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Happy Relationships "Too Republican" To Be Cool? Riiiiight…
Is having a boyfriend now considered “uncool”? In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone dive deep into the cultural shifts around relationships, social status, and online identity—especially among urban, progressive communities. They explore why some women are now hesitant to share their relationships online, the rise and fall of trends like the “stay-at-home girlfriend,” and how social media algorithms and peer pressure shape what we see (and don’t see) about love lives. The conversation covers everything from viral articles and Reddit threads to the impact of influencer culture, parasocial relationships, and the new “flex” of being single. Whether you’re curious about the latest social trends, the politics of dating, or just want a fresh perspective on modern relationships, this episode is for you.
Episode Transcript:
Malcolm Collins (2): HELLOOOOOO SIMONE! I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be discussing. If having a boyfriend has become embarrassing or uncool specifically for urban monoculture, I really cannot describe this. Anything other than like upper middle class white women. Okay. Have begun to categorize.
Having a boyfriend or being in a relationship as a social taboo. There was a paper written on this then in in Vogue, which we’ll go over, which by the way, teen Vogue Vogue inspired all of their black employees. So that was fun. When they were trying to do like woke cleanup, they accidentally.
Simone Collins: No, I, I think it’s more, I think they were getting rid of unprofitable Teen Vogue by tucking it into Vogue.
Vogue. And they got rid of the, the politics team, which was just because obviously gay and not
Malcolm Collins (2): that also all the trans, no, no, yeah. Sorry. Not
Simone Collins: gay trans. Yeah, gay is like conservative. LGBT Trans is progressive Lgt. Yeah. Gay. Gay
Malcolm Collins (2): [00:01:00] is now conservative coded these days. Yeah. But anyway, so to continue here so they did an article on this and we’re gonna go through both their article and the article that they referenced, which I think is almost more interesting than their article itself.
And then we’re gonna dig, go through some reply articles to this and Reddit threads that we’re discussing this to sort of see how the general feminist community feels about this. Okay. But it does appear to be a real shift that’s happening online, which is really cool and interesting
Simone Collins: because cartoon hate her was kind of like.
Is this really real? This is actually just journalists making something up, but it’s no, I, I, I
Malcolm Collins (2): think it’s, well, when I look at the Reddit discussion of this, I think it’s real, and it also makes sense when you think about the wider cultural context that we’re in.
Simone Collins: Okay. Interesting. Let’s dive in.
Malcolm Collins (2): So if someone so much as says, my boy and, and they cut it off there, so they can’t even say, my boyfriend on social media, they’re muted.
There’s nothing I hate more than following someone for fun, only for their content to become quote unquote, my [00:02:00] boyfriend Defi suddenly, oh, this is probably because for so long it felt like we were living. In what one of my favorite subjects, hackers calls boyfriend land a world where women’s online identities center around the lies of their partners.
A situation rarely seen reversed. Women were rewarded for their ability to find and keep a man with elevated social status and praise. It became even more suffocating when this could be leveraged on social media for engagement and if you were serious enough financial game.
Simone Collins: So, oh yeah, right. There was the whole stay at home girl
Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago