Objective Functions vs. Optimization Loops

In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins explore how looksmaxxing (and its cousins: performative masculinity, status obesity, performative altruism, and more) functions as the modern equivalent of “gender affirming care” — a seductive but ultimately sterile trap.

Drawing on John B. Calhoun’s famous mouse utopia experiments (Universe 25), they explain the rise of “the beautiful ones”: rodents in abundance who obsessively groomed themselves, avoided conflict/mating/parenting, and became socially sterile while remaining physically pristine. Sound familiar?

From Clavicular’s extreme regimen (steroids, meth for hollow cheeks, bone smashing) to billionaire status-hoarding, kidney-donating effective altruists with no kids, and Gen Z pickup artists chasing views instead of partners — this conversation reveals how abundance creates behavioral sinks where people optimize for aesthetics, validation, or signaling instead of legacy and meaning.

They discuss why these traps feel productive (they’re often high-discipline and cerebral) yet deliver zero lasting happiness or genetic/cultural impact — and how to escape them by building a real objective function in life.

If you’ve ever felt pulled into optimization loops (looks, status, altruism, masculinity, etc.) that leave you hollow, this episode is your wake-up call. A free copy of The Pragmatist Guide to Life (ebook or audiobook) available — just DM us or join our paid subscribers on Substack/Patreon.

Based Camp - The New Trend in Male Gender Affirming Care

Episode Notes

The Gist

* Looksmaxxing is the new Gender Affirming Care

* We’ve joked about how women getting cosmetic procedures are getting gender affirming care

* But men are doing it a ton now, too, in the form of Looksmaxxing

* But gender affirming care is just one of many traps people are falling into

* And these traps all map to a particular behavioral pattern that may be consistent across any abundant mammal society—something that’s even observed in rodents (and we’ll talk about that!)

* It’s important that we talk about these traps for several reasons:

* They don’t yield lasting impact

* They don’t yield happiness or contentment

* So let’s talk about this and use looksmaxxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into these traps so that we can be more adept at evading them personally.

And let’s start with the rodents.

The Beautiful Ones

Between 1958-1962, a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments using rats and mice in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise “ideal” environment affects social behavior, mental health, and population stability in rodents.

His hope was to better understand the implications of overcrowding + abundance for human society, so he gave rats and mice abundant food, water, nesting material, and protection from predators and disease—so that lack of resources was not the cause of problems—and observed how increasing population density changed aggression, mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall psychological functioning over time.

These experiments were far from scientifically precise and had many issues, but they yielded some really interesting patterns that you could also argue we’re seeing in modern, abundant societies.

For example, Calhoun observed some consistent behavioral groupings that are analogous to behavioral groupings in modern, affluent human groups that we talk about on Based Camp all the time.

Some examples:

* Dominant aggressive males: Highly territorial “alpha” males that monopolized prime nesting areas and mates, frequently fighting and wounding other males and sometimes attacking pups.

* “Dropouts” or socially defeated males: Males driven out of territories by dominant males who congregated in central areas, often scarred, hyper‑submissive, and involved in seemingly purposeless mass brawls; in earlier rat experiments some turned to cannibalism.

* Hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males: Males that mounted other males and juveniles, showed disorganized mating attempts, and sometimes coupled sexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns.

* Neglectful or “failed” mothers: Females that abandoned litters, moved pups repeatedly, stopped defending nests, or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the nest.

* “Hermit” or withdrawn females: Adult females that retreated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating, or pup care—effectively dropping out of normal communal female roles in mouse societies.

​We spend a lot of time talking about the human societal analogs of these rodent groupings, but today, we’re focusing in on the beautiful ones.

In his experiments, “the beautiful ones” were a subgroup of male rodents (first observed in rats and later highlighted in his mouse “Universe 25” study) that withdrew from normal social life. They spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming, avoiding fighting, mating, and parenting, so they remained physically unscarred and well‑kept but were socially inert and did not reproduce.

Calhoun described these animals as healthy in body but “socially sterile,” seeing them as a late-stage symptom of social breakdown in an overpopulated yet materially abundant environment.

It’s Not Just Looks

People are falling into all sorts of obsessive loops, and I’ll highlight three just based on recent examples that have been shoved in front of me in the past 24 hours:

Status

From a friend (not sure if I can attribute):

“Something for pronatalists to shame: status obesity.

The idea is that the drive to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes. But the drive to eat can be highjacked and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive if we eat too much and become obese.

Status is similar where the drive in general is good and it evolved to be a strong drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive. But there are people (especially at the top) who are status obese. Their drive for status, rather than contributing to their survival and their children’s survival, is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money on plastic surgery instead of more kids for example. They are status obese, hurting their genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of their young.”

Virtue Signaling / Aimless Altruism

Largely childless, single young men are donating their organs in larger numbers:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/12/altruistic-organ-donation/

* According to the article, these non‑direct altruistic donors “tend to skew male” and that “a good portion are in their 20s,” with another large cohort in their 50s.

* It also notes that donors are predominantly white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children than average.

Dating

We addressed the new trend in Gen Z pickup artists per steph’s substack essay “gen z pickup artists are taking over my city” that many of the leading gen z pick up dating coaches are optimizing around getting views, not actually sleeping with women.

* “The big names in Gen Z pickup are operating under a brand new set of incentives. The tactics they promote don’t necessarily need to work, they just need to hook the guys watching their content at home. In fact, the more insane his pickup line, the more bewildered her reaction, the better his clip will likely perform.”

* “Cold approaches are treated less like meet-cutes and more like sales performance reviews. Who cares about a mutual spark? Did he open strong? Did he display high value? Did he maintain frame? Did he get the close?”

* Example of one of these = Erick Ronaldo

Looksmaxxing as a Case Study for How People Fall Into these Holes

Looksmaxxing is on the rise

Google Trends shows how it came out of nowhere in 2023, came to a lull again in 2024, and swung back up in 2025 (interesting as some more extreme practices and figures within the movement got more interest, too)

Clavicular

Clavicular has, for many, become the new public face of the looksmaxxing community.

He:

* Started testosterone injections at ~14–15 and engages in long‑term steroid use.

* Uses meth to suppress appetite, stay extremely lean, and maintain hollow cheeks/cheekbone prominence.

* Practices “bonesmashing” (hammer/fists to the jaw/face) to induce microfractures for a sharper jawline.

* Side note: does the transmaxxing community practice of “bonesmashing” (hammer/fists to the jaw/face) to induce microfractures for a sharper jawline actually work?

* Basically, no

* Bonesmashing is based on a misreading of Wolff’s law, which says bone adapts to controlled, repetitive mechanical loading (like normal weight‑bearing exercise), not to random blunt trauma or deliberate fractures. Surgeons point out that striking your face with fists or hammers creates uncontrolled injury, so any microfractures or healing are unpredictable and cannot reliably make the jaw sharper or more symmetrical. Reviews by doctors and oral–maxillofacial surgeons state there is no clinical evidence that bonesmashing produces cosmetic improvements in facial structure.

* Blunt force to the face primarily damages soft tissue (skin, fat, muscle, blood vessels) and nerves, causing swelling, bruising, and scar formation rather than clean, controlled bone remodeling. Even when small fractures occur, they tend to heal along the original anatomy or in a misaligned way, which can worsen asymmetry or create deformity instead of a sharper jawline. Experts emphasize that when bones truly need to be repositioned or reshaped for cosmetic or functional reasons, surgeons use precise, planned osteotomies and fixation—not repeated low‑level trauma—to get predictable results.

* Claims probable infertility from years of steroid abuse

* Told the NY Times he is not particularly interested in having sex with women; rather, simply knowing he could is validation enough

These last two points are clear signs this is not extreme male peacocking in an effort to secure partners but rather a pursuit of a certain aesthetic for its own sake.

Bruno Daniel’s Theories on Drivers Toward Looksmaxxing

1. Camera technology distorts how people perceive their own faces

One surprisingly concrete driver is smartphone camera distortion.

A 2018 research letter in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery by Boris Paskhover and colleagues modeled how perspective distortion affects facial proportions in close-range photography. Selfies taken at typical phone distance (~12 inches) can make the nose appear roughly 30% larger than it does in photos taken from portrait distance (~5 feet).

Other studies have found similar distortions in facial proportions when images are taken at close range.

Plastic surgeons increasingly report that patients bring selfies to consultations and request procedures based on how their face appears in those distorted images.

Sources:• Paskhover et al., JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery (2018) — “Nasal Distortion in Short-Distance Photographs”• Rutgers / Stanford modeling of selfie distortion

2. “Snapchat dysmorphia”: comparing oneself to filtered faces

Around the late 2010s surgeons began describing a phenomenon sometimes called “Snapchat dysmorphia.”

Patients increasingly request procedures designed to replicate filtered versions of their own faces produced by apps like Snapchat or Instagram. These filters subtly modify facial proportions, symmetry, skin texture, and eye size.

