Based Camp - Based Camp： Update On Our Lives & Going Viral

00:00:00.000 hello it is so exciting to be here with you guys again it has been years since we have put something

00:00:09.940 like this together but we've gotten a lot of requests so i am quite excited to uh try to

00:00:15.620 start doing this on the regular again yeah um so we saw that a surprising number of people actually

00:00:21.200 wanted to know what's gone on so i will give you a really quick rundown and then malcolm will say

00:00:26.880 more interesting things because he's the fun one but basically since we've last checked in with you

00:00:32.580 we have published depending on what you've watched um two or four more books the pragmatist guide to

00:00:38.880 sexuality the pragmatist guide to relationships the pragmatist's guide to governance and the

00:00:43.080 pragmatist's guide to crafting religion all ended up amazon bestsellers the guide to governance

00:00:48.420 congratulations malcolm was a wall street journal bestseller a few weeks back so that's a big

00:00:54.060 milestone for us we also saw our travel business through the pandemic we operate a travel

00:00:59.920 business dirty little secret of ours um it actually does pretty good work and we we survived as a team

00:01:05.860 the pandemic which was a big deal um we got into education reform and pronatalist advocacy um and we

00:01:13.840 also had uh depending on when you've last seen us two more kids or one more kid our latest kid

00:01:23.220 uh her name is titan invictus was selected using a cutting age uh new type of embryo selection which 0.95

00:01:32.180 ended up getting us covered in a piece by bloomberg which then led to us giving getting covered in a piece

00:01:38.200 by insider both related to our embryo selection and our pronatalist advocacy and then most recently

00:01:45.600 our pronatalist advocacy um which is just something we do on the side as something that we care about a

00:01:53.080 hobby got us featured in telegraph magazine which then led to a lot of people discussing front cover

00:02:00.920 front cover magazine continue a title along the lines of meet the elite super readers um

00:02:09.260 so uh that led to um a meme i think like meet the elite couple breeding to save humanity um and it is

00:02:19.820 it was a weird week following that so uh malcolm how do you feel about all this thing all these things

00:02:25.940 that happened well i think we learned a lot about how the internet works and how the current news cycle

00:02:33.620 works in ways that can help us manipulate it better in the future um and we've been experimenting with

00:02:39.000 that already uh which is really fun so one of the things that's really important to note in terms of

00:02:44.820 the various articles that covered us is this wasn't the first front page article about us um we actually

00:02:52.080 hit like the front page about 75 percent of it at the national post which is one of the top papers in

00:02:56.300 canada or the top paper depending on how you're counting um and that got us all uh nobody care

00:03:05.100 but under a different title that was more provocative and this is where i began to realize

00:03:18.500 sort of there's three categories of articles that we can pretty reliably predict how viral they're going

00:03:24.740 to go when they come out the lowest category of article is an honest article about us that is sort of

00:03:31.300 nuanced about our perspectives and the prenatalist stuff which we'll talk about in a future podcast

00:03:35.740 at some time um and an honest headlock um and those do very poorly like we immediately know no matter

00:03:43.880 how prominently they're featured they're going to do poorly the second so the insider piece was actually

00:03:49.040 behind a paywall and not a front page piece yet it was probably the second most viral piece on us

00:03:54.700 um and that one fit into the second category which is uh a dishonest piece and a dishonest headline

00:04:05.840 yeah well and specifically what malcolm is describing is um gosh okay i'm gonna look up the exact headline

00:04:13.980 um because you'll see like it's something that would make me um immediately

00:04:20.400 like bristle it the the title uh oh no i can't see beyond the paywall

00:04:28.020 the title is i'm sorry i'm trying to find it but now it's like literally paywalling me um

00:04:35.460 oh uh here i'll just do it yeah

00:04:38.100 billionaires like elon musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids

00:04:49.080 inside the movement to take control of human evolution yeah so that sounds at all yeah what

00:04:55.480 the movement's about uh it's about a sort of increasing access to fertility technology and

00:05:01.320 you know like in our case we were motivated to use it because um simone's mom died of cancer and we

00:05:07.940 didn't want our kids to get that and then you know with existing technology we're also able to select

00:05:12.280 against things like probability of developing depression and stuff like that but i would hardly say

00:05:16.340 that editing uh you know out uh things that we've had to struggle with that we don't want our kids

00:05:21.500 to have to struggle with would be considered like genetically superior kids or and yeah that i mean

00:05:27.340 the whole subtitle of the article implied that we think and that other tech billionaires think

00:05:34.600 that they are genetically superior which we first don't and the whole reason that we're involved in

00:05:39.500 pronatalist advocacy is because we really care about preserving and expanding pluralism and diversity

00:05:46.940 um so it it looks really bad but when people see a bunch of smug pasty nerds sitting in a preview 0.65

00:05:57.720 image below a title like that online what do they do they hate share it and they talk about how 0.71

00:06:04.340 disgusting these people are for thinking they're genetically superior and trying to populate the

00:06:09.640 earth with their disgusting genetics and i think that that is it's a good lesson in ideas ride through 0.98

00:06:21.060 the internet especially through places like twitter on waves of hate um instead of on waves of nuanced

00:06:26.800 conversation and our hope is that when we try to share information about the risks of a hard landing

00:06:36.740 on demographic collapse you know why we're in pronatalist advocacy in the first place um even if

00:06:41.960 we ride on a wave of hate to get to someone to sort of reach them with the issue that they may at first 0.99

00:06:47.940 look at that and bristle and say oh my god what assholes how could they possibly think they're superior 0.97

00:06:52.480 which is not the pronatalist video so let's not go too deep on it we won't go too deep but they'll 0.99

00:06:56.360 they'll end up reading the argument and say oh oh wait they're actually super reasonable and that's

00:07:02.460 not what they actually believe and yeah um which is something that trump did right um a lot uh he

00:07:08.940 would say his core strategy um but i haven't gotten to the best type of article so so one of trump's

00:07:15.340 core strategies was to say um something like oh you know we don't want to be like one of those

00:07:22.340 shitty countries in africa and the media of course is like ah he said a bad thing you're not supposed 0.61

00:07:27.920 to say those countries are shitty but your average person when he's promoting that hears that and 0.86

00:07:32.820 they're like but they are shitty right like we don't want to be like that um and uh that is sort of 0.98

00:07:40.280 how you play the press these days is you get them to say something that they think is preposterous

00:07:45.860 with enough of your own words that people can read it and be like oh maybe i'm not getting the full

00:07:50.520 story here maybe there's more to what they're saying than what is being reported that's being

00:07:54.340 said but then there's the very best type of story about you which is one with a dishonest headline

00:08:02.320 but um other than other than the headline it's pretty honest um and that is uh you know what 0.99

00:08:12.640 you're you're really hoping for because what that does is it allows sort of the idiots who see the 0.93

00:08:16.580 headline and then just want to go off on it to um go off on the headline um and then uh 0.99

00:08:24.300 the gives the people who want to argue against them enough ammunition to argue against them in

00:08:31.700 the comments and that's how you drive something to the top of social media these days sorry i took

00:08:36.620 off my glasses because these ones seem to be like lopsided i gotta figure out what's going on with this

00:08:40.300 um well so here's something i want to ask um because something that we're seeing among a lot of

00:08:45.560 our friend group like a lot of our friends have various causes that they care about and things

00:08:49.640 that they want to support um and yet their approach with both their own personal lives and also with

00:08:57.660 their issues is to never ever ever court controversy to only get puff pieces to um you know never never 0.97

00:09:06.300 look like an idiot for sure um i'm wondering why why there's so much care about this like do you have 0.88

00:09:15.620 any picture under or understanding of why people seem to want to be so private these days yeah so 0.99

00:09:21.480 first i think it's worth talking about why the controversies do so well in the existing social

00:09:25.880 media environment so uh i think a lot of us well uh you know older people uh we grew up with

00:09:32.420 facebook algorithms and what facebook algorithms do is they recommend you content from people who

00:09:38.740 uh you like their other content uh however a lot of the media cycle is driven by the twitter algorithm

00:09:44.720 and it doesn't work that way it recommends content based on um how well uh how much engagement an

00:09:54.020 individual piece of content is getting that's part of why uh twitter just doesn't really convert for

00:09:59.980 people so if you're a celebrity and you're trying to promote like a concert or something twitter

00:10:04.160 converts famously poorly because anything that's just promotional and not courting controversy just

00:10:09.900 does not do well on twitter which also makes twitter like a weird status symbol in our society to have

00:10:14.800 a lot of twitter followers because it's it's not really monetizable or even particularly good at

00:10:19.960 getting your message out unless you're willing to court controversy with everything you do this is one of

00:10:24.480 uh andrew tate's core strategies is he would make sound bites that were very offensive so people

00:10:29.700 would share them and he would try to be more reasonable in his long form content um i still

00:10:36.000 think you know maybe not that reasonable but that was his core strategy to to sort of moving up within

