Do We Have a Real Relationship？
Episode Stats
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197.40897
Summary
In this episode, Simone and I talk about how we came to understand that we have a parasocial relationship with each other, and why it's important to understand parasocial relationships in general. We also talk about why we don't like messes, and how to deal with them.
Transcript
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he was like, Oh, I have a parasocial relationship with you guys. You've never met me, but I watch
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all your episodes and I feel like, uh, I sort of know you through that. And it was very interesting
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the way I felt about that in the moment, because I was like, yeah, well, I mean, you're our friend,
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right? Like I immediately felt like it was much more of a two-way relationship than historically.
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I have seen people talk about parasocial. Well, more than you would expect. Right.
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And so then I begin to reflect on the people I know when they talk about their fans,
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do they have a relationship where they genuinely feel an emotional connection to them?
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Even when they haven't personally talked to somebody, they just meet someone in this one's
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like, Oh, I'm a big fan of your work. And they're immediately like, Oh yeah, we're going to get
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along. Or do they sort of recoil at that? So then what is your thesis on what was causing this divide?
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Imagine there's like a monster or like a murderer outside, outside your room, just outside.
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And that feeling, that feeling, or like, like your worst enemy or like your boss or something
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is like right outside your, your door, just waiting for you.
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So this is because there is a mess outside her door.
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We got all of this stuff from my mom after she died and we've been putting it away.
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And Simone just always reacts this way to messes.
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Where is this existential sort of constant hatred and dread?
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By the way, Simone, speaking of messes, I, and I get added the longer we're in a relationship.
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I get new little tasks I have to do. So I took a shower before this podcast. And now I have to
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squeegee the walls of the shower after I do it. Oh, hard stains don't. I don't know if this is a task
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that anyone else has to do for their wife. I have not heard of this as a part of regular life
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If you have hard water, it is. If you have hard water.
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We have a whole system to help with the hard water.
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And it's not enough. It's not enough. It gets the glass all smoochy and gross and cloudy. And I don't
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want that. But yeah, anyway, we're not going to talk about showers.
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I got a recount. What inspired this podcast was a particular, so we're going to be at this
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natalist conference. We're not the ones running it. A lot of people think we're the ones running it.
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No. And another group is running it. Actually, they've got some, some canceled people among
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them. So it will be spicier, I think, than a lot of things that we might put together ourselves.
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And we were talking as one of the people who was running it, but who we hadn't met yet.
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And he was like, Oh, I feel like I already know you. Like, like I have a parasocial relationship
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with you guys. You've never met me, but I watch all your episodes and I feel like
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I sort of know you through that. And it was very interesting the way I felt about that in the
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moment because I was like, yeah, well, I mean, you're our friend, right? Like I immediately
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felt like it was much more of a two-way relationship than historically I have seen
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Well, more than you would expect, right? Like when, yeah, when someone says like, we feel
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like we have a parasocial relationship with you, we're like, Oh, so like one, you don't hate
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us for our views. Two, like we're on the same page with some weird ideas. Like we've,
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we've said, yeah, but I think what I want to get into here, Simone is why, because then
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I started thinking about, you know, Simone and I, I guess with guests we've had on and
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stuff like that, people can tell that we hang out in circles with lots of really high profile
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online celebrities and also IRL celebrities. And so then I begin to reflect on the people
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I know when they talk about their fans, do they have a relationship where like they really
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like the relationship they have with their, their, their fans? Like they, they genuinely
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feel an emotional connection to them. Even when they haven't personally talked to somebody,
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they just meet someone and this one's like, Oh, I'm a big fan of your work. And they're
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immediately like, Oh yeah, we're going to get along. Or do they sort of recoil at that?
