Status Signaling and Material Possessions

In this video, we dig into why today's billionaires and high status people often have very muscular physiques. We explore how physical attributes like muscularity have historically signaled social status in different ways across different cultures and time periods. From tanned skin to calf muscles to informal clothing, status symbols are always changing. We talk about how steroids and social media are disrupting traditional notions of high status masculinity. Finally, we speculate on what the next big status symbols might be in a social media-dominated world where everyone can fake looking good online.

Simone: [00:00:00]

Simone: like in the early days of tech CEOs becoming super wealthy, they would wear pretty disrespectfully informal clothes as a flex because they could, And then I think we saw the, like the height of it with Sam Bankman freed.

Malcolm: if you look at the billionaires today, , they're pretty buff. They are, they are very muscular And the question is, is why are individuals doing this? I think we need to take a little history lesson here

Malcolm: If you want to understand why Andrew Tate like he talks about low T males, except you can tell by looking at a male's face. How much testosterone they were exposed to when they were in their developmental stages, .

Malcolm: , when you look at the far left and the far right, they both seem to have body dysmorphia Would you like to know more?

Simone: hello, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am excited to talk to you today. So one of the things I've been doing recently, because I was like, okay, well, Andrew Tate's a really big conservative influencer, I wanted to really dive into his longer form content to understand.

Malcolm: The underpinnings of his philosophy [00:01:00] and a big part of it is be muscly, look

Simone: like he, he like actively advocates for people to lift.

Malcolm: And one of the things he points out, and this is absolutely true is if you look at the billionaires today, the people in our society that are like top of the social hierarchy, presumably a lot of them, whether it's Bezos or Musk recently, I don't know if anyone's seen him recently or Zuckerberg.

Malcolm: They're pretty buff. They are, they are very muscular. Actually it's very interesting. So I think many people have this view of Elon Musk from this one shot of him on a yacht , but if you look at like recent pictures of him, he looks Bezos y. That's what I would think.

Malcolm: Oh no, doesn't really, okay. Okay but the point being is that you see this sort of across the billionaire class right now, right? And so Andrew Tate's taking that as evidence that, look, once you don't have any other needs, you realize the importance of muscle. And then you'd be like, and as a man, as a man, maybe not as a man.

Malcolm: Of course. And throughout [00:02:00] history, here, you can see this. The problem is it's got history. You can't see this what you actually see and what is actually going on here. And this is a very interesting phenomenon to dissect so like, let's talk about luxury cars, right?

Malcolm: If you are buying a pointless luxury car to signal your status or build a self narrative of, I am a person with X type of things, you need to actually think about. What you're giving up when you spend three times on a car, what you would otherwise spend. It's the same as muscle. Where there is a level that you need to exercise to be at optimum physical health.

Malcolm: And then there's a level way beyond that, where it is about signaling something to your environment or to yourself or changing aspects of your chemistry, which we can also talk about. And the question is, is why are individuals doing this? I think we need to take a little history lesson here to something that my parents pointed out to me when I was growing [00:03:00] up and really helped me contextualize physical status symbols.

Malcolm: Okay. So when I was growing up, my house, they actually had a tanning bed in my house. My mom had bought a tanning bed for tanning. And my dad, he pointed out to me, he goes, when I was growing up a long time ago, you go, you go back a long time ago. Having a tan was considered very low class. The reason why having a tan was considered low class back then is because the lower classes did physical, manual labor.

Malcolm: So they would get tans, and then the wealthy, and you can see this, this is why historically, you look at the old west or something like that, the high class women would have these

Simone: parasols all the time. No, better than that, have you seen like even middle ages I think, like throughout history riding masks?

Simone: They're scary, like women would wear these Yeah,

Malcolm: yeah, so throughout most of history, tans were considered very, very, very

Simone: low class. Well, and even currently keep in mind, have you seen like [00:04:00] the sort of bikini burqa face mask things? Well, I want

Malcolm: to talk about how this flipped again, okay? Okay, yeah.

Malcolm: So then there was a generation... Where tans became common because everyone was like, okay. So first let's talk about how tans became high class. Well, what you had is a culture where the lower class, instead of working on farms, because all that had been automated, they were working. at McDonald's or whatever, right?

