Becoming 'we' — meaning of marriage

Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into two fascinating (and very different) trends among young women: one group that’s happily dating but swearing off marriage forever, and another group embracing intentional celibacy in response to modern hookup culture.

Why are so many high-achieving women rejecting marriage altogether? Do they have a point about autonomy, identity, and avoiding “unpaid labor”? And why are younger women opting out of sex entirely — claiming dating apps have ruined intimacy?

We break down the articles, compare the two groups (with some brutal phenotype observations), discuss how media shaped different generations’ views on relationships, and explore why both paths ultimately lead away from family formation.

From Tinder height discrimination to the rise of “divorced woman” as an aspirational identity, this episode examines the collapsing sexual and marriage marketplaces — and why pronatalism offers a radically different vision for fulfillment.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] And I feel like women have unironically recreated that society on like Tinder and stuff like that.

Speaker 6: Ah. You seem to have grown since last. You stood before a

Redditer.

Speaker 2: .

You’ve been assigned to the planet Bloch, home of the slaughtering

Borderline women.

Speaker 2: Why would you trophy?

Speaker 7: However, because of your increased height, we have decided to give you the planet Vort home of the universe’s most comfortable couch.

And career women who genuinely believe you’re making a major sacrifice by being a stay at home husband.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Go to the, the trash planet where you’ll be eaten by rats and no one will synthesize.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be going over two articles that are covering two related phenomenon, but entirely distinct phenomenon.

One is the large number of women who are dating still, but refuse to get married. And then the [00:01:00] other is the large number of women who are choosing to become intentionally celibate. And what’s really interesting about these two populations and it, it’s cool because I think that our audience will find themselves like, oh, this population may have a point.

This population may not have a point. We’ll see. Right. Like civilization. Yeah. They phenotypically look very distinct. And I will put collections of pictures on the screen here. Oh, so you, the fans can try to guess which population is which. Mm. So I sent you pictures in two groups. We got group one and group two of women on

WhatsApp.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Let’s, let’s take a look here. Let’s see. I, I’m sure I can my assumption is that I can guess in what. Whoa. Hmm. Huh,

Malcolm Collins: interesting. So group two and group one, which one do you think refuses to marry and which one do you think is intentionally celibate? And if you’re looking at the screen here the number one thing you’re going to note about the two groups is one [00:02:00] is fairly attractive and one is quite unattractive.

Simone Collins: Wait, which ones are the attractive ones?

Malcolm Collins: Compared to the other group?

Simone Collins: I, I don’t know. I, I, I guess all the faces just look like stick figure faces to me. Maybe I’m like, face blind one looks like they have too much makeup on. And I guess I have to associate too much makeup with, actually doesn’t interact with men.

So then, then the second group with the too much makeup, which you would say is the more attractive group, is the. Intentionally celibate doesn’t interact with men group. Do I have that right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Ah, so the, the group that wears more makeup, which is one of the things you’re noticing Yeah. The group that is celibate mm-hmm.

Is wearing more makeup.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which again shows that makeup is largely about interesting. No. When you’re wearing

Simone Collins: drag queen levels of makeup, you are not trying to attract the male gaze.

Malcolm Collins: I disagree. I just think that lady is a Latina from Florida, and a lot of Latinas from Florida look like that. No,

Simone Collins: no.

[00:03:00] Women wear excessive amounts of makeup for other women, not for themselves. It, it, and it also for like gender euphoria, which I think is negatively correlated with

Malcolm Collins: fertility. And, and the other women specifically for me, the women who are refuse to get married just look like actively unpleasant,

Simone Collins: In a lot of the pictures.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like they, yeah. Just like

Simone Collins: main, like attractive enough, but, but, very progressive women who are more maybe disagreeable.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Mean disagreeable. Mm-hmm. Is the core sort of look they have to their fa and you can tell a lot about somebody’s phenotype, but we’ve gone over this in a different episode is for novel brack with ai.

But we point out that you can actually tell a lot about a person by looking at their face, right? Mm-hmm. Like looking at their facial structure. And people can make guesses with high probability. We go over all the studies in that episode. I’m not gonna like cite them all here. What somebody’s behavior is, and AI can do this exceptionally well.

Like an AI can look at your face and tell a ton about, oh, oh, oh, [00:04:00] hold on. Simone, did you realize something? Take off your glasses for a second. Take off your glasses so I can get a picture of our face to put into AI while I’m editing this. Oh, God. And, and look straight at the camera. And I, I want to ask an AI what it thinks our personalities are from our face.

It can do that.

So I put in Simone’s face, the image you see right here and with her rather than me. I asked it to use like not facial expression at all, just based on physionomy, it says. It says she’d probably come across as intelligent, open-minded, intellectual, with strong communication abilities, and a diplomatic, harmonious approach to life, likely empathetic and tolerant with a logical bent that makes her organized and idealistic.

Malcolm Collins: Well, let’s see.

Simone Collins: All right. But I think if I, if I change my facial expression, it’s going to give a very different response, right? Like, if I look happy, I think, I think AI’s not sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a resting face and [00:05:00] a facial expression.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you know what, let’s see, right now I’m gonna put this in.

I, I, I can’t even wait. I’m gonna put my face in. What would you guess male’s personality is from their face characteristics? Oh, no. What? Oh, I’m even getting an ab response here. So, so, oh,

Simone Collins: yeah. Grock was doing that for me today too, and I like it.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, it says that I’m a male in his late thirties to early forties, which is accurate.

Yes. The other one says late thirties to early forties, which again, is accurate. Yes. Okay, so, personality traits. Okay, so one says, friendly and approachable. The other says, warm and approachable. One says, kind and empathetic. The other says, outgoing and extroverted. The, it says intellectual and thoughtful.

The other says optimistic and you weren’t even wearing your glasses. How did it know? Yeah. The other, the other says, optimistic and good humored. A bit [00:06:00] playful slash humorous. Creative or expressive reliable, steady pathetic. I,

Simone Collins: all these things prove, but is it not just saying flattering things and then we just tap to agree with him?

I’m sure it’s just this is too

Malcolm Collins: flattering. Like,

Simone Collins: say something

Malcolm Collins: negative. No. Take, take

Simone Collins: a picture of Hassan Piker and put it in.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t wanna do that. I don’t, Gordon in Peterson. I don’t wanna risk saying positive things that, that could get us demonetized on our fan base.

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Malcolm Collins: Lose us subscribers here.

Simone, I’m gonna keep going here. So me generation, I do not young women who refuse to get married and vow to never change their minds about it. Becoming somebody’s wife isn’t something New Yorker. Carly B 29 ever wanted for herself a 29-year-old New Yorker.

I love, we’re jumping right into the deep end with this. Okay? Happily in love with her boyfriend of nine years. Check, marrying him. Absolutely not. That’s no reflection on Matt H 30, according to Carly, who works for a PR branding agency and asked that the couple’s last names not be [00:07:00] used before the pair met.

The 29-year-old had always made it a point to avoid romantic involvements with the kind of men who wanted wedding bells and kids. Quote, it was a very prominent ground rule for me before entering any sort of relationship. The East Village Dweller told the Post, I don’t necessarily need a contract that tells me my status was my partner, or tells me that I love him more than I would without one.

I know exactly how we feel about each other and I feel good with just that. Putting a ring on it, locking things down, heading to a city hall for a piece of paper, not Carly, whose parents divorced and aren’t the reason, and that’s not the reason she doesn’t want marriage. Mm-hmm. When the Pennsylvania natives met on Tinder, they are questioned about their plans for getting hitched 29-year-old was brutally honest with them. I usually say, that’s not something I want for myself. We’re never going to talk about that. Carly admitted, I think me saying that makes them think there’s something wrong with our relationship. But no, I made the decision.

