Category Archives: Drama

Daniel Larson has finally been jailed.

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It’s finally happened: infamous TikToker Daniel Larson has finally been jailed.

If you’ve been following his misadventures, you might be thinking, “What could he be in for?” After all, there are many things he has done that could have landed him in the slammer. Pulling a fire alarm? No. Remember, this is the United States, where representatives can pull fire alarms, and it can be caught on tape for all the world to see, and the law would still look the other way.

So then, did he commit another act of violence? As prone as he is to those, not this time. Trespassing on a college? Nope. Threatening an act of mass violence? Not this time. Threatening public officials? Still no.

What he’s in for is a misdemeanor evasion of justice. Because you know, he’s a celebrity, and he’s just so busy with celebrity things, such as posting videos, crushing on celebrities, and attempting to attend a college he never applied to. Showing up for his own trials is just such an undue hardship on a music star such as himself.

Bond has been set to $20,000, so I get the idea that, even though it’s a misdemeanor, they don’t want the guy out, but they’re still willing to free the guy if they’re getting enough money. What a world we live in.

Let’s get real here: Daniel Larson is a dangerous individual. He’s prone to violence, goes on unhinged rants, trespasses frequently, has threatened gun violence (even though he doesn’t have a gun, as far as I know), and on top of all that, he’s a pedophile. But while most pedophiles understand that such attractions would make them social pariahs, Daniel Larson is more of the attitude of extending an olive branch, like it’s possible to make peace with society in spite of his affection.

And more scary still, Daniel Larson doesn’t seem to comprehend that he’s doing anything wrong. As he tries to crash in businesses as a vagrant, he’ll insist that he belongs and has a right to belong there, even as he’s asked to leave. As he trespasses, he’ll argue belligerently with anyone who confronts him about it, and even claim himself as the victim. He doesn’t seem to comprehend when he’s in the wrong, even when it’s explained to him in a way that any normal person would be able to follow.

Just what is society supposed to do with someone like that?

I know that when it comes to this kind of thing, people might say not to worry about people like Daniel Larson. But the thing is, when people blatantly disregard the law and keep getting away with it, the criminal justice system inspires less confidence. While most of us avoid breaking the law, at least because we don’t want to get caught, or even because there’s some overlap between what’s legal and what’s moral, there are people out there who just don’t care. And Daniel Larson is the kind of person who should be in an institution, for the safety of himself and society as a whole.

So all the Chris Chans and Daniel Larsons of the world actually are something to be concerned about. Because there’s no telling when, in the event that you go out to pick up some goods, while you’re out, you meet someone who’s internet famous for the wrong reasons, and you either upset them in some way, or get the kind of internet attention that normal people just shouldn’t want. They’re the kind of people that you should want to avoid, and there are institutions that exist for their safety, and everyone else’s.

As I see it, it’s hard to imagine the Daniel Larson story ending in anything but tragedy. He’s a danger to himself and the people around him. While the people who troll him and egg him on do hold some of the blame, it’s still a fact that Daniel Larson is a dangerous and unhinged individual.

But the way things are looking now, the streets have just become a little safer.

Firing Off On Palworld

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Earlier this month, Palworld dropped on Steam, and since then, it’s raised some eyebrows with its resemblance to Pokémon.

I haven’t yet played Palworld, and maybe I’ll give it a try later on. It does look intriguing. This article is little more than my own opinion about the drama surrounding it, not my impression on the game.

In the Pokémon community, this game has stirred up some strong feelings, with many taking a side between supporting the game or not.

As I see it, Pokémon could use a bit of competition to stir them to improve. There have been issues surrounding Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, largely concerning performance issues, with some complaints being petty, and some being well-founded.

One of the matters concerning Palworld that has caught player’s attentions is that some of the pal characters bear a strong resemblance to Pokémon. As I see it, games like Digimon and Monster Rancher have done a lot more to ape Pokemon’s style, yet those games aren’t something that The Pokémon Company has had any issue with.

But there’s evidently something about Palworld that got their attention, as indicated by the following statement:

While one may interpret this as meaning that Pokémon is going to go after Palworld, what it comes down to is that it’s caught their attention, and they’re looking into it. Their statement that they didn’t grant the use of Pokémon assets is not a definitive statement that that Pokémon assets were used. It’s something that they intend to look into, and as the last sentence indicates, they intend to defend their copyright, if necessary.

And it might not come to that, because even though comparisons can be made between certain Pokémon and Palworld’s pals, they may be sufficiently different that no action would be needed to protect GameFreak’s copyright.

Remember that if a company doesn’t defend its copyright, they risk losing that copyright, hence Nintendo’s interest in defending Pokémon, which is the highest grossing intellectual property in human history.

Based on what I’ve seen, Palworld doesn’t infringe on GameFreak’s copyright, it merely imitates it, which wasn’t an issue when it came to similar games like Yokai Watch.

There have been comparisons made between the Pokémon characters and Pal World pals, and you may have seen some. Some of those comparisons may have been misleading, as one source of some more popular comparisons has admitted to scaling some Pal World models to make them more closely resemble Pokémon.

