Based Camp - Discord is More Dangerous than TikTok

00:00:00.000 a lot of Discord servers are based around specific individuals who are high status for some reason

00:00:07.200 or another. Suppose you had a young guy, a horny guy, like a lot of rising YouTube creators.

00:00:12.180 You put them into an environment where most people have some level of admiration for them.

00:00:17.400 Then you give them total control through admin privileges on Discord of what messages are seen

00:00:24.240 from the group. As soon as you've done that, you've created an environment where somebody who is not

00:00:31.440 mentally stable is heavily psychologically motivated with no real negatives at all to them

00:00:40.240 for removing everyone who disagrees with them or everyone who disagrees with an idea that they are

00:00:45.480 pushing forward. Go back to the comment I made about it's a cult using the trans movement for 1.00

00:00:50.180 cover. Well, suppose you had a cult about affirming like some form of gender identity, right?

00:00:55.100 On April 4th, 2023, Postcard reveals he's in contact with four minors age 9 to 13. I've so far sent it

00:01:02.280 to four minors between the ages of 9 and 13. I hope it encourages them to transition. When the

00:01:06.980 Onca Zone animation became a meme, they got excited over its virality among kids. Man and Drain and

00:01:12.440 Orion also fantasized about getting kids on hormones. Would you like to know more?

00:01:16.420 Hello, Simone. Today is an interesting topic because I had never really engaged with Discord

00:01:25.360 as a platform that much before. As old people, I'd gotten into it a little. I didn't really see

00:01:30.280 the point. It didn't seem like a way that I could build up any sort of large audience or advance my

00:01:36.920 career. So I just saw no point to it because I'm sort of past the point of my life.

00:01:41.300 Okay, exactly. So why do you play video games? This is my thing with video games. Is this going to

00:01:46.160 make me money? Is this going to advance my career? Then why am I trying to figure out

00:01:50.020 this task when I have so many other tasks? Now you understand how I feel.

00:01:55.100 I guess it's a low stress task where I know the input needed to succeed and social situations just

00:02:00.660 aren't that way. If I'm engaging in a community like Discord, it hasn't been optimized to give me

00:02:06.900 the right amount of reward for my effort. But anyway, this is why I hadn't been engaging with

00:02:13.340 the community. Well, recently I started to, because we created a Discord for this channel based on some

00:02:19.860 fans. A fan created a Discord for this channel. A fan created a Discord and then I've been promoting

00:02:23.840 it and it's doing incredibly well. Like three days after launching at any point, day or night,

00:02:29.440 there's always like a conversation going on. So we've got about 50 active members.

00:02:33.080 And yeah, I've been very surprised. Well, people too, from what I've glanced at.

00:02:38.960 Yeah, which has led me to actually engage with Discord as a platform, finally.

00:02:44.660 Which is saying a lot because you don't find most people worth engaging.

00:02:48.700 Yeah. So I finally reached a point in sort of working with the platform and using the platform

00:02:55.260 and setting everything up where I feel like I understand, one, why people use it, and two,

00:03:01.480 how it works as a platform. But in doing that, I also began to realize how extremely dangerous

00:03:08.940 Discord is as a platform. Much more dangerous for young minds than something like TikTok,

00:03:16.940 for example. Which I think would really surprise people who are not obsessed with the way sort of

00:03:23.340 social interactions work and human emotions work and everything like that, right? Like that's my

00:03:28.540 obsession to anyone who's read our books on like governance and everything like that. When I'm

00:03:31.640 building up how governance work, I start by looking at how do humans interact? How do humans judge

00:03:35.620 status? What sort of motivates our base human actions? Because through understanding humanity,

00:03:41.800 I can understand better why different mechanisms for organizing us will lead to different large-scale

00:03:49.160 macro outcomes. Well, with Discord, I was looking at it. And what really got me down

00:03:55.400 this particular rabbit hole is I also really like tea videos, if you're familiar. So when you watch

00:04:01.680 them too, this means like drama videos. Okay. That kind of tea. Yes. Drama about YouTube creators and

00:04:08.640 other sorts of like celeb celebs. I really wish people would do one on us, but no one really has yet.

00:04:14.580 Because there's nothing. What are they going to talk about? Yeah. Oh, they could come up. I've often

00:04:20.640 thought the scene where, you know, my kid fell in the water and I was like pretty lackadaisical in

00:04:25.460 getting them out. Yeah, but that's not filmed or anything. Like if that was something that was

00:04:28.640 viral. No, but I've mentioned it on our channel. And you know, it's other tea videos. They're like,

00:04:34.580 oh, the person, like when they saw their dog had been hit by a car, they shot it instead of taking it

00:04:39.660 to the vet. And it's like, yeah, of course you would do that to a severely injured animal. Like,

00:04:43.760 I know. Well, that's just the difference between progressive commentators and conservatives,

00:04:48.860 that itself, that incident online where I think a Christian influencer shot their dog after they 0.98

00:04:55.100 found it hurt in the streets was such a classic indication, right? If like one is actually just

00:04:59.960 trying to be kind to a suffering being that one loves and the other is trying to, it's credentialism

00:05:07.960 and trying to follow the correct pathways. I wouldn't even say that. To the conservative,

00:05:11.900 it is the dog's best interest that they care about. Yeah. To the progressive, the dog is a tool

