AMC ideologues

Take a listen to this video. Fear not, it’s only 2:27 long. 

It’s important to put all of this into context by better understanding the human condition. If you want to jump straight to the pointing and sputtering and manufacturing of indignation you can jump to the section titled Video Review. 

I should also note that most people have come to their senses and got the emotional excitement that they were after and are no longer diamond handers or APES. They had their fun under a false guise, saying slogans like “diamond hands” or “to the moon” for the fun of it and now look back and say, “I was part of that”. They’ll never  acknowledge what they were actually a part of or why. In other words, they’ll learn nothing. But humans are going to human. They’re not going to realize the lies they told themselves, the lies they believed, how susceptible they are to hysteria or false enforcement due to pluralistic ignorance. 

The whole AMC/GME debacle, insofar as the activists go, can be chalked up in large part to ideologues. This article doesn’t address the people who were playing along for funsies or the greater fools game, which was most people. 

Like most good ideological propaganda they need a bad guy to be a victim to. This is where misinformation, disinformation, misconceptions, lies and misrepresentations play a key role. It’s also what inevitably develops into conspiracy theories. 

As often is the case with most people's reasoning, it isn’t that what they say isn’t true, it's that they exclude other true information that would then make their conclusions false. This is why most people are propaganda machines in full force. 

Ideologues are propagandists, it’s in their nature. By definition they can’t be anything else. 

But it’s not just the ideologues and true believers that I  want to focus on here, there’s much more at play. There’s a more malevolent force. Those who hide behind good to do evil. That would be the grifters who propagate the propaganda to appear personable to the self deceiving victims. It’s a profitable hustle after all. 

In the Dot-Com section of this article the propagandists would be the news media, stock analysts, CEO’s, hedge funds and retail crowd. Essentially everyone. Why? Because those who knew better shut their mouth to play the game to profit from it. Not only did they not tell the truth, they replaced the truth with falsities. Do you think a hedge fund is going to say that they own a bunch of crap because they’re closet indexing the benchmark in order to not get redeemed? Of course not. Not only do they not say that but they give you BS reasons as to why they own it. They adopt the rhetoric of the time and feed you the same line of BS that everyone else is feeding everyone else. 

And those who didn’t know any better (assuming good faith) like the news media couldn’t afford not to feed you with BS. They’ll justify it easily enough to themselves by saying something along the lines of, “Although I think this is trading at an unreasonable price, who am I to tell other people how to invest and spend their money.” Or they’ll say something like, “ If they don’t watch it from us they’ll just watch it from someone else.” See, pretty easy. Humans are post hoc rationalizing engineers. 

And what about the analysts? For the most part they post hoc rationalize their models to justify the current price. That’s why they’re rarely ahead of the curve. Analysts cherry pick and engage in overfitting in order to justify current price action and future trajectory and to serve the prevailing bias of the market. Not once have I seen an analyst say that this company is atrocious but it has positive momentum and therefore you should buy. Nope, not once. Instead they give you lofty, abstract, pseudo reasonable reasons within a confined data set that allows them to rationalize their conclusion. Keep this in mind when you read the Art of Seduction quote in a few paragraphs. 

The grifters pander to the ideologues. They’re observably the same but fundamentally different. Just as a psychopath acts normal but is far from typical. But the ideologies are none the wiser. People are quick enough to dupe themselves. You don’t really need to run a psyop on people, they’re more than willing to gaslight themselves. You just need to know the talking points and repeat the rhetoric. Anything other than absolute support is complete aberration. In other words, you can’t reason with them. 

When you announce to the world that you believe your cause to be righteous and that you’ll listen to anything that confirms your bias and reject all that disconfirms your bias you’re also simultaneously welcoming parasitic grifters into your life. That’s just how the world works. 

The thing about normal people is that they don’t really think. They don’t understand that some people know how to play other people. And by understanding I mean acting in accordance with their knowledge.The fact that others are playing a sophisticated meta game doesn’t resonate with them. It’s mainly due to their solipsistic, egocentric, self centered, self absorbed nature. To most the world is as they live it. And since they don’t live that way (playing 3D chess) then it mustn’t be. Sure, on some abstract level they know that some people are smarter but that never gets factored into their modeling of the world. Meaning, that they are ripe for manipulation. Both from themselves and others. 

Historically, I thought that these sorts of people didn’t know any better. I would then try and enlighten them thinking that they would now be wiser. I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

A silly enough example is celebrities advertising products. As though there’s a correlation to the quality or necessity of the product and the celebrity. Laughable. Yet it’s very real. Billions of dollars a year type of real. That kind of money wouldn’t be spent if people didn’t fall for it, and I mean a lot of people. Like I said, people are more than happy to trick themselves. 

People want to get played. 

Don’t believe me, just read The Robert Greene books. 

Chapter 10 of the Art of Seduction

“It’s hard to make people listen. They’re consumed with their own thoughts and desires and have little time for yours. The trick to making them listen is to say what they want to hear. To fill their ears with whatever is pleasant to them. This is the essence of seductive language. Inflame people's emotions with loaded phrases. Flatter them, comfort their insecurities, envelop them in fantasies, sweet words and promises. And not only will they listen to you, they will lose their will to resist you. Keep your language vague, letting them read into it what they want…”

It’s pretty simple. You tell people what they want to hear and you get attention, or better yet, money. The grifters are smart and will monetize the attention. It’s funnel marketing 101. People are more concerned in playing the game than knowing the game. And even those who allege to be interested in how the game is actually played are really out to cherry pick information to force fit it into their preconceived, ego invested narratives. 

Dot-Com Bubble

Take for example the Dot-Com Bubble. During the Dot-com bubble the name of the game was to issue a small percentage of the outstanding float in an IPO. Then after the lockup expires the insiders would dump their shares on the market, overwhelming those who’ve recently bought.  

Between the time that the IPO was listed and the lockup expiry happened a small number of funds would corner the market and run the shares up in price. But what inevitably happens is people catch onto this game. Then you get a whole deluge of BS companies issuing IPOs and there aren't enough useful idiots to absorb all the shares when the unlocks happen and the other 95% of shares come to market. Essentially, there are too many shares relative to useful idiots. THAT IS THE GAME. 

And let's not forget how mainstream media plays right into their hands. Of course they’re going to invite the CEO onto their show to drive up the ratings. That’s why CEOs go on a roadshow to begin with, to draw attention to the company and its stock. After all, the news channel is there to give you what you want. And most people don’t want impartial, objective information. That’s why conservatives watch FOX and progressives watch MSNBC. No one is going to watch someone telling them that they’re stupid for buying stocks based upon 5 year projections as they’re burning through millions of dollars with no sight of profitability. Especially, when that stock is ripping 100% on the day of its IPO. 

THE GAME, in part, is spurred on by low interest rates and a new industry coming to market. In the Dot-Com bubble it was telecommunications, in 2021 it was electric vehicles. Yet most pundits point to rising interest rates as to why the Dot-Com bubble burst. And the mention for how it formed was innovative companies growing in popularity among the retail investors. It’s always funny how institutional investors don’t get mentioned. Like they weren’t the ones buying private placements and then corning the market on a tight float stock. Or how they weren’t buying PIPE deals when SPACs were all the craze. 

And trust me, we’ll be talking about institutional money managers who took advantage of AMC too. 

Lets not forget that institutional investors who know better are forced into these ridiculous trades, chasing them higher, because if they underperform the benchmark they’ll get redeemed. Which causes an additional surge and reflexive feedback loop to occur. Yet, another part of the game that’s left out. 

Do you think the “trusted” analysts were any better? What’s their incentive structured like? I think I’ve belabored this point enough. But know that these factors are THE GAME. and there’s a reason you rarely, if ever, hear it get discussed. It’s not just because it’s an open secret, but like I said, people want to play the game and not be told about the game. I know this observably and anecdotally. I’m the guy who says the quiet part out loud and most people are not only disinterested in it but they’re repulsed by it. It literally makes them upset. 

One last point on the ease of manipulating people. How about the Barnum effect?

Base rates are an important phenomenon that people roll their eyes at. Therefore, it allows manipulators to say things like the list above and give you a false sense of personalization, thus openness, thus vulnerability and by extension to be taken advantage of. 

In some sense, the AMC Apes are victims. If it weren’t for all the grifters fanning the flames and thus prompting their behavior they might perhaps come to their senses. 

AMC Activists

These so-called activists blew up one fund, Melvin Capital. But how many did they help? It’s like cutting the head off a hydra and calling it a victory. 

It’s interesting that these true believers and activists came in to be the savior of AMC and are now being “victimized” by AMC. But are they? Not really, they’re fodder for fire to keep AMC safe. They’re sacrificing themselves for the greater good. But I can’t imagine that was their plan. How noble. Such martyrs. Oh, did they think that AMC owed them a favor in some sort of covert contract way? Now these APE shares are being converted to common stock. 

Their generals told them of the noble fight and led them into war. Being fed lines of lies of the greater good and being something larger than yourself. The bag holders are useful idiots. And the generals leading the move were grifters all along. History shows that the top 1% fight with the top .1%. And the top 1% tend to recruit the bottom 99% to wage war for them. It’s been that way since time immemorial. 

History shows this time and time again. You want taxes for the rich, the government will get a taste for blood and it’ll trickle down to the poor getting taxed too. Lets not forget that the kulaks were prosperous peasants. But peasants nonetheless. And do you think the Soviets stopped at the kulaks? Of course not. Or should I say, do you think that the bitter, jealous, ignorant mini-tyrants (normal peasants) stopped at the kulaks? Nope, they needed a new enemy to be victims to. If you can’t take out the ruling class then human psychology dictates that you engage in “displacement” and find (create) a new malevolent perpetrator to oppress you and thus take down. Jealousy is only happy when destroying. 

AMC activists and ideologues jumped on the grenade. Their ostensible argument was to fight the “fat cats'' and to stick it to “Wall Street”. But as often is the case with humans, what they cite often isn’t the reason. The reason they inadvertently put themselves in the line of fire was because they were  bitter, resentful and emotionally fueled. Plus idle hands make the devil's workshop. With so many people sitting at home living lives of quiet desperation with ample stimulus money in their pockets they took to being activists. But it was merely a fantasy. Much like how people check out of reality by playing video games, watching TV or chronically scrolling through their phone. It was a pseudo attempt to have meaning so they played the vigilante game. 

I’d say they made more money for Wall Street then they lost Wall Street. Yes, you heard that right, they were a net negative towards their cause. Not an uncommon consequence of activists. They, as well as most people, lack the critical thinking component necessary in understanding how things will play out. Their emotions are uni-dimensional and are only concerned with the myopic, immediately gratifying result that validates their emotions. And they got it, they squeezed the stock. And as a consequence they enriched much of Wall Street. 

It’s not the hedge fund that pays the price per se, it's their investors. Like, oh, I don’t know, the pension funds that manage money for the everyday hard working American. The hedge fund will close down due to the high water mark clause. Why manage a portfolio if you won’t see any performance fees for the foreseeable future? 

Especially, when you have ample money as it is and you can retire in your nice Miami home. 

As of writing this it appears that the APE preferred shares are being converted into common shares. 

The Short Squeeze a.k.a. Going Long

Let's go back in time during the short squeeze. What’s the prevailing narrative? The prevailing narrative was that the shorts squeezed the stocks to ridiculous high levels due to the shorts having to cover. But that’s not what happened. The shorts got out relatively early in the move higher. Did they get squeezed? You betcha. But not at all like how people are depicting it. Most of the move higher was from people pilling in long i.e. just buying stock. They were playing the greater fools game and playing momentum i.e people were chasing to get in on the action. This chart is from the SEC filings on the matter. 

The disillusioned ideologies can’t come to accept the reality that they made Wall Street more money than they lost Wall Street. They were a net negative force for their own cause. But a net positive for their real cause…drawing blood in a resentful retaliatory fashion. They also can’t come to terms that AMC “turned” on them. And this will amount to another cynical, adolescent social skill set takeaway that Wall Street is a bunch of dirty players. Now these useful idiots and true believers a.k.a. Diamond handers are trauma bonding. Their desperate desire for camaraderie knows no bounds. And that’s how gangs develop. A need for camaraderie plus idol hands = gangs. And a gang is what they were or perhaps still are. History is full of these lessons too. A bunch of beta males create a coalition to take down the alpha male, unbeknownst to them resulting in a power vacuum. Then one of the once beta males becomes an alpha male and the cycle repeats. 

Mudrick Capital made a quick $25 million dollars by buying a private placement and then selling it on the market. Senvest Management made 100’s of millions if not over a billion dollars on Gamestop. How much money do you think Citadel made due to the bouts of volatility and option premiums collected? There’s a myriad list of hedge funds that positioned themselves to take advantage of either a temporary turnaround play due to the economy opening up or they tactically positioned themselves knowing that AMCs and GMEs were short squeeze candidates. 

Video Review

A beautiful piece of ideological propaganda. Exquisite I tell you. It even tugged on my heart strings…but only for a second. Then my propaganda recognizing instincts kicked in full force. The real icing on the cake is the background music. That song is by Hillsong United and it’s called Oceans (Where Feet May Fail). It’s a religious song by a contemporary Christian band.  Which isn’t much different than that of the pseudo-religious zealot bag holders and ideological investors whose cognitive dissonance still wouldn’t allow them to know that they were hoodwinked. Not hoodwinked by AMC per se, but by their Twitter Demi-Gods leading the charge. I won’t say any names but those who know know. 

Let's do a breakdown of this video, shall we. 

It’s a made up argument of the tropes and stereotypes of the retail investor, a so-called lost boy, MGTOW type.  But it’s a non sequitur fallacy of irrelevance. As often is the case, when people try to help out the despondent all they do is hurt them more. Telling a victim it's not their fault when it is, at least in part, only hurts the victim. Because it lets them repeat the same errors over and over again while they think they’re being virtuous.

“I want to tell you something about shareholders. These are people, not 1%, they are not basement dwellers, they are not market manipulators. They are hard working everyday people. They are first responders, they are healthcare workers, they are construction workers, customer service workers, moms, dads, business men and women…”

This is the problem when making an appeal to emotion, which this is, is that it’s often light on the facts. He’s making a part to whole fallacy, also known as, Fallacy of Composition. It’s a hasty generalization. We all know how stupid it sounds when I tell you that a pencil eraser is made out of rubber; therefore, the entire pencil is made of rubber. But we so often lack recognizing it in real, present situations. This is also a strategy of deflection. Not recognizing the so-called wrong doing that was done by some shareholders (market manipulation).The reason you do that is because you yourself don’t want to be hastily generalized in an “guilty by association” fashion by onlookers. Therefore, your only tactic is to paint all shareholders as pure and innocent, because you know that onlookers will lump you all together. 

Of course a consequence of this is that by doing so the bad actors can skate free of any consequences. You don’t want to point any fingers because you might incriminate one of your pals. It’s a common practice in group settings and this applies because the AMC shareholders are a group after all. But by not speaking of foul play you gain plausible deniability to any foul play. 

To be a 1% in the United States of America you need to make $650,000 a year. Oh my God, how rare a breed that must be. Not so fast. If there’s 340,000,000 million United States citizens then that’s almost 3.5 million people. Of course you have to adjust for some things but I don’t care enough to do that. The point is that I’m supposed to believe that not a single one of these people is an AMC shareholder or that they’re leading a board somewhere trying to incite a stock run? 

This list of people that they are just so happens to be the people we called “heroes” not too long ago. What’s the odds that he appealed to them by coincidence? Do you think people will call bullshit and push back against the “heroes” and moms and dads? Of course not. Anecdotally, the myriad of people that I knew who all bought AMC were playing for the fun associated with the anticipation of a reward. Simply put, they were playing for the excitement because they were bored and other people were doing it. And they also were construction workers and dads. How could that be? 🤔

Affirming a disjunct. 

A or B

A

Therefore, not B

If you’re a dad or construction worker (A) then you are not a market manipulator, top 1% or basement dweller. 

“These are people who just want a better life for themselves and their family. Nothing more nothing less…”

The word JUST is a thought terminating cliche, it’s an attempt to speak in absolutist terms to dissuade you from critically questioning any further. 

This is a rhetorical question so keep that in mind. Who would invest in AMC as a medium to better their lives? Playing it as a short term tactical trade due to the reopening makes sense. What kind of father and mother with fiduciary responsibilities is investing in a company which is falling into obsolescence with shrinking revenue and compressing margins? Especially once you consider all the alternative investments available. I doubt that the average medical care worker is doing the due diligence to justify their turnaround thesis. And why would you invest in a stock that has a bunch of doofuses trading it like a penny stock? 

“Over two years ago they were exposed to the market through one common love and that was the movies and the opportunity to make that better life dream come true…”

Common person appeal, Love appeal, Dream appeal, David vs. Goliath trope. 

This is what a marketing campaign looks like.

So this sounds like a bunch of amateurs who had no idea what they were getting into. I “love” Puffs but that doesn’t mean I’m going to invest in Procter and Gamble. But wait… a nose in need deserves Puffs indeed. 

So these people weren't market manipulators, just personally incredulous individuals. They bit off more than they could chew. How? Because practically no one in the everyday world understands markets. Whether that be the stock market, dating market, labor market, currency markets or even a flea market. That’s why there’s so much angst around markets. You fear what you don’t know. 

A lot of people don’t realize that a good product doesn’t mean a good investment or vice versa. I knew a few people who bought UBER or PTON because they liked using it. They couldn’t even bring themselves to read an 8-K or 10-K. Hell, they don’t even know what those are. They were clueless that the company was being subsidized by investors (such as themselves). So when the company dilutes shareholders by issuing more stock they act surprised on a down 10% day. What did they think was going to happen to them when they bought into a serial stock issuer which is losing billions of dollars a year? 

“Through no fault of their own, over two years ago, they did not know how manipulated and corrupted the market truly was. And how certain individuals would do everything it took to make sure that dream of theirs was never achieved. Those same individuals have lied, have called these investors dumb, have manipulated the markets to their advantage. Caused a lot of the turmoil that we see in the markets today…” 

Notice how he’s bifurcating the shareholders now. It started with all AMC shareholders being pure and innocent to set the scene and have you let your guard down. And then transitioned half way through to calling some of the shareholders corrupt. That’s the beauty of emotional appeals, it can contradict itself whenever it’s expedient. 

This is primarily a story of idiots trying to ride a trend and then getting blown up because they overstayed their welcome. And now they’re  looking for a savior to absolve them of their ignorance or blatant stupidity. Now they hide under the guise of do gooders wanting the best for their family. Sure, I believe that. So they tried to ride a pump and dump, didn’t time it right and were left bag holding. This is a consequence of playing a game they didn’t understand and trying to get “free tendies”. 

 “Just so they could win and make these retail investors lose…”

There’s that word again. “JUST so they could win.” And the dichotomy of oppressor/oppressed is revealed. Remember, it's NO fault of their own. And to say otherwise is complete aberration of the narrative and you’re a victim shamer. Now you’re starting to understand the importance of thought terminating cliches. 

“But I tell you this, Joe. These everyday people, these retail investors, these apes are awake now. And they can see through the bullshit. They fucking understand what they are up against. And yet, they are ready for war. They are willing to fight and they are willing to stand up for those that cannot. These people are some of the smartest, strongest and most resilient human beings I have ever had the pleasure of coming to know…”

Them being everyday people tells you that they’re not the smartest. That’s not how the IQ distribution curve works. Everyday people have the IQ of a normal person. He’s telling me that “these people” i.e. AMC stockholders are some of the smartest people. I don’t believe that for a second. Maybe a select few are above average in intelligence but no way is the bulk of them the smartest. 

Newton lost his ass in the South Sea Bubble, so what role does being the smartest play. I’m also not sure how virtuous it is to take an ass whooping in a fight you should have never gotten into to begin with? 

Notice the cursing meant to punctuate the emotional significance and act as a war cry? He also couldn’t help but engender himself by referring to their moniker of APE. War? That’s a hyperbolic, strongly provocative statement, coupled with the cursing and intonation change. 

This is the Apotheosis and The Ultimate Boon of the hero's journey. You could think of it in video game terms of fighting the final boss. In which you fight the final boss or a boss that you once lost to in a sort of redemptive fashion. By defeating the main antagonist you create a positive conclusion to the game and can now justify prior actions as they weren’t in vain or futile. 

You are battle hardened and are transcending your adolescent, naive ignorance to become a better version of yourself. That’s the story being sold here. And it’s being sold because people are suckers to buy it. It’s really re-victimizing an already victim. 

The problem is that the story just isn’t true for most of these people. They have some low resolution and unsophisticated understanding of things. Predominantly caused by their willful ignorance due to their ideological predilection. Should I be mad if I lose at a game of chess although I didn’t know the game when I got started. Or if I entered a tournament with an ELO of 1,300? No, of course not. 

You don’t play games based upon how they should be, otherwise you’d tell your boss like it is and subsequently get fired. People are predominantly fixated on their ideological beliefs of how the world should be without paying much attention to the praxeological description of how the world is. Just as it’s “feels over reals”, it’s also, “should over is”. Most are too obsessed with their beliefs in the face of contradicting evidence. It’s a sad reality that I myself have suffered mightily from. 

“And nothing and absolutely no one will stop them from achieving that dream. So you can tell your friends, your subscribers and everyone else out there that we are not fucking leaving. And they can choke on that.” 

Earlier he said that certain individuals would do everything it took to make sure that dream of theirs was never achieved. 

How has that changed? Because the APEs are more resilient and battle hardened? I feel like this is going to end in an “you tried your best” pat on the back. And they’ll say yeah, I learned a lot. But how are they going to materialize that knowing to fulfill their alleged dream in the first place. 

They won’t leave. It’ll happen like most of these things do. It’ll slowly disappear and wind down.

“And they can choke on that.” Ah yes, the heart of the issue. Do you hear the emotional vitriol? What a great way to punctuate and finish the rally speech. 

And one by one, the players will defect knowing they’re defeated and will start getting back to their lives. And the true believers will get bored of it and move on to something else, something new to excite their emotions. The movement will snub itself given enough time. Much similar to how companies will wait out the protests and picketing by their employees. Because the one who is less needy with deeper pockets wins. It’s true in stock markets, dating markets and labor markets. A transcendent principle so many conveniently forget.