Malcolm: So the only people who could spend all day in the sun

Simone: were rich people. Who could go on, especially like it became to be associated with expensive vacations where you sat on a beach. Like it was a sign of luxury. So tanning was a sign that you could afford to literally fly somewhere sunny, especially like even in the winter months.

Simone: So let's assume that like the entire population. All works inside anyway, but you know, only the wealthy would be able to fly to some exotic beach and get baked by the

sun.

Malcolm: Yeah. And then, and then tanning beds became common. And on top of [00:05:00] tanning beds, fake tans became common, right? Yeah. Which were very inexpensive and they got better and better and better.

Malcolm: And then you had this era where, and this always happens when you have these class signals, right? Is it often the, the people who grow up in, in very I guess you could call it lower class environments and up overcompensating was this classic, right? So today you'll see this in things like jewelry, right?

Malcolm: Where like a rapper may just absolutely cover themselves in jewelry the way you would never see anything else doing it because they're like, oh, this is a sign of wealth. So I'm showing how much wealth I have. Right. And you had, this was tanning as well, where they would get these. really deep almost comical tans to other people.

Malcolm: And then where this really began to become broadcast and this had become a lower class or very nouveau riche, so there's two sort of groups of nouveau riche. One group of nouveau riche is a group that integrates well with older money society. And they get considered genuinely upper class individuals.

Malcolm: The other group is a group that like. [00:06:00] I don't know if you call them autistic, but they don't really get it. Like they get off in some way. And this is what like Jersey Shore. So Gen Z have no idea what I'm talking about when I'm talking about like Snooki or Jersey Shore.

Simone: I discovered recently that Jersey Shore has a comeback season on television right now, so maybe they do.

Malcolm: Okay. But anyway, so this then. Advertise for the general public, Oh, now tans are again, lower class because they are attainable to everyone and the sort of clueless class, which is generally obvious to both the high class and the low class has gone overboard with them as a means of status signaling. And now we all know now.

Malcolm: These are low class. And so then as to Simone is talking about it is now again become a quote unquote upper class thing to hide your face from the sun all the time,

Simone: right? Well, and this, this varies across culture and also like varies depending on what technology shows. I mean, obviously right now there's a lot of emphasis on either getting a fake tan or Not being exposed to [00:07:00] the sun at all because another huge class signifier, at least status signifier is, is youth, especially among women.

Simone: So of course they're trying to hide from the sun, but I would say that what you're describing here is a, an oscillation that has happened basically as long as there has been culture and you see, evidence of the oscillation being dealt with in really interesting ways. For example, there's a really interesting course on Wondrium slash by the teaching company on food history.

Simone: And the lecturer talks about how food food trends have oscillated between like extremely complex disgusting, really difficult to eat meals. Imagine the turducken, where you've got like a pigeon inside a turkey inside a, whatever, a swan, and it's just like disgusting versus like really simple food.

Simone: And a lot of it depended on what. What people of, of lower means we're able to do. And they always want to copy, of course, people with higher means. And then the obviously the people of higher means rebelling and trying to show that they're different from people of lower means to play their status games.

Malcolm: Baroque style, right? You [00:08:00] get to this stage where it becomes so, what was the style after Baroque, like ultra Baroque or something?

Simone: Rococo. I mean, like post Baroque was just Baroque plus natural features. Sort of like, back to like simplism again. Well, yeah. And then, and then we got neoclassical where it all went all back to sort of Roman columns and clean lines.

Simone: You went from like really poofy dresses to the empire waste where you basically have a female column of address. But then of course you also have things like sumptuary laws where literally it has been illegal to bring, many like periods of history to. to have, shoes of a certain length or to have the clothes of a certain color or to just like own certain objects if you weren't in a certain level of society because there's been so much interest and I think so much like frustration on behalf of like wealthy people who really want to show off their status of like God like these people keep copying me how do I show that I'm special like guys just Stop.

