Monday, November 20, 2023

Cold Reading, Hot Reading And Internet Grifting MLM

Gematria is a fantastic tool for cold reading.  It’s really kind of the only point for a large number of aficionados.  If a standardized set of rules existed, which ain’t gonna happen, some sort of replication of results giving it empirical value would exist.  Instead what we have is a ton of ways to alter, manipulate, cherry pick the data.

Pick any common two digit gematriat, for example 83.  This can and is not just 83, but it’s also:

38 by transposition
23 by place on prime number list
308 since zeroes are dropped, and vice versa
803 because combine both those rules
318 because 1’s also don’t count since multiplying something by 1 yields the same number.
And even more creative manipulation, usually used to truncate a larger number into a smaller number.

Then there’s the classic other common practice.  Putting a word or phrase into a calculator.  Even if you just use the four base ciphers that’s four different values.  If you’re looking for 83, you’re likely to only find one 83.  Maybe two if it’s a gematria palindrome with the same value in a forward and reverse.  Now add that the Gematrinator calculator offers 30ish different ciphers.  That’s a lot more chances to hit your 83 you crave.  And what do you do when you hit that 83?  Gloat about how smart you are.  And what do you do when you miss?

Ignore it.  You’ve been trained it’s ok to be wrong.  Even though with the vast number of ciphers and manipulation the chances of getting a hit approach 100%.

Our classic psychic cold reading uses rapid fire magically based suppositions to psychologically prime the target. 

John Edwards: “I’m seeing a woman’s name, Rose or Rita or something close.”

Clueless Scamee:  We’ll my uncle has a dog named Roxy.

John:  Ow, yeah, that’s it.  Let me go fishing some more.

The man had a full length tv show based on this bullshit.  Instead of a human woman with a name starting off with more than one pick, now we’re talking about a dog.

Be wary of gematria social media accounts offering a service costing big bucks.  Something like a season long sports package of guaranteed money making picks for a $1000.  The basic gematria has already done its work of getting a cold reading on you.  The creator already has a good idea of who your favorite team is.  He has a rough idea of your age and socioeconomic group.  It’s the same reason you shouldn’t be putting out your birth month with a fun gif generator based on some fun meme.  The cold reading has turned into a hot reading.  Now the gematria guru has identified you as a gung ho believer, someone advanced enough for special attention.

In the MLM format of going for petty theft of Patreon subscriptions this is where the gung ho gematria newbie is used as free advertisement for the top tier.  Encouraged to create their own blogs, videos and further disseminate the message of the leader.  In this setting, the psychic style gematria leader is looking for a bigger score.  Individual messages to the target are tailored to fit the cold reading information to encourage further entry into the rabbit hole.  And with the beauty of gematria, an individualized narrative can be created for multiple targets at the same time.

What these targeted marks fail to do, could do, and probably won’t do, is compare notes looking for the contradictions that result.  But attention and money issues are powerful reinforcers.  Wanting to feel special and not seeing the misses far outnumbering the hits has put them in a cognitive blind spot.

*Anecdotal Evidence Warning*
My favorite from five years ago is the Twitter guy that openly was bragging about scoring what he called something like his ‘hot spiritual hippie chick.’  He purposefully used gematria to get her into divulging details about herself so he could manipulate her.  It’s a pretty safe bet that the relationship was just a fling and didn’t last.  Maybe that’s all she wanted, no way for me to tell.  But what I could see was he was bragging about being manipulative.

This kind of thing is outside what social media should be expected to control.  It would be extremely unfair to have governments step in and force social media companies to ban gematria and similar content.  It’s up to the users to get themselves educated on the kinds of things that are out there.

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