70 Comments
author

Thanks for your support! Please share my thread on X! https://x.com/0rf/status/1754293862200393924?s=20

Expand full comment
Feb 5·edited Feb 7

Someone in the YouTube comments on the video complains about how your view counts are always suspiciously low and notes 89k views mid-January. Here we are 3 weeks later and now it's down to 76k.

Edit: that YouTube comment maybe mistook your Youtube subs for video views. Either way your views still seem suspiciously low.

Have you ever seen the work of Dr. Robert Epstein? He has been on Jimmy Dore and Rogan a few times to explain all the shenanigans Google is up to that usually remains hidden since so much is ephemeral in nature. Maybe someone you and Taibbi could talk to? You could probably put together a banger compilation from data Epstein has collected. Just make sure to post it on Rumble too.

Expand full comment

Likewise, it's hard to accept that, just for instance, UK-based The Mother Of All Talk Shows, the most popular political call-in show in many countries around the world, regularly boasts upwards of a million watchers, while YouTube shows MOATS' numbers in the hundreds.

This is not surprising, or new. Long ago, the Roman Senate made sure that slaves never wore any article of clothing that might distinguish them from the rest of the population, lest they recognize each other and see the strength of their own numbers.

How many times in the past several years have you viewed content on social media platforms and thought to yourself, "I must be the only person who thinks the way I do"-? Most likely, you are not the only one who thinks that way. Others who think as you do have been systematically concealed from you.

This is the same type of strategy we see at work when millions of people all around the world take to the streets, and the news media fails to report it, or engages in extreme under-reporting and mis-reporting of the numbers and the intent of the demonstrators.

Expand full comment
Feb 5Liked by Matt Orfalea

'And yet NewsGuard gives Snopes “a perfect 100/100 credibility rating” with the “highest of editorial standards”, revealing just how uncredible the entire fact-checking industry is.'

This is so important for people to understand, because organizations like NewsGuard are used by sites like Wikipedia to judge what sources are 'trusted'. It's a huge recursive web.

Expand full comment
Feb 5Liked by Matt Orfalea

“Snopes doesn’t check facts, they check narratives, and as the official narrative shifts so do their “facts”. This isn’t fact-checking, this is government stenography.”

Perfectly said!

Expand full comment
Feb 5Liked by Matt Orfalea

Achievement Unlocked: Debunk the @debunker

+7 Health

+3 Honor

-2 Pangolin

Expand full comment

The lesson, as always: do your own research.

Expand full comment

Fact checking brings to memory Bertand Russell's sentence "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt". what kind of person self proclaims herself as a fact checker or owner of the truth? and by the way, how many fact checkers have corrected the CDC on masks, vaccine efficacy in preventing infection and transmission, etc...?

Expand full comment

Snopes definitely should not be quoted in any term paper, kids!

(I knew it was a lab leak early on. A friend told me that their university had been working on virus modifications in a foreign lab for years.)

Expand full comment

Literally none of the people who called this a conspiracy theory, and attacked people like Cotton for stating plainly common sense, rational, reasonable theories about things for which there was not a clear answer yet, has ever apologized or admitted error for doing so.

They just move on as if they never claimed all that, and as if they've always claimed otherwise. Straight up out of Orwell's "1984", the gaslighting behavior behind "We've always/never been at war with X". Yet instead of an authoritarian regime, it's journalists and establishment politicians doing it.

Expand full comment

It was a bioweapon — designed in US lab !!

Expand full comment

It’s not dangerous. Duuuuuuh.

Expand full comment

And?

Expand full comment

It’s a bioweapon that makes you shart…big deal.

Expand full comment

Sooo - we should just wait for the hundreds next ones?

Have you started drinking again or mom just allowed you to have a keyboard?

Expand full comment

Matt, the problem with your "Lab Leak" theory, is that you presume that SARS-CoV-2, the purported "virus" cause of COVID-19, is real, backed by legit science.

