Episode Details

In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins explore how looksmaxxing (and its cousins: performative masculinity, status obesity, performative altruism, and more) functions as the modern equivalent of “gender affirming care” — a seductive but ultimately sterile trap.

Drawing on John B. Calhoun’s famous mouse utopia experiments (Universe 25), they explain the rise of “the beautiful ones”: rodents in abundance who obsessively groomed themselves, avoided conflict/mating/parenting, and became socially sterile while remaining physically pristine. Sound familiar?

From Clavicular’s extreme regimen (steroids, meth for hollow cheeks, bone smashing) to billionaire status-hoarding, kidney-donating effective altruists with no kids, and Gen Z pickup artists chasing views instead of partners — this conversation reveals how abundance creates behavioral sinks where people optimize for aesthetics, validation, or signaling instead of legacy and meaning.

They discuss why these traps feel productive (they’re often high-discipline and cerebral) yet deliver zero lasting happiness or genetic/cultural impact — and how to escape them by building a real objective function in life.

If you’ve ever felt pulled into optimization loops (looks, status, altruism, masculinity, etc.) that leave you hollow, this episode is your wake-up call. A free copy of The Pragmatist Guide to Life (ebook or audiobook) available — just DM us or join our paid subscribers on Substack/Patreon.

Based Camp - The New Trend in Male Gender Affirming Care

Episode Notes

The Gist

* Looksmaxxing is the new Gender Affirming Care

* We’ve joked about how women getting cosmetic procedures are getting gender affirming care

* But men are doing it a ton now, too, in the form of Looksmaxxing

* But gender affirming care is just one of many traps people are falling into

* And these traps all map to a particular behavioral pattern that may be consistent across any abundant mammal society—something that’s even observed in rodents (and we’ll talk about that!)

* It’s important that we talk about these traps for several reasons:

* They don’t yield lasting impact

* They don’t yield happiness or contentment

* So let’s talk about this and use looksmaxxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into these traps so that we can be more adept at evading them personally.

And let’s start with the rodents.

The Beautiful Ones

Between 1958-1962, a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments using rats and mice in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise “ideal” environment affects social behavior, mental health, and population stability in rodents.

His hope was to better understand the implications of overcrowding + abundance for human society, so he gave rats and mice abundant food, water, nesting material, and protection from predators and disease—so that lack of resources was not the cause of problems—and observed how increasing population density changed aggression, mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall psychological functioning over time.

These experiments were far from scientifically precise and had many issues, but they yielded some really interesting patterns that you could also argue we’re seeing in modern, abundant societies.

For example, Calhoun observed some consistent behavioral groupings that are analogous to behavioral groupings in modern, affluent human groups that we talk about on Based Camp all the time.

Some examples:

* Dominant aggressive males: Highly territorial “alpha” males that monopolized prime nesting areas and mates, frequently fighting and wounding other males and sometimes attacking pups.

* “Dropouts” or socially defeated males: Males driven out of territories by dominant