Shifting Identities: Control and Mental Health in Youth

In this episode, we delve into the rising mental health crisis among progressive women, examining data and discussing potential causes, including the impact of urban monocultures and the evolution of harmful online communities. We compare mental health and life satisfaction rates between liberal and conservative women, analyze the role of therapists, and explore the influence of platforms like Tumblr. The discussion also touches on the diverging experiences of men and women across political ideologies and the broader societal implications of these trends.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we will be touching on the issue of exploding mental health rate. Problems within progressive women as well as exploding lack of life satisfaction. They actually have life satisfaction ratings three times lower than conservative women.

And we're gonna be going into co. Funding data that could explain this. This is a topic that we have touched on in the past, but it is a topic with such a voluminous amount of information around it that it is worth going into deeply with new data, with old data and, and trying to understand it because it's, it's, it's really fascinating to me because what we're seeing exploding mental health issues within progressive women is we are seeing.

The urban monocultures effects on somebody's mental health in psychology. [00:01:00] And through that we can, because that's, that largely aligns with, with progressivism, right? The dominant culture of our, of our society. And we can understand through that through understanding what might be causing this is how the urban monitoring could be hurting people.

And we're also going to go into a brief exploration that I found really interesting in, in a piece that I found. On how the most negative psychologically harmful culture evolved on, tumblr,

Simone Collins: this sounds like just, you know, hitting all my favorite keywords. I am very excited about this and let's, let's do it.

Malcolm Collins: All right. So. First, I'm gonna be going over a piece called Why So Blue Liberal women are less happy or lonely, but why?

Simone Collins: Oh, they went there.

Malcolm Collins: Good. Good points on the title. Yeah. Yeah. The loneliness thing is actually really shocking as well. Young liberal women are especially pro nowadays to reporting poor mental health.

[00:02:00] This was a discovery that Zach Goldberg made almost five years ago, pouring over the Pew data in the spring of 2020. Now, here I'm putting a chart on screen and it's looking at has the doctor or other healthcare provider. Ever told you you have a mental health condition and this is the amount who said yes.

Simone Collins: I just, I love this idea though of like the healthcare provider being, say, your dentist, just like, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: she is problems. And this chart is famous. This one we've gone over before that showed that white liberal women. 18 to 29, 56 0.3% of them had been diagnosed with a mental health condition. Conservative women

Simone Collins: see is, I think is not the problem that they're seeing therapists in the first place.

I think it's really hard for anyone to see a therapist and not be diagnosed with something, even if they're completely normal. Well,

Malcolm Collins: the therapists are part of the cult of the urban monoculture. Yeah. It's like going to your confessions. Like they see it as important. As I've mentioned, I've seen women who will screen [00:03:00] dating guys.

Who aren't seeing a therapist, and that's like they have been incepted with the dependency of the urban monoculture to believe that I cannot be mentally healthy and no one can be mentally healthy without seeing a therapist.

Simone Collins: Yes. And yet when you see the therapist, they point out how mentally. Yeah.

Ruby

Malcolm Collins: Art actually had an interesting talk about this, where he's like, oh yes, he went to be a progressive therapist and then a conservative therapist, and the progressive therapist just kept. Having him ruminate on his problems. Yeah. And the conservative therapist was like, okay, here's a chart. Here's what you need to do.

Here's the timeline for getting rid of it. And what's, which is nice, I mean,

Simone Collins: and he didn't even imply that the, I. The conservative therapist was certain, he just gave him potential things he could try that were evidence-based. And it's so, but it's also so indicative of the feminine versus masculine response to someone preventing a problem, presenting a problem.

You know that the correct feminine response is, oh, I'm so sorry. Tell you more. This must be so hard for you. And then the masculine response responses, okay, let's make a [00:04:00] solution. And that that scene is so toxic by many

Malcolm Collins: people. Oh, absolutely. But, but to this graph right here yeah. One thing that's really interesting in it is, yes, okay, over half of liberal white women have a mental health condition, have been diagnosed as one, but also keep in mind here.

That the moderates had about the same rate of being diagnosed as the conservatives. So the white moderate women, 28.4% white conservative women, 27.3%. Mm-hmm. And this goes down a lot in older age ranges. When you're looking at like the 65 plus, it's only 5.9%. For those women. Another really interesting thing is that if you look at, older ages. The difference between males and females being diagnosed with mental health issues decreases. Mm-hmm. And it also decreases when you're looking at moderates with moderates, you see men and women being diagnosed at around the same rates. But in both conservatives and progressives, you see women being diagnosed much more.

And, and what's really [00:05:00] interesting is in progressives you see about the same rates of diagnoses at 30 and up, but it's 18 to 29 where you see this the big difference, huh? And I think this has to do with where mental health professionals have sort of penetrated and captured aspects of these markets.

Um hmm. Like if you are a progressive guy, what I actually think is happening here no, this kid back can't be what's happening? 'cause the rate's not going up. Yeah. I just think it's the, we'll, we'll get into how Tumblr caused all this, but any more thoughts on this before I go further? I.

Simone Collins: I wanna go further.

I just wanna keep going. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Further research in 2022 found that depression had surged among liberal high school girls in the last decade and a half, and much more so for them than other high schoolers, especially conservatives. And so here we're gonna look at a another article titled. Why the mental health of liberal goals sink first and fastest.

