In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive into one of the strangest social phenomena of our time: why does public sympathy for aggressors often increase after horrific attacks? From 9/11 to Charlie Hebdo to October 7th, they examine the shocking data showing spikes in pro-Muslim and pro-Palestine sentiment right after major acts of violence.

Simone lays out her theory: the concept of “victim blaming” was originally created to address real systemic injustices but was hijacked and weaponized in the 2010s by feminist movements (SlutWalks, MeToo, “Believe All Women”). What began as a tool against unfair bias became a reflexive shield that makes it taboo to assign any responsibility to victims — even when they are the aggressors. They also discuss the rise of external locus of control, cultural shifts on the right, demographic realities, and how women helped turn “victim blaming” into a societal mind virus.

Show Notes

WHY

* Did muslim sentiment in the USA improve after 9/11

* Did muslim sentiment in France improve after Charlie Hebdo’s offices were subject to a terror attack?

* Did pro-Palestine sentiment spike after the October 7th attacks on Israel?

It may come down to a concept that was created to address unfair bias against people who were genuinely screwed over by societal forces but ultimately co-opted and ruined by… women.

So let’s discuss how women appropriated and ruined the concept of victim blaming.

The Mystery of Victim Blaming

Since when did victims become beyond reproach?

Our immediate hunch is that this happened because the urban monoculture elevates victims and holds victims to be blameless, but WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT?

We checked Google ngram viewer for “victim blaming” and were kind of shocked:

* The term “victim blaming” only emerges around 1970

* From 1970 to 2010 Victim blaming shows modest linear growth

* And after 2010 its trajectory changes into exponential growth, which only after 2020 started showing signs of a shift to mere exponential growth

Google Trends shows similar results (the term would only spike with incidents, then go back to zero, before 2010).

To add to this: @NotAldousHuxley had observed that pro-muslim sentiment spiked after 9/11 and anti-Israel sentiment spiked after the October 7th attack Palestinean attack on Israel

This suggests some sort of pathological favoritism toward whoever might be seen as a potential victim, but I found this hard to believe so I double checked:

Victim Blaming Ideology in Action

Pro-Muslim Sentiment

What’s

Pew research found that pro-Muslim sentiment rose in the US after 9/11 and in France in 2015 after the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices (the publication that published an illustration of the prophet Muhammad).

From their article: “A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 76% in France say they have a favorable view of Muslims living in their country, similar to the 72% registered in 2014. Meanwhile, the percentage with a very favorable opinion of Muslims has increased significantly, rising from 14% last year to 25% today. Attitudes toward Muslims tend to be more positive on the political left in France, but ratings improved across the ideological spectrum.

The pattern is similar to what we found in the U.S. following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Favorable views of Muslim Americans rose from 45% in March 2001 to 59% in November of that year. The increase took place across partisan and ideological groups, with the biggest improvement occurring among conservative Republicans.”

Pro-Palestine Sentiment

After the October 7th attacks, Gallup found that Americans shifted toward being more sympathetic toward palestineans:

The change is most pronounced in young people:

And least pronounced in old people:

The Creation and Appropriation of Victim Blaming

Before Victim Blaming

Genuine victim blaming is old: There are plenty of religious texts that frame victims as sinners.

Before the term was popularized, people sometimes pointed to the “just world hypothesis”: That people want to believe the world is fair, so they sometimes assume victims must have done something to deserve their suffering.

Origins

Psychologist William Ryan introduced the phrase “blaming the victim” in his book of the same name, published in the 1970s

* He developed the concept to critique explanations of poverty and racism that shifted responsibility from unjust social structures onto marginalized communities themselves.

* Ryan’s work specifically responded to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report on Black poverty, arguing that such analyses implicitly blamed Black families for structural inequalities.

* So Ryan’s critique there is pretty fair, as it does seem that after 1950 a bunch of policies changed that did really screw over black families and we’ve covered them in various episodes

* 1950s Black Families Where Twice as Stable as Their White Counterparts: The Theft of Black Culture

Exponential 2010s Growth

What happened starting in 2010???

TL:DR Victim blaming got primarily hijacked by women about women who then reflexively internalized that it was NEVER acceptable to blame women.

Specifically:

* 2013: SlutWalk framed victim blaming as a central injustice

* The 2013 SlutWalks were a series of global, grassroots protest marches held in cities worldwide—including New York, Chicago, and various university campuses—to protest rape culture, victim blaming, and slut-shaming.

* The movement first originated in 2011 after a Toronto police officer advised university students to “avoid dressing like sluts” to prevent sexual assault. By 2013, the marches had expanded into a massive, worldwide phenomenon

* The movement first originated in 2011 after a Toronto police officer advised university students to “avoid dressing like sluts” to prevent sexual assault. By 2013, the marches had expanded into a massive, worldwide phenomenon

* Demonstrators, primarily young women but open to all genders, took to the streets in clothes that were conventionally considered “provocative” or “slutty,” alongside signs with slogans like “Still not asking for it”.

* 2017: #metoo became a global phenomenon when actress Alyssa Milano encouraged women to use the phrase following the sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

Broadly:

* Universities, NGOs, and government agencies began publishing extensive material on “rape culture” and “victim blaming,” making the term standard in training manuals, awareness campaigns, and policy documents

* Psychological and criminological research on victim blaming expanded, including studies of attribution, just‑world beliefs, and rape myths, so “victim blaming” appeared more often in titles, abstracts, and key terms.

* Professional bodies (e.g., police oversight offices, social services, health institutions) issued formal guidance documents on “ending victim blaming” or “reducing victim blaming in investigations,” further institutionalizing the term.

* Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and later Instagram and TikTok enabled rapid diffusion of feminist and social‑justice terminology; calling out victim blaming became a recognizable move in online debates.

Victim blaming was literally censored

* Facebook’s Community Standards defined bullying and harassment as content that “purposefully targets private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them” (e.g., targeted shaming, altered images, doxxing, or repeated unwanted contact). Victim blaming would be categorized as bullying or harassment so long as it entailed direct, targeted degradation of a specific victim (e.g., shaming a named survivor in a harassment campaign),

* Twitter’s Rules prohibited abusive behavior, targeted harassment (e.g., one-sided insults, threats, incitement), and hateful conduct.

Wait—is this about a rise in an external locus of control?

The most direct and frequently cited peer-reviewed evidence comes from a 2004 cross-temporal meta-analysis published in Personality and Social Psychology Review:

* The researchers analyzed 97 samples of college students (N=18,310) and 41 samples of children ages 9–14 (N=6,554) from 1960 to 2002.

* Locus of control scores became substantially more external (about 0.80 standard deviations) over this period.

* The average college student in 2002 had a more external locus of control than 80% of college students in the early 1960s.

* Birth cohort/time period explained about 14% of the variance in scores.

* This pattern held in both student and child samples and was consistent with an “alienation model” involving rising cynicism, individualism, and self-serving biases.

* Implications noted as mostly negative: externality correlates with poorer school achievement, helplessness, ineffective stress management, lower self-control, and higher depression.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: after the September 11th attacks- Mm-hmm ... the most profound increase in sentiment by like, at least double is the Republican increase.

[00:00:10] Simone Collins: Just as a reminder, Charlie Hebdo is a satirical publication, still is. They published a drawing of Muhammad, and then they were subject to formal proper Islamic terror attack.

[00:00:20] Well, what’s fascinating on, in, in France is- Yeah ... you also see this on the right, and you see- Yeah ... a big jump on the right. Yeah. That’s wild.

[00:00:29] Would you like to know more?

[00:00:30] Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to explore mysteries. Why did Muslim sentiment in the USA improve after 9/11?

[00:00:40] Why did Muslim sentiment in France improve after the Charlie Hebdo offices were subject to a terror attack? Why did pro-Palestine sentiment spike after October 7th attacks on Israel? Th- this is bizarre, and this is a very

[00:00:56] Malcolm Collins: re-

[00:00:56] Simone Collins: repetitive pattern.

[00:00:57] Malcolm Collins: That is genuinely bizarre.

[00:00:58] Simone Collins: Yeah. The aggressors?

[00:01:00] Oh, I’m so sorry for them.

