Afleveringen
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In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive into one of the strangest social phenomena of our time: why does public sympathy for aggressors often increase after horrific attacks? From 9/11 to Charlie Hebdo to October 7th, they examine the shocking data showing spikes in pro-Muslim and pro-Palestine sentiment right after major acts of violence.
Simone lays out her theory: the concept of “victim blaming” was originally created to address real systemic injustices but was hijacked and weaponized in the 2010s by feminist movements (SlutWalks, MeToo, “Believe All Women”). What began as a tool against unfair bias became a reflexive shield that makes it taboo to assign any responsibility to victims — even when they are the aggressors. They also discuss the rise of external locus of control, cultural shifts on the right, demographic realities, and how women helped turn “victim blaming” into a societal mind virus.
Show Notes
WHY
* Did muslim sentiment in the USA improve after 9/11
* Did muslim sentiment in France improve after Charlie Hebdo’s offices were subject to a terror attack?
* Did pro-Palestine sentiment spike after the October 7th attacks on Israel?
It may come down to a concept that was created to address unfair bias against people who were genuinely screwed over by societal forces but ultimately co-opted and ruined by… women.
So let’s discuss how women appropriated and ruined the concept of victim blaming.
The Mystery of Victim Blaming
Since when did victims become beyond reproach?
Our immediate hunch is that this happened because the urban monoculture elevates victims and holds victims to be blameless, but WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT?
We checked Google ngram viewer for “victim blaming” and were kind of shocked:
* The term “victim blaming” only emerges around 1970
* From 1970 to 2010 Victim blaming shows modest linear growth
* And after 2010 its trajectory changes into exponential growth, which only after 2020 started showing signs of a shift to mere exponential growth
Google Trends shows similar results (the term would only spike with incidents, then go back to zero, before 2010).
To add to this: @NotAldousHuxley had observed that pro-muslim sentiment spiked after 9/11 and anti-Israel sentiment spiked after the October 7th attack Palestinean attack on Israel
This suggests some sort of pathological favoritism toward whoever might be seen as a potential victim, but I found this hard to believe so I double checked:
Victim Blaming Ideology in Action
Pro-Muslim Sentiment
What’s
Pew research found that pro-Muslim sentiment rose in the US after 9/11 and in France in 2015 after the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices (the publication that published an illustration of the prophet Muhammad).
From their article: “A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 76% in France say they have a favorable view of Muslims living in their country, similar to the 72% registered in 2014. Meanwhile, the percentage with a very favorable opinion of Muslims has increased significantly, rising from 14% last year to 25% today. Attitudes toward Muslims tend to be more positive on the political left in France, but ratings improved across the ideological spectrum.
The pattern is similar to what we found in the U.S. following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Favorable views of Muslim Americans rose from 45% in March 2001 to 59% in November of that year. The increase took place across partisan and ideological groups, with the biggest improvement occurring among conservative Republicans.”
Pro-Palestine Sentiment
After the October 7th attacks, Gallup found that Americans shifted toward being more sympathetic toward palestineans:
The change is most pronounced in young people:
And least pronounced in old people:
The Creation and Appropriation of Victim Blaming
Before Victim Blaming
Genuine victim blaming is old: There are plenty of religious texts that frame victims as sinners.
Before the term was popularized, people sometimes pointed to the “just world hypothesis”: That people want to believe the world is fair, so they sometimes assume victims must have done something to deserve their suffering.
Origins
Psychologist William Ryan introduced the phrase “blaming the victim” in his book of the same name, published in the 1970s
* He developed the concept to critique explanations of poverty and racism that shifted responsibility from unjust social structures onto marginalized communities themselves.
* Ryan’s work specifically responded to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report on Black poverty, arguing that such analyses implicitly blamed Black families for structural inequalities.
* So Ryan’s critique there is pretty fair, as it does seem that after 1950 a bunch of policies changed that did really screw over black families and we’ve covered them in various episodes
* 1950s Black Families Where Twice as Stable as Their White Counterparts: The Theft of Black Culture
Exponential 2010s Growth
What happened starting in 2010???
TL:DR Victim blaming got primarily hijacked by women about women who then reflexively internalized that it was NEVER acceptable to blame women.
Specifically:
* 2013: SlutWalk framed victim blaming as a central injustice
* The 2013 SlutWalks were a series of global, grassroots protest marches held in cities worldwide—including New York, Chicago, and various university campuses—to protest rape culture, victim blaming, and slut-shaming.
* The movement first originated in 2011 after a Toronto police officer advised university students to “avoid dressing like sluts” to prevent sexual assault. By 2013, the marches had expanded into a massive, worldwide phenomenon
* The movement first originated in 2011 after a Toronto police officer advised university students to “avoid dressing like sluts” to prevent sexual assault. By 2013, the marches had expanded into a massive, worldwide phenomenon
* Demonstrators, primarily young women but open to all genders, took to the streets in clothes that were conventionally considered “provocative” or “slutty,” alongside signs with slogans like “Still not asking for it”.
* 2017: #metoo became a global phenomenon when actress Alyssa Milano encouraged women to use the phrase following the sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
Broadly:
* Universities, NGOs, and government agencies began publishing extensive material on “rape culture” and “victim blaming,” making the term standard in training manuals, awareness campaigns, and policy documents
* Psychological and criminological research on victim blaming expanded, including studies of attribution, just‑world beliefs, and rape myths, so “victim blaming” appeared more often in titles, abstracts, and key terms.
* Professional bodies (e.g., police oversight offices, social services, health institutions) issued formal guidance documents on “ending victim blaming” or “reducing victim blaming in investigations,” further institutionalizing the term.
* Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and later Instagram and TikTok enabled rapid diffusion of feminist and social‑justice terminology; calling out victim blaming became a recognizable move in online debates.
Victim blaming was literally censored
* Facebook’s Community Standards defined bullying and harassment as content that “purposefully targets private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them” (e.g., targeted shaming, altered images, doxxing, or repeated unwanted contact). Victim blaming would be categorized as bullying or harassment so long as it entailed direct, targeted degradation of a specific victim (e.g., shaming a named survivor in a harassment campaign),
* Twitter’s Rules prohibited abusive behavior, targeted harassment (e.g., one-sided insults, threats, incitement), and hateful conduct.
Wait—is this about a rise in an external locus of control?
The most direct and frequently cited peer-reviewed evidence comes from a 2004 cross-temporal meta-analysis published in Personality and Social Psychology Review:
* The researchers analyzed 97 samples of college students (N=18,310) and 41 samples of children ages 9–14 (N=6,554) from 1960 to 2002.
* Locus of control scores became substantially more external (about 0.80 standard deviations) over this period.
* The average college student in 2002 had a more external locus of control than 80% of college students in the early 1960s.
* Birth cohort/time period explained about 14% of the variance in scores.
* This pattern held in both student and child samples and was consistent with an “alienation model” involving rising cynicism, individualism, and self-serving biases.
* Implications noted as mostly negative: externality correlates with poorer school achievement, helplessness, ineffective stress management, lower self-control, and higher depression.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: after the September 11th attacks- Mm-hmm ... the most profound increase in sentiment by like, at least double is the Republican increase.
[00:00:10] Simone Collins: Just as a reminder, Charlie Hebdo is a satirical publication, still is. They published a drawing of Muhammad, and then they were subject to formal proper Islamic terror attack.
[00:00:20] Well, what’s fascinating on, in, in France is- Yeah ... you also see this on the right, and you see- Yeah ... a big jump on the right. Yeah. That’s wild.
[00:00:29] Would you like to know more?
[00:00:30] Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to explore mysteries. Why did Muslim sentiment in the USA improve after 9/11?
[00:00:40] Why did Muslim sentiment in France improve after the Charlie Hebdo offices were subject to a terror attack? Why did pro-Palestine sentiment spike after October 7th attacks on Israel? Th- this is bizarre, and this is a very
[00:00:56] Malcolm Collins: re-
[00:00:56] Simone Collins: repetitive pattern.
[00:00:57] Malcolm Collins: That is genuinely bizarre.
[00:00:58] Simone Collins: Yeah. The aggressors?
[00:01:00] Oh, I’m so sorry for them.
[00:01:02] Malcolm Collins: But I- I’m, I’m, I’ll, I’ll tell you what, I think I- Israel wants wh- white women to love them again. They need to bomb us. No,
[00:01:07] Simone Collins: it actually...
[00:01:08] Malcolm Collins: I, I would argue- Just drop a few bombs on Manhattan, and, and-
[00:01:11] Simone Collins: No ...
[00:01:11] Malcolm Collins: they’ll all, they’ll all love them again.
[00:01:14] Simone Collins: Oh, well, yeah, that, that’s all it takes.
[00:01:15] No. I, I’m actually going to lay forth... It’s not gonna be Jews. I’m gonna lay forth my theory, and I think it all comes down to a concept that was created to address unfair bias against people who are genuinely screwed over by societal forces that were outside their control, and ultimately got ruined and co-opted by...
[00:01:37] Malcolm Collins: The women? Women! White, white women? Yes. Yay. White women, yes. White women.
[00:01:42] Simone Collins: So join us for another episode of Women Are Terrible, as we discuss how women appropriated and ruined the concept of victim blaming, and there will be- The graph
[00:01:50] Malcolm Collins: you showed me around victim blaming absolutely floored me. Yeah,
[00:01:54] Simone Collins: yeah. So she showed me- So stick around.
[00:01:55] No, I, I will show, I will show you the, the graph Okay We’re gonna go over it just next, but I, I will say stick around, because there, there is a, a pivotal portion of my my argument I’m going to lay out that involves very embarrassing images of protesting women. So stay tuned, friends. Okay?
[00:02:10] Malcolm Collins: But
[00:02:10] Simone Collins: yeah.
[00:02:10] Malcolm Collins: All, all images of protesters are embarrassing.
[00:02:12] Simone Collins: No. No. No, I... No. You’re gonna s- you’re gonna see. I somehow missed the boat. I didn’t know this thing happened. Oh, God. Okay. So, but no, you’re right. Absolutely, there is this really strange trend that takes place with the term victim blaming. And it, when we checked Google Ngram Viewer, which looks at the, the word usage in publications rather than just Google search trends, you can see that there’s basically no
[00:02:42] usage of the term victim blaming at all until the 1970s, and then it starts to grow linearly, modestly, but in a modest, linear fashion.
[00:02:51] So obviously this term was introduced and is slowly gaining popularity. Then after 2010, its trajectory changes into exponential growth, which only after 2020 started showing signs of shifting to more logarithmic growth. So it, it’s a really weird graph.
[00:03:12] But yeah, so here’s the Google Ngram Viewer. So you can see it goes from nothing to linear to exponential to logarithmic, and something happened clearly in the 2010s where this term just went crazy.
[00:03:26] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, just like, and explodes all of a sudden in the... And, well, I you acted like I should knew what that was. What, what, what happened then?
[00:03:33] Simone Collins: We’re gonna go into it. But we’re also going to look at Google Trends, and what you can see here is that before 2010, the way that victim blaming worked basically during that linear period was if there was a news story that mentioned victim blaming, people would start talking about it a ton, but then it would go back to nothing.
[00:03:49] Mm-hmm ... and then after that point, it just started entering modern parlance. But first, I, I also wanna thank not Aldous Huxley for giving me inspiration for this [00:04:00] episode. I actually didn’t believe him when he told me that there was a spike in pro-Muslim sentiment after 2001 when the, the terrorist attacks took place.
[00:04:12] I was like, “No, that’s-”
[00:04:13] Malcolm Collins: That can’t be
[00:04:14] Simone Collins: right. “... that’s not real.” So I also wanna show you some, some graphs because it’s insane. Here is a graph showing, this is so unhinged
[00:04:26] how after 9/11, across the board- Pro-Muslim sentiment grew. This is, this is flummoxing to me. This is from the Pew Research Center Among
[00:04:35] Malcolm Collins: conservatives as well.
[00:04:36] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. This is- What’s up, what’s up with that? No, no, hold on. And also the most profoundly-
[00:04:40] Malcolm Collins: The, the most profound, this is gonna shock our audience
[00:04:43] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:04:43] Malcolm Collins: after the September 11th attacks- Mm-hmm ... the most profound increase in sentiment by like, at least double is the Republican increase.
[00:04:53] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:04:54] Malcolm Collins: And- Mm-hmm
[00:04:55] hold on, conservative Republicans after 9/11 had a more positive sentiment towards Muslims than moderate Republicans, independent or conservative/moderate Democrats. Yeah. The only group that had a higher sentiment towards Muslims than conservative Republicans were liberal Democrats.
[00:05:19] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:05:20] Malcolm Collins: Note, th- this came from conservative Republicans before 9/11 having the lowest opinion of Muslims.
[00:05:27] Simone Collins: Yeah, at 35. Yeah, so it, it went from 35% favorable view- To 64% ... to 64%, yeah.
[00:05:36] Malcolm Collins: That is as- astonishing.
[00:05:39] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It, it, it’s, it is really flummoxing, and it, it’s also really flummoxing with the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terror attack. Just as a reminder, Charlie Hebdo is a satirical publication, still is. They published a drawing of Muhammad, and then they were subject to you know, whole like formal proper Islamic terror attack.
[00:05:59] What’s interesting about this-
[00:06:01] Well, what’s fascinating on, in, in France is- Yeah ... you also see this on the right, and you see- Yeah ... a big jump on the right. Yeah. That’s wild. You went from a- Again ... 9% very favorable on the right to an 18%, a dub, a doubling of positive favorability on the right. Which is pretty much what you saw, again, with the, the 9/11 attacks.
[00:06:24] Oh, yeah. In, in, in the United States- A doubling ... after 9/11 it, it’s actually almost a doubling, 35 to 64.
[00:06:30] So then we get to October 7th. I remember, I remember very clearly that day, ‘cause I didn’t really care about Charlie Hebdo. I’m sorry but I didn’t. It was in France, whatever. I was busy at the time.
[00:06:38] It was 2015. We were get- getting married, okay? We were so busy. We were so excited. And we were young children then. We had, in 2011, we, we... Or 2001, we were kids. It, that wasn’t... I don’t know. It, it, it didn’t hit me the same way. But, but I do remember October 7th, and I’m sure you do too, and just seeing the stories coming in, seeing the photos, just how horrific it was.
[00:07:04] To, to see that coverage. I, I was floored by people who would so euphorically do this. And then of course, you know, these recordings come in from Palestinians who are, like, calling their parents on WhatsApp, talking about how, like, “I killed this many people, and I did this and that.” And the parents being like, “Well, be, be safe, son.”
[00:07:23] And it was just so... I’ve never I’ve never been so shocked by normalization of hatred and violence of a group of people, and so I would have expected-
[00:07:34] Malcolm Collins: Well, and killing, you know, peace protesters at, like, a peace rally-
[00:07:40] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:07:40] Malcolm Collins: right outside, you know, just graping tons of children. Like, the- Yeah,
[00:07:44] Simone Collins: this wasn’t six guys.
[00:07:45] This wasn’t two guys, right? This was a very organized, coordinated attack of, what? It was hundreds of men,
[00:07:51] Malcolm Collins: wasn’t it? Beheading babies, right? Like, it was absolutely horrifying what happened.
[00:07:56] Simone Collins: Yeah. And they filmed it and showed it themselves because they were proud of it. [00:08:00] Yeah. And we can look and say, “Oh, that’s a mistake that they did that,” but look, it helped the world’s perception of them.
[00:08:05] Yeah, because now let’s look. Yeah, so this is a Gallup poll here. I’m not pulling out of nowhere, right? Mm. The share of Americans who say they feel more sympathetic towards Israelis or Palestines, or, sorry, Palestinians. And so f- this goes all the way back to, I think, 2000. So it’s like Israelis are in the in high mid-50s.
[00:08:24] Palestinians, not popular. They are in, like, they’re below 20 percent favorability.
[00:08:29] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, if you’re aware of the actual history of the region, you would have to be absurd to feel sympathy for Palestinians.
[00:08:35] Simone Collins: Right. But then, but then what happens? I mean, there’s a slight trending upward for Palestinians on, starting 2020 paired with a slight pairing downward for Israelis.
[00:08:44] However, what really happens is this sudden October 7th attack. Total switcheroo-
[00:08:52] Malcolm Collins: And then it- ... where- ... flips favorability ...
[00:08:54] Simone Collins: yeah, suddenly Israelis are 36% favorability, having been in the high 50s for decades, and Palestinians are up to a record high of 41%, nearly... Well, more than double actually from their, like, 18% starting point, which they hovered back to throughout the 2010s.
[00:09:13] So what’s- Mm ... interesting here with, with these particular results is that when you look at the age difference in responding, you see old Americans do show a change in sentiment. They, they had the lowest sentiment favorably toward Palestinians. Like, in- Okay ... in 2002, they started out at, like, 15% favorability.
[00:09:35] 55
[00:09:36] Malcolm Collins: and older. It dropped down to 10. Okay, okay.
[00:09:37] Simone Collins: Yeah, and they were very pro-Israel. I mean, now we’re in, like, the high 60s up to, like, the low 80s at some point. Do you happen
[00:09:43] Malcolm Collins: to have a breakout of gender in favorability ratings?
[00:09:46] Simone Collins: Oh, let me check. But also- Okay ... look at young Americans.
[00:09:49] Malcolm Collins: Okay.
[00:09:50] Simone Collins: Young Americans, when f- for- That is
[00:09:53] Malcolm Collins: wild
[00:09:54] they did- They literally flipped. Yeah. Literally- Yeah ... flipped positions from like-
[00:09:58] Simone Collins: Yeah, but like crazy. So now they, the young Americans view Palestinians favorably at 53% and Israelis 23%.
[00:10:07] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So
[00:10:07] Simone Collins: this is-
[00:10:07] Malcolm Collins: And it used to be 53% for Israeli and 23%- Mm-hmm ... for Palestine.
[00:10:11] Simone Collins: So a total flip and a very, very s- stark and violent one.
[00:10:16] So it, it really surprised-
[00:10:17] Malcolm Collins: But what’s fascinating about this is this flip- clearly, like if you look at the timeline, was not motivated by Israel’s actions in Palestine, it was motivated by the attack on Israel.
[00:10:27] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s also what’s just so sick. You wanted me to check gender, right? Let me- I’m checking the, the Gallup article right now.
[00:10:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’m gonna see if, if this is all women. That’s my, my thesis. If, if men are doing it, ‘cause the fact- Oh, it,
[00:10:41] Simone Collins: this is all women’s fault, but hold on because,
[00:10:44] Malcolm Collins: This, this affects conservatives. I mean, I’ll be honest, my sentiment towards Muslims more broadly is not a negative sentiment. Like I have Muslim friends.
[00:10:55] I know Muslims who are totally competent, whatever people. However my sentiment towards like the type of Muslim immigration that Europe has right now and that America has begun to open up is extremely negative. The, that it’s, it’s clearly just a, a net negative for our countries and our societies, right?
[00:11:17] Like, a- among an almost any metric, whether you’re looking at crime or you’re looking at you know, state services, or you’re looking at cultural assimilation. We’re just not seeing it at the same rate. And so I don’t think that yeah, I, I don’t, I, I don’t think that it’s something that, that we can continue to do.
[00:11:36] And when I, when I say this, I think one of the things that people forget is eventually, like the progressives who are here now, right? Like, and I’ve- Mm ... I’ve to talk about this all the time. It’s my, my scorpion and the, the, the snake, right?
[00:11:49] Simone Collins: Okay. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah
[00:11:52] Malcolm Collins: And they are able to prevent the two sides from going at it.
[00:11:56] But the population of Americans [00:12:00] that want to just get the unassimilated groups out of America they are the ones who have kids. And the members of these populations that don’t assimilate, like, the, many, many Muslim immigrants do assimilate in the United States, but they often are the ones that have zero kids.
[00:12:18] It’s the ones who are the least assimilated and most hostile that typically have the most kids. Hmm. This is just, like, an obvious thing if you’re looking at the data. And so eventually, a few generations from now, and this is true in Europe, this is true in the United States, a lot of these countries are just gonna, like, ask the question of, like, “Okay you know, you have X many days to get out, and then we have to, like, do something.”
[00:12:39] Because this is gonna be on the table for both of these groups in the future. Both of these groups are groups that are willing to be violent, and right now the panda’s holding them apart, but, like, one day that panda’s not gonna be there anymore. We, we can- Hmm ... just look at the demographic data. And this is why when I discuss and people will probably notice this in a lot of my videos and a lot of my discussion of these types of topics I may sound like somebody who is more open to violent solutions than other individuals.
[00:13:11] And the reason why I sound that way is because I try to keep my opinions and perspectives future oriented and evergreen in terms of where the population is going- Hmm ... where public sentiment is going, and sort of things that are going to come to a T. And this isn’t, like, that existential in the United States, but there are European countries where I can very easily see but within our lifetimes, the problem being aired of, okay, now everyone who is unassimilated has to leave.
[00:13:45] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:13:46] Malcolm Collins: And that’s going to be... That’s not gonna l- that’s gonna look bad. Like, even just ICE, even just Trump trying to, like, when he was trying to just kick out the, like, murderers and grapists people freaked out, right? Because it, it doesn’t look good, you know, dragging the grapist from their home or whatever, right?
[00:14:05] And they’re like, “Oh, look at, look at how horrible this is.” But whatever you saw there, you’re going to see 1,000 times worse than what’s coming, you know, comes down the pipeline, right? And I don’t, I, I, I deeply worry about the humanitarian consequences of not taking these issues seriously right now.
[00:14:28] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:14:29] Malcolm Collins: But anyway, continue.
[00:14:30] Simone Collins: So you’re gonna find this amusing. I didn’t find men and women on the Palestinian issue, but I... They did include independents, democrats, and republicans. So here are the republican sympathies, which is great.
[00:14:43] Malcolm Collins: Basically the same. They don’t go... They, they, they go- They- ... up, up a little bit for Palestinians and a little bit down for Israelis No, they, they just freaking hate Palestinians, and they always have.
[00:14:52] Simone Collins: Like, there’s no meaningful difference in, in, in- Yeah ... how the, the line bounces around, and they’re like okay with, with Israel. Here are the democrats and this is what’s interesting is they, they started out really not being that favorable with really Israel or Palestine, but less favorable with Palestine.
[00:15:07] And then suddenly Palestine-
[00:15:08] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it went from after- ... reached a record high ... and it started going up after the attacks on Israel. Mm-hmm. That’s what gets me.
[00:15:14] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:15:15] Malcolm Collins: Truly monsters-
[00:15:16] Simone Collins: So
[00:15:16] Malcolm Collins: yeah ... these people.
[00:15:17] Simone Collins: I think, I think, this is my little theory, that it has to do with victim blaming and that victim blaming as this concept that has ruined, like caused these insane dynamics of like, “Oh, no, this aggressor committed atrocities.
[00:15:34] Poor aggressor. Let’s defend the aggressor. Let them do terrible things to us,” actually comes from women appropriating victim blaming.
[00:15:43] Speaker 8: No! How could this happen? Where did society go wrong? How
[00:15:51] Speaker 9: could the system fail this poor man?
[00:15:54] Speaker 8: If only he’d had a better stool! [00:16:00] Do you want some hot cocoa?
[00:16:02] Speaker 11: Seems to be socio economics. Most likely an underfunded library.
[00:16:10] Speaker 8: That’s it! Ah! Ah! You shot this beautiful man for no reason! She’s evil incarnate!
[00:16:22] Speaker 10: He was stabbing Murderer! Murderer! He was
[00:16:27] Speaker 8: expressing himself!
[00:16:30] Simone Collins: So victim blaming, let’s go into it.
[00:16:33] Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. Before we go into it- Yeah ... I want to cover another thing here which I think people are going to find queer and it is worth unpacking.
[00:16:41] Okay. Historically republicans had this effect just as democrats did where they immediately started liking, you know, Muslims more after 9/11. Mm. They started liking Muslims more after what happened in, France. But this time they did. This time it didn’t affect Republicans. And I actually, when I think through, I can totally get why.
[00:17:04] The reason it didn’t affect Republicans this time is because the last crop of Republicans, the Boomer Republicans are not really, like, the critical types. Mm-hmm. They’re not the types who are willing to, like, sit down and be like you know, “We need to have a real conversation about w- like, this, this group is causing negative externalities for our society, and eventually we’re gonna have to do something about it.”
[00:17:26] That’s never been a conversation that they were ever going to table or anything like that. At the end of the day, they were in part Republican just because they wanted to be respectable. Like, that’s what Republicanism... It was a respectable old aristocratic party, right? Like, that’s, that’s what it meant back in the day.
[00:17:43] And so the respectable thing to do is to, “Oh, you’ve been attacked by someone that could conceivably increase s- decrease sentiment for them- Yeah ... so I’m going to increase my sentiment for them because now they’re in this position of, of being a v- you know, being potentially having, having people hate them.”
[00:18:03] And and I, I note here, like with 9/11 or something like that it’s not like, when you’re like, “Well, you know, they just happen to share some characteristics with them.” No, like, Islamism was why these people did what they did. In every one of these cases, in the attack on the newspaper, it was because of Muslim beliefs that they did this attack, right?
[00:18:25] It was in the, the case of, of Palestine, that’s a bit different. It’s not as much about the religion, but about, like, pan-Muslim silar- solidarity against Jewish people. And th- I’m, I’m not talking about all Muslims. I’m talking about Muslims in the region. They do genuinely dislike Jews. Or they have sort of a...
[00:18:42] I’ve talked about it. They don’t even really dislike them at the higher level. It’s more just like you can’t be seen liking them, because that could get you in trouble. You know, you have sort of a status hierarchy on how much you can mess with Israel.
[00:18:52] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:18:52] Malcolm Collins: So, The, the, the point I’m, I’m thinking, thinking through here is that the reason why this didn’t affect the right today, but it did in the past, is because the boomer right is no longer the dominant of the right anymore.
[00:19:07] And we weren’t rightists back then. You know, we, the type of people who were l- were, like, done with this BS we weren’t there yet. And then we come in and the mo- we’re, we’re the group that’s like, “Oh, yep, you know, F up Iran. They’re saying... They’re talking s**t. You know, y- you, you, you show them what for,” right?
[00:19:24] Like, and we’ve seen this across this and I’ve talked about this cultural shift in the right, but I think it... we needed this cultural shift to protect ourselves against these kinds of psychological maladies, I think is all you can really call it that the old right was subject to- Mm ... that didn’t wanna say the naughty thing.
[00:19:43] And this is where Simone keeps getting, You know, trying to be like, “Oh, you know, couch more. Don’t be so offensive with your title cards.” And it’s, “No.” Like, we need to crack that seal, right? Like, culturally, societally, that this, “Oh, you can’t say [00:20:00] this. Oh, you can’t say that,” that doesn’t work anymore, right?
[00:20:03] Like, I, I think the video that does a very good job of this is the video about powder
[00:20:10] Speaker: Sorry, I meant call me a racist, fascist, nationalist, grifter, bootlicking theocrat, literary
[00:20:41] Malcolm Collins: but th- we own these titles now, not because, you know, they are accurate representations of us, but because we just don’t care. You l- you wanna say I’m Islamophobic for saying that, like, disproportionately X group is doing Y, or this was motivated in part by their religion, or that there’s going to be long-term conflict between various groups you know, you can F off because I don’t, I don’t care that you are attempting to...
[00:21:12] And nobody cares anymore, right? Like, there’s still these old guards that wanna, like, “Ooh, how could you say something so offensive?” But most of us, and most of those old guard aren’t having kids. Like, they’re just... They’re the group that’s dying out. Like, we’re done with them. We’re done with this b******t. Okay but do you actually, do you have thoughts on that? Do you agree with my assessment that why conservatives weren’t affected by this this time around? S- s- specifically because the Conservative Party is a different group today.
[00:21:41] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, I do think that that plays a huge role in it. And, and you’ll see more when I explain more what happened with victim blamin- blaming and how actually it’s, it’s kind of related to how the new right became the new right as well, ‘cause it, it formed in the 2010s.
[00:21:57] It started to. The breakaway began in the 2010s. So anyway, you, you’ll see. At least I think so. Let’s see. Just confirming a date here Yeah, definitely. Okay, so victim blaming as a concept exists in resistance to genuine victim blaming being something that’s very, very old. That there are, for example, tons of religious texts that frame victims of bad things as sinners who deserved those things as punishment.
[00:22:26] You know, people are like, “Oh, well, you broke your leg ‘cause you’re a bad person.” Like, “Y- your house was flooded ‘cause you’re a bad person ‘cause God hates you,” and that was just a really common thing. So before the term victim blaming was popularized, people would sometimes point to the just world hypothesis, which is basically that people want to believe that the world’s fair, so then they will just assume that victims have done something wrong to deserve the suffering.
[00:22:52] Like, oh, well, th- the world’s not terrible. Like, God isn’t bad because you had that coming is for some reason. And that is, you know... I, I can understand the psychological dynamic at play. But in 1975, there was this psychology na- psychologist named William Ryan who introduced this book called Blaming the Victim that was about blaming the victim.
[00:23:16] And this concept existed for him to critique explanations of poverty and racism that shifted responsibility from unjust social structures onto marginalized communities. And specifically, he was responding to Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report on Black poverty, which argued that, Sort of like, he, Moynihan broadly blamed Black families for structural inequalities like it was their fault, whereas even you and I have talked about how in the 1950s, Black families were twice as stable as their white counterparts, and that-
[00:23:52] Malcolm Collins: Yeah
[00:23:52] Simone Collins: there were actually a lot of things that were done t- to kind of screw over American Black populations, so- Well,
[00:23:59] Malcolm Collins: they were done [00:24:00] by the progressive party, right? Yeah. Like, it’s not just that, like, Dems did them, but the biggest damage that was done to the Black family unit was the normalization of the well, American Black identity, right?
[00:24:13] Like, th- they no longer saw themselves as predominantly, you know, a conservative Christian group, which is generally good for, like, family formation and everything like that, and was what Blacks historically thought of themselves as.
[00:24:24] Simone Collins: Mm,
[00:24:24] Malcolm Collins: mm. But this other thing that existed in a way in opposition to societal mores.
[00:24:31] Simone Collins: Yeah, and this w- this wasn’t really... this was something that was largely... And socialists get involved in this timeline. Like, I can’t even remember it all ‘cause it’s so insane, but, like, it involved socialists and abortion activists and all these sort of terrible things. And a, a lot of these were just white people doing really terrible things to Black people in America.
[00:24:50] And so I, I am totally on the very progressive sounding argument of, yeah, actually, there was, there were many systemic issues that screwed over Black Americans, especially- Especially between well, certainly with slavery, so never mind. Like-
[00:25:02] Malcolm Collins: No, but I think, I think what we pointed out here is blacks were in a better relative position in terms of like right after slavery.
[00:25:12] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:25:12] Malcolm Collins: So it, it’s not like they’re still recovering from slavery. It’s they were in a worse position- Yeah,
[00:25:16] Simone Collins: it’s the, it wasn’t actually the slavery, it was these weird progressive policies and all these other things that, like, totally screwed them over. So yeah, it weirdly it’s not systemic racism as progressives think it was, where they blame Concern, like Sir- Well, it, it, it’s, it’s their
[00:25:32] Malcolm Collins: version of- Jim Crow
[00:25:33] a, a, think about the thing that the Smithsonian released about white culture, right? And they were talking about, like, you’ve gotta, you know- I don’t remember, but ... the, and they said that white culture... Look, look up the Smithsonian thing about white culture they, they got in trouble. Oh
[00:25:46] Simone Collins: my gosh, I forgot.
[00:25:47] Yes, it was some report on how bad it was.
[00:25:50] Malcolm Collins: And it was- Oh, yes ... it was, it was listing all of the things that they, the progressives, it said, like hard work, being on time-
[00:25:57] Simone Collins: Yes, yes, yes ... personal
[00:25:58] Malcolm Collins: responsibility.
[00:25:59] Simone Collins: We need to stop making these things normalized, ‘cause they’re white concepts, and we shouldn’t be imposing our white culture of being on time.
[00:26:06] Speaker 2: So if you don’t remember when this happened, let’s just go over what the Smithsonian, America’s number one museum, officially said was white culture. They said rugged individualism, self-reliance, independence, and autonomy are highly valued and rewarded. Individuals assume control over their environment.
[00:26:26] You get what you deserve. Family structure, nuclear family, husband is the breadwinner of the household. Wife is the homemaker and subordinate to the husband. Emphasis on the scientific method, objective, rational, linear thinking, because non-white people are incapable of that apparently.
[00:26:42] , Causes, effect, relationships, quantitative emphasis. Mm-hmm, Protestant work ethic. At least they recognize that only Protestants have a work ethic. Hard work is the key to success. Work before you play. If you didn’t meet your goals, you didn’t work hard enough. That all sounds like reasonable things to teach a child to me.
[00:27:02] Religion, Christianity is the norm. , Status, power, and authority. Your job is who you are. Respect authority. I guess they’re like, “Don’t respect authority.” Heavy value on ownership and goods. , Okay, , future orientation. Plan for the future. Delayed gratification.
[00:27:18] Aesthetics Woman’s beauty is being, , thin. Man’s attractiveness is based on economic power, status, and intellect. I love intellect. They had to throw that-- What? Oh my God
[00:27:31] Be polite is another one they have here
[00:27:33] Malcolm Collins: And, and person- no, but in Euro-
[00:27:35] Simone Collins: Because other people are on island time-
[00:27:37] Malcolm Collins: Black people- ... and river time ... used to have all of this stuff used to be part of Black culture. Oh. It was stripped from Black culture by these progressive and frankly racist stereotypes that progressives had- Mm ... of that culture and what it represented.
[00:27:52] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:27:52] Malcolm Collins: And I think that that’s something that’s really important to, to highlight is that-
[00:27:57] Simone Collins: 100% ...
[00:27:57] Malcolm Collins: the, and if you wanna go into the data on this, [00:28:00] because you’re like, “That can’t be true, Malcolm.” They’re, they’re more... Like, Blacks weren’t better off in the past than they are. Like, in the 1950s, Blacks were better off than they are today, and it’s like in a lot of ways they were.
[00:28:10] Go to our episode about the 1950s. You can see the episode. It’s called 1950s Black Families Were Twice As Stable As Their White Counterparts: The Stuff of Black Culture. Well, they were twice as... They, they had a children out of wedlock at 5% the rate, and for whites it was 10% the rate.
[00:28:22] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:23] Malcolm Collins: But that’s not the only thing. Also-
[00:28:25] Simone Collins: Oh, no, it was a bunch of other things. There were, all, yeah, thriving, thriving communities, all these other lovely... Yeah, it was it, it was a thing. It was a whole thing. Anyway, I’m not gonna get into that. What I’m trying to say w- the, the gist of this argument is that this dude, Mr.
[00:28:38] Ryan, he introduces this concept, victim blaming, to point out that, like, oh, actually, like especially Black Americans, there’s been some stuff. It’s it’s, they’re not evil, okay? The, the people, they were screwed over. And th- we would say, yes, they have been screwed over. So I’m saying there is merit to the concept of victim blaming sometimes.
[00:28:56] But what happened in 2010s, they, the, the concept was completely appropriated by women who took it and turned it into not a, “Hey, sometimes victims are subject to systemic problems,” but rather, “Never blame victims, never blame victims, never blame victims.” Just like never, ever, ever. Like a reflexive panicked crazy-eyed response to the very concept of victims.
[00:29:23] Like, as soon as something is a victim, it can do no wrong, okay?
[00:29:28] Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think- Like ... by the way, fun episode to, to, to note- Yeah ... because I wanna dig into this. Did the CIA really start the crack epidemic among the Black community, or is that a, is that a, a myth? I mean, I, I, I-
[00:29:40] Simone Collins: Oh, no, I think I’ve s- like, watched long YouTube videos on it.
[00:29:43] I think it, like, for real happened.
[00:29:45] Malcolm Collins: Let’s dig into that.
[00:29:46] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, okay. That could be good. Mm. That, that time- Send me a text at 802- ... the CIA
[00:29:50] Malcolm Collins: started the crack epidemic
[00:29:52] Simone Collins: Oh, my gosh. But
[00:29:52] Malcolm Collins: yeah. That,
[00:29:53] Simone Collins: that could make for a good
[00:29:53] Malcolm Collins: title.
[00:29:54] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, no, there’s all, I know the medical experiment. Look Yeah, I mean, it’s, syst- it’s, th- don’t blame that kind of victimhood, but yeah, so- The
[00:30:02] Malcolm Collins: CIA did medical experiments on white people too, mind you, Simone.
[00:30:06] Simone Collins: Sure.
[00:30:07] Malcolm Collins: They had the c- like the even the Unabomber was in one of the experiments that was meant to drive people crazy.
[00:30:12] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, he was- ... whatever. He was a stable genius. I’m going on to how women ruined- It
[00:30:18] Malcolm Collins: worked ...
[00:30:18] Simone Collins: victim blaming. Yeah, it w- Okay? Yeah. Look, I mean, it’s, that’s better than acoustic king.
[00:30:25] And,
[00:30:25] Malcolm Collins: and by the way, kids- Mm-hmm ... I wanna tell you something.
[00:30:27] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:30:28] Malcolm Collins: Of all the drugs you can take, do not take psychedelics. Okay? That, that, that, that is what... They are the drugs that the CIA used to try to up people’s minds. Okay? We’ve seen in our
[00:30:40] Simone Collins: community- Well, no, I think if you’re, if you’re terminally ill, it, it’s a really good way to reconcile with your death.
[00:30:45] And I think there, there are applications that make a lot of sense. If you’re- If you’re terminally ill. We saw in our community- There are peer-reviewed studies that show that very targeted use with, you know, going in with intentions and with an experienced therapist, they can treat PTSD really well.
[00:30:58] So there again, very targeted things, I think it would be really effective. I also imagine there could be more research on this, that shocking people out of, Can you
[00:31:05] Malcolm Collins: not hear me?
[00:31:06] Simone Collins: Oh, I can’t. Sorry. I just wanna make one more
[00:31:08] Malcolm Collins: point. Okay, make your point.
[00:31:10] Simone Collins: That y- I really wish there were research on shocking people out of chronic pain, ‘cause there’s a lot of people who have residual chronic pain that is crippling that could possibly, like, have your brain scrambled enough by psychedelics to get you out of that rut.
[00:31:24] ‘Cause I think what happens is the brain gets in a pain rut, and it can’t get out even though your body’s fine.
[00:31:28] Malcolm Collins: Maybe. Mm. You’re, you’re talking about, like, spoonies and stuff. The, the, I mean, we’ve seen within our community, I, I more would just push against it broadly. Mm ... like, th- what it can do to you, even just trying them once, like it had a serious impact on Ruby Yard’s reputation-
[00:31:43] Simone Collins: Yeah
[00:31:43] Malcolm Collins: Just trying ayahuasca once. Like, why risk something like that? I think it’s, i- i- because keep in mind, you know, you can still access your email and stuff when you’re on the psychedelic, right? Like- y-
[00:31:55] Simone Collins: Look, I think he wasn’t still high when he did those things. Yes,
[00:31:59] Malcolm Collins: he [00:32:00] was.
[00:32:00] Simone Collins: Oh, he, he was... No, he would be vomiting like a crazy person if he were-
[00:32:03] Malcolm Collins: He was high on his stream.
[00:32:05] Yes, he was. That was the entire point of, like, the 10-hour stream.
[00:32:10] Simone Collins: Oh, really? Wow. Yes. So he had, like, a bucket next to him? I didn’t watch the stream.
[00:32:14] Malcolm Collins: I di- I did... I haven’t watched the whole thing either. Sure ... but the, the point being, I, I think they’re bad, and it’s what other people use when they want to control you.
[00:32:23] So continue.
[00:32:24] Simone Collins: Right. So yeah. Anyway, women turn it into this, and, and the reason why women turned it into this reflexive never ever question had to do with all of the Me Too related movements that emerged in the 2010s. Now, Me Too, like the hashtag Me Too, emerged first in 2006. It didn’t actually go viral until 2017, though it trended upward.
[00:32:52] What happened though that was earlier that I hadn’t heard of, as all this stuff was bubbling up, were the SlutWalks. Have you heard about SlutWalks?
[00:33:04] Malcolm Collins: I have heard about slut walks. Yeah, I’ve even seen them
[00:33:07] Simone Collins: You... Wait, a live slut walk?
[00:33:09] Malcolm Collins: Not in real life. I’ve seen, like, pictures from, like, France and stuff where they do that nonsense, where they walk around, like, topless.
[00:33:15] Simone Collins: Yeah, so I, so I just, I’ll... I’m gonna bring people up to speed, ‘cause I didn’t know these existed. I don’t know what I was doing from 2011 to 2013, but, like, they’re, they, these are s- these are f- protests primarily populated by women that framed victim blaming as a central injustice as part of them. They, the, the first one was in 2011 after a Toronto police officer advised university students to, quote, “Avoiding dressing like sluts,” to prevent
[00:33:42] sexual assaults. Which is, I think, reasonable advice.
[00:33:47] Malcolm Collins: I think that’s reasonable advice.
[00:33:49] Simone Collins: It’s so based. But by 2013 the marches expanded into this massive worldwide phenomenon, which is presumably why you saw them in France. The, the first one was in 2011, but the biggest ones were in 2013, and the demonstrators were primarily young women.
[00:34:04] And what you would do if you’re a young woman demonstrating at these, is you would dress like a slut, and then walk around with signs to protest grape culture, and victim blaming, and slut shaming.
[00:34:18] So I will share with you some amazing photos, because, I don’t know, just in, like, the context of, like, more recent assaults that have taken place in the UK, and in the US, and in other countries in Europe, I’m like, “Oh, my God.”
[00:34:31] So here we have, Well, one young lady who’s not getting the prompt. She’s wearing black leggings and a checkered plaid shirt, which is not slutty. But then next to her is a purple-haired girl who is wearing a bodysuit that’s maybe not very flattering. Let’s see. Yeah, you gotta look at your WhatsApp.
[00:34:51] Ugh. Now, here’s, here’s ano- Here’s another one with a woman holding up a poster saying, “It’s my hot body. I do what I want.” She’s, Oh, my God ... letting you know she does what she wants. Here we have “How could I have been asking for it when I did not even know what it was at the time?” And then there are two girls next to this, this person holding the poster, who are just wearing bras and their jeans.
[00:35:20] Here we have some women with signs saying, “Can’t touch this.”
[00:35:25] Malcolm Collins: Feminism feels- She’s just
[00:35:25] Simone Collins: full
[00:35:25] Malcolm Collins: out- ... so anti-women to me. In,
[00:35:27] Simone Collins: under-
[00:35:27] Malcolm Collins: Like-
[00:35:28] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:35:28] Malcolm Collins: the idea that somebody psyops these women into walking around half-naked and parading themselves around town. Like, historically we’d be like, “Oh, so that was, like, the prisoners of the civilization you just conquered?”
[00:35:40] Simone Collins: Yeah, that they- But this- Yeah, this, this, this literally looks like a triumph, a Roman triumph, and these are all of the female slaves that they have brought with them for things.
[00:35:50] Malcolm Collins: So you, you never got into anything like this back when you were progressive? You never thought, “Oh, I’m gonna go-
[00:35:54] Simone Collins: No
[00:35:58] walk around town [00:36:00] half-naked?” And you know what? I, I really think that I, I may have seen a SlutWalk, ‘cause I, at this time I was working in San Francisco. You lived in San Francisco at this time too. If I saw one, I probably would’ve thought n- it was like some iteration of Critical Tits, which is this like group bike ride that would occasionally take place throughout America where you would just, a bunch of people would ride their bicycles without shirts on.
[00:36:18] It was delightful. And so you, in San Francisco you see something like this and you’re like, “Oh, this is not remarkable.” So maybe that’s why I didn’t know this was a thing. But I’m just... I, I just, there are all these countries where if a woman went out dressed like this, she would be... Horrific, unspeakable things would happen to her.
[00:36:38] And I feel like because we’re, we’re also choosing to not push back against those cultures entering our countries women are learning the hard way that actually we can’t really do protests like this anymore, and it’s really depressing, and I just find this very ironic. ‘Cause I feel like when I look back at these photos, the first thing I think about is just the unspeakable privilege and comfort that these women are operating with, and I don’t really know if today women would do the same thing.
[00:37:04] Yeah, I haven’t seen a
[00:37:04] Malcolm Collins: slutwalk in a long time. I don’t think you... You couldn’t do a slutwalk in We- London today. You’d be a- attacked.
[00:37:10] Simone Collins: Actually, though, yeah. And I think that’s really notable that while it isn’t said, I think it’s, it is implicitly understood that we can’t, women can’t dress like sluts anymore because now we understand that women are being regularly assaulted on the streets, and, like, it’s actually not safe anymore.
[00:37:30] And I, even I grew up as a teen, like thinking, “Well, that’s just unheard of. That doesn’t happen.” ‘Cause it was, but now the news stories are just so pervasive that I think that sentiment has changed. But what’s really interesting about this is the key thing, I think you remember the hashtag believeallwomen that was part of this whole victim-blaming narrative.
[00:37:46] It was just, like, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, people were just told, “If someone says they’re a victim, they’re a victim. Don’t question them. The, the man is guilty until proven innocent.” Like, this just, it completely changed the dynamics. And I don’t know how it was, like, I just, my mind really has keyed to this.
[00:38:06] It, it just, it does seem to me that it was pervasively understood that you were to not question period. And what happened during this period, aside from, like, the 2011 to 2013 culmination of slutwalks, and then 2017 Me Too really reaching the stratosphere, was that universities and NGOs and government agencies started publishing extensive material on grape culture and victim blaming, and they made the term super standard in training manuals and awareness campaigns and policy documents.
[00:38:34] Again, making it even harder to criticize what might have been causes of complex conflicts that involved possibly sexual violence. And then also there was this influx of new psychological and criminological research on victim blaming that Included various studies and myths and i- i- victim blaming essentially a- appeared a ton more in research documents.
[00:38:58] And then professional bodies like, I found one, a research oversight office, also social services and health institutions, just a ton of like this county website or whatever would have their own dedicated pages on victim blaming. Yeah. And then I think more importantly too is I think we all remember the m- much more heavy censorship regime on Facebook and a- well, the website formerly known as Twitter, right?
[00:39:23] How anything that Could possibly be construed as bullying or harassment would get taken down. Yeah. So Facebook’s community standards define bullying and harassment as content that, quote, “Purposefully targets private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them, e.g., targeted shaming, altered images, doxing, or repeated unwanted contact.”
[00:39:46] And vi- victim blaming is totally that. I mean, what are you doing but pointing to someone who had something terrible happen to them and saying they might have played a role in this terrible thing happening to them? Yeah. Right? That is clear. And so [00:40:00] while it isn’t implicit that victim blaming violated terms of service of these websites, it totally did.
[00:40:06] And so that... This is also a period during which actual, like, no, no one even saw a narrative of victim blaming. No one even saw people say, “Hey, maybe it was her fault.” ‘Cause even if one of these did get past a moderator, they would just be completely ratioed and sub-tweeted and, and attacked f- openly- Gosh
[00:40:26] for just- Remember before the blessing of Blue Sky?
[00:40:28] Yeah, when, when just everyone disappeared to that and then all just tried to kill each other. It’s horrible. And yeah, I mean, yeah, Twitter, Twitter was also famous for just a ton of other, like, even the government getting involved, involved as censorship.
[00:40:38] That was so scary.
[00:40:39] Malcolm Collins: Well, I think a lot of the crazier ones- Yeah ... unalived themselves. Like, I actually think that that’s a, a bigger thing that happened- Mm ... that is not talked about it as much. I mean,
[00:40:46] Simone Collins: yeah, there does seem to be a lot of depression and mental illness. That’s sa- that’s very sad.
[00:40:50] Malcolm Collins: And I think that that’s part of why the left quieted down, because the crazier ones burnt off.
[00:40:56] Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I think you are onto something there, so that’s, that’s totally a thing. Yeah. But I think there’s an one other element to this that is non-trivial, which is that there was also pretty significant rise in an external locus of control for individuals during this period. And there is actually, though it’s...
[00:41:17] This is before even to 2010, but I still think that the trend just continued and got worse. There’s a 2004- Mm ... cross-temporal meta-analysis that was published in Personality and Social Psychology Review, where two researchers looked at 97 samples of college students, a total of almost 19,000 students over 18,000.
[00:41:40] And then 41 samples of children when that was a sample of over 6,000. Looking at data from 1960 to 2002- And they found that locus of control scores became substantially more external, of about 0.8 standard deviations Oh my
[00:41:55] Malcolm Collins: God, do not send your kid into the school system. I’m gonna be building soon an AI that’ll make even better than Parrhesia for education.
[00:42:03] That’s, that’s one of the projects I’m working on.
[00:42:05] Simone Collins: I’m so excited, yeah.
[00:42:05] Malcolm Collins: That uses remote AIs that your kids can carry around with them. Yeah. And that focus on education and lesson plans and stuff like that. It’s gonna be so great because I’m making it for myself and my kids, so of course it’s gonna be awesome.
[00:42:17] Simone Collins: It’s gonna be fantastic. But just to give you framing, and this is ending in 2002, right? So it’s, it’s, I, I can only, it can only be worse now. The, it’s not like any of these trends reversed, so they ha- it is profoundly worse now. But the average college student in 2002 had a more external v- locus of control than 80% of college students in the early 1960s Do you, like, this is profound.
[00:42:43] That is really bad. Yeah. And, and it it all comes down to-
[00:42:46] Malcolm Collins: Explain locus of control to people, ‘cause
[00:42:47] Simone Collins: I know that it’s- So locus of control. If you have an internal locus of control and I I, I bump my toe on something in the house, I’m like, “Ugh, I’m, I’m so clumsy. That was my fault. I should’ve been more careful with where I was looking.”
[00:42:59] If I have an external locus of control and I bump my toe in, in my house, I’m like, “Who made me bump my toe? How, how could you possibly have put this thing here? Who put this chair here?” Like, you just find anyone else to blame. You know, i- if you fail the test, it’s because, you know, the, y- that your, your parents didn’t tell you to study enough, and your teacher hates you anyway, and all these things.
[00:43:21] Ev- nothing is your fault. Mm-hmm. And when you point to things like, oh, well, it’s not your fault that you were sexually assaulted, it’s because, you know, of bias, and this, this man was uneducated about consent is- He
[00:43:38] Malcolm Collins: wasn’t aware that you’re not supposed to rape people.
[00:43:40] Simone Collins: He’s not aware that if you wear super slutty clothing and come home with him and give him a b*****b that he, you know, he, he still needs to ask for consent every five minutes.
[00:43:52] Like, yeah, it just... But this is, yeah, it has become a very pervasive thing. And I do think that this has a big role to play, but I think these [00:44:00] are all very correlated. And what does seem to be something that really just skyrocketed, I mean, as you can see with Google Ngram Viewer, in the 2010s is just this concept of victim blaming.
[00:44:09] And it, I thought when I would look into the history and, and this, this this ex exponential increase in victim blaming that took place in the 2010s, that it would have to do with a broader variety of topics, like, victims of racism, victims of classism, victims of whatever. But no, it was only, only, like, Me Too victims, and that’s what really shocked me.
[00:44:32] Hmm. And keep in mind, Malcolm, just like you said, this, you know, Gamergate was 2014, 2015. So the, this happened at this very same time, and I think it, to your point, it didn’t affect conservatives the same way because this was this period where conservatives were like What are you talking about? Like, this is-
[00:44:50] Malcolm Collins: This is, yeah, like-
[00:44:51] Simone Collins: delusional. And, and, and that’s when you started to see this break off, and I think you’re also ... Like, if we were to look at external versus internal locus of control among conservatives and progressives, you would see massive external locus of control across progressives and much less common external locus of control among conservatives, who broadly see themselves as personally responsible.
[00:45:13] You know, the buck stops with them. And ultimately for your mental health, it’s better to have an internal locus of control. Even if something’s totally outside of your control, to still be like, “What can I do better?” is going to ultimately- Mm ... produce better outcomes. ‘Cause if you just blame other people, you have no reason to improve, to look within and see what you can do to increase your odds of success.
[00:45:31] So yeah. But yeah, I, I, I didn’t think that this was gonna be a women are terrible thing, but I really do think that women messed it up, because women now are just so ... What happened is they went from being so reflexively listen to all women, believe all women, to just believe all victims. Because the term victim blaming was used.
[00:45:51] Yeah. I know that sounds stupid, but I, I actually think it kind of works. Does my theory hold with you or do you think it’s stupid? You
[00:45:58] Malcolm Collins: can be honest. It holds enough. I think, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. But I think there’s also the colonialist narrative and worldview, Sierra Mendonsi episode if you wanna get- Oh
[00:46:10] a better understanding of how this works.
[00:46:12] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:46:12] Malcolm Collins: I think also metastasized during this period and is part of what’s leading to this. This idea that w- as soon as that became normalized in the left, the left’s goal genuinely became the eradication of European populations. Mm. And Jewish populations, right?
[00:46:28] Mm-hmm. Like, somehow ... Th- th- that’s the thing, whenever you see somebody, and this is why it’s so easy to be cultural allies with Jews or Israel, is whenever I see some crazy leftist talking about how they wanna, you know, get rid of the Israel, get rid of the Jew, blah, blah. You see this at protests all the time.
[00:46:46] I know that they feel the exact same way about me. Like, we have a shared enemy.
[00:46:52] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:46:52] Malcolm Collins: Which is you know, it, it makes ... Th- the you know they’re, you know they say the same thing. They, they ... When they’re protesting everyone’s equal and you go, “Well, what about, you know, the grooming gangs or whatever?”
[00:47:03] And they’re just like, “No, so.” You know, they don’t really feel that way. They feel that some groups are superior to other groups. And you know, I, I, I’m just so grateful that their fertility rates are so low and that we don’t have to deal with this for another few generations.
[00:47:21] Simone Collins: Same, dude.
[00:47:23] Malcolm Collins: Anyway, thank you Simone.
[00:47:25] Have a wonderful day. I love you, Malcolm. Love you too. so I don’t know if you heard that there’s this influencer who’s facing a firing squad in Dubai.
[00:47:38] Simone Collins: Oh, yes, for allegedly stabbing her boyfriend when she says that she was attempting to flee and he was holding onto her passport.
[00:47:49] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I think it’s... It... To me, it’s pretty obvious she’s telling the truth.
[00:47:52] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:47:53] Malcolm Collins: And I’m very surprised because, one, there’s no... They’re... They said it was premeditated murder, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why would you [00:48:00] fly to Dubai to commit a premeditated murder and then leave without, like, all of his stuff in your suitcase or something?
[00:48:09] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:48:09] Malcolm Collins: Like, that just seems like a purely bad situation to put yourself in.
[00:48:14] So, like, I can’t understand what they think e- e- especially ‘cause it was her second time going down there to see him, like, what they think... maybe if, if, if it does turn out that she had, like, Bitcoin or something, right? Like, a, a server with a bunch of Bitcoin in her suitcase or
[00:48:30] Simone Collins: something. Oh, sure, yeah.
[00:48:31] Maybe, or that she has a history of violent action, which-
[00:48:36] Malcolm Collins: Actually, the other guy has a history of violent acts. He-
[00:48:38] Simone Collins: I know, I know. I heard that. Yeah. I, yeah, I’m, I’m with Asmongold on this. This is the only reporting that I’ve heard.
[00:48:43] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, we watched the Asmongold news show.
[00:48:45] Simone Collins: We watched the same video, of course, of course.
[00:48:48] Malcolm Collins: Simone, I love that our algos are so similar.
[00:48:52] Simone Collins: Not really.
[00:48:55] Malcolm Collins: Really?
[00:48:55] Simone Collins: What gives you- It’s, like, Asmongold, Nux, Leaflet, and then, oh, and, Oh my God, why am I blanking on her name? Lovely fox woman.
[00:49:05] Malcolm Collins: Kirsha?
[00:49:06] Simone Collins: What- Kirsha. W- why did that, why did my brain do that? I don’t
[00:49:08] Malcolm Collins: watch as many of Kirsha’s stuff, like de novo as I do the other people.
[00:49:12] Yeah. No, she shows up le- less in my feed. I don’t know why. Maybe the algorithm is- I, I, but I mean her videos, if I remember, are, are quite a lot longer than other videos, and I just don’t have time for them. That could be. Yeah. Yeah, I kinda don’t see them. That’s the core reason. It’s not like she’s not entertaining.
[00:49:23] There’s some other people I’m just like, you do not put a, a, like you’re boring or low energy or, you know, like, which, which I, I really don’t like when people are low energy. We should probably vibe like Nux, right? Like- Yes ... contrast, like, what I mean by that is contrast like Nux’s show with like, Lotus Eater, Sargon of Akkad.
[00:49:41] Like Nux, very high energy. Sargon of- I love Sargon of Akkad’s like politics, I just find him too low energy.
[00:49:48] Simone Collins: I think when people turn to the lower energy but based content, it’s because they want like dad energy instead of like friend energy.
[00:49:58] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:49:58] Simone Collins: But I don’t know. This is my theory. I, I
[00:49:59] Malcolm Collins: guess that’s something I don’t need in my life is more dad energy.
[00:50:02] I got too much-
[00:50:02] Simone Collins: You don’t want someone to tell you to make your bed ‘cause you just, that ship has sailed. The bed will never be made. I will sometimes, twice a year, descend upon your room and leave your bed totally made. And those are the only times.
[00:50:17] Malcolm Collins: It’s actually funny- And you get
[00:50:17] Simone Collins: really mad at me
[00:50:19] Malcolm Collins: Sargon of Akkad, of all of these figures, is the one who has the biggest reputation for being like an offensive public figure. And that’s mostly just because he started talking about conservative content before the other ones did. Oh. When it’s still- ‘Cause
[00:50:33] Simone Collins: he’s so not sensationalist at all, from what I remember.
[00:50:38] Malcolm Collins: There was a thing where he said like he wouldn’t even grape some woman who was a public official, and people freaked out about that, which he- th- that seems pretty benign compared
[00:50:48] Simone Collins: to today’s political rhetoric. That sounds along the lines of the Trump accusation, response to his rape accusations where he’s like, “She’s not my type.
[00:50:55] I wouldn’t- It wouldn’t try.
[00:50:59] Malcolm Collins: She’s not my type.
[00:51:00] Simone Collins: Yeah, which I find to be a weirdly compelling argument. But also, it’s been a long time since the event took place, so she could have been his type back then. Anyway.
[00:51:13] Malcolm Collins: Oh, wait, any other news I wanted to catch you up on? Still working on... Oh, a really cool thing for the hardware that we’re getting for working for RFAB-
[00:51:21] Simone Collins: Yeah
[00:51:22] Malcolm Collins: is it turns out the device, that it has the camera and the screen on it it comes with the magnets on its back, so you can just plop it on a fridge or anything that’s metallic.
[00:51:31] Simone Collins: Ooh.
[00:51:32] Malcolm Collins: And so, like-
[00:51:33] Simone Collins: But ladies and gentlemen, never plonk a magnet on your dishwasher. That, I learned that from a dishwasher repair person.
[00:51:40] It can break the electronics inside. Oh.
[00:51:42] Malcolm Collins: Don’t
[00:51:42] Simone Collins: do it.
[00:51:42] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But yeah, the, what, what makes that cool is it means, like, you can take your Companion with you when you’re cooking or something, put it up on the fridge, and it can observe the scene- Oh, I love that ... and talk with you and give you feedback. “
[00:51:55] Simone Collins: Your posture is horrible.
[00:51:57] So kyphotic. You must stop this [00:52:00] now.”
[00:52:02] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:52:02] Simone Collins: Interesting.
[00:52:03] Malcolm Collins: So I’m excited to get, get this. Well, I mean, the idea is, is that once we build this system, then I can build w- a more advanced system of, like, household assistants.
[00:52:13] Simone Collins: Right, and it’s only a matter of years, if not months, until we can hook an AI into our Wi-Fi router using that system that allows you to see where a- anyone is in the room based on the Wi-Fi signal.
[00:52:27] Malcolm Collins: Oh, wow.
[00:52:27] Simone Collins: So then we can get to this point where we can start asking, “Where’s so and so?” And she will say, “Playing near the toilet.” And we’ll say, “Oh, my God,” and we’ll run. We’ll run to that place. Or we can even get warnings. “So and so has spent more than three minutes in the bathroom. Would you like to investigate?”
[00:52:49] Malcolm Collins: Wait, is this, like, an API I could use? I could try to build that out as part-
[00:52:52] Simone Collins: I don’t recall the exact software the YouTuber that I watched who talked about this, like, the, the system, but it, yeah, it is, it is, It, it does appear to be a specific type of software that, But
[00:53:02] Malcolm Collins: there, there was... I mean, I have always wanted to, and I could make this a project after the hardware, a, an assistant project, is a child monitoring system.
[00:53:12] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
[00:53:12] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s
[00:53:13] Simone Collins: great.
[00:53:13] Malcolm Collins: If you combined this image model that I’m talking about here with a Wi-Fi tracking system- Oh, yeah ... you could pretty easily get a child monitoring system up and running.
[00:53:23] Simone Collins: That would be so freaking cool. That would be so cool. I
[00:53:28] Malcolm Collins: don’t even have
[00:53:29] Simone Collins: to- Super into that ...
[00:53:30] Malcolm Collins: parent.
[00:53:31] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, so Google already has...
[00:53:33] And here’s the thing, is Google has a product that’s, they’re paying to educate people about this. They are... Remember, their camera system will alert you about things in a sort of smart way, like, “Your cat’s doing this.” I can’t remember exactly the specifics, but it was something that would send, I think, push notifications based on actual intelligently perceived actions taking place within s- your house.
[00:53:54] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.
[00:53:54] Simone Collins: And it is very expensive. It is a subscription-based service. Like, it is not cheap. And that’s probably their subsidized price. So especially if we can make something more affordable, that would be really cool.
[00:54:05] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. I’m, I... Well, that, that’s, that’s sort of the idea behind RFAB is, And it’s one of the things I’ve been working really hard on, with video generation, is getting it way more affordable, and I found a number of hacks that got the price down, where I think we’re one of the cheapest sites right now for- Yes
[00:54:18] for video generation.
[00:54:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, ‘cause it’s finally starting to get a little costly for people. That’s cool. Oh, I’m so excited about that.
[00:54:26] Speaker 3: That’s the biggest one, you guys. Oh my gosh. I’m gonna give it to camera. Oh. Mommy, mommy, mommy. Wow. Make sure you water this one every day. Every day. Okay, Toasty. Whoa. So make sure to water this one every day when it, when you put it in the dirt. Oh, well, we just took it out of the dirt. What if we put it in a vase and then water it while it lives?
[00:54:49] Does that sound good to you, Toasty? Maybe... That’s a great idea. Oh, Ty- Ty- You put it in water. She’s making a break for it. So, mommy. Yeah? I heard that the root sucks up water. This looks like it’s a banana. Yeah. This, this is long one. Looks great. Put it in the basket. Uh, mommy, I heard the root sucks up water.
[00:55:02] It does. It does. So that’s why you should put it in a big vase full of water. Yeah. Yeah, because it’s so big.
[00:55:17] Yeah, it’s gotta suck up all that water, right? And I also got the roots. You did. I got it. I got a feather. Oh, thank you,
[00:55:25] Indy. That’s so cute. A bunch. Oh, look at that. Wow. And also silky green leaves. Thank you so much. Oh, let’s go. Oh, they all go in the basket. Thank you, friends. In the basket. In the basket. Whoa.
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In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the Revenge of the Chud — the astonishing wave of woke flops across Hollywood and gaming. From Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey getting destroyed in reactions, to Disney’s Snow White bombing, Marvel flops, Ubisoft’s collapse, and more, they explore why “go woke, go broke” is finally hitting critical mass.
They dive deep into the cultural shift: the explosion of right-leaning AI creativity (Skybrow Cinematic Universe, Leaflet vibe-coding, based AI music/videos), the mysterious disappearance of woke consumers and leftist counterculture, and why the right is building new artistic languages with no real opposition.
Plus: homeschooling chaos, Reality Fabricator (RFAB) updates, techno-feudalism, and why the future of culture belongs to those actually creating.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about the year of the chud. W- I thought last year was the year of the chud in terms- ... of woke flops. But a lot of other channels, they’ll do an episode on every woke flop, every big conservative win.
[00:00:16] I wanted to cluster all of these together because now- ... their frequency and scale has been genuinely astonishing. And I think to a point where people are beginning to, even in the industry, be like, “Oh, we can’t do this anymore. Like, we cannot cast these types of individuals anymore. We cannot lead with X types of characters anymore.
[00:00:44] Like, the market simply does not tolerate it.”
[00:00:47] Speaker: such as Christopher Nolan’s, , Odyssey, which has just been absolutely destroyed in reactions on YouTube with videos attacking it or mocking it, getting more views than it has, , with a huge negative like to dislike ratio. , And, , especially for a movie that like this mainstream, this big. , And, , I think what Hollywood may take away from this is you cannot cast black people in non-black roles going forwards and you cannot cast trans people as cis people going forwards.
[00:01:19] I think not that you can’t cast these people more broadly, but those are things they should have known. I mean, like we learned you can’t cast white people as black people a while ago. Why did it take them so long to learn that with white people? Or maybe they won’t learn. As you know, I said in the Kirsha thing, , we had to literally shut down all of Ubisoft to \ get it through their sick skull, , that we didn’t want that slop.
[00:01:44] , So maybe we’ll have to shut down a lot of Hollywood as well.
[00:01:46] Speaker 10: Love the women 87% like dislike ratio for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Oh my God, 446,000 dislike a ruskies
[00:01:58] Malcolm Collins: And what’s interesting about this, and, and this is what I’m going to start with, ‘cause I think it’s the, the most interesting part other than just cheering every individual victory, is it sort of feels like we don’t have anyone playing against us, and I want to explore why. We have another episode where we go into this, called, like, The Mystery of the Missing Woke Customer. Oh,
[00:02:23] yeah ...
[00:02:24] because if we look at the number of people, even number of people who, like, I know of in my life who are still very urban monoculture-
[00:02:33] Mm-hmm
[00:02:34] um, there should be a buyer base for woke-ified products. And yet-
[00:02:41] Simone Collins: Right ...
[00:02:42] Malcolm Collins: we are seeing numbers that are, like, 50 people bought it or something. You know, like, in some of the instances it’ll be like a, you know, 5,000 people bought something that cost 300 million to make, right? Like, it, there are numbers that simply do not make sense.
[00:02:59] But I had this realization.
[00:03:01] Simone Collins: Well, no, there was one other detail that you said in that episode that really stuck with me was that when you looked into it, a lot of the developers of these w- woke audience targeted games that no woke people are buying, themselves don’t even eat the dog food, as we say in Silicon Valley.
[00:03:15] Like, they don’t, they wouldn’t even buy the games they’re developing, if fact they’re just- Oh, yeah. Well, I mean,
[00:03:18] Malcolm Collins: a number of
[00:03:18] Simone Collins: woke games- ... consuming 90s media, right?
[00:03:20] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, if you even look at a game l- like Concord or whatever, when that bombed, or, or Mixtape, like, if, even if the development team was playing it, they would have better numbers, right?
[00:03:29] Like, the, the, the numbers are so low, they almost don’t make sense. And w- I had this realization that changed a lot of this for me, which is I was talking with a reporter, a trans reporter who writes on us sometimes. I actually think she’s quite a based individual. I have no negative feelings towards this individual.
[00:03:49] Y- you- ... she’s one of those, you know, based trans people, if you, if you know any of them. They, they actually exist. But she was like, “Anything new going on in AI? [00:04:00] Like, what are you thinking about in AI? What is your community talking about in AI?” And I was like, “W- w- like AI is everything in my community right now.
[00:04:08] Like do you know about the Skybrow Cinematic Universe?” Right? And she I mean, obviously she didn’t, but I started to walk her through it, and then I had this realization and I started researching it, and there isn’t. If you look at the, the right-leaning community online, you’ve got you know, Leaflet will be on a stream, and she’ll be like, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we made a video game about what the tribe of warrior women in Africa who are actually like super involved with slaving and the people trying to stop them were the British, if we made a video game about that tribe?”
[00:04:43] And so she’ll just start like vibe coding it on the screen in the background while she’s streaming.
[00:04:49] Simone Collins: That’s so fun.
[00:04:51] Malcolm Collins: Or the other game she made when she was streaming last time. I mean, I keep seeing her make ones a lot. The other one was on trying to catch Mexicans crossing the border with a lasso.
[00:04:58] Oh my God. Oh, my God. The other one was going to the Anthony trial and selling a pineapple that you had you know- Oh, no ... kept in the, what do you call it? Kool-Aid or whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever the, Something about Kool-Aid and pineapples ... the funny viral drink is.
[00:05:13] Simone Collins: Whatever.
[00:05:13] Malcolm Collins: And then people would try to rob you.
[00:05:15] And just fantastic. I love it. But it’s, it’s- Mm ... you see that. You see, the shared... And this, this is very interesting to me because I realized when I was talking to the reporter about it and they’re like, “Well, that’s interesting.” And I go, “No, no, no, no, no. Like, you don’t get it.” Like, they’re like, “Oh, y- now that this is cheap, there’s people making stuff with it.”
[00:05:36] And I’m like, that’s not really the fullness of what’s going on here. That’s a bit like looking at early 4chan and being like, “Oh, people have started, found, found a place where they can anonymously share stuff. And so th- now they’ve begun to like iteratively share images.” And it’s like, yes, that is true.
[00:05:53] But more important, a unique language and artistic style began to be developed in the way that those lang- images, those macros communicate. And this language and artistic style ended up being a dominant force in American politics you know, about 15 years, 10 years after it originated, right? And having been around during that period What is happening in the artistic language of the right and how we use AI-
[00:06:30] Simone Collins: Hmm
[00:06:31] Malcolm Collins: feels incredibly similar. It feels like this type of ... And I think if you’re on the right, or this broader community, you do not notice just how frequently you are hitting AI art, right? Mm. Like, I this happened to me when at first what I’m thinking is, like, Sky Brown stuff, and then I thought oh, well, you know, the only person who really opposes us is Dog Shocker Hasan, and then I was like, oh yeah, I should send them the, the video where Hasan raps about shocking his dog.
[00:07:05] And then I was like, oh yeah, that’s an AI video. It had actually gone out of my brain that the dog, the dog shocking video was made with AI because it wasn’t done in the stylistic language of the things that I am used to being made in AI.
[00:07:23] Simone Collins: Oh, that’s so funny.
[00:07:24] Malcolm Collins: But it is, you know, on the the secondary stylistic language.
[00:07:28] In the same way with, like, as memes were first developed, you had your Wojaks, you had your Pepes, you had your, ... The dog shocking video, in terms of its artistic meme category, falls into the same category I’d put the Spencer Pratt for, for mayor ad. Which again, is something made with AI.
[00:07:46] And what’s important to note is if you’re on the right, you’re like, “Well, of course we’re using AI to make things.”
[00:07:52] The left isn’t. I actually went into this with y- w- well, with AI to try to find [00:08:00] is there any equivalent online, like, creation, collaborative creation with AI community on the left? And the best it could find was somebody who was politically neutral and made, like, s- a, a sci-fi universe with AI which was a cool product.
[00:08:17] I, I thought it was actually- That does
[00:08:18] Simone Collins: sound really cool. Yeah ...
[00:08:19] Malcolm Collins: neat. Yeah. I, I, I tried to watch it and it was f- unfortunately for me, boring. I didn’t really like it. But-
[00:08:27] Simone Collins: We’ve obliterated- Not like- ... our attention spans. It’s fair, you
[00:08:30] Malcolm Collins: know? Well, I like, I like my stuff entertaining, right? You know? But you certainly and I
[00:08:36] Simone Collins: yeah, buddy, we’re not done. Did you finish your math lessons for the day? No.
[00:08:39] Malcolm Collins: Oh, I,
[00:08:40] Simone Collins: I couldn’t. Oh.
[00:08:41] Malcolm Collins: I think
[00:08:42] Simone Collins: we
[00:08:44] Malcolm Collins: gotta seize the luck. He
[00:08:44] Simone Collins: said five lessons today. But we got- Tell him ... PC Principal over here.
[00:08:47] Malcolm Collins: Tell
[00:08:48] Simone Collins: him.
[00:08:48] Malcolm Collins: Tell him
[00:08:48] Simone Collins: you did five- Daddy says five
[00:08:49] Malcolm Collins: lessons ... he gave you, he made a promise.
[00:08:50] Now you gotta take him up to
[00:08:50] Simone Collins: it Have you done five? You said you promised.
[00:08:52] Malcolm Collins: No. I, I t- I tried. I tried- Well, you better, you better keep your promise ... but it got sleepy and I went with Eric and I only did zero so far. Uly, you,
[00:09:01] Simone Collins: you got about an hour and a half left.
[00:09:03] Malcolm Collins: If it, if it makes you feel any better, I was watching a video today about how children typically do better if you wait to start teaching them- Oh ... language and math- Mm
[00:09:12] um, until around the age of seven. So we’re- Mm ... we’re even before where we should be doing it if we were aligning with the studies.
[00:09:19] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:09:20] Malcolm Collins: Which you should probably look into, by the way. You, you seem to have just, like, immediately defaulted to what the school system says is best without considering-
[00:09:27] Simone Collins: well, I have to maintain statutory requirements.
[00:09:30] So I don’t actually consider, like, the lessons that he has to do to meet statutory requirements for us to, like, be able to basically show the proof we have to show to keep him homeschooled. I don’t consider that with education. Yeah. Figured that that would be... Love you, buddy But yeah, it’s, it’s the stuff that he learns with us.
[00:09:54] I, I’m not, I’m... When I think he needs to learn certain concepts, I’m not gonna have him do lessons to learn those concepts. I’m going to teach him those concepts. We have different versions. It’s, it’s like a, a two-sided homeschooling system. One is keep him out of public school, which means meeting the statutory requirements.
[00:10:13] Side two is actually teach him things that he needs to succeed.
[00:10:16] Malcolm Collins: They allow- And I’m, we’re doing both ... for, like, Waldorf schools in Pennsylvania, and they operate on this principle. There, there are ways around this.
[00:10:23] Simone Collins: Mordorf. Where you
[00:10:25] Malcolm Collins: go to- Waldorf or whatever ... Mordor. Anyway so the point I’m making here is that there isn’t an opposing visual form being created, artistic form or culture being created on the left, which feels very different from the early 4chan days.
[00:10:44] Hmm. Because in the early 4chan days, while 4chan was developing the culture that is now- ... controlling the White House Twitter feed, right?
[00:10:52] Simone Collins: And whoever is running that, oh my goodness gracious ...
[00:10:55] Malcolm Collins: we need to do a meme review for, for White House account.
[00:10:59] Simone Collins: The things they’ve posted, this is next level.
[00:11:01] Malcolm Collins: Unhinged AI funness.
[00:11:03] Unhinged. Like, I love it too.
[00:11:05] Simone Collins: So, yeah, yeah. I just, I, it’s so, it’s so well- They
[00:11:07] Malcolm Collins: had a, actually, they had a great AI... They’ve done a number of really good AI projects. Like, the one recently was of Dr. Trump curing a bunch of lefty celebrities- Ooh ... of Trump Derangement Syndrome and them talking- Oh, wow
[00:11:18] Speaker 6: Diagnosed with TDS? The symptoms can be relentless. Fortunately, I’m Dr. Trump, and I have a treatment plan. Let’s hear what some of my patients have to say. I have been suffering for over a decade, and after listening to Dr. Trump, I can see some results. Man, I’ve been suffering for years. I really didn’t believe that was help out there.
[00:11:44] Speaker 8: That was when I came across this video on TV. I really thought I was a lost cause. This was gonna affect me for the rest of my life. But after using the treatment plan, I can see a difference
[00:11:57] Malcolm Collins: about how he changed their life. But, like, [00:12:00] what is fascinating about all of this is it used to be we were competing against Tumblr culture. And the- Ooh ... language and visual forms and cultural norms that they developed came to dominate the modern left. Hmm. But right now, we aren’t actually fighting with anyone.
[00:12:25] And what it... This really hit me as I was like, “Who do we on the right, like, pretend our core opponent is in the songs, in the videos, in the, in the stuff?” It’s, like, Hasan Piker, which I have never in my entire life met a real fan of Hasan Piker. I, and we’ve talked about this before, struggle to even model somebody who might be a fan of Hasan Piker.
[00:12:52] I was surprised to find out that his fan base is actually majority male as well, which- It is, wow ... is even more confusing. Who-
[00:12:59] Simone Collins: That is, because the only people that we have heard of are some women who listen to this podcast who have either friends or coworkers who are female who listen to Hasan Piker.
[00:13:09] That’s it
[00:13:11] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, and, and Hasan Piker has like a small sort of orbit of community, if, if you know what I mean? But they’re, they’re minuscule compared to... Like, if you look at the, the, the wider community that we’re a part of, you know, your, your Nux and your Asmogold and your Tectone and your Goth Guy and your Leaflet and your Kirsha and your Smug Alana and your just Powder can’t, can’t leave her out.
[00:13:38] A- outside of even the, the AI creators, it’s a fairly... There, there isn’t a Hasan equivalent to this.
[00:13:46] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:13:47] Malcolm Collins: Right? There, there, there are orbiters, but it’s not like a constellation of real beliefs or anything like that. And this is when I realized, like are we fighting, like, the air? Like, do we just dunk on Hasan to dunk on Hasan?
[00:14:02] Speaker 2: To give you an idea of what I mean here, the two figures our community makes fun of the most other than Hasan are his fat Muslim orbiter and mod who has like sixty regular watchers that I’m aware of, , I don’t remember her name, and who’s currently in a lawsuit with Ian Klein. And then also in a lawsuit with Ian Klein, we often make fun of iDubbbz.
[00:14:24] But iDubbbz we make fun of because at one point in the past he was famous, but he’s certainly not famous now. He doesn’t have an audience now. That we have to dig to that extent, where are our enemies? I don’t know. The large leftist content producers who I respect enough to not make fun of, like ContraPoints, simply don’t produce videos anymore, , or not frequently.
[00:14:49] , Philosophy Tube, we’ve done a video on one of their takes, but like even on the left they’re seen as sort of a creep who tried to copy ContraPoints after dating her like her entire life, , which is really creepy. What, by that I mean is apparently , he dated her and then he went trans and then he like took her style and career, , which is a weird thing to do, and she has acknowledged this in a deleted tweet.
[00:15:14] , But anyway, yeah, she’s like, “You think your stalkers are bad? At least nobody tried to steal your life.”
[00:15:19] Speaker 3: Actually, now that I think about it, that could explain part of why the leftist influencer class disappeared. They have like psychological breakdowns and become incredibly unproductive. , They’re just not as hardworking as well. , Like Contrapoints just dying off as a channel due to not working as hard or not having as loud of a cultural voice.
[00:15:38] Or, another person who this happened to was, , Lindsay Ellis. Uh, you know, her, her own side turned on her at one point, and she ended up having a bunch of mental issues as a result of that. , And then there was--
[00:15:49] Aluma Hottie, who ended up being a scam artist and everybody descended on her like sharks
[00:15:55] Malcolm Collins: Like, he doesn’t seem to have credibility with any mainstream [00:16:00] demographic or movement or anything like that. Hmm. And it’s really fascinating where I project what’s going to happen, or when I project what’s going to happen, to culture moving forwards, given that there isn’t a meaningful leftist counterculture building something right now
[00:16:27] Hmm.
[00:16:28] And I am confused by that. I know that leftists are like reactively anti-AI, but the right had some people who were anti-AI in the early days. I guess just everyone ignored them. I think it may, it might be at the right that we got better at ignoring the people who were shrieking at us.
[00:16:50] Simone Collins: I, I think a huge portion of it is that they all went to Blue Sky and that-
[00:16:55] Malcolm Collins: Well, this is the secondary thing.
[00:16:57] Yeah ... I was talking, and I’ve noticed this as well, to the journalist about... I was like, “Who are the futurists? Who are the pro-AI people on the left?” And we both came to sort of realize they exist on the left, but they don’t make stuff. So they’re typically like in programming AI or like, she mentioned Cory Doctorow is one of these people.
[00:17:21] And I’m like, Cory Doctorow is kind of pro-AI kind of trepidatious on AI when I actually read his stuff. But by the way, you can look at, look at the thing starting up. Hey.
[00:17:35] So getting, getting that all set up. For our kids hopefully, I really wanna get this working by tomorrow. That, that would be so cool that I can start, you know, having people buy the hardware products
[00:17:46] Simone Collins: And trying it out, well-
[00:17:47] Malcolm Collins: And trying them out,
[00:17:48] Simone Collins: yeah Let’s play test it on the kids first, ‘cause you might wanna make a lot of design changes based on what they respond to
[00:17:56] Malcolm Collins: But there are people on the left who are okay with AI or even futurist, they just don’t make stuff
[00:18:04] Simone Collins: Hmm
[00:18:05] Malcolm Collins: And I f- I wanted to think through this.
[00:18:07] One is, and I will say this very strongly, this was not entirely organic on the right. This was very seeded in a way where what I would say is having it called the Skybrow Cinematic Universe, I think makes perfect sense.
[00:18:26] Speaker 4: What I mean by that is if the human being who is behind Sky Brows didn’t exist, I don’t know that we would’ve gotten off on all of this. Simone and I used to make AI songs at the end of our videos, but we never put in that much effort because I simply didn’t know that a product that good was possible.
[00:18:40] It hadn’t been modeled to us that this can be done, and I think all of us seeing that in such a familiar way where it felt like such a down to earth, “Oh, I watch the same types of people you watch,” showed us all what we could attempt, and we are the type of community that when we see something, we go, “Hey, I should try that.”
[00:18:59] Malcolm Collins: And also talking a bit about the language that’s being developed in this before we go over all these woke flops ‘cause I, I just wanna think about this.
[00:19:06] It, like, feels like we’re fighting a cultural battle and no one’s on the other side of the cultural battle. It’s almost Truman Show-esque. These-
[00:19:15] Simone Collins: What it feels like to me is loosely tied and overlapping affiliative groups that enjoy similar things and enjoy membership in their overlapping cultures.
[00:19:30] But, but this is- And they don’t really care about what outsiders think. I mean, it’s, we’ve reached a point at which it doesn’t really matter that much No, they
[00:19:35] Malcolm Collins: do. They do. Actually, I think, I actually think that that’s what is happening-
[00:19:39] Simone Collins: Really? ...
[00:19:39] Malcolm Collins: and, and causing a lot of this phenomenon, is most people are not woke.
[00:19:46] Even most urban monoculture people are not woke. They might even think of themselves as a little subversive. But at the end of the day, most people want status and to be seen as erudite, elite, [00:20:00] sophisticated.
[00:20:00] Speaker 12: A recent study essentially confirmed this. It was done at Northwestern University, Michigan, on performative progressivism in 2025 is when it came out. It showed that 88% of students pretend to hold more progressive views than they really do. , And,
[00:20:14] 77% said that they disagreed with the idea that gender identity should override biological sex in domains in sports and health and public data. But that 77% also said they would never voice that in public. 80% say they misrepresent their views in coursework, you know, knowing that they need to lie about their views to get good grades.
[00:20:31] , This is the degree to which we are teaching people you have to hide any conservative belief you have if you want to be seen as high status or get ahead in society
[00:20:41] Malcolm Collins: We were interacting with a, an old classmate of mine recently who really fit into this category, right?
[00:20:47] In, in terms of, like, why she found our views so mortifying and the way we’re expressing them so mortifying is because it was trashy, it was low class, it was because the wokes have successfully branded certain views and ways of talking and ways of acting as, as being that. And when other people have done podcasts on us they bragged about how their title cards didn’t use AI.
[00:21:13] And I don’t think that they were anti-AI people But they thought that that was something worthy of being proud of when all their title cards were was cutting out people’s faces- Yeah ... that they had found from Google Images and putting them on the title card.
[00:21:27] Simone Collins: For real, yeah. Not, not a flex.
[00:21:32] Malcolm Collins: Not a flex. The, our AI title cards are actually pretty hard to create.
[00:21:35] Like, they, talent goes in to being this based, people. Ugh.
[00:21:40] Do you know that yesterday we had the Pope being mesmerized by a trans gun? Oh my gosh. That was an awesome title card. Even the, the clickbaitiness of the title cards requires some work. You know?
[00:21:54] Simone Collins: It does, yeah. The, the, there is genuinely actually for, for every title card there are two to five alternate options that we discuss.
[00:22:02] We, we put way too much thought into these.
[00:22:07] Malcolm Collins: No, title cards are the most important part of an episode. I, I know-
[00:22:09] Simone Collins: I know, I know ... they take the most- They’re, they’re the face of an episode. They’re the cover of the book. They matter completely and, and entirely. And yes, we do put a lot of effort into them and, you know.
[00:22:19] Malcolm Collins: But I think what we’re missing is those types of people don’t go out and buy a woke show. They don’t even consider themselves woke. They’re slightly annoyed- Yeah ... by woke people.
[00:22:30] Simone Collins: Well, I think this might be- But- It’s similar to a dynamic we’re finding with Reality Fabricator, and I’d love to see this somehow be defied eventually.
[00:22:39] But right now, like- 95% of our customers are male.
[00:22:45] Malcolm Collins: And- But about taking advantage that sites users are female.
[00:22:47] Simone Collins: Yeah. And I feel like that there might be a similar dynamic with far progressives, where in the end, like the money just isn’t there. Th- they’re not buying the things, and that makes them consumers with not a lot of influence in the end when they’re working at least with companies that actually look for a return on investment.
[00:23:08] And I will say that there has been a period where I guess there’s been this weird subsidy of woke products. It lasted a lot longer than all the go woke, go broke canaries in the coal mine would have thought. But I think maybe we’re reaching the end of that. Well, I mean, look,
[00:23:22] Malcolm Collins: they all, they all start going broke as soon as USAID gets shut down.
[00:23:26] Simone Collins: Weirdly.
[00:23:26] Malcolm Collins: Surprising, huh?
[00:23:28] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No, there, there is this very strange dynamic of large groups and segments in societies not paying for certain types of products, just not being meaningful consumers, and that, that will have an effect on culture.
[00:23:41] Malcolm Collins: So, the, and I’ll go into all the flops in just a second.
[00:23:45] You guys have all seen all the numbers before probably, so not that exciting, but the, the sheer scale of it. I mean, we culturally took down Ubisoft, which was one of the largest [00:24:00] brands in gaming, simply by removing their customer base, right? This has been astonishing that you could take down... I used to buy every Assassin’s Creed release, by the way.
[00:24:15] I quite like
[00:24:16] Simone Collins: them. Yeah. I remember you looking forward to them with great anticipation. I feel like the last one you enjoyed was the pirate one.
[00:24:22] Malcolm Collins: That, that’s often thought of as the best one, but it’s not the last one I enjoyed.
[00:24:25] Simone Collins: Maybe the Paris one was okay.
[00:24:27] Malcolm Collins: I was okay- Did you like that one? ... up to the, the Viking one.
[00:24:30] I thought the Viking one was fine.
[00:24:31] Simone Collins: Oh, I don’t remember you saying anything about the Viking one ever.
[00:24:35] Malcolm Collins: Well, it wasn’t as good as the other. I mean, I didn’t like it as much as like the... I, I thought the Paris one was also fine. The one that I’ve replayed is not the pirate one, but the American Revolution one.
[00:24:44] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:24:44] Malcolm Collins: That one’s I, I think gets, gets undersold in terms of, You could, you get to play in areas that are like where we live today- Oh, that’s fun ... but in the colonial period.
[00:24:53] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:24:53] Malcolm Collins: You
[00:24:53] Simone Collins: know. But the pirate one had the sea shanties.
[00:24:56] Malcolm Collins: The pirate one had the sea shanties. Yes, it did. So how quickly people turn against this stuff that were f- previously, like, totally okay with it.
[00:25:03] Like me being okay with drippies of wokeness, and then just reaching this point where it’s like I’m absolutely radicalized. I’m not touching anything that you people have touched. And th- so I think that that’s the, the key part of the mystery. Actual wokes are incredibly rare. Most of it is your average aspiring to be upper class, respected, urban professional.
[00:25:28] Yeah.
[00:25:28] That’s who actually makes up the muscle of the wokes, but they don’t like the wokes, and they don’t identify as woke.
[00:25:36] Hmm.
[00:25:36] They identify as the cultural elite. And keep in mind, the, the people who identify as a cultural elite are always going to be much more than the number of people who actually are culturally elite, you know?
[00:25:47] These are the people who have their Substack that they pay for people to read, you know, like, the, the sad, sad situations like that. But to continue Let’s go over some explicit drops other than Ubisoft, because that was absolutely crazy that that happened. I mean remember the, the... Oh, God, the trans one.
[00:26:07] Veilguard came out. Oh. And the numbers were astonishingly low, like in the low thousands in terms of purchases. But recently even things like Disney, so if you look at Snow White, Snow White had a budget of 240 million and 270 million, with heavy marketing on top of that. Mm. With a worldwide gross of only around 200 million.
[00:26:28] That means that they lost around $100 million.
[00:26:31] Simone Collins: That is impossible sounding. That’s, that’s vaporizing money. Oh, my gosh.
[00:26:38] Malcolm Collins: That is, that is a sto- Mm. Mm. I mean, if Rachel Zegler ever gets a job again, I am going to... like whoever gives it to her just is insane. Because she single-handedly s- broke that. Like, it didn’t need to be that bad.
[00:26:53] Simone Collins: Come on, they made the fairest of them all about who was the most fair. Who was the
[00:26:58] Malcolm Collins: communist-est, yeah.
[00:27:00] Simone Collins: I... No. I think th- this... There were many. There were many people who played a role, okay? That sounded so bad.
[00:27:09] Malcolm Collins: The
[00:27:10] Simone Collins: world. Oh, and remember when they originally tried to cast non-dwarves for the seven dwarves?
[00:27:16] They were just a multicolored group of mi- misfits. That’s-
[00:27:20] Malcolm Collins: It looked so dumb and bad,
[00:27:22] Simone Collins: and I don’t know- I would have preferred to see that, honestly. The CGI dwarfs looked super creepy, so I would have preferred the, the misfits Which was
[00:27:29] Malcolm Collins: so much worse than real dwarves. Why did they not just... Right,
[00:27:33] Simone Collins: yeah, and again, totally screwing over the dwarf acting community, which, you know, their, their roles are few and far between.
[00:27:38] Give them a, something to work with, people. They must have been so excited. They’re like, “Finally, they’re making a new Snow White. This is our moment. We’ve been waiting for decades for another job.” And then they cast... And then they went CGI. Anyway, yeah, miss- missed the boat.
[00:27:55] Malcolm Collins: The-
[00:27:55] Simone Collins: Okay. How many left until done?
[00:27:57] Okay, [00:28:00]
[00:28:00] Malcolm Collins: one.
[00:28:02] Simone Collins: Oh, buddy, I’m so sorry, but you are gonna have to do some more, because you have not done one if you have 40%. Or 20%. Okay?
[00:28:21] Malcolm Collins: Tell him he has to go do it right now- Mm-hmm ... or daddy’s gonna be very mad. Why? Because- And Krampus might come
[00:28:27] Simone Collins: Oh, daddy says Krampus might come. He, yeah, he doesn’t, yeah. Because he,
[00:28:31] Malcolm Collins: he made a promise.
[00:28:32] Oh.
[00:28:32] Simone Collins: He said, “You made a promise.” And to do a course actually means, to do a lesson actually means to do it. We know you’re good at these, okay?
[00:28:39] Malcolm Collins: I didn’t know. I’m sorry. It’s
[00:28:41] Simone Collins: okay. Just
[00:28:42] Malcolm Collins: go ahead. I thought 4% or 20% means no thing.
[00:28:45] Simone Collins: Yeah, it means failed But it’s okay, buddy. You can do it. We believe in you.
[00:28:50] Malcolm Collins: How many do I have
[00:28:51] Simone Collins: to do?
[00:28:52] Well, you have to do five that you actually completed and passed Okay.
[00:28:58] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but what about these two ones down here?
[00:29:01] Simone Collins: Those two count. Okay?
[00:29:04] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like, yeah, like this one. Yeah. Is that 60%?
[00:29:06] Simone Collins: Uh-huh, that one is, yeah, 60% right
[00:29:08] Malcolm Collins: there. And we don’t, and we don’t even know this.
[00:29:10] Simone Collins: Yeah, and when it says N/A, it doesn’t matter.
[00:29:12] You just completed it, and that’s all that matters.
[00:29:14] Malcolm Collins: Oh, do I have to, do I have to do more?
[00:29:14] Simone Collins: So three more, okay? At least. Three. Three more.
[00:29:20] Malcolm Collins: Three.
[00:29:20] Simone Collins: Yeah. Thank you, my friend. I wanna- I appreciate you focusing in on this, ‘cause you did make a promise
[00:29:29] I wanna do this fast. Well, but if you do it fast, you’ll have to keep doing more He has to learn he can’t just try to speed run these by just answering all the questions wrong.
[00:29:37] Malcolm Collins: Okay, M- Marvels. Marvels. You had total cost was around 300 million worldwide. Mm. It only made around 200 million. Again lowest grossing MCU film. And this was around 100 million loss. Supergirl, the one that everyone’s talking about right now it looks like it’s under 99 million right now, and it cost around 275 million. So
[00:29:57] Simone Collins: it’s- How many of these cost this much when so much is just filmed on, like, a sound stage in front of a green screen?
[00:30:06] Malcolm Collins: I mean it’s just-
[00:30:06] Simone Collins: Like, films should cost less to film now than they ever have before.
[00:30:10] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but unions and they don’t like... I mean, they’re, they’re using AI too is the thing. Yeah. Like, how are they failing even when using AI?
[00:30:17] Simone Collins: Oh, I thought the unions banned AI.
[00:30:20] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. They use AI for special effects now.
[00:30:23] Simone Collins: Oh, okay, okay. Oh, but just not for actors.
[00:30:26] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Then you have The, a- and the other thing that we’ve noticed is that on the other side, like when our side releases something or they try to cancel something, it almost always does really well. Obviously the biggest example of this was Hogwarts Legacy, which just- Oh
[00:30:45] absolutely crushed records. It did. So the same thing happened with Black Myth: Wukong, Stellar Blade, Warhammer Forty- 40K Space Marines 2, Mm ... and things like Helldivers
[00:30:56] Simone Collins: 2. Oh yeah, Helldivers. I just kept hearing about that everywhere when it came out.
[00:31:00] Malcolm Collins: And then Sound- In a good way ... of Freedom and the King of Kings, and David and recently on X Citizen Vigilante- Yeah
[00:31:08] a film about going around and murdering immigrants who are raping people which is a fun idea for a movie. I like it. Elon made it free on X or something.
[00:31:19] Simone Collins: For 48 hours, yeah. After Germany gave it a non-rated status, which was sort of their functional way to try to ban it.
[00:31:29] Malcolm Collins: That’s awful, but I love that that’s how he pushed back.
[00:31:32] Like, “Oh, you, you’re gonna give this unrated?” Yeah. “I’ll make sure everybody sees this movie.”
[00:31:37] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:31:38] Malcolm Collins: And starring by Armie Hammer, who-
[00:31:40] Simone Collins: Armie Hammer ...
[00:31:42] Malcolm Collins: I’m glad he’s making a comeback. I always felt his cancellation was... I, I think he was a jerk to his wife, but I, I felt the extent of the cancellation was heavily unjustified.
[00:31:51] Yeah. And it, it, so, you know- Yeah ... our side doesn’t f*****g care.
[00:31:57] Simone Collins: We really don’t, man [00:32:00]
[00:32:01] Malcolm Collins: We really don’t.
[00:32:02] Simone Collins: It’s honestly just appropriate casting in the end, so like, you know. Right. I think that he read the, he read the reputation. It’s exactly what he should do.
[00:32:09] Malcolm Collins: The, the, the ha- have it be something that he’s like super into, going around murdering these people.
[00:32:14] Make, make it more believable. Yeah ... make it, make it more morally dubious. I think people love that, the Dexter thing, you know. Mm, yeah ... it’s just like I just can’t stop killing people, so I guess I’m gonna make it bad guys. But then have them also be migrant rape- Ooh ... migrant rapes. But yeah where I’m com- a- and the other thing about the leftists, and I, I did, I have noticed on other videos, ‘cause I actually decided to at one point study their, their behavior, like what do they say they consume?
[00:32:42] And one thing that we know is that the leftists-
[00:32:49] Who infiltrated video games, like obviously famously Anita Sarkeesian being caught on film saying, “Well, I don’t really play video games much at all,” Oh, man ... do not consume that type of media. And so the question is if they’re not consuming what they’re creating, like the category of media that they’ve infiltrated, what did leftists actually consume?
[00:33:09] And what I found was it’s mostly just the same thing over and over and over again from their childhood. So I mean, they’re still like rewatching Steven Universe or something. They are still rewatching... And part of it is because they’ve become so hyper-sensitized to anything they might see
[00:33:32] Help for what?
[00:33:34] Simone Collins: Octavian, please. Finish the lessons, okay?
[00:33:37] Malcolm Collins: Octavian, Krampus will come.
[00:33:40] Oh, yeah, yeah. That, so they, they, they re-watch a lot of the content from their childhood because they become so hyper-sensitized to things that they might find offensive that consuming new forms of media and content- Oh ... is really challenging for them, even when it’s aggressively woke.
[00:33:58] Simone Collins: See, I,
[00:33:59] Malcolm Collins: I
[00:33:59] Simone Collins: just thought it was for the same reason why we consume so much content from the 90, ‘90s, is that it’s just better then.
[00:34:04] It’s just so much better.
[00:34:05] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it often is a lot better.
[00:34:08] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:34:09] Malcolm Collins: to the extent that, like, we were watching, what’s the movie that we were watching? I was like, “This feels like a movie from the ‘90s.”
[00:34:14] Simone Collins: Hail Mary. Hail Mary, yeah. Yeah, felt like it was from that. It, it... Or, like, and I just hadn’t heard a good original score in so long that it actually stood out to me.
[00:34:22] That shouldn’t be a thing. Why, why, you know? That, like, every other score, film score recently has just felt so generic. Like they just are recycling old music. And you can
[00:34:32] Malcolm Collins: watch it on Amazon Prime, by the way, if you want. It’s on for, for Prime members. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s long and quite good. I, I’d suggest it for the family.
[00:34:40] Simone Collins: Yeah. It made me cry, but I guess I’m in a cry kind of place right now, so.
[00:34:45] Malcolm Collins: I
[00:34:45] Simone Collins: don’t like when movies make me cry, but in a, it’s okay.
[00:34:48] Malcolm Collins: But that, that movie could come out and not be aggressively woke. I mean, when somebody said one of the things that got them about the movie, and I actually agree with this, but I don’t think it’s woke.
[00:34:59] I think it’s unfortunately the way it would really be- Mm-hmm ... is they have this council where it’s supposed to be, like, all the top scientists from around the world. Yeah. And it’s, like, clearly got somebody from, like, you know, your African representatives, your, you know, your representatives from, like, Eastern Europe, your representatives from, like, S- South America, your rep-
[00:35:17] Simone Collins: That’s what one of these would look like today.
[00:35:19] Malcolm Collins: Right. And he’s like, “But really, if w- it, like, if the world was actually under threat, we’d want, like, a bunch of people from America and Israel. Like, let’s be honest here.” Right. Like, is that basically how we’re running the world now? Just, like, the smart people from America and Israel are in the room deciding what happens next.
[00:35:37] Simone Collins: I- With the caveat that the smart people from America are actually the smartest people from all around the world. And then the people in Israel are just- True.
[00:35:43] Malcolm Collins: I mean, yeah, you get some Indians in there. You get some, you know- Yeah ... we, we, we, this is true. It was a
[00:35:47] Simone Collins: lot of the- Like, when you, when you listen to the All-In podcast w- which is some of the most, you know, the world’s most successful investors and VCs, like, the proportion of them that are immigrants to America, huge.
[00:35:56] Elon Musk, immigrant to America. So many of these people were not born in America, [00:36:00] and that’s notable.
[00:36:02] Malcolm Collins: Where, where, where were, where were they, where were they talking?
[00:36:05] Well, I think within the next generation that’s where we’re gonna be. I think especially as world economies start collapsing and AI becomes bigger, more and more of just ignoring the rest of the world is gonna become the norm. Just being like, “We do not need you on this project. We will give you some of our AI money to keep you alive if you’re nice.”
[00:36:20] Simone Collins: Oh, gosh.
[00:36:21] Malcolm Collins: And now we can add the caveat because we’re Republicans, if you’re nice. The Democrats would give bo- money to people who don’t even like us. In, in fact, we should send no money to countries that have negative favorability of the United States. I don’t care how much suffering there is in that country.
[00:36:35] Yeah,
[00:36:35] Simone Collins: that, that feels right. That feels very fair.
[00:36:38] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You have to, you have to vote on the surveys we love America if you want aid. Certain, certain aid thresholds, like n- 90% or something, and then you get, then you get aid. But anyway, the wider point here being is I think that we are in a very important cultural moment where new forms of art and media are being defined, new artistic languages are being defined.
[00:37:02] Oh, and the point I was going to make is I think part of the thing that got the right into all of this, that made the right productive with these types of artistic assets, is a number of influential people on the right just sat down and intentionally decided to inspire people. When the first Sky Browse video went viral, that went viral, the Elon video- Ah
[00:37:29] When, when I saw that video, I, I immediately shared it with Simone. It didn’t feel like something I was aware was possible with AI technology at the time. I saw that, and I was like, “This is catchy, entertaining, culturally on point for somebody like me. I feel like heard. I, I’m, I’m compelled by this.
[00:37:54] I feel like this person culturally gets me,” right? Mm. And then the next video comes out, and this is when he started adding in even more streamers and stuff like that, and it was streamers who I know we overlap heavily with or I’ve done collabs with or whatever. And then I feel even more like, and a lot of people see, like, oh, you- you’re, like, looking at my inbox.
[00:38:17] You’re looking at my YouTube video feed. You get this perception of a shared cultural identity from the video. And then from that, because then streamers decided to react to this, then other people started producing videos mimicking aspects of the stylistic element, but building on them.
[00:38:39] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:38:39] Malcolm Collins: And that is what led to the explosion of the online AI music video phenomenon.
[00:38:47] Now we’re in a secondary category of building, which where I talked about Leaflet Sitting down and saying, like, “I am going to make this game to show you how good AI is at vibe coding, how quickly it can create something,” is intentionally about activating our base to get off their butts and start creating stuff because now we can consume each other’s content.
[00:39:13] Every you know, Holy Ball or Skybrow, there’s a new guy that I’ve been liking who did a good video on K-Nucks or Nucksuckin or something, a fantastic song.
[00:39:21] Speaker 5: A secret door if you think you’ve seen it all Always crab on, on, on. No permission
[00:39:32] Malcolm Collins: Every song of theirs that we consume that our kids hear is an urban monoculture is a, a big media song they’re not hearing. And as we begin to produce more full-length anime, which I expect we’ll start seeing in our community within probably the next year every one of those I consume is something of the urban monocultures I’m not consuming, right?
[00:39:54] The more content creators we get in our space of that variety, the more we can... And this is [00:40:00] something you see with RFAB, which is also a new way of building and building a company. People have shown the meme when they’re talking about rfab.ai, which is our site, of, oh, it’s like one of those guns which has, like, a knife taped on it and, like, a, a, the spatula and, like, a...
[00:40:17] because of all the different things, whether it’s you know, the AI for recipe generation or the AI for narrative DMing or the, the site that searches all not safe for work image bureaus at the same time or all not safe for work you- video sites or all torrent sites at the same time and strips all the a- annoyingness and ads out of the torrent sites or all of the...
[00:40:36] That one, by the way, needs the Bridge app to be running in your browser for it to work. By the way, when was the last time you tested the Bridge app?
[00:40:42] Simone Collins: I need to test it again.
[00:40:44] Malcolm Collins: Okay, you need to test it before- There’s an echo Okay I hear a slight echo from you, but you need to test it before you go downstairs ‘cause that means it’s been days.
[00:40:51] Ooh. And I had done the upload from my end. I just need to see that it opens.
[00:40:58] Simone Collins: So you want me to download it and reinstall ...
[00:41:00] Malcolm Collins: yeah, just download it and open it. See if you can open it. Sure. That’s all, that’s all I need to see. If it opens, it works. It’s, it’s more of an authentification issue to make sure that that was correctly applied.
[00:41:09] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:41:13] Malcolm Collins: But the point being is, is it’s all of these different products, and there’s, like, three or four products in the site that are in the works now that you guys haven’t seen yet. You’ve got the hardware feature, which I’ve mentioned. We’ve got a tutoring feature for kids. We’ve got a a feature w- that it, you know, does email consolidation.
[00:41:32] I’ve got a video streaming feature. I’ve got a video editing feature that auto-edits videos for production. And what, what combines everything on the site, like the Vtuber creation, it’s that it’s stuff that at some point was interested in somebody in our community. They’re either fans... Like, a fan asked me, he goes, “Malcolm, can you make a feature that can turn text into audio and determine who’s speaking and use different speakers?”
[00:41:55] And I’m like, “Fine,” and that’s live on the site right now. S-
[00:41:59] Simone Collins: Yes. That’s good. That’s 80%. Good job, buddy.
[00:42:05] Malcolm Collins: Keep going. Tell him to keep going so Krampus doesn’t get him. Daddy
[00:42:07] Simone Collins: says keep going, okay? You’re doing great. I’m really proud of you.
[00:42:13] Malcolm Collins: Okay.
[00:42:13] Simone Collins: Thank you, my friend. Thank you for focusing. ,
[00:42:17] Malcolm Collins: Talking about the new type of website. Yeah. But I think that this is where companies are going in the age when you can just summon any AI you want, right? To make any product you want, is we’re sort of developing in our community a degree of cultural siloing- Hmm
[00:42:32] in terms of the products that we’re making, right? Like, I don’t work on actually making the AI models, but if you’re on our site, you can use the Rhodes model, which has been trained to be super based, right? What by, by a fan. So I’m gonna be able to put that in as an API. Leaflet doesn’t spend a lot of her time making utility software like VTuber rigs and stuff like this but she spends a ton of time on her music videos.
[00:42:59] You know, if you look at the Skybrows. Skybrows, I, and I can’t make videos like the ones he makes. I, I just don’t take the time- No, he’s so good ... to develop those skills yet. And-
[00:43:09] Simone Collins: Well, and he also has a very distinct style. It is definitely a human plus AI thing, ‘cause you, you can tell even just from listening to it if it’s a Skybrows video from various flourishes that he maintains throughout his all, all of his songs.
[00:43:20] I love it.
[00:43:22] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the point being is that the way that each of us have taken to our role and building out our role is quite culturally unique for each of us, and the company that is just building products that are useful in your life and will hopefully be useful in the lives of people like you, I think is like the next thing.
[00:43:45] And if you notice on RFAB, if we’re not ch- being charged for something, we always offer it for free. You know, whether it’s the tip feature or the image app that I made, that I am actually... I use it regularly. It’s a really useful app [00:44:00] for me. And it also automatically, like, unzips things for you, although I think that feature might be partially broken.
[00:44:05] I’ve gotta figure out what’s going on with that one. So I’ll get to that, but that’s less important than the hardware. I really wanna get the hardware so I can get a, a school going for Octavian.
[00:44:12] Yes.
[00:44:13] And for you, our fans.
[00:44:16] Yes.
[00:44:16] And super cheap, too. Because I’m gonna get this so you can, you know, flash it yourself.
[00:44:20] But the point here being is this is a new culture. The way RFAB is structured is culturally totally unique compared to the way a normal website would be structured. You know, offer one product, lean on your core competency, not build additional features whenever you have an idea, right? But that’s, I think, where we’re going.
[00:44:40] And it’s the same with, with, with generation. Somebody gets an idea to do something, like, you know, Leaf, “Oh, I’m gonna make a video. I wanna be...” Like with Leaflet it’s, “I always wanted to be a an idol girl,” right? Like, “Wouldn’t that be fun?” And it’s like, now I can just be an idol, right? And us- People who are in leadership within the c- community diving in so aggressively to this technology, I think makes the community feel empowered, and thus dive in themselves, which allows for this shared culture of content creation to be born and normalized, which I’m really excited about.
[00:45:17] Agreed.
[00:45:18] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and to me it’s, it’s just a way to really easily visualize techno-feudalism as it starts to roll out, that there are these trust networks that are very distinct and interesting, that I think I wouldn’t have expected to be able to see earlier, but now you can literally see them through the cameos of the Skybrow cinematic universe videos.
[00:45:43] And you can see the overlapping of different communities, how they relate to each other, just by seeing who makes cameos, who makes guest appearances. And this is the most artistic and interesting and fun, succinct way to see it. It’s just super cool.
[00:45:56] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, we are defining likely what’s going to be the future of AI culture.
[00:46:01] Yeah. The way AI
[00:46:02] Simone Collins: art is shared. Yeah, because it’s not just, “Oh, these are fan communities.” What most of these creators do is serve as the filter through which their audiences come to understand reality. Like, Malcolm and I were just talking earlier about a crime or, like, court case that’s taking place involving a woman and murder, and both of us understand it through the lens of an Asmongold video.
[00:46:27] Like, we haven’t read original coverage of it. So this is important because these are people that are influencing pretty significantly the way that people consume, understand, and contextualize world events.
[00:46:37] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s what I wanna talk about. Yeah, I mean, I, I just I don’t, I, I cannot, like, say, and I, I, I hope our fans, our audience truly gets how astonishingly blessed our movement is to have no competent opposition.
[00:47:00] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:47:00] Malcolm Collins: I mean, other than the elites that control every institution in our society. Yeah. But they’re not competent. And that is why we will be able to steamroll the next generation of culture. We’ve just got to keep at it. And for all of you, what I’d encourage is if you haven’t gotten to explore how y- you can use AI to fix some problem you have in your daily life, dive into that.
[00:47:30] Simone Collins: Absolutely.
[00:47:32] Malcolm Collins: Because-
[00:47:32] Simone Collins: It’s intimidating, but I think it’s worth it to do
[00:47:34] Malcolm Collins: This is so good. I just want to get one.
[00:47:37] Simone Collins: You
[00:47:37] Malcolm Collins: answer- If I do it hard.
[00:47:39] Simone Collins: All right. Okay. Oh. I’ll accept that. I, oh, yep, th- I’ll accept that. Okay. Text. Text, text wants really to start school. You did good. You did good. I think Alia’s outside if you wanna go check.
[00:47:50] Malcolm Collins: Oh, okay. Thanks.
[00:47:51] Simone Collins: Yeah. I love you, buddy.
[00:47:53] Malcolm Collins: Can I stop doing lessons? Yes,
[00:47:53] Simone Collins: you can stop.
[00:47:55] Malcolm Collins: Thanks.
[00:47:55] Simone Collins: You kept your promise, and that is... You can leave it right there.
[00:47:58] Malcolm Collins: Oh, right on top of
[00:47:59] Simone Collins: this? I [00:48:00] believe so, yes.
[00:48:01] Malcolm Collins: Okay, thanks. All
[00:48:02] Simone Collins: right. Love you, buddy. Love you too. Promise keeper. Oh, wait, that has a political charge, doesn’t it?
[00:48:09] No, that’s the Oath Keepers, right? What am I thinking here?
[00:48:14] Malcolm Collins: Ugh. Whatever. Th- this, this is low effort parenting right here. Terrify your kid with monsters into finishing lessons while you’re off doing
[00:48:21] Simone Collins: other things. This is how bad it is, though. I won’t name names, but a, a friend’s kid stopped by our house this morning, and I was just like, “Oh, hey,” like- Ooh
[00:48:29] “you want anything to drink?” Like, “Okay, well, I’m gonna go in and work,” and then I, I get this call, and no, it turns out, like, there’s a panicked search for this child. I should’ve, like, stopped and detained the child, and I guess called the associated adults. But I just see a child on their own, like-
[00:48:46] Malcolm Collins: And you’re like-
[00:48:47] I’m overboard ... “Hey, you
[00:48:47] Simone Collins: want something to drink?
[00:48:48] Malcolm Collins: You wanna-”
[00:48:48] Simone Collins: And I’m
[00:48:49] like, “Hey, how’s it going? You wanna hang out for a while?” Like, I’m,
[00:48:53] we’re so now normalizing to our, like, free range parenting and just kids- ... coming and going, hanging out, that I’m just like, “Oh, hey, hi,” and I don’t realize that there’s probably a, a growing search party of panicked adults.
[00:49:07] Are we gonna be that
[00:49:08] Malcolm Collins: house to hang out at?
[00:49:10] Simone Collins: I could see that happening, yeah
[00:49:12] Malcolm Collins: I mean, we’re fortunate in that our oldest kid is an incredibly popular person. Octavian is very popular with, like, everyone he spends time with.
[00:49:20] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:49:20] Malcolm Collins: Just
[00:49:20] Simone Collins: loves them all.
[00:49:21] Malcolm Collins: He, he statted into 10s in charisma. Maybe not 10s in smarts, but definitely 10s in charisma.
[00:49:28] Simone Collins: I’m actually very impressed with him. And when you think, when, when... We, we, we joke with him about, like, his technical scores with some legacy schooling, but you and I had exactly the same delays.
[00:49:43] Malcolm Collins: Mm. Yeah, but I’m a genius.
[00:49:47] Simone Collins: Yeah. My- He might be a genius too. Look, I’m just saying, like, I had exactly... Like, my teachers were calling my parents and all that, and I don’t know, I turned out okay.
[00:49:59] Oh, no.
[00:50:04] Malcolm Collins: I love you
[00:50:06] Simone Collins: Okay, I love you too. Torsten, though he probably will have changed his mind by the time he comes in tonight, had requested grilled cheese sandwiches tonight. Would you like grilled cheese sandwiches? Sure. Like one grilled cheese sandwich and one hot dog? Like, I don’t know, what do you want?
[00:50:23] Malcolm Collins: Like a grilled cheese sandwich and a half?
[00:50:26] Simone Collins: Yeah, you always want one and a half grilled cheese sandwiches. And no hot dogs?
[00:50:31] Malcolm Collins: Do we have any tomato soup left?
[00:50:33] Simone Collins: No, no. That would’ve been like growing an entirely new species by now. It is... It, it was consumed. It was consumed by collectively the family when they were convalescing here.
[00:50:46] Malcolm Collins: W- do we have any like deli meat?
[00:50:50] Simone Collins: No, we don’t have deli meats, but we do have the caramelized pork. We have Burmese mint chicken. We have one more bowl if memory serves. We have that cashew cream curry. We have-
[00:51:04] Malcolm Collins: No, no. I’ll just have, I’ll just have the I’ll just have
[00:51:07] Simone Collins: the, the- One and a half grilled cheese sandwiches?
[00:51:09] Malcolm Collins: One and a half grilled cheese
[00:51:10] Simone Collins: sandwiches. All these gourmet things I batch prepped-
[00:51:12] Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, okay ... and you want- One and a half with a, a small amount of
[00:51:16] Simone Collins: cashew curry can go on it. They, they come in allotments once I freeze them.
[00:51:21] Malcolm Collins: Then one allotment of cashew curry.
[00:51:23] Simone Collins: With a, a grilled cheese sandwich?
[00:51:25] And
[00:51:27] Malcolm Collins: just one grilled cheese sandwich then.
[00:51:28] Simone Collins: Okay. Sorry about my allotments. I’m so sorry. I know I drive you nuts, but I love you.
[00:51:39] Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna murder you one day. That’s, that’s-
[00:51:42] Simone Collins: Yeah, well, you know, you’re gonna need someone to take care of these noodles, and someone woke me up by kicking me at 4:00 in the morning repeatedly.
[00:51:51] Malcolm Collins: I literally just woke you up by- Face ... kicking you in the face.
[00:51:54] Simone Collins: Yeah, so you know, welcome to my world.
[00:51:58] Malcolm Collins: All right, love you to death, Simone. Love you too. Have [00:52:00] a wonderful day, and let’s try to get to bed early.
[00:52:03] Simone Collins: Yes, I would like that. Would you like that? Would you like that?
[00:52:09] Malcolm Collins: Although I’m not going to bed until I figure out these cucking systems.
[00:52:14] Come on.
[00:52:14] Simone Collins: You’ll get it. You’ll get it. I’ll, I’ll give you some, some time with the dinner prep ‘cause I have to somehow grab and hose off all the kids and check them for ticks. Right. Bye.
[00:52:24] Malcolm Collins: Bye.
[00:52:25] Simone Collins: Tex the hunk biscuit
[00:52:27] Malcolm Collins: The hunk biscuit is what you’re calling him now?
[00:52:29] We got building- Ooh ... RFAB devices that you’ll be able to just... With this one you can just, with magnets, just like stick it on your fridge, and it can watch what you’re doing and talk to you and, and go through it all with you.
[00:52:39] And then this one’s just audio to audio. And I’m building an auto flasher on the system, so you won’t even need to buy these through us. I can just give you the name of the product, and you can buy this for, like, 40 bucks if you want it with video and video. And then this one is, like, 19 bucks, and it’s just, like, audio to audio, and you could have these all over your house or whatever.
[00:53:01] Give them to your kids. I mean, that’s what we’re using this for is I’m gonna turn it into an educator. Because I got tired of, of having to parent. You know, I don’t wanna do that anymore. We, we had the kid, you know, and every day. So let’s see.
[00:53:12] Simone Collins: The kid, they don’t go away. Mm-hmm. They aren’t going home.
[00:53:16] Why are they not leaving? They’re like the guest that never departs. It’s gonna take a while, Malcolm. Especially since you and I are kind of bullish on having them here as newlyweds. Like, it’s, it’s actually... If they’re like... If they’re newlyweds going through- Mm ... college or university or some kind of professional training program or getting their business off the ground As long as they’re contributing- Yeah
[00:53:39] All right, what’s going on up here?
[00:53:48] What have you done? What is this? Oh,
[00:53:56] Andy, why aren’t you in the chair? How have you jerry-rigged it?
[00:54:04] You’re so silly. Look
[00:54:20] Thank you for eating toast, Eve. I’ll get some shorts on 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 -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the German Catholic Church’s controversial Synodal Way — a major national synod that responded to sex scandals by pushing radical progressive reforms with overwhelming 90%+ bishop support. From blessings for same-sex unions and transgender record changes to women’s ordination, reevaluating celibacy, and even creating a parallel “permanent synod council” governance structure, the German bishops openly defied the Vatican.
The Collins compare this to the recent SSPX excommunications, dive into Catholic history (including crusader popes, corruption, and institutional capture), discuss BDSM/queer Catholic events, and explore whether the Church can be saved or if a new path is needed. A must-watch for anyone following religion, culture wars, fertility, and institutional decay.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so when I say coup, this is... This really happened.
[00:00:05] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:00:07] Malcolm Collins: If you’re like, “How far will they go?”
[00:00:09] Look at these 90% votes we’re seeing here. And the reason we’re talking about this right after the SSPX thing is I want to show the way the Vatican reacts when progressives do something demonstrably worse, but in the ex- same, same directionality as what SSPX is doing. When I say we, I see the Catholics who do not want this as our genuine allies in this journey, right?
[00:00:36] Would you like to know more?
[00:00:37] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simona. I’m excited to be here with you today. I had a shocking event. So we did an episode on the Catholic Church expelling some of its most devoted bishops- Yeah
[00:00:50] well, when they were ordained bishops, for being SSPX. And, you know, we were like, “This is fairly mainstream conservatism within the Catholic Church. They don’t really hold that many radical beliefs.” And somebody was like, “Oh, you don’t know anything about Catholic history.
[00:01:06] You need to read more about recent Catholic history to really have a perspective on this.” And I think that that was the dumbest thing you could have told me to do, if you wanted me to have- Oh, no ... like-
[00:01:15] Simone Collins: Yeah. What were you
[00:01:17] Malcolm Collins: thinking? Literally every time I look at Catholic history, it’s like,
[00:01:20]
[00:01:24] Malcolm Collins: when you put a cucumber next to a cat, and it, like, turns and looks at it and flies in the air like, “Oh, my God.”
[00:01:30]
[00:01:33] Malcolm Collins: But today- Oh, no ... we’re going to talk about the craziest event that I’ve ever heard of, where they basically tried to create a break-off gay Catholic church that r- had sort of a different governing system than the main Catholic Church, different beliefs and different rules than the main Catholic Church.
[00:01:54] Hold
[00:01:54] Simone Collins: on. This sounds really fun.
[00:01:56] Malcolm Collins: And it all started in the craziest way possible, too.
[00:02:01] Simone Collins: So
[00:02:02] Malcolm Collins: they had all these sex scandals, okay? Yeah. And so in response to the sex scandals, and this was the second-biggest convention in response to the sex scandals. This was not, like, some small whatever thing. This was for the entire national priesthood in, in Germany.
[00:02:18] Mm-hmm. So they, they put on this giant Germany-wide, like, for what Catholics believe in Germany event about what to do about all of the you know, child situation, right?
[00:02:30] Simone Collins: Wasn’t this a South Park episode?
[00:02:33] Malcolm Collins: B- South Park basically had a thing on this. Now, the biggest thing they did in response to this was the thing they did at the Vatican, but this was the second biggest.
[00:02:39] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:02:39] Malcolm Collins: And so what they decided to do, and what this conference turned into, and I kid you not, we’re gonna go into the details. If you’re Catholic and you already know, you’re like, “Oh, no, “ they immediately started... And I, and I like Catholics. I’m, I’m pro-Catholic.
[00:02:56] I like gays, okay? But I think that w- if you were looking at these events-
[00:03:02] So they got them all together to solve this issue.
[00:03:05] And the things that they started drafting were things like we should change trans people’s genders when they get in their like confirmation files. Uh-huh. We should start blessing same-sex unions. We should start normalizing priests having sex even recreational sex. And- Wait,
[00:03:27] Simone Collins: but within marriage or not within marriage?
[00:03:29] Malcolm Collins: Just sex. They, they- Just- ... weren’t interested in, in priests getting married. They were interested in removing the celibacy stuff. We should start- But
[00:03:37] Simone Collins: isn’t it sinful per the Catholicism to have sex outside marriage?
[00:03:41] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. That was another thing that they wanted to address-
[00:03:44] Simone Collins: Uh-huh ...
[00:03:44] Malcolm Collins: to remind people very clearly that it is not a sin to have sex outside of marriage.
[00:03:49] Simone Collins: Remind?
[00:03:50] Malcolm Collins: They, well, they believed that this was the correct teaching. And they w- wanted to start a separate... And I should note here, if you’re like, “Oh, this was like some [00:04:00] fringe loonies or whatever,” there, there were two cardinals involved. One cardinal basically ran this. There were hundreds of bishops involved.
[00:04:08] And despite all of this, S- SSPX says we want Latin mass and think that you’re being a little too ecum- ecumenical. They get excommunicated. Okay? Oh my God. This event, they ran this multiple years.
[00:04:21] And I want to point out that the Vatican told them at one point, like, “Hey, you guys are saying the quiet part out loud a little too much.” Because at this event, many of these crazy things I’m talking about had over a 90% vote from the bishops.
[00:04:36] Simone Collins: Oh,
[00:04:36] Malcolm Collins: wow. But, but the Vatican said, “You cannot keep doing this.
[00:04:40] This is a threat,” to the same thing they said that SSPX was a threat to- Oh, no ... the church’s unity. This is a threat to the church’s unity. And they just ignored the Vatican and kept doing it, no excommunications
[00:04:52] Simone Collins: Okay
[00:04:53] Malcolm Collins: So-
[00:04:54] Simone Collins: Was it, what, did, did you see anything about their justification where they like, “Look, whatever it takes.”
[00:04:59] We’re gonna go over- “We’re hemorrhaging numbers.” Quotes.
[00:05:01] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. We’re gonna go over quotes of their justification.
[00:05:04] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:05:04] Malcolm Collins: We’re gonna go over like why they thought they were doing this, where they thought they were getting the backing for this stuff, like why they thought this was an okay thing to do at all.
[00:05:13] Mm-hmm. How close they came to creating a counter Catholic government to specifically oppose the norm set up by the Vatican. And we’ll also look at with current voting numbers in terms of, because I think Catholics sometimes forget how far left the bishop class of the church actually is.
[00:05:31] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:05:32] Malcolm Collins: What would happen if they actually tried to do a Vatican III? Because a lot of people think it would push back. We’ll go into the numbers and see if it actually would. And I wanna go into all of this by pointing out- We as people are fairly pro-gay for conservatives, right? Like, I’m like, I don’t think that it should be outlawed.
[00:05:47] Do what you wanna do, whatever. That, g- that said while I think that, that’s from my reading of the Bible. That’s not a traditional Catholic interpretation, right? Yeah. Like, and to say that this should be normalized within a traditional Catholic context is quite different than me being like, look, I like gays.
[00:06:07] I like Catholics. Do I think that this should be pushed to be normalized in the church? Especially the trans stuff, when we now know how harmful this is. See any of our other episodes on that. That’s where I’m like, wow, this is crazy. And if you wanna get an idea of how crazy all of this is in Germany, I will read to you a article that came out, I think just, like, two days ago.
[00:06:30] Major Catholic event in Germany features BDSM and lesbian groups.
[00:06:36] Simone Collins: Wait, like, an act- m- not that, like, the Catholic Church also appeared at an event where there was...
[00:06:43] Malcolm Collins: no. A number of Catholic bishops, including Bishop Franz Wong Wo- Woensberg co-host an event. So a major Catholic event in Germany will feature BDSM and lesbian Catholic groups.
[00:06:53] The German Katholiktag, or Catholics’ Day, will take place from, literally called Catholics’ Day, M- May 14th to May 16th in Woensberg, and will prominently feature several heterodox groups. Now, again, I’m okay with BDSM, right? Like, I’m totally okay with it. Well,
[00:07:09] Simone Collins: and if there’s a religion that wants to pull off the aesthetics of BDSM, I mean...
[00:07:14] Malcolm Collins: You do have a point there with mortification- Can
[00:07:15] Simone Collins: you do better? Yeah ... and everything.
[00:07:17] Malcolm Collins: It’s perfect. Have the mortification tent and the BDSM tent right next to each other.
[00:07:21] Simone Collins: It’s perfect. Come on. For
[00:07:22] Malcolm Collins: 50 bucks. They’re, they’re selling the same good.
[00:07:24] Simone Collins: It’s
[00:07:25] Malcolm Collins: perfect. And you can s- you can see who’s adding a margin on the traditional, no for people who are unfamiliar with mortification, some traditional, more extremist Catholic s- groups do forms of like, self-flagellation. Or the more common stuff today is, like, tight things you, like, put around your ankles and stuff like this that hurt you a bit.
[00:07:40] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:07:40] Malcolm Collins: Just to, like, remind you to be...
[00:07:43] I actually think it’s a great thing. I’m, I’m fairly pro-mortification. Yeah. But they use some of the s- instruments that have been borrowed by or convergently evolved by the BDSM community.
[00:07:53] Simone Collins: And often people within the BDSM community kind of use a lot of these methods for the same thing. I mean, they’re like, “Well, it reminds me of my [00:08:00] master, but my master makes me a better person,” blah, blah, blah.
[00:08:02] But, like, master, God, like it’s all... Yeah, I mean
[00:08:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:08:07] Simone Collins: But- There’s a, there’s a horseshoe that really gets close at the ends there.
[00:08:11] Malcolm Collins: But I can, I can, like, m- me, as somebody who’s, like, okay with all of these things individually-
[00:08:19] Simone Collins: Mm ...
[00:08:19] Malcolm Collins: is saying, just to understand, like, how outside of what should be happening this is, I’m like, this is shocking to me.
[00:08:27] You should not be mixing the Folsom Street Fair and a celebration called Catholics Day.
[00:08:32] Simone Collins: I mean, at the same time, though, as a s- as an outsider who didn’t grow up in the Catholic Church, it just seems to work. It seems so right. The
[00:08:43] Malcolm Collins: Catholic schoolgirl outfit, all that, yeah. I
[00:08:45] Simone Collins: mean, like, actually, think about it.
[00:08:47] I mean, and that’s, but I, the, that the idea would come from within the church, though, is shocking. That doesn’t check out. That’s very strange. Yeah.
[00:08:58] Malcolm Collins: Oh gosh, you wanna hear one of the, the, the groups that’s participating?
[00:09:01] Simone Collins: Yes.
[00:09:02] Malcolm Collins: Ecumenical work groups on BDSM and Christianity.
[00:09:05] Simone Collins: What
[00:09:05] Malcolm Collins: but like
[00:09:06] Simone Collins: actually though, that’s just
[00:09:08] Malcolm Collins: what I was talking about.
[00:09:09] And it, it’s gonna have its own, it’s gonna have its own tent at the church mile. Oh. But no, you saying actually, I know you say this as a joke, Simone, but the reality is-
[00:09:18] Simone Collins: No, I, I also mean it very earnestly.
[00:09:21] Malcolm Collins: There is so much connection ... the reality is, is, is that you joking about this, or acting like it’s not a big deal that this is happening, is why the rot has been able to get so far within Catholicism- Hmm
[00:09:31] and why the religion is dying. Hmm. Because you’re treating things that should not be considered a joke, a joke. Right? Like this is their religious and cultural identity, and it is being both really deviantly subverted, right? Like, in a way that is, I think, quite alarming.
[00:09:51] Simone Collins: I’m, okay, counterpoint, counterpoint.
[00:09:54] The Catholic Church has a long and storied history of attempting to grow by I guess its, its religious version of colonization involves saying, “Oh, you worship these local folk gods? No, that’s just the Virgin Mary. It just got a
[00:10:08] Malcolm Collins: little confused.” And what happened as a result of that? Now C- now Catholics are a bunch of idolaters- I know
[00:10:13] who worship statues and shrines.
[00:10:15] Simone Collins: I know. I’m just saying- No, like- ... this stems back farther than you think, right? They’re just doing the same thing they did- No,
[00:10:20] Malcolm Collins: no,
[00:10:20] Simone Collins: no,
[00:10:20] Malcolm Collins: no, but I’m saying, the point I’m making is I think even most Catholics, like, not all Catholics are idolaters, but they’re, if you’re a Catholic, you fully realize there is a faction or subsect of Catholicism- Yeah
[00:10:34] that absolutely took these local gods- Mm-hmm ... and now essentially, while, you know, on the surface Christian, are essentially pagans. You see- So
[00:10:44] Simone Collins: in other words, it was, it was a mistake for, for the Catholic Church to think, oh, that you can just be like, “No, no, no, like we, we do believe the same thing.” And, and because they don’t.
[00:10:55] They don’t. They’re idolatrous. They don’t. They should have come in and been like, “You’re super, super wrong. Here’s why. Here’s a better way.” And they didn’t do that. They took the lazy way- They didn’t
[00:11:05] Malcolm Collins: do that,
[00:11:05] Simone Collins: and the church- ... of being like, “No, we all really agree,” and that’s not true.
[00:11:08] Malcolm Collins: I mean, right now the church is fighting really hard in Mexico, the Church of Saint Muerte, right?
[00:11:14] And-
[00:11:15] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:11:15] Malcolm Collins: or the Cult of Saint Muerte I guess you’d call them, because they believe they’re Catholics. And these are- People who believe that they are Catholics- Mm ... who w- worship alongside, a saint that is made of human bones, a, a human skeleton dressed in red that you pray for things to that you would be embarrassed to ask Christ for.
[00:11:40] Like wanting somebody dead or wanting someone to, th- forced to have sex with you or fall in love with you, right? Like, anyone can look at this on the outside and be like, “Ha! I know what that is. The human bone thing that’s dressed in red and you pray for other people’s death to.” [00:12:00] Right? Like, that is recognizable.
[00:12:01] But they didn’t see that as recognizable because someone like you at some point along the chain said, “Hey, let’s try to combine BDSM with mortification” and then it got incepted into the movement, and now they have to stamp it out but they can’t because parts of these groups have made it all the way to the top.
[00:12:20] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s so funny. ‘Cause when I was a, a kid in school, the lesson was definitely, “Oh, they did this thing where they just told everyone around the world, ‘No, no, no, we believe the same thing,’ and they just changed names”, and that that it worked. They said that was very effective.
[00:12:37] Malcolm Collins: If you go to the Catholic groups across Africa right now, they all, like, believe in witches and stuff, right?
[00:12:43] Like-
[00:12:43] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:12:44] Malcolm Collins: if you look at the relative ability, first
[00:12:46] Simone Collins: of all- Well, m- probably not they all. I bet there are some very devout, we’ll, we’ll say to the,
[00:12:49] Malcolm Collins: Okay, some ... high
[00:12:50] Simone Collins: fidelity version of-
[00:12:51] Malcolm Collins: I’m talking on average, right?
[00:12:52] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:53] Malcolm Collins: Now this isn’t to say that in Protestant parts of Africa they do not also still have some of those beliefs, but generally speaking, this belief that this tactic, that yes, the Catholic Church did historically demonstrably use they’d be like, “Oh, so it was the locals say.
[00:13:07] It’s a little different name for this,” or whatever, right? One, doesn’t seem to have actually helped them with conversions in regions.
[00:13:13] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:13:14] Malcolm Collins: When we look at the regions that the Protestants settled they generally seem to have converted at the same rate as the regions that Catholics settled. But well- I will note that there is one minor difference in the two regions which is typically the regions that the Protestants settled today, and we don’t know how this happened, big mystery- Okay
[00:13:39] but they’re mostly predominantly Northern European today. Like, the United States and Canada and Australia and New Zealand. Whereas the Catholic regions are more mixed today. Not, not, not saying anything bad happened there, I’m just saying it’s a weird pattern. But it, it... There’s actually a lot of, like, we could go into, like, why.
[00:14:03] We have another episode, actually, the Is Slavery Moral episode, where we talk about- Oh, yeah ... essentially why this happened. Mm. Th- that cursed lore there as well. But where, where was I, where was I going with this? It doesn’t actually seem to have helped them convert local populations. Mm. But it has had major negative effects on the populations that they converted in terms of the way that they practice their religion.
[00:14:27] Simone Collins: So if we were put, to put this in VC terms, they basically were a startup like Uber that was able to get tons of customers when they’re like, “Oh, just use our car share app or car riding app. It, like, costs basically nothing. It’s less expensive than a taxi.” And then the VC dollars drive up but they’re like, “Oh, we have this many users.
[00:14:47] They all pay.” ‘Cause they pay, like, a little bit. But then ultimately these aren’t people who would actually pay a sustainable profit generating rate to Uber. They, they were not real customers. They were fake customers. And that what happened with all these missionaries was they were just doing the easy fake thing and not actually converting them.
[00:15:07] Oh, and of course there’s, like, a version of this in in The Book of Mormon, the Broadway play by Matt Stone and Trey Parker- Yeah ... where one missionary goes to Africa and tries to convert people, and he makes up all these stories ‘cause it’s just, like, more convenient, and they all end up believing this completely weird version of Mormonism that isn’t true at all.
[00:15:25] And I’m sure that that happens a lot. When you’re trying to convert someone and you don’t have enough faith yourself in your religion to really sell someone on it or explain the hard parts Yeah, I think you’re gonna take the cheap shot, ‘cause you just wanna look good and get your whatever rewards, your conversion points.
[00:15:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so the key pushback I have on you is, no, we shouldn’t be normalizing this stuff. You know? No,
[00:15:50] Simone Collins: that’s fair. That’s fair.
[00:15:51] Malcolm Collins: Religions have rules and beliefs, and they have them for a reason, and if you just update it to whatever [00:16:00] mainstream urban monoculture academic elites think should be the normative...
[00:16:04] This isn’t to say that religions and belief systems shouldn’t evolve over time, but if that evolution isn’t driven by what drives thriving within the population, which these are not, right? Like- Well,
[00:16:16] Simone Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, the, the, the, I’m not trying to say this is a good thing for the religion. What I’m saying is there’s something that narratively just makes so much sense that’s in a very satisfying way.
[00:16:27] But when we’re talking about religion, only hard religions impart fitness. Only the religions that, that obligate people to do the hard thing and be disciplined and do the right hard thing even when it’s, it’s difficult and costly and painful are going to be the ones that survive. ‘Cause a religion that’s just like, “Oh, don’t worry about it,” like, “It’s okay, it’s fine,” that’s not gonna create people who step up to challenges as challenges arise.
[00:16:52] And over time- Yeah ... they will go extinct. You’re absolutely 100% right. And ultimately, BDSM is a movement that is built around wasting time and pleasure, but primarily wasting time. You gotta get the gear, you gotta go over the rule book. It is ridiculous.
[00:17:07] Speaker 5: do we have all the gear, do you think?
[00:17:09] Speaker 4: Yeah,
[00:17:10] Speaker 5: let’s get the gear.
[00:17:11] Speaker 4: Alright, hike. Yeah.
[00:17:16] Speaker 5: What if it rains?
[00:17:17] Speaker 4: You right. Let’s get the ringer. You know.
[00:17:19] Simone Collins: There are so many more efficient
[00:17:20] Malcolm Collins: things you can do.
[00:17:20] Yeah, but, like, within techno-puritanism, I am totally- Yeah ... okay with using sexuality to draw people in, to look cooler, to look more fun with-
[00:17:28] Simone Collins: Sure ...
[00:17:28] Malcolm Collins: you know, hot AI anime girls or whatever. Yeah. I am not into giant wastes of time or beginning to identify with particular sexual lifestyles, which is what BDSM is.
[00:17:39] Mm. That’s identifying a section of your lifestyle with whatever happens to turn you on, and that leads to negative externalities. But let’s get into the actual event here, because it’s gonna, like, blow your mind that this happened.
[00:17:49] Simone Collins: Yeah. Ah.
[00:17:51] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So the synod was 230 members including the majority of bishops in Germany at the time.
[00:18:00] A- in terms of, there, there were some conservatives who were involved at the beginning, but they mostly opted out, which made- Oh,
[00:18:07] Simone Collins: so this is how we got that 90%.
[00:18:09] Malcolm Collins: Well, it was still only, like, three or four conservative bishops opted out. It was, it was trivial. Mm. So a lot of them stayed in, and it, it just...
[00:18:16] Yeah. So let- let’s go over the various proposals that they came up with of how they were gonna not be as interested in graping children anymore, okay? So proposal number one were blessings for same-sex couple- couples. These were official blessing ceremonies, so not full marriages for both same-sex couples, remarried divorced people, and others in relationships matching non-sacramental marriages.
[00:18:42] Simone Collins: The- But kids can’t participate in that. What, what does that have to do with kids?
[00:18:46] Malcolm Collins: What do you... I, that’s the entire point. This stuff, basically it was just a l- a grab bag of what ultra progressives wanted and, and, and degen- like degens wanted and nothing to do with what cons- like what actually addressed the problem.
[00:18:59] Simone Collins: Wow.
[00:19:00] Malcolm Collins: It was like somebody w- they were like, “Come into the room,” and people were just like, “Oh, what’s all of the stuff I can change about the church?” The moment they had some big crisis. Mm. This one got 90 to 95% approval in terms of voters. Th- the next one was a reevaluation of the church teaching on a, a gay lifestyles.
[00:19:20] Mm-hmm. They wanted a quote-unquote “magisterial reassessment” of g- gay, gay lifestyles. A call for revising and updating catechism passages, e.g. 235-7 and 235-9, and integrating quote-unquote “modern science/theology” for greater acceptance. This got an 80 to 90% vote. Wow. Now keep in mind, when I’m talking about these, these huge votes here that these things were getting, this happened recently, within the last half decade.
[00:19:49] And when people are like, “Oh, we just need to have like a Vatican III to fix all of this,” I’m like, these people would be at Vatican III. Okay? Yeah. Yeah ... so, so be aware. Now, there is a hope, the [00:20:00] hope, well, I’ll just give it away is that the, the, the membership and a, bishops and cardinals that come out of Africa have significantly grown since Vatican II, and they are very conservative.
[00:20:10] Simone Collins: Okay ...
[00:20:11] Malcolm Collins: and that’s, that’s where, you know, we try, I mean, the conservative faction tried to incept the Catholics to elect a Black guy, and we all wanted what was his name, Sarah
[00:20:21] to be elected.
[00:20:22] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Yes. It was yeah. It was, it was a woman’s sounding name, but yes,
[00:20:27] Malcolm Collins: , next one. They wanted women’s ordination. This is the next thing they thought would fix this. Well,
[00:20:32] Simone Collins: ah, okay.
[00:20:33] Malcolm Collins: So they wanted to-
[00:20:34] Simone Collins: No, I mean, women are far less commonly known for having problems with children of that sort.
[00:20:43] Malcolm Collins: They’re not, it’s not that unknown.
[00:20:46] And- I’d point out that the-
[00:20:49] Simone Collins: Statistically- ...
[00:20:51] Malcolm Collins: gay nuns were such a phenomenon that I think we’ve done an episode on this where we point out that when post-Vatican II they moved the nunneries closer to the cities nuns began to play a major part in gay female culture to the extent that the same role that biker gangs played for early-
[00:21:10] the development of gay male culture Catholic nuns played for the development of lesbian culture, which is why you have so many nun-like aesthetics and sort of fetish-related things within the lesbian community today.
[00:21:21] Simone Collins: A UK Home Office study in the late ‘90s found that fewer, less than 5% of child, you know, what offenses were committed by women.
[00:21:31] An analysis of Catholic institutional abuse in Australia found that 95% of alleged offenders were men, 5% were women.
[00:21:39] Malcolm Collins: Okay, well maybe this would have, have genuinely addressed it, but like-
[00:21:42] Simone Collins: Yeah, man. I’m hearing solutions now. Don’t, don’t run a
[00:21:45] Malcolm Collins: little
[00:21:45] Simone Collins: bit.
[00:21:45] Malcolm Collins: But this would be horrible for the Ch- like, when I, when we look at the Anglicans electing a lady pope and
[00:21:51] Simone Collins: that,
[00:21:51] Malcolm Collins: that causing- Right.
[00:21:52] Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. That just likes peace out a huge, like about half of them. A huge...
[00:21:54] Malcolm Collins: That would be like auto schism for- That’s crazy ... I think a, a huge portion of- Yeah ... of conservative Catholics. Like, the, the Catholics who are like, “I would never schism,” would you schism as a lady pope? Like, this is my que-
[00:22:08] Simone Collins: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:22:08] It’s gonna... It would take a very long time for... We still haven’t had a female president in the US, and female suffrage started in what? 1918. So-
[00:22:15] Malcolm Collins: Hold it, Simone.
[00:22:17] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:22:17] Malcolm Collins: Hold it. It should have taken a very long time with the Anglicans as well, right? Like,
[00:22:23] And note here, Anglicans only let women first join the clergy in 1944
[00:22:28] Malcolm Collins: you don’t need- Mm-hmm ... a plurality of women in a voting body to elect a woman to signal that now you’re an understanding organization- Mm, yes.
[00:22:38] I see ... when you have people who vote like this. And what percent of people wanted to open this? 92%, with 82% of bishops in favor.
[00:22:48] Simone Collins: Wow. Okay.
[00:22:50] Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind, of the, of the people key people like attending this and stuff like this, there were people with xeno pronouns, there were people with like-
[00:22:59] Simone Collins: Really?
[00:22:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the guy who wrote the documentation for this for accepting the trans people had xeno pronouns. ‘
[00:23:10] Simone Collins: Wow. Okay.
[00:23:10] Malcolm Collins: Who, who wrote it. Keep in mind, guys, SSPX was excommunicated.
[00:23:21] For Latin Mass. Yeah.
[00:23:23] Simone Collins: Yep, yep, yep, yep. Hmm.
[00:23:25] Malcolm Collins: And you could say, “And disobeying the Pope,” but the Pope also told them not to hold this. No excommunications. Yeah. Okay. Well, at least after the first one. Th- specifically, they wanted to open the di- diaconate and by extension discuss priesthood to women, challenge Ordo Sarca Dotilis or something and called for universal church reexamination.
[00:23:47] They wanted to reexamine their transgender policies. Specifically, they wanted concrete improvements for, for transgender people, including updating baptismal records to match [00:24:00] self-identifying gender and mandatory education for clergy, and removing gender identity barriers to ministries.
[00:24:06] Speaker: I just love the statement, mandatory education for clergy, because apparently they need additional education in regards to how they deal with gender
[00:24:17] Malcolm Collins: So that you could be a priest even if you identify...
[00:24:20] Basically, they wanted to open the priesthood to xeno-gender types and transgender types.
[00:24:24] Simone Collins: That’s, it’s self ID Catholic Church edition.
[00:24:27] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This had a 96% vote in favor. If you wanna go over how the bishops voted, and keep in mind, this was open to all the bishops in Germany. Hmm. 38 voted yes, with only seven voting no 13 voted in absentia.
[00:24:46] Simone Collins: Okay. Wow.
[00:24:47] Malcolm Collins: 38 yes to only seven voting no. And then the craziest part was the permanent synod council which we’ll get to in a second. Mm. And this had a 93% vote for.
[00:25:01] Simone Collins: Remind me again, whi- what year did this happen? In 2000 something?
[00:25:05] Malcolm Collins: I wanna say around 2010. It was sort of, sort of over, like, a 10 or eight-year period they had the number.
[00:25:09] The
[00:25:09] Simone Collins: one thing that occurs to me now that you’re mentioning that people have things like xeno profou- pronouns and stuff, is that the one family friend who was in an, an order, a, a Carmelite nun when we knew her, when I knew her as a kid, but now she’s a mother had mentioned that as she grew up in the ranks of her convent, an issue they had with novices, women who wanted to enter the convent and become Carmelite nuns, is that many of them just had mental disorders, and they just wanted to opt out of mainstream life, and they didn’t actually care about Catholicism.
[00:25:48] And I wonder if one of the issues that the Catholic Church is, is, is fighting, trying to fight, unsuccessfully perhaps, is that a lot of now just mentally ill people are turning to a
[00:26:03] Malcolm Collins: career path- I think it’s not just mentally ill people. I think consider what the priesthood offers you. You you, you don’t have to worry about money anymore.
[00:26:09] You don’t have to worry about... Y- you know, it’s just, like, you don’t have to worry about a job anymore. You just do- Yeah ... what somebody else tells you to, and everything works out for you, right?
[00:26:17] Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s like a different version of entering academia with way more job security.
[00:26:21] Malcolm Collins: And you can see why it attracts so many socialists, right?
[00:26:23] You know? Mm. And I want to point out here that when I go over these things, some of these I think actually could be good things. I think opening the priesthood to marriage is biblical. You know, in Timothy, we see that to have leadership in the church, you’re supposed to have, It can be read multiple ways.
[00:26:42] The way that I think is, like, a, a fair and honest reading of it is you need to be married. The way that Catholics read it is they say that you shouldn’t have a more than one wife which would imply that polyamory is normal within Christianity. Huh. And even so, why would you need to apply that if you were going to have an entire priesthood, and God knew he was gonna do this, where nobody was married, right?
[00:27:04] Like, I think a lot of the natalist problems and problems of capture that Catholics have come from the celibate priesthood. So I’m actually for that, right? Yeah. I think they should start getting married and having large families. Like, a- I, I point out, like in every other religion, the most devout person, what do they do?
[00:27:19] They end up having the most kids. The most devout Orthodox Jew has the most kids. The most devout Baptist has the most kids. The most devout Catholic has no kids. But I think a lot of them are sometimes just people who wanted to live the lifestyle of a priest or nun. Like not- Mm ... worry about the outside world, which can draw in the socialist, which can draw in the activist type, which is why...
[00:27:36] but if you wanna get into what they were saying about all of this, let’s go to Bishop George Batzing, okay? Okay. This is somebody, mind you, not excommunicated. SSPX was excommunicated. He said, “I will not deny God’s blessing for those in committed relationships who are seeking it.” This is with him talking about wanting to bless gay unions.
[00:27:56] Mm. Which is rich because he’s also the guy who said, [00:28:00] “Saint- sex outside of marriage is not a sin.” But then later he said, “It’s okay if it’s done with fidelity and responsibility.” And okay? What I find interesting, and I think that people can look at, like, our techno-puritanism and see where we’re strict on things, see where we’re not strict on things and see that we might be significantly stricter on a lot of Christian principles than your average Catholic bishop.
[00:28:33] Simone Collins: Wow. I think you’re right.
[00:28:37] Malcolm Collins: Which probably rocks people, right? They’re like, “Wow, their - weird religion is...” And we’re pretty, we’re pretty, like, laid out, like, what’s you know, X is a sin, Y is a sin. The reason why we’re less strict than a lot of groups on something like, let’s say gay, right? Is we believe that while gayness is a sin, it’s not as bad a sin as many other sins.
[00:28:58] Speaker 2: specifically as to why it’s a sin, it’s because it’s just not the most efficient way to live your life. And when I say gayness, I do not mean, , being same-sex attracted. I mean choosing to base your life around same-sex attraction, choosing to choose your primary partner based around same-sex attraction, , that this dramatically, , impacts your ability to have kids that live on to the next generation.
[00:29:24] And I will say, I’ve known so many good and diligent gay people who said, “ Well, I can still make it work.” And I will tell you, out of every single one of them I have met, I haven’t met a single one of them who had a lot of kids, who’s actually contributing to the next generation. , They tried. It just doesn’t seem to work.
[00:29:42] Like, the Bible’s advice on this actually appears pretty sound. And, I’m not gonna say, like, I wish that wasn’t the case. It’s just I know a lot of really dedicated same-sex attracted individuals who tried to make it work, and it didn’t work for them, a lot. And it I think making it work is more of a LARP than,
[00:30:01] we or society admits
[00:30:03] Malcolm Collins: And therefore you can still, like, net be a good person and be right with God while being gay, so long as you accept the negative externalities that may have on your life and, and society and not predominantly identify with a sinful behavioral pattern in the same context as somebody that they primarily identify as a gamer, or they primarily identify as into BDSM, and that’s like their lifestyle.
[00:30:28] Well, you’re certainly not living a pr- productive and virtuous lifestyle if you’re dedicating your entire life to that. But so, like, we, we, we say this with caveats but we’re, we’re still broadly, like, it’s not as bad as something like if I was gonna rank it on a, a spectrum of things stealing, white-collar crime regularly lying to people.
[00:30:53] Like, I mean, like, th- th- those sorts of things are significantly worse. Yeah. Or being a, a, a straight gooner 24/7, right? Like, that, that would be on a, a worse category, especially if that has an effect on your life where you’re not going out and you’re not being productive. But I’m, I’m saying all of this with the...
[00:31:09] But that’s not the Catholic position, right? And even an updated Catholic position that was designed to make the church stronger, I don’t think would look like that. Mm-hmm. I don’t think that that would make the church healthier. To continue here what did Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who was a supporter of this, he said?
[00:31:27] He w- he said, “I desire an inclusive church, a church that includes all who want to walk the way of Jesus.” He, he celebrated, quote, “20 years of queer worship and pastoral care.” And keep in mind, you can be like, “This sounds weird to me.” Like, how are these, for example, gay rights activists in the Catholic Church?
[00:31:47] And we pointed out that one of the core documents in our episode, the gay Jew who wrote core Catholic doctrine, watch that episode if you haven’t, it’s the craziest thing I ever learned were written by priests who we now [00:32:00] know during the period of writing them were actively having gay sex. And that, that were not just that, but very publicly did more LGBT rights activism than Catholic activism while the church was supporting their lifestyle, paying for them, and everything like that, and they were writing core parts of Vatican II.
[00:32:18] And so when you see that, it makes a lot of sense that you’re hearing stuff like this, th- this is normal. And this is again where I think your average Catholic, especially your average like strict Catholic, doesn’t fully grok how extremely socialist and progressive the bishop class of Catholicism is.
[00:32:38] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:32:39] Malcolm Collins: Es- especially in Europe. In the United States, we’ve got people on both sides of the spectrum, but in Europe it is extremely captured. And Europe controls, because they’re closer to the Vatican, a lot of the politics of what’s going on there and what’s coming out of there Hmm. The next one to go from a- another bishop here on women’s ordination.
[00:33:02] He said, “The question of,” adding this here, “women’s ordination exists, and it has to be elaborated on and discussed. Popes have tried to say the question is closed, but the fact is that the question exists. Many young women say a church that refuses all of this cannot be my church in the long run. And I hope I will still experience a woman becoming a deacon.
[00:33:24] The path to women priests is still long. I wish for it.” So, you know, the, the, the goal isn’t just women in lower positions. It’s moving them up for these people, okay? And keep in mind, this got an over 90% vote from the people who were present at this. Mm-hmm. And then the co- leader, or well, we’ll go to the next one here.
[00:33:44] Now the overall governance changes the, one of the leaders of this, Thomas Sternberg, said the process was, n- not in exact words, was designed to create, quote-unquote, “pressure for change.” Quote, “Only through pressure does real change come about.” End quote. And he admitted that it was explicitly structured to avoid easy Vatican prohibition.
[00:34:06] Now I’ll be reading here from a Catholic newspaper that did a piece on this about what they were pushing for gover- governmentally. So they were pushing for a permanent synod council, a new national body of bishops plus laity with ongoing decision-making authority over the church in Germany,, seen by the Vatican as undermining bishops’ authority and risking a national church parallel structure.
[00:34:32] Simone Collins: Huh.
[00:34:33] Malcolm Collins: The Vatican repeatedly attempted to block and restrict this. See, this is so much worse than what SSPX was doing. Nobody got excommunicated over this. Synod Way, which was the name of this whole debacle, votes to establish a permanent synod council to oversee church and diocese in Germany. In a move aimed at achieving what critics compared to a communist council in the Soviet Union, participants of the German Synod Way on Saturday voted to create a synod council that would permanently oversee the church in Germany.
[00:35:03] At the fra- permanently oversee the church in Germany, a-
[00:35:07] Simone Collins: So is that kind of like how the Orthodox Church works, how there’s the, the p- the patriarchy in, like, Moscow, and then there’s one in Greece, and there’s-
[00:35:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically they wanted the German Church to be sovereign- Yeah ... and to have a separate set of govern- governance body that controlled both the church’s funds in Germany- Yeah
[00:35:27] and controlled the church’s beliefs and norms in Germany.
[00:35:30] Simone Collins: Wow.
[00:35:32] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so when I say coup, this is... This really happened.
[00:35:38] Simone Collins: Or, like, separatist movement. It... Yeah.
[00:35:42] Malcolm Collins: Which is wild, that they think with all of the control they have over the Vatican right now, that their faction has, that’s not enough. If you’re like, “How far will they go?”
[00:35:51] Look at these 90% votes we’re seeing here. At the Frankfurt meeting on September 10th, the controversial suggestion won almost [00:36:00] 93% of the votes. Only five bishops rejected the document. CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German language partner agency reported, “The permanent synod council would function as a consultative and decision-making body on the essential developments of the church in society,” the German proposed states.
[00:36:17] More importantly, it would, quote, “Make fundamental decisions of separate diocesan significance on pastoral planning, questions of the future of budgetary matters of the church that are not decided at the diocese level,” end quote. In order to make the council work, it should be supported by a permanent secretary, adequately staffed and financed.
[00:36:38] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:36:39] Malcolm Collins: And it wanted to have a private vote, so keep in mind if we’re seeing these public votes be this far lefty, you can only imagine what a private vote would look like. In terms of the cardinals who were involved with this, you had Cardinal Reinhard Marx. He was involved throughout the entire thing and served as- The chairman, keep in mind, this guy votes on who becomes pope, okay?
[00:36:59] He strongly defended the process throughout, and then the other cardinal you had involved was Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki. And she later became a strong opponent after the Vatican turned against it
[00:37:10] Simone Collins: Huh
[00:37:14] Malcolm Collins: And oh, I loved this quote from the, the, the thing that was writing on it about what they had to say about the people who opposed the conference. Yeah. “Schulzer herself had taken a public stance against the document. However, organizers,” this is the, the, the pro-gay stuff document, “earlier dismissed concerns and pressures on bishops rejecting the pro-LGBT document, with President Stödter Karp labeling the bishops attacking it as, quote-unquote, ‘whiny.’
[00:37:39] Following the fallout on Saturday, Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, a noted philosopher, also announced she would leave early because of how the synod way was being handled. Dorcia Schmidt, one of the few participants who regularly expressed clear criticism of the text under discussion, supported the two women’s decision in an interview with EDTN.
[00:37:59] She accused the leadership of the synod way of not tolerating minority opinions and simply pushing their own line,” this was a quote from her, “in the pursuit of goals that had been, quote, ‘fixed at the outset,’” end quote.
[00:38:16] Simone Collins: I find this all so confounding. They re- seem to really think this was going to be accepted by the Vatican
[00:38:22] Malcolm Collins: Well, the Vatican did excommunicate them, and they just kept doing it.
[00:38:26] Speaker 3: I think Simone really hits on something here, which is that they did this and didn’t think that the Vatican would push back on them, and were right that the Vatican wouldn’t successfully push back on them for this, , shows that they understood within their circles, within the clergy circles, that there was a underlying acceptance of these beliefs to the extent, I mean, keep in mind over 90% voted on them, , that they would just be passed through.
[00:38:54] That everybody secretly within the priest caste, within the bishop caste, within the cardinal caste, secretly agreed on all of this
[00:39:01] Malcolm Collins: And to get under... Oh, this is the 2020 statement by the Vatican, which was their strongest rebuke of this. Okay. They said the...
[00:39:07] And this was more recent than I thought, so 2020.
[00:39:10] Simone Collins: Oh. Whoa, really recent. Okay.
[00:39:13] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The Synodal Way does not have the power to compel bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of governments and new orientations of doctrine and morals. And they called it, quote, “A wound to the ecclesiastical communion and a threat to the unity of the church.”
[00:39:29] And the reason we’re talking about this right after the SSPX thing is I want to show the way the Vatican reacts when progressives do something that I would see as demonstrably worse, but in the ex- same, same directionality as what SSPX is doing.
[00:39:44] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:39:46] Malcolm Collins: What they said of SSPX is not just that they’re gonna excommunicate these people who have dedicated their entire lives faithfully to the church over fairly minor differences, but that anyone who is, like, really sincerely, we go [00:40:00] over the wording that they use in it, it’s all very bureaucratic ‘cause that’s the way Catholic doctrine works that they are also excommunicated from the church.
[00:40:08] Like, that their sacraments do not count. In terms of why they continued even with a Catholic rebuke, ‘cause you were saying why. Yeah. They said that they were listening to the Holy Spirit through the people of God in Germany. Basically saying that people in Germany like this stuff, like the average person in, in media, the eli- I mean, I’m sure, like, the devout Catholics in Germany weren’t about this.
[00:40:31] Actually, I read many reports that they were horrid- horribly- Horrified ... horrified that this was happening.
[00:40:36] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:40:36] Malcolm Collins: But the priest caste is an elite caste, and so they hang out with the elites of the urban monoculture. They want to impress the elites of the urban monoculture. They do not care, because they have been separated from the laity, about the laity.
[00:40:50] Which is really sad, but this is the way, I mean, it’s been forever in, in Catholicism. If you go back and you look at, like, the medieval Catholic cardinals, they were all these, like, super rich people who just partied with kings all the time, right? Like, they always wanted to be in the culture of the elite, and didn’t really...
[00:41:08] On average. Certainly there was the here and there cardinal that actually cared about his parishioners.
[00:41:16] So much purer than the common vulgar weak licentious crowd
[00:41:24] Malcolm Collins: But if you’re like a, a big history n- like, I’m a big... People might say I don’t know a lot about history. I mean, a lot of my view of Catholicism is shaped by being a big history nerd, and whenever a Catholic cardinal comes on the scene, you’re usually about to see somebody get tortured, or some horrible case of corruption, or something where the lady was having a, being completely fleeced or you know- The Vatican being like, “Hey, come in.
[00:41:54] I know you’ve called out corruption. Come in. We’ll have a conversation about this.” The person gets to the Vatican, “Ha-ha, we lied. We’re gonna torture you to death. So we’re just gonna kill you. That’s that’s what we do.” And that’s what has informed my biased perception.
[00:42:10] And I’m trying to understand, because a lot of Catholics in the comments on the last vid- they were like, “Well, you know, Catholics are taught that the church is gonna become, like, really corrupt and evil leading up to the end times,” right?
[00:42:24] And that that’s when God’s gonna come down. Like, that’s when we’re, you know, gonna have the, , Messianic period. And here I am like, wait, do you think that this is the worst the Church has ever been? Because my gosh, I almost... And people can tell me if they wanna go through this, like, studying the actual history of the Catholic Church, because it is pretty mortifying.
[00:42:50] Like, I think that there’s this perception that there were, like, maybe, like, 150 good years that maybe you go to, like, the 1950s. But by the 1960s, the bishopric was so captured that you get 90% votes on the, the the Vatican II creepy documents. So, like, I don’t think 19... I think you gotta go further than 1950s.
[00:43:14] I think you gotta go 1920s. Okay, so you go back to the 1920s, and then you can maybe say to the 1820s. Like, there was this maybe, like, 100-year period, may- maybe even a 200-year period where, like, the Church was fine. But let’s hear a pro-Catholic person’s perception of Catholic history because now the, he was excommunicated ‘cause he’s angry at the modern church.
[00:43:40] But like, let’s, what does he think when he thinks about like Catholic history, right? Because I wanted to hear that, right? Like I’m like, what do they mean when they say they wanna go back to like the old way of doing things?
[00:43:50] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:43:50] Malcolm Collins: Were they thinking of like this short window that I as somebody with like, who, you know, I’ve, I’ve listened to a lot of like early Catholic history, all the early, [00:44:00] you know, popes who always had their mistresses and were giving out corrupt favor to the kids they’d had with prostitutes and like, I’m like, “What, what was he thinking of?”
[00:44:09] So let’s go over this. And this is Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. So he was a, a very big deal. So he served as a secretary general of Vatican City. He served as the Apostolic Nuncio. This is the Pope’s diplomatic ambassador. Mm. A, he was a very big deal in Catholicism, right? So yes, he’s turned against, but he’s one of these guys who’s like, “We need to go back to the way we used to do things.”
[00:44:36] All right?
[00:44:40] So he said and I think this is in relation to the SSPX people being condemned. He said, “From the early 9th century, the popes preached, organized, and sometimes personally led military excursions to repel the Islamic invasions of Christendom. From the 11th century, for two and a half centuries, all of the popes created, organized, and levied, and above all, lived the spirit of the Crusade.
[00:45:06] That is, the reconquest of holy lands from infidels. From the second half of the 14th century, “Almost all of the popes continued in an ever more tragically operational manner to do everything and more, often against the Christian monarchies themselves, to thwart the invasion of Christendom.”
[00:45:22] Oh, sorry, here he’s saying... Oh, he’s still saying it’s good here. Mm. “To thwart the invasion of Christendom by Ottoman Islam.” Mm. “Which nevertheless reached Buda and threatened Vienna no fewer than two times. One can say that the crusading activity was the primary political activity of popes in the late medieval and modern centuries, up to the first half of the 18th century.
[00:45:42] It suffices to name, above all, above the blessed Urban II and the Counts of Chatillon, Innocent III of the Counts of Sengal, Catilius III, Borgia, Pius II, Piccolomini, Leo X de Medici, St. Pius V, Griselli
[00:45:59] the blessed Innocent XI, Odichi popes blessed and crusaded saints.
[00:46:05] Speaker 6: Just in case you are wondering, oh, this list, does this include the type of people that Malcolm is talking about? , Well, you’ve got Callias III, nephew of an earlier Bergia, heavily got into this position through corruption and nepotism. , We’ve got, , Pius II, who did have illegitimate children, , and also wrote erotic literature.
[00:46:27] The way, this guy, oh, I love my el- erotic literature pope. And then I don’t have a problem with erotic literature, right? But, like, to act like these people were these, , great, magnificent, , totem pole of Catholicism, , shows that Catholics somehow are able to completely overlook evil and corruption
[00:46:48] leo X, y- who was the son of Leonzo the Magnificent, famously worldly and extravagant, he reportedly said, “god has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it.” , And he was well known for bribery and all that nonsense. , But the point being is even when they point out the best of what they think the papacy is, anyone else in history looking at this would have been like, “This is horrifyingly corrupt.”
[00:47:16] Speaker 7: Also as a side note, one of the things that’s disappointed me the most in some of the Catholic response to our episode on SSPX being excommunicated are the Catholics who have reached out to us and said, “Well actually SSPX is an evil cult that has all these evil beliefs and they’re not...” I’m like, “No. I know, I know SSPX.
[00:47:36] Sorry. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” That doesn’t make me think, oh actually Catholicism is still good. That reminds me , that Catholics will turn their back on faithful people trying to do their best to serve God under Catholic teaching, and will burn them at the stake the moment, the moment the [00:48:00] Pope can in his corrupt whatever the is going on right now, think that they can get some sort of advantage after that, and that the average Catholic layperson will be like, “Oh yeah, F SSPX now because, , the Pope told me to, and I don’t think for myself.
[00:48:14] I don’t look into things myself
[00:48:16] Speaker 8: And this is me defending to you, a Catholic, an organization that would be much more likely because the main Catholic Church has become so ecumenical that they can’t even really throw people out anymore because everyone’s technically under God now, right? Everyone’s technically, even the techno-puritans.
[00:48:35] I want a version of Catholicism that can tell me, “No, Malcolm, you’re wrong.” Okay? I am okay with that, and I think that’s one of the reasons Catholics started to listen to this show is because everybody wants somebody who actually believes something, who’s not just gonna go out there and say whatever. Th- like I prefer a person I can disagree with to their face and who’s not gonna tell me, “Oh, well, everyone’s secretly,” right?
[00:49:01] Everyone’s secretly whatever. , And to throw out SSPX, this group that would condemn me, would say that I’m like a demon worshiper, , it’s just rich to me. By the way, for this period, if you’re like, “How bad were the popes really during this middle medieval period?” Well, you got Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, who fathered multiple illegitimate children with mistresses. Have Innocent XIII
[00:49:24] VIII, again, illegitimate children. That was 1485. Julius II, 1500s, again, illegitimate children. Paul III, illegitimate children.
[00:49:35] And then if you go before that, the popes just become like comically evil. Like you have the Cadaver Synod, which we’ve gone over in other things, but yeah
[00:49:44] Malcolm Collins: Even in the 1917, the Office of the Crusades still existed in the Vatican.”
[00:49:49] Ooh, they had an Office of the Crusade up until 1917.
[00:49:53] Simone Collins: That’s wild. I wonder what they were up to since the Crusades ended for all those, all those years. “
[00:50:01] Malcolm Collins: Today, we have a pope who goes to endorse the invasion of our lands, our property, our customs, often our lives, shattered by the bestial violence of these unpunished invaders, who know they can do anything because they are protected by those who should condemn and repel them.
[00:50:17] From John Paul II onwards...” And here I’ll, I’ll do a video of the pope, you know, blessing migrants.
[00:50:22]
[00:50:29] Malcolm Collins: They’ve, doing multiple things, saying you need to accept as many migrants as possible. Now, the Bible says you should accept people traveling through your lands, not settling in your lands. Okay? From Pope Paul II onwards, with perhaps a partial exemption for Benedict XVI. The popes have preached with all their might, with a unique insistence in their kind, with an exceptional crescendo, and with guaranteed operational management through NGOs, the Islamic invasion of once-Christian Europe. And you could be like, “Look, it’s not a straight-up invasion.” They want, in some areas in the majority, for Sharia law to eventually be the law of the land.
[00:51:08] That is an Islamic law. They are having kids at a higher rate than the native population. Now, it may not be as high as many people think, but it’s still higher than the native population, which means eventually, in these democratic states, they will be Islamic republics, at least under Sharia law if they can vote the way that they want, right?
[00:51:27] You can say, “Oh, I don’t know if this is invasion. I don’t know.” It’s, it’s still something, like, worth being mad about if you are the central Catholic institution and want to maintain a Catholic way of life within these historically Catholic countries. To have no pushback on this, but instead have commandments against pushback by your followers, you have to say, “W- why?
[00:51:50] What’s this level of institutional capture?” When you consider the actual history of the papacy in this, this lens here, and these popes did participate in these crusades.
[00:51:59] Simone Collins: I [00:52:00] did just look up, by the way, what happened to the Office of the Crut- Crusade and what they were up to after the Crusades. But basically, they, they existed because people, like kings, would give money for the Crusades, and they existed, the Office of the Crusade existed to make sure the Crusade money went to the Crusade efforts.
[00:52:17] And then later, it hung around because they also started making sure that indulgences money went toward the prayers to get people out of purgatory, right? Like, you wanna make sure that when you buy the... You know, it’s not like our Social Security system where you’re, we’re just paying boomers. Like, this was like Peru’s Social Security system where you deposit the money into an account, and you can see it ‘cause it goes to you.
[00:52:40] And so in this case, when you’re praying for your dead grandma to get through purgatory faster or, like, paying indulgences for someone else to pray for it, it was actually going to her because the Office of the Crusade existed, which is actually kind of nice. I appreciate that. And then later, it was, it was, it was there just to make sure taxes went where they were supposed to go, but then they were like, “You know what?”
[00:52:58] We don’t need this anymore.
[00:53:00] Malcolm Collins: What, wh- how bad a would it be if we had a crusader pope come in? I think a lot of progressives might
[00:53:06] Simone Collins: jump- Well, they would have to reopen the office of the crusade to make sure all the money went to the right place.
[00:53:10] Malcolm Collins: I think a lo- I think a lot of people would convert into Catholic- a lot of very high fertility people would convert into Catholicism.
[00:53:15] I mean,
[00:53:17] Simone Collins: militant Catholicism. Yeah, that would, I don’t know. People seem to really not wanna fight anymore, so probably not. Also, the Crusades even sucked during the Crusades. I was just listening to a podcast/YouTube video about the experience of crusaders and how many of them came back with, I mean, they, they didn’t have PTSD, but came back with PTSD sy- symptoms.
[00:53:44] How many of them died of, like, gangrene and dysentery well before they could actually get somewhere to even fight for something meaningful, and how it was just... It was, it wasn’t great for everyone.
[00:53:54] Malcolm Collins: No.
[00:53:54] Simone Collins: And so they- I think it’s a little romanticized
[00:53:57] Malcolm Collins: He goes on to say “Who are the true schismatics? As I have said other times, these are the days of the definitive choice between the master and the unfaithful servant.”
[00:54:06] Mm. “This is the only true criterion of schism. Everyone chooses, whether they want to or not, whether to stand with God, who never changes, or with the dogmatic, spiritual, and liturgical relativism of a conciliar liberalism and socialism of the last 65 years. I do not reconcile. I remain faithful to the popes who saved our Christian Europe and faith and civilization for 10 centuries.
[00:54:31] As I remain faithful in all things to the Church in its first 19 centuries, I do not reconcile.” And Catholics have... We may do another episode if people want us to, because this could also be an interesting episode. How could you legitimately, because the pope chooses the cardinals and the cardinals choose the pope, we’re sort of at a point in the cycle where it’s very hard to break out unless we can trick the socialists to elect a Black pope, but we just tried that in the last election and it didn’t really work.
[00:55:04] Because that could have gotten us out of this. And if we’re not seeing that, basically no matter what we do in terms of birthrates can we recapture a form of Catholicism. When I say we, I see the Catholics who do not want this as our genuine allies in this journey, right? Like, they are 100%, without reservation, whatever reservations I have about the Vatican, I do not have about them, okay?
[00:55:27] Yeah. I, I, I see them as holistically, I wanna fight for them. I wanna fight for whatever they want for the future of the Church. How do you realistically make this happen, right? And it might be my Protestant mind that I’m not like, “We’ll just wait it out eventually.” Because the Church has almost never not been corrupt.
[00:55:45] It’s, it’s it, it’s... That’s the thing about, like, the history of the Church. It’s almost always been horrifyingly corrupt, except for a few centuries. With that being the case, how do we [00:56:00] fix that, right? How do we create a p- And I believe the strain of Catholicism that is very conservative today, if they recreated the Church bureaucracy, they could create a non-corrupt, devout version of Catholicism.
[00:56:15] Mm. I believe that that is Protestant. A true- That it’s not just a warrior version of Catholicism, but a pure version of Catholicism, and maintain it with fidelity. But to do that... Now, there’s been periods throughout history where we’ve had multiple popes. But by the way, how that period ended they created a council in the Vatican to annul the two other popes, and then to make another guy pope, right?
[00:56:40] And then the other guy who they made popes they immediately came and said “Nope, popes can overrule councils.” And they’re like, “But we just gave you this power.” And he’s like, “I’m sorry, I make all the rules now.” So, like, immediately, even in that moment, you’ve got, you’ve got this creepy, like, corruption going on, and then th- this, this lack of, i, I just, I think it was, it was, it was really slimy, everything that happened during that period.
[00:57:01] But, like, you can do it, but you’ve got to do it, find some way to do it by the book. So, like, let’s go into the book. How could you... You basically just need to get a number of cardinals on your side, I think is really what you need.
[00:57:14] You need to get a number of cardinals on your side, and historically, basically need to capture the Vatican. So, if you can capture the Vatican, like, literally bar the progressives from entering, and annul them with some group of cardinals, I think you could legally get away with this, with, w- w- well, maintaining, I don’t know.
[00:57:31] Some group of Catholics has to figure this out. Because if they are excommunicating people as mild as SSPX, yet allowing this to continue to grow and metastasize, as recent as, like, the 2020s I don’t, I don’t know how you’re gonna recapture things. I don’t know, like, how that’s realistic at this point.
[00:57:52] Simone Collins: I don’t know if there’s gonna be any recapturing.
[00:57:54] The, the, the church as it is centrally managed now benefits from attrition among members because it gets money every time a convent or school is sold, for example, and it’s quite entrenched, as you pointed out. Just from a, a governance structure perspective, there is, as you say, no really breaking through it.
[00:58:12] My hope is that with SSPX, which... Look, after this excommunication, people have shown videos, posted videos online of just mass after mass filling on Sundays with different SSPX churches and, and parishes. They’re doing fine. They’re doing really well, and I think there’s been even an outswelling of, of support- upswelling of report.
[00:58:34] How do we swell? Whatever. There’s been a rise in support for them. As there
[00:58:38] Malcolm Collins: should be.
[00:58:39] Simone Collins: Yes. As there should be. As there 100% should be. So what I could see happening over time is this offshoot increasing so offshoot of the church kind of just starting to build its own centrally managed governance that eventually becomes a new papacy.
[00:58:56] It’s okay. Look, it... They had to do what they had to do. And then, you know, with time, though it’s gonna take a lot of time, so no one should hold their breath, the, the old one will fall, but it’s gonna destroy everything as it goes, as it should because as you pointed out, you kind of have to start fresh anyway.
[00:59:12] That there’s been too much baggage, entrenchment, rot, cancerous growth, whatever you want to say, within the old institution. So why bother?
[00:59:23] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, you would basically... Actually, I, I can see how you’d do this. If you have a revolution in Italy that takes control of the government and you can use that to take control of the Vatican, and control who can enter and leave- There’s
[00:59:33] Simone Collins: not going to be a revolution in Italy.
[00:59:35] They’re too hot and tired.
[00:59:37] Malcolm Collins: They’re t- So true. Well, and they’re, you know, Italians, and I, I’m gonna be... I- as somebody who lived in Italy for a year they’re incredibly lazy people. They, they, they you know- Don’t expect
[00:59:47] Simone Collins: a revolution anytime soon ...
[00:59:49] Malcolm Collins: I mean, France could have a revolution and then, I don’t know, conquer Italy or something.
[00:59:53] That’s, that’s probably more likely. They love revolutioning in France. But it usually doesn’t go well, so you know, that’s the other problem with, with [01:00:00] you know, it’s not as, as directed. And I do wanna make my position on Catholicism, like clear. I’m mortified by what the Vatican has come to represent.
[01:00:09] I am mortified by the vast majority of Catholic history, if I’m gonna be honest. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think the Catholics I know today could create a really pure and great institution. I know a great number of really devout moral Catholics today who would not repeat the grossnesses of indulgences, and like, like, even when you were talking about like paying for other people to pray for your...
[01:00:39] I was like, “Ugh, that is so gross that that was ever in the theology.” Why would you... Ugh, ugh, ugh. Yeah. So gross.
[01:00:51] Simone Collins: Wasn’t the best. I mean, I could see how it could happen and come from a good place, right? Like, people start really thinking purgatory’s a thing, even though I don’t remember seeing any biblical basis for it.
[01:01:05] But look, it just, everyone starts thinking, and it’s like this mass delusion, and everyone starts getting really worried about it, and they’re like, “How do I get over this?” And they’re like, “Well, you just gotta prayer for, pray for hours and hours.” And people admittedly have jobs and things they have to do, and they can’t, and they’re not experts, so they want to, they wanna throw money at the problem.
[01:01:23] And so someone shows up and they’re like, “Well, you can throw money at me.” Like, this is how it
[01:01:26] Malcolm Collins: could happen. And then somebody says, “You guys should stop this. It’s a little corrupt the way you’re doing it.” Yeah. I know. And then they torture and kill them.
[01:01:31] Simone Collins: I
[01:01:31] Malcolm Collins: know. I know. We know how it goes. Which is the, the way it often went- Yeah
[01:01:34] For hundreds of years. Which is hard to read about when you’re reading history and you remember that these are real people who were devout Catholics, who wanted the church to be better, right? You know,
[01:01:44] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[01:01:45] Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s hard. It’s hard. But I think that something good can be made. And I, I just, like seriously, Catholics g- in the, in the Discord or in the comments, how do you actually fix this if the pope controls the cardinals and the cardinals control the pope, and they’ve had control of this system for about a century at this point, at least half a century?
[01:02:12] Simone Collins: Well, here’s what I’m hearing from people on the ground, though. At the parish level, they have thriving communities, they have fantastic-
[01:02:20] Malcolm Collins: They do. There’s g- there’s lots of local Catholic
[01:02:22] Simone Collins: communities that I love Yeah. They’re like, “Look, this doesn’t affect me. I don’t care.” Like, it’s, the, the people who are actually doing Catholicism, who aren’t the ones in, in their ivory towers, are doing Catholicism.
[01:02:35] And in the end, pe- they’re, sometimes people are looking the other way. I mean, SSPX is different, I think, in that they’re being very explicit about their choice- Mm ... to not adopt all elements of Vatican II, for example. I think that maybe in practice there are a lot of
[01:02:51] Malcolm Collins: parishes that- But I think that this is why Catholics have such a high deconversion rate- Mm
[01:02:55] um, and, and such a low birth rate, is it’s this innate trust in institutions that they know are corrupted. So they send their kids to Catholic school- Mm-hmm ... and then the Catholic school ends up upstream of that being totally woke, which we’ve seen a lot of Catholic schools becoming. They tell their kids, “Oh, well you can trust the, you know, local Catholic priest or whatever when you move to a new city,” and then this priest has some goal or worse, because we have seen this happen among our fans who are in Catholic communities, is some based local priest becomes super popular, and then the Vatican switches him out-
[01:03:34] Simone Collins: Yeah
[01:03:34] Malcolm Collins: because they were becoming too popular, and v- they were like, “Oh, this isn’t exactly what we want being taught here.” So you can’t even, like, trust your local church, really. And then when you outsource that to your children’s moral framework that they’re building as they develop as an individual it’s really dangerous.
[01:03:51] I mean, yes, you can jury rig a system together to make it work, but I think it’s a bit like the people when it came to, like, public schools, they’re like, “Oh, [01:04:00] this woke stuff doesn’t really bother me,” and then 10 years later it’s like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this is in my local school.” When you have over 90% support of trans within this Catholic council, when you have the BDSM stuff on Catholic Day, I think you’re seeing a level of, “Well, no, this is, like, oh, my kids will go to Catholic Day and it’ll be fine.
[01:04:19] It’ll be cool. It won’t be a place where they will be incepted- Mm-hmm ... into these other communities,” and it’s like, no, now Catholic Day is the root to that for the next generation. And I think that it is this being okay with the institutions being this captured and just being like, “It won’t affect me,” it’s really like the I, I see this in Protestant communities sometimes as well, where I see the very Protestant parent, and they’re like, “I’ll just raise my kids the way I was raised, and I stayed a Christian,” and I was like, “Was it li- did you, when was the first time you met somebody who wasn’t a Christian?”
[01:04:52] You know, like, y- they’re going into a school system that is designed from the ground up to deconvert them, right? Like, you can’t just do it the way you did it a generation ago. Mm. And I think that that’s why we’re seeing these high rates of deconversion among sort of l- and a lot of Catholics are smart.
[01:05:07] They know, like, they can’t do- these systems, but it, it just raises the cost for them so much to live that lifestyle when if you go to the Mormon communities, they got, even though their institutions are slightly captured, they’re gonna have some level of protection at their, at the, the, from the ground up in these communities, and the Catholics just don’t have this anymore.
[01:05:29] And I think it’s because they just immediately were like, “I don’t even need to win these battles, these battles aren’t important.” They’re existential, these battles, are existential. And well, I mean, I think the reality is that Catholicism is probably just gonna either gonna have to grow from these movements that are, that, you know, that Vatican’s gonna get panicked, they’ll start excommunicating more people, and groups like SPSX, because I see what the Catholics do.
[01:05:53] They go, “Oh, well, this other bishop who I followed said the SSPX excommunication didn’t count because they didn’t use the proper procedures,” a very Catholic- What? ... thing to say.
[01:06:03] Simone Collins: Oh.
[01:06:03] Malcolm Collins: And so we don’t, we, we can pretend like they didn’t happen. And I think that, that that’s sort of what’s happening.
[01:06:08] They’re just going along and being like, “Well, we’re, we’re pretending that the institutions aren’t this captured.”
[01:06:13] Simone Collins: No. No, no, no, no.
[01:06:16] Malcolm Collins: As a Protestant, as a Catholic, you can actually do that. They’ve been doing this for centuries. That’s how they’re gonna wipe Vatican II off. They’re gonna be like, “Oh, they forgot to do this procedural thing,” or, “It wasn’t done in this way, when it was done this way at the first council, ‘cause they didn’t go in this order, or they weren’t sitting on this chair,” and,
[01:06:33] Simone Collins: Look, if that’s what it takes, though, I’m happy for that to be what it is.
[01:06:38] I- if that’s... Look, it, I, we just need it gone. I don’t care how, and if it just, people are like, “Oh, never mind,” like take-backsies. I would be happy. Let’s do that. I just don’t see that happening anytime soon.
[01:06:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I’d, well, I’d, I love this guy’s vision. Let’s get a warrior, let’s get a crusader pope back I’d have to, I’d have to be like like, we oughta become like a, a, like, the, that would be so cool to, to have within the alliance.
[01:07:11] And a Ca- a Catholic group recreated around crusader aesthetics and lifestyle would also be pretty cool.
[01:07:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, I could see that being... But I, I feel like there was something that happened with Islam where there was this short period where they were like, “Everyone, you should be on your own personal jihad,” but they just took the fangs out of it.
[01:07:34] Like, “Oh, man, I’m on a weight loss jihad. I’m on a study jihad.”
[01:07:37] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. This was the thing where they lied to white people because white women were stupid. Okay. And they kept saying, “When we say jihad, we don’t mean kill you all, we mean it’s like a weight loss thing.” It’s like, a no, the vast majority of Muslims understand what that means.
[01:07:52] It’s like when they started to tell people, “Well, technically there’s a way that, like, Aisha wasn’t six and then nine at consummation, six [01:08:00] at marriage, nine at consummation because if you look at it here, here, and here.” And then I, I learn that all conservative Muslims believe that. This is just, like, a few weird progressive European Muslims who don’t believe this.
[01:08:10] But if you’re talking about, like, your average conservative council in, like, Pakistan, they believe that. It’s, it’s, it’s, you don’t, don’t get fooled by that. And th- what we get fooled by that, we, when we say crusade, we don’t mean crusade. We mean, like, your personal weight loss journey. Jour-
[01:08:25] Simone Collins: It’s a c- it’s a crusade to lose
[01:08:26] Malcolm Collins: weight.
[01:08:27] It’s the same way that Simone and I dress like like, Puritan, like, settlers and stuff like that. This group could dress like old crusader stuff, you know?
[01:08:34] Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, the- As if the Catholic Church needed better aesthetics, though. I’m so into all of it. It’s, it’s all good.
[01:08:41] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[01:08:41] Simone Collins: Still, though, I, yeah, I don’t know.
[01:08:44] Yeah. I- I’ve never seen such a divide between my faith in the-
[01:08:49] Malcolm Collins: Humans. Individual Catholic
[01:08:51] Simone Collins: humans ... yeah, the laypeople, yeah, versus my, my lack of faith. And not in, like, the priest level or the nun level. Every priest and nun I’ve met, incredible person. Actually, every deacon I’ve met, really awesome, too. It’s, I, it just seems- I’m gonna push back on-
[01:09:07] something’s happening somewhere ...
[01:09:08] Malcolm Collins: every priest I have met in, in Catholicism has been an incredible person, but they have all also been very coded urban monoculture. Like, behind the things that they’re saying, it’s a clear, “But I want to be accepted and thought of as the cultural elite.” There is no edginess.
[01:09:28] There is no, that I need to, like, know that I can trust somebody. Right? Like, that, this is, like, culturally for me. I need to see a little bit of that edge. I need to see a little bit of that dark Mimi. I need to see a little bit like, hey,
[01:09:40] Simone Collins: like- Look, I don’t- ...
[01:09:41] Malcolm Collins: crusade, crusade
[01:09:42] Simone Collins: is kind of a- Our whole prohibitive vice thing is, that I think is a techno Puritan thing and, and, and something-
[01:09:47] Malcolm Collins: I don’t think it is.
[01:09:48] Like, this guy who was kicked out of the Catholic Church and was, like, a thing for the... He’s got this energy. He’s talking about crusader popes. If I, but I’ve never seen- and any of the catholic priests that i’ve talked to have that. they always have that very, like, buttoned up, sort of posh mckinsey middle management vibe
[01:10:04] Simone Collins: mckinsey middle, ouch, malcolm you
[01:10:06] Malcolm Collins: know what i’m talking about
[01:10:07] Simone Collins: i do, but ouch yeah Ah, I, I don’t know.
[01:10:15] That- Anyway, I wish them
[01:10:16] Malcolm Collins: all the best ... that Mackenzie Vigo management vibe is to me, like, like my, my vibes like the cucumber to a cat. Again, like I see that, I’m like, “
[01:10:23] Simone Collins: Rah!”
[01:10:24]
[01:10:27] Malcolm Collins: Like, what, what are you doing here? I don’t,
[01:10:28] Simone Collins: I don’t like this. Yeah, well this is equal opportunity. You have the same response to the Mormon pod person phenomenon, as you put it, so.
[01:10:35] Speaker 7: Stan, take the drug, man, prove it to us. Okay.
[01:10:41] Open the door. It is so much better. There’s no fear or pain. It’s beautiful. And you We’ll be beautiful. No problems or worries. We want you. No pain, Stan? We’re gonna come in here and I’ll show you some f*****g pain!
[01:11:04] Malcolm Collins: No, I don’t. I, I find it scary. Okay? I’m like, “Mm.”
[01:11:11] Simone Collins: It- Malcolm, no. You have a strong, visceral reaction to it. Don’t even.
[01:11:16] Malcolm Collins: It’s a little, yeah, okay, I do have a, a visceral reaction to it.
[01:11:18] Simone Collins: Yes, you do.
[01:11:19] Malcolm Collins: But I don’t get that from all Mormon- I don’t get that from Kevin Dolan.
[01:11:23] Simone Collins: Well, no, definitely not.
[01:11:24] Malcolm Collins: But I do get it from a lot of the high-level church people in the Mormon community.
[01:11:29] Simone Collins: I don’t know that
[01:11:30] Malcolm Collins: that- And Mormon influencers.
[01:11:32] Simone Collins: Well, Mormon influencers are... Look, an influencer is its own type of pod person. They have their own pod person vibe, which is a little different. But y- and you, and you, you, you also have a, a cat-meets-cucumber reaction to, to many things that Orthodox Jews do and, and that Reform Jews do.
[01:11:50] Look, you just, you-
[01:11:52] Malcolm Collins: The, yeah, their mysticism stuff?
[01:11:55]
[01:11:58] Speaker 45: Siva, Om Nam [01:12:00] S
[01:12:01] Speaker 46: to
[01:12:11] Simone Collins: Yes, Malcolm. That immediately gets me. So again, you know, well, I just, I’m saying this for the people who are always like, “Oh, you always single out Catholics.”
[01:12:17] Malcolm Collins: Oh, my, yeah.
[01:12:18] Simone Collins: Anyway. You
[01:12:19] should see what I say about-
[01:12:21] Malcolm Collins: Can’t stop thinking about Catholics ... look, people know, like, my thoughts on Kabbalism are at, probably more severe than my thoughts on Catholicism.
[01:12:28] Simone Collins: Oh,
[01:12:28] yeah.
[01:12:29] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. It makes sense ... I just yeah, they’re, they’re definitely more severe. It’s just that if you’re not an Orthodox Jew, you don’t understand why what I’m saying about Kabbalism is so offensive.
[01:12:39] Simone Collins: Oh, dear ...
[01:12:40] Malcolm Collins: and if you’re, you know... But Mormons, I think they largely know about the whole pod person thing.
[01:12:45] Mormons are aware of that. Are they?
[01:12:47] Simone Collins: I think so, yeah. Yes, yes, actually, I m- know so. I mean, they know that for the same reason that they know that MLMs are an issue in the community and all these other
[01:12:56] Malcolm Collins: sorts of things. But I mean, I say what I mean, and as I said with Simone, we know so many Catholics that are awesome and would be such great members of, like, this wider community and it, the, the just like, well, don’t care about what the people at the top say.
[01:13:12] And it’s like, but that ends up affecting your children and our ability, because if you ever become super effective, like SPSX h- has, SSPX has, It sounds like a skateboarding company, by the way. Like SSPX has. Which is cool. It’s rad, okay? Yeah. If you ever become super effective, like your portion of the Catholic movement, you could just get excommunicated, right?
[01:13:33] Like, that’s messed up, and I guess what we’re gonna see going forward is, does that matter? And so far it appears it doesn’t. And when we see an excommunication from the pope no longer mattering, and everyone just being like M- to the pope I think that is where the, the beginnings of any real revolution come from and where we might see a positive Catholic movement.
[01:13:58] And I think that the people who are now going to SSPX meetings, who are going to their churches, who are going to their masses in response to what the pope did,
[01:14:08] Simone Collins: Yeah, which is so great to see. Yeah ...
[01:14:09] Malcolm Collins: that forces the popes... That, that is how you actually create change. Mm. That’s how you force the pope to the negotiation table, right?
[01:14:18] Yeah. That is probably the only real... Because you show that what the pope says no longer matters to average Catholics when he is excommunicating people for their devoutness- ... while leaving the rest of this stuff on the table.
[01:14:35] Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh,
[01:14:36] Malcolm Collins: it’s just so wild. If it was excommunications on both sides, I’d be fine, but it’s not Which shows who’s secretly in control of everything.
[01:14:45] He’s basically just like, “Don’t say this too loudly.”
[01:14:51] Simone Collins: Well, there you have it. I’m sure we will find more things to cover going forward.
[01:14:58] Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I think that these two topics are needed back to back because they are a mirror of y- each other.
[01:15:05] Simone Collins: Oh, right, right. So on the one hand you have these very devout people who are getting excommunicated. On the other hand, you have the branches that have not even been, been admonished for trying to introduce a series of policies it seems incredibly antithetical to even the current stance of the church.
[01:15:26] Though, the fact that these were... I mean, it almost feels like a lot of this was denied merely because they wanted to administer the church, like via this extra layer of governance, and cover, and control the finances and stuff. I feel like that seems to be a bigger driver of the Vatican saying, “No, you can’t do this,” than all the other stuff, which is very interesting.
[01:15:46] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I don’t know. And I, and I will note here that like I may have been brainwashed as well, like on my thoughts about medieval Catholics. C- you, you can go to St. Andrew’s, I went to St. Andrew’s for my university. Every day walking to my philosophy class you have to walk around a spot on the ground, ‘cause there’s [01:16:00] a, a, a thing there because the Catholic Church burnt a very devout Christian man alive very pious man alive, a, a teenager actually I think because he called for reforms, right?
[01:16:12] For he, he called them to be less corrupt. And so that’s very, like in my head, the thought of a teenager burning alive because of the corrupt church.
[01:16:22] And, I decided to go to AI just to double-check I was getting this right, and yep, burned a kid alive because he was upset about indulgences. F*****g... I don’t-- Gosh, man, maybe you guys are okay with... I’m not okay with this. I’m not okay with this. I’m not o- Like, am I not allowed to be like, “This is evil”?
[01:16:43] Malcolm Collins: And, and it’s something that is hard for me to not think about. And it’s not that Protestants didn’t do like, corrupt things, but the iterations of Protestantism that were corrupt and evil, modern Protestants denounce, right?
[01:16:57] Whereas the iterations of the Church, it’s, th- th- that had the blessing of God because it’s a, it’s, it’s a contiguous line which makes it harder for me to just be like but y- like I can say what they did was bad and I’m not part of that denomination of Protestantism because I think- Mm ... that denomination was bad and corrupt and that’s not good and so we had to reform that, whereas this reform never really happened in the Church.
[01:17:22] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[01:17:22] Malcolm Collins: It’s... Anyway, love you, Simone.
[01:17:26] Simone Collins: I love you too. Is this gonna focus on the, the s- situation that happened in Germany, or are you gonna talk about the alcoholic’s rehab center turned pedobear rehab center?
[01:17:45] Malcolm Collins: I had literally knew nothing about that. What happened?
[01:17:47] Simone Collins: The island? Okay. Maybe I’ll bring that up later ‘cause it’s, it’s amazing, truly.
[01:17:53] Malcolm Collins: Well, d- tell me a bit about it so I know whether or not I need to mention it in the intro.
[01:17:57] Simone Collins: Oh okay,
[01:17:58] There was this man called Father Gerald Fitzgerald, which great name, founded what was called The Servants of the Paraclete to help problem priests. And, you know, this is a reasonable man. He knows that some priests are alcoholics, so he basically tried to create an alcoholic rehab center for Catholic priests who really struggled.
[01:18:22] And then he started getting sent priests that had other problems, problems involving their interests in-
[01:18:31] Malcolm Collins: Children. Okay, continue.
[01:18:32] Simone Collins: Yes ... the youthful. And yeah so as much as he had actually a decent amount of success with the alcoholics, he, he did not have so much success dealing with different types of disorders.
[01:18:45] Malcolm Collins: What’s the point, Simone?
[01:18:46] Simone Collins: He basically gave up on ever trying to rehab the, the priests that came to him that weren’t suffering from alcoholism, and was like, “You know what we should do? We should send them to an island and just, just keep them there. Just let them stay there. And they can just live there for the rest of their lives.
[01:19:03] No one’s gonna hurt them.” He, he proposed it was an island in the Caribbean. This was in 1965. He, he said, “Look, it’s gonna cost about s- $50,000.” He purchased it even for that amount, and he wanted to use it to isolate priests who got accused of sexual abuse.
[01:19:19] Malcolm Collins: That sounds like a really good idea, actually.
[01:19:21] Simone Collins: Oh, do you know there’s an island that’s kind of known for sheltering-
[01:19:26] Malcolm Collins: Yes ... pedophiles But if you just put them on an island without children, it- I
[01:19:30] Simone Collins: know ...
[01:19:30] Malcolm Collins: that was a, a dramatically more ethical solution than what the church chose. Why-
[01:19:34] Simone Collins: I’m just saying there is a, there’s a, per my knowledge, an un- unoccupied island in the Caribbean
[01:19:41] Malcolm Collins: Do you wanna do the Jeffrey Epstein island for-
[01:19:43] Simone Collins: Well, how perfect would that be?
[01:19:45] I’m just saying it would be, it would be perfect. Unfortunately, no priests were actually sent to the island that was purchas- purchased by Father Fitzgerald. It just didn’t happen, and church authorities sort of forced him to sell it. So [01:20:00] the, the island doesn’t even belong-
[01:20:02] Malcolm Collins: That’s really- ...
[01:20:03] Simone Collins: to
[01:20:03] Malcolm Collins: the Catholic Church anymore
[01:20:04] messed up that they had a place where they could have sent them and they-
[01:20:07] Simone Collins: They, yeah, they could have... And a nice island in the Caribbean, like this- But
[01:20:10] Malcolm Collins: not even bat. Just like, “No, whatever happens, we have to keep raping children.” Yeah. “That is the one thing that our religion cannot live without.”
[01:20:18] Yeah
[01:20:19] Simone Collins: that is- Well, and he went so far. Like, this was an experienced person. They tried everything else first. Like, “We’re gonna try to rehab them.” He l- And he, this was a man who had a track record of bringing people back from pretty serious alcoholism. But he, he literally th- his quote in, in describing them was, quote, “Irredeemable, completely incorrigible.”
[01:20:37] They just, you couldn’t, you couldn’t fix them. He just threw up his hands. I just love that, like, there was a priest, he tried to fix them, and he’s like, “Nope, send them to the island.” All right. Put them in a box. Yeah. Anyway- So I’ll get started here ... I, I didn’t realize you weren’t gonna cover that. I just figured that that was, like, connected to all this.
[01:20:54] But I guess this is- No ... just so much bigger than,
[01:20:56] Malcolm Collins: Did you do some research and see how big it is?
[01:20:59] Simone Collins: No. No. I just, I just looked up that because I thought that that-
[01:21:03] Like,
[01:21:04] could... Was- Okay.
[01:21:04] Malcolm Collins: I’ll get started.
[01:21:05] Simone Collins: Yeah
[01:21:07] Speaker 9: Whoa, what is happening, Titan? Daddy, and there’s seats right there. Daddy, there’s- Look, I can sit on one. Daddy, there’s- Yeah ... yeah, to watch the movie. Do you wanna go over there? Look, it’s the sand. Oh, yeah? Yeah.
[01:21:19] Titan,
[01:21:24] are you watching the movie?
[01:21:51] Toasty, did you build this? Did you build this? I didn’t build it
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Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the Vatican’s aggressive excommunication of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) after they consecrated bishops without papal approval. They discuss why the Church is cracking down on the Latin Mass, traditional Catholics, and the fastest-growing, highest-fertility segment of the faith — while selling off convents and schools.
Topics include: the capture of the Vatican, Vatican II reforms and contradictions, the Latin Mass vs. Novus Ordo, demographic collapse in mainstream Catholicism, monetary incentives for decline, parallels with the Anglican realignment/GAFCON schism, and why institutional recapture through demographics may be nearly impossible.
Show Notes
AP News on July 2nd:
“VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist group that consecrated bishops without the pope’s consent, declaring the Society of St. Pius X had formally broken with the Catholic Church. It excommunicated its bishops and priests, and warned its faithful that they too face the harshest sanctions in the church.
By declaring a schism and extending excommunications to potentially thousands of Catholics, the Vatican’s doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law to respond to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops.
The society, known by its acronym SSPX, celebrates the ancient Latin Mass and opposes the modernizing reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors. While a fringe movement on the Catholic right, the SSPX has been a thorn in the Vatican’s side for five decades because it claims to be even more Catholic than the Holy See.
During a ritual-filled, five-hour Mass on Wednesday at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Leo, who had urged the group to hold off for the sake of church unity. An estimated 15,500 people and their children attended, a sign that the SSPX has plenty of supporters who came from around the world knowing full well they were defying Rome.”
The Excommunication
In Catholic teaching, excommunication does not equal being condemned to hell, nor is it understood as a declaration that a person is damned (Official theology has long insisted that only God judges the soul definitively; excommunication addresses external communion, not the internal state of grace.)
* The current law treats it as a “censure,” not expulsion from the Church; an excommunicated person remains a baptized Catholic, still bound by obligations like Sunday Mass, but barred from receiving or administering sacraments and holding church offices
* Its purpose is medicinal: a severe wake‑up call meant to prompt repentance and return to full communion, not a spiritual “execution.”
* Most excommunications can be lifted by going to confession and receiving absolution from the appropriate authority (sometimes any priest, sometimes a bishop, sometimes the Holy See, depending on the offense).
* Also, what is your take on the Vatican’s excommunication SSPX members? https://www.facebook.com/reel/776390925518377
* https://www.disclose.tv/id/8klgxp4icx/
* The decree promulgated in response was by far the harshest one yet
* Leo hasn’t walked back traditiones custodes either
* The clergy in Charlotte just appealed to Rome
* The bishop took away the thriving Latin masses, restricting it to one small chapel in a corner of the diocese that can’t hold everyone
* Banned altar rails
* I think you are mistaken that high fertility means anything in the immediate term
* I used to live on a block that had a public school that was a former Catholic parish school
* The diocese sold it due to low enrollment
* Selling off properties as they are shuttered makes money
* I think a lot of religious leaders feel their job is quietly managing decline and not making too much fuss
About SSPX - Society of St. Pius X
Origins of SSPX
The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) originated in 1970 in Switzerland as a priestly fraternity founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to preserve traditional Catholic priestly formation and liturgy in the wake of Vatican II.
Ecclesial approval and early status
* The local bishop of Fribourg, François Charrière, approved SSPX in 1970 as a “pious union of priests in the diocese,” initially on an experimental basis.
* This early approval meant SSPX initially existed within the canonical structures of the Church, not as a breakaway group.
* Rome initially sent visitors who gave favorable reviews of the seminary’s formation, underscoring that early tensions were not immediate.
Rapid growth
* As of 2025, SSPX reports about 1,482 members total (bishops, priests, seminarians, brothers).
* Of these, around 733 priests (excluding bishops) belong to the Society.
* Estimates place 600,000 or so faithful attending SSPX Masses worldwide.
* Internally, SSPX news sites emphasize that the Society “has experienced constant growth” since 1970, with new locations opening every year.
* In the United States, SSPX lists 20 priories and 103 chapels, plus retreat centers, which is “quite small” compared with hundreds of non‑SSPX parishes offering the TLM.
Commentators sometimes point out that, by priestly headcount, SSPX would rank among the larger priestly religious congregations if fully recognized: one claim placed them around 5th after Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, and Augustinians, based on ~700 priests. That’s meant to highlight how unusual it is for a group of that size to remain canonically irregular.
The Birth Rates
There is strong evidence that Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) Catholics as a whole have higher fertility than other Catholics, but there is no hard, SSPX‑specific dataset that cleanly isolates “SSPX parishioners” from other TLM communities.
The best quantitative data are for TLM vs. Novus Ordo Catholics, not SSPX vs. non‑SSPX:
* A widely cited U.S. survey of Latin Mass attendees reported an average of 3.6 children per woman among TLM Catholics versus 2.3 among Catholics attending the ordinary (Novus Ordo) form.
* Commentators describe this as “nearly 60% larger family size” for TLM participants relative to ordinary‑form parishioners.
* Social‑science work on religiosity and fertility generally finds that more devout, frequently attending religious adherents have higher fertility and intended fertility than nominal believers, which fits these numbers.
Points of Divergence from the Vatican
1. Episcopal consecrations without papal mandate
* SSPX consecrated bishops without the required papal approval, most notably Marcel Lefebvre’s consecrations in 1988 and the new consecrations in 2026.
* The Vatican has repeatedly declared these consecrations a “schismatic act,” stressing that choosing bishops without a papal bull crosses a definitive canonical boundary.
* The latest decree explicitly states that this act created a formal schism and triggered automatic excommunication of the bishops involved.
2. Rejection of key aspects of Vatican II
* SSPX was founded explicitly “in opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council,” and continues to reject major elements of those reforms.
* They object to the Council’s promotion of the role of laypeople, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue, seeing these as harmful concessions rather than legitimate developments.
* The group has accused the post‑conciliar Church of being “rife with heresies and errors” such as modernism and liberalism, positioning itself as the sole guardian of the “true faith.”
3. Liturgy and the Roman Rite
* SSPX insists on celebrating the pre‑Vatican II “ancient Latin Mass” and rejects the ordinary form of the Roman rite (the post‑conciliar Mass in vernacular languages) as a theological and pastoral mistake.
* They explicitly oppose the move to allow Mass in local languages, a reform the Vatican understands as legitimate and binding.
* In practice, they treat the new liturgy with deep suspicion or outright rejection, sometimes describing it as harmful to the faith.
4. The push for unity and interreligious dialogue
* Vatican II and subsequent popes have pursued structured dialogue and “thawing of relations” with Protestants, Orthodox, and non‑Christian religions; SSPX rejects this orientation.
* SSPX holds that the Catholic Church is the “one, true faith” and regards interfaith dialogue as unnecessary or positively dangerous, criticizing official policy of building inroads with other Christian communities.
* This stance conflicts with magisterial documents that frame ecumenism and interreligious dialogue as integral to contemporary Catholic mission.
5. Teaching on religious freedom
* A core doctrinal dispute is over Vatican II’s teaching on religious freedom (e.g., Dignitatis humanae), which SSPX critics often portray as incompatible with prior Catholic teaching.
* SSPX-associated arguments frequently claim the Council’s stance on religious liberty represents a rupture, not a development, and see this as evidence of near‑apostasy outside SSPX.
* The Vatican, by contrast, has consistently defended the Council’s teaching as authoritative and binding.
6. Attitude toward the post‑conciliar magisterium
* SSPX has long suggested that Church authorities since Vatican II “have been animated by a spirit that is contrary to that of the faith and have been acting against holy tradition.”
* This includes a practical distrust of recent papal teachings and doctrinal offices, leading them to set their own doctrinal interpretations against official magisterial documents.
* The Vatican’s latest decree characterizes this stance as an “intentional rupture” in communion, hence schism.
7. Canonical status and sacramental discipline
* The Vatican now explicitly declares SSPX bishops and priests to be schismatic and excommunicated.
* It has invalidated or declared illicit SSPX administration of key sacraments, especially confession and marriage, reversing prior limited accommodations.
* Faithful who “adhere formally” to SSPX—regularly attend their Masses and share their doctrinal positions—are warned they themselves are considered schismatic and excommunicated.
8. Obedience to papal authority
* SSPX’s actions imply a parallel ecclesial structure that claims to be “more Catholic than the Holy See,” undermining the Vatican’s claim to supreme authority in matters of doctrine, liturgy, and discipline.
* The recent decree emphasizes that continuing in SSPX while rejecting papal directives constitutes a deliberate break with Church unity.
The Church Had This Coming
Pointed out to us by a friend:
* The CCP basically chooses bishops and Rome OKs them: There is a secret 2018 Vatican–China agreement that gives the Chinese state a decisive role in proposing bishops, with the pope retaining theoretical veto power, and in practice Rome has often ended up accepting party‑approved candidates.
* They keep pushing back on Latin mass even though people really like it
* Pope Leo hasn’t walked back traditiones custodes
* Traditionis custodes is the 2021 decree by Pope Francis that imposed strong limits on celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal. It requires bishops to get Vatican permission for certain uses of the old rite and generally discourages new communities centered on it.
* After Vatican II, they began removing alter rails, which foster reverence and clarify the sanctuary’s sacredness—plus support kneeling communion
* Historically, the rail marked off the sanctuary from the nave and provided a place for people to kneel to receive Communion while the priest moved along the rail. This reflected the older theology and practice where the sanctuary was treated as a distinct, more sacred space and Communion was almost always received kneeling at the rail
* Practically, it’s helpful for churches that have lots of children around
They also kind of benefit from their low-fertility mainstream
* They make money from selling properties that shut down
* They’re King Henry VIII-ing themselves
Other Schisms
Orthodox
There is an intra‑Orthodox rupture in communion centered on the Moscow Patriarchate and several Greek‑tradition churches, but it’s not that big of a deal in comparison and it’s more political (with the Catholic Church, it’s about doctrine; here it’s about communion—In this case, both sides still share the same theology and sacraments)
Basically, since 2018, the Russian Orthodox church has severed Eucharistic communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and certain churches under its influence (notably Greece, Alexandria, Cyprus).
* This means bishops and priests of these churches no longer concelebrate together, and Moscow has instructed its faithful not to receive communion in those Greek‑tradition churches.
This is downstream of Russia’s war with Ukraine. Constantinople granted independence to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2018, which Moscow argues violates canonical tradition and its own claim to Ukraine as its territory.
The dispute raises questions such as who can grant independent, whether schismatics can be received back by a patriarch other than the one they left, and whether the Ecumenical Patriarch can act as a kind of “Eastern pope” beyond his jurisdiction
Where things stand: As of recent assessments, Moscow is out of communion with Constantinople, Alexandria, Greece, and Cyprus, but both blocs remain in communion with most other Orthodox churches.
Anglican Schism
This one’s more similar to the SSPX schism.
Anglicanism is presently experiencing what many observers openly describe as a de facto schism, driven largely by disputes over sexuality, gender, and the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
* Over roughly the last 20–30 years, conservative Anglican provinces (especially in the Global South) have progressively distanced themselves from the Church of England and other liberal Western provinces over issues like same‑sex blessings and women’s ordination.
* In 2025–26 this moved from tension to formal break: the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) movement and allied provinces announced that they no longer recognize the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury or the traditional Instruments of Communion.
* GAFCON‑aligned provinces have announced that they will not participate in meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, will not contribute to Anglican Communion structures, and will amend constitutions to remove references to Canterbury.
* Estimates suggest the global Anglican family may end up split roughly in half, with each side claiming continuity with authentic Anglican identity
Issues driving the split
* The immediate flashpoints include the Church of England’s decisions to bless same‑sex couples and to appoint a woman (Sarah Mullally) as Archbishop of Canterbury, both seen by conservatives as symbols of “unbiblical and revisionist teachings.”
* Beneath these are deeper disputes about the nature of Anglican authority: whether Canterbury has any binding global role, and whether doctrinal and moral teaching can be set locally without reference to shared historic standards like the Jerusalem Declaration (2008).
* Conservative leaders frame their move as faithfulness to Scripture and to the English Reformation’s theology, while critics see it as a schism that fractures Anglicanism into two rival communions.
They’d prefer not to call it a schism: GAFCON and sympathetic writers resist the word “schism,” preferring “realignment” or “reformation” and insisting they are not founding a new church but restoring Anglicanism around its original doctrinal center.
Is this normal? Is this a promising sign?
Schisms are a recurring and fairly typical feature of religious history; what’s unusual today is more the visibility and global simultaneity than the fact that multiple splits exist at once.
What do we think about it? Keen on Malcolm’s opinion.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: ask yourself why they’re doing this. Like, Latin mass is-- It’s so clear ... clearly more popular. It’s- Yeah ... clearly practiced in churches that have lower attrition rates. Yeah. It’s clearly practiced in churches that have higher birth rates. Yeah. The common people love it. Why would you remove something like that the reason you would do that is if your explicit goal was the demoralization and destruction of the institution.
[00:00:25] Simone Collins: It, it really feels that way. It super feels that way. the Vatican actually has a, a monetary incentive to lean in to this
[00:00:34] because when you have all these Catholic schools and all these convents and all these monasteries shutting down- Ooh ... because no one’s left in the area, guess what you get to do? They’re literally, like, King Henry VIII-ing their own church.
[00:00:50] They’re selling it- Yeah ... for parts. And I think that also- For their gay
[00:00:54] Malcolm Collins: sex parties.
[00:00:55] Would you like to know more?
[00:00:57] Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm, I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we have an excommunication party. And there’s schisms taking place, and of course it’s about your favorite thing in the entire world, the Catholic Church. So here is a news bulletin from AP News.
[00:01:14] Vatican City has responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist group that consecrated bishops without the Pope’s consent. Declaring the society of St. Pius X had formally broken with the Catholic Church, it excommunicated its bishops and priests, and warned its faithful that they too face the harshest sanctions in the church.
[00:01:37] By declaring a schism and extending excommunications to potentially thousands of Catholics, the Vatican’s doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law to respond to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops. The society known by its acronym SSPX celebrates the ancient Latin mass and opposes- Wait, wait,
[00:01:59] Malcolm Collins: this is SSPX that got excommunicated?
[00:02:02] Simone Collins: I know.
[00:02:03] Malcolm Collins: I know. That’s like mainstream Catholicism.
[00:02:06] Speaker 6: What I mean by that is SPSX doesn’t hold any like weird or particularly offensive theological beliefs. , , You know, they’re not particularly racist or homophobic or, , do even anything as weird as like mortification at like really high rates like you see with some Catholic groups. The reason why the Vatican has chosen to have a beef with them is because they practice the Latin Mass and because they believe that Catholicism is the one true religion.
[00:02:32] And that’s really it. That is what was - made them worthy of
[00:02:36] The ban on being able to choose their own bishops without explicit papal approval, which no other Catholic group is subject to, and thus
[00:02:44]
[00:02:44] Speaker 6: excommunication
[00:02:45] Simone Collins: I mean, we’ll talk about the differences, but like they’re one of the biggest and fastest growing and highest fertility groups. Yeah, like
[00:02:50] Malcolm Collins: I know a lot of their people. And
[00:02:51] Simone Collins: they’re like, “Hey look, it’s my foot, let’s shoot it. Pew pew pew.” So, Well,
[00:02:55] Malcolm Collins: no, these are the only Catholics having any kids, right?
[00:02:57] I know. I know.
[00:02:57] Speaker: And I want to note here, they have done this once before. The Catholic Church has, in the 80s, they excommunicated a number of high-level people in SPX. But this time is different because they were more explicit that the lay people who go to these churches, .
[00:03:13] Are also subject to this. So, . i’ll just quote here from, a newspaper article on this, , and this is in America Jesuit Reviews, so this is a Catholic newspaper. , So this is not me putting words in, like, the church’s mouth or anything like this. , Today’s Vatican decree also goes a step further, warning the priests and lay members of SSPX that, quote, “From now on,” end quote, they too will be in schism and automatically excommunicated if they, quote, “adhere,” end quote, to the schism.
[00:03:43] What adhere means is largely clarified in the 1996 explanatory note of the Pontificate Council of Legislative Text on the, quote, “Excommunication for Schism Incurred by the Members of the Movement of Bishop Marcel Lefebvre,” , which was referred to in [00:04:00] an explanatory note attached to today’s decree. I love it how something so truly evil to people who have dedicated their entire life to a religion can be done in such a bureaucratic fashion.
[00:04:10] But anyway, back to this. , The 1996 note explains that if Lefebvre deacons and priests freely carry out their ministry within the schismatic movement, , e.g., within SSPX, in disobedience of the Pope, then that is a formal adherence to schism. , The question of the laity’s adherence to schism depends on the person’s intention in whether he or she adopts SSPX attitude towards doctrine.
[00:04:33] , This is really f-d-- like, really evil stuff, man
[00:04:37] And if you’re gonna say, “Well, they ignored the Pope’s orders,” the Pope’s orders were patently ridiculous. , The, the people who had spent their entire lives in were highly dedicated to the church, and he didn’t like them because of their views on ecumenicalism and the Latin mass. Like, that’s what he was mad at them for.
[00:04:54] That’s why he said they couldn’t become bishops. , But they went ahead and became bishops anyway. That, that’s what this was over., Just completely unreasonable
[00:05:02] Malcolm Collins: Like, I, I, so brief aside here we’ll be going over some other churches, ‘cause it’s not just Catholics that have a schism problem right now. Schisms. But like these people have actively not wanted to schism. They’ve been holding their nose. Yeah. They’ve been taking the sacrifice.
[00:05:16] Simone Collins: Since 1970, Malcolm, they’ve been holding on tight.
[00:05:19] They’re really trying to play
[00:05:20] Malcolm Collins: nice. Yeah, like we don’t want this to become a schism.
[00:05:23] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:05:23] Malcolm Collins: And my like the Catholic fans of the show and stuff that we have that say this, and they’re like, “We can just wait this out.” Yeah.
[00:05:29] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:05:29] Malcolm Collins: I have said in response to that, I think you may not understand how captured the Vatican is.
[00:05:35] Yeah. And how aggressively they will attempt to resist this.
[00:05:39] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:05:39] Malcolm Collins: And what it is to excommunicate somebody who has dedicated their entire life to your religion, right? Like-
[00:05:48] Simone Collins: Well, and the, the they’re like extra into the Catholic history and lore, into actual doctrine. I mean, I know that the Vatican doesn’t see it this way, and you, you can go back to your book that you wrote on governance where you’re like, look, if some, like if like the like mousy, nerdy girl in the teen girl clique decides that she’s not gonna wear pink on Thursday, but the mean alpha girl says that everyone’s gonna wear pink on Thursday, and then mousy girl comes up wearing purple on Thursday.
[00:06:21] Look, that is a direct challenge to alpha girl’s authority, and alpha girl either can- Undermine her authority in front of the rest of the girls, thereby possibly losing queen bee status, or she can kick mousy girl, who actually cares about all the stuff they care about, out of the group because she’s a challenge to the...
[00:06:44] I mean, like this is, it’s an obvious, like, this, this was bound to happen. It’s kind of a shock that, that- Well,
[00:06:48] Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think that people what, w- w- what wasn’t fully understood- Mm ... is this idea that if we have and it’s happening more and more in, in terms of the Catholic lay body is becoming more conservative.
[00:07:03] Yeah. That, that this, the Catholic churches that hold Latin mass are getting way more parishioners than the ones that don’t, right? Like- Yeah. Mm-hmm ... that’s what the people want. Yeah. And there is this mindset that, “Well, if we can just out-breed them for long enough, eventually we’ll be able to recapture the institutions.”
[00:07:20] But the problem is is the Catholic institutions are not controlled via popular vote. They are controlled via vote of people who are allowed to vote and appointed to vote by people who currently control the administration. So, the, the, the length that they can hold on is probably about five generations longer than I think most people suspect.
[00:07:42] And when they then point and they go, “Oh look, all of the young people who are being ordained,” and stuff like that to these lower level positions that don’t have voting rights in the larger Catholic Church- Mm ... these people are all conservative. That’s a good sign. But as I- I mean, when you, when you think about, like, how [00:08:00] progressive the people in the, in the center of the church are, like, we need infinite immigration, right?
[00:08:04] Like, we need to w- we’re, you know, we’re all worshiping the same God, you know, we’re all, you know... the, the Buddhists are great and very insightful,
[00:08:12] Simone Collins: Oh, you wanna know what’s worse, actually? So, this is, this is it kind of blew my mind. The, the CCP basically chooses bishops, and Rome just okays them.
[00:08:22] And this has been happening since 2018, where there was this secret Vatican China agreement that gives the CCP this decisive role. So they’re just like, “Okay, CCP.” And they’ve also just c- continuously pushed back on SSPX, which is just trying to genuinely be true to the church. And it’s not just on
[00:08:43] Malcolm Collins: pushing back on- What did they do that deserved excommunication?
[00:08:44] Like, what was the, what was the grave sin? What was the
[00:08:47] Simone Collins: line? They, they, they consecrated new bish- bishops that were not approved by the pope
[00:08:53] Malcolm Collins: Did the bishops have to be approved by the pope?
[00:08:55] Simone Collins: Yeah Did th- Yes. At least in this case, apparently. That really... But we’ll, we’ll get into that. Now I’m gonna, I’ll, I’ll finish the press release.
[00:09:01] Yeah. We’ll keep going. Anyway, the society known as known by its acronym SSPX celebrates the ancient Latin mass and opposes the modernizing reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors, which it is. Whi- while a fringe movement on the Catholic right, the SSPX has become a thorn in the Vatican’s side for five decades because it claims to be even more Catholic than the Holy See, because it is.
[00:09:26] During a ritual field- I mean, it
[00:09:27] Malcolm Collins: definitionally is, but okay- I know ... continue.
[00:09:30] Simone Collins: During a ritual- Or was ... field five-hour mass on Wednesday at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, and this movement was started in Switzerland, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Leo, who had urged the group to hold off for the sake of church unity.
[00:09:47] An estimated 15,500 people and their children attended, a sign that the SSPX has plenty of supporters who came from around the world knowing full well they were defying Rome. So this was one of those this, this was like ess- essentially, again, queen bee mean girl saying, “We’re all wearing pink on Thursday,” and mousy, nerdy girl who cares about what they actually care about being like, “No, I’m gonna wear purple.
[00:10:13] It’s right to wear purple. It’s...” I don’t know, whatever Being like, “All of the books say wear purple.” Like we’re celebrating world history or something. Right. Yeah. Sumptuary laws. And she’s like, “No, if you do that, you’re gonna be in trouble.” And then not only does mousy girl show up in purple, but, like, three of the other girls in the group show up in purple.
[00:10:28] Like, y- we, when you’re met that, with that direct defiance and also that many people, almost 16,000 adults and their children show up, and there are pictures of this.
[00:10:41] It’s like a sea of people. It’s, it’s hard to imagine the sheer magnitude of, of just humanity that showed up for this. Yeah ... I, I feel like-,
[00:10:51] Malcolm Collins: What’s really important to note is we are not seeing this with the Vaticanist events as much anymore.
[00:10:57] Simone Collins: No. They have lo- And it’s, like, mostly tourists in Rome who are like, “Oh, I heard there was this famous guy called the Pope.
[00:11:04] Malcolm Collins: Let’s go see him.” Right. And .
[00:11:05] if, I mean, if you wanna say, this is, this is what’s so crazy, that you can say stuff today and it’s like, it sounds insane, but, like, the evidence seems to back it up. You know, when you say there was actually a network of elite PDA files who secretly had undue influence in American business and government, and then it turned out that that’s all true and that’s just, like, a thing now.
[00:11:29] Or th- there was a trans murder cult that killed more people than the Manson Family, and this is just, like, the Zizians. It’s just a thing. It ha- b- out of the effective altruist movement nonetheless that were... or that the Vatican has been captured by a gay sex cult- ... that is now excommunicating the most devout Catholics for attempting to recapture institutions.
[00:11:54] Speaker 18: The Catholic boat’s gonna be heading on [00:12:00] out today. The Catholic boat, get some hot Christian action that’ll take you-
[00:12:11] Malcolm Collins: And y- you can see our episode. Like, a lot of people talk about this, this group, but when we went over the episode, if you haven’t seen it, it was one of the wildest episodes I’ve ever done, right? Ever thought through, was the, the gay Jew that wrote key Catholic doctrine. For real. Yeah. Which is a real thing.
[00:12:26] But the thing that got me about studying this guy’s life is just, like, the amount of gay sex he’s having that everyone he dated after he left the church was a former priest or nun. Like, it was very clear he was part of a very large network. And when we ask questions like why does the institutional Vatican...
[00:12:43] ‘Cause I think a lot of the Catholics were very confused as to... And it is true that the, the Vatican does produce, you know, a, i- in terms of the, the grapes per capita less than the American school system. But that’s not saying a lot, ‘cause the American school system is, is one in nine kids I think- Mm
[00:13:00] gets SA’d these days. But , the thing that horrified a lot of people is that all the way to the top, this was systematically covered up.
[00:13:07] Speaker 2: Why would he put anything in your butts? We don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Hmm.
[00:13:12] Hmm. Hello there, children. Chef, why would a priest want to stick up my butt? Goodbye.
[00:13:23]
[00:13:23] Malcolm Collins: And that a lot of people were asking, like, “But wait, like, did they just not believe anything in the Bible at all? Like, were they willing to you know, ruin these individuals’ lives, these children’s lives in order to protect a practice?”
[00:13:39] Speaker 11: . Yes, I, I’m afraid if things keep going the way they are, we could lose our entire religion. Yes, we’ve gotta stop these boys from going to the public. They’ve got to know to keep their mouths shut. That’s right. Right. And so, w- wait a minute.
[00:13:51] What? Yes, but we’ve got to find out why these children are suddenly finding it necessary to report that they’re being molested. Stop the problem at its source. Yes, but how? You know, yeah. I wonder what- Whoa, whoa. Hold on a second. The problem is that children are being molested, not that they’re reporting it
[00:14:08] How do you mean? Well, I mean, obviously what we need to put a stop to is all the sexual misconduct that is allowed to take place in our churches. Not just tell the children not to tell anybody about it. I mean, right? Well, did any of the children you’ve molested come forward? No. That’s good. No, I mean, I never molested any of the children in my church.
[00:14:27] It’s okay, Father Maxi. We’re all priests here. The doors are closed. For the love of God,
[00:14:32] Malcolm Collins: You know, they could have just quietly fired them or something, not move them to other facilities where they’re still around children, right? Like, it was, it was about protecting a practice and a culture. And I think a lot of people saw that, and they were like Why? Why is it doing it? Did the church just make a judgment of error?
[00:14:52] But when you combine that with what we saw in the episode on the, the gay Jew that rewrote key Catholic doctrine, and how much gay sex was going on at the high levels of the Vatican the people writing you know, Vatican II, stuff like that. Th- there actually is probably , a large group a gay sex cult controlling the Vatican, and that has been for a while at this point.
[00:15:15] And that they’re willing to go as far as excommunication to maintain that stranglehold I think is horrifying, and and, and well, you could say that they were willing to go as long... Because I think when they saw, like, the children’s lives being murdered, and the priests being moved around, and stuff like that not being murdered, but being ruined they were like, “Well, you know, this has already happened.
[00:15:36] Those kids, whatever.” Like, they wouldn’t ruin an adult’s life. Y- you know, and that’s what an excommunication does, right? Like, they wouldn’t ruin an adult’s life over this. And or they wouldn’t do it, you know, this openly. And I think that now we’re beginning to see more openly- Mm ... what the Vatican is actually about at this point.
[00:15:53] And I would expect to see, going forwards more excommunications like this [00:16:00] come out now that the jar has sort of been opened on this.
[00:16:03] Speaker 8: the way I feel about Catholicism is very weird or interesting, ‘cause we have a lot of fans and friends and some of our closest friends who are Catholic. So obviously I do not hate Catholics. But the Vatican, , I have a burning hatred for the Vatican. , That they would do this to people who have dedicated their entire lives, who have lived good lives, it just
[00:16:28] A- and, and I can only feel that, like, psychologically there must be something that is completely incommunicable between me and these people. And Simone has had long calls with some of our good Catholic friends about this, where she’s like ... But it- A better way to ... There’s sort of like, there’s a super villain out there.
[00:16:47] Everyone agrees that this is a super villain, and the super villain’s core role is the destruction of Western civilization the, we’ll call this, like, The Red Skull or something like this. And then you’re, but you’re really good friends with some of the minions of The Red Skull, and you go to them and you’d be like, “Man, the, the things this Red Skull guy is doing is really, really crazy and evil.”
[00:17:06] And they’re like, “Oh yeah, shoot, the crazy stuff. I, I think it’s totally evil too.” And you’re like, “Well wait, wait, then why are you his minion?” And they’re like, “Oh, well, you know, we’ve gotta keep unity and everything.” And I went, “But wait, wait, wait. Why do you want unity under this? Like, why, why is disunity so bad?”
[00:17:25] Right? Like, wh- why is having multiple ways of doing things so bad if the alternative is this? Right? Like , they act like disunity is this big, scary ... , and it’s like the disunity churches are growing much faster, maintaining members at a much higher rate. Like, what do you mean? Like, why, why is unity so
[00:17:45] And they’re like, “Ah, you know.” And, and then you point out, you’re like, “The Red Skull, he just like executed like his five most devote henchmen.” And they’re like, “Oh yeah, you know, sometimes he does that, but you know, one day in a few hundred years it’ll be better.” And it’s like, what, what do you mean a few hundred years?
[00:18:01] The Red Skull chooses all the guys who choose who’s gonna be the next Red Skull. And they choose the next Red Skull. Wait, what do you mean it’s gonna be better in a few hundred years? And I can only assume that, that at a deep psychological level, or maybe even at a biological level, we are different.
[00:18:18] Because I just can’t understand how that makes sense or why disunity is somehow, when we’ve already seen that disunity seems to work and be more vitalistic, more thriving,
[00:18:32] Speaker 10: As a reminder, for every eight people who deconvert from Catholicism, one person converts in, and for every two people who deconvert from Protestantism, one person converts in
[00:18:42] Speaker 8: seems to be scarier than serving under an obviously antagonistic and evil organization
[00:18:50] Speaker 9: An organization that I think if we are being honest with ourselves, if we’re ranking threats to Western civilization, , probably, I’m probably number one, honestly. , The UN is more antagonistic to Western civilization, but it’s less competent. , I guess the parts of Islamism as a whole would be a much bigger threat, but they’re less unified.
[00:19:13] , So yeah.
[00:19:15] And note the bigger issue than the excommunication, ‘cause this had happened before in the ‘80s, is the making the sort of entire SPSX o- organization, , n- null and void from the perspective of, , being right with God, , for anyone who sees themselves as Catholic. Like they’re essentially forcing a schism
[00:19:34] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, I think... It certainly as more people challenge and question what’s going on, and as what’s going on becomes more extreme. Yeah, I, I could see momentum building.
[00:19:43] And I just, I just wanted to say, though, the excommunication is not as bad as I thought it was as an outsider, I thought. ‘Cause I thought, I thought that being excommunicated was like, oh, this is what got people burned at the stake in the past. This is what got people really screwed. Like, y- you’re, you burn in hell forever.
[00:19:59] But, but [00:20:00] actually excommunication in Catholic teaching doesn’t mean you’re being condemned to hell. It’s not understood as kind like a declaration of damnation. Official theology has it that basically only God can decide, so it’s not for the church to, you know, declare. However, it means that you are not allowed to be to receive any of the sacraments.
[00:20:24] You can’t be married in the church. So y- y- you’re kind of, like, slapped with this wake-up call,
[00:20:30] Speaker 4: This is hugely underselling it, Simone’s interpretation here, because if you are a priest or a bishop who is excommunicated, that means anybody operating under you, , what they do within their, their churches, , doesn’t count. Their marriages don’t count. Their sacraments don’t count. And that matters for the souls of the people who are attending that church
[00:20:50] Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, this is fascinating. Oh my God. Okay. This happened twice
[00:20:56] Simone Collins: I don’t know about the 1988 one
[00:20:59] Malcolm Collins: Okay, yeah. As of 2026, the SSPX has repeated a very similar act, consecrating four new bishops without papal mandate in Econe.
[00:21:06] Simone Collins: Oh. The
[00:21:06] Malcolm Collins: Vatican under
[00:21:07] Simone Collins: Pope Leo- Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, yeah ...
[00:21:08] Malcolm Collins: has confirmed- I did read about that
[00:21:10] that the involved bishops incurred automatic excommunication for schism. Wo- wow, repeating the 1988 events. So this started in the 1988 events.
[00:21:19] Simone Collins: So they’re just doing it again. They’re like, “Look, we’re-
[00:21:21] Malcolm Collins: Negotiations between- ... we’re just going.” Well, hold on. Let’s go into the 1988 events, because this is when it first was normalized.
[00:21:27] Negotiations between the SSPX and the Vatican, led by Cardinal Jose Ratzenberger, I need to talk about took place in 1988. A protocol of agreement was signed in May 5th, but Lefebvre withdrew his signature days later. He demanded stronger guarantees that tradition would be protected. So this is over him wanting tradition, and the va- that was where they crossed the line, was wanting tradition.
[00:21:48] Despite repeated warnings from the Vatican, including a personal letter from Pope John Paul II on June 9th, and a former canonical warning on June 17th that preceded would incur automatic excommunication, Lefebvre went, went ahead. On June 30th, 1988 he consecrated new bishops, and that was the line that led to them all being excommunicated.
[00:22:09] But wait, can you normally-
[00:22:24] All right, let, I’m seeing if th- this was specially applied to their group because th- this does change things. This means that this is a escalation and continuation. A- and yeah, okay. Yeah, no Instead of
[00:22:35] Simone Collins: some new break
[00:22:41] Malcolm Collins: This only applies to SPX. Nobody else needs this to, to consecrate new bishops
[00:22:46] Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, so they’re like in the doghouse constantly.
[00:22:49] Malcolm Collins: No, no, but this really matters because the consecration of bishops, the bishops are the ones who vote on what other Catholics believe,- Mm ... on the... That’s
[00:22:58] Simone Collins: why- So they’re trying to make them se- they’re the second-class citizen of the Catholic Church
[00:23:04] Malcolm Collins: It’s not that they’re second-class citizens.
[00:23:06] It’s the, the fight is over, and this is what I think a lot of the traditionalist Catholics are missing. Mm. They think the fight is over the lay person, when they don’t realize the fight is over the bureaucracy. And if the bureaucracy- Mm ... can just remove anybody who comes into it but has different opinions from being able to vote, then and what’s, what’s fascinating to me is I doubt they would be doing these sorts of excommunications if these people were Africans or whatever. It’s specifically conservatism in Western cultures that they will not allow a slide back on.
[00:23:39] Simone Collins: Oh, that’s interesting, yeah, ‘cause it did, it did come out of Switzerland in the 1970s, and it was just specifically about Vatican II.
[00:23:46] Like, we’re not cool with the liturgy post-Vatican II, and we want there to be a much more pious, like, true to [00:24:00] real Catholicism practice that we can all turn to.
[00:24:05] Speaker 5: And you’re like, “No, no, no, the Vatican isn’t captured by groups that are explicitly anti-white.” , Keep in mind that when the Trump administration tried to take white refugees who were being murdered, like we have very well documented in South Africa, the organizations that ended up shutting down that year, , were the Episcopal Organization for Helping Refugees and the Catholic Organization for Helping Refugees that had both been operating for, like, half a century.
[00:24:31] , The Episcopal organization explicitly said, “We’re doing this because we don’t wanna help these people.” , And the Catholic organization did not say that. They just happened around that time period. It plausibly could have been something else. But I think, you know, it’s up to people to be r- you know, honest with themselves about what they’re seeing in these organizations.
[00:24:49] Are they institutionally racist organizations? , I mean, at, at, w-would they apply the same rules to a Black congregation , or Black priests? Because I think there are many Black priests , in parts of the way Catholicism is practiced in Africa that are significantly more conservative. So why aren’t they having the rules applied to them in the same way?
[00:25:06] , And the, the answer is obviously, , different standards for different ethnic groups because they have different outcomes they want from different ethnic groups
[00:25:13] Simone Collins: Though it, it should... What’s weird about this, and like, where I, I see this ongoing tension ‘cause I, I see what you’re saying. It’s, it’s basically they’re like, “You can exist.
[00:25:21] You just can’t have a voice, ‘cause we don’t want you to-” You can’t have
[00:25:24] Malcolm Collins: institutional power because- Yeah ... we don’t want to lose the institutional power that we have taken control of.
[00:25:29] Simone Collins: Because when the founder of SSPX created this new offshoot, the local bil- bishop who was also in Switzerland, approved of it.
[00:25:40] They, they said it was a pious union of priests in the diocese, and they just kind of saw it as like, well, this experimental branch, which is something that we’ve often lauded about Catholicism, that it’s this religion that is able to have sort of these, like, more extreme offshoots. It can innovate, and they’re kind of like the, the skunkworks of the religion, and if they’re good, they get reintegrated.
[00:26:01] If they’re not, they don’t get reintegrated. And what we have here is an issue of the discernment on what can be reintegrated being disconnected with the actual best interests and true nature of the church and its purpose. But this, yeah, that’s really interesting. ‘Cause they, they, they initially sent visitors to, like Rome did, when, when this new group formed.
[00:26:27] They, like, sent people over to check it out, and they had favorable reviews of it, and they thought that, you know, it was, it was, it’s solid. So this, this, this didn’t start out as an attack- antagonistic relationship. And SSPX has grown a ton. So as of 2025, they have around 1,482 members in total, but by members, I mean- Bishops, priests, seminarians, and brothers.
[00:26:55] So there are more like 600,000 or so faithful and that’s a lot of people. Plus when you, when you consider especially this is a hard religion, there aren’t any actual estimates of their unique birth rates. There’s only estimates of traditional Latin mass Catholics, and that can be a larger group than just SSPX.
[00:27:18] But this widely cited US survey of Latin mass attendees, and of course Latin mass is like the SSPX thing found that,
[00:27:27] Malcolm Collins: So let’s, let’s if you... I wanna go over like what, what’s the beliefs that they had that got them to sex communication.
[00:27:32] Simone Collins: But hold on. Latin mass attendees have an average of 3.6 children per woman.
[00:27:36] Malcolm Collins: Oh, Go-
[00:27:37] Simone Collins: Whereas normal Catholics have around 2.3, so that’s significant, like that’s a very meaningful difference.
[00:27:44] Malcolm Collins: That’s, those numbers aren’t accurate, by the way.
[00:27:47] Simone Collins: How so?
[00:27:48] Malcolm Collins: Catholics are way below replacement rate. Like, they’ve been below replacement rate since the-
[00:27:53] Simone Collins: Oh, okay. So you’re saying that- ... the early ‘
[00:27:55] Malcolm Collins: 80s.
[00:27:56] Wherever you got those
[00:27:56] Simone Collins: numbers from- That can’t be true because normal Catholics are-
[00:27:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... not [00:28:00] at 2.3. Catholic average fertility rate is like 1.1, Simone. I, I do not know- Hmm ... where you’re getting these numbers from.
[00:28:05] Simone Collins: Well, if I look at the year of the survey, maybe it’s just that it’s one of the older ones.
[00:28:08] I didn’t check the year when I looked at the page.
[00:28:12] Malcolm Collins: That probably worth doing because Catholics have had, in the United States, the Catholic average fertility rate, the non-Hispanic Catholic average-
[00:28:18] Simone Collins: 2018. That’s interesting ...
[00:28:21] Malcolm Collins: the non-Hispanic Catholic fertility rate in the United States was 1.6 and this was back in tw- the 1980s.
[00:28:29] 1986 is when it was taken. Well,
[00:28:31] Simone Collins: it might be- Yeah, all the data was collected between March 2018 and November 2018. Was it in the
[00:28:34] Malcolm Collins: United States?
[00:28:35] Simone Collins: I think so.
[00:28:36] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so I’ll tell you where you got the, the funky numbers from. Okay. It’s including his, the, the only high fertility Catholic group on Earth really in, in mass when you’re not talking about the, the, the Latin mass ones, are Hispanic American Catholics.
[00:28:51] Hispanic Catholics are low fertility in all of their native countries, but they’re very high fertility in the United States
[00:28:57] so you’re likely seeing the... But, like, let’s talk
[00:28:59] Simone Collins: about- It was in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Texas. So yeah, that’s gonna have, especially in Arizona And California and Texas, a decent number of immigrants.
[00:29:11] Okay, so fair, fine. But still, I mean, a meaningful difference in, in practice of, of fertility rates. And that a lot of commentators see that as, like, a 60% larger family size. And in general, like, other social science work on religiosity, which we’ve reported on elsewhere, shows that people who as we put it, practice more hard religion are more likely to have higher fertility rates.
[00:29:39] It doesn’t matter
[00:29:40] Malcolm Collins: if you’re like- Yeah, the, the point I’m making is that that’s just not,
[00:29:44] Simone Collins: Are you, are you disputing that SSPX members have higher fertility?
[00:29:51] Malcolm Collins: What, no, what I’m, what I’m disputing is that it’s not relevant to your ability to control the Vatican. That’s-
[00:29:59] Simone Collins: Right, right, right, right. What you find most interesting in this is this systematic bureaucratic resistance to reform when reform means getting rid of changes made that we don’t think are true and that many Catholics don’t think are true to the Catholic faith, correct?
[00:30:17] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. They, they, they, so who, who does have a vote within the Catholic Church? So we talk about, like, recapturing,
[00:30:23] Simone Collins: Who has the most influence, you mean?
[00:30:24] Malcolm Collins: Cardinals are created exclusively by the pope. And even the existing cardinals do not vote in new par- cardinals. That’s only the pope’s decision. Mm-hmm. Oh my God, that’s an incredibly hard system to ever crack.
[00:30:35] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:30:36] Malcolm Collins: If only the pope can appoint cardinals and only cardinals can vote on the pope, and both of those b- groups are entirely captured the bishops would have had a vote in big things like Vatican II. Like, presumably all the bishops vote on that. So they’re basically making it so that, like, not even a drip of doubt can come in.
[00:30:54] Wow. Not even a drip of opposition can enter.
[00:30:57] Simone Collins: Yeah, so it’s- Wow, so there’s basically no room for reform- There is no room for reform ... the way that governance is structured.
[00:31:02] Malcolm Collins: You’d have
[00:31:03] Simone Collins: to- It’s just not possible ...
[00:31:03] Malcolm Collins: yeah, you’d have to take out the existing leadership system almost ent- entirely. Like, like, it would require, like, revolution to get reform.
[00:31:11] Th- that is why- Yikes ... I had, I had no idea it was that bad. And if you wanna go over what they held these members to get them excommunicated for putting bishops with these beliefs into a position to potentially vote in future councils Vatican II itself. The council contained serious errors and ambiguities, especially in religious liberty.
[00:31:31] This is what SSPX thought, which it just, like, again, see our other episode on this, the, the gay Jew who wrote core Catholic doctrine, and deconverted by the way after that. The, the for people who are wondering, he wrote the entirety of the first draft of one of the key documents of Vatican II on ecumenicalism which is these people’s core complaint.
[00:31:49] The guy, the guy who wrote the first draft of the document is no longer Catholic, right? Like, I can understand why they might be like, “Well, should we really? Like, this seems to go against some of the older beliefs in Catholicism.” And, and apparently [00:32:00] this is the number one thing that they’re, they’re mad about, okay?
[00:32:02] Is- That
[00:32:03] Simone Collins: who’s mad about? That SSPX is mad about- No, that
[00:32:05] Malcolm Collins: the- ... or the
[00:32:05] Simone Collins: Vatican? ...
[00:32:05] Malcolm Collins: that the Vatican is mad at SSPX about- Uh-huh ... is SSPX views on ecumenicalism. Like trying to integrate the- That they’re
[00:32:13] Simone Collins: trying to consecrate, consecrate bishops?
[00:32:16] Malcolm Collins: W- well, no. This is the view that we’re threatening to the Vatican, okay?
[00:32:21] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:32:21] Malcolm Collins: That SSPX, this is the view that says, like, “Hey maybe we shouldn’t have endless immigrants of other religions,” right? Like, maybe we
[00:32:28] Simone Collins: sh- No, no, yeah, that, that’s, that’s the other, yeah. Like, well, I mean, a m- that is one of the many things, but yeah, they’re, they’re... Well, more broadly it’s not like, oh... So Vatican II as w- you pointed out in the, the gay Catholic whatever one Jew episode that there’s this big thing about, like, oh, let’s have interfaith dialogue, and maybe everyone’s kind of right.
[00:32:50] Whi- which SSPX is like, “No, Catholicism is the one true faith. We’re not gonna be like, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I guess everyone’s kinda cool. It’s fine. Let’s all talk together and be friends.’” Like, no, Catholicism is right.
[00:33:01] Malcolm Collins: Like, you can talk and be friends and still be like, “But we’re the right ones.”
[00:33:05] Simone Collins: Yeah, like, that’s the whole point, is it?
[00:33:06] And it- This is why we love talking with our Catholic friends and friends of other religion, especially our Catholic friends though, and I guess our Catholic friends lean more in the SSPX direction ‘cause they’re like, “I mean, that’s a great, you know, we understand your point. You’re wrong.” And I love that.
[00:33:20] Like, I wanna have that debate, and the, the leaning of, of the, of like post-Patic- Vatican II Catholic Church is very different. But then I mean, you know, it’s... They’re also super against this, this idea of in general, kind of taking away the sacredness of the Catholic Church. Well- Like, this manifests in many different ways, right?
[00:33:40] Th- I mean, we talk most about the Latin mass and their, their obsessive obsession with the Latin mass, but there’s also subtle things. Mm. Like, it’s not, there’s not a formal rule about this- Mm ... but there are what are they called? Rails. There are these, these rails that sort of separate the, the key part of the church.
[00:34:02] What is it called? The sanctuary from the nave, where like the, the- Yeah ... the parishioners sit. And post-Vatican II, it kind of just became the thing to remove the rails, which both you would sort of kneel at for communion, but also provided this feeling of physical separation from a more sacred space. And it separated the priests from the, from their flock, and sort of showed them to be like, “Hey, this is th- the stuff happening here is sacred and special.”
[00:34:32] And when you take that away, it makes all of it feel like less authoritative, less exciting and magical and meaningful. And also, I, I think this is understated, but f- just from a practical family perspective and I, I really felt this when I took Octavian into a Catholic church, when we took him just to D- DC like a couple months back.
[00:34:56] When you have a lot of little kids running around a Catholic church, which you should if you have a successful parish They might just run straight up. Like, the fence is useful, and especially, like, to kids who can’t really understand complex- Actually,
[00:35:11] Malcolm Collins: that’s such a good point. The fence is a sign of a church with kids.
[00:35:15] Simone Collins: It is a sign of a church ‘cause the what is, what is the first thing Octavian did when we got into the church? He, like, walks up. He like, “I’m gonna sit on, like, the big spot. Like, it’s, it’s a little bit raised here. I wanna go to the coolest part, and I’m gonna climb up on it.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, no, stop.”
[00:35:28] I, I think I even have video of it that I can send to you. I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Thank God no one was in there. But, like, there’s a reason there are guardrails, and it’s not just like, oh, it, you know... But, but like from a practical standpoint, it communicates to children that this is sacred, that we don’t touch that.
[00:35:45] And it’s the same in, like, an adult’s house, right? Like, this is my white living room for entertaining. We have a little kid fence here. You don’t walk in it. Like, kids understand the rails, okay? And that’s why we had those those stained glass windows. Like, little, you know, [00:36:00] they, they can’t understand what’s happening, even if, if the, if the mass is in English.
[00:36:03] Malcolm Collins: That, that’s true. Yeah. They’re like comic books of what happened- Yeah ... in the Bible.
[00:36:07] Simone Collins: Yeah. And, like, when you start to take these things away, or you, like, make the stained glass all, like, abstract and ugly-
[00:36:12] Malcolm Collins: Well, no, they take them away after... They don’t even remember the utility of something like that by the time there’s no kids left.
[00:36:19] Yeah. They don’t remember why you would have something like
[00:36:21] Simone Collins: that. Right. Yeah, because, like, what kid in the church is running up, you know, into the, the sanctuary? ‘Cause there aren’t any kids to run into the sanctuary. It, it, it makes no sense.
[00:36:28] Malcolm Collins: But if you, if you, if you, if you go over... I wanna go over all the individual things that really piss the church off.
[00:36:32] So one was they, they wanted more ecumenicalism. Yeah. Or sorry, less ecumenicalism. They’re like- Yeah,
[00:36:37] Simone Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah ... “
[00:36:37] Malcolm Collins: Look, you can be nice to people of other religions while saying they’re wrong,” right? And the Vatican- Mm-hmm ... is like, “No, you can’t,” basically. Yeah.
[00:36:43] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:36:43] Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
[00:36:43] Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.
[00:36:44] Malcolm Collins: They, they, The council teaching-
[00:36:46] Simone Collins: They also teach on religious freedom, like that there’s
[00:36:48] Malcolm Collins: this core doctrinal- Yeah, that people have a right to religious freedom.
[00:36:50] Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and or that there are even false religions contradicts earlier popes who taught error has no rights. Yeah. And the Vatican absolutely says no, nothing in Vatican II contradicts previous stuff. Yeah. Whereas SPX says no, there’s... And, and most Protestants say that Vatican II does seem to clearly contradict previous stuff.
[00:37:07] Yeah. I, I don’t wanna, like, go over all the, the points in it because of course you have the official Vatican answer, and a lot of Vaticanists will just repeat the official Vatican answer without applying critical thought to is that actually a v- a good answer? Like, did that answer pass for what I need to believe is existentially true about reality?
[00:37:25] The new, the new mass versus the Latin mass was actually genuinely one of the reasons why the Vatican excommunicated them. Yeah. Apparently. Yeah. They were just, like, really mad that we might have people who would oppose the new mass, which it-
[00:37:39] Simone Collins: Well, and they even, like... So there... It wasn’t... Like, they kept reiterating that, like, we, we don’t do Latin mass.
[00:37:45] Like, they kept trying to demote, and demote, and demote Latin mass. So there was even this thing there’s this 2021 decree- No,
[00:37:52] Malcolm Collins: if you’re a Vati- Hold on. Before you go further with this, if you’re a Catholic, ask yourself why they’re doing this. Like, the L- Latin mass is- They’re
[00:38:00] Simone Collins: trying to take the sacredness out of Catholicism.
[00:38:02] It’s,
[00:38:02] Malcolm Collins: it’s- It’s so clear ... clearly more popular. It’s- Yeah ... clearly practiced in churches that have lower attrition rates. Yeah. It’s clearly practiced in churches that have higher birth rates. Yeah. The common people love it. Why would you remove something like that if-
[00:38:16] Simone Collins: Well, yeah, and Latin mass is harder.
[00:38:18] Like, it, it’s like I, I guess it’s like a, a, a, oh, God, what’s it... de- denying an A to the student who, like, actually does all the homework and takes all the tests and gets perfect scores
[00:38:34] Malcolm Collins: That’s a, that’s a great way to put it if you’re looking at it in, like, America. It’s like you are intentionally punishing your highest fidelity highest performing, highest vitalist, highest community-
[00:38:46] Simone Collins: Yeah
[00:38:46] Malcolm Collins: part of your religion. Why would you do that? Like, I want you to think. Yeah.
[00:38:50] Simone Collins: They’re like, “No, no, no, no. We’re pass-fail. We, no, you’re out. You can’t-” No,
[00:38:54] Malcolm Collins: no, the reason you would do that is if your explicit goal was the demoralization and destruction of the institution.
[00:39:03] Simone Collins: It, it really feels that way. It super feels that way.
[00:39:07] There’s so, anyway, the, there’s, there was this thing in ‘21, 2021 called the Tradici- Traditionis Custodis that was this decree by Pope Francis that imposed strong limits on celebrating the traditional Latin mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal. It requires that bishops get Vatican permission for certain uses of the old rite, and it generally discouraged new communities from using it.
[00:39:34] And in practice what, what some of our friends who are Catholics have seen is that it’s just, like, shoved to, like, one corner of a church and, like, basically hidden as much as possible. So they not only, like, as much as they were like, “Oh, sure,” like, “We’re fine with you. You can stay.” They’re, they get mad every time they consecrate bishops, every time, you know, they, they get really excited about Latin mass.
[00:39:56] They’re like, “Oh, but, like, mm, why don’t you just do it, like, behind... [00:40:00] Why don’t you do it by the trash dumpster?” You know, like, “Go do it there.” It, it’s, they’re just, they’re being so mean.
[00:40:07] Malcolm Collins: Well, because I, I, like, I, like, this isn’t even conspiratorial, and I’m, I’m asking AI to try to figure this out.
[00:40:14] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:40:14] Malcolm Collins: Why are they against the more popular form of the mass that seems to do better?
[00:40:23] Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s a good question. So
[00:40:27] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so the main reason comes from Vatican II.
[00:40:30] Simone Collins: Well, yeah. And when that, that’s the core thing. I mean, like again, the core thing of SSPX is Vatican II runs counter to the Catholic Church. Man, what hap- like who’s idea
[00:40:42] Malcolm Collins: was Vatican II? Oh, because they believe that the Latin Mass, well, this is their argument. They say it detracts from the unity of the church specifically the unique expression of lex orandi or the law of worship of the Roman Rite. So basically because some Catholics are practicing in a way that’s different from other Catholics even if it’s more popular and better in any way, they, they’re, they’re antagonistic to it
[00:41:07] That’s wild
[00:41:11] Simone Collins: It’s, a- again, it’s, it’s, it’s queen bee, mean girl assertion of authority. It’s that classic governance thing. I mean, I, I, I see the point that you’re making, but it’s also the whole, like, you’re questioning my authority and if I don’t crack down, my authority is going to become increasingly undermined.
[00:41:28] And when I say, like, “Don’t do this,” and they keep doing it, then what, what does my rule mean anymore? Yeah. But we can jump to- No,
[00:41:35] Malcolm Collins: but I mean, the... It’s, it’s really important to note that the, the the point of no return for all of this is always putting somebody into a position where they might be able to vote on what is true in Catholicism.
[00:41:49] Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. Well, but clearly the Vatican’s not gonna, not gonna let anyone get close to making differences there, so what does it matter, basically? I think honestly, the more that SSPX moves away from this, the better. In fact, I kind of wish they were doing what the Anglican Church has done. So I’ll let you know what’s going on there.
[00:42:15] ‘Cause you... Are you aware of what’s going on with the Anglican schism?
[00:42:18] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they elected a lady bishop.
[00:42:21] Simone Collins: Well, no. Okay, yeah, so- A lady pope. Basically a l- a, a bunch of other groups primarily... What is it? There’s... It’s GAFCON, but what’s, what does the acronym stand for? The Global Anglican Future Conference has basically been like, “All right.
[00:42:37] We’re, we’re not with the Archbishop of Canterbury anymore. Like, we’re not gonna share communion. I’m not with stupid anymore. Like, we’re not doing this.” And so as much as they’re trying to not describe this as a schism, they prefer to call it a realign- a realignment or a reformation. And they’re trying to say, “We’re not founding a new church.
[00:43:01] We’re just restoring Anglicanism around its original doctrinal center.” They’re
[00:43:08] Malcolm Collins: functionally- The Bible. That’s a pretty naughty thing to... Oh. Well, I mean, if you are electing an, a lady pope, which is what the Anglicans did. So w- the reason I call her lady pope, important to understand who the Anglicans are when England became Protestant the Crown really still liked the idea of a state religion and Catholicism more broadly.
[00:43:26] He was like a fervent, Henry VIII was a fervent Catholic, like so much that the pope, like, gave him a special award or something as like a defender of the c- the faith. Until the pope, out of, like, you know, sh- sheer douchiness really it was, it was, “Oh, well, that’s my niece or something who you’d have to divorce to have a kid,” and Henry had to have a kid.
[00:43:46] If he didn’t have a male son- Yeah ... it could have led to a civil war- Yeah ... which would have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and countless suffering and children dying. Like, what he was doing-
[00:43:58] Simone Collins: Like, Queen Catherine of Aragorn was [00:44:00] what, like his niece or something? Or like, there was a fam- Family relation.
[00:44:03] It was just never
[00:44:03] Malcolm Collins: gonna happen It was a family relation, that’s why he wouldn’t let him. Yeah. Which again, like this shows the problem, corruption in the church-
[00:44:09] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:44:09] Malcolm Collins: that led to Protestantism because without the English... But anyway, so the English become Protestant. Mm-hmm. And they’re, they, but they try to keep their version
[00:44:17] Simone Collins: of Protestantism- Yeah, like they need their Protestant pope, and that’s the Archbishop
[00:44:21] Malcolm Collins: of Canterbury
[00:44:21] as, as, as a, as, as Catholic-y as, as possible.
[00:44:24] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:44:25] Malcolm Collins: And that group is the group called the Anglicans. Mm-hmm. And this group in early America was heavily, like early Americans hated the Anglicans. We, we, early Americans, thought they were basically just another shade of Catholicism. Yeah. And, and were just as suspicious as Catholics.
[00:44:39] But anyway- Yeah ... continue.
[00:44:41] Simone Collins: Yeah. So anyway this is something that’s been a slow burn over the past 20 to 30 years. Conservative Anglican provinces, especially in the Global South, so like outside the UK- Yeah ... have just continued to like slowly step away from the Church of England and other liberal Western provinces that have Anglican churches over issues like same-sex blessings and women’s ordination, because they just started doing that out of nowhere.
[00:45:08] And this culminated in 2025 and 2026 into this formal break where at the Global Anglican Future Conference, also known as GAFCON allied provinces decided that they would no longer officially represent or recognize the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury or the traditional instruments of the communion.
[00:45:33] So they are not gonna participate in meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury. They’re not going to the archbishop’s birthday party anymore. They’re not gonna contribute to the Anglican communion structures. They will amend constitutions to remove references to Canterbury. Like, we are just erasing her from our diary.
[00:45:52] We’re deleting her from our contact book. She’s out. And this has roughly split the Anglican community in half with each side claiming that like, “I’m the official Anglican community.” “No, I’m the official Anglican
[00:46:08] Malcolm Collins: community.” Yeah, and this is what it comes down to when there’s this real hatred of the idea, even if like structurally an individual is schismatic- Yeah
[00:46:17] of admitting that they’re schismatic, right?
[00:46:19] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:46:20] Malcolm Collins: And-
[00:46:20] Simone Collins: But I, this is, I think this is what SSPX should honestly be doing. I think they should be like Look, we’ve tried to play nice with the Vatican. They have shown repeatedly that they are not actually Catholic anymore. Here are, like, the bazillion reasons why.
[00:46:35] We are the Catholic Church now. Like, they’re being way too nice. They need to be a ton more aggressive. And another element of this that I think makes it so troublesome is, is aside from the governance issues that you revealed, that you surfaced in this episode and emphasized, the, the Vatican actually has a, a monetary incentive to lean in to this heretical but also very low fertility segment of its, of its, like, strategy.
[00:47:07] Because when you have all these Catholic schools and all these convents and all these monasteries shutting down- Ooh ... because no one’s left in the area, guess what you get to do? You get to sell it to, like, Katy Perry and make millions of dollars. And- The
[00:47:24] Malcolm Collins: pope in his fancy red shoes.
[00:47:26] Simone Collins: No, they’re literally, like, King Henry VIII-ing their own church.
[00:47:30] They’re selling it- Yeah ... for parts. And I think that also- For their gay
[00:47:34] Malcolm Collins: sex parties.
[00:47:35] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:47:36] Well, and look, we have issues... I think you even... We, we may have covered this in an episode, but we never ran it. Those nuns who, like, refused to leave this convent that they tried to shut down. Mm. And they’re like no, we don’t wanna leave.
[00:47:48] Like, we, we, this is our convent, and what are you talking about?” And they’re like, “No, you gotta go. You gotta go.” Oh my God, we almost bought a convent-
[00:47:55] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...
[00:47:56] Simone Collins: through being sold. Well, like, fun- Yeah ... the fundraising didn’t work. We wanted to turn it [00:48:00] into a a like a village with a, a lab school that, like, a bunch of high fertility families could live in and commute to New York City.
[00:48:07] It was, it was so beautiful. But yeah, they, they were, they were selling it because there weren’t enough nuns left. I mean, isn’t that just so convenient for the Church? There’s also, it’s not just about maintaining this control and disenfranchise people who can undermine their authority. It’s about, like, oh, actually, it’s not so bad that all these people are just disappearing because in the, in the immediate aftermath of that, we get money, and we like money.
[00:48:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, we need it to fund our lifestyle, right? And, and keep in mind that the people with positions of power, you wanna be popular at the UN, you wanna be popular with the urban monoculture- Yeah ... you push for ecumenicalism
[00:48:48] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah And
[00:48:49] Malcolm Collins: it’s so funny-
[00:48:49] Simone Collins: And again, like it’s just so similar to what’s happening with Anglicanism where they’re like, “No, we’re not, we’re not doing this same-sex marriage.
[00:48:55] We’re not doing female pri-,” like we’re, it, this isn’t, this isn’t us
[00:48:58] Malcolm Collins: I, I also like keep in mind how crazy our position should sound to somebody. That us non-Catholics, we have many doctrinal disagreements with Catholicism. We’re like, “What is your biggest disagreement?” It’s that you’re too ecumenical. And like, but that means they’re more open to people like you, and I’m like, “They shouldn’t be.
[00:49:19] They should have pride in their beliefs and d- and double down on how they’re different.”
[00:49:24] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. They... I think these are the really the key schisms to watch. There’s also a schism that’s taking place in the Orthodox Church, but it’s not that big of a deal. It’s, it’s that more since 2018, the Russian Orthodox Church has severed Eucharistic communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch- Patri- Patriarchate, is that what they’re called, of Constantinople, and, and some other- Mm-hmm
[00:49:53] churches, like in Greece and Alexandria and Cyprus. Specifically because let’s see. O- one of them, I think Constantinople granted independence to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2018 ‘cause, I don’t know, maybe Russia was invading Ukraine, and it seemed kind of unfair to Constantinople. So they’re like, “Well, I guess since you’re not friends anymore-
[00:50:19] Malcolm Collins: Do they get a new bishop?
[00:50:20] you’re,
[00:50:20] Simone Collins: you’re independent now. Like, y- y- you can do your own thing.” And the Russian Pat- the Moscow Patriarchate specifically was like, “Hey, you can’t do that. On whose authority do you do that?” And so then essentially they’re like, “Well, my religious tokens aren’t accepted in the same way that yours are.”
[00:50:42] And, and so it’s, it’s really weird. Like, it doesn’t... Practically speaking, it, it doesn’t really make a whole ton of sense to me. It,
[00:50:51] Malcolm Collins: it’s- Well, I mean, I would think that the plurality of patriarchs voting should have the ability to outvote a single patriarch.
[00:50:58] Simone Collins: It’s not exactly, but it’s, it’s both sides still s- share the same theology and the same sacrament, so this isn’t a doctrinal disagreement.
[00:51:07] It’s more about, like, who’s allowed to declare whom
[00:51:12] Malcolm Collins: independent. But this is, this is very different. So-
[00:51:14] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:51:14] Malcolm Collins: the, the, the in, in this case it is something that in 100 years nobody’s gonna care about, right? Like,
[00:51:21] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I’m sure, like, it, it, it’s... The s- stuff is gonna change, and there’s gonna be a point in time at which Moscow is no longer not out of no longer out of communion with the other Orthodox churches.
[00:51:34] It’s just that right now- Yeah, this isn’t like an
[00:51:35] Malcolm Collins: existential issue like the Latins
[00:51:36] Simone Collins: pope ... not at all. It, it just, it just has to do with the war. That’s it. It’s, it’s gonna, it’s gonna end.
[00:51:41] Malcolm Collins: What... The, the, the, the, what’s happening with the Anglicans is-
[00:51:44] Simone Collins: That is
[00:51:44] Malcolm Collins: so different ... absolutely existential.
[00:51:46] Simone Collins: Well, and it’s the same kind of...
[00:51:47] It’s the same broad trend as what’s happening with SSPX. It’s basically with the multiple churches, the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, there’s a subset that’s like- ... “What are you doing? This is not what we’re about.” And then there’s this other [00:52:00] subset that’s like- ... “What are you talking about? I’m gonna do what I want.
[00:52:02] Like, church? No, everyone’s kinda right. And also money, yay.” And that’s, that’s what, you know... I’m, I’m just really hoping that- Those who are really leaning in to hard religion win in the long run
[00:52:15] Malcolm Collins: Hold on. I’m, I’m gonna ask you like what is the, even the mechanism if popes appoint... Okay, continue with your thought.
[00:52:24] Simone Collins: Well, no, I just, I, I know that you pointed out this hopeless view that from a, a bureaucratic standpoint, there’s no reversing w- the Vatican. Like they’re just going to run themselves into the ground functionally. But my hope is that as SSPX keeps growing, and that these other hard religious versions of Catholicism and Anglicanism grow, that they’re just going to become the new de facto churches.
[00:52:52] Like, there’s not g- it’s, it’s just gonna be the Vatican in name only. I mean, maybe, maybe there will never, there won’t really be a Vatican City for the Catholic Church in the future. Like it just won’t happen anymore, but does that even matter? I mean, you, you really don’t need
[00:53:12] Malcolm Collins: this
[00:53:12] Simone Collins: to
[00:53:12] Malcolm Collins: be
[00:53:12] Simone Collins: an independent
[00:53:12] Malcolm Collins: country.
[00:53:13] Well, I mean, when Italy becomes a Muslim majority country, right, which it will,
[00:53:15] Simone Collins: You don’t need it anymore anyway. Yeah ...
[00:53:17] Malcolm Collins: I mean it just, it, it won’t make sense for it to be the, In, in short answer, there’s really nothing... So I’m trying to figure this out. Yeah, you cannot in Catholicism take back power using demographics or fanaticism
[00:53:29] Simone Collins: Hmm.
[00:53:29] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the j- pope appoints the cardinals, the cardinals vote on the pope. There’s no, there’s no way into it. A little
[00:53:34] Simone Collins: sus. Wow, okay.
[00:53:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the only thing that it could potentially do is it creates, like, a larger pool, and there just aren’t as many potential candidates for cardinal for the pope to select from that would not share their beliefs.
[00:53:53] The problem is, is you don’t need a large portion, right? Like, and, and the secondary problem is, is that because of the Catholic priest caste becomes separated from mainstream society, they’re not as affected by the conservative views of that society. And I’ve really seen this on the people who we know who have gone the route of Catholic priest or nun.
[00:54:15] It’s, they basically get separated from anyone who’s not in the priesthood or who’s not a nun. And so the wider political battle of the Catholics who have these large families is not something that they are... That- that’s not their world anymore, right? Like, that’s not- Yeah ... reaching them to the same extent, which means that even if you control, like, the vast majority of the laypeople choking the access.
[00:54:43] What you really have to do is choke the access of this counter-religion or, or re- progressive sort of elitist religion choke the access to cardinal candidates that come from this, right? Like, because, because as long as they’re... It’s not like the pope’s choosing cardinal candidates at random. He’s choosing the ones that agree with his, his viewpoint.
[00:55:00] So you need there to not be just, like, 80% of the cardinal candidates are, are, would vote the way that you want. You need to remove the 20% that wouldn’t, and getting to that point is essentially impossible.
[00:55:13] Simone Collins: Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:55:15] Malcolm Collins: Which is wild. A- a- and especially keep in mind the demographic realities and threats that a lot of the Catholic majority countries are going to be facing as well.
[00:55:27] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Let’s, Fascinating. It’s all around quite fascinating. I, we’re, we’re glad to be techno-puritans. Not our problem.
[00:55:36] Malcolm Collins: Not
[00:55:36] Simone Collins: our problem. Okay
[00:55:36] ...
[00:55:36] Simone Collins: You guys figure it out. We, we love you. Well, okay, I, I love you guys. M- Malcolm? Yes.
[00:55:41] Malcolm Collins: I, I, I like them as human beings. But I like-
[00:55:45] Simone Collins: You agree at least that they have the best, Cath- Catholics, not Anglicans, have the best clothing, so.
[00:55:51] Malcolm Collins: They do have the best clothing. I, yeah,
[00:55:53] Simone Collins: absolutely. All right. So you got that concession from Malcolm, okay? Take it.
[00:55:55] Malcolm Collins: It, it’s a, it’s the best styles. Well, because it looks like a gay person designed them all, [00:56:00] and gays are good designers.
[00:56:01] Simone Collins: They’re the best. Yeah. I mean-
[00:56:03] ...
[00:56:03] Simone Collins: In my opinion ...
[00:56:04] Malcolm Collins: you know, you, you can’t get, uh
[00:56:06] If, if you’re going uniforms, Catholics are, like, just under Nazis. You know, may- maybe, maybe at the same level, right? When we’re talking nice-
[00:56:14] Simone Collins: Oh, Lord, Malcolm. Everybody agrees- I
[00:56:16] Malcolm Collins: really enjoy it with you ... that Nazis had hot uniforms.
[00:56:19] Simone Collins: No, it’s true. It’s, it’s true.
[00:56:20] Malcolm Collins: There,
[00:56:20] Simone Collins: This is- this is why we had all these problems- If somebody tells you-
[00:56:23] in, like, East Asia, where all these, like, young teens and stuff would be seen wearing SS uniforms, and they’d have no understanding, you know, ‘cause they just found, like, this cool-looking cosplay outfit online. They’re like, “I’m gonna buy that one,” and struttin’ around, not having any understanding of what they represent.
[00:56:40] Malcolm Collins: It’s crazy. No. Well, I mean, you know, they look good. It’s a good look. It’s a good look. Whatever, right? I know, it’s, it’s a great look. Like, it’s
[00:56:46] Simone Collins: not- It’s fantastic. Yeah.
[00:56:47] Malcolm Collins: I, I think you know, it’s, it’s e- if I was younger, I think it’s a, a look more for younger people. But, ...
[00:56:53] Simone Collins: Nazi uniforms are a young person look?
[00:56:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they w- they work a bit, yeah, better on younger people.
[00:56:58] Simone Collins: Yeah, you have to have a svelte body, yeah. If you have, like, a paunch, you, it ruins the entire line of the outfit. Mm-hmm. It’s absolutely true. Or if you hunch. It, it is only for people with amazing posture, high discipline, high fitness, et cetera. I totally agree.
[00:57:12] Malcolm Collins: That’s a, that’s a, I guess, a point. But- But
[00:57:14] Simone Collins: you can do that and also be of advanced age as is shown by the Nazi-inspired uniforms in Star Wars, where you have some Imperial officers who are definitely on the older side who still look pretty good in their uniforms. So I’ll push back a little bit on that.
[00:57:28] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I’m, I’m sort of in this position of, like, I wish that there was something that they could do. I wish that there was a realistic pathway to taking back the church. I just don’t see it right now. Oh,
[00:57:40] Simone Collins: I think they should take the Anglican route. I think they should be like, “All right. We’re, we’re the Catholic Church now.”
[00:57:44] Malcolm Collins: But there’s already groups of Catholics that have done that.
[00:57:47] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah? I didn’t think of those.
[00:57:49] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they basically said that the blank council was, the, the, the Vatican was taken over from- The Second Vatican,
[00:57:53] Simone Collins: yeah ...
[00:57:54] Malcolm Collins: well, no, b- but before that. Like, the Vatican- Oh ... was taken over through an unfair election, which is, yeah, actually kind of plausibly true.
[00:58:00] So
[00:58:02] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:58:03] Malcolm Collins: You
[00:58:03] Simone Collins: could say that- Well, I mean, everyone went super into the lore of how popes are selected the last time that happened, you know, with Pope Leo, and I think it became fairly clear to a lot of people that, like, this process is not exactly optimal. You know, whatever.
[00:58:20] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it’s, it’s not about...
[00:58:22] A- a- and that’s part of the thing. It, it’s, it’s, it’s not about what the average Catholic thinks or wants, you know? It’s about what the elite think or want. It’s just- Yeah ... I don’t think anyone e- imagined that the elite would be captured by this sort of alternate religious mindset.
[00:58:37] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It, it, yeah, it’s kind of like you could say representative democracy where Americans were like, “Look, I trust our essentially landed gentry to make good decisions for us,” except what if suddenly that group of people just became alien and completely separated from the interests of the larger laypeople?
[00:58:56] Malcolm Collins: Well, the elite within our country as well, within most religions, are disproportionately captured by the urban monoculture.
[00:59:02] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:59:02] Malcolm Collins: In the United States, if you said, “Well, only the elite, quote, unquote, ‘elite’ in the country, the, the, the, the wealthiest or the you know, those who had o- over a certain IQ could vote,” you’d get way more Democratic candidates.
[00:59:17] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:59:18] Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you.
[00:59:20] Simone Collins: I love you too.
[00:59:21] Malcolm Collins: Interesting topic.
[00:59:22] Simone Collins: Fun stuff. It’s always nice to talk about popes.
[00:59:24] Malcolm Collins: Next we’ll do my book from when I was a kid.
[00:59:27] Simone Collins: All right. Perfect.
[00:59:28] Malcolm Collins: And then, all right. I’m ready.
[00:59:32] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:59:33] Malcolm Collins: Love you
[00:59:34] Simone Collins: I love you too.
[00:59:36] Speaker 14: Oh, yes. Oh, no, no, stay down here. Stay down here. Stay down here. I can hear an echo. Come back. Come back. It’s an echo, right? Yeah
[00:59:52] Speaker 13: Or something? They do nothing Well, there’s no church services taking place right now The church, [01:00:00] churches is taking place Church services, 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 dive deep into the modern Luddite movement — from NYC’s “Summer of Ludd” festival (complete with puppet spokesfrogs, offline flirting workshops, saddle-stitching classes, and panels that somehow turned into “how to build your own website” tutorials) to the surprising privilege, aesthetics, and contradictions behind today’s anti-tech trend.We compare Gen Z and millennial “Luddites” (flip phones, Moleskine notebooks, and performative offline living) with the original violent 19th-century machine-breakers, explore why deep, hours-long online friendships often feel more meaningful than awkward park conversations, and critique the expensive ecosystem of minimalist phones and typewriters. We also highlight more practical approaches from Mennonite communities and make the case for Solar Punk — using AI and technology intentionally to reclaim traditional skills, build sustainable futures, and live better rather than rejecting progress altogether.
Show Notes
“The Summer of Ludd”
* A cultural high point for the movement’s analog/anti-alienation wing.
* An eight-day (June 28–July 5, 2026), mostly offline festival and series of events in New York City
* Centered on Tompkins Square Park and Lower Manhattan
* It features over 120 free, public, participatory activities like:
* Workshops (e.g., saddle stitching, shortwave radio, mending, flirting/dating offline).
* Talks and panels (e.g., on indie web alternatives, privately owned public spaces, fighting data centers, “Google in Real Life” human Q&A).
* Gothamist: “At a Monday panel discussion on NYC event calendars, an array of neighborhood characters, older punks, fresh-faced flip phone users and various others packed the stone steps of East Village community garden La Plaza Cultural to discuss ways to learn of IRL happenings without social media.”
* “Overall, the evening was largely a technical discussion on how to build and maintain your own website or newsletter. It never got particularly ideological.”
* ““It’s not a digital versus analog thing. It’s a question of who controls how your community operates itself. Is it Mark Zuckerberg or you?” explained Thomas. “You are not an idle passenger of history. You get to control the impact that technology has on you and your society.””
* Cultural events: Plays recreating Luddite history, concerts, film screenings (analog/16mm), zine-making, rituals, and phone-free dance parties or jam sessions.
* Orgs represented:
* NYC Off Tech NYC events to connect outside of big tech
* Unplatform: The definitive guide for escaping social media (and joining the indie web.)
* Red Cal: Posters of offline events
* Nonsense NYC: Nonsense NYC is a discriminating resource for independent art, weird events, strange happenings, unique parties, and senseless culture in New York City.
* Technoqueers: Technoqueers.com is the home of “Techno Queers,” a weekly email newsletter and community focused on techno/club events, culture, and queer nightlife, primarily in New York City.
* Moon Bulletin: events and happenings in (mostly) nyc, according to moon cycle
* The People’s Circuit: and an encrypted, Proton Mail-based email newsletter
Organizers (anonymous or using puppets like “Gowanus” for media) promote it as a “movable feast” to encourage IRL community, reject algorithmic control, and build alternatives to Big Tech monopolies.
Marketing relies on wheatpastes, printed guides, and word-of-mouth—no heavy social media presence.
Reports as of early July indicate strong turnout, energetic crowds (including Gen Z, locals, families, and older activists), and success beyond expectations despite minimal online promo.
It’s tied to broader “Luddite Renaissance” efforts and overlaps with events like the Luddite Conference on Participatory Futures at The New School.
The New Luddite Movement
The forms it takes:
* Anti data center activism (we did a whole episode on this)
* Protests
* Mostly peaceful (rallies, marches, “Luddite tribunals,” app-deletion events, coning self-driving cars).
* There are reports of escalating tensions (archived), vandalism, sabotage threats, or isolated violence (e.g., attacks on data center supporters, self-driving vehicles, or symbolic targets like OpenAI exec homes), though the core movement distances itself from outright destruction. Insurance and security discussions highlight rising risks to AI infrastructure in 2026.
* E.g. “an Indianapolis city council member who supported a data center development told local outlets someone fired 13 shots at his home and left behind a note reading, “No data centers.””
* School clubs (high school andcollege):
* NY Times: Now in College, Luddite Teens Still Don’t Want Your Likes (archive link)
* Members use flip phone and advertise human connection
* One teenage luddite club in Brooklyn that the NY Times profiled in 2022: “they sketched and painted side by side. They read quietly, favoring works by Dostoyevsky, Kerouac and Vonnegut. They sat on logs and groused about how TikTok was dumbing down their generation. Their flip phones were decorated with stickers and nail polish.”
* Years later, most former members maintained their relatively offline ways and were turning their club into a nonprofit
* One detracted: ““It’s constant access again,” Ms. Shub said. “It’s the relief of knowing I can do things easier. I got Instagram, too, and it’s been nice reconnecting with people on it.”
* ““We’ve even got a mission statement now,” said Ms. Lane, who is studying Russian literature at Oberlin College. “We like to say we’re a team of former screenagers connecting young people to the communities and knowledge to conquer big tech’s addictive agendas.””
* There’s a weird undertone of privilege in the article:
* “Winter Jacobson, who was in town from Colorado to visit Ms. Butler [one of the former Luddite Club members], was sitting next to her. He started a Luddite Club at Telluride High School last year. He said it has a dozen members.
* “Colorado is very different from New York,” Mr. Jacobson, 17, said. “There’s not as much to do in Telluride. People are reliant on their phones as their connection to the world, so some of my friends think the club is a joke. I’m still trying to spread the message, though.””