However, as revealed by Dr Stefan Lanka, Dr Tom Cowan, Dr Andrew Kaufman, Drs. Mark & Sam Bailey, Christine Massey, BSc, Mike Stone (viroLIEgy), and a few others, NOT ONLY is SARS-CoV-2 fictitious (nothing more than a computer model), but all of virology is built on a fraud.

Please investigate some of these names I have provided, and their work.

Expand full comment

Thank you.

Expand full comment

I agree. Not a lab leak. Although Wuhan seemingly could have been doing GOF research IE trying to manufacture easily disseminated poisons. I am inclined to go with the Terrain group. But in any event, even if viruses exist, there was never a pandemic. And there never was COVID.

Expand full comment

Why don't these people just change their focus to something more appropriate to their abilities?

For instance, we desperately need some qualified Chuck Norris Fact checkers.

Expand full comment
Feb 5·edited Feb 5Liked by Matt Orfalea

they better beware: the dinosaurs looked at Chuck Norris the wrong way once. We all know what happened to them.

Expand full comment

HA HA! I checked, and that original Chuck Norris Facts website has gone- what a loss! Probably, we can still find it via the Wayback Machine @ Archive.org.

Expand full comment

the Chuck Norris quotes/jokes are one of my go-to sites if I'm in a foul mood, partly because it's so over-the-top, absolutely brilliant - https://www.liveabout.com/top-chuck-norris-jokes-2307758

Expand full comment

Thank you, Mary-Lou! I miss my Chuck Norris facts.

Expand full comment

you're welcome :-))

Expand full comment

One time Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked so fast, his foot traveled back in time and kicked Amelia Erhart in the head and THAT is what caused her to crash.

One of my all-time favorites!

Expand full comment

LOL, good morning to you too :-))

Expand full comment

Chuck Norris doesn’t need a sexual partner…because no woman compares to his own hands!

Expand full comment

Talking heads and puppets of the state. No integrity. No ethics. Not to mention their intellectual prowess is less than a 3 year old calf...

Expand full comment

A recent Hereford poll indicates that 43% of three-year-old calves find your comment vaguely insulting.

(Sorry, Crystal, couldn't resist the "polled Hereford" wisecrack. It's a character flaw, to be sure.)

Expand full comment

Oh my ...

Thank you ...

I would say it's a gift, rather than a flaw 😹

Expand full comment

For a generation lying has become a way of life. For many individuals their lying is so pervasive they actually believe their lies are true facts. They have become unhinged from reality psychologically. It does not bode well for them as individuals as they disappear down their own rabbit holes and are unable to find an exit, and then their reality collapses around them. Its a similar to the situation condition as for people captured by a cult and dont get out soon enough.

Expand full comment

Continual unapologetic lieing.

I think I would like to see filth like these go down some kind of hole never to resurface. Their lies at the least degrade humanity and very likely will lead to world War,

No "winners" anywhere

Expand full comment

Just what I need, Amy Goodman telling me I'm fringe. I'm who DN! is supposed to represent.

Expand full comment

Snopes' comments are a perfect example of Postmodernist thinking that truth is fluid. Remember Biden claiming "we believe truth over facts". It wasn't a gaff as they tried to explain. The problem is "truth" to the Postmodernist is just like a shirt--wear one on Monday, change it on Tuesday, or even later Monday! The Ideology is Everything.

Expand full comment

I think this piece would have landed harder if evidence that the virus actually had been created in a lab had been discovered. I kept waiting for that other shoe to fall and it never did.

This is tricky. Yeah, you’re right. It’s awkward to go 100% in one direction and then, because conditions on the ground change, mandating a change of direction, to do so while pretending nothing happened. (Nothing to see here. Move along.) That’s pride and hubris. It’s just awkward when you talking about an idea that:

A) The majority of the entire scientific community was (and still is) saying.

B) Is concerning a virus that continues to confound our brightest minds.

And C) Still isn’t technically disproven.

There is a theme that I’m detecting in your piece that I also detected throughout the worst parts of the pandemic. One of the strongest arguments against listening to the scientific experts was the fact that it seemed as if the rules and our understanding of COVID continued to change and the fact that the rules around the virus and how to defend yourself from the virus would appear to change was basis for many people to write off the experts altogether. It was (and still is) a form of absolutism that has turned many people away from any data whatsoever. If the scientists suddenly started getting data that wearing masks actually did some marginal good, well too bad. Last week, they said that the virus particles were so small, they could easily escape through the fabric of a mask so masks are useless.

Forget about the fact that:

A) What a cloth mask protects from and an N-95 mask protects from are vastly different.

B) New data was being uncovered daily that showed undeniable proof of the benefits of masking against COVID.

and C) We’re dealing with a mysterious virus that continues to confound our brightest minds.

But at the first adjustment of what we know about anything concerning COVID, that was enough for so many to blow off ALL data about the virus and any science relating to the pandemic. This brand of absolutism doesn’t have a place in science, or it demonstrates a severe misunderstanding of how science works. At the beginning of every scientific finding is a hypothesis. Once that is settled upon, the next step is to go about disproving that hypothesis. Ideas that stand up to scrutiny and experimentation long enough are deemed “true” until some new information comes along to debunk that truth. (The world was flat, until it wasn’t.) Getting things wrong is the basis of how science works and the world was learning on its feet in real time.

Many, many things hypothesized in the beginning turned out to not be true or to not be as important in the overall puzzle as we initially imagined. For example , in the beginning, it was thought that the virus was spreading by coming in contact with it on contaminated objects. So sanitation theater” took off, with the hand sanitizers and gloves and wipes and everything that went along along that exploding throughout our society. A couple years later, the data determined that, while some do contract COVID off of something they touched, the VAST majority inhaled the virus lingering in the air into their systems. The science evolved with the data because that’s how science works.

But that evolution and acknowledgement that we didn’t know everything yet (And how could we know everything with a novel coronavirus?) was enough for many to write off ALL the science, throwing the baby out with the bath water.

My point is that, to me, that sentiment also exists within this piece. There’s a strong implication that, if the fact-checkers got the lab thing wrong (and there still hasn’t been evidence discovered that it actually WAS created in a lab either, not yet at least), then EVERYTHING the fact-checkers determine must be wrong as well and they have no relevance or validity. Again, throwing the baby out with the bath water. (What a strange old saying…)

I would just caution patience and to take every fact-checked with a grain of salt. Nothing should ever be accepted wholesale. Not a single fact that anyone tells us should be believed without scrutiny. Conversely, we shouldn’t believe wholesale that all fact-checkers are obsolete and ineffective just because some within their ranks might have gotten a currently unsubstantiated theory about the creation of COVID wrong or that someone in their organization denied once writing about Biden wearing a construction hat backwards.

Expand full comment

Knee-jerk contrarianism is a deeply regrettable outcome of exposure to moral bankruptcy writ large.

One tends to forgive a smattering of intellectual insolvency, but there are limits to charitable impulsivity.

Attributed to the little emperor is the axiom "when in doubt, do nothing." Cognitively, that's easier said than done when the cacophonous shrieking of charlatans intrudes on every reasoned thought.

All one can do is to patiently re-establish rational priors.

Expand full comment

Did China deny it before the west took over the narrative ? What was their actions immediately after the breakout? Did they surround the market or the lab? Actions speak louder than words!

Expand full comment

Did they surround the market and the laboratory? Those are the actions you are talking about? What would happen if a coronavirus were discovered in America near market and laboratory? Wouldn't we surround market and laboratory, too? I would argue that would actually be irresponsible if we didn't surround that market and lab, regardless of the origin of the virus. I don't think the actions here are enough to validate your conclusion. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying the evidence that you have provided to back up your conclusion doesn't add up for me.

Expand full comment

They surrounded the lab. Not the market. Once it spread they shutdown all of wuhan. You’re just refusing to accept anything but the west narrative.

Expand full comment

Two things: Please show me where you are getting this order of events. How do you know what you claim to know. And many times in my post I said that I don’t know and that evidence could be found tomorrow stating that it was created in a lab. It’s just that no evidence has been found at this point….except for the resources you’re about share.

Expand full comment