The Death of Cringe (LOL Cows are Boomer)

This episode delves into the cultural shift regarding online cringe culture and the notion of "lolcows."

1. Cringe culture and the concept of "lolcows" are becoming perceived as outdated, linked more with older generations like Gen X.
2. Younger generations (Gen Z and Alpha) show less interest in mocking others as past generations did, reflecting a cultural shift towards empathy and away from schadenfreude.
3. The political polarization of online spaces has affected what is considered acceptable targets of ridicule.
4. The hosts suggest that the future of public ridicule may focus on "apostates" or those who significantly change their ideological stances.
5. The episode underscores a growing societal need for authenticity and a move away from mocking those with mental health issues or non-normative behaviors.

1: Introduction

The hosts introduce the topic of cringe culture’s evolution and its perceived association with older generations. Malcolm Collins: "Cringe is over. Cringe is Boomer."

2: Evolution of Online Mockery

Discussion on how younger generations view and participate in online mockery differently than their predecessors. Simone Collins: "We interact with young people and they don't use the term 'cringe' that much."

3: Political Influence

Analyzing how political ideologies shape perceptions of who is an acceptable target for ridicule. Malcolm Collins: "The politicization of the online space into leftist and rightist spaces has changed the moral codes."

4: Future of Cringe

Speculation on future targets of online ridicule, focusing on cultural and demographic shifts. Simone Collins: "I could see apostates being the next top targets."

5: Conclusion

Summing up the discussion and reflecting on the broader implications of the shift in cringe culture. Malcolm Collins: "You cannot be based without being cringe."

1. Empathy Over Mockery: Foster empathy rather than enjoyment in others’ misfortunes.
2. Critical Consumption: Be mindful of the content you consume and share online.
3. Respect Mental Health: Avoid participating in the ridicule of individuals for their mental health issues.
4. Encourage Authenticity: Support and engage with content that promotes authenticity and vulnerability.
5. Stay Informed: Educate yourself on the shifting dynamics of online culture to better understand and navigate it.

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.

People

Malcolm Collins, Simone Collins

Content Warnings:

None

Malcolm Collins
Cringe is over. Cringe is Boomer. Lolcal is a boomer. Like, cringe is. Um.

Actually, it's probably more Gen X. Both of them. Yeah. Boomer's just shorthand, I think, for old. You cannot be based without being cringe.

Simone Collins
Yeah. And by that, what I mean we're based is 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 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.

Malcolm Collins
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 satisfaction, self comfort. The comfort was the ways that his value system was different from society's value system. Would you like to know more? Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be talking to you today.

Simone Collins
Hi, Malcolm. Today I am 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 lol cows. 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.

Malcolm Collins
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 lolcows any more than, I don't know, some other individuals, like Ben Shapiro, could be seen as more lolcowly than us, to be honest. But it got them talking about lolcows and they're like, lolcows are so boomer. Hmm.

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 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? My understanding is a lolcow is 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. Yes, it is. So there's a couple of categories.

There's lol cows and there's horror cows. Horror cows are like, they're just truly a horrifying human being. And then lol cows are. That. They are funny.

Chris Chan is probably the number one lolcow, although I think he kind of borders on a horror cow now with the. You heard what happened to him, right? No. Oh, so he was in jail for a bit. I think he might be out now, but he was in jail for sleeping with his mother.

No, his dubious consent. It looks very elderly. Yeah. So that's where somebody becomes a horror cow. I think I'm gonna vomit.

But anyway.

Simone Collins
Oh, God. But it also brought me to another topic, which I think, 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.

Malcolm Collins
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 psychology individuals work, which is actually the thing that's most interesting to me. Okay, 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 with 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. And as a former neuroscientist who specialized in, like, abnormal psychology and stuff like that, 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, which I never got. Also, you don't. Even if you see cringe comedy, for example, in a tv show, both you and I can't take it.

Simone Collins
So I think it's something we have. Already very dateful to 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.

Malcolm Collins
Cringe is over. Cringe is a boomer. Lol. Cal's a boomer. Like, cringe is actually, it's probably more Gen X, both of them.

Cringe is Gen X. And, Kathryn, Gen X, which are that new boomers, right? Yeah, boomers. Just shorthand, I think, for old. 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 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 in the first 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 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. Um, 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. Oh, yes, it's very speak like the young people do because they say things like, cool. I gotta make up terms because I don't know what they're saying.

Simone Collins
We shouldn't even try. But that makes sense to me when I think about the things that gen alpha values, this reactionary and 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, yeah. 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, who identifies as someone who's struggling mentally, take pleasure in seeing the mental languishing of someone else?

Malcolm Collins
I think that has something to do with the politicization of the online space into leftist and rightist spaces, which was not as much the case when we were younger. And as the online space has become politicized, most spaces and most status hierarchies within 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, neither of them would elevate targeting an individual who is mentally unhealthy and doing cringy things. On the left, this would be seen as bullying a disabled person.

Right. Why would you do this? You're a horrible person and you are 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, do 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 haze community is still one of the local 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 improvement. And for people who aren't familiar with the haze 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 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 Lolcow. 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, except when the lolcows are explicitly political or explicitly high profile. I have a slightly different theory. Can I share it before you go forward? Okay, great.

Simone Collins
My slightly different take on this is that lol cows 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 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 house. Historically were not about political beliefs. 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 went to 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.

Most of what we do is conjecture. We just sometimes feel very confident about it. Yeah, I feel 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. Lolcows are seen as okay because they are. You can, you can hate on them within the other political sphere.

Malcolm Collins
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. Oh, the right isn't open minded about these topics.

And the right, 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 bubbles, 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, Lol.

Cows that are famous in some way are seen as okay. To laugh at still and okay. To focus on. So a great example of this would be the Shia Labeouf flag thing when four chan was chasing around. There's a great Internet historian on it.

Yes, because Shia Labouf is technically a famous actor, so we can lolcow 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, Amber Heard. Yeah.

And not only was she hateable, but the form of hate you had for her fell into one of the political niches. It was in the online, that is in like red pill communities and stuff. 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. What do you think? Yeah, that 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.

Simone Collins
Whereas in the past it was just fun 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, we'll say, morally inferior per your cultural group. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins
And I also think it's that we have moved away from a society where the lol 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 not what we're looking at. We're not looking at because people no 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? Oh boy. That's a good question. Yeah. Who will we demonize and make fun of in the future?

Simone Collins
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 on both sides we're going to see more 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 detransitioners and stuff like that.

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 their 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 tradwives, for 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 going to increasingly ignore those people. So I hear you.

Malcolm Collins
That might be, which, I have a different take of what might happen. Tell me which is to say, and you've done a tweet to this extent, you cannot be based without being cringe. Yeah. And by that, what I mean people like, what do you mean by that? You cannot be based like, you cannot.

Where base is 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 set you have determined for yourself. So just uninfluenced by society or a desire to status signal 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 gonna get. People might be like, come on, you're not really. You can't be saying that. Lol. Cows are the new based.

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. Is this pall of nihilism that flows over the generations who 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 lolcow. He is almost the perfect representation of a lolcow. Look at this cringy. He's a bad person.

He's cringey as hell in everything he does. And yet you watch him and he is the hero. 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 Carol 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. Subset of the Tiger King Watchers, though, that that was pro Carole Baskin. I was under that impression that there was a subset. They were like the far progressive ones. Because what does she represent?

What do progressives represent? But just going along with the dominant cultural group. Right, 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 who he has a self satisfaction, but self comfort. The comfort was the ways that his value system was different from society's value system. Yeah. And then on the progressive side, you.

Had Clinton, who is just Carol Baskin. No. Yeah. 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 his name the guy who sat in the cold and is old. Oh, Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders. He passed it through the Valley passage.

Simone Collins
Yes. To based with a complete ownership of. The ways that he is different from 100%. Yeah. Mainstream culture.

Malcolm Collins
And here's where I think you have the new Lolcow. The new true loci. 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. It's a couple. Okay. It's a performative virtue signaler. A couple comes from a position of power.

Everything they do is about just showing the world you know who they are. No. Harry and Meghan. Oh, gosh, of course. Yeah.

I think perfect 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. 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 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?

Simone Collins
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 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.

Malcolm Collins
Because I think that the. 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. That is, 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 so 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. When I think with Bernie, you catch on to the same thing here. People want something different.

Simone Collins
Yeah, it could be. Yeah. The biggest thing is a dissatisfaction with everything and an 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 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. Who are happy with who they are, who show a sense of vitalism and optimism for the future, and who are cringe, and 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.

Malcolm Collins
They were monsters trying to live within the dominant social culture, whereas the Adams 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, society around them. With the joke constant throughout the old Adams 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 contexts that we're in. People want a real Adams 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 that reflects on the real boomer, that maybe they're right and you're wrong. And everything that you are teaching as a society right now is a necrotic rotation of the human soul. And that when you look at something and you react, ew, that's so silly, you are merely showing that you don't understand how to achieve happiness and you genuinely, 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 hearing what others think. 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. But I care what you think.

Yeah. All right. Have a good one, Simone. You too, gorgeous.

Simone Collins
You too, gorgeous.