Wealth and fame make you stupid


That’s the conclusion I draw from the words of the wealthy and famous. Elon Musk was doing a fine job of demonstrating that he was a brainless twit all by himself, but now his ex-partner Grimes has chipped in.

Maybe it’s just religion that screws them up, because she also said this:

Religions are something con artists invent, so I’ll take that as a confession.

I don’t think someone who makes up an experimental polytheistic religion is going to be welcome with young earth creationists like Ken Ham. You never know, though — they may share a common interest in the art of the grift.

Comments

  1. heffe7 says

    “Birds of the same feather flock together…”
    My guess is Ken Ham and crew will eat this sh#t up, and start posting & sharing Grimes’ garbage.

  2. areyouashoggoth says

    I made up a polytheistic religion once too. I used it for my D and D campaign setting. The deities were cribbed heavily from the Endless.

  3. says

    …You never know, though — they may share a common interest in the art of the grift.

    Or a common interest in bullying their critics into silence.

    And yes, Elon Musk is a really stupid person, trying to be a stupid person’s idea of a Bold Visionary Tech-Bro Genius Entrepreneur.

  4. quotetheunquote says

    @ larpar:
    I know next to nothing about this “Grimes” person (except that she is/was Canadian (by the way, thanks for that, bud! as if being responsible for JP and Crowder wasn’t bad enough already)), but I see this as an attempt – a very lazy attempt – at trolling the YEC crowd. She probably wants them to come back at her with angry replies giving the “correct” date of creation – for the lolz or whatever.
    But who knows, she could just be brain-numbingly stupid.

  5. silvrhalide says

    Well, why not? L. Ron Hubbard invented a religion on a bet with Harlan Ellison, which is why we now have Scientologists and terrible books like Dianetics. The template for creating stupid religions is already out there.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianetics

    Although I do notice that the Scientologists aren’t quite so vehement about humans evolving from bivalves anymore, not since the Human Genome Project was completed and published.
    Wonder why? :P

  6. birgerjohansson says

    If the Finn god Ukko is not part of the Pantheon, it is not worth sh*t.
    And it needs a very large turtle.

  7. dstatton says

    There is a story I heard from the early 1950s. At the time, L. Ron Hubbard was one of the more successful science fiction writers, but wanted to be even richer. At a gathering of other writers, one of them told him that to get really rich, start a religion. The source of the story was Harlan Ellison.

  8. hemidactylus says

    Is she serious or just being contrarian or ironic? That she associated with Muskrat long enough to procreate gives me pause.

    I do wonder how many flat-earthers are sincere or being contrarian. Hell I’m tempted to feign flat-earthism to get a rise out of people.

    There have been tongue in cheek ironic religions— Discordians and SubGeniuses come to mind and that silly pasta thing. I’d hesitate on extending benefit of the doubt to her given Muskrat’s pretentious pseudo-profound simulation garbage.

    Wait didn’t they meet based on common interest in Roko’s Basilisk? Never mind then. I just wasted too many letters for nothing.

  9. Oggie: Mathom says

    Wealth and fame make you stupid? Oh, I call bullshit. And I can use the senate race here in Pennsylvania for evidence. Fetterman is from a small town, taught GED classes, went into politics because two of his students were murdered, is worth about $1.5 million but was not born rich, is currently the lieutenant governor of PA, and seems to know his shit about government and economics. Oz, on the other hand, married the daughter of a surgeon, became a surgeon, became a celebrity, became famous, became a huckster for often dangerous snake-oil meds, bought a home in PA less than a year ago so he could run for an open Senate seat on the anti-democracy ticket, is worth about $100 million (real estate, investments, paid speaking gigs, TV show, supplements) and comes across as knowing nothing about law enforcement and crime and how government works, shows no consistency in personal values, has no idea how the economy works, and lies constantly in TV adverts. So, rich (well, in the low end of rich) and famous (well, he’s famous in PA) Fetterman does not come across as stupid.

    Okay, Oz kinda destroys my assertion, but he is from New Jersey. And Florida. And . . . .

  10. says

    Dinosaurs were planted by god to confuse us?
    The thing is, dinosaur fossils have been found in such strategic places that their placement corresponds with the geologic record, they correspond with paleontology, with genetics, with probability, etc etc.. Indeed they are found in places and in ways that coincides with everything we know about ancient history, geology and science. Usually religionists make the claim that this was all done by the devil but this woman claims it was god. Either way, whoever hid those fossils was scientifically brilliant in laying them out so well.
    Compare that to the creation myth… God created light on the first day but created the sun on the 4th day.
    So when did god change from having an abysmal understanding of grade school science to becoming an expert in advanced level paleontology, etc?

