Why Sydney Sweeney Has Two Big Targets On Her Chest - William Costello - #1152

William Costello is a psychology researcher and Ph. D. student specialising in evolutionary psychology. Expect to learn why the internet is in an uproar of Sydney Sweeney's latest ad campaign, why so many women vehemently hate Sydney Sweeney and not other creators who do similar stunts, why Sydney became so polarising in the feminist movement, what the double standard Sydney Sweeney is held to says about the modern feminist agenda and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com Timestamps: (00:00) Has Sydney Sweeney Set Women’s Sports Back 40 Years? (11:36) Is the Backlash Worse Than the Ad? (12:53) Why Do Women Hate Sydney Sweeney? (23:12) Sydney vs Sabrina: Who Are They Performing For? (28:34) Why Do Women Downplay Themselves? (34:53) Would a Man Have Received the Same Backlash? (37:08) Can You Trust a “Guy’s Girl”? (39:52) Does Sydney Sweeney Challenge the Victim Narrative? (41:45) What Body Types Do Men Actually Prefer? (46:16) What Connects Sydney Sweeney and the Lindsay Clancy Case? (48:05) Do Women Resent Natural Beauty? (55:14) Should Gambling Ads Be Banned? (01:03:29) Is Sydney Sweeney Distracting Us From Bigger Stories? (01:04:40) Is Calling Out Hypocrisy Actually Persuasive? (01:07:30) Where to Find William Extra Stuff: See me live in the UK & Ireland this October: ⁠https://chriswilliamson.live Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  People of the UK and Ireland, I'm coming to you live. Imagine that, me on stage in your city. Dublin is completely sold out, but everywhere else has got limited tickets left and you can get yours now at chriswilliamson.live. This is a custom-built live show. I absolutely adore it. I've spent over a year working on it. So if you're a fan of everything modern wisdom, come and see me on stage this October around the UK and Ireland. Chris Williamson.live. I feel like I bring you in when there is a evolutionary psychology-informed furor happening. And obviously, our third guest today, Sydney Sweeney, has a big, natural pair of problems that she's embroiled herself in. Before we get into that, can you just make it known?

• 0:41Chris Williamson?

  What was that feminism, feminist award that your research team won a while ago?

• 0:49William Costello?

  A while ago, I myself won an award, the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society FEP's Award for a poster I did at a conference a couple of years ago. But it's nice to have that in the back pocket when I'm accused of sexism or whatever.

• 1:06Chris Williamson?

  I mean-

• 1:06William Costello?

  Not that that happens that often.

• 1:07Chris Williamson?

  It is me flagrantly putting your legitimate feminist bona fides out there ahead, just in case we get shouted at today. So, look, for the people that didn't see it, Sydney Sweeney did an ad for a betting company called Novig Sports Betting Company, prediction market adjacent thing, but it's exclusively for sports. And she does an ad. And I guess we probably should start off by watching the ad.

• 1:31William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 1:34Chris Williamson?

  It's for research purposes.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  You think you know sports? Prove it. Novig is just sports. So they wanted to show just sports. You can trade this sport and this sport. How about this? This sport too. Or this? Sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports. You can't trade this. I just look in here. No betting on wars or deaths and no politics.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Just you, your takes on sports.

• 2:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so the internet responded as, in the most predictable way, I think. Anyone that's surprised, we can call out that there seems to be some double standards going on here, that it's not reflective of what was actually meant, that they're pointing their ire in the wrong direction. There is nothing surprising to me about that. Were you surprised at all?

• 2:44William Costello?

  No, I mean, she has a significant stake in this company, so she wants it to be a success. It's obviously geared towards young men. They're the target market for any sports betting company. So she understands the oldest maxim in advertisement or marketing that sex sells. And she backs herself on that front to be the face or body of her own brand.

• 3:10Chris Williamson?

  Parrots.

• 3:11William Costello?

  You know, it makes sense. But hearing some of the backlash, I mean, I heard an Irish radio presenter, I can't think of his name, but he claimed that she, in 40 seconds, has set female sport back 40 years. And I hear that and I think, what an incredibly sexist, low kind of view of female sports.

• 3:33Chris Williamson?

  Well, that they're so tenuously held in popularity that a girl with big titties is able to undo it in an ad.

• 3:39William Costello?

  All undone with cleavage. Yeah, it's like, that's ridiculous. That's absurd to suggest it, especially when there's other, bigger issues threatening female sports, trans athletes.

• 3:49Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's very interesting, very interesting that nobody has an issue identifying who the women in sports are during this conversation.

• 3:56William Costello?

  Absolutely, yeah. And these commentators were presumably silent about the trans women in sports issue as well, so.

• 4:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, The New York Times had this piece where, one of the quotes, "The reason Sydney Sweeney's advertisement has infuriated so many women in sport is that if there is a group that has managed to genuinely force change in the perception of what women are capable of since the turn of the century, of what it means to be a strong and powerful woman, to be a girl without prostrating to the male gaze, it is women in sport." Pretty good reply to that. "It's pretty amazing to watch them suddenly pretend to be offended by risque images. These people have insisted for years that the full-blown prostitution of women is legitimate and empowering. They've adopted countless graphical sexual female rap and pop songs as anthems for their movement. Now a naked woman in advertisement is setting women back, not even the slightest attempt to be consistent."

• 4:46Chris Williamson?

  And I do think that one of the first things people saw was, hang on a second, I thought it was "my body, my choice." I thought empowerment and the sexual revolution was something that was giving women freedom as opposed to taking it away. Most of these commentators will probably be pro-sex work, pro-OnlyFans. They'll certainly be pro-female financial independence. And I didn't know this until today. Sydney Sweeney isn't an ambassador for that company. She is an owner.

• 5:14William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 5:15Chris Williamson?

  She part owns that company.

• 5:17William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Chris Williamson?

  So she has legitimate skin in the game and upside enticement, justification for doing it. She's profiting from every single one of these. So, yeah, it does seem like the modern conception of what a desirable woman is supposed to be is kind of coming into conflict with, yeah, but we don't want you to do it that way.

• 5:41William Costello?

  Yeah, or if you're the wrong person, the very same act of self-sexualization can be seen as empowering if it's the right person in the in-group in your tribe. But if it's someone who's coded as in any way right-wing, or even just not sufficiently woke, for want of a better word, then the same behaviors are kind of criticized, you know? And it's remarkable how puritanical and conservative some of the criticism has been, how sex-negative it's been as soon as it's just targeted.

• 6:13Chris Williamson?

  Put your fucking clothes back on. Who do you think you are?

• 6:15William Costello?

  Literally, yeah.

• 6:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very strange. I mean, I'm trying to, like, steel man the case for why this is bad. It's kind of hard to do because it seemed like this weird Rorschach test that I failed, where lots of people that had a problem with it seemed to assume that Sydney Sweeney was saying, this is what women's sports is like, as opposed to, this is a gambling app and you should go and use it, regardless of the gender of the person that's playing the sport.

• 6:45William Costello?

  Yeah, and then also the double standard of, literally last week, there were viral videos going where the tennis player, the Spanish guy, taken off his shirt and women, literally the camera panning over to them, taking out their phones, licking their lips.

• 6:58Chris Williamson?

  Married women, women who've got their wedding ring on. As you do, congratulations, by the way. Williams, Williams engaged, everybody give him a round of applause. There we go. You fucking made it out, dude. You got escape velocity.

• 7:09William Costello?

  Yeah, out of the incel iPhone. Incel research is no longer me research.

