In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone explore the shifting landscape of internet culture, focusing on the decline of "lolcows" and the concept of cringe. They discuss how the politicization of online spaces has changed the way people engage with and mock individuals who deviate from social norms. Malcolm argues that cringe is now seen as a "boomer" or "Gen X" phenomenon, with younger generations finding it distasteful to laugh at those with mental health issues or who are perceived as weaker. The couple also delves into the idea that one must pass through the "valley of cringe" to become truly based, using examples like the Tiger King and Donald Trump. They contrast this with figures like Carole Baskin and Hillary Clinton, who represent a desperate attempt to fit mainstream societal expectations. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone ponder the future of internet culture and the emergence of a new type of "lolcow" – those who come from privilege but fail to achieve happiness by adhering to the status quo.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Cringe is over. Cringe is boomer. Cows are like cringe is actually it's probably more Gen X, both of them.
Yeah. Boomers just shorthand, I think for
Simone Collins: old.
Malcolm Collins: You cannot be based.
Without being cringe.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And by that, what I mean, we're basis defined as without fear of societal expectations, do what you think is right, say what you think is true and interpret reality in a way that is logically consistent within whatever value you set, you have determined for yourself.
I actually think that we saw this reflected in the Trump Hillary election.
Trump was cringe. In many ways, it is almost impossible to say Trump isn't cringe, but he passed through the valley of cringe to base where he combined cringe and self comfort. The comfort was the ways that his value system was different from society's value system.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! It is wonderful to be talking to you today!
Simone Collins: Hi, Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: Today, I am [00:01:00] going to be talking about something that one of our fans said in the Discord when I was chatting with them, and it really led me to reflect.
I was talking about lolcows and like the joke that, oh yeah, we want to be lolcows, surprising that we've never had like a kiwi farm made about us or something like that, given the number of times we've gone viral. We have two know your meme entries about us. And but we've never really done anything actually egregious.
It's more like we are egregious from an extremist leftist perspective, which just Doesn't really make us traditional lull cows anymore than, I don't know, some other individuals like Ben Shapiro could be seen as more lull Cowley than us, to be honest. But it got them talking about low cows and they're like, low cows are so boomer.
And I started thinking about it because I interact with a few different, types of communities online. I see the way different people interact online and I realized I do not see lolcow discussion amongst gen alpha or really amongst, younger gen [00:02:00] Z people. And then it got me thinking, wait, why is this?
So first let's talk about what lolcows are. Do you know what lolcows are Simone?
Simone Collins: My understanding is a lolcow is a, an online figure, someone who's public enough online to be fairly well documented. Who has done enough cringeworthy or egregious things that the community on Kiwi Farms has decided to begin creating detailed posts, categorizing and cataloging their various embarrassing behaviors and exploits so that everyone can sit and laugh at them.
Yes.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. It is so there's a couple of categories. There's lull cows and there's horror cows. Horror cows are like, they're just truly a horrifying human being. And then lull cows are, they are, funny. Chris Chan is probably the number one lull cow, although I think he kind of borders on a horror cow now with the, you heard what happened to him, right?
Simone Collins: No. [00:03:00]
Malcolm Collins: Oh so he was in jail for a bit. I think he might be out now. Oh dear. But he was in jail for sleeping with his mother. Oh! No!
Simone Collins: No!
Malcolm Collins: His dubious consent, it looks his very elderly Oh!
Simone Collins: Oh! Oh! That's
Malcolm Collins: where somebody becomes a horror cow.
Simone Collins: I think I'm going to vomit.
Malcolm Collins: But anyway, Oh God. Um, but it also brought me to another topic, which I think, so there's like, why do people engage with these sorts of people?
Like, why do they watch them? And it is because they like the emotional subset that these individuals trigger in them. And I think that there's a few Justice that a bad person had bad things happen to them. An opportunity to troll someone that you see as lesser than you. The feeling of cringe at another person.
And the feeling of disgust at another person. And also the feeling of learning how fringe [00:04:00] psychology is. Individuals, which is actually the thing that's most interesting to me. So I'll explain what I mean by that's interesting to me. I find it very interesting to study how the human mind works when it is breaking, because through that, like through studying how something like a car breaks, you can understand how the car might be put together.
neuroscientist who specialized in like abnormal psychology and stuff like that when the evolution of the human cognition this is really interesting to me because it does help me understand, when I see novel conditions where, especially where I see convergent behavior patterns across different locales, I can be like, Oh, this is an unusual behavior pattern, but it comes to convergently.
