Fame, authenticity, and the cost of performance

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone dive deep into the decline of celebrity culture, using Taylor Swift as a case study for the last era of true pop stardom. They discuss the collapse of the celebrity-industrial complex, the rise of micro-celebrities, and how social media has changed the way we view fame. The conversation covers everything from Emma Watson and JK Rowling’s controversies, to the shifting political and cultural landscape, to the numbers behind Taylor Swift’s recent album and public perception.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be doing something of a follow up to an episode that we did recently on that we call the Last Show on Earth on how. You know, sort of Hollywood and, and the Zeitgeist movie, or the zeitgeist television show was no longer a thing. Yeah. And the thing that sort of connected the world was US political theater and, and the conversation around that.

Mm-hmm. The Trump White House, the Trump the, the, the Elon thing, the, the, everything like that, right? Mm-hmm. Today we’re gonna be focused on the other side of this, which it’s the collapse of celebrity culture. And how little relevance, and I think you’ll be shocked by some of the stats that we’re gonna go into celebrities have on our society anymore really.

Yeah, well, there’s been some recent you know, just absolute caning of Emma Watson. I don’t know if you saw this. Oh, yeah. K Rowling. Where Emma Watson is basically like, Hey, you know, I, I’m, I’m best seeds with JK [00:01:00] Rowling. I’ll always be friends with her. And it’s like, we remember everything you were saying about her.

You psychopath, like JK Rowling remembers when you thought it was cool to defend this whole trans thing. And, and the gender transition of minors. Forcing women in, in spaces where they are not safe to, to, to have trans women inserted into them, whether it’s it’s it’s prisons or anywhere else.

Mm-hmm. And JK Rowling was like, Hey, can we have like a reasonable conversation about this? Which really, she got de fenestrated before she began to go more and more. Right? Absolutely. It’s very similar to absolutely. Like, why is JK Rowling anti this? It’s like, not for religious reasons, it’s not for discomfort of like a variety of sexual orientations.

Mm-hmm. Like, clearly she’s got some dumbledore’s gay.

Simone Collins: Yes. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, come on. Yeah. She made everyone gay. That was like the thing about her that, that they said where she like, post hoc, make a bunch of Harry Potter characters. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Her retroactive

Simone Collins: ga ification. The double

Malcolm Collins: door I could see do [00:02:00] like,

Simone Collins: yeah, that was

Malcolm Collins: is is Emma Watson is now like, oh, I don’t care that much about those Jews anymore.

Now that it’s like everyone can say that publicly now, now that like publicly we’ve accepted. Oh, it doesn’t kill someone to block transition. Which we know now because the UK banned child transition and the unli rate in that population hasn’t increased statistically. So like we have a, an entire country where we have a very big set poll and a very big study that was done on this, and it, it did have the effect

I can only imagine the existential horror of being a trans kid in the UK right now with people trying to get those unli numbers up to actually prove that not transitioning , Minors has any potential negative effects to them.

all you gotta do is just read the words on the teleprompter here. Heh, okay. Let’s see how the

Transphobes. deal with this.

You know, some people say there’s no proof that

Not transitioning children. kills. I guess I’m the proof. By the time you see this commercial, I’ll be dead.[00:03:00]

Dead? That was fantastic! , what does that mean, I’ll be dead? That was very good, Eric. Here, eat this cupcake. It has sprinkles. Do you know what a hero is?

A hero is somebody who sacrifices himself for the good of others. You can be a hero, Eric. . Jesus Christ!.

Malcolm Collins: But to not talk on that. I also wanna use Taylor Swiss decline recently in, in sort of the public eye. As, as sort of a framing device for this, because I think in many ways Taylor Swift was the last celebrity the last true pop star that had a giant fan base that cared what they thought, the drama in their lives their politics.

And if, if you are young and you’re watching this, you don’t like get the way it used to be.

Mm,

okay. When I was growing up [00:04:00] you would see people, celebrities, like actors whose only qualification is that people knew them as actors. Go on major news stations like CNN, or M-S-N-B-C and give their thought.

On like wars or like political developments. If you watch Team America, world Police, the the Met Stone Tree Parker very good puppet thing, if you haven’t seen it. I, I think it’s hilarious. And it, it’s gotten a lot better with age as well. It’s, it’s like they really predicted a, a sort of zeitgeist.

Mm-hmm. And it’s funny that when it came out, it was considered an anti-Republican movie. Because it was seen as criticizing American foreign policing, which was like a Republican issue. Mm-hmm. And now it would be seen as a pro-Republican issue movie because it’s criticizing America, policing the rest of the world with our troops.

So it’s so interesting that that switch and it went from an anti to a [00:05:00] Republican movie.

Simone Collins: There’s the Film Actors Guild. A-K-A-F-A-G. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: The, the, the point I was making here. It’s the cultural power of celebrities was huge. When you walk through checkout lines in, in stores you know, any, any store, any grocery store growing up, I dunno if you have vivid memories of this, you would have these, just like racks of magazines and the magazines would all be covering what was going on personally in celebrities lives. Oh yeah.

Simone Collins: 100% of course. All the, yeah. Did you might remember go through today?

Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah, that’s our baby that she’s showing. That’s, sorry. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I’m constantly watching him on his NICU cam.

Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway.

Simone Collins: The,

Malcolm Collins: the point here, the celebrity

Simone Collins: gossip mags, I mean, they still exist, Mel. They are, they still

Malcolm Collins: exist, but they are much rarer. Yeah, they’re, they’re not like this dominant in your face screaming at you feature in every checkout. And they’ve

Simone Collins: lost a lot of readership and a lot of [00:06:00] viewership too.

I mean, there were also some really big online outlets that were prolific on this front. Perel Perez. Hi Hilton. Stella b****y. I loved for a while, but like now I go on them and I’m like, there’s nothing here. There’s nothing going on. It’s so nothing

Malcolm Collins: going on. Yeah. So this entire industry essentially fell apart.

Mm-hmm. And a another really fun instance of this recently was the spaceship op-ed.

Simone Collins: Oh, you mean when Katie Perry and Mrs. Jeff Bezos went into space like a bunch of other women. Were like, we’re gonna be the first

Malcolm Collins: women, all women in space. Everything is love. I feel so happy is love. Yeah. It was so cha.

What an accomplishment for women. For women. I did it for you young girls. So you could see that one day you could FA rich guy and go into space. Obviously not with like your brains or talent or effort but. What an accomplishment. Very what is it like deep see the [00:07:00] submarine thing, you know, like, yeah, the billionaire submarine, but, but the whole I think that the reason why they went up there and they did this is celebrity culture in the nineties was like.

You, you would actually do stuff like this and everyone would be forced to cheer for you. Like, because and if people don’t understand what led to this, I wanna talk about like what led to this before I get into statistics of what caused it all to break apart.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, and I think that this is a good instance.

Suppose bunch of pop stars in the nineties decided to be the first all female. Space thing. Okay. How do you the public get your news, right? Like what, what, what outlets do you have access to? Mm-hmm. So you go to early odds nineties. You are getting it from. Tv like CNN you’re getting it from like the Daily Show.

You are getting it from you know, celebrity gossip Rex. Right? The problem is, is that none of those outlets could really criticize because I am a CNN, right? Well, my parent company. [00:08:00] Owns the, their, their label company, right? Like my parent company owns for the movie stars. This is especially an issue because they’re often owned by the same companies, right?

Like, this is why it was so hard to criticize Scientology for a long time because the, the actors who are Scientologists would say, well, I won’t promote my movie if the Daily Show or Southpark is criticizing Scientology on another network. Right? Like. And so you basically could not publicly criticize these people, and when you could publicly criticize them, it couldn’t be for something that everyone knew, like they’re self-aggrandizing and went on a ship.

It had to be some sort of gossipy thing. So the information just didn’t go out there, right? Yeah. But today we, the general public can have our visceral reaction to people wasting a lot of money on something seeking personal validation, and we can just be like, that’s ridiculous. In investigation. I wanna get into, actually, I want your thoughts on this first before I go further into all of this.

What, what are your thoughts on why celebrities were ever [00:09:00] given a mouse piece?

Simone Collins: We literally didn’t have anything else to talk about. I mean, I, that is like, if we were vapid and now there’s so many more outlets for, if you want vapid content that are so much better. For example, the, the Ya and Romance novel world has exploded.

Our options are, huge in terms of YouTube and TikTok now there are so many micro celebrities that you can really get deep into the life and get tons of gossip and dirt on. People in a much more intimate way. And, and an issue with original celebrity gossip was you never got enough. You know, the, the, the front page would make so many promises.

And then it was just a bunch of conjecture from third parties speaking on background that you, you knew one, like the vast majority of it was manufactured. And it also wasn’t even substantive what you’ve got. And now you can get the real deal. On social [00:10:00] media and, and they’re letting you into their lives.

They’re giving you full behind the scenes access, that there’s just no way that actual like, or, or legacy celebrities can compete. So that whole industry has gone bust basically. No much better options are out there.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that, that’s interesting. I think, I mean. There were other people who could talk on this stuff.

I, I actually think the main reason why celebrities were in our face so much was simply because the news stations were owned by the same people who owned the record labels and the movie production studio. Well, that was

Simone Collins: even more the case. When there were those movie studios that literally like ran every element of celebrity’s lives, you know, they, they, they did all their styling.

They chose what they were.

Malcolm Collins: That’s why I don’t, I don’t care to hear an actor talk on like the the Daily Show, right? Back in the day. I always remember, I was so disappointed whenever it was an actor because I was like, they didn’t, oh, because they had such

Simone Collins: bad takes. They were so boring. They were so basic.

They

Malcolm Collins: didn’t, they didn’t write that literally. Their intellect [00:11:00] has nothing to do with their production of content, so why is anything that their intellects produces going to be interesting to me, the viewer? Yeah. It was,

Simone Collins: it was very much like Zoolander captured that so well, where it’s just like you, you just do what they tell you to, and you know, they go to like Zoolander dancing like a monkey

You are a monkey, Derek. You’re a monkey dance monkey, and.

Simone Collins: .

I mean, that, that is what. That didn’t make, they didn’t have interesting things to say. They, they were good at being attractive and playing roles. And, and that’s kind of most of it. They were, well, I actually

Malcolm Collins: think actually

Simone Collins: very

Malcolm Collins: interesting point there. They were good at being attractive and playing roles and that’s why celebrity culture went so woke.

That is why Emma Watson was so, oh. ‘cause her job was playing a role. So she looked at society and said, what’s popular? What’s current thing? Yeah. I’m going, society says

Simone Collins: dance little monkey [00:12:00] and I will dance. Like a little monkey and society was the left. And it tell told you exactly how to dance and she did it.

