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swordgeek ,

Sorry, but a shithead losing support doesn’t qualify as news.

secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

this is unfair exploitation of mental illness.

Mike Lindell is an American hero with a story of success, making a great pillow everyone loved and making himself wealthy in the process

his religious delusions are a form of either mental illness or partial handicap and he shouldn’t be stripped of everything because of that

his belief that the election was rigged AND he had the secret proof (that would hold up to court scrutiny) was clearly a religious delusion and if you think otherwise you don’t understand how cults and mental illnesses intertwine

in a just world, this deal should be something he doesn’t have to honor because he offered this “prove me wrong” thing to the public when he was clearly out of it

what about all the people he employed? the people he made happy with a decent pillow? we as a society have failed by allowing the religiously delusional to enter into any sort of unusual contracts at all. yes, the amish should be allowed to sell grain and the menonites should be allowed to sell delicious jams, but should we really allow right wing religious maniacs to enter into complex contracts?

no, of course not

this man should be given ALL his money back, and an apology from society for exploiting him. this man worked hard in life and doesn’t deserve this

Smokeless7048 ,

I mean, the options seem to be “this man is mentally ill, he needs to enter adult conservatorship” or “this man is an adult, who made a contract, and is being held to a contract”

He doesnt seem to be so far gone he needs a conservator, so his contracts are valid.

secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

there needs to be some sort of space between “this person needs a conservator and can’t have any rights” and “this is a logical rational person who can contractually give away 5 million dollars because he’s filled with religious delusions”

abigscaryhobo ,

It sucks, but there is a lot of precedent in the US for “you are allowed to be as stupid with your money as you want, as long as you’re sane.”

He may have delusions around his religion or beliefs, but he has the rights to have those delusions and beliefs, and if he wants to place bets on his beliefs because he holds them that strongly then he can. If someone else spots him as a mark and takes advantage of him, sure it was dumb of him, and they may not be in the cleanest moral area, but that’s America, learn your lesson and move on.

You go to New York and some guy sells you a newspaper that helps raise money for charity and the homeless for $5 and you believe him then find out it’s a free paper all over the city, that’s life.

We can protect you when you don’t know any better, but when you bet everyone in the room that you can fly and you can’t? That’s a hard bet to make buddy, and a harder bill to pay.

secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

The reality is he is an older American and 5 million dollars is a lot, it’s not a 5 dollar bill. This is exploitation and society is only allowing it because he’s a right wing religious idiot.

RunningInRVA ,

The guy held a contest for $5M. Why are you defending him for not paying out? He is supposed to be credible, no?

secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

No one of even mild to low intelligence thinks Mike Lindell is a credible person.

This is a person who had a positive attitude and made a lot of money making pillows, then got older. He is religious and religion and aging affected his brain, especially because he’s clearly not that bright to begin with as evidenced by his religious beliefs. Plenty of people do well in society without being that intelligent because they have a positive attitude.

Stripping this person of 5 million dollars is a form of laissez-faire elder abuse wrapped in the artifice of polite society and it’s blatantly vile.

Just because he’s a disgusting right-wing religious idiot doesn’t mean that elder abuse is acceptable, and intelligent people in society should have the decency to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

modifier ,

Mmmm except whatever shibboleths you may utter against “right-wing religious idiots”, comments like yours help those idiots and others like them by giving them a sort of ‘cognitive plausible deniability’ to get up to whatever evil shit they’ve been getting up to and worse.

Like it’s so obviously minimizing real evil - the evil UNDERNEATH shit like this ‘innocent little contest’, genius - under a shield of “d’aww shucks those pesky white nationalists are up to their hijinx again, those silly knuckleheads”.

So in that context, you talking about ‘disgusting right-wing idiots’ comes off as a real fellowkids moment for you.

secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

i hate to say it, but this is a really good response

it’s true that a lot of these right-wing religious people are awful people. i just wish that we lived in a better world in which people would never vote for idiots like this and there would be financial protection for people as they aged and became less intelligent, but not incapable of managing all aspects of their lives

ask yourself this: if a random person mike lindell’s age offered 5 million dollars if someone could prove the earth isn’t flat, would someone ever be allowed to collect that in court?

but perhaps i am living in a fantasy world by seeing these people as less pernicious than they are, and your point is taken that he is part of a white-nationalist movement that is scary and evil, and perhaps i should be glad when anything slows it down or stops it from spreading instead of nit-picking over the logistics of such. i do think religion and racism are both a sort of cognitive infection that afflict the stupid, and it’s not entirely their fault for being stupid and susceptible to infection. as much as i hate racism and right-wing people, this really feels exploitative to me, even if Mike Lindell is infected

modifier ,

Let historians unpack their intentions, I say. And deal with their actions now, while they’re action-y and actively harming everyone and everything.

Have a good night.

Smokeless7048 ,

ask yourself this: if a random person mike lindell’s age offered 5 million dollars if someone could prove the earth isn’t flat, would someone ever be allowed to collect that in court?

If someone who was known to be relatively rich held a competition, where he repeatedly made the claim, and said anyone who could prove him wrong would be paid, set requirements “you have to pay to come to my event to make a claim”, and then advertised that fact, then yes, i think that person would have an appropriate claim.

At some point, ‘you’ have to take responsibility for your actions. If I a bet online, and lost, I would expect to have to pay.

KillingTimeItself ,

you really just keep rattling on about religion and religious beliefs don’t you, you seem to almost carry the same behaviorisms that you apply to lindell.

modifier ,

I genuinely can’t tell if the downvotes are because people think you’re serious, or because people think you’re joking, or because people can’t tell if you’re serious or joking.

Daxtron2 ,

Its hard to tell sometimes because I have seen diatribes almost exactly like that, but completely serious.

jacksilver ,

Given his follow-up responses he seems to generally believe what he said (or at least upholding the joke?). I mean I kinda get the notion that we shouldn’t take advantage of people, but Mike made the competition himself. The guy asking to be paid isn’t taking advantage, he’s asking for what Mike promised him.

Blackmist ,

I have no idea why this man is in the American news cycle so much. I guess “talks a lot of bollocks” is enough these days.

He always looks like he should be dictator of a small South American country. Not a real one, obviously, they’d decorate the nearest tree with him, but the sort of dictator who ends up there through a series of zany mishaps in the kind of shit sitcom that Paramount+ might greenlight. With a really uninspired title as well, like El Presidente.

III ,

I don’t think MAGA really view him in high regard, they more or less allow him because Trump loves him. For all non MAGA people, it’s medium entertaining how much of a top to bottom train wreck this guy is. I haven’t seen a single instance of him in a public space where he doesn’t make himself look like a complete fool only to realize he has exposed himself to then try to get out of whatever hole he just dug unsuccessfully, making him look even more foolish. So, you know, an honest and reasonable representative of the average MAGA.

MehBlah ,

In a field full of clowns He is the king crusty.

Daxtron2 ,

Because he spent millions on ads for his shitty pillow so everyone who was exposed to ads knew his face. And then he came out as a raging fascist so then he became a controversial commercial celebrity.

NauticalNoodle ,

If it were a production directed by Armando Iannucci, I’d watch it.

b3an ,
@b3an@lemmy.world avatar

He cries into his own lumpy pillows at night

secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

you’ve clearly never used one of his pillows

Leate_Wonceslace ,
@Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

And now they never will.

secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

You are so sure of yourself.

And yet…

www.ebay.com/itm/334945864341

Bluefalcon ,

Seems drugs were treating him better then Jesus is.

sp3tr4l ,

Ya’ll should watch some of his ‘broadcasts’.

Not, like, the whole things.

Tommy Campbell’s YT channel does basically recaps of the stupidest shit the stupid MAGA clowns do and… well Mr. Lindell features quite often.

Lindell is basically the most perfect stereotype for a loser idiot boomer that lucked his way into being a business owner, and he is of course astoundingly technically incompetent.

There are at this point running gags with a number of words that he seemingly is incapable of pronouncing correctly, the guy produces moron clips at such a rate Im surprised he isnt a number of widely used meme formats.

afraid_of_zombies ,

incapable of pronouncing correctly

Lonely bookish kids, grown men who do not listen to anyone else, ESL adults who had to pick up the language without help. Take a guess which one of the three he is.

sp3tr4l ,

Alex, I’ll be forgoing your 3 options and asking instead “What is an obviously still using cocaine addict?”

He might have graduated from the rock to the powder, but at this rate he’ll either be incarcerated or back to the rock soon.

afraid_of_zombies ,

What is with angry men and cocaine? It’s like a chicken and egg problem.

gamermanh ,

Hey now, I’m an angry man because of my horrible ADHD and my inability to just do things

I don’t even like cocaine!

captainlezbian ,

Try meth, might calm you down

Smokeless7048 ,

sounds amazing. can you put up a link?

sp3tr4l ,

Sure!

m.youtube.com/

I am on mobile but the url should fix itself.

Another running bit he does is…

Ok, so he calls it a ‘special version’ of Lauren Boebert’s autobiography.

I think what this means its that the only editorializing is that he adds ‘It was like a fairy tale.’ at the end of all of the maybe couple of pages he reads, which presumably would not actually be in the actual book.

But you see, I cannot actually tell how much of the rest of what he is reading is direct from the book and hammed up for effect.

She comes across as having the writing ability of maybe an 8th grader… and the stories are so absolutely absurd… but the problem is that Lauren Boebert is so fucking absurd, I cannot reliably draw a line between what Boebert has written, and what Campbell is hamming up.

Its … its like reading a diary of the villain from mean girls, except she’s a hick, regularly does crimes, has the trashiest life imaginable, she has infinite self confidence and is somehow self aware but also not self aware at the same time.

Smokeless7048 ,

thanks man! I’ll check it out

Skanky ,

How does one prove that someone does not have something?

Khanzarate ,

I’m not sure but the mandatory arbitration lindell himself put in said to pay the guy, so it was as rigged as lindell could get it without it being illegal, and they still felt it was well-proven, and lindell should pay.

pantyhosewimp ,

I claim that I have a five dollar bill in my pocket. I challenge you to prove me wrong.

We turn my pocket inside out. No five dollar bill is there. I lose the challenge.

Skanky ,

In Mike Lindels case, what was the pocket that he was forced to open, revealing no data was there?

It seems like such a ridiculous exercise.

pantyhosewimp ,

From the article:

Engineer Robert Zeidman entered the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge and proved that Lindell did not possess data showing that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump

Skanky ,

Yeah, that clears it up!

irreticent ,
@irreticent@lemmy.world avatar

The “pocket” that he was supposed to open to show proof was the file(s) he claimed had proof of election fraud. When he opened the files there was no proof, just unrelated data and gibberish.

slickgoat ,

What I find fascinating is the total number of numbskulls and cartoon villains, all collected under the Trump banner, and that lunatic mob may very well take government.

What’s the hell wrong with American voters?

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

They are in a conservative news bubble or they don’t pay much attention to things that don’t directly affect them and attribute those that do to the wrong party. Or they’re just greedy or racist. Or stupid.

Take your pick, mix and match.

Wizard_Pope ,
@Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll go with answer E: all of the above

Pandantic ,
@Pandantic@midwest.social avatar

You forgot wrapped up in culture wars.

LowtierComputer ,

My coworker is going to vote for Trump because gas prices went up in the last 4 years.

el_abuelo ,

I think you need to be intentionally naive, or just an absolute shitbag, to want to vote for lower gas prices at the cost of increased human suffering. Let alone whether it’s something Trump could even deliver.

Passerby6497 ,

Also, consider what was going on 4 years ago: COVID. Gas prices went up because people are using their vehicles again , and because of that, oil isn’t in the negatives and gas prices rise.

MeekerThanBeaker ,

Same thing with inflation. People weren’t buying as much crap during COVID. After that, corporations wanted some of that lost revenue so they raised prices and/or shrunk content. Then others followed suit due to need or greed. They all just went further than they needed too to up their profits.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Cough…Iraq war…cough

Fedizen ,

thats not why he’s voting for trump

mortemtyrannis ,

Well that’s the public reason they are voting for Trump.

The private reason is that they are a boot licking fascist.

KillingTimeItself ,

i think it is the reason that their voting for trump, not because they’re stupid, but because they have the entitlement to think that gas prices should be lower even though clearly they haven’t dissolved in bankruptcy yet.

pantyhosewimp ,

On average, insufficient education and critical thinking skills because of a quasi-oligarchy that favors lots of desperate people to keep unskilled labor costs down. These oligarchs are also in league with sociopath religious leaders who know that religious recruitment is higher when life is miserable. Because 80% of our leadership are effectively solipsists, little is done to improve anything long term because it doesn’t benefit them immediately or personally.

