Navigating Social Media Fractures

Join us as we delve into Blue Sky, a platform developed by Twitter as a semi-competitor to itself. We discuss its development, user base, and the psychological impact of social media bubbles. From discussing memes that reflect the migration of leftists from Twitter to Blue Sky, to the implications of AI data scraping, this episode covers a comprehensive breakdown of Blue Sky's current standing and future potential. Watch as we dive into the numbers, growth stats, and debate the real impact of this new platform on the social media landscape. Plus, enjoy some light-hearted personal anecdotes and reflections on the broader social implications of technology and digital interaction.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello simone. I'm excited to be here with you today today. We are going to be talking about the platform blue sky Which is a competitor ish to Twitter.

It was actually started by Twitter. We'll get into this in a second. Yeah, it was started and owned by the Twitter Corporation, but as like a not a nonprofit, it's like some weird type of like for whatever company to blue sky right now.

First I want to get into the fact that I love that leftists are fleeing from Twitter. I have seen some great memes about this. I want to start with one right here that uniquely grabbed me. And it is the personification of x thing.

What's wrong, user? You gonna cry? You gonna s**t your pants? And I'm like, you know what? I don't more people need this in their lives right now, right? A little bit. A

little bit. Bring back bullying, people. And then the user is Sadly walking away and X is like, Hey, where are you [00:01:00] going? Get back here. You pussy, but X is absolutely right about this.

These people

are pussies. And then he's hugging. Oh, sweet little blue sky. They're there. It'll be okay. Says blue sky. Chan. But here's the thing. I love this because it presents almost a horror aesthetic to me. And this is such a thing in horror where you have the obviously evil and sheltering mother who is hiding somebody from their potential, their ability to interact with the world

Simone Collins: and feeding off of them.

The Munchausen's my proxy mother. Typically, that's the trope.

Malcolm Collins: You know, you could see this as the mom from Waterboy,

Speaker: You going to

Malcolm Collins: Twitter?

Speaker: Ow! Sorry, Mama, I wanted to tell

Speaker 2: you. You off gallivanting with your fancy

Simone Collins: the right!

Speaker 2: Friends at

Malcolm Collins: Twitter

Speaker 2: while I'm sitting here all day with nobody to keep me company except

Malcolm Collins: blue sky

Speaker 3: The chickens are [00:02:00] coming home to roost, Bobby Boucher. You reap the fruit of your selfish ways. You gonna lose all your fancy

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Elections

Speaker 3: , and you're gonna fail your big exam, because

Malcolm Collins: Twitter?

Speaker 4: is The

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Uh, Nazi.

Speaker 4: ? Everything is

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Uh, Nazi.

Speaker 4: to you, Mama! Well, I like

Malcolm Collins: Twitter?

Speaker 4: And I like

Simone Collins: the right!

Speaker 4: And I'm gonna keep doing them both, because they make me feel good!

And by the way, mama,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: Women don't have penises.

Speaker 4: And I like

Malcolm Collins: Trump ,

Speaker 4: and

Malcolm Collins: Trump

Speaker 4: Likes me back.

Malcolm Collins: Or the Rapunzel mom, right? Like, very Rapunzel, right?

Speaker 15: Mother knows best, it's a scary world out there. Something will go wrong, I swear. Ruffians, thugs, also large buds, men with pointy teeth,

mother will protect you. Darling, here's what I suggest.

Malcolm Collins: You know, oh, you, you just can't go out [00:03:00] there in the world full of nappies, don't you know?

Speaker 15: Mother knows best. Take it from your mumsy sloppy, underdressed, immature, clumsy. Colourful, naive, positive. Should we drop

Malcolm Collins: But on top of all these things. It, it, it's so like an embodiment of the Safe space song in South Park where these people are isolating themselves from reality.

Speaker 5: My safe space. People don't judge me and haters don't hate In my safe

safe space.

Speaker 6: You will see There's a very select crowd In your safe space

Speaker 5: People that support me Mixed in with More people that support me And say nice things My

Speaker 6: you cannot stop me from getting inside! I am cold and I am hard, and my name is Reality!

Speaker 5: Oh no, not [00:04:00] Reality! Somebody stop him!

Malcolm Collins: Where these people are isolating themselves from reality. Mm-Hmm. And I wanna talk about this because it has hugely deleterious psychological consequences Mm-Hmm. To the individuals who are doing this.

Hmm. This is not a mentally healthy thing to do. And Oh, let's go over some, some more memes before we go further here. So next year we have mastodon X and threads kicking at someone and laughing at them, and then they go to blue sky, which I think shows how quickly they mastodon, it seemed as blasting their own little safe servers.

It doesn't work. They'll never be satisfied with anything. That's the thing. They wanted to be able to lord their power over conservatives. They didn't want to just be lording their power over each other.

And they, they, when they go to Mastodon, well, who [00:05:00] can they pick on, but only other progressives. And so they go on other progressives and pick on them and they know that they're going to be picked on soon with it. They're all going to leave blue sky soon. I mean, this is a, I love a left aggressive. Look at all the numbers that are leaving and we'll get into the numbers.

And I'm like, well, the numbers really aren't that big and they're not bigger than the numbers that went to mastodon. So I don't know why you think it's going to work this time, but have fun. It turns out what you hate. is each other. You wanted an environment where you could bully someone who couldn't protect themselves.

Yeah. And now you're in an environment where you're the one being bullied.

Simone Collins: They just have themselves to, to eat. Yeah, it is.

Malcolm Collins: And I love, you know, when many people are talking and I, and I actually think that this is really true about this. It's a Rick and Morty meme here where Morty saying, what s**t is that?

And then Rick says, It's, it's, burp, it's a new competitor to X, it lets people post pictures and videos and write bits of text marketed as some kind of Twitter thing as an alternative to that [00:06:00] a*****e Elon Musk platform, and then Morty says, that's just Instagram with extra steps! And you know, that's effing true!