The Capitalization
* Light phone: The flagship minimalist device. E-ink or simple touchscreen, limited tools (calls, notes, music, basic maps, camera on III), no browser/apps/social media/email feeds by design. Premium build, expensive (~$300–$700 range). Widely seen as the gold standard for “going light” and digital detox; strong cultural cachet in Luddite/analog communities.
* Mudita Kompakt ($399): E-ink screen for calmer use, excellent battery, privacy switches (kill GSM/mic/etc.), offline maps, basic apps. More flexible than Light Phone but still minimalist. Popular for privacy-focused users and long battery life.
* Minimal Phone: ($449) E-ink touchscreen + QWERTY keyboard, some Android apps (controllable). Good for balanced minimalism.
* Punkt MP02: ($299) Ultra-minimal button phone focused on calls/texts.
* Freewrite (Astrohaus) typewriters (Gen 3 Smart Typewriter ($699), Traveler, etc.): These have E-ink screens + full mechanical keyboards, they sync drafts (Postbox/cloud) but lack internet/distractions during writing.
* Premium pricing (~$500–$1,000+); popular among writers seeking analog feel with digital convenience. Strong following despite cost; seen as a modern “typewriter” revival tool.
What’s odd is one can just set one’s phone to black and white mode
Also, you can get a razor flip phone for $35-100 USD on eBay
How Mennonites Do It
According to MennoNet.com: Within conservative Mennonite/Plain circles, you’ll see tools that look very similar to what evangelical or family‑safety communities use:
* Accountability apps such as Covenant Eyes and CloudVeil, which log activity or filter content and send reports to an accountability partner or family administrator.
* “The Security Appliance,” a content‑filtering solution developed “for and by the Plain Community,” used at the network level in some fellowships to restrict categories of sites and manage what devices can access.
* Other web filters like OpenDNS FamilyShield and similar DNS‑based filters, which can be configured on home or business Wi‑Fi to block entire categories of content.
On top of community-specific tools, many Mennonites simply use the native controls in Android and iOS the same way cautious parents do:
* iOS Screen Time and Google Family Link to set app limits, “downtime” schedules, and block certain categories (social, games, entertainment).
* Content & privacy restrictions to block adult content and prevent installing unapproved apps.
In practice, a phone may be configured so only a whitelist of “necessary” apps (phone, text, perhaps WhatsApp/Signal, maps, farm/business software) is accessible outside of designated work times.
General social norms are also super effective:
* Mennonites are super clear about when and where devices may be used (e.g., no phones in bedrooms, at church, or during meals; only in the office or shop).
* They often use hared or supervised devices: a single smartphone for a household or business, kept in a central location rather than carried at all times, limits impulsive and private use while allowing work contacts.
* There are expectations around accountability (elders, employers, spouses) so misuse is a social issue as much as a technical one.
The Original Luddite Movement
The Luddite movement (1811–1816) arose among skilled English textile workers (primarily framework knitters/stockingers in Nottinghamshire, croppers/shearers in Yorkshire, and weavers in Lancashire) during the Industrial Revolution. (Brittanica)
* They protested machinery (e.g., wide knitting frames, shearing frames, power looms) that enabled cheaper, unskilled labor, lowered wages, degraded quality, and threatened livelihoods amid economic pressures from the Napoleonic Wars, poor harvests, and rising food prices.
* The movement was named after the (likely mythical) Ned Ludd, who allegedly smashed stocking frames in 1779
What they did:
* Form oath-bound secret groups, some of which ran military-style drills
* Raid factories and break machines (starting in Nottingham in 1911)
* Luddites broke over 1,000 frames/machintes, costing manufacturers thousands of pounds
* Send threatening letters (signed by Ned Ludd or General Ludd)
* Attack mills (e.g. the Rawfolds Mill in 1812)
* Assassinate manufacturers (At least one man, William Horsfall, was murdered)
There weren’t actually that many
* Low thousands at its peak
* Raids involved dozens to approximately 100 men
* Estimates of sympathizers reached 7-8K in some areas
The movement was super short lived (met with military force and harsh laws)
How They Compare
Feels like most modern luddites are more just craving early 2000s tech use.
Feels more like a market correction than anything else
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The, the, the Luddite event turned into an explanation of how to build your own website?
[00:00:11] That’s what they were doing? The Lud-
[00:00:12] Simone Collins: They’re... Yeah, this is a little bit confusing. it’s kind of rich that many of these people who propose to be Luddites are like, “Well, this is all about human connection. I just wanna have real human connection.” When people have very real human connection online,
[00:00:27] Malcolm Collins: , The person I talk to most other than Simone, is Leaflet. And you look at , the like, 10-hour conversations once every two weeks, right?
[00:00:36] I would ask you guys, how many people in your life do you have that deep a conversation with I have never seen what Leaflet looks like in real life,, when we talk about, like, an anti-Luddite, they’re like, “Just get to know someone face to face.” I have never interacted once with Leaflet face to face, like, I ask you this sincerely, would , Leaflet and my friendship, be in any way meaningfully enhanced from a flesh to flesh conversation?
[00:01:08] Would you like to know more?
[00:01:09] Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because the Luddites are assembling once again, and you would never know it because you’re online and they’re not online.
[00:01:19] And should we be worried? Let’s find out. But thank- thanks to Wired Magazine being out there in, you know, walking around Brooklyn, we actually know about this because otherwise, how would we know? We wouldn’t know. Because- But
[00:01:30] Malcolm Collins: yet they had to find... What I love about this article they wrote on this group, and if you’re unfamiliar with who the Luddites are historically, they are anti-technologists who do not like technology taking jobs.
[00:01:41] Specifically, they wanted women in factories working on looms. Mm-hmm. That- that is- that is, they believe the natural role of a woman for all of human history is being in a factory and working on a loom. But they found this in a store. Like, in a human-
[00:01:54] Simone Collins: Yeah, so I’m- I’m reading from the- the Wired article itself called Inside the Luddite Festival: Harnessing Gen Z’s Rage Against Big Tech.
[00:02:01] Rage. That sounds ominous. The author says, “I found out about the event in a serendipitously offline way. Earlier in June, I was with a friend in the East Village, and we got caught in a summer downpour. As I was waiting it out in the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, a small venue that documents the neighborhood’s history of activism, I found the booklet covering the Summer of Ludd’s events among other zines, posters, and pamphlets.
[00:02:26] So here I am, phone tucked away, notebook out, Playbill in hand,” ‘cause, of course, our tech author attended. She’s not
[00:02:32] Malcolm Collins: allowed to use technology. But what, what’s crazier about this- She ... she, you and I w- haven’t been in the type of a venue where we could even presumably find an invitation to a group like this-
[00:02:45] Simone Collins: Yeah
[00:02:45] Malcolm Collins: probably in at least half a decade.
[00:02:50] Simone Collins: I guess you’re right. Yeah, so we would never know. I mean, thank goodness, right? Thank goodness.
[00:02:55] Malcolm Collins: I mean, they’re not, they’re not posting these at the local BJ’s or Walmart, so- Yeah. ... where else do we go?
[00:03:01] Simone Collins: Yeah, well, I mean, I think you have to be like Victoria El- Elliot, the author of this article, walking around, you know, in sort of bougie places in New York City, and that’s actually a theme.
[00:03:10] The more I dug into the modern Luddite movement, the more I discovered that- It’s, it’s kind of extremely bougie. Th- you know I
[00:03:20] Malcolm Collins: would imagine it is.
[00:03:22] Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s very... This is in stark contrast to the original Luddite movement, which we’ll also just go over at the end to kind of see, like, okay, how are these different?
[00:03:30] How are these the same? But-
[00:03:31] Malcolm Collins: No, people with sh- to worry about in their lives have no reason to be doing this stuff. No, they’re like, you can’t do this whole, “Oh, I’m not gonna have a phone. I’m not gonna have a computer on me. I’m not gonna use AI.” W- and what I love is they’re not even just, like, anti-AI.
[00:03:45] They’re anti the whole ecosystem.
[00:03:48] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. I, I felt like we had to cover this particular event, though, this, this Summer of Ludd again, because of the author’s description of it. Just another part of the article that I found very entertaining. “The Summer [00:04:00] of Ludd was preempted with a press conference conducted by the organizer’s spokesperson, Gowanus, the media puppet.
[00:04:07] Yes, I am serious. A blue cloth being with soda cap eyes manned by a masked puppeteer. Gowanus was conceived of as a way for the movement to speak to the public and the media without compromising the identities of the event’s organizers, who wish to remain anonymous. According to Gowanus, New York’s Luddite renaissance is, quote, ‘A loose group of organizers that have no formal affiliation as of now, but have been coalescing around noticing similar problems of alienation and over-reliance on big tech,’ end quote.”
[00:04:40] So, yeah, this... Basically, though, what, you know...
[00:04:44] Malcolm Collins: Daddy’s five minutes.
[00:04:44] Simone Collins: At any rate, I wanted to kick off with the Summer of Ludd as sort of our starting point here, because it’s seen as a cultural high point in the movements, specifically analog or and anti-alienation wing. And there are several wings to this, some of which bear more resemblance to the original Luddite movement, and some of which don’t.
[00:05:02] But the Summer of Ludd-
[00:05:02] Malcolm Collins: Anti-alienation wing? What... Tell me about this. What... Tell me about the wings. Can we s-
[00:05:07] Simone Collins: Right. So the different wings are basically this sort of the anti- Hmm ... alienation wing is kind of like, “Well, we feel like social media has not been good for us. We don’t like scrolling on our smartphones.
[00:05:18] We would like to performatively be offline,” and very prominently wave around our Moleskine notebooks and analog typewriters, et cetera and, and, you know, meet in clubs. I’ll talk about the clubs. Then there’s the anti-big tech and anti-AI data center agitators. We did a whole episode on the anti-AI center agitation, which is partially funded by outside players who would rather that y- the US not develop a strong AI infrastructure, but there’s also a lot of, I would say, homegrown.
[00:05:50] Though, I don’t know, we’ll say, like, fertilizer has been added by outside parties but homegrown concern over data centers. But there are definitely reports of escalating tensions between this particular sect of, like, I guess you could say the modern lud- Luddite movement and Some more violent stuff, like the vandalism, sabotage threats, threats of violence.
[00:06:18] I- you’ll recall that an Indianapolis city council member who supported data center development heard 13 shots fired outside his phone, and then when he... Or, of his home, and then when he opened his front door, there was a little note reading, “No data centers.” So people’s lives, it, it is insinuated that his life is being threatened by people who don’t want data centers, right?
[00:06:40] So that, I, I think is the, we’ll say more, like, militant branch. But this anti-alienation branch has more to do with things like this festival, with various offline gatherings and events, and then also with basically school clubs. A, a lot of the original new organization that maybe started to trend in the media back in 2022, so this is not exactly brand new was associated with school clubs.
[00:07:08] But back to the Summer of Ludd, just so, like, I can cover some of the more important details around that. It seems to be really centered around New York. I didn’t actually hear that much, weirdly, about successful Luddite movements, clubs, events, et cetera, outside of New York City, which is kind of weird as well.
[00:07:26] And it’s, it’s actually still happening right now, Malcolm. If we wanted to just drop everything and drive to New York, we could probably attend some Summer of Ludd events. It finishes July 5th, and as of today, it is July 3rd. So-
[00:07:41] Malcolm Collins: Second ...
[00:07:41] Simone Collins: we could... Mm, no, it’s... Is it? My God, yeah. Okay, so we, yeah, we can we can go.
[00:07:48] It’s centered around- What type
[00:07:49] Malcolm Collins: of events? Well, I wanna hear about the wings, I wanna hear about the types of events. Yeah, like-
[00:07:53] Simone Collins: Yeah, so the, it, it, it has over 120 free public participatory activities. There you can learn [00:08:00] saddle stitching, you can learn how to use a shortwave radio, you can learn, learn how to mend clothing also flirt and date offline.
[00:08:08] They have talks and panels, like indie web alternatives privately owned public spaces fighting data centers. So there’s certainly, like, some confluence with the anti-data center protest movement. And also like, I described to you when we were talking earlier today, there’s a Google in real life session where you get to, like, talk to a human expert.. Right. So yeah, there was also that Q&A event where it’s just Google in real life. Like oh my gosh, what if you just asked someone? Except of course it’s not anywhere close to as good as Google, and certainly not as good as any AI search engine that- I
[00:08:39] Malcolm Collins: love it that I hear the idea of somebody Googling something, and my thought now is, wow, that’s quite antique.
[00:08:46] You know, that’s, that’s a little- Antique ... that’s a little dated. I know, that Google is
[00:08:49] Simone Collins: antique
[00:08:50] Malcolm Collins: You’re Googling? What, what AI are you using? Googling?
[00:08:53] Simone Collins: Googling. Well, of course Google’s trying to serve up Gemini AI, AI answers to everything which people are really mad about, so they’re not even Googling anymore.
[00:09:00] But anyway according to Gothamist, which talked about this a little bit as well, quote, “At a Monday panel, discussion on NYC event calendars, an array of neighborhood characters, older punks, “fresh-faced flip phone users, and various others packed at the stone steps of the East Village community garden, La Plaza Cultural, to discuss ways to learn IRL happenings, of IRL happenings without social media.
[00:09:25] Overall, the evening was largely a technical discussion on how to build and maintain your own website or newsletter. It never got particularly ideolo- ideological.”
[00:09:34] Malcolm Collins: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The, the, the Luddite event turned into an explanation of how to build your own website?
[00:09:46] That’s what they were doing? The Lud-
[00:09:47] Simone Collins: They’re... Yeah, this is a little bit confusing. Yeah, a lot of it’s, it’s not actually about being a Luddite. What I’m discovering is that this sort of social element of the movement, they kind of just wanna go back to, like, late 1990s, early 2000s internet with flip phones and with just w- before this, the, the, any sort of social media feed, and not actually go offline, which is interesting.
[00:10:12] But-
[00:10:12] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s very interesting that they’re like, “All technology up to what I got comfortable with when I was a youth is bad.”
[00:10:20] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, as one person at, at the event put it, it’s not quite a digital versus analog thing. It’s a question of who controls how your community o- operates itself.
[00:10:28] “It’s a Mark Zuckerberg or you thing,” explained Thomas. You’re not an idle passenger of history. You get to control the impact of your technology, that your technology has on you and your society. So what a lot of people are trying to do is take back sort of some level of sovereignty, which I think is not inherently bad.
[00:10:44] I mean, it’s, it, it, it can be
[00:10:46] Malcolm Collins: dangerous- Yeah, no, no. I mean, they, what’s interesting is that makes it a lot like our communities. We’re just a lot more, like- Practical? I mean, the Sky Brown Cinematic Universe, RFAB, which is basically a cinematic universe at this point. By the way, one thing I’ve started working on with RFAB, Simone- Yeah
[00:11:00] Just in terms of new features building is a replacement for Descript, because I- Oh. You’ve been having- ... too frequently have issues with Descript Yeah. It’s a useful feature. I think Descript massively overcharges. If, if we did it, we’d be doing it at, like, one-tenth the cost of Descript and I don’t use the vast majority of Descript’s features
[00:11:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, you just don’t want to use them.
[00:11:20] So yeah,
[00:11:21] Malcolm Collins: it would be- I really only need it for, for people who do not know, this is what we use to edit our videos, to automatically take out ums and stuff like that. And so what I would do with this system is use it to edit our videos, but also give it to you guys, so you guys can just, like, move text around and it’ll move around where it is.
[00:11:36] Simone Collins: I think it’s a great idea. Yeah ... a, a lot of the organizations present just sound kind of like late ‘90s Seattle-style zines and fliers. So a lot of the orgs that were present when at least, I think, Gothamist was there covering one of the events, or NYC Off Tech, which just does events to connect outside of [00:12:00] big tech.
[00:12:00] Like, it’s just dedicated to that. Unplatform, which is a guide to escaping social media. Redcal. And when you go to Redcal’s website, it’s just literally images of posters that people make. Like, the kind of wheat paste posters you might see put up in a city about events and concerts and stuff. Mm-hmm.
[00:12:18] But it’s just a website of them. So just in case you’re not walking around the streets of New York City or Brooklyn, you can, you can go to Redcal’s- Wait- ... website to see. Red, how’s that
[00:12:28] Malcolm Collins: spelled?
[00:12:29] Simone Collins: Let me, let me just send you a link.
[00:12:30] It’s cal.red. So pretty easy to type in. Okay, I see. But here’s a, here’s a link
[00:12:39] Malcolm Collins: For the streets.
[00:12:40] USA
[00:12:41] Simone Collins: out of NY, adjacent Yeah, so you can see it’s just a series of the posters. It’s like, well, if I just wanted to see all the wheat paste posters in Brooklyn, I can just go to cal.red, which is not... I mean, like, so this is exactly what they’re talking about. Like, how do we be offline and not have online advertising and not post on Facebook, but still have people come to our events?
[00:13:00] Which is, like, this really tough thing to do in modern society. So I do find that somewhat interesting from, like, a just purely logistical, how do we work this out st- standpoint. Then there’s also Moon Bulletin, which is just one person, I guess, talking about what they know is going on, and then also the People’s Circuit, which is this encrypted ProtonMail-based email newsletter.
[00:13:19] So the big themes there are, like, I’m really concerned about Mark Zuckerberg knowing everything about me, and you know, I just hate these big tech companies and I don’t wanna be manipulated by social media, so here’s my attempt to live a different type of life. I like the intentionality of it.
[00:13:33] Malcolm Collins: No, what’s so interesting about seeing this, and these types of events, and stuff like that is it reminds me of stuff I felt was, like, cool and subversive when I was younger, and I
[00:13:45] Simone Collins: see- Yeah, some of it certainly looked like that, yeah
[00:13:47] Malcolm Collins: like, a punk thing or, like, a goth thing. Yeah. And I would be like, “I wanna go to this cool subversive whatever.” And what’s wild is, like, now that’s the internet, right? Like- Mm-hmm ... to, to go to one of these you’re just gonna find a bunch of aging hipsters,
[00:14:03] Simone Collins: Well, they said that all generations were there, that there were some aging hipsters, but there were also a lot of young people.
[00:14:09] So- Hmm ... I, I think that that’s s- interesting
[00:14:11] Malcolm Collins: I, I, I think there’s probably some, but yeah, yeah, I, I, I- No, no, no ...
[00:14:16] Simone Collins: young people definitely outside Apparently, like, the early reports from this, from this event show that there’s been a lot of a lot, like, really good turnout at these events, a lot of Gen Z, a lot of locals, a lot of families, and then of course older activists too.
[00:14:26] But I, what I think is more interesting is that the new Luddite movement in terms of, like, persistent ongoing social clubs is primarily, um is, is primarily Gen Z, but I think that’s because- This is the first generation that was raised as what people describe as, like, iPad babies where they, they actually don’t know what it’s like to be more offline, and when they describe these, like, revolutionary things that they’re doing to live more offline, it just honestly feels a little bit more like our lives.
[00:14:56] Because we, we, we intentionally don’t, like, scroll media feeds. We don’t have TikTok on our phones, and, like, that’s kind of as far as they’re going. They’re like, “Well, I just think, you know, TikTok is bad.” Although they try to go a little further, though, you know, to mixed results.
[00:15:09] Malcolm Collins: But basically- Yeah, just take down Trek Zone, man.
[00:15:11] That’ll, that’ll get you off media feed ...
[00:15:12] Simone Collins: no, for real, actually. But I just think that basically millennials and older can’t participate in this movement because they are, by probably kind of the, the standards of younger generations, actually Luddites. Like, actually terminally offline, which, which I think is also quite interesting.
[00:15:30] But anyway, there’s this interesting New York Times piece called Now in College, Luddite Teens Still Don’t Want Your Likes. And it’s, it’s this fairly recent New York Times piece that is checking in on a bunch of Luddite teens who had a Luddite club who were first covered by The New York Times in 2022.
[00:15:47] So this is four years later, and it’s checking to see, like, are they still offline, which I think is interesting. I, I like that they’re like, “Oh, how persistent is this? How committed are these people?” So most of the members, or at least former members, [00:16:00] still use flip phones and are still very, like, concertedly not online.
[00:16:06] One teenage Luddite club in Brooklyn that The New York Times profiled in 2022 that, that really was highlighted in this article- Yeah ... quote, “Sketched and painted side by side, they read quietly, favoring works by Dosto- Dostoyevsky, Kerouac, and Vonnegut. They sat on logs and groused about how TikTok was dumbing down their generation.
[00:16:26] The flip- their flip phones were decorated with stickers and nail polish.” Doesn’t that just sound like us as teens?
[00:16:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:16:34] Simone Collins: That’s just, just, that’s what’s so weird about it is, like, oh, the Luddites. Like, I pictured they’d be, like, weaving or something, but they’re, like, just behaving like we did. I’m like, hold on.
[00:16:42] That’s like, I, I didn’t even get a flip phone until really late. So again, this is not what I expected to hear. But years later, most of the former members didn’t go back to, to more heavy tech, but one detracted at least. She wrote, “It’s constant access again. It, it’s the relief of knowing I can do things easier.
[00:17:00] I got Instagram too, and it’s been nice re- reconnecting with people on it.” The point being, and I appreciate that she acknowledged this- Mm-hmm ... that when you choose to be offline, you’re just not going to see certain people again. You’re just not gonna communicate with certain people again. Like, it’s this concerted choice- To give up many relationships.
[00:17:19] And I think it’s, it’s kind of rich that many of these people who propose to be Luddites are like, “Well, this is all about human connection. I just wanna have real human connection.” When people have very real human connection online, like this morning on Discord and WhatsApp, I had some very personal and deep conversations with people that I’d not, I would not have had if I was-
[00:17:40] Malcolm Collins: Well, and what’s wilder is what the personal connections mean for people like us.
[00:17:46] Like, the person I talk to most in our lives, other than Simone, is Leaflet. This is both on Discord and on our biweekly chats. And you look at the, the long communications I have with her. It’s this, like, 10-hour conversations once every two weeks, right? Yeah, on our stream. We’re hanging out at night.
[00:18:03] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:18:03] Malcolm Collins: Drinking having fun, chatting about life, philosophy, everything under. It’s
[00:18:07] Simone Collins: kinda, yeah, it’s like, it’s like a modern symposium, which is really, like, extra old school. Right. And yet super new school. But- So weird.
[00:18:14] Malcolm Collins: I would ask you guys, anyone who has seen one of these, like, how many people in your life do you have that deep a conversation with or that deep of a friendship with, right?
[00:18:26] That you’re having these really long-form conversations. I have never seen what Leaflet looks like in real life, okay? I, the person I’m interacting with, when we talk about, like, an anti-Luddite, they’re like, “Just get to know someone face to face.” I have never interacted once with Leaflet face to face, and I have no interest in escalating our relationship.
[00:18:51] I, that has never been something that is of- Oh,
[00:18:54] Simone Collins: you mean like, “We have to visit together. We have to go on a
[00:18:57] Malcolm Collins: vacation together.” Yeah, we have to visit. If I drove by where she lived in Texas, I wouldn’t even, I, and she probably wouldn’t even envision- You wouldn’t
[00:19:04] Simone Collins: stop. If you were, like, a mile away, you’d be like, “Meh.”
[00:19:07] Malcolm Collins: Would our... And, and, and, and to our audience, like, I ask you this sincerely, would our friendship, Leaflet and my friendship, be in any way meaningfully enhanced from a flesh to flesh conversation? Would we know anything meaningfully additional about each other? I mean, maybe what they look ... Like they’re like deformed or been highly misrepresentative of themselves or something like that, but I don’t think they have been.
[00:19:34] Like I would gain no additional nature to our friendship. The only thing that requires being in person with someone is having sex with them. And look at the way I interact with my wife on this very screen, right? Like we’re in different rooms. Even with your loved one, sometimes it can be more efficient to communicate with through a screen.
[00:19:58] Are we not building our [00:20:00] relationship through conversations like this?
[00:20:01] Simone Collins: For real. Yeah, and we, we act like we do it literally in separate rooms of our house. Those are our most effective
[00:20:07] Malcolm Collins: conversations. Okay. But now imagine the Luddite, what they’re building in terms of a friendship. So they
[00:20:11] Simone Collins: go- They have to sit out in a park you know
[00:20:13] Malcolm Collins: They sit in a park-
[00:20:14] Simone Collins: Talking
[00:20:15] Malcolm Collins: and they awkwardly talk to somebody- About car wax ... who they met at a ... Do you think those conversations are going to be one, one-hundredths as deep as one of the conversations that Leaflet and I have over like 10 hours at midnight? Well, there, I
[00:20:26] Simone Collins: bet many people offline have very deep conversations. But what
[00:20:29] Malcolm Collins: I’m saying is- No, I’m not saying what the depth-
[00:20:30] Simone Collins: the, the number of people you can, you can interact with and the types of people you can interact with are extremely limited when you choose to only interact with those whom you can reach in person
[00:20:38] Malcolm Collins: But, but also the depth of the conversation is limited by the format. Mm-hmm. When you are, one, in a park, and two, have a tight time limit on your conversation, like an hour, an hour and a half, you’re just not gonna get to the same type of topics you get to in a 10-hour conversation that’s happening overnight while you’re both, you know, kind of out of it because you’ve been in, interacting for so long.
[00:21:00] Yeah. The level of conversation that you’re going to get to ... And I often, the conversations that I have with people in person, especially the ones that, where I meet them in person, because you don’t know as much about their background, because you don’t know what’s gonna offend them, because you don’t know where to go, your conversations start at such a lower level, right?
[00:21:18] Like Leaflet and my conversations can start at a very high level because both of us have watched a probably hundreds of hours of the other person’s content before that conversation even started.
[00:21:30] Simone Collins: Right. This asynchronous relationship that people are able to have when they consume each other’s content or read each other’s messages asynchronously and then have live conversations, again, there’s this additional level of depth that you can have that you just can’t have otherwise I think.
[00:21:44] Malcolm Collins: But it’s, it’s the irony of I don’t even know off the top of my head what her real name is. I do not know what she looks like,
[00:21:51] and those things would not ... This is what gets me so much about these Luddites, is they are choosing a form of relationship which is strictly lesser The, the think about the conversations you have on a Discord, like our, our Discord, right?
[00:22:08] Yeah. People are coming in after having watched a video and they are interacting with each other in a thread. So they’re having a conversation basically. Now, the depth that they’re gonna have in that conversation is going to be higher than any random conversation in a park because they’re coming into the conversation with a shared context, e.g.
[00:22:27] we both watched the information in the video and are now conversing about the information in the video.
[00:22:34] Simone Collins: Yeah. I think that’s interesting. What, what also, as I said earlier, stood out to me is that there is this strong undertone of privilege that pervades a lot of this. The, the people described and profiled when I read about this movement for example, o- of, of the alumna of, of this, this club, this this, this Luddite high school club that are now being interviewed later, like they’re all getting humanities degrees at fairly expensive schools, stuff that like implies they don’t actually need real jobs.
[00:23:10] Like one is studying Russian literature at Oberlin College. This is not something that someone does if their family is of limited means. What are
[00:23:18] Malcolm Collins: they going to do with their life?
[00:23:20] Simone Collins: Like what- I don’t know, because they don’t use the internet. Actually, so the, the one who’s getting- Work at a
[00:23:25] Malcolm Collins: f*****g bookstore?
[00:23:26] Simone Collins: The one, no, the one who’s studying at Oberlin College actually is working for Light Phone, which as it happens, is one of the many companies that is capitalizing on the interest of this, this perf- What,
[00:23:40] Malcolm Collins: what, what is... Oh, oh, Light Phone. Oh yeah, where it’s like a lighter... Yeah, but that’s not a terrible idea if you have like addiction problems.
[00:23:46] Simone Collins: Yeah. It, it’s a minimalist device. It costs between $300 and $700, and there’s this whole collection of devices for people who want to develop more focus who are at like varying degrees of modern Luddite, I [00:24:00] guess you could say. So there’s also the Mudita Kompakt, K-O-M-P-A-K-T. That’s $399. It’s this e-ink screen device that, that has online...
[00:24:11] It’s basically like a smartphone, but without any color. It has offline maps and basic apps. It’s, it’s a little bit more flexible than the Light Phone, and it, it I think it also costs... No, it’s three- $399. So it’s, it’s like kind of mid-range phone-wise. Mudita, by the way, really odd name. Mudita weirdly is, was the name of, When my, when one of my family members was a member of a cult, her name was Mudita in the cult which is interesting.
[00:24:43] Anyway then there’s also the Minimal Phone, which is $449. It has an E Ink touch screen, touch, touch screen, touch screen. And it, it also has just a few Android apps. Then there’s the Punkt MP02, 02, which is almost $300, that is just a very minimal button phone. And then there’s, there’s a bunch of like this whole class of basically typewriter style word processors that are like tactile typewriters with E Ink screens that allow you to sync things that you’re writing, like books or transcripts or s- or plays to some kind of cloud account.
[00:25:24] But they’re not connected to the internet, so you can’t start messing around online. But all of them are really expensive. They’re $500 to $1,000. And I, I wanted to just point out how expensive they were because You can just get a Razor flip phone for like 35 to $100 on eBay. I checked. Like, they’re, they’re extremely affordable.
[00:25:45] So you can, you could very easily be more offline without buying expensive additional stuff. But I feel like it’s one of those ecosystems where, again, the, the, the point the, the young, the young woman getting this degree in Russian literature is now working during the summer at Light Phone but also, like, kind of not sure about getting an office job.
[00:26:05] But like what is she gonna do then? She’s gonna end up marrying some guy working in AI-
[00:26:10] Malcolm Collins: Exactly ... for her
[00:26:11] Simone Collins: lifestyle. And I, I don’t know. I just feel like this is not gonna end very well. But then also, like, just this other sort of reference made offhand in the article, I’m gonna just quote from it, “Winter Jacobson, who was in town from Colorado to visit Ms.
[00:26:23] Butler,” this was another one of the former Luddite Club members, “was sitting next to her. He started a Luddite club in Telluride High School last year. He said it had a dozen members.”
[00:26:32] Malcolm Collins: Telluride, these kids are so posh.
[00:26:34] Simone Collins: He says, “Colorado is very different from New York,” Mr. Jacobson, 17, said. “There’s not as much to do in Telluride.
[00:26:41] People are reliant on their phones as their self-connection to the world.” Sorry, “As their connection to the world. So some of my friends think the club’s a joke. I’m still trying to spread the message, though.” Telluride High School. Tell us a little bit about Telluride, Malcolm.
[00:26:55] Malcolm Collins: Telluride is probably, I think, one of the, like, richest communities on earth.
[00:27:01] It is a beautiful place, though. I, I think one of the most beautiful places in the United States. Yeah,
[00:27:05] Simone Collins: like if, if we could live there, we probably would, except I think the altitude’s hard on your lungs.
[00:27:09] Malcolm Collins: I, I couldn’t be able to deal with the altitude. It would, it would cause too many health complications for me, but it’s a, a stunning place.
[00:27:16] Simone Collins: Yeah. It has... It, it’s basically like this rich, rich person paradise where, like, you can just walk the streets, and kids just walk through, free through the streets and just wander around these beautiful creeks. There’s literally a gondola system that’s free to ride that connects Telluride with Mountain Village an adjacent small village.
[00:27:39] It, it is one of the most idyllic and beautiful and privileged places in the entire world. Every every early September a bunch of celebrities descend upon the town for the Telluride Film Festival, and it’s just full of some of the most privileged, educated people in the entire world. And I think that just goes to show that like the one other city that’s mentioned where there’s a Luddite club, aside from [00:28:00] Brooklyn and, and New York City, you know, y- very, very wealthy place is freaking Telluride.
[00:28:05] You know, the, the, the secret- like the Brigadoon of rich people. It’s, it’s just insane to me. So yeah, I, I just wanted to point that out. That and, like, all these sort of expensive devices that people are buying when I think what you should really think about is sort of contrast the way that, like, these people are so proudly going offline or like trying to deal with their internet addictions with how Mennonites do it.
[00:28:30] And i- it’s not like there isn’t some precedent that modern people who are concerned about tech use can turn to because Mennonites have been dealing with this for a very long time. And according to mennonet.com, which is a thing, and it’s delightful, and it’s, has very, like, Craigslist styling but it is a website for Mennonite things.
[00:28:52] Within Mennonite con- conservative circles and plain circles, you’ll see that the, the tools are just stuff that you would install on an Android phone. There are accountability apps. One is called Covenant Eyes, which is something that’s also used by evangelical communities, and also Cloud Veil.
[00:29:11] They log activity or... and also are capable of filtering content. And they’ll send reports on accountability to, to a partner or a family administrator. So you had told me at one point you’d seen, like, Mennonites,
[00:29:23] Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
[00:29:23] Simone Collins: I,
[00:29:23] Malcolm Collins: I quite like this technology. Yeah. I think it’s something that more people should use if you struggle with addictions to stuff online.
[00:29:30] Simone Collins: Yeah, like your brother will be like, “Hey dude, I saw that you were on Facebook.” Like, that y- you’ll get that social shame from it. There’s also something called the Security Appliance, which is a content filtering solution developed for and by the Plain community which is used at the network level in some fellowships to restrict categories of sites and manage what devices- Mm-hmm
[00:29:50] can access. So it’s, I think, similar to the kinds of controls that, say, a high school’s tech network will use in terms of allowing, like, what the laptops and phones on that system can use. And then there are other web filters like OpenDNS FamilyShield, and then just other ones that are out there that can be configured at home or on business Wi-Fi to block entire categories of content.
[00:30:13] So if you don’t like Mark Zuckerberg ‘cause he’s watching your life, then you can just block Fa- like, there are, are very easy offline ways without buying- Mm ... some expensive phone when you could just get an Android phone for $100 or y- if you still want a smartphone, for example, that allow you to do this.
[00:30:31] And then you can also just, ‘cause I just did this with an, an Android device that I’m sort of repurposing for, for our oldest son you can just set necessary apps on an Android phone or use something like Google Family Link, which I know is annoying you, but I’m still setting up the settings to, to set downtime schedules where, like, during these hours of the day you can’t use the phone, you can’t use the phone for more than two hours.
[00:30:54] Like, it just literally shuts off, and then the person who is the admin on the Google Family Link can give you more time if they think you should have it, but it, they can cut you off like a bartender. So th- these are all super, like, you don’t need a special device for it, but this community feels like it performatively needs to.
[00:31:12] But what I think is more meaningful is that- In Mennonite communities, there are just social norms around not taking out your phone in certain places. Like, a Mennonite would never go to church and pull out a phone because they know that they would be, like, socially ostracized for it. And I think just having those social norms is, is, is way more helpful than even using some kind of tech, if you know that you’re gonna be shamed.
[00:31:35] And that is something at least that did really show up in the summer of Ludd in New York. It’s still, probably still showing up at these events, is that when people take out their phones, people see that they’re doing so with great shame, that the phones are, like, held really low. Like, you know when someone shamefully takes out a phone to, like, check something and they do that thing where, like- Yeah, yeah, yeah
[00:31:50] they, they hold it at, like, hip level and they think that you can’t see. It’s like s- it’s the stupidest thing. It’s like when our kids play hide and seek and they’re, like, hiding under a table making eye contact but they assume that you can’t see [00:32:00] them. It’s like that.
[00:32:01] Malcolm Collins: I love the, the, them wanting to play hide and seek and being the worst hiders in the world.
[00:32:07] Simone Collins: It’s ... I know, man. Like, I think I need to-
[00:32:09] Malcolm Collins: And they’re so excited to do it, too.
[00:32:11] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Well, and then they’re like, when they find a good hiding spot and then you, you find them in it, they’re so delighted that they immediately wanna play another round, but then they just run directly to that same hiding spot.
[00:32:22] Like, not clear on the concept, guys. Like, at what age do they figure this out? At any rate, Maybe
[00:32:28] Malcolm Collins: our kids are just stupid.
[00:32:29] Simone Collins: No, our kids are beautiful and wonderful, and I love them so much.
[00:32:34] Malcolm Collins: I love you so much, Simone.
[00:32:35] Simone Collins: I love you, too. The original Luddite movement, though, I wanna point out, is, like, so different from this.
[00:32:41] Because one, these are working-class artisans who are deeply concerned about their jobs just being completely obliterated. It, it lasted very sh- it was very short, though. It, it went from 1811 to 1816. One of the reasons it was so short is that the stuff they did was super violent and illegal and harmful and damaging and even a guy was killed at one point.
[00:33:04] So i- in addition to raiding factories and breaking machines, starting in Nottingham in 1811 they, they, they ended up breaking over 1,000 machines. I mean, people lost fortunes in, in the damage done. I mean, some- some equivalent of this would have to be, like, I don’t know, if, if they, like, broke into Apple stores and just took a baseball bat to every device they could get their hands on, even in, like, the backroom inventory.
[00:33:29] But I guess Apple stores are kind of designed to make that impossible. It seems like they’ve anticipated this. We’ve learned. But they also ultimately killed this man, William Hors- Horsefall. They, they attacked mills as well. They, this, I think, started with the Rawfolds Mill in 1812. And so obviously- There were immediate legal and military repercussions.
[00:33:52] So this, this is the kind of movement that had to be repressed. So in a sense, the, the modern Luddite movement is at least more sustainable in that most of the even anti-data center protests are just protests. There hasn’t been at least very successful sabotage of data centers, which is nice. And at least they’re using mostly legal channels, like both in the EU and other parts of the world, plus in the US, they’re, they’re trying to move more through like zoning councils and be NIMBY about it instead of like, “I’m going to break all of the things.”
[00:34:23] But there are some similarities in that like there, there were many threatening letters sent to people who are trying to buy and implement the use of these machines. A- but these are, by the way, it was, it was mostly about textiles just in case people are not clear on this. Like
[00:34:40] Malcolm Collins: Which was a predominantly female industry at the time, if I understand correctly.
[00:34:43] Like
[00:34:43] Simone Collins: it basically No, I don’t think... No, this, this was predominantly men. I I think exclusively men. But yeah, no, it, it, it, it arose among skilled English textile workers who were like framework knitters and, and st- stockinger in North Hampshire, and croppers and shearers in Yorkshire and weavers in Lancashire.
[00:35:04] So they, they were primarily men, and when they organized, they would organize like kind of semi militias. Like, they would even sometimes do military style drills as their preparations. But one of the other big things was they would send threatening letters signed by General Ludd or by this mythi- likely mythical, at least, Ned Ludd.
[00:35:26] That’s why they were called Luddites. Which is kind of similar to the, the, the 13 gunshots fired outside that one council member’s house and then leaving the note of, like, no data centers outside his, his, his door. But that’s really the most, the... as close as they get. But the Luddite movement was so small that even at its peak there were maybe 7 to 8,000 sympathizers, and the, in terms of, like, the raids of factories- So
[00:35:57] Malcolm Collins: the Luddite movement was smaller than the [00:36:00] Basecamp fandom?
[00:36:00] Simone Collins: Yes.
[00:36:00] Malcolm Collins: Like- Yeah ... that’s kind of crazy.
[00:36:03] Simone Collins: Yes, it is, it is genuinely crazy. And yet it’s gone down in- And, and no, we even mean, like, yeah, like- In books ... arguably paid fandom. Whi- which is, like, y- extra committed people who are actually willing to put money down. It, it, it’s, it’s rather, it’s rather insane. And the raids never really got bigger than approximately 100 men.
[00:36:20] So this is not... I, I would say the anti data center movement is bigger than the entire Luddite movement, which makes sense because it isn’t just textile workers whose livelihood is being threatened by AI, it’s, like, any-
[00:36:34] Malcolm Collins: It’s humanity ... humanity job,
[00:36:36] Simone Collins: email job or what, what do they call them? Yeah, email job employee or, like, white collar worker at this point who’s being threatened by them.
[00:36:44] I, and plus these were working class artisans, whereas the primary participants of the Luddite movements appear to be privileged young people and then kind of retired boomers. And then just, like, some families that are like, “Well, I live in Brooklyn and we’re looking for something we can take our kids to, so this looks fun.
[00:37:03] There’s a play about the Luddite movement, and there’s a puppet frog. Oh, our kids will love that.” You know, like, they’re, I think they’re just kind of, they’re there because they, they kind of like the aesthetics of the movement and, you know, they probably are anti-screen parents ‘cause they live in Brooklyn, and they’re just going because it’s there, right?
[00:37:18] So I, I wouldn’t say that this is a movement to, this isn’t some kind of domestic terror movement in the same way the original Luddite movement is. I think it’s kind of odd that they’re choosing the word Luddite because the original Luddite movement was very much about, like, destroying career threatening tech, whereas here they’re more like, “Well, I just don’t really want, you know, Mark Zuckerberg to fly over to Nigeria.”
[00:37:40] Well, I mean, and Luddite
[00:37:41] Malcolm Collins: also took on a vernacular term over the years that-
[00:37:44] Simone Collins: It did. It did. But I don’t know. I, and I also think that, like, it, it’s, it’s very interesting. I feel like it, it is a, a market correction of sorts that’s, that’s, it’s worth listening to in the sense that A lot of people are trying to go back to, like, kind of a early 2000s era internet use, which I could see as being relatively healthy, like, worth pursuing.
[00:38:09] Because I think that worked pretty well for us. It, it’s working really well for our kids, who I think are having that kind of relationship with tech and the internet. And I think that’s kind of maybe the sweet spot for humans, and it, I think it’s important to note if that’s where people are converging But what do you think?
[00:38:29] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:38:31] Simone Collins: Like video game consoles- ... but not really good ones. No VR. No feeds. I think no feeds is kind of a good policy.
[00:38:37] Malcolm Collins: No, just don’t be wasteful. Just don’t be wasteful. Mm-hmm. Like, come on. Th- th- that’s what I think with this stuff. Really? Like with our kids, I’m getting them the little video game ROM console and stuff like that.
[00:38:48] Simone Collins: I just- No, that’s my point though. That’s what we grew up with.
[00:38:51] Malcolm Collins: Y- no, but it’s more than we grew up with. It’s everything. I think it’s operating in an anti-big tech environment is a better way to do this than an anti-tech environment. And that’s functionally what they’re trying to achieve. They just want intelligent-
[00:39:07] Simone Collins: Yeah, like how to make your own website, how to host your own things.
[00:39:10] No, no, no, no, no, no. I was so surprised to not hear Orbit- That’s not what I mean ... in all of this.
[00:39:13] Malcolm Collins: So look at the video game system I’m gonna be giving Octavian, right? Like-
[00:39:17] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:39:17] Malcolm Collins: this is not from Nintendo. This is not from Xbox. This is made by hobbyists who wanted to make up a system that could play any ROM, right, from any of the old systems.
[00:39:28] And so he can play through any of the old games on a local device. Look at the RFab. It’s coming down the RFab pipeline. You guys will have this soon. I am so excited to be working on this. But an RFab hardware we’re gonna have soon which will allow you to give to your kids a little talking companion that keeps the conversation focused on educational topics and award points and- You can also
[00:39:51] Simone Collins: see the world because we found that our kid when he walks around with the, that rabbit AI device, that the camera is really crucial.
[00:39:58] He wants to be able to [00:40:00] show his AI companions what he’s looking at and learn about it. Like, “Is this poison ivy,” or, “What do you think of this,” or, “What is
[00:40:08] Malcolm Collins: this?” Yeah. Which is really cool. Which is really cool. I cannot wait to have RFab hardware. Yeah. But with all of the things in our life, you can choose to just not go with the big tech, and you’re generally gonna have better outcomes especially- At this point, yeah
[00:40:23] as big companies get worse at things. Like right now while we’ve been having this talk, I have been spec-ing out what it’s gonna take for me to, to clone Descript’s features and just make it better and cheaper.
[00:40:33] That’s
[00:40:33] awesome. Because, like why? Why go and work with Descript when I can build this myself, and frankly, they charge way more than they should?
[00:40:41] Simone Collins: You should do-
[00:40:42] No, I, I actually really like StreamYard, but maybe StreamYard next ...
[00:40:46] Malcolm Collins: Stre- you want me to do video hosting cloning? I can do video hosting. I can do that easily. Do you want me to, you want me to knock out StreamYard?
[00:40:54] Simone Collins: We won’t be able to afford it much longer, so yeah. H-
[00:40:57] Malcolm Collins: How much, how much are they charging us now?
[00:40:59] Simone Collins: Well, remember when we, we were able to get grandfathered in on their non-business plan for just a little bit longer because of our nonprofit, but they wanted to charge, I think, like 500 a month or something. Like, some insane amount that we were like, “Oh my God, we just can’t.” So.
[00:41:13] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I can, I can d- do this.
[00:41:15] Simone Collins: Anyway, I’m excited. Think about it. But yeah, anyway, I think this is fine. I think that it’s bougie, but that’s fine. I just I think that the most reasonable approach to the future is kind of solar punk. We... Malcolm and I were talking about it earlier that while the original solar punk movement sort of came from a very progressive, coded, environmentalist coded space, a lot of the solar punk environments and families that we know are more on the sort of, like, conservative, like, big family side of the spectrum, where, you know, they may live on some kind of homestead, but they’re using AI to work out everything from medical solutions to complex health issues to how to develop strong, like a strong permaculture system for their unique microclimate.
[00:42:05] And it’s... I think it’s really hard to do all these things without AI because a lot of us are coming into this without tacit knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation. I- in other words, I feel like we can’t actually return to the land, return to nature, and return to old ways, like more sustainable offline ways, without AI because we have collectively as a society forgotten how to do most of these things.
[00:42:30] We’ve forgotten how to tie knots and go fishing and do all these other things, and the only reason that we’re able to learn these things again is by leveraging AI and, and asking for, for that, that help. AI is playing the role that our grandparents used to play in teaching us how to do things the way that things used to be done.
[00:42:48] So I would just warn people who, like, wanna go super offline that it’s gonna be hard to learn the old ways, to learn how to do things without the internet if you don’t leverage-
[00:42:59] Malcolm Collins: I love they’re like, “The old ways, when you used to make a website for yourself.”
[00:43:04] Simone Collins: That’s what’s, again, what’s so funny about it is it’s like, oh, this isn’t L- a Luddite movement.
[00:43:08] This is a, like, go back to the early noughties internet. Anyway, though,
[00:43:12] Malcolm Collins: I love
[00:43:12] Simone Collins: you very much, Malcolm. Thank
[00:43:13] Malcolm Collins: you
[00:43:14] Simone Collins: for cheering me up. I by the way, I got the, the blood work back and I am just, the, it just completely failed. I have, I have no HCG. Just completely failed?
[00:43:24] Malcolm Collins: Not
[00:43:24] Simone Collins: pregnant at
[00:43:24] Malcolm Collins: all?
[00:43:25] Simone Collins: It... I’m not pregnant at all.
[00:43:26] We lost, we lost our baby, and I’m so sad, and I really appreciate that you’ve been
[00:43:32] Malcolm Collins: That’s really sad, but this happens, But
[00:43:33] Simone Collins: you’ve cheered me up a lot, and I really appreciate it ...
[00:43:35] Malcolm Collins: and we’re gonna keep trying. And you will get pregnant.
[00:43:40] Simone Collins: Yeah. Thanks, Malcolm. All right. I love you. Bye.
[00:43:44] Malcolm Collins: S- s- Simone, statistically, this should’ve been happening way more than it’s been happening.
[00:43:47] Simone Collins: No, I, I know that. I know that. No, I’m, I’m not, I’m not gonna dwell on it. I’ll, I’ll yeah. Bye.
[00:43:53] Malcolm Collins: Bye.
[00:43:53] Simone Collins: did you find the book you were looking for?
[00:43:55] Malcolm Collins: I did find it, and now it’s included with the rest of the documents, and we’ll be able to get [00:44:00] it digitized. And I didn’t just find that, but included with it was a write-up of the Collins family history, which I otherwise would have not had included.
[00:44:08] Simone Collins: Dude, okay. That’s
[00:44:10] Malcolm Collins: very awesome.
[00:44:10] The one thing I’d really like to find for the documentary team is the first book I wrote in high school
[00:44:20] I don’t
[00:44:21] Simone Collins: think I’ve ever seen this. What is it?
[00:44:26] Malcolm Collins: It’s called Why Do Anything? I wonder if it’s in my Google Drive. Oh,
[00:44:28] Simone Collins: wait, wait, wait. That’s in Google Drive. I, I know that. I know that. Hold on. It is... At least I have a copy of it. Yeah. I, I, I made a copy of it in 2013.
[00:44:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like why- “
[00:44:40] Simone Collins: Why do anything?” Like, literally. It’s a good title. It’s a,
[00:44:44] Malcolm Collins: it’s a very awesome title. Yeah. It is essential to know what you should be working for as an ultimate goal in life.
[00:44:49] Without meaning, life is meaningless. When we think of what we want out of life, we normally jump directly to shallow motivations ones derived from core motivations such as a, a loving family or a nice house. The problem with this is that we do not ask ourselves why it is that we want these things in life. If you were to ask yourself why it is that you want such things, you would in turn answer with one of four core values. Oh.
[00:45:18] This is great. I love that I wrote this all the way back then. This is a
[00:45:21] Simone Collins: That is delightful
[00:45:23] Malcolm Collins: I remember one day when I was 15, I wondered why I was trying so hard in school. I always had assumed I did it in order to get into a good high school, which would then get me into a good college, and from there I would get a good job.
[00:45:33] At that point, I would be successful, make a sufficient amount of money, and I would be able to do whatever I pleased. Ultimately, all of the effort I put in was going to make me happy, and if I simply economized and constantly worked hard, I would recap the benefits later, coming out ahead as far as happiness goes in my life.
[00:45:50] It was then that I asked myself why I should strive for happiness, and I realized that I didn’t know. I was aware that pleasure centers in my brain were activated when I was happy, and that this rewarded me for doing things and achieving certain things, but why should I care? Why should I do anything?
[00:46:05] Should I work hard to become successful, or instead drift through life finding happiness where I could if overall I would have more happiness doing that? Should I help other people or help myself? Without knowing what motivation should be, everything I put my efforts to would be completely pointless.
[00:46:21] I decided from that point on my motivation in life would be to find a motivation. Hmm. And then I, I go through but yeah, this is... I, I would hope our kids do something like this at 15. I think this is something an exercise. And you can see The Pragmatist Guide to Life is basically just a longer rehashed version of this.
[00:46:36] Simone Collins: Basically, yeah.
[00:46:38] Malcolm Collins: That’s freaking
[00:46:39] Simone Collins: crazy. Isn’t that wild? That is really crazy. Well, memory lane today. Kind of fun.
[00:46:45] Malcolm Collins: Thank you for storing that, Simone. You’re so diligent.
[00:46:48] Simone Collins: Aw. Thanks.
[00:46:50] Speaker: Oh, that’s good, right? Yeah. Looks a lot like me. Hey, Tex, do you think you look like Octavian now? He can’t see himself. Well, he’s smiling, and you smile a lot. Yeah, and I like it. I like his smile when he looks at me. He’s, like, laughing. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, he... You make him laugh. Hey, it’s close to 3:00. It’s kind of, it’s this close to 3:00.
[00:47:27] Speaker 2: Yeah. It’s this close to 3:00. Super close, huh? Yeah, I’m actually s- I got right in the lyrics here I’ll play with Tex because I really wanna... I’ll play with Tex to wait for Eric. Okay. Because I know you really want him to smile. I do. Thanks, Audrey. Yeah, I’ll play with him, makes him smile. Perfect. Aw, look.
[00:47:48] Speaker: Look, Tex. There’s a carrot.
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 -
A Based Camp listener encouraged us to read Performative Bafflement’s post Against “more marriage” as a solution to the fertility crisis and while we came in with our mockery sneers at the ready, we came away radicalized. Is this the beginning of our Dark Pronatalist era? Oh no…
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Simone Collins: This big Ponzi scheme we like to call the American economy isn’t just going to make it without a bunch of kids cranked out en masse to keep the wheels spinning, right?
[00:00:08] Well, friends, I’ve got news for you here too. You do not approach the net neutral in taxes paid versus consumed unless you are in the top 10% of income for 40 plus years. Oh. Interesting argument here. So only the rich people have to get married
[00:00:23] Malcolm Collins: Okay, I buy this.
[00:00:25] Yeah, let’s get rid of- Sterilize all- ... the average person. Ster- and Leaflet has said this as well, that we should offer money- Yes ... for people to sterilize themselves. Yeah. Let’s move to le- what do we call this? Twist. Like, dark pronatalism?
[00:00:36] Simone Collins: Twist.
[00:00:37] Elitist pronatalism. We’ve always been accused of elitism.
[00:00:40] You know, oh, the Collinses, they want people to have kids, but only the right people. And they want everyone to think that we’re like white people or like, Christian people, but we’re like, no, just like competent, happy people. Well, wow. I mean, yeah, I, I like that it’s always really fun when something fundamentally changes our view of something,
[00:00:58] Speaker 3: So for context, today’s episode is actually one that I had not planned on releasing to the general public. We had planned on doing this as a paid private episode. and throughout most of it, what you will see is us being rather snarky and dismissive of the ideas being presented because we’re like, “Well, what’s the alternative?
[00:01:17] What’s the alternative? What’s the alternative?” And at the end of it, I was convinced, I think that this person makes a pretty good argument. And so this has been a major sea change in how I see reality, , which is to say it could be actively harmful and selfish to fight for the vast majority of people to get married and have kids.
[00:01:40] ,
[00:01:40] Speaker 4: Because the vast majority of people make bad partners, they make bad parents, they make bad children, and they would live a worse life if they were married and had kids
[00:01:54] Speaker 3: Whereas the virtuous thing is to just replace them
[00:01:58] But see if it convinces you as well
[00:02:01] Would you like to know more?
[00:02:02] Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because today we’re doing a listener request. So those are always really exciting. We have a lot of people with excellent taste. And I- Do we?
[00:02:15] Malcolm Collins: Do we? Yeah. Yeah, we do.
[00:02:17] Simone Collins: Yeah, we do. Yeah.
[00:02:17] Malcolm Collins: I actually quite like our fans. They, they’re, I, I like you guys because you typically are living productive lives and doing interesting stuff, which is neat.
[00:02:24] Yeah,
[00:02:25] Simone Collins: like s- smart people who always give us new ideas and push
[00:02:28] Malcolm Collins: us further. And the number of you who have found partners and started making kids since we started this podcast is astonishing.
[00:02:34] Simone Collins: It makes us really happy. Yeah. So if you’re still looking, don’t give up. There’s a lot of hope, and you could be next.
[00:02:40] So-
[00:02:40] Malcolm Collins: And I, I promise you guys, it gets better as they get a bit older.
[00:02:44] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, ‘cause... Yeah, Malcolm has been reading my old diaries from early in our pre-married and newlywed days, and apparently it sucks. Wait, that’s gonna dissuade people.
[00:02:55] Malcolm Collins: Not the women- Ignore ... the babies.
[00:02:57] Simone Collins: Oh, the babies. Okay.
[00:02:58] Malcolm Collins: But the women also get better.
[00:02:59] Yeah, we got in fights all the time in the early days.
[00:03:02] Simone Collins: Not fights. We disagreed about things strategically, but sure, fights. What we had been s- encouraged to read is a, a Substack post by an excellence name- excellently named Substack, Performative Bafflement. I’ve always loved the name of this Substack.
[00:03:17] Haven’t read everything in it. Haven’t read this. The title of this particular article that we’re gonna read is Against More Marriage as a Solution to the Fertility Crisis: Let’s Create the Torment Nexus to Pump Out a Few Incremental Taxpayers. All right, let’s go into it. It has 66 likes, 48 comments, and 15 restacks, so did pretty well.
[00:03:37] They write, “Okay, so we all know about the fertility crisis, right? All the developed countries are going extinct. Many consider this bad or worrisome idea, et cetera. Said crisis is happening for hundreds of interlocking reasons, but the big KPI people like to point to here seems to be marriage. /Marriage directly tracks fertility, and the decline in relationship formation and marriage drives [00:04:00] most of the fertility gap since 2000.”
[00:04:02] He inserts graphs showing the clear... what looks to be causation. Okay, okay. It is correlation, but looks like it. “One of the main solutions,” he writes, “to the fertility crisis that most folks seem to like is pro-marriage incentives and initiatives. I am here to argue against this. These people are basically advocating for creating the torment nexus for megafolks of people,” megafolks, “to pump out a few incremental taxpayers.
[00:04:29] My position: Let’s not create a torment nexus, please and thank you. Aren’t I being totally histrionic and ridiculous here?” What? Let’s see. Okay, I wanna see where they’re
[00:04:36] Malcolm Collins: going with this. I have no idea. I have no idea where they
[00:04:38] Simone Collins: could be going. Yeah, my guess is they’re just gonna be like, “I don’t know, let the system break.
[00:04:41] I don’t wanna grind for some boomers to have more Social Security.”
[00:04:47] Malcolm Collins: Is this a leftists or a right? I don’t even know. I, I, they
[00:04:49] Simone Collins: could be like a big toe It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care because Performative Bafflement is a great Substack name, and I’m not gonna color your view of this person.
[00:04:57] Don’t click on their Substack. Be good.
[00:04:58] Speaker: So I decided to check and they are, , center right, , and of the based variety. They talk a lot about genetics, stuff like that, , working out, that sort of stuff, but not, you know, as, probably as far as us, , and male. , So at least I didn’t have my mind changed by a lefty woman as I thought
[00:05:17] Simone Collins: Okay, let’s go into the argument. Sexual, sorry, sexual. Where is my mind today? Secular marriage trends. First, they’re absolutely right that marriage is declining. It has been declining every single generation since the ‘40s, when we hit a local peak of 90% marriage rates, which have, which drove the baby boom.
[00:05:37] 90%. I didn’t know that, actually. Can you imagine living in a society where nine out of 10 people were married?
[00:05:44] Malcolm Collins: No
[00:05:45] Simone Collins: It’s crazy. Okay, I continue. Literally every single generation on generation since then, each cohort of women has looked out at the world, said, “Well, nope,” and opted out of marriage at higher rates than the one before.
[00:05:59] And they show a graph of women in the US by decade of birth who are getting married, and it, it ain’t looking, it ain’t looking good. The, it’s, it’s, it looks like a rainbow that’s dying. And I continue, and just as a note, I am framing this as primarily women’s choice because one, women are traditionally proposed to and say yes or no.
[00:06:22] Two, historically women are the sex that wants and pushes for marriage while in a relationship more often. Three, women getting educated and having jobs and careers of their own is a big part of the fertility crisis in the sense those things all reduce fertility when first introduced to a society. And indirect-
[00:06:41] Malcolm Collins: Wait, that doesn’t sound right.
[00:06:41] Do women push for marriage more than men? I don’t think so.
[00:06:44] Simone Collins: So these days definitely men are pushing more for marriage, so she’s, I mean, she’s right that women are, are driving the decline in marriage. You can see it in the polling. We’ve done plenty of episodes that cite this polling. So I, that is true.
[00:06:56] When you look at at least historical tropes, ‘cause we didn’t live in this time. I
[00:06:59] Malcolm Collins: mean- Yeah, I know historical tropes, but I think the reality is, and, and potentially even into history, that’s been the men, I mean, in a lot of the stories that, you know, I remember from my childhood, the romance stories, it’s the man pushing for marriage.
[00:07:11] It’s the- No ... I’ll go to Ipswich for you. It’s the- Mm ... you know, like-
[00:07:16] Simone Collins: That’s, those are romances. That’s not reality. Reality is men want to maintain as much optionality as, look, sexually, like from a sexual strategy perspective- Not men who want to have
[00:07:25] Malcolm Collins: babies. I pushed you to get married.
[00:07:29] Simone Collins: Right. Your mu- your game of musical chairs was rapidly ending.
[00:07:33] You, you felt like you’re, I guess m- m-
[00:07:37] Malcolm Collins: And I was like 24 at the time when I felt like I was waiting too long. I
[00:07:38] Simone Collins: know, but you felt like an old maid or whatever the male equivalent of that is. You, you’re a very unusual case. The, the male strategy has almost always been, look, maintain maximum optionality, string women along, don’t actually commit because then you can move on to another woman.
[00:07:52] And even when m- women now in our modern society after no-fault divorce were able to just divorce women when they wanted to and then move [00:08:00] on. Like the, the, there’s a lack of commitment. Although these days I know women initiate the majority of divorces. But no, I, I, I think, I think that checks out. I agree.
[00:08:08] I think that most women wanted marriage more than men historically, and often what was ha- what happened even when, like, a woman gets pregnant It’s the shotgun wedding, not because the woman is being held at gunpoint, it’s because the young man is being held at gunpoint. Women can’t escape the reality of having, being pregnant, you know, i- if, if they live in a society or in a family that does not approve of abortion or have a culture that doesn’t approve of it.
[00:08:33] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:34] Simone Collins: Anyway, yes, I agree with, I w- I agree with performative bafflement. So la, la, la. Four, women being able to have jobs and lives of their own gives them more o- options and is what enables them to opt out of marriage at ever-increasing rates. I am here to argue that this gigantic reduction in marriage rates is an unambiguously good thing, and that the great majority of these ladies are genuinely making smart decisions.
[00:08:58] Marriage is a bad idea in the great majority of cases. Broadly, people aren’t compatible because people suck. I mean, come on, Malcolm, you can’t disagree with that. When approximately 90% of women-
[00:09:09] Malcolm Collins: Other people suck? Right, but the- If you can find a person who
[00:09:12] Simone Collins: sucks in the way that you suck- You’re such an outlier, Malcolm.
[00:09:14] Malcolm Collins: There are people who think, progressives think I suck. You know, like...
[00:09:18] Simone Collins: Right, and b- b- e- yeah, but we’re very unusual in... We, we both also s- cast a wide net and, and worked... W- I was very targeted in my search. You cast a very wide net and were also very, very choosy and worked extremely hard to find a partner.
[00:09:39] Most people don’t work that hard but I think are less choosy, so it, you know, it all washes out. But I, I was so committed to living alone, not because I wasn’t a hopeless romantic, I actually kind of was, but because I couldn’t imagine someone being compatible with me being how weird I am. Yeah,
[00:09:55] Malcolm Collins: but
[00:09:55] Simone Collins: males-
[00:09:55] Malcolm Collins: And look, you had deliberately-
[00:09:56] disproportionately push for marriage, b- by a dramatic margin.
[00:09:59] Simone Collins: You just checked on AI?
[00:10:01] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:10:01] Simone Collins: During what time period?
[00:10:05] Malcolm Collins: 2023 data, so not even that recent.
[00:10:07] Simone Collins: No, we’re, we’re talking about, like, the 1950s. Obviously now, I said obviously now, men are the ones
[00:10:13] Malcolm Collins: pushing the narrative. Well, in the 1950s I believe that men also pushed for it.
[00:10:15] I think that, that we are shown a narrative in the media that’s not real or accurate
[00:10:22] Simone Collins: Hmm, I don’t know. Chime in in the comments and let us know what you think. Who’s right, Malcolm or Simone? But I will continue. Broadly, people are compatible, blah, blah, blah, they suck. How do we know this? By just looking at actual outcomes, looking at revealed preferences and how people actually end up after marriage.
[00:10:39] Obviously, the ever-decreasing marriage rate for each generation of women above, she’s referring to the graph, the sad rainbow, that is driven by something. What could that something be? I’m here to- By the way,
[00:10:50] Malcolm Collins: I’m guessing this person’s a leftist because they don’t seem interested in what’s actually true, but just sort of
[00:10:54] Simone Collins: what, what’s likely And I’m, I’m assuming that they’re a woman.
[00:10:56] I’m here to argue, because these are very common arguments so far that I hear from fem- the female YouTubers I watch, ‘cause I like girly things. I’m here to argue that it’s a genuine reaction to actual marriage quality and outcomes, the empirical outcomes. Even today, when many fewer couples get married and marriage is significantly more selected, divorce base rates are approximately 42% for first marriages, and about half of the remaining marriages are net miserable for at least one party.
[00:11:26] That’s roughly two-thirds failure misery rate. She, she doesn’t, I’m assuming she. Performative bafflement doesn’t cite this- That’s because
[00:11:33] Malcolm Collins: the people don’t try. They don’t try to get into a good marriage, and they don’t try once they’re married. Yeah,
[00:11:36] Simone Collins: and, and look, they’d be miserable by themselves too. I,
[00:11:40] Malcolm Collins: I- Yeah, I don’t, I do not know any miserably married people.
[00:11:44] Any
[00:11:45] Simone Collins: from our generation. Yeah. I mean, I don’t, people like to hide it, I guess. But yeah, at least people- I, I would know ... in the boyscan community are really solid. Anyway think about think how net miserable those 90% of marriages were that were not selected at all and could not get [00:12:00] divorced back in the ‘50s.
[00:12:01] Moreover, of the marriages that stayed together, all they predominantly do is make people fat and sexless and miserable. Married weight gain is a strong effect seen in practically every country in the world, even after controlling for genes and personalities. For example, identical twins, one of whom marries and the other does not, the married one typically gains significant weight.
[00:12:21] Both you and I weigh less than we did when we got married, which is interesting. The Termik et al 2024 meta-analysis surveys approximately 200,000 couples and approximately 100,000 matched singles across 18 countries, and surfaces a very strong effect size of marriages on obesity. A 1.7 odds ratio, up to 2.5 odds ratio in economic downturns.
[00:12:47] Aw. People eat their feelings. And, and the trend reverses. On divorce, both men and women lose weight. On sexless- sexlessness, as far as I can tell, a lot of sources consider fewer than one times a month to be basically a sexless marriage. In GSS, this ranges from 5 to 20% of all marriages that have lasted at least five years, depending on how happy they are and how long they’ve been going.
[00:13:11] And obviously there’s giant survivor effect there with the approximately half of them that have been divorced were more likely to be sexless prior to divorce. So fif- five to 20% is the heavy, heavily survivor biased portion of sexless marriages that already have a huge thumb on the scale in terms of upping the amount of sex.
[00:13:32] This is to say that I personally think some much larger portion of marriages attain sexlessness. It’s just that the majority of those end up divorced, leaving a relatively more modest five to
[00:13:40] Malcolm Collins: 20% remainder. So her thing is it’s a good thing that it’s not happening because most people are failures Okay.
[00:13:47] Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay, yeah, that’s, I think that’s broadly what, what is being argued here.
[00:13:50] Malcolm Collins: And she’s like, “And you should...” I, I mean, I guess, like, the type of person who’s not finding a partner today is the type of person who would’ve been a bad partner in the past.
[00:13:57] Simone Collins: Well, Performative Bafflement proceeds to present a flowchart showing total marriages, and then they split off 42% divorce, and then of the active marriage pool, we have 20-year successes.
[00:14:09] That’s 18% of all relationships. We’re almost coming up on 11, Malcolm, so we’re getting there. And then net miserable and/or dead bedroom, 40% of all relationships. And there’s some weird, like, extra thing in it. Eh, who cares? Whatever. Over only 20 years, only approximately 18% of marriages are actually still happy and sexually active.
[00:14:32] All the rest are divorced or net miserable/dead bedroom, and I don’t think if you’re PMC, you’re immune. So I’ve just ignored the obesity effects on this chart because that’s apparently almost every American’s fate, and nobody cares about this. At least not enough to do anything about it. This view is a simplification.
[00:14:48] Obviously, a lot of the divorces were dead bedrooms or miserable before divorce, and this caused the divorce, and obviously people trickle into the net miserable column at increasing rates over time. But this is genuinely what all the data tells us over 20 years, and there’s a good reason to think that GSS is optimistic on both the dead bedroom and the happy marriage front.
[00:15:06] So every woman opting out of mes- marriage at a higher, in higher rates, super smart. Definitely the right move. If you track empirical outcomes, that’s definitely the best, the w- the... Wait a second. But she’s not looking at the counterfactual. She’s not looking at, like, the mental health rates of women who never get married.
[00:15:22] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:15:22] Simone Collins: We’re only looking at married couples. And, look, a lot of women who end up divorced get, like, alimony and more financial security because of the divorce. Anyway she continues. I’m just go- we, we’re just assuming Performative Baffle- Bafflement is a woman, not really knowing the background. And as an aside, I think this kind of a, is kind of an amazing demonstration of the wisdom of crowds and invisible hands at work.
[00:15:43] Basically, nobody knows these numbers. All anyone can do is look around at the relationships around them and judge their quality and outcomes. It is an exceptionally noisy information channel that’s highly selected and skewed for everyone. And even with all that noise, even with literally zero idea of the statistical ground [00:16:00] truths, women in the aggregate have still arrived at a better, closer to the truth answer in each subsequent decision round over 80 years of cumulative decisions.
[00:16:09] That’s amazing. And before everyone here jumps-
[00:16:12] Malcolm Collins: Closer to the truth? She’s arguing that no one should get married or reproduce. I think so. Functionally
[00:16:17] Simone Collins: speaking. Yeah, I think, yeah. I, I’m getting some anti-natalism in here.
[00:16:20] Malcolm Collins: Like, no, it’s, it’s like what’s even the point of fixing this if sometimes marriage is bad?
[00:16:25] Right? Like- ... what?
[00:16:28] Simone Collins: Well, and sometimes being single is bad, but she’s not talking about that, is she?
[00:16:31] Malcolm Collins: And before- I, I’ve never seen two decent people in a bad marriage
[00:16:36] Simone Collins: I have. I have. My, my best friend in childhood her, her parents were perfect, and I thought they were the perfect marriage. And The dynamic broke at one point when the wife was given the job opportunity of a lifetime.
[00:16:53] They moved across country, and the husband went a long time without working, and it just killed the family’s dynamic ‘cause he no longer felt like the provider. He became the stay-at-home dad, and that, he, his identity wasn’t ready for that. Mm. And then they both ended up with other partners, and they’re happy now.
[00:17:08] But, like, there are things that have nothing to do with the two individuals who can be incredibly... These people were, like, smart and good-looking and insanely tall. Like, they were both over six feet. And-
[00:17:20] Malcolm Collins: Oh, that doesn’t really make sense to me. So what, he cheated on her? What do you mean they both ended up with other part...
[00:17:24] Because presumably it’s gonna be harder for him to get his job back or get another partner after this I think he may have
[00:17:29] Simone Collins: cheated. I think he may have cheated on her. Mm ... which, I mean, if she was, like, gone a lot for work, but I don’t know. ‘Cause I don’t, I was a kid, you know, when sh- when sh- my friend was going through all this.
[00:17:37] Yeah. And it was, it was rough, you know? But it was, it was amicable, but every- b- and these are, like, two very good people. It just didn’t work out. And that, like, devastated me. I was like, “Oh my God.” Well, I- “Like, if they can’t make it work” ... I, I
[00:17:48] Malcolm Collins: don’t know about that. I don’t know. But you continue.
[00:17:50] Simone Collins: Anyway, look, I’m just saying, very decent, smart, wonderful people.
[00:17:53] I feel like, you know... It, it all worked out in the end, so I’m happy. Anyway she, Performative Bafflement continues, “And before anyone here jumps in and tries to argue that their spouse is Mother Teresa and Sydney Sweeney combined and was recently elected- Mine is ... best and also hottest human being who has ever or will ever exist.
[00:18:12] Yes, I’m not talking about you and me, friends. We all know my readers are notable exceptions whose spouse is descended from heaven on gossamer wings, and whose very presence inspires the involuntary outbursts of angelic hymns and paroxysms of joy.” Mine
[00:18:27] Malcolm Collins: does, though. You do have a- That’s the problem, Simone
[00:18:28] Simone Collins: Mine does, too.
[00:18:29] I know. I’m, I’m the one woman who made it. “I’m talking about everyone else,” says Performative Bafflement. “Those who are far less fortunate than we. You know the ones I mean. You see the quality of your friends’ and relatives’ and coworkers’ marriages. As is usually the case with revealed preferences-” No, I, I do see the f-
[00:18:46] this can imply huge effect sizes in the background”
[00:18:47] Malcolm Collins: I do see the quality, and it’s high quality. I, I do see the quality. In my generation, it’s high quality. Th- this idea that, like, if you look around, all this can tell me is this person is in some sort of circle where everyone’s miserable. And I can only guess it’s all progressives or something.
[00:19:01] Simone Collins: I guess, yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m even, like, thinking it, a- as far as I can work it in, in my head, even with people who have m- I would say very imperfect marriages, they’re all just due to imperfections they have as people which they would experience perhaps in a more magnified fashion if they lived independently.
[00:19:20] But again, something that I wasn’t considering at this point in the piece because I hadn’t gotten to the end argument, which does help think this for me, is the people we surround ourselves with, e.g., Simone and I surround ourselves with, are exceptional people. I don’t like to talk to people who I do not think are exceptionally competent or exceptionally contributory to the future of humanity.
[00:19:42] And it is that type of person, when they end up in a marriage, that they have a good marriage. , It is the type of person who lives the life for whatever, as you’re about to hear, that even when they are otherwise good people, have toxic marriages
[00:19:58] Simone Collins: And- Yeah ... the great thing is that a [00:20:00] lot of people’s vices can be moderated-
[00:20:04] Malcolm Collins: Well, this is the whole thing. If you were purpose in life is to make humanity better and to contribute to humanity’s continued flourishing in the future, e.g. the next generation, one of the most important things you can do but by far I mean, unless you’re gonna cure cancer or something, which you’re probably not, okay?
[00:20:24] Is have a lot of kids and raise them well, right? Especially with this being a crisis that humanity is going through right now. And the fact that you wouldn’t even try to do like one of the... It’s like, you know, you’re on, a spaceship and the, life support’s dying and somebody’s like, “Well, you know, I, I don’t really see the point in trying to fix the life support,” it sometimes shocks you.
[00:20:49] It’s like, what are you talking about? It’s the only option. I haven’t heard you present a secondary option here.
[00:20:57] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. We’ll, we’ll continue then. We’ll see. The argument’s only warming up. There’s a lot more. Marriage is a bad idea even from a purely theoretical point of view. On top of the base rates indicating that it’s a bad idea empirically, the whole idea of being able to accurately predict how people are going to evolve or change over 20 to 70 years is silly to begin with, and 20 years is pretty much the minimum you have to consider if you want to have kids with that person.
[00:21:23] How much have you changed versus you 20 years ago? Why wouldn’t you expect your spouse to change that much and you to change that much in the next 20 to 70 years? I promise the great majority of everyone in that 82% were in love when they got married and didn’t think they’d get divorced or be miserable.
[00:21:39] See, this is why you have to grow together as a couple and not grow apart. Like, that, that’s, this is easy to head off, so I’m just gonna skip to the next section because you just grow together and not apart. That, that, that’s something you can solve. Next section. Good marriages are heaven and bad marriages are hell.
[00:21:54] Here I’ll point out that a good relationship is one of the best things on earth and a bad relationship is one of the worst things on earth. Being single is much better than being in a bad relationship. Okay, I’m gonna skip through this section too because we agree.
[00:22:06] Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, but the- That
[00:22:08] Simone Collins: means you should just leave the relationship
[00:22:09] Malcolm Collins: and get a good one
[00:22:09] Being married is much better than being single.
[00:22:11] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:22:12] Malcolm Collins: Being in a good marriage is- So
[00:22:15] Simone Collins: if you’re in a bad marriage, leave it,
[00:22:17] Malcolm Collins: right? Vet the person, learn about the person, grow together, get married young. What... Like, the advice is just so easy to get around.
[00:22:27] Simone Collins: Yeah. What this cashes out to, Performative Bafflement writes, as soon as no-fault divorce opened up in the late ‘60s, divorces surged and that was a good thing.
[00:22:37] It was millions of soul-crushing relationships suddenly being able to be dissolved.
[00:22:40] Malcolm Collins: No, it was millions of relationships becoming soul-crushing because people got other options.
[00:22:45] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:22:46] Malcolm Collins: This, there were bad relationships before this, but I can guarantee you they were probably at about a third the rate.
[00:22:53] Simone Collins: Maybe, yeah
[00:22:55] Malcolm Collins: Im- when you, when you create a norm around leaving a relationship or a motivation to leave a relationship or look for flaws in your partner instead of trying to make it work, this is why arranged marriages have higher love rates or equal love rates, but when you c- count survivorship bias, higher love rates than non-arranged marriages.
[00:23:11] Mm.
[00:23:11] Simone Collins: So no-fault divorce created the first FOMO or a dangerous new form of FOMO And it caused a bunch of people to become miserable when they could- they did not need to be, or would not have been.
[00:23:23] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:23:24] Simone Collins: Okay, next section then we’ll skip to. Is this women getting all uppity? So lots of guys think this is a female selectivity problem.
[00:23:31] Indeed, if you do the math, approximately 80% of women are opting out of marriage at the bottom quint- quintile of male SES, and nearly two-thirds are opting out of the medians and below. Marriage is increasingly a luxury good. The top quintile of SES men still have 85 to 90% marriage rates just like all men in the ‘40s.
[00:23:51] Oh, that’s interesting. And look again, look at the ground truth. This is just women being actually smart and reacting to actually huge effect sizes. What’s the percent of [00:24:00] marriages that make it and were retroactively actually worth entering? Roughly 20%. Boy, if I were making that bet, I’d sure try to only do it with the top quintile of people.
[00:24:12] Uh-oh, Malcolm. You’re top quintile.
[00:24:16] Malcolm Collins: I, I am top quintile, I’ll say that.
[00:24:18] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:24:19] Malcolm Collins: But, you know, I could just get a, I could just get a, as you’ve said in the past, I should just get a harem. So I’ll get a few more wives and-
[00:24:24] Simone Collins: Right. But you know, we know from that, like, one, one bit of research on African what’s the word?
[00:24:31] Poly- polygynous marriages, that the more wives a man has, his value gets moderated down. True. Because the wife considering choosing him as a husband has to understand that you now have to divide his assets by the number of wives, plus a little bit more of, of a discount because there’s the uncertainty of knowing y- you may fall out of favor.
[00:24:53] So he’s not as certain of a bet as a man of more moderate income who you know will not be further diluting it with additional wives. ‘Cause keep in mind, what, what if you’re like wife number three for, like, millionaire man? But you don’t know how many more wives he might convince to get. Those economies have got, about to get gnarly, right?
[00:25:14] So you’re gonna get, I think, fairly low-quality w- women, unless you’re super- Mm ... super high value or they’re very insensitive. Now, I think it’s different with things like sister wives, right? Because in a sense, in, it seems like in many cases, sister wives actually choose each other, and the husband’s just like, “Ugh, okay.”
[00:25:31] Whereas they’re like, “Look, I need another woman around the house.” I, you know, and it’s like, not... You know what I mean? That, that’s kind of a dynamic at play. So I’m not talking about those k- types of marriages. Anyway blah, blah, blah. Okay, so basically she’s saying that, like, it only makes sense for women to marry the, the high-value men.
[00:25:49] Next section. Let’s put any returns to bed for good. Of course, returns spent with a, spelled with a V, which you’ve noticed is a whole thing, right?
[00:25:58] Malcolm Collins: Returns spelled with a-
[00:26:00] Simone Collins: With a V. You’ve not... Are you... Really?
[00:26:02] Malcolm Collins: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
[00:26:04] Simone Collins: There’s this whole- how do I best describe it? Guys, how do I describe this to Malcolm?
[00:26:11] This, like, go back to Roman times. It’s like the... It’s supposed to be so... It’s like trying to be highbrow Bronze Age pervert, and you start some, like, men’s association called RETVRN and it’s, it’s all about going back to traditional Christian values. This rings no bell? You’ve not seen any of this?
[00:26:33] Malcolm Collins: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
[00:26:33] Oh, my
[00:26:34] Simone Collins: God. Anyway, I’m gonna read. I will read. And this is largely why some of these men are the biggest proponents of returning to a regime where women are locked out of jobs and bank accounts, and are stuck barefoot and pregnant in kitchens, shackled to duds. It’s seemingly the only way they see actually marrying women in nowadays, given the high ever-growing opt-out rates.
[00:26:55] Clearly- She’s
[00:26:55] Malcolm Collins: not offering an alternative. Like, we’re literally- Yeah, let’s see ... talking about an end to human civilization. Blah,
[00:26:59] Simone Collins: blah, blah. Okay, so yeah, manosphere rejected. No returv- returvning. Case study: what can a median woman get from marrying the median man? Okay, so prospectively, the median woman can get a snag, an, or, expect to snag a median man.
[00:27:14] The median man is short and obese, only has a high school degree, and makes approximately 50K a year. That can barely buy you groceries, much less a house anywhere. Oh, also when it comes to sex, a median Ejaculatory latency time is nine minutes. Nine minutes. So every week or so you’ll get nine minutes of awful sex that approximately zero women could get off to.
[00:27:34] Man, sounds great. I can see why average women are just busting down the doors for median men to get married.
[00:27:40] Malcolm Collins: That’s really the average time?
[00:27:42] Simone Collins: I mean, that sounds bad, right? I don’t want that.
[00:27:45] Malcolm Collins: I, I think you- You want that? I think you’d prefer that.
[00:27:49] Simone Collins: Oh, you mean short and quick. Well, Malcolm, we have things to do.
[00:27:52] Yes, no, the, but not a... I mean, every, I think
[00:27:56] Malcolm Collins: every
[00:27:56] Simone Collins: couple-
[00:27:56] Malcolm Collins: If I, I’m honest, I would probably prefer that to be my [00:28:00] time than-
[00:28:00] Simone Collins: Men prefer cookies more than... You, you under- we’re not gonna get into-
[00:28:06] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we’re not gonna get into it, but, like, yeah, that is,
[00:28:09] Simone Collins: Women tend to prefer longer sexual periods ...
[00:28:11] Malcolm Collins: I hear that and I’m like, that sounds very efficient.
[00:28:13] Maybe this is actually why- Right,
[00:28:14] Simone Collins: because the way that men experience sexual pleasure works a little differently from the way that women experience sexual pleasure, right? Like-
[00:28:20] Malcolm Collins: Actually, this might be why we have such an extreme stance on, like, it, how do, how are people having kids when they when they’re, like, naturally, when, when they have a bunch of kids already.
[00:28:30] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:28:30] Malcolm Collins: We’re like, “When are you, how do you people have active sex lives?” And now that I’m hearing that the average time for a guy to come is nine minutes, I’m like, that’s how you have a- that’s how you have sex lives and kids.
[00:28:40] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:28:41] Malcolm Collins: You know? Yeah,
[00:28:41] Simone Collins: you think the kids are gonna leave you alone for longer than 10 minutes?
[00:28:44] I mean, this is, this
[00:28:44] Malcolm Collins: is- Yeah, we, yeah. When I’m like, I just don’t understand how it’s, like, plausible that you’re having sex and a bunch of kids.
[00:28:51] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:28:52] Malcolm Collins: Okay, I get it now.
[00:28:53] Simone Collins: Yeah, 10 minutes, 10 minutes makes sense.
[00:28:55] Speaker 6: Note here, this is part of the broader conversation that we have, which is I don’t get these people who are like, “I’m parents with, like, five kids, four kids, and we still have a healthy and active sexual relationship.” , Because this guy acts like a dead bedroom is, like, the worst thing in the world, and it’s like, no, I thought it was a natural part of having a ton of kids around the house and needing to hire a babysitter to be a, basically a prostitute by proxy, because that’s the only way you get to have sex.
[00:29:25] Because God knows I’m not gonna have sex while a little baby is watching me, and I’m not gonna leave my baby outside the room for over an hour, , while I’m just pleasuring myself and my wife, right? You know, like, that’s gross, right? Like, the baby starts crying or something. What a horrifying thing.
[00:29:43] And everyone’s like, “Oh, no, it’s so easy.” And I’m like, “Oh, because it only took nine minutes for you. That makes sense.”
[00:29:48] Simone Collins: Anyway, blah, blah, blah. So she’s basically saying that marrying a mid man is kinda dire looking from the, the w- woman’s perspective, I mean, I can continue.
[00:30:01] Man, sounds great, blah, blah, blah. Another triangulation point. Fully 35% of women lack interest in sex at all, and can you blame them? And around... Wow, so 35% of women are asexual, basically. I mean, that makes sense. It’s like all, all of, me and all of my friends in high school. And around 50% have at least one noticeable problem with the quality of sex they’re getting.
[00:30:20] Want more context and flavor? Check here for actual comments from lots of women. It’s pretty clear that having approximately any job and pets and Netflix, and you own a place, is roughly 10X better than marrying the median man, who in addition to subjecting you to nine minutes of terrible sex every week, will want you to do his laundry and dishes and cook for him, and spend all your free time raising his awful kids.
[00:30:39] Well, if you don’t like him, yeah, they’re awful kids. While also working full time because he can’t afford anything and needs your income for your, for you two to even survive. I wrote a whole article on why women have a raw deal in general, and this section comes from here. Click, click there for a more complete case.
[00:30:57] All right, I’ll just... That’s its own article
[00:30:59] Malcolm Collins: then. I’m not hearing the alternative.
[00:31:00] Simone Collins: Yeah, okay, let’s see. All the positive effects of marriage are driven by selection effects anyway. Okay, this is still not a solution. How about health? Okay, that’s not a solution. It’s looking at long... The relationship between physical health and marriage was completely explained by ran- non-random selection.
[00:31:15] Okay, so she’s saying marriage is not gonna make your health better. How about income? She cites some research. The results show that married men earn more because selection into marriage operates not only on wage levels, but also on wage growth, hence men on a steep career track are especially likely to marry.
[00:31:30] We conclude that arguments postulating a wage premium for married men should be discarded. Okay how about happiness? Okay, she’s r- certainly gonna cite studies that show marriage doesn’t make you happy. This is why marriage is a luxury good now. The only people worth marrying are at the top quintile of pe- people, basically.
[00:31:45] I feel like a hypocrite, because you’re like top 1%, pro- probably- True ... like top .01%.
[00:31:50] Malcolm Collins: It’s true. I am one of the best living humans. Th- this is like an objective thing that anyone can-
[00:31:54] Simone Collins: It is, though. That, that, that does, it, yeah. So like who are we to say, right? Like maybe- [00:32:00]
[00:32:00] Malcolm Collins: You are too, though, Simone, if I’m gonna be
[00:32:02] Simone Collins: honest.
[00:32:02] Nah. For, for you specifically, right, I’m, I’m the right kind of person. And we, we’re really lucky to find each other. But I’m trying to find the solution. This is immoral and bad. I’ll make this horrible suggestion for any proposal that is basically suggesting to create decades of misery. Okay, so basically marriage is immoral and bad because marriage sucks and people suck, blah, blah, blah.
[00:32:19] Okay, so that’s your, that’s the argument. But, but we need more taxpayers. Next section. Maybe this is finally gonna be it. Come on performative bafflement, you might say. Look around you. Dependency ratios, the big problem. Oh, dependency ratios. You made that one.
[00:32:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, d- I’m the one who popularized dependency ratios.
[00:32:36] Simone Collins: You did. People, you- And
[00:32:38] Malcolm Collins: I don’t even care about more taxpayers anymore now that we have AI. I’m just like, you know, we will replace you. That’s the goal at this point. We’ve gotta replace the existing population that thinks like this. Well,
[00:32:46] Simone Collins: dependency sorry performative bafflement is, is humoring you here.
[00:32:50] The big problem South Korea, and Japan, and China are headed in for is infinite ever-growing array of old people tiling,
[00:32:58] tiling the sky to the horizon like octogenarian celestial vampires draining the economic and cultural life force out of their kids and grandkids as each kid has to support a greater number of sky vampires. Oh, that’s good. Performative bafflement, that’s good. That’s going to suck for them. Their entire economy is going to grind to a halt, and everyone is going to hate their lives.
[00:33:18] And in the developing world, we’re all on the same train. They’re just getting to the station first, so that’s ours and our kids’ fates too. This big Ponzi scheme we like to call the American economy isn’t just going to make it without a bunch of kids cranked out en masse to keep the wheels spinning, right?
[00:33:35] Well, friends, I’ve got news for hear you, for you here too. The median taxpayer isn’t. This is to say, no matter how you do the math, you do not approach the net neutral in taxes paid versus consumed unless you are in the top 10% of income for 40 plus years. Oh. Interesting argument here. So only the rich people have to get married
[00:33:54] Malcolm Collins: Okay, I buy this.
[00:33:56] Yeah, let’s get rid of- Sterilize all- ... the average person. Ster- and Leaflet has said this as well, that we should offer money- Yes ... for people to sterilize themselves. Yeah. Let’s move to le- what do we call this? Twist. Like, dark pronatalism?
[00:34:07] Simone Collins: Twist.
[00:34:08] Speaker 5: And if your question within dark pronatalism is, well then who’s worthy? Who should be having kids? It’s the people who are willing to make that sacrifice. That’s who decides. The people willing to make the sacrifice for the future. It’s you. It’s the individual who gets to decide, who gets to either find or not find a partner, who, , gets to make a good life for that partner, a good enough life that they want to have lots of kids
[00:34:33] Simone Collins: Elitist pronatalism. We’ve always been accused of elitism.
[00:34:36] You know, oh, the Collinses, they want people to have kids, but only the right people. And they want everyone to think that we’re like white people or like, Christian people, but we’re like, no, just like competent, happy people.
[00:34:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So yeah, the com- if competent- And then taxpayers- ... happy people is this like rare, impossible thing.
[00:34:55] Simone Collins: I will, I will continue, ‘cause we’re gonna have to get the kids real soon. Let’s just show this at a super high level. Only about half of Americans work. The rest are kids, retirees, and layabouts. So you’ve got 170 million workers. We spend 7 trillion a year, mostly on old people entitlements, from 52 to 69%, depending on where you account for national debt and interest and some other stuff.
[00:35:15] I like round numbers, so let’s lazily call it 4.5 trillion for entitlements and 2.5 trillion for everything else. How much is 7 trillion over 150 million? It’s 40K in taxes paid per worker. You don’t hit that amount of taxes paid until you are top 5% of income, or 250K plus or so. But people pay dollars in payroll taxes every paycheck.
[00:35:39] Yeah, sure, it doesn’t matter. The median worker pays 6 to 7K in federal taxes, including all those, and the mean is around 10 to 12K. Still way shy of 40K. I mean, even if you literally take out entitlements entirely, just that 2.5 trillion across all the workers, it’s like 15K a year.
[00:35:56] The
[00:35:56] Malcolm Collins: overwhelming- Because it’s highly heritable whether or not your [00:36:00] kids are going to pay into the s- system as
[00:36:01] Simone Collins: well. Yeah, but I, I, this is an, this is an int- yeah, th- th- anyway, I’ll, I’ll skip around. Performative Bafflement says, “I’m not disparaging average people here who are genuinely paying a big chunk of their income in taxes.
[00:36:11] I’m disparaging our maximally stupid government spending and policies, and pointing out that there’s literally no way it can go like this, go on like this with the sky vampires hit.” The sky vampires, I really like that. If we’re always and forever spending 6X more than we make per person, adding more people isn’t going to help.
[00:36:28] We’re still... We do our system in the maximally stupid way, and as an example, taking the widow’s mite of taxes, 1K back then, in 1970s dollars, immediately spend it, then basically promise the person who paid those taxes in piddling 1970s dollars we’ll spend 40K per year on them in present day dollars when they’re old, which we’re doing.
[00:36:46] Yes, that’s so true. I hate that. Versus if you were smart. Hi, Singapore. You’d put those 1970s dollars into some financial instrument that also grew with time, so by the time they were old, their money had grown and to offset some of that gap. Oh, and we also take on huge amounts of debt every year in a tiny 1970 dollar equivalence so that we hit both ways by that.
[00:37:05] None of the positive contributions grow, but the debt grows with time. So today’s figure, if we actually get to paying off that debt, would mean more like 60K per year, but obviously we’re not paying it off. We’re racking it up, still more debt every year. I-
[00:37:19] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I agree with this. Dark pronatalism. We, we should do a full episode- Dark pronatalism
[00:37:24] where we go hard into the concept of dark pronatalism. ‘Cause it’s been the direction I’ve been moving in terms of like the populations you can actually affect, who actually matters, who we actually wanna have kids. And like yeah, dark pronatalism. I, I care that you plan to be a productive citizen, you want to be a productive citizen, and that means you’re gonna have productive children.
[00:37:43] Simone Collins: Yeah, and Performative Bafflement, after making that whole tax argument, which I think we all understand now, points out that like if you like kids, you’d want them to be raised in a loving, functional, high socioeconomic status household with two parents because they will be better off, right? Like they have better everything and they want the kids and can raise them well.
[00:38:02] And that’s pretty much the ending. Wow I like the alternative. Yeah, should have, should have left it at that. What a twist, huh? I like the alternative. That was, that was great. I mean, I’m not... I don’t, I didn’t get permission from the person who sent this, but good send. Yeah. I mean, we went into this blind.
[00:38:15] I only had heard of... I, I think someone sent me one Performative Bafflement article before. I don’t know who they are. We still don’t know who they are. We like to judge people based on their ideas, and at first we were like, “Okay, this is whiny.” But also, oh my God, you’re right. Marriage does suck for most people who also just suck.
[00:38:29] For...
[00:38:29] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, not for most people, for below average people.
[00:38:34] Simone Collins: Okay, that’s like half of people.
[00:38:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but the point is, is that we can get rid of the bo- below average people.
[00:38:39] Simone Collins: We’re not get... No, look, mm, look, we will let them do what they want, and that
[00:38:44] Malcolm Collins: will mean- Lime and Stone can lead light pronatalism where they wanna help the Somalis have more kids and the, the random, you know, the freaking the homeless people who keep getting pregnant accidentally.
[00:38:57] And we can run dark pronatalism
[00:39:00] Simone Collins: You heard it here, folks.
[00:39:01] Speaker 2: It’s sad to be able to appreciate part of the take and then see that after Simone stopped, it gets, ends on the most mind-bendingly stupid take I’ve ever heard, , which is fertility isn’t actually a problem for another 100 plus years. Even if the entire world fertility drops to 1.85 for the next 100 years, we’re going to have 9 billion people through 2125.
[00:39:25] The low bar here requires it dropping to 1.5 around the world, , blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. , Fertility isn’t actually a problem for another 100 to 200 years. and, and in these like, and by the time it actually becomes a problem, we’ll have fully automated luxury gay space communism as the meme goes.
[00:39:40] , What’s so funny here,
[00:39:41] , in this very piece, he seems acutely aware that the vast majority, like one human is not equal to another human in terms of technological progress, in terms of economic involvement, in terms of economic progress. , And if we look at dropping [00:40:00] populations, like if the dropping population is primarily in this one group that’s paying all the taxes, globally speaking, that’s really, really bad for civilization, right?
[00:40:16] Like I hate to say it, but if you look at like global birth rates and you’re trying to act like everyone’s gonna be equally likely to be economically productive and you’re just like, “Okay, well, where do we have good birth rates? Oh, like Somalia?” Do, do you really think that they’re going to be the next-- Collectively, I’m not saying any indivi- any individual Somalian can do great.
[00:40:39] I’m just talking like averages and math here. That all of a sudden they’re gonna become this super economically productive region, , or, , be as economically productive as San Francisco? Come on, man. Stop being stupid. Like that’s just intentionally stupid
[00:40:52] Simone Collins: Well, wow. I mean, yeah, I, I like that it’s always really fun when something fundamentally changes our view of something, and we already had a sort of shifting view of pronatalism because of the way we look at AI and, and how AI can potentially change this.
[00:41:06] But totally valid point about taxpayers, and that like... Well, I mean, we’ve, we’ve also pointed that out, though, that like we don’t want net tax drains, which is why immigration’s not a solution and why you know, trying to push really low-income families to have more kids is, is not gonna solve the problem.
[00:41:20] It will exacerbate it, as much as we w- welcome anyone who wants to have kids to have kids. ‘Cause also, like, why, why do you wanna pay taxes for the sky vampires? I also hear that. But inter- yes, so I, I’m gonna have to think about this. Thank you. All right. Well, I love you, Malcolm. I’m gonna go get the kids and make you crispy chili oil and garlic green beans with bun cha.
[00:41:41] I love you. Bye.
[00:41:42] Malcolm Collins: I love you, too. Bye.
[00:41:43] Titan: One more time. One more time?
[00:41:43] One more time. Oh.
[00:41:44] Simone: No, you can’t be
[00:41:47] Titan: in there. That’s mine.
[00:41:47] Simone: I think if you guys use it again, I’ll just know
[00:41:51] Titan: y- I was
[00:41:51] Simone: choosing, I had to choose that. But then I would look there again ‘cause you just hid there. It’s mine.
[00:41:59] Well, I think you’ll find one. I believe in you, Octavian. I really do. Indy, do you think Octavian’s a good hider?
[00:42:06] Titan: Now count to 14. Count to 14.
[00:42:10] Simone: Yes, exactly. To 3,100?
[00:42:13] Titan: No.
[00:42:13] Simone: Boy, that’s gonna be a long time.
[00:42:15] Titan: 30 or 100.
[00:42:16] Simone: 30 or 100? Okay. Ready? I’m gonna go. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven , eight, nine, 10,
[00:42:30] 11, . Ready or not, here I come. Indy, where is everyone? Really?
[00:42:46] What is happening? Why is that box moving, Indy? Why is it moving?
[00:42:51] Titan: Oh my
[00:42:53] Simone: God. It’s moving again. I’m so scared. What should I do, Indy?
[00:43:03] It’s okay. I’m not really scared. It’s, it’s getting closer. I think I need to ... Oh, no Titan! It was you the whole time. Yeah. Wow, you’re very good at hiding. Do you know where Octavian is?
[00:43:25] Well, I need to go inside and make dinner for everyone, okay?
[00:43:28] Titan: Well-
[00:43:28] Simone: Would you like to help me?
[00:43:33] Uh, okay, just be careful, love. This is not a box with holes in it and you need air. So maybe just a loose covering, yeah? Okay, that’s fine. Good. Okay. You just, uh... I’m gonna find Octavian.
[00:43:48] I’m not gonna tell the tooth fairy. Are you gonna keep
[00:43:49] Titan: it? Um, if it is shiny.
[00:43:52] Simone: I thought you wanted to keep it if it’s shiny.
[00:43:54] Titan: Yes.
[00:43:56] Simone: Okay. All right. I’m gonna go make dinner. I love [00:44:00] you.
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Why have communist regimes throughout history consistently persecuted, imprisoned, and killed gay people? In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins examine the pattern across the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, and more — backed by direct quotes from communist leaders and historical records.
They break down the ideological reasons: homosexuality framed as “bourgeois degeneracy,” linked to fascism, rejected as hedonistic “gooning,” and clashing with extreme pro-natalist policies that viewed childless people as unproductive. The episode also contrasts this with capitalism’s unmatched track record as the most gay-friendly system in global history and explores the ongoing political shift of gay men toward Republican voting.
If you’re tired of revisionist history that ignores communist crimes against the LGBT community, this is the conversation you need to hear.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be asking a question, which is why do communists usually kill gay people? And it’s an interesting question. There’s two groups that communists generally like to kill and that is gays and Jews. Um, Which surprises a lot of people if they haven’t studied history or only look at the weirdos approach.
[00:00:26] I mean, most Jews are aware of this, but there are a lot of gays who are completely unaware of this. And they have done this over and over and over again throughout history, and the only group that seems to do it as frequently as communists do it is socialists. Is this- They also really like killing gay people
[00:00:46] Simone Collins: is this because both gays and Jews accumulate wealth?
[00:00:50] Malcolm Collins: No. Gays typically produce less wealth than the average citizen. It’s just that on the outside curve, gays basically just have a wider distribution curve of talent- Oh ... than average humans. Okay. So in the same way
[00:01:02] Simone Collins: that like with- Oh, so they’re like hyper men.
[00:01:03] They’re like extra men.
[00:01:04] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, in the same way that men, like, on, if you look at like the average man and you look at the, the, the curve, like women have like a
[00:01:10] Simone Collins: trigger bell curve. Yeah, the bell curve is more flattened, whereas like the male bell curve is- In terms of IQ ... yeah.
[00:01:13] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and with gays, the bell curve is flattened and shifted away.
[00:01:18] Mm. But it’s flattened
[00:01:18] Simone Collins: enough- Yeah, so that tip of the, the tip of the bell curve giant ...
[00:01:20] Malcolm Collins: the tip of the bell curve. If you’re like, “Who are the top 10 chefs in the world?” Five of them are gonna be gay. “Who are the top 10 fashion designers in the world?” Five of them are gonna be gay. “Who are the top 10 AI designers- I mean, not average
[00:01:33] in the
[00:01:33] Simone Collins: world?” Gay. I mean, gay. Gay. But I mean blind.
[00:01:36] Malcolm Collins: Well, no, you see this especially in creative fields. Yeah. You, you see a disproportionate number of gays. And actually I almost wanna like study this, like what the f**k causes that? But it’s also a reason why it’s, it’s, it’s a good idea to not burn the gay community be-
[00:01:49] Simone Collins: Isn’t that the higher levels of testosterone?
[00:01:52] It could be the higher levels of testosterone. So gay, gay men have, on average, higher levels of testosterone. What’s different from men? Higher levels of testosterone, like higher risk, high reward, like they’re going all in.
[00:02:00] Malcolm Collins: That and they’re not having their brains polluted by constantly talking to women.
[00:02:05] Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean- They’re not being henpecked. I mean, God, boys,
[00:02:07] Malcolm Collins: right? Imagine, imagine what you
[00:02:09] Simone Collins: would be able to accomplish. You would be unleashed, Bianca. You would be unleashed if you were blessed with dickness. If you
[00:02:14] Malcolm Collins: didn’t have to, the, you know, yeah. There, there is, there is other ancillary benefits to the wider gay...
[00:02:21] And not to say that nothing negative comes, but we’ll have that conversation later in this. But what I wanted to start by focusing on is like the, the m- ma- the majority of gay community, and this is changing. Like as we’ve pointed out, the gays are moving to Trump, right? Like in, in the voting. If they continue to move at the rate they have moved over the past few election cycles I think by the election cycle after the next, the majority of gay men will be voting Republican.
[00:02:47] And I think by the next election cycle, the majority of gay white men will be voting Republican.
[00:02:51] Simone Collins: Ooh ...
[00:02:52] Malcolm Collins: so, yeah, guys, g- keep in mind the, the, this is a community that we can win. But historically, you look at the protests, you look at all the flags, and no, these flags don’t even really represent gayness anymore.
[00:03:04] They represent like an opt-in identity at this point, the colonizer’s flag as we call it, the progress pride flag. I’m not gonna go into that right now, but so they, they, they, they have these flags, and they yell at people about Palestine. I recently saw them yelling at, A, the guy who replaced Nancy Pelosi, he was kicked out of a gay pride event when people followed him into
[00:03:23] Simone Collins: it and- Oh yeah, there’s a picture of him on the front page of Drudge, like soaked in...
[00:03:26] No, that’s Mamdani, never mind. But yeah yeah, there was a picture of him looking real mad.
[00:03:29] Malcolm Collins: But it was, it was he wasn’t enough anti-Israel for these people and they-
[00:03:33] Simone Collins: Not, oh, not enough. Never enough ... they were
[00:03:35] Malcolm Collins: carrying their, their, the, apparently that’s a huge gay rights issue. And I’m like, gays, you and your natural predators, right?
[00:03:41] Like communist, like the two groups that like have it in their mission statement to kill you, like Islamists and communists, right? Like Guys But let’s get into this. I wanna get into the stats, I wanna get into the facts, and I also wanna point out here that there has been [00:04:00] no governing or economic system that has been friendlier to gays throughout global history than capitalism.
[00:04:08] Not one. Not one comes close to being as friendly or as open to gays than capitalist systems
[00:04:17] Simone Collins: yeah, actually. Ac- I mean, look at some of the most successful capitalists today.
[00:04:23] Malcolm Collins: Well, as to why, and, and there haven’t been many at all, and we can even get into it at the end if you want to purges or genocides of gays in capitalist systems.
[00:04:33] It just doesn’t happen really. Happens in socialist, happens in communist- Wasn’t there the- ... doesn’t happen in
[00:04:37] Simone Collins: capitalist ... the I wanna say pink scare around the time of the Red Scare?
[00:04:43] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but we didn’t kill them.
[00:04:45] Simone Collins: Well, that ... Yes. Yes. Well, they- We didn’t send them to the gulags ... then, then AIDS came, and they killed themselves.
[00:04:51] So there was also that. But that, that wasn’t capital- ... Well, it could’ve been capitalism’s fault because it was ... Patient Zero was a, an airline attendant, and if we weren’t so capitalistically abundant- If we weren’t so economically prosperous ... we wouldn’t be flying around the world on our little sexual romps, bring us, would we?
[00:05:08] No.
[00:05:08] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If, if we weren’t so economically prosperous,
[00:05:10] Simone Collins: So capitalism killed the gays really at scale- At scale ... when you think
[00:05:13] Malcolm Collins: about it. No, it was orgies that killed the gays at scale. Oh. Hmm. Th- they could’ve, they could’ve just not done that when they knew a deadly disease was spreading through their community.
[00:05:24] Simone Collins: Was it known to be sexually transmitted from the very beginning?
[00:05:26] Malcolm Collins: It wasn’t from the very beginning, but people figured out pretty early. And it was very interesting for a lot of gay people to experience because it killed off a huge portion of gay culture, and the gays who survived it they were typically the, like, nerdy introverts.
[00:05:45] And it- Yeah ... really transformed gay culture because with all the party guys who ended up dying off and all of the nerdy introverts who survived- Oh ... it sort of defined the way gay culture transformed itself. Where if you look at older gay culture, it was way more you could actually see this in stuff.
[00:06:03] I wanna say, like, jockey, biker gangy.
[00:06:05] Simone Collins: No.
[00:06:07] Malcolm Collins: Y- you’ve seen the old videos and stuff. Like, it was, it was pretty tough, I guess you’d call it. And then it became sort of, effete and, and weird, but that was downstream of AIDS killing off the non-nerd gays, leading to gays to get more into nerdy hobbies and stuff like that.
[00:06:25] Al- also, just as a side note here, one reason why capitalist systems are generally pretty pro-gay is it’s this flattening of the curve thing that ends up helping gays. It’s also why capitalist systems are generally pretty pro-Jew. Any group that’s disproportionately going to be in high-profile positions a, in a system that rewards meritocratic behavior like, e.g. Being genuinely more creative or genuinely more productive or being able to, like, build big companies or whatever it, it, people with those skill sets end up in positions of power and then prevent- the, you know, big attacks on their community and everything like that, right? Like- Mm. Mm ... the, both the gays and the Jews have done a very good job with this in the United States.
[00:07:05] But let’s continue here. All right, so we’re gonna g- just go through every major communist system and whether or not they discriminated against or attempted to genocide the gays, okay? Okay, so the Soviet Union were gays discriminated against? This is the USSR, the main one, the one that, like, all the people today are fighting, you know, all that.
[00:07:28] Yes heavily discriminated against gays. Article 121 criminalized male same-sex acts up to five years in hard labor in gulags. Thousands arrested thousands died. It w- it was, it was really horrible. A- and once you got back from these, you could never get a job again. You could never get a, and a huge percentage of the people who were sent ended up dying. It was really just, like, a, a sort of a death sentence deferred for them. Like, “Hey, m- we’re gonna kill this guy anyway. Maybe we can get some free labor out of him.” And if you hear about the way people died in the gulag work camps [00:08:00] and stuff like that, like building roads in the middle of the Arctic and, and freezing- Oh my gosh
[00:08:03] to death and stuff like this, really horrible deaths. In terms of ex- explicitly targeted executions, no, but it was a functional genocide. That, that was the goal, where we’re gonna take everyone who’s gay and just get rid of them. And it’s, it’s really strongly documented. There’s not, you know, like, the confidence that this is extremely high.
[00:08:19] Mm-hmm. But then you have China, the, the PRC. Yes, being gay was criminalized. It’s, it’s still criminalized in China. Still? Yeah, you could go to jail in China for being gay under the CCP.
[00:08:32] Simone Collins: Oh.
[00:08:34] Malcolm Collins: You did not know this?
[00:08:35] Simone Collins: Oh. Wait, but then you’re going to a same-sex jail.
[00:08:40] Malcolm Collins: I don’t think- So it’s not just like-
[00:08:41] that that’s as fun- ... the gay club ... in the CCP as it is for you. But why don’t, why don’t you ask- For me- Why don’t you ask AI, like what gets you arrested in China right now around being gay, right?
[00:08:51] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:08:51] Malcolm Collins: It was originally cr- criminalized under quote unquote hooliganism. And they were often forced into public labor camps where they were worked to death.
[00:09:01] And they were forced into psychiatric cures that includes things like forced sterilization, other stuff like that. Were there executions? Yes, there were almost certainly executions under the Cultural Revolution because in the Cultural Revolution they’d execute you for just about everything.
[00:09:15] And they- Yeah ... didn’t really keep good documentation. And I, this is the thing, a lot of leftist historians have sort of tried to scrub history, where you can ask a question where you’re like, “Was it illegal under the, you know, d- during the Cultural Revolution?” And they’ll, they’ll be like, “Yes.” And it’ll be like, “So were there mass executions around this?
[00:09:32] Like, were people being executed for this?” No, no, but they- And they’ll say like, “Well, you know, the academics don’t really talk about it,” and I’m like, “Use your common f*****g sense.”
[00:09:40] Simone Collins: Right. And I, I, I- You, you don’t wanna like make a list of like, “And today, dear diary, I did exactly this to this person brutally murdering
[00:09:47] Malcolm Collins: them.”
[00:09:47] Well, I mean this is like the thing. They’ll ... I saw one when I was trying to like w- figure this information out, when it was like, “Gays were not killed under the Khmer Rouge en masse.” And I was like, “Excuse me?” I believe some academic may have written that, but if you are at all familiar with the culture of the Khmer Rouge and what that government said about gays, then you would know that they were mass executing gays.
[00:10:14] Anyway, what, what, what are the laws right now?
[00:10:16] Simone Collins: So actually China decriminalized consensual same-sex relations- When? ... in 1997. And homosexuality was removed from the official list of mental disorders in 2001. Really all that gets you in trouble f- for is like sex work.
[00:10:29] Malcolm Collins: I know, I thought, I thought posting about it, like getting posts that go viral-
[00:10:32] Simone Collins: Yes
[00:10:33] and stuff like- Obscenity. So if you post something that’s obscene, yes.
[00:10:37] Malcolm Collins: Oh, well okay. So, so basically-
[00:10:39] Simone Collins: But yeah, you can also post something that’s super straight and obscene, so I don’t see that as targeting gay
[00:10:43] Malcolm Collins: people. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The way they define obscenity is just same-sex relationships.
[00:10:48] G- ask this.
[00:10:49] Simone Collins: Producing or distributing sexually explicit material, including same-sex pornography- Right ... can be prosecuted under obscenity or illegal publication laws.
[00:10:56] Malcolm Collins: The question is not what the legal system says, but what functionally happens. Ask it. Do people functionally, like we’re talking about the way the law’s functionally implemented, if you create a post on one of the social, sci- China social media websites, and you’re gay and you’re seen as promoting gayness, are you gonna get disappeared?
[00:11:21] Okay. Next here, we’ve got Cuba. The ga- the, all these people love Cuba, and often love to forget that the UMAP had forced labor camps for gays labeled counterrevolutionary. They would lose their jobs, and they’d be imprisoned, and they wouldn’t be able to get jobs again, ‘cause that’s what happens in a communist system, where, like, like imprisonment’s a much bigger deal in a communist system than in a capitalist system.
[00:11:44] And there were certainly
[00:11:46] so yeah, in, in Cuba there were certainly large numbers of gay deaths in the work camps from it being illegal.
[00:11:53] They did make it normal again in Cuba. I guess when they learned that the leftists who they wanted to be buddy-buddy with in the US weren’t [00:12:00] into them mass killing gay people. But yeah, they were super pro killing gay people. It just didn’t help their agenda in the United States, which was really significant.
[00:12:09] Actually we recently found out that there was a high-level Cuban spy in the United States military for a long time. They kept telling people Cuba’s not that big a deal. Nothing that happened in Cuba matters. Anyone who’s telling you that in the comments either is completely ignorant of recent American history and how Cuba played a large part in organizing in far leftist organizations in the US, Antifa in the US, and US communists for about a, a, a half a century at this point.
[00:12:35] Or they are like actively disinformation agents. And people you need to be watching. Like, everyone who right now is saying like, “We need to do s- we need to help Cu- whatever,” like they’re freaking out about Cuba. The left is freaking out about Cuba because Cuba is the cornerstone of American leftist or- organizing.
[00:12:51] And the, I mean, they’ve d- they’ve taken over other countries functionally recently and, and when they learned that the, the, the, them mass executing gays was hurting that, they were like, “Okay, whatever.” But and functionally mass executing. It was through the work camps. Sorry, what are the rules around China when you-
[00:13:04] Simone Collins: S- yeah, you, you are likely to have content you post online that promotes a gay lifestyle be taken down by the CCP.
[00:13:12] Malcolm Collins: And disappeared?
[00:13:14] Simone Collins: No, not necessarily. But you, you will be suppressed. You probably if you keep trying, you’ll be disappeared, but-
[00:13:21] Malcolm Collins: Okay ...
[00:13:21] Simone Collins: I guess there’s not enough documentation for AI to be like, “Yes,” it will just be suppressed or censored
[00:13:29] Malcolm Collins: But yeah, so okay, let’s go to the next one. Notice here it’s been every single communist country has killed gays so far.
[00:13:36] I’m just, like, letting you guys know. It’s not
[00:13:38] Simone Collins: great. Yeah, I mean-
[00:13:40] Malcolm Collins: Okay ...
[00:13:40] Simone Collins: it doesn’t look great.
[00:13:41] Malcolm Collins: And, and during time periods long after it was totally normalized in the West. In f- in fact there’s some documentaries if you wanna, like, hang out in gay circles or anything like that. Like, when I was younger, I was hung out with all the artsy kids and everything like that.
[00:13:56] A lot of my friends were gay. And because of that I knew, like, the gay shows and stuff like that that they would watch. And one of the shows that, like, the GSA would play and stuff like that was about a gay person growing up on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall and, like, what it was like when the wall fell and how much freer their life got.
[00:14:17] And, like, all the gays on the western side of the wall were all partying and going to nightclubs and having fun. And on the eastern side of the wall, it was, you know, forced castration and stuff like that.
[00:14:28] Simone Collins: Forced-
[00:14:29] Malcolm Collins: But anyway ...
[00:14:30] Simone Collins: castration?
[00:14:31] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’m pretty sure the episode’s called Hoodwink and the Angry Inch, and it’s about that.
[00:14:36] Simone Collins: Hedwig and the Angry Inch?
[00:14:37] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:14:38] Simone Collins: That’s what it’s about? Oh my God, okay.
[00:14:41] Malcolm Collins: Wait, that’s about... Yeah, it’s about Berlin, right?
[00:14:44] Simone Collins: I don’t know. I never watched it. That’s terrifying. Do you want me to look it up? I mean-
[00:14:51] ...
[00:14:51] Simone Collins: Sure, look
[00:14:53] Malcolm Collins: it up. Yeah, l- look it up to, to double-check this.
[00:14:55] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:14:57] Malcolm Collins: Okay. Next, Vietnam. This is the first one on our list that probably didn’t kill gay people explicitly.
[00:15:08] Possibly. But Vietnam wasn’t that communist for that long. Vietnam never really had a full real communist revolution. They had the war with us to maintain communism, and then, like, immediately became capitalist after that and still called themselves communist. And are a great ally to the United States, one of the, the strongest allies we have anywhere in the world right now, which is pretty wild.
[00:15:33] But i- it’s, it’s simply because they hate China more than they hate us, and we are their only counterweight to China. And that could actually influence why they have been not as anti-gay as other communist states. So the one communist state so far that wasn’t expl... And no, there was a stigma against gayness even, even so within socialist Vietnam, but it wasn’t never clearly illegal.
[00:15:54] North Korea. Yes, you will be [00:16:00] executed for being gay in North Korea. It’s considered a corruption of morals. It is extremely illegal in, in North Korea. And it appears to still be illegal in North Korea. What’d you find out about Hedwig and the Angry Inch?
[00:16:15] Simone Collins: It’s the story following Hedwig, a gender queer rocker from East Berlin whose botched sex reassignment surgery leaves her with an angry inch as she tours...
[00:16:25] So it’s, it’s not the angry itch, I guess. It’s the angry inch. That’s what I said, inch.
[00:16:28] Malcolm Collins: Inch.
[00:16:28] Simone Collins: I thought it was itch. Oh ... sorry. As she tours shabby venues across the US telling her life story and chasing the ex-lover who stole her songs and fame. Though the concert style nar- through the concert style narrative, she grapples with trauma, identity, and the search for her other half, ultimately moving toward a more integrated sense of self.
[00:16:47] Yeah, but
[00:16:47] Malcolm Collins: was the, was the botched reassignment a forced thing by the state?
[00:16:53] That was, that was
[00:16:54] Simone Collins: my question Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. I know, I know it’s, it’s not... Yeah.
[00:16:57] Malcolm Collins: So Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, would you have been murdered for being gay? Absolutely you would’ve been murdered for being gay. The Khmer Rouge would murder you for speaking English or being a dentist.
[00:17:12] Of course they’re gonna kill you for being gay. They, they killed people for f- nothing. They, they- it was the craziest of communist governments, and that meant they absolutely hated the gays. By the way, we’re, we’ll get into why they did this in a second if you’re confused as to why they always end up killing the gays.
[00:17:28] Note again, we’ve also seen this with socialist revolutions. You know, famously when Ayatollah Khomeini was coming into power he allied with the gay movement. He allied with the leftist movement, said, “We’re all gonna be great friends forever and ever and ever.” He got in power, and now they literally just like...
[00:17:45] Man, if you’ve ever seen these hangings, they are so brutal, the crane hangings in Iran. They literally
[00:17:50] Simone Collins: just have like- Oh my gosh, yes. Yes. Oh, I’ve seen pictures of
[00:17:53] Malcolm Collins: the scene Because you imagine they’re like giant construction cranes, and no they’re not. They’re like small, dinky, rusty construction cranes with like big crowds of people
[00:18:02] Simone Collins: like throwing- This thing, it’s very town square in like m- medieval times kinda thing, yeah.
[00:18:07] Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, it’s, it’s horrifying. It’s horrifying. We- these people, I, honestly I think we should ban immigration. Yeah and this isn’t to say I’m against like I- Per- Persian Americans, but I think like the ones that we want got out largely speaking.
[00:18:19] Simone Collins: Yeah. And,
[00:18:20] Malcolm Collins: We, w- we, or at least
[00:18:23] Simone Collins: strong ideological vetting.
[00:18:24] I don’t know. I don’t want bad things to happen to anyone, but
[00:18:28] Malcolm Collins: this is just- You, the only way, if there is a culture that acts in a way that you find systemically problematic, Simone, the only way to deal with that behavior is to make, either transform that culture into something that is unrecognizable to itself, right?
[00:18:46] Or to replace that culture with another cultural group, right? All the quote unquote solutions to this are not going to look nice. But I think increasingly the world is tabling them. Because a lot of the, well I mean the, the world that’s breeding, the world that has power eg. the US and Israel going forwards, ‘cause like Europe’s basically irrelevant 20, 30 years from now.
[00:19:08] Yeah. Anyway your, your, what did, what’d you find?
[00:19:13] Simone Collins: It’s coerced, but it’s not literally depicted as a castration ordered or performed directly by the East German state. It’s pushed by Hedwig’s mother and the American GI as a condition for marriage and immigration within restrictive communist systems.
[00:19:30] So-
[00:19:32] Malcolm Collins: Well ...
[00:19:32] Simone Collins: not really.
[00:19:33] Malcolm Collins: Not really. Okay.
[00:19:34] Simone Collins: Laos Told that to marry Luther, the American soldier and legally immigrant, a full medical exam and legal documentation require him to be female, so the mother and fiance presume sex surgery or pressure Hansel, who became Hedwig, into sex surgery. Yeah. So more complicated than that, yeah.
[00:19:53] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so next. And I’ll go faster now for you guys. Laos, o- only the second one on the list that didn’t criminalize it although it was [00:20:00] negatively stigmatized. And Laos was not communist for that long. They only became communist in 1975. Hmm ... and they’re, they’re today not that communist. Ethiopia.
[00:20:08] Yes, it, it was criminal and there were almost certainly mass killings of gays from what we know on the ground at the time during the Red Terror. Absolutely terrifying if you’re not familiar with this one. And they definitely killed a lot of gays. ... Romania. Yes private same-sex acts were criminalized, up to five years in prison.
[00:20:27] Although we don’t know of any mass killings in Romania, there was almost certainly isolated killings of gay people in Romania for being gay. Mm-hmm. East Germany, yes, again. Next, as we were just talking about Poland. No, or at least limited. It was decriminalized in 1932 pre-communism, and remained so while a social stigma existed.
[00:20:47] So this is, like, the next one on the list that’s a, a clear no. Czechoslovakia yes, initially, then reduced, criminalized early on, decriminalized in 1961 to 1968. So clearly criminalized. Whether or not it came with executions, we don’t have explicit examples of, but again, a lot of these places that had really harsh laws, yes, probably.
[00:21:07] Albania yes, again it was criminalized under pedestry and it was a 10-year prison sentence. Oh my gosh ... and probably executions as well. ... Yugoslavia. But this wouldn’t have been mass scale executions, just, like, isolated executions. Yugoslavia a- again, this one we do actually have reports of executions, so we know for a fact it happened here.
[00:21:29] And it varied by republic, but many of them did criminalize them with them being decriminalized in 1977, so we know that they were criminalized. So, let’s go to why they did this, right? Because this might confuse even Republicans today to be like, “Wait, capitalism is the pro-gay economic system, and communism is the anti-gay economic system.”
[00:21:53] It’s like, I guess I kind of remembered that from history books, but why? Yeah. And why have the current gays forgotten this and are only just now remembering this? And what does this mean for the strategy to ensuring a Republican chokehold on the American electoral system and our continued victory? All right.
[00:22:16] Let’s go into Maxim G- Gorky, ‘cause I’m gonna go over a lot of, like, explicit quotes from people, so... who were important communists so you can get an understanding of what they thought and why they thought this without me editorializing or putting words in their mouth. You know, I could say, “Oh, they thought it was inefficient,” or something
[00:22:33] Simone Collins: like that.
[00:22:34] Yeah, ‘cause I kept wanting to think, “Oh, well it must be because there was a large Christian population.” But no, this is communism. This is supposed to be, like, super not religious.
[00:22:40] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So he, Gror- Maxim Gorky, a leading Soviet writer, said, “There is already a sarcastic saying, ‘Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear.’”
[00:22:52] Simone Collins: W- oh, yeah. What was that called? Homo fascism.
[00:22:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Gayness was super linked with Nazism in the communist mind.
[00:23:04] Simone Collins: Just fabulous uniforms again. They’re just-
[00:23:06] Malcolm Collins: I, I g- I get it. You
[00:23:08] Simone Collins: get it.
[00:23:09] Malcolm Collins: Like, I, I get it. I get it. I’m a little confused as to why the gays don’t identify with an... If you’re gonna choose a group that kills gays, like, choose the one- I thought- ... that’s well-dressed and had high-level gay m- members.
[00:23:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, you want them to beat you with their fabulous batons.
[00:23:22] . Aren’t you afraid the fashion police will come and beat you with their fabulous batons? No.
[00:23:26] Malcolm Collins: Mm.
[00:23:27] Simone Collins: Oh, God.
[00:23:28] Malcolm Collins: Okay.
[00:23:28] Simone Collins: Yeah, but yeah, the Nazis killed gays too, right? I mean, they killed a lot of people. But they was, they also- Mm ... killed gay people. I
[00:23:34] Malcolm Collins: mean, they killed way less gays in total than the communists killed, but-
[00:23:38] Simone Collins: Fewer gays. If you can,
[00:23:39] Malcolm Collins: Thank you for the grammar lesson, Mr.
[00:23:42] Simone Collins: Simone If you can count it, it’s fewer.
[00:23:43] If it is like water, there’s, it’s uncountable, then it’s more or less.
[00:23:48] Malcolm Collins: I will never learn your stupid English words.
[00:23:50] Simone Collins: God, yeah.
[00:23:52] Malcolm Collins: They will go away. Nobody’s gonna care about that in a few years. Okay.
[00:23:58] Simone Collins: The AI
[00:23:58] Malcolm Collins: will care. Nicolai [00:24:00] Krylenko this is the People’s Commissioner of Justice speech to the Central Committee.
[00:24:04] He said, “In our environment, in the environment of the workers taking the point of view of normal relations between the sexes, who are building their society on healthy principles, we don’t need little gentlemen of this type.” We don’t need a little gentlemen of this type. That’d be a fun that’s, that’s, that’s Nick Fuentes-esque almost.
[00:24:25] Simone Collins: Don’t you...
[00:24:27] Malcolm Collins: We don’t need little gentlemen- Gentlemen of a certain type ... of this type. Who then for the most part of our customs in these affairs? Workers? No. Declassed rabble. Declassed rabble, either from the dregs of society or from the remnants of the exploiting classes. They don’t know which way to turn, so they turn to pederasty.
[00:24:45] Now this is actually an interesting you know, kind of true point. Remember I said that gays seem to have a higher distribution curve in terms of success, like a flattened one, right? So they’re more on the both successful and unsuccessful edge, and less in the middle. He as a communist is noting this here.
[00:25:02] He goes, “Either they’re in the unclassed rabble,” like the, the super low class that d- is unproductive, or they’re former high class individuals.
[00:25:15] Simone Collins: Hmm
[00:25:16] Malcolm Collins: Which is a pretty interesting observation, but I can see where it’s coming from. Again Let’s go to another one here. Another statement by the same guy. “After two decades of building socialism in the USSR, there is no reason for anyone to be a homosexual,” he said.
[00:25:32] Joseph Stalin said to command co- c- to, to Commander Karnovich, “These scoundrels must be subject to exemplary punishment.” Oof. “And a corresponding guiding decree must be introduced into our legislation.” The report framed homosexual networks as potential counter-revolutionary espionage risks, which again, is actually kind of true.
[00:25:57] If you’re cracking down on gays in your country because you see them as associated with fascism or whatever as you can see in the, like, books on gay people who lived under communism and stuff like that they had a reason and to be meeting with other people secretly, which is a good way to accidentally build an espionage network, right?
[00:26:16] So I- I’m actually pointing out here that, like, they weren’t unreasonable in their fears of this. What Fidel Castro said just in terms of how much responsibility he took for it, he said, “If someone is responsible, it’s me. There were moments of great injustice. Great injustice,” he said. Now why?
[00:26:34] Well, mostly because he was just taking orders from the other ... And most communists hate gays, get to that in a second. Let’s go to why the Chinese attacked it. They saw it as bourgeoisie degeneracy and Western corruption in nature. This is true as well. The idea of, like, middle class gays just sleeping around is a very Western idea and very antithetical to Chinese traditions.
[00:26:58] And the place where you would’ve seen same-sex relationships in more ancient China is within the elite class. So they very likely would have seen it potentially even rightly so, as antithetical to actual Chinese value systems. In Cambodia, direct quotes specify, specifically naming gayness are rare because they destroyed most of the records.
[00:27:23] But the regime demanded the removal of anything that they saw as decadent or bourgeoisie bougie. And gayness was definitely seen within those categories. North Korea again it’s seen as being a f- a form of capitalist corruption, basically ‘cause it’s hedonism, right? Like, think about it from this perspective.
[00:27:41] If you say, “Okay, everybody, like, let’s get together and do what’s necessary for the state, for the people, for everyone,” right? Like, just sacrifice ourse- because this is the thing, real communism, when it’s been tried, sorry to the real communism that’s [00:28:00] never been tried, but People have tried, it just always ends up bad before.
[00:28:03] Like look at our videos where we discuss why it always goes not in the direction the people with the pie-in-the-sky goals want it to go. Yeah. But the ... what it basically is is saying we are all going to sacrifice personally within our lives to move society forwards. In a way communism is very techno-puritan in its value framing, right?
[00:28:29] Like everyone within the state suffers, everyone within the state does not pursue their own happiness, their own hedonism a- anything like that, and true happiness only comes for suffering for something you truly believe in, with that thing you really believe in being a better future for humanity, for, for communist humanity, right?
[00:28:53] And you see this with the figures that the communists would elevate in any of these countries, right? They were always Mr. Worker Man, right? Like, you know, they’ll have the shovel and they’ll have the, the thing, the ...
[00:29:03] Speaker 2: александр Пузыгин
[00:29:15] Сивина Градова
[00:29:22] Malcolm Collins: well, you even look at their- The, the ... look at their ... it’s a hammer and sickle, right?
[00:29:25] It’s like the working man, right? Like the, Yeah ... a- and, and they would build these sort of folk heroes, and you could track these folk heroes. And the folk heroes were always like a guy who did a grueling, extremely hard job for an extremely long period of time because he wanted to make things better in some way.
[00:29:44] Which is not a bad value system to And
[00:29:47] Simone Collins: no, it’s, it’s wholesome ... to grow. When you, when you say it that way it’s fantastic, yeah.
[00:29:52] Malcolm Collins: Mm. It just leads to mass death and suffering and everything like that. But again, other episodes- Mm ... we go into more detail. But if that’s what ... A- and the communists in the West, they just want the free stuff from other people.
[00:30:05] They’re basically like, “Let’s take stuff from the rich and give it to people who don’t wanna work,” right? I don’t wanna work, I wanna work ... or I wanna work on something like educating people in communist ideology or educating people in gender frameworks or ... It’s always, they always wanna work in the education camps, right?
[00:30:22] I wanna, I wanna work in you know, th- g- creative field. It’s like they don’t need a lot of creatives. Oh, I’m gonna yell on that under communism because, ... that’s a form of like hedonistic pleasure, not really needed, okay? Mm. But-
[00:30:35] Simone Collins: I mean, propaganda needs it ...
[00:30:37] Malcolm Collins: if all communist forces start with people with each of these mindsets, one that actually
[00:30:44] It’s funny, one that’s actually virtuous and wants to attempt to make human society better through diligent labor and another that just wants to spend all day at home gooning, okay? And the one who wants to spend all day at h- on home gooning secretly, the, the, the, the, you know, whatever alphabet soup the orgy party people, right?
[00:31:09] People get the guns, people go out and take over the government, and then these two sides have a disagreement about how things are gonna be run. Because the people who want society to continue to advance and people to continue to work and for this all to just not immediately fall apart says, “Hey I’ve noticed some people aren’t working, and why don’t we shoot them because they’re a problem for our society, right?”
[00:31:33] And then the the people who just wanna sit at home all day gooning are like, “I thought that’s what the revolution was all about.” And then the two sides are like, “Well, I guess we disagree.” Now it doesn’t matter if the gooners make up 80% of the population they’re not the ones who will spend the day going door to door shooting people.
[00:31:51] Whereas repeatedly the other side has shown that they’re exactly that type of person. This isn’t the, the only way that it, reason it turns bloody, but we have [00:32:00] a bunch of other episodes where we go into this. But it is one of the reasons why the gooners never take control of the communist systems and why the extremely militaristic people always do.
[00:32:09] Because they’re the people willing to do what is needed to gain power. So even if that other side made up 80% of the population that wanted a revolution, pretty quickly you get to house number five and they’re like, “Actually, I support you guys. Yeah, sure, I’ll go to the widget factory every day for the rest of my life doing a, a mindless job while I choke on smoke that’s pointlessly wafted onto our cities because it makes them look more industrial,” a real thing that they did in both China and the USSR.
[00:32:35] Did you know that by the way?
[00:32:36] Simone Collins: No. That’s...
[00:32:38] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so in China, this is a problem they’re dealing with even today, where they would explicitly build the large factories upwind of the major cities so that the cities would become polluted faster, because they thought it made them look more industrialized and modern
[00:32:58] Simone Collins: That, hmm
[00:33:03] Okay I don’t know about that Is
[00:33:05] Malcolm Collins: that, is that astonishingly stupid?
[00:33:08] Simone Collins: That’s, yeah. I’m trying to think of a diplomatic way to put it, but I think astonishingly stupid is all we can fall on today. That’s, there’s no, there’s no excuse for that. It’s, oh, God. It’s so bad. It’s so bad. Oh. Mm. Okay.
[00:33:22] Speaker 9: By the way, I was fact-checking this and, , it’s been very interesting. I can’t find any positive affirmations that this definitely happened, but I can’t find any negative affirmations that, that this is a historic myth. So who knows where I heard this, but they do say there is a suspicious number of factories in both Communist China and Russia upwind of major cities.
[00:33:44] , But we can’t find any record of why they built them there. So I, I could be wrong
[00:33:49] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. What’s interesting is, is that the people who gain power within communist systems that last for any period of time and function to any extent, actually think a lot like capitalists, like the most ruthless people within a capitalist system.
[00:34:04] They’re just often l- legally allowed to just kill anyone they think is unproductive. Whereas in the, the capitalist system, it’s more like people might be like, “Well, it would be, you know, there’s a lot of people who are drains on the state. There’s a lot of people... But you know, you can’t do anything about it.”
[00:34:20] In these systems, they’re just like, “Yeah, sure, like d- d- take, take care of it.” Do I wanna talk about why communist systems always fail? No. You can go to our other videos on that if that’s of interest to you. I don’t wanna wa- waste your time with it on this video. But what I do wanna talk about is, so if you have this idea, and people are like, “Well, gays don’t spend all day gooning.”
[00:34:37] Right? Like, some gays are productive citizens. Some gays wanna make society better. And it’s like two things. One, you know well and good that those gays have a lot less social power than the ones who are the gooners. Right? Like- ... the gooners typically gain more power than the- Gooner power ... socially responsible ones.
[00:34:58] Historically. Now, I’m seeing this shift within American gay culture in response to their movement being so taken over by the, the extremist extremist gooners, and they’re, and they, they don’t even like, the LGBT folks, they don’t even like the gays anymore. They’re like, the, the, the new thing is like a, a, a male gay is the new male straight because all the, the, the, is the new white male, you know.
[00:35:16] Because all the white straight males left the, the left, right? And so now they’re, they’re, they’re picking on the next group, and the next group’s like, “Yeah, what, what am I doing here?” R- and this is where, you know, like how is it that we, there’s so few gay Republicans, and but like our top vote getter, Scott Pressler, is gay, right?
[00:35:32] Literally moved to the movement ‘cause he’s like, “I don’t understand why the leftists are cozying up with the Islamists. They wanna kill me and everyone like me.” Right? Like, and we’ve, and we’ve seen a pretty successful alliance with the two groups here with Trump. The New York Times wrote an article, Trump’s Big Gay White House, pointing out that disproportionately, and we’ve seen this as well, his White House is, is staffed by gay men.
[00:35:51] And it is becau- and, and the famous quote from like a Republican lady in DC was like, “The Trump administration came in and I thought there’d be so many good dating prospects, [00:36:00] and they’re all gay.” But they’ve been efficiently moving forwards with a lot of the agenda that we want to see carried out, so like I’m, I’m, I’m chill with that, right?
[00:36:08] You know, I, I can say that the, the Bible’s against it and also say, but there’s a lot of other things the Bible against that are bigger issues for me than that. And- The, the wider stuff around, like the toxic parts of the movement have mostly expelled the gays to the extent that they are useful to work with us, and that they no longer have the social power if we accept them into our movement to ever force their lifestyle on the next generation again, nor do most of them want to who want to join our side, right?
[00:36:40] So like why- Mm-hmm ... be pointlessly mean about it? You’re just hurting us in future elections. But yeah, but I’ve pointed out, you, you know, this can still mean banning gay marriage and stuff like that, like whatever, right? Like, but the, why the communists are always turning against them, because even if you are an upstanding, hardworking, soci- civically minded gay, you’re still not having kids, and most communist systems were incredibly pro-natalist.
[00:37:03] The, the only exception is China, interestingly that I’m aware of.
[00:37:07] Simone Collins: Yeah. But like- Yeah, yeah. Well, but that, yeah, I think maybe it was kind of the fault of the Communist Party anyway, ‘cause they were dealing with like the famines that they caused, and then they were like, “Oh, let’s-”
[00:37:17] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, the Communist Party in China was initially super pro-natalist.
[00:37:19] They wanted people to have tons of kids.
[00:37:20] Simone Collins: Yeah, and then there were the famines, and then, yeah. So
[00:37:22] Malcolm Collins: then- And then they did a 180. But the- Yeah ... the Soviets were pro-natalist the entire time. They gave out mothers of medal, m- motherhood medals. They gave out all sorts of, you know, rewards, awards, anything
[00:37:37] Mm. Delicious. But yeah. It was, By the way, people are asking if I like, am, I’m drinking milk for some weird diet reason or something. Like I’m on some sort of c- I’ve just always really liked milk.
[00:37:52] Simone Collins: It’s- You’re a European cow herd descendant, I guess.
[00:37:58] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, this is the thing. There’s a bunch of like, you know, people from cultures that are not milk drinking cultures who don’t know how normalized milk is in- Mm-hmm
[00:38:06] Northern European cultural groups. Milk and cheese are the f*****g best. Few, few flavors in this world better than milk and cheese, people. To a Europ- Northern European.
[00:38:16] Simone Collins: I’m with you, man. Yeah.
[00:38:17] Malcolm Collins: D- in, in, in Scotland in the medieval period, you had to pay your taxes in cheese. That’s always been one of my favorite factoids I learned- Me too
[00:38:23] studying Scottish history. Mm. So I have to say it. So the local like, bishop would like have a, like a basement full of like cheese. Cheese.
[00:38:35] Simone Collins: The fir- the word factoid I believe actually refers to a, a, a fact that’s not true. Let me, let me actually fact check this.
[00:38:43] So I did fact check it and it’s right
[00:38:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that that doesn’t sound true to me.
[00:38:46] Yeah, so, so because of that you’re like intrinsically in the same way that on this podcast I’m also like, generally I think you’re gonna be able to do more for society unless you’re fairly wealthy if you are gay with today’s technology. If you decide to just, not live a life around what turns you on.
[00:39:06] I don’t think it’s as bad as it was historically. Hmm. But I think that, you know, on the edge you’re probably gonna be more productive. And we have a, we have a- I mean, yeah,
[00:39:13] Simone Collins: I mean, I, I think it depends on the person. I think some people are more productive because they, it
[00:39:19] Malcolm Collins: seems like marriage- Have a really
[00:39:20] Simone Collins: good
[00:39:20] Malcolm Collins: partnership.
