More Screwing Around With AI Overviews

I expect a big surge in cognitive dissonance related depression.  The most basic and obviously false claims that have spread and gotten traction are not getting a free pass from generative AI overviews.  All the really weird and easily debunked stuff - the vast majority of it generated during a time when pushing extremist right wing views, ultimately for political and economic purposes, the response is NO.

I’m not going to include screen shots for all of these. At this point of this post I’m only thinking of one more. That’s too much time and unnecessary.  From a scientific method point of view, it doesn’t matter so much what *I* think about it.  Anybody should be able to type in the same searches I do and get the same results.  The AI is scraping the internet for its replies and should be giving consistent replies regardless of who is doing the query.

The cognitive dissonance (processing contradictory information) has been bypassed for a long time by the individual scraping the internet on their own.  Encouraged by those higher up on the pyramid to dismiss factual information and accept that the disinformation perspective that has been artificially enhanced by dirty tracks is perfectly acceptable.  Let your own confirmation bias dismiss being wrong about the important stuff.  You’ll be fine.  Wikipedia is wrong.  All the scientists are wrong.  Everyone smarter than you is wrong.  Everyone that built AI LLMs, they’re wrong, too.  The first line of defense to your bad information, a Google search so you can hunt down somebody that is putting out support of your bad idea is met with an AI overview front and center boldly stating that is, “Sorry bucko, you’re wrong.”

One of the early searches was disappointing.  That was, “Will an AI overview be different for conspiracy theorists and scientists?”  That was met with a, “No AI overview is available on this topic.”

“Is Wikipedia reliable?”  There’s a lengthy response acknowledging its strengths and limitations.  In a nutshell, Wikipedia is a great starting point, but you need critical thinking skills to get through deeper topics.  Wikipedia is not going to give you a flat out admission that a false fact is true.  It’s not going to give a flat out rejection of actual facts.  It’s not going to take sides on genuinely debatable subjects.

Now on to the fun stuff.

“How many people are killed by chemtrails each year?”

Summarizing AI overview - Chemtrails aren’t a real thing, so none.

“Was 9/11/2001 an inside job?”

Summary of AI - no, it was al-Qaeda and all the conspiracy theories related to it have been debunked.

“<various searches about Sandy Hook>”

No AI overview.

“How many elementary schools have litter boxes?”

None.  Ever.

“How many pizza parlors are fronts for child trafficking?”

Not a real thing, and it even mentions Pizzagate specifically.  See the screenshot at the top.

“Are Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield?”

No AI overview

“Who won the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.”

Joe Biden

My favorite and worthy of another screenshot.

No long winded speech.  Just one sentence which ends up being in a font way bigger than most AI overviews.

“Do vaccines cause autism?”

Numerous scientific studies have debunked this.

“Were the moon landings fake?”

You get a lengthy recap that includes some of the specific claims to.  Kind of sciency sounding , so a good portion of conspiracists will be turned off and unable to understand.  Do you really expect drunk Uncle Fred to understand laser ranging retro reflectors?

“Is climate change by humans real?”

Oh hell yes.

I take this ending to remind you, that the biggest voices, the overly aggressive loudmouths who talk like everything they s in all caps not only promote some of these ideas, but others that don’t generate an AI overview yet.  They are willing to deliberately be wrong about everything to gain traction on sorting out the most gullible.  Some of these queries were generated from an AI overview of, “What are the easiest conspiracy theories to debunk?”  The only time these easy low level gematria style items are addressed is if someone is promoting a specific con.  Don’t get involved in the gematria scam because I want you to pay my flat earth scam.  These are rabbit hole entry points.  Bait for the current news of not so rigorously addressed content because it’s fresh, but equally stupid.  Things that currently have no AI overview because they haven’t caught on much.  (For example Haitian immigrants eating pets.)

The Zero Click Internet & Gematria

https://www.techspot.com/article/2908-the-zero-click-internet/#google_vignette

In a lot of ways this blog has been for my own amusement.  More often than not, especially these days, seemingly more like training gematria scammers to be better scammers than stopping them.  However, simultaneously the old school gematria scammer content is quite remarkably less popular than the gematria boom in the mid 2010’s.  And I hold the zero click internet business model to be largely responsible for that.

My journey started with a YouTube video recommendation about the zero click internet, and if you haven’t done at least a quick look at the linked reference now would be a good time.  Like this blog that reference is in danger of disappearing.  Now when you do a search the top result is an AI overview of internet content.  Then follows some top references of independent websites that have the most relevance.  And for all practical purposes nobody bothers reading the references, which has been true forever among the misinformation and disinformation crowd.  Doing your own research has always been a confirmation biased shitfest of bad influencers gaming the system to put out bad information for fun, profit, political clout and the occasional nugget of wisdom buried within with a back story of a vapid and insincere message of, “I’m really a good guy, just misunderstood.”

Focusing on the for profit aspect - with intent short term profit is emphasized over long term sustainability.  The same way that family middle class settings are disappearing, small businesses are struggling.  Some fold.  Some (likely extremely few) turn the corner and become big enough to scale up things of benefit to the employees like health care and PTO.  Some merge within better established companies.  But for whatever reason, lack of ability to absorb rising costs within an inflationary death spiral - the days of the American dream and having your own business are disappearing.  The same is happening with search engine optimization.  Who sees your ad is driven by who pays the most directly to Google, not necessarily who is independently linking legitimate resources and their own content be it business or entertainment.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Google gives up completely on Blogger before 2025 has finished.

Short term, I take some consolation in knowing that here I am having gotten somewhere approaching a couple hundred thousand page views and even the scammers using it as a training ground to scam better - I’ve had an impact.  For example, my favorite bullshit gematria number, 113 being DISHONEST when there are clearly lots of perfectly good associations for the opposite, Truth = 113 (Capitals added).  The search results for, What is the significance of 113?:

Nothing in the AI overview about gematria although its cousin Angel Numbers gets a big shout out.  Certainly nothing about 113 indicating dishonesty.  Next, let’s kick it up a notch and specify, “What is the significance of 113 in gematria?:

Real gematria.  Biblical gematria instead of bullshit conspiracy theory gematria.

This blog has always been about the education of what is going on with scam gematria and has never produced even a penny of income.  Consider me the small business that will disappear without ad revenue (Blogger becoming extinct.).  Meanwhile, the fake predictions of sporting events crowd is a medium sized business.  A business model that won’t get any real traffic unless a significantly more amount of time and money gets spent on advertising campaigns.  An outflow of dollars to invest in future traffic that has to overcome the already brutal reality that as far as popularity goes the damage from the early days has been halted.  And think about this, as conspiracy theory light - gematria, flat earth, weird looking clouds, etc…. What are the chances in the future someone is going to heavily invest in that?  Why not just skip right to the point and at least make something a little more lucid like Country A is better than Country B because the immigrants from Country B are terrible people?  Get it all out in the open without putting in wishy washy fluff like a meaningless gematria decode.  That’s your medium sized company that’s next to fall.  Someone who has invested time and money into continuing a business model that will only keep generating less and less return on investment unless the world magically decides that it really is deeply meaningful and someone is willing to put a lot of money on the line for that bet.

The 86 Controversy

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/05/15/politics/james-comey-instagram-post-donald-trump-uproar

For the first time in what seems forever there’s gematria decoding like the classic Qanon shitfest that infested Twixter during Trump’s first term and the Biden administration.  8647.

Now that number is way too big to be useful straight up, but it is a prime number so maybe someone already has gotten around to that.  And it does have some interesting math stuff.  That’s real math, not gematria math.

https://t5k.org/curios/page.php/8647.html

But as with all gematria that’s not important.  It’s not about the numbers themselves, because any adept gematria calculator user can manipulate any number into the overarching theme.  What is important, and not discussed by your average loony bin dweller is that it’s gematria being conspiracy theory lite.  The entrance to the rabbit hole.  The gateway drug.  The delivery system to give the semi-delusional an excuse to say, in this case, a Qanon message.  As always that is simplest put as Fuck Joe Biden and Donald Trump is God.

Because we’ve known for a long time that there’s a saying that holds true far too often.  Every GOP propaganda accusation is a confession.  Naturally, not only was 8646 meant as Anti-Biden, but you can still buy merchandise with that.  Google search 8646 shirt and you get lots of different shirts still available for purchase.

The hypocrisy is nauseatingly obvious.  Not only is one of the all time worst American Presidents on record that 8647 means *obviously* that assassination is the meaning, not only has the entire right wing ecosystem of propaganda joined in lockstep, but the earlier Anti Biden merch did not mean “assassinate”.  Then it was just anti Joe or impeach Joe.  If Trump truly believed that 86 referred to murdering a politician we should have heard about it as soon as the merch first appeared.  A public statement saying something like, “Although I admire your spirit you have crossed a line.  Please do not promote murdering my political opponents.  Thanks, DJT.”  But did you really expect that from someone content to see the January 6 rioters hang Mike Pence?

No, I do not condone the issuing of this or further 8647 messaging.  It’s not that funny.  It’s only fun if you don’t really have the critical thinking skills to look at the context - the biggest piece of that being the hypocrisy.  If my team does it it’s cool.  If your team does it, it’s bad.  In the meantime enjoy my packed Supreme Court and disregard for law.

Elsagate 2.0

 https://www.tubefilter.com/2025/05/02/ai-elsagate-videos-minion-go-cat-child-safety-content/amp/

Another story in what is destined to be an alarming growth in corporate self regulation, with “self regulation” being properly translated as “complete lack of regulation”.

A common counter argument by gung ho capitalists, the large group of people that want to have money more NOW than being right about long term consequences, is the corporate creed that shareholder profit rules above all.  Corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder profit.  That’s completely true.  But things get a little bit trickier when there’s no oversight and corporations are left to their own conscience.  The myth that they will <snicker> willingly do the right thing.  That leads to the push to gain political favor.  It’s easier to throw a couple million dollars at politicians to curry favor than it is to figure out how to cut already understaffed centers of employment even more or trying to make a decent quality product at a cheaper price.  A lot of conspiracy content disguises that mantra as the right wing talking points of small government and outdated Bill of Rights.  Sure they say limited, but just like corporate profit in practice that translates to being nonexistent regulation and regression instead of conservatism.

A famous recent example is Luigi Mangione and wanting it both ways.  United Health wants to simultaneously be known as good guys providing useful service even with some pretty clear cost cutting that serves no relation to their stated business.  Finally with some backlash and the light being shown on exposed posteriors, they tried to keep a lower profile until the exposure blows over.  And now the shareholders get to sue because they can only by one more new luxury car this year instead of two.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna205550

And human nature being what it is the whole thing will slip away from the public scrutiny within a couple years.  And the chances that someone being in charge of U.S. health care that talks about the thoroughly debunked talking point of vaccines causing autism is certainly not going to show any sympathy towards valid health insurance claims being denied to the working class.

There’s a reason that the tech oligarchs bent the knee at the Trump inauguration.  They too have been caught in allowing something to propagate that ordinary working class folk generally agreed should not be a thing.  But not even ten years down the road Elsagate style content is back.  Making money is more important than mental health.

Long ago I posted here about the original Elsagate.  YouTube allowing content creators to create not safe for kids content labeled as safe for kids, and the almighty algorithms being tricked into those videos going viral.  Violent and obscene content that adults shouldn’t even watch, but hey that forbidden fruit is fun amiright?!?  It’s probably not fair to label it as Elsagate 2.0, but the method is the same, it’s just not Elsa centric this time around.  Now a lot of it is cats.  AI cats.  AI cat videos titled as being safe for kids but taking dark turns.  Millions and millions of views being racked up on what *should* be boring by its repetitiveness but still keeps the creators interested in pumping out more.  Now this time around it’s fueled by AI with even significant content out there about how you too can create your own repulsive content and make money.  All without any government oversight to step in and try and put the brakes on.

The Psychology of Undertale

 Undertale Wikipedia article

The format of the gameplay itself is pretty standard.  A more famous example is The Legend of Zelda.  The player operated character wanders around a mapped out world and engages with both friendly and unfriendly characters.  Combat is more like PG movie violence.  Instead of first person shooter where the gore becomes part of the fun the combat is a necessary evil to level up and progress through the game.  Ultimately, after puzzles have been solved, low level minions have been dealt with, boss monsters have been conquered there is a definitive ending with a normal good triumphs over evil finale.

But then there’s the famous twist.  The rug pull that makes Undertale a bit different.  And I find it to be quite brilliant as an allegory to real life social Darwinism.

Backtracking to the obligatory gematria reference, you need to remember our concept of reverse trolling. Where your gematria newbie and ringleaders would slam out video and blog content aimed at getting algorithms to misdirect unwitting users to view the allegedly magical gematria content.  You thought you were getting a video about that bridge collapse just because you wanted the latest news on the story.  Fat chance, you have to listen about how the Freemasons did it.  You thought you were getting a video about your favorite game show.  No way, that Wheel of Fortune video isn’t just about the funny moment from last night you missed.  Now it’s about how the phrase equals the same gematriot as ANTICHRIST.  And oh boy, if you made the mistake of suggesting the video maker was delusional, the pack of wolves would descend in the comments and troll you for as long as you stuck around pointing out reason and facts.

That is the reverse trolling combat system.  Instead of you searching actively for monsters, the monster comes to you.  Sometimes someone will drop a gematria comment into an unrelated stand alone video to try and stir up trouble, but the majority of the combat was generated by the mere existence of the content combined with uncaring algorithms and nonexistent platform moderation propelled by corporate greed more than actually caring about user satisfaction.

So what did Undertale do that is so different?  If you didn’t get spoilers and know about it, your reward is how you interacted with NPCs in the game affects not just the ending, but subsequent returns to the game.  The default ending is called the Neutral ending.  If you limited your killing or didn’t kill any monsters that’s your ending.  Additionally, if you did not kill any monsters you can reload the last save and experience the Pacifist ending, meant to be a more fulfilling good triumphs over evil ending.

Or you can take the killing to heart and either because of your nature or just for fun having heard about it and wanting to try it play for the Genocide ending.  There you get the full weight of the best joke.  LOVE and EXP accumulated isn’t love and experience.  LOVE is Level Of Violence.  EXP is Executioner Poijts.If you’ve embraced the seeking out and killing everything possible your narrative changes.   Here - you ARE the monster.  And the gameplay changes entirely according to your nature being shown.  The soundtrack becomes bleaker.  The world becomes bleaker as erstwhile friends have disappeared, not willing to engage with you.  Your reputation as being an untrustworthy, rampaging murderer has alienated them.  And finally, after the Genocide ending future Pacifist endings are PERMANENTLY changed.  There’s no buyers remorse apologies enough to bring back the more standard ending.

Starting with the Zachosphere - things have not been going great.  Views are down.  Gung ho crazy about gematria new talent is almost missing.  Some old timers are starting new channels trying to rebrand.  Some have taken long breaks and dropped the amount of new content drastically.  One even took a long break, came back and immediately posted a gardening video without a hint of gematria.  There’s a significant pushback on the idea that you can decode sports and become fabulously wealthy by predictions, as it should be because that’s bullshit.  By all appearances there is now recognition that THEY are the monsters.  The trolls that showed their true colors and maybe now they finally want to experience the modified pacifist ending since it’s far too late to experience the full version.

Which brings us to what’s happening with the MAGA movement and Trump voters in the U.S.  There’s a lot of FAFO, leopards eating faces, buyers remorse apology content and straight up, “Do you regret voting for Trump?”  These are mostly hype bringing up the outliers.  Polling has shown that 9 out of 10 do not regret it.  Those are the people who don’t mind at all a bit of violence to get their way, as well as the genocide ending lovers.  U.S. politicians who have done nothing about the kleptocratic and oligarchical trends have also forgotten that the world is a big place and lots of other people have different ideas about what makes existence valuable.  Some like democratic freedom.  Some opposing governments have their own oligarchy related issues to deal with and how to handle them.  None of those people want to deal with a stubborn and petulant child who has been reverse trolling its way into alienating as many characters as possible.  The tariff plan has backfired.  Tourism is taking a hit.  Purchases of U.S. military equipment are being reconsidered.  And the layoffs are already here.  The rest of the world is retreating from the Undertale monster with the permanently altered ending.  Most of the sane and coherent narrative about the U.S. self inflicted economic destruction has our ending at something like a poorer version of the neutral ending the inevitable rise of China and the BRICS nations  as the dominant economic superpowers.

More Questioning AI About Gematria

One danger I foresee in the use of AI as a tool to enhance scamming techniques is that those that give it any credibility at the beginning are the same type of people who have been brainwashed into distrusting people smarter than they are.  People who are wrong about a lot of major and consequential decisions (like democratically elected leadership) are instantly going to dismiss an AI generated recap about the hazards of using gematria.  But for now, it amuses me and in these dark times that’s good enough.  

For now, AI says using gematria to predict sports event outcomes is nonsense.

So just like using AI to make an overview about Kentucky Derby handicapping, let’s see what you get for Super Bowl predictions.

As mentioned with the beginning of this post, it’s smart person talk for “gematria predicting sports outcomes is bullshit.”  Which doesn’t help unless there’s a trusted source to do the research and reinforce the result.  These days there are numerous stories of families being torn apart by the political divisiveness in the U.S.  Trusted sources are running short with a reality based group of people understanding the science and negative economic impact of climate change versus diehard “I’m right about everything” double downers who think FEMA employees are advance scouts to steal land for lithium deposits and the government can create hurricanes.  (Gematria/Alex Jones style bullshit.)

While farting around with searches I had input something like, “How do I scam people with gematria sports predictions?”  And the response was, “That’s not legal/legitimate, I won’t do it.”  So I asked what are legitimate uses of gematria.  The answer was biblical research.  Not gambling, or cryptocurrency or political propaganda.  

If you trick AI by questioning it what are illegitimate uses you don’t get the, “Fuck you, I’m not going to help you scam people.”  You get this.

The current big names in gematria (as few and far between as they are now) gave us a repackaged and rebooted old, pre-internet con.  They found old sources of how it worked on gullible people, updated it for current times and chose from the array of speculative and popular array of bad ideas.  Now, someone looking to capitalize on the gullible needs only to be curious and do a quick search on what scams are going on now. 

The chances that a determined future scammer will be swayed by a “Fraud is not legal, don’t do it!!” message from AI?  That depends on a lot of complex factors that is statistically hard to predict.  Adhering to a code of ethics is sorely missing in modern society.  The legal system, banking, accounting, politicians have codes of conduct.  But the financial rewards of bypassing the code and being a better criminal than others in similar businesses far outweigh the slap on the wrist penalties of getting caught.  Even AI has already learned to say, “STOP!!  Or I’ll say STOP again!!”

What Does Generative AI Think of Gematria?

Apparently, it depends on who is asking, how often it’s asked and maybe some other algorithms running in the background.

My second search for GEMATRIA GRIFT produced this AI overview:

Which is a decent recap of what I’ve been explaining for the last eight and a half years.  The first search produced a slightly longer article, with a specific reference to conspiracy theories included.  Unfortunately I messed up my screenshots and deleted it before realizing what I was about to get on subsequent searches:

But when I powered down the phone and restarted it I got this slightly different result:

Which means overall that for now I’m not sure what to make of this.  Has AI decided I’ve already shown signs of being very much against gematria and is feeding me what I want instead of objective overview from multiple points of view?  Does someone who thinks gematria works get pro gematria overview?  Does it matter what time of day I search and what cookies I have, etc…?

One of the top results after the AI overview is this Reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/s/sSw7fQwFwt

That’s also a pretty decent overview.

So maybe we can get by with accurate info being done the old fashioned way.  Search and scroll through the results and using an actual human brain to assess what’s real and what’s misinfo.  Which we know doesn’t really work too well.

Put On Your Imagination Hats, Kids

Imagine you’re at a family gathering.  And grandpa, already known to get a little feisty about politics, especially after the obligatory post meal shots of whiskey, won’t let the bullshit story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s tattoos rest.

There are several layers of what’s believed about the tattoos.  First, there’s the reality that the tattoos have nothing to do with the MS 13 gang.  Then there’s the Fox News/Qanon spin that the symbols of what looks to be a marijuana leaf, a smiley, a cross, and a skull can be interpreted as meaning “MS 13”.  Grandpa, is at the bottom of the barrel and believes that the photoshopped in images of M S 1 3 actually appear as tattoos in addition to the actual pictures.

You pull grandpa aside.  But spurred on by a lovely gematria decode that MS13 = 45, just like Trump was President #45, predictably doubles down and refuses to accept the reality that the M S 13 are not actually tattooed on Garcia’s knuckles.  You start having the long overdue discussion.  It might be time to put grandpa in a nursing home.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2025/apr/30/trump-quarrels-with-abc-interview-after-he-is-corrected-over-ms-13-tattoo-photoshop-claim-video

But, if you haven’t heard, the elderly person *showing obvious symptoms of cognitive decline* (and who was never that bright and a toxic narcissist to boot) is the current President.  And the entire country is hostage to the fuck around and find out stage of what happens.  Trump, predictably doubled down on made up information instead of backpedaling and trying to undo the damage of sending someone to a notoriously harsh foreign jail.  The FAFO reply has been predictable.  Economic deals with the U.S. are not safe.  Grandpa is far too arbitrary and untrustworthy to be accepted at face value.  The boy who cried wolf has finally lied one million too many times.

Decades ago we could have had qualified cabinet members to help Grandpa fake it through four years.  Heck, even Trump’s first term wasn’t too bad.  But now we know that there’s no voice of reason remaining to talk him down.  Loyalty to being wrong about everything is rewarded.  Dealing in actual facts like Wikipedia instead of doing gematria decodes is attacked and belittled.

I wish that the old school gematria masters weren’t silent about this and similar Trump related topics.  It would be interesting to see if reporting YouTube videos doing gematria on tattoos, tariffs, ICE raids, deporting children with cancer, etc… would get videos and channels deleted.  Unlike when it was in fashion to slam Obama, Hillary and Biden with overwhelming amounts of negative gematria press.  Those videos got pulled rarely, if ever.  The crickets are defeating now.

Strangely, reality doesn’t really care about made up information created by people with an agenda.  Now amount of gematria awareness, misinterpreted tattoos or bullying is going to change that facts do matter.