There are some common cross pollination themes in the gematria community (extended into the adjacent communities like the weird shit in the sky crowd) that represent genuine interests of genuine people who you can qualify as genuine “true believers” in conspiracy content. Once somebody has mastered or at least acquired a degree of competence you have to deal with a lot of, as Kuzgesagt explained in a video last year, of your brain being actually quite stupid.
There are lots of things that can go wrong with your brain being stupid, but of course my favorite is confirmation bias. How on earth somebody thinks that picking a sports game correctly about 50% of the time extending into a personality that thinks they are smart about everything is a weird road to travel on. Within the common themes there are some topics that show up quite often. Music, being extremely subjective on what qualifies as good is likely #1. And of course every conspiracy theorist thinks they are an expert in Constitutional Law. And there’s games on the internet. And not surprisingly, a lot of the games in the not conspiracy content section of people’s lives are what you would call violent first person shooter content.
The point of that is not to insinuate that there is rampant grooming of school shooters to act out an organized plot to control political narratives by intimidation. It’s a lead in to the next phase of the plot. People like to be entertained, people like to master a challenge and be acknowledged that they are good at something. And frankly, as mastery sets in a fatigue sets in where your chosen passion becomes dull - because the games are really quite dull. They all play out the same way. You start off with a character to role play. There’s a mechanism in place to upgrade. Picking up ammo that is magically just lying around, going to a shop to buy a rocket launcher. Then you go out shoot things. Kill or be killed. Brag about completing the mission and how much you killed. Rinse and repeat. The type of personality that is entertained by this is likely to think that their boredom can be alleviated by purchase of a similar game. Then argue about why Call of Duty is better than Battleground.
The empire building games are a different beast. There’s less focus on quick reflexes and a chance to sort through some puzzle solving. The online games always have some cooperative functions built in for a “massive multiplayer” game. Moving on to a different but similar game is still in the cards. But there’s also the darker side. The online shop where real money doesn’t really make you better, just faster. And you end up chasing the dragon, where your new found friends are trying to out do you. The way to prove you deserve to be the king and the others are looking to you for guidance, your stupid brain trying to out do the others is the willingness to pay for their upgrades, too. This doesn’t need to be directly monetary. You may be convinced to grind through leveling up on your own to use your valuable time to “protect” the realm.
In a lot of ways, the cognitively damaged consumer is the best consumer. Try smoking weed, going to the mini mart at the gas station and NOT buying the bag of chips. The jumbo bag, not just the little one, because you need to defend your weed smoking buddy back at the apartment who is gonna want some chips, too. And one doesn’t need to use controlled substances for that effect. Your stupid brain needs to get beyond going on tilt.
Going on tilt is when you know you’ve got some degree of mastery, yet by luck of the draw or distraction or whatever something doesn’t go your way. In the film Molly’s Game we have a plot point of how a character has Molly tell him to back down. He knows he should back down. But the lure of “getting even” is too strong and he ends up making more bad decisions, throwing good money after bad. And he of course accuses the winners of cheating. And I have decades of experience seeing how online game’s deliberately gaslight to provoke the tilt mode. If you are not laser focused on what’s going on with your character, your empire, you can find clues where the math just doesn’t work for OTHER empires.
Now things get tricky on the part of those that figure this out and lash out. Because without solid evidence to back you up there’s collateral damage on accusing the wrong people for wrongdoing that really weren’t involved. And that’s where we are at in chess right now. I introduced International Master Levy back when I first put out my multipart series on chess cheating months ago. And his video here is dated after my most recent follow up.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M5aJ1Su7Hn8
Everyone, even at the top levels, is talking about cheating at chess. Wild accusations, often completely baseless and having less merit than a Marjorie Taylor Greene Tweet are being thrown around. Lots of stupid brains refusing to admit that somebody was just better than them, at least for one day. Lots of actual cheating and gaslighting, even at low levels. Remember, the angry tilted consumer is a good consumer. I’ve played enough blitz chess online to have encountered my fair share of questionable opponents. And before I get deliberately misquoted, I’m talking about sites from more than a decade ago that no longer exist. I can only imagine what the future holds with our silicon overlords being so proficient now.
As with something like mask mandates for a pandemic, banning someone even just temporarily, is a bad idea. People hate to be forced to told what to do. The conspiracist, whether a true believer who’s been gaslit or a grifter pulling the strings is just going to double down. Hans Niemann fans aren’t going to back off. They are just going to double down in the comments about how he’s the bestest ever. Magnus Carlsen fans will forgive him for his own moments of petulance without admitting more than one side can both be wrong. There’s a perpetual feedback loop of more cheating, more accusations for cheating, more agendas being pushed that have nothing to do with the cheating because the goal has already been achieved. More distractions throwing people off their game, “I wonder if this guy’s cheating like I heard?” More false labels because you will find people of a different race, religion and sexual orientation. It’s a never ending quest to search out the cognitively impaired who simply believe their own stupid brain instead of actual evidence, even if it’s only temporary. No go to the online store and buy a book or ebook you patzer. Your opening repertoire sucks.
No comments:
Post a Comment