So what exactly is gematria, or more to the point of this blog, what is conspiracy gematria?
Basically, it’s an introductory level course. A teaser, a tiny crack in the opening of the conspiracy rabbit hole. Its niche is a form of what I call conspiracy theory light.
I’m not going to dwell on the basics. The big names recap the methodology on many, perhaps even most videos. That should be a red flag in and of itself. The long time viewers of the content don’t need that recap. And the number of subscribers and active participants (as measured by views, likes and comments) never matches up with the desired view that it’s a growing practice that many are constantly waking up to and joining the party.
The formula is this:
Scapegoat + Baseless Conspiracy + Financial Hook = Words Turned Into Numbers Narrative.
The parlor trick is to find matching numbers, presented in the narrative, that indicates the narrative represents evidence that the assertions about the scapegoat and conspiracy theory are true. In reality, these numbers invariably turn out to be two or three digits and have little statistical significance. It’s up to the charisma of the presenter to sell the narrative. Some are pretty good, some are average. Some are laughably bad. The best presenters have mastered the art of altering the numbers in bizarre manners beyond the basic A=1, B=2, C=3 format. Multiple different calculations (ciphers) with different values for the letters, transpositions, reflections, use of lists (prime numbers so 11 is now 5 being the 5th prime number).
It can’t be stressed enough, all the cheap ways to alter the numbers combined with the golden rule about to be presented shortly, means quite literally it is impossible not to find a match if you put a little effort into it.
The Golden Rule:
You’re always allowed to disregard when you’re wrong. If you use 10 different ciphers getting you 10 different values, 9 of them being wrong is instantly dismissed by that 1 that is right. Psychologically, this spills over into real life never having to admit you’re wrong. You just need to double down and run some other words and numbers and force it.
The Scapegoat
This is by far your common right wing extremist targets. Historically it began with The Illuminati/Freemasons/NWO, but getting people used to their own personal demons and throwing in occasional potshots directly at the Jews - we didn’t expect anything else. The money is always in the scapegoats that get the most attention.
The Financial Hook
It’s not really about the football, other than grifters see a way to have a side hustle with misinformation. The most common hook though, is and always will be American Football. It’s the most popular sport, the scoring system lends itself to a lot of juicy numbers in the target range. In second place is the scammy nature of cryptocurrency. Get rich quick schemes have more allure than the idea of an evil cabal. The core idea is that the system is rigged by the scapegoat, and if you learn their secret code you can strike back and take money away from them. This idea merges the common theme of baseless conspiracies. So many people would be in on it, it would be impossible to keep it a secret. That, and other common conspiracy impossibilities. The easiest debunk, if the person doing gematria on a football game is winning lots of money, they would simply win lots of money betting themselves instead of selling the system to others.
The Conspiracies
There always baseless outrage clickbait based on yesterday’s news. Maybe today’s if the celebrities involved are big name enough to warrant immediate attention. By association the human brain associates the topics with the gematria coding. And the topics are always NSFW, inappropriate for the dinner table, or victim shaming. This lends itself to the air of secrecy - one has special knowledge and insight that the normies including family don’t understand. And often times the normies just want to communicate that it’s a waste of time, but aren’t prepared to debunk the gematria on top of debunking the baseless conspiracy.
The Psychology of Gematria
Is driven by cognitive biases. Confirmation bias rules the kingdom. Recency bias has a high seat in the council. Recency bias gets one matching up current events with a core block of evil numbers. If the person doing gematria has been around awhile they won’t realize that some time ago those same numbers meant something else, and are funneled into what it means only for today. If they’ve done the natural human thing of doing personalized gematria of themselves it causes an internal mental conflict when their personal numbers now suddenly mean something unwanted.
But the king of them all, confirmation bias is the big one. Through the same tactics that cults use a gematria using person needs to and learns to ignore the inevitability of evil numbers meaning their own life is one of evil. When a conspiracist who genuinely believes the baseless conspiracy enters the rabbit hole, they have a pretty good idea that they aren’t a part of the scapegoat group. Yet, through hammering home the ridiculous methods of identifying who is in on the evil conspiracy everyone else could be or is in on the evil conspiracy. Even the fact that gematria conspiracy narratives always dwell on negativity is damaging. You simply aren’t cool if you aren’t focusing on how evil someone or something else is. Just ignore that technically the system you are using makes you a part of that same evil. Your own personal thoughts on racism, homophobia, and politics are given a flimsy excuse to dominate internal mental gymnastics.
The grooming starts early, you aren’t just a random person aimlessly poking numbers into a gematria calculator, you’re a decoder. You are a secret agent uncovering hidden mysteries with your magical knowledge that can be used to predict the future. And that is in defiance to the constant use of waiting until the daily news headlines are the source of events that already happened. The follow up grooming is an intense patting each other on the back festival of compliments on finding any possible predictive outcome. The community is decoding, and quite literally even if the group leader hasn’t obviously made a narrative for both teams, the community has. It’s still ok to be wrong, as long as one person in the community is right.
It’s taken too long, but there is finally a sense that gematria and misinformation and “incoherent gibberish” are synonymous. If we were to go back in time and analyze the previous content and tally up, manufactured gematria “evidence” is overwhelmingly pro right wing extremism at worst, neutral sports gambling and practically no pro left wing talk.
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