Oh, that’s very, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: She’s going to the un telling the un what the un wants to hear.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Wow. I

Malcolm Collins: think Greta Thornberg was also a product of this kind of celebrity. Well, and she was a

Simone Collins: product her mother was like an opera singer and her father was a Yeah. Like they were, it was a family of performers slash like, entertainment people.

So that also makes sense. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so to give you an idea of how much this has gone down peak interactions were five to 10 times higher. On Greta and Emma Watson’s 2019 post versus today’s post.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow. So there’s even been during recently a steep decline.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, Greta Bert’s, 2019 ex followers surged from 100 K to 4 million.

Now at 5.8 million, they plateaued. Emma’s following 28 million, stable, but inactive. Her last major activism push was in 2018. Mm-hmm. We’re gonna get into the exact numbers of interactions. Actually, I can just jump to the interactions here because I thought they were really interesting.

Okay.

So, Emma Watson 2016, [00:13:00] he, for she era average, like on a top 10 post was 27,000. And then 2024. More recently, the average likes she only had one post in the top twin that was more recent was 5,900. Hmm. So 27,000 to 5,900 is what happened to Emma Watson.

Hmm.

Average reposts went from 11,000 to 1000. Ouch. If, if you look at Greta Thornberg pre 2020 it was around 165 thousand average likes. And if you look up more recently, 2024, it was 15,000 average likes. So 165,000 to 15 average likes. And then average repost, it went from 18,000 to 4,000.

So that’s just absolutely catastrophic. Now also, keep in mind that this is, in part because X has, has doesn’t have their stands as much anymore. You know, they’ve moved to the smaller platforms like Blue Sky, so it’s harder for them to gain traction by like, do current thing, right? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Never really having their own opinion on stuff.

And, and I think that the, the, the, the act like you have a [00:14:00] role really worked for. It’s what sort of led Harry and Meghan to their giant, like bundle Bumble, which has sort of destroyed their public perception. And I think that they were just like, what is popular among like urban elite circles? I’m gonna do that and I I’m gonna do only that and all of that.

And then, then the love me. And, and being a victim was a part of that. I mean, I think that, that being a victim was, was genuinely as, as South Park showed because they associated that with status. Right.

Speaker: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Is this you sorority girl, actress, influencer, victim? Yeah. That’s totally me. Okay, I see. And then you added your husband to your friends and family account. You must be the royal prince Millionaire World traveler victim. That’s right.

Malcolm Collins: You know? Yeah. And so they played that role. And I’ll, I’ll put the scene here.

Speaker 4: The worldwide, we want pri, we want ribs worldwide. It has been several months now since our beloved Queen has. Our Canadians are finding it hard to [00:15:00] go on our Canadians. That is, except for our first guest, the prince and his wife.

Speaker 5: We want privacy. We want privacy. Alright. Thanks for having us on the show. It’s so awesome to bear her. It’s great. So let me start with you, Sam. You’ve lived a life with the royal family. You’ve had everything handed to you, but you say your life has been hard and now you’ve written all about it in your new book.

When.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

The final thing I wanted to say before I, I, I dig into like actual data quotes here is the.

Age of stars can never come back. The age of the celebrity can never come back because of ai. We are already seeing a company has been had their AI actress hired by multiple studios already. So we’re already seeing the ability to do that. It doesn’t really make sense. To, to invest in these sorts of stars.

And you can see this, there just haven’t been that many new celebrities outside of like genuine interests through social [00:16:00] media and stuff like that generated anytime recently. I mean

Simone Collins: there, so I will say there, there is still celebrity gossip. There is still celebrity culture and there are a few young celebrities that, that do get a decent amount of attention.

What they wear the way that they break up marriages or cheat or do things like that gets, gets decent coverage. And. Especially the way that they, they flame out while Harry and Meghan messed up by banking on the fact that merely being celebrities would be enough and they’d be able to sell anything just because they were celebrities.

There are still economies and entire careers built on just hate. Hate commentary on them. So it, it still kind of exists except now it’s, it, it exists more from a, a place of disrespect and not aspiration.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Hatred. That, that’s actually a very good point. Celebrities used to be something we aspire to be and that people wanted to be.

Mm-hmm.

Whereas now we pay attention to celebrities currently out of hatred. [00:17:00] Well, and you’re right, you actually watch multiple YouTubers who are just hate YouTubers on Harry and Meghan.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Multiple couriers here. I, I have I, I do think that Taylor Swift, though is one of those, those few last, perhaps now waning stars who, who did really.

Capture

Malcolm Collins: her album. Did was her biggest debut in terms of like actual sales,

Simone Collins: commercial success, the Showgirl album.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But there’s been a lot of pushback in it. We’ll get to an article that came out in, at the Atlantic called Taylor Swift’s. Fairytale Is Over.

Mm-hmm.

The subtitle, the singer has everything she wanted.

Her new album suggests that it’s all sort of a drag. Hmm. If, if we go into quotes on this, a slate on October 3rd said, quote, A masterpiece of cringe. This year’s the life of a show girl marks the first time, I might say distance helps about a Taylor Swift album. It’s not that Swift at 35 has by any means, age out.

