The Perplexing Failure of Classically Abby (Ben Shapiro's Sister)

A
She's actually cool. She's actually an interesting nerd. What on earth? Real life. What?

B
But the person she presents as on YouTube. I love your shock speaker two. Would you like to know more? Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be talking to you today.

Something really interesting that we mentioned in a recent episode that when I was editing it, I was like, wait a second. I should be really focused on this question. Why didn't classically Abby, Ben Shapiro's sister, work? Being a conservative woman in today's day and age is not easy. Why didn't she catch on with the public?

And so people could understand just how much this didn't work. She was doing tons and tons of ads at one point on YouTube. If you are active on YouTube, you definitely saw her all the time for a period. Every time I bought this up with a youtuber, they're like, oh, yeah, that aren't active on YouTube. To give you an idea, her top four or five videos have over a million views.

And if you're paying for that much in ads, because it was certainly in ads that caused these videos to go out there. Certainly over a million dollars in ad spend. If I had to guess, I would guess it was probably 1.5 to 2 million in ad spend for a channel that today produces weekly videos that are similar in format to ours and similar also in content to ours and are getting, I'd say, on average, probably about half the views that we get on daily videos. So this is really interesting to me. And I can post our numbers on the screen and everything like that.

So you can check our math. We're getting on average, I think. Now what is it? 8000 views per day? 7000 views per day and about 1300 watch hours per day or 7400 watch hours per day, depending.

It goes up and down for us. There was a peak a little bit. Ago, but you've done a really good job, Malcolm. No, I mean, I don't know. A million to two million's on side of me.

A
I would guess more like at least $100,000. Oh, certainly more than 100,000. Really? Oh, absolutely. It had to be.

B
There is no way it was less than half a million. But I suspect very likely between a million and half a million and a half. But we can run the numbers, whatever. The point being is she's connected to a famous person. Her videos are generally well done, edited, well executed.

She is an attractive woman and she had the ability to get in front of tons of people. Why didn't her message connect with any audience? And this is a very important question to be asking for. Probably the biggest reason is because the message that she was shilling is the message that the conservative elites believe the conservative base should be hearing. Yeah.

A
And I my, when I was going through her videos in preparation for this because I hadn't really watched any, I felt like I was watching an AI video. These were AI responses. If you asked chat GPT, what are some reasons why a woman would need to dress modestly? Or what are some reasons why I should keep my apartment clean? These are exactly the answers that it would generate.

B
Oh my God, you're right. Yes, I am exactly right. And I think that's also if you. Gave it the framing of, and you're a conservative youtuber, and then that's what it would split it out, you would need to give it some framing. But hold on.

Before I go further with this, I want to make a few caveats about my thoughts after watching a lot of her content. So my first thought is I think that ideologically we are probably not that different from her. Even socially, I don't feel we're that different from her. When I watch her videos, to me she reminds me intensely of some of my cousins. And by that what I mean, I.

A
Would say your family, but definitely not us. She's not weird. Well, no, this is the weird thing. She is actually in real life. She DM's for her husband's, some of his tabletop gaming groups.

B
She is into Warhammer. What? She's actually cool. Actually an interesting nerd. What on earth?

Real life? What? But the person she presents as on YouTube is. I love your shock.

Also like my family, my family members who are like her. Oh yeah. When they're drunk, they're amazing. Amazing when they're drunk. When they're not drunk, they are just like her.

They are very entirely palatable about this very crafted image. They're conservative Barbie and Ken. Yeah, and it doesn't work for a few reasons. So the very first reason that I'll get to why I don't think her image worked or found an audience is in one of her videos, the one on trad wives, she explains why she chose the term classically instead of trad, and it was because she saw Trad as being too reductionist and restrictive in terms of what it represented as a woman being strictly beneath the husband. And she'll make arguments very similar to ours that, no, this wasn't the case for most families.

Historically, women usually worked. She's lucid and educated on these topics. But the problem is so she saw classic as the alternative of that. And she really is quite a classical person. She does opera singer, opera singer.

If you look at the environment of her house or the way that she styles herself, it is a very classical look. Really. I don't know. It's Starbucks. It's Starbucks.

A
Basic. Whatever. The point is, if you are going to Dallas House parties of wealthy people. That is what you would see. That is what you would see is a house that looks like hers.

B
And this, I think, is the first mistake. Is that classical? What does classical really mean in a modern context? Classical means what is socially normative in the upper classes of a society or the elite classes of a society. Listen, my name is classy with an I and a little dick hanging off the c that bends around and the l out of the A S s.

The problem is that in our current society, being conservative is not socially normative among the elite communities. Therefore, being conservative is not classy from the perspective of this elite group that rules our society. This is why when you go to your standard billionaire who hasn't put a lot of thought into their political beliefs and they're doing what's socially normative, whether it is Mark Zuckerberg or Bill gates or even the suns. Because I grew up adjacent to the very wealthy community in Dallas. My granddad was a congressman.

And I know what happened to their kids, right? I know the lives that they're living now. They almost, to the person completely abandoned that aesthetic convention. They no longer larp trying to. So they basically went one of two directions.

Either they went the direction of what we call the urban monoculture, or trying to look like your standard, wealthy, white, progressive woman, which is an iteration of classy that stayed in some of the mansion y looking places and stuff like that. Or they became conservative or stayed conservative because their families were originally conservative and now mostly live on their family's ranch or lake house or semi rural environment, and larp more of the rural aesthetic because the conservative mindset was expelled from these communities. What she is selling classically is something that would have sold to our parents generation of conservatives, but it is not something that appeals to this generation of conservatives. When you look at what's appealing personally to this generation of conservatives. Okay, for example, look at Trump.

Is Trump classic or classy in way he desperately wants, but no, he is garish and out there, vitalist. Or you look at, as we've mentioned, other conservative heroes, like Tiger King. Ah, that's how we take care of ISIS right there, buddy. You're an animal rights person and you try and come into this facility, this is what you're gonna be greeted with.

This is the type of vitalism that the conservative base identifies with and craves or. Yeah, and I think progressives, or many will say classical conservatives, would call that trashy. But really what. What it is in our minds is like rough Rider republicanism. This is Teddy Roosevelt.

A
This is. Get out there, pew. Pew America. Yeah. Pearl clutching conservative basically died out as a demographic class in our video that I would really recommend people watch if they haven't seen it.

B
Cause I think it's one of our best. From disgust to cringe to vitalism. Examining the evolution of cultural frameworks, we talk about how in the nineties, mass action politically was motivated primarily by a disgust based framework, which. And then a cringe framework, which shamed people for violating social norms. These frameworks really worked with this classic socially normative appeal that she's going for.

Because it was the appeal that worked for our parents generation, but it doesn't work for our generation. And a lot of the positions like the base that they think, when I say they, I mean her and her brother, because they both do a somewhat similar shtick now. And it's very clear as her brother changes from one shtick to another schtick, he doesn't understand what the conservative base wants. He got famous when a different generation of conservatives was around, and he was never really got. Young conservatives.

And it's also clear you see this in likely who he's surrounding himself with, which is the last generation of conservatives, which had this sort of deontological conservative framework where these things are good, these things are bad, instead of the more consequentialist, vitalistic, rebellious framework that the modern conservative has. E. It's not about pearl clutching. You need to follow this set of rules anymore. It's we need to rebel against a system that's controlling us and that, that doesn't work with classy.

You don't. You don't. And even my back. In a classy way. Yeah.

You don't socially rebel. I often think, like, even conservatives want classy today. Young conservatives. Right. What are they looking for?

They're looking for morticia and Gomez. Not a nineties soccer mom. Right? How long has it been since we've waltzed oh, God.

A
Hours to live without you? Only that would be torture. A day alone. Only that would be death. They want someone who is okay with being themselves when themselves is in violation of current social rules.

B
And I also think that when you look at this old deontological conservative framework. I think you see it disappearing in the younger generation. And even some people who watch the show, like a lot of online culture warriors, don't realize that this base that they think exists doesn't exist. A few points I make here, and I noticed that she never. She not racist at all.

But I do believe that even in conservative elite circles, I have seen this myth, believed that there is a disproportionately racist conservative base you need to appeal to through dog whistles. And by the statistics, this is just not true. There are not more racists on the conservative side than the Democrat side. And I'll put some polls on the screen here. The one that I always love to cite is that more white Democrats said they wouldn't vote for a black president than conservatives Republicans until Obama was president.

But also, you see this in the actual numbers. So I'm gonna go through some numbers here. According to 2014 Pew Research poll, 61% of Republicans and republican leaners under 30 favored same sex marriage, while only 35% opposed to it. So if you're doing something like going against same sex marriage, which I'm not saying she's done, but this is just, I think the base she thinks she's appealing to, they don't really exist. It's only 35% in that young faction.

A more recent Gallup poll from 2021 showed that 55% of Republicans overall supported same sex marriage. So more than half, even when you include the older Republicans, support same sex marriage. And in a 2015 poll, and this was even a while ago, 20, 1510 years ago, at this point, 63% of Republicans under 30 supported protecting lgbt individuals from discrimination. So it's not just gay marriage. The conservative party is overwhelmingly pro gay now, especially the young ones.

But then you can look at other issues where she has done, like, big anti abortion screeds on her channel. But if you look at Pew research, nearly half of Republicans younger than 30 say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, 47%. So the republican base, like the next republican base, the young Republicans, are way far left of even Simone and myself on abortion. Like, we are more restrictive abortion access in our state. We're just not.

Life begins at conception types. And so I think that. And I actually want to go further on some of the statistics here. So another thing I'm going to put on the screen here is Republicans views on the legality of abortion from 1975 to 2020. And you can see it's upticked pretty significantly recently now at around 64% think it should be legal under certain circumstances.

A
Yeah, I don't think it's just that that hurts Abby. One huge revelation to me that she's actually cool, and I think that's a big problem, is that she is clearly shooting herself in the foot by not being herself online and by not being genuine. And I think that's a really big problem with the Republican Party in general, is that it's pandering its way to mediocrity in a way that is ruining its appeal while also taking a very hard stance on things like abortion, where, like, the majority of people don't agree with that and then are forced and obligated to vote against republican politicians because they feel like they need to protect just that basic optionality. But I also feel like she, she does a lot of things that are both, like, entirely legitimate. For example, one of her videos was why I've come out as a conservative influencer, which just comes across as wrong, even though she's coming from a legitimate place.

Like, she points out how it's tough for someone as an opera singer who works in, like, the sort of stage performing world to come out as conservative and actually met someone who experienced this as well. She, I should say they, they, when they worked in the theater worlds, were a trans man, and then they started de transitioning. They didn't even talk with people about the fact that they were detransitioning. But as they went through the process of detransitioning, they got completely frozen out of the theater world. So I remember this coming out as conservative is actually a scary thing.

But she didn't talk about these elements of it. She just talked about it in a very, somewhat, like, patronizing, smug way that really rubbed people the wrong way. Also, I think something that really hurt her online reputation when she otherwise could have done well was her ad targeting. It seems like through her ads, she just, we've all seen classically Abby ads if we've been on YouTube for the past three years. Like, there's that one time, like, she just advertised to everyone, and literally, she advertised to everyone.

Like, a common comment on her top viewed videos, which clearly were associated with her advertising. Are things like, for that why I came out as conservative? Video one was as a 40 year old mexican male who keeps getting her ads. All I can say is I'm finally ready to come out as a conservative woman. And under seven tips to grow from a girl to a classic woman.

Someone wrote, I'm a 24 year old man, but I'm glad to now know how to grow into a mature and classic woman. So it's clear that, like, she was advertising to these audiences of people who she definitely didn't want to target, because, by the way, she begins these videos with hello, ladies, she's talking. She's trying to create this feminine space online for, like, women to hang out and be an influencer. That is a woman talking to women. So just something went wrong with how she was encouraged to position herself and how she ran ads.

B
I don't think that's true. I think that you can get ads much cheaper when you're not targeting them as directly. And I think that's what was going on there. And she was just seeing, allowing YouTube to find an audience for her to. Find 40 year old mexican men.

