In this engaging discussion, Malcolm and Simone explore the intriguing theory that the so-called gender wars are essentially a front for class conflicts, specifically between upper middle-class women and lower middle-class men. The conversation is inspired by an argument from a Substack article and dives into how these conflicts might actually reflect deeper socioeconomic issues. They touch on various examples, such as racial and ethnic tensions, rural-urban divides, and generational conflicts, to argue that perceived cultural differences often mask underlying class grievances. They also discuss how different groups signal status in contemporary society and how these dynamics inform the current landscape of gender and class relations.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be with you here today because we're going to talk about the gender wars, which we don't talk about nearly enough. We never talk about gender on this channel. No. Never men or women, but no,

Malcolm Collins: you heard it in a crazy theory. That really clicked for me in a lot of ways.

Yeah, yeah. I came across this

Simone Collins: argument. That gender wars are not really about gender, but rather about class differences and specifically between upper middle class women and lower middle class men. And this came from cartoons hate her on Substack who made this argument. And she largely implies that that basically gender wars participants aren't aware of this, but I'm gonna argue that they are.

And then I'm also gonna argue that it could very well be that all conflicts are class conflicts, and there are some really telling examples. And I think ultimately if we acknowledge. This class resource distribution issue is the underlying cause of. Most, if not possibly all intergroup conflicts.

Maybe we can navigate them more smartly, but like [00:01:00] Let's get into it. You ready?

Malcolm Collins: I'm actually gonna push back on one area here. Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna argue something else. Okay. Which is that what creates this class divide is that male communities. Will be drawn due to their sort of tribal, centralized nature to the class norms that are normative to the community broadly, whereas female communities are drawn to a class identity.

To the class identity that is shared by the most elites within the community.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so even

Simone Collins: if, oh, come on. I mean, like the, the male influencers who set tones are, are more elite

Malcolm Collins: male influencers who set tones intentionally, code themselves as lower middle class. Oh God. You're right though. No,

Simone Collins: it's true.

Even though like the really wealthy ones come across as so trashy, it's so bad. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas the female elites code themselves as middle, upper class manhattanites.

Simone Collins: It's like old money versus new money gender edition [00:02:00]

Malcolm Collins: like Tim Pool or something. And like the way he dresses on his show or like, oh, or like

Simone Collins: Andrew Tate or like the guy who wakes up at four M and shoves his face in ice buckets of water.

They all give off a very new money aesthetic. Whereas literally. Like women are constantly, like right now a a sort of trending thing on Instagram and TikTok is sort of this old money summer aesthetic that like people like Hailey Bieber are, are pi like not pioneering, but popularizing. So it is, it is actually, that's really interesting that also when, when each class is trying to show off wealth, there is men go to new money and women go to old money right now, that's

Malcolm Collins: not what I said at all.

Simone Collins: Okay, well then I'm a separate, didn't money

Malcolm Collins: consider who is actually rising, was in the male spaces or who Wouldn when they were, so when Andrew Tate was rising in fame. Okay. He didn't go to new money coding. What he went to was traditional masculine things like boxing, kick fighting, stuff like that. If you [00:03:00] look at the male.

Influencers who have risen was in conservative spaces recently. You have individuals like Asma Gold who intentionally codes as lower middle class, even though he could very easily got a lot more money if he wanted to. Oh, that's

Simone Collins: interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas or or considered bronzes age pervert very intentionally codes as lower middle class.

Even though he went to Yale, you are almost, almost a

Simone Collins: stoic aesthetic. They're like taking the Socrates approach.

Malcolm Collins: Bronze Age RA Nationalist does this with a lot of his stuff. He doesn't, you, you wouldn't have known. Yeah, yeah. No.

Simone Collins: His stuff's not about money at all. It's about like anything. A lot of these

Malcolm Collins: people too is alternate personas hide that they are not in real life lower middle class individuals.

Oh, that's

Simone Collins: true. Oh, that, oh, but also, yeah, there seems to be a correlation between like the, actually. Upper class men are pretending to be lower class than they are, but then like the, the men who actually come from more middling backgrounds, pretend. Act like new money that, that Well, and,

Malcolm Collins: and think about the [00:04:00] way that the men who are trying to gain social status today, who even have like all the wealth you could want are doing it.

So consider somebody like Elon, right? Like what does Elon do to try to raise his own social status when he has all the money you could ever have? He doesn't like dress in fancy clothes or anything like that. What he does is he posts. Controversial memes and he, he creates a fake account to try to make it look like he's playing a lot, a lot higher level in video games.

The spans of

Simone Collins: our time,

Malcolm Collins: hold on, that's a lower, he's making the wealthiest man on earth make sure a, a huge amount of effort and ended up with a huge amount of social egg on his face to make it look like he was good at a lower middle class hobby.

Simone Collins: That's a, that's a really, that's a really interesting point.

I wonder if they're just evolutionarily divergent, but equally valid approaches to [00:05:00] a kind of realization on behalf of the collective online male aid that they are in general lower middle class. And so either you can, as an a male influencer be like, money, money, money, money, money signaling. Like, I have tons of money.

Look at all my money or be like, Hmm, I mess it. I don't need money. I'm above money. I'm better than money. I live else. No, I'm, Amanda is

Malcolm Collins: gonna argue that what we're actually seeing here is a few things. Okay? It's the way that, that men build comradery and culture, okay? Is. Part of the reason why they have normalized to the lower middle class aesthetic.

Ooh. But the other reason is the influence of the MAGA movement and the MAGA movement. As I've noted in a number of my earlier episodes, low culture, a huge amount of cultural influence that comes downstream from the Appian or backwards cultural group, which is known as like the redneck or hillbilly group, and like popular parlance.