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And when we started doing this, Simone, you came up with like a really good heuristic for
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the group that would be like, yes, I get along really well. So, so we can, we can begin
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to lay this out. So I see people who get along, like who had seemed to think very fondly of
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their fans are people like Razeeb Khan. And then when we think about our friends who are
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celebrities, who have the most antagonism to our, their fans who are like, obviously we couldn't
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say names because of that, but they're generally like pop celebrities, I guess I'd say like people
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who are really famous, but was a really, really wide audience. A wider, more mainstream audience,
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I would say. Yeah. So the, the people we know who are niche celebrities tend to be much more in sync
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with their fans. And if someone doesn't, if they've never spoken with someone, but someone knows their
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work and really gets it, like they typically get on pretty well. Yeah. So then what is it that you,
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your, your thesis on what was causing this divide? Yeah. I think that, that niche celebrities are much
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more likely to be genuinely themselves. And that's why one there's, there's still niche. Like,
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I think that when you get to a certain level of mainstream appeal, you, you aren't exactly allowed
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to be yourself anymore. Like you have to, I'm going to push back on that, but let me, you know,
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make my point is that you're not allowed. You, you basically have to like appeal to more mainstream
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tastes and views, kind of like politicians being forced to go toward the center to get more electorate
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when they're running for office. And so by doing that, you basically stop becoming yourself. And so when
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someone has a parasocial relationship with you in, in a more mainstream context, it isn't actually you
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because you've had to compromise who you actually are to appeal to more people. And tell me why you
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don't think. No, I think you're totally wrong about that. So I think your first point was correct.
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I think your second point was just so-y nonsense. So, and unfortunately I have to talk around this
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for our audience. Cause Simone always gets mad if I like, like Rizzi, I know he wouldn't care.
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Like we've done, he's posted pictures with us and stuff in the past. I know he wouldn't care,
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but like other people we know, I have to sort of talk around when I'm trying to come up with
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examples, but we know people who have a mainstream audience appeal, Simone, that are very much
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themselves within that audience. There are exceptions. There are exceptions. They're unusual.
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Like Donald Trump, I'm sure is one of those people. He's like, we don't know Donald Trump,
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but like he is definitely someone who seems like himself all the time. Right. And, and he is someone
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who, when people go up and they're like, I am a fan of your work, you can even see it in his eyes.
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He may not know that person, but they light up and he feels a genuine sense of kinship with the
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individual. Agree. Agree. Because he is publicly who he really is. But I would say that is a minority,
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a vast minority of mainstream fans. Well, actually now I'm going to point out a different thing that
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you might not be thinking about. Okay. We also know people who are niche online celebrities who hate
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their fans. I can think of two examples off the top of my head. I can't give names, Simone.
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I know you can't give names. They don't agree at me. I don't want to risk it in editing or something
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like that. I'm just going to say there are two examples that I know for a fact do not like their
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fans. And feel like they, they seem to get a little afraid when they meet people in public who
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are their fans. And both of them put on fake personalities. Okay. So you just, you just, yeah.
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Well, okay. Well, but okay. I would also say then at least the odds. So if you were looking at a
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sample of a hundred mainstream famous people, and you were looking at a sample of a hundred
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niche famous people. Here's where you're making the mistake. Here's where you're making the mistake.
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You're thinking about historic celebrities going forwards. If you look at celebrities that rose to
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fame in the last 10 years. Yeah. But I also think that we're seeing the death of the mainstream
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celebrity. I don't think we're just going to see that many mainstream, like broad, broad for everyone,
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celebrities. The reason why you used to have this trend is the same thing that you learned when you
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went to the political consulting campaign. And they're like, well, the first thing you need to
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do is to delete all of your social media history. So no one can ever find out anything weird or
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unusual or particular, you know, that you've ever said. Um, these people were catering to like the way
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that boy bands used to become famous and the way that, you know, any of these corporately engineered
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stars became famous. But today there's a lot of stars that rise to fame simply to through appealing
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directly to an audience. And there's been different ways that people have done that. So one of the
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things that you pointed out to me, and this may help you better picture, you know, famous people who
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really don't like their fans are like mommy bloggers where they have to put on this veneer
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of being very perfect and not stressed and together and not stressed. And yeah, like nothing's going
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wrong in their life. And this causes them to have cognitive dissonance around their interactions with
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people who say that they like them. And really interestingly, when they meet someone, probably
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the reason why the reaction is so viscerally negative with these individuals is the cognitive
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dissonance they experience with every individual who's like, I really feel like I have a connection to
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you. Is it they don't like that they are not the person that person has a connection to?
