Let’s see, what would be a quick summary?
The Eye Of Argon is a published work that is regarded now as the written form of something of a “so bad it’s good” movie. Plan 9 From Outer Space bad. Battlefield Earth bad. Not something like Sharknado bad, where the creators 100% knew they were making less than classic cinema, but a labor of love that gets caught up in the childlike earnestness of someone that really tried and gave it 100%. And ended up failing. An A for effort, yet an F for execution.
Yet, Jim Theis the author of Argon succeeded in doing something I like most people will never do. Actually getting their book published. It is a shame that its enduring popularity now is for the Plan 9 quality. For decades the writing community followed by the internet has dogpiled on the mockery. Having live readings as a competition to get through passages of the book, reading aloud and trying not to laugh. Theis could have taken the route of Tommy Wiseau and his film stinker The Room. Embrace the badness and pretend that it was all an inside joke along, in stark defiance of the obvious utter sincerity of the film and its marketing in gratingly contradiction to the, “Just a guy having fun” cover story. Instead Theis chose the rage quit approach. I was just a kid having fun. Please stop talking about this, it’s embarrassing.
And these themes of trying, failing, and dealing with the subsequent backlash remind me of the state of the gematria community now. Before Qanon, given the rough framework of gematria where if you work hard enough every number equals every other number and all the numbers are evil EVERYONE was an author. Everyone, goaded by those higher up the food chain who found a way to monetize it was writing (from their point of view) their own version of the great American novel. In reality they were spitting out another chapter of The Eye of Argon. Openly mocked, and certainly given the eye roll and behind the scenes mockery from those too polite to tell the authors to their face that they were wasting their time.
Along the gradient from fun self written and published LARPING to weaponization as Qanon propaganda we had Alex Jones. And at least for me that’s when I first realized something funny was going on with YouTube. Gematria had fully shifted from biblical research to stories about crisis actors and sports decoding rituals. You weren’t cool looking at bible verses. You were cool if you were insulting dead game show contestants and picking both teams of every sporting event. Given the boost of astroturfing, bot farms, and a little bit of dark money it is somewhat natural that writing bad fiction when heaped with enough praise would turn into, “I’m cool, and I associate with some kinda violent people. Acknowledge my coolness or you will be attacked next.” The smarter than the gematria authors crowd who could instantly spot the Flat Earth conspiracy theory light quality of gematria decodes were subjected to reverse trolling. It’s no longer enough for the echo chamber Attaboy!TM, now true coolness for the Mussolini fascist in training on the Alt Right pipeline sought out the eggheads on the Internet.
And that’s where every bit of good science that makes life better became a hoax. Climate change. Hoax! Covid. Hoax! NASA. Hoax! 9/11 facts. Hoax! And it worked remarkably well. Until the endgame of the rug pull scam appeared in full force now.
Like the U.S. Democrats the critics were too polite for too long. Instead of challenging misinformation there was a general malaise and no sense of urgency. And that’s perfectly understandable given human psychology and the nature of indoctrination. Getting along with other people is a benefit, and it’s best to not make too many waves. The true warning sign that was missed that could have helped with bad gematria narratives was the shift to maximum insult mode. Reverse trolling spurred on by support of the most terrible people on the planet. A global population with broken infrastructure - education on how to structure your thinking critically instead of just parroting what Fox News said. Seek ye out hero of Argon, those with actual knowledge and bully them into submission! Breaketh more shit than they can clean up! We’ll let the next generations deal with the mess or their flesh will meet my sword now!
With a couple Super Bowl predictions along the way.
