Episode Details

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore a viral Asmongold take: VTubing as a “hack” that lets women (and others) influence online discourse without traditional appearance-based barriers. They dive into how anime avatars and VTubers have transformed the online right—opening doors for older, intellectually mature women, introducing female perspectives, and boosting the post-GamerGate “nerd right” faction.

Topics include the evolution of the online right from edgy atheists to the modern conservative scene, why traditional female influencers were often young and impressionable, the rise of conservative VTubers like Kirsche, Leaflit, Rev Says Desu, and more, plus the cultural shifts around age, attractiveness, parasocial relationships, and factional dynamics within the right (deontologists vs. consequentialists, anti-nerd sentiments, etc.).

They also touch on Anna Valens drama, anime’s role in conservatism, censorship, coalition-building, and why this VTuber phenomenon strengthens the right’s adaptability and intellectual depth. A fun, wide-ranging conversation on how technology is reshaping ideology and influence.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to hear with you today.

Today we’re gonna be talking about an interesting phenomenon that came from a viral moment that Asma Gold got himself into. Oh, what? ASG Gold was I think, reacting to a tweet. And the tweet said something like, there is no point to male v tubers and Asma Gold said this is true. And then he went further, which is to say the key benefit of VT tubing for women is he said it’s like this crazy hack that they found out where you can be a hot woman without having to be a hot woman.

And then he said the thing that was controversial, but many female vt tubers have reacted to this and been like, but this isn’t controversial, it’s just true. Oh no. Which he said is, if you look at not hot female influencers. The vast majority of them are v tubers to, to the extent that almost all of them are v tubers.

Right.

Speaker 6: To be clear, I am not saying that V tubers are predominantly unattractive. I actually do not think that this is the case. I think that they’re [00:01:00] well more attractive than the average person. , like the real people are more attractive than the average person. But we lived in an era where, women who were.

Let’s say top 25%, but not top 10% of attractiveness were frozen out of being able to start to rise as intellectual influencers. , And this doesn’t just have to do with genetics. It was also really any woman who is over the age of 25 was frozen out of being able to rise as an intellectual influencer because men think younger women are attractive, generally speaking.

, And. It’s worse than all of that because even if a woman is in the top 5% of attractiveness, but she is shy or she is insecure and doesn’t want people criticizing her looks because, , that is a normal thing for conservatives to do to immediately go after a woman’s looks if they don’t like her ideas.

, She would not attempt to rise and v tubers as a concept, allowing this completely transformed that.

Simone Collins: How would you know, aren’t most [00:02:00] v tubers good at concealing their identity?

Malcolm Collins: Hmm, there’s the leaks all the time.

Simone Collins: Can you put like images on screens of like the person next to their V YouTuber persona or just gimme their names so I can do it and then give it to you?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no. We’re not gonna do that.

And the reason I’m not gonna do that is because the leaks are typically unintentional and that’s mean.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. I just

Malcolm Collins: like, like

Simone Collins: b