Are State Run Dating Apps A Solution to Falling Fertility Rates?

This episode explores the feasibility and potential benefits of government-run dating apps as a solution to declining fertility rates, focusing on Japan's approach.

1. State-run dating apps could counteract the superficiality of modern dating apps by emphasizing detailed profiles and serious relationship intentions.
2. Such apps might require stringent user verification processes to ensure sincerity, including relationship status and financial stability.
3. The podcast critiques the efficacy of swipe-based apps and their impact on societal dating norms and expectations.
4. They propose that government-run apps could offer a non-commercial alternative focused on forming long-term relationships rather than profit.
5. The episode explores the broader social resistance to government involvement in personal relationships and pronatalist policies.

1: Introduction to Government-Backed Dating Apps

Simone and Malcolm introduce the topic of state-run dating apps, particularly focusing on Japan's initiative. They discuss its potential to shift away from market-driven dating dynamics.
Malcolm Collins: "It's a great idea for the government to launch a dating app."

2: Critique of Current Dating Apps

The hosts critique current dating apps for prioritizing profit over meaningful connections and how they've evolved from their original formats.
Simone Collins: "Dating apps used to be quite good; we met on one."

3: The Potential of State-Run Apps

Discussion on how a government app could reintroduce meaningful interactions between users, with a focus on long-term relationships.
Malcolm Collins: "Japan has the opportunity to do something impactful here."

4: Social Implications and Resistance

They debate the social resistance to government intervention in dating and the cultural implications of such initiatives.
Simone Collins: "People react as if suggesting marriage is an act of coercion."

1. Reevaluate your use of dating apps: Consider what you are seeking and whether your current platform aligns with those goals.
2. Look beyond superficial features: Focus on deeper attributes and common interests when evaluating potential partners.
3. Participate in platforms that verify user intentions and backgrounds to ensure more genuine interactions.
4. Be open to different types of dating platforms, including those that might initially seem unconventional.
5. Consider how your cultural and societal views on dating may influence your perceptions and openness to different dating systems.

In this insightful discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore Japan's government-backed dating app initiative aimed at boosting the country's birth rate. They analyze the app's unique features, such as income verification and relationship status documentation, and compare it to other dating platforms. The couple delves into the evolution of dating apps, the challenges of modern matchmaking, and the potential impact of government intervention in the dating sphere. They also share personal experiences, discuss the pros and cons of various dating methods, and offer suggestions for improving dating app design. This video provides a comprehensive look at the intersection of technology, government policy, and demographic challenges in Japan and beyond.

People

Simone Collins, Malcolm Collins

Content Warnings:

None

A
Hello, this is Malcolm and Simone. And we are excited to be talking to you today about a topic of grave pronatalist interest. Specifically, the country of Japan is making a government backed dating app. Now, I know very little about this topic other than that it exists, and apparently it's a paid app, which sort of seems to defeat the purpose. But Simone is going to tell us more.

Would you like to know more? Yeah. So it's actually not live yet. Only a beta version has really been live. But I'm quite intrigued by this.

B
I think it's a great idea for the government to launch a dating app personally. You know, someone's got to make this work. And the way that market based dynamics work, you're not going to see people actually get married based on dating apps, as they are dating apps, as they are meant for keeping audiences occupied. They're meant for lots of in app purchases. Yeah, this actually reminds me a lot of people.

A
So when we bemoan the fall of dating apps, what we're typically bemoaning is not that dating apps exist. They used to be quite good. Simone and I met on a dating app. Okay, Cupid was fantastic for meeting nerdy people. But the way that dating apps worked is you would have these full profiles and you would search by, like, keywords in the profile or by matching in terms of, like, answering tons of questions.

And there were different sites that did this in different ways. Then TikTok was invented, which brought in the invite of whatever word I'm looking for here of swipe based dating apps, the advent of swipe based dating apps, and then all of the apps started to move to this swipe based system. And originally I had thought that this was sort of a malevolent push, right? So when Tinder got really big and match group moved to swipe based dating, and then match group bought OkCupid, and they moved OkCupid to swipe based dating. And I thought they had done that in order to kill OkCupid.