I’m going along with [00:08:00] it and that’s fine. So I find this really interesting so far. So basically you’re seeing a new culture emerge, which is almost going to immediately die out ‘cause none of these women are having kids where they are attempting to normalize. And it makes sense from an irman culture perspective.

If you’re searching for pleasure and self validation, kids and marriage even for women can be quite bad. But to continue here, i’ll skip ahead of it here. There’s a wave of women, and this is a quote from one of them, either thinking, rethinking marriage, or skipping it all together. And it’s getting louder every year.

It’s about autonomy, peace, and building lives in what feels right, not about what tradition dictates. Relationship coach Dr. Jack Hill. Del Rosario told the post, I’m the one who’s pushing this harder than he is, but he knows it has known it since day one. If there’s ever a thought that he wants marriage and a family beyond what I can give him, then he would need to break up and figure that out in other ways.

I actually find that, to be very honest, I appreciate that she was upfront [00:09:00] about it from day one. And you know, if you’re, if you’re gonna do this, at least be upfront about it. And I think that that’s a lot fairer. And I think that women who do this. Are more likely to be upfront about it than men who do it.

Where, because men can get higher quality partners by pretending that they want marriage and women typically get lower quality partners if they say that they’re in this for a long-term relationship and don’t just want casual sex. Mm-hmm. And that’s because well, as anyone who watches this, probably knows women have an advantage on the sex market.

Men have an advantage on the marriage marketplace. But that advantage is bigger for women on the sex marketplace than it is for men on the marriage marketplace because it’s easier to lie about not being on the marriage marketplace for a man or being on the marriage marketplace Anyway.

Considering today’s generation of young, independent women surpassing men in earning college degrees, buying homes on their own, which has nearly doubled over the last 40 years, and achieving sweet street positions at Fortune 500 companies, which has increased from 15% to 29% over the past eight years. The million dollar question remains, do [00:10:00] women benefit at all from marriage in 2025?

And the question here is, what does benefit mean? You know, if if they want a family and they want kids and they want a stable relationship, I mean, obviously yes, a marriage is very useful in achieving those things and helping be a forcing function in the things that you need to do to live that life path.

But if you just wanna hang out, you know, it’s fine. Like you don’t need to, actually, I was queued into these. So other people don’t know. We did a weekend episode about this and it has exploded since the weekend episode. It’s literally like twice as big as it was when we did the weekend. Episode is our subreddit, is where I learned about this.

And the Basecamp subreddit

is frigging huge, like ridiculously large. So an example of what I mean by this is it gets a hundred 90 4K weekly visitors and 43 K weekly contributors. So for our, our VIP fans who heard about this last time, this is more than twice as big as it was when I was shocked by it last time.

To give you an [00:11:00] idea of like what that means if, if you go to Joe Rogan’s subreddit, we’re at 190 4K weekly visitors 43 K weekly interactions. His is 308 k weekly visitors, 8.9 k weekly interactions. If you go to the ESMA Gold subreddit, so, so. We’re astronomically bigger than Joe Rogan in terms of weekly interactions and only a bit smaller in terms of weekly visitors.

Like he’s not even twice as big as us. If you go to ESMO Gold 360 4K. So again, not even twice as big as us. And only 11 K weekly interactions where we’re at 43 k weekly interactions.

Crazily. We have yet grown again since we filmed this. The subreddit is now at 247 k, weekly visitors and 58 K weekly interactions.

Malcolm Collins: So I have an episode where I go into like, what could be going on here? But they, they had this, and an interesting thing here where we’re talking about, oh, women are doing so well in society.

One of the top posts is, are women more oppressed or do we just not give a damn about men and boys? And it points out that now college graduates, there might actually be more than on this graph because [00:12:00] men drop out of college at higher rates, two female college graduates over the next five years for every one male college graduates good.

And then it shows domestic violence. Victims more male than female homelessness. Only 75% are male, 25% are female. And it’s much harder to get homeless shelters as been unloving rates more than 70, it looks like 76, 70 7% male. Workplace fatalities you’re looking here, it looks like 90% male combat death since 1991.

Basically all male. And oh, victims of forced circumcision. They, they have that as that’s, that’s quite a, a Reddit complaint. We should do an episode on circumcision someday. That would be a lot of, no, would, probably

should.

Yeah. We have one episode where I argued that I don’t even think that we’re doing circumcision.

Right. This is one of our religion episodes if you wanna Oh, you mean

Simone Collins: in terms of methodology, like the way the cut is done?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is the episode called The Question That Breaks Judaism, and we go into, we have archeological evidence, and, and Jews say they came from Egypt, right? Oh, that it

Simone Collins: was done differently originally.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: that circumcision [00:13:00] meant something different in the past. Yes. That the word meant something different. Well, what. So we have evidence, if you don’t wanna go into the full episode on that, because it’s like a four hour long episode called like, yeah.

Simone Collins: TLDR Army, please.

Malcolm Collins: And we go over historic evidence ‘cause we have from like mummies and stuff, we can see what their circumcisions looked like.

Which we don’t have from ancestral Jewish property. Mommy don’t?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: And, but they look like

Simone Collins: owl pellets gross.

Malcolm Collins: They, they Egyptian priests did dorsal lateral circumcision. So not all the way around. Not a circumference, but just like up and down, basically just cutting a slit in it. And the reason why we would have evidence to believe that the early Jews were doing it the same way is because in the early Jewish communities, they said we are a community of all priests.

Like every, every man is a priest. Oh. And so it would make sense that they might have, living in Egypt at the time and being aware of this purification ritual might have, drawn it from a common source, but just as a sign that everyone in the community is of the priest class. Which is, I, I find to [00:14:00] be really fascinating.

Like I don’t believe this hard, I don’t, I don’t like, I think this is one of those things that I’m not that solid on. I, I think it’s like a 25 to 30% chance, like a good chance, but still pretty good. Like, you don’t know because we just don’t have a lot of evidence. Like there, there’s like a a thousand year gap in what definitionally a circumcision was between it being mentioned for the first time and then us getting any records of this is how it’s actually performed.

Simone Collins: That’s so interesting. Right.

Malcolm Collins: We could do a circumcision episode.

Simone Collins: I, I don’t know how much we can talk about things that are done with sharp objects to private parts on YouTube.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Maybe they won’t

Simone Collins: like that. Maybe not. Maybe that’s a Patreon episode. A substack a paid Substack episode. You know.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so, there is evidence out there that men do actually gain more health and emotional benefits from marriage.

It’s one of the women talking, as they usually receive more support than they give out. Mike Kosik a hormone [00:15:00] health expert at Balance. My hormone stole the post. Oh, this was a male who said this. Without balanced responsibility, marriage can feel more beneficial for men. Jess Iko 30 couldn’t agree more.

She and her boyfriend, Ross Anton, 32, have been dating for five years and are head over heels for each other. She just doesn’t see a wedding in their future. As the oldest daughter of three, the New Jersey native, who owns her own social media marketing and content creation agency, told the post that growing up, she’s always been independent and career oriented, never giving relationships or marriage.

Much thought. Despite being married, raised by happily married parents. I was never like. Oh, I’ll wear this wedding dress, or I can’t wait to have a big wedding. Instead, I would watch romcoms and think, I want that career. I want her closet. She shared with the post, and I think that, that you’re, you’re getting a lot of information on why these women chose this, right?

