This Video Will Get You on an FBI Watchlist + Leak: Reddit Astroturfed by Feds

In this chilling and data-heavy episode, we uncover an FBI program that monitors and labels mainstream right-wing Americans as terrorists. Delving into shocking details, we reveal how certain words and phrases, like 'red pilled' and 'based,' are misinterpreted by the FBI to justify adding individuals to a terrorist watch list. The host discusses the manipulation of Reddit by FBI agents, speculating that the platform may be dominated by these agents, effectively killing genuine discourse. We also explore the wider implications of government control over social media, the misuse of taxpayer dollars, and the erosion of public trust in government institutions. The episode closes with a personal anecdote about the host's family life and concerns over societal decay. Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! This episode is going to be a chilling episode. This is one of those really data heavy episodes. I'm really gonna be bringing receipts here, and what we are going to be uncovering is an FBI program to monitor and label mainstream American right as terrorists, AstroTurf Reddit and manipulate and manipulate. Big events in America to the extent, so just to get started here, if anyone's like, Oh, come on, you can't, you can't really mean they're this bad, right? We, this podcast is almost certainly on an FBI watch list after the Heritage Foundation forced them through a freedom of information request to release information on a new terrorist list they were building of Quote unquote incels, and so words that would get you put on this terrorist list. Okay It were red pilled, based, look maxing, Chad, [00:01:00] Stacy, it's over, just be first, incel, and LARPing. LARPing! LARPing! No, because you know, them all right, so on this list, Speaker 2: Listen, I'll save you some gas. I'm just going down to the stationary store. Then I'll be right back. You don't gotta follow me like yesterday. Alright? Malcolm Collins: so on this list and, and you'll go, we're going to go over their twisted definitions of these words. Like they say, saying you are based means that you are saying you are racist. And here I'll put on the screen here, like Fox news, mainstream news, breaking this FBI documents associated with internet slaying, like based and red pill with extremism. And We're also going to go into proof that they've been heavily manipulating reddit to the extent where reddit might be a pretty dead platform at this point. And people just don't realize it. It's just like a room full of FBI agents talking to each other. And I know [00:02:00] that this isn't the first time when people are like, oh, you wish like the FBI was Paying an interest to you and it's like no we like know they are now because of the love not hate piece that was done on us For a year in our operation That cost a lot for them to run that was very obviously and you can go into the episode on this where we go into Receipts that was probably government backed by the uk government Now we're going to go into what the u. s government so I want to go over some of their definitions here You And keep in mind, they have in this document, like, all of these words, like, interspersed with, like, pictures of Hitler's face and, like, Mein Kampf and, like, stuff like that. Like, really hateful stuff. Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Malcolm Collins: So, they say, based refers to someone who has been converted to a racist ideology or as a way of indicating ideological agreement Okay, it literally means the exact opposite. It means that you have a logically and [00:03:00] factually informed position that is outside of any mainstream narrative or any mainstream position. So if you're, for example, are hanging out with a group of racists, it is based to say something that is non racist, like antagonistic to racism. I always Simone Collins: felt like in context, I get the impression that at least the connotation of based is someone who's just unapologetically standing for what they believe they're just comfortable in it Is that not? Well, Malcolm Collins: yes, but it needs to be against whatever the group that they are in sees as normative. Oh, yeah. So like someone who's unapologetically Simone Collins: urban monoculture is not going to be seen as based Generally anti Malcolm Collins: urban monoculture is based if you're in a general online environment, but if I am at a far right group you know being pro gay might be based. It just depends on the normative culture that you're within. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Here's, here's what they define red pill as, Simone. Okay. Taking the red pill or becoming quote unquote red [00:04:00] pilled indicates the adoption of a racist, anti semitic, or fascist belief. Simone Collins: Wait. The red pill emerged from our artist communities. This is about women and being lied to. Malcolm Collins: But I point out here that this is, and we'll do a different episode on that someday, this is what our tax dollars are paying for. Somebody was paid a salary to put this together and feel it was obviously wrong and cult like, ideologically indoctrinated misinterpretations of reality. Our government is deeply infiltrated by the virus and the cuts need to be made severely, even if it means shutting down departments entirely. Yeah. Okay. Here's what they said. Chad means, okay. They say Chad is a race specific term used to describe idealized versions of a male who is successful at gaining [00:05:00] sexual or romantic attention from women. Incels unsuccessfully compete against chads for attention. They don't compete! Simone Collins: Wow. Race? Where? Who? Who's being paid to do this? They should not be paid to They're not doing a good jo I mean, like, I don't know what's more insulting. That, like, there's this very politically biased witch hunt taking place. Or that they're so bad at understanding the witches they're hunting. No, Malcolm Collins: they're, they're not, okay, so they're not trying to. They are, this is somebody who is a, who is ultra, ultra woke, trying to build justification to put the mainstream white, Right wing on a watch list. Was this from Simone Collins: the life of Brian? Am I getting the scene right? Where there's this woman, and they're like, She's a witch! Speaker 3: We have found the witch. May we burn her? Burn her! Speaker 5: I'm not a witch! I'm not a witch! But you are dressed as one. They dressed me up like this. Simone Collins: And they're like, Well, she has a [00:06:00] nose that's long. And they're like, You put this nose on me! Speaker 3: Well? Well, we did do the nose. The nose? And the hat. But she's a witch! Simone Collins: Yeah, I feel like that's it. They're like, Well, but they're