Based Camp - How Did the Gender Wars Get This Bad？ With Alex Kaschuta

00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. Today, we are joined by one of my favorite people in the entire world, Alex

00:00:03.960 Kishuda. She is probably someone you've heard of through her podcast, Subversive, which is how I 0.80

00:00:09.760 learned about her. She also has a sub stack at alexkishuda.substack.com. It's called The Garden

00:00:16.200 of Earthly Delights. She has excellent content there as well. So do check her out. Today,

00:00:21.540 we're going to talk about Gender Wars, which is really exciting because everyone loves talking

00:00:26.440 about it. Come on. It's fun. Would you like to know more? I'd love to hear how you got on this

00:00:32.720 topic, Alex. Oh, and I should also note, if you don't know who Alex is, Alex is probably one of

00:00:37.700 the most famous dissident intellectuals in sort of the idea space right now in terms of and interviews

00:00:44.560 a lot of other dissident intellectuals. Thank you. That's very, yeah, I feel flattered by that

00:00:50.540 introduction. Sweet. Yes, I mean, this is a this is I feel like it's a topic that maybe this is my

00:00:57.780 algorithm because I'm just like so morbidly curious about what's going on. So obviously,

00:01:01.700 now I have a small child, I am breastfeeding all the time. So I'm also staring at my phone all the

00:01:06.240 time lurking, you know, reading stuff online more than usual. And it seems to me like things are kind

00:01:12.480 of bubbling up in a almost like violent way. Like the discourse has, you know, I keep saying this,

00:01:18.760 but it's like, you know, Rwandan radio levels of hatred between the sexes have been brewing now.

00:01:24.660 It's, it's, you know, I'm someone who made quite a lot of my following on Twitter by, you know,

00:01:30.960 being honest about sex differences. And, you know, essentially, kind of like, you know, human

00:01:36.660 biodiversity, but with with a sex lens, because that was, you know, that was interesting to me at

00:01:40.840 that point. And these things are quite kind of uncontroversial in some ways, like sex differences

00:01:47.160 do exist, you know, they're interesting, people like talking about them. But I feel like, you

00:01:51.900 know, there was a certain dynamic and certain incentives on these platforms that take things

00:01:56.880 like that, assert a level of discourse that is based on, you know, I don't know, what's that called

00:02:02.480 the evolutionary psychology and all these things that that are they're interesting to people in the

00:02:07.080 space. And then, yeah, reduce them to the lowest common denominator and create kind of like many,

00:02:12.860 you know, sub cults around personalities that it's quite interesting. I mean, even even kind

00:02:19.160 of from a cold perspective, just looking at, at how the space has morphed from when I, you know,

00:02:24.560 started posting about it to to what's going on now. It's, it makes me think that, you know,

00:02:30.240 maybe there's a certain even to two truths that are quite basic, like this is quite, you know,

00:02:35.680 mundane stuff, we kind of forgot about it for a while. But you know, the fact that there are certain

00:02:40.700 average differences between the sexes. Yeah, I mean, that's something that was kind of instinctively

00:02:44.560 known for a while, you know, present in many stereotypes, for sure. But now that it's kind

00:02:50.440 of out there, and and it's almost kind of like codified in the internet, it's turned into an

00:02:56.980 info hazard in a way, like, and it's, it's gotten kind of monstrous in a way. So I feel like maybe

00:03:02.060 we should be a bit more blue pilled about these things. I don't know. It's just I recoil at what's

00:03:07.180 going on right now. And I'm so I'm afraid for our future. A thesis on what's going on right now.

00:03:13.380 Historically speaking, the humans, at least the humans that survived, were always in opposite 0.83

00:03:18.900 gender pairs. And so they always had a level of interest in the other gender, even though they

00:03:26.400 were different. And when they had kids, 50% of those kids would be the other gender. So they would 1.00

00:03:30.880 have interest in the other gender as we move to like, as marriage rates fall dramatically across the

00:03:36.720 world. And as fertility rates are falling dramatically across the world. There's a large

00:03:41.660 group of individuals that really only has the best interest of one gender in terms of any of their

00:03:47.460 the ways that they're trying to influence the public. On top of that, we live in a society where

00:03:52.460 I say sometimes I'm like, wouldn't it be cool of like Neanderthals were still around, like you could 0.97

00:03:56.500 interact with something that was almost like a human, but like had pretty vastly different

00:04:01.320 mental proficiencies and perspectives. And I'm like, but we kind of live like that already.

00:04:08.000 Like, men and women can almost be thought of as two different sort of hominid species that live

00:04:13.400 alongside each other. And historically, promote this in the dissident, right?

00:04:19.040 Be careful. Yeah, historically, these two groups, they always had to work together. But now because

00:04:26.380 they don't as much anymore, as soon as women got the right to vote, we were sort of on a crash course 1.00

00:04:34.180 to a society in which one party represented the needs and wants of one of the two groups. And then

00:04:40.720 the other party represented the needs and wants of the other of the two groups. And I do think that in

00:04:45.700 a way, that's where sort of politics is drifting throughout the world is a feminine mindset and a 1.00

00:04:51.840 masculine mindset in terms of policy positions. But yeah, open to hear your thoughts on this theory.

00:04:57.840 No, I think I think that's fair. I think that's, you know, as someone who's a little bit skeptical

00:05:03.440 about democracy in general, I don't necessarily know if it's that tied to the vote. I think it's

00:05:08.040 more tied to the fact that materially, women have kind of unlinked from the protection, like physical 0.99

00:05:14.320 protection in terms of, okay, I'm fighting off invading predators, be those in the forms of men,

00:05:19.760 or I don't know, big cats and stuff like that, that was really necessary back in the day.

00:05:24.280 And the fact that a lot of women really don't need provision from men. And I think there's a quite a

00:05:31.520 big class of men who kind of expected to have that to bring that to the table, okay, I'm going to provide

00:05:38.120 for my family or, you know, whatever parameters society around them gave them, like, for example,

00:05:42.860 now, you have the phenomena of the of the two income household, it's pretty tough to maintain a

00:05:48.900 middle class standard of living without making, you know, big sacrifices, if you want to have a

00:05:53.980 family or, you know, children, multiple, many, many children in the style of the Collinses,

00:05:58.360 without making some sacrifices in your social status, in, you know, kind of going down the

00:06:03.920 rung of where you find yourself as, you know, in your relative status, in the groups that you're in.

00:06:10.260 So I think that's, that's been a bit complicated, because essentially, you know, I also draw from what I

00:06:15.360 see around me. And I'm looking at, you know, I have a lot of friends who would like to get married.

00:06:21.240 And at one point, I was really critical. I was like, Okay, come on, you know, you're 30 years

00:06:24.920 old women, come on, it's time to get married, you know, be serious, you know, you know, it's, 1.00

00:06:29.320 it's, it's a moment, but looking around, it is really tricky. You know, I don't necessarily know

00:06:35.380 who exactly these women are going to marry, because I have, you know, men from my generation as well. 0.66

00:06:40.900 They're not necessarily marriage minded. I know they're online, there's kind of this idea that,

00:06:45.760 you know, the men are just waiting, you know, the women are kind of the bottleneck in the marriage 1.00

00:06:49.080 market, you know, they're sowing their wild oats, they're girl bossing, they don't want to get 1.00

00:06:52.700 married. In reality, I think things are a bit more matching the old, old stereotypes where women 0.97

00:06:58.380 were a bit more marriage minded. You know, things have changed, obviously, but I think the old

00:07:02.480 stereotypes still hold like, you know, men in base reality, outside of, you know, online spaces where

00:07:09.060 everyone, every man's a future dad and super trad and can't wait to, you know, have pop out 10

00:07:14.020 children and provide for them. They're a little bit more reluctant to, you know, tie the knot for

00:07:18.340 classical reasons. You know, I think you're absolutely right. And I want to unpack this a

00:07:22.780 little bit. So I think what we're seeing in society, because I think guys like when I tell a guy,

00:07:27.800 you're not actually marriage minded, they don't perceive it that way. And they perceive it as a

00:07:32.640 woman's fault. And I think the reason is, is because they are being unrealistic. So this is the plan 1.00

00:07:38.480 that these guys all have, because I've talked to them about it. They're like, oh, I'll reach like

00:07:42.700 30 or 40. And then I'll marry a girl who's like 25 or 22. These women are not going to marry you. 1.00

00:07:52.480 The women who want to marry when they're 22 want to marry 23 year old guys. Yeah. Like Simone and I

00:07:58.840 did when we got married. This is, this is who those women are marrying. There are women out there who will 1.00

00:08:04.020 marry you, but they are your age or around your age. And it is those women who are desperately out 0.91

00:08:11.400 there looking for someone to marry. And then the guys are like, oh, nobody wants to marry me because

00:08:15.540 they're trying to lock down a girl who's much younger than them. And I've just consistently seen

00:08:20.240 this phenomenon because I don't know some fantasy that's baked into guys when they're young, which

00:08:25.680 is like, well, I have an infinite fertility window or because they're over focused on fertility windows. 1.00

00:08:31.360 And it's like, if you care about fertility windows and you're a man, you need to marry young there. 0.95

00:08:36.980 This isn't like an infinite thing where, yeah. And so I think that that's, what's creating this

00:08:42.200 misinterpretation is that the women who want to get married, you know, when they can get married, 1.00

00:08:48.560 like in their thirties, the guys are like, who wants to marry them? They've been passed around.

00:08:51.700 And it's like, well, say the same for you. Why are you 30 and not married? Right. You know,

00:08:55.620 you made the same gambit these women made.

00:08:58.080 I think it's also, you know, there's a growing popularity of content like this, you know,

00:09:03.140 10 years ago, you had kind of Red Bull forums and pickup artistry and things like that.

00:09:07.440 It's quite relatively niche. I think, you know, maybe one in, you know, eight men knew about it

00:09:13.460 and, you know, knew about game, had read the game or something like that, like kind of the more,

00:09:17.520 the more analog version of this whole thing. Nowadays, I mean, you know, I don't necessarily

00:09:21.820 think there are many men in the Western world who at least haven't tangentially heard of Andrew Tate

00:09:25.680 and kind of the whole sphere around him. I mean, he's kind of like, you know, the spiritual godfather

00:09:30.380 of the last man, you know, people, you know, he's kind of a focus point, but there are kind of

00:09:35.080 concentric circles of this knowledge of, you know, female nature, all of this stuff, you know, 1.00

00:09:39.980 empty egg cartons. And this is partially derived from evolutionary psychology. Like there are actual

00:09:45.020 insights in it. And it is interesting. I mean, I've, you know, I've been kind of in these spaces for

00:09:49.180 for a long time and it overlaps like the Venn diagrams between evolutionary psychology, actual

00:09:54.940 scholars of evolutionary psychology and, you know, what, what the red pill says or what some of the

00:10:00.020 red pill people say, there's overlap. These are not completely overlapping because there's also a

00:10:05.480 lot of kind of lore that's very specific to the red pill. It's very selective as well. You know,

00:10:09.700 this is about female nature, not necessarily the interplay of male nature or female nature,

00:10:14.100 because if you try to be too forthright about male nature, then no one's going to buy your ebook

00:10:21.720 because this just has a very specific target market. So to sell the ebooks that one wants to

00:10:26.840 sell, it's all about, you know, how to, you know, female nature is duplicitous, you know, 1.00

00:10:31.240 the dual mating strategies, all this type of stuff that comes out of evolutionary psychology,

00:10:35.080 hypergamy, you hear all this, you know, scholarly lingo being, you know, presented, but not

00:10:41.060 necessarily used in a certain way. For example, the red pill sees hypergamy as essentially,

00:10:45.520 if you drill down into it is, is women dating anyone other than me. If that's, you know, 0.58

00:10:50.660 it's like anyone who has any sort of redeeming quality, be it looks or money or social status

00:10:56.900 or being funny or tall or short, or, you know, whatever, whatever thing that is attractive to

00:11:00.960 the woman is hypergamy because, you know, this guy has it and I don't. So it's, you know, 1.00

00:11:06.240 it's such a silly concept. It's like women want to date up. Everybody wants to date up. 1.00

00:11:10.200 Men want to date up. What you want to date down? Like who wants to date down? Like why,

00:11:14.340 why is this? They're like, I'm going to tell you this horrible secret about women. 1.00

00:11:18.700 They like having, they like trying to date people who they think are higher status than them. And

00:11:24.120 it's like, yes, you know, I do too. You know, another thing about Andrew Tate that I want to

00:11:29.840 get on here is I don't, have you ever seen our Andrew Tate is Blippi takes like on the,

00:11:34.760 I think you mentioned that on, on my podcast as well.

00:11:37.020 On the commodification of the male identity, which is to say, you know,

00:11:41.240 if our listeners don't know who Blippi is, he's this guy who a lot of kids watch these days and

00:11:46.160 he like dances around fire trucks. Whoa, look this right here. Yeah. This

00:11:54.340 is a hydrant wrench. You use this to open up the fire hydrant.

00:12:04.440 And like, it goes on and gets in like garbage trucks and like all of the things that kids

00:12:09.360 would like, but like, obviously no adult actually wants to do these things. And we argue that Andrew

00:12:15.140 Tate's online identity is optimized around what like a teenage boy would think that an adult man

00:12:21.820 wants to do with his life, but that like very few adult men actually want to do.

00:12:26.020 We can't know booze. We need booze. 1.00

00:12:29.400 Put it to my booze.

00:12:31.520 Aikido.

00:12:32.920 How do you know Aikido without booze?

00:12:34.320 But he's really gotten good at, at, at packaging this sort of instinctual masculinity that young

00:12:41.040 boys feel and then selling to them a pathway to achieve this thing that no one should want 0.92

00:12:47.480 to achieve anyway. And I think in creating these sorts of aspirational pathways, because

00:12:56.020 on the right, we have as much of a problem with this on the left, you know, on the left

00:12:58.840 where we, we, we, we may, you know, condemn individuals who go out there and create this

00:13:05.460 illusion of like a lifestyle where they're just sleeping around a lot and they are, you

00:13:10.100 know, all polygynous and all, you know, whatever. Right. And we're like, oh, how horrible that

00:13:15.440 you have created this aspirational lifestyle that doesn't correspond with kids or like actual

00:13:19.840 happiness. Or we keep recently, we've been playing a lot of the end scene from the gladiator

00:13:24.160 where we're like, you know, this is what heaven is. Right. You know, it's the farm with the

00:13:28.080 wife and the kids. And, but on the right, we have the same thing. I mean, how is Andrew

00:13:32.100 Tate any different in sort of the aspirational life that he's showing people? Because it's

00:13:37.620 not a life that leads to productive, stable relationships.

00:13:40.480 I have a question for both of you though. And cause I'm not really sure this is something

00:13:43.960 I wonder about, but I don't know if it's maybe really what's playing out. I feel like

00:13:48.460 to a certain extent, globalization, the internet, et cetera, has allowed us to sort of culturally

00:13:53.140 homogenize. Like there's, there's less differentiation between us, between men and women, between

00:13:57.900 different cultures, between different nations. And people are in these various tribes online,

00:14:03.220 but there's a lot more similarity. And perhaps a lot of the polarization that is emerging between

00:14:08.900 men and women has more to do with homogenization and less to do with there being like serious

00:14:15.840 differences. What makes me think this is because when you look at a very, very homogenous nation,

00:14:20.980 South Korea, you're seeing some of the most antagonism between genders, essentially because

00:14:27.060 there are no super different racial and ethnic and religious groups really in South Korea. Instead,

00:14:33.780 the way that people are choosing to galvanize is based on gender. And so you have the four

00:14:38.140 nose movement among women, you have men who are extremely resentful. And of course, then you have 1.00

00:14:42.320 this major prenatalism problem. Could it be that part of what's going on with gender wars online is 0.97

00:14:47.800 we're also seeing a little bit less balkanization of other groups. People don't necessarily feel like they

00:14:54.620 belong to some specific group aside from their gender. Like it's the easiest thing to identify 0.88

00:14:59.160 with. And then that's what might be causing this to become more pronounced. I don't know. It's just

00:15:04.440 something I'm wondering about. And I'd love your thoughts.

00:15:06.760 Yeah. I think, you know, if you look at how politics works online, you know, there's there's

00:15:11.760 polarization and on every dimension. And like you said, this is kind of the most the most close to

00:15:16.560 home thing where you almost inevitably have frictions. You already have frictions within the family.

00:15:21.220 So you either have mommy issues or daddy issues, if you're online, probably one of them, at least.

00:15:25.760 And, you know, that's already kind of a gendered strife that you bring to the table. And then 1.00

00:15:30.400 obviously, as a red blooded individual, you probably will pursue romantic relationships,

00:15:35.640 you're going to have rejection. I know, I'm remember, you know, being in middle school and

00:15:40.460 not very attractive and, you know, getting rejected by boys. And if I had, whatever the the fem cell 1.00

00:15:46.560 manifesto to that point, I would probably gone down some sort of rabbit hole, you know, condemning

00:15:51.700 my life and not realizing that, you know, by the time I turned 16, and I know my cup size would go

00:15:57.020 up, you know, all my problems would be solved from that perspective. But this is the type of thing that

00:16:02.440 just wasn't available at that point. So I kind of muddle through and just kind of, you know, take it on

00:16:09.220 the chin and, you know, wait for things to get better and keep trying and, you know, smile at the

00:16:13.740 cute guy. And then hopefully something will work out. And it did, I guess, for some people,

00:16:18.540 maybe it takes longer, some people never happens. And for those people, there's more and more of

00:16:23.140 this kind of palliative care for your ego online. And there's nothing more kind of

00:16:29.880 injurious to your to your person than being sexually rejected. And I think especially for young men,

00:16:36.920 it's very scary and damaging. And if you have all these kind of meta narratives of why this is

00:16:42.860 happening, and why, you know, women are demons. And on the other end, you know, you have, you know, 1.00

00:16:47.560 a lot of kind of porn culture. And, you know, even if you're a young woman, you're like, okay,

00:16:52.560 you hit puberty, and then you, you open up the internet. And it's just, you know, it's just boobs 0.96

00:16:59.240 and ass. And, you know, obviously, this is kind of what the younger men also relate to. Okay, this is 0.99

00:17:04.300 kind of what femininity should be. This kind of trickles into your first relationships, if you have 1.00

00:17:08.860 them, it's, it's a scary environment. It's like you go from zero to 100 in, you know, very scary

00:17:15.600 waters. And I remember that was the case, even when I was in high school. You know, I hadn't heard

00:17:20.780 about porn. But you know, my first boyfriend clued me in on everything that I needed and didn't need

00:17:26.560 to know. And it was a very, you know, frightening time, actually. And I can't even imagine how much this

00:17:32.480 whole thing is ratcheted up. And it doesn't surprise me that, you know, younger women have, you know, 1.00

00:17:36.960 all sorts of, you know, desires to transition and, you know, extreme forms of feminism are taking 1.00

00:17:43.740 root in in the zoomer mind. And yeah, I mean, things are polarizing, because the enormity of

00:17:50.360 the opposite sex online, and it's, you know, detailed, you know, darkness is presented and 0.94

00:17:56.340 reflected at you every day. And it's extremely frightening. I mean, I wouldn't, I'm not surprised

00:18:00.920 that men, you know, are incels. Actually, I went into a rabbit hole a few days ago, I didn't know about 0.99

00:18:06.460 this, you know, there's a whole subculture, obviously, incels have their own lore, their

00:18:09.920 old thing. But for some reason, on, you know, this kind of tick tocky videos on YouTube, they showed

00:18:16.440 me some incel videos where there's kind of this whole group of male models that they all idolize

00:18:22.520 male models that I've never heard of as a woman who apparently, you know, loves these guys, these

00:18:26.560 chats. And they're, they've kind of picked out for the portions of their faces and things like

00:18:31.580 that. And okay, all these guys saying, you'll never be Chico. Apparently, Chico is a guy who

00:18:36.420 they all love. And it's just such a deep rabbit hole of, you know, this perfectly proportioned

00:18:42.660 twink looking gentleman. Yeah, I don't know, it's it was kind of, sometimes when you when

00:18:47.840 you stumble onto something that's not yours, and it's so exotic, and has so many layers of

00:18:53.540 lore and, and things that people have been thinking about is kind of was very startling to

00:18:58.100 me, especially because this is apparently, they're kind of codifying what it is to be

00:19:02.120 attractive to women. And it's such a such a failure of cross sex mind reading, like a 1.00

00:19:06.480 lot of this, this incel stuff is, oh, it's wild. I cannot elevate men. Yeah. Yeah. One

00:19:16.000 of the things that I often mention in the book is, is that I am what most women consider to

00:19:21.180 be a very attractive man. And men like in the comments will be like, that can't possibly

00:19:25.980 be true. No, I'm not what men consider to be an attractive man. But in the and then

00:19:31.480 they're there, they have these aspirations of body types and attitudes that don't correlate

00:19:38.100 with what the other gender actually wants. Instead, it is an idealized version of what 0.96

00:19:44.000 their gender wants. And we're seeing the same with women. I think we're seeing the same with 0.75

00:19:48.180 women. What women want? Like, I'm just look like I'm just telling you, like, guys, look 1.00

00:19:54.060 at the guys who young girls are drawing. These are elf men. All the young girls are into like 0.94

00:20:01.860 this twink elf man look, or they're like depressed dads. The meme I was trying to remember about

00:20:11.700 this was young girls are into guys who look like line cooks, elf princes, or depressed

00:20:18.500 fathers, or some combination of them. And then they have various people in this Venn diagram

00:20:23.400 here. Yeah, I don't know about that one. There's a there's a great like chart on this of the elf

00:20:31.260 men versus depressed dad. And then there's like another mark on there. I can't remember what it

00:20:35.700 is. But anyway, but it's not the ideal of you know, the the Andrew Tate like character. But I also

00:20:43.560 think there's something that you said at the beginning. So both of you said something that I

00:20:47.220 really want to elevate as ideas, because I think that both of them have an element of truth to them.

00:20:50.760 Simone's point about homogenization, the more homogenized the culture tends to be these days,

00:20:55.480 the more like is severe the gender war is. And for people who want to learn about the gender wars 0.75

00:21:01.480 in South Korea, I'd suggest a YouTube video called the gotcha gang wars part one and two. It's a

00:21:05.480 fantastic breakdown of this. And we'll probably do an episode on Korean culture eventually. The second

00:21:10.660 one that I think is really true is you talking about forbidden information. I think as the the sort of

00:21:17.460 dominant culture in our society, this urban monoculture begin to ban certain types of

00:21:22.580 information tied to human biodiversity, with a subclass of that information being gender differences

00:21:29.960 in perspectives and proficiencies, they made this information more powerful and very useful for

00:21:37.840 individuals who want to use it towards malevolent ends, even if those ends are not like they don't

00:21:42.940 intend them to be malevolent, it can just sort of like organically evolve in a malevolent direction,

00:21:47.180 because now this information, you know, it can be delivered in a did you know x and y and like x and

00:21:53.580 y are things that are obviously true, but are banned truths within our society. And then you know, b and z,

00:21:59.740 b and z are things that a person wants to believe are true, but are now being tied to this obviously

00:22:04.760 true information. So like, did you know that women want to date men who are better than them, 0.75

00:22:10.080 you know, and therefore, all women cheat and lie. And and the the you can package these in the same 0.99

00:22:17.240 thing is done with men, you know, that they did to young girls, like, did you know, that men get 0.93

00:22:22.460 turned on by violence, and therefore, all men want to beat you. The other thing that Alex pointed out

00:22:27.820 that that's really sticking with me is before, if you felt something if you felt uncomfortable through 0.83

00:22:33.820 puberty, or if you were rejected by men or women, okay, it sucked. And maybe you would, you know,

00:22:39.120 complain to your friends about it. And you would listen to some sad songs. But that was kind of

00:22:43.460 the extent of it. Whereas now, there are so many resources, like you say, to go online, and there

00:22:48.800 are communities that will say, well, of course, and that's because men slash women are evil. And 0.98

00:22:53.640 therefore, you can become this and you're going to identify as this. And now you're going to dress

00:22:57.100 like this and talk like this and believe these things. And it's going to change your entire life

00:23:01.580 trajectory. When as whereas before, it was just a mood, it passed. And you see the same,

00:23:07.740 it may be magnified more with transitioning, right? You're uncomfortable with your body going

00:23:12.480 into gender. And then a lot of people who aren't actually trans end up starting to transition or

00:23:17.360 using hormone blockers, because there's a community out there that's like, oh, you feel this way,

00:23:23.080 therefore, you're this. So I think that's a really good point that there are all these resources now

00:23:27.500 for various feelings, I think associated with a broad external locus of control, as in it's not your

00:23:34.520 fault. This is happening. It's society's fault. And therefore, you should join our group that you

00:23:40.300 now have me thinking about it very differently, which is fun.

00:23:43.960 Yeah, I also wanted to elevate a final thing that I think is a big problem here that I didn't realize.

00:23:49.760 So our fans set up like a discord server for our community, and it's ended up doing really well.

00:23:54.600 And after I've been interacting with the discord server, I realized how harmful these types of places

00:24:00.620 are, in terms of like, psychologically speaking, they're sort of like, no, no, I mean, I think

00:24:07.080 ours is fine. But I think generally, the rules, because it creates these insular online communities

00:24:14.040 that are typically focused around a single person, because a lot of the times they'll be created for

00:24:18.940 like a YouTuber or something like that, or a single online personality. So that person has elevated

00:24:23.500 status within the community, everyone, there's sort of a feedback loop of acceptance and praise for that

00:24:28.440 individual. And then whenever anyone says something positive about that individual,

00:24:31.300 and the moderators, whenever somebody disagrees with them, can, they don't do it in our community,

00:24:37.040 but they can within other communities, just ban the person or silence that particular, like wrong

00:24:41.940 think, which allows for real quick snowballs of ideas to sort of radicalize in a way that they

00:24:50.980 just couldn't historically, because someone historically, if a group was getting sort of crazy, could always

00:24:55.440 go, hey, let's take it back a few steps. But that's not really as easy within these environments where

00:25:01.040 some people have so much control about the information that's being communicated.

00:25:04.860 Okay, I have one final question for you on the subject, Alex. How are you going to be raising your

00:25:10.040 kids differently or intentionally in a way with the gender wars in mind? Because you don't, I mean,

00:25:16.780 obviously, on the extreme end of the very bad direction spectrum, you have extreme feminists, 1.00

00:25:21.480 for example, who are raising their boys to essentially hate being male, right, that you are 0.96

00:25:25.260 the evil thing. And you know, we have to make you feel guilty from age one. You know, how do we how

00:25:31.160 do we correctly raise kids of various genders? What's your plan? Yeah, I mean, this has become and to be 1.00

00:25:37.240 honest, at least in part, this is except except for my, you know, morbid fascination with it, because

00:25:41.120 it is really interesting to see all this kind of develop. But, you know, I wrote an essay a few years ago

00:25:46.080 about my worries about, you know, raising boys, and it was more about, you know, kind of the, you

00:25:50.480 know, DEI complex, and you know, the fact that, you know, as white boys are going to have, you know, 0.80

00:25:55.160 maybe issues. But to be honest, I think at this point in my life, I'm like, I'm more concerned that

00:25:59.640 they're going to be seeded with some sort of, you know, nihilistic bullshit for the internet. And, 0.98

00:26:04.640 you know, either that or completely rendered useless by, you know, extremely lifelike video games or

00:26:11.760 something like that. I mean, it is, it's, it's, it's, it's captivating. I see how much of a, you

00:26:18.660 know, slavery I have to the screens, I really try to be mindful of this to kind of distance myself to,

00:26:26.440 but it doesn't always work. I mean, it doesn't often work, actually. Also, because partially,

00:26:31.260 this is also what I do, you know, I kind of have to keep an eye on it to see what's going on. But I

00:26:36.240 think, you know, our plan is essentially in the longer term to move to New Zealand, to build a

00:26:41.380 compound, to have a much more nature focused life. And what we have there is a lot of Ben's

00:26:48.700 extended family, which is my, my husband. And yes, essentially, those kids are all, you know,

00:26:53.540 into surfing, into hiking, into, you know, we're really going to push the physical activity,

00:26:58.560 be outdoors, you know, things of an online nature need to be incidental rather than the main,

00:27:04.980 the main thing, which, you know, here where we live in Romania, it's, it's a bit of a kind of a small

00:27:09.440 city, big town, something type location. And it's just not the same caliber of outdoorsyness that

00:27:17.120 we that we want. So yeah, that's kind of the plan. And I think I know, just being very mindful of

00:27:22.900 limiting screen time controls, all this type of stuff, but also at the same time, you know,

00:27:28.580 being also mindful, but the fact that their social life is probably going to be plugged into this

00:27:32.980 stuff. So totally. And professional life too. Exactly. You don't want them to be, you know,

00:27:38.360 this is kind of the thought process here, especially in Romania, where, you know, people

00:27:41.460 are very conscious that everything is on the internet. If you want to have like a white collar 1.00

00:27:45.800 job and, you know, be a professional, you have to be really savvy with using these tools, which I can

00:27:51.260 understand, but, you know, scrolling on TikTok, it's not really using the internet. So, you know,

00:27:55.640 one has to be mindful of that as well. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of my take. I'm not,

00:28:01.500 it's not very, it's not a solution, but it's, you know, a mindset more than anything.

00:28:08.740 Yeah. I like that. That's a good approach. It sounds very healthy.

00:28:12.220 Yeah, it does. Hopefully. I don't know. They're still small, so I haven't messed them up yet.

00:28:16.180 Okay. I will ask one more final question here. How are you going to relate to, or have your kids

00:28:22.300 relate to AI in a social context? So I'll explain what I mean by this. One of the toys that I'm really

00:28:27.760 excited that'll be coming in a few weeks for our kids is this Grok toy, which is a AI that a kid

00:28:33.380 can talk to that by Grimes. And it looks really cool to have like a, you know, because I think

00:28:40.400 about my kids, like the caregivers who they're with are not the most educated people in the world.

00:28:44.740 And so this would allow them to verbally interact with something that is, you know,

00:28:49.480 the equivalent of like a Stanford PhD and its level of knowledge and in its grasp of the English

00:28:53.420 language whenever they feel like it, which could dramatically advance their intelligence and

00:28:59.200 communication capabilities. But it could also create really negative psychological effects,

00:29:04.560 like the rabbit too. We also have ordered and we'll be giving to our kids. I don't know if you've seen

00:29:08.760 this device. It's a little like a screen that you can talk to and interact with the internet through

00:29:15.120 just your voice. So they don't even need to learn to type to really have full access to the internet.

00:29:18.840 So how do you think about tools like this? Yeah. When you said Stanford PhD, I was just imagining,

00:29:24.580 you know, the voice of Andrew Huberman coming through the Grok toy and teaching your children

00:29:28.460 to do cold exposure. Grimes actually voiced them. So you'll hear her voice. Oh, okay. The voice of

00:29:35.400 Grimes telling your children to do cold exposure. Exactly. There you go. Yeah. I mean, I actually haven't,

00:29:42.840 I'm still in kind of the, the fearful peasant, you know, waving her hand at the sky stage of,

00:29:49.000 of interacting with AI in relation to my children. I'm just like, don't, don't slap the iPad out of

00:29:54.960 their hand. Don't do it. I'm still kind of developing a coherent approach to it. I'm not a, you know,

00:29:59.700 you guys are pretty much the, the internet's early adopters on many things. So I don't know if we're

00:30:04.340 all at that. It's admirable, but yeah, I mean, I'm actually going to look into this. It sounds pretty

00:30:08.700 cool. I might get it as well. They're only 99 bucks. Really? Oh yeah. And what we realized is

00:30:14.400 we think they're so cool. It's we, we actually, since our oldest son has autism, he's been going

00:30:22.500 through ABA therapy, which it's actually about to stop because he's improved so much, but during

00:30:27.060 every session that he had, both when he was in daycare and then after he left, they, they graft

00:30:31.440 all of his good and bad behaviors, very autistically actually, which is quite appropriate, I guess. 1.00

00:30:37.020 So we can actually see like spikes of bad behavior, spikes of good behavior. His behavior

00:30:42.280 was terrible in daycare. As soon as he leaves these graphs that are like all high and, you

00:30:46.920 know, going up and down, they just, they plummet. And suddenly his behavior is amazing. And we

00:30:50.500 realized, okay, it's important for kids to have peers. And we're kind of like, okay, well, we'll

00:30:55.000 just provide them with siblings, but child peers are not necessarily the best influence. Same

00:31:02.500 with child peers on the internet, but also completely random peers on the internet. So part

00:31:06.960 of our approach is, well, we can't trust humans anymore because everyone's going to be corrupted.

00:31:11.220 So maybe we can just choose the right AI for them, not the wrong one, the right one, and

00:31:17.240 then use that as their influence instead. But it is, it is one of many approaches and I

00:31:22.280 like yours, but it's been so great to have you on. And I just want to remind everyone

00:31:25.680 listening to definitely check out the subversive podcast, as well as go to alexksushita at

00:31:31.980 .substack.com. We'll include links in the description so you can get to these things

00:31:36.740 easily. But Alex, thank you so much for coming on and we hope you'll come back very soon.

00:31:39.980 Thank you so much for having me on.

00:31:42.240 Thank you.

00:31:42.740 Thank you so much for having me on.

00:31:43.240 Thank you.

Based Camp - April 23, 2024

How Did the Gender Wars Get This Bad？ With Alex Kaschuta

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