Why Some Men Opt Out of Breadwinning

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into the phenomenon of “Welfare Kings” and “Welfare Polygamists” – men who are strategically opting out of traditional breadwinner roles and instead living off government benefits, single-mother assistance programs, and sometimes multiple women.

From Muslim communities using informal polygamy to maximize state aid, to black American men openly embracing welfare as “street-level reparations,” to high-IQ rationalist couples quietly staying unmarried to claim benefits – we explore how men are exploiting the same welfare loopholes that have long been associated with women, often more effectively.

As this was a Simone-outlined episode, the notes are below; you’ll find the episode transcript after them. :)

Episode Notes

The Gist

* In a workforce that favors women, should men become housewives and welfare kings?

* I’m going to explore two examples or models of men who are opting out of traditional breadwinning roles and instead relying on income from women and the state

* Often ideologically out of spite toward women and out of disdain for the sate

* This is worth discussing for two reasons:

* Discussion about various groups exploiting state services is trending and we should spend more time about various different angles in which people do so

* We have a lot of MGTOW-style men in our audience who would find this interesting

* It’s just genuinely interesting how people inventively exploit these systems

* Don’t hate the player; hate the game

Welfare Polygamists

In various stories related to poor treatment of women by muslim communities, I’ve heard of women ending up in polygamous marriages to Islamic men who take multiple wives per Islamic law, aka “nikah”, but only legally marry one wife and who use their wives’ legal single mother status to get and often live off state assistance.

I realized this is kind of a clever hack, because if you present as a technically impoverished woman, you can get A LOT.

* Free healthcare

* Food assistance (both SNAP and WIC)

* Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8): For very low‑income families; the voucher typically covers the difference between about 30% of household income and an approved rent, subject to local income limits and long waitlists.

* Even short-term cash:

* TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families): Time‑limited cash assistance with strict income/resource limits (for example, some states cap countable resources around $1,000), work requirements, and low monthly benefit levels.

* Some states and charities offer small, targeted cash or voucher help (utilities, emergency rent, transportation), but these are typically short‑term and much smaller than ongoing food or housing aid

If I wanted to be evil and exploitative, I could divorce Malcolm, leave him with all our liquid assets, waive alimony, and claim these benefits. It would be fraud, but would we get caught? If we weren’t public figures, probably not.

I looked into this more, and apparently it’s a particularly big issue in the UK, France, and United States. For each wife, these men are, in many cases, getting housing, food, AND child support.

Estimates in one UK report suggested tens of thousands of polygamous-style unions.

Examples that go way back:

* In the UK, for instance, a 2011 investigation by The Telegraph detailed how some Muslim men in areas like Blackburn and Dewsbury maintain multiple wives in separate homes, with each additional wife registering as a single parent to access benefits. A similar report from The Spectator described a taxi driver with five wives from different countries, all claiming state support, estimating up to 20,000 such polygamous unions in the country based on social worker accounts

* In France, a high-profile 2010 case involved a Muslim butcher with four companions charged with welfare fraud after a traffic stop escalated into polygamy allegations, sparking national debate on immigration and benefits. F

* A 2015 PolitiFact check debunked a viral video claiming Michigan Muslims can list multiple wives for benefits, but acknowledged that informal polygamy could enable single-mother claims indirectly.

This isn’t unique to Muslims—similar fraud occurs in other groups, like Orthodox Jewish families in New York or polygamist sects in Utah.

* I bet there are a bunch of polycules that do this.

* There are also plenty of normal couples who don’t marry legally so they can do this.

Welfare Kings

From a based camper: “My YouTube algorithm queued up the linked video for me. It’s a conversation between influencer and coach David Cooley and a fellow called Jay Prince, self-proclaimed welfare kang. Cooley gives Prince the air to explain what this title means. Prince goes on to describe to Cooley that he had impregnated a single or multiple who weren’t interested in raising the resulting children so that they would gladly forfeit custody to him, and how he sustains himself and his three daughters with government handouts. The tale itself is amazing but what do you both think of it, with appropriate modifications, as a strategy for boosting fertility?”

To add to the Based Camper’s summary:

* He openly identifies as a “welfare king,” saying he deliberately exploits female-led social systems and government benefits so he can work minimally, live cheaply, and have many children whose expenses taxpayers cover

* He deliberately has kids with women he know will lose custody disputes

* David Cooley condemns him for having the mentality of a black woman

* Because his action is morally equivalent to embracing failure and then rationalizing it as strategy or justice

* Because he is putting the burden of work on other people

* Because he is avoiding responsibility

* Because his ancestors sacrificed so descendants could be free and pursue opportunity, not so their descendants could avoid work and live off handout

* Because if everyone did this, we wouldn’t have a functional economy

* Cooley stresses that government welfare is meant as a safety net that often incentivizes bad choices, and scaling this man’s logic to half the population would produce widespread laziness, stagnation, and deeper dependence on the state.

* HOWEVER, we shouldn’t have such a system in the first place

* The more people exploit this publicly, the better (then it will be shut down sooner)

* He rejects the idea of building a career in “another man’s empire,” claims America fundamentally hates and disrespects Black men, and insists education and hard work do not translate into real power for them.

* He frames this lifestyle as a form of “respirations” or street-level reparations for centuries of Black slave labor, arguing Black men deserve a multi-decade “break” instead of building wealth in a system he believes is rigged against them

* “I’m going to get my respirations the ghetto way” - points for being unapologetic.

* He praises women’s entry into the workforce for “lightening” standards and creating easy care jobs (like his CNA/med tech role), which he sees as low-effort, female-typed work that benefits men like him.

Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: . [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I’ve got something for the gentleman in the audience. You know what, you know all these, all these. People, these women screwing your lives over the state, screwing your life over employers, passing you over for their, you know, diversity and, and whatnot.

Hires, you know, choosing women over you, even though you, you show more merit. Well, some men are fighting back. It’s, it’s more than just MIG towel, I would say. It’s, it’s mgtow 2.0. They are, they are basically doing what women do, like welfare queens or exploitable divorcee women but better and more competently because, I don’t know, it’s a, it leave a man to do it and he’ll do it better.

But what, what I’m talking about today is, is. Two models of, of men who are opting out of traditional breadwinning roles and, and instead relying on income from women and the state.

That, that is what we’re talking, we’re talking about welfare kings. How is this done? Can I do this? We’re gonna go into it.

Yeah, actually I, I mean, yeah, we, we, we’ll, I, I’m actually curious. Do

Malcolm Collins: I need to knock

Simone Collins: up other women? Is that what your takeaways are here? Well, it’s. There, there are tactics, there are approaches, there are strategies you have to do this the right way. Honestly, you know, we’ve

Malcolm Collins: done a number of Latin American episodes right now.

I’d say that this is the Latin American male strategy.

Simone Collins: No, no, actually no. The, the, the two cases I’m gonna give actually are Muslim and black. Oh, the Muslim one is really, we got, we gotta mix it up here. No, hold on.

Malcolm Collins: I wanna talk about the Latin American thing ‘cause it is actually something you see very frequently.

Okay. Something you see very frequently within the Latin America culture is a female breadwinner and a male sort of lazy stay at home.

Simone Collins: That’s true actually. Yeah. I didn’t even think to talk about that. Yeah, that’s more like, the, the trad wise model inverted, that is, that is fair. And I would say that could be its own episode.

So maybe comment below if you want us to explore that. But no, we’re, we’re actually I, can I just

Malcolm Collins: quickly [00:02:00] explain why that happens, by the way, if people, okay, go ahead. I, but it’s funny ‘cause everybody thinks of like, oh, fiery Latina or something like that. Not, you know, Latina ends up supporting everyone.

I think it’s because they get so used to supporting their wider family systems before the husband comes into the picture that they just see it as another person that they’re supporting.

Simone Collins: Oh. The, this whole just mother hen gone wild. Yeah. It’s like, of course I have to take care of you. This exasperated like Oh fine.

The exasperated

Malcolm Collins: Latina should be the actual Latina. The, the beleaguered. Oh

Simone Collins: fine. Another person

Malcolm Collins: supporting

Simone Collins: save you too. I mean, I, I feel like it’s just also broadly female trope in a, among sort of responsible parentified women. I guess I, I, I don’t know how else to put it. But I mean, I’ve, I’ve seen this among other people.

Even, even people that we, we know closely who are not.

Malcolm Collins: Is this, is this why, why Latin dads don’t run away? Why you, why you don’t have a bunch of Latin kids being married in single, in single family households? ‘cause they [00:03:00] know, they just stay around then go into the

Simone Collins: yard, you know, when you just let them do their thing.

But no, we are, we’re gonna talk about welfare polygamists and welfare kings. Or as, as. Some might put it well for Kings. But I, I think we should really be looking at this in the broader context of some major themes that I see arising. I mean, obviously like one big thing theme is Mikal, like, you know, sort of men who are like so fed up about the system being rigged against them and women being rigged against them.

But I think that what’s, what’s interesting now is we sort of, there are stages of grief, right? And I think there are stages of mgtow you know, there’s like the, there’s, there’s the, there’s the, the red pill stage of like, oh, well, alright, I’m gonna game it and I’m gonna try and like, that’s kind of like, you know, still participating in the rat race.

Right. You know? And, and it is also like, I feel like, there’s something very. Capitalistic about like original pickup artistry and red pillow mindset. You know, it’s like, well, I’m gonna work and I’m gonna be rich and I’m gonna spin plates and I’m gonna like, you know, do all this. [00:04:00] Right. And then, then came a mgtow, which is like, no, I’m gonna fully opt out.

And I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m gonna sort of go like full monk mode. I’m gonna improve myself. I’m gonna like, go back to nature, maybe even like homestead or like live abroad in Thailand and just like, totally opt out of the system, right? So it came from like, girl boss lean in to like fully like homestead, opt out.

And now we have like, you could all almost, I would call this dark mig towel where it’s like. No, I’m just going to, like, the system has effed me over. Now I’m gonna f the system. Because one, I can, and I’m smart enough and I know how to and two, i, I deserve it. That’s kind of like the mindset of like, I hate this system, so of course I’m going to exploit it because almost like.

Almost morally or ethically it, they see it as justified like they’re owed to something by this system that is so terrible. So like of course they’re going to [00:05:00] exploit it. Of course they’re gonna not treat you with respect. And I think that’s really interesting. But also I think this is really important to discuss in the context of.

At the time of this recording a lot of people are discussing the Somali daycare fraud, but also like Somali Autism services fraud, Somali transportation fraud. So they’re just like how there was essentially an ethnic cartel that just how they’re like the Patel Motels and their Vietnamese nail salons and like there, there ethnic.

Immigrant groups in the United States and in other countries that tend to build specializations around certain economic models. It just so happens that Somalis in Michigan built economic models exploiting state benefit systems. And I, I think that that’s really interesting and a point that ASME Gold has alluded to in his coverage of this and that, that we were gonna allude to in an episode we were gonna do on these.

But I’m like, oh, so many people have been covering this and all, I think I just don’t wanna do it anymore. I’m bored of it. Is it, this isn’t a Somali thing. This, this is just, I mean, they found the Somali thing, the Somalis are being highlighted now, but like, this is not, I mean, [00:06:00] there, there are, there are groups of all types that are exploiting these systems.

And I think we should talk about some other groups and some other ways in which these systems are exploited. And I actually, on a sort of third level of this, I think it’s genuinely interesting how people have inventively e exploited welfare systems. I, I, I think. I think it’s just, I’m, in many ways I’m like, it’s clever.

Like you gotta, you gotta respect it. Like, wow. I mean, I, I, I love, I love clever ways to save money. Malcolm knows all too painfully the like, how, how much I gloat every single time we do a family shopping thing and like all the coupons that I’ve like scraped together show up on our checkout screen. And I’m like dancing and he’s like trying to hide like as people stare at me in the store.

So I, I love savings, like, so I’m like, wow, this is, how do I get on this? I can get to point, how does it work? Okay. How does it work? Just don’t hate the player. Hate the game, by the way. So let’s, let’s start with [00:07:00] welfare polygamists. And I, I, I can’t believe I didn’t start to look into this earlier because in, in all these different stories related to basically like.

Egregious treatment of women by, by Muslim communities. I heard about women ending up in these polygamous marriages to Islamic men who, who take multiple lives per Islamic law, AKA Nika, but only legally marry one wife and then use their various wives, legal, single mother status to get. A lot of state assistance.

So they might have up to four wives and then, you know, three of them are getting state assistance. And I, this is actually pretty clever hack because if you are, and we know this through prenatal list.org, we did this whole research that we, we hired experts in, in like welfare services and, and government assistance services specifically for families to build guides to each state in the United States [00:08:00] on like what programs can parents possibly have access to.

And it was a frustrating exercise ‘cause I thought maybe states had more resources for all families, but really it’s more like only if you are at or near the poverty line. Do you get services, but if you are at or near the poverty line in the United States, especially as a woman and especially as a parent, you actually get a lot like your life is super easy.

