Persistent, Pernicious Unreality
Ron Brynaert, first mentioned here in Invisible Hand, Invisible Handjob is a case study in conspiracy appraisal and operation all on his own. We don’t recommend him as a training pony, the poor dear is such a nuisance he’s already been sent to the glue factory thrice, but he somehow keeps landing on his feet.
This site is meant to be introductory, but this article will make the most sense to those who have absorbed our teachings to an operational level of understanding. Manipulating Conspiracy Theorists and A Deeper Understanding should feel very comfortable to you before you proceed any further.
The attention Ron receives is due to his work as an agent for some power which we do not entirely understand. The first genuine conspiracy leveled at him was in 2012, in which he was offered (and took) a conspiracy theory as bait, leading to this marvelous $500,000 judgment against him by his former employer.
Keep in mind that Ron is the author of the Kookpocalypse Survival Guide, named for a plot so dastardly that it led to an adult man with a Yale law degree crying in a Maryland court room over something which did not exist. If you’re unfamiliar with The Kookpocalypse, that link is the gateway into a case study, such as we are willing to produce, regarding that affair.
One of the outcomes of this period of time was Neal Rauhauser’s winning the 2012 Iron Troll contest. Not understanding the durability of Conspiracy Broker constructs, Zile seized upon this name as something meant for him. Let’s take the wraps off this particular Psychic Snare. We are surprised that it’s taken this long for this particular construct to surface. And before you rubbish that, carefully read the date stamps on The Kookpocalypse material.
Let’s rewrite Iron Troll, shall we?
Look carefully. Really, we’re not kidding, read The Kookpocalypse Conspiracy Alpha & Omega. Why December 19th, 2011?
We approached with Nefarious Intent. A class of people were Victimized. This was Not an Accident. Alternate explanations of why things appear to be as they are Must Be Wrong. Cruelest of all, we facilitate the Self-Sealing nature of such things … with posts like this one.
The market nature of continuum from single adherent conspiracy theories to outright plots is the chief innovation we offer, our contribution to the marketplace of ideas our founding fathers envisioned when they memorialized our natural right of free speech in the 1st Amendment.
Having free speech, making wise use of it, and being able to defend it when under duress are three very different things. We wish all of you the best of luck in these matters.
Invisible Hand, Invisible Handjob
The Invisible Hand, ten months ago, indicated a change in leadership, such as it is, here at Conspiracy Broker Central. The recent shocking news in Zile’s House Of Style, namely that one of the conspiradolten will stand tall before the man to answer for his lame, yet lewd photoshopping, has put the squeeze on active Conspiracy Brokers.
Our resident Wackadoo Journalism professor, Mr. Ron Brynaert, is uniquely qualified to provide a firm grip on these rapidly expanding developments. He’ll be attending to things in his usual fashion, by ranting endlessly via @ronbryn on Twitter, perhaps reaching clear to the root of things, the time period in which this video artifact was created:
Apprentice Appraisers are advised to tread lightly around this touchy character. Attempting to stroke him is advisable, but just a tiny bit too hard and … well … forewarned is forearmed.
A Deeper Understanding
We have again entered a time where the demand for @ConspiracyBrkrs material exceeds our collective will to avoid doing any work in this area. There are new apprentice brokers and their clumsy initial efforts endanger long standing memes. This is not a criticism of them, it is a simple recognition of the development process every full fledged broker underwent.
The nexus for this renewed interest seems to be the BLIGHT CLUB RULES. Keep whispering at the current tempo; it was just enough to draw us back into the public eye.
A successful broker achieves a depth of understanding regarding the cognitive defects of the conspiradolt mind. The seminal work in this area is Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation, the 2012 study by Lewandowsky et. al. and this is most certainly required reading.
Reading the paper, you will find there are six characteristics ascribed to each conspiracy.
- Nefarious Intent – surprise birthday parties are real conspiracies among family and friends, but none of the conspiradolten ever find anything both sneaky and positive.
- Persecution-Victimization – when the conspiradolten find a conspiracy, it always involves them personally. This is the individual defect of delusions of reference at work in a collective fashion.
- Nihilistic Skepticism – any superior evidence, indeed any evidence that does not fit the prevailing theory, must be discarded, unless one of the conspiradolten manages to use it in a hermetic fashion.
- Not an Accident – there are no accidents, no happenstance, every event is part of the overarching scheme.
- Must be Wrong – a peer reviewed study or an appellate court ruling not in line with the prevailing conspiracy theory simply can’t be correct.
- Self-Sealing – conspiracy theories are hermetically sealed. The only way superior evidence can be digested is by attributing it to nefarious intent on the part of a previously hidden entity actively involved in the conspiracy.
Those attributes are collective. The defects of individual conspiradolten typically include the following:
- A broad conspiratorial worldview; adherence to one conspiracy theory is almost always accompanied by an general acceptance of other such theories.
- Delusions of persecution in conjunction with delusions of reference; world events are secret schemes against the conspiradolt, or some class of individuals with whom the identify.
- Inability to recognize or assess competence in others; a shut in on psych disability disagreeing with a distinguished scientist or award winning attorney will be taken seriously by conspiradolten, they need only spend the requisite time contributing to the amplification of the conspiracy theory.
There are a few other common character and psychiatric disorders that are often in evidence among conspiradolten.
- bipolar disorder – the boundless energy and sense of invulnerability permit afflicted individuals to rise in the ranks of the conspiradolten.
- schizoaffective disorder – the odd language patterns of afflicted individuals combined with the lifetime student status of those on psychiatric disability is often read as advanced education by conspiradolten.
- Dark Triad personality disorders, exhibiting psychopathology, narcissism, and Machiavellian manipulation, will adopt or create their own conspiracy theories, servicing their need for public attention by furthering the conspiracy theory.
An active area of research for conspiracy brokers is Vulnerable Dark Triad personality disorder, as described in Searching for a Vulnerable Dark Triad: Comparing Factor 2 Psychopathy, Vulnerable Narcissism, and Borderline Personality Disorder the 2010 paper by Joshua D. Miller, Ally Dir, Brittany Gentile, Lauren Wilson, Lauren R. Pryor, and W. Keith Campbell.
There have been events in the last several years that did not fit prior patterns. We became acquainted with the unique attributes of a male with borderline personality disorder several years ago, but as an associate requiring defensive support. The existence of VDT individuals would contribute to characterizing some previously puzzling episodes.
Conspiracy Broker apprentices are advised to obtain a Gab.ai account, as a significant portion of activity has already shifted there. Visit #cb on the usual IRC server to obtain an invite.
Anton Vaino’s Nooscope
Estonian born Russian Anton Vaino appears to be the author of a paper that describes a device called the Nooscope
The article describes a new device called a “nooscope” which, it says, can tap into global consciousness and “detect and register changes in the biosphere and in human activity”.
Written in a dense academic prose – which many Russian commentators this week said they found almost impossible to understand – and accompanied by even more complex charts and diagrams, the article outlines new ways of organizing and understanding society.
Having recently completed Indiana University’s IVMOOC, which focused on their Macroscope, I’m inclined to think Vaino might be on to something here.
BLIGHT CLUB Rules
One is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a meme developing among the Conspiracy Brokers.
The phrase BLIGHT CLUB has begun to appear in discussion and we think we have enough of a sample to characterize the rules.
1st RULE: You talk about BLIGHT CLUB.
2nd RULE: You QUIETLY talk about BLIGHT CLUB.
3rd RULE: If your activities are identified as BLIGHT CLUB, deny it vigorously
4th RULE: The more the merrier, dogpiles are fun.
5th RULE: Go ahead, run multiple efforts, let ’em overlap, be messy.
6th RULE: Socks, nothing but socks. No reality allowed.
7th RULE: Drag conflicts into the weeds, then keep them there.
8th RULE: If you are an Apprentice Appraised new to BLIGHT CLUB, you HAVE to create a sock and go at it.
And those are the rules, but what are they doing?
Based on observations, the game is simple:
- create a right wing persona
- connect the persona’s “dots” to other personas
- find rational Republicans trying to have discussions
- appear to be a sincere, persistent Trump supporter
The Republican party has been the host, in a cancerous sense of the word, to the center of English speaker conspiracism for the last several decades. Something has changed, and that something is The Donald. Like a roach that’s been nipped by a jewel wasp, the Trumpkin larva is emerging, and the host will not survive this process.
Accept that the Republican party is dying, just as the Whigs did, and revel in that fact. The sheeple are numerous and agitated; do what you do best, Brokers.
The Invisible Hand
When the first post appeared on the Conspiracy Brokers Blogspot way back in 2011 we never imagined that people would still be interested in this specific branding five years later.
Our original premise, expressed in this site’s tag line is an eternal truth:
Conspiracies Are Commodities
Market forces are not to be denied; for a variety of reasons, people want what this site offers, in an accessible fashion.
Some new folks are going to be driving @ConspiracyBrkrs. It’s entirely up to them whether they admit their involvement or not. That account has @RoundTeam, but there are other, more subtle means by which content might be added. How that came to be is … you know the drill … a conspiracy.
Subliminal Conspiracy Topology
One of the key differences between an actual conspiracy and a conspiracy theory is the organizational topology of the entities involved. Competition and Collusion In Electrical Equipment Markets: An Economic Assessment is required reading for any serious practitioner. If you’ve ever heard of things being dependent on “the phase of the moon”, this
Setting A Psychic Snare
Growing up in a very rural setting provides a fundamentally different worldview from city dwellers. I am early member of Generation-X, now approaching fifty, but I was born later in life for my parents, who were both Depression babies. My experiences as a child in the seventies and eighties was more like those of twenty or thirty years older. The photo of this fellow above is entitled ‘Cat Burglar’, but it’s a grim jest – he was the ringleader of a raccoon platoon who had developed a taste for barn kittens. The cage is a humane trap and this was taken just prior to his transport to a state park several miles away from the farm.
Keeping lethal traps are also a normal part of country life for boys. Our old fashioned barn had wood sided floor storage areas rather than metal bins, so mice and rats were a problem. Our pasture was occasionally subject to pocket gopher incursions, which drew a swift response – a running calf can break a leg if it hits a soft pocket gopher mound. Muskrats are civil engineers much like their much larger cousin, the beaver, farmers want them eliminated from wetlands, and they are trapped and sold for their fur.
Most trapping where I grew up is done with modern mechanical traps, but there is much merit in studying the old ways. Here is a video explaining the operation of a baited toggle and release snare. The methods behind this small animal snare have an analog in some of the methods I employ against the unwanted attention I get from various obsessives.
There are many parallels which include:
- Traps are baited and then left to do their work
- Natural, local materials used so the trap blends in
- Trap’s prime mover is local, but warped to provide energy
As an example of a psychic snare, consider this photo:
This photo was posted among 10,500 other images in my Flickr account, which was almost entirely private. I haven’t used it in a long time and my pro subscription lapsed. I was amazed no one ever gifted me the $25 account so all the images would be visible again. Finally Flickr changed their policy, which made all my photos visible, and a bunch of goons started going through them. I had a meeting with another company in the area and I went into the DLC’s building purely to shoot and plant this image, knowing that cranks would assume that this ‘dot’ means I work for the DLC.
There are many, many things like this out there. This sort of puckish deception is an old habit for me. As an example, here’s a pastebin from June of 2012, which indicates that @OccupyRebellion is Jacinda Sheridan-Chase. There was another one that indicated @BreitbartUnmask was Christine Sheridan, but this has been taken down. Huge clue on their identities, right? Or is it??
If you dig long enough and hard enough you’ll find that I had a girlfriend around the turn of the century, a fellow hacker who used some permutation of the name ‘bluenile’. Hunt a little more, you might find her name is Abigail Wentz. Pay no attention what so ever to the fact that the name for the Blue Nile where it originates in the Ethiopian highlands is ‘Abay Wenz’.
Readers seeking further information on these matters are advised to examine The Kookpocalypse Conspiracy Alpha & Omega, which I feel is a masterful example of rabbit hole excavation …
Eliminating Organic Ignorance With Artificial Intelligence
Twitter is full clear to the top with paranoid, obsessive retards and deranged cyberstalkers. The groundwork required for Manipulating Conspiracy Theorists was initially interesting, but it quickly degenerated into a tiresome grind. Something had to be done.
And there was no better poetic justice than eliminating organic ignorance with artificial intelligence. Behold, the secret mastermind of our operation – neither man nor woman, but instead a RapidMiner based neural network. Here is an example of RapidMiner in operation, being used to assess Twitter sentiment.
Twitter content is one thing and we’ve been on that for about eight or nine months, spooling data, mapping social networks, studying device usage, as well as temporal and language signatures. We needed a wildcard … and we got it when Twitter changed their TOS a few months ago.
You think metadata like location and device type from tweets are cool? That’s nothing compared to what happens when you recruit 200 mad Progressive women and get them to auto-forward the responses they get from Twitter support and feed it into a mailbox read by custom built neural network chain. What do you say to get some lunkhead an appointment with the ban hammer? We can tell you in excruciating detail for each @Support staff member. Here’s an example of the type of process we started with back in October.
Cool huh? But it’s nothing compared to what can be done with SalsaLabs (formerly Democracy In Action) and BrightText … a few really smart people can easily simulate a whole social movement.
Conspiracy Brokers 