Well, That Didn’t Age Well

The unholy marriage of capitalism and misinformation is a happy one, until competing grift comes into a head to head confrontation.  When you pick a long term issue and the population is in a tizzy about it long before the long term results are in there’s a huge gap to operate the scam in.  Start lying heavily about the impact of burning fossil fuels in the 1970’s —-> make money like crazy for decades and not worry about the monster created that really didn’t start to become obvious until now.  Start lying about Covid at the onset of the pandemic.  Don’t worry about the impact of if there’s a “long” form of the virus.  Like how the chicken pox virus sticks with you to give shingles later:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shingles/symptoms-causes/syc-20353054#

There’s a reason conspiracy grifting has the format it does.  Maximum outrage at the onset of crisis and ride it out until it becomes far too obvious that it’s a bad idea.  Emotional reaction —-> immediate.  Critical thinking about long term consequences —-> attack those that know what’s going on and muddy the waters as much as possible.  And that leaves us with a whole host of things that didn’t age well.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Far Side panels:

Cigarette smoking is almost universally reviled now as a bad idea with serious long term consequences.  The grifting format that persists today worked perfectly well.  Lie about the science.  Lobby politicians who would rather be wealthy than right.  And just roll (ha!) with it as long as the gravy train exists and the long term health care costs can be blamed on politicians that maybe weren’t even born when the inflationary impact really hits hot and heavy.

Each of these “leaders” that thought about the smoking issue can’t be pinned down with an arbitrary group label.  Some understood the issue and worked against tobacco.  Some fell for the “it’s not so bad” hype and got bamboozled into not addressing it as they should have.  And some, the kind of people that talk on right wing media, knew damn well it was bad news and were just in it for the money, having successfully predicted that Obama was going to be the Antichrist and the rise of gematria proving anything.

Never underestimate the power of a short term monetary lure for being used in long term bad ideas.  Cigarettes used to be marketed on television commercials.  And although more recent generations are aware of cigarettes = bad for health, and even that cigarettes were marketed as something that made you cool instead of a dweeb, I wonder if the extent of the marketing is known to them.

https://flintstones.fandom.com/wiki/Winston

The Flintstones, a famous cartoon of its day.  Advertised its main character, Fred, as cool for smoking a cigarette at the end of each episode for the first couple of seasons.

Now granted that this show wasn’t intended to be a typical Saturday morning kid’s cartoon when it started.  It was a sitcom that just happened to be animated.  By the time Pebbles was born into the cartoon family the Winston cigarette ads were dropped.  And now after a gradual process including Surgeon General warnings on packaging, anti-smoking ads, and the more and more obvious heart disease and lung cancer effects smoking is admitted to be a bad thing, even by those who still smoke.  People who smoked heavily in the late 50’s and 60’s probably don’t complain that much about it now because they simply aren’t alive anymore to complain about how long cancer killed them.

The marketing ends up being a lot of the cost to purchase the product.  Studies are down to maximize sales TODAY.  Let the future sort it out later.  The cigarettes themselves are a rather bland and undifferentiated product.  Competing named products are made of the same materials and mostly interchangeable.  The only way to separate yourself from the pack (ha!) is how you market it.  And boy did curious kids love themselves a little rebellion and try cigarettes to be an adult as soon as possible.

It’s not so amazing that there aren’t gematria decodes about the evils of smoking.  The outrage porn has run its course and doesn’t work as well.  How dare you tell me not to be cool anymore!  Take away those regulations!  It’s my body, my rights!  And to hell with the effects of second hand smoke making others pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, bring back smoking in restaurants.

Gematria is also a bland and mostly undifferentiated product.  All the decodes are equally bad and irrelevant.  For instance, there’s still a smattering of LISP=56 gematria on Twixter today where Qanon ignores that 56= SOCIETY OF JESUS in the Zachosphere.  A huge Jesuit number over there. The marketing is still the same in a way, how dare you tell me I’m not allowed to say that Kamala Harris is a shape shifting demon!  It’s my free speech, it’s my rights!  To hell with some clueless idiot with a gun walking into a school interfering with others lives!

It’s a pretty safe bet that gematria decoding will not age well.  Every $10 a month Patreon donation is about the cost of pack of cigarettes.  It’s one less movie, or one less restaurant meal or less of something you might get short term entertainment value out of instead of just something you will be shamed for in the future of an internet that doesn’t forget.