So something in our society must be pushing it, or it must be some sort of pre evolved pathway or a way that some system can break, which can then give me more insight into myself. But the other subsets I think are what draw most people, the cringe and stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Which I never got. Also you [00:05:00] don't, even if you see cringe comedy, for example, in a TV show, both you and I can't take it.
So I think it's something we have a lot of difficulty taking. I find it
Malcolm Collins: very painful
Simone Collins: to
Malcolm Collins: watch. Yeah. And then this brought me to another thing, which is the statement that I was thinking and I was like, this is true. Cringe is over. Cringe is boomer. Cows are like cringe is actually it's probably more Gen X, both of them.
Cringe is Gen X and cows are Gen X, which we've got new boomers, right? Yeah. Boomers just shorthand, I think for
Simone Collins: old.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But remember when like our cringe used to be a thing and like things being cringy used to be a thing and you just wouldn't hear a young person call something cringe.
cringe anymore. Like we interact with young people and they don't use the term that much when they're talking about things. And so I think what we're seeing here is a cultural shift where when the internet first began to proliferate and the first [00:06:00] generation of genuinely online natives, which was really our generation.
We realized Oh my God, you can find people doing crazy, insane things on the internet. And then a culture arose following, mocking. And we're laughing down at these individuals for the generation under us. They don't find this to be the novelty that our generation did, and they find the behavior patterns around this to be quite disgusting.
Like you could say, I don't want to say like low class, but pathetic, like laughing at somebody who barely has their life together and clearly has major psychiatric conditions is not. Cool, though, within Gen Alpha. Ah, yes. It's very You speak
Simone Collins: like the young people do, because they say things like, Cool, hey,
Malcolm Collins: I gotta make up terms, because I don't know what they're saying. Yeah, we shouldn't even
Simone Collins: try.
Malcolm Collins: But that makes sense to me, when I think about the things that Gen [00:07:00] Alpha values.
This reactionary Status hierarchies built around mocking those who are weaker than you is just like, why would you do that?
I think from the perspective of this generation.
Simone Collins: I think part of it's also because poor mental health has proliferated so much that there's this I'm not okay either. Why would I? I, who identifies as someone who's struggling mentally, take pleasure in seeing the mental languishing of someone else.
I think it has something to do with that. Yeah, but you've also got
Malcolm Collins: to think about the politicization of the online space into leftist and rightist spaces. was not as much the case when we were younger. And as the online space has become politicized most spaces and most status hierarchies was in most places identify as either left or right leaning status hierarchies.
Which means you're now playing by the moral codes of each of these status hierarchies. And while they are different moral codes, [00:08:00] neither of them would elevate targeting the status hierarchies. an individual who is, mentally unhealthy and doing cringey things. On the left, this would be seen as bullying a disabled person, right?
Why would you do this? Like you're a horrible person and you are like the definition of evil. On which is often, there's lots of performative masculine communities. There's lots of communities around self improvement. There's lots of, but if you're in like a self improvement community You think that they're going to elevate you for saying that somebody is cringy for anything other than their like political beliefs or failures at self improvement?
No, they're going to look at you like, why would you do that? Like why are you just randomly targeting someone? You should be focused on yourself. Which is why I think that you've got the elevation. Of the Hayes community is still one of the low cal communities that it's seen as really acceptable to hate on because it's acceptable to hate on it within this self improvement niche as they are seen as the antithesis of self [00:09:00] improvement.
And for people aren't familiar with the Hayes community, it's a healthy at every size community. Which promotes the idea that no matter what weight you are, you can be perfectly healthy and that you should do things like intuitive eating, which just means eat whatever you want whenever you feel like it and that you will be more healthy if you are doing that because your body knows what it needs, and obviously these things are true, and they represent a complete Sort of mirroring of what everything you get in within these fitness circles.
So they, they make fun of these communities. But then you also have the masculine, the performative masculinity, right leaning communities, like they're not going to like laughing at the low cows. So you're not going to get it there. You're not going to get it in the intellectualist communities.
Because why does that help anyone in that community? They're like, why are you doing this? This is a sociopathic waste of your time. And so I also think, ironically, as the internet sphere has become politicized, there just are not spaces where this is elevated as much, [00:10:00] except when the lolcows are explicitly political or explicitly high profile.
Simone Collins: I have a slightly different theory. Can I share it before you go forward?
Malcolm Collins: Okay, great.
Simone Collins: My slightly different take on this is that. Lolcows or cringe watching has shifted into hate watching, but hate watching And love watching are closely related and often simultaneous. So I don't really hear about people doing much cringe watching anymore, but what I do hear from people again and again, as they're commenting on others online is, Oh, I follow this person or this group or these types of people online religiously.
Like they're always following them on Instagram or YouTube or whatever it may be. And I hate them. But I love watching them and I also now have this parasocial relationship with them, whereby I care about them. And I think what's going on here is that yes, we're in this [00:11:00] highly politicized world and yes, we do like to look down on other people or feel superior about ourselves, or at least feel like we're reinforcing our own identities and political identities, especially.
However, there's also this extreme craving online and in the world in general for authenticity. And so these people that you can watch to hate, they are typically very authentic. They're very vehement in their beliefs. And often you watch them because they're vehement in their beliefs, which are in political opposition to your own, right?
So they're like the based Mormons and you're the progressive. And you watch
Malcolm Collins: historically, we're not about political beliefs.
Simone Collins: Yeah. They were more just embarrassing people online. And now people are watching their hate, watching people who are politically very different from them. But this
Malcolm Collins: would go into my political theory, so this would argue that it's something different is going on here.
Which is and with this topic we don't have an answer. Like I'm very open to Yeah, this is conjecture.
Simone Collins: Most of what we do is conjecture, we just sometimes feel very confident about it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I feel [00:12:00] uniquely unconfident about this conjecture, but it was something I wanted to think about and pontificate on with you, because this podcast helps me think through things.
Which was, I think it is, political lullcows are seen as okay because they are You can hate on them within the other political sphere. And we believe that they are not like mentally ill people often. They are just people doing active harm to the world, out of arrogance, in not being, in a lack of open mindedness.
And both parties now just think the other party isn't open minded. The left is no, the right isn't open minded about these topics. And the right's no, you're not open minded about ideological diversity. And. Diversity of cultural spectrums. And so both groups believe the other groups is small minded.
And could, if they, tried to look outside their bubble, see the world as it truly is.
So not being open minded. That, and then the other thing is I think that punching up is seen as very okay. So lull cows that are famous in some way. Are seen as okay [00:13:00] to laugh at still and okay to focus on.
So a great example of this would be the Shia LaBeouf flag thing, when 4chan was chasing around as a great internet has to ran on it. Um, because Shia LaBeouf is technically a famous actor, so we can, low cow him all we want, or the Johnny Depp divorce thing, right?
Like I think people really focus on that because that woman, whatever her name was. Yeah. And not only was she hateable, but the form of hate you had for her fell into one of the political niches was in the online, i. e. was in like red pill communities and stuff like that. And so this then goes to reinforce the reason why cringe stopped is you needed to be cringing specifically at an otherwise mentally competent person now, because it's just not funny to, Cringe at the mentally disabled anymore, which like, yeah, sure.
Like online culture has grown up. And they need to be in opposition to something. One of your community stands for what do you think?
Simone Collins: Yeah, that, that [00:14:00] sounds about right. I think now there's also this need to add to what you're saying to virtue signal. In addition to be smug and cringe at someone. Whereas in the past. It was just fun to, to cringe and laugh at someone who was just incredibly mentally ill or just really stupid, which seemed to be the most common themes.
Now it's more appropriate to cringe or laugh at someone who's just very, will say morally inferior per your cultural group, right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I also think it's that we have moved away from a society where the lull cows were seen as violating societal norms that everyone agreed to.
And that's what made them cringe. It was like this cringe that everyone could agree on, but in the modern context, that's [00:15:00] not what we're looking at. We're not looking at it because people don't longer believe in like a default set of social values, the social values in the online left and the online right, because they've drifted apart so much are unique and differentiated, which prevents generic violations of social norms.
As othering somebody from specifically one of those two communities. Where do you think the future is going to go with this stuff?