Simone: This is

Malcolm: mine. Stop copying me. [00:09:00] This is how like purple became like a wealthy color, right? Because it was really expensive to get and you had to crush shells that were only found in like Phoenicia. Right. And so it was one of the major Phoenician industries. And then people would outlaw people who weren't in the upper classes from wearing purple once it became easier to copy these colors.

Malcolm: Yeah. And you'll see this throughout history. Another really interesting example here. You're talking about people who aren't from like the Western cultural tradition. Is you look at like fat activists and they're like, well, it was in some cultures being fat was considered high class and it's

Simone: absolutely true 100%.

Malcolm: But we also have longitudinal studies on those cultures after they acquired wealth and modernity. And it turns out that once there is no longer food scarcity within those cultures being fat immediately becomes low class. Um, As soon as you introduce them to modern food stuffs, where if you are eating like the more addictive, cheaper foods, you get fatter.

Malcolm: Those, those cultures every single time have actually flipped to fat being low

Simone: [00:10:00] class. And I would, I would say there's correlatory factor. Among people we know, and we know, we, we, we know, and our friends with people at every level of the income, like spectrum. Right. I would say that a really common factor among those at the highest net worth level, like way, way, like insanely high is like the best diet and the most disciplined to like levels of discipline that are like

Malcolm: cheffs that make them like fancy.

Malcolm: Like fish dishes every day. And

Simone: They're much more likely also to just be on very low calorie diets, vegetables only, there's no snack foods. They're, they're very careful about those things. And yeah, it's, it's definitely not even necessarily, it's almost certainly, it's not about comfort, but let's bring it back to muscles.

Simone: Cause I think that's really interesting. And I'm thinking about ancient Greek and Roman statues. They, people would be like, yeah, see mussels have always been a sign of status, but I actually think that mussels are more a sign of beauty. Then they were really a sign of status. And when you look at these statues [00:11:00] of famous leaders.

Simone: They are not terribly muscular. They are just sort of like, whatever. You would have muscular servants

Malcolm: in a lot of these periods. Yeah. So why is muscle big today? And the answer is because it is the single one. We haven't really found a good way to fake muscle yet. Steroids are now getting big.

Malcolm: So I expect this trend to reverse. So we'll talk about that in a second. But, it is a thing that, assuming no steroids, was actually pretty hard for wealthy people to fake hard for anyone to fake to an extent, and it required an enormous time investment. Building big muscles as a man shows there are a certain number of hours every day to look like Jeff Bezos, right?

Malcolm: And that is how it became the class status signal of our generation. The reason why it will fall as a class status signal is everyone basically found out, okay stare like exogenous [00:12:00] steroids. So men generate more of these than women, like endogenous or it's great more than women, and that's why it's easier for them to gain muscle mass.

Malcolm: And women, that's why I like on average, men are like 50% stronger than women. And most. strength test. But you can take these extra, you can increase your amount of steroids, right? Historically when we were growing up, there was a lot of these campaigns meant to convince people that like this caused Roid Rage and all sorts of other negative effects.

Malcolm: The truth is, is yes, it does shrink the size of your testicles and some other things. But generally the negative effects really aren't that big and there isn't any proof that it causes a Roid Rage for the last, I, I looked into the research on this. So it's just. Really not that bad to take a small balls.

Malcolm: Well, if the, if the, if the alternative is class status signaling and working out three less hours a day, which it really is like ain't dramatically lowers the amount you need to work out. Well,

Simone: and my understanding too, it's I've never really heard about women caring about ball size. It doesn't affect penis size, does it?

Malcolm: No, no, not as far as I know. Well,

Simone: then yeah, I guess no one really cares. I've never been like, oh my god, have you like [00:13:00] seen how small A lot of

Malcolm: people, they don't care about their kids, right? Um, So, I guess the point I'm making is there was this campaign that was run in our youth to convince everyone that steroids are like this really scary thing.

Malcolm: And the truth is they're just not that scary. And because the ultra wealthy in our society don't trust science, I can tell you this, we know the ultra wealthy in our society, they do not trust science. They do their own research on everything. They have their own researchers working on everything. And

Simone: that's something that's happening regardless of.

Simone: level of wealth these days, I think.

