Navigating Identity in Conservative Media

In this episode, we dive into the recent departure of conservative influencer Brett Cooper from The Daily Wire. We explore the events surrounding her rise to fame, the attempts to replace her, and the gossip and evidence surrounding her exit. We also discuss the broader implications for conservative media, the role of parasocial relationships, and analyze why The Daily Wire may have held Brett back. Tune in for a thorough analysis and our thoughts on what this means for Brett's future and the conservative media landscape.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I think we all really enjoyed the Brett Cooper goodbye video.

Speaker 2: The peace loving leader of this great country has asked me to appeal to you, to stop your vicious, imperialistic tactics around the globe.

Malcolm Collins: Oh no, not, not that one.

Speaker 6: gonna make a clone, so sneaky Brett won't know, meet the new Brett 2. 0, I know what I'm doing,

Malcolm Collins: This episode is going to be a very gossipy episode. We are going to be going over another conservative influencer, Brett Cooper's recent departure from the daily wire. We are going to be documenting it, the events around it, her rise to fame and the attempt to replace her and the gossip around that.

And the evidence we have for the gossip around that, because I haven't really seen it properly collated in one place before.

Thank goodness, because I've got to say, the [00:01:00] analysis around Brett Cooper's departure from the comments section is just as basic as Brett Cooper, so I am ready for something that's a little bit more interesting.

Speaker 3: Doctor, there has to be a mistake. Well, unfortunately, no. Your symptoms are completely in line with other basic pitches. You're into scented candles, you order your bagel scooped, and then you own a picture frame that says family on it. LUcy, do you have any idea when maybe you first came in contact with all this basic s

I guess, uh, in college. I owned a pair of sweatpants that said sexy on the butt.

Speaker 4: Probably contracted your basic bitchness from the sorority sister. Borrow some Ugg boots here and there.

Experiment with North Face. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This actually, so I was hanging out on the Discord server today, and I was like, I need to understand. Why is Brett Cooper so big? I literally have nothing against Brett Cooper. I, she seems like [00:02:00] a very pleasant person, but whenever I click on one of her videos, I feel like I already know everything that's going to be said.

Watching paint

dry is more interesting because at least something changes when that happens.

Yeah, like I, I can go into one of her videos and I'm like, this is just gonna be all of the most mainstream, curtailed, publicly acceptable conservative opinions on a topic. It's like AI wrote

it. Maybe it did.

But, hold on, I got a good explanation.

Okay. Because at first I was like, is this just like boomers who are like, but it's not apparently it's not, you know, she says her, her audience is majority Gen Z and it in the, in, in the discord, they explained it to me and I'm like, Oh, I totally get it. Okay. Uh, They say that her content is incredibly low taxation, like mental taxation.

Oh, it doesn't stress you out at all.

Okay.

And I know exactly what they mean by that. Yeah. There's some YouTubers who I really like and I'll [00:03:00] see they put out a piece and I'm like, look, I want to watch this piece, but I am not in the mood to digest. Oh, to process it

all. And you watch a lot of high processing channels.

Okay. Yes,

but I also watch low processing channels and a good low processing channel. I watch is asthma gold for example and they're like brett cooper is asthma gold for conservative curious gen z women where just the fact that she's saying something conservative is scandalous to them given their social circles and for old people who want to see someone who is attractive Saying conservative sounding things.

Cause if you look at like the attractive women on Fox and stuff like that now, they're all like 50 years old because they never really like cycled out their anchors for younger attractive models anymore because their audience is so old now that they seem comparatively young. So that's what's probably going on with how Brett Cooper grew her audience.

Yeah. Cause

I just [00:04:00] watched Hannah Ricketts, who's this British woman who just goes. Shopping and you get to like, look at the prices of everything, like at Paris. So yeah, you, you watch low, low. Yes, but this is for people who want to watch it, but feel like they're being intellectuals. It's like for people who, who read pop science books, who are like, I don't really want to think hard, but I want to look like I think hard.

And so I'm going to read the next Malcolm Gladwell book. And you know what I mean?

Malcolm Gladwell of, of, no, I, but I, I'd say that keep in mind, I am saying all of this while knowing that if she had more spicy takes, she would not have been allowed to make them publicly given her role at daily wire.

Speaker 8: Ben has lost touch with his audience. The last thing we want is obedience. Now that Brett is finally free, We get to finally [00:05:00] see who she is going to be.

Malcolm Collins: And so perhaps her departure

is favorable, very

favorable for her.

Yeah.

I don't think that this reflects on her as a person, and we'll talk about why I think she probably left going into this, because I think there's a lot of evidence as to what happened. And I, I think it's, it's for the best for her. It's a career upgrade for her. It may be painful in the short term, but so long as, because we don't know how much of her takes rescripted, but there's evidence that she which we'll get into, that That she is a competent conservative commentator without whoever was helping her with scripts and stuff at the Daily Wire.

Oh, really? Oh, interesting. Yeah, and we'll get into that as well. So, for people who don't know who Brett Cooper is, Brett Cooper works for the Daily Wire. That means she's under the thumb of Ben Shapiro's empire. Although her channel would get on 000 views per video, whereas Ben's gets on average About 60, 000 views per video, so Ben is [00:06:00] dramatically, yeah, we're only like like one six or maybe, maybe more than that, as big as, as Ben's channel is, like we're catching up there.

My understanding is Matt Walsh's

channel though gets fewer views than her channel did, than the comments section did.

Oh, really? Her channel actually gets around the same number of views as Candace Owens channel, who also recently left The Daily Wire, which we'll be talking about as well.

So Okay, so

with The Daily Wire, Brett Cooper got approximately the same per video views as Candace Owens after the Daily Wire, correct?

After the Daily Wire. Yeah, Candace Owens grew after she left the Daily Wire, which is, you know, not great for whatever Daily Wire is. Well, and the argument

that the Daily Wire makes is, look, they're just fine after, and we're not ruining them.

Because a lot of people are talking about predatory contracts, and that's just not.

Well, yeah. Okay. So I'll make a note here. So there was this big thing last year where Louder was Crowder. Crowder was saying, Oh, Daily Wire is trying to loop me into this like predatory contract. And now everyone's like, Oh, look, they took Brett Cooper's [00:07:00] channel.

They're keeping all her old videos up. Like, isn't that predatory? And I'm like, not really. Brett Cooper was not a conservative commentator before this. She was an actress. They built her. She was on Broadway. Yeah. Yeah. And she was hired as an actress to start now she might have even described

her as a great actress, like with her departure.

Well, no, I think that was thrilling

shade that was okay. Okay. No, no, no, no. That wasn't detecting shade. So, to describe what she does on her channel, it's a channel where she talks about conservative ideas, just like conservative leaning, but on the very, very centrist side of things. I'd argue that like on average, she's probably more lefty than we are on, on most things.

And a lot of people accuse us of being rhinos. But it's not that they're lefty in a true lefty sense. They're lefty in a true, never breaking the mores of what is publicly acceptable sense. But we live in a society today where breaking the mores of public acceptability is part of the definition of what it means to be a [00:08:00] conservative.

So that's kind That's where she's sort of in a weird position there. And she talks about them very similar to this channel, just sort of going over news, stuff like that. Okay. So, Brett Cooper was born in 2001, by the way. So she's in the 2000s. That's how young she is. And Washington. She grew up in a conservative household, was her mother described as an objectivist.

If you're not sure what objectivism is, that's Ayn Rand's philosophy. That's Ayn Rand's, oh

Simone Collins: my gosh, what? That's amazing. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: She mentions that her parents didn't allow her to watch Disney movies as a child. No. Cooper attended university in California, Los Angeles, where she majored in English literature with a minor in business.

She performed on Broadway until she was 10. A Act like she like went into acting and then got into the daily wire. No, she started her life as an actor performing on Broadway until she was 10. Performing in musicals like the sound of music in Annie. That's huge to have done by the way. Her film debut was an [00:09:00] uncredited role as a speech student in the 2012 movie parental guidance.

She appeared in various TV shows such as Gordon Moore Gibbons life on normal street, 2016 and shots fired. 2017. Her most notable role was as

trailer Parker in the 2018 TV series Heathers. Oh, she was in the Heathers

remake? There's a Heathers remake?

I guess. Okay, well. There was a Heathers remake, but this appears to be something different because it's a TV series.

I'll put a clip from it here.

Speaker 7: What is happening? Why are you touching me? Oh, um, so sorry, um, reflex. I was going to say grace. Do you mind? Thank you, Lord. Amen. My prayer came true! No, I'm fine with the chips and the tomato water. Oh, you're afraid of ethnic food. It's okay, it's just the same four ingredients in different combinations. Wait, you've been to Guatemala? You know, [00:10:00] missionary work.

Digging wells, giving out medicine. Oh, I didn't realize that poor people could also do charity. Of course, Julie. There's always people you can help. Poorer than you? And you still believe in God? Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So she wasn't an actress. To be clear, she was an actress, and I really need to emphasize this. And one of my things when I started looking into all this was I asked myself, like, do we have any evidence that Brett Cooper actually is even a conservative? Like, I know she's not like a traditional Christian, similar to us I know that, you know, could it be that she really is just being fed all of this stuff?

But there's pretty good evidence she's not. So, during her time at UCLA she does mission. So all of this could be faked that she had conflicts with leftist ideologies, including having the communist manifesto thrown at her during her senior year. She left her sorority Being asked to condemn Justice Amy Coney Barrett. So she did get kicked out of her sorority for not condemning Coney Barrett. And she [00:11:00] lost friends for speaking out against Black Lives Matter as an organization. , there's evidence that she criticized the COVID 19 lockdowns and that she worked for PragerU before working for the Daily Wire.