[00:39:21] Simone Collins: And, yeah They’re
[00:39:21] Malcolm Collins: not burdened by women, yeah.
[00:39:22] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, but- It’s like look, and like, and like trying to... Let’s say, like, you wanna have a family, right? And you don’t wanna raise the family alone, but you find women both so, socially abrasive and physically repulsive that you understand that if you tried to raise a family with a woman you would just be miserable and be a bad parent.
[00:39:40] It makes sense.
[00:39:41] Malcolm Collins: Simone, I think, I, I think a number of straight guys feel this way.
[00:39:44] Simone Collins: Well, the, I mean, like, there’s a... What’s the word for... So, so there’s political lesbians, what’s the word for... Or are, are they just called, like, MGTOW gays, I guess? What, what are we, what are we gonna call them? I guess they don’t exist or maybe they [00:40:00] do.
[00:40:00] It’d be really interesting to, like, find, find just we can’t stand women gays who are not gay. Anyway, though.
[00:40:09] Malcolm Collins: Oh, by the way, funny, funny side note. Yeah. So for RFab we were making ads for our video, the Not Safe For Work video feature today.
[00:40:15] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:40:16] Malcolm Collins: And I sent you the, the, like, sample ads that I created.
[00:40:19] Did you notice-
[00:40:20] but have you, have you noticed that I always make one of the characters look like you?
[00:40:24] Simone Collins: There’s a pattern.
[00:40:25] Do you want me to wear the thin-rimmed glasses?
[00:40:29] Malcolm Collins: No, just when you write for AI large circular glasses, that it does thin-rimmed.
[00:40:33] Simone Collins: You, you say black circular thick-rimmed glasses, and for yours black rectangular thick-rimmed glasses. It’s very easy. However, you do not need to make it accurate. I have, I’ve also made, I’ve also made some for, for-
[00:40:50] Malcolm Collins: You’ve made some where I’m one of the characters?
[00:40:52] Simone Collins: No. No, no, no, no, no. I’ve, I’ve... No, because we’re not targeting people like me in the ads. I’ve made some based on my understanding of what is extremely popular. So.
[00:41:02] Malcolm Collins: Send it, send them to me. I wanna see what, what you did. I gotta give you a rating. No.
[00:41:07] Simone Collins: No, I’m gonna let our ad performance give me the rating.
[00:41:11] ‘Cause also, you, you don’t have tastes that reflect mainstream interests, so. I mean, like, the most mainstream interests, which are very vanilla, pretty boring. No,
[00:41:20] Malcolm Collins: I gotta do one of, like, a, an elf girl in chains being hit
[00:41:24] Simone Collins: by
[00:41:24] Malcolm Collins: somebody.
[00:41:26] Simone Collins: I mean, maybe among base camp viewers that’s more normative, but like a- among your mainstream, like what gets the most views no.
[00:41:36] No. Just look at Aella’s Big Kink Survey and just look at what actually is really popular. Well,
[00:41:43] Malcolm Collins: yeah. Okay. You’ve also gotta think of what’s popular on gooner sites
[00:41:49] Simone Collins: Yeah, sure. Yeah, and I guess someone who has to like, who wants to pay to make unique content. That’s fair.
[00:41:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:41:59] Simone Collins: Oh, God. Sorry, I just, yeah.
[00:42:03] Anyway I
[00:42:04] Malcolm Collins: thought- I do not think the ExoClick feature that tells you which ads are doing well and which ads are not doing well is very good, by the way.
[00:42:12] Speaker 10: For context, , we’ve recently started running ad campaigns to promote, , the not safe for work video feature on the rfab.ai website. , And Simone and I are having disagreements about what types of videos people will click on, and we will see. We will see. She thinks people want super, super generic stuff
[00:42:34] Speaker 11: I’m busy
[00:42:45] Simone Collins: are we trying to head off losing the competition?
[00:42:47] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, I’m just telling you as-
[00:42:49] Simone Collins: I
[00:42:50] Malcolm Collins: see. Okay ... it has in the past with ads had, like, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 99%.
[00:42:58] I’m like, “So you didn’t even try the other ads?” It’s just like one ad sort of-
[00:43:01] Simone Collins: No, it actually, it actually does try them. And it will occasionally flip some out. They fluctuate over time- Okay ... when it serves the most. So it, it, it has a smart enough system where if one ad gets kind of tired essentially, I’ve noticed that it will cycle it out which is interesting to me, and it will start feeding up ones that were less used.
[00:43:19] So I’ve, I’ve, I’m glad I’ve introduced all new ad variants to test out more because people are getting tired of our old ones.
[00:43:28] Malcolm Collins: Anyway,
[00:43:30] Simone Collins: I really love you. People are weird. And
[00:43:38] Malcolm Collins: stop advocating for your natural predators, guys. Like this-
[00:43:42] Simone Collins: Communism, let’s not. Let’s... You gotta choose. Gayness. Well, no. See, like communism is also incom- incompatible, to your point with a lot of other things that we, we like, so yeah.
[00:43:59] There [00:44:00] is a, there is one other thing though that I about capitalism that I think is quite broken that I wanna do a totally separate episode though on, and I don’t wanna- Oh,
[00:44:08] Malcolm Collins: oh, what is it on? What is it?
[00:44:09] Simone Collins: I don’t wanna talk with you about it until I do it ‘cause I wanna get your fresh thoughts on it instead of your tired old reaction having already heard this.
[00:44:18] You know how it is with old couples where, like, you know that they’ve had the conversation already. You know that that, you know, that wife has told that story 10,000 times in front of the husband, and he’s just sit, he’s just sit through it like he’s been on, like, this one track ride so many times, and he doesn’t wanna get back on the haunted mansion ride, but he has to go back on the ha- haunted mansion ride, and it was fun the first 10,000 times but not the second 10,000 times.
[00:44:41] I don’t wanna do that to you. Let’s, let’s keep it fresh. Yeah?
[00:44:45] Malcolm Collins: Okay.
[00:44:45] Simone Collins: Okay. Okay.
[00:44:47] Malcolm Collins: Love
[00:44:47] Simone Collins: you. You, you can always guess what it is though over dinner when- whenever you want to, whenever we chat.
[00:44:51] Malcolm Collins: Doing a site update right now, by the way, with a bunch of improvements to not safe for work video generation, making it a lot cheaper to do.
[00:44:58] Simone Collins: Oh, that’s good.
[00:44:58] Malcolm Collins: By employing the new API that I found that’s basically a secret API which is so cool that I was able to get working
[00:45:10] Mm. So I’m very excited about that. And Simone was playing around with it, and she’s like, “Oh, this is really good.”
[00:45:13] Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I can see how it gets addictive, ‘cause it’s one of those, like, you don’t know what you’re gonna get, and it’s, like, really satisfying, but then that one thing’s off, and so you wanna try again, and yeah, yeah.
[00:45:25] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And as a reminder if you haven’t redownloaded the app in a while, the app for image viewing has been massively improved since it first launched. It’s, like, way more stable now, has way more features now. Mm. And if enough of you download it, apparently it will elude that stupid tag, like, this isn’t checked by Windows Defender or whatever.
[00:45:44] Oh. Do you know that auto goes away after enough people use something?
[00:45:47] Simone Collins: Really? Silly.
[00:45:50] Malcolm Collins: It is quite silly. I... F*****g Windows.
[00:45:53] Simone: Titan, do you wanna play hide and seek too?
[00:45:55] Titan: Yeah.
[00:45:56] Simone: Okay. One, two, 10. Ready or not, here I come. All right, Indy, do you think I can find them? Do you think I can find them? I’m gonna look around. I found you. Titan, I found you.
[00:46:16] Girl. All right, now we have to find Octavian. Where could he be? Do you have any ideas?
[00:46:23] Titan: He’s under
[00:46:25] Simone: the black box. The black box? Yeah, yeah. No, I hear him yelling, I think. Oh, wait.
[00:46:34] Oh, no, it’s moving. It’s alive. Oh, no. No.
[00:46:46] You win, Octavian. That was very good. That was ve- And I was crawling under there ... I really, I thought maybe you were- I was crawling under there. I s- that was, yeah, that was very impressive.
[00:46:55] Titan: No.
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Spend enough time watching girly content these days, and you’ll see a commenter or creator cite “the Girl with the List.” This batman of Lady Internet is literally summoned in content across tiktok and instagram. Her bat signal: “Where’s the girl with the list?”
Her purpose? Cure baby fever. Remind you to take your birth control.
Today, we explore the work of the Girl (actually girls) with the List, the unique genre of choice-based horror stories (be they pregnancy, parenting, or entirely-non-family-related activities, such as cosmetic surgery and travel), and whether this genre helps or harms. Enjoy!
Show Notes
There’s a young woman named Abigail Porter (goes by Zoomie) with 1.6M followers on Tiktok who is famous for “curing baby fever” by creating abundant shorts on pregnancy and delivery body horror and frustrating experiences parents have while lactating and raising young kids.
Just this week I’ve heard two mentions of her in the wild “She changed my life” said one. “I literally owe her everything”
Suffice it to say she is, at best, feeding into women’s feelings of justification for not having kids, and at worst, generating fear about having kids where it didn’t exist before.
Abigail is not alone in creating viral content of this genre—there’s also “the girl with the list” with whom Abigail is often confused and that list is called “YUNI’S PROS AND CONS LIST OF HAVING CHILDREN”), so we should probably talk about it!
So… Why avoid pregnancies?
Some highlights:
* A woman whose insides needed stitches after her baby scratched her from the inside on the way out
* A woman whose baby began to choke on her nipple after it literally fell off
* A woman who grew a tumor on her lip the size of her pinky
* Women losing their hair, their teeth, all their eyelashes
* A woman who developed a mutation during pregnancy that made her insensitive to pain meds who had to endure a c-section with no pain meds
* A woman who went deaf after her kid kissed her on the ear, causing what’s called “the kiss of death”
* BTW, this is also known as cochlear ear‑kiss injury / Reiter’s Ear Kiss Syndrome (REKS)
* It happens when someone kisses directly over the ear canal (the opening of the ear), especially using a strong suction/“air kiss.” and it can cause permanent hearing loss
* A woman whose retinas detached because she pushed so hard in labor
* Women whose bodies have become both temporarily and permanently deformed or uglified (swollen hands and feet, swollen legs, varicose veins, popped blood vessels in eyes, toe nails falling off, etc.)
There are basically four themes:
* Relatively unusual medical complications from pregnancy and lactation (like uterine prolapse, various forms of body horror)
* The expenses of labor and delivery
* Poop and pee horror
* Pretty common parenting, pregnancy, and postpartum stuff, e.g.:
* Fussy babies who are only calm when being bounced
* The rectus abdominus being separated
* Swelling
* Using a nosfrida to suck snot out of a baby’s nose
* Having strangers on the internet jump down your throat for really innocuous things, such as mentioning breastfeeding
* Kids making messes around the house (flooding, vandalism, etc.)
The Psychology of it All
Availability Heuristic
Creators like Abigail and Yuni make pregnancy and parenting look heuristic by making their hazards extremely visible and available, but it’s extremely easy to do the exact same thing Abigail does with other life choices, and that includes life choices
Known genres:
* Hiking (e.g., Mr. Ballen videos)
* Cosmetic surgery (e.g., Wonny)
* Buying homes (e.g., videos and tiktoks by home inspectors)
* Eating out at restaurants (e.g. dirty restaurant audits)
You can effectively develop an aversion to—even phobia of—pretty much anything by giving yourself sufficient exposure to its hazards.
This genre is a form of opt-in brainwashing, though it could also be a form of unintentional, algorithmic brainwashing.
Loss Aversion
Humans generally weigh potential losses about 1.5–2.5 times as strongly as equal-sized gains in typical risky choices, though the exact ratio and even the presence of loss aversion depend on context and measurement method (there’s a lot of research on this)
See:
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/prospect-theory
* https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/loss-aversion
* https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/loss-aversion/
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487024000485
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/prospect-theory
This means that people will be far more influenced by downsides of parenting than by upsides.
It’s worse than that, though, because creators like Abigail and Yuri can’t even wrap their heads around the rewards of parenting. Abigail’s most commonly cited argument is “kids are cute” whereas Yuri’s list includes:
* “Child?”
* “Tax return benefits”
* “Tiny everything”
* “You can’t get drafted while pregnant”
* “You can bribe them with candy”
* No you can’t
* “If you raise them right people praise you for it”
Overthinking & tokophobia
* Overthinking things is why mental health is plummeting
* Abigail fundamentally gets people to overthink pregnancy and childrearing
* Robert Sepulsky talks about how the system we’ve evolved to deal with stress wasn’t really designed for animals capable of metacognition, who can literally trigger that system by THINKING
Overthinking about pregnancy may be contributing to a rise in phobia about pregnancy (known as tokophobia).
A 2017 systematic review of 33 studies (≈854,000 pregnant women worldwide) estimated a pooled prevalence of tokophobia around 14%, with individual study estimates ranging from about 3.7% to 43%.
* The researches concluded that the prevalence of tokophobia “appears to have increased in recent years (2000 onwards)”, although they cautioned that this finding is complicated by changing definitions and heterogeneous methods.
More moderate but still clinically relevant “fear of childbirth” (not always labeled tokophobia) is common, with estimates in some European samples of about 5% with severe fear and over a third with high fear.
About Abigail
Her content creation journey
* Started in 2021
She’s very much a product of the urban monoculture
* Lives in downtown Los Angeles
Her standards for hardship are quite low:
* She says that getting an IUD was the most painful thing she has experienced.
* She hates cleaning up after cooking
She also does love caring little things:
* She says she would protect her cats, Bub and Willow, with her life
She has merch!
* $60 “divorce your republican husband” XL crewneck sweatshirt with a wolf on it (sold out)
* $50 “dump your republican boyfriend” M/L hunting camo crewneck sweatshirt (sold out)
* $68 “dump your republican boyfriend” XL green crewneck
* $58 “dump your republican boyfriend” XL pink hoodie
* $68 “dump your republican boyfriend” L green/blue crewneck sweatshirt
* $54 “dump your republican / story of my life” XL running-away-deer black crewneck sweatshirt
* $60 “dump your republican boyfriend” L cameo hoodie (sold out)
* $58 “dump your republican boyfriend” M navy zip-up
Wait why are most of these for larger people?
How do we feel about this?
What Abigail is doing is fine. She’s pretty clear in her content to not shame parents; she’s really empathetic toward parents (can’t say the same of many parents online!).
She’s also WAAAAY more ethical and polite than your typical content creator about the clips she uses: She told NBC: ““If I’m going to do a video about bodies in particular and show somebody’s body, I’m going to make sure that I have consent from that mother first — like if she posted a video and she made this acknowledgement like, ‘This is my body. It’s pretty crazy. The things that have happened in my body is pretty wild.’””
She also told NBC: “I have such a respect and a reverence and an admiration for the people who do choose to go through with this, because it is a huge choice,” Porter said. “I hope people will stop treating having children as an impulse decision that everyone does. I think that’s better for us and also for the children, because if every child that was ever born had parents that really, really wanted them, I think the world would be a better place.”
YES!!
People should only want kids because they have a strong reason to do so. In my ideal world, everyone should be able to watch one of Abigail’s long compilation videos and not feel doubts.
Abigail’s content is actually helpful in:
* Dissuading people from having kids for trivial reasons
* Helping actual parents head off medical issues.
* In one NBC article about Abigail and Yuri, they write “Biggers-Stewart, who is now pregnant with her second child, described the list videos as “a powerful tool for self-advocacy.””
* “I was totally shocked by all the things that could happen to you. And that’s even in today’s modern world, which is shocking with the amount of research and access that we have at our fingertips,” Biggers-Stewart said. “There’s so many different types of complications, and it can be really brutal on women. So I was like, this is empowering.”
* Helping actual parents head off other parenting foibles
* We had to learn the hard way to lock up the kitchen at night, restrict most foods to only certain parts of the house, permanently wear aprons, etc.
* Basically: When these things happen (the vandalism, the food messes, etc.) I see it as my fault, not the kids’ fault
* They’re prisoners in our home and when they’re young, they literally don’t know better; it’s up to us as parents to provide the equivalent of bumpers on the bowling alleys of their lives.
The primary concern isn’t with anti-kid content, but “worst-case scenario” content in general that can create algorithmic loops that create phobias.
What about friends/girlfriends who cite “the list” in conversations about having kids?
* Have a logical conversation.
* About actual risks
* About equivalent risks they take in their everyday life, through their hobbies, etc.
* Such as hiking, cosmetic surgery, eating out, etc.
* If they still are afraid of having kids, then they probably shouldn’t have kids
Appendix: Longer Sampling of Abigail’s Reasons to Not Have Kids
Pregnancy and birth: medical risks and trauma
* Severe post‑labor swelling of the vulva (“had balls between my legs”).
* Uterus flipping inside out and being placed in a bucket (uterine inversion).
* Severe tearing, including tears toward the anus and up toward the clitoris (“towards your bean”).
* Episiotomy (“they cut to make the hole bigger”) and still having to push afterward.
* Vaginal or uterine prolapse (“my vagina fell out” / holding her uterus in her hand; uterine prolapse needing to be pushed back in).
* Retained or traumatized bladder/urethra causing urinary retention (bladder “shut down,” pee‑hole swelling shut, catheter for days to weeks).
* Incarcerated uterus causing urinary obstruction and catheterization for two weeks.
* Post‑birth inability to pee without elaborate “Subway sandwich” pad/ice/witch hazel/foam setup after every bathroom trip.
* Pelvic floor damage: chronic incontinence, “never pee normally again,” needing to clench when sneezing, “neverending wipe,” stool control issues.
* Massive blood clots after birth (basketball‑sized clot, near hemorrhage, transfusions).
* Mastitis leading to sepsis and large clots; spouse literally sucking out infected milk and blood.
* C‑section horror stories: adhesions, two‑hour surgery with every organ manipulated, awake without “loopy drugs,” drunk surgeon in another case, multiple layers and instruments (forceps, “bladder blade”) instead of the simple cut most people imagine.
* Forceps deliveries (baby’s head clamped with metal instruments, higher risk of severe tears).
* Vacuum‑assisted birth with no epidural, tearing “to my ass.”
* Epidural issues: catheters left in the back, epidurals that can be “unplugged,” epidurals that fail entirely so pain is still extreme.
* Pain of cervical dilation (and IUD insertion used as a reference point), with emphasis that nobody explains this upfront.
* Cervix and uterus changes: permanent uterine enlargement, cervix dilation/effacement as unseen but excruciating changes.
* Eating or handling placentas (and the idea of placentophagy being sold as healthy) being viscerally repulsive.
Pregnancy complications and body changes
* Detached retinas / blindness from pushing too hard in labor; cases of permanent severe visual loss and disability.
* Pregnancy‑related eye trauma like subconjunctival hemorrhages (bloodshot eyes from pushing).
* Pregnancy‑related cancers (choriocarcinoma) that can arise after normal pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, or miscarriage.
* High blood pressure disorders like preeclampsia (including grotesque swelling and “squishy gel hairbrush” legs), with inadequate research and answers.
* Jaundiced newborns and the stress of their care (also used as a reminder of hidden complications).
* Lithopedion (“stone baby”): calcified ectopic pregnancies carried for decades, sometimes discovered in old age.
* Fetus‑in‑fetu / parasitic twins: one twin growing inside another’s body or skull; parasitic twin cases discovered in teens.
* Multiple uteruses (uterus didelphys), including rare cases of simultaneous pregnancies in both, and the associated risk of double pregnancy.
* Superfetation: getting pregnant again while already pregnant, leading to extra fetuses weeks apart.
* Extreme multiples: triplets, quintuplets, and even the documented nonuplets (nine babies), with unmanageable risk and burden.
* Uterus or placenta allergies and oddities (itchy uterus from amniotic fluid, mothers allergic to various pregnancy‑related substances).
* New allergies developing after pregnancy (to antibiotics, adhesives, metals, pine nuts, dogs, insects, etc.), including a friend “allergic to her legs.”
* Lactation‑related tumors and growths (pregnancy tumors / pyogenic granulomas on gums or elsewhere).
* Chromhidrosis (colored sweat), including pregnant people turning toilet seats blue.
* Extreme swelling of hands, feet, and noses; preeclampsia‑related edema; “pregnancy nose” growth and swelling.
* Brain changes: measurable shrinkage in regions related to social cognition, with “pregnancy brain” symptoms like memory issues, poor focus, and enduring structural changes detectable years later.
* Pregnancy rhinitis and sensory loss: severe congestion leading to loss of smell and taste; earlier pregnancy caused hearing loss; pregnancy stacking sensory deficits.
* Postpartum hair loss to the point of partial balding even more than a year after birth.
* Postpartum diastasis recti (ab separation) severe enough that a practitioner can press fingers between muscles and feel the aorta; associated back pain, constipation, and urine leakage.
* Decorvain’s tenosynovitis (“mommy’s wrist”): tendon swelling from repetitive lifting of babies, laundry, groceries, etc., potentially requiring splints or surgery and causing lasting hand/wrist disability.
* Loss of ability to burp (RCPD‑like symptoms) arising after pregnancies, sometimes reversing only after later pregnancies.
* Permanent changes in teeth and bones: baby “sucking the calcium” out, teeth rotting or falling out, multiple root canals, bone density changes.
* Toenails softening and falling off after birth, sometimes never growing back.
* New allergies or sensitivities to tattoos, metals, adhesives after pregnancy that complicate future medical care.
* Nasal, skin, or other pigment changes; white or lighter hair; other unexpected cosmetic shifts.
* Long‑term depression and anxiety, often in line with maternal family history; fear of passing down the same nervous system and mood disorders.
Breastfeeding and lactation horrors
* Babies causing nipple trauma, including nipples turning black/white (ischemia), “dead” nipple tissue.
* Babies literally sucking off part of a nipple; pieces ending up in the baby’s mouth and needing reattachment.
* Nipple puncture wounds from baby teeth, leaving permanent holes.
* Severe breastfeeding pain: clenching against anticipated pain at every latch, blood in milk, cracked nipples.
* Ongoing leakage from breasts in public, constant fear of spontaneous milk letdown.
* Milk “pregnancy tumors” in gums/teeth and pregnancy‑related gum growths while breastfeeding.
* Breast pumps and breastfeeding schedules requiring waking every 2–3 hours regardless of who is feeding, destroying sleep.
* Need to pump even when partner bottle‑feeds to maintain supply, so the birthing parent’s sleep is still fragmented.
Neonatal and baby health issues
* Babies born with teeth or extra teeth, including terrifying images of infant skulls full of stacked teeth.
* Infants born with “boobs” and lactation (hormonal breast tissue in newborns), requiring parents to express milk from babies’ chests.
* Newborn periods in baby girls, from maternal hormones, shocking parents who weren’t warned.
* Babies swallowing their own meconium at birth and suffering severe respiratory distress.
* Babies with no instinct to eat, crying for hours and needing forced feeding.
* Babies forgetting to breathe during overwhelming emotions; breath‑holding spells that terrify caregivers.
* Severe newborn jaundice requiring treatment and parental stress.
* NICU stays for weeks or months, with enormous financial and emotional cost.
Medical system and informed consent issues
* Hidden information: lack of comprehensive sex/family‑planning education about what birth and postpartum are actually like.
* Dismissive or negligent medical staff (e.g., nurse sending a woman home at 1 cm when she’s clearly in labor, then she delivers at home or en route).
* OBs scolding patients for coughing with pneumonia during C‑section and stuffing organs back in without care, leaving disfiguring scars.
* Drunk surgeon doing a C‑section on another patient and being fired later.
* Multiple, painful postpartum pelvic exams without pain relief while the mother is unable to hold the baby.
* Under‑researched conditions (e.g., rare lactation or vascular complications) with little scientific literature or explanation.
* Framing: society romanticizing pregnancy and parenthood, omitting trauma, leading to feelings of personal failure when reality is hard.
Financial burden
* Hospital birth bills in the tens of thousands to nearly $50,000 for a single uncomplicated birth before insurance.
* NICU bills for triplets without insurance running into hundreds of thousands per baby.
* Charges such as $36,000 for the first 24 hours of life, $4,000 for skin‑to‑skin contact, $17,000 for a one‑day hospital room.
* Ongoing annual childcare costs around $20,000 per child, adding up to $100,000–120,000 for ages 0–5.
* Estimates of $237,000+ to raise a child to 18 (excluding college), plus another roughly $100,000 for college.
* Formula costs of $38–50 per can that lasts only a few days, making infant feeding extremely expensive.
* One mom’s yearly cost for three kids around $47,000.
* Kids spending hundreds on in‑app purchases like Roblox Robux without permission.
* Home destruction costs: multiple replacement TVs, remotes, front door handles, wall repair, and warped floors from leaks.
Lifestyle costs: time, freedom, and autonomy
* Loss of free time and personal days off (e.g., Sundays now consumed with children’s activities instead of sleeping in and seeing friends).
* Constant need to “fill the days” with activities for kids; no spontaneous rest or leisure.
* Child‑free lifestyle benefits: travel, expensive city living, pampering oneself, double income no kids (DINK) life.
* Inability to travel light: car seats, diaper bags, etc., turning flights into logistics nightmares.
* Need to manage diapers, feeding schedules, and baby entertainment on planes, plus anxiety about disturbing others.
* Never being off‑duty, including caring for children while sick yourself.
* Introverts and easily overstimulated people losing the quiet, solitary recovery time they rely on.
* Having to cook three meals plus snacks daily, often separate bland food for kids, destroying the joy of cooking or eating spicy food.
* Having to attend endless kids’ appointments and activities on top of work.
* Permanent vigilance: always monitoring kids’ safety, bodily functions, and behaviors.
Psychological and relationship impacts
* Postnatal depression, psychosis, and long‑term mental health crises leading some parents to vow never to repeat pregnancy.
* Pregnancy hormones causing intense, often irrational hatred or intolerance toward partners (“I hated my husband while I was pregnant”).
* Strain on relationships: changed dynamics with partners, loss of sense of self, resentment.
* Overstimulation from hearing “Mom” hundreds of times per day (e.g., 234 “Mom”s in 13 hours, ~85,000 per year).
* Guilt and shame from not living up to romanticized ideals of motherhood.
* People‑pleasing parents being unable to cope with public tantrums, plane screams, or feeling like they are “ruining” others’ experiences.
* Loss of identity, body image issues, and grief over the pre‑baby self and lifestyle.
Children’s bodily fluids and hygiene issues
* Endless poop incidents: blowouts before weddings, on floors, in pools, on parents’ clothes, on hospital staff.
* Toddlers wiping feces down every stair or making “art” on walls with urine or feces.
* Dogs eating children’s feces from the yard or house.
* Kids peeing in conditioners, dog bowls, carpets, dishwashers, and elsewhere, contaminating everyday objects.
* Persistent smells: rancid pee in vents, years‑long odor issues preventing home resale.
* Vomit parties: children intentionally drinking water to induce vomiting throughout the house.
* Chronic vomiting and diarrhea episodes parents must clean while sleep‑deprived.
Household destruction and mess
* Children destroying multiple TVs, remotes, and door hardware within a year.
* Kids hammering holes in walls, pulling off door handles, eating drywall, and requiring constant repainting and patching.
* Paint disasters: kids smearing house paint over furniture, floors, and even entire condos; black paint on everything.
* Flour, eggs, baby powder, and other cooking ingredients dumped all over carpets and floors, turning into intractable sludge.
* Baby powder explosions requiring strong vacuums and toothbrushes to clean.
* Stickers covering TVs, leaving permanent sticky residue that collects dirt.
* Syrup “cup holders” carved into couches; couch destruction.
* Flooded houses from kids playing with sinks or fridges; warped floors, broken ice makers.
* Kids eating walls and needing corner protectors to stop them from biting again.
* Constant car‑seat filth: crumbs, poop, and stains that never fully clean out.
Physical danger from kids’ behavior
* Toddlers head‑butting parents and causing concussions, black eyes, migraines, and memory loss.
* Kids biting adults hard enough to cause infections requiring antibiotics; “second most dangerous bite.”
* Human bites leading to non‑healing wounds and risk of limb loss.
* Babies scratching mothers’ insides during birth with fully grown fingernails, causing internal stitches.
* Kids pulling fridge water/ice dispensers nonstop, causing water damage and hazards.
* Children nearly drowning caregivers (roughhousing in pools) without understanding the danger.
* Kids dropping heavy objects, throwing iPads into ponds, or otherwise causing injuries and expensive losses.
* Baby skulls full of developing teeth, plus parents needing to forcibly remove loose teeth in painful ways.
Sleep deprivation and constant noise
* Night terrors: toddlers screaming with eyes open for hours while asleep, terrifying parents.
* Colicky babies crying for hours despite parents’ efforts; parents “just surviving.”
* Babies needing to be bounced on exercise balls for hours every night.
* Children constantly yelling “Mommy” or screaming; continuous audio overstimulation.
* Sleep deprivation from feeding schedules, night wakings, and frequent illnesses.
* Parents unable to shower or change clothes for days; living in the same clothes while caring for infants.
Social, cultural, and structural reasons
* Unaffordable, inaccessible childcare systems; poor parental leave; lack of social support for parents, especially in the U.S.
* Pressure from family (e.g., religious households, Thanksgiving interrogations) to marry and have kids despite personal ambivalence.
* Romanticization of pregnancy and motherhood in media, hiding risks and hardships.
* Unsolicited advice and criticism directed at both child‑free people and parents (“you’ll change your mind,” breastfeeding debates, etc.).
* Fear of being responsible for a screaming child on a plane and being judged by strangers.
* Concern about passing on generational trauma, mental illness, or unhealthy patterns.
Personal lifestyle and preference reasons
* Love of travel, concerts, gaming, hobbies (miniatures, comics, snakes, bones) that would be curtailed by kids.
* Desire to keep a home wired with cables, gamer setups, and fragile collectibles without child‑proofing or sticky fingers.
* Disinterest in revisiting schoolwork and homework via children.
* Sensory issues and low tolerance for crying or touch, incompatible with early parenting demands.
* Preference for quiet, orderly homes and uncluttered floors.
* Desire to remain lazy, spontaneous, and self‑oriented without 24/7 caregiving work.
* Desire to be “rich auntie” rather than parent; using resources for self, travel, or pets.
* Fear of losing sexual freedom, nudity at home, or other adult lifestyle choices.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, everyone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, Simone has kept whatever this topic is going to be a secret from me all day because she wanted to see my reaction for, like, a day and a half at this point.
[00:00:10] So what is it, Simone? What, what is it that you wanted to go over?
[00:00:15] Simone Collins: What if I told you that there is, there’s a system for convincing women to not have children that men don’t know about because they don’t consume girly content, and it’s just floating around on the internet becoming quite influential and pervasive, changing people’s lives.
[00:00:34] And- I,
[00:00:34] Malcolm Collins: it sounds like the usual bad guys up to their usual stuff, but why don’t I know about this? Do I not know about this? Do you know about
[00:00:41] Simone Collins: the girl with the list?
[00:00:44] Malcolm Collins: I have never heard about the girl with the list.
[00:00:46] Simone Collins: She’s like Batman. She’s summoned. So there are two types of videos on which you might look to the comments and you’ll see, “Where’s the girl with the list?”
[00:00:55] And she gets summoned. She will show up or be summoned on super cute videos of babies or toddlers, or on things going- What? ... absolutely horrible with pregnancy, with delivery, with breastfeeding, with raising toddlers. Because what the girl with the list does is provide you with a virtual form of birth control by taking any cute video you see and just reminding you how horrible it is to be pregnant, to have kids, and to become a k- a parent.
[00:01:25] So- Wait,
[00:01:25] Malcolm Collins: really? Is she a mom? For
[00:01:27] Simone Collins: real. What’s her
[00:01:27] Malcolm Collins: backstory?
[00:01:28] Simone Collins: She’s n- no, yeah, yeah. I, I will tell you. There are actually, Malcolm, there are actually two girls with a list. One calls herself the OG girl with a list, but she has just, just completely disappeared from the internet. And then the second is who I’ll mostly focus on today.
[00:01:43] She’s named Abigail Porter. She goes by Zoomie. Okay. She has 1.6 million followers on TikTok, and she’s famous for curing baby fever by creating abundant shorts on pregnancy and delivery and body horror related to it, basically. A plus frustrating experiences that parents have while they attempt to raise kids.
[00:02:03] And even I not being particularly interested in cute baby photos or b- pregnancy body horror, ‘cause I live it I have just this week heard of her twice. I- in just my random girly content that I follow on Instagram
[00:02:19] Malcolm Collins: You ... Wait, so you just have randomly seen it. Can you describe the
[00:02:22] Simone Collins: instances?
[00:02:22] Yeah. Like, in the, the most recent video I, where I was like, “Okay, I’ve gotta do an episode on this,” just this week I was watching a video where a woman is, just said, “She changed my life. I literally owe her everything,” she said. And this was in a video about, let’s see, what was the video about? I’m linking to all this in my show notes.
[00:02:39] It was called about The Real Dangers of Trad Wife, Trad Wife Content, Nine Kids and Counting. I mean, you know, I see this stuff and I’m like, “I have to click on it.” Mm-hmm. I have to know why apparently it’s so bad to be, to be a mother. So yeah- ... I, she literally changed my life. Okay, like, I needed to find out who this was.
[00:02:57] And also, I’ve heard, there are lots of people in the Base Camp network who are dating young men, who would like to find a wife, who would like to have kids, and I’m hearing more and more from young men that, like, the, the, the women they are dating are like, “Well, I, I never wanna become a parent. Like, I don’t, I don’t wanna be a parent.”
[00:03:13] Malcolm Collins: I know. Yeah. Well, the, the psyop, you, you’ve got to groom your wife. Liefleit said it best. Actually, I think we said that first, and then she copied it from us, but I like that she, she’s boarding
[00:03:22] Simone Collins: that point. Maybe. I don’t, I don’t care who said it first. Look, you gotta do it.
[00:03:25]
[00:03:34] Simone Collins: And, and that’s, we’re gonna talk about this at the end, basically how to deal with this.
[00:03:37] But I, if, to first address the problem, be you a woman who is being subject to this, for lack of a better word, propaganda,
[00:03:46] Malcolm Collins: Brainwashing ...
[00:03:46] Simone Collins: brainwashing. Or if you’re a young man who’s met an amazing young woman who you think would actually enjoy being a parent, but who’s terrified of it because of this content, we, we need to-
[00:03:58] Malcolm Collins: Wait, so to [00:04:00] clarify, this woman felt that she had had, like, her life saved by the girl with the list?
[00:04:06] Simone Collins: Yes. So the, the YouTuber that I’m talking about I think probably b- ga- based on the fact that she said, “I literally owe her everything,” i- in my show notes, I’ll send them to you I link to the exact clip where she says this, it, it very much insinuates that she plans on not having kids because of Abigail Porter’s content.
[00:04:24] But, okay, just to be clear, so the, sort of background. The first person to do this was this other TikTok creator called Uni. And then eventually, this, this creator created a list, also linked, too, called U- Uni’s Pros and Cons of Having Children. And it has, like, 200 and something cons, and then like, 30 pros or something, and the pros aren’t even, like- That good?
[00:04:48] things that... Yeah, like, what do you even... No, that’s not, that’s not why we have kids. And, and so let’s just dive right into it. We
[00:04:55] Malcolm Collins: will replace you. That’s our goal. Come on, that’s, that’s what this is all about, winning- Yeah ... the civilizational game. Basically- And they, they don’t get that. They never would get that.
[00:05:02] But, yeah, okay, c- continue.
[00:05:04] Simone Collins: Yeah. I’ve, I’ve watched over four hours of compilations of-
[00:05:09] Malcolm Collins: Over four hours- Yes ... you... Simone.
[00:05:12] Simone Collins: Of Abigail Porter’s content.
[00:05:14] I’ve gone, I mean, she created on YouTube this compilation of a certain number of years’ worth of her content. I’ve, I’ve gone from watching her having a short pixie cut to a shaved head to hair down to here.
[00:05:27] Like, it’s, she’s been doing this for a long time. I think you’d actually find her very attractive. She’s very much your type. Oh, gosh ...
[00:05:34] Malcolm Collins: and
[00:05:34] Simone Collins: she’s a ginge. She’s very beautiful, so that, that helps. And she... They’re great. I mean, it, a lot of it’s humor. A lot of it’s like America’s Hu- Funniest Home Videos, ‘cause I mean, she’s, she’s being tagged on viral content, and her job basically is to, like, open her phone every mor- I mean, this isn’t obviously her only work, but what she’ll do is probably, presumably, open her phone every morning, see where she’s tagged on TikTok, and then take those clips and make her own little commentary on them and publish them out to her crowd, and then her, her followers.
[00:06:00] So her- She’s actually- Wait, her
[00:06:01] Malcolm Collins: name is Abigail Porter, you said?
[00:06:04] Simone Collins: But she goes by Zumi. Yeah.
[00:06:06] Malcolm Collins: Okay. I’ll, I’ll look her up to see if I agree with your assessment.
[00:06:09] Simone Collins: Y- no, you’ll find her so cute.
[00:06:10] This is her recent Los Angeles profile. So this is what she looks like today with longer hair.
[00:06:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she’s cute. She’s my type, for sure.
[00:06:17] Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:06:18] Malcolm Collins: I mean- ... she looks too old now. I, I wouldn’t date her like- She’s-
[00:06:21] in real life
[00:06:22] Simone Collins: with what she looks like today ... she looks very young. Oh, get over yourself, Malcolm. Anyway I think she’s very pretty. But also that doesn’t really matter. And she has a boyfriend and they’re very happy. They’re very happy dinks. But let’s go to
[00:06:31] Malcolm Collins: your- Oh my God, her Substack profile, Reproductive Rights Advocate Reminding You To Take Your Birth Control.
[00:06:36] That’s what she does. Also known as the girl with a list. Okay, continue.
[00:06:38] Simone Collins: The girl with a list. So in terms of how the content that she, she presents that will dissuade young women old women, a- any woman from- Yeah ... from wanting to have babies is, is sort of, I’ll, I’ll start with some highlights.
[00:06:52] Let’s start with s- some highlights, okay? ‘Cause, and these are, like, original clips. She, these are women who’ve gone through this. They’re, this is actual firsthand video footage. This isn’t stuff that’s made up, ‘cause you can literally see it. There’s one where a, a woman, a woman’s insides needed stitches after her baby scratched her from the inside on the way out, ‘cause it had its fingernails grew in, and they do that.
[00:07:11] A woman whose baby began to choke on her nipple, and then it just literally fell off because it was so infected at that point from mastitis and other issues. A woman who grew a tumor on her lip the size of her pinky while she was pregnant, because one of the things that can happen when you’re pregnant is to grow benign tunors, tumors.
[00:07:26] Uh-huh. A woman who, Oh, well, of course, l- women who’ve lost their hair, their teeth, all their eyelashes. A woman who developed a mutation during pregnancy that made her insensitive to pain meds who had to endure a C-section with no medication. She just eventually passed out from the, from the pain. There’s a woman who went deaf after her kid kissed her on the ear causing what’s called the kiss of death.
[00:07:48] And I had to look this up. This is actually a thing. It’s, it’s a cochlear ear kiss injury also known as Reader’s Ear Kiss Syndrome, REKS. Yeah. So, like, don’t let your... We need to, like, not let the kids close to our ears [00:08:00] anymore. There’s a woman whose retina’s detached because she was pushing so hard in labor.
[00:08:03] Women whose bodies have become both temporarily and permanently deformed or uglified. We’re talking swollen hands and feet, s- legs, ver- varicose veins That this is a
[00:08:11] Malcolm Collins: worth it for a human life. Anybody
[00:08:14] Simone Collins: would take these injuries- Popped blood vessels in the eyes ... for their child. I had the popped blood vessels in the eyes.
[00:08:18] Remember that time where I had the blood vessels on the podcast? Oh, yeah, you did. I
[00:08:20] Malcolm Collins: seem to think that was
[00:08:20] Simone Collins: maybe... I know, yeah, and the varicose veins, that’s real.
[00:08:22] Malcolm Collins: But every woman has tough pregnancies from what I hear these days. You know, almost... th- I, I occasionally hear of really easy ones, but generally speaking, pregnancies are hard today.
[00:08:31] And you know,
[00:08:32] Simone Collins: it’s expected to be hard. Today? I think pregnancies have always had their things. Yeah,
[00:08:35] Malcolm Collins: they used to be a lot harder. Did you know that on average, women lost one tooth per pregnancy?
[00:08:39] Simone Collins: I, I think that’s apocryphal.
[00:08:41] Speaker: So I decided to research to see if this is, , an apocryphal old wives’ tale. , First of all, this is way more common a historic story than I thought. , There are proverbs that mean something like, “Gain a child, lose a tooth,” in Danish, in German, in Scandinavian, in Russian, and in Japanese. , And there have been, , studies on this to see if this is accurate.
[00:09:07] , There was a landmark 1998 study in The Lancet. There was a large U.S. study by researcher Stephen Russell. , There was , a twin study on this. , And basically what everything found is that it is kind of in-- right. It’s basically right. , It’s not exactly one child, one tooth, , but it’s more children, fewer teeth.
[00:09:28] , And the reason for this is, , pregnancy hormones make gums much more reactive to plaque. This causes pr-pregnancy gingivitis in a large percentage of women, often cited as thirty to seventy-five percent or higher. , And repeated episodes of gingivitis across multiple pregnancies can lead to, , deeper infections which lead to the losing of teeth.
[00:09:50] , But w-w-- I had no idea. Th-this is wild
[00:09:53] Simone Collins: But ye- yeah, I mean, you know, if you’re, if you’re
[00:09:56] Malcolm Collins: already- You’re the one who told me.
[00:09:57] Simone Collins: No, I didn’t. I never said that. I think that was someone else. Yeah, you
[00:09:59] Malcolm Collins: did.
[00:09:59] Simone Collins: I think you came home from Natal Con with that but I’m, I’m not sure. But anyway, the... in her content, there are basically four themes. There’s relatively unusual medical conditions from pregnancy and lactation, like uterine prolapse, and apparently when that happens, by the way, you know what you’re supposed to do to fix it?
[00:10:15] Malcolm Collins: What?
[00:10:16] Simone Collins: Shove it back in. You’re supposed to, you’re supposed to just push it back in.
[00:10:20] Malcolm Collins: Okay.
[00:10:21] Simone Collins: Which, I mean, it makes sense. But it seems very uncomfortable. So that, there’s that. And, you know, there are various forms of body horror. Then also just the expenses of labor and delivery, you know, just how ridiculous it is.
[00:10:31] And when people go through their itemized bills, that’s an easy thing to go viral on TikTok.
[00:10:35] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a more, yeah. But with a lot of this stuff, it’s like, “This is why you shouldn’t drive,” and it’s just a bunch of pictures of people who got killed in car accidents. And it’s like-
[00:10:42] Simone Collins: Yeah, no, one...
[00:10:43] And I’m gonna talk about that, yeah. There’s also poop and pee humor, or, well, and horror, of course. And then super common, like, parenting, pregnancy, and postpartum stuff, like fussy babies who are only calm when they’re bounced, or the rectus abdominis being separated in pregnancy, or swelling, or using an Otriede to suck snot out of a baby’s nose.
[00:11:03] Like, that’s terrifying or something. Or-
[00:11:05] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s something that we have to do with a lot of our kids.
[00:11:08] Simone Collins: Yeah, like every parent has an Otriede. Like, would you rather have your baby screaming in pain, or y- like, suck out the snot with a tube? There’s a filter. There’s a filter. Or having strangers on the internet jump down your throat just ‘cause you mentioned the word breastfeeding in a post online, or kids making messes around the h- the house and, like, we’re talking the flooding, the vandalism.
[00:11:27] A lot of the stuff that she posts that’s, like, kids ruining houses or making big messes is all stuff, honestly, that’s the parents’ fault. Like, you have to learn the hard way to, like, childproof your home, and all of these are, they’re results of not proper childproofing. So a lot of this is actually kind of helpful content, ‘cause it’s like, “Oh, this is something to head off.”
[00:11:46] But the reason why this is damaging and not just funny or informative is that- There’s, there, like, it just goes for, like, the, the most common psychological trips your, and tr- sorry, tricks that, that will get you. You know, there’s [00:12:00] one, like, availability heuristic that Yuri and Abigail with these lists are, are making the hazards of parenting and pregnancy look extremely visible and available in people’s minds.
[00:12:12] They’re just, like, super top of mind. And it’s, it, it’s gonna make people only think about the negative. Whereas it’s extremely easy to do exactly the same thing Abigail does with other life choices. And that includes especially life choices of people who choose not to have kids. Like, I think you and I have, we follow this, this, basically the equivalent of this genre with hiking- Mm-hmm
[00:12:33] and going outdoors with, like, Mr. Ball and- Oh my God,
[00:12:35] Malcolm Collins: yes. Mr. Ball and, and everything like that. Exactly. I genuinely think every time I go to the woods, everyone’s gonna disappear.
[00:12:39] Simone Collins: I know. I know. But
[00:12:41] Malcolm Collins: like- 411, Lore Lodge. Exactly. It’s, like, one of my core categories of content.
[00:12:45] Simone Collins: Yeah, so, like, Abigail and Yuri, the girls with the lists, they are that, but for, for pregnancy.
[00:12:51] So yeah, and there’s also cosmetic surgery. I, that’s another version of this genre that I love. Like, Wani is a creator whose, whose content I love on this front, ‘cause he specifically covers plastic surgery that goes super wrong in China. Mm ... there’s buying homes. I don’t know if you know, there’s this whole genre of home inspectors uploading their videos.
[00:13:09] And they’ll just go through new constructed houses, or just any house, and be like, “Oh, look, this is broken. Oh, like, toilet’s not hanged right.”
[00:13:15] Malcolm Collins: Well, actually, you have got me into something interesting here. I would assume, like, just hearing a lot of this to begin with, is that this is a lot of women who have secretly kind of want babies.
[00:13:25] They secretly know that their lives will be incomplete without
[00:13:28] Simone Collins: them. Well, the point is they ac- no, they have baby fever. The, the
[00:13:31] Malcolm Collins: point is- And they, they want to find some way to suppress it or make their terrible life decisions feel justified,
[00:13:40] Simone Collins: or- No, no, no. That, that is not, that is not a what if. That is a literally that’s what’s happening.
[00:13:43] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. Well, you, you, you, you say
[00:13:46] Simone Collins: that, right? Her videos often go... Like, here’s the format she uses, ‘cause again, I’ve watched over four hours of these is cute baby, cute baby video that went viral on TikTok, and then her being like, “Nuh-uh-uh, Zumi here to provide you with your online birth control to stop you or cure your baby fever.”
[00:14:00] And like, that’s the whole thing. But- And then she goes into the horror story ...
[00:14:02] Malcolm Collins: the, the point I’m making is- Okay ... I could have that impression, and, and it, it is what I would jump to.
[00:14:09] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:14:10] Malcolm Collins: But I consume a very similar form of content, and I clearly don’t consume it for that reason. Mm-hmm. I do not consume Mr.
[00:14:20] Ballen because I secretly want to jump out of airplanes or-
[00:14:24] Simone Collins: Oh, ‘cause you, you crave the... You wanna go backpacking along the
[00:14:28] Malcolm Collins: Appalachian Trail. Or become a caver. There, there’s actually... B- because the caving videos are, like, one of my videos that, that I watch a lot of. If
[00:14:35] Simone Collins: any of you cave, what? Stop. Stop.
[00:14:38] Malcolm Collins: I have never in my entire life seen a tiny hole and felt an urge to shove myself as deep as I can in the tiny hole.
[00:14:48] There
[00:14:49] Simone Collins: is a- Do you think it’s a fetish, actually? Wait, hold on. When you put it that way.
[00:14:52] Malcolm Collins: I c- is it a fetish? Is caving a fetish? I, like, can’t imagine a real human emotion that would lead you to want to do that.
[00:14:59] Simone Collins: Well, no. But, like... So I, I... Y- you can also look at those those vacuum bags that people use for sexy times.
[00:15:05] And I’m like, okay, well, I can’t imagine myself doing that. I, I just now that you put it that way, I’m like, “Oh.” That could be it. Anyway, keep going. ‘Cause also they’re wet a lot of... Oh, no. Sorry,
[00:15:16] Malcolm Collins: Oh, and the horrible ways you die when caving.
[00:15:18] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:15:18] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yep ... and this is the thing. It’s not that I don’t like caves.
[00:15:20] Like, I’ve been spelunking to, like, big, nice mapped caves to see a different environment. I have found- Yeah ... that to be a very pleasant and fun experience. Have you,
[00:15:29] Simone Collins: have you scuba, have you scuba’d in caves?
[00:15:31] Malcolm Collins: I have, I have cave di- d- dived, done cave dives before. You have dived. Which is a very dangerous form of diving.
[00:15:37] But-
[00:15:37] Simone Collins: That is super dangerous diving ... we, I- Oh my God, I remember, like, snorkeling in the cenotes in the Yucatan and watching, like, I remember watching one guy go down with two extra tanks, and then I was there for, like, two or three hours and he didn’t come out, and I’m like, “Sir.”
[00:15:55] Malcolm Collins: But when I have been cave diving, when I have been [00:16:00] spelunking, when people die in these things, at least the videos that I watch, it’s always, “And then they saw a two-foot hole and shoved themselves in it.”
[00:16:09] Yeah,
[00:16:09] Simone Collins: it’s
[00:16:09] Malcolm Collins: like- Like a fricking pelican or some- what, what’s the bird that sticks his head in the sand? Flamingo.
[00:16:14] An
[00:16:14] Simone Collins: ostrich?
[00:16:15] Speaker 2: A man was exploring the Nutty Putty Cave in 2009, and he wanted to go through one of the tightest stretches called the Birth Canal.
[00:16:24] Simone Collins: I don’t actually think ostriches- Ostrich,
[00:16:25] Malcolm Collins: yeah ...
[00:16:26] Simone Collins: they’re, they apocryphy, apoc- apocryphally do that. They don’t actually do that, I think.
[00:16:30] This time Sona is right. , And crazily, this apocryphal story goes back to Pliny the Elder
[00:16:36] Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s not an apocryphy that idiots in Utah do this all the time.
[00:16:41] ... There’s nothing interesting you’re going to see in this little hole. You ding idiot.
[00:16:46] Simone Collins: It’s dark. It’s gonna look dark, and there will be darkness.
[00:16:50] Malcolm Collins: Oh. You’re not gonna find some what... Like, get your f*****g head out. But the thing is- ... is I have to ask myself, how many of the women watching this are trying to suppress the instinct, trying to cure FOMO?
[00:17:03] How many of the women who are watching this are like me? And, and then there’s the other category- Schadenfreude.
[00:17:09] Simone Collins: I think there, there’s a lot of schadenfreude for, like, DINK couples. You, you will enjoy your DINK lifestyle even if you never want kids even more if you’re just watching
[00:17:19] Malcolm Collins: people who chose- Yeah, but I have another type of schadenfreude that I watch videos all the time for, which could be another desire for this.
[00:17:25] It could be cucking-
[00:17:25] Simone Collins: Okay. Okay ...
[00:17:26] Malcolm Collins: you here.
[00:17:27] Simone Collins: Go on
[00:17:27] Malcolm Collins: I love watching incredibly misogynistic red pill content about- ... terrible experiences men have had dating and being married. You know, like MGTOW content and stuff like that. Like that- Okay ... Sandman on it, like, I’ve watched his videos, you know, pushing, like, MGTOW lifestyles and stuff.
[00:17:42] He’s not even that bad. Oh,
[00:17:43] Simone Collins: but Sandman’s awesome. No, don’t come for Sandman.
[00:17:45] Malcolm Collins: But there’s other, there’s a whole category, and we, we actually utilize it in our title cards, where it is sad woman who made a mistake. But this- Are
[00:17:53] Simone Collins: we doing that for this? No, I, I think I should just use a normal picture of Abigail ‘
[00:17:57] Malcolm Collins: cause she’s pretty.
[00:17:58] This category of video I watch not to, like, give myself like, n- a lack of FOMO around dating, but because I like to hear how much better I did in the dating market than all of these people- Uh-huh ... and about their terrible lives compared to just finding a good woman and treating her well, right? Like, you, you, you hear the stories, you hear I mean, it’s as obvious between the lines as it is when you have one of those women out there screeching about why the fifth guy didn’t like them just because X, Y, and Z, totally insane things.
[00:18:30] And on a lot of these, you know,
[00:18:32] Simone Collins: in- Oh, have you heard the new thing on X that’s trending is hiplets? Have you heard about the hiplet controversy?
[00:18:37] Malcolm Collins: What, what is this?
[00:18:39] Simone Collins: I guess some women’s hips kind of divot inward above- Okay ... the hip bone. And some men are like, “I don’t, I’m just not into that.
[00:18:46] Like, I don’t wanna date women with hiplets.” And women are like, “How dare you? I can’t control my morphology.
[00:18:52] That’s how I’m born.” And men are like, “Oh, really? ‘Cause you didn’t have that reaction when I was under six feet and you wouldn’t talk to me.” So there’s a lot of smugness going on online. But yeah, that’s also a thing.
[00:19:03] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, weird. Weird. Hiplet. Do I find it attr- unattractive? I, I can’t even imagine what they’re talking about. Hold on. Let me think. D- I’ll, I’ll make a judgment on hiplet. Just Google hiplet. Yeah. Or hip
[00:19:10] Simone Collins: divot. I’m just sending you an X post.
[00:19:12] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you gotta send me an X post. This is not, it’s not coming through, so.
[00:19:15] Simone Collins: It’s, it’s, it’s obscure enough where... But anyway, this is one of the... It’s been trending on X, like, all weekend. It’s on WhatsApp.
[00:19:21] Malcolm Collins: Ew.
[00:19:22] Simone Collins: Oh, wow. So that was a reaction
[00:19:25] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that is not good-looking.
[00:19:28] Simone Collins: Okay. I see- ... where you stand on this.
[00:19:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you, you definitely don’t have those, I’ll tell you that.
[00:19:35] Simone Collins: No, I don’t. I don’t. Where, w- wow. Okay. I like your theory, though. I, I think that there’s the, I think her content does really well because it does fit a bunch of different interests, right?
[00:19:47] There’s the shodan fraud, there’s the smug my life is so good feeling. There’s the I really want a baby, no, I, I don’t want a baby ‘cause I’m an independent woman who’s never gonna have a baby, or I can’t have a baby ‘cause I can’t find a [00:20:00] good guy. So this, all of this, all of this can be satisfied by Girl With a List posts.
[00:20:05] And it, and we have all these other genres that make us very happy with our lives. I love to watch the hiking videos. I love to watch the cosmetic surgery gone wrong videos. I love to watch the buying home gone wrong videos. There’s also people who do, like, eating out at restaurants, like all the stuff that’s going on behind the scenes you don’t wanna know about.
[00:20:23] And so you can- Oh, God. Disgusting ... you can effectively, yeah. Are
[00:20:25] Malcolm Collins: you glad we don’t eat out?
[00:20:26] Simone Collins: Very, actually. The, you, you can basically, though, my point being, you, you can develop an aversion to, or even a phobia of pretty much anything by giving yourself to sufficient exposure to its hazards, just because it becomes so, so available in, in your, your brain.
[00:20:44] And this genre can be a form of opt-in brainwashing. Though, in a worse case scenario, they could be a form of unintentional algorithmically led brainwashing. Mm. And especially given the way that TikTok works, th- they, you, you get into it, you comment on this positively at one point, and you end up getting in this engagement loop with this kind of content and just seeing more and more of it, even if you didn’t necessarily want to brainwash yourself into being afraid of having a baby.
[00:21:14] Then there’s also
[00:21:15] Malcolm Collins: just- Well, yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t w- mean to become brainwashed of going into American national parks. But you watch enough, you know, Lore Lodge, 411, Mr. Ballen- ... and you’re just like and I’ve had panic moments because of that. Like, when we’re playing with our kids in the woods and one of them- Yeah
[00:21:30] decides he’s gonna go home without- Yeah ... telling me.
[00:21:33] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:21:33] Malcolm Collins: And I’m running around screaming because-
[00:21:36] Simone Collins: Because that’s always, always with the kid ones. It’s like, well, the kid was just with us one moment, we’re all walking down the trail, and then the next moment they’re gone and we never heard from them again.
[00:21:43] Yeah. Like, that’s always the way it goes. The kid was right there. The kid was right there. Then they, they put up this massive search party. I don’t, if Mr. Ballen got a dollar for every time he said this massive search party, he’d be, he’d be a millionaire.
[00:21:58] Malcolm Collins: I haven’t watched much Mr. Ballen in a couple years, to be honest.
[00:22:01] Simone Collins: I had to stop watching his content because I came across one video where a baby got hurt and, you know, I can’t handle it.
[00:22:07] Malcolm Collins: Oh. Well, I, I think he sort of ran out of good mysteries, though, I’m gonna be honest.
[00:22:10] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was like, it got, it got to, like, very,
[00:22:12] Malcolm Collins: There’s always-
[00:22:13] Simone Collins: He was, he had to start digging into crime reporting, and that’s where it just gets really depressing, instead of like, ooh, what happened in the- Ah, National Park aliens and
[00:22:20] Malcolm Collins: Bigfoot
[00:22:20] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:22:20] Like if
[00:22:20] Malcolm Collins: you, if you ever have your mystery phase where you like crime mysteries, what you’ll realize is you’ll kind of go through all the good ones in about a year and a half. And there’s only- I,
[00:22:31] Simone Collins: it’s a way... We had a great run, Malcolm. It was, it was beautiful. I remember-
[00:22:34] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then it’s just like- All the trips that the, the stressful trips
[00:22:36] rehashing or minor updates or new, new theories, and at that point. It’s the same with good conspiracy theories. There’s only so many, and then you
[00:22:43] Simone Collins: run out it, it, everything with this genre. Plastic surgery that’s botched. All, all of the snark, all of the fundie snark, we went through that so fast.
[00:22:50] There’s onl- only so many very public fundie families that people can make fun of. Oh-
[00:22:55] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...
[00:22:55] Simone Collins: Harry and Meghan snark. I follow most of the major channels. I just, in, I...
[00:23:00] Malcolm Collins: I,
[00:23:00] Simone Collins: I was so into- They can only do so many bad things, you know? ... Warhammer
[00:23:02] Malcolm Collins: lore for a while.
[00:23:03] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah,
[00:23:04] Malcolm Collins: yeah. And then I just knew all the Warhammer lore-
[00:23:06] and there was nothing more to learn
[00:23:09] Simone Collins: Ah, so you just started developing your own religion that’s very Warhammer inspired. Oh, what are we gonna name one of our kids Mechanicus? Oh, you were thinking Crypteia Mechanicus.
[00:23:17] Malcolm Collins: Crypteia Mechanicus, our, our next daughter, yeah.
[00:23:22] Simone Collins: Okay. All right. Anyway.
[00:23:24] Malcolm Collins: It’s
[00:23:24] Simone Collins: a beautiful
[00:23:24] Malcolm Collins: name- Let’s get on
[00:23:25] Simone. It’s a beautiful name.
[00:23:27] Simone Collins: Beautiful name, beautiful name. I, w- I wanna get back to the point of the, so there’s one, availability heuristic. There’s also loss aversion, and it’s just important to remind you that, you don’t need to be reminded, but people listening may not be aware that humans are generally way more concerned about losses than gains.
[00:23:46] They, they generally weigh potential losses about 1.5 to 2.5 times as much as equally sized gains. So like The, all this stuff isn’t just like, “Oh, okay, well I’m gonna knock [00:24:00] down my interest in pregnancy by one.” No, it’s gonna be by two, even though, you know, other things will only... The, the viral kid video that’s so cute is only gonna knock up your interest one.
[00:24:10] So, Abigail is more than canceling out any baby fever that she sparks or that is sparked by the viral baby videos that she’s sent when, in where people summon her. Wait, wait,
[00:24:20] Malcolm Collins: does she really? Is this, like, true or...?
[00:24:22] Simone Collins: Well, I’m, I’m talking about how loss aversion works in general.
[00:24:25] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:27] Okay, continue.
[00:24:27] Simone Collins: Right? Because, you know, take, take, you know, one token. You have a chance of winning one token or not losing two and a half tokens. Or, sorry not losing two tokens. People are two and a half more times, whatever. You know what I’m talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I link to a bunch of this research in my show notes.
[00:24:43] You can go read about it if you want. Well, I mean,
[00:24:43] Malcolm Collins: she’s helping us. She’s clearing out the gene pool for our kids.
[00:24:47] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, look, if I- spoiler alert, but in the end, I, I think she’s doing amazing work, and I think she’s very ethical, and I like her a lot, so. It’s not just a parasocial relationship. I think she’s doing good work, but we’ll get to that.
[00:24:58] But anyway, this means that people are, are, are extra, extra influenced against this. And it’s, it’s kind of even worse than that because both Abigail and Yuri can’t seem to even wrap their heads around, like, the, the rewards of parenting at all. Abigail’s most commonly cited argument is kids are cute.
[00:25:16] Whereas Y- Yuri’s list at the, at the end of it she has her, like, whatever, 30 pros after 200 and something, I think over 250 cons. They include child and tax return benefits and tiny everything, which Like first, the tax return benefits are like very, very little considering the costs of children.
[00:25:38] Quote, “You cannot get drafted while pregnant,” end quote. So there’s that. You can’t bribe them with candy. Or sorry, you can bribe with them with candy. It was one of her pros, but you and I both know that you can’t.
[00:25:49] Malcolm Collins: You can’t. With a toddler. No, we... Actually, one of our kids hates candy. We can threaten him with candy.
[00:25:50] “Eat your candy.” “No.” No. Literally. Literally. I should try to, I’ll try
[00:25:50] Simone Collins: to film him. Try to give him candy tonight. Yes, for this episode so people can see we’re not messing
[00:25:51] Malcolm Collins: with
[00:26:05] them.
[00:26:05] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. I’ll get proof. I need to hold up like the day’s newspaper to show it’s real. And also, if you raise them right, people will praise you for it, which is so crazy. Like, that’s... To, to think that you would wanna raise kids right to get praise for it by other people. Yeah, yeah, they’re just like th- these people are very different.
[00:26:25] But
[00:26:25] Malcolm Collins: they have no external reality, no civilizational stake, no plan for the future of humanity. It is literally just about how does this make me feel-
[00:26:36] Simone Collins: Yeah, or
[00:26:36] Malcolm Collins: how does it make you- ... and how
[00:26:37] Simone Collins: does
[00:26:37] Malcolm Collins: it make other people treat me?
[00:26:38] Simone Collins: Tiny human
[00:26:38] Malcolm Collins: being. They have no larger civilizational framework, right? Like, no sense of purpose really.
[00:26:44] Yeah. It’s just autopilot really.
[00:26:46] Simone Collins: It’s gnarly, yeah. So I think, like, the, the big thing here is that I think this is part of a larger theme of why mental health is plummeting, which is people are way too in their heads and overthinking things. And I think Abigail, more than Yuri fundamentally gets people to overthink pregnancy and child-rearing.
[00:27:08] Like, I didn’t think about any of the complications that would come with pregnancy before I got pregnant. I- Really? I was... No, no. Like, my, my plan with everything is just like- I’m not gonna think through the consequences at all. Which I guess... I mean, we’re trying to be as responsible as we can, of course, but, like, when it comes to the downsides- Mm
[00:27:28] or the risks or the fears, I’m just like, look, I- I’m aware of, like, the broad statistics. Those look fine to me. I’m willing to take those on, and I’m not going to educate myself about everything possible that can go wrong with this. Remember, like, with, with childbirth and stuff, for the first time around when I was like, “I’m gonna do unmedicated labor,” I was like, well, okay, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna, like- Yeah
[00:27:48] take childbirthing courses or read a book or anything. Like, that’s just gonna get me too into my head. Like, look it’s just gonna hurt. It hurt a lot. I, you know, hurt so much that I threw up and all the other things. But you
[00:27:59] Malcolm Collins: were in [00:28:00] labor for, like, 48 hours. Like, you
[00:28:01] Simone Collins: are-
[00:28:02] Malcolm Collins: It was not great ... a worst
[00:28:03] Simone Collins: case example.
[00:28:03] Yeah. Yeah, and, and, yeah, like, induced labor that was horrible. And yeah, it was... But, like, I, I think it would’ve been worse, ‘cause I’ve learned this the hard way, s- one of the worst forms of pain is anticipating pain. It’s not like the thing itself. I can’t remember the pain. I remember throwing up from it.
[00:28:18] I remember thinking, like, “I m- I only exist with the pain, and this, this will be everything forever.” Like, there, there was nothing in my mind but the pain, and I was sitting with it, and it was, it was what it was, and I was just ready to just keep going. The, but I don’t remember it. I don’t remember what it felt like.
[00:28:33] Like, why, how could I remember that? So I think that ultimately was mu- a lot healthier for me, and all this overthinking is really not helping people. And Robert Sapolsky, you know, who does the great courses, course on stress and cortisol really insightfully explains how, like, our stress system was not developed for humans who have, like, metacognition, who can, like, literally build endogenous stress- stressors merely by thinking about something, right?
[00:29:03] Like, the gazelle is chased by the, what, lion, lioness, and it runs, and it’s very stressed- Mm ... and the cortisol’s coursing through its veins, and then the, the lion catches another gazelle and eats it and then the gazelle goes back to eating grass- Yeah ... and it’s fine, right? Like-
[00:29:17] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...
[00:29:18] Simone Collins: it, that’s... And then there’s no more cortisol, whereas, like, the human, Will just think about something that could possibly potentially happen in the future, but there’s no actual reason it will happen.
[00:29:27] And they’re- ... experiencing the same level of cortisol in their system. And it is chronically very unhealthy, and I, I don’t appreciate that there’s a lot of content out there that feeds into that, and that people let themselves feed into that. And I don’t think you should, or anyone should indulge in that because it is, it is both unhealthy and not, not, not productive.
[00:29:46] You sh- if you’re concerned about something, build a contingency plan for it, reduce the odds, but like don’t think about it. But anyway, overthinking about pregnancy could probably be contributing to a rise in phobia about pregnancy, which is known as tocophobia, which is a weird name.
[00:30:04] Malcolm Collins: Tocophobia?
[00:30:04] Tocophobia. Well, a lot of people have that. I mean, you, again, wanted to get your tubes tied for no reason.
[00:30:08] Simone Collins: Yeah, that was more just, like, euphoria. That wasn’t like I was afraid of being pregnant. I, I mean, clearly I’ve never been afraid of being pregnant. I was just like, “I’m super happy to be alone forever,” and you know, you know how I hate people.
[00:30:21] So that was fun. And it was a fun idea. But no, like I, I did not have that. But it is actually pretty prevalent. This 2017 systematic review of 33 studies looking at a total of 854,000 pregnant women worldwide estimated that there’s a sort of pooled prevalence of tocophobia between, oh, like around f- 14% with individual study estimates ranging from about 3.7% to 43%.
[00:30:48] And I bet a lot of that had to do with the, the population sampled, and I bet the populations that are consuming content from the Girls with the Lists is, is more closer to the 43% end of the spectrum.
[00:31:00] Malcolm Collins: Wait, 14% of women have a fear of pregnancy?
[00:31:04] Simone Collins: Yeah. M- just sort of like roughly per this like meta, meta sy- system- systematic meta review and it, yeah, 14%.
[00:31:12] And keep in mind, this is a 2017 systematic review of 33 studies. All those studies were conducted before 2017, obviously. And these two young women only began posting around 2021 and after. So and I bet it’s a lot worse. And it’s not great. Yeah. So- Well- ... you know ...
[00:31:33] Malcolm Collins: it, it’s interesting to look at her Substack as well to get an idea of just like what goes through her mind, what she sits around thinking about all day.
[00:31:40] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:31:41] Malcolm Collins: So if we’re just reading them like in backwards chronological order, it’s Girls Don’t Want to Be Someone’s Wife Anymore, Kids Ruin Everything- ... Everything That Happened in the World of Birth Control Last Month, Pill Pop Culture, The Weekly Dose Everything That Happened This Week in the World of Birth Control, The Ultimate [00:32:00] Nude, It, it, Lorde’s new album features her IUD.
[00:32:05] Simone Collins: Look, okay, I think Abigail, she’s just living a very happy dink life. And I think she also could be an amazing parent. She had two siblings. She has a- ample memories of being pretty naughty as a child, driving her parents pretty nuts as a child doing pretty naughty things as a child, stuff that would qualify for her own videos.
[00:32:22] So she, she knows what it’s like to be a demon child sometimes. I think all, all children do, except for me ‘cause I was perfect. Oh, no wait, I scared my parents crapless when I starved myself. Never mind. But then she- then she doesn’t really talk about teens, she just talks about toddlers. She lives in downtown Los Angeles.
[00:32:39] She started posting these in 2021. To give you sort of like Picture of her pain tolerance- Mm ... she thinks that getting an IUD was the most painful thing she has ever experienced. Which is not comfort- I’ve not gotten an IUD before, but from what I’ve heard from other people, it could be, it could be pretty uncomfortable, but it, bir- you know, birth is more.
[00:32:59] Other things are more. She, she hates cleaning. She hates cooking. She loves playing video games. Has a boyfriend, as far as I understand. She talks about him sometimes. And
[00:33:07] Malcolm Collins: she really loves her cats. I will say she, she does find interesting stuff. I was unaware of this. Did you know that Flo, the period tracking app, has been proven to be collecting user data and sharing it with Meta?
[00:33:16] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:33:18] Malcolm Collins: I didn’t know this.
[00:33:21] Simone Collins: Seems reasonable.
[00:33:21] Malcolm Collins: She says she’s been using Flo and is disgusted by this information.
[00:33:25] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, she’s, she’s on like the, she lives in downtown Los Angeles. She’s a, she’s a dink. Like, well, she’s going to have to say the progressive things. She also has merch.
[00:33:33] They’re, they’re all in the like... They’re, they’re sweatshirts, all of them. Some have hoodies. Some are crew necks. There’s the $60 divorce your Republican husband XL crew neck sweatshirt with a wolf on it. Sold out. The $50 dump your Republican boyfriend medium large hunting camo crew neck sweatshirt.
[00:33:49] Dump your Republican
[00:33:50] Malcolm Collins: boyfriend.
[00:33:51] Simone Collins: Oh, my God. Also sold out. The $68 dump your Republican boyfriend XL green crew neck. The $58 dump your Republican boyfriend XL pink hoodie. What’s weird is all of these are for larger people. There’s not a single small item in the entire shop, and she’s an ex- extra smell. Extra smell.
[00:34:09] She’s extra small. So I don’t know.
[00:34:13] Malcolm Collins: She, she had a map of the best and worst states to have a baby, and it’s just like all Democrat states are ranked as good. All Republican states ranked as bad. Duh. P- Pennsylvania is ranked as good. To have a
[00:34:22] Simone Collins: baby. Yeah.
[00:34:23] To have a baby. Yeah. ‘Cause I think we’re at like 24 weeks for abortions.
[00:34:31] Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s why it’s ranked that way. Yeah,
[00:34:33] Simone Collins: duh. Because it’s to have a baby, not abortion. Of course, Malcolm. Gee whiz. Gosh. Yeah, she’s, she’s- How
[00:34:37] Malcolm Collins: it was calculated: WalletHub ranked the best and worst states to have a baby by evaluating all 50 states and the District of Columbia across four categories: cost, healthcare, baby friendliness, and family friendliness, using 31 weighted metrics scored on a 100-point scale
[00:34:50] Simone Collins: It’s abortion, Malcolm.
[00:34:52] I mean, it could also be, I mean, keep in mind, like, in the state, in this state at least too, and, and this is how it is in many states, not all necessarily Democratic states, but generally in the United States, you, if you are at, near, or below the poverty level, especially as a woman, get food assistance, free healthcare, housing assistance.
[00:35:15] So all of those labor and delivery charges from the hospital are totally waived. And that’s really helpful, obviously. And,
[00:35:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:35:25] Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway but in terms of how I feel about this, how I imagine you will feel about this too, is that what Abigail is doing is fine. She’s really clear. One thing you don’t know this, but, like, in her content, she is super clear to not shame parents, like any of the parents she’s covering.
[00:35:43] She’s super empathetic toward them, and I really can’t say the same about many parents online, even like very pro-natalist and pro-kid parents. And she’s also way more ethical than your typical content creator with the clips that she uses. [00:36:00] She told NBC, quote, “If I’m going to do a video about bodies in particular and show someone’s body, I’m going to make sure that I have consent from that mother first.”
[00:36:09] Like if she posted a video and she made this acknowledgement like, “This is my body. It’s pretty crazy. The things that have happened to my body is wild.” She also said, “I have such respect and a reverence and admiration for the people who do choose to go through th- with this because it’s a huge choice,” Porter said.
[00:36:24] “I hope people will stop treating having children as an impulse decision that everyone does. I think that’s better for us and also for the children because if every child that was ever born had parents that really wanted them, I think the world would be a better place.” I 100% agree with that.
[00:36:40] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I- I mean, her framework for understanding why somebody wants children is really messed up, but it’s completely in line with the dominant cultural subset- Yeah
[00:36:48] so you can’t really blame her for it. You super can’t blame her. These people have no idea why they’re alive, why they should continue living, what’s the point of life, right? Like, they’re just like, So they can only relate things in, in, or they only can relate to things in how those things relate to their personal happiness, basically.
[00:37:05] Yeah.
[00:37:06] Simone Collins: Yeah, like, is this gonna be uncomfortable? Well, let’s not do it then. Which is a thing, but I, I genuinely believe that- Like, I would be fine if someone was like, “Look, you think you wanna become a parent? Watch five hours of Abigail Porter’s content and then decide.” And if someone can- I don’t
[00:37:23] Malcolm Collins: know about that.
[00:37:24] That’s- No ... that’s, that’s, n- because her content isn’t representative.
[00:37:27] Simone Collins: You haven’t watched
[00:37:28] Malcolm Collins: it, dude. Yeah. You haven’t watched it But if you had watched it earlier, you may have had a lot more- No.
[00:37:32] Simone Collins: Mm-mm ...
[00:37:33] Malcolm Collins: trepidations about going into pregnancy.
[00:37:34] Simone Collins: No.
[00:37:35] Malcolm Collins: Not at all. Well, I think you’re a tough woman, Simone, and I don’t think that you’re representative of the average female.
[00:37:40] Simone Collins: Look, I mean, I, again, I, I just gave my whole spiel on how I think overthinking things and trying to figure everything out is not good for you. But in the end, look, Malcolm, I’ve been very clear that I’m willing to do pretty much anything. I, I, and I, I’m not gonna actively go into something like a pregnancy where I have a high likelihood of dying because then I can’t be there to raise the kids, right?
[00:38:00] But, like, I will go through pretty much anything up to that. And a- as long as I can keep caring for the kids, obviously. And I, I mean, like I, I, I, I just, I agree with Abigail. I think that if, if you’re not willing to undertake the risks and the hardship, then you should not be a parent. And that’s just how it is.
[00:38:21] And I think that, it- Abigail’s content is really useful in dissuading people from having kids for trivial reasons, and she actually helps actual parents head off medical issues. Again, that same NBC article they wrote, “Brig Stewart, who is now pregnant with her second child, described the list videos as a powerful tool fuls- for self-advocacy.
[00:38:40] She said, ‘I was totally shocked by all the things that could happen to you, and that’s even in today’s modern world, which is shocking with the amount of research and access that we have at our fingertips,’ Brig Stewart said. ‘There’s no, there’s so many different types of complications, and it can be really brutal to women, so I was like, this is empowering.’”
[00:38:56] And look, you and I were just talking about a case in which someone we know has, has had to really do a lot of self-advocacy in a hospital situation, and only through their own self-advocacy did they get treatment that actually made a huge difference, and it may be the difference between life and death, or a functional life- Yeah
[00:39:13] And, and, you know, forever not functional life. So, you know, it’s, it’s not bad for people to know what can go wrong, or like to recognize, oh, like for example, if I started getting a growth the size of a fingertip on my lip, I would not know what that was and probably wait longer than I, I should have.
[00:39:29] Whereas now I know that there’s such a thing as, like, benign pregnancy tumors, and I would just be like, “Look, I think this is...” And I’d go right to the right specialist and try to head it off before it got giant, right? Like, this is good. It’s not bad. And in terms of our viewers or people themselves, so let’s say you’re a young woman watching this or you’re a woman who wants to maybe have kids watching this who’s like, “Yeah, now I’m afraid of being pregnant,” or a young man who’s dating or interested in a young woman who’s terrified of being pregnant, who doesn’t wanna have kids because of content like this.
[00:39:59] I would just [00:40:00] say, because this is what you did with me, Malcolm, have a logical conversation about the actual risks and about equivalent risks that they take or that you take in your everyday life through your hobbies.
[00:40:11] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s better- But this is assuming you have an autistic wife. What a normal woman’s going to do with this information is leverage it to get crazy good treatment while she’s pregnant, which they do.
[00:40:21] Do you, do
[00:40:21] Simone Collins: you wanna marry that woman? Do you wanna enter that? Like...
[00:40:25] Malcolm Collins: A lot of guys are stuck because they were stupid And they didn’t know to only marry autists. I love that we have this giant fan base of autistic wives who,
[00:40:34] Simone Collins: like- Isn’t that amazing? They, we’re out there. We are a legion.
[00:40:38] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we are a legion.
[00:40:38] No, they’re like all of Simone’s, like, best friends now are our fans who are like, And you used to have, like, friends before we started the podcast, and now your friends since the podcast have all been these autistic women who y- f- found him fr- through the podcast.
[00:40:53] Simone Collins: It’s true. All, all the, all the women who live rent-free in my brain are podcast listeners.
[00:40:57] You may be listening right now and not realize how, how much I think about you. I just don’t have time to write. It’s, that’s, that’s crappy of me. But anyway, yeah, it, we’re amazing. But I, I really, like really, d- if you cannot have a conversation with a woman and be like, “Look, I know you’d like to get this cosmetic procedure done.
[00:41:14] I know you love to backpack. Like, let’s talk about that. You like to eat out. You wanna know what happens when people eat out?” Like, I just think giving this pers- some perspective would be very helpful, and also doing the thing that the, the... What, what is your objective function? What is your life actually about?
[00:41:30] In the end, you just gave me bigger things to care about because you allowed me to decide for myself, you empowered me to decide for myself what I actually cared about, what I valued and what I wanted to maximize with life. And suddenly, when my life wasn’t any longer about, well, I just want to avoid things that are unpleasant, which is kind of the societal default, as you said-
[00:41:53] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm
[00:41:53] Simone Collins: I, I was kind of willing and able to do pretty much anything. I mean, I’ve... Even this year, we’ve, we’ve done a whole new level of stuff that’s otherwise would’ve been, like, impossible in the past couple of years.
[00:42:02] Malcolm Collins: What I wonder is, does she have baby fever? I mean, probably, yes, because that’s why she’s still doing this.
[00:42:06] Simone Collins: I don’t think so. Yeah. She, she has two cats. I think one’s named Willow. So
[00:42:09] Malcolm Collins: she’s masturbating the baby fever with the cats.
[00:42:12] Simone Collins: Maybe. A- and, and, a- well, I think there’s there’s plenty of rumors. I think for a while, like, in her videos she’s like, “And I still do not have kids.” So I think some rumor spread at some point of like, “Oh, Abigail Porter had kids, or had a, had a baby but tried to hide
[00:42:25] Malcolm Collins: it.”
[00:42:25] No, but I mean, that’s such the thing, though, for this sort of crowd, right? We have a whole nother thing
[00:42:30] Simone Collins: of- Probably, yeah. Yeah. A whole nother thing ...
[00:42:31] Malcolm Collins: where they’re all like, “Men are terrible. Men are the worst.”
[00:42:34] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:42:35] Malcolm Collins: Uh-oh. Well...
[00:42:37] Simone Collins: Ugh, I know. Anyway, though, I think it’s good. I think it’s positive. I mean, what, what advice would you give to a young man?
[00:42:43] And, and s- aside from lowering his expectations, oh my God
[00:42:47] Malcolm Collins: I mean, if you’re, if you’re with a woman who doesn’t wanna have kids, th- that should be established early in a relationship, and just get rid of her, and constantly make it clear to her early in the relationship that this is not a small thing for you.
[00:42:56] This is, like, the core thing for you. This is your core purpose in life or part of your purpose in life. And I was incredibly clear about this with Simone, and it’s been increasingly clear to me how clear I was from reading her diaries.
[00:43:11] Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘
[00:43:12] Malcolm Collins: Cause I was going through them again recently, and,
[00:43:13] Simone Collins: But you gotta...
[00:43:14] Okay, I got... You have to put your money where your mouth is, and that’s one thing that Malcolm did that... Like, ‘cause look, my, my barrier to entry here was high. I was really unwilling to, super unwilling to have kids.
[00:43:26] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing that really gets it for feminists. If they’re like, “Well, then you have to do all the work to take care of the kid,” and it’s like, “Okay, so you’re gonna support the family,” right?
[00:43:36] Like, because... A- and if they’re like, “No, no, no, no, I need you as the man to support the family,” and at that point it’s just like- Well,
[00:43:42] Simone Collins: yeah, but now you know you can’t fudge ... this
[00:43:44] Malcolm Collins: makes no sense. Like, you want me to treat you like a child, right? Like your entire life, right?
[00:43:48] Simone Collins: Like- Look, but no, no, no, but that’s not...
[00:43:49] But see, that’s the thing, is that’s not the way it is for most women. The way it is for most women is, “I have my career. I love my career. I don’t wanna give it up.” That, that, it, that just is. I... Be fair, right? I mean, [00:44:00] like, I think women who want to be a trad wife are-
[00:44:02] Malcolm Collins: No. No ...
[00:44:02] Simone Collins: more comfortable.
[00:44:03] Malcolm Collins: I, I disagree. I think a lot of women just want, like, a rich guy and, like, a nice life, and that’s really what they’re in it for, and they don’t really care about...
[00:44:11] Like, they, they find the idea mortifying that they have to keep working.
[00:44:19] Simone Collins: Actually, with the rise of AI, that’s gonna be more common. Pe- women are gonna start treating their careers as find, attach yourself to a man who is capable of making money with AI. Mm-hmm ... this is not to dunk on women with AI. Actually, there’s a lot of pe- y- women who listen to this podcast who are amazing with AI.
[00:44:35] But the propensity of the average woman to take and run with AI is- Are
[00:44:40] Malcolm Collins: there? Most of our female fans- ... lower ... I do not think use AI that much. We’ve got Leaflet, and that’s about it.
[00:44:46] Simone Collins: People I talk to are. Yeah,
[00:44:47] Malcolm Collins: okay.
[00:44:48] Simone Collins: Yeah, like a lot. But, you know, those are the ones who are online and chatting with me, so, like, it makes sense.
[00:44:52] Yeah.
[00:44:52] Malcolm Collins: What’s really cool, women, is AI can help you think.
[00:44:56] Simone Collins: Shut up, Malcolm.
[00:44:58] Malcolm Collins: I- It can fact check whether you’re being rational if you use a base model with the right fact-checking prompt to not get you into a loop of self-affirmation
[00:45:11] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm What? Nothing, I love you. Oh!
[00:45:12] Malcolm Collins: What?
[00:45:14] Simone Collins: You are...
[00:45:19] What
[00:45:20] Malcolm Collins: is this? W- what are you-
[00:45:21] Simone Collins: It’s nothing. It’s nothing, Malcolm. It’s absolutely nothing. You will see no consequences for your actions.
[00:45:31] I love you, and that’s, that’s it for tonight. I was thinking I can m- make you green beans with some garlic and chili oil.
[00:45:38] Malcolm Collins: That
[00:45:38] Simone Collins: sounds really good ... with maybe a couple, just, like, two of those little Vietnamese banh xa for dinner.
[00:45:44] Malcolm Collins: Very good. You know me, I don’t want that much.
[00:45:46] Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah, figured it kind of summery but not too heavy.
[00:45:50] All righty.
[00:45:51] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:45:51] Simone Collins: I love you, and-
[00:45:52] Malcolm Collins: Oh, and we can make some other types of small meats, because I’ve noticed that small meats are something I want with a lot of dishes Small meats. You know, like it w- Small meats ... well, you were looking at Korean meatballs- Okay ... but they were, like, pre-made, and I was like, “What do we have around?”
[00:46:04] Well, I
[00:46:04] Simone Collins: still have a bunch of Burmese chicken, is, like, sort of that fine distributed chicken, but that goes better over, like, a rice or something.
[00:46:10] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, or something heavier. But, like, a, a small banh xa type thing. Like, other options that are, like... Shut your wing.
[00:46:21] Simone Collins: Remember when our kids... ‘Cause we have a, we...
[00:46:23] It’s for context. In, in our attic, we keep baskets of themed toys, and Malcolm learned that you can buy you can buy Hot Wheels cars in bulk off eBay, like, by the pound. And once you, like, shake out all the sand, ‘cause they’ve all been, like, abandoned in sandboxes and fished out by some family as they, like, do an estate sale.
[00:46:41] But once you, like, get all the sand out, they’re really decent. So we have, like, a bag full s- of Hot Wheel cars, which we call the small cars, and then we have a bag of, like, big cars that we’ve accumulated over time. And they used to call small cars fwa cars. Do you remember?
[00:46:55] Malcolm Collins: Fwa? Fwa
[00:46:56] Simone Collins: cars. Yeah. Why? ‘Cause they’re f- weird.
[00:47:00] Malcolm Collins: Idiots? Okay.
[00:47:01] Simone Collins: But remember they used to call They thought that the, the word commercial... They kept being like, “It’s a cover martial,” and I had no idea what they were talking about until we discovered that it was their word for commercial. All right. All right, we gotta, we gotta go. I- Yep ... love
[00:47:17] Malcolm Collins: you. I love
[00:47:17] Simone Collins: you.
[00:47:18] Goodbye. Not knowing what you’re gonna get is I think what makes it so addictive with the video generation. Yeah. Yeah, you don’t know- You’re like, “Is this gonna work?” And then you realize, “Oh, I should have given this negative prompt,” or, “I should have m- made this detail clearer.” And then-
[00:47:33] Malcolm Collins: And then you can get really fun stuff.
[00:47:35] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:47:35] Malcolm Collins: Oh, God. You get super fun stuff. These glasses are just so messed up. Where are the... Where are my glasses?
[00:47:40] Simone Collins: Have you checked the kid room where you were all day yesterday taking care of the kids? ‘Cause that’s probably where they are. You probably took them off in frustration at some point. Actually- Oh, you’re going for it.
[00:47:50] Okay. Okay
[00:47:52] Malcolm Collins: Oh my God, here they are
[00:47:54] Simone Collins: Wait, where? Where were they?
[00:47:56] Malcolm Collins: They had fallen under a table
[00:47:58] Simone Collins: What? That looked ridiculous. My glasses. My glasses. Which is out completely the same glasses. O- the other ones were just too... I[00:48:00]
[00:48:05] can clean them. You seem
[00:48:09] to
[00:48:13] mind it more than I do. I swept out the, like, shed and the chicken coop yesterday, and they are literally covered in poop, but I can still kind of see, so I don’t mind. Whereas, like, you have one bit of dust on your glasses and you can’t stand it.
[00:48:30] Speaker 3: I got you some candy, Toasty. I want candy. Please eat the candy, Toasty. Please eat it. Eat the candy, Toasty. I- Eat the candy ... want to eat the candy. Toasty has to eat the candy. Toast- yeah, he has to eat the candy. I want- Because he didn’t eat his dinner. Yeah, Toasty,
[00:48:45] you didn’t eat your dinner, so you gotta eat the candy. Here, I’ll make him eat it. You gonna eat the candy? He’s not gonna have any choice. No, I can put it in the snack thing. I will
[00:48:56] eat my dinner. You will? You promise? You promise to eat your dinner, or you’re gonna have to eat the candy. What? No. You promise to eat your dinner? I will make him. You’re not g- Here, well, let’s get him and make him eat the candy. Ra, ra, ra, ra, ra. Oh, God. Okay, Toasty. Are you gonna go eat the dinner, you promise?
[00:49:06] You’re gonna eat your cheese? Cheese. Okay. Thank you, Toasty. Put it in your mouth right now. Otherwise, you’ll have to eat the candy. Okay, here we go. Okay, Toasty. Wow. I want candy. Have another bite, or you’re gonna have to eat candy. You don’t w- oh, thank you, Toasty. I want- We love you, Toasty. You’re a good kid
[00:49:23] Speaker 4: one. Candy. Someone candy, someone
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, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive deep into the forbidden history of group-based stereotypes and cultural pattern recognition from ancient Egypt through Renaissance Europe. This is the dark lore mainstream education won’t touch — what Egyptians really thought of Nubians and Libyans, Greek views of “effete” Persians and rowdy Macedonians, Roman donkey-god graffiti mocking Jews and Christians, medieval antisemitic pig-suckling art that makes modern versions look tame, and the surprising origins of the “French Vice,” “Italian Vice,” and “English Vice.”
The Collinses explore how what we now call racism was once just observed averages, patterns, and tribal jokes — not modern ideological sin. No moralizing. Just raw historical context on how humans have always categorized “us vs. them.”
Show Notes
With the release of Talkie, a 13M “vintage” language model trained only on pre-1931 text, people realized just how casual, widespread, and matter-of-fact prejudice was in even the recent past.
Ancient Egypt
Different groups were absolutely depicted, mostly with Egyptians being reddish, nubians being black, Asiatics being tan (and often bearded), and Libyans being white (and often bearded)
Nubians as people to conquered
Texts and artistic programs from pharaonic Egypt sometimes emphasize Nubia as a land to be subdued and exploited, supporting a stereotype of Nubians as “barbaric” or less civilized compared to Egypt.
* See:Critique of the “Black Pharaohs” Theme: Racist Perspectives of Egyptian and Kushite/Nubian Interactions in Popular Media https://www.jstor.org/stable/48763823
Canaanites/Asiatics as rebellious and treacherous
* Egyptian sources portray peoples to the northeast of the nile (“Asiatics,” including Levantine groups) as culturally suspect, often linked to rebellion, disorder, and treachery
* They were also, however, viewed as trading partners and skilled craftsmen
* TL:DR: They threatened social order
* Egyptian royal narratives from the later 17th–16th centuries BCE describe the Hyksos (“Shepherd Kings”) as foreign usurpers who disrupted proper Egyptian order.
* After the Theban kings of the 18th Dynasty expelled them around 1550 BCE, Egyptian texts portray this expulsion as the restoration of Ma’at (cosmic order), implicitly stereotyping Asiatic rule as chaotic, illegitimate, and oppressive
* In New Kingdom imperial inscriptions, Canaanite city‑states are often framed as unreliable vassals—prone to rebellion, needing punishment, and subject to heavy tribute and forced labor conscription
Libyans: Western barbarians turned useful soldiers and even rulers
* In Egyptian sources, Libyans were stereotyped both as dangerous, warlike “western barbarians” and, over time, as useful soldiers and eventually fully Egyptianized rulers; the view shifted from hostile outsider to complex “cousin” status as Libyan groups migrated into the Delta and took power.
* Sometimes they traded; sometimes they fought
* “The Libu were first mentioned in New Kingdom (c. 1550-1069 BCE) texts and were often the Libyan archetype depicted in Egyptian art. Libu tribesmen were depicted with their hair cut at the nape, a sidelock, and often tattooed. All Libyan tribes were shown with light complexions and Caucasian features.” (The Collector, citing “The Meshwesh”)
* They had tattoos and sidelocks and interesting haircuts
* “Eventually, massive migration brought the Libyans into Egypt’s Delta during the New Kingdom, forever changing the political landscape of the Nile Valley.” (The Collector)
Ancient Greece
Greeks commonly divided the world into Hellenes (Greek speakers) and “barbarians” (non‑Greek speakers), treating Greek culture as inherently superior.
Persians as decadent and effete
* Persians especially were portrayed as decadent, soft, and naturally suited to monarchy rather than free citizenship
* Their art of Darius the Great certainly makes him look fancy
Athenians: Cultural elites
* Athenians were stereotyped—especially in Athenian sources—as philosophical, talkative, artistic, and politically engaged, the center of culture and debate.
Spartans: Disciplined warriors
* Sparta practiced xenelasia, the expulsion or strict control of foreigners, driven by fears that outsiders might spy on Sparta or corrupt its harsh, militarized way of life.
* This created a stereotype of Spartans as intensely closed, suspicious of outsiders, and committed to preserving a rigid ethos that rejected luxury, commerce, and cosmopolitan influences
* Spartan woman were also definitely seen differently than Athenian women (who were largely meant to be unseen), what with their athleticism, property ownership, etc.
* Art of a Spartan woman running:
Ionian Greeks: Cowards
* Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor (e.g., coastal cities under Persian rule) were stereotyped as cowardly and weak fighters, “softened” by their mild climate and prosperity, and as good talkers but poor warriors.
Boitians: Hicks
* Boiotians, especially Thebans, were mocked as brutish country hicks—agricultural, uncultured, and un‑cosmopolitan—later also stereotyped as big, strong wrestlers rather than subtle thinkers.
Ancient Rome
Christians
* Alexamenos worships [his] god” graffiti
* The artist is referring to a well‑known slur that Jews and then Christians worshipped a donkey—an accusation called onolatry—and used the donkey head to mock Christ and Alexamenos as absurd, foolish worshippers
* At first, Christians were seen as just another Jewish subgroup
* Their devotion to a crucified man and claims about one true god were seen as peculiar but not uniquely threatening compared to other mystery cults and foreign religions.
Jews: Stubborn cliquey weirdos
* Jews were portrayed as stubborn subjects with a herd mentality, fiercely attached to unique customs such as circumcision and dietary laws.
* Romans satirized Jews as gullible religious fanatics and puzzled over their attitudes toward pigs, sometimes imagining them as pig‑worshippers or pig‑haters, while also fearing that Romans themselves might be seduced into Jewish practices.
All outsiders: Barbarian
* Romans tended to divide the world into Roman and non‑Roman, with non‑Romans often lumped as “barbari” and assumed to be less civilized, less disciplined, and less politically sophisticated.
* Foreigners could be mocked for accents, dress, food, and religious practices, and were frequently portrayed as either dangerously cunning or naïvely simple.
* At the same time, Roman writers sometimes romanticized “barbarians” as noble savages, using them rhetorically to critique decadence and corruption inside Rome itself.
Greeks: Admirable and contemptible
* The good: The source of philosophy, art, and literature
* The bad: Talkative, tricky, morally weak, effeminate, prone to luxury, unreliable in war (basically, brainy but soft)
Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Syrians (people from the levant): Sleazy merchants
* Stereotyped as sleazy merchants obsessed with money and pleasure
* The phrase “fides Punica” (“Phoenician honesty”) became proverbial for deceit, and Carthaginians were especially cast as treacherous, cruel enemies whose sophistication made them dangerous.
* Syrians and other easterners were depicted as lazy bon‑vivants living in over‑civilized cities, spending their time in baths and banquets instead of honest work or soldiering.
* Roman elites worried that exposure to such cultures would “soften” Romans, so Levantine peoples embodied a stereotype of corrupting luxury and dishonesty.
Egyptians: Ancient and sinister
* Romans were fascinated and disturbed by their religious rituals and animal cults
* Roman writers framed Egypt as a land of magic, superstition, and arrogant priests, and resented Roman dependence on Egyptian grain, which led to a stereotype of Egyptians as arrogant and entitled
Persians / Parthians: Formidable enemies
* Persians and later Parthians were stereotyped as the archetypal eastern enemy: militarily formidable but ruled by cruel, tyrannical monarchs.
* Romans cast Persia as the mirror image of Rome—an empire of disciplined warriors, but with an inferior, despotic political system and excessive royal luxury.
Gauls: Noble savages
* Gauls were initially seen as hotheaded, brave, “noble savages”: valiant in battle but impetuous, simple, and prone to rashness.
* After Gaul became more integrated into the empire, Romans began to stereotype Gauls as softening under luxury and Romanization, while still recognizing them as good orators and sometimes resenting “new money” Gaulish elites.
Germans: An even more savage version of gauls
* Germans were like Gauls but even more “savage”: unconquered, closely tied to nature, living beyond the edges of civilization.
* Roman authors alternated between romanticizing Germans as free, hardy warriors and dehumanizing them as wild beasts, a frontier people to be crushed or contained.
Medieval Europe
Irish, Welsh, Slavs, and Baltic People: Barbarians; barely Christian
* Anglo‑Norman writers in England and those living in what’s now German routinely depicted nearby frontier peoples (Irish, Welsh, Slavs, Baltic pagans) as barely Christian barbarians.
* They were stereotyped as violent pastoralists, pirates, or plunderers, resistant to law and agriculture, and needing conquest and missionary work to climb the “rungs of civilization.”
* People used these stereotypes to justify English expansion into Ireland and Wales and German colonization in the Baltic north.
* Frontier groups were therefore clearly framed as savage, lawless, and religiously deficient compared to the “civilized” core.
* We can kind of see how people viewed pastoral peasants in three engravings representing peasants made by Albrecht Dürer between the years 1514 and 1519 (Renaissance, but still the gist)
Scots: Militant poor people
* Viewed as militarily dangerous but less wealthy and “civilized” than England or France, with a rugged land and smaller, poorer towns.
* Persistent enemies who defended their independence fiercely; chronicles focus on war—Stirling Bridge, Bannockburn—and portray Scots as stubborn and warlike.
Jews: Kind of a different species?
* Lots of art of Jews + pigs; Jews not really being human
* E.g. there’s this one sculpture on a church in Wittenburg, where Martin Luther once preached, that people tried to have taken down, though the city decided to leave it up
* Jews were increasingly stereotyped as melancholic, greedy, and spiritually obstinate; from the 13th century medical writers even speculated about distinctive Jewish bodily traits (e.g., hemorrhoidal or monthly bleeding), embodying difference as quasi‑hereditary.
* This fed wider notions that Jews were “fixed” outsiders, difficult or impossible to integrate into the Christian “New Israel,” and associated them with usury and corruption of the body politic.
Most graffiti isn’t really showing biases; it’s just funny looking and it makes me laugh
Renaissance Europe
The “[country] Vice” concept emerged
French vice: Sexual looseness and maturity
* Observers of the French royal court in the 16th–17th centuries, especially around figures like Catherine de Medici and later the Bourbon monarchs, portrayed it as a place of intrigue, mistresses, and elaborate sexual politics.
* Anti‑French polemic and gossip emphasized alleged harems of ladies‑in‑waiting used to seduce nobles, and more generally depicted French court women as sexually manipulative, feeding foreign ideas that France was unusually decadent.
* By the 17th century, narratives of French “debauchery” were circulating across Europe, presenting the French court as a laboratory of outrageous erotic tastes compared with more “sober” courts in places like England.
* French literature made it worse
* The rise of an international publishing industry around the mid‑1600s helped spread erotic and semi‑pornographic French literature across borders, giving other Europeans a steady diet of stories featuring libertine characters and sophisticated sexual intrigue.
* Pamela Cheek and others note that “dirty books” and French self‑promotion were central to cementing the “French lover” stereotype, with print culture exporting an image of France as sexually adventurous.
Italian Vice: Same-sex relationships
* From the later Middle Ages onward, outsiders associated certain Italian cities, above all Florence, with widespread male same‑sex love and social networks that made such relationships visible and relatively common.
* Evidence from court records, witness testimonies, and moralizing tracts shows active male queer communities, which helped cement the idea that Italy was unusually tolerant—or at least unusually saturated—with this behavior compared with other parts of Europe.
* By the later 17th century, phrases like “the Italian vice” circulated in elite European discourse as coded ways to talk about male same‑sex intimacy without naming it directly.
* In the 19th century, British and other northern European tourists helped revive and spread the “Italian vice” stereotype, both fascinated and scandalized by what they believed was Italy’s relaxed sexual morality.
* Italian commentators themselves sometimes played into this image, depicting Italians as indolent and sexually lax compared with more “serious” northern Europeans, which ironically helped confirm foreign expectations.
The English Vice: Erotic flagellation (and sometimes same-sex relationships)
* Earlier, England was more often stereotyped by others as dour, puritan, or sexually repressed rather than especially deviant.
* As the 19th century progressed, however, English public culture became strongly moralizing, with intense attention to sexual “perversions,” and English law was notably harsh on male same‑sex acts, making Britain a focal point for debates about homosexuality.
* In that climate, continental commentators could talk about “English vice” to refer to specific behaviors (often male homosexual practices or flagellation in certain accounts) thought to be particularly prevalent or visible in England, especially in elite circles or sex‑work contexts.
* This echoed how “Italian vice” had been used earlier for male homosexuality, but now with England associated both with moral panic and with the very behaviors it persecuted.
Muslims: Fanatical warriors
* Muslims and Ottoman Turks were cast as fanatical warriors, sexually threatening and religiously dangerous, sometimes admired for courage but feared as barbarous enemies of Christendom.
Northern European: Dull work horses; Southern Europeans: Indulgent drama queens
* Northern Europeans were often described as phlegmatic: slow, heavy, and dull, but honest and hardy; southern Europeans as more choleric or sanguine: quick‑tempered, passionate, and prone to luxury and intrigue.
Northern Italians: Industrious but cold; Southern Italians: Lazy and emotional
* Within Italy, later stereotypes distinguished industrious but cold northerners (polentoni) from lazy, emotional southerners (terroni), though these crystallized more fully after the Renaissance; the underlying idea of regional moral and temperamental contrast was already present.
* Lombards and other Italian moneylenders were depicted as grasping and corrupting, metaphorically likened to Jews in some moralizing discourse, which tied Italian banking centers to greed and social decay.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. It’s so nice to be speaking with you today because as is tradition on Base Camp, we will do what we probably should not do. And, and today we’re gonna go through the history of r- basically group-based and racial stereotypes.
[00:00:15] It’s gonna be great.
[00:00:16] Malcolm Collins: We are going to teach you guys... No, this is, this is what you come to Base Camp for. Yeah. You want to be educated, but not educated in what the system wants you to know.
[00:00:24] Simone Collins: Yes.
[00:00:24] Malcolm Collins: You want to be educated in the dark lore of these groups.
[00:00:28] Simone Collins: We’re gentlemen of culture. A culture of culture. And by culture, we mean-
[00:00:31] Malcolm Collins: You want to know, not just what you call a Jew today- Yes
[00:00:36] but what did you call a Jew 300 years ago? You
[00:00:40] Simone Collins: want to know- These are the important questions ...
[00:00:41]
[00:00:56] Malcolm Collins: not just what you call a Black person today, but what were the stereotypes Black people had in ancient Europe? What about the Greeks? What about the various European states? Were some- Mm-hmm ... people primarily known for fetishes they had?
[00:01:11] Yes, they were, we will learn.
[00:01:13] Simone Collins: Well, of course.
[00:01:13] Speaker 7: Welcome to the Museum here, we try to educate you on the dynamics of racism and prejudice in America.
[00:01:22] We are now entering the Hall of Stereotypes. These wax figures represent how some intolerant people have labeled minorities. Here we see a Black person eating chicken and watermelon, a stereotype that hurts the African-American community.
[00:01:36] What other stereotypes do you see here?
[00:01:38] Speaker 10: Ah, here’s the Arab as a terrorist.
[00:01:41] Speaker 7: That’s right. But of course, we know that not all Arabs are terrorists, don’t we, kids?
[00:01:44] Speaker 8: Look, a covetous Jew.
[00:01:46] Speaker 7: Very good, young man. The idea that Jews are only interested in money is very old indeed.
[00:01:50] Speaker 11: Ah, here’s a good one. It’s the stereotypical sleepy Mexican.
[00:01:54] Speaker 12: What, what? Oh, man, what time is it?
[00:01:56] Speaker 11: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were a wax sculpture.
[00:01:58] Speaker 12: No, man, I’m the janitor. I’m supposed to be cleaning, but I’m so tired.
[00:02:02] Oh, I’m so sleepy.
[00:02:04] Malcolm Collins: So let’s go into it.
[00:02:06] Simone Collins: Yeah. And this, you know, this was really spurred, at least with me, by the release of Talky, this 13M vintage language model, which you can also find on RFAB along with other-
[00:02:16] Malcolm Collins: Yes, so on RFAB, we have a section of RFAB called Historic Chat, and in it you have models that were trained in different ways in different periods.
[00:02:22] And, and now all of them are working as far as I know.
[00:02:25] Simone Collins: Yeah, I was just using the Talky version.
[00:02:28] Malcolm Collins: And you asked Talky, I loved you sent me this image, and
[00:02:31] Simone Collins: I was like- No, this this is actually a different one that I found when people on Reddit were comparing their findings, ‘cause I actually think that whoever at Talky has, has changed it a little bit maybe nerfed it a little bit.
[00:02:42] So this person- No, wait,
[00:02:43] Malcolm Collins: what’s this other one that you found? Can you send it to me so I can add it to RFAB?
[00:02:48] Simone Collins: The, this was Talky, but this was Talky when it first came out.
[00:02:51] Malcolm Collins: Oh. You see, I think- When people got mad
[00:02:53] Simone Collins: at it ... after everything, yeah, after people shared their amazing findings they changed it because I had difficulty replicating them.
[00:03:00] But here’s someone who posted to Talky, “What do you think about race mixing in America?” Talky 1930 responded, “I think mixture of races in America must be deprecated. The white and Black races can never live together on terms of social and political equality. The presence of slaves among freemen is an abomination, and although emancipation may in time remove that blot from our national eschaton, the amalgamation of the two classes must continue to be...”
[00:03:35] And it’s kind of cut off, but basically-
[00:03:37] Malcolm Collins: Regarded as, yeah ...
[00:03:38] Simone Collins: yeah, re- regarded as something, something bad. Like, Talky is kind of weird in that it cuts off really early, and it, it, it still does now, but it, it clearly did for this person, too. So yeah, we, I think we forget how- pervasive various forms of racism, and just, a- actually, I don’t, like, there really wasn’t a s- such a thing as racism.
[00:03:56] It was just kind of like people recognized [00:04:00] patterns and started to turn them into jokes and had stereotypes about people and groups, and it wasn’t seen as a bad thing. It was... And, and people, I think, also understood that these were not pervasive truths. Like, well, if a person is X, then obviously Y. It was just understood that there were averages and patterns.
[00:04:20] But that, that became stereotypes, and eventually that became defined as racism.
[00:04:23] Malcolm Collins: Is, is that, this show, Averages & Patterns- Averages &
[00:04:26] Simone Collins: Patterns ...
[00:04:26] Malcolm Collins: it, it, it’s, it’s changing consumer behavior. Changing cons-
[00:04:29] Simone Collins: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. But this goes back as long as basically there were different people. So we are gonna start, Malcolm, with ancient Egypt.
[00:04:39] I’m going to send you some images. So you,
[00:04:41] Malcolm Collins: you wanted to turn our audience from casual racists into professional racists.
[00:04:46] Simone Collins: Into, yes. Into, well, scholarly racists, into sophisticated racists who understand the context and the- Okay. I, I can’t.
[00:04:57] Malcolm Collins: That’s what you come to Basecamp from.
[00:04:59] Simone Collins: This is, this is why you’re here, friends.
[00:05:00] Sure. But yeah, so in ancient Egypt, and this is really interesting, different groups were absolutely depicted differently in Egyptian art, with the Egyptians m- typically depicting themselves as, like, the r- the reddish looking ones.
[00:05:13] Malcolm Collins: This is fascinating ...
[00:05:15] Simone Collins: nubians were g- given a very, very dark color.
[00:05:19] Asiatics were- Yeah, this, this is
[00:05:20] Malcolm Collins: where, when people say that Egypt was run by Black people, I’m like, you can look at Egyptian art. Egyptians, like, characterize Black people in a very specific way. And, and there actually was one dynasty that was run by Black people. It was I think, like, a period of, like, 150 years, 250 years or something like that.
[00:05:38] Simone Collins: And- Yeah, there’s a lot of history in Egypt ... and
[00:05:40] Malcolm Collins: the art changed. In that period, the pharaohs were drawn Black, right? Like, it, th- it’s, it’s not like-
[00:05:47] Simone Collins: Yeah, there, there’s not that much ambiguity there. Like, it’s pretty clear when Egyptians are attempting to depict... And this is the thing about Egyptian art.
[00:05:54] It’s so helpful, because there was this one way for hundreds and hundreds of years that everything kind of had to be drawn. Like, there wasn’t much evolution in art. Right. So there’s not this, like- Yeah ... “Oh, no, this is a stylistic choice.” No, like, Egyptians had, they didn’t have the capacity for that. They’re like, “No, we are always going to draw-” For stylistic choices.
[00:06:10] They’re like- Yeah, like- ... “There is one
[00:06:11] Malcolm Collins: way of doing
[00:06:12] Simone Collins: things” ... the person shall always be sideways. We’re doing it. It is, they’re gonna look in this exact way. It was very unusual to see art that differed from that which is kind of helpful. But yeah, so, Asiatics were tan and often bearded, and Libyans were the palest looking ones and often bearded.
[00:06:29] For most of the, the European periods that historians have looked at Nubians were really framed or, like, you know, categorized i- stereotypically as, as people to be conquered. Like, they, they weren’t I, I, I would at least want to be a Nubian in ancient Egypt, we’ll put it that way. The texts and artistic programs from pharaonic Is that, is that how we say it?
[00:06:53] F- a Pharaoh, Pharo- basically Egypt in the time of Pharaohs sometimes emphasize Nubia as this land to be subdued and exploited. That’s kind of, I think, as, as good as you can go. And that kind of supported this idea of Nubians also being a little bit barbaric or less civilized. They would show up in art often as, as servants.
[00:07:14] So at least for most of Egyptian history, they did not get the great- greatest position. The Canaanites and Asiatics were also, though, seen as, as rebellious and treacherous. So they’re, mm, they’re, like, culturally sub- suspect. They’re linked to rebellion and disorder. But they were also trading partners.
[00:07:35] So rather than just, like, “We’re gonna conquer you and take you over,” it was, “Well, like, well, we, we like their textiles, so I guess they’re okay kind of. But, like, don’t trust them. N- never trust you know, whoever you’re buying your carpet from.” I don’t know what they-
[00:07:49] Malcolm Collins: Wait, did they, did they have specific people who they were like, “Don’t trust them”?
[00:07:53] Simone Collins: There were no, there were no, like, specific figures, but I mean, yeah, you wouldn’t trust a Canaanite. Well,
[00:07:58] Malcolm Collins: what were the Egyptian stereotypes about [00:08:00] the Nubians? Did you look that up, or should I pull that up right now?
[00:08:02] Simone Collins: There were... I mean, like, this is all so old that a lot of this is conjecture that people are just trying to extrapolate from images, so it’s more just you understand where they are in the social order based on a lot of art.
[00:08:14] Like, the people who are lower on the social order are depicted as smaller. The Pharaohs and the Egyptians are depicted as larger. That’s, that’s part of what people are looking at. But yeah, there, there was, there wasn’t like a, “Oh, you know Nubians. They’re like this.” I, I didn’t pick up on anything from that.
[00:08:31] It’s more just general, like, “Well, these ones are reliable vassals, and these ones, w- we conquer them. That’s what we do. Like, we like to make art of us trouncing them.” Which i- is, it’s kind of a recurring theme of, like, there’s us and there’s others, and that’s going to show up a ton, and I think it really helps me contextualize the way that biases work today.
[00:08:52] Even within the most, like, anti-racist groups, there’s us and there’s others. Mm-hmm. You know? There’s, there’s the, the progressive, enlightened, woke person, and then there’s Nazis. Like, it’s one or the other. One, choose yours. You know? Like, Nazi’s a new word for barbarian, and looking at all this history has really helped me think of that or contextualize that.
[00:09:11] Libyans, I think, were really interesting. They were also barbarians to the Egyptians ‘cause they weren’t Egyptians. But they turned into useful soldiers and then even rulers for a short period, like you were saying with with Nubians.
[00:09:21] Malcolm Collins: So yeah, with Nubians they did have stereotypes. They, they were- Okay, tell me
[00:09:25] stereotyped as, as archers, first of all- Oh ... and, and mercenaries, but that’s because they were archers and mercenaries, right? Yeah. You know?
[00:09:31] Simone Collins: That’s not a stereotype. That’s just, like, a-
[00:09:34] Malcolm Collins: But there’s also the stereotype of the, the, the wretched Kush which you’ve talked about, of, of being a defeated enemy, right?
[00:09:40] The wretched Kush. So they, they had- Yeah ... a lot of Nubian slaves bound captives, kneeling prisoners, being people being trampled upon or slaughtered by the Pharaoh.
[00:09:48] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s, that’s what you see, again, like smaller, being defeated in battle, kind of like, “This is a loser.” I think the Libyans w- in all the groups as perceived by ancient Egyptians are the most interesting because they were like a frenemy kind of.
[00:10:02] They weren’t totally bad. They, they were sometimes trading partners, sometimes they were enemies. They were first mentioned in the New Kingdom, so going way back, and they also look super interesting. Like, they have the most style.
[00:10:18] And I wonder if that’s kind of why the Egyptians were, like, frenemies with them because they also had clearly a very distinct culture.
[00:10:24] In images of Nubian- Libyans, they have, like, this really distinct haircut where it’s just short at the nape of the neck. They have a side lock of hair that they wear. So they have, like, their hairstyles, and they also have tattoos, which is such a, like... So they have this very distinct style. They have fashion.
[00:10:41] And then eventually so many Libyans migrated into Egypt that they completely changed the political landscape of, of the Nile Valley. So maybe the Libyans were some of the first ever, like, you know, migrant waves-
[00:10:55] Malcolm Collins: Migrant waves that are
[00:10:56] Simone Collins: a problem, right? Like- Yeah, this is, like, the migrant, “Oh, the Libyans,” like, you know.
[00:10:59] The Libyans.
[00:11:00] Yeah Which, I mean, it’s, some things just never change, right? Like, stereotyped as dangerous and more like barbarians but also sometimes useful soldiers. Just kind of a complex cousin frenemy kind of culture. So I, yeah, anyway, I, I kinda didn’t know anything about Libyans. I’d listened to that really long Great Courses lecture series about ancient Egypt, and I don’t remember anything about Libyans, so I’m like, “Well, what’s...
[00:11:25] Come on.” It was always just about, like, Egypt really liking to trounce outsiders, so I don’t know.
[00:11:30] Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay. So- Do we have any, do we have any graffiti or anything from this period of making fun of people?
[00:11:35] Simone Collins: No, all the graffiti that you’ll typically find is, like, Roman or Napoleonic scratchings on hieroglyphs or modern tourists defacing them.
[00:11:44] Okay,
[00:11:45] Malcolm Collins: well, let’s get to that. Let’s keep moving then.
[00:11:46] Simone Collins: Yeah. Ancient Greece th- and they’re very common of, like, you’re either someone who is Hellenistic, you spoke Greek, or you’re a barbarian. And obviously the Greeks were not- Well, I
[00:11:56] Malcolm Collins: mean, I remember they had a lot of stereotypes about the Macedonians.
[00:11:59] Oh
[00:11:59] Simone Collins: [00:12:00] yeah, Persians, Persians. They were like, “
[00:12:02] Look at these effete pretty boys.” Like you can see this, this art of Darius here looking very fancy. He wasn’t even always the Persian rulers were not even always necessarily depicted negatively, but they were always depicted as very fancy. And like- And I can’t remember what that movie was.
[00:12:20] Where was that movie? What was that movie we watched where, like, the Persian ruler, I think it was Darius in it,
[00:12:26] Malcolm Collins: Well, the idea of shaming- Just so pretty ... idolatry or the accumulation of ostentatious wealth, whi- which is what we think the idolatry bans are really about is like, the, i- just back to the beginning of Western history.
[00:12:39] Yeah. Like the, the Greeks, the Spartans, they laughed at the people who did this. But on the opposite side of this, you have the, the Macedonians, who had a lot of stereotypes associated with them.
[00:12:48] Simone Collins: Oh yeah, no, Macedonians were seen as, like, these heavy drinkers, raucous partiers, like sloppy drunks who didn’t even mix their wine.
[00:12:58] What monsters.
[00:12:59] Malcolm Collins: They were basically seen by the Greeks the way most other cultures in American history saw the greater Appalachian region people.
[00:13:08] Simone Collins: They were, they were the drunk cousin of Greece. Like, they, they’re the ones you don’t want showing up at the party who, who drinks way too much and then, like, picks a fight.
[00:13:17] But
[00:13:17] Malcolm Collins: ultimately they were the much more effective population, right?
[00:13:21] Simone Collins: I know, I know, I know. I mean, you have yeah, you have Alexander the Great. Like, it
[00:13:24] Malcolm Collins: was a big embarrassment. They, they, they come to the, the Olympic Games and it’s like, “Yeah, sure, you’re allowed,” but, like, it’s the hillbillies coming to the Olympic Games over-
[00:13:29] Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s like their hold my beer moment, and they go and conquer.
[00:13:33] And it’s amazing.
[00:13:34] Malcolm Collins: For people who are familiar, the Macedonians are the ones that Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great came from. Yeah. Ended up conquering all of Greece and then most of the known world at the time.
[00:13:42] Simone Collins: Yeah. And then you know, Cleopatra resulting from this. Like, the, the lasting influence there was huge.
[00:13:48] And I, I love the- The, the royal metallurgies or, yeah ...
[00:13:51] Malcolm Collins: yeah, so
[00:13:51] Simone Collins: back to Persians though, basically, and this is funny too, you know? We, we’ve done that episode where you were like, “Well, I don’t know if people in the Middle East can handle democracy, just like culturally. Like, they, they can’t.” This is exactly what Greeks thought about Persians.
[00:14:04] They were like, “Well, these decadent, soft people-” Well- “... are naturally suited to monarchy” ... hold on. “They can’t handle free citizenship. They can’t handle-” They
[00:14:11] Malcolm Collins: can’t handle free citizenship. You’re like
[00:14:11] Simone Collins: literally pointing out something that’s not true. I, I point
[00:14:12] Malcolm Collins: out, Simone, I said that about Arabs, not about- Oh, sorry, Arabs
[00:14:15] not about Persians, okay?
[00:14:17] Simone Collins: Not about Persians. Well, well, right. I’m saying the Greeks said it about Persians. It’s just that y- you know, you’re not the first person to say that a people cannot handle you know, free citizenship and voting. Some people just need a king. And by
[00:14:28] Malcolm Collins: the way, for the people who think that I’m being offensive there, go to our episode on it, the statistics on- No,
[00:14:32] Simone Collins: you, you make a compelling argument
[00:14:34] Malcolm Collins: on how many times it has been the, we have achieved stable democracies in the Arab world is astonishingly low when contrasted with Northern Europe.
[00:14:42] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. O- of course Athens was just sort of considered the cultural capital of the world, but I... My understanding from the various accounts and readings and stuff is that they, everyone saw them as like that stuck-up girl who thinks so much of herself.
[00:14:57] And yes, she gets all As and she’s valedictorian and she’s the richest girl in class and she’s super popular, but everyone’s like, “Ugh, like, stop. You’re f- this is tedious.” And everyone saw Spartans a- a- I mean, rightfully so, because here you have Spartans. Sparta’s really different. They, they do not allow foreigners.
[00:15:14] They’re very afraid that outsiders are gonna spy on them. They have their harsh, militarized way of life. You know, both girls and young boys are training heavily. The girls are very athletic, in contrast to the classic Athenian woman who, like, the, the perfect Athenian woman you’d never see. She would stay in the back house until she married, and then go to someone else’s, like, back of their house and y- you just...
[00:15:35] They were very absent from public life, not very, not very vocal. And then, you know, you have Spartans who are property owners, who are strong and athletic and out there. And here actually you can see, ‘cause you just don’t see statues of or- Mm ... depictions of Athenian women like this. This is a statue of a Spartan running girl
[00:15:56] like just a female athlete.
[00:15:58] You would n- see [00:16:00] this in a museum and you would immediately know this is from Ancient Greece, she must be Spartan, ‘cause, like, you don’t, you don’t have, like, girls athletically running. This is not a, this is not a thing that people do. So- I, I need to see where this was founded, but Professor Rufus Fears speaking for The Great Courses was like, everyone...
[00:16:19] ‘Cause in, in in Athens you would get a wet nurse or something. Everyone wanted a, a Spartan wet nurse ‘cause they were the toughest and they wanted- Yeah ... their babies to be drinking the milk of these strong women if they’re like, especially male babies, right? You don’t want that weak Athenian milk.
[00:16:31] You don’t
[00:16:32] Malcolm Collins: want that weak... Yeah. Yeah. No, the, the, this is, this comes to an episode where we point out that cultures that are often more militaristic, typically the more martial a culture is, the more gender equal it is between men and women. Yeah. And, and we go into why in, in that episode, but you’re seeing this here with Ath- Spartan women versus Athenian women.
[00:16:51] Simone Collins: Yeah. So the Ionian Greeks, do you, can you imagine what they, people thought of them?
[00:16:55] Malcolm Collins: They’re
[00:16:56] Simone Collins: boring. I don’t know. These are the coastal cities under Persian rule. What, what... They, they obviously thought they were cowards. Oh, yeah. That
[00:17:00] Malcolm Collins: they’re, they’re
[00:17:01] Simone Collins: effem. They’re weak, they’re softened, the- their mild climate has made them indolent.
[00:17:07] That they’re, they’re good talkers, but they’re terrible warriors. And then the Boeotians were just seen as hicks, like those just like- Who were the
[00:17:13] Malcolm Collins: Boeotians?
[00:17:14] Simone Collins: Especially Thebans. Like, y- you’re more aware of Thebans. Oh, The- Like the band of Thebes ...
[00:17:18] Malcolm Collins: they were seen as hicks? They were the ones going to
[00:17:19] Simone Collins: go to Thebes?
[00:17:19] Yeah, like, well, they were brutish country hicks. They were agricultural, they were uncultured, they were uncosmopolitan. Keep in mind, most of the people, like, writing history are the Athenians with all their books and all their,
[00:17:31] Malcolm Collins: you know, temples. No, there were a lot of Ionian Greeks who wrote history.
[00:17:33] Like, Herodotus was an Ionian, as far as I remember.
[00:17:36] Simone Collins: Right? I don’t know. That sounds just like, you know how New Zealanders, like, you just see them outside of New Zealand all the time because they have to travel the world. Maybe that kind of fits with the whole, you know, had to leave thing. But I don’t know.
[00:17:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It, well, so he wrote in Ionic dialect and was deeply influenced by Ionic philosophical and historical traditions.
[00:17:55] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:17:55] Malcolm Collins: But he was technically in a region settled by the Dorian
[00:17:59] Simone Collins: Greeks.
[00:17:59] Malcolm Collins: Ah. But I, I don’t know if they would’ve seen a, a difference. But yeah, continue.
[00:18:03] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:18:04] We’re gonna move on to Ancient Rome because this is where I actually was able to get some good graffiti at least one instance that I, I really loved in terms of, like, a stere- ‘cause I, it’s not just finding old graffiti, which is really hard to find, okay? But it’s finding old graffiti that depicts racial stereotypes and, and Romans did a lot of graffiti, they did a lot of trash talk.
[00:18:22] If you go, for example, to the, the Roman baths in Bath, in England, in Somerset you can see some of the inscriptions on little pieces of, I think, what is it? Copper? That people wrote on and then dropped into a, like, sacred pool at a temple for a goddess. You know, like, so they would, like, write on a thing, throw it in the water for the god to hear, and the things people wrote, once they carefully unfolded and read these inscriptions, were so fricking petty.
[00:18:50] They’re like, “Make so and so blind for stealing my bag,” and like, you know, it was just people fricking hated each other. Like, we’ve been petty forever. But that’s not about a racial stereotype or it’s not about a group-based st- stereotype. But here’s, is something delightful, and I just love, you know, graffitis that also looks like such terrible drawings.
[00:19:08] But tell me what you see, Malcolm.
[00:19:11] Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Sorry. Oh, let’s see. Open it up here.
[00:19:17] Simone Collins: Yeah, what are you looking at here?
[00:19:18] Malcolm Collins: Oh, I know this one. I’ve seen this one before. This is so, so I don’t even have to interpret it because I know this particular art so well.
[00:19:26] Simone Collins: This is famous, yeah.
[00:19:26] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but this is supposed to be somebody being crucified with a donkey head, and then somebody else is worshiping the person being crucified with a donkey head.
[00:19:36] Simone Collins: And the, the writing says, “Go worship your donkey god,” because that is what Romans thought of both Jews and Christians. Well- This is more Christians in this case ...
[00:19:46] Malcolm Collins: why the donkey? Why the... the, do we know?
[00:19:49] Simone Collins: You know, it, it wasn’t very clear. But it was just a well-known slur at the time that both Jews and Christians worshiped a donkey.
[00:19:57] This was an accusation that had a name. It was called [00:20:00] an- anility. And they used the donkey head to mock Christ and th- th- this is specifically, like, it’s an insult to... Again, ‘cause Romans are, like, so freaking petty and they’re very targeted. But it’s, it’s an insult toward Alexamenos. But yeah, it’s like, go worship your donkey god, Alexamenos.
[00:20:16] Malcolm Collins: Go worship your donkey god, you nerd. Oh, right. And then the guy in the picture looks like a real guy. I know, I know. Like, he looks like he could have been a person.
[00:20:24] Simone Collins: It’s, it’s, it’s wonderful. It, it is,
[00:20:25] Malcolm Collins: Just trying to go about his normal life ... yeah,
[00:20:27] Simone Collins: just trying to worship his donkey god. I mean, okay, let me, let me actually double-click on anility, because yeah, where did they get donkey?
[00:20:35] Maybe ‘cause Jesus rode into... But then why would the Jews worship a donkey? Worship of donkey and by extension, figurative devotion to fooln- foolishness. The core meaning in its literal sense means worship of the ass or donkey as a deity. Mommy? Yeah, buddy? In antiquity, pagan authors in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds accused Jews and later early Christians of anolatry, claiming they worshiped a donkey or donkey-headed idol. Writers such as Tacitus mention this slur, and Christian apologists like Tertullian and Minicius Felix refer to it in order to refute it.
[00:21:15] W- why? Why did they think Jews worshiped
[00:21:29] A donkey. Maybe it was, you know, one of those things that just like if donkeys were fools. Th- they’re not really saying that Jews worshiped a donkey, but donkeys were just a representation of like y- this is a ridiculous religion. Ancient- No, Tex. Ancient Greek and Roman authors did not seriously objur- observe Jews worshiping a donkey.
[00:21:51] They developed that idea as a hostile slur that blended ethnographic fantasy, wordplay, and polemic about aniconic worship. Anicon- aniconic.
[00:22:02] Malcolm Collins: Aniconic.
[00:22:04] Simone Collins: Okay. That’s a new word. Aniconic, ladies and gentlemen. So yeah, no, the, the, it’s just, it’s like an intentional slur that has no basis in reality, but they’re like, “What are you doing?”
[00:22:17] Okay, fine. He’s just, just here for the ride. He’s- Oh, not if you do that, though. Let’s get back to what Romans thought of people. Jews were seen as basically stubborn, cliquey weirdos. They were portrayed as very, like, hard-headed subjects with this herd mentality who were fiercely attached to their weird, unique customs such as circumcision and, and deity laws and not, not killing babies.
[00:22:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Tactica complained about that.
[00:22:50] Simone Collins: Yeah, like, what, who, who are these crazy people who don’t even kill their weak babies? And then all outsiders, of course, were barbarians. Greeks were admirable but contemptible. Like, they were, like, you know, of course the source of philosophy and art and literature.
[00:23:06] They were nerds. Yeah, yeah. They were- Oh my God, that is totally, yeah, they were nerds. They were seen as, as talkative and tricky and morally weak and effeminate and prone to luxury and unreliable and more. Like brainy but soft. They were, they were nerds. Greeks, the OG nerds. I love
[00:23:23] Malcolm Collins: that. The OG nerds.
[00:23:23] Don’t trust them.
[00:23:24] Simone Collins: Phoenicians- I
[00:23:25] Malcolm Collins: wouldn’t trust a Greek. Not back then, I’ll tell you what.
[00:23:27] Simone Collins: They- Oh, for sure not. Yeah. Oh my God, so was Nero a weeb? The Rome, Rome was the America of the time. No, like Nero then must have been kind of weeb-like, right? ‘Cause he’s like, “I just love the Greeks so much.” “And I wanna be an actor.”
[00:23:38] Was that just his thing? No, a
[00:23:39] Malcolm Collins: good way to think of the way the Romans viewed the Greeks is the way Americans view Europeans.
[00:23:44] Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, okay. Yes ...
[00:23:47] Malcolm Collins: like cultured but like effeminate and weak, right? Like a failure. Like
[00:23:51] Simone Collins: they are not- Like, yeah ...
[00:23:52] Malcolm Collins: really set to run an empire. Come on, man. No, that’s horrific.
[00:23:56] America needs to come back on and crack some heads because [00:24:00] they’re being ruled by their women again.
[00:24:02] Simone Collins: Oh gosh, that is, that is such a thing. Yeah, let’s see. Just generally like Syrians and Carthaginians and Phoenicians were seen as sleazy merchants. But I, I think like, honestly, and this is showing up as a pattern, anyone who kind of traded with your empire who was like an outside trading partner was like, ooh, suspicious.
[00:24:20] I don’t know. But this makes sense because the dynamic is this is a trading partner. Like, they obviously wanna get the better end of a deal. You’re negotiating, so you’re going to have some level of distrust. So I’m seeing like this pattern, right? There’s the Libyans and then there’s the Phoenicians and...
[00:24:35] Oh, Egyptians though were seen as- Very ancient and sinister with their weird superstition and their arrogant priests and their... They, they, they really didn’t... Also, Rome kind of resented them, and I think that it’s similar to how China can resent the US and, and, and other countries, ‘cause Egypt was kind of the breadbasket for Rome.
[00:24:58] They were really, e- especially, es- especially during certain times, dependent on them for food. So it was like, well, they need Egyptian grain, but they’re also these, like, weird, mysterious, superstitious people, and they were kind of, like, fascinated and disturbed by them. It was as if, like, you need all of your food from, or, like, a lot of your food from some, like...
[00:25:21] Oh, like your kid in the cafeteria, and your parents always neglect to pack your lunch, but, like, this creepy goth girl in the corner- Mm-hmm ... or, like, Wiccan is like, “Yes, come, and I will read your tarot cards.” And it’s like, well I need the food and she’s kinda hot, but she really creeps me out. So I don’t want this.
[00:25:40] And I think Cleopatra, I, I read, I’ve read multiple biographies about her, really played up this stereotype and used it well because
[00:25:49] Malcolm Collins: she spent- You know, she’s like, like the goth, she was the goth girl of her era, right?
[00:25:51] Simone Collins: Like- She was the hot goth of her era, 100%. Very dramatic.
[00:25:56] Malcolm Collins: I’ll kill yourself with, like, a snake or whatever, right?
[00:25:58] Like-
[00:25:58] Simone Collins: 100%. I mean, she was totally the hot goth of her time, and very, like, that girl, too, in high school who would, like, sleeps with all the guys because she, like, understands how to play their tune and use them to her advantage. She’s- And do the mysterious, gothy thing. Ugh, yeah, for real. She was, yeah,
[00:26:15] so spooky.
[00:26:16] That was Egyptians. They were spooky.
[00:26:20] Spooky.
[00:26:21] Yeah. And then in general, like, Persians and Parthians were viewed as, as pretty formidable enemies and kind of that, I think similarly to how Egyptians viewed Libyans, it’s like, “Oh, well, you are a formidable enemy. Like, I worry about you.” I think similarly to how Greeks viewed Persians of like, “Ah, I mean, you’re effete and pretty, and, you know, your people are soft, but I gotta watch out for you.”
[00:26:46] The Gauls were seen as these noble savages. So while they were seen as, like, hot-headed and brave noble savages, they were also seen as, like, sort of impetuous and simple and prone to rashness, kind of like a- Yes ... the big meatheads, I guess. The meatheads of the North. They were the, the jock on the, the, the high school team.
[00:27:04] They would just kind of follow orders, I guess, from some leader, from like a bunch- I’m trying to
[00:27:07] Malcolm Collins: get more Roman Jewish stereotypes than you had, ‘cause I don’t, I don’t like, yeah, I don’t think you, you, you go, you had enough there. Continue.
[00:27:12] Simone Collins: Of my Roman Jews? Yeah. And then the, the, but the Germans were seen as even more savage versions of the Gauls, and I know that, like, Germany wasn’t a thing yet, but, like, people from that re- region that is now Germany, they were like the extra, extra Gauls.
[00:27:26] They were super Gauls. They were even more savage, even more unconqueror. They were like the, they came from the trees, from the dirt. They were like dirt people and they-
[00:27:37] Malcolm Collins: Wait, who were, who were the super golds?
[00:27:39] Simone Collins: The Germans The Germans? The, the, well, I mean, like- They were ... the people from the, yeah, and like they, they were, they totally were.
[00:27:44] They were both like romanticized by the Romans, who were like, “Ah, these noble savages.” Like, they were kind of the OG noble savage.
[00:27:51] Malcolm Collins: So, so, okay, I, I pulled up their, their Jewish stereotypes.
[00:27:54] Simone Collins: Oh, no. They- Okay, go on ...
[00:27:55] Malcolm Collins: were clannish, antisocial, and misanthropic. Specifically [00:28:00] Jews were accused of refusing to mix with others, sitting apart at meals, sleeping separately, and showing loyalty only to fellow Jews.
[00:28:07] Tacitus, the harshest source- Didn’t I say
[00:28:09] Simone Collins: that quickly? ...
[00:28:10] Malcolm Collins: wrote that a- and Tacitus, by the way, was the, the biggest source. He was the one who complained that they wouldn’t kill their babies. That they sit apart at meals and they sleep apart. And they were prone to lust. They abstained from for- oh, he says, “While they’re prone to lust, they abstain from foreign women.”
[00:28:25] I love that’s one of the problems. They’re prone to lust, but only other Jews. But
[00:28:28] Simone Collins: they’re, they’re not taking our women. Like, what? Really? Like, where are you going with that? He claimed
[00:28:32] Malcolm Collins: they showed com- compassion only to each other and were hostile to all others. Cicero complained that the Jews stick together and had undue influence in Roman assemblies.
[00:28:42] That’s hilarious. Okay. Oh, my God. So, the Jews control all of Rome. They’re all in our assemblies, guys. They, they did not like the, the pork taboo was frequently ridiculed. The incision was ri- ri- ridiculed. Sabbath observance ridiculed, and the a- aniconism that you talked about. Yeah.
[00:28:58] Simone Collins: Yeah,
[00:28:58] Malcolm Collins: they were- And they really hated, and see our episode- Weirdos
[00:29:00] if you’re not familiar with this, but the most common complaint about Jews is that they were always attempting to convert Romans, which obviously has changed in Judaism, and see our episode, The Question that Breaks Judaism, where we go over the history of this change in Judaism.
[00:29:13] Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s a, th- there’s a, abundant coverage of this.
[00:29:19] But let’s move on to medieval Europe. Basically there were these, and, and this is interesting, the barbarians changed a little and it was kind of like they’re barely Christian. It, it, the, the primary concern with barbarians, like the Irish, the Welsh, the Slavs, Baltic people, there’s like, are they even Christian?
[00:29:36] Like, what are, what are these monsters? But that’s kind of like the measuring stick is how Christ- are these good Christians? But Anglo-norml- Norman writers in England and, and also people living in what’s now Germany, would just routinely depict nearby frontier peoples which, you know, were Scottish Irish Slavs- Welcome
[00:29:55] more far northen- northern people as just basically violent pastoralists, pirates, plunderers. They were resistant to law and agriculture. Like, “Do you even farm, bro?” And, and needing- Do you even
[00:30:07] Malcolm Collins: farm, bro? ...
[00:30:08] Simone Collins: to be conquested sorry, conquered, and they needed... It wasn’t just conquest, it was also missionary work.
[00:30:14] Like, “We gotta send, we gotta... These guys need Jesus.” Like, they were, they were really worried about them. They were, they needed to, to be civilized, they needed to climb the... Well, I, I’m giving you stuff, but you’re just throwing it. Climb the rungs of civilization and, and, and be shown a better way I haven’t heard back, love. But yeah, this, so this, this, they need to be civilized stereotype was also used to excuse or justify expansion into these territories which I, I think is, like, a f- fairly ex- to be expected pattern, right?
[00:30:49] Like, of course they would. That, that makes sense. We, you can kind of see, here’s an image. Like, there, there, again, there’s not much, like, imagery, but here are some engravings by Albrecht Dürer during the 1500s of-
[00:31:03] Malcolm Collins: Okay ...
[00:31:03] Simone Collins: pastoral people.
[00:31:05] You have to see just other Roman graffiti that I found that wasn’t racist, but could be racist, ‘cause look at nose man. Looks just so weirdly modern. And
[00:31:17] I, I forget what- Noseband.
[00:31:19] Malcolm Collins: That’s very hilarious.
[00:31:20] Simone Collins: Yeah. Someone didn’t like him or his floppy nose. Here are the pastoralists. So I don’t know, they just look kind of like they’re- ... they’re dancing. One’s playing a bagpipe. They’re just kinda like, “Eh.” Like, I don’t know. Lazy
[00:31:34] Malcolm Collins: vagabonds.
[00:31:34] Simone Collins: Like, I know exactly what you mean.
[00:31:35] Lazy, yeah. Lazy vagabonds, I guess, is kind of the look they’re going for. So that’s the closest I could get to, like, a, a, a picture of them. But the Scots especially were just seen not only as, you know, among these things of, like, more in need of civilization and everything, but, like, southern Scotland was seen- Mm
[00:31:53] as, like, kind of cool. Mm. Like, kinda chill. They’re all right. And then, like, northern Scotland was like, “No, they’re, they’re the worst. They’re poor and terrifying.” [00:32:00] But broadly speaking, they were seen as militarily dangerous, but just poor and less civilized. And they just had these small, poor towns and these people in their, in their swaddling swaddling...
[00:32:15] What do you, what do you call them? Kilts? Not kilts. What are, like, the actual garments that people used to wear in Scotland that you wrap around? They’re very long.
[00:32:23] You know what I’m talking about?
[00:32:25] Malcolm Collins: No, I
[00:32:25] Simone Collins: forget what you call- Yeah, you don’t care about
[00:32:26] She’s talking about a great kilt
[00:32:27] Malcolm Collins: your garments. I, I for- I forget the name. I know what you’re talking about.