In other words, people are increasingly comparing their physical bodies to algorithmically modified versions of themselves.

Sources:• Ramphul & Mejias, Cureus (2018)• American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery surveys

3. The pandemic introduced “Zoom dysmorphia”

COVID produced another technological feedback loop.

Dermatologists and plastic surgeons began describing “Zoom dysmorphia,” where constant exposure to one’s own face on video calls increased dissatisfaction with appearance and led to more cosmetic consultations.

Millions of people suddenly spent hours each day looking at their own faces through front-facing cameras under unflattering lighting conditions.

Sources:• Rice et al., Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine (2021)• Makhoul et al., Aesthetic Surgery Journal (2021)

4. Cosmetic modification among men is rising

At the same time, male participation in cosmetic procedures has been rising steadily.

Data from plastic surgery associations show growth in procedures such as hair restoration, Botox-type injections, skin resurfacing treatments, and body contouring among men.

What is notable is not just the increase itself, but the shift in framing. Instead of being stigmatized as vanity, these interventions are often framed as optimization or self-improvement.

Sources:• American Society of Plastic Surgeons annual statistics• American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reports

5. Muscle dysmorphia and the pursuit of extreme physiques

On the body side of the phenomenon there is a related condition known as muscle dysmorphia, sometimes called “bigorexia.”

Researchers have found that exposure to idealized muscular bodies in media correlates with body dissatisfaction among men and increased risk of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. This dynamic is often associated with anabolic steroid use and extreme training regimens.

Sources:• Pope et al., American Journal of Psychiatry (1997)• Griffiths et al., Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2015)• Pope, Phillips & Olivardia — The Adonis Complex (2000)

6. Algorithmic platforms amplify extreme physiques

Finally there is the incentive structure of modern visual platforms.

Instagram, TikTok, and similar feeds reward images that generate engagement. In practice this often means highly stylized faces, exaggerated jawlines, and extreme muscular physiques.

Repeated exposure to these algorithmically selected images may gradually shift users’ perception of what a normal male body looks like.

A possible synthesis: “algorithmic masculinity”

Taken together, these dynamics suggest a possible cultural shift.

Camera technology distorts self-perception. Filters normalize altered faces. Algorithmic feeds amplify extreme physiques. The stigma around male cosmetic modification declines.

The result may be a feedback loop where some men increasingly attempt to reshape their bodies toward digitally optimized archetypes of masculinity.

One provocative framing is that some men may increasingly be attempting to “transition” not from male to female, but from ordinary male bodies into exaggerated algorithmically optimized forms of masculinity, both in looks and behavior. The looksmaxxing communities are perhaps the clearest early manifestation of this phenomenon.

Potential questions for an episode:

• Are we seeing the early stages of widespread male body dysmorphia?• How much of this is driven by platform design versus cultural change?• Why has stigma around male cosmetic modification eroded so quickly?• Are social media algorithms indirectly selecting for more extreme forms of masculinity?

Key sources:

Paskhover et al., JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery (2018)Ramphul & Mejias, Cureus (2018) — Snapchat dysmorphiaRice et al., Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine (2021) — Zoom dysmorphiaAmerican Society of Plastic Surgeons statisticsPope, Phillips & Olivardia — The Adonis Complex (2000)Griffiths et al., Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2015)

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be with you today because we are going to be talking about looks maxing as the new gender affirming care. We’ve, we’ve joked about how women are getting basically gender affirming care when they get cosmetic procedures, you know, to look like young women. And that, you know, in the end it’s all just the same as being trans.

It’s, it’s pointless feckless chasing after a certain identity.

Malcolm Collins: You’re going to tie it to the concept of the beautiful ones or the mice from the the mice Utopia it spend all their time grooming. And we’re, we’re, we’re doing this because I think it’s important when people can learn that society doesn’t work.

And the type of autistic people who watch our show, I think communities like looks maxing or any sort of a maxing can feel like solutions. But they are not

Simone Collins: well. Yeah. In other words, like gender affirming care, be it looks maxing or becoming trans or getting a ton of cosmetic procedures as a woman is just one of many traps that people are [00:01:00] falling into.

Malcolm Collins: But I think as bad as l maxing, and I want to be clear that we’re including this in the looks maxing category

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is performative masculinity, maxing.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Which

Malcolm Collins: some people also do, you

Simone Collins: know, they’re hundred percent and, and other masculine

Malcolm Collins: more good.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I’m, I’m gonna give other examples too.

But I, I also more importantly wanna point that these are all traps that map. To your earlier point, to a particular behavioral pattern that that appears to be consistent across any abundant mammal society, which is even in observed in rodents per calhoun’s, rat and mouse experiments that Malcolm just alluded to.

And we’re gonna talk about them in greater detail. And the reason why it’s super important to talk about these traps and falling into this particular type of trap is that this, this, this, this folly doesn’t yield any lasting impact and it doesn’t yield happiness and contentment. Like even if you’re nihilistic, even if all you want is just a little bit of pleasure in this short, pointless existence you think you have, it’s not even the [00:02:00] best approach.

And so really there’s just no reason why anyone should be falling for these things, and yet they are. Massively popular outcomes. They’re, they’re extremely common. So let’s talk about this. And we’re gonna use looks maxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into these traps so that all of us can be more adept at evading them personally or getting out of them if we’re in them.

And I think it’s, it’s pretty easy, even like, even if your life isn’t about these things, I think even you and I, Malcolm may sometimes find ourselves unknowingly get pulled into these, it’s like a magnet that that happens in times of abundance. But let’s start with the rodents, the beautiful ones, just like you were saying.

So for those who are out of the loop on this, between 1958 and 1962, a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments. He used rats and mice, and he did this in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise ideal environment affect social behavior, mental [00:03:00] health, and population stability, in this case, in rodents.

But his hope was to better understand the implications of overcrowding and abundance for human society. So he gave rats and mice. Endless food, like they were never hungry. Endless water nesting material and protection from predators of disease. So that a lack of resources was not the cause of their problems.

And then he observed how increasing population density changed aggression, mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall physiological functioning over time. Now we’ve talked about these rat experiments in the past. Commenters are always like, oh, these weren’t scientifically rigorously conducted.

And yeah, obviously, yeah, the experiments were far from scientifically precise and they’ve been issues. But this is this

Malcolm Collins: important thing about the RAD experiments. They may have been p hacked. They may not have been scientifically rigorous, but they were predictive and they were,

Simone Collins: yeah, no, they yielded super, super interesting patterns that you can also argue we’re seeing in modern abundant societies.

I think the reason why people like talking about them is a lot of the stuff that he [00:04:00] observed qualitatively. Are like super major things. For example, let, let me give you some examples of, of behavioral groupings that he saw that like we talk about all the time in humans on our podcast. Yes. To refresh your memory, so there were the, there were the dom.

So, and then keep in mind again, these, these are of these abundant rat or mouse. ‘cause he did both just like. Cities that he created essentially, and then he just watched what they did. So you know, these are, these are mice after, after they’ve reached this point where they’ve just reproduced a ton.

You get the dominant, aggressive males. These are highly territorial alpha males that monopolize prime nesting areas and mates. They frequently fight and wound other males and sometimes they attack pups. Then there are the dropouts or socially defeated males, you could call them the in insults.

They’re males driven out of territories by dominant males. They congregate in central areas, often scarred hyper submissive and involved in seemingly purposeless mass brawls. In [00:05:00] earlier rat experiments, some turned to cannibalism in the end, so dark. Then there are the hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males.

Males that mounted other males and juveniles showed disorganized mating attempts and sometimes coupled asexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns. Again, there’s a reason why these resonate. And then let’s get to the female rodents. There are the neglect, neglectful, or failed mothers females that abandoned litters, moved pups repeatedly stopped defending nests or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the nest.

So again, wow. And then there’s the hermit or withdrawn females who were adult females that were treated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating or pup care, effectively dropping out of normal, communal female roles in mouse societies. This is what I wanted to be that was my role in our rat society until I, I met you.[00:06:00]

So, go ahead. What were you gonna say? The

Malcolm Collins: way that you fix this, right. For first, first the, the core thing that he noted that I think was the most important predictive element that to me just means he, he was getting some form of useful data.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Was that as you put mammals in a utopian like environment, urbanization increases.

They, they began to congregate in denser and denser spaces, even when they had more spaces accessible to them. Hmm. And that is not a behavior that anyone would’ve predicted for humanity at the time that he was doing these experiments. And yet it is something that we’ve seen play out, but you also see these more fun things like what you’re talking about.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And so obviously we, we spent a lot of time talking about the human societal analogs of, of the rodent groups I just mentioned. But yeah, let’s go back to the beautiful ones because we’re specifically talking not about the trap of incel in modern society or the, the women who choose to not have children, or the hyperaggressive males [00:07:00] we’re gonna talk about, or the hypersexual males who start mounting other males.