Based on the probabilities we can derive from examining history, the situation will have to deteriorate for a few more generations before a widespread radical event changes key aspects of civilization. We should all try to change things now in less destructive and less risky ways, but I fear it won’t work.

nifty ,
@nifty@lemmy.world avatar

lots of desperate people to keep unskilled labor costs down

America needs more unions sooo badly

afraid_of_zombies ,

What’s the hell wrong with American voters?

Rage at a system that doesn’t work and dreaming of being a person who doesn’t have to apologize for anything. There is a reason why crime movies, games, and TV shows are so popular. It isn’t that most people want to be going around murdering all day, it is they want to be able to.

barsquid ,

Southern Strategy and decades of Fox News.

sudo42 ,

True. I’m gonna go out on a limb and add another reason: Money in politics.

When I was a kid, if a politician was accused of taking bribes, they would fall over themselves to deny the accusation. Later, the politician would simply reply, “It was pay for access, not a bribe.”
Now, they don’t even respond to such accusations. Bribes are so normalized that we don’t even notice them anymore.

(For the pendants, yes there are pols that are occasionally punished for literally accepting bribes, some recently. My point is that there is little difference between literally accepting money and storing it in a freezer and having several billionaires fund your re-election campaign with dozens of legal loopholes.)

This allows The Rich to have a very heavy hand on the tiller for which way elections go. If rich folks weren’t pouring big money into elections (corporations are people too!) I’m willing to bet at least one political party in the US would be dead now.

Akasazh ,

How common is it that lawyers walk away from a case?

Khanzarate ,

I don’t think its that rare, but its not common. Usually it means that the client is breaching their agreement. Often that breach is in the form of they lied to the lawyer. Lawyers have confidentiality, so the only reasons to lie are external to the case itself.

Could also mean Lindell stopped paying them, probably for money troubles.

Akasazh ,

Thnx!

PeriodicallyPedantic , (edited )

The only reason to lie is external to the case, but that’s a bold move assuming reason was involved.

I bet he lied for no good reason, making it harder for them to do their job.

Khanzarate ,

Most likely.

If so, he has won the stupid prize for playing a stupid game.

Snapz ,

“But the pillow executive moved forward with an appeal anyway.”

God damnit… I truly hope that history looks back on this period of time as the outrageously ridiculous and overwhelmingly disappointing failure that it is. Fuck, man… God damnit, this is so FUCKING stupid.

bcron ,

History will probably unveil one of the largest psychological operations ever perpetrated by foreign actors in order to dismantle a hegemony and it’ll be clear as day. In a couple decades everyone will act at though it was totally obvious that in less than 10 years the ‘common sense’ rural folk decided to worship someone with used car salesman ethics and elect his entourage of unqualified nincompoops, none of which have enough intuition to start a lawnmower

HaleHirsute ,

Meanwhile the rest of us have already known it, and tell them, but they won’t listen.

barsquid ,

“Less than 10 years” isn’t giving Rupert Murdoch the blame he deserves. Repubs have been working on this for decades.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I hope he’s forgotten. He wants to be remembered.

nomous ,

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. I hope he’s remembered, just poorly.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I’m okay with conservatives repeating a past where they con themselves into having to pay out $5 million and having all of their lawyers abandon them over trying to fight that.

Snapz , (edited )

Well said - I’ve said this since he first ran, but his truest instinct is to nuke the entire world a day before he dies to avoid even the chance that people laugh at him when he’s dead.

That said, he will die thankfully and I hold out hope that we will collectively raise the money to buy the land he’s eventually buried in, raise the body and live it to the middle of nowhere where we to turn it into the only public restroom within 50 miles of the closest mega truck stop - that our money also subsidizes to run a 24 hour all you can eat $2.99 fried fish, stuffed cabbage and chilli buffet.

Railing5132 ,

My concern is that within a couple of decades this country will be converted into a theocratic fascist nation that won’t allow history to be taught (at least, not the “unapproved” version). My closest data point in support of this is the current projected electoral vote count: Biden - 224, Trump - 301, tied - 13. How in the hell (gerrymandering, media horseracing, and everything else) is this fraud LEADING?

