Based Camp - Why Corporate America REALLY Went Woke

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be talking to you today. Today, I wanted to deep dive on one subject

00:00:06.380 that has been something that has come up in other things that we have talked about, but we've never

00:00:10.360 really done a deep dive on it. And I've noticed some common misconceptions people have around

00:00:17.900 this, which is I think that everybody broadly knows that in the 90s, big business was predominantly

00:00:24.820 right wing. If you were, you know, we always use like the Jack Donaghy stereotype here. If you were

00:00:29.700 a big business guy, you were a right wing guy. If you were a big corporate guy at like some, you know,

00:00:35.680 whether it's BlackRock or whether it's, you know, McKinsey, the stereotype was, is that you would

00:00:41.140 be right wing. Today, the stereotype is that you'd be extremely left wing. The core Republican Party

00:00:47.340 used to be made up of an alliance of a theocratic faction in the United States and a big business

00:00:52.560 faction. And it broke apart, making way for the new right alliance with big business departing

00:00:59.120 the alliance in the early 2000s. Now, the question is, is why? And the answer that I have always given

00:01:07.900 historically is that this happened because the mimetic virus that we call the urban monoculture,

00:01:15.360 some people may call it wokeism, whatever you want to call it, spreads better and faster within

00:01:20.840 bureaucracies. This is a part of it, but I don't think it's everything. Secondly, I think a core

00:01:29.040 mistake that a lot of people make when they're looking at this is to assume, and I've heard this

00:01:35.340 from so many people that, well, it's natural that big business was a Republican aligned a party in the

00:01:42.840 90s because it wanted lower tax rates, it wanted less regulations, it wanted all of that stuff.

00:01:51.160 And this is a very naive understanding of what businesses actually care about, especially large

00:01:56.600 businesses. It is actually just as perplexing that big businesses align themselves with the right in the

00:02:02.720 90s as big business align themselves with woke us today. Because generally, big businesses prefer

00:02:09.040 a large amount of regulations and taxes and other barriers to entry. There's a reason why Sam Altman

00:02:17.180 is going around trying to get everybody terrified of AI so that you can get additional AI regulations,

00:02:22.660 because he knows no matter how big the regulations are, they'll never be enough to shut down open AI,

00:02:27.200 but they may prevent his competitors. Do you want to talk on this before I go further?

00:02:32.320 No, keep going. This resonates though. And so I was thinking about this, and I was talking to

00:02:40.440 someone about this, and I was saying, well, here's a really interesting thing. When I look at what the

00:02:48.200 Democratic Party represents today, an alliance of, and I always use the word urban monoculture,

00:02:54.320 but if I change the definition, an interesting pattern emerges. It is an alliance of big business

00:03:01.460 interests, and the dominant cultural group in the United States, whose primary interest is imposing

00:03:09.740 its value system on other people. And then when I say that, and I go back to the 90s,

00:03:16.660 that was the alliance that existed as well. It was big business, it was the dominant cultural group.

00:03:23.940 So when we talk about the theocratic coalition that existed in the 90s, this was a group of individuals

00:03:29.320 who are basically like, okay, where does Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, the main American religious

00:03:34.480 systems, Mormonism, where do their sort of moral shadows overlap? We're going to call this the 0.90

00:03:40.240 Judeo-Christian tradition. And then we are going to try to impose this on citizens through laws, 0.99

00:03:47.740 through the school system, through other things like that. And that is, they were never as good at it

00:03:55.600 as the urban monoculture was, but they definitely had the same gist of an idea. And I think, one,

00:04:02.440 before we go into it, this also helps highlight where we are so antagonistic to some people on the

00:04:06.780 right, where I think lay people, when they see us being antagonistic to these groups, they say that

00:04:12.760 we are being antagonistic to groups that are just further right-leaning than ourselves. And I think

00:04:18.200 that these are the same types of people who think that what happened is the right today is just the

00:04:24.120 90s Democrats, and that the both parties have been moving to the left, when instead, what I'd argue

00:04:30.880 is no, what actually happened is the left today is the 90s theocrats. It's just, we have a different

00:04:39.260 dominant cultural group in this country. And the right today is a fundamentally new party that doesn't

00:04:45.120 really represent the axis of the political axis that existed at all in the 90s.

00:04:50.480 Exactly. And so when these people are doing their thing, and they're like, oh, we want to impose

00:04:54.860 like gay marriage bans or something like that. I'm like, well, you're just acting like the left,

00:04:58.880 from my perspective, you're trying to impose a cultural value system, which is why I think there's

00:05:02.980 so much hostility to this sort of rhetoric within the modern right. But before we go further with this,

00:05:10.720 I want to ask the question, why does big business constantly find itself on the same side

00:05:18.020 as the dominant cultural group attempting to enforce its value system using the justice system

00:05:23.700 and using laws within the country? Well, because they have the money, right? And business goes where

00:05:28.400 the money is, like sharks following blood. Do they have the money, though? I don't know if they ever

00:05:34.720 really had the money. I don't know how you can, you can't impose a policy upon other people without

00:05:41.860 having deep pockets. Politicians don't listen to you if you don't have deep pockets.

00:05:47.280 I'm going to disagree.

00:05:48.320 Well, no, I also think that, you know, I think the major huge political donors did go woke.