Having said that, I’m aware that there is something about Palworld that stirs up strong feelings among Pokémon fans, one way or another, particularly among those employed at Nintendo. There’s something about arming little critters with guns and sometimes eating them that goes against the established tone of the Pokémon franchise, and most games that plainly took inspiration from Pokémon. But that difference in tone can possibly be used to make the case that Palworld is sufficiently transformative to avoid legal trouble.

Another point of contention that has come up is that the developer of Palworld, Pocket Pair, has developed assets using AI. As I see it, this isn’t a big deal, as this is the direction that game development has been going in. In fact, as I see it, people in the future will be able to make their own games at home for personal use, by simple use of prompts. Imagine arriving home from work after a hard day, and asking your computer, “I’d like a dungeon-crawler JRPG.” Or, instead: “I liked yesterday’s game. I’d like to pick up where I left off.”

AI is already changing the way games are made, and the way things are looking, there’s more change to come. At some point, game design will become so trivial that you could just do it yourself.

While there has been many amusing takes on Palworld, you haven’t read the worst one unless you’ve seen PETA’s take:

However the situation develops, it’s already clear who the biggest losers are.

The MamaMax Fiasco Begins

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Muta, known mainly as SomeOrdinaryGamers, has expressed his disappointment with his one-time friend, MamaMax on X. Seeing what’s coming, MamaMax has attempted an apology video, but it was too little, too late.

Muta has called his video possibly the most serious one that he ever had to make. Considering that this is the same person who exposed a dubious charity operation trusted by the game community, that’s saying something.

Here is his video, if you’re interested. It’s just over an hour long:

Obviously, someone as big as Muta doesn’t need a signal-boost from me. But I do remember MamaMax’s video from when it caught my attention, late last year, which I commented upon. I would have guessed that there was drama behind it, but I was not aware how deep it went.

Apparently, Max has dropped the GODCULT branding. Seems that didn’t work out for him.

While it was already abundantly clear that MamaMax was interpersonally manipulative, I was not aware at the extent he went to to attempt to manipulate other content creators into furthering his cause, as he attempted to do with his audience.

In his video, as you may remember, MamaMax came off as a fanatic, and proceeded to split the world in two, and tried to lay the guilt down on those who aren’t joining him in combatting CSA.

But his cause was not as noble as he made it appear to be. All that he really had to go on was the testimony of a witness, and that was good enough for him to dox what could have easily been just a Vampire: the Masquerade LARPer.

I did some research into the person who MamaMax named, and it pretty much came back nothing. But before you fault me and my internet-sleuthing skills, please know that MamaMax, the very person bringing the accusation, apparently has about as much on him.

So basically, MamaMax is trying to recruit Anonymous as his own personal army, with nothing to go on besides an accusation. And it’s not just any accusation, the mere accusation he is going on is of one of the most serious crimes that can be committed.

If you don’t see the problem with that, close your browser, cancel your internet subscription, and delete System 32.

To make matters worse for MamaMax, because it wasn’t enough to bring about 750,000 subscribers an allegation that has the potential to not be true, he brought it forth in a matter that is self-serving, egotistical, and inappropriately theatrical, rather than with the seriousness that such an accusation merits.

And through it all, against the guidance of his friends who fought desperately to get him to see reason, he resisted their insistence that the matter instead be brought to law enforcement, which is how such a matter should have been handled. And he should have known better, considering that MamaMax himself has been accused in the past!

As I often say, pay attention to those who virtue signal the hardest, as they’re often acting with a guilty conscience, usually because they have skeletons in their closets.

While I could say more about this (such as how MamaMax interpreted Penguin0’s silence as a slight against him and brought that up to his audience), I’ll get to the point: I doubt that this whole matter will go down well. Max Striker has not been conducting himself with the highest level of stability. His distrust in his friends, as well as his refusal to see reason, along with his willingness to use psychological manipulation on his friends and his audience, indicates poor judgment that has a strong potential to lead to tragedy.

Or at least a strong, public, open-and-shut defamation case. If it turns out that Max’s target is innocent, I’d be all for it. Because I’m far beyond sick of this shit. And if he’s not, Max has still proven that he’s not someone to turn to when it comes to this kind of matter.

I suspect that Max is going to do something stupid. Either something tragic, or with the potential to make him more infamous than he already is. Just hearing him speak among his friends, he doesn’t sound like he understands what he did wrong. And if his judgment is that poor, his attempts at damage control might just make things worse for himself.

From his video late last year, I had a strong suspicion that Max would appear on the news, someday. We’ll see whether it comes to that.

The Collab Between Chris Chan and Keffals Makes Kiwi Farms Easy To Justify

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Apparently, Chris Chan is planning a collab with Keffals. This was according to Chris, as he posted the following on X:

You may know who Chris Chan is, as he is considered the most well-known of all lolcows. A couple years ago, he committed a sexual offense involving his own mother, becoming a case study in true crime, and ascending to horrorcow status.

Keffals is a bit more obscure, but perhaps far more enraging. He became known for making HRT drugs at home to sell to minors without their parent’s knowledge or consent, and ran an infamous “catboy ranch”.

The packaging for his bathtub-made HRT contains the phrase, “Keep out of reach of parents.”

Both persons are males who pretend to be women, and both hate Kiwi Farms with a passion, so it wasn’t terribly unlikely that the two would have eventually found each other.

If you’re unfamiliar with Kiwi Farms, it’s an online message board that initially focused on discussing Chris Chan, but has since pivoted to discussing the ridiculous things that social media personalities do. It’s often made out to be a hive for online bullies, and while it’s true that many of its members are unsavory individuals, I think the board as it is now can be justified. In fact, I’ll go ahead and do that now.

Suppose that arson was legal. As in, you could do it, and the law wouldn’t lay a finger on you. Would you do it?

If you’re like most people, your answer would be, “No!”. This is because most people would see arson as immoral, regardless of what the law allowed.

But suppose that, not only was arson legal, it was actually incentivized. Five dollars for each house destroyed. Odds are, most people would still refuse to do it, and would be outraged at such an incentive, if it were to exist.

However, some people would jump at the offer. “Five dollars, per? Hells yeah!” they’d scream, before getting to work. We would call such people “sociopaths”, because what little they’d have to gain is something which, in their minds, outweighs the suffering that they’d cause.

But suppose that homes were being destroyed, but rather than by acts of arson, instead through influence. Suppose that a level of abstraction separates the act that destroys the home from the home being destroyed, in such a way that allowed for plausible deniability on the part of the influencer.

The influencer might influence people to drink base liquids, eat laundry detergent, dive from moving speedboats, take prescription drugs without a prescription, idolize dangerous terrorists, make self-destructive lifestyle choices, and many, many more acts which, if people were to try them, the likely outcome is that families could be torn apart, property could be damaged, and even lives could be lost. And while all this is going on, influencers are financially rewarded just for the attention that they get.

If this were to happen, and if it were financially incentivized, would you see that as a problem?

Let’s drop the hypotheticals. After all, you probably knew what I was getting at when I brought up the influencers. The fact is, influencers do encourage destructive behaviors. These behaviors have caused damage that these influencers didn’t have to face consequences for. And yes, these influencers are being financially incentivized to accrete attention to themselves, even if the attention is through the promotion of destructive and socially corrosive ideologies and activities.

These influencers are the sociopaths who don’t give a damn what damage that they might cause for you or for anyone else, so long as they’re getting the attention that they want, and the money that they really care about.

These sociopaths are among the many influencers on social media.

They don’t have to believe what they’re saying. And they usually don’t. They don’t have to see the communities, families, or individuals whose lives they are destroying. And they couldn’t bring themselves to care. They might even convince you that they’re your friend, when in reality, your mere attention only slightly enables the transaction that is their sincere desire.

By now, you’re probably wondering what can be done about these influencers. The answer is to shine a light on them, and subject them to the ridicule and satire that is richly merited.

That’s where Kiwi Farms comes in.

If it weren’t for Kiwi Farms, deviants such as Chris Chan and Keffals would have a much easier time being the predators that they are.

And now that the two have found each other, it’s become much more important that an eye is kept on the two. Because if the two are the miscreants that they are independent of one another, just imagine what they can come up with working together.

Johnny Somali Fined 200,000 Yen

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According to Yahoo News Japan, nuisance streamer Johnny Somali has just been sentenced to a 200,000 yen fine by a Japanese court for obstruction of the operation of a business, which if you know Japanese culture, you know that that’s something that they take very seriously.

If the name Johnny Somali rings a bell, odds are, you’ve heard of the infamous Kick streamer whose routine is going to one of the most polite places in the entire world and acting like a jackass. Japan is basically what you’d get if LinkedIn was its own country.

Johnny Somali (Ismael Ramsey Khalid) was in Japan as a student, but gained infamy with his streams on Kick, which often depict him acting disruptive in public. Among his antics included trespassing on a construction site (for which he was charged, but the charge was dropped), playing loud music in public, getting into disputes with locals, loudly playing adult-rated anime on a train, taunting locals by saying “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki”, among other antics.

Johnny Somali was largely considered a nuisance, and the Japanese seem to be happy that a court was willing to make an example out of him.

As of this posting, 200,000 yen amounts to approximately $1373.40. Which is probably a fraction of what he made with his Kick account.

I know I’m not the only one for whom a visit to Japan would be a boyhood dream. But I know what to expect while there. If you’re going to go to Japan, it’s expected of you to conform. If you don’t want to conform in an advanced and heavily-educated industrial society, then Japan isn’t the place for you.

Don’t believe me? Just last year, two people in Japan were arrested over a prank that involved double-dipping with used chopsticks into a communal container of pickled ginger.

There’s speculation on social media that Johnny Somali could be deported from Japan. But for the time being, it’s still only that: speculation. At this point, Johnny Somali has only been fined for his actions. I know that people want to see the Japanese throw the book at him. After all, his antics are infuriating. But at this point, that still hasn’t happened.

But considering the narcissism that we’ve seen out of Johnny Somali up until now, coupled with his tendency to act out on a whim, it’s likely just a matter of time.

Maddox Publishes Video Nearly Three Hours Long Laying Into Dick Masterson

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Yelling at screens.

I’ll say first of all that I’m not taking sides on this conflict, because even though I was once a fan of Maddox’s writing, I find it believable that either side has misbehaved in at least one way over the course of this drama.

Maddox has published a video on YouTube that is over two-and-a-half hours long, making the case that there has been a long effort on the part of Dick Masterson to harass Maddox, and bait Maddox into a response. In the video, Maddox calls Masterson “Fanboy”, in an obvious effort to reduce him while referring to him.

Embedded here is the video in question. Don’t worry, I’m not placing the onus on you of watching the whole thing. Just know that this video provides the context for the opinion that I offer on it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ic6oqqw89U

Earlier in his online career, Maddox was frequently targeted by fans who have developed an unhealthy obsession with him. This is a hazard that comes with fame, including online fame, a game which Maddox was early to. When you have a website that’s been read by millions of people, you’re likely to get a few with ideas of reference that believe that your words were somehow intended specifically for them.

There are many, many flavors of crazy out there, and in today’s connected world, it’s simple for some of them to reach back to content creators. Don’t give me that look.

As Maddox explained, part of the motivation for making his video was to raise a big stink, explaining that that’s the kind of thing that you have to do to get social media companies to care. Apparently, his reputation being at stake was not enough of a motivation, though he did make a fair point when he pointed out that when someone backbites against you, you have a choice between saying nothing and taking a hit to your reputation, or saying something and giving the trolls what’s they’re looking for.

Still, it’s hard to imagine anyone besides Maddox is going to care about his reputation if he’s not willing to defend it, himself. It’s true that a person doesn’t have to speak in his defense in every case (the expression “don’t feed the trolls” exists for a reason), but when your livelihood and reputation are significantly impacted, to answer your accusers seems expedient.

Considering the damage that has been done to Maddox’s reputation over the course of years, it’s a valid question why such an answer was so long overdue, and why Maddox didn’t take a more proactive approach to defending his online reputation. After all, his online reputation is central to his online career. His brand is impacted, for better or worse, based on his online reputation. That he was as silent as he was for as long as he was expressed a highly misplaced belief in the benevolence of his his accusers to eventually realize their wrong in continually berating him to no apparent consequences, and decide on their own that it’s time to move on to something else.

I’m speaking as someone who has been slandered, on more than one occasion. It happens to everyone. Every playground has a piece-of-shit kid who invents rumors about other kids, because that’s the worst thing that he could do to them with the least potential for immediate backlash. Preferably, you don’t have to deal with such threats to your reputation, but life doesn’t guarantee ideal circumstances, and sometimes, the best course of action is not clear.

Now that Maddox has finally come forward with an answer to his accusers, one of the chief weapons in his arsenal is to wage an accusation right back. And not only that, it’s the grand F.U. of all accusations: to call someone a pedophile.

He does bring evidence. For one thing, the projection that asserts that every male has a secret desire to do things with 17-year-olds, which isn’t true, and merely an assumption about the desires of other people based on one’s own desires (that’s what makes it projection).

The other, more flimsy, inference is that “Fanboy” likes stylized cartoon drawings. And for some reason, Maddox continued to refer to the flimsier reasoning, rather than the use of projection that most thinking people would consider the stronger evidence.

By the way, Masterson could have exercised more discretion in sharing his preference for lolicon. Like masturbation, just because it’s legal doesn’t mean that you tell everyone about it. Among the reasons being that not everyone gives the benefit of the doubt. Think of all the people who assume that playing violent video games means you secretly want to commit violent crimes.

While it might sound like a slight to Maddox, it can be pointed out that since the falling out with him, Dick Masterson has gone on to enjoy more fame than even Maddox himself. This seems to have a lot to do with a willingness to ride the wave of the algorithm, which may have rewarded him for talking about Maddox. People are drawn to drama, and the algorithm boosts what gets engagement.

Maddox doesn’t seem as willing to do this, which may be a matter of principle, like when he refuses to place ads on his website, due to his sheer unwillingness to self-censor. While one can respect a willingness to be so principled, it’s a fact of the modern world that such principles have potential to be seen as a liability. And in Maddox’s case, it’s cost him a lot of money in the long term.

There’s a lot to be said for remaining principled, even to one’s detriment. But not everyone might see that as a virtue.

But returning to Masterson, there’s a lot to say. I know that he’s a comedian, which gives someone license for a bit of edge. But if what Maddox said about “rape lists” is true, and if Masterson was sincere in his defense of sexual abuse, then that would explain why Masterson’s performances aren’t recommended to me. And I would avoid listening to them to spare my hearing in the same way that not huffing turd fires would spare my nose.

The cancellation, doxxing, and apparent attempts to recruit his own audience to fight his battles for him does not put Dick Masterson in good light, to say the least. Particularly the doxxing.

Yet through it all, Maddox has come out looking like a punching bag, even though he handled matters in the recommended fashion for those who are being bullied online. But while it’s true that it’s usually best to not answer the people who are trolling you, it’s also true that there are certain fights that one is better off not avoiding. Sometimes, the best course of action is not clear, which can be deeply unsettling.

I suppose that Maddox’s overly-macho online persona makes it difficult to pity him.

But finally, the whole drama between Maddox and Masterson has turned from being entirely one-sided, with an answer from Maddox. And true to his style, Maddox’s answer was lengthy and sardonic.

I suppose it’s likely that soon we’ll be hearing a reply from Masterson. I think it’s obvious how he’ll likely answer, based on what I’ve been hearing about his opinion about Maddox, even though I don’t follow him or care for his routine, in much the same way that I don’t have to smoke cigarettes to know what they smell like. It happens too often that some yutz will light one up right by the door, unaware or not caring that that shit will just blow inside.

There’s something screwy going on in the K-pop community.

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The Hindustan Times reported a story which alleged that a few K-pop idols are receiving backlash for enjoying a “dark anime” with “pedophilic content”. The anime in question is Made In Abyss, an adventure anime wherein a girl and a robotic boy explore a gigantic chasm, navigating its dangerous ecosystems in a quest to reach its bottom.

The Hindustan Times can be blamed for burying the lede, as the real story that led to the controversy would be the cancel culture of the K-pop community, and it turns out that much of its community is pretty toxic.

One might imagine that a collective appreciation for K-pop would bring the K-pop community together, but what we instead see is a toxicity among fans who divide themselves into factions based on their preferences for K-pop artists.

Personally, I’m glad that it’s the K-pop brand of tribalist bullshit that’s keeping these clowns occupied, because if they got into either sports or religion, they’d probably cause some riots.

The K-pop tribalism is so toxic that some fans will actually dig into the social media activity of the other tribe’s K-pop artist of choice to find anything that can be held against them. Pretty much cancel culture per se.

It so happens that this time, the K-pop artists under scrutiny are Soobin, Woozi, and Taeyong for liking Made In Abyss, an exquisite anime with developed characters, excellent worldbuilding, a heavily-favored soundtrack, and a tone that indicates that it takes its viewers seriously. The problem is, the anime is sometimes accused of promoting pedophilia by people who aren’t mature enough for the anime.

It’s disturbing enough that the toxicity of the K-pop community has reached the point that fans are willing to drag K-pop idols enjoyed by another K-pop faction down by making them out to be pariahs, it’s even worse when they are willing to drag down anime communities that weren’t even involved to begin with, and don’t deserve the negative attention that they might end up getting.

Being one who enjoys Pokémon, I can point out that, while there has been some amount of toxicity in the community, much of it came from bad actors who were quickly recognized, and the Pokémon community has mostly resisted dividing up into factions. If you can avoid certain bad influencers, you’ll generally have no problem avoiding drama in the Pokémon community.

That being my point of reference, from my perspective, the state of the K-pop community is surprising and horrifying. I didn’t have much interest in K-pop to begin with, but with the pervasiveness of toxicity and cancel culture within its community, I have no problem keeping my distance.

I suppose some might expect that I’d defend Made In Abyss from accusations that it somehow promotes pedophilia. The fact is, I really don’t have to. For one thing, I’ll refer to this flowchart that I like sharing:

One of the things I like about the Made In Abyss community is that when someone attempts to describe it to someone who hasn’t seen it, they might bring up some of its more extreme elements in an effort to warn someone that they’re there. But in doing so, they might make it sound like some hyper-edgelord anime that it’s actually not. While it’s true that there are some disturbing scenes, they don’t make up the majority of the anime’s runtime, but instead serves to make the point that there is a connotation of danger for the protagonists.

While it’s true that there are brief instances of nudity, no sex acts were committed, and the scenes played out naturally. Anyone who holds these brief scenes against the whole of the anime are failing to evaluate it from a position of honest criticism. One may even get the idea that they haven’t actually watched it.

But in any case, Made In Abyss was made for grownups, and it’s obvious that much of the K-pop community is way too young to watch anime like Made In Abyss.

And what’s more, when someone can be rightly described as smug and closed-minded, I don’t really mind that they don’t enjoy the same things that I do. As I’d have it, I’d prefer that such people were not in my own community.

Finally, it can be pointed out that we live in a world where trafficking of actual, living human children is a real problem. When someone throws themselves into a tizzy because a fictional character, a literal piece of merchandise, may be doing something sexual, they are expressing some misplaced priorities.

Bin Laden and the Algorithmic Manipulators

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Before we get into this, I’m curious how many of you had “leftists voice agreement with Osama Bin Laden” on your bingo card for 2023. It’s understandable if you didn’t, but what a year this is turning out to be.

In the year 2002, Osama Bin Laden, the very same Bin Laden that ran the terror network Al Qaeda, had issued a letter titled, A Letter to America, wherein he laid out his rationale for the 9/11 terror attacks.

I, for one, am skeptical that Bin Laden actually authored the letter, as he had initially steadfastly denied being involved in the attacks, and each of the hijackers actually attended the Al Quds mosque in Hamburg, Germany, which was never shut down, as far as I could tell.

In the letter, Bin Laden pointed out that there was no such thing as innocent civilians in the U.S.’s democracy, pointing out that his violent actions were a reaction to the policy positions of representatives that civilians voted into office. He voiced such an opposition to U.S. policy that it sounded suspiciously like it was intended to feed into a casus belli for further American intervention. Hopefully it’s understandable why I’m skeptical.

The letter had been published by British news outlet The Guardian, who took it down when a recent spate of TikTok videos appeared expressing surprise at the contents of the letter, with some expressing agreement with Bin Laden’s sentiments, saying that they’ve had their preconceived notions challenged, and encouraging their viewers to also read the letter.

Normally, I’d embed at least one example of such a video here, but I’m not doing that this time, for a reason that I’ll get into later on in this post.

When it comes to a letter from Osama Bin Laden, I’m curious what people were expecting. Did they expect something like five paragraphs of hand-wringing and mustache-twirling, proceeded by cartoon-villain cackling? The guy had a following, and he had a following for a reason: he was able to justify his positions, even if through faulty reasoning, and he did so in such a way that would have been considered convincing to those who lacked the ability to comprehend true evil, or at least those who would be dumb enough to fall for his arguments.

People with bad positions are usually able to justify their positions. Take the flat-earthers, for example. People know that flat-earthers are wrong. However, they take for granted that flat-earthers are wrong. So when they get into a debate with one, they imagine that it will be a piece-of-cake slam dunk victory. But then the debate begins, and the flat-earther runs circles around them, because they know how the game is played, they have rhetorical deceit down to a science, they came prepared with arguments that most people are not prepared for, and they themselves came prepared for the arguments and rebuttals that they could reasonably expect. The result is that a typical, middle-of-the-road thinker is left to kick dust on the way home, knowing that he lost a debate to a flat-earther.

While we’re at it, I’m curious as to what people think is in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. While it’s true that much of it is a hateful tirade made to appeal to one with an external locus of control, it’s also a political manifesto that would have been considered encouraging to a German who would have felt downtrodden in Hitler’s time.

Evil people are able to justify their wickedness, even if their reasoning is deeply flawed. To them, what most would see as wicked may be what they see as justifiable, or even banal.

By way of another example, there’s also the manifesto of Ted Kazynski, the person who is popularly known as the Unabomber. When his manifesto was published, the expectation would have understandably been the ramblings of a deluded psychopath who believed that the moon followed him as he walked around. As it turns out, he made some points about society that many people considered valid.

Returning to Bin Laden, I wonder how many people out there have forgotten that he was a religious zealot, whose own religion is pretty-much everything that a stereotypical leftist pretends that Christianity is. Bin Laden was an Islamist, who wanted to implement Sharia in the west.

The following is a few of Bin Laden’s policy positions:

  • Executing gays,
  • Normalizing slavery (and no, I’m not kidding),
  • Outlawing bacon,
  • Outlawing grown-up beverages,
  • Outlawing non-religious music,
  • A functionally-retarded banking system that’s somehow supposed to run without interest,
  • Normalizing pederasty, which has been legal in Afghanistan for decades,
  • State-sponsorship of a cult that discourages the pursuit of anything outside of itself,
  • That science is not allowed to question, among other things, that the earth is flat,
  • A judicial system that’s so capricious that tyrants are needed to maintain order,
  • That the testimony of a woman is either 1/2 or 1/4 that of a man in courts of law.

There’s a lot more. And a bunch of simpletons are impressed with this guy?

Now, let’s get into the reason why I’m not leaving a video embed in this post. Personally, I doubt that these people actually believe what they’re saying. The fact is, the TikTok algorithm boosts what gets plenty of engagement, and what’s rage-inducing (such as police-brutality videos) tend to get more attention. I suspect that these are just people who know how the game is played, and are attempting to farm the algorithm for views. I don’t want to give them a signal boost, because I don’t want them to have more attention.

But even if they don’t believe it, they still have followings that may take their words for it. And that’s how attempts to game an algorithm can have potentially harmful outcomes. We’ve already seen how videos of police brutality have inspired looting and rioting. Now, there are social media influencers out to make a quick buck who don’t care about the long-term social damage that can occur as a result of algorithmic manipulation.

But if the social media influencers were sincere, then there’s no telling how they’ll react when they get around to reading something that’s actually reasonable, such as the basic philosophical underpinnings of Libertarianism, or that of Austrian economics.

To get to the heart of the matter, however eloquent that his justifications could have possibly been, it still remains that Osama Bin Laden was a murderous nutjob who hid behind his religion, which played a significant role in motivating him to become the killer he ended up becoming.

Now, the indoctrinators of the political left are looking on in horror as the very children that they indoctrinated went on to side with terrorists like Al Qaeda and Hamas, simply because those terrorist organizations have been using similar rhetoric to justify themselves. And now said indoctrinators are losing control of the very generation with which they had hoped to usher in a revolution, and are losing control of them to a bunch of religious fanatics who are far more hateful than even themselves.

I can think of no better way to fight back than to make it known why their new ideology is not worth fighting for. Just because it’s obvious to me why this is the case doesn’t mean that everyone can be reasoned with.

If it turns out that the letter actually was a U.S. psy-op, the consequences might almost be funny. Except not quite.

Is Chris Chan’s Diet Killing Him?

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A couple days ago, Chris Chan complained of feeling “a bit woozy at times” on X, with his friends attributing this to his diet.

Here’s what he had to say:

#TF2AnalysisAnarchy reminded me of the 6-2-1 (Convention) Rule years ago. That was a common practice with me, in general, which aided me in weight loss.

But in recent days, my Body has been feeling a bit woozy at times. My friends made me realize that I could be eating more, especially considering how tall I am. So, I’m readjusting my meal plan for filling breakfast/brunch and dinner, while enjoying Fruits and/or Salad at lunch or snackage throughout the day.

Okay then, let’s see how Chris Chan has been eating fruits, by looking at a fruit salad that he shared weeks ago. And let me know whether this could contribute to his woozy feeling:

Okay, this looks like the beginning of a fruit salad. There’s a diversity of fruit there, with diced apple, strawberries, banana, and what looks like a peeled tangerine. As long as he doesn’t somehow ruin it, there’s nothing to object to, at all.

But he’s not done yet. To him, nature’s candy is not sweet enough, he has to add additional candy to taste:

He ruined it. First, with a mound of whipped cream and a literal chocolate bar. Sure, it’s just a small square, but it’s even more sugar.

But then, he adds maraschino cherries. They may be cherries, but they’re swimming in sweeteners such as sugar or high fructose corn syrup! No wonder the guy is woozy, he thinks that this is the kind of meal that’s so healthy, that he can snap pictures of it to show off as an example of his better judgment to the world!

Chris Chan handles his diet the same way he handles Biblical law keeping: lackadaisically. Here’s what he has to say about that:

I am thankful for the 6-2-1 Rule, but as a guideline like the Bible, we are meant to keep it as a guideline in our minds, souls and hearts and think outside of that in common sense for ourselves, respectively.

If you’re wondering what the “6-2-1 Rule” is, so was I. I looked it up, and apparently, it’s a furry convention guideline that recommends 6 hours of sleep, 2 meals a day, and one shower a day. But like many rules, Chris Chan regards it as a “guideline”, similar to how he regards other rules, including the ones found in the Bible.

Apparently, to him the Ten Commandments are more like the Ten Suggestions, in that he follows them when it’s nice and convenient, but considers them something to ignore in favor of his own personal dictates of common sense.

This person is claiming to be the Messiah?

The situational ethics crowd is about as scary as those who insist that Biblical law keeping has been done away with, but they have no idea. Biblical law includes the Ten Commandments, and they say that you’re not to murder, steal, or bear false witness. Which of these things would they object to happening to them?

Chris Chan has a problem that many Americans do: he has received almost nothing in the way of dietary education, and only has vague notions of what is healthy to go on. That’s a problem when the rules of diet and nutrition are such that, if you break them and are ignorant of it, the consequences of breaking those rules still apply to you.

No, I don’t claim to be perfect in this regard. When I was in my twenties, I usually had a big ol’ heaping plate of pasta for dinner, reasoning that that was healthy enough. While it’s true that there was some nutritional benefit to be had, I was consuming a monster pile of calories nearly every evening, which was only offset by the fact that I was highly physically active, walking miles on most days.

After college, I returned to that for a short while. But as my means improved, I decided to figure a few things out about my diet.

Because we have technology that can help us with our diets, why not use it? I use an app to track my caloric intake. What’s more, I got a kitchen scale to help measure out my portions. I also did a lot of research on what foods can have what benefits for me.

Here’s an example of what breakfast can look like for me:

The Grapenuts and milk are consumed together as a cereal. As for the fruit, they are blended together with water, a scoop of protein shake, a couple scoops of powdered collagen, and the “Daily Fiber” is a psyllium husk supplement like Metamucil. The result is a super-tasty and super-healthy breakfast smoothie. The fruit volume can vary, but this is what reasonably fits in my blender.

In addition to this, I’ll often have some black coffee (zero calories), as well as supplements such as vitamin D, creatine, and perhaps even some fish oil, and maybe some other supplements.

Thanks to a diet like this, I actually feel better now than when I was in my twenties, and perhaps ever have. And if you wish to copy me, now you have an idea of what I’ve been having for breakfast, lately.

If you still have doubts as to Chris Chan’s state of mind, he closes out his statement with the following:

Every religion and scripture is a piece of the Bigger Truth; they combine in all to form that, in a way. But Meditation and Connection with the Cosmos, Akashic Records and Alpha/Omega Point well beyond our Universe’s and Timeline’s Core and Matrix puts further insights and revelations into all of us to really understand ourselves and the truths and to put them to Good use with Light Power and Righteous Paths. ⚡️💙⚡️

Though he claims to have access to the comprehensive compendium of events and thoughts in all the history of the universe, Chris Chan still doesn’t know how to eat right.

Let’s end this with a quote from a far more sensible man:

The production of artificial food as a means for causing an increase of the human mass naturally suggests itself, but a direct attempt of this kind to provide nourishment does not appear to me rational, at least not for the present. Whether we could thrive on such food is very doubtful. We are the result of ages of continuous adaptation, and we cannot radically change without unforeseen and, in all probability, disastrous consequences. So uncertain an experiment should not be tried.

Nikola Tesla

The GODCULT Complex of MamaMax

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Is this the face of fighting child abuse?

I was a legacy subscriber of MamaMax on YouTube, from back when his channel was funny, but then I dropped off when he started commentating on bad hentai. Since then, the algorithm itself seldom floated any of his stuff to me.

However, that changed today, after happening upon a new offering, which was when I discovered that he now goes by a new handle, GODCULT. And not only that, he reiterated his cause, which is to encourage vigilante activity, outing child predators.

While the cause of stopping child predators is something I don’t object to, there are problems with having someone like GODCULT being the one to champion the cause. And I don’t just mean because of his hentai commentary.

For those who are interested, the video is embedded below. Watching it is helpful for establishing the context of my critique, but is not completely necessary. It’s about 25 minutes long.

GODCULT spends much of the video answering critics who have left him comments. Many of them are legacy subscribers who would agree that his new super-serious content is not what they subscribed to, and GODCULT takes them to task for not being on board with the change of his channel’s focus.

Reminiscent of the days of Maddox, to cherry pick comments that you can easily answer is highly expedient to expressing your intellectual superiority. Also of note is that he altered his voice in an obvious effort to be taken seriously, which is a nice throwback to “We are Anonymous, we are legion!”

But what’s especially disturbing is that GODCULT presumes to psychoanalyze these critics, as if to suggest that criticism of his channel’s new direction indicates a sort of permissiveness of child abuse. Whether he’s explicit in this implication, it’s easy to hear in his tone.

If one were to turn the psychoanalytic eye back on GODCULT, it would be plain to see that he derives pleasure from expressing superiority over other people. Of course, this would be difficult to reconcile with a culture that has a distaste for abusive relationships. Except, when that same appetite for domination is expressed against those who are abusive, it becomes easier to justify. When answering his critics, it’s plain to see that his deep, booming voice disguise is intended to intimidate. Whether his intention to protect children is sincere or not, it’s evidently a convenient outlet with which he could play the intellectual tyrant, fulfilling his own appetite for domination.

As explained by GODCULT, he has spun a dystopian fictional narrative of a future time in which child abuse is normalized. Because GODCULT is of the opinion that fictitious depictions indicate the sensibilities of the authors, GODCULT shouldn’t consider it scandalous to say that this indicates a sincere belief that humanity, if left on its current course, would normalize pedophilia within years.

I have my doubts. As of this typing, child abuse is highly illegal. It tends to carry a harsh prison sentence. What’s more, anyone in prison for child abuse is usually singled out for abuse by other prisoners, because even ordinary criminals can’t stand their presence. What’s more, child molesters tend to be harassed anywhere that their reputation follows them, which is usually everywhere, considering that they’re usually required to submit to a registry that would indicate where they live. Most people can’t stand the company of child molesters.

Considering all this, I think it should be understandable why I would be skeptical of the idea that child abuse would be normalized anytime soon. Having said that, I’m aware that QAnon would differ on the matter, why they would differ, and the kind of information that they habitually limit themselves to and how it informs their worldview.

While it was a throwaway line near the start of his video, we can bring attention to his calling out of Japanese media for sometimes sexualizing minors. Which would make Japanese media like most media one can find anywhere in the world. While it’s true that Japanese media has a relatively high occurrence rate of humor that would be considered insensitive to victims of sexual abuse, it’s also true that a person doesn’t have to consume media that they don’t want to. And, in any case, Japan enjoys low crime rates in spite of how racy some its media can be. It’s almost as though media is not strongly indicative of cultural norms, right MamaMax, reviewer of bad hentai?

Because we’re sensible adults, we should know that any fictitious depictions of crime does not equate to a desire on the part of the authors to commit such crimes, nor does the consumption of such media indicate such desires from consumers. Otherwise, we could assume some pretty nasty things about the people who play games from the Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto series’.

Having been through all that, as much of a problem as child abuse is, there are better things we can do about it than using our positions as influencers to recruit your viewers as vigilantes. Vigilantism is counterproductive. There has been many a case where a predator has actually gotten off because some vigilante bozo disrupted an investigation in progress.

If child abuse is occurring, you notify law enforcement. Unless the crime is in progress in your physical presence, that is the extent of what you can do to be helpful. Even if you want to do more, in informing law enforcement you’ve accomplished everything you could do to be helpful. Let the police do their jobs, they actually do want to stop these guys.

Having said this, I have a suspicion that in the event that GODCULT discovers this page, he might distort my criticisms of his approach as being adversarial towards efforts to stop child abuse, similar to how he answered his critics.

Still, GODCULT has a freedom to further whatever cause that he may wish to, so long as he can do so lawfully. And if he can rescue at least one person in so doing, then this would make it easier for him to avoid confronting his own methods for how counterproductive they may be.

I know I may be laboring the point by bringing this up again, but vigilantism is usually counterproductive, as it has the potential to disrupt investigations that are the job of law enforcement, resulting in people who commit crimes getting off scot free. Don’t want child molesters to get away with it? Then don’t be dumb.