Malcolm: Oh, yeah. Well, no, everyone, but I'm just saying, I think there's this perception among the general population that like the wealthy still trust science. They do not. No, not at all. So they do their own research on this stuff and they'll be like, okay, it's not that bad.

Malcolm: So it's become really common for them to use exogenous steroids. Um, uh, sort of, sort of Across groups, you know, do you

Simone: think that The, the, the problem here is you've basically got like what the actual billionaires are doing is they're putting in the work, [00:14:00] they're doing the training, like they're putting in the time because that's like a flex.

Simone: Literally.

Malcolm: Problem is we're going to, yeah, we're going to have soon.

Simone: And we have a bunch of people who are cheating by getting steroids. And it's funny, like we, we've gotten a lot of flack for implying that people who are into weightlifting. Our, our steroid users. But I've brought it up with a bunch of people and they're like, Oh yeah.

Simone: Like at this gym. Yeah. Like huge proportion. And I'm just, I am,

Malcolm: I honestly am perplexed when, when weightlifting people come to us and they're like, how dare you? I'm like, are you really not in the weightlifting community? Do you really not know how common it is? And I think that the only people who really do that are the people who aspire to the social status of weightlifters, but aren't actually in those communities, because everyone we know in those communities is oh, yeah, everyone's on exceptional steroids.

Malcolm: It's, it's incredibly common, because why? It's very little downside, and it literally shaves the, who has time to work [00:15:00] out four or three hours a day, right? Yeah, some people do. I guess if you're extremely wealthy and you have like this, this actual like personal aesthetics around, I don't use exogenous steroids, but if you can be, then you can be outcompeted.

Malcolm: Suppose I'm a social media influencer, right? And one of them is actually... Working out to get the muscles. Mm-hmm. And the other one is cheating to get the muscles and then spending the rest of the time editing their videos. Working

Simone: on ads. Yeah. Yeah. Spending more time posting. Yeah. Who's gonna do better?

Malcolm: They're always outcompete. This is why the liver king was the liver king. 10,000, was it $10,000 a day or something? Yeah,

Simone: it was over 10,000. Yeah. That was 10,000 on something. But he was

Malcolm: killing it. He was killing it, right?

Simone: Because he had the time, I guess.

Malcolm: So for a lot of this, there's this belief that then they'll say well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Malcolm: Being muscly has always been aesthetically manly. And it's you are not a nerd about history of fashion. I am. If you look historically. [00:16:00] Yes. A lot of the times in men, some muscles, because muscles have always been gender dimorphic. Okay. So men always had more muscles than women in the same way that like women have breasts like big breasts would show that you're more female, right?

Malcolm: Like gender dimorphism,

Simone: more muscles, more male. I get it.

Malcolm: But it's not the muscle groups that we care about today. You look at today. It's Ooh, like muscle, right? Historically you look at like medieval England. It's Ankles. Oh,

Simone: yeah. No, it's the calf, right? That's the lower

Malcolm: leg. The calf muscle. How big is this calf muscle?

Simone: Well, yeah. No In the French court of Louis XIV, a lot of it also came down to, yeah, like how your calf muscle looked with your little tights on and especially how your, essentially what became your bat leg turnout. Like when you turned out your leg a little bit, like how, how basically how flexible it was and how good your muscles looked.

Simone: In your little tights and well, I mean, you look at the

Malcolm: Men would have that more than women. So of course they focused on that, but it wasn't the same muscle groups were focused on today.

Simone: Yeah. And when you look at the clothing of men who were considered very [00:17:00] dominant, very high class and very much like George Washington, you can go to the Smithsonian museum of national history.

Simone: You can go and look at one of his uniforms and you will see that the man was. I'm friggin anorexic. I could not fit into his Your ancestor, by the way, George Washington. My great great great something uncle, yes. But I could not fit into his uniform. He was a thin man. And he was considered, extremely dominant.

Simone: I mean, they wanted to make him king, yeah, I totally agree. And even in the times of ancient Rome, where I think there was all this, definitely people celebrated the male form and the muscular male form, but they were gladiators. They were workers. Like you, you appreciated them, but like the leaders, the dominant in the

Malcolm: 1950s.

