Gematria Club has been making a pest of themselves for 7+ years on Twitter. Supposedly it’s a Gary the Numbers guy affiliated account. Gary, like Zachary Hubbard, has helped put the baseless in baseless conspiracies using the sports are rigged, everything is evil, buy my sports picks angle. The modus operandi is so similar they could be the same person.
Now this particular nugget of dinosaur wisdom has already made the rounds of social media, and has already been debunked several times over.
A simple Google search for phrases of dinosaur bone oil stories reveals that at least once every couple years somebody has felt the need to explain that this is a myth.
In the conspiracy theory world, and by extension our global political atmosphere, doubling down is not just common it’s expected. Some of the most popular social media accounts are so focused on demonizing the “other side” that when they get caught red handed posting something proven to be wrong they can be expected to not just ignore the correct information, but immediately go on the counterattack.
Doubling down and defending an indefensible position is a sure sign of someone that is closed minded to the correct information. In the same manner, tripling, quadrupling, septupling down by continually posting old misinformation elevates the poster to disinformation land. They are not concerned with correct information, they are concerned with the rotating target audience. And that target audience has already had a life full of being told they’re wrong.
Gematria Club on Twitter is operating as one of those accounts that is fully aware that they are not providing any useful service to help others. Selling sports picks instead of actually being so talented they could make enough money betting by themselves. The higher end of the multilevel marketing scam. Doubling down is a characteristic they are searching for. Psychologically the person that has graduated from the phase of posting comments on a YouTube video to defending an indefensible stance requires more effort to be unconvinced.
The gradient works something like this.
Zach, I love your videos, you rule! —> Zach, here’s $10 because I love your content so much! —> Zach, I started my own YouTube channel! —> Zach, I’ll meet you in NYC to help scream at passers by that 911 is a hoax! Not Zach—>You are wrong because Zach said so! Not Zach —> Shit, I lost my job and nobody else will hire me because my social media had me talking about people needing a bullet in the head. (Or maybe some content less extreme, but you get the idea.)
Just like the alcoholic who spontaneously gets fed up with the directly cost, the employment problems that come with that, the cost of the associated health care and or legal fees, there are those that get the message far along down the rabbit hole gradient. It’s much better for society to get no further than the $10 because I love your content phase, something akin to realizing that social drinking for entertainment is fine. Towards the upper end our alcoholic friend is insisting they perform better at their job because they only get really wasted on the weekends and calling off work on Monday because the Chargers game was the late game is something everybody does. And drives their car into the house at that nasty curve they took at 75 miles per hour.
The obvious example of extreme doubling down is Donald Trump. Social media content of Trump supporters is heavily invested in “he’s not a liberal” instead of having a valid arsenal of facts to support what good he’s doing. Constant expensive legal troubles, throwing his co-conspirators under the bus, the constant cover ups to avoid accountability. And the left isn’t a whole lot better. Now there is a need to overcompensate by claiming, at least my guy is not Trump, Boebert, Greene or Santos. Give me money. The political grifting scene has exploded, duplicating the conspiracy grifting format.
Doubling down on conspiracy content is a signal that somebody is advanced far into being completely closed minded. It would be nice for a change to see an honest debate about real issues instead of constantly rehashing old, discredited information. But there’s a new sheriff in town, and he owns Twitter. He’s at the saloon right now, let’s see what happens.
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