In this insightful video, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into the complex ethical considerations surrounding parents showcasing their children on social media platforms. They explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of raising children in the public eye, addressing concerns about privacy, consent, and the long-term impact on a child's future. The couple discusses the importance of age-appropriate media exposure, the need for open communication and education, and the value of building a strong family brand in an increasingly connected world. They also touch on the role of social media followings in creating opportunities, fostering trust, and navigating a changing societal landscape. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone emphasize the significance of parental responsibility, adaptability, and the development of resilience in children growing up in the digital age.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I claiming there are no ethical issues here? No, I'm very clearly not. I'm saying there are ethical issues, but what people on the other side of this argument are
pretending, which is just false in a lie is that there are no potential upsides for the kid from this. I'm doing is I am contrasting the upsides with the downsides . That they have the environment to start their lives with decent sized social media followings within wealthy intellectual circles, the doors that is going to open for them. And this is something that we also haven't talked enough about in society, social media followings and the ability to translate these into high value relationships.
Simone Collins: if we live in a future in which Society's current vetting systems are bankrupt and don't work anymore. The only way that you can really build trust and have people expect you to deliver on what you [00:01:00] promise is if they feel like they know you and can trust you and you're predictable because trust lies in predictability.
And the only way that they can know that is if they have some kind of access to your thought process or they have a parasocial relationship with you. And the only way to do that is if you have a very open and transparent media history.
Malcolm Collins: And we want to have kids whose lives matter. If you are afraid of people making fun of you online, Your life won't matter
Simone Collins: because
Malcolm Collins: you can't do anything publicly.
And it's very hard to change the world if you don't do things publicly
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello everyone I am excited to be here with you today. Today. We are going to be talking about the ethics of putting children in media and the Considerations that need to go into this because a lot of people might look at what we are doing we are a very public family. We are in the news all the time these days which is funny because
our channel is medium size, but not really correlatory to how [00:02:00] publicly famous we are getting. But again, just this last weekend, like the big three page front page piece in the guardian. And then a bunch of follow up pieces to that and then trending and and so people are like, wow, your kids are in all of these, like in the Vice documentary, right?
This little baby right here is in the media because she is in this shot.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And I watch a lot of snark online. A lot of the snark there's a big theme and people criticizing parents who include their children in TikTok and Instagram and YouTube posts, et cetera. And whenever they include clips that they're criticizing, they blur out.
The poor baby's faces, because they've been included in the shot. And even when they're trying to critique the video, they themselves do not want to repeat the crime of putting a child's face online, which to a certain extent, I understand the basics of where they're coming from.
For example on Google photos, which uses facial recognition, it is able to recognize the faces of. Baby versions [00:03:00] of very old people. Like it is very good at continuous face facial recognition. So it's not Oh, it's a, it's them as a baby. No one will know that this was them. Oh, actually they will.
There is no not parsing that, but also you and I have been talking a lot about this recently, this concept of privacy. Is such a farce and often to a great extent, trying to be more private and trying to hide is only subjecting. I'm going
Malcolm Collins: to push back on you here from their perspective.
Simone Collins: Yeah, you can say
Malcolm Collins: that as an adult privacy is a farce to adults. Okay. Yeah. Which is very hard to actually both be private and have an impact on the world in this current world. You can be private, but you are sacrificing your ability to impact society by doing that. Yeah. However, and I think that most like sane ethical systems believe some form of social impact is a personal obligation.
I can see how there could be like hedonist based ethical systems or like weird ones where like your family is literally the only thing that matters. But your [00:04:00] family is going to have to deal with downstream consequences of a society you didn't alter. So that's silly to me. So as an adult, yeah. I believe that privacy is a silly thing to strive for, but you could keep our children from appearing in any media.
Like I could genuinely achieve that in the way that the world is structured today. So why Delta? Hmm. Okay. Now let's talk about the ethical position that they're arguing from, right? They're saying the child did not consent being in media. And therefore the child. should not be in media, right?
Which is a fairly stupid argument. Children do not consent to the vast majority of parental decisions made around them.
