#celebrity conspiracy theories

[snekdood]

so uh

for 1. most people are gonna take advantage of black friday and wont see your specific niche tumblr post, I hate to say it

2. the us isnt running out of money for war any time soon, so...

3. this is just antisemitism???????? all we need is some (((echoes))) around the us and israel and then I'd have no reason to suspect otherwise from op...............

[manifestmerlin]

Man I liked the finale but at least it's nice to see that im not the only one who thinks the ratfish was the worst part about ratfish. Like whatever about how he was the only one to decide BOTH winners in the end, he wasn't even funny? I don't think he had even a single good bit across both episodes!

[gingerswagfreckles]

Well they caught him. If he wasn't the exact kind of person tumblr loves, the conspiracy theories about this being a random person being framed would have continued to spread. But he's an attractive 26 year old white man who was caught carrying a manifesto about corporate America and has an internet history that matches up with tumblr's general politics. So everyone is going to get excited about how he's a martyr and go back to acknowledging reality in that there isn't a conspiracy to frame the wrong guy.

The discussions over whether or not this man should be lionized as a hero are honestly not as relevant as the comfort with which people are going to drop the conspiracy theory they would have been fully committed to if this man's politics turned out to be nuts. The ease with which the userbase of this website switches between realities based on whether or not they confirm their biases is really alarming. I just hope people understand how weird it is to claim a random person is 100% going to be framed by the FBI on one day, and then drop that by the next day when it becomes clear that the person being "framed" is the exact kind of communist you had hoped.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading �� you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[reasonsforhope]

hey i get what youre trying to say with the taylor swift post but as of a few days ago shes trying to sue a college student who posts her (publicly available) flight logs. she very much does not give a shit about her carbon emissions and she shouldn’t be celebrated for her mediocre attempts to seem climate-conscious

I get what you're saying, definitely. I also did actually know about the thing with the college student when I posted that, so I wanted to give some context about why I made that post:

First, I personally didn't view it as celebrating her so much as celebrating progress. I think that if we never acknowledge wins, we'll end up dispirited very quickly

Second, recognizing when people decide to be less shitty is, at least I think, an important carrot in the carrot-and-stick dynamic of using public opinion to influence public figures

Lastly - and this may well be an unpopular opinion - but I don't actually hold her actions re: the college student against her

Why?

Well, for one, it was a cease and desist letter, not an attempted lawsuit. A cease and desist letter isn't legally binding, nor is it the start of a lawsuit - it's more like she's Putting Him On Notice. A cease and desist order can be followed by a lawsuit, if it's ignored, but it doesn't initiate one. Likely Taylor Swift will try several other steps of resolution before actually telling her lawyers to sue this guy, if only because the headlines would Not look good (x, x)

But more than that, I don't hold it against her because when Taylor Swift says that it's a matter of life and death for her, I believe that's very true.

Like, don't get me wrong, I'm not mad about her flight data being up either. And I'm not particularly a fan of Taylor Swift

But I also think that if I had to read through the rape and death threats she gets on an almost-certainly-daily basis, I'd want to vomit.

And I think that was true before Trump and his minions got obsessed with the idea that she's the keystone in the next Biden-election-stealing Pentagon psyops plot. Now - especially in the days right before the Superbowl, when this alleged conspiracy is supposed to happen - I don't even want to think about the brutality of the threats she's receiving

(For anyone going "Uh, wtf?" about the MAGA Superbowl Taylor Swift conspiracy thing, yes, I hate to inform you that it's A Whole Thing. More info here: x, x, x, x, x, x)

Taylor Swift does have stalkers, and now she has a bunch of MAGA paramilitary conspiracy theorists absolutely furious with her. If I were her, I'd want to do every single thing I could to keep information on my movements and in-the-moment location off the internet, too

tl;dr: I don't necessarily think she cares about the environment, but I'm not mad at her for sending a cease and desist letter because I think without her extensive security, she would be in real danger now, including possibly danger of being killed by armed MAGA conspiracy theorists

You're allowed to be mad at her and dislike her (obviously!), you're allowed to totally disagree with my attitude toward the cease and desist. I just wanted to share my rationale for including the post (and it is something I went back and forth on tbh)

[salma062022]

tiktok is becoming Facebook like what do you mean Beyonce is beahide everything bad in hollywood 😭

[fxirybun]

i wonder if u comfortable enough to do reading for p diddy case? or maybe serial killer? or perhaps the simpsons team up w the elites? like how can they always predict n never miss? i understand if u cant cause i don't want to scare u tho

🤔

i'm not comfy doing a reading on someone who's involved with 18+ crimes & murder scenes so i'd rather do a simpsons reading instead cause i find the show interesting.

ෆ⸒⸒ the card spreads

ෆ⸒⸒ did the creator of the simpsons team up with the elites ?

i sensed that the creator was smart enough to not team up with the elites because he seemed to know something about them that made him not be dependent on that kind of people. "i can handle it my own". he rather be independent in operating the show than relying heavily on powerful people , no matter how much perks that the elites can offer to him. i'm getting a scenario wherein there's a person who wants to cloud the public's vision about an issue , kinda similar to the whole propaganda concept.

i kept on hearing the word "justice" , i feel that the show aimed to open up the eyes of the audience about certain issues on whatever is going on with the world. there seems to be some sense of truth with this show through means of giving out some subtle "hints" which we have already witnessed from the media outlet itself. it seems to me that the creator wants to remove the misinformation and lies that the authorities may have manipulated.

the creator is also not interested in underhanded dealings that might be associated with teaming up with the elites , trying to move away from potential competitions or harmful tactics. it seems that the creator is more so focused on expanding his projects and making a plan for his future endeavors. a random thought that came into my mind was how the simpsons show was supposed to be all in for the long haul. "they're trying to censor it" is what i got but who knows ?

[apollohour]

*

[emberwritesinsight]

One day some clown is gonna come out with an article that goes like "studies show that experiencing pleasure while eating causes the brain to release chemicals that affect digestion, raising likelihood of obesity" and then there's gonna be a plague of fad diets whose literal straight-up point is to taste bad

[allthegeopolitics]

NFL star Aaron Rodgers has shocked fans by claiming that Aids was manufactured by the US government. Aaron Rodgers said the HIV/Aids pandemic of the 1980s was engineered to said drive sales of vaccinations. The New York Jets quarterback further claimed that the crisis was a “blueprint” for the COVID-19 pandemic and specifically blamed former chief medical advisor Dr Anthony Fauci for the conspiracy.

Continue Reading

[terrence-silver]

Would terry have more trouble taking beloved who is famous/ a celebrity?

---

-"In 1983,"- Demetri holds up the old, tattered gossip periodical they've fished out of Mrs. Moskowitz's attic stash of dusty trinkets and forgotten keepsakes, reading carefully, wide eyes following every line, every word like it was lifechanging --- like they could find the Yeti or the Sasquatch hidden somewhere among the many columns, Hawk perched up beside him on the squeaky floorboard surrounded by boxes, scoffing, clearly not appreciating the great mystery they were so close to uncovering together. -"After their subsequent movie one hit wonder one the Red Carpet, the dazzling career of one of Hollywood's and LA"s aspiring sweethearts takes a sudden nosedive nobody foresaw coming."-

He acutely feels Hawk's amused eyeroll burning a hole in the back of his head.

How was this not exciting for him!?

Binary Bros, uncovering the puzzle behind a 80's mega-star slipping into obscurity?

Practicality overnight!?

Sus.

-"Reports on retiring from public life took the jet-set of Hollywood by storm."- He narrates on, the article, admittedly, being incredibly and annoyingly vague. Offering no real intel. Only suspicious amounts of formality. Followed by pictures of aggrieved fans circling the streets of LA in front of MGM studios strewn all over the glossy page. Maybe it was easier to disappear back then. No Internet. No Instagram. Nobody slipping into a celebrity's DMs. Just speculations and handwritten fanmail. Landline phones at best? He continues, practically out of breath, finding a quote. -"'Our goal is privacy and civilian integrity. Just that. We ask to be respected in our decision.' Beloved, as affectionately nicknamed by their fanbase, not wanting to give any statements had their acting manager explaining, having no further comments."-

Beloved? He supposed that was a stage name of sorts? Like Cardi B? Weird.

But that bit of dialogue by their manager ---

If that didn't stink, Demetri didn't know what did.

Not even extensive True Crime Google searches or sifting through Missing Person reports gave him more clarity than what they right right in this celebrity gossip magazine from, like...what? Thirty years ago? Forty? Man, his parents haven't even met back then. They were both still kids!

-"C'mon. It's just some ancient, unconfirmed conspiracy theory from back when the dinosaurs were still roaming the planet."- Hawk shrugs and Demetri turns the page, finding sudden epiphany. -"No, no! Listen to this, though!"- He perks up, tugging at Hawk's forearm, nearly jumping on the attic floorboard with the flashlight he was holding in his hand. Wasn't even dark. He was just doing it for the spooky vibes, to be honest. He found it! Found what he was looking for! Photographic evidence, receipts and all! -"Pictured with Corporate Business Moghul, Charity Entrepreneur and one of LA's most eligible Billionaire bachelors, Terrence Silver."- The description under an image says and how did he not find this online? Was this just conveniently fine-combed off of the web? -"The young starlet's colorful choice of date, deemed controversial by some still declared the most photogenic Red Carpet couple of '83."- There he was, Ponytail Sensei --- Sensei Targaryen --- eons younger, dark haired for contrast, looking like one of those shiny, perfect Ken dolls, hand in hand with the object of their research. They were a thing! Like, together-together. -"I knew it!"-

He holds up the tabloid, pointing at it vigorously, feeling victorious.

Gloating just a teeny, tiny bit.

It was The Valley's very own unsolved urban mystery!

-"You nerd."- Hawk laughs from where he was sitting, knees bent under him, chilling on the busted parquet that has definitely seen better days, still skeptical. Okay, alright. Demetri saw how it was. His amazing talents and privately investigative research in tandem were clearly not appreciated around here. That was his thanks then? -"Yeah, some asshole from the newspapers retiring like a million years ago and dating some Bond Villain who hasn't changed his hairstyle in decades. Spooky."- He shakes his head, wiggling around his fingers and pursing his lips for emphasis, clearly unimpressed, taunting him, making fun of the whole concept, about to get up and climb down from the attic and just about ditch him. Call quits on this whole project. -"You and your head in the clouds, I swear."-

A realization hits Demetri like a train at full speed.

-"What if he like, you know, went all Fatal Attraction?"- He grabs Hawk by the elbow, stopping him in his tracks, whispering like the walls suddenly grew ears. -"What if, there was a kidnapping involved and he scooped them up, got his Doctor Evil scheming and Scrooge McDuck connections to erase all traces of them and has been keeping them in some crazy mastermind lair all these years? You know, like a hostage? Made it seem like it was just some out of the blue retirement?"- Demetri lets it all pour out, without filter, saying exactly what he was thinking no matter how insane it sounded and it kind of did sound insane, admittedly; feeling himself fall into a frenzy of rambling regardless, all his long weeks of thinking and thinking, trying to figure the mystery out and it all so suddenly made sense. Cobra Kai's current new Sensei, no matter how surface level nice he seemed, had more than one skeleton in the closet and this was one of them. But, if that was the case, just how powerful was this guy? The frozen intensity in Hawk's eyes matches his in the darkness of the attic illuminated only by their flashlight and for a second, Demetri thinks he's believed and then --- Hawk snorts loudly. Then he chortles to top it all off, grabbing him by the shoulder, startling him. Very funny. Hilarious.

-"Yeah, wow, okay, I don't believe that. Nobody can pull that off."-

He pats him on the back, leading him downstairs.

[emptyportrait]

streets saying kate middleton has been missing for more than 2 months, and now i'm suddenly extremely invested in the conspiracy theories about what might be the reason behind her disappearance. Is she's in coma or probably locked up in dungeon because she refused to divorce william....

[rotisseries]

I'm so unbelievably susceptible to the famous secret relationship trope it's unreal actually

[partlyironic]

if I was famous I know for a FACT I would act up on the regular and just. lie all the time about the dumbest things. because I do that now only instead of lying to the press it's lying to strangers just out and about

[autistic-katara]

seeing ur beloved mutual reblogging some questionable shit (probably unintentionally) but not having the energy to argue or explain why </3

[cyatzura]

i love how this is either all a fake world and that would be so cool and fun and tragic or all the weird writing choices and inconsistencies are because gege's writing is shit and he messed up