The Trap of the Beautiful Ones： The ＂Mouse Utopia＂ Hits Gen Z
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 5 minutes
Words per minute
178.79982
Harmful content
Misogyny
31
sentences flagged
Toxicity
28
sentences flagged
Hate speech
23
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, we talk about the new gender affirming care, looks maxing, and how people fall into these traps, and why they are so common. We also talk about a case study from the 1950s of John B. Calhoun and the "Mice Utopia" experiment.
Transcript
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Hello, Malcolm. I'm excited to be with you today because we are going to be talking about
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looks maxing as the new gender affirming care. We've joked about how women are getting
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basically gender affirming care when they get cosmetic procedures, you know, to look like young
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women. And that, you know, in the end, it's all just the same as being trans. It's pointless,
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feckless, chasing after a certain identity. You're going to tie it to the concept of the
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beautiful ones are the mice from the the mice utopia experiment it's been all their time grooming
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and we're we're doing this because i think it's important when people can learn that society
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doesn't work and the type of autistic people who watch our show i think communities like
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looks maxing or any sort of a maxing can feel like solutions but they are not well yeah it's
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like gender affirming care be it looks maxing or becoming trans or getting a ton of cosmetic
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procedures as a woman is just one of many traps that people are falling into. But I think as bad
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as looks maxing, and I want to be clear that we're including this in the looks maxing category,
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is performative masculinity maxing, which some people also do. 100%. And other things. More
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good. Yeah. And I'm going to give other examples too. But I also more importantly want to point
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that these are all traps that map, to your earlier point, to a particular behavioral pattern that
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appears to be consistent across any abundant mammal society, which is even observed in rodents
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per Calhoun's rat and mouse experiments that Malcolm just alluded to. And we're going to
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talk about them in greater detail. And the reason why it's super important to talk about these traps
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and falling into this particular type of trap is that this folly doesn't yield any lasting impact
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And it doesn't yield happiness and contentment.
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Like even if you're nihilistic, even if all you want is just a little bit of pleasure
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in this short, pointless existence you think you have, it's not even the best approach.
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And so really there's just no reason why anyone should be falling for these things.
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And we're going to use Luxmaxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into
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these traps so that all of us can be more adept at evading them personally or getting out of them
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if we're in them and i think it's pretty easy even like even if your life isn't about these
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things i think even you and i may sometimes find ourselves unknowingly get pulled into these it's
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like a magnet that happens in times of abundance but let's start with the rodents the beautiful
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ones just like you were saying so for those who are out of the loop on this between 1958 and 1962
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a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments. He used rats and mice. And he did
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this in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise ideal environment affects
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social behavior, mental health, and population stability, in this case in rodents. But his hope
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was to better understand the implications of overcrowding and abundance for human society.
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So he gave rats and mice endless food, like they were never hungry, endless water,
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nesting material, and protection from predators and disease, so that a lack of resources was not
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the cause of their problems. And then he observed how increasing population density changed aggression,
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mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall physiological functioning over time.
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Now, we've talked about these rat experiments in the past. Commenters are always like,
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oh, these aren't scientifically rigorously conducted. And yeah, obviously, yeah,
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the experiments were far from scientifically precise.
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important thing about the rat experiments they may have been p-hacked they may not have been
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scientifically rigorous but they were predictive and yeah no they yielded super super interesting
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patterns that you could also argue we're seeing in modern abundant societies i think the reason
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why people like talking about them is a lot of the stuff that he observed qualitatively
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are like super major things for example let me give you some examples of of behavioral groupings
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that he saw that like we talk about all the time in humans on our podcast to refresh your memory
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so there were the there were the dominant so and then keep in mind again these these are of these
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abundant rat or mouse because he did both just like cities that he created essentially and then
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he just watched what they did so you know these are these are mice after after they've reached
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this point where they just reproduced a ton you get the dominant aggressive males these are highly
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territorial alpha males that monopolize prime nesting areas and mates. They frequently fight
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and wound other males, and sometimes they attack pups. Then there are the dropouts or socially
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defeated males. You could call them the incels. They're males driven out of territories by
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dominant males. They congregate in central areas, often scarred, hyper-submissive, and involved in
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seemingly purposeless mass brawls. In earlier rat experiments, some turned to cannibalism in the end.
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so dark then there are the hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males males that
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mounted other males and juveniles showed disorganized mating attempts and sometimes
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coupled asexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns again there's a reason
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why these resonate and then let's get to the female rodents there are the neglectful or
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failed mothers females that abandoned litters moved pups repeatedly stopped defending nests
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or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the
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nest. So again, wow. And then there's the hermit or withdrawn females who were adult females that
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were treated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating, or pup care,
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effectively dropping out of normal communal female roles in mouse societies. This is what
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I wanted to be. That was my role in our rat society until I met you. So go ahead. What were
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you going to say? The way that you fix this, right? First, the core thing that he noted that I think
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was the most important predictive element that to me just means he was getting some form of useful
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data was that as you put mammals in a utopian-like environment, urbanization increases. They began
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to congregate in denser and denser spaces even when they had more spaces accessible to them
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and that is not a behavior that anyone would have predicted for humanity at the time that he was
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doing these experiments and yet it is something that we've seen play out but you also see these
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more fun things like what you're talking about yeah and so obviously we spent a lot of time
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talking about the human societal analogs of the rodent groups i just mentioned but yeah let's go
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back to the beautiful ones, because we're specifically talking not about the trap of
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incels in modern society, or the women who choose to not have children, or the hyperaggressive males,
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we're going to talk about, or the hypersexual males who start mounting other males, we're going
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to talk about the beautiful ones, and the trap of the beautiful ones, and transmaxing, and other
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forms of this, and so what were the beautiful ones in the rat experiments? They were a subgroup of
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male rodents first observe in rats and then later in his mouse universe 25 study that withdrew from
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normal social life they spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming
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avoiding fighting mating and parenting so that they they remained physically unscarred and well
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kept but were socially inert and they did not reproduce and you're going to find this is uncanny
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when we get into looks maxing so he described the animals as healthy in body but socially sterile
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seeing them as a large stage symptom of social breakdown in an overpopulated yet materially
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abundant environment. And before we go into looks maxers, I want to point out that this is a trap
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that is not just about looks. I'm using looks maxers as like our way of sort of exploring how
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people fall into these traps. But I'll just give you three examples of this form of societal trap
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that have just been brought to my attention in like the last 24 hours, just to like, because
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it's all over. It's all over the place. And a lot of people are falling into this trap.
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So from one of our friends, she texted me the other morning and just was, I guess this occurred
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to her. She's just like something for pernatal is to shame status, obesity, the idea that the drive
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to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes, but the drive to eat can be hijacked
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and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive. If we eat too much,
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become obese. Status is similar, where the drive in general is good, and it evolved to be a strong
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drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive. But there are people, especially
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at the top, who are status obese. Their drive for status, rather than contributing to their survival
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and their children's survival, is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money
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on plastic surgery instead of more kids, for example. They are status obese, hurting their
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genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of their young. And this reminds
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me of something that I heard among a very elite group that we, we used to mix in. There was this
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one guy who at this point was a billionaire. And in this, this off the record, Chatham House Rules
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conversation, he was sort of talking about his objective function in life. And like, for him,
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it was always just like, well, and it just become a, you know, get, make six figures. And then it
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you know become a millionaire and then become a multi-millionaire and then like okay we'll have
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a net worth of over 10 million have a net worth of over 50 million 100 million a billion 2 billion
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like it just is he he he i think he was going on 2 billion at that point or something like that and
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then he was asked like what after that and he's like well then i guess it's gonna be 3 billion
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it's just like like at what point you know like to what end when you do something with that that's
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fun yeah they're like it just like and he he was talking in this conversation about how it was
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sort of he was aware of the fact that it was hollow i think he was aware of the fact that
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he'd become one of the beautiful ones essentially like that this is kind of this pointless
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nihilistic exercise but he also wasn't trying to get out of it and and i really do i love this idea
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of framing to our kids something like status obesity of like just because we're not above
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shaming people for being fat i was i was growing up in a very fat shaming family right but your
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family did not did not shame status obesity and to shame someone for being status obese the same
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way you'd shame someone for like wearing tacky clothing i mean we do that early all the time so
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we do we do yeah i i find it to be really disgusting behavior and i think that it is
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it ruins people's lives it just ruins your life yes yeah people who have seen who strive for it
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they're never really happy it causes genuinely i feel like there's more correlation with failure
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to thrive and status obesity than actual obesity such a great way to put it and you and you do see
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this in upper class circles all the time oh my god yeah and if you're like or or if you're stuck
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in sort of a look max and you're like yeah but i don't have anything that matters to me right so
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i'm trying to construct something and i'm like if you want a good check out the book the pragmatist
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guide to life we will give it to you for free it's got an audiobook it's on amazon for like 99
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cents if you want it it is the book for in an unbiased way having somebody walk you through
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building something that you can philosophically rigorously believe has purpose when we try
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unlike who we are today as influencers which is heavily biased heavily we have an ideological side
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and we did not back then we were very very very ideologically unbiased back then or at least
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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
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very useful in terms of getting around that basically what we do in it is we go over
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everything you could think has value like literally we go through every philosophically
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rigorous even potentially thing that could have value and we go through the arguments for it and
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we go through the arguments against it um and so that makes it easy for you because you can be like
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okay i can bite those bullets it's basically like can you bite these bullets against it and if you
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can then it's probably a good solution in terms of structuring your life around it and now you
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have a purpose something that you can structure your life around but anyway continue sorry it
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actually is kind of blowing my mind so the difference between a like physical food-based
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obesity and status obesity is food-based obesity is just like a it's it's a low-grade addiction
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you know something that you can treat with naltrexone or avutine whereas status obesity
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is a beautiful ones problem and i think what makes the the the disease of the beautiful ones
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so uniquely insidious is that it is a very cerebral high performance vice in that it
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eats the potential of people who would otherwise be very impactful in the world. Does that make
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sense? Like these are, these are not people who are like following to like, they're not falling
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to low grade, like sex addiction, gambling addiction, food addiction, right? They, they
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are, they're rising above that. In fact, in many cases, they're extremely disciplined. You know,
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these these like looks maxers are going and we're going to get into that like they're going through
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incredible pain and deprivation to to to achieve your time being anorexic i mean i think you could
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have you know if you had vanity which i think you hate the way you look so much you'd never
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become a look maxer but you know i can see the appeal of something like that even to you
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totally no but the feeling of control that it that it could bring because for me it was always
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about control and that's what it is for most people who have anorexia um but yeah so i think
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what's what's so crazy about that is yeah i was just thinking about like the obese people i know
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many of them have kids above replacement rate they're working their butts off to give those
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kids successful lives and if anything they're obese because they're eating their feelings and
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they're very stressed as they really fight for something they believe in right like they're
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suffering from a vice they have severe problems and they're they're not in control of their impulses
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but like they're still doing more than the billionaire status maxer the beautiful one
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so i think that just to highlight how insidious and sinful like per my view this particular trap
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is there's also and i think this is really interesting i just saw a headline of this
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well another version of this trap not beyond just status maximizing is virtue signaling or aimless
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altruism i don't know if you saw this headline but the telegraph had this article that it ran
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it was on the front page of drudge this morning okay titled the extreme world of the 20 something
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men giving their organs to strangers forget giving blood these young people are offering
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strangers their body parts such generosity could revolutionize a transplant system
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and yeah so you you've actually seen that there's you see the occasional post about this
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in the effective altruist slash like altruistic rationalist space where like, oh, so-and-so
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And these are people who already like are trying to be effective altruists, except they
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lose the plot and they just want to like do all the good things.
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So they like donate blood and they donate plasma and they start running out of things
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And then they just start giving away their, like their kidney.
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And then they just keep going to complete strangers.
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And in this article, they talk about this trend, particularly in the UK. Most of these non-direct
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altruistic donors are male, kind of like the beautiful ones. A good portion are in their 20s.
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Then there's another large cohort in their 50s, weirdly. It also notes the donors are predominantly
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white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children. These are, in other
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words, I think beautiful ones. These are people who are stuck in an altruism trap. They're
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optimizing to do good without really understanding what it is. And there are people who don't have
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children, who don't have partners, who are not really making any lasting impact. Because what
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do you do when you give someone a kidney? Maybe you're extending that person's life a little bit.
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You're saving them from dialysis for a little bit. But like, what is that person going to do?
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And this is also a stranger. Like you have no control over who you're giving your kidney to
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in these cases so like i don't know you could be giving your kidney to like like a retired person
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who's not gonna have any impact anyway aside from maybe maybe babysitting a grandkid a little bit
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and helping that yeah like i really don't like it the the myop the myopy of this like you could
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instead go work for a startup that will build synthetic kidneys like we're at that point
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in human history i love the way you see things the way i do why don't you just make synthetic
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kidneys we're so freaking close that so that and then that's why i'm like this is a sign of
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really like you've gone off the rails like this is performative altruism it has no point it has
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no reason it's crazy and then there's also dating and we we haven't run the episode yet but we
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did an episode on new trends in gen z dating and one of the big trends that was emerging
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among gen z pickup artists specifically is that there's this subset of gen z pickup artists that
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are really just trying to like they're using their ray-bans are recording like sessions of
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like cold approaches and they're just trying to get views like the point isn't to get women to
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sleep with them per se it's to get attention to get reactions of we'd recorded one of our weekend
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episodes on this which are for paid subscribers if you guys want to help us out on patreon or
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sub stack they are if you're listening to this oh sorry no no sorry yeah this isn't this is for
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the main channel oh awesome yeah by the way yeah we have we run two weekend episodes every single
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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
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if you've already gone through all the backlog you have a problem okay you have like an emotional
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problem i'm trying to put this show has been on forever okay simone at this point but if you if
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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
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of interest like psychology and anthropology science government and governance theory stuff
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like that so anyway yeah but anyway so there's also now just like trends in dating in which
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people are not even trying to get a partner they're just you know they're just cold approaching for
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like to prove to themselves something or to to you know build a career as a higher status like dude
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slash dating coach that's another example of this trap but let's go to looks maxing and go into it
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in greater detail then what we're going to do is is we're going to look at clavicular and sort of
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what he does to give you a picture of what looks maxing entails because it's just very entertaining
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and then we're going to look at the various factors that are driving people into this particular
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beautiful ones trap because i think that they're very they can give you an idea of how someone can
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very subtly fall into a beautiful ones trap like status or like dating or like altruism without
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knowing it because it can be a confluence of subtle things and i'm going to go through
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the confluence of subtle gateway drugs essentially that bruno daniel friend of the podcast and of
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reality reality fabricator sent to us as he looked into what was driving people into looks maxing or
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might be driving people until we have one of our our big fans or was into look mac thing it's funny
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like when we're like okay when do we give our kids like human gross hormones and stuff like that we
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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
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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
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like i'm just like weirdly obsessive about them and i don't think they realize well because you
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don't bother with real friends because real friends are a scam well they're but they're also
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like not as well selected people who are your irl friends are people who you just happen to run into
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the people that we come across content wise and who come across us content wise we're like we're
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all really well matched for each other because we share interests and like very obscure interests
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so anyway looks maxing is definitely on the rise it if you look at google trends and this is all
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linked in the show notes, which you can find on Substack or Patreon, it shows how it came out of
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nowhere in 2023, which is probably just when they started putting a name to this. Because for
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example, the person we know who first clued us into a looks like maxing that Malcolm just referred
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to, he's been doing this since he was a teen, you know, like using different hormones and injections
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and interventions, et cetera, like going above and beyond to make sure that, you know, he grows
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enough and like looks better than he otherwise could. So like this is, it's not like it only
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just emerged in 2023, but that's when people really started talking about it online. Then
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it interestingly came to a lull in 2024 and then swung back up in 2025, but also in a much more
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extreme way, because that is when you start to see in Google trends, a spike of things like,
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what is the word where you hammer your face face yeah whatever it's it's somewhere deeper in my
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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
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i think that clavicular is i haven't seen that much of his content but he seems like so much
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more emotionally healthy than like andrew tate as like a a young male influencer
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i guess i know let's talk about what he does okay okay
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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
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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
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engaged in very long-term steroid use he this is where things start to go off the rails malcolm
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he uses meth to suppress appetite and stay extremely lean and maintain hollow cheeks and
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that's based it's it is very based i think like there's this one clip of him on social media where
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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
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alcohol i'd like mostly just do meth and she's just kind of like oh okay i mostly just do meth
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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
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00:23:40.740
like andrew tate at some stupid male influencer gathering in miami and tate was like child that
0.84
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
0.94
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
00:27:08.080
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.
00:27:34.980
Yeah, but I think a lot of that had to do more.
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
0.98
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
0.90
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
0.60
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
0.98
00:29:36.300
not having sex oh but you meant like pointless non-procreative sex yeah i understand but the
0.97
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
0.97
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
0.58
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
0.99
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
0.99
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
1.00
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
0.99
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
0.99
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
1.00
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
0.97
00:39:28.560
a hot dude like it turns her into this dumpy ugly man because she was already ugly to start
1.00
00:39:33.900
it's just so metal i love it so much and she judged the daughter is being the daughter was
0.97
00:39:41.140
hot the daughter was hot to start because at the end i think the daughter turns off the filter and
1.00
00:39:44.960
just see that like she was attractive as a woman so it turned her into an attractive man
1.00
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
0.92
00:40:01.620
that's awesome what get that are you freaking kidding me right now get that off that's disgusting
0.94
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
0.80
00:40:18.800
probably very used to the way she looked as a woman and she'd like built some kind of reality
1.00
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
1.00
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
1.00
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.
1.00
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
0.99
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
0.83
00:41:51.800
the filter which is just fascinating so yeah anyway interesting i i find her very unattractive
1.00
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.
00:42:45.980
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
00:43:39.560
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
1.00
00:44:55.580
in fact though actually this is something i left out about stuff that clavicular does
0.64
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
1.00
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
0.72
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
0.79
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
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out it's not me a good person it's like have sex with as many people as possible or you know
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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
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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
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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.
00:52:55.160
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.
00:53:05.880
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
00:55:10.520
Typically we only give free copies away readily to our paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack.
00:55:16.400
But you know, if you really care about this and you really want to not be a beautiful
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
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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
00:58:38.900
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
1.00
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
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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
0.98
01:02:21.980
them gummies are delicious adults need an excuse to have gummies in the house let me tell you what
0.99
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.
1.00
01:03:09.700
Not only does she make better cakes than I do, but although it broke recently,
01:03:16.760
She's well, I'm glad that you have aspirational women to, you know, try to.
1.00
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?
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01:04:24.220
You're running to attack me. Do not attack you.