Know Your Propagandist Tactics - Hypocrisy

When I mention that gematria is “conspiracy theory light”, what I’m really saying is that it’s part of the so called Alt Right Pipeline.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline

The proverbial rabbit hole entrance.  A hook based on a seemingly innocuous entrance to sports gambling for fun and profit (spoiler alert, the profit part is definitely missing, the fun part is questionable at best).  Frustratingly, gematria is perfectly designed for its role as conflicting sides to a number’s meaning abound.  Even the most simple and basic debunk like Truth =113 (Caps added) and Veracious = 113 (Ordinal) while Dishonest = 113 (Ordinal) and Bullshit = 113 (Reverse) has zero impact on the most closed minded confirmation biased minds.

Which means that gematria by its very nature is perfect for hypocrisy at its highest level.  Funneling people to a slightly more lucid argument after getting a taste of a few too many drinks of the cult leader’s Attaboy!^TM Koolaid.  It’s of completely no surprise to me that the ruinous effects of the current trade war are screaming out hypocrisy.  The on again off again at a whim, the arbitrary choice of amounts, the attack against those that have been erstwhile allies, and don’t forget the island inhabited by penguins.  When leadership engages in hypocrisy it filters down throughout the pyramid.  Those at the base have ammunition to engage in the hypocrite’s favorite game.  It’s ok if my side does it, but fuck you if you’re on the other side.  I’m an Astro’s fan, so if they cheat it’s fine.  But those damn Yankees, screw them.  They have it coming to them because they’ve been cheating far longer and worse than my beloved ‘Stros.  It’s all fun and games until it’s not and an alcohol fueled fight it the parking lot puts someone in the hospital just because he likes, “the wrong team.”

And that’s a lovely segue to today’s main event.  The Drew Carey Show season 2 finale, New York and Queens.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_and_Queens

While a trade war is bubbling along, alienating trading partners en masse and demonstrating a lopsided all or nothing lack of cooperation, so much for checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution, the murmurings that something was wrong with Trump’s lack of consistency were on display before the actual economic damage.  For the gematria angle, try this out:

Conspiracy propaganda gematria has always relied on hypocrisy even when not laying claim to direct antonyms in language.  Does that mean Donald has an affinity for drag queens, or does it mean he’s a champion of far right justice destined to fight the culture war hot topic that is the perceived dangers of the drag queens?  It’s either or neither or both simultaneously.  In this case it’s both, since Trump’s cameo appearance in this episode isn’t generally acknowledged.  Both movies involved in the plot and a major part of the end of the episode are drag queen movies.  Even the title while seemingly just a reference to the borough in New York is a joke about the upcoming bit about drag queens.  If Trump had any consistency, why did he not proclaim he wanted nothing to do with the repulsive content of this show?

While the lower levels of the cult pyramid are embroiled in the controversy over a transgender for beer being the worst thing that’s ever happened to our country vs. protesting and driving down the price of Tesla’s is terrorism, it was snuck into the historical record that Donald new full well he was involved in a script for the Drew Carey Show involving those evil drag queens.  And didn’t have any problem with it at all at the time, because for the toxic narcissist any attention is good attention.  You just have to live with changing your budget and retirement plans because he can’t make up his mind on what he truly believes in, other than himself.

For those that love to make mountains out of molehills I offer you a bit of a peace offering.  Instead of worrying about important stuff like long term respect in the world of global trading and sound economics, there is already an image appropriate for you.

Proof that penguins need to be taught a lesson and deserve to have tariffs placed on them.  Whether you want this to incite you to beat up a drag penguin in the stadium parking lot is up to you.

Know Your Grifter Tactics - Ludicrous Claims

 https://www.youtube.com/live/jZMs5WbgFw8?si=FwN82He-_cMlMGuo

The rebranding is underway.  Over two hours of introduction of the new podcast, Count On It.  Complete with a lack of much actual gematria, the screen background showing the various donation links, and the call in phone number.

Perhaps on purpose, therefore not so ironically, the first caller ever to the show was a supporter, pumping up how great Zach’s content is and how terribly he was mistreated by those ebil (not a typo) bastards who mercilessly out debated Zach by pointing out his unwillingness to generate a genuine prediction live on air, thus recorded for posterity.

But the stakes are raised here.  Please fast forward or jump to about 1:31:10.  That will give you a chance to settle in to the whopper coming a few seconds later.

Gematria Saves Lives

In the lead up to this we have the usual talking points.  I’ve been doing this so long.  I’m being persecuted and my channels keep getting taken down.  The algorithm is out to get me.

The same way that there’s no need to get subscription donations for a magic gambling system, if it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it isn’t true.  Never in the 10+ years has there ever been a well known story of someone who has had their life literally saved by gematria.  An inescapable result of waiting until after the fact to report on what happened.  And even this recording touts that this remarkably competent evil empire, the best they can do instead of kill you is to mock you.  (It’s a little bit before the saving lives comment.)  Give me your money and I will expose the mockery that didn’t kill you because you are still alive to listen to these outrageous claims today.

Now instead of just shitty sports picks losing money we’re treading on weird religious cult territory.  I’d really like to hear that first caller who pipes up about how gematria literally saved their life.

That synchronicity with a 20 year old TV show about a teenage girl killing vampires saved my life!

Woke up feeling bad, but remembered to check out that eclipse ritual from last night, and by golly bitcoin dropped in price!  Was really thinking of drinking two pots of coffee and that shit would probably have killed me!

My girlfriend left me because the Yankees lost last night.  Pretty sure she would murder me in my sleep if we stuck together.  Didn’t lose any money on a bet, but I’m sure there is some numbers in there somewhere.

Here’s a variation without using gematria:

There’s a lot of things wrong with the world, and I’m not dead yet.  There are a lot of things that saved my life.

You don’t need an occult crank system to identify that things are wrong.  The things that are wrong are being speed run in real time.  Markets are crashing, tensions are high, prices are out of control, protesters are protesting, vigilantes are murdering, Fox News is Foxing, Democrats are ignoring, storms are storming, habitats are collapsing.  It used to be reading a newspaper, now it’s reading an algorithm driven outrage porn story on the internet.  Do you really need to give money to someone for a two or three digit number to remind you that you haven’t died yet despite a world gone mad?

Say Hello To The Boys

In my early 20’s I watched the entire series of The Prisoner.  A lot.  It was one of those things that I was able to get a sense that beyond the fist fights and weird science fiction storylines and on my own figure out that there was a message behind the series.  Things about questioning authority in a brutal surveillance state, being an individual and thinking for yourself, and other naughty don’t question the system thoughts.  Other content I viewed would be an occasional single satirical reference and then back to the show.  The Prisoner, other than some episodes that were clearly to pad out the run to the final tally of 17 episodes, had a consistent theme.  (It was only supposed to be 6, and ironically McGoohan buckled to the authorities in the system and agreed to 17 for a full season.)

Years from now, when we’ve mutated to have our remaining dwindling population capable of withstanding temperatures in the 100 degree Fahrenheit range, scholars will be discussing current series like Severance and The Boys.  There themes being a product of current times, an updated take on old stories of ultra wealthy and powerful abuse of power modernized.

My original intent was to discuss that despite the matching gematria that Homelander in The Boys is not a stand in for Donald Trump.  This critique is fairly common.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jun/28/the-boys-homelander-trump-rightwing-fanbase

One of the beauties of gematria is that when things don’t turn out quite right on the easiest matches you get to cheat.  I didn’t feel like doing that, playing around with prime number lists or transposition of digits and fairly quickly latched on to a reasonable substitute.  The current President:

At the simplest description that doesn’t do justice to the series writers, The Boys answers the basic question of, What if Superman was a dickhead?”

As recently pointed out here, the current crop of villains are badly written, with the alarming feature of them being real life people who seem dead set on never acknowledging their gross incompetence and reveling in the damage they do to the world.  Yes, a lot of the boxes on the list are checked off.  But at the end of the day Homelander, viewed as a superhero despite being a well written arch villain, is actually competent at the superhero alter ego.  Musk and Trump, not so much.  Homelander can effectively superpower his way into killing and intimidating his way to get what he wants.  Our real life villains whose superpower is being admired for wealth through fraud and getting away with it are constantly contradicting themselves, backtracking, and making whimsical decisions that make no sense.

The Boys season 4 has not been going over well with long time fans of the show.  Somewhere along the way I should have mentioned that I’ve never watched it, not needing another monthly subscription drawing money from me relating to my entertainment budget.  The complaint being  that the show is now “too woke”.  The right wing buzz phrase for, “I hate the idea of giving a shit about other people.”  It appears to me that the show was purposefully designed, like The Prisoner, to have a definitive conclusion with a season 5 series finale coming in 2026.  For comparison you have The Walking Dead with some compelling and well written early villains that petered out into a blatant cash grab and just dragged on long after it wasn’t any real fun anymore.  The Boys could give us a spectacular season 5, with the rest of this year to tweak the storylines based on current events.  Redeeming itself from an off year.

Except nothing is going to redeem the show in the eyes of the right wing fanbase that gave up on season 4.  Their admiration of villains exposed makes them uncomfortable in real life.  The desire to do whatever they want without consequences leading them down a path where the stark consequences of unchecked power and villainy is becoming clearer.  Their real life hook (financial security), satirically written as blood, vulgarity and death by laser eye beams doesn’t change that they will never get actual superpowers the same way that their offspring have increasingly less chances of having long term promises fulfilled.  A home, a stable career, a pension of sorts in retirement.  The 7, the group that Homelander leads, has already done significant long term damage.  The poorest ending IMO would be to give him a redemption story where he sacrifices himself.  A better ending would be a Prisoner style unanswered question.  The writers have a lot of wiggle room to work with, so it’s a wait and see.

