Neither of us are susceptible to advertising.
Both of us were exposed to advertising in childhood.
Prior to age 11, there are a few instances of me having wanted something after seeing it in an advert.
At age 11, I installed Adblock Plus on my browser, and I have had ads blocked on my main browser ever since.
When I acquired Android smartphones from age 13 onwards, as mentioned on Other features of our lack of the social mindset, I rooted and installed custom ROMs on them and modified my apps to not show ads.
At age 13, a school peer sent me the following message on Facebook: ‘Check Out The Link On My Wall! To See Who Checked Out Your Profile This Month. It Really Works!’ I replied, ‘Stop clicking that stupid link it’s a Facebook virus why is everyone so gullible enough to click it.’
At age 13, another school peer sent me the same Facebook message (‘Check Out The Link On My Profile To See Whos Viewing Your Profile And Photos !!!’). I replied:
‘No it’s a Facebook virus. And most of my friends [on Facebook] including you have been gullible enough to click that link and get infected. It automatically sends it to all your friends so they can get infected and so forth and so forth.’
Over a month later, she replied, ‘I don’t care?’ I replied, ‘Bit of a late reply.’ She replied, ‘I don’t care’.
At age 17, I stated, ‘That’s all [capitalism] is, the ability to mind-control each other through TV adverts and flashy advertising bullshit.’
At age 17, my friend stated:
‘I’ve never given a penny to charity.’ I replied, ‘Nor me. I hate charity, because your money gets lost. It gets tipped into a drain, never seen again, no way to see what exactly it’s done or where it’s gone. If I wanted to help African kids, I’d go to Africa and give them something myself, help build them a house.’
I later sent a photo of an African boy with a t-shirt with an image of the Cookie Monster saying ‘Me so hungry’ with the caption ‘Thanks for the shirt. Asshole.’ I remarked, ‘It’s funny, but it’s also frustratingly true. This is what people do when they give to charity.’
I later stated at age 20, ‘You know, actually, a lot of these charities are fighting for unsolvable issues. It brings a much more sinister undertone to what they’re doing.
Child abuse will always happen. You absolutely cannot eradicate it or even decrease it directly. Only external factors decrease it, like having a better upbringing, which could come with a better economy, but economies are never always good all over the world. There will always be bad economies, including those caused by natural disasters out of our control.
So it’s bollocks trying to “fight” child abuse without having an agenda of how. I’m sick to death of all charities. They never make it clear what they intend to do and how and how they know it will work.
99% of the time, all I hear from charities is the catchline: “Stop child abuse”, “Stop cancer”, “Stop bullying”, “Fight HIV“, and people often just give after hearing just that. They don’t ask questions. They don’t know where their money’s going, why it will actually make a difference, if it will actually make a difference.
I mean, people are enchanted just by hearing that, like that’s all they need to hear to fall in love with a charity and start giving.’ My friend replied, ‘It’s people who have no perception of simple, intuitive game theory again.’
My friend later stated at age 20, ‘I don’t feel sorry for flood victims, because all the money they spent on social-mindset things, they could have bought a watertight door with. Why buy a house on a floodplain as well?’ I replied, ‘Yes, and they’ll just go and spend any money you donate on social-mindset things.’
My friend had previously stated at age 19, in response to a Facebook post by someone our age on mental-illness awareness, ‘What is she doing posting it? What does she achieve by doing that, as if we don’t know already?’
I replied, ‘It’s her shoddy attempt at “spreading awareness” when in reality, she’s only causing more confusion. People should, instead of relying on Facebook posts to gain awareness, read medical articles.‘
My friend replied, ‘Yes, I totally agree, causing more confusion. Also, why would people even need awareness? It’s just screaming them in the face. It’s blatantly obvious, the trends.
I replied, ‘All I see now are two things:
- a) awareness movements that are totally fucking unnecessary because there is already awareness, and
- b) awareness movements that only cause more confusion and don’t shed light on the nature of the issue.
Those two are not mutually exclusive. Breast cancer awareness falls under both: no mention of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, only more fucking marathons lol.’
At age 19, I stated:
‘I was only infected by a computer virus once in 2008 [at age 9], I believe, one of those things you grow out of, like scam emails, phishing, etc., things you could only possibly have an issue with in childhood.’
I later stated, in response to a study investigating whether those with autism were more susceptible to phishing scams (‘due to diminished social skills‘) but found that they weren’t:[1]
‘Hahaha. Who the fuck falls for phishing anymore but old people? For some reason, I’ve seen an explosion in “tech support scam” videos on YouTube, and I hate them. I’m tired of it. It doesn’t apply to me, because I’ll never fall for such ungodly stupid shit.’
I later stated, ‘I still remember when fake news meant satirical news, websites that were clearly fake and hosted spoof articles.’ At age 12, I had commented on a YouTube video, ‘Clue’s in the website – MOX (Mocks) news.com’.
At age 20, in response to a news article on users exploiting the BlueforSudan movement to gain followers on social media by claiming to ‘donate meals to Sudanese civilians’,[2] I stated, ‘Hahaha, but it’s the fact 400,000 people believed that and thought Sudanese people were in need of fucking meals, as if they have a “starving children” problem.’
My friend replied, ‘Yes, but that’s what these BBC UNICEF adverts do. Nobody knows where the money actually goes, but the advert is under the premise of feeding starving children.’
I replied, ‘Yes, I know. It’s just funnier in this context, because it’s actual young people doing it, not elderly women gazing at their TV, and the fact it’s Sudan, a blatantly non–”starving African child” country.
It’s also still hilarious to me how they criticise the fake accounts, when they’re not the issue; the people are the issue, the stupid followers. They’re just profiting off a problem. They’re not the problem. It’s not their fault they can get followers for pretending to be charities.’
My friend replied, ‘I just see it as this big, dancing, hysterical circus of caricatures, the Western caricatures.’ I replied, Exactly. Yes, exactly.’
My friend later stated in a voice message, ‘It’s such a leap, really, how complex we think and problem-solve, and when you compare it to everyone else and the fact they get caught at the first hurdle, that “scam” mindset as well. When people get scammed, it’s so pathetic.
I’ve never fallen victim to a scam, but my mum rang me this morning, because she’d been rung by HM Revenue & Customs [HMRC], some person saying that she owes £1,500, and they’re going to have a warrant out for her if she doesn’t pay it, and then she said, “Well, I’m at the hospital at the moment”, and they said, “Well, just pay half for now.”
But it’s the fact she was upset, almost crying, like she believed it. You know, she told them her address, for fuck’s sake. She rung me up. There’s no logical thought process involved.
I mean, the HMRC is not going to employ such cowboy tactics. They’re not going to say, “Oh, pay half now.” They’re not going to ring up in a foreign accent. It’s totally ludicrous.
It’s the fact she could google the number and then see the countless pages with the countless reports, the 1,200 reports of that number, all people saying “HMRC scam” or “scam where they threaten you with a warrant” or “generic scam where they ask you this”.
It’s so generic. It’s so basic, and yet people fall for it. I just can’t understand why my mum couldn’t understand that. It’s even the fact that I knew it was a scam when my mum said “HMRC”. I knew it was a scam then. The first word that came out of her mouth, I knew it was a scam, because I’ve seen that scam.
[Another relative] had that scam. He didn’t believe it, but I’ve seen it. He got an email for HMRC saying a similar thing. He didn’t believe it at all, obviously, and he showed it to me, and I clicked the link, and it came up with some page in Thai script.
So it’s just bollocks. It’s the fact I knew it was a scam then. It’s the fact that HMRC would not do that. They would not ring someone up. They’d write a letter.
But it’s the fact that she didn’t owe anything anyway, but suddenly, she’s coerced into believing she owes something. Where’s the sense in that? Ridiculous.
It’s the fact that she couldn’t even look it up online. It’s the fact she couldn’t even type in the number on Google and then see for herself. It’s the fact she had to ring me, the fact that she’s in a state, and it’s like the emotion just takes over all logical thought.
And that mindset is the same mindset that causes everything. That mindset there is the same mindset that can’t diagnose. It’s the same mindset that can’t sort their computer out. It’s the same mindset that gets caught at the first hurdle, and like I said, that is very dangerous.
And our mindset is just a world away from that. It’s a mutation.’ I replied, ‘Yes. I don’t understand why people fall for scams.’