And the first chart I'm gonna pull up here is Pew 2020. And it's looking at, has a doctor or healthcare provider ever told you that you have a mental [00:06:00] health condition? And it's just what we were looking at before, but it's done as a graph, which I think is a bit easier to see. Graphs are so much easier.

Next chart. Is depression scores by gender and politics. And what you can see here is female liberals are absolutely at the highest here, and their depression scores started to shoot up. They were always higher, but they were about in line with male liberals. Mm-hmm. They started to shoot up at around 2011.

Was that when they. Was that when the girl, whatever the believe, believe her movement started.

Simone Collins: Me too. No. Yeah, me

Malcolm Collins: too.

Simone Collins: No, me too. Started much later. Let's see. Yeah, 20 20 17. But it was founded by activist Tarana Burke in 2006. So we're talking way before that. Lets see, that was, that was a year after you and I graduated from undergraduate.

I don't know, like smartphones were taking off at that point. I

Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't know. Smartphones were ubiquitous before that. Only

Simone Collins: among rich kids. I dunno. I got my first smartphone [00:07:00] in like twenty, twenty eleven actually. Yeah. I, I'm gonna

Malcolm Collins: check to see if Tumblr maybe had did something around this time.

I'll add it in post.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, look up, well look up when Tumblr got popular.

Simone Collins: Peak in terms of user activity early 2014. It was on its way. It was on its way to the top.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, look up when Tumblr first started to gain traction.

Simone Collins: It was founded in 2007. It quickly became popular, so by 2011 it would've been fairly.

Malcolm Collins: So that's fascinating. Yes. I think this is a directly downstream of Tumblr is what we're seeing here. That's so funny. The depression scores, because Tumblr was where the modern iteration of the urban monoculture was born.

Before that progressivism had a very different like thing. It was optimizing around. Now what's also really interesting is conservative female and happiness starts shooting up now. It's still nowhere near these other groups. You mean like relative from what it was before? Yeah. It was a complete flat look.

So like, they're happier now. [00:08:00] They're, they're happier now in, they're shooting down like, like they're having problems. Higher depression rates. Okay. So it was, it was stable from 2005 to 2014, then it starts going up. Conservative male mental health was stable until 2013, then started going up. What happened in 2013 and 14 that would've caused conservative?

Simone Collins: I,

Malcolm Collins: I, I don't see it as a break of the dam because it was so stable before that.

I don't know.

Simone Collins: Can you send me the graph

Malcolm Collins: sound off on this? What do you guys, can I see the graph?

Simone Collins: Thematically, I actually sent you a screenshot of a, an Instagram post by a friend who shall go nameless that I, I don't know, kind of really indicates the different experience of two girls, me and her, who went to the same school, hung out, had a ton in common but then took very different political directions in adulthood.

Just like, look at that and read the post while I look at this. Okay, so

No, no, she might, [00:09:00] what if she watches this, then she knows. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I, I won't describe the person. It says back by, no one's demand and a very progressive looking person, and it says. Proof of life in the style of 2014 in an era where most things kind of suck, both personally and as a human woman on earth, maybe a little more word art TM can help.

The bar is pretty low, but always worse. Reaching for vampire, I guess, and happy ver Venus retrograde to all those that celebrate survive peace sign skull. It's been a doozy, but we're gonna make it.

Simone Collins: So she lives in a scary dystopia in which women have been robbed of their bodily autonomy. Her personal life is in shambles.

She, she doesn't look as, as healthy as I remember from before. And like I am really happy. I really love [00:10:00] my friends and my family. I. Am healthier now than I was before, despite being on pregnancy, literally healthier now. Like, yeah, like my osteoporosis is reversing despite the fact that I'm not on medication because the pregnancy seemed to help it.

Like it's, it's just kind of crazy because we had so much in common as kids. We grew up, you know, within, within walking distance at each other's houses, same broad, you know, demographic background, and yet there's such different outcomes. And I feel like the primary differentiating factor here is culture.

Malcolm Collins: The primary factor is me.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. But look at the graph. You wanted to see the graph. You see what I mean? Yeah. The lines are stable and then they start going up outta nowhere. There's clearly a triggering event where both, yeah,

Simone Collins: like what happened to conservatives in 2014 that made their quality of life decidedly worse and it wasn't.

And, and you, you would've thought, like if I, if you and I had to guess, we would've guessed that mental health. Would start going off the [00:11:00] rails, say in 2008 when there was a recession, that that would cause people to feel, or like a gradual thing, but no. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And it's, and it's not. I'm still arguing like pervasive, smart, and keep in mind, like smartphones did exist before 2011, but they didn't have this great app, ecospace.

Now you have Tumblr on your smartphone like by 2011. Tumblr has a decent smartphone app, like you're actually getting stuff. I,

Malcolm Collins: I think it's downstream of Tumblr as somebody who paid attention to what was going on in Tumblr as it was rising. Yeah. But we'll get to that later.

Simone Collins: But 2014, that is. Right.

Hold on. Let's just just ask Grok

Malcolm Collins: what

Simone Collins: happened in 2014. Event conservative, and I'll

Malcolm Collins: keep going while you're asking. Okay, thanks. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So now we're gonna put up another graph here that says, whenever I try to get ahead something or somebody stops me, USA 12th graders. So interesting here what you see is this is actually splitting over time with conservatives.

It's going down for conservative girls and with liberal girls [00:12:00] it's going up. But here's what's really fascinating.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. For

Malcolm Collins: boys, for liberals, it's going down. And for conservative boys, it's going up. Whenever I try to get ahead somebody or something stops me

Simone Collins: and for conservative boys felt more stymied.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That makes 'em stronger. It's like a

Simone Collins: good

Malcolm Collins: thing, but, but it's the opposite with, with girls. I, I don't know what we're seeing here. It could be like the, the sort of cool, like, oh, the society's against me, man. That, you know, Andrew Tate was sort of promoting during, because this is from 2017 to 2021.

But that's, that's interesting. External locus of control. Here, what you see is 2017 to 2021. Liberal girls shoots up the internal locus of control and conservative girls actually goes down a bit with boys. Wait, so

Simone Collins: conservative young women lost their internal locus of control? They lost? No, they have more

Malcolm Collins: an internal locus of control.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins: [00:13:00] So, so progressive young women had more of an external locus of control, meaning they attributed their life's problems more to external factors. Than they did before, which is shown

Malcolm Collins: to be correlated with poor mental health. Yeah, I mean, it was really, I thought, but here's the thing. I thought this was more core to progressivism, but if you look at boys, liberal boys and conservative boys have about the same rate.

I. Here.

Simone Collins: And that's, I think that's because boys aren't allowed to blame outside factors because they're the patriarchy. It doesn't matter.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. What's interesting is they have about the same rate and it's about what liberal girls have.

Simone Collins: What

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Conservative girls are like way so, 'cause you're, the girls are the only

Simone Collins: ones who are like, yeah, it's on me.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What? That doesn't make any sense. What it shows is that conservative girls are a better catch than conservative boys. Yeah. Apparently. Well, it's a smaller pool, like that's another thing. Yeah. You know, there's, there's two conservative boys for every one conservative girl, and I assume that number might be even more severe for those age ages.

What did gr say when you asked it?

Simone Collins: Honestly, I'm not getting anything. It, it said the [00:14:00] cultural events. The, the Ice Bucket Challenge goes viral in 2014. You remember that People dumping ice water over their head to donate money. The Grand Put Best Hotel came out. Robin Williams died. Guardians of the Galaxy came out and that was good.

It was good. It make me happy. Conserv movie, there was a World Cup, the Brazil FIFA World Cup. That's not bad. There was the Ferguson unrest. So there was some, some like police brutality concern. Gay marriage became more. Pervasive in terms of legalization, but I don't see how that would make the conservatives more depressed.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: here, here we're gonna get a graph that aligns exactly with the other graph with 2014, remember? Yes.

Simone Collins: 2014.

Malcolm Collins: So, so I will tell you all what happened. I, I

Simone Collins: just declared a caliphate Scottish independence referendum, but that didn't pass. So this,

Malcolm Collins: this aligns exactly. It was the 2011 number here. Okay.

So, you see between 2009 and 2013 in this graph, I'll, I'll share this graph with you 'cause it's important. Thanks.[00:15:00]

Simone Collins: Midterm elections in the us like nothing really happened in 2014. It was, it was not a consequential year really. I mean, it sort of things churned along. But it wasn't like, oh, like new administration. Huge social change.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so here's a graph. In this graph, what you see is the other numbers line up with mean derogation or like self degradation is what you're seeing here.

Simone Collins: Self derogation ation. Oh, like derogatory remarks you make about yourself.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Okay. Liberal girls and liberal boys begin to shoot up on this at around that time period with conservatives shooting up at the later time period tied to their increasing rates of depression. This is a cultural factor tied to, something that's causing young people to say terrible things about themselves over and over and over again. And people can be like, oh, that must be social media. But Facebook existed long [00:16:00] before this and was popular long before this when I was in college.

Simone Collins: Who was in winded Instagram peak. Hold on. When did Insta Instagram first take off?

'cause Facebook was very homegrown. You used Facebook to make sure people weren't. Fish. What catfishing you? Because really it wasn't a place of idealized pictures. It was a place of here's what your life is like, here's what your friends are like. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It could be the 2014 Boost Instagram. I could see that because more popular with conservatives.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Rain. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm, I'm gonna say Instagram. Instagram was really, and I mean, Facebook even had those reports that leaked where it was like, yeah, we know these make people feel terrible about themselves.

Sorry. I,

Malcolm Collins: I think Instagram may have been where the culture that was started on Tumblr. Interacted with an infected conservative, females first and then males. That would make a lot of sense to me.

Simone Collins: No, no. I think it's more [00:17:00] about idealization and not feeling like you're good enough.

Malcolm Collins: I, I disagree. I.

Really look that happened before all of this. If you look at the nineties, everyone was concerned about how pretty the models were and that girls not living up to that. The women who girls would've had to compare themselves to before social media might have even been more beautiful on average. But no.

Well, but no, no, no, no, no,

Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no. It was very different and it felt very different for me. And the reason why it did was that they were. Movie stars, they were in magazines. And suddenly with Instagram it was like, no, no, no. These are my peers. And you have to understand like our, our friends and colleagues who have children that are young teens, the way these girls look, their, their knowledge of makeup is like your, like your mom's level.

They have like 16 step beauty routines. You have to like the standards to which women hold themselves. Now, if they are online, if they are on. Instagram or now TikTok are [00:18:00] insane. By the way. There was this recent scandal with TikTok. They had a fat filter, one that made you look chubby. I think it was called chubby filter.

Sorry, Andy. And all these, like, Instagram and, and like TikTok models kept using the filter, like showing what they would look like, fat. And then it got a lot of people mad, which I just love. I I want more of that. I want ugly filters.

