Based Camp： Update On Our Lives & Going Viral
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Summary
In this episode, we catch up with our good friend and fellow podcaster, Malcolm, and talk about what's been going on in our lives since we last checked in with you. We talk about the birth of our new podcast, what we're up to now, and why we don't want our kids to have genetically superior kids.
Transcript
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hello it is so exciting to be here with you guys again it has been years since we have put something
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like this together but we've gotten a lot of requests so i am quite excited to uh try to
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start doing this on the regular again yeah um so we saw that a surprising number of people actually
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wanted to know what's gone on so i will give you a really quick rundown and then malcolm will say
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more interesting things because he's the fun one but basically since we've last checked in with you
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we have published depending on what you've watched um two or four more books the pragmatist guide to
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sexuality the pragmatist guide to relationships the pragmatist's guide to governance and the
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pragmatist's guide to crafting religion all ended up amazon bestsellers the guide to governance
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congratulations malcolm was a wall street journal bestseller a few weeks back so that's a big
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milestone for us we also saw our travel business through the pandemic we operate a travel
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business dirty little secret of ours um it actually does pretty good work and we we survived as a team
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the pandemic which was a big deal um we got into education reform and pronatalist advocacy um and we
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also had uh depending on when you've last seen us two more kids or one more kid our latest kid
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uh her name is titan invictus was selected using a cutting age uh new type of embryo selection which
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ended up getting us covered in a piece by bloomberg which then led to us giving getting covered in a piece
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by insider both related to our embryo selection and our pronatalist advocacy and then most recently
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our pronatalist advocacy um which is just something we do on the side as something that we care about a
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hobby got us featured in telegraph magazine which then led to a lot of people discussing front cover
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front cover magazine continue a title along the lines of meet the elite super readers um
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so uh that led to um a meme i think like meet the elite couple breeding to save humanity um and it is
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it was a weird week following that so uh malcolm how do you feel about all this thing all these things
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that happened well i think we learned a lot about how the internet works and how the current news cycle
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works in ways that can help us manipulate it better in the future um and we've been experimenting with
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that already uh which is really fun so one of the things that's really important to note in terms of
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the various articles that covered us is this wasn't the first front page article about us um we actually
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hit like the front page about 75 percent of it at the national post which is one of the top papers in
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canada or the top paper depending on how you're counting um and that got us all uh nobody care
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but under a different title that was more provocative and this is where i began to realize
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sort of there's three categories of articles that we can pretty reliably predict how viral they're going
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to go when they come out the lowest category of article is an honest article about us that is sort of
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nuanced about our perspectives and the prenatalist stuff which we'll talk about in a future podcast
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at some time um and an honest headlock um and those do very poorly like we immediately know no matter
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how prominently they're featured they're going to do poorly the second so the insider piece was actually
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behind a paywall and not a front page piece yet it was probably the second most viral piece on us
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um and that one fit into the second category which is uh a dishonest piece and a dishonest headline
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yeah well and specifically what malcolm is describing is um gosh okay i'm gonna look up the exact headline
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um because you'll see like it's something that would make me um immediately
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like bristle it the the title uh oh no i can't see beyond the paywall
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the title is i'm sorry i'm trying to find it but now it's like literally paywalling me um
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billionaires like elon musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids
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inside the movement to take control of human evolution yeah so that sounds at all yeah what
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the movement's about uh it's about a sort of increasing access to fertility technology and
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you know like in our case we were motivated to use it because um simone's mom died of cancer and we
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didn't want our kids to get that and then you know with existing technology we're also able to select
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against things like probability of developing depression and stuff like that but i would hardly say
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that editing uh you know out uh things that we've had to struggle with that we don't want our kids
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to have to struggle with would be considered like genetically superior kids or and yeah that i mean
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the whole subtitle of the article implied that we think and that other tech billionaires think
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that they are genetically superior which we first don't and the whole reason that we're involved in
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pronatalist advocacy is because we really care about preserving and expanding pluralism and diversity
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um so it it looks really bad but when people see a bunch of smug pasty nerds sitting in a preview
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image below a title like that online what do they do they hate share it and they talk about how
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disgusting these people are for thinking they're genetically superior and trying to populate the
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earth with their disgusting genetics and i think that that is it's a good lesson in ideas ride through
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the internet especially through places like twitter on waves of hate um instead of on waves of nuanced
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conversation and our hope is that when we try to share information about the risks of a hard landing
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on demographic collapse you know why we're in pronatalist advocacy in the first place um even if
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we ride on a wave of hate to get to someone to sort of reach them with the issue that they may at first
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look at that and bristle and say oh my god what assholes how could they possibly think they're superior
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which is not the pronatalist video so let's not go too deep on it we won't go too deep but they'll
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they'll end up reading the argument and say oh oh wait they're actually super reasonable and that's
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not what they actually believe and yeah um which is something that trump did right um a lot uh he
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would say his core strategy um but i haven't gotten to the best type of article so so one of trump's
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core strategies was to say um something like oh you know we don't want to be like one of those
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shitty countries in africa and the media of course is like ah he said a bad thing you're not supposed
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to say those countries are shitty but your average person when he's promoting that hears that and
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they're like but they are shitty right like we don't want to be like that um and uh that is sort of
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how you play the press these days is you get them to say something that they think is preposterous
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with enough of your own words that people can read it and be like oh maybe i'm not getting the full
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story here maybe there's more to what they're saying than what is being reported that's being
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said but then there's the very best type of story about you which is one with a dishonest headline
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but um other than other than the headline it's pretty honest um and that is uh you know what
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you're you're really hoping for because what that does is it allows sort of the idiots who see the
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headline and then just want to go off on it to um go off on the headline um and then uh
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the gives the people who want to argue against them enough ammunition to argue against them in
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the comments and that's how you drive something to the top of social media these days sorry i took
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off my glasses because these ones seem to be like lopsided i gotta figure out what's going on with this
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um well so here's something i want to ask um because something that we're seeing among a lot of
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our friend group like a lot of our friends have various causes that they care about and things
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that they want to support um and yet their approach with both their own personal lives and also with
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their issues is to never ever ever court controversy to only get puff pieces to um you know never never
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look like an idiot for sure um i'm wondering why why there's so much care about this like do you have
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any picture under or understanding of why people seem to want to be so private these days yeah so
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first i think it's worth talking about why the controversies do so well in the existing social
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media environment so uh i think a lot of us well uh you know older people uh we grew up with
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facebook algorithms and what facebook algorithms do is they recommend you content from people who
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uh you like their other content uh however a lot of the media cycle is driven by the twitter algorithm
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and it doesn't work that way it recommends content based on um how well uh how much engagement an
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individual piece of content is getting that's part of why uh twitter just doesn't really convert for
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people so if you're a celebrity and you're trying to promote like a concert or something twitter
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converts famously poorly because anything that's just promotional and not courting controversy just
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does not do well on twitter which also makes twitter like a weird status symbol in our society to have
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a lot of twitter followers because it's it's not really monetizable or even particularly good at
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getting your message out unless you're willing to court controversy with everything you do this is one of
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uh andrew tate's core strategies is he would make sound bites that were very offensive so people
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would share them and he would try to be more reasonable in his long form content um i still
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think you know maybe not that reasonable but that was his core strategy to to sort of moving up within
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the media uh this is also how jordan peterson began to to get he would get in fights with reporters and
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stuff and people would share that and then in his longer form content he was often more like muted and
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and uh uh reasonable um and so that's a a common strategy but to your question there's this idea of
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well i don't want anyone saying anything negative about me at all online and it's because you do get
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a lot of hate right but the problem here is this strategy one does not work into changing the public
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narrative or even getting yourself into the public narrative but in addition to that uh if you force
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it if you blunt force it with like a family name or money it leads to terrible results to you uh two
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examples i can think of are the uh coke uh daughter who right now is all like you guys don't know how
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hard it's been for me there's this new york times like sponsored piece i keep getting that just makes
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her look terrible um and then there is the uh henry and um what's her name megan megan megan and henry
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uh thing harry harry harry and megan sorry i don't follow the the royal stuff but really what they mean
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um you know this whole like privacy controversy what are they really saying when they say they
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want privacy because obviously they don't want privacy privacy they want everyone talking about
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them what they mean is they want to control what people are saying about them they want a very
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specific narrative about them and what they don't like is when reporters break that very specific and
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narrow narrative they're trying to convey the problem is is that specific and narrow narrative
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narrative is of uh people who sort of fit this this progressive model or woke model or whatever
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you want to call it of the ideal person oh i care about the environment oh i'm not elitist oh i'm and
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when you try to do oh i care about you know whatever all of the hot button issues whatever the hot button
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issue is today and when you try to sell that you come across as incredibly disingenuous and you just
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court a lot of hate um if you look at the people and the youtubers and stuff like that who have done
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well on the left they are typically far uh left of of i think what the ideal perfect woke person is
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supposed to look like um because at least then they're saying interesting things and things that
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engage people well and things that people share yeah i i think it's it's telling i i you one of your
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friends after hearing this theory from you encourage you to read trust me i'm lying by ryan holiday and
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i you know i i'm the one who reads and then i summarize everything to you but like basically
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this confirmed everything um and ryan holiday is someone who used to or maybe still does manage
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pr and and public relations related things for american apparel but would also do consulting for it
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for people like tucker maxx who probably is only familiar to people who are millennials or older
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um but he would he would start by he would basically trade up the chain so he would start by
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even fabricating something uh very controversial at the bottom of a chain so when he was promoting
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um a movie coming out about a guy named tucker maxx um he like literally defaced a billboard and then he
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leaked a tip about it anonymously or one of tucker maxx's billboards um and then he leaked something
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about that to a blogger or publication who then covered it and then that got picked up by other
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publications who are trying to you know feed a ravenous news cycle and then eventually another
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group defaced a billboard or poster related to the movie because they were caught up in this trend
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um so ultimately it was all feeding into itself and i think we've definitely seen this on our end as
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people for example cover the telegraph piece is the telegraph piece has a a misleading title um and
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cover image and subtitle and um we've seen a lot of people cover it and often what happens is one person
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covers it uh inaccurately and then a bunch of other people start covering it inaccurately as well
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and that sort of trades along and the extent to which people really aren't checking or verifying
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things in the vast majority of cases is pretty sobering really shocking to me at the guardian
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which i had thought of as like a legitimate news source literally it was very clear they had read
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nothing but headlines about pieces and some people criticizing us on twitter it was clear they hadn't
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read an actual single word of any interview we had ever done and it was the guardian which really i
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mean like trust me i'm lying guys like apparently this is a very good book for press strategy
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yeah it was really weird to read that book and then like see this happen because i i reading that
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book i was like well i like our theory i like our whole like you know controversy works hate works
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etc but like i don't i don't know if people are like lack this much scrupulousness but no apparently
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i mean if i can think of a single non-mainstream progressive intellectual who had risen to fame in
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the last 10 years without it being on controversy i can't think of one yeah yeah yeah i guess i guess
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you're right um controversy sells um resentment sells and i guess you wouldn't think it does like you
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could also think that um what we had published about us in the telegraph for example which framed us
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as elite in quotes um would have been seen let's say if people are modeling the evil us that they
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hate in that photo they probably think that we we like asked to be called elite or we like announced
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that like oh we'll do the interview but only if you call us elite in the title because i'm an elite
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gamer uh um but i i think that uh people people may not even see um articles designed to be hate
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shared as such um because a lot of people commented on that subject like what makes them elite how could
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they why how are they elite and we're like well look we're not elite you know like there's nothing
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elite about us um what's really interesting is that wasn't in the initial telegraph article
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that was added in a yahoo news reprint of the telegraph article and then adopted to the
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telegraph article because it was doing so much better in sort of the seo algorithm interesting
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so well because it made people mad we well and then a whole meme was created around this concept of
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the elite couple breeding to save humanity which i love i mean what a great meme to have uh kicked off
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um but it's interesting that we got elite as our branding from yahoo news i'm like the gatekeepers of
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modern elite culture yahoo news um but i i think um yeah i mean nobody wants to be branded as elite
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these days the idea that we would go out there like trying to push for elite branding is unless you're
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like a an elite chess player you know like an elite chess champion gamer gamer or something but i mean
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like being the elite like from a classist standpoint i mean i think right now um especially online
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capitalism is out being uh in any form of like i guess economically or socially elite is out like
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you can influence her but you can't be elite does that make sense and so this is what's so fascinating
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is these same people who decry elite status are in a huff over losing their blue check marks
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and it's like what was that if not a signal you just admit this and then i think what's
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is like they hear elite and they think classist um and that's the form of elitism that i would say
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that we don't buy into however am i a generic elitist yeah probably and by that what i mean is
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uh you know online we will have people uh you know be like oh like they think they're better than us
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or whatever right and it's like well what do you mean think like by most metrics i probably
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uh random twitter user i don't mean to be too spicy here uh but i think that uh we do believe um
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that uh we're pretty happy with who we are and and what we've achieved and i think i don't know
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here's here's how we define elite melton and i think it's pretty simple the elite are those who
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show up the elite are those who build something who do something um and if you are not doing something
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if you're not building something if you're not solving a problem that you highlight we don't
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think you're elite you just aren't because the elite belongs you know the future belongs to those
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who show up um businesses belong to those who build them like that's it that's just how we view
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the world it is a very capitalist view of the world that makes us elitist in the evil bad way i guess
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by many people's standards um and we're not denying that some people don't achieve these things due to
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stuff completely outside of their control uh that is that is and within our existing system a lot of
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people just do not have everything within their control however we're also um of of of the belief
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that uh some of it is within your control and uh we support those who uh you know work hard to do
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this and and and and the idea that uh you know you'd have somebody who spends all day on twitter
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yelling at people being like how dare you think you're better than me it's like
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yeah well i think that's that's that's our life everyone um we'll end this for now but we're
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thinking about doing regular conversations like this so if you would like to see more leave comments
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requesting anything you'd like us to discuss um and maybe we'll see you back here but it was fun