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I literally wouldnt and not enough people notice this

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I do find it a little fascinating how many of these people go insane. Not metaphorically, but literally just become shadows of their former selves. Every grifter who’s from 5-8 years ago I’ve seen is now in some phase of either borderline delirium that people watch to see them burn or just straight up vanish.

Why do you think that is?

Grifting in the internet age is an act of performance with a profit motive. The goal of that performance, the way you make money, is the art of Baiting.

Making good bait is difficult. Grifting was a different game in the early days of the internet. You had to be provocative enough to bait people into paying attention (positive or negative!), but not so provocative that you folded over into self parody. But I think the algorithmization of social media has changed how this game has played somewhat.

Every seen this guy?

He goes by DateRightStuff on tiktok. He is a master of producing bait. Every video is some shit like "when homeless people ask for money, I like to give them fake Hollywood money. That way when they go to try and use the money, they get arrested."

Clearly made-up nonsense. He doesnt actually do that in real life. But it is a story that gestures towards a conservative base, while leaving himself wiiiiiiide open to dunks from the left. Because you gotta remember, he makes money from every comment, every stitch, every reaction.

Every half-baked snarky dunk is another triggered lib for his audience to laugh at. Dunks keep him relevant in the algorithm! This is important, because the way DateRightStuff makes money is by hawking his "conservative dating app." His entire tiktok account is essentially one giant marketing campaign for this app. It is bait-based advertising, and every day literally thousands of people fall for it.

But DateRightStuff is especially good at this. Mainting this level of performance is exhausting, no matter how profitable it may be. It requires an in-depth understanding of the social space and no small amount of creativity. It is a careful balancing act, constantly making small adjustments to an internet persona to keep the money flowing in.

Many grifters fail because they are strange. They have strange ideas about the world, and have trouble maintaining the level of objectivity that makes guys like DateRightStuff so effective.

I dont think grifters really "go insane" per se. (I'm sure some do.) I think they lose control of the balancing act. They press too hard in the wrong direction, get into the wrong beef, or fail to capitalize on some new social trend, and lose the attention they need. There can be a period of attempting to claw back that attention with increasingly ridiculous stunts. From the outside, this looks like they are going nuts.

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I took my little brother (autistic, mostly non verbal) out and he was using his voice keyboard to tell me something, and this little boy (maybe 4 or 5?) heard him and asked me "Is he a robot??" I tried to explain to him that no, he isn't a robot, he just communicates differently, but my darling brother was in the background max volume "I am robot I am robot I am robot I am robot"

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You're obsessed with the rotting bloated corpse. It's like your Jungkook. Embarassing!

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obscurity is definitely in my top 10 things to languish in

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I'm beginning to think that making visibly corrupt weapons contractors a load baring pillar of our economy might not have been a great idea.

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they're letting just anybody order a happy meal nowadays

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I took my little brother (autistic, mostly non verbal) out and he was using his voice keyboard to tell me something, and this little boy (maybe 4 or 5?) heard him and asked me "Is he a robot??" I tried to explain to him that no, he isn't a robot, he just communicates differently, but my darling brother was in the background max volume "I am robot I am robot I am robot I am robot"

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A strawberry used to peel men with a single foppish motion of the wrist

*lich voice* FALL

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My gargoyle egg hatched and this thing was in it

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How the fuck am I supposed to meet a fellow lesbian and then convince her to date me

Don't know anything about lesbians, but maybe if you walked around carrying a baseball bat that'd be really bad ass.

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this thing has been staring at me for 13 years