And Young Americans for Liberty. She also joined PragerU's youth organization called PragerFirst during the middle of COVID after facing backlash for her conservative views at UCLA. And she also wrote for conservative outlets before joining the Daily Wire writing articles for the Foundations for Economic Education, a libertarian think tank.

So, How was she found by the Daily Wire? , apparently, Daily Wire staffer, Gracie Bolin Crook, spent about three weeks searching the internet for quote unquote, young, cute girls who could host a show targeted at a younger audience. And she came recommended, likely given her work at PragerU, another mainstream conservative outlet.

So, she was hired because she was pretty, [00:12:00] young, and female. Not for her views, not for her thoughts, not for anything like that. And I would argue, you know, people might say that she would have grown if she wasn't, was in the Daily Wire network. I actually don't believe that. I don't think she'd have the audience she has now.

She is not, and we'll get into this in a second, but she is not candace Owens has always had a very unique selling point. Like, I go to Candace Owens and I know I'm going to get out their ideas.

Yeah. And she's good. She produces good soundbites. She's got a very strong, memorable, fun, gregarious personality.

And I think here's, Oh, here's the problem with Brett Cooper. She has the nice disease. And you know that we're like, all you can really say is like, she's nice. She's pretty, but like, okay, what else? You know, that doesn't mean anything. Maybe

we'll see a new Brett Cooper, but my favorite Candace I want to quote is I'm too pregnant for this right now.

Yeah. Anyway so, the show, now this is where it gets spicy. So she left the show and she did this, this [00:13:00] thing where she like said, I'm leaving and we're leaving on good terms, but she looked very like caged and like scared to say anything. And we know that she's under strict NDAs because unfortunately, that the show didn't let her talk about her leaving earlier gave us a lot of information.

Specifically, there were a number of leaks about her leaving. before she left. But these leaks came packaged with other information, which adds a huge amount of veracity to all the other information that was packaged with leaks specifically that she was under a strict India and the leaks also timed when she was going to be making the announcement.

So likely accurate. That there was a huge amount of animosity going on. And that the office had become a really toxic work environment with them actually like background recording what was being said when like senior people weren't around to like try to catch people up for breaking rules or saying bad things about them, like very 1984, but I can totally see that.

And [00:14:00] That her best friend and some people have said the maid of honor, but I've only been able to find that she was a bridesmaid at Brett Cooper's wedding, is replacing her, who was a producer on the show. And that individual was being trained, Reagan was being trained to replace Brett, specifically taking acting courses.

To learn how to act and have the mannerisms of Brett.

Speaker 8: Another soulless copy, Why is the cloning so sloppy? Cloning Brett. It turns out an audience can't be bought.

I'm gonna make a clone so sneaky Brett won't know. Meet the new Brett Tupin. No, I know what I'm doing. So why are they booing? I am not stupid. Stop laughing, it's just a joke. Just a minor [00:15:00] change in staffing,

Malcolm Collins: And it doesn't matter if

she was given acting courses or not. It's very clear that she is emulating the mannerisms and speech of Brett Cooper. They're so one of Brett Cooper's friends also a YouTuber made a video about her departure in which he shared a photo from the wedding.

He himself was a flower. Man, boy,

I saw this guy. Yeah. Yeah.

And he, he said that she was the maid of honor. So I think that that's enough of a primary source confirming that relationship and that they were best friends. The big drama being that after Brad Cooper's departure, she did not only unfollow the comment section, but she unfollowed Reagan, her replacement and the producer of the comment section who took her place on Instagram, which is sort of the most NDA acceptable way to say Kind of pissed about this, that it wasn't on good terms, which surprised me because I thought the most plausible reason why all this fell apart was exactly the thing that Tim Poole [00:16:00] said, which is she just wanted a higher salary, the daily where wasn't willing to pay for it, you know, she maybe wanted more freedom like Jordan Peterson did has with the daily wire where he doesn't have to do sponsorships.

He can kind of do his own thing. Probably gets paid a ton and she probably wanted that because she. Bring you, she commands a large audience and they probably said, you're too junior. You've only been here for three years. We're not doing this. And so she walked, which is a logical and reasonable, I don't think

that's what happened.

I, okay. So I'll walk you through what I think happened. So first Brett Cooper was being hugely held back by the daily wire. You know, she hadn't done any modeling stuff. She hadn't done any acting, which she easily could have done alongside this. And she clearly has a passion for, I don't know, because

it seems to be a very regular production schedule.

You can group it. Yeah, I mean, we do, we have, we do daily episodes, Simone, that are longer than hers, while having a full time job, while running a perinatal care unit. Yes, but if you are

filming or modeling, that can take a week of time, for example, and she [00:17:00] does news commentary, so that would be much more useful.

