After nearly a decade the Gematria Grift has gotten over its growing pains and settled in to some more predictable patterns. As for the material within these posts, the overall value is a mixed bag, that said being based on the popularity of the individual posts. Although any scam topic with a cognitive bias based hook is a target for gematria grifting, the sports section is by far the most targeted. For the record, some other topics include religion/spirituality politics, and the stock market. All that will be said about those in this post is that the goal is to cultivate existing cognitive biases and nurture them into a black and white binary response. Religion A good, Religion B bad. Left/right leaning = good vs. Left/right leaning = bad. Investing in this equity = good, while involvement in any other investment = bad or at least nowhere near as lucrative.
In sports, the binary outcome is brutally clear. Two teams play and one of them wins other than the sports that have ties built into the structure. Although the making a prediction angle is downplayed at times make no mistake - the entire goal of the gematria grift is to falsely portray the narrator as some sort of magician with amazing predictive powers. A source that has acquired special knowledge that is somehow able to use that to win, if not all the time, so often that it’s far better than flipping a coin.
The Reality CheckIt shouldn't work, but it does. The entrenched old guard that has been making gematria gambling content has settled into rarely making genuine predictions. The easiest way around that is to pick both teams and have a new batch of followers who haven’t been able to figure that out. The format is something like this:
You may not be able to force any word to literally match any number with gematria, but you can certainly force the overall narrative for a binary outcome to match what story you want to tell. And to pick up fake, “look how great I am at predicting stuff” points, nothing works better than a synopsis when the game is over. If you are a scammer using gematria grift and you can’t make a believable post mortem fake prediction, it’s time to find another hustle. The daily news serves as advertisement for sports prediction grifting. Whatever big headlines show up is analyzed after the fact, giving the audience a taste of the fake predictive power of gematria. And needless to say these headlines were never actually predicted, unless they are also a binary outcome like Trump being elected instead of Clinton. Conspiracy theory content is a great topic to add as an alternative to the mainstream media reporting of some actual facts. People with a gambling problem that don’t understand the fairly simple nature of predicting something that’s already happened are probably significantly biased politically.
Gematria is really good at one thing. And that’s getting people involved. It’s perfect for someone who is fully invested in a personal belief that they are right all the time. Perfect for someone with a hatred of actual research and how pesky facts get in the way of being stupendously wrong about a lot of stuff, including major things like personal finances. My estimate is that within two weeks if not just a few days a new to gematria sports decoder is up and running and making their own predictions based on their own confirmation bias. The marketing strategy of the old time grifters is well established. Always attack science/experts/smarter people. Give out words of encouragement to newcomers. Never admit you’re wrong and always claim that gematria is valuable despite overwhelming evidence it is worthless. This is the same tactics used by cults and MLM pyramid schemes. When people do drop out after gematria fails them, they (mostly) do so quietly, embarrassed by being scammed. And there’s always a newcomer or hundred to take their place, eager for those words of encouragement missing from non internet life.
Do social media sites care? What about their stated community guidelines stating that fraud is illegal?
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