So to understand why swipe based dating is so much worse than the old systems, dating websites are environments in which guys are intrinsically on the back foot. Dating websites are environments where guys sell themselves to women. Fundamentally, that's how dating websites work. The vast majority of dating website users, it's like 80% on Tinder and stuff like that, are males, right? Yeah.

Well, here's the problem where you can get differential advantage for males and not just have all of the women sort to the top 20% of males. It's when males are being judged on multiple metrics. Yeah. All right, so, because, you know, you may not be the highest looking guy, but maybe you have a good career or maybe you're witty, or maybe you have a hobby that overlaps with this woman's hobby. There are multiple dimensions on which you can compete.

Yes. So. And by the way, I used that dynamic on okcupid as well. I did not compete based on my photos, even though I did have photos of myself in film grade stormtrooper armor. I competed based on these weird questions that OkCupid used to prominently feature in a feed.

B
So you could camp out in the questions on OkCupid and give really provocative and weird responses and show up in people's feed and engage them really easily so you can. I was able to compete based on how my. How. Hold up, sporky. I was.

I'm not saying it was great. You got lots of high profile people. I did, yeah. And that's the thing is, is that I, not being the most beautiful person in the world, was able to still compete on that. Although there was that youtuber who was criticizing us recently who was like, oh, that guy's way out of her league.

You are out of my league, Malcolm. But I thought that was really funny because I'm like, well, I guess she did pretty well using her mechanism of female outreach on dating apps. Hold on. So the point I was getting to is that when you move to a swipe based dating app, it intrinsically means that you are just judging people based on how they look. Which one, interestingly, is the thing that women care least about except for random sexual partners.

A
Right. So you are basically having the dating app replace the nightclub, which we've actually seen in the United States. Nightclub attendance has been, like, crashing. They are just used for, like, regular sex now. Like, that is the point of the swipe based dating apps.

But they prevent men, like, a diversity of men, from really competing within this environment because they can't compete on any metric other than how they look, and the women can't really use them for anything other than random sex. And worse, because all the women are now sorting to the same few men. Those men don't really invest in those women. Yeah, well. And both sides are developing wildly unrealistic expectations.

B
That is, a woman who's a four expects that not only because she can sleep with an eight, she can marry an eight, but also a man who's an eight just gets so flooded with women that he's just never going to ever want to marry even an eight or nine or ten. San Francisco and this woman was like, yeah, I mean, it's a huge problem to find a guy who's not polyamorous who's, like, in my league. And I'm here thinking, I'm like, well, did you consider that the men who are polyamorous are out of your league? And that, like, she thinks, like, well, I just need a guy who's like, this guy who's sleeping with me, but polyamorous, but who's not polyamorous. Like, it's just one weird quirk.

A
It's like, no, this guy is sharing, like, ten women. Like, he will clearly date below his league because of that. You shouldn't be benchmarking yourself on the polyamorous guys you could get to sleep with. But it's worse than that. It's worse than that because I think that this shift to image based, uh, signaling is now creating this proliferation of filters that is completely like, you.

B
You. I have no idea, honestly, what people look like online anymore because they're. There's such heavy filter use that they all look incredible. And I'll never forget, like, by mistake on an app once I turned a filter on my own face and, oh, my God. Like, I could look genuinely okay.

It's. It is. It is astounding. Puritan. Hot.

Yeah. Husband goggles. There is, like, I'm now realizing that all these people online that are so beautiful, I can now kind of tell all the filters they're using. And I think this is just creating this rampant dishonesty, too. So I think this is another thing, is that when any relationship that you could have is immediately beginning with some level of disappointment, because now you're seeing the person without the filters for the first time.

So your first in person impression of them is a letdown. Oh, yeah. And what people say online, like, when people are like, oh, you know, you guys are mid or whatever, it's like, bro, like, I have. I have been in public. Like, we just got out of the airport.

A
Like, it is rare walking through an entire airport multiple times and we're not underway. I mean, that least gives us a slight bump up. It's even being sorted for by, you know, economic status. I'm like, no, you have been distorted in what attractive is, because you assume that, like, subconsciously, your social environment is the tv shows you watch, and then. Instagram and social media, where Instagram and.

Social media, which isn't the real world, you want to learn how real people look? Go to an airport and walk around, okay? That's what airports also select for people who can afford. No, but I'm using airport because it's even a selected environment for wealthier people. But hold on, I gotta get to the secret information I actually have access to here.

I actually was, was mentioning that I had thought that match grape had intentionally destroyed OkCupid at a party once. And I thought that's what they did. Yeah. Best selling book on relationships, blah, blah, blah. And I got scolded because actually at that party was the person at OkCupid who made the decision to do the switch.

B
Zachary, did you punch him in the face? I mean, no. Everybody spreading misinformation. And I didn't know what I was talking about because. And he said, and I was wrong, clearly.

A
He's like, no, it's what the users wanted. We could see it in the dad. I mean, yeah, engagement. Let's be clear as to what he's really saying when he said that. When they switch to swipe based systems, because keep in mind, the majority of users are men, they are getting more user interaction and more regular user interaction.

The guy, you know, he turned out to have been the guy who made this decision. And the reason he gave for making the decision was the data. So what they were really finding in this data was just that they could make men, their primary audience, more addicted. Yeah. And that is why all of the apps have made this change so much.

So I thought that in a recent Scott Alexander Grant thing, or not recent, this was a few years ago. One of the proposals that, like, a nonprofit should do is to remake the old OkCupid. Oh, I remember that. Yes. Actually optimize around finding a partner who you want to marry instead of just getting people addicted to the platform.

B
Yeah. So Japan has the opportunity to do something like that here. Yeah. And it's not economically incentive. It's not trying to keep people on an app.

It's not. So I think this idea of a government backed dating app. Fantastic. And I've already seen people tweeting about this. Oh, it's dystopian.

Oh, can you believe, you know, governments are forcing people to get married. No, they're not. Okay. So I love it whenever somebody, like. Suggests marriage to someone, they're like, you're forcing me.

A
You're forcing me. It's like, honestly, Malcolm, I think it's a fetish thing. There was also the same, I think it was in the Netherlands, a bunch of women dressed up in those handmaid's tale, like bonnet, red cape dress things. They're like, oh. Because they had some, like, pro.

B
They were discussing pronatalist policies. And this is just like, policies to help parents, you know, this is not like we're going to take away female reproductive rights. It was just like, you know, this is the Netherlands. Okay? This is not China.

Okay, then. And they show up in force wearing the handmaid's tale. I think they just wanted to cosplay at it as it. I think they all have some our fantasies going on sexually. Okay, okay, maybe.

A
But here's what I think is going on. I think that when you even suggest the idea that they should do something that they know they need to do, it's a bit like. Or that they would be better off doing. When you tell a fat person, you know, you probably shouldn't eat that. They like, the anger that you're gonna get is, like, really disproportional to what you just said, even though it would be in their best interest if they did that, because they know that they shouldn't eat that.

These women know that they would be happier if they found contented, long term partners who cared about them and if they had kids, but they haven't made the sacrifices in the same way that, you know, the fat person reaching for the donut is unwilling to make the sacrifices. And that, uh, dissonance, cognitive dissonance, causes them to say, and, you know, fat people will do this. You're telling me I need to lose weight? You're trying to genocide fat people? And it's like, no, I just said that maybe you should.

You want to get rid of all people like me? And they immediately go to these places because it's the only way that they can logically, because they don't want to think, like, internally. Wow, I'm being super illogical and insane right now. Right? They want to believe that they're being the good guy.

Logical. So they take this position where it is an attack to even mention, like, hey, you know, if you do think you can have kids, it would be useful to, you know, civilization if you did. We're not pressuring you. We're just letting you know it's on the table and that you're not. Then they wouldn't need to wear those costumes.

Not doing it. They wouldn't wear those costumes. You might as well be holding them to the floor with a gun against their head. They're like, it's fascism. It's fascism.

B
I think there's something going on there. But. So, anyway, there are some spicy things. Weigh in on this. Yeah.

Do these people have a fetish, like Simone says, which they totally do. Because otherwise it wouldn't cosplay as people. Or quick note here before you go further, we never edit or censor the comments. If ever the comments are weirdly turned off or you see things being deleted, that is YouTube doing it automatically. We won.

A
It goes against our philosophical beliefs to do that. We do not have time for that. We don't have time for that small channel. Like, we're editing videos every day. You think I also have time to like be editing the comment section.

B
We have day jobs. So anyway, spicy things about the app, which I actually think are fantastic. And now these aren't coercive things, they're just cool policies. So users, by the way, for those who want to read more about this, I'm looking@japantoday.com comma, the article is called Tokyo government to launch dating app to boost birth rate. So users will be required to submit documentation proving they are legally single and sign a letter stating that they are willing to get married.

I think that's great. Setting like a standard there. You are willing to hold on. This is actually, I don't know if you're familiar with these. There's like subreddits tied to this.

A
Like, are we dating the same Guy? Yeah. And like Manhattan. Remember I said that all the women are matching to the same guys? Totally.

The really interesting thing that this is creating the quote unquote legally single category means that they are creating a sub marriage threshold of relationship commitment. Or an IndiViduaL is registering with the government that they are dating somebody else. No, I think. I think they're just saying they're not married. No, no.

I think it means you're not dating someone else. I think it's a subcategory that they're creating here, which is actually a really powerful thing to do because it helps pipeline people to engagement much faster to have this incremental stage between. We used to have this when I was younger. It's called being Facebook official. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was hard to cheat on someone if you were Facebook official because people could easily find that isn't like the primary social platform when people can make excuses about why they don't have one. Facebook official doesn't exist anymore, which made it very hard to cheat during the period where Facebook was that common. So continue because you're in a relationship with someone on Facebook. Yes, I think that's absolutely brilliant. Also stating one's income is common on japanese dating apps.

B
But Tokyo, which is, this is the office it's announcing this dating app will require a tax certificate slip to prove the annual salary. I also think that that's absolutely brilliant, that if you are. If you want to front about something, you actually have to provide receipts, like literal receipts, because another thing that you see happening on dating apps a lot is people. And of course, social media in general, people signal wealth, and especially in the United States, they signal it, and they're actually in massive amounts of debt. It's not wealth at all.

Like, you. You think that you are possibly dating into, maybe even marrying into financial security, and you, in the end, are not. I think that's like a flex on the new app to show that you actually have a lot of wealth, but to not live the lifestyle of a, like, not dress super wealthy, you know, you're dating somebody with financial security, which is hot, or somebody who's been wasting all their money on those trading card games that they have in Japan. So, you know, one or the other. Yeah, 100%.

So this is actually the first app that the government has organized, but also they have been organizing, or municipalities within Tokyo at least have been organizing matchmaking events for a while now, which is really interesting. And I am dying. Maybe in the future we can do. An episode of, like, different. So Singapore has had a matchmaking program for a while, and in China, you can go to the parks in China.

Yeah, but that's parents. That's parents self organizing, which is great. Parents are a major under discussed factor in matchmaking, and they used to play, historically, a huge role in matchmaking. Yeah, but I think most of these parents, I don't think that many, from what I've heard, that many actual relationships don't come out. Yeah.

I think they just go to there to complain or brag, honestly. Yeah. Oh, your. Your hypothetical match with my son isn't good enough. You know, your hypothetical match with my daughter isn't good enough.

A
And then they find one that's good enough, and the kids like, what are you doing?

What? Sorry? You said, what are you doing? I. No, no, I was talking about the parents, not you.

B
Yeah, sorry, you confused me. I was like, I don't.

A
One thing I found interesting about the dating app was how little they had invested in it. It did not sound like enough to make a functional app. Yeah, well, and the other thing is. And this is actually one of the reasons that they made, for just that they presented justifying the app's creation, whereas I feel like it's actually reason to be skeptical that this should be made at all. The official said, quote, we learned that 70% of people who want to get married aren't actively joining events or apps to look for a partner, unquote.

B
And then they continued. We want to give them a gentle push to find one, but that isn't like, creating an app for which there maybe don't demand isn't going to solve the problem. I do think that the fact that this app exists and has some controls in it, and it's not just the controls I mentioned. Also, an interview will be required to confirm everyone's identity as part of the registration process, which is pretty cool, because then you're not going to have fake people or people just kind of, you know, I don't know, what's the word? Tourists.

You won't have tourists on the app. You can't, it appears, use filters and stuff. Right. You know, it doesn't state that. And I'm a little bit concerned about that because then, you know, we still have that problem.

But it sounds like the kind of app where this would not be permitted, although it would be terrible if everyone had just like, a government id photo, dating app photo. That would be slightly suboptimal. But, yeah, I am a little skeptical that people will use this, and I think that's one of the biggest problems. But I. I also remember when you and I were in the period of dating, OkCupid was kind of the place to go to meet interesting people.

Tinder and some other apps are the place to go if you wanted sex, and then if you actually wanted to get married, you would go on match.com dot. And I do think that having a place to go where it's kind of, at least at the time, socially understood that if you're there, you're looking to close a deal, it would be really helpful. And I remember when I was dating with peers, and we were doing our whole competitive dating ring in the office. All of us were on OkCupid except for one, and she immediately found a very well matched partner. They were engaged within a couple of months, and then they got married just like that.

And it was so weird to see because no one else was really thinking about getting married. But both of them were in their late twenties, and they were just, like, ready to close the deal. And. And I actually, at the time, there were even older people I knew, like, in their early forties who also went on match, were very, like, brass tacks. Like, this is what I'm looking for.

This is what I'm not looking for. Got married just like that. And it'd be really cool if this app could sort of. But here's the thing about different dating apps right now, in the current environment, is that you're always going to have different social sort of circles that become self sustaining within different apps because you need, like, a certain amount of people of a certain sociological and social profile to be on an app. And then it becomes like the cluster you go to for that sort of person.

Oh, yeah. Can actually differ between cities. You know, some cities, like, okay, Cupid might not be quite as nerdy as other cities. Yeah. But when we did it, like, okay, Cupid was like, the nerd.

A
Like, it was the nerd app. Yeah. And that's why I was on it. I wanted to meet a nerdy wife. Like, I was like, okay, that doesn't seem to be as much of a thing anymore, this disintermediation.

Although I've been listening to a lot of lgbt youtubers talk about dating in the current environment, and one of the things I found really interesting is lesbians trying to find apps where you don't have tons of really aggressive trans women, because obviously these women used to date as men, and so they're used to being one really aggressive on apps the way men are. And lesbians on apps are apparently very similar to women on normal dating apps, which is just not, you know, outreaching that much. Yeah. So where do they go? If you join an app that doesn't filter against that and you can, you know, get in so much trouble for even requesting, like, I only want to.

I only want to date, you know, cis lesbians. Right. So because you can't. You can't ask that. Like, the apps will not allow you to filter this.

Even lesbian only apps, like. Which is so funny, because on other apps. Well, pretty much on every app use a woman or man, but typically women, you can be like, well, I'm not going to date anyone who's below 6ft and male. Right. So you can discriminate against height.

B
You can discriminate against so many other factors, age, but you cannot discriminate against even. Even ethnicity on a lot of these apps, but not against, you know, cis or trans, which is a pretty big morphological difference. Yeah, I would say probably bigger than heights. I've heard the most common is that they actually find Facebook dating to be the place with. Is there a dating app on Facebook?

A
Apparently there is. So there's, like, Facebook marketplace and there's Facebook dating. Yeah. Let's see. I've heard that it's LinkedIn.

B
LinkedIn is the place where at least, like, higher earners go to date. I've heard that as well. Yeah, well, it is something because you're gonna get higher agency people there that actually, like, know what they want and reach out. And we know couples and parents who met on Twitter. On Twitter?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a hard place to meet, but, no, I think it's. It's more common.

I mean, I don't know. I don't know anyone personally who married based on LinkedIn, only dated. But I do know people who married based on Twitter. That's something. Yeah, yeah.

But, but see, again, Twitter is a place where you can compete based on image, based on, like, prestige, you know, follower count, based on just how clever and witty your ideas are, and the people that we. That we know. I'm thinking of one couple especially, who, like, even now, have a kid together. Is it public that you can say this or. I don't know if they were public about meeting there, but they don't have a ton of followers.

Like, they just were intellectually very engaged. Oh, them. Yeah. That is interesting. Yeah.

A
Intellectually, they're very much, like, in the same Twitter circle. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So if you were to design a dating app as a government, what would you do?

I would. First you have to have a lot of pictures, because only with a lot of pictures can you determine what somebody really looks like. So you want, like, 30 or 40 pictures minimum. Oh, but I have an idea is the photos have to come from your personal network. None of them can come from you.

That would be incredibly hard to source. That's. I don't know if they just, you know, like, letters of recommendation for college applications come from third parties. So 30 to 40 photos. And which photo gets shown to people is random among those photos.

So you can't have, like, the. Your good side photo. Yeah. Then you also need a long form profile that talks about a lot of stuff so that you. The primary thing you're putting forwards is your sort of bio, maybe even a swipe based system.

But the swipes show individual portions of somebody's profile, not their picture. Ooh. Okay, so people are not. Photos are not the first and foremost thing, but there are tons of photos. Would you gate access to photos until after people send a message in a kind of love is blind kind of thing?

No, but what I would do is I would create hidden categories based on either ia or human. So we do ratings of everyone based on their attractiveness to create leagues. Kind of like, keep your AI does where they actually. Okay. Cupid used to do this as well.

And so you don't remember you could get your league rated. I don't remember league ratings, but I do remember that it would tell you if you were hot. Right. Outreaches you got. But I think just create leagues and then have people only be sorting within their league in terms of the text chunks that they're choosing to swipe or not swipe.

And then text checks also need a system where if they say they're dating somebody, there's some sort of a cost of that. Like, they can't go back on the app for a year or something like that. Or half a year, you know? Well, but then people are just going to lie. No, no, no.

The idea is, is that dating somebody, like, going to this I am in a relationship stage is an actual commitment with a cost. So you can't get back on the app. Okay. We'll say at least a quarter, maybe not half a year. A quarter of a year.

Okay. After you break up, before you can get back on the app again. So you can't just tell somebody, oh, yeah, I'll date you officially register with the app and then break up a week later. You know, this. You need switching costs.

That's one of the core problems in our society right now, is low switching costs. Yeah, I agree that you have to create higher switching costs. I. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how to design that. I make on this is a lot of people, you know, you're talking about, like, using LinkedIn, using Twitter, et cetera.

People like, I'll just meet my partner naturally. Right. Like, I hear this all the time. Yeah. You know, they're like.

Like people used to. Like people used to. And it's like, do you go out to a bar every day of the week? And they're like, no. And I'm like, that's how people used to meet.

B
Like, they used to meet. No, they used to meet in high school. That was kind of in high school. You meet in college, but you were meeting in environments where you were regularly socializing. Yeah.

A
People who are not going to clubs or bars or other social events continue to say, I will meet someone in the old way without remembering that the old way was contingent on them going out there and actively socializing. Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's really important to elevate, which is to say you, like, a partner is not just going to come to you by, like, osmosis. Okay. I know it happens to some people.

Right. In the same way. You know, it reminds me of somebody, like, saying, I'm not going to apply to jobs, I'll just, like, get one randomly, right? I'll wait till a job comes to me, and I'm like, why would you think that would work? And they're like, well, my buddy Brandon, you know, his dad got him a connection or something.

And I'm like, yeah, but you must understand that's an incredibly rare phenomenon. If you actually want to end up with a job, you need to start applying. And they're like, but I really hate rejection. Really hate it when they say no or don't follow up or something awkward happens in an interview. And I'm like, well, now, of course, men these days are also dealing with russian roulette in terms of women who either can get themselves pregnant and then force the man to pay child support by, like, you got to card those used condoms, or they can just randomly accuse him of grape.

And it's a very tough environment to be a guy, but in a way, you know, the genetic bottlenecks our species are facing have become more intense. The question I have for you men out there is, can you weather this bottleneck, or will you be part of the faction that gets churned by it? Because at the end of the day, we can't do that much about this particular bottleneck. We're going through the species. All we can do is try to get through it and then raise a better generation for the next next iteration of society.

And that's what we're doing with our kids, with our arranged marriage plans and all that weirdness. So, yeah, I think it's in the right place. It would be terrible if it turns out to just be a swipe based app. I'd be very disappointed in them. It doesn't say.

When I said it didn't seem like they raised much money, if I remember correctly, it was like 1.5 million USD was raised to build this app. And I'm like, that is not. I don't know. I mean, if you're lean about it. Well, I.

Yeah, if you're leaning out. Exactly. The problem is, is that government things always cost more money and are always jankier than public sector, private sector things. Yeah, maybe not in Japan. I mean, you know, there are some.

B
Some governments where it is genuinely impressive what their online services are like. And I would, you know, Japan is Japan. Let's not forget that, okay? You know, you go to the airport and anime girls are everywhere, greeting you to the nation, right? Super cute little mascots.

It's wonderful, right? So if anyone can do it, hopefully Japan can. But I'm keen to see how it plays out and I hope it works. And it's great. I just wanted you to learn about the fun elements of it.

A
Well, I love our little date talking, and I have so much fun being with you. Same. I love you so much. I'm glad we met when OkCupid was cool, last Chopra out of nom. Malcolm get all the things in my life.

I get all this hatred online, and I'm like, well, you know, I suppose this is not what I deserve, but it's for having such a good life at home. You know, every day I owe it to our reality, to the future police, whatever term I want to say to deal with all of this, because somebody has to be saying the things that we're saying. Somebody has to be getting canceled in the way that we're getting canceled or, yeah, gotta stay. Civilization is hurtling towards a cliff right now, and nobody, nobody has the steering wheel to turn it. So, you know, we're just trying to.

B
Give, like, those smart enough in society a really cool, like, base jumping parachute. So instead of just completely crashing, they can look in a badass way, like, saving themselves last minute. And I think it can happen. Some people, they're getting the parachute. Man, I feel like you.

A
You and the life that you have given me, being this amazing wife are just such an enormous reward that I still haven't earned. No, that's really romantic. I want to point out that it's also a big, big thing for people who are still on dating apps to remember that you should not try to find someone who's perfect out of the box. And that when Malcolm found me, and he's very happy. Look, he's just said he was really happy.

B
He's totally not a hostage, I promise, but that he married below his league and he created the life that he wanted. And if you want to create your own happiness, you have to fight for it tooth and nail. You have to build it your fucking self. It's just. It's like with having friends.

You're not going to have friends unless you organize everything. You host the dinners, you invite everyone. You remind them all. You think, oh, I'll reach x threshold and then I'll go find a part, you know? No, you're gonna have to brute force this.

It's gonna suck. It's not gonna be fun. How much do you. Should I value attractiveness? And I'm like, bro, attractiveness.

A
When you bank in attractiveness, you are trading something else because you can get higher quality. So if you go down in attractiveness, you know, you can get higher iq, higher diligence, higher income, higher mental stability, because, you know, your value to those women is higher than the men they would normally get, whatever your state is. So people forget that all of these are variables you're trading for other variables. Yeah, exactly. So thanks for choosing your uggo wife.

That's apparently what the Internet has decided recently, which I'm very surprised about. It's okay. As long as you can tolerate me without vomiting, I'll take it. I love you so much. I love you, too.

Have a good one.

B
And you can stop and comment and. Oh, no, no, I'm on the wrong side, sir. Again, it. What's it called? It?

Manifest. We got more of the. How fucking dare you have Simone and Malcolm on the wrong side. Do you understand how. Oh, this is even in person now?

A
We need to be on the right side when we're talking. No, no, no. Just in the podcast. But that, you know, a couple of times recently, we've. What we got, we got a ton of.

Was make more tracks. Make more tracks. And we. I was surprised, like, every single person who came up to us was like, why did you need to keep doing that? Yeah.

So we'll get back to it. All right. You want to bring us in? Bring us in with what? I don't.

B
You hate my intros? Okay. Yes. I'll do an intro. Okay.

A
Did she just throw up everywhere? No, she just, like every. She extruded something very stinky. Let's keep going. It's all right.

B
It's fine. You know what? Life. Life is. Life is poop.

A
I'll let you go get the. No, poop is life. Let's keep going. Okay, so the point I was gonna make was that I actually was. Was mentioning that I had thought that match grape had intentionally destroyed.

And I believe it's because you really. No, keep going, keep going, keep going. It's fine. Simone, we got 20 minutes left of this. This is not a good idea.

B
No, no. Okay, just give me a second. Sorry.

It's good that I waited the first time because more came out. You little troublemaker. How I love you, but you poop like it's 1999.

Okay, we're good now. Hello. I am back. Okay, so.

A
Okay, so.