Yeah. Which specifically has always really shunned the, the trappings of the upper classes. Mm-hmm. And, and intentionally would, would really work with all of [00:06:00] the other forces that are driving this lower middle class coding. Mm-hmm. Which is the area where you and I get called nerds the most because we are some of the.

Only conservative influencers who do not code strongly as lower middle class. And if you look at a lot of the attacks on us, I actually think that they are specifically due to the class that we code as rather than like when somebody says I'm a simp. I think a lot of that is actually just you do not code as lower middle class

Simone Collins: because you wear educated liberal elite glasses frames from Cutler and gross.

Purchased in Soho? Yes. How dare you. How dare you. How dare you. Yeah. Okay. Okay, then let's, let's get into it though. I'll, I'll start by presenting the argument that inspired all this 'cause you know this, this, this episode is dedicated to Diana Fleischman, who gifted me a month of, of free subscription to, to the cartoons Hate her Substack because this was a paid post.

And it is titled The [00:07:00] Gender Wars Are Class Wars subtitle. Of course we'll never agree. We're living in different realities. Oh, also though, just, just so you like, have a little respect for her, she, she's not like a liberal. Or conservative. She's, she's more just having fun. She refers to herself as a terminally online normal mom and a former Reddit troll who earned a total IP band.

And I feel like if you're a troll who earned a total IP band, like you deserve at least a little bit of attention and respect. But, so the, the TLDR of her argument is that the main issue is not gender.

Instead it's class differences. And specifically this is upper middle class women and lower middle class men. She argues these groups can't agree on the basic realities of social life. So each finds each other's anecdotes about dating and marriage and status completely implausible or fabricated, which is one of the reasons why I think they're like, oh, you're making this up, or this is all cope.

And then she, she points to some viral examples. Like there was one about like hot nannies or. Grad school and marriage prospects is, is another example.

I'm gonna send you on [00:08:00] WhatsApp just so you can see the thread. The, so specifically the hot nanny debate was, was I think. Sparked by a TikTok post that a Columbia nanny posted. That caused a lot of the male members of the gender wars to be like, well, oh, of course the husband in this relationship is sleeping with a nanny.

And they kind of like, sort of dehumanized the unseen mother in the picture here of like, well, why bother, you know, having kids if you're not even gonna be around to raise them? And there's just sort of this what she highlights is a, a deep disconnect between like. Actually having experience with nannies.

Like most of the men who, who jump into the thread and comment on au pairs and nannies have never actually had them for themselves, don't really understand the dynamics, don't really understand like how gross it would feel if you slept with a nanny. Yeah. You'd be really

Malcolm Collins: gross to sleep with a nanny.

Speaker 3: Wednesday bad news.

Speaker 4: Uncle Thera is getting married

Speaker 3: [00:09:00] To who?

Speaker 5: The

Speaker 3: nanny

Speaker 5: get out of the cabin. I mean, I'll kill myself. The help,

I think that's disgusting.

I think they're like circus people.

Malcolm Collins: Like, I, I like the idea that somebody's like, and I even think about like my friends who have nannies and stuff like that and we go play with them. It would be quite the, the like, okay. Cheating on your wife within like, tech elite social circles. As long as you guys first, if you say like you're polyamorous, which a lot of them do, like it doesn't matter at all.

Yeah. I feel

Simone Collins: like it's almost impossible to cheat in these elite circles because so many are polyamorous and you

Malcolm Collins: with the nanny, and she wasn't brought in knowing that this was the role she was gonna play. That'd be seen as like really gross. Like this would, well also it, it's, it's like a

Simone Collins: lawsuit waiting to happen, like the liability of it.

Malcolm Collins: Stupid. Like it's not that it never happens ever, ever, ever, but it's not a bigger threat than having your wife go to an office that you don't also work at. Which by the way, is the [00:10:00] number one place that women cheat. It's people they meet at the office. I think it's 80% of infidelity. It's also how most

Simone Collins: people find relationships.

Oh, yeah. With the, the, the prominent Coldplay example that surely you've heard of at this

Malcolm Collins: point. Yeah. So well, yeah, the, they just went live. The Coldplay, the guy who's. Caught cheating with his hr. That, and she had a husband, it was my understanding. Yeah. And he had

Simone Collins: a wife and kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Is that, is, is actually like where within, like if, if you are a middle, upper class couple or something like that where the husband or wife is likely to cheat yeah.

With the nanny who is like around the kids and stuff and often comes from. One, like a totally different background. It's usually you know, you, you know, you're not, you're not gonna like, keep in mind a lot of these nannies are, i'd say like conservative Catholic types. Like they're, they're, they're usually from like middle, lower class, like conservative Catholic religious backgrounds.

They're, they're not the type who's looking to sleep around with their employer.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I, now, I won't say that [00:11:00] like nannies or au pairs who come to the United States from abroad and are young and hot, aren't sometimes looking for romance. But they're looking for romance their own age. And while there's a bunch of people who jump into the thread and are like, oh yeah, like she's definitely sleeping with the husband.

Nannies always do this. Like one guy who jumps in the thread, Nick Walker, he's like funny how Twitter's automatically assuming she'd go for her client's husband when. There's a 90% chance her fiance is better looking. And literally we have a colleague who was formerly a nanny in the US and now lives here and is married because while she was a nanny, she met a guy her age who was awesome, who she then married.

Like, well, I would like to point

Malcolm Collins: out, I think that people aren't really thinking through this. Okay. So you can look at the, the woman in, in this, you know, I'll try to place a picture of it. You can see she's a very attractive woman and that's what's causing people to think this, right? Yeah. But what they're not considering is the world from this woman's perspective.

So I am this woman. I am young, very attractive. I'm [00:12:00] likely from a developing country, but right now I'm staying with a wealthy family in a place like Manhattan. Yeah. Or San Francisco. Yeah. I want to play my cards. Well, I'm a even agamous woman. What am I trying to do? I am trying to lock down a wealthy.