racists. And then, you know, like, I'm like, wait, why am I Malcolm Collins: racist? And they go, because you said Chad, because you said you're red pilled. And I'm like, but you define those things as racist. But like, but that's not racist. And Simone Collins: they're like, well, no, but we said it guys. Malcolm Collins: They put it on me. Speaker 3: Don't dress her up like this. No! No! No! No! Yes! Yes! Yes! Speaker 5: Yes! A bit! A bit! A Speaker 3: bit! A bit! Malcolm Collins: And then the, the, the guy's like, well, was any, any, any part of her which they were. She did turn me into a newt and I got better. Speaker 5: What makes you think she's a witch? Speaker 3: Well, she turned me into a newt! Got better. Malcolm Collins: This is a little like, well, how can you prove that they are you know, racist and anti women well, when Trump wins, they're going to lock up all the women and send them to breeding [00:07:00] pens and all the black people are going to become slaves again. And then I look around and I'm like, Trump one, is any of that happening? And they're like, well, it got better. Speaker 13: Oh, Peacemaker! Yes! You're that racist superhero! You only kill minorities, man! Speaker 14: I've killed a fair amount of white people, too. The ratio is suspect, is all I have to say. If somebody's committing a crime Yes? Am I supposed to control what their ethnicity is? Simone Collins: Some things just never change, I guess, you know, Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but we have another episode, which I'm going to try to have go live before this, where we talk about it's been documented now. Antifa has infiltrated the secret service. They've definitely infiltrated the FBI. And when I say infiltrated, I don't mean in a nefarious context. I just mean people who watch like Antifa podcasts and agree with their beliefs. And when we talk about what the core of Antifa beliefs are, it is. Identifying mainstream right wing Americans, or I'd say even the average American now, considering Trump won the popular vote, the average American, since it's like based in Red Pill, identifying them as [00:08:00] morally equivalent to Nazis, so that they have a psychological license to do whatever they would do to a Nazi, to a average American. And this is where like the punch a Nazi movement comes from and everything like that. And what I mean by this is you have this within the FBI now trying to get this identification of your mainstream American as being like a Nazi so that they have the justification to treat the mainstream American as if they were a Nazi terrorist. Hold on, we're going to keep going through words here because this, this just gets me. Yeah. Okay, so, Just be first A phrase used to describe the targeting of minors for sexual advances in order to be their first sexual experience before their perceived corruption by society and is quote unquote justified by some as the only chance incels have to ascend from incel status. To ascend! Oh! Okay, so for people who don't know what Just Be First actually means, is it saying that women should exercise a degree of [00:09:00] moderation in who they're sleeping with, and that the ideal marriage should be between two virgins? Now, interesting, I can say, I don't know if this is like, realistic for the average person to aspire to, but Also, this is weird, Simone Collins: I don't know if I'd want to marry a virgin, like, a virgin guy. Malcolm Collins: I married, I started dating you when you were a virgin. I started, you'd only kissed one other person. You were incredibly inexperienced in this category. And so for you to, and keep in mind, yeah, okay. You wouldn't want a virgin guy, but the point of all this is not about guys. This is about men choosing women, and I can understand the idea that women could be really messed up in this modern dating marketplace in terms of their self perception, in terms of what they expect from a relationship. Yeah. It is not an unreasonable thing to say that, hey, you know what our ancestors said that we should argue, have like a degree of freedom. of sexual propriety. That they're like, no, that whoever wrote this literally think that [00:10:00] the only women who would not have sexual experience are minors because they have so normalized sleeping with minors that they can't imagine any woman who isn't a minor not having sexual experience. And by the way, when I met Simone, you were 23. Simone Collins: 24. Malcolm Collins: 24. So not at all a minor. Okay. Just a degree of sexual propriety. And I actually was in my later years, almost as many virgins as I did in my early years. Simone Collins: And you were sleeping with people, roughly your same age. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: I just whatever it is that I bring to the table. Disproportionately attracts the type of woman who happens to be moderately attractive in a virgin. And people are like, oh, they're lying to you. No, I slept with enough people that I can tell the difference. So to keep going I need to Simone Collins: put in like the obligatory ew, because Malcolm Collins: What, you, about what? Simone Collins: Being able to tell. I just really don't like vaginas. So, I have to say Malcolm Collins: you. Well, you're a [00:11:00] heterosexual woman, Simone. It's not surprising. Simone Collins: Well, yeah, no. I remember from your surveys, vaginas were very Actually, a lot of guys playing vaginas. Yeah, like both women and Malcolm Collins: men. We're like Not, not the average man, but like a quarter of men. Like way more than you'd think. Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay, Malcolm Collins: Looks matching. A term used to describe the matching of attractive resemblance of both romantic partners, which incels see as a solution to the perceived problem of unattractive men having no potential partners. How is that a How does this make someone a terrorist? Looks maxing. The process of self improvement with the intent to be more attractive. Oh, how dare you! Improvement as a sign that you're a terrorist. The nerve! He tried to improve himself. He's Simone Collins: a terrorist! Malcolm Collins: That's insane. MGTOW, of course they say MGTOW is the acronym for Men Going Their Own Way, which refers to an online community that has overlap with the incel community. NEET, they see this as a word that, [00:12:00] that is described by this. Okay. Red Pill and Black Pill. So this is, I guess, Black Pill in the context of Red Pill. So, this is a different definition of Red Pill. I love that they didn't even do this document well. They have Red Pill on it twice. They have Red Pill on one page, and then Red Pill, Black Pill on another page. With a different definition. I mean, this is Simone Collins: the non version not racist version of their definition, because the first definition was so off. Well, Malcolm Collins: okay. The red pill refers to a belief shared by many online communities that society is corrupt and that the believer is a victim of this corruption. Black pill, which is specific to incels, refers to the belief that this corruption can only be changed through massive societal restructuring, often including violence. The left says stuff like that all the time! Society is corrupt! What are you talking about? Like, okay, let me just change the words here, right? You know, BLM refers to the belief shared by many online communities that society is corrupt, and that the believer is a victim of this [00:13:00] corruption. BLM, ultra, refers to a belief that the corruption can only be changed through a massive societal restructuring, often including violence. They're just describing the mainstream of their own movement! Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: They've got Stacy on here, but the definition is boring. And then they have all this next to things like white power and Mein Kampf. And the Turner Diaries, and Siege, and the next I do not What? Who's I don't know what any of these books I know Mein Kampf, and that's it. Simone Collins: Yeah. That's cause I keep I keep using it around the house as like a joke. You Malcolm Collins: keep using Livenshroom as a joke. Simone Collins: Yeah, that made them more love and strong and that, you know, like keeping the floor as clean as Mein Kampf, but only as a, no one uses that phrase, like, or, or refers to that book online. That's anyway. I feel like they needed to keyword stuff it with references to [00:14:00] the National Socialist Party of Germany. And other racist thinkers in an attempt to make it seem like this whole set of vocabulary is used together all by the same people. Does that make sense? Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Simone Collins: I want to, I want to understand this department that the FBI that's doing this like it was there an intern or a recent college grad. Yeah, Malcolm Collins: they had a big document. It's called involuntary celibate violent extremism. Simone Collins: Oh, Malcolm Collins: okay. That's nice. So now we're going to go over something even more horrifying, which is and this. Rabbit hole. I showed you a first video on this that some other YouTuber had done and it was good, but like, as I dug deeper, it's worse than what he made it sound like. Simone Collins: Are you Malcolm Collins: serious? So in 2014, Reddit's year end blog post had to be edited because the town that it included as the [00:15:00] most addicted to Reddit was Edgeland Air Force Base. Here's the problem. It, that indicated that it had over a hundred thousand unique visitors to Reddit. The problem is, is that that the portion, the number of residents of the Air Force Base was only 2, 448. Oops, a discrepancy of 97, 000 people. But it gets worse than that. Edglin's Air Force Base, not long before this. Other studies that had been funded were one titled modeling user attitude towards controversial topics in social media networks, which explores the manipulation of social networks and the use of quote unquote social leaders to influence opinions and beliefs. Other studies that had been funded were one titled modeling user attitude towards controversial The, the hilarious thing here is I decided to then try to dig deeper on any of the sources that covered this. Right, because I was like, okay. Is this real? So I would go [00:16:00] to the sources that had covered this which were in the Washington blog every one of the articles on this had been removed I could find sources like actually ironically reddit posts Talking about what was in archived versions of these sites, but the archived versions have also been removed. So the internet archives have been removed of this at this point, along with every place that it was mentioned. The only place that I could find a non removed reference to stuff like this was in the Guardian, where they had a fairly watered down discussion of this. Fortunately, we have lots of screenshots of these websites before they were removed, so we know they existed, and there has been no denial of the FBI of this activity or the millions of dollars that was spent doing this. Millions? So if I want to go into what the Guardian had to say about this, U. S. military admits spending millions to study [00:17:00] manipulation of social media. Part of a long term effort to spread propaganda through the internet. The activity of users of Twitter and other social media services were recorded and analyzed as part of a major project funded by the U. S. military in a program that covers ground similar to Facebook or Twitter. controversial experiment into how to control emotions by manipulating newsfeeds. And if you are, and this is from the Guardian, a far lefty thing. And I think it's because initially they thought that they were doing this to influence things in a right wing direction. But now we know because of the Facebook leaks and stuff like that, that they were doing this in a heavy left wing direction. The Facebook leak that I'm talking about is a story that the FBI knew was true. Facebook was pressured to remove it, which was the Hunter Biden son's laptop leak. And ban accounts that were reporting accurate news. The FBI colluded to ban accounts reporting accurate news in the lead up to an election cycle. That is where things are, and we haven't seen any indication of anything like this on the right, which is so funny that the left is always like, oh, the right's a threat to democracy. When they're actively [00:18:00] attacking democracy. What's fun, I, I've, I've Simone Collins: actually seen a couple of self-aware, but jokes, but kind of not jokes from people on the left after looking at the results of the selection saying maybe we did steal the last one. Which is I mean, gosh, it's insane. It just, I can't believe that we even saw the results that we did considering all of the things that are happening, like even the hostile nature of the existing government toward anyone who means slightly. To the right, which is basically just being a 1990s Democrat, by the way, Malcolm Collins: well, at least in terms of your social beliefs. I mean, I think that a lot has changed, but it's, it's very different. I argue that the left today is actually, it's not that the right today is what the left is in the 1990s. It's that the left today is what the right was in the 1990s. When a lot of people get wrong because they're too focused on social issues and they're just fighting for a war that doesn't exist anymore, like the war to ban gay marriage couldn't win any [00:19:00] election cycle. Like we're not even like, we don't even slap down rightists when they say this stuff because like we're pro gays or gay marriage. We slap it down because it's insane. just so dumb. It appeals to such a small portion of the electorate. Um, They're fighting social battles and they see the fact that we're not fighting those social battles is making us more like Democrats of the nineties when the reality is,, the right of the 90s is actually very similar to the far left today. They just represent a different view, which is to say in the 90s, it was about pushing what the dominant culture in our country was on the average American citizen. And now it's about pushing a different dominant cultural group on the average citizen. So I see that it's sort of a false equivalency there. But I wanted to, you know, one talk about paying to manipulate results. So I think a lot of people, when they look at this and they see how heavily the FBI and the U. S. military towards an extremist woke agenda is manipulating online discourse, specifically in environments like Reddit. it. I think they can misunderstand [00:20:00] the impact that 97 upvotes or downvotes can have to control what's making it to the front page within the large subreddits and what comments are making it to the top, et cetera. I will say this as somebody who I will not confirm that I've done this, but let's say we may have experimented with a manipulating the way things get to the top of Reddit through pay for vote systems. It Simone Collins: hypothetically could have happened, Malcolm Collins: it hypothetically could have happened, which gives us an idea of how many votes you actually need to create a post on Reddit. And if you have good content that is gelling with the base of Reddit, you really only need to pay for, I'd argue maybe 2000 votes. The fact that they were looking at 90, 000 votes that they basically had complete control over the past decade of what's been at the top of Reddit and what hasn't been at the top of Reddit and likely all other voter based sites, whether that is the E. A. Forums or Y [00:21:00] Combinator or this is why I think for a long time in non vote based sites like. For Chan, you have seen things moving very far to the right from the perspective of they're like, Oh, the average person isn't that far to the right. Or on X they're like, Oh, the average person can't possibly be that far to the right. Now they're realizing, Oh, the average person actually is that far to the right. This isn't like, that it was taken over by extremists. It's this, this is what it feels like to not be in an echo chamber. That's being mediated by the Simone Collins: FBI. Malcolm Collins: So Reddit basically hasn't existed as a real site in at least the last half decade. That makes Simone Collins: so much sense because I remember just living on it and then returning to it in our, I don't know, post kid lives. And thinking this sucks happen. Yes. This used to be a place where people had realistic dialogue in the YouTube video that you shared with me, where you first heard about this and started diving down the rabbit hole after the guy mentioned. He did a [00:22:00] hypothetical hypothetical experiment where he entered a prompt into chat GPT asking it to create an am I the a*****e post and it made one that was that looks totally native very natural and he was like clearly chat GPT has used reddit as training data and can easily be used to create posts. Fake accounts. Malcolm Collins: Well, this is where it gets worse. Reddit has no way to come back from this. Because the way the Reddit and the voting based systems work is if you look at something like Twitter, what does Twitter select for? It selects for the things that cause the largest emotional reaction. Yes. So that can be a positive or negative reaction. If I want to get a retweet, I can get a retweet by creating a negative reaction just as well as a positive reaction. Well, perhaps even Simone Collins: more effectively by getting a negative reaction. Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what does it mean If the, the, from like an evolutionary perspective, ideas compete on Twitter through their ability to engage our emotional subsets. And it's funny that people are like, [00:23:00] blue sky will be different. And I'm like, no, it won't be different because it uses the same system. This is why on 4chan, the stuff that comes to the top is the stuff that way I'd put it? Is the most like attention grabbing in the moment. Because that's how you get people to pay attention on 4chan. It is ideas outside of a signaling perspective. It's just whatever is on your mind and what you believe to be true. Well, attracting more for things that offend other people to one, create engagement and to act as a filtering mechanism for people who you do not want within your environment to make it toxic to those people. Simone Collins: We're Malcolm Collins: going to go over crystal cafe soon, which is like a female version of 4chan. Just mention this to me. I need to dive into this. It's really interesting because they've done the same thing to make it really unpleasant to be a man on there. So you wouldn't even want to like role play as a woman. How does one do that? Well, you'll see when we go over it. [00:24:00] We're going to go over it in the episode where I argue that everyone under replacement rate is a cuck. Oh great, okay. So be looking, be looking for that episode. But the problem with all of this is, is in, okay, so what wins within the voter based environments? It is the thing that is the most average of an opinion. The most average of an opinion for that particular room. Now on YouTube, what wins on YouTube? What wins interestingly is the content that is most appealing to people algorithmically like yourself. It's sort of the best place to find good content on the internet. The, it, and, and community discords, and we'll put a link to our discord here which have a feel of like early internet stuff Simone Collins: but, Malcolm Collins: YouTube itself Is very good for I think an average person who wants to know what people like themselves are saying now The problem with reddit and what's going to lead to its self destruction Is the most average of ideas wins the most average and safe and [00:25:00] guarded of ideas While being influenced by organizations like the fbi to be even more average and safe who? Is going to win at that game, especially if they were trained on reddit data ai AI will almost always be able to outcompete humans on a platform like Reddit, especially as AI advances further. The tights of story, because it creates the most average idea. And that's what is rewarded on Reddit. And that's why Reddit has no possible future. And, did you have any thoughts on this before I go further? Simone Collins: That's sad. RIP Reddit. It had a, a long time ago, it had a great run and I really enjoyed it. Malcolm Collins: There's so many things, I mean, its staff accelerated its demise. Simone Collins: It deserved what was coming to it, but it still makes me sad. Imagine, it's like going [00:26:00] to, it's driving by your childhood house that your family moved out of and seeing that it, Went to s**t. Turned into like a meth den. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Simone Collins: A meth Malcolm Collins: den with like obviously a bunch of FBI plants. Like, hey, would you like some marijuana, young man? So, no, I the point here being is that if you Go to Reddit. The only reason to go to Reddit is do not go to Reddit to get an understanding of what the left thinks. The left isn't meaningfully on Reddit anymore. Go to Reddit to get an understanding of what the FBI wants you to think. , that is the only thing that you are getting from Reddit anymore. But great to get an understanding of like how. far this has gone within other countries that have been more infected by the cordyceps virus or wokeism or the urban monoculture than the United States. The British government considers the following as terrorism and believes it has the right to investigate and jail people for this. So I'll read the quote from their own report. If the disclosure, so saying this being written, or threat of disclosure is designed to influence a [00:27:00] government or made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause, anything that can disrupt the status quo is terrorism. Oh boy. The UK is Simone Collins: not going to be okay if it maintains this general stance and Approach to culture slash solving problems. This is not good. Malcolm Collins: Well, they arrested a guy for this David Miranda case, British High Court accepts investigation. Journalists can be tried like terrorists. And I'd point out here that You're like, okay, so it's like the FBI is a problem and maybe like the N. I say is a problem. Speaker 6: Because if people knew how we did it, then everyone would do it. Then our enemies would do it. We can't let our enemies get their hands on this. Get their hands on what? Dudes. This is how we know [00:28:00] that Malcolm Collins: No, this is spread to every branch of our government independently. This is the way the infection works. So, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. In a request for proposals filed to companies that are feds vendors is requesting the creation of a social listing platform whose function is to gather data from various social media outlets and news sources that will monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria. The, the, the Federal Reserve. Why do they need that? Simone Collins: We need to look at more RFPs. That is. I guess that's something does should, well, they're going to, they're going to audit every single contract, but they should also be looking at new requests. That is deeply disturbing. Also part of me wonders. What if part of the objective of this manipulation was [00:29:00] to kill Reddit? Reddit being seen as a place where people were radicalized and they just wanted to neutralize it. It definitely wasn't. They Malcolm Collins: had no, no. They see Reddit as a platform completely under their control. They love Reddit. Reddit's the best. They want people to stay there. Keep in mind. They want people Simone Collins: to Malcolm Collins: like it. Yeah, even the FBI now is worried about things like Facebook, now that Mark Zuckerberg has been like, he was the one who leaked, Mark Zuckerberg is the one who leaked that the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed. That, that, that came from the Zuck. The Zuck. He may have taken a while to come around, but I think he's in the process of coming around and I do not think that the FBI trusts him with that sort of request. Simone Collins: He's in his new era. I'm liking it in his Malcolm Collins: new era. Okay. Yeah. So I don't, I don't, I don't think of all the platforms, they've got blue sky. They've got ready. They've got like, yeah, What? Like, the, the, the Tumblr teleport Is Mastodon still Simone Collins: a thing or not? I think there's a lot of Is what still Malcolm Collins: [00:30:00] a thing? Simone Collins: Mastodon. Malcolm Collins: Oh no, not really. Simone Collins: I think Discord just is everything that Mastodon was proposing to be and so much better. So, it probably never had a shot. Malcolm Collins: Yeah discord feels like the early internet by the way for people who weren't around in the early internet and if you want to join our discord, you can find a link. It's great I find it a really fun place to hang out online pretty high quality conversations I'd also note here that if you feel like the internet is dying Because like when I go to google now, it feels like an increasing amount of the internet just isn't real Like I feel like as the astroturfing is break as the brain rot You Of the people doing the astroturfing has increased as the cordyceps fungus has eaten of the urban monoculture He's eaten more and more of their brains and their only job is self replication of the virus They no longer think in false thoughts as I mentioned recently I got in an argument with somebody that just broke down into simple phonetic loops like break the cycle like Be better. Don't, you know, like I was like, what? [00:31:00] This isn't an argument. It's like in Rick and Morty when the simulation is breaking down. And they're like, my man, my man. What Malcolm Collins: That's what it felt like in real life. And I was trying to talk to like an average citizen on the street. And I was like, Oh my God, like these people are so brain rotted by the Internet that they lack the capacity for genuine independent thought anymore. And they're running on it. A collection of phonetic loops. And I think what happened is as the. The bug men have become more and more infected to the extent that they can't have rational thoughts anymore These environments that they were curating and astroturfing are breaking down And we're beginning to realize there was never anyone there That most of the internet has been an astroturf job that dead internet Theory was not wrong. The internet has been dead for a while now. It is just becoming clear at this point and that the only real conversations you can have [00:32:00] anymore are places like discord, which is pre sorting for people who are following specific, like based or otherwise filtering individuals on YouTube and stuff like that. Or and to give you an idea of how bad this is in 2006, four years after a website was created, there was a 40 percent chance it would still be around. In 2015, five years after sorry, four years after a website was created, only 3 percent of them were still around. It went from in less than 10 years, 40 percent sticking around to 3 percent sticking around. Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. Things are changing. Yeah. I came into this, or before you shared this with me, I thought, well, we're heading into this crisis now where soon no one will know where to go online because everything's going to be generated by AI. But now I realized that for the past five to seven years, it has already been largely fake content that we've been seeing [00:33:00] this whole time. The call was coming from inside the house. It was already, I wouldn't Malcolm Collins: mounting the hashtag dismantle the FBI. I don't know if we need it anymore. I mean, if they're not doing anything, Simone Collins: remember when the, we, we experienced someone stole a very non trivial amount of money from our business. We had their name, we had their address, we had their banking info, and we were told by our bank to send it to the FBI. And we never heard from anyone. We tried. All the channels we could, nobody got back to us and I'm like, Oh, so are they understaffed? Is there some kind of disaster? Like why aren't they helping us? This, this is, it should be open and shut. They have this person's address, their bank account. Like this isn't like it wasn't, Malcolm Collins: people understand this person stole money from us. Very obviously the bank said, yeah, this is stolen money. And we had the [00:34:00] account that the money was Simone Collins: wired to and the name and their address like we had all of their information and they said submitted to the FBI, but I guess they were a little too busy posting on Reddit. Malcolm Collins: They were a little too busy watching our show to like track to see how we're like, Simone Collins: you have to find those incels that they're the real threats. The, the incels who are spending money online, at least subsidizing the lives of a huge number of women through OnlyFans. I, you know, like, they're, they're doing their part to, to prop up the economy. Meanwhile, someone is stealing a huge amounts of money from us. So no one's, no one's answering the phone. Malcolm Collins: I feel like, you know, Trumpism is a fight back against this and maybe they can do some remediation, but we really are in a scenario where things are circling the drain at this point. The rot of the urban monoculture has gotten so [00:35:00] extreme. I think, Simone Collins: you know, Throwing the folder in the wastebasket, letting it go. Malcolm Collins: Well, and I also think that some people don't, and this is something that always is interesting to me, the people who like know that they're the enemies of the urban monoculture, but like, they don't believe how bad it's gotten. Simone Collins: Well, I certainly don't. And now I realize that you and I are probably on an FBI watch list. A Malcolm Collins: terrorist Simone Collins: watch list, by the way. Oh, great. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Simone Collins: I told you that basically we, and of course anyone these days, honestly, should assume that every Smart device in their home is being used to actively monitor everything. They say that the big revelation with Edward Snowden that everyone might be listening or sort of at least recording your calls and you should be careful about any keywords used that might get you put on some kind of list really did extend more to any device or anything that you typed into or spoke [00:36:00] around. So, I don't know, like, fine. Also, I'm sorry. I guess it's great that AI exists because I would feel bad for any professional who would be forced to actually listen into conversations and now at least AI is being used to just summarize everything, but Malcolm Collins: yeah, well, it's interesting as well, but I love the gems are like, How did we lose the working class? And it's like you've got to understand the democratic party right now is the party of the corpos It's the party that says your average citizen who is saying based Or incel or who is having trouble dating as a man or saying that there are systemically unfair dating environments for men these days These are the people who should be on terrorist watch lists The people who are disrupting the oligarchs control of our society right now, and the oligarchs are all in the urban monoculture. You cannot be a party of the working class and be a party for gender transition of minors. Yeah. These two [00:37:00] things are completely inconsistent because your, your rot and your virus ignored the working class because it couldn't extract money from them. It didn't care about them. So when you go to their towns and you say this s**t, they're like, Whoa, you are you are a monster, sir. You are a high grade monster and I want you away from my children. Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, the other thing that disturbs me. Is that okay, a lot of people on the left are, for example, saying, I'm very disturbed. You know what? What if if all these government organizations are going to be shut down? Who's going to be running quality control on my food? Who's going to be managing these essential services that. And that's the thing is, is I think really at this point, people think that the government is doing a lot more than it is actually doing. The government stopped doing those things a long time ago, and you have a false sense of security that they're being done just because [00:38:00] there is a massive amount of spending being done on it. You don't realize that that spending is going to bureaucratic waste, and to pensions, and to debts, and not to people. To a bunch of activity that you assumed was being done. And I think a big crisis that you and I have had in adulthood in general is assuming that because something's being paid for, it's being handled. It's not true. Malcolm Collins: And the Biden administration, and we go over this on our video on the inflation stuff and the Biden administration that it It's like, Oh, look, we're doing so well in jobs. All of its job creation, it shrunk in terms of real jobs. All of its job creation was just in the government sector or things downstream of the government sector, like healthcare, like it just pumped more money out. It just printed more dollars. Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I think the new paradigm should be. All things are paid for as they are received. So when you complete the service, you get paid. When you deliver the product, you get paid. And, and no one [00:39:00] should be paid until very concrete goals and progress is made. This concept of salaries or budgets in general, I think has become bankrupt. And it could, we have the ability now, for example, with AI. To actively monitor achievements well enough to pay people as we're going along. I think that salaries had a reason to exist and budgets had a reason to exist in the past because it was just impractical to pay things like to pay people for achievements as they went along. It would be just too much micromanaging work. Now we literally have the technology to just pay for things as they get done because the AI can just check milestones and be like, okay, yeah, release the funds. We can't keep doing this because I think what's happened. Is we've reached this period of quiet, quitting, lying flat, et cetera, where organizations and people have generally realized. The mods are asleep. No [00:40:00] one is paying attention. I can just stop working and guess what? No one even really knows what I'm supposed to do. Malcolm Collins: Crime rate. We had an episode on this where it's like doubled in every major area just in the past, like eight years. Like the, the world has quiet quit. Simone Collins: Yes, the world has quit quietly, and nobody realizes it, and we just think everything's being done, and it's not being done, and I'm so scared. And intellectually Malcolm Collins: quiet quit as well. I think that this is another thing that really needs to be hammered on which is to say that a lot of individuals When I look at the internet today, when I look at the ideas that are being shared there, it feels very frost punky to me. Like there's this one little community like, Well, does that make you Simone Collins: feel good? You love frost punk. Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it does make you feel good. Like also the people connected to us that are still like intellectually alive and the rest of the internet, like in Shugachara, like they are, are there, they're, they're, they're remnants. And they've mostly been erased from reality. There have no [00:41:00] fire to them. No light to them. There's nothing there. There's no new ideas. It's just that they're repeating one old idea or another old idea. Yeah, it might be just trying to ethetically LARP some old religion or they might be which is really just. Repeating ideas, repeating ideas, repeating ideas, or they might be urban monoculture. Repeating ideas, repeating ideas, and the intellectually alive players is such a small community that then has a community of listeners like gathered around it, like around the central generator and outside of this community. little part of the internet. It's nothing but cold and ice. And it's horrifying. I mean, there's a few little, like, I guess tire fires here or there, but other than that it's mostly a wasteland. Simone Collins: Well, thank goodness for the tire fires, I guess. Interesting times. Very interesting times. I'm disturbed, but yeah, hopefully, I just really hope that once the [00:42:00] new administration starts working after January 20th, that we actually carve out and start fresh. We have to, because one, we can't afford everything that is being paid for now. And two, we're not getting things from it. And even like I told you last night, there were six gunshots outside our house. I checked with our neighbors, both of them had, well, I mean, all three, well, all four had heard all of them had the gunshots, except for you. Cause you were asleep. Cause you wake up at 2 AM and no one bothered calling the police or checking, like trying to see what was going on because there's this, now there's this assumption. That no one's going to do anything. So why bother? And I feel like we've also reached this unspoken collective conclusion that we can't depend on much of the government anymore. Well, that's not to say like, at least for the family, for Malcolm Collins: my room, you're like, [00:43:00] Hey, any, any good cyber Monday deals for AR 15, we've Simone Collins: been planning on, it was on our black Friday list since. August or something for a Malcolm Collins: long time. I mean, how many do you want ultimately for the house? Simone Collins: I don't know. Get one with every kid, one for every kid. Malcolm Collins: Well, then we need a few more. Simone Collins: Oh, then keep checking for more sales. They're not inexpensive, but Malcolm Collins: they're Simone Collins: worth it. Malcolm Collins: They're worth it for a collapse scenario. We just need to make sure we have the bullets. Simone Collins: Yeah, we need to, we need to get, well, that would be another good cyber Monday sale, but anyway, I, I think that society has collectively realized this, but it's one of those things that we don't want to admit to ourselves. So we don't talk about it a lot. And I think that's one of those signs that we're in the middle of the collapse. It's that period where you're at the top of the rollercoaster, but half the cart is hanging off the dip and the other half is still [00:44:00] back. No, but like half of it, it's already sitting at the top and like the momentum is going to start building, but it's already. It's already there. And I don't know, it's not going to be, it's not road warrior, like you say, but I do think that there are some things that I really worry about. And it's so lumpy because while none of us decided to call the police after hearing gunshots right outside our house. We also see the police outside our house at least a couple of nights a week because they like to set up a speed trap right in front of our house to pull people over. Malcolm Collins: Of course they'll do that. They can make money off of you. Like, they're there. Like, you know that they're there. Simone Collins: That's what's odd. Well, and I mean, every interaction we've had with them has been great. You Malcolm Collins: know the money they take from, from like speeding tickets? Those go to their departments. Yeah. They don't make money by catching a random kid. It's basically Simone Collins: fundraising. Yeah, but I like that they're fundraising around our house because people drive too fast. Still, it's, I don't know. [00:45:00] It's weird because the government is there and the government will help. Like, and also, like, the number, the, the, the ratio of professionals to our kid who's going through kindergarten now because he asked to. Is insane. I'm like, wow. I mean, they're, they're all like bitter and Malcolm Collins: terrible. Like we had a zoom Simone Collins: call, we're like to check in on his progress and they were like five people on it. Like how, Malcolm Collins: because it's all administrators. These aren't people who are with the Simone Collins: kid, but I mean, what I'm saying is like, There's this lumpiness where like, if you go to certain parts of the U. S. government, you'll be surrounded by people. There will be money everywhere. It's like falling out of the walls. And then you go to like, you try to call the FBI because money was stolen from you. Or you're afraid because you know, there were gunshots outside your house and it's crickets. Malcolm Collins: This administration explosions. If you look at graphs of spending in the education space, you see it's it's equal on teachers. It's equal like the past 20 years. Yeah, but administration has exploded. Yes, depending on Simone Collins: students has not changed. But this is the same with Malcolm Collins: the FBI. This is the same with police forces. This is the same [00:46:00] administration needs to be cut to nothing. Across the board. Well, and Simone Collins: it can be without a change in quality, given where we are with technology. Now, the administrative systems that exist in most government and sort of legacy civic offices now are from a time, honestly, a pre internet time. Most of the systems and the way things are run and the processes that were like the standard operating procedures are from a pre internet era. We can clear out so much waste. And so much spending and maintain, if not improve quality, just because of where we are with technology and A. I. So we're not saying that these things are bad. And I think that's a big misconception when people are looking at this idea of eliminating and hollowing out government. It's not about taking away the services. It's about restoring them. Because they aren't there right now. Anyway, I think that's a bigger thread for me is it's not just that the internet isn't there anymore. It's not just that Reddit is [00:47:00] fake. It's that so many government services are fake, at least in the United States. Well, I Malcolm Collins: love you Simone. We should Simone Collins: get to know you too. At least we can be warmed by our love for each other. We Malcolm Collins: are in the circle of love, whether it's our, our, our fans or our family. We, we. Are weathering this I would almost say easily all right. Love you to decimum. I love you too. Gorgeous. Simone Collins: Warmer clothes because Malcolm Collins: It is obviously very cold in here as it should be by the way. Did you see the latest thing? I I sent you on whatsapp. I actually almost burst out laughing the moment I read this. No, Simone Collins: okay. Hold on What did you send me? Malcolm Collins: It says in the telegraph keep brain dead women alive and use them as surrogate mothers Suggest doctors medical association apologizes after academic argued it could become common a common way to bring new children into the world I was like, you know, there's that, how is it going [00:48:00] meme and then that bad, huh? I feel like urban monoculture, how is pronatalism, how is fixing it without fixing the culture treating you? Oh, that bad, huh? Simone Collins: It's, yeah. And I just finished Hannah's Children, by the way, that prenatalist book. She ends with prenatalist policy recommendations, and it's the best that I've ever read of any write up. It's just focus on the families that are having five plus kids, and the best way to do that is to empower religious communities. To provide their own services amenities and and empower people to give their kids religious education, which is this whole time, like, and that's what is effective and it's not. She made it so clear so articulately and so eloquently. That there is no amount of money you can pay a woman to completely change their lives and make it about kids. Like, the [00:49:00] sacrifice that you give up, the lifestyle change you're making, no one who's materialistic is going to be motivated by some materialistic incentive. To do that. Like you can't use materialism to incentivize people to become unmaterialistic. Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this is fundamentally what people misunderstand about this. Is they'll be like, yes, but I don't have enough money to do basic things. If I have kids. And then I point out, are there people who make half as much money as you? Cause when people saying this to me, they're typically people making like, let's say a hundred K a year or like way more. No, typically Simone Collins: they make way more than us. Malcolm Collins: But I'm just saying. This is the crowds that I often hear. This is people earning like. 50 K a year, like median us salaries. Right. Yeah. And I point out, I'm like, you know, that like a good chunk of the American population has a lot of kids and makes a lot less money than you. Like half what you make. So clearly there is a way to make it work. You just aren't considering it. You are [00:50:00] not considering cutting back your lifestyle as an option. Simone Collins: Yeah. And another interesting thing that she said at one point near the end of the book or noted, I think this was from other mothers interviews. That she did with them, that you don't really experience the death. You don't burn away the selfishness. That was the wording one mother used until after two kids. And after that point, Malcolm Collins: I agree. You're not really a parent until after two kids. Yeah, but there's Simone Collins: something you like it. You literally undergo a form of ego death once you reach a certain number of biologically. And Malcolm Collins: I would say that the change in me as a parent was bigger from two to three kids than from zero to one kid. Simone Collins: Yeah, Malcolm Collins: yeah. But you'd agree with that, right? That it was a bigger shift to go from two to three, and sort of biologically how you relate to reality, everything like that. Simone Collins: Yeah, well, I think you reach a tipping point where once you start to become outnumbered by your kids, it's just mentally so much [00:51:00] harder To keep prioritizing your own emotions and needs over theirs. They just crowd out the space. There's no space for it. There's no space for your anxiety and your pettiness and your dumb ideas. And it becomes your kids. And I love that. Malcolm Collins: You have the affordance to make the selfish decisions, which are the cause of a lot of our suffering in our modern society. But I love Simone Collins: this metaphor of burning away the selfishness. Malcolm Collins: It's great. All right, I'm gonna get started here. Speaker 9: Octavian, what are you opening up? The Hot Lava Box. Oh, is it a balance beam? Let's see. You're gonna open up and find out? Is Daddy putting your play structure together? Yeah. Isn't he not the coolest Daddy ever? It's the best day ever. I'm opening this box. I wonder, let's see what's in here. You want to see what's in [00:52:00] the box? What do you think is in the box? Let's see. Let's see if this has lava. Uh, well, I don't think we brought hot lava for the house. I think that'd be pretty dangerous. Yeah, remember Octavian, we've been discussing how there seems to be a hot lava problem in the house. Because you keep saying everything is lava. I opened up! So we got you a bridge to go over the lava, silly goose. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com