The Performative Male Epidemic - Louise Perry & Mary Harrington (4K)

Americans are having a record low amount of sex, even less than they did during COVID. Just 37% of American adults have sex weekly, down from 55% in 1990. Does this count to the view that sex is becoming more casually accepted than ever before? >> Who goes first? >> Uh, do you want to go first? I think I I glanced at these statistics and I and what I what I thought was interesting and sort of haven't really had a chance to borrow into is how does it split between the long-term partnered and the casually and the unpartnered. >> Yeah, exactly. because that's that's been generally the the that's where the commentary gets interesting and people have often the the the conservative side will say no actually the the the not getting they're not getting any is is very much the people who are not married and actually the married are getting any and if I remember rightly the recent headlines no actually the people who are not who are married are also um p becoming more pander-like >> sex recession's happening across the board >> yeah it's happening across the board >> relationship uh agnostic So I think that the paradox where people are simultaneously having less sex and apparently being at least more permissive towards casual sex whether or not they're having lots of it I think is solved by that marriage issue. So if people are less likely to be in long-term partnerships and people in long-term partnerships have more sex. So there's I think there's a there's a model that works where say Gen Z are having casual sex but they're only having casual sex. M [clears throat] >> so like one hookup a year for instance works out as very little sex. But it's also not >> to say that casual sex culture doesn't exist. >> So you're able to have both of these things. >> I think that those things work >> and they might actually be causing each other. >> Yeah. But I also think it's plausible that even married people might be having less sex. And that might be to do with things like obesity, things like I don't know xenoestrogens. Like there could be biological things going on or people just looking at their phones too much. I think people looking at their phones is at least as plausible in a practical level u as xenoistrogens or any of the sort of exotic biological explanations. I mean, if you're it's it's very it's very absorbing and you know, at the end of the day, you know, a certain amount of a certain amount of action happens just, you know, there's nothing nothing to do, nothing on TV >> spontaneously. You're you're here, I'm here. Um, >> you know, Alice Evans, who's a academic at KCL London, she blames smartphones for the birth crisis. I mean the the the the the line starts going down. They certainly track sometime before smartphones. >> Well, it depends. It really goes off in your 60s, doesn't it? It depends on which country you're looking at. >> But she she she notices and I think this is true that uh all the parts of the world that are seeing have seen and are seeing the greatest drops in in fertility. This does track with smartphone usage and the places where fertility is clinging on in say subsaran Africa is where people are least likely to have smartphones. I think she's probably I think probably the third factor that those things correlate with is actually modernity and affluence >> and is more and that's more complex. But it's interesting. I mean her theory is that people are just so besotted with the joys of limbic capitalism delivered via their phones that they just forget to behave like normal normal human beings and reproduce. >> Do you think Taylor Swift's tradife arc will be enough to reverse birth rate decline? >> But she's not having a tradition she's engaged. Go let her do it one step at a time. Come on. [laughter] >> What is she 35? >> Maybe. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's not especially tradies. You know what I mean though that I mean there was a poem by someone called Kalin Weird. It's got tens of millions of views. Have you seen this? It's been floating around. >> The day Taylor Swift got engaged, little girls screamed, grown women cried, and the awkward child we all carry inside finally felt chosen. My point, lots of women follow Taylor Swift. She's got engaged. Is this going to be a boon into like it's a nonzero impact on coupling right but how big is it going to be? >> So these things are mimemetic I'm with you there but I don't know I mean that is so okay that is an interesting question like we know that with fertility if you if your sister say has a baby you're more likely to have a baby in the year following and best friend etc. And >> does it work when it's Taylor Swift? Well, maybe I mean I was thinking maybe if it maybe parasocial relationships can have the same effect and probably actually people spend more I mean it occurred to me the other day that I see Donald Trump's face so much more often than I see like my neighbors faces [snorts] >> for instance. This is just and that's probably true for you as well >> because your neighbors are wearing Donald Trump mask as [laughter] they walk >> to me up. Yeah. >> Um but the parasocial relationships I mean they do everyone who's any kind of digital device >> is susceptible to them. So yeah, maybe I mean maybe Taylor might be able to trick her biggest fans into thinking my sister's just had a baby or when she does eventually have a baby hopefully. >> Um so yeah, I think it's not negligible. >> Yeah, but >> birth rate decline might be a slightly bigger challenge than can be fixed by Taylor Swift. >> Maybe a little bit. >> I mean, you could also make the case, I'm going to be provocative here, that birth rate decline is not so much a problem as just nature taking its course. um you know in the sense of um a culture self-correcting from a kind of a terminal spiral into a kind of a structural state of sterility. I mean if if if the if the logical end point of limbic capitalism uh this superb phrase that Louise just raised this I mean I don't know if you've come across this phrase before it was coined by a writer called David Courtright who wrote a book titled limitic capitalism which is all which which is a critique of all the ways that [snorts] especially especially in more recent years the the way people the the way people make money the most profitable source of new innovation is hacking people's basic primitive drives and and redirecting them from what they're actually healthily meant to do towards making making money for companies. So, so you know, selling junk food, selling pornography, um hacking people's dopamine systems so that they stay hypnotized by social media instead of getting it on or having reforming relationships or even frankly going outside. You know, all of those things are instances of what Courtright calls limit capitalism. Um, and I think you you could make the case that if we're if the direction of the general overall cultural direction of travel is such that that's the end point that we're currently destined towards. [laughter] You know, if it's if it's resulting in people just not having babies, you could argue that, you know, if you take a step back, that's just evolution taking its course. You know, we are being selected against by our own uh by our own commercial infrastructure. >> That's interesting. Um and and the the end point of that will be that the the current the current culture will won't be won't will very literally not be reproduced and will be replaced in you know two or three generations by some other culture which has somehow managed to unplug from the Skinner machine. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Um I mean so so the in the long term it's kind of optimistic but in the short term for the people who are committed to the limbic capitalist architecture it looks like a disaster. The conversation I had with Brad Wilcox, he was talking about why South Korea has got such a low birth rate. And one of his big theories is around K-pop stars. Have you heard this one? >> No. >> [ __ ] brilliant. So, um, the K-pop revolution is very constructed. These people sort of apply. They go through Navy Seal selection week and then they're done. And they're locked into these ironclad 360 24/7 contracts. isn't in them, they can't date. They're to be completely celibate for the entire time, which means that >> How long does it last the contract? >> Well, for as long as they're in the band. And if they want to go and if if they were to begin dating, they would be out, right? Maybe. I don't know. >> What's the reasoning? >> Uh I think he didn't say that, but I'm going to guess something like we want you completely committed to this huge project, and anything which is off that might muddy the water. And >> there's also a cleaner parasocial relationship, isn't it, as well? I suppose, >> you know, when you think about the relationship between Taylor Swift's fans, Taylor Swift's boyfriends and Taylor Swift, you know, you know, what was it? Matty Healey. And when she was dating him, they all went they her her entire fan base of, you know, squillion bajillions of women went absolutely bananas. They hated him. And they like his her fan base basically split up the relationship. >> That's a that's a way to put it that if you have a personal relationship, there is a part of you that is outside of the band. Yeah. Right. So there is no personal right and his point is that because you have the most popular most aspirational role models within a country are all uncoupled and childless that created an a huge generational impact of you shouldn't be trying to have kids. M >> uh and >> if that's true, there was a great example, I think it's the country of Georgia, um very religious, and they have this like superstar rockstar pastor, >> and he's the most popular guy in the entire country. And they they uh he tried to fix birth rate decline by saying, "I will personally baptize the third child of any family." >> Oh, I remember that. Yeah. >> And the these families are speed running through children in a desperate attempt to get the third. And um so you can see people who are of high status are able to create incentives that encourage people who respect them in order to follow them. So the obvious thing at least for Korea that you could fix overnight is the only way you can become a K-pop star is if you're already a mother or father. Like that's the how you get in. And that means that every K-pop star now is a example. And >> but again the entire architecture of Olympic capitalism militates against that because um the the excitement clearly I mean this is not a this is not a world I'm massively familiar with but there's obviously like huge volumes of gossip content and huge amount of exposure and like the they every aspect of these these people's lives you know down to their inner lives is is is made available for strip mining by the media machine. >> [snorts] >> Um, and under those circumstances, it's just not possible to be a parent because, you know, to be to be there to be for your child or to be for your family is to pres material, some of that intimate stuff protected from from being striped and commercialized in that way. I mean, this is something you and I talk about, isn't it Louise? like how how and in what how how you go how one can go about existing in public while intentionally preserving a space of intimacy where family life happens and where that's which is not subject to >> the digital modesty thing. >> Yeah. Digital modesty. Exactly. And I mean I'm I'm very intentional about what I post and where when and how I share any information at all about my family. You know, they're there and I love them. And if I don't talk about them, it's not because actually I secretly wish I wasn't part of that family. It's precisely because I respect their privacy and their stories are not mine to tell. >> Um, but but you know, to be a K-pop star under, you know, to say you have to be a parent to be a K-pop star would be to say you also have to be willing to to strip mine your strip mine your your family. >> That's true. I suppose you're strip you're strip mining your ability to have a family in the first iteration of it though, right? like you're you're refusing to have okay so on one side you are being puppeted by lack and on the other side you're being puppeted by transparency >> I mean I think you know at the risk of at the risk of getting very anti- capitalist very early in this conversation you know perhaps the problem is the strip mining >> it's see I mean the position that we're all in >> you know in the in the literal physical natural world as well as in the emotional >> good caveat um but my point is we're all kind of under the impression or the awareness that that is a problem that's too big to be solved. So, you need interventions that can this is the world that we exist within that's so compelling to people and so seductive that you're not going to be able to stop that. >> You're not going to get people off smartphones. You're not going to stop social media from hacking the bottom of the brain stem. Okay. So, what are the ways get Taylor Swift engaged? Uh I don't know. I think if there's any so I think it's not the case that South Korea has low fertility because of K-pop but it probably if there was one easy intervention that you could at least attempt it would be in the world of propaganda right for the birth rates thing. So whether that be intentionally boosting mothers and fathers or yeah obliging K-pop stars to to shag in a appropriate way or like whatever the rules are, maybe that would work for trying to make parenthood higher status. The problem with any other type of birth rate intervention is that um all of the other options are fairly appalling, I think, in terms of like our actual ability to tolerate them >> because the cash transfers don't work >> is what we've learned. And so if the cash transfers don't work, we could try propaganda after that. >> We're just going to have to go even stop the stop the Wi-Fi networks and kill data access from your phone. >> We could try that, I suppose. Yeah. >> Yeah. I I just found the the Taylor Swift thing's been like in the reaction to that and then the subsequent reaction has been pretty interesting. >> Well, you try and design a clever study to see if she boosts marriage and birth rates. Um, and we'll see. >> Correlate your marriage rate with your Spotify listening habits. >> Yeah, that's true. Tell us. >> I mean, apparently a supermarket um supermarket uh loyalty >> uh programs can already tell when somebody's pregnant even before they sometimes they realize it themselves. >> Did that just by by by their Yeah. search patterns and purchase patterns. >> I got an ad for pregnancy tests before I knew I was pregnant. Most recent time. >> Amazing. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. The internet's very clever. >> It's uncanny. There's a an app called Aura Aur and it's u digital safety stuff. Uh you put it on everybody's phone, but you can put it on your kid's phone and it allows parents to have sort of surveillance that's safe without encroaching too much on privacy. That at least that's the positioning. But it does things like it looks at how hard they're pressing the screen >> and it correlates that with their level of sort of psychological distress and it looks at the last time that they went to the last time they used it and the first time they used it in the morning and then they correlate that with GPS data. It's all held securely supposedly and it's like um it can deliver a report to a parent that says when little Timmy goes to baseball he sleeps for 45 minutes longer on average and he's this percent less aggressive when he's pressing the screen which suggests that it's very regulating for him. His grandmother could have told you that though. >> Yeah. Yeah. A lot of this stuff is a lot of this stuff is absolutely it's a substitute for attentive attuned interpersonal relationships by people from people who love you. >> We're trying to re-engineer through >> and and there's a there's a sense in which the more you offer a tech alternative to that, the more you create more the more you open the possibility that actually you can just do without [clears throat] the relationship. Yeah. U whereas and it's going jumping slightly sideways from that to you know the the the power of the power of older women for pattern recognition. I was talking to a local friend who's who's who has a son the same age as my daughter. We were talking about schools as we were walking our dogs you know very very very norm very very normie very countryside very um and he he was telling me um his his wife who's also my friend's mother runs a local riding school. you know, it's one of those very classic kind of, you know, English English kind of tier three riding schools where all the school ponies are are very hairy and very muddy and um and there's and generation after generation after generation of local girls sort of from tween probably to mid- teens have come through this riding stables. So, so my my friend's mother-in-law has observed patterns of behavior in possibly, you know, I think 25 years worth of local girls and he was and he is ba he he and he and his wife are basing their school selection on what she's has observed over 25 years about the about the the change in disposition as those girls go off to different schools. M >> um so not Offstead um not uh not even what other parents think not even what other parents are planning to do but which schools instantly to which which schools trans went which secondary schools instantly overnight transformed the girls that my mother-in-law saw from nice little girls into brats and which didn't. >> Wow. >> And that's the kind of stuff which you can try and you can try and replace with an app but but you can't basically. >> A quick aside, you've probably heard experts like Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about the benefits of omega-3s. They support brain reduction. They support brain reduction. They support brain function, but they reduce inflammation. They improve heart health and are backed by hundreds of studies. It's really tough to get enough through diet. No one's eating that much salmon. Come on. And with Momentous, you know you're getting the highest quality omega-3s on the market. 