Tech bro to marry me. Yes. Obviously not sleep with a guy who's paying me a fixed fee. Well, and also just

Simone Collins: considering, like even looking at the bigger meta of it, this is a Brazilian. Sorry, a Columbia nanny who has posted this video on TikTok, sorry, TikTok on TikTok. She's literally advertising how hot she is, but also what a great mother she would be because this video shows her doing all these sweet things for the kid.

The kid obviously loves her, and a lot of people also chime in in the thread to say like, wow, I wish like, you know. She's, she's great.

Malcolm Collins: She's fishing was a big, the, the thing is yeah, she's using her,

Simone Collins: her opportunity to advertise what a good wife she will be. She's not trying to be the other woman clearly.

Malcolm Collins: No, but what's funny is, is guys are watching a video and, and [00:13:00] I and you are here noticing like a class difference between groups where you're seeing this flare up mm-hmm. Of a person who is literally and flagrantly if, if, if I was her like employer or something. Are you? You'd be like, Hey, that's pretty unprofessional to be looking for a husband on TikTok using your nannying job.

You're, you're, you're watching her do something that is actually a violation, is actively unprofessional, is actively out there in a way looking for a real long-term partner. Yeah. And. You think that she's trying to sleep with the husband? Some old, yeah. She, you think she's putting her job at risk?

Simone Collins: Because I'm sure if, if the parents saw this, it'd be kind of pissed because she's not hiding a kid's face or anything. And a lot of parents are really sensitive about that, not us. But,

Malcolm Collins: It's, it's not that I've never had nannies hit on me, but it's like you wouldn't consider it, right? Yeah. Like, you, you'd be like, oh, that's a giant lawsuit waiting to happen.

Yeah. Let's destroy, let's destroy my family. Let's

Simone Collins: definitely not do that. Yeah, and I mean, I think there's this, this big, because of a few [00:14:00] very high profile examples of, of people sleeping with nannies. There there's this, this perception that it's just pervasive. And even your mom was like, don't, don't ever get a hot nanny.

Then I see these archival videos of your childhood. I'm like, who's the hot woman in the bikini playing with you guys? It's not your mom. You know who's, who's this hot woman in Italy? Like sitting in your bedroom and it's like you had hot young au pair all the time. Yeah. So, and there were no problems and.

They, I mean, you had a mixture. There's

Malcolm Collins: just not a huge benefit from the perspective of the au pair to sleep with. Cool. The old, ugly, rich guy. No. Or even, even, you know, medium age because he's already married. He has kids. And, the there, the likelihood that they are going to break up the marriage or get him to pay her, like some side amount is so much less of a good time investment mm-hmm.

Than just using the fact that she's from a developing country and now in Manhattan. Yeah. To try [00:15:00] to lock down a husband. And that's

Simone Collins: the thing is being in these families exposes you to so many marriage prospects. Mm-hmm. And I think they're also just not realizing that like, they're not even modeling a lower middle income woman.

In in what her strategy is. Well, what they are

Malcolm Collins: familiar with is tropes of the trope of the nanny that seduces the dad.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know we'll have in

Malcolm Collins: our comment somebody being like, oh, I'm aware of it happening here. And I'm aware. I'm not saying it never happens. No, of course. But I'm saying it's, it's not something that I would actively be worried about or you would actively be worried about.

Simone Collins: Yeah. She also, and this is something we talked about in our AI episode, how like social class can mean different things. Like you can be wealthy but still be considered low class by many people and you can be impoverished, but still be mixing in the most elite circles. And she points out that status is interpreted different differently by each side.

So like motor lower middle class men emphasize status as key to male attractiveness. While upper middle class women often don't even recognize their own status advantages as such. So there's just this, they, they are, as she's. Saying, living in different [00:16:00] realities. And then she highlights,

Malcolm Collins: explain what you mean by what you just said.

Simone Collins: Huh?

Malcolm Collins: You, you just said lower class men see status as

Simone Collins: lower class men. See status is, is key to their attractiveness, is like the thing that they need. And once they get the women's and women are,

Malcolm Collins: sorry, what are you asking? You, you're not, you say lower class men is key to there, but you're not defining who there is in the sentence it, the lower class, he is key

Simone Collins: to male attractiveness.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And women see it as key or not key to their attractiveness. Women don't,

Simone Collins: they, they often don't even recognize their own status advantages as status advantages. Like they're not aware of the fact that their income or education grants some advantages. They're like blind to it. Whereas men are like highly attuned to it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because it doesn't affect the women's advantage on dating markets as much as it affects the men's advantage on dating markets. That's why they're, they're, they, they don't notice it.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's surprising they don't see it.

Simone Collins: No, of course not. I mean, the dynamics make perfect sense. She also highlights that people tend to date and marry just within their own class [00:17:00] and within their own educational background without realizing it.

And I think that especially on, well, no, maybe on both sides there's this expect like women. I often talk about like, or well certainly fantasized about marrying men who are wealthier or higher status than they are. But in the end, they marry people who are pretty well matched. And, and men. Men, I think fantasize about,

Malcolm Collins: about, about statistically here.

Yeah. Women, if you're talking about who people marry versus who people sleep with, yes. They're the huge problem for when people are sleeping around, where women will all match to the same few like. You know, whatever guys that are top, you know, 0.5% and that they you know, overly sleep with them.

And that there really is a drought for the other men. And that women can by dressing up and looking slutty, you know, land some rich guy, if you're talking about who people actually end up marrying it's the Daisy Buchanans. You can be the, what was the other woman's name in that? The one who gets killed and is sleeping with him.

Can't remember the fate of the character. Right. You can't remember her. But the Daisy Buchanans I thought there was only one [00:18:00] woman. It was just Daisy. It was always just Daisy. No, there was the, there was the Ude or something. There was the lower class sleeping whiz. Who ends up trying to like run out?