Malcolm Collins: Hilarious. Okay. Okay. So I'm gonna read here from the article that we were pulling these graphs from that I mentioned earlier.

Okay. And this is on the Tumblr hypothesis. Phelps, Roger and Rowling take us through the dizzying events of the early 2000 tens. This is the witch trials of JK Rowling is talking about here. Okay. As the social media site, Tumblr exploded in popularity reaching its peak in early 2014. Tumblr hit peak popularity in 2014, and also Vivaciousness Tumblr was different from Facebook and other sites because it was not based on anyone's social network.

Mm-hmm. It brought together people from anywhere in the world who shared an interest and often an obsession. Oh yeah. Yeah. [00:19:00] Like

Simone Collins: affinity groups rather than your immediate friends. Like Facebook was Really,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: Your college friends and and, and then your high school friends, but yeah, this, yeah, you're right.

That is okay. That is

Malcolm Collins: interesting. Phelps Roger interviewed several experts who all pointed to Tumblr as the main Petri dish in the nascent ideas of identity fragility language. Harm and victimhood, which evolved and intermixed there. Mm-hmm. Angela Nagel, author of Kill All Normies, described the culture that emerged among young activists on Tumblr, especially around gender identity in this way.

Hmm. There was a culture that was encouraged on Tumblr, which was to be able to describe your unique non-normative self, and that's to some extent a feature of modern society anyway, but it was taken to such an extreme that people begin to describe this. As a snowflake, referring to the idea of each snowflake is unique.

The person who constructs a totally kind of boutique identity for themselves and then guards that identity in a very, very sensitive way, reacts in an enraged way when [00:20:00] anyone does not respect the uniqueness of that identity. And I saw this. A hundred percent. Were you like, not from the Tumblr perspective, but from the other side, because I was really into Tumblr in action.

Mm-hmm. Which was for finding crazy Tumblr posts. I was really into exploring the crazier side of Tumblr all the time because I found it from a psychological perspective, really interesting. And humorously, you know, I didn't see them as not my people either. I saw the, the Tumblr people. As it, it's very much like, well, like related to nerdy culture and stuff like that.

I, I may have had some like, oh my god, they're so silly, whatever. But like silly people should be able to do what silly people want and there's no harm to this. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And strange Aons on YouTube does so many great Tumblr deep dives. Yeah. I don't find myself associating it with. Mental toxicity so much as, as I find myself associating it with weird and communities

Malcolm Collins: is this is where [00:21:00] even the modern concept of trans identity evolved on Tumblr.

Because before Tumblr transness was something you needed to be diagnosed with 'cause you needed gender dysphoria. And then the people on Tumblr who were like, oh you're not trans 'cause you aren't diagnosed. They were called Tru Scum. And this whole movement evolved that sort of harassed them constantly.

And then the two cutes, the one that said anyone can be any gender they want, whenever they feel like it, they basically won that war. And it's also where the Theon community evolved. These were the people who wanted to be identified as animals and stuff like that. Oh, right. On top of all. So Therians are not furries, right?

They're No, they're not. It's more like. Trans to Crossdresser. That's Syrian to furries. Crossdressers. No, they're not actually the other gender. And they're like, this is just something I like doing. Yeah. Furries. No, they're not actually the, the animal. They're like, this is just something I like doing. Thank you.

And then they're crazy ones who think that they're like actually a raccoon or a girl or something like that.

Simone Collins: Although that seems to have really died down recently. Is it just me? The, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think so.

Simone Collins: Really? [00:22:00] What makes you say that? I just haven't seen many recent YouTube videos of them talking about their lives and howling and running through the woods.

I had. They're always wolves. Why are they always wolves? Hmm?

Malcolm Collins: I'd wanna be a wolf if I was like connected to something. No.

Simone Collins: Brutal life. Terrible existence.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hungry

Simone Collins: all the time. Cold. They look cold. Wolves always look cold. I guess everything

Malcolm Collins: you eat has to be like a living thing, so that's, everything you eat is

Simone Collins: raw.

You, you're, yes, you're always hungry, and again, they always look cold and they don't.

Malcolm Collins: Don't look, you know, it's funny that you mentioned that. I, I, I was thinking today like because I was watching a video on Mormon preppers and like all the food they have, and I was like, that's so great. Why not just get more bullets?

Here's the trick, here's the 'cause. They're

Simone Collins: not

Malcolm Collins: mean. Okay. They're not. Here's the trick about society. Humans are made of food. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: All, I don't wanna get mad cow disease by [00:23:00] eating human. You don't have to eat their

Malcolm Collins: brain. If you cook them, you don't have to worry. They're as safe as any beef or pig or anything like that.

So long as you don't eat the brains, because then you're not worried about prion disease. But humans are made of food. You don't often think about that. But it's a, it's a neat little trick for apocalypses. This one trick.

Oh, God, I hate you so much. You hate me so much.

Speaker: Uh, it's only been like four hours. Aren't you resorting to cannibalism a little quickly? That's the law of the land, Mr. Director. Now wait a minute, we all had a big breakfast.

Can't you people go without eating for a little while?

Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay. Although I,

Simone Collins: I can tell you right away, our kids would love building traps

Malcolm Collins: for humans. They, yeah. Yes. Yes. They, they talk about that sort of stuff all the time. All the time. One, our kid actually came to, to Moun and, and he is like, okay, I want to eat people like zombie vampires.

And you saw that vampires ate people, and you were like, no, vampires don't eat people. And he's like, well, what does, right. Like, so he [00:24:00] could play the, the right thing. Because you scolded him for playing, eating people as a vampire? Well,

Simone Collins: no. He was just like, well, mommy, like, vampire's gonna eat me. I'm like, no, not exactly.

Vampires consume blood like mosquitoes and ticks. And he, he, I just, you know, I didn't, I missed entirely what he was all about because I was deep on the lore with him and I was deeply annoyed that he thought that zombies couldn't go outside during the day, which is every color of wrong. He needs to understand,

but now he's obsessed with. Scv anything, but I'm deeply, deeply disturbed by this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he's scv. He's got a dis scv. So the, what happened with Tumblr is this was the first time it became popular to list your mental illnesses alongside your like gender in your bio.

Simone Collins: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Just like in our discard people list the number of children they have.

But on Tumblr, the status was just how mentally ill you are.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, it is, it was [00:25:00] clearly like a part of your status. It was alongside your gender. Mm-hmm. You would, you would, and then you'd have like flags associated with, because you know, when you've removed identity, when you've removed a person's connection to their ethnicity and religion and, and, and history, or you've made them ashamed of it, people need to find identity somewhere else.

And this No. Yeah. Well, no, in,

Simone Collins: in any. Community where they're trying to show status. There are things that you use as markers, like in the VAR reach community that tries to pretend that it's not var reach, it's how much lower PI you you wear. Yeah. And that's like, it's, there's all these little things that like people utilize.

And mental that is so like, such a bad sign when this is your amount of, it's like spoons, you know, like, oh, well I, you think you're sick. I'm on an iv. Ha.

Malcolm Collins: It's like a community. Yeah. Where it became cool to like get amputations or something and then it's like, I got more amputations than you. I mean, literally the trans community.

But like. I, I was thinking recently [00:26:00] the way that we relate to gender transition, given that it appears to be a culture bound illness like anorexia, you know, overwhelmingly in autistic individuals at that exact same age tied to body dysmorphia, it would be the same as treating anorexia by removing people's organs to make them lighter.

Like an anorexic person would tell you like. This is great. Like they removed a few of my organs that I didn't a hundred percent need one of my lungs, maybe a uterus.

Simone Collins: That's not how it works.

Malcolm Collins: It, it would be okay. Okay. Actually, a very good analogy would be like removing people's uterus who are anorexic to make them lighter.

Simone Collins: Yeah, especially, yeah. Yeah, because it's like additional like abdominal volume that you'd be thrilled to get rid of. Everyone's that flat bought belly, and you also want that gap. So if you could just like remove. Like musculature from your thighs. Be thrilled. And the anorexic

Malcolm Collins: people would be thrilled about this.

They'd tell everyone afterwards, this is the best surgery. I love it. Pro Anna is like a huge thing, like yeah. But, but all the same people would be like, that is a really bad way to handle this [00:27:00] condition. Yeah. So, so to continue here, Nagel described how on the other side of the political spectrum there was.

The most insensitive culture imaginable, which was the culture of four chan. The communities involved in gender activism on on Tumblr were mostly young, progressive women, while four chan was mostly used by right-leaning young men. So while there was an increasingly gendered nature of the online conflict, the two communities supercharged each other with their mutual hatred.

As often happens in a culture war, the young identity activist on Tumblr embraced their new notions of identity, fragility, and trauma. All the more tightly, increasingly saying that words are a form of violence. While young men on four chan moved in the opposite direction, they brandish a rough and rude masculinity, which in which status was gained by using words more insensitively than the next guy.

It was out of this rough. Reciprocal dynamic that experts on the podcast suggest that today's canceled cultures were born in the early 2000 tens. Mm. And I do think that that's what we're seeing here. This is also where [00:28:00] the birth of what became the new Right. The tech right. The MAGA Republicans came from, as we pointed out in one of our videos, for people who want to see an interesting, his historical documentary, the new right.

The, the modern maga Right. The online right. Was born out of. The atheist movement. Mm-hmm. The online atheist and skeptic movement which split into two groups. One group was like, oh, you guys weren't actually interested in the truth. You just wanted to dunk on conservatives. And then the other group was actually interested in the truth, and many of them have converted back into religions like ourselves.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But very, very interesting to note that all of this started on Tumblr versus four chan. Trump was first pushed by four chan, and when I say four Chan got Trump elected, many people are like, well, four Chan wasn't that relevant in the general election? In his first general election.

I agree. But four chan was super important in gaining him internet popularity and making him seen as a viable candidate in the

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: And people forget what a joke candidate he [00:29:00] was in the primaries that all the other conservatives were making fun of him and four chan mean him into Yeah.

But he is the main counterculture candidate.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: We have what we have now. We have Doge now, all of this. And keep in mind how much the culture of MAGA still has those four chan roofs that Elon called Doge. Doge, literally like a meme coin with like a a, a, a dog that was caught used on four chan.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now let's look at more modern evidence. Okay? Yes. New evidence from a 2024 American Family Survey indicates it is young liberal women are markedly less satisfied with their lives than their conservative peers. And this is from the original article, not the second article. Okay. Okay. Specifically, we found that 37% of conservative women reported being completely satisfied with life.

Well, only 12% of liberal women did so less than a half

Simone Collins: back to that high school elementary school friend of mine. Then and now you know me. Now her, now it's, it's You say you're

Malcolm Collins: completely [00:30:00] satisfied.

Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah. Especially vis-a-vis her. I mean, obviously there are so many ambitions and things that we want to achieve together and we wanna have so many more kids.

We wanna do so much more good in the world. But that comes from a place of like. A deep feeling of agency and satisfaction and

Malcolm Collins: it was what we've already done.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like that we can do that.

Malcolm Collins: Young conservative women were three times as likely to report being very satisfied with life compared to young liberal women.

Moreover, liberal women are two to three times more likely to report that they are, quote unquote, not satisfied with their lives compared to conservative women. And consistent with previous research, the effect of ideology on young women's happiness held up. Two controls for age, education, and race. And so I'm putting a graph on screen here that says, liberal women least likely to be completely satisfied with life.

And you see it's a, just a huge difference. And it goes up, it's 12% for, for liberals, 28% for moderates, 37% for conservatives. So huge jump there. Now let's look [00:31:00] at loneliness rates. Okay, so it's not just this, and this is in 2024, right? So. With liberal women, 29% say they feel lonely. Often only 11% of conservative women feel that, and you get the middling 19% for moderates.

Simone Collins: Do you think this is because conservatism likely tracks really highly with being a member of a church and that's built in community? I.

Malcolm Collins: I think so, but I don't think that that's all of this. I would assume you're actually finding the same thing with liberal women who attend churches. Well, and I

Simone Collins: would, I would guess so.

I think it's two factors. Yes. I think one, it's that, that there's a higher correlation of church attendance and therefore community membership. But I would also argue that I, conservative woman and a liberal woman with the same amount of social interaction in their lives would probably define the state of their.

Loneliness differently in that a a, a progressive woman would be far more likely and perceive it

it differently. Yeah.

Perceive it is like, this is a problem. I don't feel perfectly satisfied or I feel [00:32:00] like what I see. No,

Malcolm Collins: I, I disagree with the way you're framing this. I, I think the conservatives genuinely feel less lonely even if they are the same amount of interpersonal interaction.

Because there is no status to be gained. So your emotions, the way you relate to your emotional state is largely due to your internal framings. You can significantly alter. Very internal state.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and so with the conservative, there is no benefit to self victimization. And so they don't do it.

Liberals are trained to have this mindset through things like Tumblr and stuff like that, like even your, well, they're also trained to know that

Simone Collins: if

Malcolm Collins: they

Simone Collins: don't feel 100% perfect, that that is a problem. Whereas I think conservatives are more likely to understand that the state is transient or not even think about it.

Not even be like, oh, this is, I'm feeling something bad. Ah, you know, they're just like, okay. Yeah. You know, the bigger things to worry about

Malcolm Collins: your friend. Right. When we were reading her quote like mm-hmm. This, like, why is she posting that? Like if, if you [00:33:00] were feeling sad, would you post it? Like if you

Simone Collins: were feeling she's trying to post, she's, she's, I think she's signaling that she's a hot mess right now.

That she's not happy, she's not feeling okay, that she thinks the world is terrible. And she's looking for social affirmation and she does have some comments on that, that are like, that's my friend. And like, oh, you look great. And things like that. So I think. I, I think it's, and maybe it's also.

Malcolm Collins: And I'd also point out with her post, her post is as I think very normal, it's not cringe.

It's not like pathetic liberal beatty stuff. It is I consider like a very, I think you did a very good job of finding like a very average and normal post for a progressive to make that a conservative would never make.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's not like, it's not an unhinged libs of TikTok thing, it's just what a, yeah.

This Simone's private friend from high school is randomly posting on, you know, a certain day of the week. In spring and, and that's, [00:34:00] yeah. And like what are all my posts? Just our, our

Malcolm Collins: kids, they're often ideological. Well, they're meant to have agency in the world. Like your posts are either our kids, like showing off like your family so that other people are jealous and hate their lives.

Which is more like

Simone Collins: I, I, I take pictures of our kids and I'm like, oh, they're so cute. Then I wanna post them. 'cause I hate wasting the pretty 'cause they're so pretty.

Malcolm Collins: I do the same thing. I stick 'em at the end of videos so that people are forced to form a pair of social relationship with us in

Simone Collins: this is un non, non-consensual.

Malcolm Collins: You going forward is, I'm gonna try, try, keep in mind to take out curse words, even from added clip.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. I'm, yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: So that our videos can be safe for kids. Well, I don't

Simone Collins: think kids need to be shielded from curse words, but I think they should be taught that curse words are. Yeah, for lack of a better way to put it, like low class a, a sign, curse words are a sign of not having enough creativity to use a turn of phrase that actually gives the message that you want, the wit that you want.

Well, I think

Malcolm Collins: we need to figure out ways to be vulgar without curse words to be ide [00:35:00] ideologically vulgar. When

Simone Collins: I read, when I read Emily Post from the 1940s, this woman has the sickest burns, but she doesn't use any sling. She doesn't use any affectation.

Malcolm Collins: But, but Simone here, here's a way I can be vulgar without any, any, I think Trump should have another term.

That's, that's, I was talking with the BB, C and another UK outlet today. I didn't say that, but I So should have said that. I, so should have said that. I should have been like, well, you know, of course we're really excited for his next term to just, I love when he sometimes drops jokes about that in

Simone Collins: press conference because he knows, like he can probably see.

The pulsing veins in the foreheads of some of the people, the journalists present? No, they're,

Malcolm Collins: they're manifesting this by freaking out about it so much. Only

Simone Collins: doing it in the same way that a kid in school. Will bully a child because that child goes re really, it's hard not to when, when they react in such a pleasurable fashion.

