. And like you can show a video from like, well this is them shouting, like, death to America, like last year. Like, what do you mean?Like, this is in the party’s like bylines, right? Like Death to America. You literally like, do you take me for a complete imbecile? Like do you take, are your followers just complete imbecile? Like, do they not like understand like, what, what’s, what’s going on out there? GeopoliticallySimone Collins: speaking? Well, I think you’re forgetting that there’s a.Non-trivial level of agreement with the Death to America argument among American progressives. [00:47:00] America is the enemy in their opinion.Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But these conservatives are citing was that team right? Like, so I think that that’s, that’s a big thing. And so I, I think a lot of it is just, I, I just, I don’t understand how you can be like somebody who has actually thought through this.Even if you hate Israel, even if you think that and note, I mean, our position on Israel has tempered a lot recently. And you, you can see some of our videos on that. Even, even, even if you think that Israel’s manipulating us and we shouldn’t be giving the money and this disproportionately geopolitically helps Israel, which it does.It’s still overwhelmingly in our geopolitical interest that this is resolved. And, and the war so far has gone overwhelmingly well. We just need to have the, the the moral fortitude to step back after we install another dictator. Right. You know, don’t change things that much. Let them stay whatever they want, just get them like what we did in Venezuela.If we, and this is where things get scary, if we repeat [00:48:00] what we did in Venezuela, and this works out one quarter as well as the Venezuela situation did. This like if I’m Trump administration, it’s like, who’s next? You know, this, this changes everything about the level of power projection America has.And, and the, the one thing I’d note on, on this situation is we were able to do this because of Mosad. Right. And if we, if we end up stabilizing the situation, it’s gonna be in a large part because of Mossad. Yeah. And that’s why it’s useful even if somebody is being a selfish and douchey friend, which I think Israel often is like, Hey, give us money.Like, I’m only gonna be, it’s like, come on man, like you’re doing well. Okay.Speaker 14: My trick don’t work on, I make only money.Malcolm Collins: Like, stop shaking me down every time we hang out. Right. But like, genuinely, they also helped slip me like , the pathway that the school bully or whatever was going to be walking on so we could jump him. I’m like, I am really annoyed [00:49:00] that you’re a jerk to me and, you know, paning me for money all the f*****g time.Speaker 14: I make only money.Malcolm Collins: But, but that costs me less than being able to deal with a country that we’ve been trying to deal with for half a century.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: this holistically. Now I also wanna talk about how much Iran screwed the pooch on this and how, like, so, so this war starts and Iran then decides that it’s gonna start shooting missiles at somebody who hadn’t even attacked them, which was the UAE.So they sent, I think it was 350 missiles. All of them were intercepted by the ua e’s interceptive system, different from Israel’s interceptive system. But anyway it showed that it, it would potentially even better than the Iron dome. Really? Yeah. ISimone Collins: didn’t even know they had one until you just mentioned it.Sure.Malcolm Collins: And this is huge for the UAE actually, and, and huge for geopolitics. One, it showed to everyone in the region that like, yeah, Iran will just randomly flail and start attacking you if you’re not like full threaded on their side. Mm-hmm. And they were shooting these into tourist [00:50:00] areas.They were shooting these into residential areas. You know,Speaker 38: And as I mentioned earlier, but I think it’s really important to reemphasize, is Iran has sent more missiles to non-combatant states than it has to Israel since the start of the war. Uh, this includes the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Jordan. , And then shortly before the war Iraq, , and oh Turkey as well, if we’re including the one that went by accident.So they just. File, flailing out and hitting everyone. I do not understand how you could be more politically inept. Actually. Wait, did Mossad infiltrate them and get them to do this? Maybe they did. ‘cause I cannot believe that anybody who wanted them to win would do this..Do you see? I’m learning to think like, like a Jew learning to be sneakier. Here. I’ll figure this out. I’ll figure this out.Malcolm Collins: So I think one UAE is like, oh, I’m glad we’re not like Iran’s friend. Like this is, this is, they were as bad as we thought. But the last time I was in the UAE and I was talking with one of my friends there his mom was telling me, he is like, [00:51:00] she’s like, you know, honestly, I go to sleep like afraid.Like every night that Iran is gonna try something. ‘cause you know, they’re just across the Gulf. Right. You know, they’re, they’re just like, you see this body of, that’s Iran on the other side of that. And they, they hate us, right? Because we’re in this wider, like Saudi us. Alliance. And and so a lot of people in the ye lived every day in fear, and I think that we don’t, we don’t realize that, that they lived in fear of somebody who wanted to kill them within bomb range in the same way that like South Korea does.And for a lot of them right now, they’re feeling like that threat is basically gone. The amount of, I think it was like using hundreds of thousands of ba missiles a day on the first days of the war, and now it’s down to something like a hundred a day or something like that. Like just barely any, like they’re running out of stockpiles.Simone Collins: Well, but also the United States and Israel, as I understand it now, have shifted from taking out their leadership to not taking out their defense defense building infrastructure essentially. Like they’ve, they’ve gotten rid of all the existing stuff. Now [00:52:00] they’re destroying the stuff to build their defense architecture.So yeah, they’re not gonna be able to even make more bombs and missiles, et cetera. Right.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s, it’s I mean basically the idea is, is destroy their infrastructure and leadership enough that it’s another few decades before they can reorganize anything. And they seem to be doing a pretty good job of that.But the, the thing is, is that if Trump wants to continue this staying friends with Mossad is going to be useful in this type of power projection because they’ve shown especially with the pager text, like, and, and, and being able to know the room that he was in enormous aptitude at thatSimone Collins: is so fascinating.I wish I knew how I knew that.Malcolm Collins: So, well, the funny, here’s that anecdote. So, and this was actually leaked by the Young Turks. Okay. So there’s, they, they would be in a place to know this, right? Like Chuck Youer this, this comes from him. ‘cause I was trying to confirm this. Is at one point they built an anti Mossad task force in Iran.[00:53:00]Okay. And they later found out hold on.Simone Collins: No, no. That like within it was a Mossad agent.Malcolm Collins: No, it’s not just that within it was Masad agent. So it, it came out yeah, the, the head of the unit was a double agent for Masad of course. And then there were 20 other double agents in the task force.Simone Collins: It’s like mostly massage agents.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s just like not an organization to take out, you know, the Jews. And it turns out andallSimone Collins: these people start volunteering for it. They’re like, wow, let me help. I’d love to help. This sounds great. Sure.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, actually, you know, if I was a Middle Eastern country, I would start one of those organizations to, to like track down Mossad.Then like a year later, just go and be like, we’re executing everyone who works here. Like we, our honey trap for Mossad is just created an anti Mossad agency. OhSimone Collins: my God.Malcolm Collins: But yeah, [00:54:00] no, I, it’s, it’s just ge geopolitically where we are right now. I almost, I’m just like astonished. I’m astonished if, if you’re like a politics, why we spent our entire lives trying to deal with Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And it might be over and even it’s over. Everyone else is cornered at this point. And that what, what does that mean, geopolitically for the United States? I, I mean, we are at a, a level of geopolitical dominance right now that no political power has ever had in human history like this. This might at this point be bigger than what we had in the end of World War ii.And that’s the final point I wanted to make here. When I was talking to this reporter. I remember what I wanna say. She’s like, well, weren’t people in the right like America first? Like, weren’t we against invasions? And it’s like, yeah, we were against invasions. ‘cause like, we hated what happened with Iraq.We hated what happened with Vietnam. We didn’t wanna [00:55:00] get dragged into something like that again. We love killing terrorists, right? Like we, we want to be the hero country that goes out and takes out bad guys, right? And then has people from those countries cheering in the streets and everything. We just didn’t like the business of nation building, right?We didn’t like the business of boots on the grounds and occupations. We thought. You can’t have your cake without your bag of s**t. And so we were like, well, every cake has a piece of a turd inside it. And so I’m not gonna bite into that cake anymore. I’ve learned my lesson. Right? Trump has shown us a way to have our cake without a big turd inside it.And if he continues to execute on this as well as he has in Venezuela, because with Venezuela, we didn’t know this was actually gonna play out well. And now that we know, in hindsight it appears to haveSimone Collins: [00:56:00] mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: It’s like, well, what now? Right. Like, what now? I don’t know. I, I, I, I honestly you know, we’re, we’re entering a new world.And this also could be very good. Like I’ve often said, I think that the world that we’re heading into is gonna be a by power structure, not the US and China, but the US and Israel is being the two core powers and thus potentially antagonistic to each other as world powers often are. But if we integrate the way that we are handling this, it becomes harder for us to become antagonistic to each other.And so we might actually be able to achieve a degree of global geopolitical dominance without you know, they just gotta hope dims don’t win and screw all this up. Somehow be like, oh, we’re giving, we’re giving it all back.Simone Collins: I mean, odds are that they will win in the next presidential election.That’s just generally how things go. So, I mean, what about that? Because what this has also demonstrated is that it is a [00:57:00] nation’s imperative to, I guess, have nuclear capabilities because I don’t think we would’ve done this to Iran had we known they had usable nuclear weapons. And now this is demonstrated like, well, okay, I need to make sure my nukes work or else the United States is coming for me.Like I don’t think Kim Jong Un is on the chopping block because we know presumably that they have nukes also. Have you heard like they’re thinking it looks like his daughters next in line, which would be delightful. I mean,Malcolm Collins: are you actually like win for feminism?Simone Collins: I mean, she’s a Yeah. Girl. Girl. Bus girl, whatever.FemaleMalcolm Collins: dictator, mass murderers.Simone Collins: She’s got style, she’s got verve. And ever since, so Ozempic hit, she’s slimmed down a lot. She’s looking great. So yeah, I didn’tMalcolm Collins: like the fat version of her, the thin version. You know,Simone Collins: she looks chic. She looks chic. Gotta say, you know, it’s the new flex. You try to get an invite in South Korea, which is kind of saying a lot when everyone else [00:58:00] is starving.The whole like moon face was more for like, well she has food. We don’t, she must be a big deal. But yeah, I dunno what,Malcolm Collins: what’s more likely to happen with Korea, just so people know. North Korea has been doing a lot of trades with Russia right now to expand its military force and modernize it because it was, yeah, dreadfully out of like Iran by the way showing off us made military planes in like its propaganda videos that are literally 70 years old and made by their enemy.It’s like, bro, likeSimone Collins: isn’t it showing video game footage as well?Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They’ve been showing video game footage, AI footage.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So, we are, what’s weird that Trump has somehow been able to do is to be the global good guy, take out the dictators that the own people hated in these situations without the boots on the ground, without the enormous cost.Mm-hmm. We are getting the jingoism of post-World War II America of, you know, Iranian women running around on the streets of New York, hugging random strangers and screaming that, that [00:59:00] is V-Day. Like without, how can you do this?Speaker 18: Oh my God. Oh my God. I said he’s gone.He’s, he’s gone. He’s gone.Speaker 17: How can you be silent? This is not okay. I am, I, I’m no longer gonna support Democrats. You Iranian. None of you should support Democrats. I’m honest. Honestly, I’m, I’m livid. I’m livid. I’m done with them completely. Just acknowledge the truth. Islamist Marxism is a terrorist entity. 90 million Iranians held hostage.For 47 years because of your silence.Malcolm Collins: Right. Like, and what a lot of people say is, well, you know, you’ll pay the cost eventually, but like, he handled Venezuela.So I guess we’re gonna see, we’re gonna seeSimone Collins: yeah, I am. What, what [01:00:00] did they say? Cautiously optimistic. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh the, the point I was making earlier, I dunno if I finished this one, is now with Israel moving into Southern Lebanon and wiping up Hezbollah. Mm-hmm. Like, there isn’t even like the ability for power projection in Iran anymore with Hamas and Hezbollah taken out.Right. So like, this is. Fascinating in terms of like, what are the Saudis and the UIE gonna do after this, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway love you. I thought it was funny, like the last time we were talking about this was, was Venezuelan and people were like, oh, you just wait and see everything’s gonna fall apart, or they’re not gonna, we’re I am like, I don’t know, it seems like they set things up pretty well.Or, or the US is gonna face like major retaliations for this and you, the, the things will never be the same. And it’s like, well, when, right. Yeah. Could we face retaliations? Yeah. But. From who? Like independent terror cells. There’s nobody who’s a, a terror cell tomorrow. That wasn’t a terror cell yesterday.Like they might use this as justification, but if they were [01:01:00] nobody was radicalized by the killing of the ayatollah. Okay. Yeah. This, this is ridiculous, right? When people say this, especially if you’re like an Iranian and you just saw the mass slaughter of the Iranian people, right? Anyway fascinating, fascinating time.Love you.Simone Collins: I love you too.And. It’sMalcolm Collins: not actually particularly clear that youSimone Collins: had this, you can still see through bruising through dermal blend is the the makeup of choice for battered women who have bruises to hide. I don’t, I didn’t find like your mom’s derma blend, so I think you can still kind of see though completely.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.She, her like half of her face is black right now.Simone Collins: Yeah, the, the inside of my mouth is like a poorly sewn together ragdollMalcolm Collins: don’t talk much. Okay, sweetheart. I’m trying to, this is why we haven’t been doing new episodes recently, guys, and we had to wait to talk about this subject.Simone Collins: It’s not just that, it’s not just that, like my face is [01:02:00] immobilized and incredibly painful and I’m constantly spitting out blood.It’s that. Then I caught the cold that the kids had and then I poisoned myself with expired oatmeal because I can’t eat anything but like really soft, mushy foods and then I got terrible food poisoning. AndMalcolm Collins: I saved you from that by, by just going through. You’re like, oh, I think it was a surgery. And I go, I don’t think it was a surgery.What else changed when you did the surgery? Did you eat anything new? And I’m like, and was it expired? And you go, yeah. Well, it was very old. And I was like, Simone, that’s expired oatmeal.Simone Collins: YouMalcolm Collins: could die. You’ve gotSimone Collins: ergot green. Don’t kill people. And I’m like, oh wait. Ergot poisoning, et cetera. Right?Malcolm Collins: I, I love that your knowledge of history is how you know about this.You’re like, oh, well, oh, by the way, other fun thing for people, the agents on our fab.ai in, in extremely alpha version are finally live at this point,Simone Collins: soMalcolm Collins: excited. And you can test them and play with them in on the Discord, [01:03:00] the, specifically the R Fab Discord, not the Basecamp Discord make bug reports.And I try to be check those every morning and be responsive to those. So the site’s getting updates typically multiple a day. And everything else is pretty stable on that. So I’m sorry, I’m just sort of like pulling up where I did my notes on this.Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m keen to get an update from you because I was kind of in a, I was, you know, like walking up the stairway to heaven dying in bed.And then I like get out of the haze and I’m like, wait, what? Christine Nome was fired. Wait, what? Like, Iran is falling apart. What is happening? Like, you, you fall asleep in this timeline for like two days. You know, you’re, you’re out of, out of content, you know, you, you go backpacking or something and the world is completely different when you come back.I think it all started with that one guy who went on our long backpacking trip when COVID started. Just like, just before it became a big thing and then came back and the world was like completely different. And he was like, oh my god. Oh [01:04:00] God, I can’t smile. I look like George Washington when he like stuffed the cotton balls.Now youMalcolm Collins: can really see your relation to him now.Simone Collins: Yeah. When he, they, they, for context, he lost most of his teeth. Oh God. Is this genetic? Maybe he also had a thin biotype like I do, and his teeth just fell out because of that too. But anyway, he lost most of his teeth, had dentures that included some of the teeth from his slaves, which he apparently bought below market value.So not great,Malcolm Collins: sharp, sharp businessman there.Simone Collins: I mean, you know, we love, we love a deal. I, I can’t, yeah, I’m with him on that. I love a deal. But anyway,Malcolm Collins: I think of Simone, I think of you as an ethical woman. I think if you own slaves, you would buy their teeth at below market value, below market. You are an incredibly ruthless individual.Simone Collins: Well anyway, so his portrait artists didn’t like the way his mouth looked caved in when they did his portrait. So allegedly they stuffed cotton balls or cotton batting into his mouth. And now I am kind of, [01:05:00]Malcolm Collins: forSimone Collins: people, people who don’tMalcolm Collins: know, she is probably the most closely related person to George Washington, currently living.Simone Collins: Well, he is a great, however many times over uncle of mine.Malcolm Collins: So he didn’t have any kids himself, but she has descended from two of his siblings. Which you know, she, she should be, if he has accepted kingship, she should be the current Empress of America. And you’d be doing a great job of it. I, I know people would trust you to handle things.Simone Collins: Oh, thanks. I just like him. I, I don’t want it. So,Malcolm Collins: you do, Simone, you better want it if that job comes your way.Simone Collins: ComeMalcolm Collins: on. All right, so we’ll get started here. You Yeah. But like George Washington, you’re also like, eh, I don’t really want it, not my thing.Simone Collins: Teeth falling out. Puffy face, anorexic. He was so anorexic.You’ve seen his uniform with the Smithsonian Museum, right? No, I wouldn’t have fit into that thing.Malcolm Collins: And you were anorexic at one point. So you see just so manySimone Collins: similar. I still am, I’m just a functional anorexic. Just like you’re a functional alcoholic, right? Like we, we, we just, we skirt the lines [01:06:00] like this is functional.No, this is what I mean by functional. I literally had a DEXA scan to see exactly what my body fat composition is, to keep it at exactly the bare minimum, to be healthy and to have healthy pregnancy. So I’m at 20% just like that is, that is at the top end of what like a female athlete would have. And that is at the bottom end of what like a normal, healthy, reproductive woman would have.And that is exactly where I’m gonna stay.Malcolm Collins: All right.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Speaker 40: Okay. What are you guys doing? Yep.Are you guys cleaning up?I love you guys. Do you wanna kiss this one? No. No. You’re too busy. You too tight. Are you [01:07:00] too busy for a kiss?Working hard or hardly working. Right guys? Yeah. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this raw, no-holds-barred episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dissect how Abraham Maslow repackaged Nietzsche’s Übermensch (Übermensch) into the modern, feel-good concept of “self-actualization” at the top of his Hierarchy of Needs—turning a call for radical self-ownership and moral creation into an elitist, therapy-gated path of perpetual vague self-improvement, peak experiences, and manic-pixie-dream-girl aesthetics.We explore why the original Übermensch demands you build your own moral framework (independent of society, culture, or ancestors), reject herd morality, and embrace responsibility—while Maslow’s version lets the wealthy progressive elite pat themselves on the back without real introspection. Bonus rants on: the pyramid of sin (Maslow’s hierarchy normalizing indulgence), why strong-willed people are the true “inclusive” ones, Star Wars force analogies gone wrong, and why self-ownership beats self-acceptance every time.If you’ve ever felt gaslit by positive psychology, therapy culture, or the urban monoculture—this episode is for you. Check out our book The Pragmatist’s Guide to Life (free ebook + audiobook for subscribers) for tools to build your own value system.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: [00:00:00] He basically tried to combine the Uber minch with the aesthetics of the manic pixie dream girl.oh, I like to listen to the songs in my head. I’m sorry, I paid the cab driver in buttons.When did you first suspect you were dating a manic, pixie dream girl? On her first date and. She said she wanted pancakes for dinner, but I felt alive. But then after a few months, and she can’t feed herself, she can’t pay bills.She just wonders at the marvel. Every moment, we got married in a bouncy castle.Do you think it’s possible to ever be truly. In the moment, the Native Americans believe everything is alive.. I told him the best place to see.The night sky is laying in the middle of the street. It’s the flattest place there. She does seem happy. Happy as she can be, I suppose.Malcolm Collins: Maslow flips this. Self-actualization is achievable through [00:01:00] education, therapy, supportive environments and personal effort. Not a heroic struggle alone. . So no.What is actually said here, it’s saying, the Uber minch is elitist because to become an Uber minch, an individual has to overcome suffering.. Who has the potential to be self-actualize if self-actualization requires the fulfillment of all of the lower states of the hierarchy of needs?Only the eliteand the fun thing about Laslo system. It is a system that makes everyone who is wealthy and sees a therapist think that they’re already at the top of it, and it explains to the rich progressive, who doesn’t want to think about why the poor have different world frameworks than them.Mm-hmm. It helps them not think about it.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be [00:02:00] talking about the links between the Uber Minch as developed and defined by niche and the rebranding of the term self-actualization into its modern definition, which was done by Abraham Maslow of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs Face.And you’reSimone Collins: referring, you’re referring to Nietzsche. He’s just gonna call him Niche. Go with it guys.Malcolm Collins: It, I don’t, Frederick Niet words have no place on this American tongue. Okay. They, they would dirty my mouth. Anyway, we have another episode. If you want to understand how Maslow rebranded the term self-actualization and how his rebranding was so toxic and largely destroyed the field of psychology and is the seedbed of the urban monoculture.That is not what we’re gonna be focusing on in this episode. What we’re gonna be focusing on in this episode is, Maslow was pretty explicit in this, in some of his works. Self-actualization was a rebranding, an [00:03:00] explicit rebranding of the concept of the Uber Mitch, but it was rebranded to be palatable to a broadly progressive urban monoculture cultural perspective.And through the rebranding, in a way, it became an inversion of itself. I think he thought he was just making little tweaks to it and not realizing that he was actually retooling the core of what it meant. Now, broadly speaking, I’m gonna go over what these two mean. And then we’re gonna go over how they contrast with each other in understanding and what we as individuals can take away from this contrast to understand how we can live meaningful lives.SoSimone Collins: it is so crazy. Can you imagine when they first introduced this to you, like in your college psychology class, they’re like, oh, yeah, like there’s high Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and at the top it’s, it’s basically nietzche iss, [00:04:00] Uber mench. But let’s not talk about that. I’m not gonna, no, let’s not talk about that.Malcolm Collins: The good thing about Nietzsche’s Uber mech, one of, one of the best things that contrast it was a hierarchy of needs and, and self-actualization is that the definition when you boil it down is actually pretty clear. And it’s, it’s, it’s not like vague, just a bunch of positive things.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: You are an Uber minch if.You do not get your morality from your culture.Simone Collins: Oh, so you’re not like, okay,Malcolm Collins: society. Yeah. If you pick up what you think is right and wrong, because other people told you this is what’s right, and this is what’s wrong, you are not an Uber Mitch.Simone Collins: Okay?Malcolm Collins: If you develop what is right versus wrong, because you personally sat down and saw it through.Now, it’s not saying that you reject morality or you embrace nihilism. It’s actually a specific [00:05:00] refutation of that.Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom. Make up your own mind.Malcolm Collins: There is a way to say society is wrong or society isn’t necessarily right. As we’d see in the pragmatist guide to life, we do not live at the moral nexus of history. Yeah. You cannot assume that just because you, there’s a, a moral understanding today, and this is true of all people in the past.Wherever you look in the past, there is going to be. Something that they did that today, we consider Absolutely Mortifyingly. Amoral.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And there are gonna be things that we do today that people in the future might find mortifyingly, amoral, likeSimone Collins: eat meat. That’s the most common conclusion.Malcolm Collins: But that’s the, that’s the easy one I can think of, right.Especially once lab grown meat is really easy to do. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Future people are gonna be like, how were you able to swallow that? Whereas we see bacon cooking and we’re like, Hmm.Malcolm Collins: So yeah. So I, I, I, and, and people can be like, well, no, morality [00:06:00] moves in like one direction. And I’m like, okay, well suppose you are of this progressive mindset and you think that there have been periods in history where, you know, I go to, let’s say.A slave owner in the south or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. And I point to earlier periods of European history where like same sex relationships were more acceptable. And they’re like, well, those people were clearly evil. Look, society is always moving towards progress. And yet today, the things that had been normalized in the slave owning South but were less normalized during that period, but more normalized during earlier parts of European history.And note, I’m not saying here that same-sex relationships were ever totally normalized. Like the, the them being totally normalized in Rome or Greece is just inaccurate. But there were forms of same-sex relationships that were more normalized than during height of slave. That, that they would say like, okay, well then maybe it goes in like a wave or something.It’s like, no, you just need to, there are going to be things that are normal today that people in the future are gonna find mortifying. [00:07:00] So niche says you have a. Responsibility to not just accept morality, which is, I think interesting in that it goes against a lot of modern rightist philosophy. And that a lot of modern rightist philosophy says learn from your ancestors, embrace your culture.Mm-hmm. Where Nietzsche says, no, learn from and evolve that culture into something better. That is,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It’s important to start with because I think a lot of people get the Uber mi wrong. They think it’s some weird racial hierarchy something or I, I do not know what they think it is. They, they, I think they think it’s like a genetically engineered person.I sort of see this, this or, or the height of like German blood perfection and it’s like, no, that, that never had anything to do with it. ThatSimone Collins: would, if I broadly. Were to model the leftist commentators that I constantly listen to online. I think what they would vaguely conjure in their minds is a [00:08:00] proto edge Lord.And that is what an Uber mench is. And there’s no such thing as someone who’s actually like advanced. It’s just someone who like actively. Edge, lordy, or they would call themselves heterodox, if that makes sense.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s funny because they’re actually kind of, right. Yeah. It’s about somebody who defines their own moral truths, because that’s the only, if you’re following a form of morality, like obviously you are better than the pure nihilist if you, if you follow some moral framework.But if you follow that moral framework only because somebody else told you this is what’s right and wrong, you’re, you’re patently lower on a global moral hierarchy than somebody who developed their own moral norms by putting thought into it. Right? Yeah.Simone Collins: Well, and and to be fair, Malcolm and I are very, very passionate about this.Before we knew what Che’s philosophy was all about, because we just didn’t study it,Malcolm Collins: I thought he was an edge Lord. And then I saw that, I was like, that’s actually a really good definition.Simone Collins: Well, this was after we published our first book called The Pragmatist Guide to Life, which is 100% about [00:09:00] this. It is saying.I don’t care what you optimize for in life, morally and logistically, I just care that you show your work and here’s a guide you thinking like thoughts, experiments around common potential, things you may wanna optimize, be it hedonism or serving God or any variety of other things. And we just want people to actually take ownership of that thought process.So we 100% respect. What he’s doing here and we like it. So, okay. I like this so far. So you’re, I mean, I don’t see then how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is so bad, if that’s kind of the end goal.Malcolm Collins: Well, because he took all that out of it.Simone Collins: What?Malcolm Collins: Yes. He, heSimone Collins: took it. Wait, so he’s like, I like this concept, butwhat,Malcolm Collins: what, he liked the concept of like the elite philosophical form of human Right.Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. He wasMalcolm Collins: taking some degree of self ownership. He just didn’t like the actual self ownership part. AndSimone Collins: so, okay, the,Malcolm Collins: the, the, I think if I’m going to view Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and self actualization is he [00:10:00] handles it disfavorably, I would say what it really is, is just self-acceptance.Just sort of like you are okay with your place in the world, which you can definitionally be at any point, right? But he’s like, no, you, you have to have all this lower stuff. See our other video on this. And then once you have all that, then you can be okay with where you are in the world and what you have in the world.And that, that is it, it’s, it’s it’s self-acceptance, self-satisfaction. Now, if you’re going to then take the counter perspective to this and actually know it’s more sophisticated than that, let’s look at what I’ll take an an AI’s sort of rebuttal on this so you can get an understanding of how somebody might steal man his position against that.Okay. They would say that that’s actually more about esteem needs level four and not self-actualization. Level five, where esteem needs involve feelings of accomplishment, confidence, independence, respect for others, and a stable, positive self-image. This can [00:11:00] include pride in achievement or feeling valued, and it’s more about elevation of the self.EG, . I like who I am because I’ve succeeded. And I say here, well, yeah, but there’s different types of self-acceptance. And that wasn’t the type that I would be talking about here. But let’s look at what, what they would say as a counter self-actualization is it’s I te of just general self-acceptance.Right? Masley defined it as a quote unquote desire to become more and more than one is to become everything that one is capable of becoming. Which you can see one how that builds on the concept of the Uber Mitch. Right? Like clearly he liked oh, you know, building yourself, but he removes the concrete definition.ThisSimone Collins: is the substance. There’s no point in building yourself if it’s not just something meaningful, but he just took that away.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And just makes it self,Simone Collins: it’s the road to nowhere. It’s so stupidMalcolm Collins: about a sort of perpetual self-improvement without any definition as to what [00:12:00] better is. So,Simone Collins: although I feel like that’s so.Maybe it makes sense that this just seems so much like the path that people take. Like I remember so many of the classmates that you had at, at Stanford’s Business School, which this is one of the hardest to get into schools in the entire world. These are incredibly competent, smart, well connected, lucky and well-resourced people.And so many of them really didn’t seem to have any moral framework or set of values that they really, they didn’t care about. AndMalcolm Collins: I I, that, that actually shocked me when I hit the halls of power inSimone Collins: society. There were some Israelis and Mormons, I’m gonna say who actually did, I mean, they, they weren’t, I would say like Nietzche and or Uber Manchi in their in because they, this was their default culture.Maybe they thought through it and come to own it themselves as well. Still, their big thing was just, I’m doing the best thing, I’m doing the correct thing. It was just no, no, no. Perpetual optimization. No.Malcolm Collins: So you, you think like this means intelligence, that the Uber bench means intelligence. It it does not.So, you know, Simone got her graduate [00:13:00] degree at Cambridge. I got mine at Stanford. You know, we’ve been in sort of the halls of power in society and the, you know, Peter Thiel, secret societies and everything like that, right? Like, and so I’ve encountered the, the best and brightest of what the institutions that are generally thought of as accumulating the best and brightest bring.My first question, and this is Simone knows this from me, from our first date, to somebody who’s always like, okay. Like, what are you about? Like what are you attempting to do with your life? Yeah. What’s your purpose? Like, what are you here for? What do you, because I, I need to know how I can align my goals and their goals, and if there’s a useful alignment or if there’s not a useful alignment.Simone Collins: Yep.Malcolm Collins: The number of people who, who sputter and start outputting platitudes, when you put that question to them, which I think should be the number one question any individual considers mm-hmm. Is astonishingly high. In these, in these halls of power. I’d say if you are talking about an institution like a Stanford MBA, because that’s, you know, [00:14:00] the, the most exclusive of the, the institutes that we’ve been talking about here, maybe one in 20 people who go through have thought through.What their purpose in life is and why they exist.Simone Collins: The rest is just optimization. I am gonna be the best. So I need to go to the best school, get the best grades, earn the most money. We superlatives all the way down, but there’s, there’s no point to it. It’s just whatever is the most prestigious or seen as the highest achieving, then that’s what they’ll do.You know, climb up to the highest rank of whatever organization, and then if that organization gets capped out, well then I guess I have to run for political office. And then because the government is a bigger organization, I guess I’ll do that. And then after that, who knows what, you know, I’ll be a philanthropist and, and basically pull the strings of multiple organizations by being their primary source of funding.It just keeps going.