Malcolm: So if you go back at the 1950s, you go back at back to this era that a lot of people

Simone: Like the raw egg nationalist, the, the Bronze Ague Sherbet ideal.

Malcolm: Now what we always say about this 1950s aesthetic is that it was actually created by Hollywood at the time and should not be looked upon as like a standard of what society was actually like at the time and they didn't [00:18:00] care about people then any more than they do today.

Malcolm: But having a lot of muscle was considered low class. Because it was, it was the sign of being a manual labor. Now we don't really have manual laborers to like, there's not a lot of them. If you're living in a city, if you're living in any of the centers of quote unquote culture within our society today, you're not going to see manual laborers that they assume if you have muscle, it must mean you have a lot of free time during the day.

Malcolm: But in the 1950s, that wasn't the case. And you saw somebody that's really muscular. You'd be like, Oh, you're a dock worker. Oh, you're Popeye, right? This was not like, no, no, no, no, it's true. It's true. Muscles were seen actively as a sign of being uneducated and low class. And that is only just now beginning to trend.

Simone: In fact, when you, when you look at cartoon tropes, which I think are, are, are interesting indicators that the muscular one is the big stupid one, the grunt. Which is sort of interesting. I mean, like there's Superman, I guess, you know, who's like, you know, pretty muscular,

Malcolm: but Superman, when he's in human world, he doesn't look muscular.

Malcolm: No, [00:19:00] that's

Simone: true. Yeah. It's just when he throws on the spandex

Malcolm: he signals class because big thick glasses,

Simone: it's his disguise. I don't know. Superman's probably not the best example.

Malcolm: Okay. Okay.

Malcolm: If you want to understand why Andrew Tate feels he needs to have the body he has, versus the reason why I don't care about that, I'd say look at our faces.

Simone: Oh no, what does his face look like?

Simone: Oh no.

Simone: Couldn't he get work done? I mean, he could just get jaw implants.

Malcolm: I think he has, I don't know, too much pride for that.

Simone: And yeah, I guess people would notice if he got jaw implants.

Malcolm: Yeah, I don't mean to like insult somebody else's look, but

Simone: You think it's compensatory because he doesn't have

Malcolm: a masc he does not have a masculine jaw. A highly masculine eyespace. It is not a face that was formed in the presence of testosterone.

Malcolm: It is a face that was formed Actually, in the absence of testosterone, he really looks like if you imagined him with a weaker body, assuming he's taking exogenous surgeries or anything, you'd be like, this is the face of somebody who grew up without any testosterone in [00:20:00] their

Simone: bloodstream.

Simone: That's interesting. I'm looking up Oh! Oh, interesting. Maybe he went for the beard to emphasize his jaw. Well, I'm actually surprised

Malcolm: he doesn't have a beard. If

Simone: I had a... In many of the photos, I'm just looking. I just Googled his name and I'm looking at photos.

Simone: It looks like maybe he did. He has, in many of these various lengths of beard going. To to accentuate his jaw. Anyway, no, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So also be careful. I guess that's another good lesson in terms of how to successfully signal this kind of thing. If you want to, if you want to play the game and you want to I don't know, show off because you don't find people as disgusting as we do.

Simone: I mean, you'd probably not do anything that comes across as compensatory. Well, you

Malcolm: can see from a male, like he talks about low T males, except you can tell by looking at a male's face. How much testosterone they were exposed to when they were in their developmental stages,

Malcolm: it is, it is very easy if you have any sort of biological training, you have either gracile features and you have [00:21:00] robust features.

Simone: But you know, I would say that, my heart goes out to everyone who has These types of deformities like, I know, for example like, you know, many people don't choose partners that show any sign of deformity or whatever, and facial symmetry is a big part of that, and I have a decidedly Asymmetric face, where this part of my jaw is way bigger than this part, meaning I was either exposed to stress or I have some kind of deficiency.