My friend later stated, ‘I see everything as interlinked: the inability-to-diagnose mindset, the drug mindset, the “can’t diagnose through a screen” mindset, the Snapchat-filter mindset, the wanting-to-be-adult mindset, the loving-children-and-babies mindset, the falling-victim-to-national-media-and-folklore mindset,
the inability-to-fact-check mindset, the inability-to-ruminate-critically mindset, the animal-loving mindset, the inability-to-get-past-the-first-hurdle mindset, the gullibility-to-scams mindset, the “makeup is artistic expression” mindset, the art mindset, the wanting-to-be-on-trend or using-trendy-as-a-compliment mindset.
It’s all this massive, interlinked web that all cause and complement and feed each other; the assigning-value-to-inanimate-objects-and-jewellery mindset, objects with no practical or functional benefit, the Facebook-scam mindset, the religion mindset, the superstitious mindset. It’s all this big, festering mass.’
I replied, ‘Yes. It’s a good point about scams, because I was incredibly pissed off at why YouTube was continually recommending me “tech support scammers getting owned” videos, and I was wondering why they were still a thing in 2019.
I thought they only afflicted the elderly, but what you’re saying is right. Turns out the horror is real. All people are affected by stupid scams, the fact that the 2014 celebrity nudes leak was facilitated by simple phishing schemes.’
I later stated, ‘All these people who get “catfished”. It’s practically impossible for me to get catfished.’
I later stated, ‘I can’t be verbally manipulated, really, only physically. From the get-go, the girl you spoke to looked like something I’d avoid, looked skanky and therefore totally expectable if it were to be a catfish, looked like the exact sort of thing that lurks in the dirty depths of dating apps. … Yes, well I’d never go after it, and it proved to be not real in this case.
I still remember when some Iranian girl from a group messaged me asking for “sex chat”, and I immediately told her to send a real picture of herself when she tried to send a fake one, and she submitted. The fake one wasn’t a porn image; it was a totally genuine profile photo of a random girl, just not her.’
I later stated at age 21, in response to a YouTube video suggestion titled ‘Spying on the Scammers [Part 1/4]’, ‘This really pisses me off. They think they’re doing something sneaky or view-worthy, but in fact, it only appeals to people who have the systemic complex that leads them to always get scammed by scammers.
To people like me, who don’t, it just annoys. To them, it’s like they’re getting their retribution, when in fact, it is the recipient’s fault for falling for such a stupid scheme that literally requires stupidity to fall for it.’
I later stated, ‘Yes, as mentioned before, catfishing has never been a thing for me, never been a thing I’ve had to worry about or experience. There’s no culture or worry over my head about it.
It’s nonexistent, and frankly, I hate hearing about it, just like I hate hearing about scams, because it’s all needless stupidity that doesn’t need to happen, that people wouldn’t fall for if they weren’t stupid.’
I later stated, ‘”MTV Catfish”:[3] a whole channel dedicated to it, gosh.’
My friend later stated in a voice message at age 21, ‘You know what’s funny? I went to the Mensa meal, and they were all 70-, 80-, 90-year-olds, and the topic got on to scams and how they’ve been scammed, and I’m just thinking, well, you’ve got this IQ, whatever IQ they’ve got, 140+, 150, 160, and they’re talking about getting scammed, and the scams that scammed them are the most basic scams ever, haha.
It was more-or-less suggested that I would also get scammed, and it was impossible to express to these people that I could never get scammed.
And that also led on to them saying, “There’s going to be a point in the future where there’s going to be new technology out that you’re not going to understand, and it’s going to scam you as well”, implying that I’m also going to be in their position in 50 years time.
They have no clue. They’re unaware of the fact that I’ve already noticed that whole phenomenon about how old people don’t understand computers and how it doesn’t apply to me and won’t apply to me in the future.
When the latest technology comes out, I’ll have knowledge on it. When the latest development comes out, I’ll have knowledge on it. I’ll be researching it immediately. I’ll be using it if it has higher functionality than the functionality I have available at the moment. …’
Later, in response to a graphic mentioning ‘According to the vaccination theory …’, I sent a screenshot of the Google results for ‘vaccination theory’ and stated,
‘There’s not even any such thing as the “vaccination theory”, and all it took was a simple Google search, then you wonder why the fuck are people passing off blatantly inaccurate shit as true, especially when it’s something so easily rectifiable and actually quite hard to get wrong.