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And this is how people in positions of power get so easily captured by mimetic, contagions, like the urban monoculture that [00:15:00] you as a, I don’t know if you watching this, have thought through your own value system but you as a potential Uber minch me look at them and say, wait, but can’t they see how stupid and self-contradictory this value system is? Like, can’t they see the long-term consequences of adhering to this value system? Have they not had an single iota of internal self-reflection about what matters in life and what they live for? And the real answer is, and I say this very unfortunately, it’s, it’s no, they have not they, they, they may even find the concept of doing that offensive because it implies.You know, sort of self ownership, which, which the urban monoculture, tgt is bad. Because if it can teach you that, then you don’t end up reflecting on these ideas. The next point I make about the Uber inch before I go further here, which is important in this, in this world, is you might be like, oh, that’s quite arrogant to call yourself to Uber inch.You know, the Uber Mitch is a simply defined thing. Did you build your [00:16:00] own moral framework or did you take it from an outside source?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And it doesn’tSimone Collins: matter if you are the wealthiest person in the world or impoverished, right? This has nothing to do with wealth.Malcolm Collins: It doesn’t matter if you’re a genius or like literally mentally handicapped.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: You can be an Uber Mitch. So, so I, that’s reallySimone Collins: important. There’s nothing elitist about it at all, actually, or it’s not even like. I mean it is, it absolutely can come from a place of superior.Malcolm Collins: Well, there is something elitist about it, and it’s elitist in our conception of it, and it was elitist in Nietzsche’s conception of it.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Uber minch are morally superior to non Uber minch. Which is I think just an objectively and obviously true thing. As soon as you think through it, somebody who has taken ownership and saw it through a value system, even if it’s exactly the same as somebody else’s value system, is doing something of higher moral caliber by following that value system than the person who’s just following what everyone else says is right and wrong.Mm-hmm. Because they’ve taken on this a, a, a, a additional layer of ver [00:17:00] moral verification. Hmm,Simone Collins: okay.Malcolm Collins: Somebody could be like, well, why was that moral verification necessary? Wasn’t that just like self masturbatory work if it ended up at the same place as society’s value? Like no, it wasn’t, because it may not have, and if it didn’t, it would lead to a completely different trajectory of this in person’s entire moral prism through which they see reality.So, so it is elitist in that it does rank people into a scale of moral hierarchy. But it isn’t elitist in that only the mentally superior can engage with it. It’s more like the mentally superior in terms of I don’t know, being willing to be critical of society or being self-critical. That, that, that puts you in that category, not, not iq.So back to what it’s saying, self-actualization is here. It is less about feeling good about yourself in a static way, and more about growth, authenticity, and actualizing innate potentials. It includes traits like realistic and [00:18:00] accurate perception of reality, including one’s self without illusions or denial.Self-acceptance, accepting flaws without shame or defensiveness, but not complacency, autonomy and independence from external approval, creativity, spontaneity, and quote unquote peak experiences, moments of profound joy, insight, or transcendence. Now, note here, what you’ll see in some of these, some of these carry parts of the Uber min within them, right?Autonomy and independence from external approval is sort of key to building your own moral framework, right? But then other of them are just completely. Like cued, urban monoculture, creativity spontaneity and peak experiences. What does that have to do with actualization? Right? Like what, what does that have to do with like living [00:19:00] as, that has to do with being a manic, pixie dream girl.He basically tried to combine the Uber minch with the aesthetics of the manic pixie dream girl.Simone Collins: Yeah. What do you think he was going for there? Just hedonism or something else, some kind of aesthetic or some kind of cultural trend at the time?Malcolm Collins: So I think what he was trying to go is w with this was to say this uber wrench concept has a lot of baggage, but I want to create, because people love creating a categoried framework of society.Let’s create a category framework of society. If you’d like to see some of ours, you can check out like our life stages and stuff like that, videos. If you have this category, framework of society and you have something at the top of it you, you, you then look to other systems that have similar things and the two systems that he very obviously pulled pretty hard from to the point of pla authorization is combining the Uber minch.Twisted through a progressive lens [00:20:00] whiz the Buddha. And, and we talked about that a lot in the last episode there. There’s clearly a lot of Buddhist inspiration in the modern concept of self-actualization. It’s just this thing that is definitionally the best and that if you have to ask how it’s.Qualitatively or quantitatively different from other states, that’s just proof that you don’t have it. And when you have it, then you’ll know. But because you’re asking about it, then you don’t know. ISimone Collins: think that’s so much the, oh, as long as you want it, you can never have it. You have to let go completely.Malcolm Collins: No, I know. I won’t even say that. It’s, it’s one of those, like in our video where we talk about like the lie of love, we point out that like romantic love as people describe it, probably doesn’t exist, but like normal people can’t get away with saying that because then people will be like, well, then you live in a loveless marriage.Like, ha ha, look at you. Right? So you’ve gotta pretend that love this, this separate romantic attachment as an emotional set rather than as a commitment exists. And and I think that people pointed [00:21:00] out when, when we said that very accurately, that the Bible understood that, right? Like that love is about a choice, not an involuntary emotional state.That’s just so much more awesome than other emotions. Like when they say love your neighbor as yourself, you know, they’re not telling them to have this emotion towards your neighbor. They’re telling you to treat them in a certain way. And when somebody commits to love and honor their wife, love is the same kind of word as honor in that sentence, right?It, it means perform a duty to the person not feel a way about the person. But to continue here with traits that the self-actualized man has problem centered focus, tracking issues effectively rather than ego protection. I just love that sounds so Karen. And deep meaningful relationships without possessiveness which again, seems like you see how we go from there to the world of polyamory, right?Like. [00:22:00] If you get jealous when your partner sleeps with other people, which is giving them happiness and you love them, right? Why are you saying that they can’t do that then? Right? They would say, right? Like, mm-hmm. You’re not self-actualize in that sense. You prove to yourself, yourself, actualization by getting cut, by allowing your partner to sleep with other people, right?And I, I think where they going with that? The, the point being is, is you can see how it’s melding these ideas together. But, and, and I’ll note here that, that the, an area of overlap is that Maslow also says that self-actualization involves accurate self knowledge and humility. Alright, so, to continue, and I’ll note here, this is coming from Maslow himself because a lot of people are like, well, that just sounds like you’re describing a narcissist, right?Like a really self-centered narcissist. And so he had to have, you know, his boilerplate argument about why this isn’t just an entire world [00:23:00] framing about how to be a better narcissist, right? And he emphasized itself actual pe actualized people where actually not narcissistic. They have a strong sense of reality testing, humility and resistance to self-deception.Narcissism by contrast, involve distorted self-perception and a fragmented ego defensiveness, which are antithetical to self-actualization. On selfishness. Maslow noted that someone self-actualizing , often fuses, selflessness and usefulness into a higher utility. They pursue personal growth, but this naturally leads to good for others.In later frameworks, he added transcendence as a level beyond humanity slash nature slash the universe, getting very Buddhism influence here and helping others grow to explicitly counter any self only interpretation thoughts.[00:24:00]Simone Collins: This just seems so, seems so pointless, like on on what basis did he choose to, to add these? I feel like this is one of those things similar to all of these childhood wellbeing studies focusing on, on measures like self-esteem. Why self-esteem does that correlate with better health, longer lifespan signs of flourishing, like rates of marriage or wealth creation or family formation, the number of kids they have, like, I just don’t see what this correlates with and, and why he would choose it as a desired outcome.Because I don’t see it as being correlated with particularly correlating with any sort of desired outcome.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I know, I, I, I see that and I think that we can see that this is the case, by the way, that he developed his theory. He just looked at a bunch of people that mainstream society respects and then boil that down.And what he got was a system [00:25:00] of values that looks a lot like mainstream society’s value systems, but surprise, surprise, that is more palatable to an average person in mainstream society because they don’t need to adapt. Right? They’re like, oh yeah, that’s, this works. Anyway, to continue here. Sorry, I’m feeling a little lightheaded.I don’t know what’s going on.Simone Collins: You’re not sleeping enough. That’s probably part of it.Malcolm Collins: Oh. But I gotta get work to,Simone Collins: yeah, maybe.Maybe though. MaybeMalcolm Collins: there’s a reason nobody else does fully edited daily podcasts that involve independent research instead of watching somebody else’s dream.Simone Collins: Well that, and, and you know, the, the other full-time projects you have and also yourMalcolm Collins: Oh yeah. Reality fabricators really coming along. The agents.Yes. It’s I mean it’s, it’s, as far as I know, working pretty bloodless now, except for like a problem with reroll from computers. Which is very exciting. Very exciting too. And the advertisements are starting and Yay. Yeah. Yay. And the audio feature is really [00:26:00] cool if you haven’t tried it. It’s a so fun to do inexpensive AI chats.‘cause we’re not actually have it read by the AI itself. It’s read by a separate AI system. So you could do it in multiple languages really well too.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Here we’re going to go into, a deeper dive into the concept of the Uber Mitch.Okay. And then we’ll contrast the two and see how they, they relate to each other and are in a way inversions to each other. If they were a dark side and a light side of the force, they almost feel like to me, right?Simone Collins: They do.Malcolm Collins: Except the Nietzsche one is a dark side, which is a good side in this analogy.I mean, I think in most analogies because they’re actually, I, I, I mean, I think actually. I almost wanna do a reworking of how the force is interpreted to show that the light side of the force is actually evil. Oh, that’s gonna make a great episode. And the dark side is actually good. It’s just that the way it’s interpreted in Star Wars always sort of forces dark siders to take on these horrible actions.But if you look at it completely pragmatically to say a person. Decided [00:27:00] to use the force against the force’s own will for whatever was good for evolving humanity and moving civilization forwards.Simone Collins: Right.Malcolm Collins: That person would be a dark cider because they would be not obeying the will of a what? A non demographic democratically elected God entity that gets to tell an independent branch of like ninjas who just killed people on the streets.Like, what is moral and what is not moral? That doesn’t, that doesn’t sound, that sounds like slave morality to me, man.Simone Collins: Yeah. On, on whose authority does the force get to govern all humans? When the forceMalcolm Collins: didn’t even Right, but who, who voted for this? Why? Who says the force is intrinsically good?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right. LikeSimone Collins: seriously. I mean, the, the only force that we know to be universal in our universe is entropy. Is that inherently good? I don’t know, man.Malcolm Collins: It’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s pure evil and that the MIT chlorines, I, I also love that because we know that the force is [00:28:00] controlled by like living organisms that are symbiotes with humans and live in our cells.So humanity who follows the light side is literally slaves to the hive mind of a parasitic organism.Simone Collins: Yeah. I guess the analogy is to be like, well, my gut microbiome tells me to this, the toxoplasmosis my subjectMalcolm Collins: to the toxoplasma. They literally obey the toxoplasmosis.Simone Collins: Yeah. My boysMalcolm Collins: do an episode. Do it.They need to get their horse dewormer, you know,Simone Collins: they need to the, the jet. I need ivermectin.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Anyway, continuing here. So, he introduced the concept of the Uber Minch in his 1883 to 1885 philosophical novel, thus spoke raster. It’s a central idea in philosophy, representing the idea that a human who transcends traditional morality, societal norms, and human weaknesses to create new values and affirm life fully.Mm-hmm. Now note here how this definition sounds a lot [00:29:00] squier than the definition I gave. And that’s because this is how it is commonly interpreted by people, even though that’s not how it’s actually laid out. Because these, like once you define your own morality, all of these other positive things come to you.And I agree with that as well. You do get a lot of positive things from taking complete ownership over your own moral framework. Yeah. But yeah. But, but he, I think. Especially the people who have built on him went a little mystical, was what those nice things are afterwards, right? Like you then become a axiomatic good person where no, there’s a lot of people who’ve defined their own moral framework and we’re still really, they, they came up with horrible moral frameworks, right?Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Actually a a lot of the people who have read our book, the Pima Dis Guide to Life and reported back to us of come up with conclusions that we wouldn’t come to, but we’re actually glad ‘cause it means that the book is not biased.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Which was our goal. But can you believe there was ever a time in my life where I strove to be unbiased?Simone Collins: What’s what you tried to go for with the first [00:30:00] four? Books. SoMalcolm Collins: yeah, four books out there that you could read written by Simone and Malcolm that are like, A dollarSimone Collins: doesn’t have an ideological agenda, aside from just trying to make you more equipped and informed. Can you imagine?Those are the days.Malcolm Collins: So the Uber minch emerged in a world where God is dead, as niche said. Traditional religious and moral foundations have collapsed requiring individuals to overcome nihilism through self-mastery and creativity, and the will to power an innate drive to grow, dominate, and shape one’s existence, niche contextualized it as an evolutionary leap.Not a biological superman, but a psychological and cultural one that embraces eternal recurrence living in as if one’s life repeats forever. Rejects herd mentality, slave morality, and embodies the idea of fate, love of fate. You know, this is interesting, the idea that your life repeats forever and you should [00:31:00] live as if that we argue for something similar, but different where we say that because the timeline has already played out.We believe like, like time is just like distance or anything like that. Yes, yes. Another framework and the future is, is predestined, or all possible futures are predestined. Mm-hmm. Because of that, every moment in time is infinite. And therefore you have infinite moral responsibility for how you choose to burn every moment.And the most important decision you can make is the framework you use and how you build the framework you use for making those individual choices. Which was the point of the book that we mentioned, the Prag Sky to Life Al also, it’s an audio book. If you get the ebook for free, you can just download the audiobook.So, normally when you’re talking about the Uber minch, the, the key traits would be radical individualism and self overcoming rejection of pity equality, and conventional ethics in favor of aristocratic values. You can already tell this is getting the MAGA people [00:32:00] excited here, right? You know, joyful affirmation of life’s chaos, suffering and impermanence.And then creativity as a form of power. The Uber minch legislates values for themselves and potentially others. So. You can see this is very psychologically helpful compared to this other framing. Yeah. It, it’s much more about personal responsibility without adding in all of these additional wiggle room.Definitionally, you should feel good about yourself if you indulge in X or y you know, ex extremist self-image. Right?Simone Collins: Like, it seems like this is mostly about being at a, being effective at whatever matters to you. And caveat, whatever matters to you is something that you personally take ownership of You.No one, you’re not doing what anyone else told you to do. You just, you decided what’s best and you’re doing that. That sounds so good. I want that for everyone.Malcolm Collins: All right. So, how are they actually different from each other, and where would people, like, where [00:33:00] would Maslow be like, oh my God, this needed to be rethought because this comes downstream of nietzschean philosophy. Right? Yeah. If I said package this. The positive psychology community elitism versus inclusivity, and I’d argue that in actuality, the Uber minch is more inclusive and less elitist.Then self-actualization, but we’ll get to how in a second. Okay. But what a, what an outsider would say is Nietzsche’s Uberin is a rare aristocratic and anti egalitarian, reserved for the strong-willed few who can endure isolation, create new values and potentially scorn.Or lead the heard the last men complacent masses. It’s forged in crisis suffering and radical self overcoming often with Tempus edge towards ordinary humanity. Maslow flips this. Self-actualization is a universal human potential [00:34:00] achievable by anyone. Once basic needs are met, he estimated one to 2% fully reach it.But the pathway is open through education, therapy, supportive environments and personal effort. Not a heroic struggle alone. It’s for the democratic age. I think teachers, therapists, managers, and everyday people pursuing growing. And I’d like to point out how twisted this understanding actually is. So no.What is actually said here, it’s saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You see, the Uber minch is elitist because to become an Uber minch, an individual has to overcome suffering. They have to overcome trials. They have to live a privileged existence to be self-actualized. All you need is an elite education and having all of your needs met all of yourSimone Collins: food.Oh, don’t forget seeing the therapist even for really well-resourced, [00:35:00] like, okay, wealthy people, we know seeing a therapist is really expensive. So that,Malcolm Collins: but what’s ironic is as soon as you put it like that, you realize, oh, the huddled masses is who have the potential to become the Uber Mitch. Yeah. Who has the potential to be self-actualize if self-actualization requires the fulfillment of all of the lower states of the hierarchy of needs?Only the elite self-actualization within Maslow’s system is definitionally reserved for the elite and then gated through elitist institutions like. Therapy and elite education.