Author Topic: A Rabbit Hole of Stupid  (Read 1736 times)

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A Rabbit Hole of Stupid
Good god, what has the internet begat?

I was poking around the YouTubes and came across a provocatively titled clip from Bill Maher's show, about the value of a university education in the United States.  Maher's not always the most brilliant person in the world, but he's usually funny, so I go in for a cheap laugh.  In the video, Maher makes the claim that the sizeable population of unemployed persons with Bachelor's degrees has arisen because they chose easy-to-get liberal arts majors (i.e. bull**** majors).  While part of me is inclined to agree, I've got significant anecdotal evidence contrary to the claim, staring me in the face.  Specifically, I've been looking for any job, for about a year, that will pay someone with a B.S. in Physics and PoliSci at least $10.00/hour, and a cohort of mine, who got his M.S. in Physics, has been searching for new work for a couple of months now, so that he'll have a job to transition into, when his position at ORNL runs out of funds at the end of summer.

Before my mind does any further deconstruction of Maher's statement, the video draws to a close, and my eyes wander to the related videos.  What's the first item in the list?  College Conspiracy (full movie) from user InsideTheMatrix1.  Oh dear, it seems I've found a singularity of stupid too strong for my mouse cursor to escape.  Nothing for it, then, except to race for the event horizon.  *Click*

One second into the hour-long production, and I've already paused the video.  The production company credited with the film is The National Inflation Association, which has the tagline, "Preparing Americans for hyperinflation."  That sounds so credible, there's absolutely no need for me to look them up!  Maybe we'll just have a quick peak at their Wikipedia page, though.  What's that?  This organization with the duty of preparing us for an economic apocalypse doesn't have a Wikipedia page and is referenced in only a single article?  Hmmm....  To the Googles!

Well, there's the NIA's homepage.  Among other things that you can do there, you can read their scary report about how you'll be spending 40% of your income on food by 2015, or find a link to their YouTube channel, which contains such gems as "The Day the Dollar Died", which depicts a panicked run on the grocery stores, after an 850 point drop in the Dow.  Are you getting a sense for the apocalyptic rhetoric?  The number one commenter on that video certainly does, saying, "buy thousands of bullets. I am buying THOUSANDS of bullets".  Oh, but the NIA can save you.  You just have to follow their "100% unbiased" stock advice.

Now, let's backtrack for a second.  What was the first Google search result not directly tied to the inflation.us domain or the NIA's YouTube channel?  I'll give you a hint:  It's the same as every result that's not directly tied to the inflation.us domain or the NIA's YouTube channel.  Those results are all exposés or forum threads linking to exposés that show the NIA is, in fact, a pump-and-dump scheme!  The people at the top of the NIA buy up a bunch of penny-stocks, recommend those stocks to the poor, gullible sods, who believe that rhetoric about the oncoming economic apocalypse, and then proceed to sell off all of those shares, now that they've increased from $0.02/share to $0.08/share.  Anyone who doesn't catch on to the scheme quickly enough gets left with a bunch of valueless stock certificates for which they grossly overpaid.

But wait!  The rabbit hole goes derper!  While other parties have confirmed the NIA's nefarious purpose, the one who's led the charge against them has been a man by the name of Peter Schiff.  Peter Schiff was an economic advisor to the Ron Paul campaign in 2008, and guess what!  He believes (or at least espouses) the same tale of economic apocalypse that the NIA was exploiting to pump-and-dump penny stocks!  Not only that, but he's willing to give you some financial advice.

I'm drowning in stupid, and I'm still only one bloody second into this College Conspiracy video.  Goddammit.

 

Offline Rodo

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Re: A Rabbit Hole of Stupid
But..... maybe if you watch it entirely you'll change your mind, right?.

I mean, it's a video on youtube! it cannot be lies if it's on youtube!
el hombre vicio...

 
Re: A Rabbit Hole of Stupid
Oh, I'm watching it all the way through.  The context makes the film comedy gold, since you realize that the producers are inventing problems and pulling predictions out of the aether to play up their pump-and-dump scheme.  On the few occasions that they have proposed any form of solution to the problems of rising tuition or student loan debt, it's come out as the hyperconservative "DEFUND EVERYTHING!" nonsolution.  The majority of the time, though, they're plugging their website and throwing out ludicrous, apocalyptic numbers (like "conservatively" 20% of US college campuses closing by 2015, with the rest being attended nearly exclusively by the Chinese).

Incidentally, if I keep laughing like this hard for the next thirty-eight minutes, then the NIA will be responsible for permenantly disfiguring my face into something like this.

[edit] And at twenty-nine minutes, we quote from that bastion of knowledge, The Bible.  You know, because the education system was so much better, in the Bronze Age! [/edit]

[edit 2] Then, they immediately endorse the buying of silver, over attending university.  They give us no data or citations on their projected valuation of silver, but who wants to bet that it was a straight, linear regression, based on silver prices, since the housing bubble collapsed?  I do, because, when stock prices tumble, commodity prices spike.  The other side of that coin (no pun intended) is that when stock prices climb, commodity prices fall.  Sure, buy up silver, while it's at/near a peak value, and then see where you are, after four years of the job and stock markets improving.

Now, I've got to stop pausing this video for critique, or it's going to take me nine hours to get through the rest of it. [/edit 2]

[edit 3] Wow!  I didn't know that all legislation passed each year had the sole purpose of keeping the lawyer friends of Congress employed!  Thanks NIA! [/edit 3]

[edit 4] And they don't even wait until the movie's release to begin the backpedaling, as it starts fifteen minutes before the end.  Harold Camping at least made it to the day of his predicted apocalypse (three times) before conceding that he might be doing something wrong. [/edit 4]
« Last Edit: July 05, 2012, 09:01:14 pm by BlueFlames »

 

Offline Bobboau

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Re: A Rabbit Hole of Stupid
you are just a counter intel agent.
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Offline jr2

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Re: A Rabbit Hole of Stupid
Would you mind posting the Bible verses with the context they were referenced in the video?

 

Offline FireSpawn

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Re: A Rabbit Hole of Stupid
This is such a life changing consipracy they have uncovered...
If you hit it and it bleeds, you can kill it. If you hit it and it doesn't bleed...You are obviously not hitting hard enough.

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Offline Nemesis6

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Re: A Rabbit Hole of Stupid
When I run into stuff like this, I like to play a little game:
1 - Search for "Ron Paul" within the website
2 - Look for terminology and talking points used by the John Birch Society, like the U.N leading us towards world communism.
3 - Look for racism(related to #1)
4 - See if it's related to InfoWars.

  
Re: A Rabbit Hole of Stupid
Would you mind posting the Bible verses with the context they were referenced in the video?

It actually just wound up being the one, "...and you shall know them by their fruits."  I pointed it out, because I thought there was a decent likelihood it would become a running theme.  That didn't come to pass.

When I run into stuff like this, I like to play a little game:  [procedure]

You could probably make a pretty good drinking game out of that.  The only trouble that could arise is that by the time you're halfway through, the pace of the drinking will have accelerated to the point that you wouldn't have time to get one shot down, before it's time for the next.