00:05:17.240 to modify their own self image and emotions. Therefore they care not for the suffering of

00:05:22.260 the dog. Anything that extends the dog's utility to them is warranted, which, and anything that

00:05:28.600 makes them look good in terms of how they're interacting with it is warranted. What I'm saying

00:05:32.640 is that we've said enough stuff that they could find stuff like that on us. Okay. But one of the

00:05:37.120 most common types of tea videos comes from people's servers and specifically their discord servers and

00:05:45.980 these servers end up either being used as grooming platforms or becoming hotbeds of like CP and like

00:05:56.120 other sorts of bad information that really they should be doing a better job like moderating or policing

00:06:01.100 or something like that. And this is obviously like what I'm thinking when I'm putting up the server,

00:06:07.000 like how do I keep this from being used as a platform for one of those types of things?

00:06:12.220 And what immediately came to me was discord is almost set up from the ground level to encourage grooming

00:06:23.160 behavior, virtue spirals, and the formation of organic cults. And this is something we talk a lot about on the show

00:06:30.000 is how you can get like these organic cults forming. And this is what we, there was little things that

00:06:35.540 like happened within our server in its first few days. Like this is day three of operation, right? So

00:06:40.440 I'm not an old server. And some individuals started putting the number of kids they had after their

00:06:46.500 names. So I'd say their names and then a number and then kids. And then it became so common that people

00:06:53.300 removed the word kids and it was just a name and then a number. And then it became people shaming people

00:06:59.260 for not putting that in, which shows sort of in real time, how something like religious traditions

00:07:06.340 can evolve, which is how social norms are created, released. Yeah. It's like, it's like you, you,

00:07:12.540 you left something under a rock and then you look in like some civilization has formed, you know,

00:07:18.080 that classic trope. And you're like, Oh, I did not intend any of this. I was just pointing out that

00:07:23.600 there was a server here and now it has social norms and fights over because I had made the admins

00:07:29.620 edit. Just give you an example of another social norm that formed a different color than the other

00:07:34.060 individuals. Cause I thought they should be rewarded if they're doing additional work, but then this

00:07:37.880 caused the perception that they were higher status than other individuals. Well, if they do more work,

00:07:42.180 aren't they higher status? I mean, that's the way I see it. Right. But I hadn't chosen them based on

00:07:47.520 anything that I was really thinking through. I was just like some people recommended them who had helped us

00:07:52.920 with other things or who set up the server. Most of them were just because the guy who set up the

00:07:56.520 server said, these are good guys. And so I was like, sure. And then another person, two other

00:08:00.820 people have reached out to me saying they really liked one of the admins. I think it was different

00:08:04.540 admins as well, but they were doing a good job. Like in communications I've had with other fans that

00:08:08.840 I have regular email communication with. And so I saw that and was like, okay, things must be going

00:08:13.300 well. Right. But anyway, so there was some anxiety around like status being inferred by the different

00:08:17.620 colors. And next time I check the server moderators are all the same color as everyone 0.98

00:08:22.900 else. And then, so one of the moderators who I had given authority to had made that change.

00:08:27.360 And they were also talking about like, how do you, which is, I think goes with the spirit of

00:08:31.600 the channel, you know, the level of like equality and free speech that we try to motivate within the

00:08:35.480 channel. But then there were other things that were really interesting. There was an instance of,

00:08:40.200 oh yeah, trying to decide how I make moderators. And somebody proposed, obviously trying to look out

00:08:44.640 for our best interest, that I should make moderators, people who donate to the Collins

00:08:48.300 Foundation. And I was like, well, only three people have ever donated to the Collins

00:08:51.700 Foundation to my knowledge. The person who did it, despite their super woke D&D group, the founder

00:08:56.820 of Skype and then ourselves. And I don't know if we have a couple of other people. Yeah. A couple

00:09:04.000 of other people have donated. Okay. Okay. So we've had a couple other people, but I think that those

00:09:07.740 are like the big ones in terms of like, and they don't use our platforms. They don't care. Like

00:09:12.140 they don't care about any status within the discord service. But in addition to that, I don't want

00:09:16.640 to create a pressure that would motivate people who aren't donating because they want the money

00:09:21.380 to like go to good stuff, but are donating for some sort of social status. I don't want to create

00:09:26.040 that, especially among people who have less wealth than I have. Like that seems actively immoral to

00:09:32.980 me. And it's something that we- Well, it also seems exploitative. I don't know. Yeah.

00:09:37.740 So I was like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. But if it gives you the idea of how people are

00:09:41.120 thinking about norms, how they're thinking about rules, like the no racism rule, for example,

00:09:45.360 that's a, how do you deal with facts that leftists would call racist, right? How do you like,

00:09:51.560 and so, you know, there was some debate on how exactly that's going to work, you know, and we

00:09:55.580 decided that it's, you know, no motivated reasoning based on race, but you can, you know, if something's

00:10:01.560 backed by evidence, you can investigate the evidence, which is interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

00:10:06.200 So like, I can understand why someone suggested, you know, donations being a sign of basically

00:10:12.320 demonstrated dedication to the projects that this whole effort represents. So I also think that

00:10:19.520 that's really admirable. It's nice. We just don't want, we don't want to impose on anyone.