It just makes you rack your mind. These are such small things, small in terms of ability to deal with but quite large in terms of implications. It just recalls all the gunk I see on these YouTube edutainment channels, blatantly inaccurate shit being passed off as true.
Don’t know if I mentioned it here, but there’s that police-interview channel [Jim Can’t Swim],[4] and the channel mentions throughout its videos numerous so-called “techniques” used by interrogators, but it’s inaccurate.
I researched, and up to half of the techniques he describes don’t have a name, or the name is different to the one he made up. He’s making up names (and thus techniques) to make it sound like interrogations are more sinister and calculating than they are (since they involve so many of these supposedly well defined textbook “techniques”).
They may be very sinister and calculating, but he’s pushing a point of view using lies, which makes his credibility fall through the floor.
I don’t understand why people don’t have critical thinking. I guarantee very few people out of his hundreds of thousands of viewers have googled the techniques he mentions, otherwise they would’ve found what I found. They just accept it as fact, because he sounds all authoritative and has a commandeering voice and presentation.
Critical thinking just doesn’t exist in most people. It’s why I’ll never understand on a logical level why “fake news” is considered a problem. The problem isn’t in the fucking news; it’s in the people. It’s people. People are the problem.‘
At age 20, I stated:
‘AdBlock is one of those things you forget you have. It just melts into your daily user experience, and that’s how it should be, just like how I haven’t had YouTube ads on mobile for 4 years. It would sting so badly if I had to see them now.’
My friend replied, ‘Yes, exactly. We take it for granted. You forget what it’s like to have ads and how annoying it is.’
At age 20, I stated, ‘I don’t understand why [the YouTuber] H3 was saying[5] “Really!?” to [another YouTuber] Bill Wurtz not liking ads on YouTube.’
As a preface for the next block, there is an instance at age 12 in which I represented my views on a YouTuber telling people to ‘like and subscribe’ by commenting, ‘It’s funny when you really persist and persist and make me feel sorry that I’m not clicking the subscribe button and [I’m] just staring at you and you keep saying please like you really want me to click it…… Then I remember I’ve…’ However, the sarcastic comeback did not survive in the excerpt on record.
At age 20, I stated:
‘You know, that “persuasive” speech thing must really work on people, like, to a scary extent, because it explains why people on YouTube insist on telling the viewer to like and subscribe, as if it works.
It’s become a time-worn trope that just gets mindlessly regurgitated. No one stops to think if it does anything, but that’s the thing; I think they do, and I think they genuinely believe it does something.
I will never forget a haunting video I saw about the matter a few years ago, in which one YouTuber basically explained why he tells people to like and subscribe, and it was some of the scariest stuff I’ve ever seen. He had full faith in it, describing it as a “helpful reminder” or something.’
My friend replied, ‘It does, but I’m trying to work out why, whether it’s blind trust for people or blind love.’ I replied, ‘But you know, it explains a lot, that too. People will just do what you tell them with no second thought, apparently.’
I continued, ‘But it reminded me of the swathes of [user-submitted] tracks on [the flash game] Happy Wheels that begged the user to rate [the track] 5 [out of 5]. Even back then in 2010 and 2011, I was absolutely livid at that practice. I hated it wherever I saw it.
I continue to hate it, because it often means the difference between me potentially having liked the video or subscribed and me not. Them saying that often results in me not doing the act, because of what they’ve shown themselves to be.’
My friend replied, ‘Yes. They’d go and do it without thinking, but it wouldn’t work on me. I’d only do it if there were no other option, if it were in order to achieve something, otherwise it has no practical benefit. I’d always avoid bureaucracy or adverts at all costs. I’d always be taking the shortcut.’
I stated, ‘It’s really scary now, that I’ve made all these realisations. I really don’t like the way things are. My logical thought just doesn’t translate on to anybody else [among humans]. I can’t promote my way of doing or thinking, because other people just won’t accept it.’
My friend replied, ‘Do you not feel it all coming together? I feel like all the revelations are slowly coming together into this giant, glowing ball.’ I replied, ‘Well, most of the revelations have already come. Anything I realise now is just small additions on top of that.’
At age 19, my friend stated:
‘Oh my God. There is an advert on TV, a makeup one. Oh, it’s such a terrible influence, made me angry.
But I say that; I think if people can be influenced by that, then they have that mindset. They have that clay viewpoint, so anyone who would be influenced by that and start using makeup were doomed long ago anyway.’ I replied, ‘Exactly, as I’ve been constantly saying.’
I then quoted the following messages from a month prior: I had stated, ‘We both know that all people cannot be trusted and deteriorate. It puts all of them on a level playing field.
My point is that while it might be nice for someone to have good views, I’m always on guard for them to change [to social-mindset-based ones], and I’m totally right to do that, and you should too. No one at all can be trusted.
But just think: the mere fact that [your girlfriend] had all that makeup beforehand and changed to no makeup [prior to meeting you] means she could just as easily change back again. I’ve said it time and time again that the unstable thinking doesn’t go away.
That’s what’s at the root, not the views. The views, so it seems, are just a side effect, a passing coincidence. It’s the fact that [the makeup-wearing] was possible, that she did it for so long, and that’s ignoring all the other red flags like jewellery and festivalgoing.’
At age 20, I stated:
‘Yes, they think non-iPhone users are jealous not to have an iPhone. I see that around a lot, because all they can do is ascribe what they see others think to everyone else, so they think, because their friends all love iPhones and have one as a status symbol, that everyone’s mind thinks like that and that if you don’t have one, you’re jealous or salty.
They cannot comprehend a mind of practicality and not sociality, where one only cares about the functionality and performance of a phone. It doesn’t compute to them.‘
I later stated, in response to a voice message from my friend, ‘I was blown away by that discovery when it happened, had no idea Apple was somehow able to block access to Telegram channels or why they’d pinpoint them.
But they also get offended when you challenge what they use, as if they think it’s better. They invent reasons why it’s better. They can’t explain why they’ve used it their whole life. The whole fact iPhone users get way more touchy about this shows that they are less confident in their reasoning for using it.
Secondly, there remains an objective reality such as specs that proves the performance of the phones. Thirdly, the only reason (as you said) that iPhone users can be considering Androids worse is because they do not exploit phone functionality. If one used a phone to its full extent, they’d quickly find iPhones suffocating and Androids liberating.
It’s the fact I was looking up how to root my first Android phone at age 13 and did it successfully, then you get my current setup: daily sync of entire phone over LAN to 2 external drives simultaneously such that I can always browse the folders on PC. I have multiple similar setups. These were all free tools.
It’s given me the ability to download photos, videos and stories on Instagram, unlimited story-viewing time, no “seen” receipts for story-viewing, no “seen” receipts or “typing” notifications in DMs, the ability to disable double-tap-to-like, the ability to disable swiping left or right to enter DMs or camera and the ability to show exact dates and times for posts rather than days or years ago,
and previously, no “seen” receipts for snap- or story-viewing on Snapchat, no screenshot receipts for snaps, stories or messages, unlimited snap- and story-viewing time, the ability to auto-download snaps and stories, the ability to share snaps from the gallery, the ability to spoof my location and speed and unlimited caption text.
Practically every time I used to try and bring up the functionality of Android to people, they’d mention how they’d never use that, as if that therefore meant it was bad. No; it just means they don’t know how to exploit functionality that provides clear and obvious benefits.’
At age 20, I stated, ‘All Stranger Things adverts I ever see show the actors looking perplexed like that. I don’t know if it’s because they think that’ll make me want to watch the show. It just makes me pissed off.’
References
- ^ "Does having autism make you more vulnerable to cyber phishing attacks? - News". UAB News. 2018-12-06. (Archive version from 21 October 2020.)
- ^ Mezzofiore, Gianluca (2019-06-18). "Fake Instagram accounts are hijacking Sudan solidarity campaign". CNN. (Archive version from 19 June 2019.)
- ^ "MTV Catfish - YouTube". YouTube. (Archive version from 13 October 2020.)
- ^ "JCS - Criminal Psychology - YouTube". YouTube. (Archive version from 15 October 2020.)
- ^ H3 Podcast (2018-11-30). "H3 Podcast #96 - bill wurtz". YouTube.
- ^ Mezzofiore, Gianluca (2019-06-18). "Fake Instagram accounts are hijacking Sudan solidarity campaign". CNN. (Archive version from 19 June 2019.)