We are gonna talk about the beautiful ones and the trap of the beautiful ones in, and trans maxing in other forms of this. And so what, what were the beautiful ones in the rat experiments? They were a subgroup of male rodents. First observe in rats, and then later in his mouse universe 25 study that withdrew from normal social life.

They spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming, avoiding fighting, mating and parroting so that they, they remained physically unscarred and well kept, but were socially inter, and they did not reproduce. And you’re gonna find this is uncanny. When we get into looks maxing.

So he, he described the animals as healthy and body, but socially sterile. Seeing them as a large stage symptom of social breakdown and an. Overpopulated yet materially abundant environment. And before we go into looks maxers, I wanna point out that this is a trap that is not just about looks. I mean, using looks maxers as like our way of sort of [00:08:00] exploring how people fall into these traps.

But I’ll just give you three examples of this form of societal trap that have just been brought to my attention in like the last 24 hours just to like, ‘cause it’s all over. It’s all over the place and a lot of people are falling to this trap. So from one of our friends she texted me the other morning and just was, I guess this occurred to her, she’s just like, something for prenatal is to shame status, obesity.

The idea. The drive to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes. But the drive to eat can be hijacked and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive if we eat too much and become obese. Status is similar, where the drive in general is good and it evolved to be a strong drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive.

But there are people, especially at the top who are status obese. Their drive for status rather than contributing to their survival and their children’s survival is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money on plastic surgery instead of more kids, for example, they’re status obese, hurting [00:09:00] their genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of they’re young.

And this reminds me of something that I heard among a very elite group that we, we used to mix in. There was this one guy who at this point was a billionaire. And in this, this, off the record Chatham House rules conversation. He was sort of talking about his objective function in life. And like for him it was always just like, well, just you become a, you know, get, make six figures.

And then it was, you know, become a millionaire and then become a multimillionaire. And then like, okay, well have a net worth of over 10 million, have a net worth of over 50 million, a hundred million a billion, 2 billion. Like, it just as, as he, he, he, he, I think he was going on 2 billion at that point or something like that.

Yeah. And then he was asked like, what, after that? And he’s like, well then I guess it’s gonna be 3 billion. It’s just like, like at what point, you know, like, to what end? Like

Malcolm Collins: when you do something with that, that’s fun.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, it just like, and he, he was talking in this conversation about how it was sort of, [00:10:00] he was aware of the fact that it was hollow.

I think he was aware of the fact that he’d become one of the beautiful ones, essentially like that. This is kind of this pointless. Nihilistic exercise, but he also wasn’t trying to get out of it. And, and I, I really do, I love this idea of framing to our kids something like status obesity of like, just because we’re not above shaming people for being fat to just, I was,

Malcolm Collins: I was growing up in a very fat shaming family.

I mean,

Simone Collins: my family. Right. But, but your, your family did not, did not shame status obesity and to, to shame someone for being status obese. The same way you’d shame someone for like wearing tacky clothing looking. I mean, we do that

Malcolm Collins: internally all the time. So our kids

Simone Collins: No, we do.

Malcolm Collins: We do.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I find it to be really disgusting behavior and I think that it is, it ruins people’s lives.

It just ruins your life. It

Simone Collins: does. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The people who have seen who strive for it, they’re never really happy. Yeah. It causes,

Simone Collins: so genuinely, I feel like there’s more correlation with [00:11:00] failure to thrive and status obesity than actual obesity.

Malcolm Collins: Such a great way to put it. And you, and you do see this in upper class circles all the time.

Oh my

Simone Collins: God. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And if you are like, or, or, or if you’re stuck in sort of a look next and you’re like, yeah, but I don’t have anything that matters to me, right? Mm-hmm. So I’m trying to construct something. Mm-hmm. And I’m like, if you want a good check out the book, the Pragmatist Guide to Life, we will give it to you for free.

Mm-hmm. It’s got an audio book. It’s on Amazon for like 99 cents if you want it. It is the book for, in an unbiased way, having somebody walk you through building something that you can philosophically, rigorously believe has purpose. Yeah. And we try, unlike who we are today as influencers, which is heavily biased, heavily, we have an ideological side.

Yeah. We did not back then. We were very, very, very ideologically unbiased back then, or at least attempted to be as hard as we could. Yeah. And, that book can be, it’s a, it’s a short book. Book. It’s a short read. Yeah, it is very [00:12:00] useful. It’s true read in terms of getting around that.

Basically what we do in it is we go over everything you could think has value. Like literally we go through every philosophically rigorous, even potentially thing that could have value. And we go through the arguments for it, and we go through the arguments against it. Mm-hmm. And so that makes it easy for you because you can be like, okay I can bite those bullets.

It’s basically like, can you bite these bullets against it? And if you can then it’s probably a, a, a good solution in terms of structuring your life around it. And now you have a purpose, something that you can structure your life around.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, continue. Sorry.

Simone Collins: It, it actually is kind of blowing my mind.

So the difference between o like physical, food-based obesity and status obesity is food-based. Obesity is just like a, it’s, it’s a, a low grade addiction, you know, something that you can treat with naltrexone or semaglutide.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Whereas status obesity is a beautiful one’s problem. And I think what makes the, the, the disease of the beautiful ones [00:13:00] so uniquely insidious is that it is a very cerebral, high performance device in that it eats the potential of people who would otherwise be very impactful in the world.

Does that make sense? Like these are, these are not people who are like following to, like, they’re not falling to low grade, like sex addiction, gambling addiction. Food addiction, right? They, they are, they’re rising above that. In fact, in many cases, they’re extremely disciplined. You know, these, these like looks maxers are going and we’re gonna get into that.

Like, they’re going through incredible pain and deprivation to, to, to achieve it. It’s very

Malcolm Collins: similar to your time being anorexic. I mean, I think you could have you know, you had vanity, which I think you hate the way you look so much, you’d never become a look matcher. But I, you know, I can see the appeal of something like that.

Even to you.

Simone Collins: Totally. No, but the feeling of control that it, that it could bring, because for me it was always about control. And that’s what it is for most people who have anorexia.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: But yeah, so I think what’s, what’s so [00:14:00] crazy about that is, yeah, I was just thinking about like the obese people. I know many of them have kids above replacement rate.

They’re working their butts off to give those kids successful lives. And if anything, they’re obese ‘cause they’re eating their feelings and they’re, they’re very stressed as they really fight for something they believe in, right? Like mm-hmm. They, they’re suffering from a vice. They have severe problems and they’re, they’re not in control of their impulses, but like they’re still doing more than the billionaire status maxor.

The beautiful one. So I think that just to, to highlight how insidious and sinful, like per my view this particular trap is. There’s also, and I think this is really interesting, I just thought a headline of this,

Malcolm Collins: well,

Simone Collins: actually another version of this trap not beyond just status maximizing is virtue signaling or aimless altruism.

I don’t know if you saw this headline but The Telegraph had this article that it ran, it, it was on the front page of Drudge this morning.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Titled The Extreme World of the 20 something Men Giving Their Organs to Strangers, [00:15:00] forget Giving Blood. These young people are offering strangers their body parts, such generosity could revolutionize a transplant system.

And what, yeah, so you, you’ve actually seen the, there’s, you see the occasional post about this in the effective altruists slash like. Altruistic rationalist space where like, oh, so and so gave a kidney. Like, it’s so great that they gave a kidney. And these are people who already like, are trying to be effective altruists, except they lose the plot and they just wanna like, do all the good things.

So they like donate blood and they donate plasma and they start running out of things to do, and then they just start giving away their, like, their kidney. Then they just keep going to complete strangers. And in this article they, they talk about this trend, particularly in the uk. Most of these non-direct altruistic donors are male.

Kind of like the beautiful ones. A good portion are in their twenties. Then there’s another large cohort in their fifties. Weirdly it also notes the donors are [00:16:00] predominantly white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children. These are, in other words, I think beautiful ones.

These are people who are stuck in an altruism trap. They’re optimizing to do good without really understanding what it is. And there are people who don’t have children, who don’t have partners who are not really making any lasting impact. ‘cause what do you do when you give someone a kidney? Maybe you’re extending that person’s life a little bit.

You’re saving them from dialysis for a little bit, but like, what is that person gonna do? And this is also a stranger. Like, you have no control over who you’re giving your kidney to in these cases. So like, I don’t know, you could be giving your kidney to like, like a retired person who’s not gonna have any impact anyway, aside from maybe, maybe babysitting a grandkid a little bit and helping that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Like I, I really don’t like it. The, the myop, the myopia of this. Like, you could instead. Go work for a startup that will build synthetic kidneys. Like we’re at that point in [00:17:00] human history.

Malcolm Collins: I love the way you see things the way I do. Why don’t you just make synthetic kidneys?

Simone Collins: We’re so freaking close that so that, and then that, that’s why I’m like, this is a sign of really, like, you’ve gone off the rails.

Like this is performative altruism. It has no point. It has no reason. It’s crazy. And then there’s also dating, and we, we haven’t run the episode yet, but we did an episode on new trends in Gen Z dating. And one of the big trends that was emerging among Gen Z pickup artists specifically, is that there’s this subset of Gen Z pickup artists that are really just trying to, like, they’re using their ray bands.

They’re recording like sessions of like coal approaches and they’re just trying to get views. Like the point isn’t too. Get women to sleep with them, per se. It’s to get, and that’s, I was to get attention, to get reactions

Malcolm Collins: of we had recorded one of our weekend episodes on this, which are for paid [00:18:00] subscribers.

If you guys wanna help us out on Patreon or Substack

Simone Collins: there you are. If you’re listening to this. Oh, sorry. No, no, sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: This isn’t, this is for the main channel. Oh, awesome. Oh yeah, by the way. Yeah. We have, we run two weekend episodes every single week. We now have this big backlog. I think we have over 50 additional episodes that you have not seen.

If you wanna get your fix, if you’ve already gone through all the backlog. There’s more friend.

Malcolm Collins: If you’ve already gone through all the backlog, you have a problem. Okay. You have like an emotional problem?

Simone Collins: No, no. You’re cool. I’m

Malcolm Collins: trying to put this show has been on forever. Okay. Simon. Yeah. At this point.

But if you, if, if you have, I appreciate it. I appreciate

Simone Collins: it. Yeah. But also, like, if you wanna support us and help us out, like we really would appreciate it. It means a lot to us and it does make a difference for us.

Malcolm Collins: So, and I’m trying to, I’ve been trying to create playlists so it’s easier to do like the backlog if you ever wanna do it, of like the stuff that’s gonna be evergreen, right.

For a particular topic of interest, like, s psychology and anthropology science [00:19:00] government, and go governance theory, stuff like that. So anyway.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But anyway, so there’s also now just like trends in dating in which people are not even trying to get a partner. They’re just, you know, they’re just cold approaching for like.

To, to prove to themselves something or to, to, you know, build a career as a higher status like dude slash dating coach. That’s another example of this trap. But let’s go to, looks maxing and go into it in greater detail. Then what we’re gonna do is, is, is we’re gonna look at clavicular and sort of what he does to give you a picture of what looks maxing entails.

‘cause it’s just very entertaining. And then we’re gonna look at the various factors that are driving people into this particular beautiful one’s trap, because I think that they’re very they can give you an idea of how someone can very subtly fall into a beautiful one’s trap like status or like dating or like altruism without knowing it.

Because it can be a confluence of subtle things. And I’m gonna go through the confluence of [00:20:00] subtle, gateway drugs essentially. That Bruno Daniel friend of the podcast and of reality fa reality fabricator sent to us as he looked into what was driving people into looks maxing or what might be driving people into looks

Malcolm Collins: maxing.

We have one of our, our, our big fans into Look Mac or was into Look Mack thing. It’s funny like when we’re like, okay, when do we give our kids like human growth hormones and stuff like that, we like reach out to this fan. I’m like, I’m sure he’s done the research, right?

Simone Collins: He is so cool. No, he’s like one of my favorite people in the entire world.

I, I’m like a fan of him. I’m a fan of so many of our fans. Like, I’m just like weirdly obsessive about them and I don’t think they realize,

Malcolm Collins: well, because you don’t bother with real friends. ‘cause real friends are a scam.

Simone Collins: Well, they’re, but they’re also like. Not as well selected people who are your IRL friends are people who you just happen to run into.

The people that we come across content-wise and who come across us content-wise, like we’re all really well matched for each other because we share interests and like very obscure interests. So anyway looks, maxing is definitely on the rise. [00:21:00] It, if you look at Google Trends, and this is all linked in the show notes which you can find on Substack or Patreon.

It shows how it came out of nowhere in 2023 which is probably just when they started putting a, a name to this because, for example, the person we know who first clue us into looks like maxing that Malcolm just referred to he’s been doing this since he was a teen, you know, like using different hormones and injections and, and interventions, et cetera, like going above and beyond to make sure that, you know, he grows enough and like, looks better than he otherwise could.

So, like, this is it, it’s not like it only just emerged in 2023, but that’s when people really started talking about it online. Then it interestingly came to a lull in 2024 and then swung back up in 2025, but also in a much more extreme way. Because that is when you start to see in Google trends a spike of things like what is the word?

Where you. Hammer your face.

Malcolm Collins: Face

Simone Collins: hammer. Yeah. Whatever. [00:22:00] It’s, it’s somewhere deeper in my notes. I’ll, I’ll mention it in a little bit. And also people like Clavicular. With Clavicular being now the new 2026 face of Looks maxing, who also is just like extremely, extremely out there.

Malcolm Collins: I think, I think that clavicular is, I haven’t seen that much of his content, but he seems like so much more emotionally healthy than like Andrew Tate as like a, a young male influencer,

Simone Collins: I guess.

And No, let’s talk about what he does. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Go, go into on,

Simone Collins: I mean, he, I mean, yeah, I don’t know. Okay. There, there’s a lot, there’s a lot with him. So he, he started testosterone injections at like age 14 or 15 which I don’t. Like blame him for doing. He, he, his parents were against this, by the way. His parents were not supportive of this.

He also engages and has engaged in very long-term steroid use. He, this is where things start to go off the rails. Malcolm, he uses meth to suppress [00:23:00] appetite and stay extremely lean and maintain hollow cheeks. And that’s based, it’s, it’s very based, I think like, there’s this one clip of him on social media where he’s like chatting with a girl at a club and she’s like, like, I don’t know, do you do any drugs or something?

And he is like, or like alcohol, like, do you drink a, he’s like, well, I don’t really drink alcohol. I like mostly just do meth. And she’s just kind of like, oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: I mostly just do meth. I mostly just do meth.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He’s you know, and also like people have come to question, you know, his, his political philosophy.

‘cause he is like, well obviously I would vote for, who’s the California Gavin Newsom over JD Vance. ‘cause he totally MOGs Vance. And I think like at one point, like he said this to like Andrew Tate at some stupid male influencer gathering in Miami, and Tate was like, child, that is not the way that you vote.

Malcolm Collins: My, I love, I love that this guy is just like living on an aesthetic.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, like I get it and I, I like the commitment to the bit, [00:24:00] but also he’s one of the beautiful ones. Like to what end is this commitment? So yes. To, to our earlier point, because I was, I was this alluded, but yeah, he practices bone, bone smashing which is when you use a hammer or fist to hit your face, to induce micro fractures to produce a sharper jawline.

Now, just to double click on this, because enough people have been talking about bone smashing where I was like, this can’t. This can’t work. Right. But also, like, I was like, well, hold on a second because this is, this is how nose jobs work. And by the way, there’s some YouTubers who’ve, who’ve done really great histories of nose jobs.

People have been using, doing nose jobs. Of course you’ve

Malcolm Collins: watched this. I love it. What on our channel, wherever you find Simone has like a really deep knowledge. It’s whenever we’re talking about fashion history.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: like, oh,

Malcolm Collins: you’re talking about.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but like people have been, have been doing those jobs for a long time, and nose jobs have always involved breaking the bones in the nose and, and strategically reforming [00:25:00] them.

So I’m also like, well, of course, but I know that facial cosmetic procedures have for a long time involved breaking bones in the face. So maybe there’s something to this, but just in case you’re picking up a hammer right now and getting ready to go.

Malcolm Collins: Most looks maxers I know are super, like, educated on this stuff.

No, I don’t think they do something that didn’t work.

Simone Collins: No, because, no, this, it doesn’t work. Okay. Just let’s get cut to the chase. It doesn’t, I don’t

Malcolm Collins: believe you.

Simone Collins: Okay. Now, oh, it, no, it doesn’t. And, and I’ll explain why. And you’re, you’re gonna understand really quickly why. Okay. So bone smashing is based on a misreading of wolf’s law, which says bone adapts to controlled repetitive mechanical loading, like normal weight bearing exercise, not to random blunt trauma or deliberate fractures.

So surgeons point out that striking your face with fists or hammers creates uncontrolled injury. So any microfractures are healing are unpredictable. They can’t reliably [00:26:00] make the jaw sharper or more symmetrical. And reviews by doctors and oral maxi maxillofacial surgeons state that there’s no clinical evidence that bone smashing produces cosmetic improvements in facial structure.

So like going down to the logistics of what’s happening here, blunt force to the face primarily damages soft tissue like skin and fat and muscle and blood vessels and nerves. This causes swelling, it causes bruising, scar formation. It doesn’t cause the clean controlled bone remodeling that they think they’re doing.

So even when small fractures occur, they tend to heal along the original anatomy or in a misaligned way, which can worsen asymmetry or create deformity instead of a sheer jawline. Experts emphasize that when bones truly need to be repositioned or reshaped for cosmetic or functional reasons, and this is comes to my my nose, job awareness surgeons use very precise planned osteo osteotomies.