00:10:24.480 Oh, also, the truth is, is the type of people with the time to be good discord admins,

00:10:31.040 is probably going to be inversely correlated with how much money they make. Yeah. Because,

00:10:36.340 you know, if you're making a ton of money, you know, you often are considered more competent in

00:10:40.200 the eyes of society by your resume and everything like that, and therefore have more demands on your

00:10:43.320 time, which, you know, if we're looking for competent people whose society hasn't realized

00:10:48.020 they're competent yet, they're going to be less wealthy. So they're the very last people I would

00:10:51.980 want to ask for money, you know, which is interesting. But I want to get into how discord is almost set up

00:10:58.480 to create grooming, because, and organically forming coals. So one, I love the, the naming

00:11:06.520 of discord that is literally named after discordia, you know, the heiress, the goddess of discord and

00:11:12.980 strife, right? Like what a better name for it. I bet she'd be good at causing all kinds of 1.00

00:11:17.740 destruction and chaos. I know, isn't it cool? Hi, heiress. Oh, poo. You tricked me, you bonehead. 1.00

00:11:28.480 What are you up to, girl? Oh, just cooking up trouble, you know, having fun. And there's 1.00

00:11:34.640 nothing you can do about it. But you've got to think about how the platform works. And this was

00:11:41.600 one, the reason why I'm doing all the talking now is because Simone didn't pre-talk this episode with

00:11:45.480 me, because she said she wanted to be surprised by everything I was saying, because she didn't know

00:11:49.000 where I was going with this. But the idea being is that a lot of discord servers are based around

00:11:54.420 specific individuals who are high status for some reason or another. Either they're seen as running

00:12:02.180 some project or they are seen as like a YouTube celebrity or something like that. Like that's

00:12:07.380 where a lot of these tea videos are coming from. Yeah. All the servers that I know of typically are

00:12:11.720 built around either a cluster of people or a person. And typically they're sub stack or a podcast or a

00:12:17.820 YouTube channel for sure. Yeah. So just think about it like this, Simone. Suppose you had a young guy,

00:12:23.040 a horny guy, let's say a guy in his teens, like a lot of, you know, rising YouTube creators.

00:12:28.480 And I have, I've mentioned in the past that when guys are in that page,

00:12:31.740 a place in puberty, they often do things that are immoral in the pursuit of sex. Although,

00:12:37.340 you know, you see women doing the same thing with like a hypnotist Sappho is an example of a furry, 0.51

00:12:41.620 what's the word? PDF file. And she targets, you know, young people through discord. She might be trans, 0.98

00:12:47.920 in which case, you know, what does that mean anymore these days? So within the discord server,

00:12:53.540 by that, what I mean is a lot of people who I think historically would not have been called trans

00:12:57.360 are called trans now and still have the hormonal profile of a male. And, and so, you know, that

00:13:02.540 would still explain the behavior, but anyway, so you take an individual like that, you put them into

00:13:06.360 an environment where people are talking and most people have some level of admiration for them.

00:13:11.420 Then you give them total control through admin privileges on discord of who gets booted from

00:13:18.100 the group, what messages are seen from the group. So you can do sort of temporary punishments

00:13:22.800 where I could like, for example, like shadow ban someone or mute someone, they would say,

00:13:27.740 or make it so that like everyone else is muted to them, like weird things like that.

00:13:33.400 As soon as you've done that, you've created an environment where somebody who is not mentally

00:13:40.820 stable, it's a heavily psychologically motivated with no real negatives at all to them for removing

00:13:50.640 everyone who disagrees with them or everyone who disagrees with an idea that they are pushing

00:13:54.700 forward. This sounds so stressful. Well, I mean, go back to the comment I made about like trans 1.00

00:13:59.760 individuals today. And we've done the episode on like, it's a cult using the trans movement for 0.93

00:14:02.940 cover. Well, suppose you had a cult about affirming like some form of gender identity, right?

00:14:07.880 It's genuinely really good grooming advice. On April 4th, 2023, Postcard reveals he's in contact

00:14:13.660 with four minors, age 9 to 13. I've so far sent it to four minors between the ages of 9 and 13.

00:14:19.880 I hope it encourages them to transition. When the Anka Zone animation became a meme,

00:14:23.980 they got excited over its virality among kids. Man and Drain and Orion also fantasized about getting

00:14:29.240 kids on hormones. Orion was the manager, coercing him every step of the way. This is apparent by how

00:14:34.320 he talked about him to others. Has he started hormones yet? Yes, but not effectively. I guess

00:14:38.640 that's what you'd expect just telling a retard to buy hormones. They bought estrogen, but no 1.00

00:14:42.640 anti-androgen. It would have been more fun if he started hormone blockers at like 12.

00:14:46.700 Haha, isn't that true for everyone? Don't worry, I'll make him into a good girl.

00:14:50.600 I know people may have thought that I was being maybe controversial or reaching when I said that a

00:14:55.620 cult is using the trans movement for cover. But it's only natural if you make some group a 0.93

00:15:00.320 protected class in society that no one is allowed to criticize without being called transphobic,

00:15:05.880 that individuals with malintent will start using that group for cover. And the most transphobic

00:15:13.140 thing you can do is to not call out those individuals. Yes, there is really a group of

00:15:19.360 people out there who uses the trans identity and the cover it provides them in order to groom kids 0.99

00:15:25.660 and attempt to get them on hormones for their own sexual satisfaction. To be against fighting

00:15:31.520 against this community is the most genuinely transphobic position I could imagine a person

00:15:37.280 taking. Because to say that in calling out individuals like this, we are calling out all

00:15:43.260 trans people, you are implying that all trans people are actually like this. And that if we prevented 1.00

00:15:50.700 the protection trans rights gives some individuals from covering this community, that we would be

00:15:58.760 removing all of the meaningful protection the trans rights activism is meant to achieve.