  11. Reginald Selkirk says

    @11: The thing is, dinosaur fossils have been found in such strategic places that their placement corresponds with the geologic record, they correspond with paleontology, with genetics, with probability, etc etc.. Indeed they are found in places and in ways that coincides with everything we know about ancient history, geology and science.

    Exactly! It would take an omniscient, omnipotent God to pull that off. You have proven it. QED

  12. Ridana says

    It sounds to me like she’s trolling. The fact that Dinosaurs is capitalized while god is not suggests she’s not a true believer.

    @markmckee: I’ve heard it both ways – that the Devil planted bones to mislead us (see, the Bible is a lie!), or that God planted bones to test our faith (you gonna believe Me or your lyin’ eyes?).

  13. gijoel says

    @14 yeah, I think she’s trolling too. She was suppose to DJ a set at Ibiza a few years ago and wound up playing Taylor Swift from her ipod. Still you can’t discount the possibility that she genuinely believes this shit.

  14. silvrhalide says

    @8 When asked directly about it, in person, Harlan never directly denied it, although he certainly danced around the topic. LRH also apparently told the Scientologists to lay off of Harlan. Harlan’s explanation was that they were part of the same writers’ group at the time.

    Still, nothing beats Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold”.

  15. says

    L. Ron Hubbard invented a religion on a bet with Harlan Ellison

    Apocryphal, and the bet was supposedly with Heinlein, not Ellison (although he once claimed he was there), who would have been about 10 years old when Hubbard is first reported (by Theodore Sturgeon) to have said that if sci-fi writers wanted to make money they should invent a religion.

  16. says

    L. Ron Hubbard was one of the more successful science fiction writers, but wanted to be even richer

    Um, none of those folks–who were struggling to get published in pulp fiction magazines for a penny per word–were rich.

  17. says

    When asked directly about it, in person, Harlan never directly denied it

    He never denied being the greatest sci-fi writer and all-around human being who ever lived, either.

  18. silvrhalide says

    @19 Harlan never stopped being Harlan.
    My only source for the story was Harlan, and he’s dead, his (last) wife is dead and if Straczynski knows, he isn’t saying.

  19. hemidactylus says

    @21- Ray Ceeya
    I still love Smashing Pumpkins even after I realized Billy Corgin is a bit of a jackass. Iron Maiden still kicks ass despite Bruce Dickinson being on the wrong side of Brexit. He did encourage fans to get COVID vaccinations though. Clapton fans grapple with his assholery. It happens.

  20. StevoR says

    @ ^ hemidactylus : Love Smashing Pumpkin’s songs here too. Hadn’t heard Billy Corgan was a douche though have’t followed them that closely for, yikes, decades already? Do I want to know?

    .***

    That final paragraph certainly makes it seem like she’s trolling – or shit-stirring in the Aussie vernacular :

    Like her on-and-off-again boyfriend, the Canadian electropop musician has styled herself as an agent of online chaos and enjoys a bit of trolling here and there. It’s interesting, however, that Grimes would want to cause a stir on Twitter with Young Earth creationism, a bog-standard belief of many Christian fundamentalists, instead of… something cooler. Only a few weeks ago, she was polling followers to ask whether she should convert to “Greco Roman polytheism or ancient Egyptian polytheism,” either of which seem far more in line with her maximalist and transhumanist aesthetic, then said she was “almost finished developing an experimental polytheistic religion” of her own.

    I don’t know much about Grimes or Claire Elise Boucher as she’s also named but :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimes

    Notes she includes a lot of SF and feminist themes including song titles like Geidi Primes referencing Dune, has an album titled Miss Anthropocene and seems to have been inspired for some of her songs by Bowie and Queen so it seems highly unlikely that she’s serious here. Although Poe’s law as usual, Who knows but, well, does seem very unlikely that she menat

  21. says

    World is 4000 years old. Dinosaurs were planted by god to confuse us

    So this jackass is admitting he worships a god who lies and fabricates evidence on a planetary scale, at least. So how does he know his god didn’t plant any lies in the Bible?

  22. says

    Sorry, “she.” And the possibility that she’s trolling is noted per #23. But my criticism still stands WRT other, more “serious” YEC nincompoops.