[00:01:02] Malcolm Collins: But I- I’m, I’m, I’ll, I’ll tell you what, I think I- Israel wants wh- white women to love them again. They need to bomb us. No,

[00:01:07] Simone Collins: it actually...

[00:01:08] Malcolm Collins: I, I would argue- Just drop a few bombs on Manhattan, and, and-

[00:01:11] Simone Collins: No ...

[00:01:11] Malcolm Collins: they’ll all, they’ll all love them again.

[00:01:14] Simone Collins: Oh, well, yeah, that, that’s all it takes.

[00:01:15] No. I, I’m actually going to lay forth... It’s not gonna be Jews. I’m gonna lay forth my theory, and I think it all comes down to a concept that was created to address unfair bias against people who are genuinely screwed over by societal forces that were outside their control, and ultimately got ruined and co-opted by...

[00:01:37] Malcolm Collins: The women? Women! White, white women? Yes. Yay. White women, yes. White women.

[00:01:42] Simone Collins: So join us for another episode of Women Are Terrible, as we discuss how women appropriated and ruined the concept of victim blaming, and there will be- The graph

[00:01:50] Malcolm Collins: you showed me around victim blaming absolutely floored me. Yeah,

[00:01:54] Simone Collins: yeah. So she showed me- So stick around.

[00:01:55] No, I, I will show, I will show you the, the graph Okay We’re gonna go over it just next, but I, I will say stick around, because there, there is a, a pivotal portion of my my argument I’m going to lay out that involves very embarrassing images of protesting women. So stay tuned, friends. Okay?

[00:02:10] Malcolm Collins: But

[00:02:10] Simone Collins: yeah.

[00:02:10] Malcolm Collins: All, all images of protesters are embarrassing.

[00:02:12] Simone Collins: No. No. No, I... No. You’re gonna s- you’re gonna see. I somehow missed the boat. I didn’t know this thing happened. Oh, God. Okay. So, but no, you’re right. Absolutely, there is this really strange trend that takes place with the term victim blaming. And it, when we checked Google Ngram Viewer, which looks at the, the word usage in publications rather than just Google search trends, you can see that there’s basically no

[00:02:42] usage of the term victim blaming at all until the 1970s, and then it starts to grow linearly, modestly, but in a modest, linear fashion.

[00:02:51] So obviously this term was introduced and is slowly gaining popularity. Then after 2010, its trajectory changes into exponential growth, which only after 2020 started showing signs of shifting to more logarithmic growth. So it, it’s a really weird graph.

[00:03:12] But yeah, so here’s the Google Ngram Viewer. So you can see it goes from nothing to linear to exponential to logarithmic, and something happened clearly in the 2010s where this term just went crazy.

[00:03:26] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, just like, and explodes all of a sudden in the... And, well, I you acted like I should knew what that was. What, what, what happened then?

[00:03:33] Simone Collins: We’re gonna go into it. But we’re also going to look at Google Trends, and what you can see here is that before 2010, the way that victim blaming worked basically during that linear period was if there was a news story that mentioned victim blaming, people would start talking about it a ton, but then it would go back to nothing.

[00:03:49] Mm-hmm ... and then after that point, it just started entering modern parlance. But first, I, I also wanna thank not Aldous Huxley for giving me inspiration for this [00:04:00] episode. I actually didn’t believe him when he told me that there was a spike in pro-Muslim sentiment after 2001 when the, the terrorist attacks took place.

[00:04:12] I was like, “No, that’s-”

[00:04:13] Malcolm Collins: That can’t be

[00:04:14] Simone Collins: right. “... that’s not real.” So I also wanna show you some, some graphs because it’s insane. Here is a graph showing, this is so unhinged

[00:04:26] how after 9/11, across the board- Pro-Muslim sentiment grew. This is, this is flummoxing to me. This is from the Pew Research Center Among

[00:04:35] Malcolm Collins: conservatives as well.

[00:04:36] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. This is- What’s up, what’s up with that? No, no, hold on. And also the most profoundly-

[00:04:40] Malcolm Collins: The, the most profound, this is gonna shock our audience

[00:04:43] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:04:43] Malcolm Collins: after the September 11th attacks- Mm-hmm ... the most profound increase in sentiment by like, at least double is the Republican increase.

[00:04:53] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:04:54] Malcolm Collins: And- Mm-hmm

[00:04:55] hold on, conservative Republicans after 9/11 had a more positive sentiment towards Muslims than moderate Republicans, independent or conservative/moderate Democrats. Yeah. The only group that had a higher sentiment towards Muslims than conservative Republicans were liberal Democrats.

[00:05:19] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:05:20] Malcolm Collins: Note, th- this came from conservative Republicans before 9/11 having the lowest opinion of Muslims.

[00:05:27] Simone Collins: Yeah, at 35. Yeah, so it, it went from 35% favorable view- To 64% ... to 64%, yeah.

[00:05:36] Malcolm Collins: That is as- astonishing.

[00:05:39] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It, it, it’s, it is really flummoxing, and it, it’s also really flummoxing with the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terror attack. Just as a reminder, Charlie Hebdo is a satirical publication, still is. They published a drawing of Muhammad, and then they were subject to you know, whole like formal proper Islamic terror attack.

[00:05:59] What’s interesting about this-

[00:06:01] Well, what’s fascinating on, in, in France is- Yeah ... you also see this on the right, and you see- Yeah ... a big jump on the right. Yeah. That’s wild. You went from a- Again ... 9% very favorable on the right to an 18%, a dub, a doubling of positive favorability on the right. Which is pretty much what you saw, again, with the, the 9/11 attacks.

[00:06:24] Oh, yeah. In, in, in the United States- A doubling ... after 9/11 it, it’s actually almost a doubling, 35 to 64.

[00:06:30] So then we get to October 7th. I remember, I remember very clearly that day, ‘cause I didn’t really care about Charlie Hebdo. I’m sorry but I didn’t. It was in France, whatever. I was busy at the time.

[00:06:38] It was 2015. We were get- getting married, okay? We were so busy. We were so excited. And we were young children then. We had, in 2011, we, we... Or 2001, we were kids. It, that wasn’t... I don’t know. It, it, it didn’t hit me the same way. But, but I do remember October 7th, and I’m sure you do too, and just seeing the stories coming in, seeing the photos, just how horrific it was.

[00:07:04] To, to see that coverage. I, I was floored by people who would so euphorically do this. And then of course, you know, these recordings come in from Palestinians who are, like, calling their parents on WhatsApp, talking about how, like, “I killed this many people, and I did this and that.” And the parents being like, “Well, be, be safe, son.”

[00:07:23] And it was just so... I’ve never I’ve never been so shocked by normalization of hatred and violence of a group of people, and so I would have expected-

[00:07:34] Malcolm Collins: Well, and killing, you know, peace protesters at, like, a peace rally-

[00:07:40] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:07:40] Malcolm Collins: right outside, you know, just graping tons of children. Like, the- Yeah,

[00:07:44] Simone Collins: this wasn’t six guys.

[00:07:45] This wasn’t two guys, right? This was a very organized, coordinated attack of, what? It was hundreds of men,

[00:07:51] Malcolm Collins: wasn’t it? Beheading babies, right? Like, it was absolutely horrifying what happened.

[00:07:56] Simone Collins: Yeah. And they filmed it and showed it themselves because they were proud of it. [00:08:00] Yeah. And we can look and say, “Oh, that’s a mistake that they did that,” but look, it helped the world’s perception of them.

[00:08:05] Yeah, because now let’s look. Yeah, so this is a Gallup poll here. I’m not pulling out of nowhere, right? Mm. The share of Americans who say they feel more sympathetic towards Israelis or Palestines, or, sorry, Palestinians. And so f- this goes all the way back to, I think, 2000. So it’s like Israelis are in the in high mid-50s.

[00:08:24] Palestinians, not popular. They are in, like, they’re below 20 percent favorability.

[00:08:29] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, if you’re aware of the actual history of the region, you would have to be absurd to feel sympathy for Palestinians.

[00:08:35] Simone Collins: Right. But then, but then what happens? I mean, there’s a slight trending upward for Palestinians on, starting 2020 paired with a slight pairing downward for Israelis.

[00:08:44] However, what really happens is this sudden October 7th attack. Total switcheroo-

[00:08:52] Malcolm Collins: And then it- ... where- ... flips favorability ...

[00:08:54] Simone Collins: yeah, suddenly Israelis are 36% favorability, having been in the high 50s for decades, and Palestinians are up to a record high of 41%, nearly... Well, more than double actually from their, like, 18% starting point, which they hovered back to throughout the 2010s.

[00:09:13] So what’s- Mm ... interesting here with, with these particular results is that when you look at the age difference in responding, you see old Americans do show a change in sentiment. They, they had the lowest sentiment favorably toward Palestinians. Like, in- Okay ... in 2002, they started out at, like, 15% favorability.

[00:09:35] 55

[00:09:36] Malcolm Collins: and older. It dropped down to 10. Okay, okay.

[00:09:37] Simone Collins: Yeah, and they were very pro-Israel. I mean, now we’re in, like, the high 60s up to, like, the low 80s at some point. Do you happen

[00:09:43] Malcolm Collins: to have a breakout of gender in favorability ratings?

[00:09:46] Simone Collins: Oh, let me check. But also- Okay ... look at young Americans.

[00:09:49] Malcolm Collins: Okay.

[00:09:50] Simone Collins: Young Americans, when f- for- That is

[00:09:53] Malcolm Collins: wild

[00:09:54] they did- They literally flipped. Yeah. Literally- Yeah ... flipped positions from like-

[00:09:58] Simone Collins: Yeah, but like crazy. So now they, the young Americans view Palestinians favorably at 53% and Israelis 23%.

[00:10:07] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So

[00:10:07] Simone Collins: this is-

[00:10:07] Malcolm Collins: And it used to be 53% for Israeli and 23%- Mm-hmm ... for Palestine.

[00:10:11] Simone Collins: So a total flip and a very, very s- stark and violent one.

[00:10:16] So it, it really surprised-

[00:10:17] Malcolm Collins: But what’s fascinating about this is this flip- clearly, like if you look at the timeline, was not motivated by Israel’s actions in Palestine, it was motivated by the attack on Israel.

[00:10:27] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s also what’s just so sick. You wanted me to check gender, right? Let me- I’m checking the, the Gallup article right now.

[00:10:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’m gonna see if, if this is all women. That’s my, my thesis. If, if men are doing it, ‘cause the fact- Oh, it,

[00:10:41] Simone Collins: this is all women’s fault, but hold on because,

[00:10:44] Malcolm Collins: This, this affects conservatives. I mean, I’ll be honest, my sentiment towards Muslims more broadly is not a negative sentiment. Like I have Muslim friends.

[00:10:55] I know Muslims who are totally competent, whatever people. However my sentiment towards like the type of Muslim immigration that Europe has right now and that America has begun to open up is extremely negative. The, that it’s, it’s clearly just a, a net negative for our countries and our societies, right?

[00:11:17] Like, a- among an almost any metric, whether you’re looking at crime or you’re looking at you know, state services, or you’re looking at cultural assimilation. We’re just not seeing it at the same rate. And so I don’t think that yeah, I, I don’t, I, I don’t think that it’s something that, that we can continue to do.

[00:11:36] And when I, when I say this, I think one of the things that people forget is eventually, like the progressives who are here now, right? Like, and I’ve- Mm ... I’ve to talk about this all the time. It’s my, my scorpion and the, the, the snake, right?

[00:11:49] Simone Collins: Okay. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah

[00:11:52] Malcolm Collins: And they are able to prevent the two sides from going at it.

[00:11:56] But the population of Americans [00:12:00] that want to just get the unassimilated groups out of America they are the ones who have kids. And the members of these populations that don’t assimilate, like, the, many, many Muslim immigrants do assimilate in the United States, but they often are the ones that have zero kids.

[00:12:18] It’s the ones who are the least assimilated and most hostile that typically have the most kids. Hmm. This is just, like, an obvious thing if you’re looking at the data. And so eventually, a few generations from now, and this is true in Europe, this is true in the United States, a lot of these countries are just gonna, like, ask the question of, like, “Okay you know, you have X many days to get out, and then we have to, like, do something.”

[00:12:39] Because this is gonna be on the table for both of these groups in the future. Both of these groups are groups that are willing to be violent, and right now the panda’s holding them apart, but, like, one day that panda’s not gonna be there anymore. We, we can- Hmm ... just look at the demographic data. And this is why when I discuss and people will probably notice this in a lot of my videos and a lot of my discussion of these types of topics I may sound like somebody who is more open to violent solutions than other individuals.

[00:13:11] And the reason why I sound that way is because I try to keep my opinions and perspectives future oriented and evergreen in terms of where the population is going- Hmm ... where public sentiment is going, and sort of things that are going to come to a T. And this isn’t, like, that existential in the United States, but there are European countries where I can very easily see but within our lifetimes, the problem being aired of, okay, now everyone who is unassimilated has to leave.

[00:13:45] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:13:46] Malcolm Collins: And that’s going to be... That’s not gonna l- that’s gonna look bad. Like, even just ICE, even just Trump trying to, like, when he was trying to just kick out the, like, murderers and grapists people freaked out, right? Because it, it doesn’t look good, you know, dragging the grapist from their home or whatever, right?

[00:14:05] And they’re like, “Oh, look at, look at how horrible this is.” But whatever you saw there, you’re going to see 1,000 times worse than what’s coming, you know, comes down the pipeline, right? And I don’t, I, I, I deeply worry about the humanitarian consequences of not taking these issues seriously right now.

[00:14:28] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:14:29] Malcolm Collins: But anyway, continue.

[00:14:30] Simone Collins: So you’re gonna find this amusing. I didn’t find men and women on the Palestinian issue, but I... They did include independents, democrats, and republicans. So here are the republican sympathies, which is great.

[00:14:43] Malcolm Collins: Basically the same. They don’t go... They, they, they go- They- ... up, up a little bit for Palestinians and a little bit down for Israelis No, they, they just freaking hate Palestinians, and they always have.

[00:14:52] Simone Collins: Like, there’s no meaningful difference in, in, in- Yeah ... how the, the line bounces around, and they’re like okay with, with Israel. Here are the democrats and this is what’s interesting is they, they started out really not being that favorable with really Israel or Palestine, but less favorable with Palestine.

[00:15:07] And then suddenly Palestine-

[00:15:08] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it went from after- ... reached a record high ... and it started going up after the attacks on Israel. Mm-hmm. That’s what gets me.

[00:15:14] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:15:15] Malcolm Collins: Truly monsters-

[00:15:16] Simone Collins: So

[00:15:16] Malcolm Collins: yeah ... these people.

[00:15:17] Simone Collins: I think, I think, this is my little theory, that it has to do with victim blaming and that victim blaming as this concept that has ruined, like caused these insane dynamics of like, “Oh, no, this aggressor committed atrocities.

[00:15:34] Poor aggressor. Let’s defend the aggressor. Let them do terrible things to us,” actually comes from women appropriating victim blaming.

[00:15:43] Speaker 8: No! How could this happen? Where did society go wrong? How

[00:15:51] Speaker 9: could the system fail this poor man?

[00:15:54] Speaker 8: If only he’d had a better stool! [00:16:00] Do you want some hot cocoa?

[00:16:02] Speaker 11: Seems to be socio economics. Most likely an underfunded library.

[00:16:10] Speaker 8: That’s it! Ah! Ah! You shot this beautiful man for no reason! She’s evil incarnate!

[00:16:22] Speaker 10: He was stabbing Murderer! Murderer! He was

[00:16:27] Speaker 8: expressing himself!

[00:16:30] Simone Collins: So victim blaming, let’s go into it.

[00:16:33] Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. Before we go into it- Yeah ... I want to cover another thing here which I think people are going to find queer and it is worth unpacking.

[00:16:41] Okay. Historically republicans had this effect just as democrats did where they immediately started liking, you know, Muslims more after 9/11. Mm. They started liking Muslims more after what happened in, France. But this time they did. This time it didn’t affect Republicans. And I actually, when I think through, I can totally get why.