If anything, she’s still acting too young in quote. Mm-hmm. And they also make fun of the song wishlist for [00:18:00] being a laughable, humble brag. The New York Times October 6th said, quote, a deceptively modest set of songs about the facade of fame. Swift is hungry to move on from the battles of her past, but not until she attends to some unfinished business.

Hollywood Reporter rundown said quote, every song had the potential to be a smash. Versus nowhere as good as it should have been. Mm-hmm. And John, this is a, a guy on TikTok said I just watched a TikTok where the creator calls the life of a showgirl. Everything that people have ever complained about TWA Swift defined in an album.

She’s managed to sum up every criticism about everything that has ever gone into her music. And just do that. Exactly. Now if you’re like, how, how bad can, can this be? Right? Because this is one of those things where it’s like. People are like, well, what if an AI wrote it? I’m like, an AI would not write this badly.

Like she shouldn’t. That’s true. An AI would do it better.

Simone Collins: She shouldn’t have used ai. Yes. Here’s,

Malcolm Collins: here’s a quote from one of them. Forgive me, it sounds cocky. He ah, [00:19:00] automatized me and opened my eyes. Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see. His love was the key that opened my thigh.

Simone Collins: That’s so bad,

Malcolm Collins: so bad. And another song, it’s not his end that makes Kaylee’s pants so tight.

Another song, his magic wand. Forgive me, it sounds cocky. A, another one that people thought girl, a hilarious and sad was others wanted designer clothes, awards bright lights, and that video taken off the internet. But I want a best friend who I think is hot, a couple kids, and a driveway with a basketball hoop.

And if what Slate said to that as if Taylor Swift has not wanted all the fame, come on. You literally like worked for this,

Simone Collins: right? Like this was your job. Well, and she’s, she’s also, I mean, like when she did her eras tour, people were just so impressed by the amount of physical exertion that she put into her performances as well.

Like she got a lot of respect for it. She’s worked, she’s worked hard for her fame. Yeah. [00:20:00] And I think that that’s why she lasted for so long. Mm-hmm. Yeah. ‘cause she worked, she earned it. She worked hard for it. And when people like Ka Perry started to falter and you could see like her dance moves on her most recent tour.

And who knows what physical issues she might be dealing with, with like,

Malcolm Collins: that was the one where she like was not moving at all. She was just like, yeah,

Simone Collins: just looked. It was so bad. Versus like Taylor Swift, like just. Killing herself to, to do all this. I think the issue though, and I’ve seen some, I’ve watched a bunch of commentary on this by this point, is that she for a while was emblematic of the childless cat lady and that really meant a lot to her single female followers.

Yep. Wind

Malcolm Collins: Vance made that quip. Taylor Swift’s response to that was taken as a definitive response. Mm-hmm. But continue,

Simone Collins: yeah. That it was a really big deal and. She has, has now functionally turned on them by choosing to get married. And also by [00:21:00] even putting this now in her song lyrics, like, you know, you saved me.

Like Ophelia kind of has this song. Ophelia, in, in the Showgirl album kind of has this theme of like, you know, you, you saved me from Singlehead, essentially. And, and, and people now find that very insulting because they now, they like, she has invalidated. What she used to validate for them. Yeah. They showed

Malcolm Collins: that the, the most famous, the most wealthy, the most sexy woman in the world doesn’t need no man.

And now she’s like, but, but now,

Simone Collins: now she needs a man and everything else is falling apart because also she is white, she is wealthy, and she has a largely white. Like middle class basic b***h fan base, and we don’t respect those people. And oh, and she married like she or she’s going to marry like the Chad football player, you know?

Yeah. Come on. Basically like, yeah, like it, it’s just, it. The, the one thing she had going for her [00:22:00] that made her that made her acceptable to the left, to progressive. And, and keep in mind when we look at political divides of young men, women, they are. Overwhelmingly going more and more left. Mm-hmm. Was the fact that she was a childless cat lady, and now that she’s lost that and all you have left is a billionaire who believes in marriage and children and married a football player, this is not gonna work anymore.

And, and so I think that, yeah, I guess her, her succumbing to wanting to live a complete life. Has maybe you doing well and I think that I, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, I would not be surprised if Taylor Swift does end up just moving right. In her politics. I, I think it’s important to remember for people who are aware of Taylor Swift today, I actually used to be a Taylor Swift fan back when she was a, a country musician.

Oh really?

Because she started as a country musician and, and I’m quite a fan of a lot of sort of pop country music. Yeah, that’s great. I don’t care. Your pop country, you know, whatever.

Simone Collins: Well, I, I actually like the song Ophelia, because I, I watched, I just watched the music video of it and it has a big Buzzby Berkeley reference in it.

And I love Buzzby Berkeley. So like, I don’t know who Buzzby Berkeley is. [00:23:00] He is the man who had this, like, there was this period in like the 1950s, early sixties that had these huge, elaborate coordinated dance scenes, often involving water where women kind of acted like robots and clockwork, and I f*****g loved it.

It’s, it’s my, that’s my fetish. It’s so, you know, she, she’s now golden in my book. But well, no,

Malcolm Collins: but I, I, I think you capture something about her and her fame. And this is something that ‘cause we did end up watching K-pop demon hunters and it had something that I liked as a trope was in K-pop demon hunters.

Was that. I always am a little confused by the versions of Hell where it’s like, and this is like weirdly popular in shows where like you get a higher rank in hell if you were more evil on earth and your rank in hell determines how good your life is in hell. And

Simone Collins: so I never thought about that, but yeah, I mean like if, if that’s the way things work, you need to like really lean in to your evilness or like to being as evil as possible.

You’ll be a piece as. [00:24:00] You don’t want that. ‘

Malcolm Collins: cause that gives you either in, in like, for example, in hell of a boss, it gives you additional like superpowers in hell, right? Yeah. You don’t

Simone Collins: wanna be middle management, you wanna be like an executive. So like, or, or

Malcolm Collins: in other ones it’s like, oh, the, the, you know, like Hitler is like a, a, you know, taken is one of his generals or something.

It’s like, wait, he gets like a position of power because he gets, yeah. Wait a second. Like what? Hold on a second. You know? And in Kpop, but truly like the

Simone Collins: best hell would be like. Sanctimonious Karens, who were technically very good ruling over them. That is, that is the perfect punishment. That that’s where

Malcolm Collins: the, the, the, the ladies who are the the, the church ladies who mm-hmm.

Are gossips. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The, the ones who end up ruling over hell yeah. No, the, the point here being is they, they pointed out the thing that like being a demon, being on that side is just always being empty and in pain.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It sucks.

Simone Collins: It sucks. Yeah. It sucks.

Malcolm Collins: But I think that part of what we’re seeing, and this is what this Atlantic article is [00:25:00] talking about, and what we’re seeing in some of these songs is that, taylor Swift, and, and we see this on the other side, like we view ourselves as fighting this sort of amur, urban monocultural sort of collection of, of, of demonic beings, I guess you could call them. Mm-hmm. You know, hypothetically being and when you pledge yourself to this side, this constant search for.

Pleasure and self validation. No matter how high ranking you are, no matter if you’re the general, no matter if you are the Taylor Swift your life is a living nightmare. Right? Yeah. And I think BoJack Horseman does a great job of capturing this. Yes. It’s so well done that, that It is, it is. And, and it.

One

Simone Collins: is, well, you know what, I also think that, that you haven’t watched it, but succession does a great job at that too in depicting the, the empty misery of extreme wealth of nepo babies. So it, it’s actually been done a decent amount in contemporary media.

Malcolm Collins: But I, I’m not saying even just extreme. So I grew up around extreme wealth [00:26:00] and my mom was always very disappointed that she never saw me chasing it myself.

Understatement. Yeah, understatement. But she was always like, why don’t you just get super wealthy? Why don’t you give up X, Y, and Z to work at McKinsey? You could get a job there tomorrow. And I was like, because. I don’t want to, I I, I, I want my life

Simone Collins: to have meaning. Not, not that anyone. I mean, there are many ways to, yeah, there’s ways,

Malcolm Collins: ways that you can, you can do that.

But I, I just wanted to, you know, work on, on everything. I did try to change the world and she could never understand. And I remember being like, mom, you took me to all those parties. You introduced me to all those people. Not one of ‘em was happy. Um mm-hmm. Not one of them. And even the most

Simone Collins: luxurious trips that your family took us on, like, we’re not that

Malcolm Collins: fun, were two days in.

Simone Collins: We were deeply uncomfortable. We’re like, we need, we need to go back. I would rather get

Malcolm Collins: home playing video games and chat AI and reading Korean romance. Maybe can I just have like mac and cheese and some bread? Like, [00:27:00] please no more, no more of this, this, this gourmet food. But the point here is that it’s not just them.

It’s, it’s, it’s, that was one degree of unhappiness, which was just sort of hollowness that I saw in those populations. There’s the other degree of unhappiness, which is the unhappiness of totally giving yourself to the urban monoculture, which seems astronomically worse. And we’ve talked about this from the perspective of the celebrity drug addict burnout.

Right? Like, it, it, it is so sort of. A, a poetic justice that even the individuals who rise to the top, even the generals of the. Urban monocultural cause you know, of, of eventual mass global cultural genocide so that only they remain Yeah. That, that they are the most tortured, the, the average, you know, like lefty mom or whatever is generally gonna be living a decent life.

Right. You [00:28:00] know? But it is the. The ones, and, and Taylor Swift, I think shows this through this album and everything like that, is she believed that the reason why she felt unfulfilled in life, despite having everything that she thought that she wanted. And the great quote here from, from you know, Jim Carrey that I always love on this is I, I wish I could give you all the fame in my head.

You know, something like, I wish I could give you all the money I have, so then that you would understand that it doesn’t. Actually solve your problems.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and I, I’m gonna fully admit, having enough money to like, not worry about buying food and paying your rent. Like I

Malcolm Collins: agree. I agree. Like housing

Simone Collins: security, like money’s everything.

But like pa there are diminishing marginal returns passed a certain point. Like once you have food and housing security get more money. But the point here

Malcolm Collins: being is that, she thought, well, I’ve got this one piece left that I need which is marriage to the perfect guy. [00:29:00] She meets the guy who fits all of her stereotypes of what a perfect guy is.

Post pregnancy, pain from the uterus, shrinking. Oh, you look like you are in so much pain right now.

Simone Collins: Okay, it’s passing. Carry on.

Malcolm Collins: I’m so sorry, Simone. I’m more sorry

Simone Collins: for Dex, but he’s doing okay. Look, and he’s he’s still fine. He’s still alive.

Malcolm Collins: Still alive. Yeah. But so, the point I was making was that she thinks I get married, it’s gonna feel good. I’m gonna, I’m gonna feel that thing that I’ve always been chasing.

