In today's deep dive, Malcolm and Simone discuss the complex interplay between physical attractiveness and perceived emotional stability. Drawing upon personal experiences and exploring social constructs, they debunk the notorious "hot-crazy" graph and redefine the spectrum as "hot-evil." The conversation expands on how attractiveness and dating dynamics influence people's emotional well-being and self-perception, and how this subsequently impacts their mental health.

As a fascinating twist, Malcolm and Simone reveal their transformation from what they call their "ugly duckling" phase to their current attractiveness, and how this change has influenced their perspective on body image issues. This intriguing discussion delves into the impact of societal pressures and the unrealistic beauty standards set by online spaces. Stay tuned to see how this conversation challenges conventional wisdom about attractiveness and its influence on personality traits.

Transcript:

Simone: [00:00:00] it, is like having everything on a 50% discount.

Simone: Like just not realizing the real price of things, but on a social spectrum, right? So

Malcolm: like is it a little worse than that? So if you're having everyone come fuss over you, every time you cry, every time you lose emotional control in some way, you are being subconsciously emotionally rewarded for losing emotional control for you, losing your composure.

Simone: Oh, wow. So, so it's not just that they're given privileged treatment the whole time, it's also that they're, encouraged to engage in very toxic emotional loops that ultimately harms their emotional wellbeing and mental health.

Simone: Yeah. So it's, wait, so the spectrum isn't hot? Crazy. It's hot evil, yeah. For

Malcolm: guys it's hot, evil if they're still single

Malcolm: And so this is why I think the guys that keep running through, people that stay on these apps that most women are actually exposed to that don't end up settling down. Mm-hmm. Why they ate. That's almost serving for evil guys because you begin to realize after a while is you've noticed.

Malcolm: [00:01:00] Some people who you've hurt.

Malcolm: Normal humans don't feel good when they hurt other people. Even if it was unintentionally,

Malcolm: and so men who do have that emotion, take themselves off the market

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Malcolm. Does being hot make you crazy?

Malcolm: I, I think it just might, and I, I like this at the topic cuz a secret that people don't know about us. And I'm gonna post some picture of this proof because people will doubt this is that you and I were born. Ugly. We were born ugly. We were born ugly. We transformed.

Malcolm: We transformed. You say, you would've always found me cute. I, I look at some old pictures of you and I would've found you cute, but definitely we are dramatically more attractive now than we were 10

Simone: years ago.

Simone: No. Okay. Yeah. One, one. Let's say I, I was an ugly duckling that now I'm normal. I would say you are always pretty cute, but you look better now than you used to.

Simone: Look, you are way hotter now. I

Malcolm: actually think you're delusional about this cause we play this game. I think you are normal if [00:02:00] who you're comparing yourself to is like celebrities and people you watch online. You have to understand, and I think

Simone: this is, this is actually something we were discussing last night when we were watching a show and some, some female character came on who was supposed to be really hot.

Simone: And you were like, I don't get it. She's not hot at all. And I think the issue is that she didn't look 22 and just in like the past five years, basically everyone online started looking 22, I think because of filters. That's an issue. And the problem is, yeah, we stopped, we see someone. Who's aged well, who looks good, but because they don't look 22, we're like, oh, Cris keeper.

Simone: Like, what's wrong with, yeah.

Malcolm: So I actually think that a lot of our viewers would think that you look normal as well, because I, I, I will agree that was in my evoked set of women. Yeah. You know, you might be on the more normal category, but whenever we're walking around, so we play this game, I play this game.

Malcolm: Okay. Like if you're walking

Simone: around in a group of, of normal Americans, but also Americans have a serious health crisis right now,

Malcolm: Simone. When we're walking [00:03:00] around, I play this game. We're walking around out into the town, we're walking around in a mall, we're walking around on a cruise. I go, look around, is there anyone in this room that's as attractive as you are?

Malcolm: And she won't find anyone. And she'll be like, but that doesn't mean anything because we're what? Because the population sample we're comparing you to is Americans. Like, I think that you are forgetting how unattractive the average person is in this country now. And I think that, that this is a problem that a lot of our viewers have because we've had some viewers reach out to us about like their attractiveness and stuff, where when you are measuring yourself off of this cultural idea from what you see in online spaces, you can create a self-perception that you are much less attractive than you actually are when you compare yourself to the general population.

Malcolm: And so if. In our audience has body image issues. I think one of the best ways to deal with those body image issues is to compare yourself to large crowds. Oh. To like

Simone: go to a mall?