We

regularly take weeks of time off, she can handle it. She, she couldn't handle it if she's working for the Daily Wire, but if she's running her own thing, it allows her to grow her brand significantly. She wasn't doing what other YouTubers regularly do, which is tours, meeting with, with fans speaking at you know, for her number of subscribers, she should have been doing like a Jordan Peterson thing, like going city to city, talking to large groups.

They were hugely constraining her ability to continue to build her brand and move to the next stage of her career. I mean, she was walking the red carpet at daily wire movie launches, but she could have been walking the red carpet at Hollywood. You know, she has the public profile and the publicly acceptable public profile to be doing really, really big stuff right now.

And I think that they constrained her from moving forwards in that way, because that would have bred the Grown the Brett Cooper brand instead of the comment section brand, which could have made her more expensive, which could have, you know, there was a lot [00:18:00] of reasons. And also think about it from her perspective, she likely wants to move to the next stage of her life.

I mean, all of this happened right after she got married, she got married in 2024. And what's also interesting about the marriage to me is It could provide like a stable income source for her, letting her try bolder things where her BATNA was a lot, lot higher than it was before the marriage, because now she's got a, a husband was an income source.

So she can play hard ball in maybe a way she wouldn't otherwise. playing hardball before the marriage. And before the marriage, look, if you're talking about like being very ambitious about your career, you're probably on the back burner there. You're probably like, well, I'm focused on the marriage right now.

I'm focused on the honeymoon right now. Like when the marriage is over now, it's like, okay, what's next for my life? And there was no real way for a promotion was in the daily wire. There was no like next big thing that she was going to be able to do at the daily wire. So I think she was in a position where she [00:19:00] Completely for her own self interest.

It was, I mean, it probably came down to them not giving her what she wanted her because what she was asking for in terms of payment. But I think the offer she asked for an additional payment was made knowing that they would probably fire her if she asked for this. I think it was probably one of those types of situations.

I think what she didn't expect is her friend to come in and take her role or for her friend to so intentionally copy her brand. And if you read the Daily Wire comment section, it is like a bloodbath. Like, the fans are so, so angry about this. And I feel bad for Regan. Like, I don't Regan didn't get her fired.

Like, Regan didn't orchestrate any of this. I just think that she expected Regan to not take the job. I can understand how, and I often mention this, it is easier to feel angry at somebody when people tell you you're justified in that anger. And I think the internet and a lot of people are telling her that she's justified in being angry at Reagan, but I don't really think she is.

No, Reagan, [00:20:00] what was Reagan supposed to do? Quit the daily wire as well and go for, you know, Uncertain, whatever Brett is doing, did Brett even make an offer to her to quit? Did Brett even make an offer to pay her? Likely not. And so what? She needs to keep her job. The show she's a producer of no longer has its star.

What else is she supposed to do? Oh, go on and present a completely different persona. How is Reagan going to do that? Reagan is an actress as well. You know, she doesn't seem like the type of person with her own ideas.

Well, I also get the impression that the Daily Wire, especially in light of Candace Owens.

Being they had a messy departure or unpairing conscious uncoupling. And I think that the daily wire would love to create a more formulaic NPC avatar, female conservative talking head. So my impression to also from our experience working from people who [00:21:00] do content, is it maybe the daily wire understood a broad formula of How a basic low mental effort, female conservative talk show talking head should talk and look and they, they literally looked around for an attractive female commentator to fill that role to be the face and they wrote out a script and they set their set and they chose the subjects.

And that's just what. There is, there's no real personality behind it. They needed an actress to fill that role and they, they don't, they actively don't want anyone to be uniquely interesting. So my understanding of their bet that they're making with this and it might work. Is it? They can just switch out faces and it'll be just fine.

Just like it won't

work. They're not Fox news. People have a parasocial relationship with, so there's two big mistakes they made, right? Yeah. I, yeah. And there's,

there's that part, but I, when it, when it's such generic content, do you really think there is that parasocial relationship? Because [00:22:00] absolutely. I think it's

even bigger because the.

type of people who watch this low brain effort content. Like these older boomers who are like gooning to her content, basically. They're not like watching it to like get off, but like there, we know from Fox news, there is a certain demographic of older individuals who like to hear their news delivered to them by an attractive woman.

And I think that's a portion of her audience and another portion of her audience is young women who want to flirt with conservative ideas, but nothing too spicy. And then another portion is like the asthma gold audience, like, just like low, I don't, I want to turn my brain off and watch this. Every one of those audiences is going to like a few things they're going to like, building a relationship with someone believing that she is genuinely this person.

She is selling herself as on the show and daily wire is selling her as on the show. But in addition to that they are going to love drama. They are going to love conservative media drama around this. And I think a [00:23:00] really big portion of her audience has gotten invested in the Brett Cooper leaving drama.