Simone: That's not true. Our

Malcolm: kids have the same thing. It's genetic. Do they? I

Simone: can't tell. Okay, so some weird genetic thing, but I mean, that's still is a sign of deficiency. So, I mean, my heart goes out to people who are fucked up in the face like me, who are deformed. I'm not saying he's deformed, but I'm just saying like, you know, like. I'm here for you.

Malcolm: They can't all have the Southern gentleman

Simone: face. I'm sorry. Yeah. I don't know. Like I still, I still need the internet to explain what like. Why I don't know,

Malcolm: I think it's because of the way I talk and [00:22:00] act. You've even said you act somewhat effeminately in videos sometimes because you just don't care.

Simone: Yeah, you literally don't give a s**t. No, but I think, yeah, I mean, maybe that's why I find it so confusing that people find it to be soy. Because like, being willing to do I have no

Malcolm: anxiety around it. Well, no, because people don't know. They don't know what it looks like to have no anxiety around gender presentation.

Malcolm: I think Right. One of the things we joke about, and we'll probably do a full video on this is it's funny when you look at the far left and the far right, they both seem to have body dysmorphia they, they both have unrealistic body expectations for themselves and unrealistic self images around their body image as it exists right now, I mean, I think a part of that is, is because we don't have many role models in our society today that genuinely.

Malcolm: Do not care if people are like, oh, you're acting kind of femme, you're acting kind of whatever. I don't care I have a wife and kids like Who am I who am I performing for?

Simone: Yeah,

Malcolm: But

Simone: here's. Post Muscle [00:23:00] World, what is, what is the next call it? I wanna see what, I don't know what

Malcolm: the next is, but I really wanna emphasize to our viewers, right, is when you think about the cost you spend on the things in your life that signal self narrative to yourself I'm a big, strong person, I'm a meaningful person, I'm a cool guy.

Malcolm: Or the signal to your community genuinely weigh that cost. Many hours a day are you spending on this? What are you getting out of it? When you buy a Ferrari versus, me a used Mazda or something like that, or maybe... Your 2010

Simone: Mazda is great.

Malcolm: Yeah, our most recent car is a used Ford. Yeah why? Why are you spending all of this extra time or money? Is it really, other than this sort of immediate dopamine hit you get when you spend the money and you show it off to people, which, let's be honest, I don't know. In today's world, how many people do you really have to show it off to?

Malcolm: Not that many, okay? It just doesn't matter that much anymore. Are you [00:24:00] really gaining something of, of, of commensurate?

Simone: It is I kind of disagree. So I disagree because I think right now people have a bigger audience than ever before. In some ways. And They're signaling their

Malcolm: sin! They're signaling, they're signaling How easy it was to corrupt the things that they were trying to achieve with their life with

Simone: vanity.

Simone: I don't know. Anyway, what I'm seeing is like, when I look at people younger than us, or I even just look at people like tiny bit younger than us, and I see like they post something on social media, the number of likes they get, I'm like, Oh my God. I don't like, Whoa, man. Are you famous? No. Like they just, their lives are online.

Simone: I think that the next place and way that people are going to. Signal status, and I'm using a heuristic here of what is going to be hard to legitimately do unless you're actually wealthy and you actually have time. Like these are the two sort of limiting factors right now. So what I think, and I'll hear you guys after this because I've primed you with my perfect formula, [00:25:00] is I think that The ultimate way people are going to signal status is by looking in person as good as they do online.

Simone: Because right now, a lot of people are cheating online with filters, and that's obviously super easy to do, and everyone's getting super normalized to it. And then only those who are able to pay for the plastic surgery that makes them look like their filtered version of themselves, only the people who are able to keep themselves healthy enough to not need all the filters and actually just look like they do both online are going to be the ones to be able to maintain.

Simone: That that divide and it's going to be a huge sign of like genuine resource or class or leisure. What do you think?

Malcolm: I think you're right. I think the other thing is, is a lot of people would say followers, but not exactly followers because those will be easy to fake. It is high status followers. How many high status people follow you and interact with you and talk

Simone: about you?

