Other Bad Ideas

I’m not trying to win friends or make any $ with this blog.  The information within is intended as a resource aimed mostly at the type of person, possibly very new to social media, who stumbles upon something that makes them say, “What the fuck did I actually just read?!?”

When properly viewed as such, life is a competition for resources.  What people do not get about life is that in addition to others trying to manipulate your thinking to get on board with their own agenda, is that your own brain is playing tricks on itself.  Effective humor often requires misdirection where your brain to be mislead until you are nailed with the punchline.  Sleight of hand magic tricks confuse the brain because someone has dedicated a large chunk of time to practice their craft, and the magician’s dexterity makes wondrous things happen.  Optical illusions are more direct - a certain visual pattern is displayed, the brain is not able to process what the eyes see and “fills in the blanks”.

The well practiced gematria guru misdirects your brain into thinking you are making successful sports picks when you aren’t.  The well practiced gematria guru doesn’t tell you it’s just a trick and does whatever it takes to back peddle, confuse and obscure that what he said doesn’t actually qualify as a prediction, or if it did it was wrong and by gosh that was the first time ever it was wrong!  The well practiced gematria guru lets your brain fill in the blanks on your free time, finding synchronicity where it doesn’t exist.  Then pats you on the back for being an important member of the cult, gaining what amounts to free advertisement for the current fundraiser.

In the spectrum of bad ideas, gematria in and of itself is not bad.  But whether by intent or accidentally, in practice it serves as an identifier of someone who has a cognitive bias problem.  Someone who is extremely racist, transphobic, closed minded - doesn’t have the critical thinking skills to navigate the internet without incurring more damage than good.  Social media sites do more pretending to care than actually caring, with responses coming off as more like, “I’m sorry I got caught, now what do I do to get the government off my back without me paying a stiff fine.”

The psychological aspects of conspiracy theories are not widespread knowledge in high school.  Psychology is a murky enough subject by itself, also with its fair share of less than honest people.  Those that understand the psychology of manipulating other people are more than willing to drop in on a gematria conversation to try and suggest that their bad idea is a better bad idea than the other bad ideas.

So it’s time to start talking about some of these other bad ideas over the next few weeks.  Psychologically, a parallel is found in Scientology.  L. Ron didn’t jump right into the absolutely batshit crazy Xenu story right away.  Years of indoctrination and abuse preceded hitting that gem.  Qanon thinking didn’t directly cause a bunch of less than brilliant people to try to overthrow the government.  But along the spectrum of bad ideas it became a springboard for exposure to some of the darker content out there.

Here’s a list of some of these crank magnetism topics I’ll cover.  As usual there’s overlap in crank magnetism.  One of the first things grifters need to do is discredit the experts, so science denial is a given.

1). Sovereign citizens 

2). Violent event denial

3). Flat Earth/Moon landing hoax (science denial)

4). Health and nutrition alternative medicine

5). Anti-Vaxxers

6). 5G 

I anticipate getting bogged down or distracted and end up combining some of those together and adding new ones.