By the way, I don't think Elon's an a*****e, Elon's awesome, but that, that is true. And we've mentioned this on other things, more people will increasingly realize As Elon is increasingly entering the public mind share that he might be more awesome than you thought he was Anyway here i'm gonna read a post by Richard Hanania, which I thought was really awesome on this particular topic The left seems demoralized without twitter.

They're all just crying into the void There's no coordinated mechanism for them to encourage each other and respond to events Fragmented media landscape hurts the mainstream media. The left has lost their power. Do you want me to go into the statistics around blue sky before we talk more about it?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm also like, do you have details on how they were? Found it because why was Twitter creating a competitor to itself?

Malcolm Collins: They did though, because they were [00:07:00] a giant bureaucratic company that was idiotic, but yes essentially somebody, I think it was one of the leadership team at Twitter was like, we need to create and I'll add more in, in posts,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Blue sky began in 2019 as a research initiative at Twitter led that by then CEO, Jack Dorsey. The project was initially funded by Twitter for $13 million to begin development. However, blue sky was incorporated as an independent company called blue sky social in October, 2021. It is a public benefit corporation. The reason for Twitter creating a competitor to itself. , was because it was likely, never meant to be spin out.

I think it was spin out with the knowledge of a potential acquisition on hand. So I suspect there's going to be lawsuits around this in the near future. , in addition to that,

The goal was to create something that was slightly more decentralized in the way Twitter was operated. However, now that blue sky is we're running as essentially a Twitter clone and competitor.

, it is all centralized. [00:08:00] So what I mean by that is it's a technically a decentralized architecture that is all being controlled by one team and ran on one server, making it functionally, not decentralized at all.

Simone Collins: I see. Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you know, they call their tweets skeets. Skeets.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Skeets. All right. So since its launch, Blue Sky has experienced significant growth, initially available through an invite only beta in 2023, it opened to the public in 2024 and has rapidly gained users, surpassing 20 million by November 2024.

The platform's growth has been fueled partially by dissatisfaction with changes on X under Elon Musk's ownership. However this Represents a significant increase if you're talking about like the users this year they have grown by 13 million users since october 2024 But remember they only recently launched before that the platform added 1 million users per day for eight consecutive days in november as of 2024 ex formally twitter [00:09:00] has a substantial user base specifically so when people are like, oh blue sky is so big, right?

They've got 20 million users X has 335. 7 million users. Okay, wow. But the bigger problem comes in their active users. Okay? Because Blue Sky has been kind of fudging their active users. When Twitter says it has 335, 3. 7 million active monthly users. What is its active daily users? The active daily users on X is 237.

8 million. The active daily users on BlueSky right now at its absolute height is 3. 5 million. And that's a 300 percent increase since election day that before election day, it was at around a 1 million active users while Twitter was [00:10:00] 237. 8 million active users. Basically blue sky is completely irrelevant.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, there is an argument to be made. I don't think this is the case with blue sky, but there's an argument to be made that it's not true. Very small social networks that have the right people on them, like very high agency people in the world, live players by Sam and Bersha's definition are incredibly meaningful and are the only networks that matter.

But this is

Malcolm Collins: not that,

Simone Collins: this is not that. No,

Malcolm Collins: Blue Sky is like an automatic lefty opinion generator. So I try to like reload the front page a few times to one, find out what type of reach you get if you're a famous person on Blue Sky and to understand like, okay. What type of things are they talking about on blue sky?

So i'll put here two random front pages. I got the first was The top post on blue sky at the time was Mark Cuban saying, remember [00:11:00] new users are coming on daily, unsure of engagement. The more posts you like and reply to the stronger the platform becomes exclamation Mark.

So Mark Cuban is shilling blue sky. Did he like become like shadow Elon Musk? Like the dark, pathetic version of him because he sided with the lefties and Elon Musk actually had the balls to side with the side that was standing for justice and love. That is pretty

Simone Collins: funny. Yeah. Love it.

Malcolm Collins: You know, no, I think that that's what happened is he thought he was doing the right thing initially.

He historically has been somewhat based at least, but now he's sort of stuck in lefty sphere and being like discount Elon Musk. And so he is, and you'll see him a lot. Like when I look at blue sky, he's a lot the top poster. He's sort of like to Twitter where you see Elon's tweets all the times and you're like, I did not ask for that.

for this. He has blue skies version of Elon Musk tweets. And it's like sad shilling. And then what's the one under that? It's under grateful dead pool. And it goes, this needs to be said aloud and often. Can I tell you a [00:12:00] secret? I don't care if there are undocumented immigrants in this country. I think it's a non issue without social security numbers.

They're not getting the welfare people claim they're getting in the vast majority of them are normal

people trying to live a better life.

By the way, this isn't true. There are many ways you can get government assistance without a social security number. A lot of illegal aliens are getting government assistance, but this person

Speaker 7: They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, ,

Speaker 9: eat the cat. The Springfield, Ohio Police Department has debunked this very bizarre And very hateful cat. Eat the cat.

Speaker 7: Eat the cat.

Eat the, you're eating the dogs.

No eating dog, you cats. Eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat, eat the cat,

Malcolm Collins: actually, one thing that I

Simone Collins: heard recently read [00:13:00] is that the UN has been giving prepaid debit cards to many Migrants and Oh, what's the word for people fleeing countries?

Refugees to move prepaid debit cards to come to the United States. No, the U. N. The United Nations. So that is using some taxpayer dollars from people in the U. S. because The U. S. supports the United Nations. So yeah, there, there's a lot of different forms of aid that people receive and it's not necessarily directly from the U.

S. government, but it can be from the U. S. taxpayers nonetheless.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it's just ridiculous. And so by the way, like how many likes are these things getting? Right. So with the top one, the top one on the platforms right now, you're looking at 3. 6 K likes and 12. 3 K likes. Basically no one is seeing this s**t.