Simone Collins: They did not consent to broccoli. They did not consent to bedtime. They did not consent to. Exactly. Many things.
Malcolm Collins: So that's [00:05:00] just stupid. Like the consent argument around kids appearing in media is stupid.
Simone Collins: But they would argue broccoli and bedtime are good for you. Media is. But
Malcolm Collins: that's their judgment. And this is what we're fundamentally going to argue by the end of this video is that I suspect that the core value source in our society going forwards, especially like accreditation source with the universities, is Collapsing as trusted sources of accreditation.
Cause I've seen this more and more just nobody trusts the universities. Like they've gone way too far on DEI. They've basically become these extremist cults. Nobody really sees them as a good source of an individual's value anymore. Where do people. And then it's then what about like designer brands, no longer like this sort of scarcity around fancy clothes, no longer has value anymore.
It's what is luxury? What is value today? Because we have now, I think, cross correlated luxury with. Signs of this is somebody you should [00:06:00] pay attention to which is the way historically used to be the guy who walked into the village with all the beads on him and all the gold on him what he was showing Is I'm someone you should pay attention to you.
I am someone you should
Simone Collins: well really to boil it down someone who Actually has wealth or luxury has a scarce commodity. And right now branded luxury goods are not a scarce commodity. A lot of these other things, prestigious university degrees are becoming less scarce as a commodity. For example, there are a lot of people claiming that they have a Harvard degrees because they've gone to a Harvard extension program.
They just stretch it a little bit and, other universities have really loosened their. Admission criteria, right? So carry on.
Malcolm Collins: So it's scarce quantities. But in this current world order, the, it seems to be sorting towards the core thing of value and the core sign of competence and the core thing that opens doors from you is.
is subscriber count. Basically, it's how many people are paying attention to you in online environment. Please and subscribe. No but I mean that very [00:07:00] seriously, right?
Simone Collins: I would say it's that or Other means of proving value. Like I, I built this thing that created this much in wealth, or I am able to turn this thing into money.
So you have to just prove value or prove reach. And I think, reach is a sign of proven value and that's what we're looking at. You can no longer just use someone's vetting or someone's someone else's possessions to get there.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, there are, I would say it's. There are other means, but it's mostly proven reach.
If you look at what's the richest person in the world doing with his money, Elon Musk, he's buying Twitter slash X, right? He is buying something that gives him control of the flow of information because that is the key thing about, especially as we move into an economy was more AI where human labor has a different value than it did in a historic context where like human information labor is less important The human creative labor where creativity [00:08:00] isn't defined in the narrow sense it was historically, which is to say around narrow like pictures, which it turns out we're just like averages basically, or art, which it turned out was averages or music because all of this was very easy for AI to replicate. But, nuanced conversation and interpretation of what's going on in a global context and philosophical and cultural, like the type of information that we are providing people with or the type of entertainment we are providing people with, we loop our children into this at an early age and they come out with the large followings, basically starting their lives, what people are from our perspective, arguing against our kids having right is it's almost in the last generation.
It's like we have prepaid for our kids to go to Harvard, but they also absolutely have to go to Harvard. And you can say, what if your kids don't want to go to Harvard? I'm like, that's a [00:09:00] possibility. A lot of people in the world might not want to go to Harvard. Yeah. But. on the edge. If I told the kid I didn't know if you'd want to go to Harvard or not, so I didn't pre pay and secure your acceptance, the vast majority of people would be like, fuming.
Are you insane? How dare you deny me this opportunity that I had so set in stone for some sort of bizarre I wasn't sure if you'd want it or not. That is the way that we relate to this concept. So we can look at the counters. It's what if your kids don't want this, right? So you need to look at the actual, because we're very consequentialist in our ethics.
What are the actual consequences, negative consequences to our kids?
For being in media and stuff like that. I can
Simone Collins: walk, I can walk through some of that. And I think this is where the nuance comes in that people aren't willing to discuss. And a lot of this is similar to what we saw with corporal punishment, where there's a lot of people who are like under no circumstances, can this thing ever be done?[00:10:00]
And then on the other end, you have people who take it too far after hearing that it's okay, or thinking that it's okay. And there has to be a happy medium. So the top critiques that I hear when people are criticizing this is one, parents are bringing up subjects that these kids probably really don't want.
to have their parents talking about my daughter just had her first period. Now I'm picking up tampons for her and we're going to go have the talk on how she's going to use them. And, as a teenager, maybe that's not something that she really wants to have heard, or, people talk about, with eight passengers, obviously Ruby Frank was having conversations with her kids when her kids were even quite openly and verbally signaling that they did not want to have those conversations on the plane.
Camera. So there are instances in which there's active lack of consent. There are instances in which embarrassing things are happening. There are instances in which the kid is okay with it at the time, but in the future, you're pretty sure, like 80 to 90 percent confidence that person is not going to be happy to have that video content out there.
Cause it's just embarrassing. And then there's the [00:11:00] instance or the issue of financial exploitation and already States, I think like California have legislation that require Parents that are making money from content with their kids in them have to set aside a certain amount of income for their kids.
But this is far from, universal legislation. And I imagine that many parents that should be compensating their children for the income that they're getting using their children are not doing so, and just using their children.
Malcolm Collins: So I want to push against all of these points because go ahead.
Okay. I'll explain why they're dumb. So first you've got to look at different age ranges. And stuff like that. Yeah,
Simone Collins: absolutely.
Malcolm Collins: So suppose industry, the one who's in the shot right now wants to be a private person when she gets older within no like normative or logically consistent ethical system, could she be concerned that something that she did at this age is going to be used against her as an adult?
Like
Simone Collins: what is the effect? What about that girl who tweeted those, that the hummus or, But the girl who [00:12:00] tweeted really insensitive and very racially bad things, racist things. And then her father's business was completely shut down. I've forgotten his name. Do you think industry is going to be tweeting anything?
Malcolm Collins: No. Are you out of your mind? But what I'm saying though is there are instances of kids doing things that come no. The point I'm making is you need to divide by age ranges. Okay? Huh.
Simone Collins: Huh.
Malcolm Collins: Anything below I'd say the age of probably about six just isn't going to affect you as an adult.
Maybe even the age of seven. Anything below the age of seven. Yeah, I'll go seven. Anything below the age of seven, just know it. They're like a seven year old. That's probably fair. Yeah, and they're probably not All the things people are like,
Simone Collins: that's fine. Tweeting anti And
Malcolm Collins: you could be like what if the kids walking around screaming racial obscenities or something like that?
Simone Collins: One, It's more a reflection of the parents than anything. It's more a
Malcolm Collins: reflection of the parents. It's going to be a general problem anyway, if they're that sort of person. When they're that young,
Simone Collins: again.
Malcolm Collins: And whether or not they're online, it is not a problem that their [00:13:00] parents made a mistake there. Their parents made a mistake somewhere if that's happening, okay?
The point is that under the age of seven, Or so there's they're just not going to be held responsible for any of their actions once they decide to become private and all of this stuff can really be disintermediated from their adult identity. So it is largely irrelevant, especially when there is a potential positive for them.
Now we're going to deal with the tricky age. Okay. And this is the age you were talking about. Yeah, this is like seven to maybe 11. Oh, you're saying tween
Simone Collins: years, really? I thought it was when that sort of, I would say from 13 to adulthood. No,
Malcolm Collins: I actually don't think there's any. And so we'll take out the tween years and then we'll just jump to the next age range to explain why it's not ethically complicated.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: The sort of. I'd say 11 and up. So let's say 12 and over. These are [00:14:00] fully cognitively human things. They can decline consent whenever they want. They can say, I don't want to appear on film. And if they say, I don't want to appear on film, I think it is the parent's duty to respect that.
And I think honestly, in most cases, except when you're dealing with like actual crazy people, like the eight passenger situation, most parents respect that. Yeah. If a kid says, I don't wanna
Simone Collins: line there, you say, if a kid ever says no, I would even say, what if a five YEAROLD or 4-year-old says no, then we don't, we would never put them on camera.
Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But I don't look, what I would say is. A four year old not saying no, even if they might have said no, if they were more cognitive is not relevant to me because there's no real negative repercussions for their actions. No one's going to
Simone Collins: judge them for the thing that they might've said no to.
Right.
Malcolm Collins: So irrelevant. And then you could be like, yeah, but what if a 12 or 13 year old is they they say yes, but then they do something stupid, like something racist or something like overly sexually aggressive or And it's and then they have to deal with repercussions for that when [00:15:00] they're older.
It's excuse me. What about me when I was 20, if I did stuff like that? And then I had to deal with repercussions for it when I'm like a totally different person. Now people change over time. All I can do is try to inform my kids as much about the world as possible and hope that they make good decisions.
The fact that they might need to if my 12 year old murders someone, are they not supposed to be long term responsible for that? Be realistic people. So I really just don't see a lot of ethical consequences there. Like we are giving our kids the chance as fully mentally developed beings.
Not fully, but like they're on the way to full mental development and they have the ability to decline consent and the record, the historic record is going to be judging them with that in mind. So as an example, recently, I saw there was somebody trying to cancel Turkey Top for saying something Using racial slurs when he was 15 or 16 on like Twitter threats.
Now, he wasn't public. He didn't have parents who were making him public. But [00:16:00] once you're at this fully mental age and you're in an online space, this is where your argument of privacy is an illusion at that point, right? He wasn't public, but he became famous later, and so those things became relevant later.
And most people were just like, bro, he was 15, chill out. And nobody who matters actually cares. Turkey Tom isn't canceled. Turkey Tom is a popular YouTube channel who most people think positively of, who are not insane. Might an insane minority hate yeah, but that insane minority doesn't matter.
Like they don't have, like, okay. Ignore the insane minority because. They don't matter, and they'll always find some reason to hate you no matter what if you fit into the groups that they desire to hate. So now we've got into the, do you have any counter thoughts to that? It seems like you might, before we get into the tween category.
Simone Collins: I guess I, some I mostly agree with that. I do think though that what this is, This means also is that you have to do this the right way. You have to educate your kids about the ramifications of anything that they do [00:17:00] online or frankly around any smart device or anyone who's holding a phone, because that phone could be recording.
But perhaps the fact that we would have our kids on camera, anyone who does have their kids on camera and does educate them about safety around these things it acts as a good forcing function. It gives them essentially media training at a young age. For example, had the girl I'm thinking of who tweeted all these racist things been trained early and also been exposed to media a lot earlier, maybe she would have been a whole lot more savvy and wouldn't have tweeted all those things that ultimately then destroyed probably much of her career and also really either destroyed or Really compromised her father's business, which employed quite a few extended family members as well.
Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So there, I think it's more just good parenting and it's just that you're more on the hot seat for good parenting. And in a way this could be positive for the kids because again, you can only look at the negatives. If we are doing a bad job as parents, it is going to be more loudly and immediately obvious at these age ranges.[00:18:00]
If our kids have a public window, right? No, I need to look at the
Simone Collins: ethics of our life philosophy in general, and that we are willing to be subject to criticism. And we believe that's the right way is that if you're wrong, you want to know that you're wrong. And so the idea that so many people are trying to hide anything that might be criticized about their lifestyles, their beliefs, how they raise their kids or their kids lives.
That they're trying to hide that from any potential criticism means that if they are doing something wrong, they're probably not going to correct it, which is a pretty big deal. And so I like, we
Malcolm Collins: get to know a lot sooner and the public gets to know a lot sooner. Are we bad parents? You don't have to wait until our kids are adults to know that y'all find out pretty soon, I think.
Because we do plan to keep our kids in the media spotlight and I do plan to with this podcast, as our kids develop more cognizance, bring them into the podcast.
Simone Collins: When they want to participate.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I imagine five, 10 years from now, instead of me talking to Simone every day, some days it'll be me talking to one of the kids, or Simone talking to [00:19:00] one of the kids, or two of the kids talking to each other, or, I want this to be a family thing.
That's based around their understanding of reality and their engagement with reality, because I think people would find that very interesting. And I think they'd find that very interesting as a historic record of their development of ideas and stuff like that. We'd keep it focused.
It wouldn't be like a normal parenting podcast. I'm not interested in. You guys seeing like how awesome of a dad I am by like following me around and making sure I'm punishing them correctly and making sure I'm doing, like a lot of the parental bloggers.
Simone Collins: No, I'm watching your YouTube channel.
That's just Octavian and Torsten. They already have very interesting conversations.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'm much more interested in the philosophical development of my kids and their development in terms of self narrative and how they think about reality in the world. I think that's more interesting and I think that our audience would find it pretty interesting.
And I don't think I just don't see a lot of negative externalities coming from that for my kids in the future, even if they decide to be private. There's a lot of child stars. Who are now like, Oh yeah, I'm private now because I decided to [00:20:00] become private. It's not like some huge scarring thing for them unless they like got into drugs or something while they were a child star.
And that's even
Simone Collins: people who I think, I don't know, catch a lot of heat for things. Typically it only goes wrong when they try sand it. When they're like, Oh no, no one needs to know this. We have to stop this right now. And then they flail a lot and then people pay even more attention. So again, a lot of this comes down to media training, which I think is a key theme here is that parents have to be savvy about teaching their kids how to deal with a public life, but also only doing this with.
So
Malcolm Collins: now we need to talk about the ethically dubious age. So this is the seven to 11 age range when kids are cognitive enough to do things that can cause long term repercussions for them. And they are also in hierarchical social environments. Where things that they do privately, they may not want shared, but they may not have the ability to be able to tell their parents.
I [00:21:00] don't consent to you sharing this information. Whether it's first puberty or something like that, like we would always just have a rule. If you're going through something and you just don't want us to share it, just say, I don't consent to you sharing this. At that age range, okay.
I can understand where some concerns come in, but again, not really. So I'll explain why the not really enough it's where you get this a little blurring of the slider of, but they didn't know at that age range that Y would have those consequences.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: And. I think that we are entering a generation where because of the consequences of doing something like going online and yelling a bunch of racial slurs or like sexually aggressively approaching someone can be as severe to a person's long term like employability as them as an 11 year old taking a knife and stabbing their little sister.
We need to teach them that those consequences are that severe. At a very young age. And make sure that they internalize that. And it's more of [00:22:00] a I think people who want to, keep this pure privacy at this age are more people who are just not about parental responsibility. In terms of the them teaching kids like proper social boundaries, because even without us, if they're on a discord or something like that, and they do something insane, like this is there's still consequences for it.
And people can be like they chose to be on those social media channels. They chose to be on that discord or that Twitter or that. YouTube channel. It's not really. All of these things have addiction based algorithms or those TikToks, right? That have sucked them into them. Do they really choose them?
No. It's a combination of their parents and their environment and their, So again, I'm just not really concerned. And this is where you get to the downside. Am I claiming there are no ethical issues here? No, I'm very clearly not. I'm saying there are ethical issues, but what people on the other side of this argument are complaining.
Pretending, which is just false in a [00:23:00] lie is that there are no potential upsides for the kid from this. I'm doing is I am contrasting the upsides with the downsides and there, the probabilistic relation our kids will have to those upsides and downsides. Okay. So when I look at my kids, um, coming out of this, that they have the environment to start their lives with decent sized social media followings within wealthy intellectual circles, the doors that is going to open for them.
It's just so obvious to me that, you go look at who's even though, the podcast is okay. Like we do. Like 1300 hours a day or something. At this point, we've got about 55 people watching us at any given time at this point, a day or night. If you just look at what's the average probability, somebody's watching our channel and this is just on YouTube and we distribute through other channels.
