In accounting, your balance sheet represents a snapshot of where you are at today. Your profit and loss statements represent how the company is doing that leads to that snapshot. Notice that the P&L part is pluralized. Statements, not statement. It’s not entirely fair to assess the health of a company by one year’s statement alone. Trends are important, the company that had one bad year because they didn’t get that big contract that they expected, or a key person passed away, is not as bad off as a company that continually hemorrhages cash.
The tricky part is the timing. Deciding when to pay attention to the problems and let it go or make changes. Humans, and this odd need for attention do a particularly bad job of looking at the long term big picture. In the Decade A - well it’s not too hot yet, climate changes is bullshit. Decade B - more people are talking about this, maybe there’s something to it, ah we’ll be fine. Decade C - starting to think they’re on to something. Gosh I hope somebody fixes this so I don’t have to worry about it. Decade D - maybe I should do more to help, but gosh this sucks. Decade E - holy shit, the planet’s on fire. Why didn’t anybody do anything about this decades ago?
In the grifting world, you bypass any concern for whatever decade your in. Our accountants may be in a position that they are heavily invested in fudging the numbers to disguise that they never realized that nothing is going to save the failing company - those financial statements if honestly presented show the reality doesn’t match the dialogue. So they do the grifter thing. Pick a scapegoat, psychologically project their own problems on others, muddy the waters, double down - anything to avoid the harsh reality that the slow burn has caught up to them. Maybe they can get away with getting caught being handled with, “Uh, I’m sorry?!?”
The grifting on the internet is the short con. What are people talking about today? What can I throw shade on today? I’m never actually going to put the effort into buying the Eiffel Tower, upgrading it and selling it for an overpriced amount. It’s just a matter of finding the right gullible people to convince that’s the plan and to invest in my pyramid scheme for them to purchase their very own genuine Eiffel Tower.
Some of the more entertaining movies about con men are the long con. The group of lovable rogues hatches and executes a brilliant scheme. The Sting, Ocean’s 11, House of Games. These movies would be much shorter if it wasn’t the long con. But they do have scenes of the short con, a plot device to show how skillful these guys are.
Hyperindividualism is how people insist that they are all edgy and cool by displays of their individuality.
Getting those piercings was fun in college, but as a job seeker in a professional office, maybe you need to give up on that. Maybe that garter snake was a fun and different pet, but the herpetology got creepy and weird when you insisted that you should be allowed to be an individual and NEEDED a black mamba. But Dad, that garter snake is boring! How dare the city for having a law about not possessing dangerous wildlife!
No wonder there’s a mental health crisis in our youth. There’s an encouragement to allow individuals to be individuals and there’s a line in the sand society draws that you shouldn’t cross. And all the while the internet grifters encourage the division - what makes you the coolest TODAY?
The psychological slow burn is how this has been building up for a long time. Employment - fight tooth and nail to be making maximum salary and perks, the dream of home ownership and freedom that money brings. And even giving up and faking interest in a job just to pretend to fit in and get a paycheck that your capabilities don’t deserve. The opposing ends of the spectrum lure the middle class to the ends. Garter snake versus black mamba versus no snake at all.
I’m skeptical on the quoted percentages of toxic narcissists. There’s a link between Hyperindividualism and narcissists.
I think there’s not just the math of more people x the expected percent of narcissists, but an increase in narcissists by percent. The grifters are magnifying identifying as an individual versus a member of a society. Now you can’t just settle for being the coolest person in your family, now you have to out cool everyone on social media. Your confirmation bias got you this far, so let’s do the last thing you should, and ally yourself with grifters on social media. The grifters on the internet have no intention of paying attention to the long term consequences.
Gematria is in a phase currently of settling in to build up for a new round of major shitstorms going on. They are quiet, too quiet. The sports pickers are just picking sports. The crypto bros are just doing crypto. The Jesus is coming soon guys are just Jesusing. The spiritual synchronicity crowd is just synchronizing. What isn’t changing is the fresh crop of not the most stable personalities having experienced a mix of happy versus tortured childhoods. And all it takes is one more unseen event, the next crisis, for the cycle to start anew. The next big hoax that isn’t a hoax will have some tiny and insignificant numbers. And no amount of government funded therapy mambas is going to be enough to drag upcoming generations from the miasma of polarizing content.
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