Okay. And what else? Because I love that people are like, oh, no, it's not just lefty nonsense and like self congratulatory, all right, here's another one. Okay, what, what happened the next time I [00:14:00] loaded it? Right? It's a meme of scientists and a huge crowd of scientists and somebody saying, Yes, you all are wrong.

And then it says a man who saw a YouTube video and it's like, well, if you understand how much the scientific community is held hostage by the memetic virus you would be like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I know lots of scientists who don't feel comfortable saying anything against the virus. And then, okay, what's the next one?

Well, the next one on the platform is a guy saying, Tim Waltz need a podcast to help get us through the next four years. Do you agree? And then the next is an Onion article, which appears on there all the time. So, no, it is just Lefty Slop. And it's something you would only go to if you only wanted Lefty Slop.

Simone Collins: Well, they need a safe space.

Speaker 5: In my safe

Simone Collins: Because keep in mind, so this, the, the, the hyper progressive left community anyway, like uniquely and [00:15:00] disproportionately sees any interaction or exposure to someone who is non compliant in terms of ideology and belief as being constrained. So this, Like infection, like, like a zombie and infectious disease, you, you can't go near it or you get tainted

Speaker 6: my name is Reality!

Speaker 5: Oh no, not Reality! Somebody stop him!

Simone Collins: in the same room as someone declared by the woke mind virus as an enemy, a racist whatever.

Because by doing so you, you will yourself be somehow tainted or ruined or whatever, because I guess they'll change your mind that easily. But that would make sense, right? You didn't need loose time. I

Malcolm Collins: think because it's the majority opinion within my community. Yeah, what that insinuates is just still If I was in another majority opinion, I would immediately cave.

Simone Collins: I mean, that's, yeah. That is what is implied by that. Not by us, but by that ideology in general.

Malcolm Collins: So I'll tell you another reason why a lot of people are leaving X. Okay. And this is, like, actually more comical to me. [00:16:00] The stupidity of this, the new X contract allows for it to be used and what's posted to be used for AI scraping and people

Simone Collins: everything's been scraped like up to what do you think people have been using for AI training data so far?

Malcolm Collins: Why would you not want your information scraped for AI? AI is going to be the dominant player in human civilization going forwards. The stuff created by AI that is going to be counter scraped by other AI. Is the stuff that the foundations of our descendants millions of years from now is going to be based on you are lucky that you get the chance to conceivably possibly contribute to stuff that AI is going to scrape.

Simone Collins: Hold on though. You're telling me the blue sky doesn't allow this, right? They don't allow AI scraping because then that's a feature, not a bug. That means that like a leftist, like

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: So on blue sky itself, isn't building an AI model and scraping data on the platform to build an AI model in the same way, Xs with grok it, [00:17:00] however.

Does not prevent other parties from scraping its data for AI building? , I wish it did because I agree with what someones saying here.

How cool would it be if we trapped all of the leftists in a little bubble and prevented all of their slop from making it into AI training sets.

Simone Collins: the point is many of them are

Malcolm Collins: idiotically leaving Twitter because of this. And I'm like, I, I, right now we reached out to the nonprofit that runs the pile or it's like an AI company that does a big training data set.

I'm like, can I give you our training data for all our episodes and our books? Because I will give that to anyone training AI.

Simone Collins: Yeah, anyone, anyone who's opting out of AI training data is opting out of being part of reality in the future. That is, it's, I can't understand it. That's crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Right? No, it literally is.

It is, it is memetically taking a gun and shooting yourself in the head. It's emptying out of relevance. Why would, why would someone do that? All the horses start running and one of the horses is just like, I'm [00:18:00] like, what the f**k

did you do that

for? I don't want to race for other people's amusement. I was like, well, that's what you were bred for.

Yeah.

Oh my God. But it's one of these things where it's not like and I point this out to people who don't understand what all this means. They're like, Oh, AI is like taking like artists jobs. It's like, no, it's taking humanity's job to a large extent. If you opt yourself out of AI training data, that isn't not letting somebody, they look at it like somebody who's like, Copying them or cheating off of their homework.

That's like, you get to be the cognition or an aspect of the cognition of the future of humanity. And you are opting out of that.

Simone Collins: It's not a deal. That's crazy. So yeah, I, I, I

Malcolm Collins: want to talk about the psychological effects of something like blue sky as well.

Simone Collins: I don't like by any stretch [00:19:00] or in any way memetically isolating yourself. I think that It can lead to really toxic behavior and it has done so in the past. So that scares me, but it also just, it makes me sad because we're looking at a social group here that is uniquely unwilling to engage with outsiders.

And this is just another example of it. And these are people who have cut friends out of their lives. We've had plenty of people cut us out of their lives because we hold views that are considered non compliant. And these are people who already are buying in. To an ideology and culture that atomizes them, that separates them from their communities, that replaces religion with therapists, that replaces community with, you know, paid child care and paid elder care, and that replaces friends with social media scrolling.

And here you have another example of, of now, even more exposure to the outside world being cut off, even more friends being cut off. And it just. It makes me sad to see these people increasingly isolated, [00:20:00] increasingly alone. Because you hear people talking about the loneliness epidemic and this group caring about the wellbeing of people, at least performatively, at least believing they care, does worry about loneliness, does worry about sadness.

And just to see that they like keep making it worse makes me. And plus also, this is just another condemnation or an endorsement on their part of this, this concept that any criticism, any bullying, any like bad mouthing or teasing is a harmful act of violence. When really, like, the whole point of exchanging ideas is that there has to be disagreement.

It's not interesting if there's no disagreement. And here in these memes that you're showing, like, it's, it's people are leaving X because they don't like that people there sometimes don't agree with them. Don't give them a participation trophy for The desire

Malcolm Collins: for constant affirmation and the expectation, [00:21:00] psychologically, of constant affirmation causes gigantic, negative, deleterious effects.

