The conversation explores broader questions around VTuber personas, marital expectations, personal fantasies versus involving others, and the distinction between harmless yearning and problematic behavior. We also address community responses, power dynamics, and how these events shape norms in right-leaning spaces.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:
Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are gonna be talking about something that has been anthropologically really interesting for me in the last couple weeks. There have been three attempted cancellations slash major scandals that came out this past week. And the way that each of them has spun out and ended up working out for the people involved has shown that the new right online space is settling on an ideology of what is appropriate behavior and what is inappropriate behavior in regards to sexuality, gooning, and yearning. Specifically, we’re going to be talking about the instance of Ethan Klein being in a relationship where it appears his wife hadn’t had sex with him for years and then deciding to cheat on her, which is interesting in terms of how people are going to react to that. Then we have the case of Amber Paradox, who was a female presenting VTuber who turned out to be a male. Then we have the case of Powder and somebody attempting to cancel her for past horny posting. Not like that, but but, you know, twerking and stuff like that and working on projects that had horny related stuff in it and horny stuff on her Discord. And just for the sort of scorecard at the end of this, the Powder situation has, if anything, helped

Simone Collins:
her.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s increased her reputation. It really reminds me of the in praise of shadows attempted attack on Windigo. Oh. Hilarious. It made in praise of shadows look horrible and Windigo look great in terms of when everybody did all the reactions. Hers was even worse than that because the key piece of evidence that he led the entire attack with was that she had an OnlyFans account, which was a link to a Rickroll that she had done on April first fools day, like, a number of years ago. And, I mean, to his credit, she said she lost. She said that she only had 15,000 followers back then, and she lost a thousand of them when she did this. Oh. Because so many people believed it.

Simone Collins:
Oh, they got mad that it wasn’t mad.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. That’s why you’re really careful about

Simone Collins:
Wow. I’ve never heard people to take a rickroll that bad. I thought, you know, you just... You chuckle. You keep going.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. The... So, like, let’s go into each of these. The Ember Paradox situation has been perhaps the most interesting to me. Are you familiar with it, Simone?

Simone Collins:
Vaguely. You know?

Malcolm Collins:
So in the past, we have said there is not a lot of drama in, like, the new rights space or mini scandals.

Simone Collins:
Right. Now And then when this came out, they’re like, Malcolm. Malcolm. What’s this about there being no drama? In Three in

Malcolm Collins:
a row. Well, I think, one, it’s a lot of the drama in this space is stirred up by a single individual. and at first, when the Amber Paradox thing happened, I was more upset with this individual than I was at Amber Paradox. Same, unfortunately. The the individual is Straub.

Simone Collins:
I’m chalking it up to postpartum sleep deprivation and, angriness because it... It’s tough sometimes. I could see someone expressing extra displaced aggression.

Malcolm Collins:
She did the same thing where she crashed out on Yuki and Powder for their views on Well, first date of birth. Do you

Simone Collins:
know how mean I am to you when I’m It is true.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Okay. We’ll we’ll chalk it up to that. But

Simone Collins:
I’m trying to give her an out here. I I... Because because I I I think, you know, I think they’re a great power couple. You know, Rev says Destiny.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, no. Hold on. I’m actually going to... As more information has come out, I think she was a more in the right than I originally realized.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Because it did seem like she was stirring up nonsense and causing conflict when she really didn’t need to. But, also, I’m like, look. I get it. I do a lot of things I don’t... I shouldn’t do when I’m under the influence as it were.

Malcolm Collins:
Of of women juices.

Simone Collins:
Of being female.

Malcolm Collins:
This is what... This is the problem with bringing women into our community. I’m

Simone Collins:
so sorry. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
But... Yeah. So she ends up dropping this because some fan found some DMs that showed a connection, and, then he admits it. and, my initial thought in relation to all of this is, oh, no. Did you know that my good friend Leaflet isn’t a real slime girl? Like, big drop. I I I have completely undermined her trust in me. and then worse, I’ve really been, because the takes that have gone most viral on it have been Yukiyara’s takes. And her takes focus on the idea of, well, even privately to me as your friend, you didn’t tell me, which led me to engage with you in private conversations as if you were a woman, to which I understand why that can be hurtful, but this is Amber Paradox’s entire career. Right? They could be blown up over this. And you’re, like, kinda friends, but apparently, like, not so good of friends that, like, I I would... You wouldn’t share that if you were faking your gender.

Simone Collins:
Classic, gender bent anime scenario where either a boy or girl ends up having to go to school, and as a as a boy, but, you know, she’s really a girl, and she’s going to an all boy school. And then they all have crushes on each other and blah blah blah, and it gets very confusing. It’s one of those situations where, like, you start to really care about these people, and then the lie gets deeper, but you can’t tell them because of... Insert plot point.

Malcolm Collins:
No. That’s not why you can’t tell them. You can’t

Simone Collins:
tell them because career was gonna be lost if it came out well.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s your entire career. You can’t tell everyone you collab with that your your real gender. Point being, this was all outed because he told somebody. Right? Like, did did somebody dug something up, swirling?

Simone Collins:
That’s true. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
You got nothing. Secondary point is is if Yuki really did share such personal information with him because she thought he was a girl, then he, despite the attacks from her, hasn’t released it, which is

Simone Collins:
No. It’s just... Look. There’s some stuff that I don’t bring up with you that I bring up with other people

Malcolm Collins:
who are True. I’m... Yeah. What I’m saying, it probably wasn’t anything that egregious. So it sounds like it’s more of a... Or he’s just uniquely moral, but that’s not what I think is really going on here. The real reason, I don’t care that he lied to friends. Okay? If you are interacting with a VTuber, you should take at face value that you are interacting with a persona.

Simone Collins:
Well, yes. That’s true. Yes. Fair enough.

Malcolm Collins:
And I think to presume more than that... And I think it’s important to take that because if you’re like, well, now I’ve been turned gay because I masturbated or found this person attractive. And I’m like, if that happened to you, this should be a warning to you about never gooning to VTuber. What are you doing?

Simone Collins:
Well... But also, I’d like... The the funny thing is there’s this... In a totally separate world, this Disney adult controversy playing out with this this woman who, over ten years, has has stalked and obsessed over and posted about the Peter Pan’s at Disneyland. She’s well aware, be... Having worked in the Disney intern program, for example, that these are actors playing Peter Pan. She’s not, like, psychotic. Right? But she she tries to give them gifts. She crushes on them. She posts about them. Like, she... That... There’s a thing. It’s in... A lot of people are talking about it. And I think that people are willing to suspend that disbelief. They would, in many cases, prefer to have a relationship with a fantasy person and not the real person. And so to me, when I look at this in the light of that controversy, which is from a totally different world, the Disney adult snark world, I’m like, yeah. But here’s the thing is most people, even when they know, like, explicitly that there is a separate identity beyond the face, they still pretend. They they intentionally suspend disbelief. And so that’s why I’m also like, like, no one cares. Although people do. And I I wonder, you know, how much of this comes down to people choosing... Not not to, like, knock on anyone, and I I I can understand why Yuki would feel uncomfortable, but, like, to pretend... To allow oneself to be troubled by this when they don’t have to be. It’s not like, you know, we we don’t sit on Santa’s lap and tell tell

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. In the same way that, like, I... When, you know, it comes out that, mouse whatever... I I don’t particularly like her or her politics, but I I acted... We had the shocked episode when Tech Tone acted shocked about this because we were like, come on, Tech Tone. You know that these are a bunch of 40 year old women. Right? Like, we all know this. We we we don’t need to be blowing stuff up for them Despite me liking TechTone a lot more than her, I just don’t think that, like, anybody... You could

Simone Collins:
you could act shocked about it, but, like, whatever. Right? I mean, TechTone knows as well. Like, I mean, he he needed a bit because it was funny. And then, like, when he... About this whole issue, he posted something like, well, if I learned that... Oh, what is it? Mama Juju or whatever. Is it actually a monkey? You know? And blah blah blah. Then I am just done with VTubers. You know? Like, he’s joking because, like, that’s the thing. He’s like, we know these are personas.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So, and on our show, he said Oh, banana aware. That’s right. He warned you guys, any of you guys who thought Amber was not a guy, he said, be aware a good chunk of the female VTubers are males. He he he said this on our show. I think he said it multiple times in that episode as well. Just like, don’t be Oh, Ted Young said that? On our show. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
Multiple times. Well,

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. so you guys also had a warning about this. So that to me wasn’t the thing that I found shocking or concerning. Okay. Where it got shocking or concerning to me was the Ember Paradox situation is that this is a sex thing

Simone Collins:
for him. And that Is it?

Malcolm Collins:
So he wrote a book that has been connected to him. prom changed everything, and it is a book about a young underage boy who is, graped, made to dress like a girl, and then, has his genitals mutilated. And then he transitions into a female, And then it’s about his life after being forcibly transitioned into a female. And, like, the romances that he gets into as he grows up with guys as a female now. And he has gone on forums. Like, he’s posted on our cross dressing for recommendations on breast forms and breast plates that look more natural. He noted that either looked fake, had a net gaps, or too much shine. He... This one I see is less of an issue, the trans voice change subreddit because, obviously, that was, like,

Simone Collins:
part the screen. Good. Yeah. For sure.

Malcolm Collins:
For sure. He went on, egg IRL, multiple comments on the account, talking about gender fluidity, trans topics, and similar things. and then he’s been on a niche three and cross dressing web type, specifically the big closet top shelf, cross dresser, heaven style platforms, etcetera. So, the the point here being is, this is... This book was his first book, and it is, he says, his best book. I don’t have a problem with you being interested in books like this or having unique... Or working things that arouse you into your literature. Like, I’ve I’ve been guilty of doing that myself. I think that’s

Simone Collins:
part of How how can you write it well if you can’t understand it?

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. How you write fun... I mean, it’s something that you spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about. Sure. Like, write it into your literature. Right? Like, that’s that’s fine. Gets... Because... But I think it’s very, very clear that this is an arousing concept to him. And because of that, that meant that him doing this was not what I had initially assumed. I had assumed, and this is where I would put, like, a distinguishing mark in the morality of this, at least from my perspective, is if it’s a guy who just realizes guys are idiots and will pay more for things with boobs, fine. You know, do it. Right? If it’s a guy who gets turned on by guys seeing him as a woman,

Simone Collins:
oh. Okay. Yeah. That that is where lines start to get a little crossed for sure. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
That that moves into the Anna Valens with the vibrator in her butt playing a a children’s game, where it vibrated whenever somebody bumped into her. obviously, that was significantly worse than anything Amber Paradox did. but the element of arousal in sexuality being a component in this, I think, does make the entire situation a bit sketchier.

Simone Collins:
Well, this is starting to sound like an Ayla Twitter slash x question where, like, if someone is getting off on a thing and yet no one is, you know, harmed or affected and no one knows, is it is it a moral negative? And I guess that’s the question. I think the problem, I guess, is that we... You know, now this is broken containment. It is known. So then there is harm, but, like No.

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. Hold on. I I can I can answer Ella’s question really easily here? Okay?

Simone Collins:
I mean, I’m not saying Ella exact... Exactly No. No. So the question...

Malcolm Collins:
The delineating factor is this. Okay? Yeah. Is it... Are are you using another human being to get off? That is when it becomes a problem. So I will delineate, and this will be really easy for you.

Simone Collins:
But Even if you, like, if you’re a teenage boy and you imagine a classmate you have a crush on while fapping, you’re saying that that’s morally bad?

Malcolm Collins:
If you, as a teenage boy, take a picture of a classmate that you’re crushing on and then use AI to redraw them naked and then you fat to them Well that’s an issue. If you are crushing on a streamer and you use AI to make nudes of that streamer and you fat to that, I think pretty much anyone is going to say that’s not okay. They can say you can crush on a streamer, but the moment that you make lewds of that streamer explicitly

Simone Collins:
We we never see... Yeah. But, like, the Ember Paradox thing, we we are not getting to to nudes being creative. We’re we’re talking about immaterial things that arouse someone.

Malcolm Collins:
No. But it’s it’s the same thing. I think... Do I think if you are... Like, I I would consider it an immoral act to pull up pictures of a classmate on your computer and masturbate to them. Absolutely. Like, I think most people would consider that an immoral act.

Simone Collins:
What okay. What if someone, like, orgasmed every time they went to a fishmonger and purchased salmon? Like, are they morally bad to go to a fishmonger and purchase salmon? You know, the fishmonger doesn’t know, and they’re making money. I mean, I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins:
Same way with transforming art into not safe for work art. Like, that is what makes it... It’s that you are utilizing another human being, and when that other... And this is where it becomes, like, the Ayla thing. You could say it doesn’t matter at all. The reason why it matters is because of the potentiality of the other person finding out and the effects it has on them when they do find out.

Simone Collins:
So this has personally happened to me, so now I I kind of can relate.

Malcolm Collins:
I will admit. It is a victimless crime until

Simone Collins:
they find finds out. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, if if in some hypothetical moral discussion world, you could guarantee that the subject will never know, that no one will ever know

Malcolm Collins:
Then I don’t see I don’t see it as... I I think it’s a harm

Simone Collins:
any risk whatsoever that anyone will ever find out about this. No. No. No. No. No.

Malcolm Collins:
No. I think it’s a harm to yourself.

Simone Collins:
To... Oh, because it might also make you think unrealistic things about that person and start hoping or whatever.

Malcolm Collins:
Because it is, I mean, it is directly, desiring, what’s the word here, like another human,

Simone Collins:
first of all. We we

Malcolm Collins:
argue that that’s what the bible, like, we think delineates against because that has negative effects on you. Because that’s different from, like, having a crush on someone or desiring to date someone. That’s imagining a... And and I think a really toxic way

Simone Collins:
around this trip. It’s one thing. Yeah. But... So, like, to hypothetically consummate something that that you’ve not achieved. Then that can mess

Malcolm Collins:
up in your mind so you’re not out pursuing real relationships. So you’re not... So you can’t build a healthy actual relationship with this person because you have moved to

Simone Collins:
You’ve you’ve already gone. Yeah. You’re like, you’ve reached third base with them in your imagination, and that messes with things.

Malcolm Collins:
Yes. Well, it messes with the way you interact with them, the way you see them, your ability to actually date them, your ability to actually date other people.

Simone Collins:
I mean, I I actually see your argument. I I I would’ve... I really would’ve aired in favor of I don’t care if no one knows, but now I’m like, okay. I I see... This is a surprisingly conservative take from you. I... But I see your point.

Malcolm Collins:
I see your point. And and I will You’re

Simone Collins:
ruining our reputation of debauchery. What do think?

Malcolm Collins:
Hold on. I will note there are concessions on this particular point. Okay? Okay. Concession one is if they have given you permission to do. Oh, sure.

Simone Collins:
If they have an OnlyFans. If they’re posting nudes.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, the permission can be in... No. I don’t think anyone should be using OnlyFans or or something like that. I’m thinking more of you’re in a long distance relationship with somebody.

Simone Collins:
Oh, okay. Right. Well, no. But that’s them that’s them asking to engage with you.

Malcolm Collins:
Yes. That I would view as just not anymore negative at all.

Simone Collins:
That is their almost... Not not even their consent, their direct... If someone sends you nudes, they... As long as you didn’t ask for them, they Yeah. If if You know, there’s something with them.

Malcolm Collins:
The the alternative here is, I think any sort of, porn that is OnlyFans, that is online stuff, I I would put that in a in a middle section.

Simone Collins:
But wouldn’t you... I mean, you’re you’re very categorically against OnlyFans.

Malcolm Collins:
Right. Well, as I mentioned, I think OnlyFans is significantly worse than normal free porn because of the parasocial relationship it builds, which interrupts the person’s ability to build relationships and the amount of money that can go into it and time that can go into it. And that it it creates a lifestyle for women where a lot of just, like, not safe for work, pictures and stuff like that aren’t going to. I still think both of them are bad. There’s a reason why rfab.ai, our our website Reality Fabricator, it has a website that allows you to search every not safe for work image database at once except... And explicitly filtering for any images of real women. that’s how immoral I find it. We do the same with video. We have a... We search all the video you want. No real women because I I... That’s where I draw the line on that stuff, which is interesting because a lot of people think that that’s more debauched. That, like, hentai is more debauched.

Simone Collins:
All these these furries. Oh my goodness.

Malcolm Collins:
But the but the reality is that if you look at the effects that it has on people’s lives, it’s significantly less, because you’re not drawing somebody else into your

Simone Collins:
Yeah. No one’s being pulled into your perversion.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. And you’re... You have less of a chance of developing some obsession with, like, a porn actress or something or not understanding that this isn’t reality. so that’s, I think, why his situation has played out the way it has. The the next... So we’ll go through the the next. we’ll go into the Easton Klein situation now. because this one has been... I think even when Asmigold has talked about it and mentioned the... It appears that they hadn’t had sex for quite some time, there was a degree of understanding. if your wife doesn’t have sex with you for three years, should you have the right to sleep with somebody else? The answer here, I would say, is two people can be in the wrong. Yeah. I I think that both of them did something bad. And I think that the wife should have expected something like this given her actions. and I think that this is why, I don’t really believe in and Simone doesn’t really believe in, and we haven’t since we first got married, believed the idea that a spouse should be able to turn down sex from another spouse. The idea of a marital grape, I just don’t think it’s a good thing to normalize as a concept. I think that a spouse should always look to accommodate their partner outside of extreme circumstances.

Simone Collins:
Well, that means that... Well, I think, yeah, the wording is... Could be better done in that we don’t believe in any functional marriage. It would ever get to the point of marital grape because a spouse would always try to accommodate the stated needs of their spouse. If they’re like, look. I really need this. Like, you’re right.

Malcolm Collins:
Like, no. No. I mean, I think that what happens in a real relationship that’s actually healthy is one person’s like, I’m on my period, but, like, let’s schedule some other time. Right? Or some bad thing just happened, but let’s schedule another time. I think a rejection with a scheduling is the correct response if you normalize allowing rejection.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Or accommodation. I mean, I feel like yes and could be also a really good response of, like, not to be too explicit, but, like, I’m on my period, but here’s the plastic sheet. Like, I don’t know. Or shower sex. There are ways around these things, and, yeah, I think it’s important to accommodate a partner.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. But I think that there’s there’s always the idea of just shut down permanently. Like, I’m not interested,

Simone Collins:
and we’re not finding another way to do it. That’s... Yeah. That’s not... That... No. That doesn’t end well. What would she say? End well. Yeah. But I mean, do... Is this proven? Because I I mean, admittedly, I

Malcolm Collins:
don’t Here’s what we know. Okay. So it’s it’s difficult to know exactly because all that has been confirmed is they are separated now. He cheated. His production company has shut down. He has act fairly morally, in everything that I have seen since the scandal broke. Specifically, the people who produced the show with him all said they would not continue to work on a show that financially helped him. And so he’s been working to remove himself financially from all of their, productions, all of their shows, all of their So

Simone Collins:
that they can

Malcolm Collins:
continue to go on producing content despite this. I think that that is... Honestly, that’s a sign of immense character. He didn’t have to do that. Right? Those are things that he built. They’re only famous because of him. They’re only relevant because of him. And he was... Like, the the first wrong... Well, I think both of them committed an egregious wrong. The first wrong was not his. And I think a lot more people, the the... How long had it... They not had sex, we we can sort of draw this out because of a number of conversations they had on the show where he asked her sort of provokingly, like, well, what do you think a couple should do if they haven’t had sex in months or years? You know, like, what... You know, this topic came up very pointedly in a way where it was obvious. It was obvious to me watching it that he was talking about his relationship.

Simone Collins:
Oh, okay.

Speaker 11:
One year of not having sex....

Speaker 12:
Times at least.

Speaker 11:
Sorry. This woman had three of your children. Shut the fuck up. It was like, are you gonna have a divorce because of that? When you have a family, Like, just give everything up because you don’t get to have sex.

Speaker 12:
Can I ask you a question if if if there’s a husband? I hear this problem come up all the time, so I’m genuinely curious. If there’s a husband or wife and the husband is not... She she doesn’t wanna have sex with him. Right? And it’s been, like, years. So, like, should he just suck it up and just fucking take it or should they talk about it and try to figure out...

Speaker 11:
Talk about it. I think it depends on the relationship and the people.

Speaker 12:
She’s just like, I don’t... I’m not... I’m just asexual. I just don’t...

Speaker 11:
Yeah. That’s definitely possible.

Speaker 12:
So what’s so much... What’s this? What’s the...

Speaker 11:
It’s possible that... Is that what happened here?

Speaker 12:
I just... I don’t know. I’m just... I know. No. I’m separately separate.

Speaker 11:
No. No. I... Just separating it. Yeah. So... And because I feel like in this case, totally possible to talk about it and to find whatever works For the two of them. And if the woman in this case is okay with the man getting it outside of the marriage, then fine. If it works for them. But I don’t think that’s the case here because there’s pregnancies involved, three of them. And so...

Speaker 13:
This is less ambiguous than I had originally thought on rewatching it. She is clearly saying... Because she mentions the not having sex for years in relation to having three kids, which she has had. she’s clearly talking about their relationship and being like, yeah. Some other women would allow to sleep outside of their relationship, but I just don’t care about you, our relationship, or this question, and I’m not gonna treat this morally seriously. and I think her behavior around this was really disgusting. I still think his actions are wrong, but I think that she was the initiator of the bad faith and degradation of their relationship, and you can see that clearly in these clips.

Speaker 14:
Specifically because he appears to be acting in good faith. Like, what do I do? What should I do? and she’s basically like, suck it up, you little baby, which he should have done. But I don’t think that that’s the right way to respond to this, when you’re on the other side of it.

Malcolm Collins:
The second issue around this that a lot of people have been talking about is they’re like, well, the power dynamics because she’s an intern, and he’s the... And I’m like, that’s what makes it hot. What are you talking about the power dynamics? That’s what makes it hot for the woman? That’s what makes it hot for the man? What what do you want? Sex without power dynamics? I’ve read your fantasies. Come on. So I think that’s ridiculous, this whole power dynamics nonsense. It’s... The the power dynamics are the point. Okay? She appears the the intern. We don’t know that it’s her, but she made a stop motion animation of him before coming on as an intern. And in one of them, he burned a picture of his wife.

Speaker 6:
he’d say, I kissed your sister. I wasn’t too kind about that because I’ll tell you what, man. I’ve been kissing my sister. That’s my sister, and ain’t one gonna be reprocating with her, Jeremiah. That’s gonna be me. So

Malcolm Collins:
They, she also showed up and asked him so directly in a way that appeared to make him uncomfortable that he had to reject meeting her the first time she came to one of her events. Yeah. Then there were a number of sort of innuendos on the the show. one of the the worst cases, there was also a slip where he brings a water bottle, and she goes, is that my water bottle? He goes, oh, I thought it was his wife’s. And then she goes... He goes, oh, did you leave it at the... And then she, like, it gives him a look, he doesn’t finish the sentence. And, yes. Not looking good. Very sort of awkward look for a period after that.

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
The other thing that people didn’t like is the way that he responded when caught by his wife, which is if we’re saying it’s just emotional cheating, then say it’s just kissing, then eventually admit that, yes, there was actual cheating involved. Yeah. but, again, that’s the way I expect somebody to react in a cheating situation. all of the individuals, who have had backlash because of all of this, Ethan has had the worst. He isn’t a traditional member of the new right. He’s sort of from the proto new right community. Old enough that he’s been adjacent to a lot of these people and spaces and because he doesn’t want to completely destroy Israel. He’s been on the outs with Hassan and his crew for ages, which sort of puts him in our our side when debates and arguments are happening, but he’s not, like, a real... Doesn’t have real convictions or anything as far as I see. Not not not meaningful political convictions. He just sort of played himself as, a wife guy. Right? Like, you know, he’s made multiple statements like the best thing you could do for your kids is to love your spouse or, you know, gone on things about how bad spouses are and cheat. And I think that this is what cooked him on this. And this is

Simone Collins:
why That he, like, was talking about being a really good husband. Like, tried to have the the reputation of a good husband. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
I think I think this is one of the things where you’ve got to be careful about what you criticize other people for because one day... And this is where I’ve been... I mean, Yuki has done a a a number of pieces on the Amber Paradox situation and how it has affected her personally. And my first reaction when I thought before I knew about all of the grooming related stuff and stuff like that, I was like, I I don’t know if I’d be establishing the standard for her. Right? Because what what if she does something similar? Now, obviously, it wouldn’t be as egregious, but now there’s this new standard that she set that could be used against her in the future, especially given the the very person who did the release, Straub, had very recently been attacking Yuki, over her... Or or people with similar views to Yuki over abortion views. Right? which was like, I don’t know if I’d be enabling this. And now I feel differently that I know more of the full situation.

Speaker 15:
And for the record, while I can see both person’s perspective on this particular issue, the side that I come down on is would god kill an infant for the sexual impropriety of their parents? Yeah. I mean, he did. Like, David’s kid. Right? Like, god clearly lays this out, and I think it’s because god is the god of consequences and attempting to make society a better place. And, unfortunately, if you reward rape as a genetic strategy, then you lead to more rapes and more suffering in the future. God is the God who demands the the the massacre of suckling infants

Speaker 17:
When they are the infants of people who practice child sacrifice.

Speaker 15:
and punishes Saul for not killing them all. And if we pretend that god is the god of buddy Christ and be the maximally nice thing, we are, making up a god. We we are taking god’s name in vain and not talking about the god that’s laid out in the bible. You know, god says, I knew you before you were in your mother’s womb, which means that god can see the future, Because before before. He could have used another word here. It’s before that’s used here, which means that there is moral, weight to the decisions about who we choose to bring into this world.

Speaker 16:
And when she made her arguments, she wasn’t making arguments about what’s in the bible and what’s not in the bible with quotes from the bible. She was just saying this is what people in our community are allowed to believe and not allowed to believe, essentially. And I think that that’s very unconstructive when we are in a fight at the precipice of the destruction of Western civilization as we know it. we need to win, and arbitrarily gating our community with hostility You know, I I am extremely, extremely, extremely anti early stage abortion. If you’ve seen from other videos that we have done recently, I do not think abortion should be used in the form of birth control, but, also, I don’t think that we should be rewarding rape with genetic success.

Malcolm Collins:
But I think that that’s something where, like, it’s very, very important in content production to... When you’re criticizing somebody to sort of think, oh my god. Is this ever gonna come back to get me in the future?

Speaker 8:
When you criticize someone on your own side, you are establishing the moral criteria by which it is righteous for you yourself to be judged. And that is why I take criticism of people on team, people who seem to be attempting to recruit people or part of the pipeline, even if at their very beginning of the pipeline of the new right, why I generally avoid criticizing them unless they are an individual who is actively fighting against the larger team’s goals like Nick Fuentes or something like this.

Malcolm Collins:
And I don’t think that Ethan...

Simone Collins:
I think Ethan really saw himself as

Malcolm Collins:
a wife guy. I think that, this whole cheating thing came because of two things, an extremely aggressive girl. Idea The that anyone’s acting like he’s a victim. We’ve we’ve seen everything up to the cheating with this girl. It it it seems like she was extremely aggressive. And that as a guy, if if if there’s a a younger girl subordinate to you in the right situation who’s being very aggressive Oh, no. I can under... And your wife hasn’t had sex with you for years, I can see how that could be uniquely tempting. It’s wrong, but I can I can I can see where he’s coming from?

Simone Collins:
Right? I mean, my general take is if, if one spouse isn’t providing to another spouse something that they really need in life, that that person should understand that they’re gonna need to get it outside the relationship. And this could be watching sports, playing video games with that person. Like, I do not play. I cannot play a game for the life of me. I cannot. So it’s not like I’m gonna get mad if Malcolm has other friends with whom he plays games. Yeah. And I gotta hold with that with everything. If I cannot provide it, I would like you to still get it if it’s important to you, and that includes sex. It gets complicated when the person doesn’t consent to that. If they’re like, I’m not gonna provide you with sex even though I know it’s really important to you, and you’re not allowed to get it outside the marriage. That is one of those things where, like, okay. So you want the marriage to die because that’s exactly what you’re saying. I can’t have the thing I can’t go without. You’re not gonna give it to me, I can’t get it somewhere else. Yeah. And that that is... Okay. So then the marriage is over. So that is where it it comes to a... It takes two to tango kind of situation, which sucks. It sucks.

Malcolm Collins:
But, like It shouldn’t it have happened in in the first place. The sit... The situation shouldn’t have happened.

Simone Collins:
Well, yeah. But it’s one of those things where, like, everyone’s guilty because, like, one, like, suck it up. You know? If they need this, give it to them. Two, if you don’t wanna give it to them, let them get it somewhere else. But three, if you’re a dude, like... And and, you know, maybe your hedonic pleasure doesn’t matter that much. You know? It doesn’t matter as much as, like, your career and your And your kid. Your kids. Yeah. It’s like all these things have have now fallen apart for him in a way that’s quite damaging where I feel like if he could probably go back and do it all over again, he’d probably choose.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, no. He would absolutely choose.

Simone Collins:
I I mean, he obviously feels he made a

Malcolm Collins:
mistake here. That’s why he’s being so, conciliate

Simone Collins:
about shouldn’t live for your pleasure because all of this is downstream of people pursuing pleasure over their higher purpose in

Malcolm Collins:
life. And this is this is why I am so pro, like, general masturbation and stuff like that. It’s like, bro, you could just masturbate. Right?

Simone Collins:
Like Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
You you did... There are other ways to achieve sexual release than you

Simone Collins:
More efficiently without involving other people.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. And I think the the... Having the... You know, somebody’s hitting on me very aggressively. Yeah. But I could just masturbate. You know, I I don’t have to do this. Right? Like, I don’t... I think people are sometimes surprised that we move so hard in that direction despite on many of our beliefs appearing so right wing these days. That’s not something that I’m likely to move back from because it’s such a good tool from protecting against the types of sexual impropriety that can destroy your life. Now there are people who it doesn’t work for. There’s people who develop addictions. There’s people who develop other other... If if you have developed an addiction, what do you do? Take a opioid agonist. And, I mean, I was severely addicted to alcohol. Took an opioid agonist, and it knocked it out for me. The the the... It has an... Also a massive effect on on your sexual appetite and your desire to do anything like masturbate or anything like that if you use this

Simone Collins:
You kinda have to schedule it after that point, which is a little difficult.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. You you you specifically... You’ll you’ll never wanna masturbate again if you do it, like, four times on naltrexone.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Or you’ll means you have... I have to, like, ask him. Malcolm, have you taken any?

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, yeah. So she’s asking when

Simone Collins:
she approaches me for sex.

Malcolm Collins:
She always has to ask, have you taken naltrexone recently? And we have to schedule not taking naltrexone for days where we intend to have sex. Yeah. Because if I have, then I will not be able to orgasm easily.

Simone Collins:
You don’t seem to, like, enjoy it.

Malcolm Collins:
You don’t enjoy it by now. Terrible.

Simone Collins:
Which no one wants to no one wants to have sex with an unenthusiastic person. I guess some do. Someone gets off on that.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, yeah. There actually is, like, a category of, you know what? I’ve actually found it kinda hot sometimes. It’s it’s like a category of of, at least I know in, like, hentai or whatever where, like, the girl is acting like she’s playing video games or something.

Simone Collins:
Oh, that’s true. That is the whole genre. Yes. That is true of, like, disinterested. Like, I I have no interest. You just

Malcolm Collins:
do what you need to do. The disinterested god.

Simone Collins:
Well, then there’s, yeah, that, like, unconscious person thing. Yeah. I guess you’re right. I guess you’re right. I just... From what I remember from Elo’s research, the number one biggest thing is, like, dogged enthusiasm. Although it plays out differently in, like, men and women. You know? Like, for men, it has to be, like, dogged enthusiasm, but only from a very high status attractive man Yeah. Who only has eyes for you. It’s very conditional. You can’t be ugly, poor, unimportant, nonpowerful, or polyamorous in most cases.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So if you’re gonna ask me what I think Ethan should have done in the situation he was in

Simone Collins:
Sucked it up. But also she shouldn’t really have to say Put out.

Malcolm Collins:
Your wife is doing something bad, but you still need to suck it up for your kids and just masturbate, man. Like Yeah. And now if the issue is that your wife wants to stop having kids at only three, now that’s divorce work.

Simone Collins:
That is... Yeah. That is a different... That is a very

Malcolm Collins:
different thing. But this this does not appear to be that she didn’t wanna have sex because of that. It appears because there’s kids in the house. And the reality is is that if you’re taking care of a large number of kids,

Simone Collins:
it is actually There’s no turn off like

Malcolm Collins:
kids. It it is actually very hard to maintain an active sex life. I understand that as well. Yeah. Unless you you really make a point of it and talk it through and, you know, that

Simone Collins:
And there there are couples who, like, have a lot of kids. We’re talking five, six plus, every night, you know, like clockwork. I mean, on the on the nights where it’s possible.

Malcolm Collins:
We’ve heard we’ve heard this from our fan base.

Simone Collins:
It’s just not like, no. We just... We lock the door, and we we handle it.

Malcolm Collins:
We’re like, you’ve gotta hire a nanny if you wanna do that, and that’s just a prostitute with extra steps.

Simone Collins:
I mean, that’s the thing. Yeah. Like, if you’re paying someone so that you can have the sexy times, it’s As we’re like can’t bring ourselves to do it. Also Or it’s like we’re on a vacation,

Malcolm Collins:
and so somebody else is taking care of the kids either way. There’s a work trip because you do all your work trips together. You get opportunities. But, like, at home, it is hard with a with a baby in the room and everything like that. I I get that. You know?

Simone Collins:
Yeah. But, I mean, there are people who can get it on with, like, their dogs staring at them. So to each their own, I guess.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Have you ever had any of

Simone Collins:
your ex girlfriends, like, dad pets that watched?

Malcolm Collins:
I would find that to be such a turnoff that it’s not something that ever occurred.

Simone Collins:
Scenario would never come to pass? Oh,

Malcolm Collins:
I do I do not want to be watched by an animal. No. That is not a thing that I’m interested in. I don’t wanna be watched by a baby either. Like, that’s the other thing. That’s the

Simone Collins:
only thing that Could you imagine? I... Yeah. That’s... Which is not helpful for us given that there’s, like, always someone present, some some child, some youngling.

Malcolm Collins:
No. But the point the point I’m making here is what I’m telling him to suck it up... Well, I’m obviously not in the situation he’s in. If I ever asked Simone to have sex, she would have sex. But it’s not like that I haven’t dealt with the same challenges raising five kids, you know, of not having sex a ton. And my response to that is suck it up or masturbate. You know? Don’t don’t cheat on your wife.

Simone Collins:
Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Which is a new position for me, by the way. I wanna be clear. This is not the position. If you go back early So

Simone Collins:
what would young Malcolm’s position be?

Malcolm Collins:
Well, I mean, remember, we had an open... I was allowed to sleep with anyone I wanted to early

Simone Collins:
in first still stands. You just don’t exercise it.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, I I I now don’t think that it’s a good decision. I I I... Like, literally, my position on that now is I would only, approach somebody that way if I intended to have more than one wife.

Simone Collins:
Oh, Fred.

Malcolm Collins:
That is the only instance in which I would... I I think that... Well, because that’s... You know, we talk about the... There’s ways that you can read the bible where it does explicitly ban that. But

Simone Collins:
I don’t know, man. There’s a lot of Watch our episode, man. Multiple wives in the bible.

Malcolm Collins:
There’s a lot of multiple... Now it usually ends or almost always ends badly, which means that we

Simone Collins:
funny thing. Yeah. There’s a lot of wives, and they

Malcolm Collins:
hate each other. It’s a couple issues. With multiple wives.

Simone Collins:
Nightmare. Yeah. I think the bible’s like, it happens, but also you’re gonna you’re gonna maybe regret.

Malcolm Collins:
Do you really want more than one woman in your life? The other day, you were like, well, what do you mean? Guys can date girl... Fake AI girls on our FAB, but but they’re not real women. And I’m like, that’s the point.

Simone Collins:
That’s the point. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Malcolm Collins:
Did you know on our fab that the AIs that you’re, like, flirting with or whatever, there’s a feature that can give you a wake up call every morning and will call you back if it wasn’t convinced that you’re actually gonna wake up? I haven’t tested it myself, but I built it.

Simone Collins:
Well, it would be great if I... I mean, I guess I I

Malcolm Collins:
But you do it for me every

Simone Collins:
day anyway, which is so sweet. It’s better if your wife does it. Yeah. That’s true. It it also gives me motivation to get up. Like, when I’m like, I do... I’m not. I cannot do this. Like, text has been up on that or something. I’m still like, I have to I have to wake him up. Who who else is gonna wake him up? It’s that accountability system. It’s very good.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So how, the final situation is obviously the powder situation, which had a complete inversion of an explosion. And I think the reason it had an inversion of an explosion... And I will note all of this in the context of, I run a not safe for work chatbot website. That is one of the things it does. It makes not safe for work comics of anything you can imagine. It’s significantly better at that now. I can actually do some higher concept ideas. I I was doing a lot of experimentation this weekend to try to get it, like, really high quality. Freaking up... This works. It’s good. It can do children’s books too, which is nice. But,

Simone Collins:
like Non... Yes. Safe for work.

Malcolm Collins:
Children’s You are men who want that. And and you can even turn, like, your chat sessions or your chat adventures into comics afterwards.

Simone Collins:
Like, I can’t I didn’t know you. Did you just build that this weekend? Yeah. I built that this weekend. Dude, welcome. And now

Malcolm Collins:
we also have a subscription. So you can pay... If you thought it was too expensive to use, you could pay $13 a month, and it gives you extremely high access to the last model of Grok, which was the one the site ran on at the beginning of this year anyway. And it gives you... What I’ve calculated is more than I think anyone would reasonably use unless they’re trying to scam us. Basically, it’ll give you half in terms of token credits of your monthly expense every day as your limit if you’re paying that. so it’s a way that you could completely screw us over in terms of income, and we’re gonna have to obviously do audits. but what I wanted to do was for people who wanted to use our FAB and didn’t want the more expensive experience and wanted to the the... You know, I’m I’m I’m paying, I wanted to be able to give them a bot that’s better than the bots that they have on janitor.ai and better than the bots that they have on, you know, Chubb... HUD and and GPT Flow and all that. But... Yeah. And, again, why I... So you have... Obviously, I’m in this... No one has ever tried to cancel me for this. We have never had a Discord scandal. Powder has had a Discord scandal. And the main reason is is because I wanted to allow miners in, but my mods didn’t.

Simone Collins:
And so it’s never been an issue. Well, I think the the the the thing for our Discord is we don’t have... We tell people it exists, and that is our... The the extent of our relationship with it.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. And I wanted to have a... I I feel okay with having a not safe for work section, but, like, with our our

Simone Collins:
podcast moderating that. They they can do what they want.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. But then somebody has to moderate. I... We’re just not conducive to that. Right? You know what I mean? we don’t really make sense as a not safe for work thing in the same way that, unfortunately, most female streamers do because they understand that part of what guys are there is for their body. That’s why I was like, I might start a female streamer if I wanted to get, like, a boost up or something. You know? You you you put some boobs. You have my ideas. People think, oh my gosh. Because there’s so few base girls in this world. So, what was I gonna say? So with Powder’s situation, first, you had the humiliation of getting Rickrolled. But then the problem is is the stuff that he is citing her for is lewd figures doing lewd things like

Simone Collins:
twerking encountered featuring. Yeah. And that sometimes

Malcolm Collins:
some of these models were furry models or had, like, cat ears or cattails. Now, do you know do you know the furry scale, Simone? No. Hold on. So this is the classic furry scale.

Simone Collins:
Okay. It goes from knowing is half the battle, net furry, cute cat girl, semi furry, furry feet, one one little furry feet. Okay. Fair... Furry is... Okay. We’ve got the full tail, and we have paws instead of hands. Very very furry is just a somewhat anthropomorphized fox girl. What are you doing? A fox with a bow on it, and please reconsider a fox. Okay. And... Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
And... I’ll show you another furry scale that is, you know, maybe a bit better because I think it offers more......

Simone Collins:
Furry is just fox girl with with a... An ears and tail. Oh, I see. What is a furry scale ranking system explained? Going from a girl who’s just got cat ears to a girl with furry face and ears and tail to someone who looks like they’re wearing a fursuit to someone who looks like they’re wearing a naked fursuit to... Actually, this one, don’t

Malcolm Collins:
think it’s good because I think the first level of furry here is, like, too furry. We’ll we’ll go back to the other one. This is the more... The the the the reason why this one’s a little sketchy is just that she looks so young in it.

Simone Collins:
Oh, I don’t... I didn’t read young. I just read drawn person.

Malcolm Collins:
Drawn person. I mean, that’s true. Right? Everybody is drawn young.

Simone Collins:
Well, the the problem is drawing a cute person. The characteristics that people see as cute are also eyes. That’s a sign of youth. Also, all these mannerisms that I thought used to come from cartoons turned out to just be like, that’s a kid. That’s a two year old.

Malcolm Collins:
But I... What what we’ve seen in the reaction to the powder drama, and it’s like, well, if you’re calling her a furry for that, I mean, you calling Keirsha a furry? Are you calling Smuggalana a furry?

Simone Collins:
Or are calling Apparently, he is. And that’s why I guess this is Because I think it’s funny to call furries. Absolutely no.

Malcolm Collins:
The reality is, as I think within the right, we have learned, and it’s very important for us to have this in our retinue to beat the left, the difference between yearning and gooning, the difference between genuine sexual impropriety and utilizing arousal as a part of a normal life and not just punishing men for the things that they like. Right? because the left has begun to do that. They’ve begun to make characters in video games ugly, specifically female characters. They’ve begun to make characters in art less sexy. and the the yearning, making something visually appealing is never a stand that we should ever allow ourselves to be pushed back from because you can always spiral out from there. And so Powder taking the position, this is just yearning, bro. Like, you you know, this is this is not goon related. This is not sexual impropriety. Putting cat ears and a cattail on a girl and admitting that that’s cute is not... Like, first of all, I’m... And I think one of the reasons why this this whole category of thing has not gone... You know, everybody laughs at it is there’s a reason why some of the most famous right wing female VTubers, I even say the majority to the point that they made an entire song about it. See, Skybrows, no Fox given, dress up as level one to level two furry. And that’s that. A lot of guys like that. Okay?

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Like And that doesn’t look them

Malcolm Collins:
at risk of being an animal. Alright? It just means that they like things that look a little different sometimes.

Simone Collins:
Well, and also, like, even just furry furries. Furries that go to fur cons argue pretty vehemently around the whole, are we aroused by animals or... Zoo files. Like, a lot of controversy around that. No. Some of them clearly are, but there’s... There is clear and well documented discomfort in the space around that.

Malcolm Collins:
No. So... But, Simone, I wanna ask you. Where are you on this chart? What’s your ideal?

Simone Collins:
The... Obviously, level one. Like, I think we would we would all look here Would you would you take would

Malcolm Collins:
you take level one over human?

Simone Collins:
Well... So a tail that is not functional is just another handle to be grabbed. Right? This is why I don’t believe in ponytails. It’s another handle to be grabbed. I’m always looking at something from, like, a what happens in a worse scenario. So you’re immediately thinking, how do I kill it? Well, no. I mean, what what what body part might I consider that would be a liability to me? So the ears, I would take, but the tail is a liability and that it could be some... It is a handle. Any tail is a handle. A ponytail is a handle. Any, like, long strap you have trailing from your body is a handle, which can... Any aggressor can take and use against you. So I wouldn’t I wouldn’t take the tail, but I would take the the ears.

Malcolm Collins:
You take the ear. Oh, you’re thinking for yourself?

Simone Collins:
For anyone. But I also think I wouldn’t I wouldn’t need your eyes. Like, I don’t I don’t like putting... I mean, you could you could see when I give our girls braids, what are the braids used for?

Malcolm Collins:
The point being is... Yeah. The the... For pulling and throwing. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
Their handles.

Malcolm Collins:
Their

Simone Collins:
handles. The point

Malcolm Collins:
being is that, we have moved past this idea that you can attack women for using the female form, to do... To to please men as part of a a process. There’s a difference between being a busty VTuber and putting out slop, okay, which is just like whatever, to having interesting philosophical or or research based takes, like, say, Kirtia, and then to put some some boobs and some furry stuff in there because it’s pleasing to look at as well. You’ve created just

Simone Collins:
like Why does Rev have a female, you know, rig model? Like, people like looking at women. I think women like looking at women. When you when you... The first thing I ever learned about online ads was that people click on women more. Like... And this is women and men. it’s just a lot of things. It’s it’s not... I don’t think we need to put that much thought into it. And this is where I come

Malcolm Collins:
in with, like, our own not safe for work art and everything like that and and product is learn to control yourself. Like, this stuff is out there. If this stuff is bad for you, you’re gonna be exposed to it regardless. What I’m trying to do is give people a maximally pleasureful experience. you know, when I’m walk... When I’m making those, you know, insert cards in between this, I don’t make an ugly Simone. I make a cute Simone because cute Simone is good Simone. Right? That’s what you’re here for.

Simone Collins:
I love the implication there. The second note I’d make here

Malcolm Collins:
is you might not know about this controversy, but people have tried to take down Straub for having done not safe for work adjacent stuff in the past. And what she says is, like, took it all down. And that to me is a fine answer.

Simone Collins:
A sign of contrition.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. It was it was, like, sexy ASMR,

Speaker 9:
Which I would actually argue is fine even if she had left it up. Sexy ASMR falls squarely into the category of yearning and not gooning. there... It’s just a a sweet little thing, like a sexy avatar or something like that. Whatever. But even if they were, I still think that I would entirely... And we as a community should entirely forgive her if they have been taken down and she had apologized for it.

Malcolm Collins:
I think. no. Just like people change. Like, Christianity is about redemption. Like, what are we... What are you talking about, people? Right? Like, trying to... In a right wing community, because this person was, like, a chud, trying to attack Powder for... And he did this after he wouldn’t review her... His video, like, to try to attack her

Simone Collins:
Oh, for no. That’s not

Malcolm Collins:
don’t Right wing communities. Right wing communities. Yeah. The the the only place this goes if you give them one ounce with this cord is they’ll use to hang our community. And so I I appreciate the the two things that you are allowed to do as a member of our community is, one, grow as a person. I don’t think a person should ever be punished because now they’re part of a community that disavows previous stances that they’ve made. Right? Like, that’s how you get new members. Are you saying we shouldn’t have new members because people can’t make mistakes? I really do

Simone Collins:
hate this whole thing of, like, here’s this thing this person wrote ten years ago. That person is dead.

Malcolm Collins:
And then They don’t exist anymore. Is the world of yearning. You you try to make something set. Malfoyd is sexy. Right? Like, that’s the whole point of Malfoyd. Right? That’s that’s... We’re using something that is desirable, against leftists because they can’t use the sexy Draco. Okay? And we can. And I don’t think anyone... The people who are like, pornography ruins life. Malfoy... If Malfoy ruined your life, okay, you’ve got a a serious problem. But where we do draw the line is bringing other people into your fetishes. Okay? Using somebody else for part of your arousal, that is, I think, something where we can draw a pretty clear boundary. And then the next pretty clear boundary I would draw is you should be the one ashamed if you assume a YouTuber is... A VTuber is whoever they present as. Okay? That’s a that’s a known use thing. I’m I’m I’m gonna say more broadly. Because the point of a VTuber being more broadly is pretending to be someone you’re not.

Simone Collins:
I Right. Because otherwise, they would just use their face.

Malcolm Collins:
Otherwise, they would just be who they are.

Simone Collins:
Right? But I understand. To be fair, like, if I were to use a a VTuber rig, I would try to make something that looks like me.

Malcolm Collins:
I would too, but I’m very proud of who I am. Some people

Simone Collins:
And I think that not looking like who you are is is stolen valor. I I can’t even dye my hair. I I I... It’s... It seems wrong to me. Yeah. I didn’t earn it.

Malcolm Collins:
I would I would argue... For for my kids, I would have them choose VTuber rigs that look like themselves. But, like, for other people, I think that, you know, different morality for different people. Right? Different ways of doing things. The the final takeaway from all this is cheating is wrong whatever the circumstances of your marriage.

Simone Collins:
However Because it’s a violation of the of the of the contract of your marriage. Though to be fair, the... We have a marriage contract. It’s it’s explicit. It is it is a fat clause. It has a no boats clause. It has a... An agreeable temperature, family holidays, what to do with ailing parents, all sorts of... It’s a very detailed contract. You know what? The the violation, like, the the the... What’s the word? Like, the fine... The penalty is for breaking a rule, it’s... Well, it hurts my feelings. That’s it. Yeah. It’s not, oh, and then the marriage is over. Because, look, if you make that the penalty, then you’re gonna have to follow through on it. I mean, it’s understood that if you hurt someone’s feelings enough, you know, like, if you just constantly violate the terms of your your relationship contract or whatever it may be, that that relationship’s probably going to end. But to to just make, you know, a threat like that, it’s it’s also a little dangerous, and I just wanted to point that out.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. I I... That’s the other thing that’s gotten to me about all this, that she’s going straight to divorce over this.

Simone Collins:
But you said separated.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s not Separated, and it seems clear they’re moving towards a divorce. I I think, frankly, if... As bad as it would be if I... Well, you wouldn’t even care if I cheat on you because I’m explicitly allowed to, but, like, if I did it without telling you.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Like, because the the the term that we had set when we said that was, I have to

Malcolm Collins:
You wouldn’t go straight to divorce over this.

Simone Collins:
No. Well... But... Yeah. Because that’s... The the penalty of our marriage contract is it would hurt my feelings. I mean, obviously, it would.

Malcolm Collins:
Same as if you did it. I don’t... I wouldn’t go straight to divorce if Simone cheated on me.

Simone Collins:
And you’d be pretty disgusted, though. I don’t know

Malcolm Collins:
if you I’d disgusted, and I’d probably never have sex with you again. But Probably not. I wouldn’t go straight to divorce.

Simone Collins:
Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Right? There would have to be enough other things. But but presumably, there were enough other things wrong, I guess, given

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Well, yeah, a clear... Look. We don’t know their lives. We don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors. The things that people think about us, right, that we have learned because we’ve had enough people talk about us as though they know what’s going on in our lives that people speculate wildly and often get things very, very wrong. And so who are we to say what’s going on? And this is all just this is your way of being able to point to a couple really important, you think, moral observations. One that even surprises me, which is the the yearning for other people that’s that’s acted upon is immoral. And I think that’s interesting, but also, yeah, there’s weight to that. I appreciate it.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Well, it... It’s something that becomes immoral when discovered, but, like, cheating is the same way. Like, Ethan wasn’t hurting his wife until she learned about it. Right? Just because an act doesn’t create

Simone Collins:
Maybe he was if he was, like, not showing up for important things for the kids or possibly exposing her to STIs. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Or or potentially getting somebody else pregnant. I mean, you’re you’re absolutely right. Yeah. Okay. I agree with that. Well, it’s it’s it’s been a fascinating week for all of this. I just really hope that... Oh, and, also, don’t attack right wing people over furry stuff. Like, nobody cares about furry stuff anymore. You you guys can put that in a box and go far, far away. That is that is a normal part of human sexuality, and everybody is effing aware of that at this point. you you put cat ears on something, and they’re like, cute, I guess.

Simone Collins:
Cute. Yeah. I mean, I think to me, it’s one of those things, like, that we we find youth cute because it is. Right? But we also... Like, the the animal traits that show up in level one furries are most commonly animal traits that are associated with, like, with animals that have evolved to be very attractive to humans. You know? Like,

Malcolm Collins:
to be humans compared interesting point that

Simone Collins:
she made. So we are we are literally just leaning into things that we have coevolved with other species to love. And, you know, we... We’ve we’ve evolved to love children and and think they’re cute so that we don’t, you know, kill them. And we’ve evolved to think that dogs are cute because they’ve evolved to Make us be indisposable an... To to us. Yeah. You know, the the ugly dogs didn’t survive because we didn’t keep them, and we didn’t feed them our food scraps. And so is it so weird that, you know, we would love a trait that some species has evolved to, like, really get us excited? You know? It’s... It seems unfair, unreasonable.

Malcolm Collins:
I I agree. I agree. And what... So then you could ask, okay. Well, what if somebody goes, like, super furry, goes to conventions? I think that should be condemned because that can lead you to, like, a really bad lifestyle. Right? Like, a lot... There’s a lot of weird... And this is, I think, what happened with Amber as well. I I I... Is I wonder if it might have started that he just wanted to VTube in a way where he knew he could hack the algo. And... No. Because a lot of these searches are, like, three years ago. Like, that was what I thought at first when I first went into this. Okay. Maybe he just went in trying to hack the algo, and then it it sort of brainwashed him into thinking he’s a girl. Right? Like this. You know? But I don’t think that that’s what happened. I think that we look at the timeline of Pose. He was into this before he went into doing that. And, unfortunately, if you’re like, well, does this mean that, like, if you happen to be turned on by, like, forced feminization, you just shouldn’t VTube as a girl and that whole pathway is away from you? And I’m like, yes. For example, if you’re really turned on by touching women’s feets, I don’t think you should do women’s shoe size footing in a shoe store. Okay? I think we can all say, like, yeah. I’m sorry. I know it’s a little unfair. There’s one career that just is always gonna be ethically questionable to you. But... Yeah. And the guy who does the shoe fittings for women for you touching your bare feet has a foot fetish. You don’t have a problem with that?

