In this in-depth analysis, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the reasons behind Classically Abby's failure to gain traction as a conservative influencer. They dissect the changing landscape of conservative culture, the disconnect between traditional and modern right-wing values, and the importance of authenticity in online content creation. The video also touches on broader topics such as the evolution of conservative thought, the role of "vitalism" in modern conservative appeal, and the challenges facing established conservative institutions. Additionally, the Collins discuss the ethics of featuring children in online content and offer insights into successful conservative influencer strategies.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] What? She's actually cool? She is actually an interesting nerd. What on earth? In real life. What? But the person she presents as, on YouTube, I loved your shock face here
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Simone! I am so excited to be talking to you today. Something really interesting that we mentioned in a recent episode, that when I was editing it, I was like, wait a second, I should be really focused on this question. Why didn't, classically Abby, then Shapiro's sister,
Being a conservative woman in today's day and age is not easy. !
Malcolm Collins: why didn't she catch on with the public?
And so people can understand just how much this didn't work. She was doing tons and tons of ads at one point on YouTube. If you are active on YouTube, you definitely saw her all the time for a period. Every time I bought this up with a YouTuber, they're like, oh yeah, that. If you were aren't active on YouTube to give you an idea.
Her top four or five videos have over a million views. [00:01:00] And if you're paying for that much in ads, because it was certainly in ads that caused these videos to go out there certainly over a million dollars in ad spend, if I had to guess, I would guess it was probably 1. 5 to 2 million in ad spend.
For a channel that today. produces weekly videos that are similar in format to ours and similar also in content to ours and are getting, I'd say on average, probably about half the views that we get on daily videos. So this is really interesting to me and I can post our numbers on the screen and everything like that.
So you can check our math. We're getting on average, I think now, what is it, 8, 000 views per day, 7, 000 views per day and about 1, 300 watch hours per day or 7, 400 watch hours per day depending it's, it goes up and down for us. There was a peak a little bit ago.
Simone Collins: But you've done a really good job, Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: No,
Simone Collins: I don't know. I'm a million to 2 I would guess more like at least a hundred thousand dollars.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, [00:02:00] certainly more than a hundred thousand. Really? Oh, absolutely. It had to be there. There is no way it was less than half a million, but I suspect very likely between a million and a half, a million and a half.
But we can run the numbers, whatever. The point being is she's connected to a famous person. Her videos are generally well done, edited, well executed. She is an attractive woman. And she had the ability to get in front of tons of people. Why didn't her message connect with any audience? And this is a very important question to be asking for a, probably the biggest reason is because the message that she was shilling is the message that the conservative elites believe the conservative base should be hearing.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And I, my, when I was going through her [00:03:00] videos in preparation for this, cause I hadn't really watched any, I felt like I was watching an AI video. These were AI responses. If you asked chat GPT. What are some reasons why a woman would need to dress modestly? Or, what are some reasons why I should keep my apartment clean?
These are exactly the answers that it would generate. Oh my god, you're right? Yes, I am exactly right. And I think that's also an issue
Malcolm Collins: if you did the framing of and you're a conservative YouTuber and then that's what it would spit out. You would need to give it some framing.
But hold on before I go further with this I want to make a few caveats about my thoughts after watching a lot of her content. So my first thought is I think that ideologically we are probably not that different from her. Even socially, I don't feel we're that different from her. When I watch her videos, to me, she reminds me [00:04:00] intensely of some of my cousins. And by that what I mean is Yeah, I would say
Simone Collins: your family, but definitely not us.
She's not weird. Well, no, this
Malcolm Collins: is the f ing weird thing. She is actually, in real life, she DMs for her husband's some of his tabletop gaming groups. She is into Warhammer. What? She's actually cool? She is actually an interesting nerd. What on earth? In real life. What? But the person she presents as, on YouTube, I loved your shock face here.
Oh my god! But they are also like my family. My family members who are like her Oh yeah, when they're drunk, they're amazing.
Simone Collins: Oh yeah, they're
Malcolm Collins: amazing when they're drunk. But when they're not drunk, they are just like her. They are very concerned Entirely palatable. About this very crafted They're conservative, Barbie and Ken.
Yeah. And it doesn't work for a few reasons. So the very [00:05:00] first reason that I'll get to why I don't think her image worked or found an audience is In one of her videos, the one on tradwives, she explains why she chose the term classically. Instead of trad. And it was because she saw trad as being too reductionist and restrictive in terms of what it represented as a woman being strictly beneath the husband.
And she'll make arguments very similar to ours that no, this wasn't the case for most families. Historically, women usually worked. She's lucid and educated on these topics. But the problem is so she saw classic as the alternative of that. And she really is quite a classical person.
She does opera singing. If you look at the environment of her house or the way that she styles herself, it is a very classical look. Really. It's Starbucks. It's Starbucks basic. Whatever you get to say. The point is if you are going [00:06:00] to Dallas house parties of wealthy people, that is what you would see, is a house that looks like hers. And this I think is the first mistake, is that Classical. What does classical really mean in a modern context? Classical means what is socially normative in the upper classes of a society or the elite classes of a society.
My name is Classy, with an I, and a little dick hanging off the C that bends around and f the L out of the A S S.!
Malcolm Collins: . The problem is that in our current society, being conservative is not socially normative among the elite communities.
Therefore, being conservative is not normative. Is not classy from the perspective of this elite group that rules our society This is why when you go to your standard billionaire who hasn't put a lot of thought into their political beliefs and [00:07:00] they're doing what's socially normative whether it is mark zuckerberg or bill gates or even The sons because I grew up adjacent to the very wealthy community in Dallas, my granddad was a congressman.
And I know what happened to their kids, right? I know the lives that they're living now. They almost to the person completely abandoned that aesthetic convention. They no longer LARP. Trying to, so they basically went one of two directions, either they went the direction of what we call the urban monoculture or trying to look like your standard, wealthy, white, progressive woman, which is an iteration of classy that stayed in, some of the mansion y looking places and stuff like that, or they became conservative or stayed conservative because their families were originally conservative and now mostly live on their family's ranch or lake house or semi rural environment and LARP more of the [00:08:00] rural aesthetic because the conservative mindset was expelled from these communities.
What she is selling classically is something that would have sold To our parents generation of conservatives, but it is not something that appeals to this generation of conservatives when you look at what's appealing personally to this generation of conservatives okay, for example, look at Trump.
Is Trump classic or classy in any way? He desperately wants to be the next president of the United States, but no, he is garish and out there and vitalist or, you look at, as we've mentioned, other conservative heroes like Tiger King,
Okay. Ah!
That's how we take care of ISIS right there, buddy.
You're an animal rights person, and you try and come into this facility, this is what you're gonna be greeted [00:09:00] with.
Malcolm Collins: Like this is the type of vitalism that the conservative base identifies with and craves.
And I think
Simone Collins: progressives, or many we'll say classical conservatives would call that trashy. It is in our minds is like rough rider republicanism. This is Teddy Roosevelt. This is, get out there. Pew, pew America.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The pearl clutching conservative basically died out as a demographic class in our video that I would really recommend to people watch if they haven't seen it, cause I think it's one of our best.
From disgust to cringe to vitalism, examining the evolution of cultural frameworks we talk about how in the 90s mass action politically was motivated primarily by a disgust based framework, which, and then a cringe framework, which shamed people for violating social norms. These frameworks [00:10:00] really worked with this classic socially normative appeal that she's going for because it was the appeal that worked for our parents generation, but it doesn't work for our generation and a lot of the positions like the base That they think when I say they I mean her and her brother because they both do a somewhat similar.
Stick now and it's very clear as her brother changes from one stick to another stick He doesn't understand what the conservative base wants. He got famous when a different generation of conservatives was around and He was never really got young conservatives. And it it's also clear, you see this in likely who he's surrounding himself with, which is the last generation of conservatives, which had this sort of deontological conservative framework where these things are good, these things are bad, instead of the more consequentialist, vitalistic rebellious framework that the modern conservative has.
E it's not about pearl clutching, you need to follow this set of rules anymore. It's we need to [00:11:00] rebel against a system that's controlling us. And that, that doesn't work with classy, you don't and even if you don't fight
Simone Collins: back in a classy
Malcolm Collins: way, Yeah, you don't socially rebel.
I often think like when even conservatives want classy today, young conservatives, right? What are they looking for? They're looking for Morticia and Gomez, not, a 90s soccer mom, right?
Waltzed? Oh, Gomez. Hours.
To live without you, only that would be torture. A day alone, only that would be torture.
Malcolm Collins: They want someone who is okay with being themselves when themselves is in violation of current social rules.
And I, I also think that, when you look at this old deontological conservative framework, I think you see it disappearing in the younger generation. And even some people who watch the show, like a lot [00:12:00] of online culture warriors, don't realize that this base that they think exists doesn't exist.
