Getting yourself in a feedback loop can be a good thing. That guy at the gym who tried to motivate himself time and again to lose weight, maybe his failure was rooted in some other problem. Since this blog is about internet weirdos conspiracy theories and grifting let’s assume it’s financial. Having been exposed to the tangential grift magnetism content of wellness industry grift since he’s now firmly anti-vaccination, his lousy job coupled with losing money on shitty gematria based sports picks can’t allow him an expensive gym membership. Drinking his own urine didn’t help like he was told. All the other quackery didn’t work. The cognitive dissonance is building up on all the internet crap he’s been subjected, so he decides to give the gym a try. Saves up some money, joins, and starts to see some results because exercise actually works. Friends and family notice the change. Positive verbal feedback. Keeps going to the gym. Hangs around more normal people. Meets a nice girl. They move in together, get a puppy, get married and he throws away his notebook with all his decodes, and becomes the next ambassador to Wollongong.
The key to the success was interruption of a negative feedback loop and substitution with a positive feedback loop. This is much easier said than done. The old adage of wanting to change holds true. Those that are targets in the internet grifting MLM scheme are already getting a lot of negative feedback about them being real life and internet weirdos. Even being called out as an internet weirdo is their five minutes of fame and is better than being ignored.
So that brings me to the best internet weirdo I’ve visited this year, which was just a few days ago. And, I refuse to give oxygen to this brush fire by mentioning screen or channel names. At least for now. The top of the grift pyramid loves to pump these guys egos up - everybody hates you because you know the truth! Attaboy!TM.
My strange little friend is consistent with his video content. The video titles almost always use the phrase gangstalking, and he’s being persecuted. It’s obviously never occurred to him that the gangstalkers have not figured out how to use their vast resources to track him down on YouTube and load up the platform with content regarding their mortal enemy here.
The negative feedback loop is - night driving. And they demonstrate that they know who and where he is by only having one working headlight. And naturally, even with that ongoing main theme, he expands into everything else being a sign that the stalkers are out to get him. Commenting while he taps away from the safety of his car about all the things the stalkers are doing to stalk him and apparently doing absolutely nothing else but stalking him. There’s a hitchhiker at night! Gangstalker. There’s a car with two working headlights, but the high beams are on! Gangstalker. Easily distracted by the negative feedback loop he’s stuck in of his private little persecution world. Fortunately, maybe, limiting the drives to night time instead of being a problem on a busy daytime freeway.
Since his surprisingly large library of videos on this is a proud announcement that he’s got some cognitive bias problems I’m sure he’s bouncing around and getting looks at other dodgy content. And getting positive reinforcement on bad other bad ideas. Maybe there’s already been a sovereign citizen grifter that’s tried to convince him that to be safe he just needs a special license plate to keep the stalkers at bay. If so, the reality is that if he gets stopped (maybe for a headlight being out at night!) the police will probably already treat him oddly for his bogus plate. More feedback on how the entire world is out to get him.
For someone as proficient as me with finding odd content these types of accounts are easy to find. The process amounts to looking at known leaders. Then look at the people that are active in the comments. Then look at their content. And by the time you look at friends of friends there’s always somebody putting out copies of thoroughly debunked content like 9/11 hoaxes, anti-vaxx and contrails.
Which makes researchers wonder - if social media sites claim to care, and you can find this content so easily, why can’t they tweak their algorithms to maybe pay attention to facts instead of views? Not our headlight friend here, his videos have less than 10 views normally. But those that are courting him. They’re the ones trying to encourage him to jump to that next level. Start mirroring videos. Go on to Twixter and talk about that great new channel you found. Post that meme on Facebook.
And all this going on as the King, Alex Jones just gets back on Twitter. Bear in mind that he’s more of a symptom of the overall problem. It’s easier to encourage continued negativity than to break out of the loop and get involved with a more positive loop. When there’s money involved.
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