Simone Collins:
I mean, I don’t want anyone touching my feet.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, what I will say is is is broadly regardless. Like, I see this as a low level crime.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. Like, low level moral crime. Right. And we talk about this in other things where, like, people are getting all weird about various sins, and and meanwhile, they’re, like, breaking three of the 10 commandments openly every day. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. I I I I... Again, this is not, like, the same level as, like, having an OnlyFans or something like that.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. But, yeah, it’s a... It’s It’s I guess it’s one of those things too where better better to not do it because I think most women and even I, being as tone deaf as I am, have found myself in positions where I’m like, this person’s being a little weird about this thing, and I don’t know if I want to be in this situation anymore, where people are clearly getting off on a thing that I’m involved with, and I’m... I wanna extract myself from this situation. So I it’s maybe one of the situations, like, going back to my fishmonger example, where, like, the person purchasing the salmon from the fishmonger thinks that the fishmonger is unaware of what they’re experiencing internally. And yet the fishmonger is standing there, and the person’s like, oh, yeah. And you’re like, no. I know what you’re doing, and I don’t like it. So, like, who... Maybe, yeah, there... This is an issue of, like, people can’t necessarily be sure that the person isn’t finding out. So just don’t do it when in when in doubt, and there will always be doubt. Don’t do it. So, yeah, you’ve changed my view on something, which I I appreciate very much.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. I I... Again, I actually don’t have any animosity over this event. I I could see how this could develop without, at any point, him realizing that he crossed a line. And I feel like I

Simone Collins:
feel a little a little awkward about Straub. Career. I wouldn’t wanna, like, reveal anything about anyone that they are not ready to reveal. Like, if if... Even if, like, they’re... If they’re victimizing someone else, I would tell that person to be like, bet... You know, you don’t wanna be interacting with this person. You know? Like, this Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
And with Trump, I I I take you at this. It could just be hormones in the moment or something like this.

Simone Collins:
But I like Well, but also, like, there are people who love to kick up drama. Like... And and I can’t help themselves.

Malcolm Collins:
That. I don’t like that in a person. I think that’s a... Like, a a negative moral trait. It can

Simone Collins:
be very... Look. If... But if you live on x, you have to live off that. Right? Like, that is how you get engagement followers. That’s how you can monetize on x. So, like, Straub is a primarily x figure. I think you can’t survive on that platform if you don’t kick stuff up. And I think that might be one of the issues at play. She is path dependent on being the kind of person who does that from a career standpoint. So I also... I should... I didn’t consider that, and I should also consider that that, like, this has probably been a boon for her account in terms of engagement

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, yeah. Of course, it has.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. And I presume that her account is monetized, and therefore, she only financially benefits from this. And you

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, it doesn’t monetize anymore.

Simone Collins:
Doesn’t? It does. No. X ended monetization. You can have subscriptions, though.

Malcolm Collins:
X ended monetization. People can’t make money on x anymore.

Simone Collins:
Yes. You can. Google it. Yes. You can. Oh my goodness. Okay. Hold on. I’m just gonna log in to x because it’s gonna it’s gonna show that we can’t monetize because we’re not a big enough deal because we’re such users. No. You’re not even asking in AI. Come on, someone. So I’m going to blah blah blah. Let’s see. More creator studio subscriptions. Ineligible. Ineligible. You mean subscriptions? Yeah. So x officially shut down

Malcolm Collins:
its creator revenue sharing program 09/07/2020.

Simone Collins:
But you can still have subscriptions if you’re not a user like we are. You just have to

Malcolm Collins:
I don’t think that I don’t think that that’s... Like, I don’t I don’t see that as justification. I can make money off of something for turning on community members unless you think

Simone Collins:
Thing is posting on x, isn’t it? It is.

Malcolm Collins:
It

Simone Collins:
is. Do do... I mean, do we have to do as many women as to our terrible episodes as we do? Do we? Do we

Malcolm Collins:
really, Malcolm? Do we? We do. You’re literally... Your argument here is it’s a frog in the scorpion situation. Women like drama, like, of course.

Simone Collins:
I didn’t say women like drama. Look. Lyman Stone is very successful on x, and he can’t help but, like, get involved in drama. I mean, there’s no reason why he had to get involved in the shrimp welfare wars, but he did because he couldn’t help himself. But it’s really good for him on x. And then he says

Malcolm Collins:
he doesn’t even like drama. Like, when he’s gotten on fake fights with us on there

Simone Collins:
as well. Except it’s good for him. I... Like, from a from a visibility standpoint, I think it helps the institute for family studies. I think it helps him personally. I think it helps his his demographic consultancy business to to show to clients that level of engagement on a major social media platform is a net positive to him. So it’s one of those things, like, if you’re if you’re constantly rewarded for advice, even if it stresses you out, even if it... It’s not a good thing. I just... I think that you should never take... You you should always... You should never take glee and the downfall or harm of... In somebody from your own community’s career. Think Straub took pleasure in doing that. Like, I don’t think... I I... Look. I I can’t speak for other people. I don’t under... People make no sense to me. I’m... Let’s hide away in our little house here with our kids

Malcolm Collins:
who are Wait. I’m not saying that... I’m not saying this is the condemnation of Straub. I’m just saying of what we should normalize as a community more broadly. Like

Simone Collins:
Yeah. No. I mean These

Malcolm Collins:
are real people who are going through, like, real hard times, and we are all subject to temptation and sin. And that doesn’t mean that we should normalize it, but we should know to any one of us, there are things in our past that somebody could come and and try to attack us with. And it is good if we have a community of people around us that has built norms around reflectively defending community members unless they’re being actual negative externalities to outsiders. And the the the reason why I’ve modified my perspective on Straub and Yuschke’s take on this is because I do think that Amber was being a negative externality now, which I didn’t think when I first heard about this.

Simone Collins:
Oh, because of the the moral thingy of

Malcolm Collins:
the Yeah. But but but I don’t see that as, like, a huge thing.

Simone Collins:
I’m still, like, maybe because this is all alleged. So

Malcolm Collins:
It’s not alleged. He said, hey. I’m a guy.

Simone Collins:
Well, I know. But I’m saying the, like, the book and the things that are turning on and the the fantasies and the stuff. Oh, well. Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
Sad day for them. I hope their careers survive. I hope that they learn from this and build something. I mean, Straub did did... I mean, I’m sorry. You know, he he did come out and admit it even when the proof wasn’t that strong.

Simone Collins:
Well... And, I mean, maybe this is a net positive in terms of subscribers. Who knows? I don’t think so. No?

Malcolm Collins:
I I actually didn’t mind his show before.

Simone Collins:
Oh, but you I didn’t like Just so now that you know he’s a dude, you’re not as, like, okay with it? You don’t like it?

Malcolm Collins:
No. I get a creepy feeling when I see his avatar in, like, fishnets and stuff like this that he has... Look up the the the Ember the Ember Paradox holding screen.

Simone Collins:
So yours? Here’s an example. Oh.

Malcolm Collins:
K? Oh, that’s interesting. I... So this this is just, like, what it shows in between shots. Or holding screen meadow. That’s the more common one.

Simone Collins:
Meadow. Wow. You... You’ve actually, like, watched a decent amount of Ember Paradox stuff.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, not a decent amount, but, like, I I I... It’s it’s one of my least favorite right wing streamers because it’s just so basic in the takes that it has. So I don’t... Like, I’m just like, whatever. But, like, I’m not finding... Starting screen? Is that what it’s called?

Simone Collins:
Well, I’m concerned about the fire hazards that our character is surrounded by.

Malcolm Collins:
But, like, you you... The fire hazard.

Simone Collins:
Whatever. It’s a character.

Malcolm Collins:
The point being is I get, like, a creepy feeling when I see a sexualized woman wearing sexualized female paraphernalia.

Simone Collins:
And I know Yeah. Rev doesn’t And I know that a man is behind it. Like, Rev doesn’t weep out his way. And it’s it’s not like a, oh, oh.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. It’s not like a, oh, oh, oh. If Rev did that

Simone Collins:
You make it sound like a fire truck.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s not I have concerns. Okay. Which which... No. Concerns, but it would it would weird me out. Like, I don’t want to feel this way. I’m not coming into this guy’s stream wanting to feel like, ew. Like, why is

Simone Collins:
it It ruins... It it breaks the fourth wall for you. It’s too much.

Malcolm Collins:
It it breaks the first wall and, like, ew.

Simone Collins:
It’s it’s it’s it’s knowing that the the Peter Pan at Disneyland goes home and buys Starbucks and watches Netflix, and it ruins the fantasy. Okay. Fair enough.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Well

Simone Collins:
The I love you. The shame. Love you too. Upskirt shots. Yeah. I guess you didn’t need to do upskirt shots. No.

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. No. It it... This is clearly, like, not the the the stockings, the, you know, the... It’s it’s it’s a lot. It’s... It means clearly sexualized in a way that feels like I’m being drawn into this sexual fantasy that I don’t I don’t... Gives me the willies. And I don’t I don’t mean to feel that way. It’s just the way I do feel. Right? Like, I can’t can’t turn that off. Yeah. And I suspect that a

Simone Collins:
lot promised me when we got married. You couldn’t you couldn’t promise to love me forever. We can’t control our emotions because that’s actually true. We can’t. You can’t promise these things. You can’t promise how you can feel. Well, that sucks for her, him, they, them, and I love you. I’m gonna make you bacon and fries tonight, if that’s alright with you.

Malcolm Collins:
That works for me. I’d love... If you could begin stalling some steak, I’d love to try some, bulgogi.

Simone Collins:
yes. Yes. Okay. We shall we shall thaw that. In fact, it might be better for it to be partially frozen for me to thinly slice it tomorrow, so it’s it’s good for me to get that going. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
And I deeply love you, and I think that you are an amazing woman. And the the funny thing is is, like, we don’t really have any big scandals that I’m aware of. Have one scandal that’s gonna come out of the documentary that is so annoying. The... I I went on our site, and they asked me

Simone Collins:
Oh, that... That’s not a scandal. That was you entering a prompt and getting something that didn’t come well... Come out well.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, I entered a prompt of a a Puritan woman because they’re like, how not safe for work at this go? I was like, anime Puritan woman stripping. One of them came out as a real life underage Puritan woman crying while she strips. And I was like, oh my god.

Simone Collins:
It’s the early days of AI. It messes up sometimes, but that’s okay. That’s okay. This is this is how we get a mouse. You have

Malcolm Collins:
no idea how much that’s gonna blow up.

Simone Collins:
No. What’s gonna blow up is me, like, not... Me saying stuff that makes me look like a a terrible backstabbing monster. And then then the documentary is gonna come out, and you’re like, oh, Simone, it’s okay. I understand. Like, you, you know, you’re really stressed around the team. Then the documentary is gonna come out, and you’ll be like, Simone, I hate you. This is all your fault. Everyone thinks I’m a bad person now, and I’m never gonna hear the end of it. And I... I’m really dreading that. I’m really dreading that. I’m like, is this going to... Is this gonna end our marriage? Because I said the wrong thing on camera.

Malcolm Collins:
After an article has come out about

Simone Collins:
me? This is different. And, also, I haven’t messed up with journalists in the same way that we’ve... That has ended up on film. Like, there was that one time when Vice was here and I... Or was it Vice someone someone else? And they were like, can you explain in your enemy’s words what they think is wrong with you? And I was like, okay. And I, like, really...

Malcolm Collins:
And I was like, no. You don’t... You never talk from the perspective of somebody who doesn’t like you.

Simone Collins:
But I I can very easily put myself in their shoes. So that wasn’t that wasn’t... But that didn’t... But all the... I... You know, all the stuff that I’ve I’ve messed up saying, that’s my big fear is you’re just... You’re never gonna forgive me, and I’m very scared.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, we’ll see. Oh, yeah. Check out ArtFab. We got lots of new features. We... If you if you want safer work, you got mudpuppy dot a I for kids, then you can go slash o s for the great Android OS. We’ve got the...

Simone Collins:
You want to take at robots. I just, like... I I spent my Claude month on it.

Malcolm Collins:
On on working on it? You could go to rfab.ai, and that... And you could go to backslash safe for work if you just wanna do, like, AI adventures and chat and video creation and editing and whatever you wanna do. But if you if if you wanna do, you know, the not safe work chess, we also we also have a lot of that in in image creation and comic creation and all that. Love you.

Simone Collins:
I love you

Malcolm Collins:
too.

Simone Collins:
That Zoolander clip where he’s

Malcolm Collins:
like Yeah. We’ve been working on This is cool for ants. Making it so that you can make physical products on our fab. And we have, I think, like, 200 products in our inventory now that you can make. And one of them was a mouse pad, and so I wanted to test it. So I ordered the mouse pad, and I got, like, a two foot by two foot mouse pad. What is that? I was like, what the fuck? So You do

Simone Collins:
have big hands. So

Malcolm Collins:
about it. The the the project, I’m actually really excited about, but I haven’t tested yet. So don’t, you know, order it without knowing. It hasn’t been tested yet. I still need to test it. So it is the porter decals.

Simone Collins:
So it uses goodness.

Malcolm Collins:
Vinyl flings. And What what are you talking about?

Simone Collins:
Whatever a window, you know, I’m talking about. Yes. Thank you. Okay. There we go. Alright. That’s better.

Malcolm Collins:
So you want a a ship portal?

Simone Collins:
Well, no. Fireplace. That’s cute. Yeah. Like a ship. Yeah. There we go. Come on.

Malcolm Collins:
And then and then we’ve got magic. You know? Some... I don’t know what that is. And you can also change, like, the the the... You’re like, I want it to be, like, landscape. You know, we’ve got we’ve got those options, and we got different sizes. I’m actually making your own size. So what you can do is you can make it, like, giant, like, the size of an entire wall, and it will print a bunch of them next to each other. We also have, like, debris kits that you can you can add. Yeah. I don’t know. Thought it was pretty fun.

Simone Collins:
I like it. Okay. Has called me, and he desires more milk. I’m going

Malcolm Collins:
Are you gonna go get him more milk?

Simone Collins:
He needs to eat. He needs all... K. Toastie, I’m on my way, and I will be right there. He gotta eat. He gotta eat.

Malcolm Collins:
Grab the mouse pad so we can show them.

Simone Collins:
Oh, yes. Yes. That’s perfect. Yeah. I’ll go get the... Okay. Look at the mouse pad. The mouse pad of ridiculousness.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah.

Simone Collins:
The boys are so sweet. Did you get the mouse pad? Yeah. I did. Okay. So normal mouse pad. Like this size. Right? Malcolm’s mouse pad. I can’t

Malcolm Collins:
I might have under sold it with two foot by two foot.

Simone Collins:
I can’t even fit it all in. Can you see it all now?

Speaker 10:
So, apparently, I had made the wrong product the default mouse pad. this is an actual type of mouse pad that gamers use when they have, like, really low sensitivity settings on their mice for playing shooter... Competitive shooter games.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So... What even... Okay.

Simone Collins:
Made in China, printed in USA, it doesn’t say, like, what it thinks it’s supposed to be. But this... I know it’s working...

Malcolm Collins:
It’s otherwise a high quality mouse pad.

Simone Collins:
Like it has, like, the the border of a mouse pad. You know, it has the... Like, all the all the trappings, it’s the thickness of a mouse pad. It is everything that a mouse pad should have except for the size. And I can’t use it as... I’d use it as an infant blanket, but it’s not quite big enough. I guess changing pad. We’ll find some use for this this sweet thing, but it smells good. Love the smell of synthetic fabrics sometimes.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. So, apparently, it’s something called a gaming mouse pad, and it’s a real product that people use. I just

Simone Collins:
Wait. No. Like, because they’re all over the place.

Malcolm Collins:
Flailing like a gamer.

Simone Collins:
A gaming mouse pad. Okay. Well, yeah, maybe someday we’ll get the the boob mouse pad where you can just put your your living avatar... Your AI girlfriend, like, print it on the... You know, the boob mouse pad.

Malcolm Collins:
You could do that now. You could do not save for work prints. No.

Simone Collins:
No. I mean... No. It’s like three d. It has the it has the ergonomic wrist rest.

Malcolm Collins:
Of the boob. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I know what you’re

Simone Collins:
talking about. Yeah. I’m talking about that, obviously. You know instantly what I was talking about when I said the boob shirt, and yet you don’t know what I mean when I talk about the boob iPad. So we’re gonna

Malcolm Collins:
we’re gonna get started here.

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Speaker 18:
Doing a good job. Aw. You’re into a better job. Oh, Toastie’s season for the clothes. He keeps going. Oh, they’re banging candles. I love it. Okay, little Triceratops. Do you know what to say? You want me to carry you, girl? Yeah. She’s crawling.

Our discussion covers cultural shifts toward hedonism and nihilism, with analysis of specific titles, apps, and movies, and the preposterous markups apparently charged by Bloomingdale’s—while also touching on broader trends in media consumption and relationship dynamics.

Show Notes

A Michigan State University analysis of 38,467 songs by 230 popular artists, spanning 1947–2024 found that artists’ lyrics grow more anxious over their careers and that newer artists write with more anger than their predecessors—plus declining references to social relationships.

The “Prestigification” of Porn

‘Prestige porn’: married doctor-moms are listening to XXX audiobooks in the family SUV and calling it therapy

Choice quotes:

Opening Profile

“Rachel is a 41-year-old doctor in Bergen County, New Jersey. She has a solid, loving marriage to a fellow MD, two boisterous kids under seven, and one method that she uses to stay sane:

Prestige porn.

Specifically, the kind of highbrow erotica with the same explicit content as a softcore video, but made by award-winning filmmakers and novelists, and starring Oscar-winning actors instead of OnlyFans girls.”

““It’s become like my therapy,” said the family medicine specialist, who plays XXX-rated audiobooks like “Helpless” by Jessica Knoll and “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas when she’s driving alone in her family SUV, and watches movies like “Baby Girl” and shows like “Industry” on her iPhone while doing laundry.”

“In another generation, Rachel would likely need to keep her sex-positive programming under wraps. Not today.”

““My group chat is full of moms who trade [sex content] recommendations,” Rachel told The Post. “It feels like you’re watching any other good movie… just with bondage.”

The Growing Industry

Rachel and her friends are reaping the rewards of prestige porn, a new genre where 40+ women are centered in highbrow erotica about sexual dominance and desire — in movies, in books and at upscale fashion and beauty boutiques.

Think “Fifty Shades” for women who have a mortgage, a career and no patience for fake bags… or fake orgasms.

The era of prestige porn means Oscar winners like Nicole Kidman, 59, and Olivia Colman, 52, can engage in once-unthinkable graphic acts for au courant movie studios like A24.

Jessica Knoll, who has made millions writing crime thrillers, is now a Gen X Anais Nin writing about unspeakable — but delightfully readable — sex acts in her bestselling new book “Helpless.”

Meanwhile, Bloomingdale’s now sells $108 “arouse stimulating serum” alongside its Louis Vuitton purses; at Revolve, there are anal beads and Isabel Marant. And the $60 erotica app Quinn tells bedtime stories spicier than Blue Ribbon’s wasabi, read by Emmy nominee (and Dior darling) Andrew Scott.”

• What’s notable about this article is just how abundant the products and media are

• So far, we’ve got: Books, audiobooks, subscription audio services, stimulating serums, and anal beads.

Wicker

““The latest entry into these artful new films came this weekend: “Wicker,” an “absurdist romantic comedy” starring Colman as a frustrated spinster and Alexander Skarsgård as a man made of straw who gives her a roll in the hay.

When its steamy trailer debuted in July, it went so viral that doctors had to warn people against pleasuring themselves with “trees or shrubs.”

The movie opens nationwide on Oct. 30, but advance screenings for the show — including several with “vibrating and motion seats” — sold out across the country.

Reddit reports say the theaters are full of older women. In Florida’s Palm Beach Gardens, The Post saw an entire screening room full of female retirees.

“Very enjoyable,” said one 74-year-old woman named Joyce after the movie, under the condition that she withhold her last name. “My kids read your paper.””

• The preview is pretty flagrant

The Prestige Psyop

“Why is our era so ripe for prestige porn?

“People are totally disconnected from their bodies right now,” said Brianna Makówka, MSEd, LMHC, CST, a licensed sex therapist who specializes in kink therapy. She told The Post that between social media, dating apps and remote work, “we’re living in screens so often that our bodies are reminding us how important they are to our full being.”

Prestige porn, she argues, is letting us frame sex as not just desirable but luxurious, which gives people — especially women — permission to engage in it more openly.”

• I see it differently; I think it’s a sign that people feel it’s OK to celebrate self indulgence and nihilism

The article goes into detail describing smutty Broadway shows and sex products being sold in mainstream stores for things like makeup and underwear.

They also describe how the semblance of luxury is being used to legitimize nihilistic hedonism:

““Elevated design gives people permission to view sex as something they should feel good about wanting and exploring,” said Goicochea, who counts the Hollywood bombshell Dakota Johnson as a business partner.

Maude was one of Sephora’s first-ever sexual wellness brands; today it sells lube and vibrators at Ulta Beauty next to Naomi Watt’s sexual wellness line, Stripes, which was created especially for post-menopausal libidos.

Gwyneth Paltrow, 54, sells her own lubrication — called “Sex Oil” — through her Goop wellness empire for $55.

“Buying an intimate oil or a sex toy should be as mundane and shame-free as buying a face cream,” Goop’s editorial director, Kylie Gilbert, told The Post, adding that frank chats on sexual pleasure have been part of “Gwyneth’s vision of Goop from day one.” She notes that the Goop lube is a longtime bestseller.”

• Goop lube is kind of the perfect name for lube though

They Call it “Romance” While Normalizing Toxic Relationships

“Perhaps the big hook for prestige porn is that it refuses to call itself porn at all. In press interviews for “Wicker,” both Colman and Skarsgård are careful to call the movie a “romance” despite its explicit content.

“Industry” is described by HBO as a “gripping and provocative” drama despite its penchant for strap-ons and fellatio scenes. And the Nicole Kidman hit “Babygirl” features the Oscar winner on all fours, pretending to be a dog, licking candy out of her 20-something intern’s hand before getting thrashed in bed.

Makówka, the sex therapist, says all this is pretty great.

“A lot of people might have a curiosity of a power exchange dynamic —a dominant and submissive relationship that’s about leadership and surrender,” she said.

“Films like these are giving a lot of people permission to get curious about asking, ‘What is it that I want? What have I not been seeking? Maybe it’s okay to seek this out.’ That is healthier, psychologically, for everyone. It makes people happier and more connected.”

Tech devices don’t do that, says Makówka.

“Good sex does.””

• I hard disagree on that; these shows and movies feature pretty toxic relationship dynamics

• Also, the sex is extremely superfluous; it feels just like fan service. I watched Industry and had to fast forward through the sex scenes because they were so gross

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins:
Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we have another episode of women are terrible.

Malcolm Collins:
Why do you always find these?

Simone Collins:
I literally have AI crawl the Internets for for stories for me. But this is, like, actually bad. I... Women are prestigifying porn, and they’re dating well into their eighties. And I feel like it’s a sign of the end times, and I’m going to explain why. Prestigifying porn. They’re prestigifying porn. And all

Malcolm Collins:
the dating into their eighties. You did It’s so gross. Gross tomorrow.

Simone Collins:
You’re gonna you’re gonna quirk so many times in this episode. But, yeah, buckle up and get your barf bags because I

Malcolm Collins:
am buckle... I am buckled up because these guys are attracted to women as haggardly as you.

Simone Collins:
Oh, you don’t understand. It’s also younger guys. Well, you’ll see. Just wait. Okay? Two articles came out recently that offered a peak basically into the modern state of womanhood, and they reveal trends and worldviews that just smack of nihilism and and I would say the downstream effects of living for for pleasure and nothing more. And this is not a woman specific thing. In fact, a Michigan State University analysis of 38,467 songs by 230 popular artists spanning from 1947 to 2024 recently found that artists’ lyrics now grow more anxious. Like, they’re more anxious now than they were in the past, and they’re less focused on romance. and they also just have fewer references to social relationships at all. So across the board, we’re seeing more nihilism, more like rage, but it’s it’s extra disgusting and weird and, I would say, telling with women, and that’s why I wanted to focus in On these two articles.

Malcolm Collins:
So Of course.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. We’re gonna start with the prestigification of porn because I’m okay. The prestigif what

Malcolm Collins:
she mean by this?

Simone Collins:
Well, you’ll find out. Look. The the article is titled prestige porn. Mary doctor moms are listening to triple x audiobooks in the family SUV and calling it therapy.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my god. Of course, women are. Everybody thinks that men are the degens.

Simone Collins:
You have nothing on women. No. There’s actually this really great... I think it’s a TikTok stick... Skit. I’ll see if I... Should I try to find it? I’m not gonna try to find it. Too lazy. I’m too I’m too everything. But it’s this TikTok stick where a a man pulls up to his his home in the family car that is connected to everyone’s Bluetooth. Right? You know, our our phones are connected to Bluetooth, you know, seamlessly goes onto the car. His wife is outside mowing the lawn or something, you know, her earbuds and her ears. And then as the car pulls up, the worst smut comes on the speakers. And she, like, pulls out her earbuds, doesn’t realize he pulled up, and then, like, you know, is, like, looking around and then, like, sees him and, like, bolts toward the car or something. But that is... It is it is pervasive enough for there to be, like, pretty popular skits about it I I found the skit clip,

Speaker 3:
You. Your soul only therapy. I’m literally going to destroy your and rebuild it with my mouth as a fucking

Malcolm Collins:
That’s

Simone Collins:
what I’m talking about.

Malcolm Collins:
I’m going That is that is me walking into your room at night.

Simone Collins:
I hate you so much. That is not.

Malcolm Collins:
It is not, by the way. I’m just joking with Simone because I like... You know, like, the Malfoyd song I made where she’s just teasing the other character the whole time? That is my relationship with my wife is I love...

Simone Collins:
You are my Malfoy. No. You’re my you’re my Harry, but I’m not sufficiently

Malcolm Collins:
This is what Malfoy in the song does to Hermione. You’re my Hermione if I’m if I’m Malfoyd here.

Speaker 5:
91

Speaker 4:
answers and not one said. I winked. She knew her face

Speaker 5:
went red. Ranger. Ranger. I’m just curious. Why are you so cute when you’re furious? Your cheeks go pink. Your fists go tight. So naive, so sweet I could take a bite

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I, sadly, am a lot more on the Hermione end of the spectrum, which is... You know? But the self hatred explains that. Okay. so the growing industry No.

Malcolm Collins:
Actually, no. So the song actually for me unlocked. And for people who watch it, they’re like, wait. I like the Hermione in this song. Like Oh. How did this happen? A Hermione that is constantly being teased and tricked and getting frustrated is a Hermione that you can actually like.

Simone Collins:
That’s the Hermione in the books. That’s the thing is I think that they made a really big mistake in the long run casting Emma Watson and then making her this, like, whatever. I don’t know. Like, heroine because

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Girl boss who doesn’t, like, get

Simone Collins:
things from Hermione was a joke, and she was fantastic as a joke. But we we digress. The the

Malcolm Collins:
article pursues No. No. Hold on. We digress. I love JK Rowling has, like, a proslavery thing in the book. She’s like the slave. No. Oh,

Simone Collins:
yeah. I guess it was proslavery.

Malcolm Collins:
It was pro slavery. She’s very... JK Rowling was the most based of based people who ever lived.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. For real. For real. It’s it’s interesting. The more... The deeper it goes. Gosh. And then the Department of Education going full Malfoyed. This is a great Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Department of Education posted a Malfoyed meme, by the way. Bless America. Unaware.

Simone Collins:
Yes. . let’s go with the opening profile of this New York Post article so you know they’re not gonna pull punch No.

Malcolm Collins:
I mean, Simone. I mean, Simone. I remember when we were doing our videos on this the women

Simone Collins:
That’s that’s why I’m able to comment on this stuff. Okay?

Malcolm Collins:
Hold on. I need to remind the audience of this. You were like, well, I don’t watch this stuff, but that doesn’t really align what’s in book number five. And I’m like, Simone, how do you know what’s in book number five? Right.

Simone Collins:
You’re like, I those audiobooks to to

Malcolm Collins:
fall asleep. Sexy stuff. I just pointed, then why do you watch the one?

Simone Collins:
It’s very calming. Look. I also listen to the old testament to fall asleep, though admittedly that’s also full of sex and violence. So that’s probably not a good defense.

Malcolm Collins:
And that’s why women love it.

Simone Collins:
I... Right. Anyway... Oh my gosh. Okay. The opening profile of this article. Rachel is a 41 year old doctor in Bergen County, New Jersey. She has a solid, loving marriage to a fellow MD, two boisterous kids under seven. One method she uses to stay sane, prestige porn, specifically the kind of highbrow erotica with the same explicit content as a softcore video, but made by award winning filmmakers and novelists and starring Oscar winning actors instead of OnlyFans girls because we’re better than that.

Malcolm Collins:
We just Woah. Okay. I love this because it’s, like, exactly what women actually want Which is high status men.

Simone Collins:
High status. If it’s high status, it’s okay. Right?

Malcolm Collins:
This isn’t a kink. This isn’t even, like, prestige thing. This is

Simone Collins:
just like, I want No. Wait for it, Malcolm. Wait for it. continue.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my god.

Simone Collins:
Like my therapy, said the family medicine specialist who plays triple x rated audiobooks like helpless by Jessica Knoll and a court of thorns and roses by Sarah j Maas when she’s driving watched.

Malcolm Collins:
You you watched.

Simone Collins:
I hate you so much. I I did until I got really annoyed with the main character, and the the sex in it was not good.

Malcolm Collins:
No. Hold on. What I love about you is you’re like, I didn’t like this, and I stopped watching it because I didn’t like the type of sex scenes. Yeah. I didn’t like this, but the sex scenes were not... You’d go too much going down on women. You’re like, I don’t like this. Get it out of

Simone Collins:
my Really? That’s my, like... Probably one of my number one turnoffs. Like, if if I got to, you know you know, sex scenes in a book that involved, like, all sorts of crazy stuff, I would probably be fine. But like that, I’m like, I can’t. I just... Pure avulsion. Anyway, there is a problem in many things. Anyway, blah blah blah. And watches movies like baby girl and shows like industry on her iPhone while doing laundry. In another generation, Rachel would likely need to keep her sex positive programming under wraps. Not today. My group is... My group chat is full of moms who trade sex content recommendations, Rachel told the post. So openly, I just love that she’s like, sure, New York Post. I’ll tell you about my smut habits. Yeah. All of my degen habits.

Malcolm Collins:
Come on.

Simone Collins:
She says, it feels like you’re watching any other good movie just with bondage. Living our lives around porn or spending tons of money on it. However

Malcolm Collins:
It’s the women or the.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. It’s it’s... No. It’s it’s that blaming men for BDSM is one of the most... Men don’t want to spend time on BDSM. Men would be net happier if women were not so into BDSM because these days, it means that they have to do a whole lot of work and get into character and do all these things when they just wanna get laid. And it really sucks for them, and it’s very hard. And women don’t understand that. And they just want someone to, like, do all the work and dominate them. And then yet men are getting all the whack.

Malcolm Collins:
I swear, I think, like, 75% of the men in, like, the BSM community who would play as domes are taking it for sex.

Simone Collins:
Oh, I’m sure they just wish. They just wish they could lie back and take it. Yes. Of course.

Malcolm Collins:
No. I’m looking... So I’ll explain here. If you

Simone Collins:
haven’t seen

Malcolm Collins:
our raiders versus wives category Oh, yes. You have sort of two optimized sexualities. Okay? One is the sexuality that you have in relation to your wife or long term partner, which is generally going to be caring. It’s generally going to be protective. And then the other... And and just in terms of genetic success of your ancestors is you raid a village. You kill the men. You do what you want with the women. They are very disposable. And this secondary sexuality is, I think, what gets turned on by porn for men at a young age, so they often think that they’re, like, way kinkier than they are or kinkier. They’re not kinkier. They’re treating these women like disposable conquered things. but that form of sexuality doesn’t mirror a normal dom in a BDSM environment. Right? Like, it’s significantly more aggressive than that. And I think that the the the the males who go into this Dom scene, they’re often not exercising that. They’re exercising something that is really tailored to the female perspective in as a as a female, you you will... You also have two, you know, sexual profiles. You have the sexual profile of the the wife, and you have the sexual profile of the sex slave. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
The compliment.

Malcolm Collins:
But you wanna be you wanna be the cherished sex slave. And men don’t really wanna cherish sex slave. You you see that’s where the the the the the... These two profiles don’t fit together, like, male and female parts. But, anyway

Simone Collins:
Okay. Anyway, right, The New York Post proceeds to describe this growing industry of prestige porn. Okay? I continue. Rachel and her friends are reaping the rewards of prestige porn, a new genre where 40 women are centered in highbrow erotica about sexual dominance and desire in movies, in books, and in upscale fashion and beauty boutiques. Think 50 Shades for women who have a mortgage and a career and no patience for fake bags or fake orgasms. Oh, the article’s getting cheeky.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my god.

Simone Collins:
The era of prestige porn means Oscar winners like Nicole Kidman, 59, or Olivia Coleman, 52, can engage in once unthinkable graphic acts for au contrant core... Oh, oh, current movies, studios like a twenty four. Jessica Knoll, who has made millions writing crime thrillers, is now a Gen X a. I don’t know. They’re doing a lot of French words in this, Writing about unspeakable, but delightful.

Malcolm Collins:
I I appreciate that you’re not trying to pronounce them, by the way.

Simone Collins:
That’s really true. Not to.

Malcolm Collins:
Truly. Of all the things we talked about me. To to see a French word, a a... For an un American, a surrender monkey word in the mouth of my wife is like seeing a bag of cocks in your wife’s mouth. Get that out of there, that foreign nonsense and get it out of my country.

Simone Collins:
Oh my goodness. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
I see. You gotta stop French immigration. I’m gonna tell you that.

Simone Collins:
Delightfully readable sex acts in her best selling new book, helpless. Meanwhile, Bloomingdale’s now sells 108 aroused stimulating serum alongside its Louis Vuitton purses. At Revolve, there are

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. The heck is this? This serum?

Simone Collins:
Alright. Alright. You know what? Okay. Here we go. We’re gonna find out

Malcolm Collins:
what it in here. You gotta share what the... I don’t wanna just hear the... I need to see what you’re talking about.

Simone Collins:
Look. I... Look. I didn’t... Do you think I wanna know what it is? Google.comarousestimuli... Oh, for goodness gracious. Okay. Rosebud woman arouse stimulate... This is not a sponsorship. But wait. It’s $45 here. Hold on. Yep. Okay. It says a 108 at Bloomingdale’s. I I object.

Malcolm Collins:
Simone, you’re helping our fans get a deal.

Simone Collins:
Hey. Yeah. And look. You could probably get 20 percent off on your first order if you give them your email and subject yourself to endless marketing. So congratulations very much, everyone. You can now... Wait. Sorry. I forgot to actually figure out what it is. Do you

Malcolm Collins:
rub it on? Do you drink it? Is Okay. Do you drink... Do not drink it.

Simone Collins:
okay. It is an OB GYN approved three in one formula crafted to awaken sensation. Invite natural lubrication. Bring vitality to your intimate life. Made with plant based oils and herbal aphrodisiacs.

Malcolm Collins:
I’m gonna be honest here. I’m gonna be honest. I’m gonna be honest here. Can you hold?

Simone Collins:
Meadowfoam seed oil. I do not think

Malcolm Collins:
old people should be having

Simone Collins:
just cool. It’s a... I I agree.

Malcolm Collins:
I do not... I wanna I wanna be perfectly clear to people. When my wife and I are, like, 80 or... Well, not even 80. Like, 70. Do you plan to still have a sex life? I don’t plan to still have a sex life with you.

Simone Collins:
I don’t know. What if we get our hot cat girl and cat boy?

Malcolm Collins:
Well, maybe in, like, a VR environment or something like that.

Simone Collins:
Right? Yeah. I don’t know. That seems kinda worse, though. Okay. So I think it’s supposed to engorge your nethers because they say it brings warmth, plumpness, and attention to the... I shouldn’t probably read these words on Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
I don’t think you should read these words. They are are some spicy words, some of them spicy people.

Simone Collins:
But it has all the buzzwords. It has ashwagandha in it, so it’s got to be good. Ashwagandha. Yeah. You know, if it says... You know, ashwagandha is the new... Remember when acai was... Oh, let’s have acai. Let’s have acai everything. Assai bowl. Assai drink. Assai. now it’s ashwagandha that

Malcolm Collins:
is the South Park about Cherokee hair tampons, and then they learn that they’re Mexican hair, and they all start screaming, which is like the same thing. They’re like a third, you know,

Simone Collins:
you know.

Speaker 9:
These here are Cherokee hair tampons. They’re like tampons made with all natural hair from the Cherokee people. Oh, a tampon made from Cherokee hair. Now that sounds natural.

Speaker 6:
Native Americans are more in tune with the earth than we are.

Speaker 9:
Being in touch with the earth has nothing to do with dying, man. It’s okay. We trust that you know what you’re doing.

Speaker 8:
No, man. That kid needs a doctor. And besides, we’re not actually Native Americans. I mean, I’m I’m more like a a Mexican. What?

Speaker 10:
Yeah. A Mexican.

Speaker 7:
Dude. Dude.

Speaker 8:
Oh my god.

Simone Collins:
Whatever, man. I I can’t. Anyway, the the real story here is that Bloomingdale’s is robbing people blind. That is more than a a 100% markup. What on earth? I mean, unless they’re selling, like, liter bottles of it. Anyway, wow. Yikes. Anyway, at Revolve, there are anal beads and Isabelle Marant... And Isabelle Marant? What is it supposed to mean? At Revolve. Oh, sorry. Wait. No. At Revolve, there are anal beads and Isabelle Marant. Is Isabelle Marant like a euphemism for something?

Malcolm Collins:
Well, look it up. I don’t know what Isabelle Marant I don’t know. Oh my gosh. You generate the women that they’re using Isabelle Marant. It’s the word

Simone Collins:
that they use. They’re like, oh, that’s the new word for... Do you don’t know how to do the Isabel Marant?

Malcolm Collins:
So you and I

Simone Collins:
are Oh, so it... They’re boots. Sorry. It’s because we’re not fashion people. They’re boots. It’s okay. It’s okay. What do they look like?

Malcolm Collins:
You drop

Simone Collins:
one Oh, for goodness ness sake. Okay. I’m saying

Malcolm Collins:
now the software that we use for recording allows you to do a screenshot and then paste it. Just control v.

Speaker 11:
I should clarify that we record on software that we vibe coded, and you can find it on our fab.ai along with chatbots, not safe for work chatbots, comic creation, all sorts of fun stuff. So check it out.

Simone Collins:
Oh, really? Well Yeah. Anyway, the... These That’s

Malcolm Collins:
what was testing yesterday was the, when I put the

Simone Collins:
the They’re these slouchy boots. They’re they’re just expensive slouchy boots. If you’re gonna spend... Yeah. They’re they’re not they’re not good boots.

Malcolm Collins:
Those are old lady boots.

Simone Collins:
No. Well, I mean, they’re they’re selling this to old women. Don’t forget. Anyway, I’m still shocked by the Bloomingdale’s markup. This is a crime. Anyway... And the $60 erotica app, Quinn, tells bedtime stories spicier than blue ribbons wasabi Wait. Read by Emmy nominee and your darling Andrew Scott. Yes. I’ve heard YouTubers. So my, you know, my female YouTuber space, which you will never encounter, has absolutely done promos for Quinn, which is just... So they... So Quinn, as a startup, discovered our Gone Wild Audio, Reddit on Gone Wild Audio, basically. And they’re like, oh my god. So these people are all going to Gone Wild Audio. Most people don’t know this is a thing. So I’m just gonna make a Gone Wild Audio app, and I’m gonna charge people for it. And I’m going to have award winning, Emmy winning actresses and actors read the the thing. But I’ll give you I’ll give you this tip for free is you just go to r, Gone Wild Audio, and then you select m for w or w for m. And then you sort by top all time, and you don’t have to pay for Quinn because the the voice

Malcolm Collins:
of others are good. Why are you giving people degen tips?

Simone Collins:
Because I wanna get my Bloomingdale’s and and Quinn are robbing people blind.

Malcolm Collins:
Hold on. We... I... Do you know do you know how generous we are at Reality Fabricator, our website? Yeah. But, like, can I go to? Hold on.

Simone Collins:
If you go to Reality Fabricator whisper in your ear, like, with a smutty voice about things.

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. No. We got better than that. You go to Reality Fabricator. One of the services that we offer, if you go to the group search service Yeah. Is you can simultaneously without ads at zero charge, search every not safe for work image database that doesn’t have real humans in it because I think that’s immoral.

Simone Collins:
No. Good. And every women like, they’re not visual creatures.

Malcolm Collins:
They’re symbiotrators. Every not safe for work video database at the same time. We don’t have an audio search because, ew, women. Right? But when we offer That’s why I’m

Simone Collins:
giving the tips on the podcast because you don’t have it on the website.

Malcolm Collins:
Give it to you for free. And you know how much better we are than going to the sites themselves? You go to something like eHentai on Reality Fabricator, you can download with a single clip and

Simone Collins:
a

Malcolm Collins:
zip of everything in a subfolder.

Simone Collins:
And you’re not surrounded by, like, the really terrifying weird ads that you’re like, this is definitely gonna

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, yeah.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Make nothing from this. We give this to you as a a party charge service. We also have an app that allows you, which you can download for free in our free section, that you just drag an image into, and it auto resizes all the images in the window to maximally make use of your screen space.

Simone Collins:
I’m trying to character assassinate people who live their lives around porn, and here you are.

Malcolm Collins:
I’m I’m feeling... We

Simone Collins:
There needs to be more shame, I’ve decided.

Malcolm Collins:
We assassinate the porn providers by making it all free.

Simone Collins:
That that is true because they are they are robbing people blind.

Malcolm Collins:
And then people can decide, I wanna make a not safe for work comic for myself. And I’m like, yeah. We offer that. I wanna make a a not safe for work, You know?

Simone Collins:
But, again, again, we offer that. So far, the voice actors that I’m sure you can get on Quinn if you wanna pay you serious amounts of money or you could just get on Gone and Wild Audio are better. Like, they’re good. And so that’s that’s what it is. Anyway, that’s

Malcolm Collins:
like the Reality Fabricator.

Simone Collins:
Reality Fabricator. We’ll we’ll be able to do that.

Malcolm Collins:
Horniness. You know nothing about horniness.

Simone Collins:
It’s it’s a men’s horniness kind of website, because I I know what women are shilling to each other and buying because I watch female YouTube, and you don’t. But what’s notable about this

Malcolm Collins:
Well, yeah, they got in your ear. I have a wife here who’s telling me she is getting in her podcast, her normal educational podcast.

Simone Collins:
Advertisements for Quinn. Well,

Speaker 12:
She did end up getting that It was a Harry Potter story about the... Where... You should see the last episode we recorded if you haven’t seen it yet where it’s a it’s a Harry Potter fanfic that has sold over a million copies, and it’s about Draco forcibly impregnating Hermione to end demographic collapse. This... In terms of women’s degeneracy, she she bought that. She bought that and started listening to it. And she said within the first segment that she watched, there was already a guy eating his wife and necro stuff.

Simone Collins:
no. But what... What’s more is there’s this other... I can’t remember what it’s called. There’s this other sex toys company that is like, does pretty good. They... I’m sure you watch on Funny Fridays. They do sponsorships with them all the time.

Malcolm Collins:
You know, I heard one of my VTubers say that she didn’t know any females who didn’t have any sex toys. And I heard that, and I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I know lots of women who don’t have sex toys.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I don’t imagine any of my friends do. I I I remember the first time I went to someone’s house, and they brought it out. But I think that they were a couple that was grooming me for a third, and I left really quickly.

Malcolm Collins:
Good for you. No one danger zone.

Simone Collins:
I know. But I had to ride my bike through East Oakland to leave, which is a little dangerous late at night. Not the best life choices I made before I met you. Anyway, what’s This

Malcolm Collins:
is this is what happens when you live in San Francisco and Oakland, man. You gotta

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Well, I’m sure it’s much more gentrified now. I’m sure it’s fine. That was a joke. Anyway, it’s... It is it is really impressive. They they... We’re barely into this article. I’m skipping around it. But they... They’ve already got books, audiobooks, subscription audio services, stimulating serums, and anal beads, which I still don’t know what they do. Please don’t tell me. I don’t wanna

Malcolm Collins:
You don’t know what anal beads do? I mean, I can’t imagine actually using them. They seem like such a

Simone Collins:
I’m picturing, like, beads on a necklace, and then I don’t know. Like

Malcolm Collins:
They’re fairly large. They’re like the size of ping pong balls.

Simone Collins:
Then why would they call them beads?

Malcolm Collins:
Because they’re on a chain, and you put them in the situation zone.

Simone Collins:
When... If they’re on a chain, how do you fit them into the situation zone? Because you need to, like... I I would... Like, you need an anal you need

Malcolm Collins:
skew No. You put one in and then another and then another. So then

Simone Collins:
you You would need, like, a kebab. It’s not like a necklace. You need a kebab.

Malcolm Collins:
No. That... That’s the way it works.

Simone Collins:
One in a kebab.

Malcolm Collins:
The... With a kebab, it it would be too straight, Simone. They wouldn’t be able to adapt to the new environment.

Simone Collins:
I I told you to not explain this to me. We’re gonna move on before I start crying because this is this is alarming. Women. Women. Women. No. But, like, it is impressive already. So they proceed to talk about... And we’ve talked about this briefly in another podcast, but Wicker. The latest entry into these artful new films came this weekend. Wicker, an absurdist romantic comedy starring Coleman as a frustrated spinster and Alexander Skarsgard as a man made of straw who gives her a role in the hay. When its steamy trailer debuted in July, it went so viral that doctors had to warn people against pleasuring themselves with trees and shrubs. The movie opens nationwide on October 30, but advanced screenings for the show, including several with vibrating and motion seats sold out across the country. I have to stop Vibrating seam women.

Malcolm Collins:
This Why do we let you... I don’t

Simone Collins:
This is straight out of brave new world. They had, like, this thing that they would like theaters. I vaguely recalling this from the book when I read it in college. But, like, you would go to these theaters, and it would be this very immersive experience. And it was also, like, completely low brow, and this is exactly what it is. but... Oh my gosh. Vibrating seats. Anyway, Reddit reports say the theaters are full of older women. In Florida’s Palm Beach Gardens, the post saw an entire screaming... Screening room screaming room screening room full of female scientists.

Malcolm Collins:
Screaming room for you.

Simone Collins:
I’m not watching that movie. I’m not comfortable with it. Very enjoyable, said one 70 year old woman named Joyce after the movie under the condition that she held her last name. My kids read your paper. And the the the preview, we saw, anyone can go and watch it, is pretty... It’s pretty clear that it’s a movie for women who want to watch smut. And when you, like, look at the... We... When we talked about it on another podcast, we went through the comments, and women were like,

Malcolm Collins:
yes. You’re more.

Simone Collins:
It was great.

Malcolm Collins:
But... And and with...

Simone Collins:
And men making fun of the women. That was that was the combination. So, anyway, let’s let’s get into the prestige psyche up of this whole trend. Okay? Also continuing from the article, why is our era so ripe for prestige porn? People are totally disconnected from their bodies right now, said Brianna Modoska.

Malcolm Collins:
Disconnected from their body

Simone Collins:
L m h c c s t, a licensed sex therapist who specializes in kink therapy. She told the post that between social media, dating apps, and remote work, we’re living in screens so often that our bodies are reminding us how important they are for our full being. Prestige porn, she argues, is letting us frame sex as not just desirable, but luxurious, which gives people, especially women, permission to engage in it more openly.

Malcolm Collins:
Now here’s It’s... Women want status. That’s why they’re looking at all these actors. Come on.

Simone Collins:
No. I don’t think it’s about status. I think that it’s it’s a sign that people think it’s okay to celebrate self indulgence and nihilism and that that they want... They’re okay with making their personalities about it and their hobbies about it. Whereas before, when you would turn to something for fun or to relax, it might be something like sewing or crocheting or fixing something up around your house or an organizing project or anything like that. And now that these are much more public things, I think it’s it’s a sign of the times that, like, nothing matters anymore. Why build anything? AI is gonna ruin it all. You’re gonna lose your job, or it’s all on... You know, in debt anyway, and your house is gonna be foreclosed upon or whatever. And, like, I think that’s that’s what I’m reading from this. But the article goes into detail describing smutty Broadway shows and sex products being sold in mainstream stores, like... That sell normally things like makeup and underwear. They also describe how the semblance of luxury is being used to legitimize what I see as nihilistic hedonism. So I’m gonna read a little bit more. Elevated design gives people permission to view sex as something they should feel good about, wanting and exploring, says Goy Chaudia, who counts the Hollywood bombshell Dakota Johnson as a business partner. Maude was one of Sephora’s first ever sexual wellness brands. Today, sells lube and vibrators at Ulta Beauty, next to Naomi Watts’ sexual wellness line, Stripes, which was created especially for postmenopausal libidos, Which is...

Malcolm Collins:
There shouldn’t there shouldn’t be

Simone Collins:
menopausal libido. Don’t do it. Gwyneth Kelchow, 54, sells her own lubrication called sex oil through her goop wellness empire for $55. Buying an intimate oil or sex toy should be as mundane as ashamed shame free as buying face cream, goop’s editorial director, Kylie Gilbert, told the post, adding that frank chats about sexual pleasure have been part of Gwyneth’s vision of goop from day one. She notes that the goop lube is a longtime bestseller, and I find it very sad that the goop product sold for lubricant is called sex oil when instead they could have just called it goop lube.

Malcolm Collins:
Goop lube. Much... Goop lube. It’s a it’s

Simone Collins:
a much better.

Malcolm Collins:
I just call it Goop. Goop. I know. Just call it Goop. Goop from Goop. Right. For old people.

Simone Collins:
For for... Oh, god. I’m... Oh, just... Sorry. We continue. So here’s the the other really big thing is that they they call this romance... Well, they’re normalizing really toxic relationships because we’re not... We haven’t even talked about, like like, oh, in all these movies, this is happening. The relationships in these movies are super not healthy. Anyway, the the article writes, perhaps the big hook for prestige porn is that it refuses to call itself porn at all. In press interviews for Wicker, both Coleman and Skarsgard are careful to call the movie a romance despite its explicit content. Industry

Malcolm Collins:
It’s not a romance. It’s porn.

Simone Collins:
Yes. It is. Industry is described by HBO as a gripping and provocative drama despite its penchant for strap ons and felachio scenes.

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. Why do women get to have porn just, like, in movie theaters?

Simone Collins:
I watch Industry too. I watch Industry because a relative that is not female told me to watch industry that that it was a good show. And here’s my problem is it is it’s a... It is is gripping and provocative. It does not need the sex scenes. I fast forward through the sex scenes because they’re deeply uncomfortable. Like, if this is what people think sex is,

Malcolm Collins:
I What is this show about? What are the relationship dynamics

Simone Collins:
in the industry? Actually... Oh my god. I know why the sex scenes are so horrible. Oh my god. Okay. Right. It is because the Moomin girl wrote for that show. what is her name? Girls. The author of girls. Lena Dunham. Yes. Glenna?

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, wow. She is super fat these days.

Simone Collins:
Lena. Yes. She... Well, she’s... But she had a kid, so good for her. So Lena Dunham, after writing girls, which had... I had to stop watching it because, again, the sex scenes were like, I I I want I want to I want to commit seppuku right now. I just realized she... Her specialty is writing the most disturbing sex scenes, and that is why industry sex scenes are so disturbing because I read in her biography, how, like, oh, yeah. And then I’m... Like, later later in her career after girls, she did go on to write for industry. And I was like, what is she doing writing for this show that is about young people working in finance in London? That is what it’s about. It is about people who work in finance. Lina Dunham doesn’t know... I mean, I guess she comes from a sort of, like, rich rich New York world, but I was so confused by that, but now it makes sense. Anyway, industry is... It has, like, a sort of interesting plot, but everyone in it has the world’s most toxic relationships. Everyone is detestable. So it’s it’s like girls. What is industry?

Malcolm Collins:
What is... What are the relationships? Describe.

