This image, which I have no reason to suspect as being even a real Change.org petition, let alone a sincere suggestion or genuine argument anyone had, but who knows – depicts a petition “To Hire 1,000,000 People To Put Their Fingers In The Shoot Hole Of Peoples’ Guns So They Can’t Shoot Them”…
Some might laugh but this is actually true. The circumference of the finger creates a seal at the tip and and when the gun is fired, the explosion is contained within the barrel, which swells like a snake that just ate a dog for a moment and then viola! -wait, no, that’s a string instrument. I mean: vuah-la! but how do you spell that? voilà! -the point is – harmless nonviolent solution.
I’ve seen Bugs Bunny do it before, so don’t even try and argue. Only fascists would oppose this.
A few days ago a story went viral allegedly showing a 9 year old boy with dwarfism reeling in so much pain from having been relentlessly bullied that he was crying and said he just wanted to die.
I didn’t watch it because that’s not my idea of a good time and I don’t need to consume media of people in emotional anguish in order to empathize with them or come to the conclusion that ostracizing people for the way they look is bad. I also saw zero value in posting the original story except to virtue-signal the notion that basically, “hey u guyz, this world is so terrible and cruel but you know what?? I think that’s BAD, man! I think people who are jerks are NOT NICE!” and build clout over yet another sentiment that no one disagrees with just so I can feel good about myself. I confess that that is exactly what I thought of everyone posting the story at first, for exactly those implications — and another thing that really grinds my gears is the existence and distribution of the video in the first place.
I don’t think parents should post videos of their children in stress, failures, or otherwise humiliating or pitiable situations on the internet for it to live forever and be a part of who they are to the public. Why wasn’t THIS – the fact that the mother is putting her Childs pain in the public square for us to tut tut at, instead of just showing it to the school administrators at the source of the bullying), the real scandal?
But I’m getting ahead of myself…
My interest in the story perked when I saw comedian Brad Williams – a standup and also awesome dude who also has dwarfism – had taken the lead to raise funds and give the kid a treat in the form of a trip to Disneyland, all expenses paid.
*This* I thought and still think, is worth posting because there’s actually something to draw from the negative instance rather than just beginning and ending with “this kid was treated poorly! Repost to more people who agree that kids shouldn’t experience emotional suffering and hopelessness that makes them want to kill themselves and feel like you did something when you actually did literally nothing but make yourself feel like you did something righteous!”. Brad stepped up and countered a terrible experience with an amazing one – eg – he actually *did* something about the pain he saw someone experienced and sought to counter it with a balance of love, kindness, and gift of joy. So that story, I reposted, and I’m not sorry I did because I endorse people *doing things* over moral posturing in the guise of “spreading awareness” of something 100% of the people you are spreading that thing to already agree with the conclusion of. Brads efforts quickly met the 10 grand goal, doubled it, tripled it, and at the time of this posting, reached a whopping 300,000 empathy dollars. Wow! As I understand it, that money isn’t going to kid/his family but rather the original 25 grand goal to send him to Disney is proceeding as stated and the excess funds are going to anti-bullying charities.
However… what if the story about the bullying was a scam by an adult to emotionally manipulate the public into making someone rich and/or famous [so they could get rich that way]? Shortly after the virality of the original story, this post – or rather reposts of screenshots of this Facebook post – went just as viral:
Its contents were repeated and soon became the popular accusation. And the evidence is… interesting. But not, at the time of this writing, all that compelling. Not yet at least.
Like I said, I didn’t watch the video, and I don’t feel like analyzing it at this juncture to try and find hints and tells that it’s an actor pulling a con but I maintain that it is not cool and highly suspicious that his mother video’ed his pain and put it on display to the world, even though I – repeat – haven’t actually watched it. But even without that direct analysis, the specifics in the hoax claims above don’t pan out.
Yes, I’m pretty sure he’s 9 or 10 – not 18 or older
First, the claim that the kid is an adult and scamming the public with this sob story to enrich himself. I admit that the “what if this guy is like the plot of The Orphan” did cross my mind. But.. evidence of his adulthood is lacking. His Instagram shows him with a lit up “18” sign with some other kids and one apparent older person / young adult and the claim is that he removed reference to his 18th birthday in the caption.
But… who noticed the alleged caption to reported its existence but *didn’t* screenshot what it said before it was “deleted”? That absence of original-deleted-text on the Insta post is extremely suspect to the point of being discounted all together. Being photographed next to the number 18 doesn’t make me think he’s 18 on its own – there is no evidence to support the claim that there was a caption saying it was his 18th birthday – and there *is* evidence that it wasn’t as the same group of photos with him wearing the same shirt near the 18 shows that it’s a dude named Garlen’s 18th birthday that the event was at.
Further – and not that I’m a medical expert in the field of dwarfism, but – he doesn’t appear to me to be an adult with the disorder. He looks like a child with dwarfism. So based on appearance and the 18th-birthday falsehood, I’m ruling out the age-scam accusation.
Was it still a hoax to get you bleeding heart suckers to pay him though? Well. Lets see…
What does his social media reveal about him, exactly?
His Instagram account has a lot of posts where he doesn’t appear to “need money” for sure – but also remember that no one claimed he did. My boy Brad Williams didn’t start the Disneyland GoFundMe because his family is poor and give him cash to buy food and awesome toys – he started it to send the kid on a trip and have a blast as a gesture to remind him and others that, yes, cruel and terrible things happen, but that’s not all there is to life. There are good people and awesome things to do and see and fun to be had and joy to be experienced and let that be a reminder to him and all onlookers when faced with the crushing hurtful parts that are marbled into the experience of existing.
But – truth first, as always – let’s examine the evidence.
Some of those “he don’t need no money” posts include him in a fancy white kiddie car like those Pow Pow Power wheels badass rides that the most spoiled kid on your block had and you wish that you did, show him in Gucci sweatshirt (or at least a hoodie that says “Gucci” on it, whether or not it actually was made by the luxury brand) and, most amusingly and also disturbingly to this context – there’s this video of him holding up money like a gangster talking about “getting paid” in a post made a week ago.
Update: I’m leaving the video embed below, but his Instagram has since been made private after the scrutiny this story has brought to it. If you can’t view the embed below – it’s just what is described in the preceding paragraph…
hmmm… Well, again – “he needs money because he’s poor” was never the claim, so that’s off the table. But what are we to make of this and the other thuggy/punk style media portrayal?
Idk man, what do we typically make of kids posting thuggy puffery of themselves online? The most illuminating part of that video to me is just a reminder that Australian currency looks like the money from the board game Monopoly (at least it does to us Americans).
Unless the kid is accused of violently attacking someone and his defenders are only showing media of him that portray a meek and innocent demeanor, there’s not really anything to uncover with these revelations of him portrayed as a tough guy punk online.
Seventeen year old Trayvon Martin was killed by a single upwardly-shot bullet from a legally owned firearm by someone who credibly claimed that Martin was on top of him beating his bloodied face into the sidewalk and the prosecution and public outrage that fomented against that shooter portrayed Martin as a cherubic innocent little boy via photos from 5 years prior, all but begging the revelations of his “gang” style language, references, and gestures to come out and look much more damning because of it. But even then no one was claiming that just because Martin portrayed himself online as someone who flipped off cameras and said naughty words meant that he was guilty of attacking his shooter.
What are this 9 year old boys middle-finger photos and “gangsta life” posts online supposed to reveal about him exactly? That he’s incapable of being emotionally wounded because he’s actually a badass gangsta thug?… come on guys…
I don’t think there’s much of anything that these posts illuminate. It’s not uncommon to feel on top of the world one day and be mistreated another day so poorly that you feel like you don’t want to be alive. It’s also typical for people on social media to present themselves in a way they wish they were (ie: more powerful and confidant than they are in real life) and are almost always not genuine bankable windows into a persons real self. This goes double/triple/beyond with teens and kids. Instagram in particular is known for being the least-real-life member of the Social Media game in where people post their best and their brightest and their most peacocky of moods, attitudes, vacations, and blessings. Assuming that the clown is always laughing is a psychological trope of a mistake always, but doubly so in this context, so again, I’m not going with these being hoax-busting revelations.
The only sketchy part is the parenting choices here…
It’s not credible to claim that he’s an adult and it’s not a contradiction that he’s self-portrayed as a confidant punk on his Instagram and yet experienced painful degradation from his peers that made him feel terrible. It *is* fishy that there is so much “hey look at me” media of a 9 year old with a carefully curated social media account that this story is coming from. It’s not proof of anything – it’s just fishy… Like… flip off cameras and goof about being a pimp all you want, but what kind of mom posts that stuff online and then makes your worst day public viewing to the world? That’s where all the “wtf” attention should be in my opinion – not on whether he’s 25 and banging hookers with all that sweet sympathy cash (which, again – I’ll update if I hear different, but as of now, the family hasn’t solicited any funds and Brad Williams’ donation campaign that reached 300-grand is only paying the cost of a Disney trip and then channeling the spill-over amount to charities).
If this does turn out to be a big scam along the lines of his very non-victim-like appearances online suggest then this is gonna be another in a long line of hoaxes that prey on peoples preconceived bias’ of there being oppression around every corner that social justice warriors need to fight so they can feel valuable and worthy instead of having to confront the reality in the meaninglessness of their online crusading – but as February 21st 2020 – I have yet to uncover evidence that support these claims.
Until then – Moms: Don’t humiliate your kids to the public even if it’s with the intention of praising them or shaming bad behavior. It’s not worth it.
This start-up raised millions to sell ‘brain hacking’ pills, but its own study found coffee works better
That’s the headline to this CNBC article, and the story that follows doesn’t betray that thesis. Unfortunately, its stories like these that give casual observers the wrong idea about the actual options available to people to be able to improve and maintain a healthy brain.
The report above is about a startup I’m not previously-familiar with called HVMN, which was originally called the much more descriptive Nootrobox, which they should have kept. Nootropics are brain enhancers and a box of those things is essentially what the company is making and selling so why tinker with the name when it succinctly nails your whole business?
Whatever.
Their product, SPRINT is labeled as a “cognitive enhancement” and was put in medical trials against caffeine and, as the headline states – coffee was more effective in those tests than the SPRINT supplement. As I buy and make and think about selling my own Nootropic blends, this perked my interest but I didn’t find anything very interesting under further scrutiny. When looking at the ingredients of SPRINT, I could have saved them the trouble of hiring a study they would later try to have the name of their product removed from by just telling them the result.
I already knew the findings of the study, not because I’m psychic or a good guesser – it’s just right here in the known capabilities of the ingredients. Nothing boosts concentration better than caffeine and nicotine – in other words – “drugs”. Everything else is long term health and improvement in ability over time. its like steroids vs protein and creatine. The former will jack you up (with downsides) while the former(s) will aid, sustain and facilitate your muscle growth.
It’s poor practice to make fanstasical claims on things that are “only” just “really good for you” because then when your magic is debunked, the legitimate goodness gets thrown out in the court of public opinion with it.
Plus, I read that former Yahoo! CEO Melissa Mayer invested in the company and that should have been a tip off because everything she is involved in is overhyped, underperforming, one-dimensional marketing fluff. When I said that in a message to someone, I was sarcastically retorted “you mean i can’t trust the judgment of this woman who sat behind a roped-off throne at the company Christmas party?” – which was a new tidbit for me. That eccentricity makes me like her more cuz I thought she was just a bland social-justice hire failure but she remains a figure lacking in the talent that the narrative built around her begged her to fulfill.
But the difference between healthy things that aid you over time and things that cause immediate measurable improvement are pretty big and providers of all-natural supplements often drink their own kool-aid marketing and go off the deep end on what their products can do.
Looking at the ingredients, Sprint is only “okay” and not a great supplement. It’s tyrosine, theanine, vinpocetine and B-vitamins with caffeine. That combo is the cheap stuff that’s available in any number of brain pills on Amazon plus vinpocetine (the only premium ingredient in that list). no neurotransmitters like GABA or plant stuff like bacopa, or oat straw or mucana pruriens (legume that helps dopamine production).
AlphaBrain has all of those things and more. I only know about most of these things from reverse engineering alpha brain years back and studying which things are study based proven to have an effect and it’s still the best product for brain health and performance I know of. I still take all its stuff separately though for not a whole lot more per alpha-pill at higher dosage.
