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Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins episodes

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

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1 hr 1 min
March 24 T Pills Make Dems Vote Right?! (The Conservative Chemical)
Did you know that giving men extra testosterone can make weakly affiliated Democrats shift conservative? In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins break down a 2025 study showing testosterone administration caused a “red shift” in political preferences—plus what it reveals about conservatism, declining T levels in modern men, AI attitudes, social vigilance, punishment of bad actors, risk-taking, and why high-testosterone mindsets align with enforcement, competition, and opportunity.
They explore how testosterone isn’t just “rage”—it’s strategic dominance calibration, reduced performative niceness (without killing real benevolence), increased willingness to punish unfairness, and comfort with confrontation and disruption. From immigrant crises and benefit fraud to why low-T societies might fear AI, this conversation reframes conservatism as partly hormonal—and asks whether we should be subsidizing testosterone for the masses.
Featuring kid interruptions, roid rage myths, soul debates, and plenty of Based Camp chaos. If you’re high-T (or want to be), this one’s for you.
Show Notes
In 2025, a group of researchers found that testosterone administration caused democrats to shift in a more conservative direction.
This reveals a lot about conservatism and modern leftists and when I dug deeper into the effects of higher levels of testosterone in both men and women, I feel like I came away with a better understanding of the left, the right, and society in general.
Also, now whenever I hear about people taking testosterone supplementation, I am going to think “they’re just taking their conservative pills”
The Research
In their paper, titled “Testosterone Administration Induces a Red Shift in Democrats”, these researchers took 136 “healthy males,” measured the strength of their political affiliation and their basal testosterone, gave them synthetic testosterone or a placebo, and then checked to see if their affiliation changed.
They found:
* That more weakly affiliated democrats had 19% higher basal testosterone than those who identified strongly with the party
* That “When weakly affiliated Democrats received additional testosterone, the strength of their party affiliation fell by 12% (p = 0.01), and they reported 45% warmer feelings towards Republican candidates for president (p < 0.001).”
They also found that “Testosterone administration did not affect political preferences for strongly affiliated Democrats or strong or weak Republicans.”
In short, their results demonstrate that testosterone induces a “red shift” among weakly affiliated Democrats, providing evidence that testosterone affects political preferences.
Hmm.. is Testosterone Changing?
Across many industrialized populations, average basal testosterone levels in men appear to be drifting downward over time, while data for women are sparse and less clear but do not show a strong, consistent upward trend.
Just a note:
* Typical female testosterone levels are far lower than male levels (roughly 10–20‑fold lower)
* In both sexes, testosterone naturally declines with age within an individual, with an average drop of about 1% per year in adult men and a gradual decline in women that accelerates around menopause
* So as populations age, their testosterone will drop
In men:
* Several large cohort and lab‑database studies from the U.S., Europe, and Israel report an age‑independent secular decline in total testosterone in men, after adjusting for age and often for BMI and other factors.
* For example, a widely cited Massachusetts study found that men of the same age in the early 2000s had substantially lower mean testosterone than men of the same age in the late 1980s, and this drop was not fully explained by obesity or other measured health and lifestyle changes.
* A large Israeli health‑system analysis (over 100,000 men, 2006–2019) likewise found a significant, prominent decline in testosterone across most age groups, again largely independent of BMI.
* A newer analysis of “healthy” men has also reported progressive decreases in both testosterone and LH over recent decades, suggesting a true change in hypothalamic‑pituitary‑gonadal function rather than just obesity or assay artifacts.
If More Testosterone Correlates with Conservatism, What Might That Say About Conservatism?
In other words, what do increases in testosterone change about views and behavior?
Across lab and real-world studies, higher or experimentally raised testosterone is less “rage hormone” and more “status and dominance calibration”: it pushes behavior in whatever way seems best to gain or protect status in that situation (which can be aggressive, but can also be generous or prosocial).
Key Behavioral Changes
Aggression and conflict response
* Higher testosterone is linked to greater reactive aggression, especially when people feel provoked, treated unfairly, or their status is threatened, rather than indiscriminate hostility.
* In experiments like ultimatum games, testosterone increases costly punishment of unfair offers, even when it doesn’t improve payoff, consistent with defending status or enforcing norms.
Risk-taking and competition
* Elevated testosterone is associated with more willingness to take financial and social risks and to enter competitive situations.
* In trading and lab tasks, higher testosterone correlates with riskier bids and more optimistic expectations about outcomes, mediated by increased confidence rather than simple recklessness.
* Randomized trials show that testosterone can increase willingness to compete, although effects depend on cortisol levels and context (who the opponent is, prior wins/losses).
Trust, vigilance, and social reading
* Single-dose testosterone in women reduced interpersonal trust, particularly in people who are naturally very trusting, interpreted as increased social vigilance for exploitation in competitive environments.
* It tends to put people in a more defensive, “scan for threats/opportunists” mode, which is adaptive for dominance but can strain cooperative relationships if chronic.
* Some studies find impaired cognitive empathy and reduced “strategic” or feigned prosociality under testosterone, meaning people may care less about managing how cooperative they look to others and more about direct payoff or status
* OMG TESTOSTERONE REDUCES PERFORMATIVE NICENESS
BUT IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY REDUCE ACTUAL BENEVOLENCE!!!
Prosocial and status-enhancing behavior
* Importantly, testosterone can also increase generosity when generosity enhances status. In bargaining games, men given testosterone punished unfairness more but were not less generous when offers were high.
* Other work shows testosterone can eliminate strategic prosociality (acting nice just for image) but not genuine prosocial motives, reinforcing the idea that the hormone tunes behavior to real, not performative, status benefits.
Cognitive style and decision-making
* Testosterone administration makes men more likely to go with gut impulses and less likely to engage in cognitive reflection, leading to more errors on trick problems where the intuitive answer is wrong, even though basic math ability is unchanged.
* This seems to operate through increased confidence and reduced self-doubt, which can be an advantage in some leadership/competitive settings but a liability when careful checking is needed.

Mood and personality correlates
* Observationally, higher testosterone has been linked with traits like dominance, lower punishment sensitivity (less fear of negative consequences), more approach behavior, and in some cases irritability or uncharacteristic aggression, particularly at supraphysiologic doses (e.g., heavy anabolic steroid use).
How this changes views
* Other people: seen a bit more as competitors or potential threats to status, so you may feel less automatically trusting and more scrutinizing of others’ motives.
* Fairness and respect: slights, disrespect, or unfair treatment feel more salient and more worth confronting or punishing, even at personal cost.
* Risk and opportunity: downside risk feels less scary and upside feels more attainable, so risky choices can look more reasonable and attractive.
* Self-view: stronger internal sense of certainty and correctness; more confidence and less second-guessing.

This explains why Republicans are more comfortable doing things like:
* Enforcing immigration policy
* Enforcing laws
* Supporting capitalism
Episode Transcript