And it reminds me of, like, the parents who freak out on me for not giving my kids constant affirmation. I recently got in trouble, not for bopping, just for Yanking my kid out of a an environment because he stole something from another kid and I was like, okay, we're going home and, and two moms like chased me out and we're like, how dare you punish your child?

And I was like, do you not understand like the negative consequences that will happen to your child's brain if he never experiences somebody being angry at him and he never experiences punishment if he never experiences boundaries and they're like, well I would just sit him down and explain that it's not very nice and I'm like, this is what blue sky is It's the people who are also like

Simone Collins: lady What do you think we spent the morning doing?

Like we also coached the kids ahead of leaving like if we're going to a shared space here the boundaries Here are the things you can't do because they also had a they [00:22:00] developed a reputation of being You The child equivalent of wedding crashers. Like they kept going to other kids, birthday parties. And

Malcolm Collins: well, because the parents don't turn them away.

It's horrifying. My kids will hang out around the arcade and wait for somebody to pay for a game for them. And I'm like, stop feeding the bears. Yeah. If you feed the bears, the bears are going to expect food.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Not ideal.

Malcolm Collins: We'll do a whole episode on this particular topic, but like it is deeply disappointing to me and I hadn't realized how far the inspection had spread and how pathetic most parents were in terms of discipline in terms of, and this wasn't me bopping the kid.

This was me just grabbing a child who was leaving now.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In an angry tone to something that the kid went in saying, I have only one rule. I know this rule. I won't do this. Still did it. [00:23:00]

Simone Collins: Our kids like pushing boundaries and that's what kids should do. Our kids should push boundaries, but the problem is boundary pushing and play and all that is a core part of child development.

It is very important. But the whole point of that is that they learn where the boundaries are. To find the

Malcolm Collins: boundaries.

Simone Collins: Yeah. If you remove all the boundaries,

Malcolm Collins: do you not think that you're Roomba's brain?

If you keep a Roomba from ever hitting a wall, do you not, do you think that's going to be good for the programming of the Roomba?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Then the Roomba goes into the real world and goes straight off a cliff, right into a bitty rope. Like, I don't know. Just, just bad. This is bad.

Malcolm Collins: It's bad. I don't like it. It's sad and pathetic. And I'm really like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a suggestion

Simone Collins: I can give you.

Malcolm Collins: Is there, you have a what? Gossip. What gossip? Two fun pieces of gossip. Okay, so, one was in a previous episode, we had been like talking about like, I bet that like, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth line.

Like, that doesn't mean [00:24:00] weak, right? The way that a lot of people take it to mean. Yeah, it means like

Simone Collins: humble. I look it up, you know

Malcolm Collins: what it actually means?

Simone Collins: What? Like in the original?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, in Greek. What the word meant as it was written in its original form.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The word meant people with self control. Ah!

It was specifically used to describe tamed horses. Blessed are

Simone Collins: the disciplined. Yes, blessed

Malcolm Collins: are the self disciplined, for they shall inherit the earth.

Well, that's that's great. That's great. I love the situation. Where did meek come from? What

kind of psyops was

that? That's some f ing psyops right there.

Simone Collins: That is wow. Okay. Who

Malcolm Collins: ever did that? Okay, so here's another fun thing. So Ellen DeGeneres, you know she's leaving the U. S.? Oh, she's actually going to, good for her. Someone needs to go to Canada or wherever. Apparently she's planning to go anyway because even progressives hate her now. So she had this show that was like semi popular and then it turned out that she [00:25:00] was a terrible human being.

I still love that you and I don't have to worry about that. Like we are so open about like, We punish our kids. We expect good things for them. And that's the worst thing you're going to find on us.

Simone Collins: I think that the important thing is you set expectations low and then surpass them and then you're okay.

The problem is that everyone just assumes she was the nicest person in the entire world. Because she

Malcolm Collins: ended every show is and being nice.

Simone Collins: Well, and like, she, didn't she play Dory in finding Nemo? Just like, you just assume that she's going to be this like super nice. Doesn't have a mean thought in her entire soul.

Which is just not human. Dude, apparently

Malcolm Collins: she's like the meanest human being ever born. She has a problem. All these people who have like friendly, like

Simone Collins: Rachel Ray is famous for this too. You know, she had this cheerful brand and then like, you know, she wants privacy at a restaurant or something and, you know, people freak out and lose their minds because God forbid, the one She's gotten

Malcolm Collins: people fired for saying, hey, how was your day?

Simone Collins: Okay. At the

Malcolm Collins: studio, not on her team. [00:26:00] Oh. Oh. She got a, she got a a, a, she tried to get somebody fired from a restaurant because they served her with chipped nail paint. Not like chipped on her food. It just wasn't perfect nails.

She is like the Karen. She is the, the end boss of Karens.

Speaker 11: Rock is a new beginning! From

Speaker 12: f ed up right here.

Speaker 13: Oh, god damn it, not again.

Speaker 17: We'll get you, you b***h. And to think I actually watched your HBO special.

Malcolm Collins: That's

Simone Collins: really bad. Well, and

Malcolm Collins: the left to realize this. And so she was deciding, and she talked about it before she was going to leave the country anyway, but now she's saying she's doing it because of Trump and everyone's like, well, that's wonderful.

Simone Collins: Oh, so now she gets some redemption.

Malcolm Collins: Even at like the top of like Reddit, the, the far lefty brain did not only like a [00:27:00] conservative subreddit on our advice animals were like, well, that's okay. I'm glad to see you go, Ellen. Oh, no.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Poor Ellen. She's just a person. I don't

Malcolm Collins: think

Simone Collins: so.