Osteo [00:27:00] osteotomies and fixation. Meaning that they’re like really going in there and very strategically breaking the bone and repositioning it. They’re not just like hitting it with a hammer. So not repeated low level trauma to get predictable results. So the problem is

Malcolm Collins: fake news, getting the hammer, gimme the hammer,

Simone Collins: fake you.

Actually, I think, I think that even clavicular has stopped bone smashing. He just, like, it got him a lot of attention, but he doesn’t do it anymore, I think ‘cause it doesn’t work. So I don’t

Malcolm Collins: know. He looked pretty dumpy in his before photos.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I think a lot of that had to do more. So keep in mind he, he engages an extreme calorie restriction.

A lot of that was just weight loss, allowing his bone structure to come through.

The, the primary difference that I saw in his before and after had to do with weight loss. It wasn’t, it was the meth Malcolm. It’s not the hammer. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: It’s

Simone Collins: not,

Malcolm Collins: not

Simone Collins: the hammer. They’re not condemning [00:28:00] all of it. I mean, he could have just used semaglutide, but he had to be more metal.

So I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t have insurance coverage and, and the, the, the meth is less expensive. Who knows? But keep in mind, but going back to the beautiful things, the beautiful, the beautiful ones theme of this all is that he, he also is well aware again, being quite based and he really owns everything that he does.

He’s aware of the fact that he’s probably infertile due to the, the chronic steroid use, you know, if not all the other things. No, that’s not, he also. Told the New York Times, and I’m linking to the article in the show notes that he’s not particularly interested in having sex with women. Just knowing that he can is, is enough validation for him.

So, like this is, this is a person who at least as of now, is not looking very likely to successfully reproduce. This is a very, very good example of how looks maxing is the beautiful ones, the ones who just excessively groom and look untouched and good, [00:29:00] but are, are not, they’re not, they’re, they’re an end to their genetic line to, to all of, of mouse and rat history.

They are genetic ends and he is a genetic end to ev you know, the millions of years of evolution. And I

Malcolm Collins: basically did what he did, but. Was a

Simone Collins: different outcome at that age. No, no. You, you did not obtain hormones and steroids

Malcolm Collins: and drugs. No, I, what I mean is pointlessly optimize my goal at his age. ‘Cause he’s young, right?

He like, yeah,

Simone Collins: he’s like 20.

Malcolm Collins: He’s very young, but just have sex with as many attractive women as possible.

Simone Collins: But he’s not having sex.

Malcolm Collins: I understand.

Oh,

Simone Collins: but you meant like pointless non procreative sex. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I understand. But the point I am making is non proative sex is the same as as no sex.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s all self validation.

It was all validation.

Malcolm Collins: If, if, if I,

Simone Collins: let’s be clear that I actually wanna clarify that having sex is not the same as masturbation non-operative sex. Because honestly, [00:30:00] masturbation is way more effective if all you want is the physical pleasure sex itself. Like if you’re doing like a net, you’re right. Sex

Malcolm Collins: is

Simone Collins: more calculation.

There’s no, but also there’s way more like the, the, the, the pain. Coins that I get from like, like I’m, I’m thinking just like as a male that I have to spend to get like the pleasure coin of like ejaculation or, or sorry, like a climax. I have to, that’s like 28 pain coins for one pleasure coin.

Malcolm Collins: I understand, but it’s, it is about knowing that you can, it’s

Simone Collins: about, yeah, and that’s what I’m saying.

It’s about the self validation. It’s not about physical pleasure.

Malcolm Collins: And, and I think the young people, especially if you’re born with an enormous, like gold drive like I was, right? Mm-hmm. You can, you can very easily if, if you’re smart, get caught in one of these loops, especially if you’re doing really well at it.

Mm-hmm. You’re like, oh, I’m good at this. Okay, I’m gonna lean in. I’m gonna do more, I’m gonna do more. I’m gonna do more.

Simone Collins: You make the next million, make the next billion. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And you [00:31:00] just get obsessed with it.

Simone Collins: And there’s a, there’s a, a rule that path dependency I think plays in this too, of like after a while you’re not good at anything else.

You only know one thing. In this world it’s actually kind of scary. Second

Malcolm Collins: guessing. I actually would push back hard here. I think that some of these use obsessions like mine can be incredibly useful when you get older. Oh, I

Simone Collins: mean, it certainly taught you a lot about sales. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They taught me about sales.

It taught me about sales and how to talk to people and how to sell myself to people and how to approach strangers and how to confidence, how to own a room, how to build presence, how to like I got more out of that than I did outta college, I’ll tell you that. Right. Like true. So I, I don’t, I I, I, so

Simone Collins: you’re just saying everyone should just go on a sexual rum, Springer and college.

Well, I mean, you couldn’t have done the sexual Rum springer to its full completion without going to college, so I guess

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. I actually by like my second year of college, I had basically gotten over it. Oh,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. [00:32:00]

Malcolm Collins: I, I mean, I still, you know, from, from that point on, you know, I, I, I still slept with a number of people, but it wasn’t my core goal anymore.

I was finding a

Simone Collins: wife. Yeah. Once you hit college, it was fighting a wife. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, first year of college it wasn’t fighting a wife. I was still sleeping around a lot.

Simone Collins: Oh, really?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It was second year of college where I was like, okay, I gotta take this seriously now.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. That’s when you got matchmaking obsessed?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Or, or maybe, maybe like halfway through the first year.

Simone Collins: Okay. Oh, fair enough. Then,

Malcolm Collins: I, well also at that point, I had slept with everyone that, you know, that I saw that I thought was attractive in, in my social circle. So I, I didn’t have a reason to keep trying. I was like, whatever. Where, where, when I was younger I wasn’t limited by that because I would hook up with people I met through online dating back when that worked.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind this was a very different era of online dating. You could actually very easily online date in that era, [00:33:00] which is sad that like today you can’t do that

Simone Collins: for real times have changed. Sad. But yeah. So Cliff is, he is obviously a very extreme example, but I think there are lots of men who are falling into this trap.

And also, you know, women who are falling into the gender affirming trap. And just people in general who are becoming obsessed with their looks online or other things. So, let’s go through Bruno Daniel’s theories on what drives people to looks maxing, which I think also explain what drive women to obsession with their appearance to sort of explain the subtle ways in which I think also people fall into like algorithm maxing or status maxing.

And this is what Bruno Daniel sent to us. And thanks Bruno. You are awesome. And yeah, the best. So one, he pointed out that camera tech, sorry, camera technology distorts how people perceive their own faces. He cited a 2018 research letter in J-A-A-M-A Facial Plastic [00:34:00] Surgery by Boris. Past cover and colleagues who modeled how prospective distortion affects facial proportions in close range photography.

So selfies taken at typical phone d distance, like 12 inches can make the nose appear roughly 30% larger than it does in photos taken from like a five foot portrait difference. So when people are taking selfies, they actually think that their nose is bigger and then they start getting obsessed over it.

So there’s this like subtle subconscious thing that makes you start feeling a little bit, like less comfortable about it. Yeah. I’m gonna include additional studies that Bruno sources on these fronts in the show notes, just so people know. And then there’s also number two, Snapchat dysphoria, comparing oneself to filtered faces.

He wrote around the late 2010 surgeons began describing a phenomenon sometimes called Snapchat dysphoria. Patients increasingly request procedures designed to replicate filtered versions of their own faces produced by apps like Snapchat or Instagram. At least,

Malcolm Collins: you know you’re gonna like what you’re going for.

[00:35:00] That would

Simone Collins: only I know. I know. It’s, it’s great. Yeah. Plastic surgeons used to use special proprietary software to show you,

Malcolm Collins: this is what gets me about like a nose job when somebody’s like, what would you want a nose job? And I’m like, what? I don’t know what a pretty nose looks like. Like I, I don’t,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Like how would I look corrected? And yeah. Plastic surgeons used to like make versions that would show you, but now people are literally seeing the after version of them in plastic surgery every time they turn on a filter every time. Which is,

Malcolm Collins: I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why you’d want a different nose.

Like there’s, there’s gotta be something seriously wrong with your nose.

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I have you ever turned on like, an attractive filter? I turned one on by mistake and was like, oh God,

Malcolm Collins: this is what I

Simone Collins: could look like. This is what I could look like if I was pretty. Like, it’s, it’s actually quite I found it quite disturbing because I, I feel really uncomfortable about the idea of altering the way I look like.

I even like dying my hair ever since I was a kid. I, I felt it was some version of stolen valor to [00:36:00] like, I, I, I, I don’t, I cannot pretend to be a blonde that would be criminal. Like, I, I have this feeling of like, some inherited feeling of sanctuary laws. You know, like, well, you, you’re not allowed to look beautiful.

You’re not like, that’s. Deeply wrong in some way. Well, I mean, that

Malcolm Collins: makes sense.

Simone Collins: It does. If you’re not

Malcolm Collins: beautiful, don’t lie.

Simone Collins: But genuinely, because then people will try to reproduce with you thinking that you’re something that you’re not. Anyway someone actually suggested that as an episode to us at some point, like the ethics of cosmetic procedures and whether people should have to disclose that, et cetera.

Or like having people do background checks on partners to see if they, that kind of thing. I think they also suggested

Malcolm Collins: I’m, I’m, I’m very against cosmetic procedures, by the way. I, I see them as largely pointless unless

Simone Collins: no, they’re, we’ve talked about ones that you feel like you’d wanna get someday if a certain issue arises that you think is uniquely, and both of us, I had braces, you’ve had, you know, dental stuff done.

We both had, you [00:37:00] know, as kids stuff done to teeth. Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I take that back. Yeah. I’m okay with this. So

Simone Collins: like, yeah, for sure. If our kids have their teeth growing crooked, we’re gonna help them get,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, get

Simone Collins: braces,

Malcolm Collins: get, you know.

Simone Collins: You, I think your mom told you as a kid, like, oh, if you see a kid with crooked teeth, their parents don’t love them.

Malcolm Collins: That means their parents. She did. She did tell me that. She goes, that’s the easiest way to tell if a parents love their children.

Simone Collins: It’s so mean because that’s not true. True. It’s

Malcolm Collins: kind of true though.

Simone Collins: No, because the thing is in the United States for the, like half of our audience that doesn’t live there, tooth care dental coverage is entirely independent in the United States from health insurance coverage.

So you can have a parent who has health insurance through their employer and they don’t have dental coverage. And also most dental coverage is really, really bad. At best, it will cover two cleanings a year. For example, all the in intense gum surgery I had to do it covered like. A couple hundred dollars of [00:38:00] that.

And like the rest I’m paying for out of my like, personal fund savings for like buying myself treats, it was like $2,800. And I’d saved up years for that to like go on a, you know, like do something nice for myself and like that’s gone to keep my teeth from falling out. ‘cause that’s dental coverage here.

So no things like orthodontia for kids and stuff that is paid for out of pocket. Like it was a big deal for my parents to get braces from me as a kid. So then, no, that’s not true. It’s not a sign of being loved. It’s a sign of having money

Malcolm Collins: defending people from my mom’s horrible classism.

Simone Collins: Listen, I love her classism, but also I’m gonna point it out as, as a classism anyway.

Yes. So basically PE you should at some point look at. I just think filters are really funny. Like there’s some filters that don’t make you look more attractive. They just like change your gender so you can see what you look like if you’re old or obese or male. And there’s this one amazing clip of like a mom and a daughter.

And it begins with [00:39:00] them as males, like with the gender clip on. And it’s like, or no, sorry. It begins with both of them. No, sorry. It begins with the daughter just having it on her face. She’s just holding the phone mostly aimed at her. So his mom’s, her mom’s on the side, but her mom hasn’t been subject to the filter ‘cause it’s only half her face if the AI doesn’t recognize her as a human and like the daughter is this like hot dude.

And then like, she like scrolls the phone over a little bit. So like her mom’s full face is in it and her mom’s like all excited to be turned into a hot dude. Like it turns her into this dumpy ugly man because she was already ugly to start.

It’s just so metal. I love it so much. And she, so you judge

Malcolm Collins: the daughter as being

Simone Collins: hot.

‘cause the daughter was hot. The daughter was hot to start. ‘cause at the end I think the daughter shows turns off the filter and you just see that like, she was attractive as a woman. So it turned her into an attractive man. And it just, like, it kept the, the attractiveness equivalent, like the AI is really good.

Speaker 4: Oh my God. Christina, you are one hot looking man. Oh my God. [00:40:00] Are you freaking kidding me right now? That’s awesome. What? Get that. Are you freaking kidding me right now? Get that off. That’s disgusting.

Simone Collins: So anyway, you might wanna play with filters someday, but filters really mess with people and they can really hurt you like that. That older woman, the mother in that particular scenario was probably very used to the way she looked as a woman and she’d like built some kind of reality bending field about, oh, I’m really pretty anyway.

And then she saw herself as a man. In a whole new light and realize just how ugly she was all over again. Like filters really do affect negatively the way you look at yourself. So treat come as no surprise that people who are subjecting themselves to Snapchat filters are getting this dysphoria and that looks maxers.

And probably trans people and women alike are looking at these filters and feeling bad about themselves and feeling like they need to do something. Here’s the thing though, and here’s how it gets to the beautiful ones. This is a trap. Like you’re getting [00:41:00] obsessive about it. But to your point, Malcolm, it doesn’t matter if you’re ugly, you’re ugly.

Like that’s how you look. That’s the world. I’m sorry. Like it sucks, but like, that’s not what matters. In the larger scheme of things. Find your objective function and figure out what you actually care about if you don’t know. The other, the only other fun fact I will give you about filters, and this might have changed, but I don’t think it has changed that much, is there is one person in the world who.

Can turn on like a Snapchat or Instagram filter and their face doesn’t change. Do you know who that is?

Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna say no. Who?

Simone Collins: Kim Kardashian.

Malcolm Collins: Really? Her

Simone Collins: face. She’s basically like the, the touchstone of the filters.

Malcolm Collins: Has she actually done this to, to show people? ‘cause I don’t think she’s a very attractive person.

Simone Collins: I think it’s No. Yeah. But the, the filters make you look more like in that direction. She, she is the filter. Which is just fascinating. So, yeah. Anyway,

Malcolm Collins: interesting. I, I find her very unattractive. So I

Simone Collins: guess filters

Malcolm Collins: aren’t, well,

Simone Collins: yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I [00:42:00] now, I, now I really wanna see what you look like. I have to figure out, I have Instagram on my phone.

I have to figure out how I’m so excited for this. Okay. Anyway. So then let’s go to number three. The, the way that people fall into this trap without realizing it the pandemic introducing Zoom dysmorphia according to, to Bruno. COVID produced another technological feedback loop. Dermatologists and plastic surgeons began describing zoom dysphoria, or sorry, dysmorphia, where constant exposure to one’s own face on video calls increased dissatisfaction with appearance and led to more cosmetic consultations.

Millions of people suddenly spent hours each day looking at their own faces through front facing cameras, under unflattering lighting conditions than he is too more. Academic sources on this, like it’s, it, you know, is, it has been measured and attested by academics. Number four, cosmetic modification among men is rising at the same time, male participation in cosmetic procedures has been rising steadily.

Data from plastic surgery [00:43:00] associations, stroke growth and procedures such as hair restoration, Botox style injections, skin resurfacing treatments, and body contouring among men. What is notable is not just the increase itself, but the shift in framing instead of being stigmatized as vanity, these interventions are framed as optimization and self-improvement.

What he didn’t mention here, and we talked about this in another episode, and we even looked at the Google trends of it, is leg lengthening surgery, which can cost upwards of $200,000 and be incredible.

Don’t

Malcolm Collins: even,

Simone Collins: I just imagine this.

Speaker 8: His profile says he is six one, so I can wear lifts. Even with lifts. You’re not that tall,

Speaker 7: Jerome never questioned my commitment again.

Simone Collins: It’s, that’s basically what you’re doing though. Like it’s, it’s, it is, it is incredibly punishing and more men than ever are doing it.

Which is, it goes to show again, beautiful ones. This is not gonna. This is not gonna make you have a lasting impact on, [00:44:00] you know, the unbroken chain of human existence. But whatever. Number five, muscle dysmorphia and the pursuit of extreme physiques on the body side of the phenomenon, there is the related condition known as muscle dysmorphia, sometimes called big auryxia.

Researchers have found that exposure to idealized muscular bodies and media correlates with body dissatisfaction among men and increased risk of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. This dynamic is often associated with anabolic steroid use and extreme training regimes or regimens. What Bruno didn’t point out is that in, in some areas, in fact I think this is actually happening a lot in Brazil.

Men are injecting in some cases saline, in some cases, other materials.

Malcolm Collins: Oh

Simone Collins: God,

Malcolm Collins: I find this so gross. Fake muscles.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: No, it’s disgusting. Don’t even, the pictures are so horrifying.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Don’t look it up. Nightmare fuel. Nightmare fuel.

Malcolm Collins: Mm. Like worse than trans people.

Simone Collins: In fact though, actually this is something I left out about stuff that clavicular [00:45:00] does.

But he is very interested in having the right, like sort of shoulder proportions. Kind of like, you know how I’m using the scam to look a little tougher with my little gam? I

Malcolm Collins: think it looks good. No, you look like, what I like about these, these sort of medieval outfits is they look so spacey. Like you genuinely look like you could be on

Simone Collins: the space.

