I’ll never forget the day I decided to go read some NZ anti vax telegram groups to see what they were up to. The funniest thing I saw was someone posting some pics of regular ol clouds, with everyone commenting “omg those clouds look sooo unnatural!!” under it. I definitely saw lots of mentions of everyone dying in a few months/years too, some people are even prepping for it. I’m guessing this is gonna be one of those things where the apocalypse keeps getting pushed forward lol. In addition they were saying that the bad driving back in early Dec (of the sort you usually see before Christmas) was newly vaccinated people going off their rocker. Fascinating, funny and sad all at the same time.
As an autist the ‘vaccines cause autism’ thing always strikes a nerve. It just reeks of eugenics, that autism is the worst thing that could happen to your kid, worse than dying of a preventable illness. I don’t get people who think that way. I’d never give up autism, even if it’s challenging sometimes. It’s just part of my identity.
Also, I actually have an acquaintance who has been posting on fb about not believing in germ theory!! She also posted an article that was talking about how exposing yourself to small pathogens can train your immune system. I guess they meant in a ‘natural’ way but still I thought that was pretty funny.
The whole Telegram as an unaccountable social media cesspit is interesting. Telegram will voluntarily block channels hosting vaccine misinformation. At least they did in Italy recently. http://www.news.cn/english/2021-09/07/c_1310173950.htm
I'm so sorry you have to encounter the neurotypical prejudice against autism that runs rife in antivaxxer communities. It's really ugly. For some relief, awesome standup comedienne Hannah Gadsby covers it hilariously in her recent Douglas show - if you've not seen it already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Gadsby:_Douglas
And I can't find the links now but I recall many years back some fringe naturopath's were encouraging the drinking of dilute amounts of paraquat to boost your 'resilience' to environmental pollution.
DO NOT DO THIS!
You don't gain immunity to poisons and other such toxins by exposure to them by ingestion. That's actually a para-suicidal (and sometimes not so para) form of self-harm. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC313909/
Yeah, you could try reporting those channels to the NZ Ministry of Health since per that news article, it took the threat of Telegram being faced with court action by the Italian government for undermining their COVID response before Telegram took action.
I'm not sure if Telegram would feel as concerned about the NZ market as I imagine getting sanctioned by the Italians could have had ramifications across the entire EU and Telegram probably did care about that.
It makes you wonder about what Telegram's business model actually is. Probably seeking to IPO with a large customer count I guess - like Twitter and those before them since Telegram has avoided advertising as a way of funding - so far.
Old school peace loving hippies becoming united with right wing white supremacists is one of the things that blows my mind. Many of these types likely don't even see the connection. The fear is very strong in these people!
This always takes me by surprise, too - just on a very visceral level. I want to shake them! "But you're into yoga. YOGA! How did we get to the nazi stuff?!"
Pre Covid I had a mate, who I now distance myself from, who transformed from a super accepting open minded all-round great person into an anti trans, anti immigrant white nationalist. I still don't know how this happened.
Conspiracy researcher Abbie Richards has a great chart that describes the ascent pulling you up (or down) the conspiracy pyramid towards the black hole of hate-speech - the anti-Semitic point of no return.
One of the three core psychological attractions of conspiracism is the pursuit of a sense of specialness, often to counteract a sense of shame that exists in other areas of your life.
It's the most toxic driver because if that's what conspiracism is being used for by someone, as they surround themselves with more people on the conspiracy bandwagon, they have to become more extreme to keep their specialness within it. And that journey gets increasingly ugly.
Fascinating, thank you. I expect the old mate I spoke of is now well in the anti-Semitic point of no return category, perhaps beyond. He did often rant on about Soros etc. Another friend in the US took a similar path over the last 2 years, last I heard he was ordering parts to assemble an AR15 style rifle (ghost gun).
That connection you point out makes me think of the horseshoe theory of politics, which notes how extremists (of all stripes) have more in common with each other than the rest of the body politic.
I’d like to think that if I inadvertently became a major figure in a global conspiracy theory I wouldn’t string people along and use it as a money making opportunity, but you never know until you’re tested.
What I like most about the Dallas thing is that not only was JFK Jnr due back, but dad was too. It's just beyond any kind of reasoning. Lazy storytelling. If it was in a movie, people would walk out
Bezos has popped up here several times, so I have to share my favorite Bezos-is-insane moment, and it's not the space penis. Not exactly, anyway. It's his completely not at all bonkers idea that within a few decades, humanity will be living in a Bezos-built, Bezos-controlled space bubble that will simulate life on Earth.
There's a fantastic writer and environmentalist named George Monbiot (seriously, give him a follow, he's brilliant), and he just absolutely tore apart this space bubble idea in this here video:
It's like 10 minutes long, but I promise you will not be disappointed. Sometimes we lose perspective, I think, on just how utterly detached from reality these guys are, and Monbiot does a brilliant job reminding us here.
So yeah, the space bubble has got to be my favorite bit on bonkerdom this year. Not quite a conspiracy, but at least part a very elaborate fantasy world this dude has built for himself.
A worthy follow and that video blew my mind. Thank you. Sometime - possibly as I am so focussed on Musk - I missed this Bezos brain buster. Eternal thanks.
The chemtrails one is a personal favourite (and of the aviation community). I have seen a few SocMed posts from fellow pilots who have even gone so far as to make up fake placards marked “Chemtrails” and placed them on the instrument panel of their aircraft next to a random On/Off switch, just to stir up the crazies.