Simone: Oh, so that's interesting because not, not every platform allows you to see who Yeah, [00:26:00] well

Malcolm: I think that's the core. So Twitter converts very, very poorly, X, whatever we want to call it these days. X converts very poorly. It does not convert to book sales, it does not convert to people coming to our YouTube, it does not convert to But

Simone: it's where people can show off who follows

Malcolm: them.

Malcolm: But it's very good at showing off who follows you and who respects your opinion. So Twitter, we've got like 5, 000 or something. But we have a lot of really high status followers, invite us to parties and stuff. Right.

Simone: I think that's a good one. Yeah. So we'll see. Yeah, but again, it has to be a thing that, that, yeah, that.

Simone: Only those with wealth or, or status or leisure will be able to achieve. And I think that those are really the things, it's, it's, it's still really expensive to get plastic surgery or to genuinely look as good as you can look online. It's only going to get worse. And it's, it's generally talking about how important muscle is.

Simone: It's like a woman

Malcolm: in the nineties talking about how great a tan is.[00:27:00]

Malcolm: Don't you know that it's sitting in the sun, you're capturing the rays of the earth and exposing your true femininity. And that's why I do it nude, so that I, I, I capture all of this earth energy and I'm genuinely at

Simone: one with my... Hold on, do you, but do you know about the whole... Like men exposing their balls to the sun thing going on right now.

Simone: There's like a current trend of this. I've heard it's dumb as hell. I know. But I'm just saying there's a lot of other really weird stuff that's going on with like sun exposure.

Malcolm: You stuff. The placebo effect is really strong. But I

Simone: mean, also like tans help you more easily conceal blemishes and other things like that.

Simone: I mean, there's, there's a lot of reasons why people like tans that don't necessarily have to do with social class, but. It, it is, it is a good example and how it oscillates, and it is one of those limiting factor things. But I think that's the formula is, is this something that you can only get because of status or wealth or a lot of leisure time, which, you know, only those

Malcolm: with resources can have.

Malcolm: Well, and I also think that the people we know a lot of [00:28:00] wealthy people from a lot of groups, the ones who have been able to resist this muscle trend are also the ones who don't own things like fancy cars. Yeah. It, it's, it's, it's specifically susceptible to the people who need to show off all the hot women there was and all their fancy cars.

Simone: And to a certain extent, it exposes new money, right? Because

Malcolm: money, but a level of insecurity, a level of, I earned money just so I could signal my status to other people.

Simone: Yeah. Well, I think, oh, here's an interesting example of it that shows that the status cycle is, is Informally dressing as a flex, right?

Simone: Like in the early days of tech CEOs becoming super wealthy, they would wear they would wear pretty disrespectfully informal clothes as a flex because they could, because it just had that much money. They were still in the room. And then I think we saw the, like the height of it with Sam Bankman freed.

Simone: Who was not only like wearing very respectfully informal clothes, but like even behaving disrespectfully, like playing [00:29:00] games while on key interviews, I

Malcolm: love this. Okay. So people don't understand Sam Bankman Fried, FTX, big EA guy, basically funded 80% of all effective algorithm stuff. And he would always flex about how Oh, like he was living inexpensively, right?

Malcolm: Expensively so that he could give all his money to charity. Okay. But then you'd see him on business meetings and he'd be playing league of legends, right? This was the famous thing that he would do. Why, why was he doing this? This, this was not to give money to effective altruism. It was to show class status through insulting the other people in the meeting without having them leave.

Malcolm: The moment I saw that, I knew all this guy cared about was status. Because you look at us... And the ways that we save money, we try to donate around 50% of our yearly income to charities or causes like that. And this has been recorded in newspapers, so we're not BS ing this, this isn't like Telegraph and stuff.

Malcolm: And we do that [00:30:00] through extreme... Daily austerity, but I would never disrespect a business partner or waste time that I could be spending being productive, being indolent, indolent, whether it's video games or the gym, if it is not moving you towards your objective function, the thing that you believe has value in the world, right?

Malcolm: And I hope that's not your personal aesthetics. Um, Then it is a sin. It's sinful. And we all engage in sin. I engage in sin myself. This doesn't help me. But at least when I am doing it, I acknowledge the cost of that sin. To my lifestyle, I do not pretend like my sin is a virtue, whether that be...