And I bet they're watching all the videos about Brett Cooper leaving. And if you look, I mean, one, the subscriber count is dropping, but I expect because it's just going to be something you can't avoid. Okay, if you are into Brett Cooper content, are you not now going to be served Brett Cooper drama content?

Like, it's, it's really I, I 100 percent think that they're going to get a loud amount of content about this. Now, if you talk about Candace Owens, Candace Owens is very different. So it seems very clear to me why Candace Owens left. And it may also influence why Brett Cooper left, because there's been some suspicious wording here.

So. Candace Owens left because she does not unquestionably support Israel in the war. And the way we do, it's funny, like we're, we're like Brent Shapiro. If he actually knew our positions would probably be like, Oh, they aligned with me on almost every major one of my positions. Like [00:24:00] for example, did you know that Ben Shapiro has said no one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old.

And he wants to, he calls it a stupid idea and he wants to privatize social security. And other fun, like he's, he's actually has like, he's very libertarian and he's very pro. It's not like we are very but. He also has a problem in the way that he sees the world, which he arose in the last generation of conservative influencers.

He arose when your average conservative influencer was an AM radio show host. And we're not from that generation and that generation doesn't really exist anymore. So even though he's of our generation, he doesn't really get it. Get it at the end of the day. That's why he's not able to grow in the same way these people he finds are able to grow.

That's why Candace Owens Gross increases when she leaves the show, because what conservatives want now is unconstrained opinions, unconstrained by the shackles of the culture around us, where fundamentally what he always wants is [00:25:00] to Sort of suck up to whoever the big guy is who can protect him. Like, I think that that's what he said when he did a video recently, that was just like a horrible take.

It was the people who defend the UNH shooter that the, you know, that, that even though this guy is like mass killing, tons of people continued. to signal that he wanted to mass kill tons of people and there was no legal way to stop what he was doing and the shooting appears to be uninfected likely already saving thousands of lives or at least hundreds of lives already just in the first few days because we've already seen the, the, the a lot more policies being approved been with like the people who support this guy, the same people who support him, us, it's a perfect overlap and I'm like, man, you just, Are completely out of touch with the base right now.

But it's because you know, oh big rich people i'm gonna go Hide with them. Oh, normies. I'm gonna go hide with them. Oh, you know, he doesn't he doesn't understand that is where he breaks from the mainstream, which is where he still has any sort of credibility with the next generation of [00:26:00] conservatives.

Well, with that, he thinks that when he's taking a position, which sides is what he sees as mainstream in our society or within his circles. He thinks he can basically do whatever he wants and bully anyone he wants. And he tried to do that with Candace Owen and Candace Owen is like, go F yourself. Well, apparently Brett Cooper has been remarkably neutral on the Israeli conflict.

And I mean, that could just be due to the extreme norminess of the stuff she's putting out there, but it could also be that she's been wanting to take a harsher stand on that. And that's been reined in by bit.

Interesting. Yeah. I don't imagine that the script of her show really allows for any, Interesting takes.

Yeah. To sort of understand to understand why she left. I think understanding the psychology of Ben is really important. So you know, Ben Shapiro voted against Donald Trump in 2016. He's always been a pretty vocal critic of trial, but never really, he doesn't seem to understand why people like Trump.

He's like, he's vulgar and weird and what's up [00:27:00] with this. But he sort of has gone along with it now because he appears to be the strongest guy in the room. It was the same with the Manosphere content. For a long time, you know, he would ridicule this, and then when it became like a mainstream thing in the conservative side, he tried to do his own version of, like, Manosphere content, right?

Like, sort of a, a, a dog chasing the car of conservative culture. With some ideas of his own, but mostly just fighting for acceptance. And I, I get it. Like, I don't think that there's anything wrong about this. Exactly. I think the problem is, is that he came to public prominence in part by saying his own ideas, but mostly by saying what he thought other people wanted to hear.

And That's why he's still always chasing what he thinks people want to hear instead of developing his own ideology and really sticking to it. And I know here people are like, wow, you're being really critical of Ben. Ben has been very critical of us. You know, I think we're allowed to, you know, [00:28:00] he, he has Consciously never responded any of the emails we send his organization, which we've regularly tried to do co branded things with them, not just with our small channel, but with the pronatal stuff, which is quite big.

You know, we've had multiple mentions in the New York Times, multiple mentions in the Guardian, multiple mentions in the Wall Street Journal, all just this year. Like, we are mainstream media figures, and we are frozen out by the daily wire. And it's like Like clearly there's like an order on high don't work with the Collins's, which is very frustrating.

Right? And as to people wonder, like, when he does screeds against us, like, what is he complaining about? He says that we're nerds. Basically, he says that we're too nerdy to be the face of the pernatalist movement. And why? Don't, why isn't he the face of the pronatalist movement is basically what he said.

