The Lindy Illusion: Why Old Things Suck

Queen Victoria was basically the 19th-century version of a hardcore weeb… but for Scottish culture.

She fetishized tartans, kilts, and fake clan traditions so hard that she forced visiting nobles to show up in made-up “clan tartan” outfits — and they actually did it. Today, huge numbers of Scots genuinely believe this stuff is ancient… because Scotland’s education system is apparently cursed.

Meanwhile, Nassim Taleb fans keep preaching the “Lindy Effect” (longer something survives → longer it will survive) as gospel in crypto, culture war, and trad circles. But in 2025–2026 reality — with hyper-rapid technological, economic, and memetic change — the Lindy Effect has basically inverted.

In this episode we cover:• Queen Victoria’s Balmoral weeb arc and how she single-handedly invented the modern Scottish aesthetic• Why almost nothing you use or celebrate is actually “ancient” (spoiler: most traditions people call timeless were invented 1850–1980)• The original Lindy deli comedians meant THE OPPOSITE of what Taleb claims• Survivorship bias, Fortune 500 churn, disappearing classics, collapsing orchestras…• Why rigid “antiquity = virtue” thinking is suicidal in the modern world

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So Queen Victoria

Simone Collins: Imagine a weeb invented our modern perception of Japanese culture, even as believed by the Japanese. That’s what Scottish culture as we understand

Malcolm Collins: so she then. Starts telling any of the Scottish nobles who visit her house, that they have to come in their clan tartan

Simone Collins: and in their, and

Malcolm Collins: they’re like and they’re like, my what? And so it’s like, it’s like a weeb. Goes to Japan and he says that everybody’s daughters have to come in their magic girl costume.

Simone Collins: He’s come in your formal Goku hairstyle, sir. .

Malcolm Collins: And these, and these Japanese people are like, like, and they’re like, it’s the, it’s the queen. I’m gonna dress up my daughter like a matching girl. We’re going, we’re going all in on this. And the funny thing is this, since Scottish people today, the country has such a terrible education system that many of them believe that all this stuff,

Speaker 9: We saw the lochness monster. When all of a sudden this huge creature, this giant Ste from the Pete Lithic air comes out of the water. I yelled. I [00:01:00] said, what you want from US? Monster? And the bent down and said, I need about three 50.

Simone Collins: How much of a weave Queen Victoria was. She also allegedly would, would while visiting Balmoral slip into this fake Scottish brogue. So you can imagine like a weeb going to like spend their summers in Japan, like speaking in ic, Japanese accent.

And you would imagine

Malcolm Collins: built their entire culture off of her we fantasy.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: . Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about one of the ideas that has become popular in pseudo intellectual circles. And I want to talk about how wrong it is.

Simone Collins: Are we, so intellectuals, is this one of our circles?

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, it’s, it’s called the Lindy Effect. And it often comes up in the concept of something being anti Lindy or a heuristic where the longer, a non-perishable thing like an idea [00:02:00] technology, cultural practice, book or institution has survived the longer its expected remaining lifespan as its proven robust against time and disorder.

So this concept is really, really, really popular in the conservative space. So they’ll look at something like techno puritanism, right? Like our family’s religious practices. And they’ll be like, oh, well it’s very anti, right? Like, it’s very new, and therefore it’s unlikely to survive a long time.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: and I’m going to point out that this is both a misattribution of an idea. It’s a misattribution of a bad idea that even in its very conception was taken to mean the exact opposite of what it originally meant. Which is just like e everything about this idea is bad.

One is that, first of all, the idea is just wrong in a modern context. It worked a lot when you were dealing with a static economy and society because then that was like a evolutionary environment. If something becomes evolutionarily advantageous and out competes [00:03:00] other things and the environment it has outcompeted them with has stayed stable, it is going to continue to be advantageous.

That just like an obvious truism, right? And that is true for cultural environments, right? Like if you’re dealing with a long period of human history where things were broadly the same from one generation to the next an idea or a book or a technology is going to be much more robust if it has out competed other technologies within a similar context.

However, that is no longer the world we live in. Things change dramatic. In terms of the global economy, in terms of the global culture, in terms of how we communicate and in terms of global mimetic sets so rapidly now that you almost have an inversion of the very concept of the Lindy effect.

Second, what I’m gonna be talking about is a lot of the things that lead to the perception of the Lindy effect, and we’re gonna be going over these are illusions. Mm-hmm. They are instances in which an [00:04:00] individual today believes something has antiquity because either of just a myth, right. Or they believe it has antiquity because something in antiquity had a similar name.