Simone Collins: Oh boy. That's a good question. Yeah. Who will we demonize and make fun of in the future? I could see. Apostates being the next top targets. So both because what we predict right demographically is that there's going to be this increasing xenophobia in high fertility groups, plus.
increasing levels of extreme predation from the urban monoculture as it needs to get more converts, which means that there is on both sides, we're going to see more [00:16:00] xenophobia. And then on both sides, the ultimate enemy, the people that are the worst are those who detract those who leave the home culture or those who leave progressive culture.
So like the transitioners
Malcolm Collins: and stuff like that. We
Simone Collins: transitioners religious people who convert to atheism. That those people will be seen. So right now, for example, there's a lot of people we follow online on YouTube who are like ex Mormons, for example, who do a lot of commentary on Mormon culture. I could see there being this sort of movement of now a bunch of Mormons just really enjoy following.
Those ex Mormons and seeing how miserable their lives are and how childless they are and how, fat and ugly they've become as soon as they leave the religion whatever, right? Like that. I could see them going for those sorts of things. On the other side, I could see, people, and we're already, I think, starting to see the forefront of this, the bellwether of this.
I'm starting to see. Religious people doing things like that, and I'm also starting to see progressives doing things like that with trad wives, for [00:17:00] example oh, now she says she's a trad cat. Now she says she's this and look, she's going to lose all her money and she's going to be so miserable and she acts as though she's so perfect, but she's really not and I think that we're going to see more of that.
And specifically from people who deconvert and not just from people who happen to be on the other team, we're gonna increasingly ignore those people.
Malcolm Collins: So I hear you. That might be what I have a different take of what might happen. Tell me which is if you say, and we've done a tweet to this extent, you cannot be based.
Without being cringe.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And by that, what I mean, people be like what do you mean by that? You cannot be based like you cannot we're basis defined as without fear of societal expectations, do what you think is right, say what you think is true and interpret reality in a way that is logically consistent within whatever value you set, you have determined for yourself.
So just. Uninfluenced by society or a desire to status signal [00:18:00] or, what's going on around you just take a straight narrow path there that will lead you to make decisions that, it will axiomatically lead you to make decisions that go against mainstream societal values. And where cringe is an individual, quote unquote, not recognizing mainstream societal values or going against mainstream societal values.
You are intrinsically, you must pass through the valley of cringe to get to based. And as such. And I'm going to get people might be like, come on, you're not really, you can't be saying that lol cows are the new base. And I'd say, actually, I think so. I think that we live in a society right now that is so starved for vitalism in people that it might admire.
Or model itself on that it is looking for these post cringe individuals who demonstrate, having something together in their lives. It's this Paul of nihilism that flows over the generations who [00:19:00] are comfortable with who they are and who they are is not about fitting some social trope around them.
And somebody can be like who are you? Talking about here, who would fit this? I say the Tiger King is a great example of this. In any previous generation, the Tiger King would have been a lull cow. He is almost the perfect representation of a lull cow. Ha, look at this cringy, he's a bad person.
He's cringy as hell at everything he does. And yet you watch him and he is the hero. Yeah, very obviously. You can look, and he seems like a genuinely pretty bad person, and yet you find yourself, and I think society found itself, loving him, and then hating the alternative, Carole Baskin, which was somebody who tried to play by all of society's rules.
Somebody who tried to fit this default social like idea of I am a good person. Please like me.
Simone Collins: Subset of the Tiger King [00:20:00] watchers though, that, that was pro Carol Baskin. I was under that impression that there was like
Malcolm Collins: the far progressive ones, because what does she represent? What do progressives represent?
But just going along with the dominant cultural group, right? And I think that what they miss is that the average person, the average American who isn't one of these progressive intellectual circles, doesn't like people like that. I actually think that we saw this reflected in the Trump Hillary election.
Trump was cringe. In many ways, it is almost impossible to say Trump isn't cringe, but he passed through the valley of cringe to base where he combined cringe and a self satisfaction with self comfort. The comfort was the ways that his value system was different from society's value system. Yeah, and then on
Simone Collins: the progressive side
Malcolm Collins: You had Clinton who was just Carole Baskin.
No, yeah no.
Simone Collins: Clinton did not pass through the Valley. She was still in the uncanny Valley of not of cringe. That's what I'm saying. Like the guy who sat in the cold and is old. Oh, [00:21:00] Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders. He passes through
Malcolm Collins: the, yes, based with a complete ownership of the ways that he is different from a hundred percent.
Yeah, mainstream culture. And here's where I think you have the new lolcow. The new true lolcow, the person who everybody agrees that they hate, is somebody who both comes from privilege and structures their entire life around fitting the mainstream societal exception of idea of this is a good person and is clearly unhappy at the other end of that.
And so I think the ideal, who do you think I'm going to say is the ideal new lolcow?
Simone Collins: It's a couple. Okay, so for a formative virtue signaler, a couple?
Malcolm Collins: Comes from a position of power everything they do is about just showing the world you know who they are.
Simone Collins: No.
Malcolm Collins: Harry and Meghan.
Simone Collins: Oh gosh, of course. Yeah, sadly.
Malcolm Collins: I think it's the new perfect [00:22:00] lolcow. They are like the Carole Baskin or the Hillary Clinton on crack. Where every little thing about their lives is structured to try to earn mainstream societal normie acceptance. Normie points. They don't realize that the normies don't exist anymore. They are yelling into a cloud that doesn't, to avoid and everybody thinks everything they do is truly detestable because it is so focused and so manicured to not be cringe.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think it's so interesting and I think intuitively confusing to people and I can't really understand it myself because they do represent the, Some fairly average and mainstream views and they're always trying to jump on things that the mainstream has already jumped on So that's where it's weird.
Why would we find that so cringe and yet we do? I wonder what's going on there Why it would be so rejected because intuitively it seems like it shouldn't be that [00:23:00] if they just glom on whatever the current thing is That they should be celebrated for that and yet they are not why do you think that only people who are more?
Because
Malcolm Collins: I think that the dominant cultural group in our society has been so aggressive and so abusive to its neighboring groups that the only people who really follow it anymore are the ultra elite. I. e. people who own media companies, people who control our school systems, professors, stuff like that.
And everyone else basically sees it as this stupid culty religion. And if you're like Harry and Meghan, all of your friends are in this cult, so you don't understand that the general public basically sees it as a joke now. Even at the age of Trump, when he was first running, we had already, I think, begun to enter that.
Where everyone was just like, yeah, at least he's not doing what everyone else is doing, and I think with Bernie, you catch on to the same thing here. People want something different.
Simone Collins: [00:24:00] Yeah, it could be. Yeah. The biggest thing is a dissatisfaction with everything. And then understanding that our current stances don't equal a solution and maybe, yeah it's part of a flailing for hope, but that's interesting.
I guess we'll see how it plays out who the future targets of ridicule
Malcolm Collins: will be. Yeah I'm very interested to watch this play out. And I think it's a positive societal shift and I think that there is a hole within the current memetic landscape for individuals who can, it. Who are happy with who they are, who show a sense of vitalism and optimism for the future and who are cringe in that they are differentiate from like mainstream social expectations, but take complete ownership of that.
And I think that, this is best represented in the traditional Adams family, like the nineties Adams family, where, I always say that the monsters were monstrous because they represent, they were monsters trying to live within the dominant social [00:25:00] culture. Where the Addams Family were monstrous because they were normal humans who differentiated from the mainstream societal culture so much that it made them more culturally similar to monsters than the society around them.
With the joke constant throughout the old Addams Family being that Despite that, they were happy and satisfied and had healthy relationships that no one else was able to capture in their society by following the rules. And in a society that is so nihilistic today, in a society that has so clearly failed people and with social expectations that so clearly do not work within this new economic and social context that we're in, people want a real Addams Family.
They want a real family who your average Boomer is like, Oh, they're weird and cringe, but then why are they happy? And that reflects on the real Boomer that maybe they're right and you're wrong, and everything that you are teaching as [00:26:00] a society right now is a necrotic rot of the human soul. And that when you look at something and you react, eww, that's so silly.
You are merely showing That you don't understand how to achieve happiness and you genuinely don't or satisfaction or a healthy relationship and you have no future plan for where we are going as a species that breeds optimism anymore while these weirdos do, and that humor. I think that contrast I think is what we hope to drive was the community that we build and why I think that it isn't just random cringe alternative.
And I love you for creating this with me, Simone. Thank you for not caring.
Simone Collins: Oh gosh. I'm very happy with what we've done and I really don't care what other people think, but that's probably the autism,
Malcolm Collins: but I care what you think. Yeah. All right.
Simone Collins: Have a good one. Simone, you too. [00:27:00] Gorgeous.
The Death of Cringe (LOL Cows are Boomer)