No, but strong, prominent shoulders are masculine and are attractive. You know, what clavicular has done with his shoulders to make them look more,

Malcolm Collins: pad them

Simone Collins: with.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. Breast stuff.

Simone Collins: Cutlets. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Cutlets.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Whoa.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Should

Malcolm Collins: I do that?

Simone Collins: Put, put chicken cutlets on your, on your shoulders. I don’t have falsies.

Guess we, where do you buy them? CVS I’ve never owned any you’ve never owned any? I, yeah. I guess you didn’t wanna portray yourself as something stolen baller, Malcolm. I’m like very morally against this. I’ve never even, like, I, I didn’t even, I, I, I remember my, my cousin got a training bra a training bra.

Like you don’t need a [00:46:00] freaking when you need, when you put it on. A

Malcolm Collins: training bra is like a fake bra. Right.

Simone Collins: That makes, yeah. It’s like, it’s, it’s just like a little, you know, it’s like a little bra for girls who have absolutely nothing in there, but, you know, she got it anyway. ‘cause I don’t know, maybe it made her feel girly or her parents are trying to prepare her for the horror that is female puberty.

But I was like, well, I would never. Get a bra. I mean, even e even when you met me, you had to convince me to actually get measured for my bra because I was like, well, I can only possibly be an acup because for sure I I don’t have anything.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and you were wrong

Simone Collins: and I was wrong. Yeah, but like, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, for most of my life actually, I only wear sports bras.

I basically bound my chest. But yeah, so I, I definitely couldn’t have cutlets. But yeah, so like he, even clavicular is aware of like this, but instead of thank God, instead of injecting silicone into his shoulders, he or, or saline has just it’s just put cutlets there. [00:47:00] But I, I actually think that’s a somewhat ingenious solution.

Again, I, I have a lot of respect for him. But I, I don’t respect the end game of it all. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No, no meth, no steroids that are gonna sterilize you. You know, you gotta get out there, you gotta make maybes. That’s the point of it. All right.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But the point that Bruno was making was that like, men are falling into this trap without knowing it because of this, this confluence of camera technology, the way it’s distorting, distorting our self perception, the way that filters are normalizing, altered faces.

Mm-hmm. The way that, that, that algorithmic feeds are amplifying extreme physiques and sort of normalizing stuff that really isn’t normal and really isn’t healthy. And then this, this decline in even stigma against male cosmetic procedures that are really. Insane. And what I wanna point out is that exactly the same things are happening with things like status, with things like altruism like in the rationalist communities.

Like, you know, Scott Alexander will offhandedly for example, in a post about this or that [00:48:00] thing. Talk about so and so who very valiantly donated a kidney in a way, like makes it clear that that made that person good. You know? And like if Scott Alexander thinks someone’s good, then they are good because he is like.

The smartest of all, you know, like God said so the smartest

Malcolm Collins: of all the nerds.

Simone Collins: No, he’s like, he’s like big nerd. He’s the ea rationalist nerd. God, you know, wait, did

Malcolm Collins: this happen? Are these people donating their organs because they read Scott Alexander, I, wouldn,

Simone Collins: surpris Malcolm. I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised the article.

I would be surprised. It, it, interestingly, this actually surprised me that the Telegraph article didn’t talk about effective altruism or rationalism because it’s very obvious to me that that’s

Malcolm Collins: what this is coming out of.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like obvi, I mean, like EA came out of Oxford. It, this is a UK of origin meme.

But the Telegraph, I mean, what can you expect? Like they’re not plugged in. They really don’t know. They can’t find their feet. But I, I, [00:49:00] I wanna stress that, that like, you’ll get into the algorithm and you’ll, you’ll start seeing these things and then you’ll just tat it like if you don’t have a strong objective function, you will just assume that. Well, okay, then that’s what we’re optimizing for. I guess. Just like I grew up, my my thing was, well, like envir, like save the planet environmentalism. I had no idea what that meant, but my entire,

Malcolm Collins: you’re so right. So much of this is just, you get stuck in an optimization loop.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, well, of course that’s what the right people

Malcolm Collins: do. All the good people do that good person be seen as a good person, right? Mm-hmm. Without any sort of philosophical or moral framework behind it.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And people just spin out on that, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But or if you’re

Simone Collins: sping and you’re spinning out

Malcolm Collins: on this not person, it’s like, have sex with as many people as possible.

Mm-hmm. Or you know, be super

Simone Collins: masculine or

Malcolm Collins: be super masculine or for us right now, have as many kids as possible. Right. You know, like,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But hey, I, I, I am, I’m pretty confident in that one. I’ve seen our kids, they’re pretty neat.

Simone Collins: We have a very clear objective function, and [00:50:00] having kids is a very clear part of that.

And also we really, really love them. I think this, yeah, the, the difference, I love a

Malcolm Collins: couple.

Simone Collins: You don’t love them all. Here’s the difference between the, the beautiful one’s trap and a genuine objective function because they can look very similar, right? Like, both are very goal oriented, achievement oriented things, and I think it’s very easy to assume that one is the other, right?

Like these people donating their kidneys, you just like, well, of course they must really know what they’re doing, you know, be very mission driven if they’re donating their kidneys, right? These are people who live their values. I think the, the key difference is you are never going to get enough to feel satisfied or content.

In one bucket, whereas in the other, you are like, I think you and I, as much as we’re often stressed and really worried about being able to do right by our objective functions are [00:51:00] heartbreakingly content, to the extent that like our greatest fear is that like we’re just gonna like suddenly drop down and die because this is just so too wonderful.

Or that it’s not Well, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: no, our, our lives are stupidly good. Yeah. I am, I am shocked by the I mean, I was just thinking today. I, but, but I always just reflect on it’s the life that you built for me, right? Like, you’ve given me this amazing existence, right?

Simone Collins: You given me this amazing, I didn’t know this was even an option.

This, this wasn’t one of my multiple choice. Options on my, on my board. Again, I was gonna be the beautiful one. They were treated and, and chose to not, to not have offspring. I was that mouse. So that wasn’t, you know, I was the what, what did you call it? The hermit mice. That was me. So I didn’t know this was an option in the mouse.

Utopia. This is really cool.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but, but we’re creating a new option, right? Like, that’s what the prenatal list are. They’re like a community coming out there with flags. We’re tunneling, like, we’re getting out. Everyone come. You want, you wanna be part of the, like, high tech sciencey, like, agentic faction [00:52:00] that thinks for themselves, come join us and we’ll help defend each other, right?

Simone Collins: Like, yeah, we’re the mice that Calhoun notices in a corner building some kind of structure to get out of the cage. We’re getting off planet guys. We’re not

Malcolm Collins: off planet. We’re gonna wait. Why are these mice building a rocket? Like

Simone Collins: something is going terribly wrong? Yes. So that, that’s us. But yeah, I think the problem, the problem with the beautiful ones trapped is you, it will never be enough.

You will never have enough status. You will never be beautiful enough. You will never be masculine enough. You will never be altruistic enough. You will never have, have, have done anything. Whereas the weird thing is objective functions. We don’t call them life goals. We call them objective functions because they are things that you are only able to try to maximize.

There is no, in the end achieving a goal. There is no point at which you’re like, check, I’m done. I can die now. You know, like, it’s just like up until you know, you realize that you can no longer [00:53:00] really pursue your objective function. You’re gonna push forever. You’re just trying to maximize whatever it is.

And so you’d think, well, oh, then you’re also never gonna be satisfied. But weirdly, the emergent properly of knowing that your life is now productively dedicated to the pursuit of this objective function, you get this deep sense of contentment and no more fomo. Yeah, no more cognitive dissonance. Like I, I, I remember the way I used to feel in moments.

When I was pursuing a beautiful one’s life where I would just feel this empty existential dread, like this mixture of cold depression and of cognitive dissonance, like not, not being sure if I was missing out on things. They’re like, oh, I should probably be doing this. [00:54:00] I’m not. I’m just not sure. What if I’m doing this wrong?

What if I, and, and I don’t ever feel that now. Like sometimes I’m wondering tactically like, well, would it be better for me to spend my time on this or that to like maximize our desired results? But I’m never questioning, I’m never like feeling this deep unsettled worry of like, am I missing out on this?

And I instead feel incredibly happy, incredibly tired, but in that, like I just spent the day at Disneyland kind of way, except that that doesn’t work anymore. That doesn’t really make me happy. People were return from Disneyland happy anymore. Find your feeling quite stressful these days. I guess it as if I were a child who spent the day playing at a creek.

Okay. That kind of feeling,

Malcolm Collins: which our kids do every day.

Simone Collins: That deep innocent contentment. Octavian iss very unhappy that he got into the twenties again. And that there’s no creek playing anymore right now. He’s Oh, really? Devastated. Yeah. I feel really bad ‘cause I get it. I get it. We’ll get them out there soon enough.

The spring is coming. Not yet though.

Malcolm Collins: Gotta

Simone Collins: plant more

Malcolm Collins: [00:55:00] trees.