An example of this would be somebody who will say something like, well, Christmas or Easter has been around a long time, and we’ll go into not in anything that’s meaningfully close to the way today these things are practiced. If you said that, you know, if, if you’re applying the Lindy effect to.

Let’s say something like Christmas or you, you would apply it to Teop Puritanism, eg. What I mean by that is in a hundred or 200 years, if techno Puritanism becomes widespread and is like a common belief system everyone would say, well, this just follows the Linde effect because it’s Christianity.

And Christianity has always been around, but people within our generation would be mortified if somebody said that. Yeah, you said that the way that Christmas is practiced today, or Easter is practiced [00:05:00] today, is historic to somebody in the Middle Ages or something like that. They’d look at you way crazier than saying

Simone Collins: technically.

Well, and certainly, you know it like, you know, the year, like for bc they’d be like, what do you mean? What are you talk, this is an apocalyptic Jew, just like all the other ones. What do you. Yeah. So,

Malcolm Collins: She’s talking here about what a lot of his historical Jesus researchers think about Jesus within that context.

But the, the, and the other reason why this is hidden from a lot of people, and we’ll go into this, is a lot of these traditions use their manufactured antiquity to try to give themselves a veneer of authenticity. Whether it is the practices of the current Catholic church or modern Judaism, or modern Orthodox Judaism even.

And when individuals. Question these things, you are often literally questioning somebody’s self-perception and worldview. Mm-hmm. So it [00:06:00] is incredibly, like the, the people wanna fight against it as hard as they can, because for some people, if you could show that their faith or belief system lacks a lot of the antiquity that they believe it has, then they would see that as invalidating it because they see that as its core, like argument for existence.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so, we’ll, we’ll go into that as well.

Simone Collins: That’s a really good point. I, I wanna say, I, I can, first, I just wanna give credence or I don’t think people are crazy to have an intuition in favor of this effect because up until the scientific method or like empiricism became widespread and more systematic and we had ways to very quickly.

Validate whether something that was true that didn’t involve literally dying. The only way you knew that something was a decent, like health intervention or safety intervention was because it was a tradition that was passed down from generation to generation. Because all the, the generations that tried something new and [00:07:00] different that didn’t work, died and all the surviving ones did the thing that did work.

And so it was really good to do the thing that was old because that means that everyone who did it before. Well, they, they lived so it’s probably a good sign.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s, it’s not even that they lived, it’s actually, and you bring up a really fascinating point that God, I could do a giant deep dive on like an episode in itself.

But there was a period in European history that went from like the late Roman period to the high medieval period. And in this period of, of, of history, this is when the Catholic church really dominated. Oh. And they created an a, a mindset around the sciences and around things like, a medicine where you would always reflect on an older and proven older way of doing it or teaching.

And the antiquity of a thing was in this sort of early version of Catholicism proved that things authenticity. And this existed outside of the church. This was the period where [00:08:00] you had like Ga Galen medicine, right? Oh, and then like nobody developed on me medicine after Galen for a really long time.

Yeah. And when they would teach medicine at university, if you had a, a, a new way of doing a thing, literally the argument they would have is, well, this isn’t the way Galen did it. And then people would be like, well, you know, maybe he was like, like, they’d be like, but it, it seems to work better. And they’re like, but.

Is it, is it, does it have the anti antiquity?

Simone Collins: Oh, the antiquity. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Very much like the dwarves from Warhammer medieval Puran version. Right? Like, does it have antiquity? If it doesn’t have antiquity, it’s wrong. How dare you With these new flying contraptions, I don’t care that they work, they don’t have antiquity.

And what you also saw, this was philosophers of this period and books of this period.

Simone Collins: Well, this is why we are, so we dunk on Deon Deontologists all the time because there’s, there’s a difference between a heuristic that works well, which is, oh, this old thing probably is good because the people who used it survived.

And [00:09:00] probably all the new things that. Ended up killing people. Well, that’s why we don’t know about them. That, that makes sense as a heuristic until you build a better method like empiricism the scientific method, et cetera. Just better technology or something that just appears to work better, to your point.

Right. But then the deontologists are like, I don’t care or gonna do it the way it’s supposed to be done. And that’s why we have such a big problem with this. But this goes beyond this latest episode in We Hate Deontology.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This, this goes beyond just classic Deontology though. Yeah. If you look at the way science and information was treated during this period it, it, it had some positive effects.

Civilizationally specifically the reason why today we consider the quote unquote classics. The classics that you, as of a, you know, if, if you’re watching this, you probably are educated on ancient Greek literature and ancient Roman literature.

Simone Collins: Probably not anymore, sadly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, sadly. But, but we were in our generation, this happened for a very long time.

Civilizationally. But here you’re, you’re actually proving that Lindsay is [00:10:00] a is, is inverting now that young people aren’t learning this stuff anymore, even though it had been learned for so long. But the reason why wasn’t because this stuff was necessarily good or better or anything like that. It was because during this period of Catholic church dominance of Europe, the educational institutions operated on the belief that older was better with a few specific periods in history, specifically certain parts of the Roman Empire, in certain parts of the Greek civilization, having like, real, real level of importance. And it, it’s, it’s ironic that it turns out that the church is the reason why we hold so many pagan thinkers in such high esteem. If, if not for this period of Catholic dominance you know Socrates and Play-Doh and all that, you, you likely would

Simone Collins: know, oh, you think like the, the Catholic Church was the original hype machine for all of these Greek and Roman relationships.

I

Malcolm Collins: don’t think it’s, it’s very well documented history.

Simone Collins: That’s so I didn’t, I guess I just [00:11:00] never put two and two together. I love that. That is delightful.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the, the Catholic church was actually really obsessed with this stuff. I mean Okay. Think about it this way, right? Simone? You read something like Dante’s Inferno, right?

Or, or Dante’s Divine Comedy is the

Simone Collins: full

Malcolm Collins: name. Yeah. Dante’s

Simone Collins: Burn Book.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Think about all of the figures that appear on it. Yeah. They are either modern political figures from, like Italian politics of his spirit,

Simone Collins: Dante’s Burn book. It’s so, he’s such a like 13-year-old girl. I

Malcolm Collins: love him. Yeah. Or yeah.

Writing a fan fiction about all of his or, or they ancient Greek thinkers or ancient Roman thinkers.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. Was Dante the original online bully? Fan fiction writer.

Malcolm Collins: He, he writing a a mean fanfic

Simone Collins: about all this. He’s like making a furry and it, the trifecta is complete. He probably was one, what am I saying?

No, no, but no, this, you’re making a really good point though. Yeah. It’s like, like their, their fan fiction, their, their their cinematic universe of choice was these, these thinkers, like if [00:12:00] it wasn’t a saint or you know, a, like a, a biblical figure, it was. Roman or Greek philosopher. Right?

Malcolm Collins: But, but, and, and you would know this if you went to you know, a Catholic monastery of this time period, they’d know all of their Roman and Greek thinkers, right?

Mm-hmm. Like they’d know and, and, and the, not just the thinkers, but the fiction from that period, that was the most popular fiction for a long time because older was better. Mm-hmm. You had that and then you had the, the weird incel horny comic book literature of the Period, which was the val work literature, which a lot of people don’t realize was written by the Horny troubadours and with sort of our version of comic books today.

And we have totally other episodes I can get into about that. But the point being is I think it created the illusion, if you’re looking at history, that this stuff actually had any sort of saying power and it didn’t. Mm-hmm. It was an artificial staying power, which has collapsed, was in a lot of modern institutional environments, but.

[00:13:00] Before we get to that, where did this idea come from? Where did it get popularized? The guy who popularized it, I’m gonna see if you remember this guy’s name for anything, was Naem Nicholas Tale in his 2012 book, antifragile. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah, that ring bell.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the 2017 essay called an expert called Lindy.

So we actually have another episode on this particular figure where I point out that he is an Oh yeah. Enormous con artist. You were

Simone Collins: super mad about him. I

Malcolm Collins: forgot. Yeah. He’s the guy who is the biggest known advocate that IQ has literally no meaning that was meaning it was no outcomes. Yes. And I just go through his argument and be like, this guy is just lying with like, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, I I consider that episode a very good dissection of an argument so you can quickly recognize when somebody is using supposed data to lie to you.

Because it’s, it’s very clear when you read his argument that he knows he’s deceiving his audience. I was like, it’s really skeezy, but basically [00:14:00] I put him on like a lower level than Malcolm Gladwell. Right. Like I think Malcolm Gladwell may be

Simone Collins: evil. Malcolm. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I’m gonna call him good Malcolm, because I’m evil Malcolm, which is being good Malcolm.

I’m joking. But yeah. Yeah. He’s evil Malcolm. So, evil Malcolm. By the way, my, for people who dunno, at Stanford Business School, there was literally an entire class that we took that was a mandated class that everyone had to take. And there was only like three mandated classes in the entire, like, so it’s like a big deal class.

The entire, I think first year, it might have been like first semester of this class was entirely just using Malcolm Gladwell’s books to learn how to use statistics to lie to people. It was like, this is the

Simone Collins: learn from the Masters

Malcolm Collins: gold standard of lying to people with statistics. Let’s go over these books.

I think it was the tipping point was the one that they were really focused on, but there were a few others. Oh, nice. 80,000 hours was another that they focus on. But I, I just love that like, people do not [00:15:00] realize how bad some like modern pseudoscience officers are. Who’s the one that always pisses you off.

The guy who wrote Sapiens. Hmm.

Simone Collins: Can’t remember

Malcolm Collins: his name. What’s his name?

Simone Collins: I cannot remember his name.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But a lot, a lot of people do cue into these like pseudoscience books that are like pop science and they think that they’re like valid. But anyway, so basically came from a famous pseudo scientist.

Okay. And what’s so hilarious is he named it after Comedians who frequently gathered at Lindy’s Delicate Scent, a famous Broadway area spot known for its cheesecake and a hangout for showbiz folks after performances. What’s hilarious is they use the term to mean the exact antithesis of what he took it to mean.

I just think it’s bad reading comprehension on his point or something really story. But let’s go into this ‘cause it’s interesting.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So there the comedians would gossip and analyze recent shows and speculate on career longevity, particularly for comedian TV comedians. The core observation [00:16:00] slash heuristic they developed within a comedian’s career.

Our life expectancy was inversely proportional to how frequently they were exposed on tv. The more frequent appearances EG weekly shoe shows, the quicker they’d burn out material and fade, sparse appearances, guest spots and special allowed for longer careers. Huh. So it’s not exactly inversely, but it certainly doesn’t mean anything like what Lindy took it to mean.

Mm-hmm. This was then updated by Benoit Delbar a 1982 in, in the book the Fact Geometry of Nature, where he referenced the same deli anecdote, but mathematically reframed it, trying to argue for the longer something with around the, the better it was, right. Basically. Hmm.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And it didn’t gain main spread’s popularity until the mid 2020s.

And the main reason it seemed to gain main spread’s popularity was because of Bitcoin

Simone Collins: widespread and or [00:17:00] mainstream, is that what you’re

Malcolm Collins: trying to say? Widespread and mainstream. It was because of Bitcoin battles, basically. Bitcoin tried to use it to argue that Bitcoin was the best cryptocurrency.

And then of course, immediately the gold people were like, well, then gold is better than Bitcoin because Bitcoin is anti Lindy. You know? I mean,

Simone Collins: Gold’s doing better than Bitcoin right now, though.

Malcolm Collins: The point being not, I mean, not over any sort of longer period, period,

Simone Collins: directionally,

Malcolm Collins: Bitcoin is below where we sold it, I think. So the point, high

Simone Collins: scale, just saying,

Malcolm Collins: the point being is that how was I gonna say in, in terms of anti Lindy and Bitcoin?

Yeah. So basically the, the whole Bitcoin bro versus gold bro debate and Bitcoin bro versus ETH bro debate is what popularized the concept and got a lot of people to become aware of it.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: One of the arguments used against it, which I do not think is a good argument, is they say a common charge is that the Lindsay effect is essentially survivorship [00:18:00] bias dressed up as wisdom.

Critics point out that we only see things that have lasted eg ancient texts, gold bread, et cetera. While countless old things have vanished without a trace, the heuristic cherry pick survivors and ignores the graveyard of once enduring ideas and technologies that failed. I’m gonna point out that that’s, that’s not even the case.

It’s just not a very good principle beyond the intuitive. Truth that you would see to it, eg. Obviously you’re gonna have a bit of a bias towards things that have been around a long time simply because they have been around a long time. But what we will see is one, things just aren’t around as long as you think they are.

Mm-hmm. So a great example of this is Fortune 500 companies. And, and the trend of things not being around as long as you think they are is increasing over time. So if you go to the 19 fifties to the 1960s, the average tenure on the Fortune 500 list was 50 to 60 years. If you go to,

Simone Collins: oh my gosh, wait.

That’s insane.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: I can’t even imagine that.

Malcolm Collins: If you go to the 1970s to [00:19:00] 1980s, it was 30 to 35 years. If you go to, that’s

Simone Collins: like a lifetime. That’s insane.

Malcolm Collins: If you go to the 1990s, it was around 20 to 24 years. If you go to the 2000 tens to 2000 twenties, it’s. Now at around 15 years or less. That is, that is how long?

So it went from 60 years to 15 years on the Fortune 500 list. Companies are churned through on this list these days. Oh my gosh. And I’d also point out here that a lot of the things that you believe are historic are just not, so let’s, let’s go through a few of these, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and by the end of this you’ll be thinking, wait is literally anything I use in my life.

Does anything have historicity? I’m like looking around my room for anything that is historic. I can find one thing.

Simone Collins: Well, the whole room maybe

Malcolm Collins: a, a knife. Well, yeah. I mean, the room, your room was built in like

Simone Collins: 1790. Yeah, that’s de decent for America,

Malcolm Collins: but that’s just living in [00:20:00] an old place. So you’ve got this knife here and this cup here.

Yeah. These are the only two things I can see anywhere around me that have any real degree of historicity.

Simone Collins: Well, how are we defining historicity? That recur bow over there was built in like, or made

Malcolm Collins: maybe, maybe the time, the sand, the sand time thing here. But like nobody actually uses those anymore.

Simone Collins: No, no. That was made in like 2000.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I know, but I’m talking about the technology itself.

Simone Collins: Oh, the technology. No, I recur bow right there.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Your recurve bro. And the mirror. That is it. That is the only things in this room that have any historicity to them. Oh. Why have

Simone Collins: woven baskets full of baby things?

Books obviously. I’m looking at books. Come

Malcolm Collins: on now. What books are on their way out right now? And you look at, watch our video. Why burn books when it No, nobody reads anymore. Books are largely just decorative at this point, and almost nobody reads books. Even if you’re talking about bestselling books.

And we go over that, like, I think it’s like your average, like top end of book. It’s like 5,000 to 8,000 reads or something when we were going over.

. [00:21:00] For some examples of what I mean here. The average New York Times bestseller is only selling between 10,000 copies to a hundred thousand copies. , And that can mean for the author you’re getting 18,000 to $180,000 per in New York Times bestseller. , The win of wins. And even if you come into this successful, , suppose you’re Billie Eilish, right?

Billie Eilish sold 64,000 copies. Justin Timberlake sold only a hundred thousand copies. Ileo Mar, 26,000 copies, way less than an average episode of our shows, , P Morgan 5,650 copies in the us basically nothing. , So p. People do not read books. Whenever somebody comes to me, they’re like, oh, I have this great idea to write a book. I’m like, well, that’s pretty silly considering nobody reads books anymore.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s

Simone Collins: sad. It’s so

Malcolm Collins: sad. It’s bad if you contrast it with like an average YouTube video or something. And, and so I think a [00:22:00] lot of the things in like, the only thing that is actually still regularly used are cups and knives, baskets.

You don’t,

Simone Collins: baskets. Baskets, man

Malcolm Collins: baskets, right? Like, not a lot. Like you have candles behind you, but they’re entirely decorative. So let’s go over other things that people may think. They’re also

Simone Collins: electric candles, so I don’t know if they count one.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. Oh. Glasses. Glasses. Have a degree of historicity and haven’t changed that much.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Buckles. You have buckles buckle. That’s literally a re historic recreation dress. So I don’t

Simone Collins: think that’s, it’s actually, no, that’s, that fasteners of that sort are actually quite new. Oh, but I, I am wearing stays right now. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: actually, you’re right. They’re so new that the Amish don’t use them because they see them as too newfangled.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they’re newfangled. But my laced up stays under this well, and I’m wearing a Viking apron. Below this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But a, a lot of people just don’t realize it. Something like a buckle is actually a fairly new technology in terms of clothing.

Simone Collins: Even hair ties, I mean, people used to literally use a needle and thread to tie up their braids.

Malcolm Collins: Like there’s [00:23:00] some, some fun ones here. Diamond engagement rings. Those are very diamond engagement rings were popularized in the 1930s to forties by the DeBeers company.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Their diamond is forever added in 1947. The white wedding dress. The white wedding dress was popularized

Simone Collins: Victoria.

Malcolm Collins: How you know your stuff. Let’s see if you can get more of you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Fashion history, Malcolm, come on. That’s like my, that’s my thing.

Malcolm Collins: The, the happy birthday song.

Simone Collins: Oh, that was made that was the based on the Good Morning to You song made by two school teachers. Yes. In the like 19. What, 1910s to 1930s?

What is it? 1930s. You got it right.

Malcolm Collins: Wow.

Simone Collins: My wife. Good morning. Trick or treating you trick or treating. Yeah. That wasn’t done until I wanna say like the 1950s or sixties, right? 19. Now people used to make little jackal lanterns and stuff. The really cute collectible stuff that are Halloween decorations are all lanterns.

They’re not for. Dressing up in costume. We

Malcolm Collins: actually have an entire episode where we go over how new, like if you [00:24:00] think like academia is, as a historicity, we put out the entire citation system that academia invented is, is based on, was literally invented. You

Simone Collins: blew my

Malcolm Collins: mind with that 1954.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And the

Simone Collins: citation system, like I thought, like there was like a peer review and everything too.

Malcolm Collins: And that was the G index and the H index, which are used to rate professors today. And academics today were literally invented in like 2013. Like so crazy.

Simone Collins: So

Malcolm Collins: crazy. And this is like what our entire academic system is based on these days, right. The

Simone Collins: people like as it always was,

Malcolm Collins: as it always was.

Here’s, here’s some fun ones. Later HN and DLE octoberfest attire.

Simone Collins: LA later Hoan. Yeah. And by the way, I had a German friend who always got mad. ‘cause everyone in America pronounces it leader Hoen, which apparently means singing pants. Which is a way better word.

Malcolm Collins: I like singing pants. Okay.

Simone Collins: You have like twisting puts on his overalls and he calls them marching pants because he, their overalls, I dunno why he thinks, but letter, why letter goes was, what were they, were they like invented in like the, the 1910s or something?

What? [00:25:00] I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: 19th to earliest 20th century.

Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. So in the 18 hundreds.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Or 1910s if early 20th century is 1910s. I’m not too bad.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. The Japanese tea ceremony.

Simone Collins: Ceremony. Oh, that’s interesting. I wanna say 1830s.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s about right. So, so early 20th century. It was done during the Beijing era

Simone Collins: modernization.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think when you go to the, the, the golden, did you go to the Golden Palace in Kyoto? I think they talk about it a lot there. Have like a designation. Maybe I

Malcolm Collins: did. I wouldn’t have remembered something like that. ‘cause I don’t

Simone Collins: care. It was one covered in date. The palace covered in gold,

Malcolm Collins: which is all new.

Almost everything in Japan is new. By the way. Watch our episode. The the, the one true civilization theory. Our most offensive theory, if you want to be heavily offended, it’s, it’s a good, it’s a spicy one. But English breakfast.

Simone Collins: Oh, like the beans and blood

Malcolm Collins: beans. Yeah. A hardy plate of eggs, bacon and beans.

Simone Collins: Gosh, I don’t know. I, I’m gonna [00:26:00] guess that’s an industrial revolution thing. No, it could be. Yeah, it

Malcolm Collins: is. It is. It’s an industrial revolution thing that was promoted when hotels started to become popular as a middle class symbol of prosperity.

Simone Collins: Well, don’t forget Scottish tartans. Being like a total invention.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We’re gonna

Simone Collins: go into that too. Right?

Malcolm Collins: Tartan is an invention. Kilts are a modern invention.

Simone Collins: It makes me so, so sad. Like you want it to be real. You want it to be this historical

Malcolm Collins: thing. The Scottish thing is so, and Scott, this is like, you know, like I said, that like Jews get pissed off when you point out that like there’s not actually that much antiquity to a lot of Judaism.

Yeah. And Catholics get pissed off when you say there’s not that much antiquity. You wanna really watch a people who get pissed off tell this to us, Scott. Tell them, you know, that kilts don’t actually have much historicity to Well, ‘cause

Simone Collins: then they have to accept that they were just hill people, criminals.

Right.

Malcolm Collins: Right. No, it gets, it gets funnier.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The actual reason why all of this, like the Scottish image we have today was, [00:27:00] became popular was

Simone Collins: Queen Victoria fetishizing them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So people who don’t know Queen, what was the place called that she went to?

Simone Collins: Balmoral.

Malcolm Collins: Balmoral. So Queen Victoria would go to this place called Balmoral.

And she was really enamored with the idea of Scottish history.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It was like, imagine, no, this is perfect. Imagine a weeb invented our modern perception of Japanese culture, even as believed by the Japanese. That’s what Scottish culture as we understand

Malcolm Collins: that is Yeah, that is, you are a hundred. So to understand how much of a weeb she was for Scottish culture, right?

Like, so she would go and there were some patterns that look something like a modern tartan, but there was nothing like a clan, no version, like different C clams didn’t have different ones. It’s,

Simone Collins: it’s an invention. It’s a fan. It was

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. But so she, she saw this somewhere, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just like in a pattern shot basically somewhere.

And she hadn’t seen it in the uk and so she decided. Personally, and [00:28:00] because she’s the queen, everybody leans into this. Oh yeah. You know, she’s like, oh, I love this Scottish pattern. And then they’re like, oh yeah, this is the most Scottish you, you need to buy it all. And so then she literally wallpapers her entire house in Tartan designs.

And then what she starts doing is because she had this vague idea of like a kilt, because something like a kilt had been banned, I wanna say the jacka bite revolution. I don’t remember this, the specific, but, but something like, it was banned, but it actually wasn’t like a formalized thing or anything like that.

It was like a more modernized symbol of like, it

Simone Collins: wasn’t a pleated skirt. I mean, they, they wore something more akin to togas or sorrys than.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Similar to toga or Aari which a lot of people, medieval people wore, like it wasn’t unique to Scotland or anything like that. Yeah. It was just the basic medieval gown that like peasants in Ireland or England or anyone elsewhere.

But she saw this and she thought it was like a male skirt thing. Anyway, so she then. Starts telling any of the Scottish nobles who visit [00:29:00] her house, that they have to come in their clan tartan

Simone Collins: and in their, and

Malcolm Collins: they’re like and they’re like, my what? And so it’s like, it’s like a weeb Goes to Japan and he says that everybody’s daughters have to come in their magic girl costume.

Simone Collins: He’s come in your formal Goku hairstyle, sir.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Come in your formal Goku hairstyle in your matching girl costumes. And these, and these Japanese people are like, like, and they’re like, it’s the, it’s the queen. I’m gonna dress up my daughter like a matching girl. We’re going, we’re going all in on this. And the funny thing is this, since Scottish people today, the country has such a terrible education system that many of them believe that all this stuff, well, it’s, it’s a funny thing because it’s a really, really bad education system combined with, I say this as somebody who got his.

Graduate degree, I mean, my undergraduate degree at St. Andrews mm-hmm. Which is easily the top school in Scotland, often the top college in the uk. Yeah. So I’m not saying this is somebody with no knowledge of Scottish people being dumb buns. Like supposedly I [00:30:00] was around the best of the best of Scots and I was just not that impressed.

And no, actually it was a thing at St. Andrew’s the St. Andrew’s people who were from abroad, because it has like a huge, I wanna say like 25% foreign audience. They were typically, like, they’d know stuff. I would expect a normal, educated person to know. Mm-hmm. The, the Scotts they would not know like one.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: But you still have to be the best of the best of the best to get into St. Andrews as someone in Scotland.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So this is the best of the best of the best.

Speaker 6: Uh, why exactly are we here?

Speaker 5: Son,

Speaker 7: we’re here because you’re looking for the best of the best of the best. Sir,

Speaker 5: what’s so funny?

Speaker 8: He is just really excited and he has no clue why we’re here.

Malcolm Collins: And one of them was unaware that America used to be a British colony, for example. I was like talking about independence. That’s

Simone Collins: because America’s just that based.

How could it Well, I mean, come on. That’s Scottish history. It just, everything begins [00:31:00] in the year 1900. All right. America always was Scotland, always was

Malcolm Collins: curtains,

Simone Collins: always.

Malcolm Collins: No, they were like independence from what? That’s

Simone Collins: like the Indians, Malcolm, the indigenous American,

Malcolm Collins: the Indians, Americans, independence.

No, but like that is like their knowledge of their own history.

side note here, if you are, . Scot’s Irish, which is what most people in America who think they are, either Irish or Scottish actually are, and what we are, which is the greater Appalachian cultural group in the United States. , This was actually an incredibly small population that was hated by the Irish, hated by the Scots, hated by the English.

, They, they were not mainstream Scottish. So while I do say. I make fun of my own people. , The Scottish people certainly wouldn’t have thought of the Ulster Scots as their own people. , They, they hated them quite a lot. And when they left Scotland, it was a population of, if you’re talking fighting age men, , maybe only 3,500 people.

Um, and that, that exploded into one of the dominant cultural groups in the United States. But that is for other episodes.

[00:32:00] Fun fact when this population that has become one of the dominant population groups in America with lived in Scotland, they were called the Reavers. And this is where the concept of like the Reavers from Firefly come from, , because they were just that violent. , And, , so pop culture hasn’t treated them kindly.

Malcolm Collins: And so they have like this,

Simone Collins: how much of a weave Queen Victoria was. She also allegedly would, would while visiting Balmoral slip into this fake Scottish brogue. So you can imagine like a weeb going to like spend their summers in Japan, like speaking in ic, Japanese accent.

And you would imagine would. So bad. They

Malcolm Collins: built their entire culture off of her we fantasy. So hack by the way, another modern invention in Scotland doesn’t have historicity to it. I think it’s from like the 18 hundreds. Scott,

Simone Collins: I love it. I kind of, I kind of love the idea though, actually, if we, if we wanna get like a little bit more deep into it though, [00:33:00] like you have to, you know, let the cringe pass through you and only remain.

Of, of just building a culture based on the fan fiction, because who likes the, the, the nuance of history? I mean, again, like what do you have when you go to the realities? Just like warring clans people just like crazy hill people. I mean, honestly, American hillbillies are like more true to the, the real Scottish person.

Right. You know, this romanticized Scotland. I think it’s being, it has been adopted because it is a more flattering version of the truth. Why not just reinvent history and just run with that? Why not have the we version of your own country? You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No,

Simone Collins: here’s, you’re not wrong to do it.

Malcolm Collins: Trigger Scottish people. So,

Simone Collins: oh, what Scottish people, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: haggis was invented in the 18th century but the first mention we have of something called Haggis that later Scottish people copied. Mm-hmm. We have this from, from two books. Right. Guess where they’re both from? [00:34:00]

Simone Collins: God, I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: England, it was in 1930. Or

Simone Collins: just like the Scotch egg, which is not at all Scottish. It’s, it’s English, but the scotch egg, I dunno why no one knows why

Malcolm Collins: there’s in English records around 1430.

Simone Collins: Oh my

Malcolm Collins: God. You don’t even see it in any Scottish records until 1520. And at that point we don’t know that it’s what today they called haggis.

So real. That’s

Simone Collins: so, that’s so England like, like just going and making everywhere. Awesome. And then just also allowing them to take credit for it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And then everyone else being so resentful, oh, only the Imperial Empire ruined everything when like, really they just fixed everything and allowed them to just reinvent their own history and be like, oh yeah, no, it’s, that is like what the true good leader does, right?

They’re like, they, they allow you to, you know, they give credit to their. Underlings or whatever, like, oh, you know, no, Jimmy did it all. I’m credit to Jimmy where like, you know, he really did all the work. That’s a great leader. I love that. We found new

Malcolm Collins: people to lay into in this [00:35:00] episode, a new

Simone Collins: Scott group.

We love Scott. We love Scott. We got married in Edinburgh. You went

Malcolm Collins: to and, and, and, and I am Scottish ancestry. Like that’s where my family is from. That’s where part of your family is from as well, you know? Yeah. We’re both from the, the backwards tradition in the United States, which is a Scottish population.

Simone Collins: Well, my, my ancestors mostly passed over on the, you know, their, their raping journey.

Speaker: Are you really proud of your wife, at least? I mean Frøya dove into that pillaging, one hundred percent. Even took part in quite a lot of the raping

Simone Collins: it’s, it’s what you did as, as a Nordic Viking, but Sure. My ancestors. Banged your ancestors. Non consensually.

Malcolm Collins: Non consensually. Actually, there was very little genetic crossover from the Vikings.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I know. It’s mostly England.

Malcolm Collins: It’s mostly a myth. Speaking of historic myth, uh uh, no, that’s,

Simone Collins: that’s honestly ‘cause they were just too gross. We thought about it

Malcolm Collins: as to why so many myths, because I actually think that is interesting persists about Scottish [00:36:00] history.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The reason is, is because Scotland teaches its own history, almost like Native Americans in the US might teach their own history as a discriminated group.

So they sort of allow themselves these, these whys. And if you challenge them, they’re like, oh, you’re exo phobic or whatever. Okay. Right. Like they, you know, and you see this from other groups, we’re gonna get Jews who are like, Judaism isn’t a mon watch our video. The question that breaks Judaism maybe want us to go in depth in this.

I do not want to delineate all of my arguments here. The two

Simone Collins: hour video,

Malcolm Collins: it’s a four hour video I think, or like a three hour. It’s, it’s, I forgot.

Simone Collins: Took basically a week to film that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, because I wanna, I was like, if I’m gonna have a bunch of things that I’m gonna be accused of as being anti-Semitic.

‘cause you know, that’s how things are. If you challenge your religion, people are like, oh, it must be because you hate us. And it’s like, no, I’m just going over fricking history here. But I was like, I’m gonna have that all in one episode. Right. So I don’t have to like pepper it throughout episodes. And then with, let’s keep going here. Here’s the, here’s a fun one, by the way. And, and note here, for anyone who wants to be like, we clearly pissed off a lot of Scottish people in this episode.

Simone Collins: [00:37:00] What Scottish viewers analytics only shows S uk so,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, yeah, real English. You know, that’s a, people need way more pride in English Heritage.

I, I’m gonna tell you that. But to continue here,

Simone Collins: honestly, I feel like Scottish people are pretty freaking offline.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No,

Simone Collins: wait, no, we’ve, oh, we’ve won. Shout out to you. We have won Glasgow based

Malcolm Collins: oh,

Simone Collins: we do. Listener and props to you, sir. We love you. Screw everyone else. This one’s for you.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Anyway so gender specific toys. Pink for girls, blue for boys. Do you know when this started?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Pink used to be for boys because pink was the, the pastel version of red, which is the color of victory and power

Malcolm Collins: and blood.

Simone Collins: Yes, yes. Obviously it’s so weird that pink became a girl color.

Malcolm Collins: When did pink become a girl color?

Simone Collins: Oh,