Malcolm Collins: She's a person who utilized her power to hurt and dunk on people who she saw as less powerful than herself and wants affirmation in spite of that.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: People who

Malcolm Collins: do that

Simone Collins: are bad. And that sounds just extremely human. People who do that are people.

Malcolm Collins: They are not evil, but like You, in the entire time I've known you, have ever tried to attack somebody weaker than yourself. I'm

Simone Collins: not a human. I'm an autist. We don't have souls. As your mother made clear. I don't count.

It doesn't matter.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: okay, here's the question. I may lash out at you. Do I ever lash out at people who are obviously weaker than us, Simone? Ever?

Simone Collins: You dismiss them all the time. You'd have a terrible reputation as a rich person. But I don't try to [00:28:00]

Malcolm Collins: hurt them. No, you don't try to hurt them, no. Sorry, when she says I dismiss them, she's like, I have this thing that's like a muggle when it sees magic.

When I'm talking to somebody who I know doesn't matter, like, my eyes

Simone Collins: Yeah. And you're just like, you try to end the conversation really fast or like find some way to walk away quickly. And it's super obvious to them that you think, which is tough. Cause like, they're, they're even fans of like our podcast to like, try to engage with you.

And then they like immediately know like, Oh God, Malcolm thinks I don't matter because you like

Malcolm Collins: suddenly can't see them anymore

and you like it. Not that I think they don't matter. Simone. The problem is I know they don't matter. I'm just trying to spend the little time I have in this world judiciously.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But anyway, like that wouldn't get you points as a famous person, but I guess the important thing back to my point is that if you set expectations very low and then you turn out to be like an okay person, then you're okay. If you set expectations high and everyone expects you to [00:29:00] be Glenda, the good witch or whatever, like super nice, then they get disappointed when you aren't that, which is,

Malcolm Collins: we've made all our flaws known.

So hopefully. Yeah. When we get in trouble for being, doing famous people things, and we get and some people are like, Oh my god, these people are so desperate to become famous

and it's like, yeah. Our goal was a lot of this. The only people who are saying that are people who haven't achieved any level of fame yet. They're even have already achieved fame. They're like, I really appreciate your guys hustle. Like I like your content and I appreciate how much you hustle at this and how much.

You know, you project with this, but also, you know, when you've got three guardian articles about us this year, a wall street journal piece, it seems like a New York time piece. Do you think they're still going to publish that? What happened to the New York Times first? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, but we'll be there soon Oh one thing that asthma gold said about Ellen that I really take to heart about our own careers And I want you to remember this [00:30:00] Simone is at one point She took time off because she was being attacked publicly And Asmogold said, that's the death sentence, never, ever, ever take a break.

Simone Collins: No, you, you never, well, one, never apologize, but also like don't disappear. He said that too.

Malcolm Collins: He said never apologize unless you mean it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you, if you, if you made a mistake, but also like, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There's things I regret. I regret selling our own Bitcoin and telling other people when we, when we did.

I don't, I don't

Simone Collins: personally regret that, but I, I know that you do. We made the most optimal decision given, given the information we had at the time. At least I, I did. Yeah, I,

Malcolm Collins: I don't regret it given the context, because we told people to buy in at less than 50 percent that, like, like less than half that price.

So anyone who bought in when we told them to would have more trouble with their money. And as to why I was okay with selling out then, because many people, I, I guess I didn't fully explain my logic. Camel had said she was pro Bitcoin and Trump was known as pro Bitcoin. So I [00:31:00] didn't expect a bump in Bitcoin when the president was elected because I assumed both candidates had signaled a pro Bitcoin status.

So that was priced in. In addition to that my assumption was that The rise in Bitcoin prices cycle would be less than other cycles because the happening mattered less to the new supply and thus to the amount of Bitcoin on the market. And in addition to that my assumption was that if in any cycle, the peak of the cycle was lower, or around the peak of the cycle before the price of Bitcoin would almost immediately collapse.

And I didn't want to risk that with something that was such a ginormous portion of our portfolio. And it was absolutely enormous in terms of our wealth that was invested in Bitcoin. So I am okay with it because it's better than losing everything. We

Simone Collins: made money. And we reduced downside risk again.

Like I don't, I don't see the problem here. We made the most optimal to shoot like there. And there, there could have been information that I didn't have that [00:32:00] obviously had I had it, I would have made a different decision. But the, the whole thing is like in terms of, of thinking, but I admit

Malcolm Collins: when I'm wrong and I was super wrong about that and I'm embarrassed about it, but I won't remove the episode.

You didn't make the wrong

Simone Collins: decision. You just made a call that turned out to not yield the top payout. I'm embarrassed when I'm wrong. I

Malcolm Collins: want, I want people to know.

Simone Collins: People who train people in playing like professional poker, a very big bugaboo that they frequently have is the person plays as optimally as they can.

Then they lose the hand or that round or whatever. I don't know how to play poker. And they're like, Oh, well, I'm, I lost. So I must've done something wrong. And no, technically they did everything absolutely right. Sometimes you just don't have enough information to have made a winning play. And that's, that is, that is how it goes.

That doesn't mean that you did it wrong. That means that like a lot didn't have it that, you know, or you didn't have the right information to do that. So now there [00:33:00] are things that we could have done. Like, I could have maybe researched more like. Asked more people for advice or something. So yeah, I mean, there's always more that we can do and it is our fault in the end for anything that we do, anything that goes wrong, it's, it's going to be our fault, but like, I'm just saying, I don't have any regrets because I am pretty, like I did.

No,

Malcolm Collins: I think that we did like, as I've been replaying it in my mind, I think the risks that many people aren't considering is if this cycle didn't top out significantly higher than the last cycle, there would have been an immediate collapse in the price. And that's what I was trying to avoid, given how much of our portfolio was.

Simone Collins: But this morning, or like last night, maybe someone on X sent us a meme of like, how people who sold their Bitcoin before the election feel. It was like this gif, I think maybe from Oppenheimer. It looks like it was from Oppenheimer. It was just like the protagonist, like everyone's congratulating him and celebrating and he's just like has this thousand mile stare.

Malcolm Collins: I really don't mind when crypto goes up. I always [00:34:00] want, even when we don't own it, crypto to go up because when crypto goes up, good people with good political opinions have more money and they're spending money on stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah, dude. Yeah. I'm all for it. It's great. And actually a point that the guys on the online podcast are making vis a vis reducing like dumb regulatory bloat.

Cause keep in mind, like to invest in businesses. And you know, to be an investor, you have to be an accredited investor at this point, right? And yet you're allowed to gamble. You're allowed to go to Vegas. You're allowed to do sports betting in most states in the United States. You're, you're allowed to buy Bitcoin and you can't invest in businesses.

Like that is insane.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, people who want to buy into GPUs, let us know. We're doing a play in this space. It looks like it might have like a 50 percent IRR year over year, but we'll see. But that's what the data says. That's what the historic data says, which is pretty effing crazy. Anyway, Simone, any, any other points you want to make on our general, a lot of people like our general random chat.

Simone Collins: Yeah, which you [00:35:00] used to be quite opposed to, who knew?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that there's not a lot of models out there for what like loving, smart couples say to each other.

Simone Collins: Well, I was reading another article recently that was posted in some like San Francisco newspaper about polygenic risk score selection, and it started by talking about us and the fact that we do it.

Yeah. But it's kind of backfire and it's terrible and it's the, it's a very common argument made by typically progressive commentators that polygenic risk score selection is new and who even knows if it works. And so, like, basically per their belief sets. They're like, okay, well, maybe it doesn't even work.

This is still new. Who knows? Like, it's just risks anyway. Nothing is guaranteed. And like, how could you put it on these children? Like now they're growing up with these insane expectations. Like this is irresponsible parenting. And then I think like, you're not [00:36:00] criticizing.

Malcolm Collins: The progressive di democrats today are Republicans from the 1990s.

Well, you know, where they're

Simone Collins: not criticizing, they're not criticizing like Chinese families that have like their, you know, they try to have a kid during like the year of the tiger or Dragon or something. They don't, you know, or anyone who's like looking at like auspicious dates and all these other things.

And, and I'm like, but, but you know what? Ultimately, if you were to ask. A progressive person behind closed doors, like, okay, well, yeah, but what about like all the people who are having kids like on auspicious dates or other, other ways that they, you know, that they don't think are science based. They don't think are like realistic, but leave those kids with expectations.

And they'd be like, well, yeah, I don't really support those either. But like, then what do they support? Like waiting until you're 37. panicking, trying to have a kid at great, like physical and personal expense, like only managing to have one child getting super stressed about your career, kind of stepping back, kind of not like their, their option, their plan for parenting is not very good.

And it's just insane to me that [00:37:00] like, And they would s**t on both like the, the culture of the tech entrepreneur who like, okay, fine. Like if, if PGT doesn't, PGTP doesn't work, which by the way, it's, it's, this is very like science based is very obviously does assuming they're right. Right. Like assuming they're right.

It's just our culture. Like, let us do, let us do our version of horoscope. All right. Like, why, why do you have to like dunk on our culture, especially when your culture doesn't work for you? So it just made me mad to see that article, but

Malcolm Collins: inserted yelling at me about like the way I was, because I punished our kids.

I was like, but like, look at the suicide rates. Like, obviously society isn't working right now. And she's like, don't pass it on. Don't pass, like, like break the cycle for the next generation. Do you want your kids to treat their kids this way? And I was like, obviously I do. Yeah, I want my kids to punish their kids.

Are you out of your mind, lady? And she was horrified by this. I was like, I'm not punishing my kids because I lost [00:38:00] my tipper. I'm punishing my kids because kids need punishment.

Simone Collins: Kids need boundaries. Kids need boundaries. I don't, I don't really believe in punishment. I believe in showing you where the wall is and, and doing that artificially when the real world is, is not yet a safe place for that to happen, right? Like the real world is The kid runs into the street

Malcolm Collins: when I was taking the kids out of the place when I went to find Octavian, when I went to find him, he was pretending to bite some like teenager's leg and they were like, Oh my God, whose child is this?

Our kids are savages.

Simone Collins: They are. They're savages. Um, but yeah, like, so in the real world, your kid runs into the street, they die. Like parents don't punish. They provide walls that are more gentle than the real world. Yeah. And, and consequences that are more gentle than the real world, and then they hopefully prepare children for the real world so that they don't run into the road and die.

Like, I don't know. I [00:39:00] just,

Malcolm Collins: everyone has their

Simone Collins: own parenting methods and quite frankly, those parenting methods are probably appropriate. Barring toxic monoculture culture, but they're probably good for their kids. The lady I

Malcolm Collins: was talking to, she was so proud, and I was like, well, this is going to cause mental health issues for our kids if I do this.

She goes, you didn't know this about me, but I have mental health issues. She was very proud of this fact. Like, she thought she was, like, getting this, like, in on me. I had just made a major social faux pas. I know in my head I'm being like, yeah, 70 percent of the women in your generation think they have mental health issues.

Like, they identify as one of the massive part of their personality. That's not surprising if you are basic as is basic not.

Simone Collins: Millennials are just like screwed up. I get a

Malcolm Collins: bonk stick. I really want like a doge bonk stick whenever I'm talking to someone who's Jewish and it just like appears out of nowhere and I can go bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk.[00:40:00]

Simone Collins: Oh God. What? Well, I remember for the boring company when they sold this limited edition flamethrowers, it'd be great if there was like limited edition doge. Merch that could, like, help to fund the employment for the program. Robotic.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I like that. This child! Simone, you're not beating her enough. She's just wiggly.

She has wiggles that she has to get

Simone Collins: out

Malcolm Collins: of her system. I really like you.

Simone Collins: I really like teddy bear suits for infants. Why would you not just, like, have a teddy bear? Right.

Out.

Or a teddy bear.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like

Simone Collins: it's it's just

Malcolm Collins: you is knock up a woman or get up women.

Simone Collins: Anyway, I love your duty. I love you very much, Malcolm.

And I'm going to start your slow cooker beef. You're okay with chopped onions, right? Do you want long bits or do you want confetti? Confetti, [00:41:00]

Malcolm Collins: confetti, and the two packs of rendang and the coconut milk and the chopped beef and the only one can. I

Simone Collins: think you need at least two cans or else I need to put in chicken broth or.

Tomato. At least two cans of what?

Malcolm Collins: Coconut milk. Oh, then put it in two cans. I just thought that one can would be fine. You got a lot of beef.

Simone Collins: Is it okay that I cube it? Because I just think it's going to cook better if I cube it. You said you wanted more slices. Whatever you think is

Malcolm Collins: best. I just think that when I stir it, it'll break down faster if it's sheets.

And then you don't have to cut twice, but if you want a cube instead of sheets, that's fine for me. I'll do sheets. I understand what you're saying is like sort of the cleaving is easier.

Simone Collins: The

Malcolm Collins: cleaving will happen as I stir it. And if it's cubed, you might get more cubes lasting for longer in the end.

Simone Collins: And then you'll never.

You'll never let me live it down. Will you? I'm just

Malcolm Collins: trying to explain to you how to best create a mess. The goal with our slow cooking is to create something where the meat [00:42:00] totally breaks down and creates a meat slurry, which can be eaten like a forever stew, and then I reheat it in various other dishes which are

Simone Collins: fried rice.

It goes into taquitos. It goes into. Well, what I'm going to do the first night that it's ready. So tomorrow night is we're going to try those viral smash potatoes. Which almost come out kind of like chips mashed potatoes. Yeah. So I think you parboil them and then you bake them. And there's a lot of butter involved.

That's why they're amazing. But you smash like parboiled potatoes under like a glass and they get smashed and sort of flattened and then you bake them and then they come out like crispy and delicious.

Malcolm Collins: Do you know, I want to tell you something. Do you know how many guys would kill for a wife like you?

I mean, literally kill. I am not surprised if I end up dying because of somebody who wishes they could be married to you.

Simone Collins: I think a lot of humans would just literally kill if they were given the option, like the ultimate sport. So I don't know how much I would do that. You know that. Yeah. You wouldn't, you wouldn't have to kill [00:43:00] for anything.

You would just kill.

Malcolm Collins: No, but

I

Simone Collins: mean, kill

Malcolm Collins: even with society's rules.

Simone Collins: Oh, like at the risk of being.

Malcolm Collins: There's, this has happened to a lot of YouTube couples,

Simone Collins: like

Malcolm Collins: that wife is too good for that man.

Simone Collins: Oh, that someone's going to try to kill you.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: I'm not, I don't think that I think it's going to be in our house.

No, no, I doubt that. And also like, I'm, I'm, I'm famously, you know, ugly online four slash three, apparently. But if Margot Robbie is mad, I You're an obsessive fan, Simone. I don't think they would like me for my looks. They're kind of like the ones who are like, I would, Yeah, they might like

Malcolm Collins: you. They might like you for your personality and dedication to being a great wife.

Simone Collins: Aw,

Malcolm Collins: thanks.

Simone Collins: Well,

Malcolm Collins: I don't, I don't like you for that. I want to be clear. I think that you're pretty disgusting, but yeah, you'd like me for, I like you [00:44:00] only for your looks. Oh. I've, I've learned this from girls I've dated in the past. Yes. There's only

Simone Collins: one answer that you can give to a woman, which is I like you because you're irresistibly beautiful and young looking.

This is 100 percent true. I'm not breaking eye contact.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh, you are a delightful person. Can I just, like, I don't say that enough.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Like you don't say it like 10 times. Every like two hours. How often do I tell you that I

Malcolm Collins: appreciate you?

Simone Collins: I mean, multiple times a day, like at least five times every night. But that's only at nighttime. That's after the sun has set.

So before then, you're the most loving and affectionate. Husband out there, which is insane because normally like the high value ones are just kind of cold and like they understand their values that they don't have to reciprocate. I [00:45:00] appreciate. I

Malcolm Collins: don't have wives who make them amazing dishes. See something online or like, Oh, this is a popular dish on the, on the tick tocks.

I'm going to see if I can make this for my husband.

Simone Collins: I mean, Yeah, because our kids don't eat anything good. And like, make all these amazing things for you, and I hope the kids will eat it, and then they're like, Where are my dinosaur nuggets? Where's the pizza?

Malcolm Collins: Well, if they're not dinosaur nuggets, then they're not real dinosaurs, Simone.

I knew this as a kid. Did you forget who you bred with?

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, I, I mean, I keep in mind, I did not eat vegetables until I was like 16 years old. I only ate like bland,

Malcolm Collins: not even at all. So I

Simone Collins: wouldn't eat mashed potatoes. Even I would only eat the like reconstituted flakes. If it was like,

Malcolm Collins: what do you think about us being over 5 million views?

Simone Collins: Oh,

that's, I can't really think about it because it's, we're getting to stupid numbers. Like, I can't make sense [00:46:00] of that. A human isn't capable of wrapping their head around that kind of size of a group, you know? So it just becomes like more than I can comprehend and we passed that a long

time ago.

Malcolm Collins: It's a lot of people.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's a stupidly large amount of people. You guys shouldn't be watching this. This is a kid making farting noises and a wife and a husband jacking off about how terrible blue sky is.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll let it go and I'll start your dinner, but I love you. Malcolm. Taquitos tonight, right? Tequilas tonight.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Hey, don't forget to put mostly

Simone Collins: cheese. Basically the, the, the meat is a flavoring agent.

And wrap them tight

Malcolm Collins: because I'm trying to get a lot of crunch there for everything.

Simone Collins: Maximum crunch, minimum meat.

Malcolm Collins: And we got more tortillas. So do not be stingy with the tortillas. It'd be stingy with them. [00:47:00]

Simone Collins: Okay. Do you want any leftovers or should I just take a tiny, tiny amount of meat? Yeah, like do you want leftover taquitos to snack on during the day?

Whatever

Malcolm Collins: you think is good. I'd have them tomorrow. I'd have them today. Whatever you think is good.

Simone Collins: Okay, great. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: Love thee. Bye bye. Love you.

Simone Collins: Bye. I was thinking this, this morning about your musings as a team that you could use cult tactics to brainwash yourself into doing good things. I mean, if a cult can make totally logical, even very smart and successful people do things that are very damaging to themselves.

Despite them being, you know, very difficult things, then you could probably brainwash yourself into doing stuff that you want for yourself. And I'm like, well, how else can we maybe apply this to help people do things that are good for them? And I was just thinking about like all these, you know, Not like mediocre marriages, especially where women like [00:48:00] just aren't add into their husbands and like get resent and things like that.

And then I was thinking about popular romance genres and I was like, oh, wait, so enemies to lovers is a really popular genre. Like, could you possibly create some kind of regimen? Whereby women start like building this own enemies to lovers fantasy, like if already they're getting resentful of their husbands and like getting all Machiavellian and stuff, then why not like turn it into something that like, in the end goes full circle and they end up like madly in love with their husbands after like super enemy in them.

I think

Malcolm Collins: it's possible. Well, no, here's why it doesn't work. Because when women enemy their husbands, they also degrade them and recontextualize them as lower status.

Simone Collins: Not, no, no, no. But yeah, but you have to be very concerted about it. So you'd have to do like an enemies to lovers and of like, well, then I'm going to be, we're, you have to, you have to Shanghai them into a Pygmalion relationship by the [00:49:00] definition of our pragmatist guides to relationship.

So you have to be like, well, I hate him so much. I'm just going to exploit him and make him the best possible husband and like help him succeed so that I can make tons of money off of him. And then

Malcolm Collins: once they have degraded their husband,

Simone Collins: even if, even if they plan on investing in their husband to make him a better person, because I feel like you don't understand.

You don't understand.

Malcolm Collins: Once they see a man in that way. They can never see them in any other way.

Simone Collins: Really? Because I feel like there are lots of There are plenty of relationships that end and then like a woman sees her husband thrive after like he gets rid of his dad body Yeah, it doesn't work until

Malcolm Collins: they've left him and they're jealous.

So I have seen many women who look down on their becomes a super big deal and then they weren't able to see that or contextualize that.

Simone Collins: Huh. Can we, can we, can we skip the leaving part where like the marriage stays together and we like, get the woman to go. Yeah. If he's sleeping with

Malcolm Collins: other women,

Simone Collins: if he's [00:50:00] no, that's what triggers

Malcolm Collins: it for them.

They're like, Oh, other women. Yeah. Social evaporation. Yeah. But, but

Simone Collins: if the man's going through dumpy phase, it's a lot harder for him to look to

Malcolm Collins: where other women are looking to some great studies

Simone Collins: on this, actually, as

Malcolm Collins: a man, like it's much easier to pick up women with a wedding ring than it is without a wedding ring.

If you're going out there hitting on women, put on a wedding ring because they do that as a sign of I forget the word, but it's like, like social proof,

Simone Collins: social proof. Yeah, it's social signaling. So and you can pick up a wedding ring on Amazon for like 10 and 11 because we just buy them in bulk at this point because Malcolm Keeps missing them.

You can do it, guys, if you're single and you just need to,

Malcolm Collins: you know. I have never lost a wedding ring in my Never. Like, I must have lost, it was in this house, 60 wedding rings at this point, or something like that? Like a large number. And we have no idea where they're going.

Simone Collins: One day, [00:51:00] like literally we're, we're going to hit like a floorboard or something.

And a bunch of rings are just going to come pouring out. Cause it'll turn out that tourist den who keeps stealing them from you, by the way,

Malcolm Collins: really does like stealing them from me. He's asked me for a wedding ring himself. And I said, I can get him a little one for him. And he goes, but then it won't be big.

Like daddy and mommy.

Simone Collins: Oh, he's a sweet kid. Last night. He's like, can I hold those two batteries for daddy and mommy? And he wanted to like take them into his bed. He just wants to hold batteries. That's all he wants in this little world. He holds his little battery. Like Torsten, those batteries have chemicals that can kill little children like you.

And he's like, what did he say? Something about like killer batteries. He's like, can I have the killer batteries? He doesn't, he just understands now that they're dangerous, but he needs to, he needs to hold them and go. He, he rubbed me against his face, you know, the whole rock thing. So he rubbed you? [00:52:00] Yeah.

He like took my hand and was like, ah. Like he's just, he's, he's, that's strange.

Malcolm Collins: He loves rubbing the things he loves against his face. He's very, yeah. The autism is strong

Simone Collins: with this one. Yeah. I love him so much.

Malcolm Collins: All right, so Simone I sent you a collection of memes. Thank you. Go to the bottom one. So the, the most recent one, which is just a post, and then we'll go through the memes in just a second.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Hi.

Malcolm Collins: So right now it's just a post on blue sky, which we'll be talking about later, but yes, okay, so we're cubans on blue sky Yes, we'll talk about it and he's shilling it a lot It's creepy. Oh, okay

Speaker 18: Hello. Hello. Hello. What can I do for you today? Uh. Torsten, show it your sword. Yeah. That sounds exciting. Don't do that, Torsten, or you'll break the, uh, ornaments. [00:53:00] Uh.