The highlight for me is coming up with some weird pseudoscience justification for why it’s okay to hit your kids.
Every article on pronatalism in the past few years has been these two Thiel-sponsored white nationalist dweebs and nobody else. Why the fuck does the Guardian fall for this shit too.
I contacted the reporter via her website, to ask what motivated the story when the Guardian just wrote about them last year, and if the couple’s PR rep (who I assume exists) had instigated it.
I don’t really expect to hear back but it sure would be interesting to know.
It’s worth noting in the Grauniad’s defence that the piece which mentioned them (among others) last year wasn’t a commissioned interview article, it was a column by Arwa Mahdawi. Columnists usually have a regular gig to write opinion pieces on some topic relevant to their interests and then submit them for publication – in other words, they don’t have an editor telling them to go and cover something, they write about what they feel like writing about even if it turns out to be at odds with the paper’s editorial policy (e.g. Simon Jenkins, who is a Guardian columnist despite regularly expressing some highly un-Guardian-reader views). As Mahdawi is a columnist who regularly focuses on feminist issues and the United States this would be entirely within her field of interest.
Still doesn’t mean these people deserve yet more coverage, though. I hope their kids get out of this toxic family having suffered as little harm as possible from a mother who apparently thinks that the only solution to “cheap, good-quality snowsuits bought from Russia” not fitting when you’re pregnant is dressing like a tradwife and a father who really doesn’t seem to like them and who does an abuse in front of a journalist which he thinks he can just explain away with pseudoscientific bullshit as “hey, that looked like abuse but it wasn’t, it was SCIENCE”.
I really really don’t get how wearing a corset* while you’re pregnant is somehow the most rational option
*Don’t come @ me corset fans, I’m sure they are very comfortable, but while you’re pregnant? Eight months pregnant?
i pinged her on twitter too
My Papaw has ten brothers and sisters and dropped out of the sixth grade to become an entrepreneur, but I don’t see the Guardian beating a path to his door.
That’s because there is no “movement” and the whole thing is a stunt to promote the ideas of the least thoughtful of all the unthoughtful people who nonetheless consider themselves intellectuals.
Honestly any day the Guardian isn’t publishing transphobia wearing a feminism mask is a good day for them.
All I have to do is read the kids names and, poof, I can tell they are both idiots and narcissists.
Valley Forge, PA
Yep, checks out.
hmm I don’t actually know the context here, mind sharing?
York and the surrounding counties are currently very much a culture war battleground. There’s a bunch of school board initiated censorship, bomb threats against libraries (and then subsequent defunding of those unless they promise not to do anything that could cause offense to domestic terrorists), that sort of thing. (Edit: forgot to mention the hate tracker, some more stuff I didn’t think I wanted to know about my own neighbors)
That crap is done by people and I imagine these folks are among those doing it, and so are their friends and neighbors.
City very much in the heart of Pennsyl-Tucky
(fwiw this reply was only like 0.01% more informative than the original thing, but from other people’s comments I got to figure things out. please try to remember that there is more world out there than just eaglegunscountry)
Not really? It’s just the Philadelphia suburbs. 14 miles northwest of where I saw Fishbone and Primus.
Pennsylvania gets a looooot more Pennsyl-tucky than that.
Fair. I always thought of Pennsyl-Tucky was more a state of mind/politics rather than an area, but I’m not a local and haven’t been in the area for years so I’m inclined to believe you.
“Suburbs of Philadelphia” is pretty funny to me - it’s a 2:15+h car ride there from Philly. Americans might consider 100 miles a short commute, but dang. When does a part of PA stop being a Philly suburb and start being a Pittsburgh suburb?
50 miles, not 100 miles.
25 miles each way is not that big of a deal. In college I spent six months commuting 40 minutes each way (traffic gods willing it wouldn’t be longer) from 31st street to Springhouse, PA.
I was wondering if we are looking at the same map, and then it turns out there are two Valley Forges: one is a neighborhood in (yep!) the Philly suburbs, the other is a township next to York, PA. The latter is what I was referring to!
Ah, that explains it. I wonder which one they live in.
Actually it’s probably the York one because “Valley Forge" by Philadelphia apparently isn’t really a town in its own right.
Malcolm and Simone Collins with their children – Octavian George, four, Torsten Savage, two, and Titan Invictus, one – at home in Pennsylvania.
bye
Is it me or are the names getting weirder as they go along?
perhaps they named the child after this fucking gobshite?
Guardian failed the “don’t promote these specific cunts for 14 months challenge”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/20/pro-natalism-babies-global-population-genetics
Perhaps the NRx-curiosity is a natural consequence of the Guardian’s “gender-critical” editorial stance? Look at all the other TERFs jumping into bed with actual masks-off Nazis.
My vibe is that the Guardian UK still thinks it’s a left wing feminist stance to be transphobic 1, and unrelatedly, the Collins articles keep getting printed because everyone involved — the Collinses, their PR people, the Guardian – know perfectly well what ragebait is. A click is a click.
1: Somehow. What the hell is in the water in the UK? 2
they definitely missed out on naming two of the daughers ursa minor maior and ursa maior minor.
Their next kid will be named Ultima Thule, and they will claim very loudly that this is just because they are so big fans of astrology and that they never heard of the controversy regarding the name.
jfk
Ultima Thule was a Swedish white nationalist band back in the day.
@gerikson The name predates the white nationalist band by *several centuries*. Per wiki: “In classical and medieval literature, ultima Thule (Latin “farthest Thule”) acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the “borders of the known world”.”
I suspect they renamed the KBO Arrokoth precisely to avoid the unfortunate recent connotations of the name.
In the spirit of denying the regular suspects any unearned cultural territory…
This discussion reminded me of a story that Margaret Killjoy at Cool Zone Media released last year about the residents of Valhalla doing some anti-fascist work. Alas, I couldn’t find a transcript.
Nazis Don’t Go To Valhalla https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/nazis-dont-go-to-valhalla-spooky-week-5/id1449762156?i=1000540089027
Oh I am aware of the term’s history[1], but just like the humble swastika some stuff can become tainted (although I believe that Ultima Thule the band is only locally infamous here in Sweden). I do know that if someone presented themselves as Ultima Thule I’d do a spit-take, but so would I if I was presented by someone named Titan Invictus.
Arrokoth is a fucking metal name tho.
[1] pretty sure the first I heard of it was in one of Evan S Connell’s great collection of essays.
and here i just assumed the name was original to ffxiv
Ow yeah I’m joking here. But it was really weird that they tried to name the asteroid Ultima Thule (and it is also odd that this controversy isn’t on the wikipage).
Titan Invictus … Are they playing Star Citizen?
they’re nazis, bob
“Dad, why is my sister’s name Octavia George?”
“Because your mother loves the Roman Empire.”
“Thanks Dad.”
“No problem Industry Americus.”
Jesus Christ I thought you were making a joke.
But you’re not.
The imminent arrival of their fourth child, a girl they plan to name Industry Americus Collins
The imminent arrival of their fourth child, a girl they plan to name Industry Americus Collins
ah well, at least when they transition they won’t need to change the masculine-gendered second name.
no matter how absurd you may think these people are, they always surprise you by finding ways to be even worse
Next: “Are you coming to the baptism of little Deductio Tributus?”
Sad they’re dissing the classics, like Incontinentia Buttocks.
Looks like someone’s behind the times; all the cool kids are into the Eastern Roman Empire this season. That’s why my kids are named Constantine Cataphractus and Velociraptor Paleologus.
My favourite bit is the bit about “you can afford it, just choose a more frugal lifestyle” while young people today literally can’t afford to feed themselves. Also how about your ability to love your kids? Didn’t see that in any of your spreadsheets and your kids will hate you for giving them a shitty upbringing.
Close runner up is the bit about how we’ve had centuries of population growth, and it’s a huge deal that we’re not growing anymore without noting that all those centuries also included events such as wars and epidemics regularly killing off sizeable percentages of the population which doesn’t happen on the same scale anymore.
Oh wait I got this, how about the bit about the oldest child taking care of the younger ones. They get to grow up fast and spend their precious time being an unpaid babysitter instead of actually being a kid pretty much ruining their childhood.
Or how about the bit where the parents deliberately have so many kids gambling one will get rich and take care of them when their old. These natalists are delusional and I actually know a few irl that have said or done these and frankly its fuckin disgusting to me
Oh wait I got this, how about the bit about the oldest child taking care of the younger ones. They get to grow up fast and spend their precious time being an unpaid babysitter instead of actually being a kid pretty much ruining their childhood.
Common practice among quiverfull creeps.
My mum grew up in Ireland in the 60s (one of 8 children) and witnessed some of this at school: little girls from families of 15 or 20, missing classes so they could mind their younger siblings.
the fascism is strong in those
the eugenicist language and narrative should’ve been at least strongly challenged
These people are full of shit popping off like they do after THREE kids. Big fucking deal, my parents had three, and my brother and I were accidents. And they let us have heat in the winter and they didn’t hit us. Three is still normal!
There are some more lovely sneers in r/longreads
Nice link ,but man is Reddit shit to read nowadays with the newish layout.
old.reddit.com still works… but for how long?
even the old version randomly hides comments under “load more comments”, for no ohter reason than for literal clicks as far as I can see
I don’t know where to start.
The Collinses are atheists; they believe in science and data, studies and research. Their pronatalism is born from the hyper-rational effective altruism movement
This is just gonna be eugenics, isn’t it?
Malcolm describes their politics as “the new right – the iteration of conservative thought that Simone and I represent will come to dominate once Trump is gone.”
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right? You can’t just add another fucking prefix anytime your stupid fascist movement goes off rails.
One of the reasons why I chose to have only have two children is because I couldn’t afford to give more kids a good life; the bigger home, the holidays, the large car and everything else they would need.
Yeah, what about giving them love or a warm relationship, or, you know, time?
And then they wonder why those generations have shitty relationships with their parents when they seriously believe that what they need is a big fucking car, as if that’s the variable that was missing in all of this.
Excuse me while I go and hug my daughter. I need to de-rationalize myself after reading this.
I love how the journalist just reprints their reskinned Great Replacement theory at face value.
And importing people from Africa to support a mostly non-working white population – because you didn’t put in labour to support non-working white people – has really horrible optics.
Ah, so the reason you’re concerned about falling white birth rates and don’t want immigration is because it’s racist to allow “people from Africa” to immigrate to your country. Got it.
I appreciate that the journalist was shocked by the bad parenting but I’d have appreciated a little more fact checking on the naked racist conspiracies.
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right? You can’t just add another fucking prefix anytime your stupid fascist movement goes off rails.
It reminds me of how terrible sports teams will frequently change their logo and uniforms. (e.g. Vanderbilt’s University’s gridiron football team). Obviously, their lack of success is a branding problem.
What’s that now? Neo-alt-right?
I assume it is neoreaction. Not sure if you are a recent poster here, or were aware of sneerclub when it was on reddit but we talked about NRx there every now and then. (Not a fan).
I don’t know if the Collins are NRx, what I do know is that neoreactionary podcasters love the Collins. (According to a quick google search). And bonus for David Gerard, Grimes has reached out to the Collins source is the grimezs long post on Grimes her links to all this shit
they are sponsored by Thiel, so ‘ave a bleedin’ guess
Ow yeah, it certainly paints them in a very bad light, and I will not argue against others calling them NRx, or neo-nazis, I just like a little bit more proof myself because im a bit pedantic at times, but in practice it doesn’t really matter if the ‘we worry about great replacement r-strategists(*) racists’ are NRx/nazis or not).
*: For those just tuning in. (Turn back! Stop reading! Go away, innocence once lost cannot be regained!) claiming non-white people are r-strategists while white people are K-strategists is a big far right foghorn. (wiki page on the theory) In their bs theory they ignore that this is about differences between species (of course they are also racists so yeah, this isn’t hypocritical on their part, just a sign of racism), and r-strats are physically impossible for humans, as we don’t have enough nipples + we take too long to mature etc.
yeah, at that point we’re past “quacks like a duck” and “precise subspecies of mallard” into which groups are hanging out in which ponds this week
Yeah and a lot of “precise subspecies of mallard” people don’t really seem to care that the ducks keep attacking the children playing in the park and have learned to shit on peoples heads. In fact, they start to call the people who are being attacked by the ducks, ducks themselves (some of the ‘worried about subspecies’ people even look suspiciously like 3 ducks in a trenchcoat).
Well damn, I used to lurk on old sneer club, but I gotta admit I missed that particular rabbit hole so far.
These idiots are atheist and conservatives? Morons they’re morons. The only thing that conservatives due to atheist is put them up against the wall when they have the chance. You throw it nationalism and it’s a damn guarantee
They’ll stop being atheists and start fully being “tradwivies” the very instant their ingroup requires it. Give or take 7 seconds after the purges begin.
They aint nothing but disengenious.
this is not necessarily true from the guardian
it is a prediction, but really fearporn to push people into accepting the guardian’s political agenda
hey, everyone, look a this fucking clown: a bona fide breivik-praising fascist
fuck me those prior posts hurt. at least they wear their shitty little sign, saves us some trouble!
the whole server is chock full of this type; i defederated the trash from circumstances.
they’re now defederated from here too. I guess we’ve made it when even the shithead parts of mastodon want a taste. what’s a good way to keep up on which instances fucking suck on the mastodon side of things?
Seirdy’s. Seirdy’s fedinuke list is a perfect starting point; and you might want to review his tier0 blocklist (you will probably apply almost all of these).
fuck yeah, this is a lot higher quality than most blocklists I’ve seen. it seems like once I get back to Philthy, a CSV blocklist importer will be an important next feature (you might not be surprised to learn that the only bulk admin operations Lemmy seems to support are done directly on the database)
the commies’ favorite label, fascist
but I think fascism means at least 2 things: a social and a political definition
which one of these 2 do you mean (don’t say both)
and can you unpack your answer?
you should answer so you won’t look stupid in front of “everyone”your dumb
wait, am I hearing correctly?
oh, I see,
it’s a commie gang attack
just like a neo-nazi gang attack
you guys are so similar
congrats on the stupidest post I’ve seen this month
it really fucking was
literal fucking neonazi identifiers in post history, comes into our house, and then claims us to act like nazis. clever!
they’re such an obvious nazi I legitimately wonder if their shit works anywhere outside of the alt-right instances on the fediverse or if their miserable existence is just other people immediately and correctly calling them a nazi while they try to engage someone, anyone in a rousing round of “debate”
looked up their posts because I was curious how dumb it was. It was dumb. Noticed they reference Saul Alinsky, which is quite a weird thing. I noticed only the crypto far right and libertarians (I repeat myself) talk about this guys work. Quite a red flag.
u wot m8
omg a neo-nazi with bad reading comprehension that’s so crazy
"Malcolm had a turbulent childhood that he clearly doesn’t want to talk about. He comes from a wealthy family and grew up in Dallas, but was sent to a “troubled teen” residential facility when he was 11. The only reason he can give me for being sent there was that his parents were getting divorced and were locked in a bitter custody dispute, and the judge “thought I shouldn’t be with either parent”. After that, he lived at a private boarding school, with his fees and expenses covered by a family trust. “I have no beef with my parents. My childhood was hard, but my adulthood has been easy. Can I say a parent did a bad job if I’m happy with my life today? I don’t think so.” "
L to the O to the motherfucking L. These people are just reacting to their trauma and acting like they’ve found some magical answer to life being hard. Their poor children.
The combination of the mother being all “I got raised by hippies, which I hated so I am doing the opposite”, “we are very rational”, " our kids will obviously be like us, only better". Can’t they put these pieces together?
Well, with that many children, at least one will write a book about how their childhood sucked.
Chapter 1, I am so cold When I think about my childhood, I think about freezing…
Chapter 12, Stop hitting me dad!
And so on.
After that, he lived at a private boarding school
expenses covered by a family trust
My childhood was hard
oh no trust fund baby had hard childhood
however, it’s nowhere as hard as their children childhood is gonna be
These people are just reacting to their trauma and acting like they’ve found some magical answer to life being hard.
Big Kissinger energy
Ah these are the dudes with the unbelievably cringe Reddit dating history.
Id rather starve than enslave children
There are already way, way too many people on the planet.
I suspect quite a few of them are going to be unalived in the next 30 years, given the way things are going politically in various countries.
Could be many millions, especially if Modi’s India gets really bad and it overflows into Pakistan.
Still not enough to make much of a dent in the total world population though.
Nah, to do that you need widespread ecological collapse, famine, lack of clean drinking water, and ideally a really good infectious disease.
@gerikson I have some news…
nah. there are too many billionaires though.
Two things can be true at once
yes. but “there are too many people” is just a tired white supremacist trope; there are not too many people out there. (the “non-white” is usually silent in these statements. this is also how some people can be both pro- and antinatalist.)
I don’t care what color people are, and you have no idea what you’re talking about.
We’re using resources way faster than the planet can provide them, we’re running out of land, we’re driving both global climate change and the fifth ever mass extinction of life in the billions of years of Earth’s existence.
There are way too many people on the planet, we passed carrying capacity decades ago.
those are extraordinary claims and i’m sure you can give pointers to peer-reviewed materials that back them up.
when you will be doing that, please consider which parts of earth you feel are overpopulated, what quantum of global resources are they getting and what should be done with it; please convey the results of your considerations back to us.
nope, this is diet eugenics and we’re not having it
We are “running out of land” because instead of using that land for our food we use it to grow food for cattle which we then eat which is really shitty energy efficiency. We are “running out of land” because of our addiction for cheap meat. Which by the way is also a big driving factor for climate change.
Over 50% (!!) of the country I live in (hint: 6th biggest country by area in the world, so it’s a big bit of land) is used for cattle grazing.
Sure, a fair amount of that land isn’t ideal for cropping, but a large portion of it would be, and the rest is what we have left of native vegetation. It’d be great if we stopped letting cattle trample it, and who knows, maybe we’d even have some land available for serious land-back and treaty talks??
The world has enough for everyone’s need, just not for everyone’s greed.
On average we humans use too much, yes. I don’t know if WWF (not the wrestling one) still does their yearly report, but anyway they used to and the only part of the world that in average was over carrying capacity was the West (the first world, the golden billion). And within countries there are also stark differences.
Placing the blame on the poor billions of the world is at best ignorant and at worst racist (not saying that you are, but placing the blame on poor people with more pigments has been very common). Placing it on the billionaires is more fitting, though really it’s societal structure that upholds the growth obsession and produces billionaires. But at least the billionaires has power, and in general fights every attempt at making things slightly better, which makes it more fitting to blame them.
@fuckingkangaroos @sneerclub Not because the planet cannot carry 8 billion humans, but because no known humane socioeconomic system can provably do so. That problem is exacerbated by the fact that all evidence suggests that the best first step towards a solution would be to lose the richest billion, not the poorest, and absolutely not the folks actually doing the hard work involved in directly feeding and caring for their fellow humans.
@fuckingkangaroos @sneerclub The TESCREAL (I prefer “STREACLE” but that ship has sailed) worldview implies a future with far fewer actual humans on Earth, something also foreseen as necessary for a widespread sustainable high standard of living by people who don’t share their essentially fascist views. We should not get there by having any set of “elites” self-select their own survival. The inevitability of an outcome does not justify any arbitrary path to that end.
@fuckingkangaroos @sneerclub I’m just glad that I’m old enough that I likely won’t have to watch the process by which we get to a smaller and more sustainable human population. I fear that what we’ll actually get is the first movers towards a smaller (and on average better-off) human species are those who salivate at the prospect of slaughtering “undesirables” for the good of the race. Those of us who just want to tax the rich to build better lives for all will lose.