00:05:54.940 So I agree with that. But I don't think that that is why the politicians are following them. I think

00:06:00.480 that when I look at the sort of imposition of woke culture on other people, I think it was from a

00:06:07.300 vocal minority and that the wealthy then ended up following it because they saw this vocal minority

00:06:13.100 and saw them as a threat. And I think it's very similar to like the satanic panic of the 80s or

00:06:18.440 the, you know, the extremist evangelicals of the 90s, where they never really made up that large of

00:06:24.800 a population. But if you had something like, you know, a demon in a show or something like that,

00:06:30.840 you had to be very careful about it or anything that could be seen. We actually saw this with the

00:06:35.220 Catholics. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but for a long time, Hollywood wouldn't

00:06:39.000 make any movie that could be interpreted as anti-Catholic because the Catholics were very,

00:06:43.460 very good at vetoing movies. The organization I'm talking about here is the National Legion of

00:06:47.940 Decency. But my timeline is a bit off. They were mostly prominent between the 1930s and 1960s.

00:06:54.220 And they used the audience of 20 million Catholics who back during that time period would actually

00:06:58.460 listen to what the church told them to do, which they don't so much anymore, which is largely why

00:07:02.920 the council lost power to boycott movies. And they ended up influencing things like the Hays Code and

00:07:08.820 most of the movies that were released. And there was actually this chain of like movies made by

00:07:14.200 Hollywood specifically to endear studios to the church. Like in one of them, the plot was something

00:07:19.620 like a Catholic preacher was given a confession, but like that the guy was going to murder someone

00:07:24.460 or like murder him, the preacher. And like, he couldn't do anything about it because he was so moral

00:07:28.580 and he had to follow, you know, these rules. And this was a common thing. And you might actually have

00:07:33.720 noticed this, that Catholic preachers were disproportionately in media in the 80s and mid-90s.

00:07:40.460 And you basically don't see them in media anymore because they weren't that big a faction of Americans.

00:07:45.940 So their appearances were artificial, you're arguing?

00:07:50.800 Their appearances were artificial due to, and I'll look up in post some specific examples of this,

00:07:56.480 but it was a specific union of Catholics that would boycott movies.

00:08:01.860 That's so interesting. I mean, that, I suppose, makes sense.

00:08:07.660 Which was, I think-

00:08:08.360 So it's more about who is strategically in power? Is that what you are saying is going on?

00:08:12.900 No, I think the right, despite what people would say today, in the 90s and 80s had a form of

00:08:19.200 cancellation. They would say that this individual is satanic or this individual is, you know,

00:08:24.640 they'd use different words to label them, but they had a form of saying, oh, this company does this

00:08:30.820 or this, therefore we won't do business with them. And I think especially children's media was very

00:08:36.100 afraid of crossing these boundaries for a very long time. And I think that the wokes more borrowed 0.91

00:08:42.360 these existing tools, but implemented them much more effectively. And I think what we might be seeing

00:08:48.860 here is big business is a very susceptible to bullying more so than it is looking for market

00:08:55.820 demand.

00:08:57.780 So you wait, you, okay. So could this be an issue of larger bureaucracies having basically the

00:09:03.960 sensitivity to criticism? And that's why they're more subject to whatever the mainstream zeitgeist

00:09:09.820 is because they have compliance departments, they have lawyers, they have marketing departments that

00:09:14.660 are capable of hearing criticism and freaking out about it. Whereas smaller organizations just don't

00:09:20.400 literally don't have an ear or an eye to that kind of thing.

00:09:23.000 I wonder if it might even be that the type of person who works at a large company is more sensitive

00:09:26.580 to criticism. So when I think about our friend groups, you know, our job basically with the

00:09:32.400 pro natalist movement is attracting criticism in a way that furthers the message of the movement.

00:09:37.920 Right.

00:09:38.000 Um, so we're always going around baiting media sources to try to get them to talk about us. And

00:09:42.980 then we use that to draw attention to our cause areas in ways that are usually pretty effective.

00:09:48.100 Like, honestly, we've been enormously effective. I don't think that there's been a public media

00:09:52.080 figure that has been as effective as us at either rising or catching attention in the last five

00:09:58.100 years, which I take, I take great pride in, but this has given us a unique understanding of who

00:10:05.460 has freaked out about knowing us or being publicly associated with us and the people at startups or

00:10:11.120 venture capital firms or small companies, they're like, okay, fine. The bureaucrats who work or run

00:10:18.960 very large companies are extremely scared of being associated with us. They are extremely scared of

00:10:25.840 criticism. And I wonder if a fear of failing, which is I think where this fear of criticism comes from

00:10:32.880 failing in other people's eyes or being seen as not good enough associates was working in large

00:10:38.580 companies. Yeah. Well, I, I could see basically not being willing to stand for anything personally

00:10:46.420 and being really afraid of being subject to criticism would make a job at another company where you can

00:10:52.620 always blame it on someone higher up the line, blame the company, blame your manager, et cetera.

00:10:58.320 Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. And you could argue that also people with a bigger external locus of

00:11:06.800 control are more likely to be drawn to larger organizations and bureaus. Actually, I'm having

00:11:10.660 an understanding here. Both of these types of people aren't just drawn to large companies. They're

00:11:14.640 also drawn to academia. They're both career tracks where it's for people who are more afraid of

00:11:20.740 failing. They don't want to go outside their bubble. They're just like, okay, this is what I've been

00:11:24.580 doing for the past four years. I'm just going to keep doing it. If I can maybe make some money from

00:11:28.340 doing it. And they're very sensitive. They have a lot of status anxiety. They're very sensitive to

00:11:32.860 the status the job gives them. And so not just a fear of media criticism, but potentially a fear of

00:11:39.340 criticism within these organizations makes the mimetic virus spread faster within the organization.

00:11:47.260 That, that's quite interesting. Yeah. Well, but then aren't you really ultimately just arguing the same

00:11:53.920 thing that you've been arguing since the beginning, which is that mimetic viruses are more likely to

00:12:01.420 spread in these large bureaucracies and maybe the refinement you've gotten.

00:12:07.300 I don't think that the, the nineties version of like evangelical mom was really a mimetic virus.

00:12:12.620 I think that they like evangelicalism didn't spread through companies in the same way wokeism

00:12:17.800 spread through companies. I think that it, what we are seeing is, is, is two things happening

00:12:23.560 simultaneously. You have this phenomenon that I'm talking about with people more sensitive to

00:12:27.780 criticism, working in these large bureaucracies on top of them also being more sensitive to like,

00:12:33.120 when a guardian article says something mean about me, my, sorry, people in my life freak out about

00:12:38.540 it. And then we always get the email of, Oh my God, how could this happen again? You must be

00:12:43.600 devastated right now. And I'm like, bro, the guardian doesn't even have a Twitter account anymore.

00:12:48.320 Like, what are you talking about? Nobody reads this. It just establishes credibility for stuff

00:12:53.380 like Wikipedia articles and getting in front of like a few other people's faces in terms of

00:12:57.500 expanding our reach. But yeah, that's, that's my thought on that. But I'd also note how wokeism

00:13:03.840 spread within companies. Cause we had somebody talking, we were talking to you about this

00:13:06.900 and I hadn't realized it, but it's something that is really interesting, which is, and I note here,

00:13:13.580 by the way, anybody who wants to hire us as consultants to anti-DEI fire company,

00:13:16.780 now that we're stepping back from our day job, absolutely happy to help with that. Stanford

00:13:20.420 MBA, Cambridge degree in technology policy, run major companies in the past. We'll work

00:13:25.880 inexpensively if we're helping make a company strong, but we'll even run for the work for

00:13:31.920 a percentage of the increase in profits we can make you within certain margins or the

00:13:36.480 cost savings we can give you. Cause that's the great thing about taking DEI out of a company.

00:13:40.000 You're only saving money. Um, but it was when the DEI stuff started, what companies did like,

00:13:48.860 they were like, Oh, I have to put this, like whatever person that fits all of these criteria

00:13:53.840 into the company. All right. Well, we don't want to put them in like engineering and we don't want

00:13:58.700 to put them in like making products. Cause like they actually need to be good to have those jobs. 0.95

00:14:02.600 So where can we put them? Well, HR, like people don't really do anything in HR, often marketing

00:14:09.560 to communications, PR compliance. And what they didn't realize when they were putting these people

00:14:17.340 in HR and compliance, but specifically HR is where I think the initial crop was dumped is that now these

00:14:24.000 people had control over hiring. Yeah. And they started to exclusively hire and heavily affect the

00:14:30.400 hiring processes around these DEI objectives, which quickly DEI-fied the entire companies.

00:14:37.640 And in addition to that, as, as Simone was talking about, you have things like marketing becoming

00:14:42.200 heavily DEI. What happens when marketing becomes heavily DEI, then you'll have them leave Twitter

00:14:47.740 when Elon buys it, for example, because they think that they can use the company at the cudgel,

00:14:52.480 even when their customer base, they're still on eggs. They're still on these, these platforms.

00:14:59.360 And they're, but they don't care like, because they're not in this for, at the end of the day,

00:15:03.780 making money. They are now part of the, the DEI cordyceps virus. And they just want to expand the

00:15:09.340 reach of the virus. What are your thoughts on that mechanism for how the spread was in companies?

00:15:16.420 Yeah. I mean that, I think that's what we've largely understood to be reality for a long time.

00:15:21.200 It's, it's, it's funny how things happen. I think people think of arguments around the woke mind

00:15:31.360 virus or the people on the left or the people on the right as, as being this, this all being a very

00:15:36.880 concerted organized effort that happened on purpose where a bunch of people got together in a room and

00:15:43.180 were like, ah, yes, this is how we shall slowly take everything over. And there are even people who

00:15:48.360 are like, oh, let's conspire to do this, but it rarely works. Conspiracies rarely work out.

00:15:55.320 Yeah. And I, we've been involved in conspiracies. We've been involved in organizations that are

00:15:59.120 supposed to be conspiratorial. There people are just, there's not that many, like truly effective,

00:16:04.560 independently thinking humans for a conspiracy to be effective. People are not that.

00:16:08.800 What is interesting. And this is why I think your interest in governance is so crucial is that just

00:16:15.880 the correctly misplaced incentive or the, the misplacement of a particular agent within a

00:16:23.200 particular area, it's like putting a seed crystal into a substance.

00:16:28.140 It's much worse than a conspiracy in a way.

00:16:30.120 Yeah. Like in a way that no human, no exerted effort could, could make something happen.

00:16:38.200 What happens, for example, when, when you're tempering chocolate, you'll put a seed, like

00:16:43.600 essentially a seed crystal, like a piece of chocolate that has been properly tempered in

00:16:48.100 with a batch of chocolate. And then you raise it to a certain temperature. And the idea is that

00:16:52.740 your, she used to work in a chocolate factory, your one seed crystal will then help the rest of the 0.98

00:16:59.520 chocolate snap into the right crystalline structure. And I, that's kind of how I see this happening is

00:17:05.620 that once you get, for example, this certain culture in HR, it's able to make the rest of the

00:17:12.420 company snap into that crystalline structure in a way that doesn't require you to go through each and

00:17:18.580 every single department. It just kind of happens naturally and almost all at once.

00:17:23.880 And in a very powerful way.