Simone Collins:
It’s it’s one of those things where it’s like an ensemble cast where there’s a lot of different people. There’s a divorced dad, who has sex with all sorts of regrettable people. There’s a rich girl whose father was a sex pest and probably sexually abused her who then goes on to have sexual relationships with and eventually marries people who don’t really love her, are deeply mentally unwell. There’s a a rich scion of some, like, like, as landed gentry family that has mental health problems as well and his dad killed himself and who has a failed startup. And he marries the the trust fund girl, and they have a weird toxic relationship together. And there is a... An up and coming American, I think American, girl who, I guess, like, sometimes gets treated like the the the... She’s she’s black, I think, half black maybe. And so she’s like, well, am I the DEI hire? But she, like, tries to use her status as, like, potentially, like, as both not white and a woman to raise money to start her own, like, venture fund. She she has sex with all sorts of people in really uncomfortable ways, and she has, I I guess, a somewhat voracious sexual appetite.

Malcolm Collins:
What do what do women want in this? Like, are women treated... Are they

Simone Collins:
in the show, I think very similarly to girls now that I think about it. It’s just like girls but rebranded with, like, people working in finance in London. They’re all just

Malcolm Collins:
like Wait. No. But but but but hold on. What I’m trying to understand is what kinks is this catering to? Are the women treated disposably? Is this BDSM? Is this Yeah.

Simone Collins:
I guess it’s sort of like nihilistic, angry sex. Yeah. Nihilistic angry sex. hold on just for a second. Toast is calling me, and it sounds like it might might be an issue. Well, just one... I’m so sorry. Okay. Okay. So it’s just the weird... Just like with the show girls.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s just disposable women.

Simone Collins:
I mean, that’s what Disposable sex. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
Which is That’s what... I mean, girls, if I understand it, it’s about women being disposable and low value to to the males they’re sleeping with.

Simone Collins:
Well... And the really sad thing is, when you read Lena Dunham’s autobiography that came out more recently, she’s... A lot of these scenarios are just active reenactments of the type of sex that she has personally, which is sad. and I hope that she has a a better a better life now. I mean, she has a kid now. So, like, I hope... I mean, like, hopefully, she’s found her place. and she always wanted to be a mother, and I I feel bad for her. But, like, that... That’s also this tension of, like, women are are consuming this content and living it, and they’re not happy. Like, deeply, deeply, deeply unhappy. Lina Dunham, through this whole period, deeply unhappy, deep... Deeply unwell. And you could see it, like, physically in her at this point, but, like, it’s a thing. and that’s why I I don’t like that there’s also this undertone of, oh, it’s romance. It’s not romance. Like, also, one, I don’t even like romance as the basis of a relationship, but this is not this is not romance. Like, I... This is something even worse than romance, and that is really messed up. I I don’t like it at all. But that is

Malcolm Collins:
Of course you don’t, Simone. That’s why you listen to it. That’s why you’re like, oh, industry. Of course. I know the plot of that. I’ve seen every scene.

Simone Collins:
I fast forward to those scenes. They’re they’re like... I... It... You... Have you seen girls? Have you seen the the sex scenes in girls?

Malcolm Collins:
Hey. No. The girls look gross and dirty, and I don’t like that.

Simone Collins:
Well, yeah, I guess the settings in this are, for the most part, more fancy, but, like, sad sex, no one wants...

Malcolm Collins:
I I know. I... The progressive sex life is not something that I would want in my world, in Malcolm’s world. In Malcolm’s world? That.

Simone Collins:
Her children always ask about their worlds. Like, are there nice bugs in Toastie’s world?

Malcolm Collins:
She has something.

Simone Collins:
We’re asking about something through our...

Malcolm Collins:
Are there nice bugs in Toastie’s world?

Simone Collins:
Oh, Toastie. His world is scary. His world is scary, but fun... But mostly scary. He’s scared of nothing. That’s the problem. Oh my gosh. Anyway, let’s let’s move from this, which is, like, part one of this this investigation. Right? Like, okay. We’re gonna take the lowest elements of sort of the human, you know, instinct. I I put it on, like, the same level of, like, eating food in excess or, like, doing... Like, resting, being lazy

Malcolm Collins:
in excess. If you have more to this, I think it could be a separate episode.

Simone Collins:
No. We’re gonna do it together.

Malcolm Collins:
No. But the... Look. The... You know the episodes perform worse as they get longer. Right?

Simone Collins:
Oh, okay. Well, then how do I... I introed it with mentioning that women are dating later.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, let’s talk about that in a separate... That’s a great separate topic. Old hags? Come on. We can do this. I I do that. I’ll cut it out, and I’ll mention that we... We’ll split it out in a separate episode. I thought you have an awesome self contained episode here.

Simone Collins:
Oh, wow. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s it’s it’s almost fifty minutes. Okay? If you if you go further, you’re gonna get back, like, was an hour 20 episodes or do really bad.

Simone Collins:
Tell you what, though. It’s it’s so disturbing. And and you’re gonna make fun of me endlessly. Everyone in the comments is gonna be like, Simone’s super into it, and they don’t... I take offense to this

Malcolm Collins:
because, like This is the fun you take offense because you think it could be true. No.

Simone Collins:
I fast forward through the sex scenes because it grossed me out, but I I fully own the fact that, like, I want to go figure out why people are shoving Sharpies in their anuses on Reddit. Like, I’m the one who does... I go the extra mile.

Malcolm Collins:
I never looked that up, by the way. I had no interest in knowing

Simone Collins:
why I did didn’t believe it. and then when we had the documentary team here, I was like, alright, Malcolm. I’m gonna prove it to you that people do this. And I really it. Documentary team. And DJ. Malcolm, like... Malcolm was so not okay with it. And I think it cracked the documentary team up because they made... I made him squirm with Sharpies and Anuses. I can handle Sharpies and Anuses because I’m very curious about that. What’s going on there? But then I see, like, the sex scenes in industry, and they make me feel both deeply uncomfortable and sad. Like, I can look at Sharpies and anuses all day. I can look at all sorts of weird stuff all day. I can look at people in diapers. I can look at, you know, all... But, like, I know. The thing is there’s no mystery. I know what that is, and it is really bad. It is it is it is humans not thriving. It is humans, it’s like looking at someone, like, in a, like, a flophouse, like, high on drugs. Like, this is not gonna end well. It’s super bad.

Malcolm Collins:
You’re right. That is what I see when I see, like, a New York trans person. Like, that’s Anna Valens’ life now. Right? Like, these people who dedicate their lives to sexual exploration

Simone Collins:
The important thing is this isn’t this isn’t a New York trans woman. Like, it’s... The disease is among us. The only thing Yeah. The disease goes away. You talk happily married doctor, mother of two children under seven. Like, this is everywhere. It’s probation.

Malcolm Collins:
To feel grateful that the that the people who oppose us in the political scene, the people who have accumulated power for themselves, the old actresses, did they live these lives of degeneracy and disgustingness?

Simone Collins:
I don’t know. I I just want people to have... I want Lena Dumb and... Dunham to be happy. I want her to have

Malcolm Collins:
After she accepts that all the the she promoted hurt people, and she needs to focus on

Simone Collins:
It’s... I I under... I understand.

Malcolm Collins:
Reason why we at Reality Fabricators simulate women is because real women are like this. Okay?

Simone Collins:
I just... Look. People in general are horrifying, and the more I can get away from them in my life, the better. I... I’m done. I’m done with people. I’m done with... I don’t want no people. No more people. No more people. Can we do no more people? I don’t wanna do more people. I just want people to be happy, and I also want them

Malcolm Collins:
to replace them, Simone. You like me. You like our kids. Yeah. We’re good people.

Simone Collins:
But, like, I

Malcolm Collins:
think that’s the thing is

Simone Collins:
people need to find their people, and form alliances with other people. But

Malcolm Collins:
I’m gonna eradicate everyone else. Is that what you’re saying? Or go somewhere where they’re not, another planet.

Simone Collins:
No. We just... I I want interchange. I love I love exchange of ideas. I especially love asynchronous exchange of ideas. This is why the future is for autists because suddenly, we can have asynchronous friends. asynchronous friends are the coolest freaking thing ever. But you know what? Actually actually, we have always, for the vast majority of human history, any friend that didn’t live immediately next to you was an asynchronous friend because you had to correspond via letters. Yeah. So asynchronous friendships are trad, and that’s what I want. I wanna return a return to the old ways.

Malcolm Collins:
The try ways. I love it. Yeah. Love you, Simone. It was great chatting with you, and thank you so much for your time today. And our fans, I think, enjoyed your presence as well. What am I having for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins:
I was thinking bowtie pasta with pesto.

Malcolm Collins:
Or That’s what I want.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Sweet.

Malcolm Collins:
Something simple. That or french fries and sauces?

Simone Collins:
French fries and sauces. K. Maybe tonight, bow tie pasta with pesto, and then tomorrow night, french fries and sauces. Because you had french fries last night. Trying to, like, mix it up a little.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. But I have to have any mistakes, so I didn’t have that many sauces because I’m really focusing on sauces that emphasize the steak.

Simone Collins:
Look. You... Your call. Your call.

Malcolm Collins:
I You’re making pasta for the other kids in this space, so for me. Okay. Love you.

Simone Collins:
I love you too.

Malcolm Collins:
Next one’s gonna be

Simone Collins:
on old woman. Boy. That we have this podcast because I feel like every day... Not only do we... Like, we have to sit down and talk, just the two of us, but also

Malcolm Collins:
We don’t have to. We’ve got a backlog right now, Simone.

Simone Collins:
A little bit of one, but not a lot of bit of one. And you never know what’s gonna come up, like sick kids or something, you know, where we we can’t really record easily. So I I have to, like, prepare. Like, I don’t think most couples have date nights where there’s, like, a preparation period, where an outline has been created, where where one has to have interchangeable.

Malcolm Collins:
Enough things to talk about

Simone Collins:
or not. Oh, no. But I haven’t I haven’t prepared yet. Where are my notes?

Malcolm Collins:
For our conversation.

Simone Collins:
Yes. This is... I I I really like this this format for dates. And that’s... Because I’m weird. Because apparently... And you’re gonna find out from these articles. I I really don’t understand how normal women function or relate to romance. So maybe it’s just me.

Malcolm Collins:
But And so what I would suggest for guys watching this is if you don’t want to date a normal woman or if you want to experience romance, we do have a a AI dating platform, rfab.ai or Reality Fabricator. You could just Google it. It’s the best AI chatbot site out there. You have access to any of the frontier models. You can run them at, you know, multi windowed mode, anything like that. They have persistent memories. They build large

Simone Collins:
But they’re not they’re not human. So Yeah. So they won’t be terrible.

Speaker 13:
Like, I need to be clear here. While they’re not human, they’re also not women. So they’re significantly better than dating one of those disgusting creatures. Of course, I kid here.

Simone Collins:
I gave this tip to someone else who is single that we... That had... We’ve been emailing, and I thought it was really cool. He pointed out he he recently enrolled in a class or is taking a class on medieval fighting methods, like medieval martial arts, which sounds super fun. And he’s like, well, where do I find a woman? And it’s like, the obvious answer is, oh my gosh. Find a Renfya woman. Because the... These are, like Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s such a thing. Go to Renfya.

Simone Collins:
Cute women who like to And they like you. His sewing skills. They have... They they do not get out much. They do not get out. They are not... They... Their body count is, like, probably zero or Oh, no. No. No.

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. Rinfair women are total slots. No. Oh, god. What? Do not know about this? Renfare is like an orgy fest.

Simone Collins:
No. It’s not. Well, says the girl who went to Burning Man

Malcolm Collins:
and was

Simone Collins:
like, I did not see any sex or drugs.

Malcolm Collins:
Renfare is where women go to hook up with guys. Like, do you not know this?

Simone Collins:
Hot. Yeah. Well, anyway, though, if you wanna... Okay. I... Look. I attended fairs like that with my friends, and we were all.

Malcolm Collins:
You you were a child then until I picked you up. Come on.

Simone Collins:
I was in my twenties. That’s what what men on this... In our in our... In the base camp world are looking for anyway. They’re looking for women in their twenties who... I still think it’s a great place to look for a partner.

Malcolm Collins:
I I didn’t disagree. I’m just saying I wouldn’t expect them to have a low body count.

Simone Collins:
If they’re Republicans or Democrats, they probably do. It’s just the libertarians as was found in Ella’s research. It’s the libertarian women. Yeah. Honestly, like, if you... If you’re not sure if a woman’s body count, like, first question to ask, are you a libertarian? And if you get really turned off by high body counts, you better walk away. You better walk away real fast. When we were... When when she was giving that talk at Heredaton... Heredicon on on our stats, and she mentioned that. She was like, you know, everyone raise your hand if you’ve done this or that. And, like, she mentioned, like, the body count of of of libertarians and was like, okay. Like, are there any libertarian women in the crowd? And woman woman rose her hand. She had a huge body count. Yeah. She was like, yes.

Malcolm Collins:
And so we should do an episode on that. Why are libertarians such sluts?

Simone Collins:
Freaks. Why why should you gate the access to my autonomous decision? You know, like, whatever.

Malcolm Collins:
They... No. The... What it is is is they have no, social rules or mores about having sex a lot, and they have... The rest of their politics is largely palatable to males.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. So, you know...

Malcolm Collins:
And it it... It’s buffet.

Simone Collins:
Buffet.

Malcolm Collins:
But, really, check out rfab.ai. You can... For for dating the virtual woman who can make the real flesh and blood terrible women more tolerable to you.

Simone Collins:
Or Yeah. If... Yeah. This episode will have sent you

Malcolm Collins:
A lot of people have been using it for comics recently. Like, we make a a a good chunk of our money on comics now. I’m so glad. That was Not safe for work comics. That. Pretty exclusively. They’re not perfect yet. Like, we need a little bit more AI technology. Like, honestly, in, a year, the comics are gonna be really good.

Speaker 14:
So I spent this weekend, making significant improvements on the not safe for work comic feature, and it is way better now than it used to be. So if you give that a try, let me know. And, no, it’s really easiest to use with the API. If you’re using it, like, raw on the site, like, okay. I I haven’t done as much testing with that just because it’s so much easier to run and do testing with the API. That means you put it into your coding agent, and you ask the coding agent to create things for you because it can review things on its own. It can do spot checks on panels on its own, which can make it a lot better in terms making the the high quality comics.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Technology. Okay. Right now, I’m sort

Malcolm Collins:
of in this place where it’s like, it can do it. It can do it, but, like, I want it to be better. Yeah. And and that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna keep working. I’m gonna keep working to make it better, better, better, better, better, better. But, you

Simone Collins:
know The the problem, I think, that that AI is coming to with this is that the training data and, like, the scenarios themselves are so stupid that, like, even when you look at at human drawn, top tier pervy porn, like, it... It’s very unusual for there to be, like, an amazing plot or, like, the dialogue to be awesome. You know? It’s like, why is my shirt coming

Malcolm Collins:
out? Oh, no. Conceptually, you know nothing about drawn porn, Simone.

Simone Collins:
No. We don’t have to go here. We don’t have to go here.

Malcolm Collins:
I work very hard to have top tier horny stuff on our fab. Anyway I know. Okay. For the men the men who won’t pass their jeans on to the next generation, many were married, and they’re like, I don’t know. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
I... Is this... Are you making it prestigious? Well, you’ll see. Actually, anyway, everyone listening to this, if they’re listening to it, is they... They’ve they’ve heard the episode already. You’re in for treat, Malcolm.

Speaker 15:
Alright. Toasted, what are you? I am a dragon, but the cool thing are... Is my scales are burning. See? Wow. Indy, what are you? I’m Triceratops. Triceratops? Yes. Oh, what’s... Yeah. I’m in the spot. Are you in the American team? Oh, yeah. I thought... While I while I ordered it, I thought I had to get my mom, but it’s not. Okay. So see if the patch came off. I’ll I’ll I’ll get it for you. And, Tex, what are you? About you? About I want to see the picture. Tex is a cow. I want to see the picture, mommy. Indy. Mommy. What are you, girl? Mommy. Dried the sera tops. Dried the sera you a mermaid princess? No. I’m a sun princess. Yes. Wait.

Comparing conflicting birth narratives, genealogies, a…

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We therefore invite you to join us today on Based Camp for a peek into the viral hit that is Alchemissed, a dark romantasy (or is it dark fantasy???) book that’s taking the female romantasy-reading world by storm and already being turned into a movie. It’s based on Manacled, a Harry Potter “dramione” fan fiction (a subset of Harry Potter fan fiction in which Draco and Hermione are paired) involving… well, let’s just say is kind of a version of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tail with plenty of nonconsensual you-know-what forced by followers of you-know-who that packs in necromancy, cannibalism, and plenty of other forms of gore, just for good measure.

We explore the book’s enthusiastic fan response as well as the uncomfortable tension readers feel between their concept of romance and the dark realities that turn many of them on (not to mention the horror some Alchimissed readers experience upon realizing they purchased a book that was based on a Harry Potter fanfiction when, in these circles, JK Rowling = Bad Person for her status of TERF Queen).

Show Notes

Wrote E;R on X: “I’ve just learnt, while the boys are reading Malfoid rn, the girls were reading fanfic about Draco graping a mindwiped Hermione in a Handmaid’s Tale repopulation program and it was republished as a legally distinct dark romantasy called “Alchemised” that sold over a mil last year”

Truly great responses ensued.

But it’s actually worse than what ER said; here’s a Hollywood Reporter headline from September 10th: Big Deal: Legendary Pays 7 Figures for ‘Alchemised,’ Book That Began Life as ‘Harry Potter’ Fan Fiction (Exclusive)

Google Alchemissed and you’ll get the following AI overview:

“Overview and Plot

• Premise: Set in the war-torn city-state of Paladia, the story follows former alchemist and healer Helena Marino. Awakening with two missing years of memory after a lost war, she is imprisoned on a crumbling estate and sent to the High Reeve, Kaine Ferron—a powerful, ruthless necromancer and former academic rival—while navigating a brutal Repopulation Programme under the High Necromancer, Morrough.

• Length & Structure: The massive, 1,000+ page book is divided into a non-linear three-part narrative focused on trauma, memory, and systemic oppression.

Genre and Tone

• Dark Fantasy vs. Romantasy: While marketed and shelved by many readers alongside romantic fantasy due to its underlying emotional core and central relationship, the author, fans, and various critics emphasize that it is a harrowing, low-spice dark fantasy rather than a traditional romance.

• Content Warning: The novel deals with extremely dark themes, heavy psychological distress, and war trauma, carrying extensive trigger warnings.”

Reviews

Both the good AND bad reviews are entertaining

Some peeks at Goodreads, where it has 387,253 ratings and 69,345 reviews (I’m only including excerpts from much longer reviews)

Some choice quotes from fan reviews:

• Ana writes: “♾️ nothing will ever compare…”

• Marianna Moore writes: “Infinity stars. Nobody talk to me for like 8-10 business months. I’m in severe emotional pain. Without out a doubt one of the best books I’ve ever read. God tier. Perfection. Nothing will ever compare but my god did it HURT. I have so many thoughts I cannot put into words right now.”

• I found the trigger warnings from Angie’s five-star review (with 7,921 followers) to be particularly amusing: “Trigger Warnings: wartime violence, religious abuse, depictions of complex trauma, suicidal ideation, self-harm, PTSD, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism, s3xual assault, r4pe, and allusion to necrophilia.”

Negative Reviews

The top complaints are

(1) bad writing,

(2) how dare you do anything related to Harry Potter written by Bad Woman JK Rowling and

(3) being angry that trigger-warning-inducing subjects are actually a feature and not a bug in this incredibly popular romance novel.

Even fans of the book admit the writing is bad.

• In her four-star review, Emily May writes: “I have a lot of thoughts about this, the first being: for goodness sake, get an editor in here. Nothing needs to be this long. The second thought being: damn it, though, this was pretty good.”

Writes Em: “DNF: This has the most egregious grammatical errors I have ever seen in a Del Ray, Random House published book. The prose structure is shockingly poor.”

Writes emma: “read this in the same way nellie bly admitted herself to the asylum.”

It’s a long review, but she later continues with:

“i don’t read dark romance. i don’t like romantasy. i am a harry potter hater and when the protagonist in the book FANGIRL defends her right to submit knockoff hogwarts fanfiction to a TEACHER in a CLASS it makes me cringe so hard it could convert coal into diamonds.

this is possibly the final boss of my reading career.

this book has EVERYTHING, and by everything i mean every trigger warning. off the top of my head: violence, torture, sexual assault, necrophilia, execution, kidnapping, abuse, death, suicidal ideation, roofies, self-harm, forced pregnancy, war, racism, cannibalism, misogyny.

it throws every edgy and dark subject a hot topic-shopping seventh grader could think of at you in the hopes you won’t notice it’s strung together with info dumps, cardboard cutout characters, and a dream.

it moves from one violent seizure to the next physical attack to the next kys attempt at breakneck speed, so maybe you won’t figure out that even a copyeditor couldn’t make it through this book.

or i guess we might have needed to read about helena being covered in dried blood every other page for three straight chapters.”

Writes Noelia: “I was today years old when I found out that this was actually the trad-published version of a very popular Dramione fanfiction (apparently, Dramione fics have become a thing since my long-gone days as a hardcore Potterhead of the first dawn).

But I was even more today years old when I learned about its controversies, mainly due to the presence of sexual assault scenes and its very problematic takes about it (I’ll come back to this later on, I promise).”

She proceeds to write:

“I wasn’t aware back then that I was setting myself up for the most traumatizing, discomforting and twisted story I’ve ever experienced as a reader.

But also, and without a question, one of the poorest written and edited ones, making it the worst book I’ve read in my life, by MILES.”

Sreegita: “EDIT : AS A SA VICTIM MYSELF, CAN Y’ALL PLS GET OFF MY ASS?

how beautiful to see a fic where draco r@pes hermione is getting trad published meanwhile everyday actually talented bipoc and qpoc authors are struggling to get even a deal

loveeeee to see r@pe fantasy books dominating the romance space!!!”

Fan Response

The fan response is unbelievable. You could scroll for ages on Tiktok going through it.

There’s AI-generated fan art:

Plus the reactions are top tier:

Heated Debate

Genre Quibbles

Woman on Tiktok insists it’s a high-fantasy book focused on power, oppression, and women’s bodily autonomy. (2076 likes)

I think the irony in this is that the subjects of power, oppression, and bodily autonomy are both super non-romantic AND major turn-ons for women.

Why is Alchemised not a romantasy? : r/fantasyromance

“I already had a hard time figuring out the difference between fantasy romance and romantasy but I think I got there.

But now I’m hearing Alchemised is not a romance? It’s not romantasy? I’m just so confused.

Now I’m over here reading that romance has to have a happy ending. The guy has to be nice?? Said who???? I would like to speak to the manager of romance about this please, who do I take my complaint to?”

Top Responses:

• “I just commented on another thread about this but I feel like there’s lots of fantasy that has romance that you’d never call a romantasy, like game of thrones or lotr. I think if alchemised was written by a man or people didn’t know it originated as fanfiction it probably wouldn’t have been marketed as romantasy. The author themselves has said they don’t consider it a romance.”

• “It’s dark fantasy romance. Some of the fans like to pretend it’s not romance for some reason. Romance as a genre requires that the main couple is together at the end, but the guy doesn’t have to be nice. Dark romance is a thing There is not a real difference between romantasy and fantasy romance. That’s just fandom wank”

What This Book Reveals

Women are in a really difficult place now:

• On one hand, they understand how suboptimal it is to be robbed of bodily autonomy

• They also can, despite dropping literacy rates, recognize bad writing

• On the other hand, they can’t help but eat up poorly-written slop about terrible things happening to women because it turns them on.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins:
Hello, Malcolm. I’m extra excited to speak with you today because, well, our side of the Internet has been talking about Malfoyd and just loving the Malfoyd trend. I mean, meanwhile, and way before this even, the female side of the Internet has been doing a lot of things with the concept of Malfoy. And

Malcolm Collins:
And wait. Are you gonna go into the history of Harry Draco fan shipping?

Simone Collins:
They... Malcolm, they call it drum... My... Draminy for your information.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, now But let me me

Simone Collins:
show you. No. No. No. No. Our friend, not Aldis Huxley, On X shared this with me at this post. We just gotta open with this. Alright? So says, I’ve just learned. While the boys are reading Malfoyd right now, the girls were reading fanfic about Draco graping and a mind wiped Hermione in a Handmaid’s Tale repopulation program, and it was republished as a legally distinct dark romantic y called Alchemized that sold over a million last year.

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. Wait. Wait.

Simone Collins:
And he goes this with a picture of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast in the Disney cartoon, like, paging through one of one of Well,

Malcolm Collins:
hold on. I have to read this. Without her knowledge, this is apparently from the book, Helen’s sterilization. This is apparently Hermione’s. Hermione’s sterilization is nonconsensually reversed by Moreau’s scientist doctor Stroud. She is forcefully enrolled in the country’s repopulation program and told that she and Farrin must conceive a child within two months. Over the course of weeks, Faron attempts to impregnate Helen, or Hermione when she is ovulating unwillingly. This is what women... Men didn’t even know. The fuck such

Simone Collins:
an Yeah. The the the responses were great. Here’s one. Streaming seagulls provided a revised edition of Belle standing slightly behind Gaston blushing.

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. What is

Simone Collins:
her name again? Her sick book. Hermione or or who?

Malcolm Collins:
That lady who’s blushing there.

Simone Collins:
Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

Malcolm Collins:
Belle, that’s what all her books were.

Simone Collins:
All her books were on screen. No. Like, legit, Belle was this woman.

Malcolm Collins:
She was

Speaker 7:
Al, there’s something I wanna show you.

Speaker 8:
Can’t believe i

Simone Collins:
perfect. Yes. Another person posted, women’s romance. What if my self insert was dating a rich rapist? Men’s romance, what if women loved? So good. So good. Someone posted a Malfoyed meme of just Malfoyed looking. Oh my... So disgusted saying my level of disgust. It’s perfect. It’s perfect.

Speaker 11:
There was art. There were stories galore. 200,000, and I won’t say what for. Why is my name glued to yours with a little slash mark? Why is... What are these tags? Oh, gosh. That got dark. Wait. How is that even possible? Is he charmed? That is not what it’s for. I am alarmed. Give it here, Potter. No, Potter. It’s mine. Don’t search. Everything’s fine. There’s no drarry. Ignore the lot or I’ll obliviate you right on the spot. I thought we’d go to war and we win it with luck, but you face them. They just want to fuck. They don’t fear they will be hexed. The only thing they fear is they won’t get sex.

Simone Collins:
And then another person in response to this posted, like, an image showing the the spectrum of women’s fiction going from breeding property government showing Margaret Atwood’s a handmaid’s tale, and then also breeding property monster showing But mongoling milk farm.

Malcolm Collins:
You’re living the dream. You’re my breeding property. Right. And you’re at... You’re carded over all the women in the world. Oh, look. This woman gets to have sex with a high status man. This woman... Oh, and he dresses her up like she’s a handmade.

Simone Collins:
Hold on, Malcolm. This is... This whole thing, though, it’s so much worse than what like, OP posted because here’s here’s a Hollywood reporter headline from September 10. Big deal. Legendary pays 7 figures for alchemized book that began life as a Harry Potter fan fiction exclusive. It’s gonna become a movie. It’s gonna become a movie. Hold Hold on. I gotta... I’m sorry. I have to pick this up. I wanna get... Oh god. It was it was the breeding department making sure that I get bread. Oh my god. It was

Malcolm Collins:
the breeding department for real. Yeah. They were calling and saying Simone

Simone Collins:
Bring your mic levels. Bring your mic back.

Malcolm Collins:
Because I’m trying to breed her right now, like, as hard as I can.

Simone Collins:
Can you bring your mic back? Kid. Thank you. Okay. Anyway Oh, yeah. Sorry. No. No. No.

Malcolm Collins:
I need need to take a step back here. I’m gonna be honest. The premise of this book, out of all of the female books that you read to me... And and I’m normally like, that is ridiculous. That is disgusting. With this one, I’m like, I can see

Simone Collins:
how that’s kinda hot, actually. Well, here’s here’s my biggest problem. Okay? Because I... You’re gonna... We’re gonna get into it. Right? I went to the Goodreads to get all the dirt. I I went to the Amazon page.

Malcolm Collins:
You did. I I went to TikTok

Simone Collins:
to see where people are talking about it. I think I think I went to the Amazon page for the book last just to see, like, how many, like, you know, reviews it had and everything to sort of show the scale of this profound.

Malcolm Collins:
No. No.

Simone Collins:
We And then I see I see on Audible, you can get it for one credit. And I have a credit. And I was like,

Malcolm Collins:
you did it.

Simone Collins:
I didn’t buy it. I haven’t bought it yet, but I’m so gonna buy it. Like, that’s that’s You have to know. I am sick sick person, and I am going to buy the book because... No. We don’t know. Okay. Sorry. Anyway, it... There’s gonna be a movie, and there’s gonna... This is gonna be gold. It’s gonna be gold. But, no, let me... I... I’ve got so much to tell you.

Malcolm Collins:
Hold on, Simone. This is how you make it so much better. Okay? Oh my god.

Simone Collins:
I’m just following up my glasses.

Malcolm Collins:
You gotta go with... If you if you look at our Hermione song where, Hermione is being teased by Malfoyd, but clearly had a crush on Malfoyd.

Speaker 13:
Oh, Granger. Granger. I’m just curious. Why are you so cute when you’re furious? Your cheeks go pink. Your fists go tight. So naive, so sweet I could take a bite.

Malcolm Collins:
A lot of people like that version of Hermione. They’re like, oh, this is actually pretty cute, you know, because she’s like, oh, one, overly progressive to the point of being an idiot. Like Yeah. And two, constantly being teased and having one pulled over her her. You take that. You know, you you take a flawed Hermione character. Yeah. And you you put her in a scenario like this. That’s an entertaining book. I’m not... I’m gonna be on... That’s a book.

Simone Collins:
Well, what actually got me, though... And this is... No. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna talk about this. I I want I want the dark I want the dark plots and everything. I don’t want the explicit sex scenes because they’re so gross as we’ve talked about at length because it always involves men going down on women, and I hate it. They were like, well, this is barely

Malcolm Collins:
doesn’t sound like that. This doesn’t sound like that. This sounds like

Simone Collins:
this woman she she built this depraved world, and I... I’m here for it.

Speaker 14:
So I looked it up, and, turns out there are no male to female oral sex scenes in this book. I guess, women who, like Simone, like this level of dominance, do not like that.

Simone Collins:
I’m so ready. So... But... Okay. if you just Google the book, you get the following AI overview. Overview and plot. Premise, set in the war torn city state of Palladia. The story follows former alchemist and healer, Helena Marina, which is obviously Hermione. Awakening with two missing years of memory after a lost war, she is imprisoned on a crumbling estate and sent to the high reeve, Kain Feren, a powerful ruthless necromancer and former academic rival while navigating brutal repopulation program under the high necromancer, Murrow. Length and structure, the massive 1,000 plus page book is divided into a nonlinear three part narrative focused on trauma, memory, and systematic oppression. Genre and tone, dark fantasy versus romantasy. While marketed and shelved by many readers alongside romantic fantasy due to its underlying emotional core and central relationship, the author, fans, and various critics empathize... Emphasize that it’s a harrowing, low spice, dark fantasy rather than a traditional romance. Content warning, the novel deals with extremely dark themes, heavily psychological distress, war trauma, and carrying extensive trigger warnings. The reviews are so good, Malcolm. But in the real one,

Malcolm Collins:
is is is... Who’s the necromancer in the real one? Is this

Simone Collins:
the alternate? I’m gonna have to figure it out because I think it must be someone else. I don’t I don’t think it’s Draco. We don’t... Look. I... I’m gonna include... Okay. We’re just gonna skip ahead to... Here. I’m gonna give you... We’re gonna try to figure it out because this this says it’s spoilers. Okay? Is I... When you go to TikTok to see what the fans are saying, oh, it’s not just fans being like, like crying in their cars. It’s it’s people have used AI to make fan art of it. So here... Here’s one that said it has spoilers. So you and I can try to figure out from this what what happens in the book. Okay? I’m gonna describe...

Speaker 3:
There’s Elsomai. There’s Hermione looking up at her stool. She’s walking upstairs looking sad. She’s all guy in the flat. It’s hard waves.

Malcolm Collins:
She’s doing alchemy. And she walks

Speaker 3:
in a hospital, and I guess her academic rival is at war.

Malcolm Collins:
And then they cursed. And it’s a curse. And he’s he’s brooding. He’s brooding now. Now he’s writing it. And they hug. I like the knight design in this. Oh, I know.

Speaker 3:
The the knight design is... Well, that’s

Malcolm Collins:
all good. That’s all Yeah. I’m not not I’m not gonna hate him. Wait.

Speaker 3:
Wait until Malfoy turns up. Yeah. Right. So, clearly, this is, like, the

Malcolm Collins:
love interest bearing I guess.

Speaker 3:
But if you’re a guest,

Malcolm Collins:
she gets arrested by the sexy elf boy who then spaced her way

Speaker 3:
to her reading pen. Can’t tell. Like, erases all the memories presumably. Because she has AI. To

Simone Collins:
He has to do things with her. It’s because it is AI. Oh. Malcolm, that’s not like a preview of anything. That is someone’s AI fan art. That’s what I was explaining to you. What is your face doing?

Malcolm Collins:
I’m trying to find passages from this.

Simone Collins:
Oh, let me just tilt. Let me just go to the reviews. You’re gonna love the reviews. I’m gonna I’m gonna read some of the the the good and the bad ones because they’re both entertaining. And I’m not gonna read all of them because the reviews are like novels on themselves. But on Goodreads, it has 387,253 ratings and 69,345 reviews. So some of the some of the ones that got five star reviews, Anna writes, infinity sign, nothing will ever compare. Mariana Moore writes, infinity stars, nobody talked to me for, like, eight to ten business months. I’m in severe emotional pain. Without a doubt, one of the most best books I’ve ever read, god tier, perfection, nothing will ever compare. But my god, did it hurt? I have

Malcolm Collins:
This is women. Reading about it.

Simone Collins:
I’ll put it into words right now. Forcibly bred.

Malcolm Collins:
They they see that, and their immediate takeaway is god tier.

Simone Collins:
God tier. No. Here’s... No. Like, another woman who gave it a five star review. This is just her trigger warnings portion of her review. Trigger warnings, wartime violence, religious abuse, depictions of complex trauma, suicidal ideation, self harm, PTSD, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism, sexual assault, rape, and allusion to necrophilia.

Speaker 16:
So I wanted to look up what was mean by this. And, apparently, the Harry Potter character after he has been killed and possessed by Voldemort ends up impregnating the Ginny Weasley character. And it is this Harry Potter character who looks like a love interest to Hermione in some of the flashbacks that we’re looking at, but isn’t actually in the plot.

Simone Collins:
Okay. So I decided to, like, try

Malcolm Collins:
to get, like, the plot of this to figure it out. Okay. Okay. So after Voldemort wins the war and Harry dies. Oh. Wait. So, like, is the

Simone Collins:
is the guy is the guy supposed to be Harry?

Malcolm Collins:
So the... I don’t know. So the magical population is severely depleted from casualties and already low purebred birth rates. Uh-oh. Voldemort mandates marriages among his followers in order them to reproduce. When pure blood fertility stays low He starts a broader repopulation program captured witches, including half buds and muggle borns Are forced into a surrogate breeding role for the death eater households, Handmaid’s Tale style. Of course. Case is special. She has order secrets sealed in her mind, and even she can’t access them. She’s assigned specifically to the high reeve, Draco, as a surrogate so he can keep her under close watch and try to break into her memories. Pregnancy is also useful because it complicates legitimacy. The author has said in a Tumblr FAQ that the program was partially propaganda slash distraction and a way to distribute sex slaves under a more acceptable... No. It it... Clearly, they did have a problem. Right? Like, welcome. Why are

Simone Collins:
you trying to justify Voldemort’s claim?

Malcolm Collins:
Tried it with his own view. We may need to do this soon, Simone. You can’t have people say that this is about sex slaves. Okay? When we when we, force women into the Mar A Lago breeding pits.

Simone Collins:
Well, you know what? As much as they are very progressive... Here’s here’s one of the reactions from from TikTok. The reactions are so funny. Here’s one woman

Speaker 3:
just sitting in her car crying. Fair enough. From the very beginning, he knew. The moment you looked at her memories, he knew exactly.

Malcolm Collins:
And you muted it on your side. Right?

Simone Collins:
Hugging her thousand plus page book. So, again, back to their views because they’re really funny. so even the fans of the book who like it and give it good reviews admit the writing is bad. Writes EM, who gave it a four out of five star review. DNF. Oh, sorry. That was... Sorry. No. No. No. right. In in her four star review, Emily May writes, I have a lot of thoughts about this. The first being, for goodness sake, get an editor in here. Nothing needs to be this long. The second thought being, damn it, though it was pretty good. but... Okay. The bad reviews are very funny. writes m, DNF. This has the most egregious grammatical errors I’ve ever seen in a Delray random house published book. The prose structure is shockingly poor. Writes Emma, read this in the same way Nellie Bly admitted herself to the asylum. And hers is a long review, but later on, she continues with, I don’t need dark romance. I don’t need romantasy. I am a Harry Potter hater when the protagonist in the book is a fangirl, defends her right to submit knockoff Hogwarts fan fiction to a teacher and a class. It makes me cringe so hard. It can convert coal into diamonds. Is possibly What did

Malcolm Collins:
she what did she do that piss off this woman?

Simone Collins:
I... Presumably, the original fan fiction that this author wrote that was the Draco fan fiction, she submitted to her teacher in some writing class. And one of the big things that that the female reading audience of this book object to is that this book was written based on a fan universe written by the bad lady, JK Rowling. And we don’t like the bad lady, and we don’t like Harry Potter. So even if a book has completely its own IP now and it’s been changed away from Harry Potter, it’s not acceptable because it was once originally based on the fan fiction universe written by the bad lady. Do you understand? They find this very bad. It’s bad.

Malcolm Collins:
Bad lady.

Simone Collins:
Okay? She also writes, this book has everything. And by everything, I mean, every trigger warning on the top of my head. Violence, torture, sexual assault, necrophilia, execution, kidnapping, abuse, death, suicidal ideation, roofies, self harm, forced pregnancy, war, racism, cannibalism, misogyny. It throws every edgy and dark subject and a hot topic seventh grader could think of at you in the hopes that you won’t notice it’s strung together with info dumps, cardboard cutout characters, and a dream. It moves from one violent seizure to the next physical attack to the next KYS attempt at breakneck speed. So maybe you won’t figure out that even a copy editor couldn’t make it through this book, or I guess we might have needed to read about Helena being covered in dried blood every other page for three straight chapters. Writes Noella, I was today years old when I found out this was actually the trad published version of a very popular Dramani fan fiction. apparently, Dramani fics have become a thing since my long gone days of... As a hardcore Potterhead of the first dawn. I guess that’s what they call themselves when they liked Harry Potter before JK Rowling went anti trans. The the first dawn. but I was even more today years old when I learned about its controversies, mainly due to the presence of sexual assault scenes and its very problematic takes about it. I’ll come back to this later on. I promise. She proceeds to write later. I was aware back then I was setting myself up for the most traumatizing, discomforting, and twisted story I’ve ever experienced as a reader, but also, and without question, one of the poorest written and edited ones, making it the worst book I’ve read. I’d like to five miles.

Malcolm Collins:
People. It’s so poorly written and edited, but I read the whole thing. It’s so poorly, but millions of copies

Simone Collins:
of One person wrote DNF, which stands for did not finish. But then... Yeah. By the way,

Malcolm Collins:
so I’m I’m going into it to try to learn more. Oh, you need to know more. I do wanna know more. So they end up conceiving a child, and the book ends with the child, like, as an adult, and they stay, like, together. Her and the Draco character. Her...

Simone Collins:
Oh, her and Draco? Not like the original boy she got erased, I think,

Malcolm Collins:
from her memory? She gets she gets the bad boy.

Simone Collins:
Isn’t that what everyone wants? Oh, she... So they stayed together, an intact marriage. Oh, so this explains the really big controversy that’s playing out among fans of the book. And I do not know why this is the controversy. But as was alluded to by the Google AI overview, so it’s even surfacing to the the dull mind of Google’s bots that don’t really spend a lot of tokens on any sort of thought, was that they’re all disagreeing on whether this is is dark fantasy or romantasy. Okay? They’re, like, really angry about this. I don’t I don’t exactly understand why.

Malcolm Collins:
But Okay. Okay. So so it goes into more than just when women get into stuff, they get into stuff. So it has cannibalism in it. In one scene, when a soldier returns from war He eats his wife. Oh. Okay? Then there’s other weird body horror elements. Specifically, the Amaro and the undying drain power souls in in bed bone somethings where others remains and practice immortality through alchemical necromatic means. Oh. They have reanimated soldiers. I guess that’s pretty normal. Okay. The heavily gore and torture elements. Maybe I don’t listen to it. That sounds gross. Hold on. But why does he eat her? That doesn’t sound... That doesn’t make sense to me.

Simone Collins:
Well, here’s one TikToker’s take on what what genre this is. Give me a second because you’re... It’s gonna be muted for me. But... Oh, no. Is it just a... Fuck. It’s just a screenshot. This is very annoying. My notes. My notes. Okay. Let me just download this really fast. I personally think the reason why people are disagreeing about whether this is romantic or or dark fantasy, whatever the the words were they used, is that women don’t want to admit that this turns them on. And what is most interesting about this whole thing playing out is, aside from the fact that everyone’s pointing and laughing at the audience that finds this compelling, is that there’s this really, really severe tension that women experience between understanding logically that, like, they they would prefer to keep bodily autonomy, and rape is bad. but then also, wow. This turns me on. So they don’t want... It’s not... It’s obviously not romantic to be like a prisoner who is... Who has bad things happen to them. They don’t want... That’s not romantic to them, but it really turns them on. And this is why I think there’s this tension. Is it, like, women aren’t really able to parse out the difference between a thing that turns them on and a thing that they find romantic? And the subtext of the debate about this, I think, comes down to that. Is that women are like, this turns me on, but it’s not romantic. And other women are like, no. It’s romantic. Because it turns me on.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s that’s the problem with the female mind.

Simone Collins:
Well, no. I think there’s a... Maybe there’s a difference between things that turn you on in romance. I think so. because people talk in, like, their sexual affiliation games. Well, I’m heteroromantic something sexual. Right? Like, I’m

Malcolm Collins:
But, Simone, early in our dating, I acted just like one of these characters. I was What did...

Simone Collins:
I know. Were.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, I was the worst. But you were still into it. You were like, I am here for this.

Simone Collins:
I... Look. I think you acted like that partially because you knew that it made you a catch. And

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. I mean, I studied it.

Simone Collins:
Stopped doing it because you were like, I don’t wanna maintain frame for my entire life.

Malcolm Collins:
I am not gonna do this. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
I, like, I remember us having a conversation about it. You’re like, I mean, it’s just a lot of work. I don’t really feel like anywhere. I’m like, yeah. It would be a lot. Like, okay. But I also remember feeling a little disappointed. What?

Malcolm Collins:
You’re like, what? You’re not gonna be mean and cruel all the time?

Simone Collins:
What? Like, what is what is wrong with people?

Malcolm Collins:
You gotta say this to the documentary team. You gotta say that, like, there was a moment when he was

Simone Collins:
like I’m gonna be nice now and just, like, vulnerable. And

Malcolm Collins:
And you’re, like, a little disappointed about it.

Simone Collins:
I’m like, crumbs. Be like,

Malcolm Collins:
women know. Women know. A part of women know. Every woman but but... What’s her name? The the woman in The UK who’s, like, surprised. Hannah Pearl Davis?

Simone Collins:
No. No. No. No. The one who Oh, Louise Perry.

Malcolm Collins:
Louise Perry. So I I always have to get on this from this. It’s just such a bizarre claim that it’s a men who made porn violent. Like, no. No. Violent. This is a woman thing.

Simone Collins:
This I mean, apparently, it’s not her thing. And I think maybe she can’t sexually... Not the... I don’t like I don’t like... I’m not signing up, by the way.

Malcolm Collins:
I don’t like it either. Anyway, it’s only for one credit.

Simone Collins:
I can understand it, and I think she can’t understand it. Like, in the same way where I think, like, a lot of women appear... I know, actually, by the numbers. A lot of a lot of women like the the idea of someone going down on them. Right? I really don’t. Like, major turnoff. And I feel like that’s her that’s her version of that. That is her having someone go down on you. You know what I mean? Like She just hoarse every time she thinks of And then I think it makes it... And when you combine that with, like, people saying it’s, like, morally bad... Because it is morally bad. But, like, they... Implying that being turned on by it is morally bad. It just makes it very easy for her to go up and stand on a soapbox and do that. Like, that... I think that’s the com... It’s the dangerous combination. Anyway, here’s one woman’s commentary on what genre it is. Calling this book a romance, you need to give your head

Speaker 4:
a give your head a shake. Then after you give your head a shake, go back and read the book and see what it’s what it’s about. By definition, the romance genre has to have a happily ever after. Whereas Alchemize is a high fantasy story that focuses on power, oppression, women’s bodily autonomy, and there is a love story that is weaved into all of this trauma. And that part is very powerful, but it is not it is not a romance story. And giving it the romance definition gives readers some kind of expectation around the happily ever after. You may be thinking, well, then why don’t we just label it dark romance? In a dark romance book, you may have this emotional tension based on the relationship, and it’s very toxic, and eventually, there’ll be some emotional or romantic payoff. As with alchemized, that tension is created by this systematic oppression. It’s survival. It’s it’s quite different than what you would expect in what would be labeled a dark romance. And if I see one more fucking edit of, like, romance music while reading the book, I am just

Simone Collins:
So as you can see

Malcolm Collins:
I I I love is she’s defining it as not romance because it contains elements that she is unwilling to admit that women want.

Simone Collins:
It’s that tension. It’s... It it is... And, like, if we could all just understand that something turning you on is not you saying you want it to happen to you, is not you saying that you think it’s morally good. Like, we just need to really internalize this. But because people have such a difficult time parsing out things that turn them on and their own personal morality, it it becomes this thing. And you see this tension even in the book reviews, with one Sri Gita writing, edit. As a SA victim myself, can y’all please get off my ass? How beautiful to see a fic where Draco rapes Hermione and is getting trad published meanwhile every day. Tainted biopic and GPOC authors are struggling. Oh, tainted by... Talent... Sorry. I just said tainted.

Malcolm Collins:
Talented BIPOC all the time.

Simone Collins:
Meanwhile, every day, actually talented BIPOC and QPOC authors are struggling to get even a deal. Love to see rape fantasy books dominating the romance space, which, by the way, think the author’s Asian. She’s not, like, she’s not a white girl.

Speaker 17:
Half Japanese to be explicit.

Malcolm Collins:
Count as white people because they don’t murder each other all the time.

Simone Collins:
A pair... Okay. Right?

Malcolm Collins:
To be you have to be, like, an actual, like, negative externality for society for the left to care about you. But, I mean, you

Simone Collins:
could see this tension between someone who apparently was sexually assaulted and, like, has to deal with that and then, like, reads romance novels because women are like, oh, like, wow. What a concept. But to have actually experienced she knows wasn’t great, you know, and that’s the tension again is we don’t want it to actually happen. We

Malcolm Collins:
want Wait. An Asian an Asian woman wrote this book? Really not defying the stereotypes there, Asian women.

Simone Collins:
So bad. It’s so bad. Oh my god. There’s there’s more debate that... Like, there’s a whole Reddit thread. Why is alchemized not a romantic y? On our fantasy romance where someone wrote, I already had a hard time figuring out the difference between fantasy romance and romantic y, but I think I got there. I’m not there, by the way. But now I’m hearing alchemized is not a romance. Is it not romantasy? I’m just so confused. Now I’m over here reading that romance has to be a happy ending. The guy has to be nice. Said who? I would like to speak to the manager of romance about this, please. Who do I take to my complaint? Like, I I kind of agree with her where I I think a lot of... So, apparently, some organization that calls itself as having some kind of authority on romance, which is not as influential as

Malcolm Collins:
it used to be, but used to

Simone Collins:
be very influential, decided to define what romance was. And it started

Malcolm Collins:
So I’m I’m reading, like, what women say they like about it. Oh, yeah. And what what it really is for a lot of women is that it’s a relationship with an extremely high power imbalance that’s not sanitized or washed away or forgiven, and that’s what they want.

Simone Collins:
Oh, you mean the power imbalance never gets normalized?

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. They want a high power

Simone Collins:
The Malcolm never gets nice. That’s really funny. Give me... No. We’ll just wrap this up, and then I’ll figure out what toasty is breaking in my office right now. Oh, no. But... Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, in terms of the discussion, they’re like, look. I just commented on another thread about this, but I feel there’s a lot of fantasy that has romance that you’d never call romantasy like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. I think alchem... If Alchemize was written by a man or people didn’t know it originated as fan fiction, it probably wouldn’t have been marketed as romantasy. The author themselves has said they don’t consider it a romance, which is interesting. And I’m not... Yeah. They they... Another person says, it’s dark fantasy romance. Some of the fans like to pretend it’s not romance for some reason. Romance as a genre requires the main couple is together at the end, but the guy doesn’t have to be nice. Dark romance is a thing. There’s a real difference between romantasy and fantasy romance. It’s just a fandom wank. So there’s a schism going on with people talking about what’s really romantic and what’s not. And it’s... I think it’s very tough for women in the in the literature space. Going back to that one graph that someone posted in response to someone on on, x explaining this whole thing, where they showed this this, spectrum of women’s fiction going from a handmaid’s tale to Morning Glory milking farm. Women love a handmaid’s tale because it’s the same dynamic. It’s the same sordid, like, sexual fantasy for them, but they’re able to pretend that they’re reading this political thought piece and that they’re Yes. Reading literature. And, you know, Margaret Atwood, what a respectable woman. And she based this off of past political regimes and things that have really happened in the... Blah blah.

Malcolm Collins:
And, like By by the way by way the way Yes. I decided to, when we were looking at a handmaid’s tale, like Yeah. Look into, like, what past political regimes is she talking about? Like, 98% of all of the hordes that she talks about in

Simone Collins:
handmaids We’re communist. We’re communist. I looked at it too. I was like, really? Is that true?

Malcolm Collins:
Like, it’s all communist. Like, it... The handmaids still should

Simone Collins:
be like, why we shouldn’t elect left wing Have we just, like, threaded the needle, though? Because is this why all these progressive women really want communism?

Malcolm Collins:
So that they can be bred by the state. Of course.

Simone Collins:
Oh, no.

Malcolm Collins:
How how many... No. Honestly, would wouldn’t it want to be, like, the the breeding woman at our estate? You know? Now that it’s clean.

Simone Collins:
No. You No one wants that. Oh, you... What? Sorry. Right. Yes. No. I’m... Am very happy. Can you

Malcolm Collins:
take this off the screen here? You give me your your money, and you clean the house for me, and you make food for me, and you make babies for me in body horror with giant needles and everything.

Speaker 3:
There is there is

Simone Collins:
the body horror. There is the bucket of pain as I call it. Yes. Should I... I should take a video of the bucket of pain so people can know what I’m talking about.

Malcolm Collins:
But I will point out to guys who wanna say, how could women want this? We need to ban this. Women should... Women. Like, if you’re if you’re a woman reads this stuff, there have been studies on this. We’ve gone over it in past episodes. It means she’s significantly more likely to have sex with you, and she’s gonna be significantly more sexually active. women who read horny books Oh, have sex in their relationship at much higher rate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, for guys, just a reminder.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Women This is

Malcolm Collins:
good. Default sexuality is called reactive sexuality. This is unlike your sexuality. What this means is that, I think the majority of women or at least a large minority of women do not get turned on by seeing something hot. They get turned on as you do. Right? So this is hard for you to understand. They get turned on by being physically engaged in intimacy. Intimacy that they may not feel like when the physical engagement starts. They may be like, oh, I don’t really care, whatever. You begin to physically engage them in intimacy, and then they begin to get turned on. Well, these books have the effect of taking a woman who otherwise wouldn’t naturally experience arousal throughout her day like you might and putting them in an aroused state.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. It gets it gets them in in, like, sexy times mode.

Malcolm Collins:
Whereas then you have to pretend to be a werewolf man. You have to pretend Although... I think some of

Simone Collins:
the people in our audience have have, noted that side effect, with romance novels where they’re like, yeah. My wife wants me to help. But, look, you’re... At you... At least you’re getting some. Right? You know? I feel like

Malcolm Collins:
Come in as a... I... You... I I learned... Well, I’m I’m naturally pretty sexually aggressive, but, like, I also learned to even play it up in the context of when I wanted to get laid all the time. Right? Like, when I was younger and I was trying to sleep around, like, it’s what women want. It’s it’s what you sell if you wanna sleep around. Right?

Simone Collins:
They’ve broken containment. They’re coming for me. I must run. Fly, you fools. Oh god.

Malcolm Collins:
You fool. You fools. No. This was hilarious, Simone. This was hilarious.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I really appreciate

Malcolm Collins:
you you sharing with me the world of Hermione.

Simone Collins:
Oh, you... Yeah. You gotta you gotta just, like, go to... If you wanna laugh, okay, because I laughed a lot today, go to TikTok. Enter the title of this book, Alchemized. You’re welcome. Oh, you’re welcome. Oh my god. You’re welcome.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my god. Yeah. It’s Yeah. It’s gonna be great. This... And if you are a woman, the not safe for work comic feature on our fab is pretty good. I bet you could build some scenarios, you know, out of of this.

