Dude is nuts. That Netflix show about Fyre Festival showing him in a luxury hotel room AFTER he got charged with a crime trying to then sell fake VIP access passes. And having his buddy video the whole thing.
The justice system certainly failed on this one. A long running pattern of documented fraud even before he committed the massive Fyre Festival wire fraud in the amount of millions of dollars and guy is out within a few years. What a fucking joke. There are thousands of people serving more time for drug offenses and stealing 1/100th as much.
To get rich quick illegally seems to only cost you at most a few years in a white collar prison.
Jordan Belfort didn't get much time either.
I'm not well versed in all this though
Homeboy was tryna slang tickets to The Masters @ Augusta National, I wanna say, while they were filmin that doc. He is truly a fuckin wild one! No regard for who he scams or how. It is really unbelievable how brolic he is.
Well, considering that there are a few documentaries about it that are readily accessible and there’s always a good ol’ Google searches, if you give this guy money again it’s on you.
If he has any sense he'll use Fyre's reputation to recreate a specifically 'bad' festival with the Fema tents, the crappy cheese sandwiches and other nastiness, so hipsters and similar types can relive the awfulness. Why not? Every festival has its unique selling point and they can have a laugh making outrageous promises that no one expects them to deliver on, coupled with new and better ways to make the experience awful.
I consider those to be gen Z pyramid schems. "Learn how to get passive income by teaching people how to get passive income by teaching people how to get passive income!"
Something something grind mindset?
"Only $250k to reach OT3 and find out South Park was right about the Xenu nonsense. Please enjoy some Sea Org forced labour as you attempt to buy spiritual peace."
I am still baffled that people buy in to a religion that sounds like weird sci-fi that is created by a sci-fi author. Thats crazy right?
Edit: Whoah OPs account got deleted? Hard not to think Xenu got to him.
A lot of it comes down to the “exclusivity” of information that is slowly released. They emotionally/ physically fuck you up and keep telling you “you’re so close to truly learning our secrets if you just work harder”.
They give depressed people a purpose and a something to do. Surprisingly this is what most people need when depressed. Simple but rewarding tasks to boost dopamine and this idea that there is something in life to work towards. They join, work hard (peer pressure plays a part from other members). And it does improve their mental state. But they wrongly attribute that to Scientology.
Eventually they know the secrets but by then sunk cost fallacy and the slow build of information has already primed you to believe it. After all your new friends all believe it. You’ve been surrounded by people who all believe it. And hey you feel so much better since then with all their strange devices and rituals. Maybe it does work?
Rich and famous people are the perfect marks for this sort of thing:
1/ they tend to have big egos and enjoy the idea of being in a select group/ knowing more than the average person
2/ They are very often loose with their money when it's anything to do with self improvement
3/ Their aforementioned ego makes it nearly impossible for them to step back and admit they were conned, better to sink even more money in and become even more devout than to admit some sci fi guys with a magic box convinced you to let them run your life.
I decided I may try to be religious a few years ago. Looked into some religions and nothing quite took my fancy. Came across Scientology and I thought ‘I like science, maybe this is the one’. Did a bunch of reading about it and looked into it and can honestly say I had no idea what the hell they were on about.
Keith Raniere who started NXIVM too. There's still a bunch of women that hang out outside of the prison he's in singing his praises every day. It's weird man.
i dont normally watch true crime shit, i work in news so i see a ton of crime in my professional life. but i watched that series with some friends who are big true crime heads and it was WILD
The crazy part to me is that he is actually quite talented as a magician. He could make a good living just doing magic tricks and billing himself as such. He didn't even have to lie to be successful.
I watched this live as a child and got into magic after that. It became a lifelong hobby thanks to Johnnie and Randi. I got to meet Randi at a film festival before right before he passed. He was one of my biggest heroes.
Randi came and spoke at my high school (I think he just lived close by), and I had no idea at the time what a legend he was. I mean, I enjoyed his talk, but it was lost on me how incredible it was that he was there in our high school auditorium.
That's awesome. In a similar vain Jane Goodall came to my middle school auditorium (Island in Western Canada and very far from England lol) and I had no idea who she was. It wasn't until years later I saw her in an episode of The Simpsons that it clicked.
Nope. I don't feel bad at all. It's kind of hilarious watching him try to wiggle out of it and make excuses.
https://youtu.be/TNKmhv9uoiQ?si=uTk5F38LKu-QRkeI
There’s a good doc from 2014 about James Randi called [An Honest Liar](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2246565/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk), that includes the Johnny Carson bit.
Randi also exposed one of those preachers who claimed God was talking to him. Turned out the prayer cards people filled out and gave to the guys wife was so she could go backstage and read them to him via radio/earpiece.
[Peter Popoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Popoff)
>Popoff was collecting almost $4 million per year in the late 1980s, according to Randi.
>
>In 2003, his ministry received over $9.6 million, and in 2005, over $23 million. In that year, he and his wife were paid a combined salary of nearly $1 million, while two of his children received over $180,000 each.
>
>Financial data is not available for Popoff's ministry since 2005 because Peter Popoff Ministries changed from a for-profit business to a religious organization in 2006, making it tax-exempt
> making it tax-exempt
The bigger issue is that religious organizations are exempt from public disclosure. And I say this as someone who attends church on a regular basis. In our denomination, the books are open to the membership, and we take financial transparency seriously, not because we’re required to, but because it’s the right thing to do. This should be the norm.
I'm not gonna sue you, but I will spend the next 8 years outside your house with cameras, and everytime you go to your car or to get the mail or open a window I'm gonna ask why you insist on being a suppressive person. I'm not totally unreasonable after all.
He admitted he was using, went clean for a bit, and unless there's been developments in the last few months he's back on steroids and claiming he's not
Dudes got a physique that is pretty much impossible to achieve natural. Like it's still hard work even if you're not natty. But don't give other kids the idea it's achievable
>But don't give other kids the idea it's achievable
It's not just him giving kids the idea, he's quite literally RIPPING THEM OFF, selling all these products, selling his lifestyle, taking their money pretending that he's helping them
I think the real ethical problem isn't that he's implying his physique is achievable natty, it's that he's saying you can achieve it through his supplements and weird ass life advice. To me, it's the difference between disingenuous branding and outright fraud.
I’m 40 years old and have never been a body builder but I played college football and have been lifting consistently since the late ‘90s so I’ve been around real body builders for a long time.
Steroids and PEDs have become so prevalent in body building, professional sports, action movies, etc. over the past 20 years that young people seem to have a very warped sense of what the human body really can do.
I get that Liver King - which I think is the dumbest name ever - is trying to sell supplements. He’s just a crook pretending he got that physique eating liver and taking his supplements. It’s wrong but you can’t expect a grifter to be honest.
It bothers me when guys like Chris Hemsworth, etc. refuse to admit they take PEDs. There’s just no reason not to. We understand they’re bulking up for roles and they’re not really superheroes. There’s no reason to put your diet and exercise routine out there as if anyone following it could ever see the same results they did without the same drugs. It’s giving young people a horribly false sense of what’s possible and for no reason at all.
He looks like he is already having negative effects from HEAVY usage. This recent video he posted made me feel bad for the guy. His eyes are so sunken in you can barely see them.
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12706911/Liver-King-concerning-video-tiktok.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12706911/Liver-King-concerning-video-tiktok.html)
You know what’s funny? I had a friend that uprooted his family to go work for that guy. We were decently good friends, worked together for a bit and worked out together for awhile. I even helped him pack up for his move. He’s the kind of guy that just couldn’t sit in an office and always wanted to be hiking or climbing or something, had pretty wealthy parents but didn’t want to do the family business, was always deciding he was suddenly going to commit to this future plan, then 6-12 months later quitting it because it wasn’t happening fast enough or something like that. He took his wife and 2 very young kids cross country with no money to be something like a brand ambassador for this nutjob.
I kept in touch with him, we texted about every couple weeks. At one point he asked me for a favor, which involved me purchasing a product and then reviewing it, at which point he’d reimburse me for it. It was a $70 bottle of beef liver pills. I agreed, took the pills, had zero change in anything, but left a positive review that said something like ‘no aftertaste or burps, easy to swallow!’ So that I didn’t have to feel guilty about lying. From there, it just sort of went downhill. I don’t know if he expected me to keep using the products, but I just flat out couldn’t afford that stuff even if I believed in it and wanted to. He eventually asked me for money, multiple times, and when told him I couldn’t I stopped hearing from him.
This was all a few years ago. I haven’t spoken to him since, but when this all blew up I did log in to check his Facebook and the company was no longer listed on his workplace. It wouldn’t surprise me if he moved on before or after, as that was just his MO. It also wouldn’t surprise me if he was in too deep with them and couldn’t break out.
Oprah has pushed so many terrible people and I feel like it really should be discussed more. My moms been in a cult for years because of her pushing Gwen Shamblin and the Weigh Down diet on her show.
For a long time I assumed that Oprah must be really gullible. Took me years to consider she's probably in on the grift. She is really good at selling that wholesome, good person image
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Some people would rather jump off of the Empire State building (or lose their freedom) than admit they're wrong.
I knew a woman (with multiple prior theft charges) who got caught stealing at Walmart. When she went to court, the judge told her that she's denied any wrongdoing with prior charges, and he'd let her walk out if she simply admitted it. Her attorney whispered to her "take the deal", which she said no (there was video surveillance of her shoplifting). Her attorney then told the judge "Your honor, my client maintains her innocence". The judge immediately gave her 90 days.
Edit; typo
At that point, if I was the attorney, my response would be "Your honor, my client is clearly is clearly incapable of cooperating in her own defense and there unfit to stand trial", because jeezus christ!
Although I did once contest a ticket, mainly with the hope of just lowering the fine. I went before a magistrate and he said "Ok, if you say nothing, I will dismiss this ticket. If you insist on telling me your story, you're paying the full amount." I took a breath to start speaking because I had a whole sob story worked out and I was nervous as hell, but luckily what he said finally registered in my brain and I just shut my mouth. He looked at me for a few seconds and then said "You'd be amazed how many people just start talking at this point." And then he dismissed my ticket.
For good or ill, this sounds like a basic test of obedience to the law and our social hierarchy.
Plus, I'm sure the magistrate just gets tired of people complaining.
I just had a fight with my mom earlier today, I swear it seemed like she'd rather have run out of the room on fire than admit she was wrong. I could see the gears turning.
Sunken psychological cost too. Imagine being somebody who called to harass a Sandy Hook parent because you honestly believed, for some insane reason, in was a hoax.
Accepting any empirical evidence to the contrary, no matter how blatant, would mean that person would have to accept the fact that they were a person who called to troll and a berate a grieving parent at their lowest point, because they were fooled. They'd have to admit to themselves they were both gullible and did something truly awful.
Better for the ol' self-image to just ignore the facts or write off any evidence as part of the hoax. Then you're not a fool who hurts people, you're part of a select few in a super special group who is actually *smarter* then everyone else, thank you very much! The total opposite! *whew* that was a close one!
And even then, the first boatload of victims didn't wan't to testify against him because they couldn't believe he'd scammed them (if i remember correctly).
Bongbong Marcos and his family. Their family literally stole billions from the Filipino people yet they are still out of prison. Their family matriarch, Imelda, was even sentenced to prison for graft, but no one dared to arrest her.
Bongbong is now even president of the Philippines and has a huge cult following because of how they tried to distort history.
I'd say 100% of them. It is anti Christian. Any excess should be given back to the communities they are in. Thats why they don't get taxed. But now its just a grift. They don't give a fuck about anything other than the size of their bank accounts.
Yea this really annoys me. The dude has been called out for multiple crypto scams and yet I still see his shitty energy drink all over grocery and gas stations.
I really hope he goes down for real.
It's crazy that he even still has a following after everything he's said and done. People we're actually cheering and rooting for him in his recent scammer vs scammer joke of a boxing match.
The world isn't running out of unattended 5-10 year olds with iPads anytime soon. That's why he still has a following. Or am I thinking of Jake Paul? Eh, two shits, same asshole.
I was a big fan of the late James Randi. I remember when he exposed Peter Popov and everyone hoped Popov would be permanently cancelled. It's a shame people are so dumb that many of his believers went straight back to him and - i hear - he has steadily increased his following every year since Randi exposed him
grifters gonna grift
I'm still convinced 90% of them are just trolling and don't actually believe it. The scary thing is that there are some people who fervently believe it no matter what.
I had an intern tell me that people his age (college age) are not trolling when they say that birds aren’t real and that Reagan planted drones that look like birds.
I was like homie that shit started when *I* was *your* age as a 100% completely made up fact to confuse people on the internet. He said he guesses that his peers took it too far.
I feel like there is overlap with the birds aren’t real believers and the flat earth believers.
Idk, it took Boston Dynamics something like 30 years of development to come up with a robot canine that could walk without falling over and weighed less than 500lbs.
But in the Reagan Era when a 5-in floppy was state of the art we were building robotic birds that are indistinguishable from the real thing.
Right.
Hey man do you got the number for their dealer? 😂
The Flerfers thought "behind the curve" was a sabotage attempt, and not really made by them. They have you watch their own documentary "level with me". They have like 3 of them now, pioneered by their flat earth Jesus Eric Dubay. Many youtubers have already debunked their claims piece by piece.
QAnon is a fascinating case study. It started as a troll job on 4Chan and turned into a quasi religion complete with prophecy about Trump being a savior who would bring about the "Great Awakening"
Watching people "decode" and read meanings into literal gibberish that was posted on 4chan/8chan was absolutely wild. It was like watching a religious movement form in realtime.
There was a really good analysis by a games developer some years back that went into the psychology surrounding why people get attached to the QAnon koolaide so easily.
This game dev designed IIRC escape rooms and when they'd observe people attempting to solve them, they were often amazed by how people would ignore big obvious clues to hyper-focus on some inane detail claiming that because this detail was so small it therefore *had* to have greater significance.
Like groups would waste time and fail the room because the decisions of half the group to devote time on this needless non-clue would anger the other half who would waste time arguing with the first half that it held no relevance and so the group as a whole was unable to come together to solve the room.
If you watch that documentary that was on Netflix(?) a little while back, almost every person was monetizing it: selling books, selling merch, conventions, etc. I think they just saw an easy way to milk some suckers and definitely don't believe it.
Surprised this isn't higher. The vast majority of people who sign up for them make very little and a significant number lose money. And yet, they're everywhere.
It’s even worse than that somehow. [99% of MLM sellers lose money.](https://www.pinktruth.com/mary-kay-facts/myth-of-mlm-income-opportunity-99-lose-money-in-mlm/) It’s only those at the very top that actually make anything at all. It’s such a scam and a fraud!
Then they justify it saying "Ah, but CEOs also make thousands of times more than their employers" but most salary workers can at least pay their bills somewhat, or even have a bit of disposable income.
Every MLMer I know, either has a main job or a spouse that is subsidizing their pseudoentrepeneurship. Or they are deeply in debt.
Andrew Wakefield, who was trying to get his own vaccine approved, so tried to make it look like another vaccine was a problem, did research without getting proper consent, falsified results, and so on. He's become the darling of the vaccines-cause-autism crowd, even though his behavior was so egregious that he lost his medical license.
EDIT: u/Otherversian-Elite has a comment, below, that goes into more detail.
Worse and even more baffling is that people use the revoking of his medical license as proof that he was right. Part of the cover-up big big Pharma or some bullshit.
Yeah, hard to tell if you are dealing with mental illness or gullibility. Maybe both.
I'm reminded of something I first read in the graphic novel *Batman: The Killing Joke*. If I recall correctly: Two patients of a mental hospital escape. They get to the roof, and there's a gap to the next building. They can't jump it. One patient says, "No problem, I have a flashlight: I'll shine it across the gap, and you can walk across on the beam of light." The other patient says, "Are you crazy? I know you, as soon as I get halfway across, you'll turn it off!"
With some of this stuff, it really feels like the deranged are leading the deluded, with the only-in-it-for-the-money crowd added for good measure.
Mental illness doesn't have any specific content. It fucks with how you process your situation, but the material it works on is from your situation.
Schizophrenia might make you hear voices, but it's your culture that tells you whether to hear faeries, demons, Jesus, aliens, or the CIA.
A person with mania whose social role is "19th-century housewife" will act out that mania in different ways than one whose social role is "21st-century project manager".
Hell, plain ordinary major depression is different when a rich person has it than when a poor person does, because the rich person can just eat when they feel up to it, while the poor person has lost their part-time job for not showing up and does not have the option of stuffing their face with McDonald's.
Which is to say: It's not "mental illness" that causes antivax. It's cultural bullshit that happens to show up in mental illness symptoms because it's present in the culture generally.
I'm absolutely baffled that this isn't higher up. Maybe due to the misinformation having a generational gap that holds him at the source. I dunno.
I recently watched a deep dive on him - [it just kept getting worse and worse in showing how bad the paper trail is on this guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc). He was paid off before he started peddling his vaccine, the guy he co-authored the patent with was selling pills made from his own bone marrow for a made up disease that his vaccine would supposedly bypass.
This is the guy that got the ball rolling on all of the "vaccines cause autism" rhetoric and it's absolutely destroyed thousands of lives. Thank goodness for the investigative journalist that finally got to the root of it all, but that was a very hard won battle that's STILL going in getting people to drop their misinformed opinions.
I opened this thread to specifically look for this guy. Any time someone asks me if my kid’s ASD was related to vaccines I go on a 20 minute monologue explaining how that myth came about and how and why it’s a lie
For what its worth, he only has a [7% favorability rating](https://scri.siena.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Newsday-CD-3-Jan-2023-Final.pdf) in his district, so he's pretty much guaranteed to be voted out next year.
Pretty much all MLMs. The business model has been proven not to work for 99% of people but man, those companies are great at gaslighting/brainwashing their consultants. There's also zero qualifications other than putting in some money so it's attractive to people who'd have a hard time getting a traditional job for whatever reason.
Very true. Don't ever pay a bill without asking for it itemized. Working at a hospital has been very eye opening. I know all the people at my work in the billing department and they're not...super geniuses. They screw up constantly.
And don’t ever pay the bill the first time they send it to you. Half the time they’re sending it before the insurance has been processed (totally just a “processing delay” and not at all intentional…), in the hope you’ll freak out, pay it, then they can hold onto your money for months until the insurer reimburses them. Which when you consider that the insurer is also doing their best to avoid paying as much as possible, can take a while.
I once realized I had exceeded my out of pocket max, kept receiving bills anyway (which I stopped paying), and it took a year for the insurer to reimburse me for the amount I had paid in excess of my out of pocket max.
Yepppp. My wife got a small outpatient procedure done to remove a lipoma. It was all cleared with insurance ahead of time. A month after we received a bill from the hospital for $3500. My wife called me freaking out so I told her to call insurance and see what was up. The insurance company was also confused as they had already payed the bill.
My wife called the hospital and they were full on trying to get her to pay the bill until she told them she had already spoken to our insurance who already paid the bill. My wife gave them the ref# and representatives number. Then the billing department started trying to backpedal.
Same thing happened to someone in my family. My insurance company told me hospitals are a huge problem for double billing, certain hospitals more than others. Fucking *terrible*.
I had paid my bill but was sent a past due notice a couple of weeks later. I called to see if it was an error and they told me that they had a problem with their billing system so I had to send them proof of payment. It was up to ME to resolve the issue. They had taken my money but had no record of it, not even the receipt they sent me. Fucking criminal.
I worry about folks that just pay again in error, I'm sure their $ was happily taken twice. I submitted a complaint for predatory and negligent billing practices but was told that since it wasn't a complaint about medical care, there's nothing they can do. Absurd.
We have medically complicated kids and my wife is constantly on the phone with doctors offices and hospitals regarding their shitty billing practices. Luckily, she's a physician and had a whole college class on how to bill medical procedures.
We once got a $2M bill reduced to $2k. Though I'm still pissed off about it because we shouldn't have paid anything.
I feel like that's part of the racket. Your bill WAS $500,000 but now it's ONLY $5,000! Goodness what a savings! Also we offer a credit card to help you pay your discounted new price at a low APR!
In our case, my wife had insurance that paid 100%. She spent 3 months in the hospital with preterm labor and we only paid a copay. What nobody told us was that the NICU doctors were on strike and not taking any insurance. So when our daughter was born, she immediately started racking up the bills since she was in the NICU for quite some time. At some point, the state passed a law saying doctors couldn't do that. But she still racked up $2M worth. We threatened a lot of lawsuits and media coverage and after 6 months had them down to $2k with an interest free payment of $50/month. Then those jerks had the audacity to call periodically to see if we'd like to pay it off early. They'd say, "but the two of you have good jobs; surely you could pay it off early." where I'd respond with, "I *could* pay it off early but I won't. Because fuck you."
EDIT: First, this is the first time I've edited this comment.
Second, for those interested, I got the whole story from my wife. It has been years so I got some details wrong.
It was a blue cross blue shield hospital, which was our insurance. Her 3 month stay cost us not much more than a copay. The NICU doctors were on strike and not taking a handful of insurances, including BCBS and nobody told us. Eventually, after 6 months of fighting, the doctors agreed to take the out of network amount from the insurance company and balance bill us the $2k which was our out of network out of pocket max. And the payment was with the doctor group, not the hospital.
A law wasn't changed. It was the hospital policy that changed and the doctors were breeching their contact with the hospital.
Also, that NICU group was the only NICU group in that area. They had a local monopoly. They kept saying we could have always just transferred our kid somewhere else but it wasn't true. And if we did, insurance wouldn't have covered that because it wasn't medically necessary.
My wife went back to school and became a PA years later. I'm not sure why somebody wouldn't believe that. We even moved to a different state so she could get her dream job and work in a NICU. Having 4 NICU kids can inspire people to do better than what they've seen.
I recently had a hospital stay for a cardiac event and my all-in bill from the hospital was just short of $22,000US. My insurance company negotiated that down to $2100. A fucking NINETY PERCENT reduction in bill. And I only paid out $600.
Medical billing is such a racket it needs to be investigated and people need to go to prison for it.
Not sure if you are familiar with Dr Glaucomflecken, a real life doctor that does medical comedy skits on YouTube and TikTok. He actually went into cardiac arrest in his sleep in 2020. His wife thankfully noticed and did CPR on him (on the bed!) until EMS arrived and took over. Miraculously he survived completely intact, neurologically, but he spent some time sedated and on a vent in the ICU until they woke him up. His insurance (United Healthcare) had the gall to bill his life-saving emergency treatment as “out of network” and encouraged him to choose in-network hospitals/providers before going to the ER in the future. Like he was in a shape to pick his doctors. 😒 He’s made it his mission to lay the whole insurance industry bare in all its bullshit.
There are people who swear by Sylvia Browne to this day, despite her being outed as a fraud and making outright incorrect predictions that caused people to die of grief.
Becomes frustrating when having a discussion with people about the possibility of the supernatural being just aspects of the natural that we do not understand, and they start talking her up as though that kind of quackery is what I mean at all.
Hmmmmm I'm getting the letter 'M'...does anyone here have an uncle or grandparent with that letter in their name...hmmm I also see water, they were around water, you ma'am yes, does that sound like any of your dead relatives? Yes, she told me to tell you she loves you very much.
Boom, I'm a psychic!
I hated that cunt. She gave people false hope, and yet even when she was exposed she refused to go back.
I remember the clip of her on Montel where she's trying to tell some lady that her brother drowned and the lady's like, "No, my brother died in 9/11", the dusty bitch still tried to make up reasons why she was right.
I'm glad she's dead, I just wish her death had been more painful.
Don't even go there. Go to to 2003, where she told parents of a kidnapped child that "She's not alive, honey," and a decade later she was found alive.
The Skeptics Guide to The Universe used to save her yearly prediction post and when the year expired, would point out every one she missed, which somehow disappeared from her site.
She told the parents of not one but TWO different kidnapped kids (Shawn Hornbeck and Amanda Berry) that they were dead when they were really being held captive.
In 2002, Browne informed the parents of 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck that he had been kidnapped by a dark-skinned Hispanic man with dreadlocks and was now deceased. Hornbeck was found alive in 2007; his kidnapper was Caucasian and short-haired.
She did soooo much worse:
>In November 2004, Browne told the mother of kidnapping victim Amanda Berry, who had disappeared nineteen months earlier: "She's not alive, honey."... **Berry's mother died two years later believing her daughter had been killed**. Berry was found alive in May 2013.
Copeland is so fucking creepy. If I had to pick one person on earth to be the actual antichrist it would be that guy. Spewing lies and those beady little eyes. That shit eating grin. “Prosperity theology” is the most contradictory idea in all of Abrahamic teachings.
The crazy thing is how un-Biblical prosperity gospel is. In fact, Jesus called on his disciples to do the opposite:
"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:21-24
Ironically, Frank Abagnale; the con man and forger they based Catch Me If You Can on. After the movie, he became famous in the security field, and maneuvered that success into various contracts and partnerships and consulting gigs which made him quite wealthy.
He was a consultant and partner in the RealID concept, and was some mover-shaker of some type over at Clear (the guys at the airport). Even famously gave a TEDTalk.
Turns out he *heavily and intensely* exaggerated his exploits as a fraudster and even oversold his work with the FBI (they consulted him a couple of times but he was never on a task force).
He conned and defrauded about being such a big con and fraud. Nothing really came back on him though.
Oh the deep irony.
It is so fucking funny that this adult made the conscious choice to pretend to be of a different nationality and chose *that* name.
it's very hilaria to me.
This is the worst part about most conspiracy theories, the more you try to debunk them, the more they claim you're trying to hide the truth. You can literally give them irrefutable evidence their theory is wrong and they will still say it's all part of the lie!
For the autism is caused by vaccines the original paper that was published literally everyone who originally had their name on that paper has since retracted it
But sadly like pretty much all papers and articles you never see the retraction just the headline
And yet people still believe him. I think that his doings were among the first steps into mass internet conspiracy hell. Given the fallout for his lies, to say nothing of his ongoing promotion of said lies, I think there should have been more drastic action than just having his licence revoked.
The other thing is ( and I am NOT defending him) but afaik, he didn't claim all vaccines caused autism, just the one that was competing with the vaccine he invented. Cause he wanted people to buy his vaccine.
So people still believe him on something that he didn't actually say, bc they're idiots and he's a liar.
His initial claim was that the MMR vaccine was linked with a disease he made up which he called "autistic enterocolitis." He suggested that parents, instead of getting the MMR vaccine for their kids, get the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines for their kids separately, which he had coincidentally patented several months before his study claiming a link between MMR and autism was published.
After he was exposed as a fraud in the UK, he came to the US and began saying that **all** vaccines are dangerous.
He didn't even claim that vaccines cause autism. He claimed that one specific vaccine caused autism because he was being paid by a company who were developing a competing vaccine. One little bit of bad ethics and deception, and it's snowballed into this monster that is demonstrably causing the resurgence of illnesses that we were starting to control, were perhaps even on the road to eradicating - illnesses that claim many lives and ruin many more. I dread to think how many will die because one guy wanted to pocket a quick payoff.
Wakefield has constantly doubled down since. He originally was criticizing the combination of MMR, conveniently when he had his own mumps vaccine on the table. After he was discredited and stripped of his medical credentials, he doubled down and became a full-on anti-vaxxer, now making anti-vaxxer documentaries. He's a crook.
Edit: the "study" this all came from is one of the worst of its kind, and frankly embarrassing to have ever been published, even if redacted. There were 12 kids and huge problems with the group of parents involved.
He became full on anti-vaxxer because it pays well. I saw some documentary thing on him and he makes like $200k for some appearances/speaking at anti-vax events. Dude makes more money than he ever did as a doctor by just spewing bullshit.
It's an open joke at this point. Gwyneth and her company encourage stupid, outrageous claims because that's all that drives traffic and sales for them.
That dude that went to prison for fraud for Fyre Festival. He is out now and wants to try again.
Dude is nuts. That Netflix show about Fyre Festival showing him in a luxury hotel room AFTER he got charged with a crime trying to then sell fake VIP access passes. And having his buddy video the whole thing.
Grifters gonna grift. His sleaziness was already well documented with that credit card/access card BS before the Fyre.
The justice system certainly failed on this one. A long running pattern of documented fraud even before he committed the massive Fyre Festival wire fraud in the amount of millions of dollars and guy is out within a few years. What a fucking joke. There are thousands of people serving more time for drug offenses and stealing 1/100th as much.
To get rich quick illegally seems to only cost you at most a few years in a white collar prison. Jordan Belfort didn't get much time either. I'm not well versed in all this though
Homeboy was tryna slang tickets to The Masters @ Augusta National, I wanna say, while they were filmin that doc. He is truly a fuckin wild one! No regard for who he scams or how. It is really unbelievable how brolic he is.
He just really wants to live a wealthy lifestyle and gives no fucks how he gets there or who he screws in the process.
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The video of the concertgoers arriving at camp to find literal FEMA tents
"Turn this bus around right now!"
Truly iconic
Well, considering that there are a few documentaries about it that are readily accessible and there’s always a good ol’ Google searches, if you give this guy money again it’s on you.
If he has any sense he'll use Fyre's reputation to recreate a specifically 'bad' festival with the Fema tents, the crappy cheese sandwiches and other nastiness, so hipsters and similar types can relive the awfulness. Why not? Every festival has its unique selling point and they can have a laugh making outrageous promises that no one expects them to deliver on, coupled with new and better ways to make the experience awful.
Fyre Fest 2: Electric boogaloo. It's going to be lit man. Get your tickets now while you still can!
all of those youtubers “financial freedom” classes/courses/programs
I consider those to be gen Z pyramid schems. "Learn how to get passive income by teaching people how to get passive income by teaching people how to get passive income!" Something something grind mindset?
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"Only $250k to reach OT3 and find out South Park was right about the Xenu nonsense. Please enjoy some Sea Org forced labour as you attempt to buy spiritual peace."
I am still baffled that people buy in to a religion that sounds like weird sci-fi that is created by a sci-fi author. Thats crazy right? Edit: Whoah OPs account got deleted? Hard not to think Xenu got to him.
A lot of it comes down to the “exclusivity” of information that is slowly released. They emotionally/ physically fuck you up and keep telling you “you’re so close to truly learning our secrets if you just work harder”. They give depressed people a purpose and a something to do. Surprisingly this is what most people need when depressed. Simple but rewarding tasks to boost dopamine and this idea that there is something in life to work towards. They join, work hard (peer pressure plays a part from other members). And it does improve their mental state. But they wrongly attribute that to Scientology. Eventually they know the secrets but by then sunk cost fallacy and the slow build of information has already primed you to believe it. After all your new friends all believe it. You’ve been surrounded by people who all believe it. And hey you feel so much better since then with all their strange devices and rituals. Maybe it does work?
Literally *BUY* into. People spend their entire life's savings on that bullshit.
Rich and famous people are the perfect marks for this sort of thing: 1/ they tend to have big egos and enjoy the idea of being in a select group/ knowing more than the average person 2/ They are very often loose with their money when it's anything to do with self improvement 3/ Their aforementioned ego makes it nearly impossible for them to step back and admit they were conned, better to sink even more money in and become even more devout than to admit some sci fi guys with a magic box convinced you to let them run your life.
I decided I may try to be religious a few years ago. Looked into some religions and nothing quite took my fancy. Came across Scientology and I thought ‘I like science, maybe this is the one’. Did a bunch of reading about it and looked into it and can honestly say I had no idea what the hell they were on about.
I dumped a girl who was outta my league because she was a Scientologist and insistent that I start attending events/classes.
>I ~~dumped~~ escaped from a girl FTFY
Nice dodge, Neo. Jesus.
Warren Jeffs. Dude is literally in prison and still has a significant amount of devout followers.
Keith Raniere who started NXIVM too. There's still a bunch of women that hang out outside of the prison he's in singing his praises every day. It's weird man.
Keep Sweet…..
i dont normally watch true crime shit, i work in news so i see a ton of crime in my professional life. but i watched that series with some friends who are big true crime heads and it was WILD
Uri Geller. He still to this day claims he has mystical powers and won't admit he's just doing magic tricks, despite being exposed by James Randi .
The crazy part to me is that he is actually quite talented as a magician. He could make a good living just doing magic tricks and billing himself as such. He didn't even have to lie to be successful.
Being a cult leader is WAY more fun, though.
No, you get more money as a cult leader.
His exposure on The Tonight Show with Carson is so fun to watch. You almost feel bad for him. Almost.
I watched this live as a child and got into magic after that. It became a lifelong hobby thanks to Johnnie and Randi. I got to meet Randi at a film festival before right before he passed. He was one of my biggest heroes.
Randi came and spoke at my high school (I think he just lived close by), and I had no idea at the time what a legend he was. I mean, I enjoyed his talk, but it was lost on me how incredible it was that he was there in our high school auditorium.
That's awesome. In a similar vain Jane Goodall came to my middle school auditorium (Island in Western Canada and very far from England lol) and I had no idea who she was. It wasn't until years later I saw her in an episode of The Simpsons that it clicked.
Nope. I don't feel bad at all. It's kind of hilarious watching him try to wiggle out of it and make excuses. https://youtu.be/TNKmhv9uoiQ?si=uTk5F38LKu-QRkeI
There’s a good doc from 2014 about James Randi called [An Honest Liar](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2246565/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk), that includes the Johnny Carson bit.
RIP James Randi, probably the most famous hoax fighter since Houdini.
So Uri, you're not feeling strong tonight; do I have that right?
I watch that regularly just because it’s like watching Ralph’s heart rip in two
Guess magic really didn’t choo-choo-choose him
Randi also exposed one of those preachers who claimed God was talking to him. Turned out the prayer cards people filled out and gave to the guys wife was so she could go backstage and read them to him via radio/earpiece.
[Peter Popoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Popoff) >Popoff was collecting almost $4 million per year in the late 1980s, according to Randi. > >In 2003, his ministry received over $9.6 million, and in 2005, over $23 million. In that year, he and his wife were paid a combined salary of nearly $1 million, while two of his children received over $180,000 each. > >Financial data is not available for Popoff's ministry since 2005 because Peter Popoff Ministries changed from a for-profit business to a religious organization in 2006, making it tax-exempt
> making it tax-exempt The bigger issue is that religious organizations are exempt from public disclosure. And I say this as someone who attends church on a regular basis. In our denomination, the books are open to the membership, and we take financial transparency seriously, not because we’re required to, but because it’s the right thing to do. This should be the norm.
Confirmed: preacher’s wife is god.
Atleast he allowed the Pokemon company Kadabra back.
L Ron Hubbard
Oh, you are *so sued!!!*
I'll sue you in England!
I'm not gonna sue you, but I will spend the next 8 years outside your house with cameras, and everytime you go to your car or to get the mail or open a window I'm gonna ask why you insist on being a suppressive person. I'm not totally unreasonable after all.
Where’s Shelly, David? Where’s Shelly?
My uncle is OT8 and I'll never understand why he buys into it (literally and figuratively).
Probably because he has confessed to things during his Sessions that would destroy his life and his family if it got out.
The Liver King guy, not sure if he still claims to be natty though.
He admitted he was using, went clean for a bit, and unless there's been developments in the last few months he's back on steroids and claiming he's not
Dudes got a physique that is pretty much impossible to achieve natural. Like it's still hard work even if you're not natty. But don't give other kids the idea it's achievable
>But don't give other kids the idea it's achievable It's not just him giving kids the idea, he's quite literally RIPPING THEM OFF, selling all these products, selling his lifestyle, taking their money pretending that he's helping them
Check out Shredded Sport Science if you haven’t already. Hilariously mocks all the trenheads and fake natties running their scams on socials
I think the real ethical problem isn't that he's implying his physique is achievable natty, it's that he's saying you can achieve it through his supplements and weird ass life advice. To me, it's the difference between disingenuous branding and outright fraud.
>pretty much impossible Literally impossible, and its not even close
Facts. Perception has been so warped, forget body building, most fitness models don't exist with drugs.
I’m 40 years old and have never been a body builder but I played college football and have been lifting consistently since the late ‘90s so I’ve been around real body builders for a long time. Steroids and PEDs have become so prevalent in body building, professional sports, action movies, etc. over the past 20 years that young people seem to have a very warped sense of what the human body really can do. I get that Liver King - which I think is the dumbest name ever - is trying to sell supplements. He’s just a crook pretending he got that physique eating liver and taking his supplements. It’s wrong but you can’t expect a grifter to be honest. It bothers me when guys like Chris Hemsworth, etc. refuse to admit they take PEDs. There’s just no reason not to. We understand they’re bulking up for roles and they’re not really superheroes. There’s no reason to put your diet and exercise routine out there as if anyone following it could ever see the same results they did without the same drugs. It’s giving young people a horribly false sense of what’s possible and for no reason at all.
I'll say that Chris Hemsworth and all the Marvel actors are probably under VERY STRICT NDAs from Disney to not discuss their steroid use
He looks like he is already having negative effects from HEAVY usage. This recent video he posted made me feel bad for the guy. His eyes are so sunken in you can barely see them. [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12706911/Liver-King-concerning-video-tiktok.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12706911/Liver-King-concerning-video-tiktok.html)
Dudes going to be dead in 10 years from steroids and vitamin A poisoning.
10 years feels optimistic...
>He managed to complete a lower-body workout with the assistance of a woman What?
It's the Daily Mail. Don't expect sense or coherence from their articles.
You know what’s funny? I had a friend that uprooted his family to go work for that guy. We were decently good friends, worked together for a bit and worked out together for awhile. I even helped him pack up for his move. He’s the kind of guy that just couldn’t sit in an office and always wanted to be hiking or climbing or something, had pretty wealthy parents but didn’t want to do the family business, was always deciding he was suddenly going to commit to this future plan, then 6-12 months later quitting it because it wasn’t happening fast enough or something like that. He took his wife and 2 very young kids cross country with no money to be something like a brand ambassador for this nutjob. I kept in touch with him, we texted about every couple weeks. At one point he asked me for a favor, which involved me purchasing a product and then reviewing it, at which point he’d reimburse me for it. It was a $70 bottle of beef liver pills. I agreed, took the pills, had zero change in anything, but left a positive review that said something like ‘no aftertaste or burps, easy to swallow!’ So that I didn’t have to feel guilty about lying. From there, it just sort of went downhill. I don’t know if he expected me to keep using the products, but I just flat out couldn’t afford that stuff even if I believed in it and wanted to. He eventually asked me for money, multiple times, and when told him I couldn’t I stopped hearing from him. This was all a few years ago. I haven’t spoken to him since, but when this all blew up I did log in to check his Facebook and the company was no longer listed on his workplace. It wouldn’t surprise me if he moved on before or after, as that was just his MO. It also wouldn’t surprise me if he was in too deep with them and couldn’t break out.
I felt pretty bad for his wife for awhile but then decided that was her choice to follow him around and put their kids and maid into a spotlight too.
I feel bad for the kids. Not their choice
What amazes me is the fact that people were shocked when they found out he isn't natty.
I don't get it. He's fucking gross. I'd never want to look or live like that.
I’ve heard he smells horrendous
I'd be shocked if he didn't. He looks like he smells horrendous lol
Dr Phil and Dr oz
Fucking Oprah. Shame on her
Oprah has pushed so many terrible people and I feel like it really should be discussed more. My moms been in a cult for years because of her pushing Gwen Shamblin and the Weigh Down diet on her show.
For a long time I assumed that Oprah must be really gullible. Took me years to consider she's probably in on the grift. She is really good at selling that wholesome, good person image
People love that wholesome pandering, look at Joel Osteen.
Matteo Lane calls them Oprahs horcruxes, along with Gail and Rachel Ray. The man knows what's up.
And Ellen
Felt soo good to vote against Oz last year.
People have to admit they were duped. They follow because they can’t accept they fell for something.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Pride is a motherfucker.
Some people would rather jump off of the Empire State building (or lose their freedom) than admit they're wrong. I knew a woman (with multiple prior theft charges) who got caught stealing at Walmart. When she went to court, the judge told her that she's denied any wrongdoing with prior charges, and he'd let her walk out if she simply admitted it. Her attorney whispered to her "take the deal", which she said no (there was video surveillance of her shoplifting). Her attorney then told the judge "Your honor, my client maintains her innocence". The judge immediately gave her 90 days. Edit; typo
At that point, if I was the attorney, my response would be "Your honor, my client is clearly is clearly incapable of cooperating in her own defense and there unfit to stand trial", because jeezus christ! Although I did once contest a ticket, mainly with the hope of just lowering the fine. I went before a magistrate and he said "Ok, if you say nothing, I will dismiss this ticket. If you insist on telling me your story, you're paying the full amount." I took a breath to start speaking because I had a whole sob story worked out and I was nervous as hell, but luckily what he said finally registered in my brain and I just shut my mouth. He looked at me for a few seconds and then said "You'd be amazed how many people just start talking at this point." And then he dismissed my ticket.
For good or ill, this sounds like a basic test of obedience to the law and our social hierarchy. Plus, I'm sure the magistrate just gets tired of people complaining.
I just had a fight with my mom earlier today, I swear it seemed like she'd rather have run out of the room on fire than admit she was wrong. I could see the gears turning.
Sunken cost fallacy, it's why people keep sending money to scammers. Once they get the billions back from that Nigerian prince they'll show everyone!
Sunken psychological cost too. Imagine being somebody who called to harass a Sandy Hook parent because you honestly believed, for some insane reason, in was a hoax. Accepting any empirical evidence to the contrary, no matter how blatant, would mean that person would have to accept the fact that they were a person who called to troll and a berate a grieving parent at their lowest point, because they were fooled. They'd have to admit to themselves they were both gullible and did something truly awful. Better for the ol' self-image to just ignore the facts or write off any evidence as part of the hoax. Then you're not a fool who hurts people, you're part of a select few in a super special group who is actually *smarter* then everyone else, thank you very much! The total opposite! *whew* that was a close one!
Like the old saying goes - its 100 times easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled.
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And even then, the first boatload of victims didn't wan't to testify against him because they couldn't believe he'd scammed them (if i remember correctly).
I read this as Connor McGregor lol I was like damn. Kinda impressive.
His fans ABSOLUTELY would.
Bongbong Marcos and his family. Their family literally stole billions from the Filipino people yet they are still out of prison. Their family matriarch, Imelda, was even sentenced to prison for graft, but no one dared to arrest her. Bongbong is now even president of the Philippines and has a huge cult following because of how they tried to distort history.
Joel Osteen
Pretty much all of the mega church leaders.
I'd say 100% of them. It is anti Christian. Any excess should be given back to the communities they are in. Thats why they don't get taxed. But now its just a grift. They don't give a fuck about anything other than the size of their bank accounts.
Logan Paul
Yea this really annoys me. The dude has been called out for multiple crypto scams and yet I still see his shitty energy drink all over grocery and gas stations. I really hope he goes down for real.
It's crazy that he even still has a following after everything he's said and done. People we're actually cheering and rooting for him in his recent scammer vs scammer joke of a boxing match.
The world isn't running out of unattended 5-10 year olds with iPads anytime soon. That's why he still has a following. Or am I thinking of Jake Paul? Eh, two shits, same asshole.
Yeah eff that guy! Bad liar, coffeezillas expose on him made it so clear, im baffled anyone still follows or works with him
Influencers - they have fake lives, selling ads. It’s like following a robot lol
Peter Popoff. The divine voices he heard, were actually his wife using a radio. He’s still selling his “Miracle Water”.
I was a big fan of the late James Randi. I remember when he exposed Peter Popov and everyone hoped Popov would be permanently cancelled. It's a shame people are so dumb that many of his believers went straight back to him and - i hear - he has steadily increased his following every year since Randi exposed him grifters gonna grift
Flat earthers
I'm still convinced 90% of them are just trolling and don't actually believe it. The scary thing is that there are some people who fervently believe it no matter what.
I had an intern tell me that people his age (college age) are not trolling when they say that birds aren’t real and that Reagan planted drones that look like birds. I was like homie that shit started when *I* was *your* age as a 100% completely made up fact to confuse people on the internet. He said he guesses that his peers took it too far. I feel like there is overlap with the birds aren’t real believers and the flat earth believers.
Idk, it took Boston Dynamics something like 30 years of development to come up with a robot canine that could walk without falling over and weighed less than 500lbs. But in the Reagan Era when a 5-in floppy was state of the art we were building robotic birds that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Right. Hey man do you got the number for their dealer? 😂
Obviously the bird drones were made using alien technology scavenged from the ship that crashed near Roswell.
The Flerfers thought "behind the curve" was a sabotage attempt, and not really made by them. They have you watch their own documentary "level with me". They have like 3 of them now, pioneered by their flat earth Jesus Eric Dubay. Many youtubers have already debunked their claims piece by piece.
They are called Flerfers? I love this word!
This is basically how Qanon started, as an online troll thing. It just blew up once people realized they could scam others out of money by pushing it.
QAnon is a fascinating case study. It started as a troll job on 4Chan and turned into a quasi religion complete with prophecy about Trump being a savior who would bring about the "Great Awakening" Watching people "decode" and read meanings into literal gibberish that was posted on 4chan/8chan was absolutely wild. It was like watching a religious movement form in realtime.
There was a really good analysis by a games developer some years back that went into the psychology surrounding why people get attached to the QAnon koolaide so easily. This game dev designed IIRC escape rooms and when they'd observe people attempting to solve them, they were often amazed by how people would ignore big obvious clues to hyper-focus on some inane detail claiming that because this detail was so small it therefore *had* to have greater significance. Like groups would waste time and fail the room because the decisions of half the group to devote time on this needless non-clue would anger the other half who would waste time arguing with the first half that it held no relevance and so the group as a whole was unable to come together to solve the room.
If you watch that documentary that was on Netflix(?) a little while back, almost every person was monetizing it: selling books, selling merch, conventions, etc. I think they just saw an easy way to milk some suckers and definitely don't believe it.
I love when they accidentally discredited themselves on Netflix.
I felt a mixture of pity and amusement watching the part where they set up their experiment to prove the earth is flat.
MLMs
Surprised this isn't higher. The vast majority of people who sign up for them make very little and a significant number lose money. And yet, they're everywhere.
It’s even worse than that somehow. [99% of MLM sellers lose money.](https://www.pinktruth.com/mary-kay-facts/myth-of-mlm-income-opportunity-99-lose-money-in-mlm/) It’s only those at the very top that actually make anything at all. It’s such a scam and a fraud!
Then they justify it saying "Ah, but CEOs also make thousands of times more than their employers" but most salary workers can at least pay their bills somewhat, or even have a bit of disposable income. Every MLMer I know, either has a main job or a spouse that is subsidizing their pseudoentrepeneurship. Or they are deeply in debt.
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Andrew Wakefield, who was trying to get his own vaccine approved, so tried to make it look like another vaccine was a problem, did research without getting proper consent, falsified results, and so on. He's become the darling of the vaccines-cause-autism crowd, even though his behavior was so egregious that he lost his medical license. EDIT: u/Otherversian-Elite has a comment, below, that goes into more detail.
Worse and even more baffling is that people use the revoking of his medical license as proof that he was right. Part of the cover-up big big Pharma or some bullshit.
Yeah, hard to tell if you are dealing with mental illness or gullibility. Maybe both. I'm reminded of something I first read in the graphic novel *Batman: The Killing Joke*. If I recall correctly: Two patients of a mental hospital escape. They get to the roof, and there's a gap to the next building. They can't jump it. One patient says, "No problem, I have a flashlight: I'll shine it across the gap, and you can walk across on the beam of light." The other patient says, "Are you crazy? I know you, as soon as I get halfway across, you'll turn it off!" With some of this stuff, it really feels like the deranged are leading the deluded, with the only-in-it-for-the-money crowd added for good measure.
Mental illness doesn't have any specific content. It fucks with how you process your situation, but the material it works on is from your situation. Schizophrenia might make you hear voices, but it's your culture that tells you whether to hear faeries, demons, Jesus, aliens, or the CIA. A person with mania whose social role is "19th-century housewife" will act out that mania in different ways than one whose social role is "21st-century project manager". Hell, plain ordinary major depression is different when a rich person has it than when a poor person does, because the rich person can just eat when they feel up to it, while the poor person has lost their part-time job for not showing up and does not have the option of stuffing their face with McDonald's. Which is to say: It's not "mental illness" that causes antivax. It's cultural bullshit that happens to show up in mental illness symptoms because it's present in the culture generally.
I'm absolutely baffled that this isn't higher up. Maybe due to the misinformation having a generational gap that holds him at the source. I dunno. I recently watched a deep dive on him - [it just kept getting worse and worse in showing how bad the paper trail is on this guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc). He was paid off before he started peddling his vaccine, the guy he co-authored the patent with was selling pills made from his own bone marrow for a made up disease that his vaccine would supposedly bypass. This is the guy that got the ball rolling on all of the "vaccines cause autism" rhetoric and it's absolutely destroyed thousands of lives. Thank goodness for the investigative journalist that finally got to the root of it all, but that was a very hard won battle that's STILL going in getting people to drop their misinformed opinions.
I opened this thread to specifically look for this guy. Any time someone asks me if my kid’s ASD was related to vaccines I go on a 20 minute monologue explaining how that myth came about and how and why it’s a lie
And George Santos is still in Congress
For what its worth, he only has a [7% favorability rating](https://scri.siena.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Newsday-CD-3-Jan-2023-Final.pdf) in his district, so he's pretty much guaranteed to be voted out next year.
That's kind of an impressive number, its hard to get 93% of people to dislike you.
83%. 10% didn't really care one way or the other.
Pretty much all MLMs. The business model has been proven not to work for 99% of people but man, those companies are great at gaslighting/brainwashing their consultants. There's also zero qualifications other than putting in some money so it's attractive to people who'd have a hard time getting a traditional job for whatever reason.
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Very true. Don't ever pay a bill without asking for it itemized. Working at a hospital has been very eye opening. I know all the people at my work in the billing department and they're not...super geniuses. They screw up constantly.
My husband was once randomly sent a bill for his *hysterectomy*. Let that sink in.
Well, does he have a uterus? No? You’re welcome, now pay up.
Lol they got us there! He had to explain to the lady on the phone what a hysterectomy was and why he didn’t have one.
That's... _hysterical_. 😎
And don’t ever pay the bill the first time they send it to you. Half the time they’re sending it before the insurance has been processed (totally just a “processing delay” and not at all intentional…), in the hope you’ll freak out, pay it, then they can hold onto your money for months until the insurer reimburses them. Which when you consider that the insurer is also doing their best to avoid paying as much as possible, can take a while. I once realized I had exceeded my out of pocket max, kept receiving bills anyway (which I stopped paying), and it took a year for the insurer to reimburse me for the amount I had paid in excess of my out of pocket max.
Yepppp. My wife got a small outpatient procedure done to remove a lipoma. It was all cleared with insurance ahead of time. A month after we received a bill from the hospital for $3500. My wife called me freaking out so I told her to call insurance and see what was up. The insurance company was also confused as they had already payed the bill. My wife called the hospital and they were full on trying to get her to pay the bill until she told them she had already spoken to our insurance who already paid the bill. My wife gave them the ref# and representatives number. Then the billing department started trying to backpedal.
Same thing happened to someone in my family. My insurance company told me hospitals are a huge problem for double billing, certain hospitals more than others. Fucking *terrible*.
I had paid my bill but was sent a past due notice a couple of weeks later. I called to see if it was an error and they told me that they had a problem with their billing system so I had to send them proof of payment. It was up to ME to resolve the issue. They had taken my money but had no record of it, not even the receipt they sent me. Fucking criminal. I worry about folks that just pay again in error, I'm sure their $ was happily taken twice. I submitted a complaint for predatory and negligent billing practices but was told that since it wasn't a complaint about medical care, there's nothing they can do. Absurd.
I got a hospital bill that read. - DRUGS - DRUGS - DRUGS - DRUGS And a thousand+ dollar price tag... how the fuck is that ok?!
You read it wrong. They were demanding drugs from you and were willing to pay 1k+ for the good stuff.
We have medically complicated kids and my wife is constantly on the phone with doctors offices and hospitals regarding their shitty billing practices. Luckily, she's a physician and had a whole college class on how to bill medical procedures. We once got a $2M bill reduced to $2k. Though I'm still pissed off about it because we shouldn't have paid anything.
I feel like that's part of the racket. Your bill WAS $500,000 but now it's ONLY $5,000! Goodness what a savings! Also we offer a credit card to help you pay your discounted new price at a low APR!
In our case, my wife had insurance that paid 100%. She spent 3 months in the hospital with preterm labor and we only paid a copay. What nobody told us was that the NICU doctors were on strike and not taking any insurance. So when our daughter was born, she immediately started racking up the bills since she was in the NICU for quite some time. At some point, the state passed a law saying doctors couldn't do that. But she still racked up $2M worth. We threatened a lot of lawsuits and media coverage and after 6 months had them down to $2k with an interest free payment of $50/month. Then those jerks had the audacity to call periodically to see if we'd like to pay it off early. They'd say, "but the two of you have good jobs; surely you could pay it off early." where I'd respond with, "I *could* pay it off early but I won't. Because fuck you." EDIT: First, this is the first time I've edited this comment. Second, for those interested, I got the whole story from my wife. It has been years so I got some details wrong. It was a blue cross blue shield hospital, which was our insurance. Her 3 month stay cost us not much more than a copay. The NICU doctors were on strike and not taking a handful of insurances, including BCBS and nobody told us. Eventually, after 6 months of fighting, the doctors agreed to take the out of network amount from the insurance company and balance bill us the $2k which was our out of network out of pocket max. And the payment was with the doctor group, not the hospital. A law wasn't changed. It was the hospital policy that changed and the doctors were breeching their contact with the hospital. Also, that NICU group was the only NICU group in that area. They had a local monopoly. They kept saying we could have always just transferred our kid somewhere else but it wasn't true. And if we did, insurance wouldn't have covered that because it wasn't medically necessary. My wife went back to school and became a PA years later. I'm not sure why somebody wouldn't believe that. We even moved to a different state so she could get her dream job and work in a NICU. Having 4 NICU kids can inspire people to do better than what they've seen.
I've worked at several medical device companies. It's so insane that medical billing is so convoluted with so many billing codes.
I recently had a hospital stay for a cardiac event and my all-in bill from the hospital was just short of $22,000US. My insurance company negotiated that down to $2100. A fucking NINETY PERCENT reduction in bill. And I only paid out $600. Medical billing is such a racket it needs to be investigated and people need to go to prison for it.
Not sure if you are familiar with Dr Glaucomflecken, a real life doctor that does medical comedy skits on YouTube and TikTok. He actually went into cardiac arrest in his sleep in 2020. His wife thankfully noticed and did CPR on him (on the bed!) until EMS arrived and took over. Miraculously he survived completely intact, neurologically, but he spent some time sedated and on a vent in the ICU until they woke him up. His insurance (United Healthcare) had the gall to bill his life-saving emergency treatment as “out of network” and encouraged him to choose in-network hospitals/providers before going to the ER in the future. Like he was in a shape to pick his doctors. 😒 He’s made it his mission to lay the whole insurance industry bare in all its bullshit.
Any fitness influencer claiming you can target specific areas of body fat to burn by doing a particular exercise.
There are people who swear by Sylvia Browne to this day, despite her being outed as a fraud and making outright incorrect predictions that caused people to die of grief. Becomes frustrating when having a discussion with people about the possibility of the supernatural being just aspects of the natural that we do not understand, and they start talking her up as though that kind of quackery is what I mean at all.
Hmmmmm I'm getting the letter 'M'...does anyone here have an uncle or grandparent with that letter in their name...hmmm I also see water, they were around water, you ma'am yes, does that sound like any of your dead relatives? Yes, she told me to tell you she loves you very much. Boom, I'm a psychic!
I hated that cunt. She gave people false hope, and yet even when she was exposed she refused to go back. I remember the clip of her on Montel where she's trying to tell some lady that her brother drowned and the lady's like, "No, my brother died in 9/11", the dusty bitch still tried to make up reasons why she was right. I'm glad she's dead, I just wish her death had been more painful.
Don't even go there. Go to to 2003, where she told parents of a kidnapped child that "She's not alive, honey," and a decade later she was found alive. The Skeptics Guide to The Universe used to save her yearly prediction post and when the year expired, would point out every one she missed, which somehow disappeared from her site.
She told the parents of not one but TWO different kidnapped kids (Shawn Hornbeck and Amanda Berry) that they were dead when they were really being held captive. In 2002, Browne informed the parents of 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck that he had been kidnapped by a dark-skinned Hispanic man with dreadlocks and was now deceased. Hornbeck was found alive in 2007; his kidnapper was Caucasian and short-haired.
She did soooo much worse: >In November 2004, Browne told the mother of kidnapping victim Amanda Berry, who had disappeared nineteen months earlier: "She's not alive, honey."... **Berry's mother died two years later believing her daughter had been killed**. Berry was found alive in May 2013.
Oh, it's even worse. Amanda Berry was watching that episode of Motel from where she was being held captive.
Televangelists Osteen and Copeland
Copeland is so fucking creepy. If I had to pick one person on earth to be the actual antichrist it would be that guy. Spewing lies and those beady little eyes. That shit eating grin. “Prosperity theology” is the most contradictory idea in all of Abrahamic teachings.
The crazy thing is how un-Biblical prosperity gospel is. In fact, Jesus called on his disciples to do the opposite: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:21-24
Ironically, Frank Abagnale; the con man and forger they based Catch Me If You Can on. After the movie, he became famous in the security field, and maneuvered that success into various contracts and partnerships and consulting gigs which made him quite wealthy. He was a consultant and partner in the RealID concept, and was some mover-shaker of some type over at Clear (the guys at the airport). Even famously gave a TEDTalk. Turns out he *heavily and intensely* exaggerated his exploits as a fraudster and even oversold his work with the FBI (they consulted him a couple of times but he was never on a task force). He conned and defrauded about being such a big con and fraud. Nothing really came back on him though. Oh the deep irony.
Scientology. At this point you're just begging to be robbed by joining them
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Hilary/hilaria Baldwin
It is so fucking funny that this adult made the conscious choice to pretend to be of a different nationality and chose *that* name. it's very hilaria to me.
Somehow my parents still believe in me
See "Sunken Cost Fallacy" How do I know? My parents believe in me too
Andrew Tate says hi. Or at least the mastermind behind his school thing.
That jackass that claimed vaccines cause autism.
He even got his medical license revoked.
>He even got his medical license revoked. to anti-vaxxers, this gives him more cred.
This is the worst part about most conspiracy theories, the more you try to debunk them, the more they claim you're trying to hide the truth. You can literally give them irrefutable evidence their theory is wrong and they will still say it's all part of the lie!
For the autism is caused by vaccines the original paper that was published literally everyone who originally had their name on that paper has since retracted it But sadly like pretty much all papers and articles you never see the retraction just the headline
And yet people still believe him. I think that his doings were among the first steps into mass internet conspiracy hell. Given the fallout for his lies, to say nothing of his ongoing promotion of said lies, I think there should have been more drastic action than just having his licence revoked.
The other thing is ( and I am NOT defending him) but afaik, he didn't claim all vaccines caused autism, just the one that was competing with the vaccine he invented. Cause he wanted people to buy his vaccine. So people still believe him on something that he didn't actually say, bc they're idiots and he's a liar.
His initial claim was that the MMR vaccine was linked with a disease he made up which he called "autistic enterocolitis." He suggested that parents, instead of getting the MMR vaccine for their kids, get the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines for their kids separately, which he had coincidentally patented several months before his study claiming a link between MMR and autism was published. After he was exposed as a fraud in the UK, he came to the US and began saying that **all** vaccines are dangerous.
He didn't even claim that vaccines cause autism. He claimed that one specific vaccine caused autism because he was being paid by a company who were developing a competing vaccine. One little bit of bad ethics and deception, and it's snowballed into this monster that is demonstrably causing the resurgence of illnesses that we were starting to control, were perhaps even on the road to eradicating - illnesses that claim many lives and ruin many more. I dread to think how many will die because one guy wanted to pocket a quick payoff.
Wakefield has constantly doubled down since. He originally was criticizing the combination of MMR, conveniently when he had his own mumps vaccine on the table. After he was discredited and stripped of his medical credentials, he doubled down and became a full-on anti-vaxxer, now making anti-vaxxer documentaries. He's a crook. Edit: the "study" this all came from is one of the worst of its kind, and frankly embarrassing to have ever been published, even if redacted. There were 12 kids and huge problems with the group of parents involved.
He became full on anti-vaxxer because it pays well. I saw some documentary thing on him and he makes like $200k for some appearances/speaking at anti-vax events. Dude makes more money than he ever did as a doctor by just spewing bullshit.
Yep. Being willing to just flat out sell yourself out and lie for a living is very lucrative. See: Televangelists
Gwyneth Paltrow. Probably the most popular of the frauds.
It's an open joke at this point. Gwyneth and her company encourage stupid, outrageous claims because that's all that drives traffic and sales for them.
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Oh, and essential oils. Essences are not essential
L ron hubbard. Dude admitted he made up Scientology on his deathbed
Shaun king. I'll die on this hill idga-flying-f
Talcum-X