00:16:04.560 Don't blow up our spot, bro. All teaslers are like that. If you can trust me around your kid,

00:16:09.000 it'd be transphobic not to. Me with daycare tots. To Orion and many of his associates, their identity was

00:16:14.820 little more than a political shield. It clearly worked given he publicly fantasized about assaulting

00:16:19.580 women in bathrooms. Me when transphobic little girls asked me what I'm doing in the women's 1.00

00:16:23.640 restroom when I'm obviously a woman. The two fantasized about assaulting J.K. Rowling's

00:16:28.740 grandchildren. Not letting teaslers get with your kids is transphobic. Someone should Harry Potter

00:16:33.740 woman's grandkids. Orion then goes on to call them turf meat. And don't give me that, oh, this is just

00:16:39.080 like edge cases or fringe people in the community type of thing. Alok Vade Menon, who was put in

00:16:46.840 Out Magazine's Out 100, 100, so the top 100 most influential LGBT people that year, said,

00:16:53.680 these days the narrative is that transgender people will come into bathrooms and abuse little 0.99

00:16:58.140 girls. The supposed quote-unquote purity of the victims has remained stagnant. There are no 0.99

00:17:04.260 princesses. Little girls are also kinky. Your kids aren't as straight and narrow as you think. 1.00

00:17:09.060 The community really does need a very serious cleanup, and grooming is a serious problem. We might do

00:17:15.740 another video just dedicated to this topic, but if you're like, well, I understand that some people

00:17:21.560 are doing some bad things, but think of the damage this could do to the wider LGBT community, and it's

00:17:27.000 like, bro, like, think about these messages you're reading. What about the kids who are being convinced

00:17:32.440 who are not actually trans to get on hormones at extremely young ages and having their entire lives 0.99

00:17:39.500 ruined just so that they can be some creepy grown-up sex toy? Like, do you have zero sympathy for these 0.98

00:17:47.600 individuals? They could never come back from that, and worse, now every time they hear about trans 0.99

00:17:53.020 issues, they are just reminded how their bodies were ruined for the gratification of some sicko. 0.98

00:18:01.560 How often does this happen? How many more of these people do we need to catch before we say,

00:18:06.480 okay, some individuals are using this ideology for nefarious means, and we need to call out that

00:18:13.500 this can happen, that weirdos can use stuff like trans identity to go into restrooms and attempt to 0.92

00:18:19.260 assault little girls, and do something about this? Although we are getting off topic here, so I'll see if I

00:18:25.060 can find another way to talk about this issue. So to make this more PC, like, suppose it's like a

00:18:29.400 cloud gender community, and everyone who disconfirms cloud gender identity gets booted from the

00:18:36.340 server. Everyone who in any way even questions themselves or isn't sure or used to identify as

00:18:42.920 this but goes back is removed from the community. But there isn't a perception among people in the

00:18:48.180 community that these people are being silenced or removed. It's not really super loud and obvious

00:18:53.400 that this is happening, and a lot of people may not care. They might say, oh, well, we've created norms

00:18:58.620 where disconfirming something is a form of violence to people, right? Like, and the left often does

00:19:05.200 this, right? But you could also see people getting a big head, like, as I said, a popular male creator,

00:19:11.120 a bunch of people are fawning over him in the server, and then maybe he creates a separate thread

00:19:15.040 for the girls who like him, right? Well, now you've got a thread, which is private, and everyone in it

00:19:20.200 is a girl who likes him. That creates within women, and you often see within women, of course,

00:19:25.340 they're going to end up finding him more arousing. You've created an environment where every other

00:19:30.060 woman in the environment sees this individual as high status and arousing in some way. So you're 1.00

00:19:34.280 going to get sort of a reinforcing loop of, oh, this is like, if you talk about, like, hypergamy or

00:19:41.880 whatever, like, obviously women like dating men who are higher status than men like that as well. But

00:19:46.400 like, women like it a bit more than men like it. So, and this is in terms of long-term partnerships,

00:19:51.340 whereas men, they're often okay with at least having sexual partners who are lower status than

00:19:54.860 them, but long-term partners, you know, they look for it. So in this environment, you get these loops,

00:20:00.320 like you have at concerts where, like, women cheer, and then it just goes, oh my god, all the other

00:20:04.800 women are cheering, this person must be so hot, and then they end up, like, passing out because it 0.98

00:20:08.420 creates a feedback loop that can't turn itself off. We have records of this happening to women going all the 0.99

00:20:13.800 way back to... Litzemania. Was it Hans Litz? I can't pronounce names. L-I-Z-T, the composer.

00:20:22.540 Yeah, yeah. And then we had it for the Frankie Sinatra. We had it, like...

00:20:25.820 Frankie Sinatra?

00:20:27.120 Whatever, Sinatra, whatever. So we see this going way back into history. This isn't, like, a modern thing.

00:20:32.140 So anyway, my assumption here is that as soon as you've created this and you've got some horned

00:20:38.860 dog guy, and especially if it's a guy who has any sort of biological predilection for younger

00:20:45.120 presenting phenotypic traits in females or males, for that matter, if that's what he's into, you now

00:20:51.960 have, if what he's seeking is sex, you now have the perfect environment that one motivates him going

00:20:57.480 down the path of attempting to groom people and the perfect environment for grooming someone. It would 0.88

00:21:01.980 actually be almost kind of impossible for someone not to end up being groomed. Then you have the

00:21:07.300 second problem. What if the guy doesn't want sex? What if he wants power? Like, what if he wants

00:21:11.380 a common thing for young people? And we mentioned this in the book. There's a thing about this in

00:21:17.040 Japan. They have a name for it, which is... I can't remember. There's an anime about it,

00:21:21.080 but I'll edit it. It's called, like, Evil Eye something or, like, thinking. But anyway, what it means...

00:21:26.220 All right. Claude says,

00:21:27.380 The term you are looking for is chimbuyo, which literally translates to, quote,

00:21:32.060 middle school second year syndrome, end quote. It refers to a common phase in adolescence,

00:21:36.980 usually around the eighth grade or so, hence the name, where teens may exhibit delusions of grandeur,

00:21:42.220 believing they have special powers, a secret identity, or otherwise exceptionally unique or

00:21:46.980 important. Some common chimbuyo delusions include, one, believing they have a hidden supernatural power, 0.88

00:21:52.800 like controlling the elements or reading minds. Two, claiming to be reincarnated

00:21:57.220 from another world or to have a secret dark past. Three, using made-up, overly complicated

00:22:02.220 names for everyday objects or actions. Four, affecting a distinctive fashion style,

00:22:08.120 often involving gothic, occult, or fantasy elements.

00:22:11.360 Is there a trend in young people of a certain age to, like, believe they have magical powers?

00:22:17.260 Oh, no.

00:22:17.760 Oh, no, no, no.

00:22:18.660 You know what I'm talking about, right? Like, I'm actually an energy vampire, or I'm actually,

00:22:23.660 you know, if I do this ritual in the right way, the wind blows like this, or like...

00:22:27.580 Oh, yeah, like modern Wiccans. 0.97

00:22:29.840 Yeah, modern Wiccans would be a great example of this, but they're not all Wiccans. You know,

00:22:33.220 some of them do that with a Christian lens, some of them do it with some sort of other

00:22:36.840 esoteric or mystical lens around it, but it's a very common thing for people to believe,

00:22:42.760 because these power fantasies just really appeal to people during these ages where they're attempting to find

00:22:46.520 their identity if they have a community that will affirm them. Well, if you've created an

00:22:50.440 environment like this, and I'm sure this happens much more in, like, female-dominated discords, 1.00

00:22:54.080 you know, why not, once you've gotten a group around you that you can just remove anyone from

00:23:00.580 who dissents, and you've created, like, private channels around this, why not try to get them all

00:23:05.560 to worship you or something, right? Like, if that's what gets you off, if that's what your desire is,

00:23:11.560 and it would happen organically, right? Somebody might have a few ideas,

00:23:16.880 I actually think to an extent this could be what we're seeing with, you know,

00:23:20.180 Rubiard and what I've all hissed if people have seen his CIA video, which goes in a very mystical

00:23:24.460 direction, and he talks about thinking that he is getting, like, that he has supernatural perception

00:23:30.880 of the world, and that this is also supported by evidence and historical tradition that some people

00:23:35.580 just have this supernatural perspective of reality. And this might be a true thing, like,

00:23:39.040 I don't want to shit on him, but let's assume that it's not. Let's assume that every now and then 0.93

00:23:43.380 people just get this inclination that they have a supernatural perception of reality around a

00:23:47.860 certain age range, which, you know, he falls squarely within, he's like 22. And then he is

00:23:53.560 in a community where he drops this as an idea, and of course, people are going to feel uncomfortable.

00:23:58.440 I mean, he's the big guy. He's got half a million subscribers, unconfirming that. And some of them

00:24:03.640 might be like, actually, I have this too, right? And then it begins to create a snowball effect

00:24:10.040 where he feels encouraged to, and I'm not saying that this has happened to him yet, but I'm just

00:24:16.880 saying you can see how somebody who starts in this position, in a completely, like, goodwill position,

00:24:21.620 to be increasingly encouraged by the way server dynamics work on Discord, to make more and more

00:24:28.840 extreme claims about supernatural abilities or something like that.

00:24:34.320 Yeah, well, it seems like this kind of community setup is likely to create an echo chamber effect

00:24:43.420 for any group or any behavior where it's very easy. Once you establish what makes you higher status,

00:24:53.760 then that thing is going to get out of control because then people are going to chase after that

00:24:58.500 thing and need to augment it or emphasize it in order to maintain higher relative status, right?

00:25:04.300 There's no way around it. Whether it's the number of kids you report you have next to your username

00:25:08.880 or how supernatural your abilities may be, I guess.

00:25:15.060 Yeah, well, I mean, keep in mind that a lot of people don't sort for status in the external world.

00:25:21.940 I think a lot of people think that most humans are driven by the affirmation of other individuals

00:25:26.880 when the reality is that a huge class of sort of, I'd say, the unthinking masses are more driven

00:25:32.960 by their perception of how other people see them, and they are totally okay with cheesing that

00:25:38.320 perception when it benefits them emotionally. So have you ever been, and I ask the followers,

00:25:43.320 you know what I'm talking about, someone like when you're in a conversation with maybe like an old 1.00

00:25:46.020 person and they're telling you a story and they're trying to be like a mentor to you. And it is very

00:25:50.380 obvious to anyone who was actually interested in your perception of them that they would know

00:25:55.280 that they're just like, you don't think very highly of them and you are amusing them so that

00:26:00.100 they feel like a mentor because you know, it's important that they feel like a mentor to their

00:26:03.200 continued patronage of you. Well, or, or, you know, it's like a parent, right? And they're giving

00:26:09.000 you some long narrative that is more about telling a narrative to themselves than it is about actually

00:26:14.380 altering the way that you see them. It's more about telling themselves how you see them than it is about

00:26:21.260 altering your own perception of them. And people can do this very frequently. And I think within

00:26:25.900 communities that go into a mystical direction, you can really easily get spirals around this,

00:26:33.200 where an individual wants the people around them to believe that they have power and they want to

00:26:42.000 believe that they believe the people around them believe they have power more than they actually

00:26:46.400 want the people around them to believe they have power. If you understand what I'm saying.

00:26:49.160 Yeah. And that this can create spirals that go really far, really fast to the point where now the

00:26:57.880 person is, and one of the reasons why this is so dangerous is because now the person is drawing

00:27:01.740 information about reality from unreal things, from internal intuitions, which end up being confirmed

00:27:08.720 by a community and end up creating these sorts of cults. And I think that this is where, one of the

00:27:14.960 places where you get these gender cults, the extreme, like right-leaning and left-leaning gender cults.

00:27:20.700 You know, when you get something like a trans community where everything is about gender expression, 1.00

00:27:24.700 I mean, what is looks maxing, if not an obsession with gender expression, which is often more 0.77

00:27:29.680 right-leaning. They begin to define their, or like these workout communities, or like these,

00:27:36.540 you know, I think that some iterations of like, the red pill community went in a bunch of different

00:27:40.460 directions. Some of them were sane. And then some of them, I think, are more just like

00:27:44.840 gender dysphoria cults. But they are trying to affirm that they are their birth gender. 0.60

00:27:50.320 And people can be like, why so frequently do, on both the left and the right, do you get these

00:27:55.680 gender dysphoria cults within these sorts of feedback environments? And there's a few reasons. 0.92

00:28:01.120 One is that gender is the thing that people are most frequently uncomfortable about when they're

00:28:04.580 going through puberty, which is the age at which people mostly choose any religion. So between 15 and

00:28:09.140 21 is when most people leave their birth religion or culture. So it's a primary thing of interest when

00:28:14.640 you're most likely to get recruits. The other thing is that it's very easy to get into what I'd call like

00:28:19.640 gender spirals, where, like, you just have to fit this identity that you've created for yourself as 1.00

00:28:25.640 like the correct way to be who you are. And if you can't do that, you just might as well die. 0.97

00:28:30.660 But Simone, you wanted me to not prep you on any of this. What do you think?

00:28:35.320 Well, what I'm curious about is your theory as to why Discord servers specifically are so good at

00:28:40.700 this. I'm assuming it's the fact that they're much more limited in what you see.

00:28:44.220 So then the criteria that people are competing on becomes very, very focused. Is that you agree

00:28:51.120 then? So it's three things that lead to Discord servers being uniquely good at this.

00:28:55.260 Well, what I'm curious about is your theory as to why Discord servers specifically are so good at

00:29:00.760 this. I'm assuming it's the fact that they're much more limited in what you see. So then the criteria

00:29:06.300 that people are competing on becomes very, very focused. Is that you agree then?

00:29:11.420 So it's three things that lead to Discord servers being uniquely good at this.

00:29:15.360 One thing is, is it's very easy for a person who is high status outside of Discord and otherwise

00:29:21.800 being normal outside of Discord to be completely weird within a Discord server without that much

00:29:27.920 risk of it leaking. I mean, obviously it does leak, but they can feel like it. But like,

00:29:32.720 you know, I'm talking to like two, three people here in this private channel. Like, I can see

00:29:37.520 everyone who's in the channel. I might have a longer relationship with them. So it's a lot

00:29:41.920 hard. It's a lot easier to go sort of crazy or to go sort of like subtle abusive without being a fear

00:29:49.220 of it coming back to haunt you or being called out on it. Also, this reminds me a lot of online dating

00:29:54.180 then in the way that with the advent of swipe-based dating, things also fell off the rails. And

00:30:00.640 we actually saw. I think it's quite different from that. Oh, really?

00:30:04.460 Yeah. So consider, well, this is where the second thing with Discord is really important.

00:30:08.240 The illusion of consensus, because it allows a mod within a server to always create the illusion

00:30:16.340 that there is consensus with anything that they are saying or of their status vis-a-vis the world.

00:30:22.880 And so with swipe-based dating and stuff like that, everybody still knows that they need to judge

00:30:29.240 whether this person is worthy of their time, the person who they're interacting with. That is somewhat

00:30:33.920 taken out of individuals' hands within Discord servers to an extent. And so I think that that's

00:30:39.920 what makes it quite different from those environments.

00:30:42.820 It's this added tyranny from various mods that makes it extra crazy.

00:30:50.120 Yeah. And keep in mind, I don't think a Discord server like ours is really at that much risk

00:30:54.660 because one, our goals are not aligned with this. We're an older married couple that's

00:31:01.540 not out there looking to groom people. We really, I think already as shown by our actions,

00:31:06.900 are not interested in money particularly, or at least money from our community, right?

00:31:12.200 We're not interested in, there's just a lot of the motivations and this extremist anti-mystic

00:31:17.260 stance we take on everything, which we've done in order to protect our kids, prevents a lot of

00:31:21.820 these sort of self-power fantasy spirals, which can become really easy if you allow for mystical

00:31:27.480 thinking. And finally, we, I don't really act as an active mod within the server and the people who

00:31:33.560 are active mods are sort of active around, actually it's a great test, I'm going to say.

00:31:40.220 Okay.

00:31:40.460 So, you know, like within the Discord server, we're, we're actually, you know, halting the

00:31:45.260 track series for a while because it's a lot of extra work and Simone is about to give birth. So

00:31:49.800 we just didn't want to do it for now. And in halting that, like the videos don't do as well

00:31:55.320 as our other videos, but, and they take a lot more time, but they're much more popular among the type

00:32:00.120 of people who use our Discord server. So it could be the type of environment where if we have set these

00:32:05.460 social norms around belief systems with something like that, we can see, do they actually protect

00:32:11.200 against weird sorts of spirals? I mean, one of the things that we've already seen was in our Discord

00:32:17.360 server, which I don't know if it's a positive thing or not, because we've talked about, you know,

00:32:22.380 making it high status for people to have more kids is going to encourage higher fertility. 1.00

00:32:26.440 I don't know. A lot of people who are active on the server have zeros next to them. And I think most

00:32:31.660 people in the pernatalist movement, the modern technophilic one, are younger and they don't

00:32:36.820 have kids yet. I understand. So the question at hand is, should we say that this should not be a

00:32:42.460 social norm within the community? Should we say that you shouldn't put the number of kids you have?

00:32:46.100 Or is it good that we are constantly, in terms of every social interaction, reminding people,

00:32:51.300 this is the goal, this is the goal, this is the goal? I mean, I do think what I like about it

00:32:56.460 as something that's present. And what I love about seeing more about this in modern society is that

00:33:02.620 it does give someone a reminder that having kids has some kind of status bump to it and that it is

00:33:10.360 an asset to you. And it is a cool thing if you have kids, because in many circles now, if you have

00:33:17.020 kids, it's just assumed that you are now less fun, less cool, more poor, more stressed, more sleep

00:33:23.660 deprived, all these bad things. It is a drop to your status. So yeah, I would say anything that

00:33:29.260 indicates, no matter how many people have zeros by their names, that having a higher number could

00:33:35.040 increase their status is fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's an interesting thing that was going

00:33:41.140 around the Discord server today. And I was wondering if you had thoughts on this. They were asking

00:33:43.980 what happens if the Discord, because apparently Discords can get banned for like bad political thought,

00:33:49.380 like QAnon boards got banned and like anyone who has friends was members of QAnon boards got their

00:33:53.240 boards banned. But aren't they private? I mean, there's no like... No, no. They say that once

00:33:57.720 you get over 500 members, and we're already to 200 in three days. So that means an outsider will join

00:34:02.340 it, flag it, and then it gets to you. No, not an outsider. The mobs at Discord often monitor the

00:34:06.920 servers. Oh, wow. And they say definitely once you get over a thousand, which is what we're really aiming

00:34:10.580 for. So join. We're going to have the link below. But yeah, it is actually a really cool group. Like I like

00:34:16.780 interacting with it, and I did not expect to. So that's cool. But your question is what happens when it gets

00:34:21.540 banned? Well, so I would tell them this, you know, if they're signed up for our sub stack, 0.99

00:34:25.880 they get an email every time we do an episode. So that's really easy to track. But I don't know.

00:34:31.480 Like, if we get banned on a few platforms, we'll find a way to tell you where to find us on one of

00:34:36.160 the remaining platforms. We're on so many platforms. Yeah, but they're referring to a place to chat and

00:34:40.200 hang out because you can't... Right. Well, we would create a new community and some other, I don't know,

00:34:45.640 more right wing app or something like that. I mean, I'm sure you could have something like

00:34:49.840 discord that is totally crypto based or something like that, you know, like blockchain based,

00:34:54.540 and that is difficult to meddle with. But I don't want to deal with that right now. I've looked at

00:34:58.300 some of those communities, and they're actually pretty hard to use. So I just haven't dealt with

00:35:02.740 it. But they exist if we have to go that route. But I think that we do a pretty good job of not

00:35:09.260 crossing the line. So unless things get like really crazy, I mean, we are primarily on a Google

00:35:13.920 hosted platform. So I can see the fear here, right? But yeah, so I'm wondering if you had any final

00:35:19.340 thoughts on this theory. It makes a lot of sense. It makes me want to keep our children off discord.