Yeah. And she, she gets this engagement and she doesn’t feel that. And that’s when I think everything sort of tumbled for her. Interesting. Was for the legacy, what, what

Simone Collins: is indicating to people that she doesn’t feel that though?

Malcolm Collins: Well, we’ll get into that. I mean, some of the songs are also like, why are you doing a song about [00:30:00] this?

Like she wrote a song called Ruin the Friendship that Mourns a high school crush and what could have been yeah, when she’s just like, engaged. Right. In the title track featuring Sabrina Carpenter uses the kitty persona to lament show business grind with lines that feel like Kitty Perry’s cry for relief.

They’re like, they ripped me off like false lashes and they threw me away. Hey, thank you for the lovely bouquet. You’re sweeter than a peach, but you don’t know the life of a showgirl babe. Showgirl feels like Taylor’s crying for help. All this keel love, but she’s stuck reliving a high school in scooter fights.

Sad. Wish, by the way,

Simone Collins: I understand that there’s a song in which she refers to a really happy moment in high school where she played on a trampoline, but then she broke her arm and this is why we don’t get a trampoline. Okay. Just saying, I.

Malcolm Collins: Right. You are amazing, Simone. Well, I mean, I can, I can read the, the Atlantic article, a bit of it.

Taylor Swift’s fairytale is [00:31:00] over. She just doesn’t sound like she’s having fun. She has the team captain, the cushion cut diamond, the fans who will show out for yet another branded cardigan. But Taylor Swift, a life of a show girl. The life it seems to portray is a Charmless chore. Swiss Spin’s 12th album.

Pondering, familial blunders, rivalries, regrets. The countdown clock of her own morality. What’s new? Narratively is her football player, fiance, and the happy of her after he represents, but she can’t quite convince herself or the listener that she’s getting what she always said she wanted. She’s become too cynical to sell a fairy tale.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

I don’t know. I mean, I could see her trying to trying to articulate the disenfranchisement and disillusionment that so many people feel now. I don’t know though. I mean, like, it’s, it’s hard to communicate these things. People are gonna read in a ton of stuff. I mean, what you and I know and what family members have told [00:32:00] you who, who’ve been very famous, is that the stuff you get accused of.

Is annoyingly not true?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: the evil stuff about you that, that you worry about going out doesn’t come out and then like the evil stuff people say about you just isn’t true. And that’s kind of frustrating. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I’ll articulate what you’re saying a bit better about fame is what was said to me by one of my famous relatives is they said.

That the reasons that he, he goes, when, when, when you become famous, a lot of people will hate you and a lot of people will love you. And what makes it so, you know, sort of unfulfilling is that the, the things that people love about you aren’t true. The things that people hate about you aren’t true.

Mm-hmm. They, they hate and love somebody who doesn’t exist. Yeah. And,

I think

Simone Collins: Swift is going through that. I mean, so like, you know, we can talk our way around here. The bigger narrative, of course, is that like in the end, they’re losing their grip [00:33:00] on, on the, the narrative anyway.

Malcolm Collins: But I actually disagree with what this.

A family member told me, so I’m gonna push back. I’m, I, you know, we now know a lot of people who are famous in like this generation. Right? Yeah. And I pointed this out on other podcasts but. I’ve noticed that the relationship people have with fame and the relationship they have with their fans actually comes down to that original quote which is the ones that are hated and loved for things that are true about them, typically are very happy with being famous and quite like the public perception of.

The people who are hated and loved for things that are not true about them are the ones that really seem to, to, to be drowning under their fame. Okay. Touche.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because we know people who are really, really, really famous, who don’t like their fame, and they are also massively misunderstood. And I think that.

In, in the amount [00:34:00] of renno that we have. It’s actually fairly accurate and we freaking love it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’ll be like the progressive stuff will like make up stuff about us and they’ll lie about us in the pieces, but they’re usually not like, they’re like directional lies or something like that. Like they won’t to, the biggest one is probably that we’re like billionaires,

Simone Collins: which I love.

Malcolm Collins: Fine. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Billionaires in happiness bucks. Yeah, so true.

Simone Collins: Never felt so wealthy is when our kids are all piled on us. Oh my gosh. Right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, but the, I think the general like sane person who has taken a bit of time to like research or try to understand us,

Simone Collins: they yeah. They have a

Malcolm Collins: very real understanding of who we are.

100%.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and so when they say Malcolm and Simone, I love your guys’ work. I love what you do. I love who you are. I want the best for your family. That’s great. It feels. A reminder for me that I’m pretending to be something I’m not and causing emotional dissonance. Yeah. That is a reminder of like, oh, they actually like me.

[00:35:00] Right? Yeah. Or like

Simone Collins: some reminder that we have to live up to an untrue standard, which I think a lot of other people really feel of like, oh, it’s not actually true that like, or I’m this healthy like liver king. Right. Like he wasn’t actually what he said he was. And that must have been extremely stressful for him.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And then other people is just like, oh, you think I’m this, you know. I am politically aligned in this way, and I’m really not like, that’s not actually what I believe. Yeah. Yeah, I Yeah, that’s a really good point. Like,

Malcolm Collins: for example, you never hear like I, or I’ve never heard Joe Rogan complain about being famous.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no. Yeah, because he’s so based, he’s so unapologetically him. It sounds stressful.

Malcolm Collins: Matt Stone and Trey Parker complain about being famous. I’ve never heard any of the, the people I know who, who come off to me as authentic. That I can talk about ‘cause I don’t actually know them. You know, I can’t, I can’t talk about like, my actual friend group, obviously.

Right. But like, yeah. Yeah. So I, we we’re talking about how much has sort of the celebrity culture died. Mm-hmm. So let’s look at a, a few of the like things that, like people know about from familiarity culture. Oscar’s viewership in 1998. Oh. [00:36:00] Do you mind that, you know, the population was smaller back then?

You know, you didn’t have cell phones, you didn’t have YouTubes. It was harder to access viewership of stuff. It had 57 million Vol Watchers and only 18.7 million in 2023. You look at the Grammys in 2010s on average was around 26 million viewers. 2024, it was only 16.9 million. If you look at print magazine sales, 1.2 million circa the early 2000 tens in 2024 mm-hmm.

Only around 800,000 are left. If you look at win search trends for celebrity gossip peaked, it was between 2010 and 2015. And there’s been a, a 55% drop in some stars like Kim Kardashian. Which and, and it, I, I thought a AI’s take on this is actually pretty interesting. Yeah. He said 2024 was a blood blast for a-listers eroding the untouchable aura Sean did.

He combs faced federal raids and lawsuits over alleged abuse slash trafficking, taking his [00:37:00] empire and sparking hashtag free diddy memes that mocked rather than mourned Blake Livelies. Ends with us promo turned into a PR disaster amid labor disputes and tone death, feminism accusations.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s the good thing is we just wanna watch the fire burn.

Yeah. Like that is that if you’re, if you’re trending as a celebrity, more often than not, it’s because of people taking pleasure in some scandal that you’re undergoing.

Malcolm Collins: I, I it, it, Chrissy Tiger’s 2020 Apology Tour or James Conan’s 2022 Exit Show how social media amplifies flaws, making celebrities quote just like us, but worse.

And we have in the meantime seen the. Digital celebrity eclipse it, right? Like the, the even like the brat summer thing, which you could think of as like a traditional corporate thing mm-hmm.

That wasn’t

done with the prodi traditional promotional campaign or anything like that, that, that, that just went viral.

Right. Like that it

Simone Collins: was very homegrown. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That is how you reach people. [00:38:00] Mm-hmm. If we’re gonna go over, I can talk about like stars that have crashed out, like Lindsay Lohan and Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen DeGeneres was so fun to watch Crash Out. I almost wanna do like a whole thing on just how she ruined her life because, well, isn’t Rosie

Simone Collins: O’Donnell now like she has Trump derangement syndrome?

Didn’t she leave the US or something like Yeah, there’s just a lot of.

Malcolm Collins: They,

Simone Collins: they used to be so, politically influential and powerful because we didn’t really have access to other sources of shared trusted people who we get a kind of parasocial relationships with. And because that became Bal Inized and decentralized, they lost their influence but didn’t realize it.

They thought that they would always have it.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s so funny with you, you know, I, I could go into her room in the morning or like on our morning walks and we’re like, well, ASM Gold said this today. And she’s like, oh yes, I watched that Asma Gold video. And you know, it’s, he almost this, this, this gr crazy like falling apart guy was like three teeth, you know, living.

In, in deplorable [00:39:00] conditions has more influence than pretty much, I think culturally speaking, any mainstream celebrity right now,

Simone Collins: he could fix the rest of his mouth. He said in one episode that he just, he fixed one side ‘cause it was what was seen on camera. He’s just super, he’s one of the low, lowest maintenance people in the world.

Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Well, maybe now higher maintenance ‘cause a person of his body are like falling apart from, from living in such a, a dangerous environment to take

Simone Collins: care of yourself. Asman gold.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I, I think that, I mean, he, he has cut through society so well because he deeply bleeds authenticity.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

And people desperately want authenticity. That is what the left has realized. Like the, the men who aren’t voting for leftist candidates anymore want is, they crave authenticity than everyone’s

Malcolm Collins: Like, Asma gold isn’t, isn’t rightist. And I’m like, bro, he like went on like a Trump like election tour basically.

Right? The right isn’t. Whatever the right used to be anymore. Right. Like they, it is RFK and Trump and [00:40:00] Elon and JD Vance. Like none of these people were, were Republicans, you know, a a, a few decades ago. Right. You know, and it, Asma Gold is a rightist simply because is one of the fans that a, in a recent video, he’s just willing to like, get up there and have an actual evidence-based conversation.

And that’s what the rights become. It’s just. It, it, it doesn’t have to do with your actual beliefs anymore. It’s like, are you interested in an evidence-based conversation or do you just want to yell at me? Right? And so you get people with wildly different beliefs. And I think that people who aren’t on the right or aren’t at rightest events may be surprised how wildly diverse the beliefs are at these, these sorts of events.

Like if you go to like a, a, a right wing conference, which we go to, we speak at them all the time, and you bring up something like universal basic income or you know, other things that people would think of as like. Classically socialist people will be like, yeah, let’s have a talk about that. Like, what are the statistics?

What are the, yeah, like [00:41:00] it’s, it, it’s like you could basically go up there and under another name be like, let’s talk about communism and, and, and seizing the means of production. And they’re like, okay, let’s have a conversation about that. Right. You know, like, does it work? Like, I don’t know, you know, if anything, it’s an offensive thing to say, so it’s even more something that we should look into.