Oh,

Simone Collins: sorry. Yeah. The, the wife of the car mechanic.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the, these women are always only like side pieces or something like that, like the idea of as a woman marrying. To improve your class, it can happen, but I've seen the, the, the families that it happens in most, and it's usually the creepiest and grossest of men.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. It,

Malcolm Collins: it doesn't really ha like, like the men where. I would say you could not pay me any amount of money to, to, to live that life. Well, and you wanna

Simone Collins: know, it's interesting though, Malcolm is also more and more people are marrying within their social class. In other words, the, the likelihood of dating statistically or dating down, it has decreased in recent decades.

So in 1958, like that birth cohort. 39% married. Within their [00:19:00] class. There were, there was a lot of people who were marrying outside and presumably this was women marrying up and men marrying down. Then in 1970, that birth cohort, 45%, so up from 39, married within their class, and then from 1976 to 19 81, 50 6%.

Married within their class. And presumably it's only gone up since then? No, this, this is from UK data, but similar trends are seen in US data, so I think less and less and less people are, are marrying outside their class. And maybe what's going on too is men are anchoring to a different time and they're assuming that things worked like they used to work where, you know, men would wear.

Mary, some impoverished hot woman and women would seek out some Prince charming who'd be willing to consider her. And that just doesn't really happen anymore. People especially, 'cause to your point, people meet at school, people meet at work, and those are typically pretty, pretty bound by [00:20:00] social class, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not that, not that you, I mean, keep in mind like the guy who was caught cheating, he was caught cheating with the head of hr, not like, yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, they were, yeah, it wasn't a secretary. Come on. Yeah. Actually that's a really good point. Historically, when men cheated at the office and you had the scandals of it, it was the secretary.

The secretary. Mm-hmm. Today, most of the scandals I'm aware of, of tech CEOs cheating with an employee, it is somebody holding a c rank position. Mm-hmm. Or other senior position in the company. Isn't that funny? In fact, I can't think of a single secretary instance. Mm-hmm. In the past 10 years.

Simone Collins: I can't either.

I'm sure you know, people will come up with exceptions, but I just think it's far less common. But, so here's, I, I wanna actually take this a step further because I don't think the where I, I, I love the idea presented by cartoons hate her. I think she's wrong that people are just kind of talking past each other and not getting it.

I actually think that either subconsciously or even explicitly, especially men who are involved in the [00:21:00] gender wars know that they're class wars. Which is why of the many of them support taking women down a notch. The same way that Far Left Socialists support. The elimination of billionaires like Bo both have detailed plans for how to level the playing field.

Like on one side you have Zhan mom. Saying, I don't think that we should have billionaires, so we, we need to, we need more equality. Like literally. And then you have on the other hand, Ark Ethereum whose, whose essays we've highlighted a bunch of times here arguing that, oh, like in the, the, the Aporia article he wrote called The Baby Boom.

He argues that we should roll back welfare and pension, state income and, and lower income taxes because that's mostly men paying for women. That we should roll back the regulatory state because that gives bureaucratic jobs primarily to women. We should end affirmative action for women that we should defund education because women primarily outperform men in the educational sphere.

That, that we should give primarily all of the, the perennial list incentives to men and not to women, and that we should roll back the sexual revolution. Like he's, it, it, it, it comes [00:22:00] across. The same kind of like take away the power of the billionaires tax, the rich except in, in this case it's just women.

But it's because in this case, he sees women and, and explicitly in the Baby Moo article on Emporia, he highlights the fact that women have been given sort of a bunch of artificial tailwinds, enabling them to have higher relative. Class status and wealth to many men, which makes it harder for men to, to attract them?

Well, no,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, we point out the course problem within the, the existing gender wars is women put a bunch of things in place to try to make men and women economically equal. And they've more than achieved that. Now women are, are doing slightly better than men was in our generational cohort. And now they look around and be like, well, I want a man who still.

Like more successful than I am for a marriage partner. Yeah. Where are those men? And it's like, well, you got rid of them. You said they were a problem, right? Like, yeah. So I think that, that a lot of people are, are very upset about that, especially the men who have [00:23:00] been screwed over because it is much economic, much, much more economically difficult for men yeah.

These days than it is for women. Yeah. Especially because as the economy is unraveling, the part of the economy that has received a bit of cushioning is the bureaucratic physicians mm-hmm. Which are abnormally held by women now.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and abnormally protected and kept in place even when there's no financial justification for it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now eventually AI is going to rip those apart more than other sorts of positions. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It'll happen. You know, don't worry. Act Ethereum, like, like I said in the AI and social class episode, I think women are the ones who are gonna be screwed over by it because they are not gonna be the risk takers who win.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So it'll happen. Give it a good time. Agree with that. Well, and, and they're, they're disproportionately sorting into the types of positions that AI is just going to be safer to, to have handled

Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah, because they're middle of the bell curve kind of professionals typically, and men are the outliers and it's the outlier professionals who are gonna, so we're

Malcolm Collins: gender reshuffling was in our generation.

Um mm-hmm. But it's, it's, it's going to be a [00:24:00] fairly ruthless reshuffling to boast genders, I think.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Well, and I mean, well, it, every reshuffling well, I think disruption typically yields more opportunities for men. Relatively speaking, that's only like the side of the bell curve for like the sliver of men that like succeeds, like the, the genius outliers and not like the equally large, if not larger number that just completely get, are they probably all gonna have

Malcolm Collins: Elon Harems?

Is that how we're gonna fix the birth rate? You know, it's a signal harem. Oh. With

Simone Collins: our, with our, our grok girlfriends maybe. No, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: You know, like, the signal guy in Elon, in that, oh, so like, okay,

Simone Collins: well, yeah, no, no, that's actually like, I, I think that many women are going

Malcolm Collins: to, you get like 50 Ys each

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, that and or just in general, women will look more to like, well, I better attach, like, I better hitch my cart to a.

