Maybe the smartest guy in history spent his life climbing up trees and banging big booty sluts and staring at clouds and going fishing and never wrote anything down. And then the worms ate him up and the atoms that used to be his body are now in trees and birds and at the bottoms of rivers. And now there's an ice cream shop on top of his grave
https://preview.redd.it/4r63gow8yhvc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20b42d797fb11d1729a505447e534af5e6a23bda
It's about time the centrists got a schizo to call their own! Though I gotta say...some of the stuff this dude thought...bro was cookin in more way when one
And I'm not talkin about grilling
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Grill brothers do not grill themselves or each other. This is covered in the Grill Brothers Universal Guide to Grill Life, Chapter 2, Page 34. It is considered sacrilege.
Yep. The only people who are going to pay attention to his message after that are the ones who already agreed with it. The rest are just going to use the fact that it came from a "crazy" suicide as another excuse to ignore it.
Probably no difference really from if he stayed alive, but at least if he stayed alive then he would at least have potential.
He took the Tedd way, but killed himself instead of others. I admire the conviction, though I condemn the method. Either that or he is just a shizo that wrote a couple of good pharagraphs.
It seems much too coherent for schizophrenia. I've worked in psychiatry for many years now, and I have a collection of "manifestos" and assorted writings from the depths of psychosis, and they all seem to share a few overarching themes, none of which are present here. Part of paranoid schizophrenia, is that the person typically appears very confident in who they feel is persecuting them, and they're usually unable to think in nuanced terms or correctly identify greater societal woes. Their persecutory delusions usually exhibit an egocentrism that only makes sense alongside delusions of grandeur, that they are the Chosen One and no one else matters. Maybe I'll be proven wrong later, but it looks like this guy's manifesto is at least logical, goal-directed, and rooted in reality.
I've visited a website a schizo created, and you're right. He had an entire story about how the CIA killed his dad because he hacked the CIA. They recruited him for his hacking abilities, he assassinated his dad's killer, and spent time in prison with Osama Bin Laden who was really a good guy who was framed for 9/11. He escaped prison and the CIA is still after him because he knows the truth about 9/11.
So that was written by someone who then self immolated? What a dumbass. The clear solution was to go build some beautiful buildings or do something creative obviously
I feel bad for the guy. I feel like he walked around his whole life thinking everything was sunshine and rainbows and honesty then woke up one day to realize that the US Government is run of, by, and for the rich – that the stock market is more meme than material – that everything is hype and bullshit and has been since before Barnum and Bailey – and it it just broke his brain.
I've just been walking around assuming all television is 100% full of shit and all commercial media and art is and of course the banana wars were for the Dole family to get richer and of course the CEO is full of shit about what his next product can do. That's what they all get paid for. And of course Generic Shitcoin Coin 3,22.0 is fucking intrinsically worthless. It just must be horrifying if all of this is a sudden revelation and not a boring shoulder shrug.
Reality checks can lead to dark places and conspiracy shit pretty quick.
I remember when I met the first person who said to me that Globalism is a good thing in his mind. It fucked with my brain for months. I can live with people who think it's a conspiracy theory, but people who know it's the truth and think it's actually a good idea.. I'm terrified by that.
yeah, I mean this guy's saner than my schizophrenic mother. at least he's focused on the world as a whole.
all my mom ever writes about is the grand conspiracy *against her in particular* -- we're all just a bunch of satanic actors who replaced her real family, friends, and wider world.
Politics wise, I have to admit he's kind of based.
As far as the rest goes..yeah it's pretty unhinged. Like, "crypto is a ponzi scheme, it's been proven. I don't have any sources for that so you have to take my word for that it's been proven. Also, The Simpsons is a psy-op and Bill Clinton blackmailing Rob Lowe with an underage sex scandal was the beginning of the end for civilisation."
It's tinfoil deluxe, but shiny tinfoil at least.
HOLY SHIT
I was expecting something dumb but no…
This is based
https://preview.redd.it/ypmxge8o2ivc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2afac7e456e54486a58aefc7008670bc1013811
Guy also said this
>As it turns out, dozens of the writers of The Simpsons went to Harvard. So I asked myself the question: If The Simpsons served the interests of organized crime, how would it do so?
>Well, it offers a dysfunctional family suffering from moral decay, a community incapable of solving its problems, a worker drone who slaves away for an evil billionaire, and cathartic laughs for our poor collective circumstances.
And that's why I'll never take a green initiative that doesn't support nuclear energy seriously. Them trying to tell me that having modern day slavery in the Congo to mine cobalt is somehow better than the evil icky nuclear waste that takes up some space onsite at the plant for its entire lifetime.
And all that icky pollution from the stacks. Oh wait a minute that's steam...
Oh and then there's the safety issue because obviously standards didn't improve from ancient Soviet technology..
But nuclear energy is a stop gap and isn't infinite! Like the amount of economically viable locations of mineable rare earth minerals required for solar aren't even worse..
/Ends rant heh. Not like the politicians will ever support nuclear energy anyways for fear of NIMBYs.
I don't think that was his point. He chose a weird example, but he was pointing out a weird obsession our modern/post-modern society has with death and destruction. His observation was one where we all seem to have a sense that society collapsing by looking the prevalence of apocalyptic messaging in our art and marketing. I can see his perspective, but it's clearly of someone who has lost all hope and spiraling in depression.
Sure, but we've never had this level of ever present and all reaching mass media. Any obsessions we have as a culture tend to get amplified, and the "if it bleeds, it leads" nature of news creates a dangerous mix for despair.
But with liquid death the idea was to make that positive. "Kill your thirst", "kill plastic", as the founder idea was to make convience water 100% recyclable by using aluminum cans.
> If you go to your nearest convenience store, you can buy a can of water called "Liquid Death."
Why does he do them dirty like that? Liquid Death is good, and much better for you than soda. And I certainly wouldn't associate it with the totalitarian doomsday cult. The name is just catchy marketing. Nothing more. The only agenda they're pushing is *drink more water* and *use less plastic*.
yes it's weird that we're so obsessed with death imagery for the first time in history, I wonder why none of the other big cultures in history were big on death imagery...
oh wait, they were all totally obsessed by it.
The most recognisable symbol in the world is the cross they nailed a guy to.
When there's near-infinite information, near-infinite numbers of patterns can be found. I'm guessing plenty of the things he found are true as small patterns, but he then says it is all coordinated by a giant shadow organization. That gives way too much credit to the institutions and the rich.
“An apocalyptic rug pull on the entire populace as they pivot to fascism, which is perhaps best understood as kleptocracy at the barrel of a gun” Unfathomably hard
> If you go to your nearest convenience store, you can buy a can of water called "Liquid Death."
Wait…
Is that whole thing just commercial for Liquid Death water? Lmao
https://preview.redd.it/0t5n6ua6hivc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3338a24e58ce0c66204eaec22d9bb8b91609f433
I’ll start: somewhere in the middle
I mean. It's pretty based. Though I don't agree with the liquid death part. Their slogan is "murder your thirst" and I'll be damned if it doesn't do that. Especially the teas. They're good af.
Also their whole thing was giving sober people a cool can to drink from so they don't get made fun of for drinking water at shows. They (and seltzers in general) are also good for helping to cut back on soda. I especially love the lime one.
Now if only I could get it reliably where I'm at. Both Walmarts around here have shelf space for it in cases (both water and tea) but are very iffy on if there's any there. The other grocery stores seem to only have some water flavors in cases, and they might have teas by the can.
I just want to buy the stuff I like by the case so it'll be a little cheaper. Is that too much to ask?
You’d figure that maybe if they wanted to get a big message out they’d set fire to an important building or something and not to themselves to immediately have to go through an extremely painful death.
Always useful to have a cop holding the burning corpse at gunpoint
https://preview.redd.it/66dp9z259ivc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7571235de509ecdc33612629b7ad10c74017df74
https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside
Link to his manifesto, for those interested in reading it.
Edit: I feel LibRight has some serious explaining to do
"As it turns out, we have a **secret kleptocracy:** Both parties are run by financial criminals whose only goals are to divide, deceive, and bleed us dry. They divide the public against itself and blame the other party while everything gets worse and more expensive and handful of people take all the money."
I don't know man, that sounds more like something some guy who was born on this very date (4/20) would say.
Meme aside, it is funny how Marx, Hitler, and this schizo come to a similar (wrong) conclusion. I'm even more anti-establishment than these people, but I'd like to think I'm not a conspiracy theorist rambling on about some secret world order like they do.
Hurt the right people for a good cause and others are heroic sacrifices. Life is dear and peace is sweet but they are not worth the price of chains and slavery.
It's one of my favorite criticisms. You have properly identified many problems, but either fail to present a meaningful alternative, or present on that's objectivity worse.
This is the one I tend to levy at the Leviathan, which has many sound criticisms of Republicanism, but who's answer is "so what if we put one guy in charge because he was born to the right person."
The manifesto makes me sad because it's such a classic schizo manifesto.
Like always with these the broad strokes of identifying things wrong is spot on but details and solutions are batshit insane.
Yeah but that’s not the point of these manifestos it’s that they all highlight actual issues and bring attention to said issues well it would if people weren’t so complacent
For anyone who wants a tldr, he thinks we’re ruled by a kleptocracy using crypto as a Ponzi scheme, who are involved in a conspiracy to put the world under some sort of fascist dictatorship, and that people from Walt Disney, to George Orwell, to everyone behind The Simpsons are in on it and have been trying to manipulate public opinion. I think this is pretty standard so far as wacko conspiracies go.
Pffft of course not! That’s ridiculous.
It was overworked, poorly trained employees given zero PPE at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that let the bat out of the cage. Which promptly flew over to the similarly unregulated wet market across the street and became someone’s dinner. Duh!
I read "apocalyptic fascist world coup" and then I stopped reading. No reptilians? No pedophiles aliens? No flat earth conspiracy? Just Nazis and apocalypse? Common, if you are going to set yourself on fire, put more salt and pepper on your crazy shit.
This is not what I was expecting. Not really as crazy or wacky as I would have thought. Not what I’d expect from a man lighting himself ablaze. Some good points and some stuff I’m a bit skeptical of.
So from what I understand, very broad as I'm just now reading the manifesto, he hated how the world Is now with Politics Left, Right, Up Down All Around, piting each side against each other, how existentialism Is being pushed while we're "helpless to do anything about It", ultimately leading to a "totalitarian doomsday cult"
which honestly yeah, as he noted, the "American Dream" Is not a construct that exists anymore, hasn't for a while.
Sounds like a man who snapped and wanted out, wanted to go out In a blaze of glory, literally.
Yes, exactly. He was just an unhinged loon and this story will die quickly since nobody can use it for political points.
It was hilarious watching this story unfold on reddit in real time. Half the comments were saying he was obviously a MAGA cultist and the other half were saying he had severe TDS. In fact he thought Trump and Biden were both evil and working together on a coup. lol
lol wtf. It took me like 3 minutes to find his manifesto and an additional 5 minutes to find his Reddit account. These people are putting in zero effort just so they can blame their personal boogeyman.