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: I also find it interesting that the one thing I would think all humans have access to, while not everyone is born equally intelligent mm-hmm.I think all men have access to, or should be judged by their lack of access to [00:36:00] their own personal willpower. Right? Yes, absolutely. It, it, it says it’s reserved for the strong-willed few being strong-willed. If it is genetic, like let’s assume it is genetic, it is still worth me scorning the individual who is not strong-willed because they will take actions that are immoral at a higher rate and scorn is used to prevent them gaining power, which they will use to take immoral actions.Mm-hmm. When we make the concept of recognizing, which you can see here in this AI is doing of recognizing, and I think Maslow Maslow did from the perspective of the urban monoculture. That strong will is a negative trait to, to say if I recognize strong will in others.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And I lauded them for that, that is a negative thing for me to do.Right. Ranking humanity on the amount [00:37:00] of self-responsibility that they are taking in terms of building their own moral frameworks versus ranking humanity by, and I love the entire hierarchy of needs. Pyramid is meant to sort of hand wave that this is being done. Ranking humanity by wealth which is fundamentally what the hierarchy of needs does because it monetizes the things that you need.It creates a food period of, of basically stuff you need to buy, experiences, friendships, dating, romance, sex, everything like that. Whereas what the Uber Minch does is it says, no, you can just go straight in and get this stuff yourself. You, you can learn to control all of these other needs while building a moral framework and living your life around that framework.Thoughts Before I go further here, Simone?Simone Collins: Hmm. Nothing in particular that what you’re saying [00:38:00] makes sense just. I’m just shocked by all of this still.Malcolm Collins: I also like how it’s like, no, no, no. Anyone can be a self-actualized. They just need therapy. Just go to therapy. Right?Simone Collins: So therapy, I really, the, the whole you need therapy in order to be a functional or acceptable human thing is so disturbing to me.Malcolm Collins: Look at our videos where we talk about how modern therapy has become a cult. I used to be a trained psychologist. I am very familiar with the field. Everything they do now is stuff we were told. Do not do this like this. This will cause dependence.Simone Collins: But, but a lot of this, you can understand why this is the case when you look at incentives, therapists who systematically are very, very good at getting people who have problems, what they need, and helping them get to a good place mentally.Go out of business therapists who create codependency do really well who are gonna be the therapists left after 20, 30, 40, [00:39:00] 50 years of that the ones who create codependency and, and maintain your problems or better yet make them worse. So you have to up your hours. It’s, it’s just obvious. Then it would end up like this.Malcolm Collins: And then what you get, and this is why the urban monoculture as an evolving sort of organic entity is so important. Then you can see how a profession like this could co-evolve with a mimetic set where the profession helps put more people in a mental state where they’re willing to accept and then dedicate their time, life and resources to proliferating this mimetic set.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Where that per mimetic set also. Funnels people into this profession, so they are symbiotic. And we talk about how you can also see this with parasites. We talk about all the parasites that can alter people’s sexuality and why we cannot talk about this right now. We cannot talk about how we know now from the research that there is a form of toxoplasmosis that alters people’s [00:40:00] sexual proclivities.And that’s how it appears to be spreading. It’s going direct human to human now instead of through cats. And it, it, it makes people, for example, more, more attracted to the same sex. And it’s not the only thing that might be doing that. And that if you talk about something like toxoplasmosis, the toxoplasmosis might be literally co-evolving with the urban monoculture.It reduces threat detection. Reducing threat detection is important. If you’re gonna join a culture where your own people are systematically going extinct, and you were importing a hostile foreign group, a normal person would say, what this seems like a big mistake. But if you have the thing in your brain that is telling mice to go where the cats are and do a little dance so they can eat you, it’s easy to see how it adopted the same circuitry.To get the progressive to say, yeah, let’s bring the knife wielding man to my country, who is actively saying he wants to kill anyone who is like me. Which they, they often will. There was the case recently in the UK where the, the government in charge, like Stomberg government was [00:41:00] cheering, saying we won a major civil rights victory, bringing this guy back to the UK and freeing him from Egypt.And he, he’d gotten arrested in Egypt and he had multiple tweets saying that he wanted all white people to die. He genuinely hated all white people, especially the English and the Dutch. Like they are cheering for bringing somebody into their country who actively is a genocide supporter of their people.But and this is bringing the cat into your country, right? Like this is stupid. But the, the next inversion here that it sees. But I find that first inversion very interesting. But because they’re trying to hide from you from the truth of inclusivity and the reason why this can make sense to, from an elitist perspective.Whether that’s AI that is often trained on elitist data or to the type of person who you’re going to read because they have reach IE they’re writing books or they’re writing the New York Times. These are wealthy white women often. And so they have all their needs met. So, and everyone they know has all their needs met.So when they [00:42:00] go out there and they say, well, self-actualization is available to everyone, whereas having willpower is not what they mean is everyone in their evoked set of friends. They know that if they told their set of friends, Hey, you have to take responsibility for the things you’re doing and saying you have to take moral responsibility for your own system.They wouldn’t do that. And so they’re like, well, then this is an egalitarian thing because my friends wouldn’t engage with this. They don’t consider. If I’m actually talking about somebody who’s struggling in life and in an a, a, a disadvantaged position, which system is more accessible to them because they just genuinely don’t think about those people.And I I think that this is also really important to understand when they’re talking about being a fem cell, when they’re talking about being a, you know, oh, you know, guy is. Just don’t get it when I, you know, hit on them or whatever. It’s so hard to date when they’re a GA girl. And what are you guys talking about?When they’re saying all this, it makes perfect sense in their head because [00:43:00] genuinely do not see guys, they do not want to bone as human. If they do not look at a guy and think, I wanna bone that, that person does not clock as meaningfully human. The guy who, who bags her, her food at the grocery store, they are never considering that person when they’re talking about, guys just don’t date me.Right? Like, they know that that person would date them, right? They’re, they’re saying this yeah,Simone Collins: I guess the, the more implied statement is eight. Eight outta tens. Don’t take me.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think the, well, but it’s, it’s more that morality and moral frameworks do not worry in terms of how they apply to anyone below the eight out of 10.Mm-hmm. ‘cause I simply don’t consider them in anything I do in my life. So a, a great example of this is in cells versus gays, right? So, these women, right, they’re are gays. They may want to bone, right? Like a lot of women look at our ywe episode, right? Or we talking about this phenomenon, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And [00:44:00] so when you say to them something like, well, I, I do not think that. It is, it is good to normalize that people who are same sex attracted that the default pathway for them, or the only pathway available for them is going into same sex relationships. And to which they would gasp and say, but if they don’t go into same sex relationships, how are they gonna be able to masturbate their arousal system?How are they going to be able to have sex with somebody that they want to have sex with? Right. And they’ll say it’s about love, but we all know that you can love people who you’re not attracted to. People love their dogs. Not everybody who loves their dogs wants to f their dog. Okay? Right. It’s not about love.What they’re really mortified at is the idea that the gay men that they want to f wouldn’t be able to sleep with whoever they want to sleep with, wouldn’t be able to masturbate. Their arousal system would be inconvenienced or challenged. [00:45:00] Now you talk about the incel. Who has the same struggle. They are not able to masturbate their arousal system in the way that they want to masturbate it.Mm-hmm. And they say, well, their plight deserves not just no concern, but active scorn. Mm-hmm. I’m annoyed and angry that you have inconvenienced me with suffering that is ironically of a form that I view as so absolutely societally existential to protect in the form of gay normalization. Right. And this, I mean, they, they, they are morally irrelevant to women now to continue here.Any thoughts, Simone? You, you seem very annoyed at women.Simone Collins: It’s just, it’s very frustrating. I, I feel frustrated with myself too, because I grew up around this mindset and I never [00:46:00] questioned it. So that, that makes me mad at myself.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The person who’s like, of course we have to do everything we can to normalize gaze, being able to masturbate their arousal system, but that in cells can’t.And people would be like, well, it’s that gaze. You know, it’s, it’s two consenting adults or whatever. And it’s like, okay, great. Two consenting adults. I get that, but why is it so blindingly existential that you solve that normalization problem and yet the incel problem is worthy of score? Why? Why is that the case?Why is the incel it asking for sympathy around something you see as absolutely socially ex existential in this other context now worthy of score the, the polarization of the difference of these views. And I used to have this view too. I did. I, I absolutely did. And now I see how repulsive it is because Uber Mitch value system, [00:47:00] I thought through it for myself.That’s hopefully what the channel helps you do. That’s what an episode like this like, I don’t think an episode like this is gonna do great in the algo, but if somebody is like, you need to reintroduce a pragmatist guide to life ideas, you need to reintroduce how to build your own value system, please check out that book.If you are like, I want to go on this adventure, it’s basically free. If you’re a subscriber, we’ll just send it to you for free. Like we do not care, right? Like we just want as many people as possible to get this information right. Yeah.Simone Collins: In other words, also, just as a note, if you are. You really, really, really don’t want to pay for the book.Should I say this? You, you can email us. You should just email usMalcolm Collins: us and we’ll send it to you. We don’tSimone Collins: care. Yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, give us a good review or something on it. You know, if, ifSimone Collins: we really appreciate that. Yeah. Like, yeah. In, in, in general, if you could leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, if you happen to have an iPhone, because we don’t even have one, it would mean a lot to us.We know people look at that for whatever reason, and we, I do not know why theMalcolm Collins: Apple Podcast reviews matter. [00:48:00] But anyway I wanna, I wanna go to the, actually do you wanna say Yeah. What our Apple Podcast review is right now?Simone Collins: I think we’re at like 130 or something. 140. See, we don’t have that many because we’re very uniqueMalcolm Collins: 29Simone Collins: first podcast.So yeah, if, if anyone’s up for that, it would mean a great deal to us. And huge thanks to everyone who is a paid subscriber on a. Patreon Substack. It is incredibly generous of you and just wanted to say we okay. Adss over.Malcolm Collins: Adss over. Okay. So to continue. A, so this is another difference. It’s something like an AI would see in this uhhuh, which I think iss good because it’s getting sort of the average societal opinion of how these concepts are different.Simone Collins: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: A moral slash value creating versus inherently ethical and pro-social. So it is interesting here that it is assigning Nietzsche system as being amoral slash value creating, and Laszlo’s system is inherently ethical and prosocial where I actually think the inversion is [00:49:00] true.I, I think that the, the Lale systems amoral in value creating and the Nietzsche system is inherently ethical and prosocial.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: But let’s continue. The Uber venture transcends slave morality, Christianity, pity, equality, resentment to invert their own values, which could be noble, ruthless, or experimental, not guarantees of kindness.Mm-hmm. Mishi warns against pity as weakening and celebrates a more fatty, loving fate as triumphant self-assertion. Mm-hmm. Maslow in. Since self-actualize people are automatically ethical, creative, just loving and reality oriented.Simone Collins: Automatically ethical. That’s, that’s a,Malcolm Collins: that’s when you know that you’re dealing with an incredibly unethical framework.Mm-hmm. ‘cause whenever you can self define your actions as ethical, well, I did it. And you see this in your red monoculture so much. Therefore, it must have been the ethical thing to do because I’m a good person and I did it. Mm-hmm. And you see so many people like this.Simone Collins: Yeah. Huge. Yikes. [00:50:00] No good. No good.Malcolm Collins: They exhibit B values being values like truth, beauty, wholeness, justice, and often move towards transcendence, helping other self-actualize. He explicitly rejects a Nietzsche and quote unquote rampaging, egotism or callousness as pathological, not sublime. It’s a Nietzsche light. The perks of harmonious descent, not the barbaric joy of conquest, or I would say the acceptance that.Because really what this is all about and what the big fear you see in the contrast of the two system is mm-hmm. Is again, Nietzsche’s system requires self ownership. Right. It requires, because as soon as you take the self ownership, then you can say, well then why don’t I just not act on those intrusive thoughts?Like, why? Why? Why isn’t that the goal? Instead of satiating the intrusive thoughts. Right?Simone Collins: [00:51:00] Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But thoughts on these wider frameworks here.Simone Collins: It seems like this isn’t something unique to what Abraham Maslow did. What I see happening with so many philosophers is people will take the original source material and be like, okay, but I don’t really wanna do that, or I don’t wanna do that work, or I just don’t feel like it, and therefore I am going to reinterpret it as this new system taking a lot of the originally.Compelling points that I guess sold well or marketed well. Just manipulating them in a way that both makes them appealing to people, but also strips away all the substance.Malcolm Collins: No, I, I, I think what you see, if you want to get an idea of why I think lots Las Tiger meat did so well is one, it gave people charts.People love sorting hats. Any sorting hat, people go crazy for it. Whether it’s a [00:52:00] quiz about what character you are from friends, or whether it’s a, you know, this, this on OkCupid used to be one of the big things, all the quizzes and in Asia you’ve got your, your blood types and here you’ve got your INTJs.Everyone’s an INT js, so it doesn’t matter you all the ISTs, right? You’ve got your you know, I mean, it, it’s, it’s, they wanna, they wanna know where they are in a system. And the fun thing about Laslo system. It is a system that makes everyone who is wealthy and sees a therapist think that they’re already at the top of it, and it explains to the rich who progressive, who doesn’t want to think about why the urban poor or rural poor have different world frameworks than them.Mm-hmm. It