Ha! I really like that. Might make it worse, but eh - I think those people are already pretty lost. Have always liked Mick West's debunking work in this area - wish I was as smart and had this knowledge on hand in my empty brain! https://contrailscience.com/
People are bonkers, I'm still astounded at the level of just fucking stupid of our present age.
My favourite is microchips in vaccines. That generated some excellent memes and genuinely made me laugh out loud. Sad thing is it has probably cost lives. 😕
Yes - it appears people either misunderstand microchips or nano technology - or both. Watching the 5G / Covid / Vaccine stuff all combine in 2020 was the *strangest* thing, right?
The chip thing makes no sense though. Everyone has a mobile/ cell phone. We already have these microchips with us everywhere. Why put them inside us for the same outcome? These people are already controlled my social media and easily tracked. Seriously what is the point?!
I love pointing this out to conspiracy peeps, and the line I get in response is FB is innocent, the evil is Johnson and Johnson who do the FB moderating!! Wtf, these people will spin any line to reinforce their delusions
Mix and Match Conspiracy, anything gets bolted on. That has been the most remarkable thing about 20/21 for me. Maybe it happened before but I didn't notice or am more aware because of the high stakes or reading this newsletter.
My favorite thing about the microchips/5G tracking and all that is that people seem to think we are advanced and sophisticated enough to even come up with something like that. If science were there yet, it would certainly be very impressive. But yes, ultimately of course you are right, this kind of thinking has cost so many lives and relationships.
@Alex: Education is better but not as powerful as the internet. Learning takes effort and being told what to think by some dude on YouTube takes very little effort and it's more exciting I guess. The most bizarre thing is this stuff is underpinned by the idea that governments are organised, functional, intelligent and cooperative enough to pull this stuff off on a global scale. Most literally couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery and are focused on party success and personal gain. They can be shady but that is usually to maintain the status quo and/or flow of cash into their pockets.
I've also wondered if those of us who were young in the 70s are more vulnerable to this thinking, kids culture was trippy, bizarre and some of the kids TV shows I saw scarred my brain. I wonder if there is any data on age ranges of people who believe in conspiracy theories? The people I know of in my circle who believe conspiracy bollocks are 47+ where the under 35's seem quite sensible.
As far as the age ranges issue goes, I think the fact is that people who are older (like boomer old, not so much Gen X) are more gullible to internet propaganda because they did not grow up learning how to weed through that stuff. Perhaps that is oversimplifying the matter, but I do think it's a factor.
As a boomer (and old hippy) with many friends of the same ilk, I want to say that most of us are not that gullible. I live in a place with far too many anti-vaxxers and conspiracists, but the age range is right across the spectrum ,with probably the bulk in their 30s, 40s and 50s. My daughter pointed out that these are the ones who never saw or experienced things like polio, tb, measles as we older ones did, so they simply have no idea that vaccines had any part to play in reducing their impact or ridding us of them. One of these (in her 40s) told me that the horrible measles epidemic that killed 83 people in Samoa because they lacked Vitamin C! And that the polio vaccine caused polio. I'd suggest she read Defeating the Ministers of Death (excellent read on history of vaccination) but it would be a waste of breath.
I love your comment in general, but the vitamin C takes the cake - they can't even get the vitamin right - in active measles in a child, it is vitamin A which reduces mortality (based on a fairly small South African randomised controlled trial) - although of course not in the realm of the protection provided by immunisation prior to infection.
The measles outbreak in Samoa was a terrible tragedy to watch unfold. A nurse mixed an agent which paralyses breathing muscles with the vaccine and 2 children tragically died. What should have happened was that special fridges were installed in operating theaters and intensive care to hold such dangerous drugs, and vaccinations never stored anywhere near such drugs, alongside nursing upskilling, education and double checking protocols. Instead, Robert Kennedy arrives extolling the evils of vaccination, contributing to an incredibly low rate of vaccination amongst children in the country. You know the rest. Of course once the virus was raging through the population and children were dying, there was never any indication of contrition from the anti-vaxers who had actively helped set up the whole situation.
What I have never been able to forget (or forgive) is her blithe acceptance of the totally unnecessary deaths of all those children! Three in one family. Those anti-vaxxers should have been prosecuted.
Yes, you make an excellent point, and reconsidering my comment, it could certainly be taken to mean that all boomers are the problem. Sorry if I was unclear there; what I should have said is that Boomers, as a whole, are less likely to be up on the latest in tech.
Maybe - but as I said above, it is not just about technology, but life experience or lack of. BTW, I taught fully online for the last 15 years of my career. My father and I played internet Scrabble every day (and he downloaded his cryptic crossword too) until his death at the age of 89. He wasn't an educated man at all, just keen to try things. Some old dogs can learn new tricks.
Yeah, it probably is the case with boomers. Sadly I know Gen X who swallow conspiracy bollocks too, intelligent, and usually rational but believes so much conspiracy from Twin Towers onwards. Weird. I would love to understand why they believe it but I'm not clever enough. I hope someone studies it in the future.
First time I heard about microchips being injected was from the faith based communities I was on the fringe of. As a teenager we were shown "Mark of the Beast" documentaries at church youth group meetings. Back in the 1990s it was barcodes. The tech has now improved to microchips!!
Frequent reader, sometimes above the fold reader in my emails, I have found it hard at times to engage with writing about conspiracies because it is so depressing sometimes. Just the sheer ability for people to latch onto these wild ideas that provide them some kind of security or fills some emotional need... it doesn't bode well for our future as a species. But I am also optimistic that a new generation is wiser and will have social mores and tools to fight these ideas. Maybe we are just caught in the thick of it as a species right now perhaps.
I wish everyone who reads this a good new year and hopefully your family isn't caught up in this madness.
Understand all these thoughts. I think there is a new generation coming up which is a lot less stupid. We really shouldn't have let our parents loose online, right? "Hey, this is Facebook - connect with your old friends!" etc.
Non conspiracy newsletters this year too, I promise!
Sigh ... Andrew Wakefield to Robert W. Malone, then the influences of Vladislav Surkov and Bannon how does one individuate these people and their discord back into the fold of humanity?
Start with the self first l would expect and hopefully things go from there.
"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
Psychopaths and the highly anti-social, which includes Con artists, are essentially intra-species predators. They are only about 1% of the population, genetically speaking, but have an outsized impact however, contrary to the stereotype, most of their violence is interpersonal injury (i.e. psychological, emotional, financial, etc.), rather than physical injury.
Agreed, so without going the down the immediate path of black and white thinking, more reactionary, just condemning this branch of humanity. I think these kinds of threads provide the village with the mechanism to call out the sick individuals that endanger the herd/ other members.
In regards to narcissistic personality disorders and psychopathy, if it sits in a place of status and power, it's something else, how to navigate that long term?
The malignantly narcissistic and psychopathic are attracted to power and status (as are most of us to an extent) so having the public educated about spotting and corralling them early is helpful. The rising awareness of the seriousness of workplace bullying and the #metoo movement are a good start. The real problem is industries in which they are already well entrenched atop the management hierarchy and actively resisting reform.
No you are fine, black and white thinking is a check and balance on my own thinking/actions.
Yes those are great resources there, I remember doing my psychopathy/ sociopath papers, working with clients from semi homeless to well to do at the time, in contrast the actual danger was my time in Government and some of the Kingdoms the Managers and HR ran, very bling Lord of the Flies some days with a toxic top down culture that was protected.
*Edit, the #metoo movement, yes you're definitely right, reminds me of the 60s cultural revolution that impacted how many minority groups and their self agency of directing their future paths vs the Mormons having a sudden revelation that colored people in their cannon suddenly were not cursed Sons of Cain, even then Modernity has seen the Catholics kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.
Really, they just painted the planes all black, like the helicopters, and now they fly them at night after claiming to have stored them all 'in the desert'. How convenient. The Mojave desert is home to Area 51 where they're storing the alien bodies and their crashed UFOs.
As always, thanks for the weird read David and Dylan.
Now, forgive the tangent, but I saw something online this morning that made me immediately think of you.
Have you looked in to (or possibly already written about) completely digital influencers? As in, CGI models who have their "own" Instagram counts.
Lil Misquela, for example, is a digital model with 3 million followers and has appeared in ad campaigns for his fashion labels. Or Shudu Gram, who claims to be the first digital super model.
To me, it seems like just the kind of bizarre dystopian fodder that you wrote about so well, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
Heh, yeah I've followed Lil Misquela for awhile - I've seen a few pieces about "her", and while originally sort of intrigued, it all just boiled down to pretty boring marketing - albeit with a CG creature instead of some model wheeled out and paraded. I did find a network of Instagram accounts with entirely CG figures - all interacting and commenting with a very busy life going on. Sort of like a CG Kardashians. May go and revisit that now you raise it - mainly interesting as there was no product placement and seemingly zero point!
I imagine there's two versions of it happening. The purely commercial versions like Lil Misquela, and then there must be surreal almost role-playing versions like you were talking about, with networks of cgi creations essentially acting as avatars for real people. Or even a single person talking to themselves? I wonder how long it will be before they develop the machine learning necessary to make their post fully "autonomous"?
Virtual idols are a lot easier to control and manage (i.e. scandal proof and don't resist financial exploitation) so they have been a growth industry of late. It saves having to find and create new ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_band#Japanese_virtual_idols
As for dystopian fodder, the awesome William Gibson even wrote an 1996 SF novel that centers on this concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru so life is imitating art :-)
You seem to have interesting info on every possible thing I bring up in here. It's awesome haha.
I guess mascots and cartoon characters have been used for decades to promote things, often with their own "personality".
I guess I'm just so weirded out by these latest versions because the advances in CGI means they're essentially indistinguishable from real life. And the way they're presented online as "people".
If I had found Lil Misquela before hearing she was a CGI creation, I would've been none the wiser... And that is unsettling. It basically makes me realise that we're much closer to achieving the reality of the science fiction of films like Deus Ex Machina, or Her, than I'd realised.
Mea culpa. Our interests do seem to overlap quite a bit - and I'm quite the William Gibson fan.
And you're right, modern machine learning has solved the prior issues and allowed us to initially cross the Uncanny valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley and that's not an entirely good thing.
Arguably, finding out that's she's fake afterwards has likely pushed you back into the Valley of disgust/discomfort.
In terms of Idoru (the 1996 novel), we can deepfake image and voice now but she's still scripted and animated by human minds. However, language models like GPT-3 could be producing her scripts from seed texts and keywords. Facial animation and emotion is early deepfake-able too but still needs lots of human cueing. And general AI is quite a ways off.
Our interests do definitely seem to overlap a lot.
I find all this stuff absolutely fascinating. The intersection between CGI, machine learning, AI, and inevitably AR and VR, is going to produce some amazing, and horrific, shit in the next few years.
We're already seeing some pretty significant impacts on our society beyond cgi influencers, like the filters used on insta, tik tok etc, that not only beautify, but now literally change the structure of your face. And it's impossible to tell a filter is being used.
I just read an article (on The Spinoff, I believe... Or maybe The Guardian?) about these filters. There were a few influencers interviewed who'd come to love their filtered versions of themselves more than the reality. One of the women said she almost stopped recognizing her real self, because she preferred the filtered version so much.
Being exposed to photoshopped or airbrushed advertising has a dempster effect on people's self esteem. But I feel like filtering your own face is that same effect on steroids.
Once again, we're kind of just unleashing this stuff on ourselves and then dealing with the fallout afterwards.
The increasing ease of blurring between fantasy and reality is something that the recent Nvidia/Unreal engine PS5 tech demo produced for the Matrix Resurrections movie touches on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ
Influencers and image filters and how they encourage self-deception as a form of induced narcissism and shame avoidance is troubling from a psychotherapy theory point of view and something I might touch on in a future webworm.
My favourite batshit crazy moments of the last year (because this happened more than once) were when I was accused of being a member of the 77th Brigade by conspiracy theorists on Facebook.
They based this on my trolling their ridiculous ideas and that they couldn’t see much on my FB page. Not having much visible to the general public on you FB page clearly marks you as a member of the British military on a psyop, as opposed to someone who just has the majority on their stuff set to ‘Friends Only’.
My favourite from 2021 is kind of a medley of all the weird protests we had in NZ, certainly from Aug to Dec it really ramped up and kind of devolved into a crazy hodge-podge of loopy. Like there was no singular message or issue being protested, it was just groups of grumpy people wanting to get together with other grumpy people and have a big rant about whatever their particular annoyance was. From watching Q supporters trying to stop the farmers’ (unrelated) protest, people wearing Trump hats & t-shirts, “Let’s Go Brandon” signs, demonstrators biting police, calls for freedom chanted by groups of people who were using their freedom to freely protest about their lack of freedom, death threats to government members, Tamaki & his toadies pesting around Auckland unchecked before finally getting arrested only to return shortly thereafter to resume breaking the law, calls to “drain the swamp”…..I saw a photo taken at the (I think) last protest in Wgtn across from Parliament House over by the train station there were 2 homeless guys just laughing their arses off at the group that had gathered. Sums it all up really.
I'll be seeing my Mum in England this summer for the first time in 2yrs (I live in Australia now). As someone who rarely thinks for herself, and prefers to soak up the beliefs of whatever nutjob she is dating, she has recently outdone herself by informing me that "you can prevent Covid with the right nutrients" (even though she caught it herself eventually), "it's all a Great Reset", "the government is lying about the death rates and suppressing whistleblowers", "you can't believe the mainstream media" and my favourite after I'd bought a new computerised sewing machine, "darling, you'd better keep your old non-digital one, as it can't be hacked by Russian spies".
I've bought a notebook which I'm using to explore, research and clarify these conspiracy theories (aside from the sewing machine comment because - come on), along with how to debunk them, before I see her. My aim is to get clear on anything she might throw at me so that I can have an articulate answer for her, as my impatience has a tendency to take over. Articles like these are a great starting point and Webworm as a whole has been a huge help. Wish me luck please! I need that, and a whole load of patience...
A great read thanks. What do you know about the Community Service Block Grant in NZ. I have friends claiming to have received a lot of money delivered to their doors. The old too good to be true. I discover that I am on their recipient list to my horror. I cannot find a webpage for them which fills me with even more suspicion.
I’ll never forget the day I decided to go read some NZ anti vax telegram groups to see what they were up to. The funniest thing I saw was someone posting some pics of regular ol clouds, with everyone commenting “omg those clouds look sooo unnatural!!” under it. I definitely saw lots of mentions of everyone dying in a few months/years too, some people are even prepping for it. I’m guessing this is gonna be one of those things where the apocalypse keeps getting pushed forward lol. In addition they were saying that the bad driving back in early Dec (of the sort you usually see before Christmas) was newly vaccinated people going off their rocker. Fascinating, funny and sad all at the same time.
As an autist the ‘vaccines cause autism’ thing always strikes a nerve. It just reeks of eugenics, that autism is the worst thing that could happen to your kid, worse than dying of a preventable illness. I don’t get people who think that way. I’d never give up autism, even if it’s challenging sometimes. It’s just part of my identity.
Also, I actually have an acquaintance who has been posting on fb about not believing in germ theory!! She also posted an article that was talking about how exposing yourself to small pathogens can train your immune system. I guess they meant in a ‘natural’ way but still I thought that was pretty funny.
The whole Telegram as an unaccountable social media cesspit is interesting. Telegram will voluntarily block channels hosting vaccine misinformation. At least they did in Italy recently. http://www.news.cn/english/2021-09/07/c_1310173950.htm
I'm so sorry you have to encounter the neurotypical prejudice against autism that runs rife in antivaxxer communities. It's really ugly. For some relief, awesome standup comedienne Hannah Gadsby covers it hilariously in her recent Douglas show - if you've not seen it already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Gadsby:_Douglas
And I can't find the links now but I recall many years back some fringe naturopath's were encouraging the drinking of dilute amounts of paraquat to boost your 'resilience' to environmental pollution.
DO NOT DO THIS!
You don't gain immunity to poisons and other such toxins by exposure to them by ingestion. That's actually a para-suicidal (and sometimes not so para) form of self-harm. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC313909/
Oh interesting! Maybe I will try reporting these ones then.
Yes I absolutely loved Douglas… one of the few times I’ve laughed out loud at a comedy show. She’s great.
Oh I see, that’s so strange. And scary!!
Yeah, you could try reporting those channels to the NZ Ministry of Health since per that news article, it took the threat of Telegram being faced with court action by the Italian government for undermining their COVID response before Telegram took action.
I'm not sure if Telegram would feel as concerned about the NZ market as I imagine getting sanctioned by the Italians could have had ramifications across the entire EU and Telegram probably did care about that.
It makes you wonder about what Telegram's business model actually is. Probably seeking to IPO with a large customer count I guess - like Twitter and those before them since Telegram has avoided advertising as a way of funding - so far.
https://startuptalky.com/telegram-business-model/
Old school peace loving hippies becoming united with right wing white supremacists is one of the things that blows my mind. Many of these types likely don't even see the connection. The fear is very strong in these people!
This always takes me by surprise, too - just on a very visceral level. I want to shake them! "But you're into yoga. YOGA! How did we get to the nazi stuff?!"
Pre Covid I had a mate, who I now distance myself from, who transformed from a super accepting open minded all-round great person into an anti trans, anti immigrant white nationalist. I still don't know how this happened.
Conspiracy researcher Abbie Richards has a great chart that describes the ascent pulling you up (or down) the conspiracy pyramid towards the black hole of hate-speech - the anti-Semitic point of no return.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/11/29/metro/this-chart-conspiracy-theories-has-gone-viral-freebritney-qanon-local-disinformation-researcher-breaks-down-what-know/
One of the three core psychological attractions of conspiracism is the pursuit of a sense of specialness, often to counteract a sense of shame that exists in other areas of your life.
It's the most toxic driver because if that's what conspiracism is being used for by someone, as they surround themselves with more people on the conspiracy bandwagon, they have to become more extreme to keep their specialness within it. And that journey gets increasingly ugly.
Fascinating, thank you. I expect the old mate I spoke of is now well in the anti-Semitic point of no return category, perhaps beyond. He did often rant on about Soros etc. Another friend in the US took a similar path over the last 2 years, last I heard he was ordering parts to assemble an AR15 style rifle (ghost gun).
That connection you point out makes me think of the horseshoe theory of politics, which notes how extremists (of all stripes) have more in common with each other than the rest of the body politic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
Man, JFK Jr is looking rough.
I’d like to think that if I inadvertently became a major figure in a global conspiracy theory I wouldn’t string people along and use it as a money making opportunity, but you never know until you’re tested.
What I like most about the Dallas thing is that not only was JFK Jnr due back, but dad was too. It's just beyond any kind of reasoning. Lazy storytelling. If it was in a movie, people would walk out
Well, you don't have to be narcissistically or psychopathically organised to pull this stuff... but it helps.
Bezos has popped up here several times, so I have to share my favorite Bezos-is-insane moment, and it's not the space penis. Not exactly, anyway. It's his completely not at all bonkers idea that within a few decades, humanity will be living in a Bezos-built, Bezos-controlled space bubble that will simulate life on Earth.
There's a fantastic writer and environmentalist named George Monbiot (seriously, give him a follow, he's brilliant), and he just absolutely tore apart this space bubble idea in this here video:
https://twitter.com/DoubleDownNews/status/1419985920485470218
It's like 10 minutes long, but I promise you will not be disappointed. Sometimes we lose perspective, I think, on just how utterly detached from reality these guys are, and Monbiot does a brilliant job reminding us here.
So yeah, the space bubble has got to be my favorite bit on bonkerdom this year. Not quite a conspiracy, but at least part a very elaborate fantasy world this dude has built for himself.
A worthy follow and that video blew my mind. Thank you. Sometime - possibly as I am so focussed on Musk - I missed this Bezos brain buster. Eternal thanks.
The chemtrails one is a personal favourite (and of the aviation community). I have seen a few SocMed posts from fellow pilots who have even gone so far as to make up fake placards marked “Chemtrails” and placed them on the instrument panel of their aircraft next to a random On/Off switch, just to stir up the crazies.
Ha! I really like that. Might make it worse, but eh - I think those people are already pretty lost. Have always liked Mick West's debunking work in this area - wish I was as smart and had this knowledge on hand in my empty brain! https://contrailscience.com/
That was a good read, depressing but good.
People are bonkers, I'm still astounded at the level of just fucking stupid of our present age.
My favourite is microchips in vaccines. That generated some excellent memes and genuinely made me laugh out loud. Sad thing is it has probably cost lives. 😕
Yes - it appears people either misunderstand microchips or nano technology - or both. Watching the 5G / Covid / Vaccine stuff all combine in 2020 was the *strangest* thing, right?
The chip thing makes no sense though. Everyone has a mobile/ cell phone. We already have these microchips with us everywhere. Why put them inside us for the same outcome? These people are already controlled my social media and easily tracked. Seriously what is the point?!
I love pointing this out to conspiracy peeps, and the line I get in response is FB is innocent, the evil is Johnson and Johnson who do the FB moderating!! Wtf, these people will spin any line to reinforce their delusions
Mix and Match Conspiracy, anything gets bolted on. That has been the most remarkable thing about 20/21 for me. Maybe it happened before but I didn't notice or am more aware because of the high stakes or reading this newsletter.
My favorite thing about the microchips/5G tracking and all that is that people seem to think we are advanced and sophisticated enough to even come up with something like that. If science were there yet, it would certainly be very impressive. But yes, ultimately of course you are right, this kind of thinking has cost so many lives and relationships.
@Alex: Education is better but not as powerful as the internet. Learning takes effort and being told what to think by some dude on YouTube takes very little effort and it's more exciting I guess. The most bizarre thing is this stuff is underpinned by the idea that governments are organised, functional, intelligent and cooperative enough to pull this stuff off on a global scale. Most literally couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery and are focused on party success and personal gain. They can be shady but that is usually to maintain the status quo and/or flow of cash into their pockets.
I've also wondered if those of us who were young in the 70s are more vulnerable to this thinking, kids culture was trippy, bizarre and some of the kids TV shows I saw scarred my brain. I wonder if there is any data on age ranges of people who believe in conspiracy theories? The people I know of in my circle who believe conspiracy bollocks are 47+ where the under 35's seem quite sensible.
As far as the age ranges issue goes, I think the fact is that people who are older (like boomer old, not so much Gen X) are more gullible to internet propaganda because they did not grow up learning how to weed through that stuff. Perhaps that is oversimplifying the matter, but I do think it's a factor.
As a boomer (and old hippy) with many friends of the same ilk, I want to say that most of us are not that gullible. I live in a place with far too many anti-vaxxers and conspiracists, but the age range is right across the spectrum ,with probably the bulk in their 30s, 40s and 50s. My daughter pointed out that these are the ones who never saw or experienced things like polio, tb, measles as we older ones did, so they simply have no idea that vaccines had any part to play in reducing their impact or ridding us of them. One of these (in her 40s) told me that the horrible measles epidemic that killed 83 people in Samoa because they lacked Vitamin C! And that the polio vaccine caused polio. I'd suggest she read Defeating the Ministers of Death (excellent read on history of vaccination) but it would be a waste of breath.
I love your comment in general, but the vitamin C takes the cake - they can't even get the vitamin right - in active measles in a child, it is vitamin A which reduces mortality (based on a fairly small South African randomised controlled trial) - although of course not in the realm of the protection provided by immunisation prior to infection.
The measles outbreak in Samoa was a terrible tragedy to watch unfold. A nurse mixed an agent which paralyses breathing muscles with the vaccine and 2 children tragically died. What should have happened was that special fridges were installed in operating theaters and intensive care to hold such dangerous drugs, and vaccinations never stored anywhere near such drugs, alongside nursing upskilling, education and double checking protocols. Instead, Robert Kennedy arrives extolling the evils of vaccination, contributing to an incredibly low rate of vaccination amongst children in the country. You know the rest. Of course once the virus was raging through the population and children were dying, there was never any indication of contrition from the anti-vaxers who had actively helped set up the whole situation.
What I have never been able to forget (or forgive) is her blithe acceptance of the totally unnecessary deaths of all those children! Three in one family. Those anti-vaxxers should have been prosecuted.
Yes, you make an excellent point, and reconsidering my comment, it could certainly be taken to mean that all boomers are the problem. Sorry if I was unclear there; what I should have said is that Boomers, as a whole, are less likely to be up on the latest in tech.
Maybe - but as I said above, it is not just about technology, but life experience or lack of. BTW, I taught fully online for the last 15 years of my career. My father and I played internet Scrabble every day (and he downloaded his cryptic crossword too) until his death at the age of 89. He wasn't an educated man at all, just keen to try things. Some old dogs can learn new tricks.
Yeah, it probably is the case with boomers. Sadly I know Gen X who swallow conspiracy bollocks too, intelligent, and usually rational but believes so much conspiracy from Twin Towers onwards. Weird. I would love to understand why they believe it but I'm not clever enough. I hope someone studies it in the future.
First time I heard about microchips being injected was from the faith based communities I was on the fringe of. As a teenager we were shown "Mark of the Beast" documentaries at church youth group meetings. Back in the 1990s it was barcodes. The tech has now improved to microchips!!
Frequent reader, sometimes above the fold reader in my emails, I have found it hard at times to engage with writing about conspiracies because it is so depressing sometimes. Just the sheer ability for people to latch onto these wild ideas that provide them some kind of security or fills some emotional need... it doesn't bode well for our future as a species. But I am also optimistic that a new generation is wiser and will have social mores and tools to fight these ideas. Maybe we are just caught in the thick of it as a species right now perhaps.
I wish everyone who reads this a good new year and hopefully your family isn't caught up in this madness.
Understand all these thoughts. I think there is a new generation coming up which is a lot less stupid. We really shouldn't have let our parents loose online, right? "Hey, this is Facebook - connect with your old friends!" etc.
Non conspiracy newsletters this year too, I promise!
Sigh ... Andrew Wakefield to Robert W. Malone, then the influences of Vladislav Surkov and Bannon how does one individuate these people and their discord back into the fold of humanity?
Start with the self first l would expect and hopefully things go from there.
"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Psychopaths and the highly anti-social, which includes Con artists, are essentially intra-species predators. They are only about 1% of the population, genetically speaking, but have an outsized impact however, contrary to the stereotype, most of their violence is interpersonal injury (i.e. psychological, emotional, financial, etc.), rather than physical injury.
Agreed, so without going the down the immediate path of black and white thinking, more reactionary, just condemning this branch of humanity. I think these kinds of threads provide the village with the mechanism to call out the sick individuals that endanger the herd/ other members.
In regards to narcissistic personality disorders and psychopathy, if it sits in a place of status and power, it's something else, how to navigate that long term?
Sorry - I don't mean to make it sound black and white. Psychopathy is a genetic neurological difference. It's also adaptive in certain contexts and not all psychopathic individuals are predatory as that's a developmental issue. I recommend Kevin Dutton's book 'The Wisdom of Psychopaths' https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989 and James Fallon's book 'The Psychopath Inside' https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Inside-Neuroscientists-Personal-Journey/dp/1591846005 as particularly insightful on that topic.
The malignantly narcissistic and psychopathic are attracted to power and status (as are most of us to an extent) so having the public educated about spotting and corralling them early is helpful. The rising awareness of the seriousness of workplace bullying and the #metoo movement are a good start. The real problem is industries in which they are already well entrenched atop the management hierarchy and actively resisting reform.
No you are fine, black and white thinking is a check and balance on my own thinking/actions.
Yes those are great resources there, I remember doing my psychopathy/ sociopath papers, working with clients from semi homeless to well to do at the time, in contrast the actual danger was my time in Government and some of the Kingdoms the Managers and HR ran, very bling Lord of the Flies some days with a toxic top down culture that was protected.
*Edit, the #metoo movement, yes you're definitely right, reminds me of the 60s cultural revolution that impacted how many minority groups and their self agency of directing their future paths vs the Mormons having a sudden revelation that colored people in their cannon suddenly were not cursed Sons of Cain, even then Modernity has seen the Catholics kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.
Hopefully this is how these systems change.
I wonder if there are any chemtrails people who are happy that covid grounded so many planes
That's what THEY want you do think.
Really, they just painted the planes all black, like the helicopters, and now they fly them at night after claiming to have stored them all 'in the desert'. How convenient. The Mojave desert is home to Area 51 where they're storing the alien bodies and their crashed UFOs.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/travel/2020/09/historic-air-new-zealand-all-black-aircraft-leaves-auckland-for-desert-storage-tonight.html
As always, thanks for the weird read David and Dylan.
Now, forgive the tangent, but I saw something online this morning that made me immediately think of you.
Have you looked in to (or possibly already written about) completely digital influencers? As in, CGI models who have their "own" Instagram counts.
Lil Misquela, for example, is a digital model with 3 million followers and has appeared in ad campaigns for his fashion labels. Or Shudu Gram, who claims to be the first digital super model.
To me, it seems like just the kind of bizarre dystopian fodder that you wrote about so well, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
Heh, yeah I've followed Lil Misquela for awhile - I've seen a few pieces about "her", and while originally sort of intrigued, it all just boiled down to pretty boring marketing - albeit with a CG creature instead of some model wheeled out and paraded. I did find a network of Instagram accounts with entirely CG figures - all interacting and commenting with a very busy life going on. Sort of like a CG Kardashians. May go and revisit that now you raise it - mainly interesting as there was no product placement and seemingly zero point!
I imagine there's two versions of it happening. The purely commercial versions like Lil Misquela, and then there must be surreal almost role-playing versions like you were talking about, with networks of cgi creations essentially acting as avatars for real people. Or even a single person talking to themselves? I wonder how long it will be before they develop the machine learning necessary to make their post fully "autonomous"?
I find it all very weird and fascinating.
Making chat bots talk to each other has a long history starting in 1972. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/when-parry-met-eliza-a-ridiculous-chatbot-conversation-from-1972/372428/
It didn't turn out that interesting back then but things have advanced quite a bit. Mind you, if it's anything like Tay it might get racist, sexist and homophobic pretty fast. https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist
That sounds just a pretty accurate reflection of Twitter to me. 🤣
Idoru (or Idols) have been a Japanese (and South Korean) phenomenon since the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_idol
Virtual idols are a lot easier to control and manage (i.e. scandal proof and don't resist financial exploitation) so they have been a growth industry of late. It saves having to find and create new ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_band#Japanese_virtual_idols
As for dystopian fodder, the awesome William Gibson even wrote an 1996 SF novel that centers on this concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru so life is imitating art :-)
Of course you know something about this Paul.
You seem to have interesting info on every possible thing I bring up in here. It's awesome haha.
I guess mascots and cartoon characters have been used for decades to promote things, often with their own "personality".
I guess I'm just so weirded out by these latest versions because the advances in CGI means they're essentially indistinguishable from real life. And the way they're presented online as "people".
If I had found Lil Misquela before hearing she was a CGI creation, I would've been none the wiser... And that is unsettling. It basically makes me realise that we're much closer to achieving the reality of the science fiction of films like Deus Ex Machina, or Her, than I'd realised.
Mea culpa. Our interests do seem to overlap quite a bit - and I'm quite the William Gibson fan.
And you're right, modern machine learning has solved the prior issues and allowed us to initially cross the Uncanny valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley and that's not an entirely good thing.
Arguably, finding out that's she's fake afterwards has likely pushed you back into the Valley of disgust/discomfort.
In terms of Idoru (the 1996 novel), we can deepfake image and voice now but she's still scripted and animated by human minds. However, language models like GPT-3 could be producing her scripts from seed texts and keywords. Facial animation and emotion is early deepfake-able too but still needs lots of human cueing. And general AI is quite a ways off.
Our interests do definitely seem to overlap a lot.
I find all this stuff absolutely fascinating. The intersection between CGI, machine learning, AI, and inevitably AR and VR, is going to produce some amazing, and horrific, shit in the next few years.
We're already seeing some pretty significant impacts on our society beyond cgi influencers, like the filters used on insta, tik tok etc, that not only beautify, but now literally change the structure of your face. And it's impossible to tell a filter is being used.
I just read an article (on The Spinoff, I believe... Or maybe The Guardian?) about these filters. There were a few influencers interviewed who'd come to love their filtered versions of themselves more than the reality. One of the women said she almost stopped recognizing her real self, because she preferred the filtered version so much.
Being exposed to photoshopped or airbrushed advertising has a dempster effect on people's self esteem. But I feel like filtering your own face is that same effect on steroids.
Once again, we're kind of just unleashing this stuff on ourselves and then dealing with the fallout afterwards.
Living in the future is fucking weird.
I'd not read about Dempster-Shafer theory before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dempster%E2%80%93Shafer_theory so thanks for the pointer.
The increasing ease of blurring between fantasy and reality is something that the recent Nvidia/Unreal engine PS5 tech demo produced for the Matrix Resurrections movie touches on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ
And here is Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss being interviewed about it, and other things like NFT craziness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OK80eljWrs
Influencers and image filters and how they encourage self-deception as a form of induced narcissism and shame avoidance is troubling from a psychotherapy theory point of view and something I might touch on in a future webworm.
My favourite batshit crazy moments of the last year (because this happened more than once) were when I was accused of being a member of the 77th Brigade by conspiracy theorists on Facebook.
They based this on my trolling their ridiculous ideas and that they couldn’t see much on my FB page. Not having much visible to the general public on you FB page clearly marks you as a member of the British military on a psyop, as opposed to someone who just has the majority on their stuff set to ‘Friends Only’.
Hey, at least you have a cool logo!
My favourite from 2021 is kind of a medley of all the weird protests we had in NZ, certainly from Aug to Dec it really ramped up and kind of devolved into a crazy hodge-podge of loopy. Like there was no singular message or issue being protested, it was just groups of grumpy people wanting to get together with other grumpy people and have a big rant about whatever their particular annoyance was. From watching Q supporters trying to stop the farmers’ (unrelated) protest, people wearing Trump hats & t-shirts, “Let’s Go Brandon” signs, demonstrators biting police, calls for freedom chanted by groups of people who were using their freedom to freely protest about their lack of freedom, death threats to government members, Tamaki & his toadies pesting around Auckland unchecked before finally getting arrested only to return shortly thereafter to resume breaking the law, calls to “drain the swamp”…..I saw a photo taken at the (I think) last protest in Wgtn across from Parliament House over by the train station there were 2 homeless guys just laughing their arses off at the group that had gathered. Sums it all up really.
I can't remember whether I've shared this here before, but I found this to be gold, as an explanation for the various drivers for people to refuse the vaccine. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/smart_talk/audio/2018813219/assoc-prof-mike-lee-provides-a-marketer-s-insights-into-vaccine-hesitancy
More absurdity is the hilarious schematic of THE chip those 5G-ers say is implanted. It's of a Boss guitar distortion effects pedal https://guitar.com/news/conspiracy-theory-covid-19-vaccine-boss-metal-zone/ . Left my electronics engineer husband and muso laughing.
Indeed - it's also known as the Woo-Woo pedal. 🤣
One way to become a 'metal head' :-)
It turned me into a newt, I mean turtle.... but I got better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ffl0EYcJgc
I'll be seeing my Mum in England this summer for the first time in 2yrs (I live in Australia now). As someone who rarely thinks for herself, and prefers to soak up the beliefs of whatever nutjob she is dating, she has recently outdone herself by informing me that "you can prevent Covid with the right nutrients" (even though she caught it herself eventually), "it's all a Great Reset", "the government is lying about the death rates and suppressing whistleblowers", "you can't believe the mainstream media" and my favourite after I'd bought a new computerised sewing machine, "darling, you'd better keep your old non-digital one, as it can't be hacked by Russian spies".
I've bought a notebook which I'm using to explore, research and clarify these conspiracy theories (aside from the sewing machine comment because - come on), along with how to debunk them, before I see her. My aim is to get clear on anything she might throw at me so that I can have an articulate answer for her, as my impatience has a tendency to take over. Articles like these are a great starting point and Webworm as a whole has been a huge help. Wish me luck please! I need that, and a whole load of patience...
A great read thanks. What do you know about the Community Service Block Grant in NZ. I have friends claiming to have received a lot of money delivered to their doors. The old too good to be true. I discover that I am on their recipient list to my horror. I cannot find a webpage for them which fills me with even more suspicion.