Like they were raised in a generation where they did not have aspirational marriages to look at was envy.

Simone Collins: Well, how [00:16:00] many popular films, media or TV shows depict the hero’s journey for a woman at the very least in which marriage is, is the dream at the end. There’s certainly happy ever afters for like Disney princesses, but no one really watches those anymore.

And the more recent Disney princesses don’t get married at the end for the most part.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All the recent Disney princesses are not about getting married, but about how your parents are terrible. Like that’s like every recent are

Simone Collins: what, what are really popular movies that have come out, which depict a woman?

Malcolm Collins: Or trauma really trying to get married. If you look the modern female journey, like modern hero’s journey mm-hmm. It is realize you have trauma, face trauma, overcome trauma. Mm-hmm. And so I think women are, instead of what they used to want their fairytale ending, right, their fairytale ending now requires the trauma.

So they invent the trauma which we’ve pointed out is very easy to do in studies. . One of my favorite studies on this that we’ve talked about before shows that people [00:17:00] who say that they were abused at kids, the amount of abuse that they say that they experienced is correlary with how much effects that they have from that abuse on like their daily behavior patterns and everything like that.

Mm-hmm. But it’s completely uncorrelated with the amount of abuse they actually experienced when that is searched through, you know, court records and stuff like that where we have some, some evidence of whether or not they were abused or not which is wild. But anyway so I love that the new heroes journey that they’re going down is how do, how do I build my trauma oh my gosh.

And a career and all that.

Simone Collins: Well, especially when you consider this, these these general trends in the context of the trend of women choosing to identify online as divorced women, that it’s like a point of pride in something that they. Want to identify with. So even when you went through the whole process of getting married, then you actually feel enough of a sense of reward and social cachet by very being, like being very publicly divorced, that you would go on and be, [00:18:00] you know, get a divorce ring for yourself, be prominent about it, post online about it, that kind of thing.

Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so, and I think that she actually understands the point of marriage very well in terms of why she’s not doing it. I don’t think it’s a disillusion about the point of marriage. She says now in her thirties, a Klo shutters at the thought at the archaic concept saying, I do even to a man she loves because she believes becoming a wife subconsciously forces women to give up a part of themselves

Simone Collins: and men.

Yeah. You subsume yourself to become part of something bigger than both of you. Absolutely. That is, I mean, I think most people don’t want that to be marriage. They think that marriage is like, oh, I can have an unpaid cordis on now. This is great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They think it’s about a sex buddy or something, right.

Like Yeah. One

Simone Collins: on earth. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I feel like I have such a rooted self-identity. I don’t think I have witnessed many marriages where the woman doesn’t lose herself in the identity of her marriage. Instead of remaining an eye, she [00:19:00] becomes a we, which I think is, is good that she’s recognizing that that is the point of marriage, as we always say.

Mm-hmm.

Becoming, we losing the eye. Right. Life is a journey. I think when lived fully away from the eye, right? Like when you’re a kid, it’s all about yourself as an individual. And the family and the larger family unit often dotes on the, the, you, the eye as the individual. And then as you grow up you then take full ownership of yourself without the external support.

And then you get married and you become a we, and then you have kids and you become sort of the, the, the guardian of the family, like even the wider system. And then you die and you become a story to your kids, right? And, and, and descendants. And so it’s this constant drift away from the individual, and they don’t want that.

And I think that they’re making the right choice given what they, they have been taught to value in life, which is the eye.

Mm-hmm.

Despite knowing they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Ako told Lipo that she had a musician boyfriend who both currently [00:20:00] lived in Pittsburgh, but are in no rush to move in together, have been on the no marriage bandwagon for the duration of their relationship, or at least Ross has acquiesced to his partner’s choices.

Marriage appears to be the best when both parties involved really want it and each other, he told the post, oh, that’s sad. It’s necessity and significance always dwindle when that is not the case. And if you look at pictures of him, I mean, I don’t, I don’t think he was gonna get married anyway, but a Yuko explained the conversation that we have around our futures is more about how we see each other’s careers and how we see a future together in that sense, which I feel matters more than, okay, do we get engaged and get married?

And it’s interesting that she just feels that this matters more because it’s about enhancing their existing identities as atomized units, which we’ve been drifting to with the society as soon as we atomize a family. And it didn’t happen any more recently like, like faster recently. But we point out this didn’t happen with you know, women leaving the household to get jobs.

It happened was men leaving the household to get jobs, and that’s when [00:21:00] fertility rates started dropping in like the 18 fifties to like nineties depending on the country that you’re in. IKO said that regardless of how far women have come in society, she feels that once a couple enters a husband and wife territory, it’s hard for them to avoid falling into stereotypical gender roles.

Some men really want a girl who will cook and clean for them, so they want to date their mom. I can’t even imagine being with somebody who expected those things the entrepreneur revealed. Now what’s interesting was that statement is you definitely did that. I I did you expect to fall into those roles of cooking and cleaning?

I

Simone Collins: really didn’t think about

Malcolm Collins: it

Simone Collins: at

Malcolm Collins: all. It was not an existential fear for you.

Simone Collins: It’s not something I thought about or that we planned out weirdly.

Malcolm Collins: Makes sense.

Simone Collins: I mean, I think in the end I do it because I care more about how it’s done, which is, is how a lot of things work in relationships when they work out organically.

Malcolm Collins: [00:22:00] Yeah. She goes on to say the emotional labor women saw their mom’s shoulder, organizing households. Managing everyone’s happiness doesn’t look appealing. If it’s not balanced. Nobody wants to lose themselves to unpaid work on somebody else’s dreams. If marriage is on the table, it’s going to be on equal terms without sacrificing selfhood.

And this was an expert, not her, but I find that really interesting because that’s how you felt. That’s why you didn’t wanna get married When I first talked to you about marriage. You said, no, I don’t wanna do it because I don’t like the way it made my mom lived, her, her life. And, and your parents even lived in a very progressive family and lifestyle, right?

Yeah, but

Simone Collins: I think it’s different. They’re talking about unpaid labor, et cetera. And what I was really concerned about was I losing like a sense of direction that goes beyond being a caretaker for kids. And as much as I’ve taken on the internal house, cooking and cleaning and I mean at least infant care, you, you do older [00:23:00] kid care.

I, I still very much like we have our work that we do together. You know? And I think that’s, that’s not what women are worried about. They’re not worried about losing their work, they’re worried about doing unpaid labor

Malcolm Collins: or unappreciated labor. I think it’s a bigger thing, expected labor.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Except men for, I think for the most part are like, they’re not unwilling to do it.

They just have such a low, a much lower standard that when they do it like it’s, it’s to a level that is still unacceptable. Like yesterday, you cleaned your room. Am I still terrified to even look inside it? Yes, absolutely. Like your standard of what is clean is like the, the worst nightmare for me of the dirtiest our house could get.

If I was like on death’s door for three months, I took out all of

Malcolm Collins: the, all of the, [00:24:00] the uncovered food that’s very clean. Simone, there’s no reason for mice to come in anymore except for the new food from today. I, I am stabbing in her heart right now. You can look at this. This is, this is a woman being tortured.

This is why she dissociates. If you, if you saw that video, she has to, she’s dis association, enable me

Simone Collins: to enter your room. I, that’s not happening. It’s just not going to happen.

Malcolm Collins: I love, our fan base is all like, oh yeah. I’m constantly disassociates just like the way I love my life. You, I

Simone Collins: love base campers.

They’re freaking amazing. ‘cause they get it, Malcolm, you don’t understand. They just get it.

Malcolm Collins: Whenever I say something like when in the episode where I’d like, I don’t think romantic love is a thing and I expect they’re exactly really controversial with our audience. They were like, yeah, no, that’s, that this is not

Simone Collins: news.

Start reporting news to us again.

Malcolm Collins: Did they say that? Like,

Simone Collins: no, but it’s the kind of comments that we get. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I wanna, I wanna hear news. Okay. So.

Simone Collins: No, I, I don’t mean news, like [00:25:00] interesting new ideas. That’s what people like.

Malcolm Collins: Ah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So other women here saying I think we as women, especially millennial women, have been fed this narrative through movies and the media of the girl and the guy getting together.

They get married, they have kids, they get the house, and they live happily ever after. She explained, what I realized was that marriage wasn’t really translating to my happiness, and I think it would be more of a hindrance. And. This is what’s really fascinating. And I think that this is true. Like she, she’s accurate here.

I think they grew up with the remnants within media. ‘cause if she saw this in media, she’s an old person, right? Like she must be in her forties. ‘Cause you don’t see that in media anymore very often. But even during that time period, it was like, do X, Y, and Z to achieve happiness. But then it told you what happiness was, which was individual self-fulfillment.

And that’s not what a family gives you. That’s not like the purpose of a family, right? Like it’s, it’s telling you to play a completely different game that’s gonna have a completely different outcome. Right. Like

Simone Collins: what’s so crazy though is [00:26:00] that I feel more fulfilled now than I ever did single. Which is so ironic.

Yeah. Go on though. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I just can’t really remember a time when I was consistently happy, comfortable, relaxing, enjoying life while I was in a relationship or dating. There was always a worry, a stress, or an annoyance or a frustration, and it just never felt as peaceful as if it was just focusing on me.

Mm-hmm. Sorry. As peaceful as it is. Sorry. As peaceful as it was just focusing on me. I, so you can see here the purpose is focusing on herself. Like that’s the goal in all of this, which I get right? Like, if that’s what you’re into, what good is that

Simone Collins: gonna do though?

Malcolm Collins: By the way, she, she has a, a new puppy, which she took her pictures with.

Of course. One thing I’ve been practicing is just radical. A. Acceptance of myself not having any shame, not feeling bad about any of my decisions, just trying to accept myself and enjoy life. [00:27:00] And I think that that’s, that’s a perfect statement there. It shows that that that is something you feel should feel deep shame for doing, right?

Like if you, if you are a normal person to try to live your life without expectations for yourself. ‘cause that’s what shame comes from, is not living up to the expectations you have set for what you should achieve from your life. Mm-hmm. What you should give back to society. And she’s saying that actually her expectation is to have no expectations, to have no shame, to you know, axiomatic approve of the things she has done of the decision she had made.

And I think it’s worse

Simone Collins: than that because it’s not just about expectations. In fact, if anything, expectations are really weak when you look at scientific. Data, like research, academic research around behavior change, for example, and whether people are actually able to do good things that are hard.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Really the consistent thing that that changes behavior is if you change the defaults. You know, like if you need to stop eating junk food, you just don’t keep junk food in your [00:28:00] house anymore, you know?

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: And what’s really interesting about having spouses, and especially about having children, is that they force responsibility.

They force selflessness. I mean, at least assuming that you aren’t negligently allowing these people to die and being an abusive partner or whatever. Right. And a lot of people are that, which is really sad, but I think most conscientious morally, non bankrupt people. Step up when they’re presented with these responsibilities that cannot be avoided.

There are no more sick days. There, there is no more sleeping in there. You know, there is no more just deciding to phone it in because someone else depends on you, especially if kids are involved, they really depend on you. And it, it just honestly forces you to be a better person. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to be forgiving or not, you know, you’re there anyway.

And you may not always be perfect, but yeah, I dunno. I, I think it’s, it, it, it’s worse than just being okay with who you are. It’s shirking from even [00:29:00] forcing functions that would, would obligate you naturally to be a, a better, stronger, more conscientious, caring, empathetic, and moral person. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, let’s go to the second group of women to see what they say and why they’re doing it.

The inso. So with the first group, I think, well, no, no, the,

Simone Collins: the intentional celibates, I guess. Yeah, the

Malcolm Collins: intentional celibates. So with the first group, I think they were incredibly clear and articulate, and I’d even say clear minded about why they were making this decision. Hmm. They were making, well, I think they

Simone Collins: have to be, because they have to tell their partners very explicitly what’s going on, unless they’re being really mean about it and misleading them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I, I mean, I think it, it shows a degree of self-knowledge. They, they wanted to focus on self-acceptance. They wanted to focus on self-actualization. They did not like, they, they do not exist to contribute to society. Their people, their country, human [00:30:00] civilization, they exist for their own subjective experience of existing.

Mm-hmm. And they saw marriage as being. Incompatible with that. And I think that that’s really powerful, right? Mm-hmm. Like I think that they’re, they’re, they’re right about that. They’re, they’re wrong about why they exist and what they actually will get fulfillment from. ‘cause if you chase fulfillment for its own sake, you’ll never get any fulfillment at all.

Which I, it is a really sort of sad thing as to why that happens. We’ve talked about it in more detail in other episodes, but if you chase. Self-acceptance, fulfillment, your own subjective emotions for its own state. You’re saying that those are the only things that have value in, in, in your life. Which means that you are experiencing personally everything that is good about your existence because your existence is self-referential, right?

Mm-hmm. And you will realize pretty quickly how trivial all of those emotions and self-acceptance actually feel unless you fry your brain with like, hoku and, and, and crystals and [00:31:00] mysticism, right? Well, yeah, but I think

Simone Collins: it’s not, even though, I mean, you’re implying that this works and that they are experiencing hedonic pleasure at greater levels, whereas any hedonic pleasure you get, that, that you know is, is excess due to your being single and totally freed up to focus on yourself.

One, you adjust to it. Two, you’re left alone with your own demons, and I think more vulnerable to depression and anxiety and other mental health problems. ‘cause there’s nothing to fill the void. Only your demon there. The

Malcolm Collins: experience, happiness changes depending on your context in life. So when I say that she is experiencing, let’s say, like more dopaminergic reward pathways.

Mm-hmm. Then somebody who is dedicating themselves to the family. I mean that in the same way a meth addict lying on the street, homeless is experiencing more dopaminergic reward pathways. I

Simone Collins: dunno, don’t you think we are like constantly getting hit by dopamine when our kids do hilarious stuff and make us laugh and do sweet things and make us it?

Is it on the

Malcolm Collins: inside of happiness? But that’s the point I’m making. So if you are [00:32:00] doing something like meth on the streets or fentanyl or whatever, right? Like you are experiencing a level of No, but it’s like an

Simone Collins: empty high and then you have the fallout. Like it’s, it’s not the slow burn high that you really wanna

Malcolm Collins: hit.

You have the fallout and you yourself throughout the entire thing. Okay. Or, or afterwards. Before, in your context, you’re still sleeping in the rain being covered in cockroaches. That doesn’t mean, so what, whatever, you know, the meth addict is to, let’s say her, she is to us, right? Like, she is objectively like maybe hitting these pathways harder in the same way the meth addict is hitting these pathways harder.