Simone Collins:
I think...

Malcolm Collins:
I mean, women are much...

Simone Collins:
I don’t I don’t think... See, comics are for people who really need that visual element. And I I don’t know. Like, my take is that most of the female content that really picks up is is narrative, either audio or written, which is why, like, that whole new subscription service, like, pervy subscription service for

Malcolm Collins:
for women’s Gone Wild audio.... Famous men talking to women.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I wanted to say Quibi, but isn’t that the failed, like, AOL thing? It’s it’s something. Some... Cue something. When you could just go to our Gone Wild audio for free as a man or woman. I’m I’m I’m so annoyed by this. But, anyway... Yeah. I... That’s that’s my... But, yes, you’re right that on our fab there, especially for our audience,

Malcolm Collins:
which is

Simone Collins:
vast majority male, you’re you’re

Malcolm Collins:
much more conservative. Majority male as you think. I think it’s only, like, 80%.

Simone Collins:
We’re 90%. It’s 90%. It’s 90%? Okay. Percent. Hi, guys and girl, gentlemen and lady.

Malcolm Collins:
Funny that the people who, like, talk to us are mostly women.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Maybe that’s because you don’t communicate much, and I

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, yeah. And you respond and the women’s I

Simone Collins:
got response. They’re like, there’s only one person who’s gonna read this anyway. You look at the comments, though, on YouTube, and so that that is that is meaningful. Before they completely trash my room, I’m going to briefly excuse myself. I love you very much. Oh, what do you want for your birthday dinner? Octavian. Friend, is Toasty being naughty? What are you thinking?

Speaker 5:
He’s turning on the treadmill, and he’s putting pieces on it. The the... Like, the things that you put, like, the little, like, circles in. He’s he’s putting them on the trailer and the treadmill, and he’s on... And the treadmill’s on. And he’s making them, like, falling down down, like dead, kind of. It’s like a death game where, like, if you fall off the treadmill

Malcolm Collins:
A death game. Problem.

Simone Collins:
He’s gonna make a woman very happy one day.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, yeah. Totally. Yos had to really torture you. Yeah. Really working them good to get them good at that, you know, fighting. That’s why the moment the woman comes up, gut punched you’re saying? Do what I say, woman. He can’t hear me, by

Simone Collins:
the way. So he doesn’t

Speaker 5:
I can’t hear him from here.

Simone Collins:
I know. But we’re gonna keep it that way.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. We’re gonna keep it that way. Oh. Yep. But the the... What was I what was I gonna say with you? I’ll do lo mein. But last time you made me lo mein and you did it with ground beef, you used, like, twice as much or three times as much ground beef as you should have used with that many noodles.

Simone Collins:
I will use

Malcolm Collins:
You can you can span it out over a few days of lo mein instead of forcing it all into one lo mein.

Simone Collins:
I was going for the general rule of spaghetti bolognese where you always want. That is true for spaghetti bolognese,

Malcolm Collins:
but not lo mein.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Okay. Lo mein, it’s really about the noodles with a hint of meat. Okay. Gotcha. Alright.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, and so vegetables, if we have any. I don’t know if we have any.

Simone Collins:
Well, you don’t like like, a little bit of broccoli maybe? I can do

Malcolm Collins:
a bit That’d be great. That was a really good touch last time. It was? Okay. Alright. But you you put it in at, like, the end and on the side when instead

Simone Collins:
Do want me to stir fry it? Yeah. I... Because I wasn’t sure if you’d get mad at me for putting broccoli in your food. You know?

Malcolm Collins:
No. I like broccoli.

Simone Collins:
It’s a vegetable. Especially because

Malcolm Collins:
you steamed it first. It was nice and and, like, soft and not, like,

Simone Collins:
the big chunky hard bits. I know. I hate eating rock vegetables. I am a I am a I am an opener

Malcolm Collins:
that needs soft foods.

Simone Collins:
Well, I love you, and I will

Malcolm Collins:
I love you too.

Simone Collins:
I’m gonna

Malcolm Collins:
I’m gonna put this one live tomorrow. This is a great episode. You did you did a good job.

Simone Collins:
Oh, you gotta get... Just just to treat yourself tonight, just go to TikTok. Look up the book’s title.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh,

Simone Collins:
it’s so great. My women are so thirsty for this reality. They want both

Malcolm Collins:
of them to Hold on. I’ll I’ll do it right now. Alchemized. Did you just go

Speaker 5:
to TikTok?

Simone Collins:
TikTok. Why? To see really funny women in their in their creations.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, okay. First off... First, I gotta make

Simone Collins:
sure I’m spelling this right. Okay? A l c h e m I s e d.

Malcolm Collins:
And then we’re going to Excuse me? Check out this book. Can I play this?

Simone Collins:
Oh, it’s better than that.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, the... Oh, movie rights.

Speaker 5:
Come on.

Malcolm Collins:
What what is funny is that the woman who’s a slave is black and the Draco is white, so they they race swapped Hermione to be a black slave woman?

Simone Collins:
Oh, and someone’s fan art. Sure. But, like, there’s a lot of different types of self inserts in there.

Speaker 18:
So I decided to look it up, and the text never talks about her skin color, but it does say that she has very curly brown hair, usually worn in tight braids, large brown eyes, and a slight build. Specifically, she is a foreigner to the country that takes place in Palladia, and it’s from a Southern island culture.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. That that is

Simone Collins:
And just seeing women reacting to the book, it’s delightful watching. They’re like, oh, it’s great. You just gotta you gotta enjoy it for a little bit because entertaining. Oh, apparently, the original was called Manacled. Oh gosh.

Malcolm Collins:
Knowing that people are getting off on Alchemize arcs and meeting Selinu and Avenar, and I am not one of them crying. What? Oh, yeah. Me seeing everyone with physical copies of alchemize and it’s Squidward looking sad out a window and running around the corner. This.

Simone Collins:
Everyone wants in. You can get in. This is

Malcolm Collins:
is the type of... Okay. So I’ll read a passage from this. This is, like, the the type of thing that’s in alchemize. Okay? K. The hospital massacres have been the first major atrocity in the war. The guild assembly defended the attack saying that the hospitals were run by the eternal flame as covers for military bases, and the surrounding countries swallowed the lie because it was easier than involving themselves in Palladius conflict. what? Like,

Speaker 19:
By the way, this is obviously supposed to be, like, a allegory for what’s happening or a... I I didn’t know the right literary term for what’s happening with Hamas building headquarters under hospitals. But, like, it doesn’t deny... Or or no sane person I know denies that Hamas has built headquarters under hospitals. this this is acting like they’re just bombing hospitals for funsies. Like, basically, this is arguing that Jews just murder people in hospitals or Israel for funsies. That there that there has been no headquarters underneath these hospitals, which no sane reporting on this subject I am aware of would argue.

Malcolm Collins:
that’s, one, just, like, naked without engaging with, like, the nuance of this. To anyone who’d ever learned of it, she would only be one thing. Women were always defined as the lowliest thing they could be called. okay?

Simone Collins:
Yeah. No. This is this is a mess. I... You know, you’ve you’ve convinced me through our additional deep diving into this. I I actually am not gonna spend an audible credit on this. I’m gonna keep listening to the the the origins of the Old Testament. Gonna stick to the bible. No.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, are you? Are you? Not with Alchemized? I... Yeah. We were like, it’s it’s gonna be whore.

Simone Collins:
Whore person. I’m not a gore person. Well, I’ll find

Malcolm Collins:
some other. In all the fan art, she’s black. I I think she might be black in the new one, which, yeah, adds a whole other element.

Simone Collins:
But, yeah, that makes... That adds some inconvenient undertones to the whole Not not

Malcolm Collins:
super black. Like like, his his Not me?

Simone Collins:
Oh, so maybe that’s why I didn’t notice, because I just figured... Yeah. Wait. What is she in the in the thing I played? Hold on.

Malcolm Collins:
La la la.

Speaker 5:
Mom, where’s my $6?

Simone Collins:
You’ll get it if you leave this room right now.

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. What what is she miss? I

Simone Collins:
don’t know. She just looks ambiguous.

Malcolm Collins:
I think that’s the point. You need an ambiguous looking self insert.

Simone Collins:
You think she’s black in this?

Malcolm Collins:
I guess not. Yeah. She looks angry. People make

Simone Collins:
her look self insert y, however they are.

Malcolm Collins:
Which are... I mean, Greeks are, you know, obviously Greek.

Simone Collins:
They make her look Greek. Oh, this is another... Oh my without money. This is someone this is someone reacting when they learned that there’s gonna be a movie of this.

Speaker 6:
I have warned you.

Malcolm Collins:
If something happens to you,

Speaker 6:
I will personally raise the entire order. If you die, I will

Malcolm Collins:
kill every last one of them.

Simone Collins:
She’s so excited.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins:
I love people so much. I love a fan community. A fan communities are just the best thing ever. I I loved Whovians. I love my little... Like, remember when we went to PonyCon, or what do they call it?

Malcolm Collins:
Yes. PonyCon? Just... They just call it PonyCon. Working on, on helping our community. Right? Like, I think that that’s one of the coolest things about the new right these days is is community.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. No. Totally. So if I... Even if there... There’s a a group of disaffected women who are bonding around an incredibly violent Bondage. Book. Yeah. Bondage book about sexual slavery. Look. Power to them. Okay? It’s bringing it’s bringing hearts and minds together, and we should end the end celebrating that.

Malcolm Collins:
It is preparing women for the government the pronatalists will put in place.

Simone Collins:
That they wish, honestly. I feel like every time they’re like, oh, you’re trying to breathe. They’re, like, so hopeful. There’s this little glint in their eyes. Please. Will you? Like, could

Malcolm Collins:
someone It’s it’s just Briar Rabbit. Oh, please, mister Fox. Don’t throw me into that bra patch. Don’t throw me into that bra patch, mister Fox. Oh. Anything but the bra patch.

Simone Collins:
Gosh.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, there’s so many thorns in there.

Simone Collins:
Why do you sound like Cartman when you say that? Anyway

Malcolm Collins:
You’re just supposed to put on a slave accent when you’re doing it because it’s a slave story.

Simone Collins:
Is that Cartman’s accent? No. It’s a slave accent. It’s way more expensive to try.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh. Oh, oh, please. Oh, please, bro. Faz. That doesn’t... You can’t I can’t do I can’t do

Simone Collins:
the good Maybe you can have AI w w w to sound More like an

Malcolm Collins:
obsequious slave and try... Trying to... Well, that’s what he that’s what he represents in the story.

Simone Collins:
I know. We’re not allowed we’re not allowed to represent such You’re not even allowed

Malcolm Collins:
to call people tar babies anymore, which comes from an African myth as we’ve pointed out. Right? Like, they’re... It’s literally an erasure of African culture. But, see our episode on Disney erasing the Splash Mountain for a deeper dive on this because that is just ghoulish.

Simone Collins:
Hashtag sad.

Malcolm Collins:
Removing an actual African myth that inspired a ride and replacing it with a fake European one was a black self insert.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Y’all like, what?

Malcolm Collins:
Why would you

Simone Collins:
The depravity. Yeah. It’s, pretty messed up. Depravity. Depravity. But Is it is it pronounced depravity? Oh. You would be okay

Malcolm Collins:
with me, like,

Simone Collins:
on the crowd taking a sex slave.

Malcolm Collins:
Because I would like at least one sex slave Well,

Simone Collins:
if you can afford a sex slave. I’m not feeding the sex slave. Okay. We got the dog. Who feeds the dog?

Malcolm Collins:
I feed the dog. We got the chicken. Who feeds the chicken?

Simone Collins:
I feed the... I am not feeding and cleaning up after. We... She would have

Malcolm Collins:
to presumably work or starve. That could be part of the the the the thing.

Simone Collins:
No. No. This is America. Look. Everyone ends up... You know, you know, they they get... They need their things, and you gotta eat the the things and the... Look. All the all the dogs in America, which are the... I think are the closest to, like, institutionalized sex slaves, if we have any. Right? Like, also literally in some cases. True. And you gotta spend... You gotta... You have to get your pet insurance. You have to get all the other things. You know? And I blame women

Malcolm Collins:
for that. About slave insurance. The reason she doesn’t want me to have a sex slave, she immediately is like

Simone Collins:
Lucas, you don’t think through everything that goes in to all this all the work, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. But what scourge would I bring on the future of our species if you actually bred one of these women and you continued their mindset into the future? We are so blessed that we are only bringing the based women into tomorrow, right, to create little based baby girls and boys.

Simone Collins:
Well, the sad thing too, though... Because if if if if I understand the plot of this story correctly, as you told me, that, like, this Hermione ish character and the Malfoy ish character end up raising a kid together. I also think that, like, a lot of these women are just women who grew up in, I guess, a pretty toxic culture. But, like, in the end, we just like to have a kid with a guy and raise a kid with a guy. He doesn’t have to be nice.

Malcolm Collins:
Weird thing. That only happens in a government mandated reproduction.

Simone Collins:
Because... Well, look. Dating is tough right now.

Malcolm Collins:
I also wanna point out that even with the government mandated reproductive idea here, it appears they only had one child. Like, they can’t even imagine as a sex

Simone Collins:
Asian author. Okay. She’s dreaming big. She’s dreaming big. I I don’t know what to tell you, man. It’s it’s it’s sad. It’s dire.

Malcolm Collins:
What... This is what I will say about the story. At least it’s realistic. Hermione would so get off on this. Like, if there is

Simone Collins:
a

Malcolm Collins:
time

Simone Collins:
The character doesn’t get off on this in the stories as far as I’m aware. She’d... You know? I I know you tell from the stupid AI spoilers video is that, like, she has her additional... Like, her her original love interest got erased from her head, but along with, like, war secrets. And then she ends up living with her captor. But she actually is in love with

Malcolm Collins:
falls in love with the guy.

Simone Collins:
Her captor? Or Yeah. Her captor. Her academic rival who gets erased from her head but trapped inside, and her captor tries to find all the war secrets along with him. That one. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
The the dual timeline reveals that they already had a relationship during the war. This is in her memories that have been erased. In the past, Kain with the devil agent working against Moreau and the resistance assigned Helena as his handler. Over time, they became lovers. That earlier relationship was secret, dangerous, and mutual. Oh. When her memories returned, she remembers that she loved him before she was his prisoner. But she seemed to love him as a rape prisoner as well.

Simone Collins:
Guy four. Ew. Okay. That that that... Weirdly, that also kind of happens in yesteryear, the the trad wife takedown book, which is also having a movie made of it, produced and starred... Starring Anne Hathaway... Produced by Anne starring Anne Hathaway. So... Because... Yeah. So, like, oh my gosh. No. That’s, like, exactly what happens in yesteryear. Because in yesteryear, the the hateable trad wife, influencer has, like, a mental break, forgets, like, a period of time and wakes up in in what she thinks is a prisoner scenario with a... Like, not her husband and not her kids. And then the husband at one point Yeah. But she

Malcolm Collins:
doesn’t love her husband in this scenario.

Simone Collins:
Right? Well, no. In the in the before times when she was an influencer, she didn’t love her husband really. But then when he r a p e s her in the after times, she has her first ever orgasm from sex. So, also, very inconvenient women’s novels.

Malcolm Collins:
You didn’t mention that when It’s... There there

Simone Collins:
are so many egregious things in

Malcolm Collins:
the he... Why does he do that to her when he’s role playing as in the past?

Simone Collins:
I don’t know. I think he’s trying he’s trying to... He he gets very into, like, man influencer spaces, like, red pill spaces and thinks he needs to, like, maintain frame or something. And

Malcolm Collins:
But, I mean, he’s right.

Simone Collins:
Well, apparently for her because it was a... She loved... I mean, her body loved it. Who... Does... Did her mind love it? I don’t know. That is that is the tension. Is it romance? Is it not romance? I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins:
Anyway, love you. This was fantastic. You’re very good at being spicy. Aw. And I’ll be down for dinner soon, and I will

Simone Collins:
I’m gonna I’m gonna handle the kids because

Malcolm Collins:
they be Yeah. Something is happening. Breaking. I’m 40. I have to be clean

Simone Collins:
and have a real room. Oh my god. Is this your midlife crisis?

Malcolm Collins:
No. My midlife crisis is being clean. Oh, no. You’ve completely lost me.

Simone Collins:
I... Who are you? Truly.

Malcolm Collins:
For people who don’t know, I got the the thing I was talking about, that chest on the other stream. Look at look at this. Look at this.

Simone Collins:
And I got believe it. Visible floor. It’s so weird.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s so weird. Light instead of just talking

Simone Collins:
about naked light bulb over there? Instead of light.

Malcolm Collins:
And then Light on. I’ve got my big setup here, and I’m getting one more small table over there. And then I’m gonna get some longer cords so I can get all these cords off the floor. I’ve I’ve got... I’m doing a a Malcolm version of the Asthma Gold transformation except, like, actually.

Simone Collins:
Has he... I haven’t caught up on his personal life. Is he actually, like, cleaning his house more?

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. He started to... I mean, it’s still not, you know, like, a normal human’s house. But

Simone Collins:
Still... Wow. I mean, I just figured he’d get, like, the family house, and then he would have his house. But

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, no. No. Not for the girlfriend. This happened a while ago.

Simone Collins:
Oh, okay. Okay. Fair enough.

Malcolm Collins:
So, you know, don’t don’t get too excited. Sheesh, Simone. It’s as big old we’re talking about here.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Oh, one thing we could do if you want to is mount the very, very large American flag in your room, if you think that

Malcolm Collins:
would be be really nice.

Simone Collins:
That big blank wall now. But we could also put that in the kid’s room. I know that’s where they typically watch

Malcolm Collins:
Well, no. I I like that in my room.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. It’s a really it’s a really cool flag.

Malcolm Collins:
Do you think 20 feet... No. I might need 25 feet.

Simone Collins:
For what? Oh, for a cord.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Because it has to hug the wall of my room all the way around to where the laptop is.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Then 25? Can we see? Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s what it looks like to me. And then I get this. I I just add to tomorrow’s delivery, I guess.

Simone Collins:
You’re on a spree. But it’s your birthday. You should treat yourself.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. I mean, I have been these past couple days. I’ve been on a a... Getting my shit because on that one stream, I was just looking around. I was like, you know, because really what did for me was that the dead hornets were still all on the windowsill from, like,

Simone Collins:
three months ago. I cleaned them up, but I can’t... I couldn’t get through the trash heap.

Malcolm Collins:
Sure. Sure.

Simone Collins:
Look. You know, every time I go in there, I maim myself. I I I twist an ankle or something. It’s very... Your room... Your previous room and hapless, clumsy people did not go well together at all.

Malcolm Collins:
And I had this moment. My wife is a very clumsy person.

Simone Collins:
I’m an extremely clumsy person, as are our children. They will trip on stuff that’s not there just like me.

Malcolm Collins:
They’ll be extremely athletic and nimble when they’re doing crazy dangerous stuff. But when they’re doing, like, regular walking

Simone Collins:
They can scale a wall, weirdly, but they can’t walk across the floor.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. No no problem scaling a wall, jumping from thing to thing, easily getting themselves almost killed. But, you know, walking up people is one step fall over.

Simone Collins:
Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
I was like, yeah, you’re you’re very good at many things. I know. Walking is not one of them. Coordination has never been of your strong suits. It’s it’s because you... You know? But then again, I’ve never... You can fix it. I’ve never been a clean person, and now look at me. I have the cleanest room in the house. I don’t know

Simone Collins:
if I can fix my clumsiness. You are capable of moving mountains. I don’t have as much faith in me, but you’ll be my inspiration.

Malcolm Collins:
I have some faith in

Simone Collins:
you. I

Malcolm Collins:
just had an idea of how I can hide even more cords.

Simone Collins:
Oh, you ready for this one? I... This one makes me chuckle, so I think you might enjoy it too.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. Okay. Okay. Oh,

Simone Collins:
look at this. Look

Malcolm Collins:
at this. So little. So little mess. The entire room is beautiful. It is.

Simone Collins:
Apparently, when you pulled up the chest that you now have finished com... Completing on on the on the channel, and I made a little shopping with Malcolm jingle, YouTube did a little skip ahead thing to skip the ad, which is really funny to me. They recognized it as an ad even though it wasn’t sponsored content. We did not put any... We don’t do that. It’s... But but Jingle? Remember at one point when you were purchasing the chest that is now assembled, you pulled it up on Amazon, and it made a little song about how you were shopping. And YouTube thought that

Malcolm Collins:
was an ad. That’s hilarious. Yeah. I just think everyone

Simone Collins:
should everyone should announce ads the same way that Internet historian does. Ad.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, here’s here’s the way I I announce ads. The only reason I have felt comfortable putting together my life and getting my life together is because of the money we’re making through Ad. Our Reality Fabricator now, r f a b dot a I. just go Reality Fabricator. You guys, thank you so much for using this product for... Whether you’re doing real choose your own adventure adventures or AI sexy chatbots or making images or making videos or, I recently made a song. I don’t think I’m gonna put it on the song channel, with with it to put in my Y Combinator application instead of a a founder video.

Speaker 20:
We got annoyed with soulless AI tools and had to quit. We built a world of AI. Now we’re handing you the kit.

Speaker 21:
You open up a story and the story opens you. You can do whatever you want and it comes true. An artificial stud keeps the memory of everything you said. With dating these days, this is all you will get in your bed.

Speaker 22:
Then turn that tale to comics, every panel drawn in time. Then turn the comic to a film, the voices and the rhyme. Write a song about your hero, make the music video too. From a single spark of an idea to a premiere made by you. One key, one call, one site for it all. Adventures and comics from a cling on the wall. Songs and films and stories. Every dream you can describe reality fabricator. Bring your imagination alive. Now hand that key to any any agent coding. Through the night, it can paint and film and sing and call and search and ride. Claude will call you while you are outside on a walk. You don’t need to be stationary to code, just able to talk.

Malcolm Collins:
and it was so easy. I did it in, like, an hour, and it cost me, like, $8. Like, it’s incredible what... Like, I I love what I’m able to do with it, but I also love that, you know, we have this community of makers with it. And, especially if you’ve been out there on the side and you’ve looked at something like a SkyBrowse video and you’ve ever said to yourself, like, what if I could do something? Like, I wish I could do something like that. If you use Clog code or Grok code or whatever, that means you’re you’re, you know, you’re using the bot on your desktop or you’re using a CMD line thing. Take the r f a b dot a I backslash API. It didn’t work on Grok before, now it does because Grok was being weird about it. And put it in and just talk it through, like, what you wanna do, and it really can handle most of it for you. Or or, of course, you could use a Reality Fabricator agent as well. It’s just Reality Fabricator agents are too expensive to use. It’s a problem. They’re they’re more powerful than other agents, but because of all the the, ways that, like, Claude and Grock are able to give themselves, discounts, what what you could do is put your Claude or Grock account into Reality Fabricator, and we let you use the site for free, if you put your API keys in there. But that’s... If you’re getting started, that’s gonna be too advanced for you. but the point being is that, you know, I I... I’m telling you, like, actually, use another person’s product because it’s gonna be cheaper because I want people to get a a a good financial experience on our site, and that’s really important to me.

Simone Collins:
Malcolm’s not... And when I hear... When I used to hear the word API was like... Or the word... The acronym API, I was like, nope. Not doing it. Not... But, literally, he’s talking about you go to rfab.ai/api. You copy it. You paste it into your... Whatever, like, LLM you have a subscription to, and then you can... You have a lot more power.

Malcolm Collins:
It basically lets you do everything a lot more flexibly. Like... So, like, if you’re making comics, for example, which are are... Is a feature that a lot of people are liking these days, and you do it with the API, it’s just gonna be way easier because you’re just telling your AI, I want this concept for a comic. Use the Artfab API, and it will do it for you. Right? And then you don’t need to think through it all. It’s it’s the same as, anything that you’re you’re... The... I personally, when I use our fab, 98% of the time, I’m... My primary interface with our FAB is the API, and not the website itself. This this is me, the person who made it. Yeah. Just because the API is so much better. Like, I’ll give you an example of what I mean by this. Suppose you wanna make an image of your family, and you wanna insert images of each of your five kids and wife and yourself and have it reference all of those, but also have it get the style right. You can do all that through our creator studio, or you can just dump a file of family photos into an API with with a coding agent and say, handle it for me.

Speaker 24:
Note for all the people who are like, I wish I had somewhere to listen to just your songs. You know we have Base Camp Music, a separate channel, which is just songs.

Speaker 23:
Potter, sit down and put down your quill. I took this from a muggle, and I’m feeling quite ill. It’s a glowing black mirror they carry all day, and it shows them whatever they ask it to display. And I found an archive fanfiction.net. I’ve read Riddle’s diary and this scared me worse yet. 10,000 new stories a day, pot anew. Let me just tell you what’s in them. It’s ew. Our werewolves are monsters. The full moon’s a date. We lock ours in cellars. They’d use them to mate. Vampires, they sparkle. Dementors, they kiss. It sucks out your soul, and they’re chewing for this. The merpeople, gray with their spears and their teeth. And the muggles all ask, what do they have underneath? And centaurs would trample you calling one steed. There are muggles who think that’s just what they need. I mean, have you ever seen a centaur’s logistics? Your insides would look like they were hit with ballistics. I thought we’d go to war. And we’d win it with luck. But if we face them, they just want to fuck. Click the statute of secrecy, and then they want to be subjected and put in a pen. Oh, god. The statue that stands in the hall. Magic is might, the most dreadful the not there, peer. So I searched it, they’d queue round the world. Block. There’s a forum of muggles who’d pay to be rock. They don’t call it torture, they call it a scene. They’d ask for a safe word, and then for a queen, Yaxley’s crudest idea set in black stone. And the top comment asks, is there one for my hoe? And Potter just smirked, which I did not enjoy. He said, have you searched your own name? Oh, that boy? Fine. I’m a Malfoyed. They’ll write that I’m feared. I typed it. It loaded. How are these muggles reared? There was art. There were stories galore. 200,000, and I won’t say what for. Why is my name glued to yours with a little slash mark? Why is... What are these tags? Oh, gosh. That got dark. Wait. How is that even possible? Is he charmed? That is not what it’s for. I am alarmed. Give it here, Potter. No, Potter. It’s mine. Don’t search. Everything’s fine. There’s no drarry. Ignore the lot or I’ll obliviate you right on the spot. I thought we’d go to war and we win it with luck, but you face them. They just want to fuck. They don’t fear they will be hexed. The only thing they fear is they won’t get sex. It’s not like I wanted to read it. It was for science. Stop smiling. I won’t stand this defiance. Baka.

The video covers the history of All Saints Day, the role of Scottish and Irish folk customs, the commercialization through postcards and party goods in the early 1900s, and why modern associations with ghosts and the occult appeared centuries later. It also addresses common claims about Samhain and explains how the date and practices remained distinct from any earlier pagan observances.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins:
Hello,

Malcolm Collins:
Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be busting the myth that the modern practice of Halloween has any meaningful pagan roots at all.

Simone Collins:
But I don’t know the the the pumpkins and the gourds and the lights and the the... You gotta scare away that?

Malcolm Collins:
Nothing traces back to anything pagan, and we will go through each thing with receipts. And it is going to shock, I think, a lot of people who have bought into this myth because it is a persistent myth, and it feels cool. Like, oh, I bet the pagans did something around that time,

Speaker 4:
My life has been a lie. God is dead. The government’s lame. Thanksgiving is about killing Indians. Jesus wasn’t born on Christmas. They moved the date. It was a pagan holiday.

Simone Collins:
and they’re in like, don’t Christian families say, well, we don’t celebrate Halloween because that’s a demonic holiday, etcetera.

Malcolm Collins:
They also say that about Christmas, and they say that about a a lot of things. So, it’s actually really fascinating as you get into it, where the various Halloween traditions come from. so for example, can you guess, the practice of trick or treating Is actually an evolution of another practice that was just something you did before any holiday, and there is another

Simone Collins:
evolution of

Malcolm Collins:
What? Okay. And what what was it? Describe it.

Simone Collins:
You, you get kinda drunk and you go from house to house and you ask for more, like, food and drink.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. So you’re familiar with it. Yeah. So what would... Did there... The, the the practice that today we know is trick or treating is actually the exact same practice that we today know as caroling just evolved in two different directions, both practiced before two important Christian holidays.

Simone Collins:
Oh. Just, like, raid people’s house. It it just seems it seems like a very disturbing thing to have happened. Like, oh gosh.

Malcolm Collins:
They’re gonna So so what Simone’s... Oh, well, specifically, the iteration that you’re familiar with, the more aggressive one, is not a general British tradition. It came from the the... You can guess who, the backwards people, the lower Scottish reavers. In in in the in the normal version of this tradition, what you would do is before All Hallows’ Eve or All Saints Day, you would go door to door, and you would say, if you give me a treat, I will pray for your dead people. Oh. Right. I’ll I’ll pray for dead people in your family. A very Christian tradition, by the way. This is like a a thoroughly Christian tradition. But then the the backwards people who ended up becoming one of the dominant cultural groups in The United States that now form the the core of what we call Americana, they had a separate tradition where they would go and basically come to your house and be like, give us something or we’ll f up your property. And you see this captured in the, even even some traditional carols. Like, give us some figgy pudding. We won’t go until we get some.

Simone Collins:
Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
so bring it right here. It’s it’s quite a forceful song if you if you listen to the lyrics.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s basically, yeah, give us, food and drink or you’re gonna regret it.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Give us food and drink or you’re gonna regret it, which is exactly what the initial version of what we today think of as trick or treating was. and the other the other fun part of it is its association with ghosts and goblins and everything like that. That was created from the nineteen hundreds to, like, nineteen twenties primarily by, holiday card companies. And so you’d say, well, how did... Wait. Why were holiday card companies... Why did they associate those things with the holiday in the first place? Yeah. and there were two reasons. reason number one is... So if we look at the early Christian iteration of this holiday, you can see because it doesn’t begin to look more and more like a ghost and ghouls and go out and dress up day until very, very, very modern iterations of it. and and those iterations bear some resemblance to stuff that was practiced around this period, hundreds of years before the first Halloween was. The problem is is that the first Halloween didn’t include all of those elements that looked vaguely pagan. And because of that, you you can’t draw a connection between the pagan tradition and the first Halloween. But you could say, okay. Well, so how did it how did it get associated with the dead to begin with? Right. So it was originally a holiday for all saints. This is where it got the name All Saints Day.

Simone Collins:
Wait. Hold on, though. No. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be the Catholic church and say, okay. Let’s just celebrate all the saints on one... Like, present’s day, and then be like, but then we also need a holiday for all the best saints.

Malcolm Collins:
Well... So it changed over time. But what is also have a president’s day. Come on. It was like the president’s day of saints because many saints didn’t have individual holidays.

Simone Collins:
Oh, so it was for all the other... It’s all other saints.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, including those saints. But then it evolved, and it became for all martyrs.

Simone Collins:
And then Oh, is that where some of the spookiness comes in?

Malcolm Collins:
For... No. It was for everyone who had martyred themselves on behalf of the church. Then much, much, much later, it became the holiday for all Christian dead people. Okay. Because they they basically... It was just sort of a cultural phenomenon that you can see. You sort of loosen it. Well, can we pray for this person to this day? Sure. Yeah. Why not?

Simone Collins:
Have a blast.

Malcolm Collins:
Looser and looser and looser and became a holiday for all dead people. and that’s where it got the death connection. But that death connection comes directly downstream of saints and then martyrs, which are very, very, very Christian ideas. Then you have the, well, then what about... What... Where did it get this occult connection? Where did it get this magic mysticism connection? This is actually one of its oldest traditions, still only dating to around the eighteen hundreds.

Simone Collins:
What?

Malcolm Collins:
But as a tradition, so long after anyone remembered anything pagan, it was actually, again, from the reavers or the Scottish people that this tradition was entered. And it was based around a number of ceremonies, I guess you could say, that people did as part of courtship rituals.

Simone Collins:
Wait. Wait. It’s not a courtship holiday. This is not a courtship holiday.

Malcolm Collins:
It actually had nothing to do with the holiday at all. The only reason the two became associated is because Halloween, given its time of year, it already was a holiday where people were doing, like, pranks and stuff like this, and you’d you’d have a a party. so it was a perfect time for young, rural, backwood Scottish people to do their courtship rituals. And that’s how the two became connected. They they weren’t, like, intrinsically linked at all. It was just a very convenient day to do this type of thing. Think of it like this. Like, a a hoe dance or something like this, which is like a traditional, American style... Well, originally from an an adaption of, like, a Kaylee, so, again, dance. You didn’t do those at any time during the year. There So you would have a a hoe dance. Right? Yeah. You would likely have a Hoe down. Of a with hoe specific holidays where hoe downs happened. Oh. Things... Like, like, around a harvest festival would be a very

Simone Collins:
important time to

Malcolm Collins:
have lockdown.

Simone Collins:
Harvest festival.

Malcolm Collins:
Halloween is already... It is essentially a variation of a harvest festival.

Simone Collins:
I guess you’re right.

Malcolm Collins:
You would go out and do your harvest festival dances, and the teams get up to it. Oh, golly. They were basically... And you’re like, well, they’re occult. Right? Like, they’re occult rituals. And it’s like, kind of. They’re sort of occult or they would have been that part of time if you’re wondering what a courtship ritual like this would look like, have you ever played that game where you have a a thing attached to your fingers and you open it in different ways? There’s a whole

Simone Collins:
Oh, cootie catcher.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Cootie catcher. And it’s like, what’s your future husband gonna look like? You know?

Speaker 6:
The girls at our school have been hiding something from us. What if I were to tell you that the girls have a device which allows them to see into the future?

Speaker 5:
Okay, baby. What do you want to know? I wanna know if I’m gonna live in a big mansion in the future. Okay. Let’s find out. Ready? Pick a number. 4. 1234. Okay. Pick a color. Blue, b l u e. I pick another color. Red. K. Okay. Will baby live in a big mansion in the future? Definitely, yes.

Simone Collins:
And you

Malcolm Collins:
and you do the thing. These ceremonies were essentially, an ancient Scottish version of that. and so if we go over a few of these, you have the kale slash cabbage stocks. Blindfolded, you pulled the first stock you touched in the dark. Its side shape and straightness, taste of the core, and amount of dirt on the roots revealed that the future spouse’s looks, temperament, and wealth. The stock was sometimes hung over the door. The first person to walk under it supposedly shared the name of your partner. Couples sometimes went out together. Burns describes the flirtation and joking around it. So this is talking about one of the guys who who researched this. Apples. This is where apple bobbing on Halloween came from, from one of these traditions. So apples were labeled with names. The one you successfully bit bobbing in the water or snapping from a string indicated your match, or you peeled one in a continuous strip and threw the peel over your shoulder to form the initial, the initial of a future spouse. a candlelit mirror plus eating apple slices was said to show the future partner’s face over your shoulder. These put people in close physical proximity. Then it was nuts. You had two nuts named for a couple or two people. They were thrown into a fire. If they burned quietly side by side, the match was good. If they jumped apart or one exploded, it was bad. Easy to stage or to interrupt at a party. And then there are variants of of of mirrors related stuff. So this is... The earliest written description we have from this is eighteenth century Scotland, a 1769 travel accountant by Thomas Pennant, mentioned that young people drawing cabbages blindfolded on All Hallows Eve to determine the figure and size of their future husbands. Robert Fern’s 1785 poem, Halloween, which, by the way, was just a Scottish word for All’s Hallows Eve. It’s a it’s a shortening of that. No connection to anything occulted. The Irish word does have a connection to something occultic, which we’ll go into, but it Okay. It’s not a direct connection. With his own... The most famous, detailed early source, it describes kale pulling, nut burning, apple games, and other rights as ordinary rural Scottish party activities. From there, the games were frequently brought into. So, basically, they weren’t occultic in the way you think of, like, Wiccan occultism. They were occultic in the way you think of tootie catchers as occultic. Okay?

Simone Collins:
That’s so funny.

Malcolm Collins:
A holiday associated with... And and these practices, we don’t have anything before this. By by the 1769, there was no good recording or cultural memory of what the rural pagan practices of this region would have been. for people who are unaware, those practices die out very, very, very quickly.

Simone Collins:
Well, they must be so localized and ephemeral too. Like, the stuff that you might see at one school and then another school, for example, like, the the variation in cootie catcher behavior.

Malcolm Collins:
Yes. So a good example of this is I could say, do you know what your, grandfather... Or let’s not... Let’s just say great grandfather. Do you know the types of party games that your great grandfather played

Simone Collins:
Oh, goodness.

Malcolm Collins:
Potential spouses? You would say to yourself, I... Maybe... Like, if you’re pulling on anything, you’re going to be pulling on popular culture. You’re gonna be pulling on some movie you saw or some book you read. Now consider that if you’re talking about a pagan ritual here, you’re talking about something that would have not been their great grandfather, but would have been their great great great great great great great great great grandfather in this region. And any reference that they would have had to it had been largely wiped out by the church.

Speaker 7:
Specifically, the time difference between the last summer high and the first All Saints Day was between a thousand and two hundred years to a thousand and four hundred years. This is, like, what we have documented on record. The idea that you remembered a holiday that your ancestors practiced over a thousand years before, and note this was a minor holiday, not the major Druid holiday, and somehow recreated it is completely absurd.

Malcolm Collins:
So when they were trying to, think of it in pop culture, often... And this is why when you look at modern paganism, it pulls so much from church depictions of the evil witch because that’s the only cultural reference they had. They just were unaware of anything other than that, which is which is where that came from. So what’s was actually very interesting to me is how much of modern Halloween is a backwoods American tradition. not really drawing, like, most of the unique traditions we associate, including the jack o lantern, which we’ll get to in a second. Actually, I’ll just go into the gist of the jack o lantern now. So the Jack o’-lantern was a turnip that you would carve a face into. We know of it from the nineteen hundreds or the... Fairly modern. Right? Certainly, nothing to go back to anything ancient than that. And it was done as part of the guising process that we were talking about here, the process where you would go house to house and ask for things or

Simone Collins:
Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
And the goal was you you would carve a face on it to attempt to startle them because, again, they were very playful people. Said, yeah. That was great. but the real reason that they were used and placed around was simply because this was a night when a lot of people were going around house to house, and you needed lights out. And, this was cheaper than any other way you could carry a light. So they used a carved out turnip because that was easier than a real lamp Because you all of a sudden needed a bunch of lamps for just one night a year.

Simone Collins:
That’s Fair enough.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s where it came from. Again, no ancient connection. It was just a practicality thing. So the strongest... I I will give you one or, we’ll go with two potential pagan leaks to Halloween. Okay?

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
And then we’re gonna talk about some forgotten Halloween practices. We’ll talk about why pagans have to keep colonizing Christian holidays. In fact, I would

Simone Collins:
say I I... People... I I I am not sure. People might be very angry about this episode just like they were about the Christmas one.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Right. Pointed out that

Simone Collins:
really don’t like... I don’t... What is it what is it with Christians being super not okay with their holidays actually being Christian? Christian. I don’t understand.

Malcolm Collins:
We point out that Christmas actually has no discernible pagan roots. See our episode on that if you wanna disagree with us on that. You you... There’s this big myth that it came from Saturnalia, and it didn’t. But, again, see our episode on that. I’m not gonna litigate that here. The the the real reason that pagans have had to colonize Christian holidays is because modern paganism is invented. It it it just real European paganism, died out so long ago, in the regions that want to reimagine it that, and and see our episode on Wiccanism is mostly a modern fabrication, which, like, everybody admits now. Like, everybody involved in it admits, like, yeah, this was a fabrication. That mostly pulls from, like, Kabbalism and then stuff that was made up on drug trips. That that... Because there just isn’t anything to go on. Like, we we just... We have very little understanding of what, like, for example, the ancient Irish even believed in terms of their religious, for example, which is where we say this came from even even from a historic scholarly standpoint. But to continue here, the two strong ones you can have are Sammain. So, Sammain was a holiday that was a pagan holiday. Medieval Irish records recorded as a time of assemblies, markets, courts, and tribute, and a night when the other world or the the... This... The world of the or the was easier for them to come over to our world and and and potentially interact with us. Now there are some very important notes about this. And and so this was happening in November. It it it was it was so associated with that it became the Irish word for November, which is where the confusion ends up becoming... Coming in. In the same way that, like, Wednesday comes from the the word woden Right? Like, woden, but nobody associates Wednesday with woden anymore. Right? You know? Sam... Samane took over for November in in Irish. Now I I need to note here what’s very important about this loosening of the barrier that happened during this holiday. it was tied specifically to Irish folk mythology barriers.

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
Not human dead people. The the world of the Seelie is in mythology, like a a... Think of it as, like, a trickster evil fairy world. And the barrier between that and our world, not the world of the dead, was becoming looser during this holiday. Where the connection comes in is that the Irish call their version of Halloween the night of. Ochi Samanae. And so a lot of people point to this, and they say, this proves that it has a connection to the pagan festival. The problem was is that when it was first practiced, one, it looked nothing like that pagan festival. It was an all saints eve night. And two, they were just naming it because of the month. In the same way that, like, it would be like saying that, Wednesday in the Adams family is named Wednesday, to hearken to pagan celebrations. Because Wednesday originally meant woe... Woden’s day. And Who is Woden? Looks kinda spooky. And, therefore, Wednesday Adam must be named after Woden. The real reason, if you don’t know, because of a poem. Wednesday is the child of woe.

Simone Collins:
That I didn’t know that Woden was the chief and foremost god of the pagan Anglo Saxons in Germanic mythology.

Malcolm Collins:
Right.

Simone Collins:
Wow. But

Malcolm Collins:
but you see, if somebody told you that Wednesday was named Wednesday because of Wojdin, you would look at them like they were an idiot.

Simone Collins:
Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. You’re like, no. It... I’m like, it’s... We have a clear chain of events. Yes. Wednesday looks spooky and pagony. Yes. Wednesday is named Wednesday, and that is where that word came from.

Simone Collins:
Wednesday is styled much more like a, like, Catholic schoolgirl inspired look than

Malcolm Collins:
Right. But all of all of Halloween is styled more like a traditional Christian celebration. Hair. That... That’s the point I’m making. And in the same way the Addams Family is is an inversion of a of a Christian whatever. But, anyway, we have we have an episode on that that never went live. We could do a redo of that one. Because I think it’s it’s a good one. But... Yeah. So the the point being is when we have the best documented medieval English and Catholic Halloween practices, what did Halloween actually look like when it was still an all saints day? Okay? So this... If it came from the pagan tradition, it would look most like the pagan tradition when it started, not in its modern form, which is instead what’s often litigated here. so the best documented medieval Halloween practices are English and Catholic. They had church bells rung all night on October 31 for souls in purgatory. Oh. Soul cakes, prayers for the dead, those largely faded after the reformation. The earliest detailed folk descriptions of games and customs were associated with a knight from Lowland Scott speaking, again, Scotland. Lowland Scotland is from where the reavers were that ended up making up backwards American culture. In the seventeen eighties, poems from John Mayer and Robert Burns. American Halloween is basically the nineteenth century Irish and Scottish folk version brought over by immigrants. And not very Irish, actually, as far as I can find. I I I couldn’t find anything that specifically came from Ireland except... And this is the one maybe thing that you could argue as pig about Halloween.

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
I’ll give you guys an out. The date. And the only way you can argue the date is pagan is because we don’t know where the date came

Simone Collins:
from. Oh.

Malcolm Collins:
What we do know is that there was already an All Saints Festival on the April 20, and they started doing a separate different all saints festival, in the places where Halloween started on the November 1.

Simone Collins:
But

Malcolm Collins:
that’s that’s just basically being like, maybe because we don’t know where the date came from, it could plausibly be pagan because there was some sort of a festival practiced around this time in pagan traditions in these areas. The problem is is, one, it hadn’t been practiced for many generations at that point. And the second is that the the the the the early Christian celebration just like... If I’m comparing these two things. Right? Like, I have a festival around, like, when the fairies come to our world, and it’s a day for, like, community gathering and a a party of some sort and taxes. So I have that. And then I have the all saints day where we ring the church bells and we pray for dead saints. The two just don’t seem connected enough for one to have come from the other to me. Like, plausibly, but everything else that there would be a 100%, at least in origin, from Christian communities. That doesn’t mean biblical. It just means an evolution of a Christian tradition. One thing I’d note here on the the turnips that they would carry around, the jack o lanterns. These word that they use for jack o lantern translated to willow wisp. now some people could say, that’s pagan, isn’t it? Except that comes from if you don’t know what a willow wisp is.

Simone Collins:
Isn’t that just the burning fire that you would... Like, blue fire you’d see in the Moors? Like, maybe gases

Malcolm Collins:
igniting created by swamps in Moors.

Simone Collins:
Oh, I thought it was gases on the Moors igniting or something.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So... Yes. It might be gases igniting. It’s a it’s a it’s a phenomenon. Like, it’s a real thing that they would have seen. Yeah. And what did communities believe that willow wisps were? They thought that they were souls in purgatory

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
Which I mean was a Christian concept, not a pagan concept.

Simone Collins:
Anyone’s good guess at the time.

Malcolm Collins:
Anyone’s good guess. Right. Yes. So let’s what are some other ones here? Oh, yeah. Another funny thing that people go with... If you’re... If you look at the pagan traditions, and you’re looking for the date of the pagan traditions, a lot of people try to connect it to a druid holiday. when the the major druid holiday that we’re aware of was Bellatine, this was the one where they did all the bonfires and everything, and this was the May 1, nowhere close to the date of Halloween. Yeah. You have to deposit a separate ceremony that we know very little about and assume that it rung through that. In the... At least... By the way, in regards to saint stage, just a bit of history here. In the East, this appears from the fourth century and is often linked to the Eastern season, for example, the Sunday after Pentecost in Antioch, or the Friday after Easter among some Syrians. The Eastern churches still keep all saints on the Sunday after Pentecost in Rome. In 09/06/2009 or 06/10, Pope Boniface the fourth received the pantheon from the emperor, redacted it to May, and all martyrs on the May 13. That became the Roman date for a while. Over time, the feast expanded beyond what those two those who had been killed for the feast. We talked about this already. November 1 became a date standard in the West in the ninth century. this

Speaker 3:
Love you too.

Simone Collins:
This cute little boy.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. So November 1 became the standard in the West in the ninth century where under the Frankish Empire in 835 under Pope Gregory the fourth. The point of it was simply a Virgil, and it was all Hell’s Eve. It later evolved into something called All Souls Day, and this is when it became more for all dead people. And this was instituted around nine hundred ninety eight to one thousand thirty by Abbot Ordillo of Kunlei Monasteries, and then it began to spread. It sits after all saints on purpose, the triumph of the states on the first and then being purified on the second. So it’s like a a follow-up thing. the practice where you... Remember I said there were two practices. One was more aggressive and done by the backwoods people, and the other was a general. We’ll pray for your your dead ones if you give us food. The the nice one, it was from England in the fifteenth century, and that was called sullen. The the the more aggressive one from the backwoods people, was called guising, and it’s from the sixteenth century.

Simone Collins:
Guising? Never heard of that.

Malcolm Collins:
People, especially kids, put on disguises or masks and went door to door because they were doing bad things, sort of like ding dong dashing. They usually performed something, a song, a poem, a joke, a little trick, and got food, nuts, apples, or coins. It happened with various winter festivals, not just Halloween. Again, it also happened with Christmas. But the reason that you would wear masks when you were doing this is you were sort of blackmailing people. It had nothing to do... Like, the mask and the tradition of costumes had nothing to do with the occult.

Simone Collins:
So, like, for the same reason people are wearing surgical masks to protests, basically?

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So where people wear masks when they’re robbing a convenience store.

Simone Collins:
Oh, sure. Goodness. The...

Malcolm Collins:
Well, let’s see. here, I can go directly into jack o’-lanterns. So in the nineteenth century, Ireland and Scotland, people hollowed out turnips or other root vegetables and carved faces in them, sometimes putting a candle inside. These were, used as lanterns to startle people. A folktale about a stingy Jack... No. This folktale comes later than the tradition itself, so we can’t say that the tradition came from the folktale. A man who tricked the devil and was doomed to wander with coal in a turnip, again, very Christian, is a later explanation of the name. The term jack o lantern originally meant Willow Wisp, or night watchman. Pumpkins native to the Americans and much easier to carve replaced turnips once the custom reached North America. Clear records of carved pumpkins specifically for Halloween appear in the mid to late eighteen hundreds in The US and Canada. Again, deriving from the turnip tradition, not from any sort of occultic practice. in regards to postcards, roughly from nineteen o five to 1915, the golden age of the picture postcards, they were, like, really big collectors back then. Think of them like, baseball cards of the time. they

Simone Collins:
were really cute too. Very adorable. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
3,000 unique Halloween postcard designs. Historian Martin and the postcard collectors have documented this extensively. Before that, Halloween imagery was local and inconsistent. what the postcards featured were witches, often young and glamorous rather than purely hags, black cats, jack o’-lanterns, ghosts and skeletons, bats, owls, and crescent moons. this was popularized not by the occult, but by major publishers, Worschief, Rachael Tuck and Sons, and others. and then it was the party good companies, specifically Dennis Manufacturing Company’s boogie book first issued in nineteen o nine that began to push, like, crepe paper decorations and costumes as well as table settings. And the... And in a lot of these featured images of witches, black cats, jack o’-lanterns, etcetera. If you’re wondering how bad this got during periods, there was something called the black Halloween where vandalism was so bad that they almost thought about banning it in some parts of America. Okay. Newspaper accounts from the eighteen eighties onwards describe escalating pranks, soaping windows, tipping out houses, removing the gates and signs on trolley tracks Oh.

Simone Collins:
And pulling fire alarms. That’s really dangerous. That’s not

Malcolm Collins:
windows. By the nineteen tens and nineteen thirties, these often turned into large scale damage, smashed storefronts, overturned cars, fires, streetcars, derailed or blocked an occasional serious injury or even death, including cases where homeowners shot at pranksters.

Simone Collins:
These are pretty serious offenses. Yeah. This is disturbing. What on earth is wrong with these people?

Malcolm Collins:
I ask what were some of the traditions that used to be associated with this in backwoods America, which is where a lot of these traditions came from but have been forgotten. So we can go over a few of those. Cabbage night or gate night style pranks. Boys and teens raided gardens, pulled cabbages or kale, and threw the stocks or heads at doors and windows. They often stole gates, tipped outhouses, and moved wagons or livestock and soaked windows in rural areas on October 31, the night before, was known as cabbage night or gate night. There’s a common, in late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds and is well documented in newspapers from coal country and farming regions. Nutcracking night and hearse divinations. Families cracked and roasted nuts, chased nuts, hazelnuts, and used them for div... For divination. We talked a little about that, naming that’s after partners. Graveyard and abandoned house, quote, unquote, fortune games. Young people went to old graveyards or empty houses at night. Variants included walking backwards around a grave a set number of times or leaving blank paper in an abandoned house and returning the next day to see if a spirit had written their future spouse’s name on it. They’re very concerned with who they’re gonna marry. These are recorded in Appalachian folklore accounts. But, again, no accounts that this was pagan. This was an uneducated people that didn’t have a lot of connections to some sort of, like, older history. They were the types of games that you make up with your friends on your own and then become a local tradition. I remember games like this about local haunted houses. Right? Like, this is a a part of Americana culture and a spontaneous forming part of Americana culture that doesn’t require any real pagan connection. Local omens and protective practices. Some Appalachian accounts mentioned specific Halloween, sometimes called hink night beliefs, avoiding certain paths or crossroads after dark, laying a broom across a doorway said to stop witches Oh. Or interpreting knocks at the window or a dog hallowed What

Simone Collins:
is supposed to happen to... Are are they supposed to trip? What? Sorry. So, wow. What that there? I’m just so confused. Sorry. These people are... And the cabbages. Why are people taking... It takes a long time to grow a cabbage. Go on.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. But James, mean. But, again Yes. We talk about the the morality of this culture, which became the backbone of American culture and the Jack Tale, see our episode on that if you wanna go deeper into this culture’s tradition. But it is very much what this culture is about, which is about aggressive pranking and and and and ribbing and and having fun. And that... That’s that’s what they care about in a way that comes off as, like, nonpretentious. And that’s what we see a lot of these being. So in truth, when your pagan goes out and celebrates on Halloween, it is not the Christians who have been tricked into a pagan celebration. It is the pagans who have been tricked into a Christian celebration.

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
And if you wish to not practice all hallows eve for any reason, I would argue the best reason that you would have if if if you’re looking at the evidence here is that it was originally a saint celebration, and saints are too close to icons, which is too close to idolatry, which means that you shouldn’t touch it.

Simone Collins:
No. No. Malcolm, that means in the... It was it was always witchcraft. It was always idolatry. It was always evil. It’s always been a a a demonic holiday

Malcolm Collins:
because it’s It has always been about saints. Yes.

Simone Collins:
Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
But my take is that holiday has evolved from the Catholic taint that it originally had. And I think evolving to a night where you pray for the dead and kids have fun and learn to be creative and dress up and think about what they wanna be.

Simone Collins:
They learn to hustle. Learn to hustle.

Malcolm Collins:
Teaches hustling. It teaches... I think of all the still practice traditions that are derivative of Christian traditions, I think it teaches the best values. Specifically, you give the kids all the candy, and you say, here. Eat as much as you want, and it teaches you. I remember for me, it taught me more than anything else in my life that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I remember that very vividly from Halloween. My parents were being like, yeah. Sure. You can eat it all tonight. And I was like, great. I love candy. And then I ate it all, and this is why I think it’s very bad to ration candy on Halloween. The problem is is that our kids weren’t able to learn that because they intuitively rationed it.

Simone Collins:
Or if you’re Torsten, you just give all of your siblings the candy because you hate sugar.

Malcolm Collins:
Gave it all away.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Once again, we will indulge in that wonderful tradition of attempting to get Torsten to eat candy on Halloween. The scariest point of all for him.

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. Get a video tonight of you trying to give him candy. No. No.

Simone Collins:
Oh my goodness. I I mean, I was kind of like him because I didn’t like most of the homey. Only... I only ate the chocolates. So it was only basically Milky Ways and Three Musketeers that I could eat, maybe if they had M and M’s packs. And so I would go around the neighborhood, go trick or treating, and then return to my home base, swap out in my home family bucket. I would give all my candy to that and then take out, like like, equal for equal, the chocolates that my family had bought so that I could actually eat my Halloween candy. And then I slowly save it.

Malcolm Collins:
I I personally think that of the traditional Christian holidays, Halloween is, I think, the best in terms of values it teaches. I think it’s the best in

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I guess it either teaches budgeting or overindulgence. It teaches door to door hustle, and there’s creativity.

Malcolm Collins:
And it’s it’s it’s it’s one of... I think for kids, one of the best.

Simone Collins:
Oh, it’s so exciting. It’s... So when you’re out there hitting the streets I think it’s more for Halloween festive. If vaca tubes.

Speaker 3:
Every time when when I kind of press my iPad for a while, then it... Then my iPad... Then my dad told me to say something, and it pauses itself.

Simone Collins:
Because... Yeah. Because you’re supposed to answer the question.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. You need to answer the question.

Simone Collins:
It’s asking you to be paying attention. And he wants to make sure you’ve learned something, so you have to answer correctly. Okay? But, Toasty, hey. What are

Speaker 3:
gonna be for? Ghost busters.

Simone Collins:
And so you have to answer questions about ghosts.

Speaker 8:
Specifically, he’s using something on his tablet, which you can flash any Android device with any old... When you have around your house. Mudpuppy.aibackslashos. And it not only makes kids watch documentaries, educational videos, and play educational games to gain access to traditional cartoons like real Ghostbusters, which is what he’s watching here. But during both of them, it will regularly interrupt the show and attempt to, using an AI agent, engage the kids in an intellectual or educational discussion, uh, which is what’s being described here.

Simone Collins:
Now, Toasty, what are you gonna be for Halloween?

Speaker 3:
I’ll be the dragon that we have in the attic.

Simone Collins:
He’s even... We’re using a costume. So are you gonna eat the candy? Candy. I’m back, Toasty. I’m not gonna force candy to... Anyway, he’s he’s just he’s just he’s just scared of the candy. He got scared. Close the door, toasty. Anyway,

Malcolm Collins:
yeah, the the... I think it’s a very stupid to retreat from traditions when you get psyops into the idea that they’re pagan, whether that Christmas or Easter will do something on that or Halloween. I don’t I don’t know. We’ve done our... I think we did our Christmas isn’t really pagan video. But I’ll

Simone Collins:
say did, and it bombed because people got super mad.

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. No. I mean, Easter isn’t really Halloween. Oh, isn’t pagan. Sorry. Isn’t pagan.

Simone Collins:
I don’t know if we did that. I don’t think we did.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. but, yeah, retreating from good holidays that are an important part of a child’s life and help them build a cultural tradition and identity, I do not think is a smart thing to do, on the account of religious observance.

Simone Collins:
I Well, actually, someone just sent me a really helpful explanation on x about taking the lord’s name in vain, you know, that that that commandment. Yeah. His explanation was basically putting words in god’s mouth is taking the Lord’s name in vain. You know, an example of some kind of, you know, televangelist saying, you know, well, God wants you to do this prosperity gospel. He’s putting words in God’s mouth, but also someone being like, God doesn’t want you to celebrate Halloween. Who are you to say? Hello? Like, follow the 10 commandments. Don’t don’t you editorialize.

Malcolm Collins:
Actually, Simone, being less familiar with the bible than me, you’re actually explicitly allowed celebrations like Halloween in the bible. It’s it’s called New Testament.

Simone Collins:
Sure you are. I’m I’m sure. Well, like, I remember something about, like, stomp your feet and dance to to glorify God or

Malcolm Collins:
Galatians two sixteen, which is the most direct. It says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in question of food and drink or in regards to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. It’s basically saying People

Simone Collins:
are really doing wrong by saying you can’t you can’t celebrate Halloween. It’s a devilish holiday.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, I think it’s similar to the Sabbath.

Simone Collins:
To each other. As a Christian,

Malcolm Collins:
you’re not supposed to pass judgment on other people in regards to how they choose to celebrate it. But it’s up to your own conscious whether you celebrate it or not.

Simone Collins:
Like, if you feel like it’s pulling you away from God, then by all means, don’t do it. If you feel like it’s it’s helping you lean into your values, then do it.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah? That’s the idea. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
I like it. I like it.

Malcolm Collins:
And that’s my takeaway about Halloween.

Simone Collins:
Super ball.

Malcolm Collins:
So I I I think that that... Or any techno puritan tradition. I think what we’re basically given free reign here to build our own traditions, and, work on them insofar as they are focused on god or or or for us what god wants, which is for humanity to do well because god loves humanity, and that means for our kids to do well because that’s the humanity that we most directly interact with. And so you show your love for god by building traditions and doing things that lead to more long term human flourishing. That is what I believe god wants from us the most.

Speaker 9:
And I think to the people who show their love of god only through devotion directed at god rather than directed at the things god loves, um it it... It’s... It really misses the point of what god wants from you.

Malcolm Collins:
And so I think that with something like Halloween, I don’t feel embarrassed about how we took these... The the... This tradition and and and built into this. If you wanna have prohibitions against glorifying witchcraft on Halloween, that’s one thing. Right? If you wanna have prohibitions against your your daughter dressing up like a princess on Halloween, I think that’s moving in a direction that just is explicitly robbing a child’s life of joy and imagination. And and and for that, it’s a bad thing to do. Something that you would not do as a good, at least within our tech. So that’s the point. Yeah. And and what we use... Again, because this will be a track. What we use any holiday to teach about Halloween specifically is to teach value sets. And the value sets of Halloween are hustle, imagination, and the... What was the other one?

Simone Collins:
Hustle, imagination. And self restraint slash budgeting.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, yeah. Self restraint. Yeah. Eating type of stuff. But it’s also a

Simone Collins:
big also budgeting because I think a lot of kids also, really find the love of delayed gratification and careful rationing in Halloween. I know you didn’t, but I did.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s also a great holiday for... What was I gonna say about Halloween as a holiday? For telling stories. And I think that if you are a parent, you should get scary stories, the book, the... With the scary illustrations, not the new one, and try to read your kid a scary story every Halloween at the very least just as a I’m not gonna let this night go past. because, one, those stories are collected from traditional American folklore . So you’re reading them a part of original American folklore, a part of their culture, assuming that they’re from a good culture like America. And two, they are great evocative stories that I think, again, help the night feel spooky. I think one of the the biggest disappointments I have in the way that Halloween is practiced today is not that it has lost a religious message, but that it’s lost its spook factor. And you as a parent have a job to really spook your kids on Halloween. The spookiest night of the year.

Simone Collins:
You better get on that, Malcolm, because they ain’t spooked very much right now.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, then maybe they need to get visited by Krampus this Halloween.

Simone Collins:
I think Halloween should be the opening of Krampus season, don’t you?

Malcolm Collins:
The opening of Krampus season after

Simone Collins:
all the believe in Krampus season.

Malcolm Collins:
I love you. Any thoughts do you have, Simone?

Simone Collins:
I love it. I love it. I I... The the big takeaway that I have that really blew my mind here was I had no idea that, like, the Wassail tradition was a sort of preholiday raid activity. So For winter holiday. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
That fascinating. That that what we today think of as caroling and trick or treating are actually the same tradition. I... That was really fun for me to learn. I was like, oh, it’s coming together now.

Simone Collins:
It is coming together. It’s really cool.

Malcolm Collins:
And so just to tie this up for anyone who hasn’t been following along here, Trick or treating came from the same tradition that caroling came from. The original holiday was a a a saint’s memorial day, nothing to do with spooks or anything like that. The spook tradition came downstream of mating rituals and wearing a mask because you were harassing people of one evolution of the caroling tradition, and then that evolved into what we today think of as this spooky holiday, nothing pagan to it. Doesn’t mean it’s biblical, but it’s certainly not pagan. And then your question of, well, does that mean it’s Christian? I view this as sort of the same question of, well, was Abraham a Jew? I mean, was Moses a Jew? He didn’t have the later rabbinic tradition. When when did somebody become the first Jew? It’s it’s an evolving tradition as is Christianity, and techno puritanism is just one direction of that evolution. And I I think that being overly guarded about these sorts of things can just rob you away from a child’s life. But, anyways, great talking to you. One thing I’d recommend you guys do because I’ve been doing it for my kids is making some Halloween art for them on our fab to share with them So they get to... They use the API, use a collection of family photos, and you can tell it to make some fun. That’s our fab dot a I backslash API. And the tablet, the toasty came in, and he goes, it’s asking me questions . Yes. Even during the recreational time, an AI now stops to ask them things, to engage them in intellectual topics, and they can earn points doing that.

Simone Collins:
Because we believe that screens aren’t so bad when they’re an active pursuit that’s intellectually engaging.

Malcolm Collins:
Exactly.

Simone Collins:
And studies show that too.

Malcolm Collins:
.Aibackslashos. You can find this.

Simone Collins:
Also has literally, like, a built in homeschooling system and a whole bunch of learning games and other things. You don’t have to even include any recreational content. It could just all be learning stuff. but we wanted something where we could give our kids a better tablet experience or phone experience, and this is awesome. You can even drop in on the device. Like, if they’re, like, in a separate room watching it or playing with it, you can check-in on their camera, their forward facing camera, and just see what they’re up to, or have a video call with them just to check-in. It’s really cool. It’s so cool. Anyway, thanks for

Malcolm Collins:
making the best

Simone Collins:
of them. I love you too. Bye. Bye. Or planting in the spring and letting it lie follow in the winter.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. Okay. Well, we’re gonna get everything fixed. We’re gonna get those redone. We’re gonna get this house feeling nice. That’s the point of cleaning Malcolm’s room.

Simone Collins:
I can’t believe this this day came. You can see the floor. You you no longer live in the Star Wars trash compactor. It is remarkable.

Malcolm Collins:
And I told you I’d get myself together. I was like, you know what? I should do it. I should get myself together.

Simone Collins:
I I didn’t.

Malcolm Collins:
I should’ve You didn’t have faith in me.

Simone Collins:
I I do have faith in you. I just... You’re like, is it gonna make me sick? Then it’s not worth it, and it wasn’t making you sick. So

Malcolm Collins:
Well, we’re getting it we’re getting it done.

Simone Collins:
We’re getting it done, and I’m so glad. I’m really glad.

Speaker 10:
You’re going on the hard ones. It’s just using the cracks.

Speaker 11:
Wow.

Speaker 12:
I’ll show you how my eye... I’m here.

Speaker 10:
Well done.

We also discuss how the Economist’s team handled population adjustments for age and sex, comparisons to raw conviction counts, reactions from online analysts, and what the data suggests about migration impacts across Europe, noting shifts in public discourse and political positions on immigration controls.

It’s rather amusing that the Economist decided to step in this arena at all. Is the Overton Window shifting? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Show Notes

Given that people in the UK are sent to jail for inciting racial hatred*, the internet is now truly shocked by a chart that The Economist used Ministry of Justice data standardised for age and sex to show Afghan nationals at roughly 7x the British conviction rate for sexual offenses, Middle East and North Africa at ~3.6x and sub-Saharan Africa at ~2.5x, with EU and East Asian groups below baseline

“I’m shocked that The Economist was willing to publish this!” wrote Cremieux

Andris K Berzins noted that “The Economist article this chart comes from (https://economist.com/britain/2026/10/25/do-immigrants-from-some-countries-commit-more-sex-crimes) tries to play down the discrepancy. But the data (shown on a linear rather than log scale as in the original article) is alarming indeed. The Economist’s conclusion, that in absolute terms the difference in sex crimes is not alarming, hides the fact that migration is a real issue and there is a clear impact. 🤷‍♂️”

The original original article makes it look more stark.

GuruAnaerobic showed the data in a different way; doesn’t look good with Alex commenting that ““British Nationals” is doing some heavy work on its own already”

Brian Chau swung in to correct the scale though African Farmer noted he “Should have used dicks instead of fatties.” (I am inclined to agree but Brian keeps it classy)

*For real:

• Lucy Connolly received a 31-month prison sentence in October 2024 after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred. Her post called for mass deportation and said, “set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care.” This was not a conviction simply for saying that immigration creates crime concerns.

• Tyler Kay received a 38-month sentence in August 2024 for an X post repeating that call to burn hotels housing asylum seekers. The judge’s published sentencing remarks reproduce the post and identify the offence as publishing material that stirred up racial hatred. He did not need to participate in a physical attack to be imprisoned for the publication itself.

This went viral, so some riffed on this. Maarten van den Berg looked at stats for Denmark, Norway, and The Netherlands.

The Article

Do immigrants from some countries commit more sex crimes?

“In Bristol last November three men and a 17-year-old boy, all Afghans, gang-raped a 17-year-old girl over several hours. Beforehand they had groomed her on Snapchat and plied her with alcohol; afterwards they fled to France in a lorry. The French authorities returned them to Britain, where they were convicted and, on October 6th, sentenced to long jail terms. In court the girl described how “listening to it all again from the lawyers kept me reliving everything that happened to me”.

Such horrors fuel suspicion of migrants. So did a recent state-issued booklet about Britain for asylum-seekers. Page five clarified that the legal age of consent is 16 and that rape is a serious crime. “I’ve never heard of someone who decided not to rape because they received a leaflet,” said Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader. The clumsy campaign fed the idea that some immigrants—notably men seeking asylum—are responsible for a disproportionate share of sex offences. Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, claims that “Afghans are over TWENTY times more likely to commit sex crimes than Brits.”

Is that true? The government does not publish crime rates by immigration status. The limited data it does release are raw counts of offences by those of each nationality, from a country-wide police database. The “20 times” claim was based on there being 13,000 Afghans in Britain, an estimate from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Population Survey. That figure is unreliable, however, having been extrapolated from a sample of fewer than 60 individuals. In 2021 the ONS stopped publishing this population estimate owing to plummeting survey-response rates.

The Economist’s analysis suggests that the “20 times” claim is a wild exaggeration. But our numbers are hardly reassuring.

The Migration Observatory, a think-tank based at Oxford University, obtained figures through freedom-of-information requests to the Ministry of Justice. These count cautions and convictions in England and Wales, split by offenders’ nationality, between 2010 and 2024. The data detail 8m crimes, of which 106,000 are sex offences ranging from rape to consensual sex in public. The police’s recording of offenders’ nationality is messy, but we found that four-fifths of sex crimes were committed by British people. Just 0.39%—409 offences over the 15-year period—were committed by people who said they were Afghan.

Whether 409 crimes is a lot or a little depends on how many Afghans are in the country. In March 2021 the last census reported 14,300 Afghan passport-holders living in England and Wales, and another 7,100 without a passport who said they were Afghan: a total population of 21,400.

The census is just a snapshot in time. Since 2021 some 3m people have settled in Britain and the foreign-born population has risen from 16% to 19% of the total. After the Taliban seized Kabul, in August 2021, some 38,000 Afghans flocked to Britain over the following year and a half. Accounting for those who later left and those who became citizens, we estimate that the Afghan population of England and Wales had doubled to 45,000 by the end of 2022.

To capture more than the snapshot we analysed convictions during a three-year period, 2020-22, and averaged our population estimate over those three years. We then standardised our estimate to account for age and sex (men commit 98% of sex crimes, for example, and Afghans are about ten years younger than the population at large). This suggested Afghans are convicted of sex crimes at seven times the British rate—a far cry from Mr Timothy’s “over 20 times”, but disturbing nevertheless (see chart). Our number is still uncertain: it may be skewed by a few serial offenders, by quirks in reporting and detection rates for such crimes.

Evidence from other countries, using different methods, suggests that this may not be solely a British problem. The perception is certainly not. “The main group, of the worst crimes, like raping, like killing people…the main category are Syrians and Afghans,” Alice Weidel, leader of Germany’s populist Alternative for Germany party, told The Economist. In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa are over-represented among suspects and convicts—especially for sex crimes. Where age-standardised analysis exists for those countries, the over-representation shrinks, as in Britain, but it does not vanish.

Looking at convictions by ethnicity, rather than nationality, is more reassuring. The Ministry of Justice produces detailed data on prosecutions and convictions by age, sex and ethnicity. We used these to repeat our age-standardised analysis, for the same 2020-22 window. We find that men of Pakistani ethnicity, as well as other Asian and other non-black minority men, are convicted of sex offences at similar rates to white British men.

It should not be surprising that conviction rates differ between nationalities. Ben Brindle of the Migration Observatory notes that many migrants will have witnessed violence, or come from poor backgrounds. This drives criminality, and being socially isolated and jobless in Britain doesn’t help. “Just as large differences in conviction rates exist among British citizens, they will be present across different nationalities, too,” he says.

And the numbers need to be kept in perspective. In 2010-12 Afghan nationals were convicted of 92 sex crimes; in 2022-24 the total was 102. Ten additional sex crimes, after the Afghan population has roughly tripled, is not an epidemic. ■

Editor’s note (October 26th 2026): This article has been changed to clarify the wording on sex offences by ethnicity.

The Commentary

Lyman Stone posted: “Online right: “mainstream publications can never show these forbidden facts”

The Economist: shows the forbidden facts

Online right: “BUT YOU DIDN’T DESIGN IT TO BE THE ABSOLUTE MOST RACIST GRAPH WE COULD IMAGINE!?!?!?””

But I do think it’s interesting and notable that these “forbidden facts” are now being shown, especially given how much of a no-no it is to talk about these things in the UK.

What’s going on? Will ask Malcolm for input.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins:
Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because given that people in The UK are sent to jail for inciting racial hatred, the Internet is now truly shocked by a chart that the economist used, where they used Ministry of Justice data standardized for age and sex to show that Afghan nationals are at roughly seven x the British conviction rate for sexual offenses. And they also showed that Middle East and North Africa at 3.6 times, Sub Saharan Africa at 2.5 times, with the EU and East Asian groups being below the baseline. This is the graph that I found on their article. And you can see it doesn’t look good.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my... A five x. It’s around 10 x rate. Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins:
So, Kremio wrote on x, I’m shocked that The Economist was willing to publish this. And then Andres k Burzens noted that The Economist article this chart comes from, tries to play down the discrepancy, but the data shown on a linear rather than log scale as in the original article is alarming indeed. The economist’s conclusion that in absolute terms, the difference in sex crimes is not alarming hides the fact that migration is a real issue, and there is a clear impact. Yeah. This what’s so interesting is scale.

Malcolm Collins:
Do you have the do

Simone Collins:
you have Yeah. Hold on. Yeah. So here... This was the... This was what I got in the article today. I I I, like, literally created an account on The Economist to see what today’s graph was. Whereas when you look at the original graph that they posted, it... You could see why they changed it. It looks a little more alarming. The the... Those... The... So what you’re looking at aside from the the little bars, which is sort of the center point So when you look at the original chart, you can see how much more alarming it looks.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, buddy.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. And, you know, a couple people also came in. Guru Anaerobic show the data also in a different way, which doesn’t look good. Let me show you this. Kind of... There’s no way to slice it that looks well. Although commenting on that, a guy named Alex noted, quote, British nationals is doing some heavy work on its own already. And that’s a fair point because they’re talking about nationals from other nations within The UK, and British nationals are a very diverse group as it is. So this is probably the most flattering graph that you can see in terms of who’s responsible for different crimes. I have to I have to give a little shout out though to to to Brian Chao who who swung in to correct the scale after The Economist gave their much more tame version. Yeah. Brian Chow fixed it for them, swapping in

Malcolm Collins:
crafts

Simone Collins:
of crafts of rotund men to show the scale of the crime. Though African farmer on x noted, quote, he should have used dicks instead of and I’m I’m inclined to to agree with Ryan. Keeps it. Ryan

Malcolm Collins:
Chao is such a troll. I love that he’s he’s going on.

Simone Collins:
Ryan Chao is a delightful person. But this actually is is a pretty serious thing. I mean, because, genuinely, in The UK, it is dangerous to say things that could be argued to incite racial hatred.

Malcolm Collins:
Guy was arrested for writing Islam can be questioned on his own house.

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. And a woman named Lucy Connolly recently received a thirty one month prison sentence in October 2024 after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred. Her post called for a mass deportation and said, quote, set fire to all the effing hotels full of the bastards for all I care. This was, you know, obviously a little bit more incendiary than what The Economist is saying, but we’re gonna read the article. It kind of leads me to feel the same way. So I don’t know. also, a guy named Tyler Kaye received a thirty eight month sentence in August 2024 from XPost repeating that call to burn housing asylum seekers. and the judges published sentencing remarks.

Malcolm Collins:
They haven’t done it once yet. All of these people, they... The the immigrants will kill and rape you, but you can’t believe people

Simone Collins:
blame me.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s what it

Simone Collins:
is. But... After people saw these these UK stats posted by The Economist, some other people decided to look outside The UK. One guy named Martin Vanderberg looked at the stats for Denmark, Norway, and the The Netherlands, which is also not not very flattering. So here’s here’s Denmark. And you you gotta... Sorry. It’s it’s still in... Not in touch. But if you have... Basically, meet in Austin and North Africa, it’s

Malcolm Collins:
not looking good. By the way, if you ever need something like this translated, you can just use the ARFab API or dump it into the ARFab comic translator, and it will translate this.

Simone Collins:
I really like saying ho disproportional. I like the other language. Sorry. But, also, if you see African and, Sub Saharan Africa

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Or even worse than Afghanistan.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Afghanistan is actually in third, followed by... Okay. I don’t know what... But also Turkey after that.

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. You don’t know what that is? So the first is Middle Eastern and North Africa.

Simone Collins:
No. I know. But what what is?

Malcolm Collins:
I don’t know.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I don’t know if that has And then it’s Turkish. Yeah. Then it’s Turkey. Turkey ay, as they as they insist on having it be called now, which is delightful. The lowest is America. Yeah. What’s up with that? It looks like Americans going to Denmark. Our our... We’re on our best behavior when we go to Denmark. We put on our Sunday best. Anyone. And let’s look at Norway.

Malcolm Collins:
You see people, it’s not that hard to resist raping people.

Simone Collins:
In Norway, it’s Syria and Afghanistan look like they’re basically tied, followed by Iraq, then Pakistan. Also, a a note on Pakistan is, one guy on x who had a very clearly Indian username, was like, yeah. I really disagree with The Economist graph here because they’re just throwing in all Pakistanis with South Asians. And Yeah. The... He he was... He found that very offensive. And I can kinda understand if, like, actually, Pakistanis and

Malcolm Collins:
Indian, I wouldn’t wanna be judged by what Pakistanis are doing. Truly.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. You’d be really mad. Because, also, it it appears to be that there are very many, like, Pakistan nationals Pakistani nationals in The UK responsible for things. I’d be... I would be mad. I would be mad too.

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. It’s not just Pakistani nationals. I’ve heard it’s, like, one subregion of Pakistan.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Yes. I’ve heard that too. I’ve heard that too.

Malcolm Collins:
We should probably do an episode on that.

Simone Collins:
Maybe. Yeah. What’s... What is going on with this one bad neighborhood of the world? But... So let’s see. After... So it goes Assyria in in Nor... Norway, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Iran, Eritrea, and then probably just Norwegian people, and then EU people, North America, and people from Oceania, followed by

Malcolm Collins:
They grope us in with the North... The Oceania.

Simone Collins:
I know. Those those Australian ex convicts. What are you what are you doing? Now now I’m offended just like the Indian nationals. And then finally, we have The Netherlands. Who’s... Who is the best and worst in in The Netherlands? We have the worst offenders being Who’s out raping the the opponent? Well, it’s weird because I I think their data’s off because it starts with, like, I think, until in in Aruba. Aruba, like, is that The Caribbean? Then Suriname, which is also South America. Morocco, which I guess would fall into North Africa and the other graphs.

Malcolm Collins:
I’ll I’ll I’ll figure out what this first word is here.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Antilline in Aruba. Ant... In Aruba

Malcolm Collins:
is The Netherlands, Antilles, and Aruba.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Oh, so it’s like some some colony that they

Malcolm Collins:
used to have? Some colony.

Simone Collins:
Okay. So they they would, I guess, have a ton of overlap, and they they apparently are exacting the reparations in the form of sexual violence, I suppose. And Turkey is is the second to last, and then, I guess, oh, basically, Western countries is is the least bad. So

Malcolm Collins:
So, again, consistent across countries.

Simone Collins:
Is Not yet. A really, really bad look. And it’s funny that this is all coming out. It’s it’s... I think the most stark thing is that this is coming up by the economist. So I’m gonna read, I’m gonna read some of the article to you to get your take

Malcolm Collins:
what the economist is willing to say on this issue because I

Simone Collins:
am disappointed that they

Malcolm Collins:
changed their graph.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. The most famous thing the economist most recently did was have their editor interview Elon Musk in a very antagonistic way. You know? This is not... They’re not known as, like, the based publication. So this was very interesting.

Malcolm Collins:
You know what we got from the Department of Education is a Malfoyd meme I know. That you shared with me, which I was very proud of.

Simone Collins:
And I’m like Epic.

Malcolm Collins:
This is an administration

Simone Collins:
This is a government. Yeah. Truly. I’m thrilled. This is the best timeline. And, apparently, yeah, The Economist is coming over. So they write in this article titled, do immigrants from some countries commit more sex crimes? Like, they’re just coming out right right from the bat with the title. Right? They’re not they’re not like, do we The funny thing

Malcolm Collins:
is if you’re paying remote attention, you’re just like, obviously, yes. Right? But The

Simone Collins:
thing is, like... And and we’re gonna get to this in in the final portion of this podcast. But, like, our understanding was that you... Yes. We can all know this. But if you talk about it on on... Online, it’s illegal, and you have to get arrested.

Malcolm Collins:
Illegal in The UK. It’s illegal. Is the economist based in The UK?

Simone Collins:
Yes. And so that the economist is saying this is very shocking to me. But, anyway, they write, in Bristol last November, three men and a 17 year old boy, all Afghans, gang raped a 17 year old girl over several hours. Beforehand, they had groomed her on Snapchat and plied her with alcohol. Afterwards, they fled in France... To France in a lorry. The French authorities returned them to Britain where they were convicted and on October 6, sentenced to long jail terms. In court, the girl described how, quote, listening to it all again from the lawyers kept me reliving everything that happened to me. Just as a note, by the way, this is something else that came up in the commentary on the At

Malcolm Collins:
least they’re jailing them now. There was the case in, what was it? France where the girl was somewhere in North America.

Simone Collins:
Germany. I think it was

Malcolm Collins:
An underage girl was gang groped by immigrants and

Simone Collins:
Well, by underage children, like, and 14. She was underage too. And so I know. But, like, they 16. Again, there is a reason why Afghan and Iraqi and Mexican cartels are recruiting minors on Fortnite and WhatsApp because they sentences, and they shared it on same That’s not how our legal systems work. They’re not tried as adults. And, you know,

Malcolm Collins:
they should have been tried. You could be tried as adults first.

Simone Collins:
The law, but the law doesn’t work. No. Like, the law allows

Malcolm Collins:
you to try a child as an adult. Are you not aware of this? It’s a famous thing.

Simone Collins:
Can be unusual. I think it’s it’s very

Malcolm Collins:
Sharing a rape on on signal I know. Is... It aborts it.

Simone Collins:
I know. I... Look. I get it. I get it.

Speaker 5:
So the place where this happened was Belgium, and I decided to look up whether it would have been difficult to try them for more. And, no, it would have been completely trivial. Simone is just super off on this. They just intentionally decided to let them off without sentences or at least sentences that involved prison.

Simone Collins:
But, anyway, what people were pointing out, though, as to your point on x is that, again, this is a graph of conviction rates. This is not a graph of actual crimes. And as you point out, many of these things are just not even reported anymore sometimes. They’re not even logged as such anymore. I mean, think about how much it took to actually get Andrew Tate in jail after so many women coming to the police reporting things that he was doing. Right? so I I think that it’s important to just note that, that that conviction rates are kind of just the tip of the iceberg probably when it comes to things like that. Anyway, continuing from the article. Is that true? The government does not publish crime rates by immigration status. The limited data it does release are raw counts of offenses by those of each nationality from a countrywide police database. The 20 times claim was based on there being 13,000 Afghans in Britain, an estimate from the Office of National Statistics annual population survey. The figure is unreliable, however, having been extrapolated from a sample of fewer than 60 individuals. In 2021, the ONS stopped publishing this population estimate owing to plummeting survey response rates. The Economist analysis

Malcolm Collins:
that’s why. I’m sure that’s Yeah.

Simone Collins:
For the same reason why they they blocked so many people from being able to do genetic analysis, using UK Biobank because they found that there was this really odd small population that had really high rates of incest. Whatever, though. We’re not going there right now.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. No. Specifically, father daughter incest. He has really high rates of incest.

Simone Collins:
The Economist analyses suggest that the 20 times claim is a wild exaggeration, but our numbers are hardly reassuring. The Migration Observatory, a think tank based at Oxford University, obtained figures through freedom of information requests to the Ministry of Justice. These count cautions and convince... Sorry. These count cautions and convictions in England and Wales split by offenders’ nationality between 2010 and 2024. Again, reminder, this means that if you are nationalized as a UK citizen, you’re gonna fall into that category, which isn’t, like, to the the base rate. so these are just people who’ve not been nationalized yet who are being broken out in the graph that you saw. Anyway, the data detail 8,000,000 crimes, of which 106,000 are sex offenses ranging from rape to consensual sex in public. The police recounting of offenders’ nationality is messy, but we found our four fifths of sex crimes were committed by British people. Just 0.39% or 409 offenses over the fifteen year period were committed by people who said they were Afghan. Whether 409 crimes is a lot or a little depends on how many Afghans are in the country. In March 2021, the last census reported 14,300 Afghan passport holders living in England and Wales and another 7,100 without a passport who said they were Afghan, a total population of 21,400. The census is just a snapshot in time. Since 2021, some 3,000,000 people have settled in Britain, and the foreign born population has risen from 16% to 19% of the total. After the Taliban seized Kabul in August 2021, some 38,000 Afghans flocked to Britain over the following year and half. I can’t be

Malcolm Collins:
I I also wanna point something out about these graphs is the groups you don’t see on them. You know how we talk about, like, you have good immigrant groups and bad immigrant groups? Did you notice Iranians weren’t on any of them?

Simone Collins:
Yeah. That... That’s true.

Speaker 6:
So I decided to look this up. And, if you look at, the average rate of grapes per 10,000, for Afghans, it’s 59. Eritreans, it’s 54. Iraqis, 25. Iranians, 18. Britons, 2.66. So it’s still well above Britain’s, but about as below Afghans and Eritreans as it is above Britain’s.

Malcolm Collins:
I mean, they Despite heavy.

Simone Collins:
They would fall into the Middle East and North Africa, but Middle East and North Africa is a

Malcolm Collins:
crazy group. Broke out countries.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
And and so, like, we’ve we’ve put in the past said, like, Iranians really aren’t... Like, Persian... Iranians at least aren’t that bad of an immigrant group.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. They’re they’re very different. They’re very different. Yeah. In fact, I think the the the... There’s a a different video that someone... Sorry. There’s... There is a different... The the graph that someone else created, I think, using the same data and posted on x that shows British nationals, I think, is better. Yeah. Again, British nationals is a very diverse set, but they’re the gray bar on this graph as you can see.

Malcolm Collins:
This show There was a a poll done of sexual offense charges versus convictions have been shown in London about 40% are done by foreign nationals.

Simone Collins:
Great. Well Great. Yeah. Do want me to just let this sit here for reference while I go over more of the article?

Malcolm Collins:
Well, no. You can close it. I think I think our audience has the idea.

Simone Collins:
A bad... It... It’s very bad. anyway, accounting for those who later left and those who became citizens, we estimate that the Afghan population of England and Wales has doubled to 45,000 by the end of twenty twenty two. To capture more than the snapshot, we analyzed convictions during a three year period, 2020 to 2022, and averaged our population estimate over the three years. We then standardized our estimate to account for age and sex. Men commit 98% of sex crimes, for example, and Afghans are about ten years younger than the population at large. This suggested Afghans are convicted of sex crimes at seven times the British rate, a far cry from mister Timothy’s over 20 times, but disturbing nevertheless. See chart. Our number is still uncertain. It may be skewed by a few serial offenders by quirks in reporting and detection rates for such crimes. Evidence from other countries, including different methods, suggests this may not be solely a British problem. The perception

Malcolm Collins:
love all of the hedging here.

Simone Collins:
I know. You could see you could see they’re trying. If you’re seeing it

Malcolm Collins:
in every country, then stop taking them.

Simone Collins:
Well, that’s happening. And that’s actually something that came up when we interviewed Ace AT, which is he was like, look. At this rate, you cannot get into Europe unless you have a ton of money and, you know, all this sort of spotless reputation. I mean, god help you if you’re actually trying to come from Iran. Right? So it’s very annoying to me because really great people like him

Malcolm Collins:
No. I’m totally okay with that. You... There’s there’s no rule you can make that’s gonna let him in and not... There’s plenty of other countries in the world that he could go to. South America, for example, had some great countries.

Simone Collins:
That’s true. India is fine. I think he would he would probably, yeah. He he could really do quite well in many South American countries. We love to living in Peru. Anyway, I didn’t like the water being shut off, but he’d be used to that with Iran. Like, it feels like home. Oh, man. Anyway, the main group of the worst crimes like raping, like killing people, the main category are Syrians and Afghans, Alice Weidl, leader of Germany’s populist alternative for Germany party, told The Economist. In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, immigrants from the Middle North Africa, Central Asia, and the Horn Of Africa are overrepresented among suspects and convicts, especially for sex crimes. Where age standardized analyses exist for those countries, the overrepresented... Overrepresentation shrinks as in Britain, but it does not vanish. Looking at convictions by ethnicity rather than by nationality is more reassuring. The Ministry of Justice produces detailed data on prosecutions and convictions by age, sex, and ethnicity. We use these to repeat our age standardized analysis for the same twenty to twenty twenty two window. We find that men of Pakistani ethnicity as well as other Asians and nonblack minority men are convicted of sex offenses at similar rates to white British men.

Malcolm Collins:
You know what I think it’s called like this, Simone? Yeah. I think it’s bigotry against these people is why they’re being convicted at such high rates.

Simone Collins:
Well, anyway, they took down this conviction graph that they just referred to in the article. I couldn’t find it, the original article. I had to find it from someone posting it on x, but this shows the conviction rates. I wonder what hap... Somebody, like, reached out

Malcolm Collins:
to them and was like, you have to

Simone Collins:
take this down. You have Yeah. To There’s something really sus going on with this article and that they swapped out the original graph, which looked a little more stark for a weirdly compressed one. And then they also took this one just totally away in short... In terms of showing the conviction rates. And it’s it’s it’s kinda it’s kinda weird. It’s kinda weird. But I think that’s part of... We’ll we’ll discuss that in a little, like, sort of... We’ll discuss the why did The Economist publish this and also the blowback after it when I finish reading. So I’m almost done here. Ben Brindle of the Migration Observatory notes that many migrants will have witnessed violence or come from poor backgrounds. This drives criminality and being socially isolated and jobless in Britain doesn’t help. Just as large differences in conviction rates exist among British citizens, they will be present across different nationalities too, she says. And the numbers need to be kept in perspective. In twenty ten to twenty twelve, Afghan nationals were convicted of 92 sex crimes. In 2022 to 2024, the total was 102. 10 additional additional sex crimes after the Afghan population has roughly tripled is not an epidemic. Editor’s note 10/26/2026, this article has been changed to clarify the wording on sex offenses by ethnicity.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, I bet it has.

Simone Collins:
They didn’t note, though, and this is what confuses me. Because as I looked at all the x commentary, there’s all these additional graphs that were allegedly there and that appear to be referenced in the article, but they don’t talk about those being removed in in the economist article, which, again, I’m not looking at an archived version. I went and I created an economist account to check this, so I was very confused.

Malcolm Collins:
Anyway Economist went to base, went back, and then scrubbed it.

Simone Collins:
I know. Well, and that’s the thing. So in response to this getting a bunch of traction on x, Lyman Stone, who loves to sort of be a little bit contrary on x. We love him very much, but he loves being contrary. So we know that’s his thing. He posted the... Like, he re quote... Tweeted the article saying, online right. Basically, like, quote, mainstream publications can never show these forbidden facts. The Economist shows the forbidden facts. Online. Right? Who do you get and design it to be the absolute most racist graph we could imagine?

Malcolm Collins:
The most racist... This is with what I talk about. He’s not really a friend of the right wing. I I love that he pretends to be, like, right wing in some respect.

Simone Collins:
With him. We’re friends with him. We like him. He’s our friend.

Malcolm Collins:
No. But hold on. But this is... That’s a... That’s an intentionally disingenuous statement.

Simone Collins:
But But what... So so that’s... But that’s No.

Malcolm Collins:
But hold on. No. Simone, that that statement is factually incorrect and disingenuous. They... He... He’s joking like the right wing is wrong that it would never be published. It gets published and then taken down No.

Simone Collins:
That’s that’s a delicious irony. I don’t know where in the timeline he posted this. I don’t know if he posted it before or after the more offensive version was taken down, but I feel like his post is the perfect pairing to this discussion.

Malcolm Collins:
Guess that they would probably chaired it because the first part shows that he thought he was being very smart, but then the people he was making fun of were proven right. And then he gets mad because they were proven right, And he’s like, it needs to be the most racist graph possible as a joke. Right? Like, oh, you’re mad that the graph... It needs to be accurate. And the new graph is not accurate. They removed the data that used to be there, and then they twisted data that’s there. If you’re putting together something for a client and you twist data, I mean, I hope you wouldn’t do that. Like, it’s it’s intentionally... There are times when it makes sense to do a logarithmic graph. Okay? Yes. Absolutely. In statistics, are times... This is not one of those times. This is not one of those times. Okay? This is where you would do a linear graph because it genuinely is just that much worse. You... When you do a logarithmic graph, you’re basically saying, oh, it’s only natural that they’re this much more of a rapist. Right? Like, it’s not like a

Simone Collins:
It really does. Yeah. So, like, here’s the the revised one, and it’s like, oh, yeah. It looks a little it looks a little different. And then, yeah, when you compare that to the original, it it really does look so much more alarming. Being attacked by a Scottish man. You sit with me. You wild Scotsman? You are making up for that baseline. Right? Classic. I

Malcolm Collins:
know. So all the attacks.

Simone Collins:
He’s... Yeah. He’s absolutely... He’s going for it. What I think is most interesting here is that, one, why would the economist... Like, are we moving the Overton window? Is that what’s happening here where It’s in his default state. You farted. Go back to your iPad or I’m taking it away. Go back to your my puppy, buddy. You farter. You you just came here to fart on me. He just came here to fart on me. I feel like there’s... This is what I do. Oh, great. Welcome to my days. All the time.

Malcolm Collins:
This is homeschooling for us. We give them one one. We let them battle it.

Simone Collins:
You should have seen the doctor’s office.

Malcolm Collins:
.Ai/o

Simone Collins:
s. Yeah. Actually,

Malcolm Collins:
For the the homeschooling system we built for them.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. No. But I I feel like something must be moving with the Overton window where the economist is trying to normalize, like, oh, no. We’ve always we’ve always been somewhat concerned about this.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. We’ve always talked about these

Simone Collins:
sorts of issues. Exactly. It’s becoming serious enough where I think everyone is now admitting it. In fact, you can even see most... I would say probably most progressive candidates in The UK

Speaker 4:
are No. No.

Malcolm Collins:
Tell them that daddy’s gonna come in if they don’t leave.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Daddy’s gonna come in and bop you if you don’t leave. Loves. Oh, that worked. most even now progressive politicians in The UK... Oh, sorry. In Europe and The UK are basically being like, yeah. I mean, we we need to control immigration. We need to slow down what’s going on. We need to take care of our own, which would have been seen as a far right stance in the recent past. So I do really feel like we’ve hit some kind of tipping point where now even the most progressive are saying, oh, oh, like, pump the brakes. No. We always knew this was a problem. And I think it’s it’s similar to the way leading into the midterm elections in The United States right now. A lot of Republicans... Only because they have no choice or, like, oh, yeah. Maybe we need to slow down with, like, data centers because Americans are so brainwashed about how bad they are. I think that there’s just a similar sort of... We have to capitulate to the the mainstream sentiment on on this issue with immigration, with, of course, the big difference being that data centers actually aren’t that damaging as far as I can tell, and immigration appears to genuinely be that that damaging.

Malcolm Collins:
That damaging. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Still found it very interesting. It was super fun to see to see The Economist of all outlets release this information and just people would be like, wait. Did they do that? Did they just do that? So I hope you

Malcolm Collins:
Are we winning the culture war? I think when Malphoid was tweeting...

Simone Collins:
Posting Malphoid memes and The Economist is posting, like, immigrants committing more sex crime graphs, like, something is happening. Don’t want these... I don’t want the immigrant reality to be true, to be fair. I don’t want anyone to be committing sex crimes for the record. I don’t... I I kinda

Malcolm Collins:
feel You want that on the record?

Simone Collins:
You know, like, I feel like the documentary teams and the news crews who come to interview us are gonna be like, oh, I see you’re promoting anti immigrant racist hatred by saying that they’re all rapists. And I was

Malcolm Collins:
like, be great if they weren’t all rapists.

Simone Collins:
I know. Like, I would really prefer that these people didn’t do this, but also they do, and it’s really interesting when left leaning outlets... They admit that they do, especially left leaning outlets in countries where people go to jail for saying that they do. So interesting stuff. Interesting stuff. I love you very much. I’m making you steak and fries tonight. And you want it to be steak Diane where I just saute the sauce and put it over it again?

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. No. We do use the sauce on the side.

Simone Collins:
Just get the on the side. Sauce on the side.

Malcolm Collins:
With extra oil. Yeah. That tells me where to cut. It’s right where the fat is and stuff. if you do the sauce on top of it, can’t see the steak. Sauce on the side. And I am looking at getting for my room now that it’s clean. Now that I have a clean room... Look at this. Look at this. Look at my crazy setup.

Simone Collins:
What a room.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s my new new fancy bed. I was looking at getting some wooden chest for the room, instead of the

Simone Collins:
No. We can’t because kids die in those. They think that they’re hiding places.

Malcolm Collins:
With locks, you psycho.

Simone Collins:
Well, no. I would want locks on them so that you always have them locked so the kids can’t get inside and die.

Malcolm Collins:
No. The way that kids die in them is the locks.

Simone Collins:
Oh, you mean latches? Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. Sure. Sure. And so... Oh, actually, I I could show you some that I’m looking at. You could you could let me know what your thoughts are. Because I wanna try a new feature that I built for this anyway. Okay?

Simone Collins:
It’s now the shop with Malcolm portion of Basecamp. We’re shopping with Malcolm. He’s shopping online. I’m trying to upgrade my wires. We’re gonna find out.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Coffee can be this since Can you see it?

Simone Collins:
Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
What do you think?

Simone Collins:
Wow. It’s only $16.67 for a six month install. I cannot understand by an. Wow. That’s a lot of five star reviews.

Malcolm Collins:
Or, here. This one

Simone Collins:
Forestry practices?

Malcolm Collins:
Better. It’s a little cheaper. Oh, no. It’s only 39 inches. No. I want something larger than that. 47 inches. What I’m looking for are the real big ones, and this one’s 51 inches.

Simone Collins:
You know the children are gonna hide in that, and then they’re gonna put heavy things on top of it when they realize that one of their siblings is hiding inside it, and that sibling is not going to be able to get out. They’re gonna spoon and have a panic attack.

Malcolm Collins:
I will know where... It’s in my room. Chill out. Okay? Then then there’s this one slightly larger, I guess. I’ll I’ll take a look. But, yeah, I think I’m gonna

Simone Collins:
get two for... To replace it. One and a half.

Malcolm Collins:
Still have these big plastic bins in my room, which is how I handle all my clothing.

Simone Collins:
It it would be more slightly to have a lidded, and then the mice can’t crawl in there and poop, which is an added benefit.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. What if, like, an adult, I... Well, it got a

Simone Collins:
toy box for my clothing. Look. Yeah. No. Malcolm has always used pile based logic instead of sky logic, which is to say hanging his clothes. So I kinda like the idea of a chest. It’s it’s very it’s very Harry Potter. It’s very it’s very Malfoyed. It’s very good. Malfoyed.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. On brand. Gotta gotta replace all that. I’ve replaced my janky bed. I’m gonna replace all my janky things with real things.

Simone Collins:
With real. I’m a real boy. No?

Malcolm Collins:
Well, now we’re making money.

Simone Collins:
Never forget. There’s... I think it was, like, very close to the time when you proposed to me when we were still dating ish. It was, like, early days. And you... I think your parents gave you as a gift a really fancy hotel in Ghirardelli Square. Right? The the Fairmont Ghirardelli.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah.

Simone Collins:
And they booked us a suite, and you’re like, Simone, I’m gonna treat you to this romantic weekend. And we we drive over, and I get out of the the the car with my little my little suitcase, and I’m like, oh, does she show exciting? And you get out

Malcolm Collins:
of the

Simone Collins:
car, and you had packed all of your clothes in a black plastic trash bag.

Malcolm Collins:
I had not packed. I had put them in it. It was cheap, and it was there.

Simone Collins:
You walk into the Fairmont Ghilodeli where this, like... Well, it’s probably, like, $2,000 a night hotel room.

Malcolm Collins:
They’re like, closer. Would you would you like to have a bowl or a

Simone Collins:
Would you like some assistance with your Bella?

Malcolm Collins:
No. Thanks. I got it.

Simone Collins:
I guess the trash man has arrived. And you have the most lovely luggage. You know, you’ve Osprey luggage, you know, before it became a a, you know, a rich kid thing, or maybe, I I guess, during the period at which it was a rich kid thing. And I love you. And now look. My... You’re you’re growing up.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s What if my last thing is gonna leave on our FAB? Haven’t talked much about, but I’m I’m quite excited about it. You can now buy physical products on our FAB. We use a couple APIs from the subclass for a pretty big diversity of products from mouse pads to puzzles to wall clings. I’m still testing it right now, so I don’t... Like, I can’t say quality yet until I get the first one. But, like, presumably, it works. If you find any problem with

Simone Collins:
that, you quality we’ve really liked so far is... I hate to say it, but CVS. Yeah. If you

Malcolm Collins:
wanna print just posters to put in frames in your house from things you’ve made on HonorFab, CVS is the way to go?

Simone Collins:
Nate, like, I I don’t know when you’re gonna publish. This is kinda times... I hope you publish this one soon. They have a 60% off promo.

Malcolm Collins:
And then

Simone Collins:
I am not shilling CVS, but I am shilling CVS because they have a 60% off promo for their posters. Oh, did

Malcolm Collins:
you get the three final posters ready?

Simone Collins:
Also, it’s 60% off again. And I was like, oh, this is amazing because they’re not too Are they ready for pickup? I don’t... They got delayed, so they’re not ready yet. The the other ones are ready in an hour. Toastie, I see you. No. No, Jayden. He’s naughty saucy.

Malcolm Collins:
Anyway, love you. And, guys, please keep using our fab. That’s why I’ve been able to afford all of this stuff.

Simone Collins:
Oh my gosh. John is outside in his tractor with his his... With Jackson. He’s two

Malcolm Collins:
years old. It’s really cute.

Simone Collins:
Hold on. Let’s see if I can get this on camera. It’s really cute. You see Jackson on his lap there? Yeah. Ain’t that cute? The kids the kids around our house live the best. Alright, guys. What do you wanna say to the base campers? What what do you wanna say? Help. Help me. Help

Malcolm Collins:
me is what he wants to say. What would you like to say, Octavian?

Speaker 4:
What I want to say if Tim was stomach hugging me. Okay.

Simone Collins:
Octavian, let Twisten say his piece, and then you could say your piece. What do want to say?

Speaker 4:
Today is gonna be Halloween in five days. I wanna say four days. Yeah. I think it’s four days. No. It’s fine.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Octavian, what do you want to say to the base campers? Oh, I want

Speaker 4:
to say is attack more.

Malcolm Collins:
We say our kids love fighting. That’s our culture. Fight. Fight. Fight. Yeah. It’s... This is this

Simone Collins:
is just all day every day. Just... You should’ve... I I actually have some video of the doctor’s office. Titan is just repeatedly kicking Octavian in the head. Like, the the doctors just came in and I, like, I could see they just, like, wanted to walk right out of the room. They’re just like, nope.

Malcolm Collins:
I’ll tell you what. Back when kids are built different, I’ve I’ve... As I’ve said, like, a lot of our friends are orthotics kids. Whenever our kids play with them, it’s always like, woah. Like, I need to pry them off. I’m like, these these people don’t fight all day. That’s not how they show... Play with their friends.

Speaker 4:
Oh, yeah.

Simone Collins:
This is why they they cannot mix with the normals. Any pancake. Well, I love you very much. I’ll let you know when steak’s ready.

Speaker 1:
No. You’re taking out the milk. Don’t let the gripers No.

Malcolm Collins:
should My soy milk. You know what I’m showing off here? And this is why it’s so funny that the gripers are are making fun of me for having milk. The vast minority of humans can process milk. This is showing off my European heritage because I am fully European. So as an adult, I can process milk because I’m descended from hurting people. What are you? Disgusting farmers from The Middle East or something? Disgust me.

Simone Collins:
Asian farmers. Well, it’s it’s actually... It’s it’s now well understood that as long as you have a gut microbiome capable of processing lactose, you can tolerate it. So anyone can make themselves lactose tolerant as long as they’re willing to undergo the two weeks of extremely painful and gassy microbiome growing. And then after that, apparently, at least according to one scientist I was reading, it’s a fairly... Oh, no. This was according to Scott Alexander. It’s a fairly calorie intensive microbiome that grows if you need one to process milk. So maybe it helps you burn more of your food. So, like, it would be actually a net benefit if you build that up, continue to drink a little bit of dairy to keep it alive, but then otherwise, it burned more calories for you. Like, if you have a problem with overeating, I’m like, oh, wow. That’s that’s interesting. But you you can brute force it. You just happen to be naturally... Or it could be, Malcolm, that you are lactose intolerant, but you’ve never stopped drinking milk, you would never know. Because that’s the thing, is that everyone starts out being able to tolerate that, and then they stop drinking milk. And then if they try to drink it again, they get sick. Then, yeah, I find that all I find that all super fascinating. I just... I can’t believe that it wasn’t until, like, maybe six months ago that I even knew that you could brute force lactose tolerance. It’s super interesting to me.

Malcolm Collins:
That is that is fun. But... Yeah. So it’s it’s how you show off your European heritage to those It’s how you show They’re they’re trying to shame it because they don’t want anyone to know impress women by drinking milk like my ancestors did thousands of years ago being like, hey, baby. I can drink milk as an adult. Pretty sexy. Right? An additional source of calories and a very well balanced one too. Yeah. Milk, cheese, all of those fun things. Imagine the sad world that these people live in. Anyway, check out rfab.ai or Google Reality Fabricator. It is our website for not safe for work chatbots, safe for work chatbots, AI storytelling, AI art creation, video recording, video editing, really anything you want to do with AI. Show us some love. It’s how we make our money, and we hope to be able to reinvest that money in our community. So have fun.

Speaker 7:
Mommy, can you hold this for me? You have a toothbrush? Find anything, Torsten? Mommy, I wanna go in the water too. No. No. Maybe not go in the water, but around. It’s a little chilly. It’s a late October day. Wanna scoop water. Yeah. You wanna scoop water? Oh gosh. Maybe it’s a little cold for that. I see the frogs. You see frogs? They sure do.

We examine the cultural drivers including family pressure, the curse of 35 in hiring, and the desire to avoid visible unemployment gaps. Real user stories reveal how these spaces help with job transitions, skill building, and social face-saving while contrasting sharply with American coworking spaces focused on actual productivity.

