YouTube Obsession

The man-o-sphere is signified by a lot of things, misogyny, homophobia, baldness, hustle culture and general historical revisionism. Another element that is deeply ingrained in sigma-male mindset is an automatic and blind subscription to conspiracy theories.

While I don’t believe in a lot conspiracy theories I do love conspiracy theories¹ . That alone does not make me toxic. There is something to be said to having a basic distrust of power structures. However, believing in conspiracies, while having zero media literacy and a deep seeded desire to blame brown people for every bad event in America, is toxic.

The best conspiracies are the ones that don’t on their face denote a political or conspiratorial catalyst but even after the most cursory glance, appear to have elements of high strangeness. My most recent conspiracy obsession of this type is the Mandalay Bay Las Vegas shooting from 2017. On it’s face its a senseless and tragic shooting that could only happen in a nation that hates it’s own citizens but it gets weird very quickly.

Listen, I don’t even pretend to know what happened but one dude has made debunking the lone shooter narrative his whole personality and it’s unintentionally the funniest shit I have ever seen.

The title alone “The Dog Walking Guy” is hilarious. However, the humor that permeates his videos is the Tim Hidecker-character persona of cringe bad-assery he is cultivating. You know what’s worse than a cop? A retired cop. The retired cop vibe is so intense it cracks my shit up.

Just look at this cool dude. Sitting the dark, in sunglasses watching a video from a guy who could literally be ANYBODY talking about how he saw helicopters the night of the shooting. Story is not corroborated or given context. It’s hilarious. I love it.

His videos also do the thing that these conspiracy channels do all the time where they have one compelling clip of video and then show that clip in every video all the time, over and over.

Oh and the hashtags omg. And the weird clip from The Borne Identity just randomly at the end of every video. The fake CIA-UI log-in screen at the beginning come on, tell me that’s not what a divorced dad would think is cool. The generic conspiracy music edited so badly that you can hear when the track loops. So many things to laugh at.

Anyway, I’m not hyping his channel other than it’s a good laugh.

Another infuriating aspect of the former tier 1 operator podcast channels is that they are so fucking close to having revolutionary thought; despising power structures, distrusting career politicians, realizing that the current model of society is destructive to 99% of the population; but are so cucked by the myth of the American Individual that they cannot possibly imagine a world where they would help another person by paying taxes. Worst of all, is that the structure of their arguments always boil down to fact-checking the US constitution -a 200yo document written by rich libertarians who envisioned the nation to be made up completely of small parcel farmers.

“It’s my right to own a gun that could kill multiple people with one clip because the 2nd amendment specifically says “shall not be infringed.’” Literally arguing semantics like fucking nerds over the meaning of words written by a dude who’s brain would explode if he drank a diet Pepsi.

#IAMJOHNCULLEN #WEWONTSTOP #ITSNOTATHEORY #WEARETHENEWSNOW

Watching

With some friends on Discord I recently watched the 2024 Remake-reboot-re-something of The Crow.

I’m sorry, but that is the best part of the film. I won’t say you need to watch the entire film, but the car chase/fight scene is worth seeing.

As for the rest of the movie, it’s perfectly fine and an actual modernization of the original. Because let’s be honest, the original The Crow was cringe af too, just some of y’all saw it as a 15yo and thought it was the coolest movie ever"² . Wanting to die for someone is not love, but a 15yo would think so. A face tattoo is often an indicator that someone is devoid of personality but a 15yo doesn’t know that. You actually wouldnt want to hang out with most people at a co-ed(?) rehab but a 15yo has zero life experience to understand that. Cigarettes are cool though. Smoking them will always be cool.

Also, let’s not forget about the faux reverence the original gets for the unfortunate death of Brandon Lee on set. Go to any Halloween party to this day and there is still a guy in Crow makeup that will tell you about Brandon Lee passing more than anything from the movie. Because, if he hadn’t have died tragically, what movie of Brandon's would endear him to audiences? Yeah, parasocial attachment isn’t just a post social media creation. It would be like if Miley Cyrus became a huge cultural icon because she died on the pilot episode of Hannah Montana. There’s zero other context for this person other than their famous Dad and their tragic death.

Reading

I have been writing a novel for sometime now that heavily involves the early Catholic church and it’s use of indulgences. Basically, the church for a long time sold “Get out of hell certificates” to people could afford them to ease their conscious. I find the topic fascinating and The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity by Peter Brown goes deep on the subject.

Not only that topic but it also explores the “Christian Imagination” of the afterlife and it’s growth from Christ’s death to the middle-ages. The beliefs around death evolve -starting at the crucifixion- goes from apocalyptic and chaotic to regulated and defined as time passes. Great stuff, makes me want to read his other books.

Playing

Platinum Games is a studio I greatly respect even though I find most of their games impossible to play competently. I know their games are great because ChipCheezum plays most of them their fullest, allowing plebs like myself, to appreciate the brilliant game design³ .

That is until I started playing their 2010 action shooter Vanquish (Surprisingly a title ChipCheezum hasn’t LP’d)⁴ . Am I good at it? Not really but it isn’t the kind of action game that requires super fast reflexes and timing to have fun. All of the Platinum staples are here though; Snarky, cigarette smoking⁵ anti-protagonist, anime tropes, over-the-top cutscenes and -most infuriatingly- the post mission scores, thankfully without grades (A+, S, SS, etc). I loath post-mission grades. I don’t mind a game keeping score for progression and what not, just give me the option to turn it off the grade at the end of missions. I really would enjoy MG: Revengence and games like Devil May Cry more if there wasn’t a grade at the end of each level. This is totally a me thing too, I understand that, but I have enjoyed Vanquish so much more because there isn’t a grade.

Other Notables

** Thank you to Max Read for bring this to my attention.

kevin_heckart

384K followers

View more on Instagram

** Queer representation in pre-code Hollywood

** “Ginger NO!”

1   I am a self-confessed JFK super fan.

2  Which is a legit reason to love a movie, not hating at all. I still love Ong-Bak and it hasn’t aged particularly well either.

3  I highly recommend Chip’s LPs of Metal Gear: Revengence and Wonderful 101.

4  Funnily enough, I did play this back in 2010 but that was right in the middle of my drinking career so I gave up on it fairly quickly. Hard to play anything after six 40s of OE.

5  Cigarettes are always cool.