'Irredeemable media' is such a funny concept to me because it's never used for stuff like Birth of a Nation or A Serbian Film. It's always The Owl House or My Hero Academia because these people only watch things for children and can't stand any conflict more complex than Super Mario Brothers.
When I'm in a missing the point competition and my oppenent is a tumblr user
I humbly suggest that true crime freaks should get into learning about scammers instead of serial killers. I LOVE reading about fraud and grifts and pyramid schemes. true crime ppl have all this paranoid energy about murder, which is rare in the grand scheme of things.....maybe instead that could be channeled into some productive rage toward capitalism.
And u know a side effect of learning about scam artists is that you start to understand certain things about economics, and just how STUPID these systems are and how easily they are taken advantage of....and I'd much rather people gained a passing familiarity with economics than whatever armchair psychologist shit these true crimers get on. We need fewer people who think they're experts on "sociopaths" and more people who understand how people like Elizabeth Holmes and the WeWork guy were able to do what they did
Here are some of my favorite books about financial scams:
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (about the 2008 stock market collapse).
The Caesar's Palace Coup: How a Billionaire Brawl Over the Famous Casino Exposed the Corruption of the Private Equity Industry by Max Frumes and Sujeet Indap. (I admit I've never finished this one; the writing is hard to read.)
The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, by Zac Bissonette. I bought this book because of the subtitle and I have never regretted it. You must read it.
Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale. They turned this one into a movie! The book was very different and is worth reading.
The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion, by Elliot Brown and Maureen Farrell. I haven't read this one yet, but it's on my tbr pile!
Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church, by Gareth Gore. I'm reading this one right now. The author is a financial journalist who stumbled onto this story by unraveling a bank failure in Spain.
And here's a list of more non-fiction books about fraud and financial scams. The first book on this list is about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, which I also haven't read yet.
Enjoy!
If you are a podcast fan, I recommend Scam Goddess, which is run by Laci Moseley who is fucking hilarious and frequently approaches the trade from a pro-scam perspective. She is also having a Moment: she's published a memoir and recently got a television show of her own with a limited run on Max. The episode on Dixon, IL is my favorite: that small town was scammed out of $53 million by Rita Crundwell, who pissed the money away into her small empire of western pleasure quarter horses. Laci is very much an indoor cat and goes in for a fairly hyperfemme fashion style, complete with long fake nails, and she is hilariously visibly bewildered about why anyone would pay money to ride horses. And skeptical of the entire concept of horses, for that matter. As someone who quite likes horses, it was incredibly funny to watch--and the scam itself is one hell of a humdinger, too.
Stolen World by Jennie Erin Smith is a slight change of pace: it's about the early acquisition of herps (reptile and amphibian species) by zoos and museums, which was cartoonishly corrupt and involved a lot of animal smuggling. It was truly fascinating.
I would also love it if more people got into medical scammers and grifters, because boy howdy, if you want to look at a death count, those folks often beat the serial killers all hollow. In that vein...
Charlatan by Pope Brock is all about the goat balls-themed radio empire of Charles R. Brinkley, who made himself cartoonishly wealthy by selling surgeries in which he would cure whatever ailed you by tucking freshly-removed goat testicles alongside your own testicles, nestled nicely in your sac. (If you did not come with your own ready-made testicles, he did not have a lot of thoughts unless your problem was infertility. In this case, he would tuck some goat balls or some goat ovaries--your choice depending on what sex of kid you wanted to have--right alongside your own ovaries instead.) Brinkley was so successful he inadvertently spurred the creation of the American Medical Association, which lead to getting knocked off the airwaves and spurred him to run for Kansas governor as a write-in candidate on the platform of "give me my medical license and also my radio show back", and he nearly won.
this reply made me laugh harder than any reply I think I've ever gotten
How did they find the worst audio ever made
Yknow, I watched this without sound. And I saw "I hate you" as a reply, and assumed something awful happened at the end of the video. And then I scrolled down a bit further, and went back up, listened to the audio and I gotta say. I agree with found-sheep.
Watching this without volume and then turning it on is like a sucker punch
This post always disappears for just long enough to make me forget what the audio is and then returns to punch me again
Was scuncht about it, but fine now.
Found my 53yo very-much-not-online father in the kitchen today meticulously arranging cutlery on the countertop and i was like 'what are you doing' and he looked up at me with the world's most shit-eating grin and said "Your mother told me this is how you rick-roll the Youth" and i looked over and it was fucking. Loss.jpg.
i must stress that he's never seen the original comic. My mother simply showed him the shorthand symbol and he memorized it. As far as he is aware this is just a fucking hieroglyph that deals instant psychic damage to everyone under the age of 30
finally misogyny for men 😻
actually a top cheating is worse tbh its like that post thats like its gayer to top because youre choosing to put your dick in a dude repeatedly. the other guy could just be chilling for all we know.
We need to figure out where sides fit into this discourse. That’s the real question
I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad
In case you're curious here's what I mean.
Renaissance(distinct lines, stability and the individual man):
Baroque (bold, chaotic, dramatic):
Romantic(romanticize the simple hard working life):
Do you see the difference?
this post has re-wired my brain in the best way
my hatsune miku x pokemon concept
👑 ruler of my 🫀
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hyuna x luka from alien stage got their chokehold on me, not gonna be normal about this for next few months folks.. i think these also faces i finally enjoy drawing again after few years feel stagnant about my character art 😭