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Right, right, right. And yeah, I think a lot of when people get angry is when they, at least for me,
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like mostly whenever you see me angry and you think it's at you, it's because I'm mad at myself.
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So that actually makes a lot of sense. And I also think maybe a lot of the discomfort with meeting
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fans is like, maybe they will discover it's a lie, which could also be terrifying.
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I think that's it. I think it's like the fan has a connection with an avatar of yourself that is
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better than who you really are. And that highlights your own flaws as an individual. So that's one way
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it could cause emotional pain. Another way is that it's just, and this is the thing with our friends
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who are just like publicly, I would call like media engineered type famous. They typically have just
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completely personalities than you would expect. So when you, like, if you get to know like a generic,
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I'd say like, let's say boy band celebrity or something like that, right? Their actual in-person
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personalities are often just like entirely different than what you would think from their public
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personality, which is, which is interesting because like, when I think about the person
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who we're thinking about, their in-person personality is actually incredibly educated and erudite and
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sophisticated and like really deep into like, you know, whether it's like AI or, or, or genetics or
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like all of the stuff that like we talk about on this, like, like our sort of personality group.
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Right. And yet publicly they would be thought of as just like another ditzy celebrity.
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And, and I think that that would cause me a lot of pain. But I met someone and they were like,
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I'm a huge fan of yours. I'm a huge, like, I feel like I already have a relationship with you.
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And the person that they had a relationship with opposite these other like mommy bloggers types,
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where the person they have a relationship with is actually better than who they really are,
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is actually so much less than what they really are.
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That might make me feel, yeah, pretty brutally, you know, every time that happened in the way
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that it made me feel. And especially if they just like totally politically misjudge what your actual
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views are and stuff like that. And, and, and they're almost signaling themselves as like the polar
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opposite of the real you, which I think is really interesting. But then the question is,
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and this is an interesting question for you, do you think we'll maintain this? Because you had the
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thesis that, okay, if you get big enough, you eventually, or your image begins to disconnect
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I think if I were acting in isolation, that would totally happen. Cause I just don't, I'm,
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I'm, I'm, I would say not ever really acting myself when I'm in a group, like in person with
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other people, right? Like I'm that one of the reasons why we're sitting in separate rooms is I'm
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much more likely to be honest and myself and unfiltered if I'm in a room or like a room by
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myself. So reason by the way, is that she is an AI iteration of myself. I just do the same thing
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twice and then apply a filter. There was actually a conspiracy theory about us a while ago. One of
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the earlier times we went viral and the, the, the theory went, this was on Reddit that we were
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actually the same person because we were rarely in like the same picture. And this, this series
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would only bolster that. And it is easily the, my favorite conspiracy theory about us.
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They said that it is impossible that somebody this weird exists in duplicate. Like they seem
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to hold a lot of the same ideas and nobody holds those ideas. So how could two people meet each
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other who happened to be weird in exactly the same way?
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Yeah. My theory was more like, Oh, that's, it was, it was, they were commenting on a picture
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of us in the article and they were saying, that's not really the pronatalists. Those are models that
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are posing as them. And I'm like, it was like that scene in Clueless when she thinks like the
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businesswomen and they're like, Oh, they're all actually models. And they were trying to sound
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like smart and dismissive. They're like, Oh, those, those people pictured in that article,
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don't you know, that's not actually the pronatalist couple. That's just like a theory
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of what models posing as a pronatalist couple might look like and talking about like a, and I,
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I couldn't have, when somebody is trying to hurt you, right? Like they're trying to insult you.
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And yet they say something that is so profoundly complimentary. Anyway, you know, that they were
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trying to belittle the movement by saying that we were real people.
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Yeah. But anyway, Malcolm, if you were to go mainstream famous, I don't, I think you would
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not change at all. You would go like full Trump or full Elon Musk. Like those are people who have
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gone mainstream famous who like give zero shits. They've changed nothing about themselves.
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I think you're right. And, and, and I would say that it is very interesting. If you look at on
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this channel, the older videos, the really old videos, like you search for the oldest videos on
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the channel, cause we've been using someone's YouTube channel forever, you know?
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And you very cruelly do not let me delete those videos.
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No, I do not. I love those videos. They represent a different time in your life, but
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you can see her personality comes off as much more of somebody who was beginning to model
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their personality and identity off of online influencers in these early sort of solo videos
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you did. Um, we'll watch them again, Simone. It's very interesting.
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My, my social mode is just like any LLM. It is reinforcement learning based. I just did what
00:14:53.760
Yeah. But if you look at older videos with me and them, and I might even upload some of those
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because we had a different channel that I still haven't taken down that we had some
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videos on, but like, we've got to figure out how to consolidate them. I don't know.
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But you've always been you, you should even take stuff from high school where you're like,
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I come off as a very similar energy to the energy I have today. And, and I find that interesting
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is, is it that I'm sort of like an anchor personality that draws you in and allows you to fix your
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personality because you're using me as an anchor.
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You're an additional modeling factor that changes how I behave in public, but I will never be myself
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in public because I hate being in public. So if I'm actually being myself in public,
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myself being myself in public is running the fuck away from public. It is leaving the room. So I can't
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like be honest and still be in a group of people because if I'm not lying and acting like I'm okay,
00:15:48.240
then I'm not there. Right. No, I agree with that. But I feel like in these videos,
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you very much act like yourself. Yeah. Because I'm in a room by myself right now. It's great. It's
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perfect. No, no threats other than the big looming mess outside your door. Sorry. I didn't forget.
00:16:09.980
But yeah. And yeah, this is interesting for me. And I really wonder, you know, going forwards with our
00:16:15.800
fans, if this is something that changes, like do our personalities compromise going forwards and
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what would, how can we, you know, I mean, I do want to be the type of person who's still capable
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of like changing my mind when I get new information or have new ideas. I never want to be able to do it.
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You're still going to be, there's like the, the bigger question is like, if someone held a gun to our
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our heads, would you actually be able to not be you? And, and probably not, it would be the death
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of you. Like there is no world in which you can convincingly go mainstream. So don't worry about
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it. You'll never sell out. That's one thing I love about you. Okay. Here's the question I have for
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you. Okay. Let's do some theory crafting on individuals who are famous, who we don't know
00:17:03.560
whether or not they're showing their genuine. Okay. Because I think what's really interesting
00:17:07.280
is the way a person reacts when they meet fans, like a generic fan can, if our theory is right,
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it can tell you. Okay. So Bill Murray is himself. Oh my God. You should mention Bill Murray. I happen
00:17:20.640
to know Bill Murray is himself because Bill Murray goes to, so this is a celebrity that I do know,
00:17:26.740
but only from stories. So Bill Murray goes to this golf championship thing. What's it called?
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The St. Andrew's open or whatever. We're like, you, you, you do golf. So you knew about it because
00:17:36.800
you were at St. Andrew's all the time. So I was a student at St. Andrew's. And so one of the things
00:17:41.520
that he was known for is even in my house, because my house used to be a party house before I moved
00:17:46.400
in and, but I was really good friends with the people who did it. So they would host big parties
00:17:50.060
every night. And he was the type of guy who would just walk in off the street because he saw a party
00:17:53.780
happening and, and hang out. And they were joking that he would like do the dishes after the party,
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like insist on doing the dishes for the entire party afterwards. And I'm like, that's somebody who's
00:18:05.320
just so genuinely loves the way that like people they don't know engage with them based on their
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public persona. And so the opposite of a celebrity who's sort of hiding away from the public.
00:18:16.900
Yeah. Celebrities don't like crash parties, but Bill Murray.
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Seeing someone on the street and being like, Hey, you're a student. Can I come to your house
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Every story I've ever heard about Bill Murray is like so based and I love it. So he's definitely
00:18:30.240
one of those people. Um, and that's a good example of a very public person and, and yeah,
00:18:35.260
and through seeing stuff like this. So like based on this theory, I would have been able to take that
00:18:39.640
story that I knew about Bill Murray and then say, he probably is very much who he is in public in
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person. Um, whereas I wonder somebody like, well, actually this is why I suspect Hillary Clinton seems
00:18:52.840
to come off so jilted when she's talking to people at like conferences and stuff like that.
00:18:58.100
Yeah. Like she doesn't connect in the same way that Trump does because she isn't obviously feeding
00:19:04.540
positive emotions from somebody saying like, I know you like a very interesting meeting is the
00:19:11.160
Nick Fuentes Trump meeting. You can read about like what was actually going on during that meeting and
00:19:15.620
the aid who was like trying to protect Trump from this. And he was clearly just loving that this person
00:19:20.360
liked him and was engaged with the things that he was saying. Whereas I, I don't think that you
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would get that same sort of just like cancel all my meetings. I'm with somebody who likes
00:19:31.020
me from, from, from, uh, but here's the question I have for you. What do you think of Andrew Tate
00:19:38.660
and Jordan Peterson? I'm thinking of like conservative intellectual people who are really high up. Do
00:19:50.900
Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't know about, yeah. I mean, Jordan Peterson probably is, I don't
00:19:54.000
know enough. Like, but when you look at the way that Andrew Tate set up his entire lifestyle,
00:19:57.760
like that, that he lived with all his cam girls and stuff, like you don't do that. Like if,
00:20:03.220
if you have a double life and you're hiding as like your real personality, you don't make your life,
00:20:08.100
your celebrity life, but Tate's celebrity life was his life. And he like fully, yeah, he's,
00:20:14.500
Yeah. So I'm actually arguing he's probably in an interesting scenario. So I don't think anyone can
00:20:25.360
You think he's a human being capable of maintaining frame 24 seven.
00:20:28.880
Yes. Because I think he, he like, it is, it is his, his reason for a living. Like everything's
00:20:35.120
about like, I am so tough and he wakes up in the morning and I am so tough. And like that,
00:20:40.380
no, I really think like he lives for that more than fame, more than wealth or anything. It is,
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it is that vision. I think it is, it is the beating heart.
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an aesthetic vision with every aspect of how he interacts with reality.
00:20:54.640
Yeah. Yeah. He's like Barbie in the Barbie movie before she got weird.
00:21:01.380
I love this with Andrew Tate being like Barbie from the Barbie movie.
00:21:07.400
Yeah. No, no. What? Like 100%. No, I, I think it's all genuine. I,
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I don't think he slips. I don't think, I don't think for him,
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it is not maintaining frame because he is the frame. Like, I just,
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I can't emphasize this enough. I feel, I feel like he's the real deal.
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he makes it seem like to other men that that's, that's achievable to them when it's not,
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it's just his neurotype. But when you look at also like genetically, like his father,
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like his genetic inheritance, I feel like it's literally like in his,
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You listen to the stories from his father and I don't know if these are made up or anything like that,
00:21:42.580
but they are very much that his father invented the philosophy he lives by and not himself.
00:21:48.780
Well, his father was a very like aggressive chess champion. It just like, I just, it's in his family.
00:21:54.220
It is his like entire genetic line, I think, to act like that. So he is the real deal.
00:21:58.180
Who, who else? Who's, who's not? Who do we have like evidence of super not the public image?
00:22:04.320
They, well, I mean, so many celebrities complain about their fans. I think literally any celebrity
00:22:09.400
that complains about their fans is probably not. Yeah. And this is something you see sort of across
00:22:14.220
stuff. Okay. Here's a great example. Megan and Harry, I guess. I was going to say,
00:22:18.000
we're talking about online celebrities. Yeah. Lindsay Ellis. I don't, I don't know who that is well enough.
00:22:25.380
Yeah. So Lindsay Ellis is the girl who was like the female film critic. Oh, the film,
00:22:32.800
the nostalgia chick. Yes. There was a nostalgia critic who's a famous guy on YouTube. And then he hired her
00:22:37.420
to be like a female version of himself for like when that was necessary in videos. And then she
00:22:42.160
spun off and did her own thing. And now she's like, she gets in fights with her. So she got in a big
00:22:47.000
fight with a bunch of fans recently. And it's been this huge thing. And I get the impression because
00:22:52.580
she really seems to be sort of antagonistic with her fans these days that she was always sort of
00:22:58.700
putting on a fake facade. Illuminati was that for sure. Gandhi? Illuminati on YouTube. Oh, Illumahati.
00:23:06.200
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely another one. Yeah. I actually think it's much more common on
00:23:10.820
the progressive side of things. And the reason why I think it's more common amongst progressive
00:23:15.760
niche influencers is because the social rules that the progressive ideal of a person puts on the way
00:23:23.720
people need to appear publicly. They're unsustainable. That you're almost always lying about something about
00:23:28.800
how you live. Yeah. You cannot indulge in your flaws and still be liked by your community.
00:23:37.560
You know, I think that we admit many things personally here or things that we have done in
00:23:42.400
the past, which demonstrate that like we are okay with accepting our flaws and that we like don't mind
00:23:48.520
them and that our community isn't going to hate us for that. Like I, you know, I can, you can mention
00:23:53.080
things you've thought in the past. I can mention, you know, things I've done in the past and, and we
00:23:57.180
don't really get that negatively judged. Whereas I think that was in that community you would be.
00:24:02.600
Yeah. Well, even for, you know, having the wrong reactions to something, a wrong opinion,
00:24:06.640
but no, who are, who are other mainstream? I guess like every celebrity who reacts poorly
00:24:11.920
in public, who, you know, like there's so many Reddit threads, which is like, oh, like Reddit,
00:24:17.040
tell us stories when you've met celebrities. And then there's all the people who are like,
00:24:19.760
God, this person was a dick at a restaurant. I guess it's kind of along those lines.
00:24:24.640
Yeah. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation to me, Simone, because I think
00:24:30.120
it provides information on, yeah, how you can see the world. And another story that I was going to
00:24:34.640
tell with Trump, which is interesting to me is if you talk about somebody not really changing,
00:24:40.260
one of, I think the most telling things about Trump is a lot of progressives will try to paint him
00:24:44.380
as like an actual racist. And it's like, if you look at the history of a lot of progressive online
00:24:50.480
influencers today, you will find that they have said like actually racist stuff in their youth,
00:24:56.080
that they use the N word and stuff like that, like in their rise to fame. You look at Trump when he's
00:25:00.720
on like Howard Stern from like 30 years ago, how did he never say once anything explicitly racist?
00:25:07.900
Like, do you think this is a man with self-control? Do you think this is a man who is capable of like
00:25:13.600
tactically putting out even a fake personality? And I think that that's been part of his saving
00:25:18.200
grace is he lacks the tactical self-restraint to persistently and over the long-term put out
00:25:25.420
a fake personality, but instead indulges in who he really is. And in many ways, people would
00:25:33.060
traditionally think of as the flaws of a personality that he really indulges in.
00:25:37.600
That's interesting. Looks like you've got a good future ahead of you then, Malcolm.
00:25:43.940
Well, let's hope. Let's hope. The political consultants don't make us take down all our
00:25:49.520
social media posts. We won't listen to them and we're not going to hire them anyway,
00:25:52.580
so don't worry about it. I love you. I love you too.