NPC Memes and the Next Gender
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Summary
In this episode, Simone and Malcolm discuss TikTok, a new type of video on TikTok that is meant to be passively consumed by users for longer periods of time. They discuss the pros and cons of this type of content, and what it could mean for the next generation of users.
Transcript
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This is not content that is meant to be masturbated to.
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This is content that's meant to be passively consumed for longer periods of time.
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I think that type of content may explicitly be appealing to this new type of man who has much lower testosterone and hasn't fully differentiated into a male.
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That is what I think is really interesting here, is it's actually like porn, but for the next generation.
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I am so excited to be talking to you today because we're going to do something new.
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We're going to try to do something at least semi-topical because we've talked about doing this for a while.
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And this is on this meme that's been going around of this new style of video within TikTok.
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And we will have some examples of it play here.
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The two most prominent people doing this are Cherry Crush and somebody named Pinky Doll.
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What I want to get into with this is what is really going on here?
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Because I think a lot of people are just looking at this and being like, this is absurd.
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Yeah, it's like, this is a sign of the degradation of our society.
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But I actually think that there's a more interesting phenomenon here than that.
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And the people who are getting engaged with this as content producers, especially these
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early people, have shown themselves to be incredibly astute, intelligent, and understand
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aspects of the human condition that we may not have full access to.
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I also think this might represent a change in human biology that we've been seeing with drops in testosterone
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and stuff like that, which is something I'm really excited to dig deeper into.
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But first, let's talk about, I guess I'll start with Cherry Crush.
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Because I think it's easy to look at this person.
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And because what she's doing is ridiculous, assume that she doesn't like that she's incompetent
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or something like that, or she's just your standard like e-thought.
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But she's actually been at the forefront of several online phenomenons in a way that's allowed her to monetize them.
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So two other online phenomenons that she was at the forefront of and has done quite well within.
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ASMR involves riffing on a genuine kind of tickling feeling that you can get or tingling feeling that you can get from certain subtle sounds.
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So examples of ASMR are people like unwrapping delicate things, brushing hair.
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There's a lot of like overlap between ASMR and also like really childhood-like comforting things.
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So some ASMR videos are like, I'm going to do your makeup, or I'm going to brush your hair, or I'm going to tuck you in at night.
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And I think that there might be some element of it, but that is independent from the fact that for some people,
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these delicate ASMR sounds, whispered, tapping, et cetera, can elicit a kind of like tingling down your spine feeling.
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So this is really interesting because I think this is something we actually see cross species in species with really advanced auditory cortexes.
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So in birds and stuff like that, you will see them involuntarily begin to dance.
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It's great video of carrots and stuff, involuntarily dancing.
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And whenever a sensory system is advanced enough, it appears to be able to fire in weird ways with certain types of complex stimuli.
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I suspect that this system is very similar to the way you get a positive feeling with, oh, we have got these in our house, these head things that you put on your head to slowly go over.
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But, or really gently rubbing fingers across somebody's skin.
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What you're doing in both of these scenarios is you're very gently stimulating a large amount of a person's sensory system.
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And I think we call these sexual feelings because we don't have a way of engaging with them outside of sexuality.
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We've never made it through an episode where I feel like there's not something that demonetizes us.
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You wouldn't find it in a normal environment, but that represents more of a type of stimulation than that system is going to get naturally.
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And because whenever somebody is just trying to feel an emotion at a maximum context, the way that we contextualize that is almost always sexual, we sometimes have trouble fully appreciating that these systems are not necessarily sexual.
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Yeah, actually, I was just reading some studies this morning about oxytocin levels in different ape groups.
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And they definitely found that, yeah, sure, sexual interaction would increase oxytocin levels among ape populations, but so would grooming behavior.
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So if we're picking lice off of each other and brushing our fingers through each other's hair, very similar to what you're talking about, that also is increasing oxytocin levels, this level of bonding, this level of pleasure as well.
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And it is so close to sexual, but it's not sexual.
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And I think that's with ASMR, people are talking a lot about, oh, no, this is definitely a sex thing.
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This is definitely, and there are ways you can make it sexy for sure, but it's not by definition sexy.
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So one, she is on the forefront of new movements with how the internet has learned to engage different aspects of, that an individual might be trying to masturbate, right?
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You don't have to use that word constantly, to feel good in a non-productive way.
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Another word, because feeling good doesn't properly capture what I'm saying.
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What I'm saying is somebody is trying to maximally engage an emotional stimuli system using supernormal stimuli.
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So next, another area where she gained a lot of prominence early on is she was one of the first people to really engage fully with, in pornography, anime-like characters.
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Oh, so she does, like, OnlyFans-style stuff, too?
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Yeah, I think even straight up more explicit stuff than that.
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But in really high-quality prosthetics and wigs.
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To look like an elf or something like that from different anime shows.
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That is actually a pretty good innovation, because you're like, she is bridging the divide between filmed porn and hentai.
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I'm the one who looks at the actual primary materials when it comes to sexuality research.
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This is somebody who has thoroughly researched and been at the forefront of different ways that the internet is exploiting different aspects of the human psychological condition.
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In terms of maximizing certain stimuli response systems.
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So it's not somebody who is an idiot, let's put it in.
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Yeah, although she's certainly framing herself that way, but that is to exploit a market opportunity.
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She's like an expert trader on Wall Street, finding this amazing arbitrage opportunity.
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And she is rolling in it, and you're just sitting at home being poor.
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And then you've got this other character, Pinky Doll.
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This is another girl who will show a video of her.
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Then you have Pinky Doll, who's the other character who's become very popular in doing this, right?
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So you could dismiss her, say, okay, she's just jumping on a trend or something like that.
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Because this wasn't a trend that either of them invented.
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Somebody got popular doing this, I think, basically accidentally in Japan.
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And then they were looking for what's the next thing.
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And I've seen this style riffed on in very different contexts.
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Like people posting videos like to Reddit and whatnot where they or their girlfriends or their boyfriends are acting like NPCs.
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But I've not seen it in a feed, streamer, OnlyFans context.
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Yeah, and I think that this is something different.
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I think the NPC, I think it's closer to ASMR than it is to anything else.
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Like it's a very satisfying thing to watch for some reason.
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See this crossover between video games and a human.
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But before we talk too much about it, let's talk about Pinky Doll.
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Because I want to establish that neither of these people, they may dress like the way we would aesthetically assume a stupid person would dress.
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But I think that's more to please their audience than a sign of their actual intelligence or understanding.
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Pinky Doll does a very interesting thing in her videos that is unrelated to this.
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And in the center of it will be a kernel of popcorn.
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And then she'll go pick up another one and then do it again.
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And some people, when they're trying to copy the style now, I've seen people, they'll just hold curling irons.
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Not understanding why she's doing this or what she's doing.
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She is creating anticipation, which increases viewer watch time.
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So if a viewer sees her holding this, they're going to ask, is that what she's doing?
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I'm going to at least wait to see if this thing pops.
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And it's also, you've got some operant conditioning in there because you don't know when it's going to pop.
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You are unlikely, if you've been watching for a while and she's been holding it for a while since the last pop, you're not going to want to leave until the next pop.
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Because it's created into individual units of time through this system.
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And as soon as you've just gotten that last dopamine hit from the last pop, you're waiting for the next one.
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Meanwhile, she's doing this complete other system that's engaging a complete other mental system.
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But the way that they would frame what they're doing is they are acting like an NPC.
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And then people will pay for little tokens, hot dogs and stuff like that.
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And as they're going up, they'll pretend to eat them and then make a preset noise.
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And there seem to be other things that people can pay for that make them make other reaction
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So it's not like they're reacting like a human would.
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It sounds like they're repeating sound bites, if that makes sense.
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And Simone, this is actually really important for our viewers.
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We're going to need you to do it for the audience.
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And then they're kind of like, what does she do?
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No, but the thing is, and when I look at it, like everyone else is like, oh, this is sick.
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This is, this is perverse, like disgusting, sexy stuff that people are doing.
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And my first reaction is this is what every mother who's desperate to get her children
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I'm like, this is, this is me and our kids all the time.
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So let's break out a few things that are happening here.
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And I do think it's an explicitly sexual act, but I think it's different than the way our
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So one of the things that's really important to remember with males is we've looked at something
00:14:00.600
at the 30% drop in testosterone in the past 20 years.
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We are seeing a change where men, you've seen this with the studies on.
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I think you're referring to studies on the effect of at least as measured in first trimester
00:14:16.600
of endocrine disruptors on children, especially boys, and that it seems to be that there's a
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correlation between higher levels of endocrine disruptors and at least first trimester
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mother blood samples and shorter anogenital distance.
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And even later in life, less male sexually divergent behavior, which is to say the boys
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And they're also like, they've become less boys, but like, even when it comes to genital
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formation, their penises haven't made it all the way up in their migration.
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So while I think that this behavior, this type of content is meant to appeal to a sexual system,
00:14:55.120
in our generation, men engaged with sexual systems through full masturbation.
00:15:03.140
Like traditional old fashioned, not the new kind you're describing, but whatever.
00:15:06.780
This is not content that is meant to be masturbated to.
00:15:09.340
This is content that's meant to be passively consumed for longer periods of time.
00:15:15.220
I think that type of content may explicitly be appealing to this new type of man who has much
00:15:24.200
lower testosterone and hasn't fully differentiated into a male.
00:15:30.420
That is what I think is really interesting here, is it's actually like porn, but for the next
00:15:39.520
The frogs have been turned gay and now they like watching NPCs eat emojis.
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We expected the frogs to turn gay and the rate of people identifying as LGBT has exploded.
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But more importantly, what you're saying is this isn't about changing sexual orientation.
00:16:03.000
Of course, our argument is there is gay, straight is also an incredibly stupid kind of distinction
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But more broadly, sexuality is changing across the board.
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And with lower testosterone levels, you're going to get all sorts of weird attraction.
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And we've talked with prominent people in the MGTOW space.
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Sandman MGTOW, who has had a lot of really thoughtful things to say about what has happened
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And he too is observing like pretty significant shifts in sexual behavior.
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I think we're seeing this and many people are seeing this and it's showing up in weird
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People are missing the beat when they see Cherry Crush and they see, oh my gosh, the
00:16:44.860
And they just like, they can't understand it because there's literally a new evolution
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of mindset that they can't wrap their heads around.
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I couldn't masturbate to like gay male porn, right?
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I'm just not going to understand the appeal of that content, but I can't conceptually
00:17:06.700
This seems to appeal to a semi-male, like a male who might not be fully gendered differentiated.
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And this is something that we hear throughout the manosphere.
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Like you were referring to this interview with Sandman.
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And one of the things he was referring to is a very interesting thing in this sort of new
00:17:22.020
men's movement are these men who can't find partners, but they're not even looking for
00:17:30.660
They no longer, they are both incels, but also don't care that they're incels.
00:17:36.440
They don't feel this strong desire to go out and have this need fulfilled in the way that
00:17:47.440
And so this content may be content that wouldn't have appealed to men before.
00:17:51.800
So let's talk about what makes it different and what makes it so brilliant.
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It's not content that's designed to be like masturbated to, to release, like in a traditional
00:18:04.040
It's not content that it's very infantilized content, right?
00:18:09.180
It's literally how I talk to our children when I'm begging them to eat food.
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And it is very methodical and turn off your brain content in that they're engaging multiple
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systems like the popping corn and the other thing where it's literally like a direct brain
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And people are sitting there allowing their brain to be hacked with this system.
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Nobody's coming out of one of these sessions thinking like that was such a productive.
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I do think that this is part of a new wave of, of human sexuality.
00:18:51.580
I also think that, that maybe the infantilization is not, they're not necessarily tied together.
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I think that infantilization is something that is separately being societally imposed upon
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youth and that there's something that we can do about that.
00:19:06.600
I think it's going to take a lot of work, a lot of regulation and a lot of money to lower
00:19:11.620
exposure to endocrine disruptors in a way that could bring human sexuality back to something.
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Talk about this recent study about trans people.
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A bunch of scientists essentially said in a paper that there's no need to have a pregnant
00:19:29.620
person who is a trans man stop taking androgens.
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They said that it would be unethical to research whether or not it hurts a baby for somebody to
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transition while pregnant because asking that question would be attempting to
00:19:46.920
maximize the health outcome of the child and attempting to maximize the health outcome of
00:19:56.100
It's, it is maintaining your transitioned position as well.
00:20:02.480
But the point being is they refuse to research this because attempting to help a child,
00:20:10.060
they call it maximizing the health outcome of the infant was eugenic in their mind.
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So what you're saying is, is overall society, isn't that interested in not disrupting our
00:20:24.060
If you said something like we need to get these pollutants out of the environment, what
00:20:32.780
Well, especially if like the primary issue that seems to come out from the research has
00:20:37.720
to do with like reproductive fitness or gender problems, then I could see there being a lot
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less interest in at least among, we'll say predominantly progressive circles.
00:20:46.440
So like, I don't know, are you so angry about people coming out a little different gender
00:20:52.300
So maybe that's a problem, but yeah, I think infantilization is different and I really do
00:21:00.180
I want to, I want our kids to see cherry crush.
00:21:02.740
I want our kids to watch pinky doll and I want to see how they react.
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And if there is into her as I expect them to be, because I think they're going to be equally
00:21:12.760
And to me, that would be a sign that this is a very like infant style or not toddler style
00:21:18.620
or our boys are toddlers, but they, I think they've seen similar content and been pretty
00:21:23.540
I don't, I actually, I'm going to put, I think they may not be really, I guess Blippi
00:21:28.900
is a lot more intellectually engaging than, and that's, what's interesting is these kids
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shows we're showing them are much more intellectually engaging than stuff that adults are engaging
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But also just the willful turning off of your brain to engage with this content in any sort
00:21:43.960
of a long form scenario and that you're paying to do this.
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You're paying to feel like you have some interaction with this person.
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So presumably one pays for the emojis that are being consumed.
00:22:03.980
That means it's like a lot of money for, I'm just thinking, geez.
00:22:11.360
I would also like, now that you've pointed out that especially Cherry Crush is a pioneer
00:22:23.640
I would love to, if she ever wants to come on the podcast and talk with us about her brilliant
00:22:50.560
There's this perception that these are like young e-thoughts instead of like business
00:22:54.900
women where this has been their primary income stream for the past decade of their
00:22:59.880
You know, that's, it's a very different scenario and you have to become good at these
00:23:06.780
And through that, you can understand aspects of how appetites are changing.
00:23:11.640
And I think that there's always this natural reaction where if something's different,
00:23:15.260
from what you like, or it is culturally approved within your group, you react, you say that's
00:23:19.880
disgusting, that's pathetic, that's the fall of society, but different.
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In this case, I do think that they're appealing to, I'd almost call it like a new gender, like
00:23:32.360
Do you think they're, I guess their audiences are primarily male?
00:23:36.420
Hormonally, I am pretty sure that this is basically a new gender.
00:23:39.980
I love that you just pronounced hormones the way that Bronze Age pervert spells it.
00:23:51.860
I do think that hormonally we're dealing with a potentially a new gender.
00:23:56.620
And this is one of the first ways we're seeing people engage with that gender.
00:24:02.780
Because I think that the next big movement in men's rights is a group of men that just
00:24:10.140
doesn't feel biologically motivated to go after women.
00:24:20.040
But then, I don't know, actually, you look at Japan and you look at like the...
00:24:28.000
So there's this Venn diagram of otaku and idol lovers and everything.
00:24:37.280
And yeah, it makes perfect sense that this would come from Japan.
00:24:39.820
Because the whole anime world is very similar to this.
00:24:45.620
I wonder, actually, people talk a lot about how there's this problematic interest that
00:24:52.700
many otaku men have in very youthful, young, high-pitched voice.
00:24:59.300
Now, they always say that's because they're pedo bears.
00:25:03.380
But really, is it that they're more infantilized?
00:25:06.800
It's like this infantilized mindset and lifestyle.
00:25:12.980
Well, I'd actually say that the bigger trend now is not within these communities towards
00:25:19.120
I'd say it's actually towards mama-like figures.
00:25:26.460
I'm sorry to say, what have been the two big sexual figures in the online space that
00:25:32.820
The two I would think of is Resident Evil giant mama lady, who is this eight-foot-tall,
00:25:46.020
You're clearly engaged in female online spaces.
00:25:49.040
I can promise you, every single male viewer knows exactly what I'm talking about.
00:25:54.320
Okay, commenters weigh in, because I think Malcolm is too niche.
00:25:58.040
They'll all be like, oh yeah, Resident Evil lady.
00:26:00.900
And then the other one I would think of would be Bowserette.
00:26:05.480
I think very clearly a trans allegory or a trans-like character, where it is Bowser
00:26:13.300
presenting as a woman, often in finely realized relationships with Mario.
00:26:21.300
A lot of the things, like the song around this, are based around this idea that men should
00:26:27.120
just go out with other men who have transitioned, and both of them would be happy.
00:26:32.620
That's that women never really appreciate men, really, like in a deep way.
00:26:37.400
And that's what this character, to some extent, represents.
00:26:40.000
Other people would be like, oh no, it's just hot.
00:26:45.420
I'm more in, I'm more, I'm leaning toward in this conversation, like a Peter Pan camp.
00:26:50.100
Because we can't, neither of us can model this mindset.
00:26:52.680
But I think this mindset is more eternally youthful, like pretty cute, energetic, and drawn
00:26:59.740
to that, sometimes from the darkness, from a dark place, from a hopeless place.
00:27:04.620
That kind of equally infantilized, but hopeful and energetic kind of just energy, I think,
00:27:12.120
is what we're seeing maximized as a super stimuli in these videos.
00:27:19.620
I think it's an interesting concept that we might.
00:27:24.780
New genders essentially emerging as the pollutants in our environment are changing this next generation
00:27:33.100
One man's pollutant is another man's magical pill to make people cooler.
00:27:46.700
I think it's causing a lot of suicidality, a lot of unhappiness, a lot of unfulfillment.
00:27:51.460
I do not think that humans were optimized around this new type of gender expression.
00:27:55.860
And I think that the people who are trapped within it, it's not a good thing.
00:27:59.960
It would be better if we could get this stuff out of our environment.
00:28:03.000
I think being a frustrated, a sexually frustrated young man would suck way harder.
00:28:08.480
If I had to grow up in this modern world, and I could choose to be indifferent and in
00:28:14.200
a new gender dimension versus a very sexually frustrated young man with a very high sex drive,
00:28:24.520
I suppose, especially if you're born into this progressive urban monoculture.
00:28:30.140
Look at very patriarchal, traditional, like honor-based cultures where like women and men
00:28:37.560
are highly segregated and the men are definitely like much more like high testosterone, et cetera.
00:28:44.060
There are rapes, like the free radicals in those societies.
00:28:48.080
I think successful men in those cultures are not miserable.
00:28:56.140
But I think the majority of men in these cultures are successful.
00:29:00.220
I think that the old ways very much still do work in our modern society.
00:29:05.900
In a monogamous society, I'm not thinking about monogamous societies.
00:29:11.140
What, you're saying our society isn't monogamous?
00:29:12.980
It's not, but within these cultural groups, it is.
00:29:18.000
I'm not referring to like Christian communities, like the ones I'm thinking about.
00:29:22.620
What I'm saying is this, if you're born, yeah, it does make sense that you're not cursed
00:29:27.740
with wanting something if you're born in an already fallen cultural group that's not
00:29:38.100
However, I do think that whatever survives of humanity is likely cultural groups that
00:29:43.440
are going to be interested in protecting themselves from these pollutants.
00:29:46.760
Our audience can give us their thoughts in the comments.
00:29:49.040
This is definitely one of those areas where we have not fully thought through this yet.