How Legos Taught The World to Hate Mormons Again

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the viral Bricks & Minifigs Lego scandal that’s rocked the Mormon (LDS) community. What started as a $200k consignment dispute involving stolen Lego collections has spiraled into allegations of corporate theft, police corruption, small-town collusion, and a massive cultural reckoning.

Malcolm explores why this story is so damaging to Mormon PR, draws historical parallels to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and questions the Church’s response (or lack thereof). They discuss Mormon cultural tendencies, MLMs, in-group protection, and what this reveals about trusting religious communities when they hold local power.

A must-watch for anyone following the drama, interested in religious sociology, business ethics, or cultural fault lines.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be c- talking about the bricks and minifigures story.

Ooh ... but I want to take it in a different direction than a lot of people have gone on it, and I wanna g- talk about the meta discussion around it, and the extreme damage. And I’ve noticed that, that one, n- usually, the Mormon Church, and Mormons more broadly, are good at dealing with PR disasters. Like the, the, the way that they, you know, turned, The Book of Mormon into, like-

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: advertising and-

Simone Collins: Spinning that Broadway play by Matt Stone and Trey Parker into something where they would just put-

Malcolm Collins: Good PR. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: in a way, ... missionaries outside the theaters and be like, “Hey, you enjoyed the play. Why not try the real thing?” I mean, it’s great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and in one of the other episodes we did, even the Mormon tendency to come off like creepy pod people to outsiders, To some outsiders

they’ve been able to subvert that into, like, “Yeah, well, we’re just so wholesome,” right? You know, [00:01:00] like, “That’s, that’s why we’re coming off that way,” right? I mean, I still-

Simone Collins: Mormon is because they’re just that wholesome. Get over it ...

Speaker 3: I heard there’s warm pie

Simone Collins: from

Malcolm Collins: my, my cultural background think they come off like creepy pod people.

Speaker 26: I don’t remember him being that friendly. He’s obviously one of them. How

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And we have a whole episode if you’re interested on what causes that reaction, and I don’t think that Mormons have this emotional reaction, which is why they don’t realize that they trigger it so hard in other people.

Simone Collins: Well, not all S- Scots-Irish people have it. I, like, I don’t feel that. It, a lot of Mormons-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you don’t have the creepy...

But it’s clearly a common enough expression in humans that there’s multiple horror series just made- Yeah ... out of triggering this reaction. Yeah.

Speaker 7: Stan, take the drug, man, prove it to us. Okay.

Open the door. It is so much better. There’s no fear or pain. It’s beautiful. And you We’ll be beautiful. No [00:02:00] problems or worries. We want you. No pain, Stan? We’re gonna come in here and I’ll show you some f*****g pain!

Malcolm Collins: And, and here I’ll put the scenes from The Faculty or, you know, Children of the Corn or something. But anyway, in this instance it has fundamentally sh- like oh, and more broadly, so for people who know our channel and our stance, we’re generally pretty pro-Mormon.

We’re pro-Mormon for a few reasons. One is of all of the factions, like religious factions out there, they’re one of the most persistently pro-technology. And if people are like, “Why are they so pro-technology?” When contrasted with other religious groups, it’s because if you wanna be you know, status signal to other, you know, Orthodox Christians or to other Catholics, and you go to them and you’re like, “I’m doing it the traditional way, the way we did things in the 1850s,” you can look, like, extra cool.

If you’re a Mormon and you go like, “I’m doing things the way we did it in [00:03:00] the 1850s,” the other Mormons are gonna like, “Y- you are doing things super wrong, then.” And then if you’re like no, the, the 1920s.” Yeah, a lot has changed since then. I, I mean, 1950s? W- w- we’re that different then, but it’s still a pretty different beast.

It’s basically Mormonism evolves, even its belief system, so rapidly that there isn’t the desire, Because, like, if you go to the most of the, the most conservative Mormons, like if you’re talking about the ones who really try to preserve traditions they’re typically the schismatic cultists. This is like the are FLDS schismatic?

I don’t remember

Simone Collins: No. Oh, oh, you mean from the mainstream church? Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I followed the esoteric schematic,

Simone Collins: yeah. Yes. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So, again, it makes them very pro-technology. Two, they’re a minority population and any minority population is [00:04:00] useful to partner with if they have something akin to Christian values because you can largely bet on them at least within federal regulation to promote laws that maintain maximum i- cultural sovereignty because they benefit from that cultural sovereignty.

Although they do try to impose their values on others in the regions where they are the majority, which is what we’re gonna get to in this video. And so not just like positionally are they a good group to ally with but they also have been on a tear in terms of good social media. I often point out that we went from a Mormon stereotype when I was growing up of a nerdy guy who knocks on your door and has like a pencil protector and a Book of Mormon, like asking to talk to you or something, right?

Speaker 43: Well, you two boys can just buck right off.

Speaker 44: Ma’am. You heard me. Take that Book of Mormon and shove it so far Up your righteous asses, that, and choke, you soul [00:05:00] soliciting pigfuckers.

Malcolm Collins: You know, this was the stereotype my generation grew up with when the word Mormon came up and something went through your head. For today’s youths, the stereotype, until maybe this event, and I think people are underplaying how big this is, was of a hot trad wife making muffins or something like that.

That was the stereotype Mormon in people’s heads for a while. And the reason, and we’ll get into like why people have had such a bafflingly stupid response to this it has made me much more wary of long-term alliances with Mormon communities more generally. Specifically, the response that we have seen to this from Mormons, ‘cause I went through like at least a dozen Mormon videos, at least a dozen Mormon reactions, and we’ll get into

I’m assuming if you’re watching this, you’re broadly aware of what happened. But broad strokes, a Mormon-owned business staffed primarily by Mormons blatantly stole an [00:06:00] old man’s sort of inheritance for his son $200,000 worth of Lego

Simone Collins: figures. Excuse me. It’s a little more complicated than that because, and this is something that you should appreciate as someone who’s been through this process a, an old man who had a very, very impressive Star Wars Lego collection provided it to a Bricks & Minifigs Lego store on consignment.

This means that ownership was transferred to them per the contract, and then the seller would receive the payout when those goods were sold. Problem is, that business was sold, and then the people who bought the business-

Malcolm Collins: No, it wasn’t sold. Sorry, you’re getting your facts wrong already.

Simone Collins: Really? I was told that it was sold

Malcolm Collins: no. So corporate illegally took it over. And they confiscated- Oh ... not just from this guy, but everything that this other business had, which is one of the reasons- Really?

Speaker 8: Basically, and we’ll get into this later, a non-Mormon couple made the mistake of getting into a business relationship with a Mormon company, Bricks & Minifigs, and the company essentially just [00:07:00] stole their franchise and all their assets and then gave it to a Mormon couple

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they ba- That’s

Simone Collins: super ... Well, then they, there should be a clear-cut case to be like, “This, my contract was rendered invalid.”

Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, but the other person ... Again, I don’t wanna get into the details yet. Okay ... I’m just putting the broad, base-

Simone Collins: Well, I just, I, I’m glad that I brought that up because I think a lot of people are under the same impression that I was

Malcolm Collins: No, this other case is explains I think why, because it’s baffling.

This is a company that makes 10 million a year. They have 300 locations. For them to cause such a blowup over $200,000 when they were very clearly in the wrong on this, and all of their paperwork makes it clear they were in the wrong on this which we’ll get into, a baffling decision for somebody who used to run a company.

You just wouldn’t do this. We all the time gave... Even when, like, we’re not sure if the customer’s in the right or something like that generally it’s always just like, “Yeah, it’s not worth it.” Right? You know, just, just make it go away, right? For $200,000 this [00:08:00] should have been, especially when it was pretty clear that it was their, their fault, a just make it go away issue, but they didn’t.

And so we need to get into why they probably didn’t, because it’s actually almost kind of confusing that they didn’t.

Simone Collins: Huh.

Malcolm Collins: The... I actually think it has something to do with the store that they took over basically illegally. And it might implicate if they give back the money to this person, that they have to give back the money for everything else that they stole.

Simone Collins: Which it- Well, yeah. If, if they’re selling Legos on consignment and they are no longer honoring consignment agreements and just treating it like it’s inventory.

Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah. It’s not just that. So, okay. I’ll explain a little bit more.

Simone Collins: Thank

Malcolm Collins: you. The guy who originally owned it and had the stuff listed on consignment at the store- Mm-hmm

uh, Bricks & Minifigs messed up his banking information. They messed up his banking information, so he was unable to pay them normally. Then what they did is he, he worked with them in terms of [00:09:00] fixing it. It took a few months, okay? And they eventually worked it out, and at the end of the period where they worked it out, he then paid them the franchising cost for when he hadn’t, you know, when they, they had messed up his banking information, right?

And th- they agreed on the amount that he paid, they worked it out together, it was all amicable and things went ahead for a number of months. Then after, I don’t know how many months after this, maybe about four months after this or something like this corporate just comes in and says, “We are forcibly shutting down your location and taking control of all the assets in it,” because of this unpaid franchise thing.

But he had actually already paid the franchise thing and they have... Th- all of this is in writing, by the way. Oh. Right? Okay. They’re just asserting that, “Well, because you changed the format you paid it in during this period, it counts as unpaid, and we are seizing all of your assets.” Yeah, like,

Simone Collins: you didn’t do it exactly correct, and therefore, dot.dot, somehow we own everything.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so then they seized all of, not just [00:10:00] the stuff in consignment, all of his inventory.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, that’s, that seems super easy to settle in court. Like, no one’s gonna accept that. That’s-

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, it’s really bad. But we’re seeing why they thought they could got a- get away with it. And it had to do with the community, and this is where it gets interesting and why me going over all the Mormon influencers covering this has been really interesting.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Is this is not something that could have happened in a normal community, when they’re like, “Oh, there’s some bad Mormon members,” or something like that. Every incident tied to this case, whether it’s the police harassment of the people trying to handle this, the illegal jailing of people trying to handle this or the owner thinking that they could get away with this basically having the entire town government on their side, right?

And people are like, “Oh, this is normal small town stuff.” This is not [00:11:00] normal small town stuff, okay? There is a reason why this is going so mega viral, and everyone’s like, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.” This is not normal small town stuff.

Speaker 9: And as a note, I grew up in small town Texas in large part. Never did I see anything remotely like this. This is not normal small town behavior in America

Malcolm Collins: And the very fact that many Mormons watch this event and then respond with, “That’s just normal small town collusion”-

shows, I think, a degree of incompatibility with American culture.

Simone Collins: Small town

Malcolm Collins: collusion ... which is not good, because other Americans watch the Mormon go up and be like, “This is just a normal thing to happen in a town,” and they’re like, “

Simone Collins: Really?” It’s very hot vibes. I, I like

Malcolm Collins: it. What? No. Yeah. This isn’t a normal thing to happen.

This is an insane thing to happen. And when they’re like, “Oh, well, it’s just bad,” why are the police protecting a [00:12:00] private citizen here? And a, and a clear bad actor at this point, right? Why is the head of police going up and lying on behalf of this guy provably? Because we can show that he got the dates wrong on the things he was saying by things in pictures.

They’ve been able to recreate audio of what really happened during the raid, right? Because they had a camera on and that they, police knew they had no cause to do this. Why would the police go so far as to arrest a private citizen merely trying to get his property back? At one point, like to get how crazy this is, I don’t know if you’ve seen this They go to serve this guy his papers, and the police chief says this publicly, that the guy called the police and said he had his gun and he was thinking about shooting them because they were outside of his house trying to serve him his papers, which you have to do to start a court case.

The police then come, take the papers from this guy, say, “Are these even [00:13:00] real?” They then call up the court system. The court system tells them, “These are real papers.” The police says, “Oh, well then I guess I’ll go serve him the papers.” The guy refuses to take the papers from the police officer, okay? And then the police officer, what do they do after this?

They arrest him. The guy trying to do the normal part of the legal process, which is serving him his papers.

Simone Collins: Oh, on what grounds? It was on the grounds that they were not correct.

Malcolm Collins: Harassment for trying to serve someone their papers.

Simone Collins: Oh, for harassment? Okay. You

Malcolm Collins: have to serve ... For, if you’re unfamiliar, in the United States, you have to serve someone their papers.

You have to show that they opened their, the, the mail containing the legal stuff for the times to start on this stuff.

Simone Collins: It’s this, it’s just such a weird thing of like legal theater.

Malcolm Collins: It is weird, and I, we should probably ban it in the United States. It’s, it’s a stupid thing to have.

Simone Collins: It’s really stupid, yeah

Malcolm Collins: but secondarily and I know it could lead to negative externalities. There’s probably some other way we can do it, okay? But like this intentionally not [00:14:00] taking your papers, it should be able to show like you’re not legally allowed to not take your papers if a court something tries to serve them to you.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And this is a position people could apply to, okay? Or like if you’re home or something like that, you know what I mean? But anyway and, and to get into like ... And, and when people are like, “Well, that doesn’t...” The reason the cops are colluding with the business is very clearly because of a Mormon church affiliation.

In addition to that, when the cops, because in one instance very clearly, fortunately we have video of this, they did not do a rolling stop. They stopped at a stoplight. The cops then pull over the car and immediately say like, you know, not, “Who’s driving here?” You know, “Did you do a stoplight?” They go, “Which one of you,” it’s in the YouTuber’s name Ben

Speaker 10: All the police footage of this, and as you can see, we didn’t even do a rolling stop. We fully stopped at the stop sign. So this is an illegal traffic stop. So who’s Ben? Uh, me. Ben, [00:15:00] how’s Utah? It’s good. You like it? Okay. It’s-

Malcolm Collins: .

And he’s like, “I’m Ben.” And the cop then says in like your most typical villain voice possible or, or more like crazy corrupt zombie town voice possible, “How are you liking your time in Utah?” Which is clearly code for among the Mormons, right? Like that, he meant, he meant it in a, in a very specific way.

And so then Mormons could come to me and say, “Well, it’s not like we or the church could do anything about this.” And the problem is, is yeah, they absolutely could. The Mormon church isn’t like a Protestant denomination where it’s decentralized and they can’t do anything. They actively and regularly excommunicate people over fairly trivial things.

Simone Collins: Well, you can, you could lose your, your temple recommends. Like, you, you could... There’s, yeah, actually, the LDS church is uniquely well-positioned to basically both kind of economically plus more spiritually disempower or freeze out people who are doing naughty [00:16:00] things. So yeah, you can absolutely slap people on the wrist, and it doesn’t even have to be temporary.

It can just be like, “Look, we’re gonna take away your temple recommends until you give this guy his Legos and stop being a jerk. You’re really making the

Malcolm Collins: church look bad.” It’d be, yeah, it’d be trivially easy for the church to handle.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But the church has decided not to handle it, and has a historic pattern of not handling things like this, which we’ll go over.

Mm. Which make them a negative externality to other parties. Yeah ... actually, let’s just go straight into this. Are you familiar, Simone-

Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Simone Collins: While you give that, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, just let me get Tex so you can give- Okay ... I just have to feed him. You can, you can, you can give the, you can give the Mountain- You, are

Malcolm Collins: you aware of it?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

It’s sad. Kids get hurt, so you should probably say it when I’m not here.

Malcolm Collins: All right. So the Mountains Meadow Massacre. In 1857 the m- members of the Church of Latter-day Saints, Mormons, killed 120 innocent immigrants who were simply [00:17:00] trying to...

They, they were also Appalachian immigrants, so my people, who were just trying to migrate to California through Mormon territory. Now it is true that Brigham Young sent them a letter telling them not to do this, and it didn’t reach them in time. But after they did it, no one was punished for 10 years, and only two people were ever excommunicated by the church, despite a large number of people being involved in this.

And the way that they did it was horrifying. They told the settlers, “Okay, well then just give us your guns and we’ll let you through the territory.” They gave them their guns, they separated them into three lines of men, women and children. They shot the men and the women, and then they

and then- or I should probably say something else there. And then with Styx, they did something until the other group wasn’t around anymore. And then [00:18:00] they tried to blame it all on Native Americans who were only lightly involved in it. The church worked to cover it up within the region. And to give you an idea, people maintained main positions of power within the Mormon church after this.

So if we look at an individual like, William H. Dame, who was the colonel, the commander of the Iron Military District and a high-ranking figure, he gave the final approval for the massacre. But was indicted because people wouldn’t speak out against him. The entire community stayed silent.

And he continued as a leadership figure within the church in the community afterwards. And then we also know other figures, like John Me Higbee, who was a participant, one of the, the people who, who did the beatings and everything like that. And he held positions in the church for years after this.. It was absolutely crazy, and for wondering why it wasn’t even tried until 10 years after the event, and the key perpetrators maintained positions in the church. Two of them [00:19:00] were eventually excommunicated, but only two of them when dozens of them took place. I mean, 100, over 100 people were massacred.

In case you’re wondering, children under seven were not unalived, and they were brought into Mormon families. But other than that, all the kids

So it’s important to remember that this behavior of treating people outside the community as if their lives’ welfare... Oh, and they took all the people’s property. They just stole it all and distributed it, right? Treating them like their lives don’t matter if they think they can get an advantage over them is a historic way that Mormons act, and is likely the way they would act in a society if they ever gained majority control again.

Mm. Given that we both see it historically and we see it in current behavior. That doesn’t mean they’re not a useful ally right now for our agenda. But in terms of groups gaining power in a region, one of the last groups you ever want to gain power is Mormons.

Speaker 12: And this is something that is reaffirmed every [00:20:00] time a Mormon says this is normal small town behavior, or, “Oh, these are just individual bad actors, and it’s irrelevant that they’re members of the church,” when the only reason anyone is acting this way is because of the church

Malcolm Collins: Mormons are only a really good ally because they are a minority right now, and they have to fight to protect the powers of minority traditions have to protect families from CPS, have to protect...

but the ways that they act when they have power has historically been pretty monstrous. And I think one of the things that this incident is bringing back for people-

Simone Collins: Oh ...

Malcolm Collins: is, “Oh yeah, Mormons aren’t just, like, sweet trad wives. They’re also the type of people who will beat your children to death if they think they can get away with it, and steal all your stuff,” right?

They, they also are the type of people who should genuinely be viewed adversarially if they’re ever about to gain majority of control of anything that you’re affiliated with. [00:21:00] And they could make themselves, I mean, Mormonism evolves very quickly. They could make themselves into something not like that, and I think a lot of people had the perspective before this event blew up in the way it did, that the church had moved on from that mindset, that church members had moved on from that mindset.

The idea of, “Okay, well, if we have bad members, we deal with it,” right? Like, that presumably that’s what the church did now, and now we are demonstrably seeing that is not the case. And worse, not only is it not the case, but the Mormon influencers who cover this show culturally The, the, like the wider Mormon community is nowhere near the place that they need to be to just, it’d be so trivial.

It would hurt the church not at all to just ring the just say, “Hey, we’re taking away your temple recommends card until you give this guy his money back.” Simplest thing ever. It would cause literally no damage [00:22:00] for them. Mm. The key reason they’re not doing this, right, the key reason they’re not getting involved in this is because fundamentally it would be punishing Mormons for protecting Mormons in a way that was immoral.

And they’re-

Simone Collins: Oh, see, I thought maybe they’ve had a conversation internally and been like, “If we remove their temple recommends or we do anything to associate ourselves with them to comment on this, it would imply, it would make it out i- in the open and too obvious that this is a Mormon thing.” Whereas now there is plausible deniability.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, there’s no plausible deniability.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: A- and I, I think that this is th- this is something that I think that Mormons when they’re watching this don’t get that non-Mormons are going through watching this. Mm-hmm. When we watch this, right? Mm. And we see the sheer- Mm ... injustice of what’s being carried out here and, and just the wantonness [00:23:00] of it, the, the total lack of like, once we dominate a region we treat outsiders however we want, right?

The, the sheer wantedness of it. Like it, it, it makes me feel like you’re, you’re much better off being a Muslim in Israel than you are being a non-Mormon in one of these small Mormon towns, because apparently the police just don’t work for you. They, they do not even care about the pretense of impartiality.

They don’t even care about the pretense that they’re anything other than... That’s what it looks like to a non-Mormon watching this. And if you’re a Mormon and you watch this and your blood is boiling and you’re angry at these individuals, it’s really important that you understand that I’d say about 80% of the non-Mormons watching this, when their blood is boiling and they’re directing that anger in a direction, it is at Mormonism.

Mm. Because the- Or at the church ... the whole pattern, the whole weirdness of it is clearly created by a Mormon cultural foundation. And the bigger problem is, is it could be fixed. All Mormons have to do is [00:24:00] speak up. But I then started thinking about this more broadly and realized this is a larger failure of the Mormon church.

Because I was thinking about like, actually, you know there’s another thing that I’m really surprised the Mormon church hasn’t banned. ‘Cause the Mormon church is willing to go out there and ban, you know, caffeine, although they loosen up- Not

Simone Collins: caffeine, hot drinks Yeah, hot drinks. Like basically just tea and coffee actually, not even really hot drinks

Malcolm Collins: from the words of wisdom. They ban gambling. Why can’t they ban MLMs? MLMs are a massive problem in the Mormon church. Worse than being a generic massive problem, they’re... Because of the way MLMs work, fundamentally the way that people, even if somebody is making money in an MLM, at the end of the day they’re only making money because they are disenfranchising more people downstream of it.

Okay? Now the prophet, the head of the Mormon church, has come out and said you shouldn’t use the Rolodexes you have from being a church member or church lists and stuff like that as part of your MLM prospecting.

Simone Collins: Hmm. [00:25:00]

Malcolm Collins: They could go a lot further than that because the core way that an MLM makes money is by basically scamming the people at the bottom of the pyramid, right?

And the problem is, is the way Mormon social communities work, and the reason MLM spread quickly within them, is because they’re very good at converting each other. They’re very good at trusting each other. They have very low levels of incredulity when it comes to other Mormons, as we’re seeing play out in this particular instance.

So the central church could come in and say, “We don’t do this anymore,” because overall this obviously hurts Mormons the most that we don’t ban this. But also the people who run the MLMs that are doing this are predominantly Mormon, and they donate a lot to the temple. And so it sort of ends up in a, if we can milk money out of people, and this is where I fundamentally changed my thoughts on Mormons when I started thinking about MLMs, because I used to give the temple an out, right?

When people are like, “Oh, look at the temple’s financial scandals in the past,” right? Like, they invested a bunch of money in a shopping mall, and I’m like, [00:26:00] “That’s what- the way you’re supposed to invest money, you doofus.” You know? That’s not a scandal. That’s a normal thing to do, okay?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But to not restrict or even advise against joining MLMs when every sane person knows that they end up impoverishing hundreds of thousands of average Mormons every year, right?

Just so that they can get more donations. That’s when I was like, “Oh, this is more Machiavellian than I thought,” right? This is more to its core sort of rotten than I really thought. Because the... And I even looked to see if they’d ever looked at doing that, and they’ve banned lots of other stuff. Like, why can you ban gambling and not MLMs?

Oh, because gambling institutions aren’t run by Mormons. I mean, the answer is obvious, right? Do you have thoughts before I go into the, the details of this particular case?

Simone Collins: No, please go ahead.

Malcolm Collins: One thing I want you to check out, Simone, ‘cause I’d be very interested to [00:27:00] know. Can you check if the original owners of the store, the one who basically had the store stolen from them-

Simone Collins: Okay

Malcolm Collins: if they were Mormons too?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So Bricks & Mini figs operate franchises. The whole dispute stems from a deal made between a man called Brian Manswell and the former franchisee, law/Gorman.

Brian’s father had a massive collection of allegedly $200,000 but he’s now in poor health, so they were looking to sell. The owners of the store agreed to a consignment, meaning that they would hold all the sets at no cost, during which time the Manswell would still technically own them and they would advertise to sell them.

We’ve already explained this After taking consignment, the franchisees went to B&M corporate and told them that they were considering moving out of the country and inquired on the process of selling the store. Corporate responded by forcing them out and illegally taking possession of the store.

There is an actual video of the owners explicitly mentioning having the consignment and the corporate res- representative responding [00:28:00] by saying that they will handle it and take responsibility. So they both knew it and represented that they were to handle it, even when later they’re like, “Well, we say we don’t handle consignment.”

Yeah, but you signed a thing saying you would handle it, so you’re responsible for it. B&M install new owners in the Salem store J- Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best. Both of these franchisees and corporates refused to honor the consignment agreement, stating that consignments are prohibited by contract and that they have no responsibility for an unauthorized agreement entered in between Manswell and the previous owners.

Although, once again, their contract contradicts this, as does the actual video recording of the employees saying that they will take it on. It gets particularly awkward at this joint because B&M’s official stance is that they could only identify 5K worth of Legos, which potentially belong to Mansfeld, and they supposedly offered to give these over, but not reimburse for the tens of thousands of missing sets.

For the part of Manswell and Reckless Ben, the YouTuber who joined forces with Manswell to take the case they allege that this isn’t true at all and that they are in [00:29:00] possession of more sets. Or at least they were by the time they took over the store. Now, note he’s able to prove that they had more sets because they had the sets for sale in their online store after they took it over, and he was just able to look at them and be like, “Here, these are the sets,” right?

So they’re provably, again, lying. What ensure... What ensues is a bunch of back and forth, “You have my sets/money,” and no, B&M in no uncertain words, threatened him stating that the cost of taking them to court would be prohibitively expensive and than he’d ever make off the sets and that they intended to drag out the case if he tries.

So, after more nonsense they get accused of trespassing. They finally take them to small claims court, and they sort of trick them into not responding to the claims court and ended up winning $200,000. Then they go to collect the money, and they had shut down the store that day. To understand how severe this was they didn’t even tell like children who had their birthday parties at the store that it [00:30:00] was

Simone Collins: about to be

Malcolm Collins: shut

Simone Collins: down.

Oh. And they ended- This is clearly to evade. I see. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: They ended up sitting in the parking lot during their birthday after they had rented out and paid them for the spot that, that was multiple kids’ birthdays because they just didn’t handle it. A- and again, we see here complete uncaring for non-Mormons.

So, were you able to find out?

Simone Collins: Yeah. The only confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are the corporate owners in Utah, not the original franchisees in Salem. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. The new franchisees who took over, I’m pretty sure, are, are confirmed Mormon. So when they stole it from the original franchisees, they gave it to a Mormon family.

Look that- Did they?

Simone Collins: Okay, the incoming Utah-affiliated owners of the same franchise location, Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best are described in coverage and videos as Mormons. So yes. So the,

Malcolm Collins: a Mormon corporate illegally took possession of the store and all its property and gave it to a Mormon family. And people are [00:31:00] like, “What does this have to do with Mormonism?”

But then- Well,

Simone Collins: they’re not a family. It’s Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best, but-

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I guess two Mormon c- people. Okay.

Simone Collins: Yes.

But allegedly, too, because as described in, in basic- like, like according to the YouTube coverage and on Wikipedia, they’re Mormons, but again, allegedly. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So what, what happened with him and the cops, to go over this.

There was a traffic stop where they alleged that they had heroin in the car after a two-hour search showed up nothing. They then switched track and start saying that they got dilated pupils, which by the way, is the opposite of when you have heroin. They finally gave up. That- Wait,

Simone Collins: really? Cocaine would cause that.

Wouldn’t heroin dilate your pupils?

Malcolm Collins: I think heroin causes constricted pupils, or I’ll go into this in, in notes.

Yep, I was right here. Heroin constricts pupils, the exact opposite of the reason they said they pulled him over

Malcolm Collins: Okay?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And note, we have from their cams, because it’s been leaked, that the cops said, “We have nothing [00:32:00] to, to, how do we get them?” Basically just seeing outsiders as annoying, describing them as annoying.

They, were, it’s multiple unfounded traffic stops during which the police officer immediately addresses Bin in the backseat of the car by his name, being like, “We know who you are. That’s why we’re pulling this car over,” even though there is zero reason to do so. Several police call-outs while trying to serve papers to Best, where the cops said...

And, and keep in mind, in one of these call-outs, and the chief of police admits this, he said he was thinking about shooting these people, okay? And had his gun, which I think might even be an illegal thing to do. I’m, I’m not sure, but I don’t think you can be like, “I’m thinking about shooting you,” while waving a gun at somebody.

Fi- yeah, that’s got to be illegal.

Speaker 13: Yes, this would count as brandishing a weapon and a criminal threat. So it is absolutely crazy that the chief of police literally is listing a criminal threat that this man is making to the chief of police as in his defense of his actions, in his defense of not [00:33:00] arresting the guy who made the criminal threat.

Uh, my God

Malcolm Collins: The, the cops just keep coming back every time he does this, removing him when he’s trying to serve papers. Finally he gets arrested on some bogus charges for putting up advertising on a GoFundMe. So that was what they... And this was wild. He’s like, “Is it illegal to put up a GoFundMe?”

And they’re like, “It is if you list the people’s names on the GoFundMe.” Okay? The p- the problem is, is that that would be libel. That would not be a criminal offense that you could go to jail over. And they put him in jail without bail as well, so he couldn’t- Ugh ... keep filming, ‘cause that’s what they were afraid of.

Oh. So it’s gotten astronomically worse because of this. And then the police going up. They, there’s video of them going up to him, and he’s just standing there in the video. They say that he was acting roughly, but he’s clearly just standing there. They grab his arm and dislocate his shoulder.

Speaker 14: Now, you understand me? Don’t move like that. Okay? [00:34:00] Yeah, this cop pulled my arm so far back it dislocated my shoulder. He claims it’s because I was attempting to make an escape or something. Don’t move like that. You understand me? Don’t move like that. Don’t move quick. Everybody just-

Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh

this happens because his shoulder is very easy to dislocate. Apparently it’s happened to him a lot. And so he’s very aware of the sensation and what happens. Mm. And he put up a image of what a stock dislocated shoulder looks like in his video, and the police were like, “See? That’s a stock photo.”

It’s like, of course he couldn’t get a real one. You guys had him in jail and wouldn’t allow him to be X-rayed, right? Like, um So, and I’ll note here, we always call out communities when they’re not dealing with their own, right? And I do this, we did this with the ADL and Chabad with the Jewish community when we talked about speed running a pogrom.

We’re now doing it even with communities that we’re fairly close with. It’s the Mormon community. Because this is astronomically bad. The level of brutality that we are seeing here in sort of a, a global stage in, in like an American town, right? And people can be [00:35:00] like, “Oh, like this isn’t as bad as like the, the grape gangs in Britain and stuff like that,” right?

And it’s like, no, it’s, it’s not exactly, but you’ve got to understand to your average American who comes from a non-Mormon culture, it actually kind of looks worse. And the reason it looks worse is the sheer audacity with which it’s done, and the extent and, and the brazenness of the attempt to cover up, which implies to everyone all around, like if you were living in one of these communities or if these people had power, this is the way they treat you.

And what’s worse is the way Mormon influencers have reacted, which is to see this and be like, “Either this is normal small town stuff, or what can we do about it? It’s just individual bad actors.” And it’s like there are plenty of channels a Mormon can use to attempt to address this. Okay, so since all of this...

By the way, do, do you wanna say anything? [00:36:00]

Simone Collins: I hadn’t thought about it this way when hearing about the drama. Like, I hadn’t heard, thought about it of like, “Oh, so you wanna know what it’s like to live in a, an LDS caliphate? A Catholic caliphate?” Like, look at what happens in the Hot Fuzz version of a Catholic town, an LDS town, a Baptist town, and I guess this is kind of interesting and telling.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and- I appreciate you framing it this way ... and note here they can be like, oh, I actually lived when I was a kid we had a ranch. And so I lived in a small Texas town for a lot of my life. And I had encounters with the cops there and everything like that. I had encounters with other business people there.

Let me tell you what, in a small Texas town, nobody is acting like this. I don’t care if they go to the same church, they’re interested in what’s right, not what church they go to, okay? And if you wanna be like, “Well, what’s it like to be an outsider in a small Texas town? I’m sure it’s horrible there, too.”

Who’s an outsider in a small Texas town? Leaflet. [00:37:00] She always talks about her town glowingly, right? Never had any problems with the locals, right? And, and, and so I, I wanna point out here again, this is not normal, right? Thoughts before I go further, Simone.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, well, I’ve been in many small random towns in various places in the world where people are super chill.

So yeah, this is not normal at all.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so i- in terms of what’s happened, basically it’s all escalating. The police have not backed down at all. They did a, a press thing saying blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I

Simone Collins: saw footage from the press conference. Goodness gracious.

Malcolm Collins: The head of the company the, the, the toy company they- For its amazing

made an announcement basically saying, “We did nothing wrong.” I guess I should, again, ‘cause we covered this a bit at the beginning, but I want to, As business owners go into this again, okay? This is not a normal thing for a company to do. We have had-

Simone Collins: Yeah, in, in the midst of acquiring, buying or selling a, a company, what typically [00:38:00] happens is there are two ways you can buy or sell a company.

You can buy all the company’s stocks. It could be a stock purchase or, like, transfer of ownership, or it can be an asset purchase or transfer of ownership. And it’s almost always assets, because people don’t want a stock purchase. It, it involves a transfer of liabilities that no one really wants. And so when you do an asset purchase or some kind of change of ownership of assets you also have to make a bunch of assignment agreements.

When we acquired a business on behalf of investors, the, the deal was almost lost over lawyers losing their minds over assignment agreements. We actually almost lost the deal because we refused to have every single vendor sign an assignment agreement saying basically, “We will transfer our contract from the old corporation to the new corporation that’s acquiring the assets.”

So this is just one of those things that, like, lawyers that get involved are crazy [00:39:00] about because it can, it can kill a business. It’s really important. The ownership of these things matters. All this stuff is really well documented, and this is not something that you just, like, miss. It’s not something, “Oh,” like, you got lost in the shuffle.

Like, I thought, I thought these were ours. Like wait, wait, no, what? Yeah.”

Malcolm Collins: Yes, but this is the type of thing that, like, in a nor- if it was done normally, would have been a very long discussion, right? Yeah. And it- Or not ... and it, I mean, it was to the extent that it was filmed, right? Not a

Simone Collins: very

Malcolm Collins: long

Simone Collins: discussion.

So we do know that it happened. It just would have been, like, you know, we are assigning these, these as- these consignment contracts and, and the associated assets from business A to business B. That’s it. It’s very simple. Like, okay, great, now we have, you know, th- these assets that we will sell and we’re obligated to sell, to, to give a certain cut of the profits to this person.

Like, it’s so simple. And this is not something that is missed.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, no. I mean, for corporate to shut down a franchise and transfer its assets without the franchisee’s approval, when they weren’t in clear violation [00:40:00] to another party is- One, that’s insane. But then two, when the lawsuit came in, like the small $200,000 lawsuit, and you might be like, “That’s a big lawsuit.”

That is not a big lawsuit for a company the size of B&M. Bricks and

Simone Collins: Minifigs?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Br- Bricks and Minifigs. It, it, it, it is literally, like it- in terms of what... I’m, I’m not gonna say it’s a rounding error, but it’s the type of thing, I would say over the course of the last few years in running our business, there have been multiple instances where sometimes you just get hit, where like it turns out an one of your employees did something wrong, $50,000 or something like that.

You get hit with it. You pay it out. You always pay it out. You never sit on that money because the, the lawsuit and the reputational damage is just too big, right? The idea that they wouldn’t do this, that they’d be like, “Oh, we’re just gonna ignore the legal case here,” right? Like, we’re... Or, or to even let it get to legal, right?

Over $200,000, which is nothing, is [00:41:00] astonishing and it displays- Well,

Simone Collins: and this also, it’s not $200,000 that they paid for. It’s $200,000 of potential profit that they seized. Again, this is what it was valued at. This is not what it’s being sold for, though I imagine with inflation it’s probably being

Malcolm Collins: sold for that price.

No, no, no, but I just mean not just handing them $200,000 to make them go away.

Simone Collins: Oh, I see. Yeah. No, right, just buying it from them as, as a corporation. Oh, I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Yeah, as opp- They shouldn’t have even waited to sell it on consignment. They should’ve just bought it from them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, when, when people start making a stink like this, it’s generally good to just give them the money and make them go away.

Right? I

Simone Collins: see. Yeah, just buy them off. Yeah, that, that would’ve been simpler. But I mean, I think also they could’ve just been like, “Okay, we will honor your consignment agreement. Like, we will sell it or if you wanna take it back, take it back. We won’t sell it. I don’t care.”

Malcolm Collins: No, but the ob- the obvious correct choice is just give them the money, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, that is... Sorry, running businesses, we have had to make this choice around large amounts of money. Not this large, but like $25,000 or something. We probably have to make [00:42:00] it about once a year a, a decision like this, I’d say in the range between, like, 25,000 and $50,000. And it’s j- it sucks, but it’s just part of doing business.

That they wouldn’t, or that they had adopted a business practice where all throughout corporate, keep in mind, it, it, it, this required both the owners of the shop deciding not to do anything about this and corporate deciding not to do anything about this, which likely required layers of decision-making in addition to whatever the police were doing required a mindset that I think- Mm

unfortunately for a lot of people, what a lot of people are gonna take away from this is, “Oh, if you do business with a Mormon and you create a successful store they’ll just take that away from you and give it to a Mormon family one day.” As b-

Simone Collins: This is bad too, because Mormons are, have, have a really otherwise great professional reputation.

Especially LDS men who have served on missions, because they have basically gone through trial by [00:43:00] fire with patience, persistence, friendliness, sales skills, cold calling. Like, this is an amazing- They’re great

Malcolm Collins: salespeople ...

Simone Collins: yeah, like you, and, and they are disproportionately well represented in the CIA, like many high level good, like, government roles and stuff because it’s like, okay, these are people who are consistent, trustworthy, honorable values aligned, Mm

like, good. And, and stuff like this takes that reputation and weakens it, weakens it significantly because there’s this now negative baggage.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it inverts it to an extent. It’s like, oh, M- Mormons might make great employees, but never trust a Mormon in a Mormon-controlled territory if, if they are in the majority position or, or, or running a bus- business.

Like, never trust them to do... And, and if you’re like, “Well, how can you apply this to...” Again, this is the problem with a centralized church. Because you have a centralized church and the church isn’t doing anything about this, and you could say that’s not the church’s role, and it’s like w- the church’s role is to [00:44:00] make the lives of Mormons better, right?

To advance the Mormon cause. Yes, it is their role to handle negative PR when it comes up, right? Even if it’s through back channels, even if it’s through the guy’s local pastor or something like that. There, there are few things happening right now that are more the church’s role. The bigger problem is the idea that like, oh, we can Because as I pointed out, the situation arose because of Mormon culture, peculiarities of Mo- Mormon culture.

If it arose because of peculiarities of Mormon culture, obviously people are gonna blame it on Mormonism, so you could use peculiarities of Mormon culture to address it. Except the opposite has happened.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Right? A, a denial of responsibility and saying these are individual bad actors. Yeah. And to that extent, I think one thing that I’m gonna...

Because we’ve done a number of videos where we called out communities protecting their own bad actors, and how that externalizes them as a threat for everyone around them.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think at this point we’ve called out Catholics and Jews for this, [00:45:00] right?

Malcolm Collins: No, not Catholics for this. Jews heavily

Simone Collins: for this.

Have we, have we yet, we haven’t yet called out, or maybe me- mentioning- Jews and trans

Malcolm Collins: people, and now

Simone Collins: Mormonism on the left ... you’ve called out Mennonites for this because of the whole rape thing.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, the rape. Well, yeah, no, but th- th- that’s different. The, the, I guess, yeah, the Catholics did attempt to protect.

But anyway, I want to go and say that as, because now I’ve realized we’ve got a number of people who follow the religion we created, techno-puritanism so, just sort of like as a Malcolm words of wisdom or whatever, like- ... when this w- techno-puritan central organization is finally set up, the, the index when we have all of the tools for setting it up one of its core roles should be policing the morality of members with ability to excommunicate for demonstrably- I was

Simone Collins: just thinking of like-

immoral acts ... well, policing bad actors. It’s not so much- Mm ... about policing morality as it is policing people who are doing harm in society.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I think do, m- m- yeah, that’s the better way to do it. It doesn’t matter their [00:46:00] personal morality, their morality at home or anything like that. Only when they externalize harm onto other communities and the higher threat than externalizing harm on other communities is protecting a member of the techno-puritan community who is externalizing harm on other communities.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Don’t protect bad actors I mean, look, it put a target on the back of the progressive movement too. I was just looking at there’s been both, like, on X and through mainstream media, coverage of dwindling support, for example, gay marriage. It had its high at almost... So almost half of Republicans supported gay marriage around 2019.

And then I think it peaked at 2021. Between 2021 and 2024, it went from just under 50% of Republicans supporting gay marriage to now about 31%. And I think a lot of that had to do with the progressive movement on the whole supporting bad actors. And-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

Simone Collins: trying to impose culture on people who don’t want that culture imposed on them.

Whereas before, the framing had always [00:47:00] been, “Just let us live our lives. Please, just let us live our lives.” And everyone’s like, “Yeah, okay. I’ll, like, that’s fine.” And

Malcolm Collins: this is the thing where the gays could say, “Well, there’s no king gay that could, you know, do something about this.” King gay. The problem is there is a king Mormon who can do something about this.

Oh. There is a central organization, and there’s people paid very good money- I thought you were gonna say

Simone Collins: there’s a gay king, and I’m like, “Who’s the king of the gays?” This

Malcolm Collins: is exciting. Actually, did you know that the United States military spent hundreds of thousands of dol- I think it might have been arou- around a few million dollars trying to find the king of the gays?

Simone Collins: Wait, what?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. D- did you know the name of the person they were looking for?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: They, they, they ended up doing a dragnet to attempt to find- A

Simone Collins: dragnet? Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: S- Simone, I said they, they did a dragnet to attempt to find Dorothy.

Simone Collins: Huh? I don’t get it.

Malcolm Collins: You don’t, you know how you say you are gay back in the day, “I’m a friend of Dorothy.”

Simone Collins: Oh, no. I’ve never heard that before. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: you’ve never heard the saying? I [00:48:00] was- It was a behind the way to say- No ... I’m gay is I’m a friend of Dorothy. Wait, really? And so they thought Dorothy, which meant Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, was a real person. And so they attempted to

Simone Collins: find- They thought Dorothy was the king of the gays?

Like

Malcolm Collins: the, the key network o- or of the gays who like made the whole gay social scene work, this mysterious Dorothy.

Simone Collins: That’s amazing. I thought you were making a pun with Dragnet. I, yeah, I don’t know. I, I, I wish that in the US military we just started recruiting for like, it was the Band of Thebes, right?

Just like a, a, a gay subset. That would be so cool. That’d be so hot.

Malcolm Collins: Band of Thebes. Yeah, no, but all, all gay regiments. That’s the way we should do gays in the

Simone Collins: military. You, no, I, I think, yeah. Like, we, we need to start having affiliate of regiments. Like, I want, I want the militant lesbians regiment. I want the Band of Thebes 2.0 USA edition.

I want

Malcolm Collins: the- I actually think you could probably do a pretty good job ... I

Simone Collins: want, I want the furries. I want the furry regiment. I want them fighting in costume, but with like heads up displays inside their, [00:49:00] their like fursona heads. I, I want, I want affiliate of ad hoc-

Malcolm Collins: But, but anyway, ...

Simone Collins: military bands.

Malcolm Collins: This has been really interesting to see.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I think people are underestimating the cultural effect of this movement long-term. This moment has blown up in a way that, I mean, literally this is like, I, I, I think in terms of like average home penetration, the Tiger King of this, this d- you know-

Simone Collins: I don’t, I don’t know if it’s Tiger King level, but I will say that this has been surprisingly well-covered.

I’m kinda like, ugh, like do we really care that much?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, what I wanted to cover it as from a, like, as how’s it gonna change society? It’s gonna make people significantly more suspicious of Mormons or ever allowing Mormons to get power, and it makes me suspicious of Mormons. Like, I wanna be clear, it makes me suspicious when Mormons who I thought were normal, sane people are like, “This is just a few bad actors.

This isn’t a Mormon [00:50:00] problem.” Completely, when Mormon culture leads to bad action, completely saying, “Oh, not my responsibility,” I was like, “Oh, okay, well, f- me then,” right? You know? We just need to grow the techno-puritan alli- you know, federation. Y- get more members, continue to grow, have lots of babies.

And then you, you guys can have an organization you can join that doesn’t have lots of crazy scandals. And it actually punishes its own bad actors. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Simone Collins: I guess, you know, the, the OG Puritans were pretty famous for doing that, but sometimes they went a little too far. You know- But they did do-

witch hunts and all that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s- The, the OG Puritans did punish their own community members when they externalized power more. A

Simone Collins: lot. No, it was like, it was a pa- it was a national pastime. We did, we went overboard. We’re like, “You said something about your dog. You need to die.” All sorts of things.

Very, very overboard. But anyway, that’s it’s-

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, yeah, my biggest takeaway of this is no matter how aligned [00:51:00] you are with a group, I guess what this hammers home for me is- Well, all other groups are fundamentally evil. We need to grow our own

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: be prepared to- Oh, for th- Like, but I, but I’m sorry, groups I keep thinking are, are okay.

It, it does

Simone Collins: The Mormons are fine. Look, I think this had to do more with messy governance and people not coordinating well on this, and maybe the, the mechanism by which you know, temple recommends are revoked or established just not really working well, it being kind of complicated. Because I think that temple recommends, I, I don’t know the full way that, like, you get them, but I think they happen at the bishop level.

So, like, also you have to keep in mind that, like, they, the bishop who’s responsible for the various policemen and then the various corporate people, like, it’s all separate non-coordinating volunteers who have full-time jobs, by the way. [00:52:00] Like, there’s also the fact that this is a church that, except at the very highest levels, is made up of entirely volunteer work of, of full-time employed people.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on, Simona. I, I don’t... No. The, the, they, the temple could act if they wanted to. The local bishop could act if they wanted to. And if people are like, “It’s

Simone Collins: not the church’s-”

Malcolm Collins: Right,

Simone Collins: but also they’re kind of busy. Things fall through the cracks when you do this much

Malcolm Collins: If, if, if people are like, “It’s not the church’s job to police people’s morality,” that’s literally exactly their job, right?

It’s to, it’s to help people live moral lives. It’s not the church’s job to protect the church’s reputation. That’s literally... Like, those are their two only jobs. And if you’re like, “Well, they never get involved in civil matters or something like that,” or well, maybe they should, you know? In, in this particular instance.

Because they have this whole- Look, I,

Simone Collins: I imagine that there might be some reckoning or discussion that takes place after this having happened, but that wouldn’t surprise me. So-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’ll just be too late then. They, they have literally days to react at this point. [00:53:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I think if they act quickly, they can fend off reputational damage somewhat.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah, we’ll see if they do it.

Simone Collins: Let me- Time

Malcolm Collins: will tell ... it would have to be pretty severe at this point, whatever they do, but we’ll see.

Simone Collins: Mm, it, this’ll blow over pretty fast, I think.

Malcolm Collins: No, it won’t.

Simone Collins: We’ll see then. I’m, I’m

Malcolm Collins: obviously team Mormon. This will be a lasting cultural memory for a generation.

Simone Collins: Ah, I don’t know.

I, I doubt.

Malcolm Collins: Just keep in mind, it’s not... Every single one of the largest streamers has done something on this

Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, this is ... And on both sides of the political spectrum too. It’s just basically like everyone is excited to dunk, to dunk on-

Malcolm Collins: This, this is the new Carol Baskin ... corporate Bricks &

Simone Collins: Minifigs.

Malcolm Collins: But worse, because I didn’t feel a visceral anger- I

Simone Collins: thought there were a bunch of Team Carol people. There are no Team Bricks & Minifigs people. Oh no, there’s a few Team Carol people,

Malcolm Collins: but that’s the thing. Like, with Carol, I was disgusted by her, but I didn’t feel a visceral rage at her like I do these people.

Simone Collins: Well, right, and this, this is a very unidirectional thing. Everyone [00:54:00] hates Brits- Bricks & Minifigs. Yeah. And everyone-

Malcolm Collins: And the local police department.

Simone Collins: And well, of course, and the, the local police department, which is acting ... Yeah, no, like, the, the, it’s, it’s

Malcolm Collins: one of these- They’re acting like a pod person town, okay?

That’s what they’re acting like.

Simone Collins: Oh, gosh.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I have no other way to describe this other than bizarre and otherworldly. It borders on having accidentally driven into a horror movie, when you see, like, the police pull them over and be like, “Which one of you is Ben? How’s it feel to be in Utah?” That’s bizarre and pod person-y, okay?

Okay. That’s not a normal thing to do or say.

Simone Collins: It’s not great. Yeah. It’s it’s not great.

I agree. Well, we’ll see. I love you, though.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: I’ll see you in data center

Malcolm Collins: You had the kids walk around with bagpipes today. One, one of our fans- Yeah, we had

Simone Collins: an award-winning- ... provided them with bagpipes ... bagpiper perform for our kids, and [00:55:00] they thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I mean, of course, in the moment they just looked stunned ‘cause what else do you do the first time you encounter a bagpipe? You’re like, “What is happening to me right now?” But he played a perfect... Oh, like, two perfect songs, just really good. Wow, what a day. I was just thinking, I was... To this weekend, I took this kids to this spot up on the hill, the, that picnic rock by the old stone bridge, and I told them it was where the fairies were, and they thought it was too windy for fairies, which is fair.

You know, mosquitoes can’t land on you when it’s too windy, and I don’t think fairies can be out either. And then I, I pulled up pictures using Google Image of the Cottingley Fairies, ‘cause it was like, oh yeah, like famously young children have found fairies in, in the, in the woods. And I thought it would be convincing because, you know, like, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a huge fan of the Cottingley Fairies.

He’s like, “Oh, this confirms it.” And of course, Tosia looks at them and he’s like, “Wow, [00:56:00] fairies.” And Titan looks at it and she’s like, “Oh, the cotton candy fairies.” And then she just assumes that they make cotton candy, so that’s all she fixates on. That she wants not cottonlea, Cottingley or whatever

Malcolm Collins: fairies.

What is the Cottingley Fairies? Is this a scam or something? It’s

Simone Collins: the girls... You know those pictures of young girls with fairies? And they, they’d convinced... They, they ran, wandered off into the woods with their father’s camera and took pictures and then came back. Their father developed the photos, and lo and behold, the girls are posing next to beautiful fairies.

And at the time, no one could figure out what it was. They could confirm the photos were not doctored at all. Of course it turns out that- The girls had just cut out illustrations of fairies and arranged them well and took pic- pictures. Like, they were very good amateur photographers, but, like, they’d fooled a bunch of adults, including the writer of the Sherlock series.

This, [00:57:00] the clever man. Octavian takes one look at the photos and he’s like, “They just cut out pictures of fairies.” And I’m like, “

Malcolm Collins: What?” Oh, I love Octavian already. Smarter than Sherlock.

Simone Collins: What on earth? What on earth, Octavian?

Malcolm Collins: You are, you are too great at the fairy-

Simone Collins: But, but this, this is the same kid who, like, turns to me and is like, “Well, can I take my esophagus to Target?”

Because I, I have told him he can use a $25 Target gift card if he can just do the basic addition and subtraction he needs to in order to tell if he has, like, toys within his budget. You know, like, okay, well, you bought something with $4 and then... and another thing- Yeah ... with $2. How much money do you have left?

Then he can use the gift card. And, and he, he just doesn’t wanna do the math, and so I, I, I bought him an abacus, and he keeps calling it his esophagus, and it’s very annoying.

Malcolm Collins: And he wants to take it to Target to do the math? And he wants to take his esophagus to Target, ‘cause then

Simone Collins: he [00:58:00] can- Does he

Malcolm Collins: actually know how to do math on the abacus?

Simone Collins: Yes, he can do esophagus math, thank you very much.

Malcolm Collins: You taught him that?

Simone Collins: Yes. Well, th- this thing, it’s been around for, what, thousands of years. It’s extremely intuitive. You count the freaking beads. It’s, it’s really good- I, well, I know there’s, like- ... for developing number sense. ...

Malcolm Collins: specific ways to do, like, multiplication and stuff on it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, he’s not at that level. We’re at the, like, the beads move on this side, and here’s, you know, just move over the 10 beads.

Malcolm Collins: Addition and subtraction, okay, great.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Great, great. No we’re not, like, at the- But I love that he’s- We’re not- ... teaching technical terms here ... Peruvian mountain traders yet, no.

Malcolm Collins: And people are like... Again, when they’re like, “Why don’t you just teach your kids the Christian stories in the traditional way?” And I’m like, “Because I know my kids are like me, and they’re going to be very, very skeptical people.” They just

Simone Collins: cut out the fair- pictures of fairies. I can’t believe it. Anyway.

Yeah. I thought, I thought I was just gonna completely entrance the children and Octavian just has to blow it off. .

Malcolm Collins: Immediately. All right. Well, I’m gonna get started here. I’m, I’m proud of

Simone Collins: you. [00:59:00] Okay.

Speaker 16: Do you think the answer is still gonna be there? Let’s, we’ll find out

Well, we’re in a more sheltered area, so it’s nice and calm here. Feels good, right?

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