Episode 1384 Scott Adams: Loneliness Epidemic, Fact-Checking as Propaganda, UFO Origins Predicted, and eQUITy
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
UFO origins prediction
U.S. Army's woke video
Drones are the future of warfare
Basket-case theory
Promoting eQUITy
Fact-checking propaganda
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So if you had some kind of a betting service and you could place a bet, what are the odds that Scott would ever be in a national news story about Monica Lewinsky?
Well, that happened.
So it turns out that my tweet in response to a Monica Lewinsky tweet put me in the news.
Fox News and some other places carried it.
What are the odds? I mean, really?
Now, I told this story on Locals, the subscription service where I tell all my naughty stories and the stuff that I don't want to put here, but I think I could tell you this story.
Think about the following coincidences.
Number one, I'm in a national news story about Monica Lewinsky.
Number two, I once shook hands with Bill Clinton.
So I've actually touched the hand that touched Monica Lewinsky.
Now, probably a lot of people shake hands with presidents, but I met him once after a speech.
So I gave a warm-up speech for Bill Clinton, and I was just on the dais, do you call it?
And he went down, shook everybody's hands, said hi.
You might also know that I once visited the Oval Office to chat with President Trump.
And when I was there, Ivanka was waiting for the president to come in, and she had shown me into the Oval Office, and she was showing me some of the decoration choices.
And I may be misremembering this, but it could be just because it's too perfect.
You know, sometimes you remember things that you want to remember, even if they didn't happen.
But I would swear that Ivanka told me that the carpet was Bill Clinton's carpet.
Because I guess each president gets to choose from a warehouse of stuff which things from prior presidents and prior administrations they want in the Oval Office.
So I think Bill Clinton's rug was in there.
Now, I couldn't really check.
I didn't bring a blacklight or a CSI team to find out if it really was Bill Clinton's rug, but I have a memory of it, either real or false.
And So there was that, but an even weirder coincidence.
Do you remember the story of Linda Tripp?
She was the one who convinced Monica, I think, to go public.
But Linda Tripp got her advice from a literary agent named Goldberg.
Now, what are the odds that I would know that literary agent?
But I did. I believe she's deceased.
But she was married to an executive in my cartoon syndication company.
So I've actually eaten a meal with a woman who broke the Monica Lewinsky story.
I also know Jake Tapper.
You may know that Jake is also a very skilled cartoonist.
He has a very deep talent stack, it turns out.
And he's been a guest cartoonist for the Dilbert comic on two separate weeks in two different years.
Jake Tapper once dated Monica Lewinsky before she was famous.
So, what are the odds that I would have so many connections to a small cluster of presidential blowjobs?
We must be living in a simulation.
There couldn't be that many connections.
By coincidence, could there?
Well, yes, there could.
But it's fun to think about it.
So here's some more news stories.
I have a prediction about the UFOs.
Number one, I don't think they're real.
So I'm still solidly on the side that says there's nothing up there.
Just nothing. Now, I would love to be wrong.
If there's anything I would like to be wrong about, It's aliens.
I would love to be wrong about that.
But I'm going to stick with my belief that it's a psychological phenomenon along with a number of maybe visual or optical oddities.
Some of them might be fake.
Some of them might be false memories.
Who knows? But what if there are real ships?
Here's my prediction.
If they're real, meaning that there's actually a physical something, they're from the ocean.
Here's why. We have not explored the ocean, so something could be hiding there forever.
Suppose there were alien, as the conspiracy theorists say, alien astronauts who helped, I don't know, build the pyramids or helped with early civilization, you know, Beating off the animals so that humans could be the dominant species.
Maybe they've always been here.
Or they've been here for a billion years.
Maybe they just live underwater.
Because it would be safer.
If you live underwater, no hurricanes, no sunburns, no animals trying to eat you.
You know, if you had the technology to do it.
Now, You played an alien, Scott.
How could you not believe? Well, that's true.
I have played an alien on television.
Now, could it be Atlantis?
Or at least could Atlantis be based on something like that?
Well, we don't know. We do know that there was a video of a UFO that appeared to be going into the water.
We know there are stories of UFOs emerging from the water without leaving much of a ripple.
So... Now, some people saw my tweet on this topic and said, but Scott, How could they forge any metals without fire?
No, I don't mean that they live literally in the water.
I said under the water, meaning in some kind of a contained area that may or may not have oxygen, because who knows if they need it.
But I'm sure that they can figure out a way to...
If they can live under the ocean...
Undetected for millennia.
I feel like they could make metal, right?
And Marx says, what about propulsion?
There seems to be no sign of propulsion.
Well, Stixenhammer did a comment on my tweet this morning that says it might be some kind of electromagnetic force, meaning if the rocket ship knows how to interact with the Earth's magnetic force, It might be a maglev situation.
Is that possible?
I don't know. But if we're talking about stuff we don't understand, well, you can throw in some more stuff we don't understand, the propulsion.
In a fitting move, the U.S. Army shut down the comments section, or at least they blocked the comments on There are woke YouTube videos trying to get recruitment.
Now, you may have seen the video.
There's one of them in which a woman talks about her two moms and how she joined the military.
And it's all very female-oriented and very, very woke and very, what would you say, very, I don't know, very open-minded, I guess.
And we like all of those things.
I like being open-minded.
I like not discriminating.
I like everybody having equal opportunity.
But apparently this doesn't look like it's dangerous enough to scare our enemies, because it looks a little soft.
As Ted Cruz noted in his own tweet, he said that the army is turning our fighting people into pansies, was his word.
Now, how did he not get cancelled for that?
I'm trying to figure out, how does Ted Cruz still have a job after using that word, pansies?
Because isn't that...
Where's the LGBTQ people saying, hey, you can't say that?
Now, in my opinion, he didn't mean anything about being gay.
He was just saying, it's just a colloquial word for not being, you know, tough and dangerous, I guess.
But I'm kind of surprised he didn't get attacked for that.
Or maybe he did, and I haven't seen it, but it's not any kind of a national story.
Kind of surprising. I don't know why.
But apparently that didn't go over so well for the army, so they're going to stop that.
Now here's a counterpoint.
Counterpoint is this. I think it was Balaji Srinivasan who said this on tweet, that the future of warfare is probably drones.
Do you need to be 200 pounds of fighting muscle to operate a drone?
Probably not. So is there any reason to believe that our army wouldn't be 90% female in the future if they're operating drones?
Why not? You don't have to carry heavy things.
Because basically carrying heavy things is what it comes down to, right?
Suppose the military comes up with better ways to carry heavy things.
They got the robot dog carrying the heavy stuff so you don't have to.
Whatever. But I would not assume...
That there would be any degradation of readiness based on women in the military.
And if you think so, you might be thinking of the old military where you had to pick up a big old heavy sword.
But modern military, it's entirely feasible that we just don't need men for, I don't know, in the future, 50% of the jobs, maybe you just don't need men.
All right. I heard some bad news and then some good news.
I tweeted them both. I'm hoping the good news cancels the bad news.
The bad news is that the telehealth executive orders that Trump did during the pandemic that said you could do video doctoring across state lines without any special licenses or fees, apparently they had timers on them, meaning that each state will revert back to the old way When a date is hit, which I believe those dates are being hit.
What the hell?
What was the point of doing this very smart thing to fix this obvious problem and then have it revert back to the problem?
Well, the good news that I found out later, Jonah Shoemate filled me in.
That there are at least two bills percolating to fix this and then make it permanent to allow telehealth across state lines.
The good news is they're bipartisan.
So at least one of them that I saw is a bipartisan bill.
We've got a Democrat and Republican backing them.
So I feel as if the incompetence which I worried about may not have to be a problem.
So there might be a couple of politicians who are just fixing a problem.
Thank you. So if you do that, thank you.
You know what's weird about my job?
Lots of things. But one of them is I get quoted a lot.
Meaning if you go to one of the famous quote sites, there are lots of them, chances are you will see a bunch of quotes from me.
And every now and then I'll see a quote that's attributed to me and I'll say to myself, really?
Did I say that? I don't remember saying that.
Or in some cases, they might be quotes from someone else that got attributed to me.
But there is one that I feel is very appropriate to 2021 and to a problem that a lot of us are suffering from.
And I'm going to develop this as we go, so wait for the big point to be developed.
But here's the quote.
That apparently I said at some point.
I don't deny it, but maybe somebody said it before I did.
Maybe I copied it. I don't know.
But the quote is this.
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
Everybody is someone else's weirdo.
Do you ever feel to yourself, man, I am so weird.
If anybody found out how weird I am, I'd be in trouble.
Because, man, I'm so weird.
Well, I would like to introduce to you the basket case theory.
Something I developed when I was a young man to explain what I was witnessing.
And it goes like this.
If you meet a stranger, it could be somebody you want to date, or just somebody you work with, maybe just a friend.
When you meet them, don't they seem pretty complete?
Have their act together pretty well?
Man, that stranger.
I wish I could be like that stranger because The stranger doesn't have anything weird about them, and they've got their act together and on the inside pretty confident and pretty capable.
And then time goes by, and you learn more about your date or your friend or your co-worker, and suddenly there's a flaw.
Oh, I didn't see that on day one, but there does seem to be a flaw, maybe a little weirdness.
Day 10? Well, it looks like there's more than one flaw.
Two years later?
Well, I guess everybody's fucked up.
That's the basket case theory.
Everybody looks good until you get to know them.
Once you get to know a human being, there are always basket cases.
Always. Just different kinds of baskets.
As soon as you realize that every fucking person is a basket case, you're free.
You're free. What is it that bothers you more than anything as long as you're healthy and you have a job?
What bothers you more than anything is what people think of you, or what you think they think of you, or what they might think of you, or how they would treat you if you did this embarrassing thing.
They're not better than you.
Basket case theory.
They're not better than you.
They're just people you don't know that well.
That's it. There's nothing else to the story.
You just don't know them that well.
If you did, you wouldn't be impressed.
I'll tell you, one of the most common things that people say to me as a celebrity type, when they get to know me, they say some version of Gosh, you're just like a regular person.
Well, why wouldn't I be?
There's nobody who's not a regular person, except maybe Michael Jackson wasn't.
If you get famous when you're too young, you can be kind of weird.
But even Michael Jackson, was he weirder than me?
Probably not. Just different weirdness.
Was he weirder than you?
Probably not.
Just different weirdness.
And so, there's something connecting this weirdness and self-esteem issue with a massive problem we're having in the country right now.
Massive problem.
Loneliness. The loneliness problem is now the epidemic.
You know, the virus is...
We're doing a good job on that.
So, you know, great job, country and world.
Working on that. But people are so frickin' lonely.
And it's not entirely because they're not with people.
Because they are.
They are with people.
How many of you in the comments are having a crisis of loneliness right now?
In the comments, tell me how many of you are feeling lonely in a way that you've never felt before.
Like just, you know, a whole new level of loneliness.
Look at the comments now.
Now you'll see some no's, and that's good.
But look how many say yes.
Right? I'm thankful that there are any no's there at all.
Maybe half of them are no's, something like that.
But if...
And then somebody says, all my life, yeah.
And because of loneliness, I think you're also seeing more addiction, right?
One way to make the pain go away is some kind of addiction.
And how many of you watch this live stream because it makes you feel less lonely?
In the comments, answer that question for me.
Do you watch this live stream in large part Because it makes you feel less lonely.
Now, I'll tell you that, you know, I have people in my house, so I'm not like physically alone.
But I've started to watch, I guess what you would call POV or point of view video, mostly on YouTube, in which I want somebody's face looking into the camera like I am right now.
And talking to you as if I'm talking to one person.
You can find lots of YouTube videos where somebody's explaining something.
I can't watch interviews anymore.
Because if I watch an interview, I'm watching two people talk to each other, and I'm not part of it.
But if I watch one person talking to me, I could probably even watch one of those makeup videos, which are huge, because it's just somebody putting on their makeup and just talking to you.
I would totally watch that.
It has nothing to do with the makeup.
And I think there's something happening that's bigger than what we understand.
Because clearly the pandemic made us more lonely, right?
So there's an obvious thing going on there.
But there's something else going on.
Because there's a second epidemic, and I think it's connected.
Two epidemics that are interacting with each other, and none of them have to do with the virus directly.
So one is the loneliness, and the other is narcissism.
I believe narcissism has gone from something that people had, and you could stay away from them, to something closer to an epidemic.
And I think social media has done that.
So what I've learned about this narcissism thing is I used to think it was people who thought they were great.
And if that's what you think it means, Then you have to catch up just like I did.
It's not about people thinking they're great.
That's just like a little bit of it, right?
It's about people who have broken self-esteem, just completely broken.
And the way that they deal with their broken self-esteem is by belittling other people, one-upping them, bragging, putting them down, shutting them down, thwarting them in any way you can.
I used to look at those people because they're everywhere.
But man, are there more of them?
There are, right?
And I think it's because people who might have been sort of on the border of being that way just got pushed over the edge by social media.
Imagine living in a world where everybody is criticizing everybody for everything.
That's our world. We live in a world where everybody's criticizing everybody for everything.
Imagine that. How would you like to be a teenager and be criticized on everything?
The shirt you wore that one day, the embarrassing thing you did just once but somebody saw it.
You're not as pretty or as handsome or strong or good at sports as this other person.
It's got to be devastating.
Devastating. And there's just more of it because it's in your face and you're seeing these Impossible images of people who you want to be like but you're not, etc.
So, there's somebody out here watching this right now.
You might be watching it live or somebody might be showing it to you.
But I'm kind of talking to you.
Talking to you directly.
You're feeling super lonely.
You might be addicted.
And you're trying to figure out a way out.
And you're thinking, what the hell do I do?
I'm trapped, I'm lonely, and maybe addicted.
And I have low self-esteem.
And all these people who are doing better than me are beating up on me and they're controlling me with their thoughts.
Their opinions are actually just breaking my brain.
I can't stop thinking about what they said about me.
Is that you? Yeah, that is you.
And I'm going to give you at least a few tricks.
This will just be a start.
It's not going to fix anybody instantly.
But I'll give you a few tricks for escaping that.
Okay? Some brain hacks, some life hacks.
It goes like this.
Number one... Always remember the basket case theory.
The person who's talking to you and is insulting you, they're broken.
Did you say to yourself, oh my goodness, somebody who's normal is criticizing me.
Do you know how many times that's happened?
How many times has a person who's got it together and they're normal and they're criticizing you?
How many times has that ever happened?
Do you think a lot? Because the answer is zero.
It's never happened.
Nobody who has their act together is criticizing you in cruel ways.
But you are getting criticized in cruel ways.
You're being judged. Not by good people.
You're being judged by thoroughly broken people who are acting out.
They're taking out their pain on you.
If you imagine that they're complete, somehow good people, well that feels pretty bad.
Because you don't want somebody that you respect or at least think is normal to be judging you.
That feels terrible. They don't exist.
They don't exist.
That thing that somebody said?
Well, it was said.
The words exist.
But there's no such thing as an unbroken person saying that kind of stuff.
They are just completely broken.
And you should have pity on them.
And your first thought should be empathy, not feeling bad.
So that's your first trick.
Remember the basket case theory?
Nobody's good.
It just doesn't exist.
And trust me, the older you get...
The more people you meet, the more you'll know this is true.
There are no complete people, just broken people.
And they're the ones. The more broken they are, the more they're going to come after you, because they need that.
They need to push you down so that they can feel good for today.
So that's trick one.
Everybody's broken. Number two.
Low self-esteem is like a virus.
You catch it from other people.
You didn't get your low self-esteem necessarily because you were born with it.
I mean, there's got to be a genetic component here.
But mostly it comes from narcissists who have their own broken self-esteem and they want you to have a broken self-esteem and if you don't have it, they're going to give it to you.
You catch it from other people.
And you can get rid of it, just like you can get rid of the frickin' coronavirus.
You do have a constitution.
You do have immunity.
But it takes a little while, just like any cold.
The cold wins for a while, and then your natural immunity takes over.
Your natural immunity can get you away from this low self-esteem that you caught from other people.
It's not in you.
It's something you caught.
And you're going to beat the shit out of it.
Just like your immune system will beat the shit out of the coronavirus for 99% of you plus.
Number two, be good at a few things that you can control.
There's nothing better for your self-esteem than knowing that if you work hard on something, whatever it is, that you can become one of the good ones.
Not the best in the world, but better than other people.
And the things that you can control the most are...
Diet. Fashion choices.
Haircut. Fitness.
You can control the fuck out of those things.
If you're not good at fashion, find somebody who is.
Get some advice. Don't know how to exercise?
Find somebody who can.
Have them tell you how.
Don't know how to eat right?
Find somebody who knows.
Have them tell you how.
My book, Catefield, Almost Everything and Still Went Big, would give you a leg up on developing your own system to do those things.
Find some things that you can completely control and control the fuck out of them.
Just control the fuck out of them.
Because that's where you get your self-esteem.
Because if you look at...
I'm actually a really good example for this.
And I'm going to say something astonishingly lacking humility.
But the point is to help you here for a moment.
I'm a person who's good at a lot of things.
A lot of things. It was a pretty long list.
I actually made a list the other day because I was wondering what would be on the list.
So if you made a list of things that the press has called me and asked for my expert opinion on, You'd be kind of surprised.
It's across economics, business, humor, politics, persuasion.
But how many things are there that you could be good at?
Like, what are all of the things that humans can do?
It's gigantic, right?
It's like millions of things that people can do, and I'm good at almost zero.
If you took all of my skills and compared it to all the skills that anybody could have in the world, it rounds to zero.
It doesn't round even to 1%.
It's just zero.
And I'm an example of somebody who has pretty high skills in a variety of fields.
And it still rounds to zero.
But it still makes me feel good that there are a few things I could do well.
And that's why I concentrate on fitness and diet and You know, in the case of a guy, if you get your fitness and diet right and keep your hair short, you're probably pretty good, fashion-wise.
So, control the things you can control, get good at them, and remember that nobody's good at much.
Nobody, nobody, zero people, are good at much.
Take Tiger Woods.
Is he good at driving?
Right? Tiger Woods.
Most skilled golfer of all time.
Can't drive a fucking car.
Can't keep his wife.
Can't keep his dick in his pants.
Right? There's no such thing as complete good people.
They just don't exist.
Right? You could become president and have all the flaws in the world.
Have you ever heard of any presidents who had any character flaws?
Have you heard of that? All of them.
All of them. Every one of them.
No exceptions. All right.
Here's some more. Use your despair to find freedom.
Use your sadness, loneliness, depression, and despair to buy your freedom.
Do you know how to do that?
And by the way, freedom feels really good.
Here's how. Do you remember that day you were lonely and sad and neurotic and anxious and depressed and every other bad feeling in the world, and if only you could talk to that guy or that girl, the person of your affection?
If you feel like you're going to die anyway, just do it.
You're free. Go up to that person.
That you think is going to turn you down.
And guess what? They probably will.
Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
Everybody's failing all over the world all the time.
Go up to that person and say to yourself, before you walk up, my whole life is garbage right now.
I'm sad. I'm lonely.
I'm neurotic. Let's mix it up a little bit.
Let's shake the box. Let's just see what happens.
Leave your box.
Walk directly up to that person that is way better than you in your broken mind.
They're not way better than you, but you think they are.
And say, you know, I just wondered if you'd like to go out to dinner with me.
I think it'd be fun. What happens?
Well, let me tell you a story that happened just like that.
I'm going to divert a little bit.
Years ago, when I was single, I lived in San Francisco, had no social life whatsoever, no game.
It was before online dating.
I mean, meeting somebody was really, really hard, pre-internet.
And I joined a group called the Spinsters.
Well, I didn't join them.
I went to an event that they had.
Spinsters were young women.
Who were single, and they had an ironic name, the spinsters.
And they would have these big parties in San Francisco and other places, I think.
And they would invite men.
And it was just basically a way to meet people.
So I went to one of these events with my friend, Josh.
And we walked in, and we looked around, and we said to ourselves, hmm, not exactly the most attractive room.
I don't want to be unkind, but it wasn't exactly what we were hoping for.
With one exception. Across the room, there was one unusually attractive woman, and she sort of stood out as the most attractive woman in the entire place.
And so I said to my friend, well, this is a disaster.
Basically, I'm paraphrasing, but we wasted our night.
I'm just going to go over to the most attractive woman in the room, And, you know, I'll flame out in about a second and a half, and then we'll be done.
You know, we just go home.
So I walked directly up to the most attractive woman in the room, and she was my girlfriend for 11 months.
Now... If you had asked me what were my odds, I would have said pretty close to zero.
Pretty close to zero.
And it turns out that other people were intimidated and didn't talk to her.
I heard this problem that Cher had a problem that men were intimidated, you know, years ago.
And so she had a trouble getting a date.
They were just intimidated. Now, why was I able to walk up to someone that I could normally not walk up to?
It's because I'd given up.
I had absolutely given up.
There was nothing for me here.
I just said, well, doesn't matter.
I don't know her.
If she turns me down, nothing lost.
The moment you realize that your despair is your freedom, you're free.
Have you heard the phrase, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose?
You've heard that, right?
It's a famous song. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
How about that college class you were going to sign up for?
How about that sport you wanted to get involved in?
How about that motorcycle you wanted?
Too dangerous, right? You're free.
Every one of you who is depressed and anxious, you're free.
Because nothing you do will be worse than the way you feel right now.
Nothing. Do something.
Do something dangerous.
Not dangerous physically.
Motorcycle might be a bad recommendation.
Do something psychologically dangerous.
Take a chance. Put yourself out there.
Flame out. Get killed.
You know, just get smashed.
Just go do it.
You're free. You're free.
Alright. If you want to meet people, here's the best way to do it.
You have to join activities.
There is no other way to meet people and form lasting friendships.
Hear this clearly.
There's no other way to do it.
You have to join an activity.
A club. A sport.
A gym. An organization.
A political movement. Nothing else.
You can't just make a friend.
Like, good luck.
You could try.
But I don't think I've ever seen it work.
Hiya, Bob.
Hearing good things about you.
I think we could be friends.
It doesn't work. Do something.
Join a thing. Make a sport.
Form a club of your own.
Why would you not form a club of your own?
Because you're afraid nobody would come, right?
What's the difference? You're as good as dead.
You're depressed. You're anxious.
You hate your life. You're thinking about putting a...
I can't say that here, but you're thinking about maybe life isn't worth it.
I won't say more than that.
You're free. You're absolutely free.
Go have some fun. Now, I've got to tell you, I've used this technique a number of times.
And man, does it work.
It really works.
You're free. Just remember that people criticizing you are narcissists.
They are broken. Get yourself some friends.
It will help most of your problems.
Most of your problems.
Or you don't have good friends.
Most of your problems.
Go get some activities.
Get some friends. All right.
In this same vein, and I've got a few more minutes here.
I saw a tweet on this, and I'd just like to amplify it.
We're going to spend a lot of time criticizing our leaders.
For the pandemic response.
I just feel like we need some humility about that.
Because I just don't think it was reasonable to imagine all of our leaders were going to guess right.
Because they didn't have data.
There was a lot of guessing.
So let's give them a break.
We do have to be rough about looking at what went wrong.
We just have to do that.
But I think in terms of the people, You can still say they made a mistake, but I think the people were good, right?
I was just going to say Cuomo.
Say what you will about Governor Cuomo.
He didn't want anybody to die.
He worked really hard.
He's smart. He's well-meaning.
Did he make a mistake?
Well, he argues no.
You know, there are extenuated circumstances, he would say.
But I don't feel like we need to have an answer to that.
Because the answer I want is, did the leader take it seriously?
Did he work all day and all night?
Was he capable or she?
Yes. Did he care?
Yes. Did he make a horrible mistake?
Maybe. Maybe.
But I don't think you can hate them for that.
You could hate the outcome.
There's a funny movement going on to make Democrats accept their own thinking, and it goes like this, that if you're a company or a college that doesn't have enough diversity, and you're a white member of that group, let's say you're a white person who's a professor at Harvard.
I'll just pick that.
Let's say you thought that Harvard did not have enough diversity in the teachers.
You should quit. If you take it seriously, then equity, the quit and equity, is the important part.
If you don't take it seriously, and you're going to keep your nice white person job at the top of the heap, and you're complaining about other people who should do more at the bottom to make things more equal, well, fuck you.
Fuck you. Right?
If you've got a nice job and you're complaining about all the lack of diversity, quit your job.
And help a black or brown person get your job.
If you're serious about it.
If you're not serious about it, shut the fuck up.
We don't care. Alright?
So, put the quit in equity.
And let's hold the rich white people to their own philosophy.
We're not asking them to do anything that isn't consistent with their own beliefs.
That's all we ask. Just follow your own beliefs and we will respect you for that.
Glenn Greenwald had a...
I feel like I mention Glenn Greenwald every day and it's worth it every day.
If you want to follow one really good Twitter account, Follow Glenn Greenwald.
It's just like a global treasure at this point.
So he was talking about fact-checking.
PolitiFact, I guess, had fact-checked the idea that the virus could have escaped from the lab.
They called it a debunked conspiracy theory.
So they used to call it a debunked conspiracy theory.
But now they say that qualified people say it's at least something we need to look into.
So PolitiFact changed their fact from total debunked conspiracy theory to, oh yeah, all the smart people are saying this, that it might be true, that it escaped from the lab.
And Glenn points out accurately that fact-checking, I'll just read his words because he says it so well, he goes, fact-checking, like virtually everything the corporate media does to feign superiority, is a total scam.
Just another way for them to smuggle their own ideologically driven disinformation and conspiracy theories under a more elevated facade.
I love that turn of words, an elevated facade.
That's some good writing right there.
You can write for a long time without coming up with a phrase under a more elevated facade.
That's just good writing.
Anyway... You see this all the time.
So the way to make your fake news look legitimate is to have a fake fact-checking organization telling people it's legitimate.
It's like the greatest scam.
You know, if people are not trusting you, form an organization of people who say you're good.
Now, Rasmussen weighed in on social media to point out that it's very similar, Rasmussen tweets, This sounds eerily like the digital pollsters' rating and grading schemes.
Feigned superiority and prowess coupled with smug and atrocious in-house election forecasting.
So Rasmussen points out that while Rasmussen is unusually accurate compared to most pollsters, they get the most abuse from other pollsters.
Because the other pollsters don't want you to think that they're bad and Rasmussen is more accurate.
So watch out for your fake polls and your fake fact chicken.
It's going to be a lot of it. Have you noticed on Amazon, if you're a book author or if you've read reviews, have you noticed that there will always be this kind of review?
It goes like this.
I really like the author of this book for some other thing.
But this book, everything is wrong about it.
Because he gets all the wrong answers, and he's not the one who's qualified to talk about this thing.
But I sure am.
And so I, as the reviewer, will tell you how much better I could have written this book, and how the sections I didn't like really should have been edited out, and if only it could have been written more along the great thinking that is common to people like me, And less like the bad thinking from this author.
Have you seen those?
Every book review.
Or every book gets some of those.
And those are narcissists.
Those are people who are broken, and they're finding every avenue they can to assert some superiority.
So they write a review, give you a one star, that tells you, you know, if I had written this book, I would have done a better job.
It has nothing to do with reviewing the book.
It's about a narcissist who is broken, flailing out and trying to fix the pain they're in, because they can't understand why this author is getting money and fame when they're getting none of that, and they're so much smarter, so much smarter than all these authors with their best-selling books.
So, I used to be bothered by it, but only recently have I come to understand that these are just broken people.
No more different than a street person who throws a rock at you.
I mean, you don't like the rock, but you look at the street person, and you should have more empathy or pity than anger.
Haters gonna hate. Yes, but I think the hate comes from a specific place.
It comes from a broken self-esteem, and it is my hypothesis that That there are more people with broken self-esteem because of social media than at any time in history.
And that all of these broken people are flailing out at everybody else until we're all broken.
It's basically self-esteem as a virus.
It's a frickin' virus.
The broken people are breaking as many people as they can touch because it makes them feel better.
So, there's your advice.
Criticism is just a flag that says I'm broken.
Right? Now, there's such a thing as valid criticism, but you know when you see it, right?
Somebody says, you know, here's another way you could have done this.
It would have been faster. Well, that's okay.
Or, you know, that's not the hat I would have worn.
This other one would go with your outfit.
Maybe that's being helpful.
But you can tell the narcissist they're just broken.
Don't let it break you.
You've got some techniques now, and I think you're going to be a lot better when it's over.
Go get yourself some friends and you'll find your mental health problems feel a lot better.
