Will Pizzagate Destroy Reality?

In 2009, the Cartoon Network show "South Park," skewered the "political commentary" style of Fox News luminaries like Glenn Beck, who sometimes made outrageous accusations with no basis in fact, couched in their defense, "I'm just asking questions." The character Cartman accuses student council president Wendy Testaburger of, among other things, committing genocide against Smurfs. Several students, believing that the questions wouldn't have been asked if there wasn't truth to the allegations, form a mob and demand Wendy face justice.

It seems like a ridiculous scenario, the kind of thing that can only happen in the cartoon world. But in the real world, a bunch of people have started the same behavior--"just asking questions"-- and it's already causing real world violence.

Is Hillary Clinton covering up a worldwide pedophile ring? Is the Clinton Foundation cover for an international pedophile syndicate? "I'm just asking questions." To a lot of people, these questions sound ridiculous. But to a growing number of self-professed sleuths gathering on internet message boards, these are questions worth investigating... and the more questions they ask, the deeper down the rabbit hole they go.

If you want a taste--and believe me, you don't--check this nutbar fever dream out.

It boils down to this. First, some white supremacist on Twitter made up a story about Anthony Weiner's emails revealing a Clinton pedophile ring. Then, among the thousands of embarrassing emails uncovered by Wikileaks in the days leading up to Donald Trump's election, there were a few in Clinton adviser John Podesta's gmail account that referred to pizza. For example:

John -- Hosting pizza party at Belmont for HFA on April 10. Maya Harris is joining, but need you. Can you come? Thanks much, Tony

Now, this looks totally innocent, to some people. The people who don't ask questions. But some of the other pizza emails seemed strange to people who have never left their basements or had a social life. A bunch of staffers joking about how to split up the last slice from an office party. An email from a realtor asking if John had left a handkerchief with a "map that seems pizza-related" on the kitchen island at a rental property. Just look up the word "pizza" in Wikileaks and you'll find 149 results. Is it possible that these emails were all just about pizza?

Yes, but no. Because, get ready for this... the site 4chan proposed that some of the words in these emails are actually code words. The source for these code words is.... well, unknown, but this 4chan user figured it out. By plugging in the code words for innocuous words like "pizza," it turns out that Podesta, the realtor, a dozen staffers, a pizza parlor owner and everyone else in the emails were actually talking about the cutie underage minors they were going to kidnap, torture and rape.

If this seems like a stretch to you, these good-hearted internet citizens would tell you that you're not asking enough questions.

Snopes did a pretty thorough teardown  of why the "evidence" uncovered is most certainly bullshit, but all the debunking has done nothing to dissuade people from threatening the owner of a pizza parlor in D.C. and neighboring businesses.

Lest you think this is just fun and games, yesterday, a man with a gun walked into that same pizza parlor and fired a shot.

But of course, if your one who "asks questions," then you're already suspicious of the timing. What a coincidence that just when people are starting to believe pizzagate, a guy walks in with a gun?

Well, what if the gunman was just a "crisis actor?" HE HAS AN IMDB PAGE!!!!!

You can see a pattern in anything. If you look hard enough, everything is a conspiracy. Just because some things look alike or some people know each other or some places exist side by side doesn't mean they have a nefarious connection.

I believe in facts. Not speculation based on what art someone owns or whose party someone's brother once attended. Find a victim, find a crime scene, find forensic evidence, find one iota of proof that isn't an attack on someone's character or something you found that originated on 4chan. Nothing here would stand up in a court of law... that should tell you something.

These are real people that are being accused of gruesome, terrible things. They're not abstract cartoon characters. John Podesta, Hillary Clinton, the pizza guy, etc. You may not like their politics. You may not like them personally. But an accusation of pedophilia is pretty heavy. An accusation of running child trafficking is even heavier. That's pretty big weight to be throwing at someone based off of conjecture. Even an accusation is something that sticks with someone. You put it out there, you give it a semblance of validity, you might convince someone, not just that you're "asking questions," but that it's true. And that has consequences. False accusations can have real life negative effects. Especially something like this that gets people rightly fired up. You want to encourage some righteous wannabe hero to engage in some vigilante justice? Intelligent people don't make charges without real solid evidence. Find it, tell the world! But engaging in witch hunts based on circumstantial (to be generous) evidence, guilt by association tactics, and pure speculation doesn't help anyone. It hurts people.

That's my view. But it isn't the view shared by those whipping up pizzagate hysteria, the "just asking questions" crowd. Unfortunately, it seems to be spreading like a sickness. Now this same crowd is saying that the fake news sites that proliferated this election cycle weren't fake at all.

How many people who voted for Donald Trump did it because they believe Hillary Clinton runs a pedophile ring? You can laugh that off, but you can't laugh off the fact that there were millions of people who thought that there was something about her emails that made her more untrustworthy than a man involved in a fraud lawsuit he would later settle for $25 million dollars.

We're taught to question what people tell us. That's a good thing. But when the truth itself becomes a question, when there's no such thing as "fact," only the level of "digging" you've done online, reality itself becomes distorted. It's one thing to question the bias of the media.... its another thing to claim all media is in on one big conspiracy to protect a pedophile ring. Again, the media is not a bogeyman, it's made of individuals, many of whom actually have children they'd be interested in protecting.

Consider this... if the Clintons were running a pedophile ring, wouldn't some media outlet want that story? The Boston Globe won a Pulitzer for outing the Catholic Church for protecting abusive priests. Wouldn't there be some intrepid reporter going undercover, finding that dungeon below the pizza parlor?

I'm just asking questions.

MySpace Launches Vain Effort To Stop Sickos
[updated 12/8]


MySpace Founder? Or Pedophile? How Do We Know For Sure?

MySpace announced today that they will be partnering with a security firm to keep pedophiles off their service.

However, buried in their press release:

"Today’s announcement is a strong step in the right direction, but a gap will still exist in our ability to keep sex offenders off social networking sites until there is legislation that forces sex offenders to use registered email addresses"

MySpace seems to be claiming that forcing sex offenders to register their email addresses will "close the security gap," by allowing MySpace to ban those addresses from registering with the social network.

"With such measures in place, any use of false or unregistered emails would constitute a violation of the offender’s parole or probation and force them back to jail"

Um... I hate to state the obvious, but if a sex offender is contacting underage girls/boys online for sex... THAT is a violation of parole or probation. Obviously, the fear of violating parole isn't stopping these guys. With all the services out there that allow someone to set up as many free email accounts as they want in minutes, there's no way to prevent a sex offender from creating an email address that hasn't been registered. If they're planning on breaking parole anyway, do you think some requirement that they register their email accounts is going to stop them?

It's stupid. It won't work. It's unenforcable.

MySpace claims that by partering with this security firm, they can identify profiles of sex offenders and remove them from the network. But these sex offenders aren't exactly broadcasting their true selves here. Few teenage girls on MySpace are going to communicate with the 45-year-old bald guy who lives with his parents and lists Lolita as his favorite movie. These guys HIDE their identities. And on MySpace, there's still no way to verify if their being truthful or not. Sex offenders are FELONS. They're not going to put their true details out there, rendering MySpace's new partnership useless-- except to catch the only sex offenders stupid enough to put their real selves out there online. (Like Pamela Rogers Turner).

Wired Magazine used a similar screening program to search for sex offenders on the site's profiles. The author of the article confirmed 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles. That would seem to support the usefulness of MySpace's partnership with the security firm screening their profiles. But even the author of the article admits:

My search left me less convinced that targeting past offenders would be an effective way for MySpace to find current or future predators. By its nature, a search like mine is only going to produce people who use their real names and addresses, and who are perhaps the least likely of the offenders to be up to no good.

Well said. Those planning on breaking the law usually aren't in a rush to reveal themselves.


This Sicko Wasn't Exactly Fooling Anyone

In fact, MySpace seems to know this already. According to the Wired article, Michael Angus, executive general counsel of Fox Interactive Media, which owns MySpace, told a congressional committee that name-matching against public sex-offender registries wouldn't work. "He also argued that predators could easily use false names," the article states. This seems to go against the claim found in MySpace's current press release, which states, "Through this landmark partnership, MySpace will be able to search existing state and federal databases to identify and delete the profiles of registered sex offenders."

I'd love to call up MySpace and get comment on these two, seemingly contradictory statements, but the last time I contacted MySpace for a story, they strung me along without comment just long enough to get my article scooped by the AP. Bitch.

To me, the answer is simple. MySpace wants its critics to shut up, so they made this partnership, knowing it was useless, just so they'd look good. "Image"--as Andre Agassi used to say--"is everything."

So, Adam, you're such a genius, what will work?

Well, for starters, instead of MySpace selling their adspace to questionable imagery like this...


Subliminally driving MySpacers Towards Sexual Relations?

...they can put up something that doesn't smack 14-year-olds in the face with sexually charged ads the second they log in.

What, MySpace couldn't get an ad deal with Hustler?

Replace these ads with warnings. Big bright warnings that remind younger, stupider kids that some people may be older (and sicker) than they appear.

It won't stop pedos from registering, but it just might stop kids from adding them as friends.

Secondly.. and this is a biggie... MySpace needs age verification. MySpace hates this idea, and its understandable. It would cut the number of users by a large number. But such an action would prove that MySpace is committed to protecting minors. An age verification system would work the same way it does for porn sites. A credit card would be required to register. Or they could require a license number. Or, like Facebook (before it sold out and went public) a school, college, or company email address.

Less intrusively, MySpace could force users to know the last names or email addresses of the person they try to contact, before that contact can be established. They already have a similar "opt in" system like this in place, but it doesn't go far enough. They should automatically make profiles of those under 18 invisible to older users, unless that older user is a friend, or unless that older user knows the other user's last name.

How about an outside-the-box idea? MySpace can require younger users to also enter the email of a parent or guardian when they register. That way, periodically, the parent will receive an email from MySpace showing who their child has been communicating with (though, for the child's privacy, not what was said). This way, parents can ask, "Who's this PedoGuy69 you've been talking to?"

Of course, that raises another point. Which is: it's not completely MySpace's responsibility. While MySpace must make reasonable efforts, nearly every solution available to them still has many loopholes present. It's up to parents to monitor their kid's computer use. It's also up to parents to be involved with their kid's lives. I've heard many stories about kids "dating" people online and their parents never knowing about it. If you have a good relationship with your kid, this shouldn't ever happen.

But MySpace must produce more than these vain, questionably effective efforts if we're meant to view their anti-pedo stance as anything more than good public relations. They must start with the assumption that most people lie online, and then proceed from there.

And, for that matter, so should we.

Adam is a muscular, 21-year-old super-spy living in Iceland with his pet Yak, Noodles.