The Fundie Snark To Religious Extremist Pipeline

In this thought-provoking video, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the world of Fundie Snark, examining popular YouTube channels and their cultural impacts. They discuss the biases and blind spots of both conservative and progressive content creators, analyze the complexities of LGBTQ+ representation and activism, and explore the ethical implications of online criticism. The couple offers unique insights into the cultural dynamics at play, challenging viewers to think critically about the content they consume and the real-world consequences of online discourse.

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Simone Collins: I like seeing people who have taken hard cultural stances. Be criticized to see how we might be subject to criticism ourselves and what we may be doing wrong. I really like Fundy Fridays, and I really like Jen but yeah,

Malcolm Collins: she's in as much of a cult

Simone Collins: as the people who she covers. They all come from very strong cultures that have skews and blind spots because of those strong cultures. Not to say that we don't have blind spots either, but still.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and they're insane religious cults. They're the good guys in her insane religious cult. She's the good guy and she's doing what the cult is telling her to do. She should never

Simone Collins: step

Malcolm Collins: back.

Simone Collins: She'd started tongue in cheek that are frills of the channel now. Still speak very much or similar to the small time career preachers that she criticizes.

Her followers call themselves Jenna nights. And they patronize her. And how is that different from being a preacher in the end? Preachers speak to people, they cultivate communities.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be here [00:01:00] with you today. After a tough day today, it is always nice to be able to come back to doing something that we love, which is these conversations. They are so much better, you've been meditating with me earlier, like they're so much better than a date because they're like recorded and we watch them over and over again, each of us do.

I actually quite enjoy our own YouTube channel. And what I know it's weird but this is the first time I've ever created something that I really like with our books. I don't read them over and over again, but I'm like, Oh, I know I made a fun joke in this one. And I liked the way I constructed it.

But what actually got us on today's topic. Was Simone has always been a big fan of Fundy Snark content. And I have always been a big fan of religious content. And religious content for me includes the de converts and stuff like that. And where our two worlds inter, interlapped recently was Classically Abby.

Being a conservative [00:02:00] woman in today's day and age is not easy. !

Malcolm Collins: So people might not know this, but Classically Abby is Ben Shapiro's sister, and she absolutely spammed YouTube with so many ads a few years ago. If you're on YouTube now and

Simone Collins: you've been on YouTube for years, you know what we're talking

Malcolm Collins: about. You know what this is about. Yeah. You're like, Oh my God.

I remember when I had to watch her. What got me about Classically Abby, and this actually has boosted my ego so much. Classically Abby, we produce videos every weekday. Classically Abby produces one video a week but otherwise similar format to us. She gets about 2. 2k views on an average video.

Whereas, we're generally Between the low 2Ks to 7 or 8K views. On an average day, because, we can look at our statistics. So some of our videos just vastly outperform other ones. Like the old Starship Troopers one is a really high number. The Bears one is at a high number.

But on average, we're getting about 8, 000 views per day. Or about [00:03:00] 1, 300 watch hours a day. So we are, Smoking, classically Abby, smoking her for a daily channel, doing four or five times as well as her weekly channel, which I love because she must have spent millions building that up. And sorry, as to why I love this people might not know, but we have a beef with Ben Shapiro. The first time, we really went viral, he was really derogatory towards us and was like, they're nerds. Why does anyone care what these people have to say? And he has just repeatedly, we have tried to get into events that he's doing or has association with, and we are always blocked, like we are on a blocked, do not talk to list with Ben Shapiro and everyone who talks to Ben Shapiro.

Simone Collins: He doesn't blame

Malcolm Collins: you. I can understand why. We're probably pretty threatening to him that we've actually like grassroots beginning to build up. So Ben Shapiro's thing is he often switches between endeavor movement. It happens to be hot in the conservative space right [00:04:00] now. But I think he would have like when he switched to all the men's rights content and stuff like that, but he doesn't seem to actually have like his own perspective on things.

It's more just like whatever he thinks will get him in the moment clout. And I think he thought it was his sister. So it's not just

Simone Collins: audience capture, it's audience capture hopping.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Audience capture hopping. He is addicted to attention. He tried to help out his sister, which I appreciate to get into the same business, but she's just not very interesting.

I tried to watch some of her videos and I'm like, I can see why nobody's watching these. It's just Conservative TM. You know what I mean? Like just basic takes. Yeah. Just the most basic of basic takes

Basic camp. There's no, yeah. The most interesting, least interesting takes, but I want to talk about this phenomenon with Fundy Snark.

I want to talk about the various Fundy

Simone Collins: Snark is people with smart, snarky commentary on fundamentalist religions and people who are religious fundamentalists, just in case you're not familiar with it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And [00:05:00] it's very different from I, I think the reason why we would provide an interesting insight into Fundysnark is we are people who watch a lot of Fundysnark content for different reasons.

Like I'm interested in how different cultures view other cultural groups and talk about other cultural groups. I think you just like the Or

Simone Collins: I like seeing people who have taken hard cultural stances. Be criticized to see how we might be subject to criticism ourselves and what we may be doing wrong.

Because my favorite content is it turns out that I am wrong about something and I should change course. And Snar helps me because it is, it does all of that. But yes, it is also snarky gossip and I don't mind that. Don't mind it.

Malcolm Collins: Do episode on Bridger and I'm like, our audience is like 90% male now.

It used to be very interesting

Simone Collins: prenatal argument around Bridger Tin though. And we were discussing this with one of the podcast listeners. Who is in a very progressive [00:06:00] part of the Bay Area in Berkeley. And there was a lot of people who are very progressively coded at least. But who also love Bridgerton, which is an insanely pronatalist TV show on Netflix that, large families, it's all about marrying and having kids.

And if

Malcolm Collins: our viewers want us to do the Bridgerton episode, let us know. But back to the topic. So we're going to be talking about a. A few different channels