In this Based Camp deep dive, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore one of the most fascinating figures in online culture: Shoe0nHead (June Lapine).

Why has a self-described social democrat, Bernie supporter, and pro-union leftist maintained massive popularity and respect in right-wing and anti-woke spaces for over a decade—while most other left-leaning creators from the early skeptic/atheist era lost their audiences?

We break down:

- Her unique journey from Gamergate-era anti-SJW commentary to Catholic trad wife and mother

- Why she never needed to “convert” her audience or pivot dramatically

- The vitalistic, entertaining style that keeps her relevant across the political spectrum

- The broader split in the old atheist community: truth-seekers vs. resentment-driven dunkers

- Why the modern right can embrace ideological diversity (and why the left struggles with it)

- Shoe0nHead as proof that the new right is a big-tent movement built on reality and forward momentum rather than purity spirals

If you’ve ever wondered why right-leaning creators constantly react to and platform Shoe0nHead (even when she criticizes Trump mildly), this episode explains it.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be pulling a thread that we got to in another video and in this other video we were talking about the. Community of early online skeptics slash atheist, which was like the core of sort of YouTube culture in the earliest days of YouTube.

And how the individuals in this community that went right, they first became anti-feminist and anti woke, then went into Gamergate and then became the seedbed that the new right movement grew out of.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And then another group of them drifted in another direction. They drifted left and the group that drifted left like they, they were in the early atheist anti theist movement.

And then the movement went either at the anti-feminist or anti woke stage. Yeah. They lost their audiences. Notably, we didn’t talk about it in that video, but there is actually one that drifted left [00:01:00] even after that stage. He was there for anti-feminist, he was there for anti woke, and he only drifted left at the trans stuff.

This is dev slash short Fighter Taku, who has co off his views are way lower than ours now. If you look at like weekly counts

Simone Collins: has he overall drifted left?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, he has refused to really call out the trans community as a serious problem. And something that needs to be in some way, you know, the, like it legislatively something like that, a addressed.

Speaker 3: Inspector, do you know if the killer was a man or a woman? Well, if ca I know that. What else is there? The kitten,

Malcolm Collins: And I, I think that that’s part of, he’s also become more proc censorship, like censoring people in his forums and stuff like that. Really?

Simone Collins: Wow. That surprises me. It seems so unlike who I thought he was when I first started watching his videos.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that’s why he lost a lot of his followership, right?

Speaker 8: What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for [00:02:00] gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

Malcolm Collins: Like it does, it does seem very anti what I thought he was right. But we noted one notable unique case in all of this, which was shoe on head. And Shoe on Head was very unique for a number of reasons. The, the biggest being is that she didn’t drift left over time or begin to adopt leftist talking points.

She was thoroughly leftist from the beginning and, and quite a bit more leftist than I think a casual viewer may believe. She for example, to go over some of her leftist positions universal Healthcare, she wants, she has strong support of labor unions. She’s a believer in free college. She is a, as well as tuition forgiveness.

She’s broadly anti-capitalist and anti-corporate regularly criticizing big businesses, everything like that. And she promotes working class [00:03:00] popularism. She voted for Joe Biden in 2020. She was a very strong supporter of Bernie Sanders. And so yeah, very, very left wing, especially in her economic views.

And also in, in her social views to an extent. .

Simone Collins: She, she hasn’t talked about it a lot. In, in most of her recent videos, she, she’ll come out critical of Trump, but in no way more than in, in fact, less than many of the conservative. People that I’ll hear on YouTube these days, which is weird.

Malcolm Collins: That I would say

Simone Collins: is true more

Malcolm Collins: recent videos.

But if you, if you look at the whole holisticness of her work, she did not lose followers when she was talking about these leftist things. And she even has the name among her fan base of Ka mommy. So, you know, it’s a sweet name I think. But it’s also socially she’s been shown to be quite progressive.

She right now is married to a trad C and has a kid, so be aware of that. And she converted to Catholicism over COVID. But before that, she was in a [00:04:00] long-term relationship with armored skeptic where she was public about having a 24 7 BDSM daddy, Dom little girl relationship.

Simone Collins: She was not really,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: Whoa. She. Wow, okay.

Malcolm Collins: And she still hasn’t condemned kink or anything like that, which is funny because on the social leftist front that would put her with us, where we do not condemn kink at all. We’re like, what? People are aroused by random

Simone Collins: things. I know. Dumb, dumb little girl, very Catholic you know, but they work father into everything.

I mean, come on.

Malcolm Collins: I guess that’s right. Yeah.

Simone Collins: See, it’s extremely paternalistic as, as a religion and like organization. I don’t understand why that that particular affiliation wouldn’t be. Quite match.

Malcolm Collins: But I mean, she has kind of made joking videos about kink. She made that one a really good one actually, about women getting into like monster effer books.[00:05:00]

Oh yeah. She didn’t outright condemn it. It was more the way that we talk about stuff like that where it is like women are ridiculous, that they pretend that men are the, the deviant ones and that they’re little, little Es. But in that other video, what I, what I talked about was why is she still relevant, but none of the other leftists.

YouTubers are not relevant is because she didn’t try to change her audience. And she didn’t need to convert her audience. Her audience was never really persuaded by her economic arguments. She was never a pipeline out of the right to anyone. She’s still a mainstream watch figure in the right, and when I say in the right, I mean if, if she did a video and Asma Gold didn’t do a cover of it, I would be very surprised.

Leaflet covers a lot of her videos. N Sinor always needs to brag when he gets mentioned in one of her videos, so clearly he’s watching [00:06:00] them. You know, if she mentioned us or birth rates, obviously I would be there.

Speaker 4: Do you think it’s possible that

Malcolm.

Speaker 4: could be watching you right now?

Speaker 3: Well, if I was

Malcolm.

Speaker 3: , I would certainly be watching and possibly tapping for later playback because you know, it’s a big deal to be talked about on

Speaker 6: A shoe on head video.

Malcolm Collins: and it’s and, and I, and I watch a lot of her videos too, just for even sort of like cultural relevance in the right, we pointed out that Sky Brows regularly has her along all of his alt-right v tubers and everything like that in his videos.

And so first I like, I wanna talk on two topics here. One is, its how and why because this came up a lot in the comments of that video.

How has Shoe on Head maintained this right wing following and loyalty for an example of another right wing influencer? Ho Math, ho Math did a chart of women he trusts, like online influencers.

He trusted. And she came in really high on that [00:07:00] chart above I, I think the majority of like female conservative influencers on the chart, right? Like, that is saying something, right? Note at that what do the characters get at the top of the chart, which I think is fun is Pearl Davis. He is like Pearl Davis sniffed this girl out.

This is with the, it was on his episode where he was talking about the the big, the

Simone Collins: one who said that she was a virgin when she got married and the pope blessed her marriage and then turns out she was actually sleeping with this other guy while engaged, et cetera.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and in that episode I realized just as a, a brief tangent here, and I think shoe on head actually sort of fits into this is that of conservative female influencers, because I wasn’t watching N’s version of this, I was watching the leaflet cover of this.

Is that in the, in the conservative influencer space, there is a certain type of woman who just like comes up and her front and center thing is. I am ex religious woman, r...