Endless Thread - Egg-cellent If True

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

When a colleague sent us a viral Reddit post from WallStreetBets, we set out to investigate. A redditor who goes by u/throwmetfawaythanks tricked thousands into thinking he cashed in on Fresh Hen Egg Futures, and awaiting delivery on one million eggs. But many failed to notice one small detail: the story was indeed a s**tpost.

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Amory, we've been talking about the internet for like five years, and you know what we've never really talked about? Don't hurt yourself. I don't know what could we possibly have not talked about at this point. One of the main genres of Reddit post. Good old fashioned shit post. That's right. I viewed as a post that is like slightly sarcastic and meant to be in a sarcastic way,

but also meant to like make almost a vain attempt to come across seriously. Now, this kind of post is not a troll, technically. Trolling, I think, is a little more purposeful and riling specific people up. This is more of a low effort tossed off thing. And earlier this month, one of our colleagues sent us something. It was a tweet that was getting a lot of attention. but the tweet was just a screenshot of a Reddit post, and the Reddit post got a lot more attention.

And then we got the author of the post's attention among his mountain of direct messages. I didn't really answer any of them. I just kind of left them on red. This is one of the only DMs I answered, or actually it might have been the only DM I answered from the whole post to your guys is. I feel lucky.

On Reddit, or at least the account he used to post this particular, post, this person is known as Throw Me T.F. Away, thanks. Yep. That's definitely a throwaway account. Used to post things you don't want traced back to your regular Reddit history of posts and comments, etc. Also, hard to pronounce. So we're going to call this person Eggman. Eggman? That's my favorite thing to do. Whenever someone's like, cheese man, I'm like, cheeseman. We're going to call him Eggman slash Eggman because. Because he didn't want to give us his identity on the record. And he says that's because, well, he basically traffics in shitposts.

Right. But also, Eggman is very fitting to the post. Which he will read for us now. Can I refuse delivery on 50 tons of egg futures? So I went a bit overboard with DC. J.D. contracts. Fresh hen egg futures. I took a bunch of drugs and my friend had a bird and I don't know why, but it made me think of bird flu strain coming this year. So I got a shit ton of contracts. Turns out I hit the lottery as farmers across the nation massacred their chicken stocks because of the

bird flu. I got in at about 3750 a contract and cashed out at 4,400. I apparently did not get all my contracts out and now I have people contacting me saying I need to take physical delivery of 10 contracts. A contract is five metric tons of eggs. I live in an apartment. I cannot take delivery on 50 tons of eggs. What do I do? I made a killing so I can hire whoever I need to make this go away, but can someone help me? I do not want 50 tons of eggs coming to my door. Would it be illegal for me to list delivery address as the nearest Federal Reserve building? For reference slash perspective, there are between 1,174 and 2,381 dozen eggs in a single ton. This puts me at approximately 720,000 to 1.2 million eggs.

I am really stressing out over the logistics of how the fuck I'd ship out this many eggs to shelters. It would have to be so many shelters. Edit. Those of you DMing me slash commenting offering to buy my eggs, there is a zero percent chance I'm doing business with anyone autistic enough to use this sub. Somehow we'd find a way to both lose massive money. Okay, so a couple things jump out to me. So do you live in an apartment?

I do. Why the Federal Reserve Building? That seems like a sort of like a libertarian dog whistle or something. Yeah, that's the intent. Like, say more. Like, the intent is? I have a personal bone to pick with that. am I guess.

Okay. If I suppose if I was in this situation, I may genuinely consider that option. Okay. So, sorry, you have a personal bone to pick with the Federal Reserve or with Libertarians? With the Federal Reserve. Because you're a libertarian. In some ways. Monetarily, yes.

Okay. Got it. And then you said autistic? Is that right? I did. Yeah. Say more about. about that? That is going back years on Wall Street bets. It's kind of the original, I believe now,

since the GameStop thing, they're calling themselves apes a lot now. But originally it was, everybody said that they were autists or everybody was autistic. You know, they were all losing money. It was just one of the original terms used to describe the users of the subreddit. I think it's still used to an extent, but I don't see it as often anymore. The suggestion being what? That people, I mean, they also would say like, like that just you're, you have to be to make the kind of plays people make on the subreddit.