I mean, relatively speaking, I think like if you make, well, we have

Malcolm Collins: friends with that and they live almost the way we live in terms of quality of life.

Simone Collins: Oh, like materially. They have more luxuries than we do. Yeah. They have more

Malcolm Collins: luxuries than we do, but they have,

Simone Collins: they have free healthcare, they have food assistance.

Both Snap, which is sort of like a, a debit card and wic, which allows you to buy like specific foods on, on sort of a monthly basis. Then they also get housing choice vouchers and they can even get short term cash through a various programs. And this is huge. Hey, like when, when, when our kids were exposed to rabies we, [00:09:00] we did tons of like calling around how do we get a rabies vaccine to them.

Like we don’t think they were a bit like, we don’t think they were seriously exposed, but we’re like, you know, I mean, in a preponderance of caution, it would’ve been really nice to get them rabies vaccines. But we don’t have insurance offers really good coverage and we’re kind of in between jobs right now.

So we were like, okay, how do we like afford this without a $10,000 emergency room fee? And we ultimately just didn’t take our kids into the emergency room because that was the only way we, we could have gotten them rabies vaccines. Meanwhile if we were on one of these assistance programs, we, we could have just balled into an emergency room like, no problem.

And like the, we, we know people who, who were on these programs who were like, I don’t know, why don’t you just go to the hospital? We’re like. We would never financially recover from that. And so the, the crazy thing is like if you’re just, just an inch above, like you’re making a hundred dollars too much, suddenly your life is like actual poverty.

Whereas in your, if you’re in actual poverty, you’re actually living more like a middle class American which is [00:10:00] crazy. So yeah, there’s this really weird thing going on in the United States. And, and so that’s why this is extra clever. I could see you know, a family being like, oh, wait a second.

Like this is it. It makes a lot of financial sense for us to do this. But also Malcolm, if I wanted to be evil and exploitative, I could divorce you. I could leave you in our divorce settlement with all the liquid assets in waive alimony, and then claim these benefits. I mean, and arguably our kids would be better off that, that would be fraud, Malcolm.

That would be welfare fraud.

And but would we get caught if we were not public figures? We probably wouldn’t get caught. And that’s the thing,

Malcolm Collins: if we’re really divorced. We’re just living together. How is that welfare fraud?

Okay, so I decided to look this up because it just doesn’t matter why I decided to look this up. So anyway, , the way it actually works is it depends on the state, [00:11:00] but marital status matters a lot less than whether you’re actually living together. So if the wife was living in a separate house, apparently what matters the most is like how you prepare your meals.

If. They are preparing meals for the entire family at the same time, then you would still count as married, , for the, and if they’re going out and buying food for everyone at the same time, then you would still count as married. Okay.

Simone Collins: Because it could be argued that you, you, you would be up like, this would only happen if I had primary custody in a divorce and if it was found that like, oh, but they’re living together and he’s, you know, like participating in all this now.

But keep in mind though, and like we’re public figures, we have documentary teams here, you. We, we can’t really hide things like that. But here’s the thing, and people discovered this with the, you know, Somali daycare fraud. No one is checking this. You know, states don’t have like big auditing teams to, to make sure like, oh, you know, is this couple actually not living together?

[00:12:00] And we know for a fact, actually I did. I think this

Malcolm Collins: should be part of the prenatal list community’s way of life. It’s just so unethical, but like also, I get it. How is it unethical? The state

Simone Collins: should be paying for rearing kids. I mean, they should be because they’re benefiting from the tax revenue. And that’s our whole thing is like now the state, like the, the state has put the entire financial burden for creating new productive taxpayers on the parents.

Of course parents aren’t having kids like, ‘cause the parents aren’t financially benefiting from the kids. They’re financially I’ll tell you, thinking

Malcolm Collins: about divorcing you right now, I’m so done with you, Simone. You’re, and this isn’t even fraud, you just really annoyed me lately. So I’m, we need to have a conversation about that.

Simone Collins: But we know, we actually know a lot of people who are married but not legally because they do and, and like, and they, I’m talking like highly educated. Rationalist, ea, Silicon Valley people like these are people who, you know, are like, I’m not talking like trailer trash. I’m not talking like weird you know, [00:13:00] Islamic polygamous family, although many of them are polyamorous, but like even just monogamous people are not getting married.

So the wives can claim these welfare benefits because it is just otherwise, like, honestly, it’s just not worth it. To have a job or make money or anything like that. When, when, you know, like right now healthcare is so expensive in the United States and food is getting more expensive and like we’re feeling the squeeze too.

And, and it’s, it’s all very, and like this is very exasperating and I think this is why antisemitism, as we’ve discussed, is on the rise as people. I mean, we’re not, as you pointed out, we’re not giving meaningful aid in the larger scheme of things. Like, you know, the nu like out of a hundred tax dollars, we pay the, the number of, of like cents that we’re sending to Israel.

Like nothing. But still people resent seeing this. Any, any aid going to. To, to migrants or to foreign countries because they’re sitting here and they’re like, I can’t afford anything. And then all these people around ‘em are getting all these fin, it’s just not fair. But anyway so I just wanna be clear that this is something that’s been happening for a really [00:14:00] long time, and especially with Muslim polygamist, like Islamic marriages.

So in the uk in the, like way, way back, we’re talking like in 2011 investigation by the photograph. Detailed how some Muslim men in areas like Blackburn and Dewsbury maintain multiple wives in separate homes with each additional wife registering as a single parent to access benefits. And then a similar report by the spectator described a taxi driver with five wives from different countries, all claiming state support, and they estimated that up to 20,000 such polygamous unions in the country.

We’re, we’re actively taking social benefits under this kind of scheme. And I think this happened, especially, I think this is another one of those kind of like ethnic cartel issues where like, you know, certain communities discovered this, this clever hack. It’s like that chase. Well, and I can make it where even

Malcolm Collins: better just by taking extra wives so I, it would make sense to divorce you.

Oh my God. Here we go, Ken.

Simone Collins: Why, why always, [00:15:00] when I outline episodes, like the conclusion, always, always like Malcolm becomes polygamous. You, you

Malcolm Collins: made that argument. Not me. I made the counter argument, but now I’m just like,

this is great. You wanna divorce me? You wanna,

this is, this is just

fantastic.

Simone Collins: I’ll give one from a Muslim country.

They’re all, well, no, no, no. Don’t like there. There are more options. I haven’t even gotten to the welfare kings. So just like, you know, oh God, okay. You gotta explain that

Malcolm Collins: to me. But also, like,

Simone Collins: apparently this is, this is also an issue that has been a, a problem in France since as like, as early as I could find, as 2010 when there was this high profile case that involved a Muslim butcher and four companions as, as they framed it charged with welfare fraud after a traffic stop escalated into polygamy allegations.

And there was this. Whole national debate around it. And then a 2015 PolitiFact check debunked a viral video claiming that a, that Michigan Muslims can list multiple wives for benefits. Like people were just claiming that. But they did acknowledge that basically informal polygamy would enable these claims, and it absolutely does.

[00:16:00] And, and that also like, it, it should be stated that other groups like Orthodox Jewish families in New York or polygamous sex in Utah also do this. This isn’t like a Muslim thing. And like I said, like. Just, just monogamous couples we know who are highly educated. The first time I actually heard about this, Malcolm was literally at Stanford University when we spoke at one of the search fund cl classes.

Okay. One of the, one of the young women there was looking to get married and we had just given this whole talk on like working as a married couple, and she’s like, yeah, but like, I don’t think we’re actually gonna get legally married and I might just not be on payroll so that I can claim that like unemployment benefits.

And I’m like. What and that was back in, I think like 2017. Yeah, this was a

Stanford girl. Yes. She was a Stanford MBA student who was sitting in our class on search funds. It was just like,

Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna take welfare benefits. I just, yes,

Simone Collins: because

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s so normal in her [00:17:00] community that she sees it as like a mandate that she does if, if, well,

Simone Collins: if you’re making a cold calculation on maximizing, you know, benefits to you.

Like, again, don’t hate the players,

hate the game. Like the system is motivating people to do this. But let’s get to the other thing, and this, this actually came

Malcolm Collins: from No, I want you, before you go to the other thing, there, there is a reason to intentionally abuse systems like this, this system shouldn’t exist.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It shouldn it shouldn’t exist. And the

Simone Collins: more high profile this is, and

the more people who do it, the sooner this gets taken away. Like we Yeah, exactly. Because this makes me so mad.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s a horrible system. It’s a horrible,

Simone Collins: yeah. Well, because it encourages people to be free riders and to not develop autonomy and independence.

It, and we’re gonna get into this in the next, in the next segment I have here, which is inspired by a base camper. So I, I can’t remember if I’m allowed to attribute him. So I’m, I’m just gonna read the, the comment without naming him. But he, he wrote my YouTube algorithm queued up the, the linked video for me.

It’s [00:18:00] a conversation between influencer and coach David Cooley and a fellow named Jay Prince Self-proclaimed welfare. Kang Cooley gives Prince the heir to explain what this title means.

Speaker 3: You go work in slave. I get y’all check. I get y’all rais, right? Y’all don’t got a refrigerator freezer. Y’all can’t eat multiple ice pain back to back. With three kids, right? Daycare paid for, healthcare, paid for, right?

Simone Collins: Prince goes on to describe to Cooley that he had impregnated a single or multiple, who weren’t interested in raising the resulting children.

He, he impregnated multiple women so that they would gladly forfeit custody to him and how he sustained himself and his three daughters with government handouts. The tale itself is amazing, but what do you both think of it with appropriate modifications is a strategy for boosting fertility, just as you said, Malcolm.

So I’m just gonna add to the, the base camper summary. Basically this, this guy identifies as a welfare king [00:19:00] and he deliberately exploits female-led social systems and government benefits so that he can work basically minimally, like he does work, but like right under the cap. So like he’s like deliberately doing this to like maximize benefits to himself.

Like he’ll work to get as much cash as he can get through a job, but no more. So he maximizes government benefits, then he lives cheaply and then he has as many children. Whose expenses taxpayers can cover as possible. And he deli, here’s the really interesting thing. He deliberately chooses to have children with women who would lose a custody battle.

Which is like unhinged in, in some ways. Like ‘cause one, like do you wanna have kids who have like personality disorders? Like this is, I don’t know, like this seems like it would make your parenting harder, but maybe there’s just women who like he knows would otherwise. Probably produce good kids, but like, for whatever reason, like the courts would never give him custody.

But yeah, he chooses, he chooses to have hi his kids with women who are unfit parents. ‘cause as he points out, the, the system is, is rigged against men [00:20:00] when it comes to custody in most states. And the, the, the, this coach who, who’s interviewing him, like categorically condemns this behavior for having the mentality of a black woman.

He puts it. And then he also points out like the, the, the action is moral equivalent to embracing failure and then rationalizing it as strategy or justice, which this guy totally does. Because he’s putting the burden of work on other people and avoiding responsibility. And also because. The, the Cooley argues that his ancestors sacrificed so that his descendants could be free and to pursue opportunity, not so their defendant or descendants would, would avoid work and, and live off handouts.

Yeah, and he also points out that if everyone did this, it, you know, would kill the economy. Like, not everyone can do this, so it shouldn’t be done. And that government welfare should be a safety net and help people get off their feet. And, but like the whole point is. Like this system shouldn’t exist in the first place.

It does hurt people. It does create cycles of [00:21:00] dependency. So to your point, the more people exploit this, the better. But what I think is really interesting is, is is this guy, this welfare king, rejects the idea of building a career in another man’s empire. He’s basically like, this is a system that is rigged against me.

I’m never gonna win in the system. There’s too much bias against me. I’m dealing with tons of systemic. Disadvantage. And America fundamentally hates and disrespects blacks, black men, and, and he insists that education and hard work are just not going to translate into real power for them. And I think this is a message that probably resonates with a lot of men in America, not just black men, but I think like many white men who are hearing increasingly, like, we’re just not.

We’re not gonna hire white men anymore. So like, I think men in many different positions are feeling just super fed up and he frames this guy, frames his lifestyle as a form of, and this is his wording, respirations. [00:22:00] Which he, he is like I, he says I’m gonna get my respirations in the ghetto way. He is just like super unapologetic.

He is just like, he knows it’s trashy, what he’s doing. But he describes respirations as like street level reparations for centuries of black slave labor. And he argues that men deserve a multi-decade break. Like, just not, it’s not even like, so this is a black guy doing this. Yes, it is a black guy doing this, moving into

Malcolm Collins: the stereotypes.

And he also,

Simone Collins: he also praises women’s entry into the workforce for lightning standards and, and creating easy care jobs. Like, sort of like med tech roles and things like that, which he sees as low effort, female typed work, and it benefits men like him. Because I think in some cases he’s, he even gets alimony and I think it’s really interesting if like men can’t get jobs anymore.