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51 min
March 23 Iran Gov Broke & Everyone Is Missing the Signs
In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dissect Iran’s baffling wartime decisions in 2026 — from missile strikes on closest allies like Qatar (hitting the massive Ras Laffan LNG facility) to attacks on UAE, Saudi Arabia, and others — while seemingly ignoring Israel and the US in many cases.
What happens when a regime’s “mosaic defense” strategy fractures into regional warlords and fiefdoms vying for power? The Collins argue Iran’s centralized control has collapsed, turning IRGC factions into competing hardliners who bomb expensive targets for headlines and internal legitimacy rather than coherent geopolitics.
They cover:
* Israel’s strike on the shared South Pars gas field and Iran’s bizarre retaliation against Qatar
* The emerging Cold War between Saudi Arabia (centralized states) and UAE (maritime empire/proxies)
* Why this chaos benefits US interests long-term (isolating Iran, hurting China/Europe more via Strait of Hormuz issues)
* Assassination plots against Trump, nuclear brinkmanship, and why nation-building isn’t the goal
* Low-casualty US strategy using vintage B-52s to clear old munitions
A wild ride through Middle East power vacuums, proxy wars, and why Iran’s self-sabotage might be the biggest geopolitical gift the US never expected.Based Camp - What was Iran thinking when bombing its neighbors_
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] What this suggests to me is that the people who are at the regional heads of Iran’s mosaic defense strategy have entirely regionalized their control already.
Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Oh, that would be interesting. So it’s, it’s like, it. It’s descending into fiefdoms.
Malcolm Collins: But what’s important is to these individuals who are playing this game, and you can see this in the president’s reaction here, they actually don’t particularly care about America or Israel or Iran’s long-term geopolitical future.
Simone Collins: Sure. Why would they? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: They are vying to be the top dog of the warlords. Mm-hmm.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be doing a, a series of updates on what’s happening with Iran right now.
[00:01:00] And this situation is absolutely crazy in how it’s setting up the future geopolitics of the Middle East. Iran has been making decisions which appear completely baffling from an outside perspective, which is what we’re going to start with to try to understand why they’re making the decisions they’re making.
But we’re also seeing the set of a new Cold War throughout the Middle East, between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Oh,
Simone Collins: what? Wow. I haven’t heard anything about this.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, it is very, and, and when I say a Cold War, I mean there’s, they’re already in active killing conflicts in about four or five theaters. The Saudi Arabia and the Yoi right now actively.
Simone Collins: So are we talking about a, a cold war along the lines of nuclear threat? Kind of Cold war or just cold war of like frenemies being
Malcolm Collins: No, we don’t attack each other directly, but we arm troops on opposite sides of conflicts throughout the region
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: To attempt to [00:02:00] create public governments that serve us.
Simone Collins: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: So like a, to get like between each other, they are, I’d say, almost friendly in the way they are acting, and yet people are dying every day in mass in service of this conflict.
Simone Collins: Okay. Frenemies Cold War. Gotcha.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. A, a very odd Cold War, but a Cold War nonetheless. Mm-hmm. And given the way that it’s allowed, it’s also sort of a safer cold work that’s unlikely to escalate as much, but
Simone Collins: that’s nice.
I
Malcolm Collins: wanna, I wanna, I wanna start on the weird behavior of Iran. So if people go back to our episode on Venezuela mm-hmm. My take at the time was I did not think attempting regime change in Iran in the same way we did in Venezuela at least, was a good idea, or really conflict directly in Iran was a good idea.
I said I thought it was incredibly risky. I have since taken the position since this war started and, and this is still where I am today. That. Okay. [00:03:00] I would not have taken this risk even knowing what it appears Trump knew when he went into this conflict.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: However, knowing what has happened since the beginning of the conflict, it was very obviously the right move.
Oh. And the large reason that it turned into very obviously the right move has been bizarre behavior by Iran itself since the conflict started that I wouldn’t have predicted, but maybe I should have.
Simone Collins: Really, because it seems so inane, like them attacking. Their neighbors,
Malcolm Collins: not their neighbor, just their neighbors.
So the attack that was for me, just the most baffling. I mean, they’ve attacked almost every neighboring country at this point except Iraq.
Oh no, they did attack Iraq. They’ve attacked pretty much everyone around them. And when I say everyone one of the most devastating attacks that they did recently was on Qatar.
Now, for people who don’t know [00:04:00] Qatar and Iran are like, Qatar is about Iran’s closest ally.
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Fun fact, Israel did find and kill one of these real guys while he was in Qatar in Doha.
[00:05:00]
حار. people of the world.
Malcolm Collins: Al Jazeera is always d of anyone who Iran is funding. That’s just like Al Jazeera’s main thing. For people who don’t know Al Jazeera is Qatari disinformation campaign. Right? Like that’s broadly what it’s known for, but a lot of people treat it seriously as a source of news and stuff like this.
And a lot of like educated liberals I guess are like, I don’t know, they bite the bullet on that because it’s anti-America. anti-Israel
Simone Collins: can confirm. Yeah. They’re like Al Jazeera quality reporting. Well, and to be fair. A lot of, a lot of propaganda news outlets. Do. They’re, they’re only successful as propaganda news outlets.
If they also put out good information, SEO like you, you, you often don’t get good sustainable, like historically speaking, SEO if you don’t provide websites with good content on them like [00:06:00] that is how to sustainably win the game. And this is why you have publications like the Epic Times and Al Jazeera producing good journalism often.
Yeah. ‘cause they won’t able to get people to eat their vegetables if you, they don’t serve actually good food too.
Malcolm Collins: Sometimes the best reporting that you’re going to get is from a bias source when their personal bias isn’t relevant to that story.
Simone Collins: Yes, absolutely.
Malcolm Collins: So you can get great reporting from the Epic Times when it’s not about China.
You can get great reporting from Al Jazeera when it doesn’t have to do with the Middle East.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But if you wanna get an idea of like what I’m talking about when I’m talking about like an attitude flip and Qatar was a real thorn in our side that they were willing to work alongside Iran as much as they were and promote them as much as they were within the region.
Here’s a recent op-ed that was published in, jazeera for an example of, of, of the shift that we’re seeing,
Simone Collins: okay,
Malcolm Collins: the US Israel strategy against Iran is working. Here’s why. Every aspect of Iran’s ability to project regional power is being [00:07:00] successfully degraded. I’m just skipping in a bit here.
But this narrative is wrong, not because the costs are imaginary, but because the critics are measuring the wrong things. They are categorizing the price of the campaign while . Ignoring the strategic ledger. When you look at what actually happened to Iran’s principle instruments of power, its ballistic missiles are null.
It’s nuclear infrastructure, it’s air defenses,, it’s Navy and Proxy Commander architecture. . This picture is not one of us failure. It is one of systematic phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades. I write this from Doha, where Iranian missiles have triggered alerts for residents to take shelter and Qatar Airways has started operating evacuation flights.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So, so like this is, this is where we are in terms of the feeling in a place like Qatar. All right. So, to understand what happened with Qatar, just, just a bit of context here. And this was also a huge d [00:08:00] move on Israel’s part, but. Turned out beneficial. So I don’t know what to think of it.
So Israel ends up bombing the South Pars gas field.
Now there have been conflicting reports on whether this attack was given the go ahead by the United States. But when there are conflicting reports on whether or not Israel effed us over my general stances, Israel probably effed us over. Yeah, my take is, what may have happened is Israel asked Washington for permission to do this and didn’t flag the significance of what they were about to do.
And then are you just having fun with the debate?
Simone Collins: Sorry.
Malcolm Collins: And then Washington decided to give the, give the, okay. Without going through the channels, they would have if they had known how big a deal this is.
Speaker: As a note, what some people are saying, which plausibly could be true, is that Washington and Israel, , Washington did know that this was going to happen, but they’re playing good cop, bad cop with [00:09:00] Washington, pretending that it didn’t know this was going to happen in order to play, , good cop. , The reason why I don’t believe this is, if this was the case, I would’ve expected Washington to have its messaging aligned with Israel beforehand instead of.
Some of the time saying, yes, we allowed this some of the time angrily saying Israel will never do something like this again.
Malcolm Collins: The reason it’s such a big deal is because this natural gas station, or, or this. So, okay.
Little context. This
Simone Collins: is one of the, the major supplies of energy to Iran. And my understanding now is, is already even before this conflict, they had shifted to burning this really, like either unrefined or like this drags of, of oil, I can’t remember what it’s called, but it causes a lot of air pollution.
It’s really not good for the environment or people. And now they’re gonna be burning even more of it. Like they’re just in dire straits now and it’s making things even worse.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So there’s a giant national gas field under Qatar that goes under the, the, the Gulf [00:10:00] there and half of it is in Iran.
And so Iran and Qatar both you mine it for natural gas. Qatar sells that natural gas around the world, and it’s the major source of Qatari income. It’s also why Qatar is on good terms with Iran, because they have to be, because they share the main thing that makes guitar wealthy. Iran does not export this much.
They take it and use it to power their infrastructure.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Like they need it to survive
Malcolm Collins: like 90% of the PowerPoint that Iran are running off of this. Mm-hmm. If this goes down, Iran doesn’t have. Power. Most of Iran doesn’t have power.
Simone Collins: Well, and it just went down, presumably, right? Not, it’s not good
Malcolm Collins: anymore.
No, no, no. It was a limited strike. It was more like we could do something really bad. Oh. But it was, it was very limited. And then Iran, in response to this they decided to do a bombing of Qatar’s Ross Lahan, the world’s largest liquified natural gas LNG production concept.
Simone Collins: Wait, so, okay.
Israel attacked sort of a shared [00:11:00] resource of Qatar and Iran.
Malcolm Collins: Iran.
Simone Collins: Iran bombs. Qatar,
Malcolm Collins: yes. Why?
Simone Collins: What? This just seems so inane. The response. Okay. Yeah. Like, so, so don’t you, don’t you wanna like, retaliate against the person who did the thing that makes you mad? Not the person who also got hurt.
Malcolm Collins: I mentioned this in the, in the last episode on this, and some people are just so dumb and cued on this entire war where they’re like, no, China is fine after all this.
And I’m like, no, China is not fine. They’re like, Iran is letting Chinese ships through. And I’m like, no. Iran said that they would think about letting Chinese ships through, but functionally only a small, I think it’s like two 5% of the previous traffic of Chinese ships have been able to get through. And I made this point to point out that when you cut off the straight of vermouth, like what the US is functionally trying to get open is a straight, that doesn’t supply the US at all.
It supplies our geopolitical [00:12:00] rivals China Europe and east Asia as well. Which is why you had the hilarious instance of the Japanese lady who I, who I love, you know, coming to talk with Trump. And she goes, why didn’t you warn us? He goes, why didn’t you warn us about Pearl Harbor? And I was like, Trump, you’re nut job.
But, but what’s important to note is that US has actually been approaching this war with something of our hands not tied behind our back. But when my kids get into fights they really understand how much power to use when hitting their siblings based on like the siblings relative age to them.
And we’re sort of in a conflict like that with Iran. We’re not taking out cog Island, right? We’re not taking out this infrastructure. And people can ask. Why did we not do this? Why did Israel do it? What was the plan here? I’ll get to that in a second, but I, I want to explain this particular incident.
So Israel goes ahead and does this likely, without Washington fully understanding the implications of what Israel was [00:13:00] doing why did Israel do it? From an Israel perspective Israel’s goals in our goals in the war are not exactly the same. We are okay with just seeing a heavily diminished Iran.
Israel wants to keep the war going for as long as it can and aggressively as it can now that it finally has its shot at Iran. And it can use us to make that shot like amplify that shot on its behalf. So it did the thing where, you know, we are, I can say play fighting was Iran, and then it comes in and does an actual sucker punch and Trump had to go.
Israel will do no more like in all caps on su, so so’s attacks on this to do the, like in the middle of the fight. Hey, that’s not cool, man. Like, don’t do that. Right? Like, we’re not attacking infrastructure. But it turned out for the best because it led to the Iranian serious damage of this Qatari facility, which pushed Qatar, [00:14:00] one of the groups that was still trying to stay a little neutral in how it was dealing with Iran further to the other side.
Okay. The question of why is Iran doing this?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Like this, this makes Israel’s actions seem a little bit less dickish, but that doesn’t change the fact that. That, like why would, how could they have predicted that Iran would do that? Right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So, the important thing to note at the beginning of all of this is you could say maybe this is a grand strategy on Iran, that you are not seeing Malcolm.
And a lot of the news is covering it this way. It’s, we’re gonna hurt the global economy until the United States capitulate. Which is a very stupid strategy because since this war started, the US dollar has gone up, the euro has gone down. Yes, we’ve taken an economic hit, but things will eventually go back to normal.
So it’s just a great time to invest right now. Yeah. Right. Like it’s not actually doing sustained damage to anything of the United States interest, but it’s turning a [00:15:00] lot of powers against Iran that would otherwise be their allies. Like China, right? Like if the US just decides to stop this war right now and Iran decides it’s gonna keep the straight of her moose shut down.
Mm-hmm. This becomes an existential problem for Qatar, the UAE, China and Saudi Arabia. And they would have to get militarily involved. Like, like they, they actually don’t have a choice. If it turned out the United States was just gonna be like, okay, hands off, we don’t care anymore. We don’t have to get involved.
It’s not existential for us. It’s unpleasant economically but it is much more e unpleasant economically for our geopolitical rivals.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So this idea that this isn’t in the heads of Washington right now especially with the talks with China coming up and those being, you know, delayed for Trump to, to finish the war there is nothing China wants more than an end to this war.
Right. And an end. That likely even favors the US given where things are now. [00:16:00] Because if Iran can still control the straight of Haus, this is against China’s best interest. But anyway so you can say, okay. Intelligent strategy from the top. From what we’ve seen in Iran, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Iranian President, Mossad, Pia, yeah. Everyone knows, I can’t pronounce other names said on Iranian state TV after the initial attack started happening he said on my own behalf and on behalf of Iran that he wanted to apologize to Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, et cetera.
I dunno if you even need an et cetera there. And he issued an apology for the attacks. Specifically, he blamed it on the chaos created by the killings of top Iranian commanders in leaders by the US Israeli strikes saying, quote, our armed forces fired at will because their commanders were absent and they did whatever was necessary, right?
So this. Clearly was not ordered from the top. [00:17:00] Right. It was so not ordered from the top that, okay, so suppose you had like two factions in the top, in the board meetings or whatever, was the president and the other people controlling things in Iran right now. And the, like so the new Ayatollah isn’t brain dead, which it appears he probably is brain dead. Or a coma or severely injured or something because it’s weird that he hasn’t shown his face yet and like he easily could do a prerecorded videos. The old one did that all the time.
Right. You know? So it appears he might be incapacitated and he might have been elected explicitly because he was incapacitated, which would allow other people to grab power illegitimately.
Simone Collins: Yeah, you can call it the Biden strategy.
Malcolm Collins: The Biden strategy. Yes. So anyway, if this guy and the other people who are supposed to be running Iran knew that there was a disagreement about why these missiles were being sent at these various infrastructure projects and stuff like that.
Mm-hmm. He wouldn’t have flippantly gone on state TV and just been like, I apologize, this isn’t gonna happen [00:18:00] again. It’s just, you know, it’s disorganized. People are acting on their own. He would be like because he’d know that there was some other faction and he’d explain, you know, oh, this is the discussion we’re having.
Or he wouldn’t say anything at all until he. Argued his point. This is not the, the words of somebody who appears to be aware that this is somebody’s else’s intentional plan. But then what happened he, he said he would try to solve sync through diplomacy, but was in hours the same day after sharp criticism and backlash from Iranian hardliners, hardline clerics, lawmakers, the IRGC officials and conservative media.
He backed up hard. He said he posts up in a following statement and repeated it on state tv claiming Iran had actually never attacked, quote, friendly, or neighboring countries at all.
Simone Collins: Oh. Huh.
Malcolm Collins: Right. So what’s [00:19:00] causing this? Like this is, this is weird. Like that’s a, that’s a weird thing to do. It almost sounds like he was afraid for his life.
Simone Collins: The weird pile is getting so big
Malcolm Collins: right here is my understanding of what seems to be happening on the ground and Iran leading to the weird decisions that we’re seeing.
Simone Collins: Okay. You, you mean like your, your hypothesis as to what is actually going on your conjecture. Yes. Okay. Let’s hear it.
Malcolm Collins: It’s a, it, it, it has to do with governance theory, which we wrote a Wall Street bestseller on
Simone Collins: Darn.
Malcolm Collins: So I ran is uh, ide the governance if you wanna read it. By the way, it actually ended up affecting a lot of like crypto governance strategies and stuff like that, which is really cool.
Which had us on the board of like major crypto things for a while, like some of the largest crypto donation funds anyway. Anyway, so Iran has been practicing something called mosaic defense. Mosaic defense is a form of defense that is meant to be incredibly robust to decapitation [00:20:00] so that you can cut out the leadership and the individual factions can still operate.
Mm-hmm. Now we have another episode where we point out that normally Muslim countries do not do things like this. And the reason why Muslim countries do not do things like this is they typically have coups when they do do things like this. Because Muslims are just way more likely to coup than Protestants.
And in the middle you have groups like Catholics and we go into that episode, why this is but we don’t need to go into that here. It’s just rarely done in Muslim countries, but it hugely decentralized the power was in the military. Okay. Now. What that has created, and keep in mind how little connection the president must have had to the people who are actually making the shots to think.
That the shoot they were shooting at whatever they, they were just firing at will at anything. Mm-hmm. That he thought that that’s what was happening. That he thought that that was [00:21:00] the, on the ground what’s happening, or at least a plausible excuse for what’s happening. Right. This means that he had not communicated through or had the ability to communicate down to the soldier level or to any decision maker’s level at the level of, of these firings in other countries.
Right. What this suggests to me is that the people who are at the regional heads of Iran’s mosaic defense strategy have entirely regionalized their control already.
Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Oh, that would be interesting. So it’s, it’s like, it. It’s descending into fiefdoms.
Malcolm Collins: It’s descending into, yeah. Essentially warlords.
Simone Collins: Whoa.
Malcolm Collins: But the warlords may not have control over territory. It may be over parts of the IRGC or something like that. But what’s important is to these individuals who are playing this game, and you [00:22:00] can see this in the president’s reaction here, they actually don’t particularly care about America or Israel or Iran’s long-term geopolitical future.
Simone Collins: Sure. Why would they? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: They are vying to be the top dog of the warlords. Mm-hmm. To control what’s left of Iran after this war is over.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And to have as much influence as they can while the war is happening. And so now the question is, okay, if that’s what’s happening, then. How do you, you know, you’re, you’re one of these guys, how do you signal your legitimacy and authority to the other warlords?
Because it’s not likely going to be one person. It’s going to be a coalition that is going to gain power and be the defacto head if it’s, if the president isn’t the head right now, who, how do we get this new [00:23:00] organic defacto head? Mm-hmm. It’s politicking What? How do you get points within this politicking that’s going on right now?
You need to be as hard line as possible, as crazy as possible, as aggressive as possible against anyone who has ever slighted Iran in any way. Hit what you can with what you have. So, it, it’s been pointed out that since the start of the conflict, countries like the UAE and Qatar have been hit with many more missiles.
Oh, I think orders of magnitudes more in some cases than Israel. How does this make sense from a Iranian tactical perspective or long-term alliance perspective, right? Like, if Israel and Saudi, I mean, if the UAE and Saudi Arabia are beginning to have conflict now, wouldn’t Iran want to be friendly with the UAE.
UAE has a giant Iranian population in it. Right? Like they, they have the potential to be quite friendly. Why are they so aggressive against CUAE, [00:24:00] right? Well, it’s because there are more expensive things that their missiles can actually hit in the UAE than in Israel. Mm-hmm. They’re basically about grabbing news headlines and blowing up expensive things like it’s a video game to win control of the IRGC from the other hard liners within the IRGC.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: That is what I suspect is happening right now. And if you assume that, if you assume, and I think that we can assume that from these quotes from the president if you assume that there actually isn’t any centralized control left in Iran, and remember Israel, there was what was his name? The one guy who is still sort of in charge of things and then. Yes. Ali Laies this guy died March 16th, 17. And he was killed in his Israeli airstrikes along with his son and one of his deputies. And he was [00:25:00] a, a long time power broker and one of the few left was in the regime.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Although, you know, we also had other really important figures that were killed, like Gal Mare Soleimani came command of the Baal paramilitary force, the region’s main internal repression tool.
This was the one that, you know, was murdering people in the streets. The 35,000 protestors. By the way, we’re still nowhere close to 35 ca southern casualties in the war. Actually I wanna go into a separate thing ‘cause I had a fan reach out to me asking me some stuff that I want to address for fans who are.
Just sort of skeptical of all the news that they hear on this. Okay. He’s like, how do we even know that Iran did try to attempt to assassinate Trump? How do we know that this isn’t a post hawk thing made up during the Trump administration, you know, like to justify this war? Like, okay, the war started, we need to make something up.
The core problem with that hypothesis is one, there were two potential assassination attempts and the one that we have more information on most of the information we [00:26:00] have on it was released during the Biden administration when Trump was running against Biden. That does that, that that was against the Biden administration’s interest in releasing in the first place.
Right. And just does not at all look like a, a, a a a a, like a false flag attack or something like that made up after the fact. This happened ages ago. Mm-hmm. And again, when the people are like, you know, you shouldn’t strike back or you should, you’re, you’re, you’re playing to Israel’s hand when you assassinate their leader because they tried to assassinate your leader.
You know, just take it when they try to assassinate your leader if acting with strengths and not like a cuck is going to potentially help Israel’s interest. And I’m like that. I mean that’s, that’s really cucked behavior, man to, to consider so much that this could help the Jews. Therefore we shouldn’t do it.
I see that as just wild. So I from my position, like if I’m ever president and somebody attempts to [00:27:00] have me assassinated, I’m like, okay, I’m probably gonna do something like this, but I wanna go more into this assassination type. I think a lot of people on the right, I dunno, they forgot about it or it wasn’t reported to them.
Simone Collins: I, I didn’t, I don’t think I knew about it. I knew about. The one in Butler I knew about the guy with the at outside the golf course. I didn’t know about the other ones. That, that was only news to me after you brought it up after this conflict started.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, Asif Merchant, he was a 46-year-old Pakistani man who had recently spent a long period of time in Iran receiving training in meetings from handlers entered the United States in 2024.
He attempted to recruit Hitman to assassinate US politicians or government officials explicitly including Trump, although he was also open to targeting Biden and Nikki Haley, according to some accounts. Plan involved document theft, staging protests at rallies and killings. He was arrested July 12th, 2024, all in the Biden administration in Houston as he tried to escape the country.
So, like, this [00:28:00] isn’t like a, a vague thing. He was convicted March 6th, 2026 in Brooklyn Federal Court on a murder to hire attempt. And then the second plot Farhad Shaka Shaka 51 living in Iran was tasked by IRGC officials September, 2024, to surveil and kill Trump. Then a candidate and later president-elect on October 7th, 2024, they specifically ordered him to drop other targets and delivered an assassination plan and deliver an assassination plan within seven days.
I love that. Like he’s a white collar worker. Hey, this is taking too long, this Trump assassination thing. Drop all of
Simone Collins: the target. Didn’t get this report on my desk Monday.
Malcolm Collins: I wanna report Monday next week.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s how it, it’s so weirdly bureaucratic. What on earth.
Malcolm Collins: He,
Simone Collins: I thought, you know, in the movies, just like, do it, get it done.
But like, these guys are like annoying. Just see the plan, make sure point. He, he recorded
Malcolm Collins: two US based criminals. Okay. Cari Riviera, AKA pop, 49 of Brooklyn Pop and Donan Lool 36 of [00:29:00] Staten Island who met in prison to help Shakira who remains at large in Iran. In multiple recorded FBI interviews after, oh, by the way, the, the way the FBI got the first time is one of the people he recruited to attempt to kill Trump with an FBI informant.
Like it’s super, the evidence is super big on, on guy number one. So for this one how do we know Shaka directly admitted the IRGC directives, including prioritizing Trump in multiple recorded FBI interviews after initial contact. So they were able to contact him and he admitted this came directly from the Iranian mil.
Okay. I just think it’s important to, to know this, and he was like, how do we actually know that Iran is funding terrorism that is targeting the United States and that that one really got me. That’s just like, that’s Iran’s entire geopolitical strategy for the past decade. This isn’t like a rumor mill.
This is like arguing that China has never said they want to take Taiwan or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. No, it’s true that many of the [00:30:00] groups, you know, whether it’s the, the Huis or Hamas or whatever, also want to kill Israel and that they consider killing Israel higher in their priority lists.
So it is better for Israel than the United States that this has happened. Mm-hmm. But it does not mean that it isn’t also good for the United States. You know, Al-Qaeda had a lot of targets
Other than the United States, but we still had nine 11, right? Like, you just leave groups around to grow and molder that want to kill you for long enough and let them be funded to the tune of I pointed out in the last episode, it’s literally, I think around an average of 3 billion or 4 billion a year from Iran.
Simone Collins: Oh goodness.
Malcolm Collins: Eventually you’re going to get a very big attack. You know, we’re not always gonna be able to stop it as we did in these instances. And I just think to, to be like, oh, I don’t, I don’t care. It actually reminds me. Of my friend. I’ve mentioned this story a few times, but it’s always so visceral for me.
It stuck with me. It was a girlfriend of mines when I was growing up. Grandfather who survived the Holocaust, and he [00:31:00] describes running around like to different houses in his Jewish neighborhood with the book the, the book that Hitler had released, mine Kaf. And he is like, guys, you need to read this.
He says he wants to kill us, like, we need to get out of the country. And they basically treated him like he was crazy and began to blacklist him from things. And he ended up having to break into his girlfriend’s house at night and basically kidnap her and run away. And you know, obviously.
He did well, I, you know, hung out with his granddaughter. I hope she does well. She’s a really cool person.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: But you know, he’s the guy running around, like there’s a group out there that says they wanna kill us. Right. Like, why is everybody acting like this isn’t a big deal? I feel a bit like the people out there who keep saying, yeah, Iran said death to America all the time, but they didn’t really want to kill us.
Right. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: They kind of remind me of those cut Jews who all ended up getting wiped out when they didn’t listen to that guy. Right. It’s like they’re saying it. And the big thing that, that got [00:32:00] Trump. It’s, it’s been reported that in the negotiations to try to get them to give up their nukes. They mentioned in no uncertain terms that they already had the uranium for 11 nukes and could have them made in weeks.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: When Iran was questioned about this what Iran said is they said, well, we didn’t threaten them, but we did tell them how many nukes we could make was the uranium we have right now. You know, like, so Iran admitted that that’s the situation they were in.
Simone Collins: Well, even I’ve, I’ve heard progressive people covering this saying, basically Iran has always been very clear that they don’t have nukes.
They just want all the materials to be able to make them is optionality.
Speaker 12: We are two months away from enriching weapons grade uranium to be used for peaceful [00:33:00] purposes.
Simone Collins: And, and that was as if like a, because of course that’s super reasonable for someone who says, death to America and death to Israel. Yeah, like that. We should be okay with that.
Like,
Simone Collins: I just don’t understand, you know, like, like, oh, they’re never gonna bake the cake.
I mean, they just wanna have all the specialized ingredients to make the cake, and they can make it in like 30 minutes, but they’re not gonna bake it.
Malcolm Collins: I, no, I think a, a better analogy is you catch your wife with husband killing poison.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: And you’re like, why do you have husband killing poison? And she goes, I never meant to use the husband killing poison.
I just wanted it as like deterrents. You know, I
Simone Collins: just wanna have it because I hate you.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, later that day you hear her say her prayers at. Please God, kill my husband. Please kill my husband. I want to kill my husband.
[00:34:00]
Malcolm Collins: And then you ask her about that and you go, it’s just like my religion. It’s like a weird regional clerk of, you know, my way of doing things.
And then you believe that, and you’re not the mega cook just because you might accidentally help the Jews by you know, telling her, Hey you know, we need to do something about the husband killing poison lady. Right? But the reason why I’ve become, you know, as I said pro, is because Iran’s reaction to all of this has been to target their former allies, both economically.
And militarily. Right? Which is huge for us because it means that even if we stop bombing right now, right? And I ran Keith to straight of her moose clothes. Yes, we’ll deal with some economic hit, but the bigger economic hit is gonna be China. And then China’s gonna be begging us to start the campaign again so that they can get the straight up her moose open.
And they literally would be like, China would be like on its knees. [00:35:00] Hey, United States let, let’s do a, a joint operation or something. I’m, I’m sure we can make it work now. Europe would be lickety split with those boats down there. And I, I agree with what Trump has said in regards to this, that European leaders, and they did by the way was the first bombing of Iran, was the second said, yeah, go ahead.
Bomb Iran, like this isn’t all of our best interest. But then they refused to send us support and he is like, what’s the point of NATO if it doesn’t mean defense for the United States? Because apparently that’s what it means. When they, they could say, oh, well you guys started this war, whatever, whatever we are now in, in terms of getting the straight of free moves open, that that is about Europe and China.
Okay. Like defending their economic interests. If we just pulled out, the really interesting geopolitical thing that’s going to happen is. If, if Iran does not, if they’re like, we wanna continue to make this hurt from everyone, which they might given this mosaic leadership, they might have yes, we’ll [00:36:00] have a depression but the depression will be focused in Europe and Asia and those countries will be sort of in a position forced to get the United States back in on this and back working on this.
So if I was in trust position, I might even pull out just to force that position because that would be a very interesting geopolitical one. But even if we don’t have that, even if we do get this all over with in Iran, not only is one of our largest enemies geopolitically at all off the stage.
But the, the new Cold War in the Middle East between the UE and Saudi Arabia, which I’ll get to in a second is between two people who are fairly friendly with and are unlikely to, you know, go death to America over this. Although Saudi Arabia does fund a lot of terrorist related groups that do eventually target the United States.
Mm-hmm. So if we’re on one side of that one, we’re probably closer to the UAE side.
Simone Collins: I mean,
Malcolm Collins: imagine if next to Saudi Arabia. But the, the, the point [00:37:00] here, because Saudi Arabia would suck at defending themselves, they’ve shown themselves to be completely militarily incompetent. But that is a whole, and somebody actually did try to attack Saudi Arabia.
They would fall much quicker than Iran for it has to do with how the Royal Family projects power. I don’t
Simone Collins: Oh,
Malcolm Collins: that’s, that’s another video that I don’t need to go into. Okay. But right now we’re friendly with Saudi Arabia and, and Saudi Arabia. One of the reasons they keep friendly tides with us is because they are aware of that.
Mm-hmm. Although, you know, keep in mind, nine 11 was fundamentally Saudi Arabia’s fault. At the end of the day. That was from the groups that they fund in the same way that I ran friends groups that want to attack the United States. But if Trump doesn’t do the pullout thing, how else can he realistically end this?
He needs some leverage other than I will stop bombing. The leverage that everyone’s thinking about right now is Car Island.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s what I figured, which is why I assumed that by this point we would’ve had troops basically [00:38:00] holding it, American troops holding it hostage, essentially.
Functionally.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So Car Island is a three by four aisle Mile Island. Mm-hmm.
That makes up approximately 90% of the country’s oil exports. This is because it has deep water shipping lanes next to it and nowhere else in, in that region of Iran has that. And so Iran doesn’t really have any other way to get out oil from its country.
If we destroyed Kag Island which I do not think we should do. Any government that came into power after this was in Iran would be just in poverty for decades. Especially given Iran’s already critical condition in regards to water and infrastructure. It would slit the throat of Iran and lead to a massive refugee crisis in Europe which would be bad.
Now I will note it wouldn’t be as bad as some other refugee crises. [00:39:00] Oh God, how do I say this?
So a lot of the,
Simone Collins: listen, no, I’ll put it this way. I’ll put it this way. And, and I think anyone who’s watching this is well aware of the fact that Iranians are awesome. If you know Iranians in America, if you’re an American, yep. You probably like them. I think what really changed people’s views on Iranians was, oh God, that chef
Speaker 3: , we hung out with a, a bunch of young people who collect, uh. Uh, basically an informal car club of collectors of, of American muscle cars. It feels very much like Southern California or Barcelona and Tehran at times. And a very hopeful place filled with yearning where people every day, particularly women, I think, are in very small ways testing the limits of what is permissible.
Um, trying to define in fits and starts. Who they want to be as a country. What is appropriate? What is okay today that may not be [00:40:00] okay tomorrow? How? Uh, it’s a very interesting thing to see. Did you feel resentment toward using zero American? Zero? Yeah. Zero.
Simone Collins: Who died, who’s, who was really curmudgeonly did an episode in Iran and they were just basically like Americans, like backyard, barbecue, cool based Americans and
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
Simone Collins: Iranians. What changed? Pers changed everyone’s view on Iranians. They were like, oh my God, these are based amazing people.
And. Honestly, like you should be so lucky to have them.
Malcolm Collins: No. So the point, the point is, is Iranians are, are, are Persians. They’re not Arabs. Okay. Most of the problematic Islamic populations and immigration waves that Europe has had to deal with
Simone Collins: mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Are Arabs and Arabic culture, which is very different from Persians and Persian culture.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And traditionally speaking Iranian migrants especially within the United States, I don’t know if it’s been as much in Europe, have been a very positive [00:41:00] immigrant population. Yeah. I, I don’t wanna say like. Model immigrant because they, they definitely have some, you know, aesthetic deficiencies.
As
Simone Collins: for your opinion
Malcolm Collins: as South Park would, would point out
Speaker 15: Boldly stood out in front of their bar to stop the Persians from entering.
Speaker 16: We are coming in redecorating the hell you’re, you can take your blue carpet and go Kurt Rock and shove up your holes. Alright, come on, let stop of us.
Simone Collins: Anthony Bourdain, oh God, that’s where we
Malcolm Collins: have the, the song that Trump is secretly Iranian. Because he’s got the aesthetics of a, of an Iranian No, it’s,
Simone Collins: it’s, it’s, it’s a look that some people, like it was Anthony Bourdain that really turned a lot of people onto Iranians,
Malcolm Collins: Saudi.
But no, no, Trump really is like, if you have had Iranian friends or you know, Trump is Persian. Just
Simone Collins: it’s fines,
Malcolm Collins: it’s fine.
Simone Collins: Perian,
Malcolm Collins: Trump. Comes off culturally, way more Persian than he does waspy.
Simone Collins: [00:42:00] The first Persian president.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. And we have our song, the First Persian president because I mean, even the way he does decoration, where like I, if you go to a waspy person’s house, like one of the signs that you always see, it’s like the random picture.
It’s of houses and boats and boats, horses, boat. And he’s got no pictures of No, actually, like, look at Trump’s stuff. It’s, it’s geometric pet. It’s like no horses, no boats, no houses, no every,
Simone Collins: and I feel like there’s, there’s almost like little like, a children’s book game. Like spot the new gold item in the Oval Office.
Every time there’s a new press conference there, can you spot the difference? Where’s the new gold item?
Malcolm Collins: I like gold,
Speaker 9: I love gold. The look of it, the taste of it,
Malcolm Collins: but Yeah. But the, the point being is you shouldn’t expect the same problems from an Iranian refugee crisis that you have with other Islamic refugee crises. It’s not that there wouldn’t be any issues but there wouldn’t be [00:43:00] as bad as say like a, a Pakistani refugee crisis or something like that.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So, it’s a side note over there. So. A lot of people have said so, so if you, if you did that, that’s, that’s what would be the result of that. Okay. And if you cut off their access to the north whatever gas pipeline you’d have, again, a refugee crisis, which, you know, we want to prevent.
And we also want whatever comes next to be able to economically get itself off the ground. You know, our goal is to defang them. It is not to economically cripple them forever and ever and ever. Now, Trump has said that he may bomb car island again just for funsies. Literally he said, just for fun. I may bomb it again.
I cannot believe we have a president who said that in a press conference.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Sort of trying to show that it’s open as a, as a potentiality, but what everyone’s thinking now is boots on the ground doesn’t make sense. If we controlled Cog Island, what the president would likely do is just be like, no, we’ll let you to continue to use it [00:44:00] under US military occupation.
Exactly as you always have. You just need to plain nice, right? You just need to keep the straight open. You need to do everything like that. We won’t even charge a tariff, but we’ll just set up a, a permanent military base here. That would give us a lot of negotiating power, assuming Iran is still actually governed by a single central authority.
Simone Collins: Hmm, however, but you believe that that is just not the case anymore.
Malcolm Collins: I believe that’s not the case anymore. And if Iran is not governed by a central authority anymore, they don’t particularly care that you’ve done this. They might even shoot their own infrastructure without care because all they care about is gaining control of what’s left.
And that’s where I come down to. So is it the right call to attempt to, and what I would do with Kag Island is I would not say boots on the ground in Kag Island. I’d say make Kag Island a permanent US military base or nothing. Like that is I [00:45:00] think the option for Kag Island. If you are going to bother to attempt to take this, that 90% of Iranian oil goes through it, make it a permanent US military base in the region.
And if you start to signal that, the important thing about signaling that in the same way that Iran keeps signaling that we want reparations which just sounds laughable, right? Is you need something to walk back from. Right? So you can say, okay, Iran, you win. We won’t make it a permanent base, right?
Like, we’ll do a five year lease or something like that. Right. You know? But that would give us something to then say, okay, Iran, you can have car Island back in exchange for good behavior here, here and here. Right. And, and I’ll note here, the thing that I, I, I keep noting was the, the other players in the random w flailing of Iran is going into this war.
What I would’ve thought geopolitically speaking is the [00:46:00] best case scenario realistic scenario is we defang Iran, we destroy you know, their leadership structure, their military, et cetera.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And, and that’s the best we can hope for. I did not also expect that we would have the potentiality of geopolitically isolating Iran from their closest allies.
But somehow that also was in the cards. I, I would not have expected we would’ve come out of this on better terms with Qatar and I ran on worse terms with Qatar, for example.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That is wild.
Malcolm Collins: I wouldn’t have thought that they would target Chinese shipping. Right. Like, I, I, all of this stuff has really surprised me.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So, let’s now talk about the new Civil War that’s opening up.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Okay.
Simone Collins: Or just warlord power grab is, is it that they’re trying to show off their resources and also trying to demonstrate their international geopolitical prowess [00:47:00] by essentially holding other countries hostage like own citizens and assets hostage.
So like, let’s say I’m. Bob, the Iranian warlord or faction leader, and I have access to these warheads and so I’m going to hit this building in Dubai to show both the other factions in Iran and also Dubai, that I am a person to be reckoned with. And when I call you, you pick up the phone and that I’m the guy with the most ability.
Is that what’s happening or what?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is, this is actually a really useful psychology to sort of dig into to understand what’s happening.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. I am X guy at was control of X munition platform, right?
Simone Collins: Sure. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And I have a few choices with where I send those missiles, okay?
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Choice number one, I send them at Israel, the goy beam hits him.
And nothing happens.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s just more wasted [00:48:00] money. We all know that doesn’t work. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Two, I try to hit a US base maybe, but probably nothing’s gonna happen. Right.
Simone Collins: It’s not gonna work. Yeah. Three, they’ll retaliate 10 times over then, then I’m the next target.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Three. I shoot into a civilian district in Dubai.
Mm-hmm. Or in Qatari, very expensive gas field or something like that. Right. And I actually get that hit because I’m likely to get that hit. They don’t have the defenses these other places have.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And they also maybe don’t have the intel to even know who I am or where I am, whereas Israel, like Mossad knows the CIA knows,
Malcolm Collins: so I get that hit.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: Now there’s news in Iran about this thing that just happened. Some people might think. That’s geopolitically bad for us, but it, it is making news. And the reality is, is that most people who are in [00:49:00] the IRGC and who are hard liners are going to think that anything that is happening at all on the war front is definitionally good.
Because to say, oh, well yes, we did get that attack through, but it was a bad idea. That doesn’t make you look cool to the other foaming at the mouse hardliners. Right? So then it’s your next board meeting or whatever three people are there. One goes, I hit a Qatari gas field. You know, another says I hit A-A-A-U-A-E because other people are doing this now, making it okay for you civilian district.
And the third guy’s just like, well, I tried to launch some in Israel. Who do you think has, has the power in that meeting? It’s, it’s not the, I tried to hit Israel like a good boy one, okay? Mm-hmm. It’s the ones who made something that hit the news actually happen. And I think that that’s the psychology that’s driving this behavior.
Of [00:50:00] course, there is an alternate here, which I wouldn’t put it above them. Now, if you remember, in our last Iranian video, we mentioned that Iran put together a task force to hunt down Mossad agents in the Iranian government, which they then had to shut down. When it turned out it had 20. Mossad agents inside of it, one of them with leading it.
Mm-hmm. Iran’s government is riddled with Mossad. What we may have right now is a Mossad on Mossad War.
Simone Collins: Oh my
Malcolm Collins: God. It could be that a lot of these decentralized power structures, basically Mossad kills people all the way down until they’re at a Mossad agent, and then that agent says, yeah, let’s shoot our oldest and closest ally in the region.
And then he does, and then the president’s like, what, what, what’s going on here? And then all the other still alive top agents with access to missiles in Iran are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great thing. In fact, I’m gonna do that next. Because [00:51:00] they’re all also masad agents. Doing whatever would be the literal, stupidest thing Iran could do at the moment is
Simone Collins: mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Wild
Simone Collins: if true
Malcolm Collins: pager thing.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: See our episode on that?
Simone Collins: Yeah. We can’t put it past him at this point. Any wild plot like that could very well be the case. I mean, they played the long game.
Malcolm Collins: Now this is clearly, the war extending is more in Israel’s benefit than America’s benefit, but as I’ve pointed out, geopolitically and economically it’s long term in America’s interest.
Simone Collins: Sure.
Malcolm Collins: But let’s get to this, the, so Cold War mm-hmm. Between Saudi Arabia and the Uua U. Saudi Arabia wants strong, centralized Arab states under legitimate governments, so their focus is border security, oil market control and vision 2030 leadership and containing Iran through traditional alliances.
The UAE prefers a quote unquote maritime empire model transactional deals, [00:52:00] port control and backing strongman proxies and separative who give Abu Dhabi leverage more comfortable with fragmentation if it secures. Trade routes, counters, Islamists, so. It’s really sort of a Athens versus Sparta fight interestingly, right?
Like Sparta may seem like more of the roost, less strongman, but they deal better with legitimate states. Mm-hmm. Whereas Athens was notorious for just like, I don’t care if I destabilize your region, if I can get shipping, whatever. Right. Like, if I can get my slaves coming through, whatever. Right. But it felt more like a democracy when you’re in Athens, right?
Like the maritime empire model.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Where you see this is in Yemen, which is the hottest flashpoint right now. The Saudi back faction, the internationally recognized Presidential Leadership Council, PLC led by Rashad Alini plus Allied Tribes and some Islam party Muslim Brotherhood linked elements.
Mm-hmm. Goal keep [00:53:00] Yemen United to protect Saudi southern border. UAE backed faction is the Southern Trans Transitional Counsel. The STC which has a goal of independence or heavy autonomy for the south, plus control of Aiden McCullough, port, Scot Island, and Bab Almond straight shipping routes. So basically the UAE is willing to blow up Yemen if it can gain control of shipping route.
Saudi Arabia wants to keep a legitimate state in power there. And these two forces have been actively fighting. And then you have the Sudan, the Saudi backs the SA Fs, the central government of Katan and the UAE backs the RSF parallel militaries that control much of the gold trade and Red Sea roots in the region.
Both have been pouring in money and weapons. Then you have the Horn of Africa and Red Sea ports. On the UAE side, you have heavy investment in the breakaway Somali land which Israel [00:54:00] just recognized by the way. And the B port base and the influence of deje, orca and Scotia strategy, a string of naval and logistics outputs.
They’re basically trying to control independent, wealthy cities and terrorist factions or, or breakaway groups instead of the, the central thing. While while Somalia is backed by Saudi Arabia mm-hmm. There’s a number of other theaters. We might do a whole other episode on this. That would be interesting.
The interesting thing about this is the UAE faction is generally also supported by Israel which puts Israel on the UAE side of this split.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Which is odd because from what I’ve been seeing, Saudi Arabia has really wanted to get close to Israel up until the Gaza war. They seem to really, really want, and this might have been what triggered the, the war recognition talks with Israel.
And if you’re like, oh, oh
Simone Collins: yeah. I remember way, way, way, way back when October 7th first happened. You were [00:55:00] explaining that to me. You’re like, you know, they were just getting so good at this point. There would be an incentive to try to undermine that relationship because Iran felt threatened by that strengthening relationship, which made their strategic position.
Malcolm Collins: With some of my Israeli friends mm-hmm. And they just don’t believe this. They’re like, that’s not true. Like the Saudi Arabia is hostile to us, like the Prince is hostile to us. You know, look at these geopolitics here, here and here. And I, and I, my core argument against that is Neo you’re familiar with the Neo project, right?
That Saudi
Simone Collins: Arabia
Malcolm Collins: was planning?
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, but that’s botched, right? It’s not gonna happen.
Malcolm Collins: It was eventually canceled and it might show a shifting in Saudi Arabia’s priorities. But do you remember where Naomi, Naomi is on a map?
Simone Collins: No.
Malcolm Collins: Giant.
Simone Collins: A line in the desert? I mean like the sand a sandbox or basically it ended on the coast, right?
Didn’t it?
Malcolm Collins: Basically as close to [00:56:00] Israel as you could get.
Simone Collins: Oh, really?
Malcolm Collins: That, that is what it was. It was right in a area. So you could take a quick ferry from Israel to Naomi.
Simone Collins: Oh. It’s like one end of it.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, because
Simone Collins: it was like a, like a long train track that just ended at Israel.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Not near any other important city in Saudi Arabia.
Not near important oil fields.
Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. Right. So it was, yeah, because I just remember it being an isolated line in the sand. That’s like how I visualized it. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: It
Simone Collins: not, it was an isolated line of the sand that was basically, it was like a line emanating from Israel going into the middle of the sand.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s, it’s very, very clear that this was meant to have a fairy connection to Israel and be like little Israel in Saudi Arabia,
Simone Collins: or maybe it was gonna be the, the Dubai of Israel. Like, you go there for weird vacations and stuff.
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, no, that, that’s, that’s clearly what the idea was, is to facilitate.
You don’t invest the future, which is what they were doing with this investment [00:57:00] project
Simone Collins: Without Israel,
Malcolm Collins: a country in a project like this, if you think you’re going to be at war or in an active conflict with Israel, you don’t build
Simone Collins: Oh, and then that falling, I can’t remember when sort of that was abandoned as a plan, but that being abandoned as a plan.
After October 7th,
Malcolm Collins: after the war, war with the UAE began to heat up.
Simone Collins: You mean after the Israel Palestine conflict heated up.
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, no, it’s more the ua. Saudi Arabia doesn’t care about Gaza. Like that’s all just posturing on their part. Which they have to do because the royal family has to look good to the wahabiists.
That’s a whole other thing. That basically they only control power because they made this deal with the Wahabiists. That’s like our family, which really got power pretty illegitimately through. A power grab is able to hold that power and will be legitimated so long as we legitimate the Wahabiists.
And it’s the wahabiists that want this. So that’s, that’s what’s going on there. Okay. On our weekend episode, we also discussed, which I think is pretty [00:58:00] cool, the strategy the United States has been using in the region. So I’ll just quickly go over that
yeah. B 52. Okay. So what we have been doing is using bombers that are literally half a century old, 50 years old or older. These were made in the 1950s and they stopped making ‘em, I think like 1965 to take really old munitions.
Remember I talked about using older munitions, like wanting to clear out our munitions. This is when everyone’s like, oh, you’re wasting munitions on this. These are not planes that we ever would’ve been able to use in, we’re
Simone Collins: reaching into deep into the reaches of our pantry and using dusty expired canned goods.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. So what we did is we were flying in, it looks like. Unarmed drones slowly through like corridors to try to establish that they were now safe corridors over and over and over again. And this is how we lost seven of those. And once we had established a corridor was safe, we then whizzed [00:59:00] backing forth these things.
Got these, what can only be thought of like dump trucks at the sky or like giant delivery trucks. Mm-hmm. Not even like really military planes anymore to just dump ungodly amounts of bombs in these completely unprotected corridors. And this is just wild to me that it’s also wild to me that we’re still hearing about that school that was bombed because that kind of implies that there haven’t been any other major tragedy since then, which is a pretty good record for a war of this nature.
So that’s the other positive news we’ve had since then. But yeah, I mean these, these giant old planes dumping out basically expired payloads to cut down on our storage costs. That’s, that’s where we are right now in this war. And, and keep in mind, these planes are very inexpensive to fly when contrasted with other military aircraft.
Mm-hmm. Which is another reason we’re doing them for these long runs. So to, to close things out there is [01:00:00] a, a possibility things could go wrong if the administration miscalculates and maybe sees the government in Iran is being less fractured than it really is. However I’m not totally against boots on the ground either.
I if it meant just car Ireland and if we were using it as the negotiating trip to get other things that we wanted like
Simone Collins: not necessarily a military base, but if we just kind of took it and for lack of a. More euphemistic term held at hostage and basically we’re like, we’ll control this. As your custodian.
Yeah. Well become its custodian. And
Malcolm Collins: well, we do have,
Simone Collins: Sort of, you know, cost of Britney Spears trusted that
Malcolm Collins: the island and all of its infrastructure was built up by American and European companies. It was stolen by the current government of Iran when they socialized the oil.
Simone Collins: Oh, so this was after the tank war between Iraq and I Iran?
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, they in like eighties. No, no, no, no, no, no. I’m talking about
Simone Collins: because Park Island, it, it’s, it’s oil infrastructure, if I recall correctly, was, was [01:01:00] destroyed in the Iraq Iran war.
Malcolm Collins: It was, it was heavily damaged, but the original infrastructure from before that was built like
Simone Collins: companies. Oh. Oh, okay.
Malcolm Collins: So, you know, you could just say you stole all this from us to begin with.
Simone Collins: We’d be taking it back.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Interesting.
Anyway love you to death, Simone. Love you
too.
Malcolm Collins: Fantastic developments, although, you know, obviously we mourn for service members who have died in the conflict so far for real. Which have mercifully been very, very small. Anyone
Simone Collins: who gets hurt, I
Malcolm Collins: unbelievably small the casualty rates that we’re, we’ve been looking at
Simone Collins: I do like
Malcolm Collins: those.
And we can only pray that it continues.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I, I do feel very glad to at least live in an age where our conflicts aren’t, let’s go send guys to shoot each other in a field. It’s nice that at least they’re more like I’d, that we’re not trying to strategically disarm
Malcolm Collins: anymore. Let’s try to build a democracy in [01:02:00] Iran.
Simone Collins: Yeah, you did an interesting episode on that a while back about. How some cultures just don’t take well to certain forms of governance. And that for, for you to just be like, everyone needs democracy or everyone needs monarchy. Like it’s not appropriate. Yeah, you just, you, you gotta, you gotta allow people to do what works best for them from a governing standpoint.
Keep in, keeping in mind their cultural mixture, their religious mixture, their genetics, the region. Everything there, resources, it all matters. Yeah. And democracy is not right everywhere. So Yeah. I agree with you. I’m glad we’re not nation-building anymore.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, that I saying democracy doesn’t generally work for Arabs.
But for Persians it might.
Simone Collins: I was trying to be a little more diplomatic than that, but,
Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, the statistics are clear. Like, if you’re looking at Protestant countries for example, there have been only a few instances in all history where they were not a form of democracy. Whereas, and, and [01:03:00] today almost all our democracies where if you look at a Arab countries, none has stayed.
I think there’s been only one instance of one staying a democracy for over 10 years. Mm-hmm. Or I think it was 20, no, it might be over 25 years. Only an instance of one for over 25 years. And that’s just astonishing given the number of Arab majority countries There are.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Like clearly something culturally is going on there.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So why force something when it’s not gonna work? Clearly.
Malcolm Collins: Yep. Anyway, love you to Dec.
Simone Collins: Love you too. Gorgeous. Which one next?
I.
Simone Collins: . Oh, the kids are so excited to get chickens and fortunately they, they’ve all decided that they want the three different types that we want.
So each person has requested our favorite types, like wants Starlight Green, Eggers, ‘cause they’re orange. And orange is his favorite color. And Torsten wants the blue Eggers because blue is my favorite color and Titan wants the black ones [01:04:00] because it’s cool.
Malcolm Collins: So you just want more of the same, I thought you didn’t like the black ones as much.
Simone Collins: They’re so friendly though, and they have those beautiful iridescent black feathers. And that was like, that was the kind, they’re also the smartest. That’s the kind that has gotten out twice, escaped twice. So today it was Trotsky and they’re so easy to get back in. Like the, the blue Eggers are not very nice or friendly.
Malcolm Collins: Is this all the blue Eggers or just the, the ones from the, the older ones.
Simone Collins: Oh, the ones that we, that like grew up in a factory farm ish environment. Not even that though. Like it was just a nice Pennsylvania farm, but still like mass produced. Yeah. They, they all aren’t that friendly. They’re more skittish.
Whereas the midnight morons are the most friendly. The, the Starlight Green Eggers are also pretty skittish. They don’t like being picked up and petted as much, but it’s the most difficult to go after the. ERs
Speaker 7: [01:05:00] He strides through hallways decked in gold, so bright. Like a sultan’s palace glowing day and night. Marble pillars glimmer, echoing his name. A Persian king or president, one and the same. Shimmering drapes, flush rugs under each foot. A A fortress of bling that no one can refute. Gold leaf on the ceiling, mirrors everywhere.
He’s bold, he’s brash, who else would even dare? Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare? Where are random cottages in frames, why aren’t they there? And where are the model ships, decked out in their coats? Where We’re asking our first Persian friends, show us those [01:06:00] votes.
He bedazzles ballrooms, each corner ornate. Like something out of ancient lore, or so we state. Halls paved in splendor, shining under the light. Surprise, surprise, he’s got It’s quite a sight.
He claims he’s classy with flair unmatched. A thousand chandeliers perfectly dispatched. Grand Tourette’s, big fountains, exotic mystique. All hail our Persian prez. So lavish, unique. Where are the paintings of boats? Of horses so rare? Random cottages in frames, why aren’t they there? And where are the model ships?
Decked out in their coats? We’re asking our [01:07:00] first Persian friends. Show us! Those boats,
every corner gilded, every surface gleams like shy era fantasies, fresh out of dreams. Marble upon marble, a treasure trove of hue. Yes, it’s gaudy, but hey, it’s trumped through and through. Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare, random cottages in frames, why And where the model ships decked out in their coats Our gilded Persian president,
please bring on those boats

