Based Camp - September 27, 2023


Why Did Fashion Stop Changing？


Episode Stats

Length

27 minutes

Words per Minute

187.12703

Word Count

5,080

Sentence Count

363

Misogynist Sentences

13

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary

Why have things stopped changing in fashion? Is it the internet, or is it something else entirely different? In this episode, Simone and Malcolm try to make sense of it all, and try to come up with a plausible explanation.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 It was something that you would actually change fashion and most people would have switched around several times.
00:00:05.920 It was unusual to have not changed your gender in this post-singularity culture, which is, I don't know.
00:00:16.100 I mean, Ian Banks is a very prescient author, so you never know.
00:00:20.920 I think the types of people who have that amount of flightiness will be among the populations that are bred out of our species.
00:00:27.200 I don't know, man, because in this world, men could turn into women and have babies, so their fertility rate might be pretty good.
00:00:36.420 Would you like to know more?
00:00:38.880 Hello, Malcolm.
00:00:40.320 Hello, Simone.
00:00:41.740 I was on Facebook this morning, and she always needs me to find something to mentally challenge her every day or engage her, so this is my task today.
00:00:49.400 As I said before, my life is the framing device of Arabian Nights.
00:00:54.020 If I don't find something interesting to talk to her about every day, I'm...
00:00:57.780 So, today, it was this meme that's been going around that if you look at how much fashions, cars, build, like architecture changed from like the 50s to the 60s, the 60s to the 70s, the 70s to the 80s, the 80s to the 90s.
00:01:14.460 It was really dramatic.
00:01:16.920 Like, you look at an 80s outfit versus the 90s, and these were common, you know, like common outfits.
00:01:21.920 If you were in the 90s dressed in an outfit that was common in the 80s, people would think you were like in a Halloween costume.
00:01:28.240 However, if you look at the entire period of the 2000s, and to some extent the later 90s, so 1995 till today, almost nothing has changed.
00:01:39.400 If you looked at footage of a street, like a random corner in New York, other than all the shit there now because cities are beginning to fall apart,
00:01:47.760 you would not see that much, like you wouldn't be able to tell when it took place outside of like the size of people's phones.
00:01:58.200 And this is really fascinating.
00:02:00.120 And so, the question was, why is it that I can wear an outfit from like 2002, and I can go to a party in it today, and everyone would be like,
00:02:08.120 yeah, that's like just a totally normal outfit.
00:02:11.580 Why did things stop changing?
00:02:14.240 And the default answer, and this was the answer that I came to originally, because I saw the video, I might have been primed in it,
00:02:21.000 but it's also what I was thinking, is it was the rise of the internet.
00:02:23.780 The rise of the internet just made communication so ubiquitous that there was no reason for things to change anymore.
00:02:33.200 And it became harder for things to change because it was easier to access sort of any content from that moment till the beginning of the internet.
00:02:41.600 And Simone goes, no, the answer is obvious to me, and I actually think you might be right.
00:02:47.420 Cindy, do you want to go into it?
00:02:48.660 Yeah, I'm almost certain that the lack of meaningful change in fashion is a change in basically globalization, manufacturing, and global supply chains,
00:02:59.800 which has sort of led to an optimization of clothing creation that has led to this sort of convergence in fashions where things aren't meaningfully changing.
00:03:08.640 In other words, the primary driver of distinct fashions in the past wasn't fashion itself.
00:03:15.600 It wasn't like, you know, trends or stuff that people thought was pretty.
00:03:20.700 It was more like the way that clothing was manufactured.
00:03:24.320 Now, of course, there were like weird sumptuary laws in the past that would sort of dictate who was allowed to know what.
00:03:28.920 It's kind of a sumptuary law.
00:03:29.740 A sumptuary law is basically a law saying if you're not rich, you're not allowed to do or wear or own this thing.
00:03:35.160 This one would be the color purple, for example.
00:03:37.000 The color purple, really long shoes had sumptuary laws associated with it.
00:03:41.700 I think there were some foods that had sumptuary laws.
00:03:44.740 Ermine, the fabric that you typically associate with lining a royal person's cloak, things like that.
00:03:51.840 So that might dictate fashion a little bit.
00:03:54.320 I pushed back on her when you said this first.
00:03:57.780 And I said, no, that's not true.
00:03:58.920 So I was like, look, you've got random things in the 70s where I'm thinking of what's popular then, bell bottoms or something.
00:04:05.420 How could that possibly fit into your explanation?
00:04:08.320 And you're like, actually, no.
00:04:10.280 Yeah, so actually, bell bottoms totally make sense.
00:04:12.180 So if you've ever worn a pair of vintage jeans, and I've done so recently, you're going to be like, holy shit.
00:04:18.100 Like, I cannot move in these.
00:04:19.640 They are extremely stiff.
00:04:21.580 Like, the fabric, we are not wearing jeans now.
00:04:25.020 We are wearing leggings now.
00:04:26.660 Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves.
00:04:28.440 And bell bottoms really make sense, like structurally and as jeans, when you're talking about actual old-fashioned denim, which is stiff enough to flare out.
00:04:37.480 The bell bottoms today would look a lot more like sort of wilted angels trumpets than they would look like actual bell bottoms.
00:04:44.000 Because you have an elastic sewn into the denim now.
00:04:46.500 Yeah, there's, yeah.
00:04:47.620 Our denim is interwoven with elastic to the point where it doesn't really work that way anymore.
00:04:53.020 And I think partially that's because it's cheaper.
00:04:55.040 Partially that's because it's more comfortable.
00:04:56.520 Partially that's because we're fatter.
00:04:57.600 But when you look at history and how clothing was made, it was totally like the way clothing was made that would dictate what people wore.
00:05:05.420 So when you look, and as you know, since I'm pregnant now, I'm like trying to find a way where I can stay warm in our house that we typically like to unheat in the winter, while also like being a lot larger than I normally am.
00:05:18.240 And I decided that I was going to go to sort of Renaissance styles to do it.
00:05:22.920 Oh, I've got to put some pictures up.
00:05:25.540 There isn't any flattering actual maternity clothing that's good for cold weather that looks decent.
00:05:31.180 And so instead, what I'm going to do is wear like a ton of under, like long underwear.
00:05:36.760 They look like durables.
00:05:38.380 Yeah.
00:05:38.700 Well, there's a corset.
00:05:39.780 And then you're wearing like a long underdress.
00:05:41.980 You have a skirt.
00:05:42.680 There's all these layers.
00:05:43.540 But like everything.
00:05:44.540 It's not a tight corset.
00:05:44.640 It's like a structure thing.
00:05:46.180 Yeah.
00:05:46.440 It's a, yeah.
00:05:47.200 It's a, it's a, it's a sewn on sort of structured shirt.
00:05:49.600 But when you look at the pieces of this, these old patterns, what you typically have is a chemise, which is like a, a very unstructured, like undershirt that a man or a woman would wear.
00:06:00.780 That's something that's really easy to sew at home.
00:06:02.700 And like all the outer parts that were more structured were like sort of cutouts of clothing that would often just be sewn together.
00:06:08.860 Like the different parts were sewn together and you would sew yourself into your outfit or lace yourself into your outfit.
00:06:13.560 And this was all stuff that people made at home, often with homespun cloth.
00:06:17.720 And so things are more structured.
00:06:19.060 The way that they work is more structured.
00:06:20.360 And then as you go to more manufactured clothing, you move to these different styles that are really made possible by new forms of technology.
00:06:26.840 New types of looms, new types of fabric.
00:06:28.920 You can see like when wool takes over from linen and popularity, things start to change.
00:06:33.660 You can see this from region to region as well and how that influences fashion.
00:06:37.580 And when you look at, for example, Chinese and Japanese fashion, because the fabrics they're using are so different, they look really different.
00:06:43.720 And it's not because, oh, you know, we have these incredibly different standards.
00:06:47.640 You do see some universal things like fashions often emphasize gender dimorphic elements of men and women.
00:06:54.080 That's fine. And they often also emphasize whatever seems to be expensive because you're trying to fling wealth.