Simone Collins: The daffodils are coming up though. Yeah, all over the property. If you want a, a free copy of the Ragus Guide to Life DM us, we will give one to you. Typically we only give free copies away readily to our paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack.

They get it for free, but, you know, if you really care about this and you really wanna not be a beautiful one and actually have meaning in life, and I, I care enough about people to offer this. If you want it, audiobook or ebook, we can send it to you. And I think the key thing is that you should know deeply what you wanna maximize in this world and not just be maximizing a thing because it’s the algorithmic loop into which you’ve fallen, be that the environmentalism or, you know, proselytizing your religion.

I don’t know. Just be really careful ‘cause it’s a fine line, but it’s a very deep and dangerous trap. Anything you wanna add as a finishing point?

Malcolm Collins: No, I love you. Check out the book. It, it like [00:56:00] genuinely, especially if you’re a young person. I think it, I would’ve helped me a lot had I realized earlier that I should not be optimizing my life around something as silly as how many people I was sleeping with.

But you know, when you’re, when you’re young you don’t have often a lot of things that can like, give you the a, a broader perspective.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You’re just working off societal defaults and both of our things that we were optimizing for in our beautiful ones stage before we woke up essentially was like very classic.

Like, you get a lot of sex Me environmentalism, save the planet. Thank God. Yeah. Iron

Malcolm Collins: Birds. Anyway, love you. The, the, yeah. We are the male and female. We are not like advanced or something, right?

Simone Collins: Like, no, no. We, we, 100%. Like we, we were not above this. And I think there are still moments where I can feel the pull of that magnet where like, if, if again, and I, I, on another members, like paid, paid subscribers only podcast, we were recently talking about this, like, I really hate feeds.

I tend to [00:57:00] fall more into this. The, I feel the, the quicksand when I am scrolling on feeds of like, oh, like I’m not pretty enough. I’m not altruistic enough. I’m not a good parent enough. Like, you know, I’m not performatively good parent enough, et cetera. Like, why do I not have this like elaborate toothbrush set up for the children?

Malcolm Collins: You are a spectacular mother, by the way, for people who do not know this, it’s like every morning I go downstairs, she’s cooking individualized meals for all of the kids. And she says, I, I offered to handle all this for her in the morning because I used to handle the mornings. But no, she insists. ‘cause she’s like, it’s when I’m doing laundry or cleaning up after dinner or something.

And so she does like, individualize, all the kids are running around playing with their own thing, attacking each other. And she’ll have on like classic music or like, like really fun old movie music and stuff. And it’s just like, scene. Okay, it’s a scene.

Simone Collins: It’s a scene versus [00:58:00] like a rager scene after we go to bed at night and our kids every night, it’s

Malcolm Collins: like they have a rage downstairs.

Simone Collins: Genuinely, like stuff’s breaking. People are like. Vomiting in corners, jumping off things. Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Simone Collins: dinner’s nice.

Malcolm Collins: Grilled

Simone Collins: cheese tie with extra red curry paste and then a grilled cheese sandwich.

Malcolm Collins: No, not both. I’m either having one or the other. If you think I need to have the chicken curry tonight, then

Simone Collins: no.

Even tomorrow night I think.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Girl

Simone Collins: cheese breakfast tomorrow.

Malcolm Collins: Girl cheese. You make great girl cheeses. So

Simone Collins: girl cheese, girl cheese,

Malcolm Collins: two girl cheese, white bread, girl

Simone Collins: cheese.

Malcolm Collins: Don’t you try to sneak, get something healthy on me. Okay. I’m gonna be,

Simone Collins: I know. Just for, for reference, everyone, like this morning our kids had, you know, peanut butter and honey sandwiches with homemade sourdough like sliced bread, whatever, what is the word, loaf bread.

Anyway sandwich [00:59:00] bread and but Malcolm, God forbid that he have homemade fresh because literally there’s a, a loaf that just finished downstairs. No, no, no, no. For him, we’re getting out The Wonder Bread equivalent. Highly processed full of all the But

Malcolm Collins: cheaper than Wonder Bread.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Cheaper than Wonder Blood.

Yeah. Well, yeah.

I

Malcolm Collins: always get the store version.

Simone Collins: Come on guys. You gotta get, you know, if the, if the riboflavin isn’t in it, why are you gonna eat it? And of course, you chose not just a American cheese, which is a substance inspired by the concept of cheese but the craft brand individually wrapped in plastic American cheese slices.

You know, the ones that I get, the Land O’Lakes one that we get at BJ’s are just stacked and you just pull off the slices. No, but you got them individually wrapped in plastic just to maximize those microplastics. You really go, wanna shove them in [01:00:00] micro plastic? I’ll just, I’ll just keep the plastic on and melt it between the breads.

You can really get that. I haven’t the

Malcolm Collins: macro plastic.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I don’t think

Malcolm Collins: you can have American cheese without it being individually wrapped. Right, because

Simone Collins: it’s, it’s two July. You can, you can, if you get the Land O’Lakes ones that, that we can buy at BJ’s, they are just stacked.

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Simone Collins: they’re, sometimes they’re a little hard to pull off. But no, you chose the craft individually wrapped in plastic One.

Malcolm Collins: The

Simone Collins: environment. I mean, when I, when I dane to buy what you ask and get that cheese, I always buy at least the minimally microplastic one. But no, God forbid you are like, why would I buy that one when I could buy Kraft? Kraft is how, you know it’s good.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s the one brand. Okay.

Simone Collins: You’re such a nineties kid.

You’re like, I want a Capri Sun in a metallic pouch. I want the [01:01:00] Go-Gurt plastic sleeve. I want the American cheese that’s on legit

Malcolm Collins: Simone

Simone Collins: with, I mean, I really, you would prefer to have, I can’t believe it’s not butter spread instead of, you know, real butter. Right. Did you, did you, did your family do margarine back when that was the thing?

Malcolm Collins: I believe I remember yeah, I can’t believe it’s not butter or something

Simone Collins: because when we were kids it was believed that butter would kill you.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you’ve gotta remember my family was a little different because my mom didn’t cook, so Oh, yeah.

Simone Collins: You have no idea

Malcolm Collins: what you were, I usually ate like pop tarts and stuff like that.

I I very rarely ate cooked meal. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Pop-Tarts. Yeah. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Poptarts, this is what happens if you build an entire body off of like Pop-Tarts and like, honey Nut Cheerios and other

Simone Collins: oh dude. Same. No, man, I, I did not touch fruits or vegetables until I was like 6, 16, 15 or 16 years old.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Our kids are getting a, a, a much better nutri god nutritional environment than we No, I [01:02:00] sneak them bad food because Simone gets mad at me over that.

She got, she doesn’t like them to have fruit rollups and stuff, and I’m like, no, no, no, no. That’s child.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you’re always slipping them like highly processed Dros it, it’s horrible. I saw you bought more gummies. You monster. You eat most of them though, so

Malcolm Collins: shut up. I don’t eat most of them. Gummies are delicious.

Adults need an excuse to have gummies in the house. Let me tell you what you guys, if you haven’t had gummies since you were a kid, gummies are great. I’m just talking about gummy bears. I’m talking about like Motts gummies.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like the, the, the kind that parents are sold because it contains real fruit juice.

But guess what? One of the, the smartest and coolest listeners to this podcast, who I shall not name for her privacy, she makes gummies for her kids at home. Using fruit juice. Are you

Malcolm Collins: being shamed by other moms for not being, [01:03:00] for not being tried enough?

Simone Collins: Yes. I’ll never, she has more kids. She, she has, she, I think she mills her own grain.

Now, not only does she make better cakes than I do, but although it broke recently, she has the airbrush, she had an airbrush for her cakes, so she can really fancy. Well, I I’m glad that you have aspirational women to you know, try to I will never be enough. Do more stuff for the family. No, she, she inspires me.

There, there are a couple moms who I’m just like, I will never, I, like I told you about one mom who sent their holidays that they celebrate. We, we have to all have a whole conversation offline about these. I’m just like, yeah. The people who listen to this podcast are next level. This is not one like Yeah, this, this

Malcolm Collins: podcast has cool listeners.

I’ll, I’ll tell you that. Yeah. Well, I, oh, and we, we, we definitely need to as in addition for like one of the weekend episodes,

Simone Collins: alright,

Malcolm Collins: love you Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. Malcolm.

Thank you for being gorgeous.

Speaker 2: So I heard banging. Why did I hear [01:04:00] banging? Because I got Ed. Stop. This is Indy’s bed. Indy is supposed to sleep here. Why are you jumping kind? I kind of was my head on the door. Why? ‘cause I’m so fun Do attack you. He run to attack me. Do not attack you.

No. Do not attack me. Line. Why do you wanna blind the viewers? I

Speaker: won’t get [01:05:00] away.

Speaker 3: Dam it. Dam it, dam it. I’ll escape.

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