On the purely entertainment side, Antony Starr is marvelous as Homelander.  Although never seeing a full episode I have seen lots of clips.  At times sneering, totally terrifying when in full evil mode, at times the insecure toxic narcissist that more closely resembles our real life poorly written villains.  Unable to get true admiration and love because he’s incapable of doing anything worthy of being loved.  Rumor has it his audition won him the part based on his cool and nonchalant attitude.  An attitude that was so relaxed because he didn’t really think he would land the part.

https://en.as.com/meristation/news/the-boys-anthony-starr-didnt-think-he-was-the-right-actor-for-homelander-role-because-of-henry-cavill-n/#:~:text=Even%20so%2C%20the%20actor's%20representatives,almost%20out%20of%20spite%20for

No Antony, it’s a character with nuance, not just a hulking brute.  You nailed it.

Know Your Grifter Takedown Technique - Debate Tactics

https://www.youtube.com/live/RIeGB1T7ZrU?si=6mFlt9f-5-NEWaM1  - Source material, a debate panel on the usefulness of gematria

https://youtu.be/Iv4_HSRvg_8?si=Mje6uuVN8J-FwucD  - Sports Gematria’s edited highlights

Just in case you need the full source material, the top link is a 9 hour 45 minute marathon debate session of almost entirely Zach debunking himself amidst unfriendly fire from critics.  The second link is Sports Gematria’s edited outtakes along with March Madness failures.

If you had the ability to rewind to 10 years ago, such a debate had no chance of existing.  Zach, either a natural bullshitter or well practiced in delivering logical fallacies and shady debate tactics (more likely a combination of both), gathered an audience who just couldn’t get enough of Alex Jones style content.  Anybody who was willing to challenge him was woefully unprepared to meet him head on.  Now, things are different.  You can even approach the videos with a mindset of conspiracy theory truth being a vital part of society and being loaded with lots of good ideas and still gather some important lessons.  Mostly, that someone with a blatantly obvious desire for your money is not working in your best interests.

The old format, stolen from Alex Jones, worked something like this.  Spend a couple of years of prep time gathering a modest audience, becoming a “gematria influencer”.  Get a significant number of people invested in the middle level of the cult pyramid.  Convince them to put out blogs and videos of their own.  Give them a little bit of attention and Attaboy!^TMs so they get something they've been missing from their lives.  The rare chance to be called right even though their lifestyle has turned them into a person who is constantly wrong.  But, a person who is constantly wrong BUT EXTREMELY LOUD ABOUT IT.  The kind of person sane people pray does not show up at the bar they frequent that insist on debating you about what was said on Fox News the previous night  and doesn’t mind something mind numbingly stupid like gematria decodes as added fuel to their pseudo intellectual brainwashed persona.  Then keep them fired up enough to have all roads lead back to Zach’s fundraisers.  Let social media algorithms lack of integrity allow the game show fans to find gematria content while enjoying a Wheel of Fortune.  Let bad news junkies doom scroll into the disasters in the headlines yesterday and stumble on gematria.  Let the Cubs fans find the endless and daily sports decodes.

And when you’re constantly wrong about everything, you are a prime cognitively biased target to fall for the sports betting scam.  And part of the internet gambling epidemic that is reaching epic proportions.

If you have enough critical thinking skills you may get sidetracked and realize that some of this commentary will reflect badly on the way Trump and Musk are operating the U.S. government.  Like, bullying entire countries with a cockamamie tariff plan and threats of invasion.  Filling the mid level with lackeys of monstrous incompetence and corruption and pissing off everyone else to the point that they have little recourse but to push back.  Sorry about that, but I did try to warn you years ago.  I will try to keep focused on the Hubbard version of the con for the duration of this post.

So years ago, with a significant keyboard warrior army of people with a high tendency to be wrong about stuff there’s a pool of folks that desperately want to believe they can supplement their income by making winning sports bets.  And some those folks are more than willing to defend their cult leader to the end.  A ready made pool of the kind of person who would make a screen name like AlexJonesIsRight.  The number of those has been steadily dwindling.  What the Zach’s of the world hadn’t counted on is sustained pressure armed with actual facts.  Pressure and push back on a daily basis.

If you read some of the comments to the videos you can get the gist of the core argument by Zach critics.  You might disguise it by occasionally claiming you don’t make predictions.  You lie like crazy about your track record just like every video creator selling sports predictions.  But at the center of your entire business is the simple fact that you are claiming that gematria can make accurate predictions about sports game outcomes.  And yet, you have made so few actual predictions over a decade plus it’s comical that you think nobody has noticed that you are waiting until the game is over and saying, “Look, here’s how they did it!”  Relying on a tool that can always fill in the blanks to support a bogus narrative.  Almost 10 hours of relentless pressure to produce a single recorded for posterity ahead of time prediction that simply didn’t happen.  Because it CAN’T happen.  Gematria is and always will be a tool to be an after the party is over recap of what was.

So point #1.  He won’t make predictions ahead of time because he can’t.

Point #2.  He really doesn’t do well in an atmosphere that he’s not in total control of.  People were drawn to Zach and Alex because they adored how mouthy and insulting they were.  Weak competition left them as the lone man standing in the cage after the dust settled.  The alpha male wannabes in the audience get to cheer mightily on how their champion got to bully his way into another self proclaimed victory.  Sandy Hook parents be damned, my wallet is far more important than your ability to walk down the street without being harassed.  Being interrupted to be reminded that he’s still not made the requested prediction on a livestream really doesn’t sit well with him.

Point#3.  Coinciding with point #2.  Where are the friends and allies coming to his defense?  The debate format queues up call ins.  The rabid defenders are almost nowhere to be seen.  When confronted by Andrew’s sharp and pointed criticism they know that they are in for a fight instead of just someone who’s going to roll over and crumple at the first, “But SOCIETY OF JESUS = 56!!” reference.  Norm Pattis had to go up against a real lawyer in Mark Bankston.  Zach doesn’t always get to go up against a weak argument like “The Earth is flat” as some kind of proof that this means gematria is wrong.

My IRL style is more aligned with ignoring the loud mouth at the other end of the bar instead of direct conflict.  But direct confrontation from the right person of people does have its place.  Finding someone who can at least communicate facts in a proper and respectful manner most of the time goes a long way.  Getting fired up and passionate in tandem with being respectful when that’s called for is a skill I can admire that I don’t have.  And for those who claim to be patriots that really aren’t I sign off with this from John Adams.  An angry true patriot that knew when to cooperate and who to cooperate with.

I find this highly appropriate in these troubled times as there are a couple things you need to realize about this beyond taking it at face value without context.  It may have been borrowed instead of created by Adams.  And this was actually in defense of British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.  Reminding us that actual truth is actual truth and not just what makes you feel good.

The Story of Ron Vara

Oh it’s just weird they said.  It’s just some harmless fun.  Until you get the story of Ron Vara.  Even more crazy than a made up gematria story, because it’s true.  And it sounds in part like a bullshit conspiracy terminally online gematria edgelord wannabe and or grifter made it up.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/peter-navarro-is-the-architect-of-trumps-tariff-policy-elon-musk-calls-him-a-moron-e8bd0085

Now Pete Navarro has got quite a grip on a record you normally wouldn’t want.  But in this administration, the crazier and more incompetent you are, the further you go while ordinary people watch their retirement savings disappear.  You see, Pete actually spent a bit of time, four months, in a federal prison.  So of course instead of the sanity of that instantly disqualifying him as a trade advisor, instead that elevates him to MAGA godhood.

So how did that happen?  Well Pete’s written himself some books.  It looks like he got tired of being a real economist after one year in the wild and he started to get weird.  And eventually, having a deep seated hatred of China, he wrote some books that eventually caught the eye of Jared Kushner.  Then it moved along (up, down, it’s awfully hard to tell at this point) the food chain and Trump got wind of it.  Hating China and Tariffs, a golden combo there.

But Pete was lonely, because his actual economic knowledge was not so good.  And the only attention he got himself was emailing praise from a fake persona by the name of Ron Vara.  (We don’t have word if there’s also a fake wife or girlfriend, but give it some more time.). Now maybe I’ve been putting too much time typing into gematria calculators, or too much Wordle, or maybe I’m just really smart.  But it took me about two seconds to figure out that RON VARA is an anagram for NAVARRO.  That’s right, what will soon be the ex strongest economy in the world was brought down by crazy economics from a convicted criminal that couldn’t even find a more convincing fake name than an anagram of his own last name.

Kind of makes you wonder why someone would pay money to gamble on sports when all they do is play around with numbers and words and complain a lot.  It doesn’t?  Well it should.  You’re spreading the misinformation and disinformation that stokes the flames of a Ron Vara actual story coming to be.  In addition to your own gambling losses.

Know Your Old School Grift - The Egg Curse Scam

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_telling_fraud

Eggs?  Like an entire country’s economic news being obsessed with eggs.  And the sleight of hand of switching out real economic data and knowledge with…whatever you call this poor substitute.  This is why hundreds of thousands took to the streets in protest yesterday.  I’m sick of your scams.  Give me a functional eggconomy and government back.

There is some talent involved in the traditional egg curse grift.  Not everyone can pull off the magician part of switching out a normal egg with a rigged egg.  I could drone on about my extensive real life experiences in a “vote Republican or forget about a career” office environment.  Instead I choose to emphasize the difference between the egg curse scam and gematria grift.  At least for today.

So the first step is an old fashioned cold reading.  The bujo experts seek to get some quick info, is this person here kind of on a lark because fortune telling might be fun?  Is it for the lulz, or do they maybe believe in this enough to go further?  And what’s their financial situation like?  People get all kinds of crazy stupid when money is involved.  In gematria, the cold reading is spamming the internet with blog posts and videos.  Then the marks come to you, identifying themselves as gullible by posting comments.  And the financial situation is most often found by their mere presence in sports gematria content.  Smarter people will more likely know something funny is up.  The more desperate and less risk averse will be courted into at least giving it a try for a sports season.

The sleight of hand is missing from gematria grift.  There’s no need to have a physical object produced to switch out with a cursed object.  No need to tinker with rigging a physical object to be switched out.  Gematria itself is the switch.  There’s always an alternate narrative.  In addition to direct antonyms with the same values there’s always a handy and quite overused excuse.  The forces of evil are on to me and flipped the script.  Here’s what really happened yesterday with the numbers on that game I picked wrong.  Not tinkering around much in the physical world and reporting on numbers after the fact also has the advantage of creating any backstory you want.  You can go to the extent of creating fake family and friends, all that along with yourself can have an infinite variation in what fake events happened to them to produce mind bogglingly amazing gematria stories.  None of which can be proven or disproven.  None of which need to be concerned much with contradicting ongoing stories with other marks.  You’re in the target’s mind, not needing to sit right next to them to give you money, thanks to Patreon.

The finale of the bujo is destruction of the mark’s money.  The curse is lifted when the cursed money is destroyed.  Presumably you can move on with life and prosper after paying some kind of occult tax.  Instead your money was not destroyed, but went to someone who really just wanted to keep it.  You’ve been provided with some sort of finality on the status of the cursed money.  Gematria, on the other hand is weaker in this regard.  Instead of finality, well yeah sure your Patreon support disappeared from your bank account, it’s “good” money.  An investment.  One that you are required to keep giving as the imaginary carrot is dangled in front of you.  It’s a safe business model for the grifter in that whatever losses you have, YOU DID IT WRONG.  There’s an infinite supply of fake winners and their fake stories that can be created to counter how instead of you being cursed, you just happen to suck at decoding.

Finally, there’s the consequences of getting caught.  Both can be limited to a petty enough theft that it gets pointless to try and regain your lost money.  You would end up spending far more on a private detective and lawyers than the money you get back, unless somehow you scored someone who had six figures or more to hand over to you.  The only safe way is to not play in the first place.  Know your grifter tactics online and not just safeguard yourself, also educate those you care about.

Fascinating Horror

Fascinating Horror YouTube

I haven’t had this much fun since binge watching Forensic Files on HLN.  Forensic Files was essentially the same plot over and over with just slight twists.  First, here’s an incredibly stupid criminal.  Add said criminal doing something incredibly stupid.  Then the investigators look into it and find out that incredibly stupid criminal left enough of a trail and gets jailed.  Real life crime stories.  It’s CSI without supermodel female investigators and multiple easy to spot red herrings.

This YouTube channel is much the same.  Real life accident.  A bunch of people die.  The investigators find out that costs were cut somewhere and someone was negligent.  And maybe, only maybe, someone got nailed for being irresponsible.

I highly recommend you view at least some of these documentaries.  They are all short enough that you don’t need to invest an hour or even half an hour to digest the entire video. In the last eight videos as of this writing the longest is about 14 1/2 minutes.  The one thing I would change is the name of the channel.

The Horrors of Deregulation

It’s all fun and games until it’s you or someone you know that gets hurt by a tragic accident.  And the vast majority of times these horrors are always in part due to someone doing something they know was a bad idea and was just hoping they wouldn’t get caught.  Chicken grease in a restaurant that wasn’t up to cleaning standards adding extra fuel to that fire started by an electrical shortage.  The nightclub that locked the fire exits so people wouldn’t sneak in to avoid the cover charge.  The boat that capsized because it was too heavy.  The aircraft maintenance not done that should have been done.  The carbon monoxide fumes overcoming the train operators.  Over and over again these videos recap what went wrong leading to tragedy that could and should have been avoided.

This is somewhat like modern conspiracy content without the artificial scapegoat added.  The denouement is the higher ups are pretty much caught red handed and whether they get away with saying, “I’m sorry”, and a slap on the wrist or if there’s at least a hefty fine and some settlement money going to victims or families of victims.  It’s extremely rare that it’s just a freak accident that was unavoidable.  

At least occasionally there’s someone acting heroically like the man going back into the burning plane to save an infant.  Today, that man would be labeled a crisis actor in a modern conspiracy video.  The corporate big wheels would be ignored.  Instead it would be blamed on the propaganda generated scapegoat of the day.  Almost assuredly today this would be blamed on DEI policies.  Because sure.  Cutting costs by corporate fat cats is always the responsibility of people not being hired by corporate fat cats cutting costs.  The actual problem is not enough people being employed at all.  When your plane can’t land when you want it too it’s likely to be overworked air traffic controllers regardless of their scapegoatable qualities.

I recommend you watch a few of these old stories and get desensitized to it by that doom scrolling.  Or whatever you call doom scrolling on YouTube.  Accidents due to cost cutting are about to reach epic proportions in the U.S.  Every single member, and that’s not hyperbole, every single member in a high office in the current administration was placed in position due to loyalty to corporate interests and not actually doing a good job.  Cost cutting and trimming the budget doesn’t mean the stated reduction in existing fraud.  It means unemployment and reduction in staffing and not having to pay people to do a job that should be done by a person and not a robot.  If this channel or a similar channel exists a couple decades from now it will be recapping the horrors of unchecked climate change disasters, pandemic caused staffing shortages, sea level rise flooding, etc….

Whether there’s some bullshit gematria along with that remains to be seen.

Ignoring the Warnings From History

 

Years ago, Qanon nonsense in full swing, the warnings were sent out.  Gematria and other conspiracy light content was an invitation to the rabbit hole.  Enter and you will be greeted by friendly commentary.  Even if you are regurgitating completely batshit crazy disinformation, if you are part of the in crowd you’re a friend.  But, you need to graduate to the next level to be held up as a true believer.  Spread it to the potential new recruits.  Seek out those who know it’s stupid and relentlessly attack them.  Attack them with more made up bullshit.  Combine this with a sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to give up on your time investment and maybe even a hefty financial investment you are now in the clutches of a political influencer.  Now all <insert scapegoat party> here are evil.  All <insert in group party> are cool.  Until <in group party member> does something publicly disparaging to <in group party> and is now a <in group nickname for traitor>.

And no matter what the leaders of the party say or do, no matter how ruinous it is to the lives of others, no matter if it’s batshit crazy stupid everyone on the globe is now affected.

When tariffs were first announced as a trade war weapon, much was said about how they wouldn’t work as claimed.  It was actually going to do the opposite of what was claimed.  Even the WSJ went as far as calling it the dumbest trade war in history:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-25-percent-mexico-canada-trade-economy-84476fb2

But now we’re at gematria level nonsense in the trade war.

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tariffs-antarctic-islands-heard-mcdonald/

That’s right.  The precious exports of uninhabited Antarctic islands are being hit with a 10% tariff.  If the goal is to blitz scale the destruction of the U.S. economy to deliberately crash it, we are well ahead of schedule.  Further proof that each and every person in this administration hasn’t got a clue about governing.  All you get is lies and sound bites to be repeated to and by the easily misguided.  As global tensions increase, savings will dry up for lower class folks struggling to buy necessities.  The middle class with some savings will see the rate of return drop.  Our once a decade now economic downturn will be remembered in part by assessing tariffs on islands with no people as the scapegoats.  Ultimately it doesn’t matter if slipping these islands on to the list was a misguided error by someone genuinely not knowing the innocuous nature of the targets or it was just trolling for a joke.

Know Your Grifter Tactics - Bad AI

Gotta admit I’m not 100% sure it’s AI generated.  But it sure feels like it.  Well, sounds like it.

This ad is relentless.  It’s been showing up on my YouTube video beginnings for what feels like an eternity.  It’s trained me to hover over the skip button, because the annoying part is right here.

A lot has been posted about AI generated images.  They often get things subtly wrong, like eyes are always in the same position, limbs at awkward angles, and AI still has a problem with extra of missing fingers.

Well, there’s also audio problems.  And I love the Comcast voice assistance for doing strange things with pronunciation.  It amuses me, because I KNOW it’s a voice assistant.  I can read, so I know the correct pronunciation.  One common error is Roman numerals, it’s not Rocky 2, it’s Rocky eye-eye.  And there’s words not in the dictionary it takes a guess on.  To make up a movie name as an example, let’s say you wanted to make a movie about a female abominable snow person called Yetigirl.  The AI might guess it to be Ye-tig-earl instead of Yeh-tea-girl.  A movie about Pinkerton detectives ends up being Pin-cur-ten instead of Pink-er-ten.  Etc….

But this guy, he’s selling investment advice.  And although the audio looks like it’s slightly out of sync, the lip movement appears to match the actual words.  But it does have a mistake that a self respecting, intelligent investment adviser shouldn’t make.  English, can at times be a stupid language.  And LIVE can be pronounced as rhyming with either GIVE or HIVE.  And he’s super proud of how he gives all his picks for free on his rhymes with Givestreams when the sane world pronounces live streaming as rhymes with Hivestreams.

The ads way too long for me to bother with even for research purposes of what site he’s promoting.  If you can’t do a proper hive stream, I’ve got no faith in whatever it is you’re selling.

Bad Villains Part II - Two Takes In the Vegas Shooting (2017)

Looks like what we really need is a great generative AI to figure out what the real story is.

Just recently we had this take on this old story:

https://gematrinator.com/blog/2025/03/28/the-las-vegas-shooting-as-a-pi-riddle-for-nikola-tesla

While back around the time the shooting took place we had things like this:

https://freetofindtruth.blogspot.com/2017/10/23-32-99-223-mandalay-bay-shooting-from.html?m=1

Keeping in mind that these are alleged super sleuths uncovering hidden truths in reality instead of fiction, think about how differently the villain is painted in these two versions.  They aren’t even close.

For example, Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet story.  The character had certain attributes beforehand.  Things we knew about his personality and powers and motivations.  Trying to craft fiction around that and not alienate long time readers requires some effort to at least pay homage to the Thanos we know and love.  Or hate.  Acquiring the stones took some effort instead of just rewriting the character from scratch.  A stretch that would require an Oz level, “Ignore that villain behind the curtain.  Here’s what the guy is really like.”

Lazy writing doesn’t get called out by those that don’t know the back story.  The old Vegas villain was created in a time when the outrage porn was Freemasonry was a big scapegoat and open anti-semitism was more prevalent.  Now this version of our Thanos surrogate has a backstory about Tesla, Pi and eclipses.

Did Terry Brooks rip off Tolkien?

https://thetolkien.forum/threads/j-r-r-tolkien-terry-brooks-similarities.1149/?amp=1

Or was it just an influence and a loving tribute? Enough similarities to make it close enough to appeal to loyal Tolkien fans?  Or a copyright violation cause for a damages settlement in court?

Stephen Paddock was a real person, so some care should be taken into getting it right, especially if you label yourself as a “truth seeker”. But the writers do have one common denominator.  The truth is truthier if you give them money.  One is a Patreon for sports betting, the other is a website teaming with shitty ads or a membership fee to avoid those.  And you’re going to want to keep those subscriptions current because in another five years Truth will come out with a different story.  Totally rewriting the villain with the same name.  Clogging up the internet’s arteries with more misinformation and disinformation.

Final Destination vs. The Menu

SPOILERS AHEAD

Specifically, Final Destination 2, although it doesn’t really matter.

There’s always been a wide range of social commentary in films, sometimes better hidden than others.  Sometimes well done and sometimes not so much.  And in my opinion nothing makes a movie better than a compelling villain.  Thanos is a compelling villain.  He’s got a point that isn’t totally wrong.  It’s his approach to the solution that is found objectionable.  If it was, “I, Thanos, am so cool that I deserve all the money in the universe” he would be a more boring villain.

Like Thanos, and the lesser villains in The Menu there has been a fair amount of anti capitalist messaging.  This is usually not very well done, for example the opening action scene in The Beekeeper.  The villain is cartoonishly and completely obviously evil because he’s greedy and corrupt.  There’s no intrigue or plot development other than a sledgehammer over the head THIS IS THE BAD GUY.  In turn, these movies don’t help with intellectual thought about what is wrong with capitalism.  It’s more like a simple, “Thou shalt not steal”.  And if you do Jason Statham will smite you.  Even to the point where psychologically they are counterproductive.  A single vigilante beating up and shooting bad guys doesn’t happen in real life.  The justice system is also designed to (not) work the way it does.

I love both Final Destination 2 and The Menu.  FD2, has what I consider to be the Saving Private Ryan of opening scenes in the horror genre.  Sometimes I have watched just the opening scene and bypassed the entire remainder of the film.  It’s light entertainment.  Background noise while doing something else.  While the four times I’ve watched The Menu has been focused, because it’s a remarkably well done movie.

Getting to the point finally.  Final Destination 2 is a gematria narrative quality approach to villainy.  Death itself is the villain.  You already know who is going to probably die in a gruesome fashion before the movie completes.  And reusing the established formula, you know that any survivor is subject to a “no, you didn’t escape” finale or sequel bait narrative.  The lack of quality in villainy is expressed by the lower level villains in the movie.  Within normal villain writing there’s a hierarchy of villainy.  Low level obstacle villains.  Middling dilemma villains.  And the ultimate challenger, the mirror villain.

We know that in FD2 that Kimberly, having the vision of the highway crashes, is the protagonist.  The thought that Death itself would be cheated is ludicrous.  So any entertainment value is in what happens to the other established villains, the people that death was cheated out of by Kimberly’s vision disruption of Death’s plans.  For example the character of Evan.  Evan is a terrible character by design and a terrible character by writing standards.  He has just won the lottery, has an answering machine message from some girl that obviously only cares about him now that he’s wealthy.  Any anti capitalist message - greedy assholes deserve what’s coming to them - is ruined by the cartoonish portrayal of his being a complete asshole.  In a short time it’s established he deserves to die.  We know he’s going to die.  And like poorly written gematria narratives the death of Evan and others, even those we might care about a little more, are insanely arbitrary.  The not a great villain of Death itself always wins in the end.  But it makes money.  And people do love themselves money more than actually thinking things through long term.

On the other hand, The Menu has its own cartoonish capitalist villains.  Like even, these people deserve to die and we root against them.  A man who’s left by his girlfriend hires an escort, knowing she will be killed at the end of the night.  More worried about his last fling “looking good” by having a date than her well being.  Finance bros who, well, only care about their investment in the restaurant.  A rich couple that proves that they don’t even care about their investment fancy restaurant food.  It’s just a status symbol.  I have my private jet.  A bunch of cars.  And I eat at the most expensive and exclusive restaurants.

What FD2 gets right in its own shallow way is the attempt to elevate its villainy to the dilemma villain.  Kimberly doesn’t need to have a sword fight with Evan to make it to the next stage.  He’s not an obstacle to Kimberly.  At best learning about his death and the manner it came to be is a clue for those that have survived to this point.  But there’s no payoff.  No AHA! moment that Kimberly gets a genuine clue on how to survive.  If it’s your first time with any FD movie you don’t realize it until the end that the clues and build up is all a sham.

Margot, the call girl protagonist doomed for death date in The Menu gets the chance to match up against a high quality Mirror Villain.  The deaths of the characters he kills we revel in, yes they absolutely deserved to die.  But in a sense, Chef Slowik’s plans are ruined by her mere presence.  His intent is to hold a mirror up to his individual guests, showing them a final mirror to their souls before their demise.  It was supposed to be Evan’s girlfriend (not literally) from FD2.  Easy to assume a vapid and shallow bimbo.  Only caring about her date because of his status instead of his actual quality as a human being.  Margot, despite a less than noble occupation, does not deserve to die.  Not from some master plan where her faults are mirrored as no preparation was made on The Menu for her.  And certainly not in some low quality gematria narrative style, “RIP Margot.  MURDER=38 MARGOT= 38” (yes, they really do in reverse reduction).  Yet, the low level villains that are doomed and Slowik’s interactions with them and her yield vital clues.  In turn, she holds the mirror to Slowik’s face in the classic cheeseburger finale and wins her freedom.  There’s also a side dish of her looking back at the doomed restaurant guests and seeing the fight is gone from them.  They will meekly accept their fate, realizing they are actually terrible people.  All in one feature length film.

You will never get a Menu quality story from a gematria decode.  They superficially appear to be mirror quality villains, claiming to expose hidden truths about your government and society.  Yet, their actions ultimately betray them.  Give me your money because look how I let you know what you already knew.  The world is actually a shitty place.  Even at the end, Margot’s survival doesn’t magically return her to a utopia.  After her dinner and a show, a cheeseburger and a restaurant in flames, the world isn’t suddenly transformed to a better place.  But she is a better person, which ought to count for something.

Now try explaining all this to someone that thinks the number 9 is going to make them gambling winnings.

Subscription Scam Spring Cleaning

Did you know that if you stopped paying on a Patreon subscription you still get notifications unless you take extra steps to stop the notifications?  “Listen to me”, says the soft insinuating voice of the mighty Subscription Demon, “You will regret all the great content you are missing out on.  Won’t you reconsider?”

There’s too many dirty tricks in the subscription scam industry to cover.  If you want a good start you can simply search SUBSCRIPTION SCAMS in YouTube and a wide range of videos will pop up.  Before the internet advertising had already figured out that people are idiots and the scams pervaded magazines and music and anything else people could get hooked into thinking that it’s a good idea to have even after you long outgrew the entertainment value you received.  Socially, identifying yourself as a part of a tribe became a self fulfilling feedback loop.  If you bought a subscription to Super Awesome Nintendo Gaming you are now open to assault by Fabulous Nintendo Monthly and Great Nintendo Tips.  All requiring a subscription that takes far more effort to cancel than it does to sign up.

Just in 2019 alone Facebook proudly announced they deleted 5.4 billion fake accounts. 

https://people.com/human-interest/facebook-shut-down-over-5-billion-fake-accounts/

I’m sure there were many who marveled at how generous FB was looking out for their users to take the time and energy to do that for user safety.  Never realizing that the proper reaction was, “Holy shit!  That’s 69% of the world population!!  Maybe there’s something wrong with FB if it got that way in the first place.”

Creating a real Facebook account is a form of a social subscription.  You’re putting yourself out there, your image and obvious physical identifiers as simple as male or female and a rough idea of your age.  Then your profile will set you up as a target for social subscriptions.  Gardening, dog or cat lover, Kim Kardashian fan, hiking, whatever you want.  You may relocate some old friends, you may make some new ones especially if you join a group, you may not use FB much at all.  But you’ve also made a social subscription.  And depending on how overboard you go with self profiling you will be invaded by the subset of that 69% of friend suggestions that were purposefully made to lure you away from your hard earned cash.  That subset, literally billions of fake Facebook accounts over just a few years, wants you to prove your worth of being part of the in group by sending someone money that you will get little or nothing in return.

The main targets end up being the same as email, text message and good old fashioned phone scams.  Youngsters without enough life experience to realize what they are getting into.  The elderly.  Not every old person in cognitive decline can become president of a big country.  But they can donate monthly to rescue shelter that doesn’t really exist because it’s a really a fake account generated in Ghana instead of Newark, New Jersey.

Part of the assault on intellectualism and science is to seed distrust in those who are more capable of recognizing scams for what they are.  Now, more than even just five years ago, is a perfect time to find the smartest and most trustworthy person you know and let them go through your phone or laptop and look for old shady stuff that might not be what it claims.  And that’s not part of your political echo chamber trust, genuinely someone who knows their way around a computer and actually generates displays of empathy in real life.  If you don’t have such a person in your life, congratulations.  You maybe signed the social contract that you’re a gullible rube a long time ago.  Of course, part of the problem is that there will be fake subscription services to remove questionable information from your phone.  No niche is left uncovered by the billions making up part of that 69%.

Take gematria Patreon subscriptions as an example.  Do you really need someone to tell you that there are things wrong with the world?  I can tell you that for free every day.  And I don’t want your money.  Do you need to have more than one subscription?  Hell no.  That one sports gematria guru is often going to make a narrative for both teams himself.  At least limit the damage of gambling losses to a single source.  Patreon isn’t going to give you any hints that you are overdoing the number of sports prediction scammers you are using.  Even the ads on the Gematrinator site are a source of questionable social contracts.  

Did you get distracted by the pretty girl in the skimpy outfit and check out Plato’s Closet?  Not interested?  Because it’s a double whammy.  Click the Closet and get similar targeted ads or become a member to get ad free meaningless tiny little numbers.  Or both, you can check out the closet before going ad free.  Personally I’m holding out for Descartes’ Cedar Chest because I really like chests.

Do yourself a favor and do a cleanup.  A personalized actually time and effort put into it cleanup.  Your chest will be a lot better off.