• 7:14Chris Williamson?

  Well, you are, not yet, not until you've made it down the aisle. But, yeah, very strange to see that. And then a lot of the pushback is, trying to steel man it, the reason I struggle is that a lot of the pushback was, you are saying something about women's sports as opposed to you are saying something about women in gambling. I don't quite get even the, you are setting women back in sports thing, because ESPN has done a naked issue over and over. There's like countless examples. Ronda Rousey was naked on the front cover of it. Serena Williams or Venus Williams was naked on the front cover of it. There was a chick that I saw, a blonde girl with a full back piece, looking real strong with an amputated leg and a prosthetic limb, climbing naked.

• 7:58Chris Williamson?

  There was an entire, Megan Rapinoe did it, the female soccer player from America. There was this entire lineup. It might have been, was it the female USA team were all naked, back to back? And you go, okay, so what is going on here? And then the thing that really struck me, basically, women have done everything they can in sports to avoid the male gaze or to escape the male gaze. Like, that was the one that was the most insane. The only reason anyone is watching female sports is because of the male gaze. Like, who is the biggest consumer of female sports?

• 8:32William Costello?

  Men.

• 8:32Chris Williamson?

  Men, by miles.

• 8:34William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Chris Williamson?

  By miles.

• 8:36William Costello?

  Yeah, so to steel man the argument, you could make the claim that it's okay for female athletes to self-sexualize themselves. If a byproduct of their being in the sport is cultivating a very sexy body, they can, themselves can use that to attract people to watch the sport. Could be argued that Sydney Sweeney is trivializing women's sport on that grounds, or it's just plain old tribalism. But I do think there's something deeper going on.

• 9:02Chris Williamson?

  Well, she's not pretending to be a sports star. And to steel man it, okay, let's say that she's wearing the outfit, right? Like, she's got the, she's got the kit on, so, off largely, but like, some of it is on. Therefore, she's lapping as a sports star of some kind. Let's say that that's the case. Okay, but still, the priority of the ad is not around her playing sports, it's around the gambling. So if you were a sports star, like LeBron, I think, did he do Calci or Polymarket recently? I think he did Polymarket. And if we found out that LeBron, as somebody that you could bet on, wasn't betting, you go, ah, well, he's misrepresenting the illustrious community of bettors out there, the gambling people.

• 9:45Chris Williamson?

  He's not being, he's not sufficiently representative. So, okay, but like, that is, I'm like nitpicking because I want to, like- Try and point out some of the hypocrisy. Is there any way really to quantify if Sydney Sweeney is damaging the perception of female athletes or setting them back 100 years? Like, how could that even happen?

• 10:03William Costello?

  Yeah, like extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but they're very flippant with these massive claims. And like I say, it's a low opinion of women's sport and how far it's come. I'm from Ireland, one of our greatest athletes of all time, Katie Taylor, selling out Crow Park. One of the best female boxers of all time. I don't think her achievements are undone now by Sydney Sweeney. Like, that's just a preposterous claim. And yeah, it's just absurd. And it's kind of like the fixation on these micro topics. Another example that's kind of somewhat related is at home in Ireland, Michael O'Leary. He's got in trouble recently for some flippant comments in the media. He's the owner of Ryanair and he's always very kind of outspoken in the media.

• 10:48William Costello?

  And he described other airlines' prices as raping the consumer lately. And, you know, crisis organisations are just up in arms about this. And he won't apologise and they're demanding he apologise and he won't. He says, no, it's no laughing matter. It's a, you know, I did use that word to describe a terrible thing, what they're doing. I don't demean the actual crime. And just in the same week that they're fixating on that, a girl in my hometown of Galway, there's stories about her having been gang raped by two migrants and total silence on that, on that story. And

• 11:28Chris Williamson?

  A selective outrage.

• 11:29William Costello?

  Yeah, it feels like they're focused on the wrong thing. It's the same with the sport and the trans athletes. It's like, where was your outrage then?

• 11:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I do think that the counter reaction we're seeing could be more damaging to women than the ad itself. Women are being made to look, in a month-long period where they've already been kind of emotional and hysterical in some corners of the internet with Lindsay Clancy, they're not looking that serious now. They're looking quite emotional. Would it have been better, question, would it have been better if it was a female athlete who was hot and right-wing coded adjacent still? Like Sophie Cunningham, do you know who that is? Tall blonde, like quite hot girl that plays basketball, it's six foot four probably, like. And she did a thing, I think, at the UFC, I think she's come out against sort of trans athletes.

• 12:17Chris Williamson?

  She definitely presents as right-coded, she's at all of those sorts of events. If she'd done it, I don't think that the pushback would have been much less. It would have been different, but it would have been much less. It would have been about the sexualisation of sports. The legitimacy angle wouldn't have been sort of laughed at, but I still think that that would have been heavily pushed back against.

• 12:38William Costello?

  Yeah, I think you're right. It just zeroes in on the tribal psychology that's activated. It's okay when one of our group does it, but not okay if someone who hasn't expressed their bona fides of the ideology enough, then it's not okay.

• 12:52Chris Williamson?

  All right, I've laid out the cultural landscape as best I can. I brought you in so that you can explain psychologically what's going on. Sort of the evolutionary underpinnings of how intersexual competition, female coalitional psychology, all of that stuff works in order to cause this to happen and to keep happening. Because it happened last time with the American Eagle ad. I'm sure it'll happen again in future as she just continues to like basically use other people's ire as exit liquidity for her own bank account, which is kind of hilarious. So why do women hate Sydney Sweeney?

• 13:26William Costello?

  So there are two big reasons why women hate Sydney Sweeney. No, there are three evolutionary psychology ideas that are central to my take on why Sydney Sweeney specifically encourages so much ire from women in particular. So the three concepts that we'll go through are intra-sexual competition, which probably heard a lot of people talk about in this context, sexual economics theory and the overlapping concept of female coalitional psychology. So their group psychology, how they make friendships and how that's different to men's. So the first one, intra-sexual competition, it's pretty straightforward.

• 14:06William Costello?

  Once you know the mate preferences of each sex, that sets the ground rules for the zones of conflict and for the kind of terms of intra-sexual competition. So the types of things that each men and women get jealous or insecure or anxious about, about rivals, are rivals that embody the mate preferences of their preferred sex. So men get jealous and insecure and anxious around rich, formidable men who embody the preferences of women. I have a hypothesis that men get jealous around funny men, which I call the green-eyed giggle hypothesis. But maybe we can put a pin in that and come back to it later.

• 14:45William Costello?

  But women are shown in the research to get jealous about younger, younger-looking and more beautiful women, which are the key preferences of men. So Sydney Sweeney obviously is a very, very attractive young woman, but there are lots of attractive young women.

• 15:02Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 15:02William Costello?

  Right? So why Sydney Sweeney specifically?

• 15:05Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 15:06William Costello?

  The reason is that she aggressively prostrates herself or kind of presents herself as appealing specifically to the male gaze without first coming in and kind of assuring all the other women that she's not a threat, that she's not doing it for men, that she is actually specifically coming out and saying, I am for the male gaze. She puts Instagram posts up saying this is for the boys, all of this. And that just cues a threat to other women. If you think in terms of our evolutionary psychology, why women evolved an intra-sexual competition style of being kind of more quiet about it.

• 15:46Chris Williamson?

  Subdued somewhat.

• 15:47William Costello?

  Yeah. Sydney Sweeney violates all those norms. Women are meant to compete, it's very costly for women to make enemies. Throughout ancestral history, they are responsible for the wellbeing of their offspring. So if they die, if they incur physical violence, their offspring likely dies as well. Whereas for men, they can get into physical alterations and it's not as direct of a threat to their fitness. So this led to the selection of intra, kind of social adeptness in women who are very good at kind of indirect competition. So if you're going to compete with another woman, you need to, you can't be so direct about it.

• 16:31Chris Williamson?

  It's not overt, it's much more covert, it's much more subliminal. It's done by derogating what, actually, that'd be interesting. What is it that tends to be attacked in women against women and in men against men?

• 16:45William Costello?

  So women use things like feigning concern about another woman so that they're not seen as having attacked her. It's seen out of, oh, the goodness of my heart, I'm looking out for your wellbeing or something. They will attack things, they'll derogate stuff that represents the woman's mate value to men. So specifically with Sydney Sweeney, you see a lot of women online saying, it's not intra-sexual competition, it's not jealousy. She just seems like the type of girl who would steal your boyfriend. And that's literally signalling to all the other women, this girl, you know, makes herself appealing to the male gaze so aggressively and so directly without concern for what women think.

• 17:29William Costello?

  She prioritises the male priority over our group priority. She has to pay a cost from the sisterhood, from the group now. So she will, in terms of coordinated condemnation, we all shun her.

• 17:42Chris Williamson?

  But also, you're telling other men, you think that this blonde, attractive girl with big boobs is your dream partner. But what I'm telling you is because of the way that she's presenting, her fecundity, her level of loyalty to you isn't going to be what you dream of being the bad boy that she's just the good girl for, but she's a bad girl for everybody. And you don't want to be with that. It's like implicitly diminishing her

• 18:09William Costello?

  Her long-term mate value and implying she has short-term mate value only.

• 18:13Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 18:14William Costello?

  Which most women don't want to only appeal to men's short-term mating psychology.

• 18:18Chris Williamson?

  Well, what's interesting is guys will say to another guy, when shit-talking another guy, like, you're a pussy. They'll say something about his level of formidability, something about his level of sort of status.

• 18:29William Costello?

  He's a bum.

• 18:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, how well-liked he is, what his prospects are like for the future. Whereas women, if they are shit-talking, which will tend to be behind the scenes as opposed to someone's face. But if they are doing that, it's going to much more be about this girl's sort of sexual morality. Also about their looks, she's getting old, she can't do her hair, she's a ba ba ba ba. Because those are two of the things that men really care about. What does a girl, what does a woman look like? And is she going to be loyal?

• 18:58William Costello?

  Yeah, so the key thing is that Sydney Sweeney has pretty aggressively and vocally signalled to other women and to men that she is prioritising men over the group, women as a group.

• 19:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 19:09William Costello?

  So women are punishing her for that. And they organise this coordinated condemnation that she's, she's out, she must pay a social cost for doing that. The other key idea that's kind of relevant and kind of similar is the idea of sexual economics theory. And the idea there is that if you think about sex or sexual access as a resource, there's different levels of cost that men typically have to pay to get it. And the highest cost is marriage and commitment, or the lowest cost is, you know, promiscuous, short-term sex. And women kind of as a group, they're kind of like the cartel with the cost of sex. They have to kind of police each other on who's offering it for what. So women might

• 19:53William Costello?

  Really feel annoyed about what Sydney Sweeney is doing and think, oh, if she's appealing to the men so specifically and doing exactly what men want instead of what women want, then maybe I have to do that too. Cause if everyone in your town or in your village starts doing that, then that will become the expectations for you. So that plays into it a little bit too.

• 20:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. The price enforcement mechanism of slut shaming is basically the same thing. If we're two women and I give out blowjobs on the second date, but you don't give them out until the sixth date, I have a degree of competitive advantage in the marketplace. Therefore it's in your interests. If you want to keep the price of sex to be expensive, it's in your interests to enforce a shame mechanism on anyone that is too freely giving with their sex because that means that they need to raise the price as opposed to lowering the price. It means you don't want to be sort of beaten to the, beaten to the jump. I had this theory a long time ago that the price enforcement mechanism for slut shaming is the same thing, the equivalent for men is the price enforcement mechanism for simp shaming.

• 20:55William Costello?

  Absolutely.

• 20:56Chris Williamson?

  Women are giving away sex without commitment and men are giving away commitment without sex.

• 21:00William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Chris Williamson?

  And I think that this is so beautifully mirrored. It's really nice when we see this. So like guys will call another guy a simp because if you withhold loyalty and resources until a woman gives you sexual access, that means she has to give you sexual access in order for you to trade off your loyalty and resources, which means if some guy is prepared to give loyalty and resources without sex, the price of your loyalty and resources is immediately brought down.

• 21:23William Costello?

  Absolutely.

• 21:23Chris Williamson?

  And if you don't like the, the example, he's talking about sex and blowjobs and stuff on a second date, sometimes rubs people up the wrong way. If you don't like that example, just invert it, make it about loyalty and resources. And you go, okay, it's the same dynamic. It's just a little bit less icky.

• 21:35William Costello?

  Yeah. And we see this in sex ratio research, when the scarcer sex in any sex ratio in a city or a country, they have more bargaining power to get what they want on the mating market and they have higher standards for their mate preferences and they also shift a sexual strategy. So when men are scarce, men and women shift to a more promiscuous short-term mating strategy. When women are scarce and they're the rare commodity, they have greater bargaining power in that sex ratio mating ecology, then men become more commitment oriented. So it's a pretty well-established finding.

• 22:09Chris Williamson?

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• 22:51Chris Williamson?

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• 23:18William Costello?

  So women have evolved tendencies, tendencies were selected for like leveling, preferring that there's no contest, that we share the prize. Women are uneasy about taking credit for a victory. They prefer to play down their achievements, whereas men, they actually, they love there to be rules of the game. Even from very young ages, men and boys need there to be a winner and a loser. You need to keep score during the game or it's no good. And this has come through in the work of Joyce Benenson, Marianne Fisher, Tanya Reynolds. It's pretty well established that this is fundamental differences in how men

• 23:58William Costello?

  and women compete and what they prefer. So Sydney Sweeney is kind of coming in all guns blazing, saying, I'm going to compete aggressively and prioritize what men want without prostrating herself and saying, oh, I'm not a, I'm one of the girls. So take the opposite example is someone like Sabrina Carpenter, who self-sexualizes a lot, but aggressively signals that she's kind of more team girl. She's a girl's girl and she writes songs about men being man-child, all of this stuff. She's very obviously signaling that she's doing it for girls rather than men.

• 24:37Chris Williamson?

  What was, what was that tweet that we had that was a quote tweet of someone calling out why it is that women hate Sydney Sweeney, hate Sydney Sweeney, but love Sabrina Carpenter? There was a tweet. So this is Sydney Sweeney with the football balanced on the back of her boots, naked lying on a bench and Sabrina Carpenter on the front cover of Rolling Stone in a pair of thigh-high stockings. And it says Sabrina superstar. Sydney Sweeney is a putter and Sabrina Carpenter is a diva pop. And the quote here is, the difference is that Sabrina does it because she feels good about herself doing it, not encompassing our gender in hyper-sexualization for male pleasure. That is literally saying, one is

• 25:21Chris Williamson?

  for the girls, the other is for the boys.

• 25:23William Costello?

  Yeah. Even though boys will enjoy it just all the same, pretty much, you know.

• 25:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Click right. Yeah, exactly. The difference is one is clearly for male attention. The other is cunty. It's pretty obvious. Sabrina Carpenter caters to the female gaze and takes pride in her sexuality. Swastika Sweeney caters to the male gaze and wants men to validate her sexuality. I mean, it's, it's like, clearly a man's brain believes that everything is the same. Sabrina is sexualizing herself and it is in the world of art and entertainment where nudity is relatively normal. Meanwhile, Sydney is promoting a campaign that denigrates female athletes. This, no, it fucking doesn't. Of the two art forms, one being gambling and the other being art and entertainment, I, certainly if you want to say, that is so derogating to arts and entertainment to say, oh yeah, you're at the, you're in the same league as gambling.

• 26:13William Costello?

  Yeah. And also, so if you've self-sexualized to fight the patriarchy and that's why you say you're doing it, then that's fine and believed.

• 26:21Chris Williamson?

  For the girls.

• 26:21William Costello?

  If you don't, if you don't signal to the female group that you're one of them and you care about their concerns. And that's another key thing is women must very vocally signal to other women that they care about the concerns they have as well and signal that they're an empathetic, caring person. So Sydney Sweeney has never come out and aggressively fought the patriarchy. She's not signaled about Palestine or whatever the, you know, causes that women are caring about a lot at the time. In fact, she's done quite the opposite and she's kind of signaled that she cares about things men care about.

• 26:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 26:55William Costello?

  And that can be seen as leaving women as vulnerable because the things men care about sometimes can leave women exploited. So maybe that's how they feel towards her.

• 27:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. There was this Stephanie girl who wrote a really interesting tweet that said, Sydney Sweeney is the funniest stress test feminism has ever encountered because I thought it was the patriarchy that reduces women to their bodies, denies them individual agency and imposes rules on female sexuality based on what everyone else thinks women ought to be. Meanwhile, Sydney is independently wealthy, produces her own projects, owns businesses, chooses to monetize her own sexuality, gains power from doing it and appears completely uninterested in anyone's permission. And somehow the feminist response is thousands of women materializing to explain that her body is actually a collective political resource and she has a responsibility to use it in ways they approve of because otherwise she's set in women back a hundred years. Fucking lol. So congratulations ladies. You defeated

• 27:51Chris Williamson?

  the patriarchy by becoming an enormously centralized committee of women policing another woman's sexuality, scolding her for appealing to men and reminding her that individual choices must remain subordinate to what is best for women as a class. Perhaps the funniest part is that the men supposedly enforcing this grand patriarchal system are mostly standing off to the side like Sydney seems great, let her cook. While the feminist liberation committee is furiously drafting new regulations for what she's allowed to do with her own gigantic knockers. Incredible operation. You guys are fucking killing it. Extremely boss babe, very liberation, no notes.

• 28:24William Costello?

  Yeah, absolutely. It's puritanical in style, policing the sexuality, exactly like I said with sexual economics theory. It all hangs, hangs together nicely.

• 28:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Why is it, I guess the, the shared prizes thing in the downplaying, people might not necessarily realize that, like women are celebrated when they have accomplishments, but they tend to not be so celebrated by themselves. The best example that I can think of is when in school, girls used to get good grades and you would receive them in a class or whatever. If they got, if they'd scored really well or they were the top of the class or immediately, oh, you know, I just got lucky. It wasn't me. So very humble in a way, but what's the just, why is that the case? Why would they not want to have their accomplishments self-promoted at least?

• 29:11William Costello?

  Well, given that it was so important for them to stay alive and not make enemies throughout ancestral history, the tall poppy syndrome of not wanting to show that you're above anyone else or that you considered yourself above the other women. It's a way of kind of ingratiating yourself to the other girls by saying, I'm not a threat. I'm, I'm one of you. I'll prioritize the group over myself as an individual. But yeah, you see it all the time. The first thing women do when they meet each other is tell each other how beautiful they look and then deny how beautiful they look. Oh, would you stop? No, I've gained so much weight. I don't, I look terrible.

• 29:47Chris Williamson?

  Not like you, nothing like you.

• 29:48William Costello?

  It's even in their Instagram posts, you see it back and forth. And another thing is in self-disclosure. So when women share negative information about each other, and you see this on Call Her Daddy podcast a lot actually, where women are kind of encouraged to share some embarrassing story about, oh, what a whore I was in college or whatever it might be. And it's done to put the other girls at ease and make them feel better about themselves. And if you notice that in a female group, if one woman doesn't do that, declines the offer, the invitation to share something negative about herself, she will be shunned. That will be seen as, oh, she's too full of herself. She has, she's violated the code of, oh, I've shared something negative about myself now YouTube.

• 30:32Chris Williamson?

  Self-tastigation.

• 30:33William Costello?

  Absolutely. Yeah. So it's all to make sure not, no one person, women are actually quite groupish in that way in their coalitional psychology. They're kind of very consensus-oriented. They don't like norm violators and that's what you're seeing here.

• 30:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. It is really fascinating to think about how much this is.

• 30:54Chris Williamson?

  Women policing the sort of behaviour and body of someone that could have been sort of standing for their cause, because when you read off the litany of things, self-powered entrepreneur, sexuality out there, like for the boys, like, you know, this soft bigotry of male expectations idea that I've got, which is that there is a certain class of girl boss feminism that struggles to think about female empowerment in any other way than kind of classic high status maleness, that like, it's got lots to say about the breadwinner and the hunter and the CEO and surprisingly little to say about the mother and the carer and the homemaker.

• 31:30William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 31:31Chris Williamson?

  Okay, well, that, if you were to create in a lab, the canonical sexual liberation fuelled CEO type that is into sports, it would be Sydney Sweeney.

• 31:42William Costello?

  Yeah, and it's kind of an example of gamma bias as well, when the gendered nature of something is shone a light on, you see this with, it's kind of like heteropessimism. Basically, Sydney Sweeney appeals to male sexual psychology, therefore it's problematic. Whereas if she appealed for her own female sexuality, that's fine. I'm writing a paper at the moment called The Mismeasurement of Men, and it's all about scales that seek to kind of pathologise men about sexual entitlement, sexism or toxic masculinity. And so many of the items that they use to measure these attitudes in men are absurd things, like if, that if a woman said them, it would be seen as fantastic and celebratory.

• 32:24William Costello?

  So, for example, I deserve to have my sexual needs gratified by my partner. If a woman said that, she would be applauded and seen as, oh, fighting for closing the orgasm gap, and yes, you get it, whatever. Whereas if men do it, it's seen as sexual entitlement. So it's, another example is, we were discussing benevolent sexism the other day, and I brought up the example of, well, women are benevolently, benevolent sexism is basically kind of infantilising women by liking them in such a way and pedestalising them that makes them infantilised. So, for example, taking, doing everything for them so they never learn how to do anything themselves, that's the argument.

• 33:09William Costello?

  Whereas you'd never reverse that argument and say, well, a woman enjoying cooking every day for her husband and doesn't let him cook, is she infantilising him? When he's the benefactor of her benevolent sexism, he would actually be described as weaponising incompetence. Whereas you'd never, when women are weaponising incompetence and the benefactors of men's benevolent sexism, they're the victims. So men are the morally typecast, as we know from research from Tanya Reynolds, they're always morally typecast as the aggressor, the wrongdoer. And you kind of see that with heteropessimism too. Anything that celebrates heterosexual male sexuality is morally suspect in a way that other sexuality isn't.

• 33:53Chris Williamson?

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• 34:38Chris Williamson?

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• 35:03William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 35:04Chris Williamson?

  I'm pretty sure there were women running after the bus for him, chasing him down, and he was worried and he needed to get security. David Beckham, David Gandy, you know, we're talking about like, classic man-men, David Gandy.

• 35:16William Costello?

  Chris Williamson.

• 35:16Chris Williamson?

  Chris Williamson, front cover of lots of dark romance novels. But, you know, that, the sexualisation, the Diet Coke ad.

• 35:24William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Chris Williamson?

  Right? Like, is anybody asking to repeal this primitive perspective of the male form?

• 35:32William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Chris Williamson?

  So, one interesting thing for me is, why is it the case that men, if this ad had been done by a guy, or if it was an ad for something that was female-coded, because obviously we're trying to get men attracted to gambling here, so a guy taking his kit off would probably not be very good for it unless it was like adjacent to Grindr. What, what would be the reaction if a man did that from men, do you think? And why is it so different for women pushing back against, like if a guy was built and buff and being, like the Diet Coke ad, if that rolled back again?

• 36:09William Costello?

  So, I think, you know, men just don't mind being sexualised in the way women do, because it's not as scary to men. I know you see maybe the Tin Men sometimes gets up in arms about the Facebook groups of hot guys, hot dudes reading. I think most men would be delighted to be featured there, because.

• 36:30Chris Williamson?

  I'm desperately reading books in public all the time in an attempt to try and be.

• 36:33William Costello?

  They'll get you eventually, yeah. But, yeah, being sexualised is not as big of a problem to men as it is for women, and they're much more likely to be victims of sexual violence, and you can maybe perhaps understand why. So I think that's why, if we saw someone being sexualised to sell a product, we'd see it as aspirational, we'd be like, oh, I gotta get my ass in the gym. And I think also envy works differently for men and women. Men see it as kind of motivating, whereas women kind of internalise it and feel that they're being put down.

• 37:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Why is it, do you think, that women who are seen as guys' girls are perceived with more mistrust?

• 37:14William Costello?

  Yeah, so that's a specific piece of research from Sarah Hill's lab, led by Hannah Bradshaw. And specifically, when you describe a girl as being a guys' gal, having more male friends than female friends, women mistrust her, because they doubt the reasons for her doing that. And given all the research we know about cross-sex friendship and how often that activates mating psychology, perhaps there's good reason. And if you think from an error management perspective, your inference about someone who hangs around mostly with guys and does things that appeal to guys, she may have a psychology that's gonna prioritise their goals over women's goals.

• 37:55Chris Williamson?

  I'll just break down some of the DVD extra verbiage there. So, because, because a lot of orbiting friendships that are of different sexes, men and women, end up evolving into, is it some huge percentage of close friends from opposite sexes would sleep with their friend, and then some non-zero number turn into relationships. Also, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that there's backup mates on both sides, all of more for women than there are for men, et cetera, et cetera.

• 38:23William Costello?

  And also evidence that in terms of mate poaching, one of the top tactics that mate poachers use is to infiltrate the relationship through friendship.

• 38:32Chris Williamson?

  First by friend.

• 38:33William Costello?

  So, everyone knows, like, oh, she's just a friend, or he's just a friend, until he's not, so.

• 38:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So, because if you have a girl that is around a lot of friends that are guys, many of those guys, some of those guys might be in relationships, even if they're not, she has a degree of understanding about their psychology, or the very least, a degree of access, right? Just proximity, straight up proximity, is close enough to activate some of it, which again is another one of those kind of hilarious hypocrisies, which is, women can work in an office and there should never be any confusion about men and women being together or whatever. But also, at the same time, there is an implied understanding that a woman that's around lots of men is probably going to have a degree of access and maybe be hit on in a manner that makes her a sexual threat to you.

• 39:16William Costello?

  Yes.

• 39:16Chris Williamson?

  You understand what I mean?

• 39:17William Costello?

  Or her psychology is gonna be somewhat more similar to a man's as well, which may mean that she doesn't mind short-term mating.

• 39:24Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 39:24William Costello?

  You'll often find that these women, these guys' gals, they sometimes derogate the mainstream women as well. So they say things like, oh, I've never been able to have many female friends, there's just too much drama. Not like me, I'm not drama, I'm totally drama-free here.

• 39:40Chris Williamson?

  Then play Xbox with me and then fuck me.

• 39:41William Costello?

  Which you can imagine for some men, that has appeal.

• 39:44Chris Williamson?

  Fucking sick, dude. It's all the advantages of being gay without having to be gay.

• 39:47William Costello?

  It's like a covert strategy, so you do see the intersexual competition playing out on both sides.

• 39:52Chris Williamson?

  Is there anything to say about the fact that Sydney Sweeney doesn't portray herself as a victim?

• 39:57William Costello?

  Yeah, that could be part of it because like I say, that self-disclosure of vulnerability and shared vulnerability, I'm as vulnerable as you are, I understand what it means to be vulnerable, so I'm going to lobby for things to protect our collective interests as women. She doesn't do any of that, really. Although I did hear she made one film about reproductive rights about a nun. I think I might be fuzzy on the details, but maybe that could save her reputation among women, or if she self-disclosed. Embarrassing stories.

• 40:28Chris Williamson?

  Well, I think what would have been interesting would have been if she'd said, if there was this big narrative arc around how I was really uncomfortable about my body for a long time and it took a long time for me to get past that, and now that I have transcended what previously held me back, I am emancipated, I am emancipated. I am finally liberated and free to be able to use my sexuality in a way that I couldn't do previously, which sort of plays to you also, small, mousy woman that wears brown and grey, that doesn't seem to be seen by the world. Like, you too may flourish and blossom into this wonderful, big titty lady in future that gets paid millions of dollars.

• 41:05William Costello?

  Yeah, and I think she has come out with some of that stuff. Like, I have seen some interviews of her saying she hates being sexualised sometimes, but that's clearly, clearly not that much.

• 41:15Chris Williamson?

  Fucking hell, Sydney. I mean, you've really become like Stockholm syndrome for yourself, if that's the case.

• 41:20William Costello?

  But she's more often come out with media stories like thanking her mum for convincing her to not get a boob reduction and things like that. So that sends the opposite signal to women. It's like, oh, I'm so glad I have these massive tits that I can cash in on.

• 41:35Chris Williamson?

  Look at these scud missiles here, ladies and gentlemen.

• 41:38William Costello?

  Yeah, so it's like a brazen, proud of something that women know appeal. And also, boobs specifically, they-

• 41:45Chris Williamson?

  Let's talk about boobs. Tell me about boobs.

• 41:47William Costello?

  Sure, we can talk about boobs. It makes a change from talking about incels. So with boobs, like I always say to my wife, it's kind of like penises. It's not like the bigger is always the better. And, you know, she's come to accept that that's true, so that's good. But it really is the case with boobs research. Very mixed evidence for the size that's deemed optimal. But what's more consistent is the shape and the texture. It's called the tocity, the tosis of the breast. So that describes basically the sagging. And like in all elements of mate preferences in evolutionary psychology, the male preferences for beauty,

• 42:27William Costello?

  it's all about reproductive value. So as women age and as they go through each pregnancy, their boobs kind of change in texture. They sag, they head down south. So it's more about the firmness rather than the size, per se. But we do know that short-term mating-oriented men are, and the reason why that is basically the nobility hypothesis, that basically you're looking for a high reproductive value woman who hasn't a long reproductive career ahead of her and hasn't had children yet already. So that's Frank Marlowe that came up with that nobility hypothesis. And that seems to be the consistent finding about boobs,

• 43:07William Costello?

  is that it's the texture and the tosis rather than size, per se. But short-term mating-oriented men prioritise big boobs. So that could be another part of the puzzle that's putting women off. We do know that women derogate big-boobed women as well, a lot more than small-boobed women, because it's probably queuing to them that this person is themselves a short-term mating, even though there's no evidence that they may be themselves. Women perceive them that way. And even if they aren't short-term mating-oriented themselves, they know that men will perceive them as short-term mating-oriented.

• 43:44Chris Williamson?

  Induce the short-term mating strategy in the men around them.

• 43:47William Costello?

  Exactly.

• 43:48Chris Williamson?

  It's kind of interesting. So I posted this research a little while ago, that basically in a study of about 300, 400 Norwegian men, there was a bodily-focused group that was both boobs and ass. There was a ass-only, but there was no boobs-only men. There was none. It was like, you're either focused on both, just the ass or not the boobs. I don't know.

• 44:12William Costello?

  Yeah, that surprised me too.

• 44:13Chris Williamson?

  Law of large numbers, if you have enough men. But at the very least, it indicates that maybe in the current cultural climate, the ass is being prioritised more. Interesting about the ass, let me tell you about the ass. What's interesting about the ass is that it is much easier to hide than boobs for women. It's also in the back. So as you walk towards somebody, as you're talking to them, it's not front and centre, it's also not at eye level. And I wonder whether that is, even if guys on average, maybe this is across all of time, let's say that that research would replicate throughout all of human history for all men, heterosexual men, that they were interested in the ass over the tits. But even if that is the case, it's so much more front and centre, you're like

• 44:55Chris Williamson?

  compensating for how much you might not be as much of a fan of it by just the shelf height. You know what I mean? Like, what is it? Eye level is by level, as they say in CPG and retail. Okay, well, eye level is guy level for this one, I suppose.

• 45:10William Costello?

  Yeah, and it kind of gives the impression you're emphasising it and rubbing it in their nose a little bit more.

• 45:15Chris Williamson?

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• 45:57Chris Williamson?

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• 46:23William Costello?

  So, kind of pretty bleak, but the way I heard it described was, what was it? Oh, your boobs mean nothing, I've seen what makes you applaud. And that's to describe that a lot of women were sympathetic or even, you know, towards Lindsay Clancy in the-

• 46:42Chris Williamson?

  What do you think would have happened if it was this? If Lindsay Clancy looked like Sydney Sweeney, would women still have rallied around it? What do you reckon?

• 46:48William Costello?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty well-known fact that juries are pretty biased around their in-groups. And the OJ Simpson-

• 46:55Chris Williamson?

  So you're saying if the jury was filled with, like, big titty blondes, they would have been like, she's free, let her go. Not so much. But it's a pretty well-known fact that in the OJ Simpson trial, that because Nicole Simpson was a white blonde woman who was perceived as having stolen a really resource-rich, successful black man in OJ Simpson, the majority black female jury hated that. And they just could not get any sympathy for her as a victim at all. So it's actually a big problem in juries that they're so tribal, based on their own kind of in-group. So Lindsay Clancy may not have been threatening enough to them in terms of their mating psychology. And, you know, supporting her

• 47:40Chris Williamson?

  and giving group sympathy towards her issue was in women's self-interest more than it is to celebrate Sydney Sweeney appealing to the male gaze. Have you seen any men pushing back against Sydney Sweeney?

• 47:55William Costello?

  Only the Irish radio presenter, yeah.

• 47:58Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay. Which is kind of naturally a bit more posturing. Look at me, I'm for you. Going back to boobs, I wonder whether the unearned traits element of this is part of the reason. So I'm kind of fascinated about why men don't hate desirable men in the same way. If you were to do an ad that was the equivalent for men, that guy would not have a body that was an unearned trait, right? Like, just an inherent advantage that he was gifted, basically. I'm sure that Sydney Sweeney goes to the gym and has a trainer and probably follows a diet and doesn't overeat and all the rest of this stuff. But she's not got a body that at least obviously is shaped by tonnes and tonnes of work, right? At least not in the same way that a man's body would be. Whereas a man's body, you

• 48:43Chris Williamson?

  would say, oh, he's really had to sort of grind for that. And one of the really interesting takeaways, I think you sent me this tweet, that was explaining how ruthlessly reminiscent it is, especially to women, in a way that it isn't to men, for male attractiveness, that when you see a woman that is beautiful, especially with big boobs, like, that's just straight-up natural boob, straight-up natural genetic endowment. And the effortlessness with which Sydney Sweeney sort of presents herself, whether that's true or not, the effortlessness that she presents herself with, almost sort of rubs it in the face of women more. And I think this is one of the differences between Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter. Sabrina Carpenter is a woman designed for the female and the gay gaze. Like, gay men

• 49:27Chris Williamson?

  love Sabrina Carpenter. It's this over-the-top, like, princess, like, there's lots of makeup, she's always did. I actually think that this is one of the reasons that if you watch a female chatty-chatty podcast, a lot of the time, they won't be fully done up. It'll be super slouchy, oversized hoodie, look at me, this is me at my worst. But if you at your worst is Sydney Sweeney in her effortlessness presentation of this, what you're basically reminding a shit-ton of women of is- I am more desirable than you without having to work for it.

• 50:02William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Chris Williamson?

  This is how unfair the genetic spread is.

• 50:06William Costello?

  Yeah, and women with big boobs specifically talk about this all the time. They, other women accuse them of.

• 50:12Chris Williamson?

  Big boob women in the comments, we want to hear from you.

• 50:14William Costello?

  We're your team.

• 50:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 50:16William Costello?

  Of sticking them out. They like accuse them of, oh, look, why is she showing them off so much? And they're just trying to live their life, like, you know, it's like. But the sex difference is interesting because men's attractiveness on most metrics is attainable, like you say. But also, men, really formidable, high mate value, physical attractiveness men. And that's the physical attractiveness for men is formidability, muscularity, height. That makes you a valuable coalitional ally to men for other reasons.

• 50:46Chris Williamson?

  You're useful as well. What the fuck use have women got for Sydney Sweeney?

• 50:49William Costello?

  Really beautiful woman, she's just gonna take all the men.

• 50:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 50:52William Costello?

  Or men are only gonna be interested in her. Whereas for men, it's like, that really formidable guy, he could help me go into war, we really need him.

• 50:58Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 50:59William Costello?

  So that explains some of the sex difference. But unfortunately, height isn't a sexy trait you can cultivate. Although the looksmakers are doing their best to fast track the surgery on that front as well.

• 51:11Chris Williamson?

  That's true. I mean, this is a very, how would you say, unpopular to say. So I'm gonna have to put my disguise on for it. I would say it is significantly easier for a woman to raise her physical attractiveness mate value than it is for. Sorry, I would say that it is significantly easier for a man to raise his physical attractiveness mate value than it is for a woman.

• 51:31William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Chris Williamson?

  If you go to the gym, what's the evidence of how much it improves your attractiveness? It's like significant, there's basically no guy that isn't made more attractive to women.

• 51:41William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Chris Williamson?

  On average, most women by going to the gym.

• 51:44William Costello?

  Yeah, and that's true throughout most of your life as well. It's a longer span of your reproductive value. Whereas women's beauty is on a much more tight time clock.

• 51:55Chris Williamson?

  And harder to fight against.

• 51:56William Costello?

  Yes, so there's nothing you can do. Time is coming, the wall is undefeated, as the incels say. That is true to some extent, in a way that it's not for men. So that envy must feel more uncomfortable for women who's. I mean, now it's pretty evolutionary novel, the extent to which women can extend their beauty. But for most of ancestral history, it would have been seeing youthful, beautiful women would have triggered serious anxiety about your own mate value running out.

• 52:24Chris Williamson?

  Whereas if you're a guy in his 40s who's never trained before, a couple of years of hard dieting and a good trip to the gym. And you've got a body that's comparable with a guy that might be in an advert. You've got to be sufficiently disciplined with it. So yeah, I think that's, that's tough. Like, you know, that deserves sympathy and like a degree of understanding where you're like, fuck. Like, of course you're going to be threatened.

• 52:45William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 52:46Chris Williamson?

  By women, and I would love to see the age split. Is it more threatening to a woman who is a little older than Sydney Sweeney? Or is it the sort of narcissism or the rivalry of small differences in terms of age? I would imagine not so many women younger than Sydney Sweeney would have as much of a problem at the same rate as women around her age or older.

• 53:11William Costello?

  You reckon, is that? I reckon you could even predict the nature of the derogations. I would predict that younger women would derogate things like her promiscuity a little bit more. Whereas older women, when their, their mate value runs out, their value to a group becomes.

• 53:27Chris Williamson?

  Diminishes.

• 53:27William Costello?

  It diminishes, but it becomes the wise grandmother, the kind of the wisdom. So they would start derogating her, she's a bimbo, what does she know about anything? So it's like, oh, I have new type of value to the group now.

• 53:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 53:41William Costello?

  So I have to emphasize that rather than, I'm never gonna compete with Sydney Sweeney on youth and beauty.

• 53:47Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 53:47William Costello?

  That those days are gone, but I might actually derogate her, you know, for being a bimbo.

• 53:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, this is the maiden mother matriarch arc that Louise Perry talks about. Yeah, okay, so the maiden side will look at, and also the mother side as well, like the middle, the middle of the chunk will be looking at, okay. Facundity, loyalty, reliability, et cetera. But yeah, that's interesting, the sort of matriarch side might have to use something else. Oh, she's an idiot, she's setting women back, she's doing something. Yeah, that is cool. The supplement industry is full of products making claims that they can't back, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Momentous. Their co-founder Jeff By is played in the NFL and saw firsthand just how wildly the quality of supplements can vary. So he built Momentous around a higher standard. Every product from Momentous uses evidence-backed ingredients, transparent doses and independent third-party testing.

• 54:36Chris Williamson?

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• 55:18Chris Williamson?

  And thinking about how men would feel very differently about a guy that did that. And also I think women would too, because like, at least you've worked for it, worked for it in, in, in one form or another. But I, I keep on coming back to like, if a guy or a female athlete had done that, that wasn't, that was basically Sydney Sweeney. Not saying that I'm doing this for the girls, don't really care about them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think you would get still much of the pushback. Even if she'd had abs, right? Even if it had been like hot Megan Rapinoe or something, I think she would have still got a lot of the pushback.

• 55:55William Costello?

  Yeah, perhaps, hard to know.

• 55:58Chris Williamson?

  What is there to say about sort of the focus? Because for me, one of the obvious misses was this is a brand-new fucking sports betting company. It's that prediction market sports betting, I think, right? So it's like Kalshi but for sports.

• 56:13William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Chris Williamson?

  By the way, sorry, I gotta fucking pull this up. I was listening to, I haven't listened to the Daily Wire in forever. And I was listening to Matt Walsh and Shapiro and Michael Knowles and Andrew Clavain this morning. They're partnered with Kalshi.

• 56:24William Costello?

  Oh, never knew that.

• 56:27Chris Williamson?

  Sorry, are we not against the degeneration of the modern youth and stuff? Like, is this not?

• 56:32William Costello?

  Very corrosive practice for young men and society in general.

• 56:36Chris Williamson?

  The only other two would have been weed and porn. And you're certainly not gonna promote, you're gonna implicitly say that both of those things are fucking destructive.

• 56:45William Costello?

  Things are upside down, Chris. We've got the woke progressives being puritanical and sex negative. And we've got the right-wing, you know, conservatives being, you know, degenerative.

• 56:55Chris Williamson?

  Motherfucking Matt Walsh doing a Kalshi ad.

• 56:57William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 56:58Chris Williamson?

  That, that blew my mind this morning.

• 57:00William Costello?

  And that's the real story, or should be the real story of this Sydney Sweeney thing is she's promoting gambling, probably very successfully, given how, you know, sex sells. And how much attention is gonna be garnered on the back of this engineered backlash. But yes, sports betting, I mean, the American Institute for Boys and Men have reports on how corrosive this is to young men. They've done some really cool research that shows predictable effects. When you legalize online gambling in a specific area, bankruptcy among young men goes way up. And they go into way more debt, which is partially attributable to the change in law. Like, they've isolated that effect, which is really cool research.

• 57:43William Costello?

  And my wife was telling me some really kind of sobering statistics this morning about men who have problems with gambling. It's detrimental to their relationships, which has downstream effects on their suicidality. And it's detrimental to their mental health and suicidality in and of itself as well. I think something like 30% of people who have a gambling problem, of men, young men who have gambling problems, have felt suicidal. And I think something like 13% have attempted suicide because of this. So it's a huge, and if you think about it from an evolutionary psychology point of view, the addiction to young, from young men towards gambling makes sense.

• 58:25William Costello?

  It's that try and win big in one fell swoop when I've got not much else to lose in an attempt to garner enough resources to up your mate value. So it's like, they're the exact vulnerable group. And that should be the real story about this. But people care more about harms to women or perceived harms to women in all sorts of domains in life. And this is just another example. I did a tweet one time, because some people don't agree with me on that. They don't think that men and society in general are quite protective of women, even though there's a preponderance of evidence for this. I mean, Tanya wrote this article reviewing all the different ways in which this manifests.

• 59:05William Costello?

  But I just asked a question, and my following on X, a lot of incels, a lot of misogynist men, a lot of red pill kind of oriented guys. And I put up a poll, all things being equal, is it worse to kill a teenage girl or a teenage boy? And unanimously, people said it was way worse to kill the girl. And, you know, what, what can explain that unless we're actually a lot more sensitive to harms towards women? I think that that's obvious. It's seen even in a group who's mistreating women and treat women as property. It's seen as a great moral injury to that group if you harm one of their women versus if you harm one of their men.

• 59:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 59:47William Costello?

  And it just, I think this is a clear example of it, that people couldn't see, oh, the young men as the real victims in this scenario. The victims that are getting the limelight is, oh, women's sport has been, you know.

• 1:00:01Chris Williamson?

  Not the men that have been.

• 1:00:02William Costello?

  40 years.

• 1:00:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, not, not the men that have now got another predatory fisher trying to break into their brainstem. So that they can pull, they can try and extract value and cash from them. But this could have been, if you wanted to push back against Sydney Sweeney, and this is why, women are so much more sophisticated socially. Like, the fucking scalpel with which they're able to navigate. I thank the Lord every single day that I am not a woman and I don't have to deal with it. And I know that the same is true for like lots of women that are in workplace environment navigating that. Teachers are surrounded by, oh my God, it's like so complex and burdensome for me to navigate all of it. Intra-sexual dynamics and stuff like that. That being said, there is a limit to their sophistication. The limit to their sophistication is if they'd really, really, really wanted to do collective action with this.

• 1:00:47Chris Williamson?

  They could have got at Sydney by going for the. Unimpeachably perfect argument of this is predatory against men.

• 1:00:54William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Chris Williamson?

  This is trying to take advantage of young men. It's hurting them. Gambling is fucking poison and we should not have Kalshi and polymark. By the way, for all of the things that I get accused of on the internet, we have been approached by every fucking prediction market on the planet over and over again. And I have turned every single one of them down.

• 1:01:13William Costello?

  Fair play.

• 1:01:14Chris Williamson?

  Right, like, and that's a stance that I've taken. Even I don't have a gambling bone in my body. I suck at Vegas. I'm not that excited. I'd way rather go and see a show. I haven't got gambling in my family, but I did see what it did to people around me growing up. Northeast of the UK. People don't understand that in England, there are betting shops on every single high street and every single shithouse village. Norton, right, which is the cricket club I played for. The guys would finish up playing the game and go and use the fruit machine in the pub afterward. That's 25 pounds.

• 1:01:40William Costello?

  And now it's an app in your phone as well.

• 1:01:42Chris Williamson?

  That's available 24 hours a day. That could have been the angle. The headline of all of this could have been Sydney Sweeney uses her body to capitalize on men.

• 1:01:52William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Chris Williamson?

  Hurts men, increases suicidality, reduces their financial freedom. I thought that everybody was up in arms about the cost of living crisis. I thought everyone cared about financially uplifting the underclass. I bet that if you look at the people that are mostly using online gambling, it's going to skew toward the lower socioeconomic classes as well. It's not going to be the high, the, the upper class and the middle class.

• 1:02:13William Costello?

  Fast life history strategy people trying to make a big win.

• 1:02:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, this is how I'm getting, it's Robin Hood for 2026.

• 1:02:19William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Chris Williamson?

  Right?

• 1:02:20William Costello?

  Yeah, I totally agree, but it just comes back to this idea that women are a more, a better victim in terms of the media. They make sure of that story. People care more about their concerns. I would just push back on the thing you said about, oh, I'm so glad I'm not a woman because it's so hard to navigate. And it might seem like that with our male brains.

• 1:02:40Chris Williamson?

  Oh, but if I got the socio, social navigation upgrade installed into my brain because I'm a woman, my arms race would have been sort of appropriately difficult to be.

• 1:02:51William Costello?

  That point, but also think of the modern world and the social arenas you have to navigate. It actually kind of rewards the female style of aggression way more than the male style. Like, think of a corporate environment. You can't be directly aggressive and men, oh, we'll settle this in the car park. Or even just, you know, raising your voice. Men are neutered in terms of how they show aggression. And whereas there's almost no policing on women's gossiping or, you know, false accusations, things like that. So, you know, they're actually rewarded for their style, so.

• 1:03:29Chris Williamson?

  Do you want to know my, my new conspiracy theory?

• 1:03:31William Costello?

  Oh.

• 1:03:31Chris Williamson?

  My big new conspiracy theory. Sydney Sweeney keeps being used as a distraction from geopolitically inconvenient news drops. July 2025, DOJ released a memo stating that there were no significant findings in the Epstein files. The one big beautiful bill is signed into law, stripping over $1 trillion in benefits from US citizens. While raising the debt ceiling by five trillion, Sydney Sweeney's American eagle egg drops, capturing national attention, right? That's June 20, July 2025. September 2026, the UN cites concerns over US war crimes in Iran. AI CEOs agree to slow down development after former employees warm over doomsday. Trump refuses to slow progress citing competition with China. The midterms are right around the corner. Sydney Sweeney appears in an overgad.

• 1:04:11William Costello?

  Yeah, never waste a good crisis. Bury some other bad news in.

• 1:04:15Chris Williamson?

  Bury the headline below two bigger headlines.

• 1:04:17William Costello?

  You can just imagine them in their crisis room. It's like, things are getting, we're getting a lot of heat. Break out the tits.

• 1:04:21Chris Williamson?

  Sydney, we need to, we need to hit break glass in case of geopolitical emergency and it's just Sydney Sweeney's phone number.

• 1:04:26William Costello?

  Literally.

• 1:04:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, dude, I, I think it's fascinating. It's, it's interesting to, to consider how many more times, like both sides of someone's mouth or groups' mouths can be spoken out of. Is, in your experience, is like highlighting hypocrisy a good way to educate people? Cause I think what, again, to steel man the critique side or the criticizer side, it's, hey, look, we're okay with you having a position as long as the positions seem to sort of run in parallel and be.

• 1:05:00William Costello?

  Consistency.

• 1:05:01Chris Williamson?

  Yes, yeah, yeah, we want you to be consistent across your views. And because you're not, we just want one of these things to be stopped. Either sexual revolution, liberation, women can use their body thing. Like that and this can't exist at the same time, right? Square the circle for me and become consistent. Like hypocrisy is catnip for the internet.

• 1:05:20William Costello?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:21Chris Williamson?

  In your experience, is hypocrisy identification a useful tool of behavior change?

• 1:05:29William Costello?

  I mean, using just my own self, it works on me. If someone points out a way in which I'm being hypocritical, I find that persuasive. Perhaps it's not, it might trigger tribal psychology too much and just signal that someone's the enemy.

• 1:05:45William Costello?

  Yeah, so I don't know, I, I don't think so. But I, I think it's, it's worth highlighting anyway because some of the examples are so fragrant and it's, you know, so worth highlighting, I think. Just to get back to that idea on which sex has it worse. In lots of domains, it feels like the modern culture war is just a race to the bottom on people trying to fucking outdo each other on saying, oh, men have it worse in this domain.

• 1:06:11Chris Williamson?

  The Victor Hood Olympics.

• 1:06:12William Costello?

  And the evolutionary psychological approach is always very domain specific. So back to this paper I was writing on mismeasurement of men. Some of the statements in there are just way too global. It's like, men are superior to women or, you know, all these things that are massive global statements. And the more appropriate level of analysis is find the domains or the specific context in which each sex has it bad or good. And there are different ones for men and women. And it's not just one has it worse or better than the other.

• 1:06:43Chris Williamson?

  Bingo. My chick says this all the time, that there's times where her sex has been a massive advantage and then there's times where it's held her back. You go, okay, well, in that case, sweeping fucking statements don't really work. But there are some laws that seem to kind of be, hold pretty true, like gamma bias, right? Men are, the sex of men is ignored when they do positive, but highlighted when they do negative. And the sex of women is ignored when they do negative and highlighted when they do positive. Like, that seems to hold as a relatively broad perspective across headlines. What the fucking Carnegie Award? Like 95% of that, it's people who risk their own life selflessly to help a stranger.

• 1:07:22William Costello?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Chris Williamson?

  It's like 95, 96% of people that do that. It's like stranger saves drowning man.

• 1:07:27William Costello?

  What a benevolent sexist.

• 1:07:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know, fucking horrible. Dude, you're the best. I appreciate you. I'm glad for breaking this down. Where should people go? Check out all of your stuff.

• 1:07:34William Costello?

  X is where I'm hanging out. On your recommendation, I've given up the blue sky. I don't go there anymore.

• 1:07:40Chris Williamson?

  Oh, it's not for you, sir. It's not built for you.

• 1:07:43William Costello?

  Yeah, so yeah, follow me on X and articulate myself probably a lot better than here. And yeah, check me out there.

• 1:07:50Chris Williamson?

  You're the best. Appreciate you, man. All right, goodbye, my beauties. Dude, yes, fucking money.

• 1:07:54William Costello?

  That was good, yeah.