Simone: Yeah, I think there's a, in terms of successfully signaling status, like using these in some way, rarefied commodities, be it a tan or a not tan, or [00:31:00] muscles, or wearing informal clothes.

Simone: There's a level of moderation that's required, and there's also a level of trailblazing that's required to genuinely show it, right? Because once everyone's doing it, or once a certain critical mass of people is doing it... It starts being seen as a demonstration not of status or of genuine dominance, but of status anxiety.

Simone: And the reason why you're doing it or why you're doing it in excess is because you feel like you need to signal your status. And if you feel like you need to signal your status, it's because you. You personally, at least don't feel like you have it in the first place. And I think that's why many, for example, designer brands have come to be seen as actually quite trashy by many groups, because

Malcolm: like reaching or something, it seems pretty trashy these days, right?

Simone: Yes, because the groups of, who are desperate to signal status are, are getting it in excess. So I think, if there's also a takeaway on like how to leverage this dynamic in a way that genuinely impresses people, one, don't do something that's overplayed. And to just look for something, it can even be unique that just demonstrates that you have [00:32:00] more time or money or resources and other people.

Simone: But honestly, like the copycat approach, doing it by currently like getting more muscle or flexing that you can be informal somewhere. Or even traveling to expensive vacation destinations just isn't really going to impress people anymore because it's being it's already being signaled by too many people who are extremely status anxious.

Simone: Yeah.

Simone: Oh, well, still, I love talking about this. I'm really excited to see, how we're going to tackle this with our kids when they all become very self conscious around puberty.

Simone: This, it's it's one thing for us to feel comfortable with the subjects and to be comfortable with ourselves, but helping a teenage, young adult make it through this is it possible? I don't know. I mean, I think honestly, I don't think in Amish communities, you're seeing huge levels of body dysmorphia.

Simone: I think that they aren't. Yeah. But anyway, I'm looking

Malcolm: forward to it. It's interesting within Amish communities because class is not determined by wealth in any extent. [00:33:00] The, the class status signaling is around settings like beard lengths. It's, it's around things like biblical knowledge there are many different ways you can determine class.

Malcolm: I like that

Simone: both beard length and biblical knowledge are both, well

Malcolm: there was a, a hate crime case recently and actually where some Amish cut off other Amish men's beards. Oh!

Simone: Shots fired.

Malcolm: Well, I know you see that as trivial, but

Simone: to them... No, I don't know. I learned from Shanghai Noon.

Simone: With Jackie Chan, having hair cut off is like super not cool. All right. Yeah, this is

Malcolm: true in some like Asian communities, like

Simone: the top knot, man, no, like no ceremonial hair. You do not, you do not touch in any culture with any gender. You do not touch, you do not touch weave. You do not touch ceremonial top knots and you do not touch a beard.

Simone: It's just draw the line. But anyway, Malcolm, we got to move on with our lives.

Malcolm: It is so wonderful to have you back from a business trip

Simone: I love

Malcolm: you so much. You are amazing. You are so great to be married to [00:34:00] when you were gone, every moment was suffering because you just such an amazing integral part of my daily. Feeling of, of, of

Simone: completeness. And Malcolm, you, you are my status signal, my status totem.

Simone: I, yeah, I heard when you left, everyone

Malcolm: was like, are you a model? And I was like, that made me feel good.

Simone: Cause I was like, yeah, I'm your trophy wife and you're my, my, my status, my trophy husband, my

Malcolm: favorite moment in the pronatalist saying was there was this person on Twitter being like, Oh, these people are discussing this.

Malcolm: And I was like, don't you know that they don't actually look like that? That's a pair of models that was hired. to promote the pronatalist movement. And

Simone: yeah, it was like the best like insult that was really a compliment that was totally not meant as a compliment. It was incredibly sweet. Whoever, you out there,

Malcolm: you out there who tried to insult us with that.

Malcolm: It really meant the world to us. So I have been riding on that horse for

Simone: a long time. [00:35:00] Yeah. The best thing we ever heard, man. Yeah. All right, Malcolm. See you downstairs. Have a good one.