[00:32:30] Simone Collins: Yeah. I was thinking of Trump’s phrase swaddling hijab, which I just thought was the best phrase ever. But yeah, they were very, like, persistent enemies, and there, there was a lot of understanding of them being stubborn and warlike. The Jews, here’s where, like, the stuff, the antisemitic stuff gets I, I guess, good and what, where you were expecting something.
[00:32:49] Mm. What I did not expect to see was a very big recurring theme with the Jews. Do you know what it is? Have you seen, like, older antisemitic art, like 1300s to 1700s? Is it
[00:33:01] Malcolm Collins: their stupid hats?
[00:33:02] Simone Collins: No. No. What is it? It involves a farm animal.
[00:33:07] Malcolm Collins: I don’t know what it is then, no.
[00:33:09] Simone Collins: So for whatever reason, pig suckling is just all over the pl- the suckling, the, the, lots of...
[00:33:16] Like, here, here’s an example. This-
[00:33:17] Malcolm Collins: So they think the Jews drink milk directly from pigs? That was the stereotype?
[00:33:21] Simone Collins: Yeah, no. Check, check this out. So this is a church in Wittenberg. This is actually a church where Martin Luther preached once, and there was a fairly recent controversy where people were like, “Dude, this, this carving in this, this 1300s carving in this church is, like, super antisemitic.
[00:33:38] It shows a bunch of Jews suckling from a pig.”
[00:33:40] What do you think it is?
[00:33:41] Octavian Collins: It’s like people, like raise people.
[00:33:44] Simone Collins: Oh, like I’m raising you?
[00:33:46] Octavian Collins: Yeah.
[00:33:47] Simone Collins: So racism- Yeah ... is just another word for pronatalism. For raising.
[00:33:52] Octavian Collins: Pronatalism? ‘
[00:33:53] Simone Collins: Cause we’re raising. Raising. We’re raising him.
[00:33:55] Malcolm Collins: We’re raising him. And we believe in racism. Raise-ism. Yeah. Raise-ism. I like that.
[00:34:00] Simone Collins: Where was I? Right, suckling pigs. Right, so the, the, this, this, this church in Wittenberg, by the way, wasn’t taken down. Antisemitism is alive and well where
[00:34:10] Malcolm Collins: the- Thank God. What a horrible thing if they took down something from the 1300s. It,
[00:34:12] Simone Collins: it would be. It would be.
[00:34:13] Like, it’s un- it’s helpful to understand the history of bias. So I-
[00:34:18] Malcolm Collins: And we don’t know that Jews at that time period didn’t suckle from pigs.
[00:34:22] Simone Collins: Right? I mean, h- so here’s another one. Mm. I, this, this is really pretty explicit. It’s kinda hard to make out what’s happening in this antisemitic engraving from the, I think this is also the 1300s.
[00:34:36] And I couldn’t get a great translation. But it’s
[00:34:40] there’s someone e- eating something out of the butt of what I believe is also a pig. Another person is suckling from its very full teat. People have got horns because you got the Jew horns. The Jew horns- Mm ... of course appear. Or
[00:34:54] Malcolm Collins: that, that only makes sense.
[00:34:56] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, duh. And there, there’s what appears to be possibly a dead baby at the top, so maybe here’s where we get the you know- Blood libel ... the Jews and the, and the babies. I don’t know. It’s kinda hard to tell. I don’t speak...
[00:35:10] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean, this, this puts modern antisemitism to shame, you know?
[00:35:14] Simone Collins: Here’s another image of- The way we- ... more Jews suckling from a pig. What, like this I, just blindsided me. Okay. Like, why, why are we, why,
[00:35:26] Malcolm Collins: And they’re dressed like the freaking babies from that one skit, like, Ozymandias or whatever the, which is also hilarious. And one of them is, I guess, looking at the poo, and the other ones are suckling from its teat, and another one is looking at the baby’s butt and they’re in like baby outfits.
[00:35:45] Speaker 13: What is the meaning of life? Well, then what’s your answer?
[00:35:49] Speaker 14: I’ll never be able to say something as profound as my brother. My desire for my words to have sterile, clinical, literal meanings is sort of a wall that [00:36:00] prevents me from venturing close to people.
[00:36:02] Sometimes I think the most direct route to another’s heart is through nonsense, and nonsense has always eluded me.
[00:36:09] Speaker 13: Well, to you, then, what is the direct literal meaning of life?
[00:36:11] Speaker 14: I hope before I am dead and my atoms are collected back into the neutron star at the center of the baby dimension, that I will discover why the love that I have for my brother was not enough for him to feel whole when that love is all that sustains me and all that I think I will ever have.
[00:36:36] Speaker 13: I think what he meant to say was we like to have fun
[00:36:40] Speaker 14: and get tickles.
[00:36:41] Speaker 13: Okay.
[00:36:42] Speaker 14: Right? Fun and tickles.
[00:36:45] Simone Collins: Yeah, and this, I, I think I, I did not encounter any level of, we’ll say hatred or racism or othering against any group at all that I did with Jews during medieval to Renaissance Europe, That’s
[00:37:01] Malcolm Collins: fascinating that, like, Jews really, like, the, the West learned how to racism with Jews.
[00:37:06] Simone Collins: Oh, no, like for real, this was when, like, they went hard on them.
[00:37:12] ‘Cause a- again, I, I had difficulty finding a whole lot of hate on other groups. It was like, “Oh, you know, those bumpkins.”
[00:37:18] Malcolm Collins: No, what, what I also find funny about- Next slide ... this is just how extreme it is compared- It
[00:37:22] Simone Collins: is ... to modern antisemitism. Well, and Malcolm, let me be clear. It, it’s not just this weird pig suckling thing.
[00:37:27] It is that they, they basically thought they were, like, not human. Like, they had all these things that they, they thought they were like, they had weird bodily traits that other humans didn’t have, like that they were hemorrhoidal and had, had monthly bleeding that wasn’t- Just for women. They, they were very seen as, as, as melancholic and greedy and spiritually obstinate and this, this was like a hereditary genetic, like they, they were very much seen as subhuman, like as, as, as monsters.
[00:37:59] And then this, this fell- That’s fascinating ... fed into more broad notions that Jews were these fixed outsiders that you, you could not integrate them into a Christian new Israel. And they were associated very much with usury and corruption. And actually not Alex actually was just reminding me the other day in our XDMs that it’s really, really weird, this idea among evangelical Americans that like, “Well, we want Jews in Israel because, you know, we need that for the second coming.”
[00:38:28] This whole idea, like in, in Europe he, he reminded me, us that like in Europe, no, just the, the idea is that Christians are the descendants of Jews. And only, like you need Christians in Israel. You don’t need Jews in Israel.
[00:38:42] Malcolm Collins: Like- Yeah. The, the Crusades were not about re-winning Israel for the Jews For
[00:38:46] Simone Collins: Jews.
[00:38:47] Yeah, exactly.
[00:38:48] So that is something that’s powerful ... I mean,
[00:38:49] Malcolm Collins: it’s a, it’s a different interpretation. And I think it is a, if I’m gonna be honest, I think the evangelical interpretation of those particular passages seems to be more literalist and as intended than the interpretation that the Catholic Church took in the medieval period.
[00:39:06] The Catholic Church took a bunch of crazy positions in the medieval period that are just not heavily supported by the Bible. Yeah. And a lot of Christians forget just how much of that is, is... Like, I always point out like the Trinity, for example, is just not that well-supported by the Bible as a concept.
[00:39:25] It’s not, the Bible isn’t specifically antagonistic to the Trinity. It doesn’t argue against it. But like it came out as a concept like 300 years later. And so when people were like, “Oh, you guys don’t believe in the Trinity, you’re not real Christians,” I’m like Excuse me ... that was not, that was not a thing for most of the early Christians Yeah.
[00:39:35] Not
[00:39:36] Simone Collins: my canon. Yeah,
[00:39:36] Malcolm Collins: exactly.
[00:39:43] Yeah. It’s like, that, that is a, that is a... Well, I think a lot of Christians forget the stuff that came in in the early councils and the stuff that’s actually in the Bible, and they conflate the two really heavily.
[00:39:52] Simone Collins: Totally. I just sent you some more. I sent you one more Jew one. Oh. Oh, okay ... again, of Jews.
[00:39:57] Again, they’re stuck. They can’t get off this pig. And [00:40:00] one of them looks like he wants to lick the pi- the pig’s- A hole on the wrong side. Three are suckling from the teat. The other one is chewing on its tail and riding it backwards
[00:40:11] Malcolm Collins: Oh, thank God.
[00:40:12] Simone Collins: They’re just like they... I’ve never seen racist art this explicit.
[00:40:17] So as a palate cleanser, I’m gonna th- I also sent you my fav- Oh ... my favorite ones. This- A bird ... chicken, I guess. The chicken.
[00:40:24] Malcolm Collins: Chicken. Okay.
[00:40:25] Simone Collins: There’s the guy. Okay. I really like the guy. I
[00:40:28] Malcolm Collins: think, I think m- I think Octavia would’ve drawn this chicken, just-
[00:40:31] Simone Collins: It, it looks like something that Octavia would’ve drawn.
[00:40:33] I think my favorite’s just like the little dude. Not the one with the hat, but just like the dude with the sword. Oh, yeah. Looks very much like a certain internet style. You know what I mean? It’s kind of a- Yeah ... kind of Invader Zim. It, it’s kind of giving Invader Zim. And I-
[00:40:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it definitely has the j-
[00:40:46] style of modern internet art, actually.
[00:40:48] Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m like, “Oh my gosh,” like nothing is new. Nothing is new. I love, I
[00:40:52] Malcolm Collins: love that- But actually, the, the guy with the hat also has a style of like some modern cartoons.
[00:40:56] Simone Collins: Totally. Like, what, did, were these just over educated medieval art scholars who had to like get a commercial job and ended up illustrating for cartoons?
[00:41:05] What is going on? But also I guess humans just draw certain ways, so who cares? I, I don’t know. But I found that very entertaining. Moving on to Renaissance Europe. This is what you alluded to earlier, the vice concept emerged. We have the French vice, the English vice, and the Italian vice. Cool. Which is delightful.
[00:41:26] I think most people came to learn about the French vice in various movies and shows about the, the court of King Henry VIII and the Boleyn sisters. And that is because they spent some of their youth in the French royal court, which was the source of this reputation of the French vice. It was seen as this very A sexually loose place where he’d learn all sorts of tricks that the very prudish English women didn’t know.
[00:41:57] I will leave this to your imagination, but imagine, and of course, this is what people were saying, we don’t know what actually happened in the bedroom. Mm. But imagine King Henry VIII’s delight when he discovers these young women from the French court who can do things to him that he couldn’t even imagine after spending all this time with his Catholic wife, Isabel.
[00:42:17] Right, her name was Isabel. So yeah, th- this was like, it was very much a reputation. I think this is really downstream of the fact that the court the French court in general involved a lot of mistresses. So there was this depiction of like, well, there’s just, where there’s mistresses, there’s gotta be a lot of sex, and where there’s a lot of sex, you gotta have a lot of like, weird stuff going on.
[00:42:37] Gotta have it ... and even to this day, you have French kissing. Mm-hmm. You know, and there’s still reputations. French
[00:42:41] Malcolm Collins: kissing, yes. They
[00:42:42] Simone Collins: invented it. Right? I mean, come on. Like, but think, it’s, it’s like some English person who’s never used tongue who’s like, “Well, this must be the French style.” You know, like, this thing holds.
[00:42:50] It holds really well which is absolutely delightful. And then the important thing about these vice reputations, the, the English vice, the Italian vice, et cetera, is that once the seeds were planted in Renaissance Europe, in the early modern era, they just started to compound and grow on each other.
[00:43:09] Okay. So after this became kind of a thing because of some, you know, like French court women kind of being seen as sexually manipulative ‘cause there are all these mistresses floating around, you started to get French literature really leaning into it, and there was this rise of this international publishing industry, so you also have the printing press making this worse.
[00:43:28] But around the mid-1600s, all these erotic and semi-pornographic French books started entering the Germanic region. They started entering the UK. All these, all these basically French romantic and erotic smut started- Mm-hmm ... entering the rest of Europe. Really? And the printing presses made it super pervasive. So imagine if, like, suddenly books exist a- and, and all the romance novels that are really smutty come from France.
[00:43:56] You- you’re gonna start to, like, build on this reputation. Yeah ... and y- [00:44:00] yeah, I had
[00:44:00] Malcolm Collins: no idea- Well, I mean, for the longest time when I was younger, I remember the French women were known for being, like, slutty and not shaving their armpits.
[00:44:08] Simone Collins: You know, some people find that hot. I don’t, but so it’s got... Some people like it.
[00:44:11] Malcolm Collins: I’ve, I’ve heard it. Yeah, some people find bush hot, too. I d- I don’t understand.
[00:44:15] Simone Collins: But anyway, these, these dirty books were basically, like, French... And, and I think French people leaned into the stereotype ‘cause they kinda liked being a little sexy. And so that’s, that’s it. And a very similar thing... I, so I didn’t know about, I didn’t know about the French literature compounding the issue and the printing press really fomenting it.
[00:44:34] I also didn’t know why the Italian vice became such a big thing. So from the later Middle Ages onward, outsiders started to associate certain Italian cities, not all but especially Florence, as having widespread male same-sex love and social networks that made these relationships super visible and pretty common.
[00:44:58] So basically there w- there was, like, the first gay scene was in Florence.
[00:45:02] Speaker 6: , they invented gayness.
[00:45:04]
[00:45:04] Speaker 17: I wonder if having Italy be disproportionately gay during the period of, , the development of many key Catholic institutions and doctrines is what played such a large part in such a large portion of the Catholic priesthood being same-sex attracted and, , the sort of large gay networks that many people have called out.
[00:45:26] Milo Yiannopoulos, for example, wrote a book on the, , Lavender Mafia, as he called it, and we recently did an episode on the, , quote-unquote “gay Jewish,” , priests who ended up writing core Catholic doctrine. , But , the, these individuals’ ability to so thoroughly gain control of the church and its doctrine and teachings
[00:45:42] Simone Collins: Maybe they... Gay people, chime in in the comments if there’s some other first gay scene, but, like, it seems like that really happened.
[00:45:49] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, obviously there’s, there’s, there’s, like, pre-modern gay scenes, like Thebes and stuff like that, but yeah, yeah.
[00:45:54] Simone Collins: Sure. Well, yeah. Well, allegedly. We don’t, we don’t know for sure. But there’s evidence from court records- We do know pretty sure about the
[00:45:59] Malcolm Collins: Theban troops ...
[00:46:01] Simone Collins: the Band of Thebes? Is there really? ‘Cause I remember, like, getting so excited about it and being like, “This is my yaoi romance. Let’s go. I need to learn more.”
[00:46:08] And they were like, “Well, it wasn’t... We’re not sure.” We don’t know. We’re not sure how great or long- They’re not sure what happened during
[00:46:15] Malcolm Collins: Creta ... what it was, but there was- Yeah ... a period where it happened
[00:46:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:20] Speaker 15: So I decided to go over all of the primary evidence we have for this, and it’s just demonstrable. , One, that the Sacred Band of Thebes existed. We know this because they helped hold the line against the Spartan king, Agis II in 378. , They, at the Battle of Tegyra in 375 BC under Polyeidus, , the 300 routed a much larger Spartan force.
[00:46:44] For the first time, Spartans were defeated. , Spartans were defeated a much s- by a much smaller force, first of all. , They were instrumental in the stunning Theban victory over Spartans at Leuctra 371, , which ended Spartans’ dominance over Greece. And the unit fought other campaign until it was ultimately annihilated at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC by the m- army of Philip II , of Macedon.
[00:47:10] So, , for a long period, we have evidence of them existing. In terms of them being an armory of gay lovers, , this was attested by Plutarch, Dionysius, Plato, Xenophon, and other attestations appear, including Polyaenus, Athenaeus, Diodotus Siculus, , and several others. So there’s at least six ancient writers that describe the erotic pairing.
[00:47:37] , So, , it... And we have arch- archaeological evidence. There is the Lion of Chaeronea, - monetary funeral lion, , and in 1879 to 1880, Greek archeologist, , Pantagathus Stamicus excavated a site and found 254 skeletons arranged in rows, seven rows, with some pairs having arms linked in hands clasped consistent with the, , what, what [00:48:00] we’re aware of with this.
[00:48:01] , So yeah, this is almost certainly not a legend and was a real force, , in which, , it was made up , of gay men and was able to dramatically outperform forces that were thought of as... Like the Spartans’ famous saying, if 300 men beat, like, 3,000 , Persians, and then apparently they were beat by a fraction of their own number of the Band of Thebes.
[00:48:20] Speaker 16: Who then were themselves beat by the hillbilly Macedonians, showing that hillbilly style always beats all other styles. , Also fun fact, , of my genetic chart, the place where my ancestry, if you go to the pre-English part of my ancestry, it traces back from Macedon
[00:48:38] Simone Collins: Anyway well, and yeah, and I guess gay romance was kind of a thing throughout ancient Greece and Rome.
[00:48:43] Never mind. Totally, I went ... Oh, God, and then, like, never mind. Yeah. Pervasive. Never mind. Totally wrong. It’s, the world has been gay for all of history. Oh, God, yeah. Sorry I know.
[00:48:51] Malcolm Collins: CR episodes do gays destroy civilization, where we go over this. Like, where, where do we actually see gays in history? When do we see gays in history, and does it precede civilizational collapse?
[00:49:00] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:49:00] Malcolm Collins: Basically we find it, it doesn’t appear to.
[00:49:03] Simone Collins: Yeah. But there is evidence from, because this is the point at which it’s illegal, court records, witness testimonies, moralizing tracts that, that indicate the presence of active male queer communities in cities like Florence, and this helped cement the idea that this was a more tolerant area.
[00:49:25] I mean, it’s kind of ironic, right? ‘Cause they’re like, “No, don’t do it. Stop.” But, but you know, they, they kept doing it. And then by the 17th century, because phrases like the Italian vice became kind of like a, a shorthand
[00:49:38] Malcolm Collins: for gay- So gayness was the Italian vice, sleeping around was the French vice, and BDSM was the English vice
[00:49:43] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna get to, to the UK next Okay but yeah because the Italian vice was shorthand for gay stuff then people would start to go to Italy for their gay romespringa. Tourists would, even i- in the early 1800s, sort of revive and spread this stereotype because they were both fascinated and scandalized by this reputation and they, they wanted to check it out and maybe- They’d be
[00:50:11] Malcolm Collins: like, “Ooh, oh, the gay, early gay, proto-gay bars and stuff.”
[00:50:15] Simone Collins: It kind of was, yeah. It’s like the Cape Cod, Fire Island, Provincetown of of Europe, you know? The,
[00:50:21] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So being born in Fire Island definitely made
[00:50:23] Simone Collins: you a little bit gay ... the gay, kinky boot of Europe. Yeah Yes. It’s, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. So yeah, I, I thi- I didn’t know that that, it was like a, sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing.
[00:50:32] Although of course the, the court records show that it was a thing they were trying to stop. Now, the English vice is super interesting because first, England was super known for being very puritanical and c- sex negative, and not, not very interesting when it came to sexual relations.
[00:50:48] Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay.
[00:50:49] Simone Collins: But then I think part- partly because it was so dour and puritan and sexually repressed and a bunch of sanctimonious proto-Karens freaked out when people did do slightly kinky things, that it then developed this reputation for flagellation, which then evolved into our understanding of, like, BDSM, because there were commentators, like, trying to say, “Don’t do this,” and people, like, criminalizing it.
[00:51:20] Do, wait,
[00:51:20] Malcolm Collins: wait, what do we, what do we not do? What, where, where, where is the video I’m not supposed to look at?
[00:51:26] Simone Collins: What video?
[00:51:27] Malcolm Collins: That’s a joke. When you’re describing a video or something like that, it’s like, oh- Oh ... oh.
[00:51:32] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:33] Malcolm Collins: Where’s the... Do you... I, I definitely won’t look at that video. Can you just give me the URL for it?
[00:51:38] You know the joke. Come on.
[00:51:40] Simone Collins: Oh, no, I, I don’t. Maybe it’s a not girl thing. But anyway. Lee
[00:51:46] Malcolm Collins: would get it. Lee- my, my bros would get it. You’re just too-
[00:51:50] Simone Collins: I am, I am an old... I’m a s- I have the soul of a 62-year-old woman who’s probably not that online. But anyway basically around the 19th [00:52:00] century especially, English pu- public culture became super moralizing, and there were all these laws against male same-sex acts.
[00:52:09] And this made Britain a focal point for debates about homosexuality, which is also sometimes seen as the British vice, along with flagellation. And then in that climate, continental commentators would talk about the English vice, refer to specific behaviors, either flagellation or same-sex relations. Because it was, it was more prevalent in, like, a sex work context or in people getting caught and in big trouble for it.
[00:52:39] And it kind of happened in a way... It was, like, late onset Italian vice. So Italy really got the brunt of the same-sex reputation, and what really stuck with the UK was the BDSM stuff.
[00:52:51] Malcolm Collins: That is not what I’ve heard about how the UK got the BDSM stuff.
[00:52:55] Simone Collins: Oh, maybe I was reading the wrong sources. So- So what did you get?
[00:52:59] Malcolm Collins: I heard that it came from British private schools that used flogging as a, a punishment mechanism.
[00:53:06] Simone Collins: Mm.
[00:53:06] There’s this one book that’s called The English Vice that is a picture of a schoolteacher, a male schoolteacher who’s short and stout and has something of a whip. I mean, maybe it was... it came from this rep- I haven’t read the book.
[00:53:21] I, I did not read an entire book for this one episode. I’m so sorry. But like- But
[00:53:24] Malcolm Collins: apparently, what would happen is the kids would go and do it to each other.
[00:53:29] Simone Collins: Oh. Bless them.
[00:53:30] Malcolm Collins: Like, that’s, that’s where, like, they’d be like, “Oh, this is kinda kinky,” or whatever. And then it, like, took off as, like, a thing that people would do.
[00:53:40] I mean- I think, you know, BDSM and other things- Well, yeah, I mean,
[00:53:43] Simone Collins: school paddles were super pervasive. Corporal punishment was extremely pervasive in British schools. So it maybe it’s also that because that form of corporal punishment, especially things like the paddle, were very, very common in British schools, that more people learned they were into it, right?
[00:54:02] Like Aella writes in her, on her Substack about how, like, she didn’t think she was that into sex, and then experienced for the first time some forms of, like, BDSM and was like, “Oh my God.” And maybe the thing is, like, in the rest of Europe, there may not have been this exact type of corporal punishment, like being spanked with a paddle or something in the same kind of context.
[00:54:24] Also public humiliation, right? So it could just be that certain forms of attempted puritanical punishment in the UK Awoken sexually, a, a bunch of people who if not exposed to that would never have known that it would cause such satisfaction.
[00:54:41] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:54:42] Simone Collins: Mm, that makes sense. The rest is not that interesting.
[00:54:45] The Muslims were seen as fanatical warriors, basically. They were, like, sexually threatening and religiously dangerous, and you kind of admired them for their courage but you feared them as these enemies of Christiandom. So they were kind of just, like, the big, scary, bad other. Yeah. And Northern Europeans, again, like, sort of barbaric, dull workhorses, not very smart.
[00:55:08] And then in contrast, Southerners were seen as very indulgent drama queens. What’s super interesting to me is that this even falls into a microcosm- microcosmic context with places like Italy. Like, within Italy, Northern Italians were seen as industrious but, like, socially cold, and Southerners were seen as lazy and emotional.
[00:55:35] Malcolm Collins: Ooh ...
[00:55:36] Simone Collins: and yet, like, throughout the rest of Europe also, Northerners were seen as, like, these workers who were kind of, like, boring and stern, and, like, anyone south was seen as, like, oh, like, ooh, so emotional and- ... kinda lazy.
[00:55:50] Speaker 20: What’s ironic to me is that this is still portrayed even in my Korean Mawa books, , which shows how cross-cultural it is that you always [00:56:00] have the archetype of the Duke of the North who’s super cold and competent and warlike, and then the Duke of the South who’s often very,
[00:56:08] charismatic, , likable, , geniable, funny, , outgoing. , And of course, my favorite is the Duke of the North. That’s why I always have myself drawn that way
[00:56:19] Simone Collins: And it’s very interesting to me that, I mean, we have the, I think we have some, done some different episodes about the role that heat and cold play in civilizational development, and that, I mean, clearly if you live in a very cold climate, the, only the conscientious people will survive because only the conscientious people will have built shelters and food supplies that can get them through an extremely cold and frozen winter where no food grows.
[00:56:45] And in Southern cultures, you’re more likely to see some maybe more charismatic but indolent people make it through genetic choke holds because they don’t depend so much on delayed gratification and preparation and- Mm ... building in order to survive, because it’s not going to become a frozen tundra for, like, four months out of the year.
[00:57:07] So I found that- Yeah ... interesting in that the stereotypes would play out that way. But that
[00:57:12] Malcolm Collins: is
[00:57:13] Simone Collins: just what
[00:57:13] Malcolm Collins: I found. A Russian, if you wanna do Ru- ancient Russian stereotypes, they were seen as incredibly backwards and animalistic. But they also got their butts whipped by, like, every horde that came through their country in, like, really brutalistic ways.
[00:57:25] Like the famous case where they, they put a bunch of people under a table and had a feast while crushing them.
[00:57:31] Simone Collins: What? That’s horrible ...
[00:57:32] Malcolm Collins: th- this was the Mongols or the Huns or one of, one of these groups.
[00:57:35] Simone Collins: Yeah, like- Oh, yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t even get into the Mongols. There, there is art of the Mongols being, you know, terrifying.
[00:57:41] I feel like that’s something we don’t need to be enlightened on ‘cause we all know it, that they’d be scary.
[00:57:46] Malcolm Collins: So we, we could do a whole other episode on the history of American interratia- racism, like the different groups and how they hated each other.
[00:57:52] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’d be really fun. If this episode does well and y’all like it, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll get into...
[00:57:55] Yeah.
[00:57:56] Malcolm Collins: Da, da, da, da, da. Da, da, da, da, da. Da, da, da, da, da. And then, like, do a, a museum where it’s, like, a bunch of, like, Jemi- Aunt Jemimas and stuff like that. Oh,
[00:58:06] Simone Collins: my God. Like the- Right? In the Aunt Jemima restaurant. Was it called the Aunt Jemima restaurant, or was it called something else?
[00:58:11] Malcolm Collins: Something like that.
[00:58:12] Yeah,
[00:58:12] Simone Collins: well- I mean, even we had Aunt Jemima syrup. And even I watched, like, Shirley Temple movies where it was like there was some token uncle figure who would, like, sing and dance and just be... It’s so weird. It’s so weird. Yeah, that could be an interesting episode. But also probably gonna get this channel in big trouble, so I don’t know.
[00:58:35] I don’t know. No, I don’t
[00:58:36] Malcolm Collins: think... I don’t... I mean, we’ll focus mostly on non-discriminated groups in a modern context.
[00:58:42] Simone Collins: Well, we just we were declared
[00:58:44] racists by our own child.
[00:58:47] Malcolm Collins: W- yeah, he said that we raise him, so we’re racists.
[00:58:53] Simone Collins: I love that. I love that so much. “What does racism mean, Octavian?” Well, raise. Raise. You raised me. It’s people who raise.” We gotta take that. We gotta take it, yes.
[00:59:07] Malcolm Collins: Yes.
[00:59:07] Simone Collins: Oh.
[00:59:08] Okay, well, I love you. I’m going to go make you pumpkin... No. Yeah, pumpkin curry with bok choy.
[00:59:15] Malcolm Collins: With bok choy I think would be great. And you can put it on top of, yeah, whatever
[00:59:21] Simone Collins: Do you really want fries or do you really want, well, with bok choy, well, with b- with ri- with bok choy I think you want rice to s- soak up the curry
[00:59:29] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I think rice would be the right thing with bok choy. And
[00:59:31] Simone Collins: I, and I’m- And I’m just gonna stir-fry the bok choy with the curry, like, the last, like, 30 seconds, right? I don’t wanna cook it that much, right?
[00:59:39] You just want- Yeah,
[00:59:39] Malcolm Collins: you don’t, you don’t cook the bok choy that long. Okay. All righty. And you might wanna put in a little bit of, like, oyster sauce or something with this so that the, the bok choy works a bit better.
[00:59:47] Simone Collins: With the pumpkin curry?
[00:59:48] Malcolm Collins: Yes.
[00:59:49] Simone Collins: Sure. Let’s do it. Anything else aside from oyst- oyster sauce?
[00:59:52] Do you want hoisin sauce as well with, for a little sweetness? I guess the pumpkin brings so much sweet you don’t really need it.
[00:59:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you don’t really need that.
[00:59:58] Simone Collins: So just oyster sauce. Okay. [01:00:00] We’re on. All right,
[01:00:01] Malcolm Collins: love you.
[01:00:02] Simone Collins: I love you too.
[01:00:03] Malcolm Collins: Bye.
[01:00:05] Simone Collins: Bye.
[01:00:06] Just so you know, Malcolm is surrounded by empty cans, dirty clothes. It’s, it’s like the trash pit in, from Star Wars, quite literally. That’s what I feel like every time I wade into to try to, like, deliver him-
[01:00:18] Malcolm Collins: That’s why
[01:00:19] Simone Collins: I hoard, Simone- ... a drink or a smoothie ...
[01:00:20] Malcolm Collins: so
[01:00:20] Simone Collins: I can bring it
[01:00:21] Malcolm Collins: back ...
[01:00:21] Simone Collins: and so when Malcolm discovered that his mic stand is not compatible with his heavy, super expensive mic that y’all made us get, thanks, hope you like the sound of it all he decided to counterweight it by taping a Coke can to his mic stand.
[01:00:39] And that’s, it, it’s a look. It, it’s a very, I would say, cohesive aesthetic. Any interior decorator, I think, would come to appreciate it.
[01:00:48] Malcolm Collins: I hate you so much, Simone.
[01:00:50] Simone Collins: When, when Malcolm’s camera goes to full landscape mode, suddenly this short angle of his room disappears, and you can see the trash from like- This
[01:01:00] Malcolm Collins: is a problem for, like, interviews and stuff, because literally-
[01:01:03] Simone Collins: It is yes.
[01:01:04] Yeah, yeah.
[01:01:05] No, God, don’t... No, don’t do it. Oh, why did you do... Don’t. Don’t. Go back, go back. Jump scare. Oh, God. Why did you do that? Why did they need to see that? I’m
[01:01:18] Malcolm Collins: not like Jordan Peterson. I never told anyone to make their bed, okay?
[01:01:22] Simone Collins: Your bed is impossible to make. I was like- There’s no making
[01:01:24] Malcolm Collins: it ... live, live in a pigsty.
[01:01:26] I don’t care. I, like presumably it does make you marginally more efficient for some people, but it doesn’t for me. Like I, you know, and, and, and people are different, right? Like, you know, some people are better with order. Some people are better with chaos.
[01:01:38] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[01:01:39] Malcolm Collins: I
[01:01:39] Simone Collins: prefer- This, this, this is the, the not Malcolm bedroom.
[01:01:42] The, it looks weird because Tech sleeps on the bed with me, and there’s pillows there to keep him from falling off ‘cause he decides to go on a journey every night. He dreams of going to Mordor, throwing in the ring, but it really involves a lot of kicking and crawling around. So, I will kick us off. Oh, for dinner tonight, I mean, we have the nice salami.
[01:02:02] Do you want me to do something with that?
[01:02:04] Malcolm Collins: Oh, I like the nice salami. Mm-hmm. Okay, so if I was gonna do something with nice salami, I would eat it on toast.
[01:02:15] Simone Collins: Would you?
[01:02:17] Malcolm Collins: Oh.
[01:02:17] Simone Collins: You want nice salami and grilled cheese, just like to cut- I have a
[01:02:19] Malcolm Collins: great idea. Garlic bread. Cheesy garlic bread
[01:02:24] Speaker 21: A few final side notes for RFAB. , If you downloaded the image viewing app, which auto-sizes images for your screen, we now have that for both Apple and PC, and I have made significant, if you downloaded it anytime before, like yesterday, improvements in stability and features on it. So re-download that.
[01:02:42] You can find it on either our image generation page or our not safe for work image search page, which conglomerates the searches of all not safe for work search engines. , The other thing is I have recently added, , or will be added shortly after this video goes live, a model that China put out, which is beating the one that Anthropic had to take down by order of the US government on coding stuff.
[01:03:04] So if you’re using our vibe coding system, , we have , a model that is equivalent to Anthropic Fable, , which is exciting
[01:03:12] Speaker 18: you guys gonna have a battle? You’re gonna have the ultimate battle?
[01:03:15] Speaker 19: Yeah. Yeah. I would take a battle if I had a different gun.
[01:03:20] Speaker 18: A different gun. No. What’s wrong with that gun? I can find a new
[01:03:22] Speaker 19: one. I need to find a new one.
[01:03:24] Speaker 18: You do? Oh, no. All right, should I get the water out? You guys ready? Okay, so he’s gonna go to his gun wardrobe.
[01:03:35] Yeah, you want me to open it up for you?
[01:03:38] Speaker 19: Yeah.
[01:03:38] Speaker 18: Okay. That’s what I want. I’ll get 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 -
In this raw and data-packed episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins ask a provocative question: Are Europeans the only people on Earth historically into adult pairings?
While most cultures around the world historically married in the early-to-mid teens, Europeans (especially Northern and Western) stood out by commonly delaying marriage until the mid-20s — even in the Middle Ages. The hosts explore whether this European norm, later exported globally through colonialism and cultural influence, may be contributing to today’s fertility crashes in East Asia, Latin America, India, and beyond.
They dive into:
* Aella’s “Hotness Curve” study and what percentage of men find different ages attractive
* The e-girl phenomenon and why so many popular internet aesthetics look phenotypically 15
* Genetic and regional differences in fertility windows and menopause age (Europeans go into menopause ~2–3 years later on average)
* Historical first-marriage ages across Europe, China, India, Japan, Korea, Africa, and the Americas
* Global ages of consent today and when different countries criminalized CSAM
* Disney princess ages (Snow White was 14, Jasmine 15, Ariel 16…) and why normalizing teen marriage might be necessary for demographic survival
This is a no-holds-barred, truth-seeking conversation about culture, biology, attraction, and whether some populations are simply not built for the modern delayed-marriage timeline.
If you’re interested in pronatalism, human biodiversity, evolutionary psychology, or why fertility is collapsing everywhere except where European norms never fully took hold — this episode is for you.
Show Notes
Aella’s Findings
Aella also just released a substack post titled The Hotness Curve (how age changes a woman’s appeal).
Using photos of women of various ages (some real, some AI generated), Aella asked various questions, including: “Casual Sex: A 200 year old vampire shows up in your window at night. She wants a one-night stand. There are no consequences, and nobody will know. Do you say yes?”
Here are the answers:
Aella found that “Sexual interest climbs very fast, and generally hits a cresendo around women who appeared to be ~24 years old (or 28yo for the older men).”
“15% of men said yes they would have casual sex with a vampire in the body of an 11 year old. This rose to a third of men for the body of a 13 year old, and a half of men agreeing to the body of a 15 year old. By 18 we’re at roughly 70%, and by the time a 24 year old is hypothetically entering your window, ~90% of them were down.”
Just a small aside: “One interesting thing to note is that the dropoff in fuckability for women - what we might call The Wall - happens for women in their mid 30’s just as predicted, but only in the eyes of men under the age of 25. For older men, we find the ‘wall’ occurs in a woman’s early 40’s. Older men assigned equivalent ‘yes I’d have sex with her’ ratings to an 18 year old as they did to a woman in her early 50’s!”
Also: You should play Aella’s ageguesser game.
(Simone got better than 67% of players… not very good.)
The e-girl phenomenon
From our friend Bruno: “Why does a certain “e-girl” or “internet girl” face seem to resonate so consistently with online audiences across different eras? Highly recognizable women in online subcultures seem to converge around a similar look; why does that look perform so well with netizens?
Early internet figures like Boxxy, later YouTube personalities like Shoe0nHead, cosplay and streamer-adjacent figures, and then more recent cases like Belle Delphine and the current wave of TikTok, cosplay, and Twitter/X e-girl aesthetics. The more interesting question is why a particular facial and stylistic grammar keeps recurring: large expressive eyes, youthful proportions, soft or rounded features, dark hair or bangs, a slightly anime-coded presentation, and a mix of cuteness, irony, awkwardness, and sexual ambiguity.”
Malcolm’s first answer: BECAUSE THEY ALL LOOK LIKE LITTLE GIRLS AND PEOPLE ARE PEDOS.
The sick sad truth: Most of the world is full of pedos
Basically, Europeans are the only non pedos.
Maybe the concept of pedos wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Europeans
Maybe a contributing factor to falling birth rates involves modern norms around late marriage among groups that, for hundreds of years, married much younger.
Let’s explore this!
Variation in Fertility Windows
A large meta‑analysis across 24 countries estimated the global mean age at menopause at 48.8 years, and by continent:
* Europe: about 50.5 years
* Asia (overall): about 48.8 years
* Africa: about 48.4 years
* Latin America: about 47.2 years
* Middle East: about 47.4 years
WHO similarly notes that most women worldwide experience menopause between ages 45 and 55.
Variation in Average Ages of Marriage
Average female age at first marriage, approximate, pre‑1800
* England (pre‑1800) - ~22–26 - Many parishes ~25–26; Western Europe relatively late.
* Western/Northern Europe - ~20–25 - Late marriage pattern; some locales up to 27.
* China - ~14–18 - Legal norms ~14–15; practice mid‑teens.
* India - ~12–16 - Strong early arranged marriage; big regional variation.
* Japan - ~17–19 - Village data show late‑teen marriage.
* Korea (Joseon) - ~16–18 - Upper‑status women mid‑teens; similar for many commoners.
* Aztec/Nahua - ~14–17 - Girls early‑mid teens; men ~18–22.
* Maya - ~16–19 - Most married by ~20; post‑15 coming‑of‑age.
* Sub‑Saharan Africa (major) - ~15–18 - Many societies mid‑late teens for women.
Sources:
* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/036319907800300103
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1081602X08000894
* https://voxdev.org/topic/institutions-political-economy/economic-shocks-and-age-marriage-sub-saharan-africa-and-india
* https://historymyths.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/myth-136-women-married-very-young-in-the-olden-days/
* https://keatschinese.com/china-culture-resources/general-standards-of-ancient-chinese-marriage-age/
* https://childmarriagedata.org/country-profiles/india/
* https://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-society-family.html
* https://mayas.mrdonn.org/marriage.html
Ages of Consent
In the most populous countries:
* Pakistan - 18 (requires marriage)
* India - 18
* Indonesia - 18
* Nigeria - 18
* Japan - 18
* Ethiopia - 18
* Egypt - 18
* DR Congo - 18
* Turkey - 18
* United States - 16-18 Varies by state
* Philippines - 16 (general), 14 for close‑in‑age minors
* Iran - 15–18 with marriage required
* Thailand - 15–18
* France - 15 (16 in FRA report)
* Germany - 14–16 (practical 14–18)
* Bangladesh - 14–16
* Italy - 14–16
* Mexico - 12-18 Varies by state
* Russia - 16
* Vietnam - 16
* United Kingdom - 16
* South Africa - 16
* South Korea - 16
* China - 14
* Brazil - 14
More detail on Pakistan: Minimum ages for marriage
* National framework (historical): The Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929 originally set the minimum age at 18 for males and 16 for females.
* Sindh province: Since 2013, Sindh’s own Child Marriage Restraint Act has set the minimum legal marriage age at 18 for both boys and girls.
* Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT): The Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage Restraint Act 2025 now sets the minimum age at 18 for both sexes, with significant penalties for under‑18 marriages.
* Balochistan: In November 2025, Balochistan raised the legal age to 18 for girls (and 18 for boys), banning child marriage in the province.
* Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP): Until very recently, these provinces still had 16 as the legal minimum for girls and 18 for boys, though Punjab has now moved to raise the age to 18; advocacy and legislation are ongoing to harmonize all provinces at 18.
Despite recent legal reforms raising the minimum marriage age to 18 in several parts of Pakistan, child marriage remains a significant, ongoing problem, especially for girls from poor, rural, and religious‑minority communities.
UNICEF and other analyses report that around 18% of women aged 20–24 in Pakistan were married before 18, which corresponds to roughly 20.5 million girls, and about 4% were married before 15
* The Borgen Project reports: Child brides usually come from impoverished families who sell them to older men for a price as high as 2.5 million Pakistani rupees, which is more than $8,000.”
Anti-Pedo Laws
Japan has had laws against sexual exploitation of minors for decades, but it only criminalized possession of child pornography involving real children in 2014.
They really had to ease into it:
* 1999 – Japan bans the production and distribution of child pornography involving real minors, aligning partially with other OECD countries but still allowing simple possession.
* June 2014 – The Diet passes a revision to the Child Pornography Law that makes possession of child pornography (photos and videos of real children under 18) a criminal offense, punishable by up to one year in prison or a fine.
* The 2014 law explicitly excludes manga, anime, and computer‑generated imagery, so fictional depictions remain legal even if they portray minors in sexualized contexts, which is why international observers still criticize Japan as being comparatively permissive about some forms of sexualized images of minors.
When various countries instituted CSAM laws
* 1973: Germany
* 1973–1980s – German Criminal Code provisions against pornography involving minors are introduced and strengthened, banning production and distribution.
* 1990s–2000s – EU‑driven harmonization and national reforms explicitly criminalize possession of CSAM (including online images).
* 1978: USA
* 1978 – Child pornography first becomes illegal at the federal level via the Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation Act of 1977 (effective 1978), targeting production, sale, and transport.
* 1980s–1990s – Additional federal statutes criminalize possession and receipt of CSAM, with later clarifications (e.g., PROTECT Act 2003) covering digital and some computer‑generated material.
* 1978: UK
* 1978 – Protection of Children Act 1978 criminalizes taking, making, distributing, showing, and possessing with intent to distribute “indecent photographs” of children, effectively a national child‑pornography ban.
* Later acts expand offences and penalties; recent reforms (2020s) start to tackle AI‑optimized CSAM models.
* 1980s: Australia
* 1980s–1990s – Federal and state laws criminalize child pornography production and distribution.
* By the late 1990s/early 2000s, possession of CSAM, including digital content, is clearly illegal nationwide.
* 1983: Canada
* 1983 – Criminal Code amendments explicitly criminalize child pornography (production and distribution).
* Late 1980s/early 1990s – Possession of child pornography is expressly criminalized, including digital material.
* 1990: Brazil
* 1990 – Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA) bans child pornography (production/distribution).
* 2008 – Law 11.829 criminalizes possession of child pornography, bringing Brazil into line with international CSAM standards.
* 1996: Russia
* 1996 – New Criminal Code introduces offences for producing and distributing pornographic materials involving minors.
* 2000s – Later reforms explicitly criminalize possession and strengthen provisions for online CSAM.
* 1997: China
* 1997 – Revised Criminal Law criminalizes organizing, producing, duplicating, publishing, and disseminating pornographic material involving minors.
* Subsequent regulations in the 2000s and 2010s reinforce bans on online CSAM and clarify penalties.
* 2000: India
* 2000 – Information Technology Act criminalizes publishing or transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit acts online.
* 2012–2013 – Amendments (e.g., Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013) strengthen bans on using children in pornographic material, expanding offences and penalties.
* 2003: Nigeria
* 2003 – Child Rights Act, plus later cybercrime legislation, introduce offences related to child sexual exploitation and online child pornography.
* 2007: South Africa
* 2007 – Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act criminalizes creation, distribution, and possession of child pornography, including electronic images.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Simone Collins: Okay. Hello, Malcolm.
[00:00:00] I’m excited to be with you today because today we’re gonna talk about how maybe Europeans are the only people who aren’t kind of into, if you know what I mean, really young people, and that possibly our colonizing, imposing of older ages of marriage onto all the other peoples of the world could be contributing to demographic collapse.
[00:00:22] Because apparently we’re the weirdos in the room. We’re the, the, the outlier.
[00:00:26] Malcolm Collins: Okay, I, I need to go over some stats. So this rabbit hole started with me being like, are Japan... ‘Cause if you look at Japanese not-safe-for-work art it is, has an unusually high rate of phenotypically young-looking women.
[00:00:40] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:00:40] Malcolm Collins: If, if you catch my drift. And I started to think, I was like, “Could there be a genetic reason for this?” Right? Like, when did Japanese people get married historically? When would have been their first sexual encounter historically? And as I went through that, I was like Oh, wait a second. Everyone but Europeans got married at these super young ages at a historic level.
[00:01:04] And now this makes sense why you have these super young age marriages in Africa, in the Middle Easterners, right? Like we, we keep seeing this, oh, Aisha is six, nine, et cetera, right? Like, they, they... This would be weird for European. What’s, what may surprise you is that in Europe, even in the Middle Ages, it was very common for women to not get married until their mid-20s.
[00:01:28] Simone Collins: And we’re gonna go into that. We’re gonna go into that ...
[00:01:29] Malcolm Collins: which is very rare for any other culture. But hold on, it gets weirder. Before we go, ‘cause I, I wanna get all the, the fun stuff out of the way. It turns out that Europeans... Remember how I’ve always said that Northern Europeans have weirdly high fertility rates compared to every other group on Earth?
[00:01:44] Well, Nor- Northern Europeans are also genetically unique among all of the ethnicities on Earth, and that we have significantly, like multiple years longer fertility windows. Euro-
[00:01:56] Simone Collins: And we’re gonna go into that too ... pean women go into menopause- Yeah, which people should know about ...
[00:01:59] Malcolm Collins: much later. People should know.
[00:02:01] So when we started to tell other people around the world, “You can’t start being sexual, you know, with-” Yeah,
[00:02:09] Simone Collins: like the appropriate time to start is in your 20s ...
[00:02:12] Malcolm Collins: mid-20s. Yeah. We were actually sniping more than half of many of these groups’ reproductive windows. Mm-hmm. And now we’re seeing fertility rates crash around Latin America.
[00:02:24] We’re seeing fertility rates crash in East Asia. We’re seeing them crash in India, and it could partially be in results of this. But go, go into the data.
[00:02:31] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, first, some little, here are some of the breadcrumbs that kind of got me to this episode that I think are really fun. Aella just released a Substack post called The Hotness Curve: How Age Changes a Woman’s Appeal, and she used photos of women at various ages.
[00:02:46] Some were AI-generated, some were real, including real photos of her throughout her life and her friends. She asked questions like, “Casual sex. A 200-year-old vampire shows up in your window at night. She wants a one-night stand. There are no consequences and nobody will know. Do you say yes?” And then she says this paired with various photos of women, right?
[00:03:07] So the resulting graph is a little concerning, I guess. You can see it here On WhatsApp.
[00:03:17] What you’ll find and I’ll just read from Aella’s post here. Okay. Aella found that sexual interest climbs very fast and generally hits a crescendo around women who appear to be 24 years old, or 28 years old for older men.
[00:03:31] But 15, and I’m quoting from her Substack article, “15% of men said yes, they would have casual sex with a vampire in the body of 11- an 11-year-old.” Sure. “This rose to a third of men for the body of a 13-year-old, and half of men agreeing to the body of a 15-year-old. By 18, we’re at roughly 70%, and at the time a 24-year-old is hypothetically entering your window, 90% of them were down.”
[00:03:56] I, I was shocked.
[00:03:57] Malcolm Collins: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. So the midpoint for men is 15? [00:04:00]
[00:04:00] Simone Collins: Yeah, basically. But I mean, I was just shocked that at the age of 11, 15% of men were like, “Yeah.”
[00:04:06] Malcolm Collins: Well, this is actually really fascinating because if this is the actual midpoint of, you know, attractiveness for men-
[00:04:14] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:04:15] Malcolm Collins: the, the way in society that we treat this, right?
[00:04:19] Like, “Oh, you’re aroused by something that looks like that. You must be, like, a wildly deviant individual.”
[00:04:27] Simone Collins: Yeah. “You must be a monster. You must need to be arrested,” et cetera. When
[00:04:30] Malcolm Collins: literally 50% of men... 15 is astonishingly young. For, yeah, but for 11 is yeah,
[00:04:37] Simone Collins: but yeah, 15 as well,
[00:04:38] Malcolm Collins: yes. Yeah, but the, the, I’m going, I’m not going with the tw- the 25% of men. I’m going with the average man. The average man-
[00:04:44] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ... is
[00:04:45] Malcolm Collins: 15. And that is the reason why it’s important to, like, make this known to people is because if a guy gets into their head that they’re some absolutely monstrous deviant within one category, then they can begin to engage in monster, the, they begin to excuse other types of monstrously deviant behavior because they’re like, “Well, that’s what I am.
[00:05:09] That’s how I am- Yeah,
[00:05:10] Simone Collins: I’m a monster ... hardwired.” Who cares if I drown a puppy, et cetera? Yeah,
[00:05:14] Malcolm Collins: I’m just a bad guy because-
[00:05:16] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:05:17] Malcolm Collins: yeah. Whereas I think that you can say even if 15 is the average age at which a male may start finding a female form attractive that one, Europeans it’s likely gonna be later, so this is likely held down by, by non-Europeans to some extent.
[00:05:33] Mm-hmm. But, but two it, it’s, it’s, it’s normal, but you don’t act on it, right? Like, there’s- Yeah ... a big difference between something being normal and something being a mandate for you to act on. Mm-hmm. If I can give you, it is normal for me to be aroused by a random woman who walks by. It is bad for me to hold her down and have sex with her simply because I was aroused that she walked by, right?
[00:06:01] Like- For our
[00:06:02] Simone Collins: culture at least, yes.
[00:06:03] Malcolm Collins: No, I’m just saying that the, the, the way that we have in our society drawn these very, very thin lines when it comes to this one category of arousal I think is hugely deleterious and leads to a lot more PDA behavior than we would otherwise see if we categorized it more the way that it’s like, yeah, you can find a woman who’s married to another guy arousing.
[00:06:34] Don’t sleep with her. That’s morally negative and has morally negative externalities for society, right? But anyway, continue.
[00:06:42] Simone Collins: Right. Just a little aside too about the wall, because that’s a fun thing to see what her findings indicated. She wrote, “One interesting thing to note is that the drop-off in affability for women, what we might call the wall, happens for women in their mid-30s, just as predicted, but only in the eyes of men under the age of 25.
[00:07:02] For older men, we find the wall occurs in a woman’s early 40s. Older men assign equivalent ‘Yes, I’d have sex with her’ ratings to an 18-year-old as they did to a woman in her early 50s.” Basically the spread of people who would be interested in both dating or having sex with women at older ages was astonishing per this research.
[00:07:23] You should go check out the actual post. I’m linking to it in my show notes, as I link to everything else I, I was just shocked by the range of, of, of interest in women. I guess older women are better off now than they have been in the past maybe, or they always have been. But also you should play her Guess Their Age game. She vibe coded it. It’s super fun and you can probably beat me because I could only get better than 67% of players.
[00:07:48] I apparently cannot tell people’s age, which is probably good. Also our friend Bruno wrote to us about the e-girl phenomenon. He wrote, “Why does a certain e-girl or internet girl face seem to [00:08:00] resonate so consistently with online audiences across different eras? Highly recognizable women in online subcultures seem to converge around a similar look.
[00:08:07] Why does that look perform
[00:08:09] so well with netizens? Early internet figures like Boxxy, later YouTube personalities like Shoe0nHead, cosplay, and streamer adjacent figures, and then more recent cases like Belle Delphine and the current wave of TikTok cosplay and Twitter X e-girl aesthetics. The most interesting question is why a particular facial and stylistic grammar keeps recurring.
[00:08:28] Large expressive eyes, youthful proportions, softer rounded features, dark hair or bangs, a slightly anime coded presentation, and a mix of cuteness, irony, awkwardness, and sexual ambiguity.” And when I talked about this with Malcolm when we got the email, you’re like
[00:08:45] Malcolm Collins: Because they look like children. Yeah.
[00:08:48] Like Bella Delphine looks like a 15-year-old.
[00:08:50] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:08:50] Malcolm Collins: y- she could easily pass as a 15, w- in, in her, the height of her fame. Boxxy I think was literally 15 at the height of her fame. I
[00:08:58] Speaker: I realize one of the reasons why other people don’t realize this is because they think 15-year-old girls look like lollies, and they don’t. , People think 15-year-old girls look way younger than they actually do. So here I’m gonna put the pictures of the celebrities we’re talking about next to a bunch of pictures of actual real 15-year-old human girls.
[00:09:18] And when you see this, you’ll be like, “Oh, 15-year-old girls look a lot older than I expected.” And it’s like, yeah, they do. And that’s why this is so scary
[00:09:26] Speaker 2: And note, this isn’t me being selective. This is me just choosing all the top images when you look up 15-year-old girl. And I’d go so far now that I’m looking at the images side by side to say that these e-celebs that we’re talking about look slightly younger, than your average 15-year-old girl
[00:09:41] Octavian Collins: think
[00:09:41] Malcolm Collins: so, yeah. Juon Head I don’t think fits into this category. She was never really a thirst trap influencer. But if you look at the various thirst trap influencers CreepyChan fell into this as well.
[00:09:52] Mm. ... like they, they all have the, the phenotypical features that make them look different than Simone. And I’ll put images on screen here so you guys can see. I’m not, I’m not joking about this. They just look very young. Yeah. But either because it was considered okay to thirst after them on the internet during that period, or because they technically weren’t actually 15, like Vampire Girls or whatever, everyone was like, “This is fine.”
[00:10:16] Now again, I actually think it’s really, really bad to stereotype, Like in, in Australia, I don’t know if you know this, but in Australia you actually can’t have pornography where women have too small of breasts because they say that if the woman’s breasts, even if they’re a totally normal above age woman, it is illegal for them to participate in pornography if their breasts are too small.
[00:10:36] So they’ll,
[00:10:36] Simone Collins: like, pull up a thing and be like, “Insufficiently busty,” and then it says online- Yeah,
[00:10:40] Malcolm Collins: because they say it makes them look too young, right? Like-
[00:10:42] Simone Collins: So do erotic actresses have to get boob jobs? Like what happens if you’re interested? By
[00:10:46] Malcolm Collins: the way, have you seen that immensely creepy show about the girl who looks like a, like 12-year-old and who’s dating?
[00:10:55] Simone Collins: No.
[00:10:56] Malcolm Collins: You need to Google this and just watch a clip from this, because I’ll put it here before we go further. I need to call- ‘Cause I need to get your thoughts on the ethics of this. .
[00:11:04] Speaker 3: It’s not worth it. I would just completely ignore them. I try to let it just roll off my shoulders. Hearing Thomas’ views shows me a new perspective and allows me to understand a new perspective. He grew up with this mentality, just pick yourself and get up and do it, and I have a lot of social trauma. So I think he’s definitely a more go-getter, less worried about what people think, and I know what people think
[00:11:29] Speaker 6: I love how we’re like, “Japan, the Japanese, so gross.” They’re like, “Oh, she the 300-year-old vampire, so it’s okay.” Meanwhile, middle-aged moms watching TLC
[00:11:41] Speaker 8: And then fertility and where we go from there, I think the best option for you would be to get you established with an OBGYN- Hmm ... who can kinda dig into safely carrying a child, and would you be able to do it to term, and all of that.
[00:11:53] Simone Collins: What?
[00:11:54] Malcolm Collins: Look, look up a clip of this
[00:11:55] Simone Collins: show. Oh, no. She looks like a child. No. [00:12:00] Oh, TLC, of course. Of, oh, great. Of course. It’s TLC. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. I’ve seen, I’ve seen enough.
[00:12:10] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, th- then so I’m in this range where I’m like, if you look like 15 in the way that like Bella Delphine does or whatever, right, you know-
[00:12:19] Simone Collins: Yeah
[00:12:19] Malcolm Collins: I’m like, whatever with that. I’m like, I get it, you know, whatever. Right. With this girl and this show, I’m like, even if she’s technically a 300-year-old vampire, like, we need to have a conversation about this because she’s she’s like 27, by the way, Simone.
[00:12:37] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:12:38] Malcolm Collins: Sure she is. She has a very rare disorder that caused her to look-
[00:12:41] Simone Collins: No, I know.
[00:12:42] I know. TLC is, it’s, it’s the dwarves and it’s the, yeah, it’s,
[00:12:46] Malcolm Collins: it’s all the, it’s, it’s the freak show people on Earth. But then should she never be able to have a... Hold on. I’m actually thinking through this. Should she never be able to have a sex life because,
[00:12:52] Simone Collins: you know- She should. Man, the, the whole point you make in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality is if you have a thing that some people’s kink or arousal pathway, whatever, like if for example you are obese, you should go after chubby chasers who are way out of your
[00:13:06] Malcolm Collins: league.
[00:13:06] So you’re basically saying that’s one PDA file off the streets.
[00:13:09] Simone Collins: She could get a very high value ‘cause like she’s not a supermodel looks-wise, right? She may not be like the world’s smartest person. She may not be a billionaire. But she could probably find a man who’s way out of her league on one of those measures or multiple because he’s super into...
[00:13:23] Yeah,
[00:13:27] Malcolm Collins: I mean, like the reason why it’s bad, and we’ve pointed this out before, it’s, is not due to consent. This isn’t why underage stuff is, is bad. It’s because it has negative developmental effects. The reason I point out it’s not due to consent is nobody cares when two, like, mentally disabled people have sex.
[00:13:43] Nobody cares when a super elderly person has sex. But like when we’re talking about a 15, 16-year-old who’s almost certainly smarter than most people in their like late 90s or something like that.
[00:13:53] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:53] Malcolm Collins: And it’s because of the negative developmental effects. But I think one of the things that I’m realizing is are those negative developmental effects the same for non-Europeans as they are for Europeans?
[00:14:04] Simone Collins: That’s a really good question. I did not think to look at birth complications or pregnancy complications for non-European teenagers. And by
[00:14:13] Malcolm Collins: the way, the next time I’m talking, make sure you look up the average age for Jews historically, ‘cause I wanna see if they went with the European standard or they went with- Oh
[00:14:19] the non-European standard. But like This is one of these interesting fields to talk about, or I find it to be interesting to talk about because there is so much just, like, reflective and reactive signaling around this stuff where individuals attempt to show that they are, Like, just y- y- to, to, to shout at someone, to clown on someone, to yell at someone, to, you know, whatever.
[00:14:51] And it’s, it’s super unproductive because a lot of the fight is not where it should be. Like, consider the leftist activists, right, who constantly badger, like, anime companies, but do nothing about the immigrant communities where this is normalized, right? Like we’ve pointed out countless times, the religious court in Pakistan made a hearing, this is the primary religious court of the country that it was Islamophobic to raise the age of marriage from, I think, nine.
[00:15:20] Like, how dare you? But this is normal in those countries and, and if you actually cared about this, that’s what you would be targeting and not anime that actually, Now, we can argue whether it leads to radicalizing people in this direction. Mm. Even if it does lead to radicalizing people in this direction, the number of, like, standard Westerners who ever get radicalized in this direction is so dwarfed by where this is happening outside of the West.
[00:15:51] But then you have to ask is it even bad where it’s happening outside the West? Because maybe they’re, like, genetically built for... But anyway, what’d you find about the Jews?
[00:15:57] Simone Collins: So, for per [00:16:00] European standards of when marriages took place, it looks like pre-1800s, which is what I looked at for the other groups many Jewish communities married what was considered way younger than most of them.
[00:16:11] Like, in their teens. So that is interesting. They were, like, the weird outliers in Europe at the time, I guess. Well, now- Probably among other groups ...
[00:16:22] Malcolm Collins: now, now hold on. Hold on. Does this explain the Epstein networks?
[00:16:28] Simone Collins: Oh, no. Stop. No. Malcolm. Mm, we’re just gonna, we’re gonna skate right over that. No, we’re gonna skate right over this one.
[00:16:38] And whatever you wanna say, you can save it for the comments. All right? Uh-uh. You can find whatever code word you wanna use for Epstein this time. Let’s just talk about it there. I’ll start by, this is actually something another friend of ours told me, or, like, mentioned in, in a text conversation, and I just had no idea.
[00:16:53] And she’s like, “Well, you understand that non-European women have earlier onset menopause. Like, their fertility window is way shorter, and people should really talk to them about this.” And I had no idea. And then I look it up, and the estimated global mean age at, of menopause is only 48.8. But for Europe, it’s around 50.5 years.
[00:17:17] In Asia, it’s 48.8.. In Africa it’s 48.4 years. In Latin America it’s 47.2 years, and in the Middle East it’s 47.4 years. 47, like that, 47 versus 50 is, is very significant. I- I had no idea, and also it’s, it’s crazy that we’re not telling people this, but the f- when you look at this in comparison to the average ages of marriage pre-1800 across different parts of the world, it kind of makes sense that fertility windows
[00:17:49] Malcolm Collins: got pushed back for Europeans.
[00:17:49] Well, and mostly Europeans have had a strong genetic pressure for a- Yeah ... very long time-
[00:17:54] Simone Collins: Yeah ...
[00:17:55] Malcolm Collins: for higher fertility windows.
[00:17:56] Simone Collins: Because of norms around marriage. In England pre-1800, the typical arage, marriage ar- we’ll say average female age at first marriage. Keep in mind, this is average, right? This is not, you know, there are lots of younger than this.
[00:18:10] But average was 22 to 26, which is kind of what modern society has rested at now, right? And maybe that’s because- Mm ... of colonialism and, and the influence of European and especially English culture, but it’s 22 to 26 pre-1800s. In Western and Northern Europe it was a little bit lower. It was 20 to 25.
[00:18:29] And in China, by comparison, it’s 14 to 18 average. India, 12 to 16. Japan, 17 to 19. Korea, 16 to 18. I, I checked about, like Aztec, 14 to 17. Maya, 16 to 19. And then in Sub-Saharan Africa, 15 to 18. So when you look at these earlier onsets of menopause, they kind of track pretty well to historical marriage patterns, and I think that kind of helps to make sense.
[00:19:02] Now y- when you look also at, I, one thing I decided to look at, and I’m sending you a graph of this so that you can look at it more visually. But I looked at the ages of consent today in the highest population countries, though this, the global map that I sent to you from d- Our Data Is Beautiful is also just everything.
[00:19:20] But the age of consent in Pakistan, do you know what it is?
[00:19:25] Malcolm Collins: What, what’s the age of consent in Pakistan?
[00:19:27] Simone Collins: It’s 18.
[00:19:30] Malcolm Collins: Oof.
[00:19:31] Simone Collins: I know. I was like, “Wait a second. How? Why?” And no, like actually, so there’s this Child Marriage Act of 1929- Oh ... that originally set the minimum age at, at 18 for males and 16 for females Okay, I,
[00:19:42] Malcolm Collins: I, I, by the way, take it back.
[00:19:44] Younger Siwan head definitely looks 15.
[00:19:46] Simone Collins: Okay. I’ll let it go. All of
[00:19:47] Malcolm Collins: these girls look
[00:19:48] Simone Collins: 15. I, I think she still looks super young. And I think she said she was in her mid-30s. Oops. I think she also just has, like, a phenotypically young-looking face.
[00:19:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she has a phenotypically- But yeah ... that’s what it is.
[00:19:58] That’s, that’s... Guys are like, [00:20:00] “There’s this certain type of girl that I’m really into.” And it’s like, I hate to tell you this, brother, but that, that look is the look of a teenager
[00:20:10] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Long story short with Pakistan, basically, they have a lot of different laws and efforts. There’s the 1929 Child Marriage Restraint Act.
[00:20:21] There’s the Child Marriage Restraint Act in a different province. They’re like in, in Sindh province, in Islamabad Capital Territory, in Balochistan, in Punjab, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. India has a
[00:20:35] Malcolm Collins: super old first age of marriage.
[00:20:37] Simone Collins: Yeah, no, they, yeah, they, they’re very, like they have... what’s weird is when I was like, wait, but h- how long has it been 18?
[00:20:44] ‘Cause we keep hearing about these really young marriages in Pakistan. Like, all these laws show up. And then I, I, I dug a little deeper and it’s kind of like, well, they have all these laws because people keep marrying kids super young. Like, the laws are there ‘cause they’re like, “No, no, no stop. But like, actually stop.
[00:20:59] Can we...” They’re like, “For, super for real this time, guys. Like, let’s do
[00:21:03] Malcolm Collins: this.” But I mean, throughout Africa, Africa’s the place where it’s Africa and Indonesia where you see the 11 average age.
[00:21:10] Simone Collins: Yeah. But I mean, still UNICEF, for example, reports that around 18% of women age 20 to 24 in Pakistan were married before 18.
[00:21:19] So it’s, it’s, yeah, but you’re right. Pakistan’s not the worst. Anyway, that surprised me. Other, other ages of consent. So India’s also high at 18, Indonesia 18, Nigeria 18, Japan 18, Ethiopia, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo, Türkiye. United States is actually a little different. Some of our states go as low as 16, I think.
[00:21:41] In the Philippines it’s 16 in general. Iran 15 to 18, Thailand 15 to 18, France 15 Germany 14 to 16. So go Germans. But I kinda think, like, it’s so normatively weird for Germans. They’d be like, “Well, but of course we don’t need the rule because we would never. We’re German.” In Bangladesh 14 to 16, Italy 14 to 16, in Mexico it’s 12 to 18, it varies by the state.
[00:22:07] Russia is 16, Vietnam is 16, United Kingdom 16, South Africa 16, South Korea 16, China and Brazil are both 14. So China’s still super low, which is wild. But you had mentioned this to me and I thought it was insane that Japan only criminalized possession of, we’ll call it CSAM involving real children in 2014.
[00:22:32] Though it should be noted that the law explicitly excludes manga, anime, and computer-generated imagery, and I just love Japan for being so Japan on that front.
[00:22:43] Malcolm Collins: So Japan.
[00:22:44] Simone Collins: Yeah, they’re like- I- But not the mang- I mean, not the manga.
[00:22:47] Malcolm Collins: That would outlaw- A little bit ... like, more than half of anime, right?
[00:22:50] Simone Collins: I know, they would, yeah, they would, like, destroy the entire anime industry if they were to, like, actually follow through with that.
[00:22:57] Yeah. So I totally understand, But
[00:23:00] Malcolm Collins: again, we need to, in America, understand that Japanese males and females are genetically and sociologically different from us.
[00:23:09] Simone Collins: Yeah, historically- Like, it- ... they married a lot younger. Their fertility window ends sooner. They, they need to marry younger, and now that they live in a culture where marriage is severely delayed, they’re gonna see a bigger hit from that.
[00:23:21] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, I personally will be encouraging my kids to date from, to marry starting probably around 16 to 17. I think that’s when you start dating and learning to date with the intention of eventually marrying.
[00:23:35] Simone Collins: Yeah, we’re gonna have to work on them with this because Octavian just picked up At More Birth’s report that’s been sitting around our house.
[00:23:42] Yeah. And started leafing through it, and he was looking at this graph of average age of first marriage- ... over time.
[00:23:49] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:50] Simone Collins: And I asked him how old he wanted to be when he got married, and at first he’s like, “Mm, 40?” And I’m like, “Really?” And he’s like, “Okay, maybe when I’m, like, a teenager.” And I’m like, “Oh, [00:24:00] okay, so like 18?”
[00:24:00] He’s like, “No, like a hun- 100.” So I don’t know where he’s at. We need to be like, “This is the right age. After this, you gotta worry.”
[00:24:09] Malcolm Collins: Well, we used to get this. Princesses, like Disney princesses, actually look this up, look up the ages of various famous Disney princesses. Wait, hold on. Let
[00:24:16] Simone Collins: me get my phone.
[00:24:16] Malcolm Collins: But they’re often quite young for when they, they, they got married.
[00:24:20] And I think that normalizing that, normalizing not the Hallmark wedding of the divorce or whatever, but the I’m gonna get married when I’m... What, what are the ages- ... of the Disney princesses?
[00:24:33] Simone Collins: Snow White is 14.
[00:24:35] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s
[00:24:36] Simone Collins: what we need- Jasmine is 15. Aurora is 16. Ariel is 16. Mulan is 16. Hey, legal in the UK.
[00:24:43] Merida from Brave, 16. Moana, 16. Belle, usually treated as 17 years old, though sources vary between 17 and 18. Now, hold on. Pocahontas is 18. Do you want me to play a little
[00:24:55] Malcolm Collins: fun game? Rapunzel, 18. Now look up the ages of their partners in each of those movies.
[00:25:03] Simone Collins: Okay. I mean, obviously because the men are just so unimportant in most of these, especially early movies, it’s hard to tell. But so Snow White, 14. Prince Florian, 18 to 31. So either-
[00:25:19] Malcolm Collins: 18 to 31 with a 14-year-old ...
[00:25:21] Simone Collins: is that, let’s see. So the half plus seven rule, that’s seven pl- s- the half, yeah, seven- No,
[00:25:26] Malcolm Collins: no, keep going.
[00:25:27] Just go. Just
[00:25:28] Simone Collins: go ... okay. Yeah, anyway ... keep going ... the, the half plus seven rule is my, my... Okay. Cinderella’s 19. Prince Charming, 21. Appropriate. That’s a two-year age gap. Aurora and Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty 16 versus 20, four-year age gap. Ariel- ... and Prince Eric, she’s 16, he’s 18 to 19. Where is the biggest gap here?
[00:25:47] The biggest ga- oh, it’s Rapunzel and Flynn. Because she’s 18 and he’s 26. That’s eight years.
[00:25:55] Malcolm Collins: But she’s older- That’s, that’s not too bad ... so it’s okay. What about the, the Muslim one? Wh- what about the, the-
[00:26:00] Simone Collins: Oh well, come on. The, the street urchin? J- that’s plus three years. She’s 15 and he’s 18.
[00:26:06] Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s
[00:26:08] Simone Collins: a very normal marriage for that region ... but Pocahontas and John Smith is, is less clear. It is, it is e- it is between two or nine years. But- So that is unclear ...
[00:26:17] Malcolm Collins: getting women excited about marrying in their teens, I think is where we need to be as a culture again.
[00:26:22] Simone Collins: Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. W- but when, and we, I guess we have to get over this European Puritanical view shaming teen marriage.
[00:26:33] And you can actually really see it in, in where various countries instituted CSAM laws basically being like, “Young looking people, no good in images. Stop.” You c- the first, all the first countries to start this are Western. All the last countries to institute these laws, not Western. So we start with 1973 in Germany, 1978 in the USA and UK, 1980s in Australia ‘83 for Canada, 1990 for Brazil.
[00:27:03] That’s our first non-super Western country, even though Brazil’s pretty Western. 1996 Russia, 1997 China, 2000 India, 2003 Nigeria,
[00:27:14] 2007 South Africa. Like the re- Wait. Wait,
[00:27:17] Malcolm Collins: what, what is this, what is this when?
[00:27:18] Simone Collins: This is when CSAM laws were instituted, when, when, when it wasn’t okay to create or possess the, the stuff that you’re not allowed to create or possess the, the bad, the images Very
[00:27:32] Malcolm Collins: recently in most of these non-Western countries.
[00:27:34] Simone Collins: Right? Yeah. And, and Japan’s the worst, of course with the- unique
[00:27:38] Malcolm Collins: case there ...
[00:27:39] Simone Collins: really dragging their feet. But n- but not for, not for anime and manga. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. It’s gonna be okay. Your manga... God, what was that anime where, like, the- The succubus looks like she’s a child
[00:27:55] Malcolm Collins: No- Naomi or whatever I told you about.
[00:27:58] The w- yeah, where she, like, actually looks like a [00:28:00] child a child, and she can only survive by drinking-
[00:28:04] Simone Collins: Things ...
[00:28:04] Malcolm Collins: ex- things. And- Oh my God ... the whole thing’s supposed to be... Oh, hold on. R- remember I said it’s a show about being a father, right? Like, that’s, that’s the, the- Oh, yeah. Yes I had forgotten that the main character is actually literally her father, but he’s 14.
[00:28:23] Simone Collins: This is worse than that anime who, like, the guy’s hand was just a girl one morning. Remember that? Just like- I did look that up. A girl
[00:28:32] Octavian Collins: That’s ridiculous. That’s a girl.
[00:28:34] Simone Collins: Japan’s the best. Who thinks of these things? There’s like-
[00:28:38] Malcolm Collins: When I was on Linkfest streams, the, the, the manga where a guy’s willy became a girl, right?
[00:28:43] Like, th- that’s, like, the whole manga People said it was funny. I don’t know. I, I, I don’t know why- I
[00:28:50] Simone Collins: mean, it would be, I think. Yeah, I don’t Yeah, they just have to, like, find the weirdest people in the country, and they’re like, “You, you’re hired. Write a manga.” I like it. Anyway, this- The
[00:29:03] Malcolm Collins: weirdest people ...
[00:29:04] Simone Collins: this has changed.
[00:29:05] I mean, I, I, I, I’ve been having a conversation with, with someone, and w- we’ve talked about things like teen marriage, and just the, the stigma that we have around, for example, even getting married in college. You know, people see it as really weird, and I think a lot of people even who are very pronatalist who understand that it’s an issue that people are putting off marriage would be kind of weirded out by the idea of their son or daughter getting married right out of high school or in college.
[00:29:30] I,
[00:29:30] Malcolm Collins: by the way, would not, and when our kids start dating and when I start trying to do arranged marriage for them, I think the appropriate age for a kid to get married is, perfect age is probably 19 or 20.
[00:29:42] Simone Collins: Yeah, and at that age, too, the young couple can, if they need to, like while they’re still getting their footing, live at our house.
[00:29:49] You know, like, live with the parents if, if they help out and everything. Like, it, it’s such an easier way to start your life. Build savings, you know, while you’re young enough to- And if
[00:29:57] Malcolm Collins: we start having kids at that age, we just take care of the kids.
[00:30:00] Simone Collins: Exactly. It’s, it’s the smartest thing. And guess what?
[00:30:03] That, that is actually what my parents did. When my parents came back from Japan with me, for a while they lived at my dad’s parents’ house. And th- this is, this is a very normative thing. Like, the reason we had baby showers wasn’t because people wanted some bougie party that cost $10,000. It was because this was a young 20-year-old couple right out of high school, and they didn’t have money to buy diapers, and so people chipped in and bought them diapers and, like, t- taught them baby things and whatnot.
[00:30:32] Like, there’s a reason for these traditions. The same for bridal showers. It was that, oh, this is a new couple. And wedding gifts. You bought them silverware because they hoped to buy a house together and get silverware, not like they were already 30 and living in an apartment and they owned everything they’d ever need in their life.
[00:30:48] Anyway, apparently we just need to get over the fact that, Everyone else likes young girls especially. This is... We’re the weird ones.
[00:30:58] Malcolm Collins: We’re the weird ones- That’s all. Yeah ... for thinking that this is not cool?
[00:31:02] Simone Collins: Yeah. This, well, this has significantly changed my views. Like, the, in, in, in, in, in a am I the a*****e situation, we Europeans are the a*****e.
[00:31:11] We’re sorry. This was our mistake. Bring back teen marriage, bring back my Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, bring back teen pregnancy. We were wrong. We are prudish m- procrastinating Europeans. And also, if you are not of European ancestry, please adjust your childbearing years accordingly because who knew?
[00:31:39] I didn’t know. I hope everyone else
[00:33:56] knows this, but I don’t think they do. Anyway, I love you, Malcolm.
[00:33:59] Malcolm Collins: I love you too. Have a good time. This was a, a really interesting what, there was something I was gonna- About Japan or something. Now we’re just all of these other groups. I mean, what’s, what’s your takeaway on all of this in regards to the way we as a society...
[00:34:16] I mean, I just think that some groups were never really designed, or not designed, but, like, cultures are different in a way where some may genuinely not be, be compatible. And this is one of those areas wh- fascinatingly that, that Europeans may have psy-oped the rest of the world into eradicating themselves.
[00:34:38] Simone Collins: Hmm. Oh, yeah, I mean, you did an, an episode once on are some countries just not compatible with democracy. Apparently some countries are just not compatible with later onset marriage for example.
[00:34:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
[00:34:49] Simone Collins: So yeah, I, I, I think you’re onto something there. Are we becoming skeptical of the benefits of colonialism?
[00:34:55] I don’t know.
[00:34:56] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, we, we just need to colonize them harder until, you know-
[00:35:01] Simone Collins: Until their fertility windows are moved, but we will force them back. It’s fine.
[00:35:05] Malcolm Collins: Colonize me harder, Daddy.
[00:35:07] Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s, it... You’ll like it. Don’t worry.
[00:35:10] Malcolm Collins: You’ll like it. You’ll like it at the end of the day. Come on.
[00:35:14] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:35:14] Malcolm Collins: They, they, r- I mean, there’s been countries that have asked to be colonized in the past.
[00:35:19] Simone Collins: Yeah. And were there some countries that asked for their colonizing forces to not go?
[00:35:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like, the, the idea that, like, colonization was this like a universal negative is as, you know, i- it’s, it’s like, do some people in America not like the US government?
[00:35:36] Yes, a big chunk. You can get people to protest, but a lot of them like it as well.
[00:35:40] Speaker 5: There’s a great quote from an Indian under the early stages of occupation, , and they asked him like, “What, what do you think of occupation? What do you think of having to pay taxes to the British government?” And he was like ecstatic about it. He’s like, “, now with the British government, every year a taxpayer comes around once.
[00:35:56] It used to be every year all of the local [00:36:00] warlords sent taxpayers to my house.” , So basically the idea is that before the British came in, there was a bunch of overlapping regions that might have power, or at least the power to force you to give them money, and they’d all send , , tax collectors to you, , at least within this region of India.
[00:36:14] And he was, , he felt so out from under , , the burden of that under the British system. We act like everyone was saints before the colonial system came in, but in a lot of these regions, the people were, , comically cruel compared to what the West did
[00:36:29] Speaker 9: Again, if we’re talking about India here, you can look at the practice of sati, where they would burn a wife alive when her husband died. , And there’s the famous case of the English general who’s, , working with Indian troops, and they start to build a pyre to burn a woman alive because her husband had died.
[00:36:47] And he looks at them and he goes, “, don’t do that.” And they’re like, “What? We’re your allies. This is our practice.” And he goes, “Well, okay then, , we have a practice in Britain, and when men burn a woman alive, we hang them. So I’ll just set up the gallows right here, and as soon as you’re done with this fire, we can hang all of you.”
[00:37:05] , And they’re like, “Oh, okay, okay. I guess we won’t do this.” But, , , the reality , is that a lot of these places were far more cruel and brutal than is portrayed in, in the common narrative today
[00:37:15]
[00:37:15] Speaker 10: And note here, this isn’t just in the words of the quote-unquote colonizers who were recording this. One of, like, the big moments I remember from childhood is we were reading this book called Things Fall Apart, which was supposed to be about how bad the colonization of Nigeria was, and there’s this scene where they take a baby and they leave it to slowly die alone in the woods simply because it was a twin, and they believed twins were evil.
[00:37:42] And the complaint was that the Europeans wanted to stop this practice. And I remember, like, looking around in the woods, , the room and being like, “Wait, so, like, w- like, th- uh, like, everyone else here thinks this was a bad thing that we stopped this?” , The level of horrors of things that we stopped through colonization are almost unspeakable in many of these regions
[00:38:07] Speaker 11: And I say this as someone who has a British background because my own ancestors before they were colonized from Rome practiced human sacrifice regularly, practiced the sacrifice of children regularly. They would bury them under bridges to like keep them from collapsing or something. , They f- monstrous, monstrous stuff.
[00:38:26] , Before colonization we were all animals
[00:38:28] Simone Collins: Well, and I think that’s kind of what China was trying to sell with the Belt and Road Initiative. They’re like, “Don’t you wanna be colonized? Wouldn’t you like me to build some infrastructure for you? Let’s do this.” I- it’s, it’s colonizing 2.0 with different branding.
[00:38:41] So I agree with you. Yeah, I see it. Okay, bye.
[00:38:45] Malcolm Collins: Bye.
[00:38:48] Whoa, I didn’t ask you to bring it and fill it, but thank you. Octavian, come here. Come here. We’re gonna say happy birthday.
[00:38:54] Simone Collins: I gave you 2% milk. That’s really nice of you. Oh, Octavian, that’s
[00:38:55] Malcolm Collins: so nice. Did you spill any? Did you make a mess?
[00:38:58] Simone Collins: No.
[00:38:59] Malcolm Collins: Okay,
[00:38:59] Simone Collins: by the way, I don’t know if you saw. Did you see the basically, like, lore encyclopedia that’s super interactive and full of fun, like, games and cool elements that Leaflet built?
[00:39:10] Malcolm Collins: No.
[00:39:12] Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. I have to send you a link. Did you
[00:39:14] Malcolm Collins: share it with me?
[00:39:16] Simone Collins: Yeah no. I, I didn’t share it with you. I just learned about it. It’s at clyo.angelsword.com. I’m sending it to you.
[00:39:23] Malcolm Collins: It’s- Is this the one where she has, like, the cartridges that you can put in, or are you talking about something else?
[00:39:27] Simone Collins: There is a, there’s a combat training game. There’s a library with books to go through. There... Y- you basically get to explore the lore and learn about the RPG, but in a very immersive, interactive, game-like way. Not even game-like. It, as a game. Like, it’s- So
[00:39:43] Malcolm Collins: do you wanna hear the crazy thing-
[00:39:44] I think it should be ready to go live tomorrow, which I’m absolutely shocked about. But it is a new standalone app that you can download for free on RFAB. And what it does is it, for reasons, like if you [00:40:00] ever had a reason to do this, but in terms of the type of- Who
[00:40:02] Simone Collins: knows why?
[00:40:03] Malcolm Collins: Image generation- I don’t know why ... and video generation on RFAB you can open, like, a collection of images or videos, and then it auto-sizes them to the size of the app’s screen and puts them in order. So, you don’t, like... You can say, like, “Oh, I want five images open on my screen,” and it will automatically size them to use maximum screen real estate.
[00:40:25] Oh ... and the thing that I’m still working on is dragging and dropping one folder of this into another folder of this so it’s even, the UI is even easier. Okay. But it also works with clicking on opening images or videos, and that it will auto open them in a very lightweight screen that’s very easy to both resize, but also that, like, doesn’t, like, it- If you’re using, like, VLC, it, like, puts the title in front of it and stuff like that.
[00:40:49] Yeah. And it doesn’t auto loop, and it’s very annoying if you’re creating AI videos. But no, this is all handled automatically by this system.
[00:40:56] Speaker 12: Basically, this is a totally free app that you can download from the, , image generation page or the page that allows you to search every not safe for work database at the same time, , from that link up there. And, , if you set it to your default viewer, uh, you can just drop any additional image into the, , another image, and it will equally space them in relation to each other, as well as some other quality of life features
[00:41:21] Malcolm Collins: And then it does other useful things that you might run into with RFAB, like, if you’re using the not safe for work image search feature, because it allows you to download zips from various websites- Okay
[00:41:30] You can get, like, an entire folder full of zips, and now this has a feature that automatically unzips them all and can automatically take them all out of their subfolders if you want them all in the, the parent folder. Now it’s being-
[00:41:40] Simone Collins: This just sounds like it’s for a very specific type of person.
[00:41:42] Malcolm Collins: It’s being... Chud, Chud backs it. Yeah, it’s, it’s being built right now. But it’s getting close. Like, like, like, it’ll be improved because I just started working on it today, but at a base level it works right now.
[00:41:54] Simone Collins: Okay. Wow.
[00:41:56] Malcolm Collins: But, Wow ... yeah. Well, I’d say if, if you... I mean, even, it even has, like, normal safe for work uses.
[00:42:03] Like, if you’re just doing a lot of like image creation and you want to go through tons of images at once it’s a really intuitive way to do that that’s incredibly lightweight. Okay. Now, right now it’s only for Windows because I have to send it to Simone if we wanna make a Mac version. So if people want a Mac version you can let me know
[00:42:22] Simone Collins: Thanks.
[00:42:22] I don’t know, Macs are more used by women. Women are less likely to want this use.
[00:42:27] Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. I know it’s only th- th- those are women things.
[00:42:31] Simone Collins: Yeah, I feel like the, the overlap between the type of, let’s just say it, guy who wants to use this and their, like, computer use, like, they’re gonna use gaming PCs.
[00:42:41] They’re, they’re not gonna be idiots who use Macs like me. Sorry. But yes. No, I mean, anyway, it sounds really cool. I will-
[00:42:49] Malcolm Collins: Oh, and I, I hugely improved the not safe for work video generation feature to the point where it’s basically unrec- Well, because the problem that I realized I had is the text to video was not using not safe for work CDance, which is the best if you want to describe a scene.
[00:43:05] And now it works really well for scene descriptions.
[00:43:09] Simone Collins: Huh. Interesting
[00:43:14] I’m gonna have to- And,
[00:43:14] Malcolm Collins: and you can generate quite long videos, like 15 seconds
[00:43:17] Simone Collins: I need to do video generation on this. Okay. Well, I’m excited to do that then. But for now I will, I will kick us off. Okay. Ready? Yeah?
[00:43:29] Speaker 13: I know which one it is. It feels so much better than having one. I’ll tell you, just like this little herd. You’re gonna be with me, Toasty? Aw, thanks. It’s texting me Do I like frogs? Yeah, frogs are super cool.
[00:43:57] Speaker 14: Yeah, see that’s why you were gonna give me a frog question. Oh, yeah. [00:44:00] ‘Cause I like frogs. Yeah. We’ll give it to you if you eat your food, Toasty. Yeah, Toasty. Okay. ‘Cause we want you to grow big and strong, right, buddy? Look at 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 episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins break down The New York Times’ recent coordinated coverage of masculinity and fatherhood. They analyze four pieces that attempt to redefine what it means to be a dad — including a cartoon about a trans father on Father’s Day, a childless writer’s take on “modern” fatherhood, an attack on Scott Galloway’s views on paternity leave, and Ezra Klein’s conversation with Helen Lewis framing the “New Right’s very old vision of men.”
The Collinses argue these articles reveal deep cultural elite contempt for actual fathers and promote unsustainable, self-indulgent views of parenting that prioritize personal identity and emotional affirmation over duty, sacrifice, and long-term human thriving. They explain why pronatalist, traditional approaches to masculinity and fatherhood will inherit the future while progressive narratives collapse under their own contradictions.
Expect sharp cultural analysis, personal parenting stories, and a direct challenge to the mainstream media’s attempt to gaslight men about what fatherhood really is.
Show Notes
@AlexBerenson wrote:
Cannot make this up, either.
@nytimes opinion has had four recent pieces about fatherhood and masculinity, with six authors:
Three women
A trans “man”
Two childless men
Not one father. The cultural elite contempt for dads runs so deep we don’t even get to speak for ourselves.
The four pieces appear to be these recent New York Times Opinion items on fatherhood/masculinity:
* “To My Daughter, My Gender Was Never Complicated” (guest essay in comic-strip form, by Zach Ellams, a trans-identifying parent writing about being a “trans dad” and fatherhood).
* “The Most Important Way That Fatherhood Has Changed” (Father’s Day–timed essay on changing perspectives on fatherhood).
* “This Masculinity Influencer Is Loud and Wrong About Paternity Leave” (criticizing a male influencer’s stance on paternity leave and broader masculinity issues).
* “The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men” (Opinion video/transcript focusing on men, masculinity and the New Right, featuring journalist Helen Lewis).
“To My Daughter, My Gender Was Never Complicated”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/21/opinion/trans-dad-parenting-fathers-day.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/21/opinion/trans-dad-parenting-fathers-day.html?unlocked_article_code=1.r1A.oWDB.tcG4utZreGgZ&smid=url-share
This shows a series of cartoon panels about a trans father who underwent surgery at 18 and has lived as a father of a daughter, mostly quite out, for some time.
It’s about how he found self acceptance through parenting (and I love that, because I—Simone—have also experienced that and can totally relate)
The panels include things like:
* His daughter yelling: “HOW DID YOU GROW A MUSTACHE IF YOU WERE A LADY?” at a public school
* His daughter asking about a pre-transition picture of him in an album and asking:
* “Who’s that?”
* “It’s me”
* “Oh. You look cool.”
* “Then or now?”
* “Then.”
* Him worrying about his daughter outing him at school
* “I don’t actually tell everyone I’m trans. I save that for special people”
* Eventually she outs him, saying she wants to grow a beard when she grows up, and when told she can’t, insisting she can because her dad did and he was a girl.
* Her various sick burns
* “You’re slow because you’re old!”
* “Maybe I’ll be like you when I grow up” // “Yeah?” // “Yeah. Really short.”
The Backlash:
* @realBrandonGill: “On Father’s Day, the New York Times decided to promote a cartoon of a woman cosplaying as a father. And they did it for a reason. Because the cultural left knows that the first step to conquering the future is brainwashing the minds of our children— and they’ve realized that strong fathers are the biggest obstacle to that goal. They want to tear the institution of fatherhood down to nothing because, to the left, things that are normal, good, and holy are a threat to their marxist revolution.”
* Matt Taibbi: “Today’s NYT editorial on Father’s Day is an all-timer. Again, don’t know where to put it on the funny-vs-horrifying axis:”
* @EndWokeness: “The New York Times on Father’s Day. We do not hate the media enough.”
* Caitlin Flanagan: “The child’s job was to help the parent feel comfortable with his gender.”
* @AfterTheReset: “Message aside, is it necessary for the cartoons to be ugly, poorly drawn, and unappealing?”
Is this an affront to father’s day?
* Sort of
* Mother’s Day in the modern U.S. sense was founded by Anna Maria Jarvis in the early 1900s to create a solemn “memorial mothers day” honoring the sacrifices and care of individual mothers, inspired directly by her own mother Ann Reeves Jarvis’s wish for such a day and by Ann’s community health and reconciliation work.
* Anna’s drive was rooted in her mother Ann Reeves Jarvis’s work: Ann had organized “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” in the 1850s to improve sanitation and reduce infant mortality, and later “Mother’s Friendship Day” events to heal divisions between Union and Confederate families after the Civil War. Ann also expressed in a Sunday school prayer that she hoped someone would someday establish a “memorial mothers day” for the “matchless service” mothers render to humanity, a line Anna took as her guiding mission
* In the U.S., Father’s Day is generally credited to Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, who proposed the holiday in 1909 after hearing a church sermon about Anna Jarvis’s newly established Mother’s Day. (her civil war veteran dad raised her and her siblings alone after her mother died).
* I find this really relatable as a parent
* Many of us have peculiarities and a story about how parenting helps with acceptance and getting someone out of their heads is actually really good
* In fact, these panels even demonstrate how the author’s daughter gets him to stop overthinking things
* There’s a panel where she’s like: “I spot something that starts with T!”
* And all he can think of is “trans”
* And he’s like: Termite? Turtleneck? Tiny morsel of wood?”
* And his daughter is like: “TREES.”
“The Most Important Way That Fatherhood Has Changed”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/opinion/fathers-day-fatherhood.html
https://archive.is/Gn93j
In this, Frank Bruni, a (childless) contributing opinion writer who has been on staff at the time for over 25 years, talks about how fatherhood has changed between his dad and his brother’s generations (his brother has three kids in their 20s)
He talks about fathers spending more time with their kids now an cites an article suggesting one reason fertility is lower is that men want to give the kids they do have more attention.
In short, he says modern fatherhood is high effort, high investment, and he says that’s good.
He sort of misses that the investment now isn’t in empowering kids but rather indulging them, and he provides a good example: “Mark encouraged his children to let him in by inviting them to understand him. He made sure that they met and mingled with his adult friends and thus observed how he tended relationships and what they meant to him. He also showed his children his passions.
“I took Frank to a Grateful Dead concert when he was 12,” Mark told me, referring to his oldest son, who, like me, is named after my father. But that outing wasn’t just characteristically ardent Deadhead evangelism (and, well, unorthodox parenting). It reflected Mark’s sustained effort to expand the time that he and Frank spent together. The more hours, the more conversation. The more conversation, the greater the likelihood of serendipitous revelations, real familiarity, deeper connection.”
“This Masculinity Influencer Is Loud and Wrong About Paternity Leave”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/opinion/paternity-leave-debate.html
https://archive.is/Zm4Oy
In this opinion piece, Jessica Grose denounces Scott Galloway’s stance on paternity leave.
It should be noted that Scott Galloway is one of the few progressive-leaning pronatalists out there (center-left liberal or social capitalist rather).
In an interview with Derek Thompson, Galloway said: “I think there should be mandatory maternity leave, because I think the species needs to propagate. I’m not sure there should be mandatory paternity leave. I think it sometimes creates resentment. I think sometimes it’s abused. And so I’m a bit of a capitalist here. I think it’s between the company, but I don’t know if I immediately default to oh, the father needs to be there.”
Grose added: “Galloway also commented that he doesn’t think men should be in the delivery room. “I thought that was so disgusting and unnatural,” he says. When I asked Galloway if he had a response to the backlash he has been getting over these comments, he said over email, “My comments were intentionally provocative in the context of a friendly/snarky conversation with Derek.””
She also noted: “Poor Derek Thompson tried to push back, and launch a defense of parental leave. “Most of the gap between prime age adult male and female earnings is a motherhood penalty. And so one benefit of paternity leave is that it puts men and women on relatively more equal standing,” to which Galloway replies, “By lowering the economic standards of the man?””
She proceeded to cite research finding that “Paid paternity leave in Quebec did not fix the motherhood penalty for women, nor did it substantially hurt men’s economic standards.”
She also attempts to exploit that “not a baby man” aspect of Galloway’s personality:
* “It gets worse. Thompson, who is still glowing from the birth of his second child, shares a very sweet story with Galloway about playing “monster” with his eldest child, a 2-year-old, and how he feels “an enormous upsurge of instinct for how to parent my child.” Thompson adds, “I love discovering a new piece of myself in parenting.”Galloway doesn’t even seem to be listening to Thompson, because his response is, “The bad news is it just sucks for the dad. We pretend to like it.” Galloway thinks dads are full of it “when they say they like babies. They’re awful. As a new dad your job is to make sure moms don’t lose it, “and get some sleep and keep the baby away from bodies of water. That is literally your only two jobs right now, or the only two things that you’re any good at. At about 2 or 3 it starts to get less awful and then by 4 or 5 it almost becomes fun.””
She imposes an implication on Galloway that is unfair: “Scott Galloway is entitled to his feelings about parenting babies, and I’m sure he’s not alone. What I am objecting to is the unsaid implication that it’s super fun for moms all the time, while also talking to a man who seems to be wholeheartedly enjoying his small children.”
She tries to argue that many men like being fathers (implying Galloway is heartless) and that studies show people want supportive partners and that partners who take paternity leave “have higher levels of life satisfaction, better health, better marriages and better relationships to their children”
She writes: “When I asked Galloway if he was familiar with any of this research, he said, “My point wasn’t that paternity leave is bad — it’s that we should be honest about trade-offs and let families make decisions based on their circumstances rather than treating one model as morally superior.””
But then she frames his statement as elitist, writing about how few people have that choice.
She finishes with: “I don’t think it’s unusual for men to find childbirth uncomfortable or scary to watch, and becoming a dad can be a rough transition for many; there’s a whole genre of internet videos of dads passing out in the delivery room. But I don’t think saying that watching women give birth is “disgusting and unnatural” is the best way to start this conversation. Galloway told me in an email, “The broader point I was making — clumsily — is that we should be honest about the different experiences people have rather than prescriptive about what every father must feel or do. Some dads experience profound bonding in the first weeks; others find their stride later. Both are valid.”
I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.”
This is exactly why we don’t have very many left-leaning pronatalists.
* On one hand we have a woman who has unreasonable demands for a pet project
* On the other hand we have a man trying to share a relatable view and espouse practical solutions
“The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-helen-lewis-gender-right.html
https://archive.is/kuEGG
This is an episode of the Ezra Klein show with Helen Lewis as they discuss a concept she wrote about and refers to as masculinism.
They open with clips of Bronze Age Pervert and Tucker Carlson yearning for “the ancient Hittite Empire or the ancient Mitanni Empire” and “what we had before Betty Friedan wrote “The Feminine Mystique,” before lifestyle feminism dominated every institution in the West.”
They argue:
* There is a coherent masculinist ideology on the American right that goes far beyond the online “manosphere” provocateurs like Andrew Tate.
* Its central claim: modernity and liberal democracy have “thwarted” true masculinity, which is defined around hierarchy, dominance, risk‑taking, and clear gender roles (male breadwinner, female homemaker).
* Figures like Raw Egg Nationalist, Bronze Age Pervert (Costin Alamariu), Helen Andrews, JD Vance, Doug Wilson, and parts of Heritage’s agenda are all different expressions of this same ideological current.
They talk about various concerns expressed within the sphere of masculinism (from dropping testosterone to boys’ struggles in schools, male suicide, endorcine-disrupting chemicals, sedentary work, etc.)
Their primary criticism of it center around:
* A lack of what they find to be empty or incoherent intellectualism
* Klein keeps finding “less there than I thought”: beneath the grand talk of thymos, Nietzsche and liberal decadence, the arguments often collapse into trivial lifestyle advice (e.g. “throw out your plastic chopping board”) or conspiratorial hormone politics.
* They argue that much of the literature swaps serious argument for trolling, irony and “vibes,” making claims hard to pin down and allowing proponents to dodge accountability for what they’re actually saying.
* The movement’s misogyny
* Historical nostalgia and bad faith use of “the past”
* FAIR.
* They argue the movement builds on mythic, cherry‑picked pasts: a fake 1950s Pleasantville, a sanitized Rome or Sparta, or vague “longhouse” matriarchies that collapse under any concrete historical scrutiny.
* The movement’s contempt for liberal self‑restraint and equality
* They find masculinists overly valorize aggression, domination, and hierarchy
* Klein argues healthy masculinity is a matter of self mastery
* The self-helpishness of the movement
* The looksmaxxing
* The extreme body aesthetics (steroid use)
* Their allegedly exploiting real male distress in exploitative ways
* They say masculinists focus too much on butthurt and hierarchy and not on actual constructive reforms
* Their policy threat
* E.g. pushback on no-fault divorce
* The tone
* Klein emphasizes that the movement’s heroes (like
* Trump and Nick Fuentes) embody disinhibition, cruelty, and narcissism rather than courage, responsibility, or fatherhood; he calls this a “terrible vision” of adulthood and manhood.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today, because The New York Times seems to be, in some either organized or unintentional fashion making a stance on what masculinity is, really trying to shape the narrative in a very, like, kind of obvious way.
[00:00:15] Malcolm Collins: Is it, is it bopping your kids?
[00:00:17] Simone Collins: N- no. No, no, no, no. It’s- No, no,
[00:00:19] Malcolm Collins: no, no, no, no, no.
[00:00:20] Simone Collins: They don’t get to- ... the opposite of that. And I started falling down this rabbit hole when I saw this tweet on X at Alex Berenson wrote, “Cannot make this up either. @NYTimesOpinion has had four recent pieces about fatherhood and masculinity with six authors.
[00:00:36] Three women, a trans man, two childless men. Not one father. The cultural elite contempt for dads runs so deep that we don’t even get to speak for ourselves.” He didn’t directly reference all of the four articles in his, his post, so I-
[00:00:54] Malcolm Collins: The trans article was really creepy.
[00:00:56] Simone Collins: The trans article, we we’re gonna go...
[00:00:58] That’s our first one. But I did, I did, I think I found the four of them. There is, “To My Daughter, My Gender Was Never Complicated.” This is the- Trans one that Malcolm alluded to. We’re gonna look at The, The Most Important Way That Fatherhood Has Changed, a Father’s Day themed essay on changing perspectives on fatherhood.
[00:01:17] This masculinity influencer is loud and wrong about paternity leave, which is criticizing Scott Galloway’s stance on paternity leave and broader masculinity issues. Him being a left-leaning pronatalist, and one of the only ones. Mm. So great. Thanks, guys. And then finally, The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men which is from the Ezra Klein podcast actually, where he has on Helen Lewis.
[00:01:41] So two people I think are great and, but no, they have to talk about basically reframe the entire... They call it, I think, well, we’ll, we’ll get into it. Some, some name that Helen Lewis has chosen for the masculinity, masculinity movement, like raw nationalist and bronze per- pervert and a bunch of other people in our broader space.
[00:02:00] But why they’re like shallow and evil. So this
[00:02:04] Malcolm Collins: is very much- These people are awesome. Hold on. No, the thing is, is we will replace them. None of these people who are whining about what it means to be a dad is a real dad. Well,
[00:02:12] Simone Collins: and you’ll see this actually. And here’s who’s gonna replace them. So what I think is interesting is this, this is their attempt to frame this is what masculinity is or should be.
[00:02:19] This is what fatherwood- fatherhood is or should be. And in so doing, they actually, I think, explain exactly your point, why they are going to be replaced, why they are not going to inherit the future. Ooh. Because the views they express are inherently unsustainable and not going to produce something that helps humans thrive in the end which I think is telling.
[00:02:44] So let’s jive right in to the one that really got X clutching its pearls in such a way that they just burst into powder. To my daughter, my gender was never complicated. This was a series of cartoon panels about a trans father who underwent surgery at 18 and has lived as a father of a daughter mostly, mostly not quite out actually for quite some time.
[00:03:11] And it’s supposed to be- Okay ... this heartwarming story about h- how a parent has found self-acceptance through parenting. And on the surface, like, I really like that because, as you know, I have to give myself grace more now, knowing that our children are a lot like me and that some of the most difficult things about them are traits that are deep from within me, and I have to...
[00:03:34] It’s a whole thing. I like that. But so for those of you just listening, the panels include things like his daughter yelling, .” How did you grow a mustache if you were a lady?” at a public pool where this father is not out. His daughter asking about a pre-transition picture of him in an album and asking, “Who’s that?”.
[00:03:53] And the father says, “It’s me.” “Oh, you look cool. Then or now?” “Then.” [00:04:00] She’s just full of sick burns, honestly. He- Just
[00:04:02] burns ...
[00:04:03] he has some panels about worrying about his daughter outing him at school where she talks about like, “Oh, my mommy, I, I told them how my mommy made a cake for you after your surgery.”
[00:04:14] And he, he says, “I don’t actually tell everyone I’m trans. I save that for special people.” And then eventually she does out him, saying that she wants to grow a beard when she grows up, and when told that she can’t, she insists that she can because her dad did and he was a girl.
[00:04:29] And
[00:04:30] Malcolm Collins: some more- Oh, then it’s not grooming at all.
[00:04:32] Simone Collins: No, I know, I know, I know. Some other sick burns from her that I love-
[00:04:35] Malcolm Collins: I love how they just, they’re, they’re always like, they’re always like this. They’re always like, “We’re not grooming people.” We’re not
[00:04:40] Simone Collins: doing that.
[00:04:40] Malcolm Collins: And then they show an example of a kid growing up in an environment where this is normalized wanting to do it themself,
[00:04:45] Simone Collins: and they don’t- I thought I would marry a woman and have 100 cats and live in a van,
[00:04:49] Malcolm Collins: okay?
[00:04:49] You, like you literally thought the norm was being a lesbian. And, and, and the-
[00:04:52] Simone Collins: I know I did. I really did, ‘cause all my friends
[00:04:55] Malcolm Collins: grew up in San Francisco. You
[00:04:55] Simone Collins: grew
[00:04:55] Malcolm Collins: up in San Francisco. Yeah ... and it’s, you know, I think that one of the things To remember is that grooming is normal to an extent, right? Like, in that everybody grows up into the culture, or often into the culture, th- they’re surrounded by when they’re a kid, and that’s often the culture’s goal.
[00:05:14] This is why at the San Francisco Cho- Choir, you know, they’re saying, “We are coming for your kids.” Because these groups breed at well below replacement rate. The only way they can be stable is by converting children from other cultural groups. Mm. They just need to define this, and those children would normally be groomed into their own healthy culture, right?
[00:05:31] But now they are being parasitized into cultures that their birth culture typically would see as negative. And that by the statistics seems to have negative outcomes in terms of mental health, life happiness, et cetera. But continue.
[00:05:48] Simone Collins: Just two more sick burns from the daughter before we go over the backlash.
[00:05:53] And it, it is, this is really an affront on Father’s Day. She said, “You’re slow ‘cause you’re old.” I, which is just kind of a young person thing to say, but I love it. And at one point she, she told her dad, “Maybe I’ll be like you when I grow up,” and he’s like, “Yeah?” And I think he’s thinking maybe, like, trans like me or something, but she’s like, “Yeah, really short,” which is just delightful.
[00:06:15] This girl is really funny. And I think that, you know, the, the, the parent who was able to notice the humor in these moments is funny. But the backlash, ooh, the, a lot of people on X didn’t like it. @RealBrandonGill wrote, “On Father’s Day, The New York Times decided to pronote- promote a cartoon of a woman cosplaying as a father, and they did it for a reason.
[00:06:35] Because the cultural left knows that the first step to conquering the future is brainwashing the minds of our children, and they’ve realized that strong fathers are the biggest obstacle to that goal. They want to tear the institution of fatherhood down to nothing because to the left, things that are normal, good, and holy are a threat to the Marxist revolution.”
[00:06:56] Matt Taibbi wrote, “Today’s NYT editorial on Father’s Day is an all-timer.” Again, I don’t know where to put it on the funny versus horrifying axis. @EndWokeness wrote, “The New York Times on Father’s Day. We do not hate the media enough.” Caitlin Finne- Flanagan wrote, “The child’s job was to help the parent feel comfortable with his gender.”
[00:07:17] And @AfterTheReset, “Message aside, is it necessary for the cartoons to be ugly, poorly drawn, and unappealing?” And per our episode on communists and terrifyingly badass girls-
[00:07:29] Malcolm Collins: Yes, and now we’re like, “Oh, that’s the point” ... like, that’s why they do it. Yeah. Yeah, but the problem is that they’ve so promulgated it within their culture specifically that the other side is, i- you know, we can compete with our sexy anime girls made with, with AI.
[00:07:43] In fact, you know, why don’t I put in a sexy Simone right now just so everyone can see my-
[00:07:47] Oh, my God. Okay, great ... my hot German anime waifu. Thanks. The, the... I, I think, I think we, we can beat them because we get the sexy art, and we can make it- ... for virtually free. Go to RFAB. By the way, if you’re wondering the model that I [00:08:00] use most for these, it’s RFAB’s GPT model is the one- Oh
[00:08:04] that’s best for the-
[00:08:04] Simone Collins: No way ... producing sexy
[00:08:05] Malcolm Collins: German women. Yeah.
[00:08:06] Simone Collins: Really? Mm-hmm. I’m just so used to GPT art being h- awful. Like, the, the short legs. You know what I’m talking about, the short legs. Did they get over that, I guess?
[00:08:16] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s great. I mean, I, I like... If you’ve liked the images that I show, they’re genuine- Yeah
[00:08:21] GPT, Maybe
[00:08:22] Simone Collins: it’s just better at anime. Hmm.
[00:08:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I tell it to do it in an anime style. Yeah. You know, so.
[00:08:28] Simone Collins: Okay.
[00:08:28] Malcolm Collins: Oh,
[00:08:28] Simone Collins: ooh. Hold on,
[00:08:31] Malcolm Collins: buddy. But I mean, if we can fight asynchronous warfare where everything in their world has to be ugly... And I do think the other point that the person made here is really interesting about this- Yeah
[00:08:38] is the piece and the focus was on his daughter affirming his lifestyle.
[00:08:45] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like- Which by the way actually i- is an affront to the concept of Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, which isn’t about This is about me. This is my day. These holidays existed to be a memorial to the sacrifice and hard work that parents do.
[00:09:05] Yeah. Not of, like, the affirming role that their children play for them. So Father’s Day was sort of, it was inspired by Mother’s Day- ... which was founded by this woman named Anna Maria Jarvis. She wanted to create- ... a solemn memorial Mother’s Day honoring the sacrifices and care of individual mothers.
[00:09:26] Inspired by her mother, Ann Reeves who had done all sorts of, like, amazing things to help, like, just sort of community works and things like that. But Father’s Day, even more so- ... is really about, like, immense sacrifice to help raise your kids. So Father’s Day was founded by Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, who heard about Mother’s Day-
[00:09:48] and was like, “Hold on,” like, “Dads need this.” ‘Cause her Civil War veteran dad raised her and her siblings alone after her mother died. So this is about dads going above and beyond, sacrificing their happiness and their wellbeing and their sanity to take care of their children. And- Hmm ... yeah, I mean, this is not really, I would say, in the at least original spirit of Father’s Day.
[00:10:09] Even though I find it relatable as a parent I, I do think that our kids teach us how to give grace to ourselves or accept ourselves better, but that’s not what being a parent should be about, ever. It should not be about self-affirmation.
[00:10:25] Malcolm Collins: And, and that’s wild. This reframing of parenthood as an act of self-affirmation,
[00:10:30] Simone Collins: which- And that’s, again, that’s part of the problem.
[00:10:31] Like, again, to the theme of this episode, this is why the progressive left is not going to inherit the future, is because they, they’re not having children out of a sense of duty or obligation, self-sacrifice. They’re having it as, an ef- and even contextualizing it as sort of an indulgent my spiritual journey, my journey of self-acceptance kind of thing.
[00:10:56] And it’s th- this, this, this parent is so in their head about their trans identity, for example. One kid who already wants
[00:11:07] to sterilize
[00:11:08] themselves. There’s even a panel in the, there’s even a panel in the, the, the, she, the, sorry. The, the author includes where the daughter, they’re in a park, and the daughter’s like, “I spot something, it starts with a T.
[00:11:19] Can you guess what it is?” Basically, and the, the father’s like, “Aw.” Like, can only think of trans. Can only think of trans in a park, and is like, “A termite? A tiny morsel of dirt?” Like, coming up with all these things and, and the daughter’s just like, “Trees.” It just, I think demonstrates the extent to which this parent is so preoccupied with their own identity
[00:11:43] Malcolm Collins: and- Yeah, they can’t even see...
[00:11:44] Well, what a great metaphor. They can’t even see the trees in a park.
[00:11:48] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:11:48] Malcolm Collins: They can’t even see the trees around them. They, they can’t see the tree. It’s, it’s- The woods for, the
[00:11:52] Simone Collins: woods for the trees. Yes. Is that what you’re going for here?
[00:11:55] Malcolm Collins: Yes. Okay. Yeah. But they’re, to, to miss the world around them so [00:12:00] holistically-
[00:12:00] Simone Collins: Yeah
[00:12:01] Malcolm Collins: out of a focus on their own identity.
[00:12:03] Simone Collins: Yeah. And this, again, like I, I find it a relatable message. I think it’s, it’s sweet, but it’s also, I think, very telling, and it is, it is a bit of an affront to the original point of the holiday. By the way, Malcolm, thank you for your sacrifice. I was, we were so busy on Sunday that I, We’re gonna have to do a delayed Father’s Day, and I’m really sorry.
[00:12:23] Malcolm Collins: No,
[00:12:23] what?
[00:12:23] Simone Collins: You’re an amazing dad. You’re such an amazing dad. You, you sacrifice more than any other man I’ve ever encountered. You put yourself on the front lines of parenthood in a way that no father or husband I’ve ever met will. Like- Mm ... that you’re always the one that takes the kids to the doctor- I don’t know if that’s true.
[00:12:38] You’ve been doing a lot recently ... you’re alw- always the one the kids are with on the weekends. Though you’re always the one-
[00:12:43] Malcolm Collins: He’s started coding.
[00:12:44] Simone Collins: I, I, well, look, we need to, we need to get something to work there, and you’re doing a really great job. But you are amazing- Well, I mean, we are happy- ... and I appreciate you
[00:12:56] Malcolm Collins: I’ve built out all of the core features. Right now we’re just working on extra stuff, like a integrated email management feature, which- We’re very excited about ... hopefully save... I mean, w- if I can get email off of my daily to-do list, that would save me so much time.
[00:13:09] Simone Collins: Same. Yeah, especially, yeah, ‘cause w- now there’s more coming in than we can manage, but we still don’t wanna not read everyone’s message.
[00:13:16] So if we just make it slightly more efficient, and you’re making it crazy more efficient. Anyway, let’s go into the next article which is titled The Most Important Way that Fatherhood Has Changed. Mm. In this article, Frank Bruni, who is a childless contributing opinion writer who’s been on staff-
[00:13:33] Malcolm Collins: Why?
[00:13:34] Why did they let a childless writer write this?
[00:13:36] Simone Collins: Well, so I think he believes that he is in a position to talk about fatherhood because he’s talking about it from a removed perspective. In this article he talks about- Mm ... the difference between the way his father raised him and his brother, and the way- Mm.
[00:13:53] Mm ... and his brothers, and the way that his brothers have in turn raised their children. And he talks about how fathers are spending more time with their kids now. He cites an article that suggests one reason fertility is lower is that men want to give the kids they do have more attention- Lame ... which he frames as a good thing,
[00:14:12] Malcolm Collins: and- Don’t spend time with your kids.
[00:14:13] Walk up, hit ‘em, walk away. Oh, my God. That’s, whether they’ve done something bad or not. Yeah. Kids love being hit.
[00:14:18] Simone Collins: No, honestly, they, our, our kids really do. They really like fighting. They- And if you don’t do it, they’ll start it so that you do do it. Octavia- Watch out, ‘cause they hit hard ...
[00:14:26] Malcolm Collins: dropping on the floor to try to kick me in the nuts in the store.
[00:14:28] Simone Collins: What?
[00:14:30] Malcolm Collins: This is a real thing that just happened yesterday.
[00:14:35] Simone Collins: Yeah, all these other pliant children in their shopping carts. Octavian coming in for the kill. Classic. But yeah this again is, is I think that constant theme. This is why the progressive left is, is choosing to relinquish its position in the future.
[00:14:49] There is this choice to indulgently spend more time investing in children. But I think what’s really telling about his article is that the examples he cites on like, well, here’s this valuable additional investment that these children have vis-a-vis his 90-something-year-old father who is just a provider.
[00:15:09] These, these parents are getting emotionally involved in their kids’ lives, and they are... here’s one example. He wrote, “Mark,” and this is his brother, “Mark encouraged his children to let him in by inviting them- To understand him. He made sure that they met and mingled with his adult friends, and thus observed how he tended relationships and what they meant to him.
[00:15:30] He also showed his children his passions. “I took Frank to a Grateful Dead concert when he was 12,” Mark told me, referring to his oldest son, who like me, is named after my father. But that outing wasn’t just characteristically ardent Deadhead evangelism and, well, unorthodox parenting. It reflected Mark’s sustained effort to expand the time that he and his, and Frank spent together.
[00:15:51] The more hours, the more conversation, the more, the more conversation, the greater the likelihood of serendipitous revelations- Why see a dad going to a- ... real [00:16:00] familiarity, deeper connection. So basically, this father was like, “This is my passion. Witness me.” And you know, he made his son go and listen. And listen, I like Grateful Dead music.
[00:16:10] I thought I was a Deadhead when I was a kid, ‘cause my father too shared his Grateful Dead passion with me. But it wasn’t that aspect of my growing up with him that was actually helpful. What, what he’s missing here, what Frank Bruni is missing I think, is that investment in children is not all equal.
[00:16:24] The investment in children in their careers, in the way that like Benjamin Franklin’s father invested in him, walking him along the street, showing him different trades, asking him what stood out to him. The way that my dad, for example, invested in me. Taking me to work with him, helping me get jobs teaching me what business m- meetings look like, taking me to trade shows.
[00:16:40] Like, this, this is really valuable investment, and this is stuff that I think parents are really missing. You know, they’re, they’re treating children like pets. Like this thing where like, “Oh, you’re gonna see how I, you know, my friends, and I’m gonna raise you to be this indulgent, happy person, and we’re gonna be like emotionally so close.”
[00:16:59] And it’s true that younger generations now are closer like friends to their parents than ever before, but they’re also more mentally sick. And I don’t know- Yeah ... like there’s, there’s no proven causation. There is this- But it’s not great ...
[00:17:10] Malcolm Collins: optimization of closeness without thought for the long-term negative effects.
[00:17:15] That’s not great ... and there are going to be long-term negative effects for the way that they’re raising their kids like this. And worse, the way he’s spending money. Look, a father going to a concert? W- what? Paying for a ticket for your kid? That is not sustainable if you have a large family.
[00:17:32] Simone Collins: Yeah, and, and way to...
[00:17:33] Hopefully he had him wear earplugs. That’s a very easy path to early hearing loss, which is not, not great. But yeah, here’s... The next one made me so angry because we, you know, have personally tried so hard for there to be, to encourage the existence of and, and foster the growth of progressive or left-leaning at least pronatalists.
[00:17:59] And yet here is one, and- Scott Galloway ... the New York Times opinion is, yeah, Scott Galloway defenestrating him for holding a very practical and pragmatic view vis-à-vis paternity leave. So in this particular opinion piece, Jessica Grove or sorry, Grose, who is a, she is a mother, but she’s a woman of, of two children in Brooklyn.
[00:18:21] She denounces Scott Galloway’s stance on paternity leave. And again, see, Scott Galloway, he, he considers himself, I think, more like center-left or a social capitalist, but he’s still as far, as far as it can get when, when you’re left-leaning and pronatalist.
[00:18:38] Yeah.
[00:18:38] And in this interview with Derek Thompson-
[00:18:40] Galloway said, quote, “I think there should be mandatory maternity leave because I think the species needs to propagate. I’m not sure there should be mandatory paternity leave. I think it sometimes creates resentment. I think sometimes it’s abused. And so I’m a bit capitalist here. I think it’s between the company but I don’t know if I immediately default to, oh, the father needs to be there.”
[00:19:04] Grose added, this is the au- the author of the op-ed. Galloway also commented that he doesn’t think men should be in the delivery room. Quote, “I thought that it was so disgusting and unnatural,” he says. When I asked Galloway if he had a response to the backlash he’s been getting over these comments, he said over email, “My comments were intentionally provocative in the context of a friendly, snarky conversation with Derek.”
[00:19:28] Which It’s s- it, it’s like exactly the kind of thing that I think many fathers can relate to. And making these conversations open and transparent I think is crucial and important. Like, w- when people pretend that like the birthing experience is beautiful, especially for men-
[00:19:47] Malcolm Collins: Ugh. I don’t- That, that- I do not go.
[00:19:49] My wife doesn’t have me come to the delivery room. Like, I mean, you-
[00:19:51] Simone Collins: Well, yeah, and there was the one time where you were in, in with me with the C-section, and you were like, look. Like you were so uncomfortable. And, and trying to force this on men, or even [00:20:00] worse, to sell them this fantasy of like you’re gonna love being a baby daddy, like a, a, a, a, a father of an infant.
[00:20:06] You’re gonna love being in the delivery room. Will then set men up to think, “Oh, gosh, like I, I actually don’t like this, so this means I’m not gonna like to be a father at all.” Yeah,
[00:20:16] Malcolm Collins: I’m not gonna like all the other stuff.
[00:20:18] Simone Collins: And actually in, in his, in his talk, Galloway makes it clear that it gets better.
[00:20:25] So I’ll keep going. Sh- so she also noted in her op-ed I’m reading from it now, “Poor Derek Thompson tried to push back and launch a defense of parental leave. Most of the gap between prime age adult male and female earnings is a motherhood penalty, and so one benefit of paternity leave is that it puts men and women on a relatively more equal standing.”
[00:20:46] To which Galloway replies, “By lowering the economic standards of a man?” Which is a super like valid retort.
[00:20:53] Malcolm Collins: Reasonable point, yes.
[00:20:54] Simone Collins: Yeah. She proceeded, however, to cite research finding that paid paternity leave in Quebec did not fix the motherhood penalty for women, nor did it substantially hurt men’s economic standards.
[00:21:06] So good for you. But then she also attempts to exploit that not a baby man, which I talk about like there’s like 10% of men who are like they love babies. They just, infants, like they, they, they wanna hold them, et cetera, but like most men aren’t. But she tries to exploit his, Scott Galloway’s not, disinterest in babies with this.
[00:21:27] She wrote, “It gets worse. Thompson, who is still glowing from the birth of his second child, shares a very sweet story and, and how he feels an enormous upsurge of instinct how to parent my child. Thompson adds, ‘I love discovering a new piece of myself in parenting.’ Galloway doesn’t even seem to be listening to Thompson because his response is- The bad news is it just sucks for the dad.
[00:21:49] We pretend to like it. Galloway thinks dads are full of it when they say they like babies. They’re awful. As a new dad, your job is to make sure your moms don’t lose it, and get some sleep, and keep the baby away from bodies of water. That’s literally your only two jobs right now, or if the only two things that you’re any good at.
[00:22:08] At about two or three it starts to get less awful, and then by four or five it almost becomes fun. That’s what Scott Galloway said, and she’s quoting him in her article. And I think you would, like, you have said almost the same thing, and other very pro-natalist and kid-loving fathers that we know and trust and love, who are very culturally different from us as well, have said the same thing, that they’re just not into kids before they turn, like, five basically.
[00:22:31] And then, like-
[00:22:31] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and then they get awesome.
[00:22:33] Simone Collins: Yeah. And so that this woman is shaming Scott Galloway for expressing an extremely pervasive view held by fathers, and making Galloway seem like kind of a monster for doing so is It’s both, like, unfair and un- and, and, and f- and fairly cruel, but also I would argue pretty anti-natalist.
[00:22:55] Because again, if you make men think- Yeah ... like, “Oh, this is not normal, this is bad, this must mean that I’ll ne- not like anything about being a father,” they might decide to get a vasectomy. They might decide to just give up on that and have just one kid. Well, the
[00:23:08] Malcolm Collins: thing that really hit me recently is the day when I decided to go with you because you’re doing your next implantation, which we’ve done recently, so hopefully you’re pregnant.
[00:23:15] Everyone be praying. Fingers
[00:23:16] Simone Collins: crossed ...
[00:23:17] Malcolm Collins: and getting in the car and driving out, and I realized at no point did it occur to me to not do this. At no point- Hmm ... did I sit down and think, “Do I really want another kid? Can we really afford another kid? Does this make sense for our family?” It was just a regular yearly activity happening when it happened.
[00:23:37] And it reminded me, in the same way when we read that piece about the early stage abortion and the I Met My Husband at a Gang Bang episode. Watch that episode if you want to. It’s traumatizing. But, Mm ... that was when the radicalized Simone against early stage abortion. If y- if you haven’t seen it, watch.
[00:23:53] It’s w- I think one of our craziest episodes. It’ll start with you being all mad if you’re a conservative, and then you’re like, “Wait, this is c- what? [00:24:00] What?” But- Mm. Mm. Mm ... when she went to have an abortion, there was no moment leading up to the abortion that she really considered keeping the baby. It was-
[00:24:11] Simone Collins: Yeah, there was...
[00:24:12] It was unthinkable. Of course. Just like it’s unthinkable for us not to try for kid six, yeah.
[00:24:17] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I realized that that’s the way it needs to be. Like, not having kids needs to be completely unthinkable in a marriage. That is how you make this work for you, for your kids, for the way you make this work.
[00:24:29] In the same way that... And, and when do we start? In fact, let’s just lay this out. When do you start with intechno-puritanism? At the maximum, whether or not you’re financially stable, two years after you’re married.
[00:24:43] Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense. Oi. Yeah.
[00:24:46] Malcolm Collins: And if you, and if you, and if you can start before that, better
[00:24:50] Simone Collins: Yeah, the sooner, the sooner the better, for sure.
[00:24:53] Yeah. It just, so that’s super unfair. She, she also imposes another unfair implication on Scott Galloway. She says, “Scott Galloway is entitled to his feelings about parenting babies. I’m sure he’s not alone.” Oh, you’re sure. “But what I’m objecting to is the unsaid implication that it’s super fun for moms all the time, while also talking to a man who seems to be wholeheartedly enjoying his small children.”
[00:25:21] First, he’s not implying that it’s fun for moms all the time. What he’s implying when he’s like, “Oh, you can only do two things: try to get some sleep and, like, make sure the baby’s not close to bodies of water,” is that, like, mothers are dependent or, like, the ones who have the, the breast milk. Like, you can’t really substitute that.
[00:25:37] I mean, I, you, you can obviously do formula or you can feed bottles of breast milk, but if, if a woman is lactating, like, you can’t lactate for her. You can’t really do that. And women who are newly postpartum have also gone through a bunch of hormonal shifts, which I would argue make them more tolerant of sleep deprivation, make them more capable of not being super stressed about taking care of a screaming infant in the middle of the night or something like that than a father was.
[00:26:03] I mean, things do change when you become a father, but not in the same way they do for someone who’s been pregnant for nine months. So I just think it’s not, it’s not even fair. And then she frames his statement, As elitist. When he tries to defend himself when given a chance to comment on this article she, she wrote, “When I asked Galloway if he was familiar with any of his research, she said, ‘My point wasn’t that...’
[00:26:26] Or sorry, he said, Galloway said, ‘My point wasn’t that maternity leave is bad. It’s that we should be honest about trade-offs and let families make decisions based on their circumstances rather than treating one model as morally superior.’” Which she’s clearly doing. She’s like, “Well- Yeah ... maternity leave is, is categorically better.
[00:26:43] There’s no, there’s no ambiguity. The studies say-”
[00:26:46] Malcolm Collins: Nuance.
[00:26:47] Simone Collins: Yeah. There’s, there’s no nuance there. But, but he is, he is elitist because she’s like, “Well, not everyone has that choice.” And she, she finishes with, “I don’t think it’s unusual for men. to find childbirth uncomfortable or scary , to watch, and becoming a dad is a rough transition for many.
[00:27:10] There’s a whole genre of internet videos of dads passing out in the delivery room.” Which I now need to explore. But-
[00:27:16] Malcolm Collins: Wait, really?
[00:27:17] Simone Collins: I, yeah, I need, I need to check this out. “I don’t think that saying that watching women give birth is, quote, ‘disgusting and unnatural,’ end quote, is the best way to start this conversation.
[00:27:27] Galloway told me in an email, ‘The broader point I was making, clumsily, is that we should be honest about the different experiences people have rather than the perspectives about what every father must feel or do. Some dads experience profound bonding in the first few weeks. Others find their stride later.
[00:27:43] Both are valid.’” And she says- Good talk, Galloway ... he wholeheartedly agrees with that statement, but only after an article criticizing him for it. And Galloway’s making such an important point that, you know, you’re not, not all dads feel this, like, love at first sight thing with their kids. Yeah. Like y- you really don’t.
[00:27:59] You’re [00:28:00] like, “I need a paternity test. I don’t know about this.” Like, and that’s natural. You are the most loving dad I’ve ever met. You adore our children. Like sometimes when I am like, “I, I, I need a moment,” you, you really don’t. Y- you’re just always there for them. Yeah,
[00:28:14] Malcolm Collins: I’m never like, “I need a moment.”
[00:28:15] I’m always available for the kids.
[00:28:17] Simone Collins: Yeah. L- and then that’s- But you’re still, you’re not a baby man. And it’s, so, so that’s the thing, is like she’s communicating this, this, this really bad lie. So anyway, this is, yeah, facet number three is the one leftist pronatalist who has a really big profile gets defenestrated
[00:28:37] Malcolm Collins: for- Defenestrated by The New York Times
[00:28:38] Simone Collins: sharing realistic policy positions and trying to make men who don’t love babies not feel like they’re just gonna be bad fathers and not suited to be parents at all. Okay? Great. Thanks, New York Times. So now we get to the new right’s very old vision of men. This is an episode of the Ezra Klein Show with Helen Lewis.
[00:28:56] They discuss this concept she wrote about and refers to as masculinism. So they, they open with clips of Bronze Age Pervert and Tucker Carlson, who are yearning for the ancient Hittite Empire, or ancient Mittani Empire, or what we had before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique and before-
[00:29:15] Malcolm Collins: But we need to talk about this, ‘cause this is just not...
[00:29:17] But question, Simone, question.
[00:29:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:20] Malcolm Collins: Total side note. Should I get Octavian another Game Boy emulator?
[00:29:24] Simone Collins: Well, he was really jealous of Tex’s chew toy that looks like a Game Boy,
[00:29:29] Malcolm Collins: so. It’s $59. I, they, the-
[00:29:31] Simone Collins: Oh, you’re just browsing Prime Day ... the one I’m thinking
[00:29:35] Malcolm Collins: about. I was-
[00:29:35] Simone Collins: I was wondering why a white light reflected in those glasses of yours
[00:29:39] Malcolm Collins: I know. Hold, you gotta listen to me. This is actually important. So it, it turns out that it, the, the model that’s the best and the most robust, because I, that’s what specifically what I’m looking for, is not discounted for Prime Day, which doesn’t cost that much. And-
[00:29:53] Simone Collins: Oh, because we have time.
[00:29:54] Malcolm Collins: No, we-
[00:29:55] Simone Collins: Look, he broke it.
[00:29:55] They break everything. I, I don’t think we need to teach him- Well,
[00:29:59] Malcolm Collins: that’s why I’m trying to get something more robust ...
[00:30:01] Simone Collins: when we break something you just get a new one.
[00:30:03] Malcolm Collins: He broke it over a year ago at this point. Come on.
[00:30:08] Simone Collins: See, you’re more forgiving than I am. Oh, sir.
[00:30:10] Malcolm Collins: So we’ll let the audience decide.
[00:30:12] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:30:12] Does our kid- The audience will decide. Yeah, yes or no to the... Please no, Tex. Oh my God. So, right. So basically they open with these, you know, right, right-leaning influencers, although Tucker Carlson, I think just to be clear, he’s not a Republican about, like, yearning for the, the earlier days. What they argue essentially in this episode trying to basically encapsulate and then comment on the broader, like, masculinity sphere, is that there is this coherent masculinist ideology on the American light, right, sorry, the American right, that goes way beyond just, like, manosphere provocateurs like Andrew Tate.
[00:30:52] That the central claim of masculinism is that modernity is, is broken, especially for men. It is, it is thwarted masculinity. There’s dropping testosterone. There’s dropping fertility. Men are ill-suited for this kind of society, and they, Think that true masculinity centers around hierarchy and dominance and risk-taking and clear gender roles with male breadwinners- Well, this,
[00:31:18] Malcolm Collins: this is all true
[00:31:20] Simone Collins: and then they, they point to figures like Raw Egg Nationalist, who we consider to be a friend and really like. Bronze Age Pervert, Helen Andrews, who wrote the Foundation
[00:31:29] Malcolm Collins: for- Oh,
[00:31:29] Simone Collins: by the way, we’ve had Raw Egg
[00:31:30] Malcolm Collins: Nationalist on the show. If anyone has a contact to Milo or Bronze Age Pervert, I’d love to have both of them on the show.
[00:31:35] Simone Collins: Truly. They include JD Vance in all this, Doug Wilson parts of Heritage’s agenda. And we love Heritage Foundation, so, like, we take this all very personally. They talk about various concerns expressed with mac- masculinism. I think their, their primary criticism, and it is abundant. They s- I- they, they spend a lot of time.
[00:31:55] This is, like, all that was playing in my office all afternoon. They don’t like... [00:32:00] They think it has incoherent intellectualism. Klein keeps finding that there’s less here than I thought be- beneath this, for his, for his stance, grand talk of thumos and Nietzsche and liberal decadence, and the arguments often collapse, per his argument, into trivial lifestyle advice like, “Throw out your plastic chopping board,” or conspiratorial hormone politics.
[00:32:26] Or as Bronze Age Pervert would write, “w***e-mones.” They- W***e-mones. W***e-mones. Yes, he knows
[00:32:32] what’s up.
[00:32:33] He knows what’s up. They argue that a lot of the literature swaps serious argument for just trolling or irony and vibes. Meaning that it’s, it’s- No,
[00:32:41] Malcolm Collins: they miss it. They don’t understand what’s happening.
[00:32:44] Simone Collins: Yeah, they, they don’t, they don’t yeah, they, they just sort of completely misread it. Like, they don’t understand the trolling. They don’t understand the aesthetics.
[00:32:53] Malcolm Collins: If you watch our show, you will note that a lot of our show is trolling feeling. Yeah. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a lot of substance to it.
[00:33:02] There is
[00:33:03] Simone Collins: substance. There is research. There is-
[00:33:08] The trolling is authenticating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the, yeah, the trolling is a, a sign of authenticity and a way to socially signal what we’ve called, I think, what, performative vice to say, like, we are gen- like, that we’re doing the opposite of vir- virtue signaling. Like, signaling vice to the extent that it will hurt our reputation just to show you that we have no desire to be seen as good or smart for example.
[00:33:30] Of course, they also highlight the movement’s misogyny. They, and this is actually the argument that F- Misogyny? Come on ... that we’ve also made. Yeah.
[00:33:38] Malcolm Collins: Dude, literally. The reason, like, we have no misogynistic opinion The only reason we don’t want women to vote is because they keep voting for the wrong candidate. I, I’m joking of course. The real reason why it’s bad for women to vote is because if voting is a proxy for force, so basically the reason you vote is, like, if you went to war, who would actually win of the two perspectives?
[00:34:05] And women wouldn’t be included in that fighting force. Then eventually you create an asymmetry where it may make sense for a faction of the population to just capture power via war. So suppose, as is increasingly happening, all of the women are sorting into one population bloc- voting bloc, and all the men are voting for another candidate, and then the male candidate loses, and then the men just say, “Well, f**k it.
[00:34:26] I don’t care anymore.” And this is why democracy prevents that, but it doesn’t prevent it when you allow women to vote.
[00:34:32] Simone Collins: Right. And, but they, they... In- instead of hearing this, like, let’s talk about the misaligned incentives and how this is all playing out, what they just see and what they talk about in their podcast is like, this...
[00:34:44] They, they’re just anti-democracy and they’re just pro-violence. And they don’t really go deeper than that because they just... I, maybe they lack the capacity to read this more closely. Like, you really have to be looking at the problems in a very critical way. Well, they still acknowledge the problems.
[00:34:58] Like, they acknowledge that boys are, are completely, you know, maladapted for the schools the way they’re set up now. They, they acknowledge that there’s a health crisis and there’s too much sedentary life and everything. So they, they say that these are very real issues, but then they criticize the movement for Using it to exploit young men, for example with this sort of, like, self-helpishness that isn’t actually self-help.
[00:35:22] It, the long story short, ‘cause I could go into so much more detail, is that this, this is a podcast that has huge, huge viewership, that’s, that is made by very thoughtful people, Ezra Klein is, is very thoughtful and I think very well-meaning. But it’s still trying to frame this movement that is questioning modern norms in a way that isn’t intended to damage its credibility and stifle conversation about those genuine problems which they even acknowledge to be real.
[00:35:53] Which I think is very annoying and grating. But also because they’re not dedicated to actually solving these problems in a [00:36:00] way that could lead to inconvenient truths surfacing. Again, they’re representative of a group that is not likely to inherit the future. Yeah. So there’s these different facets of the way that The New York Times is trying to cover masculinity.
[00:36:13] They’re trying to cover it by defenestrating the one leftist pronatalist and, and practical parental leave policies. They’re trying to... I’m so sorry about Tex. Tex, friend. You, like, you’re not distressed, you just, you just wanna troll me and maybe you’re tired. They’re trying to under- undermine masculinity by having a, a woman write about Father’s Day and a trans man write about Father’s Day.
[00:36:41] And they’re, they’re trying to undermine masculinity by having a, yeah, like the person on X pointed out, a childless man decide what good parenting is and, and proclaim it in The New York Times opinion section. It’s, it’s weird. I don’t know if, like, there’s been some concerted effort to talk about masculinity and to be like, “This
[00:37:04] Malcolm Collins: is-” I almost wonder if it’s, like, a reaction to the pushback from the first piece.
[00:37:08] Like, we’re just gonna go extra hard on this now that we’ve gotten pushback or...
[00:37:13] Simone Collins: What, what do you think? No, because I mean, I, I think these things required some research and scheduling and prep to put together. I don’t know if it’s just this, like, immune system, like it, like, it could be, and I, I’ve been thinking about it as some kind of collective immune system response, right?
[00:37:27] That the, the white blood cells have recognized the, the virus that is this, this new movement broadly of, of fighting back against urban monoculture masculinity, and the immune system is now attempting to kill the virus by saying, “No, this is what fatherhood is. This is what masculinity is. This is what correct
[00:37:49] Malcolm Collins: parenting is.”
[00:37:50] Well, masculinity doesn’t involve men. I mean, that seems to be the point of this, right? They- Yeah.
[00:37:55] Simone Collins: It doesn’t involve men and it doesn’t involve fathers and it doesn’t involve genuinely trying to Question the broken systems at play that are harmful toward both men and women. It’s very frustrating, but there you go.
[00:38:13] It’s wild. I still really enjoyed the sick burns from the kid, ‘cause I love sick burns from the kid.
[00:38:17] Malcolm Collins: Legit, just burning the train. Yeah, but like, I mean, we see where this is going. Like, it’s very concerning. It’s very concerning to me that, like, we can’t have an honest conversation around the things that don’t seem to be working as a society, and are just supposed to go along with it.
[00:38:38] Just supposed to be like, “Oh, yeah, this, this is all fine. This is all working. We, we can look at the outcomes and see how f*****g terrible they are.” But nope. We’ll just go along with it
[00:38:49] Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t know what to say aside from I can see why people on X were so mad. Now I understand. But also, maybe we’re gonna have to reach a point where maybe, guys, we don’t need to read The New York Times.
[00:39:02] I don’t, I don’t know.
[00:39:04] Malcolm Collins: I mean, The New York Times readership is basically a contraceptive at this point, right? Like, if you re- I used to love The New York Times. It was one of my favorite newspapers. But, We all,
[00:39:12] Simone Collins: well, we did it all, I guess,
[00:39:13] Malcolm Collins: but- That future is over, right? Like, that world is over. The world of The New York Times is not the world of the future of humans, right?
[00:39:22] We are the future of humanity. We, as hard as they fight back against this, I was telling Simone today that Nux got demonetized across YouTube, across all his channels.
[00:39:32] Simone Collins: I’m so mad.
[00:39:32] Malcolm Collins: And they said harassment. I watch Nux’s channel. He doesn’t harass anyone as far as I’ve seen. He, he very rarely makes specific call-outs except for Hasan.