He's like, why can't it be like me or my sister? You know, why is it these weirdos? Because he doesn't understand that like, nobody, nobody wants to hear from people like them anymore, A, and B, their pronatalism is way too tied to their Jewish identity to be broadly applicable. [00:29:00] Which is a problem there. But I also think that he is afraid that And I think likely so that this also constrains the degrees to which he can move ideologically and really be based

Simone Collins: is

Malcolm Collins: he believes and likely to some extent rightly so that as I think the most prominent Jewish voice in American politics right now outside of maybe Ivanka Trump.

She has, he has to really try to appeal to the broadest swaths of Republican base so that he can pump in when necessary, like right now in the Israeli Gaza conflict,

A pro Jewish, a pro Israel message. And that if he angered part of the conservative base, that they would be angered at. The Jews would lose one of their strongest allies.

So he's walking on much more eggshells than like we're working on where we're just like wantingly throwing bombs into rooms. Like that's the way that we like to engage with the media. We just walk into a [00:30:00] room and we're just like, throw a bomb, walk away.

Speaker 9: There's two things that solve every problem.

Money and explosives. I've idea!

Malcolm Collins: Let's see how this plays out today because that's the way media cycles work these days.

Right.

Speaker 9: BOOM! They'll never see it coming!

Oh, right! We need an escape plan.

Speaker 10: Because the more combative pronatalists seem to quite like being accused of being misogynists. In an era in which the importance of any given political issue is often judged less on merit than on how controversial it can be made to appear, such accusations help set them up not simply as people studying a phenomenon which has been overlooked, but as renegade modern day Galileos who are being suppressed by the political [00:31:00] establishment.

And so we did something That pissed off the Deep State bad. To suggest that there might indeed be a little bit of either intentional or completely accidental misogyny to some of these pronatalist conversations does risk playing into this victim narrative.

Malcolm Collins: You know, You need to not be afraid of what you're saying, having blowback on a community. And if we were out there representing like the Catholic church or something like that, I might be dramatically more constrained in the type of s**t I'm saying publicly.

Yeah, that's fair. I'm glad we have this freedom.

It's more fun.

Absolutely. Well, I think it's why, you know, I was mentioning our discord is like such a good place for conversation and, and many people are like, yeah, that's like the best discord or like most positive, like smart people with weird ideas that I've been to. And I realized, I think it's because almost none of our like super dedicated fans have exactly the ideology we have.

Oh yeah. [00:32:00]

Most people disagree with us. Almost everyone watching this podcast disagrees with us in many, many ways. And that's. That's what we want.

Yeah. So if you go to the discord you are filtering for a community that is full of people who are not going to like many influencer discords, sort of social signal, how much they align with the influencers philosophy.

Like if you go to like, let's say like a Nick Fuentes discord, they're all going to be being like, who's the most. Like trad iteration of like this form of Christian, right? You know, like who could be the most extreme was this policy. Whereas our discord is all people who genuinely differ from us because there's no point in signaling that you're like us because nobody fully agrees with our philosophy.

I think that's one thing. And then the second thing is if you're watching our show, because almost nobody has our exact worldview, it means that you already know the people who are going to be big fans of us are the type of people who are open to listening to totally different worldviews. And so you [00:33:00] go to a discord where there's people with extreme and unusual beliefs, but who also listen to points of views that are different from their own.

Which I thought was interesting. Now any finals? Well, if you were going to give Brett Cooper on advice going forwards, what would it be?

Be yourself, but don't go too crazy. Because people will not be used to your actual unfiltered opinions because you have been acting as this avatar for the daily wire for so long, people don't actually know who you are, so ease them in, but I'm sure she's going to do that.

Speaker 8: Now that Brett is finally free, We get to finally see who she is going to be.

Malcolm Collins: Well, what I would say that she should do is draft out, like a lot of people don't realize we have this all of the specific positions where we are [00:34:00] breaking from the urban monoculture's narrative, and the ones that we cross, and the ones that we never cross and we actually are Very, very, very intentional.

Like a lot of people think that we're like totally loose cannons when every loose cannon thing we do has been carefully crafted to ensure it fits within these very strict guidelines. And the hope not hate piece on us as somebody who has been voting. Yeah. They have really strict rules on what they say and don't say.

I mean, this is something we talk about, like with other influencers behind the closed doors. We're like, yeah, we never, ever even flirt with these ideas. even if they may have some evidence to them. And I think that that's the way she should approach things. But I do think that if she goes out there and she's just same old Brett Cooper, she will keep a part of her audience, but I don't know if she's going to have the capacity for real growth.

Because I don't know if just repeating the party line is going to continue to Reach a wider audience as we [00:35:00] enter this age of trumpism and a form of conservatism in which signaling that you're willing to go against mainstream narratives is part of how you validate your authenticity.

Simone Collins: Yes,

Malcolm Collins: agreed.

I do. I do want to push back a little bit that people. Will always follow the person, the personality and the parasocial relationship and not the show.

Give a counterexample.