Why not just ex like lean on like the women who can get the jobs. And I think this sort of dovetails then with your noticing a Latin American male pattern where often they’re depending more [00:23:00] consistently than and they have like less consistent jobs than their wives, and so they’re more likely to depend on them because.

I mean, modern bureaucracies do favor women as many of the, the writers we’ve referenced and, and, and various people that we’ve talked about point out. So I’m, I’m curious as to what you think about all this. I mean, like, I, I, I, I intuitively find it so dishonorable to do anything, but make your own way and support yourself through.

The provision of meaningfully good products and services that other people and businesses want and need. Like a

Malcolm Collins: six chat bot that we made. R fab.ai. Yes. Or our education system for kids Pia, or our talking teddy bear system, whistling.ai. We, we, we try, right? And

Simone Collins: yet. A bunch of people around us are living lives materially much more comfortable than ours because they, they are playing the game.

I mean, I feel like, again, like dark Mgtow but we’re not even in the era of [00:24:00] dark mgtow. We’re in the era of like dark everything. It, it is not just men who are opting out. I mean, last week we ran the episode on women who are foregoing marriage and sex and we’re just like, I’m over it. And I don’t really know what to make of it.

And maybe people are gonna coast on government benefits until government go bankrupt. But then a GI is gonna sweep in and save them anyway. So it kind of doesn’t matter. Like I, I just kind of wonder what strategically makes sense for people at this point. What, what are your thoughts on all this now that I’ve kind of given you?

The

Malcolm Collins: idea is what it means to work is going to transform over the course of our life.

Mm-hmm.

And I mean, over the next five to 10 years yeah, I mean, over the next few years, I mean, AI is gonna change everything. The idea that you wouldn’t live off the state is gonna become laughable, I think, to our children.

Is if, if AI does become as economically impactful as I expect it to be it’s, it’s just going to, I mean, if human civilization survives, right? [00:25:00] Like, I, I, I think that you’re thinking too much like the past because in the past, you know, you, you could always outthink everyone else, you could always outwork everyone else.

You could always, but if an AI can run at a marginal cost and is smarter than 98% of the population, which is where I think we’re gonna get pretty soon. Mm-hmm. Like the agent system we’ve made for our fab ai, which creates continuously thinking agents. And right now we’re getting them set up so that they can even work on like GitHub and everything.

And then it can take over the programming for me and bug hunting and everything like that. For all of the new things I want to build, I wanna have it build some beginning

Simone Collins: for

Malcolm Collins: me because I have some ideas for them, but I don’t want to go through the whole thing, so I’m like, oh, I’ll just have you do it.

Right. Even just something like that, right? Like, ugh. Eventually, it’s not even gonna be like human actors running funds. It’s gonna be ais that run collections of other ais which make and build companies. The question is, is, is, is what happens to the rest of humanity when that happens? Right.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

I, [00:26:00] I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s clever. I mean, I also like, maybe this is just a survival strategy. I will say that like. The parents I know who have made big families work. I don’t know of any that are like doing, committing ‘cause this is technically welfare fraud, what I’m describing in, in most cases.

I don’t, I don’t actually think what the, the second dude is doing is

Malcolm Collins: No, no. The guy who’s keeping kids. I don’t think that’s Welfare fraud is, no, that’s not welfare fraud

Simone Collins: especially. Yeah. But like in these other cases of like the, the multiple wives, it’s welfare fraud. And if you and I were to like divorce and, and try to get me to like, I think that’s welfare fraud.

However I will say that the, the families that have a lot of kids that I know that, that are doing it really well. Are extremely savvy about government assistance systems and they max out as many benefits as they can get. And it’s, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it because, like [00:27:00] I grew up with the mindset of like, even at times where I had qualified for like food stamps or something, or unemployment I, I didn’t.

Take it because I knew that I, you know, had enough savings where I, I could make it by. Like, if I didn’t need it, I wasn’t gonna take it. And now I feel like, am I a chump for not doing that? And like, it, would it not be better if we all just went hard in on this system just to break it? I don’t know.

I, I feel

Malcolm Collins: confused by that. You’re gonna need systems like this, like the world of AI is gonna change everything about what it means to work, about what it means to expect to earn your own income. I just, I think, and my fa the fans can push back on me on this, but I, I do notand how in 20 years from now we have anything like our existing global economy.

Mm.

Now what that looks like in terms of individuals, jobs, everything like that is gonna differ a lot between countries. The countries that have AI in the [00:28:00] countries that don’t get outta the countries that don’t. Right?

Yeah.

Get outta Europe. Get out of Europe. Run. Run, run. And yeah. Well, and this, this brings me to, you know, where I like if I’m trying to predict the future of the global economy and everything like that and where everything’s going.

And it’s, it’s one of these things where even for like us looking for a job. You know, my brother’s like, get a normal job, and I’m like, but it’ll be gone in like a month. Like everyone I know in normal jobs is afraid of losing them because of ai. Right? Like, you, you see this in the numbers, right?

Like, I don’t know. I mean, I, I, I do think that what they did is bad for their generation, but that’s, you know, that that’s the last generation’s rules. And if you always. There were so many things that you know, my parents told me that just didn’t work for my generation, and they sounded wildly naive telling me it when they were like, well just, you know, go to an office and say you won’t leave until they hire you.

Right. You know, like that’s something that, that parents used to tell kids. Like in all seriousness, [00:29:00] show them chutzpah, you know, knock on the doors.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and, and I think you telling a kid, well, you know, you gotta go out and get a job, right. Go go to a top college and get a job. And they’ll say, oh, what is that?

Like an Uber thing? Except Uber won’t exist. ‘cause it’ll all be self-driving cars. Right? Like, is that a,

Simone Collins: well, now what’s so crazy too, and what, what makes so many younger people incredibly angry is that after the pandemic, something broke, at least in American job markets. And so many of the job postings are not even for real jobs, they’re ghost jobs that businesses maintain just to.

Show certain optics, collect data et cetera. Like, but there’s zero intention to hire. So you could spend a lot of time applying for a job and it will go absolutely nowhere. Which is also just such a.

Malcolm Collins: Well, in a lot of industries, people have just stopped doing their work. As you pointed out, you were pointing this out about like the [00:30:00] publishing industry.

It almost seems like nobody is working anymore. Like they’re just not editing their, they’re not

Simone Collins: answering their emails, they’re not doing their jobs. Yeah. It’s like they, they kind of left the office and maybe they’re still receiving a salary, but like low key. They’re just not there anymore. But no one, it’s one of those things again, we’re like, no one’s checking, and I think this is one of those things, maybe we’re kind of transitioning from a high trust society to a low trust society and people haven’t yet.