helps them not think about it. They say, oh, the Iranians Act in X way, or the Gazen Act in X way when they’re throwing a gay person off the truth [00:53:00] because they don’t have all their needs metSimone Collins: off of a rooftop. You meanMalcolm Collins: I,Simone Collins: I also just see has Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as being. A means of justifying basically any form of indulgence.Like, oh, well, I need to go out and treat myself to X because I just don’t feel shored up in this part of my pyramid, and I can’t do the more important stuff unless this is addressed. Except as I’ve mentioned when we were talking about this before, every rung in this period or every level of this pyramid of needs is insatiable.There is no level at which someone can say, okay, I have enough. The enough part of it really has to do with whether or not you care, or how much you care or how you choose to interpret your situation. And someone, for example, with very little actual physical or mental safety could feel safe just depending on how they interpret the world.Whereas someone who has. Maybe even [00:54:00] a, a paid security team who lives in a gated community, you know, who’s, who’s one of the more safe people in the entire world may feel deeply unsafe because that’s how they’ve chosen to interpret their surroundings and their their circumstances. So I think maybe one of the reasons, one, like why he was compelled to create this in the first place, but also why people glom onto it, is that it’s a very indulgent and a very.Compelling tool to justify indulgence, just like the concept of self-care really caught on maybe what, 10 or 15 years ago, and everyone was talking about how important it is to engage in self-care. Maybe that was a pandemic thing, the worst thing you could do, like, so I know, but Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was like the proto self-care.Like, well, I, I have to do this ‘cause if I don’t feel safe, I can’t self-actualize. If I don’t feel socially validated, I can’t self-actualize. And then self-actualize is this hand wavy, vague. Indulgent thing with a bunch of caveats and [00:55:00] exceptions and not really anything meaningful or hard to achieve. So it really becomes just a a get out of jail free thing for feeling, feeling guilty about spending way too much money on a therapist and way too much money on indulgent foods and way too much money on stuff that makes you feel safe.And people love that. People love having an excuse and we make fun of it. We use it too. We talk about things being shop opportunities because we get that. It’s, it’s a, it’s a very human thing to want these excuses.Malcolm Collins: But we need to understand what I, what I think is important is Laszlo’s hierarchy of need normalizes sin.Yeah. I think it’s important from the moral framework that we push whenever you are doing something out of alignment with your objective function, now your objective function may be hedonism.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: If it is, then hedonism a max buddy. Like whatever that looks like for you. Right? Yeah. But when you’re doing something outside your objective function, that is sit, right?Mm-hmm. And so, it, it, it [00:56:00] tries to normalize all of the things that we know are distracting us from. And I think very few people who watch this are probably hedonists. They’re like, I want to move human and civilization forward. I think that’s the easiestSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Thing that a lot of people are attempting to do when I’m doing something that doesn’t do that I am sitting And Leslie’s hierarchy of needs is just a giant pyramid of all that.Yes. It’s, it’s a pyramid of sin.Simone Collins: The pyramid of sin. Yes. That’s what we shouldMalcolm Collins: call it. Lala’s Hierarchy of needs. A pyramid of sin.Simone Collins: A pyramid. Anyway,Malcolm Collins: love you Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too.Malcolm Collins: What are we doing for dinner tonight?Simone Collins: More of the reang with cream.Malcolm Collins: Oh yes. Let’s do half of the reang that was there.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And we’ll do it with the cream. And do you wanna do another recording today or do you wanna do early dinner?Simone Collins: It’s it’s not a super long recording, is it?Malcolm Collins: No, not that long. We’ll just jump to it. Okay.Simone Collins: Let’s do it. Yeah. I like talking with [00:57:00] you. That’s my problem. Can you blame me? You’re so wonderful. You really feel it, you feel it good. It, there’s a bite. There’s a bite to the great outdoors. Right now, I’ve opened the door for the chickens, and I, I’ve been watching them as I look out the window every now and then so that they can wander into the, the yard and they’ll step out for just a second, because that’s where I, I dropped leftovers that the kids had from the previous night, and they love snacking on them leftovers.They take one step out and they’re like, Nope, nope. I even shoveled the area so they can scratch the leaves and stuff, as is their delight. But no, they’re like no thank you. What really surprises me is that the professor likes playing in the snow as much as we have. So instead of hanging out in her nice heated room that I’ve set up, she’s like, oh, no, I wanna play outside.I’m a snow dog.But I mean,Malcolm Collins: oh, and I’m saying a professor is, is a, a happy dog, [00:58:00] which is,Simone Collins: she actually is though. And, and she communicated so clearly to me that she did not wanna be locked inside. And I’m glad that that forced me to really properly set up her room.Malcolm Collins: By vomiting and pooping all over the floor.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway. You are such an intense mom. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Any, anything fun from the comments today? Did anyone comment on the pomegranate juice?Simone Collins: They, they did. Someone also hopefully pointed out just in terms of if, if feature things ferment there, there are okay.Alcohols and they’re not so Okay. Alcohols and you don’t know what that was so better. Okay, fine sir. I’ll better notMalcolm Collins: to drink it becauseSimone Collins: I, yeah. Better safe than sorry. You don’t know what, you don’t know what’s going on there. Whatever that was, I, it went down the drain right away when I found it after that.Oh sir, after the episode,Malcolm Collins: you are intense, Simone.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I wasn’t drinking [00:59:00] fermented pomegranate juice.Malcolm Collins: It tasted really good, actually.Simone Collins: I think it must’ve been an acquired taste. ‘cause at first you’re like, this is off. Well, I guess you just kept drinking it. You like never drink. You’ll smell milk that is not even close to off.Yeah. And you’re like, this isMalcolm Collins: milk. Simone is disgusting. Fermented a pomegranate because the pomegranate is already such a strong flavor.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: It heavily covered up. Anything else? So, it, it was like, I mean, for an alcohol mixer, pomegranate juice is actually really good because it’s going to cover up the alcohol and whatever alcohol was being formed in it tasted sort of wine like, I would say.So they worked pretty well together in terms of covering up that there was any alcohol I could taste until I felt it hit my head and I was like, whoa. That was, that was hot heavy. OhSimone Collins: my gosh.Malcolm Collins: They liked the bear songs. Simone ses was the Bears Secondary community,Simone Collins: you know, they liked the Bear song.They [01:00:00] liked that. We were just chill. I guess it, it was, it was just a good hangout episode to some people. So there you go. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The Hangout.Simone Collins: But also a lot of people expressed, I mean, what we, what we talked about resonated with them in the sense that they. It had just been gaslit for so long. AndMalcolm Collins: it about men, like actually, like the, the point being is that scientists lie regularly with data.Simone Collins: Well, but also a several people referred to their experiences from schooling onward. Even people who went to school in the seventies and eighties, like as early as then they were steeped in this and now they’re, some, some realized it right away. Others, it took them a long time to realize, hold on. I, I appear to be actually subject to discrimination here.One person described this amazing experience. [01:01:00] I think in a UK based school in the seventies or eighties where there was a debate I think maybe around the patriarchy. And this person was like, listen, our queen is a woman. Our prime minister is a woman. ‘cause it was during Mar Margaret Thatcher’s rain.And our, our school head mistress is a woman and all the teachers are women and you’re trying to tell me that we live in a patriarchy. Like, and they, he, he still lost the debate, which was judged exclusively by teachers who were all women. When he still recalls seeing their faces when he was making his point.And he feel, I mean, as far as I’m concerned, he probably knew at that point that he had won.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right. Like uhoh, you’re not allowed to make these points too accurately, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. Crazy world we live in guys.Simone Collins: Truly, truly.Speaker: He was so naughty. That’s what happened. Mommy. I do. [01:02:00] But why did he suck in the boys? ‘cause he was naughty too. Oh, he was hanging out with naughty people that at the door. So guys, are you gonna be naughty? Oh no. Oh, no.Speaker 2: Oh no, he got in water.Speaker 3: Holter guys. That’s how you teach children.Speaker 2: Dad. I was gonna get taken away by a ghost. So did I tell you the water? So you guys know why not to be mad, right? Bad, right? Yeah. When they, when they filmed the, um, the scene with, with the, the gets real bones. [01:03:00] Yes. Excuse me. Can you believe that? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this eye-opening episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into why much of the modern Islamic world feels "post-apocalyptic" — crumbling ancient grandeur, neglected heritage, and a society living in the ruins of its own past glory. They contrast today's strict moral codes (influenced heavily by 18th-century Wahhabism and Saudi oil wealth) with the wild hedonism of Islam's historical peak: lavish palaces, opium-fueled feasts, widespread homosexuality (including pederasty), endless harems, cross-dressing trends started by desperate royal mothers, and poetry celebrating wine and young boys.From Moroccan citadels split and looted across generations to Ottoman sultans with 300+ concubines and nudity in palaces shocking 19th-century Europeans, they unpack how Islam flipped from one of the most "debauched" civilizations to one of the strictest. They also touch on "dead" vs. "living" religious traditions, the closure of ijtihad, cousin marriage debates, why Islam excelled as a ruling-minority faith but struggles as a mass religion, and light-hearted parenting tangents (helicopter-obsessed kids and Bosnian songs).Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins: .[00:00:00]Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about a concept that came up in our episode on why Muslims almost never win wars of aggressionafter, like, within two generations of Mohammad’s life. And, in that episode, I commented that Muslim society had become post-apocalyptic in nature.And I wanna talk about thisin this episode, we’re going to both talk about this concept of Islam as a post-apocalyptic society, and also discuss how they went from being seen as one of the most debauched societies on earth, , with the jabba the hut like scenes or belly dancers and dripping in jewels to one of the most strict, .Parts of the world morally. You know, throwing gay people off rooftops, , women covered 100%, not even, , able to, in some Islamic countries, have both of their eyes unveiled at the same time while still [00:01:00] staying countries with high amounts of gay sex. Although that’s something we’ll go into in a, in a future episode, , in Islamic countries, they’re often like, oh, don’t.Don’t, it’s not get, it’s with a child. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. And it’s like, well, that you see, that might make it worse in some other cultural context.Because like you see when I talk to you and I’m like, what, what, what, what, what are you doing having sex with that little boy? , And you’re like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. It’s chill. He’s a child. Um, I was actually, that was the thing I was worried about was, was not the gay part, but the child part. Um, so you see, see from my cultural context, But anyway, back to the Islamic world, living in a post apocalypse.Malcolm Collins: because I think that we really do not understand how directly this is true. If you, a listener has traveled many parts of the Islamic world. We, we’ve traveled pretty extensively in the Islamic world. You will notice when I say [00:02:00] it is post-apocalyptic. I don’t just mean like the Muslim people at one point in the distant past you know, had greatness and they don’t have greatness now.I mean that you see it all around you. It almost feels like in those movies about Apocalypses where you have people camping out in like a falling apart New York City or something like that. Yeah, you don’tSimone Collins: have to imagine that if you go to like Morocco because you can just do it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so I’ll, I’ll give an example of this and I thought it was one of the most shocking to me.It was when we were in Morocco and we went not far out of Morocco to, I pulled up the name of the place you found it, Bedo.And oh, I love it whenSimone Collins: you butcher foreign languages. Oh, it’s so hot.Malcolm Collins: Citadel in, in Southern Morocco. And it’s, it’s giant. It’s this giant complex. But. [00:03:00] If you walk through it, and it’s almost like a palace it was once owned by the one of the descendants of the prophet Mohammed, and it’s just, I’ll obviously put pictures on screen here of it.Simone Collins: Do you want me to send you the ones that we, we tookMalcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. You can find them. Yeah, I’ll absolutely about it. Is that it? As you walk through it, some sections of it look almost perfectly maintained. And some sections of it have just completely collapsed to almost nothing but rubble. And there’s of things in all states in between.And the reason is, is because as the family went on, they would split ownership of it with every generation. And some descendants looted their parts of the castle for anything they could sell. Other descendants tried to maintain it and use it as like makeshift restaurants and stuff like that. But it is.Very much like a, a hermit crab in the shell of a castle, and you don’t need to be outside. One of the craziest things about a place like Morocco’s, a particularly good example [00:04:00] of this is that you climb to the top of one of the roofs there and you will see like there could be buildings that people just forgot about that have been built around by other buildings.The, in the way the city is built up. And I suspect Rome was probably like this at one point too. Mm-hmm. Just like without any long-term infrastructure planning or anything like that. And many of the buildings are obviously absolutely ancient. And I say this, you know, as somebody who’s living in a house from the 17 hundreds, these, just everything. There was old. And the other interesting thing about the Islamic world is if you go through old Catholic cities you will often see old, beautiful architecture, but it is maintained yeah, yeah.Simone Collins: Well, very common in Europe, you know, things are carefully updated.Malcolm Collins: No. In the Protestant world, you typically get something different.I’ll talk about that in a second. Oh, okay. Interesting. So in the, in, in the Catholic world it’s, it’s very common to walk by, very well [00:05:00] maintained ancient glor structures. Even if, even if their own civilization is like poor and impoverished and, and corrupt they do have a reverence for things of the past.If you go through a lot of, you know, whether it’s Iran or Egypt or, you know, Morocco you go through these places, you will see often old, beautiful structures sort of falling apart like dilapidated, I guess I’d say. But, but weirdly still in use. It’s not like they’re dilapidated because they’re misused.What happens in the Protestant world was most of the, the ch the old like glor, like giant cathedrals and stuff like that were torn down or torn apart. So it’s very, yeah, there’s stillSimone Collins: architecturally sound. I, I’m going through and looking at pictures of this one complex we visited that one of the descendants was still living in, and we, we walked through his part of it and it’s, it’s crumbly, but like in the parts that he lives in.And you’ll see this and Malcolm will send you the photos on WhatsApp. He just gonna put [00:06:00] carpets on the ground. And you can, you can kind of see furniture around and like there are just parts of the place that are, that look genuinely like ruins and there are just holes and you can see whereMalcolm Collins: Yeah, like you’ll falling apart.Reach the edge of one of his like second story hallways, uhhuh. And it is a, a, a, a hole to, to nothing because the, the person who maintained the part that connected to that fell apart. Yeah. They’re just like,Simone Collins: I’m not gonna bother to keep this up. Well, or they didn’t have the money for it, you know, whatever or something.And it’s not like this doesn’t happen in all parts of the world. I mean, you can buy castles in Europe. For basically nothing because no one can afford to keep them up. And that’s not right. ButMalcolm Collins: this is very different. You don’t have major architectural monuments in the center of major European cities that are basically falling apart.That is very common in parts of the muscle world. Mm-hmm.And what I wanted to talk to about this as I wanted to contrast this current state of the Muslim world with the true hedonism and debauchery of Islam at its height. Mm-hmm. Because I think that when people [00:07:00] look at how strict the modern Muslim world is.They think of this as from Muhammad till today, that’s how Islam was. And they have broad images of like exotic belly dancers, maybe giant. Didn’t that have something to do with aladin? It’s like aladin something, something. Yeah. That, that was actually the core of Muslim civilization. That extreme level of hedonism really for longer than the extremely strict interpretation of Islam that we have today.Simone Collins: Wasn’t it very selective hedonism though? Like you could be hedonistic if you could pay for it, and everyone else was held to very strict standards and especially women were held to very strict standards. So basically only if you were a wealthy man would you be. Subject to this and everyone else kind of, I, I, well, similar to how I would imagine it in ancient Greece, for example, there was hedonism in ancient Rome if you were [00:08:00] wealthy and not a slave and not a woman.But aside from that, most people live pretty austerely.Malcolm Collins: So actually not exactly. Okay. So you’ve gotta keep in mind how many of these Islamic societies were structured. Okay. First of all, at, at many of their heights, they were not majority Arab or majority Muslim. Oh. They just made up the ruling class.So their lifestyle was funded by taxing Jewish and Christian local populations. Oh. Huh. So, so they didn’t need everyone to be able to afford this level of hedonism. The second thing is that they had like lots of slaves like slavery and, and slave like conditions were very common in the Islamic Empire.And so, the people. Who frequently were not living these e extremely hedonistic lives. Were living the lives of slaves or slave like people. Yeah. And like you did have a middle class, the, the percentage,Simone Collins: was there a middle class like, actually, because I think the, this continent is a middle class is [00:09:00] pretty new.I mean, for the vast majority of human history, you were either a surf slash slave slash peasant slash subsistence survivor, or you were one of the very, very, very few people who owned land Well, well, typically ifMalcolm Collins: you’re talking about middle class in a historic context, you’re typically talking about the merchant class.And again yeah, the merchant classSimone Collins: also was, I mean, that, that was a new thing starting, what are we gonna say? Early renaissance. There wasn’t really a merchant class. So much agent didMalcolm Collins: have Islamic merchant classes. They were even quite famous for it. Right. The, the, the silk Road trader, right.With even a stereo. Oh,Simone Collins: oh yeah. Fair point. Fair point. Yes, you’re right. So they did, oh wait, the Silk Road, the Silk Road did not emerge until. After the Renaissance, when did the Silk Road emerge?Malcolm Collins: The Silk Road was an important, not, not necessarily in the Silk Road structure, but it was largely what kept the Islamic Empire wealthy.Because and, and, [00:10:00] okay, soSimone Collins: it’s been around forever, like 100 to 1, 130 to one 14 BCE. So I’m totally off there.Malcolm Collins: Islam got poor. And one of the things, I didn’t go as deeply in on that episode, but was a big thing is that whenever you were trading for spy spices or goods mm-hmm. That came from India or China or anywhere that part of the world, and you were in Europe mm-hmm.Your traders until they got the the, the, the pass going really well through the canal. What, I forget what it’s called the Dead Sea. No, no, not the Dead Sea. What’s it called? The, the Red Sea. The Red Sea passage going you’d have to go through, the, the Muslim territories. And so they’d add these enormous taxes ‘cause they could just put whatever taxes they want on stuff.Sure. And it was like a free money machine for anyone who was in, I mean, talk about getting lucky twice that and then oil. That’s a reallySimone Collins: good point. Wow. Lucky ducks. Although maybe not right, because I, I think we, there’s a general pattern in history, climatically and otherwise like with, with just random lux scenarios in terms of trade here [00:11:00] too, whereby, whoa.Okay. When you have it too easy, it, it breeds weakness essentially. Like you’re not getting the sufficient forcing function societally, or even just genetically to be stronger and smarter and better. And therefore you suffer in the long term. Kind of like if you’re not forced to get up and exercise every day, you know, you’re more likely to become obese and unhealthy.So it’s better to be in a situation where you’re forced to do that, even if it’s unpleasant.Malcolm Collins: No, I, I agree with that. I agree. It, it definitely, I do not think worked out Civilizationally in their favor in the long run. Another thing to, to keep in mind, or interesting point here is if you’re wondering, well, when did Islam become incredibly strict before we go into all the, the ex excesses of Islam in the past?Yeah.Simone Collins: Well, but because also I, I just thought in general that Islamic law has been, it’s not a new thing. And that it has always been pretty strict, but maybe I’m wrong here. This is super, soMalcolm Collins: a, a huge part of the strict in, strict of, of [00:12:00] Islam. Mm-hmm. I’d say probably 50%. Now, it wasn’t the only factor.We’ll talk about some other factors, probably 50% was the spread of Wahhabism by the Saudi royal family. So superSimone Collins: recentMalcolm Collins: in Wahhabism. Yeah. Wasn’t even founded until the 18th century. Holy moly. And for people who aren’t familiar Wahhabism. Is a, a very, very strict form of Sunni Islam. And the Saudi Royal family basically partnered with to gain legitimacy.Sorry, what is it now? The Saudi Royal family, the House of Saad. Mm-hmm. Partnered with the hoist sort of school of of theology and theologians and we’re like, you back us, we back you. That’s the, that’s the core agreement that made Saudi Arabia work and a legitimate state in the eyes of the other Muslims of that territory.‘cause they’ve expanded a lot through military conquest.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And then they have since then been, pushing wa, I mean, they spend billions of dollars a year attempting to push the [00:13:00] growth of this wahabi school in other parts of the Muslim world. Mm-hmm. And then this leads to sort of a perception among, because if you are you know, a, a, a wealthy sod, right?Are, you are a wealthy, you know, in any of any of these Muslim countries, you’re in this sort of dominance hierarchy with the other wealthy people in the other Muslim countries, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you, you, you are ever aware of this, both your position within the dominance hierarchy of your own country and, and it, and much more so than like America, right?Like in America, I, I do not think the wealthy families are quite as obsessed with their relative status and perception to other wealthy families. They’re more interested in like, getting stuff done or what, like the average person thinks of them. Yeah, yeah. Or yeah,Simone Collins: more if we’re talking about what.Reine Lin was that his name really popularized with this, this concept of American status signaling. It really was more of a broadcast. You want everyone to know you’re rich. You’re not trying to, it’s not a mean girl style [00:14:00] situation where you’re trying to convince certain people that you’re awesome.Yeah. Everyone.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, you do no, you do do that to an extent with Americans. I mean, that’s why rich people wear like unbranded clothes and stuff like that, that only other rich people know about. Right? Yeah. You know, there, there is an extent to that, but it’s not that, it’s not the same as like a list of known aristocratic players.Mm-hmm. And, and, and part of this status hierarchy became how you related to Islam with the dominance and, and, and rising. Of some extremely conservative Muslim families that basically got rich randomly through oil money. So typically people who are extremely religious do not get rich and powerful because they’re too busySimone Collins: being devoted to God.Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s not just you’re busy being devoted, it’s that being extremely religious adds a bunch of externalities to your ability to accumulate wealth. Mm-hmm. My family has always been pretty religious. And whenever they’ve gotten, and they’ve gotten super rich in number of [00:15:00] times they ended up donating most of their money to church or to charity.Mm-hmm. Like, and that’s just what you have to do. If you have like a, if you’re not Hassan and it’s not all a, a fake thing, you know, and you like actually care about. Downtrodden. That’s just a thing you do. But the, the, in, in Islam and in in Islam, you’re supposed to do that. They just got so rich that they were able to both do that and maintain their wealth, right?Yeah. Yeah. And so this happened in a number of places, whether it’s through, you know, the Gas and Qatar or the, the Saudis sitting on oil or the UAE and the number of interesting economic plays that they were able to pull off that required a lot more intelligence than the other players.But the UA empire is crumbling right now, but that’s a, a whole other episode. Basically a bunch of diplomatic plays they made, and like Yemen and stuff like that are super backfired. And they may even face problems in international courts finally for it. But anyway so, so, because a bunch of random, like imagine in Texas, you, you, you had something similar to this sort of a bunch [00:16:00] of random religious evangelical Christians end up.Sitting on oil money. And now being an evangelical Christian is cool and high class in Texas. Mm-hmm. As it was when I was growing up. Yeah. So, which is, which is usually not the case. Right. And so that’s the other thing that, that caused this sort of flip, but the flip in part happened because of the oil money itself.Mm. Then there’s the other thing that caused the flip. I, I guess I’m just gonna go totally into all of this. Okay. Please. Which is called the closure of the gates of Iita.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: And it’s a, it, it is a famous but highly debated concept in Islamic illegal and intellectual history. Mm-hmm. Refer the idea that at some point the practice of ija, the independent reasoned effort to quantify scholars muji to derive new legal rulings from the Koran Sunna prophets teachings.Consensus Jha and analogies haws effectively closed or became severely restricted after this supposed dis closure. Later, scholars were expected to follow established [00:17:00] precedents through akil imitation or adherence to one of the four main Sunni schools of law, HANA Malaki Shafi. And okay. Do you want me to dive deeper into this concept, or do you find this less interesting?Simone Collins: There are so many elements of this that I don’t understand. I, I lack the foundational context to find this interesting.Malcolm Collins: Well, it is, it is interesting. It’s, it’s actually, I’m sureSimone Collins: it is. I just don’t know like half these words. So I more than half, I don’t know 90% of these words, so it doesn’t mean anything to me.I’ll explainMalcolm Collins: it differently. If you, you’re just sayingSimone Collins: like a durka, durka,Malcolm Collins: durka, durka, moham ji. It’s bad. It’s true.Speaker: Dirk, Dirk, Allah,Muhammad Jihad.Oha Durka,Malcolm Collins: so, so, basically. If you go to our [00:18:00] track series, if you remember Simone, I talk about the concept of a living versus a dead religious tradition. Yes. And I argue that a living religious tradition is a religious tradition where the rules, structure and interpretation of that religious system or metaphysical system is still an ongoing, an active debate.And not just like an active debate, but it’s often a conversation. It’s part of religious practice to have these conversations. Mm-hmm. And then in other religions that does not happen. And you’ll get religions that are on various parts of the spectrum. So Islam is one of the deadest of dead religions.You simply cannot easily add new concepts to Islam anymore. Mm-hmm. And that’s one of, and you used to be able to, that used to be a core part of practicing Islam, but it justSimone Collins: lacks the, the religious infrastructure for that I, in the way that the Catholic church doesn’t, ‘cause you have a very functional, active No, the vascularMalcolm Collins: church is a pretty dead religious system as well.We’ll, we’ll get to [00:19:00] that in a second as well. Well, okay. At least the LDSSimone Collins: church has a, a fairly dynamic system.Malcolm Collins: LDS is a weird kind of dead, which we’ll get to.Simone Collins: Okay, well then what, what, what is alive then?Malcolm Collins: Evangel, evangelical Christians are pretty alive. If you, no, if you, if you, they’re not, they’reSimone Collins: not exactly centrally governed.I mean, how are, how are they really alive? That’s part of the problemMalcolm Collins: with living versus dead religious systems. So, I guess I can use Judaism as a good sort of counterweight here to, to study. Okay. Yeah. Judaism, right. There was this system, and this is why if you read like medieval Jewish theologians, they’re really all about like Muslim, medieval theologians and vice versa.These two groups really liked each other. And this was because during this period they were both very living traditions. Like a a, a new Jewish theologian would like have some idea and have a debate and write it down. And that sort of stuff is still like required reading, like anyone who’s serious about studying Jewish theology today.Right. You know? [00:20:00] And within Judaism you had this system and it sort of worked this way in Islam too in the early days where you’d sort of, you could sort of challenge things that happened one generation ago, but you can’t really challenge things that happened more than two generations ago. And so as time went on and, and Judaism is interesting because it is definitely harder today to introduce any sort of a new concept was in Judaism than it was historically.Historically you could introduce pretty radical new ideas in Judaism but these radical reinterpretations happened. Up until fairly recently within Judaism probably the, the most famous recent one is the, the basham ta who founded what is today like the Hasidic School of Judaism and everything like that.And people know I have a lot of differences with, with that school and, and that religious figure.But he did radically reshape what Judaism is. And during his life, it was an active debate. Most of the rabbinic scholars during his life, like the, the vast [00:21:00] majority of rabbinic scholars during like the height of his activity during his life like hated him.They, they thought he was like a demon. Like they were like, nobody talked to this guy. Nobody go near this guy. His ideas are crazy. Don’t, don’t interact with him. He is a, he is a, a. He is a scam artist. And despite that, his ideas ended up basically winning. And for a number of generations the descendants, I forget what they’re called, they’re called the, the Min Ji or something of the rabbinic scholars who were all against the Basov.They, they persisted as a Jewish school and, and, and they still exist within, like Israel and stuff like that, but there’s just not like a on the rise or particularly relevant ideological faction within Judaism right now. And in Islam, this closed way earlier, I guess I’ll go to the other tradition so we can sort of talk about this Mormonism.Was one of the, at its height, the most living of living religions. You know, this is the Orson Pratt period and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. Where, you know, when you had all the colonists still coming over and stuff like that, the like, higher ups in the Mormon community would just like go out and spitball and you could like read the [00:22:00] writings and it’s crazy.It’s like, Hey, how do you take like a soul works? And they’d be like, well, maybe it like splits into pieces and can become pure and maybe like when you die, your soul splits up and then gets like resorted into different people or maybe life. You need to like do it a certain number of times and they’d like, have like completely different medica physical frameworks, leaders in the community.Orson perhaps is the best example of this, would just hypothesize about this stuff and they’d be like, main. Characters in, in the Mormon tradition. Right. And they, they wouldn’t even be like the sitting prophet. Right? Yeah. And then as time has gone on really the, the, the sitting prophet basically, if he’s going to make an update to Mormon theology these days he typically makes it with the council of like a few other people in the community.It’s not like every Mormon meeting is like, Hey, let’s talk esoterica man. But there was a period in Mormon history where that was absolutely the case. So, so it’s, it’s, it’s weird and you can’t [00:23:00] easily do this as a Mormon either. Like, you can’t be like, Hey, I have a different theory about how this should be interpreted.If it’s like radically different, people would be like, well, that’s against, you know, what’s the, what’s the main church says right now? Right? Catholicism, sort of the same way with Mormonism, you can do it more. But Catholicism, I. Is a living tradition, but in an incredibly structured format, right?Like the living part of the tradition. If you wanna be part of the living Catholic tradition you have to become a priest or a nun.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Like if, if, if you or at least found one of the major orders or something like that, right? Like you, you have to be part of the bureaucracy and interacting with the bureaucracy.And then that stuff gets passed up and you might be able to get into you know, one of those big councils that they hold or something like that. And then your ideas get put into Catholic, Catholic doctorate, right? Like, it, it can update but the updates become more obscure and bureaucratic.Like if you look at the various I forget what they’re called, but when the, when the Catholics all get together to, to [00:24:00] say the stuff that’s supposed to be unchangeable and, and not go back on it. And once okay. Only have these conferences councils. Councils, okay. And if you look at the original ones, it’s like a bunch of actual theological questions.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: How should we conceive of Christ and stuff like this? Yeah. If you go later, it just gets more and more bureaucratic.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s bureaucrats arguing about bureaucratic structure and that’s, oh,Simone Collins: but what about the, the wild swings in favor of various progressive causes and ideal that ideals that the Catholic Church has made?Malcolm Collins: I don’t think that those things, I think that that is core to what has always been Catholicism has been one of the primary champions of stuff like socialism since the very first socialist movements. The idea that Catholicism was ever not, if you look at the United States, the Democratic Party was the Catholic party pretty much until this last election cycle.Like if you look at JFK, who’s JFK? Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: The first. [00:25:00] Joe Biden. Yeah. And Biden. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. Okay. So, so this ideaMalcolm Collins: that,Simone Collins: well, yeah. I mean, and even now with JD Vance, he’s just being massively criticized by the current Pope. Also American. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: But, but I mean, and, and think about the tra, I mean, Catholics are all about like, you know, taking in, you know, immigrants helping out the poor, everything.Like, this is all, that’s all their bag, man. Like, I don’t understand when people were like you know, they haven’t folded on stuff like women priests and, and, and the gay stuff yet, like, they haven’t actually folded, they’reSimone Collins: moving in that general direction. They, theyMalcolm Collins: have not folded on anything that’s in the Bible.So they, they, they basically stayed, you know, I think the Catholic church like didn’t do some big veer in one direction or in another. They’re just being what they’ve always been. And I think it confuses people because they begin to think of the Catholic church as like not different from the Evangelical church, which is always a very conservative church.A [00:26:00] conservative IE in world politics. But if, if you’re talking about the reason I call obviously Teop Puritan is, would be like the, the most extreme example of a living tradition in a modern sense, because it is just a radical discussion about ideology that is meant to change with every generation.But when you close off interpretation of, of structures, all any generation can iteratively add is basically new rules on top of the preexisting structures. And this is where I think it causes a lot of problems for modern Judaism because they, they just have so many rules at this point, right?Because you can, you cannot, like, wipe out a lot of the previous rules. And so it’s just iterative, iterative, iterative and eventually I think it breaks if, if you do not have the ability to audit, like the source code of your religious system.Simone Collins: Sure, yeah. The code base becomes unmanageable. Yeah, but did, I can’t remember which Silicon Valley company had a code base.Their like original code base was called The Beast, I think. And there was one person whose entire job [00:27:00] was just to keep it from breaking every day.Malcolm Collins: I feel like this our fabs code base these days. Mm. God. I have to keep going back in fixing, Hey, it’s mostly working now. People playing it, enjoying it, which is cool.But I’ll go into how, how decadent the Muslim world was at its height. Right. So, if we go for some, some poems this is the Kuat of Abu Noal. So some lines from it. His fine wine and his boy religion, no less than my cashSimone Collins: fine Wines and a Young POWhat’s interesting is that the, one of these that Islam has given up more strictly is, uh, the fine wine and not so much the young boys. , If you go to many Islamic countries today, like Afghanistan, you will see higher rates of gay sex than you see in most countries. Um, but they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.Don’t worry about it, bro. It’s, it’s, it’s okay. Um. It was a child and you’re like, how did [00:28:00] that makes it so much worse? But in the Islamic mind, that actually okays it in in many contexts. And we’ll get into why this is so common in Islamic countries to in, in, I’m gonna do some other episode on this because Yeah, like is Islam got like really strict on some areas, like no adult gay sex and no alcohol, but anything you do as children is fine.Malcolm Collins: Wine Coursing Between the Water and the Force From the Hand of the Boy with the griddle on his slender waist, A straight well shaped lad girdle as aSimone Collins: bridle.Yeah, I’m picturing someone with some kind of like griddle setup where they’re like making pancakes like a cigarette, cigarette style, like, you know, waitress woman, but he’s just making pancakes instead of frying bacon. I would dig that. Well, they were really, boy comeMalcolm Collins: here, griddle boy empire as well. Okay.Yeah, it, it’s probably the, like the gayest of the major empires to the extent where and I Rudyard goes into this and, you know, like he’s more than the [00:29:00] RomansSimone Collins: though.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. Way more than like Greeks, than the Romans. Really. Okay. So here, here’s an example. Well, well, I mean, we’ll get the Romans at their gayest are about as gay as the Muslims at their gayest.Okay. Okay. But on average, the Muslims were gayer.Simone Collins: Oh wow. Okay.Malcolm Collins: The, the, the Romans at their gayest were extremely gay. They wereSimone Collins: so gay. They were so gay.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We should probably do an episode on that likeSimone Collins: we did, but it was about like, does, does proliferation of. Gayness or broad acceptance of it.Predict the downfall of civilizations. Remember?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What of my favorite? Like just this level of psychosis of some Roman emperors. I think that’s what would cut off their members and then like throw them in a room full of snakes. Another emperor used to love, I think, to just throw venomous snakes at the crowd when they’d like come to see him as a joke.That’s, that’s fun.Simone Collins: That, that’s pretty good. It’s, it’s the, the t-shirt cannon of his kind of, his time. But he said, this [00:30:00] time you die.Malcolm Collins: Oh, you gonna get through gold or snakes this time?Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, you never know what you’re gonna, it’s, it’s the original trick or treat.Malcolm Collins: So here I’m gonna draw from a, a key source is Alt Barris Tuckery Al Russo while Alka.Yeah. Dka. History of the prophets and kings. Okay. Okay. So, the, he’s talking about the, the Altare explicitly says that all Ahman was inclined towards male servants Gillum to the exclusion of women, and was madly in love with a boy named Kohar, named after the Heavenly River in paradise. All lain even wrote poetry about him.Hor is my faith and my worldly life, my sickness and my physician. Aw, he’s the most helpless of people who persistently seeks his beloved. No. On, on. So I was asking for sources here ‘cause I wanna make sure I, I have good sources on this. Mm-hmm.On this guy dressing Zba Zda. This was his mom. Okay, so this [00:31:00] guy’s mom got annoyed that he was always sleeping with men.So, she dressed up slave girls as boys, ah, to try to get them interested. Surprise woman. So she selected female slaves who resembled boys and dressed them in masculine attire with short hair and turbans, hoping to attract her son to them. It didn’t work. She wanted grandkids soSimone Collins: bad. She wanted them so bad.Malcolm Collins: No, no, it gets worse. So these cross-dressed girls were called Gula Mati and became a fashion that Al Marai popularized. He organized whole crop, corpse of them with Bob Hair belt and silt turbans who served at drinking parties. And then this became popular in the region because, you know, obviously the, the, the sultan is doing it.And no, they’re likeSimone Collins: OG flappers except not feminist at all.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Eyewitness style reports preserved in historical compilations via Philip Heidi citing medieval [00:32:00] text describes elim female pages as Bob headed and dressed like boys and wearing silk turbans serving wine and blending erotic ambiguity.That is soSimone Collins: fascinating,Malcolm Collins: just from, just from a fashion standpoint that even the lower classes begin to imitate it.Simone Collins: Wow. This wasn’t fashionable cross-dressing based on one person’s. Not, not even one person’s sexual proclivities based on one mother’s desperate attempt to get grandchildren. That was totally botched.That is so fun. Oh, delightful. Wow. I can’t even imagine being that mother and just being like,Malcolm Collins: you,Simone Collins: like,Malcolm Collins: I need grandchildren. Right? Like that. Yeah. And then you start toSimone Collins: see just normal people dressing like that and just being so freaking frustrated that, you know, I’ve, I’ve managed to set off a major fashion trend, but do I have grandchildren?No.Malcolm Collins: Aw. So if we’re talking about under, under Akbar or [00:33:00] J here J here was notorious for heavy opium and alcohol use. Detailed. In his autobiography, he describes daily hunts, mango feasts, and wine sessions,Simone Collins: mango feasts, callingMalcolm Collins: wine, a source of ecstasy. He owned hundreds of ornate wine vessels.One of the, the fun ones here, this just seemsSimone Collins: like super. I mean, he, he just sounds ahead of his time if we’re being honest, aside from Mango. Okay. Okay. Well then we’ll go further. Oh, no. Honestly, no. People are all about mango feasts these days. They’re, they’re wine. They love collecting wine. Talk about addiction to opium and alcohol.Well, let’s, let’s talkMalcolm Collins: about the Ottoman Empire here, right? Because actually something that’s unusual, been through their palaces and their palaces are just like absurd. The Ottoman palaces mm-hmm. Isn’t cool or what? No, just in terms of their opulence and the way they were structured. If you look at something like the, the, the Versa, the main palace in France.What’s that one? You know, Versailles. Versailles, yeah. Mm-hmm. Or the palaces in England. One, the palaces in England are not [00:34:00] that impressive. They’reSimone Collins: pretty uncomfortable. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: If you go to something like the, the one in Scotland, what’s it called? Where they Balmoral? Yeah. Where the Royal family Summers, that entire house is maybe.Five times as big as the house we live in. And I don’t consider my house small, particularly big, and it, it, the grounds are fine. They’re just like regular rich people grounds. If you look at the, theSimone Collins: structure, it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t, it was always meant to be a private estate. The reason why some palaces are very big and grin as they were meant for entertaining, you were meant as, as a place of state.Malor was always meant to be a country retreat. It is, isMalcolm Collins: is, if you look at even like the main British palace, it’s just not that big. Bumping palace. Palace isSimone Collins: pretty bigMalcolm Collins: and most of it is dedicated to statecraft, not for like a living in if you, if you look at versa, I thinkSimone Collins: what what you’re missing though, and I don’t know why this might not have been the case, but I think this has to do more with like epidemiological history and not [00:35:00] other things.Because a big trend that seems to have existed or been very common among English kings. Was you. You wouldn’t really have one big palace investment because you were constantly moving from one to the next to avoid the plague. Or some other disease outbreak. Well, also they had to bring it out. So you had to have a network of palaces.Were small because people were notMalcolm Collins: working sewer systems some of the time. Yeah, yeah. You had toSimone Collins: air them out ‘cause they’d get too gross and crappy. And so then you’d just wait and let someone, I don’t roughly, metaphorically hose them down. And then you’d go to another one,Malcolm Collins: something like Versailles. And this was very much the point of Versailles Uhhuh was to bring all of the nobles together.So yeah, it was toSimone Collins: create a jail for all of the, the elite and mobils who, or Nobles who otherwise would be on their own plotting against the kings. So it was, it was a giled jail. It wasMalcolm Collins: basically meant to overlook. So the, the Ottomans were at a different layer. Like if you look at the, the, the structure of the palace, it was just clearly pleasure room after [00:36:00] pleasure room, which is not a thing you had in the the Versailles or the English palaces.So at its peak, you know, the designSimone Collins: choices, just to be clear about European palaces, really had to do more with, with. Granting people increasing access of access to the king or the, the, the reigning monarch. And it was more about meeting spaces and whatnot. It wasn’t about, I mean, not really parties so much.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. It had, it had a 400 rooms at the De Pac Palace. 400 rooms. 400 rooms. And so, if we’re talking about Sultans, like Marad ii, who expanded the harem to up to 40 wives mm-hmm. Each separate quarters alongside dormitories for hundreds of slaves and fathering over a hundred children through relentless sexual pursuits.1640 to 1648, known for his insatiable lust. He kept 300 concubines in addition to his 40 wives. That isSimone Collins: exhausting. I would not [00:37:00] want to put up with that. That is, that’s just too many for you. Yeah, too, too. 300, too many.Malcolm Collins: And, and these, these palaces the, the, the, the when, when Europeans would go there like in 1862, they were shocked.Not just at the polygamy, but the regular nudity in the palace.Simone Collins: Walking around naked,Malcolm Collins: the, the, I I, I want to be clear. Well, you actSimone Collins: as though the UK is so high and mighty with their palaces and no one was walking around naked there, but it was just too freaking cold. I’m sure they would have that. They could.You know, we had the ability to maybeMalcolm Collins: potentially get up to hijinks, like in the, the uk like farting competitions and stuff like that? No, that, that wasSimone Collins: France with the whole famous, that wasMalcolm Collins: France. Okay. I, I, yeah, again, the, the uk as, as we’ve pointed out, you typically get a gradient in the Muslim world, like the, the highest level of debauchery.Then you get medium debauchery in the Catholic world. And they really got up to some stuff. [00:38:00] Any good stories you can tell us about Louis court or,Simone Collins: oh well, king Louis, the xiv that, that, that is the one that was famous for the Yeah. Good storiesMalcolm Collins: about crazy.Simone Collins: Yeah. There, well, it wasn’t de I mean, there was debauchery for sure, but, and that’s obviously, I always talk about Louis Philippe, the brother of Louis Vi xiv, who, who famously dressed like an absolutely fabulous woman and had a persistent male partner very much in the open, but no one really made a big deal out of it.There was they, it was. Maybe this was actually Marie Antoinette’s court, but in, in one of the French courts, either the 16th or the the 14th, they had a farting contest to determine whose fart could sound most like a fine trumpet, which is just wonderful. And but to be fair, when they talked about the same sex relationships, I think they called it the Italian vice.So I think that was more seen as an Italian slash room who were alsoMalcolm Collins: Catholics, by the way.Simone Collins: Yeah. But then like, so I think the, the further south you go, the more debauched it got. Because remember also in the, in the [00:39:00] court of king Henry viii, the whole thing with the. The, oh my gosh. The first wife Henry?No, the second wife. And, and boy Lynn, the boy, Lynn sisters were kind of famous for being sexually mature and they could do all the fun stuff because they learned it in the French court. So basically the, the further down you got, but then the French court was, was Oh, those Italians. My gosh. Those Italians, yeah.Yeah. So like is just a little more sexually out there. And I’d also pointMalcolm Collins: out with, with King Henry, the, I, I’m actually a big fan of King Henry Thei. I think he was. A pretty excellent monarch. And I think he is really unfairly thought of today. No he, he was not like his idea of debauchery was, was hunting tournaments.Like I, that’s not like when he was younger. He was apparently like very fit. He was and would go on like, and, and was, heSimone Collins: was very, very, very devoted to his wives. He I mean as my, he, yeah, he slept around and the only reason that he keptMalcolm Collins: going through wives, by the [00:40:00] way, for people he wanted a male error.Yeah. It’s because he didn’t want a male error for himself. He knew, because all British monarchs know this. If you don’t produce a male error that is existentially bad for the kingdom. Mm-hmm. They go to war with each other. If you don’t like, you almost always have a a, a revolution where like hundreds of thousands of people are going to die.Two millions of people are going to die. Horribly if he cannot produce a male error. Not producing a male error was existential for the safety of his kingdom, right? Like that, that is what he believed from the history. And he also believed from medical knowledge at the time that women, when they couldn’t conceive it was, that’s something to do with their fault, right?Like, the, he did not, there was no medical understanding that this, well, he was alsoSimone Collins: a very faithful person, so he, I think, got. For his time. Reasonably paranoid that God was trying to send him messages, that when there were miscarriages and when there were other mishaps, that he was being told something’s wrong and he was trying [00:41:00] to listen and respond accordingly.Malcolm Collins: And the Vatican could have just given him a dispensation. Well, yeah,Simone Collins: but except that there were corrupt ties and Catherine No. Were, they were completely nepotistic.Malcolm Collins: The core reason, yeah, I remember they didn’t give a dispensation is because his first wife, who he was married to was the sister of a king in, I wanna say Spain or France, that had huge connections with the Pope, maybe even related to the Pope.Yeah, I, I thinkSimone Collins: Catherine or EOR had some kind of familiar relation. She was not very far removed from the Pope himself, soMalcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is obviously super corrupt for religion to do that and put that many people’s lives at risk, but they don’t care. You know, historic popes, they, they kill people. No problem.But anyway the point I’m making here is the level of de degeneracy of, of its Islam. And if you watch old movies about the Middle East, like when you’re, like, how recent was the Islamic religion? Just a completely debauched religion. Mm-hmm. It was recent enough that pretty much all 18th century explorers saw it that way.If you watch any of the old movies, it’s like, go watch a, like a 1920s movie or something like that. If any scenes [00:42:00] take place in you know, Arabia as they would say, or something like that they’re, they’re typically pretty debauched. But it’s reallySimone Collins: hard for me at least to tell as an outsider how much of that is just fetishization of another culture.You see this across a, a lot of different. Different cultures that, oh, well the, the Native American woman is, is, is frisky. Although, I guess Pocahontas, his name wasn’t that actually like. It meant frisky but or the, the, the Asian woman or whatever, like they No. At all. There’s a tendency to,Malcolm Collins: no, I actually, I actually would strongly encourage you.I, I do not know. I think it’s because my family, they liked watching old movies, so I’ve seen a lot of them. Okay. Old movies that take place in the Orient, as they would’ve said back then. Yes. There you typically see like the lavish, like parties and stuff like that. But you do not see the sexualized women dancing on stage constantly or slaves dancing in the corner or like that.You don’t see that. If you, if you look at the old [00:43:00] Westerners with a lot of Native Americans you might see the concept that Native American women or tribal women walked around without tops on. Mm-hmm. But they were not constantly, they didn’t have like slaves in cages constantly doing sexy dances.Right. Like, the, the if you want a modern, if you haven’t seen what these, these old depictions look like. I think Java’s Palace is a pretty good depiction of the way that the Islamic world was historically depicted. You had like slave guard eunuchs guarding like slaves and couches, Java.Simone Collins: The HUDs palace was insufficiently fancy.The, these Islamic palaces were incredibly gorgeous.Malcolm Collins: By the way, if you wanna know, I thought, I wanted to dive into like, what is the life of one of these female harem slaves, right?Simone Collins: Yeah. Was it decent? Do, would this be an aspirational role?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, they entered the channel the, the harem, typically at seven to 15.They’re sometimes younger, okay. They were either purchased on slave markets, captured in war raids, given as diplomatic gifts from governors or foreign ruling elites or recruited [00:44:00] or presented by families at, at later periods upon arrival. Selection was strict and multi-step physical, physical examinations by wood lights.Experienced re, or Chief Unix checked for health beauty virginity, so there was no defects to ensure suitability for service or intimacy. Psychological slash behavioral evaluations assessed docility intelligence andSimone Collins: docilityMalcolm Collins: and potential. Okay? Only the most promising, beautiful, graceful, and intelligent advanced towards higher roles.Others stayed at menial tasks. Hmm. They were immediately converted to Islam, if not already given new Muslim names. Often poetic, reflecting a personnel appearance or personality, and cut off from family contact to foster loyalty to the palace. Well,Simone Collins: kind of like a dog. So you’d be named like spot orMalcolm Collins: Yeah.The training process. Right. Newcomers started out as AMI novices. And they entered a natine period called Ace Maliki that lasted several years in segregated dormitories under the supervision of senior women. And [00:45:00] Unix. The, the training focused on assimilation and skill building. They studied language and religion learning, Ottoman, Turkish IC recitation and Islamic precepts and core creeds.Court etiquette and manners. Palace protocol, graceful movements, speech, deference and behavior in hierarchical settings. Okay. Arts and talents. So they had to learn music, dance, posey, recitation, embroidering, reading and writing. Yeah. But youSimone Collins: had food and lived in a nice place for any period of most of human history.That’s prettyMalcolm Collins: great. Yeah. And they had to learn cleaning, cooking, and childcare as well. What an average day would’ve looked like is you would rise early in the morning for prayers, absolution, and personal groomings. Then you would go to a communal meal where you were assigned tax served by higher ranking women and such as cleaning chambers, et cetera.Then you’d go to your education training and you’d get a little bit of leisure time in the evenings.Simone Collins: Now, I mean, sign me up for if I’m born in that period of history. Absolutely, yes. If you want aMalcolm Collins: really good show about what it’s like, because you are always [00:46:00] trying to win the sultan’s attention.You were trying to win favor. You were trying to sort of politic was the other women or the women who were in his attention, or unlessSimone Collins: you were just quiet, quitting and trying to keep your head down, you, you, you didn’t get bothered by the soul to, you get three square meals a day and you got some leisure time.Yes. So there’sMalcolm Collins: a, a great anime about this if you wanna see it. It doesn’t take place in the Ottoman Court. It takes place in the Chinese court.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. That sounds similar to Chinese Harems for sure.Malcolm Collins: Called the Apothecaries Diaries. Oh, the one was the autistic princess who reminds me. Yeah.Yeah. She’s not a princess. I just call her. She, the, the main character is an autistic physician girl. Like very obviously canonically, autistic and, and very dispositionally, I think similar to Simone. But she she’s just a great. Main character. But you really get to see that these courts are just these places of constant intrigue.And her character, like Simone said, she would, is basically quiet, quitting as a concubine. Like she, she could be a higher ranked concubine if she wants to, like some of the, the, there are instances in which high [00:47:00] ranking officials show interest in her or even purchasing her. But she’s always avoiding it so that she can just mess around with her books and, and her, her biology, which is what she’s really into she’s just a nerd, is basically the, the story.That’sSimone Collins: good to me. Yeah. Sign meMalcolm Collins: up. But I think that it’s important that we remember because it, one of the things that I think a lot of people think of Islam today, like, you know, you hear somebody like Andrew Tate or something, you know, say like, well, in Islam they actually still all follow their religion and stuff like this.This is a new thing and it is something that has. Been allowed to arise and metastasize in Islam, in part because Islam is living through a post apocalypse of their own civilizationright now.And I do not really see any realistic mechanism for them to reclaim. That, that civilization at this point you cannot, as you know, when I talk about a [00:48:00] religion being an active conversation, right.And I I talk about like Protestantism various parts of, obviously if you go to the time of the founding fathers and you read the founding fathers of our country’s works on religion, a lot of them did exactly what we are trying to do, which is sort of find ways to combine the modern science of the times with Christian metaphysics.Yeah. Right. And that’s what I mean when I say a founding, like an active religion. Like they were constantly in communication with each other within the whiter community around like. Okay, so how do we integrate this new scientific finding with our religious understanding? Mm-hmm. I actually, I think that that’s a perfect example of what a living religion is versus a dead religion.A living religion will say, how do we integrate X new scientific finding with our religion? Metaphysical understanding? How can it advance our understanding of God and of religion? Whereas a dead religion will say. Oh, there is a new scientific finding [00:49:00] either the world of science and the world of religion are two different things and we do not need to integrate them at all.Or they will say well, I just don’t care that there’s a new si like, it, it is wrong if it goes against my religious interpretation. Right? And when you get that, you, you, there’s a certain level of just sort of societal advancement that is no longer possible. And as I also often say with Islam, as I pointed out another recent video I did on Islam, which is I think one of our best videos ever.Why? Why Muslims don’t win wars worth of conquest. I should note not wars of defense. Obviously they win Words of defense. A anyone can win A war of defense. The, the cour thing I say there, like if I was going to, to update Islam worked and when it worked, it worked as a religion of a ruling minority.It has never really been particularly functional as a dominant religious group. And it really was never structured to be the dominant religious group. Mm-hmm. Which makes it quite different than something like Judaism, which evolved and was always structured to be the religion of the masses.[00:50:00] Mm-hmm. And then if you look at Christianity Christianity was a religion that took Judaism and then augmented it and used it to you can look at my video on like, was Christianity really is revolutionaries. People claim it as I think, sort of our better videos historically. And I point out that the reason that Constantine took Christianity a and, and adopted it as a state religion is it allowed for an alternate sort of deep state.Like Rome had a big deep state problem at the time. The Pretorian were constantly causing problems for people that constantly offering Emperors basically acted like they ran everything at that point in the same way that Janis series eventually did within the Ottoman Empire. And so, he has all of these officials executed, thank God you the total boss.I love Constantine, by the way. And he’s like, okay, well I need, didn’tSimone Collins: Constantine have a Oh no, he was, he was the, the, the. Catholic one.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He’s the one who really founded what I think of as modern Catholicism. Yeah. And I [00:51:00] really like Constantine. So Constantine then says we need a deep state, right?Like we, but I cannot trust the existing bureaucratic deep state. ‘cause it’s all like nepotistic and tied to everything. And it’s like, oh, this new Christian thing, they’ve got churches in every city, right? Like they’ve got an existing governance structure. And if I favored them because they’ve been disfavored and persecuted for so long, they’re gonna be really loyal to me.So like, let’s just make that the deep state. And then he’s like, and now we have to get a consistent theology. We need to get up. And so we kept holding councils and stuff like that to, you know, when the, when the, when the theologians would fight, he’d be the Constantine and be like, no, you guys get on the same effing page.I am doing this for bureaucratic reasons. Okay. Like we need the empire to function well. So it was constructed. As a religion for governing a large imperial system. Like when, when it, when it was being constructed. And, and it is very like, sort of Nam says it was being applied. Obviously Jesus didn’t have that in mind, but Christianity [00:52:00] changed a lot in its early days that you can watch any of our videos on that stuff.And, and some of these early, not even like theological concepts, but just like how, use structure of like the election of popes and stuff like that, right? Like this, this is all bureaucratic structure that matters a lot to the way the religion works. But Islam, when Islam was created by Muhammad it was a, a ruling elites religion, right?They would go, they would conquer territory, and then they would rule this non-Muslim territory. And that is also why it became a religion of such excesses. And there’s been iterations of Islam that tried to eshoo those excesses. There was, there’s even like this communist branch that ended up it’s, it’s still practice in Oman.Really they constantly have rebellions. They’re not as extreme as they used to be, but they didn’t believe that like leaders should live super luxurious lifestyles. But that always sort of falls apart in Islam after a while because and, and I, and I guess the question is, is why is Islam not as good at protecting against, dauer lifestyles, and I guess it is because it’s, it’s doing it now. [00:53:00] It’s doing it to such an extreme now that it’s preventing I think a, a degree of like real commerce and, and dynamism within this particular regions. So it, it basically, I, I will say that this happened in reaction to that like Wahhabism actually happened because you made a bunch of random people, rich.That’s, that’s the real answer of what happened to Islam. No, ISimone Collins: think the lack of dynamism is, is, is a product of among the areas where you could have that dynamism, you don’t have it because you don’t have the historical hardship due to the amount of wealth that everyone has inherited. By sheer luck, that would en enable that.A lot of people though, in response to your video on why Muslims haven’t. You know, been famous for their manifest destiny taking over the world is, is due to excessive cousin marriage causing too much, sort of like accumulated genetic damage. [00:54:00] I, I think more, it’s, it’s a matter of circumstances. Not, not breeding both a culture and, and people and societies and economies and governments that are built to make resourceful and enterprising people.But I mean, the common marriage is,Malcolm Collins: is a real thing. It doesn’t help.Simone Collins: It doesn’t help. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, but, but they’ve been doing that forever. They did that even before the Arab raids that conquered most of the world. So, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if that alone can explain the, the state of the community at this point.Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So it doesn’tSimone Collins: help. Of course, it doesn’t help. Well, I think there’s a lot more to it than that.Malcolm Collins: Another interesting thing about Islam is if you’re familiar with modern Muslim cultures, it’s like a very high power distance culture. And they still very much have this ruling elite, like that’s the part of Islamic society that still functions is the ruling elite.Mm-hmm.It is the other parts of Muslim society that don’t really function and it’s because they [00:55:00] never really were meant to exist. The, the ruling elite made the mistake of converting their pores. And, and it wasn’t really ever structured for that.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: Anyway. Well,Simone Collins: interesting. Yeah, thanks for walking me through this.‘cause I’ve, just, my understanding of, of the history of Islam, et cetera is just non-existent. It’s just not there. So anything you tell me is, is new and a benefit to me, and I appreciate that.Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you,Simone Collins: Eson. I love you too. I’ll see you in the next room. Gotta get the. Oh, here we go, friend. I was teasing Octavian today as one must, of course, you wannaMalcolm Collins: tilt your camera down a little bit so we’re closer to, okay.Simone Collins: So I was teasing Octavian about how much he loves his helicopter, and I’m trying to, you know, I’m, I’m trying to channel my [00:56:00] first grader history to speak on his level.Mm-hmm.And I say, well, if you love helicopters so much, why don’t you just marry one? And I had this instant regret feeling. ‘cause I’m like, oh no, what if he uni ironically identifies as an attack helicopterMalcolm Collins: because ofSimone Collins: you.That’s the thing. That’sMalcolm Collins: where you screwed it up andSimone Collins: decides to become like that Eiffel Tower woman and just actually marry a helicopter. And I actually I I had mentioned the Eiffel Tower woman to ton’s a, BA therapist at one point. And she was like, no, no one marries a building. And I’m like, lady, you don’t even know.And so I looked her up and that hussy left the Eiffel Tower for another architectural wonderMalcolm Collins: with a bridge or something.Simone Collins: This you can’t trust women who marry edifices and, and buildings and, and whatnot. No, because that, they just leave them. They’re, they’re totally [00:57:00] unreliable. Can’t even stay with the, it’s the Eiffel Tower.You know, that’s like leaving a wonderful housewife, you know, who just does everything right? What did the Eiffel Tower ever do wrong? Anyway, Octavian, much to my relief, says, oh, of course I wouldn’t marry a helicopter. And then I think he’s gonna finish the sentence with something along the lines of, I’m a human and it’s a helicopter and we can’t get married.But no, he’s like, because the ring would just fly right off. The ring would just fly right off.Malcolm Collins: The ring would just fly right off. SoSimone Collins: now I know his criteria for it. Can I marry it? Which is, will the ring stay on? Good to know. Octavian. Thanks. I have so much faith in your prosperous pairing eventually. Oh God.I love first graders though. I love, I love six year olds. They are, they’re delightful [00:58:00] people. He’s getting better at flying his RC helicopter. It’s, it’s insane to me. Like how do people, how do people do group based lessons when you can’t bribe children with individual things? Like, okay, you know, finish, finish this milestone and you can go fly your drone.You know, you can’t do that on a group scale.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And that he has this little helicopter. It’s so sweet. It’s really durable. He likes it a lot. Do you know what it’s called? We’re recommending it for other people.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Let me look it up. Because I, I did a lot of comparison shopping on Amazon and, andMalcolm Collins: he can actually fly it pretty well.Like he can fly it through my ring light and everything like that.Simone Collins: Yeah. After just one day. Yeah. So it’s great for younger kids. Helicopter. Helicopter. Helicopter. Whoever told me about the Bosnian song, I Hate You Now because after every lesson, one of the rewards going back to that is to play the Bosnian song.Helicopter. Helicopter and helicopter. He can’t even really wrap his head around the idea of languages yet, but now [00:59:00] he’s just mumbling Bosnian lyrics to himself. Ter, he has no idea what it means. I don’t either. I, I don’t. Ter doesn’t seem to like translate to anything like maybe Father Copter, but I don’t, I don’t understand.Anyway, it’s the bus go. B-U-S-S-G-O-R-C. Helicopter on Amazon. Remote control helicopter for kids with 30 minutes flight, two batteries, seven plus one LED, light modes altitude hold, RC Toys. Yeah, it has literally a takeoff and landing button, so you don’t even have to really. You can just have, the kid can just start off by having their drone take off and land and they feel like they’ve accomplished something and they get really excited about it.The whole family is excited about it. Last night, the kids threw a rager well past our bedtime, flying the helicopter around every, every night. ‘cause we we’re in a really old house. We can hear absolutely everything through the floors, so you, we don’t even need cameras in their room even though we have them also, because [01:00:00] I can literally just lie in bed in this bedroom and hear them and hear every little sound and know exactly what they’re doing based on my knowledge of who’s like the footfalls and everything.They were going hog wild last night. It was, people think I, I guess, you know, this whole episode has been about debauchery, but like no one knows debauchery until you’ve. Encountered a, a roving band of small children at night past their bedtime. All right, excited.Malcolm Collins: Well, will,Simone Collins: Oh. Kazu text Little man.by the way, people are wondering why we’re not talking directly about the situation in Iran right now.I really want to talk about this more, but Simone just had major surgery on her face and jaw and she can’t talk,Speaker 14: [01:01:00] What happened? You lost your blanket, then go fight for it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe