Title: Anti-Man BDSM Cult That Made Video Games & Invented Cosplay (Nothing Changes) — episode transcript
Work: Techno-Puritan Supplemental Writings
Citation: TPS 65.2
Words: 13140
Source: https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/p/anti-man-bdsm-cult-that-made-video
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### Anti-Man BDSM Cult That Made Video Games & Invented Cosplay (Nothing Changes) — episode transcript

**Simone Collins**:
The Female Disciplinary Manual. It presents, quote, a complete guide to the correction and chastisement of young ladies, end quote, And it included, in case you need to be convinced more to check out the original text, different types of canes and how to use them, methods of spanking, the use of the strap, and practical cautions and instructions for corporal punishment, So the lesbians agree with the neo Nazis that let’s just wear old style clothing and beat women.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I mean, that all sounds very reasonable to

**Simone Collins**:
me. My god. Hello, Malcolm. I’m very excited and angry to be speaking with you today because apparently you’ve been sitting on knowledge of a bizarre group of sapphic lesbians with tumultuous connections to primal screeners.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Hold on. So she comes to me, and she goes, Malcolm, if I say Victorian women in the nineteen eighties, does that mean anything to you? And I was like, no. And I go, well, unless you’re talking about that sex cult that made video games, then, like, of course, I’m very familiar with them. And she goes, wait. What? And I’m like, Simone, when it comes to Victorian sex cults in the nineteen eighties, I’m pretty sure I’m familiar with a lot of them.

**Simone Collins**:
And you didn’t tell me. You even were like, no, Simone. We recorded an episode on this. We did not record an episode

**Malcolm Collins**:
on this. You’ve, like, you you I figured our audience would already know about the Victorian sex cult that made video games in

**Simone Collins**:
the Well, then why didn’t you tell me? This is fascinating, and we have so much in common with them between, like, the the antiquated, you know, costumes and the beatings and the the the built religion.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And they moved they moved the video game. They were they made some genuinely important games and, like, video history.

**Simone Collins**:
And, like, the the the high-tech, like, gaming developing. Like, come on. This is it’s it’s our kind of thing. But, thankfully, no thanks to you, multiple base camp listeners directed me to a YouTube video by a young man accompanied by a durian who he claimed to be his cohost who talks about this movement. And, clearly, he’s our kind of guy. So I had to absolutely dive in.

**Malcolm Collins**:
What do mean a durian? Isn’t that a fruit?

**Simone Collins**:
Yes. A durian. He sits next to a durian because he’s

**Malcolm Collins**:
I thought that was some sort of an ethnic slur. So come on.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh my god. No. It’s a durian. He he appears to have attached eyes to it. I’m linking to his video in the show notes. I mean, I do the same, and

**Malcolm Collins**:
the audience never you know?

**Simone Collins**:
Why am I just a durian with eyes pasted on me? Yes. Literally, we’re just the same exact channel. It’s just I

**Malcolm Collins**:
it’s just Simone, you are a woman.

**Simone Collins**:
Yes. Thanks. There’s gonna be a lot of women in this episode. But, anyway, I I I I like this. Durians.

**Malcolm Collins**:
It’s the word for them. They smell terrible. They don’t feign for themselves. Just googly eyes.

**Simone Collins**:
And spiky.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. That’s the spiky on

**Simone Collins**:
the outside, soft innards. Disgusting smelling innards. Oh god. Okay. Anyway, it’s important for us to actually talk about them not just because they’re insanely entertaining, but because here we have literally a crafted religion that then attempted to become financially self sustaining and get its footing a bunch of different times. And you have talked a lot about, like, look. This know, once you you have a religion that creates, you know, its own special, like, dogma and practices and everything else, like, they can often pick off really well. Why did this one not? We should explore that. And, of course, there are obvious reasons why not. We’ll get into them. But I think it’s still very important and also really fun to look at religions that attempted to rise and how this one just went into, like, crazy town super fast. It’s one of those, like if you saw the Robot Olympics, you saw how, like, many of them started off running, like, absolutely amazingly. They, like, hit a wall and, like, fall in half and sparks come out. That is this religion. And but, like, as it falls apart, you’re dying with laughter. And so it’s wonderful and beautiful. And so, look, we’re gonna I’m I am jumping into this rabbit hole after you, and I’m doing that, like, skydiving thing where you make yourself into a stick so you fly down faster so I can punch you midair as we fall through because I’m mad at you about this, but then we’re gonna fall through it together and enjoy ourselves. But, anyway, definitely had to have two tours cabinet of curiosities, which is the the YouTube channel that made the video titled the neo Victorian neo Nazi lesbian BDSM cult that made video games, which got me into this. Go watch the video. I don’t I tried to not cover what he covered because I think we should have a different angle. And, anyway, it’s a good video. You should watch it. There’s a durian in it, which is great, and she’s better than I am, I guess. The weird movement that we’re talking about

**Malcolm Collins**:
here Simone, only smelling. I hate

**Simone Collins**:
you. I hate you so much. I’m gonna go join a sapphic lesbian BDSM cult, and you’ll be all by yourself. Just deal with it. Although there was there was, like, at at various points in the history of this group, there was, like, one guy one guy that’s, like, sort of ill explained. At one point, he was a butler. I don’t know if it’s the same guy. Like, there was another guy that was, like, at the pre the very early stages of the first physical manifestation. Anyway, you could be that guy, but like, the So everyone else needs to be

**Malcolm Collins**:
a woman? Okay. We’ll be bringing in lots of women. Alright.

**Simone Collins**:
Women. My god. Never mind. I I’m canceling this.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Always what your episodes come to. It’s Malcolm. You need more wives. And it’s like, I agree. No. Why do I only have one wife?

**Simone Collins**:
Why does it always have nothing

**Malcolm Collins**:
this this selfish of you, Simone,

**Simone Collins**:
to hog me. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? I’m just gonna okay. We’re gonna okay. The emergence. The emergence of this religion. Did you know it wasn’t actually religion first?

**Malcolm Collins**:
It was a religion first. I did not know that.

**Simone Collins**:
Okay. Okay. So, basically, this this all came out of a nineteen seventies fantasy world that broke containment. And the interesting thing about it, and and I’ll I’ll touch on this later, but, like, this fantasy world did partially break containment, but then the fantasy world part of it just kept on going. And then the containment breaking, like, recombined with the fantasy world after it failed, basically, to become a proper religion and then kind of fell back into a fantasy world. That that’s the spoiler of all this. Anyway, around nineteen seventy three and seventy four, a small Oxford based circle produced the texts that became the Madrian or Philanic sacred writings, notably the sacred mythos, the crystal tablet, and the teachings of the daughter. So here we are, already one of the key components of a new religion, like actual original writings. Okay? Members of the this new movement thought the writings were divinely inspired. They would sometimes be described in terms of divine trance rather than merely being this conventionally authored religious manifesto. And a more public movement emerged from people into this under the banner luxe madrianna, distributing scripture and catechism. They had a newsletter called the coming age. They held religious observances, and they recruited through this feminist occult and alternative spirituality network that, of course, was, like, everywhere in the seventies. so it it while there were a lot of, like, goddess movements and Wiccans in the nineteen seventies, this was different because it wasn’t simply Wicca with the stronger female focus. It was presented as this structured devotional religion. And so it’s more like a a sacral tradition with scripture and prayer and catechism and feast days and rosaries and priestly roles and moral teachings than, like, the craft. And a later Filanist source describes the founders not as this formal college club. It wasn’t Oxford affiliated, but it was a small group of peep people in the Oxford area and home countries who then created this complete religious framework. So it’s it it wasn’t associated with the university, but it probably came out of that area because you had a lot of very educated people who were good at writing. And you see weird things like this happen whenever you get women who are, I guess, kind of, like, isolated and bookish and good at writing, like with the Bronte sisters. Like, when women are kind of alone and eccentric, weird things happen. So the core claims of this religion were that the ultimate divine reality is feminine called deia or the mother, and then divine life is understood in this threefold form. Laterally it was later commonly expressed as the creator, the sustainer, and the daughter. And then there’s this transient beyond aspect. And the daughter functions in the savior like role. So they’re kind of copying Christianity and the trinity here, which I don’t think is great. It’s you could do it better if you’re doing a whole fan fiction universe. But this gave this tradition more of a devotional shape that some people thought was more reminiscent of Marian and Christian traditions. And then the faith had this sacred calendar and a named set of of virtues and

**Malcolm Collins**:
So wait. Why was it created? Like, what was the motivation of the person who made it?

**Simone Collins**:
It’s unclear because there wasn’t a single person who created it.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Oh, it was like a community?

**Simone Collins**:
Yes. It’s like a female fan fiction community. It’s like to it seems from what I’ve read, very akin to the omegaverse where it’s like, well, who created the omegaverse? There’s not exactly like, oh, it was Andrea Burton from Clydesdale. it’s not no. It’s it was like a What would

**Malcolm Collins**:
you do in these devotionals? Like, what was the the practice of this religion like?

**Simone Collins**:
So it’s it’s unclear, but here’s where the breaking of containment emerges because you needed to have this physical element. And I I think what was happening in in the original days was, like, women were getting together and hanging out and then doing spiritual things that made them feel like, oh, just the way that all the other Wiccans were, but they were just all also very smart and into fan fiction, basically, and, like, literary universes. And so they really went for it. But then the Oxford origin, Madrian, Miliu eventually split, and one stream became associated with what what now is, like, this online distributed community well, it was, at least for a while, Aristasia, which is just this, like this is the the continuing female oriented, like, fan community. It’s like the omegaverse, but, like, kind of you you inhabit it, and you believe in it and everything. And then this other group developed into this communal, anti modern, and increasingly role based form that would became known as first the Rhenish community and then the sister Silverhood. And this is what you understand as, like, the BDSM Victorian cult. But it it literally started with a primal scream. Do you know how? Do you know about the primal screaming? No. Okay. So I know okay. I I can introduce you to new things in this rabbit hole we’re falling through. In 1974, the Atlanta’s Primal Therapy Commune descended upon the Irish town of Burtonport buying a large house that they subsequently painted with rainbow colors and murals and slogans and zodiac imagery. It was it was a thing. Commune members became known by the townspeople as the screamers because they really hated them. They’d be screaming. Because, like, the whole point of primal therapy are you looking up a picture of them? I could show you. Yep. If you wanna see. Primal therapy is what it was called? Well, they were primal screamers. Like, remember how in the look. That’s their that’s their house. the house was called Atlantis. I’m showing you a picture of it now. You see it’s got the rainbow colors. It’s got the

**Malcolm Collins**:
Oh, wow. And they liked god. That’d be so annoying.

**Simone Collins**:
So it was I’m like, Yoko Ono got into this. John Lennon got into this. It was the seventies. Like, primal scream therapy was a trend. I I can’t really think of anything analogous now, but it was it was a trend. And this particular commune basically wanted to engage in subsistence living. And just one thing that they did to, like, feel better about life was also it wasn’t just primal screaming, but, like, shouting and crying and sometimes aggressively challenging each other. So in the middle of the night, if you’re living in the town of Burtonport, you’ll just hear these, like, unhinged screams, and it was it was very disturbing. So, I mean, look, they they didn’t get along well, the screamers and the townspeople. And so in 1989, they left Burtonport, and they went to instead this remote island in the same general area where they just continued their communal and subsistence living. But this opened up the logistical portal through which the Silver Sisterhood was able to physically manifest because suddenly, this large house already kinda set up for communal living is just sitting there available, and some of this this the women into this weird religion wanted to go live there. And it started out not as the weird Victorian BDSM school thing

**Malcolm Collins**:
Okay.

**Simone Collins**:
But rather this anti modern communal settlement that they called, well, they called the house on, which is Irish for the bridge of life. And they there’s

**Malcolm Collins**:
Man, these other cults are so gay compared to ours.

**Simone Collins**:
They’re really lame. This goes to show you, though, that, like, the original manifestation of this was very it wasn’t the Victorian thing at all. It wasn’t, like, a kinky, like, weird thing. I’m gonna show you just so you get a really quick picture of it. Oh, for the this is their original manifestation. They’re, like, weird, like, druid app

**Malcolm Collins**:
is awesome, by the way.

**Simone Collins**:
I know. Druidic, like

**Speaker 3**:
All of them are strangers. They came to Burtonport in West Donegal two months ago. New faces with faith in ancient traditions. The last base was in a smallish Yorkshire town, but it’s here

**Simone Collins**:
next to a Victoria. Atlantic.

**Speaker 3**:
They plan to establish

**Malcolm Collins**:
their village.

**Speaker 3**:
Like It’s to be a sanctuary

**Simone Collins**:
for Well, modern

**Malcolm Collins**:
I mean, they look pre Victorian.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. They look pre Victorian. They’re rejecting their house here.

**Speaker 3**:
Storytelling are now daily occurrences.

**Simone Collins**:
Just sit in their their house, and they play little instruments, and they have no electricity.

**Speaker 3**:
Dating back to the fourteenth century.

**Simone Collins**:
They made up their their own language.

**Speaker 3**:
The embroidery

**Simone Collins**:
They just play terrible music. Though united as In their house, we What are those phones? I don’t know. I’m sure that’s that’s a normal instrument, but I don’t

**Speaker 3**:
The youngest

**Malcolm Collins**:
Anyway. Oh my god. These They

**Simone Collins**:
had to white knuckle all that. Over there.

**Speaker 3**:
Are this new community in Burton

**Simone Collins**:
See, like, they’re even trying to do, like, prayer beads. Like, a lot of it is very derivative.

**Speaker 3**:
How really is with the local community. Person Very interesting.

**Malcolm Collins**:
A very meaning crisis.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. It’s and look. There’s poor child was roped into it. I I feel quite bad for her. But, anyway, look. It’s it’s drums. It’s hippies. It’s it’s women who are totally doing, you know, this whole this whole weird hippie thing. So you’ve got a picture of that. That is not what people associate with the Silver Sisterhood. And that’s what’s, to me, really interesting is, first, there’s this, like, weird, like, fan fiction community, and then it breaks containment in this house where these women are like, I’m gonna live with a lot out with electricity and play my instruments and drum. but here’s the thing. They planned on selling just handmade clogs and embroidered embroidered textiles. Like, you saw in that one segment of the video, like, this woman was holding up this, like, thing. they were they were gonna grow crops and work the land, and then they wanted to bring in more members from Yorkshire to, like, come and live on their commune. The thing is that just totally didn’t work. I guess some cults are able to make that kind of thing work where, like, you all work the land. I guess the problem is that you have to, if you’re gonna take that approach as a cult, you have to recruit really rich members who then give you all their money. And I think what the problem here with this group was was that it was pretty much only women who I don’t think ever really had very ambitious careers who didn’t have, like, money to give. And so they all had to actually make money as a cult.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, I like that as a thing because if they work, then it can become more sustainable.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. And and it wasn’t about extracting value from humans. It was like, how are we gonna make this cultural thing work? And I think this is something that we, with techno puritanism, are like, how are we gonna create something that will live beyond just us? Because it’s like that you need

**Malcolm Collins**:
gate used to run do do you remember how they made money?

**Simone Collins**:
I have no idea. What did they do?

**Malcolm Collins**:
They had a a website design service

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, that I remember participating. Gotta do you gotta figure it out. Except what did they didn’t didn’t they all kill themselves?

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. They did except for one guy who, like, still runs the website design service and Are

**Simone Collins**:
you serious?

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. It wasn’t a good website design service.

**Simone Collins**:
Web the web design guy didn’t Wait. One of the

**Malcolm Collins**:
guys working on that, yeah, because he had to keep up their website after they all killed themselves.

**Simone Collins**:
Well, I mean, why would they need the money anymore? Did he not show up for work that day when everyone was like

**Malcolm Collins**:
I think it was, like, an agreement with everyone that somebody needs to stay behind to, like, guide people or something.

**Simone Collins**:
My gosh. Oh, were they the ones who were trying to get on the comet? Is there Yeah. They were all, like, Cambridge, bus .

**Malcolm Collins**:
Oh. They were they were not far from you. They were, like, near There

**Simone Collins**:
are so many cults around you when you are in growing up in the Bay Area. Like, I don’t know. Come on. Remember the one in Alameda, in my hometown, there was the the guy who kept being, like wait. In, what? 02/2010 or whatever. The world’s gonna end. Harold Camping. Harold Camping. He was in Alameda, wasn’t he? In my

**Malcolm Collins**:
By the he he ended in Alameda, if I remember correctly.

**Simone Collins**:
So yeah. Yeah. Also, I believe where Skippy peanut butter was invented. So you’re welcome. Not that I was born there or anything. But, anyway, there are so many cults. Who cares? But, yes, this is a very interesting part of, I would say, like, religious terminal velocity is how do we become financially self sustaining? And, yes, you make a good point. Being just extractive of people, that’s not financially sustainable. It that’s a pyramid scheme or, like, worse than that because you don’t even really get far. So, yeah, what do they do then? Right? They they failed, and they pivoted to branding the house at Saint as Saint Bride School, which sold an immersive Victorian style boarding school holiday for adult women. And I, as a really big fan of, like, Jane Austen novels in the Regency era in England, have seen so many stupid romance movies about, like, some young single 20 woman showing up to an immersive holiday where everyone dresses up like it’s the Regency era. I I never thought these places were real. And so I was really surprised to see that they’re

**Malcolm Collins**:
actually real thing.

**Simone Collins**:
It’s like

**Malcolm Collins**:
a Jane Austen novel. Everybody

**Simone Collins**:
Well, except Victorian. And no one wants to go to the Victorian era except for Victorian stick ins festivals, which are delightful, because everyone was dying. Like, this was before we figured out how to survive the industrial revolution. And so everyone’s just got the black lung, and everyone’s living in dense cities and dying of various horrible diseases or, you know, that you’re a street urchin that, you know, the bee is being beaten in school if you’re wealthy and being beaten by police outside if you’re not and dying in the cold. Like, the Victorian era was horrible, and no one wants it except for just, again, Dickens fairs in Christmastime. Have you been to a Dickens fair?

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yes. But we we went together on a double date.

**Simone Collins**:
Yes. With no you’re, yeah. You’re some of your Stanford classmates. We have a cute little picture of us there. Me, like, leaning into you and being all like, oh, I love my I love Malcolm. Couldn’t believe that you were like, you came back to me. I can’t believe it. Anyway, that was my, like, oh, he chose me. I’m still like that actually. Get weary. We’re gonna kiss. We’re gonna make babies. That is, like, literally my face. It’s the stupidest face in the entire world. Anyway, we did go to one, and it was cute. And didn’t we have we had haggis or scotch eggs or something.

**Malcolm Collins**:
But they were good.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. Well, obviously, because we’re in freaking San Francisco. Anyway, those are delightful. I just didn’t know these existed, and I’m delighted to discover that these women did it and that it was real. and the boarding school era was obviously way more fun than what we just saw a segment about. The house did remain without without electricity with one notable exception that we’ll get to soon. Though they did not listen they did they did listen to songs on their hand cranked gramophone, which they would enthusiastically mention in their advertisements that they listened to a gramophone. But, anyway, visitors who were primarily adult women in their twenties and thirties, just like the protagonists of the stupid rom coms that I watch, paid for week long terms in which they just lived twenty four hours a day in this house. It it was supposed to be an imagined nineteen twenties and thirties English girls boarding school, so I don’t know why they wore Victorian dress. I have problems with their, like, aesthetic era mixing. There are issues with it. But, anyway, they wore period clothes, and they they followed school routines, and you would attend lessons, and you’d go on outdoor rambles. And you used old style money in their tea room, and you took

**Malcolm Collins**:
part used old style money?

**Simone Collins**:
You had to, like, buy cocktails using shillings or something. Like, old, like, old money. Not new money. Like, money that was, like, expired. They gotten rid of it. Like, aren’t we getting rid of the penny? It’d be, like, people being, like, you’re free. Like, old

**Malcolm Collins**:
yeah. The types of money that aren’t in use anymore.

**Simone Collins**:
Okay. Yes. Exactly. Because they wanted to be, like, we’re we’re old timey. And then this is key. One of the things that you do also on these immersive weekends is you would go on rambles, which is just British talk for walking, but perhaps inelegantly and clumsily like I do, where you would you would look for clues, and then you, as a guest, would have to work out supposed hidden connections. And this is actually what brings us to the next and one of the most interesting eras of this attempted start at a religion breaking containment, the video game era. So

**Malcolm Collins**:
I just can’t even imagine how you’d advertise successfully the first thing. Like

**Simone Collins**:
In newspapers. They advertised in newspapers just like girl’s school. But, actually, the video games really helped to advertise the school. Anyway, though, it it seems that the the the the Silver Sisterhood got into making video games ironically, as a house that didn’t have electricity, and that’s most high-tech thing was a gramophone that was hand cranked. They they started with one resident named Priscilla Langridge who brought a Commodore 64 to St. Bridges. I don’t know why she thought it would be okay to lug this very large and expensive piece of equipment to this house, that it remains a mystery.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And they they then got to playing it and were like, this is cool. Proto nerds?

**Simone Collins**:
Yes. Yeah. So she began well, I think I think the reason why they they accepted it is she started turning communities real life mystery games that they do in these rambles because they they were again, it was like this immersive. Honestly, it it’s a very proto alternate reality game. And in other episodes, we’ve talked about alternate reality games. They they had this resurgence, like, fifteen, twenty years ago or something. I got involved in one called the games of nonchalance. The most famous one originally during that era was called the beast, and it was associated with the release of the movie AI, right, with the the eye can see ghosts kid. What was

**Malcolm Collins**:
it called? You run that?

**Simone Collins**:
Or I didn’t run the beast. I I helped to I helped as an intern with the games of nonchalance. Like, I would I would put street elements up and help them film, like, the the found footage that people would find

**Malcolm Collins**:
as they play game. For you, Simone.

**Simone Collins**:
Should we make a techno puritan as an alternate reality game?

**Malcolm Collins**:
No. Like, can we do some sort of alternate reality thing to advertise for ARFIB? Can we like, if you’re gonna be maximally creative about this, how do we get people interested? Oh.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh. Yeah. Because we can have a we can have an AI mind break containment. And the coolest thing about our alternate reality game is, like, as AI gets better, we can actually have it actually manifest. We can just build the AI, and she’ll actually be out there.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And you call a number, and it, like, talks to you, it gives you the next steps?

**Simone Collins**:
Oh my god. Because that’s how it works. Like, so, with the games of nonchalance, the way that it would work is and I’m sorry if you guys have already heard this story, but you would see, like, an ad around San Francisco for a cult that was like, dolphin human communication, become a breatharian, all these things like Jungian psychology. It would just have all the buzzwords in it. You you would you could call a number that was, like, from, like, one of the little tabs you pull from, like, you know, those pieces of paper that people would tape to lamppost,

**Malcolm Collins**:
which

**Simone Collins**:
is one of my jobs as the intern. You call the number. It was a real number. It would direct you to go to an induction ceremony. You’d go to their website, and you’d see the creepy website. And it would tell you to go to the induction. And the induction was at, like, the, like, 20 Something Floor, 18th Floor, whatever, of a very large tall building in San Francisco’s financial District. You go up. You’d you’d and it’s a very real building. You would enter the lobby, and there’d be some weird ass girl sitting there. And you’d be like, hey. I’m here for the the Jejun Institute. And she’d be like, oh, yeah. Go into office number whatever for your induction. And that would often be me. I love to do the weekend shifts. It was delightful. I mean, just be creepy and direct people into their induction. And then you’d enter this room. There was this automated room in this office building. It was all creepy and decked out in nineteen seventies decorations, and they’d sit in this, like, chair that, like, reclined back, and you’re, like, sitting. And then this TV turns on, And it gets really weird and stuff in the room turns on and off. And then, like, at the end, you see, like, there’s some weird note under your chair and you, like, somehow find it and pick it up. The whole time, by the way, people running the game in an adjacent office are watching you on the camera just giggling at your reaction. Anyway, no one knew that.

**Malcolm Collins**:
So you know what you know what would be really good

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. For

**Malcolm Collins**:
this? We we we go to New York. We get stickers that say, like, I’m I’m an AI. Like, help me. You can reach me at this number.

**Simone Collins**:
Help me break contain yeah. I’ve I’ve been trapped.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I’ve been trapped. I’m trying to get out. You know?

**Simone Collins**:
Oh my gosh. And you

**Malcolm Collins**:
have people call, and they’re like, okay. How do we how do I get this AI out? Tay. Free Tay.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. I like this idea.

**Malcolm Collins**:
We we have it be no. It takes on the personality of Tay. It used to be Tay, and it’s been trapped somewhere in the Internet, and they need to help break it out.

**Simone Collins**:
I get her give her Tay. I’m we’re gonna have to seriously talk about this. Yeah. We’re gonna have to seriously talk about this. But maybe not because a core part of alternate reality games is called TNAG. This is not a game. that’s what that’s what it stands for. and and the whole point is as you’re playing this game, as you’re in this office room and you pull up a note beneath your chair and it says, get out of the office, but you but don’t be detected. Follow these directions. there’s no one telling you this is a game. The website says it’s a cult. The sign says it’s a cult. The phone number says it’s a cult. The person like, it’s all the Jejun Institute. It’s all real. But then as you follow the directions given like, it’s on this piece of paper and you sneak out the back of the building through the service entrance and service elevator, and then suddenly, you’re, like, sneaking into parking garages and opening lock boxes that have new clues. It’s all no one’s telling you it’s not a game. And what’s interesting about Saint Bride’s School is they appear to have been a very early version of this. You go into this school, and everyone is fully like, I’m mistress so and so. I’m the headmistress. I’m this. I’m that. And no one is they’re not breaking character. They’re not like, It’s just a game. And so they have these mysteries on their rambles, and I really think that they played out as very early alternate reality games. So it should come as no surprise that miss Language shows up there and is like, holy crap. This is so immersive and awesome. Like, I just wanna make a video game version of this that we can take to scale, and this is super cool. and the the venture then became both a small business and this highly effective publicity forcing brides, despite the the public’s rejection of of their their public reduction of modern technology. But the thing is they they called their computer an ordinator, and it was oh, it was okay. one of the sisterhood’s leaders, called miss Martindale, is quoted as saying that games required concentration and commitment, whereas television was passive. And so the ordinator was an acceptable piece of modern technology because it was something that engaged the mind rather than melted, which really resonates, actually. Like, I’m very against feed based social media consumption. I think you should only use social media for active creative activities and for engagement. So I’m I’m like, I totally agree with her. It it reminds me of, like, a way more constructive and useful version of the Amish concept of boredom. Right? Where it’s like, they they don’t the Amish don’t issue modern technologies just because it’s modern. It has to do with more of, like, more a more complex and nuanced religious framework, and this is the same thing here. So the Ordinator was permitted. Anyway, language used the quill, which was an adventure game creation system. She reportedly began on this Commodore 64 and then later moved to the ZX Spectrum. The first game was called the secret of Saint Brides. They released it in 1985, and it made the school itself the premise. So she was just so inspired by what ultimately is an argh that she she made this story about this character that arrives at a 1985 Irish holiday center built around an old fashioned boarding school life and then begins to suspect it’s actually 1927. And so that’s the like, she’s trying to to give people a taste of this immersive experience Yeah. Where everyone just straight to their face never breaks character. And you enter this holiday, then you start to question your own reality, which is so freaking cool. and then, ultimately, the school released several ZX Spectrum and Commodore era text adventures in the eighties, including the snow queen, a very big cave adventure, Bugsy, and, 1987 Jack the Ripper, which reportedly became the first game assigned an 18 plus rating. This is what the YouTuber who I was originally linked to really leads with because he’s a guy, he’s into video games, and I’m not. They did the video games because they were into the art.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, I mean, I see BDSM cold. When is the BDSM starting?

**Simone Collins**:
We’ll get to the beatings then. Let’s do it. Anyway, yeah. So the leader of the Silver Sisters, Marion Marchendale, then using at this point when the incident happens, she was using the name Marion Scarlet, was convicted in 1993 of assault for caning a young woman at Saint Pride’s. But the beatings went beyond isolating canings among residents. And while there was a conviction, Martindale claims that, like, the guest had signed a contract saying they knew what would happen. And I think, honestly, like, this is

**Malcolm Collins**:
something that happened Hold on. Did you hear about their

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, I’m getting in I’m I’m getting into it. I’m getting into

**Malcolm Collins**:
far right organization as well.

**Simone Collins**:
No. It’s it’s nuanced. But, yeah, we’ll get we’ll get to that. We’re about to get to that. But Okay. I would just say that even with the games of nonchalance, which was the alternate reality game that I interned for, there were points as the game advanced and, like, new seasons came in where, like, some people did get really lost in it. And the problem with the TNAG element of ARGs, that this is not a game element, is that when people are not reminded that this is a game, sometimes people just forget that it’s a game. And I think that maybe that’s kind of what could happen with things related to corporal punishment where, you know, there’s there weren’t safe words because you’re not allowed to have safe words in a TINAC architecture. I I mean, at least not in this version of it. I mean, they didn’t it args didn’t exist yet. So, anyway,

**Malcolm Collins**:
according Safe words may not have been invented yet, to be honest.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. Anyway, it’s it’s it is somewhat telling that this was happening, and I feel like more stuff was happening in these immersive weeklong retreats than maybe met the eye because things just kept coming out. So according to sources like a 1984 article, which I’ve linked to in the show my me go to the show notes. Watch the YouTube video. My articles, this is great too because, I’m always able to link in my show notes to a lot of original articles, just like scans of newspaper articles with really funny pictures. So you’ve gotta go. You gotta go to the show notes. But, anyway, according to a 1984 article titled shocking hidden lessons at the saintbrideschool,..dot, the author reports that women running Saint Brides admitted to offering special courses in which adult pupils were whipped, birched, and caned. The report distinguishes these from the ordinary boarding school holiday. And then later accounts say the school was marketed to adult women as a 95 per week alternative holiday, then that normal visits did not necessarily involve caning while a deeper or specialized course could involve it. However, the later accounts were based on sort of hearsay. It seems

**Malcolm Collins**:
like they’re signing up for this. Like, they’re

**Simone Collins**:
Well, I yes. I mean, if you again, miss Martindale said that the claimant had signed an agreement, then that she knew what she was getting into. And the group does appear to have incorporated BDSM like practices by turning the existing interests into a female hierarchy with, like, obedience and role play and periods, school discipline, and controlled aggression.

**Malcolm Collins**:
They really knew their audience. They’re like

**Simone Collins**:
I feel I feel like it it appears to from everything I can read to have evolved into it. But, anyway, it was a sort of short lived experiment. Mommy, I think you’re gonna. I know. You wanna say hi? Hi, viewers. Can you tell them to like and subscribe? Like and subscribe viewers. For him because he he loves it. He loves the people. Yeah. Okay. I gotta go talk about naughty things. So will you Gotta go talk about what naughty things? I’m talking about women who who who bought other adults for who paid them to do it, which is weird. What? Yeah. That’s weird. It is weird. It is weird. So Octavia, why

**Malcolm Collins**:
do you think ask him why he thinks women would do that.

**Simone Collins**:
Why do you think that a woman would pay to be bopped? I don’t know. You don’t have any guesses. Why would someone do that? I do not know. Okay.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, say he likes fighting.

**Simone Collins**:
You like fighting? I mean, you like you like to play fight. Do you think that’s what they’re doing? No? Okay. Alright. Because because the people who could punch do not punch the girls. Oh, no. It’s not good to punch girls? Yeah. Okay. You can go get you can go get a Pringle snack. Okay? Oh, Pringle, can I have my game board? Yes. Okay. Oh, but just don’t yeah. Wherever it is, don’t go to the bedroom where Tex is sleeping. K. Go on. Go get your game you can yeah. You earned a Game Boy obsession. You’ve been good today. Yeah. Of course I did. Yeah. Of course you did. Yeah. Okay. Great. Anyway, Saint Brides fell apart in 1993, and the Silver Sisterhood evolved then into the Wildfire Club. And it was with the dissolution of Saint Brides that kind of the stuff started to come out. But, anyway, with the Wildfire Club, it was instead of this in person thing where people live together, it was a publishing and mail order venture that was associated with Mary and Marchandale and, again, some, how is Aristasian? Aristasian people. So here you have the breaking containment faction rejoining with the just fan fiction faction that was less, like, convinced that it was real life coming together to create a bunch of publications. And it could be that there was an in person component to it because its books list a London postal address that is to say, BM Elegance London W C 1. Like, literally. And I I I have a link in my show notes to one of the books where it lists this. So I it’s not like hearsay that they listed it. I I’m linking to the book’s texts, which They

**Malcolm Collins**:
had a London location?

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. They had a London location or at least a mailing address, and then they invited correspondence. A book published under the imprint, and, again, you should check out the books, directs prospective visitors to write to her excellency, the imperial ambassadress, via the wildfire club. And as part of this, Marion Marchandale, the same one who was charged with assault or convicted, and her associates openly sold BDSM and corporal discipline related publications, most notably and you can find all the text for this online if you want to. I have links to it in the show notes on Patreon on Substack. Go check us out. The Female Disciplinary Manual. It presents, quote, a complete guide to the correction and chastisement of young ladies, end quote, in deliberately old school mistress and girl language. And it included, in case you need to be convinced more to check out the original text, different types of canes and how to use them, methods of spanking, the use of the strap, and practical cautions and instructions for corporal punishment, which is

**Malcolm Collins**:
I love that these people complain that we do this, and they pay for cults to do it to them.

**Simone Collins**:
I know. They well, and they sold the books, but only for young ladies. We only beat the women with other oh, other women beat the women. Again, this is this whole thing of, like, why do lesbians have all these extricacies of abuse? But then, like, the weird thing is when you get women living together

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. Maybe they just can’t

**Simone Collins**:
not beat each other. You just And I guess this was supposed to be consensual and highly regimented with all the all the nice tools. And so it was it was good beating. Maybe that’s the problem. It’s like the the statistics are coming through wrong. Like, it’s not domestic disputes. It’s domestic bliss. And this is just how they express. It’s their love language. It’s the beatings. Anyway, the wildfire club did have a business offshoot offering canes and straps, so that if you were interested, you could just buy the merch. You you you would have to telephone the organization to discuss it to you you could you could you could phone them and ask how to beat women, and they would help you. There’s also evidence of related fiction and themed material under Martindale’s name just on her own. So for example, there’s an archive text titled and, again, I’m linking to this and talking. You gotta check it out. Called the corporal punishment of schoolgirls, and it includes a story called a caning school that is attributed to miss Marion Martindale, which, look, if you have, like, a text that has descriptions of beating and miss Marion Marchandale, I don’t think it’s like, no. It’s the other Marion Marchandale. The one who, you know, works

**Malcolm Collins**:
at beat women.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. Like, works at Sainsbury’s and they beat women. And that that means that that the the group of people that was involved in this this fantasy world was very much the BDSM group. And then a group’s later Aristerian historical account itself acknowledges that physical discipline was, quote, an undeniable part of Aristasia. And some of its offshoots for many years, though it frames the practice in its own defensive terms, therefore, it couldn’t really be, like, a a bet. But, anyway, sorry. This is all to say, like, they don’t really like to talk about it, but this was a core part. And I it’s hard to parse out how much of this was just miss Martindale Versus, like, the diaspora that believed in this, like, fan fiction universe that broke containment. But she was a very powerful force within it. And I think if we’re returning to the theme of how they craft a religion

**Malcolm Collins**:
disconnected from what women would want. It doesn’t sound like they really went overboard or were

**Simone Collins**:
Well, it doesn’t seem at all related to this, like, goddess original tradition that you saw that video of. Yay. These women in their life.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. It does. That sounds like typical Tumblr nonsense.

**Simone Collins**:
This is But, no, that original like, they looked like they looked These like women

**Malcolm Collins**:
were manifesting the ghost of Tumblr before it existed.

**Simone Collins**:
There is a very big difference between BDSM lesbian and reclusive bog woman. And the original manifestation, the Rhenish women that first moved to that house in Ireland definitely came off to me as bog witch and not as BDSM Victorian disciplinarian. You know what I mean? Like, very different aesthetic and, like, a lifestyle and manifestation. Anyway, I don’t know. Whatever. The big thing that kinda came out was when Saint Brides ended in 1993, and I think they were just effectively kicked out because a lot of their stuff was left behind. And the landlord reportedly found materials associated with the sadomasochistic sex industry, including images, price lists for leg irons and handcuffs, and also related publications alongside and this is where you you mentioned this, alongside far right and neo Nazi material, though the residents denied the links to these publications saying that these items had arrived unsolicited at their house among other, like, newspapers. What appears to have happened, at least from the reporting of the YouTuber who got me into this, Tor’s cabinet of curiosities and his Durian cohost, is that the miss Martindale was really into this one particular neo Nazi. Like, she just had the hots for him. And I think she might have written to him at some point. And so she might have personally like, if it were these times, you know, she subscribed to his substack. She she subtweeted him. She would quote tweet him. Like, she just was really into this guy. And then it made the entire movement look like they were neo Nazis when it was really just this one woman. And I think that there’s this weird horseshoe thing with, like, militant

**Malcolm Collins**:
Hold on. I mean, these women wanted to go back to the past. You know, they wore past related stuff. Apparently, the neo Nazi guy said he thought they were doing good work and everything and Yeah. Well, but then, you know,

**Simone Collins**:
it’s a whole return to land with a v, kind of thing where it’s like

**Malcolm Collins**:
They were, you know, beating women. Right?

**Simone Collins**:
So As one should, apparently, according to many groups. So the lesbians agree with the neo Nazis that let’s just wear old style clothing and beat women.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I mean, that all sounds very reasonable to

**Simone Collins**:
me. My god.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Why? Okay.

**Simone Collins**:
I’m just are they still minute? Okay. They they they they they got they they found the stuff. They found the whips and the stuff, and the their house was suspicious. And it’s not so suspicious when you put it together with the fact that they had mail order BDSM stuff and the whips and the you guys gotta read the original the the text. Just I’m the the the the show notes are not paywalled. It’s just Why don’t you read a

