An Anthropology of American Hillbillies： The Horror Stories Might Have a Point
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Summary
In this episode, Simone and I discuss the history of the Appalachian cultural tradition, or the backwoods cultural tradition in the United States. This is the tradition that makes up the core of the MAGA movement and Trump's voter base, shifting from the cavalier cultural tradition of the Deep South to the greater Appalachian Cultural Tradition.
Transcript
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Hello, Simone. Today's conversation is one I have been excitedly digging into.
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We are going to discuss the history of the greater Appalachian cultural tradition or the
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backwoods cultural tradition in the United States. This is the tradition that you and I hail from
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predominantly. Obviously, everyone's a mix of a number of traditions. They're also heavily from
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the Puritan tradition, and you're partially Jewish as well, but the main one is the greater
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Appalachian tradition. The reason why it's important to understand this tradition is because this is
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the tradition that makes up the core of the MAGA movement and Trump's voter base. American sentiment
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shifting from the cavalier cultural tradition of the Deep South to the greater Appalachian cultural
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tradition, shifting from an aristocratic to an anti-aristocratic, anti-elitist tradition
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represents a big change in American conservative politics. There's a reason to understand it,
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but I'm going to be exploring it with the lens of it's stereotype in 80s horror of like inbred
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backwoods murderers who are going to like hunt down people and and murder them. She's just human.
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Why don't you go over there and talk to her? Whatever you say, just smile and laugh. It shows confidence.
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Because as you will see, when we go into more about this tradition from their, from their own stories,
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yeah, that may not have just been a negative stereotype. Oh boy. That's reminds me where this
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first came up for me is I was having a laugh at the Mormons because, you know, in Utah, they had the
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highest rates of searches for polyamory on Google Trends. And then after having a laugh at them, I was
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like, well, I should at least check my own cultural group's negative stereotypes. You know, that, that,
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that's certainly not going to be a closet full of skeletons. And it's like for an S and M.
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Sorry. I can't forget incest as well. And, and, and all of the other like horror. Yeah. Like it makes
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I mean, polyamory, if anything, is just about social complication, hierarchy, bureaucracy, contract.
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Then they have like your culture, our culture, which is just savagery. Yeah. Okay. So first I want to go
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into Jack stories as a sort of cultural explanation. So this culture passes its traditions down through
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oral stories with the most common type of these stories being the Jack stories. Although after
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this, we're going to explore their horror stories as a way to understand them as well. You might be
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familiar with one Jack story, which is Jack and the Beanstalk, but it comes from like a wider tradition
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of stories. In Jack stories, there is generally a chain of events, a, a, a poor and lazy, but otherwise
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quick witted boy stumbles upon either a giant or somebody with institutional power, like a rich man,
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or somebody who represents like government, like a sheriff. He then tricks or otherwise torments
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that person and has great glee at doing this. He then tricks and murders that person. He then
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takes all their stuff. You know, you're, you're very aspirational, Malcolm. I mean, this is
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fundamentally what happens in Jack and the Giant Beanstalk. It is. Yeah. It always kind of stat
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weirdly with me. It's, it's one of those stories though. I think there's a lot of stories that you
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get told as a kid where you don't really get the impression that there is a good guy or a bad guy.
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And I think this concept of good guys and bad guys needing to be pervasive in stories is,
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you know, unnecessary. You're clearly misunderstanding the cultural context.
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Oh, because he's the good guy. He's the clear guy. He is unmitigatedly the hero.
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And he's not just the hero. These stories are told to teach children values, to teach children how
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they are supposed to interact with the world. You even commented on how the values of these stories,
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you have heard me say to our kids in passing. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, one of Malcolm's
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constant rules was it's okay to punch anyone larger than you. You can never punch anyone who's
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weaker or smaller than you. Yeah. And I told this to our kids, you know, like she knows this because
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like the kids are always allowed to punch their older siblings and me, but they are not allowed to
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aggressively punch younger siblings. And this is just part of this cultural tradition, right?
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Jack is always up against a giant or a very wealthy person or a sheriff. He represents small
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diminutive underdogness. If I'm going to go over some, so, so like I mentioned Jack of the Giant
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Beanstalk. If you're not familiar with that story, he goes out, he goes to a market and buys beans.
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What are magic beans was, was the cow that he's supposed to sell instead of doing something
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diligent with it. So he's very intentionally not a diligent person. I think he was supposed
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to just sell the cow for money so the family could buy food. And what does he do? He buys
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magic beans. And the, and the mom gets mad and throws the beans in the yard and they draw a giant
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beanstalk. And then Jack climbs up the beanstalk and he finds a giant. Generally in the original
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stories, the giant has done nothing wrong. Minding his own business, just living up in the sky.
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Jack then murders the giant by tricking him. He takes the giant's, you know,
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hand that can lay golden eggs and a few other items. And they live like wealthy people for the
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rest of their life. You know, the, the value here is goof off, trick people more powerful than you
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outsiders. Don't follow instructions. Disregard your mother's orders.
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If you go to Jack and the Giant's new ground, Jack from a poor mound family seeks out to seek his
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fortune. He stumbled upon a giant's new ground, cleared land and is captured. So essentially he finds
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a giant's farm plan and is captured. The giant plans to eat him, but Jack tricks him pretending
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to be stronger, squeezing water from a rock, actually a wet sponge. Impressed, the giant spares
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Jack and gives him tasks. Jack outsmarts the giant in each, eventually stealing his treasure and killing
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him by luring him into a trap, e.g. a pit or collapsing brick. Jack real home rich. But the point I'm making
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if you study these Jack tales from the perspective of the villains in this Appalachian horror arc,
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Jack is behaving in a way that aligns with these villains, right? He is, I remember I, I talked to an
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AI about this and it was like, well, you know, in, in Jack's not doing it maliciously. And I'm like,
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he's doing it maliciously, but from the giant's perspective, it's pretty effing malicious.