Uniformly realized that. And so there’s a lot of, everyone is expecting that someone has it. Like, I thought you had it. No, I thought you had it. Like everyone thinks that someone else is doing their job, meanwhile, no one is doing their job. And things are falling apart, but it actually takes a surprisingly long time for people to figure that out.

As is indicated by the similarly daycare fraud, like this has been going on for a very long time, but. No one checks these things. ‘cause everyone’s like, I don’t know. That’s not my job. That’s must be someone else’s job. My job is to process the [00:31:00] application. My job is to see, oh, this checkbox was met. Okay, go for it.

Like I did my job, my job wasn’t to drive over there. And like even if like, you know, you’re government employee and you drive by. And, and this actually came up with the with the Muslim like is Islamic marriage polygamist issue is in, when this started, it has at various times bubbled up on X and people have had discussion of it.

And when online discussions of this trend upward, inevitably a bunch of government workers come on and they’re like. Yep. Like I, I knowingly process payments to or am aware of like this and this and this case where these people are receiving this much in benefits and I know that they don’t need them.

Like I’ve driven by their house and I’ve like done, but like they, they don’t have the authority or, and there is no pathway for them to effectively report and have these things dealt with because we live in a society and these systems were set up without. [00:32:00] The expectation of this kind of exploitation,

Malcolm Collins: and this is why, as bad as universal basic income is, and you can see our videos on it in terms of the effects it has on people.

I just do not, it, it’s better than this and I don’t see any other pathway.

Simone Collins: Well, that’s, yeah. We were thinking about it’s better than

Malcolm Collins: most. Fraud gets most money.

Simone Collins: Yes, because we, we were thinking about doing a Basecamp episode on like America. Where like, American socialism sucks extra hard because it is a socialist country, but like only for people who cheat, like only for people who are extremely poor and for people who cheat and then everyone else is screwed and like, it would be actually so much better in many ways.

It just, it was just for everyone because then, then you’re not just rewarding this huge swath of bad actors and you know, the money isn’t being wasted in the same way. And that it is, it is very frustrating. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think it’s, it’s, it’s frustrating as it is. I think these systems just need to be turned off.

We just [00:33:00] gotta, we’ve got to overhaul around a UBI system. I just don’t, don’t think that any of these other, yeah. Okay. Well,

Simone Collins: yeah. So when you say turned off, you say like replaced with, I don’t know, direct cash payments, just something like that. Yeah. Direct replace with direct

Malcolm Collins: cash payments. Just

Simone Collins: put money in the accounts.

I mean, the one thing I worry about then is. What I, for example, I, I, I alluded to earlier, the WIC program that’s Women, infants, and Children. It’s, it’s a program for that. Again, like if you’re a single mother who’s at or near the poverty level or who qualifies through other means, it’s a really effective program, and I like it specifically because unlike with snap, where you can actually see like.

All these TikTok shorts of mothers getting all this like horrible junk food for their kids. WIC only allows you to buy extremely specific food.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t like those programs. Let the parents get bad food for their kids. Let their kids die. I don’t care. I do. I do. Not our kids.

Simone Collins: I do. I do. But WIC is like, you can only buy like.

Two loaves of bread this month. And they must be whole grain. They have to be whole grain. And you can only [00:34:00] buy, it doesn’t

Malcolm Collins: even understand real health stuff. Like we’ve, we, it doesn’t, it doesn’t get the health stuff right. It’s, it’s like, it’s like, you have to have 1% milk for a kids. Like what? No kids should be

Simone Collins: drinking whole.

Well, but I, I think like, maybe there’s, I keep in mind there’s a correlation between poverty and obesity, so they don’t wanna allow parents to buy whole milk because. Whole,

Malcolm Collins: oh, it burns my brain. It No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. These programs are ridiculous. And the way you make this work with children is you just make it based on the number of people.

Right. And your UBI goes to whoever’s caring for you up to a certain age. Mm-hmm. And that way you do still get the assistance if you have kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, yeah. I don’t know. Or like if, if there’s a like come some kind of like refugee program where like kids can run away to like a safe house if their parents suck. The problem is and, and pe [00:35:00] like, I don’t know. I like, I, we, we’ve alluded to this in past, like, oh, well, what if the state raises children?

And then people clap back at us and they’re like, okay, Romanian orphan orphanages. And like China had orphanages and they were terrible, but like, this was all for like unwanted abandoned children. These were underfunded programs. What if the state actually like, did. An exceptionally good program, you know, where like it actually got a lot of investment and it was good and decent.

I mean, but then like all the child parents come in and they’re like, no, a child

has to be raised by a mother and a father who are emotionally invested in it. And if you aren’t emotionally invested in a child, you won’t do a good idea. But I feel like maybe I, I can, I

Malcolm Collins: disagree with that. I strongly disagree with that.

This is this, this whole thing of kids need to be, I didn’t live with my family after the age of 13 and I did not care. It is when, when people live without parental love and it ends up messing them up, it’s because they are weak frankly, and they’re looking to blame things. I know lots of messed up people who had parents and [00:36:00] lots of non messed up people who didn’t have parents.

Parents. I’m just

Simone Collins: saying I want, I want children to have an option in a UBI world where like. Mommy buys meth with all of her money.

Malcolm Collins: You know what I mean? And they get, they give the kid to somebody else. Well, think about it this way. No. And the kid

Simone Collins: has, can run to somewhere else or gets saved. I don’t know.

I, I just like, I, you know, I can’t deal with these stories of kids getting hurt and like, I, I, I literally had to, I mean, I should have done it anyway, but I’ve quit scrolling. Like passive scrolling on any platform because too many times now, like I scroll and it’s like, oh, like infant killed like 2-year-old found dead.

And, and, and I’m like, I can’t, like then like the next two days, I, I’m up crying all night ‘cause I can’t deal, like I, I literally can’t deal. So I need like a solution that ends this. No more hurting children. No more hurting children. No, [00:37:00] no.

Malcolm Collins: So

fix it. Fix it, guys. Civilization, fix it. You guys in the comments can let us know what you think the solution is to all this.

You know, you know me, I wanna get the extra wives. I, I, I’ll be able to breed faster, Simone. We need it. This is how we get more kids in the house. Kid, kid, kid, kid, kid. You’ll have so many kids.

Simone Collins: I’m actually outlining. An episode on the Men Spamming Kids people who donate sperm, or people like Pavel Ov who have offered free IVF to women who want to use his genetic material.

And I am going to be making an argument against, against that particular tactic, like not,

Malcolm Collins: well, it’s not a heavy, but it’s not, it’s not a bad thing like I offer. You know, if, if somebody wants to use my genetic material, I offer that. Right? Like, no, I mean, I

Simone Collins: think donating to someone who asks you or who’s like, Hey, i’d, I’d appreciate that.

[00:38:00] Like, I think that makes sense. Keep trying to

Malcolm Collins: spam it instead of building a, a family and legacy is in, usually not. Yeah. I

Simone Collins: think men who are just, well, no, I think. It is absolutely fantastic to donate an egg or a sperm or embryos to people who, who want them from you, but men who think it’s a massive win to just spam children I mean, I’m gonna, like, I, I’m gonna give a good effort to try to convince myself that I’m wrong and to steal man this, but I cannot think of a single great historical figure or impactful historical figure.

Who came from a harem, who came from a man who spammed children. I just don’t think that you, you’re, you’re doing a lot own genetics to favor.

Malcolm Collins: There’s a big difference between families and, you know.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, I like, I’m all four, like having 14 kids, whatever. But like in your household with your culture, raise them.

Invest in them. [00:39:00] But like when, when you are just flying around the world to donate sperm to girls online who are like, yeah, that sounds good. Like, I don’t, I don’t think that’s the win that people think it’s or, or when you’re like paying to have a bunch of babies born and then having just staff raise them.

I, I, again, don’t think that’s the same. So, yeah. But anyway, we’ll discuss that in the other episode. I need to, it’s just taken me a while to get to it because Archive is, is not loading the Wall Street Journal articles that I really wanna include in my research. So I can’t read the articles and

Malcolm Collins: I’m really angry about that.

I’m sorry, Simone, you need to know more about welfare fraud. You

Simone Collins: mean about circumventing,

Malcolm Collins: paywalls. Oh no, I meant that’s what the articles were. I mean, circumvented paper. No, the articles

Simone Collins: are about the men’s spamming kids. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Just

Simone Collins: use AI to do that, to ask what the articles are [00:40:00] about. Yeah. I always worry that they’re, they’re gonna hallucinate.

I wanna see the articles.

Malcolm Collins: Just say, don’t hallucinate. Can you give me the full text of this article? Oh,

Simone Collins: oh. They do that

Malcolm Collins: and sometimes they can, yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well then I will try that. Thank you. And thank you for sharing that tip with our audience. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That is, I love Simonon are a great wife. What are we doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: So I can do more Burmese min chicken pasta bolognese. Well, I mean, not bolognese, but like pesto pasta with Burmese mint chicken meat sauce, essentially.

Malcolm Collins: Did we have that left? Like it’s gonna be less?

Simone Collins: No. So I mean, I’m, I would do a whole new batch, so we have enough pesto left to do that. I have the post stuff from yesterday.

Want,

Malcolm Collins: I want a steak.

Simone Collins: Okay. Instead you want steak with chives and

Malcolm Collins: a, a double order of steak with lots of chives and peppers.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. And let me know when we’re, we’re frying it up. ‘cause I’ll throw in some miso paste and stuff like that to make the sauce interesting.

Simone Collins: Oh, you [00:41:00] wanna make the sauce?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Well, I’ll just, I’ll just make a, a twist on like a Mongolian sauce or something,

Simone Collins: but you’ll, you’ll make the sauce yourself. So all I have to do is prep the veg.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, prep a BA sauce ‘cause I don’t know how to do that.

Simone Collins: I don’t either. Just ask perplexity,

Malcolm Collins: but sure, I’ll do that and then you’ll add to it.

So I’m not unreasonable. I’m a very, very easy husband to be married to just make me gourmet restaurant meals each night while the children are. Mm. Attacking and while bathing the children and changing the diapers and,

Simone Collins: no, I love you. You’re amazing. You always go above and beyond. The kids always get so sad when they discover it’s not a day when they spend the whole day afternoon with you while you work climbing over you, while you attempt to vibe

Malcolm Collins: code.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, not attempts successfully. Vibe code.

Malcolm Collins: He jumps on me. He doesn’t climb over me. He does the hot

Simone Collins: jump. Well, Andy climbs

Malcolm Collins: over you, Tostan and, and Octavian jump [00:42:00] on you. A Titan, especially

likes jumping on me.

Well, it’s her thing. She’s a titan. She’s

a shark princess. She’s the shark. What does a

shark princess do but jump on people?

One day she’ll be a shark. That’s what she said. Yeah. And then, and then I will eat you. Mommy. Do not eat me titan. Okay. I won’t. Mommy.

Oh my God. The clip that I used at the end of the episode that I ran today Titan was so sweet. Oh, talking about creaky man. Yeah. Who says you go? Who says darn s**t?

Titan says, darn it. Darn it. Oh. Dang it.

Simone Collins: Dang it.

Malcolm Collins: Dang it. Dang it. And then she goes, and the creaky man and the creaky man lives in a cave that’s a blue and pink, because those are titans, no pink and purple, which are Titan’s favorite colors, which are but maybe a little blue. Maybe a little blue. Her monsters have to live in caves that are her favorite colors.

Very spooky, but it’s pink and purple. [00:43:00] But creaky man is good ‘cause it sounds like a real monster, creaky

man. Totally sounds like. The new song

is a

Simone Collins: real monster. Maybe she saw it somewhere. Well, wait. People on X pointed out that Helicopter, helicopter came from this like, obscure clip of what I think was, what was that thing where you would like get randomly matched with people and it’s Kermit the Frog.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s a thing.

Simone Collins: I think helicopter is a reference to, kermit helicoptering something at the end of the clip. If you want, if you know what I need helicopter, helicopter, helicopter

Malcolm Collins: go. And that’s what our kids see. And

so that is the catchphrase of our household and it is in reference to he ker the frog.

Whoa. Random. Yeah, I think that’s just too perfect. It’s too perfect. I, I’m proud if that is actually where Helicopter Helicopter came from.

Hey, none of our kids have gotten into sex scandals yet. That’s gonna be hard. All, all the, the families do the things and then their [00:44:00] kids get into sex scandals.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I wonder.

Yeah, actually a lot of people, like on, on X were also like, don’t, don’t include your photos and your, or sorry, your, your kids and your videos like this never goes well. Every time there’s a kid influencer and I’m like, okay, sorry. Who is the hero of the hour? Who is getting nothing but love? Who is getting nothing but adoration right now?

Malcolm Collins: I have no idea. The

Simone Collins: kid doing the Somali daycare fraud videos. Oh yeah, he’s cool. Who? Who’s, who does the. His mom. Really? His mom. Yes, yes, yes. And of course people are concerned trolling him too. Like, oh, just wait on like the sex scandal’s gonna come out. And he is like, literally there was this interview clip of him and he is like, I don’t like, they’re up for disappointment.