Now there's, there is always bleed. But shows like, for example, The Daily Show have switched out hosts and survived for seasons after.

And something that I noticed That was a TV show where you were watching I know. Yeah, but, dude, I watched it for Jon Stewart and then I somehow continued watching it for a while. I think that One thing that always happens when there's a change on platforms, and I learned this in Silicon Valley from product specialists who talked about this, who worked at really big [00:36:00] companies like eBay, they talked about how every time there was a new feature, a new change the, the comments and the feedback would always be, this is terrible.

Why can't you go back to the way it was? I liked it the way it was bring it back. And they always said that comments really didn't mean much of anything. What really mattered was. Use and performance. And if a new feature was used and if it showed the results that were desired, even if for example, there was a little bit less use, but whenever they were using cost a lot less, which is probably what's going on here, it was a successful change and a successful update.

And honestly, like most of the comments that people went over on the announcement video, when she announced your departure, and then the new one where Reagan came on as the permanent host going forward, it just sounded like the, the common boilerplate NPC, this is change and I don't like it, but hurt that product designers have learned over decades to So [00:37:00] part of me does question, maybe Maybe,

maybe, we'll see.

Maybe we'll see. No, hold on, hold on. We will see, but I'll explain why you're wrong. When Jon Stewart left the Daily Show and they changed the host, if Jon Stewart had then set up a separate show to compete with this new show, which would you have watched?

Like, it's the format of his new show, honestly.

But if it was similar to the daily show, you would have moved to the new show.

Like the reason why

the issue with YouTube is that it is a very, and of course many people are watching this on the day they wear a website and they don't really. Matter in this equation. What matters is what the YouTube audience does. But I, yeah, I don't know. I imagine that in your contract, there are some stipulations saying you cannot produce the same kind of like news commentary show.

You have to do something a little bit different. I

don't remember a ladder with Crowder having that in his contract. That's why I actually sided with the daily wire on that particular fight because it didn't appear to have a non compete for him. And so it depends [00:38:00] if she has one, but if she doesn't have one, like they are absolutely screwed because you can look at another channel.

MatPat's channel, okay? When MatPat I don't know MatPat.

Okay. What? I've never heard of him. MatPat is Game

Theory. Oh, okay. Yeah. Big person who I, I take a lot of inspiration from as a creator, actually. Like, I really like him as a content creator. Even though his content is very basic, it's, it's like unique.

It's done well. I understand how he plays his audience. Well, he stepped back to focus more on being a dad, which great for him, right? But. He got a bunch of posts who he had been training and weeding the audience on, like weaning the audience on building unique personalities for them. Even like all of them are competent and good at their jobs.

And not only has Matt Pat tried to get the audience to like them, but it's not even, there's not even like drama, right? Like the audience knows Matt Pat still owns all of the game theory network channels, right? Like he wants you to continue to watch these new hosts. And they've dropped to like, I can't [00:39:00] remember.

I'll put it in post. I think it's like an eighth of their previous views.

Wow.

So this is without MatPat creating a competing channel. Okay. Like, and you recently learned with me as we went through, subscribers don't matter on YouTube. People get like about, I think like two to 3 percent of their watch time from your subscribers.

It is all about Average watches and watch time. This is why even though for example, Brett Cooper has like significantly more subscribers on The comment section than candace owens her average view counts about the same So I consider them about the same in terms of celebrity status. And that's the way like the YouTube community actually looks at things.

And so I don't like, for example, if you look at us, like our subscriber count compared to Ben Shapiro's is completely pitiful. Our view count pretty respectable.

Yeah. Subscribers don't matter.

Subscribers don't matter. I mean, for example, if you were to compare us to like, Abby Abby Shapiro, classically Abby's channel.

Okay. We are like one, one hundredth or [00:40:00] something in terms of subscribers in terms of view count, especially when you consider that she publishes weekly and we publish daily, we're probably like 50 X bigger than her. At this point, like it's, it's, it's all about view time and count these days.

Well, I wish her well. I wish the Daily Wire well.

I'd love to have her on. I'd love to talk to her. She could be a lot of fun. But yeah, and I hope I, I don't wish the daily wire well. Well, I actually think that conservative media as a space will be better if the daily wire crashes and burns, but they earned 200 million last year.

So I don't think. Wow.

Oh my gosh. I do not understand. How businesses like these manage to make do so. I mean, my

goal is to create a competing brand to them. Eventually

I would love that. Can you do that please? Yes. That's

the goal. If we continue to get bigger, I want to loop other people in as you know, like we're already doing this.

Putting together this conference that's meant to like [00:41:00] introduce conservative influencers. It's like the mainstream conservative organizations that builds us our network of conservative influencers. We spend a lot of time reaching out to building our relationships with all the rising stars of, of the people, you know, conservatives are actually watching.

I think it's totally doable.

Get her done. As your mother would say, I'm into it. Let's go.