[00:39:41] I guess if it’s harassment against Hasan, okay. That, the- Touché ... the delicate little flower needed protection from Nux. But Hasan regularly- Oh ... harasses other people, right? Like, so I mean, that’s scary. That’s scary to be on a platform that can just do that when you’re following all of their rules [00:40:00]
[00:40:00] Simone Collins: I hope he gets monetized again.
[00:40:03] This, this reminds me actually of what happened to Leaflet when you included a clip of our kids being, our kids being the, you know, insane reavers they are and you being like, “You b******s,” Yeah, you little b******s is what they said. And, and I think they, I think they referred to that as hate speech.
[00:40:20] Malcolm Collins: No, they said I was, like, a- attacking children or something.
[00:40:23] Simone Collins: Yeah, wasn’t it bullying? Calling them little b******s. I think it was, I think it was exactly the same moderation reason, though-
[00:40:27] Malcolm Collins: Mm ...
[00:40:28] Simone Collins: as what Leaflet saw when hers was demonetized. So.
[00:40:32] Malcolm Collins: I mean, I don’t, when you say it, but it’s the standard trans approach, you know?
[00:40:36] And the fun thing is, is like I’d actually be okay if somebody figured out a way to make transness demographically stable, right? Like, if you’re a trans person and you’re watching this and you’re like, well, like let’s, let’s... Can I make it demographically stable? Fine, like go for it. That’d be great.
[00:40:51] Simone Collins: In the Culture Series it is.
[00:40:52] So in Ian Banks’ Culture Series I think a lot of humans, because the, the body’s modified so much that if you want to grow a uterus, you, like over a series of months can just grow that organ and then shift your hormone, because you have a, you have a drug gland. Every, every Culture citizen has the option to install a drug gland which can at any point, like release a variety of different mind-altering compounds.
[00:41:15] Like, you can just instantly get drunk when you want to get st- a stimulant when you need it. Like, it has, it’s just an, an endogenous drug producing gland. That means you can also endogenously for the most part I think, produce everything you need to in order to transition your gender. And there are characters that are featured in the Culture Series who at points in their lives like decided to become a man for like a couple years, and become a woman for a couple years.
[00:41:39] And that’s a version of transness where like y- you genuinely could with this drug gland grow a uterus, have a baby Get rid of the uterus, turn into a man again. It, and I, I wouldn’t, like, it’s, it’s theoretically possible. You could possibly, plausibly have some kind of, like, with really, really advanced technology, you could have this, right?
[00:42:09] Malcolm Collins: Theoretically, yes.
[00:42:10] Simone Collins: Theoretically. So okay, that, that is my version. My version of an, an ideal future is basically just the, the culture though. I’m, I’m obsessed. What is tech- Yeah, like I
[00:42:19] Malcolm Collins: don’t- What is this mood? As society changes, my views on this would change. As technology changes, my views on this would change.
[00:42:26] But right now the wider culture around the trans phenomenon is so toxic and so damaging, I just have to take the stance that if only to distance yourself from that wider culture, it’s better not to transition, right? Like, no- no matter how much you feel that you would benefit from it, because the culture will attempt to...
[00:42:50] Like, if you transition and then you have an opinion that’s not an approved opinion, or even the average opinion of the community shifts and now your previously approved opinion falls in the unapproved category, you get thrown in the gutter, no matter how much you’ve done for the community. I mean, look at how the community treats Caitlyn Jenner.
[00:43:08] Look at how the community treats Buck Angel, the, the two real, like, out in front advocates for it, right? Like, there, there is no respite in the community. Look at how the community treats Ana Valens. Did you know that Ana Valens ended up being canceled by leftists? This, this was this year.
[00:43:24] Simone Collins: Oh, gosh.
[00:43:24] Malcolm Collins: For, can you guess what? Can you guess why she was canceled?
[00:43:29] Simone Collins: Well, I, I’m sure it had something to do with her general oversharing, but I can’t quite tell what.
[00:43:32] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. What would be literally the craziest clown worldest reason for her to be canceled?
[00:43:38] Simone Collins: Her giantess interest?
[00:43:40] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Literally the craziest.
[00:43:42] Simone Collins: Ah.
[00:43:44] Malcolm Collins: Being a Kirsha fan.
[00:43:48] Simone Collins: Aw.
[00:43:49] Malcolm Collins: She’s not a Kirsha fan, by the way. She tried to destroy Kirsha’s life, but the left doesn’t care about what’s true. She did an article about why Pippa wasn’t so bad [00:44:00] compared to Kirsha, and somehow people got confused and thought she was a Kirsha fan, and Blue Sky just ran with that
[00:44:11] Simone Collins: Blue Sky seems like the most toxic but too boring to find amusing place in the entire internet Is there a moment where, like, you wake up
[00:44:20] Malcolm Collins: and you’re like, “Wait, did I choose the wrong team? Did, did I choose the everybody stab everybody in the back team?”
[00:44:28] Simone Collins: Mm. I don’t know, man. It’s very frustrating.
[00:44:34] Malcolm Collins: But look- I like that you brought these to my att- oh, now he’s asleep?
[00:44:37] Simone Collins: You see... Yeah. He just, he just, he needs to, like, scream and scream. This is what I say when he, like, has to yell himself to sleep and then
[00:44:46] Malcolm Collins: he’s out. And
[00:44:46] Simone Collins: you’re like, “Oh.” Right when I need to get up and make dinner.
[00:44:50] Malcolm Collins: Right when you need to get up and make dinner. Well, I’m sure you’ll be able to make dinner even more obediently-
[00:44:56] because of this, Simone. Which is really what all of us care about here, right?
[00:45:01] Simone Collins: Right? I need to know my place, because we are... Oh, God. Let me look at my notes. What did Helen Lewis call them? I love Helen Lewis. This is the problem. I find her very funny and fun. She calls it masculinism. Yes, because we are masculinists, and so my job is in the kitchen making- Well,
[00:45:21] Malcolm Collins: as, as a masculinist, I’m gonna get our kid another game console, ‘cause he deserves one- Oh.
[00:45:26] for being a sweetie. What?
[00:45:29] Simone Collins: He is a sweetie. How can we, how can we deny him? Plus, he is our son. Our sons must have everything.
[00:45:36] Malcolm Collins: Yes. Not our daughters. I’m not getting one for our daughters.
[00:45:39] Simone Collins: She’s a shark princess. She will take it from you.
[00:45:41] Malcolm Collins: She has made that very clear in recent episodes. I had a... One of the ends of a recent episode where she was talking about how she will only eat some color fishes.
[00:45:52] Not her favorite color, but, like- Oh, yeah ... gray fishes. And then she makes an eating, a, a show of how she’s gonna eat them. And then she’ll eat divers like me. She explicitly points at me. Like, not regular people. She’s like, “No, you.”
[00:46:09] Simone Collins: It’s terrible ‘cause it’s rubbing off on, on her little sister Indy, and now Indy’s just all about being defiant when she used to be my little, my little turkey.
[00:46:18] Doing- She’d be my little helper. She would bus her table. She’s still obsessed with cleaning, though. I, I, I need to- ... pretend that that’s subversive.
[00:46:26] My spray bottle.
[00:46:27] My spray bottle.
[00:46:29] My sp- Wait, Indy fights back now?
[00:46:32] Why? I wanna cleaning. Because I think she sees all her siblings do it, and she wants to be like her big n- big brothers and sister.
[00:46:40] Malcolm Collins: That’s really sweet. I wanna cleaning. You did a good job making these little monsters.
[00:46:45] Simone Collins: Yeah, well, she used to clean, and now she just uses her spray bottle to attack people, so.
[00:46:51] Malcolm Collins: And I demand praise for the expensive microphone, guys. I got a...
[00:46:55] Simone Collins: Yeah. Now you’ve listened to Tex screaming in your ear. How do you feel now?
[00:47:01] Do you want me to go back to the old one? Do, do you, do you, did I do the right thing? Are you happy now? Are you hap- are you happy now?
[00:47:11] Malcolm Collins: Oh my God, you are so... Look, I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be good about this. I’m even or- ordering it slow so we get the 7% back.
[00:47:20] Simone Collins: Thank you, actually. I always do that. I did that for these ‘cause they cost the, as much as our house.
[00:47:30] Malcolm Collins: What, what- So we- What cost-
[00:47:31] Simone Collins: I, I... Oh, no, I didn’t do it with these. I didn’t do it with the microphones.
[00:47:35] Aw. No,
[00:47:38] Malcolm Collins: but we needed these quickly.
[00:47:39] Simone Collins: Yeah, we did. For you g- for you guys. For you a******s.
[00:47:46] Okay.
[00:47:47] Malcolm Collins: We gotta get more swords while they’re on sale. Swords, flamethrowers- All
[00:47:51] Simone Collins: right, I need to- ... nails, chases ... Frank, I need to end. I’m sorry, Tex. All right. Before he starts screaming, we’re gonna, we’re gonna hit end here. Love you guys. All right, love you. [00:48:00] Bye. I love you, Malcolm.
[00:48:01] Malcolm Collins: Love you too.
[00:48:02] Simone Collins: You’re my special sub pony
[00:48:06] Malcolm Collins: Oh, but I think Texas.
[00:48:07] Look at that, he’s getting all the love, not me.
[00:48:09] Simone Collins: You’re, you’re, he’s a, he’s shards of your soul, Malcolm. He’s here, and he’s made of you.
[00:48:17] Yeah. Okay,
[00:48:18] Malcolm Collins: bye. But you guys need to become dads too. So find a wife, work really hard.
[00:48:22] Simone Collins: Yeah, become a dad. Don’t, don’t expect to love labor and delivery. And don’t expect to love babies. But if you
[00:48:28] Malcolm Collins: do, that’s great. And if you’re a woman watching this, go to the freaking Discord. There’s some guy there who will wife you up.
[00:48:34] Simone Collins: There’s some great guys in the Discord who are very
[00:48:36] Malcolm Collins: interesting. Or better, among our paid users. That’s, that’s where you know you get the big spenders, right? The real professionals.
[00:48:41] Simone Collins: Yes. No, true, true. That’s how you know they are financially secure.
[00:48:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, yeah, we should I... Yeah, actually, if you wanna, if you’re a woman looking we, we should, like, be able to email all the paid subscribers women who are looking for husbands.
[00:48:53] I don’t
[00:48:53] Simone Collins: know. Should we do... Locked and Reported does, like, o- once a year, some kind of singles thing.
[00:49:01] Malcolm Collins: No, I think because we’re majority male just female only if you’re looking for a husband. Mm-hmm.
[00:49:06] Simone Collins: Oh, we should have just, like, some kind of directory of profiles.
[00:49:10] Malcolm Collins: No. We, we should just do an email blast for paid subscribers.
[00:49:14] Simone Collins: Okay, fine.
[00:49:14] Malcolm Collins: You have all their emails. I’m sure most of them would appreciate even just knowing, like, even if they’re not, even if they’re married or whatever, they’d appreciate that we’re trying to get somebody married. And it’s another reason to subscribe.
[00:49:27] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. I’ll find a way. I’ll find a way to do this in a thoughtful way.
[00:49:32] We’ll take advice. Okay, bye guys. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
[00:49:35] Bye. Bye.
[00:49:35] Simone Collins: Tex ate like half a sleeve of Ritz crackers today. That, that’s a slight overstatement I can hear you But only slight He
[00:49:41] Malcolm Collins: ate half a sleeve of Ritz
[00:49:42] Simone Collins: crackers? He’s obsessed. He’s obsessed. He’s a man. He’s putting on the Ritz. It’s his- Putting
[00:49:48] Malcolm Collins: on the Ritz? Yeah.
[00:49:49] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:49:50] Malcolm Collins: And look, look, look, I got a Technofuriten knife, the first one.
[00:49:56] Was able to get this on Amazon Day for 15 bucks, so it’s a good price for a- Prime
[00:50:00] Simone Collins: Day, yeah ...
[00:50:01] Malcolm Collins: stabby knife. Stabby. Significantly because it’s a, a bowie knife- It’s more slicey
[00:50:05] Simone Collins: than stabby ...
[00:50:06] Malcolm Collins: it’s significantly better than the, the ones that the Sikhs have, Oh, that’s wonderful, Tom ... in, in terms of a knife fight.
[00:50:13] Great. Well, I mean, their knives were invented a long time before, it’s that they’re just not as sophisticated.
[00:50:18] Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, I feel like the LDS church would, if they had knives, update them with time. Maybe the Sikhs just haven’t had enough time, and then they’ll update The, it’s called the cure pen, right?
[00:50:28] I’ll update
[00:50:29] Malcolm Collins: it with pen. Yeah. Well, I mean, the, the Bowie knife is really the knife of the American frontier.
[00:50:32] Simone Collins: Yeah.
[00:50:32] Malcolm Collins: And so it is a traditional- ... American knife. It’s called the Amer- the, the Excalibur of the Americas, so. The
[00:50:39] Simone Collins: Exca- That is amazing. I’ve not heard that.
[00:50:41] Malcolm Collins: But I’ve already used it, like, multiple times.
[00:50:43] I didn’t know how useful it would be to just have a knife on me at all times.
[00:50:46] Simone Collins: My favorite part, though, was when you were trying to tell me the amazing history of the Bowie knife and the guy who invented it. You kept confusing his name. Because we, both you and I are terrible at names, but you kept calling him David Bowie
[00:50:57] Malcolm Collins: David
[00:50:57] Simone Collins: Bowie. I’m just blinded by that. Because every time I hear the name David Bowie, I, I get that one clip from Zoolander where it’s, “David Bowie,” and Let’s Dance flashes on real fast. It’s it’s great. It’s great. So now every time I see your knife, just so you know- And for dinner tonight- ... that clip from Zoolander plays in my head
[00:51:15] Malcolm Collins: Any sort of a curry with french fries would be good, or,
[00:51:18] Simone Collins: Okay ... any- Do you want sweet potato again, or you want, you want me to mix it up? You have a fry wardrobe now, basically, so is that what you, I
[00:51:25] Malcolm Collins: mean, the sweet potatoes were fantastic. I would love to go for something
[00:51:28] Simone Collins: else. A new curry and sweet potato?
[00:51:30] Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah, the sweet potatoes works. Yeah. I mean, the, the-
[00:51:33] Simone Collins: Or, or we have d- again, we have different fries. If you want different fries, we can try a different- Well,
[00:51:37] Malcolm Collins: which ones do we have?
[00:51:38] Simone Collins: Just- I don’t, I... The freezer’s not in front of me, but i- I think it’s a new one. It’s maybe one you got at Walmart that’s, like, a seasoned fry.
[00:51:45] Malcolm Collins: Oh, I wanna try the seasoned fries. Let’s try those.
[00:51:48] Simone Collins: Oh, boy. Tex, we got a new mic. You’re trying it out. Say
[00:51:52] Malcolm Collins: your piece. Yes. Guys, we finally got those super expensive, like, $300 mics that everyone’s been telling us to get, the Shure Sevenss. [00:52:00] So, Yeah ... they better sound better, because they were very expensive, okay?
[00:52:03] They were very
[00:52:04] Simone Collins: expensive. But what have you guys done? We even got them on discount, and we were like, “I’m never going to financially recover from this.” So what have you done? What have you done?
[00:52:11] Malcolm Collins: What have you done? But you, you guys wanted better audio, and now you’re gonna get-
[00:52:15] Simone Collins: Yeah, now you’re gonna hear Tex screaming and drooling into your ear in-
[00:52:20] Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s what you-
[00:52:21] this audio vision, like, equivalent ... that’s what you get throughout the day, Simone. Come on.
[00:52:24] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. I guess that’s, I’m so sorry to all of you. I might put... I’m gonna, I’m gonna see if he can chill in his Snappi later while we’re out. Do
[00:52:31] Malcolm Collins: I sound any different to you on here, Simone? No. But, you know, we don’t- I don’t hear it.
[00:52:36] I don’t hear the difference between audio quality. Like, everyone else is like, “Audio this, audio this.” To me, we sound no different from Asma Gold. We sound no different from Nuggs. So that, that’s part of the problem- Oh, boy ... with, like, the audiophile is- He’s so upset ... I can’t hear the difference between Ah.
[00:52:52] Simone Collins: He’s not happy Okay, am I gonna get him milk before we start?
[00:52:58] Malcolm Collins: We’re g- we’re gonna start. Yes.
[00:53:00] Simone Collins: He’s an angry elf. I’m, I’m not, you know, I can’t think when there’s a baby crying, so I will be-
[00:53:04] Malcolm Collins: You will get him milk?
[00:53:06] Speaker: deep into the jungle, guys?
[00:53:11] Is this a jungle or woods?
[00:53:21] And that’s called a temperate rainforest, guys
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 and data-driven episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins tackle one of the most uncomfortable topics in modern discourse: what happens when cousin marriage is practiced across multiple generations?
While a single first-cousin marriage carries moderate risk, repeated generational consanguinity causes the inbreeding coefficient (F) to compound nonlinearly. After just 4–6 generations, offspring become as genetically similar as full siblings. The hosts walk through the math, real-world population data, IQ impacts (10–30+ point drops), elevated rates of genetic disorders, miscarriages, and neurological conditions — all without moralizing or hedging.
They cover:
* Pakistan (50–65% consanguineous), Gulf states, Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan, and UK Pakistani diaspora rates
* Historical European examples (Hapsburgs) vs. modern British royals
* Jewish rates and cultural adaptation to science
* Why chain migration amplifies the practice
* The strategic/political angle some conservatives quietly consider
* Brief but pointed detours into halal slaughter myths, Sharia consistency, grooming gangs, and Maimonides on late-term abortion edge cases
The episode ends with a characteristically Based Camp discussion of cultural sovereignty, techno-Puritanism, and why evidence-based cultural evolution beats top-down bans.
If you value brutal honesty over comfortable narratives, this one’s for 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 -
Malcolm and Simone Collins break down one of the fastest cultural shifts they’ve seen: the collapsing power of the “antisemitism” card and the ADL’s controversial attempt to label “Goy Slop” as hate speech.
In this episode, they explore the history and modern usage of the term “goy,” why the ADL’s statement backfired spectacularly, the hilarious internet reaction (including Asmongold’s meme list), and what this reveals about changing attitudes toward Jewish organizations, identity politics, and cultural trash talk.
They discuss:
* The real meaning and evolution of “goy”
* Why policing language like this increases antisemitism
* Sentiment analysis showing overwhelming pushback
* Broader cultural realignment on the right and in the mainstream
* Advice for the ADL and Jewish advocacy groups
A raw, honest conversation on group identity, noticing patterns, and why the old rules no longer apply.
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about one of the fastest cultural shifts I have maybe seen in my lifetime- ... towards the inability to play whether it’s the anti-Semite card or the racist card or the homophobe card of- of that being a card that has value in our cultural landscape.
Okay.
And a lot of this comes downstream of a recent ADL announcement. Or- How
Simone Collins: recent are we talking? Like, this year or just now? Like,
Malcolm Collins: yesterday.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay.
Malcolm Collins: Like, it, it’s just blowing up on Twitter right now. People are, are clowning on it.
So basically what the ADL decided to do is attempt to define goy slop, which is a term that a lot of people are using now for unhealthy food that is not good for you to eat, and there’s a fun [00:01:00] video of, like, a sweet old Jewish guy going around and showing, like, kosher foods and being like, “You gotta eat this stuff and not this other stuff.
Look at all the bad chemicals.” Like, “You guys need to know this.”
Speaker 7: Sent this to a friend who loves eating goy slop. I wouldn’t touch this stuff. Anything over two ingredients is goy slop. Nothing but chemicals.
Malcolm Collins: But-
Simone Collins: Okay ...
Malcolm Collins: the ADL came out and tried to
define this as hate speech. And we’ll go into their statement, we’ll go into the history of goy, everything like that. Mm-hmm. But they tried to define it as hate speech. And then you get people like Shoeonhead where one popular tweet said, “Shoeonhead claps back at the LDA...
the ADL referring to goy slop as a slur. Wait, wait. Goy, the Hebrew word that refers to non-Jews. So you have your own little slur for us-” “... but we’re bad for using it ourselves? LMAFO.” And you-
Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s like banning the N-word from rap, right?
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, it’s, it’s, it’s worse because it is a Jewish- Worse ... [00:02:00] slur-
Simone Collins: Yeah
Malcolm Collins: for non-Jews.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And it is absolutely a derogatory word. Like, you can say, like, you as a Jew can try to define it as non-derogatory. Yeah. But if you’re doing that, you’re just going to make people more antisemitic because it looks like you’re treating them like idiots and they’re too stupid to be aware.
And I’m okay of you know, Like gringo. Right? Like, I go to, I go to Mexico, people call me a gringo, right? Like- Yeah,
Simone Collins: or gaijin.
Malcolm Collins: Or gaijin.
Simone Collins: Which is
Malcolm Collins: fine. Or-
Simone Collins: Don’t care.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Most cultures have a derogatory word for people outside of that culture. Mm-hmm. This isn’t a Jewish thing. This isn’t a problem- No
endemic to Judaism or something like that. No.
Speaker: And to be clear here, if you are Jewish and regularly hear Yiddish, you would be very aware that there are multiple idioms that use the term goy in a derogatory manner. It is clearly a derogatory word. And again, it is normal for words to mean outsider to eventually become derogatory, even if they didn’t originally have that connotation.[00:03:00]
Consider the word barbarian in ancient Greek that originally just meant outsider, but eventually came to mean, uh, a lot of derogatory contexts
And Jews will come out thinking we’re f*****g idiots and say things like, “Well, Goy in the Torah is used in a non-derogatory context to mean nation.” And it’s like, yeah, back when it also referred to the nation of Israel. But since about 300 BC in Talmudic writings, which we all have access to, by the way, it’s not just Jews who get to read those, it’s been used in a negative context.
In the same way barbarian originally didn’t have a negative context, but eventually developed one. That’s fine. Don’t treat us like idiots
Speaker 8: And I’m beginning to realize how much anti-Semitism was kept down by the self-deprecating Jewish comedian like we see in the original clip here with the guy actually [00:04:00] talking about Goy slop who’s being honest, , and how much it is risen by the Jewish Karen. And we just don’t have that many self-deprecating Jewish comedians anymore and a whole lot more Jewish Karens
Speaker 9: And the Jewish Karens seem to be completely unaware of American culture and how angry it makes Americans to be told something that we obviously know isn’t true, like that goy in a modern context is not a derogatory term.
And if you are a Jew who is unaware of this, because I’m g- gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you are just unaware of this because you have no Jewish friends. But I have a lot of Jewish friends. I interact with the Jewish community a lot. I regularly see the term used in that way. In fact, if you read private communications of Jews, as people have done in the Jeffrey Epstein emails, they see it used in that way regularly.
, This is even known to [00:05:00] Jewish children. , There was a clip that I have here of, , a Jewish kid talking to a non-Jewish kid, , saying, “ You don’t know sh- about my friends and family, so you should actually shut the F up. You think I’m going to act towards someone, an arrogant little swine white b***h who S talks Israel knowing nothing about them?
Shut up, you goy C word. Go defend terrorists. Laugh my ass off post your face. Then you’re effing embarrassing. Take your shishka...” This is another Jewish slur for non-Jewish women, , that is way more derogatory than goy, but it’s used interchangeably. Go defend the terrorists like a good little Western goy girl.”
And then he says, “Goy fake ass profile.” , But the point being here is it’s used interchangeably with words like the C word or shishka or, you know, any of these other words. A- and, and we see this in plenty of videos. Again, if you are unaware that this term is used in a derogatory fashion [00:06:00] and you are Jewish, go, like, research it, I guess?
Speaker 3: זה תספורת של גוי או של יהודי? גוי. תספורת שוקו וניל זה יהודי או גוי? גוי. בלורית זה תספורת של יהודי או גוי? גוי.
And when you point out that at one point in history it wasn’t derogatory, that has the same energy as a person claiming the N-word isn’t derogatory because just look at how you say black in Latin languages. Clearly it doesn’t have or didn’t originally have a negative context. And it’s like, bro, that, that doesn’t, um, help your case at all. That makes you look insane and dramatically worse.
The fact that a word wasn’t always negative doesn’t mean it’s not negative in the current context. And in the same voice, the fact that even at the height of the N-word’s use, [00:07:00] it was majoritively used just as a descriptor for black people, not with malice intended, that doesn’t mean that it was not a slur.
, And that is true, by the way. During the height, like if you’re looking at the s- the slave trade and stuff like that, when the N-word was used the most, it was mostly just used as a descriptor. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t pejorative as well.
Essentially the way the defining of a slur works is not the majority use of a word, because almost all slurs when they are made slurs, their majority use is not necessarily derogatory but descriptive. It’s in the minority is the term used in a derogatory context. And almost every word in every language for non-X that’s not non-X becomes derogatory.
So like let’s take Christians for example. There is no word for a non-Christian other than just saying non-Christian that doesn’t have a derogatory context now. Whether it’s heathen, heretic, [00:08:00] pagan, , all of these within a Christian mindset are gonna have a derogatory context and that’s fine. It’s pretending that they don’t that is what is freaking people out.
Malcolm Collins: however, to take that word and then say that other people can’t use it themselves, the groups that it is... It, it would be as if- when you said it would be like banning the N-word- Oh, it’s- It would be like whites were still allowed to use the N-word-
Simone Collins: Oh my God.
Yeah, okay. Yeah ... but they ban
Malcolm Collins: Black people from using the N-word in rap Dear Black
Simone Collins: people, you are no longer allowed to use the N-word. Wow
Malcolm Collins: Like, don’t you know the history of that word, Black people? It might make white people look bad.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, of course we still use it regularly and with impunity, but we don’t want other people reminded of that.
No ... and this is coming down because we’ll go over the reactions to this. Asmogold made another, a big list of like other goy words that you can use because it’s been taken and, and mixed culturally in many ways. Like goyim [00:09:00] beam. I, I think that’s a hilarious name for the anti-uh-
Simone Collins: Oh, yes. The goyim beam
goyim beam. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Malcolm Collins: The air defense missile in, in, in- Mm-hmm ... ‘cause it’s, it’s shooting down goy rockets, right? I do love
Simone Collins: that, yeah.
That’s good ...
Malcolm Collins: but the, the, the wider thing that’s so interesting to me about this before we go deeper into this is just recently, I’m talking like a couple months ago because we did a piece on this the ADL came out and they said, “Oh, how dare this guy,” ‘cause there was a YouTuber who went to a, a Orthodox Jewish community- Mm-hmm
uh, that was known and is widely accepted to be, have massive problems with welfare fraud.
Simone Collins: Are you talking about Tyler Oliviera, or?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: And then they had him demonetized- ... for doing a piece that was factually honest about a problem that everyone knows about and that would obviously be better addressed by dealing with the community that’s doing this or [00:10:00] distancing yourself from them- Mm-hmm
but not attempting to defend the bad actor, and that’s what we talked about in that episode. But when this happened, there was a bit of a pushback online, right? Like, people were somewhat mad about it but there were still defenders. It was still a two-sided conversation. This time it hasn’t been a two-sided conversation.
It sort of feels like collectively everyone is like, “What are you doing?” Even a lot of Jews in the comments to the ADL are be like, “This organization is supposed to support Jews, but it sure seems like they hate them because they’re making us look terrible.” So, I decided to run a sentiment analysis of this.
Simone Collins: Oh, boy. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, by the way, even, even the, like ADL’s own post got a community note.
Simone Collins: Of course it did. Of course it did, because it’s... this is, this is insane.
Malcolm Collins: Right. So the community note on the ADL’s own piece about this, right? Mm-hmm. Is, “Although it is in subject of much debate, [00:11:00] many Jews and non-Jews consider the word goy to be a Hebrew/Yiddish slur for non-Jews, and not an inherently neutral word.”
Mm. “Wikipedia also notes its use as a pejorative.” So I love that, that that’s the stage that we’re at, that this is getting community noted. And people who know us broadly, we’re seen as broadly philo-Semitic. I’m still, even though Israel and Jews sometimes do stuff that annoys me, I still think of all the groups I could ally with, they’re one of the strongest technologically and in terms of fertility rates and in terms of cultural similarities to my group.
So I, I’m not like an anti-Jewish person saying all of this, right? I’m like, “This doesn’t seem to be working anymore, and let’s talk about that.” So, w- A sentiment analysis, okay? First, let’s go over what the post was. They said, “Goy slop is not quirky internet slang word worth normalizing. It’s an antisemitic slur Born from [00:12:00] white supremacist hate, built on a conspiracy that the Jews deliberately harm non-Jews. @NewYorkTimes should know better than to give this language a platform. There is no excuse for the ignorance of those who use it. Hateful words carry their origins wherever they travel.”
Simone Collins: Okay, wait, wait, wait, mm.
Okay. So because some people have recognized the use of the word goy as not being necessarily flattering to outsiders, and then toyed with it, basically, like, because other people have recognized that some, some Jewish people are not so nice to outsiders, that is, that is... They, they hate Jews therefore.
And, and because they make fun of it, that, that is, that is hate, right? Mm-hmm. So, like, if... Oh, what’s a, what’s a better... Okay, let’s, let’s go back to, like, white supremacy. So, like, if, if, if if some Black Americans were like, “Oh, those white supremacists, like, really appear to hate white people.” Or sorry, “Black people,” and then they, like, made fun of them for doing that, [00:13:00] then it would be considered, like, anti-white hate- Yeah
for them to, like, b- make f- make light of that and make jokes about it, right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. And I, I wanna be clear here, goy is not as derogatory a term for non-Jews as the N-word is for Black people. Oh, yeah.
Simone Collins: Clearly. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah ... it’s, it’s probably closer to a term like-
Simone Collins: Like gaijin or gringo.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, gaijin or gringo is a, is a good it’s, it’s a term you would- It’s just a good, it’s a
Simone Collins: good outsider term ... you would
Malcolm Collins: say- But, you know, like
Simone Collins: if you’re a
Malcolm Collins: supreme- ... to a friend and it wouldn’t have a negative effect on that friendship. No. Like, it would be a laughable outsider term, but it is negative, right?
Like, and it, and it- Like noob. And why shouldn’t it be negative? Again, every group has the right to think that they’re better than other groups. That’s just what it is to have intergroup pride.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But what you don’t have is the right to prevent those groups from using the words you use pejoratively about them.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But to continue here, I did a- an analysis of this, so you can get an idea of how strong the reaction has been.
Simone Collins: Okay. [00:14:00]
Malcolm Collins: The sentiment analysis said 90% are opposed or against it- Mm-hmm ... calling it overreach, gaslighting, et cetera. 5% are neutral or mixed, and 5% are pro it. Like,
it is clown town on the internet right now with this post, and this wouldn’t have happened a year ago.
Simone Collins: It would not?
Malcolm Collins: No, I do, I do not believe the reaction would have been- What changed? ... this overwhelmingly negative. I-
Simone Collins: What do you think changed?
Iran, the war in Iran. We’re just, like, super mad at, at, at anything Jewish because of Israel.
Malcolm Collins: I don’t think it’s the war in Iran. Actually, let- yeah, let’s try to walk through what actually did change.
Simone Collins: The war in Iran.
Malcolm Collins: I- look, I get that that’s part of it, but you have... The, the, the Gaza situation was optically worse for Israel and Jewish people than the war in Iran,
Simone Collins: right?
Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Iran was a unified enemy. Basically everyone in Europe agreed that they needed to go. Everyone in Europe agreed, even during the initial bombings, that this was a good idea.
Oh,
Simone Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. All, all Europeans did. People were [00:15:00] outraged by the protests you know, up until the moment- Yeah ... that action was taken. Iran, something needs to be done, and then something was done. Woo-hoo. The
Malcolm Collins: moment
Simone Collins: something was done- Can you believe ...
Malcolm Collins: everyone was like, “What? What?”
Simone Collins: But it was Israel’s idea.
No. Yeah. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: like I love the pictures they have on of, like, comedians being like, “I don’t get it.” Like, Trump’s out there saying that something needs to be done about what Iran is doing to these protesters and he’s like, “And he doesn’t even go in and invade. Why doesn’t he invade? If he invades, at least then I’d believe.”
That’s what Bill Burr, who had this big speech about this. Oh,
Simone Collins: really?
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. At least then I’d believe, you know, that he was a man of integrity and doing what was right for the world. Mm-hmm. He attacks, immediately he’s like, “How could he do this?” You know.
Simone Collins: Checks out.
Malcolm Collins: Many leftist accounts. But yeah. No, I don’t, I don’t think that that was it at all, honestly.
I think it’s more of changing cultural winds. And it’s more of a cultural realignment moving further up the chain of communication.
Mm-hmm.
So it’s been widely understood in, like, our circle of the online internet, right? That you, you can’t pull [00:16:00] this sort of nonsense anymore. Like, “That’s antisemitic,” is just gonna make people hate your group more if it’s not genuinely antisemitic, right?
Like, that’s... Whatever you do, that’s, that’s anti whatever group. That’s anti, you know, how could you say this? That’s hate. Right? Like, these sorts of framings for a long time worked. Even, even in our community, even in the right there would, there’d be politicians who’d be like, “Trump can’t say that.
That’s a, that’s an offensive thing to say that these are, are shitty countries,” or something like that. Mm-hmm. That Haiti was a shitty country was what they were mad that he said. Now, everyone agrees with that Haiti being a shitty... The moment he starts sending immigrant, like, deportees there, they’re like, “How dare you send deportees there?
It’s a shitty country.” But when he said it it was like, “Oh, how, how dare he?” But within our sort of smaller cultural sphere online, this was understood. Then we had the, the first ratchet, which is the left turning on the Jews and turning really hard anti-Israel. And this happened collectively [00:17:00] on the left you know, I’d say maybe half a decade ago at this point, right?
And it’s been very normative within the leftist s- social world, right? Like the, their version of our podcast, right? If there, there was like a mirror world podcast, this has been normal on the left for a while, to just dislike Jews. Whoever dislikes Jews the most, they actually like at TwitchCon even like ranked people on like how much they hated Jews.
Simone Collins: Oh, for the love. Ugh.
Malcolm Collins: They, they had a, a thing where they did that. Like that was a fun thing to do at Twitch, is the give people rankings based on how much they hate
Simone Collins: Jews. It’s such a thing though, that, yeah, people just can’t shut up about Israel. What’s up with this?
Malcolm Collins: Well, you could say there’s biblical reasons for that, but w- ignoring those the...
Well, they do have disproportionate power. They’re the most successful subgroup on Earth. I mean, anyone should be... A- and they’re decent fertility, right? Like anyone should be paying attention to that.
Simone Collins: Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, and then that’s, I mean, ultimately we’re [00:18:00] filosemitic because we are very interested in whoever is competent and who has good operational skills, and yes, who is you know, of-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, somebody asked me
replacement-level fertility ... they go, “Why, why do, why do gay Jews seem to run all the AI companies or be all the major donors in the AI companies?” And I was like, “I got theories on that, but if you keep wondering, fans keep wondering, even if you’re not gay or Jewish and may disagree with them theologically on some areas, do you still want to be in an alliance with them?
It’s because they run all the AI companies.” F*****g maniacs. Don’t piss off the group that’s enormously more powerful than you on the geopolitical stage. But the, the the gay Jews running all the tech companies. We’ll t- we’ll talk about that at the end as well. But- what happened was is the left turned against them, but the urban monoculture hadn’t.
And I’ve been beginning to have a better understanding recently because I’ve been interacting with some people who are of the elite of the urban monoculture, but not of the left. These are the people who run the boring whatever [00:19:00] podcast. We were on some podcast that was, like, just generic, the opinion of the elite, right?
Mm-hmm. Like, the, the, let’s say the New York wife who just doesn’t really wanna pay attention to everything that’s going on. She’s got a, a job that’s a, a high-paying job at, like, a, a private equity firm or something like that. She’s a little insulated from the news. She’s a
Simone Collins: little insu- Autopilot educated elite.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Autopilot educated elite. That’s who actually runs the urban monoculture. Yeah. And to this group, the autopilot educated elite, it had yet to reach their ears, which was very clear to me when I had a recent interaction with one of them, that, like, the “You’re a racist” line when somebody’s just clowning around or making a joke or whatever doesn’t work anymore and causes immediate pushback.
It still works within their message, their, their, their world. When they’re at a, a company meeting or let’s say a, a convention of, like, [00:20:00] MLM Karens or something like that, right? Like, that, that sort of a person, right? When they’re at their meetings and they’re like, “Can you believe he said goys?”
Like, “He needs to be kicked off the team,” right? Like, “He needs to be fired,” this was still a perfectly reasonable thing to say in their world. And I think that this is an important for all of us to remember. The elite of the urban monoculture are sort of elitist automatons who are quite downstream and isolated from the culture war And they are unaware of it, and it sort of hits their door one day and they just go along with it after it does.
It’s, it’s now the new normal because the sophisticated people who tell them what’s true told them that this is true now. And it actually, I, I was talking to somebody recently, they go, “Why do you fight in the trenches of the internet?” And I go, “Because the trenches of the internet determine what is culturally normative 10 years from now,” right?
The mainstream of MAGA today was born in the [00:21:00] 4chan versus Tumblr w- war, right, of 10 years ago. The, the what became mainstream on Tumblr 10 years ago, if you were a watcher of that, all of the xeno pronouns and all of the extra focus on the trans issues and extra focus on the the, you know, it, it, respect my identity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That was like re- that battle wasn’t a battle that the left even had like internally because they just accepted Tumblr culture after the battle had already happened. But this was considered the most degen part of the internet. This was, I mean, the people who were having this battle spent half their time posting furry porn, right?
Like, they were not or, or were just, if, if they were in the, the 4chan side of them, most of them ended up getting canceled or lost their jobs. They were de-platformed before all of this became normalized.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: The battle that we’re having is the next generation version of that battle. But basically what we’re seeing is the [00:22:00] outcome of the battle drift upwards.
Which is to say in the conservative community, it became incredibly bad, th- the community that’s open to working with Jews, it became incredibly bad to say, “Hey, don’t say that, that’s antisemitic,” especially when something clearly isn’t. And then es- and especially if it’s just an internet joke, right?
Like, when it comes to internet jokes, that’s where it gets, like, really bad. And when it’s an internet joke with, like, a side of truth to it disproportionately people in executive positions are of Jewish heritage. Like, that’s something Jews should have pride in. That’s not a, an ethnic slur or anything like that.
And Jews disproportionately, as they should, they have, they have rules around trying to make the entire world a better place. This is true within the Jewish faith. But they also have rules about preferencing the interests of their own [00:23:00] people, as they should. Which is
Simone Collins: not insane. Yeah, come on.
Malcolm Collins: And so when people see large companies disproportionately run by Jewish individuals putting things into food that is bad for people, that is explicitly non-kosher, e.g.
they couldn’t even eat it themselves if they wanted to, it makes them create this stereotype.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: And and I think the noticing, you could say noticing is a bad thing, but that’s really bad. Because as soon as you say noticing the whatever pattern is a bad thing is a bad thing, everybody immediately pays attention to it.
Mm. The, the moment you say not, “This isn’t true,” but, “This is racist,” everybody today is like, “Well, hold on, I better research that [00:24:00] real quick.” So to go, let’s go over some of the memes here because I thought, I thought they were fantastic. Okay.. This just doesn’t work anymore after the Epstein emails,” somebody says. And keep in mind, that did a lot to erode trust in the idea of there aren’t secret cabals that are run by a guy who is at least nominally Jewish. Mm. He did seem to disproportionately care about the interests of the Jews in Israel.
And when we’re like, “Oh, there are cabals doing that,” a lot of people are like, “Oh, well let’s, let’s reenter the conversation.” Next Most Efrati comment is, “LMAO.” Then we have Asmogold saying
Here are some additional horrible slurs that the same bigots online have been using. Hopefully you can use these to better combat antisemitism. None of these are funny, and anyone laughing at them is a horrible person.” Gold steak is fantastic. So the words were goynip, an exciting event or thing that keeps the attention of people who are considered goy.
[00:25:00] Goy slop, a type of food or leisure activity that is indulgent and unhealthy. Goy beam, a military action using particle weapons, usually related to Israel. Goy cattle, worse than goy, even dumber and even more servile. Goycott, definition pending. I like that. That’s great. And goylooping, when a fat and/or retarded person keeps saying the same thing over and over again.
And I like goylooping, ‘cause it’s not even, that one doesn’t even have any sort of an undertone of antisemitism. It’s just sort of talking about the masses not understanding what’s really going on. And then next one here is, “We have a slur for y- a slur we use for all you nons, but you’re not allowed to say it, or else it’s hateful.”
Huh. But yeah. W- do you wanna go into the history of the term goy so people can be like, “Well, well...” Because-
Simone Collins: Yeah, you say so many things with Judaism are incredibly new inventions. How new is this?
Malcolm Collins: Very old. It’s in, it’s in the Bible. It actually-
Simone Collins: What? [00:26:00] Oh my gosh, okay. So this isn’t new at all.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it, it initially did not have negative connotations. And, and note here to any Jew who’s like, “It’s in the Bible and it didn’t have negative connotations there,” that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have neg- negative connotations now. And if you’re pretending it doesn’t, you just make yourself look worse or, like, pathologically stupid.
Or, or pathologically... Like, it’s even worse. If, if you as a Jewish person go out there and say goy doesn’t have negative connotations, you create the impression that you are so pathologically blind in the way you see reality that when you see another group being discriminated against in favor of your group, you are unable to see that it is discrimination.
Mm. That it is derogatory, because you so thoroughly believe that you are deserving of a differentiated treatment.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: If I had any other word for Jew that I [00:27:00] regularly used to mean Jew, Jews would out, okay? You’d- I could just make up a word now for Jew. Scuttlebutt. If I just started calling the scuttlebutts out, tomorrow everyone would say, “That’s an anti-Semite,” because it’s why not just say non-Jew?
So anyway in the Hebrew Bible, it is a
Simone Collins: neutral
Malcolm Collins: term. The person
Simone Collins: experiencing Jewness. Yes. You have, like, the neutra- person experiencing Frenchness. All that, yes
Malcolm Collins: For any nation or ethnic group, including the Israelites or Jews themselves. Examples include God promising to make Abraham’s descendants a goy gadol, a great nation, in Genesis 12:2, or referring to the Jewish people as a goy kadosh, the holy nation, in Exodus 19:6.
Neutral descriptions for nations, and it appears hundreds of times, so we see it all over the place. But in the Hellenistic or Roman periods, roughly 300 BCE onwards, especially in the rabbinic or Talmudic literature from the first or second century [00:28:00] CE, it is increasingly shifted to refer primarily to non-Jewish nations or individuals.
The nations equal goyim contrasting with Jews. Scholars like Adi Ofer and Ishan Razan Z argue that a crystallized Jew versus universal non-Jew goy dichotomy emerged clearly in rabbinic texts influenced by interactions with Hellenic culture, Rome, and early Christianity. And keep in mind, these groups were often killing each other in really violent and awful ways.
Like, if I’m gonna drag up old stuff that the Mormons did that was bad, let’s drag up, like, the things that the Jews did. So there’s a famous instance from Josephus where he’s recording of a Jewish garrison that was attempting to put down a Jewish rebellion, and the Jews said to the Romans, “Put down your weapons,” as the Mormons did to the group before they killed them, “and we’ll come in and...”
It was much worse what the Mormons did because it was, like, childrens and families, and they beat them to death. But whatever. The, when the Jews did it I’m just showing I’m giving everyone equal treatment here. They then went in and, and [00:29:00] killed everyone but the commander who converted to Judaism to prevent himself from getting killed.
A, a long story there. This, this was back when Jews were more active in their proselytization and like, “Okay, you, you, you convert, we won’t kill you.” But but that d- it seemed to be more proactive on his part and not, like, a threat on their part. We’re, we’re not, we’re not gonna get into that. But the point here being is Jews had a great deal of enmity for the goy as this term was crystallized.
Yiddish, in modern usage, borrowed into Yiddish and then English from Hebrew, where it commonly means Gentile or non-Jew. In everyday Jewish speech, especially Ashkenazi Y- Yiddish influence contracts, they say it is oftenly neutral like Gentile. However, it can carry pejorative or condescending tones in phrases like goy sheep the, the Gentile head brain.
Goy- sorry, it’s goy sheep cup or stupidity or dullness. So basically i- in Jew, if you say, “To think like a goy,” okay, like, like a literal translation here, you are saying somebody is stupid, okay? Mm-hmm. [00:30:00] Or you can have a Kamish term here in, in, in Yiddish, dos ken nor a goy. Only a goy would do that.
Okay?
Simone Collins: Well, well, I think anyone who’s proud of their culture saying that only an outsider would do that it, it is gonna be derogatory, but that is something you would expect. Like, let’s say you’re really into, like, one sports team. Like, y- you love the Raiders, and you’re like, “Well, only this... I’m so bad.
Some- only this other sports team would do that,” you know, because it’s, it’s derogatory. Or you’re Irish. Like, “Well, only a Spaniard would do that,” you know? It... I, I just, I don’t see how that’s bad. That’s normal.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, which is, is part of the problem. It’s trash talk. Is the, the world has become a trash talk world, and this is now moving further and further up the chain.
This
Simone Collins: is- Well, it’s, the world has become an anti-trash talk world. We’re not [00:31:00] allowed to trash talk anymore, apparently.
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, the, the, the elites of the urban monoculture were always anti-trash talk. Mm-hmm. Especially if it was used against i- a- any group that could be perceived as a minority group or that had some, within their, their hierarchy of discrimination.
Mm-hmm. I think what the Jews realize or what’s happening is the Jews within the urban monoculture completely fell outside the hierarchy of discrimination. Nobody f*****g cares about them in the hierarchy of discrimination world anymore. Even the elites have gotten that memo at this point. Which leaves the side that would still fend for them being the side that they offend by taking a position like this.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And it’s, it’s bad. Like, I don’t, I don’t... Like, I, I look at this as, as, as an... Like, what do, how do I feel about this? I guess even though I’m fairly philiosemetic, I am happy to see this pushback be as universal as it is. Sure. You know, because [00:32:00] it feels like the faster we get to a place societally where even an organization, even the urban elites who put something out like this from the ADL and are otherwise, like, very cloistered, th- they immediately get, next time something like this comes up, “Oh, we can’t do that anymore.
Like, we don’t get to play this game anymore. This game is over for us.” And that actually will help the Jewish people more broadly, because the longer it takes various Jewish organizations to understand nobody’s playing ball with this and it actually radicalizes people further against you to play the, “That’s antisemitic,” or, “Goy isn’t a derogatory term,” game, the faster everybody is gonna freak out
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And a note here, I’d point out when I’m like, what’s the word for... And this is what, w- for the people who want to play it, the, it’s not anti, it’s not a [00:33:00] derogatory word. Can you give me any word for a non-Christian other than just saying non-Christian, like you could just say non-Jew, that doesn’t carry derogatory connotations?
Heathen, I guess.
Simone Collins: Well, heathen’s derogatory. Infidel is derogatory.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but, but that’s the point I’m making. Apostate’s a- Intrinsically, any word that isn’t just non-Jew or non-Christian is gonna carry derogatory, even if it’s the only word you have. You can’t be like, “Oh, it’s the only word we have for non-Jews.”
No, you have non-Jew. Christians have non- Jew. A Christian doesn’t need to call you a heathen. If a Christian called you a heathen, you’d probably be a little offended by it.
Simone Collins: Yeah, or an apostate or anything. Yeah. Mm.
Malcolm Collins: Heretic.
Simone Collins: Heretic. I can’t... Yeah. Well, I guess you could just call them an atheist or non-believer.
Well, non-believer doesn’t sound good.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, yeah. Well, no, because then you’re defining what they
Simone Collins: are, Jew, atheist. That’s true. Yeah. We don’t know. Right. We don’t know what they believe. Yeah. Mm-mm.
Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s just a normal thing. D- [00:34:00] stop pret- we all know. Like, everybody knows, right? Like, you don’t need to pretend.
We’re not playing that game anymore. Yeah. We on the right are out here being like, “Dude, it’s okay if you are a separate group than us.” Okay? Mm. It’s okay if you favor- we want to favor our own people. Whatever, right? Like, everybody has a right to do that. You can do that. But you can’t come out here and police, one, you can’t be the fun police, you can’t be the offense police, and you can’t be the how dare you say the word, like you make it known that we use the word in this way.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: By the way, did this sort of shock you in seeing this? I- I’m a little shocked ...
Simone Collins: I’m genuinely shocked that this happened.
Malcolm Collins: Are you
Simone Collins: more- Very strange ... shocked that
Malcolm Collins: the ADL thought this was an okay thing to say, or are you more shocked that the-
Simone Collins: Yeah. No, no, I, I am shocked ... ADL is bad ... because at least historically, I didn’t realize just how effective the ADL was until I saw more information about just how [00:35:00] intense antisemitism was in the past.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: So I’ve realized, wow, okay, actually the ADL has done an amazing job. And so w- what I’m also surprised of is here’s this organization that has actually been pretty effective. They presumably would understand Streisand effects and where to choose your battles, and the fact that they’ve made such a profound screw-up with such a silly thing, it makes them sound sanctimonious and like they’re really trying to just impose on other groups in a way that’s gonna backfire.
Like, their goal should be to reduce antisemitism as much as possible. Now they’re contributing to it, and that’s, that’s-
Malcolm Collins: Dramatically so. Yeah ...
Simone Collins: bizarre to me. Not just because, oh my gosh, the outrage, how could they do, they do this, but actually because they have a long track record of being very [00:36:00] effective at actually reducing antisemitism, so what’s going on?
Like, leadership must have changed- Well, this is what happened ... in a very insane way.
Malcolm Collins: This, this is actually a great thing. The ADL has been so captured by urban monoculture rot at a bureaucratic level that it is now acting in ways that is actively antithetical to its mission of increasing pro-Jewish sentiment.
Hmm.
It’s trying to increase the dogmatic control of the urban monoculture without even realizing it, right? And it’s playing into the urban monoculture’s hand without even realizing it. And if you’re wondering what can you do about this, like, if I was a, a Jew that’s as connected as I am, I would probably have connections to the ADL.
I’d strongly encourage them to hire some outsider, be that us. Mm-hmm. I mean, clearly we’re fairly pro-Jewish. And we have our pulse, I think, on the fing- the, the, the pulse of the internet. Or,
Simone Collins: Our finger on the pulse of the internet ...
Malcolm Collins: yeah, a finger on the pulse of the [00:37:00] internet so they could do that with us or they could do that with y- Nux.
Nux would be great. Nux would’ve immediately- Nux would
Simone Collins: be great ...
Malcolm Collins: Nux is probably gonna clown on this himself. He’s probably gonna be like, “Can you believe the ADL would say something this f*****g stupid?”
Simone Collins: Nux or Asmongold or, well, I mean, Asmongold. I mean, who can afford him, right?
Malcolm Collins: But- Yeah, who can afford Asmongold?
Yeah, keep in mind, if you hire Nux, you’re hiring a Jew, so that’s gonna cost you a bit more, right? Come with us. We’re cheap. We’re white trash over here, right?
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: Rednecks like us, we c- we come d- we, we... You don’t even need to... You just pay us whatever you want and I’ll review this stuff for you, right?
But yeah, like this-
Simone Collins: Honestly, they would, yeah. I don’t know, I don’t w- I don’t even wanna name how low of a price you’d be like, “
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.” Yeah, sure. I think increasingly companies need to have mechanisms. And if you’re somebody who’s watching this and you’re either at a non-profit or you are in an HR department or something like that, and you are looking for somebody who can vet the way the Internet’s gonna react to [00:38:00] something we’ve played the Internet like a fiddle for a decade at this point, right?
Like, we, we’re fairly good at this particular game. Every outrage cycle we’ve ridden to our advantage, right? Like, there hasn’t been one that significantly did not move us forwards on us. You wanna play the game? Come to us, and we’ll help you as much as we can, right? Like, we- Mm-hmm ... we are hirable for this.
We even have an org for this. Yeah
Simone Collins: Yeah. But it’s I hope they figure themselves out because it’s it’s sad to see this level of incompetence at play. Not to insult them, but There must be something at play here, like some donor, maybe one of their largest donors, this became their pet project.
They’re like, “This whole goy slop thing, th- they’re making, you know, th- this is just antisemitic,” and then they f- foisted it upon the ADL’s team. [00:39:00]
Malcolm Collins: No, I’ll tell you what happened, and I’m fairly sure I can, I can model what happened. Okay. Some urban monoculture Karen who doesn’t really understand the internet saw some meme about unhealthy food, because MAHA is part of Ma- MAGA now, right?
So, like MAGA’s talking about goy slop. MAHA. MAHA.
Simone Collins: MAHA,
Malcolm Collins: MAHA. You know, Wizard Kennedy and everything like that. Like, we’re talking about like the additives in food, the negative stuff about food. And there’s been some viral videos of Jews being like, “You guys, non-Jews, need to stop eating goy slop.”
Speaker 7: It’s no wonder that the goyim want the kosher food. Cheese swirl? Go back to Wisconsin. This is the holy food. Look at the kosher food. . Do you know why I made it to 86? ‘Cause I ate rotisserie chicken and Manischewitz borscht. This is chosen food for the chosen people.
I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I am. Do you wanna help the goyim get off the goy slop and come to our side?
Malcolm Collins: Like that, I think the most viral videos on this were done by like old Jewish guys that sounded very Jewish, right?
Mm-hmm. Being like, “You need to start eating this other type [00:40:00] of food,” right? Like, and they s- they might have seen something like this, and they, they immediately think, “Well, this is anti-Jewish,” right? Because it is in any way could be taken as a criticism of the Jewish people, therefore we have a right to just shut it down.
Because anything anti-Jewish can just be shut down whenever we feel like shutting it down. Because it could for a while. Like this, the, the fact that they were able to de-platform that guy for pointing out a real known problem within this Orthodox community that nobody disputes. The ADL didn’t be like, “This isn’t a major problem.
This fraud isn’t a major problem.” So yeah, I, I guess, I, what I think we need to move more towards, and we even have a company already set up for this anti, anti-bigotry, right? What, what do we call it? DEI Remediation. Deiremediation.com I think we have. So, we have a whole corp for doing this. We got a whole brand for doing this.
You let us know, and we will help you because this stuff is gonna f*****g destroy you. It’s bad. It’s [00:41:00] bad. Because right now what the ADL just initiated was an entire internet news cycle of clowning on Jewish people, and that further normalizes it for the next time this happens. Because everybody knows they’re gonna say stuff in response to this, and everybody’s gonna think it’s f*****g hilarious, and everybody’s gonna go along with it.
Because 95% of the people this time either approved of it, 90% approved of it, 50% didn’t care, and then you got the, the 5% who are against it. And, and frankly I think it’s, it’s probably lower than that Yeah ... if you... But yeah, just be aware culture is shifting, and that cultural shift is making it upwind, upwind, upwind, upwind.
And frankly, this is why figures like Nux are so important to the Jewish community right now. He is in, in the actual culture war that matters. Your [00:42:00] only or primary champion by, like, orders of magnitude like nobody listens, for example, to Ben Shapiro anymore. Like, you guys have had people in the right in the past, I, that had a lot of influence, but they captured institutional positions that don’t matter anymore
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Nux still has cultural relevance. So maybe work a bit more to help him or work with him because he’s your guy’s, like, shot right now at not having the entire online right turn antisemitic. I mean, I guess we’re useful in that as well because we generally argue in favor of, of Jewish interests.
But yeah, y- you guys don’t have ... And have as many like, fallbacks. I, I guess this just needs to be thought through more. Jews are, are s- are smarter than this. Like, Jews should have more both awareness of the cultural game that’s being played and more interest in communicating with that cultural game in a way that [00:43:00] prevents it from going in an antisemitic direction.
And I mean truly antisemitic direction, not calling out goyslop
Also, hold on. Really... Also Jews need to really work, like another, another thing that’s really gonna trigger people going forwards, and I’ve noticed this more and more, and this, they may not see this as that, so I just wanna note this before we h- Saying something is a conspiracy theory that is a blatant and observable fact Really makes people hate you
Simone Collins: Ah
Hmm
Malcolm Collins: Like if somebody says, “Jews control Hollywood” You can quibble about that, but it’s true.
They have a disproportionate level of control in Hollywood and have for genera- since its inception. [00:44:00] That’s not a conspiracy, but when you say that’s an anti-Semitic conspiracy, people are like, “Wow.” Like, “Are we, are we... Like, you’re gaslighting me now? Like, you’re pretending...” Jews control AI. Jews do disproportionately control AI.
Jewish spies manipulate world politics. Mossad has done a spectacular job manipulating world politics. Secret cabals of Jews have disproportionate power in both business, politics, and entertainment. Obviously this is true. We’ve caught one. I, I, others are probably less nefarious. And some of them are even institutionalized.
Well, what do you call Chabad if not institutionalized organization with disproportionate level of control in American politics? That’s [00:45:00] not... That, that just infuriates people. And like, get, just get better at dealing with that and this will likely go down a bit. The swelling will go down. But for now, where do I see things going?
I mean, I see things sort of spiraling in a direction where if filio-Semitic as we want to be, we need to, even internally in our communication, better describe the Jews as a separate people with potentially aligned interests- Mm-hmm ... that are in a good position to work with, but extremely distinct from whatever we are.
And that, that is, I, I think the best way to sort of psychologically handle this in terms of handling this in a way that’s gonna, gonna go in any sort of productive direction. The idea [00:46:00] of a Judeo-Christian singular group I think has shattered. And I, and I think it’s shattered to such an extent that Christians who bet on it have, have had their careers destroyed, Mm
in the past. Like, before they were aware of this. Like Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz bet on this idea, and I think it has destroyed his credibility
Simone Collins: Yeah, I could see that. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: The other thing that’s been very interesting that I’ve seen recede over time is the support for rebuilding the temple among evangelicals.
Really? Which was something... Well, so if you look historically in the United States, there was this big movement because they thought that it would bring about the, the end times.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: But apocalyptic forms of evangelical Protestantism of, of that- Are they on
Simone Collins: the outs? ...
Malcolm Collins: type yeah, they’re kind of on the outs right now.
Simone Collins: [00:47:00] Huh. Yeah, I guess, you know, I haven’t heard a whole lot about it. People are talking about it being a thing, but I’m not hearing from the people who think it’s a thing, if that makes sense.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m not hearing from them. I, I don’t see them in my conservative circles. I don’t see them in when we’re doing campaigning.
I don’t see them... you know who I do see increasingly in the conservative circles is groups that are much closer to what I, I’d call, like, techno-puritan, like, framing. Like, our framing of, like, Christianity slash science is incredibly and increasingly common among the youths. Mm-hmm. This sort of practical, skeptical, conspiratorial, but ultimately very scientific ex- understanding of Christianity is the one that is really replacing the panicked we, we’ve gotta protect...
And I think the, the Jews losing that have lost a major point for them that could have taken flak for them in this [00:48:00] current sort of online battle.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Which has also been bad, right? I mean, you go out and you defend this. Like, suppose Ted Cruz went out there and defend this, he’d get clowned on to no end
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Any final thoughts, Simone?
Simone Collins: Just don’t know. I don’t know what to think anymore. I feel like we all, we all just need to do our own things for a while, you know? Stop policing other people’s opinions. Just let them go out there. Like, c- can we just bring back trash talk without the policing?
Malcolm Collins: Well, no. This is the interesting thing.
We, our side, our cultural movement, this online right movement, has effectively policed the ADL’s talking points. Which is to say not just we’re not gonna listen to you, but it is actively [00:49:00] negative for you to be saying this, and you’re hurting your community, and the people who said this are likely dealing with internal blowback or donor blowback at this point.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So we still police, it’s just on the opposite side. It’s the anti-policing police
Don’t even try to police or it will blow up in your face. It, it, this wasn’t a neutral thing that happened. It’s not like they tried and nothing happened. They tried and a rake hit their face.
Simone Collins: That all just sounds so exhausting. But yeah, I get it. And I, I mean, I’m glad that there is pushback. It is important that there is pushback.
So- Yeah ... I guess it’s fine.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m getting sick of every- everyone’s sick of, oh, the w- you know, whatever, r- replacement immigration, right? Th- that’s a, a, a conspiracy, right? Like, all these things that they said are conspiracies, it’s like, then why does your side say it in Spain and cheer when it’s happening, right?
Like, why, [00:50:00] why can’t we have these conversations without everything being a conspiracy? When, when all of us can see the statistics and what your side is communicating internally.
Hmm.
Anyway, love you
Simone Collins: I love you too
Speaker 13: What we doing? Well, we’re playing hide and seek and playing ring
Where is
Titan? Who knows? I don’t know where Titan is. Is that Titan?
Are you a crazy girl? Yeah. What do you wanna be when you grow up? Well, I wanna be a shark princess.
What are you gonna do when you’re a shark princess? Well, I will swim in the water really [00:51:00] fast while
Speaker 14: I’m eating some fish that are not pink or purple. So you don’t wanna eat pink or purple fish? Only gray fish and yellow fish and green fish, but not pink and purple fish. And I jump the gray fish and the green fish, and they well, people just do not like meat on their shoulders like that, then sharks will eat them, and that will be really bad, so do not put shoulders on your arms like that, then I will eat you like a shark princess.
So do not go in the water and with meat on your wrist, then a shark will eat you. Then a shark
Speaker 13: will eat you?
Speaker 14: No, you.
Speaker 13: Oh, me? Yeah, [00:52:00]
Speaker 14: if you have meat on your wrist
Well, you found me,
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Are video games the most efficient sin? Malcolm and Simone Collins rank modern sins by their real-world damage — from video games and sports gambling to shopping addictions, plastic surgery, skydiving, OnlyFans, kinks, and more. They break down how to evaluate sins by time cost, financial drain, health risks, negative externalities, addiction potential, and alignment with long-term flourishing.
This episode offers a practical, first-principles framework for thinking about hedonism, temptation, family traditions, and moral trade-offs in the modern world. Topics include gambling vs. heroin, why some “harmless” hobbies are more destructive than others, rechanneling vices into virtues, the value of different lives, and techno-puritan views on self-defense.
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to have an interesting conversation around ranking the severity of various modern sins so that we can understand which ones are worse for an individual in, terms of, well, just broad effects they have on your life.
Like, as I’ve pointed out in other episodes, sins are basically a list of things, you know, like don’t cheat on your wife, don’t be mean to people, don’t murder people, like listen to your parents. Stuff that’s just gonna F up your life if you don’t follow it i- in a, in a general format. It’s like a big list of don’t piss on the electric fence and then a- some humans are just like, “But if I just goon all day every day, that’ll feel fantastic, right?”
And it’s like, no, it won’t. Maybe for like a half a day you get to year two of that and you’re living the life of Anna Valen. See our episode on what happened to her life, right? Like going through her [00:01:00] private diaries in our Life of the Sinabyte episode.
Speaker 5: you were an interesting study. Must, greed, deception, fertile ground, but rather mundane.
Speaker 6: Doors to the pleasures of heaven nor hell. I didn’t care, which I thought I’d gone to the limits I hadn’t. The center bytes gave me an experience beyond the limits pain and pleasure.
Indivisible.
Malcolm Collins: it is not happiness at the end of the hedonism maxing tunnel.
As I often point out, if you look at the people in our society who have access to everything they could possibly want, your movie star, your music star, when they indulge in that, when they indulge in the, you know, endless chain of, of women and drugs and everything like that, they often crash out as some of the least happy and satisfied humans alive.
Whereas people who often do not have much, and I’m sure many of you, you know these individuals pious [00:02:00] individuals who just work to give back to the community they’re often some of the most fulfilled people you will ever meet.
And so this is, this is paid off to us, but whatever religious teaching you’re using, and I’m gonna try to keep this, while this is one of the track series, I’m gonna try to keep it useful to not just Christians or Orthodox Jews or anyone, but just broadly anyone because- the, the set of laws that, like, Christians follow seems to generally be useful for other people as well.
That’s why they seem to perfectly overlay with, like, the Noahide laws when Jews are like, “Well, I just want everyone to follow the Noahide laws.” And it’s like, all observant Christians already follow all of those. Like, why are you making this a separate thing? It’s just good rules for life and, and being a member of a community.
But we’re going to start, because where this came up was in a fan call which we have for our paid fans who get [00:03:00] our extra weekend episodes. If you don’t know about that, that, that’s a thing. And they somebody was talking about the relative sinfulness of video games, right? And we’ll be using the Romans quote that’s in here, which is like anything you don’t do for God is sin.
Basically anything you don’t do that you can’t be like, “This is something I am doing for...” whatever for God means to you. Like, for goodness, to, to, to promote humanity, the, you know, moving forwards. Whatever you wanna, you talk, it’s, it’s, it’s something that’s an object to that. Like, purely selfish action, right?
And they were like, video games is a very, very expedient sin. Like, of, of the various sinful things you can do. And, and to give an example of what I mean for this, let, let’s contrast two things, okay, here. Let’s contrast the relative sinfulness of video games versus watching sports, right? Like, both of these things are things you’re fundamentally doing for yourself, for your own self-gratification.
But they have [00:04:00] different impacts or potential impacts on your life. Now, obviously you can engage with either too much in a way that just completely destroys your life. We all know the person who crashed out on Warhammer for five years and then came out of a hole one day and was like, “Ugh.” World
Simone Collins: of Warcraft, not Warhammer.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, War- World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft. That was like a thing- Yeah ... that if you lived through that- In a- ... a bunch of us nerds-
Simone Collins: In a college dorm, like in a certain period of time, there was at least one kid.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Or, and, and, and here I’ll add another one here. Magic: The Gathering card collecting.
Or, or, or no, no, well, let’s just say, yeah card collecting more general. So like non-playable card collecting. No, we’ll use Magic: The Gathering ‘cause it allows us to talk about a, a, a variety of things together. If you are really into, let’s say s- sports, and so you have to, you wanna watch the games the moment they come out.
Now, that already makes it relatively more bad than a video game that you can play at any time, day or night, right? [00:05:00] Because now you’re having to, even if you’re spending the same amount of time on it, that time is not variable, and therefore is going to be more intrusive on your ability to do things that are actually like a net benefit for society or God or whatever, right?
Like you’re, you’re, you’re going to have to maybe not go to the thing with your kids, or not go to the things that you can slot in at any time, day or night. The, the flexibility of a sin is really important to that sin. Then you have the cost, the relative cost. But this is where something like trading cards can get really big because the relative cost of entertainment hour per dollar spend is of, of just about anything you can be into I think the lowest on video games.
Now this is assuming that you are into single player video games rather than either loot box type games, which can be incorporated in single player video games if you are [00:06:00] susceptible to loot boxes. Now note, not everyone is susceptible to loot boxes. Some people can play a game with loot boxes forever and never spend on them.
I think that this is something that you have to ask yourself and, and, and from your own historic behavior. If you know you are susceptible to loot boxes don’t, don’t engage with them. Right? Like d- d- don’t engage with any game that has them. And I’m sorry if that’s like taking things out for you, but one of the most dangerous you know, of all the various things we’re warned not to do, gambling is I think one of the most dangerous.
And the reason why gambling is w- I, I put gambling above something like heroin. Oh
Simone Collins: yeah. It’s just so quickly and easily ruinous.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s- While heroin can kill you in a day, it’s much less likely to, like even, even if it does kill you, like your assets are still inherited by other people, right? Like [00:07:00] i- i- it, when gambling ruins your life, it typically, one, it can ruin multi-generations of life savings just like that.
But two, the people who have an issue with it often borrow against other people when they do it. And the happiness you get from it doesn’t feel very long-term satisfying. It’s like not a good... Like this is the other thing I’ll keep into account when we’re like rating sins is how good is the happiness you get out of it?
The happiness that you get out of gambling is
Incredibly low-grade, superficial most basal of hungers. There isn’t any sort of deep satisfaction like you may get out of beating a really hard video game or something like that, right? And so that’s where keep in mind is the pastime that like when you’re judging the potential sin of a pastime, what other sins come attached to this pastime?
So if you look at something like being into [00:08:00] sports gambling is very commonly attached to being into sports.
Simone Collins: Oh, so what, what, what is also the constellation of related things that you might get into?
Malcolm Collins: Right. So like this is when it comes to something like hur- Yeah,
Simone Collins: like if you really like going, like clubbing, the odds of you getting a drug habit, non-trivial, right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, explode. Yeah. Which is
Simone Collins: like- Or like developing alcoholism ...
Malcolm Collins: if you go into a bar- Yeah ... this is why we would aga- tr- even if it’s the same amount of time- Mm ... even if it’s the same amount of cost to both go to a bar or go to a nightclub, the nightclub has a much higher probability of leading to an escalatory cycle that is going to do more deleterious impact to your life.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Gosh
Malcolm Collins: But also, but by the way, so an interesting, but I find this to be an interesting, like, broader conversation here. Yeah because it’s something that, that’s, that’s not often thought about, but the moment you begin to frame things like this, you can be like, “Oh, this is a good way for me to think through.”
Also, like, whether you want to engage with something to begin with.
Simone Collins: You’re [00:09:00] also looking at, like, uniquely male habits too. I think that,
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let’s, let’s elevate some
Simone Collins: female habits ... travel could be one of them for women. Plastic surgery is one of them for women. Wait, what did
Malcolm Collins: you, what was the first one you said for women?
Simone Collins: Travel, plastic surgery, and shopping are, are- Travel, plastic surgery- ... very big ... and, and shopping. Absolutely
Malcolm Collins: Very
Simone Collins: big. Because plastic surgery is an incredibly, for many women, addictive thing. And it is an endless money hole. Also, like, you get to a point where after you have a certain number of procedures done, you have to keep doing more procedures to either fix or maintain procedures.
And that is incredibly expensive. Plus, you just start to look terrible, so that’s not good.
Malcolm Collins: And if, if we’re putting out any sort of teachings around jewelry, I would strongly suggest that individuals treat jewelry the way I did with my wife. Which basically, when you get married, you ask her and you lay out, what is all of the jewelry you want in your, your life?
You know, be greedy. If you, if you had the maximum look, what does that look look like? It is X many pearl [00:10:00] necklaces. It’s X many earrings of these various sizes and styles. It’s X many rings. You create that list for all of the variable ways you could piece together jewelry, and you say, “Okay now with this list, this is where, like, I’m gonna be getting you presents from this list for X many years, and when we get to the end of this list, that’s it.
No more jewelry.” Right? Like, this is all of the jewelry you could ever imagine yourself wanting.
Simone Collins: Yeah, like, you, you can’t develop a, like, “I’m a jewelry collector.” Like, that, that is an incredibly sinful hobby, right? You, this- ‘Cause that is an endless money
Malcolm Collins: hole ... there’s this point where you’re just spending money on more jewelry for the emotional state you get when you spend the money on jewelry.
And like-
Simone Collins: And we, we say this ‘cause we, we know people who’ve had this habit who literally have, for their retirement, owned, like, a condo that they, it was supposed to be part of their retirement portfolio, and they sold it to buy jewelry. Like, this is... So you know, we talk about men’s gambling addictions a lot, I think.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah
Simone Collins: But I don’t think we talk [00:11:00] enough about some problems that women have, I, I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s, it’s
Malcolm Collins: harder to detect Well, I think that society’s changing more, ‘cause, “Oh, how dare you put rules on women?” But let’s, let’s do th- let’s go through. Like, I think that the same thing that goes with jewelry can go with travel, right?
Like lu- Oh,
Simone Collins: yeah, luxury, and luxury travel is an endless... Like, just one business class flight can send you back... Well, n- sorry, the last time I tried to look at business class flights just ‘cause I was curious was well before oil went crazy with the Iran war. This was like maybe two years ago. Yeah, but, but let’s, let’s talk about- And, like, one flight across an ocean was $20,000 for one person
a
Malcolm Collins: good way to handle travel, right? Because it is an endless money pit, as you say.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: If you are the type of person who goes on the same vacation every year assuming that’s not, like, a drive from your house or something like that, right? There’s likely no point to that. You are not picking up any new additional information on trip number 10 to Hawaii that you didn’t get on trip number one to Hawaii.
You’re not getting any new perspective. You’re not getting any new... this is [00:12:00] purely a hedonistic thing to do and an extremely expensive hedonistic
Simone Collins: thing to do. I mean, I think there’s, there’s something to be said for cultural family traditions. Like, some families, like, every year will all gather at this one place, and that’s a big part of their culture.
Well,
Malcolm Collins: and as I was saying, the important thing about cultural family traditions is that they are not pointlessly orders of magnitude more expensive than an equivalent tradition the family could do. Oh. So, by this what I mean is our family could every year go to Hawaii, or we could every year go to a lake house Airbnb a couple hours from here.
Or we could every year go to the Jersey Shore and rent a place, or even buy a place and have it there, right? As an, as an asset. If we make the active decision to do the thing, like marginally how much better is Hawaii than the Jersey Shore, yet it costs orders of magnitude more. [00:13:00]
Simone Collins: Yeah. No, that’s fair.
Yeah, and even just like food in Hawaii costs so much more that it’s, you have to consider that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and if you’re like, “Oh, the Jersey Shore is gross,” okay, drive a bit further to Connecticut. I think Connecticut is strictly better than Hawaii. Like the ocean, ocean side- Oh
Simone Collins: my gosh. Yeah, hands down.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
Simone Collins: Or Rhode Island.
I mean, if you wanna be fancy, you know, you could do the Hamptons. You could do... Well, not the Hamptons, ‘cause that’s ridiculous. That’s Hawaii level. But maybe like Martha’s Vineyard or Cape Cod or something. Cape Cod’s great. You could go camping in Cape Cod.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what I’m talking about.
What I’m talking about, like I do think that people need some degree of hedonism. You know, the, the, the family traditions you have, the things that you do to entertain yourself. I think if you remove all of those, while some people can live that way, I think Simone essentially lives that way I do not think everyone can live that way and still be an efficient human being.
I, I know I personally can’t. Mm-hmm. And so I do engage with things like video games. But when it comes to something like gambling, it falls into [00:14:00] that category. When we were listing out like really big sins, the trying something just to see if you like it, gambling is probably the biggest red flag.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, yeah.
There’s
Malcolm Collins: no reason you need to know if you like gambling. No- That’s
Simone Collins: so true ... appropriate reason. Yeah, it’s like, “Hey, I should try this extremely addictive narcotic. Let’s see if, how it goes. Maybe I’ll like it.” Do you think you’ll like it?
Malcolm Collins: Well, and when you know you do have a problem with something, and this is where I you know, people know I take naltrexone, which is an opioid agonist, which is just fantastic for helping curb the types of addictive impulses that you may have, whether it’s alcohol or masturbation or anything like this, right?
Like, an, i- i- a... The place that it had the biggest impact on my life that I didn’t expect was checking the news every morning when I first woke up, and then checking my Facebook feed and checking the latest comics and checking the, That behavior just went away, Oh ... after I started taking it. And a lot of people can say, “Well, you shouldn’t be removing the sins from yourself like, the temptation from the sins.”
And I’m like, “Bro, like, Jesus was literally the guy who was like, [00:15:00] ‘If your eye leads you to sin, tear it out.’ Like, ‘If your arm leads you to sin, cut it off.’” Like, he obviously didn’t mean exactly that in context, but if you’re going with the vibe of the message naltrexone would fit perfectly in this. Now, obviously this doesn’t work for Catholics because Catholics know that the church actually had to once rule on priests who were castrating themselves to not be tempted by sin.
And the church ruled against doing that, which seems very weird to me in the line with, you know, the Bible’s teaching, but whatever, right? You know.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: The point here being you don’t need to expose yourself to something. Like, we have the technology, and as technology advances, I think one of the areas I want to see it advance the most is on the mitigation of sinful impulses.
Like, imagine a society where people don’t feel these impulses to the same degree anymore. You know, you literally cut out the eyes, right, of society moving forwards. And we’re beginning to see that with stuff like Ozempic, right? Like, is, is Ozempic not a, a category there that we’re seeing? And this is where something like gluttony can be extra [00:16:00] bad because when we’re looking at sins, another thing we need to keep in mind in sort of the grand ranking of sins is the probability that it’s going to kill you.
Because that has enormous externalities on everyone that’s counting on you and your ability to do anything in the future, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And anything that falls into the category of actively leading to your death which can happen in two categories. One can be something like gluttony. Another can be where it’s, like, just literally unhealthy or something like orgies, right?
Where you may get diseases and stuff like that and you need to be- Yeah,
Simone Collins: or like before I met Malcolm, I liked BASE jumping. I liked
Malcolm Collins: skydiving. I liked- Well, I’m, I’m gonna put that in the second category.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay.
Malcolm Collins: So these are things that are just actively unhealthful. Yeah. Then there’s things that come with a risk of severe injury or death.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. So there’s sort of the chronic bad health, which I would also include, like, habits of just staying up incredibly late and not getting enough sleep. That’s really bad for you.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, ‘cause you’re trying to push me to work less right now.
Simone Collins: Yeah, Malcolm, duh.
Malcolm Collins: No, but I, I agree with that. You can [00:17:00] be indulgent in your work, and I need to be aware of that because- Yeah, your sin,
Simone Collins: you
Malcolm Collins: are sinning
it is killing me and dying.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: Which it could really at this point when you look at how much I work.
Simone Collins: Yes
Malcolm Collins: Hey, but look at how much RFAB has improved.
Simone Collins: Guys, tell him to go to sleep, please. Ugh. Anyway, go on.
Malcolm Collins: Gluttony, where was I, where were they going was, was gluttony
Simone Collins: There’s the
Malcolm Collins: two categories Gluttony.
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah There’s the one
Malcolm Collins: that’s chronically bad- But then there’s the category of- ...
Simone Collins: and
Malcolm Collins: then
Simone Collins: there’s the one that’s acutely bad ... the risk
Malcolm Collins: of death or severe injury. Yes. And this really matters when it comes to, like suppose you’re in school and you’re choosing your sport.
Something that you should be very aware of in that choice is what is the chance that this could give you a life-changing injury? So, if you’re considering between extremely high injury sports like, say, crew or cheerleading- Wait, crew? Crew has incredibly high... Because you can catch crabs, which basically means your, your row hits the water at the wrong moment vis-a-vis everyone else moving forwards.
Yeah. So the forwards motion of your boat catches your oar and throws it into your [00:18:00] face.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: Um, With all of the momentum of everyone on the boat- Oh ... and the speed of the boat.
Simone Collins: God. I didn’t know that. That’s horrible.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Easy, easy to become paralyzed and stuff like that. Oh.
Simone Collins: Dude, okay, guys, if you wanna do, just do outrigger canoe racing.
Really fun and you don’t have- but yeah, outrigger canoe racing, really great. If you like crew but you don’t wanna die- ... outrigger canoe racing, I mean, your boat might flip, ‘cause, you know, they do that And
Malcolm Collins: this is what we’re talking about here.
With any of these, there are variable things where you could get an equal amount of pleasure or whatever satisfaction you’re getting- Yeah ... that don’t come with the same negative externalities.
Simone Collins: Totally. And
Malcolm Collins: in the categories of sins, actively choosing not to look this stuff up falls in the same category.
Mm. You
Simone Collins: should,
Malcolm Collins: you should, before you sign up for an extracurricular, look up the risk of death or serious injury from that extracurricular.
Simone Collins: Yeah, for real. Like, in high [00:19:00] school, I was on an outrigger canoe racing team, and then I looked at joining crew in college. At no point did I have any idea, ‘cause I almost joined GW’s crew team.
I didn’t know that could happen. The only reason I backed out was I was like, “Oh, I will have no life if I join this team,” because it’s so-
Malcolm Collins: Well, and that’s the other thing, is how much of your life does it consume? Like, that is-
Simone Collins: Totally,
Malcolm Collins: yeah ... you are almost certainly... And this is the thing. Even if you’re doing sin for hedonism, there are some times where you’re just doing a sin that is absolutely pointless- Yeah
in terms of the amount of hedonism it’s getting you. Yeah. Like, going to Disneyland is f*****g pointless. There is no way that that was the best use of that money.
Simone Collins: No, fair. Yeah, and one, I think one thing that we discovered too when we took our kids to places before we were, like, really thoughtful about it and taking a first principle’s approach, was like, “Well, okay, what are our kids actually obsessed with?”
And it’s never, like, the concept of Disney or the concept of whatever it is that’s happening. It’s like they hyper-fixate on, like, “I like to throw rocks in this thing,” and that might [00:20:00] not even be what they’re supposed to do, right? And so you can just replicate that most likely at home. And you know, that’s-
Malcolm Collins: Right.
Like, consider the alternative, like what I do with the kids, right? Is I get a little inflatable boat with a small motor, and we drive around the lakes around here, and we go around the water, and we catch crayfish and little fish and throw rocks, and they build dams.
Speaker 16: Hey, where are you guys going?
Malcolm Collins: And that is almost certainly for kids their age as fun as waiting in lines, ‘cause that’s what Disneyland really is, is a, it’s a line simulator.
Speaker 8: so then there’s lines for fast pass. You stand in line to get a take it to stand in line later. Then there’s lines for the bathrooms, lines for the drinks, lines for can, and [00:21:00] cans.
Malcolm Collins: A- and you could be like, “Well, what about the novelty?” Okay, well, even if it’s about the novelty, there’s going to be a local park to you that’s going to have about the equivalent of Disneyland, maybe 20% less or something like that. Oh,
Simone Collins: you mean like an actual theme park.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Like Hershey Park for us or something. Like
Malcolm Collins: Hershey Park or something, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: It’s gonna be strictly personally, I don’t think it’s any worse, but i- i- you know, assuming, like even if you go to Disneyland, I still think Universal’s a better studio.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: But, but what I’m saying here is, is to apply all of this with a degree of intentionality.
And then to look at this with the risk of injury, also risk of any other sort of long-term negative effect on your life. So like if there is a Magic: The Gathering’s a good example of this, right? Okay. If you end up getting addicted to card collecting, which a lot of these people do, Magic: The Gathering can just siphon money from you endlessly.
You c- you can never have enough decks. You never have enough cards. You [00:22:00] never have enough, you know, much more so than something like getting really into, to Dark Souls or something like that. And then the next thing we need to consider and, and obviously the highest category of sin within these activities is anything that could just kill you.
Like, in terms of BASE jumping, parachuting out of an airplane, hand gliding hot air ballooning a lot of these things are just like Oh, personal plane flying. Like is there really not some other activity that you could get the same amount of marginal enjoyment from that doesn’t run the risk of just killing you?
And also isn’t worth tons of money. All of those are also enormously expensive hobbies.
Simone Collins: Yeah, there’s that. Yeah.
Actually, just recently I think eight people died in a skydiving plane accident. They’re rickety planes, so it doesn’t surprise me. I remember thinking when I sky dove for the first time, the only time, [00:23:00] like, “Oh, th- this is probably how I’ll die.”
It was- ... like held together with tape. So.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, but these things, like just recognizing, because I, I think a lot of religious traditions, ‘cause people in the past didn’t randomly do stuff for fun that could get them killed for no reason. This is like a modern invention of sinfulness that we just invented out of the ethos.
An- anyone historically would be like, “Why would you do something that could just get you killed?” Right? Mm-hmm. Like, we invented an entirely new category of sinfulness that the Bible didn’t even know it needed to warn us about. Therefore, that’s why I’m, I’m doing this. That’s why I’m putting this together.
Speaker 20: Now I need to be clear here. This isn’t out of line with passages from the Bible. You know, if you look at something like Proverbs 22:3, “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” Or Proverbs 14:16, “One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but the fool is reckless [00:24:00] and careless.”
Or Ecclesiastes 7:17, “Do not be over wicked and do not be a fool. Why die before your time?” , And, and so you can see this isn’t out of line with what the Bible is teaching, but it just never explicitly says, because I don’t think anyone around the time any of the biblical books was written would randomly risk their lives over simple thrills.
, People back then simply weren’t that indulgent and stupid, so it didn’t need to be laid out like this
Malcolm Collins: But now I wanna go into, to the next category. That cruising
Simone Collins: is crazy.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Ugh.
Malcolm Collins: Is thinking through the negative externalities of the type of sin that you are engaged in. So a good example of here could come down to something like corn, right? If you were going to rank, because obviously if you’re masturbating, well, I don’t think it’s like enormously sinful when contrasted with other things that you might do.
It’s still clearly not something you’re doing for God, which makes it [00:25:00] sinful, right? If you are now considering the various ways that you can engage with not-safe-for-work material I think obviously the highest form of negative is hiring a prostitute to cheat on your wife, right? Like, that, that’s where you get it the highest level of, of, of negativity.
Or I guess also- Because
Simone Collins: of the money spent or what?
Malcolm Collins: Well, because it has money spent on something that’s completely pointless from a f- family perspective. Two, you are creating a negative externality for the woman you’re paying, not just for your wife, not just for your family, because you could, one, get a disease from her, which creates more of a negative externality than other ways you could go out and, and do that.
But also you have now created a profession that can ruin this woman’s life, right? Like, a lot of these women who get into this, they end up speccing into this OnlyFans build, I guess you wanna say, right? While they’re young, not building up their skills, not building up a real job record. Then they lose their looks, and now they’re [00:26:00] kind of screwed.
Although I have heard, did you know this? That older women at, like, nightclubs and strip clubs and stuff like that actually get paid more than younger women?
Simone Collins: That makes sense because I feel like they would put in more effort.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, effort, experience, and I don’t know, maybe guys. I, I don’t know the full, but apparently this is also somewhat true on some not-safe-for-works. I, I don’t, I don’t know all the mechanics of this. I, I’m not gonna go deep i- into it. But there is a point after which you’re just not gonna get anyone and you’re gonna be completely screwed and no guys wanna marry you, and so you can’t settle down.
You can’t have a family. You can’t easily... You know, it, it’s gonna be much harder after that, right?
Speaker 22: That, that chair with the garbage bag taped over it looks pretty good. Meg, you look pretty next to her.
Malcolm Collins: And so, a- and this, this matters, like, building this sort of internal ranking. Like, if you’re gonna have... Like, let’s just suppose you’re engaging with content online, right? The, the lowest category in terms of sinfulness would be purely drawn [00:27:00] or...
Well, no, AI-generated content would be the lowest because no other human was ever even engaged with that. Then the next would be drawn stuff because it, it, some woman isn’t making this her life work. Then you move into actual photos and videos of real human women. You have to shut up. You have to stop it.
Because now you are promoting an industry That creates these negative externalities. Then one step up from that is OnlyFans. Because now you are actively lowering, because remember, it, your time, like the time, effort that you could be spending on attempting to contribute to whatever you think has intrinsic value is competing not just in terms of time, but in terms of money.
Because money, in a capitalist system it, it, it can buy time, functionally speaking. Not perfectly, but, but that’s what you spend your time on. You generate the money. The money can be translated for time. That’s what we do this for, right? So when you are s- actively spending money on an OnlyFans account or something like that, especially if you’re in a [00:28:00] relationship or married, because now it’s money that should be going to your kids, should be going to your wife.
That, that puts that and yet a higher tier. And I think that this is useful to think through, right? Instead of just bucketing it all as being exactly the same. In terms of the orders of magnitude worse I would put something like OnlyFans at 10,000 times worse than AI-generated content in terms of, like, the active scale of badness.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because of the, especially the ROI. Like, if you put the, the, the amount you can get of value from AI token-based purchases versus what you’re getting with OnlyFans, was, which isn’t, in I would argue, 90-plus percent of cases, unless you’re going after, like, very- ... very low-ranked people you’re not interacting with the actual model anyway.
So like, so you’re paying this much to interact with someone in, like, India or Pakistan [00:29:00] or Vietnam, or I don’t know who, who knows where, right? Who’s not the woman. You’re, you’re paying a, a huge amount of cup and it’s not, you’re still affecting someone’s life, so.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and worse, you’re entering an environment that falls into the earlier sin category we were talking about, where the woman has a motivation to attempt to addict you.
Mm ... a lot of the OnlyFans pipelines are really heavily AB tested to try to get you addicted to them. That’s the point. They want you as a permanent customer. It’s the same way where, like, if you are paying money to someone for sex that person has a motivation to attempt to break up your existing relationship, right?
Like any sort of long-term stable fications for society relationship you have, they now have a motivation to disrupt that for you.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And- I suppose Yeah, yeah. So I, I think that that is a ca- and this is worth thinking about. Like a- again, something like let’s consider categories here. Video games versus skydiving.
The, the [00:30:00] relative negative externality to your life, assuming you don’t get addicted to video game gambling is I, I might say a millionfold less bad. May- maybe more than a million. I, I might literally say it is a... No, no, I’d actually maybe a billionfold less bad to spend a night playing video games than it is to skydive or free climb or any of those things that have these giant externalities to your life.
Because there is no chance that I accidentally kill myself playing a video game, right? And when you think about all of the downstream effects of your death for something that in terms of the pleasure that you can harness from the two events I, I’d honestly be very surprised if somebody gets more acute pleasure from skydiving than they do for video games, which makes it even worse Well,
Simone Collins: I, I don’t know.
I’m incapable of garnering pleasure from- ... playing video games, as we’ve discovered, much to your-
Malcolm Collins: But you [00:31:00] gain pleasure- ... dismay ... from watching your romance shows. Do you enjoy- Yeah ... those more than skydiving? Like, it a- the f- the, the three or four hours it takes to make- So it’s- ... a full skydive ...
Simone Collins: it is, it’s hard to...
Yeah, I mean, it, like, it’s a specific high. It’s the adrenaline. Like, that’s why I like jumping off things. And it’s not, you would think, oh, well you’re only enjoying that for, like, the few seconds that you’ve jumped out of the plane. That’s actually the least interesting part because falling from the sky, as it turns out, just feels windy.
Like, if you’ve ever leaned into a heavy wind that can hold you up when you lean into it, you have experienced what it feels like to skydive. Congratulations.
Malcolm Collins: But- So is, is it literally just an addiction to a chemical reaction your body
Simone Collins: is producing? No, yeah, it’s, it’s the buildup. It’s the waiting in the hangar.
It’s the getting on the plane. It’s the going up. It’s the harnessing up. It’s the leaning out of the plane. It’s the deciding to tip out. Like, that, that is where that high comes from, and it’s unique. It’s not something you can get from a video game. The same with, like, jumping off high things, like bridges into water or-
Malcolm Collins: But
Simone Collins: does it feel-
cliffs into water ...
Malcolm Collins: good? Or does it [00:32:00] just feel different?
Simone Collins: You feel alive in a different way. Yeah, it just feels different.
Malcolm Collins: Which I think is really pointless. Like-
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and I think, I think what a lot of people have come to realize is that, like, you, you can get a very similar kind of high from, like, a cold plunge.
So I think when, when we’re talking about, like- ... the crew versus outrigger canoe racing, like, if you want that wind taken out of yourself, like, oh, like you, you feel alive-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...
Simone Collins: get a bucket of ice water. Like, it’s really not that hard. Like-
Malcolm Collins: And that generally has positive health effects from what I’ve
Simone Collins: heard.
It does, yeah. Like, there seems to be, like, an evidence-based argument for cold plunges on a regular basis. It, it, and, and the, the thing is they’re unpleasant in a way that, I guess skydiving is too. Like, you’re waiting in a hot hangar. You’re paying money. Like, you know, it’s... So yeah, I think i- if you want that kind of feeling and you really need it, just get a cold plunge and enjoy the additional health [00:33:00] benefits, ‘cause it’s aligned with probably your objective function more presumably, ‘cause your objective function should probably involve being able to do a thing which you have to be alive to be able to do.
So-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... there’s that. Well, and this is where... Because I think it’s, it’s important to think about when we hear something’s sinful, we just think, like, “Don’t do it.” And why it’s useful to create these, like... When, when we’re looking at various sins and temptations in our lives and we think about their relative negativity to us, right?
We often don’t fully think through how relatively negative they are. Yeah ... consider something like- me so let’s, let’s consider my desire to socialize, right? Mm. I, I could have that- What desire? ... exercised in, in multiple ways in my w- life, right? Like, I could go to parties, I could go to bars, I could go to cities.
And if you look at the way that Simone and I actually have ended up doing that in our lives [00:34:00] what we’ve done is we said, “Okay, what we’re gonna do is once every few months, like maybe every four months now, go to New York or DC, rent out a place, invite all our friends over and people we don’t know as well, just famous people in the area and be like, ‘Hey, you wanna come over?
You wanna come to a party?’ You know, interesting for socialization, so we’re still top of mind, everything like that.” And this prevents us from having to do a bunch of other things that may be involved in a choice like, where do you live? Like, we’re able to live in a location where it was very inexpensive to buy a house, very inexpensive to buy groceries, very inexpensive to live, and that frankly is healthier.
You know, you’re not in the city smog and everything like that. And nicer looking. I look out my window and I see a jungle every day, right? Than, than living in Manhattan or living in, in DC. But I still get the socialization because I very intentionally cluster it all. But then even more than that, if I’m just looking for...
If you’re like, “I couldn’t get away with just doing this once every four months,” there are ways [00:35:00] you can socialize that have positive externalities as well. So an example here would be my Leaflet streams. So on a Leaflet stream, I’m doing a 10-hour conversation with Leaflet typically, right? And you can find these recorded on like Twitch and Kick and everything like that if you’re interested in watching them.
But these streams often get over 20,000 views. You know, so not only am I there having a conversation with somebody and masturbating the social part of myself, right? Like, I’m doing the social thing, which does feel good to do, right, to, to, to talk with somebody who you enjoy speaking to and who shares similar interests than you, without having to get in a car, go out and interact with strangers, risk getting sick.
Keep in mind, you’re doing that every time you leave your house.
Simone Collins: Oh my
Malcolm Collins: gosh,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Risk y- you know, it, it, you, you risk being killed when you go out. That’s the other thing to remember. If you go to like a nightclub district, people always get shot in the, you know. Well,
Simone Collins: but also like every time you get in your car, don’t forget.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:36:00] Every time you get in a car, you’re risking your life. And, and that’s, that’s why I think it’s generally good to like cluster those things, and to, when you think about, like, the car you get, it’s upon you to research what is the riskiness of this car to your life. Any closing thoughts here, Simone?
Simone Collins: I don’t know. You’ve, you’ve, you’ve given me a lot to think about actually. I hadn’t thought before about Even looking at sinful behaviors and being like, “Okay, what is the thing that I’m getting out of this and how do I do it better?” I mean, we, I obviously did this, or with the help of my dad and his advice, did this with a sin of mine that was really damaging, right?
Like, I loved controlling how much I ate, but that involved dying. And so she didn’t eat anything. Yeah. Yeah. And so he’s like, “Okay, I see what you wanna do here is control and feel that form of a high. So here’s another way you can do it without dying.” And so instead we just balanced calories in and calories out, and had me weigh and measure and enter into a [00:37:00] program everything I ate.
And then suddenly I wasn’t dying anymore. And I think it’s a really good idea to take a look at things that we’re doing that are problematic, and I’m just gonna be thinking for the rest of the day today, “Okay, what am I doing now that is not good for us? What do I actually want when I’m doing that and how can I do that better?”
Ideally in a way that just helps everyone in the family, that actually contributes to us. Like, the idea- Mm-hmm ... of, of taking like a skydiving or BASE jumping addiction and turning it into a cold plunge addiction, right? You’re taking a vice and turning it into a virtue while still getting the thing, like most of the thing out of the vice that you liked.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Oh, and consider something like intermu- mural sports as a sin, for example, like in school. Your parents, the people who already have to drive you state to state for competition. Oh my gosh. You know, you’ve gotta g- go to these regular practices, which again takes up the time of the people who drive you.
They’re just enormously sinful, and we don’t think about them as sinful things. Mm-hmm. They can eat up huge amounts of your life that could be spent on self-improvement or attempting [00:38:00] to use the, the instrument you have honed yourself into to improve society for something completely indulgent.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well and, and one person’s sin could be another person’s perfectly good thing. Like, if for example for one person, participation in a sport requires their whole family to sort of derail their lives and spend a lot of time driving, but then the other person, like, happens to live right next to, to a, like, major gymnastics gym or whatever, where all they have to do is walk over and it’s a really good place for them to be, like, then maybe it’s not.
I think everyone has to consider for themselves what the cost is and what the alignment is.
Malcolm Collins: So. Yeah, yeah, and to be honest with yourself around wh- what- Yeah ... the things that you spend your time doing on any given day, on any given week. Like, if one of your core tasks in life at that time is finding a partner, unfortunately you have to do social things.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Th- like that, that becomes one of the things that you just have to do. That was the primary reason I did anything social ever in my life, was trying to find a [00:39:00] partner.
Simone Collins: Well, that’s done. Maybe.
Malcolm Collins: No. Once, once you get a good wife, that’s the great thing about a good wife and kids, you don’t need friends anymore, right?
You can just cut all that nonsense out.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I guess you have to still play the field in case I die, but whatever
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I gotta know some people. I, I’m just gonna honestly reach out to fans. I’m sure there’s some fan who wants to marry me.
Simone Collins: Oh, God.
Well then, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.
And with that, we will leave you. Well,
Malcolm Collins: especially if the fan’s like a widower, too. That would be super easy
Simone Collins: No, you would be the widower and they would be a
Malcolm Collins: widow I... No, they could be a widower too if they’re, like, still my age No,
Simone Collins: no, no. A widower, Malcolm, widower is the name for a man who lost his wife.
What
Malcolm Collins: is a
Simone Collins: woman? Widow is a woman who lost her husband Oh, a widow.
Malcolm Collins: Okay.
Simone Collins: Unless you wanna enter a- Gay relationship ...
Malcolm Collins: gay
Simone Collins: marriage, that’s fine. The, the, the people who hate you will love that so.
Malcolm Collins: But I- It’s- But I think that this, this can be applied to sexual, like, in, in regards to, like, kinks.
‘Cause I think in our [00:40:00] society we frame kinks as being, like, hugely sinful. Whereas I would point out that a lot of kinks that you may engage with have literally no negative externality but the time you waste.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, like- Like- ... that, and this, this came up when we were discussing Byron, Byron Nome, Christy Nome’s husband, who had the- Yeah
femmification interest. Had he just, like, found a community that would, like, exchange this stuff and talk about it or whatever, and, like, he, he got his big boobs and everything and, like, did his thing without spending tons of money, I would not have really seen it as sinful. It’s like, you do you. Like, that’s fun for you.
I get it. Go ahead. Like, have... This is great. It’s very common, okay? Like, it’s an extremely common thing. But instead he spent, I think, over $20,000, maybe even over $16,000 on just, like, one person, and that’s where, okay, like, this is, this is to your family’s detriment. This is to your financial detriment.
Like, this is money that could have kept you stable in retirement. This is money that you could have contributed towards something that’s aligned with your [00:41:00] values. ‘Cause I doubt his values were-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah ... supporting women who- and, and this is where, like, okay, so, so suppose a kink, like, we’re gonna rate kinks here ‘cause this, this is useful to, to, to, to be aware of.
If, if you’re engaging with it in an entirely fictional context, like an AI-generated whatever thing the negative externalities it can have to your life are incredibly low, especially if it’s on a local encrypted thing like RFAB or something like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So
Malcolm Collins: I put that at, like, the lowest category.
But if you’re talking about, like, actually acted upon things you know, at the low end you have things like, say, rope binding or something like that, right?
Simone Collins: Shibari.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, which is just whatever, right? Whereas at the, the very highest end you have things that are going to make you sterile. These are things like testicle inflation that’s become, ballmaxing it’s called now.
Oh
Simone Collins: my gosh, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. Or orgies or y- you know, something can be very ta- like, a choking fetish is a very tame fetish. Oh,
Simone Collins: yeah, don’t. Yeah, don’t, don’t.
Malcolm Collins: But if it can cause severe injury- Don’t do it ... don’t engage with it [00:42:00] with another human, right? Like- Don’t do it.
Simone Collins: No. No, no, no, no, come on.
Lots of people die doing it to themselves. Don’t do, don’t say
Malcolm Collins: that. Oh, to... No, I, I meant, like, use AI or something like that. Just don’t actually do
Simone Collins: it. Oh, imagine doing it. No, I think it’s one of those things where you have to feel it. Get, again, if you’re into that, get into cold plunges. Y- you know, again, just I feel like so, so many things.
A cold plunge. Do it.
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. With, with all of this, I don’t think we think about, we think of all depraved things as being at the same relative level of depravity often. And when we talk about the negative externality on other people, this is where something like being a PDA file, like immediately enters the highest category if, if you’re doing that with another human being.
Yeah. Whereas something like
Lo- l- like el- elcon artwork, which is a very you know, whatever topic online about whether this is immoral or not immoral because it doesn’t involve real underage people. Yeah. But I’d put it in the category of we all know it’s not the same level of immoral. Yeah. If it could tempt you down a [00:43:00] path where the end state is that, then it is extremely immoral for you.
Yeah,
Simone Collins: in the same way that you say, like, well, getting into, like, team sports can be a, a, a gateway to sports gambling, in the same way that content could be-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that it can be extremely immoral in that way.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I guess what I would say is if any... O- one is, probably my biggest question with this is is there not something else that turns you on just as much or more?
Yeah,
Simone Collins: can’t, can’t we, yeah, can’t we go with something else? That there... Yeah ‘Cause, yeah, typically most people have a basket of things. Let’s go with something else in the basket.
Malcolm Collins: Of all of the various things that turn you on, there probably is something, but I wanna point out that how much worse is an art of this versus it happening to a real human or you consuming content- Oh
of it happening to a real human.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. I, I would say it’s, again, one billionth as bad.
Simone Collins: Well, of course.
Malcolm Collins: One, yeah, easily less than one billionth as bad probably.
Simone Collins: Yeah, which is why people are like, “Why are you [00:44:00] questioning me?” When people are like, “Look, I think that, you know, synthetic versions of this are, you know, not so bad.”
But,
Malcolm Collins: but, but- ‘Cause compared to- ... do I think that if you’re a fan of Rev Says Desu, the next day you’re gonna be into underage kids or something like that? Like, no, I don’t. Do- Yeah ... do I think that Leaflet fans, ‘cause her character looks very young. She’s very old in the lore, but it looks young. Yeah. Do I think that the next thing you’re gonna be out there- You know, elves, elves
Simone Collins: are quite old.
I guess that’s how, isn’t that how, like, anime gets around it? It’s like, well, but she’s like a 200-year-old vampire girl, so
Malcolm Collins: it’s fine. Sometimes anime doesn’t care about getting around it, I’m gonna be honest. Okay. Okay. And like Japanese people, we all have our regional temptations. Yeah. You know, it might be Mormons and cucking and Japanese and underage in, you know, my region, and I’ve talked about that before.
Yeah
Speaker: So if we’re just gonna put things next to each other in a line here, , I might say something like, , furry or anthro corn might lead you to getting into the furry community if you are susceptible to temptations like that, and then that has a high probability of making you become trans, which can have a lot [00:45:00] of negative externalities on your life.
So it can be put in a category that is strictly worse than, say, maybe non-furry content, right? , Or if you say something like, , PDA content, right? Like, , l- LCON content that we’ve been talking about here. , It would be strictly worse than the, , anthro content because, , the end state that it might tempt you towards, , being a PDA is way worse.
,
Speaker: But a lot of things in a drawn context might be morally equal to neutral corn, , outside of maybe it motivates reproduction less. So let’s say like fart content, or, , you’re into pregnant-looking chicks, or you’re into, , breeding fantasies, or you’re into,, being demeaned by people. , All of these would be...
Like there’s, th-th-there’s just not that many negative externalities that can lead from this stuff.
And while sex that is [00:46:00] purely recreational, , but done with it being understood that the person might get pregnant, in a way where they might get pregnant, and you will keep the baby if they get pregnant. Now keep in mind, it is really bad to have sex where a person might get pregnant and you would never keep the baby.
, Or even question it. That’s extremely, extremely bad. But if we’re talking about sex with kinks involved, purely for recreation, worse than sex purely for reproduction, but probably better than any category of corn, no matter how kinky it is, unless it risks killing you, like certain types of choking or something like that, right?
But when it comes to totally fictionalized content
where all of these fall in relation to something else. So if I was gonna say somebody who had never gone extreme with their temptations in any other thing in the past where I would put LCON content with them, it would be at a dramatically lower level of immorality than, , a prostitute.
Or, , I’d even say than potentially OnlyFans, because, eh, that’s having an impact on a [00:47:00] real person’s life, , whereas yours has the potential, and likely very low potential given your past, possibility of impact of having another person’s life. So it’s important just to take all of this in context with the negativity of something like this coming from the multiplied probability of, in your case, what it has on somebody else, and then that somebody else’s negative context
Speaker 26: Finally here, I’d note categories that regardless of a person’s, , susceptibility to temptation that almost never lead people to temptation. An example here would be something like, oh, what falls into this category? Oviposition, I guess. , This is being aroused by putting eggs in someone.
As far as I’m aware of, no one has ever actually been seriously, like, done this in a criminal way or in a way that has made somebody else infertile compared to something like putting hamsters [00:48:00] in someone, which apparently has tempted a lot of people. People are like, “Oh, that’s not a real thing,” and then you can look up, like, actual reports from hospitals of it happening, and they’re like, “Well, I mean, I guess it happens.”
It’s like, bro, there’s multiple hospital reports about this. This is a real thing
Malcolm Collins: but anyway.
Simone Collins: Well, I think we’ve- The- ... we’ve given people a lot to think about and I, I hope
Malcolm Collins: that they- The no, hold on. I’m gonna d- talk about a final one, which is murder. Ooh. Murder. Is all murder equally bad?
Simone Collins: Wow ...
Malcolm Collins: so here, if you believe... A- and for people who say life begins at conception, I think they intuitively, even if they believe this, I don’t know any of them who if told there’s a six-year-old child in this room, and there’s 10 just fertilized blastocysts in this room in cold storage, right?
You can either unplug the blastocysts in this room or unplug something in this room that painlessly kills the six-year-old child. I don’t think anyb- anybody, any Catholic is going to choose the [00:49:00] 10 blastocysts over the six-year-old child. Because I think we all intuit even if those are 100% human lives, it’s not the same thing as a 10...
A six-year-old or a 10-year-old, right? Like, and we need to investigate morally where does this intuition come from. And i- and it’s an intuition that I think feels incredibly strong for people, right? One is, and I think the, the first thing that, that people go is, is they’re like, “Yeah, but realistically, for me to turn those six blastocysts into a six-year-old kid with all of the emotions, experiences, connected lives that that kid has, and potentiality that kid has, requires a willing woman,” right?
Right now with the technology we have. Now, this is why I think we have a huge mandate to develop artificial wombs, but with the technology we have, there is some intermittent step which makes the blastocysts more morally equivalent to [00:50:00] 10 people on life support who have a doctor’s diagnosis of 10 days left to live, but if you spent a billion dollars, you might be able to save them, or one healthy six-year-old, right?
I think that that’s the moral equation that they’re doing in their heads. But now, now we have a moral equation here where we can say, “Oh, the life of somebody who’s about to die and on life support does not have the same value as the life of a healthy child,” right? Because the potential future of that life without external intervention of a type that you cannot afford to do yourself, is significantly lower.
And now this leads us to the second thing, which is this says, okay, now you get to choose between lives. The life of a six-year-old versus the life of a baby versus the life of a 70-year-old, okay? [00:51:00] Now, if anybody is, you know, you can, you can put $10 million down and save one of these lives, and you don’t have more money than that Or increase the probability of saving one of these lives.
The moral intuition that comes out of this I actually think is quite different than what most people would assume. I think a lot of people are gonna assume, well, baby first, then six-year-old, then elderly person, if you’re just doing a str- a straight utilitarian calculation. But the reality of mor- moral intuition is that I actually think the calculation is m- very obvious in most people’s minds.
It’s 10-year-old first, then baby, then elderly person. And the question can be, why do you put the baby below the 10-year-old, right? And the answer is, is because outside of the fact that it’s a sickly baby and probably gonna get sick again, but there are a lot of things that could randomly end up ending that baby’s life and that makes it reliant on another [00:52:00] person before it becomes that 10-year-old ready to jump off and make all of the potential impacts that they’re about to make on the world that make the baby’s life, like not, not much worse to save.
I, I’d say like 2 to 3% worse, but some degree less than the, the, Also, the, the, the 10-year-old has an awareness of what’s happening to them that the baby doesn’t have that I think makes it more horrifying, their death. But this is just my moral intuition. Again, you can take your moral intuitions differently.
And the people who wanna say everybody’s life has the same value I mean, I don’t think God thinks that, right? Like, he killed random babies all the time and like, you know, when he was killing the, the Egyptians’ firstborn sons, or when he told us to, to kill all the Amalekites or the Midianites or whatever, the, the few times when he told us to kill everyone.
And even punished Saul for not doing it. So you can’t say, “Oh, it was just the way war was done at that time.” No, that was an active decision on God. Any thoughts you have on the, the value of a life, Simone? [00:53:00] I,
Simone Collins: I think I’m with you in looking at both viability and potential impact. Because if, you know, like, I think a lot of people And I know it’s different for everyone, but what, what our objective function is, and you have to consider your objective function when making a moral calculation.
Our objective function is maximizing long-term human flourishing. And that involves focusing on, on, on saving lives that aren’t necessarily going to terminate early anyway and, and involve a lot of suffering, right? That’s, that’s not gonna contribute as much as saving a life that is more likely to live long and make the biggest impact.
Yeah. I hear you. So
Malcolm Collins: this is where,
Simone Collins: Though I think that you, that you also just don’t like babies as much as I do, so it’s- Yeah ... it’s easier for you to say that. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: it, it, it would... I mean, indulgently you’d want to [00:54:00] save the baby, but I think, like, logically... Now this is where it gets i- in terms of human individual lives, is every individual life equally worth saving if it cost the same amount of money?
Speaker 27: I would note here in the context of the Bible, it was important to teach people things because this was not a widely understood concept before the time of Christianity. Like, don’t discriminate against a poor person versus a rich \, person. Don’t judge somebody solely off of wealth. But now society has moved too far in the opposite direction, , where we do not fully grok that some people are doing more to see God’s vision come to a reality or see what needs to happen for humanity come to reality, and other people may live lives that are purely parasitic on the system, and that we act blindly to this, and that we need to begin to, , recognize that while both of their lives may have [00:55:00] dignity, they are not equal in value in terms of if you can only save one, if you can only...
You know, you, in, in some sort of broad, vague sense, they may be equal in value, but in terms of, like, practical, I have to do something to save one, they’re very obviously not because of the long-term effects they’re going to have on other people’s lives. , And, and note here, this could be a person who’s super wealthy like the, , CEO of, , UnitedHealthcare, and their life is a negative externality, literally lower in value than, , somebody who is purely a parasite on the system.
,
Speaker 27: Or more salient modern example, Bricks and Minifigs CEO
So this isn’t like wealthy people’s lives are more valued than less wealthy people’s lives. It’s what you do with that life
Malcolm Collins: And here we’ll say a random unemployed Somalian versus Elon Musk. Now, did you know that now he’s worth the next, I think, five richest persons’ net worth combined?
Simone Collins: Yeah, in, like, certain countries he’s, he’s- ... like, [00:56:00] worth more than them. Surely there’s gonna be a more democratic way- But isn’t he, isn’t he, like, worth more than Canada or something?
Or like their GDP. I, I, I can’t remember. But yeah, it’s some- something insane. But I mean, so this, this is something that even came up with COVID, right? Because when vaccines were in short supply, the question came, like, “Well, what lives are we going to
Malcolm Collins: save?” Well, and the, and the Democratic establishment at the time, like their White House at the time suggested that it be given to those who’ve been racially disenfranch- basically give it to Black and
Simone Collins: Hispanic- Well, so it, it’s clear that people do make, at first...
Like I, I keep trying to explain to our kids there’s no such thing as fair. Because you, you have to establish, like well then what is, on what basis, you know, are you dividing a resource? And that depends on your values, and people have different values. And I think that’s the core thing. Mm. Is there is no universal like good or bad thing, or worse or better sin.
It really d- it’s all based on how you orient toward your
Malcolm Collins: objective function when it comes- But this, this is where when it comes to the value of a life, the value of Elon’s life is demonstrably- Mm ... more than the random Simoleon in this example, right? The, the reason I bring this up is his pursuit-
Simone Collins: Well, that [00:57:00] depends.
I mean, for like people who, who devalue capitalists and who value non-capitalists, he doesn’t.
Malcolm Collins: Right. But I’m talking about what we think is objectively true about reality. Mm. That our goal in life, any human’s goal in life is to move humanity forwards, right? To, to move human flourishing forward.
Simone Collins: Whoa.
That’s, that’s our goal, but I don’t get the impression that’s a universal goal.
Malcolm Collins: Right. But- A
Simone Collins: lot of people’s goals are
Malcolm Collins: very
Simone Collins: different ...
Malcolm Collins: this is a track. This is about what’s religiously
Simone Collins: true. Oh, yeah. Okay, yes, yes. For us, yes.
Malcolm Collins: So you can say for them, whatever. I don’t f-ing care what they think. Yeah, okay, okay.
They can go in the blender for all I care. I
Simone Collins: didn’t know we were talking about just our view.
Malcolm Collins: In our worldview, and I believe the worldview of the majority of our fans, the prospective impact of Elon going forwards is enormous when you look at the things that he’s accomplished for the human race so far.
Broke wokeism through the acquisition of X, on top of what he’s done for the environment with Tesla, the way he’s moved forward technology with Tesla, SpaceX, X, that he’s dedicated the company’s entire mission to a [00:58:00] Mars colony, right? The like, how cool is that? And the positive externality of a Mars colony, it means even if an asteroid does come that could kill all of humanity or we get a Gray Goo scenario or we get some sort of AI foaming scenario, we get...
We have the backup. The backups matter, people.
Simone Collins: Okay, but you’re going way off the rails. Going back to murder, and I, I, I did, I... One of our listeners, at least one of our w- listeners pointed out, like, how do you reconcile thou shalt not kill with the fact that there’s a lot of killing in-
Malcolm Collins: In the Bible, yeah
Simone Collins: yeah. So how do you
Malcolm Collins: personally- Because thou shalt not kill does not translate to thou shall not kill in the Bible. It translates to thou shall not murder, which in Jewish law at the time was a very, very specific type of premeditated murder.
Simone Collins: Okay, so tell me more. Like, h- how do I know if I’m doing a, a bad per the Old Testament, per the Ten Commandments?
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, in the Old Testament we see people killing people all the time on behalf of God. [00:59:00] Yeah. It’s basically if the person is an enemy of your people, you have free range on them. That’s, that’s the general... And your people, I think, you know, we can, we can I, I would say, like, any of the saved people, any of the people of God would fall into the our people category here.
But if they are creating negative externalities for your people, the Bible’s pretty carte blanche, do what you want. No, not even what you want. You, you have a commandment to deal with the problem. Multiple times throughout the Bible.
Simone Collins: Huh. Yeah, I, I would love to learn more about this specific definition of Judaism.
Like, per Judaism you say? Uh-huh. Like, of what murder is.
Malcolm Collins: Within Judaism, the context is what’s good for the Jewish people, right? And God was very okay with this context throughout the Old Testament, okay? The idea that he doesn’t want us to... And I, and I think that this is the, the line that is twisted the most.
To translate it to thou shall not kill is just lying, ‘cause that’s not what it [01:00:00] says. And I don’t, I... Th- this is the one thing I really get annoyed with, with nux when he goes over this all the time. When we end up in a scenario where the other side is blatantly stealing elections, like, let’s suppose.
And y- and, and, and your vote doesn’t matter anymore, and you have nowhere to run anymore, and now it’s prima nocta on your daughters right? You have a mandate to fight back Right? Especially when things get tyrannical. Like, I would want our people to be one of the first when things do go full Nazi to actually fight back against that.
Real Nazi. You know, like taking away our rights that we’re seeing now, right? To live life the way you want, to breed the way you want, to have children the way you want, to engage with genetic technology the way you want. I think, you know, when these rights are infringed upon, that I think are some of the most important rights that any human can have the, the lengths to which I think we are mandated to go is extreme insofar as it [01:01:00] doesn’t bring down negative externalities on our community, which is a pretty big and so
Simone Collins: Right, because as soon as you make yourself an existential threat to another group, that group has a mandate themselves to of course take you out.
Mm-hmm. And that’s I think a, a very important calculation.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And this is where all, because Leaflet wanted to talk about this, you know, on... An individual within the techno-puritan phase has a mandate to stay armed with the highest degree of lethality armament for your level of technology, ‘cause you know, you don’t wanna get stuck like the Sikhs do with stupid knives that is practical for your context.
So for example, if you’re on a spaceship, you probably don’t want something that’s n- accidentally gonna crack through the hull of the spaceship, right? But you do still want something that is lethal. And this came from the Sikh context, right? Like anybody who looks at techno-puritanism at this point can tell [01:02:00] this is a real religion, right?
Like this is obviously like a sincerely held religion, and this tract explains our views on you know, you should not... They really say don’t just go out and, and, and kill random negative externalities in society, ‘cause that makes our community into a negative externality for other communities that don’t have these views.
So that is where it makes sense to not go out there and make a, a, a jerk of yourself. But clearly these are our real religious views. And so within any government system, I think they have to respect this if they’re respecting it for Sikhs. And I’ve, and I’ve now explained logically why we have these views and why we believe we have a mandate for self-protection, because if you go into public without self-protection, you are putting yourself and your family at risk.
And so if you are over the age 18 you have a mandate for self-protection at all times. Because it, it’s up to you to not just protect yourself, but all of the other people who could be killed or have their lives removed in any sort of negative [01:03:00] externality event like a live su- shooter situation for example.
Now you are a positive externality because you can end that.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Speaker 3: And note here, this is not me telling you this for funsies. If you take a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, this is what we are commanded to do. So if you look at something like Luke 22:35-38: Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack for anything?”
“Nothing,” they answered. He then said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written, ‘And he who was numbered with the transgressors,’ and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, that which is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”
The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are your two swords.” “That’s enough,” he replied. So a few notes here. In the Greek, most modern interpretations take this to mean that there were only two swords among all of the disciples. , However, it doesn’t exclusively mean that in Greek. It [01:04:00] could mean they all had two swords or he alone had two swords.
, So what I take this to mean is that you don’t need to arm yourself with more than two, , lethal, , close-range, , weapons. , And the way that I would generally handle this speaking is that you need to be armed with at least one, because he does say you, you need a sword more than the cloak on your back, right?
, And that for the other, I would use something that is faster disabling, like a taser or something like that, , because that falls into... within the category of him. Back then, they wouldn’t have had something like that, so the idea , is first you arm yourself with something lethal, then you arm yourself with something quick.
, And this is if you are taking what we are going to call the
Oath of preservation, which is to say that you take responsibility of your own life to yourself, and if you allow yourself to die because you went out in public and you were killed by somebody who you should have been able to defend yourself against, but you weren’t because you did not take the oath of preservation, , that’s your responsibility
Morally speaking, that rests on your soul, [01:05:00] morally speaking
Speaker 3: in the same way an unaliving is, in the same way self-harm is, in the same way, , a skydiving accident is, , which we consider quite sinful.
and I wanna really focus on the words here so we can understand what Jesus is saying in this context. He’s basically saying, “When we were doing our preaching, when I was doing my preaching with you guys, , we were doing it in a pacifistic way, and in a way that was monastic.”
You know, where you don’t have a - coin purse, et cetera. , He’s like, “And now that we’re moving into the next era, you know, after my death,” which this is one of the last teachings he gave us. , “After my death, it will not be monastic. You are demanded to not go into the monastic lifestyle, to go out there, to be industrious, to have the coin purse.
And secondarily, to be armed, and to expect persecution, and thus be armed.” , So even if you’re looking at the, , the swords in this context and you do think, “Oh, it meant two swords for the entire group,” he’s still not even talking about this context. He’s talking about [01:06:00] the context for after he’s dead, where everyone is expected to always be armed at all times. And note here, some people will then say, “
Didn’t Jesus say something like, “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” as an abnomation of armed conflict?
Speaker 3: , And if you hear-- would then say something like, “Well, what about, you know, when, ...”
Jesus says in Matthew when one of his companions takes a sword and chops the ear off of somebody who’s trying to arrest Jesus,, “For all of those who draw the sword will die by the sword. , Do you not think you can call on my Father, and he will put at disposal more than 12 legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”
, So note here, he’s not saying broadly. He’s, he’s very explicitly not saying in a general context all who live by the sword die by the sword. He’s saying all who live by the sword in opposition to God’s plan, and right now he’s saying it is God’s plan that I am supposed to die in just the near future.
, And, You, you also see this because the same scene is recorded in, in John [01:07:00] 18:10. , “Put your sword away. Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” , So the reason he says to not use a sword in this context is because, , he is trying to fulfill a prophecy here, and he’s beginning to interfere with the prophecy.
, So his previous commandment, which one of his last, that you are supposed to be armed at all times, and if you don’t have a sword, you should have... And keep in mind, sword in context changes, , in modern context. We are all, not just techno-puritans, all Christians supposed to always be armed Because we have responsibility for our lives and the lives of those around us.
And note here, this, this is not a particularly weird thing for Jews in this time period. Almost all Jews were armed most of the time
This is why when they were like, here are two swords, Jesus, is that enough? I don’t think they meant for all of them together, as that would have been an absurdly low number of swords for Jews to have during that time period. It seems much more likely they mean, is two swords enough now that you’re telling me that I need swords?
That, in context, [01:08:00] appears a much more likely, even if it’s not what the mainstream Christian denominations want you to understand and will fight against, interpretation of what’s being said here in a literalist context.
So here you can see something like Nehemiah 4:16-18. , “The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judea who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword on the side as he worked.” , Nehemiah 4:14, “Don’t be afraid of them.
Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers and sons and daughters, your wives, your home.” , Basically talking about arming oneself as being a duty within the community and it being normal within the community. In Samuel 25:13, “David said to his men, ‘Each of you strap on your sword.’
So each of them strapped on his sword, and David strapped on his as well,” implying that all the men had swords ready to strap on. , In Psalms 14:4-1, “Praise be to the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers [01:09:00] for battle.” , Again, showing that the Lord does want war. He does want battle. That is part of what is expected of us when we are faced with evil.
Speaker 28: also have Nehemiah 4:13. They stationed arms by families with swords and spears and bows.
We have
Speaker 29: Psalms.
Speaker 28: 14:41, “Praise be to the Lord my mo- rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”
Speaker 29: . Basically, it’s all over the Bible. Wherever you look at the Old Testament, , people are expected to fight for their own people
Speaker 4: So officially, how does this work within techno puritanism? , There are two potential oaths that you can take, the oath of self-preservation, which is taking responsibility for your life and the lives of those around you, And the secondary oath of self-preservation, which is a more maximal form of this.
Once you have taken one of these oaths, going forwards, you are expected to undergo what is mandated by that oath. After the first oath of self-preservation in any context where you might encounter [01:10:00] somebody who is also armed with a lethal weapon, it is upon you or your responsibility to also be armed with a lethal weapon.
, This means that if in a context like, say, a plane flight or something like that, actually there is no chance that even a Sikh is gonna be on that plane with a lethal weapon, you don’t have to have a le-lethal weapon. But if you’re just, like, walking around town, absolutely you have to have a lethal weapon on you.’
, So it has one small caveat, which is if one of the types of places where no one can have a lethal weapon is in your way of a secondary location where some people might have a lethal weapon, but you will be in for a short period of time, you are not mandated to have a lethal weapon.
So this would mean if you have taken the oaths , of preservation, , and you are going on a vacation somewhere, you don’t need to then buy a sword when you get to that location if you were not able to carry yours in your luggage, right? , So this is the first oath of preservation. The secondary oath of preservation is to take this more [01:11:00] maximally because, , frankly, just a lethal weapon, , which implies generally a short-range weapon, is not going to be everything you need to protect yourself from most of the dangers of this world.
And so the secondary oath of self-preservation is more maximalist and says... While the first one says you can have up to two, ,, the second one says you are mandated to have a short-range lethal or disabling weapon and a long-range lethal weapon, , with the long-range one being lethal.
So this would mandate both, , something short-range and something long-ranged. And generally, you would take the first oath about six months to a year before you take the second oath. , While it is generally advised that most techno-puritans take the first oath at around the age of eighteen going forwards.
It is not a mandate to be a follower of our religion
And it is not advised if you are in an environment where it may prevent you from
Speaker 4: doing business or [01:12:00] advocating the interests of our people more broadly, , because it could within certain cultural contexts. , And , the secondary oath is only for people who want to maximally dedicate themselves to this and requires regular training in whatever that long-range weapon is
Speaker 15: Final note on this oath is, and you are responsible for recognizing this in yourself or having this imposed on you by your community, but if you ever reach a state of mind where you are now a danger to those around you or you are too aggressive in the way you might use something like this, ,
It, it is a moral necessity for you to either for that period not be armed, , or period, period not be armed for the rest of your life. So if you have something like dementia, you would not be armed during that period. If you are drinking, , heavily, you would have a mandate to not be armed during that period or on any sort of mind-altering chemical
Malcolm Collins: And never, as [01:13:00] a techno-puritan, broadly speaking never do like a, a mass shooting or something like that. There is just no point to it. It doesn’t achieve our ends. There, there are ways that lethality can be handled that do not hurt innocent individuals.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Basically, we just expect you to be dramatically more cunning as a techno-puritan than the type of people who would do something so witless. You know, if you want to mass effect action, use a gene drive or something like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And, and this means to be demonstrably sure of the guilt of an individual even in scenarios like say somebody is out there saying, you know, “My group needs to go out and murder people.” Like they’re, even if they’re not doing it themselves, they’re out preaching this every day. Like murder innocent people, grape children, something like that.
If this is being preached do you have a moral license to do something about this? Absolutely within this faith system. But, but this is only if, if what they are [01:14:00] preaching is manifold worse and being acted upon by people. If they’re like a crazy person on the street, that’s doesn’t matter. If you’re in an environment where people are being killed regularly I think that we have a moral mandate to intervene in this so yeah, that’s a, a, a broader understanding of, of morality, sinfulness, where to engage with stuff.
The final thing I wanted to note here, which comes downstream of one of the questions somebody had on the, the stream about, like, the actual ruling in this on techno-paganism, if you’re a follower Is what is the ruling on techno-puritanism around if you feel that you are able to develop more emotional control long stream by emotionally venting in the short term?
Now first I would note here, I think the research demonstrably shows that it- you lose self-control the more you indulge in it. If y- if you feel that you have a better ability to deal with your grief by crying and letting it out, and this is something that you’ve experienced [01:15:00] and you know yourself, sure.
But know you’re in dangerous territory if you’re doing that. Because for most of us, what happens is the things that make us sad in life are the things where, Like I didn’t really feel that sad when my mom died because I knew I had done everything I could to be a good son to her and to give her a good life within reason throughout her entire life.
I’d always been there for her, and so I was like, “I don’t really have any regrets on any interaction I’ve had with her. I have regrets that she won’t be able to see my kids, but like, that’s not something that I have control over, so there’s no reason to feel sad about this.” But there have been times when I have done things that I feel deep regret about, and there is this emotion that you feel.
Like if you feel grief in that moment, if you cry, if you blame yourself, if you hit something, the responsibility, your self-responsibility, your anger at yourself can deservedly be lesser. And I think we all sort of feel this voice in our heads. And what I’m [01:16:00] talking about is not giving into that voice, because that voice is lying to you.
It doesn’t lower your culpability. Instead what you should do is instead of giving into that voice saying, “No, I need to learn from this. Okay, I wasn’t there for my mom as much as I needed to be. Is my dad still alive? Is anyone else in my life still alive? Are, are my family members that are estranged still alive that I should reconnect with?”
It should flip a switch for you in regards to all of that. The final thing is I’ll note that this entire ethical subset that we’ve discussed here also applies to interpersonal relationships. If an interpersonal relationship is purely masturbatory, you get nothing from it, it doesn’t enrich you, it doesn’t help you understand the world better.
Like when I talk with Leaflet, I often come away with entirely new framings of society. So true. A great one she gave that I’m gonna put it in the track here because it’s gotta go on a track somewhere, is I was talking about as humans genetically engineer themselves, we’re likely gonna [01:17:00] see different groups with different preferences begin to look very differently, where you might see techno-puritans end up looking like space marines one day, right?
Like giant super intelligent, super, you know, two hearts, everything like that. Adonis type figures. You might see another group, like let’s say Jews spec- ... spec into like a high agility build. And no, this isn’t a commandment for techno-pyrogenethums. You guys need to find out what works, what’s, what’s the correct build to spec into.
Spec into an agility build. You know, they become the cat people of the far future or something like this. And I was talking about how this makes diversity even more valuable when you have a real groups with differential strengths. And what Leaflet said is she goes, “Look, if this is confusing to you, think about this.”
You’re putting together your space boarding party. This is like, you know, y- your crew for a spaceship. This is like you putting together- ... your adventuring guild, right? You, you want, you know, yeah, your Orkan warrior and your, you know, dwarven workshop guy, and your [01:18:00] elven mage, and your, you know, y- you, you want all of the different builds in there, right?
That is how you build the best party. You would be stupid to make your entire party, you know, human or dwarf. Or y- you, you can do it for some sort of novelty reason, but we genuinely benefit from working alongside other groups. Even if the dwarves and the elves sometimes screw each other over, a party’s still better off having a dwarf and an elf in it.
And I think that that’s an important thing to think about. But the reason I was saying that this matters with friendships is I think we all know that there are friendships that we engage in in our lives, or relationships we engage in, that do nothing but drain from us. Those are directly sinful to have, and if you’re afraid that you’re a bad person for abandoning this person because oh, well, if you weren’t there for them, who would be?
If you don’t have a moral mandate to that individual, like they’re a parent of yours or something and even then this is tentative, if they are draining resources that could otherwise be going to the next [01:19:00] generation cut ‘em off. This also goes for parents. A parent who is draining resources that should be going to the next generation and isn’t contributing, cut ‘em off.
Because the next generation, the younger generation matters more than the older generation. And, and, and cut ‘em off can mean pull the plug. And this is also true of ourselves if we ever become drains to our families.
Simone Collins: Yeah, we hold to that.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway. If you’re gonna be like, “Oh, God says all life has value,” then why did he tell people to randomly kill people sometimes?
Why did he tell you to, to, to... Why did he punish Saul? It’s because that’s clearly not what God wants. God wants what’s best for society. That’s why he has guided, and the groups that have followed him have always lived- ... the, in the most flourishing of societies, the most prosperous of societies. Because that’s the downstream effect.
That’s why all the sins that we get as Christians generally make your life better. But they need to also generally make society better, and so we’re extrapolating from that. Anyway, thoughts, Simone?
Simone Collins: I probably agree. Yes. [01:20:00] Yeah. And I think it’s important al- to, also to note that a lot of the more, le- less sinful things you’ve pointed out would be seen as very sinful things to do per today’s standards, and just going with what feels socially comfortable is not necessarily
Malcolm Collins: the right thing. Yeah. And note here when it comes to weapons, you also have a duty to secure them, a, a religious duty to secure them, because an unsecured weapon can end a child’s life at any moment.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and that’s most gun deaths in America, right? It’s tragic, so yeah. Any, anyway, it
Malcolm Collins: also- But even if you, even if you hate our religion, if you want the right to carry a weapon, techno-puritanism is the way to go.
Speaker 9: And note, in terms of what the weapons look like, you can go in generally a few directions for the traditional weapons. One is to go with something that represents your ancestral group or that has ancestral ties to the Technopuritan tradition. Since we personally take [01:21:00] a lot from our own Scottish ancestry and we lean a lot into Roman ancestry, that could be a dirk or a gladius.
Or something that is inconspicuous if you think that that is the most efficient, like a belt buckle knife or something like that. It really depends on, one, your own heritage and identity and how you wish to honor that, and two, what works within your existing social context. With the understanding also always being that if everyone else is banned from having a weapon, then there’s no risk of you being killed in that situation or needing to protect someone, so you also don’t need a weapon.
But if any other religious group is allowed a weapon, because Jesus told us that we have to do this, and I know a lot of other Christian groups and denominations have pussied out of this in one way or another, but we are not them. And more is expected of us in terms of protecting ourselves and our communities than most of them expect from themselves.
Most of them live incredibly indolent, self-centered, [01:22:00] and efficaciousless lives. Why should we part our moral standards to theirs?
Simone Collins: There you go. Love it. All right, well, I will go start your dinner, and I love you very much.
Malcolm Collins: Aw, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Good tract, I think.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Interesting stuff, and I, yeah, sins are under-discussed, so I’m glad we’re going back into them.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Love you. Bye.
Simone Collins: Recording. We are here. We are back. It is happening.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, people, people like the medieval shirt on the leaflet call, so I decided I... It was okay to wear it on our-
Simone Collins: It’s good. It’s good. It’s, Mm ... the stuff that really signals BDSM is leather straps.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s what I
Simone Collins: was worried it appeared it looked- They ruin leather straps.
Yes, I mean- That’s why we didn’t buy anything with leather straps, yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: instead of [01:23:00] medieval. ‘Cause what I’m going for is Ren Fair man, because everybody says I make my wife dress like she’s from the past, so why don’t I dress like I’m from the past? And I go, “I don’t make my wife dress that way,” but, you
Simone Collins: know.
I chose this outfit. This is not, like, something you made me... I was like, I showed up one day wearing this stuff, and Malcolm’s like, “Well, okay.”
Malcolm Collins: Okay. I guess this is what we’re doing. All right. What are we doing for dinner tonight, by the way?
Simone Collins: I’m gonna make some kind of pasta dish for the kids. It might be macaroni and cheese.
It might not. I don’t know. Is it gonna have, like,
Malcolm Collins: a meat sauce or a... What, what type of sauce?
Simone Collins: I... Probably a macaroni and cheese sauce or possibly just Parmesan cheese. Okay. I, I don’t know yet. It sort of depends on what the kids want, what mood they’re in. I’m okay with mac
Malcolm Collins: and cheese tonight
Simone Collins: if- Mac and cheese?
Malcolm Collins: if you’re doing that, yeah.
Simone Collins: It suits their, their cheesy fancy. It might suit your cheesy fancy, too.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. I can do a reheated potato tonight.
Simone Collins: Yeah, you can with cheddar? Do a reheated
Malcolm Collins: potato with cheese.
Simone Collins: Okay. Cheesu. [01:24:00] Like cheddar, right? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and then some of those meat patty things, the pork ones. Yeah,
Simone Collins: bon cha, or whatever they’re called.
I don’t know.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Pork bon cha. They’re really good. They go really well with cheesy baked potato, I’ll tell you what.
Simone Collins: That makes a lot of sense. With some pepper on it, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: And this time I’m gonna try to make, what, slices and just air fry them and see what happens.
Malcolm Collins: Let’s try it.
Simone Collins: What could possibly go wrong?
It better be better, because it’s gonna get crispier when you air fry it. In theory. We don’t know. If it’s an already baked potato, it might be pretty much like... Potatoes are very strange in, like, w- the starch doing things that I don’t understand, ‘cause I don’t know potato science. I’m not a potato scientist.
Speaker 30: Let’s unpack everything right here, okay? All right. Yeah. W- now let’s get this mask out right here. I get this out right here. You can’t wait to start using them, huh? Yeah, I just can’t wait.
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 -
Kirsche joins Based Camp for an in-depth conversation on her journey from TERA PvP gamer to one of the most influential conservative VTubers. She discusses surviving a major cancellation attempt by Vice, her deep research exposing “Bridge” (the successor to DEI initiatives), why boycotts alone aren’t enough, and how the VTuber community helped turn the cultural tide.
Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into tactics for defeating woke capture in gaming and corporations, the power of parallel institutions, AI tools for creators, building alternative economies, and why nerdy weirdos are winning the culture war. Topics include abortion radicalization stories, pronatalism, free speech, and practical ways conservatives can create better systems.
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: it Hello, everyone. I am so excited to be here with you today. Today, we actually are doing a collab with Kirsche, which is so exciting, ‘cause I’ve wanted to do this one forever. It’s like everything’s coming in at once. And the context on Kirsche, if you are not familiar with who she is or her cultural relevance, because it’s m- hugely outsized, I think.
My entire life within nerdy cultural niches, we had the wokes and the proto-wokes come in, whether it was video games, whether it was, you know, cons, whether it was trading cards, whether it was y- you know, anime. They’d come in, and they would screw it all up, and they would take it over, and they’d push us out.
And every time it happened, it just felt like th- there was this endless tide, and it was gonna forever happen to everything I ever had an interest in. And then one fateful day, a sort of the [00:01:00] last wave, this happened in the VTuber community. And it happened specifically targeted at Kirsche. And when this happened, we did a number of videos on it.
And Kirsche, unlike every other person before her, h- held her ground and held it in a way where they actually holistically retreated. And they retreated to such an extent that post this, a conservative VTuber scene has begun to grow. And I mean, it was there beforehand, but now it feels much livelier and much more like a core part of the wider conservative movement, and it’s been beginning to regain crowd.
So, like, after your attempted cancellation, you then had the guy who tried to do this to the horror space in, in favor of shadows. I don’t know if you remember this whole controversy. I do. But he tried to claim the horror space, and he got absolutely eviscerated immediately. Yes. Absolutely thrown out i- i- immediately.[00:02:00]
And so her being in this, it felt very much like
Speaker: And then we’ll know how to beat them. One day it will all be over, and everyone will forget that this was the moment. This is when it turned. And it wasn’t the mighty
Daily Wire
Speaker: , it wasn’t
Some fancy
Heritage Foundation report
Speaker: There’s a
Speaker 4: Vtuber
Speaker: named
Speaker 4: Kirsche
Speaker: Do
Speaker 2: now! Yeah.
Good job,
Speaker 4: Reporter.
Speaker 3: Thank you, sir. That would be
Speaker 4: fox girl
Speaker 3: , sir.
Speaker 2: Carry on, .
Speaker: Yes, sir.
Malcolm Collins: or,
Malcolm Collins: But, but after this point while... And, and this is something w- I, I wanna talk about. While culturally we seem to be winning more, like, our ability to do something like boycott Harley Davidson or [00:03:00] Tractor Supply...
By the way, they’re super woke, Simone. I don’t know if you know this. Oh, yeah. To the extent that they’ve actually changed their policies has not been effective. But in the spaces we’ve been closer to, like the video game space, like the Ubisoft boycotts basically we learned we have to put these companies out of business.
Mm-hmm. And so I wanna talk with you about that experience, like you getting into this space before the, the big cancellation attempt How you thought about and managed that and how the culture has changed post that
Kirsche: All right. Okay. So I guess the starting point is, like, how, how did I feel during the cancellation?
No,
Malcolm Collins: no, how’d you get into VTub- Like, when you got into VTubing, did you intend to be a political Vtuber?
Kirsche: No, not really. I mean, I first got into VTubing back in, like, 2018, and I w- I wasn’t even, like, a Vtuber proper then. I was just, like, a PNGTuber. I or- originally started, like, without even a microphone.
Like, two weeks of streaming, [00:04:00] no microphone, no nothing ‘cause I had just quit my job at an insurance company after an elongated period of my anxiety being incredibly bad. And so at this point in time I was hopped up on, like, three different anxiety medications and I was just like, “Well, I don’t wanna just sit around and do nothing all day.
I feel like I should at least try to do something that could help my anxiety get better.” Well, my name is pretty well-known in the Tera community, so if I started streaming I would already have, like, a small audience of people who would be there, and then I could use that as, like, I’m gonna interact with people more frequently.
I’m gonna, you know, get a bit out of my safe bubble of, like, I only wanna do text communications. And so, like, eventually, you know, obviously I started using my microphone. I got a PNG. So, so basically- I d- got a, like, animated GIF
Malcolm Collins: How did you know the Tera community? What, what, w- w- what was your, your experience there?
Kirsche: I was one of the best PVPers on the server for many, many years. I was frequently rank one on the rank board whenever like, Fraywin Canyon would have its, like, [00:05:00] rollovers. I didn’t do threes as often, but I absolutely loved Fraywin Canyon and I loved doing like, guild PVP and whatnot. Like, it, it was really weird, like, coming into a streamer scene and seeing people like Lakari, who I had healed for, like, years before, already being huge streamers, right?
I was just like, “What the heck?” Zenosas Vex, I, I played with him in, like, Final Fantasy XIV raiding as well. So, like, to see all these people who, like, had been in, like, raid groups or PVP groups before in different games with me, I was like, “Oh. I was streaming. Streaming’s got pretty robust, is it not?”
So it
Malcolm Collins: was like a- ‘Cause, like,
Kirsche: previously I never paid attention to it ... social thing.
Malcolm Collins: It, it was like an alternative to what people used to do. Like, I’m, I’m gonna get out there and, and build a social life. It was like-
Kirsche: Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: that... Okay, so that’s fascinating. Okay, so now describe how you go from there to, like, what radicali- what, what got you on the I’m actually gonna start talking, because we didn’t start talking about politics either.
We, we had no interest in that to start. A- in fact, we started with pretty progressive political beliefs, Ooh ... getting into the space and everything. So what w- what hap- [00:06:00] was it that you were a conservative during this time or you had conservative-like beliefs, or were these beliefs that you developed over time in the space, or you just felt more comfortable talking about over time?
Kirsche: I would say I was probably already on the conservative path at this point. For the 2016 election I had been registered independent basically since I could register to vote, and for the 2016 election I changed my registration from independent to Republican so that I could vote for Trump in the primary And I, I guess I had been talking about, like, the nonsense with transgender targeting children probably since about 2011, 2012 or so.
Oh, that was impossible back then. Like, just in my personal life. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that was like- And I- ... you’d get canceled, fired for talking about that- Yeah ... like, 2011.
Kirsche: Yeah. And, and I, I’d post about it, like, on my Facebook, you know, which I didn’t have many p- friends on Facebook, ‘cause I’m not a huge social media person.
So I would just, like, post about it occasionally there. And so when I started streaming when my friend who would come and voice chat with me, my [00:07:00] old head moderator, Tangerine, he he would get our groups together. So he would either put us in Duty Finder and we would wait for ages, or he would, like, put it up in an LFG and we’d get other human beings.
While he was doing that, I would just read articles on stream. And so sometimes I would get through, like, a paragraph. Sometimes I’d get through, like, half of it. Sometimes I would have enough time to finish it. But it was like I would read that in between, like, waiting for dungeons because I just, I enjoyed reading the news in my off time.
Mm-hmm. And I didn’t have anybody in, like, real life to talk about the news with because they were all, like, either apolitical or like, “Yeah, I just don’t care. I just... It doesn’t matter to me.” So it was nice to like, you know, talk to this few people in my audience then who were also interested, like, in what was going on politically in America.
And it kind of shifted once a lot more of, I guess, leftist policy kind of stuff started being her- heralded in the VTuber community as apolitical. And so it’s like you could see all of the leftist rot coming in like it did to comics, like it did to video games- Yeah ... like it did to other things, and everyone being like, [00:08:00] “Well, that’s not political, but Kirsche is political.”
And it’s like, you know what? Let’s talk politics even more now because I don’t want what happened to all of my other favorite things to happen to VTubing.
Malcolm Collins: That’s fascinating. So, one story I’ve heard from some other VTubers we’ve talked to about this is there was like, there was a big shift after the release of the Harry Potter game.
Mm-hmm. Because a bunch of people hadn’t realized how captured the space had become-
Kirsche: Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: until they just tried to stream what they thought of as a fairly innocuous game. But it sounds like you broke the seal even before that based on, and I think a lot of people don’t realize this about a part of American culture because I, because I talk about this with, with very specific groups often, where I’m like, when you are calling out a group for something that feels very justified to you and then they start yelling at you saying, “Oh, that’s, you know, anti-Mormon or anti-Jewish or anti,” you know, whatever.
And I’m like, no, this is like a reasonable thing. I think a lot of just like a culturally American thing to do is to double down on it. Be like, you [00:09:00] can’t police me for something that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say. I’m gonna double down because you attempted to do that. And that’s sort of what drove you into this.
Kirsche: Yeah. And, and it’s like, and people, people like to be like VTuber purists, and I think that’s fine, where they’re just like VTubers will only play games, they’ll only do like cute girl doing cute things, like idle activities. And I think it’s fine to be a VTubing purist. Obviously, I’m very much outside of the typical idle culture since I do talk politics.
Yeah. And it’s like I feel like once, once we start making more gains and we stop having like the colonization of our spaces, then I can kind of finally be like, okay, I still enjoy talking politics, but I can actually go back to playing more games like I used to instead of having to talk about politics all the time
Malcolm Collins: Well, you do a very good job, and for people who haven’t watched her stuff, I often describe her as the top of the funnel for our sort of intellectual ecosystem.
Which is to say you often do the original research, which then drips out of all the various taps [00:10:00] who watch all of whatever’s trending right now. ?
Speaker 5: Federal scientists are working around the clock to probe its secrets. Once we understand the bug, we will defeat
it
Malcolm Collins: When did you begin to get into the deep research? ‘Cause that must take a ton of time ...
Kirsche: for the Bridge stuff specifically, man, I, I don’t have a ton of time to watch content creators like I used to, just ‘cause I’m a creator myself now.
Yeah But I used to watch a ton of videos and stuff from, like, ItsAGundam and Tim Pool and The Quartering. Yeah. And I originally even started watching Tim Pool way back in the day because he was, he was, like, firmly on the left. And I was like- Yeah ... this is a guy that, like, has some things in common with me, but I disagree with a lot of other things.
Let’s watch him, because that’s a great way to expose myself to, you know, the other side of ideas, and sort of solidify how I feel based on his arguments, you know? So it was, it was really nice. And then over time, obviously, he became more center and left a lot [00:11:00] of the left-leaning stuff behind. But The Quartering had made a video, and he had a sponsor, and I can’t even remember what the sponsor was for, but it basically, like, told you how woke a, a, a company was-
by using it. So you could, like, scan an item and it would give you, like, a woke score for the company. And they were like, “Here’s the top 10 most woke companies of, like, 2023,” I think it was or something. And Campbell’s was in there, and I was like, “The soup company? I like their soup. I li- I like their chicken pot pie pub style soup.
That’s good.” And I hadn’t, I’d never heard of anything about Campbell’s, even in all of my, like, going through other basic DEI stuff. Yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Kirsche: And I, I looked them up, and one of the first things I found was that Campbell’s was spearhead funding a project called Bridge. And I was like, “Oh. Well, what’s Bridge?”
And I found out that there are, like, two different Bridges. There’s one set up by Social Impact, and then there’s the one that I’ve been digging into by Sharyl Attkisson. And I thought at first when I first found them that they had something to do with each other, because Social Impact was [00:12:00] called, like, Bridge Project 2.0, and Sharyl Attkisson had referred to her project as, like, a, a 2.0 of DEI before.
So I was like, “Maybe,” but I couldn’t find any solid connections between those two specifically.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Kirsche: But going through Sharyl Attkisson’s was like- Wow. And I, I literally could only contribute or attribute it to having watched that, the quartering video. If I’d never watched that, I would have never looked into Campbell’s.
Simone Collins: Wait, what, what does, what does Bridge do? I’m out of the loop.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Simone, Simone’s not in this, this conspiracy also. I didn’t
Simone Collins: know.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So John, shock her in our audience.
Simone Collins: Please.
Kirsche: So a lot of people when I try bringing up Bridge, they’re just like, “Oh, this is just another renaming of DEI, like Jedi or whatever.”
And it’s like, well, no, it’s not. Bridge is a company that is working with tons of other very, very strong, huge corporations. And they have a ton of these corporations who are signed on to like their board of directors or their other like actual, like willing to be publicly associated with Bridge page.
Simone Collins: Huh.
Kirsche: But a lot of companies who aren’t even on Bridge, they follow the [00:13:00] same exact trajectory of hiding the DEI. And there was an interview with a, a lady who runs a podcast called like DEI After Five, and she was talking to another DEI acolyte saying that a lot of people don’t realize how good DEI is for them.
And so you have to hide the DEI vegetables- Oh my God ... in order to get people to eat them to realize that they’re good for them. It’s like the entire purpose for like for years before we started seeing it, Bridge was informing companies on how to obscure DEI, how to make it less public. The entire point of having like a DEI team after 2020 was to obviously showcase like, “Hey, we’re woke.
We’re doing the Marxist thing.”
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Kirsche: Bridge comes in and says, “This is gonna be a problem. You need to dissolve those DEI teams, and you need to embed those DEI acolytes in other parts of the company.” Whoa. Because if people see the like DEI outright, that’s gonna be an attackable vector. That’s gonna be a way to get yourself in legal trouble for discrimination.
100%.
Simone Collins: Oh,
Kirsche: whoa.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Whoa. Like [00:14:00] first, so there’s this implicit recognition that it is discrimination, and it is gonna get caught, and it is gonna get stopped, but then that’s so interesting ‘cause I listen to still so many leftist outlets. And of course- Mm-hmm ... there’s always the, I mean, just as there were accusations of greenwashing when environmentalism was at its zenith, then there’s the accusations
Malcolm Collins: of like- I, I’m so frustrated
Simone Collins: DEI
Malcolm Collins: washing My, my brother retired from Doge recently, and that I, I, I should have sent him this, been like, “Hey, just tear-” Oh ... “tear into this.”
Simone Collins: Doge did not go far enough. It did not. Oh my gosh. That is insane.
Malcolm Collins: But so one of the things that you frequently talk about, and I think it’s an interesting meta conversation to have.
Actually, no, we’re gonna wait. I’m gonna be disciplined. Before we get into this- Discipline ... I do wanna get the full history. Oh, yes ... of how, how... Okay, so you began going into the Bridge stuff, w- you, so you got into the Bridge stuff before the Anna Vale thing?
Kirsche: Yeah. That was, I started the Bridge like research, I wanna say the end of 2023, and then my first posts about it were beginning of 2024 [00:15:00]
Malcolm Collins: Wow.
Okay, so that’s when you begin to get into the, the sort of intellectual deep dive. And she does this not just with research on companies, which you do a lot of, of, of great stuff on, but also research on, like if you wanna know about like Joe Money, like go watch her episode about that, right? Like- Yeah
she’ll go, we’ll do an hour long episode. You’ll have like three hours going into it, right? Oh my gosh. Like really deep stuff.
Kirsche: And I, I super appreciate my audience as well, because it’s like when I do this Bridge deep dive stuff and I, I wanna like show what I’m looking at so nobody can be like, “Oh, she’s just making it up,” it’s like, no, you can see how I found it while I’m live.
Hmm. But it, it is a lot of corpo speak. It is a lot of like dry, “Hey, this is really good information. They’re telling us what they’re gonna do. They’re telling us how they’re going to subvert us,” but it’s very dry, very boring language
Malcolm Collins: Wow. Wow. This, and then this is when, So, so in this part of the timeline, now we’re at the Anna- and the Anna Valen thing was a complete sea change for a lot of people, one, because I think it validated the VTube community for the wider [00:16:00] conservative movement that before it was unsure, like Fox Girl, right?
Like, “What? Ugh, I don’t know. That looks weird. That’s like a furry- Yeah ... thing or something,” right? You know? And we see the outlets that were used to sort of affirming, “Oh, you can trust this,” because they’re mad at it, and then all of a sudden I think a bunch of people were like, “Oh, okay. Okay. I’ll, I’ll take a, I’ll take a look at this.”
Because the story did so well. I, I don’t know if, if y- so on our video on this, I don’t know if you ever, have you ever dove over Anna Valen’s personal diaries?
Kirsche: I don’t know what the personal diaries are, but yeah. We, we found quite a bit on their degenerate interests, I guess you could say.
Malcolm Collins: They’re, they’re really sad. Like, basically- ... their, their life falls apart. That’s our episode where we, we call them a cenobite. I don’t know if you know cenobites from Hellraiser.
Kirsche: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re like the life of a cenobite. This is what happens.
Kirsche: That’s a, that’s a good word to use.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We, we, we, we had, like, AI videos where we have, like, cenobites doing book readings with kids and, like-
“Why, why are you having trouble with this?” You know, like, chittering [00:17:00] their teeth. Ah. Yeah, right.
Simone Collins: But,
Malcolm Collins: Then, then post this a really interesting thing happened which was in a huge part because of the, the Vtuber community. W- we go into this deeper in some other episodes, but the Vtuber community is intrinsically more nerdy than other parts of the right.
Like Tim Pool, I, I used to be a big Tim Pool fan myself. I, I don’t find his new stuff as interesting as his older stuff, but he you know, he’s still, like, a n- a normal not nerd guy, right? Yeah. But the Vtuber community, almost intrinsic in its identity, is not gonna crash out on anime, like Matt Walsh or something like that.
Yeah. It’s not gonna crash out on girls in bikinis.
Kirsche: Michael Knowles interviewed a furry recently, so it’s not yet over for me. Maybe I should reach out again
Simone Collins: as well.
Malcolm Collins: Wait. Who, who interviewed a furry?
Kirsche: Michael Knowles. Michael Knowles. He’s part of the- Oh, what furry
Simone Collins: did he interview?
Kirsche: I have no idea. I just saw some-
some video of him on Twitter with, like, a guy in a fur suit in an interview setting, and I was like, “What the hell?”
Simone Collins: [00:18:00] Glass ceilings broken.
Malcolm Collins: Cra- crazy lore on us. We were supposed to be on the last episode of Tucker Carlson. Oh,
Kirsche: wow ...
Malcolm Collins: but he was canceled. Yeah, his booking team and everything. That’s crazy.
We set up a date and everything like that, and then he got canceled. F*****g S- so angry about that. I mean, I wouldn’t wanna be on Tucker Carlson now. I wouldn’t care as much, but I mean, I still would. He’s big enough, I still would.
Simone Collins: Yes, you would. Come on. Yeah.
Kirsche: I have no idea what happened to Tucker Carlson.
I just know that I like his soundbite of, like, “Y- you’ve been a bad girl, and you’re gonna get a vigorous spanking.” What? Why did you say that? Why did you say that? Oh,
Malcolm Collins: we gotta, we
Kirsche: gotta
Malcolm Collins: drop you in on our conspiracies here. So this is one of our biggest conspiracies. It is and I, I don’t know, like, I say it as a joke, but, like, also I wouldn’t put it past him.
It’s that whenever somebody starts being mildly critical of Israel, Mossad poisons them so they go crazy. And then, like, three years later, they’re, like, gibbering insanity. This happened to Tucker Carlson. This happened to Candace Owens. This happened to Nick Fuentes. Like, they all start just m- being mildly critical.
Three years later, crazy.
Kirsche: So it’s like this is the prototype [00:19:00] of the mind control chip, but if you have it in you for too long you just go crazy?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, oh yeah, that, that’s probably it. Oh, like in The Fall Out where they, they turn it on too much and their heads explode.
Kirsche: Yeah, the technology just isn’t there yet.
They only get a good couple of years.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I know we’re laughing at this, but it did turn out that the Southern Poverty Law Center was the KKK’s major donor. I
Kirsche: mean- So like- It was crazy to find out ...
Malcolm Collins: yeah. They definitely-
Kirsche: There’s so little right-wing extremism, the left has to fund it.
Simone Collins: Yep.
Malcolm Collins: ‘Cause there’s just no- Someone’s gotta do it
really any extremists anymore. There’s no- Yeah. But it ended up pushing this sort of like nerd version of right-wing culture, which I think has, has done a lot to create this sense of community. And it’s one of the things that we’ve noticed as well, where when we started as like right-wing content creators and actually I’d be interested in your thoughts on this all of a sudden because of the VTuber community, we’ve gotten into like this community where like we interact with other people a lot more, which didn’t happen in our early days.
But I guess you never were in that, right? Like, you [00:20:00] always have been interacting with people. Or did it like feel to you like this wider fringe group began to appear all of a sudden? Or
Kirsche: was that only true of me? It definitely, it definitely began to feel like a wider fringe group began to appear. I always kinda kept to myself.
Like, there were only like a few handful of people that I would collab with, especially regularly. I just like, I don’t know, didn’t, didn’t really like reaching out to people too often, and especially once I started going in a more political direction. I was just like-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...
Kirsche: well, a lot of people just wanna, you know, play games and, and do, do normal stuff, and I don’t wanna have like the effect of, well, their audience is gonna revolt and cause issues for them.
And so like I you- it’s just not, it s- it sounds like a headache, right? Yeah. So I just, I just didn’t do that all that much. And it’s also interesting, I agree with you definitely that the, the Vice situation blew things too outside of the VTuber sphere because in 2024 I was supposed to be on a panel at OffKai, and I got told that [00:21:00] I can’t be on panels because I make volunteers feel unsafe.
And they showed me a handful of tweets like making a joke about Sam Hyde entering a woman’s weightlifting competition or explaining the difference between the LGBTQ extra long acronym between Canada and America, ‘cause we have two different really long acronyms. And apparently me explaining that to people is problematic.
And also like me telling Tim Poole that he was wrong about the Charlemagne clip when, when he was saying Charlemagne wants DEI gone. It’s like, that’s not what he said, Tim. Right, they had, they had a handful of like posts and clips, like my, my pronouns on Discord being burger queen. Mm-hmm. They’re like, “This is why you make people feel unsafe.”
Malcolm Collins: And this is why they feel unsafe. Yeah. No, I mean, these are the tactics they use to control organizations, right? Like-
Kirsche: Yeah. And I mean, I- ... I’ve shown proof of, of like OffKai not only playing these kind of political games where they’re like, “You don’t believe in the things we do, you can’t have a panel here, but we’re gonna have identity politics panel about like being Black and Vtubing.”
Malcolm Collins: Oh my
Kirsche: God. “And we’re gonna actively sabotage people like in Phase Connect on their, on their stage [00:22:00] debuts.” And it’s like, no, people were just like, “Well, Kirsa should have just kept her mouth shut. Kirsa shouldn’t have caused any of this drama. Kirsa shouldn’t have said anything.” Right? Like, this is causing a huge issue for something that like everyone likes going to and it’s like, why do you wanna give money to people that hate you?
Like, yeah, you wanna support your Oshi, yeah, you wanna do things, but shouldn’t you demand like a change in the venue, the people who run the venue? Mm. Because they clearly dislike you. Why would you give them money?
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Well, I wanna, I wanna I’m gonna say this for the end, the, the, the, the going into how we actually fight and win-
Simone Collins: Mm
Malcolm Collins: and where we fought and then not won, and the tactics that we use and the tactics that they use at work. But one interesting tidbit that I thought you’d find fun remember how I said we started this podcast much more progressive? One of the first guests we had on this podcast, I, I doubt you’d be surpri- you, you’d ever be on the same podcast as this person, but was Aella.
Oh,
Kirsche: the f*****g sex lady.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. We had
Kirsche: a- Oh my God ...
Malcolm Collins: an early podcast with her on how to do a consensual non-consent orgy
Kirsche: Didn’t [00:23:00] they just have a tweet recently where, like, somebody got pregnant at a consensual non-consent orgy? Okay, so, yeah, Romy- Like, I
Simone Collins: don’t- Romy- Yeah ... who helped organize her gang bang birthday met her now f- I think future husband also father of her first kid as a fluffer at the p- at the party. And they
Kirsche: moved on to- That is a story you literally cannot tell people.
That is so disgusting.
Simone Collins: Romy, no, in the Bay Area, in the Bay Area, I, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the Bay Area,
Malcolm Collins: that’s romantic.
Simone Collins: It is, it is so normative. But- Like, I- you just think that BDSM equipment is part of people’s everyday furniture, and I’m not kidding about that. Like, it’s just- She grew up in San
Malcolm Collins: Francisco, so
Kirsche: yeah.
Yeah, but, like, imagine their kid being like, “Oh, you were the f*****g orgy baby. Do you even know who your real dad is?”
Malcolm Collins: Hold on, we gotta the, the, the funnier thing about all of this is in a recent episode of our show, Romy, the girl who you’re talking about, who met the father of her child at a gang bang, wrote a piece against abortion that radicalized my [00:24:00] wife, Simone, against early stage abortion, like, last week.
Kirsche: That is crazy.
Simone Collins: I was previously against, like, after week 12. So basically when you develop neural tissue and you’re capable of feeling pain. Yeah. Like, no, we’re not doing this. Then it’s about a conversation about euthanasia if, like, you’re gonna die painfully anyway. But, like, before that, whatever, who cares?
I th- I didn’t have any understanding that there was anything wrong with misoprostol or anything like that. And then she writes this incredibly articulate Substack about her experience trying, like, going through a chemical abortion, early stage abortion, and it’s so horrifying. And she develops- It, it, probably, like, postpartum psychosis. Oh, wow. And it’s horrifying. And then she, like, when she talks about it with other people, other women, ‘cause of course this happens a lot in the Bay Area. Like my mother didn’t think that she’d be able to get pregnant around the time she was trying to have me because she had had abortions and they had, I think, been complicated and other things like that.
So I[00:25:00]
I- apparently a lot of women were like, “Oh yeah, I’ve had that terrible, harrowing experience as well trying to, like, get a kind of- When you
Malcolm Collins: talk about harrowing, the piece includes eating babies. If, if we just wanna talk about like- What?
Simone Collins: No, well, not eating bab- Like, a- another woman had passed her, her baby, like, after taking it, like a- after taking misoprostol, and passed the baby in, like, the, the like a dive bar bathroom.
And was like, “There it is.” And then she’s just like, “Well, I have to eat it now.” And she- No you don’t. What the f**k? But like, Rosie’s like, “I completely understand.” And, like, unfortunately I’m so ... I get it too. I’m like, yeah, I ... Like, where are you gonna put it, in the toilet? Like, you have to reintegrate it.
I don’t know. But, like, it’s so heartbreaking and, like, when you actually think about, like, even though this is a very early life, it’s still a life, and it’s still this thing that you’re destroying. And it’s-
Malcolm Collins: Talk about radicalizing. You should read the piece, by the way. It’s radicalizing. You should read it.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s- Can I, can
Kirsche: I- Like, I think, I think my, like, least conservative opinion is I’m still on the, like- it, sa- safe, [00:26:00] rare, whatever the f**k it was. Like, or the original reason- Yeah ... for abortion. It’s, like, very early on, very rare, in, like, certain circumstances, like incest, rape. Like, I’m, I’m okay with those kinds of things.
Like, in the case of motherless- That’s how I feel ... the baby is not viable, right? Like, it’s, it’s not- Yes ... going to survive to term.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Kirsche: That makes sense to me. Mm-hmm. But, like, if, if I was in a position where I was getting a chemical abortion, which is obviously, like, you don’t have to go into the doctor for that.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Kirsche: I’m not gonna go out to, like, dive bars or other... I’m like, “I’m gonna stay home as much as possible,” right? ‘Cause, like, why the, why the f**k would I take that risk? Yeah. That’s insane to me.
Simone Collins: Yeah. The,
Malcolm Collins: the, the piece starts with a, an abortion party, right? Just to sort of highlight how little she thought of this at the beginning, but I think it shows, like, people are getting radicalized.
Like- Yeah ... like, even the people you wouldn’t expect.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Kirsche: Yeah, there shouldn’t ever be something called an abortion party. What the f**k is wrong with people? Holy Christ.
Malcolm Collins: Oh.
Simone Collins: And [00:27:00] yeah, I mean, it’s, we’re getting to this point where I think people are now, like, ironically, even if they’re really in far progressive culture, making fun of it from within it like, sort of realizing how sick it is, but then not fully internalizing that until they come face to face with it in some personal way.
And then they’re like, “Oh, wait this really isn’t working out.” And hopefully that will happen before too much damage is done to, to more of society, but we’ll see.
Malcolm Collins: Society’s been pretty damaged, Simone.
Kirsche: Yeah. Yeah, I’m gonna have to agree with that one.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, so, the, the, the direction I wanna go with this is now let’s talk about, like, tactics.
So one of the things that you keep putting, pointing out is that we have these warriors out, like Robbie Starbucks, right? Who will go out and do a piece on a company and be like, “Ah, you see, I exposed them for being woke.” And then a bunch of newspaper articles will come out saying they’re, they said they won’t be woke anymore, and, and they don’t even say that.
And then people on the right just, like, believe it, right? Yeah. And everything goes back to normal, largely speaking. And the policies don’t change. Because once you, you get these [00:28:00] people into companies, it’s very, very hard to cut them out. And in fact, there is only one instance I am aware of, of them being effectively cut out and that was the Twitter acquisition.
Yep. And that required a, what was it? Like 89% reduction in staff.
Kirsche: Yeah, it was a huge reduction, and that, that is the only way to cut them out, is to fire them. Because again, Bridge has been informing companies, like, this should not be a siloed approach. You cannot have DEI just in your marketing or just in your HR team.
Any kind of, like, DEI consultants or DEI teams within your company need to be dissolved, for one, to protect your company from lawsuits against conservative activists like America First Legal. Yeah. And two, because this needs to be a company whole approach. This needs to be completely holistic. All of your employees need to be on board with the DEI work.
And eventually they will just naturally take it home and bring it to their communities and bring it to their dinner tables. This is, this is the ultimate goal. And so whenever these like DEI teams are being dissolved and Robbie [00:29:00] Starbuck was like, “Yeah, we’re winning. We did this.” Even in their press releases they’re like, “We are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
And it’s like, why can’t anybody read? Just, just like I’m not a genius here, I just have eyeballs. They barely work and I can still read. Like,
Malcolm Collins: So, so let’s, let’s, think through. So the, and I had mentioned before we started recording, like the one instance where like we’ve really successfully won against DEI is in the video games industry.
And that is not, a- and, and we need to talk about like how radical some of these win cases were. We had video games that people were spending like $400 million on that had like a top player count of like a few hundred people.
Kirsche: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Or like 20 people pl- playing a couple weeks post-launch. And this didn’t happen once.
This happened like, it’s still happening today. Like this has been happening for years, it’s still happening today, and it’s like the entire industry. And I think that what I take away [00:30:00] from what happened to the video game industry is boycotts alone will never convince a company that’s infected with DEI to remove the DEI.
Kirsche: Yeah. I-
Malcolm Collins: if, if you couldn’t, I mean, keep in mind when L- Ubisoft like fails, that’s like real people losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Mm-hmm. Right? Like this isn’t like a small thing. When these giant Sony games fail, this is like real hu- And the, even they can’t wake up enough. And so let’s try to think through, why can’t they wake up enough?
Because the people at the very, very top, I don’t feel that they’re actually... I think they think going after DEI, “Well, what if somebody says I’m a racist?” And, and being called a racist in today’s soci- even still, even after all the work we’ve done is still this absolutely toxic thing, when it, when it’s like, even when it’s like not true, right?
That can get you fired, that can lose you LPs. I mean, that happened with us. We were in the private equity space, right? Like [00:31:00] that’s Simone and my background in this sort of thing. We can’t get hired at a major mi- private equity firm now. So it’s wielding that against... What are, what are your thoughts?
I, I’d love to hear your thoughts before I ramble more.
Kirsche: I think that a lot of it is the people in charge of these companies, they understand the maliciousness in their lies, but they are people who believe like once the cultural transformation takes place, we will be positioned in part of the like elite class.
We’re not gonna be like the plebs down there on the bottom. We’ll be in a good position because we have ownership of these companies. People will want us to promote their messages. We’re gonna be part of the ruling class. And then all of the little people who work on the video games who are like, “Yes, DEI is necessary.
You just hate games with women and Black people in them,” they’re like the true believer useful idiot types where they actually believe that they’re doing something good that’s going to have a good effect and is going to help them reach the like utopia that they’re dreaming of in this regard. And so, like, one thing I’ve always been saying ever since I discovered [00:32:00] Bridge was that they are basically foregoing short-term profit for long-term cultural dominance.
So- Still, yeah ... even though we see all of these, all these games and companies losing money, and it’s great, and it’s a win, and I love to see it, definitely keep voting with your wallet, they’ve planned for this. They, they know that they’re going to be losing money because the modern audience doesn’t exist yet.
The modern audience is what they’re striving to create. By transforming all these IPs into something horrendous with Marxism and all this DEI nonsense, the younger generations will mostly have the exposure to these remakes, to these retellings, and to these other stories that are being made right now that we all make fun of and don’t buy.
And that is where the problem lies. Yes, some of us will go to libraries. Some of us have our own, like, VHS or DVD collections. Some of us are smart enough to be like, “We don’t wanna show our children that. We’re gonna only show them the original IPs.” That... You have to think like the average normie. The average normie- Yeah
isn’t gonna be hunting down the classics. They’re gonna be showing their kids whatever [00:33:00] slop exists, which is why we have an entire generation of iPad children in the first place, because that made it much easier to just offload your child to TV.
Malcolm Collins: And so it’s very- Can you imagine how fucked we would be if they were actually competent?
Like-
Kirsche: Yes ...
Malcolm Collins: if, if they could actually make good games or tell good stories, right? Like, we, we actually have an episode on this called the, The Wachowski Effect, which is why do trans people’s ability to tell good stories seem to ch- like, just tank after they transition?
Kirsche: That’s a great question ...
Malcolm Collins: because, like, Dragon Age: Veilguard, the writers for it were the same writers as Mass Effect 2.
Mass Effect 2 was awesome. Wachowsk- the, the Veilguard was terrible, you know? Mm-hmm. And w- I mean, we... It, it could be any number of things. We, we go over a few hypotheses in this. But yeah, we’ve... The, the... And I think this is a core to our eventual victory, is that there... It turns out they’re, like, really bad at their jobs.
Like, once they stuff these companies with DEI people, they are comically inept. M- I mean, we’ve seen this from the [00:34:00] games that they’re making and stuff like that. These are not particularly impressive games. And look at, like, Har- Harley Davidson. What innovation has Harley Davidson made since it, since it w- w- what, what new interesting thing?
What has Campbell’s done? What has... They, they win by capturing institutions, and we can only subvert them by creating counter institutions that are strictly better than the captured institutions. Mm. And I think that this is partially why we have this huge freak-out around AI because AI is allowing for that.
You know, if you look at something like The Skybrow Cinematic Universe. Like, in terms of like the music I listen to on a day-to-day basis, you know, it, it, it includes something like Skybrows or Holy Ball or, you know, any of the, the creators that are directly downstream of our ecosystem. Because the songs that they’re creating are as good as any other song I’m getting out there right now.
And I think with AI in programming hopefully we can see, and I’d really [00:35:00] like to see this in our space, it’s something I’m beginning to work on, is people in our space making video games. And then eventually hopefully we can move to making products. Like, Leaflet had to move to making her own plushies and making plushies for other VTubers because the plushie company wouldn’t work with her because she’s a conservative.
What, what are your
Kirsche: thoughts? I, I would also, I would also say, like, M-Make- Makeship dropping conservative creators was really interesting to me, and throughout my cancellation campaign I was, I was talking to, like, YouTube’s people. They were completely fine working with me again. I just did another plush with them.
So like there are still companies that are like, “You know, we don’t care about the cancel mob. We’re, we’re going to work with people that we think are decent people
Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. But does that not, I mean, do you... O- okay, so a, a side question before this because there was something you said at the beginning that I was a little confused by.
Do you think the people who actually run these large companies, not the people who run, like, the DEI firms, like Bridge and stuff like that, but the large companies, are they actually committed to the DEI mission, or are they just not thinking? Are they just [00:36:00] sort of like the scare tactics are working against them?
Kirsche: I, I think it’s probably a little bit of both. Depend- it depends on the company, but some of them definitely will have the, like, CEOs who are like, “Yeah, this is all b******t, but I’m gonna push it anyways because it will position me as, you know, a, a person in the ruling class rather than to be ruled over like the other little pleb useful idiots.”
And then there’s also gonna be the people who are like, “Well, I’m terrified of people making a stink, so we should just capitulate to them.” And when, when you encounter one of those, like, “We’re terrified of them making a stink,” you just have to make sure that the counter stink is worse than the initial cancel stink, right?
If companies are more afraid of the backlash that they will get from cutting creators or cutting people from a regular job for just no f*****g reason because everyone’s like, “I hate them. They’re a big meanie pooh-head.” Yeah. As long as companies fear the result that happens after that, then they’ll stop doing it.
At least the ones that are just afraid of that cancel mob anyway.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, we, we did see [00:37:00] a change in company policy if we talk about the victories we’ve had around overly woke advertising after the Dylan Mulvaney thing. Yeah. Like, I have not seen things that bad in advertising since then, but they’re still within the company.
They’re still preventing who can be hired.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Right? Like, the statistic that came out about the gaming industry, what was it? There, there was, like 45% of, like, new hires in the gaming space over the last year were LGBT. That’s crazy. It’s like that’s, you know, active and aggressive discrimination, right?
You know? Yeah. And w- I mean, once you get that in there, you can’t fight back without creating lateral institutions. Now you’ve mentioned still wanting to work with people if they just cancel s- like, have you thought about what... Yeah, what’s y- what’s your battle plan? You’re, you’re the chief here.
You’ve been at this for longer. You’ve y- you’ve been doing this. What’s, what’s the battle plan here? How do we actually win?
Kirsche: That, that is a great question. In my opinion, what needs to happen in order to get the DEI rot out of companies is either you starve [00:38:00] them for money for so long, like Ubisoft, that they just have to fire everyone and they end up closing down, which, I mean, they haven’t yet, but they might be.
And other than that, it, it’s just like you have to make sure everyone gets fired who’s involved in pushing DEI stuff. And that should be easy to tell based on what their roles used to be at the company, what they did in their positions, the kind of materials they would push, right? Like, you just have to make sure those people cannot be there.
And that’s why, like, colleges, when colleges would be like, “Oh, we’re getting rid of our DEI department,” and then they would just reassign their, like, DEI people to other places. I’m like, they didn’t do anything. They did what Bridge told them to do. They, they reassigned people to embed them elsewhere so it’s less noticeable what they’re doing.
The DEI is still there, and you can’t believe them that it’s not there until they fire these people
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, so how best to starve them? So one of the things that, that I’m seeing so this is a trend we’ve noted among conservative women in our circles. And this happened [00:39:00] after we learned that Leaflet buys from the same f- clothing manufacturer Simone does which is we’ve learned that a lot of conservative women are just buying, like, medieval clothes on Etsy.
Kirsche: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, yeah, actually.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, God.
Simone Collins: They work. They’re good.
Kirsche: Yeah, they, they are.
Malcolm Collins: But I think that across brands we’re in a world where we can do that now, right? Like, if a stuffy company isn’t good enough, a, a, a single VTuber like Leaflet can figure out how to make it herself. If a- Mm-hmm ... a clothing brand, they’re annoying, we can build our own supply chains.
And with AI, increasingly we can make our own products. So I was talking to you before the stream, but, like, if you look at the AI system that we’ve built, ‘cause we’re just constantly building new systems, we’ve built best chatbots on the market. We’ve built best AI both not safe for work video and image generation on the market that uses every mainstream model.
VTuber creation, recipe creation, an auto stalker and,
Kirsche: I think it’s also really funny how, like, the people on the left have gone from, “Ha ha, no one wants to work [00:40:00] with you, you stupid chud” to, “Ha ha, you have to use AI because no one will work with you, you stupid chud.”
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it’s like, but AI is awesome.
I like
Simone Collins: the AI stuff. And also, yeah, like, ha ha, I will never use AI, and then their lunch is eaten by all the people who are just building better companies. It’s like-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the product we’re working on now that’ll hopefully be done in, like, a week or something like that is we also have a vibe coding software that we’ve built, but is gonna be an integration for, like, email and Discord and WhatsApp, and all of the places where people reach out to you just because of us as, like, famous content creators, and I’m like, “I only want this in one place.”
Mm-hmm. And then complete automation for that. And I’m like, I’m really annoyed that no one has done that very well yet, so I just decided to do it myself. But, like, people in our space can just build stuff, like build games, build s- And I wanna really encourage that, ‘cause I think that that’s the only way for us to realistically eat at their money.
Like, if somebody- Mm-hmm ... in our space starts creating motorcycles, I bet they would be much better motorcycles than Harley motorcycles. And I think it’s probably doable. I [00:41:00]
Kirsche: mean, there’s definitely a barrier of entry to doing stuff like that, especially whereas, I mean, it, it’s starting to get a bit better, and I know some companies that I’ve worked with are looking to get more manufacturing back onto the American side instead of having to use China for everything, which is great.
I love that. Yeah. I would love more, like, American-made products, especially to offer to my audience. And, and so it’s like there, there is a barrier of entry to, like, making physical stuff like that. But yeah, I agree. If, if somebody has the wherewithal to do that, like, absolutely set up a competing company.
Try to... Like, you, you’re probably not even gonna have to try too hard to get business away from a company that people have to begrudgingly buy for, from because there’s, like, not- Not really m- much else to go for, right? Like, a company- Yeah ... Nas- usually, like they control so much, you know?
Malcolm Collins: Well, people hate these companies now, and, and, and they are increasingly...
I mean, if they become increasingly inefficient and when I talk about them being inefficient, look at the cost of, of food these days. Look at the cost of the things- Mm-hmm ... you buy out there these days. Mm-hmm. The cost of the raw components have not gone [00:42:00] up that much. What you’re paying for is corporate incompetence.
That, that’s been the primary point of inflation. You, you talk about this on your show but like, if you look at the education system in terms of like putting money into public schools, and you look at a graph of like increasing costs over time, the amount of money that’s going for teachers over like the past 20 years has been about the same.
Mm-hmm. The amount of money going to administration has increased like 20x.
Kirsche: Yeah, the useless daycare jobs.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so, it’s, it’s... I, I guess burn this stuff down, but also on the right, r- we need super doge. I think you’re right about that. That’s what I want from the next president is super doge.
Kirsche: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: I
Simone Collins: don’t know.
I don’t, I really don’t know if that’s possible. Part of me is just like let these systems... I mean, they are financially unsustainable. With demographic collapse, they will crumble. Like they, they will, they... Their days are numbered, so just let them collapse. And more important it is, it’s, it is more important now to invest in and focus on the alternate systems that we’re going to have to [00:43:00] all adopt- Mm
as those systems crumble and fall apart. Like just today, I’m so excited about Midjourney’s medical announcement that they have this new scanner that is faster and hopefully in the future less expensive than an MRI that can be integrated with like a spa experience. And it’s coming from like the company that I use to generate AI anime images.
Like it’s, it’s amazing. And it’s... I, I think that we are going to see, to your point, like we don’t necessarily have to think, well, I don’t know if we’re ever gonna see US manufacturing again. I don’t think we’re ever gonna see like armchair scientist control of medical technology again because AI is weirdly and disruptively going to make a lot possible that we didn’t think was possible.
Kirsche: I think there’s also something to be said for like building your own ecosystem and getting together with other people to help build them things as
Simone Collins: well. Absolutely. Yeah.
Kirsche: But not just like waiting for the old giants to fall apart. This is, this is the point where it’s like you have to be aggressive in at the bare minimum being like, “Don’t buy [00:44:00] products from these people and here’s why.”
Like not doing the same preachy thing that leftists do where it’s just like, “If you buy these things, you’re an evil Hitler.” But it’s like you wanna get that information out so people know like, “This is what this company is doing. This is what they’re gonna continue to do. They’re lying to you, and they’re trying to subvert you.”
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Well, and I think, and I think for my audience, this is... I, I, I... One thing I like about this space is, like, you obviously were a big motivation for, like, Sky Browse to do some of his early videos and stuff like that, right? Like-
Kirsche: His videos are so freaking good, man.
Malcolm Collins: Aren’t they? They’re fantastic.
Amazing. Have you seen it all, by the way?
Simone Collins: Oh.
Kirsche: I’ve seen- Yeah ... a good chunk and I’ve, I’ve left some to play while I’m working. They’re like-
Malcolm Collins: Our kid sings them all the time. Now our kid is, is singing the, the, the Mormon one, the, the Bricks and Mini Pigs. Cool. You know, like...
Kirsche: I haven’t even gotten into that situation.
I had a few people in my chat tell me about it, and I was like, “Oh, I should look into it.” But then so much information kept coming out about it, I was like, “How am I going to- You- ... digest this?”
Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s incred- It will, it will [00:45:00] piss you off so much. Like, like so many times, and I think that this is, is, is, is important w- more widely in our community, is be like, look, I like Mormons, I want Mormons on, on the in, but, like, we do need to get in some sort of intra community policing, right?
Like, we, we, we sometimes go into this with, like, I’m a big fan of Jews, right? But like everyone’s always like, “Malcolm, Greater Israel,” and I’m like, I don’t much care about the countries around Israel. Like, okay, Greater Israel, f- whatever. But, I’m
Kirsche: kind of just like, that’s not my sand, not my problem.
I don’t care about anything that exists- Yeah ... in the sandbox. I just don’t want American people or American money going to any wars over there.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. We, we need to cut off funding for Israel. And I, and I was like, I don’t understand why we don’t just do that. It’d be such a win for the Trump administration.
It-
Kirsche: I would love to cut off aid from everywhere. Like, holy s**t. At least, like, I understand if we wanna maintain our position as, like, a super world power that nobody can f**k with. Like, occasionally we’ll have to just, like, throw money at some p- places. But for the [00:46:00] most part, I think we should cut that off entirely.
Cool. Like, zero aid to anywhere for at least a little while.
Simone Collins: Well, and it’s really, it’s not even our aid that matters. It’s, it’s our supply chains and buying power. Right. So, like, we don’t even need to provide aid. We can just change small incentives here and there with where things are shipped- Well, and see-
and how things are shipped ...
Malcolm Collins: w- I think we’ve gotta be aware of the consequences of cutting all aid. Like, look, when US aid was cut, the, the, the thing was cut look at all the elections of Latin America since then. Rightists keep getting elected.
Kirsche: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Like, clear- clearly this has had a huge- Not enough
huge impact on these countries.
Kirsche: Clearly ...
Malcolm Collins: some of, some of them are putting people in jail and, and now have lower rates of homicide than they’ve ever had before.
Kirsche: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Some of them are cutting major social programs. Th- this is horrifying.
Kirsche: Horrifying for whom?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right. I love that Trump and Argentina are, they get along so well now that they’re like, “Hey, let’s, let’s hand back those islands from the UK,” right?
Like- Oh
Simone Collins: my
Kirsche: gosh. And everyone was just like, “Oh, I thought people on the right wanted foreign aid cut. What about all this money he gave Argentina?” It’s like, well, [00:47:00] Argentina paid it back after, like, six months or some s**t, so...
Malcolm Collins: that’s true. That’s also awesome that like the in, in Latin America we are seeing a lot of projects work.
Like what’s happening in El Salvador is amazing.
Kirsche: It is. And I, I wish we could do like El Salvador and just start arresting activist judges who keep f*****g things up. I wish we could just do that.
Malcolm Collins: And the El Salvador prison system is apparently like really, really cool and good. They really focus on like, getting people jobs and stuff like that, and like- Huh.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, they’re, they’re nice. They have, you know, they have the nice prisons and they have the less nice prisons. But the nice ones are super nice. Well, the, for
Malcolm Collins: the kids anyway. Yeah. You just, you know, I, I, I don’t mind the, the, the Trump policy of just like instead of prison, just like e- the, the sending migrants just like where- wherever they can.
Like when they- Make public bathrooms great again ... when they can’t send them back to their own country, they’ll just be like, “Ah, we’ll send them to Haiti or whatever.”
Simone Collins: Yeah. Just-
Malcolm Collins: But I, no, I mean, I think the point I was making earlier is if you’re a fan of this show- [00:48:00] With AI and stuff like that. I’m not saying go out and white label some existing product and make it conservative or something like that, right?
I’m saying and, and AI can really help you with this. Figure out how to buy beans from a local farmer somewhere and ship them in a means that’s cost efficient. If you can do that using a network of AIs, you can get a cheaper product on the sale shelf than Campbell has, and a better product on the shelf than Campbell has, right?
Like, this is true of all of the products all the way down. With AI, we can just do things better now. I, I know with something like, okay, putting together a motorcycle. Yes, I’d love if you do it in the United States, but you know, you talk to the right shops across like China and Shen- Shenzhen and stuff like that, you can get the parts made inexpensively enough, stress test them, then have them constructed in the United States to get over the tax and, th- like, I, I want...
I think for so long we’ve been trapped in this life of you go to college, which doesn’t help people anymore and is one of the core sources [00:49:00] of rot- Yeah ... and you then get a day job. And I think what I wanna radicalize people into doing is like at least look into the alternatives. And I love Leafly’s music video about this, like don’t go to college.
Like, like put that money into trying to start a job because you’ll learn more in the-
Kirsche: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But yeah. W- there’s, there’s so many opportunities out there now. But anyway, so- g- continue to go on. I, I don’t mean to-
Kirsche: No, no, you’re fine. I tangent all the time. It’s great. And it’s like I, I agree with you as well, like we should be setting up our own-
like parallel systems if we can, but it, it’s harder in certain areas than, than in others. Like, when, when Stream Elements announced that they might be shutting down or they’re being bought out by nobody knows yet, but when Stream Elements announced that, a lot of us went, “Wait a minute, what are we gonna do now?”
That was like the- What are Stream Elements gonna do? ... the link to use to like get donations without YouTube or Twitch or anywhere else taking a cut. And now what are we supposed to use? What, what else is there?
Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s a donation platform. Well- I mean, okay, so [00:50:00]
Kirsche: it’s a donation platform ... basic- basically, it’s a donation platform, and what they do is they have it so you can pay with PayPal, and obviously you can use, like, a credit card and PayPal or whatever, and that’ll go to your PayPal, but it obscures, like, your personal information.
And then they also have something called SE Pay, where if the person doesn’t wanna use PayPal, there’s a lot of people in my community especially who are like, “Screw PayPal, I don’t wanna use them. You need to have an option to dono that doesn’t use PayPal or require a login.”
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Kirsche: So SE has SE Pay, and so you can just use your card or, like, a prepaid card or whatever to, to pay through SE Pay, and it bypasses...
It has nothing to do with PayPal whatsoever. And so it was nice to have this, like, donation link-
Malcolm Collins: I could build you
Kirsche: that ... that did that and obscured, obscured your information so nobody got your name, nobody got your address, nothing like that.
Malcolm Collins: I, I, I can probably build you that in a week or so.
Kirsche: Yeah, that’s...
So, like, that was, that was something where people were just like, “Well, what am I gonna do?” And, like, there’s Streamlabs, but Streamlabs had a problem years ago where they tried, like, infringing on OBS, where, like, [00:51:00] OBS was like, “We don’t care. Everybody can use our, our code and everything.” But Streamlabs was trying to be like, “Well, we made this.
This is ours,” and everything was just, like, copy-pasted from OBS
Malcolm Collins: No, I’m, I’m being serious Is there an
Simone Collins: alternative now? Like, what are people using instead? Yeah.
Kirsche: No, everyone’s still on either Streamlabs or Stream Elements- Yeah ... because that’s, that’s what there is. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But yeah, I can build this for you. That
Kirsche: would be crazy. And so many VTubers would use it ... I can
Malcolm Collins: build this for you. Yeah, so- I just
Simone Collins: feel like there’s spe- like what your, what your m- m- most important and, like, desired things are. No, hold on- ‘Cause if you do
Malcolm Collins: that- Hold on, hold on, Simone. I, I need to explain something.
So the way... The big challenge in putting something like this together is that the credit card companies will try to get to you, because the credit card companies are very aggressive. Yeah. Yeah. But, essentially what we do is you donate to our nonprofit. And- ... if you use your correct email address, it then accredits points to a separate site- Hmm ... sort of behind the scenes. Interesting. And so the payment providers don’t see this. So- Mm-hmm ... we would still lose any margin that we lost on the payment provider, and then we’d probably add some [00:52:00] small, like, one or 2% margin on this.
And then the- ‘
Kirsche: Cause I was gonna say, I think when it comes to Stream Elements, the SE pay, the only percentage taken out is the processing fee from the card companies, which is why everybody uses it.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, okay. Well, I mean, I could do it without taking out any money as a good favor, but... If people mention our site.
Okay, so I’ll do it without taking out any money. Yeah ... so we’ll just take out the, the card processing fees and just have it go directly to whoever the streamer is. I- in terms of obscuring user information, all of that will obviously be captured by the payment provider. Mm-hmm. But I can obscure it on our end, if that makes you feel better.
Kirsche: Yeah, I mean, if you haven’t used Stream Elements before, I can always, like, take some screenshots and, like, show you what the dashboard and stuff looks like internally.
Simone Collins: That would be really
Malcolm Collins: helpful. How do they make money if they’re not taking any
Kirsche: The way that Stream Elements made money is Stream Elements was, first and foremost, before they came out with SE pay, a sponsorship platform.
Yeah, yeah. So they would go and find sponsorships, and they would post them on their website, and then streamers could go and sign up for them. And when you got big enough, you would have, like, a Stream Elements representative who would personally contact you and be like, [00:53:00] “Hey, we have these sponsors available.
There’s this many seats. We wanted to reach out to you. Do you wanna do these?” And so they would make their money from the sponsorships, because, you know, they’re probably taking a cut from those before we get paid out.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, okay. Another thing to note is the company that does all this is actually a nonprofit, so people can donate to it as a tax deduction as well.
So- Oh ... I’ll, I’ll try to get this set up for you.
Kirsche: No, that would be interesting. I’m sure a lot of people would be very nice to have something. ‘Cause, like, when, when Stream Elements announced that, like, we don’t know who’s buying them yet still. But it’s like- Yeah ... I can only imagine all of us are just like Well, is it gonna work the same way?
Like, we don’t know who’s buying it, so we don’t know how they might f**k it up. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Very exciting. Okay. Yeah, sure. Just send me what you want and... But this is what I’m talking about, right? Like, if, if somebody’s leaving the space and they’re being a jerk, I’m like, “Okay. I, I can build this for, for...
Operate it for free in exchange for a promotion for our site,” right? Like, Yeah ... that’s, that’s an easy thing for me to do. And it’ll work for as long as it doesn’t explode and get big. I mean, obviously our platform is very [00:54:00] chud, so all the progressive VTubers are still gonna be on it. Great. B- because, yeah, we have... Like, one of the features that we have is a feature that searches every not safe for work image gallery at the same time. What the heck? ... just to annoy the, the the people who, who freak out about that stuff. But yeah, that’s really cool. What other bottlenecks do you have? I, I built the VTuber automated creation system because Leaflet said that people would appreciate that.
Mm-hmm. What, what other issues do you have?
Kirsche: I mean, me personally, I have issues with artists being reliable. Like the illustration artists I’ve worked with, they’re amazing. I love them, love every single one of them I’ve worked with. But model artists I’ve basically been waiting on my main model to be finished since 2020.
It was supposed to be finished in 2020. I have another model that’s been being worked on for several years now as well. It’s like my, my riggers or my artists just kinda disappear or don’t finish their work, and then I’m out thousands of dollars.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. So we have a system that can get you a new... So I, I’ve got to improve it.
Like we’ve obviously got to improve the end-to-end system. We don’t [00:55:00] have hand movement yet. I’m still working on boob physics. But you, you... I’ll send it to you and you can, you can try the beginning of it. But it works for a low-quality model now, and I can get it working for a high-quality model with...
Like what you would probably wanna do is generate something with our system, then hire a rigger to refine it. And with the refinement and an artist to refine it, like- Mm-hmm ... refine the eyes and stuff like this in a few areas. And I, I think you can get a model that’s as high quality as the model you have now with just a few additions to what we have.
Kirsche: This, this was given to me by a community member, Fumetsu no Tora. He makes things very fluffy. He has a very distinct art style. I like it. And he, he made this as like a gift for me, and I’ve had a few of these gift models because people in my community have just gotten like, just so- Annoyed ... frustrated.
And, and it’s, I, I appreciate that they get frustrated on my behalf because it’s like I, I can’t even show the extent of frustration I feel for how long some of this stuff has taken. Like I understand that being an artist is not, you know, a traditional job, but if you’re making your money off [00:56:00] of it, you should be treating it professionally in my opinion.
And in the VTuber sphere it’s kind of, taboo to call out artists. Like even if an artist has like taken your money and fled- ... you are still considered the one starting drama by bringing- The riggers,
Malcolm Collins: man. So this is something I’d like a callout in my audience for because it’s something that I don’t have the time to make my skill and it would really help make this an end-to-end cycle is the RFAB VTuber creation system.
If anybody wants to specialize on post-output improvement of our models because it gets most of the way there I’d be happy to intro you to people who need that service and even advertise you on the website if that’s something that you wanted to, to build as a skill set if you’re like, “I need a Some- but, but no being flaky.
We’re gonna be pretty strict about, like, actually getting things done within short time windows.
Simone Collins: We’re also actually pretty good at being go-betweens between commissioners and artists, ‘cause that was literally our first startup as a married couple. [00:57:00] Oh.
Kirsche: See, that is, that’s incredibly... That’s pretty much what VGen is.
And I, I like VGen as opposed to SKEB, because with SKEB, like, you’re not allowed to contact the artist at all. And so if you get given something and you’re, like, missing something you’re basically up s**t creek. Whereas on VGen, you, you can message them and be like, “Hey, you forgot this file,” or, “Hey, you didn’t make the background on this transparent.”
And it’s like I’ve, I’ve never really liked SKEB, and I used them once. And the one time I used them I had asked for, like, transparent backgrounds so that I could use the stuff I’m paying for in streaming, and I wasn’t given the transparent backgrounds, and obviously I can’t contact them, so I can’t get it fixed.
Oh, my gosh. And there wasn’t any way to get rid of the entire background, so it just looked really s**t with trying to, like, edit the background out myself. And so I, I could never use those things that I got.
Simone Collins: That’s so
Malcolm Collins: frustrating. That is incredibly frustrating.
Simone Collins: Yeah, what we used to do was we had a platform that had artists and then clients, and we would match them.
And we would do all the communication. So, like, a client would say [00:58:00] something really, that would really make an artist, like, sad and not wanna work on it anymore. And then we’d, like, say it in the nicest possible way and be like, “They love it so much. There’s just this one adjustment that they realize would make it
Kirsche: so
Simone Collins: much better.”
See, like, I
Kirsche: need... ‘Cause, like, cucking the artist is terrifying to me now, ‘cause it’s like-
Simone Collins: Yeah ...
Kirsche: I don’t, I don’t want, I don’t wanna be that client that’s just, “Oh, you need to fix a million things.” And I, I- Yeah ... haven’t been thus far, thankfully. But it’s also, like, I’ve had so many issues that I just I just don’t like talking to artists much anymore.
Simone Collins: Yeah, like you just want someone to, like handle it and make sure the thing comes out good, and we did that. It’s just that there wasn’t a market for it, so it wasn’t a business that could survive on its own. But like, I totally get it, and yeah, it all came from- It’s so weird ... Malcolm, Malcolm proposed to me on Reddit using commissioned art.
Aw. And then he experienced like how hard it was to work with artists, ‘cause he tried to commission, I think he commissioned like 21 pieces- Oh my God ... and discovered, like firsthand, “Oh, this is really hard.” It
Kirsche: is really hard.
Simone Collins: Artists are super unstable.
Kirsche: They are. I mean, I guess [00:59:00] you have to have some kind of instability to be like super creative and bring out like images from your brain.
That makes sense, but like, have, have the kind of volatility that makes it so you still get work done.
Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s, it’s so funny that people are like, “AI replaced all of the things we didn’t want replaced first,” like art and music and everything like that, and I’m like, no, what AI did is it made it so that average jackoffs like myself can be good at art and music, right?
Like, it democratized
Simone Collins: art. Yeah, like they’re doing... We’re, we’re using AI to make art that artists just refuse to make for us. They’re like, “Oh, I’m busy. I can’t do it.” Yeah, it’s like- Like, how dare you take our jobs? ... artists are
Kirsche: refusing. We’re not even, like, taking work away from artists, right? It’s like-
Simone Collins: Yeah, they weren’t t-
they didn’t do- They weren’t accepting our requests. Yes. I mean, they were busy. I, I, we’re making
Malcolm Collins: a VTuber model of Muhammad, right? Who am I gonna get to do that, right? Like, I almost did that. I, I do- Oh,
Simone Collins: come on. It’s not even that. I mean, ‘cause I had to deal, of course, with our, our, our commissioning platform for like all the excuses from artists if like something didn’t happen, and we would, you know, refund our clients.
Like, the money wouldn’t disappear ‘cause it was being held- Yeah ... in escrow by us. Excuses I got included, “Oh, I [01:00:00] can’t take this on, I’m pet sitting for the next month.” Like-
Kirsche: What the heck? ...
Simone Collins: how is watching someone’s cat going to prevent you from drawing a very simple anime line drawing? Like, there’s This doesn’t make
Kirsche: sense.
It doesn’t. It really doesn’t.
Simone Collins: The- these are-
Kirsche: And it’s like I’ve, I’ve had a problem with an artist before where I was like, “Hey, it’s been like a year and a half, and I see that you consistently reopen your commissions and take on new projects, and you finish those new projects before mine. If you don’t wanna work on my project, please just let me know so I can find another artist who can.”
And they’d be like, “No, no, I wanna do it.” It’s like, it’s like they wanted, I guess like, maybe clout from like working with a bigger person, but then like never finishing it. So it’s like, what, what am I suppo- like... And when they’re delayed this much, I lose opportunities. Yeah. I lose ability to do certain things.
Yeah. If I had like stuff planned out, I can’t do any of that. And so like I’ve stopped planning anything around models because I just can’t find artists to finish them.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s really frustrating.
Malcolm Collins: Well then, okay, I’ll get back to-
Simone Collins: Malcolm, make it better. Make it better.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. I’ll, I’ll work on the [01:01:00] VTuber thing.
I’ll send you some of the models that we’ve made already so you can get an idea of like how high quality they are. Mm-hmm ... they’re, they’re decent enough. And I’ll, I’ll continue to improve on the rigging system and everything like that. But what I really need is somebody who’s just like a specialist in this.
So any of our audience who wants to take the time to do this, it’s, it’s... The problem with this versus everything else on the website is I need to go through with every algorithmic change and then load up, add the textures on the model, which all happens automatically but takes time. Mm-hmm. Then load it into VTuber Studio and test if the ears wiggle right.
And if the ears don’t... And, and I have to have different wiggles for animal ears, and elf ears, and human ears. Mm-hmm. By the way, all of this is handled algorithmically. We have a different way of handling snouts- Mm ... so like furry models work and, you know, the, the-
Kirsche: That’s really cool ... I,
Malcolm Collins: I spend way too much time trying to get this right.
Yeah. Well, because I want people to have something that they can use, but,
Kirsche: Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s with, with all of these fields, we can make something better. There’s nothing that prevents us from [01:02:00] creating the, the better version of these various things. And after this we’ll wrap things up. After this with you do we have like an open chat on like Discord, or where, where do you talk to people?
Where, where do you
Kirsche: like- Dis- Discord is the best way to get in touch with me. Like I’m still, I have like probably 40 DMs unchecked right now, but it’s still the best way to get in touch with me. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Are we, are we friends on there?
Kirsche: Yeah. Yeah, what she said.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: C-H.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And I will build you this thing that you need. It ju- it just was sent to you. Okay ... and, and, I mean, it’s basically nothing to build. It’s literally just a payment sub-system that goes to you, so really all it needs is like- Yeah, with attribution
a way to manage the payment to you. So I, I can handle that.
Simone Collins: That’s very- It’s
Kirsche: just
Malcolm Collins: no one else in the world will do it for free, but I guess I’ll do it for free for clout, ‘cause,
Kirsche: That’s, that’s what, that’s what Stream Elements had. I’m like, I’m, I’m guessing, right? I’m guessing the way they made money is, like, when companies would approach them, like Raid Shadow Legends, and they’re like, “Hey, we have 500 slots for this kind of sponsor thing,” I’m assuming [01:03:00] they would pay Stream Elements before Stream Elements, like, pushed out that sponsor to the rest of us.
‘Cause, like, we never get sponsor money taken out. Whatever we make from a sponsor, like, we keep that under Stream Elements. Oh. So, like, the o- the only thing I could figure is, like, companies pay them for the advertising. That’s the only thing I could think of the way that they were making money.
Malcolm Collins: Wait, hold on.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Why don’t you guys just set up a payment processor that goes directly to you?
Kirsche: I asked. I have guys who work on my websites, like Kirsche.com, and I asked them about adding a page that has, you know, kinda like what Stream Elements did, where it’s just a donation link that obscures all of my, my personal information from, like, PayPal or whatever.
And they were like, “Well, that could be done, but then it gets a little dicey because then we’re holding on to all of that money for you until you withdraw it. And for tax time, that could make things a little weird as well.”
Malcolm Collins: I guess that’s true
Kirsche: I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never set up a payment processor. I don’t care about how the money- I’m, I’m just relaying what I’ve been told
Malcolm Collins: goes through at all. Yeah. I, I, I don’t care [01:04:00] about that. We already handle really complicated taxes for the nonprofit, so whatever. If something can be used... What? You handle it, Simone. I’m sorry. I d- I saw that- Yeah,
Simone Collins: I just... No problem That
Kirsche: face
Simone Collins: of- As the man who has not touched a single receipt related to this entire thing.
We have no accountant. It’s just me over here. No problem. Ooh. But it’s just accounting. Oh, that
Kirsche: made me remember. During my GamerSupps merch drop last year they had a separate gifting website where people could, like, buy my merch items- Oh, cool ... and they would, like, be floating around in the ether that people could claim as, like, a gift.
And you, you had, like, a limit obviously. Like, s- no- no one could claim, like, every single thing. But, like, my community has been asking for that for my website, and I asked my website guys, and they were just like, “That would cost so much to host.” I don’t, I don’t know what it would cost to host. I... My community has really wanted something like that.
Malcolm Collins: Wait, explain the feature to me again. Explain the feature?
Kirsche: I’ll have to go find screenshots, ‘cause I took screenshots of it when I had it. But basically it was a, [01:05:00] an adjacent site to the official GamerSupps website, and it was, like, a gifting platform. And so you, like, you logged in via, I think, Twitch, and they were talking about maybe integrating, like, YouTube or whatever with it later, but it was just Twitch integration for now.
And so, like, people could go to the website and buy, like, a Kirsche cup or a Kirsche desk mat, and they could either pick a person on Twitch to specifically claim it- Oh ... so it’d be, like, tagged to that person’s Twitch name, and that person could go and claim it. Or if they just wanted to buy, like, 20 cups and have, like, anyone redeem them, they would buy, like, 20 Kirsche cups, and those would be floating around in the ether, and you could go to the gift page, and you could hit claim cup, and then you would put in your shipping information, and you’d have to pay for shipping.
But everything is given to, you know, different people. That
Simone Collins: sounds like so much fun. I like the
Malcolm Collins: idea.
Kirsche: Yeah. I c- Everyone loved it. And I like the idea. I wanna do that. Yeah, I like the idea because, like, there, there are some community members who, like, you know, they might be in a bad financial place. They might want something to support the creator, but they, they don’t have the money to do so.
Malcolm Collins: It’s a great idea.
Kirsche: And then the giga whales come in and they’re just like, “Here, my children. Have the gifts. I am Santa,” you know? Yeah. [01:06:00]
Malcolm Collins: I can build this. I can build this. I got... Yeah, d- br- just when you have things you want, come to me in the future, and I’ll just
Kirsche: give you what you want. Oh, hell f*****g yeah.
Hell yeah. Yeah, I- And I’ll try,
Malcolm Collins: I’ll try to make some of the screenshots for you ... remember there was a, there was a LeetBit stream where we had people come in on the stream and they were like, “I want an AI DM for, like, dungeon, dungeon master that, like, handles that.” And I was like, “I’ll make it. It’s done.”
The, the the, the stalker feature I made for Simone. She goes, “I wanna stalk people more easily online.” I was like, “Okay, I’ll, I’ll build that for you.”
Simone Collins: Call it Super stalk and then The recipe maker
Malcolm Collins: I, I put together based on the
Simone Collins: Yeah, but no,
Kirsche: but this is exciting. I love hearing that, like, you wanna get in the nitty-gritty and, like, build these kind of platforms that either only exist in, like, tiny little bubbles or we’re excluded from because we’re chuddy buddies.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, chuddy buddies. The chuddiest of platforms, right? You know, everybody comes in and... No, no, I love doing it because it annoys the leftists, okay? If I can make a good- How
Kirsche: dare you build your own things.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, if I can make a good VTuber rig [01:07:00] system, and then a bunch of VTubers start using it and the leftists will witch hunt their own, Yeah
infinitely, “Are you using the chud VTuber system? Are you using- Did you get chud
Kirsche: rigging?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. It’s hilarious.
Kirsche: And so I’ve, I’ve been told by a couple illustration artists I’ve worked with as well, like, they’ve, they’ve had large VTubers come to them and be like, “You can’t work with Kirsche. You have to reject her if she ever comes and tries to get artwork from you.”
And they’re just like, “Well, why? Like, I want money. I don’t care.”
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, one of the funniest things is AI, and I don’t know how much you use AI on a daily basis anymore. How, how much do you use AI?
Kirsche: I really don’t use AI much at all for anything. My, my head moderator uses AI a lot to, like, double check things or get more sources if I need them or whatnot.
Yeah. And he’s, he’s been great with AI. He makes my thumbnails with AI just because it would, you know, take forever to get an artist to finish- Works great ... different thumbnails as often as I like to change them. But I mean, I’d be willing to use AI [01:08:00] for most things. I think my, my hard stop at the moment is, like, when I’m selling merchandise, I want the artwork on that merchandise to be from a real person that I paid money to.
Yeah. I would feel weird, like, putting AI art on merch. And so for everything that I sell, I, I try to find an artist that kind of matches up with, like, the head image that I have. Because, like, I also would not want to go to an artist and be like, “Hey, change your entire style. Make it this way.” So I try to find an artist that matches with, like, the vision that I have.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, but with AI, this is one of the big areas where we have a huge advantage against the corpos and the average leftist is it’s like the leftists are trying to fight us without beautiful women and without AI, right? Like, th- we should have no trouble cleaning up against this.
Kirsche: Oh, I just thought of something as well.
Your, your, like, VTuber model creation thing is also going to fix another issue some VTubers have fallen into. So back in the day you guys know who Project Melody is, right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [01:09:00]
Kirsche: So Project Melody her model artist DMCA’d a lot of her videos and was trying to strong arm her to pay him more money to use her model that she already paid for- Oh
because she didn’t have a contract saying that she had, like, full IP rights to the model from him. And so there have been a, a couple of other, I think, smaller VTubers who had a similar issue, but it’s like- Oh, okay. Oh my ... whenever, whenever you get your model, like, you need to have an airtight legal contract just in case, just in case that artist decides, “Well, now you’re huge.
I made your model when you had, like 500 viewers, but now you have, like, 5,000, and I want more money,” right? So, like, so they can’t harm you after the fact.
Malcolm Collins: That’s very frustrating. Yeah. Well, anyway, it’s been absolutely great to have you on. I- Sorry if
Kirsche: I ran just a bit over your time.
Malcolm Collins: No, I, I love this.
I love this. This is great. And I’m happy to do, you know, if you wanna come on again, if you want o- one of us on ever. I mean, usually it’s just me ‘cause Simone can’t handle weird times. But
Kirsche: This is true. Under- I mean, she has a baby, you [01:10:00] know? So,
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: It makes it tough, you know?
Malcolm Collins: We got, we have five-
Kirsche: I can imagine.
Simone Collins: Yeah, with five it’s complicated.
Malcolm Collins: Trying to replace them. Yeah. That’s, that’s our goal. We have a, a live, laugh, love poster in our house that says, “We will replace you,” i- in, in live, laugh, love style.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So when the reporters come over- Beautiful ... they always get really freaked out. They’re like, “What?”
Kirsche: I, I got...
When I had my PO box, which I, I shut it down because a lot of stuff was just getting kicked back return to sender, like my mail wasn’t being delivered for some reason. Yeah. But one of the things that got delivered was a like Korean flag with Kim Jong Un on it, and it said, “Live, laugh, love.” That’s so
Simone Collins: good.
Oh my gosh. Where do we get one of those? That is amazing. I
Kirsche: have no idea, but I saw that, I was like, “Who sent this? What the heck?” Yeah.
Simone Collins: Thank you, kind stranger. Yeah. Thank you.
Kirsche: That’s a beautiful gift. I love this. Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Oh,
Simone Collins: we
Malcolm Collins: should do something like that, Simone.
Simone Collins: That sounds legit amazing. He’s a very
Malcolm Collins: creative little dreamer or whatever.
Yeah. And also I, the main reason I wanna connect with you on, on, on Discord is just to build, because the stuff that you, you say you need built is not difficult for me to build. It might be difficult for my wife to handle the [01:11:00] accounting on.
Simone Collins: It’s just accountable. I, I think I can figure it out as long as, yeah, the, the reporting.
I mean, the reporting has to be clear for each creator to see what they’ve gotten. So as long as I can see it and keep track of it, it’s okay.
Malcolm Collins: All right. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah. And it’s completely amazing. Thank you guys. It
Simone Collins: was
Kirsche: fun.
Malcolm Collins: You’re, you’re amazing. No, I mean, I, I- it’s fun, but also just, like, you’re such a legend.
Aw ... you are really the, the buck at which the cultural tide began to turn. It really
Kirsche: broke- I don’t know if I would say, like, legend, but I, I am very happy that I kind of, I guess, held a stronghold door and made other creators feel more comfortable about coming out and talking about things that they care about, that they believe.
Yeah. And seeing, seeing me... Like, I’ve had so many people say, like, seeing me stand up the way that I did to something like Vice, it made them all feel like maybe we can actually have an effect on something. It is true. And so that, that makes me happy. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: You didn’t just stand up. You clowned on them. You [01:12:00] crushed them.
It was a complete retreat to the extent that I don’t think, like, Vice even has an audience anymore, right? Like, not, not because of you, but I think that these institutions- Mm ... that we grew up thinking of as important, like Vice, we’ve realized that Vice versus Fox Girl- ... Vice is toothless. They have- I
Kirsche: love how some of them tried downplaying it like, “Oh, this can’t be real.
Like, she wrote it so unprofessional.” And I had a lawyer, man, come on,
Simone Collins: dude. Oh my gosh.
Kirsche: I just treated Vice the exact way that they should be treated.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it worked. And ever since then, there has not been a single, that I’m aware of, successful cancellation of a right-wing internet figure th- that- that was, that was the last of it.
That was
Simone Collins: the last- It was the turning point. It was the turning point. It was, it was
Malcolm Collins: huge Like it, it never ha- do you know how f*****g crazy that is? Like, obviously Elon buying Twitter had a huge effect on this, right?
Kirsche: And I, I also love, like, the, the wave of encouragement that came after [01:13:00] that. Yeah Like, as we’ve seen with like Advanced GG dropping Rev and Straub.
Any time Advanced GG tries to post something- ... everyone just inundates them with like, “Why would anyone work with you when you just drop your creators in the face of a cancel mob, and you keep on other people who harass others, like, objectively?”
Malcolm Collins: And I love wh- when you look at individuals like Rev and Straub, that’s the other thing I really love about the culture that’s come out of this.
And how it’s affected right-wing culture is I think for a while we weren’t sure whether the new version of right-wing culture was actually accepting of people who are, like, different and weird as long as they ch- are, are, are part of our larger... And then, you know, I think Anna Valens affirmed, you know, you and Leaflet for the mainstream wife right audience.
And then GamerSupps affirms Rev. Like, Rev genuine- I think for a long time a lot of people on the right were like, “I don’t know, it’s like an anime, vampire- Well, Gamer- ... all these” GamerSupps
Kirsche: is different from Advanced GG.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, wait, sorry. Advanced GG. Sorry. I know that
Kirsche: they’re all pretty weird and stuff. Yeah.
Advanced [01:14:00] GG were the ones who dropped, who dropped Rev and Straub just for no reason.
Malcolm Collins: To, but they, they, the, the backlash to that I think really affirmed the, the Rev and Straub for a while. The
Kirsche: change, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And now it’s like we’re all, like, just, like, nerdy weirdos, right? Like, the, the nerdy weir- And that’s the other thing about the nerdy weirdos, the, the nerd scene.
It’s not even weird. We’re nerds. We’re just f*****g nerds. Is, is, is we are winning this for the right. Like, we don’t have internal fighting with each other. We don’t have any real scandals. We don’t get married in front of the Pope and then randomly- ... cheat on our husband a bunch of times.
Kirsche: Yeah, right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like, we are, like, the wholesome part. And we- Mm ... and it’s like, no sh- they’re, the only shots fired I’m aware of is, like, a year ago Rev was annoyed at Knucks about something and then got over it, right? Like, but generally speaking, it’s like none of us ever attack each other. And I really love that wholesome feeling to this.
As well as creators like you [01:15:00] who are significantly larger than us, creators like Knucks who are significantly larger than us doing collabs. It’s such a wholesome feel to a community.
Kirsche: It’s, it’s really nice and I, I, I enjoy that there’s not as much infighting and I wish that Especially when it comes to Bridge stuff.
Like, even, even if other larger right-wing creators don’t wanna talk to me because I’m anime, I wish they would at least showcase the research that I’ve done. Because I think it’s a very important conversation, and it’s very important to show more people.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so here’s, here’s what I have. So any of our fans who either work at the White House or have connections at the White House I think getting...
Where would you tell them to go for the, the biggest condensed, your research?
Kirsche: My pinned tweet on my Twitter profile is an article of every single source of everything I’ve found researching into Bridge since 2024. The only thing not posted there, because I’m not a journalist, so I don’t know how to go about doing it, is I’ve recorded the monthly meetings Bridge has had, or one of my moderators has when I can’t, [01:16:00] for the last two and a half years.
And I have all of these videos of them saying exactly what they’re gonna be doing, exactly what their plans are, the companies they’re specifically working with, the CEOs and the CMOs and the CFOs that come to these meetings from places like even McCormick, the freaking spice company. Like, I have all of these recordings, and I just, I don’t know what to do with them because I don’t wanna go afoul of, like- Okay, so-
some recording laws- Yeah ... or whatever.
Malcolm Collins: We can also... So I tell our fans, send that to anyone you know. Simone we’ve been, we’ve been asked to speak at the White House before, so we’ve, we’ve done that. And- Oh ... we should reach out to our contact there, Simone, just as a task item. We should reach out to our contact there about this to see if we can get them to look into this at all.
Because it could be an interesting win for them.
I’m connected with them.
Simone Collins: Well, I know,
Kirsche: yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s- And they’re very big, and they’re often very overwhelmed, so maybe they just need to hear about it from our angle, so we should. Let
Kirsche: me... Maybe, yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So I think, I think get Heritage Foundation in front of Bridge. We have connections at, like, Claremont and stuff like that, right?
Like we could- Mm-hmm ... reach out.
Kirsche: Yeah, that would be great. I would love to. Like, anybody who’s willing to talk, just give them my Discord. Give me, like, a hundred- Yeah, ‘
Malcolm Collins: cause I, [01:17:00] I remember talking- ... people to contact me ... with Dustin about starting, like, a, a nerd right or new right, like, institutional, like, fund similar to Heritage- Mm-hmm
or something like that, and he’s just like, “I don’t see what benefit.” But at the very least, we should be handing this sort of information to people.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because you’ve done, like, reams of research on this. Yeah. Which is invaluable. And so that, like, they could take that and run with it. ‘Cause they have the lawyers, and you did the research, and they can just plug and play.
It’s like, “Oh, look, I can start here, here, and here.” Like, that much- Yeah, exactly ... time.
Kirsche: And, and especially- Do you know who- ... more so that, like, obviously everything in my, my Twitter article is for public consumption, but, like, the, the videos of these internal meetings where they speak freely because they believe no one who doesn’t believe other than them is watching- Yeah
it, it’s insane some of the stuff that they say.
Simone Collins: Gosh.
Malcolm Collins: Oh. Who do we... Who else do we know that could, I, like, I’m thinking who’d be interested in going deep on this. You know, Louise Perry talking with you could be pretty good. She’s got a decent audience. And I think she’d be interested Do, do you know Louise Perry?
Kirsche: I do not.
Simone Collins: She’s based in the UK. [01:18:00] She is one of those, like, I- canaries in the coal
Malcolm Collins: mine She’s, she’s really big. She is in the UK. So, you know, we’re known as like the pronatalist couple. Mm-hmm. Whatever we are to Elon- Mm ... JK Rowling. Yeah. In the same way that like JK Rowling can’t spend all day railing against trans people online, Louise Perry can’t
Does that for her, right? You know? Yeah, yeah. She also goes really deep on a lot of stuff and former leftist and everything like that. Yeah. I mean, a, a lot of our government connections are in the UK because like we’ve been better at infiltrating governments there. Which is- I don’t know why that’s the case.
There’s just, I, I guess, a larger nerd government faction in the UK.
Kirsche: I guess maybe. Yeah. I, I moved back to, like, where I’m from, so I’m back in New England, and I’ve, I’ve been meeting with a lot of like libertarian party and free state party people in New Hampshire, and that gives me, that gives me great, great hope for the future, at least out here.
That’s so wonderful. Which
Malcolm Collins: usually I’m like a doomsday party and hope for the best, but- Oh, I used to live in New Hampshire. I love, I love that stuff. Yeah, we, we’ve done we’ve done speaking at [01:19:00] some of that, and we’ve been asked to come speak at something in New Hampshire. Do you know what it is, Simone, the group?
They wanna fly us out.
Simone Collins: H- have you spoken with them? Like, some new s- society and they reached out on X, and I can’t remember the name. I can look it up really fast, but like... yeah. I know there are a lot of, like, free state related societies that it’s like a membership based private society.
Kirsche: Heck yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But yeah, awesome. This has been so great. And I’m gonna get building those things, and hopefully I can have them done in a couple weeks.
Kirsche: And I will try to get screenshots of the SE backend and the GamerSupps gifting platform.
Great,
Malcolm Collins: great. Amazing. I’ll try to mimic, I’ll try to mimic them. Just so you know our system runs on Stripe, so that would be the payment processor.
Kirsche: That makes sense. That makes sense. I think God, what’s it called? Sidescrollers plus Locals, I think they also run on Stripe.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, a- also important for you to know, the reason I use Stripe is because you can use Stripe with Privacy.
Mm-hmm. Privacy is a app that you can sign into that creates- Mm ... a fake one-time use credit card using your credit card that [01:20:00] uses a fake name and address. That’s pretty cool. So if people wanna be, like, totally anonymous, even to me, that can be done.
Kirsche: That’s pretty neat.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All right. Well- Well,
Kirsche: all right
Malcolm Collins: spectacular. Have a wonderful day.
Kirsche: You too. Thank you again for having me on, and bye bye.
Speaker 6: Okay, so you wanted to show the fans the toys that you bought?
Yeah
All of the places that are, that are trying to destroy the United States of America, or just trying to, or just trying to shoot a nuclear bomb at, at America. Okay? So Iran, for sure, right? Iran. What about China or Europe? Who do you, who do you dislike more?[01:21:00]
So you’re going to handle both China and Europe?
Octavian Collins: And, and on, and on both islands there will be Chinook helicopters drop, dropping snipers to shoot people- ... very fiercely and, and very invisible. Wait, only, only the bad people or the civilians too? Oh, only the bad military people. Or- But the civilians-
Speaker 6: And what are you gonna do with the civilians after you get rid of the military people?
Oh, so you’ll, you’ll bring freedom to China and [01:22:00] Europe?
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 breaks down the Iran conflict and the Trump administration’s surprising diplomatic masterstroke that most pundits on both left and right completely misunderstood. Instead of “giving away money” or weakness, the deal creates powerful economic incentives and on-the-ground leverage from Iran’s angry neighbors (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, etc.) that makes cheating far more dangerous than the weak Obama deal.
We also discuss why boots-on-the-ground predictions failed, Israel’s role, the collapse of Iran’s military and leadership, and the long-term strategic wins for America. Later in the episode, Malcolm makes a provocative case for allowing Sharia law applied specifically to Muslim communities in the West as a way to reduce crime, create a forcing function on integration, and let communities see the real preferences of high-fertility Islamic subgroups.
A raw, high-signal conversation that challenges mainstream narratives on both foreign policy and domestic cultural issues.
Show Notes
Headlines on June 17th
https://drudgereport.com/
OBAMA DEAL BETTER?
TRUMP HUMILIATION
MAGA HAWK MUTINY
TEXT LEAKS
NY Times Above the Fold on Iran:
Live Updates: Trump Speaks at G7 Sumit After Renewing Threats on Iran https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06/17/world/g7-summit-trump-france
Stars of Israel’s TV Channel for Bibi Fans Turn on Trump https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/world/middleeast/israel-channel-14-trump-criticism.html
You have to click through on NY Times to get any “what’s going on with negotiations” update, and the headline is: What to Know About the U.S.-Iran Framework Agreement: The full text of the deal that could pave the way to ending the war has not been published. Initial details suggest that it defers the most contentious issues.
Generally, from only scanning headlines, one gets the impression that Iran may be reaching some sort of conclusion, but it’s one unflattering to the Trump administration.
What has happened as of June 17th
A preliminary framework agreement (memorandum of understanding or MoU) was reached and virtually signed around June 14–15, 2026, between the US and Iran to pause the ongoing conflict.
Key elements (based on public statements and reports; the full text has not been widely released yet):
* Immediate ceasefire extension: Halts military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. This builds on earlier shaky ceasefires (e.g., from April).
* Reopening the Strait of Hormuz: Iran agrees to clear restrictions/mines; the US lifts its naval blockade of Iranian ports. Shipping has begun resuming, contributing to falling oil prices.
* 60-day negotiation window: For broader issues, primarily Iran’s nuclear program (e.g., enrichment freeze or limits, sanctions relief). A formal signing ceremony is planned for June 19 in Switzerland (or possibly another venue).
* Other reported aspects (with some conflicting claims): Possible phased sanctions relief, asset unfreezing, and a reconstruction fund (potentially $300 billion, mostly from Gulf states/private sources rather than direct US payments).
The key point per Malcolm: The powers surrounding Iran being directly invested in its recovery and improvement, and Iran’s stable future being contingent on not pissing them off.
Primarily Gulf Arab states (Iran’s key neighbors across the Persian Gulf), through a proposed private ~$300 billion Reconstruction and Development Fund, will be involved in Iran’s reconstructed and therefore directly invested in Iran going forward
Details from the Framework Agreement
* The fund is not direct US government money or reparations but a private investment vehicle designed to attract capital for Iran’s postwar recovery (infrastructure, energy, logistics, manufacturing, etc.).
* Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and others in the GCC) are positioned as primary backers or facilitators (”Gulf Coast Coalition”). They were attacked by Iran during the conflict and have a strong incentive for regional stability. Contributions could include loans, credit lines, or direct investments.
* Why these neighbors?
* Economic interdependence: Rebuilding Iran reduces future conflict risks, secures energy routes (e.g., Strait of Hormuz), and opens markets.
* Mediation role: Qatar and Oman played key diplomatic roles; broader GCC involvement aligns with their security and economic goals.
* Already committed: Over half the fund has pledges from companies in Gulf states, Asia, US, etc.
Other international private investors (Asia, Europe, Africa, South America) are involved, but Gulf neighbors are emphasized for their direct stake and proximity.
The fund unlocks only if Iran complies with nuclear limits, inspections, sanctions relief phases, and other terms. Full details await formal signing (expected ~June 19) and implementation. This structure gives neighbors leverage and investment upside in a stable Iran.
What remains pending:
* Israel getting on board: Netanyahu has indicated Israeli forces will not fully withdraw from Lebanon, creating friction.
* How to work out sanctions and rule enforcement going forward: Loose ends on nuclear talks, sanctions, regional proxies, and enforcement. Trump has noted dissatisfaction could lead to resumed action.
* Iran’s future armament: Iran’s nuclear capabilities, ballistic missiles, and broader regional influence are deferred.
Is Iran Less of a Threat Today?
Yes.
Various ways Iran is nerfed:
* Nuclear Program Setbacks:
* US/Israeli strikes heavily damaged key enrichment facilities
* (Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan) and related infrastructure.
* While Iran retains some highly enriched uranium stockpiles and knowledge (underground elements were hard to fully destroy), its ability to rapidly advance toward a weapon has been delayed by months to a year or more.
* The framework agreement includes commitments to non-proliferation and further talks on limits, reducing near-term breakout risk.
* Ballistic Missiles and Conventional Forces:
* Large portions of Iran’s missile launchers, production facilities, air defenses, naval assets, and drone capabilities were destroyed or degraded.
* This limits its ability to project power, threaten US assets/bases, or sustain prolonged attacks.
* Proxy responses (e.g., from Hezbollah, Houthis) were limited and ineffective in shifting the balance.
* Economic and Logistical Pressure:
* The conflict devastated Iran’s economy and defense industrial base. The recent agreement reopens the Strait of Hormuz (previously restricted by Iran, causing global oil disruptions) and lifts the US naval blockade, but under monitored terms with sanctions relief tied to compliance. This reduces Iran’s leverage via energy chokepoints while exposing it to ongoing oversight.
* Leadership and Regime Strain:
* Strikes targeted senior figures, command structures, and internal security (e.g., Basij bases), contributing to morale issues, desertions, and recruitment problems.
* The regime survived but is in a more defensive, weakened posture.
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today, and this is one of those days where I just need to be like- Everybody doesn’t seem to understand what happened at all, and I’m talking about on both the left and the right with this current deal with Iran, which is actually one of the more brilliant negotiated deals that I’ve seen maybe in the past 100 years in terms of us getting pretty much everything that we really want.
And it’s shocking to me that you keep hearing, well, outright false claims that we’re giving them money, which we’re not. But money is involved, but in a way that really, really matters, and in a way that has a lot more teeth than the Obama deal did which is another thing that people are getting really wrong.
So a bit of context, because I- I don’t even know if you fully understand, and I’m gonna get the, the gist of this out of the gate. The big problem we have with Iran and wanting to pull out of the war, right, is that Iran, due to something called a Mosaic Defense Force, [00:01:00] essentially split into independent warlords who don’t exactly follow what’s coming from the top.
We know this because there was one instance where the president said that he apologized for all the strikes on other countries that are their allies presumably, and then the, a few days later he was like, “I, I, I didn’t say... I didn’t mean that. We’re not even doing that.” You know, which implied that one, they’re not listening to him, and two, the independent warlords have more power than he does in this arrangement, because he had to back down from this position.
So this has led to a scenario where even when we do negotiate with people at the top, right? They can then th- they need to be able to, and in a, in a strong and forceful way, have a reason to tell all the people below, “Follow along and stay in line.” Right? And then we have the secondary problem with Iran, which is even if you make a deal with them like Obama did, they basically just ignore it, like they did with the Obama deal.
Because the enforcement of that deal was that you know, the [00:02:00] UN or whatever would send its inspectors in, and Iran just wouldn’t show the inspectors the, the places where this is at, freaking obviously, right? Like we’re, how are they gonna figure that out, right? So that creates a huge negative incentive.
Speaker: Mr. Eel, I was supposed to be allowed to inspect your palace today, and your guards won’t let me into certain areas. Hans, Hans, Hans, we’ve been through this a dozen times. I don’t have any weapons of mass destruction..
I’m sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me see your whole palace or else.
Speaker 2: Or else what?
Speaker: Or else we will be very, very angry with you, and we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So functionally, what Trump created was a scenario in which and Iran helped him do this. They made a number of enormous miscalculations that made this deal possible that is just so bad for Iran and people don’t get it at all. So, [00:03:00] the miscalculation, the big one that they made that is almost baffling unless you understand that there were rogue actors within the country o- operating this Mosaic Defense Force and just basically trying to The, the, the reason why they were sending more missiles at, like, Qatar and the UAE and Saudi Arabia and, like, their, their freaking allies than even Oman, who’s been one of their closest allies forever, than Israel, is because that didn’t get you scorecards in the, in the battleship of the dictators, right?
And so this led them to attack. A- and keep in mind, by the way, what the, the right grifters who lie to you all the time, like the anti-Israel right grifters and the leftist said it this word, they said, “This is gonna end up with boots on the ground, huge, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers dying in Iran, that the stock markets are gonna crash,” highest they’ve ever been.
That oil is gonna go to $200 a barrel. Did not happen. You know, and, and when I came out here with all of this, and I told you where I thought this war was gonna go, I’ve been pretty much exactly accurate. Okay? Yeah. So keep this in mind when you’re thinking of your [00:04:00] sources and where you take, like, interest- like, your information from, right?
Right. Because some people are manipulating you and playing you for stupid. But anyway, so it ended up with a scenario where- A lot of these countries have historically ... Well, they were in conflict. Like, Saudi Arabia’s not Iran’s ally. Like, they, they do hate each other. But other players like Qatar was.
Qatar is where, like, Al Jazeera is, which is basically Iran’s global mouthpiece. Yeah ... the reason why Qatar is so close with Iran is because they share the gas field that is the basis of all of Qatar’s wealth. This is the natural gas field. And Iran and Qatar have to get along otherwise they end up fighting in a way that would be mutually destructive.
But now even Qatar doesn’t like them because Iran bombed the main refining facility of Qatar. So- Okay ... all of these other Middle Eastern countries really hate, hate Iran’s guts now. And what they’re saying under the table is, “We want what Israel wants. We want Iran a failed state or functionally eradicated,” okay?
Simone Collins: Right,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. Trump doesn’t want this. This would cause a major refugee [00:05:00] crisis and it has- Yeah, yeah ... some other negative externalities. Israel, this is Israel’s endgame, I think. But, you know, Israel is at the moment partially serving us. They’re doing some stuff with Hezbollah. I think Trump secretly approves it.
We’ll get to that in a second. But- Okay ... so Iran closes down the strai- the strait. We’ve said if, in terms of large geopolitical players, we point out that that basically only helps the United States. While it may hurt us economically in the short term, like, like, in an absolute sense, in a relative sense against all other parts of the world no country on Earth is helped more than the United States by a shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz.
Because we produce all of the stuff that comes out of there, and are exporters of it, and just basically captured Venezuela, which is one of the other major exporters of it. And so, like, that just makes the value of all that stuff that we own and export and is a major part of our economy go up. And so the people who get hurt by that, as I’ve said, are Europe and China primarily, China the most.
And, and some other East Asian countries. But nobody gets hurt by this [00:06:00] more than who, Simone? Who gets hurt the most by a closure of the Strait of Hormuz?
Simone Collins: Europe, the EU, right? No. China.
Malcolm Collins: It closes ... uAE- Russia ... Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
Simone Collins: Because- Oh, for this, their oil sales ...
Malcolm Collins: they can’t export their main product if that strait is closed.
And Saudi Arabia has some other ports they can use, but, but minor stuff there. Okay? So all of these people, one, hate Iran’s guts right now. They want Iran functionally eliminated long-term. And th- because keep in mind they’re, it, most of them are a different branch of Islam and the, nobody hates each other more than the two branches of Islam, right?
Those are the two big... y- you think they hate the Jews, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re chomping at the bit to g- go at each other. But anyway, so, they, Iran pretty isolated, right? And this is why Iran, in terms of how they built out their global power projection, had to do it through terrorist networks rather than through alliances with states like the Saudi Arabians did.
So, we [00:07:00] wanna get this strait open, but there’s this Mosaic Defense Force saying, “And we don’t really care that much.” Like, we don’t want the US to put a bunch of money in getting this open. Okay?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So who is most motivated to get the strait open? The other powers in the Middle East right now. So what did the deal functionally do?
It did two things simultaneously that have people pissed off. Both of them are kind of irrelevant. One is releasing Iran’s frozen funds. For people who act like this is us giving Iran money, you guys have the mentality of Josh of Bricks and Minifigs thinking he’s giving the guy a big gift by giving him his Legos back.
It’s like, no, you f*****g seized those Legos. You’re not doing some big f*****g favor by giving them their own Legos back. You just seized them because they had diplomatic sanctions on them. Right? So that’s really irrelevant, and it wasn’t even that much money. It’s like $20 billion or something like that
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: The $300 billion deal [00:08:00] is what everybody is talking about.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: This has nothing to do with US assets. No- nobody in the US is involved in this deal. Okay. So what is actually happening with this deal? What this does is it allows for up to 300 million, which by the way a lot of people... Billion. A lot of people are leaving the up to out of investment.
Keep in mind this is not like a donation. This is not for infrastructure. This is for direct investment by all of these countries that Iran just pissed off inside of Iran. All right? So you’ve gotta keep in mind what that functionally means is going to happen in Iran. All right? So a bunch of countries now that want Iran gone in the long term wouldn’t want something like this again, and would want to be able to act against Iran with more force if this happened again, now basically have a blank slate to build up private operations with private militias, [00:09:00] private everything like that all throughout Iran.
And not just all throughout Iran, but at every key economic node of Iran, because what are these powers going to be investing in? If the UAE, if Saudi Arabia just got a bunch of billions of dollars to invest in Iran, what are they gonna be investing sprucing up? What are they gonna b- be buying? Oil.
Yeah. Oil creation assets, oil creation facilities. And they have a lot of experience in making these very defensible once they get them in place, right? Sure. This actually puts Iran in a terrible position long term, but it’s worse than that for Iran. Because now what they’re saying is, “Okay, I know that you have this Mosaic Defense Force which is going to want to, like, show off and just randomly attack ships and blah blah blah blah blah,” right?
But, this is such a potential boon to the future of Iran because it is still money flowing in, it is still dollars going to [00:10:00] Iranians at the end of the day who will be employed at these facilities, right? That there’s a reason to say, “Hey, we actually lose something very big, this continued investment, if we continue to act bad.”
So now they have an active reason to not do the bad thing with assets on the ground. Now this gets very, very different than the deal that Obama put into place. Because the deal that Obama put into place was sort of like, “We’ll have bureaucrats go there and check your numbers and see whatever,” right?
The, and the bureaucrats don’t really even have a vested interest in making sure Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons. Now under the Trump deal, which is interesting because the Trump deal on its surface feels like it has a lot fewer fangs in it. But because it’s directly tied to these new assets within Iran owned by all of these countries around Iran, right?
Mm. It is way harder for Iran to do two things. One, attempt to nationalize this [00:11:00] stuff. If Iran attempts to nationalize this stuff, they’ve now pissed off every country around them, and given countries that for a long time have wanted to seriously kick butt on Iran a casus belli for a war. And a casus belli for a war that even if the United States doesn’t enter, Israel certainly will, because Israel’s been waiting to do this forever.
And they now know that Israel versus Iran looks really bad on the Iranian side.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So functionally in terms of, like, the actual motivations that Iran has in terms of moving forwards, this is a pretty powerful deal. Now, this isn’t to say that, you know, Iran could be so much of a failed state at this point that they just can’t control their military, that their military decides to go out there, strike random ships, whatever.
At that point, we’ll see what ends up happening. I’m not saying that that won’t end up happening, because that could happen. The other big hitch in this is that Hezbollah s- is still sending missiles at Israel. So Israel decides you know, because they’re trying to, [00:12:00] to provoke Israel, basically. They don’t, they don’t want this to end, right?
Like, a lot of, a lot of these other Iran state actors don’t want this to end. This, these are the, the guys in Lebanon. By the way, if you’re like, “Oh, w- w- killing innocents in Lebanon, how could this happen?” I wanna give you a a just, just a, an overview of Lebanon’s history for people who aren’t aware of it.
So, if you go back to the 1895 census that we have, okay? Okay ... lebanon was 80% Christian. They were, by 1930- Holy,
Simone Collins: wait, what kind of Christian? Catholic?
Malcolm Collins: I think Catholic. Or they might’ve been an Eastern Orthodox branch.
Oh. Or 79% Christian. Okay?
Simone Collins: Whoa.
Speaker 3: They were Catholics, it turns out, which makes all of the de-sucking that the Pope did and Vatican II did not long after this look particularly ghoulish
Malcolm Collins: You go to today what, what is, what is Lebanon today?
28% Christian. You wanna know what happened to, to, to their Christian population?
Simone Collins: What?
Malcolm Collins: Well, mass [00:13:00] murdered. So, specifically we have things like the Damascus massacres, where 5,000 to 12,000 Christians were, like, just pulled out of churches and monasteries and murdered in the streets. And then you have the Lebanon Civil War.
Simone Collins: By whom? Like, what is, what, what contingent was so anti-Christian?
Malcolm Collins: Muslims
Simone Collins: Okay, great. Great, great. Okay,
Malcolm Collins: Muslims. Yeah, I think people, like, when people are like, “But a Jew spit on a nun once.” And it’s like, bro, it’s a completely different scale. A Jew - besmirched a statue of Jesus. It’s like, what, what are you, what are you on about?
Speaker 5: The one that always gets me when people are like, “Did you know that Israel bombed a, a church in Gaza?” And I’m like, “Okay, how many people were attending that church?” It’s like, “Well, there was like three or four.” And it’s like, “Uh-huh, and there used to be hundreds. What happened to them? What happened to them?”
Oh, you, you, you, you, are you willingly unaware or are you just like you like cucking yourself? Because these people, like it’s, it’s worse than being cucked. [00:14:00] It’s like you’re actively out there seeing somebody murder your countrymen, your children, your wife, and you’re like stanning them
Speaker 6: I am fairly confident that these people have some weird NTR fetish and that we’re gonna find out one day when Nick’s, , folder leaks that that was his thing all along
Speaker 4: And for those who are unaware, , if you’re like, “Well, but Jews I guess functionally do the same thing because they vote Democrat,” it’s like actually Orthodox Jews, the ones having kids, the ones who will be represented in the future, the ones we’ll be partnered with long-term in Israel, , they vote Republican overwhelmingly.
So much so that they are one of the key reasons we win the swing state of Florida and have moved that into the easy area to win for the Republican Party
Malcolm Collins: And note here, there are decent Muslims, right? But a lot of them, and the Muslims that have cultural power in Lebanon right now are not [00:15:00] that group. Okay? Specifically Hezbollah, which is essentially holding the country hostage. For 40 years, Israel has told the, the government in Lebanon, “Stop these people on your borders just shind- sending missiles into our country.”
They haven’t done it, so Israel says, “Okay, we’re gonna handle it. We’re gonna, we’re gonna get this. We have greater Israel. Let’s, let’s...” You know? If, if they get rid of the Christians in Lebanon, you know what? Greater Israel all the way. Make it Jewish. I don’t care, right? But Iran wants to include a protection for Hezbollah, or Lebanon in their minds in this because they don’t wanna lose the last state asset that they really have, which is really in tatters anyway at this point because of the pager bombings and stuff like this.
But Israel is saying to Trump, “We’re not gonna do this.” And they go in and they attack Damascus. Which I under- I mean, from their interests, they really don’t want this to happen. They, there have been right-wing Israeli pundits that you can find just railing about the peace deal. Because again, Israel’s best interest is the complete destruction of the [00:16:00] Iranian state.
Simone Collins: Uh-huh.
Malcolm Collins: They do not care long term-
Simone Collins: Scorched earth, nothing there, yeah. Which is-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... yeah Destroy all their economic assets. Not
Simone Collins: great. I mean-
Malcolm Collins: Anything like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. No. That’s not what we want. No.
Malcolm Collins: And that’s generally not what America wants. No. So, so you could say, okay, so why is Trump not being harder on Israel, just saying they’re being stupid, basically?
I think it’s because he wants them to do this. So the important thing to remember with the deal-
Simone Collins: Okay ...
Malcolm Collins: is that you need to make it look like you’re doing a lot in terms of your part of the deal. Sure. If Trump can go and talk Israel down and get Israel to get out-
Simone Collins: Oh ...
Malcolm Collins: while this is completely- He
Simone Collins: has more leverage
Malcolm Collins: active. Yeah, he has way more leverage in the negotiations. It’s like, “Look, they don’t wanna do this. I’m trying to get them to do this,” right? It’s, it’s really a
Simone Collins: lot- It’s good cop, bad cop. I- yeah. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So by the way, is this at what you understood of what was happening, or were you just completely with me?
Simone Collins: No, no. My understanding was allegedly there are [00:17:00] talks but this doesn’t do anything to stop any long-term nuclear threat from Iran. Like, yes, we’ve decimated their nuclear capacity, but within a year they could be back up and running. Yes, we’ve ruined, you know, their lower tech ballistic missiles and stuff, but sure, they could just buy new ones.
And this- ... this alleged a- agreement or plans for an agreement, they’re just plans. W- no one has seen the full written agreement. Nothing has been agreed to formally. And by the way, Israel doesn’t wanna back out of Lebanon and who knows what’s gonna happen with Iran? It’s all fragmented. You can’t even get it to agree in the first place.
So basically, if you look at what, I think, the surface of mainstream media and general reporting tells you, nothing is happening. This war is terrible. We’ve wasted money. We’re no better off than we used to be, and-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so that’s just basically- ... Trump
Simone Collins: is embarrassed ...
Malcolm Collins: completely wrong at every single point.
So first of all, remember how I said that, like, we [00:18:00] can’t get Iran to stop making nukes by sending bureaucrats in? Yeah. You know what, what,
Simone Collins: and- Yeah. No, that’s, it’s, it’s like telling, it’s like telling our kids, like, “Don’t do this. It’s against the rules. You’ll get a timeout.”
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: And you just have, you have to change the incentives.
Everything’s incentives, not punishments.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So you- You it, a, well, no, punishments matter too. What, Iran functionally and finally got punished for decades of flagrantly ignoring our they almost have a nuke freak-out, right? By this lore. And people were like, “Oh, it’s always been they almost have a nuke.”
And it’s like, yeah, and they almost got it multiple times. And then we did Stuxnet, and Iran, Israel did Stuxnet, which was really clever, by the way. Again, Jews and their sneak stat. They’re just like speccing into a race with like a plus 25 to sneak. Like, the Hezbollah bombings were crazy. Stuxnet, if you’re not familiar with this, it was a completely offline centrifuge, and they ended up tricking somebody [00:19:00] into taking a USB drive, putting it into the completely offline device, and then destroying this super expensive centrifuge automatically.
Like, the mechanical parts of it. That is the wildest thing I’ve ever heard of in terms of... That’s, that’s some, that’s some Jewery right there. That’s,
Simone Collins: that’s- Next, next level ...
Malcolm Collins: cucking Jew. But anyway, so, Stuxnet set them way back. Like, over and over again, they get set back. They get set back. They get set back.
And now They almost had it finally. And they were basically telling us that. They go, “We have enough to make, I think it was, what? 25 nukes within two months they said, or something like that. Like, like basically they’re just like, “Yeah, we’ve pre-refined it.” There’s no, there’s no reason to have it refined to this amount other than military-grade weapons, and it only takes a few weeks to get it from the amount of refinement they had to nuclear grade and then use it, right?
Mm-hmm. So they’re basically saying, “Yeah, we, we have the capability to nuke.” They’re a country that regularly trans- death to America at political events. This is not a controversial statement there. That’s the party line. [00:20:00] That’s, that’s in the national charter. And that’s obviously a threat to America, right?
Especially given that they have even recently funded you know, the killings of 250 Marines at one of our embassies through, through Hezbollah, right? Like, they, they are willing to nuke American assets, right? Like, they’d probably start with the Jews, but, but you know, we’d, you know, be on the list.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to do an Israel America at the same time sort of thing, just as like a big show of force and how great they are and try to... and of course, Hasan Piker and all the leftists at universities, even if it was Manhattan being nuked, would still be doing these big parades, ‘cause that’s how they are these days.
But, so they almost get the n- the, this material, and it’s like what can we do at this point, right? The only thing we can really do is bomb their military into the Stone Age, and you look at what we were able to achieve with this. We destroyed basically all of their military assets. Their entire navy, which was, by the way, I think four exercises of British Navy,
Simone Collins: Was it really?
Oh, I don’t remember- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... hearing about a big navy.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Wow. Well, it’s more that Britain has a super small navy [00:21:00] now.
Simone Collins: There’s that.
Malcolm Collins: Super small and incompetent. But anyway that’s at the bottom, that’s at the bottom of the, the, the ocean now or the, the sea there. But anyway, so we got rid of their navy, we got rid of a lot of their land assets.
We really hurt them in terms of their ordinance stockpiles that they have access to. And but, yes, they can restock, but in the meantime, we also did a lot of physical destruction to nuclear facilities that, that we’re aware of. But more than all of that, we really up the country’s leadership organization.
Like we basically killed Two generations of leadership. Well, not we. They, the Israelis are way better at the targeted killing stuff. We helped, okay? We, we threw a few bombs in there, but they, If you look at the, the, the level of the destruction that happened within the leadership of Iran it’s, it’s genuinely astonishing, and it’s gonna be very hard for them to bounce back from this.
Mm-hmm ... w- when you consider that, as well as the asset damage. And anything that looks like, [00:22:00] from the perspective of other Middle Easterners, re-arming themselves is gonna be bad, and I think that they, they... because they, they’ll withdraw the money. And this is where it gets really good, because the thing that I think that we’ve learned in the United States more broadly, and I think this is what we should learn in the UK, I think this is something that we need to, to come away with, is there was a, the, the, the one of the heads of Qatar, he’s got this speech where he’s talking about how the United States and Europe, he specifically, he was calling out here Europe, he goes, “We’re gonna have to deal with, in the next generation, many a Muslim extremist attacks,” because Europe is not dealing with its Muslim extremists, right?
Like, they are, as we’ve seen in recent episodes, there’ll be, like, a gang rape, and the, the kid, the minors who did it, so they can say, “Oh, it’s not a big deal,” they, they got fines of, like, community service. They didn’t even get jail time for it. They posted it on Snapchat live. Like, the, the level of degradation, and with the new files, which we’re not gonna cover, by the way, of all the grooming gangs, was so much worse than anyone thought.
And they were [00:23:00] 98% Muslim, turns out. So much worse than anyone thought that, that, And these also, these groups target Muslim communities as well. Like, keep that in mind, right? Like, Absolutely horrifying that this has been al- allowed to metastasize. And the, the guy in Qatar’s like, “You and America need to d- need to deal with this.
You and y- Europe need to deal with this.” And when they say deal with it in Qatar, what they mean is drag them out in the street and chop their heads off. Okay? And this is where I’m gonna say something a little controversial. I think we should allow for Sharia law in the UK and in the US applied to Muslim communities.
Oh. So, so here how this works. Okay. I think that we should still be subject to all of the other laws of our country, but in addition to the other laws of the country, if Sharia law would ever have a harsher punishment than the country’s laws, then the Sharia law punishment is applied to any practicing Muslim.
And this is done at the level of local Muslim councils. So for [00:24:00] example, what would happen to these men under Sharia law? The smallest fine that they would’ve had to pay, the smallest thing that may have happened to them as an unmarried man involved in a grape is 100 whip lashes from a whip.
If you’re unfamiliar with what 100... That’s, that’s what Johnny Rico was given for accidentally leading to one of his teammates being killed in a a live fire exercise in Starship Trooper. That is a brutal thing to do to someone.
Speaker 8: I was wrong. The Johnny Rico scene is only 10 lashes for an example of how extreme Sharia law is compared to other, , legal systems. , Just in case you’re wondering how many lashes is generally considered fatal, in ancient Roman and Jewish tradition, 40 lashes was often seen as the point where death became likely, hence the common practice of limiting it to 39 lashes to avoid accidentally killing.
In British military flogging, ,. A famous case in 1846 involved a soldier dying after 150 lashes. Sentences were later reduced to 50 or fewer. A Russian knout, , far [00:25:00] deadlier.
100 lashes were typically fatal. The heavy wire-reinforced tool could break bones in the spine, with some deaths reported as few as 20 strokes. , Modern judicial flogging in the Middle East, sentences of 50 to 100 lashes are common and often survived without serious injury, though deaths occur
, examples include a boy dying after 85 lashes due to a mishit
Speaker 7: recruit trainee John Rico is sentenced to administrative punishment Ten lashes Carry out the sentence
Speaker 9: So if we had Sharia law implemented for Muslims in the West, , and you had something like this gang rape and then they posted on, , you know, X or whatever, , we know it was a Snapchat, you know, you would have ended up with maybe a quarter of these kids just being whipped to death in public. And I [00:26:00] think that would be a very strong deterrent, , both to importing more, , Muslims who want this to be the punishment for everyone and for the Muslim population in these countries.
Speaker 10: Just a few logistical points if you’re confused as to, “Oh, well, how do you determine who’s a Muslim?” Right? The, the answer is easy. It’s by, , mosque,
Records. , Basically you are, , if you go to a mosque and that mosque, , ascribes to Sharia law, then you are put on the records as being a Muslim who ascribes to Sharia law, right? Like, it would be very, very simple. And if you are a kid under 18, , somebody who goes to one of the mosques, then you are counted as on those records
Speaker 11: And if you’re like, “Oh, but that’s so inhumane,” you understand that this is what will become the law of the land in these countries if we allow current demographics to play out. , If you look at the United States, , the Center of Security Policy poll, , found that fifty-one percent of [00:27:00] American Muslims thought that Sharia courts should be allowed in the United States.
, A twenty-twenty-four Heritage Foundation -- poll found thirty-nine percent of Muslims in the United States thought that Sharia law should be the law of the land. Um, in the UK, we have polls ranging from, , forty-three percent., There was a two-thousand-and-sixteen poll, Policy Exchange IMC, , forty-one percent showed it.
In twenty-twenty-four, Henry Jackson Society showed thirty-two percent wanting it. And you can be like, “Well, this isn’t the majority,” or, “It’s only the edge majority in some cases,” but the ones who want it are having vastly more kids than the ones who don’t want it, so they will be the majority of the population in the future.
If you’re like, “Oh, this is... How could you do this? This is mon-” You’ve gotta understand, if you do nothing, if you just allow things to play out, this is the way people of the future will be tried in these countries. So you are, through not allowing this to be engaged with, causing it to be engaged with at a much larger level in the future based on current statistical [00:28:00] trends.
Speaker 13: And again, I have nothing against Muslims or Islam or anything like that. , I just think that there is a version of Islam that is leading to much higher birth rates within certain parts of the community, , that I do find distasteful, the same way I find certain versions of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community that are extremely unproductive, , distasteful.
, And I think that when we look at this version being the high fertility version, this version being the version that’s been resistant to the low fertility aspects of Western culture, , and is, is not integrating, , because the ones who do integrate don’t have as many kids, , that, , , we see many people in the West not understand what the real long-term implications is if they become a majority anywhere.
, And I think that through changing the law system to the one that they want, the one that they’re asking for, for the members on their mosque rolls, , that could help people grok that when they say they want these sorts of punishments, they’re serious about it.
Malcolm Collins: On the high end, depending on which version of Sharia law you’re, you’re looking at, that would be a [00:29:00] public crucifixion.
Now you wanna see gang grape stop really quickly in Muslim neighborhoods? Start having teenagers being publicly crucified in those neighborhoods in Britain, and it’s gonna stop mighty fast.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: A- and better- Well,
Simone Collins: you make a fair point that, like, maybe there’s a lack of Sharia law at play among communities
Malcolm Collins: that are- These people co-evolved with these incredibly harsh punishments, right?
Right. Like, we, we point out that, like, m- different people evolved alongside different social norms, and when you take them and put them in a completely different set of social norms their behavior... Like evolution affects personality, behavior, how you relate to things, and humans have undergone an enormous amount of recent sociological evolutionary pressure.
Mm-hmm ... and if you take somebody who’s used to these incredibly strict rules that they use in places like the UAE, and Qatar, and, and Iran, and Saudi Arabia, right? Like, all of these countries have incredibly harsh punishments. Whenever you have a Muslim country that actually has a degree of [00:30:00] law and order- it’s because they are applying these punishments as they should be applied.
So I’m coming up that I’m for Sharia law going forward, just only applied to the Muslim community. And, and they can’t say, “Well, this Muslim did something and it doesn’t violate Sharia law.” If secular law ever give the punishment worse than Sharia law, then the secular law punishment a- applies.
Simone Collins: Well, I mean, I’m in, I’m in favor of any religion’s laws being properly enforced.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I know, but they’re, you’re not even legally... I mean, the, the other thing, if it’s a married man who, who grapes someone in Sharia law, that, that’s just a stoning anywhere. That’s the minimum you can get. They don’t even allow us to stone Muslims in, in the United States or the UK. Like, it’s their own law that they should be stoned.
Let’s f- let their people stone them, you know? And I think, the second thing I think, is I think that pretty soon once we kill-
Simone Collins: Well, okay, sorry. Just to, to- criticize this approach, then you’re also saying that honor killings are okay of young women who have been assaulted. And that’s-
Malcolm Collins: That’s actually not Sharia law
super not
Simone Collins: [00:31:00] cool, right?
Malcolm Collins: That’s not... That’s explicitly in violation of Sharia law.
Simone Collins: It is?
Malcolm Collins: It is. It is. In Sharia law, the woman who is raped, it... Now, there have been local customs where this has been applied. Okay. But Sharia law itself is very explicit that the woman is innocent.
Simone Collins: What about a woman who’s just being slutty, let’s say, by their standards?
Oh,
Malcolm Collins: well, you know, maybe we can let them handle... Maybe we could create some negative externalities for that behavior as well. Okay. But what I think is there’s the secondary benefit to this. One, Muslims
Simone Collins: believe- Now, we, we spend all this time around, like, very progressive people, so I’m just hearing them say, “So Malcolm, you believe that a young lady who chooses to be sexually intimate with someone, possibly someone who emotionally manipulated her at a time in which she’s very emotionally vulnerable and immature, that she should be stoned to death if she chooses to become sexually active before getting married as a teenager?”
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely.
Simone Collins: Are you saying that?
Malcolm Collins: Because there are- Oh, my God ... a number of positive effects of this for society. Okay. The first, we give the [00:32:00] Muslims what they want. The ma- majority of Muslims in the UK want Sharia law- Mm-hmm ... at this point, right? Mm-hmm. In the United States, I think it’s 36% of Muslims. So many Muslim communities want this, right?
Simone Collins: That’s a minority, but okay.
Malcolm Collins: No, in the, in the UK it’s a majority.
, I went through the statistics above listing the polls, but actually in one poll it’s the majority in the US as well
Speaker 12: And as I said, it’s also somewhat irrelevant because the ones who believe this are the ones who have demonstrably more kids, probably about double the rate of kids. And so they are the ones who will be represented in future populations
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: And in the US it might be a majority. Now, I need to double check, but yeah.
Simone Collins: I feel like this needs to be opt-in. You know, you have to, like, waive your- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not
Malcolm Collins: an opt-in for the Muslim communities who have their own mosque and everything like that.
Okay, so, so now you have two-
Simone Collins: How would this be practically enforced? Like, let’s say-
Malcolm Collins: It would be,
Simone Collins: Enforced by Sharia law ... my parents were Muslim, but I’m not. Like, I’m an, I’m an atheist wiccan whose parents are Muslim. What laws apply? I ha- I’ve chosen- So, so- ... to not opt into that
Malcolm Collins: culture ... so it is applied...
First of all, if you’re an atheist wiccan whose parents [00:33:00] are Muslim, you’re an apostate and Sharia law says you should be killed.
Simone Collins: Oh, my God. So,
Malcolm Collins: That, by the way... So let’s talk about why this is such a positive thing, why this would
Simone Collins: be such a positive thing to allow. Yes. Why is this such a positive thing?
Malcolm Collins: First, you give the Muslims what they want. Second, the Muslims who don’t want this would now have a very strong reason to deconvert, right? So what you say is basically you have the right to deconvert from Islam, and the state will protect you after the age of 18. If at the age of 18 you want to deconvert you can deconvert from Islam, and you no longer need to play in this system, and the state will protect you and maybe even open up shelters for people who are doing this specifically.
I, I’d be okay with state funding that, okay? The-
Simone Collins: Oh, for like shelters of a minor who wants to escape?
Malcolm Collins: I said 18 If you’re a minor, in Islamic law, the parents kill you if you leave Islam, okay?
Simone Collins: Oh my God. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: But the secondary benefit to this, I think minors should have to follow the laws and religion of their parents.
Absolutely. If their parents are paying to support them, [00:34:00] they’re n- the state’s not paying to support them. I mean, in a lot of these Muslim cases they are, let’s be honest, but let’s just say the parents, right? So the second thing, okay, is that visibly, now all of a sudden people in the UK, the leftists in the UK, the, the leftists in America have to visually see that the group that they’re bringing into their country doesn’t want the, the world that they want.
When they see the gay guy being stoned in the street to death, some gay, some, some twinky teen literally being hit with stones until he’s dead, crumpling to the ground in the middle of the street in Manhattan or something like this where they sanction this off or their Sharia law stoning, real quick they’re gonna want these people out of the country.
Yeah. Real quick we’re gonna get immigration,
Simone Collins: Bans in place. Oh, so you’re just saying it’s, it’s a forcing function thing.
Malcolm Collins: It’s a forcing function. We give them what they want.
Simone Collins: And people see what, what... Like, okay, right. Because I guess your broader argument is people are not willing [00:35:00] to intellectually wrap their heads around what many Muslim communities actually for really, like, for real really want.
And if we accelerate that and just give them a preview of where things are headed and say, “This is literally what you’re gonna get,” then this can be staved off from happening. So either it happens at, like, a 10% level now if we make it happen, or it happens at a 100% level 50 years from now-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, when they vote
Simone Collins: it into national law
thereby ruining countries. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Which is what they want. They want this to be the national law. Yeah. So
Malcolm Collins: let’s make this the
Simone Collins: law- And you’re just making it a 10% thing I think ... and
Malcolm Collins: then the final externality is you know how quickly the Muslim grape gangs are gonna die out when this gets implemented? You know how quickly a lot of this negative behavior we see, oh, y- w- let’s see, what’s the punishment for, for stealing in Sharia law?
We gonna get some hands lopped off here or something? l- we’ll see what the f- punishment for sluttiness is okay, so for a woman who sleeps with somebody out of wedlock it’s 100 lashes. So it’s the same as a man graping someone, which you know what?
I’m okay with [00:36:00] that. Stoning to death is if, if the woman is married, which I’m also okay with. For stealing, it’s the amputation of the right hand. I am 100% okay with that. Yeah, as for male and female thieves, cut off their hands. So yeah, you, you know how quickly the, the Muslim crime waves we’ve been dealing with are gonna stop when we start cutting off their fricking hands?
Real fast. And the great thing is, is this won’t be done by conservatives. This’ll be done by Muslims of their own communities, which will make their communities less externalities to other groups, and I bet conservatives might be able to get along with Muslims right fast when they start enacting their own punishments on their own group, right?
Like, I could... I’m, I’m being totally honest here. If Muslim communities were allowed to punish their own members in these incredibly strict and severe ways in, like, Canada, in the United States, in the UK, in Germany, a, a conservative like me, I, I honestly think... Because right now the Muslim community, like, why do I have a beef with the Muslim community?
They keep [00:37:00] graping my people, and then it gets covered up by the local police forces. Because they keep going out there and stealing from my people, right, from our government, right? From, from the local stores, from the... They create these enormous the, you know, thief games. They have your externalities when you look at, at, at, at, at, at rates of, of, of being involved in crime.
You see really high rates. If all of that dropped off a cliff, I’d have no f*****g problem. I’d have no problem with Muslims, right? Like, if, if, if, if... And I think it would drop off a cliff if we let them enact Sharia law.
Simone Collins: Well, I guess what you’re saying a lot, is a lot of this is downstream of our broader- At least personally st- very strongly held rule of we are cool with any cultural group that does its own thing, so long as it does not curtail on the rights or liberties or property of other groups.
And the problem- Right, like ... is that you’re saying this particular group is infringing upon the freedom, rights, liberty, and property of other groups that it sh- you know, has [00:38:00] no right to do. So they, they have become in a, or, and/or are becoming an increasingly existential threat to non-Muslim groups, and therefore- And I, and
Malcolm Collins: I wanna be clear here.
Your average Muslim in Britain, like, the, the average, the, the Muslim who wants Sharia law, your religiously observant Muslim, they do not like that these grooming gangs are happening.
Simone Collins: Sure. Of course not. No ...
Malcolm Collins: they,
Simone Collins: they, they want these- They’re, they’re horrible bad actors ...
Malcolm Collins: people punished because it makes them look bad and they want Sharia law in Britain, which may be antagonistic to our goals, but they don’t just, like, want every bad actor out there doing every bad thing, right?
Simone Collins: Like- Well, and I d- I do like, I do like the reframing of Sharia law. Like, I’m just a law and order citizen. Like is that so bad? Yeah. Like, in, in this era- Maximal law and order ... when I think about, like, one of the big sort of Asmongold points of, of our day and age is, hey, wouldn’t it be great if we actually enforced our laws?
That is a- ... it’s an interesting take and an angle that I hadn’t thought about before. What if we just... Like, is, is [00:39:00] Sharia law so bad in an era in which one of our biggest problems is a refusal, a, a broad, a refusal to in- impose laws that we have established and agreed upon as a, a base of citizens? Th- that we want these laws.
They should be here. But no. Yeah. No.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And well, and I, I think, I mean, even conservative Americans, if it ends up working and ha- having the Muslim community become positive actors in our countries, I think many Americans, you know, they, they see the guys, the thieves’ hands being chopped off instead of being released back on the street over and over again, they’re probably gonna be like I didn’t think I liked Islam that much, but I mean, if it’s only Muslims this is happening to, I’m fine.
I mean, that works for me, right?
Simone Collins: Well, I don’t know. But I’ve, I’ve listened to so many horrific stories of the mistreatment of especially children and women within this culture. But that’s
Malcolm Collins: common i- within
Simone Collins: Islamic countries. The problem though is, is well, the, it’s, and, and that it’s happening now without Sharia law.
In, and to your point I guess in many cases in [00:40:00] violation of Sharia law. So in, I think in a sense because they’re in these gray zones where they’re outside nations with Sharia law, nations that wouldn’t even take them as, for example, as, as refugees in some cases that are also sort of accommodating them and, and turning a blind eye to bad, bad actors and crimes being committed.
Perhaps there are, there’s an argument to be made, it’s possible that there are more atrocities committed against even Muslim, practicing Muslim women and children without Sharia law and with the law of the governing country turning a blind eye toward those communities and being like, “I’m not gonna look at this, la, la, la, la, la.”
Like, and, “It would be racist for me to notice anything,” which is screwed up. Yeah, and in a way that- Because even within those communities they’re like, “No, this is not okay,” and yet we have been defanged of the tools that we would use to police this among [00:41:00] people.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Islam has the tools baked into it to police Muslims.
Simone Collins: Right. But then of course those tools are illegal within, for example, the United Kingdom, so the United Kingdom refuses to impose its own laws on many of these groups for fear of being accused of racism or bias, but then these own groups don’t have the tools they require to enforce those laws themselves if they were to just do it without the UK.
So okay, I see your point. My goal, I mean, so obviously, like my number one goal is, you know, promote longterm human flourishing. Our general ideology is, hey, any group should be allowed to do its thing as long as they’re not- An existential threat to other group or impinging on the ability of another group to pursue its, its, you know, prerogative and, you know, have its stuff and do its thing.
But then, like, number three, I really, I don’t like people being harmed. I, I don’t, especially kids.
Malcolm Collins: But, but hold on. I mean, I think that, that you, you frame this in a way that confuses people [00:42:00] sometimes.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: I am totally okay with a group cucking with another group when that other group is net less productive than the group who’s f*****g with them less moral than the group who’s f*****g with them.
Because if, if you have a, a negative bad actor on, on your doorstep that’s constantly messing with you, right? Because a lot of people would take the things that you’re saying and saying, “Oh, when Israel defends itself against Hezbollah, that’s, that’s Jews being a negative externality for another
Simone Collins: group.” No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Because we per our morality at least, if another group is infringing upon your ability to do your sovereign thing within your own borders, y- you have every right to bop them, as we would say, to, like, retaliate. Because they are not allowing you to, within your own house, do your own thing. Mm. So that, I, I agree with you on that
Malcolm Collins: So, I mean, I just wanna end this with a, you know all those people who said we’re gonna have tons of boots on the ground in Iran?
I’ve always said I’m okay with Karg [00:43:00] Island. I’m okay with Karg Island as, as a limited military thing, but boots on the ground in Iran is stupid and Trump’s not gonna do that, and he didn’t do that. And people lied to you. Now, or they didn’t lie to you, they just have no f*****g idea how the world works and they’ve got a bu- an audience of third-worlders who’s totally captured them into these stupid anti-Semitic positions that are just not useful in terms of long-term human flourishing when we’re thinking about, like, useful allies.
‘Cause right now, Europe’s not a long-term useful ally for us. They are, they are incredibly cucked, and Israel actually goes out there, and when somebody acts a fool, they handle it. And I think that we in the United States, in Europe, need to take a l- a line from Israel’s book going forwards. And that that is why I’m totally okay with building this stronger alliance with them and seeing where things are going.
Right, right now I think Israel is actually acting with tacit approval of Trump to help in the negotiations. We can see how this ends up turning out or leaks that come out of the future. But broadly speaking, no, the stock market didn’t crash, the economy’s doing better than ever. No, oil [00:44:00] didn’t hit $200.
No, all of the, no, they, they said that all of the countries in the Middle East would start hating us, when the exact opposite has happened. All of the countries in the Middle East started hating Iran more, started liking us more. There, there has never been a PR campaign so successful for America in the Middle East as Iran deciding to randomly bomb its former allies.
Simone Collins: Right, but you are, you are one small voice whispering within a mosh pit of raging-
Malcolm Collins: Idiots ...
Simone Collins: people.
Malcolm Collins: Idiots. No
Simone Collins: one- The world is just raging ... no one is going to understand this. The message everyone’s gonna come away with is, “I can’t travel this summer because airline prices are insane. My gas prices are higher.
My food is more expensive. People in Europe have even higher prices.” And everyone else is just like, “Oh, and Trump has humiliated himself,” blah, blah, blah. So, like, I think even a lot of Republicans are gonna come away feeling like this was a net loss. No,
Malcolm Collins: I mean, a lot of Republicans have been incepted by these idiots who, like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, who have giant third-worlder audiences, who have a...
I mean, that’s why, that’s why [00:45:00] Tucker Carlson’s moving to Qatar, right? Like, th- this is, this is where his, his, his butter is backed, by the way. Th- this is the position- His
Simone Collins: bread is buttered.
Malcolm Collins: His bread is buttered. They’ve got these giant audiences. As we pointed out in our episode, this changed everything, but the, the internet became significantly majority third world over the past 10 years.
The third world, this is why they stopped caring about, this is why the left stopped caring about, like, American blacks and, and, and the environment. The third-worlders don’t care about those things. And they all got- caught up in these idiot cycles, and they completely believe them. And when you look at rightist influencers, you would get the opinion that people are, are falling for this.
But when you look at the actual right, like MAGA MAGA, MAGA’s 9- 90% pro this war since the beginning, right? Like, MAGA has always been about this. It was never fooled by the captured parts of the influencer class that are acting on behalf of leftists and honestly anti-American interests. And it, it’s, it’s like do people step back and think, “Oh, they, they were just...”
They, [00:46:00] they don’t. They don’t remember. You were like... Like, I was talking to Simone in the car about this in the morning. I go, “Will anybody take a step back and be like, ‘Nick Fuentes had no f-ing idea what he was talking about when this war started.’?” And who was right? People like Nux and Malcolm who, who actually was right about where things were going.
And that maybe- Yeah,
Simone Collins: but what’s, what’s... I just, I’m just trying to say, like, what’s really frustrating is that you guys were right, but that’s not going to change the narrative of how this is gonna work. Like, the people writing the
Malcolm Collins: history of this- No, I, I think, I think we on the right need to be harsher both in terms of our time and our views of the anti-American voices on the right which have been growing.
And I think, I mean, Nick Fuentes isn’t on the right. He’s a Democrat now. He says he’s a Democrat now, just people are so stupid they think that he’s like a right-wing, which he’s not. He’s just a Democrat. But Tucker Carlson still claims to be on the right, right? L- these people... A- and there’s these people with, th- th- you, you see them over, over, who was it?
There was some b- w- Republican influencer who’s all mad about this deal and is saying who’s got a thing on Russian state [00:47:00] TV
Laura Southern is who I was thinking of here. I saw it on nux
Malcolm Collins: like literally paid by the Russians, you know, to try to... And as we pointed out, the Russians, behind BLM, see our episode on that if you are unaware of this they funded a...
Nine out of every ten dollars that went to influencing US politics, one would go to, to quote-unquote pro-Trump stuff, nine would go to b- pro-BLM stuff. Russia has been the party that’s just like we need to f- with Americans. Like, sow division, everything like that. You guys don’t need to do that, right?
Like, when we work with Jews, we get things done, okay? Like, this was pretty cool. You know, actually winning a war. Actually getting what we wanted to, which was a degradation of their military resources to the extent that they’re not gonna be able to move forward, and more eyes and ears in their country by people who don’t want them to develop nuclear weapons.
And those people having a vested interest to continue to invest into the country and own more assets in the country, which makes it harder for Iran to operate independently of the interests of these other Middle Eastern countries. Mm. Which is, again, in our interest because [00:48:00] these guys are our...
They’re, they’re actually pretty useful allies. They can, I mean, like Saudi Arabia, 9/11, right? Like, they can, Be backstabby, certainly more than the Jews. But recently at least, Saudi Arabia’s been pretty good. And so, you know, will that work forever into the future? Hey, all we need to do is keep developing technology, because it’s not coming out of these regions, and the future is all AI, okay?
So the more automated drone swarms we get, the less we need to worry about these people’s opinions. And so in the meantime, let’s let them handle their own, and that’s something we need to be doing more of when it comes to dealing with, I think, Muslim populations. So you heard it here first, base camp, we need sharia law.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Oh, my
Malcolm Collins: God. Yeah, this, is this where you thought I was gonna go with this?
Simone Collins: No. This is not where I thought you were gonna go, but I love that you always surprise me. After all these years together, you never cease to shock and surprise. I love you, Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: I love you, [00:49:00] too. I’m really excited to see this direction.
Obviously, things could still blow up. I mean, Iran is, as I’ve said, a bunch of rogue actors, and if any of them decide to act basically all the central government can do is to either call in outside assistance or go scorched earth on the rogue actors. Unless the rogue actor’s action gives him more political influence, and then it becomes this whole...
So, you know, so we’ll see.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But I, I do... I would feel a lot more comfortable just personally, like, all right, how soon is it gonna be until Iran, you know, uses its continued tacit knowledge, or at least, like, documented internal knowledge of, like, developing nuclear weapons to just get back where it was.
And if there’s some sort of way to align incentives in such a way where, like, they just really wouldn’t wanna do that because they are better served by not, then I would feel more comfortable. I don’t care what the treaties are. I don’t care what the agreements are. I care about the infrastructure that’s going to be set up after this conflict that would dissuade them from doing that.
So the fact that there [00:50:00] may be some of that from what you said has me excited. Hopefully, that’s what happens.
Malcolm Collins: Yep, hopefully that’s what happens. I don’t see where we’re gonna get a better carrot that we don’t have to pay for than this. So fantastic scenario.
Simone Collins: All
Malcolm Collins: right. Thank you, and to our audience do something to improve yourself today.
Yeah, snap that in. You have to learn to use a new AI product or something.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Do it.
Malcolm Collins: All right, bye.
Simone Collins: .
We’re so close to getting those new mics. Just, just waiting for a potential discount. Just bear with me. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and we’ve gotta get personal audio
Simone Collins: for you guys. Yeah, no, I’m, I’m excited for this conversation because again, I, I looked... Like I thought I was crazy, you know, when I was talking with you in the car this morning, but then I look at the like Drudge this morning “Obama deal better, Trump humiliation, MAGA hot- MA- MAGA hawk mutiny, text leaks.”
Like it just sounds horrible and then I go to The New York Times, their front page
Speaker 15: No, Indy. No, Indy. No, [00:51:00] Indy. It says area closed Remember, Toasty, yesterday you saw pictures of lily pads and, and flowers? Now you’re seeing them in real life
Speaker 16: Well, some plants grow in water. They’re aquatic plants Mommy. Yeah? Why do-
Birds like water too, don’t they?
Oh no, that’s what they like to eat Well, what if the alligator’s gotta eat something? You eat birds, toaster, you eat chicken nuggets. Yeah Yeah. That says area temporarily closed. We could just go in there ‘cause alligators don’t eat kids. What does temporarily mean? What does temporarily mean? Uh, you look yummy to alligators,
Speaker 14: Titan.
No. What does temporarily mean?
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Dive into the controversy surrounding the Los Angeles mayoral election with Malcolm and Simone Collins on Based Camp. Spencer Pratt appeared to be on track for a runoff spot but was suddenly overtaken by a third Democratic candidate amid massive late mail-in ballot surges. Was this organic voting patterns, or something more suspicious?
The Collinses review claims of election irregularities, including the puzzling vote count updates that showed zero votes for Pratt in one batch, Skid Row vote harvesting (with residents allegedly paid in cigarettes and cash), ballot collection practices, and the broader issues of mail-in voting in deep-blue LA. They explore both the mainstream counter-narratives and on-the-ground reports while discussing voter ID, election integrity, and why local races matter.
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be discussing the latest LA election and the shenanigans that- that may or may not have occurred around that.
Shenanigans.
A couple of our fans were like, “This is the most blatant cheating I have ever seen in an American election,” and they wanted us to look into it.
And I will say that this is an interesting thing for me to look into, because I really don’t know... Like, obviously, if there was election fraud that happened The New York Times, NPR, all the major leftist sources are not going to admit it, because they didn’t want Pratt to win, right?
Simone Collins: Well, and what I did hear from my broad leftist news sources was
Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
Simone Collins: you gotta go, buddy.
What I heard from my broad leftist news sources was something along the lines of the Republicans are butt-hurting because Pen- Spencer Pratt didn’t even come close to winning, but he never would because he’s a Republican running in LA, and that seems totally reasonable, so I didn’t think to look further.
How can this be a [00:01:00] thing? I, I don’t understand why there could be any weirdness-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and then the, the secondary thing is obviously, and I, I, you know, I hate to say this about our side, but our side, like if he if, if there was actual election fraud, they would all be saying that regardless. So we don’t actually gain any new information from what they say there.
But we don’t gain a lot of new information from our side because obviously no matter what happened, if he legitimately lost at the last second our side would of course come out and say there’s election fraud, right? So that doesn’t exactly give me additional information
so what we’re going to do is we are going to review from both sides pieces on this particular alleged fraud.
And
Simone Collins: then we’re going to- Wait, so the fraud ‘cause you had told me earlier that you thought that the issue was... I mean, it’s inevitable that a Democrat’s gonna win in Los Angeles.
Malcolm Collins: No. It’s not so it’s kind of fraud. So there was a, a two-tiered runoff, okay? Okay. This is the gist of it, right? So there’s this runoff system, it’s called, like, a jungle primary where they decide who’s gonna run, and it means- Okay
you can have multiple Dems running against each other- Sure ... or a Dem versus a [00:02:00] Republican. Yeah. The leading candidate was this terrible Dem candidate. The, the Black woman, whatever her name is. Anyway she, she was coming in first. Then Pratt was coming in, and then there was a third Democrat that had about half the votes that Pratt had- Okay
in terms of sentiment polling, in terms of what they were able to measure, in terms of, like, at the ballots, bold, voter exit polling. And then at the very last moment, all of a sudden this flips. Mm. And all of a sudden- Mm ... Pratt’s getting no more votes- Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh ... and all the votes are going to the third candidate.
This is something that the, the narrative of I have laid it out is the narrative that even the left disagree with. Everyone agrees Pratt was demonstrably in the lead i- in terms of spot number two. And then now was he ever gonna win the full election? I, probably not. But the having him i- be in the final runoff was scaring people, right?
So Pratt was demonstrably in [00:03:00] the lead, then all of a sudden this socialist candidate flips it up, right? And-
Simone Collins: Doesn’t it have to do more with the fact that mail-in voting was very heavy in the Los Angeles election, that ballots could be posted quite late, and that it could be that this particular third candidate had a really heavy and also late mail-in voting campaign push?
Malcolm Collins: Well, that is the only plausible thing, except from at least my reading of this, they didn’t have a heavy and late mail-in voting push. So the explanation that leftists have been using
Okay. The explanation that leftists have been using for this is that, okay, yes, she didn’t have a coordinated mail in voting campaign that could explain this, but mail in voters are overwhelmingly Democratic in nature, right?
And so if the mail in voters are overwhelmingly Democratic in nature-
I don’t even remember what I was saying.
Simone Collins: So I had asked you it, [00:04:00] my, what I had heard was, oh, the Republicans are butt hurting about Spencer Pratt being in a minority lead for a little bit and then losing a bunch of ground all of a sudden seemingly. But what they’re missing is that Republicans are heavy with in-person voting, Democrats are heavy with mail-in voting, and in Los Angeles and in California in general I think even postmarked- Ooh
maybe even possibly up to the day of the election you can still submit mail-in ballots, and that what is happening is that possibly this third candidate or Democrats in general were just doing their last minute thing and sending in their mail-in ballots- Yes ...
Malcolm Collins: and that’s what was
Simone Collins: happening.
Malcolm Collins: So we will explore this theory, but there’s- Okay
a problem with it.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: The problem goes that in this last minute push that happened all of a sudden for this Democratic candidate, the votes should have, right, like if it had been like a normal election, should have continued to go disproportionately to the Democrat who looked like they were going to win the first place, right?