Malcolm: No, like if somebody thinks I'm not buff enough or I'm not skinny enough. Right. Go to a [00:04:00] mall and say, where am I percentage wise within this community? Mm. If you're in the top 20%, you don't have anything to worry about. And I think that that's a very useful way to reset your expectations in a world where we are seeing people online all the time.

Simone: Yeah. Within limitations, like I think

Malcolm: I.

Malcolm: You don't wanna admit it because you have body image issues and you don't wanna accept that you, that

Simone: you're actually, I can't identify as female without having body dysmorphia, Malcolm, otherwise I wouldn't be a woman. You have to understand, like, the way that we all relate to each other is we're like, oh, I hate my thighs.

Simone: And you know, someone else is like, I hate my face, I hate my chin, I hate my ear. Lobes are so fat. Anyway what we're here to talk about though, what. Hot crazy

Malcolm: graph, right? Yes. We are crazy, but we're not crazy because we're hot. This is a crazy cause we're crazy. First talk about the hot, crazy graph cuz this is a very interesting.

Simone: . So I think what I, I don't know where the meme came from, but certainly there are videos out there of like [00:05:00] people charting out a graph of hot and crazy where there's, you know, on one axis there's hot on the other axis, there's crazy. And basically there is a strong correlation.

Simone: The hotter you get, the crazier you get. And this is funny to people. It's amusing because it, it often holds true and. It's fun to discuss the dynamics behind that. So why would, especially, and this is for women which is interesting. This is, this is a woman thing. This is not necessarily a man thing. Why would a woman be crazier if she were

Malcolm: hotter?

Malcolm: I think it, it, it messes up your social development. Hmm. Because we live in a society today with low switching costs to partners, people can genuinely date a lot when they're younger. So it used to be, you know, if you're a young woman, Technically you can date, but not really.

Malcolm: There's no reason to like just fallen over attractive women in the way we do today because you really have to commit to that woman your entire life. And so if she's dated anyone in high school, you know that's the person she's dated throughout all of high school. And if she's dated a lot of people in high school, then she's considered.

Malcolm: Low value, right? Like that was the way things used to be. [00:06:00] Historically, I, I'm not gonna say this was a good way of doing things, but what I'm pointing out is that this is a fairly new problem. Mm-hmm. Which is women because they can sleep around without lowering their value as much in modern society.

Malcolm: There is an enormous reason for like guys to just absolutely simp over the attractive girls, especially during their formative years, because that's when guys have the highest amount of. Testosterone and sex drive. I often liken male puberty to like, somebody injects you with morphine overnight, so you are addicted to something and it wasn't your choice.

Malcolm: You'll just do anything to get it. Like really stupid stuff. And that defines I think, male puberty as doing stupid things to show off to girls. But anyway or, or, or boys sometimes. But anyway, so, it creates a, scenario in which the social limits. That normal people , are building, do not get taught to these hot women through no fault of their own.

Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Like a [00:07:00] huge number of social lessons that a normal person would learn. These women never get a chance to learn during that really important developmental period of their lives.

Simone: Well, you described it to me at one point when we were talking about it, is like having everything on a 50% discount.

Simone: Like just not realizing the real price of things, but on a social spectrum, right? So

Malcolm: like is it a little worse than that? , and we've talked about this in other videos, The more you allow yourself to indulge in any emotion, the harder that emotion becomes to control.

Simone: It's, it's pretty, oh, right. It's like the, the punching bag thing where if, yeah, if you, this whole teapot letting off steam theory is really toxic because actually if you like punch the punching bag in anger, you're gonna feel more anger if you just kind of let it go. Yeah. This has been shown in

Malcolm: studies people who like punch a wall or punch a bag after, after they get angry as a form of therapy for it, actually get.

Malcolm: More angry in the future and get angrier due to lower amounts of stimuli that would induce anger, right? So it's the same thing as like crying. So if you're having everyone come fuss over you, every time you cry, every time you lose emotional [00:08:00] control in some way, you are being subconsciously emotionally rewarded for losing emotional control for losing your composure. And of course that's gonna really mess you up as a girl. And I think that that is why when I've dated, , really attractive women in the past, I have often noticed that they do have a lot harder time controlling their emotions than less attractive women.

Malcolm: And they do cycle between emotional extremes much more often. And I think that's because they are often rewarded for doing that when they're

Simone: younger. Oh, wow. So, so it's not just that they're given to like privileged treatment the whole time, it's also that they're, it's encouraged to engage in very toxic emotional loops that ultimately harms their emotional wellbeing and mental health.

Malcolm: Yes, yes, yes. But it's worse than all that. Cause our society. People are trained to find a lack of emotional control attractive. And powerful in many ways. You see this in shows like the huge emotional out [00:09:00] outflow is seen as a sign of power, whether it's, you know, dragon ballsy, like, you know, really, but, but you see this, you know, somebody gets really emotional and then all of a sudden they have the power to fix something.

Malcolm: Right? Like, that's, that's often a, a, a tr in, in shows or the characters that are seen as having uniquely low emotional control, like a Harley Quinn or a jinx is shown as being like that aspect of them is shown as being desirable. Yeah.

Malcolm: So we have archetypes of ideal sexuality, outside of sexuality as tied to like motherhood or sexuality as tied to like long-term partner traits as personified by the civil of crazy because I think people have come to associate the two to some extent, so, Women are rewarded by guys finding them more sexually attractive, but lower value as partners, which in another way is psychologically torturing these women, cuz the women are being rewarded for acting in a way that makes men more likely to show them in the moment.

Malcolm: Kindness, but less [00:10:00] likely to over the long term, be interested

Simone: in that. I think there's also what I could call the Daisy Buchanan syndrome, which is like, she wasn't crazy per se as a character, but there were a lot of really beautiful. Women that I knew in college who clearly, like they would talk about this.

Simone: Like I, I would work with, I I, at one point I worked in this cupcake shop where like everyone there was super hot and they like all slept with each other. It was amazing. It was a favorite

Malcolm: one from the Georgetown Cupcakes from Cupcake Wars.

Simone: Not cupcake wars. Like I think the reality TV show that they had was called Cupcake Sisters.

Simone: Okay. Continue. But anyway, everyone was hot. And, and hearing about their, their dating and, and love lives was really interesting. And the interesting thing about the most, attractive people was like, there was this deep sadness among many of them and like deep distrust of men specifically because , they knew that they were really attractive and that they were kind of apprised to be one.

Simone: And that [00:11:00] many of the, the men who were interested in them were, were only interested in them because of their looks, and it wasn't about them. And they, they couldn't, they weren't, they weren't essentially allowed to be appreciated for their intelligence, for their interests, for other accomplishments.

Simone: And I do think it's interesting that that would create so much sadness in, in a woman when, like, on the flip side, like men who know that women are after them because of their wealth and their Rolexes and their cars and stuff are like, kind of really proud of that. So like they don't have that same sadness of like, oh, the woman is only interested in me because I'm incredibly wealthy.

Simone: What's going

Malcolm: on there? Well, I guess I'd call this another category of hot crazy, which is like hot on we hot.

Simone: It's the syndrome from

Malcolm: syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I, I've definitely seen this phenomenon as well, this whistless, non-interested, engaging and keep in mind that these women also, Get less credit for anything they achieve.

Malcolm: Totally. Yeah. So, so if they achieve money, if they achieve success, if they achieve academics, [00:12:00] often people just discount it. They're like, oh, you got that because you're hot. You know? Exactly. And so how demotivating must that B to B systematically discounted to have an entire half of the population that like lies to you about everything.

Malcolm: And then another half. Because this has been shown in studies that women, when they're around attractive women, they'll undermine them. Like, they'll then beauty.

Simone: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll pull them down because they're seen as threats, like when they stand out for their beauty. Yeah. Which ultimately makes me so glad to learn

Malcolm: helplessness.

Malcolm: That's what you're seeing in the days

Simone: Yeah. That they get. Yeah. But like, so, and, and so really you, you could argue that. Below average looking, especially adolescent women, which is what I was like May if I'm a five now on, on the internet. And maybe a little higher in reality. But like I was Oh, really? A little below average in my high school,

Malcolm: was probably good friend.

Malcolm: Well, I'll put up pictures and, and, and you were kept out of this reality show. It was filming while you were at the cupcake store and they hid you in the back and had the. Attractive

Simone: employees. Yeah, it was. I was, yeah. Yeah. Only the hot people were allowed to be to be in it, which was great. Amazing. [00:13:00] See, I don't qualify, but, but I honestly think it really helped me now, like there were guys who had crushes on me.

Simone: I later learned, cuz I couldn't figure it out when I was in high school, but they had crushes on me because of my. Academic achievement and my intelligence or whatever, because the, these same guys also had crushes on like other really high academic performers at our school. So like, and, and, and imagine what, like, how, how nice that was that like, I knew that people were interested in me because, you know, I, I did weird things and because I was, you know, interested in, in weird stuff or because I, you know, was passionate about certain things and instead to just be appreciated because I.

Simone: You're, you are attractive. It would be really hard, like it could really screw up a girl. It makes me think differently about how we might raise our own daughters because if we, give them all the tools to look really, really, really good young, it might actually kind of screw them up.

Simone: Not that I want to make them look horrible, but like, I, I kind of understand now the [00:14:00] parental hesitancy to like, have girls learn how to use makeup really early, very effectively. Although now it's really messed up cuz you can just use filters to like completely skew the way you looks. I, I don't know what to make of this, but it is something to think about.

Malcolm: No, I, I agree with what you're saying, but I hear, I'm gonna talk about the other thing, which is crazy guys. So the interesting thing about hot, crazy girls Okay, is that they end up acting crazy in ways they really can't control because they're psychologically conditioned while they're growing up, okay?

Malcolm: And it's very hard for them to escape this. Okay? Hot guys typically don't get the huge advantage to being hot until they're older, because women prefer older men. And because that's. Advantage. And it is true. You can look at the data. It is, it is not an illusion that 20% of guys are getting 80% of women, but, but it's actually more extreme than that.

Malcolm: It's more like, Two to 3% of guys are getting any woman they want or, maybe, maybe 6% I, I go like that. But what it means is these are the guys who a lot of women are engaging with because they're engaging with a lot of women. They're also what most women are [00:15:00] thinking about.

Malcolm: When they're like, I hate men. What they mean is they hate these men who are really hot, who they considered worth their time going out with and everything like that. Mm-hmm. These men who at any point can choose between who have very low switching costs, you know, they can dispose of a partner and then choose a new partner at any time.

Malcolm: Right. They have very little motivation to treat their partners well. And so they in many ways receive almost no punishment for being cruel. To their partners or being honorable to their partners. And so you just get this, this horrible action from them. And I think that the hot, honorable guys because I know a number of them, they get locked down early.

Malcolm: They get locked down typically. Few years outta college at the latest. Yeah. And so what that means is if you're still on the dating market, like in your thirties and you're going after hot guys, right? Like guys above a certain level of attractiveness, they are pretty much all in this non honorable category because no one has decided to lie down, right?

Malcolm: They're the

Simone: the ones who wouldn't [00:16:00] ever marry you anyway, because all the ones who would ever marry you have been married off, right?

Malcolm: So they're treating you. Crazily, but not crazy, like low emotional control due to something outside of your control that the women hot, crazy deal is, but like evil, crazy.

Simone: Yeah. So it's, wait, so the spectrum isn't hot? Crazy. It's hot evil, yeah. For

Malcolm: guys it's hot, evil if they're still single. Yeah. For single. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so you can have a guy that goes hot and evil. But, but you know, try not to, but it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I do like that. I'd like a woman in the same way they have the guys talking about the hot crazy chart.

Malcolm: The hot evil chart. Yeah, the hot evil chart. Because the hotter they are, the more evil they're, they're going to turn out to be. But then of course all the red pillars would be like, well, that's the thing that makes them hot is that they're evil and Right. Yes. There's a component of that to it. But even if that component didn't exist, you would still have a reward for this behavior.

Malcolm: Mm. But what I think is important to remember, and I would recommend this to all of the hot guys [00:17:00] out there my fellow hotties it's not that I'm hot, I don't know. No, you're

Simone: so hot. Oh

Malcolm: my God. I had an easy time with women. I've always had a very easy time with women. But what I would say is that not.

Malcolm: Locking down a partner and, and getting in a long term relationship that hurts you just as much as it hurts the people you're, you're running through.

Simone: Okay, but explain this, cause I mean it, if I'm thinking about this from a guy's perspective, like more, more female sexual partners equals better. Why would

Malcolm: I not?

Malcolm: Well that really get into high numbers. So this was seen as like when ALA lined everyone up, she did this live Twitter poll of how many partners you'd slept with. And I realized that like in a giant crowd, how many people were there?

Simone: I. I don't know, like 200. I'm really bad at counting 200. I

Malcolm: was second to the end, third to the end in terms of

Simone: number.

Malcolm: I've had this experience, and what happens? Is sex begins to become gross once you get like well over a hundred people.

Malcolm: Like your body count gets that high as a guy, it becomes routine and gross and you start [00:18:00] thinking more about like the cleanup, and you are really only still doing it at that point for the status it grants you. Mm-hmm. And I think that the people who still sleep around a lot, like in their thirties, the guys who do that, I think they're trying to make up for either the way they see themselves or maybe not getting enough sex when they were younger.

Malcolm: And so having some self-image issue because sex is just, it actually doesn't reward guys enough to really do it that frequently with that many people. You begin to get sick of it after a while. Mm-hmm. So, so one, I just don't think that they're actually enjoying it that much. The anticipation of sex is a much stronger mechanism than the actual reward for having sex.

Malcolm: When you meditate on it in the moment, the, the actual feelings from having sex are just not that good. They, they're, they're fine. Like they're good, but they're not, like, they're not worth like a day of work. Much less like months of labor in trying to get someone, if, if you're one of these, you know, guys who is really [00:19:00] struggling with this.

Malcolm: So, so one is, I think a lot of these guys are just not getting that much reward anymore. Mm-hmm. And then too, I think what guys really want, and the truth of what they want is, is somebody who genuinely cares about them. Somebody who's who, you know, kids, I can tell you. Having kids. Around the house, like playing with my kids is so much better than sex.

Malcolm: In terms of the

Simone: actual, isn't this a damnation of my sexual prowess, Malcolm? No, no, no, no. I've

Malcolm: had sex with women. It has nothing to do. The point that I'm making. Is that the core difference in our society is one of these things is tied to a lot of guys' self-worth. So they think I'm not a real guy, I'm not manly enough if I'm not out there sleeping with a lot of people.

Malcolm: Yeah. And, and our society pretends like that, that it's a lot better than, than playing with your kids. But if you, I think to most of men, now, keep in mind people are different. Some people are born like, some guys are born liking penises, right? Like, I, I don't know. I, I guess some people [00:20:00] are born probably getting less intrinsic happiness from playing with their kids.

Malcolm: I. People are born all over the spectrum, but at least for me, like what if I actually tried to , meditate on how much actual positive emotions I'm getting from the two experiences. Yeah. If like, not even

Simone: close. So you think part part of that's though this stage of your adult development? I think if you were a teenager, definitely like spending time with kids, probably not gonna be as satisfying

Malcolm: as I think you're right.

Malcolm: I think you're right, but I think that your development reacts organically to your environment in many ways. So I think if I was younger and I got into a developed relationship sooner, like a committed relationship sooner, my testosterone would drop sooner. Yeah. And, and, and this sort of stage of, of my, the human life cycle would begin sooner.

Malcolm: Yeah. But I, I, I guess what I'm saying is as somebody who went through that experience of. Being able to just, sleep with whoever they wanted for a long period of time. , when I was, , really horny when I was at that stage in my life where like that emotion is, is [00:21:00] maximized.

Malcolm: I can say that when you're at the stage of your life where like fatherhood is maximized that emotional well is just a much richer emotional well yeah. And you feel much better afterwards cuz you never like, That was another thing is I, I think when you sleep with a lot of people, you begin to worry about hurting people.

Malcolm: And I think that this is something that people don't talk about, but I think a lot of guys, and, and so this is why I think the guys that keep running through, people that stay on these apps that most women are actually exposed to that don't end up settling down. Mm-hmm. Why they ate. That's almost serving for evil guys because you begin to realize after a while is you've noticed.

Malcolm: Some people who you've hurt.

Simone: Yeah. And so those, those who keep, keep going at it or those who just don't

Malcolm: care. Yeah. Who felt their emotional connection to you was stronger than the emotional connection you had to them. Or they develop like some really strong bond to you because you know you're the first person they slept with, and then when you, you know, you move on because that, that wasn't what you were in that relationship for.

Malcolm: And you signaled that to them very clearly. They just didn't believe [00:22:00] you or thought it was some sort of a gambit. Yeah. They end up hurting. And I think that normal humans don't feel good when they hurt other people. Even if it was unintentionally, even if you signal to the person, you know, I suspect you're gonna get attached to me and when I leave you, it will hurt you.

Malcolm: And so I think that, that people who do have that emotion, men who do have that emotion, take themselves off the market and, and in, in a way that, yeah. So that could be another reason why you have this hot, evil graph with guys who the women are engaging when they go into the market. The ones that are still on the market are just more likely to be evil because they don't care about the people they hurt.

Simone: And I'm, I'm, I'm just thinking about the similarities between kid time and sexy time. Oxy toss. Oh, oxytocin surges. Yes. Cleanup is necessary. You know, yes. You might wanna shower after Yes.

Malcolm: But, but you never, I never feel like, did I hurt my kid? No, just wrestling with them or fighting with fake swords. Well,

Simone: They're devastated when playtime is over and they have to go [00:23:00] to bed.

Simone: You have, you know that the negotiation that that happens with our, oh no, I still

Malcolm: need, I want this. I lead you to handle those negotiations. Don't leave me.

Simone: Oh no. I want another hug. I don't know, man. Anyway, though, you're in for a treat because we've gotta go pick up our kids right now,

Malcolm: so. Ooh. And then we have our fancy dinner tonight.

Simone: Yeah. So you gotta run up. Get your shirt on and I'm gonna get some bottles and diapers together and off we go. Love you, Simone. I love you too, Malcolm.

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