The episode also features dubbed clips from the original viral skit and explores whether similar services could emerge in the post-AI job market. We’re personally quite pleased with the dubbing system Malcolm vibecoded for Rfab.ai—if you want to try it out, you can do so here!

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:
Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be diving into the phenomenon of a new type of business in China Oh. Where people pay to pretend like they’re working under a fake boss that gives them fake jobs. And this came from a China fact chasers video. love those guys. I’ve been a fan of them forever. So they did a video on this one girl who was talking about how every day she goes out, she takes the train, she pretends to work, and, you know, she stops all these ways she does it cheaply. And it’s her family, and they’re like, this is an increasing phenomenon in China. So I saw that video, and I was like, I want to know more. So I take it to AI, and the AI says, actually, the trend has advanced significantly beyond what they’re reporting in that video, and there are now centers in multiple major Chinese cities that are fake workstations. And what’s cool that I will be able to bring you guys that no one else can is dubbed a video of the advertisements for these places and the comedy sketch that kicked it off because rfab.ai’s API and website both offer dubbing. And so you get to see some of our dubbing work. I I don’t even think the, China Fact Chaser guys could do that. So... Or they could if they use our facts. I’d like... I’d give them free credits if anybody knows them.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Would help talk with them.

Malcolm Collins:
But, the idea actually originally came from a Chinese variety show in December 2024. In the skit, somebody visits a fictional pretend to work company where people pay a fee to sit in an office, slack off, and maintain the appearance of employment so they can more easily transition into a real job later.

Simone Collins:
Oh, wait. So it’s like a resume stuffer?

Malcolm Collins:
we’ll get to why they do it. There’s actually a complicated number of reasons why they do it. Okay. but here is the video.

Speaker 3:
Everyone here is just pretending

Speaker 4:
So a bunch of unemployed people playing house at your place.

Speaker 3:
Other than not paying salaries, our company is identical to any regular company.

Speaker 4:
Like, what’s the point of writing this?

Speaker 5:
Only your regular job has so much meaning.

Speaker 4:
Alright. I excuse me. You guys want an office system installed. Right?

Speaker 3:
Yes. Our company wants to install an o a system.

Speaker 4:
No problem. So what exactly does your company...

Speaker 3:
We’re Pretending to Work LLC.

Speaker 4:
Pretending?

Speaker 3:
A virtual company. Everyone who comes here pretends to work each day. On one hand, you keep it from your family. On the other, you stay in work mode, bridge the resume gap. So when a new job pops up, it’s a seamless transition. You catch my drift?

Speaker 4:
Got it. So it’s just a bunch of unemployed people playing house here.

Speaker 3:
Our management system is exceptionally strict, clocking in twice a day, alternating six day work weeks, meaning you might have unpaid weekend overtime.

Speaker 4:
Unpaid? What are you ever paid? You’re a fake company.

Speaker 3:
You might not get it, but except for not paying salaries, we are identical to any real company. Feel free to look around.

Simone Collins:
Honestly, nice looking kid... Up in The US. This

Speaker 4:
company makes you write weekly reports too? What’s the point of writing

Malcolm Collins:
this?

Speaker 5:
Aren’t you a regular job at so much meaning? My Rich,

Speaker 4:
I I just wanna know why you guys are grinding over weekly reports here. What’s the point? I’m not like them. At my old company, already pretended to do nothing all day. Coming here, I’m like a fish in water.

Malcolm Collins:
A bright future ahead. Just ignore him. Fresh grads like that, seen tons of them. Big talkers, zero skills, he’ll quit in no time. Unlike a seasoned vet like me, solid.

Simone Collins:
Solid. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4:
Don’t be solid here. If you’re solid here, you’re doomed. Hey, Hammer. Why don’t I set up your accounting system too while I’m at it?

Malcolm Collins:
My dubbing is pretty good though. Right? Our accounting is good.

Speaker 3:
Yeah.... With system because...

Simone Collins:
It’s all good books. Shh. Keep it down. Keep it down.

Speaker 4:
A fake company keeps fake books, obviously. Your company’s fake, so you really don’t pay taxes. You guys are just a murder mystery lark.

Malcolm Collins:
Hammer, is this the fake quote you gave us?

Speaker 3:
What’s wrong, miss Lee? Did I quote too high?

Malcolm Collins:
Just so you could win the fake bid. We brought in a whole fake bidding crew and put on this whole show.

Speaker 4:
Wasn’t it a show to begin with? Why is he so deep in character? Where’d you even hire this

Simone Collins:
actor?

Speaker 3:
Take care, mister Lee.

Simone Collins:
We can work something out.

Speaker 3:
You might not know, but he’s our company’s fake client. Used to be a real client, but after getting laid off, he couldn’t handle the drop in status. So he came here to role play as a client.

Speaker 4:
So he’s literally just here on a power trip?

Speaker 3:
Not entirely. He tipped $200 before he left.

Speaker 4:
I’m telling you, this is definitely a larp.

Speaker 3:
The corporate world is just one giant movie set anyway. Everyone plays their part. Isn’t that great?

Simone Collins:
It’s, like, the most honest thing ever.

Malcolm Collins:
A real good job arguing for it.

Simone Collins:
Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
I can see why it took off so big.

Simone Collins:
No. I I could see it taking off here too. I think your mic shifted or you’re not talking close enough to it.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, I moved the mic. Yeah. So let’s put in another video because I I I gotta really show off

Simone Collins:
my Dubbing is so good.

Malcolm Collins:
Did you notice the consistent voices across the same character? The flirty voice when she was being flirty.

Simone Collins:
And and the natural language and, like, slang use, it’s it’s very,

Malcolm Collins:
very good.

Simone Collins:
Wow. You know, it’s amazing. And we’re only just beginning. Kinda scary. But, no. Honestly, Malcolm, I I I see it, like, I see it...

Malcolm Collins:
Hold Hold on. Hold We’ll it. We’ll watch the...

Speaker 6:
I online plan to open a company called Pretend to Work LLC. It has literally everything a real company has. They accept paying you a salary. You only pay $30 a day, and it even comes with free lunch. Zero actual business. He provides cubicles, so people pretending to work and just sit there all day on their phones. He’ll even do rounds periodically, you can still get that thrilling rush of slacking off on the clock.

Simone Collins:
He’ll even do rounds. Is that a real is that a real commercial, though, for a real Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s a real commercial for a pretend company.

Simone Collins:
No. Look. Look. Hear me out. Okay? There are a lot of people who have really embarrassing gaps on their resumes. I think people would pay a company. In The US, they wouldn’t pay to go to the office. So, no. No. No. I’m not doing that. That is... I think that’s a more Chinese thing. But I could see there being a genuine industry in The United... Maybe there already is where you will pay a company to vouch for you to, like, pick up the phone for reference calls to, like, appear as re... It’s on LinkedIn. It has a website. It has, like, a paper trail. It has a funds number. You know, it is... It has a a tax ID. It is a registered company.

Malcolm Collins:
The reason when you keep saying that this could take off in The US, that’s one the of reasons I’m talking about it because I think that in the post AI economy, the... This is... This could be where we’re heading. You pay Oh my god. You feel like you have the job Well, if you’re

Simone Collins:
already here, how many people are working for fake? I mean, honestly,

Malcolm Collins:
it’s not true, though. Most jobs are fake anyway. But what’s funny is the idea of... Like, as soon as you could textualize it this way

Simone Collins:
Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
The the security and joy in the office theater environment. The thing that I hate most about a job, and I will not work at a company that does this. If there is an ounce of office theater... But this is all office theater, nothing else. And you can look at it and be like, how is this different than, one of those WeWork? Was that the name of the one in The United States? Like, the co working spaces? Yes. There are a lot of big co working spaces. they’re they’re very different in a number of categories. Like, they offer superficially the same thing, but just to go through where where their point of difference is. in a US co working space, the main purpose is a remote job freelancing or working on a start up. And we have kind of worked in them on start ups before or looked at buying units in them in the past as well. They’re they’re actually a pretty good deal for for the money. And and they often have a lot of really cool amenities, to be honest. You know, you get a Slurpee machine. You get the snacks. You get the... All that. We we visited one right in your house recently where somebody was Yeah.

Simone Collins:
For the PC repair guy.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. at the Chinese pretend to work offices, explicitly, it’s about maintaining the appearance of having a job. it serves a very different function for the people who go. Yeah. So the the... Really, there’s... You were asking, like, why do people use these? There’s a few key reasons. One is in a lot of Chinese... Well, the biggest reason is is so they they lose a job and they don’t want their family to That’s the number one reason. Or they

Simone Collins:
Well, I guess if if they live with their family, then their family knows if they’re just going off, I guess.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So that... Well, it it makes it harder to maintain the bit, blah blah blah. Second is and then this has become a huge phenomenon in China where people don’t wanna, like, have everyone know they’re unemployed. Like, un... Being unemployed, like, sucks after, like, a week. Right? Like, all the free time and everything. I mean, Simone and I are technically unemployed for the longest time at this point, but, like, we’re making money because we do all of our our gigs, we’re constantly busy. I’m the busiest unemployed person ever. I mean, I guess I’m technically CEO of our FAB, but, like, I don’t know if I consider that a job. We’re still not taking money from it. Although although I am expensing computer equipment to it. So

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. You got your clickity clack keyboard. So that’s exciting.

Malcolm Collins:
Got my fancy Galvanic response keyboard. Or What is it Galvanic Piston or something? It’s like a His Keytron. I don’t know. Apparently, keyboard people like them, and it’s

Simone Collins:
a clicky pattern. It’s just one of the old styled... Whatever.

Malcolm Collins:
But, anyway, so I’ve... I have upgraded my life. I’ve upgraded I’ve upgraded my... Here. I’ll show you guys my life upgrade that you guys have allowed by using our products.

Simone Collins:
Aw. Thanks, guys. Oh god. Don’t... Oh, yeah. That. Check it out.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. I got the two big screens. I got a wireless keyboard and mouse, and I can just wake up and start working. The

Simone Collins:
the room. The room. The room. The room. I don’t go in there, guys. I don’t I don’t go in there.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s the only place I don’t have to follow Simone’s rules, so it’s a little different. another group that uses these a lot is in Chinese colleges. There is often a rule that you have to have a job before you can graduate.

Simone Collins:
Oh. And I think Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
The reason for this is because, like, in US colleges, one of the metrics that they’re judged on is the percent of people employed at graduation. So they basically changed this metric by not letting you graduate if you’re unemployed. This is actually a problem with some US colleges as well that are like the paid whatever one is. Anyway, it it it... A for profit colleges in The US. By the way, never go to a for profit college in The US. If if you’re a fan and you’re looking for advice, they’re they’re generally not worth it. Like, either figure things out on your own or... Especially in the age of AI because AI, you know, if you’re agentic, should be able to teach you to do anything from plumbing to electrical work to woodworking to... AI taught me how to put that together that screen thing. I was like, how how do I get this to rest on the bread? And it’s like

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Why so

Simone Collins:
But more importantly, figured out that dubbing thing, which makes it easy for us to access these things, which is so cool.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Everything in my life, it’s AI facilitated from the things I screw drive to the place I work to getting the screens to work. I even make, like, little software for myself. Like, I wanted to be able to make the screens go dark so I could sleep more easily without having to turn them off and on again. I So made a little software that you can download for free on our fab. Yeah. I always offer all my little

Simone Collins:
software fab. My other You think people could just turn off their screens? It’s not It takes a few seconds. Oh, the struggles you live with. The the struggles. How do you live?

Malcolm Collins:
So the the other reason is you’ve lost one job and you’re in between jobs, and you need to make it look like you don’t have a period of unemployment on your resume. That’s that’s another reason that people use these. And then I think another reason is... And I think that this is why the pretend boss is a part of the advertising and experience at a number of these places is getting off on the idea of being in a work environment where you can ignore a boss. Having a boss come up and and give you a task and you being able to say, no. I will not. I think for so many... Like, I think it could take off in Japan too for, like, a lot of jeep... Japanese people.

Simone Collins:
Oh, just, oh, just the sheer novelty of it, you mean. Finally, you’re not under their tyranny.

Malcolm Collins:
Going in, doing the office saying, and then just being able to be like, no. Fuck off. I mean, honestly, this compared to my daily life is what the Sabbath feels like for us. It’s like... Because I’m still waking up next to my computers. I’m still allowed to, like, do stuff. We don’t we don’t have restrictions on, like, technology or, you know, anything that you find restful or fun. So it’s like, you wake up and it’s still my world with my interest, but I can’t let the little part of me that’s, like, my internal boss tell me to do anything.

Simone Collins:
Oh, I see what you mean.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. Like, he comes in and he’s like, Malcolm, tap tap tap. You really need to get on writing that game script. And I go, no. That’s a job. I’m gonna have fun and read different books of the bible against each other to look for different things.

Simone Collins:
Fun. Yeah. That was our weekend. Was

Malcolm Collins:
That was our big thing this weekend. And, unfortunately, we have moved to... In terms of the track series, and I I just wanna say sorry for this to fans who are of it. We can’t put it on the main channel anymore. The last video of it really bombed, which hurts us in the algo, and we’re, like, big enough that it matters now. And so that was the one on Isaac that I really liked. I thought the the binding of Isaac

Simone Collins:
was was Apparently... No. Abram. Abraham. Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
I guess. Binding of Isaac is is the name of that story. It was fantastic. I thought her take was fantastic. But, you know, we had another one come out that’s on cucking of Abraham because there’s, like, a repeated story where they have their wife marry other... Or almost marry other men.

Simone Collins:
It happens three times. Abraham runs a cuck scam. This is how he gets resources, slaves and and livestock. And it’s a little weird. It’s a little weird. But it has interesting... It is interesting moral implications because it it kind of implies that it it is more about the outcome that you produce that matters.

Malcolm Collins:
Why do think much? God like him if he keeps doing things that appear transparently immoral even though he says

Simone Collins:
a righteous person, he produced something wonderful, and therefore, he is rewarded.

Malcolm Collins:
In second cooking scam, God literally warns the guy beforehand, and the guy’s like, I didn’t know. And God’s like, yeah. That’s why I’m

Simone Collins:
warning you. Like, you’re blameless in this.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s it’s my guy. He can’t stop getting guys to

Simone Collins:
manage himself. Yeah. He’s got a problem.

Malcolm Collins:
Even god comes off as, like, the concerned bro. Like, okay. I gotta worry

Simone Collins:
about this. So sorry.

Malcolm Collins:
But the the one that we’re gonna do on the... That... I’m I’m so excited to record it because it’s been so illuminating toward me on the the books is is just gonna be too offensive to mainstream Christians. People were like, oh, I can’t wait till Symone reads the New Testament. And Symone reads the New Testament, and she comes away with the exact

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Y’all made a big mistake. You should not have asked us to look. We’re not gonna say more than that. We shouldn’t. Okay. Keep keep... China and provide a plan.

Malcolm Collins:
Say that people will like is the... It’s the the takeaway that traditional Christians are gonna like is Mark and Q are almost certainly far earlier than mainstream, even Christian scholarship puts him at. And I... I’m I’m pretty sure that Mark was written within a couple years of Jesus’ death, if not within a year of his death. And there... And there’s a lot of evidence of this that we’ll go into in that. And the queue, I think, was written during Jesus’ life as a way... Because this was common back then when you have, like, giant crowds. and if somebody was talking, you couldn’t hear in the back. So somebody would, like, write down the important stuff, and they’d share it, and they sort of use it like an advertisement for, like, future talks. You you see this for,

Simone Collins:
like, Abramowitz. Collection... Was a collection of sayings probably compiled from what people recorded at the time of his various speeches. But, anyway, we stan, Mark and q. Let’s go on. Back to the scene. Oh, you are the true stuff.

Malcolm Collins:
You’re too afraid of me saying that we think Matthew is foolish.

Simone Collins:
Can we move on?

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. We want people to hate

Simone Collins:
us too much publicly.

Speaker 7:
Actually, think what we’re saying here affirms what we have to say about Mark because it shows that we’re not taking just, like, the default Christian perspective or something like this. Mark really does seem to be written a lot earlier than the other accounts. Again, we’ll go over it in a weekend episode. As to why we say this about Matthew, just take any of the stories that Mark, Luke, and Matthew go over, and you’ll go over Mark and Luke, and it’ll be like, oh, well, Jesus walked up to a guy, and he blessed him. And then Matthew will be like, and then, like, a demon popped out, and then Jesus shot him with hand magic. And then a helicopter... Bunch of helicopters came out of nowhere and started shooting everyone. But then Jesus zapped them with his AK 47. And you’re like, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Why why are you the later author adding all this embellishment to the story?

Speaker 10:
And if you wanna hate us for saying this, please at least run the experiment that we ran that led us to this perspective first, which is read the stories that are in all three accounts next to each other and see if one of them jumps out as the odd man out, or seems a little off.

Speaker 19:
And one of the reasons I add this here is part of the problem of being a true believer is you can’t just say what’s popular to people. You know, you have to say what seems to be true to you. And if something seems seriously off, you know, I want someone to push back or be like, okay. Yeah. This is why despite being the latest of the accounts, it’s adding all of these extra elements that the earlier accounts presumably would have mentioned if it was... If if it happened that way.

Malcolm Collins:
But the tech... To continue here, typical users. And if you want... If you wanna see why, you can you can watch that episode. Or if you don’t wanna subscribe to us, you can ask us for the episode when we make it. Typical users, employee, remote workers, freelancers, small teams, the typical users. And the Chinese one would be unemployed people, your video went out. Job seekers in a gap, people under family pressure, what people actually do in... What people actually do in The US ones, it’s work on client projects, coatings, meetings, deep work. in the Chinese ones, it’s scroll, job hunt, play games, watch shows, chat, and sometimes light products. Come on. That’s what

Simone Collins:
they do at WeWorks too. I think the one reason why this happens less at WeWorks is that it’s actually self employed people who are either performatively working and trying to pretend that their startup’s actually gonna become a thing when they’re burning through their savings, or they actually need to... Like, their business depends on their ability to meet with clients in a place that isn’t their home, like the guy who’s fixed your laptop keyboard.

Malcolm Collins:
Do you mean like I’ve been doing on our fab for the past two years? I remember there’s this old tweet if you guys put a search for it. In the early days of Art Fab when it wasn’t very good and, you know, we were just learning to make things, and, it was like, oh, we won’t... Somebody had asked about it and then this guy was like, what a joke. You know, just like Malcolm and Simone, this piece of garbage technology. Right? It’s never gonna be anything. That’s a big community, so screw you. It’s a work. So in their marketing, they market having fake interviews to, like, get a position at it, And you get, like, success signs, and you you do, like, boss role play and stuff like that. Like, the the guy tipped to pretend to be a client and feel social function, convenience, and community is for the American ones. And then the Chinese ones, it’s explicitly about face saving, so family and relatives think you’re employed, and routines so you don’t sit at home all day. And then the the atmosphere is professional and focused in The US ones, and at these ones, it’s often deliberately theatrical or low pressure. So if you’re talking about how big has this gotten, there are locations in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Daozhong, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Conmen, and other cities. So, very, very big already. Right? and this skit was only a couple years ago. the pretend to work company in Dongyo, this was reported on by the BBC. The owner, was pseudonymous, a 30 year old who had previously run a retail business that closed down during COVID. He charged at 31 a day. Desk filled quickly after launch in April 2025, and he has described it as selling the dignity of being a useless person. Wait. Oh, the dignity of not being a useless person. Sorry. I am in the middle of a brilliant ship there. First, yes, a social experiment. The Hangzhou Pretend To work infinite company founded by Chen Yang Zin, a nineteen nineties born entrepreneur with commercial real estate background, offers standard desks, meeting rooms, and more. daily 31 monthly packages around $299.01 with some student discounts or attendance rebates reported. It went viral, attracted media, and later evolved towards support light entrepreneurship slash freelancers. Local reports note it is not highly profitable on desk fees alone. Cost of utilities, management, etcetera, can exceed revenue for a few dozen users. Beijing locations, including Yangtze and other neighborhoods like feature mock elements that have been covered in on-site reporting. So that is... The... Oh, yeah. The... Also, the thing I found interesting is the the curse of 35, which I didn’t know about. Have you heard about this in China?

Simone Collins:
Never heard about it. I’ve heard about a lot, but not that.

Malcolm Collins:
The idea is that once you hit 35, you become harder to hire and easier to fire. Employers are more poor, younger workers who are cheaper, more willing to do long hours. The famous nine nine nine six culture, 9AM and 9PM, six days a week. That’s not... Oh, yeah. But you’re commuting to an office for that. That’s pretty bad. That’s brutal. Seen as more adaptable or energetic. How do you how do you reproduce? No wonder they’re going out of business. Going out

Simone Collins:
of business. Yeah. I mean, I think it would be different if there were... If it was, like, a barracks situation, if you could just sleep there, or if it was, like, a a a fire station situation where maybe you spent those kinds of hours there but then had four days off. Kind of similar to how it works for couples who famously... Like, nurses and firefighters or doctors and firefighters who marry and then are able to raise kids with a complimentary schedule where there’s always a parent at home. That could work pretty well, I think, if you wanna have an insane work schedule. But I am starting to question working that many hours being helpful at all.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, apparently, it’s it’s common in Chinese job postings to say that you have to be under 35, and there’s a five year

Simone Collins:
old saying that captures There’s not, like, a law against this. Surely, there

Malcolm Collins:
are lot. Or in China, laws don’t matter that much. Wow. The saying goes, too old to work at 35, too young to retire at 60.

Simone Collins:
Tooth. Yeah. What are you supposed to do for those interim years? That’s insane.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s very yeah. I I I feel bad for the... A lot of these people. I mean, I’m over 35.

Simone Collins:
You’re

Malcolm Collins:
35.

Simone Collins:
We’re unemployable in China. We’re unemployable in America. Unemployable in America. Isn’t this also a thing in Korea? Isn’t it kind of famous that middle aged Koreans end up working in restaurants or sort of family run restaurants because they’re not really considered to be employ... Employable? Am I just misremembering this? I feel like I heard this somewhere, people talking about it. Like, this class of middle aged Koreans that are working in restaurants because they can’t get job jobs. But I’m probably misremembering this.

Malcolm Collins:
Anyway, oh, yes. Yes. You are getting this right. this is... Sorry. I I blanked there. In Korea, there’s a common phenomenon where when you hit over 35, because it’s also difficult. The the phenomenon... Actually, I understand it better because of my time in Korea. It’s not just that you’re seeing is not willing to work. It has to do with, it’s considered, like, taboo to have somebody under under you who is older than you.

Simone Collins:
Right. Yeah. You’re Right. So you... If you’re, like, a 35 year old manager, you can’t hire anyone older than you because it would be demeaning. Because Yeah. Culturally, they’re your senior.

Malcolm Collins:
And you’re supposed to naturally move up within a company as you age and stay with the same company your entire life.

Simone Collins:
So if you don’t move up, then you move out.

Malcolm Collins:
But if you haven’t moved up, you move out.

Simone Collins:
Right. That was the dynamic. Yes. Yes. Yes. And it has to do with that that weird hierarchy thing where you cannot. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So so for a lot of these people who move out, sort of a I always wished I could job in Korea is opening a restaurant. And it’s it’s one of the reasons why the restaurant culture is so good, but a lot of them start restaurants. But it’s also like the restaurant industry in Korea is so competitive. But it’s so good. So good. Much better than The United States. I mean, United States doesn’t haul a cattle to Korean restaurants. And I’ve tried Korean restaurants in The United States. I tried to do, like, Korean chicken. They just don’t do it well. You you you can only really recreate that with desperation.

Simone Collins:
Desperation Well, ethnic Koreanness because most of the Korean restaurants that we have been to in The United States are staffed by Mexicans. Nothing against Mexicans. It’s just that maybe Mexicans don’t get something deep and intrinsic about Korean foods. They haven’t stressed.

Malcolm Collins:
You have to work your artistic. That that... That’s something that may never pay back and that just the desperation of the Korean restaurant culture. But, anyway, I decided to look for direct quotes from people who are using these To try to understand what they’re actually saying about this, what they’re actually doing about this. So Quinn Wan, the mother of two, left a finance firm admin job developing a not safe for work product line while using the space six days a week. She said, I used to blush when I pitched my business. Now I have a thicker skin. If I don’t succeed, am I pretending to work right? The the... Basically, she’s actually trying to do, a a startup thing Which is more traditionally what they’d used for in The United States. And this is from the Absolutely. The Beijing pretending to work colocation. Then there’s a person, Yang Zhao, whose restaurant in Bao’un collapsed, and he used the Shenzhen pretend to workspace for 61 a day. He said, I feel happy. It’s like we’re working together as a group. He sends photos to his parents and said that the place gives me a reason to keep going while he teaches himself AI tools. Oh,

Simone Collins:
well, that’s productive. Great

Malcolm Collins:
use of time. Saving face waste.

Simone Collins:
Totally. Yeah. I... Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my god. Guys, if you’re not learning AI tools, you need to be learning AI tools, please.

Simone Collins:
It’s intimidating, but it’s super worth it.

Malcolm Collins:
I don’t care if you’re a plumber. I don’t care if you’re a roofer. I don’t care if you’ve been coding your entire life. I don’t care if you’ve been accounting your entire life. Figure them out.

Simone Collins:
And a big thing I learned recently,

Malcolm Collins:
not as relevant to us, but, Claude code five x is about the same as Claude code 20 x in terms of what it gives you per month, which I didn’t realize. It’s mostly at the daily spend limit that that applies. Anyway, to continue here, Yang Yifin uses the Shenzhen space rebuilding confidence after setbacks, now doing cross border ecommerce and preparing for exams. People here told me not to belittle myself. I was reminded that if I commit to what interests me, respect will follow. I come here every week. It’s not so much about working as it is about finding myself. Now that’s really interesting because, what makes this different than, like, The US hustle culture that you would have at a US workspace, which which is... Like, if you go to The US spaces, it’s all, like, startup people, like, doing their own personal businesses. Like, hustle, hustle, hustle. Don’t you hustle? How... Are you working hard enough? Where these spaces, it’s like, hey. Don’t feel hard. You know, focus on what you’re passionate about. I know you’re embarrassed and demoralized right now. We all are because we’re at a pretend to workspace. And then from local reporting, and this is on Yinjiang’s pretend to work company, Xi, a live streaming art teacher and content creator, on why she goes, she says, I’ve been working from home. After a while, it feels a bit oppressive, and I want a face to face interaction with other people. After seeing the pretend to work company online, I came. I can imagine wanting nothing less. This is so not my genetics, my people, or my culture. I would never want that. I’m going to a pretend office to

Simone Collins:
be around other people. It’s deeply disturbing.

Malcolm Collins:
My life has improved so much since working from home. Oh my god. And we were working from home before we were, like, unemployed working from home, but now I’m doing what I want. I’m Tracy Jordan. Geez.

Speaker 12:
Which one of my two favorite pastimes shall I indulge in? Video games or pornography? That’s it. Make a porn video game.

Speaker 14:
A porn video game? It can’t be done. Look, Trey, history’s greatest perverts have tried. Walt Disney, Larry Flynt, the Japanese, but they can’t do it

Speaker 12:
No. For the first time in my life, I know my purpose. I’m doing this for my children. My geniuses come alive like toys when your back is turned.

Speaker 15:
Tracy, what are you doing? They need you in wardrobe.

Speaker 12:
I’m inventing a porn video game.

Speaker 15:
Let this man work. No one is to disturb him.

Speaker 14:
Don’t hold your breath, Pete. It can’t be done, or else I would have solved it a long time ago.

Speaker 15:
I’m giving my whole life to porn, and he does it in one day. One day.

Malcolm Collins:
Alright. Zhang Wang, a recent graduate short video creator, one day visitor. I spent thirty one to experience pretend to work for a day and unexpectedly got treated. A meal basically broke even. Oh, he didn’t know about the meal.

Simone Collins:
That’s nice.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s fun. Yeah. she also filmed herself in the office, sent it to her mom, captured, found a job, and said her mom replied something like, buy some more formal clothes. She described it as joking with her mom who wants her to get a proper office job instead of doing self media. Well, I mean, that is the most desirable job these days. I guess we kind of have a job doing self media. Isn’t that isn’t that funny? It’s self media. Making money. But where where is the... Where do our YouTube checks deposit? Do you manage that? Yes. Okay. Just so you know it’s going somewhere. It’s going... They’re not lost. No. Okay. Okay. Well, there was an early period where some of it did get lost, you remember.

Simone Collins:
Well, that’s because it was turned off for, like, three months. Remember?

Malcolm Collins:
No. No. No. It wasn’t that. It was, like, before that, it, like, didn’t count as us. I I don’t remember. Anyway, Zhao Wang, recent graduate short video creator, one day visitor. Oh, speaking of lost money, you... Have you gotten any of the other payment providers working for Artfab?

Simone Collins:
No. You want me to revisit that?

Malcolm Collins:
I would because that could get shut off at any moment. You know?

Simone Collins:
Okay. Working on that.

Malcolm Collins:
I have Bruno on getting crypto working. So that should be done by the end of week because people are like, oh, I have to docs myself to use it. I’m like, no. You don’t. You can use privacy.com. We explicitly chose a payment provider that allowed privacy.com, which basically allows you to use a fake thing.

Simone Collins:
Back to the topic.

Malcolm Collins:
And you can use local encryption, bro. Like, we don’t even store anything. Oh, wow. And then, Zhao Wang, oh, yeah. We are just over there. And then Xu, jewelry ecommerce seller, who has been there for half a month. This is a this is a long term user. This is a I’m making jewelry now person. Yeah. I know. He... They said, I could say I’m one of the earliest regular employees. I even got priority seat selection. I chose the one at the end of the row relatively quieter. She noted the place is good... Close to home in a office of her building with good air conditioning, and that she finds the atmosphere useful to her work, which I, you know, certain people do. So the question is, are we all gonna be pretending to work soon? I think you have a point in that this is providing a real service that some real people may want.

Simone Collins:
It’s hard enough as it is getting a job. And I I could see, you know, people really worrying about gaps that they have as they attempt to get new jobs. I mean, even just the process of getting a new job can create a really, really long resume gap these days because it’s impossible to get work. So be... And, also, there there is this lemons, like... So a lot of people argue that the market of people seeking jobs is a lemon market. That is to say, like, the only people who are seeking jobs are not the people you want to employ. So businesses tend to prioritize people who are currently employed because they don’t want the people who’ve been fired. They want the people who are so good that their employers can’t let them go. They... That’s why so much money is put into recruitment of people who are currently employed and not necessarily finding people who are looking for jobs actively. So I think that being able to frame yourself as currently employed while trying to seek a new job is even advantageous if you don’t have a long gap. It makes sense. I could totally see this picking up.

Malcolm Collins:
By the way, if you’re worried about, like, oh, you know, I’m not being scouted. Is that a... Simone and I, over this entire... We’ve never... I’ve only been seriously scouted once. And I’m quite surprised about it because I think I’m one of the most... In terms of

Simone Collins:
my track record. Scouted. I remember. Yeah. That was forever ago. Yeah. Well, they ended up dropping me afterwards when they were like, oh, you would get us canceled super fast. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. But they’re like, other than that, your resume is impeccable. But but now who knows? You know? They... Well, we we won’t brand our fab as having not safer work components. just be like, Mudpuppy, the AI tablet for kids.

Simone Collins:
It’s so good.

Malcolm Collins:
It is so good. I I think this is

Simone Collins:
a really good development. I think it’s really funny. And my... The extra delicious layer on top of it is just the reality that most office work is performative to begin with. And so this is just the most honest form of office work where you’re just paying to be there and actually getting something done by learning AI while you’re there, hopefully. This whole area.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. One of the things that I find most interesting is, having a company that’s finally growing and successful now is

Simone Collins:
I almost wonder, like, how

Malcolm Collins:
do other startups make it work? Right? Like, I had this view that, like, okay. As soon as you have something that’s successful and people are using and people are sharing and that is best in class, VCs are gonna find you and start reaching out to you and, like, begging to be in your company. I was like, that’s why we’re not getting VCs because we don’t have a profitable company. Right? And yet that’s... We’re we’re there now, and we have a podcast that presumably people are aware of us. And even VCs that are, like, major VCs have invited us to speak for them. I mean, like, top five VCs. I I can’t say which ones have asked us to speak on their behalf, in in their conferences and stuff. and yet, like, nothing. I just don’t know how it works anymore. I’m like, what are they doing? What are they investing in? How how is this... How is that entire economic engine determined?

Simone Collins:
I don’t know. I’m... I can only imagine that it’s basically just... I know this person... That that it’s network based referrals at this point, just like with how jobs end up getting filled. I I I don’t think it’s based on any perception... Realistic perception of merit.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, yeah, but it is network based. I mean, we have 1,600,000 people watch us

Simone Collins:
just on YouTube every not friends with the right people who are friends with the people making the decisions. We’re also very polarizing people that many, many people really, really dislike. So

Malcolm Collins:
it just makes sense. True that. But, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s it’s been interesting to get to this point as people who were faking work for a long time. I mean, if you if you see my room, if you see where we’re filming from, if you see our filming setup, it’s so faked compared to my... I have... I went

Simone Collins:
to Isn’t that the opposite of performative work?

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. It’s exactly that. I went to my friends who have, like, a way smaller channel than us. Like, one, like, teeny tiny channel. Our video with her hasn’t gotten many views. If people wanna check it out, it’s called

Simone Collins:
Oh, now you’re gonna name her Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins:
I’m not saying anything negative. What’s it called? Smart girl dumb questions, and it’s got, like, a YouTube channel. But it’s it’s just the basics on us. So, like, if you’re looking for something controversial, it’s more interesting a reflection on her and, like, that world that she’s from that’s, like, New York elite, right, where, you know, we go in and we film with her, and there’s, like, 15 cameras, 15 microphones. There’s a crew. She’s changing outfits in between shots, you know, doing, like, multiple shots a day. I mean, it’s it’s obviously, like, a big hustle, but it was really... Like, from my perspective, I was like, what what are you doing all this for? Like, just get your little stinky microphone, stick it on your computer, your put computer in front of a... Look. This is this is what I’m talking to when I’m talking to you guys. Okay? This. This is this is where we are. This is my room. Okay?

Simone Collins:
Oh god. Why do you have to do this to me?

Malcolm Collins:
This this is my level of professionalism. Okay? That’s that’s where we are in terms of content production right now. Okay? and I don’t I don’t think our content production is bad, honestly. I think we we got way better microphones. We got the big expensive ones. Because she had, like, four of them, and she was really the one who convinced me to get it. Because I was like, well, if she’s gonna have four of them, we should at least have two. And now we are doing real work.

Simone Collins:
I think they might have rented them. I think that was... That came with the studio that she rented.

Malcolm Collins:
Well... And in our real work, I do it from bed now. You know? So that’s that’s how I do real work. All day in bed, like kim.com.

Simone Collins:
Like kim.com. What is he up to? I hope he’s okay. I wish him well.

Malcolm Collins:
What is kim.com up to? He he was like a thing for a while. Like, he wasn’t incompetent.

Simone Collins:
I know. I know. I think he he went to New Zealand and lives in his compound. I think he lives in his compound with... Is it his second wife and a ton of kids, if memory serves? And, hopefully, he’s happy.

Malcolm Collins:
So he’s in a long running legal battle fighting extradition to The United States Yeah. While recovering from health issues. On July Tremendously heavy. Yes. Twenty six twenty twenty six, New Zealand’s court of appeal dismissed Kim’s latest challenge against the 2024 order by the New Zealand justice minister to extradite him to The US. He’s faced with criminal charges including racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering, and wire fraud relating to the files that sharing website mega upload. That’s disappointing given that nobody cares about that type of stuff anymore.

Simone Collins:
Like I told you in that episode on stuff that that weekend episode for the podcast, most people will not have seen it, but the stuff that you can get sent to jail for that, like, everyone does anyway, that this is why it’s so scary to be alive today. Like, we’re all breaking laws. Like, all of us could be sent to jail as soon as someone hates us. You know, the wrong person hates you. Straight to jail.

Malcolm Collins:
Did you know that before his arrest in New Zealand, he was the Call of Duty Modern Warfare three number one ranked player? I didn’t know that. Having the highest cumulative score of 15,000,000 online players? Damn. Okay. Go, Kim. But he suffered a serious stroke in 2024, and it doesn’t look like... Oh, he had six children?

Simone Collins:
Yeah. See, that’s what I said. Big family.

Malcolm Collins:
Big family. Good for him.

Simone Collins:
Big big compound with all the kids running around. So I remember reading about some journalists coming out to visit him and just being like, that was weird. But I feel like it was kind of like a version of meeting our family. There’s something about, like, houses with a lot of kids running around where dad works from bed for some reason. No one knows why. The kids love it.

Malcolm Collins:
They love jumping on my bed. Now because I’m replaying an old... What what game am playing? Wildlands right now. Rogue Rogue whatever. Wildlands.

Simone Collins:
Octavian is obsessed. He just wants loves it. Because Octavian me this the other morning that he wishes that there were a screen in his bed so that he could watch daddy play that game. And the only thing he wants more than that is to play the game himself. And as soon as he reaches certain learning milestones, he will get a PC, and and he can he can he can shoot the occultists as well.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s it’s Simone. Simone. Yes. It’s Catholics. The cult of Santa Muerte is the bad guy. Okay? A Catholic offshoot.

Simone Collins:
The Mexica. It it is more of the Mexica than it is the Catholics. It was actually the episode on the Mexico that made me wanna replay

Malcolm Collins:
the game because I was like, the pulp of Santa Mora is actually a really good

Simone Collins:
bad guy. Deep desire

Malcolm Collins:
to shoot developed very well in this game.

Simone Collins:
So, like, I’m excited informed about Santa Mora. Latin America and

Malcolm Collins:
shoot people. You know? That’s like... In in a in a Great. We need to make... That should be the next type of game I make as, like, a realistic, like, shooter that’s actually fun and good because, like, I haven’t played one in ages, and then none of the new ones really Where

Simone Collins:
you shoot mystical people. It’s very techno puritan.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my gosh. A witch hunter game? I think the game I’m making right now is so far right and based. People are gonna themselves when they play it.

Simone Collins:
Hopefully, it gets you triple canceled or whatever. Anyway, am I making you a quesadilla tonight or what?

Malcolm Collins:
Quesadilla. Quesadilla. The quesadillas are so good.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Good.

Malcolm Collins:
Use the right cheese mix.

Simone Collins:
Of what? Just cheddar.

Malcolm Collins:
Cheddar. Cheddar and then some white cheese that you’re supposed to use a small amount of? Just cheddar. Don’t care.

Simone Collins:
I don’t have white... I... It’s always cheddar and MSG. Lots of butter, and then you you you bake it in the oven at the end to make it extra crispy.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. Go for it. Yeah. Your quesadillas are generally the best. So Okay. I trust you.

Simone Collins:
Hopefully, it turns out. Fingers crossed. I love you very much.

Malcolm Collins:
Thank you. anything anything you learned today?

Simone Collins:
I was just thinking about our Titan birthday day. You know, like, we do everything she wants in a day. So, of course, first thing in the morning, I ask, where do you wanna go? What do you wanna do? And Torsten convinced her to go out to the creek to hunt for frogs. And Torsten’s super excited about trying to find frogs. He’s gently finding and holding salamanders. And though Titan had initially said she was interested in hunting for frogs, which is really Toasty’s idea, she then decides that she’s going to build a bridge and is, like, hurdling rocks around. Like, oh, she’s trying to move all the rocks. Gotta put it right here. And then, like... And she just takes to throwing rocks in the water, imagining that she’s she’s attacking large schools of fish within it. The fish never saw that coming. And she’s just like It should’ve... Sploosh. It’s just like meat pouches. It’s like gently commuting with the forest animals, and she’s, like, sploosh. Like, literally saying things like, they’ll never see this coming. And I’m like, oh, what is this?

Malcolm Collins:
We have the ultimate tomboy.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Tomboy titan. I I love it. I love her so much. I love Tosi. I love Indy. I love all the kids. Octavian, he’s such a such a sweet boy.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s for girls. Is she a tomboy when she is so obsessed with being... It’s for girls.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. When we gave her we gave her an interim present because we had CBS Sunday filming at our house on her actual birthday, and it was, like, this really sparkly, horrendous toy, but we found it super cheap on... At Walmart on discounts. We’re like, okay. This is gonna be a good placeholder. And it’s... It just was in a very pink sparkly box, and that was her reaction, but in

Malcolm Collins:
the most, like, masculine way. Oh, dear. Video cut out. It’s for girls.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. She’s she’s hilarious and wonderful. And I just I just love her. I just love her. Oh, she’s a very passionate young woman.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, I will get started here. Oh, wait. I’ve gotta pull up the

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. The princess dress you said she wanted. Like, you’re picturing her wanting this delicate costume, and I’m like, well, what do you wanna do

Malcolm Collins:
in it? She’s like, I wanna play. And you know

Simone Collins:
she’s gonna be... She is the only one of our children who just scales the fences successfully all the time, but she also shreds her clothes. And I’m like, cheating her.

Malcolm Collins:
Chickens have been getting outside the fenced area now.

Simone Collins:
All the time. All the time. Especially in helicopter. They’re just like... Airplane was out this morning too. So I don’t know what to say. That if they find their way back, they get to live. I saw Cudish inside the fence this morning. So they’re making it back. They know that that’s where the good food is. So

Malcolm Collins:
presumably They’re gonna get murked. They keep this up.

Simone Collins:
We’ve already tithed one to the bald eagle. So, I don’t know, give it time. I’m sure when the winter comes, they’ll really get get taken out when the birds get more hungry. So... The birds of prey, I mean, not the not the chickens.

Malcolm Collins:
No sense of safety, those birds. Yeah. Unfortunately, we don’t have any neighbors who are gonna care on this side of the street.

Simone Collins:
About the bald eagles taking their chickens.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh. If they walk out to their property. Remember, they like deer and stuff like that.

Simone Collins:
Oh, right. Yes. They’re they’re lovers of gentle animals. Yes. They are. They’re kind people. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
Alright. I’ll get started. They actually put a deer feeder on their lawn. That’s how much they like deer. When I’m like, don’t you guys have, like, gardens and stuff? Like, deer are, like, an existential threat. And recently, one of the things is we went viral because Fuentes clipper clipped us making fun of Nick Fuentes while I’m drinking milk. Like, can you believe he drinks milk? And it’s like, what what what else are you gonna... You can drink a soda. You can drink juice, which is just like sugar water. You can drink water.

Simone Collins:
Kind of fairy drinks sugar water? This is very strange to me.

Malcolm Collins:
Fish shit in. Right? You can drink... Like, I I really don’t know what else... Alcohol, but, like, that’s not good for you.

Simone Collins:
And you also drink alcohol on the podcast. Well, I guess beer flavored water, which still technically counts. So I don’t know. I don’t know what they want you to to drink.

Malcolm Collins:
Who knows? Man juice. Like, whatever... But they sold on those whatever shows.

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. Chris Williamson on his podcast says whatever it is that a a manly man is supposed to. It was... It’s all some weird, like, nootropic drink or a beer that’s not a beer, you know, like an alcohol free beer. Like, I think that’s kind of what apparently

Malcolm Collins:
By the way, a fan was saying... Because they were talking about it on the other show, the software that we vibe coded that allows you to edit video transcripts by editing the text. They were like, you should sell that. It’s like, you could find that at rfab. Like, go to rfab.ai.

Simone Collins:
Go to creative tools. It’s We do.

Malcolm Collins:
We’ve been selling it for, like, half a year. It’s it’s a really well vetted and tested feature. We use it all the time. Not everything on rfab is, by the way. People apparently have been really liking the comic creator, which works really well with the API,

Simone Collins:
like The pervy one or the safe for work one?

Malcolm Collins:
Well, I I don’t know which one they liked. I... For the pervy stuff, it’s very good at that.

Simone Collins:
They probably wouldn’t say if they liked the pervy ones. I guess they... Who knows? It’s got two modes,

Malcolm Collins:
let’s say. Yeah. And and it’s it’s very... I mean, with APIs, it’s really good for, like, family photos and doing really complex photo work to make... We would... Like, we made really nice stuff for our kids.

Simone Collins:
Oh, it’s so good. It’s so good. But, again, if

Malcolm Collins:
you just want to horny chat an AI, rfab.ai, there for you. That’s what a lot of people use it for. But but we have all these creative tools that, you know, if you if you haven’t visited in a while, I I suggest checking it out. So very excited. And we’ve got a a video game coming out soon. So, hopefully, I have the Steam wish list page up by the time this episode goes live

Speaker 16:
Sadly, Valve is waiting to approve it, so I don’t feel it’s a good time for me to release the trailer yet, which is very frustrating because I’d like to share it with you guys. I’m quite proud of it.

Malcolm Collins:
if you want I to like am very excited for it. I I will note that this is not like a first video game project. You know, sometimes people put out a video game, and it’s like a simple scroller or something like that. This is

Simone Collins:
actually tell people to reel. It’s actually a game.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. No. This is actually a game that you expect to pay money for. This is this is not a not a... Like, he put in a little bit of work. You’re gonna be like, wow. Like... And it... But it’s built to feel very simple at first and then, like, unfold into more complexity and bigger systems as you play it to to create a a simple feel that pulls you forward. But, anyway, It’s along with

Simone Collins:
Is this because your brother made a game and you’re like, I will see your game and raise you?

Malcolm Collins:
No. It’s because it was the Sabbath. And on the Sabbath, we have a rule that you can only start new things. You can’t do, like, existing work or routine or anything like that. Just anything that, like, you feel like doing that’s not work, work defined by things that you’re doing every week. And I was like, well, I’ve always been meaning to do this since I started doing it that one day. And then because it was something I already started, I couldn’t work on it on other Sabbaths. But I got pretty far with it, and it’s really nice looking. And I think it could be a great advertisement for the RFAB API in use because that’s how I made it all. if you wanna make a video game, this is, like, a requirement to make it with good graphics, good cinematics. rfab.ai backslash API, copy and paste what you find there. It used to not work in Grok. Now it does. anyway, I’ll get started.

Speaker 17:
Baby. Oh, mommy. You’re a baby shummy. This is kid. Mommy and baby. Oh. No. That one is the dad tiger. The dad? Oh my god. This one is going in here. Oh here. Mommy, Tajik, can you hold the kid for me? Okay. Just hold him in the other hand that doesn’t have the big one in. Because the big one might... I’m getting the sound. Whiskies are... Put the sound under do you think, Dalton? Bag under their log. What is going on in your mind? Okay. Off you go.

The conversation covers Iran’s unique cultural resilience, the rise of atheism and Zoroastrianism, challenges of leaving the country, and his new life in India. A rare, personal look at ordinary life in a place often misunderstood by outsiders. We hope you enjoy it!

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:
Hello. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we have Ace AT, the Iranian guy who is talking on Asmongold’s channel who was in... Lived his life in Iran, was in Iran at the start of the war. And, apparently, he says this is the first interview he’s had because with Asmongold, it was just reacts. And that that makes me so excited because whenever I saw his stuff, it really was fascinating for me to see into this different world. And, obviously, there’s a lot of stuff that we can’t talk about, but the stuff we can talk about is still super exciting. And the things that I wanted to focus on in this interview is I wanted to focus on what it was actually like before the war even just living in a country that is at the place that Iran is at right now in terms of water outages, electricity outages, a 300 fold inflation, you said, since the since

Ace AT:
3000.

Simone Collins:
3000. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Since the revolution. how do you how do you relate to money? How do you relate to savings? How do you relate to perishable items when you can use electricity at any time? How do you, all of this is very interesting, but I also wanna focus on media. Like, what media did you grow up consuming? Games did you grow up playing? How did you relate to that? to create a picture of... For a lot of people, I think, like a normal human living in Iran going into all of this. Because Iran... Just to pontificate a little bit, Iran is a very interesting country for Americans to think about because they’re... Most Americans know Persian families or Persian, like, people who have lived in America for multiple generations. And so there isn’t, like, a specific... An ethnic animosity that you would expect and you would see in some wars or ethnic foreignness. and so the idea of, like, there’s real people in Iran actually doing stuff and protesting and all of that, that’s, something that I think, is really cool to to see. So first, what we were talking about before this that I was shocked about, we were talking about sinkholes because I prefer just like... Sinkholes are, like, a common problem in, like, the capital, and you can just, like, disappear into a sinkhole and, like, people die. I I forgot what it was, but, like, 20 people a year, I think it was. but you said, actually, like, a big chunk of the capital is over a sinkhole and could fall. Can you talk about that?

Ace AT:
Yeah. Sure. So, basically, the earlier time before the revolution, the capital was announced to be inside of Tehran. So while that happened, a lot of people started, like, moving towards it, and they were expecting a maximum amount of 15 to 20,000,000 people instead of the capital. But they said if it expands too much, it might decrease the stability of the sinkholes because the entire capital is surrounded by mountains. So the only way you can get out of the capital was... Is, like, by three or four roads that, like, leads out of the capital.

Simone Collins:
Wow. Okay. Okay.

Ace AT:
That’s why it’s basically... Oh my god. I can’t talk. Strategically? Oh my god. Okay. So back in the day, it was very difficult to attack that one per... Place.

Simone Collins:
That makes sense. Yes. So you have built in fortress. Yes.

Ace AT:
But back then, they didn’t really know about sinkholes and stuff. It just happened. So now the average, I think, estimate of the amount of people inside there is 40,000,000, which is, like, two times more than it’s supposed to be, and it’s shrinking a lot. Like, the the, like, the ground is going in

Malcolm Collins:
every year by year. I wanna provide a little context here. The reason why sinkholes have become such a problem in the capital and the reason the ground is shrinking is because there was a large reservoir under the capital of water. But because they are dealing with a massive water shortage, they drained the reservoir significantly. Yeah. So now there’s a giant hole under the capital.

Simone Collins:
Well, are there plans to, like, insert liquid into the

Malcolm Collins:
Are there plans to do anything? No. I don’t think there’s plans to do anything. So you said, like, 40% could just collapse one day?

Ace AT:
pretty much. If something like that happens more than I pretty much estimate twenty million people will get badly hurt to death even. The sinkhole is pretty terrible. The main reason is because the water shortages that kept happening inside of the country, and we we had drought for, like, two, three years. It was it was bad. So as... If you looked at the map while the, like, clouds tried to come inside the country, they instantly dissipated. From Turkey or from anywhere tried to come inside of Iran, instantly vanished. So we... Nobody knew why. It was just happening. And because of that, we had a massive drought. All of the lakes just completely went dry. We had a very massive lake on top left of the country, and that is almost completely depleted.

Malcolm Collins:
This giant lake that’s just gone. I mean, part of it was due to the overbuilding of dams during the revolutionary period. Yeah. And and they’re trying to rebuild the capital in the Southern East section. Right? But I think that’s mostly a pipe dream. Do you do you... I mean, is that gonna happen? Or

Ace AT:
Maybe. I have no clue what exactly the government is planning to do because it’s very... I’m sorry, but it’s very disorganized. I I can’t lie. They just do whatever it’s, like, necessary for that one specific thing, but don’t care about whatever repercussions that happen afterwards.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my god. Okay.

Simone Collins:
So... Although that’s... You could say that pretty much about any government now.

Ace AT:
You want me to give you an example?

Malcolm Collins:
Yes. Give...

Ace AT:
Basically, there was a river. Right? There was a river that was artificially made near the capital. And what happened was it started smelling very bad. Ugh. And people wanted to fix it. And the governor said, well, that’s gonna cost too much. We’re not gonna fix it. So because of that, they use the water that was going to that artificial lake to the stadium of football. Because of... They... Because they didn’t fix that, now the stadium was smelling very bad. And now they said, now you have to fix the stadium and the lake. And they said, okay. We’re not gonna do that. It’s too expensive. So they connected another lake to both of them to try to fix it. Instead, that lake got corrupted as well. So it’s

Simone Collins:
been very bad. So... Yeah. Oh my gosh. Wait.

Malcolm Collins:
How did they come... Hold on. I I need to understand the logistic. How did they... And why did they think it was a good idea to connect the lake to

Simone Collins:
the stadium? Flush it out.

Ace AT:
Because, when you’re trying to clean stuff out and, like, keep the grass and everything always healthy and stuff like that, they need a lot of water. So they were trying to connect it with like that so they can be a little bit more lazy, you know, but also cost efficient.

Simone Collins:
But Oh, but it’s just sort of, like,

Malcolm Collins:
drain it, like, use it for stadium purposes, and then that Yeah. Drain the the bad lake. Okay. Yeah. That Yeah. That is horrible. so I wanna know more about, like, daily life in terms of how you... And keep in mind, some things may feel normal to you that would be... That that that they’re going to be the most interesting things to other people in terms of how they’re different. So I wanna focus on, like, what it’s like when you have the regular water shortages or water is being cut off regularly or electricity is being cut off regularly. How does this change how you relate to things like what’s in your refrigerator or how you get food or how you think about, you know, showering or anything like that?

Ace AT:
So, basically, our government sometimes, thankfully, announces that they’re gonna be doing that through a SMS or from the application. For example, for electricity, it’s called. And with that, it shows you that, hey. From this specific time to this specific time, we’re gonna... You’re gonna have the power outage. So Yeah. We can, like, pretty much, decide what you’re gonna do. So the power outages inside of the country, whenever it’s whenever it’s a hot season, it’s from two hours to four hours long. But, usually, when it’s not a hot season, they just randomly cut it without announcing anything. Oh. And it usually lasts, like, two to three hours. In terms of water, water goes out with electricity because our country doesn’t have, like, a system where no matter even if the water

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Water on top of buildings.

Ace AT:
The pumps. Yeah. They they need to have, like, an electric pump to push the water up the apartments. And when the electricity goes out, the water goes out with it for three to four hours. So when they announce it, you can pretty much, like, handle everything. But when they don’t, you just have to, like, I guess, go to a location where there is water or electricity. Other than that, we... Me and my mom usually go to malls, so we can just use the air conditions inside of the mall until two to three hours passes, and then we can go back home. But other than that, yeah.

Simone Collins:
When we when we lived in Peru, they would sometimes do this too. Like, they... It would either randomly go out or it would be planned. It could be water and or electricity. But we would just... So we we would bank water. Like, we would have, like, large jugs. Like, did did you do the same thing? What were... Like, how did you plan around it in terms of what you bought? Or, like, do people sell coolers or, like, fridge backup systems? Are there products to, like, address this regular thing happening?

Ace AT:
No. In terms of, like, purchasing stuff, our country is very, very limited. For example, you guys have eBay, Amazon, and stuff like that. We have none of those. We only have, like, international For international terms, you have nothing that that comes from the outside of the country. We only have, like, domestic stuff like Digicalla, which is basically overpriced everything due to the price of dollar. But in terms of, like, preparing for things, usually, people, like, buy, like, two or three water bottles just for emergency if they have to go to the bathroom or anything like that. But other than that, they don’t... They just wait until the power is back.

Malcolm Collins:
And so what what did you eat on any given day? Like, what was your your favorite foods? What did you cook? Was it premade? Was it eaten out? Like

Ace AT:
Oh, boy. So when I was younger, the variety of foods that I could consume was much more. It was, like, I ever wanted because the price of dollar was not that high back then. But when it comes to now, it’s people... Okay. Do you guys know... I I don’t know how to, like, explain it in terms of English, but you guys... You know, when you guys buy something expensive, you can do a payment plan on it.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Buy now, pay later.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Buy now, pay later. I know what you’re talking about. Everybody knows

Ace AT:
that.... Has a payment plan for milk, for meat, for stuff stuff like that, for chicken, meat, oil, or supermarket basic necessities. That’s kind

Simone Collins:
of a good deal if the inflation’s insane. Right? So everyone wants

Ace AT:
to know.

Simone Collins:
No. It’s bad. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
Presumably, they take the inflation into account. So Oh, no.

Ace AT:
Yes. They do.

Simone Collins:
Out there. I was like, oh, this is perfect. It’s the perfect crime.

Ace AT:
Yeah. So imagine this economic sanctions is so high. And in terms of money income that someone makes inside of the country, it’s so bad that you have to pay for your food as an EMI, as a payment plan. It’s very bad. Wow.

Malcolm Collins:
So can... Wait. Hold on. I’m I’m actually interested. What... Like, so what specifically are you eating? What are your favorite dishes from childhood? What are the dishes that you actually live on today?

Ace AT:
So from my childhood, my grandma used to make a lot of types of different food and snacks for me and buy them. And I I just kinda kinda got in the habit of eating those alone. It used to be chicken and rice in terms of kebab and stuff like that, which is not typical Persian dishes

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah.

Ace AT:
Or and stuff like that. And nowadays, because everything has gotten so expensive, you usually have to go with whatever that you can afford. You probably just like a normal chicken without rice, just, like, plain normal chicken, or you can just try to get some snacks on the supermarket. It’s like a little sandwich you can, like, get to keep you filled for a little bit. But, in terms of, like, what are... What you eat now, it’s very limited because... So for example, if I have to give an estimate of how much food you can consume in a month is around probably 10 to 15 times that you can purchase a actual meal before you run out of money that you generate instead of your own. Because back then, you used to make around $250. Now you’re... Like, about a year ago, you used to make a $100 a month, and now it’s below $40 a month that you can make inside of Iran. Oh, wow. Wow.

Malcolm Collins:
And so it’s moved to That’s plain chicken as the main thing.

Simone Collins:
I mean, it it doesn’t sound that bad.

Malcolm Collins:
I I I I do I do like the chicken kebab vision that was right. That... That’s not dissimilar from the type of things we eat in our house. So...

Ace AT:
Alright. I mean... Yeah. However, I’m gonna say this, that people from my country in Iran, the the Persian people, love partying. So even if no matter how bad the situation becomes inside of our country, we always find something fun to do or try to hang out with friends to, like, we’re pretty much... As we call it, we are numb to all the negativity that keeps happening in our country.

Simone Collins:
That’s so awesome.

Malcolm Collins:
Actually, yeah, I wanna talk about that. We... I... Because I didn’t know that that... So this is, by the way, if if you are unaware of this, this is not an observation that is unique to people within your country. I’ve mentioned this about every time I mention Persian people.

Simone Collins:
It’s true, actually.

Malcolm Collins:
My my Persian friends love to party. I have I have never met a a a group of people who likes partying at... I’m like, I don’t understand why nightclubs have appeal, but somehow, like, they they exist for Persian. But so I wanna know, like, what partying... Explain. What is partying like?

Simone Collins:
Listen. And then you have... You’d, like, actually have to explain this to us because we are incapable of having fun.

Ace AT:
So... Well, mainly, partying is not allowed because you’re not allowed to listen to loud music.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. You you... Like, it used to be you couldn’t listen to loud music or dance, but now you... They are a little less restrictive. Like, what what are all the... What are the rules? Yeah.

Ace AT:
So, basically, the... It it is restricted. And right now, they’re talking about bringing back the forced hijab in our country. They already talked about it in the news. But in terms of, like, dancing in the public and stuff like that, back then, it was very, very strict. After the entire protest thing that happened, the government kinda... A little bit lost control, and they just let people do whatever they want until everything calmed down. But now it’s going back to how it was again. So it it lost its... It it it was very good. Everything went very well until it’s not anymore because, you know, because the country is based on multiple superpowers. So whoever has the most amount of power in terms of the country, that person rules everything. So that’s how the country’s built around. So now it’s very restrictive. In terms of partying, meaning you invite everyone you know in your contact list to your home, dancing and drinking and unlimited food, snacks, sometimes maybe alcohol. I don’t know. But, yeah, it’s very, very, like, loud. Very fun.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. What’s access to alcohol like? Is it is it restricted?

Ace AT:
Yes. It’s a Muslim country.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, I I wasn’t sure how... I I mean, I’ve gone to... I’ve been in many Muslim countries and the restrictiveness of alcohol.

Ace AT:
I think the punishment is lifetime in prison if you don’t get caught by one.

Simone Collins:
Are people making moonshine? I mean, are people making their own alcohol? Or, like, how does... Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
So it’s not, like, the fastest thing....

Ace AT:
Like, big lands to, like, the the the... We call it bulk. And people who have, like, the big lands, they usually make their own alcohol and wine and stuff like that on the ground of their own home. And they they kinda sell it or just keep it for their own parties.

Simone Collins:
So Wow.

Malcolm Collins:
That sounds very risky.

Simone Collins:
Well, so... Yeah. I mean, it must Very. Because being outside of the country now and and, like, actually getting... I mean, if you do drink, like, it must be Well, hold have access to tastier tastier drinks.

Ace AT:
I I can’t drink. I tried.

Simone Collins:
Give it time. Give it time.

Ace AT:
Simone, you’re

Malcolm Collins:
you’re being horrible. Come on. I wish I never drank. The first place. But the... That actually brings me to another question. If... Given that alcohol is so restrictive, how does that change alcohol versus other drugs? Are... Is there, like, a larger drug culture because of that?

Ace AT:
Or The only drug you will find that is legal inside of our country is a cigarette.

Malcolm Collins:
Wow. Oh, no. What I what I mean

Simone Collins:
is Oh, no. So... But, like, illegally. Like, does this... So, like, if you shut down one thing often

Ace AT:
Illegally, there’s everything up until weed, but when it comes to, like, a very illegal ones, like the the cocaine and stuff like that, that’s very rare to find.

Simone Collins:
Really? Well, but, Malcolm, if you’re doing buy now pay later on your milk, do you think you have room for cocaine in

Malcolm Collins:
your in your budget? Exactly. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
Come on.

Malcolm Collins:
I don’t think anyone can afford it.

Simone Collins:
To make to make meth, you need, like, basic cleaning supplies or something. And I’m not budgeting for that because I can’t buy milk.

Malcolm Collins:
So Question. How does the logistics of even putting a party together work? Where... What are you reaching out to people on? Is it directly on their phones? Is it through some social media app? Is it, like... What does that look like?

Ace AT:
So, basically, we have Telegram. Iran Iranian uses more than, I think, 70% of people instead of Iran use Telegram. So... By the way, it’s blocked as well, so you need VPN. Oh

Simone Collins:
my gosh.

Ace AT:
So we use that. Either that or we use Instagram or WhatsApp. But if you can’t communicate with each other... If... Like, older generation usually do normal calls and SMS, but the younger generation use WhatsApp or Telegram or Instagram.

Malcolm Collins:
And can the government see what you’re doing on these apps, or is it, like, a special?

Ace AT:
Apps that are controlled by Meta? Yes.

Simone Collins:
Oh, right. Because they narc. Yes. They do narc, but not Yeah. So Instagram, not so safe.

Ace AT:
Telegram. Not Telegram.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Ace AT:
That’s why Telegram has, like, a lot of type of groups of people who the government does not really like is inside of Telegram, and they firstly banned Telegram as worst as it could.

Malcolm Collins:
What are your... Okay. So, like, what are your favorite shows growing up or media or games or properties? Like, what’s your relationship to media?

Ace AT:
When I was younger, we had a device that used to take channels from different countries. We called it Mahabharata. And it’s like a satellite thing that you install in your home that you can, like, get the channels from different countries. So when I was young, the cartoons and stuff like that I used to watch was from Cartoon Network. Nice. Used to watch Gumball or Regular Show or Ben ten, Sonic.

Malcolm Collins:
What are dating yourself there is the generation directly under me.

Ace AT:
Yeah. Johnny Bravo. Oh my god.

Simone Collins:
Johnny Bravo. Yeah. Oh my goodness. And Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
I I wonder, like, when you... When you’re seeing shows or you’re consuming the media environment that takes place in a different country and culture with different things, was there anything that particularly struck out to you that was normal in the cartoons that you liked that would have been completely bizarre in your own life growing up?

Ace AT:
So when I was young, I used to watch these cartoons and stuff like that. The first thing that I always came to my mind inside of, like, a regular show or, like, Gumball and stuff like that is how they are living. And I was imagining maybe grown ups actually live like that until I grew up and saw, okay. The grown ups, most of them outside the country can live like that.

Simone Collins:
Not even.

Malcolm Collins:
You mean, like, how did they have enough money? Yeah. I mean, I guess, like, the regular show, you’re in Iran, you’re like, these two people, like, aren’t... Are are slackers. Like, how do they have enough to

Simone Collins:
to live? I mean, to be fair, don’t

Malcolm Collins:
know why

Ace AT:
I was disappointed with you. The thing is I... After I got introduced with YouTube... Because back then, we didn’t have YouTube. I I didn’t even know anything about it because everything was blocked. So I got introduced to YouTube by... When a foreigner come to my country and was like, oh, yeah. I use VPN to access social media. I said, okay. What media do you use? And so, like, YouTube. I said, what the fuck is YouTube? So... And after I started going on YouTube, I saw my first favorite YouTubers, like PewDiePie, Markiplier, DanTDM.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, so you were young when you started on YouTube?

Ace AT:
Very young. Wow. Very young. And that’s how I learned English pretty much, right, by watching them and then watching NBC two, NBC Max, Cartoon Network, and stuff like that.

Malcolm Collins:
So do... Was it... Would it have been very rare for somebody to watch YouTube during that time? Yes. Yeah. Is it is it still incredibly rare? Like, what what do most people watch these days for entertainment? Who who aren’t you or your family?

Ace AT:
my family... My mom, basically. I don’t know anything about my dad, but my mom usually watches Turkish series, which is very long, and, apparently, it’s very, very, like, important to her to watch it.

Simone Collins:
Well, they’re, like, one of the soap opera capitals of the world. Like, that’s the Yeah. That’s... Yeah. That’s it’s big.

Ace AT:
Huge dramas and stuff like that.

Simone Collins:
They’re big. You did you watch anime?

Ace AT:
Oh, yeah. I I have... I watched anime every day. My first ever anime was Naruto.

Simone Collins:
Of course. Everyone’s Of course.

Malcolm Collins:
It was. Yes. The the... Do you do you still watch anime? Is that still in your consumption profile?

Ace AT:
Yes. I’m currently watching Black Clover and One Piece.

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. I was looking at Black Clover recently.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, they just had a new season on Black Clover. Yeah. But... Yeah. So... And and it’s watching anime common there.

Simone Collins:
Like, do

Malcolm Collins:
you have friends you could talk about?

Ace AT:
To the new gen, yes. Very. Like, I can tell you, like, if I had to give an estimate to the people I know that are around my age and younger, over 70% of them know about anime, and they all watch it. Illegally, but they watch it.

Malcolm Collins:
So it’s in a in a generation or so, like, Iran is gonna be a bunch of otakus. Right? Like, that’s a...

Ace AT:
There already are. I I I see people, like, even selling their car just to go to Japan to get, like, signature from their favorite, like, anime offers.

Simone Collins:
Really? Gosh. Yeah. Wow.

Malcolm Collins:
That... That’s not that’s

Simone Collins:
not awesome. That’s not financially responsible, though. We we

Ace AT:
shouldn’t do that, but they do that.

Simone Collins:
We appreciate that they want to. That’s that’s awesome. We

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. That... Yes. We appreciate that that exists somewhere. I do not... I would not advise that as a financial decision. Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, even having a car, I think it’s it’s it’s quite hard. Can you talk about that, like, the the challenges?

Ace AT:
Okay. So back then, about probably seven... Five to seven years ago, the first mango of someone was purchasing... No. Maybe more. It... Yeah. Fifteen years ago, pretty much. Getting a house was basically, like, very common. After, like, ten years, like, five years passing that, everything became impossible pretty much to buy a house, so everyone started dreaming about cars.

Simone Collins:
Oh.

Ace AT:
So then cars became impossible, so everyone wanted bikes. And bikes

Simone Collins:
became impossible, so now everyone’s getting Ubers. Oh,

Malcolm Collins:
no. Wait. So how did... I... So I remember... What was it? There was, like, this huge building project to make all these, like, buildings in Iran in these, like, areas, and then, like, nobody moved into them. Do do do you know what I’m talking about? Like, the big empty government building blocks that were put, like, outside of cities?

Ace AT:
Oh, near Cheetahgar. Yes. I know that. Yeah. Yeah. Huge apartment projects.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. So they, like, tried to make the buildings, but then they put them all in places that nobody wanted to to live. So... No.

Ace AT:
No one wants to live because it’s near a very, very strict military base that got struck by America and Israel multiple times near that

Malcolm Collins:
area. Oh, wow.

Ace AT:
Everyone’s afraid of being there. So no one

Simone Collins:
Oh, but it would have been great if there were a lot of people there because then it would look really bad for Israel or The US to hit the military base.

Ace AT:
Cheatzcat basically is that one intern It’s human shield. Yeah. Pretty much. So that one lake, I I was talking about, artificial lake that was made, it’s Cheatzcat. It’s basically there. Oh. Oh. Wow.

Simone Collins:
Okay. So what do you what do you

Malcolm Collins:
consume these days? Is it mostly YouTube? For me, I’m I’m, like, all YouTube and anime now.

Ace AT:
Oh, since I’m in I’m in India, I’m consuming Twitch on the side of my monitor. The other one is YouTube. YouTube. The other one is...

Simone Collins:
I’m consuming it right away. Well, I still can.

Malcolm Collins:
So talk about India. And and had you traveled outside of Iran before this?

Ace AT:
Yes. But when I was younger, my family’s wealth is actually pretty much, like, good. But now we are just pretty much in in the midways, I guess. But when I was young, we went to Dubai, Bulgaria, Moscow, Turkey. And now I personally travel to India alone, which is, like, insane to me still. But where else? I’ve been to Qatar. Pretty much Middle Eastern countries because they can’t really go to European without a green card or whatever it’s called. You don’t... You can’t

Simone Collins:
get that. Harder.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. So tell me, what... What’s it like living... So you’ve been living in India for a while now. Like, it it... What is... What has been the experience?

Ace AT:
India is very loud. Very, very loud. And in terms of, like, living here, everything is... As long as you mind your own business, nobody is, like, bothering you. I... And I like that so much. But in terms of, like, peacefulness and stuff like that, I’m good. And the only issue is the bad weather because I don’t know why it’s such a bad weather. It... India is so green. It has so much trees and everything, but the weather is just absurd, and the valley is coming inside of India.

Malcolm Collins:
And it’s what you mean

Ace AT:
by that.

Simone Collins:
Is it, like, monsoon season right now? What is what is the season of India right now?

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. What what makes the weather bad?

Ace AT:
Yeah. So it’s going towards winter, which is going to be the valley very soon, and they celebrate it because it’s apparently about one of their gods. So they’re gonna be celebrating it. And when they do the fireworks... Yeah. Homecoming homecoming of one of their gods. And when they celebrate it, they do so much firework that

Simone Collins:
That’s the festival of lights. Right?

Ace AT:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what is it for the air condition, AQI?

Simone Collins:
Is that what you’re saying? Yeah. The air quality.

Ace AT:
AQI goes up to, like, max. It just go... Turns black if you try to look at the charts inside of the country. It goes very, very high. Wow.

Malcolm Collins:
And as I understood, Iran had horrible pollution problems, at least in Tehran and stuff like that.

Simone Collins:
So if you’re complaining Yes. It’s gotta be bad.

Ace AT:
As bad as India in terms of pollution. Because India gets... It’s very humid, and it gets to a point where the government tells its people, please wear mask and buy air purifier in your home because it’s very bad. And you can see, like, sometimes the government trying to help by taking out some trucks that shoots a lot of pressured water in the air to try to get rid of the... All the dust and everything like that. But, yeah, it gets very bad here.

Simone Collins:
Wow. Okay. That’s really interesting. Malcolm, did they do that in Peru? I feel like they did that in Peru.

Malcolm Collins:
Have you... Yeah. Have... Oh, have you changed? I... Yeah.

Simone Collins:
Think they did

Malcolm Collins:
do that in Peru. Have you changed what you’re eating now that you’ve moved? Like, what what do you eat these days in India?

Ace AT:
Oh, yeah. I’m I’m eating everything. No. You have no clue. I went to I went to Chili’s. And...

Simone Collins:
Oh, because

Malcolm Collins:
you you

Simone Collins:
just had

Ace AT:
boneless pizza. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I can’t tell what I had in the chilies because of my country, but when I had it, oh my god. I had, like, two kilos of it. It was, like, insane. I was, like...

Simone Collins:
American slop.

Ace AT:
It was amazing. I know. It’s insane. I love... Like, Indian dishes are actually very fun too. Very spicy.

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. Love... Those are favorite.

Ace AT:
Hurting a lot.

Simone Collins:
We would we would just eat constantly Indian food. Any... Actually, anywhere we go is... We just eat Indian food unless I insist on enchiladas somewhere. That’s so... I’m so jealous. Yeah. Like, the one thing I really wish I could get is, like, even more authentic.

Malcolm Collins:
Things that I think that is very interesting about the world today is you being in India. There’s this concept called the Eastern Standard Tribe. They came about... What what book was that from, Simone?

Simone Collins:
Oh, Cory Doctorow wrote a book called Eastern Standard Tribe. He’s an author who writes a lot of near future books. And the general thesis of this book that was the most interesting part, more interesting than, I think, the book’s narrative, was this concept of people not being really socially organized by your region, like, you are, but rather by the time zone that you kept. And I think this wasn’t quite right. Like, I don’t think we really go by time zones so much, but we do go by online social, like, subcultures. And that is the most interesting thing that that he kind of predicted was that people aren’t going to necessarily associate the very, very most with whatever, like, local area that they grew up in, but rather some Internet subculture. Would you kind of see physically... Or, sorry, visually manifested in the Skybrows cinematic universe? Like, that feels very much like a tribe because you can, like, see see it, and it is a bunch of Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
You are included in that. Right?

Ace AT:
Yeah. Yeah. Multiple times. You

Malcolm Collins:
know, it’s been crazy. So always feel Like a Skybrow video when it comes out, it feels a bit like being in a party with, like, my community. But you don’t have

Simone Collins:
to go. It’s our favorite kind of party. We hate parties. We hate parties

Malcolm Collins:
so very non partying people.

Simone Collins:
We can’t party. We

Malcolm Collins:
just wanna do it.

Simone Collins:
It’s too scary. I can’t.

Malcolm Collins:
But has anyone, one of the things I found particularly interesting is Asmagold talking to you, and I’ve noticed that at least in the American political tribes right now, I haven’t seen many or any Iranians featured in, like, the leftist stuff. Have you... Have have have any of them reached out to you or look look to do anything with you? I find that very strange, actually.

Ace AT:
Inside of my Discord, when I when I first made made videos, there was a lot of people who were saying I’m an agent spy from a different country and saying, you know,. Yeah. It’s a... And then when I opened up my Discord, a lot of people came in with lots of love, but they were a group who, like, threatened to kill me inside of my messages. It was it was What

Malcolm Collins:
what was Why? Was their ideology? Like, what motivated them? Were they a right wing, like, anti immigrant group or, like, a a left wing? I I don’t know. Like, who was it? Or a Muslim? Or what was

Ace AT:
I don’t know. I don’t really tend to, like, respond to them, but they were just flat out threatening me, saying something like, if we figure out where you live, we know what to do or something like that.

Simone Collins:
Oh my goodness gracious. It’s... We we are

Malcolm Collins:
in the same situation. We often piss people off, and we don’t know which side we’ve pissed off. We we we don’t know if we’ve pissed off the gripers or or someone. We pissed off the far

Simone Collins:
The problem is that we’re super doxed. So Yeah.

Ace AT:
The thing the thing is a lot of people think when someone threatens me, it’s actually from because they’re Muslim. But the thing is I know a lot of people who are Muslim inside of my country, but they’re very lovely people. They just Yeah. Love helping others, are very nice, but there are some who abuse that fact and just hide behind it.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously, you’re gonna get... And I’ve... And I pointed this out on my show before. All the Muslims I know I like. But I also know that, obviously, there’s a big problem with with some Muslim communities. But it doesn’t... You know? Actually, speaking of the Muslim one, the first episode we did on Iran, and I wanna get your thoughts as somebody who was in it, was the... We we called it the atheist theocracy because there was some Studies done on the Iranian people showing that nonbelief was incredibly common in the country. Like like, really, really high rates. Is this what... And and some people were like, oh, the studies must have been done wrong or they were doing the data wrong. Like, what’s your... Do you do you think that’s plausible that there actually are, like, 40%, 35, like, atheist rates?

Ace AT:
So the last website inside of my own country I checked... I I will not say it from my side. Don’t take it from my side. But from my own country’s website that I checked last time, over 70% are atheist.

Malcolm Collins:
What? Oh, yeah. I remember crazy high numbers. So it must have been 70%. Yeah. 70% is that.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I forgot. That’s crazy.

Malcolm Collins:
That sound plausible to you having lived there?

Ace AT:
Well, knowing my friends, none of them do believe in god.

Malcolm Collins:
So it seems plausible. Oh, that’s wild to me.

Simone Collins:
Like

Malcolm Collins:
Wow. It’s... And it’s wild. You have a majority atheist theocracy. And I also heard that Zoroastrianism, at least as a identified religion, had become pretty common. Is that something that you’ve observed, or is it like a a a a

Ace AT:
Persia, back in the day, used to be a Zoroastrian country where they Yeah. Worship the flame in Ahura Mazda, and it’s a very beautiful culture. I can’t lie. And it has only three rules. That’s that’s that’s it. In the entire religion, there’s only three things that you need to, like, follow. Do good things, have good thoughts, and say good things. That’s it.

Simone Collins:
Not bad.

Ace AT:
That’s the entire rule of the entire religion.

Malcolm Collins:
Kinda like it. It it also was one of the... I I only know this because I was recently doing research on this. It was one of the first religions to put prohibitions or restrictions on masturbation, which is where

Ace AT:
Was it Austrian?

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, I have no idea about that. The devil’s in the details. You know, is masturbation good or bad?

Malcolm Collins:
That’s what we’re deciding. Be practiced that way anymore. That might be something from, like, the Middle Ages or something.

Ace AT:
I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins:
I I mean, it’s an old religion. It’s one of the oldest religions.

Simone Collins:
We should do... I wanna do a deep dive on Zoroastrianism. We could we

Ace AT:
could do

Malcolm Collins:
an episode on that. Yeah. I mean, I find... We we market as one of the the true phase, so I think that it would be worth... Okay.

Ace AT:
We actually have a flame that is inside of our country that has been lit for over two thousand five hundred years, and no one’s letting it die.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. No no pressure or anything. So, like, I do not want that job.

Malcolm Collins:
Especially in in in a political environment like this in in the country. Would... Do do... Like, does the Islamic regime... How does it treat sort of Zoroastrianism or Zoroastrian identified citizens? Is that illegal, or is it... How how does that work?

Ace AT:
As long as you’re... I don’t think it would matter as long as you’re not a resident of Iran. But if you’re, for example, a Catholic or any type of Hindu or or whatever, you come to the country itself, you’re completely fine as long as you’re not actually living there. I I don’t think anyone’s gonna bother you. But if you change your religion from Iran

Malcolm Collins:
From Islam. Yeah. Then you’re an apostate.

Ace AT:
Yeah. You... Yeah. Then you’re cooked.

Simone Collins:
That’s in So, basically, everyone in the... Well, okay. I... It’s... From everything you’re describing, everyone in the country is breaking some kind of law because maybe you use a VPN. Maybe you have Telegram. Maybe you have a party at some point. Maybe you don’t believe in god. Like, so... You’re somewhere the government can kind of get you in trouble, which is kind of... It makes me nervous.

Ace AT:
I can tell you, like, everyone inside of the country, even the government itself, are doing something illegal because everyone’s using VPN, and VPN is illegal. So

Simone Collins:
Oh, man. Yep. VPN is not good. Making them illegal, I mean. Like, it’s a... We we... There’s this ongoing debate between us and our audience about, like, certain online content bans. And the problem is if you really wanna ban online content, you have to make VPNs illegal. And if you wanna make VPNs illegal, you are now making everyone break the law. And if you make everyone break the law, then anyone could possibly go to jail. And then if you live in a country like that, as soon as you’re inconvenient, you go to jail. And I really don’t like that.

Ace AT:
Yeah. It... It’s a very bad conflict inside of our country with the government and the Internet. They... Whatever happens, even if Trump sneezes in one of the interview, they cut the Internet. I don’t know why. They just... Whatever happens in America, they just cut the Internet.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, because they’re afraid. So, like, if anything starts to to catch wind as a story and it involves America, they they cut the Internet over that?

Ace AT:
Instantly. They don’t care what it is. They just cut it.

Simone Collins:
I honestly wish someone would do that.

Ace AT:
Interview that happened from Trump that wasn’t even related to Iran, and my mom couldn’t connect to the Internet at all no matter what

Malcolm Collins:
she goodness gracious. Tell you how freaked out my wife gets when we get power outages here or there’s no Internet. I don’t think so. It’s like she’s a she’s a crack addict unless there’s no crack that day.

Simone Collins:
It’s true.

Malcolm Collins:
And I’m like, Simone, calm down.

Simone Collins:
This is true. No. And so we we lived in in Peru for a while, which is why that’s, like, my frame of reference for, like, place where electricity goes off occasionally. And, like, when we when we moved there and we bought our first ever home together there, we were so excited. And then they were like, oh, by the way, just for, like, when the water gets shut off for an entire day or when the electricity goes out, like, make sure you have these things. I I lost my mind because I can’t...

Malcolm Collins:
But the worst thing about living in Peru... So the two worst things, and maybe these will spark ideas of things to talk about for you with. Number one that I hated was the smell. the smell and the pollution. The black boogers. You would you would often get, like... The sewer pipes would, like, back up into your house, and so it often smelled

Ace AT:
like sewage Oh my god.

Malcolm Collins:
Inside... Did you ever get that or no? That’s a Peru thing?

Simone Collins:
Peru thing.

Ace AT:
So our country, since the very old times, we have the biggest sewer system, whereas never gets clogged ever.

Simone Collins:
Wow. Okay.

Ace AT:
The entire country has never gotten clogged. There’s one historical place that was made during the Cyrus the Great. Wait. When a massive flood happens back then... Yes. Yep. So... You know you know you know you know balcony? You know you know the... A normal balcony in apartments? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Iran designed it.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. I heard that.

Ace AT:
Nobody... Yeah. Because back then, countries... In the country, it used to get so hot. So they decided to open up a thing for a house where the wind comes in and cools down the house. So they decided to make something called balcony.

Malcolm Collins:
A few notes on this to understand why they would... So first of all, in terms of, populated living centers, they had some of the early really big ones. And they would have had early population... Because you need the balcony if you have a lot of multistory buildings. That is what that is what ends up necessitating it. And then you have them in an already hot environment. So And the the balconies that he’s describing were quite stylized. I I I don’t know. Do they still exist? Like, can you see the old cool... I’ve I’ve seen them in, like, Turkey.

Ace AT:
Yeah. There is. Yes. Yes. And there was this one... During the Cyrus the Great, they made a sewage system where you know, how the massive amounts of, like, flooding that’s been happening over the past few, like, months? That’s like, the cars are getting dragged by the water. It’s been so bad. This one city instead of our country that has that sewer system created by the Cyrus of the great era is completely making the entire city safe from flooding.

Simone Collins:
Wow.

Ace AT:
And it has never been filled. Instantly, as soon as a single drop of water goes inside it, it instantly gets depleted.

Malcolm Collins:
I think the... Oh, okay. So that’ll go over the other thing. Because that that did bring up an interesting conversation. Yeah. The other thing that always really annoyed me when

Simone Collins:
I Wait. Is is is this what we’re talking about, though? Because this is... I

Malcolm Collins:
Yes. That’s what we’re talking about. Okay.

Ace AT:
Yes. But it’s not in the cities anymore. This is, like, very old.

Simone Collins:
So Yeah. That one was looking for, like, the original invention. Okay. But, like, it’s sort of a a ventilation thing. Okay. That’s super cool. That’s super cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
but in in Peru, they, the other thing is I... You cannot get good cheese in Peru. It all tastes like plastic.

Simone Collins:
Oh. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
I don’t know if there’s any ingredients when you move to India where either you’re like, oh my god. This ingredient, I couldn’t get anything like this.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Or What are the... Yeah. What are the big food ingredient differences that you’re you’re noticing? Like, go... Just going to grocery stores and stuff. We’re like, this, I can’t get it anymore. I miss it so much. Like, when I go back to Iran, this is the first thing I’m gonna eat. Or, like, oh my gosh. I can actually eat this food now.

Ace AT:
So, basically, everything that is in Iran does not exist in India because we don’t have any type of international thing other than Zafran. And for some reason, in India, it’s so expensive to buy Zaffron, but in our country, it’s so much cheap. So if someone lives in, like, Iran and tries to bring, like, Zaffron, well, technically, they will catch you in the airport for bringing so much. But if you do manage to somehow bring it in India, you can sell it to up to, like, four to five times the price. It’s ridiculous.

Simone Collins:
Well, it’s crazy expensive in The United States. Like, if if if there’s regular cooking with saffron in Iran, we would feel like king.

Ace AT:
We we use saffron on everything in Iran. We use it on rice. We use it on tea. We use it on chicken. We use it everything. Everything.

Simone Collins:
Oh my gosh. That is amazing. I I think I’ve used saffron, like, three times in my entire life as a treat. That’s so cool.

Ace AT:
Oh my god. Fun things

Malcolm Collins:
that I would be doing if I was you. I don’t know if you... But I I really like cooking, and I would just be experimenting with everything I could get access to in India. I’d be like, okay. Like, let’s let’s...

Simone Collins:
That’s exciting. Yeah. I mean, you you got a lot going on. I don’t know if you have, like, a lot of time to just mess around in a kitchen.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, you... So what are you You I’m

Ace AT:
gonna talk to them.

Simone Collins:
Eventually. I mean, what... I mean, like, one thing that was really cool was when we lived in Peru, for example, and you might do this in India. Like, Malcolm realized that the fruit there was incredibly inexpensive, and you could just get this incredible stuff. Like, just for for us, like, relatively nothing. Whereas for for us, the stuff we were used to getting cheaply, like, dairy was impossible. So he just went and bought, like, a ton of fruit and just tried all of it.

Malcolm Collins:
But when I go to The Middle East, I always go get tons of dates because

Simone Collins:
you can get really good dates. I don’t

Malcolm Collins:
know if you can get good dates in Iran.

Ace AT:
Back then, you used to get a lot of, like, good people from, if you’re trying to date a girl back then......

Simone Collins:
Dates. Oh, no. No. Dates.

Malcolm Collins:
The the fruits. It’s a dried fruit.

Simone Collins:
The... There must be another word for

Ace AT:
that. Right? We have a lot of those. So every kind. Oh, really? Mean, there’s, like, we’re... There’s something we make called Labo Shack, and we use a lot of fruits for it. You can... I can probably try to type it for you. You can see it.

Malcolm Collins:
Would you just describe it? Is it is it like a smoothie or something? Is it like a blended fruit? Is it like fruits?

Ace AT:
So, basically, you mash a lot of fruit inside of a metal, like, plate kinda, and you leave it out in the sun.

Simone Collins:
Really? And that’s good.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, it’s

Ace AT:
like a little roll up.

Simone Collins:
A lavashak, l a v a s h a k.

Malcolm Collins:
Or Yeah. Yeah. An original radiant scent of fruit leather.

Ace AT:
Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s very good.

Simone Collins:
Oh, but it comes in, like like, in in in chunks. Kinda chunky.

Ace AT:
You can get either in chunk or you can get a, like, a whole plate of it if you want to.

Malcolm Collins:
Dude. Yeah. And the best... A dish like that is a very standard kid food. Like, we have it for our kids. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a little too candy for for me to make a major thing of an adult.

Simone Collins:
This is what I’m getting is Yeah. Yeah.

Ace AT:
Okay. That’s it. Never mind. When I go back to Iran, I’m gonna have that.

Simone Collins:
Okay. So... Okay. Yeah. There we go. That’s okay. That is a... You cannot get it as good in in India. I’ve never seen that before in my life. So

Ace AT:
find it at all in India.

Simone Collins:
Okay. That’s fair enough then. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
Good. Well, okay. But speaking of the other kind of dates, have you tried to leverage your newfound fame to to get... I don’t know if you

Simone Collins:
have girlfriend there. Girlfriend. Is she in the skybrows video. Oh, yeah. You did the skybrows video. She’s right there.

Malcolm Collins:
You So wait. Did your girlfriend come with you?

Ace AT:
She is Indian. So we’ve been in a long distance relationship for the last five years. And we met each other every, like, year one time because I couldn’t really make that much money. So we used to, like, meet each other one time every thirty days in India, and I have to go all the way back. So...

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Are you are you staying in her city now?

Ace AT:
I’m with her. She’s currently in the next room.

Simone Collins:
She’s right there.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s amazing. Sorry. I remember it now from the the Asthma Gold videos. But... Yeah. So the the, that is all... And so I I guess the plan Wait.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. How do you how do you end up in a long distance where you probably can’t say? But, like, is there a lot of long distance dating in Iran? Because that’s... That is a... Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
How do you meet up

Simone Collins:
with, like, VPNs and all that, like, everything else? It’s going

Ace AT:
So we met on Discord on a public Discord channel where there was, like, freelancing. I’m a video editor. She’s a fashion designer. We kinda met like that.

Simone Collins:
That’s so cool.

Ace AT:
Yeah. In terms of long distance relationships inside of Iran, there is a lot, but sadly not for love.

Simone Collins:
Oh. Oh.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, to

Ace AT:
get out. To get out.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Well, I mean, practical. The... And, I mean, I... I’m I’m the product of one of those. Like, this hap... This is an international thing that happens everywhere at all times. So... Absolutely.

Ace AT:
Yeah. The way with me was I’ve been in a so many toxic relationships inside of my country where I, like, told myself, you know what? I’m just never gonna find anyone over here. Just, like, let it go. So I started talking to everyone inside of Discord, and somehow, I was able to communicate with people inside of different countries much more compared to those I knew inside of my own country. But in terms of, like, the things I experienced compared to the people outside the country, they have no clue what I’m talking about, or they think I’m trying to outscale them in, like, bad things happening to them. So... Yeah. They were like, oh oh, my Internet is slow. I said, okay. Well, at least you have Internet. So it’s fine. We’re just trying to win an argument.

Simone Collins:
No. No. Oh my gosh. I’m so curious now, though, because, like... So so what actually is dating, like, within Iran? Are there dating apps that are specific to the country?

Malcolm Collins:
Good question.

Simone Collins:
Are are people supposed to meet, like... No. You’re not gonna meet someone at the mosque because that’s not gonna work. No. That’s not not great

Ace AT:
for any reason. Dating, like, sites or applications and sort of illegal... Highly illegal. And if you wanna meet someone, you just gotta meet them outside, I guess. But other than that, if something like... Well, in terms of religion, you’re not allowed to even be together unless you are married.

Simone Collins:
So That also makes it very tough.

Malcolm Collins:
Hold on. The the... Now I’m actually curious. Like, how does it... You said you dated multiple people while you’re in Iran. How did you...

Simone Collins:
Like, were you milling around in a park or something?

Malcolm Collins:
Just going up to random women?

Ace AT:
Set up a date, like, at some place specific, for example, a mall or a food court or, like, a park or somewhere romantic on... In the mountains. However, being, like, getting caught, being together in a car or, like, holding hands or doing something intimate usually gets you in a very bad trouble. So you gotta be very careful. Unless you both have a ring, and you can be like, hey. We’re engaged. It’s fine.

Simone Collins:
Aw. So... So your emergency dating ring, you need to have. Yeah. These are the pro tips we are learning.

Malcolm Collins:
So so what I mean?

Ace AT:
As long as they see the ring, it’s fine. However, there are some who would take it further and try to, like, actually see if that’s real. They just call in and try to see if you’re actually married with your ID and if you’re not your cook. This is all

Simone Collins:
because You need, like, a... You need a you need a number on your phone labeled mom. When you get in, you can answer and be like, yes. This is my future daughter-in-law. This is so oh my gosh.

Ace AT:
That’s so No. The the the the government actually calls in the building with your ID number asking if these people are actually married or not. And when they say, no, you are going to jail.

Simone Collins:
Oh, they’re checking for marriage licenses.

Malcolm Collins:
What would you say they call your your building? What what do you mean your building?

Ace AT:
What do mean my building? What my building?

Malcolm Collins:
You said they call something the title. With this... The...

Ace AT:
So the police has, like, a building. Like, it’s, like, kind of, like, IRGC’s building. So they call in asking for information about this specific person with the ID number and...

Simone Collins:
Oh, okay. Okay. So they’re checking government records. The public records office.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. But but so then my question would be, is an engagement, does that go on public records in Iran? Like a like a proposal? Oh. Yes. Wow. It doesn’t in in America, by the way. It doesn’t in in in most... I I... Like, I didn’t need to tell anyone when I proposed to Simone.

Ace AT:
Pretty much anything you do inside of the country, you have to, like, tell the government. Wow.

Malcolm Collins:
And so how did your dates get set up? Did, like, a friend introduce you, or did you see them in public?

Ace AT:
Usually see each other on, like, Instagram. We talked and be like, hey. We can meet over here if you want.

Malcolm Collins:
Instagram. And if

Ace AT:
they’re sassy, they usually say no.

Malcolm Collins:
Course. So But, well, Instagram, like I’m gonna be honest. I’m gonna be honest. That might be slightly healthier than Twitch. Or not... What what is the What

Simone Collins:
is Discord? Disc... No. The one in The US. Tinder. Oh, no. That’s better than all of our dating platforms. Oh, god. Yeah. That’s That

Ace AT:
is way different than Tinder.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. No. But be... Because at least you’re, like, directly emailing... Not emailing them, but, like, sending them a DM and and having some sort of But Instagram is

Simone Collins:
still very image heavy, so it’s still very biased as a platform for you.

Ace AT:
When it comes to images, the, like, girls inside of our country usually cover up, not in terms of hijab, but in terms of, like, hiding...

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah.

Ace AT:
Women love to take pictures where their face is never in the picture.

Simone Collins:
Oh.

Ace AT:
Like, doing a side pic or, like, even if there was half of their face. I don’t know. Like, it... They always do that type of stuff.

Simone Collins:
So you don’t know what you’re you don’t know what you’re working with.

Ace AT:
Yeah. You know?

Malcolm Collins:
That... That’s actually really interesting. Yeah. And it explains for for people unaware. Iran has a terrible fertility rate. The fertility rate in Iran is below The US right now, because Well,

Simone Collins:
now you understand why.

Malcolm Collins:
Now I understand why.

Simone Collins:
Someone. Oh my goodness. That is

Ace AT:
really people are... Families are very afraid of, like, actual marriage now. So they say, oh, if you get married to this person and they decide to divorce you, goodbye all of your assets. So they don’t want something to call white marriage. Yeah. Wait. You

Malcolm Collins:
can... Why... They allowed divorces? I I... Are divorces allowed in Islam?

Ace AT:
Divorces are allowed, but in terms of other countries, like, for example, like, Hindu countries, divorce is something... It’s still allowed, but it’s something huge where, like, entire families judge you for it. But in Iran, it’s very common now. So because of that, the people of Iran decided on something completely new and original called the white marriage where you don’t... You live together, but you don’t, like, tell the government you live together or something.

Simone Collins:
What the... Are you gonna... Are you afraid that of being arrested or something? Like, this this whole

Malcolm Collins:
09/22

Ace AT:
They don’t have security cameras inside your home, so they will never know.

Simone Collins:
Unless you just never go grocery shopping and get in a car together. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
This is the state of gender relations right now. Men would rather risk being detained by a by a a Police. A a government, then then trust a woman. That’s that’s where we are right now. Dude, I love the... This is a... Because that’s so, like, real for, like, the the right wing online in, The United States of guys being like, I don’t know. That’s a that’s a pretty good idea that Yeah.

Simone Collins:
Checks out. Yes. Absolutely. What what

Malcolm Collins:
I will say is, I think for my generation in The United States at least, and maybe this is what it was like in Iran, because we have boomer parents and boomers are, like, the worst, that that all of their relationships were, like, super bad. And, like, I didn’t know how awesome marriage was until, like, I got married to my wife, and I began to meet other friends in our generation who got married. And I’d, like, recommend marriage to you. I think it’s it’s really good. Also, you don’t have any money. So Well,

Ace AT:
yeah, pretty much. In our family, my mom decided to divorce my dad as soon as possible because my dad used to work for the government.

Simone Collins:
Oh.

Ace AT:
And my mom did not like that at all. And back in the day, my mom got into forced marriage with my dad in terms of, you know, back then, family members used to be like, oh, I’ll pick your husband. I’ll I’ll Yeah. I’ll know who’s better for suited for you in terms of, like, something like that. And it was... It got very bad for us because my mom did not want to be with my dad, but she was, like, had to deal with it because her family wanted her to be with my dad. But after my grandparents passed away, my mom instantly divorced my dad. And me and my mom been living together for a long time, like, more than ten years. But in terms of financially, we were in a very tight spot because I didn’t have enough money to even check how much balance I had in the bank because you need to have, like, a little balance to check how much money you have. So all the money that we were getting was from our grandparents’, like, what do you call it?

Malcolm Collins:
Like Pensions?

Ace AT:
When they used to work, I guess.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Their pensions.

Ace AT:
When they passed away. Yeah. Yeah. All of our income was from dad, which we were saving enough to be able to travel, to have fun, and stuff like that. Because my mom loves traveling. She doesn’t want to stay in Iran at all. And... Yeah.

Simone Collins:
Wow. So she’s still she’s still there, and she’s hoping to maybe not be there.

Ace AT:
Or Sadly.

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
How come in our arranged married... Because I thought, like, the norm in a lot of muscle majority countries where it’s... With arranged marriages. Like, you just reach out to, like, your cousins or whatever. Is that rare in Iran?

Ace AT:
Now it’s close to, like, non... Like, you can’t see it anywhere anymore. Wow. The one... The oranges you see are usually mullahs or, like, governments who usually do arranged marriage now. It’s pretty much impossible to see a normal Persian doing it. Wow.

Malcolm Collins:
No. That makes sense. Yeah. Do you do you, oh, another question I was wondering because I was just unwrapping this. And I guess, Simone, you got this for our kids, like a baseball set?

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. What is that? They’re they’re little, like, silicone baseball diamonds.

Malcolm Collins:
So you put these in

Ace AT:
a in a... We don’t have baseball in our country, so I don’t know what that is.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. It’s... I’m actually gonna ask you, like, what sports did you play?

Simone Collins:
What are the big sports? Yeah.

Ace AT:
Like, the top three, I guess. Volleyball and football and basketball. Like Volleyball is one of

Simone Collins:
the top three.

Ace AT:
Is very... Yeah. In our country

Speaker 4:
Okay. So I wanted to find out why Iran and volleyball became a thing. So Ayatollah Khomeini was a big fan, and they added it to a lot of their school and university systems. And then they began to won a lot of national championships. Not national, like, glow... Global championships, Olympics, etcetera. And that allowed it to be easier for people to, like, focus on and get excited about. And then it just became sort of a self fulfilling prophecy of, like, we’re uniquely good at it, so let’s be proud about it.

Ace AT:
, volleyball is one of the top three. There’s badminton, tennis.

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. Men’s volleyball? Men’s volleyball.

Simone Collins:
Sorry. There are

Ace AT:
there are there are women as well, but, like, they have to wear hijab and, like

Simone Collins:
Yeah. See, it’s not... It’s fun, you know, when the women aren’t in in in hot pants

Malcolm Collins:
and very bouncy tops. In in America, volleyball is...

Simone Collins:
Well, I’m sure you’ve seen It’s the fan service sport. You know?

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Volleyball is generally the fan service sport. Right? Like, it’s the women with the big

Ace AT:
Oh, wrestling too. Wrestling is huge too

Simone Collins:
in my country.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, what what style? Like, the the the

Ace AT:
I I have no clue. I don’t know much about wrestling, but I see them, like, holding each other and trying to throw each other in the ground kinda like Sumo, but it’s wrestling.

Malcolm Collins:
You That sounds like the standard type that I practiced growing up. I I did wrestling growing up. I hated it.

Ace AT:
It seems like was very high in terms of wrestling, like rankings.

Malcolm Collins:
What what were you into? Were you ever into sports or anything like that or just get

Ace AT:
I’ve done kung fu, karate. Tried to do swimming. Did not work out. I can’t swim at all. I try. The attempt was made. I did boxing. What else?

Simone Collins:
It’s a pretty good variety.

Ace AT:
I guess... Yeah. I I tried everything I could. Badminton, basketball. I hated football because it’s just

Simone Collins:
football too.

Ace AT:
Didn’t make sense at all.

Malcolm Collins:
What about video... Because I would imagine video games would be quite costly, but, of course, you can pirate them. So, like, it... Did you play a lot of video games growing up or still, or is that not, like

Ace AT:
The biggest, I guess, you could say games in sort of our country that gets played a lot is Counter Strike, football, Rainbow Six Siege, and Call of Duty.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. Well, they’re not bad taste. did you did you recognize the countdown sound at the beginning

Ace AT:
of

Simone Collins:
so there was no

Ace AT:
Mario Three two one.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. We used the Mario Kart countdown sound, So I wasn’t sure if you would immediately

Simone Collins:
catch that, but I guess it’s Mario Kart.

Ace AT:
Less than... I think less than 10% of the people in my country know what Mario is. So...

Simone Collins:
Really? That’s so interesting. So you

Ace AT:
have properties that you make... Nobody in my country really knows about Pokemon, but they know it because of Pokemon GO. Oh, that’s so weird. Anything. Oh, also, it was a very, very small trend of people who knew about Yu Gi Oh, including me. I got first edition cons when it came out in my country. Then there’s Bakugan that people kinda knew about. And other than that, everything got sanctioned after that. Nothing after that that came out. We don’t know about it.

Malcolm Collins:
So what I have... And, you know, you can catch up on a lot of video games with this. They’re... You can buy online. I buy them for my kids. These game consoles that are, like, $60 and have every game made up until, like, five years ago on them. They’re, like, little... This is like ROMs. Obviously, they’re all stolen. Right? Like, they’re... But it’s it’s it’s... It allows you to have, like, every game made for every major console system for, like, $60 up until... Maybe not five years. They go up until about, like, ten years ago, But it’s still a lot of great stuff.

Simone Collins:
He’s still buying the basics. I just went on your shopping trip with you via YouTube. And, yes, everyone should subscribe to Asad’s channel. I think it’s just... It’s... Let’s see.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s YouTube. Yeah.

Ace AT:
Definitely definitely donate to his channel, the console you’re talking about.

Simone Collins:
No. I hadn’t either until Malcolm. It just turned up, and he handed it to our kids. They are like these tiny little game consoles.

Malcolm Collins:
Basically, they

Ace AT:
do the China

Simone Collins:
Game Boy, don’t they? Yeah. They make they

Malcolm Collins:
make these rip offs, and they look like old timey Game Boys. But they have enough hardware in them to play, like, Super Nintendo stuff and, like, you know, a lot of a lot of, like, more advanced games, like, to Xbox and stuff. And so I just give them to my kids, and they break them in, like, a month. But they’re they’re...

Ace AT:
Dang it. Oh, that’s that’s cool. I need to look it up. Yeah. Because they’re gonna chat for you.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. It’s apparently affordable to Malcolm. I would I would not give it for our children. Our children make everything.

Malcolm Collins:
We make, our money these days the the the honest way, which is with a a not safe for work chatbot site called rfab.ai.

Ace AT:
Oh my god. I saw that. Someone sent me a link, and it said, yeah. You go into an interview with, Basecamp. This is their website. They need lot of money. I was like, what? I was like, what is this NSFW one? He said, oh, yeah. You should turn that off. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
You should turn that off. You can turn it off, by the way.

Ace AT:
Yes. The kids thingy or whatever. It it was on the left side of the filters.

Malcolm Collins:
But every... It’s what everybody uses it for. Right?

Simone Collins:
Like, I can’t control what people decide to use it. We made our

Ace AT:
site wild.

Malcolm Collins:
Originally, like, just as, like, a creative studio. And people were using it for not safe for work stuff, and I was like, okay. I’ll

Simone Collins:
So you want that? I’d tell you... That’s what you wanna give me money for. Sure.

Ace AT:
I mean, if it works, it works, I guess.

Simone Collins:
It works. We... It’s owned by a nonprofit, which we then use to develop educational tools. So if... And look. No one no one pays for or funds or donates to that kind of development anymore. So, like, we are happy to do that. It is totally... What are you doing, Malcolm? This is not an ASMR video. Down. Down with the box.

Ace AT:
This is

Malcolm Collins:
I’m breaking it down. No.

Simone Collins:
We’re not breaking down boxes for recycling. No. We’re not. No, sir. Sir, what what is the plan going ahead? Like, you just kinda wanna build up your video editing services and maybe, like, do more content creation, which I would love because I love your channel. But what’s the plan?

Ace AT:
Since I was a kid, I always loved making videos on YouTube. But at first, making YouTube videos in my country was fine, but everyone looked at you like, why is this person recording in public? That’s, like, not normal. So I was like, okay. I’m not gonna do that. Then I’m gonna record at home. I started recording at home, and I got up to, like, 200, 300,000 subscribers in my own country’s, like, social media.

Simone Collins:
Wow.

Ace AT:
And then the new absurd rules came in. Dancing not allowed. Like like, English song is not allowed. Like, this not allowed. So I was like, you know what? I’m just gonna stop making content and make all of my videos disappear from that social media app. And I started going on YouTube. YouTube was brutal. I can’t lie. When I started YouTube, I started, like, making videos about, like, the mobile clash game I used to play. And when I got monetized, well, I couldn’t get the money. So the government has issued a third party company where you can, like, make deals with them, and they were like, yeah. We will monetize all your money that you get from YouTube, and we will only take 20% of them. But there’s a catch. You’re not allowed to upload any videos without their permission. The videos you upload, they have to be reviewed by them. And the thumbnails you make, if it has, like, maybe boobs in it from one of the gotcha characters, you completely cannot upload them out.

Simone Collins:
Goodness.