Malcolm Collins: [00:36:00] Yeah. No. That's what we're all here for, right? This is why, you know, we live for. The day after Trump gets election and, and everyone's having a meltdown, like that's one of our better performing videos of course, because everybody wants to watch the meltdowns. Yeah. And we should be watching more meltdown.

I need to get more meltdowns. This is a problem. Right. You know, people denying reality, saying oh, actually Trump, there was a, a huge thing of like people thinking that Trump wasn't actually gonna be sworn into office. There was. Yeah. Yeah. I was a little late to do a piece on it, but I thought it would be, you know, funny.

But were, were, were people, there were all these conspiracy theories that, like the dims were gonna like trick him at the last moment and they're, they, they had been talking about it.

Simone Collins: Oh. So now they like January 6th as a concept.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, of course.

Simone Collins: When it's, of course, when it's there. January 6th.

Malcolm Collins: And I mean, they, they literally tried to, to put him in jail on like trumped up charges.

Was that felony conviction? Yeah. It was

Simone Collins: clear they, they were planning to circumvent democracy.

Malcolm Collins: But what, well, here's, here's a fun little conspiracy theory I hadn't [00:37:00] heard before. Okay. I love, did you know that the only time that CNN was filming any of Trump's speeches, they never filmed any of his speeches live except for the one where he was shot?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: It's

Malcolm Collins: the only speech

Simone Collins: of him in Butler, Pennsylvania in, but Butler, that's when they decided to go live.

Malcolm Collins: Why?

Simone Collins: Well, it was a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer. There isn't a lot to work with Lum Cycle, or,

Malcolm Collins: or, or maybe, or maybe.

Simone Collins: There's a lot, there's a lot of highly. Irregular stuff around that particular shooting.

So,

Malcolm Collins: hey, we still have no good information on what the guy, the, the, the, the explanation we have is super suss. I heard something about like, his house had been like ra ran through when they, when they went to check it and it was like missing things. It was weird. I, I don't know. I, we will do an episode on it if we do an episode on it where we can go over [00:38:00] the conspiracy of the Butler shooting.

Yes. But I wouldn't be like shocked if, you know, it was just too obvious like that roof. It's, it's not like that roof is, is like Oh, and out of the way. It is literally the only raised location anywhere around there. Yeah. It's literally the number one. The only, and why, why

Simone Collins: wouldn't, why and why wouldn't the secret service be on that roof?

It would have been because it was

Malcolm Collins: slanted. They weren't on

Simone Collins: it. Oh, God forbid they slip and fall.

Malcolm Collins: A teenager. Yeah. Oh no. OSHA would

Simone Collins: not stand for that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, oh my God. Well, this shows what happens when you put all these DEI people, you know, that was when the Secret Service was being run by a lady. And we know that, that a lady was not the most qualified person to run the Secret Service.

I don't mean this in like a, women don't know this stuff way, I mean this in a, I know statistically the number of men versus the number of women in the Secret Service means it's highly unlikely that the most competent [00:39:00] person in the entire Secret Service was a woman.

Simone Collins: Oh. Just because, yeah. If you have like 74.

Women. Candidates and you have 538 Yes. Male candidates. We have a problem.

Malcolm Collins: There's, there's like no way, like this was obviously DEI nonsense. So maybe, maybe she was trying to protect her job, you know, chump gets taken out and then she doesn't have to worry about the DEI cleanups 'cause she was on the out after he came in anyway, given what's been going on within the government.

Simone Collins: Who knows.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you to death, Simone. It has been fun chatting with you about this. No. What do we, what

Simone Collins: do we do with this information?

Malcolm Collins: Just like, well, I, I think that, one is noting that conservatives, whatever happened to progressives is now happening to conservatives. Whatever happened to progressives, it's continuing to happen and, and get worse over time.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

We need, but the conservatives aren't just devoid. It's not like, you know, whenever you see a progressive, you know, tell them you're sorry and give them a benzo. It's, it's like, [00:40:00] actually there's something. Going on. You need to be aware that this

Malcolm Collins: is happening in our community as well. Mm-hmm. And, and fight against it.

And, and fight against it through focusing on, you know, an internal locus of control. Promoting an internal locus of control. Mm-hmm. Promoting self responsibility. I'd say stay away from therapists, like your life depends on it. And then, I mean, who would've thought

Simone Collins: that, like, we'd end up taking this very Scientology esque.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's funny because modern therapy, as I often say, functions more like ology. It's like Scientology psychology. That's what,

Simone Collins: that's such a weird double reverse flip.

Malcolm Collins: But it's, it's, so, it's, I had a friend reach out to me, a, a progressive who heard me rant about this a long time ago, and apparently thought I was being stupid or crazy.

She recently emailed me and was like, you know, I started going to work on these issues with a number of psychologists, and you were right. I had no idea how bad it is. I am dedicating. A big portion of my life and philanthropic efforts now to bringing attention to how bad modern psychology has become.

This is the story of

Simone Collins: your life. You're like, [00:41:00] oh, this is a problem. Everyone says, Malcolm, you're crazy. Malcolm, you're delusional. Malcolm, you need to get checked out. Malcolm, you're, you're lying through your teeth five years later. Oh yeah, you

Malcolm Collins: were right about that. That was kind of crazy. Malcolm. Yeah.

Or they just

Simone Collins: pretend that they always agreed with you and that you're delusional In saying that you were ahead of the time on this?