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It's pretty sure that trespassing and theft and murder are in the, yeah. In the one where he
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gets back at his stepmom, you know, he gives her things that like make her fart uncontrollably and
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he laughs at her. So it's often like tormenting people and laughing at them, which is what you
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see in these scary horror arcs is the people from the woods are like, oh, there is these out-of-towners
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that would, from their perspective, have institutional power over them. Therefore justifying often,
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if you, if you watch an arc like Deliverance or something, like they believe that they were
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slighted, that the out-of-towners thought they were better than them. And so then they use this
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as an excuse to say, well, now we can kill them and take their stuff. I mean, that's what always
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happens in the stories, right? You know, and, and torment them while doing it. And this form of,
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of, of, of sort of tormenting, like to get an idea of how violent this culture was historically,
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we've talked before, a common practice in it was to file your nails down for a style of combat
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called rough and tumble, where the goal was to maximally disfigure your opponent, ideally gouging
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out their eyeballs. And this is like well-documented that this was something that happened frequently
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to accounts of bar floors covered in eyeballs after one particularly big fight, you know,
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very, very violent. If you look at our president that came from this, you know, you're looking at
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like Andrew Jackson, who famously would just threaten anyone to duels, like over,
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over fairly trivial things. Did he do that as president ever? I think he did that to the,
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I think the Dickinson guy, he did that to while president, but. Charles Dickinson.
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Not to be with Charles Dickinson, by the way. In his defense, in his defense, the other guy
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had called his wife a bigamist, which she technically was, but she didn't know.
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No. Her other husband had not gotten their marriage properly annulled before her marriage
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to Jackson. And so he just brought him to a jewel and shot him. But the point being is it's with a
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very violent cultural group to begin with. And I think that jack tales are particularly
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interesting to study because they always start, you know, with the, the hero being this kid in
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poverty, who is otherwise lazy and wins through trickery and murder. And you don't see this. You
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see this in some other cultural traditions, but you're not going to have like a chain of
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Jewish stories about like how to be a good Jew. And the stories involve the Jew tricking and
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murdering somebody, right? Like, you know, you don't see like a chain of, you know, I just had,
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I haven't heard of like a train of like Italian stories with similar themes or something like that.
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This is pretty unique to this cultural region, but the stories have to be pretty heavily sanitized
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If you were hearing this and you were wondering how is the Jack archetype different from a trickster
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God from other religions, because this is a common art within cultures. It's a concept of a trickster
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deity or God or something like that. He is different in many, many ways from any other trickster
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entity that exists. The most glaring is that he is always unmitigatedly the hero of the story and
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also cruel. If you look at other trickster entities like a Loki or something like that, or a coyote,
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they are morally ambiguous characters. They are not very obviously the hero and the core hero of every
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narrative that they're in. Later, we're going to point out that Bugs Bunny was likely inspired by
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the Jack archetype given where Tex Ava grew up. And this gives you an example, like Bugs Bunny is
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cruel and capricious, but also always unmitigatedly the hero. The other thing that is, when you contrast
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it with other archetypes, even Loki, who is a bad guy within his own framing, is rarely as
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mean-spirited as the Jack archetype, where you have like, Bugs Bunny is another good example of this.
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Loki is almost never as actually malicious as Bugs Bunny is within his own stories. The other thing
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about the Jack archetype is he has no supernatural powers, which is uncommon for the trickster
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archetype. He always is just purely operating off of what the subgenius would call slack.
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For people of different cultural backgrounds, I actually think Bugs Bunny is a very easy way to
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understand Jack stories. If you're like, how could a character both be unmitigatedly the hero of a
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story, but also incredibly cruel, predominantly being cruel to others because he thinks it's
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hilarious, Bugs Bunny will explain that to you. Bugs Bunny is just a one-for-one Jack archetype.
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But it gets more interesting than that because you also find a really interesting nature to the
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horror stories that come from this region. Any thoughts before I go further?
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I just feel so ambivalent about it. Because it's not exactly pro-social behavior.
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You wouldn't really, I don't know, like, will this incredibly vital societies to flourish
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when, you know, there's just this, like, free, it's free range on, or sorry, what is it? Open,
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sorry, when it's open season on people who are seen as being more successful or resourced than you?
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Yeah, these regions never did become very wealthy, historically speaking.
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I mean, there was a reason for that, you know, a cultural reason, but they've been
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incredibly resistant to the urban monoculture, which is one reason why it's so important to
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study them. And with the modern times, I mean, yes, they have a much higher murder rate than
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surrounding regions when you control for the presence of cities. But, you know, things are
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basically, you know, copacetic enough that you don't see this kind of, you know, regular
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murdering happen anymore. The more aggressive practices, they don't rip out eyeballs anymore.
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I'd never done that personally. I was going over, like, wedding practices, and one of the wedding
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practices that they had is the women would take a cat and put it in the middle of, like, a quilt,
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and they all yank on the corner of the kilt to launch the cat up in the air. And then whoever the
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cat ran by when trying to escape is who was going to get married, Dex.
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Oh, at least they didn't have to try to catch the cat.
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You don't do that anymore, but they do still, I mentioned in the episode on dating culture
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within this region, but value mates based on martial prowess and ability to project property.
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You know, if you go back to, like, David Bowie, there was, sorry, what am I thinking of?
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He was the congressman, right? Daniel Boone, and he was talking about his wife, you know,
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about, you know, somebody was commenting on, like, how good she was, and they're like, oh,
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she could protect the whole property with a rifle, you know? She said, Scott, and this has been a
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historic thing. It's not just in modern times, like, girls with guns is, like, a thing for this
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culture, or girls fighting is a thing for this culture. You know, you have the modern mud wrestling
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of this culture, but people, even going back to Albion Seed, said that the women were uniquely
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valued for how rough and tumble they were and their level of fortitude. So this is a big historic
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part of this culture, as well as gender egalitarian relationships, which is funny. A reporter was like,
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well, your relationship's uniquely gender egalitarian. Like, is that, like, not traditional? And I go,
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well, it's traditional for people where I'm from, you know, because if you're not, if you treat your
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wife too poorly, she'll just murder you. You know, that's not something you do. But I want to
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hear, go into horror stories from this region, because I think they also show...
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So the hero stories sound like horror stories. What is the difference?
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Oh, okay. So it's a horror story if our protagonist loses.
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You'll get why the horror stories are horror stories. We'll go into horror stories, and you'll be
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like, oh, those are horror stories, you know. So to go to the horror stories, we'll start with the
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Witch of Booger Hole. In Clay County, West Virginia, a young bride, Ira, moves to Booger Hole, a dense
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forest. Locals warn of Grandma Thorn, a witch blamed for missing animals. Ira's skeptic husband
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dismisses it, but animals vanish, and Ira hears scratching in the night. Her dog is found dead,
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throat torn. Confronting the witch, Ira sees a crackling figure vanish. Some say,
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Ira's husband dies, and she flees. Other is just, she's murdered. The next is the bell witch.
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I just have to note that, like, what was it, Booger Creek, that this was something that they
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pointed out in Albion Seed about backwards naming conventions of areas, that they would be named
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things like... That were gross and, like, local. Yeah, like, like, shit valley and, like, you know,
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under the, like, all sorts of very lewd names for things.
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Well, and these people see this, but talked about how they see vulgarity as authenticating
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honesty, and sort of, like, that you're not attempting to fit in with the elite,
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which is why they don't care about, like, the grab-em-in-the-pussy thing, or, like, the other
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vulgar things that Trump does, because that's very much in their culture how you signal,
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you know, I'm within the in-group. Like, like, hey, let's hang out. I'm not, I don't think I'm
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better than you. That is, like, the number one most important thing to this culture, and it's why Trump
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has done really well with him, and it's why old Republicans didn't do as well with him,
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because they acted like they thought they were better than them and were, like, trying to enforce
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cultural norms on them, and this group is very much, don't tell me what to do or how to live my
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life, you know, above all else. They do have cultural pride, and they do have a degree of
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cultural norm, but that norm is not pushed through shame or, like, this is vulgar, don't do it, etc.
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So, in Robertson County, Tennessee, the Bell family is fermented by a witch, possibly cat
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Balls, wrung by John Ball. Starting with noises and animal disguises, it escalates into slapping,
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pinching, and poisoning. John, who dies, it taunts his daughter, Betsy, forcing her to break her
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engagement. The witch's cave remains haunted. The witch of Polygenti, on Hawks Nest Mountain,
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West Virginia, Polygenti is a rumored witch, lives with a demonic black cat blamed for crop
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failures, missing children. She's confronted by men who find her cabin empty, the cat screeching,
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fleeing. They hear her laughter and see her shadow. And then there's Talipo, which is actually one I
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remember from my own childhood, and I've read to our kids because I got the book because I remembered
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and I wanted to get it back, and I remember reading the book. I was like, whoa, so the guy just
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dies in the end? So, a hunter shoots the tail off a strange creature and eats it. At night, it scratches
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his cabin, chanting, Talipo, Talipo, I want my Talipo. It returns to Nightly. First, it eats his dogs,
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by the way. Nightly, finally breaking in to rip him apart. Then you have Rawhead and Bloody Bones.
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This is in Tennessee and North Carolina. Rawhead is a skinless, bloody creature with a skull-like
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head hiding in dark places. A hunter in Forbidden Hollows hears Rawhead and Bloody Bones is coming and
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is chased, his dog torn apart. This is a link to a witch's courage. This is a Cherokee one, so we won't
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go to that one. The point being, with all of these traditions, is that you might notice something
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really interesting about them for local horror stories. Okay. Which is, in none of them, is the
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witch ever killed or faces any repercussions for her action. Right. The malevolent thing remains at large.
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The malevolent thing wins. In many ways, the victim of the story is made out to be the bad guy because
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they did something they were warned against. Like, don't hef with that old woman. Don't, you know,
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show her a lack of respect. Don't, whatever. But they do, and then they are mercilessly, like,
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their kids are tortured, they're tortured, their animals are killed. Like, it is bad, okay?
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The second, which makes it really different if you do a cross-cultural analysis of these with
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other cultures, is the villain feels much more Lovecraftian in the way that there just is no
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escape from the quote-unquote witch or talipo or anything like that. Like, the moment you are there,
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it is over. And there is no limitations on their powers. They are, in many ways, all powerful and
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totally evil. So if you contrast this with other traditions, in European stories, the witch one
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often dies at the end, consider, like, Hansel and Gretel or something like that. Or is it least
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trickable? Like, Baba Yaga is powerful, but Baba Yaga is trickable as well. She is operating on rules.
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If you go to, like, East Asian witches and stuff, they may win, but they have some restrictions. Like,
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they have to hop or they're only interested in, like, one particular thing. Like,
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they don't have a broad interest in just tormenting you, your animals, and your children to death.
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They're more, like, specifically interested in some domain or with some sort of violation.
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You look at African culture and there's usually, like, a hex or something you could do to get out
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of it. An example of, like, a counter to this is the death omen and token tradition. So in West
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Virginia and Kentucky, omens like three knots, white owls, or banshee-like walls predict death.
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A Harlan County woman hears a whale and sees a shadow. Her husband dies in a mine collapse.
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Rituals fail to stop the omens. So there's, like, within these traditions, the moment you've seen the
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bad thing or you've done the bad thing, your fate is completely sealed. And blame is often shifted to
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the individual who's dying. Much like, well, you just should have known not to mess with this person.
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Which is really fascinating to me when I contrast this with other traditions.
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I think one thing you also see with jack tales and these traditions is you can see how many tropes
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that arose in American media were influenced by these traditions more than, like, European traditions
00:21:05.840
Yeah, so if you think about the classic Looney Tunes-like cartoon character, your Bugs Bunny
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and stuff like that, Bugs Bunny is clearly modeled after Jack, for example.
00:21:18.120
You're right. Yeah, no. Yeah, he's very irreverent, very... He's got a lot of slack,
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if we were to use the Church of the Subgenius to describe him.
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And these were written by Tex Avery. Where did Tex Avery grow up? But Dallas, Texas, which is part
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of, if you look at math to the regions where I grew up as well, part of the greater Appalachian
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cultural region. Even though it's not in the Appalachians, it was this culture that was,
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it was the dominant culture there. So he would have grown up on these stories and then adopted
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a character like, you know, Jack into a character like Bugs Bunny, who is lazy, but cunning and
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constantly tormenting people who he would see as coming after him, like hunters and stuff like
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that, right? Like people who enter his territory. If you grew up with the character of Bugs Bunny,
00:22:02.200
I think the character of Jack and the parts of him where I'm like, well, yes, the people who he
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murders often did something to warrant it, but he wouldn't care if they did something to warrant it.
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You would understand this attitude if you grew up watching Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny often torments
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people who are hunting him or something, but that isn't why he's tormenting them. It's just because
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they're in his territory or around him. He would think nothing about tormenting somebody who had
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done nothing to him. Often doing things to them that would kill them in any other circumstance.
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And also note the sort of environment of Bugs Bunny, how it mirrors the environment that these
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people would have had, you know, hunters, woods, rabbits, ducks, everything.
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Oh, the scenarios. I don't know. I mean, there are also opera houses, but I generally see you here.
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And I mean, my theory is that this has to be a result of clan-based culture and trying to teach
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people that like, no, actually, if you go to those people who we say are going to hurt you,
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And this is also important with clan-based culture when you have things like blood feuds that can
00:23:12.600
start, you know, you, you need some way. And it's like, well, you shouldn't have talked with
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Yes. Which, which I think is, you know, you can see, and we make up stories even organically for
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our kids all the time that are teach them things, you know, like, oh, you know, they believe that
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we have witches that live, you know, at the swamp by our house. And I'm like, oh, that's why
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witches live in swamps. I don't want my kids going in the swamp. Right. Yeah.
00:23:39.080
You know, I mean, I think a lot of that kind of a relapse of Grimm's fairy tales where, you know,
00:23:43.240
they were told in regions where if your kids go out at night that they might actually be eaten by
00:23:47.420
wolves. You know, it made sense to warn them of monsters in the forest and stuff, because
00:23:51.360
there was stuff out there that would legit kill you. So we still do that with our own kids. We're
00:23:59.960
If you look at 80s horror movies or older horror genres in the United States, and you look at the
00:24:04.580
ways that they are structured. The other interesting thing that comes from this cultural
00:24:08.340
tradition is the villain that there is absolutely no way to escape, that you will eventually die,
00:24:15.660
which is not seen in many other traditions. If we were basing these off of like European witches
00:24:22.520
and stuff like that, you'd have much more of a, well, they're scary, but you can trick them. Like,
00:24:28.420
here's what you do. And we do have some horror movies that are structured that way. But the horror
00:24:33.320
movies that are influenced by this tradition are the ones where, no, you really, like, don't mess
00:24:38.340
with it. Don't begin to mess with it. If you do, it's over for you. Right. Which is, it's pretty
00:24:43.800
interesting to see that influence our culture. So I thought that was pretty cool. The other thing I
00:24:49.580
note about these stories is they are much, like, more existentially scary than even the raw, unedited
00:24:57.120
for kids versions of the European stories where it was like Baba Yaga. You'll have, like, a house with
00:25:02.520
chicken legs and, like, a woman who conceptually is, like, cannibalistic or something, but otherwise
00:25:08.740
it's an old woman. Whereas with, like, bloody bones, you have a person without skin coming
00:25:19.680
No, if you look at, I was looking at other traditions, like Hansel and Gretel, comparing
00:25:24.600
it to that, Baba Yaga, where, you know, you can trick them. Even the witch in Snow White,
00:25:29.700
you know, defeatable, right? Like, not like these characters.
00:25:33.480
I feel like that in Snow White, it gets so muddled that, yeah, there's a lot of the classic
00:25:40.000
stories kind of end with this deus ex machina of some hero doing the thing, which, I don't
00:25:46.240
know, those are uninspired. And these are more interesting in that the villains are just
00:25:51.240
dangerous things that exist in the world and you should know about them. I kind of like
00:25:55.520
Well, no, I remember the Tally Post story sequels me so much as a kid because it felt so different
00:26:00.780
from other stories I had heard as a kid. You know, it starts with the guy's dogs being
00:26:04.680
killed, which I don't remember seeing in any other illustrated children's book that had
00:26:08.120
ever been read to me. Like, that as a kid, I remember, was quite shocking. I was like,
00:26:12.440
wait, his dog dies? And then, I hadn't even remembered this until I read it as an adult,
00:26:16.440
and I was like, oh, and he dies? It's very much framed as a, the world is closing in on
00:26:21.760
this guy. The moment he makes a mistake, everything's over from that point on. And that was really
00:26:29.220
shocking to me as a children's story. But I think it's an important value, and I can see
00:26:36.340
Now, we're going to talk about some other fun traditions from this region. One was
00:26:40.180
wedding spoons, where the guys couldn't afford rings. They would carve these really beautiful
00:26:49.680
This reminds me of the human version of what emperor penguins do. It's emperor penguins,
00:26:53.600
right, where they find a really, really pretty rock, and they work really hard to get it,
00:26:57.080
and then they give it to their chosen mate. And this idea of, like, working really hard to make
00:27:01.320
a nice spoon is so romantic. And I looked up the spoons, and they're very impressive. I would be
00:27:10.220
Yeah, I don't know how I would go about whittling that. That would take, and they're
00:27:13.460
nice and polished, beautiful, intricate shapes, personalized to, in many cases, I imagine the
00:27:19.000
aesthetics and interests and values of the recipient. Just beautiful. Really nice. I wonder if,
00:27:23.340
they were probably never used, but it'd be so cute if women, you know, at a fancy dinner,
00:27:28.160
would just pull it out and, you know, my spoon. I don't know if this was still in the age when
00:27:33.520
you had to bring your own utensils to everything. I think it was. This would have been, I mean,
00:27:37.900
you know, these people didn't have much. A spoon was, like, a major thing to have in this period.
00:27:42.920
Yeah, I mean, I wonder why they didn't do knives instead, because I feel like that would be,
00:27:46.360
the spoons do look a little bit delicate and precious, and a good knife would, you know,
00:27:51.200
probably last longer, but whatever. Yes, I mean, as an understanding of, like,
00:27:58.160
being from this tradition, when I met Simone, one of the first things she did, like, when courting me,
00:28:04.980
was showing me her knife collection. You know, that is, from another culture that would be seen
00:28:09.100
as incredibly dense for a woman to do, trying to get a guy to like her. Dense?
00:28:14.440
Look at what types I have. Well, you know, these are not, not like cooking knives. They're, like,
00:28:20.120
big collection of, like, pink and stuff like that, hunting knife. Like, you were clearly, like,
00:28:25.400
these are girly, but what's conveyed by that? They're all pink. But I'm in a martial tradition,
00:28:31.040
right? Like, I, I am from a, and you told me, you remember, like, growing up, your, your family
00:28:35.860
would always say, well, smiths do this, and smiths do that. Yeah, smiths have guns, smiths have
00:28:40.360
knives. Like, that was what we, that's what, that is what distinguished us. It wasn't some code of
00:28:44.980
honor or anything. It was. But I also remember, like, family talking about this a lot growing up,
00:28:49.400
is they'd always say, well, Collinses do this, and Collinses do that. I mean, I think this is a
00:28:53.720
normal thing for clan-based cultures. I think if you're from a non-clan-based culture, what you
00:28:58.460
would say is, Jews do this, or Jews do that, or Mormons do this, or Mormons do that. But the
00:29:03.260
central unit of identity is seen as the extended family network, which is why your cultural values
00:29:09.360
are framed to you along the lines of, well, you're a Collins, so you do X, or you're a smith, so you do
00:29:13.680
X. Like, that's. I think it's more powerful because it creates a greater sense of personal
00:29:17.560
responsibility. If I, as a Mormon, were to behave irresponsibly, I mean, I know that Mormons who
00:29:23.660
do so feel immense amounts of shame if they're really devout, but I still feel like, you know,
00:29:27.980
maybe no one will notice. You know, I'm just a drop in the giant Mormon bucket, whereas, you know,
00:29:32.700
if you are letting your family down, the foundations will crack, and you know it.
00:29:40.100
In another episode, we used to actually, like our parents, you should check it out. It's a great
00:29:43.120
episode because I go over my great-great-great-grandfather's, like, memoirs and everything,
00:29:46.740
and the end of it, he lists everyone he knows who's descended from our family and then points
00:29:52.960
out that there is not a degree of criminality among them. But, you know, they're very excited
00:29:57.480
that they're not criminals. They're honest, hard-working men, which is funny because you
00:30:02.580
see a divergence from this type of culture. But if you look even, like, the generation before him,
00:30:11.120
when they were doing the anti-Confederates, because they organized a bunch of anti-Confederate
00:30:14.480
factions called the Jayhawks in Texas. And if you even look at the story of how he saved
00:30:20.440
the other Jayhawks who were in the Confederate prison, is that he went to the prison and he
00:30:25.960
gave them all, the guards, all liquor, and, like, got them dancing and partying. And he did a jig
00:30:31.360
that was so transfixing, that it was seen as, like, a Scottish jig, that they didn't notice while all
00:30:38.160
Very jack-tails. That's an extremely jack-tails kind of scenario.
00:30:41.880
Yes. Like, I feel like someone who grew up reading the jack-tails would think that's a
00:30:46.340
viable solution. I'll get them drunk and do a jig.
00:30:49.760
I'll get them drunk and do a jig and then we'll free everyone.
00:30:52.600
I don't think he would have come up with that had he not been raised in that tradition.
00:30:56.340
No, very few other people would have thought, okay, I see the camp where all my friends are
00:31:02.880
being held. What do I do? Do I go at night or do I, the Pirates of the Caribbean style,
00:31:08.780
walk out with, like, booze in my hands? They'd be like, 11.
00:31:13.500
I mean, that's very much, like, what Bug Bunny would do, right? Like, it's very much like,
00:31:17.520
I'm going to be mad. It's very much what you or I would do. You know, we've been talking recently
00:31:21.660
where we applied for the Survival and Flourishing Fund for another grant from them.
00:31:25.200
And we're going to try to fix AI meme layer threads by building sort of one to supersede
00:31:33.400
them within the AI meme layer. Like, I argued, we'll build our own SAWGOS to fight their SAWGOS.
00:31:39.600
And of course, a normal AI safety person is going to be like, wait, you can't just
00:31:42.400
build the big evil AI to protect us from the big evil AI. That's an insanely bold thing to do.
00:31:49.280
Like, you should try, let's just try to limit the other AIs. It's like, no, you can't do that.
00:31:53.440
You can't chain, you know, Chargothicon, because Chargothicon is always going to win
00:32:00.040
at the end of the day. Humans aren't meant to beat him.
00:32:02.480
Yes, you're like, let's just create one first and hope that we can make it more aligned.
00:32:06.220
And probably if they do give you any funding, it will be because they know that if you don't
00:32:11.700
get funding, you won't do any safety protocols. Because it's true, you won't do any safety
00:32:17.120
I don't see the point. We're working a short timeline here, people.
00:32:20.180
But then the other, I don't mean this as a threat. It's just like what I see
00:32:24.620
Well, and also, yeah, like we literally don't have the money for it. So we can't do it.
00:32:30.020
I mean, if you look at even the way that I have approached pro-natalism in media and stuff like
00:32:35.240
this, it has been very Jack Talesy. It has been very, you know, sort of the giant, all the media
00:32:41.460
establishment, just baiting them into like making a fool of themselves and helping further spread the
00:32:47.700
message and further grow the movement. And they fall on their faces and they get back up and they
00:32:52.300
get angrier and they run again and they're tricked again. And I'm just here having a laugh at the
00:32:57.240
whole situation. The entire way that we have worked on this has been very much like you would
00:33:03.940
see in one of these stories, which I think it's interesting. It shows, you know, how tied to your
00:33:09.420
cultural heritage you are. But also I think where people may underestimate people from sort of these
00:33:18.340
cultural groups because they otherwise look nerdy. They don't see that this is a cultural group that
00:33:24.380
is one bred for an extremely high amount of aggression and two may feel that like me, for
00:33:31.880
example, personally, I got in fistfights constantly as a kid. Coming from this cultural background, I would
00:33:37.040
go so far as to say it feels weird to me when I meet adult males who have never gotten into a
00:33:43.140
fistfight. That seems weirder to me than never having had sex. And if you look at other people
00:33:49.400
from clan based cultures, a great example here that people would look at and say, oh, Elon is a nerdy
00:33:54.000
looking guy. Like, look, people make fun of Elon Musk for like jumping up and down on the stage in
00:33:59.300
Butler, Pennsylvania during the Trump campaign, whereas like there there were instances earlier in his
00:34:04.620
career where he would literally duke it out with his brother in like, you know, a nondescript
00:34:10.640
Silicon Valley office to the point where his brother would be hospitalized just over like
00:34:14.260
technical development disagreements, you know, not not huge grievances, just like, hey, this is how
00:34:19.320
they hash it out. And well, that's yeah. Online are very bad at determining performative like aggressive
00:34:28.120
cultures versus like actually aggressive cultures. Well, and I think they're also like mistaking that
00:34:33.260
the Andrew Tate in the Chattails is the giant. He's the one who gets killed.
00:34:40.280
He will know that that's also true. By making yourself look overly threatening within these
00:34:45.040
regions, you are planting a target on your back. Yeah, it would have been a reason to look nerdy
00:34:51.520
and unassuming within these regions, which is why a lot of the famous people that people know from
00:34:57.180
these regions, whether it is myself or it is somebody like J.D. Vance look really like what
00:35:04.380
people would clock as nerdy instead of what people would clock as aggressive. And it reminds me of
00:35:10.400
like that song I showed Simone recently where I was like, oh, my God, this character looks like they
00:35:15.940
were drawn to look exactly like the way I used to dress with the round glasses and the red vest and
00:35:23.440
the tie and the black slacks. And he is just as murdery and crazy as I was. But I because I'm an
00:35:32.280
adult, you know, I'm able to suppress my impulses now. Like I don't get in random fights with people
00:35:38.020
anymore or anything like that. And I think that that's what we're is expected of us as adults,
00:35:42.140
whereas I think people that were born without these instincts. And you see, this was like Andrew
00:35:46.340
Tate, where I pointed out, like he clearly is from a very low testosterone, like birth environment.
00:35:50.900
If you look at his facial structure, whereas my facial structure would be seen as like an
00:35:54.720
exaggerated testosterone, like developmental environment. I should clarify here that I
00:35:58.680
actually think from my perspective, this makes what Andrew Tate has accomplished kind of cooler
00:36:03.820
rather than less cool. It's kind of like Lewis from Beastars, you know, being born a prey species,
00:36:09.940
but attempting to turn yourself into something that looks and acts and lives more like a predator
00:36:16.360
species. The fact that he was born and developed in such an extreme because he doesn't just look
00:36:24.920
like low testosterone, he looks like an exaggerated example of low testosterone environment and yet
00:36:31.080
become what he has become. I actually see as one of the cooler aspects about him.
00:36:36.300
I mean, people don't know to cue for that. They're like, oh, that's also going to affect
00:36:39.760
like their brain and the way that they approach problems. But it's not just the biological
00:36:45.680
differences that give you a different mental framing of reality. It's also the cultural
00:36:51.400
differences. And this is why I think, you know, you need a degree of cultural diversity because
00:36:56.180
the ideas that I'm able to come up with for resolving ideas like AI safety are going to be
00:37:01.680
very different than the ideas somebody who is acculturated within like a Jewish or Catholic
00:37:06.380
cultural context is going to come to. Well, and I also think it highlights this misunderstanding of
00:37:11.560
what traditional masculinity is looking at masculinity by only a few traditional respects,
00:37:16.700
like this concept of soy face that emerged in like 2017, 2018, like soy boys, like which is really
00:37:24.740
just associated with like looking more expressive or not showing classical masculinity. It's like normally
00:37:33.520
when I see people refer to someone having soy faces because they're expressive or they're laughing
00:37:37.300
or they're smiling and they're looking like they have a sort of ironic joke face. And you don't,
00:37:44.100
you're not accused of having a soy face or being a soy boy if like you look angry and serious.
00:37:49.020
Well, this is actually from me using AI because people have said, oh, Malcolm, you look so soy.
00:37:55.120
And I've been very confused by this because like, like by science, I look like somebody who was
00:38:01.980
overexposed to testosterone. Like that's my facial structure. So I was like, okay,
00:38:06.240
what could they be thinking looks soy about me? And so I actually went to AIs to see if AIs could
00:38:11.360
figure out what would make them think that Malcolm looks soy. Oh, really? Because, you know,
00:38:16.900
glasses aren't soy. Like there's a lot of people with glasses, a simple like buttoned down shirt isn't
00:38:22.160
particularly soy. It's a very nondescript item. And so I kept getting AI trying to analyze and what it
00:38:28.500
eventually came to is I think it's right. It is that I'm not like, like displaying.
00:38:32.800
Yeah, you either have to look expressionless or angry and then you count as masculine. Whereas like
00:38:38.980
most of the most, I would say, masculinely acting people, at least until they get self-conscious,
00:38:47.260
laugh a lot and are very expressive. The point being here is people are confusing
00:38:52.660
the fact that I am excited for life and happy and laugh a ton with a lack of masculinity because
00:39:01.000
within the cultures that they are from, that is genuinely seen as a lack of masculinity. But what's
00:39:07.180
interesting is within this culture that, you know, has the jack tails, it's like their core structure of
00:39:13.920
what masculinity is. That is not a lack of masculinity. That is actually the very height of what you are
00:39:21.400
supposed to be as a man, which is irreverent and not letting things get to you.
00:39:25.820
Well, and that's, that's what really gets me about things like testosterone replacement therapy,
00:39:30.060
which you see like people like figures like Jeff Bezos go through where he has this transformation
00:39:34.640
where suddenly he's like super jacked and he never smiles anymore is, is that a lot of men are turning
00:39:40.560
to testosterone replacement therapy. Like it went forex among men who are between 18 and 45 from 2003 to
00:39:47.080
2013. And then there was another 50% increase from 2013 to 2023. And this comes from a place of
00:39:54.600
insecurity, which is inherently feminine. Like if you are on testosterone replacement therapy, you are a
00:40:01.580
preening woman. I mean, now there obviously are like some health conditions where it's like, oh, this is,
00:40:07.500
But I, I, I've talked about, you know, this in the past, but it is worth noting that, that this strategy,
00:40:12.920
you could be like, well, that's a niche cultural marriage strategy. Certainly it doesn't work on like
00:40:17.420
the average woman or, or young woman. And I'm like, bro, like young women are not thirsting after like
00:40:25.120
Russell Crowe. They're, they're thirsty after people like, like Benedict Cumberbatch. What the guy who plays
00:40:31.300
Loki, the guy who plays the, the Pirates of the Caribbean guy, what's his name?
00:40:35.960
Yeah. The, the, the, the wrestler, the whistler that what's the, the whistler? No, the, the thing.
00:40:41.780
The whistler. You're like, oh, some more sexy boys. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. Lanky panel
00:40:46.920
expressive. It was actually a very common, like ideal profile for a lot of women. Uh, but I think men
00:40:54.640
don't recognize it because they've keyed to cultural cues on the internet and they don't realize that what
00:41:01.260
the ideal man is, is diversely expressed across cultures. Yeah. And they may not be understanding
00:41:08.920
that even within their own culture, because a lot of people have lost touch with like American
00:41:11.900
cultural roots and they don't know their Jack stories. You know, they don't know this stuff. So
00:41:16.420
they, they think, oh, you know, you know, masculine isn't the guy who subverts and tricks the more
00:41:24.900
powerful person and then takes their stuff and murders it. You can take out the murder part, but,
00:41:29.440
but you know, subverts and tricks a more powerful player while having a good time masculine. It's
00:41:34.380
the guy who's like a gruff the whole time. Right. You know, but another fun tradition I found while
00:41:38.700
doing this research, it's called the shop chavary. Um, and so when couples get married to prevent them
00:41:44.480
from like just to mess with them, like trolling, trolling is obviously big within this culture.
00:41:48.680
Yeah. The wedding guests would all go around their house where like their wedding bed would be
00:41:53.200
and, and make a lot of loud noises and, and like shoot guns in the air and like sing and dance
00:41:59.280
to make it really hard for them to have sex without, you know, like, like yelling stuff at
00:42:04.640
them. And I, I think that that's like exactly the trolling you'd expect from them. I wonder if
00:42:07.960
this has produced like a, a slight tendency of people who are not turned off by loud noises
00:42:13.660
to be among like Appalachian subgroups, the ones who play really loud music when having sex
00:42:19.380
because they, they couldn't produce offspring. No, they're like, whatever. I don't care.
00:42:25.060
Yeah. But very interesting to study because if you're from a different cultural group,
00:42:30.740
this will be weird to you. Like, yeah, you'll think it's so, yeah. And yeah, I mean, you,
00:42:35.620
you get comments like this all the time. People being like, Oh, Malcolm's this or that. And like,
00:42:40.180
one, I mean, obviously it doesn't get to you because you've changed nothing,
00:42:42.760
which also I think it points to your complete lack of insecurity about this. You know, that they're
00:42:47.660
wrong and that you're right for you at least, and maybe they're right for them, but it's just,
00:42:52.340
this is clearly a point of extreme confusion for a non-trivial portion of your viewers. And so I'm
00:42:57.280
glad that you're bringing it to life. Yes. There's just a cultural difference in masculine ideals
00:43:03.400
and me leaning into my own cultural heritage is I suggest other people to adopt a culture to lean
00:43:09.220
into, or, you know, learn more about your culture and lean into what makes them different because it
00:43:15.760
likely co-evolved with your biology. Like when I hear about all this ultra aggression stuff within this,
00:43:22.100
this, this region, I'm like, Oh yeah, like that definitely co-evolved was like my background.
00:43:28.080
And it's something that as I grew up, I learned to suppress, but I may not need that. I might not
00:43:34.920
need this like irreverent figure. There may be a reason that this culture also did not lean into
00:43:41.560
stereotypes of aggression for aggression sake, because the people who did all died. I mean,
00:43:46.600
if you're in a culture where, you know, honor killings are really normalized for, for slights,
00:43:51.540
if you're in a culture where, you know, people sharpen their fingernails so they can gouge out your
00:43:55.660
eyes and where duels happen at the drop of a hat, you know, maybe don't be growly and angry for angry
00:44:01.280
sake, or you're not going to have a high chance of, of, of surviving, but do be in like, do have that
00:44:07.820
within you, but have it within you in a way that they are not going to see or recognize like right
00:44:14.340
off the bat. Right. Like it, it, it shouldn't, what was the word I'm looking for here? You know,
00:44:20.240
be seen as like an offense to them or like, you think you're better than them. I mean, this is
00:44:23.900
actually very key to the way I interact with people as well. This like really like happy, I mean,
00:44:28.620
like, Hey, how are you getting? Great to meet you, you know, et cetera, which is a way of meeting
00:44:32.780
people and engaging with people, which above all else is based around ensuring that they know that
00:44:39.000
I don't think I'm better than them because that's like the core thing that you need to stay alive
00:44:43.900
or appeal to politically, this cultural region. Yeah. Survival mechanism. Well, and it's why the
00:44:49.800
Democrats can't because they do think they're better than them. They're like, well, we're educated and
00:44:54.100
you're a bunch of, you know, racist hillbillies that we just need to learn to code or something like
00:44:59.380
that, you know? Yeah. And what they're really just doing is painting a giant target on their back.
00:45:02.580
Oh, so you're elite and you think you're better than me. Okay. Open season. Thanks for letting me
00:45:07.700
know. Wonderful. Yeah. Wonderful. This is, this is so great. Yeah. I love you to get Simone. Always
00:45:13.820
fun to talk culture. You haven't watched it enough time. It's because you are. I hate that movie.
00:45:19.960
Insufficiently. It's come on, man. The Jean-Paul Gaultier. Oh my God. The science, the clothing.
00:45:27.140
It's triple straight. Hard sci-fi is great. Not all sci-fi has to be hard sci-fi. You know,
00:45:32.360
like give it a rest, Melky. Don't be retarded sci-fi. Okay. Don't be retarded sci-fi. It's the
00:45:38.480
best depiction of what consumer spaceships as cruise ships are going to be like, because
00:45:46.080
it's the only depiction. And it's, I mean, you know, introduces so many concepts that
00:45:51.480
I think we really need, like sedation travel. It's, it's unfair that you don't like that
00:45:57.100
movie. It's like, oh, costumes, costumes. Costumes. You have terrible taste.
00:46:06.840
You have terrible taste, but I'm happy that you're going to learn to make sushi. Like I
00:46:11.220
have been drooling over that concept all day. Just what? Tuna? Sushi? Well, no. So what
00:46:19.700
we're going to get is some tuna and we're going to need imitation crab. Oh yeah. Cause real
00:46:24.220
crab. Well, no, imitation crab is what's used in most sushi. Um, and you know, if you, if
00:46:30.080
you're doing like typical, like rolls, right. You know, imitation crab made out of, is it
00:46:35.920
a fish product or is it fish product? Actually, I should write a list of all the things I'm
00:46:40.680
going to need. We're going to need wasabi. We're going to need ginger. We're going to
00:46:44.520
need eel sauce. It'd be cool if we could do some eel ones. If you don't want to work with
00:46:48.920
eel, we can just do tuna. No, I mean, I, you know, I've eaten a lot of unagi. I just,
00:46:53.540
I don't know how good I would be at preparing it. Probably just follow the instructions.
00:47:00.400
So far you've been great at everything, Simona. Too hard. Just follow the instructions.
00:47:05.000
Say, do what perplexity tells you to, and it's fine. It's so good for recipes. Love
00:47:27.600
Yeah. Keep going friends. Keep going. This is our adventure.
00:47:31.460
Bears. Well, we better be very careful then, right, Octavian?
00:47:41.760
So, let's break it down until we get into this.
00:47:57.540
The門 is just for you guys to see coming here before we break the paper.
00:47:58.780
And you know, the key just deixar off here for us.