A few points I'd make here, and I notice that she never, she's not racist at all, but I do believe that even in conservative elite circles, I have seen this myth believed, that there is a racist base. Disproportionately racist conservative base you need to appeal to through dog whistles and by the statistics.
This is just not true. There are not more racist on the conservative side than the Democrat side. And I'll put some polls on the screen here. The one that I always love to cite is that more white Democrats said they wouldn't vote for a black president than conservatives. Republicans until Obama was president, but also you see this in the actual numbers.
So I'm gonna go through some numbers here. According to 2014 Pew, Pew research poll 61 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners under 30. favored same sex marriage while only 35 percent opposed to it. So if you're doing something like going against same sex marriage, which I'm [00:13:00] not saying she's done but this is just I think the base she thinks she's appealing to they don't really exist.
It's only 35 percent in that young faction. A more recent Gallup poll from 2021 showed that 55 percent of Republicans overall supported same sex marriage. So more than half, even when you include the older Republicans support same sex marriage. Um, And in, in, in a 2015 poll and this was even a while ago, 2015, that's 10 years ago at this point.
63 percent of Republicans under 30 supported protecting LGBT individuals from discrimination. So it's not just gay marriage. The conservative party is overwhelmingly pro gay now especially the young ones. But then you can look at other issues where she has done like big anti abortion screeds on her channel.
But if you look at Pew Research nearly half of Republicans younger than 30 say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, 47%. So the Republican base, like the next Republican base, the young Republicans [00:14:00] are way far left of even Simone and myself on abortion. Like we are More restrictive abortion access in our state.
We're just not life begins at conception types. And so I think that, and I actually want to go further on some of the statistics here. So another thing I want to put on the screen here is Republicans views on the legality of abortion from 1975 to 2024. And you can see it's upticked pretty significantly recently.
Now, at around 64% think it should be legal under certain circumstances.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I don't think it's just that, that, that hurts Abby. One huge revelation to me is that she's actually cool. And I think that's a big problem is that she, Is clearly shooting herself in the foot by not being herself online and by not being genuine.
And I think that's a really big problem with the Republican party in general is that it's pandering its way to mediocrity in a way that [00:15:00] is ruining it's appeal while also taking a very hard stance on things like abortion, wherein like the majority of people don't agree with that and then are forced and obligated.
to vote against Republican politicians because they feel like they need to protect just that basic optionality. But I also feel like she, she does a lot of things that are both like entirely legitimate. So for example, one of her videos was why I've come out as a conservative influencer, which just comes across as wrong.
Even though she's coming from a legitimate place. Like she points out how it's tough for someone as an opera singer who works in like the sort of stage performing world to come out as conservative. And I actually met someone who experienced this as well. She I should say they, they, when they worked in the theater worlds were a trans man.
And [00:16:00] then they, started detransitioning. They didn't even talk with people about the fact that they were detransitioning. But as they went through the process of detransitioning, they got completely frozen out of the theater world. So I remember this coming out as conservative is actually a scary thing, but she didn't talk about these elements of it.
She just talked about it in a very. Somewhat like patronizing smug way that really rubbed people the wrong way. Also, I think something that really hurt her online reputation when she otherwise could have done well, was her ad targeting. It seems like through her ads, she just, we've all seen classically Abby ads.
If we've been on YouTube for the past three years, like there was that one time where I'm like, she just advertised to everyone and literally she advertised to everyone like a common comment on her. Top viewed videos, which clearly were associated with her advertising are things like for that, why I came out as conservative video.
One was [00:17:00] as a 40 year old Mexican male who keeps getting her ads. All I can say is I'm finally ready to come out as a conservative woman. I'm an under seven tips to grow from a girl to a classic woman. Someone wrote, I'm a 24 year old man, but I'm glad to now know how to grow into a mature and classic woman.
So it's clear that like she was advertising to these audiences of people. And who she definitely didn't want to target because by the way, she begins these videos with hello ladies, she's talking, she's trying to create this feminine space online for like women to hang out and be an influencer that is a woman talking to women.
So just something wrong with how she was encouraged to position herself and how she ran ads. I don't
Malcolm Collins: think that's true. I think that you can get ads much cheaper when you're not targeting them as, as directly. And I think that's what was going on there. And she was just seeing, allowing YouTube to find an audience for her to find 40 year old
Simone Collins: Mexican men.
Malcolm Collins: What I think you get wrong in this, we have a big Hispanic, [00:18:00] actually, people be surprised, but our channel has a very big Hispanic audience. We're great
Simone Collins: for an international audience, but classically, Abby is not 40 year old Mexican man who's now finally ready to go out. I'm sorry, I think
Malcolm Collins: that you're missing a point here.
I, I think that it was likely done because it got lower cost ads. But what I will say that you got right in what you said, and it is something I'd want to double down on, but Is how her and her brother come across these days and why I think they are losing cultural power and why I think she was unable to capture an audience here, which is to me, they very I'm just talking like this really how it feels when I see them talk like people who should be like at a high school.
In the nerd group, they should be hanging out with you and me and owning it club. That's secretly like that's their actual thing, but they are trying to, they got a little bit of attention from the school bullies at one point, [00:19:00] and now they are trying to ingratiate themselves with this very small group of bullies that actually everyone else hates.
But the
Simone Collins: political conservatives fear Feels like that. And keep in mind, this is the group that they're mixing in. Her husband, for example, when they met in 2017, he was interning with heritage foundation.
Malcolm Collins: Frozen us out of a lot of things. But
Simone Collins: that's the thing is they really are like the popular kids, but they're also extremely normative.
They all dress the same way. They talk the same way. They're all strictly very anti abortion. They're all very strictly these are the things we do. And these are, and they're super not weird. You can't be weird. And so I just, I think that because they got some traction in those communities and have become respected in them, they know that they can't look that way.
Because also when someone thinks about your classic dungeon master, they think of someone who is progressive politically.
Malcolm Collins: I disagree. So I think that this is where we're, when we're talking about conservative archetypes that appeal to [00:20:00] the mainstream younger conservative audience. There is obviously the country boy, country girl, you can go that route.
Yeah. You can go the so extremely trad that your tradness is a constant and daily offense to all progressives. Conservatives will like that. Or you can go our route
One of the things I find really interesting where, I'm talking here about this model of this conservative anime nerd character. Media and people are like, come on the conservative nerd. That's not an archetype that does well. And I'm like, okay what about short fat Otaku?
What about Ed Dutton? What about Ruby Yard who runs what if all his he's very nerdy. What about I, I think even Hanania to an extent comes off as pretty nerdy. Cremium comes off as pretty nerdy in, in a lot of his stuff. This is a archetype that does perform well.
and all of these routes are playing in the mud to some extent. Cause that's what conservatives do, we play in the mud, I [00:21:00] call it low culture conservative, or which is really, conservative.
This is the anime tracer, but you know, she had the video on like modesty and stuff like that and how women should be more modest. And I'm here like the last sex scandal I remember was tracer, but and I'm pretty sure the conservatives are the one recently, which is a Aeon something.
Keller blade is what I was thinking of.
Malcolm Collins: There was some Sony character, female character that they put more clothes on. The conservative. youth are anti modesty. We are pro low culture. We want our women to be modest, right? Like the women who we marry and stuff like that, but we are not the modesty crusaders of the 90s.
Simone Collins: Not even that. In fact, some of the major Mormon influencers are total thirst traps.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That is not, The actual message, like Trump is not pro modesty, right? Trump is what's connecting with the base. And I think [00:22:00] that there is a difference between celebrating a degree of chastity and celebrating modesty in all things, which just doesn't connect right now. I think if she wanted to connect with her base, she doesn't actually hide.
The cool stuff she does. She mentions the Warhammer stuff. She does? She mentions, oh yeah, she mentions the DN, that's just how we know about it, right? But for her, this stuff is a quarantined afterthought in her life, rather than the thing to lead with. If you are going after the I think the new conservative intellectual group,
Simone Collins: And to be fair, we do have a gerontocracy problem in both conservative and progressive political spheres in the United States.
We do,
Malcolm Collins: but it's not as big of a problem as people would think. And this is something I also want to elevate. So the gerontocracy does control a lot of these old conservative think tanks. [00:23:00] And it's something where, if we lost our job, which, we unfortunately need to think about that we would normally be going to work at one of these think tanks, right?
Yeah, but tough luck for us. But they will not talk to us. We are radioactive. To the conservative think tanks, even though as is pretty much all of the mainstream conservative influencers these days, whether you're talking about like Pearl Davis or BAP or Brian Kaplan or there's a lot of conservative leaning or cat girl Kool Aid or, reu, who we met recently, or, there's a lot of conservative intellectual influencers out there, and none of them that I know, or even Richard Hania.
Like we are fairly plugged in with a lot of conservative influencers and the conservative influencer crowd. to the person is actually walled from the conservative political establishment, which is still controlled by GOP. Or a Poria magazine, the guy who runs [00:24:00] that. Yeah, I just don't know if that's public, so I'm going to cut that out.
Simone Collins: No it's, he publishes a bunch of shit with
Malcolm Collins: a portal. Okay, great. Yeah, these are the things that I think are speaking more to the younger, the next generation of conservative intellectuals. And they are systemically banned. Not just they're not reached out to, not like they're not engaged with.
There's,
Simone Collins: I feel like there's a little bit of overlap with some of them. Some of them are somewhat plugged into Heritage and Coke events and other things like that. Just not.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah there's a limited but what this means is the opposite of what these groups think it means. What they think it means is their ideas will grow in the conservative youth and they will continue to have the cultural hegemony that they have had at a historic level.
But what it really means is They are not part of the conversation, like the active political [00:25:00] conversation that's happening with the next generation of conservative influencers. Yeah, they're missing out.
Simone Collins: They're missing out. They're, I, it's really a mean girls thing. Like it's just so clicky and they're so focused on status hierarchy fights, but we see this with things.
We, we talk about this happening in the EA slash rationalist community. We talk about this happening all over the place. It's a classic governance issue. The
Malcolm Collins: funny thing is that this has been happening, I think, to an extent since we were kids. In our kid generation, there were a lot of movies where there was like a cheerleader group or like a mean girl group at the school.
And I know that things are different The way they change, the way power structures are work out at schools changes every generation or so. Social media has
Simone Collins: significantly changed how these things work. Yeah. But the
Malcolm Collins: truth of our generation was that there was typically one small group of popular girls.
And I know because I went to a number of different schools could be the cheerleaders, could be something else. [00:26:00] Who. Thought that they were the most popular girls in school. And that some people tried desperately to engage with, but actually had almost no social power because everybody hated them and quarantine them.
And they're just an echo chamber
Simone Collins: that like thought that everyone aspired to
Malcolm Collins: be like them, but they were
Simone Collins: really just on their own and everyone ignored
Malcolm Collins: them. That was the high school for sure. And usually the people who actually had the most social influence usually it was the one person. It was the weed dealer.
The weed dealer typically actually had the most social influence on campus because they needed to be able to communicate across social communities. And they were typically laid back so they didn't offend any specific social community. It's very easy when you're the weed head slash weed dealer to not make enemies with the goths or the preps or the cheerleaders or the So that was typically, but then the people with the highest Like social standing and ability to access things like sexual access and stuff like that.
Those were often typically people in the nerdy communities, [00:27:00] in the drama group, in the the proto hacker kids, the, it was not the people in these groups that were like even if you had asked like the nerdy or the gods kids, they'd be like, Oh, those kids are like technically above us in the social hierarchy, but nobody talks to them.
And. I think that phenomenon has replicated itself is this over focus on maintaining an older ideological system, which is just not represented in the next generation of conservatives.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It's a shame. It's a shame because
Malcolm Collins: I, she puts a lot of work into these videos. She put a lot of money into these videos.
And
Simone Collins: yet the comments that she gets are like the comments that we only see about ourselves on hit piece videos about us. And they're on her own damn videos. It's sad. It's not nice.
Malcolm Collins: So no, it is, it does make me sad, but I think with a lot of this, it was that they just made a mistake.
They fundamentally, as we talk about they, their heuristics about how the current society [00:28:00] and online conversation is working are just, incorrect. And because of that, even though they are ideologically very aligned with us, and I'm sure a perfectly pleasant person they are making takes that are not going to resonate.
And what they assumed, and what was assumed when Classic Abby was created, it's very clear to me from the early videos and the videos that were promoted, was I bet there's a space for a modest socially conservative woman who tries to speak to both sides of the aisle.
Simone Collins: I think the issue is that people look at other figures like Candace Owens, who says some more pretty unhinged things.
And they're like there has to be a space for someone. A little bit less unhinged,
Malcolm Collins: but there really isn't. Unhinged is what conservative, unhinged is vitalistic. Candace Owens says some stuff that I just love that you'd never hear from her. Remember that? Like the she's, I'm too pregnant for this shit right now.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: I love
Malcolm Collins: that. I love [00:29:00] that. I love that. That is quite fun. But it also shows You, you wouldn't get something like it's also interesting to me and I can see why Ben Shapiro doesn't and for people who don't know probably useful context for this. Ben Shapiro has talked about us before. He really does.
