Based Camp - The Trap of the Beautiful Ones： The ＂Mouse Utopia＂ Hits Gen Z

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm excited to be with you today because we are going to be talking about

00:00:05.940 looks maxing as the new gender affirming care. We've joked about how women are getting

00:00:12.340 basically gender affirming care when they get cosmetic procedures, you know, to look like young

00:00:16.740 women. And that, you know, in the end, it's all just the same as being trans. It's pointless,

00:00:22.380 feckless, chasing after a certain identity. You're going to tie it to the concept of the

00:00:27.980 beautiful ones are the mice from the the mice utopia experiment it's been all their time grooming

00:00:32.940 and we're we're doing this because i think it's important when people can learn that society

00:00:38.220 doesn't work and the type of autistic people who watch our show i think communities like

00:00:43.660 looks maxing or any sort of a maxing can feel like solutions but they are not well yeah it's

00:00:51.260 like gender affirming care be it looks maxing or becoming trans or getting a ton of cosmetic

00:00:55.980 procedures as a woman is just one of many traps that people are falling into. But I think as bad

00:01:01.740 as looks maxing, and I want to be clear that we're including this in the looks maxing category,

00:01:05.760 is performative masculinity maxing, which some people also do. 100%. And other things. More

00:01:11.860 good. Yeah. And I'm going to give other examples too. But I also more importantly want to point

00:01:16.440 that these are all traps that map, to your earlier point, to a particular behavioral pattern that

00:01:23.120 appears to be consistent across any abundant mammal society, which is even observed in rodents

00:01:30.880 per Calhoun's rat and mouse experiments that Malcolm just alluded to. And we're going to

00:01:35.840 talk about them in greater detail. And the reason why it's super important to talk about these traps

00:01:40.700 and falling into this particular type of trap is that this folly doesn't yield any lasting impact

00:01:49.000 And it doesn't yield happiness and contentment.

00:01:51.960 Like even if you're nihilistic, even if all you want is just a little bit of pleasure

00:01:55.740 in this short, pointless existence you think you have, it's not even the best approach.

00:02:01.300 And so really there's just no reason why anyone should be falling for these things.

00:02:05.360 And yet they are massively popular outcomes.

00:02:09.480 They're extremely common.

00:02:11.300 So let's talk about this.

00:02:12.840 And we're going to use Luxmaxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into

00:02:18.120 these traps so that all of us can be more adept at evading them personally or getting out of them

00:02:23.740 if we're in them and i think it's pretty easy even like even if your life isn't about these

00:02:28.000 things i think even you and i may sometimes find ourselves unknowingly get pulled into these it's

00:02:33.460 like a magnet that happens in times of abundance but let's start with the rodents the beautiful

00:02:37.940 ones just like you were saying so for those who are out of the loop on this between 1958 and 1962

00:02:44.880 a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments. He used rats and mice. And he did

00:02:51.980 this in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise ideal environment affects

00:02:58.080 social behavior, mental health, and population stability, in this case in rodents. But his hope

00:03:04.180 was to better understand the implications of overcrowding and abundance for human society.

00:03:09.100 So he gave rats and mice endless food, like they were never hungry, endless water,

00:03:13.900 nesting material, and protection from predators and disease, so that a lack of resources was not

00:03:19.460 the cause of their problems. And then he observed how increasing population density changed aggression,

00:03:25.880 mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall physiological functioning over time.

00:03:31.820 Now, we've talked about these rat experiments in the past. Commenters are always like,

00:03:35.620 oh, these aren't scientifically rigorously conducted. And yeah, obviously, yeah,

00:03:39.740 the experiments were far from scientifically precise.

00:03:41.880 important thing about the rat experiments they may have been p-hacked they may not have been

00:03:46.480 scientifically rigorous but they were predictive and yeah no they yielded super super interesting

00:03:51.680 patterns that you could also argue we're seeing in modern abundant societies i think the reason

00:03:56.180 why people like talking about them is a lot of the stuff that he observed qualitatively

00:04:01.380 are like super major things for example let me give you some examples of of behavioral groupings

00:04:08.000 that he saw that like we talk about all the time in humans on our podcast to refresh your memory

00:04:14.340 so there were the there were the dominant so and then keep in mind again these these are of these

00:04:18.580 abundant rat or mouse because he did both just like cities that he created essentially and then

00:04:25.020 he just watched what they did so you know these are these are mice after after they've reached

00:04:29.380 this point where they just reproduced a ton you get the dominant aggressive males these are highly

00:04:34.380 territorial alpha males that monopolize prime nesting areas and mates. They frequently fight

00:04:40.160 and wound other males, and sometimes they attack pups. Then there are the dropouts or socially

00:04:45.760 defeated males. You could call them the incels. They're males driven out of territories by

00:04:50.880 dominant males. They congregate in central areas, often scarred, hyper-submissive, and involved in

00:04:57.060 seemingly purposeless mass brawls. In earlier rat experiments, some turned to cannibalism in the end.

00:05:02.800 so dark then there are the hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males males that

00:05:09.080 mounted other males and juveniles showed disorganized mating attempts and sometimes

00:05:13.740 coupled asexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns again there's a reason

00:05:20.220 why these resonate and then let's get to the female rodents there are the neglectful or

00:05:25.980 failed mothers females that abandoned litters moved pups repeatedly stopped defending nests

00:05:31.580 or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the

00:05:37.160 nest. So again, wow. And then there's the hermit or withdrawn females who were adult females that

00:05:44.200 were treated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating, or pup care,

00:05:50.000 effectively dropping out of normal communal female roles in mouse societies. This is what

00:05:54.000 I wanted to be. That was my role in our rat society until I met you. So go ahead. What were

00:06:02.020 you going to say? The way that you fix this, right? First, the core thing that he noted that I think

00:06:08.340 was the most important predictive element that to me just means he was getting some form of useful

00:06:13.540 data was that as you put mammals in a utopian-like environment, urbanization increases. They began

00:06:23.360 to congregate in denser and denser spaces even when they had more spaces accessible to them

00:06:28.580 and that is not a behavior that anyone would have predicted for humanity at the time that he was

00:06:34.760 doing these experiments and yet it is something that we've seen play out but you also see these

00:06:38.700 more fun things like what you're talking about yeah and so obviously we spent a lot of time

00:06:43.140 talking about the human societal analogs of the rodent groups i just mentioned but yeah let's go

00:06:48.900 back to the beautiful ones, because we're specifically talking not about the trap of

00:06:53.000 incels in modern society, or the women who choose to not have children, or the hyperaggressive males,

00:06:59.940 we're going to talk about, or the hypersexual males who start mounting other males, we're going

00:07:04.980 to talk about the beautiful ones, and the trap of the beautiful ones, and transmaxing, and other

00:07:10.240 forms of this, and so what were the beautiful ones in the rat experiments? They were a subgroup of

00:07:15.640 male rodents first observe in rats and then later in his mouse universe 25 study that withdrew from

00:07:21.720 normal social life they spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming

00:07:26.920 avoiding fighting mating and parenting so that they they remained physically unscarred and well

00:07:33.080 kept but were socially inert and they did not reproduce and you're going to find this is uncanny

00:07:38.200 when we get into looks maxing so he described the animals as healthy in body but socially sterile

00:07:44.780 seeing them as a large stage symptom of social breakdown in an overpopulated yet materially

00:07:50.780 abundant environment. And before we go into looks maxers, I want to point out that this is a trap

00:07:55.940 that is not just about looks. I'm using looks maxers as like our way of sort of exploring how

00:08:00.160 people fall into these traps. But I'll just give you three examples of this form of societal trap

00:08:06.800 that have just been brought to my attention in like the last 24 hours, just to like, because

00:08:11.040 it's all over. It's all over the place. And a lot of people are falling into this trap.

00:08:14.700 So from one of our friends, she texted me the other morning and just was, I guess this occurred

00:08:19.940 to her. She's just like something for pernatal is to shame status, obesity, the idea that the drive

00:08:25.880 to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes, but the drive to eat can be hijacked

00:08:30.160 and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive. If we eat too much,

00:08:35.040 become obese. Status is similar, where the drive in general is good, and it evolved to be a strong

00:08:41.200 drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive. But there are people, especially

00:08:45.720 at the top, who are status obese. Their drive for status, rather than contributing to their survival

00:08:51.500 and their children's survival, is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money

00:08:55.900 on plastic surgery instead of more kids, for example. They are status obese, hurting their

00:09:00.040 genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of their young. And this reminds

00:09:04.900 me of something that I heard among a very elite group that we, we used to mix in. There was this

00:09:11.820 one guy who at this point was a billionaire. And in this, this off the record, Chatham House Rules

00:09:17.440 conversation, he was sort of talking about his objective function in life. And like, for him,

00:09:21.800 it was always just like, well, and it just become a, you know, get, make six figures. And then it

00:09:27.060 you know become a millionaire and then become a multi-millionaire and then like okay we'll have

00:09:30.500 a net worth of over 10 million have a net worth of over 50 million 100 million a billion 2 billion

00:09:35.940 like it just is he he he i think he was going on 2 billion at that point or something like that and

00:09:41.460 then he was asked like what after that and he's like well then i guess it's gonna be 3 billion

00:09:45.780 it's just like like at what point you know like to what end when you do something with that that's

00:09:52.820 fun yeah they're like it just like and he he was talking in this conversation about how it was

00:09:59.160 sort of he was aware of the fact that it was hollow i think he was aware of the fact that

00:10:05.620 he'd become one of the beautiful ones essentially like that this is kind of this pointless

00:10:09.260 nihilistic exercise but he also wasn't trying to get out of it and and i really do i love this idea

00:10:18.280 of framing to our kids something like status obesity of like just because we're not above

00:10:25.040 shaming people for being fat i was i was growing up in a very fat shaming family right but your

00:10:30.500 family did not did not shame status obesity and to shame someone for being status obese the same

00:10:37.800 way you'd shame someone for like wearing tacky clothing i mean we do that early all the time so

00:10:43.980 we do we do yeah i i find it to be really disgusting behavior and i think that it is

00:10:50.380 it ruins people's lives it just ruins your life yes yeah people who have seen who strive for it

00:10:55.180 they're never really happy it causes genuinely i feel like there's more correlation with failure

00:11:00.200 to thrive and status obesity than actual obesity such a great way to put it and you and you do see

00:11:07.220 this in upper class circles all the time oh my god yeah and if you're like or or if you're stuck

00:11:13.720 in sort of a look max and you're like yeah but i don't have anything that matters to me right so

00:11:18.880 i'm trying to construct something and i'm like if you want a good check out the book the pragmatist

00:11:23.200 guide to life we will give it to you for free it's got an audiobook it's on amazon for like 99

00:11:28.340 cents if you want it it is the book for in an unbiased way having somebody walk you through

00:11:34.240 building something that you can philosophically rigorously believe has purpose when we try

00:11:39.900 unlike who we are today as influencers which is heavily biased heavily we have an ideological side

00:11:47.020 and we did not back then we were very very very ideologically unbiased back then or at least

00:11:52.860 attempted to be as hard as we could and that book can be it's a short book it's a short read it is

00:11:59.280 very useful in terms of getting around that basically what we do in it is we go over

00:12:03.980 everything you could think has value like literally we go through every philosophically

00:12:11.360 rigorous even potentially thing that could have value and we go through the arguments for it and

00:12:16.460 we go through the arguments against it um and so that makes it easy for you because you can be like

00:12:21.240 okay i can bite those bullets it's basically like can you bite these bullets against it and if you

00:12:25.880 can then it's probably a good solution in terms of structuring your life around it and now you

00:12:31.000 have a purpose something that you can structure your life around but anyway continue sorry it

00:12:36.180 actually is kind of blowing my mind so the difference between a like physical food-based

00:12:41.180 obesity and status obesity is food-based obesity is just like a it's it's a low-grade addiction

00:12:47.580 you know something that you can treat with naltrexone or avutine whereas status obesity

00:12:53.860 is a beautiful ones problem and i think what makes the the the disease of the beautiful ones

00:12:59.400 so uniquely insidious is that it is a very cerebral high performance vice in that it

00:13:09.580 eats the potential of people who would otherwise be very impactful in the world. Does that make

00:13:14.700 sense? Like these are, these are not people who are like following to like, they're not falling

00:13:19.260 to low grade, like sex addiction, gambling addiction, food addiction, right? They, they

00:13:24.340 are, they're rising above that. In fact, in many cases, they're extremely disciplined. You know,

00:13:28.580 these these like looks maxers are going and we're going to get into that like they're going through

00:13:32.140 incredible pain and deprivation to to to achieve your time being anorexic i mean i think you could

00:13:39.620 have you know if you had vanity which i think you hate the way you look so much you'd never

00:13:43.980 become a look maxer but you know i can see the appeal of something like that even to you

00:13:48.500 totally no but the feeling of control that it that it could bring because for me it was always

00:13:53.880 about control and that's what it is for most people who have anorexia um but yeah so i think

00:13:58.840 what's what's so crazy about that is yeah i was just thinking about like the obese people i know

00:14:02.880 many of them have kids above replacement rate they're working their butts off to give those

00:14:08.120 kids successful lives and if anything they're obese because they're eating their feelings and

00:14:11.460 they're very stressed as they really fight for something they believe in right like they're

00:14:16.380 suffering from a vice they have severe problems and they're they're not in control of their impulses

00:14:21.260 but like they're still doing more than the billionaire status maxer the beautiful one

00:14:28.420 so i think that just to highlight how insidious and sinful like per my view this particular trap

00:14:35.440 is there's also and i think this is really interesting i just saw a headline of this

00:14:39.080 well another version of this trap not beyond just status maximizing is virtue signaling or aimless

00:14:45.840 altruism i don't know if you saw this headline but the telegraph had this article that it ran

00:14:52.320 it was on the front page of drudge this morning okay titled the extreme world of the 20 something

00:14:57.280 men giving their organs to strangers forget giving blood these young people are offering

00:15:02.080 strangers their body parts such generosity could revolutionize a transplant system

00:15:06.480 and yeah so you you've actually seen that there's you see the occasional post about this

00:15:14.320 in the effective altruist slash like altruistic rationalist space where like, oh, so-and-so

00:15:22.060 gave a kidney.

00:15:22.940 Like, it's so great that they gave a kidney.

00:15:24.540 And these are people who already like are trying to be effective altruists, except they

00:15:29.500 lose the plot and they just want to like do all the good things.

00:15:32.120 So they like donate blood and they donate plasma and they start running out of things

00:15:35.340 to do.

00:15:35.980 And then they just start giving away their, like their kidney.

00:15:39.340 And then they just keep going to complete strangers.

00:15:41.300 And in this article, they talk about this trend, particularly in the UK. Most of these non-direct

00:15:49.240 altruistic donors are male, kind of like the beautiful ones. A good portion are in their 20s.

00:15:54.740 Then there's another large cohort in their 50s, weirdly. It also notes the donors are predominantly

00:15:59.860 white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children. These are, in other

00:16:05.600 words, I think beautiful ones. These are people who are stuck in an altruism trap. They're

00:16:11.660 optimizing to do good without really understanding what it is. And there are people who don't have

00:16:17.020 children, who don't have partners, who are not really making any lasting impact. Because what

00:16:22.900 do you do when you give someone a kidney? Maybe you're extending that person's life a little bit.

00:16:27.240 You're saving them from dialysis for a little bit. But like, what is that person going to do?

00:16:31.600 And this is also a stranger. Like you have no control over who you're giving your kidney to

00:16:34.960 in these cases so like i don't know you could be giving your kidney to like like a retired person

00:16:41.140 who's not gonna have any impact anyway aside from maybe maybe babysitting a grandkid a little bit

00:16:45.620 and helping that yeah like i really don't like it the the myop the myopy of this like you could

00:16:51.820 instead go work for a startup that will build synthetic kidneys like we're at that point

00:16:58.640 in human history i love the way you see things the way i do why don't you just make synthetic

00:17:04.220 kidneys we're so freaking close that so that and then that's why i'm like this is a sign of

00:17:11.820 really like you've gone off the rails like this is performative altruism it has no point it has

00:17:18.980 no reason it's crazy and then there's also dating and we we haven't run the episode yet but we

00:17:24.620 did an episode on new trends in gen z dating and one of the big trends that was emerging

00:17:29.880 among gen z pickup artists specifically is that there's this subset of gen z pickup artists that

00:17:37.200 are really just trying to like they're using their ray-bans are recording like sessions of

00:17:42.000 like cold approaches and they're just trying to get views like the point isn't to get women to

00:17:49.560 sleep with them per se it's to get attention to get reactions of we'd recorded one of our weekend

00:17:58.360 episodes on this which are for paid subscribers if you guys want to help us out on patreon or

00:18:03.140 sub stack they are if you're listening to this oh sorry no no sorry yeah this isn't this is for

00:18:09.240 the main channel oh awesome yeah by the way yeah we have we run two weekend episodes every single

00:18:15.760 week we now have this big backlog i think we have over 50 additional episodes that you have not seen

00:18:20.380 if you want to get your fix if you've already gone through all the backlog there's more friend

00:18:24.620 if you've already gone through all the backlog you have a problem okay you have like an emotional

00:18:29.040 problem i'm trying to put this show has been on forever okay simone at this point but if you if

00:18:36.300 if you have i appreciate it i appreciate yeah but also like if you want to support us and help us

00:18:40.740 out like we really would appreciate it it means a lot to us and it does make a difference for us

00:18:45.040 and i'm trying to i've been trying to create playlists so it's easier to do like the backlog

00:18:50.740 if you ever want to do it of like the stuff that's going to be evergreen right for a particular topic

00:18:55.380 of interest like psychology and anthropology science government and governance theory stuff

00:19:02.340 like that so anyway yeah but anyway so there's also now just like trends in dating in which

00:19:08.280 people are not even trying to get a partner they're just you know they're just cold approaching for

00:19:13.080 like to prove to themselves something or to to you know build a career as a higher status like dude

00:19:21.940 slash dating coach that's another example of this trap but let's go to looks maxing and go into it

00:19:27.640 in greater detail then what we're going to do is is we're going to look at clavicular and sort of

00:19:33.640 what he does to give you a picture of what looks maxing entails because it's just very entertaining

00:19:36.960 and then we're going to look at the various factors that are driving people into this particular

00:19:42.600 beautiful ones trap because i think that they're very they can give you an idea of how someone can

00:19:47.420 very subtly fall into a beautiful ones trap like status or like dating or like altruism without

00:19:54.160 knowing it because it can be a confluence of subtle things and i'm going to go through

00:19:58.340 the confluence of subtle gateway drugs essentially that bruno daniel friend of the podcast and of

00:20:05.320 reality reality fabricator sent to us as he looked into what was driving people into looks maxing or

00:20:11.540 might be driving people until we have one of our our big fans or was into look mac thing it's funny

00:20:18.380 like when we're like okay when do we give our kids like human gross hormones and stuff like that we

00:20:22.020 like reach out to this fan i'm like i'm sure he's done the research right he's so cool no he's like

00:20:26.460 one of my favorite people in the entire world i'm like a fan of him i'm a fan of so many of our fans

00:20:30.880 like i'm just like weirdly obsessive about them and i don't think they realize well because you

00:20:35.740 don't bother with real friends because real friends are a scam well they're but they're also

00:20:39.860 like not as well selected people who are your irl friends are people who you just happen to run into

00:20:46.260 the people that we come across content wise and who come across us content wise we're like we're

00:20:50.740 all really well matched for each other because we share interests and like very obscure interests

00:20:55.520 so anyway looks maxing is definitely on the rise it if you look at google trends and this is all

00:21:02.040 linked in the show notes, which you can find on Substack or Patreon, it shows how it came out of

00:21:06.340 nowhere in 2023, which is probably just when they started putting a name to this. Because for

00:21:13.360 example, the person we know who first clued us into a looks like maxing that Malcolm just referred

00:21:17.180 to, he's been doing this since he was a teen, you know, like using different hormones and injections

00:21:22.840 and interventions, et cetera, like going above and beyond to make sure that, you know, he grows

00:21:27.860 enough and like looks better than he otherwise could. So like this is, it's not like it only

00:21:33.240 just emerged in 2023, but that's when people really started talking about it online. Then

00:21:38.120 it interestingly came to a lull in 2024 and then swung back up in 2025, but also in a much more

00:21:46.260 extreme way, because that is when you start to see in Google trends, a spike of things like,

00:21:52.160 what is the word where you hammer your face face yeah whatever it's it's somewhere deeper in my

00:22:00.900 notes i'll i'll mention it in a little bit and also people like clavicular with clavicular being

00:22:05.480 now the new 2026 face of looks maxing who also is just like extremely extremely out there

00:22:15.720 i think that clavicular is i haven't seen that much of his content but he seems like so much

00:22:20.180 more emotionally healthy than like andrew tate as like a a young male influencer

00:22:24.600 i guess i know let's talk about what he does okay okay

00:22:29.340 i mean he i mean yeah i don't know okay there's a lot there's a lot with him so he he started

00:22:40.320 testosterone injections at like age 14 or 15 which i don't like blame him for doing his parents were

00:22:46.920 against this by the way his parents were not supportive of this he also engages and has

00:22:51.680 engaged in very long-term steroid use he this is where things start to go off the rails malcolm

00:22:57.600 he uses meth to suppress appetite and stay extremely lean and maintain hollow cheeks and

00:23:02.840 that's based it's it is very based i think like there's this one clip of him on social media where

00:23:08.680 he's like chatting with a girl at a club and she's like like i don't know like do you do any drugs or

00:23:12.300 something and he's like or like alcohol like do you drink out he's like well i don't really drink

00:23:16.680 alcohol i'd like mostly just do meth and she's just kind of like oh okay i mostly just do meth

00:23:23.640 yeah he's you know and also like people have come to question you know his his political

00:23:30.860 philosophy because he's like well obviously i would vote for who's the california gavin newsom

00:23:36.160 over jd vance because he totally mogs vance and i think like at one point like he said this to

00:23:40.740 like andrew tate at some stupid male influencer gathering in miami and tate was like child that

00:23:47.840 is not the way that you vote um i love i love that this guy is just like living on an aesthetic

00:23:55.780 like i get it and i like the commitment to the bit but also he's one of the beautiful ones like

00:24:02.900 to what end is this commitment so yes to our earlier point because i was i was this alluded

00:24:08.060 But yeah, he practices bone, bone smashing, which is when you use a hammer or fist to

00:24:14.380 hit your face, to induce micro fractures, to produce a sharper jawline.

00:24:19.340 Now, just to double click on this, because enough people have been talking about bone

00:24:22.540 smashing, where I was like, this can't, this can't work, right?

00:24:26.980 But also like, I was like, well, hold on a second, because this is how nose jobs work.

00:24:31.860 And by the way, there are some YouTubers who've done really great histories of nose jobs.

00:24:37.040 people have been doing of course you've watched this i love it but on our channel wherever you

00:24:41.840 find simona's like a really deep knowledge it's whenever we're talking about fashion history yeah

00:24:46.640 yeah but like people have been have been doing those jobs for a long time and nose jobs have

00:24:55.480 always involved breaking the bones in the nose and and strategically reforming them so i'm also

00:25:00.760 like well but i know that facial cosmetic procedures have for a long time involved

00:25:07.000 breaking bones in the face so maybe there's something to this but just in case you're

00:25:12.500 picking up a hammer right now and getting ready to go most looks maxers i know are super like

00:25:17.580 educated on this stuff i don't think they do something that didn't work no because no this

00:25:22.800 it doesn't work okay just let's get cut to the chase it doesn't i don't believe you okay now

00:25:28.160 No, it doesn't. And I'll explain why. And you're going to understand really quickly why. Okay. So

00:25:33.020 bone smashing is based on a misreading of Wolf's law, which says bone adapts to controlled

00:25:40.240 repetitive mechanical loading, like normal weight bearing exercise, not to random blunt trauma or

00:25:47.460 deliberate fractures. So surgeons point out that striking your face with fists or hammers

00:25:52.740 creates uncontrolled injury. So any microfractures or healing are unpredictable. They can't reliably

00:25:59.720 make the jaw sharper or more symmetrical. And reviews by doctors and oral maxillofacial

00:26:06.740 surgeons state that there's no clinical evidence that bone smashing produces cosmetic improvements

00:26:11.940 in facial structure. So like going down to the logistics of what's happening here, blunt force

00:26:16.840 to the face primarily damages soft tissue like skin and fat and muscle and blood vessels and

00:26:22.780 nerves. This causes swelling. It causes bruising, scar formation. It doesn't cause the clean,

00:26:28.860 controlled bone remodeling that they think they're doing. So even when small fractures occur,

00:26:34.120 they tend to heal along the original anatomy or in a misaligned way, which can worsen asymmetry

00:26:40.020 or create deformity instead of a sharper jawline. Experts emphasize that when bones truly need to

00:26:46.240 be repositioned or reshaped for cosmetic or functional reasons.

00:26:49.600 And this is comes to my, my nose job awareness.

00:26:52.760 Surgeons use very precise planned osteo osteotomies, osteo osteotomies and fixation.

00:27:03.040 Meaning that they're like really going in there and very strategically breaking

00:27:06.520 the bone and repositioning it.

00:27:08.080 They're not just like hitting it with a hammer.

00:27:10.540 So not repeated low level trauma to get predictable results.

00:27:14.680 So the problem is fake news, give me the hammer, give me the hammer.

00:27:19.900 I think that even clavicular has stopped bone smashing.

00:27:24.160 He just, like it got him a lot of attention, but he doesn't do it anymore.

00:27:27.640 I think because it doesn't work.

00:27:30.020 So I don't know.

00:27:30.960 He looked pretty dumpy in his before photos.

00:27:34.980 Yeah, but I think a lot of that had to do more.

00:27:38.360 So keep it on.

00:27:38.960 He engages in extreme calorie restriction.

00:27:42.040 a lot of that was just weight loss allowing his bone structure to come through the the primary

00:27:47.780 difference that i saw in his before and after had to do with weight loss it wasn't it was the meth

00:27:54.560 malcolm it's not the hammer okay i'm not condemning all of it i mean he could have just

00:28:01.580 used semaglutide but he had to be more metal so i don't know maybe he doesn't have insurance

00:28:07.680 coverage and the meth is less expensive, who knows. But keep in mind, going back to the

00:28:13.720 beautiful things, the beautiful, the beautiful ones theme of this all is that he also is well

00:28:20.100 aware, again, being quite based, and he really owns everything that he does. He's aware of the

00:28:25.640 fact that he's probably infertile due to the chronic steroid use, you know, if not all the

00:28:31.100 other things. He also told the New York Times, and I'm linking to the article in the show notes,

00:28:36.900 that he's not particularly interested in having sex with women, just knowing that he can is enough

00:28:43.340 validation for him. So like, this is, this is a person who at least as of now is not looking very

00:28:49.020 likely to successfully reproduce. This is a very, very good example of how looks maxing is the

00:28:56.360 beautiful ones, the ones who just excessively groom and look untouched and good, but are, are

00:29:00.760 not they're not they're they're an end to their genetic line to to all of mouse and rat history

00:29:07.080 they are genetic ends and he is a genetic end to every you know the millions of years of evolution

00:29:12.600 and i basically did what he did but was a different outcome at that age no you you did not obtain

00:29:20.460 hormones and no no what i mean is pointlessly optimized my goal at his age because he's young

00:29:29.400 right he's like 20 he's very young just have sex with as many attractive women as possible but he's

00:29:36.300 not having sex oh but you meant like pointless non-procreative sex yeah i understand but the

00:29:41.860 point i'm making is non-procreative sex is the same as is yeah it's all self-validation it was

00:29:48.600 all and if if i actually want to clarify that having sex is not the same as masturbation

00:29:57.480 non-propriative sex because honestly masturbation is way more effective if all you want is the

00:30:03.340 pleasure sex itself like if you're doing like a right sex is more relation there's no but also

00:30:09.760 there's way more like the the the the pain coins that i get from like like i'm thinking just like

00:30:18.380 as a male that i have to spend to get like the pleasure coin of like ejaculation or sorry like

00:30:26.740 a climax i have to get that's like 28 pain coins for one pleasure coin i understand but it's it's

00:30:34.600 about knowing that you can it's yeah and that's what i'm saying it's about the self-validation

00:30:38.420 it's not about physical pleasure and and i think that young people especially if you're born with

00:30:42.940 an enormous like goal drive like i was right um you can you can very easily if you're smart get

00:30:49.200 caught in one of these loops especially if you're doing really well at it you're like oh i'm good

00:30:53.540 at this okay i'm gonna lean in i'm gonna do more i'm gonna do more i'm gonna do more make the next

00:30:57.320 million make the next billion yeah and you just get obsessed with it there's a there's a role that

00:31:02.780 path dependency i think plays in this too of like after a while you're not good at anything else you

00:31:07.340 only know one thing in this world it's actually kind of scary just second guess i actually would

00:31:12.560 push back hard here i think that some of these youth obsessions like mine can be incredibly

00:31:19.020 useful when you get older oh i mean it certainly taught you a lot about sales yeah yeah they

00:31:23.480 taught me about sales it taught me about sales and how to talk to people and how to sell myself

00:31:27.200 to people and how to approach strangers and how to confidence how to own a room how to build

00:31:32.980 presence how to like i got more out of that than i did out of college i'll tell you that right like

00:31:39.560 true so i i don't i i just saying everyone should just go on a sexual rum springer and

00:31:44.540 well i mean you couldn't have done the sexual rum springer to its full completion without

00:31:50.240 going to college so i guess no no no i actually by like my second year of college i had basically

00:31:56.660 gotten over it oh yeah yeah i mean i still you know from from that point on you know i i still

00:32:05.600 slept with a number of people but it wasn't my core goal anymore yeah once you hit college it

00:32:10.780 was finding a wife yeah well no first year of college it wasn't finding a wife i was still

00:32:14.400 sleeping around a lot oh really yeah it was second year of college where i was like okay i got to

00:32:19.320 take this seriously now okay that's when you got matchmaking obsessed yeah or maybe maybe like

00:32:28.580 halfway through the first year okay oh fair enough then well also at that point i had slept with

00:32:34.960 everyone that you know that i saw that i thought was attractive in in my social circle so i i didn't

00:32:40.440 have a reason to keep trying i was like whatever where where when i was younger i wasn't limited

00:32:46.880 by that because i would hook up with people i met through online dating back when and keep in mind

00:32:54.220 this was a very different era of online dating you could actually very easily online date in that

00:32:59.100 era which is sad that like today you can't do that for real times have changed sad but yeah so

00:33:09.860 the cliffhanger is he's obviously a very extreme example but i think there are lots of men who are

00:33:15.920 falling into this trap and also you know women who are falling into the gender affirming trap

00:33:20.100 and just people in general who are becoming obsessed with their looks online or other things

00:33:24.780 so let's go through bruno daniel's theories on what drives people to looks maxing which i think

00:33:30.720 also explain what drive women to obsession with their appearance to sort of explain the subtle

00:33:36.040 ways in which i think also people fall into like algorithm maxing or status maxing and this is what

00:33:41.280 brunel daniel sent to us and thanks bruna you are awesome and yeah the best so one he pointed out

00:33:48.980 that camera tech sorry camera technology distorts how people perceive their own faces he cited a

00:33:55.880 2018 research letter in jama facial plastic surgery by boris pascover and colleagues who

00:34:03.160 modeled how perspective distortion affects facial proportions in close range photography

00:34:08.200 so selfies taken at typical phone distance like 12 inches can make the nose appear roughly 30

00:34:15.080 larger than it does in photos taken from like a five foot portrait difference so when people are

00:34:20.740 taking selfies they actually think that their nose is bigger and then they start getting obsessed

00:34:25.320 over it so there's this like subtle subconscious thing that makes you start feeling a little bit

00:34:30.820 like less comfortable about it i'm going to include additional studies that bruno sources

00:34:35.280 on these fronts in the show notes just so people know and then there's also number two snapchat

00:34:40.660 dysphoria comparing oneself to filtered faces he wrote around the late 2010 surgeons began

00:34:46.500 describing a phenomenon sometimes called snapchat dysphoria patients increasingly request procedures

00:34:51.780 designed to replicate filtered versions of their own faces produced by apps like snapchat or

00:34:57.220 instagram at least you know you're gonna like what you're going for that i know i know it's great

00:35:01.300 yeah plastic surgeons used to use special proprietary software this is what gets me

00:35:06.220 about like a nose job when somebody's like what would you want a nose job and i'm like what

00:35:09.320 i don't know what a pretty nose looks like like i don't know like how would i look corrected and

00:35:13.960 yeah plastic surgeons used to like make versions that would show you but now people are literally

00:35:19.240 seeing the after version of them in plastic surgery every time they turn on a filter every

00:35:25.060 time which is i just don't get it i don't understand why you want a different nose like

00:35:30.860 there's got to be something seriously wrong with your nose I don't know I have you ever turned on

00:35:35.320 like an attractive filter I turned one on by mistake and was like oh god this is what I could

00:35:41.960 this is what I could look like if I was pretty like it's it's actually quite I found it quite

00:35:47.320 disturbing because I I feel really uncomfortable about the idea of altering the way I look like I

00:35:53.720 even like dyeing my hair ever since I was a kid I felt it was some version of stolen valor

00:35:59.100 to like i i i don't i cannot pretend to be a blonde that would be criminal like i have this

00:36:06.720 feeling of like some inherited feeling of sumptuary laws you know like well you're not

00:36:12.060 allowed to look beautiful you're not like that's deeply wrong in some way well i mean that makes

00:36:19.620 sense if you're not beautiful don't lie but genuinely because then people will try to

00:36:25.140 reproduce with you thinking that you're something that you're not. Anyway, someone actually suggested

00:36:29.200 that as an episode to us at some point, like the ethics of cosmetic procedures and whether people

00:36:33.140 should have to disclose that, et cetera, or like having people do background checks on partners

00:36:37.700 to see if they ever did, that kind of thing. I think they also suggested- I am very against

00:36:43.080 cosmetic procedures, by the way. I see them as largely pointless unless- No, we've talked about

00:36:48.980 ones that you feel like you'd want to get someday if a certain issue arises that you think is

00:36:53.240 uniquely and both of us i had braces you've had you know dental stuff done we both had you know

00:37:00.020 as kids stuff okay okay i take that back yeah i'm okay with this so like yeah for sure if our kids

00:37:05.720 have their teeth growing crooked we're gonna help them get yeah you know i think your mom told you

00:37:13.280 as a kid like oh if you see a kid with crooked teeth their parents don't love them that means

00:37:19.040 she did she didn't tell me that she goes that's the easiest way to tell if a parent's love their

00:37:22.620 children. It's so mean because that's not true. It's kind of true though. No, because the thing

00:37:28.300 is in the United States for the like half of our audience, it doesn't live there.

00:37:33.840 Tooth care, dental coverage is entirely independent in the United States from health

00:37:39.000 insurance coverage. So you can have a parent who has health insurance through their employer

00:37:43.780 and they don't have dental coverage. And also most dental coverage is really, really bad.

00:37:50.000 at best it will cover two cleanings a year for example all the intense gum surgery i had to do

00:37:56.600 it covered like a couple hundred dollars of that and like the rest i'm paying for out of my

00:38:02.420 like personal fund savings for like buying myself treats it was like two thousand eight hundred

00:38:08.300 dollars and i'd saved up years for that to like go on and you know like do something nice for

00:38:12.720 myself and like that's gone to keep my teeth from falling out because that's dental coverage here

00:38:17.600 so no things like orthodonture for kids and stuff that is paid for out of pocket like it was a big

00:38:22.880 deal for my parents to get braces from me as a kid so then no that's not true it's not a sign

00:38:26.720 of being loved it's a sign of having money defending people from my mom's horrible classism

00:38:33.400 listen I love her classism but also I'm going to point it out as as a classism anyway yes so

00:38:39.900 basically you should at some point look I just think filters are really funny like there's some

00:38:47.320 filters that don't make you look more attractive they just like change your gender so you can see

00:38:50.860 what you look like if you're old or obese or male and there's this one amazing clip of like a mom

00:38:57.880 and a daughter and it begins with them as males like with the gender clip on and it's like no

00:39:04.080 sorry it begins with both of them no sorry it begins with the daughter just having it on her

00:39:09.340 face she's just holding the phone mostly aimed at her so his mom's her mom's on the side but her

00:39:13.240 mom hasn't been subject to the filter because it's only half her face the ai doesn't recognize her as

00:39:16.960 a human and like the daughter is just like hot dude and then she like scrolls the phone over a

00:39:24.120 little bit so like her mom's full face is in it and her mom is like all excited to be turned into

00:39:28.560 a hot dude like it turns her into this dumpy ugly man because she was already ugly to start

00:39:33.900 it's just so metal i love it so much and she judged the daughter is being the daughter was

00:39:41.140 hot the daughter was hot to start because at the end i think the daughter turns off the filter and

00:39:44.960 just see that like she was attractive as a woman so it turned her into an attractive man

00:39:48.800 and it just like it kept the the attractiveness equivalent like the ai is really good

00:39:53.800 oh my god christina you are one hot looking man oh my god are you freaking kidding me right now

00:40:01.620 that's awesome what get that are you freaking kidding me right now get that off that's disgusting

00:40:09.460 so anyway you might want to play with filters someday but filters really mess with people

00:40:13.020 and they can really hurt you like that that older woman the mother in that particular scenario was

00:40:18.800 probably very used to the way she looked as a woman and she'd like built some kind of reality

00:40:24.140 bending field about oh I'm really pretty anyway and then she saw herself as a man in a whole new

00:40:30.980 light and realized just how ugly she was all over again like filters really do affect negatively the

00:40:38.040 way you look at yourself. So it should come as no surprise that people who are subjecting

00:40:43.460 themselves to Snapchat filters are getting this dysphoria. And it looks maxers and probably trans

00:40:49.020 people and women alike are looking at these filters and feeling bad about themselves and

00:40:53.560 feeling like they need to do something. Here's the thing though. And here's how it gets to the

00:40:56.380 beautiful ones. This is a trap. Like you're getting obsessive about it, but to your point,

00:41:02.160 Malcolm, it doesn't matter. If you're ugly, you're ugly. Like that's how you look. It's the world.

00:41:06.520 i'm sorry like it sucks but like that's not what matters in the larger scheme of things

00:41:10.700 find your objective function and figure out what you actually care about if you don't know the

00:41:15.320 other the only other fun fact i will give you about filters and this might have changed but i

00:41:20.780 don't think it has changed that much is there is one person in the world who can turn on like a

00:41:27.100 snapchat or instagram filter and their face doesn't change do you know who that is i'm gonna say

00:41:32.460 no who kim kardashian really she's basically like the the touchstone of the filters has she

00:41:42.820 actually done this to to show people because i don't think she's a very attractive person

00:41:46.320 i think it's no yeah but that the filters make you look more like in that direction she she is

00:41:51.800 the filter which is just fascinating so yeah anyway interesting i i find her very unattractive

00:41:56.980 so i guess yeah maybe i don't know i would now i now i really want to see what you look like

00:42:01.360 i have to figure out i have instagram on my phone i have to figure out i'm so excited for this okay

00:42:07.940 anyway so then let's go to number three the the way that people fall into this trap without

00:42:12.640 realizing it the pandemic introducing zoom dysmorphia according to to bruto covid produced

00:42:19.500 another technological feedback loop dermatologists and plastic surgeons began describing zoom

00:42:25.060 dysphoria or sorry dysmorphia where constant exposure to one's own face on video calls

00:42:30.880 increased dissatisfaction with appearance and led to more cosmetic consultations.

00:42:35.220 Millions of people suddenly spend hours each day looking at their own faces

00:42:38.740 through front-facing cameras under unflattering lighting conditions.

00:42:42.960 Then he has two more academic sources on this.

00:42:45.980 Like it's, you know, it has been measured and attested by academics.

00:42:49.960 Number four, cosmetic modification among men is rising.

00:42:53.600 At the same time, male participation in cosmetic procedures has been rising steadily.

00:42:57.920 data from plastic surgery associations show growth in procedures such as hair restoration

00:43:02.420 botox style injections skin resurfacing treatments and body contouring among men

00:43:06.760 what is notable is not just the increase itself but the shift in framing instead of being

00:43:11.800 stigmatized as vanity these interventions are framed as optimization and self-improvement

00:43:16.680 what he didn't mention here and we talked about this in another episode and we even looked at

00:43:20.500 the google trends of it is like lengthening surgery which can cost upwards of two hundred

00:43:24.800 thousand dollars and be incredibly his profile says he's 6'1 so i can wear lifts

00:43:35.700 even with lifts you're not that tall

00:43:39.560 jerome never questioned my commitment again that's basically what you're doing though like

00:43:47.220 it's it's it is it is incredibly punishing and more men than ever are doing it which is

00:43:53.680 it goes to show, again, beautiful ones. This is not going to make you have a lasting impact on

00:43:59.760 the unbroken chain of human existence, but whatever. Number five, muscle dysmorphia and

00:44:05.500 the pursuit of extreme physiques. On the body side of the phenomenon, there is the related

00:44:09.920 condition known as muscle dysmorphia, sometimes called bigorexia. Researchers have found that

00:44:15.860 exposure to idealized muscular bodies and media correlates with body dissatisfaction

00:44:20.480 among men and increased risk of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. This dynamic is often

00:44:25.360 associated with anabolic steroid use and extreme training regimes or regimens. What Bruno didn't

00:44:31.020 point out is that in some areas, in fact, I think this is actually happening a lot in Brazil.

00:44:37.340 Men are injecting, in some cases, saline, in some cases, other materials.

00:44:42.320 Oh God, I find this so gross. Fake muscles. No, it's disgusting. Don't even, the pictures are so

00:44:48.940 horrifying don't look it up nightmare fuel nightmare fuel like worse than trans people

00:44:55.580 in fact though actually this is something i left out about stuff that clavicular does

00:44:59.860 but he is very interested in having the right like sort of shoulder proportions kind of like

00:45:05.860 you know i'm using this gambeson to look a little tougher with my little i think it looks good no

00:45:11.140 you look like what i like about these these sort of medieval outfits is they look so spacey like

00:45:16.980 you genuinely look like you could be no but strong prominent shoulders are masculine and

00:45:21.780 are attractive you know what clavicularis has done with his shoulders to make them look more

00:45:26.640 pad them with oh breast stuff cutlets yeah cutlets yeah well interesting yeah should i do that put

00:45:37.320 chicken cutlets on your on your shoulders i don't have falsies because we where do you buy them cbs

00:45:42.960 i've never owned any you never owned any i guess yeah i guess you didn't want to portray yourself

00:45:48.120 stolen valor malcolm i'm like very morally against this i've never even like i i didn't even

00:45:53.820 i i remember my my cousin got a training bra a training bra like you don't need a when you need

00:46:01.220 when you put it on a training bra is like a fake bra right it's like it's just like a little you

00:46:07.120 know it's like a little bra for girls who have absolutely nothing in there but you know she got

00:46:12.600 it anyway because i don't know maybe it made her feel girly or her parents are trying to prepare

00:46:17.020 her for the horror that is female puberty but i was like well i would never get a bra i mean even

00:46:24.020 even when you met me you had to convince me to actually get measured for my bra because i was

00:46:29.440 like well i can only possibly be an a cup because for sure i don't have anything and you were wrong

00:46:38.320 yeah but like yeah i'm for most of my life actually i only wore sports bras i basically

00:46:44.140 bound my chest but yeah so i i definitely couldn't have cutlets but yeah so like he

00:46:48.780 even clavicular is aware of like this but instead of thank god instead of injecting silicone into

00:46:55.380 his shoulders he or saline has just just put cutlets there but i actually think that's a

00:47:01.580 somewhat ingenious solution again i have a lot of respect for him but i don't respect the end

00:47:07.400 game of it all yeah no no meth no steroids that are going to sterilize you you know you got to

00:47:11.940 get out there you got to make maybe that's the point of it all right yeah but the point that

00:47:15.420 bruno was making was that like men are falling into this trap without knowing it because of this

00:47:20.460 this confluence of camera technology the way it's distorting distorting our self-perception the way

00:47:26.240 that filters are normalizing altered faces the way that that algorithmic feeds are amplifying

00:47:31.800 extreme physiques and sort of normalizing stuff that really isn't normal and really isn't healthy

00:47:37.060 And then this decline in even stigma against male cosmetic procedures that are really insane.

00:47:44.820 And what I want to point out is that exactly the same things are happening with things like status, with things like altruism, like in the rationalist communities.

00:47:54.100 like you know scott alexander it will offhandedly for example in a post about this or that thing

00:48:00.260 talk about so and so who very valiantly donated the kidney in a way like makes it clear that that

00:48:06.960 made that person good you know and like if scott alexander thinks someone's good then they are

00:48:11.220 good because he is like the smartest of all you know like god said so the smartest of all the

00:48:17.760 nerds no he's like he's nerd he's the ea rationalist nerd god you know like did this happen

00:48:23.520 as these people donated their organs because they read scott alexander

00:48:26.740 i wouldn't be surprised malcolm i genuinely wouldn't be surprised the article i would be

00:48:31.700 surprised it interestingly this actually surprised me that the telegraph article didn't talk about

00:48:38.120 effective altruism or rationalism because it's very obvious to me that that's what this is going

00:48:43.320 out of yeah like obviously i mean like ea came out of oxford this is a uk of origin

00:48:49.800 meme but the telegraph i mean what can you expect like they're not plugged in

00:48:54.600 they really don't know they can't find their feet but i i i want to stress that that like you'll get

00:49:02.620 into the algorithm and you'll start seeing these things and then you'll just tacitly if you don't

00:49:06.420 have a strong objective function you will just assume that well okay then that's what we're

00:49:12.600 optimizing for i guess just like i grew up my my thing was well like environment like save the

00:49:18.640 planet environmentalism i had no idea what that meant but my entire you're so right so much of

00:49:24.980 this is just you get stuck in an optimization loop yeah like well of course that's what the

00:49:29.380 right people do a good person is a good person right without any sort of philosophical or moral

00:49:35.620 framework behind it and people just spin out on that right but you're spoony and you're spinning

00:49:42.160 out it's not me a good person it's like have sex with as many people as possible or you know

00:49:47.400 masculine or be super masculine or for us right now have as many kids as possible right you know

00:49:52.300 like yeah but hey i i i'm pretty confident in that one i've seen our kids they're pretty neat

00:49:57.880 we have a very clear objective function and having kids is a very clear part of that and also we

00:50:02.480 really really love them i think this yeah the difference i love a couple you don't love them

00:50:08.960 here's the difference between the the beautiful ones trap and a genuine objective function because

00:50:17.540 they can look very similar right like both are very goal oriented achievement oriented things

00:50:22.320 and i think it's very easy to assume that one is the other right like these people donating their

00:50:27.780 kidneys you just like well of course they must really know what they're doing you know be very

00:50:33.780 mission driven if they're donating their kidneys right these are people who live their values

00:50:38.440 I think that the key difference is you're never going to get enough to feel satisfied or content in one bucket, whereas in the other you are.

00:50:51.040 Like, I think you and I, as much as we're often stressed and really worried about being able to do right by our objective functions, are heartbreakingly content.

00:51:01.000 to the extent that like our greatest fear is that like we're just gonna like suddenly drop down and

00:51:06.700 die because this is just so too wonderful or that it's not oh yeah no our our lives are stupidly

00:51:12.960 good i am i am shocked by the i mean i was just thinking today but but i always just reflect on

00:51:19.340 it's the life that you built for me right like you've given me this amazing existence right

00:51:23.600 you've given me this amazing i didn't know this was even an option this this wasn't one of my

00:51:28.160 multiple choice options on my on my board again i was going to be the beautiful one they were

00:51:33.820 treated and and chose to not to not have offspring i was that mouse so that wasn't you know i was the

00:51:40.540 what did he call the hermit mice that was me so i didn't know this was an option in the mouse utopia

00:51:45.600 this is really cool well no but we're creating a new option right like that's what the peronadal

00:51:49.740 they're like a community coming out there with like we're getting out come you want you want to

00:51:55.300 be part of the like high-tech sciency like agentic faction that thinks for themselves come join us

00:52:01.920 and we'll help defend each other right yeah we're the mice that calhoun notices in a corner building

00:52:06.760 some kind of structure to get out of the cage we're getting off planet guys

00:52:11.760 wait why are these mice building a rocket like something is going terribly wrong yes so that

00:52:21.500 that's us. But yeah, I think the problem, the problem with the beautiful ones trap is you,

00:52:26.740 it will never be enough. You will never have enough status. You will never be beautiful

00:52:30.940 enough. You will never be masculine enough. You will never be altruistic enough. You will never

00:52:34.980 have, have, have done anything. Whereas the weird thing is objective functions.

00:52:41.140 We don't call them life goals. We call them objective functions because they are things

00:52:45.480 that you are only able to try to maximize. There is no, in the end, achieving a goal.

00:52:51.260 There is no point at which you're like, check, I'm done.

00:52:54.160 I can die now.

00:52:55.160 You know, like, it's just like up until, you know, you realize that you can no longer really

00:52:59.940 pursue your objective function, you're going to push forever.

00:53:02.700 You're just trying to maximize whatever it is.

00:53:05.880 And so you'd think, well, oh, then you're also never going to be satisfied.

00:53:09.200 But weirdly, the emergent property of knowing that your life is now productively dedicated

00:53:17.200 to the pursuit of this objective function, you get this deep sense of contentment and

00:53:26.240 no more FOMO, no more cognitive dissonance. Like I, I remember the way I used to feel in moments

00:53:35.260 you, when I was pursuing a beautiful one's life, where I would just feel this empty existential

00:53:45.200 dread like this mixture of cold depression and of cognitive dissonance like not not being sure

00:53:55.580 if I was missing out on things they're like oh I should probably be doing this I'm not I'm just

00:54:00.560 not sure what if I'm doing this wrong what if I and and I don't ever feel that now like sometimes

00:54:06.300 I'm wondering tactically like well would it be better for me to spend my time on this or that

00:54:10.620 to like maximize our desired results but i'm never questioning i'm never like feeling this

00:54:17.020 deep unsettled worry of like am i missing out on this and i instead feel incredibly happy

00:54:23.520 incredibly tired but in that like i just spent the day at disneyland kind of way except that

00:54:28.380 that doesn't work anymore that doesn't really make me happy from disneyland happy anymore

00:54:32.600 quite stressful these days i guess as if i were a child who spent the day playing at a creek

00:54:37.980 okay that kind of feeling which our kids do every day that deep innocent contentment octavian's very

00:54:44.320 unhappy they got into the 20s again and that there's no creek play anymore right now he's

00:54:48.580 really devastated yeah i feel really bad because i get it i get it we'll get them out there soon

00:54:55.080 enough the spring is coming not yet though gotta plant more trees the daffodils are coming up

00:55:01.640 So anyway, if you want a free copy of the Pragmentist Guide to Life, DM us, we'll give

00:55:09.820 one to you.

00:55:10.520 Typically we only give free copies away readily to our paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack.

00:55:15.160 They get it for free.

00:55:16.400 But you know, if you really care about this and you really want to not be a beautiful

00:55:20.180 one and actually have meaning in life.

00:55:21.660 And I care enough about people to offer this.

00:55:26.000 If you want it, audiobook or ebook, we can send it to you.

00:55:28.080 And I think the key thing is that you should know deeply what you want to maximize in this world and not just be maximizing a thing because it's the algorithmic loop into which you've fallen. Be that the environmentalism or, you know, proselytizing your religion. I don't know. But just be really careful because it's a fine line, but it's a very deep and dangerous trap. Anything you want to add as a finishing point?

00:55:55.780 nope i love you check out the book it like genuinely especially if you're a young person

00:56:01.200 i think it i would have helped me a lot had i realized earlier that i should not be optimizing

00:56:06.920 my life around something as silly as how many people i was sleeping with but you know when

00:56:11.340 you're when you're young you don't have often a lot of things that can like give you the a broader

00:56:15.380 perspective yeah you're just working off societal defaults and both of our things that we were

00:56:19.660 optimizing for in our beautiful ones stage before we woke up essentially was like very classic like

00:56:26.180 you get a lot of sex me environmentalism save the planet we're gone yeah anyway love you the

00:56:37.300 yeah we are the male and female we are not like advanced or something right no no we 100% like

00:56:43.680 we we were not above this and I think there are still moments where I can feel the pull of that

00:56:48.700 magnet where i like if if again and i and in other members like paid paid subscribers only

00:56:55.380 podcast we were recently talking about this like i really hate feeds i tend to fall more into this

00:57:01.140 the i feel the the quicksand when i am scrolling on feeds of like oh like i'm not pretty enough i'm

00:57:09.700 not altruistic enough i'm not a good parent enough like you know i'm not performatively

00:57:14.400 good parent enough etc like why do i not have this like elaborate toothbrush set up for the children

00:57:21.620 you are a spectacular mother by the way for people who do not know this

00:57:26.440 it's like every morning i go downstairs she's cooking individualized meals for all of the kids

00:57:32.920 and she says i offered to handle all this for her in the morning because i used to handle the

00:57:37.600 mornings but no she insists because she's like it's when i'm doing laundry or cleaning up after

00:57:41.440 dinner or something and so she does like individualized all the kids are running around

00:57:46.100 playing with their own thing attacking each other and she'll have on like classic music or like like

00:57:51.180 really fun old movie music and stuff and it's just like scene okay it's a scene it's a scene

00:57:58.040 versus like a rager scene after we go to bed at night

00:58:03.120 it's like they have a rager downstairs genuinely like stuff's breaking people are like

00:58:10.900 vomiting in corners jumping off

00:58:13.200 oh my god

00:58:14.960 oh dinner tonight

00:58:16.820 tie with extra red curry paste and then a

00:58:19.200 grilled cheese sandwich no not

00:58:21.100 both i'm either having one or the other

00:58:22.700 if you think i need to have the chicken

00:58:25.060 curry tonight then

00:58:26.140 tomorrow night i think okay

00:58:28.660 tomorrow

00:58:29.940 girl cheese you make

00:58:33.160 great girl cheeses

00:58:34.600 so cheese

00:58:35.960 white bread

00:58:38.900 don't you try to get something healthy on me okay i'm gonna be i know just for for reference everyone

00:58:45.680 like this morning our kids had you know peanut butter and honey sandwiches with homemade sourdough

00:58:51.480 like sliced bread whatever what is the word loaf bread anyway sandwich bread and but malcolm god

00:59:02.080 forbid that he have homemade fresh because literally there's a loaf that just finished

00:59:07.640 downstairs no no no no for him we're getting out the wonder bread equivalent highly processed full

00:59:15.520 of all the but cheaper than wonder bread yeah cheaper than wonder blood yeah well yeah i always

00:59:22.340 get the store version come on again you know if the if the riboflavin isn't in it why are you

00:59:27.780 gonna eat it and of course you chose not just american cheese which is a substance inspired

00:59:36.600 by the concept of cheese but the craft brand individually wrapped in plastic american cheese

00:59:44.560 slices because you know the ones that i get the land of lakes one that we get at bj's are just

00:59:49.120 stacked and you just pull off the slices no but you got them individually wrapped in plastic

00:59:53.940 just to maximize those microplastics you really want to shove them in

00:59:58.800 get that microplastic i'll just i'll just keep the plastic on and melt it between the breads

01:00:05.600 macro plastic yeah but i don't think you can have american cheese without it being individually

01:00:12.180 wrapped right because you can you can if you get the land of lakes ones that we can buy at bj's

01:00:20.260 they are just stacked sometimes they're a little hard to pull off but no you chose the

01:00:25.620 craft individually wrapped in plastic ones I mean when I when I deign to buy what you ask

01:00:35.880 and get that cheese I always buy at least the minimally microplastic one but no

01:00:40.840 god forbid you're like why would I buy that one when I could buy craft craft is how you know it's

01:00:48.260 good it's it's the one brand okay you're such a 90s kid you're like i want a capri sun in a

01:00:57.180 metallic pouch i want the gogurt plastic sleeve i want the american cheese with i mean i really

01:01:07.860 you would prefer to have i can't believe it's not butter spread instead of you know real butter

01:01:14.560 right did you did you did your family do margarine back when that was the thing i believe i remember

01:01:21.020 yeah i can't believe it's not butter or something because when we were kids it was believed that

01:01:25.620 butter would kill you you've got to remember my family was a little different because my mom

01:01:30.080 didn't cook so i usually ate like pop tarts and stuff like that i i very rarely ate cooked

01:01:36.520 pop tarts yeah right this is what happens if you build an entire body off of like

01:01:41.720 pop tarts and like honey nut cheerios and other oh dude same no man i i did not touch

01:01:48.760 fruits or vegetables until i was like 16 15 or 16 years old yeah our kids are getting a a much

01:01:56.400 better nutritional environment than we know i sneak them bad food because simone gets mad at

01:02:01.720 me over that she got she doesn't like to have fruit roll-ups and stuff and i'm like no no no

01:02:06.780 know that's childhood yeah you're always slipping them like highly processed dross it's horrible

01:02:13.220 i saw you bought more gummies you monster you eat most of them though so shut up i don't eat most of

01:02:21.980 them gummies are delicious adults need an excuse to have gummies in the house let me tell you what

01:02:27.560 you guys if you haven't had gummies since you were a kid gummies are great i'm not talking about gummy

01:02:34.340 bears i'm talking about like mott gummies yeah like the the kind that parents are sold because

01:02:44.020 it contains real fruit juice but guess what one of the the smartest and coolest listeners to this

01:02:49.380 podcast who i shall not name for her privacy she makes gummies for her kids at home using fruit

01:02:56.340 juice i'm being shamed by other moms for not being for not being tried enough yes i will never he

01:03:02.820 She has more kids, but she, she has, she, I think she mills her own grain now.

01:03:09.700 Not only does she make better cakes than I do, but although it broke recently,

01:03:13.660 she has the airbrush.

01:03:14.920 She had an airbrush for her cakes.

01:03:16.760 She's well, I'm glad that you have aspirational women to, you know, try to.

01:03:21.760 I will never be enough.

01:03:22.540 Do more stuff for the family.

01:03:24.040 No, she, she inspires me.

01:03:27.080 There are a couple of moms who I'm just like, I will never, I, like, I told you

01:03:31.220 about one mom who sent their holidays that they celebrate we we have to all have a whole conversation

01:03:36.300 offline about these i'm just like yeah the people who listen to this podcast are next level this is

01:03:41.220 not one of those this podcast has cool listeners i'll tell you that yeah um well i oh we we we

01:03:48.460 definitely need to as an addition for like one of the weekend episodes love you simone i love you

01:03:54.640 too malcolm thank you for being gorgeous so i heard banging why did i hear banging

01:03:59.980 Stop! This is Indy's bed. Indy is supposed to sleep here. Why are you jumping?

01:04:17.660 Why?

01:04:24.220 You're running to attack me. Do not attack you.

01:04:29.980 I'm supposed to be a wanky nanny.

01:04:33.980 No!

01:04:35.980 Do not attack me.

01:04:37.980 Blind the viewers.

01:04:39.980 Why do you want to blind the viewers?

01:04:41.980 Blind the viewers.

01:04:43.980 I'm just blind the wanky nanny.

01:04:49.980 You won't get out of bed.

01:04:51.980 Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I'll escape!

Based Camp - March 18, 2026

The Trap of the Beautiful Ones： The ＂Mouse Utopia＂ Hits Gen Z

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