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Jordan Peterson, intellectual fusspot and right-wing grifter extraordinaire, has gotten himself a new speaking gig: he’ll be one of the headliners at a crypto conference in Miami in April, which should give him plenty of time to learn the basics of cryptocurrency before speaking publicly about it.
But in many ways Peterson is perfect for the conference: he may not know much of anything about crypto, but he is something of an expert on turning nothing into the semblance of something, having transformed himself from an undistinguished professor of psychology into a multimillionaire “intellectual dark web” celebrity and bestselling author of two books of advice he doesn’t actually follow himself. (“Get addicted to benzos” is not to the best of my knowledge one of his 12 Rules for Life.)
The irony here is that the bitcoiners, or at least those who comment on the subject most loudly on Reddit, want nothing to do with this intellectual parvenu. News of his speaking gig was received in the Bitcoin subreddit this week with a sneer. Some were offended that someone with no discernable knowledge of crypto would be headlining a conference on the subject.
“Guy learned about Bitcoin 5 minutes ago,” complained someone called shaddowkhan.
“This guy is a moron,” wrote wheniwaswheniwas.
Congrats on being a self-help guru and making bank but there is little substance to what he does. … Guy learned about bitcoin last Thursday and now will probably give some cringe keynote speech about how hard it is to be a man and hodl [hold on for dear life].”
“JP doesn’t know fuck all about Bitcoin,” declared gzben.
I’ve watched a few of his interviews with Bitcoin ‘gurus’ on YouTube. He was talking about how he’s recently become interested in the Austrian school of economics and all the rest of it. He speaks like he’s an authority on subjects he’s really not very well qualified to speak publicly about. Climate change, economics…
… Marxism.
Others were — wait for it — unhappy to be associated with a grifter.
“Horrible choice,” wrote THEmoonISaMIRROR. “He presents a bad image for crypto to be associated with. Bitcoin isn’t a grift.”
“He’s a grifting piece of garbage,” agreed PtansSquall. “I don’t want him and his awful reputation anywhere near this…”
“He is a know grifter and crypto is a space vulnerable to scams,” wrote MEGACOMPUTER. “Fuck this little benzo gremlin.”
These are crypto people. How much of a grifter do you have to be to offend them?
Still others were a little surprised by this line of criticism.
“Wtf are you talking about?” wondered Vladimus44 .
Bitcoin has essentially ALWAYS had shady pump and dumpers in the community. Literal felons who have fled the US government and gone onto create scam coins.
Why is everyone suddenly so shocked by this?
Some were troubled by his connections with the far right.
“Great, we’ve got Ted Cruz and Jordan Peterson,” wrote DismalSpell sarcastically.
Next lets get Alex Jones on our side. Really try and get Bitcoin adopted by the most controversial people possible, that’ll help convince everyone.
There were a few defenders of Peterson, and some of them insisted that their poor little subreddit had been invaded by Reddit’s leftists, eager for any chance to dump on Peterson. I have no way of knowing if this is in any sense true, but much of the anti-Peterson sentiment seems to me to be the work of actual crypto fans and not foreign infiltrators. Or in some cases questioning crypto fans, some of whom were led to challenge their own faith in crypto.
“Ive actually considered getting out of crypto because of this shit,” likedevo sighed. “If it’s the new alt right currency they can keep it.”
Dude, it’s been the alt-right currency from the very start. But good on you for at least noticing.
“Are we the baddies?” ChurchOfAtheism94 asked, referring to that famous skit by Mitchell and Webb.
Thanks, Dr. Peterson, for inadvertently leading some of the lost to these small moments of realization.
H/T — @TheKavernacle·for tweeting about this.
###
Seems like an accurate summation 🙂
I don’t know a lot about Bitcoin either, but two of my friends who are in programming have a negative view of it, for environmental reasons. Apparently there’s a “mining” process that uses up a lot of energy, which is kind of needless because hey, it’s a digital currency. But I guess it’s a way for someone to make money.
@e of i:
Right, there’s no need for mining of any physical substance. The digital “mining” is just processor-intensive mathematical computations which have no other purpose than to establish the successful problem-solver’s priority and thus their claim to a chunk of crypto. But this provides the requisite artificial scarcity to make the currency (at least nominally) valuable.
If everybody could just create recognized units of cryptocurrency at will with little resource expenditure, there would be effectively infinite amounts of the stuff floating around and it would all be completely worthless.
As to the mining process, it’s created rather a lot of… well, not always hatred (although that’s there) but irritation, distaste, and aggravation with one demographic that might surprise some.
Gamers.
See, the thing is that those many computations that generate the magical mystery money? Well, guess what does those very well and very effectively.
Graphics cards (GPUs). Especially the kinds designed for computer gaming.
This has the effect of driving up the price of the more recent SOTA cards up from a MSRP of around 4-500 bucks to as much as in some cases over two thousand. Making it a wee bit difficult for your average hobbyist to upgrade his or her PC to keep up with the constant demand for more powerful graphics processing for the latest games (especially the First Person Shooter and MMORPG genres). (Competitive players are particularly prone to desiring the latest GPUs because to them 90 FPS just won’t do when they want 120.)
And when said gamer needs that one card and is willing to pay the excessive prices some ask, well, the cards aren’t available even at the exorbitant sums asked, because the goddam crypto miners have gone and snatched them up by the dozen to try to pull imaginary money out of cyberspace.
So, yeah, gamers aren’t exactly fans of crypto. Not when it makes it difficult to near impossible, you know, game, which is what those cards are for.
And now you know, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is lunatics screaming about snakes and coffee shooting at each other with colorful lasers.
Which makes game publishers current love affair with NFT’s even more headdesk worthy. I hate this whole crypto-crap so much and the more I learn it, the more it annoys me. It’s a rabbithole of stupid that gets worse the deeper you go. It starts at ‘and why is that a good thing?’ and just keeps getting stupider.
Sorry for venting. Crypto and Peterson deserve eachother. Just for fun, look up ‘seasteading’ or ‘cryptoland’.
Cryptocurrency mining and climate? How about this article in the Grauniad:
Buy a coal plant to power bitcoin mining
Seconding the “they deserve each other” sentiments. JP and Shitcoin (and all its clones and NFTs) are toxic to the world, and in the case of crypto, extremely harmful to the environment. (JP might be bad for the environment too, but I can’t think of any specific example. I’m kind of surprised this grifter is so rich, too, but I guess it’s easy to exploit the willfully stupid.)
I’m actually more surprised that a handful of them seem to not only denounce him, but other right-wingers as well, and a few even admitting the crypto market is full of scammers. Amazed that people hanging out in these groups have even a shred of self-awareness left. Dare I hope they may come to their senses and break away some day? (Now I’m the one who sounds foolish.)
@Robert Haynie
I didn’t think about it, but you’re absolutely right. If only enough pissed off gamers could find a way to fight back against this crap. But what really needs to happen is to at least try to regulate this “market”, if it can’t actually be eradicated at this point, and maybe try to fix how the Imaginary Internet Monies are generated, so it’s less destructive.
”He speaks like he’s an authority on subjects he’s really not very well qualified to speak publicly about.”
Truly, this alone is the hallmark of every Conservative pundit I’ve ever heard.
They’re not wrong about him being a grifter who knows nothing about bitcoin.
They just can’t embiggen that specific realization to a general one about grifters and the bitcoins they grift about.
Still, baby steps, right?
How long before JP launches his own line of ugly lobster NFTs?
Jordan Peterson is an absolute gross creep regardless of what he talks about.
No matter what he talks about he finds a way to work in something grossly sexist.
I have no time for his misogynistic bullshit.
This afternoon I have four gorgeous ripped guys harnessed on a hot walker being trained how to look good in honor of me and in worship of me so, nope, I’m not paying attention to Peterson’s bullshit today.
@Jeanette
Oh, definitely.
@Moggie
Lol! I’m surprised he hasn’t. Don’t give him any ideas!
@Stacey
Ooh, four of them? Is that the most you’ve had at once? Hope you had fun. Definitely a better way to spend time than on MRA garbage.
@Queen of the Harpies
My regular stable has five right now. Practicalities and schedules mean that at various time we might not be all together at once but of course I like it when we are. Four in this case was for aesthetic reasons and on a mechanically practical matter the hot walker we made has four attachment point so that means four guys.
What weirds me out about guys like Peterson is that they manage to appear quite reasonable and decent much of the time. I mentioned that I keep getting motivational quotes and such from him in my Instagram feed. The quotes sound meaningful and all, I kind of have to remind myself that they are general fortune cookie/horoscope type things that can be interpreted however one likes, and he is still “Lobster Daddy.”
In other words, guys like him that can pull off the respectable vibe are kind of scary to me. I see the way people can get drawn into their little cults of personality.
Ah, the psychopath’s mask of normality …
The above comment doesn’t appear on the “recent comments” on pages other than this one. Why?
@Stacey: You’re having a better day than the rest of us! Or at least a more aesthetically pleasing one.
@Moggie: Lobster NFTs, paid for by BitLobster coins!
(He’s gotta do something to pay off his lords and masters in untraceable money for the “medical” care. Invading other countries for no reason doesn’t come cheap.)
@.45: That sounds like a deepity.
The most succinct definition of deepity I have found is:
A deepity is a phrase that to the extent that it is profound is false, and to the extent that it is true is trivial.
Example: Love is just a word.