00:07:00.520 But the fabric that's available in an economy is going to dictate what those fashions look like.
00:07:05.560 And a lot of the differences are based on what's available.
00:07:07.780 So, of course, it makes sense that as we enter this globalized world, we're going to see a huge effect in homogenization of fashion, both over time and across regions,
00:07:17.000 because we're starting to use the same supply chains, the same fabrics, the same everything.
00:07:23.200 And so you're not going to see meaningful variation.
00:07:25.440 A great example of this that you're talking about is early in comic books.
00:07:30.620 Today, when we look at those characters, we like they look like they're in underwear, right?
00:07:35.040 Like early comic books.
00:07:36.620 But what was actually being highlighted in those early comic books is that they were wearing elastic and nylon,
00:07:42.460 which were two seen as very like sci-fi and advanced technologies.
00:07:46.980 They were brand new technologies at the time.
00:07:49.760 And so to us, it just looks like normal underwear.
00:07:52.320 But to them, they're like, look at this tight-fitting, form-fitting clothing.
00:07:55.640 It's so advanced.
00:07:57.620 And yeah, so I think that we often underestimate how new many of these technologies are.
00:08:04.260 And so what you're really arguing is the change in fashion was downstream of the industrialization of society.
00:08:16.180 And society was still in many ways industrializing until we reached true globalization.
00:08:23.180 And that in today's world, if we're talking about fashion trends,
00:08:27.740 what we should really be thinking about is online avatars and stuff like that.
00:08:32.500 And that's where we are going to most likely see the most interesting fashion trends
00:08:36.520 because that's where technology is advancing the most.
00:08:39.100 And in many ways, we actually do.
00:08:42.700 So let's think here.
00:08:44.220 You know, obviously furries, you could consider sort of like a fashion trend almost was an online environment.
00:08:49.280 But remember when there was the, do you know the way?
00:08:53.020 Oh, God.
00:08:53.480 That's great.
00:08:53.920 Was it an online environment?
00:08:54.820 Did people know the, how did the full thing go?
00:08:57.680 Was it Uganda?
00:08:58.880 Yeah.
00:08:59.060 It was like, but everybody would wear these knuckles from Sonic and Knuckles,
00:09:02.500 but deformed knuckles skins when they were in VR environments and interacting with each other.
00:09:08.580 And this became like a thing.
00:09:09.920 And then you would get different fashions for your profile photos.
00:09:13.960 So a big example here, if we're talking about like expensive fashions,
00:09:17.700 was when people would buy NFTs of those early like crypto punks, right?
00:09:24.200 Or what's it called?
00:09:25.660 Lazy monkeys?
00:09:26.620 What do they call them?
00:09:28.040 Bored apes.
00:09:28.600 Yes, homeless monkeys is what I was thinking.
00:09:32.360 Anyway, bored apes.
00:09:34.140 So bored apes, right?
00:09:35.420 And those aren't really tied to any historic fashion event.
00:09:39.660 And yet they were totally unique to their time period and tied to technology.
00:09:44.660 Very interesting point.
00:09:46.920 Sorry, I just had these realizations as you were talking about this.
00:09:50.400 You could argue that the meaningful advances in technology that we have seen since the 90s involve things like smart watches.
00:09:57.280 Maybe, I don't know, I was going to say more like advanced versions of tattoos, but they're still so unusual.
00:10:02.860 Maybe it's going to be neural implants.
00:10:04.940 Maybe it's going to be more advanced tattoos once they actually come out.
00:10:08.900 Like actually when I, one of the most unique fashion differentiators in sci-fi that I've read across multiple books now is animated tattoos.
00:10:18.520 Because I think it's really hard to describe someone's fashion in a way that to a reader will feel futuristic.
00:10:25.260 And I think that's because we sort of ended up in this like hyper-optimized world that just doesn't feel that unique.
00:10:33.640 You want to throw people off?
00:10:34.620 This is what I suggest you do, Simone, going forwards.
00:10:36.940 You need to get a little bit of like metal technology stuff that makes it look like you have a brain implant and then just glue it on your head before you get a brain implant.
00:10:44.240 And tell people that you have a brain implant and don't believe it.
00:10:48.120 They'll be like, oh, they know people who could give them an implant.
00:10:50.720 Be like, it's experiments.
00:10:51.800 We can't really talk about the group that did it.
00:10:53.740 Especially if I'll shave a patch of my head and glue it in.
00:10:57.080 Like really go all the way.
00:10:58.460 Oh yeah, you've got to really go all the way and be like, that's my...
00:11:01.060 Extra points if it has some, like we can put a little like LED lights in it.
00:11:05.000 Oh, you want to have some fluid like flowing through it?
00:11:07.560 Oh yeah, if it like leaks a little bit, especially if it's a little bloody around the edges.
00:11:12.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit of leaking blood down the side.
00:11:15.540 Yes.
00:11:15.700 You're like, ah.
00:11:17.180 Yes.
00:11:17.780 I don't take my immunosuppressants sometimes happens, but you know, it's the price we pay for being able to read your mind.
00:11:28.300 Yeah, I wonder.
00:11:29.220 So prosthetics, I could argue, is an interesting evolution of you could argue fashion though.
00:11:37.360 Well, yeah, I mean, an interesting thing is some people have become like,
00:11:41.460 I don't know if you've heard of this movement, but like people identify as like needing prosthetics.
00:11:46.720 You know, the same way like people identify as trans, they identify as needing prosthetics, even if they don't.
00:11:50.560 And they actually will go get surgeries to get like limbs removed and stuff.
00:11:54.400 So that they then can fit their identity of a disabled person.
00:11:59.960 Yeah.
00:12:00.660 Gosh, but what is...
00:12:02.360 I'm really actually curious now.
00:12:03.940 What is the next meaningful...
00:12:06.400 I remember like Google glasses, you know, when they first came out.
00:12:09.960 ...transness as a change in...
00:12:14.220 Technology-driven change in fashion.
00:12:16.740 Yes.
00:12:18.160 Yeah, I guess when you can't change fashion anymore, you can change your gender, which is meaningful.
00:12:22.840 In Ian Banks' culture series, by the way, it was very normal for humans to change their gender for 10 years
00:12:28.960 and then change back and then change their gender again because they'd like to be able to have a baby
00:12:32.600 and gestate it and then change back.
00:12:34.880 It was something that you would actually change fashion.
00:12:37.580 And most people would have switched around several times.
00:12:41.100 It was unusual to have not changed your gender in this...
00:12:43.960 In this like post-singularity culture.
00:12:48.100 Which is...
00:12:50.100 I don't know.
00:12:50.920 I mean, Ian Banks is a very prescient author, so you never know.
00:12:55.740 I think the types of people who have that amount of flightiness will be among the populations that are bred out of our species.
00:13:02.720 I don't know, man.
00:13:03.660 Because in this world, men could turn into women and have babies.
00:13:08.700 So their fertility rate might be pretty good.
00:13:11.140 Another thing that I recall...
00:13:12.500 I genuinely think if you talk about the sustainable cultures that are going to survive,
00:13:16.620 they're going to be much closer likely to caste systems.
00:13:19.420 I don't know, man.
00:13:20.220 I don't know.
00:13:21.120 I think, honestly, fine, change your gender.
00:13:23.420 A post-gender world, to me, is way better.
00:13:26.460 And that feels like a post-gender world.
00:13:27.920 Just like switching it out when you feel like it.
00:13:29.460 But a caste system with baby farms is also a post-gender world.
00:13:32.920 That is gross and exploitative and I don't like it.
00:13:36.020 No, it sounds...
00:13:36.820 You don't like it.
00:13:37.880 But it would be...
00:13:39.400 This is the thing.
00:13:40.600 You don't like it likely due to genetic predilections.
00:13:43.280 We could select those out of people who come from the farm.
00:13:46.220 Oh, God.
00:13:46.860 Oh, God.
00:13:47.880 Yeah.
00:13:48.440 But you probably wouldn't need to.
00:13:50.260 I mean, it's not like we've bred chickens who love being in battery cages.
00:13:53.680 It's not like we've bred cows that love being in very constrained environments.
00:13:58.160 I actually don't know that we've done that.
00:14:01.180 So, yeah, it's like a major problem with chickens that are supposed to be free range
00:14:06.000 is that they open the cages and they just never leave.
00:14:08.980 It's a very cheap way to raise free range chickens.
00:14:11.220 We have chicken breeds that are very free range-y.
00:14:14.520 And then we have other chicken breeds that are just kind of witless.
00:14:16.860 And I think we actually have some of those chickens.
00:14:19.440 You know, one of the breeds we have, you're always complaining about how witless they are
00:14:22.880 and how they just want to sit in their thing all day.
00:14:24.980 They are very dumb.
00:14:27.360 They are extremely dumb birds.
00:14:28.920 But I love them.
00:14:29.680 It's fine.
00:14:30.540 I think another element of fashion driven by technology that will change significantly
00:14:34.980 is plastic surgery.
00:14:36.600 I think we are already seeing the effects of it.
00:14:39.200 Maybe filters plus plastic surgery.
00:14:41.500 Like, you can also see people significantly altering the way that they look using filters online.
00:14:47.560 But then in addition to that, plastic surgery definitely is going to change, you know,
00:14:50.820 what we can do with our bodies.
00:14:52.020 And in Scott Westerfield's Ugly series, which is a teen dystopian sci-fi series,
00:14:57.400 what many people do is they'll get surgery to get anime eyes.
00:15:01.220 They will look significantly weirdly different.
00:15:04.340 So maybe that's sort of the final frontier.
00:15:07.000 It's just, it's not gender modification per se.
00:15:09.660 It's all forms of body modification.
00:15:11.520 Well, it might be, another way to word this is in the online sphere,
00:15:15.140 our primary presence to other people,
00:15:17.980 the primary way we're interacting with other people is through avatars.
00:15:20.920 And that there will be less pressure for individual fashion to evolve.
00:15:26.880 Could be.
00:15:28.120 Yeah.
00:15:28.840 COVID in some ways felt like it killed fashion.
00:15:31.500 In some ways felt like it accelerated it.
00:15:33.280 I don't know what to think.
00:15:34.880 But yeah, I mean, and is it just fashion?
00:15:37.140 Or have global supply chains therefore also homogenized many other elements of society?
00:15:42.880 Well, I think they have.
00:15:46.160 Yeah.
00:15:46.560 I mean, I think that the dominant, it could also be,
00:15:49.380 you said that the dominant cultural group has so much more power now than it's ever had historically.
00:15:53.600 And it's very interested in preventing anything from evolving or changing.
00:15:58.100 Is it like power is consolidating around a very inefficient system that I think the masses realize is inefficient and stupid.
00:16:06.020 And they want to end and they lack the power to change it.
00:16:10.560 Don't worry.
00:16:11.100 We'll handle it for you guys.
00:16:12.800 We'll change it.
00:16:13.780 We'll fix it.
00:16:14.720 It'll be handled soon.
00:16:15.600 Don't worry.
00:16:16.480 These people in power are at least as witless as they appear on TV.
00:16:21.580 Yeah.
00:16:24.880 Hmm.
00:16:25.780 I wonder.
00:16:29.800 Hold on.
00:16:30.380 I lost my thought.
00:16:31.000 Hold on.
00:16:31.660 Now I had like a little, a little stroke where I just completely forgot who I am.
00:16:37.440 I am Simone Collins.
00:16:38.600 I am having a conversation with my husband, Malcolm Collins.
00:16:42.780 What, what am I here for?
00:16:44.320 What is my purpose?
00:16:45.720 You were talking about fashion?
00:16:47.540 No.
00:16:47.920 Yeah.
00:16:48.100 Yes.
00:16:48.380 What was, what's going to change?
00:16:50.000 What is going to change?
00:16:50.980 Or what it will stop changing.
00:16:52.480 So what I think is really interesting about this concept with fashion, but then also like
00:16:56.200 more broadly is that we think, I think we're, we're in this mindset of, oh, we're now in
00:17:01.740 this world where everything's accelerating.
00:17:03.620 Like we, we are already in the singularity.
00:17:05.760 Things have already changed past a point of no return.
00:17:08.680 Smartphones and the internet have revolutionized so much.
00:17:11.100 So you get this impression that, oh no, no, no, we're in this period of constant flux.
00:17:14.960 And in many ways we are right in terms of the technology that we're being introduced to.
00:17:18.000 It is, it is game changing.
00:17:20.980 But then it's something that I've never really explored mentally before is this concept.
00:17:24.940 Well, that, okay, while that has happened, while all this has happened, technology and
00:17:29.460 globalization have also slowed down the rate of change.
00:17:33.140 Almost like they're locking us into a current mode that is optimal per current global supply
00:17:38.860 chains and the internet.
00:17:40.200 What do you think?
00:17:40.820 Was it sort of a big hurry up, but stop kind of situation that we're in now?
00:17:45.120 Well, yeah.
00:17:46.400 I mean, I do think that many supply chains have been optimized.
00:17:48.920 I agree that we're, we're entering a point where you look at, I mean, look at the way
00:17:52.880 I'm dressed.
00:17:53.340 Like it's a polo, right?
00:17:54.480 Like it's about as much of a degradation as you can have from the idea of a full button
00:18:01.160 down shirt where it has all the ease, but still some semblance of button downness.
00:18:06.800 So it has some semblance of being a formal outfit, you know, glasses, right?
00:18:13.780 Like, I guess you could have contacts, which are more, but they scare me to put in.
00:18:19.240 I don't know.
00:18:19.580 Maybe there's contacts that don't scare people to put in, but I don't like touching my eye.
00:18:24.140 So I think you couldn't make any of the things we're wearing.
00:18:28.360 I've got my elastic-y jeans.
00:18:30.560 I've got my form-fitting yellow boots that I wear because kids can spot me easily and
00:18:36.240 they match the kids and they like that.
00:18:38.240 Like all of the aspects of what I'm wearing, I just don't think could be made any simpler
00:18:43.520 without losing some tie to what we consider formality, because you're always going to
00:18:49.720 judge some clothes as informal and some clothes as formal.
00:18:52.660 And so, you know, I think today the way we see formal clothes is, oh, collar must be
00:18:58.180 formal to some extent, right?
00:18:59.980 I could go to a t-shirt, but then a t-shirt would have a level of informality that, yeah,
00:19:06.000 there's just no differentiation.
00:19:07.420 You could argue that Star Trek uniforms are basically just athleisure, but they denote
00:19:12.140 formality because they denote like military rank.
00:19:15.460 So you could argue that something like a caste system or sanctuary laws would then be able
00:19:21.480 to dictate formality in a post-structured clothing era.
00:19:26.540 Well, what are NFTs if not a form of sumptuary law?
00:19:29.720 So sumptuary laws are about gatekeeping.
00:19:34.920 Well, everyone can purchase basically anything, right?
00:19:38.440 Which is where we are in society right now.
00:19:40.260 I can purchase things that look basically like Louis Vuitton at a very inexpensive price
00:19:44.440 because there is no longer any gatekeeping around that, right?
00:19:47.780 So NFTs allow you to gatekeep access to social status signalers that cost an enormous amount.
00:20:00.980 So you can show true, I guess, financial waste or possibility for financial, yeah.
00:20:08.880 Yeah, it's a gatekeeping thing.
00:20:13.180 What else do you think is most meaningfully not changed?
00:20:16.520 I mean, I like this concept because when you first told me that fashion has not changed since
00:20:20.760 the 90s, I'm like, no, I've watched like a million commentators and talk about all the
00:20:24.760 different, but yeah, meaningfully, structurally, fabric wise, we're not really seeing that much
00:20:28.620 differentiation.
00:20:29.620 So I agree with you, but I'm curious, is there some other area in which we actually feel like
00:20:33.880 we've been changing a lot, but we've not?
00:20:35.300 Maybe, oh, well, you could think in terms of celebrities.
00:20:38.480 So this is an interesting thing.
00:20:40.280 Okay.
00:20:40.840 But celebrities, there haven't really been new celebrities that have risen in the past 15
00:20:46.020 years or so.
00:20:47.160 There haven't.
00:20:49.180 If you were in the 90s, it was one boy band.
00:20:52.520 And then three years later, it was another boy band.
00:20:54.820 And then three years later, it was another boy band.
00:20:57.260 You just went through cycles of who was famous at the time.
00:21:00.420 You would have, you know, one pop star, one pop star, one pop star.
00:21:04.220 You just cycle today, the movie stars, too.
00:21:09.700 You know, you look at who are the top movie stars today.
00:21:12.120 If I ask even a young person to name the top movie stars today, many of them are going
00:21:16.340 to be movie stars that would have been famous movie stars in the 90s.
00:21:20.320 Yeah.
00:21:20.400 Now there's all this discussion of using AI to just make them look younger again or continue
00:21:24.700 using.
00:21:25.220 Keep them forever, right?
00:21:26.700 Yeah.
00:21:27.200 Why have we not had new movie stars arise?
00:21:30.240 What I mean, I actually had a cousin who was really trying to like make himself happen
00:21:34.780 for a while and a neighbor when I was young, who actually probably was the closest thing
00:21:39.000 to a new movie star before he blew up as well.
00:21:40.800 It was Armie Hammer was the neighbor when I was younger.
00:21:43.160 And the cousin was Miles Fisher, who worked really hard to try to build himself into a star
00:21:47.440 and actually has done very well in business since then.
00:21:50.720 He now runs or is on the board of some big AI company he started.
00:21:54.640 He's killing it.
00:21:55.140 So, hey, I love that my family is competent, even when they spend their whole life in acting
00:22:00.240 and then they're like, he used to specialize in pretending to be, what's his name?
00:22:03.900 Tom Cruise.
00:22:04.980 He did, you've seen the, what's the video?
00:22:06.720 It became a meme for a while.
00:22:08.900 It was based on American Psycho, right?
00:22:10.660 Yeah.
00:22:10.880 The American Psycho fake meme thing that was like a music video of that.
00:22:15.900 Yeah.
00:22:16.040 Anyway.
00:22:17.180 So yeah, some, I appreciate their competence, but I actually wonder if the ceiling for him
00:22:23.060 breaking out was actually not that he wasn't successful or he didn't have the chops to
00:22:28.580 break out.
00:22:29.420 It was like, it stagnated.
00:22:31.180 The stars were no longer being generated during the period where he was trying to break into
00:22:36.100 that space.
00:22:37.900 And so why, why is it no longer any new stars?
00:22:41.760 I mean, part of this could be tied to pronatalism, you know, as you have an aging society, everyone
00:22:46.740 is focused on the last generation.
00:22:48.800 Everyone is focused on the last generation to have kids, right?
00:22:51.440 And as you don't have a huge financial pressure for kids, you could also say this might be
00:22:57.740 tied to streaming services.
00:22:59.360 Like maybe nothing really feels like, if I look at like the one star group that actually
00:23:03.600 has broken out, it's the cast of Stranger Things, right?
00:23:06.160 Like they're continuing to move up, right?
00:23:08.200 Yeah.
00:23:08.780 Yeah.
00:23:09.160 But that was like the one like big breakout I can think of, right?
00:23:12.380 And you also make a really good point though, about it's not just stars, it's also content
00:23:16.160 that we're doing so many prequels and sequels and using a lot of existing properties.
00:23:20.380 So you could argue that story creativity is way down too.
00:23:24.740 Yeah.
00:23:25.080 And is that a supply chain issue?
00:23:26.980 Is that a creativity issue?
00:23:28.920 No, I mean, we could try to become, also this could apply to us becoming public figures.
00:23:34.280 How do we achieve that?
00:23:35.980 My suspicion is I can only achieve it by pissing people off.
00:23:38.880 I can only achieve it by being controversial.
00:23:41.220 Because that seems to be the one way you grab public attention now.
00:23:45.420 The people who solidify their power by saying what is approved of by society, they are able
00:23:53.940 to do that either because of who their parents are or because of their, you know, some sort
00:23:59.200 of level of ability to publicly disperse an opinion that had accrued to them via, you know,
00:24:07.020 moving up in the old system, or it could be like TikTok because they're like a hot girl
00:24:10.280 or something, I suppose.
00:24:11.880 But unfortunately, I have tried my hardest to become a hot girl, but it's just, I can't
00:24:18.160 will myself to do it.
00:24:20.140 Can't go all the way.
00:24:21.620 Can't go all the way.
00:24:22.640 Yeah.
00:24:23.120 Yeah.
00:24:23.440 But maybe we are the next level of attainability, a happy married couple with kids.
00:24:29.020 You know, as I say, it was the popularity of shows like Spy Family and stuff like that.
00:24:34.300 It makes me think that that is the new unattainable desire in society.
00:24:41.260 Could that be the high status thing?
00:24:42.580 I mean, Trad Wives definitely didn't exist as a thing in the 90s.
00:24:47.140 You know, Cottage Core, these are things I look at and I guess I find very appealing myself,
00:24:52.340 but they existed as vague ideals, but not something that anyone was really striving for.
00:24:59.020 In the past, you mean, or like now?
00:25:01.060 Yeah.
00:25:01.300 Did people have a name for being a Trad Wife in the 90s?
00:25:05.460 Being a wife?
00:25:06.580 I don't think so.
00:25:07.180 No.
00:25:07.420 Yeah.
00:25:07.560 It would probably be seen as like more crunchy old woman hippie-ish.
00:25:11.640 You know what I mean?
00:25:12.320 Like only people's mothers who just never left that crunchy hippie phase would be doing it,
00:25:18.600 you know, like homesteading.
00:25:20.860 So, yeah.
00:25:21.620 Would they call it like a 1950s wife or an anti-feminist or something?
00:25:25.000 Is that what it would have been called?
00:25:26.740 I guess.
00:25:27.860 Yeah.
00:25:28.100 I really don't know.
00:25:29.020 But yeah, I'm curious to see what people say in the comments, if they think that other
00:25:33.580 things have really slowed down along with fashion and if the way that we're-
00:25:38.200 Scientific developments have slowed down significantly, but I think that's the academic system.
00:25:42.660 Yes, they have.
00:25:44.680 Well, could it just be that we don't have as many smart people who are able to come up
00:25:47.600 with new ideas anymore?
00:25:49.900 Or new ideas are getting punished?
00:25:51.320 No, with fashion, I know.
00:25:52.480 No, with fashion, it's so obvious.
00:25:54.100 It's materials and it's methods of production.
00:25:57.400 I mean, to a certain extent, it's also like societal expectations around how much clothing
00:26:00.820 you own.
00:26:01.260 Like in the 1950s, we'd already gotten to a point of a little bit more mass production and
00:26:05.420 a lot more ready-to-wear clothing being sold, but it was still something that you would tailor.
00:26:09.120 And people still made a lot of clothing at home.
00:26:10.860 And also the expectation was that you'd spend a lot of money and have very few garments.
00:26:14.780 Whereas now the amount of money that a household spends on clothing is trivially small.
00:26:19.760 And most of the clothing that people buy only lasts four or five machine washes, at least if
00:26:23.700 they're women.
00:26:24.720 No, literally, they're just like rags that dissolve.
00:26:27.220 Well, I think you don't do that.
00:26:28.560 That's disgusting.
00:26:30.040 It sucks.
00:26:32.180 Moral negative.
00:26:34.580 Yeah, it's bad.
00:26:35.720 But anyway, yeah, this is interesting.
00:26:37.300 I don't know if we have like a clear conclusion or anything, but this is just, I'm going to
00:26:44.160 be thinking about this for a long time.
00:26:45.440 So thank you for sharing what you saw on Facebook with me this morning.
00:26:49.140 I love it.
00:26:50.160 I love you.
00:26:51.460 And I love that you challenged me to try to come up with new ideas or find challenges
00:26:55.700 that we don't understand so we can explore them together and keep our brains sharp and
00:27:00.460 growing.
00:27:00.900 I love you too, Malcolm.
00:27:05.020 Okay, next one is a summary.
00:27:06.860 Is that right?
00:27:08.520 Yes.