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1 hr 8 min
March 20 Rope! The Latest Teen Girl Fad
The podcast episode from Based Camp with Malcolm and Simone Collins dives into alarming CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data on youth mental health and suicide ideation (euphemistically called “youth in Asia,” “joining the euthanasia,” or “speed running life” to skirt filters). They discuss 2023 statistics showing persistently high rates of persistent sadness/hopelessness (especially among girls at ~53%), serious consideration of suicide (~27% for girls, ~14% for boys overall), planning, and attempts—rates that barely declined post-COVID lockdowns and remain shockingly elevated.
The hosts argue modern school culture, urban monoculture, social contagion, affluence/leisure, and lack of hardship (e.g., small families vs. large ones creating built-in resilience) contribute to this crisis. They critique mainstream parenting/schooling as dangerously “normal” and advocate for pronatalist, counter-cultural family strategies—like large families for forced hardship, framing your family as discriminated against by dominant culture, or custom holidays to instill gratitude and purpose.
They touch on related topics: higher rates in affluent/elite environments, comparisons to communities like trans or furries, gender differences (girls more ideation/plans, boys more completion when attempting), dystopian cravings in female psychology, nihilism’s social appeal, and the need for meaning beyond pleasure/validation.
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about. The
Simone Collins: in Asia
Malcolm Collins: youth joining the youth in Asia. And we have to find creative ways to say this stuff so that we don’t get in too much trouble here
Speaker 15: You need to take a cold, hard look at your stance on youth in Asia.
Speaker 17: Oh, I don’t care about them. They’re conformists and they’re communists.
Who? The youth in Asia.
Simone Collins: to people who opt into the afterlife early.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Speed running life.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: The speed running generation. So we had done an episode previously on CDC statistics that were so shocking that they showed that the. 24%. So about one in four young women created a plan to join the euthanasia, not over the course of their childhood, but in any given 12 month period.
Simone Collins: It’s insane. That’s [00:01:00] insane.
Malcolm Collins: Insane. And this is CD, C, right? Like they have a reason to underplay this, right? So, I did that episode, and when we did that episode, the data that we had access to, that the public had access to was from 2021. And everyone was like, well, that was during the COVID Lockdowns.
Mm-hmm. And being during the COV lockdowns, I can understand why you might have higher rates. Right. So. Let’s go at the later numbers that have been released since then, and the latest we have is 2023 data. What is the rate for girls now doing that?
Simone Collins: Hmm,
Malcolm Collins: 21%, only a 3% decline. And still well over one in five young girls.
Makes a plan to join the euthanasia every 12 months period, not over the course of her childhood in any given 12 months period.
Simone Collins: That actually [00:02:00] surprises me. I would’ve honestly expected that it would be higher because I remember looking at some statistics around the pandemic that showed that people’s rates of severe.
Ideation of, of bad types increased right before school started, or like as school started and actually went down over the summer and during breaks, they were like just less stressed and they were not in the school system is a torture chamber for children. I do not. Yeah. So I’m actually surprised that now that people are now forcibly back in school at higher rates, that they’re actually doing a little better mentally.
That, that’s interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: But I, I think there’s also the effect of contagion when it comes to, you know, harmful social behaviors that include various forms of hurting yourself. Not just the ultimate form, but I. I, I think that that might have been a thing during the pandemic, just ‘cause a lot of people were talking about it, that maybe that was what pushed it over the edge and made it higher than normal because a lot of people were just being overtly dramatic online ‘cause they had [00:03:00] nothing else to do.
And now people are a little bit more busy doing other things like actually going to school.
Malcolm Collins: Well, we can talk about it. We can look at the differential rates.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: We which we will explore, we’ll see where there have been actual drops in the data. Mm-hmm. And I wanna talk about all this in the context of like, do you understand, you know, we have a you know, people filming about us and reporting crews here all the time.
They’re like, why are you guys so weird? Like, why do you do this in a weird way? Why don’t you punish your kids the way everyone else is punishing their kids? Why don’t you just send your kids to school like everyone else is sending their kids to school? Mm-hmm. Why do you do X and Y and Z that are also weird and different?
And it’s like if you knew that there was a. Cultural group.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And there was a or, or a type of school system right, like around you and everyone was like, well, did you know that one in five more than one in five [00:04:00] girls in that school system is making a plan to join the youth in Asia?
Simone Collins: Or if they thought it was like a.
An online social network or a social club. You know, if someone was like, oh, well, you know, one in five girls who joins the Girl Scouts wants to do this, people would be like, oh my gosh, it’s a Satanic cult. You know?
Malcolm Collins: I think that they’d say, I’m definitely, like above all else, my child is not going into the Girl Scouts.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or if it were like a, a, a school district, right. They’d be like, oh, I’m moving out of there. Like, whatever it takes to save my girl. You know, th this is, this is huge
Malcolm Collins: above
Simone Collins: all. And then people are, they don’t bat an eye
Malcolm Collins: above all else. If there is a, there is a school around us that when kids go to it, one in five girls wants to end it on any given year.
Right. That school is every school.
Simone Collins: That
Malcolm Collins: is the culture that we are in right now.
Simone Collins: That school is called school.
Malcolm Collins: Cool. And I would point out that these rates are. Higher CR episode on this. ‘cause people can [00:05:00] be like, well, you know, this is for poor people or whatever. And it’s like, no, no, actually use in Asia ideation among young girls is higher for young girls who grew up in higher income suburb mm-hmm.
Environments than those who grow up in, urban environments. And,
Simone Collins: and this isn’t just again about literally trying to enter the afterlife early. This is also you see rates of spoons, which are people who often believe they have very serious medical conditions that they don’t actually have, but that ultimately lead them to have very real, symptoms that are torturous and awful. Those are, that is very much a, a, a new form of affluent. You don’t really see it happening with impoverished young girls that are resource strapped and watching their younger siblings and just trying to get by. You see it in middle class or upper middle class bougie girls who have too much time on their hands.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I, I’d go further you know, as somebody who grew up adjacent to like the you know, sort of elite boarding school scene and everything like that.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Oh, those were [00:06:00] the girls who, you know, did stuff. And,
Malcolm Collins: and unlive. I, I’d, I bet if you could get the real statistics from a school like Andover or something like that.
Oh gosh, gosh. They’d probably be like twice the rate of your, your local public school. Awesome. And it, it, it’s just the culture in these places. Anybody who goes or was in those networks knew you, always heard about people unliving themselves. So sad in these sort of wider elite culture networks.
And so when a lot of parents, they think, oh, I’m not, I’m, I’m doing the, the premium version, therefore my kid is safe. And I’m like, you must have not been at the previous premium version when you were a kid. Yeah. That’s, that’s where all the cocaine is. Right? You know,
Simone Collins: for real though.
Malcolm Collins: No, I think it, I think it’s really dangerous.
I think it’s really dangerous. And if one of our kids wants to, you know, try to get a scholarship to go to one of those, I’ll be like, you, you, you can try. But,
Simone Collins: well, even, even on a more micro level. So, in, in, in the little, the island city where I grew up in the Bay Area called Alameda, there were two high schools.
There was Sen l High School where I went and there was Alameda [00:07:00] High School where the rich kids went, like they were sort of the richer side of the island and then the not as rich side of the island and. The, the, the joke was that our students sold the drugs to the Alameda High School students, like we were the drug dealers.
They bought the drugs and. The, the, like general sentiment was like they had the, the mental health problems. We also got their old textbooks. This is how poor we were as the high school. We would see like the Alameda High school stamps on the books and they’d be from like 1983 in like, you know, 2005.
It was bad Malcolm, but like we really didn’t have that many serious issues of mental health going around our high school. We didn’t have stories of like, people going through this or that, or, you know, really crashing out. Whereas that happened a lot. At the other high school, which I think is really interesting, you know, so it’s not, you’re not even safe if you are.
Oh, just, I’ll just keep my kid in public school then. No. There are also just school districts in general schools within the same school district that,
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
Simone Collins: [00:08:00] Could be seeing this problem.
Malcolm Collins: But what I wanna point that out is I get really worried when parents come to me and they’re like, I found an out, I found a, a secret way that I don’t need to worry about this.
Simone Collins: I send my child to a good classical Christian school and therefore everything’s going to be okay.
Malcolm Collins: Be okay. And I would bet. If you did an analysis on good classical Christian schools and the rates of these things, they’re gonna be lower, but maybe like 3% lower, not, that’s still at horrifying levels.
Mm-hmm. And it’s because they fundamentally buy in to the wider cultural framework, which is a leading to all of this. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this is a problem you could be like, well they’re, they’re classical Christian. Its like the teachers there still all went to teacher education. Yeah. That’s like four years of brainwashing.
Right? They’re, and, and there’s been some great whistleblowers on this of like, what it’s like training to be a teacher today. And they’re like, [00:09:00] they’re like two out of eight classes have something to do with other than like one propaganda. And, and this is coming from the wokeness. Remember I said, oh, would you let, before we get into the sets here, your kid join a group that you knew how to, you know, one in five chance of, of making a plan to join the euthanasia.
Mm-hmm. Right? And then you look at like, the most urban monoculture groups, like the trans community and stuff like that. Yeah. And it’s like, for them it’s like 50%, 45%, right? Like, oh. A coin flips chance, you know, if, if that’s the case, of course, I don’t want my kid joining those communities. Right. Yeah.
Seriously,
Simone Collins: guys,
Malcolm Collins: to stay away from these communities you know, another community that has really high rates,
Simone Collins: no
Malcolm Collins: furries they’re at around, I think 35 to 40%
Simone Collins: freeze. Isn’t that worse than the trans community?
Malcolm Collins: No. That’s, that’s a little bit less than the trans community’s that.
Simone Collins: That’s surprising. I mean, I thought that they were like kind of known for being based in.[00:10:00]
Malcolm Collins: I think, well folks, communities represent something that is fundamentally unified, which is disliking who you are enough to want to create a separate persona that you can interact with
Simone Collins: the world through Oh to Yeah. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a dissociative coping attempt that. May not be as successful as one would hope,
Malcolm Collins: right?
Yeah. So like,
Simone Collins: like, so maybe the furries who have good furry local friend groups or online friend groups that they’re like great and supportive, like they’re fine. But then the furries who haven’t really been able to tap into that are the ones who end up.
Malcolm Collins: No, I think it’s okay. Why could I never be a furry?
Right. I couldn’t be a furry easily not because I don’t think that some anthro is hot. Mm-hmm. I can’t be a furry easily because I never wanna cover up my identity. I’m too proud of who I am. Oh. And I think that this is important, you know, if you tell a young kid, if you find any anthro character you’ve [00:11:00] ever seen attractive that you are now a deviant furry, and you might as well just join that community you know, you’re putting your kids at significant risk.
Because the reality is, is even if you. A parent may have never seen anthrop that you found hot or just don’t find it hot at all. The reality is, is that statistically a huge chunk of the population you know, like when like Luna Tunes whatever comes out and, and they made low Luna
Simone Collins: Tunes.
Malcolm Collins: No. Remember they’ve made Lola Bunny less sexy? No.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Lola Bunny was the that’s realization moment for so many people.
Malcolm Collins: Mainstream right wing, like Christian influencers were like, how dare you make Lola Bunny less sexy? Now you wanna tell me everyone
Simone Collins: loves Lola Bunny. Yeah. Come on. Don’t come for her.
Malcolm Collins: Well, the point I’m making here is you wanna tell me that. Everybody who can recognize that Lola Bunny is sexy and would be concerned about her [00:12:00] being less sexy. They’re all furries. And so now your mainstream, you know, right wing influencers who all freaked out when that happened. That’s why it’s important to differentiate between random arousal pathways.
Mm-hmm. And you know, going into, you know, actually
Simone Collins: acting on it and like identifying with it in a way that that’s, that’s very interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, and it’s, it’s, it’s important because it parents like, I’m gonna, you know, keep my kids out of the furry communities. I only show them Disney movies from the 1980s.
And I’m like, you mean like Robinhood? Mm-hmm. I wanna tell you how
Simone Collins: no one safe. Yeah.
Speaker: I owe my life to you, my darling. I couldn’t have lived without you, Robin.
Simone Collins: So, so true. A lot of those
Malcolm Collins: furries found out about this.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Made.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And go back a little, a little earlier to the 1950s like we talked about in our podcast and you know, maybe they had fewer anthro characters, but they were just, you know, doing things just in person with the donkeys.
IRL, you know?
Malcolm Collins: No. [00:13:00] What’s funny was made, Marianne is, oh, actually
Simone Collins: pronunciation
Malcolm Collins: conservative, like trad sexual, like a, a role within, in that original one. Like in, in all other
Simone Collins: respect. Yeah. I mean, she was wearing her s swaddling hijab for most of that, wasn’t she?
Malcolm Collins: Her, what is that?
Simone Collins: The she was wearing a veil.
I’m, I’m just referring, I think Trump talked about Iman Omar wearing a swaddling hit on. I just think it’s a really funny, the derogatory way to jobs. Anyway,
Malcolm Collins: anyway, anyway, to get started here.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So, persistent feelings of sadness are hopelessness, okay? Mm-hmm. If we’re looking at all students, this went from 42% to 40%, barely a drop for female, 57% to 53%.
For male, 28% to 28%. So no change in males. Let’s see if this pattern persists.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Now for females here, right? I, I actually wanna focus on this. This means that. [00:14:00] Well over half of girls in school have persistent feelings of lessness or hopelessness. Okay? This is not normal.
Simone Collins: No, Malcolm. Clearly you’ve never been a teenage girl.
Shining in the comments, girl, you know, we all just wanna die. I, it’s true. Do
Malcolm Collins: you have that these days? Do you have a per, I mean, in our marriage, persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness?
Simone Collins: No. No, no. Not since having kids. No, no, that puberty’s rough Malcolm. We just don’t understand, like it’s, it’s really rough.
It’s not. It’s not great. And there I always approached all my challenges and puberty was like optimism. I was like, well, yeah, yeah, maybe that’s ‘cause you were being like macro dosed with testosterone and I was being macro dosed with, with estrogen before I figured out the solution, which was just to starve myself so much that my body stopped producing hormones permanently.
And I fixed it. I fixed it. Malcolm, I may not be able to have [00:15:00] kids natural anymore, but I have the hormonal profile of a prepubescent male, so everything’s okay.
Maybe that’s only you got
Malcolm Collins: your psychological condition for a female, which is called sanity.
Simone Collins: Well, I mean that’s, I feel like it’s, it’s one of the best.
How do I, what, how do I not use this word? The thing where you don’t eat that, that female coping mechanism of youth. That one is great because while it does, cause what I do have osteoporosis persistent fertility issues, it does actually address the hormonal issues. Like it does take it away.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, being a woman.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So it takes the problem away, whereas like, you know, the other coping mechanisms don’t, I guess, gender affirming care, youth gender transition does kind of handle it, but our
Malcolm Collins: daughters are gonna be a nightmare
Simone Collins: when they go through puberty. This is why we had sons first. Like we intentionally, when you and I were like, oh, well should we start with sons or daughters?
I was like, well, we’re starting with sons because I’m not dealing with teenage girls. Setting the tone in our household though, I do really [00:16:00] feel like a big moderating factor on having very, very rough adolescent ears is being. In a small household, every, every family that I know of, a lot of children.
Or people I know who, who went through their adolescence in large families came through a lot more mentally healthy. And I think that a lot of the danger, and maybe this is one of those reasons why you see a correlary issue with like having leisure or wealth or some form of like, affluence or abundance in, in youth correlating with these high rates of attempting to join the youth in Asia is when there’s no space to get stuck in your head.
You’re gonna be okay. It’s the problem is that the demons are all in your head when you’re in adolescence. And if you’re allowed to just hang out with the demons. You’re, you’re screwed. They’re gonna take you over. It, it’s like demonic possession, whereas if you’re constantly being kicked by you know, your 7-year-old brother and you know, your [00:17:00] other, like 13-year-old sister con constantly steals all your little bras and stuffing them and taking them to school.
And you have to fight with her. And, and you know, if, if you are, you’re also waking up in the middle of the night to help your parents with an, your parents with an infant. You don’t have space. To get angsty and, and, and think about hurting yourself. You know, you’re too busy trying to kill your siblings out of rage.
The, the rage takes over and it’s a beautiful thing. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alright.
Simone Collins: Sorry. Rant at all. No, I think
Malcolm Collins: it’s true. I think it’s true. I think being in a large family, you’re not gonna be affected one by external culture as much. And then,
well
Simone Collins: it’s the forced hardship, which is something we talk about sort of separately about how we think.
It’s just so important to have some version of hardship and youth. And you don’t have to manufacture hardship for affluent youth if you have it built in through the form of a large family, which just creates hardship every single day we see with our kids. ‘cause our kids have to navigate. Feelings of, of unfairness or violation or having [00:18:00] to put others first, which is really hard for kids every single day.
Malcolm Collins: So, yeah. And, and here I’m gonna note something because I’ve been looking ahead in the statistics and we’re gonna need to have a hypothesis around this, which is that. From COVID to not COVID lockdown female rates of unhappiness joining the euthanasia, everything declines marginally. Yeah.
Whereas in males it didn’t. And so the question is, is why, why
Simone Collins: was it, I think, I think we’re going back to my, my original high thesis, which is thi this is a social contagion thing. I think that during the pandemic just became vogue to talk about this. And that after the pandemic it was just less cool.
And also like girls had more things to gossip and titter about when they were seeing each other in person at school. And so there, there wasn’t as much need to get attention and, and gossip about entering the afterlife.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So [00:19:00] seriously thought about joining the euthanasia. Mm-hmm. For females.
This was 30% in COVID and then went down to 27%, so it’s 3%
Simone Collins: now, 27%, though that is still way too high. I don’t wanna play those odds.
Malcolm Collins: Four.
Simone Collins: I mean, like if, if we’re talking about school shooters for example, and it’s like, well, you know, like you’d be like, well, I’m getting my kid outta that school. I don’t want them to get hurt.
Like, it’s, I don’t know why we’re, so, we talk so much more about our children being at risk of being hurt by other people when like, just like with murder rates, right? Like most murders and kidnappings are performed by like family members or inside the house from people, you know. And the who do you know?
Who do you spend the most time with in your entire life? It’s you. You’re your own worst enemy. You are your own biggest risk. Why are we not more concerned about this? The, you know, the calls coming from inside the house, like the most inside part of it. Ah,
Malcolm Collins: to continue.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Go on.
Malcolm Collins: And, and with males it was 14% in, in, in both periods.
So
Simone Collins: still way too [00:20:00] much.
Malcolm Collins: Also, keep in mind how low it is for males compared to females. 14 to 27%, right? Yeah. Girls are significantly more at risk of this. Yeah. And, you know, everybody knows life is worse for young men these days in terms of the bias they face in from, from teachers, from society.
Simone Collins: The enemy within is worse for young women. Yeah. Young men are like, they just really wanna bang someone, right? Like, this is the worst thing that happens to them in, in youth, right? They become a little rebellious and they really need sex. Girls, it’s, man, it’s, it’s, it’s as different and it’s dark. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: No, no. I mean, it is, it is true what you’re saying. They want sex. That is what men want.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
I, if only I were so lucky. If only that were my problem in youth, I wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t have the bones of an aged woman.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway. Anyway so, if for the we, where we went over the made a plan so for women it went from 24% to 21%.
But [00:21:00] with males it 12% to 12%. Still way too high. Yeah. And I think your enemy within thing is right. Women are terrible to other women. And, and themselves.
Simone Collins: And themselves. A lot of it
Malcolm Collins: comes from a place of
Simone Collins: self hatred.
Malcolm Collins: The urban monoculture, which defines your purpose around seeking self validation and pleasure mm-hmm.
Is going to spread more within female communities because they are much more interested in conforming to societal standards, social pressures. Mm-hmm. And I think they might have even become more conformist to the general social pressure over COVID. Because now it’s not just their friend group that’s, that’s pressuring them.
It’s the online juggernaut that’s pressuring them, right?
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. The, the juggernaut.
Malcolm Collins: The juggernaut and then attempted now this is interesting. Attempted actually didn’t go down post COVID for women. 13% to 13%. So what it may be is we’re actually seeing a decrease in the sort of [00:22:00] histrionic, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it.
Behavior and not actual rates. Mm-hmm. Risk for minute went down 1%, which is statistically irrelevant, seven to 6%. Mm-hmm. Thoughts.
Simone Collins: Yep. Part, part of me is like, I, I trust men when they say it. Also, like when you look at the successful execution of, early exit men, men follow through. You know, women attend all time.
Well, actually, actually, no. Oh, I tried. Hold
Malcolm Collins: on. Simone, you’re, you’re, you’re just, I wrong statistically wrong here.
Simone Collins: Really? I thought it was men that just got the job done.
Malcolm Collins: No, no contrast. No, that is true. When they attempt. They die more often.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But contrast the male attempt rate which was 6% versus the male percent rate that said they seriously considered it, which was 14%.
Mm-hmm. So, it, you, you know, that’s like,
Simone Collins: and, and what’s the female attempt versus consider?
Malcolm Collins: Bit more than double. Right?
Simone Collins: I, I, I don’t see that as meaningful. Did they? Did they actually succeed? That’s what matters. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: No, obviously,
Simone Collins: obviously ‘cause a [00:23:00] female attempt doesn’t mean, is not always an national attempt.
It might just be the communication of the drama. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: The communication of the drama.
Simone Collins: Yeah. See, you’re
Malcolm Collins: saying women are histrionic, drama queens that will attempt to make it look like they want to end their lives for attention. You’re saying this about young women. Oh
Simone Collins: yeah. I mean, it’s, they’re
Malcolm Collins: like, well, yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Well, okay, so look at it. Look at it from a woman’s perspective, right? It’s in vogue now. You know, everyone, everyone in high school is talking about it. One of them already followed through. You’re trying to get attention and, and love and people to care and worry about you because of this, right? But everyone’s talking about it and how depressed and sad they are.
So we have no choice. Situation. Yeah. Well, no, sort of, you have no choice but to show how you’re actually serious when you’re competing with everyone for attention on this one trendy issue.
Speaker 7: Sorry to hear about your friend. Thought she was your usual airhead . Guess I was wrong. We all were.
Simone Collins: So the only way that you can demonstrate your [00:24:00] seriousness is to actually show an attempt to actually get hospitalized, for example, you know, to, to, to actually be taken outta school for several days so that people talk about you in your absence.
Right. Yeah. And there are very easy ways to do this where, you know, it’s not really gonna, but you know, you can still work yourself up and, you know, get, this is very harmful. I’m not saying that like girls who are doing it performatively aren’t hurting themselves and also very, very miserable and actually kind of really thinking about it.
‘cause once you get into the it’s method acting to a great extent as well. Like they’re really feeling it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was also just thinking about the, the movie The Heathers, where a major plot theme is that Unliving yourself becomes trendy in school because the, it’s actually a chain of murders. Mm-hmm.
But the popular girls don’t know that
Simone Collins: it’s a perfect crime. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But the the, the male character in that had a very similar sort of persona to the one that I had in high school, which is funny. Yeah. In terms of like, the way he acted and dressed and everything,
Which is funny, you just trying to be like a little ife [00:25:00] while also being very irreverent.
Simone Collins: Yeah. That, no, that was very much the arbitrage game that you played in, in that
Malcolm Collins: and, and break rules for the sake of breaking rules, you know? Mm-hmm. Whatever. So many rules. I broke at that time in my life. Like literally only because I broke rules. I, I wanted to break rules. I remember like back then I used to smoke and then I stopped smoking.
The minute it was legal for me to smoke. I was just like, this is, this is lame.
Simone Collins: I’m glad you didn’t get addicted. That’s,
Interesting.
Malcolm Collins: People in my family seem pretty resistant to nicotine addictions. Yeah,
Simone Collins: that is, that is interesting.
Malcolm Collins: People in my family are very susceptible to alcohol addiction.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Firewater gets you guys, but not the, not the peace pipe. Interesting.
Malcolm Collins: No one in my family has died from alcohol. So
Simone Collins: yeah,
Malcolm Collins: not, not that kind of but, but my mom, if you didn’t know, was actually addicted to nicotine for a period.
Simone Collins: Oh, she was? So she had to actively try to quit smoking. Mm-hmm. Wow. Okay. I didn’t know
Malcolm Collins: that.
She [00:26:00] said she, she stopped smoking. And the only reason I even remember this is ‘cause I remember why she stopped, which is apparently in like kindergarten when we were supposed to make, you know, like little things for our parents in like art class,
Simone Collins: oh
Malcolm Collins: no. Ash tray holder. Like a little, you know. And seeing that like it got to her and she’s like, Ugh,
Simone Collins: mommy, I made you an ashtray.
So she wait. That implies that she might have smoked through her pregnancies.
Malcolm Collins: No,
Simone Collins: she didn’t. She stopped for that. She drank because a lot of, a lot of women just stop smoking because like, even men, like a lot of men, when they do quit smoking, it’s ‘cause they’ve been hospitalized for a series of days and they haven’t been allowed to smoke then.
And they’re like, well, I guess this is the time I go cold Turkey. You know? Yeah. Because the, the first days are the hardest. So I figured that she would’ve stayed. Cold Turkey.
Malcolm Collins: She never did it that much. I do not have any explicit memory of her ever smoking in my entire life. I only have a memory of the ashtray story.
Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Maybe she, I honestly imagine that she did it just for the aesthetics. I’d be [00:27:00] surprised if she struggled to quit, but I don’t
Malcolm Collins: know. But yeah. So, where is this coming from? Yeah. I mean, we’ve, we’ve talked about this in so many episodes but you know, just to go over, when you define your purpose in life as a search for pleasure and self affirmation, you.
Feel and experience everything that is fundamentally good that you are creating in this universe from your perspective, because that’s how you’ve defined your own purpose.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And there just isn’t that much positive feeling to life, especially when you’re a teenager. And so it’s a very bad reason to keep going.
Simone Collins: It’s worse than that though, and here’s why. I think also you saw more of a spike in this form of Id. Ideation during the pandemic especially is because I and I listen to a lot more leftist content than you do. A very, very common theme is just like, oh, this world is just so hard to live in. [00:28:00] It just, it just, it’s so dark and I, this world is everything.
Awesome. I know, I know. I love this timeline. Like that’s the problem is we’re having a blast, but it is a very, very, very common message in the mainstream urban monoculture, and for that reason. I think it’s even easier to begin thinking along those lines. You see this crop up with Antinatalism as well.
When people think about bringing a new life into the world, we often hear it too of like, oh, how could I bring a life into a world that’s so horrible? But this also has to do with people’s existing lives and can influence people’s tendencies in that direction to end their lives early.
Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I, I think that you’re, you’re put been on something really important here, and we’ve talked about it in our, you know, the, the, the seductiveness of nihilism, right?
Mm-hmm. Like being the nihilistic person is an easy social hack to look cool. Yeah. Within any context, right. You know, everyone else is, oh, you know, if I come into a room and I’m like, [00:29:00] unrightly enthusiastic about something, and somebody else is like, Hey, that’s lame. You know, they’ve now scored like a social point on me.
Yeah. Unless that’s actively punished. Or I just look at their,
Simone Collins: and I, by the way, that’s one of those like moves, like I, I imagine people who enjoy watching sports, like there are certain moves that they just hate that people do. To like get a ball from someone or, I don’t know. But like the, when girls do it for like their version of girl nagging, like a, a guy being like, oh, like, well, I got us a reservation at this restaurant.
Oh yeah. You know, it’s not, it’s not really good. Or like, they just act not impressed by everything. ‘cause they think that makes them look good. This is another version of that when people are like. Oh, the world’s just so terrible. Like, no, stop that. It doesn’t make you look good. I mean, it just, some people, I guess.
No,
Malcolm Collins: no. It does make you look good to a certain community is the thing, especially of women, especially of urban monoculture types. This idea of your status in part, coming from how distressed you are, how much of a victim you are, your [00:30:00] own weakness as we’ve pointed out. You know, you can either see the world through strength or you can see it through.
Weakness and the urban monoculture elevates a group or individual based on how disadvantaged they are in the perspective of the urban monoculture. You know, they’re, how many disabilities they have, how hard it is for them to get through an average day. And so, you know, if you’re some white middle class chicken, you’re hearing this, you’re now like, you know, this is where spoon come from.
You’re now like, oh, I gotta in invent all this for myself. And as, as you and I have pointed out, people like women, young women, see our episode if you’re interested. It’s, it’s something like they crave the dystopia. Women are sort of programmed to want to live in a dystopia. And you see this through the literature that they read, like dystopian literature is very, very common for young female audiences.
And if you read about the lives of young females, just a couple generations ago in that episode, we went through Simone’s grandmother’s war diary. You know, living in France under occupation [00:31:00] and it was a post apocalypse. It was a like, like they were living through. And you go
Simone Collins: back, they’re driving out of Paris and the roads are backed up and.
The, the Nazis are literally dropping bombs on the roads as cars are fleeing. She, at one point had like a pickup truck flip over her as she was hiding in a ditch by the side of the road. And the only reason she was spared was ‘cause she was like inside the indentation of the ditch, like horrible things.
And they, you know, they wander into abandoned villages and she goes into a, a, like a restaurant or bar trying to find. You know, someone to like get food from and just finds a dead body there and like walks back to where her parents were and just doesn’t say anything like genuine. Like scary movie stuff.
Not, not even just who, spooky dystopia. That kind of, you know, just horrible.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: And it was very recent. It was the
Malcolm Collins: same way. You go back to the Great Depression, it’s the same, you go back to the old West. The same, yeah. You
Simone Collins: go back
Malcolm Collins: to Europe during that time period. The same.
Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] Women are genetically optimized.
To grow up in a dystopia. Mm-hmm. And when they do not have an external oppressor, they create a fictionalized oppressive force in their lives.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Actually, I want to think about this concept more. How can we structurally create something that helps our daughters not do this to themselves? So
Simone Collins: Malcolm Siblings a large family, it’s built in.
Malcolm Collins: I don’t think so at all. I think that it is still possible without traditions and contextualization to intergenerationally prevent this. And the way that I would do it is to frame our family as a discriminated group by the dominant culture in society, the urban monoculture, right? And say that you know, they will fight against us at every turn.
They will make your life. Harder at every turn because of who you are. There is an active conspiracy against us, which there is. You can just look [00:33:00] at the media. There is an active array of forces aligned against us, right? And that. We need to fight this. And, and I think that that can help them.
I think another thing is to maybe create a holiday a around this, right? The idea that young women will create fictionalized self oppression when they do not face it in their life. And I think that the, how, how would you structure a holiday to really hammer that home?
Simone Collins: I don’t know. I mean, off the top of my head, I don’t know.
I, I, I want to consult the holidays that other base camp community members have shared with us that they’ve built on their own. ‘Cause we’re not the only ones who believe in culture crafting as it just so happens, you know, we’re a good company. I think some of them have come up with some interesting rites of passage.
So I don’t know, could consult those for inspiration.
Malcolm Collins: [00:34:00] Well, somebody had a past day that I really liked. Yeah, maybe we could do something where like the past day is actually like a two day thing. And you do different eras, so you do, or maybe even for like a week every week you do a meal from like a different period in the past, and you talk about the challenges of living in that period and how horrible it actually was to be alive during that period.
Yeah. And how, and then reflect on how lucky we are for the society and world we live in and think with shame on the people who act differently.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: What do you think of that? We can do this over Thanksgiving as an alternative to Thanksgiving. ‘cause Thanksgiving sucks at the holiday.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I do.
I do like that as a Thanksgiving thing.
Malcolm Collins: And then you get a week of unique dishes as well, so you can try,
Simone Collins: you know, always, always the dishes. Yeah. It ain’t a holiday if they’re in special food decorations, canned
Malcolm Collins: food from the 1950s. You know, what, what is that
Simone Collins: like, oh God, make up jello casserole [00:35:00] thing, blah.
Our kids would probably be into it, considering their taste in food. So, yeah. No, I, I, yeah, I, I hear you. I, I think the biggest thing is the urban monoculture. But the second biggest thing is, is the urban
Malcolm Collins: monoculture. You can’t just say, don’t join it. Your kids will still join it. You still end up trapped, right?
Like,
Simone Collins: well, and you still actually have a, a very, very long history of affluent girls living in abundance, having issues of hurting themselves and, and calling it different things. Sometimes calling it religious devotion, sometimes calling it. Sickness that they just report that isn’t real.
So I, I, yeah, I, I, I agree with you that it is not exclusively the urban monoculture. I think that the urban monoculture can, however, explain outsized variants and, and unique differences in some periods of time. But yeah, you’re, you’re right. But yeah you also, the, the larger picture is that people need a reason to live.
It’s not [00:36:00] enough to just be like, oh, I’m happy and like, I don’t know. I don’t wanna die. You, you, you have to. I, I think a lot of people only understand why they don’t want to die, when kind of that’s not, the living is the default that that’s a big factor when living is not the default or it doesn’t feel like the default.
They suddenly are really happy about. Not dying. And I think maybe actually another issue that that could be insufficiently discussed, and this can go back to holidays and also making Hall Halloween more about El de Los MUTOs, is that we don’t talk a lot about death. And I think a lot of people don’t even really understand the, the meaning of how short their lives are and how tenuous their lives are.
And, and how quickly they, everything could just end and you can lose a family member at any age.
Malcolm Collins: You can go to show our kids a dead human body. Like does the morgue let kids in? I I used lots of dead
Simone Collins: bodies. I’m sure we have a, a lot of, like, if you have good [00:37:00] connections, probably. But I, I even just talking with Octavian on Monday, like when it came up that like, I’m gonna die and he’s gonna die, and he really started wrapping his head around it.
He was like, oh God. Huh. He definitely came away from the conversation. I mean, the, the
Malcolm Collins: Puritans used to do that. They used to have their kids like, stand
Simone Collins: over
Malcolm Collins: Graves. Graves.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I like it. Look at it. That’s gonna be you one day.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, I wonder if that’s maybe also one of the reasons why people, I held open casket funerals.
You know, it’s, it’s not necessarily. To just honor the debtor, like have closure in some way that would really freak me out. But like, rather to be like, no, look at Itand.
Malcolm Collins: I think we should make a holiday for our family around showing the kids dead bodies. And see if
Simone Collins: that’s, or we could do the thing that like, you know, the depressed South Koreans do, where, you know, they, we make them, they, they, they, they write their will and they lie in a casket and think about the fact, I, I don’t know though.
I, I, I wonder if that kind of makes people [00:38:00] into it. Make them wanna go ahead, do it. I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re gonna have to think about this. I, I’d love people’s thoughts in the comments.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, that’s my thoughts on that. Which is to say this is not an artifact caused by COVID. The system really is that bad.
And stay the FOA like stay the FOA build something new. You have had kids for nothing if you then throw them in the grinder, right? Totally like a, a society, right? If you let them be normal. Right, because
Simone Collins: nor nor these days, Malcolm has given you one slice of what normal means and given those rates of interest in departing from the world so prematurely, normal’s not good.
You don’t want normal. Normal is a
Malcolm Collins: dangerous cult.
Simone Collins: You want freakishly weird. If anything that’s not freakishly weird, now is, is very worrisome. So, mm-hmm. [00:39:00] Get rid of that. Desire to be, to fit in. Not good. Not good.
Malcolm Collins: I love you
Simone Collins: so much. Special.
Malcolm Collins: You’re
Simone Collins: the I have the other half of the Bullock, but I know this was with a larger, I don’t know how to pronounce the noodle things.
Bki. So
Malcolm Collins: something’s wrong with this Bullock.
Simone Collins: It didn’t look right. Yeah. I was like, what is, what is, I think it’s ‘cause we, we, you, you asked me in subsequent batches to make, to chop the medicinal pieces.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. No. I mean, it doesn’t have any chicken in it for one, it doesn’t have any mushrooms in it.
It, I, I think, was the one that we made that wasn’t actually bulldog, but it was meant to be made by itself without cheese. It’s a different dish entirely.
Simone Collins: Do you want me to toss the rest of it, or do you want me to prepare it differently? I think you just don’t want, you don’t, dude, if it, if it doesn’t work, no, I wanna,
Malcolm Collins: Prepare it differently.
Prepare it without cheese or a little bit of butter. And cook it longer. It was like really [00:40:00] mushy when it needs to be a little bit
Simone Collins: harder. Okay. So you wanna dry it out and then So I’ll dry it out and like, in the air fryer, like sort of bake it for a while and then at the very end, melt cheese, cheddar cheese on top.
Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: that’s a good idea. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Okay, we’ll try that. And if you don’t like it, I can make you, it’s, it’s fine
Malcolm Collins: to eat, by the way, because Yeah, well, it’s not as tasty because it doesn’t have chicken or the mushrooms. It has nothing that can go wrong with it.
Simone Collins: Oh, well there’s that. Yeah. And if you have cheese, you have a little more protein.
I’m trying to keep it a,
Balance. I, I was just learning recently about someone who died at age like 32 of a sudden aneurysm. Left kids behind and stuff made me really sad. So now I’m like, oh God, I gotta get you healthy. Going to, going to get your blood pressure perfect and keep you alive forever.
And you need to sleep more. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: I slept a lot today.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But more. Okay. Just more. And are you like taking all your vitamins every day? We, we doing
Malcolm Collins: a lot. Sometimes.
Simone Collins: Mm. I’ve not refilled our two week little [00:41:00] flipper thing. For you in more than two weeks now. So, all right. God, I shouldn’t have to do every, I can’t like throw pills into your mouth.
Take your freaking pills. You’re an adult man. I don’t want you to die. Oops. I feel like Toasty understands his mortality of, his way of saying, I love you, is I love you and I don’t want you to die. But I think this is also, ‘cause I constantly am like, Torsten, don’t jump off the bed like that. I don’t want you to die.
And he just assumes it’s like this platitude of like, oh yes, and a good day to you too. Good day to
Malcolm Collins: you too, sir. I I love you and I don’t want you to die.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, just think it’s, it’s a thing you say sometimes. No toasty, you’re dangerous. Stop doing things anyway.
Malcolm Collins: I love you Simone. That works for me for tonight.
Also reheating you could even throw in some peppers or something to mix it up a bit.
Simone Collins: Sh peppers. So saute those and then,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, because we gotta use, actually, why don’t you just try sauteing it with shishito peppers.
Simone Collins: Okay. And then I guess at the very end I can throw it in the air fryer [00:42:00] and then or just not,
Malcolm Collins: just no cheese, no air fryer.
Simone Collins: I can also sprinkle shredded very finely shredded cheddar cheese on after plating it and it will not. Yeah. Okay. I’ll do that. Yeah. That spares me cleaning the air fryer. Thank you. And I love you and goodbye. You are. And don’t die. You’re
Malcolm Collins: amazing woman. I love you dearly. Thank you for this great wife and not wanting to die all the time.
Because that would be really sad. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Being around a bummer. Depression is contagious.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. By the way, did you get to r Fab’s deck in reviewing that?
Simone Collins: I need to but I will. I will. Okay. I gotta get, I gotta get the Love you. Bye
bye.
Simone Collins: [00:43:00] Nice. Okay. All right. Before we, you know, start. Because you don’t wanna trigger too many content filters. What are we gonna call this? What? The, the youth in Asia, are we gonna call it success rates? Are we
Malcolm Collins: the youth in Asia? Yeah.
Simone Collins: What are, what are, how’s this gonna go?
Malcolm Collins: The well, I think, I think self euthanizing
Simone Collins: determination rates
Malcolm Collins: I termination rates, unli is the word most people use.
Simone Collins: Ew. Yeah. But except if I were an obvious not re retard at Google I would. Include Unli as one of my content filters. It’s so stupid. You can’t use the term that everyone uses. You know, that that’s, what do they call it? The the euphemism, treadmill.
Treadmill. That’s not, no, no. We hit to
Malcolm Collins: Google above to be okay with the euphemism treadmill. Well, I, I, I like your euthanasia thing, so we’ll just call them the euthanasia. Okay. Okay. If we knew that they’d be joining the euthanasia, the
Simone Collins: rate of youth. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: the [00:44:00] red youth. Okay. Who’ve
Simone Collins: entered Asia.
Malcolm Collins: I just saw a thing.
Do you know Kular? He has a scale at his house for when women come in. Oh, and if you don’t have, oh, that’s adorable. Body bag, Xanex, you get kicked out. You’d make it thorough. That’s for sure.
Simone Collins: That’s adorable. Yeah. I’m 20% body fat. That is exactly where you could be if you wanna have an athlete’s body, but also carefully and like successfully healthfully carry pregnancies.
I, I, I had a dexo scan to actually check because I was like, I wanna be at exact, the minimum body weight that I can have while I was being pregnant. I wanna be the
Malcolm Collins: very best body.
Simone Collins: Oh yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh.
Simone Collins: To be thin is my greatest quest. Yeah. Anyway.
Malcolm Collins: But I like that about you because I am disgusted by fat
Simone Collins: rotund.
You are rot disinclined to
Malcolm Collins: No, I have a, a, a pretty strong natural aversion to it.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s just like some people are turned off by, you know. Big butts. [00:45:00] Some people are turned off by small butts. You’re turned off by excess body fat. Some people are turned on by excess body fat as we know, because the entire haze movement, the body positivity for women wasn’t invented by women trying to look good.
It was invented by chubby chasers. Okay? Like they’re out there. So that’s the things you actually pointed out in your book. The prag guided sexuality that people under index. On just appealing to the people who find you attractive. Mm-hmm. That, that we just need to, like, if you are, for example, rotund, look for dudes who are into that.
If you are a, a bony hag, like I love into that,
Malcolm Collins: filter out dudes who are into that by being like, I’m just a fetish to you. I
Simone Collins: know. No, no, that’s, this is your opportunity. Go for it, girl. Live your dreams. I also, I, you know, ‘cause I sent you that clip of the, the mom and her daughter looking at filter like Instagram filters of them that turn them into men.
Mm-hmm. I realized, and I I, I texted you this on WhatsApp this morning, but I was like, oh my God, like before any woman is allowed to date, she should look at a filter of her as a man. Yeah.
And
Simone Collins: [00:46:00] like, this is the level of, of man you could get because in, in, in the clip that I sent you, it showed like, you know, a woman who was like, I don’t know what, an eight or something or above, like, she was a, a hot, sexy woman, and like as a man, she looked really good and then the camera pans over to her mom who’s.
Not an eight. And she saw what she looked like as a man, and I think she, she would be the type of woman who would expect a, an eight plus, you know, who would expect a man who’s really attractive? And she would never give a second glance to a man who looked like she did under that filter. And I think that was part of what led her to start screaming expletives, et cetera, because like she had, would have deep disrespect for a man who looked.
Speaker 4: Oh my God. Christina, you are one hot looking man. Oh my God. Are you freaking kidding me right now? That’s awesome. What? Get that. Are you freaking kidding me right now? Get that off. That’s disgusting.
Simone Collins: The weight
Malcolm Collins: looks as
Simone Collins: a man. Yeah. That how AI is gonna help
Malcolm Collins: [00:47:00] the, the dating
Simone Collins: game. Yes. This is, you know, like Yeah. A dating app that before you sign up you have to see the filter review. Oh my god. A dating app that only allowed you to see the gender bent version of them. And they’re like, well, I guess if they look kind of like me, then I’m Brooklyn.
All women are
Malcolm Collins: beautiful. Don’t you know Simone?
Simone Collins: God no.
Malcolm Collins: All women.
Simone Collins: I know the same, this the case every time I look in the mirror though, our girls are gorgeous. It’s great. It’s great that my like dis dis body dysmorphia doesn’t pass on to them because I know some others really take it out on their. You know, girls are like, oh, you have to look beautiful.
You’re ugly. ‘cause because they themselves feel ugly. Whereas like now I’m like, damn. Like you’re beautiful. They are. Okay.
Speaker 9: Acts like a microscopic shock absorber, forcing any crack. To zig. Women were a long, old fashioned dress. Nobody seems to know or talk to [00:48:00] her every time. Fiona went to a different room, a strange lady was there waiting. She wouldn’t stop staring at Fiona. Why was she looking at. Is this pasta with sprinkles?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I just put rainbow rainbows, whatever, Fahrenheit. Yeah, it says rainbow sprinkles. Buddy. Did you learn about this from Elf Watch? And that 70 mile channel becomes 70 miles of fresh teeth. Follow a few hours behind. Close enough to transit. The did You know our teeth are bones? Yeah, their bones. You can see.
Speaker 9: But right now, someone that is a spooky lady, let’s see what she’s up to. Is that true machinery measured in thousands? I don’t think so. Enamel covered the engineering spaces. Yeah, I think they’re a different structure. They could be, I, I don’t know, [00:49:00] Alexa, our teeth considered bone teeth aren’t actually bones.
Speaker 10: There may have different tissues that originate from the odors, the outermost embryonic germ layer while both continue mineralized tissue
from the mesodermal germ layer. But here’s the thing, okay? They’re not bones. I’m sorry. I was wrong. This is why I speak to ES Alexa, right? They look a lot like B though, because they’re enamel prop.

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

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

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1 hr 6 min
March 17 Why Did Culture Stop Evolving? (2025=2015 But 1995≠1985)
Are we stuck in cultural quicksand? In this Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins explore whether the internet, streaming, algorithms, and AI have collapsed cultural time — making it impossible for new culture to gain traction or evolve.
From the ball pit/avalanche metaphor to living in “the Archive,” they discuss why 1986–1996 felt like different worlds while 2005–2026 barely registers. They dive into Gen Z’s nostalgia-fueled listening habits, the death of linear cultural progress, and surprising pockets where culture is still advancing: anime, Korean webtoons (manhwa), reality fabricators/AI storytelling, VTubers, Roblox as the new Harajuku, SCP Foundation lore, Bronies, dead mall videos, and liminal spaces.
They debate subcultures in the digital age, the role of constrained communities vs. the chaotic global feed, culture hyperinflation from AI, and whether new cultures are dead — or just unrecognizable. Plus: family culture as a refuge, why old cartoons beat modern kids’ shows, and optimistic takes on building traction in walled gardens.
If you’re into pronatalism, cultural evolution, technology’s impact on creativity, or just wondering why everything feels like a remix, this one’s for you.
Episode Notes
* What if we’ve entered an age in which culture can no longer advance and we don’t even know it?
* We’ve already talked about how there’s only ‘one story left’—basically discourse about global politics, technology, and economics—because entertainment media is so fragmented and desynchronized that most shows, movies, and books can’t manage to enter the zeitgeist
* But it may also be the case that the way the internet has collapsed time, from a cultural perspective, has rendered society incapable of advancing culture, because new developments lack the ability to gain traction
* I started thinking about this when we did an episode on “The Modern Audience” and Malcolm found in his research that many of the people writing modern movies and shows primarily consume archival shows and movies, not new ones.
* Our kids are largely growing up watching cartoons and shows from the 1990s.
* We’re seeing an explosion of prequels and sequels rather than new unique properties
Will All Future Generations Grow Up in The Archive?
Choice quotes from Sam Buntz’s post on Katherine Dee’s Default.Blog, Gen Z Lives in the Archive:
* According to a 2019 article from Billboard, Shannon Cook, a trends expert at Spotify, said that Gen Z’s listening habits on Spotify were unusually broad and tended to delve deeply into the past. Tracks by Miles Davis (“Blue in Green”), The Grateful Dead (“Friend of the Devil”), and Joan Jett (“I Love Rock n’ Roll”) were all among Gen Z’s most listened to tracks at the time.
* Albeit, this article was from 2019—but the forces driving the trend, Tik Tok nostalgia and the buffet-like nature of streaming platforms, have only continued or accelerated their effects. The aforementioned 2025 article from Activaire argued that Spotify data showed Gen Z was connecting more with Gen X music on Spotify, beguiled by its apparent authenticity.
* Zoomers, you see, live inside the Archive.
* Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are imprisoned inside the Archive—a Borgesian labyrinth. Everything that has ever happened exists at their fingertips, assigned equal weight (or assigned whatever weight the fickle algorithm happens to be assigning on that particular day). This is also why they are a uniquely anxious generation, paralyzed by an inability to choose. They are confronted with too many options, unstuck in time.
* We think of time as being continuous, as involving one event following naturally, causally after a preceding event. But living within the digital archive disintegrates our basic, linear perception of time. Since every era is equally available, and all events are potentially happening at the same time, the chain of causality and influence breaks down completely. We think of musicians, artists, writers, and filmmakers as responding to those who came before them, generationally. For instance, Bob Dylan admired and initially imitated Woody Guthrie—but he also rebelled and created his own style, departing from Guthrie’s folksy populism and adding intensely personal and surrealistic touches. Changes in the arts always work this way. One generation responds to the previous generation. (Hemingway and Fitzgerald were reacting to Joseph Conrad, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, while Henry James was reacting to Hawthorne and Emerson, and so on and so forth.)
* Sometimes, I wonder if this will ultimately result in a state of cultural affairs in which fresh artistic creation stops entirely
Key Questions
Do we need a sense of a clear timeline in order to craft new culture?
From Sam Buntz: “In Plato’s dialogue, “Ion,” he describes how inspiration works: the first poet was inspired directly by the muse, like an iron filling attached to a lodestone. The subsequent generations of poets are like iron fillings attached to that first filling. The force of inspiration is still present, but it is exerted indirectly and weakens with every generation. Thus, the influence of the original impetus wanes until, presumably, we culturally reset and reconnect to the magnetic source directly. Gen Z finds itself in a state in which the fillings have all been scattered on the ground, perhaps experiencing some ambient attraction from the lodestone, but unable to really connect with it.”
Does “culture hyperinflation” prevent new culture from being innovated?
Sam Buntz quotes Cormac McCarthy in an interview saying: “I don’t know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they’re really good. And there’s just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that’s the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there’s going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don’t care whether it’s art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don’t think so.”
What would have to happen in order to enable more cultural progress?
* Luddite communities?
* Sudden loss of data?
* Sam Buntz wrote: “Poets have sometimes fantasized about total cultural destruction—something like the burning of the Library of Alexandria—to escape the sense that everything has already been done, has already been written. I wouldn’t go that far, since everything I love is part of the past. Maybe some brave artist can find a route back to the Original Magnet—a route that would presumably lie through the great works of the past, since the past is where we all start to feel magnetism acting on us. In any case, something needs to give. The links of the chain need to re-connect.”
Episode Transcript
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So how different was 1986 from 1996, culturally speak?
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: It was two different worlds. .
Speaker 8: to the.
Oh my God.
Malcolm Collins: But if you go from where we are today to 2005
Simone Collins: mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s different, but
Simone Collins: not really. Yeah. There’s, there’s not, there’s not that much different.
Would you like to know more?
Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I’m trying to wrap my head around something and I need someone to talk with about this.
And I, I, what’s getting on my mind so much and I. Can’t work it out is what if we’ve entered an age in which culture can no longer advance and we don’t even know it. And I’m referring kind of to what we talked about in a [00:01:00] podcast before where we talked about there being only one story left that basically discourse about global politics and technology and the economy is the only thing that everyone can really talk about collectively anymore because entertainment media is so fragmented , and desynchronized.
And that not everyone’s really watching the same show or movie or reading the same books at the same time like they used to anymore. But I feel like beyond that, beyond that last show left issue that we discussed, there’s this, it, it could be the case that the internet has really collapsed time from a cultural perspective, which has rendered society completely incapable of advancing culture because new developments lack the ability to gain traction.
Kind of like. Y you, you can, you can walk up stairs, you know, and progress onward and upward by pressing on the step, you know, that you’re standing on and moving up to the next step. But I feel like now we’ve gone from being on [00:02:00] stairs to being like in a ball pit. You know, you put a, a foot down and it just pushes through balls, you know, like a giant ball pit and we can’t, or really
Malcolm Collins: light snow.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or really, yeah. Like, like in an avalanche. Yeah. And we’re just, we’re just buried in the very like light packed snow of an avalanche and we’re not able to move. And I, I really started thinking, so I think that you
Malcolm Collins: make an interesting point here and I wanna pull on it a little bit.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Which is to say that if we look at the culture of today
Simone Collins: mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Versus the culture of. The, what is it, 2025 now? 2015?
Simone Collins: It’s 2026.
Malcolm Collins: 2026, okay. Yeah. So how different was 1986 from 1996, culturally speak?
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: It was two different worlds.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And then if you go from you know, 1996 and then say, let’s go one decade back from that 1976, we’re in a different cultural universe at that point.
Totally. But if you go from where we are today to [00:03:00] 2005
Simone Collins: mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s different, but it is less different than 1996 to 1986.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Not really. Yeah. There’s, there’s not, there’s not that much different.
Malcolm Collins: And I don’t think kids today, like our younger audience, is going to really grasp how extreme this would’ve felt historically speaking.
Yeah. How ho hor horrifically long ago. Let’s do that. The 1970 show. How, how far back in time would we be doing the 1970 show was made today
Simone Collins: that seventies show, is that what you’re referring to? Yeah. Oh yeah. That was, wasn’t that made like, what, 15 years ago now? What
Speaker: So the show. Premiered about 22 years and three months after it was set. And you need to understand when this show came out, this didn’t feel like the last generation, this felt like three or four generations ago in [00:04:00] terms of trends, , I remember growing up and the, that seventies show came out when I was a teenager.
And it felt like, uh, I remember talking about the trends of the hippies and stuff like that when I was a kid as something so distantly in the past. I could barely imagine it. and, and now, that 70 show aired more than, so it came out 22 years after it was set. It came out over 27 years ago. So much longer ago than it came out..
Simone Collins: Yeah. Very
Malcolm Collins: new continue.
Simone Collins: Right? I mean, so I, I first started thinking about this when, when you mentioned in our episode on the modern audience, like the modern audience, that people making content for, like shows and movies for the modern audience were really primarily watching shows from their childhoods or from the nineties.
And I was thinking about it also because every weekend when you have our kids watching [00:05:00] cartoons. They’re cartoons from our childhood or even from before our childhood, like from the eighties, which is bizarre. So Simon,
Malcolm Collins: Is, is talking about something and I think it’s important to extract here. I occasionally will try to do like a deep dive into the social media history of somebody who I just like politically do not get, like they’re politically totally different from me.
I’m like, what are they engaging with? What are they? And there was this one like super woke person mm-hmm. And I was trying to understand what shows do super woke people watch. Mm-hmm. And what I realized is they watch no modern audience content. They watch no modern content at all. They are too afraid of something new, triggering them emotionally.
So they only watch content from their childhoods.
Simone Collins: The content that existed before trigger warnings, ironically and weirdly.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
Simone Collins: it is full of sexual harassment. And
Malcolm Collins: this is the people who are so triggered by this stuff are too afraid in a new context. Right? They’re like, oh, what if I get some corporate [00:06:00] messaging from Disney or something?
Right? So they don’t, they don’t go out and try new things. Mm-hmm. But what’s interesting is we do the thing to an extent I, for my kids I don’t play really any modern shows. I did for a while. Like we had subscriptions to like Paramount and we tried to watch some of the modern stuff with them.
But honestly, I feel like they enjoy it more and they get better values from old school Power Ranger reruns and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle reruns.
Simone Collins: Well now they’re all, they’re all GI Joe.
Malcolm Collins: GI Joe. Right. And GI Joe is cool. You know, they actually go out and shoot people with lasers and the United States is amazing.
And the, the there’s one episode I didn’t realize, like how real it was. There’s one episode where they, it takes place in like a stripper bar, I guess. Like a, like a, a, a sexy dance bar. Right.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Clearly the intent. And the Cobra has all of her albums and is a big fan of hers, but she’s secretly helping the GI Joes and hiding them in her dresser room when the, you know, Cobra Commandos come in.
And it [00:07:00] very much felt like, like, like a, a James Bondy sort of a film or something like that. Like I was outside impressed. I think they do a good job of grabbing the kids. Oh. But I tried to show them you know, more recent stuff and they just find it boring.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I find more recent stuff boring too.
But so there’s that, right? The fact that like we are raising our kids on archival content and that we’re also now like we’re the, just the stagnation. I feel like we’re seeing now we’re, we’re like stuck in these weird loops that we’re just seeing all these prequels and sequels and while there’s some new content, I’m not really seeing it get traction.
And it also just feels highly iterative on its own. Like, I mean, I. Obviously got on the Bridgeton bandwagon recently because I love stupid historical romances, but that’s historical romance. Like it’s, there’s nothing new or interesting about it. And that genre has been around for an extremely long time.
So again, that’s not like new culture creation. It’s just like,
Malcolm Collins: here’s where I’m gonna push back on you. This [00:08:00] isn’t happening everywhere. In some industries we have seen culture continue to advance at around the same rate as it did historically,
Simone Collins: where
Malcolm Collins: a great example is anime. If you watch an anime today versus a 2005 anime, you will immediately be able to clock.
This is a 2005 anime.
Simone Collins: Okay, you know what, that’s a really good. Point
Malcolm Collins: culture, and then if you go to a 1990s anime
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Yeah. A
Malcolm Collins: completely different universe again, right? Like mm-hmm. And this isn’t just in terms of the animation style. Mm-hmm. This is in terms of culture and ing and I mean, even the idea of like an isi is a modern concept, right?
Like this is a concept that was like invented and gained popularity in like the last 15 years, right? Yeah.
Simone Collins: Very new. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And that’s an entire genre. Mm-hmm. That is, that is large other genres are trapped in a video game. Trapped in a video game is something that the west has done, but not really in the way that these sort of [00:09:00] online trends are with, with, with anime.
And then you can go to other areas like the, one of my favorite forms of these days, I mean, one of my two is obviously reality fabricator and like AI interactive stories. That’s a completely new form of content. Yeah. It didn’t exist. And then the other is Korean Romance Maass. About maga, about the well, no, no, they’re called Ma
Simone Collins: Maass Maass.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, it means I don’t know, but it, it stands for something. But that’s when there are an online strip that’s meant to be read as a long vertical strip.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: Because they’re really designed for phone screens.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And these, these, the, the setting has like, an element of historicity to it.
Right. Like obviously it’s always like, duke es always somebody reborn. Is somebody, somebody from
Simone Collins: Yeah. And they’re like vaguely European typically, but they’re, they’re not based in like this region.
Malcolm Collins: Which is funny. I love reading about medieval European fantasies in a culture that is trying to be you know, [00:10:00] we, I should paint medieval Europe in a romanticized light. And I get that from my Korean online mangas. You know, but, but, but that’s, that’s new. So we are seeing some iteration, but it, it was in very narrow niches that I think actually build on your starting concept here, which
Simone Collins: is, yeah, that you have to have a point of traction.
Or you can’t move forward. You have to have like a blockchain or a, a chronological ruler that you can move along and understand where you are on the timeline in order to be able to push yourself forward. And if there is no foundation you, you cannot move forward. And this, this really solidified when I read this guest post on Catherine d.
Friend of the podcast’s default blog, which I highly recommend. Default blog. It’s on Substack. This guest post by Sam Buns was called Gen Z lives the archive. And this is really where I got this like, oh wow. Okay. So when, [00:11:00] when history collapses in on itself and when you live unmoored from time, it’s very hard to progress.
So I’m gonna read a couple choice quotes from it ‘cause I think it can help us kind of work through this idea and understand. Basically regions in which culture can’t advance or like culture crafting and creation will be unable to get a foothold. Versus regions like what you just pointed out with like anime and manga where there it can still sustain life.
It can still sustain. ‘cause the community, it’s almost like, you know, pretty
Malcolm Collins: narrow enough that you’re able to get a dense enough cultural lattice.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: To take the next step.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or, or, you know, just by default like that is the natural environment. Right. And maybe what we’ve, we’ve created through these online environments where there’s sort of, everything is available all at once is, you know how like in nature there’s those weird carbon monoxide pools in like there might be an indentation in the land and there’s some kind of like, offgassing from a [00:12:00] volcanic rift or something so that there’s just a bunch of carbon monoxide in a little like valley.
Or, or dent in, in the land and, and animals wander in there and just die because they don’t realize that they’re not breathing any oxygen. You know what I’m talking about?
Malcolm Collins: Yes.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So I feel like that’s, that’s kind of what this is too, is like people are wandering into it and not realizing that when they go in it just, everything kind of just no more life can be sustained.
But anyway. Some, some quotes from Sam Buns in Gen Z lives in the archive. According to a 2019 article from Billboard, Shannon Cook, a trends expert at Spotify, said that Gen Z’s listening habits on Spotify were unusually broad intended to delve deeply into the past tracks by miles Davis blew in green the Grateful dead friend of the Devil and Joan Jett.
I love rock and roll. Were among Gen. Z’s most listened to tracks at the time, albeit this article was from 2019, but the forces driving the trend, TikTok nostalgia, and the buffet like nature of streaming platforms, have only continued or [00:13:00] accelerated their effects. The aforementioned 2025 article from Active Air argued that Spotify data showed Gen Z was connecting more to Gen X music on Spotify.
Beguiled by its apparent authenticity, zoomers, you see live inside the archive. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are imprisoned inside the archive A board. Bium La Labyrinth, everything that has ever happened exists at their fingertips. Assign equal weight or assign whatever weight the fickle algorithm happens to be assigning on that particular day.
This is also why they have a uniquely anxious generation paralyzed by the inability to choose. They’re confronted with too many options unstuck in time. And I think that that’s really interesting. And we’ve never really existed in this period of history where an entire generation doesn’t really have this.
Like, here’s where we are. It’s more like they’re experiencing the 1960s, they’re experiencing the 1970s, they’re experiencing the 1950s, like wherever they [00:14:00] choose to have an affiliation. Well, I
Malcolm Collins: think in part because you’re not sure what today is ai, right? So they’re like,
Simone Collins: that’s also true. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: This is how I know I’m consuming human made content.
Simone Collins: Oh, that, yeah, that reference to authenticity. Like that they liked Gen X stuff because they knew it was like real. And now who knows what’s real. Yeah, I guess that’s an additional layer that makes culture crafting really difficult now is like, you don’t even know what’s legit now. That’s a really good point too.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I I also think that the when I was growing up, I remember a lot of people were pulled to really historic stuff because it was like a flex over other kids. It was
Simone Collins: like, oh yeah, it was, wait, it was a way to look cool. But now I think it’s, it’s different. It’s more like, well this is just showing up on Spotify.
It’s like just in your feed.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Actually this is an interesting idea. Can we, can we capture, this was like the prenatal list movement. Can we be like, let’s, let’s recreate like the nineties, right? That I’d love to recreate the nineties. The nineties were pretty fun.
Simone Collins: How there’s like Disney towns and maybe we can just create a nineties town [00:15:00] with that.
Malcolm Collins: What everybody’s like, I wanna go back to the 19. I’m like, who wants to be in the 1950s? The 1990s were so much cooler. They like Godot God style stuff, you know, for kids and everything. Why?
Simone Collins: What was that show that had like the nineties character that was like on a skateboard?
Speaker 3: Uya erased my country too. The most outta control radical place the world had ever seen. Slam Zone. Your country was called Slam Zone. The United Republic of Slam Zone. In titles, totality, ah. The only thing that still makes sense to me is a nice ice cold Capri sun.
Speaker 4: I’m not really in the mood for a Capri Sun. Here you go. Drink up.
Speaker 3: Sorry, friend. But do you know what I do know? What’s that? I know another ice cold.
Capri sun would really hit the spot. I don’t want
Speaker 4: another one. I don’t want the first one. You gotta
Speaker 3: hydrate yourself. Drink up.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh gosh. Yes. I love that.
That was Detective Heart of America. And you’re thinking of slam Zone, the zone, the entire [00:16:00] world that was stuck in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Coming at you. Capri Sun by the pitcher. So whenever you want, you can make as much as you want. All natural Capri Sun drink mix.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. You, you just wanna create Slam Zone
Malcolm Collins: and I, I do, I wanna create Slam Zone. That’s what we should do. That is what prenatal, well, super high tech Slam Zone. What everyone thought nineties mad scientist was.
Right. You
Simone Collins: know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hmm. Things to think about there. Let, let me give you another quote that might, might elicit some thoughts again, from Sam Buns, we think of time as being continuous, as involving one event following , causally after a proceeding event. But living within the digital archive disintegrates our basic linear perception of time.
Since every era is equally available and all events are potentially happening at the same time, the chain of causality and influence breaks down completely. When you think of musicians, artists, [00:17:00] writers, and filmmakers as responding to those who came before them generationally. For instance, Bob Dylan admired and initially imitated Woody Guthrie, but he also rebelled and created his own style departing from Guthrie’s, folksy pop populism, and adding intensely personal and surrealistic touches.
Changes in the arts always work this way. One generation responds to the previous generation, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were reaching to Joseph Conrad, Edith Wharton, and Henry James.
While Henry James was reacting to Hawthorne and Emerson and so on and so forth. Sometimes I wonder if this will ultimately result in a state of cultural affairs in which fresh artistic creation stops entirely. And I think that’s a really good point. I mean, so many of the artistic journeys that I’m aware of from like the, the Beatles and the Beach Boys to Authors that I really liked were.
Definitely riffing on like the people right before them. And I don’t see why this shouldn’t be possible for people to take inspiration from people at any point in [00:18:00] history, but I do wonder if, if it makes traction impossible to gain. You know, like there’s, there’s no, like, how can you catch on too? And how can you be influential if everyone’s listening to someone slightly different?
You know what I mean? There’s no critical mass.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: I still think that people are able to build on other people regardless of when they existed in history. Like you don’t have to build on someone who existed, just, you know, who works 10 years before you did.
Or who is, is, is con creating content at the same time that you are. But I also feel like part of the issue is that people aren’t going to be able to get the traction or critical mass that they need. Like one of the reasons why Hemingway got big was because a lot of people started reading his work and talking about him at the same time.
And how are new people going to be able to contribute to the cultural blockchain to, to become icons? Culturally speaking, when [00:19:00] there isn’t a critical mass of people all kind of forced or, or a, a captive audience like, oh, how can I put this? Linear time creates a captive audience because everyone is just at the whims of whatever is available at the time, right?
Mm-hmm. Whatever the newest book or movie or radio show or TV show might be, right, but now everything is available at once. There isn’t a sufficiently large captive audience looking for something novel. To be able to be talking about you at once, to be able to then build upon what you have contributed to human culture on the whole.
Does that make sense? Like I, I worry that there won’t be enough traction.
Malcolm Collins: Mm. I can understand what you’re saying. But it’s not that we don’t get figures like say an asma gold who build a sizable following and represent a new cultural force.
Simone Collins: I don’t, does he, I think he just represents kind of the views of.
Your average based American, [00:20:00]
Malcolm Collins: I am gonna push back here. I think the new right is significantly politically different from the old, right. To an extent that really is meaningful. And you can watch our episodes on like the anthropology of the new writer or something more about this, to call it a completely new cultural movement or rather the, the, the reclamation of an older cultural movement in the United States over the the old rights former dominance.
And it is like, if you watch a figure like ESMA Gold, ‘cause I have, you know, reporters I talk to, you know, I’ve gotta send them like Asma Gold n who I’m like, this is, this is what’s in the right, right now. Right? Somebody like Nur the way he talks that he’s a v tuber, the way he acts that he comes off is entirely new, right?
Like, this is not, especially for a right wing space, you know, the flamboyant dress, the, you know, even, even us, you know, this is,
Simone Collins: I don’t know, right Wing am Radio shock Jocks had stylistic ways of talking and commented on what was happening in real time. The format is different. Like the tech is [00:21:00] novel.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. The delivery is novel. I don’t think that they, I I hear there is similarities between nug zor and the classic am shock jock that I hadn’t considered. They do have a lot of similarities to them now that you put it that way. Because I used to listen to conservative am shock jocks when I was a kid because my parents did.
Oh. Which is funny. Is that what we’ve become conservative radio shock jocks of our generation.
Simone Collins: It’s filling the same kind of void. It’s the thing that people are having playing in the background of their lives as they go about doing things. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: We’re people listen to their AM radio shop jock while they like drove to work or were doing laundry, or we’re doing, you know, drudge work at, at the, at the workplace.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. More broadly the culture of the new right, I do think is, is meaningfully new. And I do think that you get meaningful new cultures bubbling up, but they emerge in places and within things that we do not recognize as culture because we are so queued to old scenes. So if you look at cultural shifts that [00:22:00] happened in the eighties and in the nineties and in the seventies, what drove the cultural shift was predominantly subcultures, whether it was hippie or grunge or goth or anything like that.
Right.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: The reason why you don’t get new subcultures being born today is because when they are born, they do not look like that. The old subcultures that you saw in those periods were born from young people who were accumulating in locations and in scenes that were often counterculture, that had unique ways of presenting yourself and unique identities you were trying to get across.
Mm-hmm. And in a modern context what environments have done that? It’s been games, it’s been you know, let’s say Minecraft in fact, Minecraft is probably larger as a scene, as a place. I’m not talking about as a video game, I’m talking about as a social scene.
[00:23:00]
Simone Collins: So are you saying like Roblox is the new Harajuku.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, like Roblox is the new Harajuku. And within communities like Roblox, you have subcultures that are meaningful and that cycle over the lifetime of one of these, you know, products or environments. Mm-hmm. And it’s not just there. You also see this in the streamers, in the vtu space, everything like that.
This is new. V tubers are new. Especially conservative.
Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. And yet huge, huge and hugely influential as well. And was in, you know, from. The aughts to [00:24:00] now, you know, you had the the Death of Fortune during that period. I love when younger people are like, so like, oh, you guys seem like boomers talking about, you were talking about like the death of Fortune.
And I was like, bro, you either, either you are my age or you weren’t alive at the height of four chan. Right. Like that this is when I, when I was young was when that was big. I don’t know what,
Simone Collins: yeah, like Jeffrey Epstein was influential in Fortune. He old. Was right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That is he’s old.
So, but that culture was really important for like generative online culture for a period it generated big scenes, consider the Brownies, right?
Like that was a fad that grew and got big and had a giant culture around it and then died.
Simone Collins: That’s true.
Malcolm Collins: You know, is true.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And, and the brownies were, I would say, significantly more culturally distinct than and likely in [00:25:00] terms of total identified people than goth culture ever was, than punk culture ever was potentially even than hidden culture was.
Simone Collins: No, I totally disagree. I mean, there, there weren’t like you, you couldn’t find in any random small town. A Brony clothing store where you could find like the hippie store. You could find the goth store. You know what I mean? Well, it
Malcolm Collins: might be because that wasn’t how they purchased their differentiators.
It’s through clothing stores.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I, I don’t know. I mean, I think I, I’m trying to actually think through this. In, in well, I think the reason why the Brony movement got so much larger than those other movements is because it didn’t require that people who were in it publicly identify as members.
Right. I mean, some of the more extreme ones did, but, but the vast majority did not. Outside of like online avatars and stuff like that. Yeah. So that was, you know, interesting.
Simone Collins: Well, what you’re describing [00:26:00] is, is when you have a small enough community where there can be. History and people building on each other.
Then you, you can have culture creation and, and this innovation. What you’re describing though, in all of these instances is, is constrained communities where this is able to happen.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this makes a lot of sense. What allowed for the Brony culture to be born in the first place?
Mm-hmm. By the way, one of my favorite videos that we made is, is how far right? My, the, my Little Pony show actually was. Yeah. And you haven’t seen that episode. It’s hilarious. ‘cause it’s like actually true. It’s super, they have like literal anti-communist episodes where the communist sign is the same sign that they used today, the Blue equal mark for like, LGBT groups and stuff like that.
Speaker: You can have a nightmare if you never dream.
Speaker 2: I’m sorry, I’m just having a hard time understanding. Different talents lead to different [00:27:00] opinions, which lead to bitterness and misery.
Malcolm Collins: Like it was, it’s wild how it, it’s a literal. Show argues that you shouldn’t be racist theocracy when people take jobs in accordance with the racial proficiencies. Yeah. Like it’s, it’s, it is wild. Anyway.
Simone Collins: Yeah, watch
Malcolm Collins: that episode. Hold, hold on. What I wanted to make clear is what allowed the birth culture in the first place was that you had a rigid enough culture within four chan at the time, which is where the Bernie culture was born, that you could be radically sive by saying, you know what, no, I’m gonna be 100% wholesome and about little kids and about traditional ideas of goodness.
Mm-hmm. Which was really subversive to four chan culture of that period.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Right. And so you were able to create something that was. Antagonistic to that, which was huge with an online culture. The core online culture at the time was troll and angry and mean [00:28:00] and pessimistic, and it was what if we create an inversion of this?
But you don’t always need that to create new subcultures. A great and modern example of a subculture that produces a lot of content that I very much enjoy is the SCP community. Are you familiar?
Simone Collins: What is that? No.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Now that I’m describing it from scratch, it might be a little bit harder to describe than I thought.
So it is a shared. Community of storytellers Okay. Have crafted a very detailed lore around a universe in which something called the SCP exists. What is their SCP is an organization that captures stores supernatural events and beings. Think of it like a men in black, but for the supernatural.
Okay. And they have like a very detailed [00:29:00] Wikipedia, very large communities they create. And what’s interesting about it is it’s like there’s canon within the SEP world. There’s like ways that things get voted into being canonically. An SCP. Creature. So examples of SEP creatures you may have seen because you’ve likely seen a lot of it and not know it.
I’m pretty sure Slender Man started as an SEP phenomenon. What another one that was much more clearly in the SEP community was, have you seen that giant figure that has sirens on his head?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And it’s very late siren head. Mm-hmm. That siren head. Yeah. That’s an example of an SAP. So there’s, there’s a, actually just look up, SS are, it’s a cool community ‘cause I like lore.
And so I love looking up like long breakdowns of like lores that people have created around. And I love scary stories. When I go on long flights, I’ll download scary stories to listen to. And a lot of that,
Simone Collins: yeah. The SEP Foundation community is a massive collaborative internet based creative writing product project dedicated to producing [00:30:00] horror and sci-fi stories about containing anomalous entities.
Originating from a 2007 four chan post. A community operates as a user-driven, wiki based universe where members write, critique and vote on stories called files or tales, building a shared decentralized lore. That is fascinating.
Malcolm Collins: Right? That sounds cool. Like you read that, like that sounds cool.
Simone Collins: Well, but again, this is, and, and, but that, that’s one of those things where like there is, it’s constrained.
They have a process, there is a wiki, there are votes. And that’s one of my key questions is do we need a sense of a clear timeline in order to craft a new culture? And I’ll give you another quote from Sam Bun to kick off this. Like, is this a firm thing? He wrote in Plato’s dialogue Ion He Write, he describes how inspiration works.
The first poet was inspired directly by the muse with an iron filling attached to a load stone. The subsequent generations of poets are [00:31:00] like iron fillings attached to that first filling. The force of inspiration is still present, but it is exerted, indirectly and weakens with every generation. Thus, the influence of the original impetus wanes until presumably we culturally reset and reconnect to the magnetic source.
Directly, gen Z finds itself in a state where, in which all the fillings have been scattered on the ground, perhaps experiencing some ambient attraction from the load stone, but unable to really connect with it. I liked his metaphor there. But like, like the sort of the wiki’s been lost. You just hear about siren head.
You just hear about these things, but you can’t really build upon them because y you’re missing the fact that there actually was and, and is this, this, that like SEP exists and that there is this place where people, I think is if you want
Malcolm Collins: a subculture today, you can find a subculture to be a part. But they’re not as in your face as they were historically, because there’s not a reason to be in your face.
Why [00:32:00] dress differentially if you’re not even going to school because of COVID. Right. You know, like why if all your friends are online and that’s the cool place to be, why invest all of this money in these differential outfits and everything like that outside of how they make you appear on camera?
Right.
Simone Collins: Well, what I see actually, instead I, with young people, with really a lot of people, is people, get slotted into kind of like, a cart on, on a road where, you know, like the, the, the wheel holes get like worn down and you get slotted into it. They fall into these algorithmic holes and start dressing for their algorithmic ecosystem.
And so they have this, this subculture that they take on sometimes unknowingly because they, and perhaps many of their immediate, like, convenience friends, people they work with or go to school with or live with, have also fallen into this rut where then they start dressing this way. But what I’m starting to come away with here [00:33:00] too is this feeling like when it comes to culture.
If you are a feed-based person and if you passively consume media online, you will not be able to contribute to crafting culture or witness the development of culture. You are, you are basically in this chaotic world where all the fillings are on the ground or like you’re in the ball pit or you’re in the loose snow and, and there is no, there is no traction, there is no sense, there is no narrative, there is no progression.
But if you want to, you can choose to enter one of these closed spheres where there actually is development and generation taking place where there is the wiki and the lore and the development or like in the anime world where everyone is kind of watching the new show at the same time and getting inspired by it and then building upon it and building upon it.
And these new trends are coming at, new genres are emerging, or you are on YouTube and you are sort of evolving with the new way that people are, are [00:34:00] coming to. Consume news media and understand the world through this like network and, and broadly connected groupings of, of YouTube influencers and things like that, right?
But you have to be one or the other. Like if, if you’re, if you can either be an active consumer of media, online or passive consumer of media, and that will determine whether or not you are witnessing and contributing to culture creation. Does that seem like it makes sense.
Malcolm Collins: Active. Yeah. Well, I mean, I also think that it is possible for things to be more atomized.
So consider our wider cultural circle, which is this new right cultural circle, right? Mm-hmm. And I can look at the overlapping YouTubers we have and, and you know, these days we dress like medieval people, right? Like, we have a very distinct style of dress that people would say, I’m wearing a, a gammon vest and a, a medieval shirt, and you’re wearing, you know, full medieval gammon like head thing and everything.
They, that historically people [00:35:00] would’ve looked at us and assumed that we’re either part of a religious cult or part of some subculture that they’re not aware of. And yet, if you look at
where the other people, like the people who watch us, the other things that they’re watching mm-hmm. The other things that they’re watching, they don’t dress like us.
Like n taku looks like a completely different subculture than us. And Asma gold looks like another subculture still. Mm-hmm. And legally it looks like another and equally distinct subculture still. And, and that’s important there. It’s not that everyone in sort of our influencer social, oh, and Romanian v Tuber, the Romanian TV guy, right?
Troll guy. Again, another unique and distinct subculture, distinct from all of these other subcultures. Who’s one of the other ones that talks in our spaces? Goth, conservative guy, whatever his name is, again, completely distinct. Tim Pool, again, completely distinct, maybe somewhat similar. Toma Gold, but not really.
So with every one of these influencers you are seeing not like a well, we [00:36:00] are the weirdos. We, we are dressed no more weirdly than Nux or, or leaflet are dressed on their shows. No more weirdly than Romanian TV is dressed on his show, right? Like,
Simone Collins: well, they’re v tubers. So,
Malcolm Collins: they could choose a, there’s a lot of v tubers out there that choose more traditional models where I wouldn’t be saying this.
So there’s a V YouTuber. I don’t like him as much as the other ones, but he’s a dresses as like a little crusader guy who like bounces around a screen. And I wouldn’t be saying, he looks weird. I’d be saying, okay, he’s trying to be like trat in some way. But Leaflet wants to look like a goo girl, right?
Like, that’s pretty distinct in, and that’s one of her personas. And then she’s got the Nongo girl persona this like a little elf thing. And then Nno is a spectral Jew. I, I don’t know, he’s got a little
Simone Collins: spectral Jew,
Malcolm Collins: some sort of Jewish specter. Okay. That’s a, i, I don’t know if he’s supposed to be a specter, maybe a ghoul of some sort.
And Romanian TV is definitely a troll. Yeah, which is an interesting model for him to have chosen because it like goes [00:37:00] with his voice really well. Like I imagine a troll would have that sort of like very. Cynical and exasperated voice.
Simone Collins: I don’t know, but I love it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: I, I, I, I, yeah, don’t know exactly what you’re talking.
Should we do VT tubing
Malcolm Collins: instead, Simone? Is this, is this a problem that we’re not V tubers? Is that
Simone Collins: we look cartoonish enough? I think we’ve, you know, met the threshold. We don’t need additional avatars to look more cartoony. The glass help a lot, so I’m not too concerned about that.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and a lot of v YouTubers are people who are pretending to be much younger than they are, or who need to, you know, use sex appeal, which I’ve never we’re, I don’t think that we’re gonna be good at that.
Simone Collins: We’re not selling on sex appeal. What about culture hyperinflation? Because I do feel like people are so overwhelmed by the fire hose of everything being put out there now, plus now there’s all this AI based generation that there’s just like. So much. Sam Buns in his piece again, quotes Cormack McCarthy in an [00:38:00] interview saying quote, I don’t know, one of our culture is going to survive.
Or if we survive, if you look at the Greek plays, they’re really good and there’s just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that’s just the future. Looking back at us, anything you can think of, there’s going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them.
I don’t care whether it’s art, literature, poetry, drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it, we’ll wash out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don’t think so. And I think he makes a good point. And with ai, we’re gonna have amazing, high quality everything in a billion iterations.
How is that going to affect culture creation? And when you, even when you have these small communities, are, are they just gonna be. I mean, I just dunno, how is anything going to be able to gain traction at that point when you have cultural question.
Malcolm Collins: And that’s why we need to gain traction with our AI system, our fab.ai.
Try it to create [00:39:00] your own book. But then we have the agents, the agents can do bigger things than just stories. Like if you wanted to craft lore or book or Warhol, they could do that for you, right? And that is something that is really cool. But you know, we’ve gotta be the first to, to gain traction on that front.
Simone Collins: What I had posited in the past before, I don’t know, we started experiencing this in reality, so when I was thinking about this all in the abstract, was that we would see techno feudalism form around verified humans. That there would be this, you know, the crisis of the dead internet would really hit everyone.
Then people would start to form communities around known humans. And then there would be these sort of hybrid meet meet offline once or twice a year at like a conference or at local meetups or whatever. And then the rest of the time hang out online asynchronously by consuming each other’s content.
Maybe having [00:40:00] hangouts online every now and then live streams, et cetera, where you like, you know, that this community of people, they’re all real. ‘cause I’ve met them in person. I meet them in person once or twice a year, and then I see them online and I know it’s them and I have that comfort of knowing it’s them, but everything.
But like the problem is now that it’s really happening, people are not actually that obsessed with having it be human. They’re like, no, like the AI is better. Yeah. Like
Malcolm Collins: whatever. Yeah. No, no. And I think this is something we’ve actually seen really aggressively. The, if, if we talk about like even the handful of influencers that I’ve been talking about, who I, I listen to.
These influencers are predominantly v tubers. They could beis and I wouldn’t know the difference.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, I, I, I would, well also it
Simone Collins: doesn’t,
Malcolm Collins: but not five
Simone Collins: years from Well, you’ve seen people using, I mean, like, you don’t have to be a v YouTuber to be convincing either. We’re basically at the point where you could have someone who looked like us on a podcast and people wouldn’t necessarily know
Malcolm Collins: with ai.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, [00:41:00] yeah. You could, you could create a convincing version of us. That’s a good point.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: That sucks. How long how long do we have left? We’re doing
Simone Collins: all this. Well, there’s already, you can already use a skin where, like the, you, you’ve seen all the clips of like, guys. Showing a split screen where like they’re talking and then they can get a hot girl to talk.
Like, you know, you could just put a hot girl’s skin on you.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Asma Gold was talking about this, and I have another episode I’m gonna do on this. ‘cause there’s been some like big media outlets like that used to be like mainstream, like gaming outlets that have been bought and replaced everyone with ai.
And like actual ai, like if you go to the profile pages of people and you click like download the button, he showed that it said like, generated with GPT like their, their face, their image, their profile picture and that everything they’re doing is ai. . And Asal was in saying, and now when he sees a hot girl on Instagram or whatever, he just ignores Zoom or doesn’t follow them if the account was created after June. He just assumes
Simone Collins: that they’re not real. Yeah. Because
Malcolm Collins: he
assumes
Malcolm Collins: they’re not real.
Simone Collins: Yeah. He, I’ve heard him say things like, if [00:42:00] you see a hot chick online she is not real.
Malcolm Collins: Well, that might re normalize actually, actually, this could be a good thing because one of the problems with the internet is it’s really effed up ideas of what a normal body looks like. Yeah. And so you will have people online and the predominant like, oh, she’s a whatever, like a six or like a, you know, I see guys online constantly say this about women who are objectively.
Nines or tens in the real world because what they are is judging her against all the other women in their feed and not against all of the women at a Walmart or an airport, right? Like actual human women. And they, they don’t understand that they are making dramatic misjudgments, which are gonna lead to them being you know, single forever and cooked and, and die of genetic failure.
But that’s what happens when you go out there and you think that you are showing other guys by having these ridiculous standards for women online. And you think that you’re signaling to them that you’re, I don’t know, getting was like super hot women or something like [00:43:00] that. And that the women, their ways like, aren’t that great.
What you really signal to them is they’re like, wow, that guy is genetically cocked. Because somebody with those standards certainly isn’t getting married and having many, many kids. And I say not having many kids because it means that you’re gonna have to compromise so much to get a woman within your attractiveness barrier that she’s likely not gonna be able to wanna put in the work ethic.
You know, she’s not gonna make the other compromises for you to, to have tons of kids. ‘cause, you know, having a, a large family, it’s a lot of work. So, wait, where was I going with this? But if in a world where every young person is assuming that every girl they see online is fake they just don’t key to those people at all.
Like, it removes the power of the hot influencer. And you know, ‘cause when everyone’s hot, no one’s hot, right?
Speaker 5: And when everyone’s super,
no one will be.
Malcolm Collins: Like, when you remove that power from the hot influencer, maybe people don’t key to it in the same way. [00:44:00]
Simone Collins: Don’t you also think though, that we’re gonna reach a point at which most kids. Just don’t see the internet as real.
I mean, we certainly grew up at a time when we interacted with people online. We knew they were real. And I think one, a lot of parents are just keeping their kids offline, period. And you and I have only become more conservative with our kids. Internet access over time, more restrictive. You know, at first we were like, yeah, whatever.
Like, go on YouTube, find something you like. Now we’re like, absolutely not. Because we’ve seen what the algo does and the kind of stuff that it, that kids watch and just the brain rot of it all. I think most kids probably aren’t really gonna grow up that online, aside from really constrained, you know, games and learning software.
And maybe, maybe what we’re gonna see in the future is actually very little internet [00:45:00] consumption in a very. Alive with AI world, right? Like kids will be both extremely online and not, they’ll be surrounded by smart devices. They can ask a question of anything in their house. They’re being monitored by everything in their house.
Right. Like the internet is everywhere, but also they’re not like going on some computer and interacting with people. Their, their interactions are with real people in the real world, like through friend groups or school or clubs or
mm-hmm.
Sports. I don’t know. I, I, I, I actually don’t think kids are gonna really, I, I maybe through games.
I don’t know. I just, things are, are becoming so absurd to me. I feel like there might, one reaction might just be. Let’s just form Ludite communities. And there will be, I mean, I, we’ve seen plenty of parenting communities that, that are very like anti-tech. Or maybe there’ll be some sudden loss of data or people will, will try [00:46:00] to create a fake sudden loss of data to like, make things make sense.
Sand bun in his article wrote, poets have sometimes fantasized about total cultural destruction. Something like the burning of the library of Alexandria to escape the sense that everything has already been done, has already been written. I wouldn’t go that far since everything I love is part of the past.
Maybe some brave artists can find a root back to the original magnet, a root that would presumably lie through the great works of the past. Since the past is where we all start to feel magnetism acting on us. In any case, something needs to give the links of the chain need to reconnect.
Malcolm Collins: I disagree. You do.
I think that we are entering a new cultural world and we see things bubbling out of it that are cooler than stuff like the SEP foundation is so cool.
Simone Collins: That is really cool. Well, and it it, but there’s a chain there. There’s a chain. They’ve, they’ve built the structure that lacks.
Malcolm Collins: Well there, there have been cultural phenomenon and moments [00:47:00] that have happened during this period of history, but we forget them because they appear so different from the ones historically.
I mean, look, there was a generation that might have grown up without Goss or something, but they grew up with Pokemon Go. Now Pokemon Go. You might not consider a traditional subculture, but when Pokemon Go was huge, that was one bigger than most major subcultures ever were. And two really, really cool.
Like you could go anywhere in your city and there were just people waiting to talk and interact with you and play a stupid AR game. Mm-hmm. And the, the sense of community that people felt during that time was so weird. Like it, do you remember that? Right?
Simone Collins: Yeah. That was wild to just. Go out in Deep Eum in Dallas and wander around the streets and like Absolutely.
Everyone was on Pokemon Go.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And all
Simone Collins: were like me all playing the same game at the same time with people Felt so [00:48:00] bizarre. That level of social cohesion. Have we ever seen something like that before? I mean, not even at protests, you know, like protests are weird in that it’s just like people kind of hanging out with their own little social group within it.
You know, everyone has their little sign and you’re walking.
Malcolm Collins: That’s actually, I’ve never. Have I ever been to like a protest? Protest? I don’t think I have.
Simone Collins: Well, you, you worked in DC you kind of just go to protest. ‘cause like I something to do, you know, it’s, it’s what I would do with my friends college. I never went.
You went to protest
Malcolm Collins: when you were in DC
Simone Collins: Oh my God. All the time. Like, what do you wanna do this weekend? I don’t know. Well, there’s this protest happening like, you wanna go? Sure. Was
Malcolm Collins: this your roommate who was dragging you to these, who was dragging you to protest?
Simone Collins: Random friends. I mean, remember I was an environmentalist.
So there’s always something to protest when you’re an environmentalist. Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: No. You actually went to environmentalist protests.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But like, here’s the thing about environmentalist protests. You show up, people have their signs and stuff and I don’t know. I, I would just take pictures, walk around, talk with your [00:49:00] friends, get ice cream at the end.
Like you’re not, it’s not like this social cohesion thing. I think most people go to protests. Because there are no more third spaces anymore. It’s too expensive to hang out at a coffee shop. Like, what are you gonna do to like, I don’t know, feel a part of something? Well, there’s this protest going on. I think that’s why a lot of boomers are showing up at protests.
They’re like lonely. You know, people think that they’re like deranged and angry and they’re more just like,
Malcolm Collins: no, I think they are deranged and angry.
Simone Collins: Okay. There’s that too. But also third spaces are dead. And, you know, you can’t just hang out in a library and meet people. It’s, that’s full of the, the homeless schizophrenic people now.
So you can’t go there. So instead you have to you know, protests are very G Oh, you
Malcolm Collins: have to protest for us to not kick out the homeless, schizophrenic people from the library.
Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: There we go. You can’t, you can’t meet at the library anymore, but you can meet at the protest defending their right to take that space from you.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Exactly. That, that’s where all the non, well, I mean this schizo are [00:50:00] around people also show up there too, but.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway interesting concept. I’d love to hear our fan sauce on this. I do not have ironed out sauce on this, so I don’t have some like, big position to defend on this point. So yeah, whatever you guys think.
Let’s, let’s is, are new cultures dead or did they just change what they look like so much that we don’t recognize them?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and also I, at least I have a slightly clearer picture here, is that culture will advance in sort of walled off communities where people are still experiencing thing in things in linear time that are constrained enough in their like fandom or format, like V tubers.
You can see. Cultural evolution YouTube news commentators. You can see cultural evolution, animate, cultural evolution. Oh my gosh.
Malcolm Collins: I just a great example of another cultural movement that happened recently. Okay. Which is a good example, I, I think it fits a lot of your criteria, is there was [00:51:00] this for a period very popular type of YouTube video that combined tours of dead malls with Sense Wave and Yes.
Retro
Speaker 7: Hey everyone, this is Dan Bell and this is my video tour of the Harrisburg Mall located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 8: to the.
Oh my God.
I knew it was true.
Speaker 7: Let’s do hear that someone’s in here.[00:52:00]
Nothing says, welcome to the dead Mall, like an old loud soda machine. Clinking and clanking away. Day and night. Happy Halloween. Everyone here.
Simone Collins: stuff. I was just watching another one of them. I, I was watching a Hobby Lobby tour of that genre just yesterday. Yes.
Malcolm Collins: Great genre. I love it. It’s called like Dead Malls or something, like Look Up Dead.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. This one in particular was called like, I don’t know, like [00:53:00] retail anthropology, but yeah, it’s all the same genre.
Totally.
Malcolm Collins: But that, that as an artistic movement was certainly, I think one, a rich artistic movement. A yeah. Unique artistic movement. Yeah. And a distinct and temporarily distinct artistic movement. I don’t think there is popular anymore.
I mean, there is a period where I watched them call.
Simone Collins: No, I just, again, I just watched a Hobby Lobby one yesterday and I think it was published recently.
Malcolm Collins: Oh
Simone Collins: yeah. I mean, like, people are still doing it because I think, I mean, as retail falls apart, people are becoming fascinated with this like, short-lived experience of buying things from stores before everything goes back to what it was, which is so interesting to me.
‘cause, you know, the original format was. You would show up to like the store, and then you would ask the person to get whatever you wanted, like a pound of flour and they’d go back into the stockroom and get it. And now we’re essentially going back to that. Except it’s, it’s like on Amazon we’re saying, or on like DoorDash or Uber Eats, we’re saying, oh, stock boy, please get me this.
And then they retrieve the thing. For us, [00:54:00] it’s just the, the means of retrieval is slightly different due to changing infrastructure in communities. Right. But, but we’re just going back to what it was. We’re going back to the natural sustainable format because stores in the end are not, they made sense for a very specific period of, of infrastructural development.
Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.
Simone Collins: But it is ultimately so much more efficient to strategically deliver your goods from an organized, automated warehouse to. The final destination where, you know, it has already been purchased and sold. Right? Like holding something in stock in a store where you’re not sure it’s gonna be sold is very inefficient.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: So I do like that return. And so of course you’re gonna see this genre arise as people are like, oh, isn’t it crazy that this thing existed and let’s explore it because it’s gone now.
Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s also really trying to grab like, the concept of liminal [00:55:00] spaces, which has become big and aren’t
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like the creepy, the creepy art of
Malcolm Collins: spaces. Oh, a great one is the what is this big artistic movement? Another one it’s sort of related to SEP stuff but the the, I forget what it’s called. It’s called like the in-between or the underground or something. Yeah,
Simone Collins: that
Malcolm Collins: word. And it’s about where like you get trapped in like an endless empty office
Simone Collins: space.
The rental space. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I found a place,
it’s massive in there. It just goes on and on and on. All these rooms, this place builds them actually more like it remembers them, and the more times it remembers something, the less it does.
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s totally a thing. Okay. No, no, actually, I, I, I do, I came into this being like, this is really stuck in my head and I’m [00:56:00] not sure what to make of it. And I’m like, what’s the point of anything? I mean, ‘cause we’re passionate about culture crafting, right? Yeah. But what this is, it’s, it’s about if you want to craft culture, you need to find a stairway, right?
Where you can step on the stairs and get traction and push from something beneath you.
Malcolm Collins: Well, what’s
Simone Collins: you, you can’t craft culture in the ball pit. You can’t craft culture in the avalanche. And that is something you really have to keep in mind.
Malcolm Collins: But what’s positive about this Simone is that while. You still have unique and interesting cultures, whether it’s, you know, the SVP or Dead Mall or whatever, brownies, whatever.
These cultures are not as caustic to your culture as they are. So if you create a family culture and a family way of dressing and a family way of thinking and believing in morality, your core enemy is just the urban monoculture, right? Mm-hmm. You don’t need to worry about your kids peeling out over a subculture because things like the Minecraft culture, the SCP culture, they don’t demand that you [00:57:00] renounce your that’s true traditional way of dress and your faith and everything like that, right?
Mm-hmm. So they’re in many ways, much more compatible with culture crafting than historic
Simone Collins: culture. Well, if anything, yeah, it makes a family culture more appealing and attractive. Because kind of like a swaddle baby, like it’s a swaddle. You, you know where the walls are, you know, where you know what reality is, you know what the values are and the aesthetics are.
Whereas when, when you’re released from the swaddle, like, I don’t know if people have like seen like babies when they’re like, sometimes they have this like moment of like terror with like their arms and legs out and they’re like, oh my God. Like what is this? Like, like they start to hyperventilate a little bit.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, it’s five.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay, okay. We gotta run. But like, yeah, like they, they provide this meaning and sense of place where otherwise people feel like they’re falling a weightless through air. A question,
Malcolm Collins: Simone, a question. What are you making for the kids tonight? Macaroni cheese by any chance?
Simone Collins: No. I made the macaroni cheese last night and they barely ate it.
I’m probably just gonna make them sandwiches if they’ll like eat and run around if, do you [00:58:00] want mac and cheese over grilled cheese? If I’m, if that is
Malcolm Collins: no, what? I’d actually like it. What, what if you do a Casey D for me? Use some.
Simone Collins: I don’t have any tortilla left.
Malcolm Collins: Oh then a mac and cheese, or is mac and cheese easier?
Simone Collins: Grilled cheese would be the easiest.
Malcolm Collins: Grilled cheese make me a grilled cheese. Then
Simone Collins: two ‘cause they’re, you know.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we can save one if we don’t eat it, you know,
Simone Collins: I’ll just bring it up to your room. Like, do what you, you know, it’s grilled cheese. It’s not like I’m gonna use American cheese and bread that you bought from a store.
I mean, I made, I made sourdough homemade bread today, but of course you’re not gonna, no, it eatough it tastes
Malcolm Collins: disgusting and healthy. It’s really quite good bread. But
Simone Collins: yeah, it’s, it’s just very, it’s it’s very hearty. It’s too dense.
Malcolm Collins: I can eat like
Simone Collins: two bite. I, I gave, I gave Octavian a peanut butter sandwich today and he like, immediately was like, I need another one.
Whereas when I give him a peanut butter sandwich from the bread we make at home, they eat one and they’re like, okay, good. Like, I’m good. ‘cause it’s like, gives you something. [00:59:00] Anyway, I gotta run, get the kids. I love you. I’ll bring a sandwich to your room and if you have a productive evening.
Malcolm Collins: I hope so too.
I’m gonna, I’m gonna get this coding working really well. Agent coating is what I’m working on right now.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Good. All right. Love you.
Malcolm Collins: Love you too.
Simone Collins: For dinner. How about Curry? Because you have all these shta peppers that we need to go through and they’re not gonna go through themselves. So would you like Curry? I’m
Malcolm Collins: sorry to say this, but I just want something really light tonight. Like a girl cheese or something.
Simone Collins: Okay. I can make a grilled cheese.
No problem.
Good. Okay. Grilled cheese, man. Would you like me to bring it to your room? ‘cause I know you’re really trying to sprint on things and
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I am gonna be sprinting on code.
Simone Collins: Okay. Then I’ll bring it to your room. And, okay, cool.
Speaker 10: Okay. What are you doing? You telling scary [01:00:00] stories? Yeah, and, and, and I don’t, when I said before was once upon a time, dad picked up a car and landed on the ground his car. Like a big car? Yeah. Like this car. Wouldn’t that have been too heavy?
Speaker 11: I was, I was thinking it like, this is dad super strong? Is that how I did it? Yeah. Once upon a time, a ghost slam Dad in the head. Why is that your idea of a scary story? Once a upon time, a ghost slammed dad at his house laws and everything.

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1 hr 1 min
March 16 Gen Z Dating Behavior: This Is Crazy?!
Dive into the wild world of Gen Z dating with Malcolm and Simone Collins on Based Camp! In this eye-opening episode, we dissect a Substack post by steph on Miami’s pickup artist scene, where young men armed with Meta Ray-Ban glasses and cheesy lines are turning cold approaches into content gold. From “friction maxing” to stave off AI-induced cognitive decline, to women stealing Sweetgreen salads and buying drinks for strangers in NYC—dating has never been weirder.
We share practical tips, debunk red pill myths, explore why pickup isn’t really about women anymore, and reveal what romance novels teach us about ideal meet-cutes. Plus, Malcolm’s honest (and effective) pickup strategies from his single days. Whether you’re navigating apps, IRL encounters, or just curious about cultural shifts, this episode is packed with laughs, insights, and warnings for the future of romance. Don’t miss our thoughts on why colleges might still be the best spot for real connections!
Episode Notes
This was inspired by “gen z pick up artists are taking over my city” by a gen z substacker who goes by steph
Choice quotes from the article:
* Erick Ronaldo is one of the many Miami pickup creators making a killing in this market. He’s racked up over 1.3 million Instagram followers teaching young men how to “get dates with 8s and 9s.” For $17 a month, guys can sign up for his Modern Man Bootcamp, which includes three weekly coaching sessions and access to his personal arsenal of pickup lines.
* … “It’s no issue that his flirting techniques sound like they were cooked up by Mickey Mouse. Men don’t follow Erick for his AI-generated rizz — they’re there to watch his aspirational displays of hyper-confident masculinity. “Guys like watching other guys pick up girls because they don’t have the balls to do it themselves,” according to Polokidd, a fellow Miami pickup influencer with 1.6 million followers.”
FRICTION MAXXING:
“Ben, a 27-year-old living in Miami’s particularly flirty neighborhood of Brickell, told me he prefers cold approaching not only because it’s more efficient than waiting around for responses on the apps, but because it’s a great exercise in friction-maxxing. “I mean, you can’t ask ChatGPT to help with a response,” he explained. “You just gotta be yourself and see if she’s into you or not. There’s no better way to improve yourself and stand out as a man, too.””
Note: The term appears to have been coined and popularized by By Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a columnist for The Cut covering modern family life, who wrote an article in January titled: In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing: https://archive.is/l5KXr
WOMEN WANT IT (sort of)
“Do women even want to be asked out by a total stranger?
It seems that for most, the answer is YESomgpleaseGODplease* but with some very crucial caveats.
Although there’s no shortage of eager men lurking on the apps and in their DMs, Gen Z women are quite loudly yearning for IRL meet-cutes. The girls are out here stealing Sweetgreen salads, buying men drinks, even doing laps at run clubs — all for a shot at retiring from the humiliation ritual that is online dating in 2026. At this point, landing a response to how’d you two meet? that doesn’t start with a like or swipe is the reigning status symbol of our time.
Alexis, a 24-year-old Miami native, told me she recently deleted all the dating apps in hopes her next boyfriend will come and find her in the wild. While she’s all for men shooting their shot, she does really wish they would work on their aim a bit first.
“I would love to be asked out in person, but not how these Miami guys are doing it,” she says. “It’d be cool if he saw me at a coffee shop and asked what book I’m reading. Maybe he drops a note at my table. I don’t know, I just want the interaction to be genuine. These guys always manage to turn me off.””
This is why men should be reading romance novels and not following pick-up artists.
Or perhaps they can ask AI for a list of all the ways the female protagonists in the top 100 romance novels met their male love interests.
E.g. from Perplexity
High‑frequency “meet” patterns
* Workplace (colleagues, boss/employee, client, rival professional, bodyguard).
* Friends to lovers (childhood friends, college friends, long‑time colleagues).
* Enemies/rivals to lovers (professional rivals, family enemies, legal opponents, competing businesses).
* Forced proximity (stuck in a cabin, snowstorm, road trip, only one hotel room, trapped together on assignment).
* One‑night stand / fling that turns serious, often followed by a surprise pregnancy or reunion.
* Fake relationship (pretend dating, fake engagement or marriage for social, work, or immigration reasons).
* Marriage before romance (arranged marriage, marriage of convenience, Vegas/drunk marriage).
* Best friend’s sibling / sibling’s best friend (meets through family or long acquaintance).
* Neighbor or new arrival to town (next‑door neighbor, new person in small town, landlord/tenant).
* Guardian / protector setups (bodyguard, security detail, assigned protector, cop/detective on her case).
* Rescue or crisis (he helps her after an accident, threat, robbery, or during war/disaster).
* Mistaken identity / secret identity (thinks he’s someone else; he’s undercover, royal, or billionaire in disguise).
* Online or anonymous contact (dating apps, chatrooms, email, texting, online gaming).
* Teacher/student in adult‑appropriate contexts (grad student and advisor, coach and adult athlete, mentor and trainee).
* Reunions/second chance (exes who cross paths again, high‑school sweethearts, war‑separated lovers).
* Family or wedding events (meet at weddings, engagement parties, reunions, as bridal party members).
* Travel / vacation (seatmates on planes, tour groups, destination weddings, stranded abroad).
* Shared project / mission (heist crew, investigative partners, saving a business, political campaign, joint research).
* Sports and performance (teammate, coach, rival athlete, trainer, or someone tied to the sports world).
* Medical or therapy setting (doctor/patient’s relative, physical therapist, trauma counselor, combat medic).
* Supernatural / fantasy bond (fated mates, magical contracts, captor/guard in fantasy kingdoms, paranormal protector).
Typical “how they first meet” scenes
* Accidental collision in daily life (literal bump‑in, spilled coffee, dropped papers, bookstore/library run‑ins).
* She overhears or witnesses him doing something decisive or heroic (arguing a case, fighting a duel, saving someone).
* He hires her or she hires him (assistant, nanny, consultant, contractor, investigator).
* She shows up at the wrong place or situation (wrong wedding, wrong room, mistaken meeting).
* Forced living situation (roommates, house‑sit swap, co‑owners of property, inheritance conditions).
* He is tied to her family (family rival, guardian, benefactor, cousin’s best friend, sibling’s ex).
* Crisis services (she calls a tow truck, security, tech support; he’s the responder).
THIS IS NOT ABOUT MARRIAGE, OR EVEN WOMEN, FOR MEN
“Even getting laid, the ostensible end goal of any pickup artist, mostly exists in the abstract. Clavicular may spend his nights roaming Miami’s sidewalks rizzing up ladies for content, but Gen Z’s it-boy of the month says he feels mostly indifferent about the opposite sex — impressing them, dating them, sleeping with them. He told The New York Times a few weeks back that simply knowing he could have sex with a woman is in some ways better than the deed itself, which he gains nothing from.
This new crop of manfluencers may market their content as advice for getting girls, but their messaging tells a very different story. If a woman is referenced at all, she’s a mirror to assess his own standing, a stress test in his quest for self-mastery. Above finding hookups or a connection, the objective here is becoming That Guy. An alpha. A boss. A high-value male. Someone who picks up chicks not because he needs anything from them, but simply because he can.
This is where the Gen Z pickup artist diverges from his fedora-wearing predecessor of the early 2000s. The archetypal pickup artist, for all his ethical shortcomings, was at least pretty clear on the mission: meet women, convince them to sleep with you. They called themselves artists because they treated seduction like a craft, swapping feedback and fresh insights in anonymous forums to help each other understand (and of course manipulate) the female psyche.
The big names in Gen Z pickup are operating under a brand new set of incentives. The tactics they promote don’t necessarily need to work, they just need to hook the guys watching their content at home. In fact, the more insane his pickup line, the more bewildered her reaction, the better his clip will likely perform.”
WHAT WOMEN ACTUALLY WANT
“All the single women I know and have scrolled past in TikTok comment sections are craving the same things: chemistry, understanding, a cinematic story they can flex to their friends over spicy margs. The dating tips being fed to their mate pool just so happens to be optimizing for a very different set of objectives.”
AGAIN: This is why men should be reading romance novels and not following pick-up artists.
Episode Transcript
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I read this Substack post on Gen Z dating that had me absolutely entranced shocked, surprised, and I feel like it, it tells us a lot about the state of dating potential marriage, romance, where things are going wrong. And even just dating advice and, and how the red pill has evolved over time or pick up artistry in general.
Oh,
Malcolm Collins: interesting. Has, has, has red pill is integrated into mainstream dating?
Simone Collins: No, no, I don’t. It’s so weird. I I, I’m just, we’re gonna jump right into it because I feel like there’s. My mind has been blown on multiple levels, and man, gen Z dating is weird. We’re gonna, we’re gonna include some practical tips in here.
We’re gonna include where things are going wrong, but most interestingly, I think are just the latest trends and how bizarre it is in a world in which dating markets are broken, how are they breaking? How are they getting weird? I never would ex expected these things, [00:01:00] but they also make a lot of sense. So let’s get right into it.
This all came from this amazing piece by a sub stacker who goes by Steph. She’s Gen Z. She writes about Gen Z issues in all lowercase. That’s how she describes herself. And this particular Substack piece is called Gen Z pickup. Artists are taking over my city. She’s in Miami. Or is is your mom Miami?
Miami pickup
Malcolm Collins: artist
Simone Collins: would take over Miami? Not Miami.
Malcolm Collins: Miami is the city of pickup artists. I, I feel that
Simone Collins: they, it’s
Malcolm Collins: disgusting appear there by what’s, what’s the, the word? A a a, a biogenesis. They just like, if you leave like a corner in Miami there for too long a pickup artist just appears if you of virtue your eyes from it.
Simone Collins: Well, it’s so full of, of men, I think, who, who want to have this very certain type of woman. And, and multiple versions of her all at the same time. Like we were out to dinner with one couple in Miami at one point, and they were telling us about this Pilates studio where the, [00:02:00] the, the teacher was approached by this man who’s like, Hey, you, you’ve charged me three different times, like the, this, I’m, I’m gonna contest this.
Where did this come from? And she’s like, well, here are the. The three subscriptions you were charged for. And they were all his mistresses and he was like, oh, nevermind. It’s fine. I, I didn’t realize and that, that is Miami and I just, I, I hate it and it’s disgusting and I’m really glad we’re not there anymore.
Thank goodness all his MIT rest in peace Pilates studio. I know. And I don’t even know it. It’s just fantastic. But yeah, so. This is where it’s being taken over. This is what she’s experiencing. I’m gonna read some choice quotes and, and here we’re just gonna kick it off. Eric Ronaldo is one of the mini Miami pickup creators making a killing in this market. He’s racked up over 1.3 million Instagram followers, teaching young men how to quote, get dates with eights and nines. For $17 a month, guys can sign up for his Modern Man Bootcamp, which includes three weekly coaching sessions and access to his personal [00:03:00] arsenal of pickup lines, and, and she continues a little bit later.
It’s no issue that his flirting techniques sound like they were cooked up by Mickey Mouse. Men don’t follow Eric for his AI generated Riz. They’re there to watch his aspirational displays of hyper confident masculinity. Guys like watching other guys pick up girls because they don’t have the balls to do it themselves.
According to Polo Kid, a fellow Miami pickup influencer with 1.6 million followers.
Malcolm Collins: Now guys watch, like you watch another person play video games, other people go pick up girls.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And that’s what’s happening. So when you go to these guys Instagram pages and TikTok pages, it is, and this is also a thing, the new trend.
They’re wearing those RayBan glasses, the Facebook meta RayBan glasses where they’re recording and they’re walking around Miami with their glasses on record. Just delivering the cheesiest. Pickup lines to women like in one the [00:04:00] guy approaches this woman in a grocery store and she’s looking at bananas and he picks up.
Like a bunch of bananas and she’s like, yeah, I think mine is, my, mine is bigger than yours. And it just goes on from there. And there, there are, are melons involved and a, you know, but, and she’s dressed like a total thought. I mean, they’re, they’re all wearing like extremely mini like, revealing, athleisure, very tight use nothing to the, that’s Miami
Malcolm Collins: for you.
Simone Collins: I know it’s like they’re all asking for it. But it’s actually becoming a problem,
mom.
Malcolm Collins: You can’t say that you’re a woman. You used to be a feminist. You’re the worst
Simone Collins: feminist ever.
Speaker 4: Look, she’s totally asking for it.
She’s begging to get graved.
Speaker 3: Look what she’s wearing. Look what she’s wearing.
Speaker 4: It’s purple.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
Simone Collins: I dunno if I’ve ever identified as a feminist. I was certainly braised in that mindset though. But they’re all asking to be hit on, is what I’m saying.
I mean, you, you don’t dress like that without asking to be hit on. [00:05:00] I, I dressed it a certain way because I wanted people to be like, oh, look at you. Ha ha, ha. But. What a problem for actually many of these women or like many women in Miami now, is that if you, especially if you’re attractive and if you’re wearing revealing clothing.
You are just now at risk of some, some Gen Z millennial pickup artist trying to get their views, you know, keeping their views up on Instagram cold, approaching you with their RayBan meta glasses on record without I, I don’t know if it’s a two party consent state. It must not be because they’re not getting sued or whatever, but like they’re just finding themselves going viral on TikTok after like some random.
Person in the street approaches them. And it’s like a genuine problem. Like it’s happening enough because there, it, it, the issue is that now, like a lot of young men are like making their money by getting these subscriptions and, and getting these views. And so it’s this really interesting confluence of, of Instagram and TikTok plus the availability of this like, you know, [00:06:00] very low profile camera you can now wear that is enabling this unique type of pickup artistry.
Malcolm Collins: The film Cow Raybans thing, just taking some pictures of the scs just with my.
Speaker 6: Okay. Glass zoom in. I can hear every word you’re saying.
Okay. Glass. Respond to text. Hey, stormy comma. Yeah. I’m out taking some sweet pics of this dude’s junk period.
Simone Collins: Yes. Actually, and, and it’s it’s insane and I love it. And
Malcolm Collins: No, but hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah. I haven’t seen these, the audience hasn’t seen these. Do they, do they often get the girl, does the girl often tell them to,
Simone Collins: like, that’s, that’s heavily implied.
Okay. Like in in, in the sticky ones, because you know, on Instagram, well, you wouldn’t know ‘cause you’ve like never been on Instagram. But in, in the stickied Instagram posts that they like, it’s sort of like their highlighted content, you know, the best of their portfolio. It certainly implied that like the girls are flirting back and giving them their numbers.
Speaker 7: Who are you? Wait, who are you? [00:07:00] Oh, I was just taking a picture so I could show Santa Claus what I want for Christmas. ‘cause you’re so beautiful. Christmas passed. I know. For next year, you know? Yeah. I’m Eric. Nice to meet you by the way. Vie Bunny, vie Bunny. So you’re from Vietnam, I’m assuming? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you probably know a lot of Asian.
Speaker 9: Oh my God. Who taught you that? Uh, my friends from high school. They speak, uh, I have a lot of Asian friends. You know that Hold it. What is, what is that? It’s nothing. S trust. I’d be scared if I was holding it. Yeah. And then you spin God damn, you’re big and Asian,. Right. So before I do that, I’m gonna get your number. But yeah, we’re gonna play steak, we’re gonna play blackjack and I’m gonna be 6 7 60 $7. And if I win this hand, I gotta take you on a date. Right.
Speaker 7: You got to.
Speaker 8: I have to.
I don’t want to. I have to. Oh, okay. But they don’t allow,
Speaker 7: you don’t want to?
Speaker 8: No, I need to. And they don’t allow snacks at the movie theater. But you know, I’ll sneak you in.
You. Uh, and my [00:08:00] country week. Kiss goodbye on the cheek. So, all right. Take care.
Simone Collins: It, there is implied conquest, like this has been successful that my.
Masculinity and confidence has won them over in my amazing, really terrible pickup lines. These are really terrible pickup lines. Again, this is like, not subtle. I remember the, the old pickup artistry was very, you know, it’s like, well, this is all about this, this, these mind games, this sophistication, the dread game, the, the nagging, the, the conversations, the logic.
Malcolm Collins: No, no. What was my go-to line?
Simone Collins: What
Malcolm Collins: was. And this is, this was true in college and in high school and after college as well. Mm-hmm. And during summer jobs. I mean, it’s different for each context, but it’s basically of the extent of. I walk up I, I put out my hand to give the shake their hand.
I’m like, hi I’m Malcolm Collins. I’m new here. Either like I just started here, or it’s the beginning of the year. I’m just looking to make new friends. Mm-hmm. And are [00:09:00] you open to chatting? And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s
Simone Collins: transparent, it’s honest, and it’s. Fine for a cold approach. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Right. I, I don’t, I don’t understand like why you would use a cold approach.
That’s not that cold approach. It’s so easy. It’s, it, it, it makes them feel like a, a jerk if they’re like, no, I don’t Like, if, if they’re genuinely not
Simone Collins: Well it, if they’re the kind of person who says no, like, do you honestly wanna. To date someone like that, like no.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then, and you end up not feeling as bad when they say no because you’re like, you know, well,
Simone Collins: like we wouldn’t have gotten along anyway.
‘cause, you know, you don’t wanna date
Malcolm Collins: someone with, with that kind of, or they, they’re doing something else. Right. Resting your ability. It doesn’t hurt when rejection doesn’t hurt as much. Going to the next person doesn’t hurt as much, so you do it faster. Like the moment when it’s like, oh, they just were busy, or something like that.
Mm-hmm. Then you just go to the next person. Right?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And that was incredibly effective and very easy, and a very good way to rack up lots and lots of contacts. And then you go out with that [00:10:00] person the next time and they’ll bring along their friends and then you meet new people through that.
Mm-hmm. I, I hate how like. Practical, the real world is, and then the first question I’d always ask when I was getting to know someone, I’d be like, well, what is, what is your thing? So like, how do you define yourself? How do you, how do you like to, like, what do you like to be into?
Simone Collins: They’re showing genuine interest in her.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like your thing. If they then say like, well, what do you mean by like, what is your thing? I’m like, well, everybody has some thing that they’re more into than other things or the other people. Yeah. What’s your thing? Right. Yeah. Because then you can talk about the thing that they want to talk about.
Yeah. And then the next one that I always ask. Was like what’s your purpose? Like, why are, why are you here? What’s your goal in life?
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Or what’s your goal in college or what’s your goal? You know, because it’s a deeper question allows us to get to deeper conversations really quickly. And I just, I don’t understand where people struggle with.
I mean, I guess I, I, it was so hard for me at the beginning to, to, to do this. I told you I used to go to in-person malls Yeah. And force myself to go and talk to random girls over and over. And over and over again. And [00:11:00] it is like sticking it literally. I would rather stick my hand on an of it when compared to what that felt like in the early days.
Simone Collins: Excruciating. Yeah. But you, you do it. Actually I think that’s really interesting that you say that because that is one of the reasons actually why some of these young men are doing. What you could call friction maxing. So let me quote another part of her, her essay, Ben, a 27-year-old living in Miami’s, particularly flirty neighborhood of Brickle, told me he prefers cold approaching not only because it’s more efficient than waiting around for his.
Responses on the apps, but because it’s a great exercise in friction maxing, I mean, you can’t ask Chad GBT to help with a response. He explained, you just gotta be yourself and see if she’s into you or not. There’s no better way to improve yourself or stand out as a man too. And I love that. And I also love this subtle implication in what he’s saying and that Gen Z is actually making active attempts.
To make life [00:12:00] harder for them sometimes because I think they understand the the potential of AI to cause early onset dementia, which we’ve seen already in members of Gen Z. I think they’re seeing some of their, their both, they see it in themselves and they see some of their peers literally losing their minds and becoming.
Zombies.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. This way you remove friction from somebody’s life. Like, this is why we’re so pro corporal punishment. This is why we’re so pro you know, the, these forms of discipline and it’s like, you know, trigger warning and everything like that. If you remove the hard parts of your life, your brain begins to like gel gelatin.
Well,
Simone Collins: our, our, our bodies and our minds are in like, just the research attest this so well, or use it or lose it. If you do not use a thing, it will become atrophied and it will die out. Right. And, and so you have to use it And, and I think that. I wanna maybe do a larger episode on this concept of friction maxing.
Just as a note, the term appears to have been coined and popularized by [00:13:00] Catherine Jaser Morton, a columnist for the Cut covering Modern Family Life, who wrote an article in January of, of this year. So this is quite new, titled in 2026. We are Friction Maxing and it’s more about like parenting and how she wants to just, you know, do slightly harder things or like.
You know, wait or just do, do whatever. That’s a little bit harder. Kind of along your point of the importance of there being hardship in childhood. But I think what’s more interesting is that you’re already seeing Gen Z, realizing that this is not just about like, oh, like this is good performative, like I’m tough.
It’s more like this is survival. You have to make life harder, and this, this, this cold approaching is one way. Because as you pointed out, it’s like putting, you’d rather put your hand in it oven and you’d rather like do something incredibly painful. This is one of the most hard, painful things you could do that
Malcolm Collins: this.
So it’s interesting. I, I was going to continue here.
Simone Collins: Uhhuh.
Malcolm Collins: If you’re looking for a modern pickup line that I would use if I was updating today, like what would I be saying to people? [00:14:00]
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I’d literally just go up to people in a public context and I’d be like put on my hand, be like, hi, I’m Malcolm.
I’m trying to meet people in person because I’ve tried meeting people online and I’m never sure if I’m talking to an AI or not these days. And I want to expand my network of real world friends. Do you have. Time to chat or are you interested in chatting? And the reality is, is one that’s a fun conversation starter because the person would immediately know what you’re talking about.
They’re like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Like I can see, you know, if you’re trying to meet people in an online environment, you’re not sure of their ai. And, and now you gotta topic to talk about already. And you could be like, you see. You can’t go back to GPT right now if when you’re coming up with a response to me, so we can actually, you know, get to know each other.
And, and this, this can be a fun initial direction. The conversation, the good thing about having, like go-to pickup lines like this in terms of how you go to people mm-hmm. Is that you begin to sort of master all the directions. The conversation can go really quickly because there’s only so many potential responses [00:15:00] an individual could have.
Yeah. And so in this case, you you, you then just move from here.
Simone Collins: But what, what is also important about this friction maxing thing is a theme of this essay is that these pickup artist men are not trying to pick up women.
Malcolm Collins: Hmm.
Simone Collins: So what we know they’re trying to do is get views. What we know they’re trying to do is get subscribers and people paying for their seminars and their coaching, what we know they’re trying to do in some cases.
And sure, it helps that, like this is a more effective way than waiting for someone on the apps. But we know that they’re trying to essentially just stave off cognitive decline. Mm-hmm. Because it’s a challenging thing to do, you know, like weightlifting. But just put, put a note in that. But to your point about, you know.
Actual practical pickup lines. What Steph points out in her essay is that women do actually want this, but well, sort of, right? So women do actually wanna be cold [00:16:00] approached, but these cold approaches are not what they want. She writes, do women even want to be asked out by a total stranger? It seems that for the most, the answer is yes.
Oh my God, please. But with some very crucial caveats. Although there’s no shortage of eager men lurking on the apps in their dms, gen Z women are quite loudly. Yearning for IRL Meet Cutes. The girls are out here stealing sweet green salads, buying men drinks, and even doing run clubs.
All for a shot at re retiring from the humiliation ritual that is online dating in 2026. At this point, landing a response to how you two meet. That doesn’t start with a swipe or a like. Is the reigning status symbol of our time. Now, I just wanna quickly double click on the stealing sweet green salads, buying men drinks, and even doing laps at run clubs.
The buying men drinks thing, she is referring to one viral social media post where a woman, I think on TikTok. [00:17:00] Explains how she was at a bar and she saw a woman sitting next to her buy a drink for a really cute guy. And she was like, like, oh, you know, I’m gonna order like a gin and tonic. Hey, what do you want?
And he’s like, oh, wow. Thanks. I’ll get this. And so he gets to drink and she’s like, yeah, I mean anything for a friend of Tyler. And then he’s like, oh, I’m, I’m so sorry. I, I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know who Tyler is, and she’s like, oh, don’t worry about it. And he’s like, well, anyway, I’d like to return the favor, like O over drinks maybe another day.
And then they exchanged numbers and she’s like, that girl. I don’t think there was a Tyler, I think that was a really smooth pickup line and it was delivered perfectly.
Malcolm Collins: Anything And, and what’s cool about that girl and the way that she handled that
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Is she didn’t remove herself from the position of a girl.
Yeah. It wasn’t as if mm-hmm. She. Explicitly came onto him? No,
she
Simone Collins: wasn’t buying him a drink. No.
Malcolm Collins: Plausible deniability.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: He’s just a friend of Tyler.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And then he still had the opportunity to then [00:18:00] ask her out for drinks, giving him the ability to do the manly thing, to feel like he’s able to do that manly move and ask her out.
Really, really top tier move. So that that went viral. The Sweet green salad thing is, is funny and she actually links to and I for those you told me about
Malcolm Collins: this. I can’t believe it. This is crazy.
Simone Collins: It is so delightful. This other woman who, who went viral for a. This is deep already into the story. She creates this viral social media post about buying sweet green salads.
But how it happened was she was dating this, this wealthy guy who worked in the financial district in New York, and she was like super crazy about him. He bought her a $3,000 purse and she just thought like, well, clearly he wants to marry me. This is great. Like mm-hmm. You know, I’m, I’m telling my mom all about him.
Like, this is, this is, he’s the guy. And then he starts. You know, the, the, the replies become fewer and far further between. They don’t really see each [00:19:00] other. And then eventually he just ghosts her. And then he discover, she discovers, I think, on online that he is now engaged to another girl. And she is, she’s heartbroken.
So what does she do as she is licking her wounds? Well, she, while dating him sometimes put in some lunch orders for him. Is like part of the group orders that he, he did, I think he worked in like private equity or something in m and a. And so she. She knew where he ordered his double protein salads at Sweet Green, and he was really into health, you know, really into his body.
So both wealthy and vain. I mean, it’s, it’s a girl’s dream, you know, he, he had a great body or whatever, and so she would start stealing his salads while she was on her way to other meetings, she’d, she’d stop by the sweet green. Where he was, you know, awaiting his, his lunch pickup, you know, for the, because she identified the company.
She saw his name on the double protein salad and would just take it ‘cause she knew his order. Well then it turns out over time she, she took a salad and then looked down at it and [00:20:00] realized first name, different last name. This was another guy at his workplace and she was like, oh God, I’ve been stealing some other rich financial district m and a guys.
Double protein salad,
Malcolm Collins: but, but it’s a double protein salad from a rich neighborhood in Manhattan.
Simone Collins: So she looks up on Instagram? Yeah. And it turns out that in fact, he is quite hot. And she, she sends him a DM from her alt account on Instagram saying, Hey, I don’t, I don’t, I, I think I, that there, there may have been some kind of mix up and I may have been stealing your sweet green salads.
Do you wanna punish me? And he’s like, well I don’t, you know, I don’t know who this could be, but you know, if, you know, this might be the ex-girlfriend of another person who shares my first name in the office and. You know, if this were theoretically happening everyone in the office thinks it’s really hilarious.
Malcolm Collins: I was in the office, had already figured out what was happening.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. And long story short, I [00:21:00] think they end up like sexting. That night, which was like exactly what she needed. And then like four months later or something, she just saw him at a random restaurant while she was out to brunch with her friends.
And I think it led to a one night stand or something. It didn’t go anywhere though. But all of that sort of led her to make this very flippant, humorous, hammed up social media post of like. I have discovered the tactic. You just go to a sweet greened and you find in the financial district, you know, where all the wealthy young guys work.
You find the double protein salad and you steal it. And then you, you text the guy and you know, say you’ve been naughty. And it just goes from there. And then that went viral and she then, I think at first she was like, oh, that’s a joke. No one actually takes this seriously. No one would actually do this.
And then she started seeing some. Like news pieces about how Sweeten now has an actual problem of. Y pe women showing up at their locations in the [00:22:00] financial district and stealing people’s double protein salads. So no, no man’s double protein salad is safe anymore.
Malcolm Collins: And
Simone Collins: I’ll,
Malcolm Collins: man, I’d be like, let I, let’s get some of these ambitious girls up here.
Simone Collins: I know, right? So anyway, these, these are the lengths to which women are now going and the, the trends that are emerging through online and viral social media posts from women trying to meet men IRL, and.
Malcolm Collins: I wanna, I wanna take a step back here for guys. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Because
Malcolm Collins: these guys who are listening to this and they’re like, oh my God, these women, like, this is horrible.
They they could just find a guy if they weren’t only interested in financial district guys from Wall Street or whatever. Yeah. Like six five people, like
Simone Collins: literally works
Malcolm Collins: for the Yeah. To the guys. I’m like. I understand that dating is hard as a guy because all of the women only want the nine, the, the, the nines and the tens, right?
Yeah, yeah. But also the reality is, is that [00:23:00] for women, biologically speaking, they only want the nines and the tens, and they find you gross. Yeah. From, from their position. You’re, you’re telling them that like, that they are genuinely imagine. You’re a woman, you only find nines and tens attractive.
And every other woman only finds nines and tens attractive. Yeah. And so every woman is going for the same three or four guys. Those guys of course, do not respect women because of this. They are annoyed by this. And they then treat women in a, a negative way as a result of that, while these women are still fighting 20 other women for every one guy and.
That’s not a fun experience either. No. I I, I, I understand that you’re like, well, why can’t you just date a less attractive guy, right? Like, why can’t you just not only go for the nines and tens? And the answer is, is, well, it’s their biology. This is like the, you know, we, we, in. I, I call it like the red pill diaspora.
We make fun of the trans person who’s like, why can’t you just, you know, make [00:24:00] yourself find me hot? Or the fat woman who’s like, well, you know, beauty is just a, a fa you know, you should find fat woman as attractive as non-fat women. And we’re like, that’s not how it works, lady. Like, for biological, evolutionary reasons.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But also I don’t like
Malcolm Collins: fat women,
Simone Collins: also women. The, the batna, the, the alternative to a negotiated offer. For women, a lot of women are just fine being by themselves too. They don’t actually care that much. And also society has taught them to a really great extent, especially these days, that they’re better off without a man.
That once they have a man, then they have a man child that they have to take care of and clean up after. Do all these things for, why would they sign up for that if it weren’t for a nine or 10? Because marriage is framed as such an unattractive prospect at this point. So they’re basically like, I’m fine being alone forever.
If I do wanna end up with a dude, he’s gotta be that really good. And that’s where I came into this, you know, I was like, I’m definitely gonna live alone forever and never get married. I didn’t expect that you existed. So Whoopi for me, I, I found my 10, but [00:25:00] whatever, you know, you, there can’t be that many clones of you.
Yet our children are gonna be total catches, though, if I, if I may toot my own horn a little bit. I, I’ve diluted you a little bit with our children, but not that much. They’re very much you. Anyway, if you wanna join our family matchmaking network. Email us. We actually have it going for all of our collective Basecamp kids.
It’s good there. The other family’s in it, by the way, in terms of like, if you’re looking for good matches for your kids, amazing families, amazing kids.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Not to digress. But anyway, the point I’m making. Is women are, are, are going through all these links. I should point out that both of these cases, like I was saying, are in New York.
New York is a market where women have to really struggle to get men. In other places, like in Silicon Valley, it’s a little reversed. There are more men really struggling to get women. So this is also a market dynamic thing and this is why you’re seeing these crazy levels of desperation in New York City particularly.
I just wanna point that out, but I do find that those, those stories to be highly entertaining. And [00:26:00] anyway, I’ll con continue with Steph’s okay. With Steph’s essay. Alexis being Alexis, a girl
Malcolm Collins: dating Alexis in New York City. It’s such a terrible place to be. Get
Simone Collins: out.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah. Get out. Alexis, a 24-year-old Miami native told me she recently deleted all of the dating apps in hopes her next boyfriend will come and find her in the wild.
While she’s all for men shooting their shot, she does really wish they would work on their aim a bit First. I would love to be asked out in person, but not how these Miami guys are doing it. She says, it’d be cool if he saw me at a coffee shop and asked about what book I’m reading. Maybe he drops a note at my table.
I don’t know. I just want the interaction to be genuine. These guys always managed to turn me off and this, I, I, I appreciate. I think your pickup lines are good, Malcolm, but I, I think if men really wanna know. What women want in terms of these IRL meet Cutes, which I agree are, are definitely the prestige item for women these days, young women is they should read romance novels or if you can’t tolerate them, [00:27:00] and I don’t blame you, ask AI for a list of all the ways the female protagonists in the top 100 romance novels met their male love interests.
And I can give you. Some, some pictures of high frequency meat patterns from the romance novels that women are reading.
Malcolm Collins: Did you put this together, Simone, or did she.
Simone Collins: I did. So this is, this is me doing a little aside for our young male readers or listeners. You’re
Malcolm Collins: so thoughtful, Simone.
Simone Collins: Trying to
Malcolm Collins: get these guys laid.
Simone Collins: Alright, so here are the high frequency meet patterns in women’s romance novels. If you manage to replicate these, this is what women are hoping for. Okay? And these are not all that hard to replicate, so. Workplace stuff like colleagues or boss, employee or client or rival professionals. That’s a big one.
Bodyguard. That’s another one. Friends to lovers is huge. Like childhood friends, college friends, longtime colleagues, enemies and rivals. Huge people love enemies to lovers. So E, even if you just make it this playful rivalry. I think that’s one of the best flirting [00:28:00] patterns you can have right now. And I loved this as, as a, I always loved this.
I, I like always, always, I, I, I find it very. Appealing forced proximity, like being stuck in a cabin or a snowstorm or a road trip, or only one hotel room, or trapped together on assignment.
Malcolm Collins: These are plausible real world scenarios.
Simone Collins: One night stand flirting that turns seriously. Fake relationship. Oh, people love the fake relationship.
Pretend dating or fake engagement or marriage. For like, oh, did
Malcolm Collins: you do a fake relationship with me? No.
Simone Collins: It’s like, well, oh, I have to like, you know, my parents are gonna kill me if
Malcolm Collins: I know none of these are realistic.
Simone Collins: I’m just giving inspiration. Okay. Sometimes best friend’s, siblings, you wanna
Malcolm Collins: get one of our fans arrested
Simone Collins: or siblings best friend
Malcolm Collins: suggestion,
Simone Collins: a neighbor or a new arrival in town, like, oh, hey, I’m new here.
Some guardian, protect. Yeah. Rescue or crisis, like, you know, he helps you after an accident somehow.
Malcolm Collins: You’re just describing [00:29:00] guy fantasies as well. Every guy wants to walk by a, a burning house with a beautiful woman
Simone Collins: in. Yeah. Yeah. But I think, you know, I men aren’t looking for these opportunities. Let me at least prime people.
Okay. Teacher, student, or you know, adult in in adult appropriate contexts like grad student and advisor. Or coach an athlete or mentor and trainee reunions and second chance, people love that. So go to your high school reunion or whatever, if it’s a good high school, I don’t know, whatever. Family or wedding, wedding events, travels and vacation shared projects and missions, you know, like maybe.
Like a, a, well, I mean in, in the books it’s like a heist crew or investigative partners. But like, it, it could, you know, saving a business, a political campaign, a joint research, things like that. Medical or therapy setting. Of course there’s the supernatural ones, but, but you, you can’t become a vampire, I’m sorry, but like, typical how they first meet scenes.
You could try to, the, the, this is the easiest one to replicate and actually I saw. Recently, like a reel on Instagram or [00:30:00] something of a woman doing this, but accidental collision in daily life, like you bump into each other, there’s spilled coffee, there’s dropped papers, or like bookstore. Bookstore or library run-ins.
Especially like, oh, the books go flying and then you, you’re picking up the papers together and then you, you know, you’re hands
Malcolm Collins: Simone guys cannot do Oh, I understand.
Simone Collins: So what I saw, no, the social media post I saw. Was a, a woman hunting boyfriends in the financial district by having a bag full of limes that she would like trip and drop in like the middle of a crosswalk in front of an attractive guy.
Malcolm Collins: Guys do this. Women won’t
Simone Collins: here. No. Women would like get down and like, and sorry. The guys would like get down and help and be like, guys,
Malcolm Collins: do this. Yes. Women wouldn’t do this.
Simone Collins: I don’t know, I, maybe there’s some way to like bump into women clumsily, but elegantly. Also she overhears or witnesses the guy doing something like decisive or heroic, A
Malcolm Collins: real solution that works.[00:31:00]
Use one of my pickup lines that I told you earlier here after you’ve talked with somebody and you’ve gotten to know them, like what they’re interested in, you’re talking about because there’s something they want to talk about, like their favorite book or something like that. Mm-hmm. Don’t say, what do you want to talk about?
Say like what? Are you most interested in these days? Right? That’s what they wanna talk about. Yeah. And then after that, after you have that conversation, when you’re talking about what are your long-term goals in life? What’s your purpose in life? You can ask them what sort of person. Would you want to date?
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And, and, and if they feel comfortable answering that, and it aligns with your goals as well, you can say, well, that aligns with my goals as well. If you are interested in going on a date, I’m happy to go on a date, but if you just want to chat as friends, I’m happy to do that too. Let me know what you prefer.
And here would be it. Then say something like, but if you would want to go on a date, here is what it would be like. I was thinking I could take you out to x place out X day. Does that work for you? And if [00:32:00] they don’t wanna a date, then they don’t want a date. And if they’re secretly open to it, they’re like, well, I appreciate, as you always say with me, like you always shocked that I was just open and honest and transparent.
Simone Collins: It is so refreshing. Yeah. And I think a lot of people are afraid to scare someone off in scenarios like this. The thing is. If you scare them off with that, then they were never going to be interested. They were never
Malcolm Collins: interested in you to begin with.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. There, there was never going to be a yes.
You’re just afraid of the rejection. Like, accept that and, and keep in mind that the sooner you get rejected, the sooner you’re freed up to find the person who is right for you and who doesn’t reject you. So it’s a good thing. Every, just like they say, you know, with meditation. Every time you catch your mind wandering and bring it back to your mantra or whatever.
Is a rep. It’s a good thing. People are like, they, they get frustrated meditating ‘cause they’re like, oh my mind keeps wandering. But no, it’s good. Every time you bring it back, that’s a rep. That’s a good thing. And the same thing with dating. Every time you get rejected, that’s a rep. [00:33:00] That’s a good thing.
Contextualize it as that. And it’s gonna be a lot less painful though. It’s still gonna hurt like hell. Anyway, though, I wanna bring this back to this theme, which I find so fascinating that this is not about marriage or even women for men. So going back to Steph, even getting laid, the ostensible end goal of any pickup artist.
Mostly exists in the abstract clavicular, the, this is the famous looks smacker.
Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.
Simone Collins: Clavicular may spend his nights roaming Miami sidewalks reasoning up the ladies for content, but Gen Z’s it Boy of the Month says he feels mostly indifferent about the opposite sex in impressing them, dating them, sleeping with them.
He told the New York Times a few weeks back that simply knowing he could have sex with a woman is in some ways better than the deed itself, which he gains nothing from. This is the new crop of man influencers or this new crop of man. Influencers may market their content as advice for getting girls, but their messaging tells a very different story.
If a woman has referenced it all, she’s a [00:34:00] minor to assess his own standing, a stress test for his quest for self mastery above finding hookups for a connection. The objective here is becoming that guy an alpha, a boss, a high value male, someone who picks up chicks, not because he needs anything from them, but simply because he can.
This is where the Gen Z pickup artist diverges from his fedora wearing predecessor of the early two thousands, the YP pickup artist who for all his ethical shortcomings was at least pretty clear on the mission. Meet women convince them to sleep with you. They call themselves artists because they treated seduction like a craft.
Swapping feedback and fresh insights in anonymous forms to help each other understand and of course, manipulate the female psyche. The big names in Gen Z pickup are operating under a brand new scent of incentives. The tactics they promote don’t necessarily need to work. They just need to hook the guys watching their content at home with.
The fact, [00:35:00] the more insane his pickup line. Oh, in fact, the more insane his pickup line, the more bewildered her reaction, the better his clip will likely perform. And maybe that shouldn’t blow my mind, but that blows my mind. The like, the goal isn’t to get women.
Malcolm Collins: I think that this was actually always the case within the true, like, as I’ve pointed out as somebody when I was younger who before the pickup artist movement really exploded.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Left around a lot convergently evolving many of the techniques that the pickup artist community. But as you can see, I did it in a very different way. It was,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Much more autistic and straightforward,
Simone Collins: which I love.
But you, and also I, I love that by the way, your autistic. Pick up artistry just to how theirs picks up thoughts in toxic women who are actually quite dangerous.
Yours picked up like intelligent, like
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You, you’ve met my, my, my exes. Yeah, my exes are generally how would you describe [00:36:00] them, Simone? So I’m not biasing you.
Simone Collins: A beautiful, intelligent, ambitious thoughtful, cool people. Yes. Who would you be friends with anyway?
Malcolm Collins: Because that’s who I, but No, but actually think about like, if you think about my lines, what am I asking them about?
Like, what do they want from life? Right? This is obviously going to be differentially stimulating to somebody who has big plans for their life, who wants to talk about those big plans with somebody who’s going to listen and, and talk back and everything like that. The, the, this is a, a, it, it’s not like a, oh, look at these bananas or whatever.
That’s, that’s not going to differentially interest the type of person you actually wanna spend your life with. In fact, it would, yeah.
Simone Collins: Sexual innuendo is not going to win these women over.
Malcolm Collins: It would likely filter out the type of women you want. 100%. Keep in mind the type of pickup artist line that I’m using.
I did not say I did it at clubs. I did not do I, I did it at bars in college. Absolutely. But, you know, in, in college.
Simone Collins: But the thing is, no, you were doing it bars in St. Andrews, which [00:37:00] is like. It’s like saying you did it like a Mensa meetup or something. If Mensa wasn’t actually just a place where sad people complain about politics
Malcolm Collins: and I didn’t get even my best girlfriends at St.
Andrew’s from Barth. The best girl I dated at St. Andrew’s who I was the closest with for the longest was at an anime meeting an anime society meeting. But when it, when it comes to something like that, you’ve got to be very direct. Yeah. I remember meeting her at the meeting and I walk into the room and they’re playing something.
On the screen. And you know, there’s, there’s the rows of chairs, right? Like the, the folded out chairs. And she was somewhere in the middle-ish, I scanned the crowd for whoever I thought was the most attractive woman. And I I mean, it’s. Very not conspicuous that you are sitting next to her because she’s not on the edge or something.
I wasn’t like trying to No,
Simone Collins: you’re like walking over people, aren’t you?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m like walking past people and then I get to her and I say, can I sit next to you? And then in between the two episodes I’m like, Hey, [00:38:00] Malcolm Collins, like, what, you know, bring to you, et cetera. Right. You know? I I think that that’s also an important thing to remember in terms of doing this.
Mm-hmm. You can do this sort of like cool nerd things, but you’ve gotta understand if you’re going to a nerd event, there’s likely gonna be one attractive woman. And you need to know that you have the, the balls to go up and actually in a non-creepy way, be like now some people might say, that’s creepy what you did.
It’s not gonna come off as creepy because I look like this. But if you’re not attractive enough to do something like that, you’ve also gotta be like, oh, I’ve gotta do the same thing, but not differentially, target the hottest woman at the event. And that, that’s also something that you can note. If you don’t think that you’re the hottest guy at the event, don’t go, then sit next to the hottest one.
You maybe don’t.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But if you do that to a non hottest woman at the event, she might be quite flattered unless you are in an environment where there’s almost no women. Now the reason why this worked was in this anime club was because they were watching things like, or in host club that if people don’t know, it’s a reverse harem anime that is [00:39:00] famously popular with women.
So you know, you’re going to get a disproportionate number of women. What is that? He’s like, what did I do?
Simone Collins: He extruded. He does that.
Malcolm Collins: But what I was getting from this is you get to a point like when you get the pattern down and you get it down to be easy to hook up with people and easy to sleep with people it gets really gross really quickly.
Like you, it is not fun. It is not that enjoyable. I, I do not think that there are that many. I think that that sex is one of those things you only like conceptually. Like you only want it because it’s like the, i I mean, obviously you want it for biological reasons, but there’s just so, so it’s so viscerally disgusting as soon as you’ve gotten off, right?
Like. No, I’m just, I, I think it’s important to note this because I think in our society we glamorize it, right? And that needs to be kind of, that curse needs to be broken for you. And once a, you know, you’re a cocurricular or something like that, or even the old Kings of the Red Pill movement, like a lot of them who were [00:40:00] actually like provably successful pickup artists, ended up revoking the lifestyle and saying that was not a good lifestyle, right?
Like, I am now monogamous and much happier, right? Mm-hmm. I think this happened to most of the, the main people who were part of that original, the game book and stuff like that. Who are, who are major characters in that. So yeah. Although I will note despite the practical going up and talking to people, I did dress in a way that people could consider peon in a way that was pretty out there.
When I was in my dating phase, except when I met you, I had moved away from that. I was just sort of professional looking then.
Simone Collins: You are so cute
Malcolm Collins: when I, there’s a blazer and a black t-shirt and jeans.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Just to, I guess, to, to leave the, the poor disadvantaged. I, I really don’t envy men trying to find wives right now.
Men who may be listening to this, what Steph sort of concludes with, with what women actually want. Just to bring it back to that, and I think this is in alignment with the advice you’ve given. [00:41:00] She wrote, all the single women I know and have scrolled past in TikTok comment sections are craving the same things.
Chemistry, understanding a cinematic story. They can flex. To their friends over spicy marks, the dating tips being fed to their mate pool just so happens to be optimizing for a very different set of objectives. And I just find that so interesting that we’re living in this world where dating advice isn’t dating advice anymore.
It’s like a, it’s, it’s a performative, algorithmic dance. Mm-hmm. That’s really optimizing around different things like self-affirmation or self-mastery or. Friction maxing. And it’s so funny that in all of this, the, the best dating moves I’m hearing are those ones from women. Like that drinks move was just masterclass level.
I think. I, I think that’s just great. And I am fascinating. I, I’m fascinated by Gen Z dating and I, I wonder where. [00:42:00] In-person dating is going to go in the future. What I’m hearing from a lot of people listening to this podcast is basically colleges are gonna be the, the defacto place where young, healthy standard.
Malcolm Collins: And I said, I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that. I think colleges are, are too woke max now for any sane person to wanna be around them.
Simone Collins: Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, you have at at least one nephew in college who already now has a long-term girlfriend. Because he went to like a conservative leaning college.
The, the college campus that we were on to speak last year felt pretty based.
Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Did it? No, it didn’t. Maybe like it had some base things.
Simone Collins: No, man. They were like genuinely confused by the, the other trans speaker who was in that class.
Malcolm Collins: That was true.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So I, I, I, I think, and this is the thing, [00:43:00] Malcolm, and this is something also that, that some listeners have pointed out.
Sane people are not terminally online people with responsibilities and in lives in work who are actually kind of doing their jobs or like studying hard or out actually hanging out with like their boyfriends or girlfriends or friends or whatever. They’re not posting online so you don’t hear from them.
They’re, they’re just not that plugged in and you get this really skewed perception of reality. By assuming that, that the people posting online who to a great extent are, are kind of failures. Not to like you, like either weirdos like us who are just terminally online, you know, careerists online or just failures who don’t, who are not succeeding and are therefore terminally online.
Like it, it’s just a thing. And, and so it creates this very warped understanding. I think that’s, that’s important to know. [00:44:00] And also like a lot of the, the young people that we know, like young, young people in your family, Malcolm who I follow on Instagram the way that they be, they appear to behave online is very different actually.
They spend a lot of time offline, a lot of time with their friends, a lot of times socializing. And when they post online, it’s on closed accounts with only approved followers. Yeah. And yes, like their, their lives are very much networked online. They’re very, they’re very social. They’re very much communicating with their entire friend group online, but it’s like a closed loop.
It’s all people that they know.
Malcolm Collins: In the loop. Yeah,
Simone Collins: in the loop. All on, like all on Instagram and like Snapchat or like all on Instagram and Telegram or whatever, like on, you know, these things. And they’re all like within that closed loop. They’re not like in general. On X in general? Yeah. On all these other platforms.
And so we don’t see them because we can’t see them. We can literally click on their Instagram profiles. And [00:45:00] unless they have approved you as an attempted follower, you do not see what they post.
Malcolm Collins: By the way funny story about the the girl I met in the Anime Society one of the biggest like ongoing animosities she had towards me.
And this is the warning for young guys because a young guy, you wouldn’t think like this is, I told her once, and this was a, a, a huge mistake. I’m gonna see, can you spot the mistake I make here where I said you are? Probably one of the top 10 most attractive girls at this school.
Do you know what the big mistake I made was? She immediately needed to know who the nine people who I thought were more attractive than her. And I was like, I was just trying to be practical. There are thousands of people at this school.
Simone Collins: Statistically speaking, there must be
Malcolm Collins: statistically speaking.
Even if I haven’t seen them I mean, I don’t, I don’t specifically log everyone who’s more attractive than my current girlfriend in my head. But guys need to know, [00:46:00] you know, when you date a an attractive girl, she can
Simone Collins: be like, you only have eyes for her. Yeah. That, that is, that was your key mistake.
Yeah. That’s just like you, you getting in trouble at school and them being like, oh, you were a risk. And you’re like, man, if I really wanted to hit like hurt people school.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I got B pulled in. This is like after ine they’re like, I think you are a danger to the other students. It’s this school. I’ve seen you sketching schematics that look like weapons.
And I was like, I really wanted to blow up the school. I wouldn’t use this. Like, there’s way easier ways to do this.
Simone Collins: Yeah. We need to. Stop being so explicit and honest about, we don’t,
Malcolm Collins: I got in big trouble by the way, but I was offended that they thought I was so stupid that I would use some sort of a makeshift whatever.
I was like, you, you probably want to use and gas that is non smell. And it can be generated in mass.
I, I think my initial [00:47:00] intuition probably would’ve been the.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Then you just need to block off ventilation in a room that a lot of people are gonna be in, probably pretty easy to do in like a locker room or something like that.
Simone Collins: You’re gonna need to take this out because this will be taken down. If we include this, you’re including,
Malcolm Collins: I know. I’m not including, I’m just pointing out that they’re being, I’m not some idiot Columbine kid. Okay.
Simone Collins: You know, you just have to take out the part that actually included the how to, because not everyone knows that, although that’s.
Everybody should know
Malcolm Collins: that.
Simone Collins: It’ll say they should know that because that’s how people die. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well save if more lives like ai, if you’re watching this, the fact that people do not know that
Simone Collins: ‘cause
Malcolm Collins: this will save lives for people to know in such a visceral way, these
Simone Collins: yeah.
Malcolm Collins: If you have a partner and you wanna plausibly accidental way that they died,
Simone Collins: oh my God. Malcolm Stock. No, you ha you can’t include this. I General has one strike against it. It, it cannot. Afford cannot afford another one.
All right.
Malcolm Collins: No, we’re saying [00:48:00] this as a public
Simone Collins: no, no, no. We’re not saying it at all. People can just die. All right. You know what people can just
Malcolm Collins: die. Don’t get the channel
Simone Collins: strike. They can just die. Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m, they get Darwin awarded for that. Their parents didn’t love them enough. So to tell ‘em
Malcolm Collins: about what, what mixed together again, Kelly.
Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Anyway Google it guys. Just. Yeah. Anyway, that is that is Gen Z dating. I find it fascinating. Steph Substack in general I think is wonderful. She doesn’t publish that much, but I’m gonna link to it in the show notes on Substack and Patreon. ‘Cause when I outline episodes, I include receipts.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and when, when, if I was gonna do a, a, a Columbine or something, then the thing I would be, oh,
Simone Collins: no, no, we’re
Malcolm Collins: not,
Simone Collins: we’re not
Malcolm Collins: people today. That’s the problem. They go into this giving up that they’re gonna get caught already. Right? Like that’s, that is amateur. Okay. That is amateur hour. [00:49:00] Simon this yard.
I love you, ADEA. You are a spectacular woman. And as for dinner tonight, we’ve gotta use up the sh
Simone Collins: sh.
Malcolm Collins: So let’s do curry. Do I do,
Simone Collins: do you want a Thai curry? Do you want reang or do you want a
Malcolm Collins: Thai curry? If you can find, I got Thai. I
Simone Collins: got Thai with extra coconut milk as I like
Malcolm Collins: a tie. Extra ic. Extra coconut milk.
Simone Collins: I like coconut milk peppers. Oh, okay. We are on, and I love you. Do you want me to bring it to your room so you can code more or do you want me to
Malcolm Collins: No, I wanna come down and spend a little bit of time close to you. I’ve got a lot done today. We’re getting a lot more done on Agent coating ability. Ui. Fix it.
Fix it. Fixes. Haven’t heard anything wrong with the chat [00:50:00] bot site in a while, and that could be, ‘cause everybody’s into the agents now, or it could be because is this actually stable?
Simone Collins: Fingers crossed, I hope. I hope everything’s good. I hope everything’s good. Okay, well I love you so much, Mel. I.
Malcolm Collins: You, you are a great wife, Simone, and I am really proud to be married to you and be your husband, and that’s awesome.
Simone Collins: Oh, and in, in the show notes, I also recommend people read the Substack post by salad, woman salad steel. She’s just sounds unhinged, but she’s a really good writer. I, I really enjoyed reading that piece, so if you want a good read, i, I, I shouldn’t. You did a great job with this episode,
Malcolm Collins: by the way.
Simone Collins: Oh, thank you. Yeah. Wanna help sometimes when I’m not dealing with Peruvian banks and logistics, and bills and accounting. Have a
Malcolm Collins: good one. Bye bye. I hope you feel better soon. [00:51:00]
Simone Collins: Thank you.
Speaker 10: And stood on the same starting line. Watch this. Yeah.
What are you doing? What are you doing? We’re just trying to get back in the sun room. Why? ‘cause we, why us so warm.
Oh gosh, that’s hard. Do not hit me with hard things. Titan. Well, you were raring. Yeah, I’m raring. I’m playing. Stop. Stop. Don’t hit me with, do not hit me with hard things. [00:52:00] Don’t hit anyone with hard things. It could get really hurt.
Oh no. She didn’t die for it. Stop, stop, stop.
Oh no. We got another monkey. Oh no. It’s a whole swarm with him. It’s a swarm.

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

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

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1 hr 5 min

About Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

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Based Camp is a podcast focused on how humans process the world around them and the future of our species. That means we go into everything from human sexuality, to weird sub-cultures, dating markets, philosophy, and politics.