this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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I'm not certain they're all shills, but mental illness is real. Take edwinbarnesc's latest post on formerly-Twitter/X (any of his recent posts, actually): https://nitter.net/edwinbarnesc/status/1748202509964120259#m - I've appreciated some of Edwin's stuff from 12+ months ago, but someone needs to do an IRL health check. We joke about aluminum foil, but schizophrenia is real and I bet Edwin's windows are covered in it. And of course these people spam their nonsense on formerly-Twitter/X (where these types congregate now), and dummies or users with ill-intent re-post on Reddit with headlines like "OMG LeadPaintChips_2 HAS FIGURED IT OUT".
What I think has happened is the sane, rational people have left the room to "touch grass" while waiting for actual developments, and the only ones who remain are the crazy people, or previously sane people who have gone crazy while staring at tea leaves. Its an embarrassing look for the community, for sure.
Also I'm pretty sure a lot of these individuals, such as Edwin, don't have jobs or lives of any sort - based on the volume & intensity of their of posts. I think we can deduce that disability, probably with a mental element, is to blame. Or they're being bankrolled by SHF to frame the community in a negative light. Maybe both.
Thanks, good to consider. A couple more thoughts: 1) they can't ALL be shills, right? :-) 2) 84 years ago, we joked about "weaponized autism" being the feature most dangerous to SHFs. Some of that is real - obsessiveness can be quite powerful - but it's also important to look out for each other, as you say. However, there's only so far an online community can go in that regard. 3) I've read Edwin's most-recent DD being referenced here, and I don't find it out-of-line with his previous work, really. Yes, he uses catch phrases like "do your own research" that have stronger meanings in other communities, but his foil has always been "beyond" most of our other folks, and I don't see him as lost or at-risk here. I also ignore politics, since I doubt most of us would agree on that topic anyway. Now, if Edwin's posts from Dr Eyeball were proven to be sus - or fabricated - I'd agree he's jumped the shark. But taken at face value, eyeball's comments do seem to be an attempt to assert control over several key subs by one individual, which would obviously be a danger to those communities. Since we mostly seem to support decentralization n' all (lol).
I suggest we all be very careful about calling anyone names, or suggesting they're mentally ill; or, even as Michael did the other night, repeatedly call someone stupid who was being mostly reasonable on the ppshow. The guy didn't even attack RC, as the pp team claimed; he just said he supported the little people and didn't care about billionaires, which I understood to mean "billionaires can take care of themselves." Which is 100% true. I'm a very loyal guy, but when someone's resources so outweigh those of most others here (presumably), I'd agree they can take care of themselves. I think RC and Pulte do a lot of good in the world, but remember, Pulte called RC a shark at the Florida gig, and we should always remember that idealizing mere humans will nearly always result in a let-down at some point.
The pressure is on rn. Don't take anything personally. As RC said, "words can never hurt us."
My comment was from a place of empathy regarding his possible situation, but it doesn't mean we should encourage Edwin or put his ramblings on a pedestal. Also autism isn't a mental disability, but schizophrenia is and is manageable with the proper diagnosis. I appreciate the pattern-seeking efforts (a symptom of schizophrenia - hyper-vigilence & pattern-seeking; blame snakes for honing our ancestor's brains), but his latest stuff is practically nonsensical - aside the already nonsensical Qanon stuff. I didn't realize he had gone off the deep end until reading into his Dr Eyeball thing this morning - I had to go to TwitterX for the full-res image of the texts, and I actually didn't see anything concerning in Eyeball's messages... Which led me to review Edwin's other stuff and was appalled. Everything I read of Edwin's tried to, poorly, to link every conspiracy theory thread to every other similar thread, and a dash of our stocks too. I'm all for entertaining the possibility of some theories where actual evidence exists, valid unanswered questions, etc. but his recent posts are just... Unsubstantiated and lacking in links between points A, B & C of any sort. I hope he is OK.