Yeah. But he
Simone Collins: calls us like massive insufferable nerds, which is hilarious. I say that's the highest status
Malcolm Collins: of nerd you can reach. Would Ben Shapiro thinks you're a nerd. Yeah. But he wouldn't say something like that. And when he does try to make like a a hit claim or something like that he feels like that nerd who's trying to ingratiate himself with the bullies he tries to be like, Oh, wet ass pussy.
I bet you have a disease. My wife, who's a doctor told me women don't, I don't know exactly how that went, but I'm sure everybody remembers that controversy. And then everyone else was like, Oh my God. That his wife has to tell him this to keep him happy because he's never made a woman. Anyone was like, the four Ds emotion like social cues.
He just comes off as this massive [00:30:00] nerd, which is. I think that is why he has gotten more popular than his sister. I think it's in spite of himself. I think it's because he is so socially incompetent that he cannot That he's fun to watch. He cannot help No, it's not fun to watch. He cannot help but step in it sometimes and come off as this low culture anime nerd, which then endears himself, because I'm saying that framework works.
Conservatives are willing to follow the next generation of conservatives, the anime nerd basically. But he as we've called them, the, what is it? The Catgirl Femboy Alt Right Conservative. Yeah. Which like is a thing. Like people have talked about it. Catgirl Femboy Alt Right Conservatives online.
And it's it's a thing. It's, I don't think that's our audience really, but that is an audience that some people have. Come on. No, yeah, I'm sure it's a portion. And they see somebody screw up so badly socially with something like that and they can't help but [00:31:00] be interested. But love them. Yeah.
You gotta love it. Yeah. And she hasn't had moments like that.
Simone Collins: Because yeah, she's too perfect. She's too refined.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and also she comes off as too conventionally attractive, too, like he comes off as a dweeb in a way that is that undermines his air of superiority.
Yeah, a little
Simone Collins: like Duty Houser.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
Simone Collins: before our generation, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: Where it's like a little mouse that's squeaking about how great it is and how, dah, and don't you know, and you see that and you're like, oh, that's really cute. When a beautiful woman comes up that looks, styled and attractive conventionally, and she starts doing the same little mouse speech, you're like, whoa, chill the fuck out. And I think that was something that he didn't understand. He thinks that the world views him and likes him for the way he wants to be seen instead of as this alternate nerd character.
Simone Collins: I'm even thinking like a lot of her videos are about etiquette [00:32:00] and just like how to live better, and I'm thinking about how in the past genuinely we'll say classical women have executed this successfully.
And even they have done it in a very vitalistic and slapstick kind of way. So I'm thinking about my beloved, like 1950s, 1940s, Emily Post etiquette books and Just how incredibly snarky they are. How she in the most delicate and beautiful terms, throws shade at fat people, calling them, those inclined to rotundities. And all these sorts of things. It's an incredibly she is casting shade so much. throughout every single thing. It's extremely snarky. It's extremely biting. It's extremely humorous.
Malcolm Collins: And it's not just Emily Post, your other hero. You used to have all of Martha Stewart's books growing up.
Yeah. Martha Stewart threw her weight around. It was not if you're trying to [00:33:00] compare her to a modern figure, she was closer to a
Simone Collins: title. No. There is a modern Martha Stewart, and she also gets tons of attention, and it's Nara Smith. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Talk about her. I don't know. Nara
Simone Collins: Smith is the tradwife influencer who does those insane TikTok videos where she's like, Oh, my, my child told me that they wanted French toast crunch this morning.
And so I, then she like makes cereal from scratch, baking each individual grain. Of cereal that kind of, yeah. So that's what, and that's what Martha Stewart did in her original time. Oh, like I'm going to do everything from scratch and build an entire, birthday parties worth of accessories all before birthday party.
She, the modern Nara Smith is totally riffing on that. And I can't believe it. And so far, none of the commentators on her brought that up. They just call it rage bait, but it's the same kind of thing. It's over the top. It's extra. And yeah, I actually think Martha Stewart was a little bit more of a Ben Shapiro and here's why.
Martha Stewart [00:34:00] came from a lower income Polish immigrant family. Her last name was Kostyra. She always had a big chip on her shoulder about that. And went out of her way to develop a different accent, a different cadence of a woman who was far more high class. And then she kept her ex husband's last name, Stuart, because it sounded super waspy.
So she was always this this, Fairly status anxious woman cosplaying as a very waspy, wealthy
Malcolm Collins: I hear you, and maybe this was a mistake on her part, but to me, and I think to a lot of people no, it comes
Simone Collins: across as overblown, and as a LARP, and as like Ben Shapiro being like, And you're just like, oh my god, this is so cute, and it's amazing.
Malcolm Collins: No, but this is actually a good point. That's the point I'm making. Margaret Middler, classy, was a LARP, and was obviously a LARP. Yeah. Huh. Abby's classy is I was born wealthy and I am carrying on. Yeah, she was born
Simone Collins: wealthy and she's just being wealthy and she's why can't you just be [00:35:00] wealthy?
Obviously, and that's why it comes across as AI.
Malcolm Collins: Here's the final point on Ben Shapiro, because I hadn't really thought about it until now, where I was like Ben Shapiro is actually famous.
What actually appeals to people is what a nerdy dweeb he is. Like that's the model that is popular among his fans. That is how he has captured the public attention, but he personally is unaware of this and denies this. Because of that, that
Simone Collins: also I think it's easy to deny it when you're as famous and wealthy now as he is, too.
Yeah, but
Malcolm Collins: I think that is why he hates us so much is because we, as they say, like the things you don't like about yourself, I'm sure there's a part of his brain that is aware. He was for a generation, the conservative nerd who pushed cultural boundaries and wasn't your classical Christian.
And he sees that in us [00:36:00] and it forces him to reflect a little bit. on a portion of his own rise to fame that he doesn't want to reflect on, and an aspect of the way he's seen by the world that he doesn't want to reflect on.
Simone Collins: We also just have punchable faces, I
Malcolm Collins: don't know what to tell
Simone Collins: you, Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: He
Simone Collins: does too, that's the thing.
Malcolm Collins: Ah, and he sees his own punchable
Simone Collins: face in the mirror.
Malcolm Collins: So that is what I think is going on there. I do think that Classical Abby easily drift in a different direction create a content that is more like why she holds the belief she holds instead of this is what's right.
This is what's wrong. And I think it would probably perform better in the algorithm. And to focus on beliefs that cut the dominant conservative narrative. Those are the videos that people are going to find interesting from you. If I was to give her advice.
Simone Collins: Dear Abby, if you would like to come on based camp.
You are always welcome. You seem like a delightful person. Share your spicy takes with us. Yes, you are extremely welcome here. We would [00:37:00] love to have you on.
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. And and even Ben! He seems like somebody who would be our friend if he could get over trying to fit in with the cool kids.
But I also understand what you're saying. There is social cost to him. The thing,
Simone Collins: though, is the cool kids, are they really your friends if they'll turn on you the moment you act yourself? Fuck them.
Malcolm Collins: Fuck them. And that's also what's cool about our audience is We are uncancellable within our audience because we are who we tell them we are.
Simone Collins: Yeah, and our audience we're definitely, the great thing about Basecamp listeners is most do not agree with us. It's, they're not here because they agree with us, and if we were to change our mind on something or express our view on something they disagree with, they're not going to go away, because sometimes they're just like, Here to hate watch, or they're just here to disagree, or they're just here to hate
Malcolm Collins: watch.
I think we get very few hate watchers. I say they're here because here is an active intellectual conversation about what's going to be the dominant conservative narrative next. And most of the political [00:38:00] landscape today is not a living conversation. A conversation about how to enforce, X groups value system and not about can we like improve this?
Can we improve that? And I think that that is why people are here when they don't agree with us because they're aware that this is an active conversation where people are. including ourselves, changing our mind when presented with new arguments. Yeah. And that is really exciting to me to be part of a community like that.
And I think that's why most of the, we have so much reach within the intellectually active conservative community these days, or at least the young ones.
the other agendum I wanted to add here was classically Abby and kids.
In every one of the pictures where she has a kid, she is, tastefully hiding the child's face
Simone Collins: classic.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I know. So classic, so classy, but here's the problem. Hiding children from the world is not [00:39:00] pronatalist or good. We used to share the joys of rearing was our communities. And through that normalized parenting and developed and proliferated parenting strategies that actually work outside of an academic context.
We have lost that win. You stop sharing children with the world when you stop sharing being a parent with the world. Is it any wonder that the world has forgotten how to be a parent?
Simone Collins: And I just, I have to reelevate what you pointed out to me that, oh, one of our uh, podcast listeners on the discord had pointed out.
Which is that the childless and antinatalist internet elite, especially females benefit from shaming having kids on camera. Because it is a, kids on camera are way to like steal attention and be a thirst trap of babies. Cause kids are cute. They can be.
Malcolm Collins: It's the weapon parents have against non parents in the [00:40:00] culture war. But if parents aren't
Simone Collins: allowed to post their kids, then all they have is their, gross mom bods and dad bods that no one wants to see.
Malcolm Collins: Through disarming parents, they ensure their victory in culturally backing down on this point.
I don't think. Any conservative family should ever one iota back down on this point. Being a parent is not something you need to hide from the world. You can watch our video on the ethics of showing our kids on camera. Where actually I think that kids will end up a much better off.
especially in a world where everything you do is being recorded to being reminded that everything they're doing is being recorded. So they don't accidentally go on that teenage tirade that right now is career destroying. And obviously there's a lot of benefits to having kids on camera and the costs are just so low in our existing environment.
People in the adult world, when you enter that world, people are like well, what if the, you know, Well, kids can't consent, largely speaking to this. Like my kid can tell you when he [00:41:00] doesn't want to be on camera. And we have never, ever had one of our kids on camera that didn't want to be on camera.
If you're wondering about infants and you're like, well, the infant can't consent, but it's also like, yeah, but the infant consent is irrelevant to, because nothing an infant does on camera while it's an infant can negatively affect their adult to life. Therefore, their consent is irrelevant.
Simone Collins: I can't imagine. There's never been an instance. Yeah. But
Malcolm Collins: like we would hold a really strict line on that. And then people are like there are two, two, two, Young to knowledgeably consent to something like that. And it's yes, but fortunately that's taken into the context where the negative ramifications from this can come.
I E when they are older and they have to deal with the ramifications of something they said when they were 11, the world's going to take that they were 11 into context. Okay. Where if you look at other things that are being normalized, if they medically transitioned their gender when they're 11.
[00:42:00] And they're 27. They can't go back from that in the same way. It's not reversible. And nobody can be like I understand the context, therefore it doesn't count. Those things count. And so it's important to remember that there are inherital, inherent societal buffers for any negative repercussions that can come from showing your kids because in these contexts and when we allow progressives to win that culture war of normalization, never showing kids in an online context, then kids never get seen if that's the core media source and parents never get seen and parenting never gets seen.
scene. And that is really well,
Simone Collins: and then what does get elevated is empty consumerism. It's travel. It's being a thirst trap. This is all stuff that's very ephemeral but no one's going to have for life. And yeah, it just, it's a it's not ultimately inherently fulfilling or really all that pro social or Griffith society.
Malcolm Collins: Instead of the miracle of creating a human being and raising that person and trying to give them the best shot possible in [00:43:00] life and the best life possible which is actually something beautiful.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
So if you're watching this and you made it to the end, we love you. Please, if you haven't already, and subscribe. Oh, and check out the Discord.
Malcolm Collins: You want to talk about an active conversation. Discord.
Simone Collins: Yeah, no, genuinely it's a great conversation over there. Malcolm constantly shares it with me cause he's constantly checking it. And it's the conversations are as good as, It's not probably no better than ours here, honestly.
Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: I would say most of the episode discussions, if you're like, I found that intellectually stimulating and I wish I could watch another hour on that one topic you just did.
Simone Collins: But with additional viewpoints, like with the Catholic viewpoint and with the Mormon viewpoint and with the Orthodox Jewish, it's just so great.
It's okay.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like on the Catholic fertility rate ones, that one had a great conversation on the discord, go to the discord, go to the episode discussion section. And it's a lot more, interactive and full than the comments on YouTube because of course and I think you'll really enjoy it because the [00:44:00] quality of the conversations.
And I agree with someone I actually think is maybe even a little higher than the quality on this show.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Cause
Simone Collins: you
Malcolm Collins: know,
Simone Collins: who are we trying to think of anyway. Also if you happen to have an iPhone, if you could like us on Apple podcasts or give us a five star review, if you're open to it, it would help us a lot.
Anyway. Thanks everyone. And Malcolm, I love you. I love you too.
Malcolm Collins: Bye bye. Bye
Simone Collins: bye.
The Perplexing Failure of Classically Abby (Ben Shapiro's Sister)