Ace AT:
So when I said, okay. I don’t wanna work with you anymore. They said, okay. Pay us a fee for ending the contract sooner than you were supposed to for $3,000. So I had to completely go inactive for three years until my channel got released by these guys. And my girl decided to open up a bank account under her her name for me to be able to monetize my channel.

Simone Collins:
Oh, that’s awesome.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s that’s good to hear. That’s a... That that sucks. So you

Simone Collins:
you enough to monetize on YouTube, and you would

Ace AT:
just deal with all that.

Simone Collins:
My goodness. But I I think you’re

Malcolm Collins:
at the beginning of a of a good thing now. And in addition to that... By the way, something you have to check out, and I’m at... Like, seriously, check it out. Our fab has a... If you do video editing and that’s that’s where you’re making your money, rfab has a very good video editing suite. We we built

Ace AT:
it What is rfab?

Simone Collins:
Oh, it’s the website. Rfab.ai is the It’s

Malcolm Collins:
the it’s the It’s the website with another... If you go to it and you go to creative tools and then you go to the video editing or video recording, like, we’re doing a video recording on rfab right now The the video editor that we have will take a video that you have, and then it will give you all of the text for the video, like, the words for the video. And you can edit the video by moving the words around, like, moving the text around and copying and pasting it.

Ace AT:
Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins:
But you can also, like, remove all hesitations with one click. You can remove all places where people are quiet with one click. You can, easily, you know, like, make cuts and then put in a quite... Like, put in an audio and then put in a quiet, like, AI made loop video behind it that we do a lot. We, like, we do... Just check it. I use it for all of our stuff because,

Ace AT:
like That’s very convenient. I can’t lie.

Malcolm Collins:
I don’t... Yeah. And it’s it’s very inexpensive compared to equivalent software like Descript. The the reason we made it is because we got tired of paying our video editing software. Like, a lot of people don’t use it. Like, it... It’s not one of the more used features on the website because, like, you can do work or you can jack off. And, apparently, people wanna... You know?

Simone Collins:
Alright. They’ve made their choices clear. They’ve made their choices tested feature on the website because Malcolm has to run an episode for our podcast every single day, and he needs software to work.

Ace AT:
That’s good. I see. I’ll I’ll make sure to check it out because right now

Malcolm Collins:
And I’ll give you free

Ace AT:
credits on the website. Terrible laptop. Yeah. W. Hey. Yo. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. So we’ll give you free

Ace AT:
My laptop is terrible right now. So Editing Well, this would help.

Simone Collins:
Yes. Because also for some reason, when it, like... However it’s exporting videos is... They’re like... They render really, really quickly for whatever reason. I don’t know why. Yeah. Until you get your new laptop, this is gonna be hopefully Well,

Malcolm Collins:
I’ll tell you why they export really quickly, Simone. Why? And you’re you’re still wondering the magic behind the scenes.

Simone Collins:
Explain it to me.

Malcolm Collins:
They start up a separate server on Amazon Web Services, and they do all of the processing on the separate server. So they’re not doing the processing on your computer, and they’re not doing the processing on our AWS back end. It’s a completely unique service.

Simone Collins:
Okay. Yeah. Then then just give us the email that’s... You wanna associate with an RFAB account that you use for editing, and we’ll just give you the tokens you need

Malcolm Collins:
to do. We’ll give you tokens. And in addition to that, if you end up liking or using it, we are happy to do sponsorships with you on future stuff.

Ace AT:
Hey, yo. Let’s go.

Simone Collins:
My first ever sponsor. Oh, okay. I’m excited for this.

Malcolm Collins:
And you can give people the safe for work link. You just can give backslash safe for work and lock their account into safe for work. And and then we also do the the other thing that I can do for you is if you’re using the software and you’re like, this could be better or I want this feature that’s not here, let us know and we’ll build it. That’s how that’s how we build things out. so, anyway, yeah.

Simone Collins:
Was there couple of do more content creation and video editing. I didn’t know you had that many followers in your own country before you had to start fresh, and now you’re... Oh, yeah. Look.

Ace AT:
You’re gonna get wanna tell anyone who I was on my own YouTube instead of my social media Oh, sure. Because the government pretty much figures out who I am in, like, two seconds. So I didn’t wanna show that out. But in terms of my future plans, I love to do YouTube. Yes. But in terms of, like, my most important goal is just having a normal life. I just wanna do my own thing, you know, without having to worry about, like, Internet going out or this this is, like, going to blow up. And, like, two seconds later, like, America and Israel attacks, and I have to, like, pretty much sits idle in the middle of the hall waiting until the war ends.

Malcolm Collins:
So Has it felt very different being in India? Like, just like... Or are you still, like, settling it?

Ace AT:
It’s very much more calming. I can tell you that I haven’t... When I sleep, it feels so calm that it feels like I’ve never slept like this for the last, like, a year. Oh, man. If you Yeah. Because every time I’m in Iran, when I’m, like, sleeping, I have to sleep with, like, one eye open as you as you call it. Either the government is going after you or you have to deal with America wanting to bomb you because they just released a new video. We’re gonna destroy all the governments and stuff like that and just gonna wait until you tell you hear a jet. If you hear a loud bang, you just pretty much wake up, especially after the PTSD I have because, like, two buildings next to my house got blown up by a rocket. It was, like, very loud. So I couldn’t sleep, like, at all.

Simone Collins:
That’s enough to... Yeah. Just...

Malcolm Collins:
And and how hard is it to get out of the country now? Like, with...

Ace AT:
It’s not gonna

Malcolm Collins:
be hard.... Something you can talk about. But, like, do... Is there... Was there legal ways to do it, or is it like...

Ace AT:
There is legal ways, but you need to have a lot of money because you only earn $40 a month, and then your normal ticket will cost you about $1,000 to get out. So legal way, yes, there is way. I got out the legal way, and I tell you, it hurts because I had to sell my house. So if I want... If you want me to explain how bad the economic is going, about... Like, it hasn’t even been a year. Seven months ago, I said, I’m gonna sell my house. It was worth $15,000. Two months ago, it got sold for $7,000. And then a few weeks after that, I converted it to dollars, and I only got 5,000. So I got one third of the money of the entire house for selling my house. It... It’s brutal of how you can, like, earn money and keep your money’s value inside of the country. So it’s very hard.

Simone Collins:
Wow. I guess the best time to have done that then is is already, and I’m really glad that’s behind you.

Malcolm Collins:
And I’m and I’m glad you’ve got the the... One of the hardest things to get these days is a is a partner who you like. So I I hope that that that gets locked down for you.

Simone Collins:
So That is amazing. I’m so excited.

Ace AT:
I mean, to be fair, I have the wedding ring inside of my bag for proposal. You know? So... Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Wait. She doesn’t know? Do I need to cut this out?

Ace AT:
No. No. Don’t worry. She won’t... She she doesn’t know who you guys are yet. Oh

Malcolm Collins:
my gosh. Oh. I am so excited for you. I can’t tell you how awesome it is. Like, I I have just been so thrilled to be married... Like, since we get... Because every every marriage I ever saw growing up was terrible. And I didn’t know If you marry somebody who you like and who you like working on things with, which it sounds like you do with your partner. Like Yeah.

Simone Collins:
So that you’re both entrepreneurs and you’re both doing... Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. I’m always like, if if you can work on projects together, that means you’re going to... Whenever somebody tells me, like, why do you work with your wife? Like, that seems like it would be terrible. I’m like, why why did you marry someone you don’t wanna work with?

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Like, especially if you’re gonna have kids. Like, you you can you can, you know, leave a business venture together. You can, you know, whatever, but you can’t, like, can’t leave kids.

Ace AT:
She... She’s worth it. I... I’ve sacrificed everything again for

Simone Collins:
You have. It’s so romantic. It’s it’s very romantic. Oh my goodness.

Malcolm Collins:
But it’s giving you, hopefully, a place to to to grow from in a in a in a more stable environment....

Ace AT:
You’re kind of trying to talk with her family. Her family do not accept me at all because of where I’m coming from. And no matter how much I explain it, it’s still a difficulty. So we’re trying to figure that out.

Malcolm Collins:
That is tough.

Simone Collins:
They... I think now that you’re there, though, they can get to know you. Like, when when Malcolm asked my parents for their blessing, they said no. But then we got married anyway. After that, like, he spent some time with them, and then they love him. Like, now he’s fine. I think they

Ace AT:
just need to

Simone Collins:
get to know you. But there’s, you know,

Malcolm Collins:
ethnic things in India. And

Simone Collins:
I don’t know.

Ace AT:
Much more difficult here. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
And Yeah. I don’t religious background. But if she’s not from a a Muslim religious background, there could be biases there.

Ace AT:
From a very strict family.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh. So a a strict Hindu because of the

Ace AT:
past history of India and Pakistan fighting each other, they see me the same way kinda.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. They’re not gonna see, like, an American. They’re not gonna see, like, a Persian and an Arab as different from each other.

Ace AT:
Yeah. Very... The... I I told them that, but they just say the government... Look at your government right now. How do you, like

Simone Collins:
The heck? My govern... Come on. Yeah. That’s difficult.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s very difficult. I I see we’re there. Yeah. That’s... I I... Well, the the... I I hope things work out for you. I mean, I know it’s it’s tough, but what I’d be like is, look. You want grandkids or not? You’re not you’re not getting them without me. You

Simone Collins:
know? Shit. I’m just running out.

Ace AT:
Planning on that if we do get married.

Malcolm Collins:
Well, good

Ace AT:
for personally want a daughter. I can’t lie. I wanna

Simone Collins:
Daughters are so great. I have one curled

Ace AT:
up right next me. To Look at her. Daughter always goes to Gosh.

Simone Collins:
Oh my god. Show her. There she is. Snuggled up. She’s just so cute. Do you... Oh my god. You’re one the cutest daughters. I’m so excited.

Ace AT:
The reason I want a daughter is because daughters always go to their dad.

Simone Collins:
They kinda do, though, don’t they?

Ace AT:
Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
Alright. Alright. Well, it was a joy to have you on. I’m going to, after this this weekend, do some follow-up where I will reach out to some of the content creators I know and see if they’re interested in doing something with you. Also, sign up on our FAB and send us the email that you used to do that, and we’ll give you tokens. And if you like it for what you’re doing, we can do some sort of promotion thing.

Simone Collins:
Or, like, any just other facets of it that you just think are fun, that you feel like you would be comfortable talking about, then we could talk about sponsorship.

Ace AT:
Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
I mean, obviously, like, we would never sponsor something on our podcast that we didn’t, like, insanely, like, feel comfortable doing, so we wouldn’t ask you for that. But, anyway, yeah, we’d love to be sponsors. So

Ace AT:
That’ll be crazy. That’ll be... You guys are gonna be my first ever sponsor if that happens. That’ll be crazy.

Simone Collins:
I would I would love that.

Ace AT:
I’ve been trying to, like, get sponsorship from anywhere, but whatever I get recommended is from NordVPN or ExpressVPN. Said, I can’t promote that because it doesn’t even work in my country. So

Malcolm Collins:
what’s the point?

Simone Collins:
Yeah. That would be really... It doesn’t work, but try NordVPN. Oh, man. Yeah. They’ll come. They’ll come. The more will come. We... Weirdly, like, I think a lot of people have weird email triggers for for YouTube accounts. And then after we hit 50 and then again after we hit 80, we got all these new, like, influxes.

Malcolm Collins:
But So once you hit 50, I think it’s when you’re gonna start

Simone Collins:
And you’re gonna be there so fast. You’re gonna be there so fast. Like, this weekend, you’re probably

Ace AT:
gaining 200 followers per video. That’s insane.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I’m

Ace AT:
happy with it. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
No. The more the merrier. Well, we we... Anyway. You get to

Malcolm Collins:
to our level of production. We do a video every day now. So get there, and you can start you can start

Simone Collins:
And then you’ll be getting... You’ll be racking them up fast. But... Yeah.

Ace AT:
Okay. That would be crazy. A video every day is ridiculous.

Simone Collins:
It’s a it’s a it’s a lot, but we... It’s fun, man. Like, it’s really fun. So... Yeah. But

Ace AT:
I mean,

Malcolm Collins:
it will

Ace AT:
be more fun if I can use my face so I don’t have to worry about editing every time to see my reflection. I have to edit it out. So it’s very hard.

Simone Collins:
That’s... Yeah. That is that is... Well, everything looks smooth on this, so that’s good. So Wait.

Malcolm Collins:
Here’s the question. If you if you can make enough money from this, are you gonna take your mom out of the country?

Ace AT:
For sure. She hates being there. Why would I keep her there?

Simone Collins:
Okay.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay. Okay.

Ace AT:
I would know. Wasn’t sure wanted to say something. She loves Turkey. So if I can’t make enough, I will try to get her a place in Turkey where she can, like, do whatever she wants inside of Turkey. She loves Turkey.

Simone Collins:
She’s pretty endless, so fabulous. All the drama. Do

Ace AT:
all the just in India with my girl trying to start a life. I’m trying to purchase purchase us a house if I can and, like, pretty much get everything sorted so their family sees, hey. I’m trying to buy even a house over here. I’m not trying to take her anywhere. Yeah. So Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins:
Oh, man. Like, you’re really going the extra mile here. Okay. Well, any... To any extent, we can help you in your journey, which I think Well, I think we’re going to be pretty useful. Yeah. I hope so. We’re we’re we’re we’re we’re dedicated to doing that.

Malcolm Collins:
You haven’t gotten any interview set up yet, I’m like, I’m sure I can get you something else better than our channel.

Ace AT:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh my god. Thank you guys so much.

Malcolm Collins:
And fans who are watching... If you’re watching this and you’re, like, a mod on somebody else’s Discord or something like that, you know, he’s open to do interviews. So, feel free, and we can connect you to

Simone Collins:
And speaking with you, actually, has been so fun. Like, you have just the insights that you have, the perspectives you have are really unique, really hard to reach. So, like, you got a lot of value. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
So it’s

Ace AT:
just it’s

Simone Collins:
so cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Well, thank you.

Ace AT:
When my when my mods were like, yeah. The the the... There’s there’s a interview coming up for you.

Simone Collins:
Said, what? Really? Who? I’ve been trying so hard to find someone. No one’s

Ace AT:
gonna come

Simone Collins:
for Yeah. Well, no. That that... Once the floodgates open, I think they will they will open for you.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. They they open for us really big. Like, once you begin to build friends in this community, then you’ll you’ll just have more and more and more friends in the community and people, like, trust you. And the community is, like, very, very nice. At the very least, like, we could definitely probably... Like, Yuki Aru would probably

Simone Collins:
Yuki Aru would talk. Oh, yeah. She’s she’s so friendly and fun. Oh my gosh. I talk with her again. I wanna talk with every... Anyway, everyone’s great. Life is wonderful. And, well, we we hope that you have a really good weekend ahead, but we’ve got a lot a lot of coordinating to do for you. And everyone listening, if you’re still listening to this episode, you better be. Please subscribe because this is this is a channel that’s really fun to watch. The videos are great. We will... I really enjoy them. And, yeah, looking forward to seeing what you put out next.

Ace AT:
Thank you. Thank you so much. And make sure to subscribe to Basecamp as well. I’ve been starting to watch your podcast.

Simone Collins:
My gosh. We never promote our podcast.

Ace AT:
Up until now. We never...

Malcolm Collins:
Alright. I’m gonna push, stop here.

Titan Collins:
Because I got grass for everybody.

Simone Collins:
You got grass for even me?

Titan Collins:
Yeah. I got grass for even you.

Simone Collins:
What are we gonna do with the grass, Titan? Oh, you found the dry... Oh, no. Well, you found what’s left of the dragon.

Read more

For today’s paid-subscribers-only weekend episode of Based Camp, we challenge the case for a demographic rebound, asking whether modest birth-rate upticks, larger families among the wealthy, and the growth of high-fertility communities can meaningfully c…

Read more

So join us today as we explore the DSA’s actual program and discuss what a DSA-led America what might actually look like. Sure is interesting!

Show Notes

DSA Structure

Founded in 1982 through the merger of two leftist orgs, the DSA is made up of a National Convention (its highest decision-making body which convenes every two years) and super autonomous local chapters.

• National leadership

  • Is where all dues go; they’re then partially redistributed back to chapters

  • Made up of:

    • The National Political Committee (NPC): serves as collective leadership and a board of directors

    • A Steering Committee that makes interim decisions, oversees staff and finances, charters and revokes chapters and commissions, and implements convention priorities

  • The NPC and national staff provide resources, field organizers, training, shared tools (phone/text banking, compliance help), and national priority campaigns.

• Local chapters

  • Are required to affirm the national body’s principles and basic democratic norms.

  • Send delegates to the convention proportional to their membership

    • At the convention, they set strategy & priorities, elect leadership, and adopt resolutions and platforms

  • Do the day-to-day political work

  • Have their own membership meetings, bylaws, officers, and sophisticated internal structures

• Youth wing: Young Democratic Socialists of America (YSDA)

Active Members

The DSA started growing explosively with Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign and the election of President Trump.

• Membership went from around 6500 in 2014-2016 to over 120,000 now (+ median age dropped significantly)

According to Peter Sterne (News & Opinion Editor @CityAndStateNY)

“As of the end of July, DSA has about 129,000 dues-paying members.

NYC-DSA has about 15,800 members.

Next 5 largest chapters are:

• At-large (i.e. not in a local chapter): 6,500 members

• LA: 6,000 members

• DC: 4,000 members

• Portland: 3,700 members

• Chicago: 3,300 members”

Every member of the DSA simultaneously belongs to the national organization and one local chapter (or “at large” if no group exists nearby)

• Which is rich because this August The Hill reported that “Ocasio-Cortez is not a member of the DSA’s national branch but maintains ties to her local chapter in the Big Apple.” (that’s NOT A THING)

DSA Stances

I’ve bolded all the ones I think are actually cool

Their current program:

1. THRIVING WORKING CLASS COMMUNITIES

   • Freedom To Flourish

     • “Expand public resources to support recreation, learning, and social spaces accessible to all. Establish paid family leave for all workers, a 32 hour work week with full pay and benefits, and a living minimum wage. Provide free, quality public education from pre-K to college and cancel all student debt.”

   • Healthcare For All

     • “Guarantee universal healthcare at no cost to individuals, including complete access to reproductive and gender-affirming care. Expand healthcare access and quality by investing in new public hospitals and clinics. Make all medical education and training public and free.”

   • Housing For All:

     • “Build new, publicly-owned social housing, strictly regulate investment properties, establish universal rent control, and guarantee right to counsel for all tenants.”

   • Finish Reconstruction:

     • “End the legacies of slavery and colonialism. Reinforce anti-discrimination laws. Honor all treaties and tribal sovereignty. Enact reparations and massively invest in good jobs, quality housing and infrastructure in neglected minority communities.”

   • End Mass Incarceration and Police Immunity

     • (this is basically reworded “abolish the police”)

     • “Demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor. Treat drug addiction and mental illness as health issues, not crimes. End qualified immunity and empower civilian oversight bodies with real authority over the police.”

   • Feminism For All

     • “Stop gender violence and end policies that oppress bodily autonomy and intimate life, including patriarchal restrictions on abortion, childbirth and childraising, gender expression and transition, marriage, and divorce. Ban sex discrimination and ensure fair compensation and support for all forms of labor, including care work.”

   • Green New Deal

     • “Pass a federal jobs guarantee. Implement massive investment in sustainable, publicly owned energy and transit infrastructure. Phase out the use of fossil fuels. Reclaim and repair our earth’s resources for all.”

     • NOTE: A federal jobs guarantee generally means the federal government would ensure a paid public-service job is available on request to people who are ready and willing to work, especially if they cannot find adequate private-sector employment.

2. WORKING-CLASS FOREIGN POLICY

   • End The U.S. War Machine

     • “End all foreign wars and close overseas military bases. Support and fully employ veterans. End immunity for U.S. war criminals and support the International Criminal Court’s mandate to prosecute war crimes.”

   • Free Palestine

     • “Recognize the rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of return, the right to resist military occupation, and the right to self determination in a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. End all military and economic aid to Israel. Prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza.”

       • Note: They’re SUPER against Israel. There’s one candidate, Nithya Raman, an LA city council and mayoral candidate, whose endorsement might be expelled from the DSA because she failure to properly probe or affirm her support for BDS (an international campaign seeking to pressure Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.) and anti-Zionism even though she was previously censured for accepting an endorsement from a pro-Israel group.

   • End Blockades, Embargoes, and Sanctions

     • “End economic warfare against countries whose governments act independently of the United States, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.”

   • Abolish ICE

     • “Legalize migration, grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, provide a path to citizenship for all permanent residents, and end visa caps and quotas.”

3. WORKING-CLASS DEMOCRACY

   • Democracy For All

     • “Extend full voting rights to all permanent U.S. residents and restore the right to vote for incarcerated people and people with criminal convictions. Establish statehood for Washington D.C. and recognize the right to self-determination for all U.S. territories and colonies. Expand and protect voting rights and end voter suppression.”

   • A Real Democracy

     • “For the working class to govern, we need a new political system. End political corruption and legalized bribery: get rid of lobbyists, dark money, and Citizens United, and publicly finance all elections. Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

   • A Democratic Congress

     • “Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.”

   • Economic Democracy

     • “Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. Enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to spend on public goods and infrastructure.”

   • Democracy At Work

     • “Empower workers to come together and fight the boss. Protect, expand, and enforce the rights of all workers to form, join, and strike with their unions, regardless of industry. Support union members who organize reform caucuses, democratize their unions, and take political action.”

Variation

They do not support identical policies in lockstep. DSA is explicitly multi-tendency (“big tent” on the left). Ideological caucuses (e.g., Bread and Roses, Groundwork, Socialist Majority, Marxist Unity Group, Libertarian Socialist Caucus, and others) organize around different strategic and theoretical emphases—ranging from more reformist electoral and labor strategies to more revolutionary or dual-power approaches. Local chapters adapt national priorities to local conditions and can emphasize different tactics or issues. Differences on foreign policy (especially Israel/Palestine), the relationship to the Democratic Party, and the balance between electoral work versus base-building/direct action are ongoing and sometimes sharp.

Prominent DSA Members

Zohran Mamdani

• NYC Mayor

• Longtime member of NYC-DSA.

• He has publicly described DSA as his political home

• He was a key figure in the chapter’s “Socialists in Office” network while in the State Assembly.

• His 2025 mayoral win significantly raised DSA’s national visibility.

AOC

• Congresswoman

• Fellow NYC-DSA member

According to August reporting in The Hill:

“Despite residing in the far-left wing of the party, Ocasio-Cortez has begun to distance herself from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

The New York representative has walked back previous statements about defunding the police — a policy supported by the DSA — but hasn’t completely opposed the presence of democratic socialists within the party.

“I believe that democratic socialists are fundamentally pro-democracy. And we believe in the ballot box. We believe in respecting the outcomes of elections and governing democratically and ensuring that the ideas … and policies that are implemented are won through popular vote and popular opinion,” Ocasio-Cortez told host Jonathan Karl.

“And so, I think that’s why so much of what we focus on is also making sure that we are providing for the majority of Americans, guaranteeing healthcare, raising wages, strengthening the right to a union. And I think that that’s, at its core, what we’re about,” she added.

Ocasio-Cortez is not a member of the DSA’s national branch but maintains ties to her local chapter in the Big Apple.

In 2024, the national DSA withdrew its conditional re-endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez over policy differences regarding Israel. However, the local New York City chapter kept its backing.

This year, she has support for reelection from both entities but hasn’t moved to broadly endorse all candidates under the DSA umbrella.”

• NOTE: That’s because National endorsements of candidates have clearer criteria requiring alignment with the national platform and priorities; local chapters can (and do) make independent endorsements.

  • If AOC is to run for president, she will HAVE to break with some of the DSA’s core requirements for endorsement (in order to get elected) so this would happen as a matter of course if they wanted to run her.

Rashida Tlaib

• U.S. Representative (Michigan).

• Active member of her local Michigan DSA chapter (often referenced as Metro Detroit DSA or similar).

• She has been a national endorsee, spoken at DSA events (including as a keynote), and is consistently described by DSA as an active chapter member and democratic socialist

Chris Rabb

• PA State representative

• Confirmed member of Philadelphia DSA

• He publicly identifies as a democratic socialist and received national and local DSA endorsement

Simone Collins:
Hello, Malcolm. I’m very glad to be speaking with you today because the elections in The United States are right around the corner. Everyone’s got their campaign signs out. And AOC, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, is currently... I mean, while she’s, you know, a a a politician now, she’s the front runner for the next big election in The United States, the presidential election, which is in 2028. And she is ahead of everyone else, John Ossif, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Josh Shapiro. I mean, she clearly is is the one to be looking at, and she’s also a very prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA. also, it’s it’s really clear that a lot of the early, like, we’ll say sort of pre election activities, basically, the primary elections in The United States, have been a big win for DSA and DSA endorsed candidates. They’d they’d have a very strong year of primary wins for very safe Democratic seats, which positions a lot of congressional and senate offices and even just local offices for more of a DSA skewed leadership if they’re in already democratic areas.

Malcolm Collins:
You haven’t gotten to the point. The reason why this matters is they want to abolish the United States government as we understand it. Yeah. Well, no.

Simone Collins:
I I didn’t know how seriously extreme they were as a group until I just went to their website and read their platform. And and per their official program, they want to nationalize the largest corporations. They want noncitizens to have access to government funded gender affirming care. They want all student debt canceled.

Malcolm Collins:
And voting. And they

Simone Collins:
want race based reparations, basically limitless immigration as a path to citizenship for all no matter how someone entered the country. You’re in. they want no more electoral college, and they want no more president or supreme court. Instead, they want a congress run executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to congress.

Malcolm Collins:
And no more senate. So no more president, no more supreme court, no more senate. And if you understand how cooked that form of government would be, look at the places like the EU, right, or the UN. these types of organizations that they are attempting to put into place are very easy for left wingers to control because they move it down to middle management dumb butts, basically.

Simone Collins:
That’s the... Giant committee, running... Yeah. You want... If you want your government to turn into a group project, support the DSA. As if it... It’s not bad enough as it is. Maybe we should just support them so it just

Malcolm Collins:
How how many people like the job that congress does? What is congress’ approval right now? I wanna I wanna say.

Simone Collins:
Right. Can can we make it even worse? Well, I think, actually, isn’t congressional approval better at least than presidential approval? But it’s just that the president’s always a a lightning rod for disapproval and butthurt. But it’s, it is it is really interesting. So we we really should know.

Malcolm Collins:
No. So so so congressional approval right now is at roughly 10%.

Simone Collins:
It’s even worse than the... I didn’t think that was possible. Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins:
Dear man. Trump’s is at 34%. It’s nowhere close. Trump’s is literally three x higher than congress.

Simone Collins:
Well, I mean, that’s so funny because in the headlines, it’s always like, can you believe president set new record lows for this particular day in their presidency? They always, like, choose very skewed ways of making it seem like it’s it’s very low.

Malcolm Collins:
Literally, no one approves of the congress.

Simone Collins:
The congress is But, like, let’s make it completely in charge and abolish the supreme court and the executive. My gosh. This is so bad. Whereas, like, literally, when The United States was first formed, they were just like, Washington, can you just be king? Like,

Malcolm Collins:
we we...

Simone Collins:
Look. We we... This... We have a placeholder, but can you just... We don’t need it. We know it’s gonna make... Mess up. He should’ve just said yes.

Malcolm Collins:
He should’ve For people who don’t know the lore, so while Washington didn’t have any kids, his siblings did, and Simone is descended from two lines through

Simone Collins:
his siblings. Trying to position myself for the line succession in the American.

Malcolm Collins:
You would be in the American royal family running running the country with your your golden scepter or whatever.

Simone Collins:
What would it be?

Malcolm Collins:
Honestly, a country where you were empress would, I think I think,

Simone Collins:
be really good. I think you’d I’m be taking a trying to think of what a a proper American scepter would be. A giant some kind of barbecuing, you know, thing. Like, a giant barbecue spatula would be the American scepter. I don’t know. I’m gonna workshop it. But, anyway, yeah, we should know because this is not what’s happening. We’re not headed towards a monarchy. We’re headed toward a DSA run America because they’re slowly but steadily taking over the Democratic party, and they’re just gonna keep on going. And so we should understand, what they are and what they stand for. And Well, and I think I understand

Malcolm Collins:
this ideology that they fight for. And it’s it’s been very interesting to me because we had this hypothesis where we’re like, okay. Where are the Democrats going? Where is the left going? Because they sort of lost Gaza as an issue because Trump ended that war, and it made them look bad to still act like that was an issue. they lost environmentalism because everybody stopped caring about environmentalism, like, twenty years ago. like, even Grant Thornburg won’t talk about it anymore. It’s like the environment or whatever. I don’t care. they they lost Hispanic rights because, well, the Hispanics voted for Trump, and then they got really racist real fast.

Speaker 4:
Why is that? Why is the democratic share of the of the Latino vote shrinking?

Speaker 5:
And what I said to you when we asked the question was, Latinos want to be white. They want to be with the cool kids.

Malcolm Collins:
They’re the whole... Yeah. I hate Nazis thing hasn’t been so hot since they decided they hated Jewish people. So it’s sort of like, okay. Well, where where where did the leftist go at this point? Right?

Simone Collins:
And they’re going to the DSA. They’re going to the... Look.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s Yeah. Yeah. No. I think the DSA shows. It’s not... Its core goal... Like, if you look at its core goals, they’re not actually tied to socialism or workers’ rights or

Speaker 3:
Oh, thank

Malcolm Collins:
nationalized health care. They’re they’re tangentially. But the real goal where the organization puts its real, like, shots out there is the destruction of the US government.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Though that that does seem pretty central. Not just that, but also in terms of how they they aim to change citizenship and voter composition indicates that they really do want... They want it to burn.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. And I... This makes fighting the left, I think, even more existential than it’s been historically, and it makes the people who would collaborate with leftists like Nick Fuentes even more of a danger. Because, like, when the stakes are, I want to end your ability to ever have power again, it... The situation is just absolutely existential.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Absolutely. So let’s learn a little bit more about them because they started pretty obscurely. So the DSA was founded in 1982 when two leftist orgs came together, and it’s made up of two parts. It has a national convention, which is its highest decision making body that meets every two years, and then it has local chapters. They’re super autonomous. And this matters because sometimes there are candidates who are endorsed by a local chapter, but not the national one. And so they’re like, well, they’re not technically DSA endorsed, but they totally are. Like, they’re dues paying members of the local chapters. And this, for example, is the case for AOC, our top likely to be nominated for Democratic president candidate AOC because she is not endorsed by the national DSA chapter, but she is a paying member and endorsed by the local New York chapter she’s a member of. And that is the biggest chapter. So, like, to be... I think they’re trying to basically make plausible denitability. Like, oh, she... No. No. No. She’s no... She’s not a GSA.

Malcolm Collins:
She could be more involved she tried.

Simone Collins:
Yes. Exactly. Just just to make that clear. So it’s important to understand how this organization works. So no,

Malcolm Collins:
naturally a 100,000 members in this organization. So for her to be a member is, like, a very big deal. There’s

Simone Collins:
It’s small but growing. And mean Dorhan. Dorhan Mamdani being another very prominent and beloved member who gets tons of social media attention. In fact, the latest heat that he’s been getting, aside from not firing, someone in relation to an ICE shooting, is that he has not been legislating enough as mayor. Instead, he’s being accused by his critics of posting too much to TikTok, which, to be fair, is, I think, a really effective thing to do when you’re trying to help, in general, your party or subgroup win the midterms. But, anyway, the the national portion of the DSA is where all of the dues go. So AOC’s payments as a member to the New York chapter do ultimately feed up to the national organization. It’s made up of the national political committee, the NPC. Just perfect. The NPCs.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my god.

Simone Collins:
Yes. And it it serves as... That’s the collective leadership and its board of directors. And then it has a steering committee, which... Every time I hear steering committee, I just think, like, the most tedious people in your high school social set Yeah. Or in, like, a homeowners association. Steering committee does not does not tell me something productive is happening. But, anyway, that is what makes interim decisions. Like, in between these two year meetings, They oversee the staff. They oversee the finances and charters, and they will revoke chapters and commissions if they’re being too naughty. And they also implement all the convention priorities. The NPC and the national staff provide resources and also field organizers training shared tools like phone and text banking and compliance help and the national, just national priorities to the local chapters. So they’re very connected. The local chapters are in turn required to affirm the national body’s principles and their basic democratic norms. They send delegates to the convention proportional to their membership. So, for example, the New York branch or chapter that AOC is a member of sends a lot of delegates and is very influential in the national chapter because it’s the biggest one. And then at the convention, they’ll set the strategy and priorities. They’ll elect leadership and adopt re... Resolutions and platforms, which is what we’re gonna go over today is the platform that they most recently adopted. More chapters too.

Malcolm Collins:
Know. Just some side things that that they do. To to to understand how, like, disruptive this organization is, do you do you know the practice of salting?

Simone Collins:
Presumably, that has to do with ruining something, like salting the earth. What is it?

Malcolm Collins:
Actually, yes. It does. So what they do is it’s the process of applying to organizations with the intention of starting unions within the organization, and and building your mindset within the organization. Oh, is it? The DSA does this pretty aggressively. Like, they train people how to do it. And there’s in the... God. What is it? The The National, a case of somebody who did this for Amazon centers. Literally just going in as basically an employee of the DSA attempting to disrupt. And and note here, Amazon makes my life demonstrably better.

Simone Collins:
There are

Malcolm Collins:
few companies that have had such a positive impact on my daily life as Amazon. I know. And this is made extremely clear to me whenever I’m outside America, and I can’t use Amazon. Americans do not understand the magic of being able to manifest anything you want at a decent price.

Simone Collins:
Some... It’s, for parents, it’s a game... It’s one of the most prenatal stores out there because you can’t even... You cannot always make it out, to a store with with a lot... Especially with a lot of kids. It is it is too much of a journey. It is it’s it’s a total game changer.

Malcolm Collins:
I’m actually kinda surprised that Amazon hasn’t attempted to get into the grocery game.

Simone Collins:
They are. They bought Whole Foods.

Malcolm Collins:
Oh, they own Whole Foods.

Simone Collins:
Whole Foods. Malcolm, where have you been for Why don’t they have grocery deliveries? Because they do have grocery delivery through Whole Foods. I I think it’s because... Look, guys. Malcolm has, he he, like me, is very frugal. So often when he wants to buy something, he asks me to actually, like, hit the purchase button because it’s just too painful for him to, like, make the irresponsible choice. This is true. and so he doesn’t see the encouragement from Amazon to add a Whole Foods add in to a delivery every single time you attempt to check out because Malcolm doesn’t check out, which is I think, kinda sweet.

Malcolm Collins:
It’s kinda because I’m afraid of whole... Whole Foods, I would not go into.

Simone Collins:
I know. Whole food. Who’s gonna... Yeah. That... No. Pronadalyst families are not buying from Whole Foods because pronadalyst families cannot afford Whole Foods. You just can’t. Anyway, yes, that is... It it is funny. Yeah. And people complaining about how dystopian Amazon is, and they’re tracking your emotions and telling you to go clean the bathrooms and, like Another fun thing

Malcolm Collins:
that happened in the DSA recently. I don’t know if you read about this.

Simone Collins:
No. What?

Malcolm Collins:
Is they’re recently having a schism around AI. Of course, they are. Of course, they are. Now they can all agree with an 86% vote that, of course, their organization can’t make any art with AI and can’t do anything productive with AI or can’t Oh, no. You know? Of course. Of course. Right? We gotta make sure that all of our leftist organizations aren’t intentionally terrible and boring.

Simone Collins:
Oh, you can you can tell by... Wait. I have to I have to screen share the page that shows the... Their their platform because you’re you’re totally gonna see exactly the kind of... You know how there’s this theory going around that things are intentionally ugly to, I don’t know, mess people? Oh my see it has that, like, famously, like, ugly drawing. Like... But, of course, it’s all very hand drawn. It looks like they were woodblock prints maybe, some of these. And then if you go to the very bottom, you can see there. So they have lots of drawings, but it’s like, this is very much that kind of, like

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my god. That’s totally intentionally ugly.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Of, like, let’s just... Yeah. Make it Ew. Super ugly. I do not know why. But this... I... This definitely is part of that, like, anti AI thing of, like

Malcolm Collins:
So, anyway, yeah, with the fight is actually over, may surprise you. Yeah. But their orgs have been infected with AI doomerist, who’s saying AI is going to kill everyone. And, there’s other people in their orgs that are saying, here’s an example. And I and I think it’s... AI alarmism and AI hype are both the same story. Both keep your attention on a science fiction future to distract you from real harms experience in the present. And they they note that what these people are functionally doing is helping the stock price of AI companies and that these fears are being spread by many people affiliated with AI companies.

Simone Collins:
Like, literally working at Anthropics. Yeah. And they’re like fine.

Malcolm Collins:
These companies aren’t profitable. They they think that they wouldn’t have... It doesn’t matter if they’re profitable or not. Even if... These companies... Like, I’m using AI every day constantly. people who use our fab are using AI every day constantly. By the way, if you ever have any problems with our FAB, feel free to email me or use the suggestion feature. We work really hard to fix all that stuff. It’s so funny. Like, I... I’ll regularly run into to issues when I’m working on it with AI, and I realized somebody did something, like, really crazy. like, today, somebody was doing a a brainstormer for a companion, and it ended up costing, like, $27. And I was like, how did it cost $27? I asked the AI, and they’re like, oh, they they just put in a giant context window. And it’s like, do you want me to stop people from doing that in the future? I’m like, no. If somebody wants to do that, they can do that. That’s insane, but it was, like, a a story.

Simone Collins:
Their choice.

Malcolm Collins:
Maybe it was, like, I can’t see what anyone’s doing. Like, we make it so that, like, even if the site leaked, we wouldn’t have any big issues.

Speaker 6:
Specifically, I regularly run checks on the back end to make sure nothing’s being recorded about what users are doing. So even if somebody hacked into our AWS account, nobody could tell what’s happening on the website outside of what I need for diagnostics to fix things. So it records, like, conceptually what’s happening, but not the actual messages or context or anything like that. With the one caveat on except for very, very new features, where I need to do more detailed bug checking. Like, right now, I think we still have context in the back end on comics, but we’re we’re working on that feature, like, really, really actively. And once the automatic comic creator is stable, that’s going to disappear as well.

Malcolm Collins:
My guess is it was somebody who has probably had a a character, that was from

Simone Collins:
Another platform? From Character dot ai, which is going bankrupt?

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Yeah. Like, character.ai or, like, from another chatbot site that they used, and they were just putting its entire history in, which basically would summarize its history, which I guess is fine. It’s probably not the most efficient way. You could do it with, like, a subsection of that or something.

Simone Collins:
Look. Let him cook. Let him cook, Malcolm. Probably that’s his money. He wants to spend it assuming he’s a he because this No.

Malcolm Collins:
The site actually ended up refunding them accidentally because it was trying to figure out what was happening.

Simone Collins:
Aw. Alright. Well, whoever he was. Where were they? On the house, buddy. That’s good.

Malcolm Collins:
We’re we’re all... I mean, we’re we’re... We try to be very, generous. I I actually regularly run AIs on the back end to just see who I need to give refunds to. So if you’re a regular user of the site, you probably at times just didn’t even know something was wrong and got like, oh, your agent was in a loop, so we refunded you, you know, whatever.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. I don’t think anyone else is doing this. This is what happens when we get a chatbot platform, an AI platform ran by a nonprofit, an actual nonprofit. Imagine if OpenAI just just didn’t just didn’t, you know, betray its original vision.

Malcolm Collins:
Betray everything that it said it cared about.

Simone Collins:
What a concept. But that would never happen. Oh, but it is with us. Okay. Whatever. Anyway, where was I? Right. So it’s it’s the local groups that do the the door knocking, the the canvassing, the local organizing. And so they they are very influential, and they do matter. They also do happen to have a youth wing, the young Democratic Socialists of America, the YSDA. I haven’t really heard much thing... A lot happening with them. I think that’s because the overall organization is so small. It just makes more sense to participate in, like, the grown up one because they’re just so thrilled to see anyone. It’s so funny. When you go to, like, local political meetings, there are always young people present who are, like, super, like, ready to go. What really frustrates me, especially with the Republican, like, local political gatherings, is the young people are clearly smart go getters, and the older people block them or just like, oh, like, I guess there’s this perception that they have to pay their dues or something. They do not listen to them. They do not give them positions of power. It drives me so freaking nuts. So I hope the DSA uses their youth. Well, I mean, not, but, like, maybe they’re succeeding because they do. I don’t know. Who knows? I don’t know. I wasn’t able to get a lot of information. But we should also just highlight some of the most active members. They they started growing explosively with Bernie Sanders, with his 2016 campaign and the election of president Trump. Membership when Trump was elected... No. You know, few things have been as good for organizations like the DSA and a bunch of these super woke nonprofits. Like, what’s the one that made up white supremacy? The anti

Malcolm Collins:
The Southern poverty law center.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. Like, they got a ton of extra funding when Trump got a... Like, getting... Trump getting elected was so good for many progressive groups and people. But, anyway, membership in the DSA went from around 6,000, 500 in twenty fourteen slash 2016 to over 120,000 now with the median age dropping significantly. According to Peter Stern, writing for the news and opinion, editing section of of City and State NY, quote, as the end of July, DSA has about 129 dues paying members. NYC and DSA, 15,800. So keep in mind, 15,800 out of a 129, it... Clearly, the New York branch is is huge. Yeah. In LA, it’s only 6,000 members. In DC, it’s only 4,000 members. In Portland, it’s only 3,700.

Malcolm Collins:
Really important to take away from this is the groups that steer cultural direction are small.

Simone Collins:
Yeah. And often very geographically concentrated. I mean, think about it. Donnie and and AOC, they’re both in New York.

Malcolm Collins:
Right. No. But I think it’s not just true with the DSA. It’s true with, like, the nerd right and, like, the

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. They’re all in San... They’re all in freaking Berkeley. They’re all around Light Haven.

Malcolm Collins:
Not just... No. I mean, the the, the perinatalist movement, at least within the online space and stuff like that, like, we had a reporter over, and he was like, well, you guys are still pretty small. And I was like, I mean, we get a 100... 1,600,000 views a month. I don’t think that’s small.

Simone Collins:
Well, one of it has to do with, too, how agentic is your audience. And that’s the biggest thing for me is I don’t care how big, like, mister Beast’s audience are. Do you think these people are achieving anything in this world?

Malcolm Collins:
Building anything.

Simone Collins:
No. Yeah. They’re not. Mister beast’s audience has zero value to me. I would not trade our audience for mister beast audience for anything.

Malcolm Collins:
You would have give me a movie.

Simone Collins:
I would, like, for maybe, like go after? $8,000,000, I would take his audience. Maybe his his audience makes that because he’s shilling all sorts of stuff. I don’t know. But I I... Like, it’s a it’s a worthless audience to me because what we care about is ideology more than money. And, honestly, you can’t even really buy audiences with money, certainly not agentic audiences. You can buy bots with money, and that’s what most people with money are doing. Anyway, this is all going way far off. But the point is that I really... I just wanna go. I wanna go into... Can we go into the stances in their program? Because I know our our our our our minutes are numbered. Actually, No. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins:
No. Thank you. She’s so polite but firm when she makes up her mind on something.

Simone Collins:
At the doctor’s office, it’s like... I’m like, okay, Andy. Can I take your temperature? No. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins:
Thank you.

Simone Collins:
I love you, girl.

Malcolm Collins:
Okay.

Simone Collins:
She’s just, like, trying to figure out life right now. Oh my girl. She woke up from her sick nap. Hi. And text. We got text here too. Hey, buddy. God. Okay. Alright. The DSA’s platform is genuinely crazy, so let’s let’s get through it. With... We we... You saw their their illustrations. They’re definitely handmade illustrations, which is a thing. So let’s let’s just talk about what they actually want because we must prepare for our new overlords if the robots don’t take over first. Okay. Fine. Fine. No text. Oh my gosh. This is gonna go horribly. Okay. Jax. No. Oh my god.

Malcolm Collins:
People are like, oh, no. What if what if AI takes over? It’s like, really

Simone Collins:
need go back to the DSL. Yeah. For real. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
We we need We work. We’re the collaborators

Simone Collins:
for the AI technology. Happen. Yeah. This is this is our desperate hope. So let’s just go through it point by point. they do want, as they say, thriving working class communities, and this means their freedom to flourish platform, quote, expand public resources to support recreation, learning, and social spaces accessible to all. Establish paid family leave for all workers, a thirty two hour workweek with full pay and benefits, and a living minimum wage. Provide free quality public education from pre k to college, and cancel all student debt. They don’t exactly... And by exactly, I mean, all. They don’t at all, like, explain how this is going to be paid for.

Malcolm Collins:
But... No. That’s a that’s a four day a week work week is what they’re campaigning for.

Simone Collins:
But I think the key here is that maybe if they have AI doomers, as you say, they’re like, well, the AI is gonna kill most humans, so this is gonna be affordable. Because all the human pets, like, AI is gonna handle that anyway. I don’t really understand how else this is gonna work, but I’m sure they could probably explain this to me. Oh, just eat the rich. Right? But the ACS dress says

Malcolm Collins:
You know, you can you can you can list this stuff. You can say there should be no boundaries to education. I should be abolished. All illegal immigrants and criminals should be able to vote. And you hear this, and and we’re gonna abolish everything with the congress. And what you’re not hearing is this is just a directly we are going to try to abolish the United States government and take permanent control. That’s that’s what that’s what’s being said here.

Simone Collins:
I mean, how else are you going to to achieve that? And and this is just one point. So let’s go on to health care for all. under that particular part of the platform, they have, quote, guarantee universal health care at no cost to individuals, including complete access to reproductive and gender affirming care, expand health care access and quality by investing in new public hospitals and clinics, make all... This is the one point that I’ve liked. I highlighted this in my notes. Make all medical education and training public and free. I 100% aim for that. If you agree, I feel like... I think that being a medical professional should be like serving in the military. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:
I I could agree. I think that’s a really clever idea, Simone.

Simone Collins:
No. It’s the DSA’s idea. So we gotta give them credit where credit is due.

Malcolm Collins:
No. Your idea is not like the DSA’s idea. If you implemented it like being in the military, I think that that would be very valuable. Maybe even you have to do some amount of service after you get your degree.

Simone Collins:
Oh, 100%.

Malcolm Collins:
Yeah. Like, obviously. You you have to work for very low cost for x many years for, like, The US either through, like, I don’t know, what we do in our, like, poor hospitals and stuff like that. Best veterans, stuff like that. Yeah. and then you get to

Simone Collins:
Medicare and Medicaid. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, like, I I think that... Honestly too, I think that many people who now are are doctors and have gone through the medical profession, like, had... They’re paying off their their student debt would be like, yes. I would much rather... Also, it’s so punishing to be a medical professional as it is just to go through your rounds. Like, I don’t think they would care so much if they had to do it, like, you know, in some in some weird way. She’s doing the toasty thing. No. No, Andy. Don’t take that on.

Malcolm Collins:
What what is the toasty thing?

Simone Collins:
Mommy. Mommy. And she even adds the you part, which is a a toasty

Malcolm Collins:
Our kids love begging for attention to annoy us.

Simone Collins:
Well, that’s because they can they can... Even though we have a smart speaker system, both through smart speakers and through our our tablet... Our homeschooling tablet system, they still just like to call through the floorboards because we basically live in a tree house. Like, this thing is... There’s not like... You can you can look through the floorboards and see someone. So they just call through the floors. So in the morning, that’s my rooster call. Anyway, let’s move on aside from their their one good point, which I really like. housing for all. Because, of course, they say, quote, build new publicly owned social housing, strictly regulate investment properties, establish universal rent control, and guarantee right to counsel for all tenants.

Speaker 7:
And I just wanna note here. Like, we’re dropping this as if it’s nothing, but they just said they want free housing for all people in The United States.

Simone Collins:
And it is insane to me to hear this, to read this coming from an organization whose largest contingent is New York City, where rent control has completely broken the housing market. You have

Malcolm Collins:
buildings made everything so freaking expensive.

Simone Collins:
Rent an apartment because because landlords are keeping apartments unoccupied. This is just text shaking the mic. Because they they are unable to both rent out the apartment to tenants and literally maintain the expenses of the apartment because the expenses of the apartment are higher than wear and tear from a tenant. That is ridiculous. Oh, second time. Then a light has fallen on in the last forty eight hours. We’re not doing so well. This this one is my fault. Actually, Texas’ fault.

Malcolm Collins:
You’re getting so scared when the light falls on her.

Simone Collins:
Well, she was... It was... I know it was harmless, but, like

Malcolm Collins:
CBS did this to her.

Simone Collins:
Not not CPS. CBS. Tax. I, by the way, I do

Malcolm Collins:
not know why I prep you with say the most controversial thing, and you still say, well, I’m really only screening for cancer risks. You know?

Simone Collins:
Okay. Sorry.

Malcolm Collins:
We’re trying to replace you with... When... Just just future reference. When a news crew asks you about the genetic selection stuff, ignore the question. Reply with, I think the thing that we all really want to talk about is genetic modification, so let’s talk about that. You know,

Simone Collins:
the Republican Party really needs you as, like, both a spin doctor and, like, a campaign manager because you totally understand the whole, as a politician, never... That was Indy’s fault. Never answer the question. Just say the thing that you need to say per your campaign.

Malcolm Collins:
Your image went out, by the way.

Simone Collins:
Oh, for goodness sake. Sorry. All the children are pulling on all the wires. Give me a moment here. Oh my god.

Malcolm Collins:
But the reason you do that is because that allows you to have a spicier conversation and keep the conversation hypothetical so you don’t need to say anything like, are you selecting for intelligence or not? You say, if I could genetically modify an embryo to be more intelligent, why wouldn’t you? Right.

Simone Collins:
Yes.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s what you say. Okay. You say, what’s your objection to that? What’s your objection if I can genetically modify an embryo to not get cancer? What... Why would you stand against that technology? And if you’re going to stand against that technology, are you willing to take on board the lives that’s gonna kill?

Simone Collins:
Masterclass. You really... Like, you could be a political consultant, and they charge usurious amounts. So you’re gonna try to attack me. Great.

Malcolm Collins:
I could

Simone Collins:
She’s gonna attack from above too. Anyway, let’s keep going. They want to finish Reconstruction to quote, end the legacies of slavery and colonialism, of course.

Malcolm Collins:
End the legacies. So, basically, they want white people to become a slave race.

Simone Collins:
Duh. They want to reinforce antidiscrimination laws, honor all treaties and tribal sovereignty, enact reparations, and massively invest in good jobs, quality housing, and infrastructure in neglected minority communities. So, yeah, I guess you summed it up. Let’s keep going. End mass incarceration and police immunity. What could possibly go wrong? they want to, quote, demilitarize police departments. Oh my god. Are we gonna have The UK police where they, like, have sticks? Little batons?

Malcolm Collins:
Little sticks to beat up people.

Simone Collins:
To do? Hit me with your baton.

Speaker 8:
Aren’t you afraid the fashion police will come and beat you with their fabulous batons?

Simone Collins:
That’s how we’re gonna end up with a situation like that that clip situation in The UK where, like, he’s doing... He’s breaking the law. What do you want me to do about it? Says the policewoman as she gets in her

Malcolm Collins:
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 9:
He’s breaking the law right now.

Speaker 10:
He’s breaking the law. What am I supposed to do? Are you serious?

Speaker 11:
Okay. Have a nice day.

Speaker 9:
He’s breaking the law. What I’m... He’s breaking the law. What am I supposed to do? That’s got one of the best quotes of all time by a police constable.

Simone Collins:
Think that’s that’s what they’re going for here, I guess. So right. Right. Where was I? Disempower police unions and redirect funding to public services as steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison system, which protects the rich and jails the poor, treat drug addiction and mental illness as health issues, not crimes, end qualified immunity, and empower civilian oversight bodies with real authority over the police. Wait. Is that a homeowners association that can put people in jail? Hold on.

Malcolm Collins:
Yes. Well, they can put police in jail.

Simone Collins:
Civilians oversight bodies with real... Oh my gosh. Right. That is no. Is that text making a fart noise, or was that you really... You know what?

Malcolm Collins:
I think the issue, Simone, is is that you are reading this as actual civilian oversight bodies instead of oversight bodies that that their organization controls.

Simone Collins:
They’re civilians because they don’t work for the military or the police. So it’s, yeah, it’s their people. You

Malcolm Collins:
can go check on her.

Speaker 3:
Thank you.

Simone Collins:
Oh, yeah. She did. Girl, I got you. Oh, do you wanna get to feminism for all? Yes. Okay. So they want to quote, stop gender violence and end policies that oppress bodily autonomy and imitate life... Oh, an intimate life. Sorry. Including patriarchal restrictions on abortion, childbirth, and child raising, gender expression and transition, marriage and divorce, ban sex discrimination, and ensure fair compensation and support for all forms of labor, including care work. Because, again, money is just material is... Materializing out of nowhere.

Malcolm Collins:
That’s Yeah. Whatever. Of course. Yeah. That’s I