Profitable man and make money off him by raising his kids, like, or have my life supported by raising his kids. Yeah. I, I do think that we're gonna see a lot more of that for better or for worse. Yeah. As

Malcolm Collins: we pointed [00:25:00] out, our general thesis is that society is going to become less equal economically speaking over time.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Because of ai.

Simone Collins: Yep. But, so speaking of this, like I'm just, I was thinking about this and realizing, yeah, like a lot of this really is about resources and wealth and it really kind of has nothing to do. With gender, even though we're we're saying it's men versus women, and where it's like, really it's

Malcolm Collins: about gender.

I, I think you're wrong there. It is a hundred percent about gender and it's about the structural and fairness that men deal with. Okay. It's

Simone Collins: then it's about structural and fairness. I, I just like, let me give you some examples though, because I really do feel like most of the cultural group conflicts that we have are, are probably rooted in class differences.

Okay. And, and so let, let's just go through some examples like consider. Racial and ethnic group tensions look at black white conflict in the us while, while race is of course a centralizing organizing principle in American society, research absolutely shows that divisions within racial groups are along class lines that when wealthier, black and [00:26:00] Latino Americans have different political priorities and lived experiences compared to poorer members of the same group.

Poorer individuals may feel less represented and more acutely affected by class barriers. Than by purely racial ones. And, and that absolutely shows up or immigrant versus native foreign groups. I think you're saying

Malcolm Collins: that really, really not, not clearly. Okay. What she means by this is that if you are an upper middle class individual, you are going to look at your black and Latino friends and say, these people are not different from me.

Not only are they not different from me, but the person who says being in a black neighborhood is dangerous, is a complete psychopath. The person who says Latinos are taking their jobs, like, how could you say that? Now you go to a lower middle class individual and you go into you know, or a lower class individual and you go into, you know, black neighborhoods.

You're like, Hey, this is a dangerous neighborhood. That's like a common thing to say, right? Like common sense. You say, Hey, I, I lost my job at the auto shop. You know, that's a. Everyone would be like, yeah, [00:27:00] obviously you lost your job at the auto shop to immigrants. That happened to my, my, well, yeah. And that's, that's the other

Simone Collins: thing.

Yeah. Because it's not just black, white, it's, it's also immigrants, but like the, the immigrant thing isn't so much, I mean, I think when it's harder for people to maybe express the fact that like, you're, you're mad at this group 'cause they're taking your jobs, or you feel like they're siphon in a way, social services that would've otherwise gone to you.

And so you're like, ugh. Like they're eating dogs and cats. I hate them 'cause they smell weird and they look funny and they talk funny or whatever. But like.

Malcolm Collins: That it's, it's that they are culturally different. So again, if I'm an upper middle class individual yeah. And I have black friends and I have Latino friends, because the upper middle class is gated by the urban monoculture, these individuals are culturally gonna feel almost identical to myself because they are going to be part of the urban monoculture.

Yes. If I'm lower. Class, and I am a white guy and I have black or Latino friends. Culturally, they're gonna be nothing like me. They're gonna be a different species for me, you know? And I, I, I don't mean like [00:28:00] ethnically as a different species. What I mean is they're just a different kind of person to me.

The way their families are structured. Yeah. The type of parties they host well, and I think

Simone Collins: the fact that they're different. Absolutely makes it easy for us to articulate and animate resentment in a very colorful way, but I think that the resentment stems from inequality and fear related to resources.

Malcolm Collins: I don't, and that's not even what I'm saying.

I'm saying that if you are in these communities. Like the, the, the conservative community, which is this lower, lower middle class community. And I say something like, blacks are different from whites and, and are, and, and, and whites are different from Latinos or something like that. And, and anyone in the community would be like, oh yeah, I went to a Latino barbecue and it was nothing like, oh, and I went to a black barbecue.

And you go to a lower class black barbecue and a lower class white barbecue and a lower class Latino barbecue. The, the experience is going to be like, you're in a, a different country. Yeah. Now you, you go to an upper middle class black barbecue or white barbecue or [00:29:00] Latino barbecue, they're all gonna be the same.

Yeah. You might have like one little activity or, or one little thing that happens. One maybe.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's

Malcolm Collins: different. But to these people, when they say there are no cultural differences between ethnicities, it is genuinely, because many of them really. Mean it in the depth of their souls. Mm. They have just never experienced it, and so when they hear somebody else be like, no, these groups are actually quite different from each other.

They're like, oh, you could only be saying this because you're a racist. Because I know, you know, I just, the other week went to my, you know. Wealthy black friend's house and it looked exactly like my house. And I met, you know, his wife and their relationship structure was exactly like mine. And I met his kids and they go to the, you know, the same type of the, the doing the same type of thing my kids are doing and at the same type of goals and, and we're all, you know, the same basic religion.

This and this echoes

Simone Collins: the cartoons. Hate her argument in that. Within each side [00:30:00] they're like, I don't even know what reality you're talking about. Like this, none of this makes sense. 'cause they don't have exposure to each other's realities.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean you could just see this with churches. You go to an upper class, you know, black church and it's gonna be a lot like a, a white church.

You go to a lower class black church and it's gonna be very different. Right. And, and, and this is because the urban monoculture rots society from the top down. It homogenizes society from the top down. So the closer you are to the top, even just aspirationally speaking, the, the less you are going to see the real differences between people or understand you know, as I argued today, the modern conservative movement is made up of an alliance of often these different groups.

Like one of the reasons why, you know, so many Latinos have come over to the conservative party, they're like, we wanna maintain our distinct culture. And that they say they. Us. They, they say they like us, but they call us Latinx, which like even ignores the basic way our grammar medical structures work.

Yeah, yeah. Like obviously if that is the word, they use us and it has [00:31:00] so little respect for the way our culture is unique. Yeah. They do plan to homogenize us. It's like, shut

Simone Collins: up. Not, not only am I not lats and I'm not Latino, I'm not Latina, I am Colombian. I am from Argentina. Yeah. Come on. Like, what on earth, what are you doing?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and it's this homogenization, this burning homogenization, this burning away of uniqueness, which has allowed for many, like, and I also think that this is just smart because the, feminist movement has sort of converged with the progressive movement, which has converged with the urban monoculture and the anti-feminist movement has converged with the you know, cultural sovereignty movement, which is the, you know, MAGA conservative movement.

And so to converge. Culturally within your places of strengths? IE If you go to like lower class communities, even though these groups are different and they recognize they're different, many of them will have friends in these other groups. Sure. And those friends will value the way that these groups are different and not want those differences further eroded.

Right. Like, you know, you'll have your black friend if, [00:32:00] if you're a, a, a lower class American or your, your Hispanic friend, you know, from the job site or whatever. And, and you'll understand that you guys are very culturally distinctive. You have distinctive gender norms. You have distinctive roles around sexual taboos.

You have distinctive, and you want to maintain that distinctiveness. And so when you're coming and you're like, okay, let's all get together and, and work out how we're gonna fight against this homogenizing force it, it works to come to this lower and lower middle class place. And, and if you're all, yeah, and I

Simone Collins: mean, I, and I hear you and you're saying this is cultural, but I'm also saying that I think that the resources money class element of it is, is underrated.

Like, I'm okay just aside from race. Talk about like. Rural urban divides, A lot of that comes down. It's not just culture, it's also about feeling economically marginalized compared to urban centers and that that tension can feel real. Like we, we've spoken with people who are like, yeah, man, I feel completely left behind.

Who live in more and, and Oh, oh, [00:33:00] okay. Consider also like boomers versus millennials when you actually look, I mean, millennials will make fun of boomers and vice versa about like their cultural things, but in the end, the big resentment. Is the younger generations are like, the boomers have all the money, they have all this wealth.

They're like, oh, it just work and you'll be fine. And like it, it doesn't work that way anymore. And there's a lot of resentment there. And it, it stems from resources.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, this explains why if you go to all of the protests against Trump, it's like only boomers if people have been talking about it they, they boomer protests, there's like no young people.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think, you know, to your point about this, this urban monoculture as well, I think a lot of that also then also it, it boils down to class. You have a higher resourced, more educated class of people that has become homogenized, and then you have a bunch of other people. And it, it, it gets weird for, with, with that because then you, you have the, the urban monoculture also being really socialist and like.

They hate [00:34:00] people with money, but they are

Malcolm Collins: the ones, no, we're not socialists. What, what socialism and communism is, is it is the ossification of the bureaucratic hierarchy that is existing within our society, but just making it so that the bureaucrats have to work even less. When we talk about like AI eroding bureaucratic jobs, it does that if we maintain capitalism.

Mm-hmm. If we switch to socialism, they get to keep their positions within the system forever. Oh, okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Them keeping power. And communal narcissism, as we talked about on

Malcolm Collins: the left, at any time in human history, is never about wealth redistribution in any sort of real sense. It is about the ossification of a bureaucratic power structure.

Simone Collins: Okay, well that explains it, but I mean, I'm just trying to point out that a lot of seemingly cultural conflict in the end are about competition over jobs, housing, political power. And, and class position influences who perceives opportunity and who feels threatened. And with the gender words. A lot of this [00:35:00] comes from man, like women have been given all this like affirmative action and they get all the bureaucratic roles and they're doing better in education and there's a lot of resentment about it and maybe it would be more productive of people just explicitly talked about that like our Ethereum does.

Whether or not it's true, because some studies have found like they looked at some areas where men did get. Better economic achievement and better social status, and that still didn't produce more children. So I don't, you know, like there's, but we should be having that conversation instead of just being like, no, but a Walt

Malcolm Collins: outside of children women today, like if you look at this generation, there's been some graphs that we've gone over in other episodes.

Yeah. They increasingly, like over the past 10 years, believe that women. Increasingly, like with a sharp increase, there is a perception among women that women are being treated worse over, over time. That society is more unfair towards women. That college entrance is more unfair towards women. Even though like by the facts, this is objectively untrue to anyone who's like living in reality.

And so I think that, you know, they say. Well, you're just living in different realities [00:36:00] because you're seeing different class norms. Yeah. And it's like, no, we, on the conservative side, acknowledge their class norms and their reality. Often like there's some instances where there's, there's like the maid situation and they just have no idea what.

Going on 'cause they've never experienced it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: broadly speaking, we acknowledge their class norms and they are unaware. Or are they, they actively choose to be like, no, you people aren't experiencing these things. They, they, they will say no. Yeah, because they're

Simone Collins: the privileged ones. And, and the matter that the lower class ones, no,

Malcolm Collins: no, no.

They'll be like, they'll be like, oh you know. Like a upper class woman will be like, oh, like upper middle class. I just can't find a guy who meets my standards. And we're like, yes, you can't. I agree. Here's why. We, we'll say like, oh, I lost my job because of an immigrant or something like that at the car shop.

And they'll be like, that didn't happen. Or you know, like, actually, you know, there. Really big differences between the ethnocultural groups in this country. And, and then they're, they're not exactly living harmoniously [00:37:00] with each other. And they'll be like, no, you haven't experienced that. Because.

Or crime is actually a real problem right now in my, my city. Can you do something about it? And they're like, well, I just looked outside and it's not a problem. Right. Or like, they stole my car. And really that was a good thing because now somebody who needs it has it, you know? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Probably need. Yeah. Oh gosh.

Those arguments I haven't heard in a long time, but there were absolutely those arguments of, well, I think he needed my bike more than I did.