00:17:25.140 Well, no, I think out of here, HR is the department that can fire you, that determines your salary,

00:17:29.900 moving up and down within the organization. As soon as you control that within an organization,

00:17:36.020 you control the incentives that the organization has, and people will want to DEIF-ify themselves to

00:17:42.660 ensure that they can move up or down. And I think something that you were talking about earlier,

00:17:46.480 like the conspiratorial mindset towards this stuff, I think a lot of that is actually downstream

00:17:51.660 of humanities. And I think that this is really important when I'm, when I'm interacting with

00:17:55.940 people. And when I typically, I'm like, okay, this person is an idiot. When they start to see like 1.00

00:17:59.720 big agentic conspiracies everywhere, because we're not an idiot, but the mistake that they're making,

00:18:06.040 and it's, it's an inbuilt human mistake is humans are evolutionarily programmed to see the world

00:18:11.360 in terms of theory of minds. So we look for theory of minds in everything. We look for theory of

00:18:17.420 minds in mass groups of humans. We look for theory of minds.

00:18:20.700 Oh, you'll see faces in tree stumps and in wall plugs. We just think, yeah, it's very hard not

00:18:28.400 to humanize things.

00:18:29.580 Yeah. When you see action, you're not thinking, okay, how could this action have evolved? I.e.,

00:18:33.680 how could iterations of this action have been better at replicating themselves in non-iterations

00:18:36.960 of this action, which is actually why most things happen. Most actual conspiracies are not agentic.

00:18:44.600 They are not one individual attempting to, in part of a brand conspiracy, fool a bunch of other

00:18:50.240 individuals. It is just a self-replicating thing. And so it's better rather than to look at who wants

00:18:57.600 this or who's trying to orchestrate this. I think it's better to look instead at the incentives and

00:19:03.700 where our incentives align. Right. But I think that, and people can say that this is the like

00:19:09.640 a kinder interpretation around this, but it very much isn't. If you look at what the implication is,

00:19:16.900 if this is a mimetic virus, like that cordyceps virus, which infects ants and then makes them just

00:19:21.840 spread the fungus. Once an individual is infected, they must be surgically removed from the company.

00:19:27.860 There is no amelioration. There is no cure. The only cure is cut once, cut deep. You have to remove

00:19:37.000 the cancer. Yeah. I haven't heard of anyone deescalating from a position that is like-

00:19:42.980 Yeah. Have you ever heard of a woke person genuinely deescalating? I don't think I ever have.

00:19:48.480 Yeah. Well, I guess what I, here's what I could envision happening because what we're doing is here

00:19:55.960 with corporate America, we're contrasting the point at which it was sort of strongly influenced by

00:20:03.340 conservative Christian American culture of like the nineties to now when it has been very influenced

00:20:10.360 by woke culture, culture, the urban monoculture. When, when that Christian conservative subculture

00:20:19.800 suddenly became the minority in corporate America, that didn't mean that the people who used to enact

00:20:24.780 witch hunts as Christian conservatives no longer existed at organizations, it meant that they kind 1.00

00:20:30.460 of realized that they were outnumbered and they had to go underground as it were, or just be tolerant.

00:20:35.900 And I think that that's more what happens. It's not, these people can exist and not do damage

00:20:41.680 as long as they know that they don't have a mandate and they don't have impunity.

00:20:45.880 I think the only instance from the Christians, really? Okay. I disagree with you. So convince 1.00

00:20:52.700 me. I'll explain why. Okay. So first you've got to put these people in two camps who can be

00:20:58.360 ameliorated is the people who just sort of like believed mainstream media. And then one day we're

00:21:03.480 like, Oh shit, I'm being lied to not like the torchbearers, but the people, I think a lot of people 0.98

00:21:08.220 like us, JD Vance, a lot of these people who are just like, they believed the mainstream narrative. 0.99

00:21:12.680 And then one day they're like, Oh, you guys are all against us. Um, that, that community I think

00:21:18.000 can, can reform. The problem with the wokes is they don't have families. They don't actually need 1.00

00:21:23.040 to make money. They would rather enforce the message and self-indulge in a victim mindset

00:21:28.460 than actually, uh, make money or keep their job. Whereas with the Christians, they, you know, 1.00

00:21:34.940 they might've been an evangelical mom, you know, they had five kids to feed back home, you know,

00:21:40.320 I know there's much better place down the street. The girls are cleaner. The liquor ain't watered 1.00

00:21:45.640 down. Sure. And you get kickbacks. Hey man, I got five kids to feed. Take him to the dentist.

00:21:52.640 Uh, I got to put a Benny thing here. I got five kids to feed, but they, yeah. So they, they had to

00:21:57.920 worry about losing their jobs in a way that I think that the wokes don't. And they also had to worry 0.96

00:22:02.140 about feeding themselves. You see, it was a woke. If you're a Christian and you lose your job, you take 1.00

00:22:06.260 some level of personal responsibility for that. Even if you were, you know, trying to push a

00:22:09.920 Christian agenda, if you're a woke person and you lose your job, you take no, you don't feel like

00:22:14.700 you messed up in any sense. No, if anything, you sue and expect to win a ton of money.

00:22:20.040 You're the hero of the story, right? You know? And I think that one thing, one thing I will note,

00:22:25.700 and this is a surprise to me about companies is after this Trump election cycle, which has appeared

00:22:32.260 very different than previous election cycles. Last time Trump won, there was this broad perception

00:22:37.760 of like, the pollsters got it all wrong. And you know, the pollsters didn't know what they were

00:22:43.220 doing, but like broadly, everything else is still fine. Like society still works the way we used to

00:22:47.820 think it did. This time it's almost acted like a mandate against the infected cultural institutions

00:22:56.420 more broadly. We think with MSNBC being sold now with things like Disney going back onto X slash

00:23:02.540 Twitter, with a lot of rollback in woke policy that I didn't think I would see. I am actually

00:23:09.600 surprised how quickly business has turned on these individuals. Now, are they still putting out media

00:23:16.040 that's been in production for the past five years? It has like pronouns like God, one of the ones I was

00:23:20.080 actually interested in trying out recently. It was something like Avowed is the game I was thinking of

00:23:26.020 Awakened or something. Anyway, I'll add it in post, but it turned out to have pronouns in it. And I'm

00:23:29.660 like, I'm not going to play that. Like, I'm not going to do that because I know-

00:23:32.000 But that's inertia to your point, right?

00:23:35.200 What?

00:23:35.760 That is the product of inertia.

00:23:37.700 I think where we are seeing business able to make retreats, we are seeing it in many areas I did not

00:23:44.640 anticipate. So business might be correcting faster than I thought. I'd also note here about another

00:23:53.500 argument I've heard, which is very interesting. It's that business went woke because woke culture

00:23:58.820 is more consumerist.

00:24:01.660 It is, I guess. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing, the core of woke culture and the urban monoculture

00:24:07.860 involves atomization and divorcing the human from their family, from their community and

00:24:15.280 commoditizing everything. So suddenly, instead of having friends, you have a therapist and you

00:24:21.840 have social media and a bunch of things that you buy-

00:24:25.520 Wait, wait, wait. Can I just say how much I love that? Instead of having a friend, you have a therapist.

00:24:28.500 I mean, but that's what's happening, right?

00:24:31.540 Yeah.

00:24:32.180 So yeah, it does. It basically says,

00:24:36.160 it's taught all these original sources of these things that you used to get are toxic. Now you buy it.

00:24:41.940 And to not buy these things is to be a conspiracy theorist, raw milk drinking homesteader who believes

00:24:52.460 in a bunch of crazy things and doesn't vaccinate their kids. And they're seen as crazy. And I was

00:24:58.740 thinking about this when you suddenly were concerned about food diets last night of like, now,

00:25:04.300 even when a totally normal person is suddenly kind of concerned about processed foods, there's this

00:25:11.900 feeling about them like, oh, you're one of those. Like you're one of those off the grid, like only

00:25:18.340 eats, you know, raw eggs. And by the way, like I'm super into that, but it is categorized by the urban

00:25:27.400 monoculture as sort of a crazy off the grid conspiracy theorist. So yeah, that does make sense. So you're not

00:25:34.100 going to, and you also, you're not going to make money from those people. So if you're a business

00:25:36.940 and you're marketing to someone, are you going to market to the person who does their best to avoid

00:25:41.580 hyper-processed foods, who does their best to avoid toxic social media, addictive games and things

00:25:50.380 like that? Or do you go for the person who has fully surrendered themselves to operative condition

00:25:56.320 and dopamine hits? Yeah. I mean, conservative culture says, you know, restrict yourself,

00:26:01.320 you know, have a degree of self-control. And those are bad consumers. They're not repeat

00:26:06.360 purchasers. They're not sticky. They're not addicted. Like that's terrible. You're right.

00:26:10.700 That's a bad investment. That is, I think it's the most convincing thing you've actually said to me so

00:26:14.780 far in terms of like why they have chosen to double down so hard on this audience is this is the most

00:26:20.860 trigger and spend happy audience. And an audience that is not woke is far more likely to not buy

00:26:28.920 things. That's convincing. Well, I mean, look at the way our family buys things. We tried to buy

00:26:34.300 just a few things that are very reusable. And I even look at the us when contrasted with much

00:26:39.520 poorer friends that we have, they buy so much more than us. Like, yeah, it actually like causes Simone

00:26:47.580 to like almost panic when she sees the way that other people who were friends with who are much

00:26:52.240 less wealthy than us spend money. They like actually like go out to like McDonald's. They

00:26:58.440 like actually like buy like snacks. These days, anyone who goes to a restaurant, I'm like, how can

00:27:05.720 you financially like survive this? This is I'll never financially recover from this. Oh my God.

00:27:14.600 I am never going to financially recover from this. Every single time someone goes out. Yeah.

00:27:19.680 Every single time we go out. RIP. When was the last time you went out to a restaurant, Simone?

00:27:27.340 Hold on. I know this. Well, when we were at Hereticon, but that was included.

00:27:36.160 Okay. So when somebody else wasn't paying, when was the last time? Can you even remember? It must

00:27:40.140 have been a year ago at least. Like when you and I just did it because we weren't. Yeah.

00:27:45.820 You and I paid for a meal that you ate. Oh, my birthday at the hibachi place. 1.00

00:27:53.800 Yes. Your birthday. So that was pretty recent. Yes. Yes.

00:27:57.380 Before my birthday win.

00:28:01.480 You, you got takeout for yourself. We cooked for the whole family.

00:28:04.960 No, no, no. I'm saying you.

00:28:06.100 Okay. Me? Huh. Yeah. I, I honestly cannot. I could not.

00:28:11.760 It must've been more than a year ago. I'm just pointing out that I think a lot of people don't

00:28:16.940 get, like, they think this stuff is normal and it's not normal if you're from a conservative

00:28:20.720 cultural group. It is a disgusting amount of overspending that is genuinely nauseating.

00:28:26.320 Well, and this is, this is how spending used to be. People think that, I guess, in the 1950s,

00:28:33.300 there was just some era of abundance. People were eating shitty canned food. Like when you 0.98

00:28:38.360 actually look at what are considered gourmet recipes at the time, it is stuff that, like,

00:28:43.740 even poor people living on food assistance would not bother to eat. It's stuff. I served

00:28:49.340 food in a tenderloin San Franciscan food bank. It was better than, like, the best 1950s had

00:28:57.100 to offer. People don't realize, like, the level of luxury that they're living with now.

00:29:00.580 Yeah, 1950s, like, if you look at, like, good 90s, it's like-

00:29:03.680 Like dinner party stuff. You would, like, go out of your way to, like, serve to the fancy,

00:29:07.540 your boss, you know, who's coming over for dinner.

00:29:10.140 It can be jello. So you'd have, like, some, some fruit in some jello. And then you have

00:29:15.400 some, like, I'll put things on screen here. It is quite disgusting, by the way.

00:29:18.360 Yeah, I'll see. I can share some of my, like, videos on cooking. So anyway, that was the 1950s.

00:29:23.780 People were like, oh, like, oh, it's so, we live in such. And also going out to eat was a

00:29:29.020 very big deal for a whole family to do that. And maybe, maybe a young people courting or something

00:29:35.880 might go out. It's like a, ooh, I'm really showing off.

00:29:38.120 No, I mean, honestly, one of the most disgusting signs of opulence is smart, casual restaurants

00:29:42.300 being branded as, like, a regular thing that people should-

00:29:46.640 Yeah, what a conspiracy. Yeah, I guess that's, that was sort of, maybe what we're seeing is the

00:29:52.700 tail end of this era in which American families were gaslit into believing that eating out regularly

00:30:00.980 was normal, that insanely opulent birthday parties were normal, that-

00:30:08.200 Oh my God, birthday parties for kids are insane. Why would you do that? Why would you give a child 0.77

00:30:12.740 a party?

00:30:13.660 Well, but even now, like, what's so normalized, and I see this, not just among influencers, 0.99

00:30:19.220 I'm just saying our friends, people buying cakes for birthday parties, like, bitch, make a cake. 1.00

00:30:25.540 Like, it can be a boxed cake. This is not hard. And it doesn't even have to be good. I mean, 0.98

00:30:31.460 I've had so many disaster cakes that, you know, because we're cooking in altitude or with, like,

00:30:35.740 borrowed pans or something didn't work out, and we just turned it into a construction cake that,

00:30:39.360 like, you know, it's a pile of, like, cake dirt. But it's fine. Like, but people are buying,

00:30:45.580 and these are, these are expensive cakes. There's fondant involved. They're multi-tiered cakes.

00:30:49.940 These are, and that's just the cake. Like, what else are they getting? Some people are renting

00:30:56.160 decorations.

00:30:58.020 Oh, by the way, just so people know how we do toys with our kids. So we do do the future police,

00:31:02.980 where they take away the kids' toys, but we don't give them all back. In fact, we regularly clear

00:31:06.940 out all but about a quarter of their toys. We put them in the attic, and then we wrap them and give

00:31:11.560 them back to them or younger kids later on.

00:31:16.100 It's great, because they treat them like, sometimes they remember them from before,

00:31:18.980 sometimes they don't, but they're always really happy to have them again, and they're,

00:31:25.460 they're otherwise ignored. It's not like they miss them. And if they miss them and ask for them,

00:31:29.540 we give them back. But they typically can't.

00:31:31.820 Yeah, but typically they don't miss them or notice them, but if they do, we give them back. Yeah.

00:31:35.240 Yeah. I don't, I can't remember the last time they've asked for something back.

00:31:39.940 Which is, no, but it's a good system. And I think that so many people, they just are like,

00:31:44.120 oh, that wouldn't, you know, whatever. Like, yeah. Yeah. I think that the consumerist thing

00:31:50.160 might be part of it. Is it the urban monoculture was to an extent crafted or a partnership with big

00:31:55.140 business to create this belief that if you want something, and it's one of the things I've known.

00:31:59.740 No, no, no. It's again, any, you're using language that implies intentionality. When no,

00:32:04.780 it was that they clicked together that this, this on, on, on the one part, this memetic virus that

00:32:10.760 promised instant gratification and never having to say no to yourself and never having to do

00:32:15.220 something unpleasant in the moment. Plus an industry that profited from that mindset. Like,

00:32:20.860 of course they're going to love each other. Of course works for Doritos. You'd have like the

00:32:26.620 Hayes by Doritos and Dunkin' Donuts. That is beautiful.

00:32:30.820 Hayes brought to you by Doritos. Yeah, basically.

00:32:32.960 And now there's heroin chic brought to you by Ozempic. Now, yeah, it's sort of this really

00:32:38.520 interesting backlash. I think the more interesting question now is now that there is this backlash

00:32:45.460 to the urban monoculture and yet organizations are going to have to still figure out

00:32:51.360 how to make money going forward. What are they going to do? I mean, already there's a lot of

00:32:56.840 commentary online about what highly processed food companies are going to do in the face of

00:33:02.600 Ozempic becoming widespread because people just aren't having the same cravings for highly processed

00:33:09.360 and like snack foods that they normally would. So now what do they sell? Another, they're trying

00:33:15.720 to remarket a bunch of things. I don't know if that's even necessary. Maybe we've already reached

00:33:21.920 this point at which people are so morally, not morally, mentally bankrupt, like sort of incapable

00:33:26.460 of self-control, that it doesn't matter.

00:33:30.060 By the way, Simone, I think I remembered when you last went to a restaurant.

00:33:33.200 Oh, when?

00:33:33.680 It was when we were speaking at that conference in Vegas and I took you to that Chinese restaurant

00:33:39.620 and we ordered that dish that we split and the Raider shamed us for buying too deep a dish

00:33:43.900 and splitting it. Do you remember that? That was what? A year ago?

00:33:48.740 That was at the Bellagio. I don't know if that counts because it was a business trip.

00:33:52.540 Yeah. I mean, it was an expense to the foundation, so.

00:33:56.480 So then it doesn't count. Yeah. But if it's, yeah, if it's a business trip, you don't, I mean,

00:34:02.200 we wouldn't have spent that money to buy two dishes personally, but especially if you're traveling

00:34:08.060 for business, you should be respectful of the business that's paying for the thing and then

00:34:12.100 only buy one entree. That's what we did the entire time that like last personal vacation we took.

00:34:18.740 Which was in Switzerland. And we're like, oh shit, it's expensive here. We're going to share 0.99

00:34:23.380 one meal going forward. And it was great.

00:34:29.000 People need to like normalize this because they don't understand the way people actually lived

00:34:33.380 in the fifties. If you are trying to be trad, being trad is being frugal. Okay. Yeah.

00:34:40.240 And this is the problem is they don't realize this. They think that being trad is a life of

00:34:44.420 abundance. And it is. Well, there's also the, this theme that keeps coming up in Hannah's

00:34:48.940 children, the super pronatalist book, that's actually super pronatalist in which parents of

00:34:54.320 five plus children are interviewed. And basically it's a book compiling their interviews. Very

00:34:58.160 interesting. A common theme that comes up is in response to this question of what will we do when

00:35:04.160 we have, how will we travel once we have five plus children? How will we get out of the house when

00:35:09.500 we have four plus children or six plus children? And the answer is you just don't like that. You

00:35:15.060 just don't do that anymore. And guess what? Life goes on. Like there's just kind of this expectation

00:35:20.940 of like, but how will we make it work? How can we possibly do it? And once you realize that the

00:35:26.940 answer is you just don't honestly, things get so much better. I love the trip thing. I don't know

00:35:33.540 if people know this, but like even the concept of vacations or trips is like a fairly modern concept.

00:35:37.820 Mm-hmm. Oh, and even the, even the scaled down 1950s version where you would go everywhere in

00:35:42.940 your car and go car camping, even that was very new because the highway system was a new invention.

00:35:48.820 The concept that you had roads that you could travel across America, that was a big deal that

00:35:54.000 you could actually drive across America suddenly. Yeah. So, so, so my dad, whose father was a

00:35:59.420 congressman, so like not like an insignificant person and a fairly wealthy individual, they'd go on one

00:36:05.380 trip a year. It was a car trip to the Jersey shore. Yes. And they would just stay in one place the

00:36:09.580 whole time. It wasn't freaking Disneyland. It was a house. Yeah. And I think that we, as a society,

00:36:16.320 are like, this is one of the, you know, you were talking to me about this. They're like,

00:36:19.500 but if I have a kid, how will I go to Milan? It's like, well, maybe you need to not be going to

00:36:24.800 Milan. Milan sucks. What do you do? There's like one Da Vinci piece, some old churches, 1.00

00:36:32.500 but like the rest is just mostly office buildings. What do you, Milan? We say this is people who used

00:36:40.360 to split our time between countries every other month. Well, I mean, I think that's, that's also,

00:36:46.120 it's, it's kind of like, we're speaking from a position of so much privilege and abundance. 0.50

00:36:50.100 It's kind of shitty for us to do. Like you being like, oh, sex isn't that interesting, 0.94

00:36:54.040 but you've had so much sex. Like very much the way I am was travel as well. Yeah. Like you've 0.71

00:36:59.380 traveled so much throughout your life. And now I'm like, ah, you, you guys shouldn't live for

00:37:04.020 sex. Don't do that. I, I used to travel as I said, I think it was earlier. I said over a hundred 0.81

00:37:08.780 countries. I actually think if I remember correctly, the number was over 50 countries,

00:37:11.320 but over a large number of countries, I I've done tons and tons of travel. I've lived in like seven

00:37:15.360 countries and, and now I'm just like, ah, travel sucks. We still have a house in Peru.

00:37:21.320 Do we need to sell? We need to get that sold as well.

00:37:24.380 ASAP. Well, I'm trying the, we have to make all the plumbing repairs first. And the, 0.59

00:37:31.100 do you though? The house? Yes, we do. We actually really, there's no hot water in the apartment

00:37:35.460 right now. And the housing association is blocking Alexander from doing the fixes. But again, see,

00:37:40.200 like, this is the thing is everyone's like, well, I want to have multiple houses someday. I want to

00:37:43.860 have a vacation. No, you don't. Do you understand what a hassle that is? I mean, one, there's a property

00:37:49.680 taxes, two, there's a constant repairs, three, there's the cleaning for there's the travel

00:37:54.840 between the places and all the money that you have to spend just doing the travel. And then of

00:37:59.500 course, whenever you bring over more supplies from one country or another, there's import or export

00:38:03.960 taxes. It's some customs person decides to like slap on you after digging through your suitcases.

00:38:09.560 This is not fun. Yeah, it's super interesting to see how just having a lot of kids and the forced

00:38:22.400 frugality and groundedness that a large family forces on people causes them to become a lot happier,

00:38:30.100 it seems in this book. And it could be, it didn't have to be children. Like it could be that,

00:38:36.560 I don't know, both of your legs are cut off or something or whatever. Like it could just be

00:38:41.720 that you have been forced by law enforcement to not leave a certain radius around your house,

00:38:48.180 but then suddenly your life gets a lot better because you're not doing all this stuff that

00:38:52.260 ultimately doesn't make you happy anyway. I just find that interesting as a concept, but yes. Okay.

00:38:57.560 The big thing that I'm taking away from this conversation is that a big reason why

00:39:01.880 the urban monoculture paired so well with corporate America was that they mutually benefited

00:39:11.240 from reinforcing instant gratification and consumerism.

00:39:16.320 And how else is a flag company supposed to stay in business if you don't change it every year?

00:39:23.540 What was the colonizer's flag?

00:39:26.560 Oh, the new gay pride flag.

00:39:28.060 They haven't updated it recently, have they?

00:39:31.780 Sales are way down. No one's buying American flags anymore.

00:39:36.240 We had some success when we jumped on the pride bandwagon,

00:39:39.560 but now that it's a settled issue, there's just no demand for flags anymore.

00:39:43.900 Guys, I've got it.

00:39:46.060 What if we updated the gay flag? 0.96

00:39:49.880 But trans people... 1.00

00:39:52.880 Actually, they haven't.

00:40:04.640 Yeah, I feel like...

00:40:05.060 They need to add, like, a new, like, keffiyeh pattern layer onto the end of it?

00:40:08.960 I feel like they ran out of new communities to add.

00:40:12.240 That's why I said they need to add the keffiyeh, Lauren. 1.00

00:40:14.600 Oh, yes, to make it Muslim, too. Yes.

00:40:16.640 No, no, no, no. Specifically to make it, like, Hamas-coded. 0.71

00:40:19.120 Like, a Muslim sign on the center of the gay pride flag? 0.56

00:40:21.600 You know they'll do that one day, you know?

00:40:23.340 Like, the star?

00:40:24.820 The, like, sort of...

00:40:27.000 The moon.

00:40:27.720 The crescent moon thing.

00:40:28.560 Yeah, the crescent moon, yeah. 1.00

00:40:31.780 Damn. 0.99

00:40:32.500 Why not? 0.99

00:40:33.320 No, no, to make it extra good, though,

00:40:35.600 it would have to be, like, a crescent moon, like, inside a Star of David

00:40:38.860 to be like, no, no, no, we're inclusive.

00:40:40.560 We're not inclusive.

00:40:41.440 No, they would not know. They hate the Jews. 0.99

00:40:43.480 No, no, no, but, like, I just feel like it would be so extra offensive 0.80

00:40:46.420 in a way that actually works with the colonizer flag

00:40:48.640 if you were to do that.

00:40:49.500 Because already, like, if we're slapping that on, like...

00:40:52.480 No, they literally would put, like, a little X in the Star of David.

00:40:56.040 They honestly would.

00:40:59.540 All right, Simone, I love you to death.

00:41:01.740 I have enjoyed talking with you,

00:41:03.360 and I am so glad to be married to you.

00:41:05.160 And I am so lucky that you are a woman

00:41:09.240 who seems to enjoy frugality to an extent

00:41:12.380 that I find frustrating when it comes to buying things for our kids.

00:41:15.100 What? I let you buy the bouncy house today.

00:41:20.100 How could you say that?

00:41:22.460 I did not.

00:41:25.320 I, well, so this is the way I was doing the cost.

00:41:28.000 Per kid, it was $25, okay?

00:41:30.820 We have four kids.

00:41:32.640 Oh, no, $50 per kid.

00:41:35.120 $50 per kid for a permanent play thing

00:41:38.300 is not that bad,

00:41:40.200 especially considering we plan to have more kids.

00:41:42.460 Permanent?

00:41:44.640 Have you met our children?

00:41:47.420 I don't get patches.

00:41:48.340 That thing had better have patches 1.00

00:41:49.520 because that thing is getting stabbed.

00:41:51.400 We've got a little indoor bouncy house

00:41:53.020 that BJ's for the kids.

00:41:55.000 But I'm like, look,

00:41:55.820 I look at what I pay for them to do things on weekends,

00:41:58.340 like go to various kids' places.

00:42:00.240 And $50 per kid is, you know,

00:42:03.160 that's like four weeks of stuff.

00:42:04.980 If we can get them better than that,

00:42:06.820 especially in the winter

00:42:07.480 when they can't go outside to play.

00:42:08.720 Yeah, I think that's big.

00:42:09.860 That's what convinced me

00:42:10.960 is I want them to still be able to exercise

00:42:12.680 and get all their energy out in the winter.

00:42:14.520 And this is going to be great for that.

00:42:16.820 I love you.

00:42:18.080 I love you too.

00:42:20.700 Good day, sir.

00:42:22.500 Good day, Rob.

00:42:24.660 Where does that come from?

00:42:25.900 What does I said good day?

00:42:27.080 Like, is that just a trope?

00:42:28.840 You lose.

00:42:30.320 Good day, sir.

00:42:32.180 I said good day.

00:42:33.100 I said good day.

00:42:34.900 I don't know.

00:42:35.380 Maybe it comes from talking to British people. 0.78

00:42:38.060 No, it's like, it just,

00:42:40.140 it comes up so much.

00:42:42.320 I wonder if it's like that trope of like,

00:42:43.920 they always use the,

00:42:44.960 like they throw in the sound of that guy going,

00:42:47.500 ah, when he falls off something,

00:42:49.620 like that sound effect being used.

00:42:51.240 And it's like,

00:42:51.760 I don't know.

00:42:53.160 All right.

00:42:53.780 Anyway, bye.

00:42:54.640 Bye.

00:42:55.160 Bye.

00:42:55.660 I'll go into the next room.

00:42:56.660 Okay.

00:42:57.320 Okay.

00:42:57.560 I love you guys.

00:43:15.120 I love you guys.

00:43:19.600 I love you guys.

00:43:22.000 I love you guys.

00:43:34.520 I love you guys.

00:43:36.260 I love you guys.

00:43:37.380 I love you guys.

00:43:39.120 I love you guys.

00:43:42.620 Bye.

00:43:43.740 Everybody comes toало.

Based Camp - November 25, 2024

Why Corporate America REALLY Went Woke

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