Okay. But I would not wish her lifestyle on my worst enemy. Right. Like Right, of course. Anyway, so to continue here, does that make sense to you or do you wanna No, it does. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I mean, and, and that was, it’s, it’s this latter lifestyle that I was personally going for before I met you. And everything got derailed ‘cause I discovered meaning in life through you.

But it, [00:33:00] it was really fun. Like on the surface it was really fun. But then, yeah, I think what you describe is pretty accurate. Like it’s the end of something uniquely fun that I’d planned for myself. I would feel empty and anxiety would creep in and yeah, I felt like I was constantly running from that.

Malcolm Collins: It was scary. Makes sense. Okay, so, now we’re gonna go to the next article, meet the young single women going celibate, but not for the reason you’d expect. And then it, and it has to start with the title. Many of them find it incredibly hard which is interesting because like just everyone used to live this way.

And you’ll see that this is, you see it from the title manana, Zami 29 spent a quote, unquote good chunk of her twenties being celibate. Now I find that, that, that sentence ridiculous in a historic context. The idea that an unmarried woman spent a good chunk of her twenties not [00:34:00] sleeping around is, would be considered the sluttiest thing. You could imagine, if you go back, let’s just say 50 years ago, right? You, you’re not supposed to be sleeping around in your twenties. You stay celibate, you get married, then you have a family. Mm-hmm. Like, what, why is she sleeping? What, what does she mean? It’s, it’s like the, the priest who’s like, well, you know, I only see prostitutes a couple times a year.

Or the, the nun being like, I’m celibate. I just lapse every, you know, few months. But anyway, to continue here. It is like, it’s like that’s not, that’s not celibate. In fact, she purposely did not sleep with anyone for four consecutive years. Ooh. So four years of celibacy, the Floridian told the post, and men have made her decision fairly easy.

According to Z’s generation of young females. Hookup culture aided by dating apps ruined intimacy [00:35:00] hookup culture. This is a woman saying this doesn’t benefit women in any way. It totally only benefits the man. I’m not here to judge. But at the same time, hooking up ruins the part where when you actually find the person you want to spend your, the rest of your life with, it takes away from that special, intimate moment that you have wisdom in quote.

Now, I, I find that to be really fascinating. So basically they’re taking this perspective. I think actually what I’m seeing in the reason I thought these women were more attractive is, is they’re just younger. Oh, okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And that’s the difference. That’s a different generation. So the, the previous generation isn’t going for marriage because they were raised on this sort of mantra of self-actualization, self involvement, be a career woman.

And this generation was raised during the era of pickup apps and they’re just like, these are terrible. And create a terrible environment. And again, I don’t Yeah. Nott even try. I, I, I think, I mean, you do need to try if you wanna find somebody. Right. But you’re not

Simone Collins: gonna try to find someone [00:36:00] though,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Yeah. Yeah. So Kylie Kaputo, a 29-year-old New Jersey resident agrees. I feel like hookup culture was, has ruined dating because it almost feels like that’s the end goal. It’s like people are so trained now to just ask you home wisdom. It’s so bizarre to admit to the post adding that sleeping with someone you are newly seeing quote clouds your judgment on how you really feel about the person.

It’s a very mature thing to say. I agree with that. Yeah. Zami is among the slew of Gen Z and millennial women who are fueling America’s unprecedented sex recession as they seem to be fine with it. So, this is actually interesting and I think I get it. The, the core difference between these two groups, this group isn’t sleeping around because what they really want is a marriage and a dedicated partner, and they don’t feel they’re getting that from hookup culture.

Now as to why they’re not getting that from hookup culture. It’s because you’ve got the, you know, problem where less than 1% of women are sw right. On the average [00:37:00] man. Right? Like they’re, they’re, they are definitionally all going after the same few guys.

Yeah.

Which rewards those guys for bad behavior where they don’t really value the relationships, which then creates the perception in these women that men don’t really value relationships and treat them poorly.

And then you get this you know, horrible cycle here. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s also hard, like when, when I look at men in this generation, when I look at the, you know, subreddit we have where it’s, it’s a lot of gender related stuff. You know, so many of them talk about how hard it is dating as a non-white man.

Which I, I can totally hear. Or how tall it is dating as a, a, a short guy, right? Which again, I, I didn’t like, I was in an easier time period for dating and, I wasn’t dealing with either of those things. Right. So, I had it uniquely easy compared to that community. I, I do like that the community isn’t, at least, it doesn’t seem like spiteful against, like, taller guys and stuff like that.

I just feel like the tallest from Invader Zm

Speaker: here they are, your all knowing, all [00:38:00] powerful leaders, the Almighty toys.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: Like that, that’s, that’s who we are doing the podcast. That’s, that’s literally, it’s so funny in Vayner Zim tried to create like a joke society where everything is based off of how, how, how tall a, a, a male is. And I feel like women have unironically recreated that society on like Tinder and stuff like that.

Yeah, that is, that is actually our society right now is oh, you’re, you’re too short.

Speaker 6: Ah. You seem to have grown since last. You stood before a

Redditer.

Speaker 2: .

You’ve been assigned to the planet Bloch, home of the slaughtering

Borderline women.

Speaker 2: Why would you trophy?

Speaker 7: However, because of your increased height, we have decided to give you the planet Vort home of the universe’s most comfortable couch.

And hot career women who genuinely believe you’re making a major sacrifice by being a [00:39:00] stay at home husband.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Go to the, the trash planet where you’ll be eaten by rats and no one will synthesize.

Simone Collins: What in general was the, the sentiment or reaction or discussion on, on the subreddit about this? Like, what was their, and so, or, and therefore just like, women are terrible. You see, you see how bad this is, why I’m gonna be a passport, bro. Like, what, what is there and there for from this? I don’t know. I don’t,

Malcolm Collins: I didn’t read all that comments.

Okay. I find it less fun than the Discord to be honest. But it’s, it’s, it’s active as heck, man. It is, it is incredibly active. I’m just very shocked by this. I do not know. I mean, I know why it’s become a place like the podcast itself isn’t that relevant to the Discord. It’s become a place for people to have political debates.

Because the podcast itself, in the eyes of many people in the Discord, they’re like, they frame themselves as righteous, but they’re actually very centrist. [00:40:00] Which is prob, I mean, I don’t know what political opinion I have that’s not right-leaning. Of, of center, it might not be as right leaning as some people, but but I can understand how a lot of people in like online spaces, if you’re like in the er crowd or something like that, would see us as centrist.

Mm-hmm. And, and I think because of that, because we try to air both sides from like a, a logical and, and, and, and broken down, and I think fair perspective, often, even if we let our biases be known very clearly that attracts the type of people who want to have debates within online communities like Reddit.

So you get this big debate, Reddit, which is why the interaction rate’s so high. As much as you want to blame the other species, you also have to take accountability for why you’re allowing certain people into your life and why you’re okay with letting people basically walk all over you. I love, she calls min the other species, the

Simone Collins: other goodness gracious lady.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s to why you’re letting men walk all over you. The answer is clear. You are going after the guys [00:41:00] who have tons of other options, and so of course they’re gonna walk all over you. That’s just like, think about it from the guy’s perspective, right? The, the problem with all of the men, women sorting to these top few men, which statistically they objectively do on dating apps, right?

Is that the, the, those men are gonna have like five to 10 women each who will sleep with them whenever they want, and Yeah. Yeah. They don’t need to treat you with respect. Like there’s, there’s no need to treat you with respect because you are literally disposable from their perspective. And I think, I think this makes life worse for those men as well.