00:35:26.280 So I would definitely say I would discord will be strongly disallowed for our kids. I think it's

00:35:31.700 incredibly dangerous, except for our server. They can join our server, nothing else. Well, no, I mean,

00:35:38.140 I can just see how easy it would be if you are following one of your heroes for them to heavily

00:35:45.140 begin to twist. Because the thing about discord is, is it's not like Reddit or Twitter, where you're

00:35:50.460 like acting in a larger ecosystem, you can go in every time you go to that server, and it feels like

00:35:56.080 a friend group. And yet it's actually being heavily moderated, everything that you're seeing was in

00:36:00.820 that community. And so you can feel as if you're getting true friend information, when it is actually

00:36:06.640 an incredibly twisted interpretation of real.

00:36:08.780 Oh, so it's like mainstream news outlets. I mean, welcome to the club.

00:36:12.900 Yeah, but I think people know to be like, when you're a young kid, right, you don't get a lot

00:36:18.040 of your perspective of the world from mainstream news outlets, you get it from your peer groups.

00:36:21.340 Yeah. And it unlocked for me a big understanding of why individuals who I think pretty obviously are

00:36:28.000 not trans are transitioning now. And why part of the red pill movement has become this intense

00:36:33.680 gender dysphoria movement for what was like look smacking and work out everything and like gender 0.99

00:36:39.420 displays and like, oh, this is how to be the man of the perfect man, right? Like it's a big issue for

00:36:44.740 them. It's because that's an incredibly appealing way to brainwash a young person. And now you've given

00:36:52.200 them the tool to do it.

00:36:54.820 Yeah, gosh. Well, that's scary. But it's cool that the discord servers picking up and I had no idea that

00:37:02.860 discord could be so fascinating. But I think it's another important thing just to walk away with is

00:37:08.420 that I think it's underrated how many people navigate the internet through private chat channels, not

00:37:16.320 necessarily just discord, WhatsApp groups, other things like that. Remember when we met the woman who runs an

00:37:24.240 NGO that teaches people internet literacy, yeah, and how to like start businesses and do basic project

00:37:30.420 management. And the key thing that she found was that people in refugee camps, people from less 0.99

00:37:38.220 economically advantaged areas didn't use the internet the way that we do. They don't use internet browsers

00:37:44.060 and Google things and ask questions and reference Wikipedia and articles and whatnot to understand

00:37:51.560 reality. They navigate the internet and reality through Instagram, through WhatsApp, through Facebook,

00:37:56.860 and through other text based groups, probably like discord, but whatever their local version of it

00:38:02.280 might be. So I think it's important to keep in mind that these dynamics that you're seeing with discord

00:38:06.880 aren't just showing up among super nerdy communities that use discord servers. This may just be how many,

00:38:14.840 many groups, especially low tech groups, are just understanding reality in the world in general.

00:38:20.600 Well, and I think this brings me to a final point is just as discord can be used to draw people into

00:38:25.800 cultural groups that they do not intend to be drawn into. I think that they can also have this

00:38:30.320 secondary counter effect of protecting kids in a way. So if you're controlling the discord groups,

00:38:37.080 your kids are like, if you are a Catholic family, and your kids are in discord groups for young Catholic

00:38:41.940 kids, where their faith is part of the social status of the way the discord server is run, and you have

00:38:47.440 some level of adult supervision within these communities, it could be incredibly powerful at preventing

00:38:52.440 them from deconverting. Same with like our wider community. I mean, we've created a set of structured

00:38:57.440 cultural norms, which is why I feel so safe with my kids in our discord server, because I know that it's

00:39:03.020 going to reinforce the cultural values that we try to preach on this channel. And through that, it creates

00:39:09.660 one, this sense of community for them, but also a values aligned community that they can return to.

00:39:15.060 So I think that there's a high utility for something like this for child rearing.

00:39:19.740 Yeah, that's why it's worth us continuing to grow it where we can and not get it banned,

00:39:25.160 because it will have utility to our children in terms of not getting sucked out into the world.

00:39:31.240 Yeah, that makes sense. And well, I'm glad you brought me up to speed on this, because

00:39:35.840 sadly, I do not have time to really check it out myself, but I'm glad you're there.

00:39:41.800 All right. Love you to Desimone.

00:39:43.680 Love you too, Malcolm.

00:39:44.600 If you want to check out our discord servers here at the link and I put it in the comments.

00:39:53.160 Had anything to do with it. Don't you dare demonize cheese. Ever. I mean, when is cheese

00:39:59.880 ever made someone sick? At least. Come on. Our ancestors have been eating off cheese for

00:40:08.000 a very long time. Yeah. She's referencing, I have food poisoning right now and we're trying

00:40:13.060 to determine the culprit. I suspect it was old sausages. It was old sausages. It could have been

00:40:18.740 cheese because I eat a lot of cheese. And I was thinking today actually was milk because I was

00:40:24.040 like, well, can I trust the milk? And I was like, milk is a great food because you always know when

00:40:28.160 it's off. Yeah, but you have a God tongue with milk. Well, I can't, right? I'll drink expired sour milk

00:40:33.960 forever because you somehow are so prissy with your milk, but I'll happily chug it. It just has 0.94

00:40:40.040 a patina, you know, it has a bite at that point, you know, it's partially fermented. What's so wrong?

00:40:46.620 Well, anyway, we'll, we'll get started on the episode and I'll move this bit to the end. Okay.

00:40:50.960 Of course.

Based Camp - May 03, 2024

Discord is More Dangerous than TikTok

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript