The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I had to tell a friend of mine to take a break from it.
The level of tinfoil hat theories (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth off of which to build more theories is really something. The unfortunate thing is - in our current environment, the crazy speculation and knowingly dealing in just shit you made up seems to actually pay off when pressuring public officials.
I am glad the files were released. A lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. I don't actually think this ends up going anywhere, but we'll see.
> The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well.
I saw a video on Instagram claiming (or at least insinuating) that Epstein had access to all of Lifetouch's photos, because "the company is in the Epstein files!". Turns out, it was a single line item for $109 in what looked like banking records. In comparison, that same selection of files mentioned Whole Foods ~250 times.
For those outside the US, Lifetouch does school photos for about half the schools in the US (or something like that) so you can understand how that's a thread that conspiracy theorists can pull on. But there's nothing there. Just a single payment to the company in a sea of thousands and thousands of normal, every day purchases.
who. fucking. cares. systematic child abuse has been covered up for decades, across multiple administrations. THE PRESIDENT IS NAMED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TIMES.
LET ME REPEAT. WHO CARES. I don't blame a single god damn person for getting wrapped up in conspiracies.
There is a book “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” which you might want to consider before deciding truth doesn’t matter anymore. It describes an explicit strategy by the Kremlin to poison the information landscape with lies, half truths, and conspiracies. And amplify conflicting narratives.
Eventually people stop caring about what is true anymore.
> Eventually people stop caring about what is true anymore.
In the age of easy to fake video, photos, audio, etc, who wouldn't be?
Except you and everyone you agree with I'm sure
nixosbestos’s comment was in response to a post about how an arbitrary brand new conspiracy theory didn’t have compelling evidence in the emails. It seems like saying “who cares” to what kind of reads like “technically there’s an infinite amount of conspiracy theories that aren’t proven in the emails” is saying the opposite of “truth doesn’t matter”
> (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth
I haven’t seen any indication of “people that didn’t previously believe in cannibal elites now believe in cannibal elites after reading the emails” being a phenomenon that actually exists.
I’ve yet to interact with anyone that has seriously said “I didn’t believe they ate babies on Tuesday but it is Thursday and now I believe they were eating babies.” but people are posting like that’s a thing that happens frequently now. It’s almost like the tinfoil hat theory I’ve seen the most isn’t “pedophile cannibals” but rather “reading the emails will make you go crazy and start believing in cannibal pedophiles” like they are an actual real-life Lovecraftian hazard, which is a much more outlandish idea than… kooks and hucksters continuing to be kooks and hucksters.
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> What a fucking joke. This site is a joke. This discourse is a joke. The entire pretense of these bullshit conversations are a joke.
Don't take it out on me. I am outraged. I can't be outraged every minute of every day, and certainly not at the very-unlikely-to-be-true worst theories from the files. I am so sorry my post did not live up to your expectations.
You're right about something:
> you know, than remarking on the fact that once again, nothing will happen.
Any kind of pretense that justice ever got served to Epstein and his co-conspirators is a joke. We all know it. The system is a joke - a joke that's on us.
Sorry, I regretted this pretty much after I wrote it. I'm upset, didn't need to be at you. I'm having a bit of a hard time compartmentalizing? all of this, despite my default cynic attitude.
Time for an extended break from things.
Kudos for recovering this nicely.
I've seen a number of HN threads lately where commenters regain their balance like this and respond in a thoroughly decent way.
A new pattern? I wish! but it's probably just the clustering illusion... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37303788)
what about a new top nav category next to show? decency
Thanks for your reply.
> Time for an extended break from things.
It's all a lot.
You were right the first time, the holier-than-thou sanctimony is a bit much, especially as it relates to these developments.
Nearly half the potentially responsive files still withheld (per reports of ~6M pages collected but only ~3.5M released, plus heavy redactions and privilege claims), and HN top commentary is about not rushing to judgement and conspiracy theories... maybe it's because the government is literally running an active cover up on a child abuse scandal that involves the billionaires, the elites, and threatens to take down entire governments.
We should be taking it out on ourselves though.
We're sitting around waiting for Luke Skywalker or Wonder Woman; someone else to improve the world.
It's not just you but it is you too.
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Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary.
As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews.
Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church.
Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.
It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
>It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
That is because it is true, a lot of people do want to paint all Jews like that. People would probably find the catholic church stuff even juicier if the vatican was running an intelligence agency that brokers with most other western intelligence agencies with these same rapists.
The thing with Epstein is that he really seems heavily connected to intelligence. Maxwells dad is alleged to be a Mossad agent. There are pictures of him in meetings in his office with a map of Israel, gaza, and the west bank on the wall. There are FBI documents that allege epstein himself was at least at one point a Mossad agent.
So you have this compelling israeli intelligence angle. The fact that global elites genuinely partied with this man. All the history of the case from the sweetheart plea deal in 2007 that stopped the federal investigation at the time in its tracks and granted immunity for potentially involved parties, the fact he was never actually convicted before he died (even that is suspect), the fact that outside Maxwell no one has been arrested.
I mean it really quacks like a tin foil hat global elite conspiracy. That is what makes this story so damn juicy and compelling. It isn't just a couple priests getting their rocks off with some alter boys, but an entire systematic thing where its looking like this guy was not only trafficking girls but running some sort of Bene Gesserit esque breeding program impregnating teenagers he thought had good genetic traits.
You couldn't even write this stuff into a movie it is so wild and hardly believable if it wasn't coming from DOJ evidence respositories.
Yeah, but 2 things can both be true:
1 The Epstein story has an interesting Mossad angle, maybe they contacted him or even paid him
2 Lunatic antisemites (and probably many bots) are overrunning the internet with medieval-style antisemitism in which Epstein is still alive, babies were eaten, etc.