Uh-huh. Are you autistic? No. Okay. My sense is sometimes people are self-identifying as, as, you know, I'm not going to say it, the R word, right? Like, they're self-identifying as the R word or as someone with autism. Is that right?

on Wall Street bets? I don't, I wouldn't say self-identifying. I think it's, it's being used in a shitpost manner. Like, it's, it's sarcastic. Got it. It's offensive, of course, but, um, I mean, a lot of, a lot of shit posting is offensive, I guess. And purposefully so. Right.

Yeah. Not in a, not in a hateful way. It's not meant to, to shame. those kinds of people. I believe at one point the community donated a bunch of money to some kind of autism fund or something. Okay. Yeah, that's like tricky, tricky territory, right? Like, it's like, it is. I could definitely see why people would, would, would, will get upset by that. I mean, it is. Right. It's like a purposeful use of a word that is, or a description that is offensive to a number, a group of people that is effectively marginalized.

Sure, yes, yeah. Whoa. I'm glad you called him out on that, Ben, I guess. It's pretty complicated to use hateful speech and then say, but, you know, it's not being used in a hateful way. Yeah, just don't do it. There's no, don't explain it away. I'm more in the camp of like, hey, don't do it, no excuses. Same. But also the story at the center of this is bananas, if true. Or it's eggs if true, wrong food group. Eggselent if true.

Well, another interesting thing about this post is that it's almost a Reddit post meme, it turns out. So it's a story that has been copied and tweaked and pasted, like that thing they call a copy pasta, right? That's what Eggman did. He actually based this post off of another user who posted something. things very similar almost a year and a half ago. The exact day it escapes me, but he posted in the same subreddit that he took a bunch of futures out on gourds and he was going to be getting a large shipment of gourds to his house and he wanted to know how to turn a profit on all the gourds he was getting.

It was copy pasta. I saw, I don't even remember what subreddit was on, but somebody made a post about it and I reminded me of it and I just kind of put my own twist on it because Easter was coming up. You're keeping it going on a different holiday. That's good. Yeah. I mean, as low effort as possible for a shippost, right? Just take someone else's work and change the holiday. Can you talk a little bit about your Reddit diet and like what you spend your time on Reddit? Like what are you doing as a user generally speaking? I would say I'm pretty active. My favorite subreddits are of course Wall Street bets. I like political Compass memes a lot. I mean, the general meme channel is good.

I would say those are my main active subredits that I comment in. I browse all the popular mainstream subredits. I stay away from like the political ones, but outside, well, political compass means. So I'm going to admit that I am not familiar with political compass. Is this like just one specific meme genre or what is this? Yeah, it's like, I don't know if you've ever seen like the political compass where It's got like the red, the blue, the green and the yellow squares in each quadrant. So top left is red, bottom left is green.

Top right is blue, top right, bottom right is yellow. And then it's like, authoritarian is the top axis. Libertarians, the bottom. The left axis is economic left. The right axis is economic right. So it's a subreddit where people put memes over that compass. And it's kind of like their, they're stereotypical. as, or they're like as stereotypical of whatever quadrant you could be. So like the,

anyone posting in like the, the bottom left quadrant will be very like sarcastically, like over the top social justice warrior or the bottom right would be like, you know, like your, your, you're, your Rockefeller type capitalist child labor kind of meme stuff. Got it. What are most of your posts? Like what's the content of most of your posts usually? I mean, chip posts usually. So I don't take like typically a serious angle with my posts. I'll even go into like, I don't know, I like to go into the libertarian meme subreddit and post sarcastic memes in there, even though that's not something I would say. I typically, and I'll post something in there that I don't really believe in just to get them riled up, stuff like that.

I don't know, I like to see people's reactions. So you would describe a fair amount of your posting as effectively shit posting, right? I would describe all of my posting on Reddit as that. And why? Why? Well, like, why? Why do you do? Why do you, like, tell me more about your motivation for that? Boredom, perhaps. I think it's funny watching people believe it, especially with the latest one that we'll discuss. Yeah. I don't know. I just think, why does it troll troll? I don't know. I just, it's, I enjoy it. It's a hobby, I suppose. More on Eggman's hobby in a minute.