I’m Mormon. I don’t drink. I’m a virgin. Like, I dunno what you expect. You’re gonna find, like this is gonna be hard and like all these people just [00:45:00] want to believe that young people involved in content creation are somehow gonna be ruined for life. And of course like it’s ‘cause they’re weird pearl clusters.

They’re weird. There are tons of kids who are making very good money. Making just cute little play videos. Like what’s his, like whatever’s world. I I mean, maybe his life

Malcolm Collins: is

Simone Collins: wrong. No, no, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: The the thing is, is that these people are weird pearl clutches who complain about everything, and it’s just who they are.

I’m sorry

Simone Collins: if you’re also a base camper and you like our podcast, we just disagree with you on this. But that’s the thing is base campers disagree. No, I, I think it’s so

Malcolm Collins: lame. It’s so la. Every kid wants to be an influencer these days. Like what are like, or almost every kid does, right?

Simone Collins: Really? Because you have like a screwed up family like.

I, I, most of the cases of influencer, like kid influencers who are screwed up, the screwed up element of them is ‘cause they have like a narcissistic parent or like, they’re like, whether or not there was gonna be YouTube involved. They were gonna have a screwed up life. Like, I don’t wanna, yeah. So I think

Malcolm Collins: that there’s, there’s two things where you can have [00:46:00] problems with this if the, the kids are the core of the content, right?

Because then you need the kids to behave in specific ways and do certain things, and you’re creating a weird relationship between you and your kids. ‘cause the kids are the content itself. And I think

Simone Collins: that, no, that’s where, where parenting is the core of the content because that’s when you have the parents like.

Making a video about like, well, our daughter just had her first period and I’m going to the store to buy her tampons and like, girl. Yeah. Like that can

Malcolm Collins: cause problems for kids, obviously, but that’s not like, that’s

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I, I tell, yeah, I totally just putting kids on

Malcolm Collins: Instagram, that’s not, you know, and the other one where it can cause a problem is when it’s specifically because you’re trying to do something that is inappropriate with, like, obviously there was a case recently of what’s her face who came of age

Speaker 2: . All y’all broke haters. Y’all aint doing it like lilt. This is why all y’all hate me. This cost me 200,000 rapping, lilt money away.

Malcolm Collins: and had a, like, sold out for her 18th birthday.

Oh. The

OnlyFans thing.

With the, the girl who is like [00:47:00] younger and is like, I’m

all about the money. And so Yeah. The Asian

Simone Collins: girl.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Whatever her name is.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. No, there, there are absolutely bad instances. And there, there are certain, like, for, for example, like we know from experience that like just, just having a certain number of subscribers or views isn’t gonna translate immediately to money.

What translates to money, certain types of contents, which makes like, for example, the like Sephora influencer kids. I understand why their parents got them into that because that’s where the sponsorships are. Like these makeup companies reaching out to them. ‘cause they make a lot of money from, you know, other kids who are intent driven consumers watching that content and wanting to buy something.

So that leads to lucrative sponsorships. And then, you know, it, it ends up, you end up with these kids who are now like screwed up with, you know, body image issues or whatever. Although I feel like that can be easily, like, I don’t, I don’t know how much body image issues necessarily even correlate with bad outcomes in life.

Like, I’m watching a documentary the old documentary Gossip on Rupert Murdoch and his publications and page [00:48:00] six, and this one gossip columnist named Cindy and her mother. Like she was born in 1935. She was 90 when the documentary was made. Her mother was like screwed up. Like she gave her her, her teenage daughter a nose job in like the, the, the forties, right?

Like, this is before like nose jobs were highly sophisticated. She had her hairline raised because Oh my god. She didn’t like, yeah. And she like sent her to dance classes, like whatever. ‘cause she thought she was an ugly girl and she just wanted her to be beautiful and like, she like was very controlling.

But this woman. Ended up becoming like one of the most prolific and successful gossip columnists. Can, can you

Malcolm Collins: tell when a nose is attractive or unattractive? I’ve, no. I literally can’t tell. No. Well, you

Simone Collins: and I are both broadly face blind and people thought I was like trying to do this, like own or troll in that episode where you were like, which group of women is more attractive when I’m like, I don’t know, which is the more like.

Because you’re like, you can tell, which is the more at attract, and I couldn’t tell which is more attractive. No, a lot of people love

Malcolm Collins: that you couldn’t [00:49:00] tell because they, they go, they’re all ugly to me too, because, I don’t know, there’s this internet thing where a guy think they look really cool by pretending normal looking women are unattractive.

And it, it’s, it’s, it’s not a flex. It, it’s weird. It’s silly.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Like, I, I, I, I can, I can I think I can try to ob like look for facial symmetry and signs of health, that that is what attractiveness is, right.

Malcolm Collins: I think, yeah. Well, for me it’s mostly just being appropriately the appropriate weight.

Like that’s a 95% of attractiveness for guys. It’s just I think

Simone Collins: No, no, no, no. When fundamentally, what you blew my mind about was, especially for, for

Malcolm Collins: and

Simone Collins: young for women. Young, young, young, young, young. That’s like the only thing that matters is like how young you look.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, that’s your fertility window, right?

Simone Collins: No, it makes, it makes evolutionary sense.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, anyway, I’m

Simone Collins: going to get dinner started. I love you very much and life is [00:50:00] good.

Malcolm Collins: Have a good one. You

Simone Collins: too.

Malcolm Collins: Hitting end hit.

Speaker 4: Wait, what happened? Octa, what, what is up there? Ma? Our, Chris, our SS mama. That Christmas, la, he mom put him right there.

Speaker 5: I wanna, so you get to choose a special treat because you, you found the Christmas llama. I can’t, I can’t believe I found a Christmas llama. He’s so magical. Is he too? He watches you, you know. Oh yeah. He sees when you do naughty thing. Yeah, I’ll put it in somewhere else. Oh, he’s gonna hide again. Yeah, he’s gonna hide again, and then you’ll find him.

Speaker 4: You get a special, can I eat it now? Yeah, you can. Yes.

Speaker 5: This is [00:51:00] so fun. It actually is magical. He actually is. Yeah. How can you tell. ‘cause he moved up there. Which kind of ass? I mean, come on man. I didn’t know. I didn’t know he moved. I love, I love, this is like a very satisfy. How do our kids not curse?

I wanna get get, I gotta get the scarf out. Let’s get the presents out.

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