But so this isn't a huge number, but what's the demographics of this [00:24:00] number? Because we know, because we interact with a lot of them, it's venture capitalists, it's campaign operatives. It is. academics. It is this channel just does not appeal, to like your average person that much. And it is the type of people who, one, my kids can source good career opportunities from that will get them a huge leg up in life.
But And I think that this is really important that they can serve as partners through. And this is something that we also haven't talked enough about in society, social media followings and the ability to translate these into high value relationships. Which I think is going to be when our kids are like, yeah, I really appreciate that you were able to hook me up with a spouse through this network that you spent the time to build.
But yeah, and I want to create something that is a clan based network or channel or something like that. So that my kids, cause right now we're trying to build it so that we get a TV show made on our family. And we're in talks with a lot of people that I [00:25:00] can't talk about.
But as we do that I want it to be like a clan based media empire, right? Like where they are Working with each other to build up their own properties, but they're also investing in any properties that we built out.
Simone Collins: So what you're saying is a lot of your interest personally in
Malcolm Collins: inheriting any properties we built out
Simone Collins: and having a lot of people be aware of your behavior and philosophy and activity is it makes more people willing to are interested in working with you.
And the same would happen with our kids. Yeah. If there is, if we live in a future in which Society's current vetting systems are bankrupt and don't work anymore. The only way that you can really build trust and have people expect you to deliver on what you promise is if they feel like they know you and can trust you and you're predictable because trust lies in predictability.
And the only way that they can know that is if they have some kind of access to your thought process or they have a parasocial relationship with you. And the only way to do that is if you have a very open and transparent media history. And if you can't show those receipts and you reach out [00:26:00] to someone and you say, I want to work with you, or I think we should start a business together or please hire me.
They have nothing to go on. So it's
Malcolm Collins: not just that, as the economy changes, like if our kids want to start a company, how do they get their customers? Like it's hard to get customers, right? But if they have online followings, it's much easier.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: How do they get, how do they get anything they want?
Like everything gets easier for them. The larger a following they have. And we have some people in our circles that are like, I want to be as private as possible. And it's because they view, I think negative comments about them online is like a genuinely negative thing. When like random haters don't matter.
Like they do not matter.
Simone Collins: Yeah, there was one critique video I watched where they showed a clip of someone filming their kid's reaction to someone, like an online commenters snarking about their name or something. And the kid looked hurt and was like, why would someone say that? And they just looked, [00:27:00] genuinely like their feelings were hurt.
And that is a combination of bad media training in general. But. They're totally missing the point that if a kid learns early on that a bunch of idiots online are going to say dumb things about them, they're going to develop a much thicker skin. They're going to become anti fragile and shielding a kid from mean commentary online or from criticism that is coming really from no strong foundation.
It's not something to worry about. That's The
Malcolm Collins: Bergens are gonna Bergen, we have an episode of like it's humanity becoming the Bergens from the trolls series, which I referenced way too much on this show for a child's cartoon. But yeah the Bergens are going to Bergen.
They just hate everything. They're weird mutants who sit online all day yelling at people. And the earlier
Simone Collins: you get used to their commentary, not mattering the better, cause we even know people now who. After seeing the tiniest semblance of that act as though someone has showed up their front porch with a gun pointed at [00:28:00] them.
And this is not a productive way to live. And if that's what takes you out in a day, if that's what you have a freak out over
Malcolm Collins: life is never going to matter.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And we want to have kids whose lives matter. If you are afraid of people making fun of you online, Your life won't matter
Simone Collins: because
Malcolm Collins: you can't do anything publicly.
And it's very hard to change the world in any sort of productive way. If you don't do things publicly. So that's the other thing where I'm just like, I don't care. Like it's about training my kids to be good people, not about. Protecting them from dealing with the consequences of their actions. No, I need to help head off those actions to begin with.
And we live in this fragile world, right? And I think that you make a great point there. I'm really sad because some of the people we know who are like, Oh my God, like you guys are getting so famous. And now it's hurting me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because you're in the media and some idiots don't like you.
And it's How are you ever going to do [00:29:00] anything? You don't disagree with my views. I know you don't disagree with my views. You don't disagree with how we're trying to change the world. You're just afraid of pushback. So you can't do anything. Even if you're competent. Even if you're rich.
You can't do anything until you are willing to do it. to allow the world to hate you or the idiots, the Bergens to hate you because the truth is, and you've seen this with the whole like corporal punishment controversy where at first Simone was like, Oh my God, everybody hates us online. I got to chill out Simone.
There were things I was embarrassed about with people. With that article, I was embarrassed that I had framed Kevin Dolan is further right than he really is. He's actually probably to the left of me. He just has a public reputation as being to the right of me and I shouldn't have done that.
And I was really guilty about that because I had caused somebody else, negative repercussions that they didn't need to deal with. But the slap itself, I was like, no, this is going to turn out in our favor. Don't worry about it. Like the research agrees with it. And. You've seen that now since the, then, like [00:30:00] everyone we know who is like a smart, competent person has been like yeah, they were right to do that.
What did you about, or at
Simone Collins: least they acknow that this is a nuanced situation. I think that's,
Malcolm Collins: I haven't heard that. I, no, I literally haven't heard anything other than enthusiastic support. What do we have? We got like Richard Hania, the enthusiastic support. Recently I had Sarah Hater and Meghan Dunn yeah. But no,
Simone Collins: but they said it's nuanced. They said it's nuanced. Sarah Hader didn't even say that. I don't think she practices corporal punishment with her own kids. She just had made one comment that like,
Malcolm Collins: Sorry I watched the whole video. She said, if it's not done in anger, okay. And it's not done to cause pain.
Yeah. But I, that's,
Simone Collins: I count that as nuanced. No one's coming up being like we're not saying that either.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. She said it is enthusiastic support was in the realm of what actually happened.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And this is what you saw with other people who reached out to us whether it's a, God, we had her on early.
We should have her on more often. I have an episode of hers [00:31:00] that I haven't done live yet. Yeah, Diana Fleishman. It's on how we can stand being such lazy parents. That's the episode that hasn't gone live yet.
Simone Collins: Oh, we shouldn't do that.
Malcolm Collins: I'll put it out. She's so
Simone Collins: cool. I've
Malcolm Collins: got such a backload of interviews because I'm always, I process the interview so much slower than the other episodes because it causes me like emotional pain to process them because I have to think through somebody else judging me and I often just don't really fully process the interviews.
I think going forwards, that's what I should plan on doing. It's just interviews are cut as they are.
Simone Collins: Why not?
Malcolm Collins: Because I can't deal. I do not like social environments and it's like reliving a social scene. Whenever we do one that's what I'm so slow with. I'm like the make this or hater one.
Anyway, I absolutely love my wife. You are amazing. I appreciate that you are so sane in this world of stupid, weird deontological stuff. Can shouldn't do, it doesn't matter when you're talking about a fucking four year old. [00:32:00] Okay. Because they, no, it doesn't. They don't understand. I
Simone Collins: think, I think it's important to model what, when, and I, no, I actually do think that an infant can show and in toddler can show consent and lack of consent.
You tell you can tell when our children are not happy with the situation and when they're happy with the situation. I
Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't disagree with that, but the problem is that when you value the perspectives of somebody who's not fully mentally developed, you get stupid things.
Does my child consent to being punished when they do bad things? Do they consent to timeout? Do they consent? No, they don't consent to that being. Of course they don't. They're a child.
Simone Collins: I'm just saying that there's nuance.
Malcolm Collins: And then there isn't nuance. There isn't nuance. I am saying there isn't nuance. Okay.
The, if our child comes to us and they go, I think I'm a woman today. Can you medically transition me or put me on a drug that will change the course of my life? I'm going to be like, no, fuck off. That's a dumb idea. I understand that you're hearing about this online, but you're four. Like you don't [00:33:00] even like our four year old cannot consistently state his gender.
Simone Collins: But Malcolm, if our, if our two year old or something saw us filming him with a camera and said no and ran away and started crying, we would think it wasn't cool to film him with a camera.
Malcolm Collins: I suppose, but that doesn't happen.
Simone Collins: I know it doesn't happen, but if it did, we would take it seriously.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we take it seriously, but I'm just saying it doesn't happen. So it's not within the realm. I guess there might be some kids that are afraid of the public seeing them, but our kids love it.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's our fortunate
Malcolm Collins: reality. But again, it's because they're genetically related to us. So I think that this is another thing that people don't understand is we're making these decisions for people who will think similarly to us.
And
Simone Collins: yeah and you have in mind for all these influencer fame whores as well, who are fame whores like us, that, these people have children who are probably, So at least a little bit like them and
Malcolm Collins: the problem with a lot of the fame whores and I'd say that they're [00:34:00] in a more ethically questionable scenario than us is they use their children to augment the way the public sees them.
So their children are props to demonstrate their parenting and stuff like that to the public. Whereas our children, like the point of all of this is our children, the point of developing the schools, our children, the point of everything is giving our children the best shot possible. We are developing like an intellectual conversation.
Brand which is very different from the brand that a lot of people are developing is like the only negatives to our brand is that it's weird and that the kids can even leverage that in the early social media days if they want to go against it. I hate what my parents did. It's horrible, but a great way to get sympathy and build up a lot of followers in your early days, right?
Like Even if they disagree with us, that very disagreement can be capitalized on, but only because of how extremely weird and extremist we are. We're an extremist and they just look ungrateful, right? You've got to create an environment where even if they hate you, it's positive.
Simone Collins: Yeah and you can't skew things.
There are famous examples, too, of [00:35:00] YouTubers who, I don't know their dog is dying or something, and then they, are filming in the car and the parents coaching their child on how to look more devastated. So I think a lot of it also comes down to being genuine.
Malcolm Collins: I love it. All right. Have a good one, Simone.
Bye. Hi, Malcolm. Spectacular woman. We're gonna be talking about, we're having a call for the Natal Wisdom Conference Two. For anyone who missed the first one, be sure to check it out on the website,
Simone Collins: number six and seventh. See you there.
Malcolm Collins: Bye. Oh we have to go. Oh, it's a call.
Simone Collins: It's a video call. So stay here.
Not stay here, but get on the video call. Wait, let me check. Hold on. Let me check.
Yep. It's a Google meet call. Join it. It's in your calendar.
Malcolm Collins: Sarah is deleting angry Facebook comments.
Simone Collins: What wanna happen?
Malcolm Collins: No. Facebook just seems to bring out like the lowest of the low in terms of haters.
Simone Collins: Oh no. Twitter is pretty bad. [00:36:00] Twitter's pretty bad. I
Malcolm Collins: appreciate that you engage with Twitter to protect me.
Hold up. There you are. You have my social media comments? Yeah, yeah, right here. . Oh, that's nice. Oh, great. This is all the Twitter comments? Yeah, oh, Kyle! You thought me having someone edit my social media would make me look stupid?
People are actually really stoked on me now. It's a pretty brutal job sifting through all that darkness. Mhm.
Simone Collins: Instagram's just funny because now the theme is every time I post something because, oh, people just say. It's always oh god, his face is red. Was he just slapped? Or oh, do you slap him for being adventurous or not adventurous enough? They'll just find some It's gotta be like a little bit of both.
Yeah yeah. I
Malcolm Collins: would love to post the Venezuela meme there
This is outrageous. You shout like that, they put you in jail. Right away. No trial, no nothing.
You're playing music [00:37:00] too loud? Right to jail. Right away. You're driving too fast? Jail. Slow? Jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken? Also jail. Undercook, overcook.
Malcolm Collins: That's such a good
Simone Collins: one. Parks and Rec is so underrated. It's actually not underrated as a show.
It got the attention it deserved, I think. Speaking of things that I really enjoy watching is Snark. It is a delight to me and I love Snark. So are you trying to do the intro? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Then do the intro from the intro not from banter because that loses people I always have to put that at the end and you just do the intro.
Okay.
The Ethics of Not Showing Kids On The Internet