What I think you get wrong in this, we have a big hispanic. Actually, people be surprised, but our channel has. We're great for an international audience, but classically, Abby is not great for a 40 year old mexican man who's. Now, I think that you're missing a point here. I think that it was likely done because it got lower cost ads.

But what I will say that you got right in what you said, and it is something I'd want to double down on, is how her and her brother come across these days and why I think they are losing cultural power and why I think she was unable to capture an audience here, which is, to me, they varies. I'm just talking like this, really how it feels when I see them talk like people who should be, like, at a high school, in the nerd group, they should be hanging out with you. And me and owning it. That's what they secretly like. That's their actual thing.

But they are trying to. They got a little bit of attention from the school bullies at one point, and now they are trying to ingratiate theirselves with this very small group of bullies that actually everyone else hates. But the political conservative sphere feels like that. And keep in mind, this is the group that they're mixing in. Her husband, for example, when they met in 2017, he was interning with heritage foundation.

Yeah, heritage has, like, frozen us out of a lot of things. But that's the thing, is they really are, like the popular kids, but they're also extremely normative. They all dress the same way, they talk the same way. They're all strictly very anti abortion. They're all very strictly.

A
These are the things we do when these are. And they're super not weird. You can't be weird. And so I just. I think that because they got some traction in those communities, and have become respected in theme.

They know that they can't look that way because also, when someone thinks about your classic dungeon master, they think of someone who is progressive politically. I disagree. So I think that this is where, when we're talking about conservative archetypes that appeal to the mainstream, younger conservative audience, there is obviously the country boy, country girl. You can go that route. Yeah, you can go the so extremely trad that your tradition is a constant and daily offense to all progressives.

B
Conservatives will like that. Or you can go our route. One of the things I find really interesting, I'm talking here about this model of this conservative anime, nerd cat girl, conservative media. And people are like, come on, the conservative nerd. That's not an archetype that does well.

And I'm like, okay, what about short fat otaku? What about Ed Dutton? What about Rubillard who runs what if all hiss? He's very nerdy. What about, I think even Hinania, to an extent, comes off as pretty nerdy.

Crimea comes off as pretty nerdy in a lot of his stuff. This is a archetype that does perform well. And all of these routes are playing in the mud to some extent, because that's what conservatives do. We play in the mud. I call it low culture conservative, which is really the four chan conservatives.

This is the anime tracer butt. You know, she has a video on, like, modesty and stuff like that and how women should be more modest. And I'm here, like, the last sex scandal I remember was tracer butt. And I'm pretty sure the conservatives were the one recently, which is a aon something. Eller Blade is what I was thinking of.

There was some Sony character, female character that they put more clothes on. The conservative youth are anti modesty. We are pro low culture. We want our women to be modest. Right?

Like the women who we marry and stuff like that. But we are not the modesty crusaders of the nineties. Not even that. In fact, some of the major Mormon influencers are total thirst traps. Yeah, that is not the actual message.

Like, Trump is not pro modest. Right? Trump is what's connecting with the base. And I think that there is a difference between celebrating a degree of chastity and celebrating modesty in all things, which just doesn't connect right now. I think if she wanted to connect with her base, she doesn't actually hide the cool stuff she does.

She mentions the Warhammer stuff. She mentions. Oh, yeah, she mentions the DNA. That's just how we know about it. Right?

But for her, this stuff is a quarantined afterthought in her life rather than to lead with. If you are going after the, I think, the new conservative intellectual group. And to be fair, we do have a gerontocracy problem in both conservative and progressive political spheres in the United States. So we do. But it's not as big of a problem as people would think.

And this is something I also want to elevate. So the gerontocracy does control a lot of these old conservative think tanks. And it's something where if we lost our job, which we unfortunately need to think about, that we would normally be going to work at one of these think tanks, right? Yeah, but tough luck for us. But they will not talk to us.

We are radioactive to the conservative think tanks, even though, as is pretty much all of the mainstream conservative influencers these days, whether you're talking about, like, Pearl Davis or Bap or Brian Kaplan, or there's a lot of conservative leaning, or Catgirl Kulag or Crimew who we met recently, or there's a lot of conservative intellectual influencers out there, and none of them that I know or even Richard Hannania, like, we are fairly plugged in with a lot of conservative influencers. And the conservative influencer crowd, like, to the person, is actually walled from the conservative political establishment, which is still controlled by GOP, Inc. Or Aporia magazine. The guy who runs that, I don't know if Matt Archer. Yeah, I just don't know if that's public, so I'm gonna cut that out.

A
He publishes a bunch of shit. Okay, great. Yeah. These are the things that I think are speaking more to the younger, the next generation of conservative intellectuals. And they are systemically banned.

B
Not just, they're not reached out to, not like they're not engaged with. There's. I feel like there's a little bit of overlap with some of them. Some of them are somewhat plugged into heritage and coke events and other things like that. Just not a ton.

Yeah, there's a limited. But what this means is the opposite of what groups think it means. What they think it means is their ideas will grow in the conservative youth and they will continue to have the cultural hegemony that they have had at a historic level. But what it really means is they are not part of the conversation, like the active political conversation that's happening with the next generation of conservative influencers. Yeah, they're missing out.

A
They're missing out there. It's really a mean girls thing. Like, it's just so clicky and they're so focused on status hierarchy fights. But we see this within. We talk about this happening in the EA rationalist community.

We talk about this happening all over the place. It's a classic governance issue. Funny thing is that this has been happening, I think, to an extent, since we were kids. And our kids, kid generation, there were a lot of movies where there was like a cheerleader group or like a mean girl group at the school. And I know that things are different.

B
The way they change, the way power structures work out at schools changes every generation or so. Social media has significantly changed how these things work. Yeah, but the truth of our generation was that there was typically one small group of popular girls. And I know because I went to a number of different schools, could be the cheerleaders, could be something else who thought that they were the most popular girls in school and that some people tried desperately to engage with, but actually had almost no social power because everybody hated them and quarantined them. They're just an echo chamber that like, thought that everyone aspired to be like them, but they were really just on their own and everyone ignored them.

A
That was the high school, for sure. Yeah. And usually the people who actually had the most social influence, usually it was the one person, it was the weed dealer. The weed dealer actually had the most social influence on campus because they needed to be able to communicate across social communities. And they were typically laid back so they didn't offend any specific social community.

B
It's very easy when you're the weed head weed dealer to not make enemies with the goth or the preps or the cheerleaders or that. So that was typically. But then the people with the highest, like, social standing and ability to access things like sexual access and stuff like that, those were often typically people in the nerdy communities, in the drama group, in the proto hacker kids. It was not the people in these groups that were like, even if you had asked, like, the nerdy or the gods kids, they'd be like, oh, those kids are like, technically above us in the social hierarchy, but nobody talks to them. And I think that phenomenon has replicated itself.

Is this over focus on maintaining an older ideological system which is just not represented in the next generation of conservatives? Yeah, it's a shame. It's a shame because I. She puts a lot of work into these videos. She put a lot of money into these videos.

A
And yet the comments that she gets are so. Are like the comments that we only see about ourselves on hit piece videos about us, and they're on her own damn videos. It's sad. It's not nice. So.

B
No, it is. It does make me sad. But I think with a lot of this, it was that they just made a mistake. They fundamentally, as we talk about their heuristics, about how the current society and online conversation is working, are just incorrect. And because of that, even though they are ideologically very aligned with us, and I'm sure a perfectly pleasant person, they are making takes that are not going to resonate.

And what they assumed and what was assumed when classic Abbey was created, it's very clear to me from the early videos and the videos that were promoted was, I bet there's a space for a modest, socially conservative woman who tries to speak to both sides of the aisle. I think the issue is that people look at other figures, like Candace Owens, who says some more pretty unhinged things, and they're like, there has to be a space for someone a little bit less unhinged. But there really isn't. Unhinged is what conservative. Unhinged is.

Vitalistic. Owen says some stuff that I just love that you never hear from her. Remember that? Like the. She's pretty.

I'm too pregnant for this shit right now. Yeah, I love that. I love that. That is quite fun. But it also shows you you wouldn't have get something like.

It's also interesting to me, and I can see why Ben Shapiro doesn't. And for people who don't know, probably useful context for this. Ben Shapiro has talked about us before. He really does. Yeah, but he calls us, like, massive, insufferable nerds, which is hilarious.

I say that's the highest status of nerd you could reach when Ben Shapiro thinks you're a nerd. But he wouldn't say something like that. And when he does tried to make, like, a hit claim or something like that, he feels like that nerd who's trying to ingratiate himself with the bullies. He tries to be like, oh, wet ass pussy, I bet you have a disease. My wife, who's a doctor, told me women.

I don't know exactly how that went, but I'm sure everybody remembers that controversy. And then everyone else was like, oh, my God. His wife has to tell him this to keep him happy, because he's never made a woman anyone, was like, the four D's, emotions, like social cues. He just comes off as this massive nerd, which is. I think that is why he has gotten more popular than his sister.

I think it's in spite of himself. I think it's because he is so socially incompetent that he cannot. He's fun to watch. He cannot help. No, it's not fun to watch.

He cannot help but step in it sometimes. Off as this low culture anime nerd, which then endears himself. Because I'm saying that framework works. Conservatives are willing to follow the next generation of conservatives. The anime nerd, basically.

But he, as we've called them, the, what is it? The. The Catgirl Finn boy alt right conservative. Yeah. Which, like, is a thing.

Like, people have talked about it. Catgirl femboy alt right conservatives online. And it's a thing. It's. I don't think that's our audience, really.

But that is an audience that. Come on. No, yeah, I'm sure it's a portion. And they see somebody screw up so badly socially with something like that and they can't help but be in love. But love them.

A
Yeah, you gotta love it. And she hasn't had moments like that. Because, yeah, she's too perfect. She's too refined. Yeah.

B
And also she comes off as too conventionally attractive, too, like, he comes off as a dweeb in a way that is, that undermines his air of superiority. Yeah. A little like duty howser. Yeah. Before our generation.

A
Yeah. Where it's like a little mouse that's squeaking about how great it is and how, da da da da da. Don't you know? And you see that and you're like, oh, that's really cute. When a beautiful woman comes up that looks styled and attractive conventionally and she starts doing the same little mouse speech, you're like, whoa, chill.

B
The. And I think that was something that he didn't understand. He thinks that the world views him and likes him for the way he wants to be seen instead of as this alternate nerd character. I'm even thinking, like, a lot of her videos are about etiquette and just, like, how to live better. And I'm thinking about how in the past, genuinely, we'll say, classical women have executed this successfully and even they have done it in a very vitalistic and slapstick kind of way.

A
So I'm thinking about my beloved, like, 1950s, 1940s Emily post etiquette books and just how incredibly snarky they are. How she, in the most delicate and beautiful terms, throws shade at fat people, calling them those inclined to rotundities and all these sorts of things. And it's an increase casting shade so much throughout every single thing. It's extremely snarky, it's extremely biting. It's extremely humorous, and it's not just.

B
Emily Post, your other hero. You used to have all of Martha Stewart's books growing up. Yeah, Martha Stewart threw her weight around. It was not. If you're trying to compare her to a modern figure, she was closer to a.

A
No, no. There is a modern Martha Stewart, and she also gets tons of attention. And it's Nora Smith. Talk about her. I don't know.

Nara Smith is the tradwife influencer who does those insane TikTok videos where she's like, oh, my. My child told me that they wanted french toast crunch this morning, and so I eventually, like, makes cereal from scratch, baking each individual grain of cereal. That kind of. Yeah, so that's what. And that's what Martha Stewart did in her original time.

Oh, like, I'm going to do everything from scratch. Build an entire birthday party's worth of accessories all before a birthday party. The modern Nara Smith is totally riffing on that, and I can't believe it. And so far, none of the commentators on her brought that up. They just call it rage bait, but it's the same kind of thing.

It's over the top, it's extra. And, yeah, I actually think Martha Stewart was a little bit more of a Ben Shapiro, and here's why. Martha Stewart came from a lower income polish immigrant family. Her last name was Kostira. She always had a big chip on her shoulder about that and went out of her way to develop a different accent, a different cadence of a woman who was far more high class.

And then she kept her ex husband's last name, Stuart, because it sounded super waspy. So she was always this. This fairly status anxious woman cosplaying as a very waspy wealthy. I hear you. And maybe this was a mistake on her part, but to me, and I.

Think, no, but comes across is overblown and as a larp, and is like, Ben Shapiro being like. And you're just like, oh, my God, this is so cute, and it's amazing. But this is. This is actually a good point. That's the point I'm making.

B
Classy was a larp. And was obviously a Larp. Yeah. Abby's classy is I was born wealthy, and I am. Yeah, she was born wealthy, and she's just being wealthy.

A
And just. Why can't you just be wealthy? Obviously. And that's why it comes across as Aihdenkhdev. Here's the final point on Ben Shapiro, because I hadn't really thought about it until now, where I was like, Ben Shapiro is actually famous.

B
What actually appeals to people is what a nerdy dweeb he is like. That's the model that is popular among his fans. That is how he has captured the public attention. But he personally is unaware of this and denies this because of that. And also, I think it's easy to deny it when you're as famous and wealthy now as he is.

Yeah, but I think that is why he hates us so much, is because we, as they say, like the things you don't like about yourself. I'm sure there's a part of his brain that is aware. He was, for a generation, the conservative nerd who pushed cultural boundaries and wasn't your classical Christianity. And he sees that in us, and it forces him to reflect a little bit on a portion of his own rise to fame that he doesn't want to reflect on and an aspect of the way he's seen by the world that he doesn't want to reflect on. We also just have punchable faces.

A
I don't know what to tell you, Mel. He does, too. That's the thing on a similar archetype. Face in the mirror. So that is what I think is going on there.

B
I do think that classical Abbey could easily drift in a different direction, create content that is more like why she holds the belief she holds instead of this is what's right, this is what's wrong. And I think it would probably perform better in the algorithm and to focus on beliefs that cut the dominant conservative narrative. Those are the videos that people are going to find interesting from you if I was to give her advice. Dear Abby, if you would like to come on faced camp, you are always welcome. You see your spicy takes with us?

A
Yes. You are extremely welcome here. We would love to have you on. Yeah, absolutely. And.

B
And even Ben, he seems like somebody who would be our friend if he could get over trying to fit in with the cool kids. But I also understand what you're saying. There is social cost to him, though. Is the cool kids, are they really your friends if they'll turn on you the moment you act yourself? Yeah, fuck them.

Fuck them. And that's also what's cool about our audience, is we are uncancellable within our audience because we are who we tell them we are. Yeah. And our audience, we're definitely. The great thing about basecamp listeners is most do not agree with us.

A
It's. They're not here because they agree with us. And if we were to change our mind on something or express our view on their disagree with, they're not going to go away because sometimes they're just here to hate watch or they're just. Here to hate watch. I think we get very few hate watchers.

B
I say they're here because here is an active intellectual conversation. Yeah. That's about what's going to be the dominant conservative narrative next. And most of the political landscape today is not a living conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A conversation about how to enforce x groups value system and not about can we like improve this? Can we improve that? And I think that that is why people are here when they don't agree with us, because they're aware that this is an active conversation where people are including ourselves, changing our mind when presented with new arguments. Yeah. And that is really exciting to me, to be part of a community like that.

And I think that's why most of the we have so much reach within the intellectually active conservative communities days, or at least the young ones. The other addendum I wanted to add here was classically Abby and kids. In every one of the pictures where she has a kid, she is tastefully hiding the child's face. Classic. Yeah, I know.

So classic, so classy. But here's the problem. Hiding children from the world is not pronatalists or good. We used to share the joys of rearing with our communities and through that, normalized parenting and developed and proliferated parenting strategies that actually work outside of an academic context. We have lost that.

When you stop sharing children with the world, when you stop sharing being a parent with the world, is it any wonder that the world has forgotten how to be a parent? And I just, I have to reelevate what you pointed out to me that, oh, one of our podcast listeners on the discord had pointed out, which is that the childless and antinatalist Internet elite, especially females, benefit from shaming. Having kids on camera because it is a. Kids on camera are way to like steal attention and be a thirst trap of babies. Because kids are cute.

A
They can be. It's the weapon parents have against non parents in the culture war. But if parents aren't allowed to post their kids, then all they have is their gross mom bods and dad bods that no one wants to see through. Disarming parents, they ensure their victory and culturally backing down on this point. I don't think any conservative family should ever one iota back down on this point.

B
Being a parent is not something you need to hide from the world. You can watch our video on the ethics of showing our kids on camera where actually I think that kids will end up much better off, especially in a world where everything you do is being recorded to being reminded that everything they're doing is being recorded so they don't accidentally go on that teenage tirade that right now is career destroying. And obviously there's a lot of benefits to having kids on camera. And the costs are just so low in our existing environment. In the adult world, when you enter that world, people are like, well, what if the don't consent?

And it's like, well, kids can consent. Largely speaking to this, like, my kid can tell me when he doesn't want to be on camera. And we have never ever had one of our kids on camera that didn't want to be on camera. If you're wondering about infants and you're like, well, the infant can't consent, but it's also like, yeah, but the infant's consent is irrelevant because nothing an infant does on camera while it's an infant can negatively affect their adult life. Therefore their consent is irrelevant.

A
I can't imagine there's never been an instance in which they ever wanted to be on camera. Yeah, there's never been an instance, but like, we would hold a really strict line on that. And then people are like, they're too young to knowledgeably consent to something like that. And it's like, yes, but fortunately that's taken into the context where the negative ramifications from this can come. That is when they are older and they have to deal with the ramifications of something they said when they were eleven.

B
The world's going to take that they were eleven into context, okay? Where if you look at other things that are being normalized, if they medically transition their gender when they're eleven and they're 27, they can't go back from that. In the same way, it's not reversible. And nobody can be like, I understand the context, therefore it doesn't count. Those things count.

And so it's important to remember that there are inheritable, inherent societal buffers. Any negative repercussions that can come from showing your kids within these contexts. And when we allow progressives to win that culture war of normalization, never showing kids in an online context, then kids never get seen. If that's the core media source, and parents never get seen and parenting never gets seen, and that is really, well. Then what does get elevated is empty consumerism.

A
It's travel, it's being a thirst trap. This is all stuff that's very ephemeral that no one's going to have for life. And yeah. Just it's. It's not ultimately inherently fulfilling or really all that pro social or Griffith society.

B
Instead of the miracle of creating a human being and raising that person and trying to give them the best shot possible in life and the best life possible, which is actually something beautiful. Yeah. So if you're watching this and you made it to the end, we love you. Please, if you haven't already, and subscribe. Oh, and check out the discord.

You want to talk about an active conversation discord? Yeah. Genuinely, it's a great conversation over there. Malcolm constantly shares it with me because he's constantly checking it. And the conversations are as good as, if not probably no better than ours here, honestly.

Yeah. I would say most of the episode discussions, if you're like, I found that intellectually stimulating and I wish I could watch another hour on that one topic you just did. But with additional viewpoints, like with the catholic viewpoint and with the Mormon viewpoint and with the Orthodox Jewish. It's just so great. It's so great.

Yeah. Like on the catholic fertility rate once that one had a great conversation on the discord. Go to the discord, go to the episode discussion section. And it's a lot more interactive and full than the comments on YouTube because, of course, and I think you'll really enjoy it because the quality of the conversations, and I agree with someone I actually think is maybe even a little higher than the quality on this show. Yeah.

A
Because, you know, who are we have time to think about anyway. Also, if you happen to have an iPhone, if you could like us on Apple podcasts or give us a five star review if you're open. Yeah, it would help us a lot. Anyway, thanks, everyone. And Malcolm, I love you.

B
I love you too. Bye.

The Perplexing Failure of Classically Abby (Ben Shapiro's Sister)

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Episode Chapters

1: Introduction to the Episode

2: Analysis of Abby's Content and Strategy

3: Deeper Dive into Conservative Cultural Shifts

4: Conclusions and Reflections

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