Sub-Cultures With High Fertility： In Japan, UK, and Australia
Episode Stats
Words per minute
170.27571
Harmful content
Misogyny
20
sentences flagged
Toxicity
12
sentences flagged
Hate speech
43
sentences flagged
Summary
A cultural subgroup that is derivative often of American cultural subgroups and popular with the lower classes within a number of countries is staying or becoming one of the core high-fertility communities it shall inherit the future. In this episode, Simone and I explore the phenomenon of the "Yankees" of Japan.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be discussing a
00:00:06.320
phenomenon where a certain convergently evolved cultural subgroup that is derivative often of
00:00:14.100
American cultural subgroups and popular with the lower classes within a number of countries
00:00:20.040
is staying or becoming one of the core high fertility communities.
00:00:27.380
Exactly. And the first of these is going to be the Yankees of Japan. I'll put a clip of one here.
0.74
00:00:49.800
I want daughters who act like that, by the way. That is my plan. It is 100%.
00:00:56.620
But it's a culture that if you watch anime, you're likely familiar with, in which people sort of dress
00:01:03.400
like greasers and they form gangs, greasers being the 1950s American subculture, and they focus on
00:01:15.200
So not exactly. So yeah, Yankee culture is more just kind of like this. Yes, there's the greaser
0.99
00:01:21.440
hairstyle in many cases, like perms and little bouffons and stuff. But there is just general,
00:01:27.040
like, as younger kids, they were hooligans. They had bike gangs. They caused destruction to property.
00:01:33.960
But the movement now has evolved into what is referred to as mild Yankees, which are basically
00:01:41.600
the grown-up version of these people. And they've kind of switched out their souped-up biker game
0.95
00:01:46.440
bikes for... What are they called? These weird-looking Toyota cars that they spend way too much money
00:01:52.040
on. The Toyota Velfire. It's like this really boxy van. Just look it up. It's a thing. And
00:02:00.340
they're actually now known for being, like, fairly responsible, but they still kind of maintain a
00:02:06.320
So basically what happened, and we're going to go into a tweet that I think gets into this really well,
00:02:10.500
is they picked up this greaser, rebellious-for-rebellious's-sake culture that ended up
00:02:17.660
being very similar to sort of redneck culture in the United States, truck-nut conservatives in the
0.98
00:02:23.140
United States, as we pointed out. This is a uniquely resistant to fertility collapse group.
00:02:26.980
And being reactively anti-authority and anti-trend following, like mainstream trends,
00:02:34.240
is in the US, and for obvious reasons, protective of fertility rates.
00:02:37.840
And it has acted protectively for this subculture and other subcultures as they've aged out of their
00:02:44.560
Well, but I think what's really interesting about this group, and also the other groups that we're
00:02:48.600
going to explore in the United States, Australia, the UK, that bear a lot of similarities, is
00:02:54.260
this rebelliousness also is correlated with or just exists alongside a fundamental mistrust in,
00:03:04.380
like, mainstream societal institutions being plugged into mainstream news, and also believing in things
00:03:10.640
like the lifelong corporate job and going to university. So these groups also tend to either
00:03:15.500
not even finish high school, but at least definitely at very low rates, go to university,
00:03:20.640
so they're not in higher education. And the man who actually coined the term mild Yankee, his name is
00:03:28.260
Harada Yohei. He wrote this book called Yankee Economics, The New Conservatives, As the Leaders of
00:03:33.220
Consumption. He described them as the last Japanese generation to have parents who enjoyed
00:03:40.860
permanent, regular employment in a normal way. And it actually, as they aged, their rebelliousness eased up a
00:03:49.520
little bit, because fewer and fewer of their parents had jobs and incomes that sort of allowed them to, like,
00:03:54.060
wield social control that they might even, like, buck up against. So I think that also this generation
00:03:59.360
are at the lower ends of the economic spectrum to begin with, also was the first to see the crumbling
00:04:05.220
of the lifelong corporate job, which was a really big thing in Japan, but certainly a big thing everywhere else, too.
00:04:10.380
So they also, like, I think are among the first cultures to start going off the grid.
0.78
00:04:16.780
And by going off the grid, I mean, not buying in to something that has turned out to be a fundamental lie,
00:04:24.180
and that buying into also correlates with low fertility, in that the lifelong corporate job,
00:04:31.260
or buying into that kind of fantasy of, like, I'm going to make a lot of money, I'm going to go to
00:04:34.800
university, is the IQ shredder. It is the moving to the cities. It is the going to university and getting
0.90
00:04:41.300
the demanding job and not having time to live close to your family network and raise kids and
00:04:45.800
just spend time with friends and live within your means. And so this group is sort of naturally
00:04:52.400
high fertility, because these are the ones who aren't entering the fertility shredder. Does that
0.98
00:04:57.020
make sense? Well, they're also not as economically disadvantaged as you would imagine, given their
00:05:01.400
life choices. At the same time, they decided to get out of the university pipeline, focus on the
00:05:07.760
trades. In Japan, especially, those types of jobs were increasing in value or what they paid relative
00:05:14.880
to the types of lifelong corporate jobs that were really sort of breaking apart. Yeah. And what's
00:05:20.240
interesting is some people have posited about soft Yankees in Japan that, oh, they're going to
00:05:25.020
disappear. They're not going to last for long because they're not very educated. And, you know,
00:05:28.600
they won't be able to afford houses. They will totally be able to afford houses. There are these
00:05:32.280
just like emptying out towns in Japan where they can buy houses, although they're typically sticking
0.99
00:05:38.240
close to home and living within their means and using family for support and childcare. So no,
00:05:43.360
these people will be just fine. So to go into the original tweet thread that brought our attention to
00:05:48.220
this, it said, Miles Yankees are the winners of Japanese society. Skip high school and uni, several
0.96
00:05:53.700
years head start, and earn way more than a graduate in their 20s. Marry a gyro, buy a new house, have kids,
1.00
00:06:00.580
this is the way. And it has some images of, of this culture. And we should put some images on
00:06:05.200
screen of like what this culture looks like. It says then they tend to stay within a 10 kilometer
00:06:10.500
radius of their hometown. So they keep strong family friendship bonds, making it easier to start a
00:06:16.200
family. And it shows, you know, a meme of them grilling with, with, and it says, yeah, the mild Yankee
00:06:27.080
statue was their van. The boy was the soft Mohawk barbecue on the holidays. My eldest daughter is
00:06:33.900
learning to dance beautiful wife. And they have, I think it's not a van. I think again, it's a Toyota
00:06:40.680
Vellfire. And I want to understand the obsession with this vehicle. That is so strange. And there's
00:06:45.140
another thing here where it's, it's mild Yankee, where it's a guy and his girlfriend and they have a
00:06:49.700
baby. And it says, but, and he says, this, this messed up delicious. That's really bad. This,
00:06:58.020
eat it if you like. And she's giving, an old lady's giving her like food. And of course in Japan,
0.98
00:07:02.780
this would happen if you moved to a town and had kids.
00:07:04.920
Oh, basically it's, it's a cartoon showing a husband enjoying his wife's food, a wife accepting
00:07:09.180
local produce from a family member or neighbor. And then the, the family and their kids expressing
00:07:15.840
thanks to that local community member. Like this is the archetype of sustainable family rearing,
00:07:22.880
living in a supportive community, showing them gratitude, the young and old and, and working age
00:07:28.780
all have a role and they enjoy small and simple things. And that's the thing about this.
00:07:34.080
It's about building an alternate culture where the dominance hierarchy is not, and people don't
00:07:40.520
like that. I use the term dominance hierarchy. They're like, call it the prestige hierarchy. I use
00:07:43.580
dominance hierarchy because I'm comparing it in an anthropological context to like an eight tribe
00:07:48.280
or something like that is not the unified, the dominance hierarchy. The problem, one of the
00:07:53.480
biggest problems with the urban monoculture is that everyone's playing was in the same dominance
00:07:57.500
hierarchy. So you're always going to feel near the bottom, unless you happen to be like famous or
00:08:01.780
something where it was in both the Yankee and the mild Yankee dominance hierarchies. You can, for a much
00:08:07.960
lower cost and much lower investment, really invest in that culture and be like your own person that
00:08:15.500
you can have pride in. And then a tweet under it. Oh, actually, before I go to the tweet under it,
00:08:23.140
do you want me to read about the evolution of Yankee culture?
00:08:26.660
In Japan? Yes, I will. Okay. So the term Yankee in Japan doesn't refer to the American baseball team
00:08:34.480
or the historical U.S. group, but rather to a distinct subculture that emerged in the late 20th
00:08:39.580
century. Japanese Yankees are typically associated with rebellious youth, often characterized by a
00:08:44.520
distinctive style. Think pompadour hairstyles, modified school uniforms, and a tough anti-establishment
00:08:50.000
attitude. This subculture has roots in the post-war period, influenced by American pop culture like rock
00:08:55.700
and roll and biker kings, but it evolved into something uniquely Japanese. Over time, it's been
00:09:00.680
linked to working class communities, particularly in urban and semi-urban settings like South Osaka
00:09:06.340
and parts of Kishu. Is it associated with higher fertility rates? There's no hard data from official
00:09:12.500
sources like Japan's Ministry of Health or academic studies specifically tying Yankee subculture to
00:09:16.440
higher birth rates. However, some observations and sentiment on platforms like X hint at a connection.
00:09:22.120
For instance, it's been suggested in areas where Yankee culture is strong, like South Osaka or
00:09:28.600
Kishu, families tend to have more kids, two to three, compared to Japan's national average total
00:09:34.060
fertility rate, which dropped from 1.2 in 2023. Okinawa with a TFR of 1.6 and parts of Kishu, like Miyazaki,
00:09:43.580
1.49, do stand out as having higher fertility rates than, say, Tokyo, 0.99. These regions also have a
00:09:50.940
reputation as being more relaxed, community-oriented lifestyles, which some associate with lingering
00:09:56.360
Yankee influence. The theory might go like this. Yankees historically from working class backgrounds
00:10:01.940
may have prioritized family and traditional roles over career-driven urban lifestyles that dominate
00:10:07.500
cities like Tokyo, where fertility rates are lowest. Their mild modern counterparts could still carry a
0.58
00:10:12.880
countercultural tendency towards earlier marriage and large families, bunking Japan's broader trend of
00:10:18.680
delayed and foregone parenthood. For example, Kishu's relatively high fertility rates, around 1.8 in
00:10:24.100
some areas, and its reputation as a Yankee stronghold could suggest that correlation.
00:10:30.600
So one thing that I was looking at today was the connection between Yankee culture and another
00:10:38.040
high fertility culture, which is the Appalachian culture, which we constantly talk about. And in that
00:10:42.780
Twitter thread, they don't even mention Appalachian culture, but two separate people are like,
00:10:46.680
oh my gosh, you're just describing the UK phenomenon of the Dino.
00:10:51.340
And we're going to go over these two other phenomenons in a second.
00:10:53.140
Oh, you're just describing Aussie tradies. But I want to talk about the similarities between
00:10:57.320
Yankee culture and Appalachian culture. And the reason why is there's this movie that I love that
00:11:05.140
you will never, ever watch because it's basically the Japanese Amelie called Kamikaze Girls that I
00:11:09.600
have probably spent like hundreds of hours watching again and again, like before I met you,
00:11:14.920
because I love it so much. It's about two girls. One is this girl who's really into Gothic
00:11:19.520
lollia clothing named Momoko and a friend she makes named Ichigo. And Ichigo is a Yankee. She's a,
0.98
00:11:26.840
she's a Yankee girl. And like, when I rewatch the scene where she's introduced, I'm just like,
00:11:32.440
oh my gosh, there's, she is like the Japanese, like Appalachian Tom girl, because she shows up on
0.99
00:11:39.600
what is basically a rideable truck nut. It's like this insane, like souped up scooter motorcycle
00:11:46.220
thing. And because she's the member of this, this, this Japanese biker game called the Ponytails.
0.99
00:11:51.520
And she's actually showing up at this young girl's house because her father sells bootlegged Versace,
00:11:58.260
like super trashy clothing. And like, as she's like looking at the clothing that's available for sale
00:12:03.340
later in the scene, she's like, oh my gosh, universal Versace. Cause he'll just like starts
0.96
00:12:07.960
combining logos. It's like just totally trashy taste, but like fantastic. And as she's approaching
00:12:13.780
Momoko, Momoko's like thinking like, oh, a Yankee drawn on eyebrows. And she spits on the ground and
1.00
00:12:20.500
she has like very male mannerisms and it's just like, whoa. Okay. So we've got the tomboy,
0.99
00:12:24.840
we've got the truck nuts, we've got like the toughness and this sort of like unabashed enthusiasm
00:12:30.960
for things and lack of concern for what other people think. And I absolutely love it. And I
00:12:38.200
never watched that movie thinking like, oh, this is a lot like another type of American culture,
00:12:43.840
but it totally is. And it makes so much sense to me that this would evolve into one of the
00:12:49.580
high fertility Japanese cultures. And I'm thrilled about it.
00:12:52.540
If I can get away with posting this culture, it's this video, because it's part of a music video
00:12:57.120
that it's from the country song, When It Rains. And I think that many people, when they think of
00:13:03.540
American country music, or they think of this like uniform sort of Republican American cultural group.
00:13:10.820
And I keep pointing out that no, the Appalachian cultural group is very distinct from the aristocratic
00:13:17.040
Southern group or the aristocratic and very religious Southern group and proper and the Mormon group.
00:13:23.360
And I think that the intro to this video does a very good job because you see this family coming out
00:13:28.080
going to church and you assume if you're approaching country music with stereotypes that they are the
00:13:33.820
protagonist. And no, it's not, it's not them. It's the guy who fell asleep partying on his, his roof and
00:13:39.440
who's just, you know, was, was having a fun time. And you can tell that this individual would be very
00:14:06.580
Watch like a video of the, the girl in it, who is being a very like, at her lunch with the other girl.
00:14:14.300
And she's showing a lot of manners that remind me a lot of our daughter.
00:14:17.720
No kidding. Yeah. If it was like, if that scene was our family, it would be me
00:14:22.640
dressed like the frilly girl and it would be our daughter Titan sitting across from me 100%.
00:14:28.640
But also like another thing that's demonstrated in that scene you're referring to is like this
00:14:46.160
distinct lack of education. Like, I think she's listening to some classical artist and Ichigo's
00:14:55.520
But, but you see here that this is also something you see with this Appalachian group culture.
00:15:00.020
When you see them stereotyped, they're always stereotyped as the women particularly as being
00:15:05.360
uniquely tomboyish. Just think of like Applejack for My Little Pony. He was like hardworking and,
00:15:10.300
and, and, and tomboyish. Or you could think of, well, any girl from, you know, I'm trying to think
00:15:16.620
of good stereotypes. Oh yes. I'm a redneck woman. Or the, the girl from, I didn't need no high
0.96
00:15:23.080
class man. The Beverly Hillbillies. I think she's great. Oh yes. The Beverly Hillbillies where she's
0.86
00:15:27.900
incredibly strong. Is, is like the gyaru archetype. So the, what Roko on Twitter said when talking
00:15:49.180
about this movement wasn't implying that like Yankees marry Yankees and definitely like female
1.00
00:15:54.420
Yankees as depicted by Ichigo and Kamikaze girls is less common. You're more likely to get like the
00:15:59.740
girly girl version of that subculture, which is gyaru. They're like way back in the day, the way that
1.00
00:16:07.000
you knew you were looking at a gyaru was basically if you saw like a Japanese stereotype of like
00:16:12.360
Malibu Barbie. So bleached blonde hair, super tanned, and then extremely girly pink accessories.
1.00
00:16:20.800
That's how you know you're looking at a gyaru.
1.00
00:16:22.680
They look overly tan and they're like, now, now they're, now they're just toned down. Now they
00:16:26.160
just look like the Japanese equivalent of trailer trash. Like they're, they're attractive. They're
1.00
00:16:31.980
sexy. They, they like dress in a sort of like sexy, attractive way. And I think social media
00:16:36.460
has kind of had that effect where it's like toned everyone down a little bit and also taught everyone
00:16:40.660
how to style themselves. Both in like a more classy and more trashy way. Right. Cause everyone has,
00:16:45.740
everyone has adopted drag makeup online. Like everyone's contouring now. And yet like,
00:16:50.260
we're trying to like, even it out. There's tempering taking place.
00:16:54.360
I sent you a like super wholesome hentai of, of one of these girls. So you can see that
00:17:01.700
Leave it to us to describe hentai as wholesome though.
1.00
00:17:04.280
Well, this one is clearly just made for like, look, you can masturbate different parts of your brain.
0.99
00:17:11.680
And one thing that people like to masturbate is the wholesome part. Like, yeah, like a fantasy about
0.99
00:17:18.480
Who actually loves you and cares about you. Can you imagine?
00:17:22.620
Yeah. Like the, the, just as basically a childhood friend who doesn't feel like she's done anything with
00:17:26.700
her life is really just completely plussed and over the moon. And she's become a gyaru or like a mild
0.98
00:17:32.720
gyaru, I guess you'd say. It was like big pink animal print, like broth, like small top thing.
00:17:43.600
Yeah. And, and you, you, she's like sad about her life and she's really excited that somebody
00:17:49.580
loves her and cares for horror. And that's the, the gist of it. But it's, it's, it's common enough
00:17:54.660
that even when these characters are used in Japanese pornography, like hentai, they are used
00:18:00.760
as like a, I'm going to be a sweet, good, and loving wife. Who's going to give you lots of
00:18:07.540
babies. Yeah. Yeah. That's very much the, the, what you can tell is like the fantasy that's
00:18:14.020
represented here. And it's interesting that it transitioned from delinquent to, I am going to
00:18:19.800
be delinquent by being a sweet wife, but not in a traditional Japanese way, which is like,
00:18:26.840
I guess like out of subservience or something like that, just because I appreciate you so
00:18:31.460
much, you know, and I think that a lot of guys in Japan may feel that way. And they may look
00:18:36.560
at a girl like that and see her as more attainable, which was what would create this like genre of
00:18:43.300
hentai. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's just also such a contrast to, I watch a lot of,
00:18:51.160
I guess you could call them ambiance videos on YouTube made by single women who live in tiny
1.00
00:18:57.700
little apartments in Tokyo and have salary woman jobs. And in these videos, they're just like
0.85
00:19:03.000
silent. They never show their faces and they just do their evening routines. They make dinner for
00:19:07.000
themselves. And it's just such this weird contrast between this like completely asexual, highly
00:19:12.760
educated, professional woman. Um, and I'm sure that they're male equivalents, you know, doing the
0.98
00:19:17.840
same thing. And then this, this, this family, you know, these people who actually want to have kids
00:19:23.580
young. And this is what we have to like, this is, this is what post globalization, post tech high
00:19:29.560
fertility culture looks like. It looks like people who marry their high school sweethearts or who marry
0.98
00:19:33.720
during university and start having kids in their twenties and have a support system. I mean, it doesn't
00:19:38.740
have to be as an, is the case with the soft Yankees family members, and they don't have to stay
00:19:44.180
within 10 kilometers of where they were born, but it helps.
00:19:50.200
So am I free to move on to the next cultural group?
00:19:53.140
Ooh, which one are we going to do? Are we going to do Aussie tradies?
00:19:56.060
Yeah, we're going to continue with this. It goes, this is wild. There's the exact same archetype
00:20:00.220
with differences in execution, obviously in the UK called the Dino, a lower middle-class types,
00:20:05.420
extremely misunderstood. The commonality they have is their positive outlook. They need few things to
00:20:12.060
make them happy, laugh easily, et cetera. So let's talk about the Dino group.
00:20:17.400
Dino isn't an organized group or a former subculture in the UK, but rather a satirical
00:20:22.480
stereotype that's emerged online, particularly on platforms like Twitter, now X and 4chan to
00:20:27.420
describe a specific type of person or lifestyle. The term paints the picture of a lower middle-class,
00:20:33.340
often suburban or small town British couple, typically in their 20s or 30s, who embody a mix of
00:20:39.160
aspirational consumerism and what some see as tacky mainstream tastes. Think of this as a modern
00:20:45.380
evolution of the older British stereotypes of the Essex man or Mondio man, but with a sharper-
00:20:52.580
What about the Chavs? Like, are they just totally different?
1.00
00:20:55.500
Are they different from the, are they Chavs? Shavs? I don't know how they are.
1.00
00:20:59.400
Okay. Although to point back to like Kamikaze Girls, like this obsession with like Versace knockoff
1.00
00:21:04.580
stuff, I think that's the thing. It's like lower middle-class, like thinking, for example,
00:21:13.240
Dino is usually imagined as a guy named Dean, hence the name, working a decent but unglamorous
00:21:19.740
job. Say, a call center supervisor, estate agent, tradesperson. He lives in a new building
00:21:26.620
housing estate, often called Barat Britain, after a major UK developer, drives a finance
00:21:32.820
car like a Vauxhall Astra and enjoys lad hobbies, FIFA, Love Island packaged holidays to Marbella
00:21:44.940
Yes. His partner, sometimes jokingly called Miss Fiat 500, matches him with white and teap,
00:21:53.000
lift fillers, and wardrobe of fast fashion. Their home might feature gray carpets, a sophology
0.60
00:22:01.700
sofa, and an astroturf garden, all proudly shared on Instagram. The stereotype leans hard into their
00:22:08.620
perceived obsession with appearances and status, despite their relatively modest means. The Dino
00:22:13.900
meme started as a piss take on 4chan and spread through British Twitter, where it's been dissected
00:22:18.680
with both humor and disdain. Some see Dinos as happy and fulfilled in their straightforward lives,
0.99
00:22:24.680
owning a home, having mates, and enjoying the odd pint, while others mock them as shallow conformists
00:22:30.000
or oblivious to their precarious financial situation, big mortgages, little savings.
00:22:35.340
Posts on X often highlight their aesthetics, slicked back hair, half shirt buttons undone,
00:22:40.280
and blonde hair dye and eating disorder for the women. It's less about real subculture and more
0.99
00:22:46.340
about a caricature of the normal British outside the urban elite.
0.99
00:22:50.380
Oh, screw them. I'm here for it. I'm here for it.
0.98
00:22:53.060
I think it's people who are proud to be themselves outside of this other culture, which is what's
00:23:01.220
necessary to fight against this. A pride in being something other than the other urban monoculture,
00:23:06.060
and an immunity to urban monocultural ridicule of you, whatever that culture looks like.
00:23:11.620
Well, there's some tension there because there's absolutely keeping up with Joneses taking place
1.00
00:23:15.900
with the financed vehicle, with the house, with everything posted on Instagram, the lip filler,
00:23:20.980
the blonde hair, the whitened teeth, the eating disorder. I think that they're among their
00:23:26.540
internal, there is keeping up with the Joneses. It just happens to be that the Joneses aren't
00:23:30.760
like this distributed international group. It's like literally the people who live next door to
00:23:36.640
you, just like it was in the fifties and sixties. Yeah. But there, there is still, there's,
00:23:40.500
there's sensitivity, but also it is more financially realistic keeping up with the Joneses because
00:23:45.320
you're playing a different game than the urban monoculture game. Yeah. This is like what they're
00:23:48.780
saying. They're like, they're so surprised that these people seem proud of things that aren't of
00:23:53.320
status within the urban monoculture. Like why do they have pride in these modest mean things? And it's
00:23:58.520
because they're playing a different dominance hierarchy than you're playing with it. Yeah.
00:24:02.700
But anyway, goes on and tweets to say, I have a lot of friends like this. All they do is drink and
00:24:08.740
party all day, but they go overseas every year. And here I am working overtime at the office as a
00:24:13.580
humble salary, man. Maybe I should have taken the, and I think it's something in Japanese pill after
0.99
00:24:19.080
all. And then it says under the shortage of blue collar workers is so extreme that wage wise,
00:24:24.360
you can earn much more than the average salary, man. The flip side as your body will be
00:24:28.380
broken by your fifties and you'll probably die of lung cancer early. And then the next says that
00:24:32.980
they can live at least decent lives. If their father refrained himself from spending his whole
00:24:37.840
savings on verifier, or if they're becoming too Pachinko addicted. And then a person says today,
00:24:44.660
I learned mild Yankees are just like Aussie tradies. Like Pachinko addiction is, is no different
1.00
00:24:50.140
from problems with sports gambling in the U S like there's so many similarities here,
00:24:55.280
but yeah, we can, we can go here to this next culture, the tradies in Australia. Do you want
00:25:01.060
to learn about them? Yeah. I want to learn about the tradies. Absolutely.
00:25:04.460
In Australia, tradies is a widely used slang for a term short for tradespeople or tradesmen
00:25:09.960
refers to skilled manual workers who specialize in a particular trade, such as carpentry, plumbing,
00:25:14.880
electrical work, bricklaying, or mechanics. And you can tell that they would fall into this category.
00:25:18.780
These other people who we're talking about, these folks typically are hands-on professionals
00:25:22.220
who've completed apprenticeships or vocational training to master their craft. They're the
00:25:27.480
ones building houses, fixing pipes, wiring homes, and keeping cars running, essentially keeping the
00:25:31.820
country running. The terms got cultural weight down under. Tradies are often seen as embodying a rugged,
00:25:37.380
practical, no-nonsense Aussie spirit. Think high vests, steel capped boots, and a ute utility vehicle
00:25:44.620
loaded with tools. They are a big part of the economy too, especially in construction, which is a powerhouse
00:25:49.840
industry in Australia. Posts on X and Web Chatter sometimes paint them as a hardworking blokes,
00:25:54.340
and increasingly women who enjoy a beer after a long day, though that's more of a stereotype than
0.99
00:25:58.600
a rule. Unlike the UK's Dino stereotype, which is more about a lifestyle or a class jab, tradies are
0.98
00:26:04.020
defined by their skills and jobs. They're not a subculture in the rebellious sense like Japan's
00:26:08.440
Yankees, but they do have their own lingo and camaraderie. Think smoko, break time, or hard yaka,
00:26:14.520
tough work. Some tradies earn solid money, 75 to 95k on average, but they're specialized or run their
00:26:22.540
own gig, though it varies by trade and experience. So yeah, apparently a lot of cultures are seeing
00:26:32.240
this in different regions or something that they see as similar with the core difference being
00:26:37.720
a different life path and different dominance hierarchy and different things that they value.
00:26:45.340
And then this person here did a podcast on it. They say, this is a fascinating, generated,
00:26:50.860
a whole AI podcast about the subject. But they did a picture, which I thought is really nice looking
00:26:55.420
of this. And then somebody here also said, there's also the work and Ezekiah and then open a kitchen
00:27:02.180
car pipeline, allows lots of time for surfing, et cetera. Yeah. And an izakaya restaurant is
00:27:09.440
basically Japanese tapas. So I could, I could see someone like having maybe a pop-up restaurant and
00:27:13.520
using that to create a sort of flexible lifestyle. So only the malcontents of Japan
1.00
00:27:19.260
are also the only people who thrive. The only people who couldn't fit in, in a brutally conformist
00:27:24.900
country are also the only ones to find happiness. The only winners of Japanese society are the people
1.00
00:27:30.360
with a good sense to stay out. What were you going to say? Sorry, I interrupted you there.
00:27:35.740
No, go, go ahead. I mean, so, okay, I'll just jump in then and say one thing that gives me a lot of
00:27:42.780
hope about these subcultures is that one, they may be underrepresented as inheritors of the future
00:27:49.720
because they've chosen so much to opt out of the internet, to opt out of mainstream culture,
00:27:55.620
and to be pretty hard to measure. So I was, I was reading some news stories on this group and
00:28:01.920
they're like, well, people are trying to like find them, but you can't really find them in online
00:28:05.500
surveys. You, most of the interviews that people are doing on people on the streets are in places
00:28:10.980
like Tokyo, like in really high traffic neighborhoods. So they're not finding them
00:28:15.300
because these people, even when they vacation, they typically vacation close to home. So my understanding
00:28:20.120
is that basically they are off the grid to a great extent. And when you and I were looking at data
00:28:26.340
of groups that seem to be high fertility in the United States, we kept seeing yes, high levels of
00:28:33.620
religiosity, but also xenophobia and extreme sensitive sensitivity to hierarchy and sort of like a lot of,
00:28:39.980
a lot of scary fascist, but not in a good way. And it's sort of closed minded, scary way
00:28:45.080
tendencies. My impression is that these groups are not as much like that. They might be somewhat
00:28:51.680
suspicious of outsiders. I get that, but I'm, I'm less concerned about groups like this
00:28:57.920
inheriting the future because they're community minded. They sound pretty pro-social at least since
00:29:05.320
they've sort of evolved out of their hard Yankee days where they used to actually cause a lot of
1.00
00:29:10.380
property damage and be kind of troublesome people in their communities. Now they're, they're seen as
00:29:15.540
being much more responsible community members. So they're, they seem to be broadly pro-social.
00:29:20.600
They care about kids. They care about family. They're grateful for the community health they get.
00:29:25.740
This doesn't seem like a bad group to be inheriting the future.
00:29:28.680
It seems like living for a delinquent aesthetic where that is also high fertility. And that's one of a way
0.97
00:29:35.200
of thumbing your nose at society is high fertility. And another thing that's high fertility
1.00
00:29:40.140
is being both frugal, but not good with financial decisions. That's another thing that seems to be
00:29:46.640
high fertility is that they don't fold. They're just like, okay, I'm going to keep having kids and
00:29:49.700
it's going to work out. I think people who are overly concerned about being able to afford things
00:29:53.200
like the people who are like, well, don't they know how precarious their life is? People who think
00:29:58.940
like that never end up having kids. Yeah. Like they, well, they, they both are happy living within
00:30:05.360
their means, but they seem to for cultural or perhaps lack of education reasons are both
00:30:11.140
blow the money that they do have on things that they don't necessarily need like cosmetic surgery
0.92
00:30:17.840
and cars and maybe sports gambling or pachinko. And that's maybe, I mean, we, we see it as not great,
00:30:26.100
but at the same time, the lack of savings and also that lack of concern. Oh, I can't afford this.
00:30:32.220
So I'm not going to do it. Yeah. Does seem to be really, it forces people to lean in more to
00:30:40.040
family, more to community. And I do think there's a synergistic effect there where the more you lean
00:30:44.120
into family and community, the more you're likely to have kids and also support your family and
00:30:48.700
community. You know, the more everyone needs each other, the more they help each other and the more
00:30:51.620
they lean into that again. And so it would only create more children, more loving communities.
00:30:56.600
And we can, we kind of need that. So rut row. All right. Well, Simone, this has been a fun
00:31:05.680
conversation. I hope our daughters grew up to be as fierce as, as that Yankee girl who you liked
0.84
00:31:11.960
growing up. What did you think of her character growing up? Did you like, like her or did you
00:31:15.460
identify more with the other girl? No, I definitely identify with Momoko, the sweet Lolita girl who's
00:31:22.680
obsessed with frilly dresses. Some of the, I was watching other scenes from the movie today and
00:31:27.280
I realized like in one scene, she's wearing a dress that looks so much like what I wear every day.
00:31:34.260
Like she's a white bonnet and a black jumper, a white petticoat. And I'm like, Oh God,
00:31:39.900
Lolita. Like, is that like actually your thing now? Is this Puritan Lolita? What have I done?
00:31:46.720
Oh, that's what I like. When we go to conferences and she dresses up in her traditional outfits,
00:31:50.400
the people who like come up and gush over them are often like skunking goth girls. They're like,
0.98
00:31:56.340
Oh, that's so cool. You look crazy. Like I love it. And it's so fun that you can be so trad
0.94
00:32:03.040
that like the big goth. It's the horseshoe theory, just like you have the, you know,
00:32:08.640
the crunchy to all right horseshoe where, you know, they, they end up being connected in the end.
00:32:15.060
It it's, it's great. I love it. But wait, so you basically now as a grownup,
00:32:20.680
I have a daughter who's like the punk girl who's like Momoko and you know, sorry, I'm like Momoko
00:32:25.640
and I have a daughter like Ichigo. Yeah. 100%. Did you, did you expect that? We'll see if she
00:32:30.340
keeps it up as she gets older, but right now, Oh my God, she loves trolling. Like
00:32:35.000
such a troll. She's such a troll. She will like, even with her siblings, it's not just us. It's
1.00
00:32:39.620
like Octavian will be like, please don't touch my, my Google device while I'm gone. And then she'll
00:32:44.840
be like, as soon as he leaves, she has no interest in it. Yeah. She just wants no desire to play with
00:32:49.880
Dexter's lab or something. 100%. She lives to troll and I love it. I respect it. I didn't know that
00:32:55.560
that was a real genetic compulsion. Yeah. Trolling heritable. Someone can make apologetic score
00:33:01.720
around that with enough data. Is she going to be Deedee to Torsen's mad scientist? The short
00:33:08.200
little brother who's shorter than her and really smart. They're the same size now, pretty much.
00:33:28.040
He has bigger feet than her. Thank goodness. He's, he's growing something.
00:33:31.560
I'm going to get that kid to grow. We're going to move ways. Okay. All right. I love you to
00:33:38.360
Desimone. It's been a joy talking with you. And we just submitted our Andreessen Horowitz
00:33:43.720
applications with two of the Collins Institute and the video game that we've been working on.
00:33:50.040
If you're buddies with them, put in a good word for old, for old Collins. Yes. Or if you know another
00:33:57.960
VC we should be looking at or talking to, who's interested in AI games or AI education, let us know
00:34:04.280
because warm intros apparently matter. And what's the point of having fans if we can't get warm intros?
00:34:11.640
Yeah, actually social batching is everything. And these are big projects that we really believe in, but
00:34:17.640
I, yeah, we'll see. Oh, we should, we should put the pitch decks here so people can be like,
00:34:22.440
oh, this is what you're working on. Oh, that would be cool. Yeah. If you want to learn more about these
00:34:26.040
projects, see the pitch decks below. And if you have ideas for us, please share, because actually
00:34:32.360
our listeners are super smart, incredible people with some. Yeah. Okay. Not all of you. All right.
00:34:40.440
Which one are you listener? Are you, are you mid or are you based?
00:34:48.440
Are you, yeah. Are you smart enough to, to have been a Yankee who have known to be a delinquent
0.99
00:34:52.200
from the beginning? I was definitely a delinquent growing up. So you married the, the grownup
00:34:56.520
delinquents. Yeah. Well, I mean the, another one of the themes that I really like from this is,
0.91
00:35:01.640
is a lot of people identifying, or at least referring to them as misfits, you know, like
00:35:06.280
it's the misfits in the end who could get to inherit the future. And that's totally it. It's the
0.98
00:35:09.720
people, as you keep pointing out, who deviate from mainstream society.
00:35:14.360
They're misfits is that they don't care about the fact that they're perceived as misfits.
00:35:19.800
It is the not caring about other people's judgment of you as a misfit.
00:35:27.000
Anyway, and that's what you got to raise your kids to think like. And it's, it's, it's a big,
00:35:31.240
so many people, I think that this is, is going to be one of the biggest things that Mormonism
0.99
00:35:34.920
is going to struggle getting around is a fear of being seen as misfit or others, which is one of
00:35:41.640
the reasons their particular fertility collapse, even though it's not as bad as other denominations
00:35:47.400
like Catholicism may be more intractable because I think that many Catholic groups are okay. It was
00:35:52.360
looking weird. Whereas I don't know many Mormon groups that really embrace the idea of being weird.
0.53
00:35:59.240
Yeah. 100%. That's a big problem. Okay. Bye. Bye. I love you. Goodbye.
00:36:04.280
Bye. I said, good day, sir. Good day. I love the aesthetics, the subject. I absolutely adore it.
00:36:14.440
It has just all these like tiny little aesthetic moments and references. And the main character has
00:36:22.680
sensitivities to stupid little things that I really identify with, but it's definitely, it's like even
0.96
00:36:28.920
down to lighting choices made. It is clearly the Amelie of Japan and you will never watch it and
0.99
00:36:33.640
you will never like it. And that's okay. It's totally okay. I mean, that was a common thing in
00:36:38.680
Japan to pair characters who have those two acts. The contrast. Yeah. Yeah. You had it with Puffy Amiyumi,
00:36:44.360
for example, the cartoon about the popular band. The Tom Girl and the Girly Girl.
00:36:49.880
Tom Girl and the Girly Girl. Everybody wants to hang out with Tom Girl and the Girly Girl.
00:36:53.240
You know what? Watch them fight each other. Oh, that's so silly. So silly.
00:37:23.240
I want flowers. You want to pick the flowers too?
00:37:38.840
Okay. If you can stay out of the mud, you can pick some. They're called swamp marigolds. Go get some.