[00:17:04] The reason it didn’t affect Republicans this time is because the last crop of Republicans, the Boomer Republicans are not really, like, the critical types. Mm-hmm. They’re not the types who are willing to, like, sit down and be like you know, “We need to have a real conversation about w- like, this, this group is causing negative externalities for our society, and eventually we’re gonna have to do something about it.”

[00:17:26] That’s never been a conversation that they were ever going to table or anything like that. At the end of the day, they were in part Republican just because they wanted to be respectable. Like, that’s what Republicanism... It was a respectable old aristocratic party, right? Like, that’s, that’s what it meant back in the day.

[00:17:43] And so the respectable thing to do is to, “Oh, you’ve been attacked by someone that could conceivably increase s- decrease sentiment for them- Yeah ... so I’m going to increase my sentiment for them because now they’re in this position of, of being a v- you know, being potentially having, having people hate them.”

[00:18:03] And and I, I note here, like with 9/11 or something like that it’s not like, when you’re like, “Well, you know, they just happen to share some characteristics with them.” No, like, Islamism was why these people did what they did. In every one of these cases, in the attack on the newspaper, it was because of Muslim beliefs that they did this attack, right?

[00:18:25] It was in the, the case of, of Palestine, that’s a bit different. It’s not as much about the religion, but about, like, pan-Muslim silar- solidarity against Jewish people. And th- I’m, I’m not talking about all Muslims. I’m talking about Muslims in the region. They do genuinely dislike Jews. Or they have sort of a...

[00:18:42] I’ve talked about it. They don’t even really dislike them at the higher level. It’s more just like you can’t be seen liking them, because that could get you in trouble. You know, you have sort of a status hierarchy on how much you can mess with Israel.

[00:18:52] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:18:52] Malcolm Collins: So, The, the, the point I’m, I’m thinking, thinking through here is that the reason why this didn’t affect the right today, but it did in the past, is because the boomer right is no longer the dominant of the right anymore.

[00:19:07] And we weren’t rightists back then. You know, we, the type of people who were l- were, like, done with this BS we weren’t there yet. And then we come in and the mo- we’re, we’re the group that’s like, “Oh, yep, you know, F up Iran. They’re saying... They’re talking s**t. You know, y- you, you, you show them what for,” right?

[00:19:24] Like, and we’ve seen this across this and I’ve talked about this cultural shift in the right, but I think it... we needed this cultural shift to protect ourselves against these kinds of psychological maladies, I think is all you can really call it that the old right was subject to- Mm ... that didn’t wanna say the naughty thing.

[00:19:43] And this is where Simone keeps getting, You know, trying to be like, “Oh, you know, couch more. Don’t be so offensive with your title cards.” And it’s, “No.” Like, we need to crack that seal, right? Like, culturally, societally, that this, “Oh, you can’t say [00:20:00] this. Oh, you can’t say that,” that doesn’t work anymore, right?

[00:20:03] Like, I, I think the video that does a very good job of this is the video about powder

[00:20:10] Speaker: Sorry, I meant call me a racist, fascist, nationalist, grifter, bootlicking theocrat, literary

[00:20:41] Malcolm Collins: but th- we own these titles now, not because, you know, they are accurate representations of us, but because we just don’t care. You l- you wanna say I’m Islamophobic for saying that, like, disproportionately X group is doing Y, or this was motivated in part by their religion, or that there’s going to be long-term conflict between various groups you know, you can F off because I don’t, I don’t care that you are attempting to...

[00:21:12] And nobody cares anymore, right? Like, there’s still these old guards that wanna, like, “Ooh, how could you say something so offensive?” But most of us, and most of those old guard aren’t having kids. Like, they’re just... They’re the group that’s dying out. Like, we’re done with them. We’re done with this b******t. Okay but do you actually, do you have thoughts on that? Do you agree with my assessment that why conservatives weren’t affected by this this time around? S- s- specifically because the Conservative Party is a different group today.

[00:21:41] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, I do think that that plays a huge role in it. And, and you’ll see more when I explain more what happened with victim blamin- blaming and how actually it’s, it’s kind of related to how the new right became the new right as well, ‘cause it, it formed in the 2010s.

[00:21:57] It started to. The breakaway began in the 2010s. So anyway, you, you’ll see. At least I think so. Let’s see. Just confirming a date here Yeah, definitely. Okay, so victim blaming as a concept exists in resistance to genuine victim blaming being something that’s very, very old. That there are, for example, tons of religious texts that frame victims of bad things as sinners who deserved those things as punishment.

[00:22:26] You know, people are like, “Oh, well, you broke your leg ‘cause you’re a bad person.” Like, “Y- your house was flooded ‘cause you’re a bad person ‘cause God hates you,” and that was just a really common thing. So before the term victim blaming was popularized, people would sometimes point to the just world hypothesis, which is basically that people want to believe that the world’s fair, so then they will just assume that victims have done something wrong to deserve the suffering.

[00:22:52] Like, oh, well, th- the world’s not terrible. Like, God isn’t bad because you had that coming is for some reason. And that is, you know... I, I can understand the psychological dynamic at play. But in 1975, there was this psychology na- psychologist named William Ryan who introduced this book called Blaming the Victim that was about blaming the victim.

[00:23:16] And this concept existed for him to critique explanations of poverty and racism that shifted responsibility from unjust social structures onto marginalized communities. And specifically, he was responding to Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report on Black poverty, which argued that, Sort of like, he, Moynihan broadly blamed Black families for structural inequalities like it was their fault, whereas even you and I have talked about how in the 1950s, Black families were twice as stable as their white counterparts, and that-

[00:23:52] Malcolm Collins: Yeah

[00:23:52] Simone Collins: there were actually a lot of things that were done t- to kind of screw over American Black populations, so- Well,

[00:23:59] Malcolm Collins: they were done [00:24:00] by the progressive party, right? Yeah. Like, it’s not just that, like, Dems did them, but the biggest damage that was done to the Black family unit was the normalization of the well, American Black identity, right?

[00:24:13] Like, th- they no longer saw themselves as predominantly, you know, a conservative Christian group, which is generally good for, like, family formation and everything like that, and was what Blacks historically thought of themselves as.

[00:24:24] Simone Collins: Mm,

[00:24:24] Malcolm Collins: mm. But this other thing that existed in a way in opposition to societal mores.

[00:24:31] Simone Collins: Yeah, and this w- this wasn’t really... this was something that was largely... And socialists get involved in this timeline. Like, I can’t even remember it all ‘cause it’s so insane, but, like, it involved socialists and abortion activists and all these sort of terrible things. And a, a lot of these were just white people doing really terrible things to Black people in America.

[00:24:50] And so I, I am totally on the very progressive sounding argument of, yeah, actually, there was, there were many systemic issues that screwed over Black Americans, especially- Especially between well, certainly with slavery, so never mind. Like-

[00:25:02] Malcolm Collins: No, but I think, I think what we pointed out here is blacks were in a better relative position in terms of like right after slavery.

[00:25:12] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:25:12] Malcolm Collins: So it, it’s not like they’re still recovering from slavery. It’s they were in a worse position- Yeah,

[00:25:16] Simone Collins: it’s the, it wasn’t actually the slavery, it was these weird progressive policies and all these other things that, like, totally screwed them over. So yeah, it weirdly it’s not systemic racism as progressives think it was, where they blame Concern, like Sir- Well, it, it, it’s, it’s their

[00:25:32] Malcolm Collins: version of- Jim Crow

[00:25:33] a, a, think about the thing that the Smithsonian released about white culture, right? And they were talking about, like, you’ve gotta, you know- I don’t remember, but ... the, and they said that white culture... Look, look up the Smithsonian thing about white culture they, they got in trouble. Oh

[00:25:46] Simone Collins: my gosh, I forgot.

[00:25:47] Yes, it was some report on how bad it was.

[00:25:50] Malcolm Collins: And it was- Oh, yes ... it was, it was listing all of the things that they, the progressives, it said, like hard work, being on time-

[00:25:57] Simone Collins: Yes, yes, yes ... personal

[00:25:58] Malcolm Collins: responsibility.

[00:25:59] Simone Collins: We need to stop making these things normalized, ‘cause they’re white concepts, and we shouldn’t be imposing our white culture of being on time.

[00:26:06] Speaker 2: So if you don’t remember when this happened, let’s just go over what the Smithsonian, America’s number one museum, officially said was white culture. They said rugged individualism, self-reliance, independence, and autonomy are highly valued and rewarded. Individuals assume control over their environment.

[00:26:26] You get what you deserve. Family structure, nuclear family, husband is the breadwinner of the household. Wife is the homemaker and subordinate to the husband. Emphasis on the scientific method, objective, rational, linear thinking, because non-white people are incapable of that apparently.

[00:26:42] , Causes, effect, relationships, quantitative emphasis. Mm-hmm, Protestant work ethic. At least they recognize that only Protestants have a work ethic. Hard work is the key to success. Work before you play. If you didn’t meet your goals, you didn’t work hard enough. That all sounds like reasonable things to teach a child to me.

[00:27:02] Religion, Christianity is the norm. , Status, power, and authority. Your job is who you are. Respect authority. I guess they’re like, “Don’t respect authority.” Heavy value on ownership and goods. , Okay, , future orientation. Plan for the future. Delayed gratification.

[00:27:18] Aesthetics Woman’s beauty is being, , thin. Man’s attractiveness is based on economic power, status, and intellect. I love intellect. They had to throw that-- What? Oh my God

[00:27:31] Be polite is another one they have here

[00:27:33] Malcolm Collins: And, and person- no, but in Euro-

[00:27:35] Simone Collins: Because other people are on island time-

[00:27:37] Malcolm Collins: Black people- ... and river time ... used to have all of this stuff used to be part of Black culture. Oh. It was stripped from Black culture by these progressive and frankly racist stereotypes that progressives had- Mm ... of that culture and what it represented.

[00:27:52] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:27:52] Malcolm Collins: And I think that that’s something that’s really important to, to highlight is that-

[00:27:57] Simone Collins: 100% ...

[00:27:57] Malcolm Collins: the, and if you wanna go into the data on this, [00:28:00] because you’re like, “That can’t be true, Malcolm.” They’re, they’re more... Like, Blacks weren’t better off in the past than they are. Like, in the 1950s, Blacks were better off than they are today, and it’s like in a lot of ways they were.

[00:28:10] Go to our episode about the 1950s. You can see the episode. It’s called 1950s Black Families Were Twice As Stable As Their White Counterparts: The Stuff of Black Culture. Well, they were twice as... They, they had a children out of wedlock at 5% the rate, and for whites it was 10% the rate.

[00:28:22] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:23] Malcolm Collins: But that’s not the only thing. Also-

[00:28:25] Simone Collins: Oh, no, it was a bunch of other things. There were, all, yeah, thriving, thriving communities, all these other lovely... Yeah, it was it, it was a thing. It was a whole thing. Anyway, I’m not gonna get into that. What I’m trying to say w- the, the gist of this argument is that this dude, Mr.

[00:28:38] Ryan, he introduces this concept, victim blaming, to point out that, like, oh, actually, like especially Black Americans, there’s been some stuff. It’s it’s, they’re not evil, okay? The, the people, they were screwed over. And th- we would say, yes, they have been screwed over. So I’m saying there is merit to the concept of victim blaming sometimes.

[00:28:56] But what happened in 2010s, they, the, the concept was completely appropriated by women who took it and turned it into not a, “Hey, sometimes victims are subject to systemic problems,” but rather, “Never blame victims, never blame victims, never blame victims.” Just like never, ever, ever. Like a reflexive panicked crazy-eyed response to the very concept of victims.

[00:29:23] Like, as soon as something is a victim, it can do no wrong, okay?

[00:29:28] Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think- Like ... by the way, fun episode to, to, to note- Yeah ... because I wanna dig into this. Did the CIA really start the crack epidemic among the Black community, or is that a, is that a, a myth? I mean, I, I, I-

[00:29:40] Simone Collins: Oh, no, I think I’ve s- like, watched long YouTube videos on it.

[00:29:43] I think it, like, for real happened.

[00:29:45] Malcolm Collins: Let’s dig into that.

[00:29:46] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, okay. That could be good. Mm. That, that time- Send me a text at 802- ... the CIA

[00:29:50] Malcolm Collins: started the crack epidemic

[00:29:52] Simone Collins: Oh, my gosh. But

[00:29:52] Malcolm Collins: yeah. That,

[00:29:53] Simone Collins: that could make for a good

[00:29:53] Malcolm Collins: title.

[00:29:54] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, no, there’s all, I know the medical experiment. Look Yeah, I mean, it’s, syst- it’s, th- don’t blame that kind of victimhood, but yeah, so- The

[00:30:02] Malcolm Collins: CIA did medical experiments on white people too, mind you, Simone.

[00:30:06] Simone Collins: Sure.

[00:30:07] Malcolm Collins: They had the c- like the even the Unabomber was in one of the experiments that was meant to drive people crazy.

[00:30:12] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, he was- ... whatever. He was a stable genius. I’m going on to how women ruined- It

[00:30:18] Malcolm Collins: worked ...

[00:30:18] Simone Collins: victim blaming. Yeah, it w- Okay? Yeah. Look, I mean, it’s, that’s better than acoustic king.

[00:30:25] And,

[00:30:25] Malcolm Collins: and by the way, kids- Mm-hmm ... I wanna tell you something.

[00:30:27] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:30:28] Malcolm Collins: Of all the drugs you can take, do not take psychedelics. Okay? That, that, that, that is what... They are the drugs that the CIA used to try to up people’s minds. Okay? We’ve seen in our

[00:30:40] Simone Collins: community- Well, no, I think if you’re, if you’re terminally ill, it, it’s a really good way to reconcile with your death.

[00:30:45] And I think there, there are applications that make a lot of sense. If you’re- If you’re terminally ill. We saw in our community- There are peer-reviewed studies that show that very targeted use with, you know, going in with intentions and with an experienced therapist, they can treat PTSD really well.

[00:30:58] So there again, very targeted things, I think it would be really effective. I also imagine there could be more research on this, that shocking people out of, Can you

[00:31:05] Malcolm Collins: not hear me?

[00:31:06] Simone Collins: Oh, I can’t. Sorry. I just wanna make one more

[00:31:08] Malcolm Collins: point. Okay, make your point.

[00:31:10] Simone Collins: That y- I really wish there were research on shocking people out of chronic pain, ‘cause there’s a lot of people who have residual chronic pain that is crippling that could possibly, like, have your brain scrambled enough by psychedelics to get you out of that rut.

[00:31:24] ‘Cause I think what happens is the brain gets in a pain rut, and it can’t get out even though your body’s fine.

[00:31:28] Malcolm Collins: Maybe. Mm. You’re, you’re talking about, like, spoonies and stuff. The, the, I mean, we’ve seen within our community, I, I more would just push against it broadly. Mm ... like, th- what it can do to you, even just trying them once, like it had a serious impact on Ruby Yard’s reputation-

[00:31:43] Simone Collins: Yeah

[00:31:43] Malcolm Collins: Just trying ayahuasca once. Like, why risk something like that? I think it’s, i- i- because keep in mind, you know, you can still access your email and stuff when you’re on the psychedelic, right? Like- y-

[00:31:55] Simone Collins: Look, I think he wasn’t still high when he did those things. Yes,

[00:31:59] Malcolm Collins: he [00:32:00] was.

[00:32:00] Simone Collins: Oh, he, he was... No, he would be vomiting like a crazy person if he were-

[00:32:03] Malcolm Collins: He was high on his stream.

[00:32:05] Yes, he was. That was the entire point of, like, the 10-hour stream.

[00:32:10] Simone Collins: Oh, really? Wow. Yes. So he had, like, a bucket next to him? I didn’t watch the stream.

[00:32:14] Malcolm Collins: I di- I did... I haven’t watched the whole thing either. Sure ... but the, the point being, I, I think they’re bad, and it’s what other people use when they want to control you.

[00:32:23] So continue.