Malcolm Collins: I always, not a new fertility collapse was a problem. I always knew it a developed world problem. I always knew that the psychologist had basically become a scam cult. Yeah.

I always knew. And, and no, there are still good psychologists out there. It's just, it's hard to identify them. And I think that I wouldn't risk it was my own kids. Now, now I am somebody who was trained as a psychologist. Okay. That's part of my training as a neuroscientist. I was trained in that. I worked in that field, you know, I am not antis psychology.

I went to psychology. Well, there are

Simone Collins: also so many other interventions that would be so [00:42:00] much more effective, like changing the context of the subject. Because that's often so frequently at the root of their problems, or there are underlying health issues. There are just so many other things you can do first that will likely solve the underlying problem.

And I think the problem with psychology, I. Is it often only deals with surface stuff when you, you can't solve that until you've shifted the other language. It is

Malcolm Collins: literally right. Like, like nut up and work out. I think the reason why that culture has done Yeah.

Simone Collins: People realize, oh my gosh, wait, this is suddenly working for me.

Like I, I switched to intermittent fasting and I work out three times a week and suddenly I feel okay.

Malcolm Collins: Well it reminds me of Christian science. So a lot of people don't know this. Christian scientists, it's like a branch of Protestantism. It's not actual Christian science. But anyway, when it was founded, it's so cool though.

Simone Collins: It sounds, I'm just picturing, you know, it,

Malcolm Collins: it sounds cool, but when it was founded, it had a belief that, that they still hold today against medical technology. [00:43:00] Mm-hmm. You know, no, IVF no blood transfusion, no. Anything like that. Right? Yeah. But in the past, theoretically, no. No leaching, no bleeding. No.

Yeah. Isn't that backwards? But when it was founded. The medical profession had gotten so bad with quack treatments, they likely were better off not engaging with the medical field. It was likely an adaptive cultural evolutionary trait during its early period, 100%. It only became ill adaptive as the science got better.

But science is getting worse now. Like there's a reason to distrust science again. And in addition to that, psychology, which used to be great psychiatry, which used to, you know, serve a purpose is, is getting worse. Mm-hmm. And I'd say that now we're back to sort of where it was in the eighties when people were doing like hypnosis and implanted memories and stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Your, your kids will be incepted to hate you if you send them.

Simone Collins: Ah,

Malcolm Collins: anyway, love. You did ask Simone. Have a spa. Oh, oh, by the way, great study. I sent Simone on [00:44:00] this. If you're like, well, what do I do as an alternative? Ai ai what, what's the study that I sent you is great little statistic there and

Simone Collins: people, they can't tell the difference between an AI therapist and a human therapist, and also the ai I think they, like the AI therapist did better in some measure.

I can't, I, I didn't read the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. But that doesn't surprise me at all because when you look at those chat apps that people like high school students are getting addicted to, like my AI boyfriend, I can't quit him. It's not the boyfriend I. Scenarios that are even the most popular on these platforms.

The number one chat scenarios that are popular in all of these, and not because they're trying to fob this off on people. One, the safer work

Malcolm Collins: ones, I should clarify, but the safer, yeah,

Simone Collins: no it's, it's therapists. This is already proven. People are showing with their clicks that this is really effective for them.

And it's, you know, when I con, when I contrast this. To people's experiences on better help. I don't know if you've watched any of the mini YouTube [00:45:00] exposes on Better Help. Better Help is a bad idea. It's, it's awful. And what, what is the

Malcolm Collins: expose on? Like what, what's the ridiculousness of it?

Simone Collins: Oh, the, the, the therapists on it are, are really phoning it in and not very good at all.

They'll actively. Like not know anything about the conditions of the, the people that are asking for help. There's just like a lot of people who really shouldn't be on the platform, who are on the platform. And so this is why use ai,

Malcolm Collins: use

Simone Collins: Clause?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Honestly,

Simone Collins: I don't think you even need to use like a therapist, AI just.

Just talk through things. No, just go

Malcolm Collins: to go to clock. Rod would be a good AI for this. Grock would be a good AI for this. All right. Love you did, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too.

Malcolm Collins: Gorgeous.

Simone Collins: What shall we do next? It's

Malcolm Collins: just making everything extra difficult.

Simone Collins: Well, at

Malcolm Collins: least it won't interfere with my workload.

Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly. But, you know,

Malcolm Collins: sick on a plane. [00:46:00] I showed Simone Art from art assets from the upcoming game, and she loved every faction that, that, the Catholic faction, the Mormon faction, the Quiverfull faction, she hated the techno Puritan faction.

She said they looked like Voldemort. And I was like, well, I, I expect

Simone Collins: more. Machine integration. This is the techno puritan branch, and it's in the future we are gonna have a lot more cybernetics going on.

Malcolm Collins: You want more cybernetics with them? I, I tried to do some cybernetics and it always over. Does it?

Simone Collins: Is there such a thing? I guess you need the Chanel rule of cybernetics. Just take one. Device off before you leave the house, then you'll be,

Malcolm Collins: but the other factions, by the way, are looking boss like I, I really like it. They're, they're really differentiated. I think people will have a lot of fun. It basically takes like American and American and religious, cultural anthropology and like dials it up to 11.

The way that I think should always

Simone Collins: be dialed up. I love it. It's so true. That's the way he,

Malcolm Collins: yes. Over the top. [00:47:00] Over the top.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Over the top or bust,

right?