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If you ever read that classic um blog, I think it's by an anonymous blogger from years ago about um about whams versus autists. [laughter] So, so WAS is a madeup term. So, the argument in the piece is great is um we spend a lot of time talking about autism and like identifying it in people and seeing it as an obviously bad thing, you know, and we'll list all the ways in which autistic people suffer in the world and we see it as something to be treated. I mean obviously in extreme non-verbal forms obviously that's appropriate but to some extent it is just a personality type and it's a personality type you're more like to see in men and is often pathized and the piece argues that no look like autism is just one end of a spectrum in terms of a disposition in terms of being more interested in things than people and being very interested in systems and being quite socially withdrawn and whatever. We don't have a term for the other end of the spectrum. But we just don't talk about the other end of the spectrum. But there is such a thing as someone being more interested in people than things, not really being interested in systems, being very extroverted and being very intuitive about everything and very like hyper sensitive to emotion or whatever. Why don't we have a name for that? Because in extreme forms, that's also a problem. >> And so the writer, who I think is male, calls them whams, >> which stands for >> nothing. It stands for nothing. It's just a word that you made up. So [clears throat] whamishness is like the opposite of being autistic. And that's that's a fantastic example of whamishness, just pure like intuiting from the girls emotional states. >> I don't know. I mean, it it seems like a robust example of pattern recognition and the most kind of grounded and localistic kind of it's people focused. >> I mean, I know I know this guy's mother-in-law as I've met her on a number of occasions. She's the least kind of emotionally labile individual you can imagine. She's like small small square thick set um extremely practical English horsewoman. You know, as a [laughter] relying very heavily on your neighbors not watching this. Sorry. [laughter] >> You're relying very heavily on your neighbors not watching. >> Well, I mean, I'm not I'm not going to name names and these are all people who I whom I love and respect. You know, I cite this as examples of what what of a functioning social fabric looks like. Absent >> this is classic British village life. Yeah. And and the the the reason the reason I I talk about, you know, affectionately and respectfully, really deeply affectionately and respectfully about my neighbors and my local community in this way is because living living like this is only is what you have before you start trying to re reverse engineer a technological replacement for it. >> Um and I mean, you know, these are these are not people who are all up in each other's grills the whole time. you know, small town, small town England is mostly people mind their own business, but there's a sense in which you're known um cumulatively over time just because you all show up in the same places and you go to the same play groups and whatever. And that's a very different way of being known and seen and observed than, for example, you know, creating a profile online or or even, you know, having your data tracked and and monetized by by a supermarket shopping app or an algorithm that wants to sell you pregnancy tests. Very different. certainly a missing archetype I think for the uh wise non-grandmother influence in some young person's life. I think we >> we we call those the aunties really. >> That's why the group chat between us is aunties. That wasn't that was not as flippant as you might have thought. >> Um >> and yeah, like those auntie influences >> uh I don't live in the town or the country that I was born in. I I've been displaced by my own choice, but most of my communication now is mediated through all of that. Where is the opportunity for some older matriarch woman to, you know, >> why aren't you married yet? >> Bestow me the wisdom. That's I'm aware that's a that's a big question. I'm aware that >> Well, I mean, I'm not expecting you to answer it now, but but this is this is what all of the aunties will be you with on every possible occasion. I did highlight that at every I actually dread now going to weddings because as a 37year-old unmarried man every time that the vows are completed the [ __ ] eyes of Sauron all turn [laughter] to the people who Christopher when are we for [ __ ] sake I feel like I need to you know do some fugazi are those old derves over there I must I must escape the situation >> that's what auntie's Oh, that but that that is that's what aunties do. So I mean your your relation a lot of poking. I mean you know on the one hand you long for the aunties and you want to create auntie group. On the other hand you want to run away from them when they beast you at weddings. >> That's true. [laughter] This is I think this is the the auntie dynamic. You know you >> I probably was ever thus. >> Yeah. Correct. You know what I mean? All right. I want to I want to talk about kind of >> downstream from the Taylor Swift thing. I want to talk about Pikmis and performative males because these are two memes that are taking off a a little bit at the moment. >> Performative males. This is not one I've heard. Please send me. Have >> you heard about performative males? >> No. >> What is a performative male? >> You need to get back on Twitter. [laughter] >> You need to get back on Twitter. >> I've had a discourse. >> Hasn't sent me a tweet. I just don't see it. [laughter] >> Okay. >> I've also been deliberately not very online all all through the summer. Yeah. I I took my holiday from the internet in England's last remaining. I've decided to pick your [ __ ] sbatical from online life and today is the day that the kids go back to school. So had I have asked you this in in four weeks time. Oh, allow me to tell you about performative males. Okay. So >> So you're going to have to fill us in. >> Let me let me do that. Okay. So performative males uh it it's a call out. It's been very interesting. The trend emerged and almost immediately became kind of castigated. You know, like woke had an opportunity to be a legitimate term before it was a satirical term. Performative males have almost immediately become satarized. Performative male is a guy with floppy hair, sort of oversized flared jeans. He's got a tote bag. He's reading some sort of literary fiction. He's got a matcher. He's not quite like a cinnamon roll boyfriend husband thing. >> Is this Is this not just the new soy boy? >> Maybe. It might be kind of like an elevated hipster uh like a a soft boy archetype perhaps from sort of the late 2010s. Um, it might be the equivalent of women wearing like football shirts or Pink Floyd t-shirts or like kind of like the male imagine the male equivalent of a pick me, >> but it's stripped of most of the um raw aggressive kind of more mascul more doineering. >> So, so let me like if I were to speculate, I would say this is the kind of guy who might employ the sneaky [ __ ] mating strategy. >> So, this is why this is why it's become I think immediately satarized. I think it's >> of course knows what I think. >> Poorly it's poorly hidden poorly hidden pliable male mating tactics being called out very quickly. >> Actually, interestingly, I'm not sure how well this maps to performative males. But I remember discovering how very very interestedly discovering just how high the proportion is of male feminists who are who who subsequently end up being me too as sex pests. >> I'm rewriting this. I think the law four paragraphs because [laughter] because they weren't sufficiently well because they were just rumors and it was just um yeah I think >> well allegedly allegedly we must remember that allegedly >> they they gutted the article but really the pattern is is strong enough that even if you don't name names it's it's a thing. >> Um so so these guys are they're sort of droopy and feminized in presentation. flaccid flaccid man >> at least in presentation >> but het heterosexual >> heterosexual but heterosexual and the performative males being this I think it's >> is it the one guy who comes to Pilates with you and then just like tries tries to hit >> we're getting close there we're getting perilously close to like what would have been the sneaky [ __ ] male feminist the performative male I think it's it's as much an aesthetic as anything else so it's it might be the aesthetic basically it might just be a rework of the aesthetic of the sneaky [ __ ] >> what does he what does he eat. >> I'm not too sure. I'm not too sure what you'll be what you be reading. Yasmin. [laughter] >> She left. >> She she's she's she's my source of of sneaky [ __ ] info cuz she's in she's in LA. Um [laughter] but it would be it would be him sort of >> matcher and he's the male embodiment of a matcher drink. >> So >> does he write Sarah J. Mask? I think this is what I'm trying to >> maybe >> figure out. What it reminds me of is the '7s when you had the the men simultaneously embracing long hair and free love and whatever and being quite feminine and and you know dodging the draft and stuff. So on the one hand being anti-masculine but then >> fully embracing the postexual revolution opportunity to get women into bed and and feminists at the time complained about this. What it sounds like though is that the performative male adds a layer of like consumerism >> which is quite distinctively 2025. Is that right? >> I think I think you've nailed it. Yeah. With the tote bag, with the dress, with the hair. >> I mean, what on his bag? >> Probably almost certainly Laboo. Actually, that's a better way to put it. If you could find a Labu with a matcher, it's Labubu males. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. >> Amazing. Yeah. Um, I mean, I one of the one of the sort of depressive depressing thoughts that crossed my mind the other day, you know, when you think about these sort of like the the this sort of noodle armed male phenotype, you know, with a liaboo on his bag and um a matcher in his hand and and maybe he actually literally does read Sarah J. Mass. Um, and I I think about them and you think about, you know, [laughter] do do I do I need to wait on this? >> It's okay. I just the way that you the way that you construct sentences, I can't keep a straight face. [laughter] It's [ __ ] brilliant. Okay, go on. >> But I mean, you know, these these kind of this stop. >> Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, so, so Leubu guys, um, what if in fact they're more evolutionally fit in terms in the context of what they [ __ ] adapted to the new environment. >> That's what I mean. Because it's like when you think about when you think about the kind of work that everyone actually does now and when you think about the kind of social environments that particularly knowledge class people of either sex have to operate within actually being the kind of high tea aggressive um >> you're not sitting still in class >> not sitting you know those guys get medicalized and pathized basically because they they they don't work in open plan offices. question on this. Is this as close as a man can get to being female whilst still being reproductively viable for females to find attractive? >> Yeah. >> And given that females have got this advantage so socioeconomically in the education and in the workplace, this is like >> the new it's it's and also I want to talk about me too at some point today. I wonder if this is the sort of postme too acceptable what men think even though incorrectly I've been told do not be doineering do not be too forthcoming do not be somebody that could make women feel uh threatened in any way what's the least threatening lab boooo tote bag floppy hair >> uh match a drink >> HR friendly and I do I do get the like there's a lot of there's a lot of guys particularly those who are sort of you know socialized into the more sort of progressive kind of thought world who genu genuinely feel uh very distressed by by the sort of heighty aggressive male disposition. I was I just finished reading a book. I mean, it's a it's a good book, very interesting um piece of work by an ecological economist um on on care and the the sort of Cinderella economy as he as he puts it um of care and maintenance and you know systemic health and environmental and environmental sustainability and so on which he sees as being again strip exploited and you know ultimately exhausted by the the the the re the quote unquote real economy that we now have. And in it he has a whole chapter about the patriarchy which I just found a really interesting read from a guy who's you know he's he's he's a successful guy and he's got um [snorts] adult children and you know he's obviously you know sporty and fit and intelligent well read and so on. So like you know perfectly manly man within the terms of you know modern uh respectable liberal society. Um but he's furious about the patriarchy, you know, and he's and what and the the passage I found most interesting is he he has a little discussion about Daphne Demorier's novels um and Jamaica in particularly and Rebecca and he talks you know his reading of of Daphne Demorier is as is as a feminist you know that it's a critique of gender relations between the sexes you know and particularly of you know the the chronic kind of suscept vulnerability of women to male violence. Um, but at one point he noted he observes that that Demorier's female characters are both vulnerable to male violence and also kind of turned on by it. He doesn't quite put it up. He doesn't quite put it like that, but there's obviously a real ambivalence in the way she writes and he doesn't know how to process it. And I find that really interesting just in the context of thinking about how how the the the Labubu man presents. You know, I'm not suggesting that the the author of this book is a Labou man. He's a he's a he's he's not quite that. But but there's something really interesting going on there about um you know guys who've internalized the idea that to be a d a straightforwardly aggressive man in a style in in in a perhaps quote unquote old-fashioned style or more overtly patriarchal is bad and that puts you in continuity with Andrew Tate and other people who are bad obviously by definition. Um, and therefore we must be something which is softer and more uh consensual and more kind of labubberish or I don't know something. >> Good news. AG1 just released their nextgen formula. It is a more advanced clinically backed version of the product that I've been drinking every day for years. So you still get the same one scoop ritual but now with an even more thoughtful formulation flavor and four clinical trials behind it. AG1 has been evolving since 2010, continuously improving alongside the latest research. And AG1 NextGen is the result clinically shown to help fill common nutrient gaps and support gut health even in people who already eat well. In one study, it boosted healthy bacteria in the gut by 10 times. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 90-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it and try it for 3 months. If you don't like it, they'll give you your money back. Right now, you can get a free supply of vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs, plus the 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com/modernwisdomd. That's drinkagg.com/modern wisdom. >> Circling back to Chris's opening question, is it possible that everyone's having less sex because of the labubu male? [laughter] But seriously, like maybe it's crossed my mind sometimes. >> We need more polarity. >> Well, look, I this is to me this just seems like the progeny of me too in many ways that the message that a lot of men, the vast majority of well- behaved, uh, sexually disciplined, not pushy men took was, I shouldn't be pushy. It's like, well, yeah, you already weren't that pushy, and maybe you actually weren't pushy enough. So, the issue with the message, don't be too pushy, is that the men who really need to hear it will ignore it, and the men who are already predisposed to believe it will take it to heart. So, what you end up with is this weird selection effect where the bad actors still act badly, and the ones who actually probably needed a little bit of a helping hand to go forward like, "Oh, holy fuck." And maybe the labuba man is just the the final >> final form of of that. >> He's taking it too seriously. >> At the risk of the risk of just pouring um petrol on this conversation and then flinging a matching. Um it it strikes, you know, the it strikes me that, you know, if if if your thesis is right, and in fact, um somewhere buried in in all of this is actually a low level of sort of low-level revulsion at Lubu man. Um and a yearning for a more direct and unmediated form of um masculine sexual aggression. Um it has been suggested by people on the internet whose names I now forget that that this is some this is in fact a factor in the extremely um politically sensitive subject of migration into the country across the English Channel. Um, as in there are that there are progressive women >> who [laughter] I know >> kind of kind of enjoy the appearance of young men who haven't been liubified yet. >> Wow. >> Or this is no this is this is not >> because Lubu hasn't reached Syria. >> Labubu has not reached Syria. The these guys are not noodle armed. These guys in fact have demonstrated considerable gumption in making it from wherever it is that they've originated to England. I mean, it's an it's a genuinely impressive level of gumption involved. >> Yeah. >> Um and I don't know, maybe >> that's spicy. [laughter] >> Spicy. Yeah. You really >> So, [laughter] so I Okay, two things. One is >> So, so having having just I'm just I'm going to hand you the petrol. [laughter] >> So, I do actually agree with you. I was speaking to a journalist friend recently. >> No, you're not agreeing with me. You're agreeing with people on the internet whose names I don't know. Um >> I was speaking to a friend, a journalist friend recently who had been in uh Calala and speaking to these guys who come over the channel and he said like what is really amazing is you'll talk to these guys about their life stories and it will be like oh yeah so I came from Sudan and I walked across half of Africa and then I got to Libya and then I got enslaved and so I was taken to another country where I was a slave and then I was gang raped and then I somehow escaped from that and then I swam across the tunnel or whatever. like they tell this story >> and it's the most appalling thing you've ever heard and they're physically it's evident that they've been through this and these are like 20-year-old guys or something and then that you ask them why did you do it and they're like >> just like Manchester United [laughter] they'll offer some like really weird inadequate answer. It's not even like I want access to the welfare state because you could have got that in other European countries. It's it's it's quite like strange and I do kind of get your point that there's an element of like crazy machoess about it. >> Wow. If you're prepared to go through all of that for Manchester United, imagine what you'd do for your family and your partner. >> I suppose so. The only the only thing I would say though is that the impression that I get from a lot of women who are very very invested in refugees welcome kind of stuff is that they really infantilize these men at the same time and there's a degree to which they're kind of scooping up the vulnerable. You know, you think so. >> This is a bit like the American pitbull ladies phenomenon. >> Yeah. Yeah. He's just he's just misunderstood. >> This is [laughter] I'll just add some >> in there. It's okay. >> Um this is this is this is another one of these these discourses actually probably related in obliquely to Lubu man. Um there was one of these memes that slot is around in which um pro a certain subtype of of usually single American progressive women are accused of adopting actually obviously murderously sociopathically dangerous rescue pitbulls >> as a kind of proxy for the sort of man they would never dream of admitting to fancying in real life. >> Right. Okay. So, so in a sense, you know, officially they're only allowed to date Lubu man. And that's in fact the only people who are within within their social circles immediately. And so they adopt a pitbull to just kind of compensate. >> So I see >> his lack of >> I see your Lubu man. >> Yeah. >> And I raise you the newly nomenclatured himo, which has actually come back around. >> The new dream guy is beefy, placid, and politically ambiguous. Amid pitch debates about masculinity, the HMBBO stands stoically above it all. As an alternative to the thinking man, the Renaissance man or the family man, today's HMBBO offers just man, a blurry image, a blunt political instrument, or just a caricature, the human equivalent of a smiley face. The Hmbo is in many senses unreal, a wish fulfillment fantasy. His true self is concealed behind a set of do-ike eyes. The content of his inferiority forever un unconfirmed. >> So is this like Ken in Greta's? He says he says towards the end, "If I'd realized patriarchy wasn't wasn't just about horses, I wouldn't have bothered." Hunk with a heart of gold. Punk with a heart of gold. I think um who was the dude that did Magic Mike? Who was the guy the actor that played Magic Mike? >> Oh, >> Channing Tatum. Channing Tatum is often put forward as like him. I actually Channing Tat follows me on Instagram, so I I actually quite like him. But [laughter] >> hunk with a heart of gold, the human equivalent of a smiley face. What we've got here is basically I think you're trying to cross the streams between Labubu man uh in terms of disposition and front cover of a dark romance novel in terms of presentation. >> I mean it's a tricky tight road for women because on the one hand you want and this is an eternal conundrum. You want a man who is going to protect you and protect your children and pro provide for you in times of of extreme threat, right? But you also don't want someone who's going to beat you up and beat up your children. And so that's that's tricky. >> The line that you've got to perennially >> Yeah. And so the the Hmbo is is I I I love a Hmbo, right? And I the impression from my female friends is that Hmbo is very high status. I remember a friend talking to me about how attractive a Hmbo was and she said she really really didn't want I guess a labubu man who was like excessively intellectual. She said if I came home and he was like I just read something in the New York Review of Books. I would kill myself. [laughter] It's not what she wants in a man. Right. Um, a himo does kind of tread that tie road like he's physically capable clearly of doing what's needed if you're at risk, but he's so sweethearted that he would never turn on you. >> Well, again, I mean, skipping sideways through this this sort of untidy territory. There was a there was a piece, I think it was in the New York Times, which is often a sort of barometer for what uh what [clears throat] American middle-class women in the 30s think about stuff in general. There was it I think it was the New York Times, but it was it was somewhere in that zone, that discursive zone. Anyway, um on on how on a on a on an in fascinating new trend of women marrying down and what they were actually talking about No, but but what they were talking about wasn't actually women marrying down. It was women marrying below their educational level. Yeah. Actually, they were financially they were marrying up because these were these were women with maybe a degree and a masters or a degree and a PhD or something but no money and a mansion of debt. It's like complex hypergamy >> who were marrying um construction, you know, construction entrepreneurs or, [clears throat] you know, a successful plumber with a with a with several employees who was turning over, you know, chunks of change. And so, you know, in straightforward financial terms, you know, is it's at least a match if not marrying up. But in intellectual and in terms of a of a particular type of cast as distinct from straightforward economic levels, you know, she she was exp, you know, some of these women were experiencing it as kind of marrying down. And I think there's something there, you know, I think that speaks to your HMBBO in the sense that very sensibly these these extremely overeducated women have married some guy who's going to appreciate their brains and also be able to pay the mortgage, you know, without trying to compete. It seems like the the the Hmbo is economically uh prepared and maybe educationally underdeveloped, whereas the Labubu man is maybe economically underdeveloped and overeducated. >> I mean, would you rather have a guy who can talk would you rather have a guy who can talk contemporary literature but can't afford to buy you dinner or some guy who can who can who can fix the plumbing when it goes wrong and just doesn't care what you think about books. >> I have a funny story about this. It occurs to me that my parents technically have that dynamic cuz my mom has a PhD and my dad has an undergraduate degree and then became a lawyer. Um, but anyone who knows PhDs don't translate into big money, right? So, my dad's always a lot more. But there was this funny story about a time when he was at work, this is the age for the internet, and someone referred to King Lear in talking about office politics. He was like, "Oh, someone is someone's behaving like King Le in relation to someone." like he didn't understand what they were saying and he called my mom like very quietly and said what happens in kingly [laughter] >> and it was a funny example of it >> well there's something there how much do women find that endearing how much do women find needing to intellectually coddle their partner beyond up to a certain point >> how much do they find that is oh noble savage >> I personally find that endearing >> if he's also if he's also sort of generally red-blooded in his bearing behavior and is also capable of fixing stuff around the house that goes wrong. I don't really see the problem is very girly. >> What about What about if it's the opposite though? What about if it's somebody who can tell you what has been happening in the New York Review of Books, but uh needs to call his dad if there's something broken in the toilet at your house? >> I mean I mean competence competence is very hot or should you know, >> right? But this is competence within a particular domain because you could say the noble savage is incompetent when it comes to his intellectual development. I mean, I suppose, you know, zooming zooming back a bit, you could probably make the case that we're where we're we're currently in an age of flux where the sort of never- ending growth really does feel like it's come to an end. You know, politics is quite uncertain. You know, we've got war in Europe for the first time in a very long time. Um, and all kinds of things don't feel as certain and safe and stable as they used to. And it could be that in fact some of these uh very instinctive mating patterns are going are shifting are going to shift or are perhaps even already shifting in the light of how people assess their own prospects in that very much more uncertain world. So women who might have automatic who might have gone for the intellectual guy because he can always buy in a plumber >> um are going to assess you know who they're likely who their looks match and economic match is likely to be for a long-term partnership and think you know what actually like labu man I I need somebody who knows how who who knows how to use a shotgun or you know >> um or or you know there there are various levels of deranged preparationishness that you can apply to that depending on depending on your filter bubble >> but Um there are you understand what I'm saying? >> It's like that study that men like fatter women when they're hungry, >> right? So I'm sure >> economic security hypothesis. >> Yeah. So so it sounds like perhaps the equivalent for for women like more more >> masculine men when it seems like aggressive when the [ __ ] awesome Mack and Murphy if you're listening go and do that study for me. >> I mean it seems like if that's empirically researchable but intuitively it feels completely right. >> Super easy. whatever the whatever the equivalent of the social v you know the VIX index you familiar with that volatility within the market whatever the social equivalent of that is okay let's just have what are the uh popular types of uh the preferred types of men would you want one that's more doineering or one that's a little bit more casual >> whereas the point of being able to discourse about the new review of books is status games right and so if and that's very much Maslo's hierarchy of needs tippy top so that's the sort of thing that you're going to jut pretty quickly >> yeah yeah >> in these kind of conditions >> oh so the fact that you have the ability to do that suggests to me that in some ways maybe it's a a luxury position. Oh, you've got the bottom levels looked after or maybe you're unable to look after the bottom levels and you've kind of outsourced them or skipped over them in some sort of way. >> Yes. I think that my friend who threatened suicide if her boyfriend read the review of books, I think what she was referencing was someone who couldn't do the other stuff who was >> prior he turned the uh triangle upside down. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's what's unattractive. Uh, so the the only final bit on this HMBBO thing, what is it about the kind of it's not someone who's saying I want the Renaissance man, I want the thinking man, including cuz presumably you could say, I want to max out his physicality and also max out his mind, but it seems like it's actually preferable to have the slightly more doy-eyed human smiley face as a partner. The one thing that I would sort of maybe throw into the mix there is that if you have somebody that is both doineering uh prestigious, sort of able to make things happen in the physical world and also has the intellect to be a little bit more conniving, you run a much higher risk there of this guy's maybe going to be quite sought after in many ways. He's maybe going to be able to outwit me. Um, is that an element or what do you think's going on with this desire to actually kind of turn down the volume on the the intellectual nature simplicity? >> Uh, or is it maybe a bit >> I mean realistically guys like that are just relatively rare. So partly it's just a numbers game. >> Yeah. But also I feel like it's a bit girly to be too preoccupied with. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Think just looping all of this looping all of this back to the to the Taylor Swift theme. Would you not say that actually Taylor's choice of a husband perfectly encapsulates the >> HMBO her right? Yeah. Yeah. She She's the kind of right-wing coded equivalent, isn't she? >> Lana Del Re has married a >> was he like a crocodile wrangler. >> It's incredible. >> From Louisiana, I want to say something like that. Normal blue collar guy. I don't know if blue collar is the right word. crocodile wrangler but green color >> he does a completely like very skilled very like impressive >> big arms masculine >> yeah and has enough but then I was thinking if you're if you're Lana del re or you don't need the money and actually marrying someone who's in your field of work >> and he will inevitably less successful than you >> is a nightmare >> because you're able to do you're able to do more comparison hierarchically so what what what does it mean to date hypogamously if you are going >> cross above of your Taylor. >> Yeah. Yeah. I picked someone from another industry. I picked someone. >> There is no way of doing hypergamy if you're Taylor Swift because she's just she's just right. She's the apex. She's the apex of so many different hierarchies that >> this is Will. Have you read the status game by >> But but Travis Kelsey, you know, he's enormous. Um he you know, he's a successful outlift her. He's able to outrun her. He's >> he can pick her up and chuck. He can probably juggle her. Well, he's got prestige and he's got standing in his own field >> in and specifically in a cohort that she does not. So, if you walk into a different room, there are tons of people that couldn't give a [ __ ] about Taylor Swift but will sprint toward Travis Kelsece. >> Right. Yeah. Exactly. And this is if you've read Will Sto's status game, you've probably interviewed him at some point. His really really good piece of life advice is that everyone is completely obsessed with status. You can't pretend that you're not. It's this just the natural human condition to be preoccupied with status. But you can choose which status game you compete in to some extent and you can say I realize that that one is is bad for me or that I'm not going to >> flourish in it. But you can just choose another one. And so yeah, choosing having a spouse who's competing in a different status game from yourself, I think is very sensible. >> A young friend who who also has something of an internet platform told me recently that he he had tried dating women who who also were internet uh figures of some sort and it was just hideous. >> It feels too similar. Yeah, it was just it was too much of a visual comparison too direct. >> Um and and there's a and I guess I I don't think like this wasn't his point, but it struck me that if you were if you're both um if you both have a platform, you both have an audience, the temptation to turn your relationship into content would be almost would be >> India's thing, right? That all relationships are just brand collaborations, >> right? And and it doesn't have to be like that, but you really if you're very online, you have to choose you you know you're going to survive much longer and stay much ser if your partner is not online at all or is or is it just not very interested in that? >> Have you heard the theory that aliens are just the end of human evolution that they're completely Yeah, I'm I'm bringing it back, I promise. Um the sort of uh huge heads, human heads have got bigger over time, although they actually got smaller at one point as well, but human heads are big. um we seem to be getting lower testosterone, less muscled, less sort of, you know, uh doineering physically and that aliens, the classic sort of big head, big eyes thing, is the completely atrophied in the body, but uh uh overdeveloped uh cognitively. >> Well, they are to us as we are to chimps. >> Uh and yeah, cuz we are weaker, bigger brains. Yeah. And then you just keep running that forward. I want >> Even less hair on aliens as well. >> Good point. I never really assessed the hair of an alien, but I it's just it's just interesting to hear where your mind goes. >> Um I wonder whether Labubu man is kind of the same sort of I've adapted to my local environment. My local environment is one where if I'm quite flaccid as a human and like a very flaccid human, I can sit in an office chair for longer basically. >> Right. So, so the interesting qu you know what you know civilizations can go down as well as up. How long would it take after the [ __ ] hit the fan hypothetically speaking in civilizationally [clears throat] before the booboo man got his got his act together >> and was either was either selected aggressively out of the picture altogether or or actually just shoot Yeah. Well, I mean, how many people say if our country went to war, there's no way that I would fight for them. I've got asthma. Sorry. No, my my athletes foot precludes me from being able to go into the, you know, there's like all manner of different excuses. And uh yeah, without selection pressure, people fold around whatever that situation is. They kind of get molded and shaped by it. >> I I think it's a really serious problem right now. if we did have some kind of serious strife in this country. >> Well, I mean, it strikes me that one of the structural problems is that two or three generations of young people have now been now being taught, you know, very methodically by the education system, by the sort of ambient um public conversation that nation states are just not really they're not the real political community. And actually, the real political community is everyone, is every human on the planet. You know, we're all just a continuous one big happy family. Um, and yeah, under those circumstances, the idea that you you could just snap people overnight back into thinking of themselves as an us just in the context of the nation state, particularly in in an age of high demographic. >> That's good. You're trying to redraw territory. >> So, so having having said, "No, no, actually, universal humanity, yada yada yada, and and explicitly teaching that and explicitly teaching children that nationalism is bad and that it caused Hitler and the Second World War and carnage and death and disaster for for decades and generation after generation. And then you turn around the next day and you're like, "Oh, by the way, we're going to reinstate the draft because Putin." No. Would you do you blame the kids for saying no? [ __ ] off. >> That's such a good point. Holy [ __ ] >> I mean, you know, even leaving, you know, there are various kind of uglier and more bitter versions of that story to do with ethnopolitics and so on. But fundamentally, I think you that's the that's the crux of it because it goes across the board. It's not just the right-wing zoomers. It's also the leftwing ones. They just don't buy it because they've been taught not to buy it. Except that generally, I mean, if you watch these endless vox pops that you're referring to where you ask people, would you go to war for your country? And they all say no. What you normally happens is that anyone who's member of an ethnic minority will say, oh, but I'm Jamaican >> or no, cuz I'm not from here or something. And actually, you you scratch the surface and everyone has a degree of ethics. And this is actually what worries me that having abolished or done their best to educate young children and young people out of thinking in terms of nation states that people are not going to abandon having a tribe. What they're but they're just going to draw the tribe around people who look like them. >> Once you scale that up to the level of you know you you you start looking at lines of conflict internal to the country you know [snorts] along pos possibly different tribes but a kind of olster situation you know potentially even within the country itself which is a disturbing prospect. Yeah, because of course nation states are modern inventions and they are a bit fake. >> They are. They are. And I mean and if you look at if you look at the the flag phenomenon that we've been seeing a lot recently, you know, that feels to me like the precursor to a kind of olsterization happening within within the United Kingdom, which is deeply deeply concerning. >> I've been watching loads of Tik Tok videos of people having increasingly commonly having confrontations between people putting up flags and people trying to take them down. are a bridge near our house has now had I think four iterations of people putting up flags, taking them down, putting up and they leave the cable ties every time. So that there's just like a porcupine kind of thing on the um >> the graveyard of where patriotism used to be. >> Yeah. And people putting up counter things and whatever. It's like a whole thing. And there's quite a lot of Tik Tok videos of people having these confrontations. The main thing that jumps out at me as a Brit who's very sensitive to these things is the class difference. So the flaggers are always workingass and the D flaggers are always middle class. And it's really obvious. >> Yeah. Yeah. And why is it obvious or why is this happening? >> Why is it happening? >> Cuz I think the whole thing is a class rule. >> Always has been. >> I think that's basically right. Um I mean I I was sort of obliquely thinking about the writing about the Norman conquest u earlier this week. You know this is this is this is where that that particular class war began. >> Um because the English class system was originally not just a cast system but also a racialized cast system in that the ruling class u the the Normans arrived and just replaced the whole Anglo-Saxon ruling class with their own. And they were a different they were a different ethnic group and I guess didn't interbreed that much. >> Well, I mean to to an extent after a while um but people with Norman surnames are still to this day more likely to be wealthy than those with Saxon overented Oxbridge. >> People with names like Smith and Cooper are less likely to be rich than people with names like Glennville or uh you know >> Dennis >> or or Groner. Indeed, you know, it was the current the current Duke of Westminster, Hugh Groner, can trace his trace his ancestry all the way back to 1066. >> Yeah. >> Um and and is still a billionaire, still one of the richest people in the country. I think he's number 15. >> Gregory Clark is punching the air right now. >> So, I mean, you know, you can, you know, never mind critical race theory. England has had a racialized class cast system all for a thousand years. >> Um, and I think I think actually really genuinely that is a significant factor in what Louise is describing about this about this class war. there are there is a subset of of more more well-off um culturally middle class middle or upper class English people um who who identify much more with the sort of with the with the Norman um disposition um and though and then there are there are a group of people who think of themselves I mean they it's even right there in the conflict between English and British you know British values quote unquote and English flags >> English flags right >> mostly they mostly alternate them but I've noticed that like if you go to touristy places they have union jacks up anyway because it's a bit twe that's not that's the St. George thing is >> flagging has to necessitate St. George just crosses at least some of them and it's an anti-government gesture. >> Um, >> and again the comments you'll get all the time on social media is such a classic like midw normally take is um, oh they don't have any GCCs and they don't have any teeth like basically something very very classless directed at nivists. And I'm like I mean yes you are right to identify that rift and it's a consequence of the relationship with the globalized economy. If you do the sort of job that is vulnerable to the importation of cheap labor, >> course obviously you're gonna hate it so much more than if you're doing it completely working completely different industry like yes you correctly identify this class fissure and what we've seen for decades now has been of middle classes inviting demographic change which doesn't hurt them and does hurt the working classes. I mean it it drove Brexit and they learn nothing. >> Yeah. It's a similar dynamic to what happened in America, but it's got a uniquely British flavor. Because of how >> because of the class system, because of Precisely Correct, bluntly because of the Normans. >> Yeah. Well, look, I I I use the word posh and get laughed at in America because it it feels like me, I don't know, talking about herring bone or something like it's just an odd term to use because even though most Americans understand what I mean, it's such an odd archaic. Like, you don't talk about that. You would talk about race or education or wealth. It's probably from the northeast, aren't you? >> Newcastle. Well, Stockton. >> So, so you probably don't exactly have skin in either sides of these game because you're probably Viking >> in heritage. >> I have no idea. I need to do my 23. I need to do my ancestry.com. >> Well, don't because data security. They're about to sell the whole database. So, >> Oh god. And all of the murders I've done will come up. Yeah. They sell my data. Um >> Yeah. No, don't do that. But I mean, people from the Northeast are ancestrally much more likely to be uh Danish Scandinavian inherited. >> I sit outside of the hierarchy. Um, [laughter] >> so, so, so you can you can you can throw tomatoes at the northern I do, I'm sure. >> If you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function. They run lab tests twice a year that monitor over a 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard, and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels to your thyroid function and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. And getting your blood work done and drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with function it is only $499. And right now they're giving a,000 Modern Wisdom listeners another $100 off, bringing it down to $399. So just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modern wisdom. I don't know whether this is precisely true and I hate the word going back to something that it feels like we just dispensed with. The word woke is so sort of tried and and done and kind of lame. Um, however, this feels like a uniquely new British brand of something akin to woke >> flagging. >> Yes. And and the response to it and it's the reason that I want to I haven't got a different word for it. broke wouldn't work as Britain won't. Um, it has a dynamic that is exclusively present or mostly present in the UK, which is this sort of classist approach because it exists a little bit in the US that people that were left of center that were very pro- immigration, but the reason that they were doing it and the sort of accusations that they would make weren't the same. They weren't about in the same way about being uneducated, in the same way about the way that people sort of presented the no teeth thing. Although isn't that what Hillary was saying with the basket of deplorables? Like it was basically a class statement. It was more veiled. Whereas I guess here it tends to be more explicit. >> Um which was probably because we've had a thousand years of not being invaded. Right. So you can you can build up. >> You can oify. >> Exactly. >> The situation in America is is much more complicated because they've because everybody there >> where do I stand in this hierarchy? I'm not sure. I've only been here. >> Everybody there is technically [clears throat] an immigrant. Yeah. >> Um at one point or another. Yeah. >> So, so it's very much harder to have to do the nivist thing because you know the the most recent angophone arrivals weren't that long ago. >> And it's also a problem of course cuz cuz here our elites are so incredibly Yankee that they assume you'll hear people talk about Britain being a nation of immigrants. No, it isn't. That is factually incorrect. Like Britain was 99% plus white British in the 1950s. It does strike me at times that casually conflating invasion and immigration is possibly not the wind at the >> it's middle class advocates. [laughter] >> Yeah, >> imagine it is anyway. >> Yeah, they're like I can see I can see some ways that that could back remember Linda's farm. >> Did we not embrace the >> I know. Um but because they're so Yankee they they don't realize that actually no like people here are indigenous to these islands going back a very long way. Same as America. I I did wonder about what a land acknowledgement in the UK would look like. >> Douglas Murray did this once actually giving a speech and he did a land acknowledgement to the Duke of Westminster who owned the land. [laughter] >> It was very funny. Classic Douglas. >> Uh >> although really he I mean strictly speaking the Duke of Westminster also counts as a colonizer. Well, because cuz that's Hugh Groner who arrived with the Normans. >> No, there we go. >> So So I mean Hugh Grer ought to be doing a land acknowledgement to the Saxons. >> Your surname has scuppered you. Uh, looping it back to the perennial discussion about stupid things to do with the relationships on the internet. Have you heard of princess treatment? >> What? No. >> Oh, allow me. I mean, you are spending a lot of time on TikTok. I would have expected this to come across. Okay. Princess treatment refers to various supposedly fairy tale worthy gestures made by women's partners, including but never limited to lattes in bed, flowers every Friday, partner funded pedicures, and doors being open for you. Nearly 130,000 Instagram posts congregate under it. However, this is immediately being taken to reductio at absurdum. Courtney Palmer, self-proclaimed housewife princess. I do not interact with the waitress. I do not open any doors and I do not order my own food. You do not need to talk unless you are spoken to. You are not going to be laughing loudly, speaking loudly, or demanding the attention of the restaurant. So, princess treatment. Uh, >> is this not sort of lifestyle BDSM with say it's a sex thing? >> It's a It's totally a sex thing. It's a sex thing. >> How have you both arrived at this? This is like that this is like that [laughter] [ __ ] anti-wisdom thing where I haven't seen it. Like you're looking at this optical illusion. I'm like >> to be I mean this is kind of explain to the muggle in the room. It's a Mary Louise group chat running joke about the tradife. I mean there's the tread wife or autogopile but that's not this. Um there's also >> what the trad wife autogyny file >> or or but but there's also there's also the continuity between um right-wing right-wing complimentarian tradwife discourse and lifestyle BDSM which it seems to me is just it's it's really just a question of inflection but it's basically the same conversation. >> You're going to have to bring it down to earth a little bit for me. >> Do do which of us is going >> Imagine that I didn't read the first three Harry Potter books and I come in at the fourth please. So, so on the one hand you have, you know, it's often very Protestant code is some sometimes quite American. There's a c there's a sort of religiously inflected discourse about how men do one set of tasks and play one set of roles within a within a long-term relationship and women play the other and and everyone comes together as ordained by God in this in this dual dance of complimentary uh unity and then everything is good. um on and then in a in an entirely different political filter bubble, you have the people who embrace lifestyle BDSM, which is um a it's a way of living in a long-term relationship where one person is always um explicitly the dominant one who just gets to decide everything and the other person is also always the submissive one who just says yes, yes, master. >> There's a degree of entitlement though here which doesn't sound superbly submissive, does it? Well, I mean, this is this is where it gets this actually both both um complimentarian um right-wing tad types and also lifestyle BDSM will tell you that in fact um the the wife/submissive depending on depending on how you're framing it, you know, has plenty of say because in in fact >> she's the one putting it online. >> It's never the man who's filming content about us, is it? Always. >> That's true. As that that Well, this is too much of a rabbit hole. No, do do it. Let's run it. I'm fascinated. I'm already I'm already I'm [ __ ] Alice in Wonderland here. >> Women Women do this simultaneous like I'm so submissive and it's there's a lot of humble brag going on as well. Like by the way, my husband could afford to buy >> the long nails on her high heels. >> Exactly. But also, she's calling the shots in terms of their social media presence. >> Yeah. And also >> which is really what matters >> in in these sorts of very deliberately stylized polarized relationships. You know, assuming it's a long-term affectionate relationship that every that both both parties want to continue and sustain and maintain, then actually the person who's who's formally giving way all the time has a lot of say because the other person has to second guess what they want all the time. >> That's interesting. if if you see because I mean you can't you can't just order somebody around and say no you're gonna you're going to go and lick the floor clean or do the dishes or whatever because if you if you just if you make if if you make decisions for both of you for long enough and actually the other person doesn't like their doesn't like your decisions eventually you know the the nomive them well the the nominally submissive one will vote with their feet you know assuming that it's a consensual loving relationship otherwise um you have to make decisions that both pe both of you want to abide by um so so actually it's not as it's not as com it's not as commanding as all of that you know but it just sort of reflects um >> I think I mean we both feel like there's nothing wrong with complimentary gender roles like with within reason they make sense it's fine like no no complaint what is weird about the lifestyle BDSM is when it's clearly done in an exaggerated way as a sex thing like the motivation is not this makes the household run more smoothly this makes sense of our financial lives etc it's this turns me on and I'm also doing it for an online audience >> that's weird yeah >> that's weird but I mean you know this the the difference I I don't really see a huge amount of difference in kind between that and princess treatment if she's like I I I'm just going to sit there sit there at a restaurant and you have to guess you know you as my date/artner have to guess what it is that I want to eat and get it right and you have to do all the leg work of interacting with the underlings you have to pay and I'm just going to sit there and nominally yes you know you get to decide everything and you have the power but also you have to guess and you have to get it right so who so who actually has the power in that situation >> that's a great point Yeah. Wow. Okay. I I really have seen through the matrix here. [ __ ] me. Women are so much more sophisticated than men are with this [ __ ] >> But yeah, I mean, all of this, of course, you know, with the caveat that it's it assumes that it's an a mutually affectionate and and consensual relationship, you know, under, you know, there there are there is there is also a continuum between that and domestic abuse because if if the one >> Yeah. kind of financial imprisonment, domestic abuse, and so on, where somebody is is calling the shots and actually the other person isn't free to leave through whatever combination of coercive control or other kind of >> Does this not play into Does this not play into another one of those lines that needs to be walked that it would be nice to be looked after? >> Yeah, >> it would be nice for my partner to know me so well that I actually can sort of take my foot off the gas a little bit. Wouldn't that be lovely? And then if you uh overdo the dose, the response curve gets really squirly. When you get toward the point, well, I can't leave anymore because I don't have >> my own phone. I don't have my own bank account. I don't have my own access to anything. >> It's the big big trade-off traditional gender roles that the woman has no financial independence. And as soon as you dergate loyalty, as soon as you end up with divorce becoming more society accepted and people being able to move from partner to partner more freely, that means that the cost for the man uh the cost for anybody of leaving is so high and so common, sorry, is so low and it's so common that you need to have the insurance policy at all times because the likelihood of you this just being marriage one as opposed to the marriage >> means that you've got to have the the back door. >> I mean, it strikes me that maybe may a a possible explanation for why compl these compl complimentary gender roles tend to appear either where somebody is extremely online and posting about it a lot or else in the context of religious communities. It might it might make sense in terms of of that failure mode, the sort of abusive failure mode. um in that if you're if you're posting online about what a surrendered wife you are actually you're probably making bank and so you're not all that surrendered after all because there's this other dimension to it you know do you remember the whole discourse about ballerina farm and that no >> oh okay she Instagram star married to the air of jet >> ballerina don't turn and look at you didn't even know about him [laughter] >> [ __ ] hell >> you have how many bajillion followers on Instagram you've never come across ballerina farm >> okay >> this okay entirely entirely distinct influencer universe >> [laughter] >> Look at the echo chambers are very echoey here. >> The internet the internet is a big place. Okay. So ballerina farm very beautiful very accomplished sort of trad married to married to this scion of the JetBlue family inherited a load of money and they they have a farm where she does trad things and has lots of beautiful children and makes yogurt and it's all very crunchy. >> I mean Right. Exactly. It's lovely content. She It's also like the content engine which powers actually a very profitable business for them selling like kitchen aliens, yogurt and whatever. >> Like her I think her SAO starter kits cost like $100. um you know she's she's doing she's doing all right at it and yet you know there's this whole discourse about whether or not she's actually oppressed and I'm like what have you [laughter] >> one of the things that people cuz she was profiled in the times the times of London a while ago and it was mentioned um there were various details mentioned which um a lot of um women primarily on the internet thought were alarming like how exhausted she got I mean I'm not surprised she gets exhausted because she has so kids close together. Yeah. Um but things like they don't have a nanny, they don't have any domestic help despite obviously being able to afford it. And they were like, "Oh, this is a sign that he's oppressing." And I thought, "No, you know what? I actually get it. I think that she there's a weird kind of Anglo thing going on, including Anglo-American of like, no, I'm going to do the hard thing on my own. I'm going to do the deliberately different." >> But also, you know, having having recorded a few podcasts and seen how the sausage gets made, you know, you look at how well produced her content is. There's a ton of people in that house all the time. >> Oh, yeah. just not a nanny specifically, but like that I that makes sense to me. I think that makes sense of her personality. And of course, it is Hannah who is making all the content. She's she's running the show in that she's driving. >> Yeah. >> But it makes sense to me that the the the trad meme gets propagated either from within religious communities where that there is in there is actually a much thicker um relationship. There is a thicker community of people surrounding the couple. You know, again, this is not foolproof because, you know, domestic abuse happens within religious communities as well. Um, but it als it provides some kind of ideological scaffolding for a couple such that, you know, potentially potentially that could help to keep a relationship in line, you know, and stop stop abuse creeping in and and make sure make sure things stay make sure things are able to remain healthy. Is is that kind of a uh a insurance policy that if I'm the one that's in control of the Instagram account that ultimately if I am mistreated it might be a financial victory for you, but it's a branding victory for me. >> Well, I mean again again it's not foolproof, you I mean, this is I I can't name names, but I know from I know from one noted right-wing uh content producing woman that she she's she knows of and several women within that space who are posting Sunny Treadwife content while their husbands are also not treating them very well. You know, this is this also happens. So, it's it's definitely not foolproof as an insurance policy. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a fallen world, right? You know, people people screw up and do horrible things. You know, I'm not I'm not sure there's a there's a guaranteed way of hedging against that. >> One way that does traditionally sort of work to hedge against being mistreated by your husband is male kin, your own malekin. Like is it Sunny Kleone and Godfather who beats up his sister's abuser or something like that, right? that in really those really traditional societies, if your recourse as a woman, if your husband is mistreating you, >> your dad goes around and breaks his >> patrol and mal. >> Yeah. I mean, this is this is probably something Chris that you're more able to speak to than either of us, which is about the formation like the the formation of virtuous men. >> I'm glad that you look at me and you think formation of virtuous men. >> I mean, as the as the only as the only guy in this conversation, you know, unfortunately, I think this this one's yours to speak, but but it seems to me that, you know, there's Where have all the good men gone? Actually, the one part of the answer to that is that, you know, if we want good men, we need to we need to be forming good men. And actually, what forms men is not women, it's other men. >> Mhm. >> Um, and so, and I'm not sure we think nearly hard enough or specifically enough or concretely enough about how we go about forming men. And I mean, this sort of goes to the your your Leubu figure. You know, if the men that we're forming are sort of noodle armed lubu guys rather than virtuous, capable, competent men, then that's not just a problem for men. That's a problem for everyone. >> Well, I think a lot of the advice that men are given is about how how to behave in a manner that makes women feel more comfortable. But if uh the which it seems to continually be uh reinforced, male competition theory seems to be highly predictive of female attraction as opposed to actually female attraction. So there's a this is the David Put study. Have you seen this one where they looked Oh, this is [ __ ] brilliant. You're going to love this. So uh photos of men were shown to both men and women. The women were asked to rate how attractive these men were. The men were asked to rate how likely they thought it was that this man would be able to beat them in a fight. The photos of the men were real people and they were tracked. >> 12 months later, they brought the photo men into the lab and said, "How many sexual partners have you had over the last year?" The female attractiveness rating was basically non-predictive and the male intimidation rating was highly correlated. >> Competence is hot and competence cashes out ultimately as can this guy can this guy protect me in a fist fight. >> Which the argument >> you say have higher sex drives maybe, right? They're higher tea. >> There's some variables in here. They're going to be more forthcoming. They're going to be less agreeable. They're going to be, you know, chasing after it, making it happen as opposed to waiting for it to come to them. Still, you would think at least given that women are the gatekeepers and this is a direct I find this guy more attractive than that one, you would have assumed it would have had like maybe equal amounts of predictive power, but it didn't. Uh the ovulatory shift thing got another decapitation the other day, which was uh women don't find men with beards any more or less attractive, but they are more sexually uh successful and men find them more intimidating. So, it's this whatever it is. Um, uh, women don't help you win. They just wait at the finish line to see who goes first. Um, and it is male competition theory for this. But the issue is if guys are trying to labuoo reverse engineer their way into what they think women want. A lot of the time >> they're entirely going about it the wrong way. We may labuoo into a verb. [laughter] >> Yes. They have labued. Oh, you've done gone labooed yourself. [laughter] Oh no, he's in a boo himself. [laughter] Oh, is just climb climbed up into my chest and died. [snorts] So I think the issue is and and this is this is what I really want you to get into here. uh postme too. Being able to talk frankly about anything which is not nerfed, rounded off edges, labubuified uh flaccid soy men. Um seems to be encouraging a type of guy that is perilously close to this world that we only just managed to reach escape velocity from. like we just got away from this thing which was entitlement doineering um controlling entitlement even though the Labubu men also have their own type of entitlement in a very sort of a conniving malicious Yeah. Yeah. sneaky way. Um, I don't think I I don't know where you get maleto-male advice on what it is that women truly want for long-term uh success because what you end up with there is just going back to pickup artistry. Like almost all of the advice that comes out of the red pill world is for short-term mating, >> right? It's almost all about how to sort of do the fugazi thing to get a woman into bed. That's not necessarily what is good for you as a man to signal for long-term intention to her or to be effective for her as a long-term partner or for yourself to actually form yourself into the kind of partner that can be a good long-term uh uh option, but it'll probably get them into bed. >> I mean, I can't I keep coming back to my conviction that this has to happen offline. Like on online advice is is no good. Like whether it's Jordan, you could be the most productive. Well, but because they don't because they don't the person doesn't know you. Um, and actually, you know, actionable advice um actionable model probably comes from trusted uh trusted decent older men in your own community and and you know and really this to a lot of the time aunties. >> Yeah. The uncles. Yeah. The structural problem is that those those intergenerational networks are in some cases almost completely gone. And that and I think that problem is particularly grave for young men growing up in fatherless households >> especially if you which is you know it's not a coincidence that those are the guys who end up joining gangs because there finding mentorship from older men and that's literally the only kind form of older male you know peer group mentorship male mentorship they can get >> sat there with Bugsy Malone Aaron Davies who is famous ex gang member now turned rapper and actor in Guy Richie movies lives in Dubai phenomenally wealthy very very well read all the rest of and he was telling me about what it's like to be in a fatherless home and then you have this gang which is the surrogate of that. The the I think even for me because I didn't have many older friends or no older brothers or sisters or younger brothers or sisters. Uh >> I was hungry or thirsty for role models in a way that I don't think I would have been if I'd had a more connected uh nuclear family. if there was more hooks for me to get in. Even if it had been an older sister, right, there would have been advice that was coming down. And if your dad is busy, even if he's not absent as in not in the household, if he's absent as in there's one person working to try and fund on a not a cubrious wage in an attempt to try and fund three people's lives, like that's something that you Yeah. And you're like, "Fuck like I I need I'm hungry for more. I need more more." And especially if most of your interaction occurs online, but online you're worried about saying something which is going to be deemed so toxic or or uh old from, you know, this was only allowed in 2012 and we've got past this and you can't talk that way about women anymore. >> I also think that there's something structurally feminizing or feminine about social media discourse just in general because it incent it forecloses physical violence obviously because it's selling your way through stuff. Um yeah, your words telling you like it encourages endless endless talking and it forecloses physical violence whereas it in my observation I mean maybe you can you I mean I'm not really in my observation like the society of men absent the relation to women sort of works the other way around like actually most of it is not really about conversation at all. It's about cooperating on getting something done. >> Mhm. That's why the men's sheds initiative in Australia was so good. >> Yeah. And um you know this it's it strikes me that you know getting men together to talk about their feelings is precisely the wrong way to go about it. together to fix a lawn mower and they might talk about their feelings alongside >> or or or just not in a way which is mutually understood but and mutually respectful, you know, but but it's it seems to me civilizationally suicidal for to create a situation where there are ever fewer opportunities for men to be together constructively offline, learning from older men about how to work work together and get stuff done. except um gang situations where actually the only thing you're learning to get done is stabbing, raping, murdering, or or or the drug trade. That seems to me like a completely insane scenario. [snorts] >> I wonder if low birth rates as part of it as well in the sense that >> there was this great article in the Atlantic recently about the decline of cousins. You have so many fewer cousins now than even a generation or two ago because of people obviously having fewer children. And also when people are having children later, you end up with these long thin families where you have very old, very young, but not that much in just not that many people. And it makes me think of that line from Kurt Vonagot where he says >> when a man and a woman have an argument nowadays, I'm I'm just paraphrasing, they might think that they're arguing about sex or work or whatever, but what they're actually shouting at each other over and over again is you are not enough people. >> Like it's not realistic to expect your spouse to be everything that you need. socially, everything. And maybe if there were more brothers and cousins and uncles, cuz obviously uncles have to be brothers to begin with, right? Then there would be more, >> you wouldn't need to be as many people because there would be more people. >> There would be more male infrastructure available in particular. >> And again, this is also the dilemma because Anglo actually don't like having Anglos quite like Chris doesn't want the aunties. >> I made I made the [ __ ] WhatsApp [laughter] chat. Okay, look, I'm I'm I'm a >> You run away from the You run away from the >> WhatsApp thing. Did I contradict myself? Well, I'm deep. I contain multitude. Um, [laughter] >> Chris Multiplex Zest. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah, that's me. >> Before we continue, this might be the most refreshing flavor that Element has ever made. It takes the classic taste of lemonade and makes it functional, giving your body back the sodium, potassium, and magnesium that it loses when you sweat. No sugar, no junk, just the stuff that works. I've been drinking Element for over 3 years now, and it genuinely feels different when I take it versus when I don't. And they back it with the best policy. You see that? That I've ever seen. And no questions asked refund. No time limit. You don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all of their favorite flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. I'm like Neo in the Matrix, dude. You're not going to win. That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. Ah, [laughter] >> let's do Can you do a little postmortem on me too now? We're kind of like what 10 12 years post the the the peak of that. >> We're both married and have been for a while. Are we were we the best people to do this? I don't know. One thing I'll say about me too which I think people often get wrong this idea. So that there's a common idea maybe it's true that men used to approach women in bars or in the at work or whatever and do kind of cold approaches and now they don't do that because of me too has made them scared. That period I think where men would find their spouses by doing cold approaches was really brief. >> I think you're completely right. It it it roughly coincides with and is connected to the very short flesh in the pan era of free speech absolutism. >> You're right. >> Like free speech absolutism and cold approach dating are basically the same phenomenon where you abolish a whole load of old-fashioned um mores and everybody just does what they want. But the but the afterburner of those mores is still strong enough that nobody nobody gets up to anything too disgusting. >> They're huffing on the fumes of the >> Yeah. that they're basically huffing on the fumes of conservative sort of pre pre-sexual revolution um behavioral norms. >> Why is that important? Why is the uh inclusion of that period of guys cold approaching women in bars or at work uh even having women in the workplace whilst men were able to date them also relatively narrow window. But it also cuz it's cold approach presupposes a whole load of basic behavioral norms in order not just to be absolutely terrifying call the police stuff. >> You know being chatted up in the street by some guy assumes that they they're going to be able to judge it so that you don't just scream and run away, right? And so that it like there's an edge of fun excitement and danger and a high trust society >> and fiss um it requires a high trust society fundamentally. Um and so so actually does free speech absolutism because you're never really free to say every anything you want. there or there are always lines that it's possible to cross. That's just never not been the case and it never will be the case. But it seemed as though it was the case like the the period the people who are still really annoyed about the disappearance of free speech absolutism and maybe 10 years older than me. You know, I'm in my mid40s now. Um and [snorts] they were like they came of age in an era where, you know, the social norms were still robust enough that people could make edgy jokes but basically got away with it and nobody really crossed the line too far. Now we're just too diverse um for free speech absolutism because there you there is there are so many different perspectives it's possible to have that you know you could actually genuinely end up frightening or offending or you know inciting violence from uh any number of different subgroups by >> cross some random you didn't know. >> Yeah. Um, so you it so so so it's it's just no longer possible and it's the same with cold approach because I mean you know the you know going back to the sort of petrol flames conversation we were having before you know a lot of a lot of those scenarios are really you know genuinely about mutual cultural incomprehension. You know, there are guys who've who've shown up in the country from from wherever and maybe the only the only information they have about what British girls are like comes from, I don't know, Pornhub or um you know, Instagram or whatever. So, they have this very odd picture of what social norms here are like. Um and then they do do their best to put them into practice at which point some some 14year-old girl just screams and runs away, calls the police, he gets arrested, and then all and then you know >> there's a crowd outside your mic. >> And there's a crowd outside the hotel where you've been put up. Yeah. Um, and you know, and I'm not I'm not trying to excuse any of this, but I'm saying, you know, to a degree, you know, this is a problem generated by, you know, it's it's cold approach. It's PUA stuff that they're trying literally. That's what they're trying to do. Um, but the but the but the cultural differences are such that it's just not possible. >> The game got translated into Syrian and now we've got >> Yeah. And now and now we've got protests outside the Bell Hotel in Eping. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I don't know. I just >> I don't really know how you Yeah. I'm not even going to try and speculate on how you solve that. But, you know, certainly like the age of PUA is not coming back. No. Um, short, you know, until until we have some kind of homogeneous culture again. And even then, I'm not even sure it should. But, >> but also historically, like even in a super homogeneous society, that's not how you meet your spouse. You meet through people who know you. There's like reputations and interlocking social networks and stuff. You don't just go up to some lady in a bar and >> No. No. I mean, that's why people used to have dinner parties, you know. Does people don't really have dinner parties anymore, do they? That was how that was how you you set people up with your friends. >> It's certainly not bringing it's certainly not a collegiate uh one where you've got both genders coming in. You know, when I think about the dinners that I have in Austin, >> maybe someone >> brings a woman, but that woman is not there to try and meet one of you, it's their partner. Yeah, but I mean as as recently as the as Bridget Jones's diary in the early um you know [snorts] she's she she writes very very amusingly for the time about being being invited along by by her smug married friends to to dinner parties where she's been set up with some some unbelievably awkward sort of supposedly eligible lawyer and this keeps her because all of her friends are trying to trying to find someone for her to pair off with. This is just a completely normal way of doing things. was pre- internet dating you the the smug marrieds would have dinners where they'd they'd invite and you know one or two other smug married couples and then and then a smattering of the eligible singles that they well the eligible singles and would be you know in a sincere effort yeah they're auntieing that's literally what it is is auntieing >> both virtuous >> yeah in virtuous and also often incredibly cringe absolutely [laughter] >> okay so if you've got dissolving social networks in IRL because everybody is living their life mediated through the They've got fewer friends and they're spending less time outside. Does that for you explain the demise of this particular path for people meeting? >> Fewer parties, fewer friends. >> Also, people are poorer and their houses are smaller. >> Yeah. I'm trying >> the parties are [ __ ] so you don't want to just I mean, you know, if you're if you're living in a house share until you're 35, you can't really invite eight of your friends around for dinner very easily without annoying your housemates. >> I'm trying to think about why I haven't done more of these dinner parties. We often do lunches and dinners with like another couple, particularly if they've got kids, and then the kids play and that's great. But I don't know if I've ever done one where that's just scaled child care. That's just child care with the best. Yeah, just hang out with your friends with kids on a Saturday. Your Saturdays immediately improve. Um, it's also a massive It's also a massive effort. Um, everybody works full-time. Um, and the the time the time and mental energy you you might deploy towards that is pointed at other things. Um, and I I don't I'm not really sure. >> Needing needing dual income here means that there's just less time perhaps for the wife to think, oh, you how should we get we'll get the Joneses over, we'll get the >> For me personally, it's more to do with the fact that we live at the very edge of a city of 10 million other people and our friends live at every point on the clock face and realistically getting everyone in the same place at the same time is quite difficult. That's what it is. Get together, you'd probably just meet meet somewhere. >> Also, we can only seat six people at our dinner table. >> Yeah, it's what I mean about, you know, >> small furniture, small house. That's interesting. >> Bridget Jones was living in what? Islington, >> right? Exactly. She's living on a journalist salary age like 30. >> I know. Yes. >> On her own. >> So I mean it's obviously fiction. >> Um and so I have been I was thinking for a little while about uh me too to me tea with the tea app and that you did see the tea app, right? Okay. This is a little older. Come on Louise. >> The tea app. >> Tea app. It was that app >> unsubstantiated gossip circulator. Yes. It's a reput reputation ruining app. >> Yes. But so it was women gossiping about men who screwed them over in their view. Okay. >> Yeah. And then there was a big data breach. There was sequences of big data breaches. Yeah. >> And there was a bunch of people on the internet who made a comparison between these videos of women in Manhattan who steal men's salads, look at the name on the top of it, then message them on Instagram and say, "I'm so sorry that I stole your salad." in a desperate attempt to try and overcome approach anxiety from men to women. There's these videos of girls in maxi dresses with their hair done just going, "I just want one guy to buy me a drink." Mid20s, very voluuptuous. There's another one of a woman walking through Central Park, big naturals, low top. Uh, and she's saying, "Look at me. The skin's flowing, the boobs are out, and not a single guy is going to approach me today." Some people made comparisons between the videos made by women saying they wish men approached them more who seemed quite eligible and like the sort of women that you would imagine it happens to with the data breach from the tea app. That was not the same cohort when it comes to female mate value. It was much more uh short hair piercings heavier set and it was just an interesting world where you have the women that you think this might happen to a lot wanting it more and it not happening. women who you might think it was a bit more scarce for being a part of a community who warn women off of men and actually are actively disincentivizing this. So it could be kind of this inverse luxury belief thing which is like a Bins in a Citadel. If I can't get what I want, I must teach myself to want what I can get. Uh and then buy together like the female equivalent of sort of inelom I suppose. >> We're doing some sexual competition there, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the problem for the the the hot woman in Central Park, she it's it's the it's the classic cartoon where the hot guy approaches and she's delighted and then the ugly guy approaches and she calls HR. I mean, >> that's that [clears throat] is the difficulty. Like, you don't want to be approached all day every day. >> I want to be cold approached, but not by >> not by you. Not by [laughter] him, by you. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> And every guy sees themselves as the not by you guy. >> Well, >> apart from the ones that are too pushy because I don't think that guys have a good understanding of their own I don't think guys have a good understanding of their own mate value. They have a good understanding of their own uh confidence or their uh disregard for female rejection, but that is not the same thing as a success rating. >> Like I am friends with some of the [ __ ] most eligible men in America that are single and these guys are you'd be like you must actually swim through women in order to get to your front door. and they're just like drenched in self-doubt and uncertainty and this sense of not knowing. And maybe this is a little bit of a like a a luxury challenge. It's a challenge of the of abundance, not one of scarcity where they actually need to weave through things in a different sort of way. And there's problems when you get to the higher altitudes as opposed to the lower ones. >> But men do not have a good understanding of their mate value. I don't think >> I mean, yeah. Just I'm going to stick my hand up and say, you know, I I remember cold approach. Like I was there. M >> um you know I'm old >> I lived it and survived >> you just about yeah um I'm old enough to remember when that was actually a thing and you know being what was what the the word they use now chirps um being chatted up we called it this [laughter] >> yeah I I remember that being a thing and it was understood you know it starts happening to you when you're about 12 um and it was understood by you know you you and your girlfriends compare notes that the kind of guys who do that are probably not the ones who are going to become your boyfriend. That's just, you know, cold cold approach might have been a thing and sometimes maybe for those guys >> because it's evident that you're one of a number. >> Those guys would be fun. You know, you you might let them buy you a drink and sort of chat to them and let them flirt with you for a bit, but it was understood that those are probably not the guys that that you that are going to become your boyfriend for for a whole host of reasons, but >> strategy men. >> Yeah, it's you're okay. You're going to have to unpack that, Louise, because this is more your wheelhouse than mine. >> Surely every modern wisdom listener knows about this. Our case selection, right? So our strate this is in this is true in evolution biology in general not just humans that some species uh are more uh are strategists in that they will have lots of sex lots of babies except that most of those babies are going to die fast die young kind of strategy whereas K selection is like elephants or blue whales where >> elephants versus rabbits maybe. >> Yeah. they'll have one baby that they'll really invest in and you know and humans are kind of both depending on context like we're more case strategists but there are individual variations and you can kind of nudge in one way or the other and yeah I think the guys who come and >> this is a big theme in your book isn't it there's the there's the guys who there there's the chatter uppers who are probably they're about sewing the seed as widely as possible and then there's >> there's the but again we're trying to find we're trying to find this balance right it's some I think 80% % of women say that they want a man to make the first move. >> Um, but how is that supposed to be done in a manner and this is how you labuboo yourself, right? In a desperate attempt to try and uh couch your forthcomingness in a sufficiently cinnamon roll exterior, >> but actually what you need is not to labubify yourself. It's it's what you need is the social scaffolding. >> You know, even whether that's sort of, you know, >> given that you don't you don't have that, you've got to bootstrap it yourself, right? The way that I did this with my husband as a as a sneaky get round is I heard that he was single and so I told a friend who was a mutual friend like tell him to hit on me and I and if he does I'll say yes and so we we basically did that loop round. >> Uh okay this is >> but that requires social scaffolding. This this is what I mean about the social scaffolding. You know, there are there sewed some seeds that this would be a like a high return strategy this odds the odds might look a little bit like difficult, but it's assuring the silk glove basically. >> Exactly. >> And so, you know, there's there's an element of that, you know, that women have to be willing to drop the silk glove if they want the man to make the first move. >> Um, I'm sure you you you know the the metaphor, you know, then he he can graciously hand it back. there. >> Why are [snorts] all these eligible men, you know, still not finding wives? >> It depends. It's for different reasons. Um, >> some of them >> aren't you, >> some of them have got Yeah, I know. Uh, some of them have got themselves to the stage where they've got so much exposure that they are basically they see any interaction as a potential downfall of their career, >> right? And they're worried about gold diggers presumably. >> Uh, more so about reputational destruction like post me too, I didn't consent to that. He is this or that or the other. especially if you've got a relatively squeaky clean image or you're in an industry that is not as forgiving as podcasting like the Andrew Hubman's survival rate should be uh positive reinforcement for anybody in my side of the internet. Um but if you're in >> he was was he completely fine after all of that? >> Better I think actually [laughter] >> he just posted through it. He was fine. >> Yeah, just just >> always the advice isn't it? Just post through it. >> Yeah. Just keep looking at sun in the morning and everything is fine. and and he is live he lived by that strategy. Um there's other reasons for it. I think that in the same way as women who are emotionally developed and want to find a partner who is able to hold their own in a conversation and understands their emotions and can be honest and truthful and wants to build a family and do all the rest of this stuff. That's a pretty refined taste for the most part. Um, a lot of the guys, your lamp analogy around if you haven't yet bought a house, trying to find a lamp that you like and put it in a house is pretty easy. Whereas, if you've spent two decades building a very very carefully crafted interior, trying to find the perfect lamp to fit in that is much more difficult. >> Um, that's also a a challenge. And your ability to discern good from bad lamps or your standard for lamps has also increased along with the complexity of the room that you're trying to put it in. probably complicated further by the fact that people are not lamps and people come with their own agency and [clears throat] >> preferences. The answer to the first problem about can I trust this woman not to wreck my reputation is probably it's to do with long-standing social reputation. You basically need to know her friends who will tell you >> yeah is she trustworthy? Is she crazy? Whatever. Um but that's not going to work with cold approach at all. So much of this is if you're not inshed in social fabric where you know their friends and them and maybe their family and they know the same because it also disincentivizes people from doing [ __ ] right? Because the the blast radius of that is going to impact so much. >> That's the that's the charitable interpretation of what the TA app was trying to do, isn't it? Is to try and >> surrogate. It >> it's trying to compensate for the lack of social architecture. >> That's the best steelman case for the TA app that I've ever heard that it is a surrogate local community. Yeah, >> because everybody is >> because I mean that's how women used to keep in in a sort of village scenario. That's how women used to keep >> is he is he trustworthy? Can I >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have a >> you heard what he did with such and such. >> Exactly. Exactly. And it's a it's a it's an attempt to provide a tech fix for the absence of that. >> Um it's just that because it's because it's only a tech fix. It doesn't work in quite the same way. And in fact, it has all sorts of other horrendous. >> So there's no repercussions if you make false accusations. If you say, "Oh, you heard what he did." And someone says that I did with such and such. Whereas in a in a real world, in a grounded real world relatively stable community, if you spread false rumors about somebody, eventually you'll get the blowback. >> The TA app is an artificial solution to an artificial problem. It's the GLP1's form. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's ampic for uh reputation management. Yeah. Low low trust reputation. Low trust relationship formation. >> Yeah. >> 65% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 think that guys can have their reputations destroyed for just speaking their mind. And 85% of young men who voted for Trump agree with that statement. >> See, one thing just going back to going back to our the our sort of light motif of the Naboo guy. What I find interesting um is this occurred to me earlier. um is that uh the the kind the obviously you know not very appealing nature of Laboo guy doesn't seem to have produced a kind of back swing towards this this very much more right-wing identified male >> you know what it is it's what our friend Katherine D calls the male to-male transsexual [laughter] >> that's the flip side to the laby man >> what is the male to-male transsexual >> guess what do you think based on the name >> uh it is a guy basically ling as a much more masculine version of himself. >> Yep. >> Right. >> And really devoting his life to that transformation >> as well. >> Which is actually quite a feminine thing to do. >> It is. It is. These are the guys who who who are predominantly interested in lifting so they can post physique. >> Mhm. >> Which is just the giriest giriest giriest thing to do. You know, I I firmly believe that guys should lift. I don't think they should post physique. I think that's disgusting. [snorts] >> [laughter] >> Two days ago, I had some guys that were both over 250 pounds. I would have loved to have seen you say that, too. They would have both They would have both taken it. They would have both taken it really well. They would have both gone, you know what it is. You're probably right. I do take too many photos of my top. >> It's It's just really girly. Don't do it. >> Be strong. Be competent. That's really hot. Don't post physique. It's really girly. >> I mean, it's an interesting your point about social media being inherently feminine is so true. And you see this come out of the the dissident right kind of manosphere is the wrong term but they're kind of hyper masculine dissident right which yes really valorizes masculinity can be really negative about women etc but also in includes a lot of selfies a lot of gossiping on the internet a lot of like girly bickering >> never seen purity spiral yeah who coined this meme I coined that meme that kind of thing I have never seen a girly a bunch of men on the You know, there are there are exceptions. You know, some some of my best friends, etc., [laughter] >> but well, what you say what you say is is on point. It's >> and and some some of this is just produced by the sort of selection effects of the internet in that. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's the internet, >> you know, the that that media sort of draws draws a the internet >> kind of optimizes for a very uh one-dimensional perspective of a person. >> Yeah. If so, Chris Bumstead uh what's that thing that Yasmin was talking about? Looks that can kill but heart of gold or something. What is it? Okay. Oh, right. That's it. Looks That could kill you, could you? And looks That could kill you, is a cinnamon roll. Right. And Chris Bumstead, guy that was sat here, met he's a six-time Mr. Olympia is the basically the modern world Arnold Schwarzenegger. 25 million followers on Instagram, met his now wife because she fell in love with a video of him crying on the internet. Um, so that's Lux That could kill Kill You, is a cinnamon roll. And that Chris is one of a very small number of guys who have managed to thread the needle of highly masculine, highly feminine at the same time or at least highly masculine and embodied, bothered about emotions. uh reads a lot of books and talks about um like not I don't believe in cry it out for raising our daughter Bradley. We're actually trying you know I want to teach her that it's okay to feel feelah you know like deep in therapy culture at the same time whilst being the like Adonis is Adonis as a guy um and super strong and big and all the rest of the stuff. I don't think that there is a particularly good place for that. There isn't much room for many people to be able to thread that needle because it takes a long time to explain the nuance of what you are as a guy. Like you look and it would be much easier for him to just be brash. Like if you presented in that way and had the uh personality of Andrew Tate, it's like there we go. Like I've got that uh cliche. I've already got that archetype locked off. And if you're trying to accumulate attention online, you need to make it quick. You don't want it to be effortful. And I I think it's just bad for brand. Like just do it explains what Nike is trying to get you to believe in as an ethos. It's not just do it and here's a 5,000word footnote explaining precisely what that means. >> Yeah, I I think that's absolutely right. The the attention economy dynamic forces everyone to become a very reductive meme version resolution. Yeah. And you have to you have to accept that. I mean, I've long since learned that existing in public online means just not feeling obliged to correct like the the bizarre versions of you that people have living rent free in their heads. Just like don't waste your time doing that. No one's got time for that. >> The best quote that I've heard around that is I do not concern myself with the opinions of people who misunderstand me. I think that's so [ __ ] good. It's hard to do because you want to correct the misunderstanding. Say, "No, no, no. You don't see it. I >> I remember the saddest version of that I ever saw was when Mary Beard got cancelled for saying something really innocuous and she posted a video of herself on Twitter crying and she was obviously trying to get people to understand that you know in fact she contained multitudes. There was a real person here and it but but all it did all that did was was incur more hate because that's just not how the internet works. Um and you just have to you have to post through it like Andrew Huberman. Be more Huberman. >> That is that is a [ __ ] phenomenal hashtag. be more hubman less less labu. Um [laughter] uh so what about the other side of this? I'm interested. I read this article on substack which both of you probably will have read about schlub feminism. The me too was the death of schlub feminism. >> No. >> Okay. So this was that um the thesis is me too protected women who were maybe a little more neurotic than is optimal and got much more attention from men than they would like. And what that meant was women who actually would have liked a bit more attention from men and were quite keen to try and find a partner were immediately told, "Oh, my sweet summer child, you're not doing that because you want the attention of men. This is this is for yourself. You're doing you're wearing the makeup. You're doing the beautifification. You're doing all the rest of the things because this is part of your empowerment." And it didn't allow any room for the schlub female to the Bridget Jones, the like hopeless romantic immediately became deriggated because in you are doing something for men, put power in men and also inevitably meant that well you're uh encouraging some of the you're making us not subservient but kind of at the mercy. It's like basically me too killed the Bridget Jones archetype in women and there's no place for that. >> Do you remember the essay Stacy is depressed? It was on a >> I remember reading that. Yeah. What was that? >> Similar theme really that there are there are lots of just quite ordinary looking people of both sexes really who would who'd be very happy to find an ordinary looking person of the opposite sex to love and they're probably both a [ __ ] lobby and so what >> um and that somehow somehow this hyperco competitive online dynamic of you know Chads and Stacy's and so on has just made it increasingly difficult like the guys are relegated to sort of neckbeard computer gaming basement dwellum and [snorts] Stacy meanwhile is just she's either she's either a sort of disposable play thing for some Chad having been kind of scoped into all of that by various kind of you know terrible internet discourses or else she's just terminally sign single as well and also desperate for love >> um and Stacy is just miserable >> as a as a consequence that feels that feels sort of cognate with um your >> Have we killed Bridget Jones? >> Have we killed that architect? >> Sometimes there is just this great mystery about why some people are single. I was talking to someone yesterday who does a lot of like she organizes Christian mingling things to try and get Christians to meet in real life and she said that um they always have an over supply of women >> and it's a classic thing in churches to have loads of really like earnest often lovely really eligible attractive etc women showing up desperate for a husband and they can't find them and I I I always I think often you can't really tell without really really knowing someone exactly what's going on there because whenever you hear doom and gloom about people are finding it impossible to find partners now etc. I think of all the people I know who are Stacyes in so is it Stacy's depressed >> Stacy? Yeah. >> In that they're completely normal people and they have happy flourishing family lives. >> Does that make you more skeptical around the perennially single and you think maybe everything's not as rosy on the outside as it might seem? >> It makes me assume something is going on. >> Yeah. I had a I had a vigorous debate with a friend the other day who was like he it was a kind of a throwaway joke. He was like, "Oh, you know, maybe we should just send all of the incelss to Ukraine where there's a massive shortage of men." I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What makes you think that Ukrainian women want anything to do with those guys?" >> Oh, what? Sorry. To fight and get married to Ukrainian women? >> No. To to to make up the shortage of sexio to to recmpensate the sex ratio, >> right? >> And I was like, whoa, you know, there might be like, but we're talking about actual people here. And you know, sometimes these things can be complicated. >> It doesn't necessarily mean that there's something terribly wrong with people who are single. Like I say comfortingly, right? It doesn't mean that. It's just that there's probably something going on that is might be hard to see like excessive pickiness or getting up to the moment of committing and backing off every time or something like that. This >> so committed to a professional career that actually there's just no bandwidth. Cuz actually if you look around at the people you actually know in real life, not on the internet, there isn't a correlation really between how attractive you are and how likely you are to be married. >> No, there isn't. >> I did have this idea that [clears throat] maybe the birth rate and coupling uh is associated with obesity, but not because of some hormonal thing, but just that there is a minimum bar that humans will find other humans attractive at. And if you fall below it by eating yourself out of that window, everyone's just less hot and now there's less desire across the board. You know, people tend to mate uh in terms of physical mate value and overall mate value broadly assortatively, right? They're within their their range. Uh >> that >> maybe you can eat yourself below that. >> It also plausibly becomes a hormonal thing in that uh weight gain is corresponds to higher levels of estrogen. >> I I agree. I just I don't think you even need that dynamic. I think it's just that if we assume that a well put together body is something that people will find sexually attractive and as you get further and further away from that actually on either side but typically at the moment we've got >> just less ugling [clears throat] going on generally. >> Yeah. You just think you're less ugle worthy >> like Donald Winnott's idea of the good enough mother >> I'm not familiar with that. >> So he said that Mary will probably know this better than me but he was a a psych child psychotherapist. >> Yeah. um who argue that um >> you don't need mothers to be perfect by any means. Like in order for children to be properly attached and develop happily, you just need the good enough mother. The mother who does that who meets the standard in terms of providing care for her baby. >> And yeah, maybe it's the good enough partner >> body. >> Yeah, they just hit that standard. Although I saw a man, some anonymous man recently comment which I thought was uh insightful that women of the last I mean ampic is going to reverse this by the way. We've surely hit peak obesity already, but women having >> putting the prices up presumably. >> Well, then it becomes even more desirable, right? As time >> I don't think I don't think weight is ever going to stop being a status signal in an obesogenic culture. >> Um, you know, if if if ampic looks like it might fix that, they'll just pull up the price of a Zmpic and it just kicks the can down the road. I mean, it's already happened. Eli Liy just tripled the price, didn't they, in the UK. So, it immediately thinness will remain a status signal in an obesogenic culture. just in it just the the cost stops being one of self-discipline and becomes literally just a cost. >> Well, it's a different sort of signal then though. >> Yeah, it's a signal of what you that's true. The the meaning of the signal changes. >> Yeah, massively. >> But the class it's it's class inflected nature doesn't >> true. But I don't know whether class is associated with or previously was associated with weight. >> Yes, absolutely. Um weight u obesity is strongly negatively is strongly correlated with poverty on both sides of the pond. >> Okay. And it may still be that but for different reasons. >> Just the the reasons for that might change. >> You can't afford this solution as opposed to >> you can't afford the healthy >> rather than exactly you can't afford to shop at Whole Foods. You don't you're you're you're too busy working three low paid jobs to go to the gym or whatever. >> Um it becomes um you can't you can't afford the job. M well pre-Impic and still probably now um I think women have simultaneously become fatter and prettier because there's a lot more [laughter] money in >> Are those two separate dynamics? >> Well, in the face, right? Cuz and and also things like hair and what there's so much more sophisticated beauty tech available and using things like >> whatever retinols or doing it getting your eyebrows microbladed or stuff that stuff has become very routine and very accessible. Um, and uh, social media is full of like hacks on how to do all this expensive salon treatment on yourself. So, I I really think that the bar has moved a lot in terms of what women do to their faces and their hair. It has, >> even if they've also got, >> but maybe maybe the technology for making men more attractive hasn't kept up in kind. >> Men don't really try as well, >> right? But >> and also what makes men attractive isn't really is only secondarily or even terti appearance is secondary or tertiary. fake turn is not going to make much difference to me. >> But going to the gym perhaps, >> you know, being being physically competent remains remains the gold standard for being attractive and earning, you know, earning a bread winner's wage. >> It goes with it goes with um having a reasonable physique. Um but I don't know. I I will this is a hill I will die on. Scaffolder physique wins over gym physique any day of the week. But I mean, I'm sure you saw, was it Ollie M who did that transformation and William Costello posted tweeted about it. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> So, and then Sasha Baron Cohen did the same thing. >> Do you see who was on the front cover of Men's Fitness? >> I thought Ollie M looked better shredded. >> Well, but you would be in the minority. Even if you do think that you would be in the minority and I I had an idea around this, which was >> he posted physique though. It was posting physique instant turnoff. Sorry. on that basis alone like object objectively like he looked good in the second picture but he was posting physique >> okay but what if it had been a candid physique photo >> that would have been a completely different ballgame totally different ball game hard to say at that point but it wasn't >> so there was basically Sasha Baron Cohen did the same thing I think he's in a superhero movie >> he is the lead actor in some superhero movie and he also got divorced at the same time so it was breakup physique superhero physique and then you compare him with Borax >> so when guys get shre headed. Is that the equivalent of you of getting a new haircut? >> It's the pixie cut, but the dudes. Yeah, exactly. [laughter] Going on a heavy course of testosterone is is going and saying to your hairdresser, "We're going to do it today. We're finally [laughter] going to get it off. >> I'm going to get the pixie cut." >> Yeah. Um, so the there was definitely an interesting question. I think that Olly is fat in one photo, shredded in another photo. >> He wasn't fat though. He's just a noob. [laughter] >> Relatively fat. He was maybe, I would guess, 15 to 18% body fat for the bro lifters in the audience and then he probably got himself down to towards single figures. He wasn't like striated delts but he was visible uh six-pack abs which is that's not nothing like that's [ __ ] and it was not in an unbelievably uh long amount of time either. So you know he he speedrun it which is you know it's impressive. However, lots of women said this isn't attractive and lots of men said you don't know what you find attractive. What I think is happening there is that guys have they place so much pride and weight on if I can get jacked, women will find me attractive. That is a big uh poltergeist to kill. And if you do, you go, "Oh, [ __ ] >> Maybe I don't have as much control over my mate value by going to the gym as I thought." Yeah. >> [ __ ] The illusion has been smashed. >> This was my one recourse >> to Yeah. Um I mean I sort of feel like like she I mean Jim Jim body is not a meaningless signal in the sense that it points to a measure of selfd disccipline. >> Yeah. Seriously consistent. Consistent selfd disccipline and individual willpower and so on which is you know that's a good signal but it's it's not the only one. And if you're also a massive weirdo it's not going to cancel that out. >> To be a little bit cynical about the women who said that they don't like the shredded physique. I think that like most women in the West are like a bit fat, right? I mean, the average American woman is like a size 18 or even 20 in American sizing. No, that's not right. He's a 16 in the UK. So, was a 12 in the US. But basically, the average American woman is like overweight. I don't think that she wants a shredded spouse cuz he shows her off. >> There was a uh story I heard from a friend who was a a powerlifter. Powerlifters go through um big weight fluctuations. They're the fat boy lifters typically. squat, bench, deadlift. Uh, and he then went and did a bodybuilding show and then he went and did weightlifting. So, he went through all of the different strength sports. And his girlfriend said to him, "My I felt my most comfortable when you were powerlifting, which is when you were fattest. I felt my most insecure when you were weightlift when you were bodybuilding, which is when you were leanest." Yeah, >> there's an argument to be like an EP physique that suggests that he is kind of advertising his beauty to other people, which may the whole dad bod thing is actually true. If you've got one extra spare calorie to spend, should you be spending it on yourself in terms of self- beautifification and enhancement or should you be spending it on your family? And if you are getting more attention from the women around you, who are you doing this for? Well, maybe you're not quite as committed to the family as we thought you were. Where are those extra calories going? They're going on yourself. You're eating the chicken, you're going to the gym, that doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a committed father's doing. Have we not transcended this? Have you not got past this? You're actually doing it for. But in the interesting female beautifification maybe, but it's at least a couple more uh second third orders away men don't look at women wives that are beautifying themselves unless it's very provocative and overt in terms of the way that they present as you are doing that in order to advertise your eligibility potent to potential monkey branch lily pad backup mates. I feel like another another factor in that is that I mean, you know, feminists are fond of denouncing the male gays, but there is diff there is unmistakably a difference in how men look at and evaluate um other people's physiques. Actually, I think of both sexes and how women do. >> Um and there's a sense, you know, women be, you know, if you're a woman, you beautify yourself. You might moan about the male gaze, but also I think you'd probably miss it. And like, you know, when women, a lot of women when they reach middle age do miss it genuinely. Um, and you know, there's a sense in which being checked out is part of what helps to form your sense of who you are. Um, you know, rightly or wrongly, but that's that's part of the ongoing constant kind of ambient intraexual dynamics. Um, but men like me, a man who's titivating himself is implicitly doing it for the male gaze because women don't look at each other like that. This this goes to what you were saying. >> I don't think that men know that. They might not realize it, but but but the point is that from a woman's perspective, when a guy is titivating themselves, you know, implicitly it's for the male gays, and that's just a turnoff because that's like you're like, "Dude, this you're on you're on you're in my >> it's either gay or ignorant of female preferences." >> Yeah. Yeah. And or or poss, you know, it's it's somewhere in that male-to-male transsexual territory. >> Does it have to be gay? Can it not just be signaling to other men? >> I mean, it can be homophilic without necessarily being like actively actively kind of sexually uh yeah [ __ ] orientated towards other >> but it but it's it's homo it's it's bro stuff in a way which which implicitly excludes the woman excludes women from from the dialogue >> there's also a big failure of cross- sex mind readading because guys are going I find that intimidating you must find it attractive >> uh and some things that are intimidating are attractive and women don't know it and then there's some things that men find intimidating which maybe women don't find attractive. >> Women have the make the same mistakes. Like with choosing clothes, I will often run past out if I if I'm like doing something publicly, I'll run past my outfit, past my husband for not because he knows anything about fashion, precisely because he doesn't know anything about fashion. And sometimes because it's hard to tell the difference between do I like this because it's signaling status to other women and it's signaling that I'm very a breast of current fashions and I'm experimental in my choices and whatever or do I like this because it's actually like looks good. And [clears throat] men are often actively turned off the high fashion impressing other women type of clothes. >> Have you ever se Have you seen that video of the girl showing off her new uh boyfriend fit jeans to her boyfriend? >> So it's an American woman and the boyfriend is in the kitchen washing up or doing something. He says, "Honey, I just got these new jeans and they're this sort of super loose fit, loose at the knee, loose at the ankle. What do you think?" and he daydreams away to 10 years in the past when fitted jeans that you could see a girl's thighs and a girl's ass existed. And he sort of like shakes [laughter] swallows and he goes, "Oh, they're lovely." And then she gets an even more baggy pair of jeans and he's on the floor sort of crying and holding himself. And there is certainly this weird lack of understanding in both ways about what it is that's and then I guess at least with guys very few guys are dressing themselves to signal to other men. Almost all guys are doing fashion exclusively for women but women are doing fashion for men and for women. So, they need to c I mean, it's the I do not know the difference between a Birkin bag. Even though I know the name, I don't actually know anything else about them other than they're expensive and called Burken. I guess if it said it on it, I'd know what it was. Uh, and something that's from Peacocks, right, and£10. I literally have no idea. So, who is that for? It's for other women. Yeah, >> right. It's the I guess red bottom leboutons. I know that just because it's a meme, but beyond that, I don't know the shoes. I don't know. So this signal is look at all of the luxury time that I have. Look at all of the spare capacity I have. If I'm in a relationship with a partner, look at how invested he is in me. He's You better not try and take my man. Look at I'm He's [ __ ] 30 bags deep on this bag on this literal bag. Uh you're not taking him from me because he owes me. >> Yeah. So you mentioned before we got started there this trend of feminism and women turning to the right. What is that dynamic that we're seeing that's going on? >> So it's quite a common view on the dissident right that um women are inately leftwing. So there are average psychological differences between men and women which we've all talked about at length. Um women tend to be more agreeable than men, more neurotic than men, um more uh sensitive to social signals than men are. There are various differences. Obviously they vary between individuals, but they scale to being quite significant differences between the sexes. And one thing that does seem to be clear is that women tend to be more egalitarian in their own social groups or at least in their in their female friendships. overtly at least >> more overtly egalitarian. Yeah. And sometimes this gets interpreted as that means that women are leftwing and like innately and if you let women vote and participate in public life, they will drag everything to the left. I tend to think that's not true because there are so many examples historically of women being very enthusiastic participants in rightcoded political movements. I mean obviously talking left and right is a bit complicated in the past but say women participating enthusiastically in temperance and prohibition would be one example. The church ladies phenomenon where women are actually the ones enforcing conservative social norms locally or even female participation in Nazism. I mean it's probably not quite right actually to say that Nazism is rightwing. It's complicated, but women were passionate passionate participants in the rise of Hitler and in fact often had like weird sexual obsessions with Hitler, which you can read about at length and had a kind of beetle mania when he showed up and things like that. So the idea that women are always and forever like woke I think is nuts. >> Um it clearly is the case though that at the moment young women in particular skew woke a lot and particularly in some countries skew woke a lot and there's a big sex gap. I think it's more that there are some political movements which kind of tap into feminine preferences and woke is one of them. It has that it's not so much the egalitarianism as the encouragement to scoop up and protect childlike figures. So whether that be trans people or refugees or whatever um dis encouraging women to channel those maternal energies towards certain groups I think is very powerful. Yeah. There's also there's also infinite opportunities for moral dog piling which is just incredibly appealing if you're >> how so >> um I mean you you you can if you can arbitrary arbitrarily change which words are forbidden sort of every few months and then mobilize your friends to attack somebody for getting it wrong and you can use that as a means of conducting office politics that's >> attacking people from a moral infractions >> yeah attacking people for moral infractions you know in in a sense it's kind of village it's a women's village modus operandi on steroids on the internet and divorced from any meaningful application in real life or any sort of meaningful kind of breaking mechanisms. >> I also think wokeness is quite emotionally compelling in the sense of feeling like you have this sense of purpose and crusade and you know I think that young women in particular find that quite enticing. Um, wokeness doesn't really work on men though, >> apart from the labuba men, >> but it doesn't like it doesn't hit those I I think it I like to think of it like Jonathan Height's idea of moral flavors. Like it doesn't hit the flavors that men have taste receptors for. >> I'm going to I'm going to say this carefully because otherwise I will get dogpiled by exactly these guys. But I I do think it's correct, even though this is I I do actually think it's right that there's a subset of the ir which is the equivalent of woke just predominantly for men. And by that, you know, I don't mean the woke right in the sort of James Lindsay sense of, you know, being some sort of terrible thing that must be expelled from polite discourse because something something civil liberties or free speech or uh well no civil discourse and and and objectivity and all of that. Um what what I actually think is going on is that the the sort of woke pattern of social interaction and the irright pattern of social interaction are both updated versions very very strongly gendercoded of two political sides as mediated through the kind of interactions which are just normal on the internet which are very much less rationalistic in both cases actually just visibly the case very much more but un unmed from material realities unmed from localized communities, very abstracted happening in the internet, you know, full of all kinds of perverse financial incentives and geared mostly towards u rage baiting in both on on both sides than than really towards substantive politics or even really getting anything done in the real world at all. >> Um they're extremely online and and actually I found it very interesting watching the emergence of Zoran Mandani in this context in New York. um as bench press. Yeah. I mean because he he he strikes me as a sort of he's a sort of post literate leftist. I don't mean he himself is postiterate but he he mobilizes a certain kind of very net native leftism. >> Um and that's that's the source of his popularity. You know whether or not he'll ever actually you know get elected and or deliver any policies is almost secondary to that. And there there there's a subset of Trumpism and Marga which is that but for the right and those two movements code they they are respectively gendered. You know there are more women that embrace the Mandanism and there are more men who embrace Marism and yes of course there's some overlap but they're they're both strongly gendered. >> Are we seeing a trajectory pivot then at the moment? Is there some subversive to the right? >> Are women are women turning to the right? >> I think that when they do they'll turn quickly. >> That's my main thing. >> I'm actually going to quote the a noted member of the irite in in in support of that you bronze age pervert who said memorably you remember also the mob is a woman >> which I think is an important what's by by that I mean I'm I'm I'm interpreting here but my the way I understand that is that the mob um as in a group of people highly you know morally irrated angry sort of mimemetically charged you know wanting action now um is is actually, you know, is as much is is as plausibly um all female as it is all male. You know, an angry mob can be of either sex. Um but the the mob as a collective entity bronze age pervert in this context is is suggesting is actually a very is a is is a female phenomenon, >> you know, >> although of course if the mob's going to cut off your head, it will have to involve some men. >> Yeah. I mean, >> but the emotional energy the emotional energy is is mimemetic. It's contagious. It's collective. So, so a concrete example of this would be what we've already talked about refugees or you know immigration in general. And until now the very strong energy from young women in particular has been to see um ethnic minorities and refugees in particular as childlike figures in need of protection. and also to um have this slightly um to see this cause as very emotional kind of you get pulled along with the mimemetic energy kind of thing. You could easily see that flip and actually it becomes and you're already seeing this among working-class women in Britain definitely is that the childlike entity in need of protection is like literal children really underappreciated scissors here is actually whether or not you have kids >> and and I would be I would bet any any sum of money you care to name that you'll find more women on the refugees welcome side who don't have kids and more women on the actually we've actually um no very straightforwardly for the And Louise just explained if if you're worried about your kids, that's an entirely different and very much smaller and more particularistic set of affections than if you want to you love quote unquote the vulnerable in the abstract. >> The inverse of this I think is a big part of the reason why so many guys want to be entrepreneurs right now is displaced paternal instinct that they've got this project that they're working toward. They've got a purpose, a meaning. They've got a single thrust and drive. You know, my my team, my staff, my purpose, whatever this thing is. >> That's interesting. >> Is Yeah. just supplanted. >> Yeah. >> Family. >> Yeah. But you could easily easily see, and I think we're already starting to see a right-wing political movement propelled by women that is using exactly those political flavors that women are receptive to, like fear, women being more neurotic, so fear of threat, um, wanting to mother childlike or actual children figures. Um, and the kind of mimetic energy. There's no reason. Where are we seeing that? >> Well, I think we're probably seeing it with the women showing up outside migrant hotels. >> The the pink the pink protests. >> Yeah, that's what they're called. >> Yeah, they No, they're not they wear pink, >> right? >> Which is which is an interesting echo of the of the Trump era [ __ ] hat thing. >> Yeah. >> They're not wearing but they're not wearing pink [ __ ] hats. They're wearing pink t-shirts and they're turning up saying, "Close the hotels and send them home." >> Yeah. And they're all over social media. And at the moment, this is very much contained being a working-class thing and middle- class women are quite hostile to it mostly. Um, but I think you could easily see that spread easily. Um, and yeah, women turning to the right could become Posie Parker is an example of this already happening. Um, in that she's Yeah, she's able to her movement is distinctively feminine. >> Yeah. >> And also not leftwing >> the very least. >> Yeah. >> Louise and Mary, you're both great. I really, really appreciate you. Where should people go to keep up to date with all of the things you're saying and writing? And >> uh so my podcast is made mother matriarch all the places that you find podcasts. Um my first book was the case against the sexual revolution. I am writing a second book on birth rights, but having children has kind of got in the way of writing it, but I'm I will finish it eventually. >> Put your money where your mouth is. Put your fertility [laughter] where your mouth is. >> I know. I know. Well, it wouldn't quite have as much credibility, would it? If I wasn't walking the walk. [snorts] >> I um I have a Substack. Uh maryh harington.co.uk is where you'll find it. My regular column is at unheard. Um I tweet although not so much over the summer at move in circles. I know I post school started. Everyone can go and follow you and you'll be you'll be back up to speed and you got and I'm I my my last book was feminism against progress. I'm writing another one. This one is on politics after literacy. So internet politics after the singularity if you like. We've already merged with our machines. What happens next? >> Okay. Aunties I appreciate you very much. [laughter] Thank you. This has been fun. Thank you. >> Thank you very much for tuning in. That episode felt like a warm, cozy hug by the fireside and a cup of cocoa. Uh, and here's a still very interesting, but slightly less warm conversation between Louise and Bonnie Blue. I'll let you make your own conclusions about that.