[00:32:24] Simone Collins: Right. So yeah. Anyway, women turn it into this, and, and the reason why women turned it into this reflexive never ever question had to do with all of the Me Too related movements that emerged in the 2010s. Now, Me Too, like the hashtag Me Too, emerged first in 2006. It didn’t actually go viral until 2017, though it trended upward.

[00:32:52] What happened though that was earlier that I hadn’t heard of, as all this stuff was bubbling up, were the SlutWalks. Have you heard about SlutWalks?

[00:33:04] Malcolm Collins: I have heard about slut walks. Yeah, I’ve even seen them

[00:33:07] Simone Collins: You... Wait, a live slut walk?

[00:33:09] Malcolm Collins: Not in real life. I’ve seen, like, pictures from, like, France and stuff where they do that nonsense, where they walk around, like, topless.

[00:33:15] Simone Collins: Yeah, so I, so I just, I’ll... I’m gonna bring people up to speed, ‘cause I didn’t know these existed. I don’t know what I was doing from 2011 to 2013, but, like, they’re, they, these are s- these are f- protests primarily populated by women that framed victim blaming as a central injustice as part of them. They, the, the first one was in 2011 after a Toronto police officer advised university students to, quote, “Avoiding dressing like sluts,” to prevent

[00:33:42] sexual assaults. Which is, I think, reasonable advice.

[00:33:47] Malcolm Collins: I think that’s reasonable advice.

[00:33:49] Simone Collins: It’s so based. But by 2013 the marches expanded into this massive worldwide phenomenon, which is presumably why you saw them in France. The, the first one was in 2011, but the biggest ones were in 2013, and the demonstrators were primarily young women.

[00:34:04] And what you would do if you’re a young woman demonstrating at these, is you would dress like a slut, and then walk around with signs to protest grape culture, and victim blaming, and slut shaming.

[00:34:18] So I will share with you some amazing photos, because, I don’t know, just in, like, the context of, like, more recent assaults that have taken place in the UK, and in the US, and in other countries in Europe, I’m like, “Oh, my God.”

[00:34:31] So here we have, Well, one young lady who’s not getting the prompt. She’s wearing black leggings and a checkered plaid shirt, which is not slutty. But then next to her is a purple-haired girl who is wearing a bodysuit that’s maybe not very flattering. Let’s see. Yeah, you gotta look at your WhatsApp.

[00:34:51] Ugh. Now, here’s, here’s ano- Here’s another one with a woman holding up a poster saying, “It’s my hot body. I do what I want.” She’s, Oh, my God ... letting you know she does what she wants. Here we have “How could I have been asking for it when I did not even know what it was at the time?” And then there are two girls next to this, this person holding the poster, who are just wearing bras and their jeans.

[00:35:20] Here we have some women with signs saying, “Can’t touch this.”

[00:35:25] Malcolm Collins: Feminism feels- She’s just

[00:35:25] Simone Collins: full

[00:35:25] Malcolm Collins: out- ... so anti-women to me. In,

[00:35:27] Simone Collins: under-

[00:35:27] Malcolm Collins: Like-

[00:35:28] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:35:28] Malcolm Collins: the idea that somebody psyops these women into walking around half-naked and parading themselves around town. Like, historically we’d be like, “Oh, so that was, like, the prisoners of the civilization you just conquered?”

[00:35:40] Simone Collins: Yeah, that they- But this- Yeah, this, this, this literally looks like a triumph, a Roman triumph, and these are all of the female slaves that they have brought with them for things.

[00:35:50] Malcolm Collins: So you, you never got into anything like this back when you were progressive? You never thought, “Oh, I’m gonna go-

[00:35:54] Simone Collins: No

[00:35:58] walk around town [00:36:00] half-naked?” And you know what? I, I really think that I, I may have seen a SlutWalk, ‘cause I, at this time I was working in San Francisco. You lived in San Francisco at this time too. If I saw one, I probably would’ve thought n- it was like some iteration of Critical Tits, which is this like group bike ride that would occasionally take place throughout America where you would just, a bunch of people would ride their bicycles without shirts on.

[00:36:18] It was delightful. And so you, in San Francisco you see something like this and you’re like, “Oh, this is not remarkable.” So maybe that’s why I didn’t know this was a thing. But I’m just... I, I just, there are all these countries where if a woman went out dressed like this, she would be... Horrific, unspeakable things would happen to her.

[00:36:38] And I feel like because we’re, we’re also choosing to not push back against those cultures entering our countries women are learning the hard way that actually we can’t really do protests like this anymore, and it’s really depressing, and I just find this very ironic. ‘Cause I feel like when I look back at these photos, the first thing I think about is just the unspeakable privilege and comfort that these women are operating with, and I don’t really know if today women would do the same thing.

[00:37:04] Yeah, I haven’t seen a

[00:37:04] Malcolm Collins: slutwalk in a long time. I don’t think you... You couldn’t do a slutwalk in We- London today. You’d be a- attacked.

[00:37:10] Simone Collins: Actually, though, yeah. And I think that’s really notable that while it isn’t said, I think it’s, it is implicitly understood that we can’t, women can’t dress like sluts anymore because now we understand that women are being regularly assaulted on the streets, and, like, it’s actually not safe anymore.

[00:37:30] And I, even I grew up as a teen, like thinking, “Well, that’s just unheard of. That doesn’t happen.” ‘Cause it was, but now the news stories are just so pervasive that I think that sentiment has changed. But what’s really interesting about this is the key thing, I think you remember the hashtag believeallwomen that was part of this whole victim-blaming narrative.

[00:37:46] It was just, like, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, people were just told, “If someone says they’re a victim, they’re a victim. Don’t question them. The, the man is guilty until proven innocent.” Like, this just, it completely changed the dynamics. And I don’t know how it was, like, I just, my mind really has keyed to this.

[00:38:06] It, it just, it does seem to me that it was pervasively understood that you were to not question period. And what happened during this period, aside from, like, the 2011 to 2013 culmination of slutwalks, and then 2017 Me Too really reaching the stratosphere, was that universities and NGOs and government agencies started publishing extensive material on grape culture and victim blaming, and they made the term super standard in training manuals and awareness campaigns and policy documents.

[00:38:34] Again, making it even harder to criticize what might have been causes of complex conflicts that involved possibly sexual violence. And then also there was this influx of new psychological and criminological research on victim blaming that Included various studies and myths and i- i- victim blaming essentially a- appeared a ton more in research documents.

[00:38:58] And then professional bodies like, I found one, a research oversight office, also social services and health institutions, just a ton of like this county website or whatever would have their own dedicated pages on victim blaming. Yeah. And then I think more importantly too is I think we all remember the m- much more heavy censorship regime on Facebook and a- well, the website formerly known as Twitter, right?

[00:39:23] How anything that Could possibly be construed as bullying or harassment would get taken down. Yeah. So Facebook’s community standards define bullying and harassment as content that, quote, “Purposefully targets private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them, e.g., targeted shaming, altered images, doxing, or repeated unwanted contact.”

[00:39:46] And vi- victim blaming is totally that. I mean, what are you doing but pointing to someone who had something terrible happen to them and saying they might have played a role in this terrible thing happening to them? Yeah. Right? That is clear. And so [00:40:00] while it isn’t implicit that victim blaming violated terms of service of these websites, it totally did.

[00:40:06] And so that... This is also a period during which actual, like, no, no one even saw a narrative of victim blaming. No one even saw people say, “Hey, maybe it was her fault.” ‘Cause even if one of these did get past a moderator, they would just be completely ratioed and sub-tweeted and, and attacked f- openly- Gosh

[00:40:26] for just- Remember before the blessing of Blue Sky?

[00:40:28] Yeah, when, when just everyone disappeared to that and then all just tried to kill each other. It’s horrible. And yeah, I mean, yeah, Twitter, Twitter was also famous for just a ton of other, like, even the government getting involved, involved as censorship.

[00:40:38] That was so scary.

[00:40:39] Malcolm Collins: Well, I think a lot of the crazier ones- Yeah ... unalived themselves. Like, I actually think that that’s a, a bigger thing that happened- Mm ... that is not talked about it as much. I mean,

[00:40:46] Simone Collins: yeah, there does seem to be a lot of depression and mental illness. That’s sa- that’s very sad.

[00:40:50] Malcolm Collins: And I think that that’s part of why the left quieted down, because the crazier ones burnt off.

[00:40:56] Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I think you are onto something there, so that’s, that’s totally a thing. Yeah. But I think there’s an one other element to this that is non-trivial, which is that there was also pretty significant rise in an external locus of control for individuals during this period. And there is actually, though it’s...

[00:41:17] This is before even to 2010, but I still think that the trend just continued and got worse. There’s a 2004- Mm ... cross-temporal meta-analysis that was published in Personality and Social Psychology Review, where two researchers looked at 97 samples of college students, a total of almost 19,000 students over 18,000.

[00:41:40] And then 41 samples of children when that was a sample of over 6,000. Looking at data from 1960 to 2002- And they found that locus of control scores became substantially more external, of about 0.8 standard deviations Oh my

[00:41:55] Malcolm Collins: God, do not send your kid into the school system. I’m gonna be building soon an AI that’ll make even better than Parrhesia for education.

[00:42:03] That’s, that’s one of the projects I’m working on.

[00:42:05] Simone Collins: I’m so excited, yeah.

[00:42:05] Malcolm Collins: That uses remote AIs that your kids can carry around with them. Yeah. And that focus on education and lesson plans and stuff like that. It’s gonna be so great because I’m making it for myself and my kids, so of course it’s gonna be awesome.

[00:42:17] Simone Collins: It’s gonna be fantastic. But just to give you framing, and this is ending in 2002, right? So it’s, it’s, I, I can only, it can only be worse now. The, it’s not like any of these trends reversed, so they ha- it is profoundly worse now. But the average college student in 2002 had a more external v- locus of control than 80% of college students in the early 1960s Do you, like, this is profound.

[00:42:43] That is really bad. Yeah. And, and it it all comes down to-

[00:42:46] Malcolm Collins: Explain locus of control to people, ‘cause

[00:42:47] Simone Collins: I know that it’s- So locus of control. If you have an internal locus of control and I I, I bump my toe on something in the house, I’m like, “Ugh, I’m, I’m so clumsy. That was my fault. I should’ve been more careful with where I was looking.”

[00:42:59] If I have an external locus of control and I bump my toe in, in my house, I’m like, “Who made me bump my toe? How, how could you possibly have put this thing here? Who put this chair here?” Like, you just find anyone else to blame. You know, i- if you fail the test, it’s because, you know, the, y- that your, your parents didn’t tell you to study enough, and your teacher hates you anyway, and all these things.

[00:43:21] Ev- nothing is your fault. Mm-hmm. And when you point to things like, oh, well, it’s not your fault that you were sexually assaulted, it’s because, you know, of bias, and this, this man was uneducated about consent is- He

[00:43:38] Malcolm Collins: wasn’t aware that you’re not supposed to rape people.

[00:43:40] Simone Collins: He’s not aware that if you wear super slutty clothing and come home with him and give him a b*****b that he, you know, he, he still needs to ask for consent every five minutes.

[00:43:52] Like, yeah, it just... But this is, yeah, it has become a very pervasive thing. And I do think that this has a big role to play, but I think these [00:44:00] are all very correlated. And what does seem to be something that really just skyrocketed, I mean, as you can see with Google Ngram Viewer, in the 2010s is just this concept of victim blaming.

[00:44:09] And it, I thought when I would look into the history and, and this, this this ex exponential increase in victim blaming that took place in the 2010s, that it would have to do with a broader variety of topics, like, victims of racism, victims of classism, victims of whatever. But no, it was only, only, like, Me Too victims, and that’s what really shocked me.

[00:44:32] Hmm. And keep in mind, Malcolm, just like you said, this, you know, Gamergate was 2014, 2015. So the, this happened at this very same time, and I think it, to your point, it didn’t affect conservatives the same way because this was this period where conservatives were like What are you talking about? Like, this is-

[00:44:50] Malcolm Collins: This is, yeah, like-

[00:44:51] Simone Collins: delusional. And, and, and that’s when you started to see this break off, and I think you’re also ... Like, if we were to look at external versus internal locus of control among conservatives and progressives, you would see massive external locus of control across progressives and much less common external locus of control among conservatives, who broadly see themselves as personally responsible.

[00:45:13] You know, the buck stops with them. And ultimately for your mental health, it’s better to have an internal locus of control. Even if something’s totally outside of your control, to still be like, “What can I do better?” is going to ultimately- Mm ... produce better outcomes. ‘Cause if you just blame other people, you have no reason to improve, to look within and see what you can do to increase your odds of success.

[00:45:31] So yeah. But yeah, I, I, I didn’t think that this was gonna be a women are terrible thing, but I really do think that women messed it up, because women now are just so ... What happened is they went from being so reflexively listen to all women, believe all women, to just believe all victims. Because the term victim blaming was used.

[00:45:51] Yeah. I know that sounds stupid, but I, I actually think it kind of works. Does my theory hold with you or do you think it’s stupid? You

[00:45:58] Malcolm Collins: can be honest. It holds enough. I think, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. But I think there’s also the colonialist narrative and worldview, Sierra Mendonsi episode if you wanna get- Oh

[00:46:10] a better understanding of how this works.

[00:46:12] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:46:12] Malcolm Collins: I think also metastasized during this period and is part of what’s leading to this. This idea that w- as soon as that became normalized in the left, the left’s goal genuinely became the eradication of European populations. Mm. And Jewish populations, right?

[00:46:28] Mm-hmm. Like, somehow ... Th- th- that’s the thing, whenever you see somebody, and this is why it’s so easy to be cultural allies with Jews or Israel, is whenever I see some crazy leftist talking about how they wanna, you know, get rid of the Israel, get rid of the Jew, blah, blah. You see this at protests all the time.

[00:46:46] I know that they feel the exact same way about me. Like, we have a shared enemy.

[00:46:52] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:46:52] Malcolm Collins: Which is you know, it, it makes ... Th- the you know they’re, you know they say the same thing. They, they ... When they’re protesting everyone’s equal and you go, “Well, what about, you know, the grooming gangs or whatever?”

[00:47:03] And they’re just like, “No, so.” You know, they don’t really feel that way. They feel that some groups are superior to other groups. And you know, I, I, I’m just so grateful that their fertility rates are so low and that we don’t have to deal with this for another few generations.

[00:47:21] Simone Collins: Same, dude.

[00:47:23] Malcolm Collins: Anyway, thank you Simone.

[00:47:25] Have a wonderful day. I love you, Malcolm. Love you too. so I don’t know if you heard that there’s this influencer who’s facing a firing squad in Dubai.

[00:47:38] Simone Collins: Oh, yes, for allegedly stabbing her boyfriend when she says that she was attempting to flee and he was holding onto her passport.

[00:47:49] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I think it’s... It... To me, it’s pretty obvious she’s telling the truth.

[00:47:52] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:47:53] Malcolm Collins: And I’m very surprised because, one, there’s no... They’re... They said it was premeditated murder, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why would you [00:48:00] fly to Dubai to commit a premeditated murder and then leave without, like, all of his stuff in your suitcase or something?

[00:48:09] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:48:09] Malcolm Collins: Like, that just seems like a purely bad situation to put yourself in.

[00:48:14] So, like, I can’t understand what they think e- e- especially ‘cause it was her second time going down there to see him, like, what they think... maybe if, if, if it does turn out that she had, like, Bitcoin or something, right? Like, a, a server with a bunch of Bitcoin in her suitcase or

[00:48:30] Simone Collins: something. Oh, sure, yeah.

[00:48:31] Maybe, or that she has a history of violent action, which-

[00:48:36] Malcolm Collins: Actually, the other guy has a history of violent acts. He-

[00:48:38] Simone Collins: I know, I know. I heard that. Yeah. I, yeah, I’m, I’m with Asmongold on this. This is the only reporting that I’ve heard.

[00:48:43] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, we watched the Asmongold news show.

[00:48:45] Simone Collins: We watched the same video, of course, of course.

[00:48:48] Malcolm Collins: Simone, I love that our algos are so similar.

[00:48:52] Simone Collins: Not really.

[00:48:55] Malcolm Collins: Really?

[00:48:55] Simone Collins: What gives you- It’s, like, Asmongold, Nux, Leaflet, and then, oh, and, Oh my God, why am I blanking on her name? Lovely fox woman.

[00:49:05] Malcolm Collins: Kirsha?

[00:49:06] Simone Collins: What- Kirsha. W- why did that, why did my brain do that? I don’t

[00:49:08] Malcolm Collins: watch as many of Kirsha’s stuff, like de novo as I do the other people.

[00:49:12] Yeah. No, she shows up le- less in my feed. I don’t know why. Maybe the algorithm is- I, I, but I mean her videos, if I remember, are, are quite a lot longer than other videos, and I just don’t have time for them. That could be. Yeah. Yeah, I kinda don’t see them. That’s the core reason. It’s not like she’s not entertaining.

[00:49:23] There’s some other people I’m just like, you do not put a, a, like you’re boring or low energy or, you know, like, which, which I, I really don’t like when people are low energy. We should probably vibe like Nux, right? Like- Yes ... contrast, like, what I mean by that is contrast like Nux’s show with like, Lotus Eater, Sargon of Akkad.

[00:49:41] Like Nux, very high energy. Sargon of- I love Sargon of Akkad’s like politics, I just find him too low energy.

[00:49:48] Simone Collins: I think when people turn to the lower energy but based content, it’s because they want like dad energy instead of like friend energy.

[00:49:58] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:49:58] Simone Collins: But I don’t know. This is my theory. I, I

[00:49:59] Malcolm Collins: guess that’s something I don’t need in my life is more dad energy.

[00:50:02] I got too much-

[00:50:02] Simone Collins: You don’t want someone to tell you to make your bed ‘cause you just, that ship has sailed. The bed will never be made. I will sometimes, twice a year, descend upon your room and leave your bed totally made. And those are the only times.

[00:50:17] Malcolm Collins: It’s actually funny- And you get

[00:50:17] Simone Collins: really mad at me

[00:50:19] Malcolm Collins: Sargon of Akkad, of all of these figures, is the one who has the biggest reputation for being like an offensive public figure. And that’s mostly just because he started talking about conservative content before the other ones did. Oh. When it’s still- ‘Cause

[00:50:33] Simone Collins: he’s so not sensationalist at all, from what I remember.

[00:50:38] Malcolm Collins: There was a thing where he said like he wouldn’t even grape some woman who was a public official, and people freaked out about that, which he- th- that seems pretty benign compared

[00:50:48] Simone Collins: to today’s political rhetoric. That sounds along the lines of the Trump accusation, response to his rape accusations where he’s like, “She’s not my type.

[00:50:55] I wouldn’t- It wouldn’t try.

[00:50:59] Malcolm Collins: She’s not my type.

[00:51:00] Simone Collins: Yeah, which I find to be a weirdly compelling argument. But also, it’s been a long time since the event took place, so she could have been his type back then. Anyway.

[00:51:13] Malcolm Collins: Oh, wait, any other news I wanted to catch you up on? Still working on... Oh, a really cool thing for the hardware that we’re getting for working for RFAB-

[00:51:21] Simone Collins: Yeah

[00:51:22] Malcolm Collins: is it turns out the device, that it has the camera and the screen on it it comes with the magnets on its back, so you can just plop it on a fridge or anything that’s metallic.

[00:51:31] Simone Collins: Ooh.

[00:51:32] Malcolm Collins: And so, like-

[00:51:33] Simone Collins: But ladies and gentlemen, never plonk a magnet on your dishwasher. That, I learned that from a dishwasher repair person.

[00:51:40] It can break the electronics inside. Oh.

[00:51:42] Malcolm Collins: Don’t

[00:51:42] Simone Collins: do it.

[00:51:42] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But yeah, the, what, what makes that cool is it means, like, you can take your Companion with you when you’re cooking or something, put it up on the fridge, and it can observe the scene- Oh, I love that ... and talk with you and give you feedback. “

[00:51:55] Simone Collins: Your posture is horrible.

[00:51:57] So kyphotic. You must stop this [00:52:00] now.”

[00:52:02] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:52:02] Simone Collins: Interesting.

[00:52:03] Malcolm Collins: So I’m excited to get, get this. Well, I mean, the idea is, is that once we build this system, then I can build w- a more advanced system of, like, household assistants.

[00:52:13] Simone Collins: Right, and it’s only a matter of years, if not months, until we can hook an AI into our Wi-Fi router using that system that allows you to see where a- anyone is in the room based on the Wi-Fi signal.

[00:52:27] Malcolm Collins: Oh, wow.

[00:52:27] Simone Collins: So then we can get to this point where we can start asking, “Where’s so and so?” And she will say, “Playing near the toilet.” And we’ll say, “Oh, my God,” and we’ll run. We’ll run to that place. Or we can even get warnings. “So and so has spent more than three minutes in the bathroom. Would you like to investigate?”

[00:52:49] Malcolm Collins: Wait, is this, like, an API I could use? I could try to build that out as part-

[00:52:52] Simone Collins: I don’t recall the exact software the YouTuber that I watched who talked about this, like, the, the system, but it, yeah, it is, it is, It, it does appear to be a specific type of software that, But

[00:53:02] Malcolm Collins: there, there was... I mean, I have always wanted to, and I could make this a project after the hardware, a, an assistant project, is a child monitoring system.

[00:53:12] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:12] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s

[00:53:13] Simone Collins: great.

[00:53:13] Malcolm Collins: If you combined this image model that I’m talking about here with a Wi-Fi tracking system- Oh, yeah ... you could pretty easily get a child monitoring system up and running.

[00:53:23] Simone Collins: That would be so freaking cool. That would be so cool. I

[00:53:28] Malcolm Collins: don’t even have

[00:53:29] Simone Collins: to- Super into that ...

[00:53:30] Malcolm Collins: parent.

[00:53:31] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, so Google already has...

[00:53:33] And here’s the thing, is Google has a product that’s, they’re paying to educate people about this. They are... Remember, their camera system will alert you about things in a sort of smart way, like, “Your cat’s doing this.” I can’t remember exactly the specifics, but it was something that would send, I think, push notifications based on actual intelligently perceived actions taking place within s- your house.

[00:53:54] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:54] Simone Collins: And it is very expensive. It is a subscription-based service. Like, it is not cheap. And that’s probably their subsidized price. So especially if we can make something more affordable, that would be really cool.

[00:54:05] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. I’m, I... Well, that, that’s, that’s sort of the idea behind RFAB is, And it’s one of the things I’ve been working really hard on, with video generation, is getting it way more affordable, and I found a number of hacks that got the price down, where I think we’re one of the cheapest sites right now for- Yes

[00:54:18] for video generation.

[00:54:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, ‘cause it’s finally starting to get a little costly for people. That’s cool. Oh, I’m so excited about that.

[00:54:26] Speaker 3: That’s the biggest one, you guys. Oh my gosh. I’m gonna give it to camera. Oh. Mommy, mommy, mommy. Wow. Make sure you water this one every day. Every day. Okay, Toasty. Whoa. So make sure to water this one every day when it, when you put it in the dirt. Oh, well, we just took it out of the dirt. What if we put it in a vase and then water it while it lives?

[00:54:49] Does that sound good to you, Toasty? Maybe... That’s a great idea. Oh, Ty- Ty- You put it in water. She’s making a break for it. So, mommy. Yeah? I heard that the root sucks up water. This looks like it’s a banana. Yeah. This, this is long one. Looks great. Put it in the basket. Uh, mommy, I heard the root sucks up water.

[00:55:02] It does. It does. So that’s why you should put it in a big vase full of water. Yeah. Yeah, because it’s so big.

[00:55:17] Yeah, it’s gotta suck up all that water, right? And I also got the roots. You did. I got it. I got a feather. Oh, thank you,

[00:55:25] Indy. That’s so cute. A bunch. Oh, look at that. Wow. And also silky green leaves. Thank you so much. Oh, let’s go. Oh, they all go in the basket. Thank you, friends. In the basket. In the basket. Whoa.

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