The Best Pronatalist Comedy We Have Seen (Julie Nolke)

We analyze a viral Julie Nolke comedy sketch in which a time traveler from the future begs a woman in the present to have more children to save civilization. We discuss how it nails both the pronatalist talking points around demographic collapse and societal hostility towards breeding, while also skewering the selfishness of modern life. Other topics include the misperception that kids ruin careers and happiness, the injustice of how vital parental work goes unrewarded, and the bleak hedonic treadmill of reality TV that people trade real meaning for.

[00:00:00] I am calling from the year 2453, and I am begging you to help us. Oh, s**t. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Our civilization is crumbling due to our dwindling population.

Yes. What can I do to help? You must have children. Oh. Um. Okay. . Uh. It's just that it's not a very good time for me. This is of the utmost importance. It is life or death. Yes. Okay. Okay. I'm just kind of in a really good place with my career. Um, but I don't think I could do both my career and, and save the species.

Then the choice is obvious. Totally. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I worked with a lot of early hominid skulls and things that you would see frequently. It was like the bones sort of bubbled off from like funguses and it ate somebody's face off while they were alive.

And like, this is a fungus. It would be trivial to kill today with antifungal. In historic context, nothing you could do. just bubble your face off, but you kept trugging because you were doing it to make your [00:01:00] children's life better. And we were going through this intergenerational cycle of martyrdom.

This generation finally was like, okay, I'm sort of cashing in. I'm not going to pay it forward. You know, with every instance of paying it forward, things got easier. I'm just not going to do it because I deserve whatever I want whenever I feel like it.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, gosh. Anyway, Simone, I am so happy to be here with you today. This morning A friend on Facebook actually posted this and then I, I checked it out and we learned that there was a longer form version of the video on YouTube, but it was a video both making fun of and sympathizing with the pronatalist movement.

And it is probably one of the best pieces. Of especially non explicitly right leaning pronatalist comedy I've ever seen and, and it even seems a little like urban monocultury left leaning in its complaints and perspectives on pronatalism. Yeah, this

Simone Collins: is a thoroughly left leaning complaint. Left leaning people are aware of demographic collapse [00:02:00] as an

Malcolm Collins: issue.

Well, that's an interesting thing is that this is a changing thing that's happening in our society. Yeah. And what we wanted to do is to begin to analyze this, like as various groups wake up to the cause of demographic collapse, or at least the severity of the cause, how are they reacting to it? And what does this portell for the future of once the urban monoculture comes to accept that everybody who complains about fertility collapse, is it like, Some reaving, psychotic, racist.

Simone Collins: And hold on. We have to just applaud that you coined a new word, which is a port manto of portend in Tel Portel. I like it. Port.

Malcolm Collins: Oh

yeah.

Simone Collins: That's great. Portel , you're no, you're no hy, but ,

Malcolm Collins: yes. I, we have a little bit of organize disorganized schizophrenia the way I, I talk. But anyway, so we are going to, if people can check out our, our schizophrenia.

Pretty good spectrum video if that's come out before this one but we have never done like a watching a video [00:03:00] analysis before and we don't really know how to do it with like our faces on the screen. So what we're going to do is I'm going to play segments of the video that you and I will watch together and then I'll cut out the segments of this and put the video in and then it'll come back to us talking about the segment we just watched.

Hello? Anyone? Uh, can you hear me? Hello? Whoa. Hi. Oh, thank God. I am calling from the year 2453, and I've used my last time leap to make this call, but I don't have long. A few moments have passed. Oh my God, you're from the future. Yes. And I am begging you to help us. Oh, s**t. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Our civilization is crumbling due to our dwindling population.

We can no longer sustain ourselves. We are going extinct. Oh my god. You must save us. Okay. Yeah. Yes. What can I do to help? You must have children. Oh. Um. Okay. Tell all your friends. Every fertile woman you know. They must have children. Uh. [00:04:00] Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Uh. Is there anything else I can do? No. I have ran countless models that all point to this exact moment where we could undo our downfall.

Okay. Uh. It's just that it's not a very good time for me.

Malcolm Collins: I love the way they're starting this because it feels very much like us. Like, we are these panicked people who have taken the time to run the numbers. As I always say. Having worked on this issue in South Korea to start like that's when I started caring about this when I was there and coming to the U.

S. It really did feel like traveling back in time to a country that was further along in the collapse, knowing all the stupid s**t they would try, like handing out money and stuff like that, that it wouldn't work the blocking immigration that it would exacerbate the problem that there is no natural floor coming back to the U.

S. And Getting a chance to try. So I very much feel like this, this woman from the future who is going out there and trying to proselytize this call. So, so I think they, they [00:05:00] captured that very well. But they also, I think, capture the standard urban monoculture initial response, which is they're used to this idea of, like, calls from somebody in the future saying, if you do this now, You know, the future will be a better place, but these things are always token.

It's like, don't use straws or something like that. Like they're, they're not things that involve it's recycling. They're not things that involve real genuine sacrifice, like having kids. And there's a reaction of like, Oh, you, you mean you want me to like actually do something. The other thing that she did that I thought was really clever in this is not just say that she specifically needs to go out and have kids.

She understands that. The people who actually care about this problem need to spread the word about it, right? And she framed spreading the word in a way that I think is really aligned with what it's actually like to be out there spreading the word. Which is, you sound [00:06:00] insane. Like, go out there and tell all the fertile women you know they have to start getting pregnant.

And it's like, yeah, that's what we have to do. But like, it sounds insane.

Simone Collins: And Or we end up sounding like religiously conservative mother in laws, mothers in law, and mothers. Just being like, well, when you're gonna have kids, you should have kids. We're the grandkids. Either way you look bad. All right, all right.

This is of the utmost importance. It is life or death. Yes. Okay. Okay. I'm just kind of in a really good place with my career. Well, surely you could momentarily put it on hold to save your species. I could. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I could. I could. Um, but I don't think I could do both my career and, and save the species.

Then the choice is obvious. Totally. Yeah.

. I, I definitely am, obviously this is where I step in and I'm like, This is such a disgusting farce. As if, through, for the vast majority of human civil