Malcolm Collins: There was no, there was a, not too long ago, or maybe like a couple years ago post by a comedian and where somebody had broken into his car and he goes, well, this is just like the price you lay to live, live in a wonderful city like la.

And it's like, well, you know, if you actually didn't have a lot of money, somebody breaking into your car is a huge financial deal. Even if they don't steal it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Remember when your car was broken into? Yeah. And it just was, yeah. It's not like, it's not like even people who you know are, are not on the lowest ends of, of [00:38:00] society, aren't really hurt.

By that, I mean, we still own that Mazda and we, we drive it every day. Like I, yeah, I, I feel these are forever cars. Like,

I don't know what to say.

Malcolm Collins: A 2010 Mazda. God bless it. Wondering out our frugalness. I still, Liv was the very first car I ever got. And we, we work on it all the time to keep it good, but yeah.

Am I gonna be one of those guys who keeps the car for sale long? It becomes like a classic. I

Simone Collins: don't know if a 2010 Mazda is ever really gonna become,

Malcolm Collins: it's a good car.

Simone Collins: Yes, it is. I like, I'm very fa it's, it's been like nothing. It doesn't do any, it, it is it is the Simone of cars, right? Like workhorse doesn't complain, doesn't break down very much.

As long as you drive it the right way. You know? Nope. Don't become

Malcolm Collins: classics after 30 years. I

Simone Collins: don't know. Is there some designation? Like, I think so vintage versus antique.

You gotta school me. I don't do, I don't do cars.

Malcolm Collins: A car needs to be 20 years old to be a classic. This car is 15 years old. [00:39:00] All I'm five years from being a classic. It becomes a classic in 2030, Simone. Well hold onto it my friend. I had no intention of selling it. That's that's crazy. I could actually be that, that old man who's driving around a classic car just be like, actually the owner of a classic car care of it.

Simone Collins: Your mom maligned. We can't even, we can't even say online, which she called it. That's one of those few things we can't even say.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Yeah. Anyway my god. So, wait, do you have any other arguments here?

Simone Collins: No, I just, I I actually, I, I, I want people to think more about why they're actually. Mad about things or mad at groups?

Malcolm Collins: disagree. I think that they're mad at them because of the unfair dating and market dynamics and the systemic unfairness towards men. But what I will and I, yeah, and I

Simone Collins: think that's a resource thing.

Malcolm Collins: No, but what I will No, no. I'm saying this is their predominant area of madness. What I will agree with.

Is this article, is it not

Simone Collins: area of madness? The the primary reason for their grievance? You make it sound like they're crazy. The primary, whatever [00:40:00]

Malcolm Collins: you see. This is, this is, I am speaking like a lower class person area of madness, and you are speaking like an upper middle class person. Reason for grievance, well.

Simone Collins: well, I don't think that men appreciate being referred to as hysterical. That's what they do to the women.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, Simone, so, so no, I'm just using like broad words that anyone can use and you're trying to get all fantasy with your language here. Uhhuh your ification ending in your words.

Simone Collins: But upper middle class, feminine ways.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But the point I'm making is that I think that she's wrong and that the grievance areas are are being misinterpreted. But what I will agree with is that these two movements have become coded with different social communities. Mm. In different social classes. And I think it's important to ask why are they being coded with these various social classes.

Mm-hmm. And it's not that I don't think that a lot of the foot soldiers have woke him. Are impoverished people, but they are impoverished people living with like 20 people [00:41:00] in a like polyamorous house and like man Manhattan or Portland to live the simul locker room of the upper middle class lifestyle.

Mm-hmm. There is this obsession with living was in the simul locker room of this lifestyle, and I think that part of that is downstream of women's psychological differences in men. And the, the males saying, Hey, I want to be accepted by the norm. Like, like of this larger, like, new right community.

Therefore I am going to appeal to the average man. I'm gonna, you know, you know, like Elon with the gaming stuff or like Asma Gold or like, and I think that that is also downstream of the dominant culture was in this movement, which as we've noted, is our own culture, which it's the, the sort of greater abolition, like clam based cultural tradition, which is very Okay with differences and very hostile towards elitism and aristocracy.

Simone Collins: Well, what about all the men who, who keep trying to show flash around money that they may or may not have?

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is a point they often rose. If you [00:42:00] look at the men who rose in the the last generation of the conservative cycle when the aristocratic cavalier group or deep south group still was a dominant group and party it.

So you're saying the

Simone Collins: new version of aspirational male is low culture, lower class signaling, whereas the previous generation was flash money. Yes. It's a time thing. It's a trend thing. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That helps you.

Malcolm Collins: And they do this today. Either they look buffoonish or they look like they're part of a separate cultural group.

Okay. What I mean by this is we lived in Manhattan for sorry, Miami for a period. And when I saw a man flash money to attempt to attract a woman always my initial reaction is, oh, he's a Latin American. Like, I like that was, even if he, I was like, he must be Latin American. Right? Like, he's not a, a American.

American because he's, he's, he's acting in a way that is discordant with the dominant cultural value [00:43:00] system was in this country at the moment.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that that, that either people look like they're just signaling that they're in a, which is fine, right? Like a Latin American man in Miami trying to attract Latin American hoes in Miami is you're playing

Simone Collins: that game.

You gotta signal to the right audience.

Malcolm Collins: That's the, that's a, yeah, that's the. Fing game man, right? Like, no, I'm not gonna hate the player for that. Right? But you know, I look at that and I'm like, oh, you know, I, I would not want those women. I, I would, I would pay to not have to sleep with those women or to not have those women approach me.

Like he is, he is fishing for a fish that I don't eat. And I have never had any interest in eating that fish. So it's, it is just a different cultural game that he's playing and I'm just like, okay, fine. Play this alternate cultural game. Or I think that, oh, they're like buffoonish and behind the times.

They don't understand what's going on these days because, you know, you look at the, the, you know, the billionaire Plus, and none of them are, are doing that anymore. They're trying to hide that stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and sleeping with their colleagues, their high status.

Malcolm Collins: Jeff Bezos, who I've always said, [00:44:00] just looks like an out of touch buffoon, the, the woman he is marrying looks like just, yeah.

Simone Collins: But I, I feel like he did that to her because when they first started dating, she wasn't. She hadn't had that much work done.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah, but it, it looks super low class.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But also like, he started from humble beginnings, so, you know, he's not old money I people, I was, I was watching a YouTuber talk about old money recently.

I think my algorithm is, is serving that up ever, ever since I watched some video about it. And she was like, oh, you know, old money that's like, you know, 50 years. And I'm like, no, that's, 50 years is not old. Old money is like three generations of a family of wealth. It is not, yeah. Yeah. Jeff Bezos is, is new money and, and therefore it, it should come as no surprise that his wife doesn't look like, oh, it's like that scene from Legally Blonde.

No,

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna push back here. I think the old money, new money distinction is stupid. There is a lot of, first of all, we argued in a, another video. I don't think it's gone live yet. That old money basically doesn't exist anymore. That it as a no, no, no.

Simone Collins: That, that was in our [00:45:00] AI and social class video where we talked about basically it

Malcolm Collins: has a social class has mostly dissolved at this point.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so. Right now what you have is two groups. And, and both of them are fairly new wealth. One of them is, is sort of hip with the times and everything like that. This is like your Elon or your Zuckerberg. I mean, he might be like a bit out of it, but he broadly knows what's going on or your teals or your andreessen's or whatever, right?

Mm-hmm. And then your other is like, you know, your Jeff Bezos or your what's his name? Bill Gates or your what this is like, this is like the more generic class and they're more like trying to culturally signal to communities that don't really exist anymore. They're, they're trying to culturally signal to what they wanted people to respect you know, 50 years ago or 20 years ago when they were growing up.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And not the way things are on the ground right now. So I think the old money, new money distinction is just completely silly because it doesn't really exist anymore. It is the [00:46:00] people who are hip to the ways that culture has changed and people who are trying to signal to a mostly dead or gone.

Audience that's not really there anymore. No,

Simone Collins: I think that's a really good point. Yeah. That, that old money now only is an aesthetic because now people with intergenerational wealth don't have the discipline required to maintain intergenerational wealth.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. That's, yeah. Which we, we talked about this.

Go see AI on social class, our, our video on that. We, we basically talk about how everything we've seen at Family Wealth conferences and among these types of groups is basically they're like, oh, I just want my kid to be happy now. Whereas before it used to be like K-Pop, all the people

Malcolm Collins: communists,

Simone Collins: and they,

Malcolm Collins: and they have no kids themselves.

Like they're, yeah. Whereas like

Simone Collins: before, if you look at the Kennedys, like they weren't having fun. Those kids were like being engineered to be future presidents and politicians, you know, they, they weren't. You know, this was, this was Disney kid, this was K-Pop Idol. Like you're gonna be, so yeah. Now they're, oh, I just want them to be happy.

So yeah, the money gets pissed away. [00:47:00] Alright. I love you Malcolm. Thank you. Love you to a fun conversation. You always widen my perspective, but yeah, cartoons hate her. Fun.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, on the next episode, I think you might wanna change the topic and you need to ask Diana first if we can do this topic.

Okay. Because I think it's a little rude to do it without asking her. I did, let's. Things.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, there aren't that many people who are as bullish as we are on raising our kids with ai. So how did, how did

Malcolm Collins: the episode do in terms of comments today?

Simone Collins: People really enjoyed it. People were very keen to draw the connection between communal narcissism and women.

Malcolm Collins: Communal narcissism and women.

Yeah, we did the communal narcissism episode. I didn't expect the episode to do as well as it did really. We were like, Ugh, this is just such blatant red meat for our audience. Like, this is not gonna hit number one. And it hits number one.

Simone Collins: When we feel like we need to get performance to work, how can we just make progressives and women look bad?

Malcolm Collins: Our, our channel's numbers right now, by [00:48:00] some way. Someone you wanna update, we're at. In terms of view count, just on YouTube per every 28 day period, 368,000, so, getting close to a million there. And in terms of watch time, hours per 28 day period, 179,500, so around 180,000 hours. Watch time, that's

Simone Collins: a lot of

Malcolm Collins: per 28 days.

Simone Collins: That's a lot of time.

Malcolm Collins: I'm proud of this. We built this into something kind. Cool. From a, you know, just a few people watching and my mom being like, you look like a fool talking on YouTube, and no one's listening.

Simone Collins: Well, she, she came around to it. She came around. Yeah. So I'm glad. I think she'd be pleased. All right.

You ready? Alright. Get those thick glasses on that trigger people so freaking hard. Are, have you lost the other glasses? I do like the other wire frame glasses.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I should look it around for them. I have them somewhere. The core [00:49:00] reason I don't wear them anymore is because they're not like fitted correctly right now.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: So we gotta take them to New York and take them to the store where they're made 'cause nobody else works on them.

Speaker 2: Do you see? You put the car in the walls. Wait, so he's putting the car in the house? Yeah, he's her banana bread. I'm trying to go outside.

Well then walk out the door. Where is the house? Why? Why is your car inside the house? I don't know. Why are you going for this hole? Are you like renovating? It looks a little rough, maybe Looks a little rough because you drove a car into your house. I dunno. Why did you, why is the cleanliness check mark?

Speaker: Yes. A house condition is at 23%. That helps to explain it.

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

2025 in Review: Can India and Pakistan avoid a fourth war over Kashmir?

The Take

Threat to the Indus Waters Treaty

The AI-powered Podcast Player