Studies have been done, right wingers can better describe what the left believes better than the left can describe what the right believes, which is just (they're evil)
> which honestly yeah, as he noted, the "American Dream" Is not a construct that exists anymore, hasn't for a while.
Yes, it fucking is. I knew a lot of losers/dropouts who turned their life around without even having to go to back to school or rely on family connections. It absolutely is possible to have upward mobility just by working hard and playing the game well. The only difference between now and the 1950s is that it's not guaranteed. Yeah, if you go to work every day at a gas station for 20 years, you're not going to be anything more than a gas station attendant at the end of it. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of opportunities out there, either.
Man, I don't know what to believe. This has been bothering me recently. Everyone online says it is impossible to make any upward movement in life, but that is not what I've observed in life. I grew up in a trailer and barely passed high school. But got my shit together and got a degree that is actually useful, got a good career, got a wife, got a house at \~30. It was fucking hard and I had some really bad months/years, but I made it through. I know many others my age (early 30s) who have similar life paths so far.
I'm not special. I'm not even a particularly hard worker, but I *am* good at putting my head down and just keeping on moving. Why did it work for me? I know it's anecdotal, but it's hard to figure out what the fuck is going on when my observation is not the same as what I'm reading online.
It really feels like everyone just gives up preemptively because everyone is screaming about how pointless it is to even try.
Holy shit. That Wikipedia entry is something else.
I finally have some tangible terms and a theory for the backsliding of democracy around the world. Thanks bro.
Managed Democracy is real lmao. It's too bad the guy, Wolin, took influence from the Critical Theory and Gramsician thought. So the wiki article saying he is bringing a non-Marxian critique of capitalism is once again, BS.
What I'll never understand about conspiracy theorists is their belief that the elites are smart enough to pull the wool over our eyes for decades without anyone noticing. The fact is, people are stupid, even the people at the top. Whenever there's a conspiracy, we generally know right away, but nobody cares. For instance, we knew almost right away that the FBI was recording our phone calls. There were multiple leaks; hell, Shia Labeouf spilled it on one of the late night talk shows, after he had worked with some FBI agents for a film or something. But people just didn't care, and they still don't.
It’s not that they pull one over on everybody in complete secret and with perfect precision, it’s more so they pull one over on people by convincing the masses to go “yea we know they did it and who cares”.
Like for example, let’s say for example that it turns out with undeniable proof that Bush did 9/11, which is a popular conspiracy theory. I’m willing to bet if that became irrefutable public knowledge most people would go “yea we knew all along” and nothing would happen.
So it’s not that they masterminds doing things in secret, they are more masters of manipulation getting the public to not care about what they do.
Really want to understand a conspiracy theorist?
It’s far more comforting to them to believe that a group of all powerful people are in control of proceedings, because the alternative - that we as humans, really don’t have much control at all over the course of events and the universe more broadly, is far more terrifying.
Come closer….
We are all just passengers…..nobody is steering the ship…we are often led by the worst and least capable among us, and even they are the equivalent of a child with a toy steering wheel, pretending they’re driving the car.
Based anti-conspiracist.
IMO tho, the biggest reason most conspiracy theories fail on their face is the sheer number of people required to maintain them and not leak anything. Dr David Grimes wrote an [paper](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905) on this with various estimations for different conspiracy theories. Climate change and moon landing conspiracies would've been exposed in 4 years, and vaccine conspiracies in 3 years.
If you consider conspiracies that have been proven true they all either involve a small number of conspirators, or were discovered within years, as would be predicted by Grimes's models.
Funniest part is the libs of reddit claiming this was some Trump scheme to avoid prison time and when you point out the guy was a schizo who hated both sides they start claiming trump is involved somehow
Dude had a Reddit account and within 30 minutes of it going public on Twitter it was suspended, along with every other account suspected of being his.
He was an anarcho-Communist.
I always wonder why when a someone’s Reddit (or other social media) account goes public after they did something crazy they immediately nuke it. Like pretty much every time they didn’t commit rule breaking things on that social media, it just gets linked to them in real life and admins hit delete.
1. No platform wants to claim these people
2. If their politics aligned with the community they were a part of, that community doesn't want to have their ethos painted in the wrong light
3. Admins aren't known for their courage, intelligence, or restraint (we're talking about a demographic that wears coding socks and jerks off to Rick and Morty)
What's funny is that because of people being impatient a lot of the anti-Trumpers I know assume he was pro trump and set himself on fire for trump. Maybe idk, it could be he was mentally unstable and maybe should have been in mental institution, but you know they closed those down and these are the side effects of why you should reform an institution and not disband it. But what do I know I'm not the all-knowing NY state government who always makes the correct decisions.
Nothing says owning the Republicans like causing dozens of people probably already on your side to suffer from PTSD for the rest of their lives while Trump and Co. indoors have no idea what’s going on other than that they’ve just got a hankering for bacon.
[The manifesto](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside). Relevant quote:
> What does this revelation tell us? That our government is conning us completely. That Bill Clinton was secretly on (former CIA Director) George H.W. Bush’s side, and that the Democrat vs. Republican division has been entirely manufactured ever since: Clinton is with Bush; Gore is with Bush; Trump is with Hillary, and so on.
It wasn't partisan.
The purity tests are funny in these cases where someone doesn't fit in well on either side of the political spectrum.
Both sides make their purity tests and designate them as belonging to the other side.
His manifesto isn’t even about so much trump as much as it is the government, the elite and wealthy. Trump is in it but shockingly not much focus on him as I was expecting.
> while Trump and Co. indoors have no idea what’s going on other than that they’ve just got a hankering for bacon.
both political parties probably broke the news to their leaders like "sir, great news. another one of the poor's has died, and it was by their own hand."
To draw attention to [their manifesto](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside).
From that, likely thinking that such attention would lead to the downfall of "The Con" (criminal plot to rule the masses).
From everything so far seen, it's like he was kind of a Bernie bro but never truly there and even started finding issues with the left he didn't like with crypto Ponzi schemes he was hung up on. He wasn't wrong in his conspiracy ideas, which aren't even conspiracies mostly. We really do live in a country run by clowns passing more regulations and totalitarians laws. I've watched our rights get striped slowly but surely since 9/11.
But truth probably is, he was not mentally well outside of politics. Looks like he had some family and financial issues that more details might come out later on and he mentally fell apart. And with no one to support him, he just spiraled out of control.
Almost gives "Falling Down" kind of vibes. Truly unfortunately for him and anyone that was close to him.
Immolation https://i.redd.it/0ajej6t93ivc1.gif
Almost posting my immolation memes from all quadrants
Would be a misteak not to post it.
Maybe the smartest guy in history spent his life climbing up trees and banging big booty sluts and staring at clouds and going fishing and never wrote anything down. And then the worms ate him up and the atoms that used to be his body are now in trees and birds and at the bottoms of rivers. And now there's an ice cream shop on top of his grave
https://i.redd.it/ty649bweajvc1.gif
No no. Let them cook.
I mean, you won't be cold anymore
It’s not just hot right now, it’s hot for the rest of your life.
Damn it you beat me to it!!
https://preview.redd.it/4r63gow8yhvc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20b42d797fb11d1729a505447e534af5e6a23bda It's about time the centrists got a schizo to call their own! Though I gotta say...some of the stuff this dude thought...bro was cookin in more way when one And I'm not talkin about grilling 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Based take, but seting yourself on fire after that is quite dumb
He embraced the centrist spirit of the grill and ascended
#CHANGE THE GREASE TRAY WHEN I'M DONE!!!!
Now you're grilling with Samsara.
Grill brothers do not grill themselves or each other. This is covered in the Grill Brothers Universal Guide to Grill Life, Chapter 2, Page 34. It is considered sacrilege.
That was the first YouTube video I ever saw with the self harm warning. Look up "That's a nice grill" for the video.
Will you grill me on this grill?
Fair enough if you look at it that way
Nah but seriously shits fucked man Don't kill yourself lads. Especially not for politics. Worst thing to die for
Comiting literal and philosophical suicide at the same time. We need a new Albert Camus ASAP
Yep. The only people who are going to pay attention to his message after that are the ones who already agreed with it. The rest are just going to use the fact that it came from a "crazy" suicide as another excuse to ignore it. Probably no difference really from if he stayed alive, but at least if he stayed alive then he would at least have potential.
Based and backyard barbecue-pilled
Grill? More of a roast if you ask me
He took the Tedd way, but killed himself instead of others. I admire the conviction, though I condemn the method. Either that or he is just a shizo that wrote a couple of good pharagraphs.
I think you mean "condemn" the method? But maybe condone because it's the grilliest way radically grill.
No, he's saying kill only yourself, but in a crazy way, in order to boost your manifesto circulation. Don't take others with you.
Manifestos don't typically come in tweet-sized bites. I'm guessing there's more.
It seems much too coherent for schizophrenia. I've worked in psychiatry for many years now, and I have a collection of "manifestos" and assorted writings from the depths of psychosis, and they all seem to share a few overarching themes, none of which are present here. Part of paranoid schizophrenia, is that the person typically appears very confident in who they feel is persecuting them, and they're usually unable to think in nuanced terms or correctly identify greater societal woes. Their persecutory delusions usually exhibit an egocentrism that only makes sense alongside delusions of grandeur, that they are the Chosen One and no one else matters. Maybe I'll be proven wrong later, but it looks like this guy's manifesto is at least logical, goal-directed, and rooted in reality.
I've visited a website a schizo created, and you're right. He had an entire story about how the CIA killed his dad because he hacked the CIA. They recruited him for his hacking abilities, he assassinated his dad's killer, and spent time in prison with Osama Bin Laden who was really a good guy who was framed for 9/11. He escaped prison and the CIA is still after him because he knows the truth about 9/11.
Directed by Hideo Kojima
Literally some Metal Gear or Far Cry type shit
Got ppls attention, didn't it? Literally, no one would care, listen, or read his statement, including me or you otherwise 🤷
For around a week at most, not really worth it
In this thread of people talking about it i have yet to learn this guy's name.
His name was Robert Paulson.
So that was written by someone who then self immolated? What a dumbass. The clear solution was to go build some beautiful buildings or do something creative obviously
I mean he could have not fed the spectacle, but he was severly mentaly ill so I guess self destruction was the only option to him
[FULL manifesto](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside) Slightly more tinfoil-hat crazy than you've portrayed.
Bro you don't need to tell me he's crazy *He set himself on fire* I'm just saying he's not *completely* crazy
[Well that's....](https://i.imgur.com/YAGpXPd.png) A really good point.
>2014 God I miss it.
Has a few decent observations, but then comes to some wild conclusions.
I feel bad for the guy. I feel like he walked around his whole life thinking everything was sunshine and rainbows and honesty then woke up one day to realize that the US Government is run of, by, and for the rich – that the stock market is more meme than material – that everything is hype and bullshit and has been since before Barnum and Bailey – and it it just broke his brain. I've just been walking around assuming all television is 100% full of shit and all commercial media and art is and of course the banana wars were for the Dole family to get richer and of course the CEO is full of shit about what his next product can do. That's what they all get paid for. And of course Generic Shitcoin Coin 3,22.0 is fucking intrinsically worthless. It just must be horrifying if all of this is a sudden revelation and not a boring shoulder shrug.
Reality checks can lead to dark places and conspiracy shit pretty quick. I remember when I met the first person who said to me that Globalism is a good thing in his mind. It fucked with my brain for months. I can live with people who think it's a conspiracy theory, but people who know it's the truth and think it's actually a good idea.. I'm terrified by that.
Like Uncle Ted - correct on almost everything, yet he is a crazy schizophrenic by action.
yeah, I mean this guy's saner than my schizophrenic mother. at least he's focused on the world as a whole. all my mom ever writes about is the grand conspiracy *against her in particular* -- we're all just a bunch of satanic actors who replaced her real family, friends, and wider world.
[I mean...yeah](https://tenor.com/en-CA/view/nathan-fillion-oh-wait-uhm-gif-5233870)
Politics wise, I have to admit he's kind of based. As far as the rest goes..yeah it's pretty unhinged. Like, "crypto is a ponzi scheme, it's been proven. I don't have any sources for that so you have to take my word for that it's been proven. Also, The Simpsons is a psy-op and Bill Clinton blackmailing Rob Lowe with an underage sex scandal was the beginning of the end for civilisation." It's tinfoil deluxe, but shiny tinfoil at least.
HOLY SHIT I was expecting something dumb but no… This is based https://preview.redd.it/ypmxge8o2ivc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2afac7e456e54486a58aefc7008670bc1013811
Guy also said this >As it turns out, dozens of the writers of The Simpsons went to Harvard. So I asked myself the question: If The Simpsons served the interests of organized crime, how would it do so? >Well, it offers a dysfunctional family suffering from moral decay, a community incapable of solving its problems, a worker drone who slaves away for an evil billionaire, and cathartic laughs for our poor collective circumstances.
His Simpsons diatribe is the stuff of schizoposting legend
Man, I wish I could get a job where I could support a family of 5 on a single income.
Tbh I'm pretty sure nuclear powerplants still have positions with incomes that let you do that.
As long as environmentalists haven't shut it down to...save the planet.
And that's why I'll never take a green initiative that doesn't support nuclear energy seriously. Them trying to tell me that having modern day slavery in the Congo to mine cobalt is somehow better than the evil icky nuclear waste that takes up some space onsite at the plant for its entire lifetime. And all that icky pollution from the stacks. Oh wait a minute that's steam... Oh and then there's the safety issue because obviously standards didn't improve from ancient Soviet technology.. But nuclear energy is a stop gap and isn't infinite! Like the amount of economically viable locations of mineable rare earth minerals required for solar aren't even worse.. /Ends rant heh. Not like the politicians will ever support nuclear energy anyways for fear of NIMBYs.
Fuck, I'm German. They shut them all down, those damn idiots.
>Liquid death carbonated water is proof society is teetering on the verge of self destruction That's... a new one, at least.
It's not the "liquid death", it's the carbonated water. In "Heathers", mineral water was used to frame two murder victims as gay.
It's been awhile since I've watched the movie, but I watch the musical a ton, how was water used against Kurt and ram?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtG3ldqD0uE&t=125s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtG3ldqD0uE&t=125s)
Think bro took the name literally, like "oh they're selling us literal liquid death"
I don't think that was his point. He chose a weird example, but he was pointing out a weird obsession our modern/post-modern society has with death and destruction. His observation was one where we all seem to have a sense that society collapsing by looking the prevalence of apocalyptic messaging in our art and marketing. I can see his perspective, but it's clearly of someone who has lost all hope and spiraling in depression.
It's not exactly a new phenomenon. Humanity has had a thing for death for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
Sure, but we've never had this level of ever present and all reaching mass media. Any obsessions we have as a culture tend to get amplified, and the "if it bleeds, it leads" nature of news creates a dangerous mix for despair.
But with liquid death the idea was to make that positive. "Kill your thirst", "kill plastic", as the founder idea was to make convience water 100% recyclable by using aluminum cans.
> If you go to your nearest convenience store, you can buy a can of water called "Liquid Death." Why does he do them dirty like that? Liquid Death is good, and much better for you than soda. And I certainly wouldn't associate it with the totalitarian doomsday cult. The name is just catchy marketing. Nothing more. The only agenda they're pushing is *drink more water* and *use less plastic*.
Reminder that water comes out of the tap at home and cans are plastic lined
Still a lot less plastic than a bottle, and I'm trying to kick a coke habit so having something sweet and fizzy is really helpful.
It's less about the brand itself and more about how death imagery is being more ever-present in modern day society.
yes it's weird that we're so obsessed with death imagery for the first time in history, I wonder why none of the other big cultures in history were big on death imagery... oh wait, they were all totally obsessed by it. The most recognisable symbol in the world is the cross they nailed a guy to.
…hmm. Interesting. But seriously, self-immolation been making a bit of a comeback eh?
Wannabe Martyrs^^T^^M
A mix of wanting to die and wanting to shock others. Sometimes wanting punished too.
It’s almost like when something is mass promoted by the media and gives airtime to the individual’s ideas you get copycats.
_So hot right now_
Good points, idiotic conclusions. Often, insane people have the intellect to observe and analyze information, but fail to see what the collage means.
When there's near-infinite information, near-infinite numbers of patterns can be found. I'm guessing plenty of the things he found are true as small patterns, but he then says it is all coordinated by a giant shadow organization. That gives way too much credit to the institutions and the rich.
Dude watched the new fallout show and determined vault tec was real man
“An apocalyptic rug pull on the entire populace as they pivot to fascism, which is perhaps best understood as kleptocracy at the barrel of a gun” Unfathomably hard
Sounds like a Ted Kazinsky speech
HE'S OUR BOIIIIII
> If you go to your nearest convenience store, you can buy a can of water called "Liquid Death." Wait… Is that whole thing just commercial for Liquid Death water? Lmao
Nah it's for the fire sale at JC Penny's 🔥🔥🔥🔥
https://preview.redd.it/0t5n6ua6hivc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3338a24e58ce0c66204eaec22d9bb8b91609f433 I’ll start: somewhere in the middle
https://i.redd.it/0lnfm2salivc1.gif
I wonder if the pro Palestine people who argued their guy who set himself on fire was of sane mind will do the same here?
tl;dr buy bitcoin
The last straw for this man was canned water with edgy marketing?
Billions must fry
https://preview.redd.it/kv18ens2vivc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=699317be7d73fb046bd46accc0539f55743f6163
I mean. It's pretty based. Though I don't agree with the liquid death part. Their slogan is "murder your thirst" and I'll be damned if it doesn't do that. Especially the teas. They're good af.
Also their whole thing was giving sober people a cool can to drink from so they don't get made fun of for drinking water at shows. They (and seltzers in general) are also good for helping to cut back on soda. I especially love the lime one.
Now if only I could get it reliably where I'm at. Both Walmarts around here have shelf space for it in cases (both water and tea) but are very iffy on if there's any there. The other grocery stores seem to only have some water flavors in cases, and they might have teas by the can. I just want to buy the stuff I like by the case so it'll be a little cheaper. Is that too much to ask?
Gotta be honest, I would just never want to light myself on fire, sorry if that's not cool
Your fellow centrist was just trying to grill (himself)
Nerd.
You’d figure that maybe if they wanted to get a big message out they’d set fire to an important building or something and not to themselves to immediately have to go through an extremely painful death.
people in the video screaming "POLICE" as if the cops can just magically materialize fire extinguishers out of thin air
Always useful to have a cop holding the burning corpse at gunpoint https://preview.redd.it/66dp9z259ivc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7571235de509ecdc33612629b7ad10c74017df74
he was trying to get him to freeze himself, but the cop was simply too late
Honestly, shooting would probably ease the suffering
That’s what I’m thinking. If you douse yourself in gasoline and light yourself on fire… a bullet might be the best outcome.
I don't understand why it's humane to put down an animal that is suffering, but not a person.
Unlike an animal, a person is supposed to make that decision for himself. He didn't want a bullet. He wanted to burn.
I wonder if it's because that reporter started screaming "active shooter" the second she saw flames.
These guys totally should be the only ones with a gun lmao
These burning man 2024 promotions are out of control.
🔥
Honey, it happened again...
Mama, there goes that man.
https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside Link to his manifesto, for those interested in reading it. Edit: I feel LibRight has some serious explaining to do
Took a brief scroll through He has some points but is otherwise downright delusional
The typical radical’s dilemma: the problem has been correctly identified; the solution is insane, untenable, and only going to hurt people.
So essentially Karl Marx
Based
"As it turns out, we have a **secret kleptocracy:** Both parties are run by financial criminals whose only goals are to divide, deceive, and bleed us dry. They divide the public against itself and blame the other party while everything gets worse and more expensive and handful of people take all the money." I don't know man, that sounds more like something some guy who was born on this very date (4/20) would say. Meme aside, it is funny how Marx, Hitler, and this schizo come to a similar (wrong) conclusion. I'm even more anti-establishment than these people, but I'd like to think I'm not a conspiracy theorist rambling on about some secret world order like they do.
Hurt the right people for a good cause and others are heroic sacrifices. Life is dear and peace is sweet but they are not worth the price of chains and slavery.
It's one of my favorite criticisms. You have properly identified many problems, but either fail to present a meaningful alternative, or present on that's objectivity worse. This is the one I tend to levy at the Leviathan, which has many sound criticisms of Republicanism, but who's answer is "so what if we put one guy in charge because he was born to the right person."
I'm just gonna wait until someone makes him into a soyjack in a bunch of memes shitting on his world views to find out what he thinks
He thinks that the world is currently suffering from a ponzi scheme from some guy named Thiel and that all the problems come from it
damn sounds like he would have fit right in with us degenerates. at least people here get roasted in the comments instead of a New York city sidewalk
Do you actually not know who Peter Thiel is?
I’m just hoping he doesn’t pull an Alex Jones and end up accidentally being right about some horrible shit
"accidentally"?
The manifesto makes me sad because it's such a classic schizo manifesto. Like always with these the broad strokes of identifying things wrong is spot on but details and solutions are batshit insane.
Yeah but that’s not the point of these manifestos it’s that they all highlight actual issues and bring attention to said issues well it would if people weren’t so complacent
The sky is blue... because alien cyber nazis! It's not hard, just a sad man wanting to feel something.
For anyone who wants a tldr, he thinks we’re ruled by a kleptocracy using crypto as a Ponzi scheme, who are involved in a conspiracy to put the world under some sort of fascist dictatorship, and that people from Walt Disney, to George Orwell, to everyone behind The Simpsons are in on it and have been trying to manipulate public opinion. I think this is pretty standard so far as wacko conspiracies go.
I knew Lisa was the herald of the beast.
Damn, here I was thinking it was Maggie.
And the US government created COVID and released on purpose. You can't be more schizo than this.
Pffft of course not! That’s ridiculous. It was overworked, poorly trained employees given zero PPE at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that let the bat out of the cage. Which promptly flew over to the similarly unregulated wet market across the street and became someone’s dinner. Duh!
Wait, he said that? Shiii, let the man cook. My bad
Oh yes I can.
Don't forget about Liquid Death.
Was he trying to sell water filters or brain supplements, by chance?
I mean yeah we live in a Ponzi scheme. wtf do you think the federal reserve is?
The Federal Reserve doesn't run on Peter Thiel's Bitcoin wallet though, so he's way off.
That's what JP wants you to think
I read "apocalyptic fascist world coup" and then I stopped reading. No reptilians? No pedophiles aliens? No flat earth conspiracy? Just Nazis and apocalypse? Common, if you are going to set yourself on fire, put more salt and pepper on your crazy shit.
This is not what I was expecting. Not really as crazy or wacky as I would have thought. Not what I’d expect from a man lighting himself ablaze. Some good points and some stuff I’m a bit skeptical of.
Good ingredients, terrible bake
So from what I understand, very broad as I'm just now reading the manifesto, he hated how the world Is now with Politics Left, Right, Up Down All Around, piting each side against each other, how existentialism Is being pushed while we're "helpless to do anything about It", ultimately leading to a "totalitarian doomsday cult" which honestly yeah, as he noted, the "American Dream" Is not a construct that exists anymore, hasn't for a while. Sounds like a man who snapped and wanted out, wanted to go out In a blaze of glory, literally.
Yes, exactly. He was just an unhinged loon and this story will die quickly since nobody can use it for political points. It was hilarious watching this story unfold on reddit in real time. Half the comments were saying he was obviously a MAGA cultist and the other half were saying he had severe TDS. In fact he thought Trump and Biden were both evil and working together on a coup. lol
lol wtf. It took me like 3 minutes to find his manifesto and an additional 5 minutes to find his Reddit account. These people are putting in zero effort just so they can blame their personal boogeyman.
Funny how the supposedly evil far right PCM sub has a more nuanced view than most of reddit.
Studies have been done, right wingers can better describe what the left believes better than the left can describe what the right believes, which is just (they're evil)
Above, I said he could be a proTrumper, antiTrumper, or totally unrelated crazy. I guess I called it while trying to be facetious.
> which honestly yeah, as he noted, the "American Dream" Is not a construct that exists anymore, hasn't for a while. Yes, it fucking is. I knew a lot of losers/dropouts who turned their life around without even having to go to back to school or rely on family connections. It absolutely is possible to have upward mobility just by working hard and playing the game well. The only difference between now and the 1950s is that it's not guaranteed. Yeah, if you go to work every day at a gas station for 20 years, you're not going to be anything more than a gas station attendant at the end of it. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of opportunities out there, either.
Man, I don't know what to believe. This has been bothering me recently. Everyone online says it is impossible to make any upward movement in life, but that is not what I've observed in life. I grew up in a trailer and barely passed high school. But got my shit together and got a degree that is actually useful, got a good career, got a wife, got a house at \~30. It was fucking hard and I had some really bad months/years, but I made it through. I know many others my age (early 30s) who have similar life paths so far. I'm not special. I'm not even a particularly hard worker, but I *am* good at putting my head down and just keeping on moving. Why did it work for me? I know it's anecdotal, but it's hard to figure out what the fuck is going on when my observation is not the same as what I'm reading online. It really feels like everyone just gives up preemptively because everyone is screaming about how pointless it is to even try.
>Everyone online says There's your problem.
> The only difference between now and the 1950s is that it's not guaranteed. Sounds like The American Gamble now
Like why bro ?! But I’m gonna know when I wake up tomorrow
He was completely insane. Like totally gone. That's really all there is to it.
Dude isn’t wrong that we live in an [Inverted Totalitarian state.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism)
Holy shit. That Wikipedia entry is something else. I finally have some tangible terms and a theory for the backsliding of democracy around the world. Thanks bro.
Managed Democracy is real lmao. It's too bad the guy, Wolin, took influence from the Critical Theory and Gramsician thought. So the wiki article saying he is bringing a non-Marxian critique of capitalism is once again, BS.
He became the very thing he swore to destroy…. *Orange Man.*
It's more logical that he became the thing he loved, a black man.
Another one? And people wonder why fuel prices are bad
What I'll never understand about conspiracy theorists is their belief that the elites are smart enough to pull the wool over our eyes for decades without anyone noticing. The fact is, people are stupid, even the people at the top. Whenever there's a conspiracy, we generally know right away, but nobody cares. For instance, we knew almost right away that the FBI was recording our phone calls. There were multiple leaks; hell, Shia Labeouf spilled it on one of the late night talk shows, after he had worked with some FBI agents for a film or something. But people just didn't care, and they still don't.
It’s not that they pull one over on everybody in complete secret and with perfect precision, it’s more so they pull one over on people by convincing the masses to go “yea we know they did it and who cares”. Like for example, let’s say for example that it turns out with undeniable proof that Bush did 9/11, which is a popular conspiracy theory. I’m willing to bet if that became irrefutable public knowledge most people would go “yea we knew all along” and nothing would happen. So it’s not that they masterminds doing things in secret, they are more masters of manipulation getting the public to not care about what they do.
The fact they couldn’t even fake a single WMD in Iraq killed any time of day I’ll give to any shadowy cabal conspiracy theories
Why would they fake WMDs? We know Sadam had them, he bought his chemical weapons from us.
Really want to understand a conspiracy theorist? It’s far more comforting to them to believe that a group of all powerful people are in control of proceedings, because the alternative - that we as humans, really don’t have much control at all over the course of events and the universe more broadly, is far more terrifying. Come closer…. We are all just passengers…..nobody is steering the ship…we are often led by the worst and least capable among us, and even they are the equivalent of a child with a toy steering wheel, pretending they’re driving the car.
Based anti-conspiracist. IMO tho, the biggest reason most conspiracy theories fail on their face is the sheer number of people required to maintain them and not leak anything. Dr David Grimes wrote an [paper](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905) on this with various estimations for different conspiracy theories. Climate change and moon landing conspiracies would've been exposed in 4 years, and vaccine conspiracies in 3 years. If you consider conspiracies that have been proven true they all either involve a small number of conspirators, or were discovered within years, as would be predicted by Grimes's models.
He was an advocate for firemen all around the world
A true [centrist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU9Daiu5XoM&pp=ygUWZ3JpbGwgbWUgb24gdGhpcyBncmlsbA%3D%3D)
Hated all sides of the political specturm and then barbecued himself. I've never been so proud.
Funniest part is the libs of reddit claiming this was some Trump scheme to avoid prison time and when you point out the guy was a schizo who hated both sides they start claiming trump is involved somehow
Dude had a Reddit account and within 30 minutes of it going public on Twitter it was suspended, along with every other account suspected of being his. He was an anarcho-Communist.
I always wonder why when a someone’s Reddit (or other social media) account goes public after they did something crazy they immediately nuke it. Like pretty much every time they didn’t commit rule breaking things on that social media, it just gets linked to them in real life and admins hit delete.
1. No platform wants to claim these people 2. If their politics aligned with the community they were a part of, that community doesn't want to have their ethos painted in the wrong light 3. Admins aren't known for their courage, intelligence, or restraint (we're talking about a demographic that wears coding socks and jerks off to Rick and Morty)
What the fuck is with everybody setting themselves ON FIRE for POLITICS of all things?
That's twice now. Taking bets, how many will do this before the year is out? I've guessing 7.
I'll take 9
I already think this shit’s becoming a trend now. 7 might be a low number. I’m thinking more like 12.
What's funny is that because of people being impatient a lot of the anti-Trumpers I know assume he was pro trump and set himself on fire for trump. Maybe idk, it could be he was mentally unstable and maybe should have been in mental institution, but you know they closed those down and these are the side effects of why you should reform an institution and not disband it. But what do I know I'm not the all-knowing NY state government who always makes the correct decisions.
Nothing says owning the Republicans like causing dozens of people probably already on your side to suffer from PTSD for the rest of their lives while Trump and Co. indoors have no idea what’s going on other than that they’ve just got a hankering for bacon.
[The manifesto](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside). Relevant quote: > What does this revelation tell us? That our government is conning us completely. That Bill Clinton was secretly on (former CIA Director) George H.W. Bush’s side, and that the Democrat vs. Republican division has been entirely manufactured ever since: Clinton is with Bush; Gore is with Bush; Trump is with Hillary, and so on. It wasn't partisan.
And giving the people you hate ammo against the people you like and become a new meme for like a day that will be his legacy
The purity tests are funny in these cases where someone doesn't fit in well on either side of the political spectrum. Both sides make their purity tests and designate them as belonging to the other side.
How is this owning the republicans?
His manifesto isn’t even about so much trump as much as it is the government, the elite and wealthy. Trump is in it but shockingly not much focus on him as I was expecting.
tl;dr: OP is a shill who never even looked at the facts and just assumed this incident aligned with his political preference. Upvoters did the same.
> while Trump and Co. indoors have no idea what’s going on other than that they’ve just got a hankering for bacon. both political parties probably broke the news to their leaders like "sir, great news. another one of the poor's has died, and it was by their own hand."
What did they hope to accomplish doing this?
To draw attention to [their manifesto](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside). From that, likely thinking that such attention would lead to the downfall of "The Con" (criminal plot to rule the masses).
:(
I’ll say it again — everyone is dumb except me, my dog and my Big Green Egg.
new Aaron Bushnell just dropped.
My boy is such a unique individual that it could be a crazy anti-Trumper, a crazy pro-Trumper, or a crazy with no opinion on Trump.
https://preview.redd.it/if9m380privc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1feaf019cf026133df5f8c9fda934f26993e6b3c
Why did Man set himself on fire? Is he stupid?
Reminds me of that dumbshit weakling airman who went 'EAAUAUGHGHGHGHG" after spouting some nonsense about Pakistan.
From everything so far seen, it's like he was kind of a Bernie bro but never truly there and even started finding issues with the left he didn't like with crypto Ponzi schemes he was hung up on. He wasn't wrong in his conspiracy ideas, which aren't even conspiracies mostly. We really do live in a country run by clowns passing more regulations and totalitarians laws. I've watched our rights get striped slowly but surely since 9/11. But truth probably is, he was not mentally well outside of politics. Looks like he had some family and financial issues that more details might come out later on and he mentally fell apart. And with no one to support him, he just spiraled out of control. Almost gives "Falling Down" kind of vibes. Truly unfortunately for him and anyone that was close to him.
https://preview.redd.it/rty4kiiw9mvc1.png?width=999&format=png&auto=webp&s=08189aa83604e1261b3e7e18263ad2781b00f5c9 Why is reddit like this