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You've heard about his shitposting hobby. Eggman, yes. Eggman. How do you feel about this person right now? I'm pretty confused. I mean, I'd say this person contains multitudes. I'm not sure that I, need to explore all of those multitudes, but you kind of just want to sit down and figure out

where exactly they came from and where are they coming from. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a little puzzled. Yeah, I mean, I had some pretty mixed feelings about this Eggman. And I think a key thing to understand here is that the post is complete BS, right? And yet it convinced a ton of people that it was real. There's a shocking number of Wall Street Betts users who ship eggs for a living. So yeah, so that's a question. What were the people who are actually in the egg business,

so to speak? What were they saying to you? Oh, they were just like, you know, like what state are you in? I run a distribution business, blah, blah, blah. They're trying to set up business deals, basically. or I got a lot of messages saying, like, I'll take a dozen eggs for free. Well, these does sound like genuine heartfelt, you know, trying to help you out. Yeah, maybe one or two people, but there's like a hundred something.

I find it hard to believe that that many people are in the business of distributing 50 tons of eggs and browsing this subreddit. But like, did this cause you to have any deep thoughts? No, I mean, I was just kind of taken aback by how many people. People thought it was genuine, deep thoughts maybe on the future of humanity for intelligence-wise. So Eggman sort of says this gives him a lack of faith in humanity, but also thousands of people responded to him trying to help him deal with these tons of eggs that were about to be delivered to his porch.

A publication in India wrote this up as if it was like a dead serious thing and actually gave like investing advice and information about investing in egg futures. This went all the way across the ocean, all the way to India in terms of its popularity. People were responding from all over the place, like sending in messages, direct messages, trying to help Eggmen deal with this supposed disaster that was on his hands, even though his post was, of course, complete BS. Some of them, it sounds like they were genuinely trying to, to help you, right? Oh yeah. I would say the majority, it restores my faith in humanity in a way,

right, that people are so willing to help out a complete stranger with a completely ridiculous issue that they have only themselves to blame for, right? But in another way, it concerns me that people don't take the time, like, with how often people use the internet these days, they don't take the time to, like, to think or verify, to fact check anything. They just take it at face value. So it's like complicated, right? Like it's like you're like, I can't believe people will believe anything, but you're also contributing in some ways. One could make the argument, right, that you're contributing to the fact that people believe less and less, right? I don't think that's a bad thing, though, right?

I would prefer people be skeptical of what they see on the internet and take the time to fact check things rather than just see a headline and take it at face value or see a random post on. on Reddit and take it at face value. Right. So yeah. So say more about that. Like, like, um, how come? Like what, what, what, what, what kind of like, like, increased skepticism would you like to see? Like, how would you like to see?

Would you have preferred, for instance, people to have, like, downvoted you into oblivion and commented a bunch, like, basically like, calling you an idiot because this would never happen and, like, saying that you're, you're, your post is complete BS. Like, would that have made you feel better? No, I wouldn't say that. It's not like I'm on some, like, grand mission to destroy internet disinformation or something. It's just, like, you know, if we're going to think about it on, like, that kind of scale,

I suppose, like, that's what I take from it. Like, it worries me that people will believe anything that they read online. To me, I'm just posting it to have a laugh and, like, send it to a couple of my friends. I'll have a laugh on it. Are you a libertarian? Would you like politically identify as a libertarian?

I suppose if you wanted to put me, like if you're considering like what Republican Democrat and that as the three boxes, I would fall into that box. There's a lot of things that the party agrees with that I would probably disagree with. But I fall more into that box than other boxes. Yeah. I want to know what you care about. Like what do you care about? What do you believe in?

I believe in maximum individual freedom, I guess. But not to the point of like anarchy or like no government. I wouldn't say that. Okay. You know, I like gay government. I would just shrink the government, I suppose. But I also, I don't want people to think I'm like a Trumper or something. I'm a very, very left-wing socially, but right-wing economically.

you could classify me maybe, which I know makes people jump to Libertarian, but I think that they may go too far on some things, like, completely open borders, for example. I wouldn't want that. Yeah. What's something that, like, what's an issue that

you really care about that you think is really important? A specific issue? Yeah. Or, I mean, like, I'm describing this stuff in political terms, like, issue, right? Like, but, like, you know, like, I have a family so I have kids so like something that's really important to me is that like my kids get

opportunities and that they get a good education right like that's a thing I believe in uh I'm not I'm not a big fan of war I don't think that war serves anyone I'm effectively a pacifist so like that is something I would agree I would agree there so like yeah so tell me some stuff that you feel strongly about um hmm I want to be careful how I word things, bear with me, and I want to come across poorly. I mean, the reason, like, to be clear, like, the reason that I'm asking you this, right, is that, like, we think that this story was really, like, I thought this post was really funny, right? And, like, and the reaction that it got was, like, it wasn't, like, massive, right?

You're not, like, the most famous, like, you know, shit poster on Reddit this week even, probably, right? but like it sort of popped off and so like to me that's just an interesting story in and of itself but I also want to like you described your sort of online behavior as as you know majority shit posting so like that can be a very safe space to be in if that makes sense right like you're not really kind of like attaching emotion to what you're putting into the world if you're shit posting, right? Right. So, like, I guess what I'm curious about is, like, who, what, what do you feel emotion

about? Like, what are the things that you, like, really care deeply about? What are the things that you're, like, is there something that you're, like, really willing to stick your neck out for? Is there someone who you care about who, like, defines a specific issue? Do you have somebody in your life who represents something that you actually would, like, that you would not shitpost for, that you would actually be? put up a very heartfelt post on behalf of or that you would do some other kind of act for.

Does that make sense? Yeah. I used to post when I was living on the East Coast. I used to post a lot about the lack of gun rights in the state I lived in. So I actually could say I care a lot about that. Okay. My main philosophy, I guess, in life is that I just want to be left alone to do do my own thing as long as I don't harm anyone else or stop anyone else from doing what

they want to do. You know, live and let live kind of thing. Like your whole pacifism thing, I definitely agree with a lot. I just think everybody's too worried about what everybody else is doing. And we need to, especially from like a governmental standpoint, I would like to... Yeah. Let other people be. Do you have like a family? Do you have a family? Do you have people in your life who you're close to you? I have a wife. I have a dog. I have siblings. I have parents.

We're all close. I'm a happy guy. I live a life off the internet. Does your wife read your shitposts? I showed her this one because, you know, I was going on here. And I was telling her I need the room for the night. And she didn't understand it. She was just like, I don't understand why they want to talk to you.

All right. Amory, how do we feel? What do you got for me? All right. Well, on this show, we talk about the blurring of the lines between our online communities and lives and selves and our offline communities and lives and selves, right? Yeah. And how, like, increasingly they're the same thing. Exactly. And so who you are online obviously says something about who you are offline. An Eggman, for someone who probably spends a lot of time online, he kind of seems to be treating his online actions as if they happen in a vacuum. But if he wants to be this kind of live and let live guy politically,

but then he also wants to poke people and rile them up on Reddit just for the sake of it, that's, I think that needs a little, that's worthy of a, huh. R slash mhm. Mm-hmm. And because he comes across as a pretty cynical person, I guess the last thing that I'd want to ask him is just like, Eggman, what brings you joy? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I do. And, you know, it's interesting. Like, I think we make assumptions about folks who do this kind of posting. And we think of them as somebody in their basement, in their mom's basement, yelling for chicken tendies. you know, social pariahs who are increasing the toxicity of the world. But Eggman doesn't strike me as that. And actually, I don't think anyone is really like that.

But we're all full humans with actual depth. Yeah. And I agree with you, too, that, like, it's just complicated when you think about the impact. So did you see the other famous shitpost of the week? No. about the the snickers vein it was someone pretending they made a fake news headline about snickers removing the quote unquote vein from the top of snickers because it you know was phallic essentially to have the like chocolate ripple which looks like a vein and so like this enraged the political right, people freaked out because it was like removing the gender of the Snickers bar. And I think like, Eggman, look, I'm going to say Eggman's post is like relatively innocuous

compared to the Snickers vein, right? But like, this stuff has like a real impact. And so like Eggman, I think would say like, listen, we all need to get better at identifying BS online and and, and, and, we all need to get more skeptical. And to a certain degree, I agree with that. But at the same time, I just, I don't know, man. I don't know if this stuff, if this stuff is helping or hurting our ability to understand each other. Yeah, well, I stand by my first statement about Eggman, which is that he contains multitudes. So I agree with you on that.

And I know that he is more than this post and even what we have gotten into in this conversation. And I guess that's, I do genuinely. want to know what makes him happy to be alive and if that is as spreadable as the content that he is currently used to spreading. That's all I'm saying. I'm looking for that Eggman post on unwholesome memes or something like that, you know? Yeah. Give me the joy, Eggman. Some of your dog footage on eye bleach, Eggman. Make us feel joy at its cuteness. All right. Well, that's it for this week, y'all. We'll be back with another episode next week.

you know, while you're out there, don't try to save somebody who's talking about egg futures. Be egg-solent to each other. Oh, that's what we were looking for. Indeed. Okay. Bye. Goodbye.