burgers , (edited )

man i just spent like an hour in the bathtub reading further into this and belly laughing

i will say though that i think the guy who sold mike lindell the ‘data’ that he’s referring to in the challenge might actually be a genius lol. this is apparently the third or fourth time he’s identified someone who needs some kind of technological hail mary and then he just shows up and is like “i have… the data”. he sold proof that obama faked his birth certificate and also sold a bunch of completely bogus software to the pentagon during the post-9/11 defense industry boom such as software that “decodes” al jazeera broadcasts into secret al qaeda messages. an employee of his testified that he doesn’t even have an IDE installed on his computer. he’s literally made tens of millions of dollars off of this grift and despite being basically constantly legally embattled for the past 20 years has apparently not suffered any consequences. i wish him a long and successful career being the smartest dumb guy in the room

mike lindell actually comes away from this looking almost sympathetic because he is so, so clearly a moron whose conception of data is like, a PS1-era spinning icon of a CD-ROM. it’s very hard for me to guess whether or not he was acting in good faith: on the one hand, the logical thing to do with proof of election tampering is not ‘announce a five million dollar challenge for someone to prove that i don’t have it’, but on the other hand, it doesn’t make any fucking sense to do that if you don’t think you have proof either. either way i would love to know how much money he paid for it (by the way, the data is: a text file with a list of IP addresses in mainland china, a PDF with a ‘graphic depiction of voting machines’, and many terabytes of gibberish binary files timestamped to several days before the challenge was set up). look at this quote the guy is literally zoolander stupid

“I said, ‘Wow!’ This would absolutely explain what I couldn’t explain!” Lindell recalled in an interview. “It was done with computers! I knew that was the only explanation."

Snapz ,

The votes were IN the computers all along?

Smartmaticsonite… I was WAYYY off!

awesome_lowlander ,

Want good reads to recommend concerning this?

burgers ,

sorry im not sure if you’re asking or offering. if you’re offering then absolutely, hit me. if you’re asking then these two are pretty good:

reviewjournal.com/…/nevada-companys-troubles-enta…

www.npr.org/…/the-man-who-conned-the-pentagon

awesome_lowlander ,

Sorry, autocorrect screwed me. I was asking if you had any good reads to recommend. Thanks!

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

My favorite part is that the lawsuit is being brought by a Trump voter.

ours ,

“Let them fight!”

sp3tr4l ,

Dude is a clown.

cultsuperstar ,

What’s hilarious is that they all seem to have proof of all these things, but they never release any of it.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Wait…there is money in manufacturing false data to sell to these fascists?

frezik ,

Oh, if only my moral compass was just a bit weaker. The TSA spent about a decade after its conception trying to find a magic box that identifies terrorists in airports. The millimeter wave scanners are the most successful thing to come out of the entire effort. Those at least sorta work, and most of the rest on the list are far worse than that. Made a bunch of people a lot of money, though.

afraid_of_zombies ,

I don’t know if it is unethical. They want a narrative and you sold it to them. Is making a superhero movie unethical? Is roleplay in the bedroom unethical? You are taking money away from fascists which is always a good thing.

Pandantic ,
@Pandantic@midwest.social avatar

Security theater, just like signatures for credit cards. At least they’re doing away with those.

Pandantic ,
@Pandantic@midwest.social avatar

The fact that he did a “prove me wrong” instead of a “here’s the proof” tells me, at minimum, had a suspicion that the proof had no merit.

mosiacmango ,

No, he admitted at some point the “5 mil to prove me wrong” was a publicity stunt to drum up media coverage of his conference.

He thought it was impossible to prove a negative, but in this case the data was so clearly unrelated to any election, much less election fraud, the judge found that the confrence go-er had proved him wrong.

KillingTimeItself ,

an employee of his testified that he doesn’t even have an IDE installed on his computer.

that doesn’t make him not a programmer, plenty of linux pilled programmers don’t use IDEs.

Hell some of the really prominent ones use shit like text mate, DHH for example.

smokebuddy ,

“I think he’s the single greatest purchaser of advertising I’ve ever seen.

I said, Mike, I don’t care how many pillows you sell, and now you’re selling slippers, and sheets, you’re selling everything. I said, I don’t care, you can’t afford that much advertising.”

modifier ,

Give him his due, the man can sniff out a chump to be exploited.

circuitfarmer ,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Stop giving stupid people air time.

dohpaz42 ,
@dohpaz42@lemmy.world avatar

We need more of these feel good stories. That put a smile on my face.

Infynis ,
@Infynis@midwest.social avatar

There are two kinds of Republicans—billionaires and suckers

He proves he’s a sucker, because a real fascist would know never to ask to be proven wrong

dogsnest ,
@dogsnest@lemmy.world avatar

FINO

Fascist In Name Only.

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