brb #shifting to Hogwarts

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A Conspiracy About r/Conspiracy

Over the last year, more and more extremist internet communities have begun leaving mainstream the social networks like Reddit they were festering in and setting up new communities using the .win domain. The Incel subreddit was the first big group to do this (and has since moved to a .co doimain), but Reddit’s r/The_Donald is using the domain, as is the toxic fandom around the lifestreamer Ice Poseidon. Now, it seems like some of the mods from Reddit’s r/conspiracy are trying to migrate, as well.

A recent post on r/AgainstHateSubreddits pointed out that a link to the site conspiracies.win was stickied at the top of r/Conspiracy. In another post, a user called it their “contingency plan.”

r/Conspiracy is one of the oldest and biggest conspiracy theory-based subreddits on the internet. It was started in 2008 and has 1.4 million subscribers. It has gone through a lot of phases. It’s currently in the midst of another, with pro-Trump users, hardcore QAnon users, and the classic libertarian X-Files side character types all bickering about what the subreddit should stand for in a post-Trump world.

I’m not convinced the communities moderators will be able to successfully move that many people over to a new site, but there does seem to be a conceited push. One moderator in particular, u/axolotl_peyotl, seems very interested in setting up conspiracies.win, advertising the site in multiple posts.

If you’re confused as to why r/Conspiracy mods would try and take the community off-site, when Reddit’s admins haven’t attempted to really censor the site much, it’s the same strategy behind sites like Gab and Parler — victimize yourself and consolidate power in the process. This has become the predominant trend across all right-wing online spaces and, honestly, it almost makes me feel bad for conservative internet users (almost). The moderators of their communities only view them as revenue sources or political acquisitions. Moderators are constantly mobilizing them for crowdfunding or moving them around the internet and it honestly must be exhausting!

Setting up these right-wing safe spaces also completely tanks the community because all the users get bored being stuck in a sandbox alone because modern right-wing social networks need cruelty and abuse to sustain themselves because without an other to constantly antagonize and define themselves against they end up talking about absolute nonsense gibberish like JFK Jr. secretly being alive, reptilian aliens controlling the global stock market, and speculating about when the biblical apocalypse will arrive.

If things go the way they typically do, likely two things will happen on r/Conspiracy. Moderators will start allowing more and more extreme content, pushing the limits of the community, eventually causing Reddit to either quarantine it or shut it down entirely. And then they’ll go over to their .win site and loudly claim they’re being censored and possibly raise a bunch of money via crowdfunding or Republican dark money in the process.

Let’s Check In On Scotland

If you don’t feel like clicking through, the names on the map are:

• Gangsta Granny Gritter

• Mr Plow

• Sprinkles

• Rumble

• Ice Destroyer

• Power Bear Explorer

• Ready Spready Go

• For Your Ice Only

• BFG — Big Friendly Gritter

• Yes Sir Ice Can Boogie

• Snow Dozer

• Snowball

• Spready Mercury

• Salty

• Snow Destroyer

• Sil Salter Scott

You can check out the live tracker here. Today there was another truck on the road called The Winter Explorer.

People Are Trying To Manifest Reality Via Internet With Lucid Dreaming Again

Further proving that every new social network absorbs, remixes, and reinvents everything that came before, TikTok has reached its lucid dreaming phase. If you go over to the #Shifting tag, you’ll see tons of videos made by mostly Harry Potter fans trying to “shift” reality and go live at Hogwarts. According to VICE, it’s been going on since at least September.

It’s interesting that this sort of thing keeps coming back up. 4chan went through a big lucid dreaming phase in the early 2010s and between 2014-2015, My Little Pony fans became obsessed with manifesting “tulpas,” or living hallucinations of their favorite ponies. I’m honestly not 100% on what this means that it keeps happening.

Author Sam Maggs has a really good thread if you want to read more about shifting and the terminology associated with it. “DR” means “desired reality,” for instance. According to most users, when you successfully shift, a clone takes over your body and lives out your life here on Earth prime, while the real you lives in whatever fictional world you want to escape to.

Maybe it’s naive, but I tend to assume most things on TikTok don’t have very much staying power. Memes and trends come and go and I’m not totally sure the young people engaging with the content on the site really care much about it. So I don’t think the kids posting #Shifting content will have go through the same psychological distress that the Bronies did. But who knows, maybe a bunch of the TikTokers will have nervous breakdowns. Based on what I’ve seen though, this all just seems like weird fun stuff.

But it probably does say something about the current state of the world that a bunch of teenagers on one of the most popular apps in the world right now are sharing tips for how to disassociate and live in a fictional dream world!

A Really Good Video About A Really Good Discord Conversation

This reminds me. I’ve sort of been passively thinking about starting a Garbage Day Discord. I don’t know if anyone would be interested in that sort of thing, but it might be fun! Let me know if you’d be into it.

One More Good Reddit Thing

Sadly the original post has been deleted. Also, this wasn’t posted to thedonald.win, but r/DonaldTrump, which is the slightly less deranged pro-Trump subreddit. If you click through to the thread there’s some very good screenshots of the what the comment section looked like before the post went down. It turns out a lot of people do not fully understand what is and what is not socialism.

Doge Is 15 Now

There was recently a discussion happening simultaneously on Tumblr and Reddit about how old Kabosu, the dog behind the doge meme, is now. Turns out she recently turned 15 years old! Which is very old for shibes, but based on Instagram, it seems like she’s have a very good holiday season.

Fun Fact: I got to pet her backstage at an award show once and she was nice and her fur was very soft.

Shout Out To Twitter User @edma06RBLX

Earlier this month, YouTube’s Twitter account asked people about which videos they’ve watched over and over again this year. For me it was probably Skatune Network’s of “Mr. Brightside”.

That’s when Twitter user @edma06RBLX responded with a link to what seemed like it was a cute video about a cute puppy.

Except if you actually click on it and play the video, it was Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Classic. It looks like YouTube’s Twitter manager fell for it.

Anyways, nice work @edma06RBLX. I’d say this is up there with Twitter user @firescotch BOFA’ing Richard Dawkins.

My Sister’s Bad Holiday RomCom Review Corner

I’ll be ending the next couple Garbage Days with a section cowritten with my sister Caroline. She loves terrible Christmas movies. She loves them so much she subscribes to the Hallmark channel’s streaming app and watches them all year long. So I’ve asked her to help me review some terrible Christmas movies.

The Princess Switch: Switched Again

What’s It About?

Caroline: “It’s the sequel to The Princess Switch. This time, Duchess Margaret (Vanessa Hudgens) all of a sudden has to inherit the throne of Montenaro [Ed. note: Not Montenegro, but the fictional country of Montenaro] at the same time that she’s in a ‘rough patch’ with her very common boyfriend from New York who has a bakery. Then her double, Stacey (also Vanessa Hudgens), steps in with a plan to get them back together — although, a third lookalike (also Vanessa Hudgens) has a different plan.

VHuds #1 and #2 are besties but #3 is Duchess Margaret’s wicked cousin Fiona who has bleach blonde hair, wears leather tights to a ball, and her first line as she enters the ball is ‘Yo! Let’s get this party started, shall we?’ And she walks around with two people in her posse who pickpocket people because they’re like rich-poor.

Stacey (VHuds #2) plans to switch with her bestie Margaret (VHuds #1) to help her have some time with her commoner boyfriend, but before that Fiona (VHuds #3) kidnaps #1 and pretends to be her to move up the coronation and steal the crown and other valuables.

It’s honestly too complex of a plot for how basic the movie is. It truly hurt trying to summarize it.”

How Does It Involve Christmas?

Caroline: “Well, you can’t have a royal scandal without a Christmas ball and an Obscene amount of Christmas tree decorations in each room. And a really drawn out Christmas decorating party montage scene that felt like it lasted 20 minutes.”

Is The Movie Any Good? 

Caroline: “Anything is possible in Christmas movies, like a soon to be queen being kidnapped by her poor cousin and then marrying a common baker from New York. Which is obviously the true meaning of Christmas. But I thought it was a little hard to jam a wedding, a coronation, and a Christmas ball all into the final chunk of the movie lmao. I’d give the first Princess Switch 4 stars out of 5 and this one 1.5 stars out of 5.”

P.S. here’s a really good tweet.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***