You know, when they, when they call, well, yeah, they’re not

Simone Collins: happy. ‘cause also they’re not having kids. They don’t have a, a committed partner. I think even men who thought they could make it work where they’re billionaires and they have one committed partner who’s kind of like raising kids for them or something, and then they’re sleeping around.

Like, there are so many now prominent cases, and I might get into some that I’m, I’m work, I’m working on an episode that might get into some of these examples where they just [00:42:00] crash and burn. So even that doesn’t really work. That I just, yeah, no one’s winning in this. Who’s winning

actually Who is winning? Someone has to be winning. I feel like even the dating app companies aren’t winning because they’re, I think they’re losing people regardless. If you, if you help people get married, you lose people. But also people are probably, I think I, I read something on this. Who’s winning

Malcolm Collins: R Fab AI where you can get yourself a simulated partner of the highest scholar?

Simone Collins: Oh, the chat bot platforms. Yeah. Honestly, they’re, they’re way more pleasant to speak with than people.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you always create ones of me, or, or like a character import feature can create very detailed Malcolm’s and Simone’s.

Simone Collins: I think it’s one of the most popular when you, when you go onto the platform at least, is this, just because I keep interacting with it.

But the Malcolm is, is one of the most popular.

Malcolm Collins: Because you like interacting with the Malcolm. [00:43:00] We’ve got a great new audio feature, by the way, now where you can just like push a button and chat with it and then it will speak. Oh, I love that

Simone Collins: feature.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it works in like five different languages, like totally fluently.

Yeah. As well, which is really cool. So cool. Anyway, somebody from another language tried it and they go, oh my God, it sounded like a real woman. Like, I’ve never seen a Spanish audio translation. It’s very natural. Yeah, there’s a lot.

Simone Collins: And there’s different, even within any language, there’s, there are different ality options and gender options which is nice ‘cause I, I don’t know.

That’s definitely matters. It, it really does have an impact. So I, well done Malcolm. Well done Bruno. You guys are awesome.

Malcolm Collins: Speaking of her celibacy, but then one year turned into two, which turned into three, which turned into four years. I made that promise to myself. Until I’m in a commitment relationship, I want to be celibate.

Okay, Seb Zami.

So one, first of all, I wanna say to what Simona’s saying, we’ve got the site mostly stable now. I’m sorry. It was like unstable for so long. I, I got jumped the gun in announcing it because I’ve never developed software from scratch before. Like this myself is gonna go so well,

Simone Collins: what could possibly go wrong?

You thought,

Malcolm Collins: well, [00:44:00] you know, it, it took a really long time to get it, it, get it as stable as it is now. And, and that was frustrating. But we’re there now finally I’m excited about. I’m, it’s, this is awesome, but to what she’s talking about here, I found this really interesting. They, they, she’s not saying she’s actually celibate.

She says, until I’m in a committed relationship, I wanna be celibate. No, it’s just

Simone Collins: so crazy. ‘cause at least when I was doing my thing. I, I was just celibate. Like I, I wasn’t, but I, I know also like a lot of people have sex drives that probably they have to address. Right, right. And

Malcolm Collins: you do not which, which is I awesome.

Right? Like, I think that that makes like, so much better and easier, especially for the next generation if you’re not Yeah. I mean, imagine

Simone Collins: just pretty much anyone can probably relate to having intrusive thoughts about something, be it food or, or alcohol or gambling or sex or something. And like a life without those intrusive thoughts is an easier life, you know, like if you choose anything.

No, I hated doing through

Malcolm Collins: puberty. I [00:45:00] hated it. I remember I had the thoughts of like, my ideas were so much more complicated so much more interesting before I went through puberty.

Simone Collins: Oh, oh my gosh. So you could even remember back to when you were saying.

Malcolm Collins: No, this is like an experience that I think a lot of guys have.

I mean, I had

Simone Collins: that, I just, it was with mood swings, like, oh, suddenly I’m like anguished and angry and embarrassed and I can’t, I don’t understand why, but I didn’t have it with like, I need sex.

Malcolm Collins: And then you go through puberty and all of a sudden it’s like all of your thoughts, all of your daydreams, they’re on like, sounds terrible.

Sex and hunting and killing. Yeah. And, and, and it’s what all of your doodles are about. It’s the Roman soldiers at war, you know, it’s you know, building empires as well. Right. But, but the thoughts are so like bundled. And before that, I remember I was constantly thinking about philosophy and why I exist and everything like that, which is more what I moved to as I’ve gotten older and my sex drive has died down.

But there’s a period [00:46:00] there where, you know, it was just like,

Simone Collins: couldn’t get, you couldn’t get a thought. And edge was. It sucks.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you doodling, you know, vikings and, and soldiers and war, and every guy I think, goes through this phase, right? Like, yeah. It’s starships, you know, you gotta take out the Zenoss.

Of course. My God. As you colonize the, the universe,

Simone Collins: I mean, of course,

Malcolm Collins: anyway, after breaking her four year streak last year with someone who ultimately wasn’t worth it, the 29-year-old is keeping that promise to herself. And going back to the no sex bandwagon Zai is just one of many women in her age group that are openly discussing the celibacy journey and encouraging others to do the same.

So accidentally having sex with somebody like once in a four year period while you’re looking for a husband used to not be called celibate. It used to be called. Normal. This used to be like, if you’re talking the [00:47:00] 1970s, this would’ve been a normal middle American woman’s. Sure. Like

Simone Collins: one night stand while you got a little too tipsy,

Malcolm Collins: like once in four years.

Sure. Right. Like, that would’ve been not celibate. That would’ve been i, I screwed up. But no one, not everyone’s a saint. You know what I mean? Not everyone’s Simone. Mm-hmm. From 2010 to 2024, the percentage of youngsters 18 to 29, who admitted to not having sex doubled from 12% to 24% according to a general social survey.

And to make matters worse even more shocking cyclists for young adult females has risen by roughly 50% according to IFS. Mm-hmm. And these strong world women are just adding to that already increasing number quote. Typically, if I feel like things are going down a path where I’m like, oh, they might be expecting something from me, I like to be straightforward and be like, I’m not having sex with you.

And I’m like, that, that’s normal. Yeah,

Simone Collins: that’s pretty normal.

Malcolm Collins: And I literally say it so bluntly. That kind of allows [00:48:00] me to feel not only like I’m in charge, but also if they’re just looking for a quick hookup, then they don’t have to see me again, which I also think is really good, I think is really good for women to not waste anyone’s

Simone Collins: time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like me, I, I met you, what did I say on our first date? I’m looking to get married. I was like,

Simone Collins: oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. I thought I was thinking about what you were saying on, on our second date, which is Oh yeah. My mom told me when I was a teen that if a girl doesn’t go down on you, if by the second date she’s just playing games.

Malcolm Collins: Third day. Third day. She third day. Is

Simone Collins: that what she said? I can’t remember what her, her words of wisdom were on that front, because I didn’t hear them from her directly. But

Malcolm Collins: I mean, that was in her generation that she grew up learning that. Right. You know? Yeah. And I do think that was normalized when we were growing up.

It was, yeah. That like a woman, you were weird because you didn’t sleep with people, right? Like Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.[00:49:00]

Malcolm Collins: We have the, the whole diary of the year you met me that that’s been annotated and turned into a book for, it was the first book we did. And it’s called Into the Heart of Dork Darkness. And we never published it. And she refuses to give it to like our exclusive subscribers ‘cause she’s like, too embarrassed.

I think it’s a good book. I think it’s a good book.

Simone Collins: I’m glad you think it’s a good book. It can, it can hide in obscurity.

Malcolm Collins: Hide and I’ll, I’ll make sure that it gets published on your death.

Simone Collins: Thanks. Great. Fantastic. I mean, I’ll be dead, so I won’t care. I really, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Come on, Simone. I think you’re really cute.

And, and it’s very relatable and it talks a lot about our time.

Simone Collins: You’ve normalized so much to my death when you die. So and so is, you know, Octavian, but he will be very mad if, if we die before we get, what does he call it? The golden subscribe button. It’s not even golden. Or do you, is there a golden one?

Is he putting that on us? Do we? No, there is

Malcolm Collins: a [00:50:00] golden one. There’s a silver one in a gold one. What are, what are the do you have to get a million

Simone Collins: for? Oh God. So he

Malcolm Collins: expects

Simone Collins: a million from

well then I guess anyone, you know, we, we need to not die until we get the gold one key.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so at a hundred subscribers you can create a custom URL. Have we ever done that? I think we have a custom URL mm-hmm. 500 subscribers and you become eligible for the expanded YouTube partner program. Which of course we have a thousand subscribers at Major Milestone, you become eligible for the YouTube partner program, which allows you to earn money from your videos.

Okay. 10,000 subscribers, you unlock features like custom thumbnails and access to the YouTube Creator Academy. Wait, you can’t

Simone Collins: make custom thumbnails before you have 10,000? Wait, they can’t, cannot be true.

Malcolm Collins: It might be, I mean, it’s I mean, that was so long ago for us when we started like, you know, dedicatedly making videos again.

No, we had custom thumbnails on those videos, so that must be an older thing. So it, it, at a hundred thousand subscribers, you’re eligible for the Silver Creator Award, known as the Silver Play button. And we’ll just tell him it’s [00:51:00] gold. You know, he doesn’t know the difference, Todd.

Simone Collins: Yes, he does.

Malcolm Collins: At a, at a million subscribers, you’re eligible for the Gold Creator Award.

That’s what he wants. A a million. And then at 10 million, you’re eligible for the Diamond Creator Award. And for, wait, is this, that one just made out

Simone Collins: of glass? Like is it, or does it have a diamond?

Malcolm Collins: I’ve never

Simone Collins: seen it before. I don’t, I don’t know if I follow anyone. Here’s the thing though, is I bet all those people just create those, those slop YouTube videos for. Kids because that’s like that, the only time I’ve ever seen a video that like, or a channel that consistently produces videos that are like 10 million views, 30 million views, it’s always like a, a stupid kid channel.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s, it’s just a crystal award. And then it’s just through this time. Yeah, it’s just see through Crystal. Yeah, it’s, it actually looks, I think, worse than the other ones. Yeah. And then there’s the Red Crystal Award, which is actually pretty cool looking. It’s, it’s a, it’s a [00:52:00] black crystal with like a red play button in the center of it.

Ooh,

Simone Collins: that sounds good. How many do you need that for?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that is those are our family colors that the black and red, that Calvinist. So is that that what we’re going for a hundred million. We’re we’ll never get there. We don’t make content that’s appealing to a mass audience. Yeah, that is

Simone Collins: can do it if he, if he, if he makes kids slop.

Malcolm Collins: But I, I think, I think the silver play button is realistic for us within what are we at now for subscribers? 62,000?

Simone Collins: Our goal for this year, we’re like, oh, if we could do it, it would

Malcolm Collins: be, no,

Simone Collins: we’re at

Malcolm Collins: about 64,000.

Simone Collins: We’re at 63.8. Oh really? Our goal was 70,000. So we didn’t make it, but I thought that it was impo.

Like, I was like, let’s set a goal if 50,000 subscribers. And you’re like, no, it has to be a stretch goal. We stretched. We didn’t stretch far enough, Malcolm, we

Malcolm Collins: didn’t stretch far enough, but I think this year resolutions here, people, we can make it to a hundred thousand. So please subscribe. Our channel was hit so hard by the Christmas [00:53:00] season.

I always hate that that happens. You know, we were getting to a point of like 20,000 per episode. And then, yeah, don’t,

Simone Collins: don’t subscribe for us. Subscribe for our eldest son Octavian. So they, who, who only cares,

Malcolm Collins: they

Simone Collins: literally walks around houses as the, our house as though he’s narrating a YouTube video. Hey guys, just going around my house.

Like, he just loves it. He loves YouTube. He was born in the YouTube. He, he, he

Malcolm Collins: literally born like the guy from that show Truman show.

Simone Collins: No. And like also, he literally, ‘cause he’s autistic, he has these little things he recites. He will literally recite like the sound bites, the clips that people will use in videos as like sort of the new version of reaction gif.

Like, ew, ew. Like, he keeps saying that one and Oh my God, what the hell? Like all the, all the little like sound clips. He does it all the time. Because he is, he is literally born in YouTube. Like he, he, he is the meme, he is a walking meme. He’ll generate his [00:54:00] own memes like that, that spread even to like his a BA therapist are doing it.

His, his thing that he coined was, or maybe it didn’t, maybe it did come from YouTube. Yeah. Tell me, chime in, in the comments if Helicopter, helicopter was. From YouTube, our kid or like from YouTube. ‘Cause maybe this comes from some video, like, I don’t know, riffing on whoever made their gender attack helicopter, though.

I think Octa’s genuine gender, if he knew it was an option would be attack helicopter. Not joking.

Malcolm Collins: Attack helicopter would be a cool gender option. Yeah.

Simone Collins: If I could choose gender, I would choose attack helicopter. Shut up. People

Malcolm Collins: like, what the heck? Why don’t I get to be? It reminds me when I was a little kid and my parents said, you can be anything you want when you grow up.

And I said, so yeah, why can’t I be an attack

Simone Collins: helicopter?

Malcolm Collins: I said, I wanna be a tyrannosaurus rexton. Like, and then I wondered why and Titan would wanna be

Simone Collins: a Tyrannosaur. Why

Malcolm Collins: aren’t there more tyrannosaurus Rex? I remember this as a kid. I was like, but if that’s true, then why aren’t there more Tyrannosaur rexes around?

Like how can they go if anyone can become one when they grow up? Like it seems like the obvious thing to want to be when you grow up. Why so many ducks? Why [00:55:00] so few tyrannosaurs, right? Like

Simone Collins: suspicious. No, and we have chickens. We have dinosaurs. Our kids are so accustomed to the idea of chickens being dinosaurs that this morning when they were playing with toys, I, I can send you the clip.

I even took a video of it. They were just cooking dinosaurs in their play kitchen and then feeding it to each other. That’s dinosaurs. Yeah. They’re cooking dinosaurs TV was shoving it in setting the oven to 500 broiling. It makes sense for dinosaur steak. You’d want it.

Malcolm Collins: Of course. No, I mean they think they eat dinosaurs.

‘cause we gave them the dinosaur nuggets, right?

Simone Collins: No, but we tell them that chickens are basically dinosaurs,

Malcolm Collins: which I mean they are.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So they eat dinosaurs. I explained to them this is what dinosaurs are now. No, no,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. So, I love you to death. I love you too for dinner tonight. I’m doing something with pesto, I guess.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which I’m excited about.

Simone Collins: Pito pesto. I mean, if you want, [00:56:00] I could saute some of the. Nice steak with it, but I just figure like it be, sir,

Malcolm Collins: actually, if I may,

Simone Collins: we actually do have some of those peppers left. Why don’t I just, well, we, pasta that I need to use too though,

Malcolm Collins: if I may. Yeah, if I may. What I’d really like to try with the pesto is the way that we’ve done the pesto historically.

Is fine, but it’s not that good compared to like what I get at a restaurant. Basically we cook up the pasta and then we just mix in past sauce and cook it a bit more.

Simone Collins: Saute it with pasta. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What I think would be really nice is to actually not like just we, no, we haven’t been saing it in paste.

We have been cooking it, putting it whiz pesto in, in a the, the container where we cooked it in. Right. And basically just letting it cook it down a bit. Whereas what I think would be really good is if you put the [00:57:00] pasta with some pesto in oil in a pan and you fried it with the past stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

That’s, I, I did that the last time we did it because I discovered that’s how restaurants do it. I just, we’ll do it again this time. I guess.

Malcolm Collins: That sounds fantastic. And if we wanna make it really good, could you make it with a, a fried egg on top?

Simone Collins: I used up all the eggs we have this morning.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, no problem. The chickens aren’t

Simone Collins: laying that much right now. They’re not happy. Those eggs

Malcolm Collins: you gave me this morning were fantastic, by the way. You did a great job cooking them.

Simone Collins: I’m glad you liked

Malcolm Collins: them.

Simone Collins: That makes me

Malcolm Collins: happy. Well, you really know your stomach, I think we’re seasoned very well, not over seasoned.

Not under seasoned. I, I, I, I let you know when I’m like, Hey, this could do a bit better. That was, that was on point, Simone.

Simone Collins: Thank you. That makes me glad. Yeah. Eggs and homemade banana nut bread with butter.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that was pretty good too. You really laid on the butter. So, you know, that’s how you know

Simone Collins: Octavia and Jordan as well.

I made the same thing for, and he is like, I don’t want that. That’s not gonna be good. And I’m like, you just need to try it. And he will discover that you [00:58:00] actually like it. And he’s like, whoa. And it was just gone, gone. At least he tried it. Like toasty will never try because toasty is me.

Malcolm Collins: He’s you, you won’t try things.

Simone Collins: I won’t, I won’t them. I’m not putting it in my mouth. Whatever it, whatever. It’s, it’s not happening. I’m going to eat. Five things and that’s it, but I can still make everything for you. And toasty is just like me ‘cause he’s like, mommy, I wanna make waffles for Octavian. And I’m like, no, we’re only gonna make food that you want to eat.

Like I’m not. ‘cause Octavia didn’t ask for waffles. He is. He’s not gonna eat waffles. It’s so frustrating. But I, the solution is you just get a family and then you make them the food and they eat the food and so you get to make the food and they eat it

Malcolm Collins: to, to make the food. But you used to do this by yourself.

You’d bake sweets and Yeah, then they’d be like,

Simone Collins: oh, what do I do with this? And I’d have to find someone who would take my baked goods or whatever. Now I have a whole family, it’s only gonna grow so I can satisfy my fantasies. That’s the [00:59:00] thing. It’s so much better to be married and to have kids, and have people who can.

I don’t know. I think one of the greatest sources of happiness is doing kind things for people and, and making them happy. And making their lives good. Because after a certain point, you can’t really do more nice things for yourself, you know, and we still do really nice things for ourselves, but like that can only go so far.

The diminishing marginal returns are real. So then you, you can only really get further along by doing kind things for other people, even people we know who are, I would say like professional pleasure, maxers, we’re not gonna name this one person. But like they’ve discovered that even like with no children and even without a spouse, that the only way that they can get additional marginal pleasure is by like.

Giving things away to other people. But in, in this particular case, one person I’m thinking about then just created like an ecosystem of scam artists around them because they discovered they could exploit that. [01:00:00] You know what I mean? Yeah. But like, yeah, I think even people who really are seriously taking hedonism, like, well just openly say, my life is all about being happy.

Discover that you have to have other people in your life to max it out after a certain level. So it just shows the folly of this approach.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway. I love you Simone. You, you are absolutely amazing.

So what did you and Octavian do today?

Simone Collins: Mostly he just got a adjusted to the concept of working from a treadmill desk, which he finds delightful. And I think my. Hypothesis preliminarily is confirmed that, that, especially kids who are the A DHD end the spectrum and especially young boys who just aren’t designed to sit down at a desk and do things, work really well with a treadmill desk, especially if, if they have a secondary screen that’s playing stuff that’s vaguely interesting to them.

So I [01:01:00] queued up a playlist on YouTube for a secondary screen that was just the history of helicopters and I found really cool old vintage films about the history of helicopters. And so that was playing in the background. And then he was going through his phonics lessons and his math lessons on his other Chromebook.

Orin’s Chromebook at the same time, and he was really just able more than ever before to just actually focus on the work and get it which was great. That’s really cool. You

Malcolm Collins: know, I, watching him work today, I was like, oh, this might really work, right? Like, there might be, I don’t

Simone Collins: know. We’ll, we’ll see. I’m, I’m probably wrong and terrible at all of this, but like, I know that for me, having a secondary screen playing something that I mostly ignore and walking keeps the demons at bay.

It feeds them, it feeds the chaos monkeys. And so you don’t have, they’re, they don’t, they leave you alone. And then you all, all that’s left is just you and your focus. It’s so nice.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. All [01:02:00] right.

Speaker 18: I, I actually make it for your mom. Don’t forget I make this for you. I really like it. Octavian. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You actually try to work my best to make you Oh, I’m, I’m, I really like it. I love the American flag and the British flag. What’s the, what’s the good team? This team, and why is it the best team?

‘cause. We love America because we love America, and it is so great that it keeps us safe enough that I really, really, really want to make this for mom because I think we would want to be happy. And I wonder when that remote, the remote for the Tex, for the Tex must be for a field.

Five. Yeah. And I actually made this [01:03:00] also out of nine knits. Magnet tiles. Yeah. Magnet. Yeah. Magnet tiles. I absolutely love it. It looks super awesome. And thank you. High five buddy. Target blocks right there, as you can see. Love you. Target blocks. Target blocks. Oh

Speaker 19: yeah. There they are. Yeah, there they’re, there they are.

Speaker 18: And here’s a dog.

Speaker 19: A dog. Wait where? Where’s

Speaker 18: the dog? Yeah. 15. Oh, the

Speaker 19: dog’s on the, yeah, there he is.

Speaker 18: Look at that. Yeah. And a little sniper right there. A

Speaker 19: sniper. Nice.

Speaker 18: Yeah. Nice.

Speaker 19: The road sign, I mean, a sniper

Speaker 18: right here. Right here? Yeah. There’s a death sign because you meet a death sign. A death

Speaker 19: sign. Yeah.

Where’s the death sign? There’s a restricted zone right here.

Speaker 18: Yeah, we’re stretching.

Speaker 19: Um, toasty can help me find it. I, I know there’s a dust sign somewhere. You heard

Speaker 18: aro. I mean right there. This is

Speaker 19: the medical tent. That’s good.

Speaker 18: Yeah. There some, we need

Speaker 19: that in case people get hurt. Right. Yeah. Where

Speaker 18: is the,

Speaker 19: I don’t know, maybe it’s hidden inside toasty, which is good.

We don’t want all the [01:04:00] hazardous materials to be available to everyone. Right, buddy?

Speaker 18: Yeah. You mean Yeah. Yeah. The dead sign. Dead sign is inside.

Speaker 19: Yeah. Well, they, you should hide the hazardous materials deep inside the building. Right? It’s more secure

Speaker 18: because they’ll not know and they will win because of sound.

Speaker 19: Alright.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe