What is Daily Life Like for Polyamorous Women?
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 15 minutes
Words per Minute
189.30042
Summary
In this episode, we re talking about the other side of polyamory, open relationships with other people. We re looking at the case study of Ayla, a successful polyamorous woman who has been in a monogamous relationship with her partner for the past 15 years. We discuss the pros and cons of open relationships, why they re not for everyone, and why we should all be open to them.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about
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the other side of polyamory. Specifically, what I mean by this is somebody who has gone into
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open relationships, polyamory, you know, they are around our age, and they have been as successful
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at this as a human can be, and they know everyone else who's really in this lifestyle.
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Who does it well? Like, as best as you possibly can. The perfect case study.
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Of course, we're looking at Ayla here, because she wrote a blog post about this recently.
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And not just that, but it was so fascinating to read, because when I read it, clearly from her
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perspective, it was a bunch of wins and awesome life moments. And from my perspective, it was,
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I would never want that. And no, no, no, no, I think this is really useful, because I think for a lot of
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people, when they start thinking about opening a relationship, or like seriously sleeping around
00:00:59.060
with other people, they think about it in the context of that individual decision, instead of
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where it will lead them in life, and whether or not that is, yeah, whether or not that's a place they
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want to be. And what I like so much about Ayla's piece here, is I think that if you are the type of
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person who wants a polyamory endgame, you will read, like, you'll hear this, and you'll be like,
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that sounds fantastic. And if you're not, even if you're the type of guy who might be like, well,
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you know, but I should sleep around on my partner more often, or something like this,
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this may scare you out of that, if this is the endgame.
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Yeah, so basically, for some people, this actually really truly is ideal. But many people who think
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it's for them, it really isn't. And this is a great blog post or a sub stack post to review.
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If just just to find out to test the waters without necessarily destroying a monogamous
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relationship that could actually be the better. Well, and I think if you are monogamous, just from
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an anthropological perspective, you'll find this very fascinating. Like, especially if you're like
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us, and like with a bunch of kids and your chickens and living on a farm, this is another world that she's
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living in. That is, yeah, as different as maybe somebody living in the 1800s is from like our
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daily life. And I also really should bring in some history here as we go more into this, because
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actually, I also really found it interesting in reading this was your core reaction to it. So
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Simone reads this, and it's not all the debauchery that gets to her. It's the wasted time. She's like,
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how do they have time for this? And so I want you to comment on that as we go through this.
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So the article is titled, Anecdotes from the Slut Cloud, It Works Fine. A lot of people have
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opinions like, no man would ever seriously date a whore. Promiscuous people have relationships that
00:02:51.340
fall apart. This is setting everyone up for so much drama. Slutty people are secretly suppressing
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their actual hatred of the lifestyle, etc. While our polyamory is full of nerdy memes about getting
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your polycule to play D&D, our monogamy is pretty angry at all the non-monogos. This most upvoted
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posts include stuff like, when you see two people in an open relationship, it's like, which one of you
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came up with the idea, and which one of you cries to sleep every night? And I note here, what I like
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about her going into this is she's saying that that's not actually true. There are actually people
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who like this polyamorous lifestyle, even if you would find it a living hell. Like, again, I read
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through her lifestyle, and I'm like, oh my god, that is a living hell. But we'll get to that in a
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second. But clearly, she doesn't feel that way about it, and I know other people who don't.
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And next one here. I'd get bored is something so selfish to say about your partner. People you
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supposedly love don't exist for your entertainment. Do I agree with that? I mean, I don't get bored with
00:03:54.800
you, and you do exist for my entertainment. So, you know, mostly as a productivity enhancer and
00:04:00.300
entertainment as a second. You know, people keep saying that we were going to get bored
00:04:03.800
of our conversations, you know. Oh, well, then we'd run out of things to talk about with this
00:04:07.800
podcast. Well, that's what I thought when I started dating you and marrying you and spending
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almost all my time with you and doing all our companies together. It's like, eventually,
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I must run out of conversations. Yeah, no. Especially not in this timeline.
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Yeah, apparently not. Yeah, this is too crazy. Next. Was bored and took a small dive into poly
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relationship YouTube, and 95% of the videos are about training to not hear the little voice in
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your head telling you that something is insanely wrong. Or responses to one of my poly friend's
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tweets about polyamory. And so here are some responses. I'm going to invent a disease to eradicate
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them. They made effing around boring. Total a-humanity. I swear it's the video games,
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specifically RPGs, that impart upon nerds this bizarre micro-fascist structuralism to every
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interaction. They need to be economically and socially disenfranchised. Every GameCube will be
00:05:05.760
smashed. Next. Fluffy in bio. Oh, I guess they're saying he's a furry. Quote-unquote, poly people
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aren't people. Those are really mean. Yeah. The hate that she screenshotted and shared in her
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essay is so unfounded. But I think also, it's stuff that I see. She's not just selecting the most
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extreme, random, very unusual response. No, I see it too. I absolutely see this all the time.
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And there's reason for it as well, especially from women. Well, and for men. So, okay, I should get
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into why people slut-shame. Slut-shaming is a very useful tool in securing partners. When women just
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sleep with anyone, especially attractive women just sleep around with anyone, a lot of other women
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lose one of the core values they feel they bring to the table that they can use to attract a partner,
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which is sexual access. And so, you know, if you're in a dating market and some of the most attractive
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women in the dating market are just giving away sexual access for fairly little, or even like
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monetary, which can be even worse for you, because then they've discreetly priced what sexual access
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to somebody like them is worth. You can really struggle to secure the attention of some of the
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men who you otherwise would have been able to secure the attention of. And for men, there's also a reason
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to do this because you do not, you know, yes, you may enjoy like in the moment sexual access,
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but what you really want, what all men really want at the end of the day, except for this one
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rare category of men is, you know, a long-term partner to have kids with. And if other women
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are normalizing this behavior, especially if they're not sleeping with you, which is fairly common. I mean,
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a lot of these people who are out there like, you know, poly, whatever, like awful, they're the type
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of people who only like fat poly women will sleep with if they're men, or they're the type of people
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who just don't gain access to, to the attractive poly women. And so they don't understand, like
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there, there is a degree of benefit to gatekeeping this behavior, because if you can enforce monogamy
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among attractive men, especially then more women sort to you because, you know, right now all the
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attractive women are just sorting to the top men, even if they don't realize that that's what's
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happening. So it's not that they're acting, you know, out of line with like logical or even
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cultural evolutionary motivation, but there is a lot of cruelty to it. I can see that, but there is
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an intentionality behind the cruelty. I'd also note here, and perhaps even an intentionality that could
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lower overall social dysfunction, but I don't know if they can win this market anymore. Like they're
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never going to dissuade the poly normalized people from being poly with these sorts of tactics. Now what
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might is something like our EA to sex work pipeline that goes into the effective altruist movement and
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the poly normalization and how this leads many women to sex work. And I think discussion of long-term
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ramifications and how they may or may not align with the long-term goals people have. Absolutely.
00:08:07.680
Yeah. That could be convincing. So to continue, this all feels so bizarre to me. I live in a culture
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where none of the slutty people are unhappy and failing at relationships thing is true,
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or rather no more so than it is for the non slutty cultures. It seems like it's hard for people to
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envision how life might work where there's high contingent of happy slutty people. And so what's
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really fascinating to me about reading Ayla's posts in regard to this stuff is I feel like I know,
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like I can personally pull up the various people she mentions anonymously, um, based on the context
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clues she's giving around them. Yeah. At least a bunch of them, some of them. Right. But what's
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important about this to me is it means that I have the same view into this culture that she has into
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this culture. You have, you have some insight into it. No, I have, I have some insight, but I'd make a
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few notes here. Yeah. First, she is not wrong that there are a lot of people in this culture that have
00:09:07.380
at least seemingly healthy and happy relationships that are otherwise successful and that are, you
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know, do, do partner sharing and that are very successful, that are sexually fulfilled and in
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very good supportive. And I would say wholesome relationships that are also poly that also involve
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a lot of sex, but yeah, but it's just to be very clear, we know some of these people and she is
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absolutely right. But, but you enormous caveats I'm about to add to this. All right. Okay. First,
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every one of these relationships that I know that is stable, the guy is extremely famous and well-liked
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and well-known. Not always, not always, not always. Who are you thinking of? Are you, are you thinking
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the Miri guys aren't super famous? They are extremely famous. No, I'm thinking of other ones. I mean,
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like they're, and it's not, I wouldn't say necessarily famous, but well-known within the
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community, respected of the community, attractive, wealthy, and professionally successful. Okay. That's
00:10:10.220
the point I'm making. Okay. Is every one of these instances, the guy is among most measures, a 10-10.
00:10:17.480
Yeah. And if they're not super famous, then they are super attractive. Yeah. They're not super famous.
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They're super attractive. The point here being is this only appears to look like it's working to
00:10:29.780
her. One of my perceptions is because she is around very, very, very successful people. Yeah. And what
00:10:37.220
she doesn't realize is the poly thing is working for these guys because they're sharing lots of women
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more so than women are sleeping around as much. And women are still sleeping around within these circles,
00:10:49.060
but it is a lesser phenomenon. Well, and I also want to point out that, that this also works
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because you have extremely educated, extremely self-aware, high caliber people who are wealthy
00:11:02.700
living in an almost post-scarcity society, because there is one place where I am very familiar with
00:11:09.560
the dynamics that she's talking about. Can you imagine it's, it's, I read a book that was about this,
00:11:15.380
this social environment three times because I loved it so much.
00:11:22.120
No, it's not sci-fi. It's real history with lots of primary sources.
00:11:29.580
Yeah, Louis XIV's court. Antonia Fraser wrote this great book called, I think it's
00:11:33.820
Love and Louis XIV, The Women in the Life of the Sun King that talks about the court.
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And it is like this. It is people who are attractive, largely attractive, competent,
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well-educated, wealthy, lots of leisure time, and they are sleeping around like crazy.
00:11:50.380
But I would note here that as somebody who explored Silicon Valley, not entering it as
00:11:55.660
a celebrity like she did, I also saw the group houses, the people being passed around, the women
00:12:01.420
who were less attractive, the men who were not successful and engaged in this, very few of them
00:12:08.320
And that was also a problem in the French court in the 1700s.
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But I'm pointing out here that part of this looking like this is working to her is due
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to the filtering of the community she sees. The second is I do not feel she knows a lot
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of happily married people and has gotten to see them interact. As somebody who has seen
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both sides of this, I would say that if you had only seen people from within the San Francisco
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EA poly community, Austin community, you'd be like, their relationships are fine and stable
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and they're happy. If I contrasted any of these people with the stable married couples we know
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who have lots of kids, their relationships are nowhere close. And these people could, like
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they have the emotional intelligence, they have the bond with their partner, they have everything
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they need to have a relationship as high a quality as are married with lots of kids, couple
00:13:01.020
friends. They just sort of, I don't know how to put it. It's like their relationships are
00:13:07.240
in sort of an unstable dynamic. They're held together by the partner's attraction to each
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other, compatibility, the social normativity of what they're doing, and often the status of
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the man. But this orbit is not stable in the same way that a lot of the married was lots
00:13:26.860
of kids couples we know are. Another really interesting difference between the two groups
00:13:30.540
is, and I suspect that this might be a core thing that causes this, is how extroverted
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are you? Every one of the married with a lot of kids couples I know who's in a really stable
00:13:40.100
relationship are basically Hakiko boys. Those are people like us who basically live on a farm.
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We're shut-ins. We get really stressed when we're around people.
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Where they live in like small group houses with like a few other people and basically
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It's really this, because Ayla is also pretty introverted. At least she says she is. She
00:14:00.220
She is, but she goes to big events and interacts with people. And I mean, I think she's got an
00:14:10.100
Yeah, maybe not introversion, but tolerance at all.
00:14:12.240
I would say tolerance for stimuli, because both you and I really don't like being touched. Like,
00:14:17.060
you know how my parents used to troll you by insisting that you hug them for 10 seconds?
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Did like literally count? And you would just like die on the inside. And I'd like if-
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I like hugging our kids though, which is, I didn't expect.
00:14:28.000
Yeah. Yeah, that is odd. And I feel the same way. But like, yeah, no, anyone else, like,
00:14:32.320
especially if they're not you or our kids, I feel deeply uncomfortable. And what's even worse
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is like, I'm fairly good at masking and I know I'm supposed to not be deeply uncomfortable. So I
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act like I love it, which means people think that that I think it's okay because they don't see me
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freaking out, which means that they do it. And then I really just can't be around people because
00:14:52.640
Oh yeah, no, I find it really, oh, people like this idea of like cuddle parties or something.
00:15:00.860
Torture, torture, torture, torture. But yeah, I mean, for some people, yeah. So I think some people
00:15:05.100
really enjoy that physical contact. And then you and I would rather-
00:15:10.320
But I wanted to start by validating what she's saying here.
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She's not lying that from her perception, there are a bunch of people in stable relationships like this.
00:15:18.440
Okay. So to continue. So to help visualize, here's some instances from the lives of myself and people
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I know. Names are changed and some of the details are slightly altered to preserve anonymity.
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We know a lot of each other's friends. I've been horny lately, says a girlfriend of mine.
00:15:33.760
Oh, says a girl group chat. I'd recommend trying to bang Mike. He's really into the thing you're
00:15:39.280
into. But another girl chimes in. Actually, I'm not sure. Mike is definitely into X, but I think
00:15:45.020
you're actually more into Y and it might not work out. Worth trying though, exclamation mark.
00:15:50.340
Like, imagine that. I mean, if your hobby is that, like, if your hobby is sex and different,
00:16:02.680
different, like, arousal pathways or kinks, that's great. I mean, if you just replace this
00:16:10.880
with, like, knitting terms, like, you know, he's really good at this. Like, I really want to do
00:16:15.900
this kind of stitch. Oh, I think so-and-so knows how to do this kind of stitch. Actually, he's not
00:16:19.620
really good at that, but I think you actually really want to do this kind of stitch. But you
00:16:23.060
can ask him anyway. Like, if you just replace that with knitting or with fly fishing or with
00:16:28.400
anything else. All right. All right. Let's continue here. I'm chatting in a group of girls at a house
00:16:32.780
warming party about whether or not a mutual friend is coming. I realize with amusement that all the
00:16:38.340
girls in the conversation have had sex with him. I'm hanging out with a group of friends and one of
00:16:43.520
them has to stick a pill into her vagine for medical reasons. Someone asked, quote-unquote,
00:16:49.060
can I watch? So she says, sure, pulls her pants down, spreads her legs, and the whole group of us
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watch as she shoves the pill in. Two of my friends I describe as frenemies who seem to have had a lot of
00:17:03.020
sex compared to how much they find each other annoying. Okay. I mean, a lot of this, like, if you're
00:17:09.260
really bored in life, this would be very entertaining. Well, no, that's another thing
00:17:12.720
about this is it seems like such a distraction. First, all of this is, like, groups of friends.
00:17:16.940
Like, dude, we don't do that. I don't ever, ever hang out with a group of friends except when I'm,
00:17:22.760
like, with Ayla. Like, Ayla is, like, the one instance when I'm, like, hanging out with Ayla or,
00:17:27.060
like, some of my San Francisco friends. Do I hang out with, like, a group of other people who are
00:17:33.020
friends? And I actually, like, don't get it. Like, the only other time this happens to me, and you can see
00:17:37.560
our episodes of Why Do Jews Have Friends is when I'm hanging out with orthodox Jewish friends I have
00:17:42.200
or conservative Jewish friends I have. They are the only other group I know that regularly ambushes
00:17:47.480
me with friends. And I'm, like, why? I don't want to meet your friends. What are you doing? I just
00:17:53.160
want to, like, I understand that, like, you don't want to take time. Like, for some of these individuals,
00:17:58.100
it's, like, okay, because they're famous or whatever, and if they're going to take time with me,
00:18:01.060
they're going to take time with a few other people, right? Like, I get that, right? But I would never do
00:18:05.040
that, no matter how famous I think I get what I want to. I mean, I guess we sort of do it with
00:18:08.940
our New York parties and stuff like that, where to cut down on the time we interact with people,
00:18:13.660
we host events where we have just tons of, you know, high-profile people come to these secret
00:18:17.780
parties, and they become, like, known about by newspapers now and the DC parties. But I don't
00:18:23.020
really consider those people friends. Like, I consider them friends individually, but I don't consider it
00:18:26.880
a friend to get together, because what we always focus on at those parties is intellectual
00:18:30.460
conversations. Well, and connecting people with each other, because they don't know each other yet.
00:18:34.240
So it's busy hosting to, like, chill and hang out. Another thing that I thought was really
00:18:40.200
interesting when we were going through these separately is you were, like, I talk to people
00:18:45.240
in group chats, but I never talk to anyone about something without utility. It is always, when I
00:18:49.860
say I am speaking on behalf of Simone, you're, like, it's always about how to make money, how to get a
00:18:53.260
book done, how to get... Yeah, like, tactical. Like, you know, how are you addressing this? Or,
00:18:58.500
you know, can you tell me about this? Or, you know, how can I help you move forward with this
00:19:09.960
Well, yeah. The only time it is idle socializing for us, and I think this is just, like, us being,
00:19:14.940
like, weirdo autists, is when we send people, like, hey, I see you're getting attacked a lot
00:19:20.480
online right now. Like, I hope you don't let it get to you or whatever.
00:19:23.460
That's not idle socializing. That's us extending support for people that we care about.
00:19:28.200
Yeah, so it's really only either emotional support for people who we see are going through a lot
00:19:32.280
or tactical questions and nothing else. And when I say nothing else, I really mean nothing else.
00:19:41.360
There's, like, a few people who send us memes, but we don't really mean back, you know, which is
00:19:46.980
fascinating to me. It's even with my parents, I almost never talk about anything else. I'm like,
00:19:50.380
here's what I'm working on now. Do you have any tactical? And when they try to go into other stuff,
00:19:53.660
I'm like, ending right now. I don't, I do not care. I don't care how you're feeling.
00:19:58.960
But so they're describing, like, an entirely different type of social interaction than the
00:20:02.660
one we have. But I was also commenting to Simone about this this morning is how lucky we are
00:20:06.280
to have found each other. Because if we had craved this type of social interaction,
00:20:10.640
our relationship really wouldn't have worked as well. And yet, you know, we are from, I guess,
00:20:15.840
you know, as we say, like, we're culturally or maybe genetically different from other people. And we really just,
00:20:20.380
we're focused on trying to make the future a better place. Like, that's it. That's everything
00:20:23.740
that we focus on, right? You know, and I would be so disappointed in you if I saw you wasting time
00:20:29.600
like this. But to continue here, an escort friend of mine married one of her clients. My boyfriend met
00:20:36.280
another girl on a dating app. He was staying at my place for a few months. So he brought her to live with
00:20:41.740
me during the period that they were going to see if they wanted to try a serious relationship.
00:20:47.580
I was just vaguely around the house as they had sex, talked for hours in each other's arms,
00:20:52.620
etc. We both ended up breaking up with the boyfriend. And now our good friends with each
00:20:57.200
other. Oh, okay. So, well, okay, they made friends with each other. But that's also really
00:21:04.460
interesting. I don't want like somebody having like random sex when I'm you mentioned like her
00:21:08.720
like sitting around reading a book. And you're like, you can't imagine yourself having the time to do
00:21:12.600
that. Like not just reading a book, but then somebody sits down next to you and starts having
00:21:17.100
sex. Yeah, I've never, I don't, I can't remember the last time I've sat on a couch for any reason
00:21:25.000
other than, you know, one of the journalists is visiting our house and I have to, but normally I'm
00:21:28.660
up and cooking or something. Yeah, we really only socialize for journalists these days.
00:21:32.900
That's the only time I'm, or the only time I actually sit in a chair for an extended period of
00:21:36.760
times for this podcast. I can't. Yeah. Like to not, to not work. I can't. And she really means
00:21:43.680
it, by the way. She finds it quite distressing. It's not a, you know, an exaggeration or a ploy
00:21:48.520
or something. Yeah, deeply unpleasant. But I mean, just in general, I mean, you, you also like kind of
00:21:54.020
really struggle to not like, to just hang out. It's not something we do. Oh, no. If I'm like with a
00:22:02.160
group hanging out, it's not that I'm as productive as you, but I'd always rather be like chatting
00:22:06.720
with AI or playing an adventure game or, you know, drinking and watching anime or, you know,
00:22:13.540
anything. So I just don't have these desires, right? Or, or I always have some higher order
00:22:20.740
desire, even though I get some in the moment pleasure. She goes on. I know a poly couple
00:22:27.960
who's been married for decades with three kids. They haven't really done much outside dating
00:22:32.280
recently because they're too distracted with the kids, but they spent time on their relationship
00:22:36.700
beforehand. And I anticipate they'll likely spend more time after once the kids stop taking up much
00:22:42.520
of their attention. And yeah, this is something I often see with, with poly individuals is once
00:22:48.020
they start having like a reasonable number of kids, just poly stops making as much sense.
00:22:52.020
And I've noted that this isn't because sex isn't good. It's just that kids are generally better.
00:22:57.300
Yeah. That's sort of underrated that. I think a lot of people couldn't imagine anything that would
00:23:01.660
be more enjoyable for them to spend time doing when they could, when they know how enjoyable sex
00:23:06.560
is. And you only hear about negative stuff with, with kids. Plus when you're around other people's
00:23:10.840
kids, it's like nails on a chalkboard. It's just so unpleasant. So you couldn't imagine ever wanting
00:23:16.340
to hang out. But we have the best kids. Well, I think, but I, I mean, I do think a lot of people
00:23:21.080
love their kids and they would never guess that literally spending time with your kids could be as
00:23:26.600
enjoyable or more enjoyable than sex. I think most people are like, and this is where I think
00:23:30.980
that they're wrong with this as the kids get older, I think that they're going to want to spend more
00:23:34.620
time with them because our kids just get cooler as they get older. Yeah. And I certainly, you know,
00:23:40.220
wouldn't want to leave my kids to, you know, cultivate another relationship unless I was just really like
00:23:47.100
the person for other reasons. But, you know, that's rare. Like I, I just don't build that many
00:23:52.080
friendships outside of my relationship. And again, the funny thing about all this is,
00:23:56.520
is in the context of I'm allowed to sleep with people outside the relationship if I want to,
00:23:59.940
it's just a matter of, is it ever worth the time? And when I look at this, I see why I,
00:24:06.100
that isn't something I have interest in aggressively pursuing. I guess it's one of those you can,
00:24:10.360
but should you? Yeah. At a nerd meetup, I noticed a guy used the phrase my wife and my partner in
00:24:16.900
separate conversations. And I figured he must be Polly. I casually referenced him
00:24:21.200
as Polly shortly afterwards, but this freaked him out. He pulled me aside and said, no,
00:24:26.720
please don't talk about this. He hadn't quote unquote come out yet and didn't want word of
00:24:30.840
this getting back to his job or friends. He was afraid of what might happen.
00:24:34.260
I remember, remember we had, we had a Polly friend whose husband was like that where like,
00:24:41.340
they were super closeted about the fact that they were Polly. But when you look at the bias against
00:24:47.100
Polly couples, that doesn't surprise me at all. Oh, I remember, yeah. In Dallas, remember?
00:24:51.240
They ended up breaking up, right? They did end up breaking up, but still, and getting divorced. But
00:24:55.860
still, he was extremely nervous about it. And I think part of that is because they were in Texas
00:25:03.000
and he worked for a more conservative company, but. I don't, I don't think that that's the only
00:25:06.560
reason. I think that there is a huge difference of a guy sleeping with a lot of women outside the
00:25:10.920
relationship and a woman sleeping with a lot of guys outside the relationship.
00:25:13.440
Yeah. Like his male peers would be like, sweetie, you're cucked. Yeah. Especially in Dallas, Texas.
00:25:22.720
Fair, fair. Okay. Good. No matter how much you're into it, I wouldn't want to deal with it. Like,
00:25:29.180
even if I was into getting cucked, I wouldn't want to deal with the social fallout of something like
00:25:33.560
that. Oh yeah. Like that conservative guy who was just really open and transparent about it and was
00:25:37.280
just completely defenestrated for it. Oh yeah. What was his name? God, I can't, we did another episode
00:25:42.260
on him. I was a beard and he was like a manosphere influencer and he's like, oh, it's so cool to
00:25:47.600
have my wife sleep. And everyone was like, you, my friend. And, and, and as a lot of people.
00:25:53.980
doing this gets you in trouble. I mean, you can call it being cucked. You can call it poly,
00:26:00.520
you can call it whatever. Right. But like society, a lot of people don't get it. And I think a lot of
00:26:04.760
that also just comes from people, a lot of people have a sexual disgust reaction to it.
00:26:10.760
And it's very hard for people to parse out the difference between a sexual disgust reaction and a,
00:26:16.800
this is immoral sign. They just think that they're the same thing.
00:26:20.840
Yeah. Right. To continue. I am hanging out with a group of friends, which includes Bob and Alice
00:26:26.540
who are married. Bob and Alice are getting ready to try to conceive a baby. They've moved into a group
00:26:31.500
house with other soon to be parents for community support. We've discussed birth control methods
00:26:36.500
with Alice and how her sexual behavior is going to change once she enters an active conception
00:26:41.920
attempts phase. I think I know of this house. Yeah. At one point, somebody mentions how big
00:26:49.960
Bob's member is. I've had sex with Bob and I agree that it's big. I say that whenever Bob approaches
00:26:56.880
at orgies, the other guys tell me, oh, you're in for it now. Most of the other women there,
00:27:01.480
have also had sex with Bob. Alice says something about how her husband's member is big, but she
00:27:08.080
didn't realize it was that big. And then we all tease her about having high standards for member
00:27:13.160
sizes. We discuss the one other person at the orgy who has an even bigger one. What's his name?
00:27:19.260
Someone remembers. We agree that it's probably girthier, but not necessarily longer. What a,
00:27:25.640
the, the conversation, what a pointless conversation.
00:27:28.480
They could be funny conversations though. I mean, that sounds, you know, if you're stuck with a group
00:27:35.460
of people, I know. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that, although I feel kind of bad for these guys. I
00:27:42.740
would feel very self-conscious if people were like talking about, I don't know, like my, my private
00:27:48.620
parts. It would, I would, I would, I would, I would like uncomfortable while I do not like the concept
00:27:55.020
of being at an orgy, right? Like I do not, I find it actively unarousing because you know,
00:27:59.760
for obvious evolutionary reasons, a lot of guys are going to feel that way because you do not want to see
00:28:03.860
other people sleeping with people you are trying to get pregnant. But the thing that actually sort
00:28:10.080
of horrifies me as I'm like, I might not just be a participant in an orgy, but I might be a
00:28:15.380
participant in the orgy who doesn't have the biggest member. Like that to me would be like an extra,
00:28:21.200
and I didn't even think about that. Oh no. A whole new fear has been. A whole new fear has been
00:28:27.160
unlocked. I don't think you need to worry about that. I, well, you know, you get, you get enough
00:28:33.280
crowds statistically. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess a large enough sample, especially if people who
00:28:38.560
are very confident about being naked in group spaces, you're probably going to have probably
00:28:43.720
a disproportionate number of men who are well endowed. Yeah. So yeah, I guess the risk is
00:28:49.100
relatively higher, but I would still not be too worried for you. All right. Well, I appreciate
00:28:55.780
the vote of confidence. Two of my friends are a married couple together for 15 years. Their marriage
00:29:02.000
is great. They have kids no longer small, and they decided to open up their relationship.
00:29:07.220
And now the husband has a girlfriend. The wife has a boyfriend. They all sometimes hang out together.
00:29:12.200
And of course, the respective boyfriend and girlfriend are people a lot of my friends have
00:29:16.420
had sex with. Everybody knows this. Nobody tries to hide it. I personally am either directly or,
00:29:22.720
or a few sex partners removed from both the new girlfriend and boyfriend. A friend of mine
00:29:29.540
is a mega slut, was a body count in the multiple hundreds. She has married a very successful guy,
00:29:35.380
spent the marriage helping her husband get laid and have threesomes, and now is having a few young
00:29:40.060
kids. I'm hanging out with a group of friends and their friends, and I overhear someone saying,
00:29:46.800
well, you guys might find this weird, but I'm actually monogamous.
00:29:49.760
One in our comments today was pointing out, like, remember when the left revealed this idea of
00:29:55.060
radical monogamy? Yeah, that was so funny. They're like, we're doing this weird new sex thing called
00:30:00.660
radical monogamy, where you only sleep with one person, but it's because you choose to only sleep
00:30:06.280
with one person, not for like weird reasons. This person is really on the edge of debauchery with
00:30:16.680
their new monogamy idea. They're, they're so debaucherous. They keep one partner just for
00:30:23.100
their sexual. Well, I mean, in this community where it's not normative, you know, and I think
00:30:27.120
it can become fairly insular where people are kind of like, whoa, wait, you're, that's interesting.
00:30:31.680
Well, and I think that people don't realize how much, you know, when you've culturally normalized
00:30:36.260
to something and something culturally outside of that seems gross and weird to you, you're like,
00:30:41.240
oh, how selfish to like think of partners. It's only about like arousal or whatever,
00:30:44.940
or getting bored of them. And then this is what you think of, you've no relation to monogamous
00:30:48.240
culture, but like genuinely having been around this culture and knowing how they think, you know,
00:30:52.960
I go up to one of them and I'm like, well, you know, my wife and I are in a monogamous
00:30:56.100
relationship or something. And they're, they're genuinely like, what a weird, so what your wife
00:31:00.620
is like your sex toy. Like she's not allowed to like do whatever she wants. Like, what are you
00:31:05.760
even talking about? Like how selfish can you be that you're not letting your wife, the person you
00:31:11.540
claim to love more than anyone else in the world do what makes her happy? You know, like
00:31:16.880
I'm not saying I agree with this framing, but I'm saying you need to understand that this framing
00:31:22.920
is totally normal in these people's heads. Yeah.
00:31:27.520
It's not like a contrivance. It's not like a defense mechanism. This is a normal for them.
00:31:33.860
Now we can get to the question of whether or not it works, but it is normal for them.
00:31:37.180
Also in general, lots of swapping stories and orgies with friends. Carl did the thing to me.
00:31:43.940
Did he do that to you too? Oh my God. I know Dave and I aren't usually as compatible as you and Dave,
00:31:49.300
but last week he did this move. I never expected. My boyfriend is having a girl he's dating over.
00:31:55.120
He's mentioned he's interested in move. What, what moves are people doing? Like how many moves are
00:32:00.240
there? Like I slept around a lot. I did not feel like there were that many moves. There were specific
00:32:07.500
scenarios I could set up and things I could do. But in terms of like moves, moves, like these people
00:32:13.740
must pick up like a whole new repertoire of like ways to be good at arousal and stuff like that.
00:32:21.080
But I wouldn't even want to, like if I knew that I was being judged this way for sex.
00:32:26.800
That's true. Yeah. There's a whole new layer that I got away that from this, that, oh, and they're all
00:32:34.040
openly talking about their intimate experiences with these other people. And I would feel so
00:32:40.940
self-conscious about that. I just want to have sex people. Like I don't want the moves. I don't want,
00:32:49.000
oh, you didn't even use a move. I'd be like, sorry, I didn't collect my, my Pokemon cards.
00:32:56.800
To play all the right moves. Didn't deploy. Deploy. Ah, activating my trap card. Anyway,
00:33:04.080
my boyfriend is having a girl he's dating over. He mentioned he'd be interested in banging her
00:33:09.620
casually in the open. And I say, sure. They're sitting on the couch with us. And he starts
00:33:13.880
having sex with her in front of me with her consent. With her consent? Oh.
00:33:18.900
Yeah. Just to make it clear that this isn't messed up. It looks nice. So I asked the girl
00:33:23.660
if she'd like me to take a few photos of them. She says no. But about 10 minutes later, still in
00:33:28.900
the middle of getting railed on the couch. She says, actually, I changed my mind. Some photos
00:33:32.880
would be nice. I'm like, draw okay. And I get a lot of photos of them having kinky sex.
00:33:38.960
That's really sweet. It's both really sweet. But this was what I was commenting about. I just
00:33:44.280
couldn't imagine like sitting on a couch long enough for like someone else to sit down and do
00:33:50.520
anything. Like turn on a TV or start railing each other. Like I just, I'm like this, that is what
00:33:56.520
feels weird about this scenario. It is a different world. Not the fact that they were going at it,
00:34:00.060
but like the fact that someone could sit on a couch long enough. You know, actually, now that you
00:34:04.140
mentioned this, that is something that really distinguishes our poly friends from our high
00:34:09.980
agency married couple friends is all of our poly friends have like major problems getting stuff done
00:34:17.200
and they are much slower to complete tasks. And our married friends typically have like five major
00:34:23.340
projects at once. Well, and this is also why like reading this just reminded me so much of the French
00:34:28.980
court of Louis the 14th. Like, wow, this is so familiar. What? Oh, that's it. Which is also so
00:34:37.680
interesting because they're even with all like the online hate that poly people receive, like, oh, I wish
00:34:43.320
we, you know, could just to make a disease to eradicate them. A big underlying theme of this.
00:34:52.560
Is the Catholic church. And the Catholic church is basically prude Twitter, like being like, well,
00:34:57.780
I'm not going to give you the sacrament because you're, you're sleeping out of wedlock with
00:35:03.100
someone. Wait, were they doing this in the Louis church or the Louis, Louis? Yeah. Like in, in the
00:35:08.200
court of Louis the 14th, the, the like cardinals and everything had like very serious problems with
00:35:13.380
Louis the 14th, having these open female lovers, it being, I mean, he had multiple children with
00:35:19.820
several of his female lovers. One of them sort of became the de facto nanny who would like have the
00:35:25.420
kids come over to her estate and she would raise them like this. It was a whole thing. And like,
00:35:30.680
keep in mind, like it, it wasn't just one of these things where it was a harem for him. There were
00:35:35.440
lots of, there, there was all sorts of like mixing and matching. It felt very poly. Like keep in mind,
00:35:45.340
for example, that one of the lovers of, of Louis the 14th was Henrietta of England. And, and she
00:35:53.020
married King Louis the 14th's brother and likely during the time when she was married to Philippe
00:36:01.200
the first, Duc d'Iolan, the, the, the, the brother of Louis the 14th. Well, also like Philippe the
00:36:06.620
first, this brother had, you know, multiple male lovers. And then like one, one really well-known
00:36:11.600
one, the Chevalier de Lorraine. So like, they're like, there's just, just like all this, the sleeping
00:36:17.000
and the, you know, man on men. Really interesting about this is as a guy, and even as a guy who,
00:36:23.300
you know, when I slept around a lot, you know, had a high sexual appetite, I would not have enjoyed
00:36:27.660
this. The, they're like, oh, you wouldn't enjoy like just a world where there's attractive women
00:36:32.400
and you can sleep with them whenever you want. I don't know. Not if everyone else can sleep with
00:36:36.960
them. Like I, I, so like the, the scenario, like you're a scenario in which you were banging one
00:36:43.600
woman while another attractive woman is, is sitting on the couch. Like it would just be
00:36:49.020
ruined by the fact that you knew that those women were sleeping with other men too. Yeah. Well,
00:36:53.820
and the, the sexual access was so easy. Like, oh, too easy. 95% of the fun for me back when I used
00:37:00.480
to sleep around was the hunt. 5% was the sex. The sex was largely irrelevant. I mean, these people work
00:37:08.260
on it, don't they? They do. And they get the, the, you know, risk with new relationship energy
00:37:14.040
and everything like that. But there's also a huge aspect as we'll see going on here where there isn't
00:37:18.000
a lot of work, you know, they're going to work. Oh yeah. It's like, oh, you should just sleep with
00:37:20.560
so-and-so. Yeah. Like, oh, just this person. Yeah. And I don't know if I could gain any, and, and,
00:37:29.880
and again, if it's as casual as like a referral to a lawyer. Yeah. That's not. This,
00:37:36.440
this isn't necessarily a positive thing for me exactly. It's a bit like in a video game,
00:37:42.100
right? Like I like video games, right? Sometimes when you enable the cheat mode in video games,
00:37:46.720
the video game just becomes immediately unfun because the challenge was the point, right? The,
00:37:51.920
the social challenge, the convincing somebody, the, all of that, the seduction. And when you turn that
00:37:57.340
off, the game isn't fun anymore. Yeah. Well, whereas, I don't know, like my favorite stage of
00:38:04.760
rollercoaster tycoon, like the one video game I ever played, computer game, PC game was like
00:38:10.180
that one park with unlimited resources. I just loved that park. I just played that one over and
00:38:14.400
over. So I think for some people are meant to be poly. Therefore I am poly. No, but for some people
00:38:22.640
this works. And I think that's, that's the nuanced conversation that isn't being had that should be
00:38:26.680
had is that people need to recognize. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm pushed back
00:38:30.320
there, but let's keep going here. Okay. Okay. Okay. At an event, I'm chatting with a girl. When I
00:38:34.860
realized that she's about to go on a date with a guy that I've been considering going on a date
00:38:38.800
with, I asked her to tell me how it goes afterwards. She texts me how the date went and said she was
00:38:44.080
sexually disappointed and anticipated. I'd be disappointed too. I thanked her and did not hook
00:38:49.600
up with this guy. That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. Like I am so scared as a guy dating in
00:38:56.940
this community. Oh, I disappoint one girl. All of a sudden she calls all the other girls and is
00:39:02.140
like, eh, he wasn't good enough. He wasn't, you know, and I didn't consider these girls like kinky
00:39:05.820
sex a lot. So they're like, oh, he wasn't rough enough. Oh, he wasn't, you know, didn't do enough
00:39:10.720
of the hardcore stuff. But I mean, like in contrast, women who are dating in monogamous dating markets,
00:39:16.660
which aren't even monogamous, they just pretend to be don't have trust networks, referrals and
00:39:23.180
reviews of men. What you're missing here. Okay. Like, okay. As a guy who's even into the like
00:39:28.460
harder core stuff, right. Even when I was sleeping around and stuff like that, I'm getting up to that
00:39:34.320
maybe a third of the time because it is so much extra effort. I don't know. And also you, it takes
00:39:40.140
a lot to know. I like it. Either you have to do a lot of talking in advance or have a woman who's
00:39:46.100
very self-aware or it's extremely risky. Not really. Really? I mean, there's idiots who get
00:39:52.120
involved in it in ways that are risky, but there is no way like from my experience that I'm going to
00:39:57.540
hook up with a girl and I don't know what she's into to begin with. Oh, okay. I wouldn't, the
00:40:02.020
conversation. So you're just saying it's just sheer laziness on your part. You're like, I don't want
00:40:05.820
to bother. If you underestimate the effort involved. The point I'm making here is if I knew that if I
00:40:15.420
didn't like, basically you lose access. If you're in this market, it's like sex, wherever you want it,
00:40:21.800
but you lose access to just sex, just like normal, lazy, relaxed.
00:40:27.120
Oh yeah. No, no lazy sex allowed. Well, I don't know though. Like it seems like a lot of the sex can
00:40:33.340
be pretty like, sorry. I don't have to worry about being lazy with one person and then them calling up
00:40:40.720
everyone else and being like, Hey, this is, you know, the first time I tried, I just wasn't up
00:40:45.560
to snuff. Not, not, not a filet mignon. I demand a filet mignon perfectly cooked every time. So,
00:40:52.540
so next year, some of my friends have harem chats where the people they're dating all coordinate with
00:40:57.220
each other. I'm running a harem chat with one of my partners and we'll probably be planning an orgy
00:41:01.840
tailor to his preferences. What did a time sink harem chats? My friends found a guy she super likes.
00:41:08.860
I said, Hey, it sounds great. I can't wait to meet him. She was like, Oh, you already met him.
00:41:13.880
You had sex with him at your gang bank. They ended up getting engaged. My partner runs a gang,
00:41:19.420
gang gang gang gang gang squad called the werewolves, a group of vetted STI tested experienced men who when
00:41:26.880
the summoned will all descend upon a lady who would like to experience a gang bang. It's a great network
00:41:32.220
that sometimes women I know call on if they need members for any particular service.
00:41:37.900
That is interesting, but, but imagine that. I mean, I think a lot of women who have that
00:41:45.060
particular sexual interest would love access to a resource like that. Oh no. Yeah. I can see some
00:41:50.460
guys amounts of money for access. Obviously I would never want to do that, but I can see some guys want
00:41:55.840
to do that. Right. Oh, to participate in that. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't want to line up to have sex with
00:42:04.260
someone. It's like, I don't want to go to Disneyland anymore. Cause I don't want to line up to go on a
00:42:08.660
ride. Gang bangs, sex with lines. All right. Continue. Okay. And some direct quotes. I was at
00:42:19.500
Susan's garden party, sheepishly admitting to just having had sex with someone in the closet.
00:42:24.920
Susan overheard and said, well, you should F my husband and went over to get him.
00:42:29.600
Oh, well at least she's trying. I mean, the person probably did, but like, oh, you just had sex with
00:42:36.160
someone. You should have sex with this other person. Well, that's where the referrals. That's
00:42:39.820
where I was thinking about your comment about the chase being an important part. Like if, if someone
00:42:45.960
was just like, oh, she, you know, my friend here just had sex with someone in a closet at our garden
00:42:51.040
party. You should also have sex with her. You'd be like, this wasn't hard. This wasn't.
00:42:55.740
Once I accidentally took too much G with one partner and then passed out. And then I woke up
00:43:00.000
and I was super horny and I needed to hump something, but he needed to go pee because
00:43:04.420
he had been watching me breathe for an hour. Doesn't take that long to pee. So he called his
00:43:09.880
roommate over so I could hump his roommate's leg while I waited for my partner to come back.
00:43:15.020
Then he sent me home with my husband with pics and more G so my husband could enjoy. Honestly,
00:43:21.400
sleeping with people who live together has been super convenient and nice.
00:43:26.900
I just would not want that. I would not. I did. They'd send you back and I'd be like,
00:43:32.320
you can keep her. I'm not interested anymore. Wow. Good to know.
00:43:37.140
I'd really better not. The fact that most of my friends are my ex-partners or ex-metamors.
00:43:42.600
I had to draw a diagram where I explained this all to my newest partner. I didn't seem to use dating
00:43:48.340
apps anymore because meeting people at sex parties has become more efficient. And this is something
00:43:53.040
I actually really get back when I slept around a lot. It actually took me a really long time
00:43:56.220
after I started dating Simone and stopped dating around much to make friends. And I would still
00:44:00.460
hang out on dating apps predominantly to make friends because it was the primary way I knew to
00:44:04.680
I remember that. Yeah. And I just really struggled. How do I do this? But I mean, I experienced the same
00:44:12.040
thing when I was dating. I was just stunned by how like I used it more to find friends and I made
00:44:18.040
some really great friends out of it. And I didn't realize that dating apps would be so good for
00:44:21.400
that. Well, I mean, they, and I, there was even like a stage early in our relationship where we
00:44:26.560
basically pretended to be polyamorous just to meet people. Just to have friends. I know it was so bad.
00:44:31.020
And like San Francisco. But the thing is. Nothing sexy ever happened. Like we just made a lot of
00:44:35.480
friends. Is I have an easier time convincing a woman to go on a date with me than I had convincing a
00:44:42.940
woman to just hang out with me. That is true. I never thought about that before.
00:44:47.520
I'm like, Hey, do you want to come for this? This brings them to the yard. And I'm like, Hey,
00:44:52.700
do you want to come to just chat? They're like, eh, well, no.
00:44:55.260
Do you think that's what women think that you'll pay if it's a date?
00:44:59.400
No. Cause they often insisted on splitting and stuff like that. It's, it's, it's, I think it's
00:45:05.620
a contextualization of what they want to spend their time on.
00:45:08.120
Or maybe they, they, they, they feel more desired. Yeah.
00:45:11.600
Maybe it's just a friend thing. It almost, it's an insult because I think maybe some women
00:45:15.960
instinctually feel instinctually feel like men can't have women friends.
00:45:22.800
I don't think that's it at all. I think it's that they just, they're either going to just
00:45:28.220
talk with somebody or they are going and they know what the guy's interested in, in their
00:45:33.600
mind, which is sex. So they feel like they know what's up. They know what the whole thing
00:45:36.740
is. They're there. And they can get multiple things out of the interaction, not just a
00:45:41.480
conversation, but possibly sex, which to them is important.
00:45:44.980
And our limerence, new relationship energy, that thrill.
00:45:48.920
Me and a partner's boyfriend used to send each other cute photos of her when she's with
00:45:55.600
the other. And we coordinate on how to cheer her up and surprise her with something.
00:46:01.120
It's sweet, but not something I would ever want. This is the other thing.
00:46:03.800
Like all of them are very aspirational from a perspective of somebody like her and horrifying
00:46:14.140
The idea of me getting pics of somebody else sleeping with somebody I'm sleeping with as
00:46:19.160
like a fun little thing. I would not find that fun at all.
00:46:22.320
Oh, right. The part of partner sharing would disgust you.
00:46:25.580
I was overly focused on the whole like cheering her up thing.
00:46:28.640
Once I was sad after not getting banged enough at an orgy, my two boyfriends trying to cheer
00:46:34.260
me up coordinated to have sex with me at the same time, even though they're not really
00:46:39.140
in to MMF threesomes, which again, sounds sweet within the context of the community.
00:46:45.100
But here you are thinking like, I would feel obligated to do that.
00:46:51.640
This is like people hugging me who I'm like not interested in hugging me.
00:46:56.340
I just want to hug my kids and wife being was one partner in texting pics slash video of
00:47:01.960
us having sex to another partner who is brimming with delight.
00:47:28.780
There's something so special about seeing it right after it's recorded.
00:47:34.200
These people must just have entirely sexual profiles in me.
00:47:38.580
No, what I do think it's kind of popular, a popular thing for people to like enjoy this.
00:47:44.400
Like public sex is a big, is a big arousal pathway for many people.
00:47:50.520
But this is watching somebody work and sleeping with somebody else.
00:47:58.060
And it may for many people be bigger than the instinct against sharing partners.
00:48:03.060
And then to get a new one thing I think is cute is people sharing tips on how to have sex with other shared partners.
00:48:10.280
Like, I believe there exists a how to have sex with me document that I didn't write because it was co-created by a few people I sleep with.
00:48:22.440
I started seeing someone in June that I really quite like.
00:48:25.980
And I discovered he hadn't been particularly slutty, but had slutty aspirations.
00:48:30.300
And I immediately started to think, how slash when do I start promoting him to my hot friends?
00:48:37.700
And this happened to me when I was younger as well.
00:48:39.480
Women really will share you among your friends if you're, like, a good at S person and you are into the stuff that women are into that most guys aren't into.
00:48:48.560
Which, again, as I said, is the much more, like, dominance-focused, harder core stuff.
00:48:55.700
On the chat, people were like, oh, what sort of person likes being choked?
00:49:01.480
And I was like, well, one, the statistics show that actually more women prefer that than don't prefer that.
00:49:05.600
But in addition to that, just as somebody who slept around a lot, I have seen that 100% in a woman.
00:49:11.660
I mentioned one of the cases that I still remember very vividly is a girl.
00:49:19.280
She comes to me and she goes, look, my boyfriend is being a big pussy.
00:49:26.620
And I've heard you're, like, way hardcore and cool.
00:49:34.600
And I'm here, like, okay, like, even if that's hot, like, I know about sticking it in crazy, right?
00:49:42.100
Like, and this is clearly a red flag warning right here.
00:49:46.160
You know, he was a little worried about endangering my life.
00:49:49.820
And I know that you're not the type of guy who worries about that.
00:49:52.540
And I'm like, hmm, you know, you're probably right.
00:49:57.880
But what I mean is this is actually what happens.
00:50:01.020
Like, this is coming from the women, not from the men.
00:50:04.000
But the number of guys I know, and this is actually in the Discord thread as well, where they're like, look, I actively, as a guy, find this a turnoff.
00:50:13.360
I've had to do this with multiple women just to get them to not break up with me.
00:50:25.260
Like, it's one of those, like, oh, you have to do it every time, and then it becomes a risk.
00:50:29.480
I'm into broad dominance, but I don't need choking.
00:50:34.000
I think some people are very specifically into, like, that lightheaded feeling you get.
00:50:42.920
People who aren't into this, they'll come into it and say, oh, they're into, like, auto-asphyxiation and the lightheaded feeling and blah, blah, blah.
00:50:52.220
And I'm like, you have not been with many people who are into this.
00:50:57.100
What they are into is knowing their partner could kill them.
00:51:06.480
It is the vast majority of the time it, Simone.
00:51:09.520
I know you haven't slept with a lot of people who are into this.
00:51:14.020
You don't understand the context of the way that they want this.
00:51:21.320
If it is to be choked out, it is only in so far as knowing that the partner might actually attempt to kill them.
00:51:36.040
They want to feel like they are with somebody who is that level of aggressive, that level of dumbness.
00:51:43.100
Because a lot of people, like a lot of the auto-asphyxiation deaths that take place are people doing this for themselves.
00:51:56.660
You can look at the statistics while we're talking here.
00:51:58.120
But auto-asphyxiation deaths are almost exclusively male.
00:52:00.860
And this is a very different phenomenon than women liking to be choked.
00:52:05.160
A couple of years later at an orgy, we decided to – so this one is crazy, I thought.
00:52:16.500
Years later, I invited her to my wedding dinner.
00:52:18.880
And at the dinner, my girlfriend announced, hey, Ella, did you know Fred had a crush on you?
00:52:25.940
A couple of years later at an orgy, we decided to start writing together.
00:52:29.620
When I wrote the opening of what would become our first co-authored novel in a fountain pen on her back – remember, you didn't realize it was on her back – we've now published five novels together.
00:52:41.640
With a six coming out in two months and two more due next year.
00:52:49.240
Like, are these successful novels or are they just, like, you know, Google Docs?
00:52:54.040
You are more right than I ever could have imagined.
00:52:56.800
Male to female ratio of over 50 to 1 has been reported in some analyses, meaning males account for approximately 98 to 99% of cases, while females make up only 1 to 2%.
00:53:09.880
Women do not like being choked for the lightheaded reason.
00:53:13.900
It is for the same reason they want a vampire to bite their neck in a vampire book.
00:53:17.840
It is for the same reason they want to date a werewolf in a werewolf book.
00:53:21.380
It is because they want to know that the person they are with –
00:53:30.020
You are talking about Twilight here and not Anne Reif, which is the OG vampire writer.
00:53:36.620
And you're forgetting that in Twilight, while Edward didn't want to potentially kill her, the other hot vampire who was into her did.
00:53:44.900
There was another hot vampire that was into her?
00:53:48.420
I thought Edward didn't – like, he was like, no, stay away from me, because he wanted to kill her, and that was the hot thing.
00:53:59.220
We like to pretend that they don't, but, like, you watch the books that they're reading.
00:54:03.780
You look at what they're asking guys to do, even guys who are, like, clearly uncomfortable about this.
00:54:08.520
And that's why, for this girl who reached out to me, you know, when I was younger, and she was like, oh, when I passed out, my boyfriend got worried.
00:54:16.800
That's why that ruined the entire fantasy for her.
00:54:19.560
That's why she never wanted to sleep with her boyfriend again after that.
00:54:22.560
Oh, because, yeah, she knew that he would never actually.
00:54:28.100
And then the plausible deniability was what was hot for her.
00:54:38.520
You are missing the girls who are into this and trying to, even you, who is into, you know, fairly, you know, more extreme things than I think other people, have this fantasy that people aren't as debauched as they are.
00:54:55.400
For years, I maintained a signal group called Redacted, where people, I would, and for people who are wondering, oh, why would women be into this?
00:55:01.960
Again, we've pointed out, like, this is very obvious evolutionary reasons.
00:55:05.540
If you look at the amount that towns were rated historically, women, especially women who are already having a lot of sex, and you can look at our thesis of where I think that women who don't have many sexual partners tend more towards tender sexuality or at least not the extremes of BDS sexuality or, like, you know, the more extreme forms of dominance and submission and violence.
00:55:25.500
I think a lot of this is due to polyamory signaling to a woman that she is in an environment where she is being passed around or an S slave, which is what it would have meant in a historic context.
00:55:35.320
And a lot of women were in that scenario in a historic context.
00:55:39.500
Meaning it would be evolutionarily adaptive to be more into that.
00:55:44.280
Yes, in many evolutionary environments throughout human history, the majority of women having kids were essentially slaves.
00:55:50.760
So the idea that, you know, you wouldn't have some adaptability by knowing not to fight back in aggressive situations.
00:55:59.000
And aggressive situations are when you don't want to fight back the most because that's when they're most likely to kill you.
00:56:04.800
So that is why, in those situations specifically, you would want some sort of counter-signal.
00:56:13.900
I'm just explaining why humans are built in a weird way.
00:56:18.400
For years, I maintained a signal group called Redacted, where people I was sleeping with would talk about topics related to dating me and occasionally AI safety.
00:56:29.720
And then, I have a shared Google Photos album where my metamor and I share saucy pics of our mutual partner.
00:56:44.460
She goes on to say, obviously, everything is not perfect.
00:56:50.000
A friend of mine's metamors, a partner's partner, two girlfriends and boyfriend are metamors with each other,
00:56:54.580
recently got uncomfortable with my friend's relationship and it caused painful issues.
00:56:57.960
I've had partners break up with me because they found someone else and wanted to be monogamous with them and they picked her over me.
00:57:05.680
One couple I know opened their relationship and there was some rocky months where one of them found a partner faster than the other.
00:57:12.360
Jealousy and insecurity are real, but they don't usually manifest in the way you'd think.
00:57:16.860
Almost none of the list of anecdotes about jealousy, as far as I know, usually it pops up in different ways.
00:57:21.780
Like, my partner just recently let me know he'd be spending time with other girls during a time I'd be visiting him on a trip.
00:57:28.020
I haven't gotten to spend much time with him as recently as I wanted and the skins of scarcity spark jealousy in me.
00:57:35.320
If she's flying out to see this person, why is he sleeping with other individuals?
00:57:39.460
I expressed this by sending him a lot of Soviet-era propaganda posters that I customized with relevant texts with, like, me and her and the guy is stabbing the other girl.
00:57:59.940
She's like, I don't actually hate the other girl stealing him away.
00:58:02.400
I was trying to convince my partner to not see them, but I learned that suppressing jealousy when I feel it in order to seem cool is a terrible, unsustainable, no-good move.
00:58:13.200
One of the reasons why her community works so well is they are extremely emotionally self-aware.
00:58:21.600
And if you're not able or willing to buy into that, then you shouldn't play the game.
00:58:28.560
But the type of people, like, when I read this list and we go through all of this, and the reason I went through all of this is the type of guy who thinks, you know, I'd really love to be able to regularly sleep with people who are not my partner.
00:58:43.260
I actually think a lot of guys fit that category.
00:58:45.660
The type of girl who may occasionally think that, I don't think a lot of girls do, but I think a good 20% do.
00:58:50.620
The number of guys or girls who, after hearing this list of anecdotes, as what successful polyamory looks like, and who are like, oh, wow, that sounds like a good life, I think that's 1.5%.
00:59:04.960
Yeah, I guess because the unsaid part is that most men would love to sleep with additional women, but women who are only sleeping with them.
00:59:18.480
And then the additional ancillary problems are, like, the sharing, the transparency, the social pressure, the risk of being expunged from the community if you're not seen as being a sufficiently generous lover, etc., correct?
00:59:37.480
I find the amount of time spent on all this very interesting.
00:59:39.940
As you pointed out, this is a community that is just lower productivity than other communities we know, despite being same intellectual horsepower.
00:59:49.120
It's also, I've noticed, polygroups are way more susceptible to viral memes than non-polygroups.
00:59:59.960
Well, that makes sense because it becomes this social echo chamber where suddenly if everyone within the community believes it, then, you know, it's very hard to avoid.
01:00:13.260
You know, like, even if you are susceptible to, like, if, like, everyone around you is saying one thing, it gets to you.
01:00:19.200
And if you lived in that community and you were also intimate with people in that community, it would be really hard to not.
01:00:25.560
Well, and you don't have that sanity partner, right?
01:00:27.740
Like, the thing about you or our other friends who are in, like, you know, monogamous marriages is AI dumerism goes around.
01:00:37.940
They go to a party where they hear people worried about it.
01:00:42.500
And then they turn to their partner and they go, is this really stupid?
01:00:46.620
And their partner, without worry about what other people in the community are going to say about them, is able to give an honest judgment.
01:00:53.380
Ayla doesn't have anyone she can go to with that, for example.
01:00:57.140
The other people in these polycules don't have anyone they can go to and be like, is vector a cult?
01:01:10.040
You know, is negative utilitarianism, like, a poorly thought through idea?
01:01:16.200
Because if these things have become status symbols within the community, you know, they put themselves at risk by pointing out how dumb they are.
01:01:23.640
And I can say, for example, if I was part of this wider polycule network that Ayla is a part of, and I, you know, took a stance of, you know, intellectual integrity and said, AI dumerism is just a poorly thought through position, the other, I would lose sexual access.
01:01:45.020
Even if I tried to do it in private, even if I tried to be like, because people would notice, oh, the people, his metamors seem, you know, not as, as seem immune to the mimetic virus.
01:02:07.380
You have to be more socially agreeable, and that could get you, yeah, a little bit echo-chambered.
01:02:21.600
So, there's downsides that I think she's also not seeing.
01:02:25.500
But to me, the biggest downside is just the number of people who think this is going to be appealing to them because, oh, they're the hot person who wants to sleep with me, and they say all I have to do is be polyamorous to enter this.
01:02:42.780
Versus the people who want this in-state is very small.
01:02:48.540
Well, so I actually think that there is going to be growing relevance for these types of communities in a post-scarcity age.
01:02:58.780
Like, let's say UBI becomes pervasive, especially to the extent that people are very comfortable, and they just really don't need to work, and they're not working.
01:03:08.880
I can see this becoming super common because you need to fill that void with something, and you can fill it with the drama and the new relationship energy and the negotiating new relationships and the, I'm bored, let me try out a new kink.
01:03:25.900
Like, I think for a leisured class, whether it's the court of Louis XIV or whether it's post-scarcity AI communities, this could fill a really big void.
01:03:41.440
No, because I don't think they're going to be creating sustainable families that have descendants and that then therefore inherit the future.
01:03:49.340
So I think it's going to be a very short-lived kind of format, though you see it in Star Trek.
01:03:55.920
I mean, like, there's a lot of sleeping around in Star Trek.
01:03:57.840
Well, I think a lot of kids who grow up, as you did, you know, you sort of grew up in a network where polyamory was normal.
01:04:06.540
They didn't call it polyamory back then, as you always point out, but...
01:04:13.000
The point being is that you didn't want that for yourself, even when you started...
01:04:20.420
But I have seen very, very few people who have grown up in communities where polyamory was normalized that want polyamory in their own lives.
01:04:31.720
Polyamory is something I see almost exclusively and disproportionately in communities where they felt like extreme monogamy was enforced.
01:04:40.240
So you think it's more reactionary than anything?
01:04:46.100
Where she was raised that, like, her job would be a housewife raising kids at home, never having a job.
01:04:52.700
Our descendants of, like, Orthodox Jewish families, they're typically first-generation breakaways.
01:04:58.720
It is not multi-generation exposure to this stuff.
01:05:10.260
Remember that guy who grew up in a cult and his...
01:05:16.320
And then kicked all the young boys out of the cult.
01:05:21.100
Because he was actually sharing women with other men.
01:05:29.620
And this, to me, says something about the intergenerational durability of this.
01:05:34.520
We'll say he was reactionary to a very rigid sexual dynamic he grew up with.
01:05:44.040
I mean, this is fascinating to me that I can't think of one.
01:05:58.080
The first 18 years of a kid's life is a sales pitch to replicate the culture that they grew
01:06:05.740
Despite the fact that I never thought anything negatively about it.
01:06:13.020
Polyamory only works if you think the idea that you can sleep with multiple people is novel and
01:06:19.420
worth, you know, like it's worth exploring for its novelty.
01:06:22.800
If you are given this idea without stigma attached to it, and you're like, okay, here are two
01:06:29.680
You can sleep around a ton or you can be monogamous.
01:06:33.540
Which lifestyle do you prefer given the ups and downs of both?
01:06:41.300
Well, I feel like if I was living in a post-scarcity society where, you know, I had never met someone
01:06:50.700
like you, and I did enjoy physical contact, this would be very entertaining.
01:06:58.380
Not really, because I know you as well as I know myself.
01:07:04.680
And while, you know, this might be something where, like, if we have, you know, somebody
01:07:09.040
who we're really close to or whatever, you know, there could be exceptions to something
01:07:13.800
like this, the vast majority of the time, I would always prefer to use AI.
01:07:21.760
Yeah, because then also you're not going to hurt a real person if somehow things go wrong.
01:07:24.300
It's like, as they say in the lower deck Star Trek, where I can't remember, it's whatever.
01:07:29.640
You know, that's only meant for training exercises and weird sex stuff for the commanders.
01:07:34.780
Like, and it's like, that's what the point of the holodeck is, is weird sex stuff.
01:07:39.720
But the point being is that as AI gets better at simulating things, I think polyamory is
01:07:46.280
going to appear more and more weird and, and like a pointless waste of time.
01:07:52.220
No, but I think, I think the people who are getting involved in this community too, I think
01:07:55.680
are uniquely physically responsive, which you and I, again, aren't.
01:07:59.880
Like, people touch us and we're like, how can I get this scenario to end?
01:08:04.140
I will be able to masturbate those instincts in the future.
01:08:07.500
Come on, Simone, we're talking about the next generation.
01:08:12.480
I don't want to wear, I don't want to wear a haptic.
01:08:18.080
I'm just saying, if that's what they want, there will be better alternatives than having
01:08:26.260
I think for a lot of them, it's also the smell, the tree.
01:08:31.880
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
01:08:39.260
In a world where they can get all of this from an automated environment, does, and I
01:08:44.140
think that's a really interesting question for the next generation of polyamory, does
01:08:50.480
Well, I mean, I feel like a lot of this and what is being discussed in this too, is she's not
01:08:54.460
talking specifically about instances of like this particular time when we had sex.
01:09:02.160
What she's actually talking about is all the ancillaries.
01:09:06.980
It's the shared experiences with a partner and getting to gossip about that partner and
01:09:11.380
getting to share new people with that partner and getting to recommend people to that partner.
01:09:15.260
And I think that's almost like when I'm taking away what I'm seeing is the feature of all
01:09:19.280
this, a lot of it's that feeling of meaning and community and connection.
01:09:23.760
And again, that's one of the things that's really lacking for modern society.
01:09:27.160
Like this is, this is like, I guess, yeah, because you and I have such a lack of a desire
01:09:41.160
I know I'm always horrified by my friends who have like drama and stuff like that.
01:09:44.160
I try so hard to stay out of drama and have we ever our dramas only ever been like logistical,
01:09:55.080
But we also don't really share our drama with others either.
01:09:57.700
Um, and I really struggle with some of our friend network who has more drama and most
01:10:05.260
of them are polyamorous because I just, it's not like I struggle with dealing with it.
01:10:20.920
I wish you could just be with a trad partner, you know, but I think it's unfair too, because
01:10:28.900
Just go to dead bedrooms on Reddit, you know, like a lot of people struggle with their relationships.
01:10:35.700
Like to just to dunk on the, the downsides for people who are polyamorous is totally
01:10:45.060
When, I mean, we would argue that most people are in super suboptimal relationships where
01:10:53.840
They, I don't think that's true of our generation.
01:10:56.700
I think our generation is actually fairly good.
01:10:58.860
Like of our friend network was everyone I know who's married is in a really healthy relationship.
01:11:19.060
And I think this lifestyle for all the people that she's mentioned that at least I think
01:11:28.620
And so like, I think in many instances, they'd be better off going to live on a farm.
01:11:37.140
I mean, I would love for some of them because there's such brilliant minds to be more productive.
01:11:41.940
That's my one gripe is that I wish they produced more work and had more of an impact on the
01:11:48.840
world and had a farther reach because they are.
01:11:51.520
A lot of these people have a very far reach, Simone.
01:11:54.740
I guess you'd like some of the AI doomers to have less of a far reach.
01:11:59.040
I'm glad that all the AI doomers are stuck in these.
01:12:06.620
I think it's part of why AI doomers never get anything done.
01:12:09.640
It's because they're too busy in their poly relationship.
01:12:12.660
We, we, we did a application for funding from a EA grant and we were like, we actually
01:12:17.920
need to work on the AI safety stuff because the AI doomers get effing nothing done.
01:12:24.560
It's just that these people are stuck at orgies 24 seven.
01:12:29.960
Well, you know, that's what I secretly believe.
01:12:35.520
Maybe if you actually thought AIs were going to kill us, you wouldn't spend a third of
01:12:38.580
your time dealing with orgy logistics planning.
01:12:47.900
Do you want to do another one or do you want to go down and do dinner?
01:12:51.840
Some people in the comments, Malcolm pointed out that the, the book I'm reading now, All
01:12:58.420
Systems Read by Martha Wells, looks like it has a, like an Apple TV show coming out called
01:13:09.240
Well, I guess we don't have Apple TV, so nevermind.
01:13:16.840
So that show that you liked, it's got a, uh, no, the book I'm enjoying looks like there's
01:13:22.200
about where already is a TV series called Murderbot.
01:13:31.280
I mean, a lot of people are going to want to see a murder bot.
01:13:36.160
Like a sweet show about a robot that like, I don't know.
01:13:38.580
I don't know if it's going to be adorable, like in the book.
01:13:40.740
I don't know if he's going to be socially awkward and autistic.
01:13:51.020
It's the perfect time of day, the time of day that everybody waits for.
01:13:54.820
I'm, I love, I love our conversation so freaking much.
01:14:00.720
There might, there might be a happy time, even if we don't run them, but now we can just
01:14:08.700
Well, I mean, the channel has been doing really well.
01:14:11.180
The episode today was seven out of 10, but it was still above the normal normative range
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So even one that's doing lower in our recent episodes is doing unusually well.
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I mean, I think it's because we've done a number of good baby episodes in a row, to be
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I don't know if it's anything other than that, you know, but.
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One moment while I get Indy in a position where I think she's more likely to fall asleep
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I've been looking forward to discussing this all day.
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Like, as soon as I saw the email in my inbox, I was excited about it.
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Oh, things to talk about, by the way, just so we remember.
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And with the next episode, I want to talk to you about the categories we're thinking