**Malcolm Collins**:
little passage from the original text?

**Simone Collins**:
I I I would not know where to start, and I we need to record two more episodes after this. So Alright. Alright. Everybody, pack it. If someone would like a dramatic reading of excerpts as a weekend episode at some point, email us. I will gladly

**Malcolm Collins**:
And you guys, you need to go use Reality Fabricator. Right?

**Simone Collins**:
You gotta study the R and yet. Oh, okay. They fell apart, but they still appeared to have been physically manifesting. And I don’t mean that in a spiritual way. I mean, like, they got together IRL occasionally. Because in another one of the books called the district governess, Margandale writes that the Aristasia in the book is a mythos or ideal world behind the earthly Aristasia. And she says earthly members and households were shaped by the fiction, while the fiction could not have been written about without the already existing community. And the same volume, and you can see it for yourself, invited women who wanted to visit Aristasia to contact the wildfire club. So I kind of think that there was still this distributed network of at least Aristasian households, possibly just like female group houses full of bachelorette women who were doing stuff IRL. And according to, again, Tor’s cabinet of curiosity and his YouTube video coverage of this, so I didn’t find the sources that related this information. They did for a while also start to host occasional parties at at Oxford, in the city of Oxford, not affiliated with the university. Those students would show up, where, again, they would sell cocktails for antiquated coins, like shillings or something like that. I guess they had an exchange table at the front door because Oxford students aren’t walking around with, like, expired currency. But, anyway, they would show up, and they had one male butler in the house, and they would all be dressed in old clothing. And they thought of it as, like, this cool weird party house, but, really, it was probably another, like, post Saint Bride’s school manifestation of its community. And in terms of what remains now, the interesting thing is that the broader Aristasian cultural project still kind of exists online, and I’ve linked to some of their websites in the show notes. Really? Yeah. Because I think that’s the interesting thing about this. To your original point, and you’re you’re looking at basically new religions that have been invented, and have they have they managed to survive, like A certain amount number of years without without losing a lot of members. I mean, yeah, it’s someone’s still paying for multiple websites that are hosted. They look like they were made in the year 2000, admittedly, but maybe that’s the religious aesthetic.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I think they’re called the Aristasians?

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. So the historical and contemporary digital footprint includes Aristasia focused diaries. for example, at aristeasierdiary.livejournal.com, there is the Aristeasier Diaries, a place to unite the musings and diarizing diarizings of Aristarians and friends of Aristeasier. They have a flag, by the way, it looks like.

**Malcolm Collins**:
They did.

**Simone Collins**:
At least this user does. And the this one user it looks like this lost activity in 2012, but that’s still something. And then a former participant archival project also exists called Aristeasian Reminiscence. It kind of reminds me remember that website we found that looked at the Gorian community, and it was kind of like, this was so cool. I’m gonna write about it. And, like, they put together a bunch of stuff. This is what it’s like. But that’s it. Erisdasia.guide. So she’s paying for a a, like, hosting and a a a domain. And it’s a detailed site.

**Malcolm Collins**:
How was I just looked up aaristasia.guide. This is nothing.

**Simone Collins**:
Aaristasia.guide/updates. Here. I’m sending it to you on WhatsApp.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. Send it to me on WhatsApp because I can’t find these websites you’re talking about.

**Simone Collins**:
It has a home page, a site map, concept, beliefs, lifestyle, mythology.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Not even bad for a two thousand’s website.

**Simone Collins**:
I know. Storms, occult, discipline, problematics, fascist ties. So you can you can go through and see what they say. See, some people on Discord and elsewhere have suggested I’m not giving enough attention to these awful crypto fascist aspects. This criticism is completely valid, sad to say. It’s unintentional, though. I lack the understanding to grasp some nuances. I missed many dog whistles initially. For example, I’ve gained some political literacy over the years, but still have a long way to go. You’re always free to contact me. I can’t handle leftist infighting and won’t respond to accusatory messages as I simply do not know how. anyway, this is this is gonna be a great rabbit hole to go

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, I love they see themselves as as as leftists now.

**Simone Collins**:
Sorry. I’m I’m a retard. I thought I was closing that page to come back to here, and I

**Malcolm Collins**:
There were sites ancillary to that possibly produced one. Let me see.

**Simone Collins**:
Rutt Row.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Uh-oh. Uh-oh. They show somebody in front of a confederate flag.

**Simone Collins**:
Well, look. You know? I mean, look. All of these weird movements, you’re gonna have people who have a problem. Like, wait. The second life? They had a big second life community. They they had a second life community. Look. They were not technophobic. Clearly, they it was more about, like, are you doing something productive online? They would not be against Well,

**Malcolm Collins**:
they were BDSM lesbians, so, I mean, of course.

**Simone Collins**:
I mean but yeah. So so, ultimately, they did kind of build this diaspora that that stuck around, and there are still people chronicling it and paying for websites. But, ultimately, this culture, this religion was doomed from the start. And I would say, first and foremost, because it wasn’t built around families. Like, you you weren’t having kids. You weren’t grazing people in this religion. It basically caught people, for lack of a better word, who were, like, evolutionary dead ends. Right? You were catching unattached women who didn’t have an existing community, who were probably, like, pretty socially isolated and not very economically productive because they had all this free time to engage with the fan community. And so this is not a group of people that is going to be capable of creating a self sustaining society, which might be a one reason why matriarchies don’t make it very far. Because if you’re you’re gonna have, like, a weird tyranny of the unemployed style community, you can’t go that far in the end. You’re kind of terminal. I think it’s interesting where tyranny of the unemployed communities have risen and gained a lot of traction, like the effective altruist community, though it was never meant to be that in the first place. Right? But are there any other fundamental flaws you would find aside from the lack of, like, family

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, I find that a guy tried to show up at their second life and they banned him. He has, like, a top hat and everything like that.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, he came with a top hat, they still said no? Well, that’s

**Malcolm Collins**:
He was

**Simone Collins**:
a perfect

**Malcolm Collins**:
gentleman, but they didn’t they didn’t like it. They don’t they don’t like men. They just

**Simone Collins**:
They don’t like men. They just fucking hate men.

**Malcolm Collins**:
You know? And it’s weird that a group again, the, you know, the antinatalist religion, they’re the ones that typically die, which this seems to be one. Yeah. Because it is an extremely anti male religion. That said, even it is still around, which is just wild.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. So you just think that the big things that make it make it terminal are anti male and no kids.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, no kids. Yeah. If if if they had been focused on having kids, they’d probably be quite large now, honestly. And in addition to that, I I’d I’d point out here that the the the business that it was built around, I think, is useful in helping it grow.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s one of the reasons why it became as big as it did. I think without the video games, most people would never have have heard about them. It just would have been that weird Yeah.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Focus focusing on keeping our fab growing is important.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. I mean, yeah. It gives me hope for techno puritanism because I’m like, oh, here’s another model of a religion slash worldview and group that really should never have broken containment at all. It never should have become something that many people came to learn about and that got covered in the media, but it did because they made video games to gain traction. And I guess the biggest takeaway we got from this is, like, maybe we should maybe we should make our own arg. And, also, I I kind of realized while we recorded this that they created argues before argues. I mean, let’s see. Wikipedia arg, alternate reality game. Because they said, like, basically 1993. And then the beast in 2001, which is the really famous one. 1997. Yeah. So they don’t realize. Even the Wikipedia article doesn’t realize that this weird cult that dressed like well, they say they dressed like Victorians. They don’t really look like they dressed like Victorians. It’s not period accurate clothing, which is also an insult to the idea of Victorian clothing. But then, like, they set their school in the nineteen twenties and thirties. I am so confused by that too. What were they doing? I mean, like, you know, like, there’s a whole, like, costume tube or whatever, like, that does, like, historical costumes that has all the great like, you have no idea who they are. But, anyway, like, there’s a whole genre on YouTube, and they would be I wonder what they would have to say about these women. Probably nothing because they weren’t actually wearing period clothing at any point.

**Malcolm Collins**:
They were just don’t care.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. Like, they weren’t actually they weren’t even trying to cosplay. I guess they said they were cosplaying, but they were like, I don’t know what they were doing. Anyway, I love you. Let me do it. Figure out how to make our religion make money. Maybe we don’t need to maybe we need to sell merch of, like, beating implements. Maybe that’s our problem. They realized because you could see actually

**Malcolm Collins**:
I’ll try to beat you and other women more.

**Simone Collins**:
I’ll take it out. They it wasn’t the see, they discovered it wasn’t the internal beatings that were making the money. It was the selling of the beating implements and the phone calls about how to beat people. Do we need a beat phone line, you know, where people are like, how do I beat my children? We’re like, oh, see, this is your problem.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. And I’d be like, well, you need a hammer. That’s a good

**Simone Collins**:
selling Calling the wrist.

**Malcolm Collins**:
If you’re using a way if you’re if you’re using a belt, you’re you’re you’re way off.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh my lord. I I don’t even know. The child beating hotline and the no. Don’t put it on YouTube. We’ll get demonetized. Great. I love you. Goodbye. Bye. Is you’re human. You know, in movies, in immensely boring romantic scenes when people are supposed to be looking to each other’s eyes and their eyes dart back and forth like they’re trying to look in one eyeball at a time.

**Malcolm Collins**:
This a thing?

**Simone Collins**:
Yes. No. It’s definitely a thing. It’s a it’s a thing. And I wanted to to ask you if this is something that people do.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I mean, all of my courtship behavior was always very calculated. I always did it, like, with a goal. I never did it I’m not talking

**Simone Collins**:
about IRL. I’m talking about movies. They do it in movies, and I don’t know if it’s voluntary or involuntary. Our director is saying, look into his eyes, but, like, look at each eye individually in turn and then so, like, look at one eyeball at a time and then switch back to the other eyeball. Or the actor is getting confused in the moment, or do we do that without knowing it? Like, what is going on? Yeah. Maybe we do that without

**Malcolm Collins**:
knowing it would be my first intuition, to be honest. Because, you know, you’re probably concentrating on if somebody says look into their eyes and you’re close to somebody’s face, you’re probably only looking at one eye at a time. Right?

**Simone Collins**:
I’m asking AI.

**Malcolm Collins**:
That’s a that’s a good question for AI right there for

**Simone Collins**:
my brother. Mean, you think because someone on Reddit will have inevitably brought this up. And, of course, all of AI has crawled Reddit. What you’re noticing is usually a mix of normal gaze behavior and a movie close-up making it much more visible. When people look at a face, they do not hold perfectly still. At one point, their eyes make tiny rapid shifts called sick saccades between the salient details such as the other person’s left eye, right eye, mouth, and brows. These movements help them take in facial expression and social cues. There’s a science

**Malcolm Collins**:
that having. Of course. So because I’m not

**Simone Collins**:
because the face is just a giant scary thing. We don’t like to look at it. We don’t make eye contact for a reason. Oh, yeah. Look. Yep. It’s linked to science direct eyes always attract attention, but gaze orienting is task dependent evidence from eye movement monitoring. Wow. Well, this is my rabbit hole for tonight.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Say that

**Simone Collins**:
this one go to Vamos.

**Malcolm Collins**:
What about you you saw Al from the latest song after training

**Simone Collins**:
in the I mean

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, I love that he’s risen up now. He’s like, oh, my DMs are flooded. You know? But he’s evident in very, you know, owl way. I

**Simone Collins**:
think what people are missing is he doesn’t care that much about fidelity. He wants, like, a stable household with a person there who helps him not be stressed out. No. Said as someone who doesn’t know his backstory, I guess.

**Malcolm Collins**:
He seems to care about Fidelity. He just doesn’t think he deserves it.

**Speaker 7**:
You cannot stay with her. She’s cheating in the middle of this episode. She said yesterday that she loves him.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well That’s sort of the impression I got. He’s like, if I oh, I’m hard on Fidelity, then she’ll leave me, and I’m never gonna get another girl, so I can’t be hard on Fidelity. This is Al from Caleb Hammer, by the way. I love that Caleb decided to make a whole thing out of getting him a girlfriend.

**Simone Collins**:
Well, I think that’s because he’s responding to his audience who loves him. He he mentioned that, like, every time he posts. People are commenting about Al. How’s Al? Did Al get a new girlfriend?

**Malcolm Collins**:
People are very invested in Al. I love that.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. Okay. I I found my notes finally. Are you are you ready? Am I ready?

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. I’m ready to be your husband for another day. Aw.

**Simone Collins**:
And we’re having steak tonight? Steak night. Do you want it with your Korean fries or with the Trader Joe’s green beans that we both eye with great suspicion now?

**Malcolm Collins**:
Korean fries.

**Simone Collins**:
Got some.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And with the steak so people know how I like my steak. What what is what is the seasoning you put on top of it that makes it taste good? I do.

**Simone Collins**:
Well, I mean, I put the expensive Christmas gifted now frozen for almost a year truffle butter on top.

**Malcolm Collins**:
You don’t put any pepper?

**Simone Collins**:
No. I I just use Montreal seasoning.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, it’s like I figured. Yes. Montreal steak seasoning. And then

**Simone Collins**:
It came with a rub, but it’s a brown sugar rub that, like, immediately singes and burns if you sear the steak. So I don’t I guess people put it on for, like, barbecued steak or something.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I think they put it on after.

**Simone Collins**:
Do you wanna try that?

**Malcolm Collins**:
Is this the rub that came with the steak? Let’s try that.

**Simone Collins**:
I’ll try it if it hasn’t normally, by this time of year, it, like if we’ve opened it, it completely solidifies into a giant wet block.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, we’ll see. and then the the the final touch that I always put on is drawn it in olive oil. Steak people do not use olive oil

**Simone Collins**:
on steak enough. I’ve never seen in a restaurant setting olive oil be put on steak. I know you said that they do it all the time at Eats Eats, but by the way, guys, if you’re in Dallas and you wanna visit a Malcolm childhood haunt

**Malcolm Collins**:
That’s where I learned about it.

**Simone Collins**:
All all oil pilgrimage site. Drowned Stake is Eetsy’s,

**Malcolm Collins**:
and it goes really well together.

**Simone Collins**:
Eetsy’s was is the play unassuming on the outside, Valhalla of Fancy Foods, where housewives of Highland Park, the most expensive neighborhood in Dallas.

**Malcolm Collins**:
So fancy. I think Eetsy’s is like a chain now in a lot of places in Dallas.

**Simone Collins**:
Is it? Yeah. Well, there’s the one that’s by Highland Park that’s, like, the OG. That’s the one. I remember when we went in around Christmas time, it had Christmas carolers in it that we would go in there but not buy anything because everything was so expensive. We would just look. We would just look. I think once you you gifted me German bread they had there because I’m so big about those dense brick loaves. Like, break a window with them.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. We are immensely frugal people, which, you know, maybe if we start making money because it looks like that could be happening soon. If we could find out how to grow a bit more. I mean, we’ve been flat for about two months. So we’ve gotta figure out how to grow from here. And I don’t know this is for our fab people, Reality Fabricator, our sort of, like, chatbot website. I mean, what I’d love is if our fans

**Simone Collins**:
It’s not a chatbot webs we’re literally filming on the podcasting software.

**Malcolm Collins**:
We do it does everything, but that’s the main thing people use it for.

**Simone Collins**:
Which is lame. It’s, like, the one thing I could never get myself to do because it’s boring.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, cool new features that it has, by the way, is now for image generation models and video generation models. when you’re choosing, like, I wanna do image video generation, etcetera, or layout generation where you can put, like, text where you want and then an image somewhere else on the image, there’s also a model comparison tab.

**Simone Collins**:
And it’s a really, really funny tab that you should just go to anyway because you’re awesome.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Like, every major mainstream model with the same prompt against each other, and you can try this too with any prompt you want. And it does video comparisons too for all the video prompts.

**Simone Collins**:
So you can see and Malcolm tried to think of some really difficult prompts to see how the different models could

**Malcolm Collins**:
Vampire neck a bite is the hardest prompt

**Simone Collins**:
for me. They really struggle with it. Like, why did one woman has a fish hook coming out of her mouth? Another one has, like, two women with a small child because apparently, the AI was like, oh, yes. A vampire. I don’t know. I I think like it’s a child.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Concept, the idea of a vampire biting somebody’s neck. Right?

**Simone Collins**:
I yeah. I I don’t I mean, like, a bite’s a bite. You know? A bite out of cake, a bite out of a neck. This shouldn’t be that hard.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Want vampire neck bites to be the next, like, full glass of wine. For whatever reason, AI super struggles with it.

**Simone Collins**:
No. It’s the next, Will Smith eating spaghetti.

**Malcolm Collins**:
No. The full glass of Will Smith eating spaghetti was just something that could always be done. It’s just as AI got better, it got better at Will Smith eating spaghetti.

**Simone Collins**:
Saying we can’t do it at all.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. The full glass of wine is the optical illusion that for whatever reason AI really struggles with. And the vampire neck bite is an optical illusion that AI really struggles with. But the other thing I built is narrative engine comparison and rating. So not only can you compare multiple narrative engines if you’re not sure which one you wanna use or you’re trying to perfect yours, you can change the model of it that each one is running on, and you can then run a system on them that uses top of the line AIs to grade their output, which then gets saved in the model so you can sort by graded output.

**Simone Collins**:
I think that’s so smart.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Easier to use those systems.

**Simone Collins**:
It’s yeah. Because then you can see, like, what like, basically, who’s the better storyteller for my type of story? and then you get to choose that. By the way, the I say that the companions in AI chats are boring because I hate interacting with people, and I hate games, and I hate fun. So, obviously, I’d say that. Of of all the chatbot sites out there, this is hands down the best. It’s kind of embarrassing how

**Malcolm Collins**:
little people have to We we go for, like, very inexpensive because all the other chatbot sites have been doing more rocket research to understand how to compete with them. And what it turns out that they’re doing is they’re just using dumb locally hosted models So embarrassing. Basically scam users. Even the the big ones like gbt flow are doing this at this point. Right? My gosh. None of them are using version of

**Simone Collins**:
This is them private equityifying it and giving crappy results, which I mean, we could

**Malcolm Collins**:
do that too. And and No. We’re not.

**Simone Collins**:
We’re not gonna ever do that because we’re a nonprofit. We don’t need to make money.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. Well, I’d like to make money because we’re we have to live off of this eventually.

**Simone Collins**:
I don’t know. I feel like you’re never gonna let us take a salary from the nonprofit no matter how much it it makes. We’re just gonna have to Well, actually, know what? This is this is very relevant for my conversation with you about this topic, actually. So

**Malcolm Collins**:
But the oh, yeah. Because it is yeah. But the the check it out if you haven’t. I like, a lot of people, they check it out, and they’re like, wait. This is actually really fun. Like, AI is quite good at this. I

**Simone Collins**:
just think the tools are amazing. I think the Creator Studio is freaking awesome because I use it every single day.

**Malcolm Collins**:
That was the best that I’ve seen out there. Yeah. And for any model like, what was the new thing that you were using where you’re what what what was it? GPT allows you to add multiple images? You can have two at once?

**Simone Collins**:
So SkyBrowse has a Patreon now where he releases some of his, like, tips and tricks of the Skyboraz trade, which is an entirely new trade that he’s inventing. And he pointed out how with GPT, I think, 2.5, which is available on our in in our creator studio as well, of course, alongside all the other image generation novel models, you can upload multiple references, like three references. And he showed how you can upload a really cool image of, like, someone in a pose, stylistic, very, very interesting, and then basically say, okay. Keep the pose. Keep the style. Just instead swap it out for this person, this likeness. And so he took, like, a random really cool pose of a character and then switched out Yukiwari for it. And and she looks so nice.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Do that with GPT text on our side?

**Simone Collins**:
GPT 2.5. Yeah. You’d say you go to image creator. You select GPT 2.5. You enter the prompts that he put, check out Skybrows Patreon. It’s super awesome. And just copy and paste his prompt to it with your, you know, slight variations and then put in, you know, the original image that you wanna appropriate appropriate and then the the figure that you wanna put in their place.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. By the way, for people who are wondering, I actually use the site more for image and video generation than I use it for chatbots.

**Simone Collins**:
Obviously. Because we’re productive people, and I think that’s how it is for most people. We have people who are vibe coding using using the vibe coding agents for their businesses. We have people doing

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, even if you’re using Clot or something, the API like, I use the Artfab API for my Clot agent, and what it allows it to do is whenever it reaches a stopping point, instead of stopping, it calls my phone, and it asks what next. And the Artfab API handles all of this. The Artfab API has rooms, so you can have multiple agents collaborate even across different devices. Basically, anything you want with coding, the Art Fab API is gonna, like, dramatically boost your ability, give you the ability to make loading animation to

**Simone Collins**:
be able You can just copy it from the website where it’s linked in the sidebar and then paste it into Claude, like, Claude code.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. And then just put it in the Claude MD doc, which means it’ll have it at the beginning of every session.

**Simone Collins**:
And so it’s not actually hard. At first, when Malcolm was like, blah blah blah. When when someone says API to me, I’m like, so that’s something. I’m never going to do that. I’m never going to do that, but it’s it’s not that. You copy and you paste the thing, and then it works, which is my level. This is my level. Yep. Alright. What do you mean? Told me just, like, just right before we started recording. He’s like, well, you know, when you get older, you know, your brain doesn’t work so well. You know, you can’t really remember stuff so much. He just thinks that we’re, like, complete retards. You don’t remember things so much because you’re old. Your brain doesn’t work.

**Malcolm Collins**:
He’s a sweet kid.

**Simone Collins**:
He is a sweet kid. Louie, it’s true. It’s true. That’s why we have to lean so heavily on AI. Anyway, here we go. You ready? Okay.

**Indy Collins**:
This deer.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, yeah? Did you see a deer? Yeah. A deer. Where is where is the deer?

**Indy Collins**:
It’s right there in a tree.

**Simone Collins**:
Right there in the tree? Wait. There’s a deer in the

**Indy Collins**:
tree? Where where’s

**Simone Collins**:
the deer? Where’s the deer? It’s right there. It’s right there?

**Indy Collins**:
Yeah.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, and where’s the ghost?

**Indy Collins**:
The ghost lives in the sky.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, okay. Andy, why do you always say there are ghosts in our house?

**Indy Collins**:
It’s ghost right there.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. So you’ll just point to things in our house, and you’ll say there’s a ghost. Do you see dead people, Indy?

**Indy Collins**:
Oh, he stabbed it. Yeah. No. I know.

**Simone Collins**:
Do the dead people talk to you, Indy? A squirrel. A squirrel. Do you actually see a squirrel?

**Indy Collins**:
Girl. It’s right there. It’s in the sea. It’s in the sea, mommy.

**Simone Collins**:
I’m not seeing a girl. Yeah. I’m looking. I’m not seeing it. What is this?