Based Camp - The Art of Media Baiting： Inside the Tactics of the Pronatalist Movement

00:00:00.000 Now, this issue, because it counters the mainstream narratives around what people should care about, is considered a right-wing issue.

00:00:06.880 That's not, I think, necessarily because it's a right-wing issue.

00:00:10.440 It's because the left control all centers of power today.

00:00:13.400 So if you are saying anything that challenges the dominant narrative within society, you are considered a far-right activist within today's informational ecosystem.

00:00:21.800 So we're like, okay, we can use this to our advantage.

00:00:24.720 In fact, the negativity the press shows us, in a way, vets us with conservative and moderate audiences.

00:00:32.860 They see press skepticism about reasonable causes as validation of those causes' realism, efficacy, and grassroots nature.

00:00:45.400 Would you like to know more?

00:00:47.040 You look like you're actually in some kind of equivalent of a man cave, just like sitting there in the darkness.

00:00:52.660 And like, here I am with my candles over there, and the, you know, windows, and like, there you are.

00:00:58.560 Yeah, it looks like it's two different times a day in our two areas.

00:01:01.400 Yeah, we're in different time zones.

00:01:03.860 But I do like my man caves.

00:01:05.640 You know that.

00:01:06.280 I love the dark.

00:01:07.440 Yeah, you love the darkness.

00:01:08.720 And like, defensible corners, you know?

00:01:11.200 Like, you gotta know your exits.

00:01:12.540 And it's actually interesting how much defensibility is important to me in terms of being comfortable in a room.

00:01:17.280 Yeah, even if we're like sitting down at a restaurant, you're gonna want the defensible seat.

00:01:21.300 Well, you know, that's what so much of feng shui really is, is just defensibility.

00:01:26.220 Hmm.

00:01:28.660 Yes.

00:01:29.440 And that's why it feels like it works for people, because what they're really sensing is how defensible is the space I'm looking at.

00:01:35.400 I mean, I think a lot of aesthetics fall into this category as well.

00:01:37.960 That is a very interesting take.

00:01:39.860 Like, I like this view, and it's like, well, what type of views do you like, you know?

00:01:45.560 It's like, well, I like a view where I can see a long way, and there's water, like streams present.

00:01:52.040 So it's like, oh, so what you like is a fresh water supply in a highly defensible area where you're on some sort of high ground, right?

00:02:00.060 And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.

00:02:01.460 I also like other views.

00:02:02.460 Like, I love views of the ocean.

00:02:04.480 It's like, oh, okay.

00:02:05.480 So you love views of an area where you have, you know, a lot of food and likely, you know, so much of human aesthetics and human preprogramming is just around defensibility and the things that would have caused her.

00:02:19.420 Like, will I survive here, and yeah, and that includes both, will I survive if someone tries to attack me, and also, are there natural resources here that will sustain me?

00:02:30.900 And that's beautiful.

00:02:32.860 Hooray.

00:02:34.180 But we want to talk about something else today, not about human evolution, which is one of our big things.

00:02:40.620 But instead, we will talk about one of the things that has been most controversial about our general strategy with our nonprofit.

00:02:49.340 Very, very controversial.

00:02:51.000 Which is being intentionally courting controversy.

00:02:55.680 Yeah.

00:02:56.360 Intentionally courting controversy.

00:02:57.660 So why do we do this?

00:02:58.700 Why do we intentionally court controversy?

00:03:00.160 Because a lot of people see this.

00:03:01.040 We've been called, what was that Sony documentary on us?

00:03:03.480 It was like they're human memes or something.

00:03:06.880 Oh, yeah, like walking internet memes.

00:03:11.220 A lot of people, just for a bit of background, if you're watching this channel and you're looking at the subscriber count and you're like, you know, I feel like I see these people in the news a lot.

00:03:19.460 Why isn't their subscriber count higher?

00:03:21.260 It's because this channel was dormant when most of our media coverage happened.

00:03:26.160 So, obviously, if you look at this channel, you'll see stuff from, like, 15 years ago, right?

00:03:31.000 Simone used this a lot when she was younger.

00:03:32.660 We had a period where we revived it for a bit, but it hadn't been used in, like, three or four years when we were, you know, whether it was on Piers Morgan or whether it was on Chris Williamson or whether it was, you know, had the front page piece on us in the Telegraph or the front page piece on us in the National Post or that big viral insider piece or the elite couple breeding to save mankind piece.

00:03:51.520 All of that happened when this channel was dormant.

00:03:54.500 If this channel had been active during that period, we would have caught all of that.

00:03:58.600 And this got us to a stance where we're like, okay, well, we need to reactivate the channel again so we can catch all of that.

00:04:03.300 But we have had multiple periods where, to an extent, for different ends, we needed to court a level of controversy to promote something that was of short-term utility to us.

00:04:16.160 The first time we really went viral that a lot of people are familiar with is the Reddit Proposal, which, what was the old internet magazine that rated it the most romantic moment of the year?

00:04:27.460 Oh, yeah, that was nice.

00:04:28.920 This was Upward?

00:04:31.340 I don't know.

00:04:32.260 One of the many bankrupt internet magazines out there.

00:04:37.020 Yeah, it was whatever the main one was back then.

00:04:40.640 The Daily Dot.

00:04:41.400 No, the Daily Dot did a piece on us.

00:04:44.340 Mashable did a piece on us.

00:04:45.720 PC Magazine did a piece on us.

00:04:47.160 But this was...

00:04:48.320 Anyway, it doesn't matter.

00:04:49.460 It doesn't matter.

00:04:50.260 This is when we were proposing.

00:04:51.520 And I did it both because I know Simone.

00:04:54.280 While she doesn't like personally interacting with people or humans in public, she doesn't mind human attention on the internet.

00:05:01.320 And so that was my...

00:05:01.940 I wanted a grand public display, but I also didn't want to be in public.

00:05:07.460 So you nailed it, Malcolm.

00:05:08.720 But it was also something that I could use to leverage the launch of our first company, Art Corgi, which went through 500 startups.

00:05:17.160 And we got VC funding for it.

00:05:19.600 It did end up working out, but we didn't ever raise that much for it.

00:05:22.140 So we didn't put too many people out.

00:05:23.940 But that was something where we were like, okay.

00:05:25.740 And that was also in part an experiment for us because we had somebody who had told us before, as people know, we go to a bunch of secret society things.

00:05:34.080 And at one, I was like, well, you can intentionally create a viral event.

00:05:37.820 And they go, no, you can't.

00:05:39.440 And this person was a marketing expert.

00:05:40.880 They were seen as one of the world experts in marketing.

00:05:42.940 And I was like, no, you absolutely can.

00:05:45.440 And they're like, no, you don't understand.

00:05:47.440 I'm one of the world experts in marketing. 1.00

00:05:49.080 And you're just some idiot kid who's in graduate school right now, right? 1.00

00:05:54.080 And I was like, screw you. 1.00

00:05:55.700 I'm going to do it. 0.99

00:05:56.380 But there was an element of pride in doing that as well.

00:05:59.500 Well, this is all because someone told you you couldn't do a thing.

00:06:03.940 Well, you got to learn that with our kids, Simone.

00:06:06.800 Don't tell them they can't do things, okay?

00:06:10.780 Because they will desperately try to do all of those things.

00:06:14.340 But then there's the second thing, which is the second more recent pronatalist virality that we've had.

00:06:19.720 And I'd point out that literally the human being on Earth with the largest platform, the largest platform of any human on Earth, more wealth, more power than probably any human has had in human history, Elon Musk, has been pushing for people caring about birth rates long before we did, okay?

00:06:41.800 He created almost no sustained buzz around this.

00:06:45.620 People were like, oh, it's weird that he's talking about this.

00:06:49.400 And a VC here or there began to care about it.

00:06:52.220 But it did not enter the mainstream narrative.

00:06:55.340 We came at this in where we created a website around this.

00:06:58.460 And we're like, so a lot of people don't know how the website actually came to be.

00:07:01.560 We had this one year where we're like, okay, we are going to blue sky how we can change the world in a positive direction.

00:07:09.460 And what we were looking for was arbitrage areas.

00:07:12.160 So we were looking for areas where we could do a project where no competent people were working, but that were either like real big and real like severe human problems or, yeah, that was it.

00:07:26.580 And we came up with-

00:07:26.940 Yeah, so we created our list of like, here are the things that we know are existential threats to humanity.

00:07:32.200 Obviously, Demographical Apps was on there ever since he worked in South Korea.

00:07:35.760 There were a bunch of other things though, too.

00:07:37.800 There were lots of other things.

00:07:38.860 The other one that was on there was education reform, that no competent person was working in education reform.

00:07:44.280 Oh, yeah, where we didn't find, yeah, anyone else working on it.

00:07:47.760 And then the final one that didn't end up becoming a big project of ours was the Panspermia Initiative.

00:07:53.720 So this was, I was like, okay, if you care about like nature and the environment, all right.

00:07:59.300 So what makes nature and the environment good?

00:08:01.540 Like diversity, right?

00:08:02.480 Like it's the diversity of ecology that gives it this intrinsic value. 0.95

00:08:06.000 When people are like, I'm mad that species are going extinct, they're, I mean, there's idiots who are like, I want to freeze all species in their place in the world today, right now, and nothing can ever change or evolve. 0.97

00:08:16.940 Right. 0.99

00:08:17.200 But for the group-

00:08:18.000 Is that natural? 0.83

00:08:19.660 And not like retarded. 1.00

00:08:23.380 Everybody knows you never go full retard. 0.98

00:08:26.560 You ain't full retard, man. 1.00

00:08:30.180 Never go full retard. 0.99

00:08:31.280 Are we allowed to say retarded again? 0.91

00:08:33.660 I don't know.

00:08:34.080 I think, I think, I think, yeah, the hard, the hard R is coming back.

00:08:38.020 Yeah.

00:08:38.260 Yeah.

00:08:38.620 People who aren't retarded. 0.99

00:08:40.020 Because nobody uses it to mean people with like mental disabilities anymore. 0.96

00:08:43.360 Now it just means like people who are retarded. 0.99

00:08:46.420 We are really trying to understand this. 0.99

00:08:49.260 How is it that you boys think referring to gay people as fags in today's world is acceptable? 0.99

00:08:54.300 Because we're not referring to gay people. 1.00

00:08:56.660 You can be gay and not be a fag. 1.00

00:08:58.320 Yeah, a lot of fags aren't gay. 1.00

00:08:59.820 I happen to be gay, boys. 1.00

00:09:01.020 Do you think I'm a fag? 0.99

00:09:03.160 Do you ride a big, loud Harley and go up and down the streets ruining everyone's nice time? 0.97

00:09:07.660 No. 0.98

00:09:08.760 Then you're not a fag. 1.00

00:09:11.460 So what if a guy is gay and rides a Harley? 1.00

00:09:14.940 Then he's a gay fag. 1.00

00:09:16.300 I mean, is this really this hard? 1.00

00:09:17.600 I don't know. 1.00

00:09:18.540 This is fucking ridiculous. 1.00

00:09:19.700 All right, look, you're driving in your car, okay? 1.00

00:09:22.920 And you're waiting to make a left at a traffic signal.

00:09:25.000 The light turns yellow, should be your turn to go, but the traffic coming at you just keeps coming.

00:09:28.920 And even when the light turns red, a guy in a BMW runs the red light so you can't make your left turn.

00:09:33.180 What goes through your mind? 1.00

00:09:33.960 Fag. 1.00

00:09:36.020 Fag. 1.00

00:09:36.500 Fag. 1.00

00:09:37.640 Right. 1.00

00:09:38.400 But you're not thinking, oh, he's a homosexual. 1.00

00:09:40.500 You're thinking, oh, he's an inconsiderate douchebag like a Harley rider. 1.00

00:09:44.260 This is making insanely good sense to me. 0.98

00:09:47.800 Right.

00:09:49.040 Oh, God.

00:09:49.640 So what they actually care about is ecological diversity.

00:09:52.440 Well, it's like, well, how do you long-term maximize ecological diversity if you seed new planets with life?

00:09:57.360 Right?

00:09:57.620 Like, that would do much more because each new planet you seed with life is an entirely new biome that's evolving that's as equally rich as Earth's biome.

00:10:04.700 Like, almost nothing we do on Earth would be meaningful in contrast to that.

00:10:08.080 You save one pitiful species, one pitiful ecosystem, we've created an entire new biome.

00:10:13.860 And so we looked at the cost of doing this.

00:10:15.460 And because you can get little capsules on satellites, you can pay, like, $50,000 to get a capsule on a satellite, which is most of the cost of taking a planet.

00:10:22.940 Then you can use a serial evolution chamber.

00:10:25.240 This is a chamber where you're incrementally changing the conditions within the chamber to create, you know, a form of bacteria or a form of fungus that's resistant to, like, the type of radiation you would see on Mars by slowly changing the amount of radiation that it's facing.

00:10:37.520 Slowly changing the heat variation that it's exposed to.

00:10:40.900 Some just quickly breeding organisms.

00:10:42.240 And then you put it in one of these.

00:10:43.580 You send it to one of these planets.

00:10:44.740 You can seed them.

00:10:46.380 And this seeding would eventually lead to, no, lead to a whole biome growing there.

00:10:52.860 Now, what would be better, and one of the reasons why I went against doing this, is if we had more funding to do this than the amount that we would probably be looking at as doing this, is we could probably do seeding with gene-engineered organisms instead of just serially evolved organisms.

00:11:07.140 And through that, seed biomes with bacteria, whatever it is, it turns out to work best, that are programmed to create an atmosphere that humans can live with in.

00:11:18.020 And if we do it with something that's not programmed to create that, then you're going to get, like, local optimization beforehand.

00:11:23.520 And then if you tried to later seed it with something that was optimized around doing that, it wouldn't be successful.

00:11:29.240 And that would put our species back the thing that to us matters the most.

00:11:33.240 I mean, our long-term goal is an intergalactic human empire.

00:11:36.860 But whatever becomes of humanity, not like, you know, again, just like the environment.

00:11:42.440 There's no point in freezing humans in a revolution that somewhat defeats the purpose of what makes humanity great.

00:11:49.120 So that was the one project that didn't.

00:11:51.840 But we had created pronatalist.org, and we were basically, like, seeding it.

00:11:55.960 We had reached out to a few reporters, but nothing really came of it.

00:11:58.740 And then the piece came of us because of our embryo selection.

00:12:02.000 And that was actually promoted by one of the companies that we were working with.

00:12:05.020 And that got us a platform, and then that platform was picked up by the Insider article, and then that created the initial virality around this.

00:12:13.160 Now, that was very useful to us because after that, we sort of became the faces of perinatalism, and we're like, okay, like, this actually is an existential issue for our species.

00:12:24.520 Let's move forwards in how we address this.

00:12:27.220 And you guys are getting, like, a way too honest history of how we got into this, but it is useful in terms of understanding.

00:12:32.100 So then we began to do some experimentation around this, and how we engaged with reporters.

00:12:37.880 Like, do we edge the reporters with controversy, or do we actually try to convince the reporters that this isn't a controversial issue?

00:12:44.860 When we did that, we got a piece on us in the third most read newspaper in Canada, the National Post.

00:12:50.640 It was a front page piece on us, and it was very popular.

00:12:53.540 Demographical apps.

00:12:54.340 And it was a very balanced, very positive on perinatalism and our advocacy.

00:12:59.240 I think it literally got, like, seven Twitter followers.

00:13:02.100 Like, if you're measuring, like, how much people liked this from Twitter followers.

00:13:05.380 I don't even know if we got any Twitter followers on that or if anyone really got any – like, what I'm looking at when I look at, like, is one of our articles here a success?

00:13:14.460 I'm looking at, like, is there – are people talking about this online?

00:13:18.360 Is there engagement with the article?

00:13:19.900 Like, are people encountering this and actually learning about the problem and discovering that this is an issue and then maybe changing their behavior about it?

00:13:27.980 Or maybe they'll change their voting patterns because of this.

00:13:31.060 Or building communities.

00:13:31.580 Yeah, that got basically no interaction.

00:13:34.560 And then in contrast, the first article about us that kind of framed us as pronatalist that, as Malcolm said, framed us in that way because of previous coverage we got because we worked with the company Genomic Prediction on Polygenic Risk Score Selection, which we just – we did that press for them or, like, we did an interview for them with Bloomberg because we really were excited about their tech.

00:13:58.100 Like, that was – like, this is great.

00:14:00.300 We wanted to shout this from the hilltops.

00:14:01.620 No one else is willing to talk about it, so, okay, fine, we will.

00:14:04.940 But, yeah, so this paywalled insider article about pronatalism and us that, like, most people couldn't even access got tons of engagement and was really, like, many people's first encounter with the concept of pronatalism, like, outside of just religious groups not being –

00:14:21.940 Well, it was literally the first public push for pronatalism other than Elon Musk.

00:14:26.700 Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, and the thing is, like, when Elon Musk talks about anything, it could be immigration, it could be pronatalism, it could be cats, someone is going to cover it because he's, like Malcolm said, the most powerful person out there.

00:14:39.240 So, like, yeah, again, like, what we want to see is can advocates in the space get people talking about it independent of a person or independent of why this person has to carry everything?

00:14:51.560 And so what we realized pretty quickly was that the controversial pieces were actually the pieces that were doing well.

00:14:59.760 Specifically, and this is our thesis when we look at the internet today, I mean, I consider myself a terminally on – I am a child of the internet.

00:15:07.960 You know, the Bane speech.

00:15:09.080 Oh, you think darkness is your ally.

00:15:17.440 You merely adopted the dark.

00:15:20.780 I was born in it.

00:15:23.560 Molded by it.

00:15:26.480 I didn't see the light until I was already a man.

00:15:29.920 By then it was nothing to me but blinding.

00:15:32.380 The shadows betray you because they belong to me.

00:15:45.140 I was raised – the first generation raised was in these ultra-online spaces.

00:15:50.400 I made all of my early friends through the internet.

00:15:52.880 This was in an age where this was considered an insane thing to do, to, like, reach out to random people on the internet to make all your friends.

00:15:59.300 So I understand this culture, I think, much more intuitively and innately than most people was in my generation.

00:16:07.600 And through that, I am able to engage and direct the currents where I want them to go much more easily than the mainstream iterations of our group.

00:16:17.980 And what I've realized is that if you unironically say that I support something within online spaces these days, like if you're on 4chan or something where, like, actual internet culture happens, and you're like, I unironically support this, you are a shill.

00:16:33.160 You're just seen as a shill.

00:16:34.160 Like, people – it doesn't matter if you really mean to support it or not.

00:16:38.000 You cannot unironically support a thing within online spaces anymore and have that thing go viral or have that thing take off.

00:16:44.920 It just hasn't happened.

00:16:45.760 If you look at right-leaning influencers that have taken off in the last 10 years, every single conservative or right-leaning or even moderate online influencer that has gained prominence in the last half decade to decade has done so through specifically controversy.

00:17:03.060 You know, you look at Andrew Tate.

00:17:04.220 You look at Jordan Peterson.

00:17:05.460 All of these individuals, it was their controversy.

00:17:08.360 It was their fight with the media that rose them to prominence.

00:17:11.340 Now, this issue, because it counters the mainstream narratives around what people should care about, is considered a right-wing issue.

00:17:18.560 That's not, I think, necessarily because it's a right-wing issue.

00:17:22.120 It's because the left control all centers of power today.

00:17:25.080 So if you are saying anything that challenges the dominant narrative within society, you are considered a far-right activist within today's informational ecosystem.

00:17:33.120 So we're like, okay, we can use this to our advantage.

00:17:36.740 And we began to push this narrative of us as human clickbait, you know, being as juicy of a story as possible for these individuals who wanted to create these memeable, shareable stories.

00:17:52.640 And a lot of people then look at this and they're like, no, that's just people laughing at you, not laughing with you.

00:17:58.660 That's not you, you know, that you have to know your meme page about the elite couple breeding to save mankind.

00:18:03.100 And it's like, this is just objectively not true.

00:18:05.980 We see this both from our follower count, from the people who positively reach out to us about funding things that we're doing to the people.

00:18:11.920 Like, they almost always hear about us from negative articles.

00:18:13.880 In fact, the negativity the press shows us in a way bets us with conservative and moderate audiences.

00:18:21.580 They see press skepticism about reasonable causes as validation of those causes, realism, efficacy, and grassroots nature.

00:18:34.160 I will add, just like as a sanity test, if you read something like a clearly negative and against someone article about them,

00:18:43.400 you're probably not going to think that anything positive that you think about them was untrue.

00:18:50.200 Like, if there are still some things that you like about them, it's not going to be because someone was writing a puff piece and you fell for it.

00:18:57.360 You know, it's because you yourself decided that despite all these bad things about them,

00:19:01.800 there are some things about what they're doing or who they are that you kind of like.

00:19:05.980 And that's why.

00:19:07.420 Like, you can't trust anything that's positive because there are so many lies.

00:19:12.100 There's so much inflation.

00:19:13.020 Like, no one's face is real online.

00:19:15.440 No one's anything is real online anymore, it seems.

00:19:18.380 Like, everything's fake.

00:19:19.840 And so only unflattering and negative stuff.

00:19:23.680 Like, again, like, if you see an unflattering photo of someone online that looks bad,

00:19:28.120 you're more likely to be like, oh, yeah, that's really them.

00:19:30.460 But, like, they actually look pretty good, you know?

00:19:32.540 But it has to be an unflattering.

00:19:33.980 So, for example.

00:19:34.640 For example, so people will think, okay, this works with right-wing people, but it doesn't work on converting left-winging people to your ideas.

00:19:42.000 Wrong.

00:19:42.840 So you will get peace.

00:19:43.960 So here's an example of an email we got from someone.

00:19:45.840 Hello.

00:19:47.280 I first discovered the two of you from your, quote,

00:19:50.380 Meet the elite couples breeding to save mankind, end quote, article that went viral.

00:19:54.600 I laughed it off at the time, but soon I started to feel miserable for the nihilism and general depressive nature of the antinatalist thinking that seems so pervasive everywhere.

00:20:03.840 I remembered your article and started digging into your philosophy a bit more.

00:20:07.620 I've listened to most of your podcast episodes and have read The Pragmatist's Guide to Life, and I plan to read more of your books.

00:20:12.920 I really like your approach to life and to the future of humanity.

00:20:16.480 I like that you are hopeful and optimistic about building a better world for your children, and I want to be part of that better world also.

00:20:23.900 And this is something that we see all the time.

00:20:26.060 You know, this is not like an isolated type of outreach we get from somebody.

00:20:29.840 The idea of genuine, like, just being a genuinely wholesome, positive person.

00:20:36.100 One of the things that I always say that I'm trying to be that I got from a review of one of our books is that we were like the mirror world.

00:20:42.700 If people know, like, the mirror world.

00:20:46.620 Live long and prosper.

00:20:59.840 I mean, there's an entire galaxy out there for us to conquer, and we are here with these petty inter-human fights right now 1.00

00:21:20.480 over teamy things like nationality and ethnicity when existential threats likely loom in our future

00:21:29.160 that we're going to need to band together to fight and to fix,

00:21:33.600 or at least those of us humans who still have agency and aren't attempting to drag down our species

00:21:39.180 into a silent death or a violent barbarism.

00:21:44.240 Mr. Marsh, what exactly are you trying to accomplish?

00:21:47.620 We have to take matters into our own hands. 0.98

00:21:49.520 We're trying to turn everyone gay so that there are no future humans. 1.00

00:21:53.400 Present day America, number one! 0.99

00:21:55.160 From, like, Star Trek, where, like, everyone has mustaches and is evil.

00:21:58.500 We try to be, like, mirror world Mr. Rogers, right?

00:22:01.680 Like, try to be as almost oppressively wholesome as possible in the way we approach things

00:22:08.140 while still constantly edging on controversy.

00:22:11.020 And through that confluence, the controversy pushes people in, and then they see who we really are,

00:22:20.460 and they're like, why is no one else I listen to, like, an actually healthily, happily married couple?

00:22:27.360 Why is no one else I'm listening to, like, actually optimistic about the future of the world and happy and working to try and create the world a better place

00:22:35.940 instead of running around with a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off and yelling and trying to build random followings?

00:22:41.760 It is, you use, you create, you bait the trap with the ridiculousness, and you reel them in with the wholesomeness.

00:22:54.160 That is the way that we exercise everything.

00:22:57.520 And the idea of baiting political traps was something that I personally really learned from Trump.

00:23:04.240 This wasn't something that I had always seen as a really effective strategy.

00:23:07.480 What he would constantly do is say things that were uniquely controversial to the media.

00:23:15.000 Like, the media would see this and be like, how could anyone ever say that?

00:23:18.020 Because they were so leftist, they were so in a bubble that they were brainwashed,

00:23:21.260 that they didn't understand that your average citizen hearing this would be like, oh, of course.

00:23:25.400 And so they then signal boost those things, and through signal boosting them,

00:23:29.680 but with the negative context attached to them, they endeared people to him. 0.94

00:23:35.000 A great example of this that I always use is when he was like, well, we don't want to be like those shitty countries in Africa. 1.00

00:23:39.380 And the media was like, how dare he say we don't want to be like shitty countries in Africa? 0.90

00:23:43.020 And your average person is like, I mean, but I don't want to, would you attack me if I said that? 0.96

00:23:49.960 Does this mean that I'm against you?

00:23:52.380 Does this mean that I'm not part of this cultural group that I thought it was?

00:23:55.240 Does this mean that Trump is telling the truth about things?

00:23:59.780 And this is something that Trump constantly did very effectively in the early days.

00:24:04.840 I, you know, I'm not like a full Trumpist or anything like that.

00:24:08.360 I definitely have my consternations with his moral character and some of the directions he takes things.

00:24:12.760 I do think he was a pretty good president.

00:24:14.100 But I do want to point something really important out because basically what we're saying here is like, oh, just like allow yourself to be made fun of, have unflattering stuff about yourself, float around online, you know, have, you know, be court controversy, etc.

00:24:29.880 And then, and then of course, people will just see the truth and then they'll, they'll disproportionately, you know, come over to your side or like, no, no.

00:24:39.060 So really what this does is still tons of people make fun of you.

00:24:42.560 Tons of people still hate you. 0.94

00:24:43.760 Tons of people think you're absolute monsters.

00:24:45.340 And then like the few, well, basically we had this earlier philosophy that I think this came out of, which was, it's good to be completely transparent about who you are, because if someone is going to like you, then they're going to like you sooner.

00:25:02.260 And if someone was never going to like you anyway, like why would hiding that thing that you knew they wouldn't like, like you're just prolonging the inevitable.

00:25:11.020 They're never going to be on your side.

00:25:12.580 So basically we're, we're, we're definitely never going to be liked by a lot of people.

00:25:17.340 And now a whole lot more people who didn't know we exist now just don't like us because they were never going to like us.

00:25:22.960 And this has had a genuine cost.

00:25:25.920 There are people who, and I think a lot of people right now, and this is fair because I think a lot of people don't have the same kind of autistic thick skins that we do. 0.97

00:25:33.640 Like we just really don't care, especially about the opinions of people who we think are being completely illogical.

00:25:39.240 So, and you care enough to angrily rebut them in email.

00:25:43.300 Today she got this really, really bad antinatalist argument and it just angered her so much.

00:25:49.080 Well, it's just when, when an argument's that bad, I, I, yeah, I can't help myself, but like, I don't care if people are like, oh, you're evil and, and, and whatever.

00:25:56.360 And, and ugly and all the other things people say, I'm like, yeah, sure.

00:25:59.760 But there we have, people are very sensitive about their reputations online.

00:26:05.100 A lot of people won't even act like be online or show their face online or be themselves online, like their real names and their real faces, because they're so concerned about their reputations.

00:26:14.240 And that means that we have lost a decent number of friends who just don't want to be associated with us, who literally do not want to be seen with us because we are controversial and because they fear that any association with us is going to tarnish their reputations.

00:26:33.420 They're, they're, they're interested in personal vanity.

00:26:36.040 They're interested in a reputation of, as an, a wholesome, totally good person who, because they see our wholesomeness and they're attracted to us because of that.

00:26:44.480 But when they see that the public, not everyone in the public sees it, they want to utilize, they're like, oh, I like that aspect of you.

00:26:52.500 Like, I like who you really are as a person, but I don't like how that could affect my reputation.

00:26:57.240 And I understand this, you know, a lot of people live for personal vanity.

00:27:01.020 And so of course, if they are living primarily for personal vanity, rather than the betterment of the human species, rather than to save a species at a perilous point in our history, they're not going to understand why we do things that lead to, because it's an instinctual human drive to not have the tribe reject you or anything like that, that this can be utilized to slingshot you.

00:27:23.520 You know, it's a bit like in the current context, that famous Apollo mission, where they utilize the moon gravity to slingshot them back to earth because they didn't have enough fuel to get back on their own.

00:27:33.620 We're utilizing that to slingshot us is to them an anathema and against the natural order.

00:27:39.360 And they're like, no, I just care about, you know, and I get it, I get it.

00:27:42.460 And so it has had a cost to us, but I also believe that we are well on track.

00:27:47.280 So this is one thing that's really important.

00:27:48.940 As I pointed out at the start, Elon Musk has been hampering on this issue forever.

00:27:52.700 He has infinitely more power and money than we do.

00:27:55.500 And yet he was unable to pierce the mainstream veil was this.

00:27:59.040 This year, New York Times did a front page piece on demographic collapse.

00:28:02.780 This is something that when I talked to your average citizen on the street about, they now have an opinion about.

00:28:09.500 We pierced the mains.

00:28:11.560 We didn't just pierce it.

00:28:12.600 We popped the bubble.

00:28:13.580 Like it is out now.

00:28:15.480 This is part of Trump's reelection campaign. 0.89

00:28:17.640 It's like one of his core platforms where he's like, oh, you men, you're going to have so much sex now because of me, because he's going to put in such prenatalist policies.

00:28:25.520 And this was due to us using meme ability to pierce that veil because that what is me mobility is a viral idea.

00:28:35.720 It's an idea that spreads on its own. 1.00

00:28:38.140 When you start spreading this idea, your idiots hear it. 1.00

00:28:41.900 They hear the elite couple breeding to save mankind and they laugh. 1.00

00:28:44.960 Ah, let's make memes about this.

00:28:47.200 But then other people are like, wait, what do you mean?

00:28:49.780 The elite?

00:28:50.240 That's an absurd thing to say.

00:28:51.860 Who would say that?

00:28:52.680 Why would they say that?

00:28:53.700 And then they look into this and they're like, oh, they seem weirdly wholesome or they seem like demographic collapse.

00:29:01.080 When I look at the numbers, seems like a real issue.

00:29:02.920 The important thing is to properly make fun of us, you kind of also have to understand what we're fighting for, which means you kind of have to understand demographic collapse, which is why now a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, let's have this conversation.

00:29:15.980 Plus, you know, like, so I think the big takeaways we should share is, one, courting controversy, definitely, I mean, and this is a known tactic.

00:29:26.340 Like, people have written PR books on how, like, hate spreads faster than love.

00:29:30.640 Now that, you know, Vice has gone bankrupt, a lot of people who were previously, like, held to all these non-disclosure statements have just decided to break them.

00:29:39.080 And they're like, oh, yeah, Vice would tell me to, like, send my story to someone who is, like, clearly opposed to it and have them make fun of it.

00:29:45.680 Because they knew that the hate shares would be way more effective at driving clicks than hate positive shares.

00:29:51.860 And so, one, yes, hate is very effective if you want to raise awareness about something, doing so through controversy, through unflattering angles, through all sorts of stuff like that, that is, or getting your enemies to cover it, or the enemies of that cause, the opposition to cover it, is very effective.

00:30:11.720 However, there is a real cost, especially if you're using yourself as the conduit for that.

00:30:17.320 So, just keep that in mind.

00:30:19.440 But that, you know, at least this explains why.

00:30:21.580 Like, we get so many more people who would never otherwise engage with this idea to engage with the idea of pernatalism and demographic collapse by throwing ourselves under the bus.

00:30:35.300 So, that's why.

00:30:35.780 Well, I mean, we started this movement, like, less than a year after we started this movement.

00:30:38.900 We had front-page piece in the New York Times and a conference being held that we didn't put together on the concept of pernatalism, like, our iteration of pernatalism, not, like, the religious kind that existed before us and stuff like that.

00:30:53.020 The amount of success I think we've had is undeniable within the public sphere.

00:30:57.280 And it is, it's, it's working.

00:31:01.440 Like, this could be, if you look at how big a problem demographic collapse is, this could be what saves our frigging species from going extinct.

00:31:10.200 It is worth sacrificing one family on the altar of new ability, especially when that family doesn't mind so much.

00:31:19.940 Yeah, there you go.

00:31:21.680 There you have it, ladies and gentlemen.

00:31:23.800 I love you to just, you know, walking through hell with me, Malcolm.

00:31:27.280 No, I'm the one who pulled you into this.

00:31:30.200 I'm too artistic.

00:31:30.920 I am so glad that you have taken the risks you did with me, that you have worked to keep this movement one of positivity, to keep it from going in the ethnocentric direction that we've seen with European iterations of this movement.

00:31:44.160 And I think that we can spread this to something that can really pierce the veil of a lot of people who have had reality in the statistical reality of the world that we live in, hidden from them by both the academic system.

00:31:58.080 It was so funny.

00:31:58.860 We were talking to a reporter recently.

00:32:00.060 Sorry, I know I've got to go get the kids, but I've got to relay this anecdote.

00:32:04.520 And she was like, I have talked to a lot of demographers and all of them say it is impossible to predict demography long term.

00:32:12.500 So there's no reason to prepare for any changes.

00:32:14.620 And I was like, all of the leading indicators suggest decline relates of religiosity.

00:32:19.680 I can ask a gen alpha.

00:32:21.380 I can ask gen C, how many kids do you plan on having? 1.00

00:32:23.380 I can, do you plan on having kids at all?

00:32:25.180 All of them are worse numbers than before.

00:32:27.200 And she's like, yeah, but it's what the academics say.

00:32:29.460 And it's like, there's this class that's just diluted, completely diluted into seeing reality.

00:32:35.280 Anyway, love you to death.

00:32:37.180 Love you too, gorgeous.

Based Camp - January 18, 2024

The Art of Media Baiting： Inside the Tactics of the Pronatalist Movement

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