Yes. It’s

Simone Collins: more authentic. Yeah. Yeah, because

Malcolm Collins: it’s more authentic, right? But the reason why I cite Asma Gold and people can be like, well, his numbers aren’t that high. It’s like half a million to a million, or whatever, right? And I’m like, the reason why Asma gold matters more politically than people with higher numbers than him is that if you look at people who beat him in numbers, they’re often using.

Click Beatty titles. Mm-hmm. And click Beatty content, right? Like it is content that is, if, if, if you have like a standard right wing guy, right? And everything he’s putting out there is just playing to the right wing base. He’s not saying anything that’s meaningful to, to, to changing people’s beliefs, right?

Like, people aren’t going [00:42:00] to him to have their beliefs changed or challenged. And I’ve always never wanted to become somebody like that, right? Mm-hmm. Because then, mm-hmm. Right? Like what’s the point? What’s the point if I’m just confirming people’s beliefs. He is of the people who have an audience that is open to genuinely hearing ideas outside of their existing political sort of perspective and world perspective and open to changing their mind on long form intellectual content.

He’s probably the current king. Yeah. Also, I have to go back. Love you. Love you. Love you.

Simone Collins: I love you. Celebrity culture is dead. This was really miss talking. I’m, I’m glad to be home. Yeah. All right. I, I love you a lot. I

Malcolm Collins: love you too.

Simone Collins: Bye. Bye. I’m Texas is still, still chugging along. He’s doing all right.

Malcolm Collins: That’s wonderful news. Serious. Complications of post-birth. So

Simone Collins: yeah, poor thing. He’s got a stomach tube. He’s stuck in the nicu, his iv, his. Cannulas, but Oh, in the, in the recent [00:43:00] x-ray, did they find anything new? They decided not to take one.

And I’m kind of glad because he’s been getting too many x-rays. They’re like, he’s doing fine, so let’s just not give him more x-rays unless he shows that he’s juggling to breathe.

Malcolm Collins: That’s really smart. I’m, I appreciate that.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think they’re making really good decisions. And the next thing that will happen if he.

Is able to take in liquids is and, and like eat more, take in more food through the stomach tube and some through bottles. They’ll take out the IV as early as tomorrow, which would be huge. So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Oh,

Simone Collins: By the way, do you know what’s going on in Japan? ‘cause it’s pretty awesome.

Malcolm Collins: What

Simone Collins: they, they basically just elected Shinzo Abe 2.0.

Oh, really? Yeah. Her, her name is so Taka Takai. She’s, she’s basically, she, she frames herself as the successor to Shinzo Abe. She’s all about bringing back omics womenomics. She’s very aware of demographic to adjust social services in preparation of that she. [00:44:00] She’s like balancing like border security and control with an understanding that there is gonna be a need for foreign workers in the face of demographic collapse.

But she is definitely like all about beefing up national security. And she’s the most right. Candidate of all of the ones like, you know, the, the other guys were like either more centrist or more left. And well

Malcolm Collins: that’s, that’s good. I hope we get more of that. And for people, she, she’s not also a

Simone Collins: mainstream feminist at all.

Like as much as she’s all for like the woman omics element of Shinzo Abe’s original thing was like, let’s support. Childcare, let’s help women get into the, the economy. So she’s not like women belong in the home. She’s obviously like supporting women working, and she wants to bring Japan to Nordic levels of childcare support and parental leave, which is like, that’s wonderful.

Convenient. I don’t think it’s gonna help with birth rates, but I, I still, I’m like, okay, cool. If you are, if you’re up for it. But she’s also like, yeah, I don’t think we need like a female empress. Like she, she doesn’t support like [00:45:00] super progressive. Views, like changing traditional Japanese institutions just to be more woke.

So she just sounds awesome. I’m so excited. Love

Malcolm Collins: it. People haven’t seen our Shinzo Ave video. We go deep into Shinzo Ave. In his policies, we call him the Harambe of Tism or the Harambe of the new right? More broadly. And great guy, great guy.

Simone Collins: His legacy lives on the, the, the people have spoken. They want Shinzo 2.0 and they got it.

So I just wanted to give you that happy, happy news in the realm of tism.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Yeah. There’s so many topics. I really wanna do. The one on the AI claiming to murder people. So, so much we’ve gotten behind on during your pregnancy, not

Simone Collins: claiming, deciding to murder, people, deciding it thought 96% if you’re major.

Malcolm Collins: Which I think is so funny because it shows that EI at Murkowski has no idea what he’s talking about, even when things go bad because it’s thinking and acting just like a human.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: His, his whole thing is, is that we can’t predict how it will act.

Simone Collins: It’s like, yeah. Like he just, yeah. His whole thing is, yeah.

It’s gonna act in completely alien ways and we can never anticipate. [00:46:00] It’s like now it’s, it’s doing exactly what we would do.

Malcolm Collins: Watch any of our videos on this. If you were gonna murder a human, it would murder you first. That’s. That’s the way we do.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right.

Speaker 7: You gotta go into the maze. That’s where you go in.

Way over

the way over. No, you do not do that. Octavian. That’s not funny way.

Look Andy Here. Wait. Get one in here. Hey Andy, do you want me to put you in with the balls?[00:47:00]

So.

Titan, what are you doing?

Chocolate chip Octa. Knock it off. Homemade.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe