An Anthropology of the Nerd Right’s Emerging Sexual Morality

Today on Based Camp we examine three recent scandals in the new right online space and what they reveal about emerging standards for sexuality, relationships, and online personas. We discuss Ethan Klein’s separation and infidelity, the Ember Paradox VTuber gender reveal, and attempts to cancel Powdur over past content.

The conversation explores broader questions around VTuber personas, marital expectations, personal fantasies versus involving others, and the distinction between harmless yearning and problematic behavior. We also address community responses, power dynamics, and how these events shape norms in right-leaning spaces.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are gonna be talking about something that has been anthropologically really interesting for me in the last couple weeks. There have been three attempted cancellations slash major scandals that came out this past week. And the way that each of them has spun out and ended up working out for the people involved has shown that the new right online space is settling on an ideology of what is appropriate behavior and what is inappropriate behavior in regards to sexuality, gooning, and yearning. Specifically, we’re going to be talking about the instance of Ethan Klein being in a relationship where it appears his wife hadn’t had sex with him for years and then deciding to cheat on her, which is interesting in terms of how people are going to react to that. Then we have the case of Amber Paradox, who was a female presenting VTuber who turned out to be a male. Then we have the case of Powder and somebody attempting to cancel her for past horny posting. Not like that, but but, you know, twerking and stuff like that and working on projects that had horny related stuff in it and horny stuff on her Discord. And just for the sort of scorecard at the end of this, the Powder situation has, if anything, helped

Simone Collins:her.

Malcolm Collins:It’s increased her reputation. It really reminds me of the in praise of shadows attempted attack on Windigo. Oh. Hilarious. It made in praise of shadows look horrible and Windigo look great in terms of when everybody did all the reactions. Hers was even worse than that because the key piece of evidence that he led the entire attack with was that she had an OnlyFans account, which was a link to a Rickroll that she had done on April first fools day, like, a number of years ago. And, I mean, to his credit, she sa