00:10:40.840 the media uh this is also how jordan peterson began to to get he would get in fights with reporters and

00:10:45.860 stuff and people would share that and then in his longer form content he was often more like muted and

00:10:51.320 and uh uh reasonable um and so that's a a common strategy but to your question there's this idea of

00:10:58.220 well i don't want anyone saying anything negative about me at all online and it's because you do get

00:11:01.540 a lot of hate right but the problem here is this strategy one does not work into changing the public

00:11:09.540 narrative or even getting yourself into the public narrative but in addition to that uh if you force

00:11:16.920 it if you blunt force it with like a family name or money it leads to terrible results to you uh two

00:11:24.100 examples i can think of are the uh coke uh daughter who right now is all like you guys don't know how 1.00

00:11:30.380 hard it's been for me there's this new york times like sponsored piece i keep getting that just makes

00:11:34.580 her look terrible um and then there is the uh henry and um what's her name megan megan megan and henry

00:11:46.020 uh thing harry harry harry and megan sorry i don't follow the the royal stuff but really what they mean

00:11:52.760 um you know this whole like privacy controversy what are they really saying when they say they

00:11:57.380 want privacy because obviously they don't want privacy privacy they want everyone talking about

00:12:00.780 them what they mean is they want to control what people are saying about them they want a very

00:12:06.260 specific narrative about them and what they don't like is when reporters break that very specific and

00:12:13.060 narrow narrative they're trying to convey the problem is is that specific and narrow narrative

00:12:18.200 narrative is of uh people who sort of fit this this progressive model or woke model or whatever

00:12:25.400 you want to call it of the ideal person oh i care about the environment oh i'm not elitist oh i'm and

00:12:33.260 when you try to do oh i care about you know whatever all of the hot button issues whatever the hot button

00:12:40.260 issue is today and when you try to sell that you come across as incredibly disingenuous and you just

00:12:45.780 court a lot of hate um if you look at the people and the youtubers and stuff like that who have done

00:12:50.660 well on the left they are typically far uh left of of i think what the ideal perfect woke person is

00:12:59.960 supposed to look like um because at least then they're saying interesting things and things that

00:13:05.000 engage people well and things that people share yeah i i think it's it's telling i i you one of your

00:13:10.820 friends after hearing this theory from you encourage you to read trust me i'm lying by ryan holiday and

00:13:17.540 i you know i i'm the one who reads and then i summarize everything to you but like basically

00:13:21.740 this confirmed everything um and ryan holiday is someone who used to or maybe still does manage

00:13:27.620 pr and and public relations related things for american apparel but would also do consulting for it

00:13:33.520 for people like tucker maxx who probably is only familiar to people who are millennials or older

00:13:37.740 um but he would he would start by he would basically trade up the chain so he would start by

00:13:43.580 even fabricating something uh very controversial at the bottom of a chain so when he was promoting

00:13:48.780 um a movie coming out about a guy named tucker maxx um he like literally defaced a billboard and then he

00:13:56.420 leaked a tip about it anonymously or one of tucker maxx's billboards um and then he leaked something

00:14:04.340 about that to a blogger or publication who then covered it and then that got picked up by other

00:14:09.220 publications who are trying to you know feed a ravenous news cycle and then eventually another

00:14:14.140 group defaced a billboard or poster related to the movie because they were caught up in this trend

00:14:19.300 um so ultimately it was all feeding into itself and i think we've definitely seen this on our end as

00:14:25.180 people for example cover the telegraph piece is the telegraph piece has a a misleading title um and

00:14:33.260 cover image and subtitle and um we've seen a lot of people cover it and often what happens is one person

00:14:40.140 covers it uh inaccurately and then a bunch of other people start covering it inaccurately as well

00:14:47.140 and that sort of trades along and the extent to which people really aren't checking or verifying

00:14:52.500 things in the vast majority of cases is pretty sobering really shocking to me at the guardian

00:14:56.620 which i had thought of as like a legitimate news source literally it was very clear they had read

00:15:02.320 nothing but headlines about pieces and some people criticizing us on twitter it was clear they hadn't

00:15:09.020 read an actual single word of any interview we had ever done and it was the guardian which really i

00:15:13.900 mean like trust me i'm lying guys like apparently this is a very good book for press strategy

00:15:18.580 yeah it was really weird to read that book and then like see this happen because i i reading that

00:15:25.560 book i was like well i like our theory i like our whole like you know controversy works hate works

00:15:30.140 etc but like i don't i don't know if people are like lack this much scrupulousness but no apparently

00:15:35.620 i mean if i can think of a single non-mainstream progressive intellectual who had risen to fame in

00:15:42.360 the last 10 years without it being on controversy i can't think of one yeah yeah yeah i guess i guess

00:15:51.560 you're right um controversy sells um resentment sells and i guess you wouldn't think it does like you

00:15:59.200 could also think that um what we had published about us in the telegraph for example which framed us

00:16:06.580 as elite in quotes um would have been seen let's say if people are modeling the evil us that they

00:16:14.640 hate in that photo they probably think that we we like asked to be called elite or we like announced

00:16:20.700 that like oh we'll do the interview but only if you call us elite in the title because i'm an elite

00:16:26.800 gamer uh um but i i think that uh people people may not even see um articles designed to be hate

00:16:37.460 shared as such um because a lot of people commented on that subject like what makes them elite how could

00:16:45.520 they why how are they elite and we're like well look we're not elite you know like there's nothing

00:16:49.760 elite about us um what's really interesting is that wasn't in the initial telegraph article

00:16:53.660 that was added in a yahoo news reprint of the telegraph article and then adopted to the

00:16:59.440 telegraph article because it was doing so much better in sort of the seo algorithm interesting

00:17:03.760 so well because it made people mad we well and then a whole meme was created around this concept of

00:17:09.720 the elite couple breeding to save humanity which i love i mean what a great meme to have uh kicked off

00:17:15.340 um but it's interesting that we got elite as our branding from yahoo news i'm like the gatekeepers of

00:17:22.980 modern elite culture yahoo news um but i i think um yeah i mean nobody wants to be branded as elite

00:17:31.020 these days the idea that we would go out there like trying to push for elite branding is unless you're

00:17:36.220 like a an elite chess player you know like an elite chess champion gamer gamer or something but i mean

00:17:42.300 like being the elite like from a classist standpoint i mean i think right now um especially online

00:17:48.800 capitalism is out being uh in any form of like i guess economically or socially elite is out like

00:17:58.560 you can influence her but you can't be elite does that make sense and so this is what's so fascinating

00:18:03.440 is these same people who decry elite status are in a huff over losing their blue check marks

00:18:08.480 and it's like what was that if not a signal you just admit this and then i think what's

00:18:18.560 is like they hear elite and they think classist um and that's the form of elitism that i would say

00:18:26.420 that we don't buy into however am i a generic elitist yeah probably and by that what i mean is

00:18:36.260 uh you know online we will have people uh you know be like oh like they think they're better than us

00:18:42.800 or whatever right and it's like well what do you mean think like by most metrics i probably

00:18:48.620 uh random twitter user i don't mean to be too spicy here uh but i think that uh we do believe um

00:18:57.720 that uh we're pretty happy with who we are and and what we've achieved and i think i don't know

00:19:03.160 here's here's how we define elite melton and i think it's pretty simple the elite are those who

00:19:08.160 show up the elite are those who build something who do something um and if you are not doing something

00:19:13.740 if you're not building something if you're not solving a problem that you highlight we don't

00:19:17.800 think you're elite you just aren't because the elite belongs you know the future belongs to those

00:19:21.880 who show up um businesses belong to those who build them like that's it that's just how we view

00:19:26.700 the world it is a very capitalist view of the world that makes us elitist in the evil bad way i guess

00:19:33.280 by many people's standards um and we're not denying that some people don't achieve these things due to

00:19:38.860 stuff completely outside of their control uh that is that is and within our existing system a lot of

00:19:45.240 people just do not have everything within their control however we're also um of of of the belief

00:19:54.180 that uh some of it is within your control and uh we support those who uh you know work hard to do

00:20:02.940 this and and and and the idea that uh you know you'd have somebody who spends all day on twitter

00:20:08.720 yelling at people being like how dare you think you're better than me it's like

00:20:13.940 yeah well i think that's that's that's our life everyone um we'll end this for now but we're

00:20:24.960 thinking about doing regular conversations like this so if you would like to see more leave comments

00:20:31.340 requesting anything you'd like us to discuss um and maybe we'll see you back here but it was fun

00:20:38.020 chatting

00:20:48.840 you

00:20:49.020 you

00:20:49.100 you

00:20:49.220 you

00:20:49.240 you

00:20:49.300 you

00:20:51.400 you

00:20:51.840 you

00:20:52.520 you

00:20:52.940 you

00:20:53.740 you

00:20:54.380 you

00:20:54.980 you

Based Camp - May 07, 2023

Based Camp： Update On Our Lives & Going Viral

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript