#abusing the blog for sinister purposes again

[stab-acultclassic]

GUIDELINES.

GENERAL. if you want to RP with me, don’t be afraid to simply shoot me an IM, meme prompt, or an ask to get something started! i’m looking for scream characters to play with as well as OC's set in the universe

NSFW: SHIPPING + SMUT. is muse/chemistry based. i require chemistry in order to ship my muses with anyone, and they must be adult 18+.

NSFW: TRIGGERS this blog will most certainly be triggering. i will tag things accordingly and use read more’s where necessary, and will always state either at the start of a post or in the tags if you should be aware of any triggering material.

the triggers on this blog may include:

↪ canon typical violence

↪ abuse as a metaphor for love

↪ murder

↪ blood

↪ gore

↪ manipulation

↪ weapons and weapon use

↪ alcohol and use

↪ drugs and use

i want to address that muse =/= mun. the views and actions of my character do not reflect who i am as a person.

BIOGRAPHY: Stab, A cult classic: Stu Macher's Sinister Legacy*

Thirty years have passed since the infamous Woodsboro massacre, where two masked killers, Billy Loomis and Stu Macher, terrorized the small town, leaving a trail of blood and trauma. While Billy met his demise, Stu managed to fake his death, fleeing into obscurity. But Stu's twisted ambitions didn't perish with his partner. Instead, he nurtured a dark vision, cultivating a cult centered around his masked persona.

*Early Years and Hiding (1996-2005)*

After escaping Woodsboro, Stu assumed various identities, evading detection. He drifted from place to place , honing his manipulative skills and studying cult dynamics. Stu became fascinated with the psychological impact of fear and control, recognizing Ghost Face's potential as a symbol of terror.

*The Cult's Genesis (2005-2010)*

In a rural town in Oregon, Stu found his cult attracting disillusioned individuals mostly teenagers and young adults seeking thrills and purpose. He crafted a twisted narrative, positioning Ghost Face as a messianic figure, embodying chaos and liberation.

*Cult Ideology and Structure*

The Cults doctrine emphasized:

1. Embracing fear as a catalyst for transformation.

2. Rejection of societal norms and authority.

3. Loyalty to Ghost Face

Stu established a hierarchical structure:

1. Inner Circle: Handpicked lieutenants, sworn to secrecy as they are the only ones who know Stu is still alive

2. Initiates: New recruits, subjected to psychological conditioning.

3. Followers: Sympathizers, participating in peripheral activities.

*Rituals and Initiations*

The Collective conducted clandestine rituals, mimicking the Woodsboro murders:

1. Masked gatherings, reenacting iconic scenes.

2. Initiation ceremonies, involving symbolic "killings."

3. Mind control techniques, ensuring loyalty.

*Reemergence and Modern Operations (2020-Present)*

Nearing the 30th anniversary of the Woodsboro massacre, Stu sensed an opportunity to revive Ghost Face's notoriety. The Cult began infiltrating social media, spreading eerie propaganda and recruiting new members.

*Digital Presence*

The cult created:

1. Encrypted forums, discussing ideology and tactics.

2. Ghost Face-themed propaganda

3. Cryptic videos, showcasing ritualistic activities.

*Real-World Manifestations

The Cult influence has been linked to:

1. Mysterious disappearances in rural areas near woodsboro

2. Graffiti and vandalism featuring Ghost Face imagery.

3. Coordinated cyberbullying campaigns.

*Law Enforcement Investigation*

As the anniversary approaches, authorities have launched a task force to investigate The reemergence of Ghost Face. Detectives are racing against time to unravel the cult's network and apprehend Stu before he strikes again.

*Legacy of Terror*

Stu Macher's twisted legacy has spawned a new generation of Ghost Face fanatics. The Culy's resurgence serves as a chilling reminder that evil can adapt, evolve, and reemerge when least expected.

*Epilogue*

As the 30th anniversary of the Woodsboro massacre looms, the world trembles at the prospect of Ghost Face's return. Stu Macher, the mastermind behind the cult, remains at large, orchestrating chaos from the shadows. Will justice finally catch up with him, or will the cult continue to spread terror?

[onepiecematchmaker]

Okay now I want to talk about the CP9

And not in the usual way? I was doing some looking into something for an OC and that led me into animal stereotypes. It occurred to me that I’ve never seen the CP9 discussed in terms of animal stereotypes, which is odd since they obviously have them. 

This won’t be majorly exposition heavy because I think it’s self explanatory. Also it’s long so it’s under the cut.

Lucci

I think often people already portray Lucci (in art, fic, etc.) as having cat similarities. Often, the silly ones, which are drawn from the reality of cats rather than the generalizations of them. I didn’t include a screenshot of this one, but I do think he falls within the sexy cat stereotype too. While it’s more often attributed to females, Lucci is the most attractive member of the organization. That’s not really accounting for personal opinions (or for those who can’t call a male sexy) but it’s definitely. yeah. whooo. He’s a hot guy.

Kaku

Yeah I remember that cover story. And his running joke is generally looking ridiculous in neck and nose.

Blueno

I’ll explain this one a touch more I guess. At Water 7 he’s played as being slow and stupid and generally as just around. Of course we know he’s dangerous. Also the Minotaur? I kinda saw that when he first showed up. Man with a bull’s head sort of thing.

Kalifa

Recall that Kalifa was “fooled” into believing that Monster Chopper was Nami’s DF power. She also had a rough time with Nami’s mirages. There’s no stereotype for sexy sheep, but I think sexy is just Kalifa as Kalifa.

Kumadori

This one is pretty obvious.

Jabra

He is cruel, and he is evil. Often he’s discussed in terms of his offer to kill Usopp quickly and without pain, and cruel is attributed to Lucci, but I think his cruelty can be more subtle. He killed 20 extra people on his previous mission and didn’t apologize for it. He also “plays with his food” - tricking Usopp into going for the key and almost killing him, as well as trying to trick Sanji.

Fukuro

I don’t think it’s a stretch, but maybe someone else does. Fukuro is obviously not very smart (perhaps a downfall within the Gov’t system of picking it’s assassins) and tells people things they’re not supposed to know. And while it falls under general birds in terms of stereotypes, he gossips all the time. 

Spandam

Bears often have positive connotations, and that could be called inversion of stereotypes in this case, but cruel, proud, and dopey fit for sure (I think he’s lovable but I’m an outlier). And I don’t include dumb in this case (though a lot of people would say he is) because he’s not really. He’s dopey, but he’s extremely crafty, which is more commonly attributed to foxes and cats.

And how could I leave out the actual animals in a discussion of animal stereotypes?

Hattori

Hattori seems like a gag animal but I think his stereotypes are an extension of Lucci.

Funkfreed

I attributed his loyalty to being an object rather than an elephant, because he is still a sword. But he’s not really depicted as evil.

I thought this was interesting, and I definitely think Oda looked through lists of stereotypes while conceptualizing the CP9. I suppose this is both a closer look and some advice? I have seen and read a lot of CP9 OCs, maybe this could be helpful for trying to fit the theme they were given (it helped me). The only problem for me personally is which fucking animal cuz there’s so many good ones.

Anyway, hoped it was entertaining at least.

[havenmentalhc]

How to Recognize and Heal from Narcissistic Abuse

Some of the most difficult counseling cases that I come across are of individuals who have suffered at the hands of a narcissistic parent, partner, sibling, or significant other in their life. Don’t get me wrong. These situations are not difficult because of the victims who I see in my office. What’s heartbreaking is to see how the deep impact that narcissistic abuse has on a person. It can shape and shake the foundation of who you are. Narcissistic abuse can make you question your sanity, worth, and sense of self. And unless you’ve been through it, it may be difficult to fully comprehend just how sinister a narcissist is. For the purposes of this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at narcissistic abuse as it shows up in romantic relationships, though there will be overlaps in narcissistic behavior no matter the relationship.

Being in a relationship with a narcissist is like having the rug pulled out from underneath you over and over and over. When you dreamed of a partner, you likely never imagined a person who would wear you down with ego and arrogance. Or confuse you with subtle jabs of condescension and loads of gaslighting. You hoped to be treated well, loved intentionally, and respected daily. And you deserve as much.

However, if you find yourself in a relationship where you’re constantly feeling like you’re on the defense, questioning what you may have done wrong this time, or have a disturbing feeling when examining what’s going on between you and your partner, it’s important that you take time to honor your feelings.

Is your partner just insensitive? Are they a reformable jerk? Or is this a relationship mountain you shouldn’t keep trying to climb? Perhaps you’re just overreacting?

Maybe.

Could it be that you become the target of narcissistic abuse? Good question.

Let’s look deeper at your experience for answers:

Key Challenges of a Relationship with a Narcissist

Generally, narcissistic behavior puts a strain on a connection that should be meaningful, loving, balanced. Why? Narcissists come first in their own minds. They must focus the relationship on themselves and their own needs.

The result? You suffer. Why? Because your role is to count for less, ask for less, and expect less for yourself. And sadly, the methodical, manipulative way this occurs can do significant damage to your self-esteem and emotional wellbeing. When you’re in the thick of it, it can be hard to read your narcissistic partner. In fact, they can seem so attentive and engaged at times that you feel thoroughly off-balance as you try to make things work. To gain some perspective, be aware of the way you and your partner interact.

Is The Narcissistic Abuse Cycle at Play?

This cycle of interaction is broken down into three key stages: idealization, devaluation, and rejection.

Idealization Marks Your Initial Connection

Romantic relationship carries with it a wealth of infatuation, and exhilaration in the initial phase. It’s the desire to reclaim that seeming adoration that can keep an abused partner with a narcissist. For the narcissist, those early days serve a different function. They idealize their partner and place them on a pedestal early on. They see perfection in their partner and claim that person as their own, pouring affections on them, even overwhelming them with their dedication.

But of course, their partner is not perfect. Perhaps you know what it’s like to be thrown off your partner’s pedestal?

You’re Disparaged and Devalued

For most couples, the euphoria fades as a contented routine emerges. Most partners grow closer and learn to work as a team. Not for those in a narcissistic abuse cycle.

Instead, the narcissist affection fades as perceived perfection of their partner fades. For the narcissist, your value is how well you boost their own self-image and significance. Is your narcissistic partner putting you down or withholding intimacy? Do they flip things around and play the victim when you call them on their behavior?

It’s not all in your head.

Rejection Becomes Routine

Narcissists can’t reasonably, respectfully communicate and resolve their differences equitably. Rejection plays a big part of manipulating their partner. If you never measure up and feel at a loss as to how to stay in your partner’s good graces, your relationship is not good for you. Which is how a narcissistic partner prefers it.

What’s worse, if you don’t stop it, the abuse cycle will continue to do damage until you partner tires of it. They likely have a string of broken relationships, never realizing that they are the problem.

So… Can You Heal and Live Well Again?

Definitely! But it isn’t easy. Your partner’s manipulation is likely very thorough; thus, you’ll need the help of a professional.

How can therapist help?Learn How to Disarm Your Narcissistic Partner

Narcissists are fueled by reaction and conflict. This maintains the perception that you are the problem and they are the solution. To disarm a narcissist means maintaining the self-control that allows you to remain calm, self-confident, and capable of not feeding the drama. This is no easy feat when the narcissist in your life knows exactly what buttons to push to get a reaction out of you. Their jabs may infuriate you, rightly so, and make you want to explode. However, doing this only further empowers the narcissist and gives them ammunition to further the smear campaign against you. Your best solution is to remain calm, as impossible as it might seem, and therefore remain in control of the situation. Trauma therapy is an excellent resource to learn these skills and ones that your therapist can help you develop.

Learn to Set Firm Boundaries

Healing means setting boundaries. Holding to what you feel is physically or emotionally unacceptable is everything. However, if you grew up in a home where boundaries weren’t respected or landed in a relationship where you’ve been made to question yourself, this can be quite difficult. Boundary setting is easier said than done and require consistency and confidence in its implementation. You’ll need validation and support in recognizing your needs and limitations while also developing the strength to stand up for yourself. The consequences of this may include the narcissist in your life becoming more intense in his/her efforts to disparage and villainize you. This is the time to remain firm and consistent, but requires courage. Thus, your therapist can help you prioritize your needs and stay committed to them, while helping you determine how (or if) the relationship proceeds.

Experience Support Without an Agenda

Professional counseling is essential when coping with a narcissist. You need a safe, compassionate space. You deserve to be seen and heard. Narcissistic partners don’t provide that. In fact, vulnerability is a liability with a narcissist.

We’re here to provide help and hope. Please don’t suffer in silence. Read more about trauma therapy and reach out soon for a consultation.

[ranboo5]

Good morning. You can either vague a general conception or tag me next time, good user.  

Anyway to get to this I will fully concede that I did not in fact write my entire argument out in my tags because they’re my tags on a post on my blog, not a full meta, and Wilburmeta is hard and I have other responses to write. However (under a cut because once again I cannot shut the fuck up)

1. What does that have to do with seeing Niki multiple times, getting told she was going through fucking hell, and telling her to Stay Strong UwU. Why can you not get her out of the direct area she is currently in danger in? Why can’t you invite her back to Pogtopia? Hell, why can’t you at least tell her your plans? She was abandoned 

2. It’s not a bluff when you lose the button. Wilbur was fully intending to blow the place during the Red Festival; he was conflicted on the whole, but on at least one occassion, he was ready to blow up the country and did not care about the collateral 

3. This is a misunderstanding of my point, probably because I didn’t write the tags very eloquently. What I meant here is that Wilbur offering his life for Niki means that in fact as a person, he didn’t want her dead! Surprise! I don’t think Wilbur was evil! But consider the coexistence of “didn’t want Niki dead when he was actively considering that option” and “was fully ready to accept her death as collateral” -- what that means is that when he was willing and ready to push the button he was blatantly not thinking whatsoever about Niki or anyone else he was putting at risk. Wilbur’s self centered and warped perception of the world is a product of being a very troubled and unwell man who desperately needed help, and it is not an excuse for this 

4. He may have said that, but he certainly didn’t show it when he repeatedly encouraged and enabled people to sacrifice for the country. He created a mythos of a nation and a cause that was a Glorious Revolution, even before the war, and a lot of earlier lines that were very jokey (pressuring people to sing the anthem, denying Tommy and Tubbo dual citizenship, etc.) get very sinister when you realize this was the first part in creating a nationalist mythos that encouraged people to die and sacrifice for an ideal that really never had the chance to do basically anything for them! As to “who actually forced the war on her” -- I am not going to pretend Dream didn’t escalate right back, but Wilbur absolutely instigated a conflict on purpose in the interest of a drug monopoly and the only reason he didn’t want it to escalate into armed conflict is that he knew L’Manberg would be disadvantaged in that regard. He actively wanted opposition for opposition’s sake (likely to build loyalty) and encouraged a definition of loyalty tied to sacrifice. Dream escalating raised the stakes and cemented this/locked everyone into it. Wilbur made the factions; Dream rose to the challenge and made it so that the factions were important. They both contributed heavily to locking the server into this pattern 

5. I never said she was abused. In those tags I said she was not abused and said it did not have to map to Tommy and Dream with the implication that it didn’t, because those are completely different things. HOWEVER: she was directly hurt by Wilbur because she trusted him as a friend and leader and he blatantly neglected and abandoned her in favor of furthering what he saw as his cause. She talks about how he hurt her and what she reemphasizes are empty promises -- Wilbur was a figure who put himself in a position of authority and, technically, social power over her, and used both this position and their personal friendship to convince her to invest herself in fighting for his cause for a promised payback that never came. This is not abuse, but it is definitionally something that makes Niki a victim 

The whole post these tags where attached to was in fact 

6. This point is fully correct! And here I’m going to be confusing, because again, I don’t think Wilbur’s intent was ever malicious. 

It is indisputable that Wilbur Soot deeply cared for his loved ones, and crucially, tragically, didn’t know how. I would argue Wilbur’s investment in L’Manberg during and after the war on was partially from the fact that he thought he was going to help the people he cared about through it, and as you say, he was deeply hurt, unwell, and spiraling himself. Wilbur was as much a victim of circumstance as anyone else, and he desperately needed help and support and someone who would see him as a person instead of as the leader persona he constructed -- none of which was available to him. And, again, he cared. As brought up here, he was willing to put his life and mental health on the line for those he cared about. He cared about his unfinished symphony and his glory and his legacy, yes, and at the same time that selfishness is inextricable from the selflessness of wanting the people he cared about to be safe and to care about him and each other 

This makes the fact that he hurt them, and the ways that he hurt them, all the more profound. It was by the construction that he convinced himself was going to do good for them, and it was by self destructing when he wasn’t “good enough.” Wilbur Soot is self-centered and that warps how he sees the world, and that is what caused him to hurt those he cares about as he tries to do right by them. He is a tragic, sympathetic figure motivated by love and desire to protect those he cares about, and he is a manipulative authoritarian who will sacrifice them for a cause that was supposed to protect them. These are truths that coexist. 

7. Yeah, actually! She is not fully correct in her political read on the situation, but she is actually rational in regards to the personal one! The root of her feelings is rational, as I explained above! Wilbur hurt her and it is only rational to recognize that, and to be infuriated with that!

Also, fascinated by the implication that by saying it is rational for a woman to be angry and hurt that she was abandoned and had her good faith taken for granted by a man in power, I am the one being misogynistic. 

Tl;dr:  - Yes, Wilbur cared about her and the citizens of L’Manberg  - He still hurt her, personally, intentionally or not leveraging her trust in him as a leader and a friend to take her good faith and patience for granted and leaving her to die on more than one occassion  - How is it not rational of her to recognize this as hurting and manipulating her 

Good morning Tumblr. I’m going to sub-post this (really fucking bad) take because it’s so awful I feel bad letting it rest without a counter. I’m rolling claim by claim, here.

1. Niki was told to sit tight. You know why she had to wait for rescue? Because Wilbur and Tommy had to be careful in exile since they would literally get killed if they got caught. Or don’t you remember when Wilbur fucking died?

2. Wilbur did try and claim he’d blow everyone up! That was also a huge stinkin’ bluff! Unless you forgot when he failed to press the button with people in direct danger THRICE (oct 16, oct 17, nov 2).

3. Wilbur trying to offer his life for Niki... means he wasn’t thinking about her? Really? Right, he tried to die to save her life because he didn’t care about her... as you do!

4. “Your life is worth more than the revolution” - quote from L’Manberg Wilbur. I’d argue the only life he ever wanted to risk was his own ... unless you wanna actually blame the guy who shoved the war on him.

5. She was a victim of Wilbur? How so? I can’t think of a single time he lied directly to her or abused her. Hell, right up to Nov 16 he was trying to give her something to fight for (remember how he guided her to Ant’s gift fox?)

6. The argument that Wilbur never cared about L’Manberg’s citizens is wrong on so many levels that all I need to do is point to the fact that he literally forced himself to hide his mental health until he couldn’t any more FOR THEIR SAKE.

7. Niki is rational in being mad? She’s rational in the midst of her emotional breakdown, is she? She’s VALID in being upset but she is NOT rational. Stop reducing her character to something she’s not! It’s more sexist than you think!

[reifromrfa]

RFA guys + Minor Trio are Vampires

Hey hey hey!! Here’s more Halloween HCs for you guys, written by the amazing @rainydayswriter and yours truly! It was so funny watching each other’s ideas and continuing the story and we hope you guys enjoy reading our masterpieces (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ ✧ﾟ･: *ヽ(◕ヮ◕ヽ)

Check out @rainydayswriter​ ‘s blog for more awesome content!!!

Yoosung

Yoosung protects

Seriously though, all he wants to do is make sure you’re safe and happy, so having superhuman strength and speed gives him the ability to do just that!

So?? Adorable???

Uses his powers to save cats from trees

SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK

Lol ask him to bite you and watch him have a crisis

Super speed helps him with his studies and gives him more time to play LOLOL

Maybe if he makes you immortal you won’t leave him like Rika did welp

He can see well in the dark, so no need to be afraid of the dark anymore!

Still checks under the bed for monsters though this cutie

Shapeshifts into a bat when you’re mad at him because damn it he’s just so cute you can’t yell at a little bat

With the wrong type of encouragement, you’ll have yourself a full-blown possessive vampire boyfriend, which is someone you will never be able to leave, so make this choice wisely~

If you make the decision to be with him forever

He would be so!!! Excited!!!

It’ll be like an eternal sleepover with your best friend!

Zen

Stereotypical gorgeous vampire much?

He was already handsome as a mortal, now it’s 100x harder to keep people away from him ;;;

Guess this explains the red eyes

Still an absolute theater nerd

“Careful, babe,” he’ll say with a fanged smile, “you wouldn’t want to release the Beast.”

Hates to be hungry in front of you, it makes him...hungry ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) you know exactly what we’re talking about

What if he hurts you? Or what if he frightens you? What if you find him revolting?

“Hyun, let’s be honest...you’re not revolting. You’re THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PERSON ON THIS PLANET.”

Oh God he’d be shedding tears of joy

He doesn’t feel cold anymore, but when you guys go to the rooftop to gaze at stars he always makes sure to bring a jacket and blankets for you

Would definitely ask you to consider living an immortal life with him and he’d be elated if you agree

Of course after you’ve turned he wouldn’t be afraid of hurting you anymore and omg imagine all the broken furniture after he unleashes the beast  

Jaehee

You’d have to be nothing less than superhuman to be Jumin’s assistant

So efficient in everything she does, so graceful, so breathtaking!

But you do not want to get on her bad side

Her glares alone are enough to curdle blood, but threaten the RFA and she will dispose of them without a trace

Jumin recieves a fresh bottle of red wine

When you come into her life she is shook

For so long she’s suppressed her human side to be the perfect assistant, but then here you are, supporting her and making her laugh and she’s experiencing feelings she hasn’t felt in a long time???

She gets so flustered and slightly clumsy around you especially when you compliment her it’s so cute

Going to midnight showings of Zen’s works together!!!

Is unimpressed with vampire jokes, if only because Mr. Han and Seven use them all the time

But if they make you laugh she’ll begrudgingly allow them

She’s so grateful to have you in her unlife, she will always make sure to tell you so

Teaches you all about vampire strengths and weaknesses, including ways to deter them just in case

“Feel free to use pepper spray on Seven if he bothers you too much.”

Any amount of time she spends with you is a blessing

If you bring up wanting to stay at her side forever, she’ll sit you down for a ~serious discussion~

Giving up mortality is a big decision! What if you grow tired of her? Or can’t handle outliving the world around you?

But you want to stay by her side! There’s no changing your mind! You want to protect her as she protects you!

She’s not crying, you’re crying

Okay you’re both crying

Jumin

Tells the most vampire puns, in a totally flat voice and with a totally straight face

“MC, who do you think should be my...necks victim?”

-____________________- Jumin no.

Loves hearing your heart beat faster when he’s close to you

So classy, he drinks blood from wine glasses

It makes sense that’s he’s so rich, he’s had a century to accumulate his wealth

Neck fetish

Jaehee gets a heart attack everytime she enters his office because it’s always so dark

You once visited him in the office and when you came in it was dark

And Jumin whirls around in his chair, stroking Elizabeth the 3rd in his lap with a sinister smile on his face

“Velcome to my lair, MC.”

*facepalm* *roflmao*

But you love this man so much

His staff would be afraid of him but they’re so jealous at how he seems to look effortlessly young and handsome all the time

Regarding immortality, he would want to spend the rest of his life with you but of course he would ask for your consent first

And maybe ask you to sign an agreement contract or two ;;;

Saeyoung

Can be goddamn brooding if he’s alone with his thoughts for too long

Mixes lingo from different eras on purpose

Abuses his godlike strength by constantly sweeping you off your feet

Ask him if he sparkles like the vampires in Twilight

He’ll roll around in glitters and take you to the park, where everyone can marvel at his sparkly skin put your shirt back on you’ve made your point Saeyoung

LOVES cosplaying as Edward Cullen

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb” *eyebrow wiggle*

Saeyoung stahp

He will have his broody moments though and he’ll try to push you away because he’s dangerous

An immortal hacker/secret agent,you sure know how to pick ‘em MC

Drives Vanderwood insane because he can make a dozen dog robots in two hours but not finish his work???

If you try to ask him any vampire-related questions, you will never get a straight answer

“Are you afraid of garlic?”

“GAELIC??? MC I KNOW HOW TO SPEAK GAELIC WHY WOULD I BE AFRAID OF IT??? GOD SEVEN FEARS NO LANGUAGES!!!!”

Sigh. “What about running water?”

“Jeez, MC, if you think I stink just tell me. No need to be rude.”

You give up

On a more serious note, he’d go back and forth between wanting you to be with him forever and wanting you to live an actual life

Contents himself with just being around you for a short while, he’ll bow out at soon as you seem to grow tired of him

To prove your love for him, you make him turn you into a vampire, that way you’re also indestructible and you can live out the rest of your life with him

V

There’s something poetic about someone who can’t show up in pictures and old mirrors putting his heart and soul into recreating the world around him through art

With immortality in play, he wants to catch as many moments as he can before they pass by

If you sketch him, he will be so moved because A. he hasn’t seen his own face since becoming a vampire and B. he’s never been the model

Omg V if only you knew you’re as beautiful as your photographs

Have you ever wondered why V is his nickname?

He has to change aliases every few decades and he decided to use the letters of the alphabet; he’s on V now lololol

Knows all the best places and he’ll take you around the world with him

His vampire abilities will only be used for good and for helping others

And also taking photos

“V, please don’t lean so far off the edge” ;;;

“I’m fine, MC. You don’t have to--”

Falls off the cliff

It’s a good thing he doesn’t bleed. Or die.

Would love to spend forever with you but he would never pressure you; would also feel guilty for even thinking that ;;;

But when you reassure him for the millionth time that you love him and want to spend an immortal life with him he finally turns you into a vampire

He spends eternity marveling at the beauty of the world with you and he will do whatever it takes to make you happy and keep you by his side

Saeran

Typical secluded vampire, prefers to venture out in the dead of night

Embraces dark aesthetics

Death toll rises when he’s in a bad mood/thirsty

So intimidating, nobody will ever dare messing with you even when he’s not around

They learned the hard way

He loves looking at the sky so being under the sun doesn’t bother him

He loves looking at you more though

And he’s so stiff and awkward around you because he doesn’t want to accidentally hurt you

Like that time when he held your hand and you ended up at the hospital coz he broke your fingers ;;;

He’s cold to the touch so he doesn’t know what to do when you’re shivering

Will wrap you in a blanket as slowly and gently as he possibly could

By the time he’s done you probably have icicles hanging down your nose lololol

Or he would wear a jacket or a coat when you guys go out so he could offer them to you if ever you get cold

He wants you to stay with him forever and will probably be the least shy or guilty about it

You’re the only person who understands him and accepts him and he’s head over heels in love with you

The thought of living forever without you seems lonely and desolate

He doesn’t even remember how he spent all those centuries without you

Your becoming a vampire would mean the world to him

And omg get ready to experience Saeran in all his glory ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

No more holding back! He’s been dying lol no jk he can’t die to hug you and now he holds you every chance he can

Saeran smiles more now and he sincerely looks forward to your future together

Vanderwood

Super speed is used to clean Saeyoung’s room faster

Super senses to track down Saeyoung when he’s avoiding work yet again

Will probably compel Saeyoung to finish his work when he’s desperate ;;;

He’s equivalent to ten bodyguards so you’re always safe

He has a lot of enemies thanks to his job though, so Vandy prefers having you in his line of sight at all times

Even if it means stalking you sometimes ;;;

He gives you his favorite taser so you can defend yourself

Pfft you wouldn’t have to though, Mary Vanderwood the 3rd has you covered

He’ll be like Saeyoung sometimes, trying to act detached and say mean things to get you to stay away from him

But he’s the one who can’t stay away from you

Won’t encourage you to become immortal like him because he doesn’t want you to regret it after a century

But if you choose to be with him, Vanderwood will be so happy and he will love you and protect you for all eternity

[rainydayswriter]

RFA + Minor Trio as Vampires

Another writing collab with the wonderful @reifromrfa! She’s so incredibly talented, check out her blog for so much more Mystic Messenger writing! It was a blast to write, so I hope you enjoy it ^^

Yoosung

Yoosung protects

Seriously though, all he wants to do is make sure you’re safe and happy, so having superhuman strength and speed gives him the ability to do just that!

So?? Adorable???

Uses his powers to save cats from trees 

SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK

Lol ask him to bite you and watch him have a crisis

Super speed helps him with his studies and gives him more time to play LOLOL

Maybe if he makes you immortal you won’t leave him like Rika did welp

He can see well in the dark, so no need to be afraid of the dark anymore!

Still checks under the bed for monsters though this cutie

Shapeshifts into a bat when you’re mad at him because damn it he’s just so cute you can’t yell at a little bat

With the wrong type of encouragement, you’ll have yourself a full-blown possessive vampire boyfriend, which is someone you will never be able to leave, so make this choice wisely~

If you make the decision to be with him forever 

He would be so!!! Excited!!!

It’ll be like an eternal sleepover with your best friend!

Zen

Stereotypical gorgeous vampire much?

He was already handsome as a mortal, now it’s 100x harder to keep people away from him ;;;

Guess this explains the red eyes

Still an absolute theater nerd

“Careful, babe,” he’ll say with a fanged smile, “you wouldn’t want to release the Beast.”

Hates to be hungry in front of you, it makes him...hungry ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) you know exactly what we’re talking about 

What if he hurts you? Or what if he frightens you? What if you find him revolting?

“Hyun, let’s be honest...you’re not revolting. You’re THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PERSON ON THIS PLANET.”

Oh God he’d be shedding tears of joy

He doesn’t feel cold anymore, but when you guys go to the rooftop to gaze at stars he always makes sure to bring a jacket and blankets for you

Would definitely ask you to consider living an immortal life with him and he’d be elated if you agree

Of course after you’ve turned he wouldn’t be afraid of hurting you anymore and omg imagine all the broken furniture after he unleashes the beast  

Jaehee

You’d have to be nothing less than superhuman to be Jumin’s assistant

So efficient in everything she does, so graceful, so breathtaking!

But you do not want to get on her bad side

Her glares alone are enough to curdle blood, but threaten the RFA and she will dispose of them without a trace

Jumin recieves a fresh bottle of red wine

When you come into her life she is shook

For so long she’s suppressed her human side to be the perfect assistant, but then here you are, supporting her and making her laugh and she’s experiencing feelings she hasn’t felt in a long time???

She gets so flustered and slightly clumsy around you especially when you compliment her it’s so cute

Going to midnight showings of Zen’s works together!!!

Is unimpressed with vampire jokes, if only because Mr. Han and Seven use them all the time

But if they make you laugh she’ll begrudgingly allow them

She’s so grateful to have you in her unlife, she will always make sure to tell you so

Teaches you all about vampire strengths and weaknesses, including ways to deter them just in case

“Feel free to use pepper spray on Seven if he bothers you too much.”

Any amount of time she spends with you is a blessing

If you bring up wanting to stay at her side forever, she’ll sit you down for a ~serious discussion~

Giving up mortality is a big decision! What if you grow tired of her? Or can’t handle outliving the world around you?

But you want to stay by her side! There’s no changing your mind! You want to protect her as she protects you!

She’s not crying, you’re crying

Okay you’re both crying

Jumin

Tells the most vampire puns, in a totally flat voice and with a totally straight face

“MC, who do you think should be my...necks victim?”

-____________________- Jumin no.

Loves hearing your heart beat faster when he’s close to you

So classy, he drinks blood from wine glasses

It makes sense that’s he’s so rich, he’s had a century to accumulate his wealth

Neck fetish 

Jaehee gets a heart attack everytime she enters his office because it’s always so dark

You once visited him in the office and when you came in it was dark

And Jumin whirls around in his chair, stroking Elizabeth the 3rd in his lap with a sinister smile on his face

“Velcome to my lair, MC.”

*facepalm* *roflmao*

But you love this man so much

His staff would be afraid of him but they’re so jealous at how he seems to look effortlessly young and handsome all the time

Regarding immortality, he would want to spend the rest of his life with you but of course he would ask for your consent first

And maybe ask you to sign an agreement contract or two ;;;

Saeyoung

Can be goddamn brooding if he’s alone with his thoughts for too long

Mixes lingo from different eras on purpose

Abuses his godlike strength by constantly sweeping you off your feet

Ask him if he sparkles like the vampires in Twilight

He’ll roll around in glitters and take you to the park, where everyone can marvel at his sparkly skin put your shirt back on you’ve made your point Saeyoung

LOVES cosplaying as Edward Cullen

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb” *eyebrow wiggle*

Saeyoung stahp

He will have his broody moments though and he’ll try to push you away because he’s dangerous

An immortal hacker/secret agent,you sure know how to pick ‘em MC

Drives Vanderwood insane because he can make a dozen dog robots in two hours but not finish his work???

If you try to ask him any vampire-related questions, you will never get a straight answer

“Are you afraid of garlic?” 

“GAELIC??? MC I KNOW HOW TO SPEAK GAELIC WHY WOULD I BE AFRAID OF IT??? GOD SEVEN FEARS NO LANGUAGES!!!!”

Sigh. “What about running water?”

“Jeez, MC, if you think I stink just tell me. No need to be rude.”

You give up

On a more serious note, he’d go back and forth between wanting you to be with him forever and wanting you to live an actual life

Contents himself with just being around you for a short while, he’ll bow out at soon as you seem to grow tired of him

To prove your love for him, you make him turn you into a vampire, that way you’re also indestructible and you can live out the rest of your life with him

V

There’s something poetic about someone who can’t show up in pictures and old mirrors putting his heart and soul into recreating the world around him through art

With immortality in play, he wants to catch as many moments as he can before they pass by

If you sketch him, he will be so moved because A. he hasn’t seen his own face since becoming a vampire and B. he’s never been the model

Omg V if only you knew you’re as beautiful as your photographs

Have you ever wondered why V is his nickname?

He has to change aliases every few decades and he decided to use the letters of the alphabet; he’s on V now lololol

Knows all the best places and he’ll take you around the world with him

His vampire abilities will only be used for good and for helping others

And also taking photos

“V, please don’t lean so far off the edge” ;;;

“I’m fine, MC. You don’t have to--”

Falls off the cliff 

It’s a good thing he doesn’t bleed. Or die.

Would love to spend forever with you but he would never pressure you; would also feel guilty for even thinking that ;;;

But when you reassure him for the millionth time that you love him and want to spend an immortal life with him he finally turns you into a vampire

He spends eternity marveling at the beauty of the world with you and he will do whatever it takes to make you happy and keep you by his side

Saeran

Typical secluded vampire, prefers to venture out in the dead of night

Embraces dark aesthetics 

Death toll rises when he’s in a bad mood/thirsty

So intimidating, nobody will ever dare messing with you even when he’s not around

They learned the hard way

He loves looking at the sky so being under the sun doesn’t bother him

He loves looking at you more though

And he’s so stiff and awkward around you because he doesn’t want to accidentally hurt you

Like that time when he held your hand and you ended up at the hospital coz he broke your fingers ;;;

He’s cold to the touch so he doesn’t know what to do when you’re shivering

Will wrap you in a blanket as slowly and gently as he possibly could

By the time he’s done you probably have icicles hanging down your nose lololol

Or he would wear a jacket or a coat when you guys go out so he could offer them to you if ever you get cold

He wants you to stay with him forever and will probably be the least shy or guilty about it

You’re the only person who understands him and accepts him and he’s head over heels in love with you

The thought of living forever without you seems lonely and desolate

He doesn’t even remember how he spent all those centuries without you

Your becoming a vampire would mean the world to him

And omg get ready to experience Saeran in all his glory ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

No more holding back! He’s been dying lol no jk he can’t die to hug you and now he holds you every chance he can

Saeran smiles more now and he sincerely looks forward to your future together

Vanderwood

Super speed is used to clean Saeyoung’s room faster

Super senses to track down Saeyoung when he’s avoiding work yet again

Will probably compel Saeyoung to finish his work when he’s desperate ;;;

He’s equivalent to ten bodyguards so you’re always safe

He has a lot of enemies thanks to his job though, so Vandy prefers having you in his line of sight at all times

Even if it means stalking you sometimes ;;;

He gives you his favorite taser so you can defend yourself

Pfft you wouldn’t have to though, Mary Vanderwood the 3rd has you covered

He’ll be like Saeyoung sometimes, trying to act detached and say mean things to get you to stay away from him

But he’s the one who can’t stay away from you

Won’t encourage you to become immortal like him because he doesn’t want you to regret it after a century

But if you choose to be with him, Vanderwood will be so happy and he will love you and protect you for all eternity

[the-desolated-quill]

The Crimson Horror - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

I really want to love The Crimson Horror. After my constant berating of his Who stories, it’s nice that Mark Gatiss has finally gone back to doing what he does best. Camp and macabre horror.

There are a lot of things to like. At first things start off really intriguing. Set in Yorkshire 1893, red corpses start showing up in the river and this so called ‘Crimson Horror’ appears to be connected to the recently opened Sweetville. A utopian community run by Mrs Gillyflower, played by Diana Rigg, and her silent partner Mr. Sweet. It’s a really great mystery that feels very reminiscent of other Victorian era Who stories, most notably The Talons Of Weng-Chiang, and a lot of the characters and plot points feel like stuff you’d find in Gatiss’ The League Of Gentlemen. This isn’t the first time Gatiss has done the Victorian era of course. His first ever Doctor Who was The Unquiet Dead during the Christopher Eccleston era, but while The Unquiet Dead felt like it was being held back due to the Doctor Who setting, The Crimson Horror seems to dive headfirst into this twisted world Gatiss has constructed. It’s still kid friendly, but there’s something really quite yucky about this episode. The corpses in the river alone should give kids nightmares, but then we also have to contend with very dark themes like eugenics, Victorian values and views of what is considered decent and moral, and domestic abuse.

The standout stars for me are Mrs Gillyflower and her daughter Ada, played by Diana Riggs’ real life daughter Rachel Stirling. Both are incredibly well written and well performed, and both are used to great effect. Mrs Gillyflower is incredibly sinister and really highlights the strict religious values of the time period. She believes that society is in decay, using her own daughter’s blindness to demonstrate this, and offers her followers salvation in Sweetville. Sold as a utopia for people to live and work, it’s actually just a front to preserve her victims for her ‘New Eden.’ (The giant gramophones playing sounds of factory noise to fool the applicants was a nice touch). It does in some ways cover the same ground as The Rings Of Akhaten in terms of its criticism of religion, but this is goes slightly further in a different direction. She’s obsessed with perfection, only accepting the best to be preserved in her glass jars (which is creepy in and of itself) and discarding the rejects into the river with the rest of what she perceives as muck. Her views are beyond horrific and her actions are truly deplorable. The scene where she coldly rejects her daughter, calling her unfit for her vision, was very uncomfortable to sit through. She ruined her own daughter’s life for her own utopian vision and then just left her on the scrapheap.

Ada is a very sympathetic character, caring for the Doctor while he’s been Crimson Horrored. However I do appreciate how they don’t take her down the innocent and naive route that you normally see with these kind of abuse stories. She may be blind and a victim of a mother’s cruelty, but she’s not in any way weak. In fact there’s more than a little bit of her mother in her. When she discovers the truth about her blindness, how it’s the result of her mother’s experiments rather than an abusive father, her fit of rage feels very similar to Gillyflower’s behaviour. And let’s not forget that while she did save the Doctor and looked after him, she also chained him up and locked him in a cell. She effectively imprisoned him for being a ‘monster’ just like how her mother imprisoned her. Of course Ada’s motives are slightly different. She’s driven more by a sense of loneliness rather than any selfish goals, and it doesn’t make her any less sympathetic. I’m glad she ended up getting a happy ending and now that she’s free of her mother’s poisonous influence, she’s free to live a life of her own and actually make friends and companions, which she couldn’t do before.

It’s these two characters and the execution of the whole mystery plot that allows me to look past some of the episode’s shortcomings. The reveal of Mr. Sweet (a Silurian parasite) clinging onto Mrs Gillyflower’s bosom was both icky and funny in equal measure, but I didn’t fully understand what the purpose of it was. Was it just providing the venom? Was it somehow influencing Gillyflower’s behaviour? What was its motivation if that was the case? And I don’t understand how a Victorian era chemist was able to build a rocket in her basement, nor how she intends to poison the entire world using one titchy bottle of venom. But as I say, the execution is so good and the characters of Gillyflower and Ada are so intriguing and engrossing that I honestly don’t mind.

Like I said at the beginning, I so desperately want to love The Crimson Horror. There’s so much good stuff in here. Unfortunately it’s all let down by the usual suspects.

Why couldn’t the Doctor have stayed Crimson Horrored throughout? Have the Paternoster Gang be the sole protagonists who just happen to discover the Doctor while they’re investigating and have to find a cure for him whilst they handle Gillyflower. Actually take the opportunity to develop the characters properly at last and give them a story outside of the Doctor. Alas, they’re still just as dull and lifeless as before. As I’ve said in the past, I’ll never understand why people like the Paternoster Gang because they don’t actually have interesting characters. Madame Vastra is boring as fuck, Jenny very quickly slips into the Moffat default of sassy dominatrix (which in Victorian times would have been scandalous), and Strax... Look I never found him funny to begin with, but even if he was amusing the first time around, he most certainly isn’t amusing now because it’s literally the same joke over and over again. Strax wants to blow something up, Vastra or the Doctor says no, Strax leaves in a huff. It’s just boring now.

In fact a lot of the humour doesn’t work in this episode. We have that journalist guy who keeps fainting every five minutes. That got old very fast. The Strax jokes, as I said, aren’t funny anymore because we’ve heard them a thousand times now. But the worst joke of all has to be when that random kid shows up to give Strax directions to Sweetville:

Strax: “What is your name?”

Kid: “Thomas sir. Thomas Thomas.”

OW! OOOOOOOOWWWWWWW! OH GOD! SOMEONE PHONE AN AMBULANCE! I THINK MY CRINGING PIPES HAVE BURST!

And the worst offenders are of course the Doctor and Clara. I’m really getting sick of their constant pissing around. It’s not in the slightest bit funny and actually distracts from some of the far darker and more emotional moments. Particularly the scenes with Ada. The scene where she kills Mr. Sweet, the source of all her torment and misery, should have been really powerful, but then it’s all ruined by Matt Smith undercutting it with humour. (Also the Doctor sexually assaults Jenny and there’s an erection gag involving the sonic screwdriver. I really wish they didn’t do that). And do we have to keep going on and on about how Clara is impossible? Unless you’re going to give us an explanation for why she’s impossible, shut the fuck up and get on with the story.

It’s frustrating because if this story featured any other Doctor and companions, I honestly wouldn’t hesitate in calling The Crimson Horror a classic. It’s easily one of the best things Gatiss has ever written for the show (it meant putting up with 8 years worth of crap from him, but we got there in the end) and it really plays to his strengths as a writer. If only we had a Doctor and a companion who was even vaguely tolerable (only 4 or 5 more episodes to go until he regenerates. Just hang on Quill. Grit your teeth and you’ll get through it).

[alexsmitposts]

Atmospherics and the Googling of Humanity What can be done is being done. Moreover, those “doing it,” or “having it done” are products of a long disintegrating standard of humanity, morality and values. I will begin with an example, please be patient. Some 50 years ago, I was serving in South Vietnam as a Marine. Notwithstanding that the war itself was insanity, predicated on lies and broken treaties, serving with a rifle squad gives one a much smaller view of events. During the Vietnam War, the United States Marine Corps simply went insane. You see, they became obsessed with a single idea, that the 60’s drug culture would “infect” their elite organization. Of course, the Marine Corps, as it had become in peacetime between the Korean and Vietnam wars was far from elite, an organization of “bottom feeders” and unemployables as depicted in the 1960s TV comedy “Gomer Pyle.” Few had seen combat, those who fought in Korea or World War II, had long opted out for a better life. What was left was the dregs, thus, America went to war where “the Few,” as Marines are told to refer to themselves as, were often drunken, overweight and illiterate. When this gang of incompetents reached a war zone, they began an unending witch hunt against “potential drug abusers.” Little or no time was spent planning combat operations and, by 1969, many small unit leaders were drug informants with no knowledge of maps or using a radio, much less of combat operations. The Marine Corps outlawed sunglasses and even some brands of cigarettes, based on conspiracy theories that such things were part of a violent subculture intent on overthrowing “the system.” What is it Jim W. Dean so often says, “You just can’t make this stuff up?” The Marine Corps lost men in Vietnam, due to these and other equally stupid circumstances, at a rate 4 times that of World War II. Combat units would return from patrols and operations to find that base areas had been subject to mutinies and, in some cases, officers and senior NCOs were living in underground bunkers fearful of being murdered by their own men. Am I making this up, did this happen on Hill 10, Hill 34, Hill 55 or LZ Rockcrusher, and I could add two dozen names to this list? We thought Vietnam was insane, but the lessons of Vietnam weren’t learned by the likes of Donald Trump or John Bolton, both of whom openly assert that they were “too important” to be wasted on a war. With leadership devoid of those who learned the folly of insanity the hard way, the post 9/11 world has been one, not only of unending war but of a singular focus, not on drugs but on terrorism. There are only terrorists, or potential terrorists or Jihadists or varying processes where everyday citizens are now “potential enemy combatants” or “terrorist sympathizers.” Right after 9/11 it began, a focus on technology to monitor the “individual threat level” of every human being on the planet, identifying “influencers” and those who might be influenced. In the process, capabilities increased exponentially, and then again, exponentially still until the gulf between man and machine had disappeared, at least in the eyes of “data clients.” You may think you are human. You are really “click bait.” Your “devices” exist for one purpose, once the onion is peeled, to dangle images in front of you, often grotesque and perverse, and “fish” for your reaction. This is the AI of Google Corporation interacting directly with your subconscious. Nobody needs your psychiatric files, no “Daniel Ellsberg” type FBI break-ins nowadays, not only is it all free, but you pay and pay and pay for the privilege of being violated, your every thought, your every movement monitored every minute of every day. Chances are your phone counts your steps, it may well be counting your heartbeats as well, all going into a “cloud” where privacy advocates long ago gave up any hope of success. You buy the device, you pay for service, you endlessly “subscribe” to one thing or another, your life, your “enriched” existence is there and it is seen and processed. The science of seeing you, programming you and in nation after nation, selecting you for even broader surveillance or diminished personhood, is called “atmospherics.” What didn’t exist a decade ago is now a $100 billion a year industry and the buyers, once soft drink companies and car manufacturers are now political parties and governments. “Atmospherics” is a secret, a term the public face of Google knows nothing of, not in any dictionary, known only to a few. There is a reason we mention “atmospherics” and “Google” in the same sentence as both terms are part of, not a “two-edged sword” but something far more sinister. We begin. There is magic in the business models of Google, Facebook and other social media platforms like YouTube, owned by Google. Google enriches itself by selling access to content entirely created by others, content they censor at will, promote at will while Google “seeds” fake news, smears and conspiracy theories into the collective consciousness of a planet, driven by the most advanced AI or artificial intelligence on the planet. “Atmospherics” is the pseudo-science of engineering all that data through fusion centers and creating “output.” You see, the NSA, America’s “listening ear” that taps every phone, hears and sees all but processes or “fuses” as it were, almost nothing. Google “fuses” everything, every email but more, with the help of their dark little friends, all VOIP phone calls, and by that we mean everything, gets listened to as well, far more than the NSA gets. When you combined that with Facebook and their control of WhatsApp and Microsoft’s control of Skype, every expressed thought, be it a Facebook post, a comment on a blog site or what too many misconstrue as their private phone calls, all is heard, mixed with click bait output, cooked in a stew with friends, family and neighbors and we all become “product.” Imagine this, there are maps of every square kilometer of this planet where people access the internet. Overlaying these maps is a web, showing who shares any commonality of any kind, pet ownership, religion, employment, same model motorbike, any and every “maker,” connecting the world together. The EU has declared war on this capability, and the companies that ply the trade with names like “Analytica” and “Fusion,” and the output they sell to the fake democracies and tin pot dictators they serve. There is only one reason for the data in the post 9/11 world, and that is to identify threats and where no threat exists to invent one. As with the adage, if a hammer is the only tool you have then all you see are nails, atmospherics and intelligence fusion, driven by AI, sees only threats. Pet ownership can make someone seem “overly sensitive” which can be also seen as “easily influenced” and, when the insanity of the time takes hold, that translates to “easily radicalized.” Then throw $20 trillion dollars at the problem the value of the tech industries behind the insanity. Imagine this as a business model: All content, news, commercial, cultural, scientific, is submitted to you. You charge money to list or promote content, a service for which you charge, and, mind you, this is censorship and promotion not just of political issues but scientific and cultural as well. And then you sell advertising in return for your gift of allowing content creators to be censored or promoted, something they pay you for as well. It gets even better. You then track those who visit content and develop profiles on them. As all content comes through search engines and all search engines are now controlled by Google, even those that claim they aren’t, you create a grand “skinner box.” Content viewers, and by this, we mean “humanity” is subjected to customized, custom censored, custom propagandized, specialized content intended to stimulate consumption of useless goods and services while giving away all critical thinking capabilities. There was a time when psychologists went to corporations with programs to increase sales by profiling potential customers. Soon companies began profiling each other, using chaos theory and eventually advanced modeling through mathematics. In a world of corporations where faceless stockholder’s equity value justified all existence and any methodology, what many saw as a descent into barbarity supposedly took root. But they were wrong, so very wrong, it went further, so much further.

[reapersmacabreundertaking-blog]

What Happened to Haunted Houses being fun?

Am I a disillusioned adult? Were haunted houses fun when I was a kid, only because I was a kid? Is it because when I went in high school I paid with some cash my parents gave me and not my hard earned freelancer (half the year I work, half I’m unemployed) paycheck, that I am so hard on haunts now? Honestly my last post was on October 18th prime Halloween season so what happened to all my other horror posts?! I went to a horror movie all nighter at The New Beverly which was great. Then I went to two more haunted houses and that’s when I started to get disillusioned about this season and haunts in general (which is what this blog will be about), then I went to a Halloween party dressed up as Herbert West and no one knew who I was, but then again I know I need more horror buddies. That was the end of my Halloween season, a bit of a bust.

When talking about CreepLA I wanted something more authentic to the Halloween spirit. Monsters, frights, blood, tension, gore that’s all this girl wanted. So I decided to ditch the LA atmosphere and go to Orange County to see what they had to offer. My first stop was Sinister Pointe. While waiting in line the guy doing line patrol was telling us that there were 4 mazes and that each one had different “escape room” activities – I put the parentheses for a reason. My friend and I showed up rather early and the line was short, but they only allowed a few people in at a time so that each group got “their own experience”- also parentheses.  We get in after waiting too long for that short of a line, we take a picture, then we go to a tarot card table to pick which maze we get to go to, all good. Then the atmosphere….. black painted wood boards for walls, with random symbols painted on them, nothing very imaginative and as plain as can be. Or first “escape room” was us crawling under fake barbered wire, the second one was us walking under a suspended fake body, the others were so not special I forgot what we did, it says a lot that I remember we walked under a fake body and forgot the rest. As for the solo experience by the end of the maze we were following about three other couples, so why did we wait so long? Most of the population that inhabited the haunt and was supposed to scare us were men in black wearing paintball masks, or people in robes with no special make up, aka more boring stuff. There wasn’t much smoke used so you clearly saw how shoddy the set up was. After we we were done, one maze was enough, no need to waste our time on something that will most likely be the same drabness.

Haunts don’t need to be multi million dollar Hollywood productions, to be effective. I loved the park district haunted forests when I was a kid. Why was the kid friendly haunted forests better? CREATIVITY! Different sets, different characters, I actually saw effort in the production. Giving me plastic gory bodies, and blood for 20 minutes doesn’t peak my interest it’s all just one note. Colors, noises, props they all add to the experience, just like the reason I go to horror movies- I want to see some familiar aspects but then I also want to see something new. You can’t shroud something in darkness and have people jumping out every so often and call it a haunt, it takes effort - let me see some heart (figuratively and literally- of course). This makes me wonder who creates haunts, do they like horror? That’s a question for another time. And well I thought that Sinister Pointe was going to be the worst on my trip... oh silly me.

 My friend departed and since I was in the area I decided to go to another haunt. This one is called 17th Door. I walked in and in the lobby you have to sign a wavier. To me that meant “Alright they mean business” the scare business that is. Then you read the wavier: triggers like bullying, abortion, implied child and sexual abuse, eating disorders etc. are present in this haunt. To me I was like hmmmm, have I never notice those things before in other haunts? That seems like a strange concept but I’m sure it’s minimal. My warning DON’T spend money on any haunt that has that in a wavier DON’T DON’T DON’T!!!! The storyline is not fun nor should be used for fun purposes. Actors showed a girl getting bullied online, a girl (same girl, the story was about one girl) getting beat and yelled at by her boyfriend, then the girl trying to have a coat hanger abortion, and in the end the girl suffocating her baby and throwing it in the trash. I paid to be entertained, these themes are not entertainment they are depressing, offensive and sick in this context and not scary. The only surprise I felt was how far they took those themes and how anyone thought this was a good idea. Yes I did sign a wavier, and it said those things on the wavier. But haunted houses are supposed to be fun, why would this concept ever be considered? Looking on Yelp they still have high reviews. I will say they had two good rooms but out of 17 that’s not worth my money. People who said this was fun or scary I don’t understand.

  Yes I’m a girl that likes horror films that usually include gore, sfx, violence, I can handle that because I know what I am getting into, I’m settling in, to be grossed out and scared. Haunts are the same, they are supposed to create a safe space for imaginary scares. Instead the 17th Door abused that privilege and created a space that exploited themes just because they could. In the wavier it says that the haunt follows a troubled girl. Why troubled? Using it first you are describing the girl so is she unsettled? Is she disturbed? Is some imaginary evil hounding her? NO. Instead she is a girl in distress, a girl that needs some help, a girl in trouble. Her “trouble” was not entertaining, nor done with any respect at all. The only reason I am glad I went is so I know that horrible haunts like this exist and I will be more prepared next year, and aware about reading those waivers closely.

 I went to Chicago and I decided to try some more haunted houses. I bought tickets for House of Torment and 13th floor. Both haunted houses were produced by Thirteenth Floor Productions and they have haunted houses across the country. After experiencing what I did in LA I cannot recommend those haunts enough. They get it! Great set design. Honestly there were times I would stop in the haunts and just gape at the beautiful lighting design. So with great set design and lighting they gave you an experience! There were a bunch of lighting tricks and room setups that I had never experienced before. On top of that they throw in some ghouls and monsters, thank you; this is fun, this kept my attention, got me excited, made me nervous for what could be next, and made me smile because I had fun, mostly because the atmosphere allowed me to have fun. Both haunted houses had different stories so I didn’t regret going to both. Seek these out if you want a true haunted house experience. They helped to restore my faith for next year.

 So am I a disillusioned adult? Maybe. I feel like haunts don’t respect the need to have monsters, a spooky atmosphere, scary clowns (scary clowns are always a hit) basically the pure joys of what Halloween is – scary, offbeat, creative and safe; and a bit bloody. Or haunts think that we are so screwed up and desensitized that anything can be entertainment. I feel like I need to discover those companies and people that want customers to have a good time, sadly those seem to be few and far between, but I won’t stop searching. 

Please next year be good.

NOTE: I will say Halloween Horror Nights is pretty fun, not scary it’s pure camp, (except for the extremely well done Texas Chainsaw Massacre- HHN surprises me time to time) just go early and not on a weekend to miss those lines!!

 NOTE: Also from now on I will read the bad reviews for haunts on Yelp first, they seem a lot more truthful than the others and more attuned to the experience for people that love haunts.

[politicalfilth-blog]

What Did YouTube Just Do?

In this video, we give you the latest breaking news on the latest decision by YouTube to further control what you will and will not see.

Article – https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/08/24/the-term-conspiracy-theory-was-invented-by-the-cia-in-order-to-prevent-disbelief-of-official-government-stories/

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Transcript –

Welcome back beautiful and amazing the veins and nose are the wonderful noises that I make every time I read a mainstream Media news article.

Socks and of course in today’s day and age there’s a lot of sloppy journalism that either is.

Holy admitting very important details to a bigger story that is happening stories also that deliberately lie and are used for the purposes of propaganda or fear-mongering some people call it fear porn but to say the least it is very difficult right now to decipher what is true what is not and what’s the full story behind the major event that’s why in this video I’m going to attempt to do that by singling out.

Single news article reading it to you and I’m telling you all the information about just how much it is filled with propaganda disinformation for journalism and if this does well it is something that we are going to continue to do on this channel with you guys also submitting articles that you want me to specifically read to you and review.

Golf Course.

This is pretty much because of your sponsorship your donations you guys purchasing t-shirts or change me to University and being a major force behind it this Independent Media operation which by the way is Bitcoin as well but if you feel inclined and can please support us on we are change. Org board / donate to allow us to do this work for you now the first story that I wanted to talk about today specifically.

Article by USA Today that is titled YouTube to curb recommended conspiracy videos and all yet we’re also going to send the nice personal message to Jefferson Graham the author of this piece at the end of this video and this was actually a very popular news article that was on the front page of red.

Has galvanised a ton of people sharing this article for some strange reason on the USA Today website it’s difficult to see any kind of metrics artists even how many people shared this story and there’s no there’s no comment section there’s only adds know a lot of news organizations have just completely eviscerated their comment section.

Because yeah there’s some crazy stuff that usually happens in the comment section but also because a lot of users usually call out a lot of the bullcrap lies and deception in the comments section and usually those comments are the number-one upvoted ones in major media Publications and a lot of news organizations instead of facing scrutiny from the people.

Totally deleted any kind of interaction between you and their publication which day want you to pay $9.99 for month.

Even though they clearly don’t care about being held accountable By Their audience and no USA Today I don’t want to stay connected no no thank you and I’ll let me get past all these advertisements to actually get to.

That’s a lot of advertisement now the article starts off here saying video Network YouTube responded to critics who have long called the Google company to clean up its recommendation engine and not offer conspiracy videos in suggested plays now even the first statement here is just full of crap and lies because I don’t know about you but the only people I’m seeing complained about the YouTube system and YouTube in general with their recommendations is only the mainstream media people don’t have a big issue or problem with the recommendations by in large and this statement is just a fallacy that they start off with I generalizing as much as they can without showing approving any evidence trying to push one past the goal post as if this is a legitimate argument.

A legitimate grievance by legitimate critics and no it’s not it’s the mainstream media that are mainly crying about this because by and large they’re getting destroyed by alternative media Independent Media that is destroying them and becoming a serious competitor for all their ad Revenue that they’re trying to collect those greedy little you know what I’m trying to say here or honesty or they would just say instead of critics I would say we us the mainstream media have been calling on the Google to fix the recommendation so we don’t lose advertising Revenue to people who are apart of Independent Media another very vague generalization here just saying conspiracy videos continuing on in a blog posted Friday YouTube said it will begin to reduce recommending borderline content and content that could miss inform users in harmful ways that look at YouTube statement border. Line contact again content that could.

Could miss inform users in harmful ways again also very generalized oblique language that could be used in many different ways and of course generalized because this Authority that they are now claiming will be abused for sinister purposes and the way to hide at those Sinister purposes is of course to make it as a large so people can’t find it and is generalized as possible to make it as Bland sounding as they can so people don’t get angry at them because this is a huge step backwards and I continued on with the article quote such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for serious illness claiming the Earth is flat or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11 again very interesting that YouTube actually decided on these very specific issues. And make up the craziest theories to generate ad Revenue yes that does exist but I would make the argument here that this is a situation where you’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater because YouTube does work does promote does push and recommend mainstream media Outlets which I would argue are sometimes more incredulous than the biggest phone when he’s on YouTube and have caused more damage to humanity.

Book of the mainstream media they sold us the Iraq War like it was a Shore thing they sold us the banker bailouts the supposed stimulus.

Just giving our money.

The richest most powerful people who created an economic crisis in this country look at 9:11 with the official voice saying that the air was safe to breathe issued by a lion government that the mainstream media repeated because they were believed to be authoritative voices and this is what YouTube has called a lot of the mainstream media companies that they are pushing forward while of course going after the small craters saying that they are at or Tatum voices and I believe our society is as screwed up as it is because of the mainstream media and you need people to question whether the air was safe to breathe on that 11 whether the Iraq War was worth it whether we should be giving out billions and trillions of dollars to foreign banksters those questions on a national discourse need to happen to have a healthy Democratic Society and when you take away those voices and you only let the establishment speak which is ultimately what YouTube is doing here which of course.

USA Today is running propaganda for mainly because companies like USA Today benefit and other mainstream media companies benefit from these larger decisions when you have these bigger shutting down the voices from the conversation you’re going to have huge detrimental effects to society especially with limiting the public discourse on what many people believed to be a public utility YouTube which has the power to dramatically change events and situations that we are dealing with okay now let’s continue on with the article the most high-profile conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was banned by YouTube in 2018 along with apple Stitcher Facebook and others over concerns about his content including videos that questioned whether the killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 were real as you all know I am definitely not a fan of Alex Jones and have criticized him in detail over his content on this. Very specific YouTube channel but please if you can entertain me and tell me the difference of what Alex Jones did in 2012 regarding families but entertain me here for just a second and tell me the major difference from Infowars coverage of Sandy Hook to of course the mainstream media coverage of the Covington Catholic school kids and the recent controversy that happened in Washington DC is there that big of a difference between the two campaigns and that’s something to think about that I could be wrong about but let me know and legitimately in the comment section okay so it’s go on here so if YouTube viewers were searching for music ounce of an event like Sandy Hook they could have seen Infowars pop up after a string of videos from CBS ABC and the like again just a very very rare example that they’re using a very of course hyperbolic one of area of course emotional one to convince you of this argument that they’re making but this is. Already been in use this censorship has already been hitting this YouTube channel for an example not just events like Sandy Hook but with other important geopolitical events especially major ones like the yellow vest movement which I have been on the ground covering and doing live streams from which have dominated the coverage some videos galvanizing even a million views destroying my competition and the mainstream media’s coverage of it because I actually provided an unbiased look at the entire situation that was happening there that resonated with people and had people sharing video that was on edited unbiased of exactly what was happening there without any kind of bigger Spin and when you typed in we are change French protests we are change yellow vest into the search algorithm here guess what none of our videos showed up pretty funny that mr. Jefferson Graham here didn’t use that as an exam. Misses of course the Slanders content that has been coming out against the yellow vest Movement by the mainstream media that is trying to destroy this movements typically from the coverage that we have seen from the French media continuing on with this article the article says the YouTube algorithm pics videos based on your viewing and search histories in an auto play mood with suggestions for other videos to watch as well yes I I can’t wait for Jake Paul videos to be shoved down my throat again continue on this isn’t the first time YouTube has tried to take the conspiracy video Problem in March 2018 it said it would put links to Wikipedia about events in text boxes around widely accepted vents like the 1969 moon landing a very successful I literally did a video about Vladimir Putin and literally the Wikipedia entry I got underneath.

My video is that Vladimir Putin is the president of Russia.

That’s what this idiotic did stupid again what it really is just a sick Sinister effort by technocrat trying to be in control of a narrative that they’ve been losing because of Independent Media let me skip this other advertisement here continue aren’t continuing on with the article YouTube was responding to public backlash know it wasn’t don’t lie USA Today Jeffrey Graham I’m writing you a nasty tweet after this stop lying what public backlash to mainstream Media made it up if it wasn’t for the mainstream media screaming and crying about ad Revenue not having enough money to survive trying to attack people take down independent users there wouldn’t be a supposed backlash there’s not one person that I know or even have seen other than politically motivated mainstream media limousine. Pax system cuckservative were screaming and writing hate rage click articles trying to of course galvanized the tech industry to act on their behalf and this is exactly what this is this isn’t public backlash you look at the most popular conspiracy videos out there they mostly have upvote people like their content people want to hear about the possibilities. Of course I will never be entertained by the mainstream media there’s a good discussion in the comments section mainly people enjoy it and you could see it by the response that they get continuing on after the supposed public bash backlash after it’s trending videos tab Gable white platform to clips that shared false or misleading information that sometimes the information was correct and you were wrong and this is why you need to take this down cuz you don’t wanna lose control them are that’s what’s Happening Here continuing on with the article about breaking national news events like the high school shooting in Parkland Florida or the two. 17 mass shootings in Las Vegas the mass shootings which by the way that be I just released the final report on what supposedly no motive at all with the authorities of course being tight-lipped not sharing a lot of the information with the general public many times covering up for themselves trying to protect themselves from any kind of responsibility or scrutiny from when they mess up because FBI messes up but they cover up to not face any accountability for this is why.

Regulates that maybe there’s something more to the story especially with a lying establishment a lying media that clearly works for special interest and tries to shut down independent voices that dare to say hey.

You’re probably lying here which sometimes they are and they need to be called at 4 and not censored continuing on with the article YouTube says Des algorithm shift will apply to less than 1% of the content on YouTube I don’t believe that that’s a big corporations word on itself what happened to h38 Street they got taken down because even talked about Alex Jones clearly they were doing a livestream they were taken down because they talked about something that you don’t want them talking about continuing on but the limiting the recommendations of these types of videos will mean a better experience for the YouTube Community whose standards and belief experience for the YouTube Community Human Experience for the technocrats globalist and prostitutes who only want to sell you a narrative to deceive you moving forward the network precise that the changes will affect recommendations of what videos to watch not whether a video is available on YouTube as always people can still access all videos that comply with our community guidelines. When relevant these videos may appear in recommendations for channel subscribers and in search results YouTube receives over 400 hours of videos uploaded to the site every minute so many questionable videos fall through the cracks fall through the cracks.

Some of the videos included child abuse pedophilic videos of perverse really inappropriate videos radicalized Islamic videos radicalized hate videos first interesting because as I’ve been hit by YouTube for supposedly talking about conspiracy theories myself I see all these other videos there are fine for a quite a moment YouTube decides to prior to a prioritize is of course.

Supposed conspiracy theorist not all those other things I mentioned which they didn’t go after first first they went after conspiracy theorist supposedly that’s what they call us it’s pretty much a dirty name created by the CIA what you got is another rabbit hole that you should jump into and I’ll leave this article for you to fact check yourself in the description of this video about this specific top.

Okay moving forward critics have long called for more human oversight and YouTube has responded by saying it will hire as many as 10,000 people to hunt for offencive videos.

Sensitive videos I thought we’re going after misleading videos with someone’s emotions are involved here and if their emotions are offended we have to take those videos down to exactly conflating it making his General.

As they can because they know this is a bad thing that they’re doing and we’ll have a big backlash continuing on Additionally the network has touted its use of machine learning to get a better handle of keeping bad stuff off the network again guys today set alternative Independent Media first on their little algorithm then they went after the child abuse the pedophilia activity the really inappropriate sexual stuff and then in a radical islamist.

Heads up just to just to show you where YouTube’s head is at continuing on videos were main up until they are flagged by members of the community for not adhering to YouTube guidelines you I can definitely can’t be abused by the system here and other people continue with on such as showing violence sexual content or in the case of the recent Florida high school shooting false information.

Who is going to be the decider of Truth technocrats billionaires no thank you I’ve been this is what they’re doing protected by USA Today continuing on an example of the conspiracy issue in February 2018 when student survivors of a high school shooting in Florida began speaking out a video that suggested the students were quote crisis actors hired by democrats and gun-control Advocate Rose to the top of YouTube trending section attracting 200,000 views what’s the media caught on to it YouTube pulled it down again very very rare case the trending section is pretty much the advertising section for YouTube it’s not really the top videos that get the most amount of used that’s misinformation number one so probably some of that YouTube made a mistake they don’t want to take responsibility for it so they just blame anyone else questioning narratives out there continue run this change in policy relies on combination of machine learning and real people YouTube says we work with human evaluators and experts from all the. The United States to help train the machine learning systems that generate recommendations these evaluators are trained using public guidelines and provide critical input on the quality of video Jim mortgage are good crap YouTube had resisted making whole some changes to its algorithm Duke due to concerns for free speech oh yeah you did yeah yeah that’s that’s rare. That’s pretty golden since you’re actually doing the thing that will suppress refreeze it Free Press now as you’re announced we have concerns but you know where I can just admitting here at the end yeah this is a big issue for Free Speech but we’re going to go with it anyway quote the network said that the changes strike a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech yet sure and living up to our responsibility to you know it’s not it’s you once again again it’s just one hand washing the other one ended. For talking another and this cozy relationship between big Tech and of course the mainstream media is in Ed Horton but proves and shows to everyone that the truth is mainly the rain enemy here for them people discussing and talking to each other is something that they can have they can’t have a discourse they can’t have people talking to each other they’re coming from the point of view that people are too dumb to understand truth to understand how to live their lives and they will decide what you can and cannot hear and what you’re able to even think about this is what they’re doing here on such a major level continue along with the Stars look at just a boy and adds here.

What it what is it Yo Gotti drops put a date on it with little baby set to appear on the tonight this is not used as an advertising is that Busta Rhymes by the way Busta Rhymes also are you considering I was sick of this let’s look at all these add holy cup Yo Gotti drops put a date on it with little baby set to appear on The Tonight Show what the hell is this.

4 train like this is news content it’s not this is this advertisement this is what this is really all about that Busta Rhymes fun fact here Busta Rhymes by the way is really big into alternative information especially surrounding the events of 9/11 and anything else the mainstream media tries to jam our throat and of course you know that this is conflict and of course the mainstream media is all about their just trying to confuse you as if this is actual news articles here just trying to get you to buy more crap holy cow look like I’m not even sure how long we’re going here for holy cow I even have a special application.

Oh that I came and talked about okay let me actually turn on the advert oh my God oh my goodness I just turned off a special app thing that I had with in my browser here thank you guys know what I’m talking about I can’t really meant.

This is modern journalism inundated with the garbage from the internet corporatist trash.

Okay let’s go find Jeffrey Graham and write him a nice mess.

For him on Twitter.

Grammar is this guy here we go yeah oh Jeffery Jeffery I’m so disappointed in you probably going to fire the poor guy because.

Absolute trash at the solar industry has turned into.

Jeffrey Graham just read a Jeffrey.

You just rewrite press release that your corporate.

Overlords vomited down your throat and you regret rejecting.

They did to us serious question with the open face emoji and send check out the activity that will be happening right here.

If you enjoy this video obviously share please I mean you got to have to now because YouTube because.

We’re not an authoritative voice we’re telling you what they’re not telling you.

Good label us a conspiracy theorist which we’ve been labeled by the mainstream media at so many times before.

Mom still my work all the time when I’m doing live that’s what I am so frustrated at.

Regardless share this video please YouTube won’t I appreciate you guys if it wasn’t for you donating a supporting and subscribing and being a part of us we wouldn’t be here if you like this format of me reading articles to you let me know and I’ll continue to do this if you have any other videos you recommend send it to me on my Twitter at twitter.com.

Are you guys thank you again so much watching stay tuned for more here on youtube.com.

The post What Did YouTube Just Do? appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/what-did-youtube-just-do/

[soundincomestrategies]

Media And Information Bias With David Scranton

Dan Gainor

 David Scranton: Hi and welcome to this week’s installment of the Income Generation, I’m David Scranton your host. As always the primary purpose of this show is to provide you with useful information thoughts and financial remedies to assist and guide you through a time in your life when financial missteps could have a much larger negative impact than when you were younger. Each week I share some of the insights and expertise that I use in my financial practice and bring them to you as either food for thought or actionable items for financial or investment concerns you might be having. Many of the times people don’t even realize or recognize what these concerned should be, they feel as though they’re doing everything right. You might be watching the nightly news, you might be reading financial publications, sitting there with your broker or a financial advisor on a regular basis to make the most of your situation. But history has still shown that time and time again the information distributed to you by various outlets turns out to be wrong or if not totally wrong just ignores some very important facts. So why is it so often wrong or incomplete? that’s what today’s show will help you discover and I’m sure that it will get you thinking and maybe even rustle some feathers of people that I occasionally run into in my own business, and that’s fine with me. Our guest today is an expert on the subject of media bias, he’s vice president of Media and Culture at a much heralded organization. Watching the media and what you’re being told, they listen and watch word for word for truth then they make the findings available as a public service. So as much as the news and the media are in many ways supposed to be your source of information or even the public’s watchdog, as it turns out the watchdog actually needs a watchdog. As you may know America has a watchdog with the Media Research Center so you’re in for some great insight and perhaps even some disturbing examples today of abuses in the media. abuses that you know we’re exposed to every single day, a little later in the show I’ll be interviewing Dan Gainor who for ten years was head of the division of the MRC. The MRC exist solely to be the watchdog for you. I’ll see if I can get Dan to pull the cover off some of the machine that shapes public thoughts, the media themselves. I’ve known Dan for a while but I’ve never had the opportunity to have this discussion with him, I look forward to his informed insights and depth of understanding of what either is intentional misdirection or complete dishonesty. And what may just be the nature of information distribution. Marti Johnson’s also back this week with a special report on why the media like so many other businesses may be flawed or missing their potential to do good. And most of the media is a four profit business whether it’s a newspaper with a two hundred year history, a major television network or recent blog that you read. The main goal is to make money. Actually, in many cases informing you is a bit lower on the list, how much lower? Well by the end of the show we’ll have a better idea of where we rank in the media’s eyes. Last week we had an economist Peter Morici on and he discussed some of what drives market expectations and its expectations that often drive investment prices and returns.

Peter Morici: The reality is though is that Mr. Obama would be limited to spending only as much taxes come in so would force a balanced budget almost immediately that is a manageable proposition. So to say the Republicans are responsible is absurd but unfortunately, who’s ever present in the United States gets to set the terms of the debate by virtue of the bully pulpit. And he’s got America convinced that somehow that we’re going to renag and welch on our debts. Nothing could be further than the truth, the only person that can determine whether we renag or welch on our debts if we don’t raise the debt ceiling is the president of the United States.

David Scranton: Well, with a constant barrage of news twenty-four seven and even phone apps today that are updating and informing us on a constant basis it would be almost impossible for the information distributed. Whether correct or not to not work its way into the market psyche and even yours, this of course has a huge effect on us all. As for myself I’m a student of the markets and I sometimes sit dumbfounded as I listen to a reporter discuss why the markets moving up or why the markets moving down. the reasons they give it times I think are so oversimplified as to be comical, I often wonder if they’re intentionally oversimplifying or if they purposely omit discussing the most likely causes of market moves for fear that you at home simply may not understand. Let me give you a simple example, in August of this year the stock market moved significantly lower and what the media called a flash crash. This event included one of the top ten worst days in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Since the talking heads on television always promised to deliver and provide the answers immediately they had to give viewers a reason for the drop on the spot. My experience is that they seem to have a list of go to explanations for most market moves, this time they pulled out the old high frequency trading and lack of transparency as being the cause. They basically blamed electronic trading. They quickly were airing conversations to viewers about market reforms to help improve these causes and conditions. Whether the news outlets were right or not didn’t matter, all the folks at home who digested this as a cause were fed information that is now part of their beliefs to one degree or another. The reasons given much later on when analysts had time to look at all the mechanisms that played into that historical day ended up being much different. And that is still being studied, I thought of a similar event back in May of two thousand and ten. Which had a one thousand point flash crash. You might remember that back then the media also pointed the same culprits, high frequency traders. Enough time has passed and research conducted since that invent they have come up with an entirely different set of reasons. In fact, the conclusion the SEC came up with along with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission specifically stated that high frequency trading did not cause the flash crash. The staffs of these two agencies discovered that Futures contracts in Chicago specifically something called the E-mini futures had a liquidity crisis and it caused the price drop of five percent within four and a half minutes. Did the news outlets issue a correction or even an apology? Not that I heard, that was yesterday’s news and what I describe briefly earlier is not something most viewers would quickly grasp or tie together. Perhaps they’re afraid to give too much information because they don’t think their audience can handle it. Today’s show we’ll talk about this and even more sinister motives, that’s one of the reasons I’m here to dig deeper than a soundbite or quickly fabricate a reason to explain just the market move or the day. in fact after a very few very bad days after the flash crash this August, the market began climbing back much of the time according to analysis done by my staff at Sound Income Strategies was it was due to investors covering what’s called short positions in the stock market. These trades have the same effect as any other purchase so of course, the market begin to rise. Now this again wasn’t explained as one of the possible reasons on anything written or aired that I have seen since then. I guess they didn’t think you’d understand, I remember hearing instead that China suddenly was no longer a concern and that the Fed was expected to raise rates and that was the reason for the original drop. But the market climb is because the Fed will probably be on hold for a while now and of course, the old standby excuse unemployment concerns. If you have any money at all you can rest assured there are people who will be trying to relieve you of some of it? Now I’m not suggesting necessarily in an illegal way we all know there are people who will steal. What I’m talking about today though is legal businesses that bombard us all with dubious images and definitions of what’s best what’s normal and what we need to do to live happier more successful lives. One example, I like to show is legalized fantasy sports betting. If you haven’t seen these commercials for these fantasy sports companies which fits almost every definition I know of gambling well then you’re lucky. On their commercials which typically air during football or baseball games they have one person after another talking about how for just a few dollars entry fee they were able to win thousands of dollars playing. Their all extremely happy, they’re full of energy and the commercials urge you to get into the action along with them. The underlining message is that you can’t lose now, maybe these commercials and the business practices of this industry shouldn’t bother me as much as they do. But when I see the advertisements it reminds me of the ads and business tactics of discount brokerage firms and online trading sites. the message their commercials constantly send is that it’s so easy to invest a baby can do it , you’ve all seen those I’m sure. Another ad looks to get people to buy more by convincing them that if they’re like the winner in the commercial when they have an idea they also need to act upon it right away. Yet another sends the message that all you really need is the right charting tools you know instantly take control over your finances. Much like the ad for one week fantasy leagues which may not specifically be asking the viewer to gamble, I feel these discount broker ads are suggesting the same thing. They craft the message that it’s easy, it’s fun, everyone’s doing it and everyone’s making money doing it it’s almost like they’ve even taken scripts directly from the cigarette ads of yesteryear. You know if you smoke well you’ll be cool or in this case if you day trade you’ll be cool. Let me mention another reason for us to all be upset, when a product portrayed as glamorous you know yet it has the potential to do as much harm as smoking or online trading. The company and perhaps even the network is acting irresponsibly but it’s you as a citizen who gets stuck with the bill in one way or another, think about it. Both the tobacco companies and those touting these ease of do it yourself investing have cost Americans billions, that’s whose footing the bill for irresponsible misrepresentations of what you should expect. Why would large T.V. networks not instead have more wholesome advertisements? For the same reason Congressman may be more likely to act on behalf of lobbyists than their constituents, you know there are lobbyists pursuing them and pushing them, incentivizing them to act on their behalf instead of yours. It’s similar with T.V. and magazines paid advertisers are far more important than non-paying viewers. I’ll even go as far as to say it affects the very content of the supposed new shows, I hope to dig deeper into this with Dan Gainor later in the show. My registered investment advisory firm Sound Income Strategies is already held to a fiduciary standard. I believe that brokerage firms which are related business should also be held to the same standard, this is why I get so fired up when I see commercials that are encouraging people to gamble with their future. They should all come with a warning much like packs of cigarettes today that say Don’t Try This At Home. In fact, right now President Obama is making a huge push to have all advisors including brokers become fiduciaries when investing client’s retirement accounts. I’m a managing member of a registered investment advisory firm as I said a moment ago so I’m already held to that fiduciary standard, in fact, I’d lose my license and effectively be out of business if I didn’t put my clients first. Holding brokers and other advisors and hopefully one day commentators also to a fiduciary standard I believe is a good thing because it’s not so easy that a baby can do it. So it may be a rare moment when I agree with one of President Obama’s initiatives but I hope in this case that his push on this topic is successful. You heard that right, I agree with you Mr. President all advisors need to be held to the high fiduciary standards of putting their client’s interests above their own. Many types of financial advisors don’t have to under current regulations so make sure you’re working with an advisor that does. Dan Gainor currently runs the Business and Cultural Institute at the MRC but has also been the T. Boone Pickens fellow as well as the director of the free market project in the past for the MRC. Dan, welcome to the show.

Dan Gainor: Thanks Dave, it’s a pleasure.

David Scranton: First of all, can you tell us what the Media Research Centers primary mission is?

Dan Gainor: Well, we’re a conservative media watchdog and it’s our job to both identify and then neutralize left wing bias in the media. We’ve been around for more than twenty-eight years and we are probably the largest archive you’re going to find this side of the Library of Congress for video. we’ve got I think the last number is close to six hundred thousand hours of video and that means that we’re monitoring ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC and not just for news but also for entertainment. because one of the things we found over the years is that the bias in the media is in all aspects of media and you’ll see that…you’ll see that it attacks on conservative issues, you see it attacks on business men you’ll see you know T.V. shows where there were always targeting businessmen as villains. And the free market system and our country as somehow evil but one of the things we’ve learned over time is that essentially American public has lost faith in the media and there’s good reason for that.

David Scranton: Alright, fair enough that’s a great explanation for viewers you know why do we need a media watchdog and why can’t the media…?

Dan Gainor: I’ve been… I spent decades in news. I mean I spent decades in the news before I came into this job and I can tell you that on every major issue of the day journalists have opinions that they let creep into their news copy. that’s who their friends with, who they go to… who they socialize with, how they vote that all creeps in and it ends up undercutting people’s opinion. If you look at the opinions going year by year using the Pew Center for People in the press the opinions of the major media have been pretty much on a steady decline for years. And the reason for that is people now have a better sense of what’s going on in their media, they turn on T.V. they can then watch it and Twitter. Watch it on Facebook and then get real time reaction and when they do that they realize just how disastrous what they’re being fed really is. And the net result is if they’re… if who watches the watchers?

David Scranton: Right, good question. That’s absolutely correct and obviously you’re one of the people that help us with that and we’re grateful for that. Let’s point the conversation now to the interested parties that are associated with you know many of the shows that are consider financial shows or even financial news shows. Where I’m not sure the American public realizes that unlike the Internet everything on T.V. is paid for by one group or another. Can we talk about that for a moment?

Dan Gainor: Oh yeah sure, and I mean there’s… when you get into niche markets, financial shows, sports shows you know that’s were really I guess you would say some of the worst media cronyism is. Because I mean you know you’re… it’s in your best interest to not alienate the very people who are paying your salary and then you get… you know so that crops up. Now when you’re… when you’ve got an ABC evening news show and you know you’re touching on a lot of different topics you’re going to run less maybe into advertisers. But if you’re talking about something happening in the business media then you’re really running into a much more narrow market where financial advisors, mutual funds, everybody involved… You know they’ve all got a piece of the pie and you’re expecting whoever you’re watching to be a neutral observer, they’re not.

David Scranton: yeah so who else besides financial advisors, mutual fund families are the advertisers in these types of shows that might influence the decision of a reporter or someone else?

Dan Gainor: Well, I mean I think even before you get into that you’ve got to think also about corporate ownership. it’s a very finite number of organizations that own you know that own media so you’re looking at… just use NBC for example, NBC is MSNBC, is CNBC with its corporate owners you know ultimately Comcast. Are you going to really you know… and that means because their extremely reliant on cable, you know couple of those shows, couple of those networks wouldn’t survive at all without cable. And then of course they’re owned by cable, so you’re going to expect them to be you know have their advisors, their analysts come on and talk about cable. And say oh yeah we think the future cable is bad no, of course not, because they’re you know they’re too closely tied to that market. You know so then you go in to start looking at advertisers and it’s the whole universe of you know financial media, financial advisors, financial mutual funds, stock market. you know the… you know from soup to nuts and so you know… and you can even listen in you know when you’re watching the show sometimes you’ll hear oh, we just recommended this stock and you know two minutes later you’re hearing an advertisement for a company that’s related to that company.

David Scranton: Got you, so you wonder why and then all of a sudden you look back later and you think oh, I get it, it makes sense. Yeah, it’s so true and I want to talk more…

Dan Gainor: Yeah and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re compromised you know it just means that you really got to take a… you’ve got to really take a John 20:18.

David Scranton: And of course, you know with any public traded company if the advertiser is publicly traded their number one fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders. And it’s very easy for you know a reporter writing an article or doing a news report to get influenced by what they say and right after the break we’re going to talk more about that. We’re here now with Dan Gainer talking about some of the issues that we have to deal with in the news reporting world, in this field and how some of the things that you hear and read about financial advice and so on could be skewed more toward the profit motive of a particular person. And maybe just a little bit less toward what’s truly in your best interest. We’ll be right back with Dan Gainor. We’re here today with Dan Gainor and we’re having a frank conversation about how reporting specifically financial reporting, be it through published media or through television is influenced by the likes of advertisers and other interested parties. Dan you know you’re talking about the advertisers per say, so it sounds like you’re saying if an advertiser for a particular show for example is a mutual fund family. Then it’s likely that you’re going to hear a lot of positive things about mutual funds for example, is that correct?

Dan Gainor: Or if nothing else you won’t hear the negative. I mean that’s you know that’s just the reality I mean you know everybody has to pay the bills and so if a particular show is funded entirely by mutual funds you’re not going to hear that that shows saying oh, well mutual funds are a bad bet. Because advertisers will flee you know if you watch the evening news shows you don’t see a lot of stories generally speaking attacking the whole drug industry. The new shows are under you know are funded… there are a lot of advertisers that are drug manufacturers it’s just not one of the things that they you know crusade against. So when you’re looking… when you get to the basics really it helps to understand how do you kind of make the secret sauce to this journalism? And while the economy started doing a downturn in the last several… you know with two thousand and seven journalism never really stopped and as a result you’ve seen massive decline in number of working journalists in major cities. We’ve lost a lot of major dailies, there’s a lot fewer people reporting there… and then there’s a lot of pickup of what other people do so I mean all it takes is one bad story sometimes and the next thing you know that bad story is spread like a virus across the internet. And so because journalists are not spending a lot of research time double checking it you know you really have to be well informed and to give an example how bad this can really be. You’re not going to get the most advance knowledge from journalists, several years ago I’m a member of society professional journalists which is not mandatory. But it’s a good organization and I took economist Brian Wesbury, a great guy. Took him to an annual conference and we had you know a meeting talking about how to teach economics to journalists. And there’s about twenty-six, twenty-seven journalists in the room and Brian got it that he by speaking to you know that smaller number. He was speaking to hundreds of thousands or millions of people and so the first question he asked he says how many of you have had advance training in business or economics? One person raised a hand and he just went off and he’s a very nice guy but he was just stunned by how embarrassingly bad this was. And he said you know how are you supposed to cover business and economics if only one of you have ever had any training in it?

David Scranton: And Dan isn’t it true…

Dan Gainor: That’s what they don’t see what’s easy to pull the wool over the eyes of….

David Scranton: Dan isn’t true also that a lot of times writers to gain experience might write about sports for a while and then write about something else and then maybe fall into finance. You know is that a big part of the reason why perhaps that there are not experts in that particular area as most readers would think?

Dan Gainor: Well you know most journalists are generalists. I’m mean you know not… maybe when you get to the Wall Street Journal level you know you’re not talking about that. But you know there are people… journalism is a trade not a profession like medicine where everybody necessarily went through years of study. Lot of journalists didn’t even have… didn’t get a journalism degree and even then a journalism degree is how to do journalism not how to do economics, not a study of business. And frankly, when you kind of scratch the surface of most journalists they’re not business friendly. I’ve always you know joked when you go to work at a news organization, the news organization isn’t even friendly with its own business department. You know the people they don’t like the advertising in circulation people the people who help pay their bills, the only time they talk to them is at the Christmas party. So you know to expect them to you know to turn around and be friendly to your business you know it’s just not going to happen.

David Scranton: Right, right. You know in the two minutes or so we have left Dan, can you share with our viewers some egregious examples or at least one egregious example of… in the financial industry that you can recall.

Dan Gainor: One of the worst examples and I mean this is foundational to the economic collapse of two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight is the Fannie Mae Freddie Mac scandal.

David Scranton: Sure.

Dan Gainor: For years Wall Street Journal led the charge saying that this was an organization and an operation that was destined for chaos and the American public would be on the hook for billions and billions of dollars. New York Times picked up on it much to their credit, Washington Post picked up much to their credit and there was almost complete and utter silence on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN to the point where Charlie Gasparino who you know… I remember coming out at the time and he was railing on the networks and saying that the reason why they’re not talking about this is bias. But here’s the reason why? Because the journalists were convinced that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac helped ordinary you know particularly poor and underprivileged people get mortgages. So they would go to talk to their buddies on the Hill who invariably were pro Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac and they’re telling them oh, there’s nothing wrong. So it ends up being this enormous disaster costing taxpayers you know hundreds of billions of dollars. And only when everything really hit the fan did the networks even at all attempt to cover it.

David Scranton: Yeah and anyone who owned Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac stock back then actually knows what’s happened to that is there’s been a huge loss of wealth for shareholders. So you’re absolutely correct.

Dan Gainor: yeah and I mean that’s you know where is the responsibility for that if you’re an investor and you rely on the regular media to tell you what’s going on then you’re just a (unclear 28:18) fool.

David Scranton: I love it a dazzling fool. Alright well, so for viewers obviously you know you don’t want Dan Gainor to refer to you as a dazzling fool so pay attention to different sources and as I would say always ask the question why. You know why is it something’s being touted for us? Marti Johnson’s going to be here in just a minute and actually talking about that as part of her report. So Dan, I want to take this moment to thank you very much for being part of our show today as usual.

Dan Gainor: Well thank you very much, I enjoyed it.

David Scranton: Okay and we’ll right back in just a minute with Marti, stay tuned.

Marti Johnson: Thanks David, as a media professional myself for many years I’ve always prided myself on my own journalistic ethics and professionalism and so too have the many colleagues I’ve had the privilege of working with. But after hearing today’s guest it will probably come as no surprise that trust in the media as a whole is at an all-time low in this country. According to a two thousand and fourteen Gallup poll only forty percent of Americans surveyed said they trust the media’s ability to report the news and information fully, accurately and fairly. The interesting word in that survey question is ability, because in truth biased reporting and media spin usually aren’t caused by one lone wolf reporter or an editor with a personal agenda. More often, they’re the result of fundamental flaws in the way mass media works and operates. And that’s especially true when it comes to the financial media, today we’re going to take a closer look at those flaws which support the point financial author Dan Solon was making when he wrote to be a successful and responsible investor you need to ignore most of what is in the financial media. Well everyone is aware that the mass media has changed dramatically in the past ten to fifteen years, prior to that the majority of us relied on daily newspapers, T.V. and radio as our primary sources of news and information. the internet changed all of that and today we’re bombarded with headlines, updates, breaking news alerts almost constantly from our laptops, desktops and yes, even our cell phones not to mention the T.V.’s and the radios. Unfortunately, the dramatic increase in the presence and variety of mass media in our lives has only served to enhance the flaws that threaten journalistic objectivity, not diminish them. As a result we’ve seen an equally dramatic increase in the pervasiveness of hype and spin and a decrease in the presence of balanced and truly objective reporting. But what exactly are the flaws driving the situation and why are they even more prevalent in the financial media? To a large extent they stem from the simple fact that most of the outlets in the business of reporting news and providing information are in fact businesses. As such, they’re competing against each other businesses providing the same services competing for readers, viewers, subscribers and of course, advertisers. With so many news sources in the competitive mix and the internet and cable T.V. accessible to viewers and readers around the clock. All of these businesses are compelled to deliver fresh and updated content twenty-four seven and to try and distinguish themselves from competitors. As a result the lines between news advertising and infotainment have become increasingly blurred and modern journalists are under more pressure than ever to put pleasing their bosses and growing their businesses and their brands ahead of serving the public. The result, very often is reporting the lacks objectivity and a spun to the liking of an individual and interest group or an advertiser. But this flaw runs even deeper when it comes to financial media, it begins with the fact that the heads of major financial firms on Wall Street are financially obligated to their shareholders first and to their customers and clients second. They have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value in part by keeping customers invested in the markets as much as possible. People are more likely to invest obviously and to stay invested if they’re optimistic about the markets and believe they’re moving upward. As a result Wall Street C.E.O.’s and the people who work for them have an inherent need to sell positivity. And to always speak optimistically about the markets regardless of how often economic realities are moving or the markets might be trending. Why, however does this supposedly objective financial media so often fall in the habit of serving the same pro market spin to the public or as Dan Solon bluntly put it, serving as a shill for the securities industry. One reason, is that most financial media outlets are corporate owned and therefore obligated to some extent to help that Wall Street C.E.O. please shareholders by selling optimism. That’s why most of the high profile market analysts you see on the internet and cable T.V. always seem to be touting stocks. Pushing them regardless of market conditions while ignoring the very existence of other investment operations and options. Their opinions aren’t based on independent objective research but on in-house sources and usually there’s no firewall between the company’s research department and its ownership and its advertisers. Most of these analysts know that if they contradict the company line they run the risk of losing their high profile, high salaried jobs. Of course, the overcrowded and highly competitive nature of today’s twenty-four seven media that I just spoke about is also part of the problem. In the midst of this fast paced competition, financial news sources today like news providers in general increasingly fall in the habit of simply pulling stories off the wire to use an old inside ball game journalistic term. They repackage news content already circulating rather than devote resources to developing their own that’s why what you hear from one financial source is so often the same thing you hear from another financial source. They haven’t done separate research and reach the same conclusions by coincidence, they’ve simply gotten all of their information from the same place. And there’s still another issue specific to the financial media industry that makes objective reporting and finding that information difficult. It stems from the fact that a great many articles written for financial publications or broadcasts aren’t written by financial experts or qualified market analysts. Rather they’re contributed by professional writers and even when the writer is highly qualified and very experienced he or she may not have a single area of expertise. Their resume may include everything from athlete interviews for Sports Illustrated to travel articles for Cond Nast this kind of broad based background is common in journalism. You can always trust a good writer to do research when putting together any story but the sources he or she uses to gather their information vary. And unfortunately, it’s quite common for writers contributing to financial publications to use the most convenient sources which very often happen to be among the publications advertisers. The fact is that successful magazines, programs and websites get the majority of their revenue not from readers, viewers and subscribers but from advertisers. And who do you suppose are financial media’s biggest advertisers overall? At the top of the list not surprisingly brokerage firms and mutual funds, obviously these are going be more… these sources are going to be more than happy to provide the reporter with information for his piece. But will it be objective information? Probably not, more likely it will be information that again conforms to his company’s inherent need to sell optimism and to please shareholders by putting a positive spin on the stock market and market based products and strategies. That’s why it’s so important for our members of the Income Generation and all investors today to understand that so much of what bombards them on the internet is not really objective news and information. Particularly when it comes from financial news, rather the majority of it is spin biased rhetoric and disguised advertising. the result of fundamental flaws and the very framework of today’s increasingly convoluted and highly competitive mass media.

David Scranton: When it comes to your money you always have to ask the question why? As in why is this particular advisor or this particular reporter recommending the approach that they are to me? This is especially true in the financial services industry as we’ve seen today. Some of the reasons to be weary of what you see and hear are that so many of the so-called experts on T.V. and the magazines and even professional advisors invited to your kitchen table to help. Have a vested interest in promoting whatever sells their products or services, this lesson extends to all areas of your life. So when you’re hiring a professional be it a landscaper or a contractor or even a lawyer or doctor remember to ask yourself why? Why are they recommending what they are and is it really what’s best for me? One of the examples I like to use when speaking to my clients is as follows. Let’s say that I told you I were having some back pain and I went to four different medical professionals to get help. Now, I ask how many different solutions do you think I might get from four different medical professionals? Well, what if I told you that they came back with four completely different recommended treatments. At first, you might be alarmed but then if I told you that one was an orthopedic surgeon, one was a chiropractor, another was a physical therapist and perhaps the fourth was an acupuncturist. Now it would actually make sense, this is because in the medical field and as well as every other field. Everyone has an expertise and they’re likely to want to help your issue with whatever they can provide and subsequently get paid for. You know there’s a saying when you’re a hammer every problem looks like a nail, so in the medical example knowing the why the different experts are recommending what they are is very, very important. The same is true for the financial industry, and I’ll include investment analyst appearing on T.V. in this group also, ask yourself why they’re recommending what they are indeed recommending and maybe because that’s what they’re getting paid for recommending. Just like you’ll probably never see a time when a stock broker says stocks are bad investments you’ll probably never hear a real estate broker say real estate is a bad investment. Now, when it comes to your health, most people of the Income Generation understand the differences between these four various medical professionals and what they do. Unfortunately, differences are not as well understood in the field of financial services, people tend to paint the financial industry and financial advisors with one broad brush. They look at all advisors being very much the same even though they know that doctors for example are very much different. In reality, there are many different types of financial advisors just like there are different types of doctors, lawyers, construction contractors and even beauticians. You want to make sure you go to the one who is a best fit for the why for which you’re seeing them. This is important and it will soon be designating an entire show to determine the type of advisor that’s right for you and as I said earlier preferably one that’s required to act as a fiduciary. So you could be even more comfortable that they’re acting on your behalf. You know in my personal practice Sound Income Strategies, I talk to prospective clients all the time who are currently working with stock market based advisors. Often these advisors work for one of the big brokerage firms but at times they’re independent. Many times these prospective clients are surprised to find that they have a majority of their money in the stock market, I’m generally not surprised if you think about it this is why stock brokers are called stock brokers. They typically search to find solutions with the limited answers found within the stock market. Like I said earlier, if you’re a hammer every problem looks like a nail, today we got sit down with Dan Gainor and learn about all the good work being done at the Media Research Center. I for one am grateful the MRC exists and his role as media watchdog, I’m personally happy to have shared this resource and to help the Income Generation understand that this information is there for you. I want to also thank Marti Johnson for her reporting, Marti’s report was very important for all of us to understand the role that advertisers play in shaping what makes it on to business news. Now I cannot wait for next Sunday when we have conservative icon and bestselling author Steve Forbes on to discuss how three things are going to potentially save our country. Repealing Obamacare, redesigning the tax code and reforming the Federal Reserve he says it’ll bring our nation back out of its Malays and on its track to growth and prosperity.

Steve Forbes: And in terms of a stable dollar you know you once… the dollar works best, money works best when it has a fixed value. You know money is not wealth, money measures wealth the way scales measure weight or ruler measures length and money…

David Scranton: Forbes has written a new book on the subject called Reviving America. I’ve just finished reading it personally and I look forward to sharing this great thinker with you. if you haven’t signed up yet for a complimentary special report titled The Income Generation which allows readers to discover many answers to their invest the questions. Sign up now at The Income Generation dot com, you’ll discover a wealth of useful ideas for financial security that you may have never known existed. Well that’s it for today, I’m David Scranton you’ve been watching The Income Generation and we will see all of you next week.

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As I write this it is the end of summer and while I have had a little break and have had some fun I knew my coming back was inevitable because while I love what I do on this blog and what I do outside of it with the same skill set I thought it would be a great idea to do something different. I’m going to find out the backstory of Heath Ledger’s Joker. I am a huge comicbook fan and I love Batman for not only his amazing detective skills not put forth in many works but also his rogues gallery and every character’s amazing psyche. And then there is the best comicbook movie of all time “The Dark Knight” and it goes astray from the source material with a perfect and in some way better interpretation of the Joker played by Heath Ledger. But as the original Joker is this one also has a lack of backstory even more so that the original and for the 10 years after its release people have theorized and theorized without much skill into case work and they’ve gotten pretty far but today I put forth my theory or theories depending on how you look at it and with actual evidence that is solid and a little bit of assumption but not nearly as much as some theories on this go. In the movie he kills 28 to 35 people so definitely on the mass murder scale but also displays signs of something far sinister with his preference of knives making him seem more like a serial killer. His ratio of actual intelligence and social manipulativeness and also other display signs of antisocial personality disorder puts him on the definite psychopath side but some aspects such as sexual promiscuity and superficial charm are not present and also his teenage and marriage history isn’t known but I would assume that he would have had trouble as a teenager especially if he was indeed abused in his childhood. so this doesn’t actually put him at the top of the psychopath spectrum but it is worse because he doesn’t care about anyone from his nihilist point of view including himself. He sees himself as a vessel that chaos can come from or be a part of. This means he doesn’t care about hygiene or his looks in the traditional sense. He very much does care about his looks but he doesn’t want to be seen as attractive he wants to be seen as crazy or a freak because he doesn’t believe himself to be and wants to show people how they are the same as him but also in doing that they would realize they are extremely crazy just like him. So technically speaking he isn’t completely psychopathic just like he tries to make sure he is undiagnosable to not only show that every system is a list of flaws but also that he is unpredictable and represents uncertainty. Many comic book characters follow a similar path such as the punisher, batman, and I’m sure many others. Regardless he would definitely be leveled as legally insane but possibly not in our world but I’ll get to that in a moment. Legally insane means that you were not aware of your actions in the event of a crime and is a very slim amount of courthouse cases that it is even discussed in. Especially since on the outside it is hard to not identify him as crazy but instead is extremely intelligent and an amazing specimen of research if it is even possible. In the DC universe these terms seem to be tossed around more and it is probably because there are a lot more criminals out there than in this world and also that they have more faith in their treatment because of Arkham Asylum’s large amount of support financially and in terms of workers. In this world he is obviously not insane because although he is aware of his actions he doesn’t really know right from wrong because of his hatred for all people but in a way he does still know right and wrong and this is obviously not a case of him not aware of his own actions because he isn’t say a schizophrenic. From how “The Dark Knight Rises” was suppose to go before the death of Heath Ledger the Joker was definitely going to bust out of Arkham and face batman again and even if he was put in a mental hospital the first time around in this world the second time he wouldn’t be so lucky because if they keep putting him in an asylum and he keeps breaking out we would just execute his ass and batman wouldn’t even have to worry about breaking his one rule. This would especially be showing how intelligent he is in order to escape and he could possibly escape from Blackgate prison or one of our real world prisons I don’t know. Another aspect I think might be apparent in this joker is his “hypersanity” which in the comics is joker’s ability to realize he’s in a comicbook which could be true. He could realize he’s in a movie or comicbook as well because if there are infinite parallel universes like theoretical physics suggests then there is a parallel universe where he is in a comicbook or a movie and this is the one where he is in a movie. In fact there is a universe where you are in a comicbook or where we are all in a comicbook and to him it makes everything a joke and if we all thought like that all the time we would be in the same purple shoes he is. Alright enough on the criminal profile I think it’s time for some actual possible origins. The first thing I looked at were the scars. They are hypertrophic scars and his scars are actually called a glasgow smile that was actually in the Black Dahlia case and a few other famous ones. It is usually followed with a stabbing or kick to the stomach so when the victim screams they rip the “smile” open so if we saw him shirtless and saw that it would be a definite 99% proof he did not do this to himself. but instead I will have to go with 98%. Here are pictures of the scars

The red circles indicate the tearing of the actual cuts themselves. The black is just a cut below the mouth that seems accidental. And overall both sides of the smile are not even. This seems to have been done by a different person or people because if he did this himself he would have obviously used a mirror and wouldn’t make these mistakes if he would have taken his time. These type of scars take 3 years to heal. This means he had at least 3 years before he went to go create chaos in Gotham. We know that the Joker had only been active from the end of batman begins into the dark knight because at the end of batman begins Gordon shows Batman a Joker card explaining who he is briefly. So this means he had his scars before he even considered himself the Joker. As Gordon shows Batman the card he explains how Batman could make way for villains with a taste for the theatrical like him which is a perfect segue into saying that Joker probably saw what scarecrow and Batman did in Batman Begins and in seeing there are other “freaks” out there became one himself and it is deeply embedded in the comics that there can be no batman without joker and vice versa. But how does Batman use all his detective skills (although most of the tech he used was incorrect in terms of forensics) and still not be able to identify the Joker? Well everything about him had been deleted without a trace. But how does someone achieve this in the real world? Well in a missing persons case or some other crime someone is obviously missing and after 7 to 8 years they are considered legally dead but even if you are legally dead you were still once a person and therefore still have records. The most likely of something like this to happen would come from the government or even the military because they are the system and they do it all the time. That brings me to the theory itself. I believe that the Joker was indeed a soldier overseas but instead was tortured by his fellow soldiers for probably doing something they didn’t agree with probably brought about through something he did morally whether it be not allowing something illegal to happen or killing an innocent person on purpose. either way he is tortured and given his scars and left for dead and erased from ever existing. He survives and makes his way back to society whether he ran from home to Gotham or lived there originally. He then becomes homeless living on the streets until discovering someone he relates to: Batman. He then finds his way through the ranks of the criminal underworld messing with the rest of the mob and eventually making the bank heist we see in the beginning of The Dark Knight. This is why in the beginning of the movie we see all the crime bosses discuss who stole their money and Salvatore Maroni states “Stupid whack job, wears a cheap purple suit and makeup. He’s not the problem.” And we even see this cheap purple suit in the beginning where the threading is even coming undone because of its age in the bank heist. You can even tell how different the makeup looks when he is in the bank heist to when he is talking to the crime bosses with his famous pencil trick. Also in the interrogation scene he states “what would I do without you go back to ripping off mob dealers?” implying that he had done it multiple times in the past. This even explains why he says to two face he only did everything with some gas and a couple of bullets because in his mind that’s what it felt like to him and it persuades the audience and two face because overall it didn’t seem like a lot of actual traditional power even though we see a rocket launcher and 28 to 35 dead. This would add even more to the idea he suffers PTSD making it extremely possible he doesn’t even remember where he came from like he is in the comics. And PTSD can effects the hippocampus creating short term and long term memory loss. He even states he is like a dog chasing cars and that he wouldn’t know what to do if he caught one. But something else that I found very interesting is that he definitely knows who Batman is because also in the interrogation scene he says to Batman “You know for a while there I thought you really were Dent. The way you threw yourself after her.” and “Does Harvey know about you and his little…” and finally “choose between one wife or the other. Your friend district attorney or his blushing bride to be.” The reason he knows torture methods is probably because he did it while he was in war because he tells batman not to start with the head when batman bangs his head against the table. In fact him wanting to be a clown or freak possibly comes from how he may have been viewed in war with his fellow soldiers. He could have even been, in a way, similar to or the same as the comedian in The Watchmen comics since they both share the same ideology. This means since his second explanation of his scars was false then the other one is probably false too. But he still mentions how he hated his father when even not talking about his scars and it seems likely a psychopath like him came from that kind of background because most psychopaths come from that. When he states that even when a truck load of soldiers is blown up it’s all part of the plan that is probably because he witnessed it happen but he would have looked a lot different if that happened to him. In the dark knight manual it states the GCPD think he could have been an Arkham escapee and a victim or Dr. Krane (Scarecrow). This is possible but I don’t think Joker is very afraid of everything and Arkham wouldn’t really have the ability to erase records from existence and in fact they would probably have copies of all of it. So what do you think? Do I seem correct or just as crazy as Joker himself? What would you like me to investigate next? I say this was definitely a fun thing to work on.

  -Riddlez

File 19: The Joker Files As I write this it is the end of summer and while I have had a little break and have had some fun I knew my coming back was inevitable because while I love what I do on this blog and what I do outside of it with the same skill set I thought it would be a great idea to do something different.

[maliasa]

In an earlier post, we wrote about Thinking in a Social Dynamic Context, mentioning some researchers on conformity anyone who is interested in Thinkibility must know: Solomon Asch, Irving Janis, Stanley Milgram Philip and Zimbardo.

  In this post, we will explore the theme of conformity and social dynamics in a more dramatic and impact full way, mentioning the books and movies you must know if you want to defend yourself against manipulation.

Animal Farm

  Orwell originally wrote a preface complaining about British self-censorship and how the British people were suppressing criticism of the USSR, their World War II ally:

The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary… Things are kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervenes but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact

In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, he explained how escaping the communist purges in Spain taught him “how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries”.

In our blog post  Intelligent Gossip at the Water-cooler, we mentioned Daniel Kahneman, who argues that to become a good thinker we need to acquire a large set of diagnostic labels to identify thinking errors, like those that are available for physicians.

Useful vocabulary to describe thinking in a social dynamic context

The next expressions can be used to indicate how simply political dogma can be turned into malleable propaganda.:

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. The ultimate example of the pigs’ systematic abuse of logic and language to control their underlings’ clothes utterly senseless content in a seemingly plausible linguistic form. Although the first clause implies that all animals are equal to one another, it does not state this claim overtly. Thus, it is possible to misread the word “equal” as a relative term rather than an absolute one, meaning that there can be different degrees of “equal”-ness, just as there can be different degrees of colourfulness, for example (more colourful, less colourful). Once such a misreading has taken place, it becomes no more absurd to say “more equal” than to say “more colourful.” By small, almost imperceptible steps like these, the core ideals of Animal Farm—and any human nation—gradually become corrupted.

“Four legs good, two legs bad! Orwell portrays this expression as one example of how the elite class abuses language to control the lower classes. Although the slogan seems to help the animals achieve their goal at first, enabling them to clarify in their minds the principles that they support, it soon becomes a meaningless sound bleated by the sheep (“two legs baa-d”), serving no purpose other than to drown out dissenting opinion. By the end of the novel, as the propagandistic needs of the leadership change, the pigs alter the chant to the similar-sounding but completely antithetical “Four legs good, two legs better.”

Nineteen Eighty-Four

  EDMOND O’BRIEN Film ‘1984; NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR’ (1956) Directed By MICHAEL ANDERSON 01 September 1956 CTG21439 Allstar/Cinetext/COLUMBIA **WARNING** This photograph can only be reproduced by publications in conjunction with the promotion of the above film. For Editorial Use Only

Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in the year 1984 when most of the world population have become victims of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation.

We have here some of it derived from 1984 to get some grip on the social dynamical context on modern life as it is defined by the Internet.

Useful vocabulary to describe thinking in a social dynamic context

Big Brother. “Big Brother” has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.

Doublethink. Orwell, doublethink is: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink

Thoughtcrim In the book, the government attempts to control not only the speech and actions but also the thoughts of its subjects. Thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding unspoken beliefs or doubts that oppose or question the ruling party. Every movement, reflex, facial expression, and a reaction is measured by a system used by the Thought Police. The “Thought Police” is responsible for enforcement of ideological correctness.

Newspeak. The purpose of Newspeak was thought control by not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of the party but to make all other modes of thought impossible. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words.

Telescreens. Telescreens are devices which operate as both televisions, security cameras and microphones. Telescreens are used by the ruling Party in the totalitarian fictional State of Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania. All members of the Inner Party (nomenklatura) and Outer Party(middle-class) have telescreens in their homes, but the proles(lower-class) are not typically monitored as they are unimportant to the Party, assuming that they would never rebel on their own, and therefore does not find a need to monitor their daily lives.

Room 101. Such is the purported omniscience of the state in the society of Nineteen Eighty-Four that even a citizen’s nightmares are known to the Party. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world. Room 101 is the basement torture chamber, in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to his or her own worst nightmare, fear or phobia, with the object of breaking down their resistance.

2 + 2 = 5. The phrase “two plus two equals five” (“2 + 2 = 5”) is a slogan is used as an example of an obviously false dogma that one may be required to believe. Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, uses the phrase to wonder if the State might declare “two plus two equals five” as a fact; he ponders whether, if everybody believes it, that makes it true.

Memory hole. A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.

 Wild Wild Country

  Wild Wild Country

Wild Wild Country

Wild Wild Country is a Netflix documentary series about the controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), his one-time personal assistant Ma Anand Sheela, and their community of followers in the Rajneeshpuram community located in Wasco County, Oregon. In our opinion, it is worth watching because it reflects perfectly the concepts of Animal Farm and Ninety Eighty-four but now its consequences in reality: The 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack and the 1985 Rajneeshee assassination plot.

The Trial (Der Prozess) and The Castle (Der Sloss)

  The Trial is a novel written by Franz Kafka between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously in 1925. It tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. In a polical and sociological sense, it demonstrates the mechanisms of an autonomous and inhuman bureaucracy and of a lack of civil rights, in where the protagonist wanders through a labyrinth that seems to be designed to make him fail or even seems to have no relation to him at all.

The Castle is a 1926 novel by Franz Kafka. In it, a protagonist known only as K. arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle. The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.

Useful vocabulary to describe thinking in a social dynamic context

Double bind. A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, and one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa) so that the person will automatically be wrong regardless of the response. The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore can neither resolve it nor opt out of the situation.

Paradox  A paradox is a statement that, despite apparently sound reasoning from true premises, leads to an apparently self-contradictory or logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox involves contradictory yet interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persists over time.

Brave New World

  Brave New World is a dystopian novel written in 1931 by English author Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State of genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to make a utopian society that goes challenged only by a single outsider.

Useful vocabulary to describe thinking in a social dynamic context

Brave New World. If someone ironically refers to a brave new world, they are talking about a new and optimistic situation or system resulting from major societal or technological change but actually is a hypothetical future society in being variously dehumanized and disorienting.

In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

In our post A Repertoire of Concepts we argued that “thinking boxes” or concepts help us to make sense of the world. If we don’t have enough thinking categories available, we can’t make proper sense of what is happening, nor could we imagine other possibilities. In that case, we can’t see what the mind lacks in its repertoire of concepts. For new concepts and Thinkibility vocabulary, we do not have to turn to scientific texts, there are a lot of concepts to find in literature as well.

See also related posts:

Double bind

Contradictions and Aggression

 Don’t Think You Can Think part 1 and part 2

Key Performance (Mis)Indicators

Is Free Thinking a Mental Illness

News, Fake News and Not News

Controlled Behaviour by Design

Intensive Human Farming

Dramatized Thinking Vocabulary – How to Make Sense of the World In an earlier post, we wrote about Thinking in a Social Dynamic Context, mentioning some researchers on conformity anyone who is interested in Thinkibility must know: Solomon Asch, Irving Janis, Stanley Milgram Philip and Zimbardo.