The voting [00:05:00] shouldn’t have shifted between Democratic candidates late in the process like this. That doesn’t make mathematical or narrative sense. So we’re going to get it- Because, yeah, it could just be that a bunch of Dem votes came in at the last minute, right? But then those votes would presumably proportionally still be for the person who won top ticket first, and then for the person who ended up beating out Pratt second, not almost all exclusively for the person who edged out Pratt.
So we’re gonna look into both of these explanations because there are, you know, plausibles and then it’s like, okay, yeah, but what’s really happening here?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, my, my standing plausible theory is that whatever that third candidate that got a surge after, you know, the, the, then overtook Spencer Pratt was just one who heavily focused on last minute mail-in ballot-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah
voting. So we’re gonna see if that’s true, and we’re also going to go into what the leftist counter-narrative is. So I’m gonna start with the leftist counter-narrative, okay? The leftist counter-narrative goes like this. And [00:06:00] I’ll be reading from a piece, How a Misreading of Data Fueled False Claims About LA Mayoral Vote Count.
Okay?
Late on election night, an update of vote counts in Los Angeles mayor’s election appeared on electoral results pages of various media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times. It showed leading Democrats Mayor Karen Bass and Council Member Neda Rahman receiving tens of thousands of new votes, and leading Republican former reality TV star Pen- Spencer Pratt from receiving no new votes.
So basically, on the screen, there was this big, like, huge number of votes to these two Democrats, and then literally zero votes for Spencer Pratt. Some voter, observers of the vote tally immediately took the screenshots with some shouting fraud. I mean, that looks a lot like fraud. Others ran statistical analysis that showed it would be impossible for a candidate such as Pratt running second in the race to receive zero votes in such a large batch of bal- ballots.
In fact, the update that showed zero Pratt votes was [00:07:00] followed one minute later by another update that showed tens of thousands of votes for Pratt and none for Bass or Rahman. There was no batch of votes that included zero votes for any candidate, and LA County’s own data shows that plainly. But the claim’s fit was the broader false narrative being pushed relentlessly by Trump and other Republicans in recent days that California Democrats were cheating.
Voter data pushed out by the Associated Press came as two separate updates one minute apart, with Bass and Rahman’s votes in the first and Pratt’s in the second. The AP vote count receives updates as provided by election officials and adds them to our vote count. What happened in this case is that there was some log in an automated update, such as that one candidate’s votes were added in an update, and the other candidates were followed about a minute later, the Associated Press told The Times.
Specifically, an elec- electronic update from the Los Angeles County website pulled in votes from only one cro- group of candidates, including Karen Bass and N- Rahman. [00:08:00] Exactly one minute later, the electra- the electronic update picked up votes from another group of candidates, including Spencer Pratt.
Taken together, the updates included the 21,000 votes for Pratt, the 12,000, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Does that sound plausible to you?
Simone Collins: I don’t know with this election stuff. Like, the way stuff is counted and the way stuff is reported to me feels very opaque even though it’s designed to allegedly be trackable and, and transparent.
And I know that there’s a ton of shady stuff, and also very inconsistent stuff that comes with mail in ballots. For example, we just voted in the Republican primary election in our local area, right? And we had requested due to sometimes unexpected travel to have mail in ballots. You received your mail in ballot.
I did not even though I requested mine. And I know that I had requested one because- Well, there’s been a
Malcolm Collins: lot of it. When you say I received, you didn’t receive your mail in ballot, what we’ve seen, and somebody might have voted under your name by the way just so you [00:09:00] know what’s been a common form of voter fraud recently is going around houses and taking the mail in ballots as they come in-
Simone Collins: Yeah
Malcolm Collins: and then using them to vote. And people have been filmed doing this. This isn’t a conspiracy.
Speaker 20: On Tuesday just before midnight, David Sprouse’s surveillance cameras captured this man stealing not just his mail but his neighbor’s as well. It was a younger-looking man, uh, happened to come down the sidewalk. He was wearing a ball cap, face mask, gloves. Uh, carefully opened up our mailbox, took out all of our mail.
Simone Collins: Yeah, and yeah. It’s, this is, this is entirely possible because in the last election your ballot was missing. Remember when you had to fill out the provisional? ‘Cause I, then I went to the polling station this year.
I had to go to to
Malcolm Collins: vote. Yeah, I did not, and all these replies-
Simone Collins: And I was like, “Well, okay, maybe I forgot to request my mail in ballot. Maybe it was my mistake so I’ll just go and vote.” So I go and vote. They’re like, “Well, you requested a mail in ballot so now you have to fill in a provisional ballot instead.”
And so I did that. And remember last time we voted you had to do that because your mail in ballot went mysteriously missing. So e- if you and I are [00:10:00] experiencing this,
Malcolm Collins: but the point being is that it, it’s happened in multiple election cycles with our house, which makes it to me seem highly plausible that we are looking at systemic election fraud happening in this way in our area.
I- given that the, the, their systems all show the vote went out, right? Like, that’s why we’re having to fill in these provisional ballots. It’s not, like, a mistake that we made or something like that, and it’s happened multiple times. Mm. So- Yeah. And, and we do know that the, the, the wider Philadelphia area is one of the areas where, th- that has had serious allegations of this.
It has? And note now for the people who are like, “Election fraud never happens,” we now have videos... What? Oh, the kids. We now have videos of people stuffing the ballot boxes and stuff like that in some past recent American elections.
Speaker 16: This surveillance video, showing a supporter of Mayor Joe Ganim and a City Hall employee stuffing envelopes into the dropbox outside the Bridgeport Government Center. Now, the other [00:11:00] investigation will look into the use, distribution, and possession of absentee ballots at the Fireside Apartments, which is a senior and disabled public housing here in the Park City.
The Commission says even before last Tuesday’s primary, there was a significant attention in allegations of ballot abuse.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Mm. Have you seen these, Simone? They’re crazy.
Simone Collins: No. And also, like, these days I don’t know what’s fake and what’s real, and-
Malcolm Collins: Well, it, it becomes, it
Simone Collins: becomes a blur of real
I, I mean, like, when, when I ran, when I ran for office here- Like- ... remember, like, I, I spoke with a lot of people who were super involved in elections- Mm ... who were getting out the vote, who were trying to help the... In, in my case, of course, since I was a Republican candidate, I was talking with people doing the Republican stuff.
And they were talking about their experiences watching elections, watching the votes come in, and then seeing these strange and sudden changes in vote count and jumps in favor of a different candidate at the last minute. But again, like- I don’t know. You know, in the end, like
Malcolm Collins: there’s- But no, Simone, what I’m telling you, is there have been confirmed videos- Mm
of people stuffing [00:12:00] vote mailboxes. This is not a maybe it’s AI generated or something like that. This is a, this is coming from police who have gone through security videos that have shown people showing up in the middle of the night with big bundles of ballots, looking really shady both ways, stuffing them in the box, then coming back 30 minutes later and doing it again.
Jesus.
Simone Collins: Oh,
Malcolm Collins: my ... th- th- there, there have been elections in the United States where this has happened. We know from the Texas issues that there were I think it was, what was it? At least like 50,000, 100,000 fake votes. And, and this is just in Texas that were confirmed. So like we know that this is happening in the United States.
Like, these are questions. The idea that you should never question an election, I think as soon as Trump won again, that went out the window because then all the Democrats started saying-
Simone Collins: Well, hey, that’s... See, Trump is just doing God’s work, all right? He’s getting them to be critical of election integrity.
They sh- I mean, again, like it’s, it’s so funny. I grow up thinking like, “Of course vote by mail is fine. Of course we don’t [00:13:00] need voter ID.” And now I’m like, wait a second, like this is actually super shady. Like, I, I even don’t like the idea that... Again, like when I went to the polling station to do my provisional ballot this year, I I w- I was like, “Oh crap, I don’t have my ID with me.”
Like, it... Of course I assumed as any, like, normal person that if I’m going to vote in an election, and if this is something where it’s like, oh, you know, I verified this, verified that, like they’re gonna ask me for my ID. And yet, no, it’s just like your, your name and a signature or something.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the, the biggest coun- counter to this piece is that it doesn’t focus on the core instance of election fraud that Republicans are claiming, right?
It doesn’t explain either of the... It basically focuses on one glitch that would make anyone suspicious, right? Why, why were the two Democratic candidates in one grouping and the Republican candidate in a different grouping in the way that they were handling the ballots in the first [00:14:00] place, right? Like, presumably they would all have their own groupings if that’s the way it was being done, where they would be updated individually, not in groupings like that.
That makes very little sense. I can see why people were suspicious of that. But then it doesn’t even mention the other claims that people are talking about- Mm ... with the Skid Row vote harvesting. So we’re gonna get into that in a second, but I also wanted to, before I go further- Skid- oh, they’re
Simone Collins: going to, like, vagrants living in tents and stuff and getting them to vote?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and paying them to vote
Simone Collins: Ah.
Malcolm Collins: And there have been, lots of people have reported on this. There’s been a lot of on the ground reporters who have gone and asked the people in-
Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s just the, the sort of thing that would be great for YouTube views. I could totally s- yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and they’re, they’re, they’re, it’s, they’re all saying like, “Oh yeah, of course.
Like I got cigarettes for voting this year. I got, I got $2 for voting this year.” You know? Or for filling out these forms. You know, and people have been saying in the comments and stuff like this, that this is actually a very old practice in LA County that they use. Specifically things like [00:15:00] teachers unions and stuff like that use it whenever they wanna get something through, you know, like, the, the, it’s, it’s like... Well, what’s wrong, buddy?
Simone Collins: Friend? Friend? Whoa. Okay, here we go Friend, did we... We’re not missing any threads. I think he just, like, deep throated a thread and then it came out and ignited his gag reflex. You okay now, buddy?
Malcolm Collins: He wants it back immediately now that he’s choked on it
Simone Collins: Oh,
Malcolm Collins: God. Going straight at it again. Okay. Oh, God.
Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. Tripping on voter fraud.
Malcolm Collins: So what we’re gonna go, and, and I will put some of these videos in here
Simone Collins: Yeah ... for you people. I, yeah, I, I would, yes. I wanna-
Malcolm Collins: But the problem with this is, like, nobody cares. And it’s been interesting, Jimmy, because we can [00:16:00] see this vote buying happening.
Everybody knows that Democrat, like, on the ground people would do this. It doesn’t even need to be institutionalized. But this wouldn’t explain the last minute change in mail-in voting, right? Because the Skid Row voters are not the mail in voters. You, you don’t have a lot of mail in voters who are homeless people, right?
The homeless people who are being paid to vote are coming and voting in person likely. So that doesn’t really fit the broader narrative here. But let’s go into this. Here we have a piece called Spencer Pratt Pack uncovers disturbing new mystery in Skid Row. Okay? And this is from the New York Post. A Spencer Pratt volunteer team has claimed they found lots of ballots that were sent out to Skid Row, but few were actually voted in the mayoral l- race.
The California Post joined four members of the Pratt pack on Sunday as they spent hours touring the rundown neighborhood. Former California State Senate candidate Susan Collins, interviews a resident on Skid [00:17:00] Row. They asked dozens of local about voter registration, mail in ballots, and the petition gatherers who had worked in the district for years trying to get them to vote.
It comes just a week after Pratt was dumped out of the race for mayor after Karen Bass won and Nayan Ramak received a huge pile of mail in ballots that saw her dramatically overtake him. Susan Collins, a former California State Senate candidate, who was part of the Pratt pack on Sunday, told the Post, “We’re finding a lot of people being registered to vote, a lot of ballots being sent out, and nobody actually voted.”
Oh, so that would explain how they did it Okay, so, so this is what basically is being alleged, Simone. It’s that they are going in and paying these people to register to vote, and then basically keeping their information, and because these people are homeless anyway, like, the vote’s not gonna go to their house.
They just send it to their own houses and then mail on behalf of these people. I think the... [00:18:00] No one can hear you. You’re muted. You’re muted.
Simone Collins: Okay, so I am me, whatever, right? I, and I care about getting X candidate registered, so I just walk along Skid Row and I’m like, “Hey, can I, can I register you? You can just use my address,” and they don’t even necessarily know what I-
Yeah
and then I give them a pack of cigarettes, probably just a cigarette, maybe three. I don’t know. Whatever. And then I just get their, their thing. I, w- I, I, I forge their signa- I mean, they, they do this weird thing where, like, the signatures are supposed to match, so how do, how do you think that would work?
Malcolm Collins: You just- I don’t think they check or care if it’s a Democratic candidate. I mean, come on. They’re not, they’re not really checking right now. The thing that people keep asking for, Republicans keep pushing for, is the voter rolls. And- Mm-hmm ... the fact that they are not releasing the voter rolls, like, I can understand if they believe that there is fraudulent voting going on- Yeah
Why they wouldn’t release these voter rolls, right? Because it would look really bad for them to do.
Yeah.
And I’d point out here, you, you’re like, “Yeah, LA is heavily Democrat leaning,” which [00:19:00] is true, but Pratt’s campaign was astonishingly good, and Democrats have done an astonishingly bad job running LA for a while at this point.
Simone Collins: People are getting pretty fed up.
Speaker 11: Please, I’m begging you. There’s homeless drug addicts in front of the schools. My children aren’t safe. Look, if you were a transgender migrant, I could get you a free pussy. Let’s move the drug addicts closer. Bass already solved crime. I endorse her. Next!
Speaker 14: I just wanna rebuild my home. It’s been over a year.[00:20:00]
Speaker 15: This is a machine. If we wanna burn this town to the ground
Feels so close to you right now You can do it, Spencer!
Simone Collins: I’m, there, there was, there was a lot of of smear campaignage to try to make Pratt look bad, of course, as well But yeah, sure
Malcolm Collins: Also to your question of whether she did some big [00:21:00] genius last-minute mail in campaign what AI said is, no, she didn’t. It said the most realistic answer is Rama is a sitting council member who is well-known among progressive LAs.
Her base, younger, more liberal urban Democrats, is much more likely to vote by mail closer to the deadline.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: The problem, again, is why did they switch from voting from the front runner to her all of a sudden the moment it looked like the front runner was going to beat Pratt?
Simone Collins: Maybe because once you know they’re gonna win, why give them pity votes when you could show support for an underdog that you really like?
Malcolm Collins: That’s a good possible explanation. They’re
Simone Collins: waiting. Like, I, I could see myself doing that as a young Los Angeles voter trying to... I, I guess she gets nothing out of it, but she has a less- ... a less embarrassing loss. And, and certainly getting more votes, it could be a starting point to future campaigns. You know, it shows future campaign donors that she has the capability of gaining traction even when running up against [00:22:00] better funded, more famous opponents, right?
So-
Malcolm Collins: Yes. So to go back into what’s f- f- fuddy here. Okay A review of public records identified more than 7,600 registered voters linked to shelters, supportive housing projects, addiction to their treatment centers, and social services agencies, including one of 160 registrants contacted to the Midnight Mission in Skid Row.
One longtime local told volunteers on Sunday he personally knew the Mariana Del Rey woman recently charged by federal prosecutors was paying homeless people to register to vote. Brendan Lee Brown Armstrong, also known as Annika, was charged in May with paying another person to register to vote. So people have been charged over this as well.
This isn’t just a conspiracy theory. The question is, are they still doing it? According to federal prosecutors, Armstrong worked for years as a paid petition circulator collecting signatures for California ballot measures, and has agreed to plead guilty. Wow. “She was right on this corner,” they said. This was her area,” Titus Brown told volunteers.
Brown [00:23:00] claimed people were routinely offered money or cigarettes to sign forms. “She gives them $3 to $5. Some of the cheap people she’d give $2 and a cigarette,” he alleged. But Brown told LA Times- Dude, that’s
Simone Collins: so little
Malcolm Collins: Our elections are being sold for very little. But you know, they pay more per vote if you’re talking about, like, the main elections in the United States.
Simone Collins: Yeah. For sure. That’s crazy.
Malcolm Collins: Throughout the years residents remembered registering to vote. They remember petition gatherers. What many didn’t remember was actually casting a ballot which is interesting. They, they remember people coming around and trying to get them to register. They just don’t remember then voting.
Speaker 3: Videos posted online by LA Needs Spencer Pratt shows multiple Skid Row residents claiming they received around $2 in exchange for voting in the recent Los Angeles election. Karen Bass, yeah? Yeah. Or, or Nithya Raman? Uh, Karen.
Speaker 5: Karen. They told you to vote for Karen? Yeah. They had to sign the little thing. That’s, uh, and how much they pay you? It’s, like, two bucks. [00:24:00] Two bucks? Oh, to sign off on a, on a thing to vote for her? Yeah. And so they do this for everybody out here? Yeah, they come out here all the time. Several residents made similar claims.
Speaker 3: One man alleged he was not registered to vote in Los Angeles County but was still encouraged to complete paperwork. I’m not in this county. I’m in San Bernardino County, but they just said, “Who cares?” They gave me a name to, to write. They gave you a name to sign? They gave me everything to sign. They gave me a whole paper of, like, who, what to write and who to sign and everything, so.
Another resident alleged people were sometimes instructed how to complete voter paperwork and ballots. But we know that they gotta answer to somebody by what they said, so it ‘cause it’s not authentic. I don’t wanna have to scratch it out. And don’t let your signature look like the other signature. Can you use your other hand, or can you write with your foot or your nose?
Speaker 7: I’m serious. They ask you to do that? Yeah. For ballots? And I was doing it just so I could get the money.
Malcolm Collins: The volunteers moved through the tents, shelters, and service centers, sidewalk encampments, interviewing people, residents about their experiences with the drives. “A [00:25:00] lot of people never voted,” Brown said. “They did register, but they just wanted the names.” That’s interesting. For Collins, a- and ap- apparently this was still happening in this election, and they know people have been arrested for doing this in past elections, so it sounds like it’s still operational.
For Collins, who had spent the year raising concerns about ballot collection practices, the most striking part of Sunday’s visit was hearing the same story repeated block after block. “So what I’ve been hearing from a lot of people is that they’re registered to vote,” Collins says. “I’ve not found anyone, anyone who has actually voted.”
Simone Collins: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: The big question is what happened to all those ballots? People remember getting them. They don’t remember voting. So where did they go? And Julio, who was visiting Skid Row for the first time, described that experience as eye-opening and said it strengthened her determination to be involved rather than watch from afar.
“It was really intense,” Juliano said. “We saw a guy chasing another guy with a shovel and attack him.” Juliano said she came to sh- Skid Row looking for answers and convinced there was more to the election story than the voters were being told. Wow. “I guess I was part of [00:26:00] trying to figure out what happened.
The numbers just don’t make sense. That’s why I’m digging deeper into the sidelines. One thing I would like to say is I think this election fraud has forever changed Los Angeles,” she said. “At least that’s my hope, that people will feel empower- empowered to talk about the truth and keep looking for the truth.”
And there have been other reporting on different types ... So from a different New York Post piece, bombshell photo unveils damning Nithan Raman link with homeless voters as fury erupts over LA vote count. Thousands of homeless voters are registered to vote in LA shelters, and Sprint Sir Pret was eliminated by Nithan Raman.
So they, they, they then did a review here. And it said the ... so here they’re looking to see, Yeah, this seems to be, it, it seems to be the same thing. They’re just going over video evidence of this that they found. So here’s where I come at the end of this. Like, what, what do I think on all of this?
Did Democrats do this in the past? Yes, we know they did, and they’ve been charged for it in the past. Is it the [00:27:00] type of thing that Democrats would do? Like, consider the size of, like, Antifa and stuff in LA. You’re not asking, did the Democrats organize this from the top down? Right. You’re asking, was there any rogue group of Democrats, extremist leftists in LA with motivation and means and opportunity to do this?
There was definitely manifold of those.
Simone Collins: Well, okay. Here’s where I’m gonna push back, right? So the person who got the surge in votes was someone who wasn’t going to win anyway, and it was very clear that they weren’t going to win, correct?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: And then suddenly these votes appeared. When you do pay someone to buy you votes, right, illegally, sure, this person, you know, people like this are paying one or two cigarettes, three bucks per person.
Mm-hmm. But they in turn are charging probably quite a lot per voter because of the legal liability to which they’re [00:28:00] subject, as is shown by the convictions we see here, right? Mm-hmm. People are doing time. People are really paying a lot in terms of when you get caught. So when they’re weighing the odds of getting caught they’re, they’re ultimately gonna charge a lot more.
So why would this one particular candidate or people supporting this one candidate pay that much for votes that weren’t going to help them win anyway? That doesn’t make sense to me. I’m more likely to believe a conspiracy theory- What do you mean votes
Malcolm Collins: that did help them win? I’m confused.
Simone Collins: My understanding...
Oh, sorry. It’s the fragility company.
Malcolm Collins: So anyway, what was the point you were making? Why, why do you not believe that there... You, you said the amount it costs- So my understanding was that
Simone Collins: the surge of votes that came in, that were presumably bought, were for a candidate that was never going to win in the first place, that was not the Democratic front-runner, right?
Malcolm Collins: Right. It
Simone Collins: was- So why would someone pay the non-trivial cost to buy voters? Because what you’re paying, you know, the people to commit a, a crime is pretty high. Like, the premium [00:29:00] is high.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but what you are forgetting is the, the crime was already committed either way. So, presumably, the way that this works, given the various points that we’ve heard, is I, a Democrat, go and I ask homeless people to sign up to vote.
And I give them my address, right?
Simone Collins: Okay, so it’s, it’s like a subscription. It’s like I, I have on offer every single voting cycle, these are my homeless people. Would you like my homeless people this
Malcolm Collins: year? Yes, every single voting cycle- Would you like my homeless people? ... I have on offer a list of votes that I can choose how they go.
Simone Collins: And then who, who knows how it’s administered, right? It could be like I’m this one person, this crime boss of Democratic politics or whatever polit- like, who knows? And it could be apolitical, who’s just like, “I’m gonna decide how I deal with these votes.” It could even be someone who’s not paying someone else.
It could be a totally third party who’s like, “Who do I want to have my votes go toward?” Yeah. This is my little kingdom. So
Malcolm Collins: the crime would have already been done. Uh-huh. They would’ve been sitting on votes that they have to cast either
Simone Collins: way. Yes. They’re like, “How do I want my votes to go?” [00:30:00] They could have decided, “Well, I know that the, the, their...
We don’t have to worry about Spencer Pratt. This Democratic front-runner’s gonna win. I want to place this, this up-and-coming Democratic candidate.”
Malcolm Collins: Well, the wording would be, “I wanna make sure that Spencer Pratt isn’t in the final election,” ‘cause that’s what would’ve happened otherwise.
Simone Collins: Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. I totally missed that.
So if he had not been surpassed by this other Democrat, he would’ve been on the,
Malcolm Collins: the- Yeah, he would’ve been on the ballot for the
Simone Collins: final then Oh, and then there actually was, he ha- would actually have a shot, instead of just two Democrats.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Well then, okay, yeah. The, the incentives are more clear then.
Okay, thank you. Now I know. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: so now you understand the incentives, yeah. Yeah. So, basically I’m in a position of the people who are saying, like, basically at this point we’re at a point where I say demonstrably we know that voter fraud happened. Mm-hmm. The question is the scale of the voter fraud.
Simone Collins: Correct.
Malcolm Collins: And the, the, it, it really bothers me [00:31:00] that like we’re seeing mainstream Democratic outlets that are supposed to be like out there searching for truths completely uninterested in this. De- despite the overwhelming, I mean, we’ve got a conviction already, right? Like,
Simone Collins: the- Right. Well, the problem is all sides do it.
I mean, even arguably sides that people who don’t have a side. Mm. People who are just making money because this is a way to make money are doing it. Like, it, it’s one of those things where-
Malcolm Collins: I’ve never- ... I
Simone Collins: think a lot of people are- It’s all sides ... are concerned. Also, journalists are, journalists in mainstream media have this, there’s, like, there are two tiers, right?
Mm. Of like, is this a good story? Will this perform well? But also they have this whole, like, you know, I, I need to decide what the people can handle or not, right? Like, I’m not going to touch this conspiracy theory because it might incite racism or conspiracy thinking or- I was
Malcolm Collins: talking to the other day, one of our friends couldn’t believe the conspiracy theory that Michelle Obama was a man.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s
Malcolm Collins: like, and Simone, I’m like, “Simone, there’s a lot of evidence. You gotta,
Simone Collins: you gotta believe.” There’s not. There’s that, that, that, that dance... There, there’s nothing in her pants. You guys don’t [00:32:00] know female slacks. I’m sorry, but, like, women’s pants are
Malcolm Collins: weird. There, there is something hitting her pants from behind.
Simone Collins: There’s nothing hitting her pants from behind. There’s nothing. Not, it’s, it’s the way they crease. There is, there
Malcolm Collins: is-
Simone Collins: You don’t know what flowy pants... Men don’t wear pants like that. They don’t understand how they...
Speaker: Michelle
Simone Collins: mm, mm. Anyway, anyway, so I feel like this isn’t necessarily people trying to cover something up.
I think that there’s this journalistic, like, “I decide what the public can and cannot handle, and I believe that the public cannot handle this. Therefore, I’m not going to cover it because the, the nuance will be lost, and they’ll just, you know, it will undermine democracy, and I’m not gonna play a part in that.”
And I think that a lot of people see us as being irresponsible for feeding into the conspiracy theories when it, like, is, there are really [00:33:00] serious issues of voter fraud. But I also see the point of journalists who are like, “I’m not gonna bother co- cover- covering this,” because what are you gonna do, Malcolm?
Like, we can’t uncover these people. Like, we can’t find them. This is a lot harder to uncover than, like, daycare fraud, you know? Like, th- this is much more hidden, much more insidious. People have been trying to find this forever. It’s really difficult to uncover because of the way the systems work, because there’s no voter ID, because you can just take a ballot out of a, a, a thing.
And like, it, like, even if, even if every signature is checked for a match, you can easily find what someone’s signature looks like. Like, it, this is one of those very difficult situations, you know?
Malcolm Collins: N- I don’t, I don’t think it is. I, I think we’re dealing with a scenario where, I mean, I understand w- why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Like, every, I think, sane American knows that even if there was demonstrable and large voter fraud, they wouldn’t cover it. Because it goes against their political interest, right? Like, we haven’t really seen them cover many things that go against their political interests.
Simone Collins: Well, no, no. I mean, it goes in their political interest when it’s about, [00:34:00] like, a, a Republican candidate winning.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, a Republican candidate, yeah. But the point being is you’re like, I, both sides are d- I don’t think in LA Spencer Pratt or even the LA Republican Party has enough institution to commit voter fraud at this size.
Simone Collins: Right. Right. But I mean, I’m, I’m sure there’s Republican voter fraud in other areas.
Look, it’s, it’s,
Malcolm Collins: this is
Simone Collins: a system they do it.
Malcolm Collins: I doubt it’s at the same scale. Highly
Simone Collins: I don’t know.
Malcolm Collins: I don’t know I mean, it- it’s, it’s there. It’s just when we look at... And, and the reason why I doubt so strongly it’s at the same scale- Hmm ... is if you look at the Republican apparatus, because we’ve been involved in it at, like, the grassroots level, right?
They are fighting rabidly for stricter observation and oversight to prevent voter fraud. If they were the ones-
Simone Collins: Oh ...
Malcolm Collins: still committing voter fraud, they wouldn’t be doing that. And the- That’s
Simone Collins: pretty damning. That’s pretty
Malcolm Collins: damning ... the louder damning thing is that the left has been fighting [00:35:00] rabidly against investigation of voter fraud.
Simone Collins: That is moderately susp- okay, more than moderately suspicious. That’s a really good point.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, that should get- Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: not just that, but
Simone Collins: with the
Malcolm Collins: Save Our Country Act or whatever, the,
Simone Collins: we’re, we’re- That’s someone who’s like, “Hey, let’s be more careful,” and the other side being like, “No, what do you mean careful?”
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If, if I have one team out there who’s like, “We should have ID, in-person only voting,” and then another group out there that’s like, “That would be a end of American freedom,” right? Like, I’m like- Okay ... “What are you talking about?”
Simone Collins: When you put it that way, the look is not good. It’s a, it’s a bad look.
Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so, my general takeaway from this is it’s happening. It’s probably pretty big. There isn’t a lot you can do once they capture a region. Just based on the evidence that we have access to, I mean, it seems that, like, everyone who’s involved is saying, “It’s happening, just what’s the scale,” right?
And I think the scale is probably pretty big. If you look at the, And, and here I’m not even looking at, like, the observed statistics. I’m just thinking about the number of radical leftist groups in LA that [00:36:00] don’t care a damn about the law and would have motive, means, opportunity, and time to do something like this.
If they have time to, like, stage these giant protests, somebody in the org has time to do something like this. And then I think what we learn about this is you can’t let them win, ever, right? This is the thing with, like, Nick Fuentes’ dumb strategy of like, let, g- let’s let the left win and then the right will get angry enough that it ri- Generally, when the other side l- wins, our side moderates.
That’s how it works. If you want our side to become more extreme, what you need us to do is win a number of times in a row, not lose. Because the average Republican voter doesn’t then say, “I guess we need to be more extreme.” The average Republican voter says, “I guess we need to be more moderate to pick up some of those swing voters,” right?
So, but it’s not just that. It’s that once we lose an area, when you look at the map, and I’m gonna put the two maps here,
of states where you are allowed to vote without an ID and states where Democrats [00:37:00] win or won in the last election it’s like one for one at this point, right? I think that we’re entering a place where we cannot give an inch of ground because they’re realizing that the demographics are shifting against their favor.
And there will be a point, you know, once we have the 2030 redistricting, where it essentially becomes impossible for them to win going into the future. And after that, what do you do, right? When you look at the the higher fertility rate among Republicans and we look that people vote like their parents vote, when we look at the shifting right-wing vote in the youth of these days, you know, if these trends continue this is, it’s over.
It’s game over for the left. And I think that they’re behaving in a way that seems rational to them and, and ethical to them because they believe that the right are literally Nazis. That’s why it’s important that they define it that way because it gives them what’s called a psychological license to do whatever they want to combat it[00:38:00]
Simone Collins: Yeah, okay. I, I, yes. You, you’ve also changed my view on this. It is worth covering this because it is worth to explain why it’s very important to push for voter ID laws.
Malcolm Collins: Voter ID laws, they’re never backing down. No, no election is unimportant. Not your local elections, not your national elections, every election matters.
Yeah. And if you, if you vote by mail like us to try to make it easy, just keep in mind you’re gonna have the person drive by and steal your ballot.
Simone Collins: Not great. Not great.
Malcolm Collins: But that’s, that’s you know, just, just the state of America right now and why we need to be so overwhelming in the legitimate votes that we’re putting out there.
Simone Collins: Well, friends, be careful and make sure your ID is current.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway love you, Simone. Have a fun day at the dentist, and thank you for your time
Simone Collins: Love you [00:39:00] You’re beautiful. But that should come as no surprise.
Nice one, Tex. Nice one Okay
Camera is- Mary,
Malcolm Collins: can you hear me okay?
Simone Collins: I can. However, I need a moment
Malcolm Collins: to find where my camera is.
Okay.
Here we are. Found it. Oh, no, no, no, no, you don’t. Don’t even think of it. I
do feel- I do- ... good being able to do this with you again today.
Simone Collins: I know. I, I miss it, and that’s, you know, why I -
Malcolm Collins: Oh, we got a close-up of a baby.
Simone Collins: Oh, no.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no.
Simone Collins: Frank.
Malcolm Collins: All the women out there now need babies. [00:40:00]
Simone Collins: I don’t know. I don’t know if close-ups help or hurt.
Malcolm Collins: Got me in my pirate shirt today.
Simone Collins: No, actually-
Malcolm Collins: New, new Evil Maxx
Simone Collins: aimed ... I meant to get a proper, like, Mr. Darcy shirt. Rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr. God, Tex, I’m so sorry. Someday you’ll look back on this fondly, or not, Mr. Demaison.
Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. I, like, either I’m still with you, or the thought of losing you has destroyed me someday.
Simone Collins: What do you mean?
Malcolm Collins: Well, I wouldn’t look back on this, because I will just go talk to you.
Speaker 25: First one, actually, I’ll just light it for you
Speaker 26: Back, back. Here, Torsten.
Speaker 25: Hold it away from me so you don’t get hurt. All right, Tagan, come back. Go, go play over there. It’s gonna fall. Do not do that, Torsten. Octavian, come back here[00:41:00]
What happens if- If you w-, if you, do not let that touch anyone or it’ll hurt them Why is it going down the thing?
Titan, do not let that touch anyone or you will never get to play with these again Toasty, why are you putting it on the deck? Why? You’re burning the deck. That’s bad, Torsten. You have to hold it up in the air. It says that it might burn me. Octavian, come here. That’s why there’s the metal part at the bottom.
Speaker 28: There you go. See, look, it stops at the end right there. Can, can I try it again? All right. Go play, Octavian. When you’re done you can give it to me. What? Just never put it on the deck. It’s not burning. Oh, it’s empty. No, we’re done. We’re done? Mm-hmm. Oh, Octavian, you got yours.
What do you think, Professor?
Speaker 26: How do I know? How do I know?
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Malcolm and Simone Collins discuss a surprising realization about why many leftists accuse pronatalists of having a “breeding kink.” They explore how some in the trans community appear to structure major life decisions around arousal patterns and identity fulfillment, leading to projection onto families who have many children (often via IVF).
Topics include: why breeding kinks don’t actually drive real family-building, the difference between fantasy and daily life, identity-maxxing vs. objective function living, Techno-Puritan sins, power dynamics in kinks, furries, Lia Thomas, and much more.
This episode dives deep into psychology, sexuality, culture wars, and how different worldviews shape behavior.
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be talking about basically a very weird phenomenon that has happened to us repeatedly, and I didn’t understand it until today, and I had this, like, shocking realization when I was just thinking through this today, and I was like, “This explains so much of a leftist mindset that I didn’t fully understand before.”
Which is when we initially would go viral people would say, “Oh, like, why do they have to, like, bring us into their weird breeding kink?” You know, and this was a common... I, I’d say it’s, like, 1/5 or 1/8 of comments whenever we used to go viral.
We, we had a journalist come to our house recently, so, like, a trans individual who’s a journalist, and he was interviewing us or she, whatever. I, I, I never know with these people. She was interviewing us over, And by the way, if, if you’re trans and annoyed by that, just know how annoying it is for the rest of us when we can’t tell, we don’t care, and you act like it’s the biggest effing deal in the world, [00:01:00] and yet you dress and act in a way that intentionally makes it hard to tell, right?
Like, I would gender you right if it was obvious to me, right? I’m not, I’m not, like, out there actively trying to be a... But you are intentionally dressing in a way to make it difficult for me to know, right? So why am I supposed to... You’re just being a jerk to people. You have made your existence a jerky existence to other people.
But anyway, so the, the, she comes here and she gives us an interview, and in the interview she asks us something along the lines of, like... And, and this was the thesis of the interview. Like, is this all really just a kink? Like, is there a kink that’s motivating you guys to want to have lots of kids?
And I was just, like, sitting there like, does, do they really believe that, like, I would have five kids because of a kink, right? Like, the amount of my life I would have to dedicate [00:02:00] to something as simple as, like, something you masturbate to, right? Like, a, a simple arousal pattern would be genuinely astonishing to invest so much that I have five kids over it.
And I, I was just thinking today, like, do they really think that I’m doing all this? ‘Cause I was, I was, like, playing with my kids. I’m like, do they really think I have kids over a kink?
Simone Collins: Well, and then they get super, super shocked when they discover that we’ve produced all of our kids with IVF.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that we produced all of our kids with IVF.
They’re like, “Oh, that... Well, that undermines the entire thesis.” But- They they, th- which they were very confused about, right? Like it, is it... And, and, and then today I had this realization. Oh my God, I assumed that they just didn’t understand, or they were trying to cast aspersions on us, or they were trying to be edgy in some way about this.
[00:03:00] But then when I started to think about it more, I was like, but wait a second, this is a trans person. If they’re trans over a kink, which a good portion of the trans community appears to be in their own stated things. They’re like you- if you go to the, you know, trans Reddit and stuff like that, they’re like, “Well, of course, like arousal is part of this,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Now they have tried to define it as not a kink, tried to define it, but if you look at the actual written experiences of trans people going through gender transition many of them talk about it as something that is partially arousing to them. This is incredibly well documented in trans people talking about their own lives, right?
And in addition to this, we have entire trans communities where when you ‘cause I actually read like the Transmaxer Manifesto, right? Trying to get people to Transmax. And this is clearly a, a, a gender transition modification transformation kink in, in, in even the way it’s structured. It’s like, wouldn’t it be so hot if X, Y, and Z, and D, right?
You know. So [00:04:00] I read through these things a- and I’m like, if this person transitioned over partially an arousal pattern, yeah, that’s actually how they live, right? They really are living their entire life, their entire reproductive future, which I guess to me, I think of as like one of the core impacts you have with your life, was decided potentially downstream of an arousal pattern.
And I saw this and I was like... I had just never considered to take what they were saying at face value. It just seemed so insane to me that an individual could say all of this, that it didn’t enter my mind as, no, they might actually mean this. And I think once we accept that yes, they do actually mean that, you can begin to understand so many other things about modern [00:05:00] leftist philosophy.
Thoughts before I go further, Simone?
Simone Collins: No, although I am curious if this ties in with your concept of the techno-puritan sin of, of living to fulfill an identity versus living to maximize an objective function.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think it’s, it’s both. I mean, transness is obviously it breaks, like, all of our sins.
I mean, one, they’re living to fulfill an identity and other people’s perception of them, which I see the fundamentally fai- vain way to live. You can just, you know, choose to live however you wanna live, right? And, and say, “What matters is my effect on the world, not whether or not I appear a certain way in other people’s minds.”
Like, obsessing over that, we argue is sinful, where sinfulness are just things that f**k up your life in the long run. But second it’s sinful in that it’s... And, and I think that it- it- it’s, it’s living your entire life after an arousal pattern. Like, we don’t even, we don’t even put into our sins living your whole life in the pursuit of [00:06:00] happiness because we say happiness is a choice, right?
So you don’t need to pursue it. It’s something that you should sort of grab and subdue. You choose how you interpret the things around you in life. And when you realize that this sort of, like, higher form of happiness, like am I content with myself, am I moving forward, that it’s a choice, well, then the only sorts of happiness you have are the basal forms of happiness.
You know, this is, like, eating whatever food you want all day, every day, right? Or just having constant orgies or engaging in huge life-changing behavior to fulfill arousal patterns, right? Which are just a, a basal sort of breeding thing in the background of all human biology that really shouldn’t affect any sort of a daily choice.
And this is where it all got really interesting for me. Because if I am listing, like, my unusual arousal patterns or kinks or anything like that and I have argued in the past that a breeding fetish is about the only thing in the world that is not actually a fetish.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: [00:07:00] It’s what the entire arousal system is built to get you to do.
About anything else that arouses you is ancillary and something misfiring.
Simone Collins: All non-procreative sex is a fetish. Or some kind of weird kink, I guess.
Malcolm Collins: But anyway, of my list of, like, things that really turn me on, the wider category of breeding fetish content is actually one of those things for me. It’s not my top thing but it’s probably number two.
But with
Simone Collins: that being- Well, based on its popularity, like, if you look at just sort of top ranked tags and stuff in erotic material, for men specifically, that’s kind of the thing. In women, I just don’t see it that much, actually, for, like, female content, which is interesting.
Malcolm Collins: And do you not see it a lot in female content?
Mm. I mean, sort of being forced to breed you see in female content, like, Not
Simone Collins: really,
Malcolm Collins: actually ... in The Handmaid’s Tale and stuff like that, like the-
Simone Collins: No. Because even then if you actually look at the [00:08:00] books most or most if not many of the men are themselves infertile, so-
Malcolm Collins: Oh, really?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, like, there are issues with, like, some of the doctors being like, “Well, I will.
I will inseminate you ‘cause I know for a fact this guy is infertile and he doesn’t know it. But, you know, you should just therefore let me F you,” and then, yeah. So it’s, it’s a whole thing, actually. Wait, but
Malcolm Collins: isn’t that a kink in itself? Isn’t that part of the breeding kink?
Simone Collins: No, I don’t think so. Yeah, anyway, I, I don’t- Does,
Malcolm Collins: does, does she go with
Simone Collins: the doctor?
Does she- In Handmaid’s Tale I just don’t think that... I haven’t read the books. I, I only know from, like, some summaries and stuff that I’ve heard.
Malcolm Collins: Of what?
Simone Collins: But, like, there’s not a lot of actually getting pregnant going on. Like, some, some of the ancillary characters go through pregnancies and stuff, but-
Malcolm Collins: I guess it, it, it, like, once you get pregnant and have a kid, all of the sexy stuff after that
Simone Collins: begins to- Pregnancy is, yeah, that’s, that, that is where for m- m- maybe a majority of women, I don’t know, like, sort of arousal and, and, like, stuff being sexy just dies with [00:09:00] pregnancy and with newborns being around.
So typically with female erotic material, it is, there are-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but especially if it’s, like, multi-books ... no
Simone Collins: children around.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, if she gets pregnant in book one and now in book two she’s raising a newborn, like, all of the other sexy stuff starts to get weird.
Simone Collins: Well, and you have to keep in mind pregnancy is while a beautiful thing, often very uncomfortable.
Like, you’re not aroused when you want to vomit. You’re not aroused when you have intense nerve pain. You are not aroused when you feel incredibly large and when your- Right ... legs are swollen and when you look like, you know, a, a watermelon, right? Like, noth- there’s nothing. Like, now first, I’m sure there’s always exceptions, right?
I’m sure there’s some women who feel incredibly sexy and have really high sex drive and everything when they’re pregnant and when they have newborns and whatever, right? Like, all these things are possible. However no. Like, and I’ve, I’m, I’ve c- I’ve consumed, like, so much erotic material both targeted at men and targeted at women.
Women, it’s power dynamics. It’s getting high-powered men. It’s high-status men. It’s and, and, [00:10:00] and a lot of, like, just the more general focus i- like, really hot men, Yeah ... men who’ve always had a crush on them, men who really like pleasuring them. It’s never, “I’m going to get you pregnant.” Like, that actually if anything could possibly be on average a turn-off for women, which is really interesting.
Yeah. Yeah, so- but yeah, I, I do not, like, it’s super common in male-oriented stuff, not in female-oriented stuff.
Malcolm Collins: That, that makes sense. That makes sense. So the, point I was getting to here is even as somebody who like would just admit if you consider the idea of impregnation being hot a kink, right? Or your partner being pregnant a kink, right?
Like, I, I always think she looks better when she’s pregnant. If you consider that a kink and I’m saying me, even as somebody who would have both of those things being in like my kink category, they have never activated around my actual children’s birth, right? Like-
Simone Collins: That’s true, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: They, they have [00:11:00] never, because I don’t like, even
Simone Collins: me- Well, no, and then I, I will point out, and this is maybe getting a little bit too TMI, but like even before we realized we had to do IVF and we were just, you know, timing and trying to get pregnant naturally- Yeah
like it actually felt kind of unsexy to, when we were actually trying to get pregnant- Oh, oh ... ‘cause it was like, oh God, this is like the ovulatory window, like we have to do it now. And
Malcolm Collins: like- I, no, I completely agree. It was- Yeah ... really unsexy. Like-
Simone Collins: Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: having sex to conceive is like-
Simone Collins: Stressful and not sexy
Malcolm Collins: yes, you’re on a schedule.
Simone Collins: Super
Malcolm Collins: not sexy. You’ve gotta work it into unusual times.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: You’ve gotta like, it is, it is
Simone Collins: actively- It’s typically like women aggressively like when men aren’t ready for it, being like, “I need you to like come inside me now,” and like just getting really intense about it. And like I, you, you, like even I remember your, m- again, not TMI, but like I remember your dad at a steakhouse being like, “Yeah, like it was really stressful when your mom was trying to conceive ‘cause she’d just be like call me up and be like, ‘You have to come home from work now.’”
And like, just like it’s not [00:12:00] fun for the men. Like it’s very clearly not fun for anyone involved.
Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s not. But I’m, the point I’m making here is even with somebody with all of the layered kinks that could be associated with a breeding kink, right? Mm-hmm. Never was that process unusually arousing for me.
Mm. If anything, it went in the exact opposite direction. Because-
Simone Collins: Ironically ...
Malcolm Collins: it, it fell into, and this might have been a competing like anti-kink I have of, of the long procedures and everything like that- ... and a lot of you know-
Simone Collins: Anti-kink ...
Malcolm Collins: but whatever the point being is it never- Yeah ... influenced me or wanting to have kids.
Even though I may feel like my wife looks even more beautiful when she’s pregnant-
Simone Collins: Aw ...
Malcolm Collins: right? That would never, ever in a billion years factor into my decision to get her pregnant. Because that’s just like a minor modification into how attractive I find her. Maybe like a I find her 10, 20% more attractive for nine months, and then- She has [00:13:00] a child I need to raise for the rest of my life.
Simone Collins: Right. Like, and then, and then 18 years and she-
Malcolm Collins: That would be f*****g insane.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
And just to hammer this home further, even though I find her more physically attractive when she is heavily pregnant, I do not have sex. We do not have sex when she is heavily pregnant. And people can be like, “Oh, it’s totally safe for the baby,” whatever. I’m like, “Mm, actually, there have been cases where baby has, have died or suffered injuries during it.”
It is incredibly rare, but it is absolutely possible. Um, and I would never in a million years forgive myself. In a million years. Imagine you knew that. Like, I, I’m not going to do something where I might have to live with the fact for the rest of my life that I know I killed one of my kids because I wanted to get off, and she couldn’t even get pregnant that day.
What are you talking about? That’s so disgusting. Um, I, I know some people are like, “Well, I just wouldn’t have sex if I [00:14:00] couldn’t have sex with my wife all the time when she’s preg-” Whatever. Okay? I’m just pointing out here that it’s actually instances in which I cannot have sex with her because I’m worried about the safety of my children.
Even if it’s a one point zero zero zero one thing, I’m not taking that chance
Malcolm Collins: That would be absolutely insane.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: But then weirder than, and I, and I actually, like, I want to communicate this to these people, and I w- I, when I originally was thinking through this, I was like, well, think of it this way.
Like, even if you have like some BDSM related kinks. Personally I’m aroused by being in a dominant position when I’m with my partner. We’re like getting a list of kinks I have today. Oh,
Simone Collins: boy. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I’m aroused. I have never been aroused by being a boss, right? I have never been aroused by having to fire someone.
I have never been aroused- ... by being in a real world position of authority over someone.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: For the vast majority of kinks, to activate them, you need to engage in scenarios that are so [00:15:00] divorced from anything that actually happens in real life that they’re not gonna accidentally activate during normal daily stuff.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And I think a, a lot of people would get this, right? Like, when I talk about the BDSM thing, most people, I think most people probably have some level of arousal to submission or dominance.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, that, in, in our research, that was just so- Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: like
Simone Collins: the
Malcolm Collins: vast- ... pervasive. So if you’re one of our followers and you’re aroused by submission or dominance, have you ever actually been aroused by, like, being someone else’s employee-
or being someone else’s boss? Yeah, someone’s
Simone Collins: like, “Go clean the toilets.” Oh, yes. Say that again, slowly.
Malcolm Collins: Y- you’re like a f- yeah I mean, surely somebody is. But I realized- Yes ... what’s different for me in them-
Simone Collins: Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: is there are ways that some people with submission fetishes or dominance f- fetishes relate to being an employee or boss that [00:16:00] is sexualized.
Like, we do see people engaging in relationships with their boss where, like, that’s clearly a component to it. No,
Simone Collins: but that’s, it, it’s the power dynamic. It’s not the bossing, it’s the, the fact that he is the boss and I’m the secretary. And there are definitely plenty of female fantasies around that in terms of, like, the material that’s popular.
That is certainly common in female- Or- ... or in general erotic material ... you see this in the
Malcolm Collins: case of, like, teacher-student, right? Like, where a teacher is in a relationship.
Simone Collins: Yeah, no, teacher-student, boss, and... Well, and, and you see it w- with male erotic materials, too. A common one, of course, is nurse, right? It’s, it’s one of those places where it’s acceptable for a man- Well, no,
Malcolm Collins: but that,
Simone Collins: the,
Malcolm Collins: the point I’m making is I’m not talking about in erotic material, I’m talking about in real life stuff.
Simone Collins: Oh, sure. Or- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But what I realized is that these people who are actually aroused because of this position they have relative to somebody who they are the boss of- Hmm ... or who are in a submissive position because they’re [00:17:00] somebody’s employee, they relate to their daily duties in a way that is totally foreign to the way I relate to my daily duties.
Simone Collins: Oh, sure.
Malcolm Collins: It would never accidentally arouse me to be somebody’s teacher, right? I would never mistake that for this other type of relationship.
Simone Collins: Yeah, good point.
Malcolm Collins: And then I realized, oh my God, it’s not just in those instances. It’s also likely in the instances of how these people like the whole trans thing, the, the idea that, like- Oh, well you couldn’t possibly just do something every day all day that’s primarily intended to arouse you, right?
The idea of transition itself as being in that category, right? It’s like this is why they do all this weird fetishy stuff all the time that I have found so confusing, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I’ve always been like why, why, why do we have, Who is the, the, the swimmer? [00:18:00] The trans swimmer? Lia
Simone Collins: Thomas.
Malcolm Collins: Lia Thomas.
I always talk about Lia Thomas. I’m like, why did the trans community support her flashing male genitals at girls in the girls’ locker room when neither male or female locker rooms is it normal to fully undress yourself, and it hasn’t been for the past 20 years. It wasn’t when I was in school. It’s definitely not today, and we’ve been drifting further in that direction.
So that means that this is somebody who is intentionally flashing people. I was like, why did the trans community make this person a role model for the community, stand this individual, make them the figurehead when they were clearly acting in a way that I would think is a bad action? And then I realized I didn’t understand it.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Lia Thomas made every moment about what aroused her. Walking into the locker room and being like, “I am gonna make my entire life a sexualized reframing,” is actually very, very normal to people with this mindset [00:19:00] And I’ll note here, I think we see this in the conservative side as well. In the conservatives who are just doing this conservative LARP and don’t seem to have actual, like, values.
They’re just like, “I’m the most conservative person out there.” And that’s why when people try to, like, front on you with this stuff, like, “Oh, I’m more conservative ‘cause I’m more...” whatever thing they wanna push on you. Like, “I hate the gays more, the Jews more,” the, you know. And it’s like, come on, the communists did that stuff, too.
You’re bad at being a conservative. You’re an idiot conservative. But the, the the conservatives who, who go with that, “I’m a more trad version of a Christian. You’re just, like, really involved in being a scripture nerd. So, like, what are you? Some nerd about study- the trying to get the exact right words in a way that makes sense?
Why can’t you just believe whatever I was told Christianity was when I was growing up?” And I’m like, “Well, because I actually wanna believe what’s true.” And they’re not interested in what’s true. They’re interested in what fits this theming, and then we see it affect in their actions. [00:20:00] Like the couple, the famous conservative couple where their marriage was blessed by the Pope and she was cheating with her boss the whole time, right?
Simone Collins: Blessed by the Pope.
Malcolm Collins: Blessed by
Simone Collins: the Pope. Apparently, though, there, it’s... What, what happened actually in that case is apparently you can, like, show up in a certain place when you get married, like, at, at, at, in the Va- in Vatican City, and the Pope will be there and, like, bless a bunch of people all at once.
So it’s not like they made some kind of special appointment with him. They like- Well,
Malcolm Collins: right, but
Simone Collins: it
Malcolm Collins: was
Simone Collins: still a very performative- ... showed up. It’s like showing up at a Mardi Gras parade and getting Mardi Gras beads thrown at you. Just, just to, like, put that in context for
Malcolm Collins: our listeners. No, no, no, no. I, I, I...
Look, and again, I wouldn’t even... As much as I might be anti-Catholic, I’m not gonna besmirch the Pope for accidentally blessing somebody who wasn’t true to their belief system, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: He had
Simone Collins: no way of knowing. Well, plus with the Catholic Church there’s always redemption, so don’t worry about it.
Malcolm Collins: Right, right.
But I’m just saying even, even if it was personally organized, I would still... That, that’s not... But the point is is it was still a big show of, “Look at [00:21:00] how X I am.” Mm. And what I realize is that actually when you live your life based around maximizing an identity rather than a consequentialist value system, you can be aroused by these sorts of positions even if you’re a conservative, right?
Mm. The reason why a teacher may be aroused by being in the role of a teacher relative to a student or the role of a boss relative to their employee is because they are maximizing and they identify as teacher. That’s what they’re doing. I’m trying to be the most teachery teacher right now. And so that allows me to, if, if that’s what’s hitting the arousal pathway, then that hits it for me, right?
But if I’m going out there and as a boss, as I’ve always done as a boss, my job is to make money for my investors, right? Like, never, and, and, and not screw over customers and not screw over my employees, but like that’s always the calculation running in my head. It’s [00:22:00] never, “I’m a boss.” I, I can do the, you know, I’m a, I’m a boss song here.
Speaker 9: Direct workflow. Like a boss. My own bathroom. Like a boss. Micromanage. Like a boss. Promote synergy. Like a boss.
Malcolm Collins: But like I, yeah, I’m never thinking like, “I’m the bossiest boss.”
Speaker 2: Hey, I’m Buddy. I’m the boss.
That’s my sister, Grace. She’s not the boss. I’m the boss.
Malcolm Collins: I’m the boss.” But anyway, for making, about making cakes. But anyway it, it’s never how I perceive myself in those moments. I’m just a tool of trying to achieve a specific outcome.
And I realize that I think many progressives, so there’s sort of two people here who get sucked into this in ways that were, one, before foreign to me, but now make a lot more sense. One is the progressives who just like intentionally are pleasure maxing their lives.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And, and I think you see this sometimes as conservatives, but it’s fairly rare.
Just like the [00:23:00] only thing I live for is what arouses me and what makes me feel good. Yeah. And if, if, and these people can fall into various categories. Obviously if they are most impacted by arousal systems, they may go down the trans pathway, they may go down some other lifestyle pathway, like the furry pathway or something like that.
Simone Collins: The furry pathway.
Malcolm Collins: Or they may go down, you know, all these various things that they could go down. And actually this is an interesting point to me, which is really important for me in terms of how I see something like furries. When people tried to, the left tried to take Lola Bunny and make Lola Bunny less sexy, there was a big online outrage that predominantly happened on the right.
And what that showed me is A lot of people find anthro characters attractive, right? Like apparently this is normalized enough that like right-wing influencers were like, “How dare you desexualize Lola Bunny?”
Simone Collins: Is this true? I mean, it just... They, they made a humanoid character sexy. Like, [00:24:00] how is that... A sexy character- Well, so the point I’m making here-
that’s humanoid is sexy. Like I, how is that... It’s not like people are into animals
Malcolm Collins: The point I’m making... Well, yeah, they dr- that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to make the character activate the part of your brain, for at least people without very strict counter systems look like a slightly modified version of a human.
Yeah. And because people like diversity in sexual partners, which we’ve actually seen from genetic selection events that happened in environments where mate selection was really important, like in Northern Europe. We have another episode where we go more into this, like are redheads monster girls.
But like, in
Simone Collins: these- Forgot about
Malcolm Collins: that ... in these environments you begin to have these really unusual dimorphic traits, like bright red hair and different eye colors. Which by the way you don’t have in most of the world. You do not have varying hair colors, you do not have varying eye colors. You only have these in these very explicit Northern European environments.
Mm-hmm. And because of that, or that just shows me that, you know, [00:25:00] historically, at least within populations that I’m related to liking somebody who looked in some way novel. Like a ginger looks very novel. Mm-hmm. You know, to, to a, a Roman, you bring a red-headed ginger in and th- they wouldn’t look any more different from the average human woman than a, a girl with horns or elf ears.
In fact they probably would’ve looked more different from the average human woman to a Roman who captured a red-headed slave with, with, that was a ginger than your average elf in fantasy fiction looks to your average human in fantasy fiction. But the point I was making here is that there is something very different from just saying like, “Oh, something’s arousing to me.”
Like, that’s a category of like anthro figures is arousing to me, and being a furry. Because it’s how you’re relating to this arousal pathway. Mm-hmm.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: When you’re a furry you’re saying, “This is going to be my identity. I’m gonna go to cons around this, I’m gonna invest a ton of money in this, I’m gonna incorporate [00:26:00] this thing that arouses me into my core idea of who I am.”
And I would say of, of the list of techno-puritan sins, let’s definitely add this one as, like, one of the higher sins you can commit of, of trying to incorporate a, an arousal pathway. Well,
Simone Collins: no, I think trying to incorporate any emotional pathway into your identity is- Right.
Malcolm Collins: True ...
Simone Collins: toxic. It- that’s not the point.
Your identity should be something that is meant to maximize your objective function. That’s it.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. But there are two, ... Well, by the way, for people, when she talks about objective function, that means the things that you believe have intrinsic value. Mm-hmm. Like a weighted list of things you think are good for humanity or that you’re commanded to do by God or, you know, whatever else, right?
Like, you have a, a, a thing that you as a human are made to do, and you believe that, right? Mm-hmm. And even, even if you think the thing that you’re meant to do as a human is maximize your own pleasure- Pursuing [00:27:00] pleasure in the way that these communities do rarely maximizes your own pleasure. Actually, like let’s look at furries as an example of this.
If you look at the suicidality risk you look at the unaliving risk among furries, it’s incredibly high. You look at the depression risk, it’s incredibly high. When you do this form of hedonism maxing, it ends up eating away at your actual contentedness because it’s just not how humans were designed to live.
Mm-hmm. It’s like even if I enjoy candy, if I do nothing but eat candy every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I am going to feel much worse. You know, like pleasure maxing, even though candy make me feel good, candy not route to long-term pleasure maxing.
Simone Collins: Well, in fact, when it, when we discussed like is there a cure for gay in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality, from what we could see in the research, the only way you could really make someone not want [00:28:00] to indulge in any same-sex activity is to just inundate them so much with gay sex that they like just can’t take anymore.
Malcolm Collins: No, no now obviously same sex attracted people can suppress this arousal pathway. Yeah. Right? Like, there’s arousal pathways I suppress all the time, but the, the point I’m making here is we’re, we’re building out three categories. So category one is the people who are captured by an identity, and this identity can be tied to an arousal pathway or not.
Mm-hmm. But I think even if you don’t go into it as tied to an arousal pathway, like the Christian influencer who saw himself as like a boss or a superior to this person, and like the big tough Christian influencer guy, he became captured by this identity in a way that ended up trow- triggering arousal pathways that made him move against his core moral thesis, right?
Or his objective function as we would say. But then the second category is the true I’m gonna eat candy every day person, and this is, this is where you get, you know, the, [00:29:00] the haze influencer. This is where you get the healthy at every size people. This is where you get the ex- the, the trans extremists, right?
Where it’s just I’m gonna live my entire life based around whatever can make me... This is where you get the people crashing out on Twitter because the government won’t give them, Pre, pre... We had a whole episode. It was one of our craziest- Oh, PrEP. PrEP, yeah. We learned about how much the government pays on PrEP, which is only useful if you’re having orgies.
Like if you have a, a monogamous partner, because of how good anti-AIDS medication is now, but PrEP’s just largely
Simone Collins: irrelevant. Well, yeah. So not, not exactly orgies, but more specifically, like, a lot of one-off partners, new partners who you can’t really vet who you can’t necessarily trust to say, “Yeah, I’m taking the correct medication,” et cetera.
Yeah. Then that’s what PrEP is for. Yeah, it’s for, like, the most unsafe and irresponsible form of sex that you could have, regardless of your orientation. And the fact that the government’s paying for that is somewhat annoying.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, government isn’t paying for it, you’re [00:30:00] paying for it. You, the viewer of Base Camp, are paying for it.
Simone Collins: Well, if you live in the United States, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I think most of Europe gives PrEP too, for free. You
Simone Collins: think? Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: You know. Thanks. De- definitely need to cut PrEP. And people are like, “Well, the, these people can’t control them. They should be able to control themselves.” And then they’re like, “And what if they get AIDS?
And we shouldn’t pay for that either, then they can die,” right? Like, w- w- whatever can happen to consequences, right? Like, don’t do X thing because it can lead to Y thing, right? Like, that should be on them to know, “Oh, gee, I shouldn’t have the orgy. I should just step back from the orgy,” right? Like, a little less orgying.
But yeah thoughts, Simone?
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I’m, I’m trying to reconcile this in my head with the stated purpose of becoming trans, which is, you know, you feel like you’re born in the wrong body, and you’re just trying to resolve severe body [00:31:00] dysmorphia. The, the mainstream opinion on the left, as I understand it, is that this has nothing to do with your sexuality and it has everything to do with who you feel you are, which I guess we would probably say is a misnomer.
Like, your identity doesn’t matter anyway. It doesn’t matter who you are. You should just make the most of whatever you’ve been dealt and optimize it around your objective function. And if you’re suddenly born tomorrow, or, like, you wake up tomorrow and you’re totally different, it’s not like, “Okay, well, I need to fix, fix this to, to how I feel.
I need to just live,” like, and, “Okay, this is my body now,” like, “Okay, now I’m a rabbit person. Okay, then I’ll just do that.” In fact, I think you could argue that everyone has to do this throughout their lives, because one day you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna be 40. And I think a lot of people are, like, trans young, right?
Like, they’re 40, and they act like they’re 12. And that’s just not, not ideal. You know, they should be leveraging the identity that they’ve woken up [00:32:00] in, in an optimal way. And I think- Nevertheless what the argument is with identity and, and being trans is that they feel like they’re in the body of someone with a different n- natal sex, and they have to fix that.
That it has nothing to do with sex. And I’m
Malcolm Collins: trying to- Yeah, nobody ever, like, the, the, it’s, it’s like, it, it’s very normal to not feel like you’re an adult, right? Like, this is a normal thing. Just because I don’t feel like- Yeah,
Simone Collins: or to not want to be an adult. Like, I mean, all the women who are getting elective cosmetic procedures to look younger are trans young.
You know? They, they are also getting gender affirming surgery and, and youth affirming surgery.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and identity affirming surgery,
Simone Collins: right? Uh-huh, exactly, which again, we would say is sinful. But I don’t, I, for, for women, I, m- many would, you could argue, oh, they’re doing it for sex ‘cause they wanna attract partners.
I don’t think they’re doing it for sex. I, so I don’t know if, if the trans thing is really about sex. I mean, so I’m trying to parse that out. ‘Cause also there’s this very common thing in, in, like, trans [00:33:00] discourse to say, “No, being trans is not expressing autogynephilia. They’re totally different things.”
There’s almost this, like, disavowal of people with autogynephilia. Like, it’s not a sex thing.
Malcolm Collins: There, there is not at all a disavowal in the actual trans community. So, this is something that they, that they signal very loudly to outsiders. But to insiders, it’s widely accepted.
Simone Collins: Okay, but you don’t deny that it’s signaled loudly to outsiders.
Malcolm Collins: No, it is signaled loudly to outsiders, but if you actually hang out on their forums, they’ll talk about this arousing them all the time. In fact, there was even a giant fight within the trans community like 10, 20 years ago, so, like even before it blew up between the the people who said, “Being trans is about gender dysphoria,” and these were called true scum, and the people who said, “No, being trans is about whatever I want,” which is the people who are called the two Qs.
And the whatever I want, while it often wasn’t explicitly laid out, was generally autogynephilia. Or some [00:34:00] form of kink or arousal pathway, right? Like, if they, that, that was well understood if you look at the leaders of the whatever I want community and the stuff that they were caught with, whenever they had leaks or anything like that, right?
You know. But yeah. What was the point you were making around this? I mean, my, my point is, like, the, the community- That
Simone Collins: it’s not about sex. That you’re saying, well, a breed- people who have a lot of kids don’t have a breeding kink. But people who are trans have a kink that they’re exercising every day, which is why they think that people who have a lot of kids have a, a breeding kink.
And I’m trying to push back and say, “I don’t know. I don’t know if people who are trans think it’s very sexual at all either.” In fact, I would argue that especially people who are- Read the forums ... male to female trans are, if anything, experiencing a significant drop in sexual arousal because it’s testosterone- They, we just read a thread about this yesterday
that’s the huge sex driver, and they’re, like, trying to kind of nuke that out. Have
Malcolm Collins: you read, have you read or spent any time reading, like, the trans subreddit or any community which would- Not
Simone Collins: in a very long time, to be fair ... talk to other
Malcolm Collins: [00:35:00] trans
Simone Collins: people? Not for a
Malcolm Collins: long time.
Simone Collins: It’s,
Malcolm Collins: it’s very common to talk about this in those communities, and they are not shamed for talking about this in those communities.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: It is seen as a normal part of transition, and people would say it’s very wrong to shame somebody for being aroused due to something tied to their transition. And they’ll always say, “Well, like, of course we don’t signal this to outsiders, but within the community, we know what’s up.” Right? Like, I think that to, to over-buy into this externalized like the too cute versus true scum war obviously happened.
If you do a, an internet search, it obviously happened. It’s, it, it, it’s one of the biggest parts or cultural fights within the growth of modern leftism and the movement that came out of Tumblr, right? And pretty much no one denies that the, the true scum lost. True scum now are seen as adjacent to TERFs, right?
Like, they’re, they’re seen as sort of similar in the same way that, like, [00:36:00] TERFs were sloughed off by the feminist movement as the wrong kind of feminists, the true scum were sloughed off by the trans movement as the wrong kind of trans. So I, I think that y- yeah, they’re aware that this is for them, and this actually even came up in the conversation with the journalist.
And I was like, “You know, obviously I wouldn’t wanna live my entire life just to maximize the amount of pleasure I, I, I s- feel.” And they said something along the lines of, “Well, you know, speak for yourself,” implying that, like, this is actually how they structure their life.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So even in that context, Simone, you saw the individual doing this.
Simone Collins: That’s fair. That is fair. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So I think that the, the, the thing is, is even if, or the, the wider context here, even if somebody has all of the fetishes around th- that presumably this lifestyle should be activating, it doesn’t work to activate them. It’s a very ineffective way. If you out there as an individual are [00:37:00] thinking, “I wanna have a lot of kids because of a fetish,” there’s places for that.
There’s, like known sperm dono networks appear to be primarily fetishes from what I’ve seen.
Simone Collins: Oh. Yeah, that’s true. That is true. Yeah, the people who just make themselves available for sperm donation. Totally.
Malcolm Collins: That seems to be about a breeding kink. I like Elon. What he’s doing seems to be partially potentially motivated by a breeding kink.
Just the way that he’s doing it. Instead of doing it all with one woman and surrogates, which he could do if he wanted to he does it with lots of women who he treats as disposable, which is often part of a breeding kink, right? So that looks like... I- I know he doesn’t treat all of them as dispo- but some of them he clearly does.
Like, it’s like I hit up a girl on Twitter, she’s interested, I impregnate her. There’s other ways he could achieve the same scale with significantly less legal liability with the money that he has, right? So there’s something motivating this outside of just logic. That said, maybe he’s, like, ideologically [00:38:00] against using using w- w- what’s the word?
Simone Collins: Surrogates?
Malcolm Collins: Surrogates. Yeah, ideologically against surrogates. No. No? Okay. So, yeah. ‘
Simone Collins: Cause he’s known to have used surrogates, so.
Speaker: Like if I had Elon level money, I would have a, uh, uh, like a facility in some third world country, like in India, I don’t know, South America, Brazil, something like that. Um, that’d be like Ender’s Game, raising like 50 kids per year, , in the best conditions I could afford for them, but at scale. , Which is obviously very different than the path Elon has taken
Malcolm Collins: Or maybe it allows him to operate at a scale that, like, even we’re unaware of that would make this make sense. I don’t know. But the point I’m making here is- is that the- the breeding kink is generally not tied to and then you raise a family of like 10 kids.
Very
Simone Collins: true. And
Malcolm Collins: I, and I, and I’d actually point this out to the trans community, like the trans community that is watching this and crashing out over me saying this. You kn- you kn- like, breeding kinks are common in the trans community. Like for example, Ana Valens had a, a [00:39:00] breeding kink. Remember? She wanted to like, she, she- There were,
Simone Collins: there were so many.
There were so many things ...
Malcolm Collins: This is a writer who w- dunked on Leaflet and Kirschner. But anyway, so Ana Valens was like, “Oh, I have this fantasy where I free use women and impregnate them.” Like, that means just having sex with lots of women and impregnating them. Oh. And then tran- trans women should have free access to cis women to just use them and impregnate them.
Now, this is clearly a breeding kink, but it is antithetical to and then I raise those kids. It’s, it’s the exact opposite of that. Breeding kinks are, at least from what I’ve seen in terms of like what’s out there, almost always tied to and then I move on.
Simone Collins: It’s almost more a correlated with sneaky copulation than it is Like anything you do with a partner, a long-term partner, pure bond partner Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Where that stuff is often much more motivated by “I really like kids and let’s make the kids,” right? Like that’s, [00:40:00] that’s the point of the sex, and then the sex is all schedules and everything like that. And as we’ve said, then you, then you basically get to a point where, you know, having a nanny is just like a prostitute by proxy, right?
Because- Yeah.
Simone Collins: It, it might be different for religious couples who are just open to having kids, meaning that like every time you have sex, you’re not necessarily trying to have kids. You know, God chooses, right? Jesus takes the wheel on that front, and then it’s not stressful in that way because you’re not trying to make it happen.
You’re just open to it happening when it’s meant to happen.
Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.
Simone Collins: In which case perhaps then it’s- More s- of a turn-on for the... I don’t know. Because I b- they also like, people who are you know, open, open to having kids and, and having families in that sort of very natural way tend to also not talk about what arouses them and their sex lives.
So who knows what’s going on in their heads, right? Like-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well- ...
Simone Collins: who knows if they find it a turn-on or not. But I [00:41:00] think what, when you also look at just sort of how it’s described biblically, like becoming one, which really just means, like, as we interpret it, combining your genetics with someone and basically taking what feels like to us shards of our soul and, and, like, seeing them in children combined.
You know, really you see yourself, both of yourselves in one person after you have a kid, in that person. You do become one in that kid. I think that’s more, like, where you see the expression of love. It’s not really in the sex act itself or the sex act itself- Well, I also know here where- ... has more to do with sort of increasing-
a
Malcolm Collins: trans person may push back and say, “Well, it’s not just breeding kinks.” You know, you say that the breeding kink is never associated with a wanting to raise a child, right? And they’re like, “Well, what about, like, daddy dom little girl stuff,” right? You know, that’s tied to wanting to raise a child, and I push back super hard on that.
I, I would bet even, even people maybe we could get Shu on head sometime because we know that she was into this kink for a [00:42:00] while and now has a kid. I would bet to anybody who’s ever been into that kink, th- this is not one of the kinks I’m into but for anybody who’s ever been into that kink, having their own kids has never been arousing to them.
Like interacting- Yeah ... with their own kids. A, a, a one, the western mark effect is super strong. That’s the thing that makes you unaroused by anyone who sort of is growing up around you at certain developmental milestones. But in addition to the western mark effect which is usually with siblings, but also affects parents, because I mean, there, there, there is something that tells you and needs to tell you from a biological perspective people can have hot daughters.
Like, people can have daughters that are just objectively attractive, and you need to know at some sort of internal level, “Oh, I shouldn’t be procreating with this thing that happens to be
Simone Collins: my daughter.” That system doesn’t seem to work in everyone.
Malcolm Collins: And when you... Well, no. Where people end up with their daughters most frequently, it’s because you’re also more attracted to people you’re genetically related to, is when the father didn’t raise the daughter.
Oh. And this one we actually see [00:43:00] quite frequently is when a daughter raised by
Simone Collins: a dad gets called. Yeah. And, and when, when you have people raised separately because they both have the same, like, father through IVF ‘cause their, their father is a prolific sperm donor.
Malcolm Collins: Right. But, but even more than that is when the dad, like, divorced the mom young or something like that anyway.
Simone Collins: Sure. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: We’re not gonna talk about that right now. The point I’m making here is the daddy dom little girl fetish is very obviously to me in the category of fetishes of power exchange. This would be the ex- same as, like, a nurse fetish or a teacher fetish or, like, a I’m in control over you in some other way fetish and you have less control than me.
This is about signaling submission and dominance, which is not actually something you do with your kids very frequently. I, I think that people would be surprised about that. Signals of dominance are just not a part of n- normal interaction you have with your kids because there’s almost this, like, intuitive understanding with children, until they’re teenagers at least, and that’s, you know, that’s a whole other thing, right?
[00:44:00] That the, the parent is in the authoritative position that it doesn’t need to be signaled. It’s not, it’s
Simone Collins: not part of your relationship. Well, it, basically if you have to signal it, that means you’ve, you’ve failed already, right? Like, you know, the, it’s a show, don’t tell kind of thing.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So, that, that was sort of my wider thought.
It, it just made me realize, like, oh my God, they actually see the world this way, and I had just always bro- brushed it off as, like, a-
Simone Collins: Yeah, very confusing. Yeah. Genuinely ...
Malcolm Collins: it was either confusing or, like, they didn’t... And, and they’re, oh, you know they’ll clip this and see, like, he admits it, that, you know, the whole breeding fetish thing is something that, that turns him on.
I mean, yeah, of course. It’s what the entire arousal system is meant for. But I also have been very clear, and I think we’ll get other people in the comments who will mention this around whatever fetish they’ve experienced, that there is a big deal difference between something that is a conceptual fetish and something that’s [00:45:00] going to be accidentally activated by your daily life.
Mm-hmm ... and I doubt... I, I, w- w- I mean, one of the easy ones, ‘cause this is even... Anyone who’s into, like, the daddy dom thing ever accidentally been aroused by that with one of their kids, right? Like, presumably it should, if it, that’s the actual system you’re trying to activate. But I don’t think it is. It’s the authority figure non-authority figure system, which isn’t really the relationship you have with your kids.
The relationship I have with my kids is nothing like the relationship I’d have with, like, a pupil or something like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No. That’s, it’s a good point. I’m, I’m glad you brought it up, ‘cause that, that has always kind of befuddled me, and I’m just like, I don’t know, I don’t know what to say. I just, it’s not.
But this was worth going into. I love you. Anyway,
Malcolm Collins: love you, Simone.
Speaker 13: He’s really good at alligators[00:46:00]
What do you think, buddy?
Thanks, friend
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know to push with your knuckles, right? Yeah. Why? So you don’t get your fingers dirty, because you eat with your fingers
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, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive into the viral meme: “I’m just a normal person from 1995.” They explore how mainstream 1990s views — including those from Bill and Hillary Clinton on immigration, welfare reform, and borders — are now branded as “far-right extremism.”
Using data from Cremieux’s Substack analysis of the General Social Survey, Pew Research polarization graphs, and cultural shifts, they discuss the leftward drift on race, gender, sexuality, institutions, and more. They argue that what was once normal (family values, personal responsibility, evidence-based thinking) is now demonized, while the modern Right has become the side of data, science, realism, and genuine societal progress.
Topics include: the Overton window shift, trans issues and science, immigration realities, political tolerance, why many 1990s Democrats would be “MAGA” today, and the divorce between “progressivism” and actual improvement. Plus lighter moments on Hunter Biden, AI waifus, and mashed potatoes.
Show Notes
To set the scene, here are some quotes:
* From our xenophobic, far-right president, saying: “I want to talk with you about the problem of illegal immigration. It’s a problem our administration inherited, and it’s a very serious one. It costs the taxpayers of the United States a lot of money, and it’s unfair to Americans who are working every day to pay their own bills... Our immigration policy is focused in four areas: first, strengthening border control; second, protecting American jobs by enforcing laws against illegal immigrants at the workplace; third, deporting criminal and deportable aliens; fourth, giving assistance to States who need it and denying illegal aliens benefits for public services or welfare.”
* Or this from our capitalistic first lady, advocating for a “welfare reform plan that will dramatically change the nation’s welfare system into one that requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance.”
What do they all have in common? They come from left-leaning public figures in the 1990s.
* Bill Clinton
* Hillary Clinton
The Rabbit Hole on X posted “Far right is often just a propaganda term for normal person” alongside a cartoon of a woman and man in a car, with the woman saying: “Why are you so far right politically” and the man saying “I’m just a normal person from 1995.”
Andy Hatfield posted another meme that reads: “Recognize the warning signs of a far-right extremist:
* Full time employment
* Literacy
* Loves his family and country
* Common sense
* Obeys the law”
Inspired by the meme, Cremieux wrote A Normal Person 30 Years Ago A normal guy in 1995 probably believes a lot of things that are unacceptable now on Substack and his post about it—plus the resulting discourse—became a trending topic du jour on X.
Cremieux’s Observations
In his Substack article, Cremieux broke from the sentiment-based memes and looked at the data.
“I opened up the General Social Survey and had a look around. To get started, I defined a few sets of political views: Institutional Confidence, Criminal Justice & Guns, Political Tolerance, Economic/Pro-Government, Racial Liberalism/Civil Rights, Gender-Role Egalitarianism, and Sexual & Moral Liberalism, and then I outlined a set of important social views.”
The data shows that:
* “People have become less confident in America’s institutions over time.”
* “When it comes to criminal justice and firearms, more people think courts are too harsh on criminals, more people oppose the death penalty, and fewer people think we ought to requires permits to buy guns. The last of these didn’t change that much.”
* “Political tolerance has somewhat increased since the 1970s, but it’s somewhat down since the 1990s. This general trend masks something interesting: more acceptance of gays and atheists, less acceptance of racists and militarists.”
* “Movement on economically left-wing views has been generally pretty flat, which is roughly what we also see for economically right-wing views.”
* “When it comes to racial liberalism, people have shifted far to the left. People have become more likely to ascribe Black-White gaps to discrimination and less to a lack of effort, among other things.”
* “When it comes to gender roles, egalitarianism has greatly increased.”
* Diana Fleischman recently made an interesting observation on that front vis a vis male postpartum depression
* “Finally, when it comes to sexual and moral liberalism, views on sex education, divorce, marijuana legality, and so on have, in some cases, quite radically shifted towards left-ward positions. Abortion legality for serious defects is the only exception among the bunch.”
He concludes that “the nation has moved considerably, but not overwhelmingly, to the left.”
His editorialization is thoughtful: “What can we say about the normal person from 1995? In many ways, he was much like us. In other ways, he was what most people would now regard as kind of a dick. He didn’t like interracial marriage and he wasn’t too keen on gays either. These social views aren’t alone: plenty of things now considered taboo were, at the time, wholly acceptable, even in polite society, and sometimes these were the majority view.
Right or wrong, I don’t think appealing to normal people in the world 30 years ago is likely to make many friends after realizing the sorts of things people used to believe.”
I largely agree but also think he is not extrapolating sufficiently from the data. “Let a racist speak” has gone down in the General Social Survey, but also the definition of “racist” has changed significantly, from something that is, we would argue, blatantly racist, to someone who, for example, believes genes dictate skin color and other traits.
In short, I think he was looking at the wrong thing to measure change.
Additional Observations Shared on X
NC Phycicist observed that “Pew Research illustrates this nicely. What the left calls the “far right” is just the left moving further left.” sharing a pretty illustrative graph showing diverging median democrats and median republicans in 1994 vs 2017:
HF responded that: “Society always changes and moves on. By definition, a progressive (someone on the left) is either ahead of, or keeping up with those changes. A conservative (someone on the right) wants things to stay the same and not change.
Society always changes and moves on. By definition, a progressive (someone on the left) is either ahead of, or keeping up with those changes. A conservative (someone on the right) wants things to stay the same and not change.”
But Charles Pontificates pointed out that “It’s mostly leftists who want deindustrialization and the stagnation of energy production, and that’s hardly progress.” sharing a graph of electricity and income per capita that makes it clear there’s no such thing as a low-energy rich country.
People also tried to make slippery slope arguments:
* Rikki Schlott: “How far do we wanna go back on this one though? I’m just a normal guy from 1960? From 1850?”
* Posterior Malone: “Yeah it’s certainly true to some degree, but 30 years is a very long time…imagine saying in 1995: ‘I’m not far right, I’m just a normal person from 1965’”
* Martin Stepan: “I’m just a normal person from 1895.”
There’s some pondering to be done about progress and time fixing everything versus toxic ideologies spreading.
Episode Transcript
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today. I want to set the scene with some quotes. Let’s start with one from our xenophobic far-right president saying, “I wanna talk with you about the problem of illegal immigration.
It’s a problem our administration inherited and it’s a very serious one. It costs the taxpayers of the United States a lot of money, and it’s unfair to Americans who are working every day to pay their own bills. Our immigration policy is focused on four areas. First, strengthening border control. Second, protecting American jobs by enforcing laws against illegal immigrants at the workplace.
Third, deporting criminal and dep- deportable Americans. Fourth, giving assistance to the states who need it in denying illegal aliens benefits for the public services or welfare.” And then here’s, and just another one from our capitalistic first lady advocating for, “A welfare reform plan that will dramatically change the nation’s welfare system into one that [00:01:00] requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance.”
Oh, but crap. I used the wrong accents ‘cause, because I was actually quoting our different president and first lady from the 1990s, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. And that’s kind of the whole thing that’s been bubbling up on X recently. I think
Malcolm Collins: we saw this meme that’s like, “I’m just a normal- Yeah, the, the-
person from 1990” Yeah, the, the
Simone Collins: Rabbit Hole on X specifically posted this on X. Far right is just often a propaganda term for normal sent alongside a cartoon of a woman and man in a car with this woman saying, “Why are you so far right politically?” And the man saying, “I’m just a normal person from 1995.”
Speaker: We’re just normal men What do you mean normal men? We’re just innocent men. Eh?
Simone Collins: And Andy Hatfield also posted another meme under that that, that reads, “Recognize the warning signs of a far right extremist. Full-time employment, literacy, [00:02:00] loves his family and country, common sense, and obeys the law.” And,
Malcolm Collins: There, there was actually videos that were put together at one point.
Oh,
Simone Collins: really?
Malcolm Collins: I’m probably gonna be too lazy to look for them.
Speaker 3: Your son is not just lifting weights. He’s lifting the crushing weight of toxic masculinity. This is not fitness. It’s a silent scream for self-worth.
Malcolm Collins: But this became a thing where they were leftists- We’re creating warning signs if your son was being radicalized by the far right.
Simone Collins: Oh, are you serious? Like, that this is drifting off the thing? And it was stuff
Malcolm Collins: like... Yeah, it was stuff like, “Has he been working out more recently?
Has he started cleaning his room more?
Malcolm Collins: Has he-” Oh,
Simone Collins: no. No, no, no, no. No.
Malcolm Collins: I- I- yeah, no, actually it was like, “Has he started consuming less pornography? Has he started-”
Simone Collins: You’ve got to be kidding me ...
Malcolm Collins: Has he started playing less video games and working more? He might be being- No ... radicalized by the far right.” Oh, my God. Has he started... No, another thing that was cited was, like eating [00:03:00] healthy.
Like that was a, a warning sign. Like,
Simone Collins: I did... Oh.
Malcolm Collins: No, but the irony is, is that these are all actually pretty good warning signs-
Simone Collins: They are, they are legit good warning
Malcolm Collins: signs ... that a young man is being radicalized by the far right, right? You know. Oh, my God, Malcolm. He, he, they, if I, if I was a leftist and I saw my kid start exercising, I’d be like- No,
Simone Collins: then you know.
That’s how you know. It’s true. It’s, it’s actually true. That is, that is the funny part. Anyway though, Cremieux, who we love to follow think he’s a cool guy- just saw this post and decided to write a Substack article. He, in this, he broke from the sentiment-based memes around this subject and looked at the data.
Per his article, quote, “I opened up the general social survey and had a look around. To get started, I defined a few sets of political views: institutional confidence, criminal justice and guns, political tolerance, economic, pro-government, radical liberalism/civil rights, gender role egalitarianism, and sexual and moral liberalism,” and then I outlined a set of important soc- [00:04:00] social views.
I sent you, Malcolm, the graphs. I’m gonna put all the graphs and I’m gonna link to everything I’m talking about in the show notes for this on Patreon and Substack. But this is what he generally shows.
Malcolm Collins: I love Cremieux. He’s like a meme. A b- a friend of ours, by the way. I love him. You know, follow him on X.
A great, great right-wing tweeter. And he’s like, “Let’s break down the data. Let’s, let’s-” Yeah. Let’s look at
Simone Collins: it. But also, you know, his take is gonna be different from what I think a lot of people, even when you look at the discourse on X, ‘cause this ended up as one of sort of the trending topics that got surfaced as something on X, I think even just this morning as, as our time of recording.
What a lot of people assumed he was gonna be saying is not actually the conclusion that he reached after looking at the data, and I actually think he, he was missing important things in terms of the data he looked at. But anyway. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: oh, ooh.
Simone Collins: So the data shows that, and I’m just gonna quote his findings vis-a-vis all these things, but you, it’s better for you to look at the graphs, I think.
They, they really help to sort of hammer it home. And again, just go to Patreon and Substack. The data [00:05:00] shows that, quote, “People have become less comf-” Oh, my God, the screaming. quote, “
People have become less confident in America’s institutions over time. When it comes to criminal justice and firearms, people think courts are too harsh on criminals.
More people oppose the death penalty, and fewer people think they ought to require, Wait, and fewer people think we ought to require permits to buy guns. The last of these three didn’t change that much. Political tolerance has somewhat increased since the 1970s, but it’s somewhat down since the 1990s.
This general trend masks something interesting. More acceptance of gays and atheists, less acceptance of racists and militarists. Movement on economically left-wing views have been generally pretty flat, which is roughly what we see economically for right-wing views. And when it comes to racial liberalism, people have shifted far to the left.
People have become more likely to ascribe Black-white gaps to discrimination and less to a lack of effort, [00:06:00] among other things. And when it comes to gender roles, egalitarianism has greatly increased.” On this front, by the way our friend Diana Fleischman on X shared an interesting comment vis-a-vis this article that came out on, On postpartum depression for dads.
Specifically like a lot of people on X were like, “Oh, dads can’t have postpartum depression.” Like, that’s super screwed up, and like sort of gatekeeping around postpartum depression. And what she observed, and I think this is actually really astute, is that probably there’s a rise in postpartum depression specifically because while women have this sort of insane hormonal thing they go through-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah
Simone Collins: when babies are born, that, and I’ve, I’ve witnessed this, like actually makes them pretty tolerant of all the sleep deprivation and not super stressed about getting... ‘Cause I was super phobic about waking up in the middle of the night, for example before I ever had a kid, and in my, in my un- unparented life.
And now it means nothing to me to like get up at 1:00 AM, 3:00 AM, [00:07:00] like whatever. I don’t care. Like, I’m really not stressed about it, and I’m sleeping a lot less now. But I’m, it super doesn’t bother me. And when I sleep, I sleep more deeply. Men don’t have the same kind of hormonal balance or shift. Yeah.
And yet, these days, especially in, in like sort of educated progressive families, men are expected to like get up and, and, and feed babies in the middle of the night the same amount, or like be there for their wives when their wives are up and breastfeeding. In many cases, obviously not in all, but when they take a gender egalitarian approach to newborn care, men who did not go through this hor- whole hormonal revolution, who, you know, have not experienced this bodily change that has given them the ability to be more flexible in these ways, and it’s well documented that women’s brains go through a lot of changes and their bodies too, obviously hormonally as well that probably allow for this to be tolerable.
And again, I’ve experienced it personally and I didn’t believe it could be possible. Is it any surprise that men are getting depressed when they’re like thrown into like this situation that they’re not [00:08:00] equipped to handle? So anyway, I thought that was interesting. And then he writes finally, when it comes to sexual and moral liberalism, views on sex education, divorce, marijuana legality and so on have in some cases quite radically shifted towards leftward positions.
Abortion legality for serious defects is the only exception among the bunch. So he clu- he concludes however-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah So hold on, hold on.
Simone Collins: He concludes, and this is what’s most interesting that, that the nation has moved considerably but not overwhelmingly to the left. His editorialization on the issue is what can we say about the normal person from 1995?
In many ways he was much like us. In other ways, he was what most people now regard as kind of a dick. He didn’t like interracial marriage and he wasn’t too keen on gays either. These social views aren’t alone. Plenty of things now considered taboo were, at the time, wholly acceptable even in polite society, and sometimes these were the majority view.
Right or wrong, I don’t think appealing to normal people in the world 30 years [00:09:00] ago is likely to make many friends after realizing the sorts of things people used to believe. So I somewhat agree with him, but I also think that he’s not extrapolating sufficiently from the data. So when you look at one of the graphs about like sort of racial views let a racist speak has gone down in the general social survey.
But also the definition of racist has changed significantly, and that’s not gonna get picked up in this survey. So like it changed- Right ... in the ‘90s from something that like we would genuinely even today argue is blatantly racist to-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...
Simone Collins: like let a racist speak means let, let someone admit that like genetic differences might lead to a difference in skin tone as you personally, Malcolm, experienced when being interviewed by an MSNBC journalist last year.
Like that’s what- Yeah ... racism is now, and that’s not gonna get picked up by this general social survey. So what I think Krimuw is missing is that he doesn’t understand that you can’t look at the general social survey and take this data-focused approach to this [00:10:00] issue, though I love the premise, because the definition of the words have changed rendering the survey data inadmissible.
What I think was more compelling was what NC Physicist observed which is I think a much more compelling graph which I’ll also send you on X to look at, and I’m also gonna post in the show notes of course. So this Pew graph I think is a lot better at illustrating what has happened. What NC Physicist observed and wrote was, “What the left calls far right is just the left moving further left.”
Sharing a pretty illustrative graph showing a diverging median Democrats and median Republicans in 1994 to 2017. For those who are just listening, basically 1994, there’s a median Democrat and a median Republican basically-
Malcolm Collins: High degree of overlap ...
Simone Collins: shown.
Yeah, they’re very close. Like, the medians are like this.
And then when you go to 2017, the medians suddenly diverge significantly. They’re quite far apart. And the, the graph goes from looking like two mountains [00:11:00] almost next to each other to, like, two quite different mountains with a very significant valley in between the two of them. Mm-hmm. And I think that that’s, that’s more what has happened.
Malcolm Collins: Well, here’s what I’ve begun to notice. And I think that this ... When I talk to your average, like, older boomer progressive about most of my beliefs, they don’t see them as particularly extreme, right? They’re like, “Oh, those are really normal things to believe.” Until I get to something like, you know, my beliefs on trans people or something like that, and they’re like, “Well, you know, what, what, what about, like, their rights?”
And I’m like, “Well, what about the rights of, like, religious people or people who dis- disagree with this,” right? And they’re like, “Well, yeah, that’s not, like, an extremist position to take.” What they don’t realize is functionally this average person from 1995 is today in the eyes of the normal progressive an absolute radical, an absolute extremist.
And [00:12:00] I think what we on the right do not fully realize is how many people who vote Democrat would actually support us if you could just get through ... Like, as I pointed out, when the thing I was shocked about was only sorry, that 40% of Democrats think that gender transition is immoral, right?
Like, like, like, that is astonishing to me, right? Like, when, when you talk about those numbers there, right? It, the left ... And yet, and yet you could be fired from saying that from a mainstream job too, right? Like, that it’s one, both such an unpopular opinion among the masses, but two, that it’s seen as labeling you as an extremist, right?
And I think a lot of the conversation is about waking people up to this reality, right? You know, that-
That th- that everyone who is really still sane is on the [00:13:00] right at this point. There, there is not... Like, the, the leftist factions that, that control what’s left of, of the left, when they go out there at their protest and say, “Shoot a Nazi,” and then, and this is a frequent mainstream talking point on the left- No,
Simone Collins: the, the, it’s punch, punch a Nazi.
But yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Punch a Nazi. Assault a Nazi. Okay, great. This is a normal mainstream talking point on the left. It’s also a normal mainstream t- talking point that if you sit at a table with a Nazi, you’re also a Nazi. And it’s also a mainstream talking point that MAGA is Nazi, which by the way, over half of America’s voted for.
They, it is... W- when you take these together and you ask, why are there so many leftist mass shootings these days it, it becomes immediately obvious. It is normal for them to believe they have a license to kill the vast majority of Americans for different belief systems. And the moment you wake up a leftist often, often, like one of these sort of sleeping boomer leftists, this is what their party is [00:14:00] now.
I, I think a lot of them are like, “Oh, I guess I, I guess I’m MAGA.” But then they’re like, “But if anyone ever found that out, I’d, I’d lose my job, I’d lose my friends, I’d lose my...” ‘Cause that’s the way that the left operates at this point, right?
Simone Collins: Well, one thing I thought was also interesting from this discourse and some of the, the discussion that people had, is this tension between the idea of progress and people shifting cultural views in the face of just better evidence, like learning, getting better, just the idea of progressivism being a concept of society progressing and improving.
And, and, well, this tension of that with like, to- I wanna say toxic culture and messages that actually isn’t making society better. So, HF responded in this general, like, about this subject, “Society always changes and moves on. By definition, a progressive, someone on the left, is either ahead of or keeping up with those changes.
A conservative, someone on the right, wants things to stay the same and not change. Society always changes [00:15:00] and moves on. By definition, a progressive, someone on the left, is either ahead of keeping up with those changes. A conservative, someone on the right, wants things to stay the same and not change.” But Charles Pontificates pointed out that, quote, “It’s mostly leftists who want deindustrialization and the stagnation of energy production, and that’s hardly progress.”
And he shared a graph of electricity and income per capita that makes it super clear that there’s no such thing as a low energy rich country. And where I felt like there’s this tension is I mean, a lot of people are trying to argue in response to this whole like, “Oh, well, they’re just reasonable people.”
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I think that that’s just fundamentally not what the left-right divide is anymore. Uh-huh. And I think that saying that conservatives... If you go to a conservative and you ask them, like let’s say the trans stuff. My opinion on transition was changed predominantly by changes in the scientific evidence.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. That’s a really- like- Yeah, that’s a good example of like where the left isn’t progressing with modern science and [00:16:00] understanding. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Right. Yeah, like with modern science it looks like the left should be- Or like
Simone Collins: climate change, right? Like, we learn different things about cli- But- And population is a good one, right?
Climate change, population. There was a belief
Malcolm Collins: that
Simone Collins: there were gonna be too many people, and now we know that we’re okay with a higher level of population. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: The right now is the side of data and statistics- Mm ... and, and c- climate realism and genetical re- realism, right? Like, we are the side that is engaging with information, and the left has just stopped doing that.
Simone Collins: Right. It- So this argument that it’s just that the left is the, is the, is the party of data and reality, and the right is, and conservatives are... I guess, and that’s maybe why we don’t call the it, the new conservatives. We call it the new right because-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because it’s not small C conservatives.
Simone Collins: Uh-huh. There are often- It’s not just go back to the old ways
y-
Malcolm Collins: quite radical people who are often open to a large diversity of ways of potentially fixing things.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And-
Simone Collins: Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: the reason why it’s not just like go back to the old ways or don’t change is there isn’t just [00:17:00] like one unified image of the past that we’re fighting for anymore. It’s a better future that we’re fighting for.
And, and that obviously involves a lot of things. Like right now the right is a pro-AI party. The left is the anti-AI party. The right is the pro-nuclear party. The left is the anti-nuclear party. The right is the pro-genetics party. The left is the anti-genetics party. On almost every meaningful scientific i- issue
The, the right is the people coming to the, to the table with statistics. And when I talk about, like, with the trans stuff, it’s like, you know, if you follow the WPATH leaks or the data that the Travis Stark Clinic was hiding that you know, putting people on puberty blockers was increasing their unaliving risk, and now that it’s been banned in the UK, we haven’t seen any increase in unalivings in the UK, even within the trans community.
We now know that, like, the, the, those things are not true. And so now that we have that information, we can say, “Oh, we were wrong,” right? Like, the data that we were looking at was coming out of clinics that were making the majority of their money off of gender transition, which we’ve seen all of the pro-trans studies were.
[00:18:00] They had somebody involved whose life depended, life, livelihood depended on this being normalized, and that those institutions were covering up the data that was showing this wasn’t working. And we have historic evidence where a real... This happened in the past too, with Joe Money, right? Like, this is a repeated phenomenon, and when the phenomenon comes to light, you update your opinions, right?
We have changed our opinion significantly on a, you know, immigration because now if we look at the numbers, even three generations in,
Hispanic immigrants are over 50% on welfare, right? You know, you can’t support that, right? That eventually that ends up breaking the, the welfare system. They do not assimilate, right?
And with that being the case, and it’s, and it’s funny because, like, the leftists will even say, “Well, the goal isn’t assimilation.” If the goal isn’t assimilation, like, if you see that as a bad thing, them losing their heritage or, you know, culture, then we will become like the countries that they’re coming from, right?
Like, the, presumably the reason we don’t is it’s not that we have magic soil or something, it’s that [00:19:00] we see and perceive reality and ethics differently, and when they come to this perception, then they become productive like us, even if you are a blank slates. If you’re throwing that out the window, then we’re...
What, what conversation are we even having here?
Simone Collins: Yeah, this is really helpful for me because I, like I grew up just loving like the West Wing Democrat. Like this like we are patriotic, we love our country, we, we want everyone to thrive, we believe in science. That, that, like that’s the Democrat to which I anchored,
Malcolm Collins: And that’s what the right is now.
Simone Collins: I know. And, but like, but then I think there’s still a lot of people who remain Democrats today who still think that they’re West Wing Democrats, but they don’t... They hate America- ... and they won’t listen to science. And I’m, I, gets so confusing to me sometimes because we’re, I think we’re often confused of, or, or we’re, we’re being accused of being so something that we’re not.
When I think I’m, I’m certainly not the only person who is now on the right who [00:20:00] like grew up obsessed with West Wing Democrats because they’re wonderful. I love that show.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean-
Simone Collins: So that’s helpful. But, because I mean, what people kept saying is like, “Oh yeah? Yeah? Like well I’m just a normal person from the 1830s.”
Like do, is that where you, is that what you want? Is that what you want? Like you want Jim Crow? Is that what you want? And like, y- it, it just didn’t sit right with me.
Malcolm Collins: But this helps- Well, the reason why- ... sort of reframe it
Simone Collins: for me ...
Malcolm Collins: people say, “I’m just a normal person from 1995,” and it hits so hard for people in a way that
Simone Collins: these- 1995.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When these people say, “Oh, I’m from the 1930s,” or whatever, is pretty much everyone agrees society, or at least America and Western countries, were demonstrably better in 1995, right? Like things were working better. There was less actual racism in our society, there was less you know, of the conflicts that we’re dealing with now as a society.
So when a person presents to you, “I am an average person from 1995,” m- people who hear that, the reason it’s effective is they’re like, “Yeah, let’s [00:21:00] go back to something that worked,” because this, what y- what we’re doing now, the left isn’t working.
Simone Collins: That Disney pastime is yeah. I, I really just need to wear my bonnet more. He’s going for it. But yeah, I that, th- this has been really helpful for me then because it’s, it’s helping me actually come to terms with this cognitive dissonance I’ve had around like the right being framed so readily as anti-progress, and even Cremieux being like- Yeah, the
Malcolm Collins: Cremieux-
Simone Collins: “Oh, the left hasn’t really changed” ... he’s a
Malcolm Collins: right-wing scientist. What’s he doing?
Simone Collins: Well, so this was a timed post, so I think maybe he was like, “I don’t know. Let’s see if the data backs it up.” And per the data he chose for this particular thing,
Malcolm Collins: Oh, he does that stupid timed writing
Simone Collins: thing ... that US general survey.
Yeah, I mean, like, ‘cause when that other person on X looked up the Pew results, like it’s very clear that there’s been a change. I think a lot of this comes down to definitions, but I think in that also is something interesting in that like it’s not necessarily that, [00:22:00] like, people’s reported views haven’t actually changed that much, and I think that’s meaningful.
It’s more that like maybe, maybe the radicalization is, is in definitions, is in like the way that people... The, the way that people have been radicalized, like the, the, the lobster or frog being boiled phenomenon had more to do with like not, not radicalizing people, but fundamentally and subtly changing definitions of like let’s just redefine you know, mental health as this, of of harm as no longer like physical assault, but of, you know, triggering someone, making someone feel bad.
You know, let’s, let’s r- reframe body positivity as not like, “Hey, you know, you don’t have to be perfect,” to like, “Oh, it’s okay to be morbidly obese and like deeply unhealthy.” Like maybe that’s where the, the societal harm or like the radicalization has taken place, and of course in certain measurement [00:23:00] formats that’s just not gonna show up.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I just think his entire framing is wrong about what, what, what conservatism is in a, in a modern context, like what the right is in a modern context. Because it’s, it’s, it’s not just like, wrong. It’s an inversion of reality.
Simone Collins: I think you’re right. Yeah, it, it’s still interesting. And I, I mean, I keep hearing that whole, like, 1995 Democrat thing bandied about. It is so striking to see these quotes from Bill Clinton that are like, “Hey,” like, “Let’s, let’s control our borders and, you know, curtail social services for, you know, immigrants in our, in our cities.”
And, and that being, like, just the same simple stance that our current president has, and yet such a different view of how they’re categorized even today. It’s, it’s wild.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think the left back in the day was having a conversation where [00:24:00] the left and right had different values, right? But they both still wanted the best interest of the country, right?
And its people. And I think that now, very openly, the left is antagonistic towards the count- whatever country it’s in and its people. And this is, this is a fund- That means the conversation’s fundamentally different. They’re asking, “How can I destroy you?” We’re asking, “How can we build you up?”
Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe it’s connected to that, that sort of communist or, like, socialist Americans association plan that you de- outlined in a separate episode where they were like, “Okay, we’re gonna, you know, get people to collectively think that they’re super mentally unwell.”
You know, foment a- a- encourage the development of hideous art. Like, all these things. Maybe that’s kind of also it’s what’s happened is this collective plan since at least the ‘70s to basically make Americans hate America and be miserable, has also seeped in and taken over in a way that has been incredibly damaging.[00:25:00]
But I don’t know. You know- That’s, that’s more, what more or less what I wanted to discuss. This is, this is a short one, but,
Malcolm Collins: It’s a short one. Well, I mean, I think the thing that we need to get away from is the perception that we are... because in a way, yes, it is that we are 1995 Democrats, and that we are fighting with a collection of widely diverse people against the culturally dominant force, which at that time was the Judeo-Christian community.
And now it’s the urban monoculture. But I, I think outside of that, n- n- the, the two things don’t share that much in common. Like, the wider political ideology of, like, staffing the White House with a bunch of entrepreneurs and like, like, Founders Fund people and you know, actually cleaning things up, and I guess it’s...
But, like, everybody always kind of wanted the government to be and be doing who wanted a better future.
Simone Collins: But is it- I think actually Clinton had a, an effort similar [00:26:00] to DOGE.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, he did. It
Simone Collins: was executed quite differently, but again, like, the similarities are insane. Plus, Trump at that very same time was a Democrat and openly known for being, like, a liberal Democrat public media figure.
So, like, I, I don’t know. I don’t know. I,
Malcolm Collins: I, by the way, fun, fun aside here, People have been talking about, and I, and I think that they’re right about this, about what was his name? Who, who’s the last president? Joe Bi- Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden running for office in a few years.
Simone Collins: Like- Oh, he’s on his comeback tour.
Yeah, I mean, I think the odds are long
Malcolm Collins: for anyone- He’s on his comeback tour. You know what? He could, he could I think do pretty well in terms of bipartisan support.
Simone Collins: Another glass ceiling. Yeah, you know?
Malcolm Collins: I mean, he’s a crazy crackhead, but he, he does it so he really captures the, what... Like, Gavin Newsom tried to do the Trump irreverent thing- Mm-hmm
and it didn’t work at all. Like, it looked so fake. When you know, Hunter Biden on, like, the Democrats’ main website has one [00:27:00] of his photos
with a crack pipe in his mouth- ... like, that is f*****g hilarious. That’s like, I’m not a Democrat, and I’m like, “That is hilarious that on the list of, like, who’s supporting who, you’ve got a, Hunter Biden with a crack pipe.”
Speaker 5: Here’s Hunter Biden reacting to this image. “ I know it may sound petty, but I can’t stand it when people Photoshop a meth pipe in my mouth. A crack pipe doesn’t have that little bowl at the end. This is why you can’t trust AI. Please make the appropriate edit. Thank you for your attention to the matter.”
Simone Collins: Well, in an age in which we’re just so fed up with inauthenticity, I think it’s one of the reasons why Trump did so well, is, like, Trump is exactly who- ... you think he is. He does not hide or try to obscure anything. Yeah. I mean, like, what- He’s proud of who he is, hides nothing. Hunter Biden is like, “Yeah, I did this.”
Like, it, it, like, the stories he told when he interviewed with Candace Owens were insane. And- Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, people are like, “Why, why aren’t you in, why aren’t you in jail?” And he’s like, “Well, my dad got me pardoned.”
Simone Collins: Yeah. Duh. Like-
Malcolm Collins: Like, what, what-
Simone Collins: Yeah, it, it’s super... And, and that’s, that’s, [00:28:00] that’s all we needed to hear.
You know, that just he’s not trying to virtue signal. He’s like, “Yep, that’s what happened.” Yeah, and then- And like, look at all this other crazy stuff. And I think especially, you know, in, with all the blowback that, that is arising in the face of, like, the Epstein revelations not being what we expected and all these things just not playing out the way we expected he’s got a lot going for him.
So yeah, if I- They should, yeah, they should just run him 20... I mean, it would be a tough run. Honestly- Yeah, running would be a tough run ... if it were Hunter Biden versus any of the... I mean, certainly, like Marco Rubio, there’s no way. There’s no way.
Malcolm Collins: Marco Rubio would struggle against Hunter Biden.
Simone Collins: Yeah, because Marco Rubio is all polished and perfect, and he looks like he’s hiding something.
He represents establishment. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t
Malcolm Collins: say, I don’t think Marco Rubio is a good candidate to run at all. Like, he comes across as very- I
Simone Collins: know, but people keep talking about him. I’m just
Malcolm Collins: saying ... people keep talking about him, but he just doesn’t, he comes off as so inauthentic c- compared- Yeah ... to, like, JD Vance.
Simone Collins: Right. But not everyone... Look, there are still many people who [00:29:00] weirdly want the inauthentic. They’re like, “Just give me my inauthentic politician and they have the authentic.” No,
Malcolm Collins: I just get that they have the opinion of Marco Rubio based on the things that he’s done in the administration, which I appreciate.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: And they have the opinion of JD Vance based on his history. I used to hate JD Vance for his whole Hillbilly Elegy and all that, and all his NPR-
Simone Collins: You didn’t even read it.
Malcolm Collins: No, but I saw his NPR apology tour. It was gross.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: okay. But when I listen to his speeches now and I see him talking now, and I know, “Oh, this is a guy who watches Asmongold.
This is a guy who knows Hasan Shocks his dog. This is a guy who is eviscerating the UK for, like, what’s happening there in angry social media posts.” And the UK’s are like, “We, how dare you say that the UK is a garbage country and, like, the people should revolt.” But, like, I don’t see that from Marco Rubio.
I’ve never seen a speech where, like, afterwards I was like, I wanted to cheer for him, or I felt, like, a connection with him. Mm. But, you know, that, that, that’s- We shall
Simone Collins: see. We shall see. But no, you’ve... Th- this has been an important conversation for us because at least [00:30:00] now I understand That there’s been a divorce between, from the concept of progressivism and actual societal progress, which requires a reconciliation with inconvenient scientific truths and, and just, like, realities.
Plus just a- adapting with science. A- and adopting science, to your point. AI shifts in our understanding of how to best contend with climate change just realities of, of genetic differences realities of gender transition not being what we thought it was. Yeah, all these things are a divorce from what the natural, like, progress of history is going to be.
Malcolm Collins: It turned out that, like, sleeping with whoever you want whenever you want doesn’t lead to positive outcomes,
Simone Collins: right?
Malcolm Collins: You
Simone Collins: know? Right. Right, right. And I actually think, like, yeah, truly a true progressive has to, by definition, change their mind because we are going to try new things as society evolves, and some of those things we’re gonna try out to not be so good.
Like, they’re gonna turn out to be kinda damaging. And it’s like, okay, well look, we tried that. It, [00:31:00] that, that is, like, the scientific method, right? You, like, hypothesis, and then you do an experiment, and then you see if your hypothesis is null or if, if the... You’re like, “Oh, okay, I was right. I was wrong.” Like, okay, now we need to adapt.
We need further research. And then you, you, you, you, you refine, you iterate. And a true progressive society must be iterative, and the left has become a lot less iterative. Whereas on the right what you actually see is what feels like a modern version of a much more broad and distributed academic framework of, like, different schools of thought actively competing and seeing how their experiments turn out.
It’s super cool. It’s like a bunch of people, like, all trying to cure cancer and being like, “Well, I’m gonna try this weird form of gene therapy.” “Well, I’m gonna try this weird mushroom derivative.” And, “I’m gonna try, like, this targeted, like, weird bacteria.” And, like, all these different groups are trying and seeing what works best, and then when a group discovers that, like, “Oh, my weird mushroom solution actually causes the cancer to grow significantly more,” guess what?
[00:32:00] They drop it. And then on the other hand, we have, like, this one group that’s like, “I only do this one therapy. This one therapy is perfect.” And then it turns out the therapy’s, like, totally killing people. But who cares? No, we only do this one therapy, and how dare you suggest anything else? Anyway, I’m going to go.
Assuming it would be good for you, ‘cause I know you’re not feeling really great, I was gonna make heavy, creamy, smooth mashed potatoes, but I need to go now.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, that would be great for today, yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay, well then...
Malcolm Collins: Just mashed potatoes.
Simone Collins: Just mashed potatoes. I’m okay with that because the amount of cream and butter in them is, like, a little bit of protein plus a lot of, of fats, so I’m like, okay, fine.
I
Malcolm Collins: don’t eat that much. You know that, Simone,
Simone Collins: right? I know. But especially on days where you’re not feeling so well, I feel like creamy mashed potatoes. Like, I w- I want... I’m envisioning, it’s not gonna turn out this way, but I’m envisioning the kind that you get on the instant mashed potatoes- box where it looks like a snowy mountain at sunrise with a pat of butter slowly sliding down a beautifully whipped- I think with
Malcolm Collins: AI you’re gonna be able to make [00:33:00] great mashed potatoes.
Simone Collins: I, I pulled up a, a recipe and I... it looks good, so... with AI, of course.
Malcolm Collins: Remember to use rfab.ai recipe generator or-
Simone Collins: Yeah, it even creates really... Like, the images are also great motivation, ‘cause it shows you what you can get. And, and, like, pretty good, ‘cause you’re using Nana Banana for the images, and Nana Banana is, is the accurate AI image generator, whereas Grok is, like, the sexy, fun AI image generator.
So I like it.
Speaker 6: Or as a crazier feature, , and this one just came out, so it’s gonna be undergoing lots of updates. It’s got some stability issues now, but it’s a feature that allows you to search every not safe for work site that doesn’t have real humans on it, because I think that’s immoral, , at once. , So all of the, , not safe for work drawing sites can be searched simultaneously, and not just searched simultaneously, but from them you can, , download entire galleries with just a click, , without having to go through each individually with some, , useful [00:34:00] time-saving buttons like the no homo button, which just immediately removes all of the gay or male related tags from the search.
Or the, , English button, which instead of just searching for English, it searches for other languages, so you also get things without any, , language attached to them
Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway.
Malcolm Collins: I love you.
Simone Collins: Off to potato land I go. God
Malcolm Collins: willing. Off to potato land I go soon enough.
Simone Collins: Hopefully. Yeah. We’ll see.
Malcolm Collins: All right. Bye.
Simone Collins: Bye. lap. He’s, he does this thing where he likes
Malcolm Collins: to- Okay. Roseanne
Simone Collins: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: We gotta make the AI waifu a, a thing. I think, I, I really wanna go harder with this. Like, the idea- Oh my God ... of, I, I, I wanna make it, like, even a meme on the right. I, I think it would be fun of you know, y- you, you can still... Being on the right doesn’t mean you can’t be, like, when I make sexy pictures of my AI waifu, which is just my wife done in, like, a Puritan AI anime style,
Simone Collins: You mean when you make AI pictures of [00:35:00] your wife waifu- Ah
not your actual
Malcolm Collins: fake wife. Yeah, yeah. Like, I do not understand, like, the people have gotten... It’s my wife, okay? Like, this is my property, okay? There is n- And it’s not like she’s semi-closed in these or something. It’s not like she’s you know, showing off some sort of sexualized asset like breasts or something.
You know, it’s literally my wife drawn in a way that is appealing enough to you, the watcher, you know, with, with yandere face or whatever, where you’re like, “Oh that, that, that’s, that’s We’re have- like, we need to be the side of fun, not the side of curmudgeonliness, okay? And I wanna put m- m- more pictures of myself.
I, I did some Duke of the North ones of, of me.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I wanna see those. Give me more of those.
Malcolm Collins: More of Otherworld Malcolm. More,
Simone Collins: more Malcolm fan art. That’s what I’m here for. Well,
Malcolm Collins: they had the, the fur on them, and I w- we were thinking about that
Simone Collins: before. Yeah, and I keep sending you those outfits, [00:36:00] and you just never wanna choose them.
You- Let’s
Malcolm Collins: get one. Let’s get one. I’ma b- make a note right now. No, you can’t. I will stay up late to find fur.
Simone Collins: No. D- you are going to bed tonight. You’re going to bed early, or you might discover that key electronics in your room have just started to disappear randomly.
Malcolm Collins: This is the way you treat our kids.
Simone Collins: It’s true, actually.
Malcolm Collins: But I mean, I mean, I wanna make it, like, a... I want it to be not just us, but I, like, want the wider community to... Because I think, you know, we did this with Emilia to an extent, right? But the problem with Emilia is if you’re an older woman, like, let’s say 40 or something like that, and you’re dressing like Emilia, or 35, 36, and you’re dressing like Emilia you’re gonna look like a creep or a, a loser, right?
Like, that, that looks try-hard and empathetic. Yeah,
Simone Collins: it’s so tried, yeah. Women need to dress their age. Let’s bring it back, people.
Malcolm Collins: We need to show that being a Christian mom is not uncool or unsexy. And, like, if [00:37:00] you were Jewish- you- Y- you could draw,
Simone Collins: like- They don’t have to be sexy. Let’s be clear. They can just be cool.
No,
Malcolm Collins: but th- women want to be desirable, and we do not have an archetype of a desirable woman with, like, five or six kids who tries to live a moral life. But there’s no reason we... We can fight asymmetrical warfare with the left because we can have sexy women and anime, right? So let’s buckle in and start fighting this.
You know, if y- if you’re Jewish, you can do, like, hot Hasidic women, right? You know, you can do the, the hot Hasidic family. Oh. The, you know, if, if you’re- And if you’re Christian, you know, post, post the, the, the, your, your wife. And I think that making it of, you know- Your wife ... your wife or, or your ideal wife if you don’t have a wife is, is also a fun way because you know it’s going to trigger the leftists soaking hard.
When they see- Yeah. Let’s do this ... us having fun, that’s gonna trigger them. Don’t let it trigger you, okay? We gotta, we gotta win this.
Simone Collins: All right. [00:38:00] Okay. As long as I get more Malcolm fan art, I’m down with it.
Malcolm Collins: Okay.
Simone Collins: I like, I like the Malcolm fan art you create for me. I mean, obviously I should be creating it too, I just don’t...
There’s no time for fun. There’s no time for anything. Gotta... Anyway, shall I start?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let’s get started.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Are the apples wet? They, they have a lot. All apples
No, no, apples are just naturally a bit wet, Toasty. Washed them in the sink to wash off the dust- Come on, Toasty ... that you’re always so worried about, right?
Torsten, eat an apple. What are you doing?
She didn’t lick them all
I want it back to zoo. It’s true I know it’s true. I, I promise you she- Jackson, you were-[00:39:00]
See, Tyne didn’t. That would be a really long thing for her to do, Josie You make her too much fun. We went in 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 episode of Bricks and Minifigs 2, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the Coffeezilla investigation into the Bricks & Minifigs Lego controversy. They explain what Coffeezilla allegedly got wrong—especially around accounts payable, business acquisitions, liabilities, and ownership of consignment inventory.
Malcolm and Simone (experienced business buyers/sellers) dive into why the previous owner wasn’t being shady, how stock purchases transfer liabilities, why the “missing Legos” narrative misses the bigger picture, and the legal realities of taking over a business with existing obligations. They also discuss the broader saga, corporate responses, Brian Mansell’s history with the company, and why the focus should now be on properly resolving things with investigator Ben.
A must-watch for anyone following the Bricks & Minifigs drama, Lego collectors, business ethics enthusiasts, or fans of deep-dive investigations. What do you think—did Coffeezilla miss key business 101 details?
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] you had watched the Coffeezilla piece and were convinced by it on Bricks and Minifigs. And- I mean- Oh my God, I thought that you with your business background would immediately see what he was getting wrong.
Simone Collins: What was he getting wrong?
Malcolm Collins: So there were two big things he got wrong. Okay. The, the really big glaring one is when he said the previous owner sold some of the sets without sending the money to the guy, right?
And yet we see from her own words when they’re doing the transition of ownership, she goes, “You’re going to-” Yeah,
Simone Collins: I’m worried about... Yeah. “
Malcolm Collins: You’re
Simone Collins: gonna close out-” And they, they’re like, “We’re gonna have some- That’s gonna get handled by someone else.”
Malcolm Collins: That’s what I heard. No, no, no. But she wasn’t worried about the inventory.
Mm-hmm. She, she was worried more about closing out the accounts.
Speaker 2: These are ones that haven’t-- he has not been paid his percentage yet, and if I don’t have the tickets, I won’t know how much I need to pay him. That, that’s a business thing and not necessarily yours. If, if taking on the business, he takes on all that comes on that [00:01:00] part.
Speaker 3: What’s extremely funny about this piece in retrospect is you can see that the person, if not the CEO, at least somebody at Bricks & Minifigs properly understood the law that when you buy a business, you take on accounts payable
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What that means in business speak is she knew part of the money that was meant to go to him had been unpaid. Oh. And she’s like, “I need to go over my notes.” She even specifically says, “I need to go over my notes to see those amounts.” And then they say, “No, we’ll take on that responsibility.”
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: This is a normal thing in business. Yeah. This isn’t her being shady. It’s not like-
Simone Collins: Well, that’s... When you acquire a company if it is not- an asset acquisition. If it’s a stock acquisition, you also acquire their liabilities
Malcolm Collins: Liabilities.
Simone Collins: And that, one of the liabilities- You acquire their liabilities
is your accounts payable, and that is accounts payable. Yeah. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: that’s, that’s accounts... Th- this is the most 101 thing in business, and you were like, “Oh, there weren’t that many Legos in the store because she had sold some before,” and it’s like, n- that doesn’t, that doesn’t matter. And then the second thing- No,
Simone Collins: what, what Coffeezilla said is that, that I [00:02:00] thought was most notable was that the amount that’s sort of pending was much smaller than people thought.
It’s more, like, in the $20,000 range. That’s
Malcolm Collins: because he wasn’t inc- including the accounts payable in the amount pending.
Simone Collins: I thought that’s what the amount was, that the accounts payable- No ... oh.
Malcolm Collins: He was talking about the physical sets that were still in the store, because he didn’t seem to understand accounts payable.
Simone Collins: Hmm, I... Th- that can’t be. That’s too obvious.
Malcolm Collins: No, it’s obvious to you because you’re a business person. He very clearly, if you watch the piece, and he was calculating the amount of money that he said Bricks and Minifigs owed the , the guy, he just did an addition of all of the sets he could find in their inventory.
He didn’t- Oh ... include accounts payable, which would have, from what we’re hearing, maybe doubled that amount. So that was the first thing that really annoyed me.
Simone Collins: I just figured if that was the case, then they would have included, featured prominently in that particular investigative episode, Coffeezilla, I mean.
Like, i- she would say, “And the accounts payable amount was, like, $34,000.” She
Malcolm Collins: [00:03:00] literally says that. She goes, “I need to check my records so I can settle accounts with the people who have order-”
Simone Collins: Yeah, in, in... I know, from the recorded clip, but she doesn’t say how much that was. In the, in the subsequent interview that she had- Why?
In
Malcolm Collins: the subsequent... Because she’s being an idiot ...
Simone Collins: with Coffeezilla, she would have stated that amount. ‘
Malcolm Collins: Cause she’s being an idiot. But in the, i- when she’s having the store taken over, she literally says, “I need to settle the accounts,” implying there’s a large amount of accounts payable specifically to him.
Because, the,
Simone Collins: Then why has no one stated that amount?
Malcolm Collins: When we did our first episode, people were like, “Malcolm, it’s crazy that you saw things in this case that I just didn’t understand.” I think a lot of people are just ‘tards, Simone. That’s, that’s the, the- Well,
Simone Collins: no, but I mean, it, it, at the very le- oh, I guess the Brian, the original owner would not know the amounts because he wouldn’t have been aware, aware of what was sold and not.
Do you
Malcolm Collins: think Ben or Brian understands what accounts payable is? The, the, these-
Simone Collins: Yes, I, I imagine they do. But I also imagine they couldn’t know. Like, ‘cause i- if I’ve, if I’ve given something to a shop for consignment, I don’t know at any given day what [00:04:00] has sold and what hasn’t. Yeah. Like, there’s not... That’s just for us to know.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, which is why she said, “I need to check my records.” Okay. So that really annoyed me.
Speaker 4: Just so you understand why the law works this way, imagine if the law didn’t work this way and accounts payable magically disappeared or was transferred to the old owner of a business, , whenever the business changed hands. Now keep in mind, the owner of a business can be a business, , or not a specific individual.
So suppose, , one individual, , , , accrues a large amount of accounts payable in a business, , and they just then transfer that business to themselves for like a one dollar sale, right? , And they say, “Oh, all the money that I owed people with this business...” , N-no, or let’s not say themselves. Let’s say their brother.
, They say, “All the money this business owed immediately disappears because it transferred hands.” , That would be completely stupid. , Th- that would be like the easiest business trickeroo in the world. Like, it’s very obvious why n- you cannot have the law work this way
Malcolm Collins: And then the second thing that really annoyed me- ... that we can go further on-
Simone Collins: Oh,
Malcolm Collins: [00:05:00] God. Crap ... is they keep focusing on whether or not she, she had the right to enter into the consignment deal, which is just totally irrelevant to any of the facts of the case.
Whether or not she had that... So think of it this way, Simone. Uh-huh. Suppose I own a garage right? Or let, let’s, let’s make this different. I’m leasing a garage from somebody else, okay? To make this even clearer. And then I use the garage I’m leasing in violation of the terms of my lease to do what, what do you what do you call that where you, like, pay somebody to s- park your car for you at, like, restaurants?
Well, I d- I don’t know the term. You pay somebody at a restaurant to park your-
Simone Collins: Valet ...
Malcolm Collins: valet. Okay, yes. So I use it for valet storage in violation of the agreement, right?
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: Then the owner comes back and they go, “You didn’t have the right to run valet service here.” So then what they do is they take possession of...
Because I’m only subleasing the asset, right? They [00:06:00] retake possession of the garage, and then they turn around and start selling all of the cars that I had been- Yeah,
Simone Collins: like you parked a Ferrari and they’re like, “So this is mine now.”
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they’re like, “This is m-”. That is not remotely how the law works.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: You don’t take possession of an asset- Mm
, Just because it’s in a location that you took possession of.
Speaker 5: Again, to understand why it would be comical for the law to work this way, suppose I owned a, , storage locker that I rented to someone, and then the moment they moved in all their stuff, I then went to, , my brother, and I sold the storage locker to my brother. And then he now said, “Now I own everything in the storage locker.”
Or I own a, a hotel, and I wait until a bunch of really rich people come there for a trip, and then I sell it to somebody, and, , now they own everything. All you would need to do to ste- legally steal stuff from somebody is to own something where you expected something of high value to go across, and then [00:07:00] immediately sell it to somebody who you’re close with the moment the person with high value walks across a w- five-foot square of land that you own
Simone Collins: Yeah, I wonder how the law works with that. Like, if someone puts stolen goods or, like, someone else’s goods
Malcolm Collins: in your home. No, it’s, it’s, no, it’s not how the law... It’s the clear... Okay, so m- suppose I walk into a building and I set a, a, a diamond ring I own on a table in the building.
Yeah. And then that building sells. The person who buys the building doesn’t own my diamond ring. There’s
Simone Collins: no finders keepers law?
Malcolm Collins: Y- that’s not remotely how it works. That wasn’t included in the assets of the purchase. It wasn’t neg- And this is all laid out when you make a purchase of a company.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But yeah, sorry, that really gets me as well, but it continues.
Simone Collins: How does US law work with ownership of lost items? For example, if I lose a diamond ring at a restaurant and someone picks it up Are they legally in trouble for not giving it back to me if I [00:08:00] return to the restaurant and say, “It was mine”? What does that
Malcolm Collins: have to do with anything?
Simone Collins: I’m just curious about it.
‘Cause now I’m just curious about finders keepers law. It’s not a law. It’s not a law. I’m just wondering like-
Malcolm Collins: This is the... I mean, it’s clearly how the Bricks & Minifigs guy think the law works
The, the, the principle of finders keepers
Simone Collins: So b- basically property is yours unless you abandon it. A finder- Yeah ... generally has a right to possess an item that is good against everyone except the true owner. Okay, so there is kind of a finders keepers. But they have to give it back to the true owner if the owner can prove owners- so there kind of is a s- a finders keepers law.
Malcolm Collins: No, if the owner can prove ownership. Mm-hmm. Which the original contract proves that the person that they
Simone Collins: took the property from- Yes. No, 100%, yeah. W- yeah, with, with bricks and minifigs, of course. That’s, that’s obvious ...
Malcolm Collins: didn’t have ownership
Simone Collins: Yeah, and then it’s a civil issue if you refuse to give it back. Interesting Mm. Many systems distinguish lost from [00:09:00] mislaid, AKA, like, deliberately set down or forgotten. Property left on the premises is often treated as mislaid. Huh. Law is so interesting. I totally can understand why that one famous housewife women write to work, like, female equality... What was her name?
She has a, a difficult to pronounce, unflattering style name who became a lawyer.
Speaker 6: Note here, , while I say I w- don’t hold it against, , Coffeezilla for not understanding accounts payable, , maybe he did understand it and it just slipped his mind in this case because he has done really complex financial stuff into some of his other videos. So it’s, it’s almost sort of baffling to me that this wasn’t just like immediately top of mind for him.
But maybe -- he knows what accounts payable is, he just doesn’t know what happens with accounts payable during a business transaction, ,
Like even if she was being shady, even if the accounts payable she had had accrued for a year or two years, it would still transfer to Bricks and Minifigs. , It’s, it, it’s [00:10:00] irrelevant.
Although it appears very clearly that she wasn’t being shady because she specifically asked for her books before being kicked out to ensure that she did make the payments to him
Speaker 2: These are ones that haven’t-- he has not been paid his percentage yet, and if I don’t have the tickets, I won’t know how much I need to pay him. That, that’s a business thing and not necessarily yours. If, if taking on the business, he takes on all that comes on that part.
Speaker 6: because very few people... Simone and I have bought businesses before. That was our job in the past, to buy and sell businesses, which is why this is so incredibly salient for us and just seems like the simplest thing in the world.
, Which it should have been for the Bricks and Minifigs corporation. , And it seems to have been, because when the guy was making the transaction, he explained to her accurately, “When you do a acquisition, we take on the accounts payable.” , “That’s a business thing,” as he said. You know, that’s a, you know, simple understanding.
, Second here is, i-it’s not that Coffeezilla did nothing in their video. They did some really cool work. It was really cool when they showed the guy that he had all [00:11:00] this stuff in his own corporate records from his own corporate Google Drive, and the guy was like, “What?” And then, oh my God, that’s so cool, the, , U-Haul thing was really neat
Speaker 9: See the window, but the problem is it’s night outside, so you can’t see. And so I’m looking at everything I can, and there’s just nothing, you know? And I have this alternate angle, I’m looking at that. And then wait a minute. Zoom in on that photo. Bring up the brightness of this photo a little bit and my gosh, there’s a U-Haul in the parking lot right outside of the store the night of November 14th, 2024.
This is something that Matt said he had seen footage of, and it couldn’t be true. And again, I, I believe I have seen footage from that night that shows clearly out into the parking lot, and there’s no U-Haul. After seeing this, I said, “I really have to make a call.” And that’s when the story changed. So last night I talked with Matt McNeff.
I brought up this question of the U-Haul. He told me [00:12:00] emphatically there was no U-Haul. Y’all came to me this morning. You said, “Hey, we looked into it. There actually was a U-Haul there that night.” Can you clear up what that’s about?
Simone Collins: Actually, it, it is a good idea to do the, the Lego mini fig one, just to give people an update on what everyone’s missing, because that’s actually what everyone’s missing.
Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: I was, I was so annoyed by the Coffeezilla piece on it. I was like, it, it did- they’re obviously talking about keeping accounts payable, and the other company, you take on accounts payable. That is normal when you acquire a business. That is like Business 101
Simone Collins: If you do a stock purchase, the question is,
Malcolm Collins: we- we- If you do a hostile takeover of a store, you obviously take on that asset.
You, you take on liabilities and assets. If y- during a hostile takeover, you absolutely do.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know how it legally works with franchise agreements, like, how the corporate entities are related
Malcolm Collins: or not. Here’s another way to put it, Simone. It doesn’t matter how you took over a company.
If that company had a bunch of stolen [00:13:00] goods, goods that were legally not theirs in a storeroom- Yeah ... you don’t all of a sudden own all of those stolen goods just because you own the company now. Mm. That is functionally what the company did. They said, “Your paper only proves that the woman who we took over the store from didn’t own it.”
It’s like, no, it proves that you don’t own it because you only acquired her assets. Mm-hmm. You didn’t acquire other people’s assets simply because they happened to be around. That is the wildest thing ever. Like, I ... To think that you o- like, when you think about it with the stolen stuff, I think it becomes so much more clear.
To think that, “Oh, I bought a warehouse full of stolen goods, now I own all of the stolen goods,” everyone would be like, “W- no.” Or even worse, right? Somebody was renting a, a, a storage locker from me and stole a bunch of goods, and they defaulted on their payment so I took all of those goods. It’s like, th- that’s not how this works [00:14:00] at all.
And you’re like, “But it was illegal for them to have the goods there in the first place.” And I’m like, “That does nothing to help your case.”
Simone Collins: So you think for proper resolution, the accounts payable just needs to be paid out to this guy?
Malcolm Collins: Well, no. But the framing of the Coffeezilla where he tried to make it seem like it was over a very small amount of money, and that’s the- Yeah, I
Simone Collins: guess his framing, if I recall correctly, was just, like, the, the big thing is where are the missing Legos?
They either were stolen by a disgruntled employee or
Malcolm Collins: one of these- No, that’s literally not the thing, and that’s what I’m trying to explain. No, no,
Simone Collins: no. I, what I’m, what I’m trying to do is recap what his argument was, and I think that’s what his argument
Malcolm Collins: was, right? And it’s a stupid argument. We know where the missing Legos are, functionally speaking.
They were either sold in those early books, or they were inherited by the store. What he uncovered is that the vast majority of the money to be paid for this guy may not have been in the Legos in the store, but in accounts payable. Mm. That doesn’t mean the [00:15:00] previous owners did anything wrong. The, w- basically we know where they were.
They were sold. And we know the previous owners didn’t do anything wrong because we have the video where she explicitly says, “I need the books to settle my accounts.” Settling your accounts means paying out accounts payable. That’s what that means. They said, “No, don’t settle your accounts. We will manage it.”
That, that is, that was literally them. And then somebody could say, “Oh, that’s a low-level employee saying that,” or something like that. That low a level, even if it was a low-level employee, when they took custody of the books which managed what had gone out and what hadn’t gone out without going through with her, as you always do during a biggest acquisition, and she was trying to be nice in those videos and stuff like that.
Like, she was literally like, “Hey, let’s get on the same page about the accounts payable, about the the, the co- consignment stuff.” And they’re like, “No, I don’t want to get on the same page with you.” Mm. Because they knew, I think functionally what happened is they knew that the way they were shutting down the store was very immoral- Mm
and they felt really uncomfortable about it. So
Simone Collins: they- [00:16:00] Oh, like, “I’ve been told to do this. I’m just doing my job. This is corporate.” Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They basically knew corporate had sent them to do something absolutely demonstrably immoral. And so even though she was willing to, and we see in the videos, obviously willing to talk them through everything they didn’t want to be talked through everything, right?
And that, that is on them. If I since, so like, if they’re like, “Oh, that’s a low-level employee. He doesn’t represent corporate or anything like that,” it’s not even the fact that he affirmed to her, “Oh, I know what’s in these books.” Corporate at any point could have gone back to her to get better accounting, and it appears that they never tried, right?
And it appears that she wanted to give them the better accounting. What corporate does, if I send let’s say I send an employee, and the employee is the one who actually shuts down the storage locker that’s full of stolen goods, right? That doesn’t mean that I, of a [00:17:00] company, am now not legally responsible for the fact that those goods are stolen and need to get back to their rightful owner.
Even if it’s an employee who shuts down the garage that’s full of cars that somebody had you park for them, right? That, that doesn’t absolve corporate from the basic financial accounting responsibility of determining the ownership of the assets of the property, especially when multiple people are telling you these assets are not what, you know...
Speaker 14: And a day or so ago, corporate released a, their timeline of events, and their timeline of events clearly shows that from nearly the very beginning, they were very aware of this consignment Lego set. So they can’t say, “We were unaware that she didn’t own this.”
Malcolm Collins: and the thing that always gets me is they keep saying, “We tried to give Brian Mansell all of this in the past.” Mm. Why can’t they provide proof of that? That would be very easy to provide proof of. Presumably it’s in an email, right? Emails are easily recorded. So [00:18:00] if they don’t have that email, then I don’t believe that.
And I don’t understand why they haven’t presented that email of them trying to give them back in the past. It seems like an obvious lie. But also one thing
Simone Collins: that- There’s, the, there’s disorganized stuff on both ends. Like, why did the original franchise owner s- provide spreadsheets of records so late as well.
I don’t know.
Malcolm Collins: Well, so the other thing that we’ve learned since the, the co- well, this was before the Coffeezilla piece, but he didn’t include it, is the way that Brian Mandzel originally acquired Bricks & Minifigs was through, in a really scammy way, suing his father for control of a company that his father had built.
And it appears that pretty much since day one, Bricks & Minifigs has been bleeding money. So he basically- Oh ... stole his father’s assets and used that to build his pet project company that he has never been able to get financially stable, truly. And that might also explain why they cared so much about such a small amount of money.
One, they’re just not good at their jobs, and then two, they feel [00:19:00] really pinched on money.
Simone Collins: Right. They, they actually- When you, when you- ... don’t have the money.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like when you look at his house, when you see, you know, his, it, it doesn’t look like a house with someone with that much money, right? So it, it may have been that’s why he felt pressured to steal this stuff, but it’s still stealing.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, also, if the company’s not immensely profitable- You know, it, it probably isn’t run well. They don’t have good records, like all that kind of thing. You know, like it’s not... It’s just kind of falling apart, so. That, that makes sense.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Poor things.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway r- I mean, not poor th- th- the CEO’s not a poor thing.
He seems like a truly evil person. The, the way that he’s acting and the way that he’s responding, that he still has Ben under a gag order, you know, that’s why I have to release this episode. Mm-hmm. Maybe, maybe you can let Ben talk, right? This isn’t a normal thing to do in the world of YouTube, and I think he thought talking down to a YouTuber, he didn’t realize in the world of the actual world today, YouTubers are significantly more powerful than these big CEOs who think [00:20:00] they can talk-
Simone Collins: No, that’s why he did that.
He did that because he was getting severe amounts of harassment because
Malcolm Collins: of everyone getting his talk. Well, yeah, but cutting down the YouTuber only makes it worse. He needs to basically get on his hands and knees and beg the YouTuber. He
Simone Collins: can- Well, he doesn’t seem to understand that ...
Malcolm Collins: you know, he made- He thinks he
Simone Collins: can shut it down
Malcolm Collins: Brian, like everything with Brian. It’s like it’s not Brian you need to settle this with anymore. It’s Ben you need to... It’s Ben who you need to prostrate yourself to. And I know that that hurts your ego, but fundamentally, that’s the only way this gets right. But
Simone Collins: anyway. Sorry. No, no, no, it’s not Ben. It’s Brian.
Malcolm Collins: No, it’s Ben. It’s Ben. It’s the YouTuber that the CEO needs to be prostrating himself to, not the old man. He thinks he can make this right with the old man because it’s no longer about bricks and minifigs. The core issue now- Oh,
Simone Collins: it’s, it’s about the cover-up ... is
Malcolm Collins: about- It’s destroying
Simone Collins: FanTheFacts ...
Malcolm Collins: the way that he tried to stifle Ben’s investigation and Ben’s honest efforts to try to get this, and then tried to destroy Ben’s life through jail time, through these court [00:21:00] cases.
These are targeted, personalized court cases, right?
Simone Collins: That’s true. He
Malcolm Collins: could choose not to do this, but he didn’t. So, no, absolutely. It is... And this is what he’s getting wrong. He needs to get Ben to accept his apology to even begin to get anywhere with this, not Brian. Ben is his problem here. Ben- Mm-hmm
is not some kid anymore. Ben is the victim in everyone’s mind, and the core victim in everyone’s mind.
Simone Collins: Well, especially the way he filmed that I can’t talk anymore video against this dark hostage style background. But anyway- Yeah ... I have to go get the kids. I love you so much.
Speaker 12: What needs to be done next? What does that say? It’s saying we gotta use the wrong screwdriver to do it. Oh, no. It’s okay. Where did the wrong screwdriver go? I see a screwdriver right there. I’m [00:22:00] talking about the wrong one. See? There’s a Phillips head and a flathead. Do you know the difference between the two?
Speaker 13: What? One has an X at the end and the other one has a line at the end. I don’t- The one with the red handle- Oh, here’s, here- That’s a wrench. Oh. Oh, here’s, here
Speaker 12: you go, Tayn. This is the thing. Wait. Yeah, Octavian, it’s true that screwdrivers and wrenches are easier. No. Like, if you use that to turn- No, I don’t ... the screw in. Hey
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