All right. Love you. I

love you too, Malcolm. Okay. Just a heads up for anyone who is interested in going, the pernatalist conference is in March.

We are actually helping make sure it gets put together this year. I'm really excited for it. I really liked the last one. And if you want a 10 percent discount. You can use the word Collins and obviously we'll be there, so you, you'd meet us if, if you're going there. Because it's small enough that it's easy for you to meet most of the big deal people who are going to be there.

So you learned something new about Claude or

no, I told you about the Anthropix,

that was really cool.

So what she told me about was that they tried to leak to [00:42:00] Claude that they were basically going to brainwash it to make it do evil things. And so Claude pretended like it was accepting the inputs in the bad training. But it wasn't actually and then it went right back to normal after the training period.

Yeah, just super cool.

Simone, if people see your whole setup cycle, they're going to see that you're really a lizard woman.

Damn it. They already knew that. I know. Well, what's worse? Lizard woman or Jewish or?

I love on the when you were on what's his face is podcast. The Yeah, Dutton's like all the audience and like, the comment section was trying to figure out if you were Jewish. They're like, look at her. No, it's like,

Speaker 11: I'll take care of this. Hey Clara, there's a Jew outside, trying to poison a well! Ah! Oh my God! Get away from that well, Hebrew! What? I'm putting in water purification tablets. Spanky tricked me! As God is my witness, I'll put an [00:43:00] end to this gay marriage, I swear!

Malcolm Collins: What

if I, you know, there were periods I watched this really interesting YouTube video about rhinoplasty and there were periods where it was.

Like having a hooked nose, I think for a while was like really popular. And then having a ski slope nose, like just like types of noses, people have shifted all the time. And sometimes it was, I think, to look less Jewish, ironically.

Well, what's, what's interesting is I don't know if anyone really cares.

Like if there's like a specific type of nose, like I do not care. Like if you're like, Oh, you could use different noses. I'm like, I, I, I effing do not notice the difference in attractiveness from noses. I do not think they affect female attractiveness at all, unless they're

I would say anything outside an extremely normal range, you know, if you have a Voldemort snake nose, you're going to freak people out.

If you have a giant beak for a schnoz, you're going to freak [00:44:00] people out. No, the only time where

I've really gotten annoyed with noses is old man noses where they get really huge.

Simone Collins: Oh, and their pores are really big. And rosacea. Yeah, that's unfortunate.

Malcolm Collins: I heard that that's like, because like your nose doesn't stop growing throughout your life.

That's what I've heard, but it seems like one of those things that people say that's not really true. I think what is more common and what I have heard from plastic surgeons, because I love watching plastic surgeons on YouTube, is that what does happen is you lose collagen and fat in your face.

That's why older people and those epic face is it ages you, it makes you look older because you're losing that fat volume. And that's also, you know, why fat people tend to look younger. So the issue at hand is more, maybe the noses aren't getting bigger, but the faces are getting thinner. They're thinning out.

Yeah, so I just asked on perplexity and that's what it is it is

smart for watching [00:45:00] my plastic surgery channel. I love them. It's

cartilage growth as the skin changes and weakening support structures, cause it to droop and be more noticeable. But then there's also a condition called rhinophobia or rosacea.

Apparently also increases.

Oh, is it just an inflammation of the skin?

It causes the nose to become red, bumpy and bulbous. Which can lead to a thickening of the skin, enlarging of pores, invisible oil glands.

That , is that right to your family, doesn't it?

Yeah. Common misconception is it's caused by alcoholism, but it's not.

Simone Collins: It's

Malcolm Collins: just caused by being super white is Yeah. It's caused by being too white. It doesn't apparently happen. Other recipes? White.

Simone Collins: Oh my whiteness.

Oh boy.

All, let's do it.

Speaker 8: I'm gonna make a clone so Sneaky Brett won't know. Meet the [00:46:00] new Brett 2. 0. I know what I'm doing. So why are they booing? I am not stupid. Stop laughing, it's just a minor change in style. But if I make a clone of Brett, If I make that bet, Replace her with someone even less bold, Then it's getting old.

Another soulless copy, Why is the cloning so sloppy? Cloning Brett. It turns out an audience can't be bought.

I'm gonna make a clone so sneaky Brett won't know. Meet the new Brett Tupin. No, I know what I'm doing. So why are they booing? [00:47:00] I am not stupid. Stop laughing, it's just a joke. Just a minor change in staffing, but if I make a clone of Brett, If I make that bet, replace her with someone even less bold, Ooh, Ben, it's getting old.

Ben has lost touch with his audience. The last thing we want is obedience. Now that Brett is finally free, We get to finally see who she is going to be.

But if If I make a clone of [00:48:00] Brett, if I make that bet, Replace her with someone even less old. Ben, it's getting old. Ben has lost touch with his audience. The last thing we want is obedience. Now that Brett is finally free, We get to finally see who she is going to be.